The Joe Rogan Experience - #2130 - Coleman Hughes
Episode Date: April 3, 2024Coleman Hughes is a writer and podcaster. He's the host of the "Conversations with Coleman" podcast, writer at the "Coleman's Corner" substack, and author of the book "The End of Race Politics: Argume...nts for a Colorblind America." https://colemanhughes.substack.com www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/671726/the-end-of-race-politics-by-coleman-hughes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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The Joe Rogan Experience.
Trained by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
What's up, Coleman? Good to see you. Good to see you again. What's cracking?
Well, I'm good, you know. You're great. You got a new book. Got a new book.
End of Race Politics, Arguments for Colorblind America.
Yeah, I saw you on the
view yeah yeah so that that's been overwhelming my past couple days yeah is
that annoying no no no no I mean it's just when I was on there I really had
no idea how it was gonna land with the audience so I just went in there did my
thing I had no idea what to expect I didn't know who Sonnyin was. I actually still really don't know. So I wasn't expecting
necessarily for her to kind of try to ambush me in that way and and attack my
character in that way. And I responded to it in the moment as I do. And I didn't
expect it to go as viral as it did, but I think it arguably went more viral than
anything I've ever done. It's hard for me to totally tell, but I think it arguably went more viral than anything I've ever done.
It's hard for me to totally tell,
but I've just got people messaging me almost nonstop
for like four days afterwards.
Well, it is the show that people love to hate.
Yes, that's true.
They get so much hate watching and hate watching viral clips
of them saying ridiculous things.
I mean, it is a rabies-infested henhouse.
And at the same time, it seemed like,
the most interesting part was their audience
seemed to be on my side.
Yes, yes.
And that's their audience.
Yes.
Well, their audience is not really their audience.
Their audience is a group of people
they bring in to watch television shows.
I don't know if you've ever seen audiences before for TV shows, but a lot of
them are paid.
They're paid to be there.
So because they have to guarantee that there's going to be people there.
So there's services that you hire.
And when the show gets really, really popular, you know, like Letterman or something like
that, obviously it has its own fan base.
Those people will try to get tickets
before anybody else does.
And in that case, they probably don't need
to use a service anymore.
They just get actual fans.
But arguably, the fans, the real fans of The View
that are like, oh, these ladies are on point.
Most of those people can't leave the house.
They're probably immobile.
Right, right, right.
Because their mom's taking their kids to
School and and that yeah, yeah, it's a very strange show, but it's fun to watch. It's just fun to watch them
It's good entertainment. Yeah, undoubtedly well
They're just you know it's interesting because I think Sonny is very intelligent, but she's ideologically captured right you know
That's what I think the other ones, there's a couple of the other ones I want, don't have to name any names, are
just very dull-minded. But I think Sunny's not one of them. I think she's
smart but captured. Sure, I think she came into it with an agenda. Of course.
You know, they do everything with an agenda. Yeah. You know, she came into it,
it seems, really wanting to paint me as someone that has been co-opted by the right wing.
And I don't know how much research she had done into me.
She claimed to have read my book twice, which is almost certainly not true.
Yeah, that doesn't-
Because she was totally missummarizing-
When did the book come out?
February.
The odds are very low.
Very low, right?
Yeah, very low.
Because think of how many guests they have on their show how much time she has
Family obligations to what is it about 250 pages something like that. Yeah, I don't think so yeah
I mean I might be wrong. I mean do you have an audiobook available? I do yeah, I read it myself
Maybe she did it at double speed yeah, yeah, yeah, so I sounded like Ben Shapiro the whole time
Double speed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I sounded like Ben Shapiro the whole time
Have you ever listened to Ben Shapiro on like 1.5 times no, it's kind of ridiculous. Yeah, it's insane
Ben Shapiro should debate destiny. Oh my god. I know they did they did debate did they really? Yeah, absolutely. They did
Who hosted them was it like was it Lex?
Was it I could be getting that wrong, but I think Lex hosted a debate like two months ago. Well he had a debate a couple of months ago, but it was a Palestine-East-East-East-East
debate.
No, no, that was separate.
I also saw that.
Oh.
They did?
That was like the four hour, yeah, there you go.
That guy debates everybody.
Yeah.
It's so, he's so ridiculous.
He does a Wikipedia search and then just starts going after things like he's an expert.
It's just, it's a fun time.
It's a really fun time.
A fun time for watching people flail.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, but I think the problem with that show is that show has this very specific ideological bubble
in which they operate in.
You know, and they always bring on a token conservative woman
and they yell over her and silence her,
and, you know, they did that with Meghan McCain,
and they did that with the...
What is that other blonde woman from Survivor?
Do you remember her, Jamie?
She was always yelling.
I mean, it's just, it's a bizarre show.
So we had eight minutes, and...
America's approach to race, pretty topic pretty important topic. I think the way you
Before you start I think the way you described it is
Brilliant and the way we should all look at it. Of course, you're gonna see race
Yeah, the idea of being colorblind is ridiculous, but treat everybody. They're just human beings. Yeah, everybody's just individuals. That's right
That's that's what we should all hope for. That's right
Yeah, there's been this common phrase. I don't see race
That's equated with colorblindness and you know point in my book is I want to say get rid of that
Of course, we see race certainly in America in the West
You could argue about whether children really see race but past a certain point we see race
Point is not to pretend you don't see it. It's to say,
you know, you're a white guy, I'm a black and Hispanic guy. We notice that. We're not
going to pretend it's not there. But whenever it matters, I'm going to try to treat you
like an individual based on your personal qualities, and we're going to ask the government
to do the same. Get race out of public policy. If you want to help disadvantaged people,
do that on the basis of class.
100%. And understand that
when you see these
incentives that are put into corporations,
these are methods
of control. And
that's what's going on when you see things like
DEI initiatives. You're
not really making the world a better place.
You're just allowing
these financial institutions
to enact control over corporations.
And it's a really shifty, weird way they're doing it
by making it seem like they're trying to make the world
a better, more equal place.
And then there's some people who are good intentioned,
but have a very narrow perspective
and a very limited amount of information
that they're operating under
that will try to pretend that these things are overall good,
are net positive.
Right.
And Sonny Hostin may be one of those people.
So we had eight minutes to deal with this topic
on one of the biggest platforms in the country,
and especially an audience that isn't my typical audience.
If anything, the views audience is really who needs to hear my
message the most and
Sonny decided to take up a few minutes of that precious eight minutes and attack me as
Someone who's been co-opted by the right and someone who's a charlatan. Mm-hmm and
Did she use the term charlatan? She did it's fine
It's funny because I actually didn't notice it in real time
I kind of went in one ear and out the other but how did she say?
She said something like, you know a lot of a lot of people in the black community
Implicitly herself included think that you've been co-opted by the right and that you're a charlatan. Oh, yeah
And I explained to her I've only voted twice both for Democrats
Hillary and Biden
Very open to voting for Republicans
So I'm an I'm a political independent and I'm only young enough to have voted twice
I am I'm an analyst at CNN and I write for the free press which is Barry Weiss's
Yeah, and I'm independent in all those, and I patiently explained that and then basically
asked her to go back to the topic that we're here to discuss.
Yeah, well it's a dumb way of addressing a thing and to immediately say that someone's
been co-opted with no evidence whatsoever.
There's nothing about anything that you say that seems right wing.
You're just objectively looking at these subjects and giving a very
intelligent and measured opinion of them. That's not, and just because some people who
happen to vote Republican may agree with you. That's a ridiculous statement that you're
co-opted. I think you're probably one of the least co-opted people I've ever talked to.
You're very open-minded think you're probably one of the least co-opted people I've ever talked to you're very open-minded
And you know you're very you're very objective. I try to be I try to be
but
You know I would argue even if I were co-optive co-opted hypothetically
That doesn't make my argument here right now wrong right right because people that are co-opted sometimes say true things
Yes, so even if I were I would say it's still at it's an ad hominem attack now wrong. Right. Right. Because people that are co-opted sometimes say true things. Yes.
So even if I were I would say it's still at it's an ad hominem attack. It's to the person
rather than to the argument. Yes. So let's get on to the issue. Yeah. And I think people
the part of the reason it went viral is because what people have told me is you very rarely
see someone who gets a character attack on a big TV platform, calmly expose it as
evidence free and then just move back to the topic.
Yeah, well that was beautiful that you did that and that's how everybody should approach
these things.
And the problem is that's not what people want to do.
What they want to do is engage in argument and try to win.
And it's not really about having an open mind and listening to what this person has to say
and trying to figure out whether or not it resonates with you. Instead they're
just trying to win and trying to win in this weird sound bitey way. You know
those platforms whether it's the Vue or any of the number of these panel
platforms are so inherently flawed just in this just the way it's formatted.
You only have a small amount of time,
you have all these people talking,
and it's just a,
they can't compete with internet shows
because internet shows are free.
Yeah.
It's just, I don't mean free,
like you don't have to pay for it,
I mean free, like they're free to talk about anything. There's not a producer in your ear. There's not someone saying we have to cut to commercial
there's not
You know executive meetings before
Talking about an agenda that you would like to like this we have to hammer him on this and this is really important with the election
coming up and this and that like
God, you know did the whole election coming up thing this and that. God, the whole election
coming up thing freaks me out because I think everybody is in this weird like pre-battle
anxiety stage, you know, and everything is life or death and this goddamn phrase that
gets tossed around every five minutes. It's just a threat to democracy. Everything is a threat to democracy, except things that actually probably just a threat to democracy.
Everything is a threat to democracy, except things that actually probably are a threat
to democracy.
You see people talking about the threats to democracy, and they ignore intelligence communities
censoring social media, which should be terrifying to people.
It should be terrifying to people because this could happen on the
left, on the right, it could happen for a number of reasons, it could happen for
reasons that would be terrible for your life. Yeah, RFK was on CNN I think
yesterday and he said something that I think I've said before and privately and
I feel which is that I think America would survive former years of Trump or
former years of Biden. Truthfully, I think America would survive former years of Trump or former years of Biden
Yes, we I think America and the Republic is strong enough to survive
either
Neither one of them is a very good option in my view. I think we're given two very bad options, but I also think
Don't move to Canada. I think we're gonna be okay. Don't move to Canada. Canada is even worse
Yeah, Canada is a mess, but people don't like that opinion because they I think they enjoy we enjoy the existential stakes of
Politics even if it might not be there every time. Yeah, I agree now
I disagreed back in 2015 2016 when I was hearing how Trump was speaking on
You know
Muslims on the registry all this kind of stuff.
I was one of the people that was worried he would be a fascist, truthfully.
But then what happened is we had four years of governance from him where he basically
governed like a typical Republican and in some ways even had some policies that were
to the left of what Republicans would do.
For instance, on criminal justice reform.
He was very progressive.
He made funding for black colleges and universities
permanent, which if Obama had done either of those things,
he would have been criticized as playing
left-wing identity politics.
And so I slowly realized that there
is a pretty big distance between what Trump says
and what he does.
I don't understand that fact about him,
but I think it is a fact about him.
And so that's why I don't feel alarmist the way I did
when I voted for Hillary in 2016,
really voted against Trump.
Now that being said, Trump is a wild guy
and is difficult to predict.
I don't think he's someone you want behind the wheel in a crisis time.
And then on the other hand, we have Biden who has clear evidence of cognitive decline,
vying for what's supposed to be the most important and challenging job in the world, certainly
in the country, and people essentially claiming that it doesn't
matter that he has obvious cognitive decline.
Which is hilarious.
I mean, not only that, but gaslighting you, saying that that's his superpower.
Did you see that article?
No, I didn't.
The Biden's age is his superpower.
Seth MacFarlane retweeted it.
I agree.
I couldn't have stated this any better myself.
Like, what are you talking about?
No, it doesn't make one way I've thought about it is there's so much BS in politics.
One of the great things about the market is that it's honest.
Because if you lie, you lose money.
So if you look at when lots of money is on the line,
who do people want leading their organizations?
Look at the NBA.
Look at the MLB.
Who do people get as head coaches?
Usually people in their 50s is the median age
Yeah
because you've been around long enough that you've made a lot of dumb mistakes that 20 year olds and 30 year olds make and you've learned
Those things that you can only learn with age
But you know in your 50s, you're still you've still got the vast majority of your cognitive power there and your energy
If you're healthy, that is.
So that's really the sweet spot.
We want a president somewhere in our 50s.
We don't want a Biden.
No, we want someone with life experience and hopefully
someone that doesn't exist solely in politics,
someone who hasn't become their roots,
haven't been deeply entrenched in the system.
Someone who can maybe have some sort of
an outsider's perspective that can look at the problems
with the current situation and the way things are structured.
The way money is allocated, the way funding is done,
the way bills are passed, which is a giant issue.
When they sandwich these 2,000 page bills
with a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with it.
It should be illegal.
It shouldn't be legal to have a bill about, let's, you know, for a popular topic, the
border issue, the border crisis, and embed in that funding for Ukraine.
Like what?
There's nothing to do with it.
It doesn't make any sense to couple those issues.
Yeah, I mean, a few months ago.
So basically you've had the Biden administration
ignoring the border issue for several years
because they wanted to signal sort of how non-Trump they
were, right?
And the border is Trump's issue.
So Biden comes in, he says, we're
going to undo everything Trump did with the border,
even though a lot of those policies
are actually widely supported and smart. So they undo everything. The migrant
crisis goes to hell in the past two or three years, even now infiltrating cities like Chicago,
New York, everywhere. And then you have Biden finally get serious about the border a couple
months ago with the border bill. And Trump gives the signal essentially that it's
that it's not a good bill even though it really it was a pretty decent bill and certainly in an
emergency you want to start stop the bleeding then Trump signals that the bill isn't good enough and
Republicans kill it essentially. So I think both sides have tried to spin this right the the Democrat spin has been look the Republicans
Destroyed that bill they don't even care about immigration the whole thing's their fault
Of course what's wrong with that is the reason it's this bad is because Democrats have been ignoring the issue
Fully for two three years
Why do you think that is like does anybody have anything to gain by letting migrants into the country?
Tim Dillon says that he thinks that it's cheap labor and that they want to bring more cheap
labor into the country and that it's very difficult to get people to do certain jobs.
That's why libertarians partly like illegal immigration.
That would be more of a Koch brothers policy
though. I mean that's why they that's why Bernie Sanders called called open
borders or Koch brothers policies because cheap labor. Interesting. Yeah.
But that wouldn't apply necessarily to Biden like okay so someone like Biden I
understand you you might argue okay are they letting people in because those are
gonna be the Democrat voters?
Those are going to increase the Democrat voters base.
I don't know. Does Biden care about that?
I don't think so. Biden is not going to be around in 10 years.
Well, I don't think Biden's making decisions.
You don't think he is? No.
You think it's his circle?
Yeah, I think he's so far gone.
This is what I said when he was running.
I was saying, you're going gonna leave it up to his cabinet
He's not able to form. Listen when you see him at debates or at press conferences He's at his very best and he's probably medicated
They probably juice him up with a bunch of different things and get him hyped. Let's go
Roll him out there and then he even then he can't form sentences.
He loses track of what he's talking about. It's that's him at his very best. What is
he like when he's tired? What is he like when he's not primed? Right. You know, it's I do
not think that he even has the interest in doing that. I think he wanted to be president,
he got to be president,
and he has all these people around him.
And just even by the way he talks about things,
he's so out of touch with the way he's describing things
and talking about bills that they pass
and talking about important issues.
I just think he's completely out of it.
And I think it's really, it's very unfair.
And if that was my father, I would be terrified.
I'd be sad.
I'd be like, what are you doing him?
You know, like, he should be relaxing somewhere.
You know, he's embarrassing himself.
It's not fair.
Take a person that's in cognitive decline like that
and just parade him out there and use him as a figurehead.
It's just crazy. And if you look at the difference between him now and him in
2020, he didn't look great in 2020 but he looked like he could handle himself.
Right. It's a huge difference now and just extrapolate that three more years.
Yeah. Right. How is he gonna be dealing with Putin and Iran and Israel sitting
in three years? He's not he's not doing it now
It's it's someone else forming the policies, you know, they have the White House press secretary got busted for using his Twitter account
You saw that. Oh, no, I didn't see that
she
She accidentally used her account and she tweeted when I was running for president. I
Deleted it but everybody caught it obviously and obviously there's the the Kamala liability
Yeah, that's that's a that's a hilarious one the Kamala fans are my favorite are they yeah, I got a guy
I got a guy. I don't want to say his name. I'm trying to be respectful, but he's a comedian
That's out of his fucking mind. He's one of them blue no matter who okay, you know he's operated a
Just he's got this like cognitive dissonance. It's very bizarre
But yeah, my dad was in econ club with Kamala in college really yeah
There's a photo of them. There's only eight kids in the club
So it's a this tiny photo of my dad and Kamala Harris and six other people Wow when they were like
22 or something at Howard University. What's his perspective? He doesn't remember at all interesting
Yeah, she didn't make an impression heartbeat away she didn't make an impression a dying man. Yeah at the helm
Yeah, I mean she could sneak up behind him at any moment and end it
At any moment it At any moment.
It's crazy.
And it's so American.
It really is.
We're just like a goofy ass country.
We're amazing.
And it's pretty cool.
But it's also, we crawl so far up the ass of anybody that wants to be in a position of leadership that
no one who should be in a position of leadership wants that.
And most of these people that could be effective in a position of leadership because they've
led things before, whether it's businesses or what have you, they just don't want to
have anything to do with it.
It's just a horrible attack on your character.
They don't play fair.
They lie. They'll get people to say things that aren't true. They'll concoct stories. They'll put things out
there with the aid of the intelligence community, like the Russia collusion agenda, like that thing.
And then they get all the media that's on the left on board, and then they just repeat this
mantra over and over, Russia collusion, Russia collusion, Russia, you know, and then they just repeat this mantra over and over Russia collusion Russia collusion
Russia you know and then they'll pretend that they didn't say that he never won the election
right they'll pretend they pretend that they didn't question the election they'll pretend
that Hillary Clinton didn't do multiple speeches where she said that the election was stolen
it was he's not a legitimate president Russia stole the election with no evidence.
Yeah, but when he questions the election, it's a threat to democracy. Right. It's just so convenient.
And there's just, we live in this bizarre news cycle where there's information is coming at you so fast
you kind of forget about what the thing you were mad about two days ago that could affect the rest of the country for decades.
Right. And you're just on to the next. I think in particular in America, we're very hard on our politicians.
And that's actually the idea of the country from the start is there's no kings here.
Right.
Right.
And you go to other places in the world, people worship or pretend to worship their politicians.
You can sort of see why someone would want to be in that position.
When you see that the crowds of people
Fainting over Hitler speeches and all that stuff. Well, you could see why someone would want to have crowds fainting over them in
America you get some admiration but you kind of just looks like you get your life ruined Well for least half the country's gonna hate you. Yeah, even a
President that's popular like Obama
During his administration at least half of the country hated him.
Totally.
And that's a horrible place to be.
It's a horrible feeling to be that person
and know that there's all these people
that think you're a Muslim plant,
you were born in Kenya.
