# Joe Rogan Experience #2574 - Francis Foster & Konstantin Kisin Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin argue that good-faith, long-form debate can counter outrage-driven media and political division. - Show: The Joe Rogan Experience - Hosts: [Joe Rogan](https://realalpha.app/people/joe-rogan/) - Guest: [Francis Foster](https://realalpha.app/people/francis-foster/) · Comedian - Guest: [Konstantin Kisin](https://realalpha.app/people/konstantin-kisin/) · Political Commentator - Published: Oct 31, 2026 - Length: 2 h 38 m ## The best minutes - [2:03:55](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7435) [AI wealth needs a way to include people who lose work](https://realalpha.app/s/ai-wealth-needs-a-way-to-include-people-who-lose-work/) (7 min) - [2:10:46](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7846) [People need purpose as AI makes work less necessary](https://realalpha.app/s/people-need-purpose-as-ai-makes-work-less-necessary/) (7 min) ## Also worth watching - [1:34:38](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5678) [The Iran war may have strengthened Tehran’s leverage](https://realalpha.app/s/the-iran-war-may-have-strengthened-tehrans-leverage/) (7 min) Skip the opening politics, climate and religion debate, the city-and-lifestyle chat, ancient history, and the later U.S. politics discussion. ## Summary Francis Foster is a comedian who hosts The Francis Foster Show and co-hosts TRIGGERnometry. He wrote (Un)educated: My Life as a Teacher, and Why You Should Never Become One. Konstantin Kisin is a political commentator, co-host of TRIGGERnometry and author of An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West. Foster and Kisin argue that social platforms reward provocative content and make it harder to distinguish fact from propaganda, while long-form, good-faith conversations can restore nuance. Rogan challenges mainstream climate-policy assumptions and criticizes energy costs; Kisin argues that Britain's climate measures impose economic costs despite the country's small share of global emissions. The guests and Rogan examine immigration, institutional incentives and the strategic risks of the Iran conflict, including whether military action could prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. They close by debating how AI-driven disruption could affect work, economic fairness and people's need for purpose. ### Minute by minute - [0:09](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=9) **Online outrage obscures facts.** Rogan and the guests question viral claims about Brazil and describe how fabricated stories, bots and misleading images can muddy public understanding. They say platforms reward provocative engagement, while good-faith conversations across political lines can offer a more useful alternative. - [8:57](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=537) **Climate models remain contested.** Rogan questions how confidently people interpret climate models and historical temperature changes. Kisin argues that Britain produces about 1% of global carbon emissions and says its energy policies have driven up costs for households and industry; Rogan questions the motives behind some green-energy policies. - [20:14](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1214) **Political identity can replace religion.** Rogan suggests that some progressive causes can function like religion for people who lack shared moral structures. Kisin says people often reach for political slogans when they lack a grasp of complex issues; they also discuss whether political interests shape the push to restrict marijuana in Texas. - [29:54](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1794) **Alcohol and wellness involve trade-offs.** Rogan describes taking eight months off drinking and says he felt better, while the group discusses alcohol's costs and downsides. Rogan recommends supplements, including glutathione and electrolytes, and recounts disagreeing with a doctor who said a balanced diet provides everything people need. - [35:59](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2159) **Urban life can strain people.** Kisin connects crowded cities with stress and discusses Desmond Morris's idea that cities affect people much as zoos affect animals. Rogan and the guests compare urban life with time in nature, citing calmer behavior among children during a countryside trip and the relief of getting away from city noise and crowds. - [43:12](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2592) **Online politics distorts opponents.** Rogan and the guests say viral posts and political clips can make opponents seem more extreme than they are. They argue that outrage-driven content earns attention, while a longer conversation can reveal more nuance and make disagreement less hostile. - [52:48](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3168) **Immigration sharpens institutional distrust.** Rogan argues that illegal immigration affected political incentives and representation; Kisin says politicians may leave problems unresolved because they can campaign on them. They also discuss corporate power and how people can feel detached from the consequences of decisions made within large organizations. - [1:03:06](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3786) **Long-form media carries responsibility.** Kisin says a growing audience gives podcasters a responsibility to prepare carefully and challenge claims, while Rogan argues that people still want material that makes them think. The group also discusses child fame, arguing that children featured in online content cannot fully understand or consent to its long-term consequences. - [1:12:54](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4374) **Ancient history leaves open questions.** Rogan raises questions about the dating and construction of Egyptian sites, including claims about stonework and water erosion; Kisin describes the engineering at Abu Simbel. They discuss ancient king lists, religious syncretism and historical empires, while noting that some interpretations remain uncertain. - [1:29:02](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5342) **Iran's geography shapes the conflict.** Rogan worries that the United States could resume attacks on Iran after the midterms. Kisin and the guests discuss how geography and control of the Strait of Hormuz affect the conflict, and Kisin relays Robert Pape's argument that the war has strengthened Iran's leverage. - [1:40:09](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6009) **Iran's nuclear future remains uncertain.** Kisin questions whether the conflict can achieve its stated aims, noting that airstrikes alone have not produced regime change. The group debates Iran's nuclear capacity and whether the attacks could instead push the country to pursue a weapon more urgently; Kisin says he has not heard a convincing case for how this strategy prevents that outcome. - [1:49:36](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6576) **Political exclusion can fuel backlash.** Rogan raises concerns about security threats and possible attacks on infrastructure, while the guests discuss protests and whether they are organized or organic. Kisin argues that people who feel democracy no longer represents them may disengage or turn toward more radical alternatives; he and Rogan connect that risk to economic exclusion and frustration with communism. - [2:04:14](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7454) **AI could disrupt work and status.** Kisin says people who feel locked out of economic opportunity may be drawn to radical politics, and argues that society needs to make growth feel accessible. Rogan warns that AI could eliminate jobs and says a basic income alone may not replace the identity and satisfaction people get from useful work. - [2:18:05](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8285) **Purpose still requires meaningful effort.** Kisin recounts footballer Danny Drinkwater finding satisfaction in training as an electrician, while Rogan and the guests discuss status, failure and learning through experiences such as jiu-jitsu and comedy. They debate whether a universal income could free people to pursue meaningful activities, and conclude that family, connection and useful work may remain important even as society adapts. ## Transcript The Joe Rogan Experience, hosted by Joe Rogan, with Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin. Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [0:13](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=13) I haven't talked to anybody about this, so I'd like to talk to you guys about it. Do you know what the fuck is going on in Brazil? No, not not not intimately not specifically not specifically but the Flavio Bolsonaro Bolsonaro, who is the son of the guy, Jair Bolsonaro, he was one of the candidates in the election, and then the moment the election finished, they took his passport away, and I think he's ended up fleeing to the U.S. now, is that right? I don't know. I've heard that he fled, but I don't know if there's any evidence. Yeah. I mean, that's just like Twitter talk. Yeah. But first of all, just taking his passport right away is kind of crazy. [0:55](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=55) And I think they did warn him as well. They said, Lula said, if I'm elected, you know, it was kind of like you're going to be in jail when Trump said it to Hillary, but they followed through. But what was the, what are the charges? Like, what are they? I don't know the details of it, Joe. But the whole thing was – so it was someone that was his – Lula's former defense attorney. He elected to the Supreme Court of Brazil and then that person opened up the polls for an additional two hours and that allowed Lula to win. Is that accurate? I think so. Yeah, that bit I think is – that's what I saw. But this is the thing is like you have to really do a lot of research now to even know the basic facts of anything. [1:38](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=98) So if you just see something on X or Facebook or whatever, I am hesitant to believe it now off the top. Do you know what I mean? 100%. I read stories all day that I know are fake immediately. And it's like breaking. And then you read the thing in all caps. And you're like, oh, this is a fake story. And there's a lot of them. They're all over the place. And I think they've done something where you don't get monetized for those. So you can't make money off of them. So there's less of an incentive. But if the goal is just propaganda, then they don't care about the money. Like if these are – if this is a country or a government that's involved in doing this or someone with a vested interest in fucking up American politics or Brazilian politics or whatever, you just – who cares if we're making money? [2:29](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=149) What we want to do is fuck up the waters. We want to muddy up the waters so nobody knows what the fuck is real. If there's, you know, people that are voting, we want them to be completely confused or lied to where they have a totally incorrect narrative of what's going on. And you see so much of it. And, you know, like, I feel like maybe when there's a fact check, like like a grok fact check and it proves to be absolutely incorrect. Maybe they should like just take it down so that you don't have to go into the thread. Because I'll go into the thread, I'll read something like that's fake and I'll go into the thread I'm like where does someone ask Grok and someone asks Grok and it says no this is not correct And then Grok lays it out. Maybe then they should take it down. Right. Because it's just your timeline It's just flooded by straight horse shit Completely made up stories about you know people being arrested and you'll have AI photos of someone handcuffed It's crazy. It's really crazy. And then amplified by bots or foreign actors as well. [3:36](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=216) I mean, that's one of the interesting areas where I think there's probably a solution, which is kind of like digital border enforcement where you actually know that people are commenting on this and where they're commenting from. Because I think most people get their political opinions from other people. They don't necessarily have a, they don't sit down for three hours and think about this stuff. They just go, this seems to be what everyone thinks. And that's where this kind of manipulation is so powerful because you're creating the idea that a narrative is popular. Right. And a lot of people then go, well, maybe that's what I should believe. [4:10](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=250) Especially with the bots. Yeah. Because you'll have a story that's clearly either biased or full of shit, totally. And then you'll have a bunch of bots agreeing with it and saying what should be done to these people. And this is an outrage. And then you find out it's completely fabricated. And you're like, well, what are they doing? Like, what's happening here? Like, why are there so many of these, you know, Bob, six, seven, four, three, two people that are commenting on this? And what are they trying to prove or what are they trying to push? And it's not just that. It's also you get certain influencers and you see them come up on your timeline time and time and time again with these takes that are just straight out ridiculous. [4:48](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=288) And then you look underneath and you look at the amount of retweets. You look at the engagement. You think to yourself, that just can't be real. because that is such a ridiculous take that they've just given you but the engagement is unreal and then you see it time and time again from the same influences yeah well i think just becoming outrageous is profitable right yeah that's a problem yeah so like you could just have a take like so let's take out fake stories so you could just have a contrarian take that's preposterous and just gets you angry the moment you read it and then you see fuck you and then but that's that's engagement that's what these people want and some people on twitter or they just didn't get exist for engagement they're not good faith actors they're just weird people that you know are probably on all sorts of weird drugs and there's somewhere just fucking tweet up a storm yeah and it's also as well because uh now you can monetize your ex yeah that means that that's incentivized people to create posts that are going to get more engagement yeah and what's the what's one really easy way of guaranteeing engagement is negative engagement if you piss people off if you say something that's outrageous that's far easier [6:04](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=364) to then get people engaging with you than to do something funny or to all right take it easy that's been our business model for and a half years you're fucking ruining it but actually i mean we're joking obviously i'm actually really happy we this in the last few episodes that we've put out on trigonometry you've got um we've got david packman who's a left-wing guy dave smith who's like a libertarian guy and we've got stephen crowder coming out uh soon so like we actually got to the point where we always wanted to be where we're talking to everybody it's what i always really enjoyed about you and the way you do it you've always been able I actually kind of marveled at how you were able to do it because when we started, we had a very hard time getting more of the left-leaning guests on. [6:47](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=407) You never seem to have that problem. You just get everybody on and they're happy to come on and talk. And that's what actually you need more of in the world. I think the outrage stuff you're talking about, it really pushes people apart. We were really interested in how do you bring people together to have one conversation based on an agreed set of facts. I think as long as you're getting people that are honest, that are good faith conversationalists, you know, and I think that's that is an issue. And that's what I don't want to do anymore. I don't want to have on these people that I think are full of shit, that are propagandists, that are loyal to a party to the point where they just distort facts or obfuscate or talk over you when you're trying to make points. [7:28](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=448) like the pierce morgan model where you see like someone will be saying something and the other person just chime in and just talk over them to try to disrupt their pattern of thinking it's very annoying and stupid and i'm not interested in that at all yeah and i i'm not interested in talking to people that i think are just outright liars unless like i have some fucking obligation to expose them but i don't i don't want to i don't i don't want that to be a thing that I want to do all the time where it's just bring on people that I know you're full of shit and like say I'm At the facts, like, I like to talk to people that I'm interested in talking to. [8:04](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=484) And that's my business model. I mean, it's not a business model. It's just like, it's what I started doing, and that's what I want to keep doing. And if that, you know, I was very interested in talking to Bernie again. You know, I don't agree with him on a lot of things, but I don't think he's a bad person. You know, and I think he, you know, he's an older guy with some ideals that just didn't pan out. and I think he still believes that there's like a way to do this that's different and better for the people and for the working people but I think after a while you say these words like you know what it's like when you have an act and you've been doing a bit for a long time and then the bit stops losing meaning you just say it the way you've always said it but it doesn't have any meaning to you anymore and the bit starts to get stale and it starts to die off and if you're smart You pull it out of the act you put it on the shelf and you go. I got to rework that thing or something It's like I don't I'm not attached to it anymore. It doesn't feel real I'm just saying it to go through the motions That's how I feel like when he starts talking about climate change and stuff like that Like okay, what are we talking about? How much have you looked into it? Because if you really look into climate change [9:11](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=551) It's very fucking confusing like it's not as simple as Like there was just an article today that someone sent me that they think that global warming may have stopped an imminent ice age that was coming which was one of the things that they were talking about during the 1970s. That was a big thing. It was a big narrative about climate change. That was the big fear. Was that a new ice age was coming. In fact an episode of that Leonard Nimoy show. Did you ever watch that? In Search Of. Great fucking show. It was great. Because it was a mix of like horse shit, doom and gloom, Bigfoot UFOs, all kinds of stuff. But it was Leonard Nimoy. You know, Spock from Star Trek. [9:50](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=590) And he had a whole article about eminent ice age. And that's the thing that we really should be afraid of. It's a fucking terrifying proposition that the world freezes over again. Because if it gets hot, you just move to the places that used to be cold. And get air conditioning, right? And get air conditioning. We don't have air conditioning, Joe. In England? No, no, no. That's why you guys die every year. Yeah. More people die in England from, I think this is a fact. I think more people die in in not in England, but in Europe in all of Europe from heat stroke during summer Then gun violence in the United States Mmm, I might have made that up. Yeah Actually, there is a serious point It's a high number though because I was just gonna say I was just gonna say like that just sounds real Yeah, that sounds real after the summer we've had it must be true. Yeah It sounds real. [10:48](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=648) I don't understand why people haven't adopted air conditioning. Is it a money thing? Well, it's the same green nonsense that you're talking about. Oh, no. Because air conditioning consumes a lot of energy, and it therefore causes more climate change, quote-unquote. Actually, more people die in England from cold in winter than they die from heat. Here we go. Europe had an – okay. Yes, if you mean deaths attributed to heat rather than specifically heat stroke. European heat death estimates can exceed the total number of U.S. firearm deaths. But the comparison needs a few qualifications. Same year comparison. [11:29](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=689) Europe had an estimated 61,672 heat-related deaths during the summer. That's fucking crazy. The United States recorded more than 48,000 firearm deaths over the entire year, according to CDC. That includes suicides, homicides, and other firearm deaths, not just murders, including also cops shooting bad guys. So in that year, yes, even Europe's summer heat death estimate exceeded America's full firearm death count. Well, heat stroke. We don't have to say heat stroke. That was maybe a bad terminology, but just from heat. What about from cold? Look up how many Europeans die from cold every year. What do you guess? Think it's more? [12:15](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=735) I don't know about Europeans. In Britain, I know more people die from cold than heat. In Britain specifically. Wow, that's crazy. I imagine in Italy, less so. That's crazy. Like in the south. It's confused because you spelled year wrong, Jamie. I'll figure it out. There you go, Joe. 364,000 people a year die from cold across 30 European countries, according to a 2024 study. Wow. That is an estimated annual average based on 1991 to 2020, not a count for the latest year. That is really crazy, though. Well, this is what people don't understand about the climate change agenda is it's pushed electricity prices up and gas prices. [13:02](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=782) And so energy is much more expensive. So you literally have pensioners freezing to death in winter because they can't afford to heat their home properly because we're saving the planet. Anyway, your point, I think, is we need the Second Amendment and air conditioning in the UK. That would help a lot. That would help you guys a lot. A lot of things would change. Yeah, I mean, the fact that we don't, the majority of places don't have air con. Like, if you're dating Joe and you want to bring a lady back to your flat, all you need to say is you've got air con. So it is available to some. Yeah. So, like, imagine if you move into a place and it doesn't have air conditioning. [13:39](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=819) How much hoops and ladders do you have to go through to get air conditioning into your place? Well, so now I'm having air conditioning installed in my house right now. You don't have it right now? I just bought a house that doesn't have it. But, you know, the climate is not like here in Austin. Like, it is survivable. It's just hot. It's hot, right. What is a hot Fahrenheit day in England? I don't know Fahrenheit. Give me Celsius. We've had like 37, 38, maybe up to 40 this year. Okay, so that's like in the 90s. That's high. Yeah, it's high. What is that, Jamie? Let's say 40. What is 40 Fahrenheit or 40 Celsius rather than Fahrenheit? [14:21](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=861) 40 is probably about 100 degrees because 40 is when you're having – if your body temperature is 40, you've got a very bad fever. It's 104. 