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March 29, 2022 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:07:04
Joe Rogan Experience #1797 - Josh Barnett
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joe rogan
42:58
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josh barnett
02:21:37
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jamie vernon
00:03
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unidentified
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
joe rogan
And we're up, Joshua, talking.
What's happening?
josh barnett
What's happening is I've wandered into some sort of a strange portal that's transported me here to this wooden, galaxy-filled, I don't know, I mean, bunker, starship.
joe rogan
It's just a studio, but you brought with you War Master.
josh barnett
You're damn right I did.
joe rogan
Yeah, I love this stuff.
So you helped develop this with this company?
josh barnett
Yes, to a degree.
joe rogan
Did you give them taste parameters?
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
Cheers, sir.
josh barnett
Hey, cheers.
joe rogan
Good to see you.
I told myself I was going to take a while off of drinking after this weekend.
Guess not.
josh barnett
Today ain't the day.
joe rogan
Do you smoke cigars?
josh barnett
What's that?
Yes, I do.
Yes, I do.
Actually, part of the development of the whiskey prior to doing a single barrel product...
Was doing a lot of tasting with cigar clubs by our original head distiller.
So this, part of the creation of this was also what would be the best bourbon to go with a cigar.
joe rogan
Wow, this is perfect because it's got smoky, like a smoky essence to it.
How do they do that?
Do you know how they do that?
I saw a video.
josh barnett
Yes.
Well, what we do is we take 75% of our 75% corn mash bill and we smoke it in a big shipping container on these racks.
joe rogan
There you go.
unidentified
There you go.
joe rogan
Now you're up.
josh barnett
And then after three days, we then take all that smoked corn.
Take it back to the distillery and then we will mill it with the 25% roasted corn out of that 75% corn mash bill and then we mill it with also a 25% malted barley or malted rye and we mix it all together we get our mash going and Then starts the process of fermentation.
joe rogan
And the company Warbringer, had they been around for a while?
Did you know them and then you decided to do this with them?
josh barnett
I did not know of them.
They reached out to me.
And I was actually in the process of...
Of trying to work with a distillery to do whiskey.
Because, you know, I started to see a lot of this stuff popping up with celebrities slapping their name on these different things.
And I have been someone who's a connoisseur of whiskey for a long time.
And I wanted to do it, but I wanted to do it in a way that I felt was legit.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's hard because people come to you with whiskey that they've made, and they're like, hey, I want you to try this.
And you're like, yeah.
This is not good.
josh barnett
Well, there's plenty of that.
Whiskey has been an incredibly fast-growing market at this point, and the shelf space right now is getting pretty full up.
joe rogan
It's also hard to make.
It takes a long time to do it right.
josh barnett
It does.
joe rogan
Buffalo Trace ages their shit for eight years.
It's one of the reasons why it's so good.
josh barnett
Well, and the thing is, Buffalo Trace has a rickhouse full of thousands of barrels to choose from, to do whatever they want with.
When you're a startup, or let's just say a craft distillery like us, if we have 30 barrels sitting around, we're pretty happy.
You know?
Yeah.
It takes a lot to get this stuff going.
It takes a lot of little subtle things, which yeast you're using, you know, how long your fermentation cycle is.
And then as it all goes to that distillation run, the low wine run, the stripping run is important, but that's pretty much full tilt.
You're not really looking for anything in particular other than just watching what the level of alcohol you're getting out of it is and what that yield is.
But then on that second distillation run, where the real juice comes from, You've got to make your cuts at the right place.
You want to avoid getting a bunch of heads, and you don't want a bunch of tails.
But you don't want no tails, because some of those volatiles or higher esters will interact in the barrel in ways that come out really pleasant.
But as you initially taste it, it might put a little what you feel is like some slight taint to what you're doing.
It's all processed and the thing is you can't rush any of it.
joe rogan
Is whiskey like wine where you want to let it sit open for a while?
Does it change the flavor?
josh barnett
It does.
And in fact, I tell people, if you really like it smoky as shit, add water to it or ice.
That brings that essence of smoke.
I believe it brings some of the oils up to the surface and it makes it even smokier.
If you want it less smoky, put no ice in it, no water.
And then before you drink it, let it sit for five minutes.
And it opens up a little bit.
And as you're sitting there, it will generally tend to get creamier, a little more buttery, less smoke hit in the front.
It never loses all of its smoke, because this is really smoky stuff.
As it sits, as time gets to it and oxygen gets to it, it will change the nose and the palate.
joe rogan
The nose and the palate.
josh barnett
I'm sitting here, getting punched in the face all the time, talking about noses and palates.
joe rogan
Your nose is in remarkably good shape.
josh barnett
Well, I mean, considering it looks like Mulholland Drive.
joe rogan
It doesn't look that bad.
I mean, there's a lot of guys who have way more jack noses than you with such a long career fighting.
josh barnett
I will let them have that.
They can have that title.
You know, this nose is...
When the gal was swabbing me, I'm thinking, well, don't try to go up in this one because it's all broken up so bad you can hardly get a swab up that thing.
joe rogan
Are you ever going to get them fixed?
josh barnett
Yeah, I think at some point.
joe rogan
Dude, it changed my life.
I did it when I was 40. I had my deviated septum fixed and all I could think of was, God, why didn't I do this when I was younger?
It's so much better.
josh barnett
I know why I haven't.
And that's just simply because I figure I'm just going to bust it up again.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
josh barnett
And even though fighting really is winding down, it ain't completely over yet with me.
So I want to try and get every last drop of opportunity out of that and then walk away from it.
Because it's not the kind of thing where you're like, oh, you know, actually I feel like, no, you don't.
Too late.
It's gone.
It's over with.
joe rogan
How old are you now?
44. How many years do you think you've got of scrapping left?
josh barnett
I don't know.
Maybe two or three, but I ain't going to spend two or three probably.
joe rogan
It's so much different for heavyweights.
You know, heavyweights traditionally physically mature later.
It's like if you were a flyweight at 44. Yeah.
josh barnett
Yeah, the fact that you've probably slowed down quite a bit is going to make a huge difference to you, whereas a heavyweight, the last thing you're going to lose is power.
And lack of speed is not inherently going to cost you out there in the ring.
George Foreman, big example.
But even at heavyweight, there's not a ton of guys who are 40-plus that were able to...
Relaunch their career and go out there and win a world title George is really the only one if you really think about he's like the number one, but but even Holyfield is still competitive Although not now obviously that thing now when he did with a V tour was real weird Yes, because first of all he took it on short notice, which is a terrible idea when you're almost 60 and Exactly.
joe rogan
You know, and I know Evander had been training and gearing up for a fight with Mike Tyson, and he, you know, he looked half decent on the mitts, but much better later than he did earlier.
And you see him early in the first few videos that he posted, it looked like he really hadn't worked out in a while, and it was really knocking the dust off and getting the old engine lubed up again, and Then as time went on, he started looking pretty good.
But then to take a fight, an actual fight, I think it was like two weeks notice, right?
josh barnett
That sounds about right.
joe rogan
Because Vitor was supposed to fight...
Who was he supposed to fight?
josh barnett
Roy Jones, was it?
joe rogan
That's right.
So here...
Was it Roy Jones?
No.
I feel like it wasn't Roy Jones.
It was like...
Vitor is still fucking fast, man.
He still hits hard.
And this is TRT Vitor.
josh barnett
Yes.
This is a...
Really, to me, this is basically youth versus age.
And it was such a disparity that even the...
Technical expertise and that boxing experience that is far and above Vitor.
joe rogan
Yeah.
josh barnett
It didn't matter.
joe rogan
Vitor's always been a fairly decent boxer, though.
unidentified
Yes, for sure.
joe rogan
For MMA, he's been an amazing boxer.
josh barnett
Yes, and this isn't to diminish Vitor, but, you know.
joe rogan
He's got to do everything.
josh barnett
You're Evander Holyfield.
You've been to the Olympics.
You've only boxed your entire career.
His knowledge of the sweet science is going to be at an extreme level.
joe rogan
Oh, that's right.
Oscar de la Hoya.
unidentified
Oh, right.
josh barnett
He caught COVID. Yes, yes.
joe rogan
He didn't just catch COVID. He caught a case of bad acting.
That was nuts when he was in the hospital really quickly.
All of a sudden, one of the chances of me catching COVID. Maybe he just has a catheter fetish.
Is that what they do?
They give you a catheter as soon as you get in there?
josh barnett
I don't know.
Maybe he was hoping for it.
He's like, you know what?
COVID has made my urethra swell so that I can no longer urinate.
Can you please jam something up it?
joe rogan
I'm trying to think if I've ever had a catheter.
I think I must have since I've had a few surgeries.
josh barnett
I have never, other than a roll-on one for doing the Baja 1000. Oh, really?
Yeah, you just basically put on this little condom, and you take the line, you run it down the side of your leg, and you put it off to the back end and off to the side of your shoe, your boot.
So that way, when you're driving, a little crack in the floorboard, and if you pee, it just goes out the car.
joe rogan
Oh, wow, that's genius.
josh barnett
Because you ain't stopping.
joe rogan
Yeah.
No, that makes sense.
josh barnett
You ain't stopping.
joe rogan
Somebody should have told that to...
Well, remember that lady, the astronaut, who wore a diaper to go kill her boyfriend's wife?
josh barnett
Right, yes.
joe rogan
Remember that?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
She drove, like, many states across state lines with, like, duct tape and pepper spray.
This bitch was motivated.
unidentified
Oh.
joe rogan
It just shows you you can be an astronaut and still be a crazy fuck.
josh barnett
That's true.
Also...
Don't fuck with crazy women.
joe rogan
No, but that's the problem is that sometimes the most fun.
That's the problem.
josh barnett
No, it is a problem.
It's a huge problem.
You need to realize when you've got to stop.
joe rogan
Yeah, you've got to know what fun is not necessarily good for you.
josh barnett
Yeah, you know, it's not necessarily a bad idea if you bring someone home to take a really long, convoluted, complex route so they can't figure out how to get back.
joe rogan
You can't do that anymore.
Girls have phones.
They just drop a pin where your house is.
josh barnett
I get it, but most people are not that Machiavellian.
They don't think that way ahead.
Now, me, I would think that way, but...
You know?
Hey, and look, maybe if you find a girl that is that Machiavellian, maybe a merrier.
I don't know.
joe rogan
Well, the crazy ones are the ones that are going to drop the pin.
josh barnett
Yeah.
Generally.
joe rogan
Generally.
Yeah.
They're going to make sure they come back.
josh barnett
Well.
joe rogan
They're going to leave panties behind.
josh barnett
Oh, man.
No crazy people in my life anymore.
I mean, MMA and pro wrestling is crazy enough, but no, no.
I decided that it was probably better for my health and sanity to be with someone that's just plain awesome and calm and is not interested in dropping pins and doing crazy shit.
joe rogan
Your girlfriend seems very nice.
josh barnett
She is.
joe rogan
It's like you've got a perfect one.
josh barnett
Awesome.
I couldn't be happier.
joe rogan
That's nice to hear.
So how many times have you done the Baja?
josh barnett
Just once.
Bud Brutzman hits me up.
joe rogan
Oh, my buddy Bud.
josh barnett
I love Bud.
So Bud hits me up on short notice and he's just like, hey, what are you doing?
Actually, I was at 10th Planet in downtown working with Amir, I think it was.
joe rogan
Renovar?
josh barnett
No, Alam.
joe rogan
Oh, Amir Mom.
josh barnett
Because for a while there, all the bigger guys from Eddie's school were training a lot with me, and I was cornering them on a lot of the things they were doing.
So I'm sitting there, and I get this call from Bud, and he's like, what are you doing?
I'm like, I'm just training.
He's like, you want to do the Baja?
Yes.
By the way, I've never done any off-road racing.
Only like road racing and drag racing.
And so I'm like, but I know this is a completely different animal.
But yeah, sure.
Why not?
When?
Oh, Thursday.
It's Monday.
joe rogan
That's such a butt folk off.
josh barnett
Where do I gotta be?
And it turned into a fucking adventure and a half.
joe rogan
Explain the Baja for people that don't know what's involved, because it's a crazy race.
josh barnett
In the Baja Peninsula, there is the Baja 500 and 1000, and the 1000 being the granddaddy of them all.
It's one of the most prestigious off-road races in the world.
It's also one of the most dangerous, and they have two ways of doing it.
One is they do a circle where they set it up where you start off in Ensenada generally, and then you'll head down south, and you'll make a loop, and you'll come on back.
And then the other aspect they have is it just goes in a meandering line all the way down to 1000 miles from where you started.
So for the time I did it, I was part of a team and I think I jumped in the car.
Second or third?
Me and Jesse Combs, rest in peace.
Ours went from Ensenada to, I believe, La Paz.
It's one off-road shot all the way down there.
And basically, you're off in the wilderness, in the wilds.
You can see the remnants of courses and things like that, but some of the stuff just gets made as it goes.
And there's also a lot of people that do what's called pre-running, so they'll go out there and they'll map out the track and all that, and they will mark all the hazards and they'll get used to it because, you know, there's a lot on the line with the Baja 1000. And you have, if you've got the money especially, you'll have a trail team that'll travel down the highways and then can intersect with you at different points to do your driver changeovers.
joe rogan
Is it a thousand kilometers?
Like what is it?
josh barnett
I think it's a thousand miles.
It's a thousand miles.
unidentified
Wow.
josh barnett
You get out there and you're in the middle of nothing.
And you could be, I remember we jump in the car at four o'clock in the morning, pitch black, lights are on, slap you on the helmet, put your shit on, bye.
And we're already going 50, 60 miles an hour in the middle of nowhere in brush.
And I'm looking at a GPS and looking up ahead.
There's no windshields in any of this stuff because that would just get dirty and then you would get blind.
So you wear your helmets and you sit on microfiber, Like mitts and things to just clear your face off as bushes, cacti, whatever, dust, dirt, silt is flying through that into the cabin and hitting you.
You've got electrolyte drinks that are in a little...
Like a camel setup that you can go and take a drink while you're in the car.
You've got your catheter set up to urinate.
And away you go.
And it's pitch black.
All you can see is what the lights are showing.
And I'm just going, well, you know what?
Tight butthole, I guess.
But there ain't no turning back now.
And we were in a Class 6 vehicle, which was...
It was like a dune buggy with a Subaru Boxster motor in it.
But the thing did top out at like 98 miles an hour on a back road, just going straight, just hauling ass, four gears.
And it's pretty hairy.
I mean, when the sun starts coming up, though, and you're going 30 miles an hour along the side of this rock ridge on this cliff with like a 40-foot drop off to your right, but you're seeing the sunset coming up, the sunrise over the Mexican...
And it is just insane.
But also, people like to do things like create hazards on purpose and then film them for YouTube.
So put a jump where one wasn't.
Put a hole where one wasn't.
Put a cactus right in the middle of the course, perhaps.
I mean, it's just crazy shit.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what I kept hearing about.
josh barnett
And stuff like this happens.
I can tell you from experience, I rolled our vehicle over.
Not that bad, thankfully.
Someone came by, pulled us over, away we went.
Really?
Yeah, we just blew all the oil out that had spilled in through the exhaust and just ran it, smoke, boom, bye.
Wow.
Away we went.
joe rogan
They call those trophy trucks?
josh barnett
Now, the trophy trucks...
You hear them before you ever see them.
And those dudes are going 150 miles an hour.
I don't know how fast they get, but they're all like 10,000 RPM small blocks and shit just freaking flying.
And you can hear their engine, and then as they start coming up behind you, they start hitting these sirens and stuff to tell you to get the hell out of the way.
And if you don't, they will come up.
Run up right behind you and then bump you right out of the way.
Just shove you right off the road and keep going.
But you watch them hit these whoop-de-whoops and the suspension's just going...
We're doing this kind of thing.
We gotta go over them, let up, get on, let up, get on as we're going.
And the trophy trucks just run right over the top of them like they were nothing there.
joe rogan
Is that a trophy truck?
josh barnett
Yes.
B.J. Baldwin.
Another dude who loves shooting like we do, but is an insane trophy truck racer.
joe rogan
Yeah.
josh barnett
Yeah, he's badass.
joe rogan
Those trucks look insane.
josh barnett
They are absolutely nuts.
joe rogan
Those are stupid expensive, too, right?
josh barnett
And they're automatics, too.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
josh barnett
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wow.
So is yours a manual that you were driving?
josh barnett
Ours is a manual with a four-speed Volkswagen four in reverse.
joe rogan
Four in reverse?
josh barnett
Four in a reverse.
joe rogan
Oh, and a reverse.
I was like, why would you need four gears in reverse?
josh barnett
Although our reverse died on us at some point.
I don't know why, yeah.
It decided like...
joe rogan
Well, I'm sure the beating of just the pounding, they can't last.
josh barnett
No, and funny enough, the most durable vehicle that I've been told are the ones that make it through the most are Stock Bug.
joe rogan
Volkswagen?
josh barnett
Volkswagen Bug.
joe rogan
Really?
josh barnett
Yes.
So there's a limited amount of things you can do to it, but they just soldier on and get through it.
But I hear it is just brutal on the body.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, I can only imagine.
Those are tiny, light vehicles.
josh barnett
They make it.
joe rogan
Maybe that's it, right?
josh barnett
It could be.
I think that by being lighter, you're obviously going to have less impact amongst travel because it's going to have less kinetic energy, less weight bearing down on things and releasing and bearing down on it again.
But to the life of me, maybe they're just really well made.
joe rogan
Bud does that every year.
josh barnett
Yes, he does.
He's so fucking nuts.
And his team won the class that we were in that year.
Him and Kyle...
Oh, what's Kyle's last name?
He used to run Detroit Speed an absolute...
You know, when you meet that person, you're like, wow, you are probably like the most pious person in the whole world.
That's Kyle.
joe rogan
Really?
josh barnett
He's just such a nice dude.
Just so cool.
And I met him through Bud, again, doing Optima Ultimate Streetcar Invitational when I competed over there at SEMA. Bud is a successful television producer with a beautiful wife and family and risks his fucking life every year for a goof.
Yeah.
joe rogan
I'm like, why are you doing that?
josh barnett
He is just driven to go out there and just compete.
The guy is just such a competitor at everything.
And he's such a...
A seriously intense person when it comes to competing.
And he still trains jujitsu and everything.
joe rogan
No, he does that with his whole life.
josh barnett
He's a strange guy.
He is, but in the best way.
No, I love him to death.
He's an absolute fantastic dude.
joe rogan
I sold him his house.
josh barnett
You did?
joe rogan
Yeah, that was my old house.
josh barnett
Oh, man.
Holy shit.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, I told him that he was looking for a house, and I said, hey, I'm moving out of this house.
Do you want to buy it?
And it was perfect, so we didn't have to go through anybody.
josh barnett
Well, you know I had to have plenty of car stuff for everything you might need.
joe rogan
Back then, man, I was kind of broke.
Well, I wasn't broke, but I didn't have a lot of cars.
I only had a couple cars back then.
josh barnett
You didn't have that sick, was it C2 Corvette?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
No, I didn't have that.
josh barnett
Because I saw that one up at Home Dude's shop.
Yes.
In the valley.
Steve Stroop.
Steve Stroop.
Don't get him talking about Star Wars.
Oh, he's a massive Star Wars fan.
He'll be like, and then jibber jabber, I can't believe he was just left out of the cannon.
I'm like, okay.
He's like into it, man.
Deep.
joe rogan
Bud wears only black.
josh barnett
Only black.
joe rogan
You go over his house, you open up his closet, it's like a crazy person.
Like, where's your colors?
josh barnett
None.
joe rogan
You have no colors?
josh barnett
He's just serious.
Nothing but black.
Johnny Cash.
His cars are black, too.
joe rogan
Yeah.
