Jeff Dye joins Joe Rogan to dissect fame’s distractions, from Ronda Rousey’s UFC struggles—where media framed her losses and post-fight comments poorly—to the toxic algorithmic pressures of social media and performative activism, like DEI policies harming Asians or viral NYPD resignation claims debunked by data. Rogan criticizes mainstream media’s integrity, citing BBC’s January 6th edits and Trump’s misrepresented "very fine people" remark, while debating Epstein scandals, political gaslighting, and how power corrupts systems with money and influence, like sports betting scandals in UFC or NBA. They contrast Hollywood’s commercialized comedy with Austin’s meritocratic scene, where artists thrive without ideological constraints, and ponder AI’s role in job displacement—whether wealth redistribution or personal passions will define future meaning. Dye’s move to Texas and new Die Hard podcast reflect a rejection of manufactured outrage for genuine artistry. [Automatically generated summary]
Like, I like UFC, but I don't, you know, you know these things.
So I've always said, like, Ronda Rousey was a badass and was awesome at fighting when there was like 30 girls doing it professionally at her level.
Right?
That's why I said I might be wrong.
But then there was probably all these girls who could really fight all over the world, like in Japan and other countries, and even maybe even in America that just weren't in UFC.
They're like, I could probably beat this chick.
And now that there's so many women competing on this level, like Ronda Rousey probably isn't in her prime as badass as like the field.
I mean, I got nothing but love and respect for that lady.
What she did was so impressive.
She was the first legitimate female superstar.
She made the UFC female division possible.
If it wasn't for her, Dana was very open about never having female UFC fighters.
It took someone that was that dynamic, that was that special, to open his eyes and go, you know what?
I think this lady's a star.
And to be the type, like, when she said, like, I wasn't an expert, everyone's entitled to their opinion, you know, but you got to understand why she thinks like that.
Because she's a fucking, she has a champion mentality.
You can't judge her, like, compare her to like Zhang Wei-Li.
Because like Zhang Wei Li, who was the 115-pound champion, she had a chance to watch all these other people learn what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong, what's effective, what's not effective.
What Rhonda had is world-class judo, world-class, bronze medalist in the Olympics, one of the best arm bars, period, in the sport, in the history of the sport.
Her fucking arm bar, the technique was flawless.
There's a fight with her and Katzangano.
Katzangano launches at her, just fucking charged.
Katzangano was an animal, charges at her.
Ronda catches her in an arm bar in like 13 seconds.
I don't remember the exact time.
It was nuts, but it was perfect, perfect technique.
You know, you couldn't fuck with that.
But then she fought Holly home.
And when she fought Holly home, she was dealing with an elite boxer, an elite kickboxer, and a very physically strong woman who had an awesome game plan and who had a chance to study Ronda.
And maybe more importantly, came from a great camp.
And that camp, Jackson Wigglejohn camp, one of the best camps in the world.
John Jones came out of that camp.
Holly, Donald Cerroni originally came out of that camp.
A lot of great fighters came out of there.
So they were really good at game planning.
So they knew how Ronda likes to clinch.
They knew how Ronda likes to set up her takedowns and they knew what to avoid.
And then on top of that, Holly is just an elite striker.
So every time Rhonda tried to close the distance, the striking that she was very effective with against guys like Bech Kohea, these fighters that were a lower tier, it's not going to be as effective with someone like Holly.
And Holly started catching her on the feet and had her rocked and then landed that famous high kick and put her out.
But it was stylistically, it was a great matchup for her because she's an elite striker.
She's really good at counter-striking, striking.
She's really good at movement.
And when Rhonda has to close that distance, every fight starts in the feet.
And when you're with a very physically strong woman, it's got good takedown defense and is good at like catching you as you're charging in.
That was the problem in that fight.
Also, the problem in that fight, I think, for Rhonda is when you start becoming really famous, then the hyenas show up.
And they start offering you this and offering you that and distracting you with this and distracting you with that.
And now you're going to meetings and you're talking to agents and you're setting up movies and you're doing this and you're doing that.
And all those things take away from the most important thing, which is your fighting.
Even if they don't take away from the amount of training you do, they take away from your focus.
They just, they rob you of the bandwidth.
You know, I always tell comics this when it comes to like dealing with haters and things online that you shouldn't read.
You only have, like, think of your mind as having a number of units of attention.
Think you have 100 units of focus.
Anything that eats into those units, anything that bothers you, that annoys you, that's useless, that doesn't help you, that's stealing from your 100.
You know, so now you only have 80 units or 70 units of focus because 30 of it is concentrated on bullshit.
It'll rob you of what makes you great.
So there was two factors.
There was the skill of Holly, the fact that she had all this opportunity to study Rhonda and with a great team and devise a game plan.
And then there's also the stealing of focus.
You know, Rhonda, I was one of the biggest champions of her as a fighter, as a like a legitimate pioneer and a star.
It was first, it was Gina Carano and Chris Cyborg to a certain extent, but Cyborg had an asterisk everybody knew she was Reuted up.
And then it was Ronda.
But Rhonda eclipsed all of them.
She's bigger than all of them.
I was a huge supporter and still am.
But when you watch a fight and you're watching you get your ass kicked and the other person is talking about how great the other person is doing and how bad you're doing, that doesn't sit well with a lot of people, especially like someone who's got that kind of champion mentality, that fucking pit bull mentality.
I was very public about saying, I don't think she should fight for a long time.
They were talking about doing an immediate rematch.
And I was like, that's crazy.
Like, they were talking about doing a rematch in four months or something like that.
I was like, when you get headkicked into the shadow realm, you're supposed to take a long time off.
When Manny Pacquiao got knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez, it was a fucking picture-perfect right-hand who knocked it that knocked Manny Pacquiao out.
His coach, Freddie Roach, said, You can't fight for a year.
I don't want you doing anything for a year, for one year, because you got to heal up from something like that.