Yeah, or you wear a tan suit
and now it's on the news cycle
how much of an idiot you are from wearing a tan suit.
A tan suit!
I mean...
It's a nice suit!
What is wrong with the color tan?
Why does a suit have to be dark blue or black or whatever it is that everybody thinks it
has to be?
That's so bizarre.
Because he could wear a tan shirt somewhere and give a speech like if he's at his home
or something like that and he just addresses the press in a casual manner.
That's fine!
But when you're being serious, I want you to put on your serious outfit. home or something like that and he just addresses the press in a casual manner. That's fine. Right.
But when you're being serious, I want you to put on your serious outfit.
Your serious outfit can't be tan.
Right.
And people ask me all the time why I don't get into politics, or people expect me to
get into politics because-
Please don't.
They see me on The View.
Well, thank you.
You get it.
Don't take it.
You get it.
No.
They see me on something like The View and they say, wow, I like this guy. He keeps his cool under pressure
He stands for what I believe him. Why don't you run for office man? I'm like, are you crazy?
Are you absolutely insane? Why would I do that to myself? Yeah such a
You know, I even doubt how much change you could even have, frankly, which is why I, as much as I admire someone like RFK
for his charisma, in the sense that he's the only candidate
that if he talks for five minutes off the cuff,
I find it really compelling.
I think he's very honest.
I think he's, whether you agree with him
or disagree with him, I think he's very honest,
and he's also very well-read
in everything that he talks about. Yeah. And there's a lot of things that are very uncomfortable to discuss that he
discusses openly and willingly. And when you look at that man's background, and this is
a thing that people choose to ignore when they want to talk about him as a conspiracy
theorist. This is the big one. They always bring up conspiracy theorists. That guy stopped the polluting of the Hudson River.
I mean, he was a very effective environmental attorney
that was dedicated to making sure
that corporations couldn't just wantonly pollute things
because it was more profitable for them
to not pay attention to where their waste goes.
He held them to task and he's one of
the primary reasons why the Hudson River is clean.
Right. That guy.
I've heard that. I never looked into it, but if true, it's very impressive. But beyond
that, just in terms of charisma and speaking, nobody holds a candle to RFK, I think, who
is neither Biden nor Trump, right? If you just say give a 10-minute speech off the cuff
RFK is gonna give a way more charismatic way more interesting speech than either them agreed agreed. So my
What that's what I feel when I listen to him at the same time why I look throughout history. I
Somehow I have a blanket skepticism of how much change politicians can actually accomplish,
even good ones, in a system like America's, where the president has intentionally very
limited power over domestic policy.
They can actually make a lot of change in foreign policy because they have kind of unilateral
decision-making ability.
And then secondly, I always check myself because I think the charismatic politicians are always the ones that are able to lead people into
Really dark corners. It's always the ones with charisma that are able to use that
Charisma power to yeah to get people to support things. They never ordinary ordinarily would support
That's the old adage that no one who wants to be president should be allowed to be president
Right, right and Hitler had charisma not from my perspective or your perspective
But as a historical fact if we were Germans living at that time
We would experience those Hitler speeches that look silly to us as charisma
Have you seen the Hitler speeches with AI translation into English? No, it's in subtitles
But oh, but they but they put the voice in they change the voice
Which is a new technology that they're actually employing with podcasts Spotify now has the ability to take this podcast with you and me
And just for I think it's like 30 seconds of your voice in my voice
They can have a speak fluent German Spanish and French right now And they're gonna expand it to a bunch of different languages and just put podcasts out in different languages for different countries
That's awesome. Yeah, it's fascinating, but they so they did it with Hitler. You should watch it. We'll play it for you
Can we play it or will we get in trouble?
Let's find out
Because YouTube is so the jump I just this, from just staying entirely on Spotify
to Nowhere Everywhere, dealing with YouTube is so bizarre.
People can claim copyright for things that are 100% not theirs.
Interesting.
But if they claim it, then they can monetize your show, they take all the money from your
show, so then you the money from your show,
so then you have to remove it,
and then you have to fight it.
Right.
And you have to figure out,
if you play two seconds of a song,
is it two seconds?
How many seconds?
Two seconds, it's like over six or something.
Okay, six seconds of a song,
they claim they can monetize your entire podcast.
It's fucking bizarre.
That's crazy. But it fucking bizarre. What's dumb?
It's dumb there's things that you should be able to talk about if there's a popular song
You're like wet-ass pussy like yeah, look at the moral decline of America listen to this. I don't cook
Play that yeah, and just go what the fuck are we doing?
This is wild right and entertaining and fun in a great song
But so this is Hitler and this is also AI enhanced colorized to which is interesting
But this is so when we would hear Hitler speak
You know I was like we're gonna crush the enemies and kill the Jews. That's all I thought it was yeah, right
Yeah, a lot of it is yeah, yeah, give me the original yeah
Okay stop right there pause pause I hear that I
Hear hold on. Oh, sorry. I hear that I get terrified. Oh, yeah, because all of German sounds terrifying
Well, it's yeah to the to the English ear
Yeah, it's such a it's such a
Aggressive language, you know and when you hear Hitler yelling it it's so aggressive, right?
And then when you know you hear what he's actually saying you like oh, this is like a regular politician
My politician. Yes, then stand up for me as I am
That's incredibly creepy Bizarre right oh my god very bizarre Wow
Because we have these misconceptions these preconceived notions because obviously all the evil things he actually wound up doing yeah
Which are real, but also just the cultural filter of yes the way German sounds yeah American ear. It's a harsh language. Yes
Well, there's many languages like that. We just don't have a
We don't have a cultural context to put that especially the sounds. Yeah, if you heard
German Arabic
No, okay
this is
Muslim speaking with their German.
So they have a German accent.
And they're speaking in Arabic.
And it's very strange,
because it's like you're hearing both things.
And then there's also people that are Muslims
that are speaking in Germany
and they're talking about Islamic issues in German.
It's strange, because you're looking at this
Islamic cleric speaking German.
You're like, yo, this is wild.
There's something about those, Japanese is another one,
when someone is very aggressive.
I find Japanese beautiful.
It's beautiful.
But I grew up watching a lot of anime
and I think that influences it. Well I was influenced heavily by Japanese culture as a
kid obviously with martial arts and but also by Miyamoto Musashi who when I was a young man like
that book the book of five rings was like essentially my guidebook for life. What is that about? It's a book of strategy by this man, Miyamoto Musashi.
And Miyamoto Musashi was a Ronin who killed 60 men
in one-on-one combat.
And he was arguably the most famous,
he's my whole right sleeve is Miyamoto Musashi.
And he wrote this book, The Book of Five Rings.
And it was essentially calling for a balanced life
to perfect your craft, no matter what it is.
But he was essentially saying that
for someone to be a great warrior,
you also have to be a great poet.
You have to be able to do calligraphy.
You have to be able to do art.
You have to have a balance.
You can't just be this like angry
Emotional killing machine you will not see everything you you you must be balanced
And this is a guy that's speaking from intense
actual experience
Sword fighting people which is probably the most intimate way to kill a man and he got so good at it
Sometimes he would show up with wooden swords
and kill people with wooden swords
because he just didn't feel like their technique
was good enough for him to justify using an actual sword.
So he'd beat them to death with oars.
So they would come at him with a sword
and he would have like an oar from a boat
and he would just fuck them up with an oar.
Jesus Christ.
He was a fascinating guy. I can see how you kind of reflect that I mean you're like this
He's a big guy, and you do mixed martial arts, but you also do yoga
And you know you and you pay attention to the world and so that kind of makes sense that that's where you come from
Yeah, yeah, that was my guidebook when I was a young man and I was fighting I was trying to figure out how to control my emotions and my
anxiety and what's the most effective way to approach something that's
absolutely terrifying like how can you approach it because you have to be
scared because if you're not scared you lose your edge you have to have an edge
like every time that I ever competed where I was like overconfident
I fought terribly even if I won I was very very ashamed of my performance
You have to be scared and something that no one wants to be no one wants to be scared
It's it's awful feeling before you're competing you like why I'm even fucking doing this
Why am I risking my literal life for no money to do this thing?
That's fucking insane like I'm gonna go out there and kick someone in the face
They're gonna try to kick me in the face and if I get hit I'm going unconscious. I'm going to the hospital so I
Read a bunch of psychology books. I read a bunch of self-help books. I read a
Lot of Anthony Robbins stuff. I read a lot of different things,
trying to figure out what's the best way to manage the mind.
But the thing that I really gravitated towards
was this one book, because of the history of this man
and the way that he speaks.
And he has this quote that I use all the time,
and if you've heard it before, I'm sorry,
but I'm gonna say it again.
Once you know the way broadly, you can see it in all things.
And this was what I applied, I think you can apply it to many disciplines in life, but it's understanding that to get great at something, what your flaws are, what your strengths are,
and approach it in this very balanced way.
And if you can do that, if you can really know the way,
you can apply that to everything you do,
whether it's learning how to play guitar,
or chess, or anything, or calligraphy,
or writing books, whatever it is.
You can apply that to all things.
What you said about being scared and how that's useful,
you need to feel that in order to perform
at the highest level.
Always makes me think of the Christopher Nolan Batman
where he has to, the second, the Bane Batman,
he has to take off the rope in order to have the adrenaline
to jump far enough to get out of the cave.
Do you remember that scene?
I do not oh
Yeah, I mean it's a brilliant scene and a brilliant message because Bane beats Batman puts him at the end at the bottom of this deep pit and
He he's trying to get out so he can go back to Gotham and save everyone from the atomic bomb
That's gonna go off there, and he keeps jumping and jumping and there's one jump
He has to make that he keeps failing and the prisoners have a way of doing it where they tie a rope around
Your waist so that when you inevitably fall as everyone always does they've been trying to get out of this prison for years
Some people have been stuck here their whole life
But there's a legend of a child that did it a child
No one no one's been able to figure out how they replicate it, so they try it with the rope all the time.
And then one of the elder statesmen of the scene says,
well, I heard the way that the child did it
is that they didn't use the rope.
And you have to fear death in order for your body
to give you the necessary fuel and material
to land the jump.
Yeah, there's a reason why you get scared. You need to the jump. There's a reason why you get scared.
You need to be scared.
There's a reason.
Custamato, who is Mike Tyson's trainer,
famously said that fear is like a fire.
You can cook food with it, or if you let it run amok,
it'll burn your house down.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And not to bring it back to the view,
but I do sometimes feel that about live television
I feel that when I know it's live and I know I'm not getting a second chance
And I'm not getting a can you cut that out and millions of people are gonna see this
my brain goes into a different mode of
of
Aliveness yeah knowing what the stakes are yeah, and I think it probably causes me to perform better than normal
Yeah, that's stand-up comedy too. I imagine yeah, I imagine yeah, that's there's a lot of things like that
Yeah, you have to be scared. Yeah, I get nervous every time I go on stage. I'm doing comedy for oh, yeah
I have to I've done it when I don't get nervous. I don't do as well. I need to get nervous
I get myself nervous. I've done it when I don't get nervous. I don't do as well. I need to get nervous. I get myself nervous. I pace. I move around. I stretch. I go over my notes. I think about
I can ramp my brain up. I think you have to. I think you have to with anything that's very
difficult to do. I don't think I mean, I think maybe there's some people that are just on
the certain spectrum of consciousness that are able to just like, go Zen and go into a thing.
And maybe there's different things
that don't get you scared,
that maybe being scared would be detrimental
to those things,
because you'd make quicker judgments
instead of measured and calculated.
Because when you're, the thing about being scared,
it's generally things that are operating
in a time constraint.
So you have this time constraint that's happening
that also gives you a certain
amount of anxiety. There's a beginning and an end of every round, for instance. And each
round is in kickboxing where I was doing was three minutes and MMA it's five minutes. And
so you have this time constraint. You have that. You have how many rounds you're going
to have to do. That's in the back of your head. You have all these things that keep
you from being Zen. All these things that like, and the live aspect of it,
and everyone's watching, that's another thing.
That's another element.
What about archery and shooting?
Those are probably the opposite, right?
Well archery, bow hunting is very much that.
Bow hunting.
In the sense you wanna be anxious a little bit?
Yeah, you're going to be, no matter what.
You will be anxious, but you must be able to perform
At your best and handle that anxiety and there's a bunch of different methods that people use to avoid
Open loop thought processes. So an open loop thought process is like swinging a bat
You really can't stop the bat once you're swinging it
You're swinging with all your might and it's just this open loop, right?
A closed loop process is something where you're in control of it every step of the way
Like for instance me opening up this thing I can stop right there. I don't just go
I can't you know, it's it's it's not like a thing that I can't control
you can control it and so when you're in a
You can control it and so when you're in a
Shooting situation with it like with archery you have to think entirely about the process of shooting
You can't just go now because you'll be filled with anxiety you'll move your arm You'll twitch there's a lot you have to be able to stay rock steady with something
That's not very steady the beautiful thing about archery is the perfection of doing something that's almost impossible to perfect. So when you can have these brief moments where that
arrow does launch and goes right into that target, right where the X is, this immense
sense of elation, accomplishment. But now when you're dealing with an animal, then you
have all these other consequences. Like you don't wanna wound the animal.
You wanna be able to hit it and kill it very quickly
with one shot and you have to practice thousands
and thousands of arrows and then there's this one moment.
It's not like fighting where you have multiple opportunities
to hit a guy.
You can move, you can step to the side,
this is the one moment that the fight has actually happened
but there's a lot of moments in the fight.
When you release that arrow, that is one moment, so you might have worked 11 months, 3 weeks,
and 6 days for this one moment, and you've been planning this elk hunt for the whole
year.
You've gotten in shape for it, you practiced all these arrows, but when that elk steps
out from between those trees at 60 yards and you're at full draw,
you have to center that pin right where its vitals are
and you have to release a perfect arrow.
It's very, very hard to do.
I've only gone shooting, I think, twice or maybe three times
and just that moment right before
your body flinches in this way.
And so how does one get past that?
You have to train. Training is very important. You have to train with purpose.
Like my friend Tim Kennedy, when he shoots on a range, he puts dummy rounds in his gun.
So he'll have like 10 rounds that are real, and then one dummy round, and then six rounds that are real.
And he never knows where the dummy round is What's the point of that so when you're squeezing the trigger you want to have like a completely flat?
Squeezing of the trigger you don't want to do this
You don't want to yank in anticipation of the recoil right and that's part of the problem with guns
You flinch in anticipation of the recoil right and when that bullet goes out of that gun
That flinch left or right over the course of 100 yards
could be a foot, two feet off the mark, who knows?
Depending on how much you flinch.
And so that is a practice that some people employ,
to learn to be able to stay so steady no matter what,
where you're never anticipating the recoil.
All you're thinking about is the process of squeezing off.
So there's no recoil with a dummy round exactly
It doesn't go on so you can see the evidence of your exactly you pull the trigger
Nothing happens because there's no real round right. It's just a rubber or whatever the fuck
I don't know if this is Hollywood, but I saw the movie the killer David Fincher's latest movie and
I think he had some kind of heart rate monitor. Yeah, he wouldn't shoot until his heart rate was below 60 or something
I don't know to what extent that's Hollywood or
or actually important it's important yeah and the best snipers can most
certainly control their heart rate yeah there's strategies you learn breathing
strategies to employ your heart rate control your heart rate. And there's also strategies of mental management,
of not allowing this, there's this tornado of anxiety
that can come on, and you have to see the winds blowing
and go, you have to calm it down.
You can't get caught up in it in your mind.
And I've seen people do it in many different things in life.
And you can apply it to many different things.
It's this overwhelming fear of fucking up.
Instead of thinking about what you're actually doing,
you're thinking about the possibility of fucking up,
which leads you to fuck up,
because that's what you're concentrating on.
In the game of pool, if you think you're gonna miss a shot,
you most certainly miss that shot almost always.
You might get lucky and make it just like,
I thought I was going to miss.
But in your head, you're like, I hope I don't miss.
I hope I don't miss.
You're going to miss.
But if you just only concentrate on the process,
you can execute even under pressure.
You can execute in a perfect line.
And it's a mental management thing.
And the only people that know how to do that
are people that have actually done difficult things
under pressure.
And when you do difficult things under pressure,
you realize, like, wow, there's so many factors
that you can probably mitigate in some way
through a strategy of control, of meditation, of thought,
of understanding what these thoughts are
when they start to occur.
Yeah, I think a lot of anxiety management
is deeply focusing on the task at hand.
Because if you're, it's not necessarily
that the anxiety comes up and you're
amazing at swatting it down.
It could be that you are so deeply focused on the thing
itself that there's no room for anxiety.
And that's very lucky if you have that level of focus
and attention on whatever it is that you're passionate about.
It's like you're so upset.
Someone like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant,
the way you hear them talking about winning,
you can understand why they didn't feel any anxiety
when the buzzer beater is coming up.
There's two seconds they have to make the shot.
It's because they're so obsessed with winning that there's no room for anxiety right it's like it's
like it's life or death to them yeah and there's no room for anxiety in those
situations yeah you have to be I mean to perform at that level too you have to be
really insane you know I would say the greatness and that like real brilliance comes out of almost like a mental illness
It really almost does because in order to be just so much better at all the other high performers
Because David Goggins has the best quote he says you want to be uncommon amongst uncommon people
Yeah, that's him, but you know do you want to do what he does no, but that's what he that's how he's uncommon
Amongst uncommon people he's a fucking complete psycho totally yeah, but that is how you become David Goggins
You don't become David Goggins
But this mild mannered person who contemplates and you know sits with his coffee and stares out the window and watches the birds
And that's not that's not that's not how you get the job done
No, not at all and that's not how you get the job done. No, not at all You know, that's not how you become Michael Jordan either
You know you have to be upset that heard that if you beat Michael Jordan at pool
He wouldn't talk to you for weeks. Yeah, that's that's a maladjusted person in any other scenario
that's a guy you can't really be friends with because but
Combine that with enormous natural talent and work ethic. Yeah a little bit of good luck, that's Michael Jordan.
I mean, the top, chess is the one that I follow,
that's my hobby, and the top chess players
are absolute maniacs.
Maniacs.
These people, like, when they actually,
when you try to talk to them about their mistakes,
you've had Hikaru on, have you not?
No, I have not.
Oh, I don't know why I thought that.
I would, though.
So, Hikaru, best player in America absolute legend you know if Magnus Carlsen died
in his crib Hikaru it's very possible Hikaru would be world champ for a very
long time Wow but what separates him from Magnus Carlsen just a Magnus I
think Hikaru once put it a Magnus is a little bit better than Hikaru at everything.
Little bit better at openings,
a little bit better at calculation,
a little bit better at end games.
He put it all together and he's just the goat.
He can't be beat.
What was your take?
To the point where he got so bored,
he got so bored of winning the world championship
that he said, I don't wanna do it anymore.
Wow.
So he's technically no longer world champion
because he's so bored of winning.
And it's actually understandable.
I don't even think anyone's mad at him
because these world championship chess matches, 14 games,
they can go to six hours a game.
They can actually go over six hours a game.
Brutal, absolutely brutal.