He's got a beautiful 69 Mustang.
josh barnett
Have you seen that?
Yes, he does.
That one has a 4.6 dual overhead cam motor in it, too, I think.
joe rogan
It's a gorgeous car.
He's got a lot of good cars.
He was the producer of rides, that show where I had my Barracuda done.
josh barnett
Ah, right, right, right, right.
joe rogan
He also produced Overhauling.
josh barnett
I had my buddy on Overhauling.
I wrote out to him and I go, hey, my buddy's got the 67 Firebird.
And he's a comic artist, Dan Panosian, amazing dude, great guy.
And he would love to get this thing really, I mean, it drives and everything, but he would really love to get it all done up.
And so, of course, this whole elaborate scheme gets put together.
It's overhauling.
joe rogan
For people who don't know the show, they pretend to steal your car.
So someone will steal your car.
Say if Josh had a charger, they would steal his charger, and then they would do it all up, and then bring you somewhere under false pretenses, and then unveil your new car.
josh barnett
Well, in this case, they didn't do any of the stealing.
No thievery.
But the deception was...
Oh, hey, Dan, the UFC, the magazine, is going to do this photo shoot on me, and they would love it if I could bring, like, a muscle car or something, so could we use your Firebird?
He's like, yeah, that's awesome.
They're like, yeah, they'll give you, like, 500 bucks for the time and other things.
Sounds great.
Amazing.
And so I'm standing there with—it's me and Ariane, and at this moment— Bud or whoever is directing the photo shoot, he just goes, alright, and action!
And Ariane throws like a whole bucket of red paint all over the car, and then I swing a sledgehammer through the front windshield.
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
In front of the dude?
josh barnett
In front of the dude.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
josh barnett
And the whole, obviously the idea was, oh, we're gonna get this great TV moment where this guy just like melts.
joe rogan
Right.
josh barnett
In one way or the other.
And instead, he just kind of goes, hmm.
And he kind of laughs and...
And so we bring him over, and Bud's saying, like, well, no, I mean, you got paid.
I mean, the contract's not going to take care of this or whatever.
But the whole time, we're trying to get this rise out of him, and he doesn't really budge.
And, okay, then we let him on.
It's overhauling and all this.
joe rogan
Did you tell him before they fixed the car?
josh barnett
Oh, yes.
joe rogan
Did he have to fake it when you unveiled it?
josh barnett
No, no.
He knew, but he didn't get to see anything we were doing.
So he knew we took his car.
He knew a bunch of stuff was going to be done to him, but he had no idea.
It was just like, your car is gone.
It's got a sledgehammer through the windshield and a bunch of red paint on it.
And bye, you'll see it when we're done.
And we're not telling you shit.
But at the time, he...
So Bud's just like, dude, why are you so cool about this?
And essentially, Dan's just like, well...
I really trust Josh, so I knew he would...
There's no way he would let my car just be fucked.
And I'm like, God damn it.
We needed to be...
joe rogan
Look at him, he's like, what the fuck?
josh barnett
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wow, what a beautiful car.
josh barnett
And I came, I worked on this a little bit with him.
I did some of the deconstruction.
I helped Lucky with a little bit of the electrical.
I worked with...
Andreas a little bit on some of the other touches and me and Chip sat down to do just the rough outlining and designing about what kind of a car in terms of purpose we wanted to build out of it.
joe rogan
And this dude had no idea?
josh barnett
No.
No clue.
And, you know, we're in there just working away, getting it done.
And Lingenfelter supplied this sick LS3 that makes like 600 horsepower.
Detroit Speed did a whole deal for the front and back suspension.
Center Force is helping us with the clutch.
And the car turned out to be incredible.
It's like one of the...
I think...
Until his son was born, and maybe even a little while after, his wallpaper on his phone was his fucking car.
So that's how much he loves it.
joe rogan
Does he still drive it?
josh barnett
Oh, yeah.
And I make him take it out when I can, too.
We'll do stuff like...
There's this quarantine cruise thing that's still going on down in...
That got started during the quarantine, but it's still going on.
This cruising around Pacific Coast Highway and all that kind of stuff.
And so I brought my GT500 out, and I made him come out with his car, Mitra.
And, you see, here's the thing.
If you ain't driving the cars, what's the fucking point?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
No.
I firmly believe that.
I don't understand people who have cars and it's just going to be in a garage forever.
josh barnett
No, there's no point.
A lot of people do that.
I know, and I understand if you want to build something museum quality, but then I'm like, well, then just put it in a museum.
What's the fucking point?
But in terms of what's the fucking point, at SEMA this year, there's always some trend that is...
Trash, in my opinion, that always seems like maybe it got started in an interesting way and then it just like runs the gamut of just every copycat version of it that's just like, oh God, we don't need any more of this.
This year, or last year I guess, it was turning your classic car electric.
And I'm like, fuck!
joe rogan
I have a problem with that.
josh barnett
I have a massive problem with that.
I'm just like, why would you take the soul and spirit out of a machine And replace and make it even more material, more mechanical, and less engaging.
And then it's so bad now that even with EVs for all kinds of aspects, there's people selling you, I don't know how they put it together, but it's a thing that makes car noises for you.
joe rogan
Oh, no.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
No, no, no.
Like a vroom vroom?
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
Does it pretend to shift gears?
Because there's no gears.
I think a Porsche Taycan has two gears for whatever reason.
But a Tesla has zero.
It's like one gear.
So what do they do?
Does it just rumble when you hit the gas?
josh barnett
I guess.
joe rogan
No shifting?
josh barnett
Dude, I have no idea.
What do they do with their fake noises?
I guess they just add that to the rest of other fake shit that they're doing in their life and the way that they're doing things and, you know, hunky-dory.
joe rogan
BMW started doing that back in the day with their turbocharged engines.
They started pumping in fake exhaust note through your stereo.
Yeah.
And it was an option, I believe.
I believe you could shut it off.
But I had a couple of M3s back in the day.
I had the older ones, though, with the V8. Oh, yes.
It was really nice.
It was like a high-revving V8 engine.
Oh, it was great.
josh barnett
Great car.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was so good.
I got two of them in a row.
My lease went up, but I got another one because I loved it.
It was just a real high-revving...
It wasn't the fastest or the most handling, but it was...
Very engaging.
josh barnett
It's a car that has a driving experience to it.
It's quick.
It's fast revving.
But it's also easy to drive everywhere you want to go.
joe rogan
It was a great commuter car.
I loved it.
I loved taking it to the comedy store.
It's just a great shifting paddles, you know, which I generally don't like.
But when you're in LA traffic, that's one of the things I always admired about you.
In LA traffic, you still drove a stick shift.
josh barnett
Yeah, yeah.
No, I actually sold my SRT 8 Challenger and replaced it with a diesel GLK Mercedes SUV. And I was so proud when I put a trailer hitch on it.
I'm like, you know I've turned a fucking new leaf.
When I'm like, hey, look, it's a diesel and I've got a trailer hitch.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a new leaf.
josh barnett
But at the same time, I'm still, like, with Victor Henry, who you just saw in UFC, we're building, he bought a 70 Cutlass S off of me, and we're building this thing up.
Phytek is giving us fuel injection to do on the whole car.
I've had a 455 with aluminum heads, roller cam that I had sitting around putting it, tunnel ram.
It'll be, like, 10, 10.2 to 1 compression.
It's gonna be, you know...
joe rogan
He talked about that.
We actually talked about that during the fight itself.
josh barnett
Ah, yeah.
joe rogan
Which, by the way, was fantastic, and I really wanted to talk about that, because Victor Henry was super impressive.
It's so rare that you see a guy enter the UFC, kind of unheralded, but with a good reputation, but not a lot of hype behind him, but perform that way against a guy like Howney Barcelos.
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
Who's a top-of-the-line fighter.
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
He is so good.
How many is so technical and so high level and Victor just put on a fucking clinic.
He put on a clinic.
It was amazing.
He's so good.
josh barnett
And it's like Victor said to the press afterwards where you know they usually ask a bunch of like just rote questions like well you know what did you think about being underestimated or whatever he goes look You guys are UFC people.
You know about UFC, you know about people in UFC, and you don't really know anything else.
And so, what you don't know about I'm not surprised that you're not acquainted, like that you wouldn't really understand how to put this on some sort of metric.
joe rogan
Right.
That is a very good point because I think at this point in time, that's silly.
It used to be you would look at the UFC and that was like the NFL. Those were the elite football players.
The UFC was the elite fighters.
But there are guys in other organizations now that are top of the line.
There's a bunch of them.
There's a bunch of them that are fighting for one FC. There's a bunch of them that are fighting for these other organizations.
You know, Kayla Harrison, who's over in the PFL. There's top of the line fighters.
josh barnett
There are killers all over the world.
And that was...
One of the things that I like to do with my athletes is I want them to see the world.
I want them to fight all over the place.
And so I was taking Victor to Russia, and he's over there beating guys.
He was undefeated in Ryzen.
He was the champion for Deep.
He had fought for the title in Pancras before early in his career.
And so he'd gotten to see all this different stuff and fight in all these different places, different rule sets.
And so when it came time for the UFC and during the pandemic, it's just, okay, can't get to Japan.
No one's getting visas.
Fighting in the States is really limited.
But the amazing George and Steve Bash, they helped Victor out, got him a title shot against Albert Morales.
And LXF, and so we were able to keep him busy, and it's like, hey guys.
And I'd been talking to the UFC, but I'd get the response like, well, Dana White's contender series.
I'm like, no.
This kid's 20-5, 21-5.
He's got two world titles.
I'm not doing it.
I'm not putting him in the contender series for a maybe.
This kid's legit.
And eventually, this opportunity with Houni came up, and we just said, yeah, we're good to go.
joe rogan
That's a good example because most people are not going to take that fight with Barcelos on such a short notice because he requires a lot of preparation.
josh barnett
This is true.
joe rogan
Crazy endurance, super skillful, but goddamn, I was impressed with Victor.
I was impressed with how composed he was and how technical.
He never wound up once.
Everything is coming from the chamber.
There's no telegraph.
He's constantly moving.
He's constantly fainting.
Lots of head movement.
Fuck, he was impressive.
josh barnett
It was us putting our game plan fully into implementation because Howney is such a tough guy, very physical athlete, great wrestling background as well, and a diehard heavy striker.
So our thing is, well, you know, all right, we're not going to wrestle with him.
Like, there's no point.
I don't feel that Victor couldn't or couldn't submit him potentially, but why put it in places where we feel like...
I'd be giving something up or putting it in a place that he wants to be.
But we also know he loves fighting on the feet more than anything else, for the most part.
And he really believes in his striking skills.
So you could get into a big fight with him about that, but now you're kind of...
Putting yourself in a position to kill or be killed, and why?
So the idea was, keep tearing apart at his body.
Keep him fighting on the back foot.
Don't let him fight moving forward.
And use constant fakes, feints.
Keep tagging the body over and over and over again.
Getting our chip shots in.
Hitting first and always hitting last.
And watching out for his right uppercut.
His right hand and how he loves to pull with his head movement and then throw a punch behind it.
So not getting too extended, letting that guy get his work off at times, but pulling with a half step, getting right out of range so that we're not behind or running into any of that stuff and continue to chip away at that body and take away his endurance and bank on our cardio and scoring and scoring and scoring and If the opportunity presents itself, we had a few things up our sleeves for potential fight enders.
But also, we knew that if you keep pulling a guy apart, eventually, if they feel like they're losing in any way, they're going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.
And the bigger they get, the more openings they're going to leave behind.
And there was a couple times it seemed like Vic had him rocked.
Maybe he could have taken him out, but Houni's so tough.
So we're not going to just...
And so Vic just kept pouring it on, pouring it on, pouring it on, pouring it on.
And, you know, in time, we just were able to pull Howney's tactics apart and leave him exposed to our opportunities.
But, you know, the guy never stopped fighting the whole fight.
You know, even in the third round, whenever he got a chance to get off, he was trying to take Vic's head off.
Which is why he's so dangerous.
joe rogan
It was very impressive in that he had that kind of endurance, given that it was such a short notice.
Did he have a fight lined up anywhere else, or was he just always in the gym?
josh barnett
No, but as soon as that fight in LXF was over with, I just said, hey, stay in the gym.
You're not going to crank it up to full peaking fight camp, but you need to stay in the gym and stay at a certain level of conditioning.
joe rogan
Keep a strong base.
josh barnett
Because I'm going to try and find something for you.
I'm going to be out there advocating to try and get you another fight.
And if it ain't in the UFC, then maybe it's going to be again for George and Bash in LXF. We're going to keep you busy.
We're going to make it so nobody can deny you at some point.
joe rogan
And he's in this place where, is he 34, 35?
I think he's 34, going to be 35. So at that age, especially in the lighter weight classes, as we were saying before, he's in a position where you've got to kind of get going now.
josh barnett
Exactly.
And I knew that he had...
A lot left in him, and potentially he was actually coming into his best era of himself right now.
And so I didn't want to let that go to waste.
joe rogan
Well, it certainly looked like in the fight.
There's no way you could fight like that against a guy like Barcelos.
josh barnett
At the end of the day, Sean Shelby sees us in the back, and he just had such a shit-eating grin.
He's like...
Fuck yeah.
That is exactly what we want.
And I'm like, I told you, but I know everyone's always telling you, but he's the real deal.
And he's going to give you badass fights every single time.
This kid doesn't know what it's like to not have heart or will.
It just doesn't exist.
And he's skilled and mean, and he can get it done.
He's great.
And I was really actually massively...
I'm surprised in a pleasant way about what the UFC was doing for him.
In prep for this fight.
It's like, oh, you have this fight camp coming up?
Oh, we have meal plans.
We got this.
We will make sure you make weight.
We'll help you.
It's like, all right.
I love this.
Looking after this kid in this way where you're not going to get that any other place.
And not to diminish places like Ryzen or fighting in the places like RCC in Russia.
I mean, we've been taken care of greatly everywhere we've gone.
But...
Having the UFC go into their toolbox of things that they could put out there to benefit the fighters, I was stoked.
joe rogan
It was great.
They've done a lot of amazing stuff in that regard.
First of all, establishing the Performance Institute in Vegas.
josh barnett
Have you been?
joe rogan
It's amazing.
josh barnett
I was there with Travis Brown prior to his fight with Alexey Olenek.
And then when we were there to originally fight at the APEC Center, that was completely opened up to us and that was a great, great opportunity.
I've been in conversation with Forrest because I'm always interested to learn about why the PI itself does this versus that.
I was talking to the people there about their Normatec system.
Okay, well, what is your experiences with this?
How does this compare to, was it ECG or ECGC, which is another...
joe rogan
We should explain Normatec.
Normatec is, they're these awesome boots that you put on.
Well, they're like pants.
josh barnett
They've got ones for your arms, too.
And then, to me, it kind of reminded me of the ECGC, I think it's called, where there's a system around heart patients, Where they put cuffs around you and they hook you up to an EKG and then with your heart rate and your pulse rate, It's supposed to move and squeeze in succession to create extra circulation or help with circulation.
And so there's been studies that say there's a lot of benefits for this for people that have had heart issues or circulation-related stuff and whatever.
And so I started talking to the gal there about how does this compare.
And so getting little bits of information like that, getting to understand more about what the systems are and what their intention is, what problems are they trying to solve.
That's great for me as a trainer because then I can take that information back and then figure out how to use it with my athletes, find other complementary things to go with it.
And anything you can do to try and give that athlete that – not just that extra edge now but something that can keep them in the battle even further along in their career.
which is, even though I'm a heavyweight and we can get away with having longer careers to a degree, I feel that the way I was trained from the beginning has a lot to do with me being able to stay in this game as long as I have.
joe rogan
Well, particularly conditioning, right?
josh barnett
Conditioning, yeah.
joe rogan
Tell everybody your background with catch wrestling.
You were very fortunate to be able to train with some real legends.
josh barnett
Yes.
So my initial training, I was a wrestler and I saw UFC 2. On a tape, sophomore year of high school.
I just looked at it and went, I don't know how the fuck you get into this, but I'm going to find a way somehow, and I'm going to do this.
It was just like, there's no questioning, there was no hemming and hawing, no if and ands, I'll do it.
Back in 1994, 5, 6, I mean, it's all just like, do it as you can.
Put it all together in any way that's possible.
joe rogan
I saw one of your first fights on VHS tape.
Babyface assassin.
josh barnett
Very much so.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was back in the day, man.
It was a long time ago.
josh barnett
And through then, I trained with Jim Harrison, rest in peace, one of the old school blood and guts, bare knuckle karate guys.
You know, the kind of guy where even Chuck Norris and all them are like, that's a dude you don't fuck with.
I mean, it was being at a celebration of life last year because he died during COVID and we couldn't really put together a proper goodbye.
And it was like me and Superfoot and Troy Dorsey and a bunch of different legends.
But then listening to guys that weren't martial artists even talking about it, but people from law enforcement when he did this special – he was a part of this special criminal unit in East St. Louis.
unit in East St. Louis.
joe rogan
Oh, boy.
unidentified
Oh, boy.
josh barnett
And hearing the stories about, direct from these guys' mouth, about being there with him or people in the military.
And hearing the stories about – direct from these guys in his mouth about being there with him or people in the military.
It's like, yeah, well, when Jim Harrison was paid to do some work in military action and go over and different things and talking about him in that regard, and it's like, this guy is something that doesn't exist anymore.
This is like Ernst Jünger type stuff.
Even I, who trained under him and knew him very well, I still had to sit back like, wow, what an individual.
joe rogan
Those guys in the early days of karate, too.
I mean, that was a wild time.
josh barnett
Very wild.
joe rogan
You know, in the 60s and the 70s when karate was being introduced.
josh barnett
It's a lot like MMA, right?
They're building it as they go.
joe rogan
Yep, very much so.
josh barnett
Building it as they go.
And when I tell people nowadays that...
At one point, we just, oh, we'd agree on rules as we got there.
Or, you know, this place would allow headbutts and bare knuckles and whatever.
And people are like, what the hell?
We were just fighting.
You know, we were trying to test it all out.
And the idea even of gloves was foreign to us because they didn't really exist.
Right?
We had to, if you wanted MMA gloves, at one point, you basically had to buy Harbinger wrist wrap bag gloves that were fingerless.
And then you would have to trim pieces off and build them.
That's what was available to you.
And then there was a boxigenics glove came out.
That was in the UFC. And then after that, different people started making gloves.
And then gloves kind of became a standard.
But at one point, it was like, yeah, they exist, but you ain't got to wear them.
joe rogan
Wasn't the first MMA glove really those things that Bruce Lee was wearing?
josh barnett
The Jeet Kune Do ones?
Yes.
joe rogan
Was that Enter the Dragon?
josh barnett
Enter the Dragon, right?
Where he does a whole scene with Samo Hung.
joe rogan
Yeah.
josh barnett
And takes him down and arm bars him.
joe rogan
Gets him in an arm bar, yeah.
That was during the days when he was working with Gene LaBelle.
josh barnett
Well, even prior to that, the guy who really got me into martial arts to begin with was Fred Sato, who was one of the founders of the Seattle Judo Dojo and one of the original four...
That is Bruce Lee, Fred Sato, Taki Kimura, and Jesse Glover.
That's the original four.
And I remember, you know, looking through little old books, picture books and stuff, of, you know, Fred Sato and Jesse and all them with Bruce, and they're just in someone's backyard.
I don't even remember whose backyard it was, when Bruce Lee is a little skinny kid going to Garfield High School in Seattle.
So, FYI, people, if you watch Dragon, the Bruce Lee story...
Mostly bullshit.
Revisionist history.
Like a lot of things these days.
No, he didn't go to UCLA, to my understanding.
No, he didn't meet Linda Lee in California.