It's bad.
When you get knocked unconscious, it's not just that you'll be a touch gun shy, which is possible, but also that you're more vulnerable to getting hit.
And then you could ruin your chin forever.
Like if you get knocked out, there's certain fighters that used to have iron chins, like Chuck Liddell is one of the greatest examples of that.
He had an iron chin.
You could hit that dude with a fucking sledgehammer and he would just keep swinging at you.
And then eventually it got to the point where he would get clipped and he would just go out.
And it wasn't him.
It was his brain was broken.
It was too many times, too many shots, too many knockouts, too many impacts.
You got to preserve that.
You got to be very careful with that.
You got to take a long time off.
And then there was the Amanda Nunes fight.
So the Amanda Nunes fight, I was also very vocal that everybody was putting all of the attention in the promotion on Ronda making this huge comeback.
And if you watch the promos for that fight, I thought they were crazy disrespectful because the promos, and obviously, look, Ronda was a fucking huge star, a much bigger star than Amanda Nunes.
And that loss was a shocking upset to a lot of people that didn't understand martial arts and didn't think that Holly had a chance.
Didn't think anybody had a chance.
She's going to beat everybody forever.
But all of the promo was Ronda coming back.
All of it was like, she's coming back to take what's hers.
It was Ronda in a mansion looking out.
It was like the worst promo set.
Like Rhonda in a mansion, looking out the window, saying, I'm going to go get my title.
I don't know who made that.
I don't know what it was, but I remember being backstage the day of the fight.
And there was all these agents mulling around, all these Hollywood twats.
And this guy was like, I forget his exact words.
They were talking.
He didn't know who Ronda was fighting.
And he said, I don't know what her name is, but whoever it is, it's her funeral.
That's what he said.
And I was like, oh my God.
Like, these are the people.
Meanwhile, Amanda Nunes was the scariest person at 135.
And that's what I had said before she fought Holly Holm.
I mean, like Dana and I talked about, I said, I think Amanda's the scariest title challenger because she can flatline chicks with one punch.
She's very different than all the other ones.
She wound up flatlining Chris Cyborg.
It was a crazy fight.
She beats the fuck out of everybody.
She hits so hard, like way harder than most women.
And I was like, that's a dangerous fucking opponent.
And they're making it seem like this is all about the Ronda comeback when Amanda was the champion.
So Holly had beaten Ronda.
Misha Tate had beaten Holly.
And then Amanda had beaten Misha Tate.
So Amanda was the fucking champion.
But all the promotion was all about Ronda.
And then they were trying to do, like, pro wrestling.
It's disrespectful to the champion, especially a fucking dangerous champion.
And if the champion wins, which I thought she was going to win, it sets up, it's not good to set her up.
Like, you should set her up.
Like, how fucking dangerous she is.
Now you got a bigger star.
Obviously, she wound up being a bigger star.
And Amanda's the greatest of all time, like widely considered to be the greatest mixed martial arts female fighter in history because she fucks everybody up.
She's just so dangerous.
So, and then that fight happens, and then that lady takes Rhonda out in the first round, just beats the piss out of her, just stops her standing.
It was brutal.
You know, I never had a bad thing to say about Rhonda.
I still don't.
I understand her mentality.
I mean, she's a champion-minded person.
Like, she's like, you're fucking with me or against me.
It's me against the world.
You know, she doesn't have a chip on her shoulder.
And there comes a time where, look, every fighter can only redline for so long.
And the reality of fighting is you're redlining.
Lord Dravidian.
You know what a redline when the engine, you know, when your tachometer reaches like 8,000 RPMs, like, bam!
Right.
You can only do that for so long or your engine blows.
But to be in peak physical condition, to be able to fight in a championship fight, you essentially have to redline your body through camp.
You have to get your body to a place where it's at a rate.
You can't maintain fight shape.
It's not possible.
You get to a certain part, you peak, and then the last week you kind of drop off so that you can recover.
And so that Saturday night, when Saturday night rolls up and the lights go on in Madison Square Garden, you are as fucking ready as a human being can get.
But you can't maintain that and you can't do that forever.
And they think that there's a theory amongst mixed martial arts commentators and experts and what have you that it's about nine years.
Nine years is all it's possible to compete at a peak level.
And then you get a drop off.
Some people have more longevity than others.
It varies.
Some people, it's a much shorter reign.
And you got to kind of look at who they were when they were at the top.
You can only look at them when they're at that peak.
Like guys like Anderson Silva, he gets kind of dismissed because later in his life, the performances weren't the same.
They weren't elite performances.
But I say that's just human.
You got to look at him when he was the champion.
He was one of the most elite guys that's ever competed in a sport, period.
He's one of the greatest of all time.
But you can only, you got to look at when he was in his prime.
Last time I was here and I did his podcast, he had this huge Bronco that he was like doing something where he's selling it, like enough people buy tickets for it or something like that.
Oh, yeah.
And that truck was a beautiful truck.
And I like, like, that's what I like, is like big, stupid tires.
I have a cyber truck, and you can't really lift it, but since it has an air suspension, you can buy pins that make the air suspension one inch larger than whatever it's adjusting to.
Because if you put a lift on it, it's going to screw it all up.
So anyways, long story short, I have a lifted cyber truck with big, stupid tires on it.
And I drive into the comedy store parking lot and I'm like, this really isn't helping my reputation.
Every time I roll in, everyone's like, what is that?
Well, people are always looking for every possible opportunity to be a shithead.
And if they can be a shithead, if they're justified in being a shithead because they disagree with you, they would be the meanest motherfuckers just to be a shithead.
And that activity happens primarily on the left.
Primarily.
Like, you don't see that from the right.
Like, if someone pulls up in a Prius with a coexist bumper sticker, you don't see a bunch of guys going, hey, you fucking pussy.
Like the lab at the improv thought this was a hilarious premise.
And then she said, she was like, what part of his ideas did you find so gripping?