104. Right. Okay. So you guys have 104 days. Like one or two over the course of a year. Yeah. But you've got to remember though, Joe, it's like the infrastructure and the houses and the trains and all the public transport, they're not built for that kind of climate. Right. So if you go on holiday in Italy and it's 40, that's one thing. If it's 40 in the U.K. in houses that are built to keep the heat in during winter, it's a different conversation. So the average daytime high in July and August is 70 degrees. [15:01](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=901) But we have had very hot days the last couple of summers. Very hot. And that's when people start freaking out about climate change. But that's just so narrow-minded. And it's not that we shouldn't be concerned if the earth gets warmer. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying it's never been static. So this idea that, oh, my God, this is we're doing this like are we do you know do you know about the entire history of the world's temperature? Because it varies insanely. Not only that, there's been many times in Earth's history where there was way more carbon in the air and it was way cooler. It doesn't make any sense. [15:37](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=937) And if you don't understand differential equations, if you don't understand, like, the way the wind blows and solar activity and all these different variables that come into play along with greenhouse gases, along with carbon, there's so many different variables that come into play. Like, these narratives are so unscientific for the people that want to, say, trust the science. Well, the science on climate change is fucking incredibly complex, or just climate period. Forget about the word climate change. And it's so interesting you use the word unscientific because I often think about this. Most of my family are scientists, physicists, biochemical engineers. [16:17](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=977) The thing with, like, when a normal person hears the word science, what they think is, if I pick up this phone and drop it, it's going to fall at a predictable speed because we understand the rules of gravity. We can calculate it. We can calculate the speed, the acceleration, all that stuff. Climate science is modeling, modeling, right? That's not the I'm not saying it's not science exactly, but that's not what we think about as normal, just ordinary people. When we think about science, we think about something that's 100 percent predictable, measurable, calculable. You can go if we change this and this is going to happen. [16:52](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1012) Climate modeling is not like that. It's an approximation and an estimate based on a lot of assumptions. And we don't know how accurate those assumptions are. But even if you accept all that, what's interesting in Britain is, do you know what percentage of global carbon emissions Britain produces? Oh, God. It's got to be minuscule. 1%. Yeah. So if we reduced it to zero, we'd not have any impact on the climate at all while just destroying our economy, killing people. And that's what we've done. We have the highest industrial electricity prices in the world. That's why you can't build anything in the UK. [17:26](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1046) hey, you can't run a business, an industrial business. You can't make anything. You know, it's funny. You guys are having this big battle of data centers here. Yeah. We don't have that because we're not fucking building in here. Yeah. The other super inconvenient thing when it comes to carbon is that there's more vegetation, more leaf coverage in the world now than there has been in a long fucking time. Global greening. Yeah. It's because of carbon. because plants actually consume carbon dioxide. It's like, what are we doing? What are we freaking out about? Well, we're freaking out about a bunch of people that have engineered a narrative to get us to freak out about it so they can profit off of it. [18:10](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1090) And that's the reality of it is that all of these green deals and all of this green energy, these people get contracts and then there's mandates for what you can and can't use and what you should and shouldn't do. And then people profit off of these directions that we go in. And that's the real problem. It's not like we're looking out for the world. Shut the fuck up. When people say that, we need to look out for the world. None of these people pushing this are looking out for the world, just so you know. You might be, you liberal lady in East Austin with the fucking science is science bumper sticker on your fucking Prius. [18:48](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1128) Maybe. Maybe you really are a genuinely good person looking out for that. The people that are pushing that are not. They're trying to profit they're sitting in boardrooms and they're showing spreadsheets of how much money they'll make if a certain bill goes through because of the certain bill restricts one type of energy and promotes their type of energy even if their type of energy like windmills is terrible for the environment and radically inefficient they're going to profit and that's what they're thinking about and so then they're going to pay politicians to push certain narratives they're going to fund these people they're going to put out advertisements for a green Texas you know paid for by a greener Texas who's paying that corporations people making large amounts of money and they don't give a fuck about your environment they want to make money they're vampires they're vampire people and it's always been that way like oil companies funded anti-nuclear right it's just that's how it works that's how it works in Britain now I saw I'm actually gonna get an electric car soon right and the reason is they've created the incentive structures whereby if you get an electric car, especially through your business, you can basically get [20:00](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1200) A car that's twice as good for the same money because you get so much tax write-off. Because, like you said, people have created a structure whereby if you encourage people to do this, they save money. And who benefits from that? Well, it's the people who are producing that type of vehicles. 100%. In Texas, we have an issue right now where they're trying to ban marijuana. And why are they trying to do that? Because alcohol sales are way down, like way down, like disturbingly down. And one factor that a lot of people aren't taking into consideration is GLP-1s. It's Ozempic. There are fucking millions of people on GLP and millions more that are lying about me. [20:47](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1247) I have a guy that I know is on him. I said, dude, you're looking great. What are you doing? He's like, oh, calorie restriction. Well, technically you're not lying, but you're lying. You're on Ozempic, motherfucker. you know what you're doing yeah it's embarrassing you know i always feel like when you talk about any issue a lot of it just comes down to education you know people don't have a good grasp of actually what's happening so what it is that people have inside them is a vacuum and eventually something has to fill that vacuum right because you can't operate particularly now with a going when someone asks you about whatever it is climate change the middle east the war and whatever Whatever subject you want to talk about most people simply don't have the education the answers They don't have their own opinions. So they simply reach for something and you know what you're gonna reach for you're gonna reach for a slogan Right, and it's gonna come from the most prominent person. There is I have a theory about why the left is so much more loony in my opinion currently I mean, it's not like the right isn't loony like very fucking loony But the left is loony and some like things that don't make any sense and [21:55](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1315) And I think it's because the left is secular, like almost universally. Like when you think about the left, you generally don't think about like Christianity or any religion, really. It's more of like a science-based, like we're too smart for that thing. And I think they're just lost. There's no moral scaffolding to hold on to. There's no, and I'm not saying, you know, religion is 100% great. But what I am saying is there's something about having a structure like Ten Commandments or whatever they have in whatever religion we're talking about where there's rules to abide by because there's a higher power and then you worship. [22:39](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1359) And in worshiping, there's a humility to that and a humbleness to that. And then there's this community where everyone's drawn together and we're all agreeing on certain rules. Like I always talk about like the church parking lot is proof that Christianity works because everybody's so nice. they all let you go like you go you go like it's all so orderly like nowhere on earth i'm like just that alone proves that christianity can work and there's something to that i guarantee you if you went to like some trans rights rally and you parked your car and tried to leave it would not be so kind it would not be the same would not especially if you were like in a pickup truck or something with an american flag on it right they'd be rude as fuck to you whereas i think a part of what's wrong with this this side of our politics when you look at the two sides the left and the right is that the left is almost like I would have I wanted to know like what percentage of people who identify as progressive have any religion um we could probably find that out yeah yeah let's find out actually would be interesting it's what you were talking about with a vacuum So I think this is my belief at 59 years of age, that there's a part of people that almost like is designed a part of the human. [24:00](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1440) and psyche that's designed for religion and we have had it for so long we have had it for so many thousands and thousands and thousands of years i just think it's the way the human mind works and i think in the absence of religion we find something that stop that for a second we find something that does the job of religion and that thing that does the job of religion is being progressive or being whatever you're being you know like what find find a cause find of think climate change, whatever it is, find a thing that becomes your religion. And anybody that is confronting that with an alternative perspective is a heretic. That's a bad person. [24:40](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1480) That's the evil. That's an infidel. And that's how they behave. They behave like religious zealots. I'm sure you've seen these conversations and you've had them with people. You just confront people in the street and start asking them questions. If you don't agree with them, I mean, even if like you, you're great at it because you're so calm and rational. You see them just fucking. They just don't want to be confronted by alternative perspectives. Very much like a religion. No, it's totally. And it's interesting. We just had Jonathan Haidt back on the show. We haven't released it yet, but it's one of the things we talked about. [25:12](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1512) We talked about religion and he's not a religious person, but he was like, I used to be very snooty about it. And now I just go, whatever you believe, it's a social technology for achieving cohesion within a group and forgiving people. And on a personal level as well, I think one of the things that Christianity in particular is very, very good at is gratitude, which is just a practice that forget about God and all the rest of it. The practice of acknowledging how fortunate you are at any point in your life is something that changes how you experience life. And if you do that every day, I think it's much, much harder to be a deranged lunatic who thinks that they're political. [25:58](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1558) Like there's political causes I feel very strongly about. But I'm not going to go on a march and scream at people who don't agree with me. because that's not coherent to my worldview of what it is to be human. It's also radically ineffective. And completely ineffective. Never changes anybody's opinion, ever, ever. No one screams at your face and you go, wow, I see your point. What are the stats you were trying to pull up earlier, Jamie? So here we go. Affiliated with a religion, 78% of Republicans, Republican-leaning independents identify with a religion. So with Democrats, it's about 60%. Wow. [26:37](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1597) Interesting. It's a lot more than I thought. Religiously unaffiliated, about 39%. Did not answer about 1%. Like, what is that? Fuck off. 1% across the board. I'm in that group. That is the most intelligent group on earth, the about 1%. The 1% that will not answer polls. That was my take on polls, always. I was like, here's the problem with polls. Most people don't answer polls. If somebody calls you up and said, I'd like a few moments of your time to ask you a question, fuck you. Anybody with a life, anybody that has like a family and stuff to do and hobbies they enjoy, friends they want to hang out with, they don't sit around answering some fucking poll. [27:18](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1638) So you're literally getting the opinion that people so fucking stupid, they answer polls. So adding out of those people, like if there's an issue, like 49% agree. That means less than half of the people that are so fucking stupid. They're answering polls Agree with you. That's not good, right? Yeah, you know It's the same with studies that they do a colleges because they always use college students So like you're getting a very skewed perspective on you Yes, yeah, that's how you're measuring what human beings respond to another thing that's interesting with the religious thing when it comes to the left is there's been this larger than normal presence of uh these like lbgt pastors and these people that are promoting a very different christianity you know and they're they're talking about things that you know biblical scholars are like hey wait what page is this on where does it say abortions okay like how are you getting to that where does it say god's non-binary you know there's a lot of this weirdness that this woke weirdness that sort of entered into religion in some some pastors are doing it and you go okay is that good i don't know if that's good i mean is it because you're not following the original stuff so if we're gonna [28:38](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1718) not follow the original stuff shouldn't we go and take out the slavery part first like shouldn't we go and take out the slaughtering of women and children first because that's in there there's a lot of stuff that's in there we should probably concentrate on first before we start saying god's non-binary you know what i mean yeah it's true it's true it's like because i was raised catholic and i and i go to a church i went once to a couple of times to a church of england mass and it's like look if you're going to mass you want the product right you want the you know you want the real deal you want the marlboro reds you want to hear the latin yeah you want you want the It's good stuff. [29:17](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1757) Show him in his home and his home. Yeah, you want to sit there and think to yourself, fuck, I'm going to hell and it's going to be awful. We really should get the original. The original version, when they would come down the aisle with incense, it was cannabis. They would have these big fucking, like, things where they'd handle, you know those things? Yeah, with the incense. Yeah, it was cannabis. It was cannabis? What church are you going to? They're high as fuck. They're getting everybody high so they get along with everybody. No wonder they're trying to ban it in Texas, man. The Texas thing is all about the alcohol. [29:46](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1786) It's all about alcohol. It's like traceable money to Dan Patrick and some other people. It's traceable. Like you could see how these people support him and you see that they want this because it's like it's hurting their business. And if people can just get high and, you know, like here's the thing about marijuana, even if they do what like Colorado did. So Colorado was the first shout out to Colorado, the first to legalize cannabis. And one of the things they did is say, we're going to put a crazy tax on it and just use that tax for fucking schools and all kinds of stuff. Everybody would be happy because you've got all this new tax revenue. [30:21](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1821) I think it was like 39 percent, which is really – and everybody was like, great, fine. Because marijuana is relatively inexpensive. Like if you go out drinking with some buddies, fuck, man. You bring five buddies. You're picking up a tab. They're picking up a tab. You guys are having fun. You're drinking. You're ordering – you have $500, $600 at the end of the night. Easy. Easy. right easy marijuana six hundred dollars you're dead six hundred dollars or the weed will fuck you up for a month you'll be just lying in your bed going why did i do that yeah it's that's not gonna happen it's a different thing it's like one joint like what is a joint these days jamie you're a young fella in california where you can legally buy them yeah probably in the range of 15 to 20 dollars yeah 15 20 bucks you're barbecued for the whole night yeah especially california cannabis they've got scientists that have been working on this shit for a long time man they are not normal joints every now and then ron white will bring one by the mothership and you're like get that out of here before everybody dies they all dust them with keef they they have thc crystals all over them it's like they're going too hard they sell they sell some joints that are like guaranteed to fuck you up [31:36](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1896) they're like a hundred bucks and it's also as well it's like young people don't have the money to go out boozing like we did when we were young when everything was much cheaper well there's also i think and this is a positive aspect of the internet um and all these uh health and wellness influencers is that a lot of people are realizing like hey alcohol is actually bad for you i like it i took a long time off It took like eight months, which is a long time for me. And I noticed a big difference the moment I stopped drinking. I just felt way better. Felt better throughout the day. I felt like my energy levels were much more consistent. [32:12](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1932) I felt better waking up. It's not good to poison yourself all the time. But it's also fun. Well, right. It's like all drugs. It's got good and bad. I would say alcohol is kind of a shit drug in terms of the good versus the bad. I'd like a glass of wine with dinner or something. But beyond that, the trade-offs go way down. Like the second, third, like you're not – it's not improving your enjoyment of the evening. No. It's very expensive. And at our age, you wake up the next day. Oh, man. I'm like – after one glass of wine, I wake up the next day. I'm like, oh, you know, even – One glass of wine? [32:48](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=1968) Yeah, yeah. Wow. You know what it'll help you? Uh-huh? Glutathione. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially liposomal glutathione. It's more bioavailable. But a glutathione is really good for taking the night when you're drinking it while you're drinking Take it before you're drinking take it after you're drinking all right. I'm back on the source. Thanks But also there's an one of the issues with alcohol is dehydration. Yeah, and it's an aminosuppressant So you should be taking amino acids. You should be taking Definitely some electrolytes, but also glutathione It's a kind of mixed sales pitch imagine you were like a rep for an alcohol company You can you can have a glass of wine, but you need to take about five supplements at the same time Well, listen, I think everybody should take supplements anyway. [33:31](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2011) I really do. I think there's a lot of misleading doctors out there that you shouldn't listen to. I got a doctor with a potbelly once telling me that you get everything you need from a balanced diet. I'm like, shut the fuck up. You shut the fuck up. I didn't say that to him, but I really wanted to. I was kind of gentle about it. I said, sir, I have been taking vitamins for a long time, and I notice a marked difference between when I take them and when I don't take them. There's a lot of benefits, and there's a lot of peer-reviewed studies that show benefits of vitamins. So let's just stop talking about this before I get fucking angry at you, you fat fuck. [34:06](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2046) Fat fuck giving out health advice. Yeah, thanks for looking at me when you said that, Joe. I appreciate my opinion. I looked at him first. I looked at him first. And then you looked at me while she said fat fuck. Well, I had to look at you. I'm being kind. I'm a polite host. But, you know, one of my cousins, this is a true story. He was a cardiologist. He used to smoke like 40 a day. Great. Perfect. He's probably stressed out. He's probably got bills to pay and fucking... I don't know what you guys have over there because you have... Your education isn't free. To what level? Up to, like, so to get a doctor's degree. [34:43](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2083) No, no, no. That's not free. It's free up until college. Yeah. Then you have to pay. And then what about liability insurance? Do you guys have outrageous liability insurance for doctors? because that's a giant issue with doctors in America. I don't think it's as outrageous as it is here because our laws are different and we're also not such a litigious culture. Like, a British person who's had a bad experience, unless it's really, really bad, will not be like, I'm suing the fucking... Like, we don't tend to... Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah, but there's a trade-off to it, which is, like, our service culture in the UK is objectively disgusting. [35:19](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2119) It's a lot closer to the Soviet Union than it is to America. Like, in the Soviet Union, when basically if you went to a shop, they would treat you like they were doing you a favor. And Britain is much closer to that than it is to America, wherever. Yeah, where people are like happy to see you. Like I walk into a restaurant in Texas, they're happy to see you. I'm like, what the fuck, wait, whoa. And it takes me like a week to adjust to the fact that people are nice. Well, people are nice here in general, much nicer than California. And I think one of the reasons is there's less people. I really believe that there's an effect That it has on humans no matter who you are when there's an enormous number of people surrounding you all the time I think it's just I totally agree, man. [36:01](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2161) I think this place is only a million people. Well, you know, there was a guy, I talk about this all the time when we talk about, you know, everyone's concerned about plummeting birth rates and all of that. And a lot of people- Everybody but Elon. Yeah, he's pumping them out, man. But he is concerned, that's why he's doing it. He's doing something about it. I'm at a replacement rate with my family now. Congratulations. Good job. But I think my sense has always been, I read this great book by a guy called Desmond Morris. He was a primatologist. He studied great apes and he wrote a book called The Human Zoo, which was all about how the city creates in human beings the kind of responses that a zoo creates in animals. [36:41](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2201) Higher rates of interpersonal violence, higher rates of mental illness, lower reproductiveness, higher rates of depression, all of this stuff. Totally makes sense. And I've moved out of the small town that I lived in outside and I already noticed the difference. It's like we went in on a Saturday to do some shopping, and I was like, get me the fuck out of here. After 10 minutes, it was just like too many people. I only go into London now for work, do the work, come out, and just hide in my house now. Yeah, so you become accustomed to that buzz of the city. Yeah. But it's not necessarily good for you. [37:15](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2235) It's not good for you. I don't think it's good for you. I don't think it is either. Being accustomed to the buzz of the city is like being accustomed to social media. It's constant dopamine. mean it's constant constant constant you you're always looking for the next thing you're always looking for something to stimulate you it's why a lot of people in the city when things go quiet they can't handle it right yeah i have a good friend who's lived in manhattan for boy more than 30 years and he recently got a place on fire island not recently like within the last 10 15 years and he said without that place in fire line he wouldn't even be able to keep his place in Manhattan he said he can't deal with it anymore but Fire Island's like a small island I don't think they even have cars I think you get there on a ferry and everybody rides bikes and it's like and so he goes there and then he comes back beep beep fuck you but he just you the contrast of the two of them makes it livable yeah whereas when I first met him he was like I fucking love it I love the energy of this city and I was there like I've got my own energy I gotta get the fuck out I don't like this. I like woods. I like peace. [38:22](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2302) I like to be able to sit on top of a hill and see birds fly overhead. That's what I like. I like nature. I do not like being in like a cramped fucking group of all kinds of people stacked feeling each other's energy. It's fun Occasionally, New York's fun to visit But living there sleeping there it pays it you pay a toll You do pay a toll because that city like we've got a friend who lets us use his apartment And it's a beautiful apartment in Manhattan, but you can never really sleep because the boy you said And it's like you go what's going on and it's like it's 315. Do you know what I mean? Right. Yeah, people are insane. They're driven insane by this Well, it's also a 24-hour city a legitimate 24-hour city, you know And when I was single, it was great because pool halls are open in New York City 24 hours a day. [39:18](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2358) So, you know, Chelsea Billiards, which is where we would go, was like this crazy place that was like a playground that was open 24 hours a day. Like, this is nuts. And then you go to a diner. You could get a real meal. Apparently, a lot of this died during COVID. But you can get like a steak dinner at 4 a.m., like a nice restaurant. You could sit down. Like, this is crazy. This place is nuts. It was fun when I was 23. It's fun. It's fun. New York is a lot of fun. We have a good time. We're there for a week. We go to our favorite cigar bars. You know, all of that. It's fun. It's fun. But I think it's also once you get married and you have kids, then the calculus changes completely. [39:55](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2395) Like, I would rather spend half an hour with my son walking in the woods. Yeah. Over, you know, whatever the best New York has to offer. You know what I mean? It's just... For sure. Well, it's for me, too. A lot changed when I moved to Los Angeles. I started moving further and further away from the city. And as I moved further and further away from the city, I became more and more relaxed. I was like, I think there's something to this. And so where I lived most of the time when I was living in LA was not even in LA County. I was living in the neighborhood county neighboring county i had plenty of acres i had mountain lions and bobcats and all kinds of shit in my neighborhood deer in my neighborhood it's way more relaxed it was just i could go outside and just hear birds and you know and see you know a hawk circling over a canyon looking for a rabbit it was awesome i loved it it was just so much better than just being inundated with sounds sounds and movement and activity it's just like you know when i when i was teaching i remember every year because i was teaching a really rough part of east london we used to take the kids away for a one week residential in out in the countryside and they [41:06](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2466) would do activities and whatever else and you would literally see a different side to these kids 100 you would when you saw them on the playground they were surrounded by concrete and just skyscrapers and tower blocks they everybody even when you started the day everybody and these some these were 10 11 year old kids everybody just felt amped like they were ready to come for confrontation they were ready to go yeah after a week in the countryside you saw a different side to these kids yeah because that's how people are supposed to live that's how we evolved just like we evolved with religion we also evolved in nature and i think we're struggling with the absence of both of those things in our society and the big one to me the biggest one is not just nature but it's also light pollution yeah you know we were talking about the other day uh column tyrell hilarious stand-up comedian was on and uh he was talking about how he goes to uh big ben and uh goes down to uh this area of texas and south texas that is like one of the best places to see the sky the night sky and how fucking insane it is and you just just you're just confronted by the milky way and all these stars i think that chills people out too that puts that [42:18](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2538) puts your place in the universe in perspective and in the cities that's the most absent you can't see any stars so in the cities everything's bright you just see a black sky who gives a fuck what's up there let's go eat let's go do this let's do that fuck these people like you fucking fascists or whatever it is it's like you're you're living in this this very tiny blindered world i think for people like us as well who who by virtue of what we do are digitally plugged in like we have to Kind of pay attention a little bit to what's going on So I certainly spend a lot of time on my phone When you know I remember A month or two ago there was some shit going on People talking shit about as always About us on social media or in the papers And then I just sit in my garden and I see these Two giant trees that are like 300 years old Yeah who gives a fuck Yeah when you're there you just go who gives a fuck It's you know it's also the cost Of what we do yeah the cost Of what we do is people are going to have opinions You want them to have opinions some of the opinions are going to suck and some of them are going to be completely outrageous and some are going to be just outright lies where they just want to take you down that's okay yeah the lies piss me off [43:25](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2605) i'll be honest the lies piss me off because i'm like i am happy to be criticized for mistakes i make i'm happy to be criticized for things that i said inarticulatively i'm happy to be criticized by people who don't like my world view but don't fucking lie about don't make a bullshit about me and tell other people that that's what I am, that pisses me off. We should reject that from everyone, from both sides. And the problem is if it aligns with your ideology, you won't call it out and you accept it, and it's fine. It's just like, you know, I always say that these parties that, you know. Unfortunately, we only have two are defined by the craziest members of those parties Like when you think about the left What do you think about people that want trans women in sports and communism and an open border and then when you think about the right? [44:13](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2653) What do you think about like Patriot front and fucking? You know religious fundamentalists that want the Bible in every school and you know Xenophobic people to think this is a white Christian nation, and that's it it's just so exhausting and if you spend enough time absorbing all of this online it'd completely warp your worldview instead of just basing your worldview on how you interact with people in real life you know and most people now are tainted by this so even interacting with them in real life is a problem especially if you don't catch them one-on-one yeah you know it was three of them and one of you then it's a problem like why are you talking to me like this like you You would never talk to me like this was you and me and we were alone. [44:56](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2696) This is crazy. This is a crazy way to talk to people. If you have an opinion about something and we both have the time, which is another thing, to actually discuss this. Like this is a time-consuming, nuanced discussion. Like let's – which is a beautiful thing of what we're allowed to do. We can sit down and have those discussions. And I think it's super beneficial for other people to be able to listen. Because if someone sees some Twitter hot take on you, they get a very distorted perception of who you are. And then they hear you on a podcast and go, wait a minute, this guy is pretty reasonable. [45:30](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2730) Seems like a nice guy. The fuck is going on in the world? Right. But if you're only a clips person and you're only a Twitter person and you're only a hot take person, you just – and you're tired. You're working all day. You have a fucking whole bunch of obligations. You're going to like lock into a fake version of the world and that version of the world is going to give you anxiety But it's also about incentives because if you are a hot takes person if you are a clips person You actually don't care about the truth because that's not what you're aiming for what you're actually aiming for is engagement It's views. It's all the rest of it. It's money. So Unfortunately, as we all know, there's the truth is important but it doesn't generate it doesn't engage people as much as a hot take as much as something that is potentially devised here's how i push back on that the success of podcasts like yours and mine like this is the difference right it's like it's clear that there's a thirst for this there's a hunger for people having discussions and for people that say oh well i see this point of view i see why you would think that way this is what i think and let's talk there's a hunger for that obviously yeah it's not just that the only interaction that humans are having is these [46:43](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2803) bullshit artists that are making these fake posts or these these very biased posts just to get engagement because that's how they make their money which are that's a it's a sizable population online but there's also plenty of people that are having real conversations yeah and it's like you said i think politics is what what changes all of it and and maybe that's where i acknowledge that Like when we started the show, we had a rule that we would never have sitting politicians on the show. And then, you know, we got interested in more politics and we had access to more politicians. And suddenly we talked to a few. [47:16](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2836) And then people go, oh, OK, so this is like you're on a team. You're on the other team. And now the gloves are off. Man, it is crazy. Like we were sitting in Airbnb yesterday preparing for one of our interviews, watching something on YouTube. But because we weren't logged in with our own account, you get YouTube ads. and right now as we're recording this it's the midterms coming up and the political attack ads have you seen this shit oh i've seen a lot of them in america bro it is if you show that to a person who's not used to it like it is shocking to me it's like ken paxton loves pedophiles like whoa right that's and the other way too yeah right james talarico wants to take your daughter and rape her and then trans her. [47:57](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2877) It's like, whoa. It's. Like imagine talking about people like that right right imagine you came on here And you were just like the Republicans want to trans your kids and the demo of the Democrats. Oh, no, that would be crazy Well, listen give it another 30 years, right? When the Republicans are transing your kids, that's when you know you really are well That's when we know that the world is a changed place when they're secretly straight people right yeah so like there's someone living a gay lifestyle because it's super popular but he's secretly straight and we have to like find him and tmz catches him making out with a woman like donald sutherland an invasion of the body statures somebody gets outed for watching straight porn yeah one day one day one day if the the democrats have their way yeah but then but then like you said i mean the stakes i also see the other way though because the stakes are high like if you if you take a legal immigration like that was a real problem in this country under the democrats like gigantic right so so a lot according to the view the view fact-checked me on that in fact the border was closed that was one of the yeah oh my god they did a fact check of me saying why [49:13](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2953) i voted republican and i said there's there were so many things that were going the wrong way with the past administration one of them you knew that it wasn't biden running it It was who whoever was in his cabinet. They were running the country wasn't Biden. He was out of his fucking mind. We all know that we accept it. There's a bunch of people come out and said that that we're working there now. So that was one. The other one was the border was wide open and that people were fucking coming through and fucking Sonny Host in fact checked me and actually was saying that Biden told people not to come. [49:43](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=2983) I'm like, but they did. And yeah, look, Greg Abbott, our governor, did bus people to New York City because like, look, you guys are past these policies. You want this border wide open? You fucking handle these people. And that is true. But it was also true that the Red Cross had stations that were set up where people give people maps, tell them how to get in, that once people did get in, they were given plane tickets. They were given EBT cards. They were given cell phones. They were put up in luxury hotels. All this is true. Not just that, but a disproportionate amount of people who moved in, who came here illegally, moved to swing states. Kind of crazy. Seems a little odd. Seems a little odd that you got a large portion of them set up in Ohio and set up in a bunch of these different places, like the Haitians in Ohio. It's a famous part. [50:34](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3034) But it's like there's clearly an incentive. You know what the incentive is. The census counts humans. It doesn't count legal citizens. So if there's 10 million humans and half of them are illegal, it doesn't matter. That indicates how many congressional seats you get. That's real. So if you just flood a place that you're already in control with illegal immigrants that you're paying for, this isn't rocket science. That's going to help you stay in power and that's what was going on and I felt like that is crazy so Kamala Harris was recently talking about how they need to add more people to the Supreme Court and then they need to turn DC and Puerto Rico into states and Why do you want to do that? Because if you do that then you have control forever, right? [51:26](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3086) And that's that's the reality that I was Confronted with with the choices between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump It's not that I looked at the Trump administration and I would say, well, this is perfect. This is exactly what we want. I love it when he has a picture of himself as Jesus and he posts it up on True Social. This is great. I think some of the things he's done are good for sure. And I think some of the things the FBI has done. This is one of the things that the left does not want to confront. There's been a significant drop in crime. Significant. Significant drop in crime. Measurable drop in crime. [52:00](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3120) crime because of the FBI under Kash Patel and this new administration. Now, I don't know why. I don't know what it means. Some people say it's because of underreporting, which is an issue because, especially places like Los Angeles, no one gives a fuck if you get robbed. No one gives a fuck if your car gets broken into. They're not going to do anything. So it's underreported crime. And so they say crime is down. But is it? No. Not if you talk to people. Everybody that I know that lives in Los Angeles says it's fucking Gotham City now. It's fucking nuts. whereas it wasn't 15 years ago. So what happened? [52:33](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3153) What happened was the same policies that you fucking people keep voting for keep going further and further and further and further down the line, and the further they go, the more things get shitty, and no one wants to change because you're in a cult. Yeah. It's also worth, you know, people say these policies are kind, that it's the right thing to do morally. As, you know, as somebody who talks to, whenever I see a Venezuelan person, I always want to talk to them because I want to see how they're doing, how they feel the country is doing, how Venezuela is doing. Because you're from Venezuela, I always tell people that. [53:08](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3188) Yeah, and one thing that I remember this conversation I had with an Uber driver and he was talking to me and he said to me, look, when you go on the pods, because I follow your pod and I listen to Joe and I follow these pods, please tell people that Venezuelan people, we're not criminals, we're not people coming here to cause trouble. the vast majority of us only want to come here to work and he goes but those are the people who do it legally the other people who come in now I'm sure that some of them just want to come in a lot of them want to come in just for a better life but you're also allowing a portion of people to come in who are criminals who are going to cause trouble and that's going to give a bad reputation to every single Venezuelan person who is here because the moment you hear Venezuelan you think Oh, Tren de Aragua, which is the very famous gang, which was causing huge amounts of problem in America, drug runnings, killings, gang