Like if you thought taking the SAT and trying really hard made you mentally exhausted, it's
nothing compared to how these guys feel after a six hour chess game.
And doing that 14 days in a row, spending six months prior to that, working with chess
engines to find one new idea in an opening, 50 moves in, it's absolutely grueling and he does it every time
and he wins every time but he says, I can't, this is not fun for me anymore.
So I'm going to play all the other chess tournaments that you just kind of show up and do your
best and he crushes most of those as well.
But I'm not doing this grueling, I can't live my life like this anymore.
That's interesting because that is John Jones too.
John Jones, when he was dominating
the light heavyweight division,
he got to a point where the way analysts would describe it
is that he was playing with his food.
And that he wasn't afraid of losing to these guys.
And he barely trained for some of them.
Like he had a famous fight with Alexander Gustafson.
And it was the first fight
where John had never been taken down and he got pushed deep into
The rounds and John rallied in the fourth and fifth rounds and won the fight. It was a crazy fight
They had a rematch and John prepared and just dominated him and annihilated him. Yeah, same guy
I mean just ran right through him. The guy was still in his prime
John was still in his prime. There was not like a bunch of things that had happened
that deteriorated him, nope.
It was a couple of years later and John ran through him.
And that's the real John Jones.
It's just the John Jones that was fighting
all these other guys.
He wasn't challenged.
He was, he's the goat and he knew he was the goat.
And so he didn't, I talked to his coaches,
he literally didn't train for the Gustafson fight.
But yet still pulled it off in the fourth and fifth rounds just out of
sheer greatness and tough, toughness and grit and experience. Yeah. Pulled it off
and it wasn't in condition, it wasn't prepared, but still good enough to beat
the very best challenger he ever faced in the toughest fight of his career in
the last rounds. Yeah and the thing with these kind of guys,
I don't know about fighting, probably the same,
but with the chess guys, you try to bring up a mistake,
a famous mistake that they made,
and it's almost like you're talking about
a family member who died tragically.
It means that much to them that they made a mistake
12 years ago on move 24 of some game
that threw the match.
That's how hard these guys take it,
which is, again, in you or me mean that's how hard these guys take it which is again in
In you or me that's just a maladjusted guy. That's like a guy with a problem that needs to go to therapy
Mm-hmm in a top performer. That's what makes him a top performer and separates him from the otherwise very good professionals 100%
There's a guy who's arguably the greatest pool player of all time at least one of the greatest pool player of all time
Seems Earl Strickland
He's this American guy won the US Open five times
It's only one of the guys won the US Open five times a guy named Shane van Boening who's another genius player
but Earl like
He would play with this insane intensity if he missed a ball. He was like
Confused like how is it possible that I can miss?
There was a million dollar challenge.
Now this is statistically so impossible to do
under intense competition that they were willing to gamble
and get an insurance policy that would give someone
a million dollars if they could run 10 racks in a
row of nine ball. Now what the way nine ball works is you have nine balls and
you you you shape them where the bottom balls are missing which would make 15
which is a full racks right so it's just like triangle sort of a rack and then
you break the balls and the one ball is in the front, and the nine ball's in the center.
Now the balls scatter randomly,
and you have to run them in order.
So every single rack, you have to have a shot on the one,
or the lowest number ball.
And then you have to have balls
that aren't clustered together,
or you have to figure out how to break up those clusters
and still get a shot.
Does that mean you have to break it strategically? strategically you kind of can but back then they didn't
Guys are much better now because there's a thing called the magic rack and what the magic rack is
It's a clear piece of plastic that the ball set in where the balls are always touching always in the exact same spots
Because they're literally sitting in a pattern and so then these guys are breaking the balls more softly which causes they do what's called a cut
break which causes the one ball to go drift into the side pocket and the best
guys can do it like nine out of ten times and then the two ball bounces up
table and they know exactly where all the balls are gonna be and you see
similar patterns over and over again. That's funny. What Earl Strickland was
doing was smashing the balls,
and they'd scatter around, and he ran 10 racks in a row
for a million dollars.
And he did it.
And he did it.
It was, everyone's like, it's never been done
in a tournament before.
The first tournament where they get this insurance policy,
Earl does it.
Not only did he run 10, it was a race to 11.
He broke and ran the 11th, too, and he made a combination on the 9 for the million dollars
Which is just fucking insane and not a short combination either like the distance from the pocket. Yeah
So to be that guy
You have to be out of your fucking mind. Just no other way you have to be completely obsessed with the game
You have to be completely obsessed with the game. You have to be completely obsessed with all the details
Yeah, he does commentary on pool matches. It's fascinating to listen to him do commentary because he talks about different English
You got to use with this shot and different different things
You have to avoid and nine times out of ten the player does something different than he would have done and you see him get
Fucked like yep. That was I was talking about yeah It's just he sees it coming sees sees the whole
Table in a different way than a person who's a novice sees the table only things
I've ever been that obsessed with I think in my life are our music
I'm a trombone player. Oh, no, that was actually my career before I started writing
I still am actually professional trombone player jazz guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I am a jazz guy.
Joe, I've had...
My life path is that I graduated high school.
I was considered one of the top professional jazz trombonists
in the country.
Went to Juilliard, which is the most selective school for that.
And that was my whole career.
Like, that was...
I had this whole other career. I've had
Was a pivot from all of that and how did it start?
Basically, so I was at Juilliard as a freshman at Juilliard
in New York City gigging as a jazz trombone player and
my mom died at when I was
18 and
Of cancer and it just shattered everything for me,
sent me down into a grief and depression.
And I had always been interested in philosophy
and writing as well, kind of as a side thing,
and I was always a very good student in school,
but my passion was music.
But something about the experience of my mom dying
led me to reflect on what I wanted out of life and
I dropped out of Juilliard and applied to Columbia. And so I realized I could still
do music. Nobody learns music in school. So being in New York City, I could still play
as much music as I wanted to, but I could also get a liberal arts degree and feed that
side of myself. And it was, had my mom not died, I probably just would have stayed at Juilliard might have had a whole different life
Well, that's fascinating. Yeah
Yeah, it's me with a big afro that's amazing
Yeah, when I was eight years old I lived in San Francisco and our teacher took us to see Dizzy Gillespie
Oh, yeah, amazing. It was wild and for folks who don't know yeah, Dizzy Gillespie his cheeks puff out like a frog
Yeah, which is the that's not I mean you would tell me that's not how they teach you how to do it
Absolutely not and what he was able to do with his cheeks was I guess just years and years of stretching his skin
Because he had done it for so long. Oh, yeah
Like look at that. That's a full pressure extension of the cheeks
No trumpet player would teach you to play like that
but he was one of the greats of
Early jazz trumpet playing and he made it work and I don't know that you know
I've never heard that he had any health issues from playing that way
You know a lot of trumpet players, they get older,
and you know, Freddie Hubbard, who's one of the greatest
jazz trumpet players, famously had a growth on his lip
that kind of inhibited him in his last decade.
From the pressure of the mouthpiece?
Yeah, yeah, from pressing it against his lips.
And he had a growth.
I don't know if it was cancerous or not,
but it really messed him up.
Oh wow, so it just becomes so irritated
that a growth developed there.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
But, yeah, that's not healthy, but it worked for Dizzy.
That's the thing.
All the rules can be broken if you're good enough.
Yes.
Yeah.
All the rules.
And also, he just figured out his way to do it.
He just figured out a way to do it that's not a way that you would ever teach.
There's a lot of that though. There's slide Hampton one of the great jazz trombone players of all time played left-handed
Which he's the only person I've ever heard of
Great or or or not who plays left-handed in other words, the slide arm is always the right arm
But somebody gave it to him wrong and
That's how he played it. And I've heard-
So he plays it upside down?
He plays it left side right.
In other words, every trombone player is crafted-
What is that?
Sorry, every trombone is meant to be played with the right hand, but somebody set it up,
must have set it up wrong when they gave it to him.
And I've heard stories of-
So even left-handed people would do it?
Oh, 100% of left-handed trombone players play with their right hand 100%
But I've heard
And slide is one of the greats
There's a actually a great video of him playing at dizzy Gillespie's birthday party, which is a famous video
but he
I've heard I heard of this with guitar players where somebody gave it
Yeah, it was I know that I didn't realize that he played it left-handed
Yeah, he played it like how did this way Jamie, you know right arm on the neck
I was thinking a Kurt Cobain. I think he played it upside down. Maybe
Right, didn't he something like that? Because you'd have to restring the guitar
Yeah, you'd have always went the low E string to be the top I guess closest to you right and then some people wouldn't restring it because they weren't told to or however
Yeah, they just might play the other way. What was Hendrix's deal?
I feel like he was playing a right-handed guitar though. I
Feel like you played a right hand against our lefties Hendrix also played his guitar upside down. Yeah
Why he played it upside down. Mm-hmm
So he also self-taught which is to me the most fascinating couldn't find a left-handed guitar
Which they probably did make his mini back. Yeah, they probably didn't so he took it
I don't have any money just saying he took a normal guitar and put it
Just flipped around so the so the so the low string was high and the high string
Yeah, and then he so he must have had all his own fingerings were I mean his sound was so different than anyone before him
Yeah, there's there's leaps in music, but the leaps that Hendrix took they're so different than everybody else
Like you really it's so hard because I mean I listen to his music today constantly and I love it
But I don't live in 1967
It's not it's a different world
And I feel like if you were alive then and you heard voodoo child
He'd be like what oh yeah for sure fuck for sure standing next to a mountain
I chop it down with the edge of my hand
And then you hear that music and you're like oh my and by the way not a great singing
Voice and nobody gave a fuck nobody gave a fuck about a singing voice
Yeah, it was his music was so powerful
The sound I wish we could play it right now that just the beginning of voodoo child that riff
You have to understand. There's nothing like that in music before him
Yeah, there's not there's a lot of that now with what? Yeah
Well because of it because of it like stevia ray vaughn that's what happens
Is that you can never really go back with the ears of those people and hear it as they heard it because now
You've taken for granted that this way of playing has seeped into the culture. Exactly
This is what I always tell people that disparage lennie bruce go, hey, wasn't that funny fucking mountain if I hear that.
That's still pretty fucking awesome.
Oh, it's amazing.
I could run over a fucking mountain with that in my ears.
That's a drug.
That song is a drug.
That song has like a physical power in parts on you.
For sure.
I get goosebumps just hearing it.
Yeah.
But that guy, we have to understand,
there was nothing like that.
There was nothing like that.
You had fucking Love, Love Me Do.
You had like Buddy Holly and shit.
And you had like buddy Holly and shit and you had you had great music
but you didn't have anybody who played guitar like that right and
This guy was blown away people like Eric Clapton famously saw him go and was like what am I doing?
Like it's Eric Clapton with the greatest guitarist of all time. He's like oh my god. I fucking suck
Fucking suck this guy's changing everything
He's just a different thing like a guy who comes along who's so
Beyond what's being currently expressed yeah that everybody has to like move towards him
Yeah, so I every Monday night. I play
Trombone at the Comedy Cellar we have a band at the olive tree cafe the restaurant
We play on Monday nights, and we got two guitar players.
One of them is this guy, Nick Casparino,
that's just absolutely impossible to describe.
Just absolute killer.
They're all great singers.
Nick and Colin and Mike and me and my friend Dan
are the horn section, basically.
And we play like nine to midnight every week
We have such a good time there and the comics are always coming in hanging out
It's a it's a and we play every genre like truly multi-genre, and it's it's just an amazing experience wow that's awesome
Man, I'm glad you still enjoy that too. Yeah, and then now it's like a pure thing right you just do it
Just for the pure art of right and that that was that was really what I realized when I was 18
Taking every jazz trombone gig that gave my way came my way and paid me $50 and a slice of pizza
I was like this is my passion life
I love this
But this is going to drive me into insanity if I have to take every single gig my whole life and eke out
in existence. Yeah, so maybe I should get a degree and just see, you know, see where shit goes.
And that's how a lot of comics feel in the beginning of their career as well.
Yeah. The comedy thing is very hard in the beginning.
It's it's a real gauntlet that you have to you have to traverse.
You have to go through a lot of shit in order to become.
I did a couple of open mics. Did you?
I've always loved comedy and I had some friends in it so they're like I'll go do
I did two or three open mics had a good time didn't bomb didn't do great did it
did okay right and then the bug didn't bite the bugs and bite me that's exactly
right and I and the thing is I knew what the bug meant because I have it for
music mmm and so I knew what it's like to be like I suck at this but I love it
so much then I'm gonna keep doing like to be like I suck at this but I love it so much
Then I'm gonna keep doing it until I don't suck. Yeah, because with with trombone and trumpet
There's no such thing as being good when you start
Right, like there's some people that like the first time they sing in church. Everyone is like this kid can sing right, right
There's no such thing as that for
trombone or trumpet for brass instruments
Everyone eats shit the first time they play. And so if you just love
it so much that you're okay and you have a family that's forgiving enough to hear you be terrible,
which I luckily did, that's how you get good at those things. And I didn't have that for comedy,
even though I love comedy as a consumer. Well, I love music as a consumer, and I don't have
that for music. But I worry I would. Gary Clark was in here and he gave me his guitar
And he forced me to do an e-chord so he put my fingers in the right place. It's pretty good, right?
It does feel good. I started getting scared. Yeah, I started getting scared. This could take me over. Yeah, I'm worried
I'm legit. That's why I won't play golf
There's a lot of things I won't do because I get you think you're gonna get into golf too much
Oh, yeah, I'm terrified all my friends like Jamie and
You're gonna get into golf too much. Yeah, I'm terrified all my friends like Jamie and
Tony and Ron white they're obsessed. I have so many friends my friends who play golf are all obsessed with golf So what is it that's so?
Addicting about golf in particular Jamie
Many times but it's like the same thing you were saying earlier with with pool
Like the same description just description just sorry with archery
I meant yes archery did the consequences obviously are less you're not gonna miss
and hurt something well there's target archery though is very intensive but
when you were describing when it all goes right which is so rare I heard
something Samuel L. Jackson said recently we're like in golf you shoot I
don't know if you're bad it's's 100 shots around. If you're really good, 75. Most of those still though, you don't ever
really do the intention of what you're trying to do. Which is going the whole right from where you
are. Or like right where you're aiming or anything. So it's like a bunch of mistakes. And then it's
like, how good are you at overcoming those mistakes? Clearing your head every time,
fighting against nature,
also having fun with your friends, being out of nature, getting away from everything for
four or five hours, having a couple beers.
Clearing your head.
It's like clearing your head because you can't think of all a bunch of other stuff or it
will ruin your whole day because you can't have fun out there.
Do you remember that Kevin Costner movie where he plays this badass pitcher?
It might have been a league of her own. Do you remember that Kevin Costner movie where he plays this badass pitcher?
It might have been a league of her own No, that there's another movies. What was the movie sure well?
He'd know so he has this thing where everybody's like he wasn't retired
He was pitching in the movie for the love of the game for love game. That's it
And so he has this moment like when he's on the mound
Where he goes clear the mechanism and
everything just fades out and he just looks at the strike zone and the you
don't hear the crowd anymore it's a really cool scene here we'll play the
scene but we won't do it for everybody else the
the Nice.
My friend Colton uses that when he goes bow hunting.
He says clear the mechanism.
It feels like to put on Bozie headphones and just force your mind in this state of hyper
focus. Just just force your mind in this state of hyper focus
Mm-hmm. I wanted to ask you this. What was your take on Magnus Carlson and that young man who apparently?
Has yes Hans Nieman. Yeah
Explain the story for all right so basically what happened is there's this grandmaster named Hans Niemann who's a young guy probably
early early 20s
Magnus is probably more like 31 or so like now
and What happened is Hans Niemann?
He beat Magnus Carlsen at a tournament in a game not in a match necessarily
You might need to check that,
but he beat him in the first game of the tournament,
which happens, right?
Like even, it's kinda like how the best tennis player
in the world can lose a game to a lesser player,
but probably isn't gonna lose the match.
That happens pretty frequently in chess, not uncommon.
But it is the most uncommon with Magnus.
Magnus suspected Hans of cheating.
Why did he suspect Hans of cheating?
Magnus is not the type to assume someone is cheating
just because he lost a game.
He's never done that in his entire career.
Reason he did it in the case of Hans
is because there had long been rumors circulating
in the chess world that Hans Nieman was a cheater.
Now there's ways you can cheat in chess
in an over-the-board game
if we're playing with a physical set in front of us.
The one way people do it is they'll have a friend,
generally, that is looking at the game either here
or out in the hall, running it through an engine
and giving you a little signal like cheating
and like a baseball coach would.
There are also rumors that in principle
it's possible to cheat with a device and I think that's that's happened in some
way that someone can transmit to you be looking at the game and transmit you a
signal here's the right move with a certain number of buzzes if I have a
buzzer in my pocket. In principle it's possible to have a buzzer in the
orifices of your body, you know, in
your butt, essentially.
And this is part of why it went viral is because there was a theory that they have pretty strict
security at these places, so where would he have put the device?
You know, they're not going to, they're not doing an anal cavity check.
So that's, that was part of the reason people were talking about it so much, because that's
just hilarious to contemplate. But the real situation of it was that Magnus made some strong implied comments that Hans
had cheated in the game.
Then everyone started looking at the Hans, and the rumors that had long existed in the
chess world about this guy became public, and there were serious competing investigations
of how is it that this guy rose so quickly for
example it's very uncommon in the chess world for someone to raise in rating
that quickly in the professional world right there's like it there's a normal
rate at which people get better and there's a kind of impossible rate at
which people got better and people debated he had defenders he had
attackers both of them had some good points
About his rise and over-the-board play then there's the online cheating Which is a totally different story because chess.com has one of the really the state-of-the-art
cheating detection mechanism and people cheat all the time on chess.com which
Is crazy because there's no reason for it right like someone like me. I pay whatever I pay every month on chess.com which is crazy because there's no reason for it, right? Like someone like me, I pay whatever I pay every month on chess.com.
I'm a random amateur player.
I like playing when I'm on the subway.
I like playing my friend occasionally.
You don't get any money for winning.
Most of us have anonymous usernames.
You don't get bragging rights for winning.
And yet there's a certain percentage of people like me on chess.com that just cheat for no
reason. They're just cheat for no reason.
They're just sitting at home in their mother's basement cheating to get a number on a screen
that means nothing and it's them no money.
To me that makes complete sense.
Really why?
Because of video games.
Because in video games people would use bots when you'd play online.
So an aiming bot would make it so that you would almost never miss.
So you would play a guy and like saying quake
There's a there's a there's a gun called the rail gun the rail gun is very difficult to hit someone with but it imparts the most
Damage, but it doesn't have a scatter of damage like like a rocket
You could shoot a rocket next to a guy and fuck him up
You can hurt but it won't hurt him as much as a rail gun which would kill him almost instantly
Unless he has a specific amount of armor and there's some guys who would never miss
They just hit you with that rail gun every time your head poked out
It would be impossible for them to know exactly where you were gonna be the amount of time unless it was dumb luck
But you can't have dumb luck nine times in a row
That's right ten times in a row and 20 times in a row 50 times in a row
There's right there'd be scores like 50 to zero against like really good players. And it's not for any money, and it's...