They're all from Washington.
joe rogan
They made all that up?
josh barnett
It's all made up.
joe rogan
Why would they do that?
josh barnett
Because it's cooler to be from California than it is to be from Seattle, I guess.
unidentified
But it's not.
joe rogan
It's a historical figure.
josh barnett
Leon is not...
There was no Leon.
It was Jesse Glover.
joe rogan
So Leon's a fake guy?
josh barnett
Fake guy.
He's supposed to be Jesse Glover, so to speak.
joe rogan
Why wouldn't they just have Jesse Glover?
I just don't understand why they do that.
It's like in the Mark Schultz film, when they had him fight a Russian guy at the end, when everybody knows he fought Big Daddy Goodrich.
It's a part of history.
josh barnett
I know.
You can go look it up.
It's the same with all the stuff about Bruce.
You could even, Taki Kimura put out a book, something, Memories of the Dragon, whatever.
It's got all the old pictures in it.
Jesse Glover's passed away.
Taki's passed away.
Fred, my sensei, passed away.
But, you know, I remember watching that movie and sitting there just being, just fuming about, like, why the fuck are they lying?
You know what I mean?
What's the point?
I mean, the guy's story is cool enough.
And yes, at some point he ends up in L.A. and everything.
And, you know, the contributions to the idea of approaching martial arts from his perspective...
Absolutely, or live on in all kinds of aspects, in all kinds of ways, through all kinds of people.
But, you know, I trained with Guru Dan before.
I've been around all these folks, and it's just like, I don't...
His story's cool enough.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, but that's something that Hollywood producers love to do.
They love to think they're smarter than the original story.
Instead of just taking the original story and putting it together in an entertaining way, in their eyes, you have to add some nonsense to it.
Otherwise, they don't feel like they got their fingerprints all over it.
josh barnett
Yeah, I could see that.
Like, a lot could be from just simply ego.
Like, I want to tell the story the way I want to tell it.
It doesn't matter what reality was.
joe rogan
They do that all the time.
josh barnett
Of course they do.
But then, what do they even make these days?
Anything that is not...
That is original?
Good luck finding that.
It's as if...
You know, it's just like, what?
joe rogan
Well, I'm sure they're making original movies.
unidentified
I'm sure.
joe rogan
But the point is, it's like, why would you change the life story of a historical figure who's one of the most important figures in the history of martial arts?
josh barnett
I don't know.
There has to be some sort of reason, and it could be arbitrary on one end, and it could be deliberate on another.
At the end of the day, for me, it's just like a lot of things.
Go to the source.
It may not be the most popular widespread one, but it's out there.
joe rogan
It's just so annoying.
So how did you get into Catch?
josh barnett
I got into catch basically through Matt Hume, who was training, who had trained over in Japan with Funaki and Suzuki, and then got to train with Sayama.
And so he's training under these guys that all come from this Carl Gotch catch lineage, who also are from Antonia Inoki.
So back in the 70s, Inoki...
He split off from Japan Wrestling Association or something like that.
So him and Giant Baba, they make a split.
They both are trained under Ricky Dozan.
And Baba goes, he makes all Japan pro wrestling.
And Inoki goes, he makes New Japan pro wrestling.
And Inoki's approach is, we're going to make this the world's strongest martial art.
That's our goal.
This is when we present professional wrestling, it's going to be something called strong style, and it's going to be the king of sports.
It's going to stand at the zenith of all things.
And it's going to be incorporated with martial arts and fight skills and all these aspects of reality combat.
And he brings in Karl Gotch to come and run this gym.
And so all these guys are all getting trained by Karl Gotch, who is a catch wrestler originally from Hungary.
And he goes and trains.
He was an Olympian and Greco-Roman.
And he trained in professional wrestling when it was also a much more reality-based product.
But then he goes to the Snake Pit in Wigan, England and trains with Billy Riley.
Who is one of the godfathers of catch-as-catch-can wrestling, which the term itself comes from Wigan England.
Catch-as-catch-can.
Get him any way you can.
Where these old, these tough-as-shit miners get out from the mines at the end of the day.
They go and they have their pints and what have you, and then they go up on the hills and in the grass and they throw bets down and they just challenge each other and go after it.
And this, eventually, starts to become what we know as professional wrestling.
And at some point, professional wrestling is a 100% legitimate sport, but then it starts becoming worked over time.
joe rogan
How did it become worked?
Did it become worked because of carnivals?
josh barnett
The carnivals were a part of it because you could, like, let's say you got Tootsmont and...
I'm trying to remember the rest of them.
The Gold Dust Trio, they go around up and down the West Coast and they go and they put these shows together.
But one of the tricks that they would do is they could have someone who's a ringer, like a real nasty badass, who is either in the crowd to go wrestle someone that didn't know who this person was and go in and just murk them and take all their money.
Or here's the other thing is they set it up where they have a guy in the ring doing all these matches, just smashing up all the locals.
And then they say, well, who's willing to get in here next?
And then they have a guy sitting in the audience who is their plant.
He gets in the ring.
He wins.
And then everybody bets against him.
The Gold Dust Trio bets on him and takes all the money and away they go.
And so this is also where the terminology of marks comes in because the audience, everyone's a mark.
It's a con.
joe rogan
So that was the beginning of theatrical pro wrestling.
josh barnett
That was the beginning of conning stuff and setting up a potential predetermined.
But then it also got to the point where...
Really highly skilled, evenly matched guys could be out there for an hour and a half.
And it's just like, people don't want to watch this.
They want to watch more action-packed, action-oriented stuff.
And so then you start working the matches and putting more flourishes and things in it.
It becomes more popular, more interesting.
And then you start...
I mean, the basic premise of professional wrestling still exists, and that is you have a face and a heel.
So basically, you have a good guy and a bad guy, and the good guy is trying to overcome the bad guy.
And at some point, he will go through all kinds of torment and suffering and what have you, and then come out on the other side victorious and overcome the problem.
It's basically...
a little four-sided ring.
And oftentimes, pro wrestling does a great job of mirroring the sentiments of the culture around it at large.
And this actually would be a really great conversation to have with Eric Weinstein because he's such a huge pro wrestling fan.
unidentified
Is he really?
josh barnett
He's massive.
And he has this...
He's got this great series.
It hasn't been finished yet.
He's got two parts where, you know, it's got clips of him talking about kayfabe on here and work shoots and all this kind of stuff in terms of politics and culture.
Mostly politics, but...
So the idea of it on a metaphysical level, he would enjoy that conversation, I think.
And I got to connect with him.
I was just talking to him the other day.
He's like, are you in LA? I'm like, I'm actually heading to Austin to go hang out with folks and go do some stuff, but I'm coming back.
But so pro wrestling starts getting worked at some point, but then it starts getting even more and more exorbitant and outrageous.
And you start getting guys like Gorgeous George and you start, you know, people that are really playing to these big personalities and cutting promos.
And then you get the territories that start, they start branching out and each one would have sort of their own spin on things.
But at one point, pro wrestling was the way it was like MMA is now, except it was mainly confined to straight matches of grappling with submissions.
But, you know, you'd have incidents like Ad Santel.
He beats this world judo champion from the Kodokan.
And he goes, well, I'm the world champion of judo now.
And the Kodokan goes, what the fuck the hell you are?
Get him!
And so all these guys keep coming after Ad Santel.
They eventually have this giant showdown in Yasukuni Jinja, the shrine in Japan.
And he does, I don't remember, three matches over five days or something like that.
And he knocks one guy out in a jacket match.
So they made them both wear jackets.
joe rogan
Like kimonos?
josh barnett
Yes.
And he slams a guy and TKO's him, wins that match.
And essentially the catch guys beat the judo guys at that point.
But then it doesn't end.
And it keeps going.
The judo guys get some wins.
There's draws.
There's this.
And eventually Ad just goes...
That's enough.
Okay, I got it.
I can't keep this up.
I'm not the world judo champion anymore.
I'm shutting the fuck up about this.
Because they were not letting it go.
And of course, regardless of Ad Santel being able to come out on top, these were no slouches.
These were tough as shit dudes.
And in a more...
And a more...
Hey, look at that dude.
You can imagine that dude was probably strong as shit.
joe rogan
Jacked.
josh barnett
Yeah.
joe rogan
And this is pre-creatine.
josh barnett
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Very much so.
This is all very much truly horse meat and bone marrow and all that good stuff.
joe rogan
And just hardcore working out.
josh barnett
Exactly.
joe rogan
One of the things about Carl Gotch in particular was he was legendary for his requirements of fitness.
josh barnett
It's true.
joe rogan
Did you get a chance to train personally?
josh barnett
I got to train a bit with Carl, although he didn't ask me to do all the requirements and all that.
And I met him through a magazine interview where Gong Kaktogi brought me over to meet with him in Tampa.
And I believe Jake Shannon helped set it up, in fact.
Because Jake and Carl were really close.
And then eventually Billy and Jake would become very close because I brought Billy to Jake because Billy left Japan and came back to America and was living in Arkansas with some of his family.
And I said, hey, can we do something with Billy here?
Like get him doing seminars, something.
Let's keep him active.
Let's put some money in his pocket.
Let's do something.
And Jake...
And structured this whole thing and got Billy out to the rest of the world.
And it was amazing.
And it was so incredible that Jake was able to do this for Billy and bring Billy to everyone and have some of this stuff taped, do these seminars and expose again what was old is now new.
joe rogan
What was Carl's conditioning routine that he required of students before they were able to learn?
josh barnett
That's a good question.
I don't know exactly what it was, but it was something like 1,000 squats and 500 Hindu push-ups and something, something.
It was a pretty rigorous thing.
And if you wouldn't...
If you couldn't complete it, he wasn't going to teach you.
But I think a lot of that was, well, number one, he believed that conditioning is your greatest hold.
That is a direct quote from Karl Gotch.
But also, it showed how serious you were.
A lot of people always say, oh, hey, Joe, you know, I want to be a comedian, too.
And you're like, no, you don't.
You're not really serious about it.
You see my success.
You see these things.
You think, well, I could have that.
It's like you have no idea how much, you know, it's the iceberg concept.
You know, you see this, but underneath it all was all this toiling and suffering and failing and all these different things to get to this point.
And you can look at someone like, you're not ready to fail.
You're not even ready to fail yet.
You're not ready to suck to get to being good.
And it's the same with someone like Carl.
You know, all these people will come around.
Oh, yeah, teach me.
I'll be the best in the world.
unidentified
I'm going to be.
josh barnett
It's like, yeah, sure you are.
You know, show me some conditioning.
You're out of shape.
You can't do it.
You're garbage.
You don't take this as seriously as what it needs to be to actually be successful, let alone...
Be able to be on Joe Rogan level, or Carl Gotch level, or Antonio Noki, or what have you.
People, even back then, weren't necessarily in for that kind of ride, let alone these days.
joe rogan
Yeah, let alone these days.
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
But to imagine somebody requiring that, like a Carl Gotch type guy today, before he takes on any students, what a small pool of talent you'd have to draw from.
josh barnett
This is true.
And while it's not something I put my athletes through, per se, You know, I don't take on new students either.
I just don't do it.
And people come at me all the time like, nah.
joe rogan
Yeah, people like to say that, like, you're not a coach unless you take someone from, like, white belt all the way to, like, world championship level.
josh barnett
I mean, there's something to be said about that, but there's...
joe rogan
Sort of.
josh barnett
There's a lot of different...
I mean, coaching isn't...
joe rogan
There's levels of coaching.
josh barnett
There is absolutely levels of coaching.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's elite coaching.
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
You know, like, an elite fighter needs an elite coach, and you don't need to be working with someone who doesn't understand a jab.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Like, you don't have to.
Like, this idea, like, there's a sort of...
josh barnett
Hierarchy of coaching where people think that if you don't take someone from the ground up If you don't like really work with like bottom level athletes and bring them into top shape But I don't I don't I don't necessarily I mean there are people I've started from near ground zero and brought up I mean Victor when I got him he had five amateur fights but It's also something let's say like this There's guys that can teach you all these techniques and how to lift and blah, blah, blah, right?
They're giving you all this structure.
But beyond teaching you how to throw punches and do this, there's also the concept of why.
Why?
And not just why for you, why for you versus this guy, why for you at this time, why for you based on what your body's doing.
I mean, there's all these different contextual and subjective elements that come into this whole thing.
And I was talking to, I had three athletes I worked with fight at LFA. Last weekend.
Me and Chad George are working with these athletes.
And so Lou Schwenke goes out there and knocks a dude out in the first round.
Chase Gibson has a great scrap back and forth with Javier Garcia, who's very tough.
He wins a unanimous decision.
And then Ozzy Diaz goes out and knocks his guy out in the first round.
And I'm talking to someone and I go, yeah, there's a lot of folks that can get a guy all pumped up and teach him how to throw a bunch of punches and do all this kind of stuff.
But Can they actually break down the opponents and all their tendencies, being able to see through that athlete and go like, okay, when things are at their best, here's what they're going to do.
When things are at their worst, here's what they're likely to do.
Here's their tendencies.
Here's the things that you can pretty much count on that they're always going to go to when things get tough.
When things are at their hardest, people are always going to go to what they're best at.
And then it's also to look at your athlete and go, okay, How do I need to structure this guy's fight, not just on the day, but in all the training leading up to it, so that he's able to mitigate the strengths of his opponent and emphasize his own strengths and keep away from his weaknesses.
And there's that aspect and then there's the mental aspect of how to get into that person's head and give them the right motivation or the right comfort or whatever is necessary at that moment to get them at their best.
joe rogan
Did you ever work with a sports psychologist?
josh barnett
No.
joe rogan
No?
Do you read any?
josh barnett
Yes.
I read some books.
Actually, one of them that was a real eye-opener was one on coaching women.
And there was all kinds of great little bits of knowledge that I got out of that, just for general coaching and for working with female athletes.
This thing was written by a female volleyball coach, and I wish I could remember the name of it.
It was an excellent book, though.
And then it was just, I think, just paying attention, reading, About things like psychology and philosophy and other things.
I mean, it's one thing to say to read philosophy, let's say, but reading Nietzsche for me is not just about philosophy.
It's about human behavior.
It's about psychology.
They call him like the first psychologist philosopher in a way.
And so just being open enough to let the world show you what it is and for people to show you who they are because...
You'll come...
Yes, everyone's an individual.
They all have their idiosyncrasies.
But in most ways...
We're more alike than we're different.
And we've been more alike in almost entirely the same ways since anyone has ever been able to write about what a human being is like, period.
If you read about ancient Greece, if you read in the Bible or the Quran or any, whatever, you can grab yourself a cuneiform tablet or you start reading hieroglyphs, you're not going to get a radically new, different story about what a human being is, how they think, how they feel, what are their motivations and what it takes for flourishing.
It's never changed.
You know, you can say that we've evolved, but we're no really...
But on what level?
I mean, maybe we still have the remnants of a tailbone, but even in society and as it evolves, technology may more emphasize how we interact with the world and things and maybe the intensity at which we may express ourselves for good or for bad.
But it's not new.
Envy is still there.
Egos are still there.
Ego from the point of being healthy to the point of being unhealthy.
Same with envy.
Same with resentment.
All this stuff is all the same shit.
Go read Gilgamesh.
It's all the same shit.
We're not telling new stories.
We're telling the same story over and over and over again.
And I think that as a coach...
Beyond that, you know, deeper meaning of being in humanity, but at the same time, it's just allow yourself to be open to see things.
Let people tell you who they are.
And if you really are interested in trying to be about something, it's not always about charging headlong into it.
Sometimes it's about sitting back and just shutting the fuck up and listening.
Listening to someone who's telling you something or just Listening in a metaphorical sense, just allowing things to show you something.
Watch that footage over and over and over again and throw your preconceived notions aside and just let it happen and then see how much you start seeing that repeats itself.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's probably a great benefit in learning how to teach women because from my personal experience, women learn better in a sense that they don't have as much ego when it comes to martial arts and they also don't muscle things.
josh barnett
True.
I think that teaching all types of people is incredibly useful.
And I liked teaching women a lot, especially because they smelled better and took better care of themselves.
But you can't go out there generally and just start screaming at a girl like, why are you so stupid?
They're gonna take that in a whole different way.
Although I've had athletes that were females That needed more tough love than they needed more gentle guidance.
And to that, it just came down to the individual athlete themselves.
And I feel like you need to learn how to coach women and men, and then In and amongst that, you then need to know how to coach every single woman, every single man on an individual level.
Because they're not just women, they're not just men, they're individuals.
joe rogan
And you gotta get to know them.
josh barnett
Exactly.
And so that's another reason why I'm not necessarily very eager or...
Driven to just start pulling in new athletes because to me, I'm not just teaching you how to fight.
I'm going to take a mentorship role in your life.
I'm going to be managing your career.
I'm going to be helping you when you do something dumb in your relationship or something fucks up or you make some bad mistake.
I'm going to be there for that.
It's penny or a pound, penny and a pound.
No matter how small or how severe, I'm signing up to be a part of this.
joe rogan
Yeah.
josh barnett
And so I don't want to spend my time on someone that I don't think has the right kind of character.
I don't want to bother because it doesn't matter to me if they're going to go out there and win a bunch of titles and give me a bunch of money.
It ain't worth it because now I got to hitch my boat to this person.
And that says something about my honor and my word.
And I just don't want nothing to do with something like that if it doesn't reflect the person that I want to put out there in the world.
joe rogan
So what is the process?
Say if an athlete wanted to work with you, how would you even go about deciding whether or not you'd be interested in that?
josh barnett
Well, at least...
One of the things I would do at CSW is people come up to me, and Victor even was part of this process.
I mean, he was training with a good friend of mine, Jimmy Romero.
And Jimmy was at Legends when you guys were all there.
And at some point, Jimmy's like, man, I just can't keep doing this.
There's not enough money.
I'm going broke.
And I got stuff to do.
I have a kid on the way.
This ain't flying.
He loves martial arts.
And Jimmy was just...
Just coming by CMMA the other day and running pads for Chad and all that.
It was awesome to see him.
But I completely understood his position.
But what happened is, well, okay, there's no more team.
But he'd been bringing his guys down to CSW to come train and spar.
And this kid, Victor, was his protege.
And he's a super solid kid.
And I could see it.
And everybody around him that I knew all vouched for what a good kid this dude was.
And He's growing up in Southgate, which is like the Mexican Compton in L.A. So it's a rough-ass place.
And, you know, he's been shot before just sitting on the stoop playing with his friends.
And someone does drive by and stray bullet.
Bing!
You know, all this kind of stuff.
I mean, this kid's got a wildlife.
And I'm just like, all right.
I call him up.
I go, hey, I heard the team is disbanded and what have you.
Be here on Monday.
Well, I don't have any money.
Just be here on Monday.
He shows up.
I give him stuff to do.
Come check in on him.
He's been doing it.
All right.
Now I start taking a more personal approach.
Now I'm more right beside him as I'm doing things.
He gets it that, okay, if you're serious about it and I tell you something, and if you don't do it, that's your choice.
If it's not that important to you, you're not going to do it?
All right.
If it's not important to you, then it's not important for me to give it to you in the first place.
Not important for me to spend my time on you.
Vic then...
He says this to another athlete at the school who was brought in, who had come up to me before and goes, man, I see what you're doing with Victor and some of these other folks, and they're having a lot of success, and I really like the way that you're working with them.
Would it be possible if I could work under you?
And I just said, let me think about it.
And at some point, I think this guy, a fighter under me, AJ Bryant, another great kid, heavy hitter, and he's got a fight coming up in May.
He goes to Vic on the side.
He goes, hey man, what does that even mean?
I'll think about it.
I mean, what is this?
And Vic just turns to him and goes, look, if he just, you show up, you keep showing up, you train your ass off.