activity. [54:04](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3244) So immediately, when you think of a Venezuelan, you go, oh, Tren de Aragua. You don't think of the guy who's coming along, who's going to work for you, who's going to drive your Uber, who's just doing what he can to make ends meet. Now, let me ask you this. Do you think that allowing the illegals in and the criminals in, not just the illegal, let's say, because everyone who comes in that doesn't do it the right way is illegal. So allowing criminals to come through as well, knowing that this will increase violent crime. Do you think that that is just an unintended side effect of the goal they're trying to achieve, which is get more congressional seats, control districts, make it so that the other party can't win? [54:46](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3286) Or do you think that they have calculated this and said that this would probably be a way that we can institute much more control like flock cameras and have the ability to tap into people's phones, find out if they're doing illegal activity, and that people will actually allow us to do this because we'll do it under the premise that we're making the streets safe again? And it's probably quite hard to separate the criminals from the non-criminals as well. If the border is open, then they're just coming. It's impossible. How would you know? The other thing we had Andrew Yang on recently, and this is where it gets even worse, because one of the reasons he left the sort of conventional Republican Democratic Party model was he said, actually, neither party wants to solve the problem. [55:29](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3329) And he was saying some Republicans will deliberately avoid allowing Democrats to close the border because it gives them something to run on. Of course. Yeah. And that's fucking crazy. Yeah. That is fucking crazy. Yeah. Anna Paulina Luna explained that to me. She was like, there's a bunch of issues that they don't want resolved because that's how they raise finances. They can run on it. They run on them. It's campaign talking point. And it's like, you got to have it. You got to have it in your bag. See, this is where I think the left has a lot. of very good points actually, which is the accumulation of power within big corporations and government. That's why when I was younger, I always thought of myself and I haven't really changed my opinions very much. I thought of myself as being on the left because the more actually we do our show and the more people we speak to who are in positions to know, the more I'm just confronted by how much behavior in that part of our society is driven by greed and not morality. [56:28](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3388) These people are not moral. I'm not even saying they're immoral. I think they're worse. They're amoral. They don't give a fuck as long as they win the election. They make money. They increase their bonus. That is so scary to me. It's much scarier actually than people intentionally doing bad things in a way. And that accumulation of power in the hands of a very small number of people, that's a real thing, man. It's a real thing. And it's also a part of the culture of those groups of people, right? Like there's a diffusion of responsibility aspect of being a part of a corporation that's doing things that are fucked up. [57:03](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3423) Like say if you're working for a corporation and they manufacture something and you find out that these people are dumping some sort of toxic waste in the third world. Like not me. I'm in Dallas. I'm working on – I'm at my desk. I'm doing spreadsheets. But you are a part of this corporation, right? but you don't think oh my god i'm a part of an evil movement that's killing fish in a river somewhere in cambodia or whatever that's not how you think you're you you are a part of this culture and you if you're a lawyer hey i know he's guilty i gotta get him off this is the job if you're working in a corporation hey we're here to make money like this is what we do we have shareholders we're working 16 hours a day we're on fucking adderall you know we don't have time for morals okay maybe one day i'll be moral but right now i want a house in the hamptons I want a yacht. I want a fucking jet. And I think I can get there because I know that the guy who used to be the CEO, he left, he got $600 million. And this is what the culture is. The culture is all about making the most money as possible. And when you're around a bunch of other people that are doing that, it seems fine. The responsibility of being moral is completely removed. You're a [58:14](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3494) part of a giant machine that you can't stop. And so listen, we are Xerox or Raytheon, whatever it is. You don't think, oh, I can have an effect on the world with my decisions and I should probably do the right thing. There's none of that going on. No. And also as well, the people that do think like that, they're going to self-select out of that system because they're going to be there going, oh, dude, we're doing this. I can't live with this. They'll leave. They'll write an article for The Atlantic. Nobody will read it. That's it. That's the end of it. It's how I think about what we do, though. It's like I think of trigonometry as like a family-owned restaurant right we're feeding people information right or conversation or whatever it is but we are providing something that people ingest yeah there's a responsibility that comes with that right you shouldn't put you know lead and mercury and all kinds of shit in there to make it taste better or make more money and whatever and we we know there's people we could have on our show that would get ten times the views right but it's just not it's not what we do right now yeah and i respect that i think it's clear in your conversations that that's not what you're trying to do you're not going to play gotcha whereas no disrespect [59:27](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3567) to pierce morgan that's his business model his business models have a bunch of people on have them fucking yell at each other we he's great at it it's it's also a time thing i think when people have a very short period of time it inevitably becomes that if you ever see uh pierce uh doing long-form interviews some of them are incredible oh sure i'm not even talking about him i'm talking about his yeah i get it yeah yeah i can slag off pierce there's no problem you douchebag no um yeah the model i agree that model isn't is What it does is it attracts attention, but I think once you've watched it, I think it was actually our mutual friend Chris Williamson told me about this. [1:00:08](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3608) He said there's a thing, you know that post-nut clarity? Yes. There's post-content clarity. Oh, yeah. And when you watch something that's outrage porn, you get that post-content, like, why have I spent 15 minutes watching that? You know? Yeah, I try not to. When I see people like, you know, destroyed this guy on this, I'm like, I don't want that in my life. I'm not interested. If something's particularly interesting, someone will send it to me. So this is my filtration system now for online content. If a friend doesn't send it to me that I think is a cool and interesting friend, I don't read it. [1:00:43](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3643) Yeah. So most of what I get, unless I'm on the toilet, I'm getting from the toilet, I will just give in. The toilet is where bad things happen. And I will give in and go, what? But it's made my life infinitely better. Yeah. Infinitely. But the issue is the incentives are baked all the way through. Like when I wrote my book, Uneducated, I remember people saying to me, oh, you're going to write about the culture wars in education, talking about how the culture wars affected you in your classroom. I was like, mate, I was teaching in a fucking ghetto in East London. We didn't have time to talk about decolonization. [1:01:18](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3678) Because you can't do it. You can't do it. How are you going to talk about decolonization when a kid's throwing a chair at your head? You know what I mean? But it would have been. And then when you go and promote the book, people are like, well, did you talk about trans in the classroom? I'm like, no, mate. I was trying just to have a lesson. You know, we didn't have that. But the moment you know that by doing that, you're going to forsake a large part of what of outrage, you know, interest in you in what you do, because you're not playing that game. Right. and you're forsaking the clips for that yeah but who cares yeah it's like that's not what you're into anyway it's like if you run a vegetarian restaurant and you're that's what your thing is i have the look of a man who runs a vegetarian restaurant but you don't get upset if someone else is you know making money selling steak like that's what they do if you want to sell steak you sell steak yeah not that's a bad comparison because what you guys do is better it's like you're the steak we're the steak yeah it's like someone's out there buying vegan burgers and getting really sick no it's and then that's what we try to do it's you know you realize i know it [1:02:23](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3743) sounds kind of hacky but you when your platform goes to a size up we're about to hit two million subscribers now and you do an interview you think oh fuck like we've got real responsibility if somebody says something that is actually you know that you think isn't right it's your duty to challenge him it's also your duty to you know to make sure that the interview is prepped properly so that when they have their arguments, you can go, well, actually, what about this? What about that? Right. All of these things, because you realize what you're putting out into the world, it matters. People are going to consume it, and they're going to take it as fact. [1:03:00](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3780) Yeah, it does matter. And if you abandon that feeling of responsibility just because you want the outrage clicks, it's like you're just a part of the problem. Yeah, I mean, you got to be able to have conversations with people. And this is why I push back against the idea that people have a shorter attention span than ever. It's like, do they, though? I feel like they're just people. I feel like people are just people. I don't think I'm unique. I think I like listening to audiobooks because I think they're interesting. And I think I'm not alone. I think they're very popular. They sell a lot of audiobooks. [1:03:33](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3813) It's one of the big reasons why Spotify got into podcasting is because their audiobook sales or streams, rather. A lot of people were streaming audiobooks. I'm like, wow, a lot of people just – they don't just want music. Let's get into other things. People like to be informed and have their brain excited. It's good. And you can have it excited in a negative way, like get outraged. That's the problem. It can hijack your – concentration in that way. It can hijack your attention. But also, what's more fulfilling is getting your brain stimulated in a positive way, or at least an intriguing way, something that really makes you think about things. I love when I listen to a podcast, I listen to a conversation, and I carry that thought with me. I'll shut the radio off, and I'm driving. I'm like, wow, okay. And I'll just contemplate and think about things. I'm not alone this is not a unique thing that i have i think there's millions of people out there like that they're just that desire is not being fulfilled so it gets their attention gets hijacked by horseshit well and i think the direction of travel is clear i mean a lot of people in our space like to be oh tv's dead well if you look at the absolute numbers [1:04:46](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3886) that they are way up here right then collectively then then youtube and podcasts but the direction of travel is only one way from here. They're going to go down. We're going to go up. Do you think that the views on television are higher than the views on, like, say, YouTube? I don't even think it's close. That's interesting. YouTube is infinitely more popular than any television show. Yeah, but it's not all, like, most of the views on YouTube are like guys, kids unboxing toys and guys going camp. I discovered this channel the other day called Outdoor Studios. Are you familiar? Or Outdoor Boys. [1:05:22](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3922) Yeah, I think he stopped doing it. He stopped doing it. I was like, this guy, 20 million subscribers, every video is like 90 million views. And he just was like, yeah, I don't want to do this anymore. I think the popularity thing is overwhelming. And the fame, it freaks you out. I think he probably reads the comments, unfortunately. And he was just a regular guy that's really into survival stuff. It's amazing content. And he seems like a really nice guy. Seems like a lovely guy. I think maybe the one thing that pushed him in that direction just watching it is he kind of got his family involved. [1:05:56](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3956) So a lot of it would be like him with the kids going to places. And I imagine if you never fully signed up for 20 million subscriber fame and you're a five-year-old or a 10-year-old or now you're an 18-year-old, that's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. And that's probably extremely disconcerting and unpleasant. Well, I don't think that's wise. I don't think that's wise at all to do that. Yeah, I mean, when I see people getting their children involved in their television shows, I'm like, please don't do that. So, like, you didn't ask them, and they're going to have to go to school and then deal with the consequences of it and all the bullshit. [1:06:31](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=3991) I mean, it's a pretty straightforward show. The guy's just, like, you know, camping in a fucking igloo. No big deal. But even then, you're still exposing yourself to schizophrenics and crazy people and the world, the whole world out there. Yeah. And also as well, number one, they can't consent because they're too young. So they don't understand actually what it means to consent to something like that and what are going to be the long term implications. But also, it's just weird. It takes you a while when people come up to you and they go, oh, I feel I know you. And you obviously don't. But as an adult, I can rationalize that. Imagine what it must be like as a kid. [1:07:11](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4031) Well, that's the real problem with child stars, right? They all get fucked up. Like I've become friends with Zac Efron lately. He's been coming to the club. Very nice guy. But talks openly about it. Just like becoming famous when you're young, when you're really young, you're a kid. It's just so fucked up for you. I liken it to when you make cement and you don't put all the ingredients in and then it kind of forms but you can never fix it. So it's never fully formed. And I think this is an issue with I've met a lot of child actors that became adults and every one of them was fucked up. Macaulay Culkin was probably the least fucked up, oddly, but he talks openly about the struggles that he's had. [1:07:57](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4077) And what is it that makes somebody really struggle with life? I've having been famous as a kid, like you get adored for no reason, right? You're you're six and everybody loves you. You're supposed to earn that, right? You're supposed to have it from your family. And then the way you behave is supposed to dictate how people treat you in the real world and what you're good at. So, like, maybe if you're good at art or you're good at music, people like Jimmy, I love how you play guitar. And then so then people like you for that. And then you like you want more of that. So you work really hard and then you go through this whole process of becoming an adult and dating and girls don't like you just because you're on the cover of Team Beat. [1:08:37](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4117) They like you because hopefully they think you're attractive looking and then they think you're funny or you're smart or you're nice to them. And then you go on a date and you guys jive and it's a learning process. And you don't go through that at all when you're a nine year old and you're on the set of a television show that's in your name. And then everyone around you is catering to you. Everyone's kissing your ass Tommy Can we get you anything would you like a juice would you like anything like everybody loves you? Nobody is telling you you have to do something you have to do this you have to do that nobody's punishing you nobody's nobody Is like bullying you at school. It's like your world is weird and people tolerate your shitty behavior I imagine a hundred percent you could throw temper tantrums and fucking smash windows and they mean that's why rock stars fucking tear apart hotel rooms why they do that because they can they go to that hotel room just fucking throw a tv through the window i mean it's in it's in all these movies right why they do that because they're out of their fucking minds and because there's no guardrails and to have no guardrails as you're growing up and to also be completely wealthy by the time you're 10 you know and then [1:09:46](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4186) usually the parents are involved in some sort of a shitty scenario like i have a friend who's uh It was a child actor his parents stole money from him and he didn't find out until he's an adult like millions of dollars from And he's had like this fucked up relationship with them anyway That's gonna he found out that they were they were mishandling his money and stealing. That's got to be so horrible He suspected it though. It's like It's one of the things that happens when people see you being successful and you have money or they think you have money Suddenly like all these people emerge out of everywhere who've got like these amazing ideas for how to convert your money into their money. [1:10:20](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4220) Brilliant ideas for that, right? And there's a lot of them. Yeah, I get confronted all the time with stupid ideas. And I just, I don't invest in anything. I'm like, that's the best way for me to just diffuse it all. Like, I'm not interested. I'm not buying that. And also with the child star thing is you have all of this success, which is more success than the vast majority of people will ever encounter in their life. And you're done by the time you're 16. because you fundamentally changed the way you look. So you've now become an adolescent with all the awkwardness and the horrificness that goes through all of our teenage years. [1:10:56](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4256) Yet you look back at a time when everybody loved you, and now no one does. Yeah, you peak at 15. But imagine being like Tutankhamen, became the pharaoh of Egypt at nine. What? You're running Egypt? What? Huh? Yeah, he wasn't really running. He was like Joe Biden. Well, he seemed compromised, too. That was a team, Joe. That was a team. Yeah. It seemed like he might be inbred. Or two in common? Yeah, there was something wrong with him. He was very odd. Sorry, I'm choking on something. Yeah, I think analysis of his bones, I think they said that he might have suffered. I think that's some speculation. [1:11:39](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4299) People try not to be offensive when they talk about that. But obviously, inbreeding amongst royal families is not a unique thing. not like what wait a minute you know like yeah and so the possibility that he was inbred here one of the most striking things about tutankhamen was his parentage 2010 dna study concluded that his parents were Probably brother and sister. The researchers identify his father as most likely Pharaoh Akhenaten, and his mother as an unnamed mummy, known as the Younger Lady. And that was probably his sister. The body differed from the idealized royal image. Researchers reported a club foot and damage to bones in his foot, suggesting he had difficulty walking. Walking sticks found in his tomb support that interpretation. [1:12:27](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4347) these are medical interpretations of ancient remains rather than a complete certain picture of his health he became king around age nine died around 18 or 19 exact cause of death remains uncertain researchers detected malaria parasite dna and proposed that malaria bone problems and a fractured leg may have contributed to not any single cause was conclusively established hmm apparently um the reason why they found his tomb versus uh all the other pharaoh tombs that had long been looted was that he was uh very disrespected and that once they uh buried him and they put him in his tomb they covered it with rubble so that no one could visit it they were like fuck this guy like yeah we did what we had to do but let's just cover the whole thing with rubble that's one of the one of the one of the pieces of speculation that's so funny there's so many guys in history who are like i'm gonna build an empire i'm gonna no one knows their name yeah this dude was a shit king i know shit king nine years old and that's the one that everybody thinks about when you think about an egyptian pharaoh you think about king tut because they found his tomb intact yeah so the real question is what happened to all those other tombs and is [1:13:39](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4419) where is all that gold where where are all those i mean if if that guy had such an elaborate burial and he was a shit king like what you know what did what did ramses what did his pharaoh what did what did that guy's burial look like i mean well it's been like 6 000 years right since the ancient egypt is 6 000 years ago at least at least there's a lot of real weird stuff when it comes to that real weird you know um there's also the the actual king's list with the zeptepi Kings list in Egypt that it's super weird