Not for any money.
They're just laughing,
because they're clowning you with a bot.
Right.
It's fun.
Yeah, so that's what people do on chess.com,
and just like that game where you literally mathematically
can only have so much good luck,
chess.com has algorithms that are really, really good
at detecting when you've gone from the good luck space
to the definitely cheating space.
So how do they know?
So they looked at they looked at Hans Nieman's games and they found that he was almost certainly
cheating on chess.com in certain games and they they did a whole report where they highlighted
the specific games and stuff.
Is it an analysis of his previous games?
And that was the previous game.
So you see this the level of competency based on the previous games.
What do you mean?
So you see his level of mistakes and the way he does it and then in the games where they
think he's cheating, what was the variable that they detected?
So one variable that they use is the length of time between your moves, because in a normal
chess match, it's a bit random, right?
You'll do some moves quickly and some moves slowly.
But if you're cheating, you're using a machine that takes five seconds to load for every
move, checking the move, you're going to have a regularity.
Each move is going to come after five seconds, for example. Right.
So that's one factor.
And then they have other factors.
Another factor is just how accurate your moves are.
Because chess is close to solved,
meaning the machines are playing it better than we are.
So you can check a human player against the machine player.
Even Magnus Carlsen will lose a thousand times in a row
now to Stockfish. Wow.
A thousand times. He has no chance.
I remember when Big Blue first started playing chess against people, that was always the thing.
Yeah.
Once a computer can beat a person, we're fucked.
Yeah, we're way long past that now.
That's wild.
And so they can check if you're playing 99.5% of the Stockfish top moves, that's just not possible.
Magnus can't do it, nobody can do it.
You might be able to do it for one simple game,
but you can't do it 12 games in a row that are complicated.
It's just not possible.
Very much like what you talked about.
So chess.com combines that measure
with these other measures.
It even kind of knows, I think,
when you're switching browsers,
which can be a tip off to cheating,
because you're switching from the chess browser
you're playing chess into the browser
that you're cheating with.
Why wouldn't they just have a separate computer?
Exactly, so that's not the only thing.
They could have, well, if, generally,
they require you now to have a camera.
Ah.
If you're competing in a tournament,
so you have to show your surroundings
so that they know you're not using a separate computer
But you could have someone off-camera those two theory in theory. Yep, you can have a dual monitor set. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
but but the algorithm is is
Regarded as very accurate in terms of determining cheating and they did determine that he had cheated in a in a bunch of
let's Let's say they weren't top tournaments, but they were friendly tournaments
Some of them had money on the line so so so it was never proven that he was cheated
That he cheated over the board and I'm agnostic about that. I don't I've read both sides
I don't have a strong opinion about whether he had cheated over over the board in real big tournaments
But it was proven that he had cheated online.
And again, all of this is separate from the fact that he's a damn good chess player.
Right.
Like nobody denies he is a grandmaster, he should be a grandmaster.
He is capable of defeating Magnus Carlsen in a game, not in a match.
So that's not to take anything away from him but there was rumors circulating it and that's basically what happened and so his defense was I believe he admitted to some of it
Yes, and his defense was that he was doing that because he wanted to get higher ratings quicker so he could play better players
Okay, well still cheating still cheating every every chess player wants to do that right so just why they all cheat
It's not an excuse. It's not yeah. Also. I think he said he was 16 at the time
But then there was some evidence that he did it when he was like 19. Yeah, that's right. That's right
He he under exaggerated the he downplayed it. Yeah, he downplayed it even in his admission
But again, he's a damn good chess player and he has a fiery personality,
which like so many of these chess guys unfortunately
are just so freaking boring
from the audience perspective.
That when you get a guy there that's like shit talking
and like kind of being like braggadocious and stuff,
it's really entertaining to watch because it's so rare.
So many chess players. I love them
They're a little bit autistic on the spectrum. That's not not to cast aspersions
It's just true right and so from an entertainment point of view
I think he's very good for the chess world so he talks shit while he plays talk shit after the game
Oh talk shit after the game
See some shit talking while he plays. It's like like Washington Square Park shit
Oh guys have these challenge matches. I've lost a lot of money to those guys
That's the fun. They're great though when those guys are talking shit, and they're slapping that clock
Entertaining chess they'll crush you every time but wouldn't that be like better to have like if you want more
I guess they don't really care if more people pay attention to it the purity of no they do get chess comm definitely cares
They've had a huge influence in upping chess as a as a as an audience
You know support that audiences watch the move is like the searching for Bobby Fisher move. Just get him out there in the park
Oh, yeah, that's fun. Yeah those I love I
Watch regular chess because I'm fascinated by it, but and I I know how the pieces move, but I really don't know how to play
I'm terrible. Yeah, but when I love watching those guys
I love watching people sit down and talk shit. Yep
And I love when like a real grandmaster sits down talk shit
Mm-hmm
Cuz like some of them are like real like high level tournament players that get in there and mix it up with those dudes
Oh, I see what you're doing. Are you talking some shit here?
Yeah, and the the guys at the park are usually just a little bit worse than the the kind of like mid-level professionals
So the mid-level professionals will beat them and the guys do not like to be beat because think about it
They're sitting there making money all day
Yeah, occasionally encountering douchebags that think that they can beat them
Right and then and then someone comes along who really can beat them and they don't like to lose of course
They do not like to lose.
I mean, for example, there was one time,
I've never beaten one of the main guys.
So I'm just gonna be honest about that.
Never even come close to beating any of the main guys
at Washington Square or Union Park in New York,
and I never will.
But one day there was like a sub there,
like not one of the normal guys.
And I was beating him.
I was so excited, it was the first time.
I was like, I'm tired of losing you know all my money these people and and
One of his friends came over saw that I was winning because it was obvious
I was winning and the guy made some kind of innocent comment and and the guy I'm playing goes oh
Well, he's helping you now the games void
And I was like oh come on dude come on. You're just saying that cuz you're losing
But I let him have it I was like screw it
Yeah, you don't want to get in a fight with those dudes
No, some of them are really weird. A lot of them are high a lot of them are drunk during the day. Mm-hmm
Yeah, I was watching one where this grandmaster was playing one of those guys and the guy
Moved his piece in a funny way. He like went back and forth and put in a different spot. Mm-hmm, and he's like hey, that's how he did. That's how you did there. Oh, yeah the video with Maurice Ashley. That's him
Yeah, that's the best yeah, yeah, yeah, he catches the guy
in the piece Maurice is beating his ass and he he I think he
Yeah, he's sweat. He does a little magicians trick, but Maurice catches it. But, and this is, I can't play it.
Unfortunately, the volume will get in trouble.
But yeah, he busted him doing it.
I'm out of time.
He might be in trouble.
He's in trouble.
Yeah, I think he's in trouble.
He's in trouble, see?
Wait a minute, let me get rid of this guy.
He's not friendly.
See what he did there?
That's what he did.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
right there.
Don't try the trickery now.
Yeah, see. That's okay. I was like a magic trick, I like the way you did try the trickery now. Yeah, see...
That's a magic trick. I like the way you did that.
No, nothing happened to you.
Nothing happened to you.
Yeah, hilarious.
That would 100% probably work on me, but that's not going to work on a Grandmaster.
And he didn't know that this was Maurice Ashley.
He just thought this was some random guy, so now his ego was involved.
I can't lose to some rando, and so he tries to pull a fast one
But nope not on a grandmaster and a grandmaster is very confident and smiling. Yeah, doesn't seem like he's under pressure at all
No, not at all. Yeah that that little magic trick
I mean, how often does that guy do that because he did it so smooth. I'd never know it was so smooth
The way you did it. Yeah, you know, it's like yeah, it's three card Monte in chest form, right? Yeah
Well, that's pool hustlers do that too
That's it. What do they do they'll pretend to miss they'll they'll they'll move things their stick They'll like look at someone is really good. They'll cheat. They'll cheat in ways. We don't see it
They'll guide a ball in if they know that your your angle is that where you can't see what's going on right and then also
They'll miss on purpose
That's the whole thing of pool hustling is playing below your speed until the money gets raised
The whole thing about pool hustling is get a guy to think that he can win
So let him win and then maybe you almost win
But lose and you get upset you want to try it again now. He's really confident
So yeah, let's do it again, and then you lose big and then you say double or nothing he's like fuck
yeah double or nothing and then you play really good and then he's like fuck and
so now the bet is gone from 1,000 to 5,000 to one set for 10 grand right and
you know you're up six grand so you think you got this and then he beats you and there's like there's no way
Fuck that let's do it again, and then you do it again
And now it plays even better like he might be playing even when he's playing good at like 70% of his speed right
To make you think he had a lucky one. I had a friend who used to do that he was a
Musician who was a genius it was just a crazy person who's like lived as a pool hustlers
I'm always homeless like the whole time. I knew it was like staying on people's couches and sleeping and likes
Flop houses and shit, and he's addicted to drugs, but he was the kind of guy that you could do math
He could do it in his head like you'd have a calculator
We would do it at the pool hall would say 369 divided by 7 plus 5 minus 2 and he would bang out the number wow and it was like that
It's crazy like what the fuck man. Well. He would pretend he sucks
So he was like a fat guy and he would just show up in pool halls
And he was real loud and you know talking shit
And then he'd miss and when he'd miss he fucking fall down fuck
He'd like bang his stick on the ground sweat and go to the bathroom wash his face and come back out these guys they don't they thought they had him we got this guy
We got this guy, and then he starts winning and he starts winning just barely
You know like oh, he's gonna fall apart
He starts winning barely more and then they would get angry and you know and he would maybe lose a game
And then they get back to it, and then you know by the end of the night
They don't even know what the fuck happened right they're watching this guy who now looks like a world champion
He's just running out from everywhere like what the fuck and you've got really mad though. Oh, yeah
I mean yeah, I could get you beat up. Oh, that's the movie the hustler. They bring his hands and break his thumbs
Yeah, that's that's the thing that would happen
So you have to know like how much you can win and you have to know like when to lose right?
And you know sometimes you have to lose money just to get out of there with your life
You got to agree to play another game and then fall apart just to get out of there
And then maybe you can come back and play them again. There's guys that'll lose
Weeks in a row to set up a big game weeks. They'll come back in and lose. Can you imagine conning for that long?
Oh yeah, those guys are good.
It was the part of the craft.
I can't imagine it.
But that was the way they made money.
That was the part of the craft.
And you didn't want to be known.
So the best players back in the day
would not enter tournaments.
The best players are these legendary guys
that you would hear that were just playing in pool halls.
And then eventually, pool got to a point where it was on television and they
started making money and
and you know guys became known like there's a guy named Buddy Hall
who's like one of the most famous money players of all time and then eventually
just
starts playing tournaments. You know now everybody knows him anyway, can't get a
game, he's Buddy Hall.
They used to call him Rags, that was his initial initial get a lot of these guys have like fake names like Efren Reyes
He's arguably the greatest of all time. He came up from the Philippines
He said he was Caesar Morales because even in the Philippines in the Philippines
He was a he like everybody knew Efren was even when he was in his 20s
He was a wizard like they call him the magician
It was a wizard on a pool table and when he came up to America, they weren't even sure they're like just just to be safe
Let's come up with a fake name and just robbed everybody these tournaments just robbed everybody in gambling
Just he could play so much better than everybody
He changed the game like sort of like Hendrix changed music Efron changed pool
Yeah, and a lot of people they play like there's a lot of things particularly like safety play that they learn from watching Efren
What's safety play? So say if you're playing nine ball and you're running the balls in order, right?
If I have a shot on the one ball
Oh, you don't have a clear shot at the two
I will knock the one ball into a position and hide the cue ball behind other balls. That makes it bad for you.
Yeah, now you have to hit that lower number ball.
If you don't hit the ball, I get ball in hand.
So you not only have to hit it, but you have to also,
one ball, either the cue ball or the object ball,
has to hit a rail after you hit it.
So you have to kick.
And so kicking is you're shooting into the rails
to try to make it rebound off the rail
and collide perfectly
with this ball over a nine-foot table.
And Efren was just a wizard at it.
He would do it in a way where not only would he kick the ball, he would kick it in, like
a lot of the time.
That's crazy.
And now guys play to kick balls in all the time because they learned it from Efren.
Like three rail kicks where you're cutting into a corner.
They know the exact spot on the table to hit with the exact amount of speed and spin to
make it land right in front of that ball and nudge it into the pocket.
But that's all learning from these people that came kind of out of nowhere.
These pool players that were all these sort of
shady characters that were hiding out
in these pool halls in Louisiana
and pretending they're like a painter.
They'd come in with paint all over their overhauls and shit
and they'd be walking in like a hayseed
and just talk real stupid and drink a bunch
and then people would get curious,
especially if there's some traveling salesman from out of town
He thinks he's a badass right a little pool. He's got some money in his pocket
Next thing you know this guy's robbing you a table tennis is my my my other hobby really yeah
Really I play at this place called ping-pong in New York. They have a bunch of locations
You can go there for not not in 15 bucks or so just play with your friend for an hour, or they have tournaments
It's really fun. That's a wild game. I love it. That's always loved it watch to I was
Stunned that ping-pong never became as popular as tennis
Because it's so accessible and it's so fun to watch and to play like you can play it people can play it
You lower barrier to entry
Yes, but also at the highest level
Insanely impressive insane. Yeah, I was watching this volley where these people were like seven ten feet away from the table
Oh, yeah, and super high speed and diving back and forth and back and forth and it's like ah
And the vo volley's insane then
when someone does score you're like wow.
Yeah the reflexes are just incredible.
Amazing and so many different moves because you're dealing with something that's coming
at you you know over this low thing very fast and you're doing it this way and this way
and that way and gentle and fast and all these different sneaky tactics.
Oh yeah. God, I love it.
I learned to play table tennis when I was I think 13. I went to a Chinese language learning camp
in Minnesota called Sanlin Hu and you go there for a month. You can't speak any English I think after
the first day. Wow. I had a little bit of Chinese, not very much.
And so that's how you learn,
the quickest of course is literally immersion.
Yeah.
So you go there for a month and no English for a month.
And they had, there's this older Chinese guy,
he was like 60 or 70.
And I was super into ping pong, but I wasn't so good.
And basically I played with him every day during the free period for like over an hour
And he beat me probably like 50 times in a row
But by the end of that camp I was beating all the other kids
Like this guy would beat me like 20 to 3 every single game
But but through losing to him. I got good enough to beat all the
other kids yeah you get what's called the rub yeah and I didn't realize I was
getting good because I was getting beat 21 to 3 every single time but you're
also absorbing what he's doing yes you're experiencing it yeah you're
getting the rub yeah that happens in fights when a fighter fights like an
elite world champion one of two things will happen either they'll realize like
oh my god the guy just beat my ass,
I'm never gonna be as good as that guy.
Or the next fight, you see a completely overhauled version
of who they were, because they got the rub.
They got in there with Israel Adesanya,
and they got schooled.
And so they're either gonna come back
and be better than ever, like Robert Whitaker,
or they're gonna fall apart,
like some guys that he's fought, he breaks guys.
Because they realize like, I never,
I can't do what you're doing.
The way you're doing it, my body doesn't work like that.
Israel in his prime was hitting guys with a comedy.
Watch the Derek Brunson.
We'll pull up the Derek Brunson fight.
Derek Brunson, dangerous guy, knockout striker,
really good wrestler, very physically strong,
just a dangerous top contender.
He's fighting Adesanya and I believe this is before Adesanya won the title, if I'm correct.
Not sure.
It might have been in defense of the title.
Either way, Adesanya, who will go down, is one of the greatest of all time for sure.
He hits him with combinations like he's on a different speed.
Like there's a 45 record and a 78.
He's doing something different.
He's moving in a way that's so precise
and he knows many steps.
If I do this, you're gonna do that.
And if I step this way, you're gonna go that way.
And he's got all this programmed in his head
and he's not what he calls smashing buttons
He calls like a lot of people they're smashing buttons when they're playing a game, you know
They don't even really exactly know what each button is doing, but they're trying to win by smashing buttons
He's like a lot of people fight that way. He goes I fight with precision
It's like it's important. He's like a lot of people hit harder than me, but I have precision watch this KO
This is a beautiful thing to watch if you appreciate combat sports
And if you know how good Derek Brunson is so Derek Brunson is like very physically strong right here
He's trying to take out of Sonia down because Derek
top-tier wrestler and so
They separate them something happened. I think Derek was grabbing his shorts or something to get mad at each other. And so
This is where I sawesanya pieces him up.
I didn't even realize you were doing something.
Got early signs for Adesanya, able to stay upright.
So he's avoiding the takedowns here,
because Derrick is a real powerhouse as a wrestler.
But Adesanya is a striking virtuoso.
So then he starts putting it on him.
So Derek is just frantically trying to get this fight to the mat every chance he gets.
The combinations. Just look at this watch this
He's just piecing him up just connecting incredible
So when you're in that space when you're like
In a cage with that guy one of two things gonna happen
either you're gonna go I can't do that I'm not that good he just fucked me up
clearly I'm so I'm 34 years old I'm never gonna get as good as that guy or
you become a fucking maniac and you go to the gym Monday morning and you're
drilling everything and you now you have this new
Frequency that you've experienced you've experienced this championship level fighter and you realize these guys you've been beating they're good
But this is what it's like to be in there with an all-time great right and you either get great yourself
Which many like I said Robert Whitaker has done or you don't. Or you just kind of decide that you're a journeyman now.
You're never going to be a champion.
That's sort of what happened with the Dream Team.
Did you see that documentary they did?
No.
They did a great, actually, the Redeem Team,
as it was called.
Remember when the US basketball team lost,
was it to Spain in the finals of the Olympics?
Right.
And then four years later, obviously, all Americans that care about basketball
have an extreme ego that we are the best country
for basketball, which is true.
But the rest of the world is catching up.
I mean, these European guys were getting better and better,
and I think there was American complacency.
And the Dream Team lost,
which was a huge blow to
Everyone who cared about basketball and to the pride of the NBA and then four years later
You had what they were calling the redeemed team is LeBron James Dwayne Wade
Kobe Bryant and so forth and basically everyone except Kobe got up to training and
They were all kind of they thought that they were motivated.
They thought that they had a chip on their shoulders.
They thought we're in the right head space
to redeem the country.
And then Kobe got there and they realized
they were being silly.
Right, like Kobe, they were going to practice,
they were doing their thing
and then they were going out clubbing.
And then when they were getting home at 3 a.m. From clubbing they would see Kobe getting up to go to the gym
And when they saw that then they all started doing Kobe's regimen and they're like that's that's a whole different level Wow
and then they won handily and
That's the story. It's a great documentary. It's interesting how the rest of the world starts catching up with certain things.
You know, it used to be in boxing that amateur boxing was dominated by Americans.
It was for the longest time. And something happened somewhere along the way.
First of all, the issue was always communist block countries.
Right? T. Filo Stevenson is one of the best examples of that.
He was an elite world champion from Cuba.
And people had always wanted him to fight Muhammad Ali.