He's going to come over to you at some point and he's going to give you something to do.
He's going to tell you something, whether it needed to be done here or it needs to be done outside of the ring, outside of the gym.
But he's going to come to you and he's going to say something.
If you don't do it, if you're not, he's just going to be like, you're not serious and that's it.
Fuck off.
And so, you know, eventually I come over and I'm like, alright, hey, do this.
I just leave.
Or, you know, I start feeding him little bits and I see, no, this kid is serious.
He really does want it.
And then...
I take AJ under my wing.
I start working with him all the time.
He's a part of the team.
We're all going.
We're all training.
Turn him pro.
After his last amateur MMA fight, I turn to him.
I go, alright, that's enough of that.
You've got enough experience for fucking free.
Fighting for free.
That's it.
You're going pro.
Let's move on.
And he's like, okay.
And boom, I have him fighting like five or six times in a year.
Like right off the bat.
And I was like, if you're serious, I'm going to get you placing him.
Took him to Russia.
I'm fighting all over the US. We're going to do it.
But anything I'm going to ask of my athletes is not going to be any less than anything I've ever done in terms of severity or intensity.
And oftentimes, it is less.
It's like you guys are going to get the benefit of all the shit I had to do and all the things that have created new structure for us as athletes now to take advantage of.
But that same underlying sentiment about being the meanest, toughest motherfucker out there, and whether you go down or your hand is raised at the end of the day, you keep your head high the same way.
And even with someone like Haoni, I met Haoni before that fight in Brazil when I was training with Pedro Hizzo and Master Roberto Letao, rest in peace.
And I remember Pedro going, hey man, this kid at my gym and this kid is dynamite.
He is such a badass.
And I met him and I'm watching him and I got to roll with him a little bit and get to see him.
And so I run into him again even before the fight.
And he's like, oh hey, hey master.
I'm like, oh, oh hey, hey, we met in Brazil.
He's like, yes, no, that was me.
And it's like, fuck, you know.
God.
Well...
At the end of the day, it sucks that one of you has to win and one of you is going to lose.
But, and you'll see this even at the end of the fight, the way Victor approached, it's like, it's nothing but love.
Me and Pedro, we couldn't be happier for our athletes.
And even though I know Howney lost the fight, If he had won, I'd still be happy for Haoni.
I'd still have a lot of love for him and be like, man, Pedro, that's amazing.
You guys are great.
And to have the opportunity to fight people that have that kind of respect and love of martial arts...
Alright, cool.
joe rogan
That brings up an interesting point, because one of the things that's happening today in MMA, and it seems it has a lot of elements of pro wrestling in it, is that there's a lot of shit talking for promotion.
And Chael Sonnen was probably the best at it at one point in time.
josh barnett
He was great.
joe rogan
And then Conor came along and Conor's amazing at it.
Now, you know, Colby is off the charts with it.
Maybe some people think he goes too far with it.
But that's like a lack of the martial arts respect.
That is just pure showmanship and salesmanship to try to get people excited about fights.
How do you feel about that kind of stuff?
josh barnett
It makes complete sense in the era we live in.
This is a world that is...
It is a degraded form of where it's come from.
We don't really create anything anymore.
We just make replicas.
We do repeats.
There aren't original things anymore.
It's just all simulacra.
It's as if the knowledge to create new things is gone.
It's lost.
It is a foreign idea anymore.
And with fighting, it's like, well, sure, we can become better athletes and we can do all this training and what have you.
But at the end of the day, we start treating it more as an entertainment sport.
And it is entertainment.
Don't get me wrong.
It really is.
But when all you have to offer...
is how much you win and then how much racy, spicy shit you talk about your opponent.
Not only does that say something about the people employing those means, to which you can at least understand to a degree that, well, this is their occupation and they want to get the higher contract, the higher spot on the card.
joe rogan
More eyes on them, more attention.
josh barnett
But the bigger perspective is that it works is the problem.
So when people are like, oh, you know, the Kardashians, they're the worst.
I hate all this reality TV shit and blah, it's terrible.
Okay.
But people are watching it.
So who's terrible?
The Kardashians or the audience?
joe rogan
Well, in that sense, neither.
Because what they're doing is they're providing you with, like, fast food TV. Like, you don't have to drive by and pull into the, you know, drive into McDonald's.
josh barnett
But what's better?
joe rogan
You can keep going.
josh barnett
But, I mean, isn't there a distinct difference between eating grass-fed...
Beef, LQ Shot.
Yeah, there is.
Versus fast food.
joe rogan
But don't you like the fact that if you feel like it, you can pull into a drive-through and get a Big Mac?
josh barnett
It's alright, but I know that...
joe rogan
I don't necessarily want one.
josh barnett
No.
joe rogan
But if I do want one, I like that I can get one.
josh barnett
I like that I can get one, but I also never lie to myself in that I'm not doing...
To try to sell you to my...
I'm doing something that's even neutral.
Because I'm not.
joe rogan
Right, right.
josh barnett
And that's, you know...
joe rogan
We're not doing anything neutral with this whiskey either.
josh barnett
Oh, this whiskey's beautiful stuff, man.
Are you kidding me?
It's beautiful stuff, but I understand that.
But I choose to engage in a vice as a vice and not try to treat it as a virtue.
joe rogan
There's probably some fatso out there with a cheeseburger right now just moaning in pleasure.
josh barnett
I'm sure he is an actually ecstatic, orgasmic...
joe rogan
Oh, this quarter pounder's so good.
josh barnett
Oh, yeah.
It's like double quarter pounder with cheese, just all those trans fats.
joe rogan
In moderation?
josh barnett
Yeah.
joe rogan
In moderation?
josh barnett
I get it, but it's the...
Approaching it as...
It's the approach.
I love the shit out of whiskey, which has a long history and lineage to how you make it.
You can go into all the different types of stills, the different types of yeast.
If it's Scotland, it's almost entirely barley.
Whether it be malted or not, then you've got Irish.
All this different stuff.
That's the difference between, say...
I don't know.
Like...
Just distilling whatever, throwing a bunch of sugar in it because it tastes horrible and you're trying to cut all those heads down.
So make it palatable and then slugging it down.
unidentified
No, I get it.
josh barnett
After you've added caramel coloring into it and everything.
joe rogan
But to bring it back to MMA, this trend, does it bother you at all when you see like right now we're dealing, this is very recent into the Colby Covington-Jorge Masvidal fight just happened and then Jorge Masvidal just sucker punched Colby at a restaurant somewhere.
josh barnett
Yeah, the sucker punching is, I'm not down for that at all.
Even if there is some sort of an issue that Masvidal has about, say, you talked about my kids, that was like the one thing or whatever.
I'm fine with that.
Totally fine with that.
To me, that's honor culture things.
You should understand that there should be a line that you shouldn't cross in terms of aspects of civility.
Otherwise, expect nothing but hostility.
And that is a choice.
That's why we had all of these...
Concepts of manners and courtesies was because violence is at the bottom of every word you speak.
Violence is at the bottom of every exchange.
Literally, politics is war by other means.
So Louis XIV had all of his canons inscribed in Latin, the last word of kings, the last argument of kings.
Because when it comes down to it, violence is the golden rule.
It is the thing that is at the absolute bedrock of human interaction.
joe rogan
It enforces laws.
josh barnett
It absolutely does.
It enforces laws.
It's about sovereignty, too.
Someone once tried to argue because I said, well, rights are an abstract concept.
I understand the concept of Lockean property rights and all these things, and it's wonderful, but rights are what you can defend at the end of the day.
You know, if you're like, well, I deserve to have this right and that right, it's like, well, who provides them for you?
How do you keep them?
How do you keep someone from saying, no, you don't?
You use somebody else's violence, you proxy it out to a state, or you have to do it yourself.
And you're not getting away from that, ever.
Nowhere, anywhere.
And we live in a society where all of this is violence is something that happens to other people now.
Violence is something that's done by someone else on our behalf.
We don't take any accountability for it.
We don't have...
And with that, it's like, if someone says, don't talk about my fucking kids and my family, and you cross that line, Okay, if he does nothing about it, if he just goes and whinges on Twitter about it, what does that mean?
That means nothing.
If he goes and calls the cops, well, he talked about it, and the cops just go, well, that's within his legal rights.
He can say whatever the fuck he wants.
Sorry.
Then how do you get him to stop doing it?
joe rogan
But do you think that what Jorge did?
josh barnett
Sucker punching him wasn't good.
No.
unidentified
No.
josh barnett
He should have been like, I told you what's on.
If I see you, come with me and come outside.
joe rogan
The problem with that is if he does that, Colby's going to take him down.
And that's what happened in the fight.
josh barnett
Deal with it.
joe rogan
Yeah, but it's like if you want to fight someone and you fight someone, you lose.
I feel like at a certain point in time, you've got to accept what happened.
josh barnett
I think there's a way of creating, through these conflicts, some aspect of mutual understanding and respect, in fact.
joe rogan
Okay, so what does that look like, though, between those two guys?
josh barnett
I mean, I don't know them personally.
joe rogan
Sucker punching a guy at a steak restaurant.
josh barnett
No, that ain't gonna do it.
That ain't gonna do it.
Because, again, you hit him when he wasn't looking.
It's like, well, okay.
Essentially, what you're asking for is for me to give you a certain modicum of respect.
And for it to not pass certain lines in terms of courtesies, because this is unacceptable.
How are you going to get them to do that when you cheap shot them?
joe rogan
Right.
josh barnett
It's just not going to happen.
I mean, it's like this.
I had a guy once that...
And this is...
It's not happened many times.
And...
I'm not one to go out there and shit talk people at all.
Because for me, it's just like, well, I don't need to talk shit about you.
I'm just going to go out and fight you.
If I have a real personal problem, I'll let you know.
And that isn't about me getting a fight.
It's not about me like, oh, I'm trying to drum up.
No.
We can fight in a professional sense, and that's all good.
If you want to make this personal, it ain't going to be professional.
It's for real, and you shouldn't do it, because I don't want to do it.
I'm not trying to live my life this way.
But if you make this the case, It's for real.
And it's on.
And so I had this guy out of nowhere to start shit-talking me.
And I'm like, what the hell is this guy's problem?
I don't get it.
And so...
joe rogan
This is a fighter?
josh barnett
Yeah, it's a fighter.
And so I'm just like, what the...
You know, I've never said two bad words about this guy ever.
Never.
I'm not going to talk shit about him.
And he's just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like, all right.
So he starts going in.
So I responded in kind.
And I started ripping on him a bit.
He ran his mouth some more.
And at the time, I remember my manager that I had, he's like, oh, well, you know, you can go.
I go, no, no, no, no, no.
This isn't, I'm not getting in the ring with this guy.
So I can make him a bunch of money and give him notoriety and all this after I beat his ass.
Like, nah, you don't get to make a bunch of money off of my name.
I go, look, we're going to be out at this event.
If that dude's there, and I'm here with Hammer, if that dude comes up to me and starts running his mouth, I'm going to tell him once, and then when I see that motherfucker go to the bathroom, I'm going to have Hammer come with me.
Hammer's going to block the door, and I'm going to fucking tear him apart.
I'm going to walk in.
I said, I fucking told you.
You're looking me dead in the eyes.
Put your hands up.
We're going.
If you can see when we leave, you'll be lucky.
If I haven't bit off pieces of flesh out of your body, you'll be lucky.
If you can fight again after this, you'll be lucky.
But I told you.
And my manager's like, don't do that.
And I go, it's not up to me.
It's up to them.
Nothing happened.
Nothing ever happens, to be honest.
But it's just, don't fuck around with these things.
Hold yourself in high esteem, and with that...
Give that to other people until they give you a reason not to and then just be like, you know what?
I don't fuck with you.
It's no good.
joe rogan
So this brings us to last night.
josh barnett
Yeah.
joe rogan
This brings us to Will Smith walking on stage where Chris Rock said one of the most mild jokes ever.
josh barnett
It was pretty mild.
joe rogan
I thought so.
Jada Pinkett is bald.
Apparently, I didn't know this.
I found out after the fact that she didn't shave her head voluntarily.
She shaved her head because she's suffering from alopecia.
josh barnett
I didn't know this either.
joe rogan
So, I don't know if Chris knew this, but Chris says a joke around G.I. Jane 2, looking forward to it.
Very mild.
Just laughed.
And even said, come on, that was nice.
And then Will Smith initially laughs, but it looked like Jada was upset.
And so Will changes his tune, walks on stage, and smacks Chris Rock in the face at the Oscars.
And then says, keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth.
josh barnett
Yes, he does.
joe rogan
And then he goes, come on, man, that was a G.I. Jane joke.
And he screams it out like...
josh barnett
Keep my wife's name out your fucking mouth.
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
And it's like his lips were quivering and he...
First of all, that whole scene, doing that, in that manner, in that place, is a great example of what's wrong with the glorification of just being able to go up to someone and smack them in the face.
Because that whole thing was so weird.
josh barnett
I'm going to disagree with you here.
joe rogan
Please do.
What is your take on it?
josh barnett
I want you to finish, though.
joe rogan
Well, no.
You said you were going to disagree with me.
What do you think?
josh barnett
Well, I don't actually think there's any glorification of violence in the sense of free capability on Will's part.
joe rogan
What do you mean by that?
josh barnett
Well, for one, I... I don't think that there was any inherent given that you could just get away with it.
I think that whatever Will did, he did it, and he was like, whatever comes with it, I'll have to own up to it.
joe rogan
I don't think he was thinking that far ahead at all.
unidentified
Maybe he wasn't, but maybe he was being emotionally fragile.
josh barnett
Probably.
joe rogan
And he acted on impulse.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
And I think it's a foolish impulse that you do when you know there's no consequences.
josh barnett
So you're hitting a very small person.
I'm going to say that I don't know that he thinks that there's...
Now, in terms of hitting Chris...
In terms of them and their physical differences and capability of combat, let's say, yes.
joe rogan
There's no consequences.
josh barnett
But I'm saying, well, there's no consequences in getting out of your seat and striking somebody on national television.
joe rogan
Yeah, but I don't think he was thinking about that.
I think he was acting impulsively.
josh barnett
Simply in terms of man to man and who's capable and what's capable.
And you know what?
That may be the case in the microcosm of things, but if you hit anybody for any reason in public at this point, you have the very real fact of all of the powers of law that be,
especially depending on who you are and what the public and the cathedral thinks of you, smashing you to death until you have your penniless, bankrupt, That's not gonna happen here.
joe rogan
Probably not.
He just smacked him.
He didn't beat the shit out of him.
He didn't harm him.
He smacked him in the face and humiliated him.
We live in a society where violence is so But there's no way Will Smith is going to become penniless from smacking Chris Rock.
You wouldn't think so.
He's extremely wealthy.
It's not going to happen.
And not only that, Chris Rock instantly didn't press charges.
He wouldn't press charges and he just accepted it.
josh barnett
I would say it should have been handled...
In the back?
Or he could have at least, he could have stood up, said something right on the spot.
joe rogan
But listen, no.
josh barnett
And not done anything about it.
Or said it in the back.
joe rogan
Chris Rock's doing his fucking job.
You don't go and sit in the front row, you're a star at the Oscars.
There's a professional comedian whose job is to roast people.
That's what he's doing.
And what he did was not even insulting.
josh barnett
It's not about...
joe rogan
It was a mild joke.
josh barnett
It's not about...
What is it?
It's not about giving Will Smith a pass or saying what he did was right.
But what I am saying is that from his perspective, if it was that important, he could have barring going up there and hitting Chris in front of everyone.
And he could have said something if he had to do it right then and there, if he felt that it was that egregious of a remark.
And I agree with you, Chris Rock's a comedian.
The presenters at the Oscars are supposed to be entertainers, often crack jokes that either A, that they do themselves in Chris's perspective, or from Chris's situation, or ones that are written for him.
Chris is a comedian.
I highly doubt that they don't know each other at this point, being in Hollywood for as long as they have.
And in my opinion, if you really want to settle things, Go do it personally.
Speak to the person first.
Give them an opportunity to apologize for things, especially if they didn't realize that what they were doing was...
joe rogan
I hear all the things you're saying, but they're not applicable.
That was not an insult.
It was the most mild joke about her hairstyle in reference to a movie where a lady shaped her head.
josh barnett
I fully get it.
I fully get it, but I'm just simply saying...
joe rogan
The idea that there's any justification whatsoever of him getting up there and smacking him in the face like that.
josh barnett
No, he didn't need to go up there and smack him at all.
joe rogan
No.
josh barnett
But...
Regardless of what you and I think of how important or what the weight of what Chris said was, just removing us out of the equation, if it's really that important to Jada, Therefore, it then becomes important to Will.
Then he should deal with it on a personal level and have a conversation with Chris before anything.
joe rogan
Of course.
josh barnett
Because you have to give someone the opportunity because, one, you have to assume, potentially, that Chris had malicious intent in what he had to say.
joe rogan
How do you have malicious intent in a mild joke?
Tell me about it.
josh barnett
I'm saying I don't agree that he did.
joe rogan
I'm telling you, dude, this is all rational thinking about an irrational act.
It's an irrational act.
He was emotionally fragile and he acted on impulse in a staggeringly stupid way.
josh barnett
I'll tell you something.
Somebody, a good dude who I know didn't mean any harm was kind of, you know, playfully, verbally sparring with my girlfriend.
And she didn't actually, it made her really uncomfortable and she didn't really like it.
And so the next time we run into him and my girlfriend's like, I hope he doesn't, you know, come up and say X, Y, Z again.
And I'm like, I don't, I don't think that's going to happen.
And he does.
And I'm like, okay.
So I pull him to the side and I'm like, hey, look, I know you don't mean anything by it, but you know, X, Y, Z.
And we just have a simple conversation and the guy's just like.
Yeah, dude, that's rational.
joe rogan
That's a rational response to human beings having some sort of a dispute.
josh barnett
But to assume people...
Have malicious intent, especially in that position, I think is an erroneous way of approaching it.
joe rogan
I don't think it had anything to do with that.
I think what he was doing was saving face.
He was doing some weird movie thing.
He was getting away with it as if he was living in a fictional movie.
Like, the idea that you think it's smart, while wearing a tuxedo, to walk onto a stage in front of the world, like literally the world, one of the biggest award shows on earth, if not the biggest, and smack a comedian for the most mild joke, and then sit there quivering, saying, keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth!
And everybody's just gonna sit there in the shit that you just took on the table.
You just pulled your pants down, took a shit on the dinner table, and they all just sit there and look at that.
That's what it's like.
josh barnett
A shit full of peanuts and corn and everything.
joe rogan
It stinks.
It's just the whole idea behind it is completely irrational, but what I'm saying is like these people live in this fake world of, you know, you're protected by guards, you're driven by limos, you're on the red carpet, you know, like all of it is crazy life.
And he's so goddamn famous and so removed from regular discourse and interaction with regular people that he, for whatever reason in his head, acted like he's a character in a movie.
josh barnett
Maybe so.
And I only am not speaking indefinites in regards to Will because I don't know the man.
I never met him.
All these things that you're saying could absolutely be 100% plausible and true.
And especially a person like Will, who is in such an elevated position in society at large.
And you are 100% right in that these types of folks get removed from reality for a variety of reasons.
But it's often a catastrophic process to the person and how they approach the world.
joe rogan
But here's what happened right afterwards.
He won the Academy Award, then goes up and does a speech.
The whole thing was so bizarre.
And it made me think, like, how many other human beings could be in a similar situation and pull that off?
josh barnett
Not many.
joe rogan
Like if a man walked on stage and smacked a woman.
josh barnett
That would not fly.
joe rogan
Would not fly.
josh barnett
Not fly.
joe rogan
If a woman walked on stage and smacked another woman, I don't even think it would fly.
josh barnett
Probably not.
joe rogan
Probably not.
josh barnett
But also, man smacking a woman, I feel like it's even an ingrained thing, like, you don't fucking do that.