because it goes back 30 plus thousand years and they want to talk about that as if it's myth and then it gets to a certain age where it's agreed upon that this is the time in which these dynasties existed that people accept and so this is very it's very weird stuff and you I think you have to really understand hieroglyphs to be able to even comment on it so I'm not going to but one of the weird things about it is the ages of the older people The people from 30 plus thousand years ago, they're like living 200,000 years, 50,000 years. [1:14:50](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4490) It's very odd. They reign for a long time. And that aligns with the Sumerian Kings list too, which is also super fucking strange. The Sumerian Kings list has the same sort of properties where you have accepted historical figures that are later that live a normal lifespan. But then when you go way, way back, you have kings that are ruling for 35,000 years. Isn't it the same in the Bible where it's all like way extended? So is that maybe just like a language thing or like a calculation? It's probably a bunch of things, right? The real problem is you have cuneiform, right? So you have the ancient Sumerian writing. [1:15:31](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4531) So there's not like a language issue then because you have them detailing the ages of the people that are historically active. where we know that they existed the real problem is like what were they talking like in the bible like when noah was 600 years old okay what is a year do you like what does that mean right is it every is every season a year is it an actual calendar year do you have a gregorian calendar like what do you what do you use it because they used to use Different calendar entirely in ancient history used to use a 13 lunar cycle calendar. So it was a 13 month calendar was a 28 day calendar, which is 364 days. So they would have to have a leap year every now and then. But when you think about that, that actually kind of makes more sense, because that really does align with the cycles. But somewhere along the line, they decided to make it 12 months. And some months are 31 days, and some months are 28 days, like what? Like, what happened here? [1:16:30](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4590) Like what so it's like what do you mean when you say he's 600 years old, you know Did you just mean he's old as fuck you see no like that dude's like a million years old like you like how old's my dad? My dad's a hundred and fifty thousand years old And he fucking hates this, you know like you know what I mean like people talk in a certain like the whole 72 virgins thing Right, you know when they say you get 72 virgins when you make yourself a martyr They don't mean the number 72. It's like saying, you know, I got a million friends it's just a lot they're just saying a lot it's like a substitute for a lot you know one of the interesting things is when when you actually go to egypt is genuinely how much we don't know about that about about their civilization the engineering how they constructed the pyramids i remember i went to the temple of abu simbel i don't know if you've ever seen this temple it's huge it's absolutely massive and there's a certain point in time during the day where there is a beam of light that comes into the temple and alights i think it's at the altar they so they did that specifically that was a choice that they made and they designed the temple for that to happen and you go well how did they do that yeah it's super sophisticated engineering and um it's [1:17:44](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4664) also that's it at a scale when when you're dealing with how far they move the stone how they quarried the stone, what tools they use. There's also real clear evidence of ancient tool use and not just tool use, but high speed drills, some sort of unknown technology that seems to be able to scoop sections out of rock. It looks like it was moving far quicker than what they would achieve with copper and sand and friction and all the different theories that people have proposed to how they did it, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. And I think it's way older than they think it is. [1:18:26](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4706) I think it's way, way, way older. And I think one of the first people to propose that was Dr. Robert Schock from Boston University. He's a geologist. And he looked at the weathering of the temple where the sphinx is carved out of. and he said this is water erosion like thousands of years of water erosion has led to these deep fissures on the sides of these walls and then the furs this back you get where you have rainfall like heavy rainfall in the nile valley you got to go like 9 000 years so that's 9 000 years and then you have to deal with thousands of years of rainfall to achieve that so when was it actually built it might be 10 000 years old might be 12 000 years old it also might be newer than some of the other stuff that's there, which is even crazier. [1:19:16](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4756) And then you have the stuff that's underground and you go, hey, like the things that they know about, like the labyrinths that they've discovered, that Herodotus wrote about, that these enormous labyrinths, as he said, was greater than the spectacle of Giza, like greater than the pyramids. He said underground was even more preposterous. You know, and going back to our religious conversation, I never knew this. So I went to an exhibition at the British Museum where they were talking about the ancient Greek Empire took over the ancient Egyptian Empire. And there was a fusion of the two. And what they had at one point was the Greeks who were living in Egypt worshipping their gods and the Egyptians worshipping their gods. [1:19:57](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4797) And the elites then turned around. You know what? We've got a major problem here. If we don't actually do something to help bind society together, we're going to have a civil war. So they artificially created gods that both sections could worship. Which gods? I can't remember the name of the gods, but... They've made up some gods? Yeah. And everybody's like, oh, phew. Yeah. Thank God you found the bridge. You know, and it's kind of a genius solution because you can still worship your Greek gods. they could still worship their egyptian gods but there was a gods in the middle that everyone could worship well that's a age-old tactic right i mean this is sort of how constantine pushed christianity through rome you know it's like got to bring everybody on the same page so this is people have always done this whereas the mongols had a totally different approach genghis khan said i don't give a fuck what your religion is come on board just pay taxes and don't fuck around pay taxes don't fuck around let's kill folks he didn't care what you believed it he didn't give a very tolerant Genghis Khan yes very tolerant it's what it's really interesting dark Dan Carlin had this great take on him where he was he was [1:21:09](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4869) saying that if you historians today talk about Genghis Khan as like a Genghis Khan there was a lot of positive aspects to his empire and one of the things that he opened up trade to the east like right also killed 10 percent of the population like it's kind of crazy that one of the biggest mass murderers in the history of the human race documented is also thought about in the positive impacts that he had on civilization well it's funny i took my dad to azbekistan because my dad would grew up in azbekistan and i lived in azbekistan for four years so we did like a father and son trip there when you get to azbekistan you get to tashkent right in the heart of the city there's this giant statue of tamerlane timur the lame he see most people don't even know who the guy was he was basically like a mini genghis khan and they celebrate they're not decolonializing that shit they're like this is what this is our boy and by the way that dude he was as vicious and his empire stretched as far as constantinople on the one side to china to russia to india at one point it just didn't last as long because he was a badass and most of his descendants were not but he controlled this giant swathe of the of the [1:22:24](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4944) of the central asia in particular and uh in samarkand they still have his tomb that uh the tomb is there and there's a story i don't know if i told you this before do you remember about the the soviet in the german invasion of uh the soviet union did i tell you this before maybe um basically uh soviet archaeologists were opening about to open this tomb and all the locals were like don't don't don't touch it don't touch it because on the tomb it said whoever opens this tomb will unleash a conqueror greater than i they opened it and the next day hitler invaded soviet russia whoa the next day the next day i think you did tell me this yeah Yeah, I probably did. [1:23:06](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=4986) That's crazy. June 22nd, 1941, Operation Barbarossa. Here's the interesting bit as well. The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point in the war. So Soviet Union, I don't know if you remember this, but the Soviet Union was basically getting its ass kicked for the first year and a half of the war. Absolutely steamrolled, million men, army surrendering en masse. The Germans were kicking ass. They got as far as the gates of Moscow. If you go to Moscow, there's these three giant tank traps outside. That's how close the Germans came. And a lot of historians actually argue that if Hitler had taken Moscow, which he was very capable of doing, if he didn't make mistakes, that would have been it. [1:23:48](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5028) Because Stalin stayed in Moscow. And so Stalin would have been captured, probably killed, and the Soviet Union would have lost the war. Anyway, fast forward to the Battle of Stalingrad. The archaeologist eventually... You know what? We've dug this up. We should have opened it. And they gave him a proper Islamic burial, put him back in the tomb, covered everything up. And the next day, that was the pivotal day in the Battle of Stalingrad. And from then on, the Soviet Union basically pushed forward and won the war. Simulation theory. Right. In effect. It's insane, man. But you know what? Uzbekistan, you talk about spreading trade and stuff. [1:24:23](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5063) It was that part of the world at that time. If you go there today, I loved going there as a tourist because it's kind of like the Muslim Rome. It's just this like incredibly beautiful testament to the greatness of their civilization at one point. These beautiful madrassas, beautiful mosques, gigantic, absolutely gigantic. People are really friendly. Food is amazing. It was a really cool place to go. I really liked going back there. Well, I think one of the things that set back the Islamic world in a huge way was Genghis Khan invading Iraq. How so? When he invaded – well, I don't even think it was Iraq back then. [1:24:59](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5099) What was it? Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia. So Baghdad, they took – the Mongols took Baghdad and the river flowed red with blood the way they describe it. They just slaughtered everybody. They knocked civilizations back to the Stone Age. It was a famous story that Dan Carlin talks about. It's one of the scariest ones. The Shah of Khwarizma sent an envoy to go to visit Jin China. And as he's making his way to Jin China, they see what they think is a snow-capped mountain in the distance. That as they get closer, it turns out to be a pile of bones. and that Genghis Khan had arrived before they got there and killed everyone in the town, everyone in the city, and stacked their bones on, over a million people, stacked their bones on top of each other. [1:25:49](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5149) Whoa. And then they had abandoned their carts along the way because the roads had become so degraded from rotting human flesh. So rotting human flesh had turned everything into mud. So there were so many dead, rotting bodies in the road that they couldn't get their carts through they couldn't get the wheels to turn through the sludge of dead humans maybe not that tolerant then let me open up trade in the west you know that's why we love interviewing historians so much on our show because when you talk to historians you go oh number one what we're going through like people have been going through this since a year dog yeah and you just get to understand so much more not only about your society but also about yourself and human nature and who we are as people like you know we always talk about these are unprecedented times nothing like this has happened before but you go through history and you talk to a historian and we're like well it's kind of similar to 8 and 23 when you look about it because a b c d e and f or whatever it may be you're going all right and that that gives there's a calmness that comes from that yeah people have always been fucked up like always and it's you know i've talked about this a bunch of times i apologize [1:27:03](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5223) If you guys have heard it, but I've been reading this I finished it this Alan Watts book called the Age of Insecurity And it's about the 1950s and it is essentially he's talking about how society is changing so quickly Because of technology and culture shifting radically and people are so anxious. He's talking about this in 1952 I believe it was and you read it and it applies totally today and you realize like oh there's never been a time where everybody's like life is great and then we have this nostalgic view back to those days going all back of those days when i was a boy the milk man came and he delivered your milk and everything was beautiful and everybody believed in god and there was no problems no there's always been problems people have always been people people are messy and sloppy and crazy and they're always going to cause chaos and as long as there have been people there have been problems and yeah this is just a much more aware version of society than ever before and maybe propagandize It may be confused because of the internet, but also a lot better. I mean, if you look at, we can talk about, you know, Gen Z and not as resilient and all of that shit, which is true, but also the way we're raising children now, like when I think about the way my parents and grandparents were raised in the Soviet Union, like animals, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you, you, a five-year-old did something they didn't know not to do, get a fucking beating for just for that. Right. And that was normal. Yeah. [1:28:30](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5310) completely normal and think how we understand a lot more about the impact of shit like that now and that's why we we don't do it um so in the world has improved in so many ways but we are in the age of anxiety and insecurity because i mean you say francis you know all of this has happened before i think ai is a different level it's a different level of challenge to humanity that's going to hypercharge everything yes it's going to be very very very very weird really soon and maybe sooner than we'd like yeah i'm a little concerned um about what might happen post midterm and one of the rumblings that i'm hearing post is after the midterms the united states might start attacking iran again i don't know if this is true or if this is just speculation but good lord i hope it's not true so i don't know what it is but i'm really concerned Because this whole Iran thing is like we're at war, but no one talks about it anymore. [1:29:30](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5370) It's been this like stagnated thing in the media. And what is going on with the Strait of Hormuz? Like boats are getting through, but they have to be ushered. You know, they have to be guided by battleships and shit. And like, are they fighting off people all the time? I hear they are. I hear people are trying to attack these battleships all the time. It's like what happens after the midterms? Because if they did it right now, they'd get crushed in the midterms. and there's a lot of speculation they're already going to lose in the midterms. So if they're waiting until after that's over before they do this, things get real ugly. [1:30:05](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5405) Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, well, you say that. I take that and I raise what's happened in the UK. Our defence minister came out when he was – speech. I can't remember the exact context where the speech was being held, But he was talking about how we need to start, how British people need to start stockpiling. He did say, he said three days worth of whatever. But it kind of makes sense because our infrastructure is very vulnerable. We haven't built a lot of the shit that we should have been building because we're very green and all of this other stuff. But isn't three days the modern version of two weeks to stop the spread? [1:30:43](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5443) Right, right. You know what I mean? And Joe, before we do it on, can I have a piss? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll pause. We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen. So, where were we? We were on Iran. We were talking about Iran. Are we back on air now or not? Yeah, we're back on air. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Let me just do this. Here you go, Mike. Do you want to do that? I'm doing the triangular things. Okay. Nothing like three white guys talking about geopolitics. Why do you have to racialize? That's going to be one of the comments. You have to today. You have to today. today it's very is that working no it's no I think it's dead yeah I'm filling the sucker up I'll give you this two seconds um geopolitics is actually that's not really correct when I read the original term of geopolitics sort of widely used to talk about different countries but it's really about like resources and geology which makes sense like what is the actual pull that up What is the actual original term of geopolitics? [1:31:51](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5511) I'm pretty sure it wasn't originally about, like, how countries get along with each other. I think it was about resources and about like, you know, geo. I mean, you can argue that the resources is about how countries interact with each other, right? Study of how geography, such as the country's location borders natural resources and accesses to ocean influences political power. See, we don't think about it that way. We think about it as like the relations between countries. Yeah. And actually, I think we're living in a time when people totally forget that geography very much affects... I've got it. Thanks, brother. Geography very much affects how countries behave. [1:32:34](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5554) It's the real thing. It's the real thing. Why we love Ukraine so much? Does it nothing to do with the fact they're on trillions of dollars in minerals? Yeah. Nothing? Well, and for Russia, the reason they feel so passionate about it is, I think we've talked about this before, 80% of all the shit that matters in Russia is in the westernmost 20% of the country. So Russia always tries to expand westwards to expand its buffer zone. And that's basically what has historically happened every time they've been strong. So invading Ukraine is a kind of expected thing for them to do as well. But coming back to Iran, I mean, the geography of Iran is what this is all about because it seems like from the conversations we've had with people, the administration got a little carried away here. [1:33:22](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5602) The American administration? Yeah. How dare you to come to my country and tell us we're doing things wrong? Fuck you. I'm not sure about wrong, but the... Yeah, I think they thought it was going to be like Venezuela. That's exactly what they thought. This is the same mistake they made from Operation Desert Storm, you know, to when we went in in the 1990s in Iraq, it was quick and easy. Bang, bang, got it done, kick some ass. So when the 2000s came around after 9-11 and we went back into Iraq, I don't think anybody expect that it was going to be this prolonged shit show that it became i think the people supported it because they thought yeah well they're doing it that's how it 9-11 happened let's go in there and kick smash and then it's like oh my god we're there 20 years later what the fuck is this but it's also this idea that you could bring democracy to iraq you know a country that has never had democracy that doesn't understand it yeah and even in our own countries like the uk it took a long time for us to get democracy well you think we're so special that We're going to go over there and go, hey, guys, we've got this magic system. [1:34:28](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5668) Everyone's going to go, yeah, that's great. And then what? They're all going to live in paradise? And definitely there won't be any corruption. That's really important. When a country comes in and fucking hangs your leader on television, you know, afterwards, everybody's cool. Well, this is an interesting thing with Iran, right? Because there were people. So last time we were here, it was right around the time that the war started. Yeah. And then we had this guy called Robert Pape on the show. I don't know if you've seen his stuff. He's a military air power analyst. And he basically said exactly how it was going to go. [1:35:05](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5705) This is before the invasion. Yeah, yeah. And we just had him on just now to talk about it. And he calls it the escalation trap. And he talks about how effectively America trapped itself in this situation, particularly with the Strait of Hermos. and actually his argument is now look i'm not i can't judge whether it's true or false but so far everything he said to us worked out is this is put iran on the path to become a regional hegemon