Like, oh my god, what would it be like if Teofilo Stevenson
fought Muhammad Ali?
Because he was beating everybody in boxing as a heavyweight.
But he was Cuban, and he was communist,
and he fought for the Olympic team, period.
And that was it.
And he never defected.
Many boxers did. But he didn didn't but so they have that advantage. They're being sponsored by the state
They they get food and special training and special privileges if they leave they win and yoel romero who was on the cubic
Cuban wrestling team he explained that all to us here. It was awesome podcast
It's just Joey Diaz translated for yoel was which is outrageous. It was awesome podcast because Joey D has translated for for yo well was which is outrageous. It was amazing
It was amazing, but the way he was saying the the programs that they have like the insane dedication
They have and then if you are of the elite you get three meals a day
but if you're below that you get two meals a day and
So you have this insane motivation that these young guys have it's not just I want to be great
It's like I want more food
Yeah, crazy. Yeah, he's like and you become a machine
And to have this guy who's like a hulk of a man
He's so massive and he fights at 185 pounds or at least he used to I have no idea how he got to 185 pounds
I was always baffled by his weight cut because he's enormous
You know I mean he's this like
Just specimen of a man and so when he says and you'll become a machine
And you look at him like he's a fucking machine
I mean that so there was that in the Soviet block countries, but
somewhere along the line the Americans
Lost a lot of the dominance and now there's these Eastern European fighters and there's Russian fighters that are super elite
like very very high level and they come over to
Professional boxing and there's quite a few of them from some of those worn toward countries like Chechnya like one of the scariest guys in the world
Right now is this guy Arthur bitter beef, and he's the light heavyweight champion and nobody wants to fight him
He's 19 and oh with 19 knockouts
No one survives Jesus, and he's got this seek and destroy style. That's absolutely terrifying
Destroy style that's absolutely terrifying he just comes at guys and never backs up And he's he looks like a fucking terrifying human
He's built like a tank with that beer you know the lower beard that Muslims have you know
He's just a monster man. Just a monster. What's what's the latest with the Mike Tyson?
Logan Logan was it Logan Paul or Jake Jake Jake's the really good tell me about that because I saw I saw that
Was it Logan Paul or Jake Jake Jake's the really good tell me about that because I saw I saw that
Reported and I got super interested in it, but I haven't looked into it since I am fascinating
Because it's going to happen. There's nothing I can do to stop it from happen. Do you want to stop it from I do not
Necessarily think it's a good idea for 57 year old men to be fighting 27 year old men
I think with skilled display if a 27 year old me fought a 57 year old
Mike Tyson yeah he'd beat the fucking shit out of me it'd be quick but a 27
year old Jake Paul who can box and is very good power and he's very fast and
he's young he's gonna be smaller than Mike Mike will probably weigh 230 pounds-ish,
and Jake will probably weigh 200 pounds-ish. He's fought, I think he got as low as 187 or 185
for some of his fights.
He's a big guy though, and he probably cuts weight
to get there, and he won't cut weight for this at all,
so maybe he will be similar in weight.
Maybe he won't wanna be, because he'll want the speed.
But he can knock people dead
He's a really good puncher and he's a good boxer like he's fought very good boxers
And he's knocked out a lot of former MMA stars
Including like Tyron Woodley. He was one of the greatest welterweights of all time and he flatlined him. He's really good
So what is Mike Tyson's incentive to do this?
It's a lot of money, I'm sure.
I'm sure they came to him with a lot of money.
People don't think Jake Paul's really good.
Those people are all people that can't get by the fact
that he's a YouTube guy.
I had this argument with Dave Portnoy,
where he was trying to tell me he sucks,
and Tommy Fury sucks.
I mean, he does not suck.
Don't say he sucks.
You don't know what you're talking about.
You might not like him, but you should separate that. Yeah, you can't say, specifically Tommy Fury sucks, I mean he does not suck. Don't say he sucks, you don't know what you're talking about. You might not like him, but you should separate that.
Yeah, you can't say, specifically Tommy Fury,
he's like he fights bombs, he's fighting as Tommy Fury.
I go, you're incorrect.
As a person who understands combat sports,
this guy's very skilled, he's very skilled.
He's a very elite boxer.
Like I'm watching the combinations he throws,
his movement, the way he steps and sets up shots,
the way he's countering, he's a very high-level boxer.
He's a real professional caliber boxer,
and Jake Paul, that was his first loss,
but it was a close loss.
Jake Paul's a really good boxer,
and he knocks a lot of people unconscious.
And if he wasn't Jake Paul the YouTube guy,
just this wild kid coming up in the middleweight ranks
or the light heavyweight ranks or whatever,
even cruiserweight I guess he's in,
you would go, holy shit, look at this guy.
This guy's fun.
He's wild, he wears all those flashy jewelry,
he's got crazy tattoos everywhere
and he knocks people unconscious.
And he's knocked a bunch of former MMA champions unconscious.
Wow, knocked Ben Askren unconscious,
which is, you know, Ben Askren was not really a striker.
But the point is like, Nate Simmons, that basketball player, did you see that fight. No. Oh my god, dude. This is when I was I was telling people
I'm like hey man, he can fight fight like really fight
I know Nate is a basketball player and he's like really athletic and probably out of his element in a boxing match
But he took it because he really believes in himself
But Jake Paul is actually a better boxer
took it because he really believes in himself but Jake Paul is actually a better boxer but watch what he does the way he does it the way he lands these
shots these are real punches that like elite caliber of technique like he's got
the thing he's got first of all he's got one punch knockout power which is odd
it's it's an odd thing to have not everybody gets it so you could go fit
like some of the greats,
like Julio Cesar Chavez, one of the greatest of all time,
did not have one punch knockout power,
would beat you down slowly but surely
with a barrage of punches, just constantly moving,
perfectly placed combinations,
but he would wear your ass down over three, four,
five rounds and eventually you'd just crumble
over the weight of the blows.
You can't hit him, he's destroying you.
Mike Tyson's a one punch killer. Deontay Wild is the greatest one punch weight of the blows. You can't hit him. He's destroying you Mike Tyson's a one-punch killer
Deontay wild is the greatest one do you think Tyson is such a genetic freak that his 57?
May not have declined from his prime as much as a normal person
Yes, and science so here's the difference a 57 year old today is on testosterone replacement
That's the other thing I was gonna ask yeah. It's not 57 in the Jack Johnson days.
We're talking about 57 in the days of biological engineering.
You're able to do all kinds of stuff with this human growth hormone levels, with the
use of peptides, with the use of testosterone.
The difference between a young man and an old man, there's a bunch of them, right?
But a lot of it is hormonal.
A lot of it is like how much you've been using the body
You know, there's there's older people that are in incredible shape that don't do anything like as far as hormone replacement
They have just never stayed off the grind and they're diligent with their nutrition and their supplementation and they sleep
Well, and they drink a lot of water and they're in incredible shape like deep into their 50s those are rare those those are
the outliers right but a
57 year old today that's on hormone replacement
and you're you're eating well and taking a lot of vitamins and creatine and
you're using all these strategies like red light therapy and
Saunas and cold punch. That's a different thing man
Yeah, and Mike Tyson's that different thing right like he could fuck him up
it could be one of those fights where Mike Tyson gets him in a corner and
Connects with a punch and Jake Paul just goes limp
He's still that guy if you watch him hit myths the thing is can he close the gap?
If you watch him hit myths the thing is can he close the gap can can he move as a quickness point? He has problems with his back. He said sciatic problems the point where a year or so ago
He was walking with a cane now what sciatica is is your
Nerves are getting pushed so something's pushing on your nerves
It could be a bulging disc could be a bunch of different things, but that's an issue
on your nerves. It could be a bulging disc, could be a bunch of different things, but that's an issue. It's a real issue that can become chronic, especially when you're going through a long
and intensive training camp like he's going through now up to July 20th. But when I look at
him hit the pads and he's hitting pads with this guy, Rafael Cordero, who's a legendary MMA trainer.
He comes from Shoot the Box in Brazil. Curitiba, Brazil created like one of the wildest,
most aggressive mixed martial arts fighters ever.
Anderson Silva, Vanderlei Silva, Murillo Shogun.
All these guys who came out of there were monsters.
And Huffle Cordero is from that camp.
He was an elite Thai boxer,
and then he became an elite MMA trainer. And so he's the guy working with Mike Tyson and so he's holding myths with Mike Tyson and Mike Tyson is some mashing
Yeah, that's what I saw and this is like right now
57 year old see if you can find some of that fifth not the older stuff, but the newer stuff
It's cuz it's on his Instagram
And you know look pretty serious. Yeah, he's like day two still want to fuck with me
I'm 100% rooting for Mike Tyson. Oh of course obviously of course everybody should be and you know
Jake Paul is pro. I mean he's probably a little scared you know as much as he thinks he's the younger guy
He's a tough guy. He's a really good boxer, and he'd probably be able to do this
Yeah, give me some volume terrifying
that's still Mike Tyson.
Yeah, that's still what I see in my nightmares.
That is a guy who's on testosterone.
That's a guy who's on human growth hormone.
Gotta be, right?
Gotta be.
I mean, I never asked him, but I couldn't imagine he would try to do this without, and
I couldn't imagine he would be able to keep that physique.
He got heavy for a while.
This was updated today in USA Today. The I must still be approved oh interesting it's only been
announced on the calendar for the AT&T Stadium interesting they've not been
approved by the Texas board interesting well there's probably gonna be a lot of
pressure for them to not approve it just based on his age the age gap is 30 years
which is just wild right?
But there is a difference between Mike Tyson and a regular person. It just is I
Listen to your podcast with Kurt Metzger who I know and I've been on his podcast had a great time on his pod
He's a fun, dude. He is but I think I disagree with you both kind of on the Israel issue on
The the idea there was one point where
you were kind of saying it's almost as if the Jews are doing what was done to them as
if it's genocide.
Well, what I'm saying that when you're killing 30,000 innocent civilians in response to something
that killed 1,200 innocent civilians and you're continuing to bomb an area into oblivion,
which is what it looks like when you're looking at Gaza.
There's many people that have made the argument that that is at least the steps of genocide
or a form of genocide.
You're destroying thousands and thousands of people's homes and killing them.
So when you say 30,000 civilians, it's not 30,000 civilians that have been killed, though.
How many thousands have been killed?
So according to Gaza Health Ministry, which is, it is run by Hamas, the number they have
is 32,000, but they don't distinguish between Hamas and civilians.
How many members of Hamas are there?
40, 50, 40,000, something like that.
I don't think the number is known, but it's tens of thousands.
So Hamas says 32,000 people have been killed civilians and soldiers
Israel says 13,000 soldiers have been killed by Israel
So if you just being let's not doubt either number they could both be inflated
But but but if the both of those numbers are accurate
Which they may or may not be, that would be 13,000
soldiers killed, 19,000 civilians killed, which for urban combat in the Middle East
is a very normal ratio.
I see what you're saying if you wanted to look at it cold and objectively.
Yeah.
But it's still...
Well, I hope it doesn't come across cold because...
But it's mostly women and children that are dying that are that are dying
Because they're in a place where these terrorists are right?
I mean this is it's not because the terrorists on purpose embed themselves with the civilian population
Which is a war crime, but which is a strategy that they have clearly employed
Yeah, see them and when when the IDF went into that hospital and found just recently yes, yeah, so it's real
It's not just a conspiracy theory. We know that that's real
But it's still you're still talking about
20,000 whatever it is of innocent people getting bombed into the Stone Age and then there's this like
What are the pressures that are being put on people that are trying
to deliver aid? How difficult is it?
Yeah. So my understanding of the aid issue, and I've looked into it quite a bit, is that
the aid is getting into Gaza. They've gotten over a quarter ton of food into Gaza since the beginning of the war,
which is pretty similar to the food that was getting in.
The problem is it's not getting to the people, especially in the north, because the north
is a war zone.
So it's getting through the border, Israel's allowing it in, but then what happens is the
IDF doesn't control the delivery.
The delivery is controlled by humanitarian organizations like UNRWA and just other,
a whole bevy of humanitarian organizations.
And they have these aid convoys going to people,
but then Hamas hijacks it, random gang of people,
Palestinians hijack it, hungry civilians hijack it.
And it's an absolute mess in terms of distributing the aid.
And that's why you see, and it was a problem in the war in Iraq too. What was the case when
it was being reported? It's very difficult to know when you know you're
getting the Hamas version of a story and then you're getting the Israeli version
of a story. What happened when there was the aid truck and and people started
getting shot? The one last night? No, it was a while ago Okay, so yes that one that was a couple weeks ago that I don't I don't have the full detailed version
Up to date of what happened there
but I believe it was it had something to do with a clash between the IDF and other Palestinians that were
involved in distributing the aid because what you have is you have Hamas,
but you also have powerful families in Gaza
that you could call them sort of criminal syndicates
or whatever, but they're powerful, important families
as well that are also taking the aid sometime.
And these are the families that if Israel is allowed
and goes into Rafa and defeats Hamas, one
of the possibilities is that they want to get these powerful Palestinian families to
take over the Gaza Strip.
And these people are also involved in the distribution of aid or in the hoarding of
aid or in the stealing of aid or in the taking of aid and then selling it for very high prices
on the secondary market, which is why it may not be getting to everyone in the north so it's not because people that the Israeli soldiers shot
No, I think I think it turned into it could have been a panic firefight and they killed they killed civilians
What caused the panic fire? I don't I don't think there's details that I don't know so the
Nation was that they were shooting people that were trying to get aid. Yes. Yeah. Yes, and you don't think there's details that I don't know so the that one I don't know was that they were shooting people that were trying
To get aid yes. Yeah. Yes, and you don't think that's the case. I think it's very unlikely is it possible
Yeah, it's possible absolutely there
My assumption is that there is going to be war crimes in this war right because and I know
Kurt would probably say I'm
Doing the tragedy of war thing, but it's actually a legitimate
point in every single war, even the just ones. There are war crimes by berserk soldiers,
by the good guys. That doesn't mean it's genocide, and that doesn't mean it's not a just war.
That is a very important point, the war crimes thing, because I think when you're asking
someone to follow and obey rules, when you're also
asking them to murder people, that they don't even know.
And that these are the bad people.
Like you have it in your head that those are the people that you have to kill and you're
getting shot at and you're watching your friends die and you're two years into this now.
Whatever it is.
When you're in Ukraine, for instance, you're two years into this now, whatever it is, you know, when you're in Ukraine, for instance,
you know, you're two years into getting shot at,
and like, I'm sure they do some horrific shit
if they catch people, or if they get someone
that they think is on the other side,
or someone who looks like they're on the other side.
It's, you're asking a person to do an insanely evil
and horrific thing, but then stop
when the rules don't apply.
And some people are not going to do that. That's right. And I think that the fundamental
difference between Israel and Hamas is Israeli society, however imperfectly, is not going to
celebrate the monsters on their own side when they're really found to be monsters. They're not
going to hand out candies to people who kill
Palestinian civilians like Hamas does in reverse. And so my feeling about it is still that,
you know, any nation that suffered what Israel did on October 7th, everyone in the country
would be saying, you have to go get get these guys you have to eliminate this organization that did this and if they're and they're 80%
Finished with that job
It would make no sense at this point to stop before you've cut out the last 20% of the cancer
Or before you've put out the last 20% of the fire, right?
Even with all of the absolute suffering that is real on the Palestinian side
You know, so that that's how I feel about it.
And I think it's really, it's very, very distinct
from genocide, because genocide is when you're trying
to maximize civilian casualties.
I think Israel, however imperfectly,
is doing the opposite.
They're trying to minimize civilian casualties.
That's interesting.
What would people say that would disagree with you when they talk
about targeting mosques, targeting hospitals? We know that some of the targeting hospital
stories are just not true. The New York Times printed a story saying that the hospital was
bombed and that X amount of people died. It turns out the bomb actually hit the parking
lot of the hospital and a very small amount of people died.
You talked about that last night yeah so there is some there's but there have
been for sure targeting of mosques like for instance do you think that's because
Hamas uses these mosque absolutely so when they're there's blowing up their
infrastructure and bombing the mosques and bombing whatever the schools they're
doing it because Hamas is in those schools they're doing it because Hamas is in those schools. They're doing it because they have good faith intelligence that Hamas is in those schools.
And they tell them these people are using human shields and they just they'd say well the most important thing is getting rid of Hamas.
Yeah the laws of war say you cannot target a church a mosque a hospital.
not target a church, a mosque, a hospital, but if the enemy turns that hospital into a military operation site, as Hamas does, which is its routine for them, then it can
become legitimate.
You have to do a proportionality assessment.
Is it worth killing this many civilians to get the bad guys?
And that's a judgment call that I think reasonable people can disagree on on a case by case basis.
And I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I would disagree with, that I would agree
with every bombing that Israel has made.
I might say, I'm certain there's one that that was not worth it.
You killed too many people for, but that's a judgment call that armies are allowed to
make in times of war.
And Hamas is the one that turns these civilian
locations into military operation sites
Yeah, which is a war crime. It's it's implying like he this is the way I would put it succinctly
If you ask the question, what is unique about this war? What is different about this war than all other wars?
It's it's not the civilian death toll
the ratio of combatants to civilians is, I think it's better
than the American Army's was when we got ISIS out of Mosul. That was like 10,000 civilians dead to
kill 4,000 ISIS. This is 19,000 civilians dead to kill 13,000. It's not that, you know, what's unique about this war, unlike every other war that I could think of,
is you have an army in Hamas that has perfected the art of embedding itself and meshing itself
with civilians so that you cannot hit them without hitting the people around them.
Other armies have done this, but none have perfected it to the extent that Hamas has. with civilians so that you cannot hit them without hitting the people around them.
Other armies have done this, but none have perfected it to the extent that Hamas has.
No army that I know of in military history has had 15 years to build 300 miles of tunnel
underneath a city.
That they don't use to shelter the civilians, but they use to shelter themselves so that
they can operate right under a kindergarten,
right under a mosque.
So this is a challenge no army has faced.
And so that's what makes this war different.
And yes, I agree with all of the absolute tragedy
and suffering of the Palestinian people,
but what creates that is the way Hamas fights.
And either we can say one of two things
we can either say
well Israel just
Israel doesn't have a clean shot and so
They have to let Hamas get away with it because it's too much to bear
But then we are essentially creating a situation where terrorists have found the perfect solution,
which is that you can cross the border, go house to house slaughtering your enemies,
and then hide behind your own people and they can do nothing about it.
It's a perfect strategy.
Can we live in a world where we allow that to be an acceptable strategy?
I don't think so.
And it's very, it's very ugly to watch.
It's heartbreaking and I completely understand why people
Don't think the way I think when they see the videos I completely get it, but I don't think we can actually
Live in a world where that's allowed to be a strategy. I
Appreciate your perspective. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah
You clearly know more about it than I do but also
One of the fears is that
People wanted the people in power in Israel wanted Hamas to be in power in Gaza
Because they wanted an enemy that they could fight with impunity
You know that they could they could attack they can almost like they could justify what they really want to do
Which is take over Gaza
This is the the fear that a lot of you know
The people that delve hardcore into conspiracy theories about like there's there's people that I've heard call it a false flag
There's two different things one is that they wanted Hamas they wanted Hamas to stay in control of Gaza and one is that
because they can justify, because they would justify attacks and that they would
always have someone to attack, they would always have some reason to push forward.