Was it his racist?
She just started launching into like about how like the fact that a guy she liked would be sad about Charlie Kirk's assassination was the biggest turn off to her that she wrote like a whole bit about it.
And I was just in my mind, I was like, I can't believe that this is her take.
I can't believe it's a take that the crowd is on board with.
And I can't believe I'm in this town anymore.
Like it was like a moment for me where I was like, what?
Well, there's certainly cult-like thinking involved in both the right and the left.
It's a real problem with people that identify with any political ideology, whether they identify as being a conservative or identify as being a liberal.
It's a real problem because then you lose all your objective thinking and you have to agree with everything that this side supports.
And generally, that's never a good thing to just agree with like a swath of predetermined ideas.
Yeah.
And one is that public assassinations are okay and that they're not sad.
When you take sound bites, like very short clips out of context of what someone's saying, and then you highlight that one particular sentence and the way they said that sentence, you could frame someone in a very different way than who they really are.
And I think there was some problems with some of the things that Charlie said, the way he said them, and in the fact that you could take it as a clip.
And one of them was the idea of DEI pilots.
Like the idea of any lowering of standards of anyone in a really important job, like a pilot, because a person is blank, fill in the blank, because they're a lesbian or because they're gay or because they're white or because they're Chinese or because they're black or whatever it is.
If you're lowering standards because you want more people of one thing, well, you've just made the skies a little more dangerous.
You made a very dangerous thing, which is flying, a little more dangerous.
So his statement was because they're doing this and they're trying to get, they're using DEI to hire people.
And when I get on a plane and I see a black pilot, I hope that they're qualified.
Instead of saying that that way, because one of the things that I pointed out is that what DEI, especially in regards to education, the people that discriminate the most against, like people say it's a white supremacist idea to be against DEI.
The people that DEI discriminates the most against in education is Asians because Asians fucking kill it in universities.
They kill it.
So much so that there was a giant lawsuit at Harvard because they were making their admission standards more difficult for Asian people than they were for white people, for black people, for everybody else.
They made Asians more difficult because if they didn't, half of their fucking population in their classes would be Asian because they work harder.
It's a cultural thing.
You know, I grew up in Taekwondo and I grew up around a lot of Koreans.
And man, you haven't seen work ethic until you've seen first-generation Koreans who come over to America and, you know, they have those tiger moms and tiger dads.
It's like this pushing from their parents, the high pressure.
And again, I don't think it's so good for you psychologically.
I don't do that with my kids.
My kids do very well in school, but they do very well in school because of the example that I and my wife said of be a nice person, work really hard, have discipline, do the stuff you're supposed to do.
Don't fuck off.
You know, get the things done that you're supposed to do.
But would they be able to compete with some kid who just came over here from China?
Which is why other countries like America so much is because they realize, oh, if I work as hard as I can, maybe in wherever they live, India or some of these other places, it's not a promise that they'll succeed.
But they love a capitalistic America where, like, yeah, if I put in the work and my kids put in the work and I force my kids to put in the work, it'll work.
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This is where you see the hypocrisy of the education system, though, because they claim to be all about diversity.
Asians are part of diversity.
They're a small percentage of the population in America, but they're fucking killing it.
Because in their mind, Asians don't complain as much.
They get to work more.
They're not the ones that are out there organizing and making signs.
They're not doing that.
They're fucking working.
They don't have time to be going to these rallies and cheering and chanting.
They fucking get to work.
So because of that, they're not as represented when it comes to grievances.
So you can get away with being racist against them.
And you can get away with discriminating against them in higher education universities like Harvard, which is just crazy because it shows you're lying.
You're not really caring about minorities.
You're caring about very specific minorities because they give you social clout to represent and to fight for them.
Like if you're fighting for black people, if you're fighting for trans people, those are the people that are really noisy and really loud.
It sounds strange, but like these kind of things consume me.
I don't have a wife and kids, you know?
Like I think about these things all day.
But like I think about it with like in our in our business, you know, like there are so many women who complain like, oh, no girls on the lineup or only two girls on the line.
And I'm like, there's less of you.
That's all it is.
In fact, the fact that there's less of you in our industry is why you're able to stand out and succeed so much quicker than your male counterparts.
So yes, it can feel like a boys club because it is.
There's plenty of disadvantages to being a female comedian like putting up with these comedy club owners or working the road or like it is there's fans being creepy with creepy fans.
And I'm sympathetic to the things female comics have to go through.
But if they just don't understand the numbers, like there's, there's girls in Los Angeles who are regulars at the improv and the laugh factory and the comedy store who have been doing it a few years.
And then there's guys that I know that have been doing it 15 years who us, you know, subjectively are very, very funny and fun, subjectively funnier than them, but at least inarguably funny.
And they can't get any spots at these places because we need more women comics.
Like, we don't tolerate any bullshit, ideologically, one side or the other.
It's not supposed to be about that.
It's supposed to be about the art form.
And, you know, there's shit.
A lot of my fucking friends are like far left.
I don't care.
Are you nice?
Are you cool?
Do you have interesting thoughts?
Can we have conversations?
I'm down with that.
But there's this propensity, this thing that people do where they just decide you have a different ideology than me, so you're the enemy.
And I think that is one of the stupidest things you could do as a human being.
It's weak.
It's simple.
You're doing something that's just too convenient.
And you're doing it because you know it'll be supported by a bunch of other fucking morons because we're in a TikTok generation where most people don't have nuanced perspectives on things.
And the one thing that drives a lot of people crazy is they've, I've done all the right things and no one comes to see me because you forgot the one thing.
Yeah, I love women, but I trash them pretty hard in my act.
You know, and so the only reason I was bringing all that up is that, like, I feel like I've never once gone, I can't talk to someone because of their stand-up comedy.
I'm not going to go to the improv and go, Mary Lynn Reiskib shouldn't be allowed here because what she said about Charlie Kirk, and I was offended.