they are now going to be in a position where they're way more powerful than they were before this conflict how so because they are they have been given the legitimacy to block the strait reformers and they are now becoming more powerful against saudi arabia the uae who are their primary opponents and also Israel, they control a lot of the oil and where that goes. [1:35:56](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5756) And the Houthis as well. The problem is the Saudis have this pipeline that goes to the Red Sea. The idea is you don't need the Stratformers, you can go around it, but the Houthis are bombing the shit out of that pipeline right now. So it's a trap. It was a trap, according to his analysis. And that's why, coming back to your point, the war isn't over and you have to find a way to resolve it. [1:36:20](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5780) **Konstantin Kisin:** And his argument was, you got to get out of this as quickly as possible or it's going to get worse and worse and worse and worse. [1:36:28](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5788) And you see that now where Iran is in a position – they've basically got a – like they've got the global economy in a rear naked choke. That's why gas prices are what they are. That's what diesel prices are what they are. It's why Trump talks about, oh, Zelensky is – it's not Zelensky bombing Russian refineries that's causing the diesel price to get to this point. The war in Ukraine has been going on for four years. But the price started really going up when the war in Iran started. And this is where all these problems are coming from. And Iran can do this as long as they want. It hurts them too. But his argument is they can carry on doing this because for them, it's about survival. It's like Russia in 1941. You're taking casualties, millions of people being captured. But for you, this is about survival. [1:37:18](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5838) You know Trump's got the midterms to worry about. You know after the midterms he's not going to have the House, may not have the Senate. He's going to be up to his eyeballs in investigations, congressional committees, impeachment proceedings, all of that shit. So this war has now put America in a weaker position or its leaders. Maybe not America, but its leaders in a weaker position. That means you've got more leverage. And you can see in the rhetoric now with, like I said, the Zelensky thing and all the rest of it, there's a lot of flailing about. There's a lot of flailing about trying desperately to get gas prices down. [1:37:51](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5871) And Iran knows this. They're not dumb. They're watching this and going every day that this goes on, we've got more leverage. And it's in their interest to carry on that until they get the deal they want, which is get American bases out of the Middle East entirely. Well, they've already fucked up the American bases in the Middle East to a point where it's going to take decades to fix them, right? Is that right? So we were reading – I don't know. What do I know? but they have bombed bases where american troops have it's more than 20 of them we pulled it up the number the other day it was a it's a large number and you got to think like how much destruction like we're not seeing videos where they're detailing all the different things that happen and from what i hear it's pretty extensive and the problem with this the this asymmetrical warfare the problem with drone bombing the problem with all this stuff is that it's like Like regular countermeasures don't seem to work, you know, like what they figured out in Ukraine where they're using the monofilament line to control these drones. [1:38:54](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5934) So you can't even use anti-drone weapons. It's like you're almost exposed. And so if you have an air base and like the attack that the Ukrainians did on the Russians where they blew up all those planes, that's kind of wild that you can go in there and do billions of dollars worth of damage in one night. It's like this is a different world we're living in. We're not living in a world where just you have to launch missiles. They see the missiles come and they shoot them out of the sky with the Iron Dome. That's not the it's not the same thing anymore. Drone technology has changed everything. One of the things that I love about our job is that we get to meet so many interesting people, either because they've been on the show or just because they're friends of friends. [1:39:34](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=5974) I was talking to an ex-Special Forces guy and I said to him, could we put I said, I don't agree with this, but could we put boots on the ground in Iran? And he just laughed. He went, let's take all the politics out of it. He goes, nobody would agree to that because the terrain is so mountainous. How are you going to achieve that? It's impossible. You're not going to do that. And he also said to me, I think Robert Pape echoed this. There has never been a regime change achieved solely through airstrikes. It doesn't happen. So you go, well, how is this going to evolve? How is this going to actually evolve? Does anybody know? Is this just vibes? Is there a bigger plan? What's going to happen? [1:40:20](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6020) What do you mean by is it just vibes? By vibes, it's like, did they actually think this through? Did they think if this actually happened, A could happen, B could happen, C could happen? And if A could happen, what's our strategy for A? If B could happen, what's our strategy for B? If C could happen, what's – or were they just like basically high off Venezuela and they were like, hey, we smashed Maduro, let's go in? Well, it's also how much does Trump know about how this all could possibly play out if they started bombing Iran and what was he told? And what did he – how did he manage the information that he got or how did the people get access to him or not get access to him? [1:41:01](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6061) Right. Because that's also part of this conversation. It's the same with – this is why Vladimir Putin is four years deep into a three-day special military operation in Ukraine. Right. Because he was told, you're going to go in there. We're going to get Zelensky out. We're going to land paratroopers in Hostomel, land all our share. Everybody is – and the people are going to rise up and support us. which is exactly what they said about Iran, by the way, right? Take out the leader, the people will rise up, take over and whatever. And it seems to be that that's not how it works. And quite often you get these situations from what we are told where not all of the information is presented equally. [1:41:40](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6100) There is not the process of deliberation that I think we'd all hope there is for decisions of this magnitude. It's more like Francis said, Venezuela went very well. We're on a roll. what's next you know and that sounds shocking and simplistic and whatever but that is literally what people we have spoken to who who are close to to the decision making process have told us well it's also very enticing if you're a guy who wants to leave his mark on history to be the guy who took down the evil iranian regime you know we took down venezuela you know and then you you can go in there and have that too as your list of accomplishments and if someone's blowing enough smoke up your ass and if you believe it and we all know that Israel tried to get a bunch of different presidents to try to do the same thing I mean they try to do it with the Obama administration they tried to do a lot of administrations like why don't we do this and they're like yeah I don't like it which is well for me this is why the ultimate responsibility rests with the people who pull the trigger right because everyone's gonna present you with all kinds of information um and it's within you know israel's interest to to do it i mean they they would like [1:42:54](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6174) us to do that yeah yeah i think i think that's true and i think that's where there's a divergence between the foreign policy interest of israel and the foreign policy interest of the united states and the world right and everybody i understand why different countries pursue their own interest but it's the job of the american presidential administration to do what's right for america Yeah. How crazy. What a mild thought. Yeah. So it's complicated, but it's having a massive impact economically across the world. And as bad as it is in the U.S., you are actually way more insulated from the consequences of this war than we are in the rest of the world. [1:43:31](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6211) In Europe, I have friends who are like farmers in Australia. They are really struggling to get diesel. you know and the same with uh you know the the european situation uh most countries have a lot of supply for like a year's worth the uk has two months worth of diesel supply oh god yeah so it's it's been a big problem and the reason you say they might strike again is because what else do you do what Right. do you do do you just let it keep stagnating well like what do you do well you or you have to i mean i thought the best way out here was for trump to do what trump does which is to sell to sell a deal that he did with iran and that deal probably would have been worse than what was in place before because you just bombed the shit out of their country they're angry a little bit unhappy about that but you do a deal with them and then you just got this is the greatest deal ever you know Right, right, right. That would be nice. Trump, if you're listening, that's the move. Just say you won. We'll all go with you. We just don't want this to escalate. And then the narrative is always, we can't allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. It's okay. I agree with that. It doesn't seem like it'd be a good idea to have a regime that kills their own citizens if they protest. [1:44:52](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6292) It doesn't seem like they would be the kind of people that you would want to be able to just kill enormous groups of people with one missile. And that's really the question because I understand that logic, which is why I understand the Israeli position, which is like these guys want to kill us. We can't have them have a nuclear weapon. And I understand a lot of Americans would also agree with that. Of course. The question is, though, was this the right strategy to achieve that outcome? Also, the question is, were they really capable of doing that? And they definitely were enriching uranium past the point they needed for energy. [1:45:25](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6325) But they weren't at the point where they needed it for nuclear weapons. And then converting it into nuclear weapons is a completely different ballgame. Scott Horton laid that out on my podcast, and I'll butcher it if I try to repeat it. But it was pretty complex, and he was pretty clear that they were nowhere near doing that. Also, hadn't the Ayatollah issued a fatwa against the construction of nuclear weapons? Yeah, but the question is... What was that like? Well, right. How much do you trust the Ayatollah? I mean, stereotypically speaking, they don't seem to be entirely consistent in what they say. [1:45:59](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6359) My understanding is different on the nuclear weapon thing. I mean, with some things they are. Yeah, beheading you for dancing. You know? Very consistent on that. But my understanding on how easy it is to get... I remember talking to my granddad who was an astrophysicist about this. Like, it's not that hard to get from you've got enriched material to you've got a nuclear weapon it doesn't take that long in today's world the first one that took a lot of effort with the manhattan project but now that everybody knows how to do it well this is why india and pakistan got nuclear weapons right all right it wasn't they we thought that you'd have nuclear power great and they're like look what we figured out yeah miraculously so i totally understand the concern i haven't heard a great explanation of how this conflict was supposed to achieve that. [1:46:49](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6409) This is why the 12-day war made perfect sense to me. Like, you bomb their nuclear facilities, you see if you get it, that's the percentage play, right? Right. But this just, it doesn't seem, no one ever explained how one would lead to the other, how doing this conflict this way would achieve non-nuclear Iran. In fact, it seems to me now, inevitably, if you're Iran, you do everything you can to survive and then you do everything you possibly can to get a nuke as quickly as possible so that this can never happen again. Right? Yes. If you were Iran, that's what you would do. Yes. So there's been a miscalculation, it feels like to me here. And I'm not sure that when people say, well, you've got to deal with Iran's nuclear threat. I agree with them. I'm just not sure this was the right way to do it. And it became very quickly apparent to us early on in this conflict that that was what do you think could have been the right way to do it if you ask Robert Pape he says something like you've got to have regional balancing so you've got to strengthen Saudi Arabia and the UAE so there's some kind of balance in the region and no one wants to Escalate the whole region to nuclear level. [1:48:02](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6482) I don't know enough to say whether that's right or wrong. And I think that's the real big question here is how are you supposed to get Iran to not have nuclear weapons? And maybe the truth here is, Joe, once this thing has been invented, eventually people are going to get it. You know, Iran is not, they're not some shitty little country in the middle of Norway. It's a giant country which has control of a huge amount of its own natural resources, but also then one of the biggest arteries in the world for energy and fertilizer and gas and plastic and all of that stuff. You know, maybe the reality here is that there's no way that you can maybe extend it. [1:48:41](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6521) You can do deals, but ultimately they are going to get them. And that's a terrible outcome. But I haven't heard anyone convincingly explain how you avoid that. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things that's interesting as well is that you look at countries that have had an empire, you know, they still have this sense of pride and honor in themselves. Like if you look at the Russians, you know, the Russians have had a great empire. You look at the Persians. I mean, you don't need to be a historian to look. And, you know, the Persian empire was once very, very, very powerful. So there is still something in their psyche where if they feel that they're being pushed around, it's not like a smaller country. [1:49:20](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6560) But they still, how dare you? this is the persian empire this is where we came from this is who we are and we are gonna fight you yeah it's 90 million people it's a bigger country than britain that's crazy our empire was bigger though that it was yeah it's it's disturbing to think that this could pop off after the midterms it really is it's been bothering me a lot the last few days why does it bother you so much joe because i have a feeling that this uh preparing for uh you know having food and water is there's a real concern i have a feeling there's a real concern and um if the power grid does get attacked and if we if cities do get bombed it could get really fucking crazy in this country i don't think iran is in a position to do to bomb america though i think that's probably well cyber attacks yeah Yeah. With the grid, but sleeper cells. We really have no idea how many people came in over the last four years and how many of them are in a terrorist cell. And this is not right wing speculation. You're just dealing with a number that is it's so massive. Right. So the low end number is 10 million. That's the low end. [1:50:32](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6632) In four years in four years and so some Republicans think the high end is over 20 We don't know it's just pure speculation There's the ones that they've counted secret service sites heightened threat environment as air defense systems deployed at Mar-a-Lago and airport this today Surface to air missile systems have been deployed at Mar-a-Lago and Donald Trump International Airport at the request of the US Secret Service I didn't even know there was a Donald Trump International Airport the spokesperson said the agency is operating in a heightened threat environment right so I think something's about to go down and I mean all the the when you go super kooky tighten up that tinfoil hat people think that it's a false flag and that we you know this is so we will support this and that and I don't know but I do know that if you keep fucking around one day you find out and it seems like we've been fucking around and it seems like they're telling us hey you might might want to store some food in case we have to find out what's fascinating to me is how because we we don't live in the u.s so we come here a couple of times a year we see you we do a bunch of interviews i remember being here two years ago on the eve of the presidential election and everybody in [1:51:49](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6709) austin was like you guys are going to la next fuck no no there's gonna be riots it's gonna to be crazy what are you doing and we get there the election happens and it was so overwhelming Because it was the presidency, the House, the Senate, the college, the Electoral College, the popular vote. There was nothing in L.A. Everybody was chill because, like, America voted for this. Like, that's what America did. Well, people were very upset, but I think one of the real issues in America when it comes to protests is they're organized and paid for. Yeah. No question. And there was nothing to be gained by tearing up Los Angeles after the presidential election. [1:52:28](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6748) That's a good point. They're like listen. Where's the protests about us bombing Iran? Where are those if protests are organic most people are very unhappy with us going into Iran, but where are the protests? Well, there's no one organizing and paying for those protests, so they don't exist That's interesting. Yeah, that that's I hadn't thought about that is actually legitimately a very good point It's so hard for people on the left to accept this and I have friends that are very left. And I talked to them about paid protesters and they pushed back and I'm like, listen, man, you just got to understand when you see those vans pull up and you see those signs come out and those signs are already printed out in advance. And this is about an event that just happened 24 hours ago. What's the odds that someone's not paying for all this? And then when you talk to people that actually say they are paid to protest and there's people that show up at every protest and those people make a living protesting. This is a career. This is a real job if you're a ne'er-do-well and you're also like you know sort of peripherally political like yeah man fuck the fascist like you can you don't have to work you could just go to protest [1:53:39](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6819) and scream and yell and they give you a sign and now you have a job and it's a great place to meet girls which i imagine yeah yeah yeah not not for the long term i actually saw a lady they're gonna to be a little unstable if you're into mental instability who isn't but what is this jamie i just google protests about it and there's an article in reuters about about the bombing in iran yeah lots of protests lots of people died in other countries about it right but in america 145 different cities right what kind of demonstrations they had i didn't see any of them i certainly didn't see them on the news no were they small demonstrations like how many people were in these demonstrations oh you had a map there jamie would you mind scrolling back up well There's maps on this about a bunch of stuff. [1:54:23](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6863) Oh, right, right, right. But it's interesting. Okay, so there's ones with big signs that were printed out in advance, clearly. Like, look at all the signs. All uniform. Like, who made the signs? How'd you get them? United States flag upside down. That's interesting. So I was wrong. It just hasn't been in the news. I haven't seen it. Like, the No Kings protests were huge. Well, this is your point. It's about scale, right? Like you're not seeing it overwhelm the country in the same way like you had in 2020, for example. But coming back to my point about going to L.A. two years ago, I remember the mood. [1:54:59](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6899) We had Rob Schneider on the show, like the day after the election. He was like really happy. The mood was different. And I just wonder in an alternative reality, if Trump does Venezuela and then doesn't do this or does Cuba next, then it's like Venezuela. And it's just like you lock down your your hemisphere. You get the easy wins It's a whole different legacy, right? Yeah, you know, it's basically Blair without Iraq. Yeah, yeah Yeah, I don't know how much sense I'll make to Americans But it's it's like you came in you closed the border because you got to give credit where it's due, right? He's closed the border, right? It was the Iran decision that fucked everything. Yeah, yeah, because even the ice stuff look most people in this country don't like the idea of a militarized police force with no identification just pulling people over it opens up a world of problems it up it sets terrible precedents and this is what people that are pro ice don't seem to understand They could use that in another way. [1:56:02](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=6962) Now we've set a precedent. You're allowed to have a militarized police force with masks on and they don't have any