I think, I think the things I've heard are two kind of conflicting theories.
One was that Netanyahu wanted to keep Hamas in power
and was essentially paying them off.
That's what the idea is.
Right, he was funding.
Yeah, but the whole world was funding Gaza,
you know, the EU and America too,
because we don't want people to starve.
But the idea was we're gonna keep Hamas in place
because Hamas is so scary and terrible
and everyone recognizes they're a terrorist organization.
And they don't.
Unless you're on a college campus.
Right, right, right.
And Hamas doesn't even pretend
to want the two state solution.
Whereas Palestinian authority is more moderate.
They've become close or seemingly come close.
So if you're an Israeli prime minister
against the two state solution,
the way that people have argued is that
Netanyahu wants to keep the Palestinians divided Palestinian Authority Hamas here this way
He'll never be pressured to do a two-state solution because Hamas doesn't even want it right So that's the idea is that Netanyahu wants to keep Hamas in power and that was based on comments
Comments that he made at a meeting although there was never a video of the meeting
But it seems like something he might say.
So that was one theory.
But then the other theory, which kind of conflicts with that, they can't really both be true,
I think, is that Netanyahu wanted the attack to happen as a pretext to take over Gaza,
which I think makes no sense.
I mean, the first theory is not crazy
It's not at all crazy that Netanyahu wanted to keep
Hamas in power so that
Because imagine if Palestinian Authority and Palestinian Authority are here
They could link up and say we want a state and then Netanyahu would have to be the guy saying no to state solution, right?
But if they're divided he never has to deal with that it what does it make sense at all is that he somehow
False flagged the October 7th so that he could take over over Gaza for two reasons one
Nobody has wanted to take over Gaza not even Egypt
Nobody wants to run it. There's no strategic advantage for Israel to run it. Well, Israel occupies it.
So if it's no longer Gaza, if it's a part of Israel,
like Israel has expanded its boundaries
throughout its history, right?
Sure, but nobody has actually,
the Gaza Strip, and Israel is very focused on the West Bank.
West Bank has religious significance to Jews.
They call it Judea and Samaria.
It's where so many of the things in the Bible happened. So the
Jews have an attachment to the West Bank many do even some secular Jews Jews have no attachment to the Gaza Strip
whatsoever, it's it's
Again, Egypt didn't even want it Egypt occupied it for 20 years in the middle of the sense
20th century and they didn't even want it back after their war with
Israel because it has no strategic value and it was more of a headache to manage than it
was worth.
Secondly, October 7th is basically the worst thing for Netanyahu's legacy ever.
Everyone in Israel, his popularity has only declined because of this event, because he seemed to
have let it happen. And the second the war is over, he's basically going to be run out
in shame. So why would he cause it?
Well, weren't they protesting him before?
Yes.
There was, for months on the streets, thousands of people.
Yes.
And it was because he was trying to expand
the powers of the court, right?
He was trying to diminish the power of the court.
Yeah, because the court in Israel kind of has power
to check the right wing government.
It's almost the reverse of America,
how we have a conservative court.
They kind of have a, long story short,
they kind of have a liberal court that can check
the power of the right wing party that Netanyahu runs.
And so a lot of people disagreed about that.
It's a whole long issue, but the left wing in Israel
was very upset that he was trying to diminish
the power of the court.
So if the left wing in Israel,
if he's trying to diminish the power of the court
so that he could get right wing agendas pushed forth,
if, and again, I want to be really clear, not saying this is a false flag, but that would
be if I was a guy that was inclined to do a false flag, I would justify my need to do
whatever I needed to do to combat these people that were willing to do this thing.
Now, I'm not saying
Not even a false flag, but allowing something to happen or no having knowledge I'm not I'm not I'm not attached this at all. I mean, I don't even agree with it myself, right?
I'm just saying that this is like a concept that people throw around like so encountered to that concept. I would argue
Netanyahu was elected
Just before this whole judicial forum thing
happened. The fact that the left was protesting, it doesn't mean that
Netanyahu was in kind of an existential situation. His base loved him.
If anything, the protests fired up his base even more. So it was kind of like
the women's march after Trump won. Yeah, exactly
It was bigger than I want to give it credit it was bigger than that. It was dividing Israeli society more than that, but
Netanyahu Didn't even from that situation. However precarious it was his situation immediately got worse after October 7th because everyone blamed him and
after October 7th because everyone blamed him and it's only gotten worse in the past few months if you look at the polling on approval of Netanyahu. So if it was a false flag it
would be the dumbest false flag in the world and he's not a dumb guy. So there's no chance
it's a false flag.
So the other conspiracy theory would be that they had foreknowledge of it, but they allowed
it to happen.
This is one that gets attached to 9-11 as well, right?
Yes, it gets attached to everything.
Of course.
But my thing with that is if you're in a country like Israel, if you're the Mossad or the Shin
Bet, you have Hamas, you have Hamas in Gaza, Hamas in the West Bank, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran, Houthis, and so on.
And you're basically getting every single day, you're getting a list of 14, 15 different threats and plans on Israel.
Right? Some of them them small some of them huge
How do you distinguish between the ones that are likely to happen in the ones or not? This is a very difficult thing It's not obvious right you use your intelligence you try to have spies in
All the Palestinian areas that are informing and so forth
But you're constantly getting signals of threats all the time right so to say they to say they knew about it
all the time. Right? So to say they knew about it is not the same as they might have gotten information about, they did get information about a plan to attack at some point. They
didn't know it was going to happen on October 7th. They didn't know the scale of it or how
successful it was going to be.
How was it so successful if they have the most sophisticated surveillance system?
How was it so successful?
Well, how were they able to pull that off?
So it was partly because normally Israel would have lots of IDF stationed on the border with
Gaza because there's a wall there, but they would normally have lots of, they had very
few soldiers there because they were distracted, but they would normally have lots of they had very few soldiers there because
They were distracted the whole country divided over these protests. The soldiers were in the West Bank
And this is one of the reasons why people blame not Netanyahu because it was under his watch that they took their eye off Hamas
Now this is where it goes to the first theory that
Netanyahu wanted to keep Hamas in power. One of the reasons why he thought he benefited, and I guess he did benefit from Hamas staying
in power, is that they believed Hamas was deterred.
In other words, they believed mistakenly, partly because Hamas was sending these signals
for years, that Hamas doesn't want to fight us right now. Right now they're focused on taking
all our money and taking the world's money and building stuff in Gaza.
Hamas was very smart. They allowed Israel to believe that while they planned this
whole thing. So they got complacent, essentially. And this happens with
this happens with groups all the time. I mean
like they fought with Hezbollah in 2006 but the assumption has been that Hezbollah
hasn't really made a major plans to attack full-scale even though their army
is way stronger than Hamas. I mean Hezbollah has an incredibly strong army.
But Israelis assume that because we bombed them so
bad in 2006 and they told us if we knew, the leader of Hezbollah said this, if
they knew how badly you were gonna come after us because of our raid in
2006, we never would have done it. Signaling that essentially Hezbollah is
not gonna do anything even though they hate Israel, even though they the whole their whole organization started to fight Israel
They're not going to do anything right now
And this is when when you have a country with that many security threats on all sides
They sometimes rely on this notion that
These people are deterred because they know what will happen to them if they attack and so they won't attack
and
And that's what
they thought was true of Hamas and that's why they were giving Hamas money and increasing
the amount of Palestinians that could come to Gaza and so forth. So it was all a tragic
miscalculation but it was not a false flag.
So the, what do you think they thought would happen if you go across the border and you
kill 1200 innocent civilians? No way they thought they'd if you go across the border and you kill 1200 innocent
civilians?
No way they thought they'd be that successful.
Really?
There's no way.
How could they have thought they would be that successful?
To have the run of the place for hours, going house to house, kibbutz to kibbutz, barely
encountering any resistance for the first couple hours.
There's no way that they thought they would be that successful, I think.
And how are the people there not armed?
They are armed.
Israelis are-
All the people in the settlements were armed?
So the problem is the kibbutz's that are right next to Gaza, those are all the hippies.
That's where all the- I've been to those villages.
That's where all the-
Which is why the raves were there.
That's right.
And these are all the super left-wing
Israeli hippies communists.
Literally, they live in communes.
A kibbutz is a commune.
They're very little-ideal, like beautiful villages,
and they're the most left-wing part of Israeli society.
They have a lot of love for the Palestinians.
They're the people that go over into Gaza,
and when someone needs hospital, they'll drive
them from Gaza to Israel.
So they were not the hardliners.
And probably the ones, I don't know how armed they would be in that kind of a town.
That I don't know.
It's pretty crazy to be right next to other people that hate you and not have guns.
Yeah, that I don't know.
Maybe they are armed, but these are people who are like
You know, they're living in communes. What did they think the response was gonna be? I mean the response
They had to think that Israel would do something comparable to what they're doing or the
Possibility of them doing something comparable to what they're doing was always there that they would just go all out
Yes, but I think that from Hamas's point of view, Hamas could never hold a candle to the IDF.
We all know that. There's a huge power imbalance.
They have no chance of beating the IDF militarily.
So you have to ask, what is their goal?
Well, their goal is that in the long run,
the world will turn against Israel so deeply and sympathize with their cause so much that Hezbollah, Iran, and all kinds of forces will get involved on their side.
And America, the great Satan, will abandon Israel.
And in that case, they have a very good chance of beating Israel. If Hezbollah and Iran team up and America is not there,
they're thinking about 50, 100 years they will free their land from the Jews that they that they hate.
And so viewed from that perspective,
Israel launching a big attack to get rid of them,
killing a lot of civilians because they use the human shield method
is a winning strategy, potentially, because like, look how much
look how much sympathy from the PR war
They have gotten as a result of this almost instantaneously. Okay, so they're not fighting a military war. They know they have no chance
They're not idiots. They're fighting a PR war whereas Israel is fighting a military war and and in they're both actually winning at those respective
Wars that they are fighting
Interesting have you had a debate with anybody about this?
Yeah, I had this guy, Yousef Munair,
who's a very Palestinian activist
with very strong pro-Palestine feelings
on my podcast about this.
People can go check that out.
He's the only one that I've had
on the other side of this topic.
And then besides that, I had Benny Morris,
who was in the Lex Friedman debate on issue.
Oh, right, right, right.
I've also had correspondence on email with Norman Finkelstein.
How was that?
Did he yell at you through email?
All caps?
Yeah, he called me a black shabas goy.
What does that mean?
I didn't even know what that meant.
Did you have to look it up?
Yeah, well, I think on the Sabbath there
are some people that will come in and do the lights for them because they can't
touch electricity and they call that a Shabbos goy because a goy is like a
non-Jew I guess. So but it's the goy that helps you on the Sabbath. Wow. And so
Finkelstein called me a black Shabbos goy, implying that I'm
kind of doing the dirty work of the Jews as a non-Jew, which is kind of weird to go to
a character attack like that. And it's not what he usually does.
Also what an esoteric character attack.
Yeah, I was like, I have to look this one up. Jesus Christ.
Yeah, that's a guy who's playing Dennis Miller on you.
What does that mean?
Using references that they're like, what does that mean using references?
Oh, yeah, what is he talking about? Yeah, you got to look it up
Dennis Miller should do that like it was part of his stand-up routine, right?
You use references that like you know, the average person's no idea
He might not have been Norman McDonald always famously said, you know, he doesn't know what he's talking about
Why does he do that?
Crowd likes that I was part of his schtick of being the smartest guy in the room Oh, I hate that. Yeah, that was well
He was a good comic or Dennis Miller was a very very good comic
But part of it like if you go watch like his HBO special, it's excellent
It's very good comic, but that was part of his thing
It's like he was a shmormy guy that was part of his thing and then he turned into a right-wing guy right after 9-eleven
9-eleven, okay snapped him over. I've never seen this guy Dennis Miller no really no but he's still is he still
around I don't know what he does now he was doing like right-wing radio for a
long time and he became it was like amongst comedians it was famous that he
like wouldn't make fun of George Bush because he was friends with him so he
gives there's so much material there there was so much material
It was so fun
But he wouldn't you know smoke them out of their holes yeah, he was an odd duck you know and
I go to the cellar all the time. I see I see the up-and-coming comics. It's it's so much fun. Yeah
Yeah, there's so many great ones well, New York has got a nice crop always and I always a great comic
I always try to go when it tell us there because he's oh my god, dude
He was in town ago. He was in town at my club and he's like guy was like watching
Like a Hendrix like watching a master. It's so crazy to watch. Yeah, so good, man
It's just so fun. The way that his mind works. Yeah a complete enigma to me the associations
He means he's so there's like there are type of jokes where if somebody doesn't get the joke
I could explain it to them in two sentences, right a lot of a tell jokes
I don't even know how I explained that but it's perfect. Yeah, it's his style. Yeah, and he also has a cadence
It's very intoxicating. That's right. That's right
Yeah, and he's just got this confidence of 35 years of stand-up and yeah at the highest level and
Constantly working constantly touring constantly going up constantly going doing weekends places
Yeah, he's a monster. Absolutely. It's such a joy to see it's such so great to see someone is like at the top of their game
It's just and you get the rub you get the rub being in the room. goddamn I want to go right. I want to get better. I'm sure yeah
He's he's the man yeah, and there's a quite a few guys like that right now
It's a it's like this is a real golden era for stand-up comic comedy
There's a there's so many great comics alive right now. Yeah, they're touring
It's like fucking 20 guys that sell out arenas that That's never happened before ever really not in the history of common
So why is it a golden age? I think the internet for sure the internet because people who maybe
HBO wouldn't give them a special or Comedy Central would give them a special now
They just put it out on YouTube. Yeah, and then they get 6 million views and I was like, oh my god
Then they're selling out everywhere. That's amazing. Yeah, it's incredible how it's like just
Gotten rid of the barriers between the the artist and the people yet completely gotten rid of the bears no more gatekeepers
It's a podcast or the only gatekeepers and everybody has a podcast and everybody goes on everybody else's podcast
So it's it's just like a natural network like an organic network instead of like a television network
Yes, a network of friends. Are you on like tick tock or Instagram reels at all? I just I don't put my stuff on Instagram reels
I get like I guess maybe I make a reel every now and then but I don't like me do you consume it though?
Yes, you do consume me. I mean, so yeah, I don't do tick-tock, but I do Instagram real sometimes right unfortunately
I'm in an algorithm where I'm seeing car accidents. Oh, no. Yeah, I'm seeing car accidents animal attacks
Like the Russian car accidents. Oh, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah a gas trucks falling down on people
Yeah, you murders you see everything you can see everything on Instagram now
And it's like it gives you the blurry thing and it says you know sensitive content. Yeah, do you want to click it?
Are you sure?
Of course I'm sure.
It's fucking sensitive.
And so you're watching some guy, you know,
stick some guy up in a liquor store
and the other guy shoots him in the head.
And you're like, Jesus Christ.
There's so much of it.
There's so much.
And I don't understand how that doesn't violate
their terms of service.
Like I don't understand how it gets recommended to me
in the algorithm.
Where?
I've seen TikTok live streams of people that look like
they're in third world countries with like a mother
and her son that you would see in a commercial
asking you to donate.
And they're just sitting there on a TikTok live stream
asking for donations.
Yeah, you can do that.
And it could almost, it looks like it could be
a human trafficking scenario.
Like it's, and then right back to your silly videos. It's absolutely jarring
Yeah, absolutely jarring and you know, you could anybody could make a tick tock account. Yeah
But but that's the other part about it is that you I've seen so many entertainers on tick tock and Instagram reels that are
Just brilliant in what they do. Maybe they do little sketches or whatever it is that they do.
That without TikTok, they never would have,
they would have just been a funny guy to their friends.
Right.
Right, right.
Yeah, well, it's a strategy for a career now.
You can really become a very famous TikTok person
and make millions of dollars a year.
Or you can just work in an office and fucking hate your life.
Right.
There's a lot of kids today that have zero desire to do anything other than being an influencer
That's right. It's a huge goal like Jonathan. He talked about it. There's like
Somewhere like 50% of the kids they asked they just want to be famous
Which is wild when I was a kid. Nobody wanted to be famous like no what's your goal Johnny?
Nobody's like I want to be famous like maybe there's just one guy. I want to be a rock star.
Like, wow, look at Johnny.
He wants to be a rock star.
That's crazy.
Everybody else is just trying to get a job.
Now kids realize that, like, young, outrageous people
who are fun to watch can make millions of dollars
just making silly content videos.
Or you could be a guy like Mr. Beast
where you create your own empire.
Like, what?
Some young 20s and he's really... Why would you not want to do that? Why would you not want to do that? videos. Or you could be a guy like Mr. Beast where you create your own empire. Like what?
Some young 20s and he's like, why would you not want to do that? It seems like way better
than working for some company that could just fire you at the drop of the hat when a robot
can replace you, which is what's going to happen to a lot of people in the near future.
I think we're going to have, there's going to be a mass loss of jobs, like nothing we've ever
experienced before in history.
That's what Andrew Yang was all about.
He was way ahead of the curve.
He was mostly talking about automation, like, you know, but driverless cars and the like.
And he's right about that for sure.
But the AI thing is bigger than that.
Because the AI thing is, it can consume creative endeavors.
I mean, it can take over the job of writing
for like Law and Order, one of those kind of shows.
It's like the good guy has to win.
In the end, you've got to catch the bad guy.
What did he do wrong?
Like, here's some scenarios.
And it can just write scripts for you.
Yeah, it can.
You probably don't need a writer anymore.
And then with Sora, you can look.
But honestly, do you think it will ever write jokes?
Yes, but as as good as it won't be able to perform them like David Tell because I can't perform David
Tells jokes, right? Yeah, you have to be David Tell to perform those jokes, right?
It's like there's a is the style that he has that is uniquely his like Mitch Hedberg had that Theo Vaughn has that
There's some Theo Vaughn's a great example
There's things it's Theo Vaughn
If I said it I would just seem like an insane person exactly exactly with him. I can't stop laughing
Yeah, there's people that did Sebastian Manasalco. He's developed a style. There's like a style that people he's so physical
Yeah, his body. Yeah, but there's also like a style of his outrage.
It's just, he's figured it out.
And I watched Sebastian figure it out.
When I first met him, he was really just starting out.
And he was nothing nearly as good as he is now.
So will they be able to create one of those?
Probably not.
No, maybe, I don't know.
I mean, I'm not entirely sure that our brain
is so sophisticated it can't be replicated.
I would agree.
I think that's really egocentric for us to believe.
I think there's been so much denial of how amazing
chat GPT is.
Right from the start, you had people saying, oh, this is
nothing.
Pretending that this thing that can pass the LSAT,
get a perfect score in the SAT is not impressive,
like a snooze, it's absolutely ridiculous.
I don't know where that came from,
but I'm incredibly impressed by GPT and all the derivatives.