Also, if you had a conversation with her and confronted her with the reality of what that guy had said, some of the conversations that he had with both trans people, people of color, all kinds.
Yeah, that's true in some ways, but it also benefits you in some ways too.
It's like there's good and bad.
Like there's little things that you'll say that are funny that make it into clips.
And that's good too.
It's like the thing, like I was talking to Tony about this because we were talking about people that complain about his show and talk shit about a show.
I go, dude, they work for you.
They don't realize it, but they work for you.
They're the publicity arm, the negative publicity arm for the Kill Tony show.
You just got to get to a point where you don't have to care anymore.
Like, it's not going to affect you.
You know what I mean?
But if you're in that position where I'm in that kind of sort of, you're not totally ever in that position, but you're much more in that position than the average person.
It's your duty to not care.
It's your duty to set an example and to say, look, you're supposed to be, when you get to the top, you're not supposed to be mean and like defend it and push everybody down.
You're supposed to lift everybody up and be what you would hope the guy at the top would be.
Be supportive, try to help other people's careers, try to promote them, tell everybody how cool they are, tell everybody how funny they are, tell everybody good things that you know.
Instead of complaining all the time about everything, find cool shit and inform people about it.
Tell people cool shit that you've seen, cool restaurants you've been to, cool music you've listened to, cool people you met.
Do that.
That's what I try to do.
And that's my, that is my obligation, I think, in having the top podcast.
You have to set an example that's beneficial for not just me, but for everybody.
What actually happened, official data and statements from NYPD representatives confirmed there has been no mass walkout, while police union leaders and some critics have warned of potential wave of resignations or feared attrition.
See, that was the thing.
Social media posts alleging 5,000 officers, I didn't see any that said resign.
I saw something that said are threatening to resign.
Go back to where I was reading.
Once have been debunked as rumors or satire.
NYPD has about 33,745 uniformed officers as of late 2025 with staffing down only slightly from the previous year.
So it's like maybe it's one of those things where someone talked to some people and they said, I know a lot of guys.
Be at least 18 years old and capable of making health care decisions.
Be eligible for publicly funded health services.
Okay, that's normal.
Voluntary request, informed consent, have a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability causing enduring and intolerable suffering that cannot be alleviated under conditions acceptable to the person.
But that's the key word, the key phrase there, acceptable to the person is interesting.
Be in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability.
Okay, are people with depression, just write severe, are people with severe depression eligible for MAID?
Write that.
Severe depression.
Because a lot of people would say that is an incurable disease.
In Canada, people whose sole underlying medical condition is severe depression or any other mental illness are currently not eligible for medical assistance in dying.
This temporary exclusion includes psychiatric conditions like depression and personality disorders.
The law excludes eligibility for MAID on the basis of mental illness alone in March 17, 2027.
However, people with mental illnesses may be eligible if they have a grievous, grievous, grievous, or irremediable.
Boy, that's a word.
Have you ever said that word?
Irremediable?
Irremediable.
I've never said that word.
But I've never even seen that.
Irremediable?
Physical health condition that meets MAIDS criteria.
The government has delayed eligibility expansion for mental illness due to concerns around safety and appropriate safeguards.
When MAID for mental illness becomes legal, they say it like it was.
Oh, okay.
That's what I'd read.
Okay, this was the issue.
So they were going to.
Okay.
The law excludes eligibility for MAID on the basis of mental illness alone until March 17, 2027.
So there's a year and a few months.
And then these people are eligible for this.
As of 2025, severe depression alone is not qualified.
So what it seems like is a lot of people that are just not doing well.
It's the end of their life.
And they're like, I'd like to go out on my own terms.
I don't want to just walk into a library with a 44 and make people clean up.
The patience that these people have to work with dementia and those kind of even an eating disorder is you know, you can't really communicate it to the person when they have this body dysmorphia or anything.
Like it's something as simple as that.
Those people are saints that can work with anybody cognitively or like any kind of like dysphoria.
Like that's that's I mean, I those are heroes to me because I don't have the patience for it.
I'm very like direct.
I'm very like want to have a good time.
Like I'm not good at being like, how don't you see this?
I'm probably going to say this on here, but there's a beautiful great woman named Lydia who I've been hanging out with, and her mom had some sort of dementia or something like this.
And their family had a real long debate about what the doctor recommended.
I heard all these stories about there would be like people who would still, you know, on the fringes of it because they didn't want to shut down their practice.
So they'd be like, hey, you know, we'll still give it to you.
I will say the first time I did mushrooms, I was like, because my buddy's like, the cool thing about mushrooms is that you don't want, it's not like cocaine or E or anything.
You're not going to become like addicted to mushrooms.
You're going to want to do mushrooms every day.
And then the second I did mushrooms, I was sitting in the chair and I was like, you guys were wrong.
And sometimes people have fucking hemorrhages from these things because they violently yank your neck and a blood vessel pops and you have a fucking stroke.
I mean, this is just like based on what we've done in Austin, right?
What we did in Austin is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where we hit every green light.
Every green light along the way, we got in the right spot.
So like the only way this club happens, first of all, is I'm friends with Adam Egot, and I've been friends with Adam Egot from back when he was running the improv in Tempe.
So that's when I knew him.
I knew him from back then.
And then he came to California and he started working at the comedy store when I had already been banned.
So I had been banned and I had gone on my seven-year exodus.
Because, you know, Ari Shafir is one of my closest friends.
And he was filming his special there.
And I had known Ari since he was a doorman.
I knew him when he was a doorman there.
And now he's filming a special.
I'm like, I don't give a fuck.
I have to be there.
I have to be there for him.
And I went there a day before just so I could relax because it was weird because I hadn't been there in seven years.
And, you know, it was super friendly, hugged everybody.
It was great.
And then I saw Ari and Ari killed.
And the special was awesome.