Number two, women smacking women.
All the women are going to look back and be like, women don't solve their issues with violence.
You're supposed to tear them down in other ways.
When women start feuding with one another and one of them finally says, that's it, and they go to violence, it's almost as if they've lost completely.
All the other women are like, nah, you broke.
Sorry, you're out.
joe rogan
Well, I don't know.
There's plenty of world-star hip-hop videos of women beating the fuck out of each other.
You can find a lot of videos online of women in Walmart parking lots pulling each other's hair.
josh barnett
Yes, there are exceptions, I will agree.
joe rogan
Kicking the shit out of each other.
I will agree there are some exceptions.
But I just think, in terms of society standards, I don't think they would have accepted it the same way.
josh barnett
No.
joe rogan
It was a rare instance where someone is so enormously famous and successful like Will Smith, That they literally still allowed him to not just win the Academy Award, but also go up and accept it and give a speech after he assaulted a small comedian.
josh barnett
Yeah, they should have ejected him.
They should have ejected him from the show.
joe rogan
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
I agree with that.
You can't just go smack a man in the face in front of the world and then go about business as usual.
First of all, it sets a terrible precedent.
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
In so many different ways.
It's a terrible precedent for comedy clubs.
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
Like are people gonna decide that they're gonna go on stage and smack the comedian now?
josh barnett
I hope they try to smack Brendan or you.
I just want to see one Joe Rogan turning sidekick.
Get chuggy!
joe rogan
I don't necessarily think people are going to change their behavior, but dumb people might.
But also, it's just like, what are we saying as a society when the people that we look up to, for whatever reason, for good or for bad, we look up to actors.
And the Academy Awards is supposed to be them in their most regal Their most regal outfits, their best behavior, and to drop down to violence for something so innocuous as a G.I. Jane joke.
josh barnett
Look, man, it's not the hill that I'm looking to necessarily die on either, in particular context.
And, you know...
Having a conversation with somebody over something that made my girlfriend uncomfortable, to me, that was the way to approach it.
But I guess if someone wanted to tell me fuck you about it, then it's like, okay, well now that changes things.
joe rogan
Right, of course.
josh barnett
You don't care how it affects other people, and you're having consideration for me or my girlfriend.
joe rogan
I know what you're saying, but in this case, we saw it.
We see all the elements laid out.
Chris Rock's joke was so mild.
josh barnett
I get it.
And so...
You know, Jada's allowed to take offense, and Will's allowed to take offense, but to jump up, run on stage, slap him, and then throw the scene that he did is a completely different story.
joe rogan
It was a meltdown.
josh barnett
To at least to go and give Chris an opportunity to talk to him, and maybe even Jada, and just be like, look, one, you can see that he did not mean to try and cause any actual harm to you.
So, you know what?
Just tell him, if you didn't like it, tell him face-to-face and be like, yo, man, I... It really, you know, hey Jada, it really bugged you.
joe rogan
You're talking about two totally different things.
josh barnett
I get it.
joe rogan
We both agree with that.
josh barnett
But to me, regardless of whether you're Will Smith or you're the other Will Smith, the former special forces guy who speaks Russian, was in all tons of 70s and 80s movies, played Conan's dad in Conan the Barbarian, that badass motherfucker.
You could be that guy, this other super popular Will Smith, or Will Smith that nobody actually knows who that person is.
The approach has to be the same.
There is no exception for you if you played Ali or if you played Conan's dad or if nobody's seen you play anything even with yourself.
joe rogan
Well I think what we're looking at also is the culmination of a long period of like emotional distress.
Like that family's been public about all their issues and, you know, there's a conversation that they had to have, like the two of them together about infidelity or about open relationships and they were openly mocked because of that.
But I think there's a certain defensiveness that comes along with that.
Well, then, you know what?
Sit in that fucking term.
josh barnett
Sit in it then.
Sit in it then.
Because the public is mocking you for the thing that you brought to them.
joe rogan
Yeah, listen, I'm in agreement with you.
josh barnett
100%.
So for me, I'm like, look, if you're adding stress into your life by publicizing and externalizing everything, which, again, says something more about the state of things, like, why are you externalizing this shit?
joe rogan
Right.
josh barnett
You know what I mean?
Like, even when I told this story about, oh, you know, this fighter and I had beef.
I ain't gonna say his name because you know what?
I'm not trying to create more beef because I'm not trying to live my life, even though I'm the war master, in some point of irrational, unnecessary conflict.
When conflict comes, conflict, if it has to get to that, That's my whole point.
It's destroy everything.
joe rogan
You're a man of honor and of like deep moral principles and ethics.
You have a very rigid way.
You live your life with discipline.
That's my whole point of this.
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
This is a nonsense scene.
josh barnett
You're right.
joe rogan
Where you're allowed to just go smack someone.
josh barnett
You're right.
joe rogan
Like that is a non-consequential move.
That's like you're saying there's no consequences to this.
I'm gonna go up and smack him in front of everybody and I'm gonna give him the fucking the what not.
You know, you do this.
josh barnett
We live in unreality, Joe.
We live in unreality, hyperreality.
I've heard it coined.
We live in a massively unserious place from our populace to our people that we put on pedestals within media to our politicians.
All these people are massively unserious and That's probably the problem with living, right?
joe rogan
What we're seeing represented in the media and in society, whether it's in films or television shows or even in the news in a lot of ways, it doesn't resonate with what we know to be true and real with real life.
Like even just the way they communicate.
They don't communicate like a real person.
So, so much of it, we've sort of accepted that so much of what you see is bullshit.
And I just don't think like living that kind of life where you are that kind of person, you're an actor, you're constantly on the red carpet, you're in this weird public pedestal place.
I think you can get a very distorted sense of reality and I think that's what we saw manifest itself.
josh barnett
You're 100% correct.
unidentified
Yeah.
josh barnett
Welcome to the Iron Age, the Kali Yuga.
joe rogan
Yeah, exactly.
Enjoy it.
josh barnett
Enjoy it.
joe rogan
Well, we were talking about that before and that's kind of where we're at.
We are in Kali Yuga.
josh barnett
We are in Kali Yuga.
joe rogan
And the Hindus were very smart in their idea of, it was the Hindus, right?
josh barnett
Yes, the Hindus, yes.
joe rogan
They came up with this idea that there are certain ages almost unavoidable of civilizations.
unidentified
Correct.
joe rogan
So they go through these cycles.
josh barnett
Correct.
There is a...
Nietzsche talked about this.
René Guénon, a French philosopher, and Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West, a volume.
We wrote two whole giant books on this.
And, you know, I sent you a quote from Spengler, and I'm like, this is from 1922. And it's talking about the...
of the media into the way people view the world and how there has never been a more powerful machine than this to degrade and deracinate human beings.
And all they had was radio back then.
They're like, oh God, this could be a huge problem.
They thought the printing press was going to make a huge issue where all people did was just dream away in books all day long and not actually make anything or create anything.
And yet people like Ganon and Spengler and Nietzsche saw these patterns of human behavior.
I mean, even beyond the cyclical history of the Hindus, Ganon, who takes a lot from the Hindus, and Spengler.
There's also even Strauss and Howe with their fourth turning concept.
It's like every 80 years that there's going to be a complete changeover.
You have these four ages that you'll go through.
How's it go?
It's like artist, nomad, or is it nomad, artist?
Nomad, and then you get hero, and then it just keeps repeating itself about every 80 years.
And Strauss and Howe think that our fourth turning will come around 2030. I don't entirely buy into the entirety of the fourth turning concept because it's like, oh, the millennials are going to be the hero generation.
I'm like, I don't fucking think so.
Sorry.
It's just not going to happen.
joe rogan
You say no, but then you see Gen Z and you go, maybe.
josh barnett
Well, I mean, compared to what?
Compared to what?
joe rogan
You almost have to recognize that the next generation is so fucked up that you have to pick up the slack.
josh barnett
I truly believe that at least this kind of aligns with the fourth turning concept in that.
It takes calamity to change humanity.
I believe that too.
And part of what Ganon and Nietzsche, and Nietzsche's concept is the last man.
And this is, you know, you want to understand this, go read Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
With Ganon, start with Crisis of the Modern World.
With Spengler, probably Man and Technics is the easiest one to get with.
If you feel like it, there's a lot of people have now started reproducing his work so it makes it easier to get a hold of because it was hard.
When I had to get my two copies, I found a couple old used ones and I had to pay like 120 bucks to get them.
Now it's a lot cheaper.
But there is, I would say, you can go ahead and go with volume one form and actuality into perspectives of world history, but be prepared to be in for a long haul with that stuff.
What they're going on about is that you'll see these, the, how the comfort of technology and way I see technology is like basically think of technology as not just illuminating or exposing, right?
Like understanding the grains of sand that you can then take and then build into, see how you can then create the form of a cup through heat and pressure.
And now you have this vessel that can be used to hold things, or it could be a ballistic weapon.
It could be all kinds of stuff.
However, you know, you want to see what you could do with that cup.
But it's also about ability.
Abating nature, right?
So technology is putting a roof over your head and then running water and lights and every little step further away of abating nature from how it can interact or how it can force you to and your being and existence and your action in the world.
You start abating nature, abating nature, abating nature.
I don't have to walk somewhere anymore.
I could get on a bicycle.
Well, I can get off a bicycle and I can ride a horse.
Well, I could get off this horse and I have a car.
And each thing makes it so nature has less effect on you.
And you are abating the effects of terrain, which also another aspect of time would be the roads to then be able to travel.
Okay, no roads?
Take a plane or a helicopter or what have you, you know, from the Wright brothers all the way up to 787s.
I mean, man starts on this journey of materialism and starts seeing everything as atoms and pieces and parts and things without any spirit to him anymore.
This is, you know, back to the thing about EVs.
It's just like, well, you know, just make stuff, right?
Technology will allow me to do this, so just do it.
It's a constant conflict of...
Shoulda or coulda instead of shoulda.
And, you know, we have a phone that has all this access to all.
I could go look up audio books on YouTube of getting on and, you know, people's lectures on all these different things.
But it could also be this thing that deranges me in how I start now having resentment and envy with people I'll never meet, I've never seen, in a life that they're carefully constructing to be seen in one way versus the totality of what life is really like for anyone.
And so now you get all these people across all these platforms that can now reach out way further than any tribe has ever been able to do before.
Now all of a sudden it's like, well, Dunbar's number says like 200 people that you could actually have a real relationship with.
Well, now you've got all these electronic relationships on top of that.
And they're making you believe as if you're really invested and engaged with this person, but you're not.
You know what I mean?
And at the same time, I'm not going to sit here and just say, like, everything about social media and electronics and technology is just evil and bad.
I'm not calling for, like...
joe rogan
It's not evil and bad.
It's just we don't have the tools, like, genetically or inherently to navigate those worlds rationally.
josh barnett
Right, I'm not calling for a butlerian jihad.
joe rogan
Yeah, what's going on with technology is that there's nothing wrong with it, but what is wrong is not having discipline and not having the ability to accurately assess whether or not something is good for you or bad for you.
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
And then also having a vast amount of people that are going to take the easy way out, and that easy way is provided to them through technology.
josh barnett
We're generally primed to find easier ways.
joe rogan
Always.
That's how you survive.
josh barnett
Exactly.
You're not going to find, if a wolf doesn't have to travel with their pack, Hundreds of miles to go and get a kill.
joe rogan
Right.
josh barnett
They ain't going to do it.
joe rogan
Of course.
josh barnett
If someone just starts chucking food out, they're just going to keep going there.
joe rogan
Yeah.
josh barnett
They're not going to take off.
And if you think that we're that far removed from wolves, then you're fucking...
joe rogan
Well, that's how they turned a wolf into a collie.
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
That's literally how they did it.
josh barnett
Yeah.
joe rogan
They did it by chucking meat to wolves that came by the campfire and they turned them into dogs.
josh barnett
One of my favorite Nietzsche quotes is, verily I have laughed at those who thought themselves good because they had no teeth.
joe rogan
Hmm.
Interesting.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, we are in a precarious situation where the human animal doesn't have an owner's manual.
josh barnett
No.
joe rogan
We don't have a great guidebook to how to navigate all the perils of being a person.
josh barnett
Well, we do have these guidebooks, but...
joe rogan
But not one standard that's handed out to people.
josh barnett
No, of course not.
We don't have...
I mean, yeah.
joe rogan
We don't teach people how to...
josh barnett
Of course.
joe rogan
It's one of the differences between martial artists and other folks is that you're willingly participating in something that develops character and discipline, and it's very different.
josh barnett
And it's basically built on the concept of failure, trial and error, and effort and discipline.
You have to keep showing up, otherwise you don't get the results.
joe rogan
And intelligence.
You have to be able to navigate problems.
The way I always describe MMA, it's high level problem solving with dire physical consequences.
josh barnett
Indeed.
It is something that allows you to create a safe space for suffering.
A place where you can go and bleed and sweat with your brothers and sisters and create community and have deep personal relationships based on the intensity of the activity because I have to trust that if you and I are rolling, that like, oh, if Joe catches me, he's not just gonna break my shit off, Because he feels like it.
Instead, he's gonna allow me to tap.
And even then, it's like when I roll with folks, I'll lock something in super tight, and if I start feeling like, uh-oh, this shit's going to go, I back off.
I go, look, man, it's not worth it.
And there's been times where I've rolled with folks, and they don't tap.
They think they're going to get out of it, and I clack, and I immediately let go.
I'm like, oh, man, I don't need you hurt.
joe rogan
That's a horrible feeling.
josh barnett
If you're hurt, we don't get to do this.
If we're not doing this, then neither one of us is growing.
And even just the thin veneer of, oh, we're not just hanging out even in this gym.
And I like that.
It's part of the reason why I'm here.
It's not the only reason, but having these relationships is part of why I'm here also, because I enjoy it.
We have something in common, which we can have a rapport about.
But we...
There are all these quote-unquote owner's manuals across time and history and cultures, and they're more alike than they're different, and there's a lot to be learned from it.
And I'm not a theist in any way, but I study religion because there are actual philosophical and metaphysical truths embedded within these things.
And sometimes they're the oldest text I can get a hold of for a particular culture.
joe rogan
Don't you think that – I agree with you that religions do hold truths and many of the ancient spiritual texts do hold guidelines on how to love thy neighbor, treat thy neighbor as if they were your brother.
Yeah, all that stuff.
But don't you think, like, physical action needs to happen, too, to completely form a person?
josh barnett
100%.
Yes.
joe rogan
That's where it's missing.
josh barnett
It is.
joe rogan
If you're just studying these works, but you're not applying them in a way that tests you, tests your morals, tests your physical will, your discipline, your mind, tests the way patterns of thinking that you're able to cultivate and maintain under pressure.
josh barnett
Yes.
One, we have a problem of compartmentalization.
And this goes back to the Kali Yuga.
This goes back to what the Kali Yuga will entail and how people will behave.
To Nietzsche and The Last Man, to Spengler, and he breaks everything down into spring, summer, autumn, winter.
We're in winter.
And when he wrote The Client of the West, he's talking about the winter, the winter of our discontent, I guess.
When you get to these parts in time, you see that everything becomes this little compartmentalized aspect.
Training in the gym is this compartmentalized thing where I'm just doing jujitsu, maybe.
And then when I go and I go to church, if you're a church-going person, that's its own compartmentalized thing.
And when I go to school—and so everything is this other—everything's a deracidated, atomized, you know— It's a materialized way of doing things, and nothing is integrated into itself to make a synthesis of all aspects of being in the world.
That's a great way to put it.
And it's not even about whether you're good at it or great at it or you suck.
It doesn't matter.
Finding places on a broad scale, finding things that challenge you and allow you to grow are an absolute necessity.
Agitation or suffering in some way is going to help you break down and build up.
It's like tearing down the muscle tissue and then it comes back bigger and stronger.
It's the same for a person in terms of their being.
Also, the body needs to move.
We're not made to sit around all day long.
And we're not made to sit and do nothing and just eat processed stuff.
Also, which is really so bizarre how much nudging is going on to try and get everyone to eat fake processed meat everywhere.
It is driving me nuts.
joe rogan
It's driving me nuts as well.
It is.
All that plant-based meat shit.
There was an article recently where Bill Gates said that wealthy countries should move 100% to plant-based meat.
josh barnett
You first, Bill.
Go for it.
joe rogan
I think he's already doing it.
And it shows.
That stuff's terrible for your body.
It is absolutely horrible.
If you want to eat vegan, there's nothing wrong with doing that.
You can do it, and you can do it healthy, and you can sustain rigorous levels of physical activity with a vegan diet.
josh barnett
Some people.
joe rogan
Some people can.
But the point is, like, you don't do it with fake meat.
You do it with pea protein.
You do it with hemp protein.
You do it with eating fresh vegetables.
You don't have these fucking garbage fake meat alternatives.
If you don't want to eat meat, just don't eat meat.
But eating that stuff is not good for you.
They're crammed with seed oils.
josh barnett
And just trash.
It's as processed as dog food.
And some of it, when lined up against itself, ingredients-wise, it is indistinguishable from dog food.
joe rogan
Dog food is probably more nutritious.
josh barnett
Dog food in general is probably more nutritious.
joe rogan
Most dog food is a lot of animal protein.
josh barnett
To me, veganism is...
If you're a vegan because you have such...
Empathetic and emotional attachment to animals in any way and you can't see yourself having an animal die in any sense for you to...
Okay.
Valid.
You do what you got to do to make this work for you, but I accept that and it's totally fine.
And all the stuff about this is healthier, it's this, it's that, bullshit.
This is a luxury diet born of modernity.
It's exactly the kind of thing you would see in the Kali Yuga.
It is this idea that you can somehow...
Pretty much every historical tribe, peoples, nations, everything that has helped people grow.
The fact that it is said that our ability to harness fire and cook animal proteins is what allowed us to get in the caloric and vitamin and intake that we needed for our brains to grow— To become us.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think it's a primary factor.
josh barnett
Even if you're eating pea proteins, you're going to have to do stuff to help break it down, whatever.
It doesn't have the same amino acid profiles.
It's just not.
joe rogan
No, it's not.
But the point is, if you do study it meticulously and you're very careful, you can live a vegan diet and be healthy.
I know a lot of people that do it.
But the point is, it's like, you don't do it through fake meat.
That shit is not good for you.
There's plenty of vegetables that are great for you.
josh barnett
100%.
You can eat legumes and lentils and blends of lentils and rice.
There's ways to do it.
And you know what?
It's true.
But yeah, all the nudging for fake meat is just like, oh, okay.
joe rogan
It's like, I don't know why people are listening to him in that regard.
You should listen to him on how to market an operating system and make billions of dollars.
He did an amazing job with that.
josh barnett
They listen to him because he is part of our aristocracy.
And our aristocracy is nothing but managerial rent-seeking elites that don't know how to make or create anything anymore.
Or they have a capability in one sector that they then think gives them the understanding capability across all things.
joe rogan
That's a very good way to put it.
That's a very good way to put it, and I like that you called them an aristocracy, because that's essentially the way we look at extremely wealthy business people in this country.
We look at them as like, if this guy is able to accumulate billions of dollars, he must be a special class of person, because clearly that's the one thing that every working person aspires to, is to become exorbitantly wealthy.
josh barnett
And that may be true, and that special class is psychopath.
joe rogan
Right.
josh barnett
Or he is an exceptional class of person in a very specific context.
joe rogan
Yes.
josh barnett
But that doesn't make them exceptional.
unidentified
Right.
josh barnett
Like, do you think Bill Gates could fucking fight at all?