identification and they're snatching up people and some of them happen to be American citizens. Like if you're supporting this, you're like, I got to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. Okay, well, you just opened up the fucking hen house and now the chickens are running all over the place. Like you could do whatever you want now. If you're allowing that and that's normalized in society, that's not good. but on this at the same point you do have a bunch of very dangerous criminals the trend to aragua people there's a lot of different gangs that have gotten in and they're setting up illegal activities and kidnappings and all kinds of shit cartel violence inside american borders that's real too so like supportive ice to go after that is pretty strong but it's also as well what it does to your democratic process because one of people part of trump's appeal as we all know is that he marketed himself as the outsider. I'm not part of the political system. You're going to get a radically different presidency with me. I'm not going to be the other ones. And one of the promises [1:57:07](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7027) was, here you go, Joe. One of the promises was like, no forever wars. We're not going to go around. We're not going to do these wars. I'm going to put America first. It's going to prioritize American people because we've got real issues in this country that we need to sort out. And And the problem is when you do Iran, what you say to people is it's just more of the same. It doesn't matter who you vote for. You're still going to get these types of wars. And so what happens is that people then feel more and more disenfranchised, that they're not connected, that it doesn't matter who they vote for. [1:57:44](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7064) You're undermining democracy. Yeah. And that's a really dangerous place to be because once people feel that democracy doesn't represent them, then they start disengaging. And again, it goes back to that argument about vacuums. That power vacuum still needs to be filled. And then you have people going, well, what we actually need is a king or what we really need is to do our own thing. And that's how the fractures appear within society. You got those weird kids today that think we should burn it all down and start from scratch. It's like, OK, show me your plan. What's your fucking plan? What's your burn it all down, like long range strategy? [1:58:24](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7104) Well, that's why I always look. I'm not a historian, but it's something I've always thought about. I think calling the American Revolution a revolution is inaccurate. And that leads to a lot of confusion because it wasn't a revolution. To me, a revolution is when you overthrow the existing regime in your country, right? The Russian Revolution. Right. You have the Tsar, and then the Bolsheviks come in, they overthrow the Tsar, they install a new government, right? In the French Revolution, you have a monarchy. The revolutionaries come in, they execute the aristocracy and the king, they institute a new government. [1:58:58](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7138) The American Revolution is really a war of independence. It's you guys saying we're going to separate away, and in our part of the world, we're going to have our own government. You guys do whatever you want. So America was not actually created in a revolution. It's just people seeking independence. It's like if Scotland broke off from the United Kingdom, right? And that, I think, changes the mentality because revolutions actually usually end very badly. It's a very bad thing that happens. They're very violent. Lots of people get killed. The people who did the revolution usually get killed off first. [1:59:35](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7175) Then they kill off the people who came. This is what Stalin did. I mean, his purges were just about, you know, the revolution has happened. And now you've got all of these psychotic revolutionaries who don't know how to build anything. They just want to tear everything down because that's what revolutionaries do. And now we've got to get rid of them. The revolutions are generally not the sort of thing you want to be around for when they happen. and so yeah the terror They're all down thing that doesn't appeal to me at all. Well, it's just young kids that are saying this It's like this is these are the young Democrat socialists and Marxists. They want to tear it all down. It's a great message that resonates without actually having thought it through It's like you see that guy's pissing you off go punch him in the face. Okay. What if he punches you back? [2:00:21](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7221) What if his friends show up? You know what if what if there's a guy in a car across the street who sees it and he grabs you and throws you into traffic Like there's a lot that can have let's play this out. Let's think this through if you fucking destroy America What what takes its place? Where does the money go? Where does your money go? Where who takes care of the streets? You know, and I always say to these people who are like, you know, I'm a socialist. I go you ever talk to a Cuban Talk to a Cuban right talk to a Venezuelan Talk to a Russian or talk to anybody from Eastern Europe. Anybody who's really experienced actual communism, they're not fond of it. [2:01:00](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7260) No, no, they're not. I remember I used to go to the coffee shop when I was writing for stand-up. And I got to know a guy who ran the coffee shop. He was a Cuban guy. And we used to talk about communism all the time. It's one way to pass the day. And he actually said something to me. He goes – because I was getting very frustrated at this point that right about 2018, 2019, the talk of socialism came back. And it was very triggering to me on a personal level. And I was very upset. And I was saying to him – he was getting really fucking pissed. Triggered. And I said to him, like, how do you fight this? [2:01:42](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7302) And he goes, you can't. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, look, Francis, you know, when you argue with somebody from the West who has grown up surrounded by this and you're saying about communism, they can't understand it. They can't comprehend it. It's like saying to a really rich kid, look, don't walk down that alley. Don't walk down it at night because something's bad going to happen to you. He goes, the only way they will ever truly understand is if they walk down the alley, they get hit on the back of the head. They feel the taste of blood in their mouth. that's when they get it until then i hate to break it to you but you're fighting a losing battle and i'm talking as someone who grew up in cuba whose most of their family is cuban and have tried this time and time again there is a part of me that is slightly fatalistic that goes sometimes people need to see the mistakes for themselves you have to fall down you have to hurt your knees to realize like oh don't do that i also think we have to be honest and say that There is a thing going on in a lot of Western societies where if you had assets in 2006, before the great financial crash, you've done very well for the last 20 years. [2:02:56](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7376) But if you didn't, your ability to buy a house, to pay off your student loans, all of that, it's become more difficult. And it's why that portion of society who feel that they've been locked out are feeling like they don't have a stake because they don't have a stake in society. and that's when this kind of thing happens and I think that's something people on the right and people like us who I mean I think communism is the most evil ideology that's ever been tried just numerically speaking it's a fact right but you have to make sure that it's not looking after people because what we do in Britain we just go here's a handout you know you don't need to work just here's some money shut the fuck up right that doesn't work but what you have to do is make sure that society feels fair to everybody or to as great a number of people as possible and that there's opportunity to advance. [2:03:48](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7428) And for our generation, we are in our early 40s now. For our generation, like Joe, if we hadn't started trigonometry and haven't had the amazing success that we've had that we're so grateful for, We'd be in that same boat. We'd be in the exactly same boat and we'd be struggling now going like this thing. It doesn't work anymore. And I think that's where a lot of this stuff is coming from. So, yes, it's one of the things that I think people in the AI world don't really think about enough. what happens when even if we don't if even if we accept that actually in the long run jobs aren't going to all disappear and like all technology you create new jobs with it and all in the interim it's going to get very disruptive and in that time i really think andrew yang was onto something when he talked about the need to find a way yes you're creating all this beautiful wealth these five companies are creating all the wealth but you've got to find a way that the rest of society feels like they they've got a shot as well they've got an opportunity um and unless we do that i think this path down to where a lot of people feel really locked out and angry and and frustrated and betrayed i think that that it's understandable that it's so understandable that's [2:05:07](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7507) why the movie the joker resonated so well yeah yeah it was it was and i always say this it's like society is basically a game and you know you follow the rules you do what you have to do and you will get the rewards at the end of it the problem is is if for young people which is very very true they feel they're not getting the rewards and everybody else's and they're working just as hard if not harder than everyone else eventually they're going to go you know what fuck your game yeah and the board goes up in the air and that's what i think what we're seeing with young people sure that's why they cheered when luigi shot that united healthcare guy and that's crazy to me but that's where it's coming from yeah you know that's crazy it makes sense and it's also that's the narrative that's being promoted in universities you know that kind of thinking that revolutionary thinking making it sexy yeah yeah and so when you when you combine that and also the other things they've been taught for generations now is to hate their own society it's history it's culture you put all that together it's a dangerous mix fun times so but But I really think that there is a way to address it, which is that we have to think this is coming. [2:06:19](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7579) People are locked out. How do we make sure they are included again? Yeah. Well, if you ask the AI people, it's going to get super weird because the universal high income thing that you hear Elon talk about, that would be that every citizen in the united states would have a stake in artificial intelligence and that you would get just like if you live in alaska you get money from the oil companies you get a check people maybe people don't know this but if you live in alaska you just you get a check and when when you're born or no you get like every every month yeah you get a you get an income wow let's find out how many people in alaska get it and what's the parameters um you know if you live on native american reservations like they get checks if you're native american you know you can get a check if you're a part of a tribe that has a casino you know you get a piece of the casino and this is kind of what's going on with the united states when it comes to the consequences of ai and taking over automation taking over jobs taking over shipping taking over commercial truck driving you already see it all over to austin you see these uh waymos and cyber cabs. It's kind of nuts. I mean, I see as many of them sometimes as I do regular cars. It's really [2:07:41](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7661) nuts how many Waymos you see. So those jobs are gone. They're taking jobs. And this is just the beginning of the storm. These are the first raindrops of the storm that is the consequences of AI completely taking over every aspect of society, which it'll probably do and do much better than what Humans do. Then this becomes a problem of your identity. Like, do you think of yourself as a person who works? And are you proud of that? Is that who you are? You know, you're proud to be useful and you get great satisfaction out of your occupation. If all of a sudden your occupation is automated and you don't exist anymore, massive amounts of depression, massive amounts of drug addiction. And then you just give them a check. I don't know if that's going to be enough. [2:08:26](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7706) Well, to your point about Native American reservations, from what I understand, the kind of social outcomes of that are not great. So here it is. No, not. Well, the Native American one is particularly bleak, but we can get into that. Alaska pays eligible residents an annual dividend called the Permanent Fund Dividend. For 2026, it's $1,200 per eligible person, including a $200 energy relief payment. So it's $1,400 a year. That's not much. Not much. But it's a little something. What's that, Jay? Oh, per eligible person. It includes the $200. It's only $1,200. Oh, oh, sorry, includes a $200, including a $200 energy relief payment. [2:09:04](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7744) So it's just $1,200. So if there's two people in your household that are eligible, well, how old do you have to be to be eligible? Who receives it? Is it a certain age? Is there an age requirement? Or is it all citizens? Or is it like voting citizens? Either way. [2:09:28](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7768) **Joe Rogan:** um it's not enough no um now the the real question is when you're dealing with ai and this infinite amount of wealth it's going to generate how much is enough you know when when elon says universal [2:09:42](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7782) high income what are we talking about here like what what does that mean are you saying you're going to give everybody five hundred thousand dollars a year i'm not i'm on board okay so then what happens are you joe this because this is the flip side of this conversation which is you mentioned the native american situation it's like you know yourself you take a lot of meaning from the things that you do so just getting money it's a dire straight song money for nothing yeah and the chicks for free money i'm not sure that well that way they are girlfriends maybe you're gonna get the chicks they were talking about guys complaining about people on mtv right right But I guess I think what I'm saying is there's a difference from saying, hey, I'm, you know, Mark or I am Elon or I'm Sam and I've taken your job and I'm Elon, I'm Mark, I'm Sam, I've taken a job. [2:10:35](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7835) Here's $10,000 a month. There's a big difference there. And unless that problem, unless we as a society work out a way to do that, you don't have to be a genius to work out that's not a recipe for a stable, healthy society. oh so i'll give you an i'll give you an example of something oh so when i was teaching i taught a kid he was very low ability he really struggled academically so we i gave him work which was you know which was less challenging than other kids sometimes he would be okay sometimes he would play up because he understandably had self-esteem issues one day he was playing up really really badly and I said Chris look you're going to be in detention and I wanted to I never believed in just detention getting kids to be bored I wanted him to be useful and I was giving him what I thought was a punishment I said Chris you see all the pencils in the classroom every single pencil I'm talking about colored pencils I'm talking about ordinary I want them sharpened and I want them perfect because we've got an art lesson after lunch he went and did it and when he brought the pencils back to me he was so happy he was so proud because he felt useful because he felt useful and he said and i saw a side of him that i'd never seen before because finally he got given a job [2:11:55](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7915) that he could do he could do to a very high standard and he was [2:12:00](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7920) **Francis Foster:** Useful and part of something. And he said something to me that actually kind of teared me up. He went, can I come back tomorrow and do more? [2:12:09](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7929) So he felt good. He felt good that he was useful. And I think most people do. The real question is, is it possible to teach people differently in school? So instead of teaching people facts that they need to memorize and having to sit in a chair and making sure that you're doing everything that you're told, because someday you're going to have to have a job and you're going to have to learn how to behave this way. Is it possible that you could teach people, listen, money is not the problem anymore. Resources in terms of like your ability to feed yourself and put a roof over your head, that's not an issue anymore. [2:12:42](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7962) Now your life is about pursuing your interests. But we have to teach people that from the jump. We have to teach people that from the time they're very young. The older people that are set in their ways, they're going to have a very difficult time changing and adapting. But – and then also people are going to have a very hard time having the same kind of motivation that people have when they grow up poor. That's a superpower. Growing up poor is a superpower because it gives you a motivation like a drive that I don't think you get if you're a trust fund kid and your parents are worth a lot of money. [2:13:14](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=7994) So we're going to have to teach people to have internal motivation instead of external motivation. And we're going to have to teach people that there is a great benefit to doing things that you don't want to do and then seeing the result to, you know, just putting off any sort of enjoyment that you might possibly have in the present time so that you can have more enjoyment in the future because you did that. You sacrificed and you figured something out. But we have to teach them that way of thinking. If you could teach them that, listen, man, you don't have to worry about money anymore, but that doesn't mean you don't have to worry about life. [2:13:50](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8030) Like there's a lot of cool things that you can find that you can do with your life. But now do those things and get a sense of purpose from you learning about yourself while you're pursuing whatever it is, whether it's becoming an author or whether it's making things, whatever it is. find a thing that you like and then teach people how to find the thing that interests them rather than finding just some menial bullshit job that's going to keep them depressed and just barely pay their bills i noticed this with my son the thing he loves to do with me the most is like paint the fence to him that's like the happiest time that we have together see progress we we go and do something together that he feels is valuable he's learning he's doing it with me obviously you know father and son time as well but but he would much rather paint a fence with me than he would play a game much rather interesting it's more it's more meaningful for him right he's accomplishing something yeah and learning a skill and like you said you know yeah there's stuff that people can do we have only been doing this thing this show up at a job and and doing working in an office and going to a city this is super fucking recent in human history it's one of the [2:15:03](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8103) reasons why subsistence tribes are so much happier than us because we've been doing that forever and the human reward systems are structured in a way that like if you hunt and fish and grow your own food that's normal like you're you've you've very little anxiety that's that the great werner herzog documentary happy people you know that documentary about the people in siberia tell me about it oh it's called happy people life in the taiga and it's all about these uh fishermen and trappers and hunters that live in siberia that have like no mental illness they're all just happy and they live a completely subsistence lifestyle in one of the most brutal climates on earth it fucking siberia and you know and they they're fine they're having a good time we're fucked up and we think oh my god i could ever live like that but you're not happy but they are happy what is our goal is our goal to be happy because this thing that we've created these jobs in in corporations and in Cubicles and this thing that is normal for us is not really normal for us. And we've kind of decided somewhere along the way that this is the only way, that you have to have a job. Without a job, what do we do? What about the idea that something that the human race has created no longer makes it necessary for you to do a job anymore? [2:16:21](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8181) Now, instead of worrying about hunting and gathering food, the next stage of being human is pursuing interests. I mean it could be a gigantic explosion of creativity and of innovation and art. And who knows what people can do, especially with the access to technology that we have today and all the different things that people can – we're just assuming that this way that we live that sucks, that everybody hates, is the only way to live. And I just don't buy that. I mean, clearly I'm biased because clearly I went through all those process of being poor and struggling and figuring out a way in life and then trying a bunch of very difficult things that other people avoided and finding a path. [2:17:05](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8225) But