And it was just such a, it was such a happy moment to see him like accomplish this thing, going from being a doorman to having your own Comedy Central special while he's also doing a show on Comedy Central.
And becoming really good friends with Adam and knowing him from the improv, like knowing him from back in the day and then becoming friends with him when he was the Cal Coordinator.
We had talked about like what are the problems with running a club?
Like what is the problems with like people telling you, oh, you have to have more of this on your show or more that on your show or you're problematic and people getting mad about this, mad about that.
I'm like, it's got to be a meritocracy.
As much as that bothers some people, the people that bothers, they're never good.
David Tell's never complaining about diversity.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like the people that are complaining, generally they're mediocre at best.
And he was like, you're right.
I go, but you can't give into them because there's a lot of them.
And they yell and they make it seem like it's a big deal.
But the big deals laughs, doing good comedy, having an original idea, being funny.
Here's the world through my eyes.
This is how I've crafted it for you.
That's all it is.
Everything else is a fucking distraction.
And we both agreed on that.
And so when the comedy store shut down and then I moved out here, there was a long time where I was like, I don't know what to do.
Like, do I stop doing comedy now and just do this podcast?
Like, no one's doing comedy.
It was months and months of no comedy.
And then Dave and I started doing shows at Stubbs.
So Dave was like, I want to do a show at Stubbs.
Let's do like a residency there.
I'm like, fuck yeah, let's do it.
So he and I did like a, we had done a ton of shows, a bunch of arena shows before the pandemic together.
And so the Stubbs thing came along and I was like, okay, yeah, let's just do this.
All right, we're doing this now.
And I guess we're doing comedy again.
And then we started doing comedy at the Vulcan.
And the Vulcan is indoor and it's loud and it's rowdy and it was naughty.
You know, and we can do it in a way where it's not connected to fucking Hollywood.
It's not connected to movies.
It's not connected to TV.
It's an art form in and of itself that had been prostituted out for so long that people thought like the golden goose was be a late night talk show host.
That was the golden goose, a job that I wouldn't.
There's no fucking way.
If they doubled my money, I'd be like, I'm not doing that.
I just watched the starting five of it's called starting five on Netflix, but they follow NBA players.
And the annoying part is like their wives and girlfriends.
I think that's the annoying part.
Like I want to hear them talk about basketball, like the thing they love.
Right, right.
That inspires me because I look at the way I pursue comedy, the way they pursue their basketball, you know, like their career.
So anyways, but what I was inspired by was like Kevin Durant, who I thought I hated my whole life, was awesome.
He just wants to play basketball.
Like that's all it is for him.
He's like, yeah, I just want to go out there and hoop.
And he keeps going to that thing of like, man, I don't want to have these arguments in barbershops about the greatest ever or any of those things.
He makes money, but it's not about the money for him.
And it's not about the chicks.
Those are all symptoms of what he pursues.
And I love that because I'm like, yeah, I just love the joke part.
I love that I can write a bit and then that night try it and people love it or they go, what an interesting idea, or that's funny, or that's naughty.
I've never thought of it like that.
You know, when you're campaigning on a political trail or whatever, like when you go to like the Trump rally or one of, I don't know what Kamala Harris called her thing, but those aren't undecided voters.
Those are people who are there because they're already in.
You're not even talking to anyone who's considering voting for anyone else when you go to a thing like that.
But with stand-up comedy, when they're in that audience, they're just looking at you and going, Hey, bro, bring me some jokes.
Yeah.
And so I can now do jokes about what I think and what I believe.
And the crowd will listen to me and decide if I'm not funny or funny.
But you're getting into their ear.
You're getting into them going, I've never thought of it like that.
That guy was making some pretty good jokes up there about a subject that I thought I wouldn't hear.
You know, like, it's just like, I think comedy is such a gift that way.
But I was like, I was like, I think I'm like Kevin Durant.
I like the girls and I like the money and I like all I love all that stuff.
But for me, I did a spot here.
I can't remember what it was.
And they were like, dude, we can't thank you enough for coming.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
Like, I get up on any fucking stage.
And you try to slide me money.
I go, give it to the other guys.
Like, I came to do this because I was happy you have me on.
But that's the best attitude: just love what you do.
Love what you do.
And all the success comes because of it.
But the moment you start thinking about the success only and then making decisions based only on getting and attaining more success instead of thinking about the thing.
And I love that you believe you can make some money off me by putting me in that.
But for me, walking my ass into a place that has a stage and a microphone and being able to be naughty and say anything I'd like and make jokes is so exciting to me.
If they put a billion dollars in my bank account tomorrow, I'll still go do my spot tonight at the mothership in Fat Man.
And if tomorrow they said, Jeff, you make zero dollars doing this, you might want to find a day job.
I'll go, okay, but I'm still doing my spot, right?
I won't say this comic's name because, you know, I just don't want any trouble with this guy.
But I remember I was at a festival and I'm more criticizing his attitude on that night.
We're in the green room and they were like, so excited to have him because he's a very funny guy and very talented.
And they said, they go, so how much time do you want to do?
He was like, how much time am I contracted to do?
And they were like, oh, well, you know, your book's for 45 minutes, but I was just letting you know you're at the end of the show and everyone's here to see you.
So just do whatever you want.
He goes, then I'm doing the 45 minutes.
And I remember thinking, the fuck is wrong with you?
I've worked at any coffee shop that was, like, I've had over like 40 different coffee jobs because I just couldn't keep a job.
Like, I was always living somewhere different or like pursuing comedy so aggressively that like I just needed a job.
So I was good at getting the job and then I would fuck off or do something stupid and I'd get like let go or I'd move and just ghost that job.
You know, I've had all these jobs.
But whether it was Hollywood Video or Rock Bottom Brewery or whether it was any of these million coffee shops I worked at, I was always the fun guy at the job that made friends with everyone and goofed off because it's more fun to have a good attitude at work and like the job than it is to hate the job.
Well, there's some people that think they have to be miserable to be good.