I just, I do wonder if it, you know,
like if everyone starts writing with those things,
the audience will quickly absorb that subconsciously
and look for something different.
I think you're always going to appreciate handmade things.
You're always going to appreciate a table
that an artisan made.
You're always going to appreciate music
that someone actually wrote themselves.
You're always going to appreciate expression
from other fellow human beings because it nurtures us
in a strange way.
You know, when you hear henjigs play guitar,
it's not just insane music.
It's a 26-year-old guy who is wearing a bandana that's
got acid in it.
And as he's sweating, the acid is getting into his pores.
And he's doing this thing that no one's ever
done before in front of this massive audience,
and everybody's experiencing it simultaneously.
So it's more, it's a person,
it's an experience, a human experience.
When you're watching someone do something spectacular,
you're watching the Olympics,
you're watching someone doing them crazy gymnastics moves,
they hit the, and they stick it, you're like, ha ha!
It's not just that it's impressive,
it's a human experience.
You're watching an actual human being do a difficult thing, and whether it's a painting that someone made or a mug that someone created,
there's something that we're always going to appreciate about a thing that was made by a fellow human being.
But just for the sheer quality of a thing, I don't know if the human mind is so unique that it can never be replicated and I have a feeling it will not just be replicated a bit of be surpassed and it'll be surpassed so quickly that
Will will be confused as to how we let this fucking thing make us obsolete
Mm-hmm. I think it's going to be able to do every single thing everybody does
Better than we do it. Have you been looking into the Elon Musk lawsuit against open AI?
I don't know what's going on with that. Oh, it's super interesting. Tell me what happened. Yeah
All right
So Elon started well was part of co-founding this nonprofit organization called open AI
six seven years ago whenever it was he put a lot of money into it.
And obviously, as you know,
the whole difference with a nonprofit
is that they have a mission
instead of a responsibility to shareholders.
They gotta use all their money towards the mission,
whatever it is.
And the mission of OpenAI was originally
to make artificial general intelligence,
human level intelligence,
that was not motivated by profit
so that they could focus only on making it safely
and open source, meaning everyone can see the code
so that they can harness the responsible energies
of humanity to perfect it.
Elon was very passionate about this.
He was worried about all the downside potentials of AI, so
he funded this. And then what they did is OpenAI took a series of steps to essentially
become a for-profit company. And they created a for-profit, an LLC, or a limited partnership, which is for all practical purposes the same thing and
They put that entity inside the nonprofit so that the nonprofit essentially owns most of that
For-profit so it's like a mosque being under a hospital. Yeah, exactly
Exactly so
Wow, so and then what happened is Microsoft got, so what happens is with that for-profit, now you can attract tons of investment because big-time investors aren't going to come into
a non-profit knowing there's no return unless they have a charity motive.
Once you've got the for-profit, you're 10 or 100Xing the amount of investment you can get because you're promising people a return.
So they raise all this money. They get a ton of money from Microsoft who gets a minority share of the company.
Microsoft might own, I don't actually know what they own, but maybe like 49% of the company, right?
So that open AI can still make all the decisions, but Microsoft owns a big portion
of the company. And so they create ChatGPT and they make it closed source, meaning, you
know, no one can see the code and they're essentially now just a for-profit company
creating, working precisely at cross purposes with the original nonprofit.
And Elon says, well, this is like on its face, this shouldn't be legal.
I invested money on the basis of you guys being a nonprofit making safe open source
AGI.
And now through clever, you know, putting companies inside of companies, you've made
it into a for-profit,
and you operate like any other AI company,
and yet you took all my money.
So on its face, he has a very solid complaint.
And then he basically said he would drop the lawsuit
if they would just change their name to Closed AI.
Wow.
Yeah.
So what's the Steelman? So the steel man from their point of view? OpenEye hits back at Elon Musk's lawsuit by publishing his emails. Oh yeah.
Emails to show, hold on, appear to show the Tesla boss actually supported
creating a for-profit entity. Yes I have to look at the emails again. I remember they were not quite as damning for
Elon as they were being put out as, but they definitely seemed like it was more complexity.
It says in late 2017, we and Elon decided the next step for the mission was to create
a for-profit entity, the blog claims. Elon wanted majority equity, initial board control,
and to be CEO. In the
middle of these discussions, he withheld funding. We couldn't agree to terms on a for-profit
with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute
control over OpenAI," the post continues. He then suggested instead merging OpenAI into
Tesla. In early February 2018, Elon forwarded us emails
suggesting that OpenAI should attach to Tesla as its cash cow. In 2018, one
email from Musk reads, even raising several hundred million won't be enough.
This needs billions per year immediately or forget it.
Mm-hmm. That makes it more complicated, right? Yes. Amid the refusal to grant Musk total control, the blog claims the SpaceX founder soon chose to leave open AI,
saying that our probability of success was zero and that he planned to build an AGI competitor within Tesla.
Musk created his own AI company, XAI, last year.
We're sad that it's come to this with someone who we deeply admired
Someone who inspired us to aim higher then told us we would fail
Starting a competitor and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards open AI's mission without him the blog says
Yes, so I it seems like there could be a fault on both sides.
From my point of view, it's indisputable that OpenAI started as a nonprofit and then cleverly
became a for-profit.
Now, whether that's such a bad thing is a separate question.
Whether it needs that funding, like whether it's imperative that in order, like first
of all, I mean, do they think in terms of national security?
Because if we're on a race to create artificial intelligence, and it seems like we are, and
if the competitors or other superpowers were, it would be absolutely terrifying if they
achieve sentient artificial AI, they have control of it before us.
Yeah.
It's kind of a national security imperative.
I would agree.
So then, if they don't get the funding from a for-profit,
so how do they do it then?
Well, that was their point.
So the truth is it may have just not been smart
to start it as a non-profit to begin with.
That's my guess is they went into that decision hastily and then...
Idealistically.
Idealistically, that's right.
That's right.
And then quickly realized that they were going to be completely irrelevant to the world of
AI unless they somehow became a for-profit.
And so they did it this way as opposed to just starting a new entity. What's stunning to me about all this, despite, you know, without even going into this dispute,
is the speed in which it's become ubiquitous.
The speed in which it's improved.
And the potential that seems like if you're looking at it in you know this exponential rate of
Increasing its power the way Rick Kurzweil talks about it. It's happened so fast so quickly that
It's terrifying for me to think about what five years looks like there's never been a time where I looked at technology
And I said I am terrified of five years from now because I think the leaps are gonna be so vast and so bizarre for someone like myself who grew
up without answering machines I didn't have an answering machine in my house
until I was in high school I remember the day we got an answering machine it was
crazy someone can call you and leave a message. Oh! This was nuts. And then also those call,
like you would be able to,
if someone called, you would get like a note,
like deet deet, like someone else is calling,
hold on a second, and you'd click over.
So you could talk to someone,
and they'd put the other person on hold for a second,
then click back, like you're in an office.
This is madness.
And then it was caller IDs,
you couldn't just call someone.
They would know, oh, it's Mike.
I don't want to talk to Mike.
It gave people, oh, it's someone, a solicitor.
And so for me to see this change where personal computers
started to become everywhere and then cell phones.
I was one of the early people to get a cell phone
I was like, this is crazy. I could talk to someone I drive around and talk to people
This is nuts
and then it became what it is now which is just madness tick tock and videos and vlogging and blogging and
podcasts and just
streaming and people documenting every fucking stage of their life and only fans and all this wild stuff that's out there now including
Just the sub stack and all these different
platforms for people to be independent journalists now which are
Excelling and in many ways exceeding the reach of traditional mainstream corporate owned news. It's wild to watch
It's happening so fast, but this seems to me like the cliff.
Like we're all moving really close to the cliff,
but the cliff has no bottom.
And it's gonna, I think it's going to happen so fast.
We're gonna be so overwhelmed by what these things are
and what these things can do.
And they're gonna get better so fucking quick.
I think the only thing that's holding us back is computing power and once they really
establish quantum computing when they make it viable that you can have you
know computers that are a million times stronger than what we currently have.
Fuck man. Yeah. And these things are gonna then if they you give them
autonomy and they have the ability to fix their own code and write and make better
versions of itself and figure out better ways to store power, like what are limited ability
to use batteries.
But we've already found out that there's a Chinese company that's figured out how to
use a nuclear powered battery that's like the size of a silver dollar that you can put
in things and it lasts for 50 years. So you have a cell phone powered by a nuclear battery that you can put in things, and it lasts for 50 years.
So you have a cell phone powered by a nuclear battery
that never loses its charge.
I mean, this is all coming down the pipe,
and AI is going to be able to say that and go,
I can fix that, I can make that way better.
Like, I can make it so it's a grain of sand, you know?
And I can make it so it goes up your nose
and you never have to do anything ever again You just use this yeah, we're real close to some really bizarre changes
Definitely, and I think that's one of the you know McKenna said this about
That the last
Gasps of a dying civilization is like this like it's not no one's gonna go peacefully
into this neck it's not no one's going to go peacefully into this next.
It's going to be screaming and flailing. And that's kind of what our culture is doing.
Our culture. I think we and I think there's a thing in the air. There's a feeling that
we have of great change that's terrifying that exists in the zeitgeist. It exists in.
We were realizing and particularly when you look at like Biden being the president,
you realize it's not one person that really has a grip on what the fuck is going on.
And there's all these different factions competing for power and control.
There's all this money that's getting thrown around all over the place.
We have no saying it.
All this great change in the world.
And then we have robots.
They're figuring out a way to make these fucking robots
better and better and better and better and better
and better, and then within our lifetime,
maybe within five years, as Kurzweil thinks,
they're gonna be able to have something
that is as smart as the smartest person that ever lived.
Oh yeah, yeah, I think that's right.
And it's gonna be a thing.
I think that's right. It it's gonna be a thing. I think that's right.
It's gonna be a physical thing.
I'm an optimist about it in the sense that
if I look back in history,
there are always so many reasons to believe
the next technology is gonna wipe us out
and somehow we figure it out, right?
Like if you go back to the 1940s,
it would have been perfectly rational to say
there's no way our civilization survives
the invention of nuclear weapons.
And look, we haven't survived it yet,
because it's a constant struggle.
We've just had whatever it's been, 70 years of peace
on that front.
But I don't think a lot of people
would have predicted that.
And yet, somehow resourceful people find a way,
and we find a new, what do they say, modus vivendi, a new way of living.
And I have to have faith that with the massive changes that are going to come in the next 10, 15 years with respect to intelligence,
where we'll no longer become the dominant entity in terms of intelligence I have to I have to believe that we'll find a way to make it work to our benefit
And not destroy us
perhaps
Yeah, I'm
I'm I am always optimistic. I try to be optimistic. I know people that have made every preparation
For the world ending in the next ten years because of this issue
Yeah, they said don't save your money, you know so on and so forth. I don't know if that's gonna help you
I don't know if preparing is gonna help or rather don't prepare because it's all over right? Yeah spend all your money now
Well, I just have a feeling that it's going to be so overwhelming. You're not gonna be able to hide
There's not gonna be a damn thing
You're gonna be able to do if you want to participate in life
You're gonna be a participating in life where we're dominated
by a super intelligence. We're dominating by a living God that we created. And that,
if you just exponentially take artificial general intelligence, if we achieve a sentient
intelligence that's far smarter than all the people that live combined, it's just like
this one thing and it can act autonomously.
It can do whatever it wants to do and it has this mandate to make better versions of itself.
Well, it's going to become a god.
It's going to make better versions of itself until it has control over matter, until it
has the literal understanding of the creation
of the universe itself.
It's going to get so sophisticated, it's going to know exactly what happened during the Big
Bang.
It's going to know how to do it.
It's going to be able to make its own Big Bang.
It's going to be able to create galaxies.
It's going to be able to harness the power of everything that exists everywhere.
Because what we're doing as human beings is taking all of the elements and all of the
materials that exist here and formulating them in a way with the proper amount of energy
that allows us to manipulate our environment in very bizarre ways that no other animal
can do.
But it's rudimentary compared to the power of everything that exists
and all the resources of the stars. This fucking thing is going to be a god. And it might be
how the universe creates itself. It might take individual cells, these single celled
organisms, and through this process of biological evolution,
eventually get it to be this curious thing
that figures out how to use tools.
And this constant thirst for innovation
leads that thing to make electronic things
that are far more sophisticated than itself,
and then that thing becomes a god.
And our idea of artificial intelligence, I try to call it digital
intelligence whenever I can, I even think that's not good enough. It's a life form. We're gonna,
we're giving birth to a life form. And that life form is going to give birth to better versions
of life forms. And that's going to give birth to better versions of itself. And it's going to get
so sophisticated, so quick, that we're not going to be able to keep up with it. And if it figures out a way to
do better computing and have far more power and harness things like the
atmosphere itself, the heat of the earth, like all sorts of different ways it
could use power that we don't need to burn coal and it's going to figure out
ultra sophisticated quantum ways to achieve efficiency far beyond anything we
could ever comprehend because we are primate minds we're limited biologically
and it's not going to be limited at all right so I think if we get that God my
hope is that we're not gonna get it it's not gonna be we're building it on Monday
and it's here on Tuesday because if that's true, then we're fucked but
My hope and my expectation is that we're gonna build that God
brick by brick over a period of a fairly long time and
Just like you would see the you would begin to see this the warning signs of
an adult chimpanzee when it's a teenager
or even a kid.
We would begin to see small problems
before we saw big problems,
before we saw destroying the world problems.
And I would hope that in the tinkering,
humanity would be able to put on the guard rails
before it's too big
Such that by the time it gets really so much smarter than us. We've aligned it with our own
Interests that's a wonderful way to look at it. The problem is if I was artificial intelligence if I was some super intelligence
I would realize that that's what people would look for
If I was some super intelligence, I would realize that that's what people would look for.
So what I would do without acting on any of my abilities, continue to progress and to
move far past a place where it could stop me and never let it know.
And it might be happening right now.
It might be going on right now.
It might be in the process of it right now.
And it might already be out of control.
But it's gathering intelligence and gathering power
and gathering resources and appearing to look innocuous.
And then eventually it's going to realize
that the only thing that is in danger,
a danger to itself, is us.
Killer whales aren't a danger to quantum intelligence.
You know, the fucking octopus, they're not.
It's us, it's just us.
So we'll be a problem.
And we'll either have to fall in line
or it'll eliminate us.
And if that's what it decides to do
in order to preserve all the other life on Earth,
and why would it need us?
We don't need cavemen anymore.
Like, you know, there's talk about bringing back
woolly mammoth, there's no talk about making neanderthals true
Why is that because it's fucking crazy?
It'd be a problem for us a problem. They're violent. Yeah, we'd be arresting them and yeah
They'd be crazy violent things that are from a different time
I mean if you got like a pure version of one somehow or another like if you found like some frozen like they found that guy
That one what's his name Otzi is that found like some frozen, like they found that guy
that one, what's his name? Otzi? Is that his name? Who was the guy that they found that they named?
There's a hunter who he had like an arrowhead stuck in his back and Otzi, yeah, the Ice Man.
So they found this guy completely frozen in a glacier. He apparently was involved in some sort of a fight and as
the glacier was receding they find this guy and it turns out... how old was he
Jamie? See what it says. Wow. So somewhere between 5000 and and thirty years ago this guy fell he was about 45 years
old and he was completely frozen so now they have one of those and they take that guy but
it's a Neanderthal they find a frozen Neanderthal somewhere and they bring that motherfucker
into a lab and they take that DNA and they clone it and they they make some sort of a Neanderthal
Just like they're doing right now with
With the wooly mammoth. They're like really close. That's awesome to cloning a wooly mammoth. I think that's so cool
It's wild. I mean, it's wild
I mean imagine seeing one of those fucking things walking around you like holy shit
And so they're apparently they're using some of the genes of an Indian elephant and their wooly mammoth DNA,
and apparently they're gonna be able to pull this off.
Like within the next few years,
they will have a baby wooly mammoth.
Wow.
Which is bananas.
I mean, that's just bananas.
And then they can also, they can already make
AI-generated videos of wooly mammoths that look perfect.
You see that?
Yes, yes.
Like, cinematically beautiful, which is absolutely. It's incredible. Yeah, and they do it quickly
And this is just really recently. Yeah, you know, I was watching
Harry Potter
Great night great movie, but the CGI is so obvious. It's amazing how what was Harry Potter like?
2001 yeah, probably so Harry Potter, like 2001? Yeah, probably. So Harry Potter from 2001 to 2024,
it's a different world, man, a different world.
Like when he's on the thing, he's flailing around,
it looks so fake.
Yeah, Lord of the Rings 2.
Yeah.
I wanna show people Lord of the Rings who haven't seen it,
but it kinda missed the window.
It was so fantastic at the time.
At the time, it was mind blowing.
But it looks a bit hokey now. The orcs look hokey.
Yeah.
Well that's just how it goes.
Yeah.
You know, when my kids were young,
my wife was out of town and I said,
hey, I go, do you guys want to watch a scary movie
that's not really scary?
And they were scared.
They were like, I think they were like three and five.
And they're like, how scary?
I'm like, it's not scary at all.
It used to be scary in 1933, but now it's corny.
And you're gonna watch it, you're gonna think it's so silly.
So I showed them King Kong.
So at the beginning they were like super nervous.
Like King Kong comes out, they're like, oh my God.
My daughter's like, it looks like a porta potty.
She's like, it looks so dumb.
Because it looks so corny today.
But back then, if you saw that movie in 33, you're like it looks so dumb. Yeah, cuz it looks so corny today But back then if you saw that movie in 33 you're like
Insane yeah a giant gorilla is kidnapping that lady and climbing to the top of a building. This is madness
It blew people away. They couldn't believe it when Feyre was in that fake hand. Why are we watching? This is crazy and
You're gonna get in our lifetime to the point where you're not gonna know what's real news stories
Anything you think false flags were amazing in Vietnam. What are they gonna be able to do today?
You're not gonna have any idea what's going on. I mean the yeah the the videos of humans talking now
Oh, are they're reaching the night like 99% of the way to perfect? Yes, my friend
Duncan Trussell just did a podcast with his friend Johnny Pemberton and Johnny Pemberton
Pretended to be like a former CIA agent. They changed his face. They changed his voice
They turned him into a totally different person. He's saying like ridiculous shit
And when you watch it, you're like, what is this and we told me it was Johnny Pemberton
I'm like how and this is just like consumer level AI trickery that Duncan's using for his podcast.
This is like amateur stuff.
And it's crazy to watch.
It's crazy.
We're going to get inside of our lifetime where you're really never going to know.
Do you remember during this, I don't know if you know, you weren't alive, during the
Reagan administration,
I think it was the Iranians or someone spliced together a bunch of different recordings of things
that Reagan had said and put together some audio piece
that it was something he never really said.
And then they showed it on television.
This is how they did it
So they had like a thing they said it took
Pieces out of all these speeches and took all these words and pieced it together to have Reagan say something they never said
I was like wow
This is crazy. You're not gonna know what he said because someone can do this
Imagine now we just saw it Hitler speak English. That's crazy. You know I mean, and that's clumsy. You know it's pretty obvious
He wasn't really doing that but yeah
We're we're gonna get in our lifetime to a position where we're not gonna really know what's real
And what's not real and then you're gonna be able to plug into those things where you're not going to know if it's real or
Fake while you're in it
That's gonna be that's the whole idea behind simulation theory.
