Joe Rogan
June 2, 2014
"I'm just very fortunate in my life that I've been in the right place at the right time almost always."
– Joe Rogan
Guy MacPherson: I spoke to you seven years
ago. Then you were playing clubs. I saw you another year at the casino theatre.
And now look at you: at the Orpheum.
Joe Rogan: Crazy.
GM: Movin' on up.
JR: (laughs)
Sort of.
GM: Sort of?
JR: I mean, it's definitely
a bigger place. But it's all the same. Honestly.
GM: Yeah, it is, but it is nice
to see that level of support you get, and that it continues to grow.
JR: That's nice. No, it's
definitely fun. It's nice to see it grow. There's something cool about doing
clubs, as well, though. I enjoy doing big theatres, like the Orpheum, but I
like doing clubs, too.
GM: Clubs are great. But just
from a numbers point of view, you gotta like the big theatre. You're never
going to do the big arenas like some comics do, are you?
JR: Would I ever? I don't
know. I'd have to really think about it. I mean, I definitely would but I will
still always do clubs. I still do clubs now. I still book certain weekends on
the side when I need to do a smaller venue so I'll do a 200-seater or a
300-seater. Regularly in town, in L.A., when I work on material, I'll do, like,
150-seaters and even smaller places.
GM: I was thinking about your
multi-faceted career. In Hollywood, it seems like performers get pigeon-holed.
I don't know if it's the public or the industry that can't accept people doing
different things once they know them as one thing. But you've managed to go
from sitcoms, reality TV, standup, sports commentator, podcaster. Is it that
you just do it?
JR: Yeah, I just do it. I've
just been really lucky in a lot of ways.
GM: Have you heard throughout the
years that you've got to stick to one thing?
JR: Yeah, I have heard that
but I've heard it from people I didn't trust, fortunately. So I just sort of
kept doing my own thing. I've been the type of person that, whether it's
reckless disregard for other people's advice or blind faith in my own
instincts. I've always kind of chosen my own path and fortunately I've been
very fortunate in a lot of ways – I've just been right. I was correct and they
were wrong. Whether it's things like Mixed Martial Arts, doing commentary for
the UFC, when I first started doing it, people used to tell me that it was
going to ruin my career in show business.
GM: Really?
JR: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
GM: Just commentating on it?
JR: Yeah, just being a part
of it. Being a part of it was like I was somehow involved with something that
was seedy, distasteful.
GM: I guess because you came in
on the ground floor with it, I guess.
JR: Yeah. I came in when it
was in the basement. When I was involved, it wasn't even on cable television.
You could only get it on satellite. It was small casinos gathered throughout
the south of the US. It was very underground. I was the post-fight interviewer
in 1997. Back then, the UFC was nothing like it is now. There were very few
high-level athletes, there were small venues. Worldwide recognition was
virtually nil.
GM: What did you see in that you
thought it would become something? Or did you even care that it would get big;
you just liked it?
JR: I thought it could get
big if the right people got behind it. I have a long background in martial
arts. Martial arts sort of defined me as a person; made me who I am. It was
that that I saw in it. I saw this new sport that was coming along that would
give these martial artists a professional venue which didn't exist before. So
that's what I found intriguing about it, that there was something finally.
Someone came along that had put it together and let us find out what martial
techniques were effective. Because before that, there was a lot of speculation
about what would work, what wouldn't work. We'd always wanted something along
those lines. It was just that before the UFC came along, nobody had ever put it
together. I just found that fascinating so I pursued it. But I was really
fortunate that it actually became as popular as it did.
GM: Are all martial artists,
generally speaking, in favour of mixed martial arts?
JR: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.
Mixed martial arts is sort of the testing ground. Without that, there was a lot
of fuckery before. There was a lot of shit that people thought was good but was
useless. And there was a lot of people that were pretending that they were
doing some high level ancient martial arts that were deadly and super effective
but really they were just, like, cult leaders and charlatans. Crazy people.
GM: You mean it was more for show
and you wouldn't put it to the test of actually fighting someone?
JR: Yes. There was a lot of
people that never put it to the test. And there was a lot of people that
thought they were really good and meanwhile what they were doing was just
completely useless. So we learned a lot about what actually worked in hand-to-hand
combat. We learned a lot. The line that I always use is that martial arts have
evolved more in the 20 years since the UFC was invented than the 20,000 years
before. That's true. It's absolutely true. Martials arts have evolved more in
my lifetime than any other time in the history of the human race and it's
directly attributed to mixed martial arts, both the UFC and the worldwide
variance that sort of sprouted off after the UFC, like Pride. Things along
those lines.
GM: So they're mutually beneficial,
the two forms.
JR: Yeah, not just mutually
beneficial but incredibly important. Without traditional martial arts, we
wouldn't have these techniques, and without the UFC, there would be no
refinement of these techniques. And then the new techniques that have been
added over the past couple of decades have also substantially changed the
landscape.
GM: Have you ever done mixed
martial arts?