No.
joe rogan
No.
josh barnett
No, Bill Gates, part of what makes a Bill Gates is that all the violence that he ever needs in the world to allow him to have what he needs...
Is already proxied out and he never has to be the one to employ it.
joe rogan
Yes, for sure.
josh barnett
So if at any point all aspects of governance and personal private security just says, nope, you're on your own.
joe rogan
Right.
josh barnett
We will prosecute no one for what happens to you.
joe rogan
Well, that is...
unidentified
He's done.
joe rogan
That is a great point.
josh barnett
If he's topotlipunum, which means head of the wolf, which means that's it.
You're on your own.
No one will come for you.
No one will help you.
Anyone can attack you at any moment for any reason.
You are under no protection under Rome.
Have fun.
Bill Gates is gone.
joe rogan
Yeah, quickly.
josh barnett
Because that is the reality of life, period, at all points.
joe rogan
Yeah, they will raid him the way they raid a San Francisco Walgreens.
josh barnett
You will get snatched out of the air.
You'll get snatched out of the air like some hapless fucking seagull by a chimpanzee.
joe rogan
How wild is that video?
Is that the greatest video?
josh barnett
It is pretty great.
And almost as great as I write some little comment like, oh, this is one of the deepest truths of being right here.
And then watching the just like mid-wit level responses and then watch them go after each other.
I'm like...
joe rogan
That's why I don't read responses.
I just want to enjoy that chimp beating that seagull to death.
I know what's happening.
josh barnett
I personally like to read...
I read all the comments and everything because I look for the threads.
What is the perception of me?
What is the perception of what I say?
It's not about whether it's true or it's false.
I'm just trying to get an idea of what people...
joe rogan
It's not a chimp.
It's a monkey.
It has a tail, right?
It is a monkey.
Is that its feet?
Is that his feet or is that, it's hard to tell.
I think that's a tail.
josh barnett
It's hard to tell.
Either way, it's locked in on that pole with a lot of, his balance is solid, which is something about fucking monkeys, right?
joe rogan
I think that's a monkey tail.
I think that thing, the low thing is the tail that's holding on to the tree, but he is beating the fuck out of that seagull.
That is so wild.
josh barnett
And he's going to eat it.
joe rogan
Well, that's probably what he wants.
I mean, this poor bastard has probably been living in this fucking zoo, being tortured.
He's in a prison for no fault of his own.
He didn't do anything wrong.
josh barnett
He just happened to be a monkey.
Or was born in a prison, right?
His throne-ness was to grow up in bars.
joe rogan
And then he figured out how to climb up there and snatch one of those motherfuckers right from the sky.
josh barnett
Hey, nature finds a way, bro.
joe rogan
That does.
I fucking love this video.
First of all, seagulls are cunts, if you don't know.
Seagulls are some of the most evil birds.
You ever see seagulls try to eat other birds?
josh barnett
Oh, they're nasty.
unidentified
They're nasty, man.
josh barnett
They're mean as shit.
I grew up in Seattle, man.
There's seagulls everywhere.
joe rogan
They're everywhere.
josh barnett
They are brutal little sons of bitches.
joe rogan
They'll eat a pigeon, swallow them whole.
There's a great video of a seagull eating a rat whole in New York City.
It is crazy.
This rat is gigantic, and this seagull is choking it down.
Actually, it might be in Italy, now that I think about it.
josh barnett
Seagulls are brutal.
joe rogan
Yeah, they're brutal animals.
So I'm team primate.
josh barnett
Me too.
joe rogan
I'm all with that monkey.
josh barnett
I mean, if it was a crow, I'd be upset about it.
joe rogan
Right, I like crows.
josh barnett
Me too.
Crows, magpies, ravens, I'm all about it.
They're so smart.
joe rogan
One of my favorite videos online is there's a raven or a crow, whichever one it was, who convinces these two cats to fight.
Instigates a fight.
josh barnett
I've seen that one, yes.
joe rogan
He goes to one cat, fucks with him, and then flies over to the other roof and fucks with the other cat and then goes back and forth until the cats decide they're never going to catch this bird, but they're so round up, they're so angry, they start going to war.
And the raven follows them.
The crow is like laughing while these guys are going to war.
josh barnett
Hugin and Munin, they are in the Eddas and all the Norse myths for a reason.
joe rogan
Yeah, they're smart as shit.
josh barnett
They go out and they bring things back to Odin.
joe rogan
Well, you've seen them do tricks, right?
Where they figure out how to use tools to get...
josh barnett
If you split their tongue, I think, it allows them to...
They can start to speak.
You can teach them to speak.
joe rogan
Look at this.
Research shows that crows and other corvids, a family of birds that includes ravens and magpies, know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds.
According to a 2020 study in Estat, This is considered a cornerstone of self-awareness and shared by just a handful of animal species besides humans.
I wonder what the test entailed, that they can ponder the content of their own minds.
josh barnett
I know I saw an article talking about that chickens can actually be trained to have the intelligence of a toddler, like a three-year-old, where you can teach them to take shapes and put them in the right boxes and things like that.
Really?
joe rogan
Bro, I've never seen an animal more vicious than a chicken when it's confronted with a mouse.
josh barnett
Oh, I had four of them in Hollywood, of all things.
And I would watch them just annihilate lizards and what have you.
And then one time, this little chihuahua somehow, I don't know, got loose from its trophy wife or whatever.
It's Hollywoodite, and it's running around.
Oh my God, Precious, where'd you go?
And it ended up somehow in our backyard, cornered.
And we hear this noise.
I hear this...
The chickens are going crazy.
It's like, what the hell is going on out there?
This chihuahua is cornered with all four chickens just like...
joe rogan
Trying to eat it.
josh barnett
Going to take it apart if they don't act right.
joe rogan
Yeah, if you're small enough, a chicken will bust a move on you.
josh barnett
They're dinosaurs.
joe rogan
They really are.
They are such little creeps.
josh barnett
But, you know, we...
We think that we can compartmentalize everything we do.
Oh, I go and I work out because I want a six pack or I work out because, you know, we always have this external reason instead of an internal reason of I'm a human being and I need to fucking move.
I can't just sit here and be unable to open a jar.
That's pathetic.
A jar in and of itself is technology manifest.
And now I'm too weak to even operate the thing that's made to make my life fucking easier?
How do you get more pathetic than that?
joe rogan
Well, it's also just for the management of the mind, just to make sure that everything runs smoothly.
I 100% believe the body needs activity.
You need something.
You need something.
And I think the mind needs challenges too.
I don't think it's as simple as the body needs activity.
It's one of the reasons why discipline training, like endurance training, is so good for you because it trains the mind.
You don't think of a discipline activity like long distance running or any kind of deep, heavy endurance training.
It's a mind contest.
josh barnett
Yes, it is.
Because you're going to get to this point where it's either your mind decides that you're going to get it done Or you'd make a decision, it's not possible.
And when you're doing these kind of hard, strenuous activities, and I explain this to my fighters constantly, most of this incredibly hard training, it isn't so much about the body, it's about you telling yourself that I can go past what I thought my limitations were.
And it's such a throwaway concept in today's way of being that people just think like, oh, that's just part of like, oh, I can biohack the body.
I can do that.
It's just the whole concept.
Everybody says that.
No, this is fundamental towards your development.
And like you say, being able to – even sitting here and you and me talking about this whole Chris Rock thing, me disagreeing on one end.
and you starting from another, I don't think we really disagreed, though.
Not exactly, but even still, what do we have but a dialogue?
And we expressed all these different things.
People work just on that surface to begin with because that's how our...
Our heuristics work, right?
We don't have – until we have the opportunity to sit down and get into the deeper branches of all this where it starts from.
It's like an hourglass.
All these ideas come to this one point and then they can all break away into others.
And being able to have these conversations, to have people around you that you can have that – So to speak, conflict with is good.
This is part of the process.
Part of why I'm trying to track down Eric who I know is an incredibly busy person is because I want to talk to him so that he can challenge my ideas and vice versa and that we can get insights that we wouldn't have had otherwise because I want to try and get the most out of life and I want to get the most out of me and hopefully my friends think I'm helping them in the same way.
joe rogan
That's one of the things that's come out of this podcast for me that was, in a sense, accidental.
Because I started it out just to have fun and just talk with friends and have a good time.
And then along the way, it became a thing where I got to sit down with very intelligent people and pick their brains and get to see how their minds decipher the world.
And through that, I've learned so much about the way my own brain works and why you'll slide into one pattern or another pattern and it might not necessarily even be accurate or relative.
josh barnett
The way that people that are not being disingenuous describe your podcast as an exploration of ideas and conversations Is 100% true.
And last time I sat in here, which is also kind of funny, because I can't wait for everyone to be like, oh my god, I can't believe you did Joe Rogan.
I'm like, this is like my sixth time, assholes.
But it's, I said it last time, this right now is so fucking important, I cannot stress it anymore, that there is a place where people can come on here and have conversations and express ideas.
I don't give a fuck if you like them or not.
You have to interact with that which is the unknown and that which you don't even like.
When it came to things that I felt were fucked up or ideas or ideologies and philosophical contents that I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
None of this reads okay in my book at all.
My position isn't to then go just read all the things and study all the things of people that hate it.
No, you've got to go to the source.
Go let it speak to you itself.
joe rogan
Find out why these people think the way they think.
josh barnett
And then once you've done that, now you can make your own decision.
At least you heard their arguments, hopefully, in the best way that they felt they could make them.
And being here, and especially seeing after, I mean, it's just so, to me, a lot of things are self-evident in terms of the actions that happen and what seems to be a really clear underlying reason why.
You catch COVID. You say, hey, I did this, and I'm good, and that was great.
I'm glad I'm not hurt.
This is what I did.
This is for all of you to understand what I went through.
So I'm helped in a way.
I saw it as Joe Rogan is giving his experience to try and bring something good into the world.
There was nothing framed about it in like, And you know, I did it with this one trick that they don't want you to know about.
It wasn't that kind of thing.
It was just simply a matter of, hey man, here's what I went through.
Here's what I did to the detail.
Hey man, I'm okay.
Take it for what you will.
I'm just trying to put things out into the ether to bring more things to the world.
Maybe it's going to help other people.
But the response was, hey, that's not the narrative.
Fuck you.
You got to be destroyed.
And I'm like, that...
I mean, how does somebody not...
And then seeing people like, yeah, I see...
Exactly.
Joe Rogan's so evil.
He's such a bad person.
Wait a second.
We're literally in a pandemic.
A guy says, hey, I'm suffering in this too, but I did this and it seemed to work for me.
Hey, do something with it if you want.
Maybe this could be useful for you or other people or someone else could go, why don't we run this through some sort of controlled study as best as we can.
Let's try to use some potential positive opportunities to then apply it to other people.
But no, no, no, no.
That's not the way we've decided this has to be.
That's not the route that we have decided through propaganda and, you know, basically nudging and other things, you know, read Walter Lippmann's public opinion, go read Edward Bernays' propaganda and public relations, and then go see how this shit is fully applied through this concept of the cathedral at anything it determines is a heretic.
And it's like, well, is the point for us Through our actions to make the world a better place potentially or to have things out there for other people to use to maybe create their own benefit?
Or is the whole point of why we're doing this to create this structure for whatever oligarchs remain at the top to then decide how the world should exist for you and for you to then just go, okay, this is the punch card you've put into ENIAC right now.
This is what I'm going to do because you put it in.
You told me how I was supposed to act.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was an extreme time where people were so tested, like their ability to deal with adversity, their ability to deal with anxiety, all those were stressed to attend.
And people freaked out and they're looking for things to freak out about.
And when someone took what they think is like an alternative path, didn't get vaccinated, but got over COVID very quickly with a series of medications.
They thought that I was doing something evil.
And I'm like, look, I'm just telling you that this is what I did.
And they only focus on that one drug, too, which is so crazy.
josh barnett
Because that was the number one thing that was making the rounds that was counter-narrative.
And the cathedral, this concept of, like, essentially...
The idea was originally penned is all these emergent...
They're disassociated groups, but they all worship at the same church.
So they're all in the same religion anyways.
So they all have the same belief structure.
Although I tend to believe that there is actually some levels of collusion at the highest levels where there is some organization.
Don't tell me that the mainstream media doesn't talk to politicians or talk to this person or that person or speak with Bill Gates before they go on to think...
joe rogan
Well, they're 100%.
josh barnett
100% they are.
joe rogan
They're also 100% influenced by the companies that pay for their advertising.
josh barnett
Of course they are.
joe rogan
And we've seen all those ads.
josh barnett
And if there's one thing at the bottom of all this, when it came to COVID, one, we, as a people, especially in the West, Kali Yuga, we're afraid of death.
Death, violence, these are abstract ideas.
Now, these are things that happen to other people, not to us.
These are things that don't exist for me, they exist for someone over there.
And having that unhealthy relationship with death puts you in a really unhealthy relationship with being because you're denying an absolute.
You're denying your endpoint, whether you like it or not.
You're refusing to engage with something that is in your future.
When?
Don't know.
A lot of things go into that.
But with COVID, the denial of death was so strong and was pushing people to act so utterly irrational and erratic.
It was a great example of the decline of the West manifest.
And the fact that People don't have that internal security in like, well, you know, I've done my life.
I've lived my life.
I'm going to do the best that I can by the things that I think are the way to approach the world.
And when I die, I die.
I just hope that what I put into it was something that is now within everybody that was a part of my life and everybody that was a part of my life before that put into me.
I've put into them and it will live on.
And like the idea of Not necessarily a great chain of being, because it's kind of a different concept, but that I carry the fire for Jim Harrison.
I carry the fire for Fred Sato.
I carry the fire for Santia Noi.
All these people that have ever been in my life, I carry the fire for Carl Gotch and Billy Robinson.
And whatever I do, when I sit here on this podcast, Billy and Carl and Santia and all these folks, my dad, my grandfather, they're here with me.
As I speak to you, as I have what I have formulated in my way of being and my Dasein is here.
It's the same for anyone if you want to actually...
If you want to make this a part of who you are, if you really want to actualize everything that's been put into you and passed through, we don't...
I'm not just here on a rock spinning in space.
I'm an evolved monkey.
Living in this state of nihilism doesn't bring you anything but misery.
And you lose out on so much.
You don't just lose out on, let's say, success or especially material things.
No, you lose out on the deeper things, the spiritual things.
You lose out on the true beauty of the world.
joe rogan
Yeah, you do.
You lose out on what's amazing about being a person, is that you can meet people like yourself that have been tested and through that have developed these exceptional characters.
And because of your exceptional character, it makes for a fascinating friendship.
josh barnett
Well, yeah, I'd like to think so.
unidentified
It does.
joe rogan
Me being your friend, I can tell you personally that.
I always use you as an example as an educated savage.
josh barnett
I know, I know.
And prior to coming on the podcast, my girlfriend will back it up on like, Oh, fuck, I'm actually nervous right now because, you know, we're buddies and we've been doing this for a while now, but now this shit is so fucking huge that it's like, oh no, is everyone going to pour over every single little thing I say?
joe rogan
They will because there's more people pouring over it, but it's the same thing.
I do it the same way.
It's the same thing.
It's just a conversation.
josh barnett
It's true.
And, you know, she's asking me about, like, what time are you supposed to be there?
I'm like, I don't know.
You'll tell me.
And she's like, this is like the biggest fucking podcast in the world.
I go, I know, but it's my buddy.
joe rogan
We're the same.
josh barnett
It's my buddy.
joe rogan
If I become something different because it grew bigger, I'll quit.
If it gets to a point where I can't do it anymore, where I have to do it in some sort of weird way, where I walk on eggshells and mine my P's and Q's, fuck that.
josh barnett
No, I get you.
Yeah.
You need to be able to do whatever you're going to do with 100% sincerity.
And you need to be you.
joe rogan
Especially this.
This requires sincerity.
Without it, this show doesn't have any success.
josh barnett
Everybody's complaint...
We'll just say 99% of everyone's complaint on you, any criticism, is essentially they're putting insincerity on you.
That's really what it is.
Joe Rogan is this because of that.
Joe Rogan is that because of this.
And it's always from a concept of insincerity.
It isn't because of the actual content of your stuff, because they've decided, they've already packaged and framed up who you are and what you are and what you're talking about and why you're talking about it in a way that has insincerity and some sort of ulterior motive beyond This is me.
This is what I'm into.
This is what I believe now.
But yet, I'm gonna have people on here to talk to me about these things.
And yes, you will argue with people about stuff that you don't buy into.
You'll also allow yourself to be convinced.
And that's the thing, is that until you sit by and allow someone to show you these different ideas and approaches, even to understand, like, that's total bullshit.
You don't know it until you've allowed yourself to engage with it.
joe rogan
You don't know it until you really allow someone to express themselves openly.
josh barnett
And we live in an era where essentially everybody assumes everything is insincere, where people approach everything from, well, I have ulterior motives for what I want to do.
I want material gains.
I want this.
I want notoriety.
I want to be famous or what have you.
Not just I want to do something because I think it's a good thing to do and it intrigues me and I like it.
joe rogan
But the thing is when you do something like that because it's a good thing to do because it intrigues you and you like it, it resonates with people because they're so starving for that.
Because most of what you see, you see a lot of people that are cynical, and they think that everything is insincere, and you just find the thing that's the most acceptable to you that's also insincere.
And that's how we pick politicians.
josh barnett
Everyone's a grifter.
Everyone is bullshit except for my side.
Now we have two teams of morons, and they're supposedly, you know, oh, well, this guy, the reason why gas is going up is this, that, and the other.
It's because of this.
No, it's not.
The barrel of oil dropped at one point, and the price of gas still went up.
joe rogan
Sagar and Jetty has a really good analysis of what is causing the rise of gas prices.
I don't want to fuck it up, but I would guide people to go look up Rise—excuse me, that's their old show— Breaking Points, it's their new show with Crystal and Sager, and Sager breaks down in a very detailed and nuanced way what's going on.
josh barnett
To dumb it down to the simplest version I could think of, instead of telling everyone to buy EVs, and all of a sudden, hey, you got 50 grand laying around, just buy an EV. Or, like, we're going to have to cinch our belts up.
joe rogan
Yeah.
josh barnett
Hey, how about you just take away the excise taxes for right now?
joe rogan
Did you see some of the fucking hot takes on this from Bloomberg?
Because some of them were so- No way!
josh barnett
Bloomberg was stupid hot takes?
I can't believe that.
joe rogan
They were telling people that they should avoid chemotherapy for their dog.
That was one of them.
I'm not kidding.
Because I made a screenshot of it because it was so fucking crazy that I was like, that can't be what someone's actually saying people should do because- Because there's no fucking...
Because they're running out of money.
See if you can find that, Jamie, before I find the screenshot because I... I think it's in here.
unidentified
I'm going to try to find it.
joe rogan
Well, it was a tweet.
And in the tweet, they had made a synopsis of what you need to be doing to make everything better.
josh barnett
You need to use archive.today when you pull these things up so you get no paywalls.
unidentified
When I get a paywall, I know what to do.
jamie vernon
It doesn't always come up right away.
joe rogan
I'm trying to find it.
josh barnett
Don't make the mainstream media money.
joe rogan
I make too many goddamn screenshots, unfortunately, of stupid shit.
So do I. Because I find so much of it.
It just drives me nuts.
josh barnett
Or a good meme drops in.
You're like, oh, I need that.
I need that.
joe rogan
I've got it in here somewhere.
I know it's close.
josh barnett
But...
Yeah, of course.
I mean, living in unreality, of course.
joe rogan
That's it.
Eat beans, take the bus.
Skip getting chemo for your sick dog.
See if you find the actual tweet, because it's so stupid, it makes me furious.
josh barnett
Yeah, fuck your animal companion that you've raised and that you love and loves you back.
joe rogan
Dude, let me tell you something.
josh barnett
Don't buy in bulk.
joe rogan
I would take out a loan before I left.
josh barnett
Try lentils instead of meat.