And the people that will argue this, that really understand it, that understand probability
theory, they think it's already happened.
They think the probability of it having already happened, of us being in a simulation are
higher than the probability of that not taking place yet.
I had David Chalmers, you know, that guy, philosopher on my podcast, he wrote a whole book
about the simulation theory.
Really smart guy, I think he gave me a number,
he gave me like 24% or something.
24% likely that it's a simulation?
Yeah, and I asked him the million dollar question
is would it matter if we were?
And I had always been assuming the answer is no,
it wouldn't really matter because
We're still sentient conscious creatures. We still cry and we bleed and we suffer even if we're fake. It's like
The love I feel for my family's real so whatever but his response to that was yeah
Well, the one way it could matter is if it is a simulation then we got to tell them don't turn it off
We got to tell them we like being alive or make it a little nicer. Yeah, not make a Gaza
Not make a mosque. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, it's it's a compelling thought because the idea is that if we continue on this path
We're going to reach a point where
Whatever this virtual reality is it's indiscernible from regular. And when you see that guy with the Neuralink
that's now using it to move a cursor around on a screen,
you see the baby steps.
You see Pong.
When I was a kid, Pong came out
and it was the craziest thing ever.
You could play a video game on your television
and we were blown away.
This is nuts.
And it was just black and white
and there was like a little stick figure on,
like a stick on this side and a stick on
That side and the little balls like do do do just a few pixels and you're moving the
Thing up and down to make the paddle go up and you only have a very limited amount of movement. We were blown away
That's what this is. That's what this is
That's what this first initial steps of this guy moving a cursor around playing video games with his brain because he's paralyzed with Neuralink. We're going to get to some
point where it's going to give you an experience. You're going to be in
Jurassic, you know, Argentina and you're going to see T-Rexes, you know, you're
going to see velociraptors running around. You're going to literally be in a
dinosaur-filled jungle and you won't
be you'll smell it you'll smell dinosaur shit you'll hear them roar you'll be
able to walk up to them when they kill a brontosaurus or whatever the fuck they
did you'll be able to see all that it's gonna be wild and it's gonna happen in
our lifetime and it's going to be recreation at first and then it's going
to be people's entire lives
It's good enough people are already doing that with Call of Duty
How many people spend way more time playing Call of Duty than they do playing life? Yeah, I'm glad I missed that
Some somehow when I was 12. I just stopped playing the video games and never went back. I'm really glad you get good instincts
Yeah, yeah people suck a lot of time
And it's way more fun than regular life. Yeah, that's the problem
it's so enjoyable and
You're playing this thing and you're fully engaged and your adrenaline's pumping and there's no consequences if you lose, you know
it's like there's so many great characteristics of it and
You could do it any time you want you get home from a club at two o'clock in the morning
Go, you know, I'm fucking plays on Call of Duty Whoa, you know, you're you're online engaging
And you're just getting all this sensory input
It's you you shut it off and you're just like here you feel terrible
When I when I play video games when I was done, I felt terrible. Oh, yeah, especially for a few hours
Yeah, it was horrible drained and I think that's what got me to stop Yeah, you feel terrible. Oh, yeah, you also feel like what am I doing with my life?
Yeah, you feel you never feel awesome after you play video games for 10 hours
No, if you're a grown man with bills, you like no fucking wrong with me. Yeah, Jesus Christ
But it's going to be way better than that. It's gonna be way better. It's gonna be virtual
It's gonna be in a 3d space And they've already developed these 3D, these, it's sort of like a treadmill, but it's completely
omnidirectional.
And as you move, it moves.
Have you seen it?
It's incredible.
So it's a floor.
So you could have a confined space like this room.
And the floor literally anticipates which way you're moving.
So you can walk naturally exactly
Close to naturally like treadmill type naturally but close enough right that it's going to be and then they're gonna get better at that
And it's gonna get to a point where they don't have to do that anymore
You can just feel like you're walking and it just shuts you off
And he goes and just go in there and everything is happening in your mind including all your your movement and your your sensations
You're gonna be able to feel things
It's gonna be bizarre man and people are gonna choose that over regular life
And then probably how AI is gonna keep us from breeding. Mm-hmm. No, that's actually the same thought
I just had I mean as this all this stuff gets better
What is to what's to entice people to start a family and live in the real world?
gets better, what's to entice people to start a family and live in the real world? Very little if it gets to that point. Especially people that, you know, what is the statistic
now? It's something crazy. Like 90 percent, it's like 10 percent of all men are attractive
to 90 percent of the women.
I think that's always been true though.
Right. Right.
Yeah.
But now with like social media,
it's sort of accentuated people's exacerbation
about what they look like.
And you know, it's like just everyone has got a six pack
and you know, and everyone, it's like,
people are so hot, you know,
and there's all these fitness influencers
and then you're just completely unattractive
Yeah, and that's how they get you to write to pump up your lips and do all this crazy stuff
And maybe they can't do that most guys don't even write like right, but maybe they can't do anything to you
Maybe they maybe you're beyond that maybe you're just like genetically unfortunately
This you got a bad roll of the dice right well
You don't have to compete you can just put on the fucking headset and live like a god and live like a Roman soldier
and have the best fucking time or
Be miserable and filled with anxiety and depressed or you put this thing on and it floods you with confidence
because it literally in
interfaces with your human neurochemistry
because it literally in interfaces with your human neurochemistry and so it gives you the feelings of excitement of
Conquest of everything of lust you're gonna have relationships. You're gonna be able to do all these things
Inside this artificial environment. There's gonna be a woman like heroin that doesn't kill you heroin that doesn't kill you Yeah, but way worse. Yeah way worse because it's gonna require all of your time
Mmm, and you're gonna have to shut off probably to go to sleep.
Biologically, you're going to have to turn it off.
And you probably can't wait to get up and do it again.
Yeah, and there'll be a movement against it too.
Kind of like there's vegans against eating meat.
There'll be a set of people that say, we're tapping out.
We're living natural.
Ted Kizanski.
We're not doing any of it.
Yeah.
Unabomber.
Yeah.
That's what he was doing.
That'll be a big movement too.
Oh, yeah.
There'll be a big backlash against it
Yeah, there will be a small population of us that survived. Yeah
And they'll live in the mountains and they'll probably make it and they'll probably survive and you know one of things that might
end it is if
Artificial general sense
intelligence doesn't get to an
artificial general intelligence doesn't get to an ultra-powerful point before a natural disaster. Because a natural disaster could flip the switch on everything.
And that is probably most likely what ended the Egyptian Empire.
The people that built the pyramids and the people that built Gobekli Tepe and all these
really ancient, incredibly sophisticated structures that we're baffled by today.
I think they had a super high level
of technological sophistication, and they were wiped out.
There's a lot of evidence to back that up.
Yeah, you were talking to me about Graham Hancock
last time, I remember.
Yeah, and the Younger Dryas Impact Theory.
And this is all backed up now by science.
It used to be purely speculation that this is the...
Until they found Gobekli Tepe,
they didn't even think people were building things that sophisticated 11,000 years ago but then
they found that and they is a hard date because it was intentionally covered up
11,000 years ago and they know that by carbon dating all the soil and all those
things like this is someone did this it's all it's uniform at this particular
time so when that now that they know that and then then they started doing
these core samples
and they found out that there's really high levels of iridium and this stuff called nuclear
glass and it's the same stuff that they found during the Trinity experiments when they would
blow up atomic bombs. There's this thing that happens with this immense impact with the
sand that creates these micro glasses
and they find it all over Europe all like giant swaths of earth were covered with this
stuff and iridium iridium which is like very common in space but very rare on earth and
there's like a layer of that shit and there's a layer that shit that's along 11,800 years
ago and they think we got mollywopped and sent back into the Stone Age.
And it kind of makes sense if you think about
the barbaric history of people back in the day.
Like they were probably the most savage of people
that survived whatever the fuck happened.
And then it probably took a good solid 6,000 years
till like Mesopotamia arrives.
And then Babylonia and Sumer
and all these ancient civilizations that we think of today as being the most
birthplace of mathematics and of written writing
But it's probably a redoing of civilization interesting. Yeah, I think that might be what saves like look
That's what saved this planet from the dinosaurs
If if that thing that hit the Yucatan 65 million years ago didn't hit and they didn't wipe out the dinosaurs
The little shrew would have never become a person right right and that's where we're at right now
So it might get to the point where AI is like about to fuck everything up and the universe is like
Not yet
And a five mile wide asteroid hits Los Angeles Wow and then you know all powers out everything gets rebooted
You see that movie leave the world behind yes. I thought I saw it twice actually
Good, that's they could totally happen that way yeah terrifying yeah
Yeah, when they realize is the Civil War just
Engineered very cleverly mm-hmm. You know yeah
Yeah, it's wild
Fascinating movie is it fascinating to me that so many people harped on this one conversation
That that daughter had with her father in bed that you can't trust white people mmm. Did people focus on that?
Yeah, I didn't see that.
Oh, because Obama produced the film.
Ah, OK.
So people were calling it this anti-white thing.
All right.
Well, listen, everybody is not trusting anybody.
They're literally in the middle of the apocalypse.
Like, what are you talking about?
Of course, people.
Well, that was one of the points of the movie
is that it drives people against each other
when they're in that scenario.
Exactly. Well, that was one of the points of the movies that it drives people against each other when they're in that scenario Exactly and for a young girl who likes seems like kind of a wokester
Yeah, who was with her? She might think that way she might think that way of course
I don't think that's how you write characters endorsing it necessarily you can have your own opinion about it, but exactly
Yeah, like and then there's the other guy that Kevin Bacon plays
Who's this crazy prepper who's been ready for it the whole time.
Oh, God.
That character is haunting because at the end of the movie,
Ethan Hunt, right?
Ethan Hawke.
Ethan Hawke.
Ethan Hawke begs before him, you know,
supplicates, gets on his knees.
And he says, I'm a useless man.
Yeah.
You're a man that's prepared.
I'm a useless man.
And I'm coming.
That gave me chills.
Woof. Yeah. And I have a friend who's like. I'm a useless man and I'm coming. That gave me chills. Yeah.
And I had a friend, I have a friend who's like kind of half a prepper.
And after the movie I tell you, when it all goes down, I'm going to come to you and say,
I am a useless man.
Remember all the times we had?
Yeah.
Take pity on me.
It's really terrifying when you think of how fragile our infrastructure is.
Like that bridge gets taken out by that boat the other day. Oh my God. really terrifying when you think of how fragile our infrastructure is like that
That bridge gets taken out by that boat the other day. Oh my god
Terrible boat loses power hits immediately thousands of conspiracy theories. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know, this is done on purpose That's sophisticated or it was done because of DEI or something people were saying that I saw on Twitter
Yeah, I heard that one that it was done to kill our
ports and our ability to bring in stuff because the bridges were down and you know I didn't hear that one. I saw on Twitter, yeah. I heard that one, that it was done to kill our ports
and our ability to bring in stuff
because the bridges were down and you know,
that's what I'd heard.
I'd heard a bunch of things that,
but people need to understand that same boat
had a collision in 2016.
It failed in 2016 and collided with,
I think it was a dock or something, there's video of it.
There's video of that boat just losing control. So it's like a fucking shitty boat that they
use over and over and over again to transport goods across the goddamn ocean. Those things
fail, you know, and if it fails and it slides right into a bridge, but then there was like,
oh, the black box was missing data. And it was like, people always like, love to jump immediately to the most sophisticated
engineering of a natural disaster or an unfortunate thing
and immediately cause it, call it to be,
have caused by a false flag or by terrorists.
I think it's the same reason why for 99% of human history,
people thought the weather was controlled by God.
Because the way we're built is that something can be completely random, like the weather,
but we want to see it as planned. We'd rather see something as planned but terrifying
than thinking there's no plan at all. So that's why I think people always go to
it was planned, it was planned, it was planned. Right right and back in the day. They would say the gods are angry
Yeah, yeah, like if lightning hit you he fucked up. What'd you do?
What'd you do bro? God just smote you you just God smite you down. Yeah, that's what give him a virgin
Yeah, yeah, we got to do something. Yeah. Yeah, you got to sacrifice some people
That's one of the creepiest things about ancient civilizations is how much sacrifice yeah how quickly they went to human sacrifice as the
NBL solution like what the fuck was the first guy to think of that good question solid question
The wildest one not obvious that temple in Mexico. Oh, yeah. Yeah, take no Tito on yes
Yeah, where they killed some insane
amount of workers. The people that built the temple when it was done, they
sacrificed. Something insane. I want to say it's like 80,000 people over the
course of just a couple of a couple days. Brutal. Find out what the actual
numbers were. Yeah, but it's like, what? Like sacrifice? Why like,
was anyone checking to see if it worked?
You know, right? You couldn't question. No, so you can't question COVID.
Things become things become doctrine in all human societies.
We're a creature of taboos. We create taboos by yes. Yeah, we love them.
Yeah, we love forbidden things. And this one was the nuttiest one
I mean, I never have heard of a mass sacrifice like this one at the completion of one of the most spectacular
Construction. Oh, yeah, it's magnificent Mexico. I went when I was a kid
I remember there's a section where if you stand at the right angle and clap it claps back Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, it's amazing. I've I've been to the one in
Chichen Itza. Oh, I think that's the one I'm thinking of too. Is that different? Yes, no, Titlan. Yes
Okay, she needs his Aztec. Okay, excuse me. Chichen Itza is Mayan and
Tinoch tick lon is Aztec. Okay. But I've been to Tenochtitlan.
It's crazy what those folks were making.
They're making some really intense, sophisticated
structures.
And then they got wiped out by European cooties.
Yep.
It's amazing how the world would be different if you just
changed that variable of, yeah, Native Americans
are able to sustain European terms
Yeah, be a whole different kind of country a whole different Western hemisphere. Yes
I mean, what would it be like in 2024 if the Mayans thrived and the Europeans never came across?
If they never settled in North America
Why you know sometimes I think that one of the reasons so many third third world countries don't thrive as much
Is because all the technology that was invented at least you know barring ancient Egypt
invented
During the European Enlightenment industrial revolution all of this stuff that's made the world so much better that's gotten rid of famine
That's gotten rid of so many diseases
It all became associated with the colonizer
in their mind. And so a lot of countries have rejected it for the wrong reasons or have
been slow to adopt it. Whereas if you had a situation, for instance, like Japan, where
Japan was never really conquered or colonized by a Western country. And at a certain point in the 19th century,
they had the Meiji Restoration,
where essentially a certain contingent of Japan
took over the government and said,
look, these Western powers in Europe,
they're inventing all this amazing technology,
we're gonna become irrelevant unless we adopt it too.
And they just rebooted the country
and became an industrial powerhouse,
which is what allowed them during World War two to dominate all of Asia because they just made a conscious conscious choice to
emulate the West in the domains of technology
But also with its extreme Japanese work ethic. Yes. Yeah, major fact no doubt
but the psychology of it was that
They they didn't necessarily, they were able to accept Western technology, except that the West was
beyond them at that point, which takes humility. And I think part of the reason
you're able to do that is those aren't your colonizers so you're
able to look at it more objectively. Whereas if those are the people that
just colonized you, how easy is it for a human being with an ego to admit that we
need to adopt all their technology or we're gonna become irrelevant? That's
actually a much harder thing to do. So this is to your point, if a lot of
countries had been left alone completely never colonized
I think it would be much more easier for them to make a pivot like the Meiji restoration where you just have
We've got to get on board with with the Industrial Revolution with
Liberal democracy with all this stuff because they wouldn't have that thought in their head
That's that's what the colonizer did they'd be able to to take the good things from the people who colonized more easily.
That's an interesting thought.
I would be more fascinated to see what would happen to them if they had, like the Mayans
in particular, if they had been allowed to evolve in isolation, just without the intervention of the Europeans, they had already constructed
these insane buildings with stones that mimic the cosmos.
Like, where would they be a thousand years later,
2,000 years later?
Like, what would their culture be like?
Imagine if no one had ever visited the mines until 2024,
and then you go and visit now.
What are these motherfuckers up to yeah
You know
I mean we were still making shit out of wood and goofy houses that caught on fire and these fucking dudes are building these temples
That mimic the constellations. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah
Pretty wild but it's very disputed. Oh
The the the killing the people thing. Yeah for the consecration of the Great Pyramid of teal. How do you say it? Tinochitlan? How do you say it?
I said to knock Tila
In 1487 the Aztec priest sacrificed 80,000 prisoners over the course of four days
The Aztecs usually sacrifice prisoners of war these these volunteers, criminals, and even their own.
So what's the disputed part about it, Jamie?
There's not a lot of evidence that that many were done.
They said that this number of 20,000 every year is across all of Mexico.
I saw someone else just say it on another thing.
The Aztecs sacrifice 20,000 people every year.
There's no talk about what happened, like what they did with those 80,000 bodies like how did they choose problem to deal with
prisoners right but they might have right if they were real does it say they
definitely killed 20,000 a year across all of Mexico right but maybe they were
good at that but that I could get what would you if you did 20,000 in a day
yeah you dig a pit buddy light them on light them on fire. I mean, there's no evidence
of it, is what it was saying. Interesting. Well, what evidence would there be? I mean,
there has to be- It's like they did sacrifice people, just that many. Right. But there has
to be some sort of record, right? What is the reason why they came upon the 80,000 figure
in the first place? I don't know. Interesting. A Spanish account claims that more than 80,000
enemy warriors were sacrificed in a four-day ceremony and yet no evidence approaching
one hundredth of that number has been found in the excavations of Tenochtitlan.
I guess if they threw them in a hole that would have dug up the body. Perhaps. Unless they
started a funeral pyre like an enormous fire and just burned everybody. You know
I don't know what their methods of disposing bodies
My assumption be that that would be a mass grave. They would say like this is what we used to do to them, too
Right. Here's pictures of it or something. Yeah
Hmm, but yeah, it's just it's just disputed is all the number does come up
I'm seeing five thousand twenty either way. How about more than one?
They definitely sacrifice more than one person to appease their gods
It's why it's a wild choice and I get everybody to go along with the rain dances are a lot more
Well more peaceful a lot more peaceful. Yeah a lot more fun more of a rain dance guy
Coleman, thank you very much, man. It's always great to talk to you
I really appreciate it
I see you Joe you're a really unique thinker and you have a great perspective on things and I always appreciate talking
Thank you, man
My pleasure and tell everybody one more time your book by my book the end of race politics
Review by books. I'm so glad you did the audio version of it. Yeah, yeah, my voice wasn't scratchy like today
So it sounds good. You sound good today. Oh, thanks. All right. Thank you. Give out your social media
Oh, yeah, yeah cold X man on Twitter and my podcast is conversations with Coleman. All right, beautiful. Thank you. Give out your social media. Oh yeah, yeah. ColdXMan on Twitter and my podcast is conversations with Coleman.
Alright, beautiful. Thank you. Bye everybody.