JR: I've never fought in mixed
martial arts. I was a former taekwondo champion. I kickboxed for a while. And
I've been training in martial arts since I was a young man. I'm a black belt in
taekwondo and I have two black belts in jujitsu.
GM: A lot of sports fans when
they watch any sport can envision themselves in the game. How do you think
you'd do in your prime?
JR: Who knows? I'd have to
compete to find out. Anything other than that is just pure speculation. That's
what competing is all about. There's a lot of people that look like they would
be really good fighters, that seem like they're tough, that have techniques
that they can execute when no one's threatening them that look impressive, but
how do they do in actual competition? You don't really know until you throw it
all into the fire. And I never did that with mixed martial arts. I did it with
kickboxing and I did it with taekwondo and I was successful with those things.
GM: Is it because it hit when you
were older?
JR: It wasn't around when I was
fighting. I retired from fighting when I was 22. The UFC came around several
years later and I was already doing a bunch of other different things: I was
acting and doing standup comedy and I had a career. I had thought about
competing if maybe everything went wrong and I found myself looking for
something to do for a living. Maybe I would have done that. But fortunately for
me it didn't. Fortunately for me, also, I got involved in it at a different
level – instead of as a competitor, as a commentator.
GM: Maybe you wouldn't say this,
but you must be partly responsible for its success.
JR: Maybe a very small
percentage. Very small. I think it would have been big without me. I'm very
fortunate that I became connected to it and that people associate me and my
voice and my commentary with some great fights, but it would have been great
without me.
GM: You're doing the one up here
the day after your Orpheum gig. It's great that you get to combine both your
loves in one trip.
JR: Oh, yeah, yeah, it's one of
the cool things about the UFC. I come and I do the weigh-ins, which are on a
Friday, so I usually do a show that night and then the next day is the fights.
So it's very, very fortunate in that respect.
GM: And spend some time in
Vancouver. I know you like it here.
JR: Love it there.
GM: When you retired from martial
arts at 22, is that when you started standup or were you doing it at bit at the
same time before?
JR: I was doing both at the same
time and I realized I couldn't do that. I was doing standup. I started standup
at 21 and I was fighting at the same time and it was too much. There were too
many different things going on. Plus I was working. I had to work to try to
make a living.
GM: Day job?
JR: Yeah, I had a couple of day
jobs. I was teaching martial arts – I was teaching at Boston University
actually. I was teaching taekwondo there. I delivered newspapers. I worked for
a private investigator. I had a bunch of different jobs outside of just trying
to do standup comedy. I realized somewhere along the line that if I was really
going to do standup, there was no way I was going to be able to do it and
compete at the same time because competing just requires too much of your
energy. You have to be fully 100 percent immersed and committed to it otherwise
it's really dangerous. It's really dangerous even if you're fully committed to
it but if you kind of half-ass it, you can really get fucked up. That's sort of
where I found myself.
GM: And comedy's a little
dangerous in a different way if you're not committed to it.
JR: Very much so. Comedy, if
you're not committed to it, you wind up bombing on stage. It's emotionally
dangerous.
GM: You get beat up emotionally.
JR: Yeah!
GM: All those day jobs you had
kind of sums you up. You're still so spread out. You have so many interests.
JR: Yes. I have a lot of
interests. I've just been very fortunate that I've been able to take those
interests and turn them into occupation.
GM: You started in Boston, right?
JR: Yes, that's where I started.
GM: Boston had a great comedy
scene at that time. Do you think that's what led you to comedy and if you were
based in some other city maybe you wouldn't have started? Or was it something
you always wanted to do?
JR: It certainly helped. Like I
said, again, I'm just very fortunate in my life that I've been in the right
place at the right time almost always. The place to be in the 1980s, when
standup comedy boom was on, was Boston. Amazing, amazing place.
There were so many comedy clubs. There were five comedy clubs on one block at
one point in time.
GM: Seriously?
JR: Yup. Yeah, a place called
Warrenton Street. There was five different clubs on one block. It was an
incredible place.
GM: And could you play all of
them?
JR: Yeah, you could play all of
them. Yeah, they didn't have, like, bans where they kept people from playing
other places. You basically could play everywhere.
GM: And what is it like there now
in the comedy scene?
JR: Dead. It's horrible. There's
one comedy club and it's got a shitty sound system and people always complain
about it. There's little satellite rooms outside. The local comics, there's no
one that they talk about like they used to talk about before. These local guys
would be treated with all this respect. You'd go to Boston and you'd face all
these local killers, these up-and-coming hungry, creative guys. You don't see
that anymore. The scene has dried up. Dried up for a bunch of reasons, but one
of them was the fault of the very comedians themselves because they stopped
being creative, they stopped writing material. They started resting on their
laurels. They would just use the fact that they were comedians to party and
have a good time and that's sort of what they did with their lives instead of
pursue it as a discipline. I think they also got stuck staying in Boston. They
never ventured outside of town and they got soft. That's what happened. So
there's lessons to be learned there as a young comedian. There's pitfalls that
you have to make sure you don't fall into, that I saw a lot of other comics
sort of ruin their lives with.