There's a weird thing that I think some artists feel like they have to kind of suffer in order to be funny.
Like they have to be upset.
They have to be angry.
I used to think that when I was really young and dumb, I was thinking that maybe like I should stop meditating because if I meditate and achieve any kind of enlightenment, I won't think things are so annoying anymore that I could shit on them on stage, which is like a big part of my act.
Well, Jerry Seinfeld, who's one of my favorites ever, despite any of his political beliefs or any of those things, like I really, really respect every time Jerry Seinfeld talks on podcasts or interviews or whatever, because he's like Buddha of comedy, like the way he talks about work ethic and the way he talks about joke writing, the way he's very disciplined.
He's very good.
So I always hang on everything Jerry says in those things.
I think he's the best.
Look up anytime he's been interviewed.
But Jerry, although he's clean, right?
He's a clean comic.
And although he's a husband and a dad, and no matter what he's labeled as, he seems to be very at peace in his life and very successful and rich.
He does have this edge to him.
There still is like an irritability.
And I think that's probably what you were thinking at 21 of like, I need that.
If that's racist, you're expecting something that you're not going to get, which you're expecting people to abandon meritocracy in the most meritocracy-based art form.
If at the top of the heap, you got like, in my mind, if like if somebody said something to me and they quoted a source and it was the BBC, I was like, okay, that's like Washington Post.
That's like New York Times.
It's a very official source.
So I'm thinking, this must be real.
And they turned it into activism and they turned it into lying.
And they did it in front of everybody where you could clearly just listen to the whole thing and know he didn't say that.
It's like, well, and I think I'm sorry that I keep harping on this, but like that's what AOC or kind of the left I see most guilty of doing is in their brain they go, I know that this is a little like whatever, but it's for our greater good.
I think there's also the consequences of people going to trial for that RussiaGate stuff.
Because I think that RussiaGate collusion hoax that they perpetrated on mainstream media for years.
And a lot of people are really uncomfortable with even saying it was a hoax.
No, it was a hoax, ladies and gentlemen.
It was a hoax, and a lot of people coordinated that hoax.
And there was a lot of people involved.
And I think they're super sketched out about Trump being president again and possibly digging into that stuff.
And he's doing that now.
And you're finding real evidence that the people that you would think the intelligence agencies, you think, what are they here for?
They're here to make America safe and protect us from problems.
But it seems like they also meddle.
And not just meddle, but like completely try to sabotage someone and paint them out in a way that's completely inaccurate, knowingly, willingly, with taxpayer dollars, funding it all.
How much money transferred back and forth to different accounts because of things that happened there?
How many huge international decisions were made by people in powerful positions because someone has a video of them doing something very compromising on an island.
That's why I'm glad that I, I mean, I might not be very rich or anything, but like if something, you know, if they try to figure out something on me, this would be their research.
They'd be like, all right, we found Jeff Dead.
He likes a sprite, you know?
He also watches pro-rel, like, they'd have nothing.
You know, he might not be effective, but you don't have anything on him.
That's it.
He's not going to compromise.
He doesn't have to.
He got nothing on him.
Or you got someone who wants to be a leader for some strange reason, and they're really not that extraordinary, but they're in a really shallow pool of talent.
Because that's the real truth about running for president or running for governor or running for mayor, is it's a fucking shallow pool of talent.
Because most people that have any kind of fucking talent talking don't want that job.
So the people that want that are all out of their fucking minds.
And they're all kooks.
They're all Gavin Newsoms.
They're all Kamala Harris's and Donald Trumps.
And they're all kooky people.
And some of these kooky people will do a better job than other kooky people, but only kooky people want the job.
And until that changes, and until not just kooky people want the job, not non-kooky people want the job of being president, but non-kooky people involved in Congress and the Senate and everything.
Regular, rational people that can have real conversations and not try to diminish whoever you're talking to in every most reductionist way possible.
Make them out to be a moron because they're on the other side.
Actual solving of problems without you doing it at the behest of these massive corporations that have been donating to you.
So you have to bullshit your way and gaslight people and you can't be honest about your real opinions.
That's the real fucking problem with that whole system.
It is absolutely contaminated by both money and the promise of money in the future if you play ball.
That's where it gets real weird.
They leave government jobs and start working for pharmaceutical drug companies that they were regulating just 16 months ago.
Oh, I'm going to try and find some people's ideas.
It's all like debate culture.
You could put the most simple thing and you have 700 people who just want to go, but the goal is to debate and argue and get into win and dunk on your opponent and make someone say there's not like nobody, like you said in the beginning, is like nobody's trying to just go, I think I really want to make it fair.
But they have to do it because they have to get elected because if they don't get elected, then they don't have power.
And if they don't have, once they get into power, then they have to use that power for their constituents and for the people that help them get into power.
So there's a bunch of fucking needs of these.
And there's a bill you want to put this in the bill because it's going to help the oil sector or this in the bill is going to help chips.
Woo!
And so, of course, you're going to put a mask on and go fuck a guy.
You're crazy.
You're doing a crazy job.
You're doing ecstasy.
You're hanging out with all these people that are running the world.
Of course, you're sucking dick with a VHS camera somewhere.
$376 million cost to improve the East and West Wings infrastructure.
Peck described the project as largely underground utility work.
Doesn't do a whole lot of good to have a building that's sort of an image of the free world standing up there and not functioning well.
Peck told CNN when questioned about the cost.
Bloomberg News reported in 2010 the Obama renovation was the biggest White House upgrade since President Harry Truman was in office 48 to 52.
Truman oversaw the White House historic gutting, renovation, and expansion in response to significant structural issues that at one point resulted in the leg of his daughter piano breaking through the floor.
Trump's project would be the first major exterior change of the White House in 83 years.
They had to do like crazy underground infrastructure shit that probably wasn't heating, cooling, and fire alarm systems that hadn't been updated since 1902 or 1934.