More nudging, by the way, to get you to stop eating animal products.
unidentified
Yeah, what the fuck, man?
josh barnett
Nobody said this would be fun?
Fuck you.
joe rogan
What does that mean?
Nobody said this would be fun.
Look at that.
josh barnett
Thanks, Dad.
joe rogan
Look at this.
Inflation stings most if you earn less than $300,000.
That's a lot of fucking money.
Here's how to deal.
Talk about being delusional and out of touch.
Inflation stings if you earn less than a third of a million dollars a year?
josh barnett
Yeah, no shit it stings.
joe rogan
Yeah, duh.
josh barnett
No shit.
joe rogan
But here's what you should do.
Take the bus, don't buy in bulk, try lentils instead of meat, and nobody said this would be fun.
Nobody said this was gonna fucking happen.
josh barnett
Yeah, nobody said it was gonna happen.
Nobody said that any of this shit was gonna go down.
By the way, no one said that we were gonna have some...
There's a plausibly lab-altered coronavirus released on the world.
No one said that we were gonna have a war in Ukraine, in Europe.
No one said that, but by the way, it's like, It's a shift.
COVID doesn't exist anymore because now we have the Ukraine war and so on and so on and so on.
There's always a constant new thing.
It's like, nope, that doesn't exist anymore.
Now this is this.
joe rogan
And the same people are tweeting about it incessantly.
unidentified
Of course.
josh barnett
My favorite, some of my favorites are, was it Trump was talking to Zelensky, I guess, at one point?
There was phone calls like, oh, see this?
But Ukraine and Zelensky said, oh, he didn't force me to do anything or threaten me or whatever.
It's like, but you're just a corrupt imbecile and it doesn't matter what you have to say.
And now it's like, no, but you're actually the reincarnation of Rambo and Mother Teresa all at once.
So it's like, well, which is it?
I mean, is he a human being or is he just some sort of stand-in for whatever your narrative needs to be?
And then with inflation, I I saw an article, I don't remember who it was, Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg or some other midwit news source.
It's like, oh, inflation is on the rise and that's a good thing.
joe rogan
Yeah, what?
Now, this is what I want to know.
josh barnett
What fucking world are you living in?
joe rogan
Is that, like, a hot take for clicks?
Is that, like, a clickbait thing?
Or is that...
Do you think, in the most cynical sense, it would be someone is giving them a narrative?
And it's like, I want you to make a good spin on why you don't have any money.
josh barnett
We don't have...
Yeah.
I mean, maybe.
But my personal opinion is it's...
If your upper echelon of elites are just managerial types, that they're rent seekers, they get into a position, all they do is they get rent off of it, they can't make, create, or build, or fix things.
Anything.
All they can do is manage.
They can push the papers along.
They can make the system grow.
They can put more managerials in.
They can solidify their position.
They can consolidate things, but they can't make stuff.
If there's a problem, they can't really fix it because, one, they're absolutely way too fucking slow at doing anything because there's so many steps in between all aspects to fix something like, I guess Flint has water now, but it took forever.
And by the way, I mean, most people have probably forgotten completely that there was an entire American city with poisoned water, and no one ever really followed up on, hey, guess what?
We did something about it.
Nobody said anything.
joe rogan
I don't know if they have done anything about it.
josh barnett
I read an article that said, because I looked up on it, I'm like, what the fuck happened with this?
And it's like, oh, yeah, actually, everything's good now, but...
But people in Flint have such low trust that they won't drink the water and he's still...
joe rogan
Well, they should have low trust.
josh barnett
Well, yeah, of course.
joe rogan
You remember when Obama went there and drank the water like a stunt?
Remember that?
It's one of my favorite weird moments because he sipped the water and it's the tiniest little bird sip.
Do I get a glass of water?
I'm thirsty.
This isn't even a stunt.
josh barnett
Michelle is here.
joe rogan
I'd like a glass of water.
josh barnett
She gave me this glass on our wedding night.
joe rogan
Come on, man.
Take a go.
josh barnett
You know what?
And yet, if it's one side, he's your God.
If it's another side, he's your devil.
And on both ends, it's like, guess what?
If Obama's the devil, and you think your guy's some sort of saint...
You're fucked.
joe rogan
Yeah.
josh barnett
You've got it all wrong.
joe rogan
Well, what he definitely is, is the best representation of an intelligent, articulate statesman who is a president of our lifetime, other than Clinton, and Clinton was kind of a sketchy dude who liked to fuck everybody.
josh barnett
Yes.
joe rogan
You know, it seems like Clinton...
josh barnett
All he is...
joe rogan
Can I get a glass of water?
Let me hear this.
josh barnett
Yeah.
joe rogan
Hold it from the beginning?
Can I hear it from the beginning?
josh barnett
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Electrolytes.
joe rogan
No, from the beginning.
Right.
This is a long video to get to hear.
Because he says, can I get a glass of water?
He goes back.
This is the part that's fun.
unidentified
We invest.
Can I get some water?
joe rogan
Imagine living in a city where your water is poisoned and you cheer.
And that's how much they love this guy.
I mean, when he was a president, at the very least, we knew that we had a super intelligent, very, like, he was composed.
josh barnett
You know what we knew we had?
We had a first-rate manager.
joe rogan
Yes.
Yes.
We felt like he was smarter than us.
unidentified
Yeah, well, of course.
joe rogan
If I saw him on TV, I'm like, well, that seems like a president to me.
josh barnett
Look, I voted for him.
joe rogan
Yeah, I did too.
If you look at Joe Biden, unfortunately, you're looking at him and you're going, I don't know what he's capable of.
I don't think he's capable of figuring out problems.
I mean, he's saying crazy shit in the White House.
That's not what Joe means.
That's not what Joe means.
josh barnett
Not just across the U.S., but across the entire West.
We have the oligarchs, and they are all oligarchs.
Go read Political Parties by Robert McKells, and he will outline why every group, every group eventually becomes an oligarchy.
It is impossible for it not to, and especially in politics.
It's impossible.
It will always be an oligarchy.
joe rogan
Why is that?
josh barnett
Because in the realm of politics, okay, you got all this mass of people.
These people need to make a decision.
So at some point, they're going to go through some process of figuring out who they want their representatives to be because everyone can't speak at once.
Someone's got to distill the messages and what have you.
And people don't want to work in a gigantic collective of everything.
At some point, somebody is going to be either the natural born leader or they're going to make them the leader because it isn't for everyone.
And it's not even to everyone's capabilities to be the leader or to be the spokesperson to deal with The conflict from argumentation and so on and so forth, and to be the person to stand up and to get people to believe, like, if he says to do it, I'll do it.
You know what I mean?
Also, you then also start to have things like, alright, We live in a liberal democratic republic.
So you're going to need in politics, oh, I need someone to run my campaign.
I need someone to do this.
So you start getting the division of labor in and amongst even your political party itself to then handle all these specific tasks and get specialized people to do it.
Well, then they also then become part of that oligarchy because...
It can't just be Joe Schmo and Betty Nobody.
It's got to be somebody that is either A, capable of being the person that's the campaign manager and the speech writer.
Script writer.
One and the same.
unidentified
Kind of the same.
josh barnett
All these different things.
And this is all working towards your...
Your upper echelon to go out there and to represent on your behalf.
And especially in America, which is a representative republic, it's a representative democracy, somebody is there on your behalf.
Although there is a jillion unelected non-democratic officials like a Fauci or what have you that are out there making all kinds of rules, doing all kinds of things that you have no say in and you get to do nothing about it.
The thing is, as Mikels points out, it always, eventually, either by necessity or just by nature, every group becomes an oligarchy, always.
And the thing about it is, okay, well, if it is an oligarchy, one, you should be truthful about it and not try to lie to everyone and say, like, oh, no, no, we all have a say in this.
No, the fuck you don't.
You don't.
We do.
And if we don't like the sound of that, we ain't changing it.
Period.
And instead, in this modern age, what we'll do is we'll get the cathedral to go and tell you how you're supposed to think.
And then you'll come around to us or we'll nudge you until eventually you come to the point that, you know what?
Eating meat is bad.
You know, why?
Because reasons and studies and statistics and, you know.
joe rogan
Right.
Climate.
josh barnett
Climate is one.
And it's like climate becomes more of a vehicle to insert particular political ideologies more than it has anything to do with saving the planet.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And that's part of the problem with any cause that we have that's a giant national cause.
They use them.
They manipulate them.
You know?
It's like whenever any sort of tragic event happens.
unidentified
Yep.
joe rogan
There's a lot of times people think that, oh, maybe it was orchestrated because you see how these people are using this event.
No, that's like their default mechanism.
They take advantage of chaos and of any kind of big event to implement ideas they already had.
Like when 9-11 happened, one of the things about the Patriot Act, there was a bunch of shit they were already trying to pass through.
And they couldn't get it before 9-11.
josh barnett
Nope.
joe rogan
But once 9-11 came along, they go, hey, now we got our shot.
unidentified
Yep.
joe rogan
Let's get in this mass surveillance.
Let's start fucking ramping up our security state.
josh barnett
Hey, Saudi Arabia funded a bunch of these guys to get all their training and all this kind of stuff.
Our funding came through Saudi Arabia.
And then, you know, we're doing all this stuff with military arms and all this backing and supporting of Saudi Arabia.
We go to Saudi Arabia and say, hey, can you put more oil?
And they go, nah.
joe rogan
That's recently, right?
Yep.
I don't know what's happening there because I'm only reading headlines in that because it's too much.
josh barnett
Well, for one, I mean, not to get all into the Ukraine, but it's fog of war.
You just can't know it.
And now with our massive media state You're going to only know what they want you to know.
And to be able to get through and try to even understand some semblance of truth is going to be incredibly difficult.
And at the end of the day, you have innocents dying on both ends for reasons that don't seem to be, you know...
joe rogan
Logical.
I want to recommend a podcast to people because a lot of people recommend it to me and I'm in the middle of it right now and it's excellent.
It's about Ukraine.
If you want to get an understanding of what's happening, why it's happening, it's called the Marty Maid Podcast.
Excuse me, Martyr Maid.
Martyr made podcast and it's called thoughts on Ukraine updated and remastered and It's very well thought out very It's very intense.
josh barnett
I'd like to add listen to Samo Burja Burja's conversation.
He had Samo s-a-m-o-b-u-r-j-a He has a company that is centered around Analyzing all world events and politics and everything and trying to Bismarck analytics.
And I'd also say Michael Malice and Curtis Yarvin on You're Welcome.
joe rogan
Michael Malice is great.
josh barnett
He's a good dude.
I'd like to meet him at some point.
I want to argue with him about...
joe rogan
He's out here.
josh barnett
Oh, well, I'll try and, you know, track him down.
Lex...
I like to talk to him about anarcho-capitalism and anarchy in general and why it doesn't work.
But I also respect him in a lot of ways for putting his opinions out there.
And look, if he's friends with Lex and he's friends with you and he's friends with my other buddy, Ethan, No, you'll love him.
He's a great guy.
And Yarvin, as smeared and misunderstood as he is, I think has a lot of interesting insight.
And I also think that, you know, just for your own sake, not just Ukraine or any, but for any understanding and getting a better idea on all about how, especially the West works on a political level, read James Burnham's The Machiavellian's.
It is the easiest way to get Familiarized with the thinkings of what's called the Italian elite theorists, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels.
And they look at politics from the perspective of power, but from also the perspective of how these things work, especially in a democratic sense, and how even though the concept of what we call liberalism Which, as an aside note, I hate it when people call leftism liberalism or leftist liberals.
I'm like, no, everybody in America essentially is a liberal because we are a liberal society.
We are built on classic English liberalism that is the bedrock of who we are.
I think we're good to go.
At some point, this all goes away and the oligarchs and the managerial class decide everything for you.
And you think that what you're doing is going to influence these things, but it doesn't.
You think that when, oh, there's this big, you know, uprising of populist movement of against this or that, it's like, yeah, it was all astroturfed.
I'm sure somebody in the elite class somewhere funded it.
The government either put rules in place to increase its probability of happening, which is an argument of law, culture is decided by law and not the other way.
And that's an even deeper concept to get into, but just simply that at the end of the day, human beings organize themselves in such a way that there's always a representative at some point.
And be it a king, be it a president, be it an elite managerial class, that's how it's going to happen.
And once a managerial class sets itself up, the only thing it wants to do especially is manage because it's not there to create.
It's not there to fix.
No, it's there to continue management and to ensure, most of all, that they stay there.
That they don't lose their positions.
And so a lot of what I saw COVID as, like, this is managerialism manifest.
It's not about whether this is healthy or that's healthy or we could make this change or, okay, what we didn't know, an overreaction makes sense.
It's the unknown.
And even despite our massive fear of death in modernity in the Kali Yuga, We still need to approach things, the unknown, as like, it's the unknown.
The fuck if I know what's really gonna happen?
Yeah, I'm probably gonna overreact.
Until I know more, until I've had a little bit more time, then I can readjust.
But the readjustment really never happened very – definitely didn't happen with any sort of real speed because the managerial class is sitting back like, we cannot make a mistake on this in any way where it can be used against us, regardless if it's small or large, right or wrong.
If it was right, I guess it wouldn't even be a mistake.
But any way that it could be used as ammo against us to lose our position to our enemies.
Because all politics breaks down into a friend-enemy distinction.
And that who is along with my narrative is my friend and that who is against it is my enemy.
Because if you're against it, that means you could then use it to somehow say, I don't deserve to be here.
And if I lose my spot in the managerial...
I've lost, and all this way of rent-seeking is now taken from me, and that's all I do anyways because I'm not capable of probably starting a successful car company where I redesign suspension.
No, no.
All I know how to do, I go to school, I get raised up through this managerial oligarchic class, I go to the right schools, I say all the right things, I join the right clubs, I get primed to go into places.
Then I get to become a managerial myself.
And when I'm in politics, I'm part of that managerial oligarchic class, and then when I leave politics, I'm still in it because now I'm working at Pfizer when I used to be a part of whatever, like the...
FDA. Yeah, or this, and I'm going back and forth between the two.
I'm doing all this stuff for Monsanto, then I'm president, then I go back to it, and then I get to go and do dinners While I'm in office at $30,000, $50,000 a plate and rake in all this cash and then go back to me and telling you about how you need to cinch your belts about this or that or any number of reasons, any other scenarios you can come up with.
That managerial class of person isn't capable of then coming down here and running a simple podcast.
No, their podcast has to be backed by parts of the cathedral that then back the managerial class to allow them to continue to push the same narratives that their class wants you to push and put things out there the way that they think is beneficial to them.
So they can then go back to being a manager in some other way.
And it's like the homeless problem in LA. Every time I see someone rallying for they're going to go for some office, I'm like, well, I'm going to do this.
I'm going to build this low-income housing.
How are you going to put a paranoid schizophrenic on crack in a low-income housing?
How are you going to do that?
You basically don't really give a shit about all these people in the street suffering.
You think that it's okay for a person to live this way, you know, deranged in their own head, self-medicating and living in filth as long as you create some boondoggle where you've got a bunch of property development people that are making money off of it and you're making money off of it and your little shadow corp or whatever is making money.
It's just like, you have to be a Machiavellian To do that and sit back and then walk out on those streets if you're Maxine Waters.
And I was in her district not long ago and it's like, wow.
She don't come around.
Got nothing to do with any of this.
joe rogan
That area is a fucking holy mess.
josh barnett
All of LA is turning into a holy mess, Joe.
I have a buddy that comes from frickin' Staten Island, and he goes, what the fuck, dude?
joe rogan
Yeah.
josh barnett
I go, this is how we run things here.
We don't fix problems.
It's getting worse.
We just create them.
Yeah, it increases.
joe rogan
You know, I never had this perspective on homelessness.
I always thought that the problem was just really big, and if they had more money, they'd be able to solve it.
Sorry.
josh barnett
I think you just need more whiskey.
joe rogan
Yeah, maybe.
But then my friend Coleon Noir pointed out that he's a lawyer, and he went to San Francisco, and he was talking to these people up there about the homeless problem, and they laid out, they go, no, no, no.
This is a giant money-making scam.
The reason why it's never going to go away is that there's a large payroll of people that are making exorbitant amounts of money to deal with the homeless.
Now, those people would have no job.
josh barnett
Nope.
joe rogan
If the homeless problem was somehow or another solved, and I'm like, how much money are they making?
So he pulls up this fucking list of people in LA, and there's people on the list that make a quarter million dollars a year, and they're not doing a good job.
Obviously, the homeless situation is bigger and bigger every year.
josh barnett
Seattle, too.
joe rogan
The budget keeps getting bigger and bigger, and then these people make more and more money, and it never gets solved.
josh barnett
No, of course not, because solving it, one, they're not capable of solving it.
They're rent-seeking managerials.
They can't solve shit.
joe rogan
Russell, how do you solve like what you said?
How do you take a schizophrenic crack addict?
josh barnett
I think the only way that I can think of is, one, you'd have to basically essentially outlaw homelessness and say, look, especially in a metropolitan, dense, populated area, you cannot have homelessness like this because One, you can't have people out here suffering like this.
That's fucked up.
It's not okay.
Number two, those people are a potential criminal problem, too.
joe rogan
And there's a health hazard.
josh barnett
Number three, it's a health hazard because you have all these populations intermingled with each other, but they're not going and getting healthcare and other things.
I mean, they can't take care of themselves.
So diseases are going to spread amongst these groups at different rates, not to mention there's a potential for superbugs to create and or medieval diseases to come back.
There was a typhus outbreak in L.A.
And that's because now you've got all these rats around the waste and the trash and all this.
Plus, and then you make the environment – Ugly, disgusting, unlivable.
And look, what you live around absolutely affects the way you feel, but it also affects the way you interact with the environment around you.
If you think you live in fucking barter town, you're going to act like it's barter town.
joe rogan
Right.
josh barnett
Period.
You're going to tag every fucking thing up with every sloppy, shitty fucking tag.
You're going to throw your trash out.
You're not going to care.
You just, you know, oh, that's just another homeless guy instead of being like, God damn, you know?
joe rogan
Another fellow human being.
josh barnett
Why is this person suffering on the street?
Well, you know why they're suffering on the street?
Could be a number of things, but it ain't the regular narrative that, oh, they just fell on hard times.
unidentified
Right.
josh barnett
I fell on hard times and then all of a sudden believe people are trying to get them or they're bipolar to such a degree that they're harming themselves and others.
No, the only thing I can think of is you'd have to make it essentially illegal.
You would have to create a big ass camp and you would have to round these folks up, clean them up because a person that can't bathe themselves is a massive fucking thing.
Human beings want to be able to clean themselves, feel like they've refreshed who they are.
You gotta give them psychiatric treatment.
You gotta help them get off the drugs.
You gotta help them give them drugs if they need them for these things that are ailing their mental state, that are keeping them in this broken realm of suffering that doesn't allow them to actualize who they are.
Then you have to give them a work opportunity because human beings need to do something.
So in and amongst that, maybe it's just, to me, I think, oh, it's beautification.
Cleaning up all the graffiti, cleaning up the trash, giving someone something to do, pay them some sort of a small wage because you're covering all their, now you're covering their living quarters and all this stuff.
And you're giving them medication, you're giving them help, getting them off of drugs.
The state has credit unions and all these things.
You open an account in their name.
Now they're getting a bit of money for everything they go out and do.
Now if they want to at some time, they can go, okay, you're clean.
You're good to go.
You know what medications you need.
You're in the system.
Go take the money.
Go do what you want to do with it.
Or maybe integrate into the program and now you can help other people.
Maybe now you can start going to school.
Go into psychology and psychiatry.