I don't know if that's the only way to live and I don't think it is I think there's a competitive drive in people that exist no matter what and if we're not competing over finances anymore Maybe we'll compete over art or accomplishments or creativity or fill in the blank like whatever you decide to pursue And of course you're probably going to make more money doing that on top of the money you already get It's not like we're gonna go into a full communist state where the entire population only get $500,000 a year we take from the billionaires we distribute evenly. No, that's not what we're saying We're saying like you start out with the 500,000 whatever it is I don't know what the numbers gonna be start out with that and then you can still make money on top of that if you want But do you have the drive to live a special life deliver fulfilled an interesting life? [2:17:58](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8278) Well, there's there's a soccer player former soccer player called Danny Drinkwater and he He... It's a great name. Yeah, it is a great name. He won the Premier League with Leicester City, which is a very, very small team. It was one of the biggest surprises in football that no one ever predicted that this team would win. And he went on to have an amazing career. And towards the end of his career, he was struggling. He was struggling with alcohol. And then all these pictures started to emerge of him after he finished his career on a building site. And people were taking the piss out of him going, And look how far Danny's fallen. [2:18:33](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8313) He was a Premier League champion. Now he's working on a building site. And there was an interview where he was like, I love my life. I'm training to be an electrician. I love doing this. I get a sense of achievement out of it. I get the same camaraderie that I got in the dressing room with the boys on the building site. I'm actually happy. This is what I want to do. Because he realized that he still needed something. He still needed to achieve something. but because in our own kind of fucked up way we see playing elite sport as somehow less than building something that it's lesser than but he's actually found the purpose by doing that well it's interesting that you would never go up to someone who's working as an electrician look at you fucking loser working as an electrician but if that person had been a movie star and then you know stopped doing movies and said i think i'd rather be an electrician then we you're allowed to talk shit about them but it's just shitty humans are one of the biggest problems we have is we're not teaching people how to think or not i don't want to say teaching people how to think but informing them on the more beneficial ways to construct your life through [2:19:45](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8385) thoughts and instead we're allowing these stupid kind of be like that kind of like tear them all down behavior to go unchecked like you really you know how transparently pathetically jealous that is to want to go up to a guy I was like an elite soccer player, and you're upset because he has a job that's like yours? You know how fucking nuts that is? That's nuts. It's a status thing, I think. We had this great guy on called Will Stork. He wrote a book called The Status Game. Are you familiar with it? Yes. Yeah. Yes. This is the reason people do this, I think, is it's a status thing. So Premier League footballer, high status. [2:20:23](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8423) Electrician, low status. and also let's be honest if you haven't got to where you've got to where you wanted to in life and you haven't got the status that you want it's kind of satisfying for some people to see someone else fall down oh yeah and then you go oh i'm not the only one sure it's actually one of the things i do really like about america you have a kind of failure is just the step to the next success attitude here a lot of people have that here so it's very normal for people to start a business business doesn't work they start the next one doesn't work start the next one it pops and actually i was seeing stats i can't remember where i got it so i hope this isn't bs maybe jamie can check but i think uh with every business you start and fail it increases your chance of succeeding well not it increases but if you start by the time you start the third business your your chance of that business being successful is significantly higher than the first one i think this is elizabeth holmes strategy when she gets out of jail by the way her uh husband lives in town lives in austin so we might be seeing her at the mothership one day but i think it's a really important thing that and i think we should all do we should we should [2:21:37](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8497) all talk about our failures more because it's part of the journey yeah you know if success isn't as sweet when you get it first time round because you don't appreciate it but if you fail and fail and fail again and finally something works you just number one what that teaches you is gratitude number two is it shows other people oh shit if he's failed and failed and failed and then made it maybe i can do that maybe not in the same field but maybe my journey is going to be like that in a different way it's one of the main things that i think a lot of people can get out of jiu-jitsu other than self-defense is that everybody starts out terrible you you you I mean you have a little bit of an advantage if you're strong you know you have a little bit of an advantage if you've maybe done some other martial art before but not much I mean even me I I'd started out I had years of taekwondo and kickboxing and I got mauled just mauled I mean I was it was so humiliating but humbling in a great way where i was like wow i had no idea i was that vulnerable i was walking around all delusional thinking that shit's not gonna work on me he might work great but everybody who you train with if they stick it out you see them growing and getting better [2:22:58](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8578) and we all you all go on this path together where then all of a sudden i've seen guys that they started out they were terrible and then a couple years later i see them rolling with the new guys and manhandling them i'm like this is amazing like look at this guy like now he's like tapping people out that are new and then you see the look in his face like wow i can this is real i learned i got better it's something that i thought was impossible in the beginning you're so the mountain is so high like fuck you take one step you fall down you're like this is terrible and for a lot of people their self-esteem can't handle it and they never go through that process but if you could force yourself to go through that process it's one of the very best processes of a failure and then learning from failure and then you get a little bit better and then more failure and then learning and then a little bit and you keep going and you realize like oh this is a journey and along this journey I can apply these same principles to essentially anything in my life and get better just even about just being a Human. Just better at being a human, realizing the dumb shit that you do that sabotages your life or fucks up your diet or gets you drinking again, whatever it is. You can apply the same strategy that you learn to get good at jujitsu to anything in life. [2:24:15](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8655) You know, I remember when I was, nearly 10 years ago, I was opening for Eddie Izzard on his European tour. And I remember people go to me like, who's like one of your biggest influences? And Eddie was that person because when Eddie started out doing comedy in London, way back when, like late 80s, early 90s, you know what his nickname was on the circuit? What? No Laughs Eddie. That's what it was. like he would come on and everyone's like oh my god it's this guy oh fuck was that before or after he started dressing like a chick that was before so did the dressing like the chick turn it all around no no i think what actually turned it around is that he was just and when i spoke to him he was like look i was relentlessly driven and focused i knew that this was what i wanted to do i knew that this is what i wanted to achieve and what was happening is that at the beginning it wasn't working for me so i needed to change in order to get to where i wanted to go but i know he likes dressing like a woman so maybe that legitimately i love that guy but it's weird because he is a guy like he's i think now maybe he's changed but he told me he likes women and i'm like cool you know like he came on the podcast he was great i've done a couple podcasts with him [2:25:35](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8735) but the point is like that is what he enjoys doing and to stop him from doing that in the past maybe allowed him to be freer on stage which allowed him to be better on stage because it is a journey of self-discovery when you try to figure out what is it about your act that doesn't work what is it about this that the people are not buying like and maybe that was a part of it for him maybe it was a part but he was also trying to do something radically different at the time that nobody else was doing but once he nailed it he kind of he just exploded for him but i always remember that lesson that i took from him which was you've got to go through the shit you have to that's just part of the process and you've also as much as possible not going to take it personally because you've got to accept that this is what life is teaching you if you want to do that you've got to take the hits and you've got to accept failure most of life is failure most of the time you do things it's not going to work out in quite the way you want but then you take the lessons from it and then you move on and it's gradual it's not like we all want to be the guy who steps on stage gets on a soccer field touches the ball everyone goes wow what a genius 99.99999% of us [2:26:45](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8805) ain't like that yeah and even the one percent of the point whatever it is one percent they're not either yeah it's all bullshit it's 100 there's like some people have a better start than others but everybody has to learn and grow along the way and it's interesting with eddie like he applied that same sort of grinding strategy to a lot of the crazy physical feats that he did like when he ran around the entire uk and he didn't train for it have you seen that documentary no no i remember the story insane it was one of the most impressive things i've ever seen because literally the skin on his feet were falling off like he had to take a couple of days off he's running a marathon a day with no training and uh he had to take some days off because his feet were so destroyed he couldn't stand on them never forget about running 26 miles i mean you're seeing the raw open skin it's horrible and he's got a doctor or a nurse tending to his wounds it's terrible i mean just like raw torn apart feet next day 26 miles took a day off maybe a two maybe two days off and the entire time he did it was nuts and it's like that same thing like just keep going you can do it and in this TikTok generation, where everybody wants everything to happen really quickly. You want to be an influencer. You want to get famous. You want to get this. You want to get that. I don't want to get fat. Oh, take a pill. Bang. You know, whatever it is. Or Ozempic. There's this desire to have something happen to you very quickly versus the satisfaction that you get from knowing, like, the jujitsu mountain. Like, look, I started down there. I started down there. Now I'm all the way the fuck up here. [2:28:24](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8904) Right. And that process just makes you into the person you're actually supposed to be. Yeah. It's the process that makes you into the person you're supposed to be. Yeah, and anything difficult. We often talk about this with our show because sometimes we're doing interviews with people where we're like, this is a serious thing that we're doing here. It's a serious person. This is going to be big. It's important we get it right. If you had catapulted us when we started the show into the position of interviewing that person we wouldn't know what the fuck to do and we would screw it up very badly oh for sure it's the process that gets you to the point where you're actually able to have a conversation on a high level and it's different things sometimes it's about being prepared to challenge people call out certain facts sometimes it's just about like the conversation is dying out a little bit where do we go to all of that stuff you learn along the way and if you haven't got the miles on the clock up till that point being parachuted into that position this is why it's actually probably very very hard to like start a tv show and get the right talent or whatever because they haven't got the miles right on the clock to actually be able to do the job and it's that process [2:29:31](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=8971) that gives you the ability to actually perform at a high level because you've been there you fucked up you've made mistakes you've learned from them you've grown as a person you've become more humble. The process of doing stuff humbles you, like you said, because you go, oh, wait, I had this idea and it totally didn't work. Maybe I need to revise how I think about this. And I think life is just this one long lesson in what you talked about, which is deferred gratification. I'm going to give up pleasure or comfort. And comfort's a big one, Joe. It's not even pleasure, is it? It's comfort. That's what kills you. You get comfortable and it's a lot more comfortable to sit at home on the sofa it's terrible for you but it's comfortable and it's overcoming that and learning to get out of your comfort zone like all the good stuff it's on the other side of that that's gonna be the real problem with giving people universal high income right is that like people don't like to just leave comfort and they're not gonna want to do anything other than just take the money that they get and then I don't know party i think so but i also think we've all been i don't know we've never talked about it but i [2:30:38](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=9038) imagine there's been times when your life in your life when you've gone down that route you've taken some time to just veg you know and you do it for a bit and it you know you play a video game for a week non-stop and you're just immersed in that and whatever and then you realize it sucks like the first day you do it is kind of fun the second day is fun but eventually you get to the point where you realize this sucks and i think with having this universal high income or universal basic income or whatever people will get to the point where they go actually this has been fun it's like partying a lot of people spend their you know 20s doing that eventually you grow out of it 99 of people hopefully you've met a lot of people who haven't grown out of it oh yeah Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially me, because I know a lot of comedians that are basically like 45 year old boys. [2:31:32](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=9092) Yeah. Yeah. Because especially if you don't have any responsibility other than getting on stage at night, you know, comics have the most open ended schedules and a lot of them have zero discipline and they don't have to. They could play video games all day. They work at a comedy club for a weekend. They make enough money to pay their bills for a month. They don't have to worry and so they just they're childlike and they just drink at night and fucking eat terrible food and play video games Do they eventually they'll get my Are you married and have kids and settle down? Some of them do. Yeah, some of them don't. [2:32:04](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=9124) It's a weird, like, sort of frozen adolescence. I think once you get to the kids thing, and we see it with, you know, people that work with us, you start, you get a serious girlfriend, suddenly the attitude shifts, they get a little bit more serious. Children's the big one. Yeah. Yeah, it just lets you go, oh boy, I have to take care of a tiny little person. Like, this is not the same fun and games anymore. And set an example. Yes. Because they don't learn from what you tell them, they learn from what they see. Right. And so if daddy's sitting on the sofa, what are they learning? Well, hopefully the world will learn, right, in that regard. [2:32:35](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=9155) Like, so if universal income becomes a thing, well, I think there's a lot of pros that come out of it. And here's the pros. Starvation ends, goes away. The lack of food ends, goes away. The struggling to pay your bills ends. So all that stress ends. So how much crime do we lose because of that? I bet we lose a lot. I bet there's a long transitional period because people have been ingrained to certain types of behaviors and actions, and they have personality flaws they've developed over the years. But once society settles into the concept, I bet crime radically gets reduced. You mean like acquisitive crime, stealing? [2:33:13](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=9193) Necessity, yeah. Because they're – I mean like the silly one was the AOC one where they're stealing stuff from stores. They just eat bread for their family like, right. That's why they've got the Lacoste trainers. Yeah, right. No, that's not necessarily what's going on. Right. But once society settles and then there's not a haves and haves not situation at the same extreme that we have today, because the extreme that we have today, not as much in this country, because it's kind of thought of as the land of opportunity. but there's a lot of countries where like if you don't have you will never have and this is just how it goes if that becomes something that's adopted and employed by all nations is that the amount of wealth it generates is so fucking extreme that and jobs are gone and that people now have money but you never have to worry about working so the fear and the anger at least gets significantly mitigated i mean that's the hope that's the real hope and if they just want to play call of duty all day like who fucking cares as long as they like their life it's like but you know it's like we need to train people to enjoy their life and not think that your life is just a thing you do that sucks so you can make money so that you can buy stuff so it makes you feel [2:34:31](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=9271) good about doing the thing that you do that sucks and then one day you die yeah the encouraging thing about human beings is i think we are very adaptable yeah we are very adaptable yes and i think the things that matter to us are the things that have always mattered to us uh it's family it's human connection it's meaningful work uh or meaningful activity at least it might not be work it might just be activity you know i love chopping wood to to like i could buy wood but i don't i buy wood that i have to chop because i like chopping the wood you know what i mean i like and i like doing with my son and like teaching him how to do it i could pay a guy to paint the fence i could pay a guy to paint the wall but if there's little things that i can do with him or i can do myself i actually prefer to do that and i think it's a it's actually some so we will i think we will find a way to adapt uh because it's what we've always done that's that's i think the big hope but i do think the transition is going to be a big challenge yeah and i think i really hope the people who are doing this ai stuff think about this a lot i i think it's gonna be them who's gonna have to think about this a lot and if i were them i'd be thinking how do i give as much of this away as i [2:35:46](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=9346) can so that everybody feels included in this thing yeah otherwise there's not enough robot defenders in the world who are going to guard your mansion right is what how i think about it and um Yeah, I think we'll... We'll get to that. I think people will realize that's the reality of this. I hope so. Do you know what always gives me hope is that every time I taught Greek mythology to the kids, and we did the Odyssey, everybody got locked in. And I taught in a place where most kids were first or second generation immigrants. We didn't have shared culture, vastly different experiences, some of whom were incredibly poor, but you taught the Odyssey, boom, they were all locked in. [2:36:28](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=9388) and why is that so special it's so special because it talks about the human condition it talks about struggle it talks about overcoming and i think one of the things particularly nowadays is we we all think we're so incredibly different yet when christopher nolan does a retread of the odyssey and puts it on the big screen people flock and i people talk about oh it's an anti-woke movie or it's this or it's that no because it's a story about a man confronting his own demons and overcoming them and the importance of family. And I think that's a really important bit. That's a really important bit. The things that, as Constance says, that matters have always mattered. And this idea that we're more divided than ever and that we hate each other, we've got to believe that we can overcome that. We really do. Because if we just see each other as an enemy or as an avatar, we're never going to be able to transcend. But if we see the humanity in each other and actually left, right most people just want a fairer, better world we've just got different ways of approaching it. Here, here and on that note. We solved everything we solved it all Francis Foster for president No, you don't want that, John. We were ending on such [2:37:47](https://realalpha.app/v/a2K-AHeZ3o0/?t=9467) a nice thought and you had to ruin it Cut to me getting executed. It's always fun talking to you guys. I really appreciate it. Love your show you guys are cool as fuck it's always fun great to see you brother thanks it's always a pleasure bye everybody