If it wasn't for a off-duty Secret Service guy who saw that guy running through the fucking White House and he tackled him, he just happened to be there.
Was just hearing something really crazy where someone was making a connection between Rockefeller and alcohol being during Prohibition that one of the competing fuel sources back then was ethanol.
I don't even know if this is true, but that Rockefeller had control of oil and they were using oil to make pharmaceutical drugs.
So like most of the drugs that people buy, the reason why they started doing it that way is because Rockefeller, because he had control of the oil.
And this was saying that he wanted to stop them, people from using ethanol.
So he wanted, he thought the best way to do that was to make it so that no one could have the ability to produce alcohol.
And the best way to do that is to make a prohibition about alcohol.
But it sounds crazy.
It says it's a myth.
Let's see why they say it's a myth.
John D. Rockefeller is often blamed for using prohibition to eliminate ethanol as a competing fuel source to gasoline from his standard oil business.
But this is a myth.
Rockefeller supported the temperance movement primarily for religious and social reasons.
Okay, that's the excuse that's publicly stated that he supported alcohol prohibition for religious and social reasons, believing alcohol consumption was harmful and aiming for a more productive workforce.
So this is the problem with it.
These are not quotes.
This is like someone saying why this guy supported banning alcohol and not, yes, he did work to ban alcohol and yes, he did benefit from it because ethanol was taken out.
That is true.
So ethanol as a fuel was not banned, it's saying, explicitly allowing, even promoted the use of high-proof alcohol for scientific research, fuel, or other lawful industries during prohibition.
Ethanol as a fuel was not banned.
In fact, some industrialists, including Rockefeller, dabbled in ethanol fuel production.
Henry Ford also pursued ethanol fuel development during this time.
Okay, so I take back what I said.
So it's not that it was banned.
So that doesn't make any sense then.
It would make sense if somehow or another, but could you, if you were using ethanol, though, the thing is, like if you stop people from making their own alcohol, if you make it illegal to make your own alcohol, you definitely can't make your own fuel.
And then you can't use ethanol because you can actually make ethanol with corn.
That's how they make it.
So I could see how you would say if you wanted to sell more gasoline, you would make it so people can't make their own fermentation and you can't make your own alcohol.
And one of the best ways to stop people from making their own alcohol would be the prohibition of alcohol.
Like he supported a prohibition of alcohol because of morals, but yet he was like really involved in a lot of shady shit that seemed like he was very controlled.
So it's not true that he, that ethanol, that they prohibited it, but it is true that they kind of eliminated people making their own alcohol.
And if you're not, if people aren't like making engines from ethanol, because most people are using gasoline at the time, it seems like they don't have the materials.
Yeah.
It would be a good way to stop people from making their own gas, and then you'll sell more gas.
This is a proposed class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Goes on to allege that both brands fail to meet the regulatory requirements to label themselves as 100% agave in Mexico and the United States, even though they carry that distinction on their labels.
So what are these brands?
Click on that link where it says those brands.
Oh, Casamigos and Don Julio machine.
Significant amounts of non-agave alcohol despite being labeled as 100% agave.
Customers named the suit claimed that they purchased the products under the assumption that the tequilas were made exclusively from Blue Weber agave and paid prices reflective of that premium designation.
When I first worked at Giggles Comedy Club, the owner, like we didn't really have a green room.
We're just kind of in the back world, like the soda tubes are going from the boxes of syrup and all the bottles of alcor back there.
And he had one bottle of every kind of like top shelf liquor, but he would just pour shitty liquor in there, like with funnels, like totally against the law.
Just like funneling like the cheapest tequila he could get in like the finest tequila bottle.
And then when people would, people would constantly bring it back, like, this tastes wrong.
I watch how many people do that all over the world.
There's a lot of that going on.
There was there was a great documentary about that.
It's called uh, sour grapes and it's all about these wine guys that got duped.
They were buying this wine that was like Thomas Jefferson's wine.
Some dude was making it.
Some dude in Century City was like making the the, the labels, putting over the bottle, putting dirt on yeah, he was totally doing that and he was mixing a bunch of cheap wine to try to come up with this flavor.
He ripped off the COKE Brothers to a big like yeah, and they had.
They bought some old ass like Thomas Jefferson wine and it wasn't real.
And then they they also had some magnums from a company that never made magnums during that year they're during that era and this actual wine guy saw their seller and started putting what is this right?
And he says that's this and that he goes, no no no they, they don't do that.
This is not from that.
This is fake.
And he was like what?
And so then they have a lot of resources obviously, so they're like release the house and then they you know, they caught him.
They get enough evidence that they can raid this guy's house, and so when they raid this guy's house, they find like a whole manufacturing thing.
He's got dirt and water.
He's rubbing it on the labels.
He's like making the labels old and that's hilarious.
He's reusing old labels from wine that he had bought somewhere else and re-corking it and sealing it.
Oh, total scumbag.
And he sold millions of dollars worth of like figures wine to all these dorks that are like these dorks.
I wish who caught him was a Somme, like someone who was actually like, no, this tastes like shit and like i'd be like, oh, it's real, like there is one Somonye in that documentary that these other guys were like sniffing it, going.
That monitors unusual betting activity in any fight.
So the moment there's any unusual betting activity, they contact the UFC.
The UFC contacts this fighter.
It says, hey.
You're the favorite to win this fight.
There's a lot of unusual betting activity on you to lose.
Like, are you okay?
Is everything fine?
Are you injured?
No.
No, I'm fine.
I'm going to kill this fucking guy.
Okay.
Has anybody contacted you about this fight?
No.
So he goes out, loses in the first round, gets submitted, rear-naked choke, doesn't look good.
Immediately, the UFC says we called the FBI.
So now, apparently, there's an investigation of many fights.
Right.
And there's a web, it seems like, of people that have contacted fighters and said, I will give you X amount of dollars if you lose this fight.
Yeah.