Maybe then at some point you could be the person that's diagnosing this person, trying to help them out and get them off the street.
And you create this process that tries to get people from this position of being deranged and in the dirt to...
Able to have some kind of way of actualizing their life and making their own rational decisions.
joe rogan
Well, they've done something about it here in Austin, and I had a long conversation with the mayor about it here, and one of his points is that Austin only had about 2,000 homeless people.
And he's like, 2,000, maybe 3,000 homeless people.
And he's like, we can fix that.
That can be worked.
He goes, when it gets to the state where Los Angeles is, when you're dealing with several hundred thousand people potentially, I don't know what the real number is.
He goes, it's too much.
It's insurmountable.
josh barnett
But at some point, you got to sit back and go, We can find every reason to spend inordinates amounts.
I mean, I drove by, and Officer Coughlin, who I was doing a ride-along with, he shows me this new container homes that they're building.
He goes, you know how much that one up on the top is going for?
How much the cost is that?
$600,000.
What?
joe rogan
For a container home?
Yeah.
Where is it?
Yeah, it's like they're all stacked on each other and all this kind of stuff.
josh barnett
But it's like, you really think you're going to get a paranoid schizophrenic to go live in this?
Or even just a drug addict.
Because now it's like, well, they ran this experiment in Seattle and they put these little shelters up and almost didn't use them.
Because one, if you're a paranoid schizophrenic or something, some neurodivergent on that level...
I'm sure you're just like, that doesn't seem like a wise idea for someone to know exactly where I'm at at all times.
joe rogan
Right.
josh barnett
If you're even just considering the fact of that what you're doing with drugs and maybe prostitution or whatever is illegal, well, now the cops know where you are in your mind.
I don't want to be there.
Right.
So it didn't work.
It didn't do anything.
joe rogan
Not only that, when you're living in Los Angeles, you can exist in a tent.
It doesn't really get cold enough to kill you.
josh barnett
That's true.
joe rogan
It's not that big a deal.
josh barnett
Or you roll up an RV and you just sit there and you chill out there.
joe rogan
It's a fucked up problem.
josh barnett
It is a fucked up problem.
joe rogan
I wanted to, because we're running out of time, but I wanted to bring up this one thing that you brought up earlier, because I think there's, you made a really good point, but I think there's more to it.
When you're talking about people that want to avoid death, and that this is like a main component of our life, is like no one wants to die, you want to avoid death, you don't even think about it.
Do you think that because of the fact that we don't experience death the way maybe some primitive cultures did, that we have disconnected with it?
We don't think of it as this inevitable, unavoidable thing?
Instead, we think of it almost like something that's not going to happen to me?
And that, like, if you think about, like, the Spartans, when the Spartans would meet someone who was 30 years old, they would treat them with extreme distrust.
Like, how are you alive?
Like, how have you made it to 30?
They thought that person maybe was like a traitor or an enemy or a coward or someone who avoided conflict.
Like, how did you ever get to be this old and not get killed in battle?
We don't see a lot of death here.
And I think because of that, in most places, because of that, we don't have the same sort of resolve about the inevitability of death that I think some cultures do have.
josh barnett
Well, modernity...
Is a major cause to this.
But let's just say specifically in the West, like I said earlier, death is an abstract concept.
It's something that happens to other people in some faraway place that doesn't exist around me, be it war, famine, or even just natural causes.
We know people die, but we're never ready for it.
We never expect it.
And then when it happens, it's like, oh no, don't touch it.
Don't touch it or it'll get on you.
But the thing is, so a friend of mine, one of my best friends, his dad is, well, he's not in his best place mentally and physically.
And my buddy, he looks at it like, you know what?
I'm going to do my best for my father as much as I can.
And I'm going to help him in every way that is possible.
But he is going to die.
And he doesn't know when.
He doesn't know, especially because it could take all kinds of turns at places that he doesn't know and he can't necessarily expect.
But...
At the end of the day, we just sat down there, we looked each other in the eye, and I just said, look, whatever, whenever, however, just call me, and I'll be there.
And we'll take him, and we'll do what needs to be done.
If we're going to bury him on his own land, if we're going to do this, we're going to do that.
joe rogan
Are you allowed to do that?
josh barnett
I don't know.
But all I know is this.
When the people that are of my tribe, of my family, of my things in life are there, when death greets them, I'll be there with them.
And when they're When their body is without life, I will not treat them as if it is something that I don't want to get on me.
I will hold that hand, cold as it may be, and I will know that this too is for me.
And in this moment, I will not let this person be, I will not let this person essentially be alone.
I'm not afraid of death, not my death, not other people's death, not death in general, because it's not like I'm so tough or cool or unafraid of anything.
It is just that I've accepted this.
I live my life in a way where death is beside me at all times.
I remember having to have an MRI for something, and I'm like, oh shit, you know, some heavy shit was going on.
And I told someone, I go, you know, the only thing I thought of at that moment was, you know what?
The only thing that matters to me is I refuse to die a coward's death.
That's it.
That is it.
I don't care anything else.
I will not die a coward's death.
I will meet death head on.
I will face it.
I will hold its hand.
And when I have to walk that way, if I get to go to Valhalla, if that's a thing that exists, that's where I'm going.
And I'm not doing it like a coward.
I'm going to accept it.
And there we go.
Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to roll over.
That doesn't mean anything else other than Death is here with me at all times and everyone else, whether they want to acknowledge it or not.
And the difference is I'm here to live life.
I'm here to face death squarely and accept it and then get everything I can out of being here.
That doesn't mean go crazy hedonistically.
I got to get it all in before I... No, no, no.
That just means I'm going to let the beauty of the world enshrine and enshroud me...
Because it's all I got.
And if I get to get reincarnated, cool.
If I go to some sort of Shangri-La, fine.
I don't know what any of that could be.
And I don't care if it doesn't exist.
I don't care.
I don't care if there's a heaven.
I don't care if there's a hell.
What I care about is living to my principles.
Being a person that is of honor and respect to those he interacts with and those that he loves and that are part of his life.
And beyond that, I just have to accept where I fail.
Own it and move forward.
That's it.
joe rogan
And what you're saying sounds noble and honorable and it's a great thing, but it also sounds incredibly rare.
And I think that's one of the unique things about this time is that people that are accepting reality, accepting the inevitability of their own demise and trying to live life by principles and by ethics and a strict code of honor.
It's rare today.
josh barnett
It's rare because Genon, Nietzsche, Spengler have all seen and sorted out how we have, through the comforts and the malaise of modernity, found ways to divorce ourselves from all these things.
To not have to have it.
We live in a culture without honor at any point anymore.
Or when we have honor, it's this.
Exacerbated perversion of it where we come storming out of our fucking seat at the Oscars.
We slap a tiny comedian who we know the motherfucker has known for I don't know how long.
And then we rant and we scream in our seat after the fact.
Instead of meeting the man face to face, looking him in his eye, having a conversation with him, and allowing him even the opportunity to say, Hey man, I really didn't mean anything by it.
I thought it was a pretty simple, harmless joke.
Especially because it's still even in the vein of movies and acting.
And you know what?
I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to hurt her feelings.
And I didn't know this was such a serious thing for you.
And that's that.
And you know what?
Allowing somebody to have that kind of humility or that...
Everybody loves to fucking throw around the word empathy all the time.
Nobody knows what it actually means.
That's empathy.
Empathy is not letting all of the digital world infiltrate your person and then you going and throwing out all this emotional attachment and taking it onto yourself so now you can be spun out of control and running around now having to see therapists 24-7 because you've now done something that the human body is not meant to do, which is try to interact with this simulacra As if it is actual reality for you.
joe rogan
Right.
Without all of the context of being a person, without social cues, without the emotional connection you have when you're having a conversation with a person.
josh barnett
Look, that person on the other side of that Instagram account, unless you actually know them, Is not an actual person.
That is not a person.
That is a simulacra of that person.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a vague representation of their real thoughts.
And they might be fucking with you.
They might be trolling.
josh barnett
They might be bored at work.
It is the persona, the Jungian persona they want to put out.
To the world.
That is not who they are.
joe rogan
Yeah.
That is a giant problem with social media today.
It's like that becomes a goal.
It becomes a goal to be the baller on social media and to have this life that's at least...
It seems unattainable.
josh barnett
Well, I mean, you can find inspirational quote right below some chick that's just showing you all of her goods.
Or inspirational quote besides some guy trying to ape the version of masculinity that they think is the prime example of it.
joe rogan
Yeah, something that's really going to make you wild.
josh barnett
So you just have fake on top of fake on top of more fake.
And why would it not be fake when the ability to sincerely and accurately know and actuate those things is lost?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, it's such a strange thing to have as a primary influence.
If you think of our culture, that's one of the primary influences is the image projected by social media.
It's a giant part.
I mean, we even call them influencers, which is kind of crazy.
josh barnett
And why, you know, when it came to doing whiskey, per se, when they approached me, I said, that sounds great.
I got to drink it and I got to meet you guys.
Otherwise, we got nothing to talk about.
And so I went up there.
I met with them.
Not only did I realize they were already making a great product, but then with bringing me on board.
And even then, at the time, David, the head distiller, was like, you know, I wasn't really quite sure about all this.
And I thought you were just going to be some fucking guy.
But then here you are.
Milling the grains and doing this and watched me with this guy from Bourbon Review do a double-blind taste test back-to-back.
I picked the same barrels and the same notes and I could find the whiskey that I wanted to be the one that we released.
He's like, okay.
joe rogan
So how did they do that?
So they gave you a bunch of bullshit whiskeys in yours and you had to taste which one was it?
josh barnett
No, in this case, what it was, we had three barrels to choose from.
And all right.
Which one's gonna be the single barrel?
So I tasted all three, took my notes, and then I said, you know, barrel seven.
This is the one we're gonna go with for batch one.
And then Will from Bourbon Review at the time, he goes, all right, let's do this again.
Now I'm going to mix them up.
I ain't going to tell you which ones they are.
Taste them and then pick them.
And I picked seven again as my choice, and then eight and then nine.
So I picked them all in the same order that I ranked them before at the same time.
And it was like, okay, well then, yeah, I guess seven's the fucking one.
joe rogan
How do you do that?
Do you have to clean your palate in between?
josh barnett
You do, and there's a couple tricks.
One is soda water is pretty good at cleaning your palate.
Two, I mean...
Being very aware of what you eat before you go and do it and not eating something that's heavily spiced or something that's really...
If you're trying to do a tasting, you don't want to do something where all these flavors and everything over...
Like, don't smoke a cigar and then try and go and do a cigar tasting.
A whiskey tasting.
Yeah, yeah.
The other thing I found was you could...
I saw this on a YouTube video.
You could smell...
The inside of your elbow, and that can kind of help reset.
unidentified
What?
josh barnett
It helps reset your olfactory senses.
joe rogan
The inside of your elbow?
josh barnett
Yeah.
Because it's you.
You're smelling you all the time.
Okay.
I've seen people use things with coffee and coffee beans to smell and something to reset your nose.
But there's other little tricks for tasting.
You put a small amount in the glass, shake it, get it on your hands, rub it, smell, then shake it, smell, taste a little bit because as soon as that alcohol hits your tongue, if it's the first drink, that alcohol hitting your tongue is like, whoa, okay.
joe rogan
That's interesting.
josh barnett
Let it settle.
Then take another little sip.
Now, move it all around your mouth, they call it chewing, and then swallow, and then let that all coat your mouth, and then try to get an idea, start picking things out.
And by the way, there's no right way to, if you think it tastes like, so last night, something we had, I was like, you know, the end finish on this is a bit like the smell of MDF or plywood in a Home Depot.
They're like, what?
I go, try.
Yeah, I kind of get that.
Okay.
Oh, it's toasted coconut.
Move to this, move to that.
And if that's the note that you come up with, that's the note you can come up with, right?
It's yours.
However, your memory of taste and smell is unique to you.
But yet, we've all eaten and tasted most of the same shit because we all live in the same country with the same cuisines.
joe rogan
Did you take a class on this?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
Or read a book on it?
josh barnett
I just became a drunk.
unidentified
Ah!
joe rogan
And talk to other drunks and they tell you how to do it right?
josh barnett
Yeah.
So, doing this whiskey, it was really important.
Like, everything I do, that if it's got my name on it, I really got to stand behind it.
It's got Warmaster right on the fucking bottom.
That's my nickname.
This is me.
So, and then when it came to, all right, We need to pick our production up during COVID. So I said, here I am.
I got the time.
I'm here in the distillery.
So like the video you showed on one of your deals about talking about the whiskey.
No, that's, I mean, yeah, that's highlight stuff for that reel, but that's real shit.
I cleaned the floors, ran distillation runs, smoked grains, roasted shit, did mash bills, sat and worked underneath as an apprentice, a head distiller.
Who also was a PhD biochemist.
So we're talking about the aspects of physics and chemistry as well as just stuff that comes with whiskey making, you know, that hand done process.
And for me, this just lined up perfectly.
Not only did our normal Warbringer blend win a gold medal this year at World Spirits Competition in its pot still category, we have a vodka that we put out where...
Vodkas are basically all the same.
I don't give a fuck what anybody says to you.
If I make you a cocktail with Absolute or Russian Standard or Belvedere, you ain't gonna taste any difference.
joe rogan
I watched this video where they took cheap vodka and they ran it through a bunch of Brita filters and they said it's indistinguishable from expensive vodka.
josh barnett
By nature, vodka is supposed to be tasteless, odorless, neutral, distilled at I think over 180 and then cut down to 80 proof or whatever.
With us...
We worked with a mixologist, award-winning mixologist, Josh Goldman.
The idea was to create a vodka that would be the best well vodka to make the best cocktails.
And the difference is our PhD biochemist and the mineral formulation in the water.
So our mineral formulation in the water creates a different mouthfeel, a little bit of different interaction, brings out different aspects of what's in the vodka from the three different grains that are in it.
And that vodka, we put it up to the World Spirits Competition this year, and it won best varietal in the nation, best varietal in the world.
joe rogan
Whoa.
josh barnett
Silver grid.
joe rogan
Dude, that's amazing.
josh barnett
Yeah.
joe rogan
And it's called War Master as well?
josh barnett
Silver Grin Vodka.
joe rogan
Silver Grin.
josh barnett
Silver Grin.
joe rogan
Interesting.
josh barnett
Like, you know, getting silver teeth back in the old days.
We have a very old-timey Western aesthetic because we're in the Southwest.
joe rogan
Right.
josh barnett
And then we've got our rum coming out, which I made along with our head distiller at the time.
He got a bunch of inverted sugar, and he's like, he made this insanely awesome rum.
It's more like a scotch kind of in a way.
It sounds hard...
Strange to say it, but if you drank it, you'd understand it.
And it was made from this incredibly expensive Muscovato sugar.
Well, he wanted to do something.
It's like, well, fuck, we just can't keep getting Muscovato sugar all the time, and it's so expensive.
I'd like to do something.
joe rogan
Well, what is Muscovato sugar?
josh barnett
It's this type of sugar from the specific, from the Mauritius Islands.
And it's got its own unique terroir to it and everything.
So by being in the location that it is, it has its own properties, and the shit's incredibly delicious on its own.
joe rogan
I've never wanted to try rum and vodka more than right now.
josh barnett
But I'll get you some rum.
I can get you some rum and some vodka.
joe rogan
I don't know how many times I've ever had rum in my whole life.
josh barnett
So he's like, I want to make one that's delicious as fuck but on a lower price point and easier for us to get a hold of.
So he got all this inverted sugar and he goes, all right, we're going to cut it half and half with molasses.
And molasses is a pretty typical admixture to make rum from.
So...
We mixed the two together.
We did a half and half in our mash.
Well, they don't call it a mash bill of rum.
They call it a...
Fuck.
I forget what they call it with rum.
It's a different term.
But it's the same thing.
You're basically mixing all the stuff together.
You're adding yeast to it.
You're adding aspects for fermentation.
You run your fermentation cycles.
And we did it, like our whiskey.
We run a first fermentation.
Then we run a secondary fermentation in oak tanks.
Then we pump it over to the still.
We do our stripping run, which gives you a low wine.
And then after that, you run it again.
Then you get the final high-proof product.
So that's called Parlor K. It should be coming out sometime soon.
And I sat there and worked side-by-side.
Making rum.
joe rogan
Well, dude, when those come out, let me know.
I'll let everybody know.
I'll post it up on social media.
But for now, this stuff is legitimately some of my favorite whiskey.
josh barnett
I love the fact that you love this.
joe rogan
I love it.
It's mesquite smoked, and it's probably hard to get, right?
josh barnett
It is pretty hard to get.
joe rogan
Runs out quickly.
josh barnett
Yeah, when we do, I would say if anybody's interested in this stuff, one of the easiest things to do is sign up for the email list.
I know that sounds so fucking corny in this daily.
joe rogan
Is it warbringer.com?
josh barnett
Warbringerbourbon.com.
And sign up for that email list because when we put the email blast for the two barrels that we had that were coming out, they were immediately gone.
unidentified
I'm sure.
josh barnett
All flew off the fucking shelves.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
It's great stuff.
And listen, man, I love the fact that you do this.
And you do this like you do everything else.
josh barnett
You do it all the way.
I don't know any way to do it.
I don't know any other way to do it, man.
joe rogan
It's one of the reasons why I love you.
josh barnett
Likewise.
joe rogan
All right, man.
Well, thanks for being here.
josh barnett
Look, man, Joe, you're a fucking treasure.
And I... Can't stress enough.
And I've told you, even in this little text, man, someone's like, oh, Joe Rogan this.
I'm like, tell me.
Tell me more.
What about Joe Rogan?
unidentified
Go ahead.
josh barnett
Nothing.
He's like, you ain't gonna fucking dog this dude when he ain't even here to defend himself.
But go ahead.
joe rogan
Well, thanks for that.
josh barnett
And what you do is an important thing for you.
joe rogan
People are going to dog everything.
It's a part of life.
josh barnett
I agree.
joe rogan
It doesn't bother me.
I just don't read the comments.
I keep moving.
But what's your social media?
josh barnett
At Josh L. Barnett on Twitter and Facebook.
And then there's a Josh Barnett official.
I'm sorry.
At Josh L. Barnett on Twitter and Instagram.
Josh Barnett official on Facebook if you're like 65 and you still use that, I guess.
Or you're like in Slovenia.
And yeah, you can go to joshbarnett.com.
That's a nice placeholder for all the shit I'm doing.
I didn't even plug this.
I have Josh Barnett's Bloodsport 8 in Dallas.
My pro wrestling show.
The hardest hitting pro wrestling show.
The hardest hitting show in all pro wrestling.
It is fight-oriented pro wrestling.
Where these guys are going out there and going head-to-head and toe-to-toe.
Actually hitting each other.
Putting it on the line in a way that you're not going to find in any other pro wrestling show out there.
joe rogan
Where is it?
josh barnett
It's going to be in Dallas at the Fair Park grounds.
And it's part of the GCW collective package, which is like this huge amount of different shows.
Yeah, this is Josh Barnett's Bloodsport.
joe rogan
Oh, so you don't have a ring.
josh barnett
No, we have, and you only win by submission, knockout, or TKO. And so we go at it with each other, submission holds, we trade back and forth, strikes.
joe rogan
And when is this?
josh barnett
This is going to be March 31st at 3 p.m.
See, look, I'm wrestling Minoru Suzuki, former King of Pancreas.
And myself, this is the IQ wrestler who is one of the absolute best highlight video makers in the entire fucking business.
joe rogan
It's intimate too.
josh barnett
It is.
And it gets down and dirty.
There is blood.
There is violence.
It is no joke.
I love that you love this too.
joe rogan
Alright.
That's it.
Thanks brother.
I appreciate you very much.
josh barnett
Likewise.
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