And a bunch of people have said no to it and publicly talked about how they said no to it.
You know, really good fighters and even went on to lose the fight, you know, unfortunately, and didn't get the money, but were open about it.
Yeah.
So it's one, like Patchy Mix, who was Bellator champion, came over to the UFC, and he said that someone, I think he said somebody offered him $70,000 or something like that to lose a fight.
Something crazy.
I might be wrong if it was him that said that number.
It might have been someone else.
But so they're offering dudes like a big pile of cash to lose to a fighter that they might have losed might lose to him anyway.
That's a tangled web if you're involved with people that are making money gambling and not on the square.
So the thing is, if you're just gambling on the square, if you just watch a fight like Pereira versus Ankhalaev 2 and you say, I like Pereira to get that title back.
I'm going to fucking, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is.
Met him, so I was doing a prank show for MTV called Money from Strangers, which was kind of like Impractical Jokers, but way darker.
Like, we were like a lot edgier before money or before Impractical Jokers.
And so, they'd always send me to like MTV movie awards or any kind of those things.
And I was like, I don't know, I live in New York.
They're going to send a car.
I get to go on a red carpet, whatever.
I'll drink.
I'll make it fun.
And they happened to be behind me.
The Bellator guys happened to be the next guys in the red carpet line.
And the way the red carpet works is no one cares about us at all.
They're just waiting to get like Miley Cyrus or Beyonce or whoever the hell it is.
So, like, we're basically the photos they're taking are just something we're going to save off the internet because no one gives a shit.
They were like all Bellador guys.
So, people at this movie awards don't necessarily care.
These guys are behind me, and they're like, This guy's fun because I'm making all these jokes and like goofing around.
And I was already kind of like buzzed up.
And so, then that Michael Chandler and these two other like Bellator guys, uh, Brog the Predator, you know, he is no, he was a Bellator guy too, a Cleveland guy.
Okay, big guy, he's awesome too.
But, anyways, these three guys, and they were like, This is kind of dumb.
And I was like, Yeah, this shit's kind of gay.
I don't want to be here, you know.
And then they were like, Let's just go drink.
And so, we just drank and met people and hung out.
And they're like, Want to get subway?
And we got in a car and got and got subway and just hung out with these dudes all night.
You, you're doing this, obviously, and you're doing this for the love of the thing.
And you said that if you didn't need money and you didn't even get paid money, you would still do it.
And I think the same way.
I would do it too.
But what do you think about the idea of universal basic income?
Because this is something that is being discussed with automation and with AI.
And we were having a conversation about the other day with Elon, and he was saying that he thinks that AI can generate so much productivity that you could have universal high income.
And then I went, wait, okay.
Am I, are we married to this idea that everything that you do in life, you have to be doing just for money?
Because that's what it is now.
If you're a professional, you're doing it for money.
If you're a professional podcaster, if you're a race car driver, you're doing it for money, right?
Why are we married to that?
And if you didn't need money and no one needed money, would you just find a thing you love to do?
And would we be able to rewire our brains and still have some feeling of value and of identity and without being attached to an occupation?
Like, isn't it possible that we've just tricked ourselves into thinking that the only way to live is to live in a way where everything you're doing, you're doing is for money.
And then if it's just everybody does their best at things and enough money is generated so that basically everybody has, like what he was saying, a universal high income.
What does that mean?
Like, is that a feasible thing?
Like, what is AI going to do with production?
What is AI going to do with automation, resource extraction?
How much money is going to be generated that you're going to be able to literally have the entire population of the country under universal high income?
Is that even possible?
And if it is, what happens to people's desire?
What happens to their dreams?
Do they just find a thing like you and I have and do that and not care about money and really be into the thing?
Can't that be taught if it's taught to you?
If you figured it out and I figured it out, if people have figured it out, they figured out like find a thing you love and you're never going to work again because you're going to love doing it, whether it's building cars or painting or carpentry.
If you really fucking love doing it, you do it because you love it.
Wouldn't that be a better way to live?
I know, I know.
You can't do it.
I know.
I know, no, no, no, no.
I know, no, no.
It wouldn't work.
There's too much money in the stock market.
I get it.
I get it.
It wouldn't work.
But as a thought experiment, wouldn't that be a way that's possible for people to live if it's possible for you to live that way?
If it's possible for me to live that way, if it's possible to find enough people that are willing to do and love to do all the things that we need to keep a society running.
I mean, realistically, I only went a few days because I was doing like Zooms and I was doing like underground things for rich guys.
I was the first comic.
Me and Brad Williams were the first comics to go work in a comedy club with the new COVID restrictions.
Because they knew if they called me or Brad, we'd say yes.
Like Keith Stubbs called me from Salt Lake and goes, we're thinking about doing a show with all the restrictions and just see if the government shuts us down.
Would you be willing to come?
And I was like, yes.
I didn't even talk about price.
I just go, yes.
Like, I, because I need it.
Now, why do I need it?
Because that's where I personally find my meaning.
Now, if I maybe was at home and going, man, I'm getting a lot more time with my kids and I'm getting a lot more time with my wife and like things are pretty productive around here.
That's where I would have put my meaning.
You know, I think like, and it's just where we put it.
It's where we kind of put it.
And I think, so a lot of people find a lot of value in their jobs that make them the money, but that's, that gives them something to do.
There's going to be no more need for lawyers, no more accountants, no more coders.
Like all that stuff's going to be done with AI.
It's going to get so weird if you're going to college right now because you could be going to college for something that's absolutely obsolete in three years.
If that becomes something that controls everything, which is really ultimately what it's probably going to do, controls all of our power grid, all of our waste management resources, everything.
It's going to control everything.
It's going to generate insane amounts of wealth.
But the question is, like, how does it even get distributed?
And then also, we'll start doing a thing where it's like once a week we'll do the Face to face where I have like an interview with somebody that I like and sit down and do like a proper podcast.