"People become really jealous of other success. And it's ugly. It's a very ugly instinct. You have to try your best to avoid that ugly, ugly instinct. It's just a pitfall of human nature."
– Joe Rogan
GM: There are a few old-timers in
Boston who've never moved out but are legendary.
JR: Yes. Without a doubt. Guys
like Don Gavin, Steve Sweeney, Kenny Rogerson. Great, great, great comedians.
But there was a sense of sadness, too, that those guys never got the
recognition they deserved on a national scale. When I started out in 1988, the
comics that were big back then, whether it was Lenny Clarke or Steve Sweeney or
Gavin or this guy named Mike Donovan, I would put them up against any comedians
in the world at that time. I think they were just fantastic comedians. But they
stayed in town. They didn't go anywhere. They never spread their wings and
because of that they sort of lost their feathers.
GM: Fear of success?
JR: No. I think they're just
lazy. I think they were lazy and they were scared of taking the chance of not
being the big fish anymore. They felt leaving the pond and going to the ocean
was just too much. They also had a lot of regional material. There's a lot of
comics in Boston that would consistently talk about being from Boston.
Boston-style humour. That became a trap. So there was a lot of lessons to be
learned for young guys like me and Bill Burr and a lot of those guys from that
era who got to see these up-and-coming guys and the mistakes that they made.
GM: You and Bill started out
around the same time?
JR: I was a little bit ahead
of Bill. I was leaving at the time when he was just coming up. But all those
guys in that era, there were windows of about three or four years that you
consider yourself in the same era as a guy. So in that sense we're kind of the
same era.
GM: I guess you see both sides in
your business. But you might see a guy and have one opinion of him and then
they just blossom and get hugely successful. And then others fall by the
wayside.
JR: Yeah, it's very
important to be around other successful people. Not just successful but
inspiring. I like watching a great comic because it makes me want to write. It
gives me fuel. It's like added wood to my oven. It makes me fired up. I think
that's a huge part of this art form, being inspired by others. The worst
aspects of people's personalities when it comes to creative endeavours is
jealousy and vanity. There's a few different things that can kind of become
pitfalls and traps. And a lot of comedians, especially in the beginning, they
operate under a famine mentality. Like, they'll see someone come up with a joke
and instead of being inspired, they get jealous that they didn't come up with
the joke. Or they get angry that it wasn't them that performed and had the
audience dying laughing. Because you can fall into these ego traps. So for
comedians it's very important to not fall into those ego traps and it's very
important to be inspired by others. And when you do that, then all these
comedians, instead of becoming these people you're competing against, they
become not just your friends but your allies and they become these sort of
power stations that you can get inspiration from. And the momentum of their
acts and their writing fuels you as well and it becomes a wonderful place. It
becomes amazing. And you get excited when you see good comedy instead of
getting bummed out.
GM: Is that something you have to
teach yourself? Because it is a human emotion to feel a bit of jealousy. Do you
have to fight against it and talk yourself through it?
JR: Yes. It's a discipline.
You have to learn it. It's a very important thing to learn. Not just for that
but for your life in general. People make these bad mistakes when it comes to
those things and that type of thinking – famine mentality and selfish mentality
– can ruin your life. It can absolutely ruin your life. Because you can take
things that would have been fantastic, inspirational moments and turn them into
these horrible, selfish, self-centred pity-parties. And that happens to a lot
of artists, whether it's singers in rock'n'roll bands or whether it's comedians
or illustrators, artists, painters. People become really jealous of other
success. And it's ugly. It's a very ugly instinct. You have to try your best to
avoid that ugly, ugly instinct. It's just a pitfall of human nature.
GM: It sounds like your martial
arts training helped you in that discipline.
JR: Unquestionably. Without
a doubt. Without a doubt it shaped the way I approach that aspect of comedy and
creative endeavours in general. You have to look at what is empowering and how
can you turn a situation that is sort of inherently negative to the untrained
eye or to the narrow mind and turn it into a source of inspiration and fuel.
And not only that, it benefits all these people around you, as well, because
people imitate their atmosphere and they learn from other successful behaviour.
So when other people that are around you, other young comics, see that you
support other comedians and that you pump people up and you're complimentary,
there wasn't a lot of that coming up when I was coming up. There wasn't a lot
of really complimentary guys and guys who would take really funny young guys on
the road with them and try to give them help. I've made a big point of doing
that in my career. It's been very important to me to take up-and-coming young
comedians and encourage them and promote them.
GM: I know you're bringing that
up-and-comer Bryan Callen with you.
JR: Yeah, Bryan Callen and
Tony Hinchcliffe, who's hilarious.
GM: I just saw Bryan here at the
MIX a month or so ago.
JR: He's very funny, isn't
he? Bryan's also one of my best friends.
GM: And you've brought Ari
Shaffir in the past.
JR: Yeah, I've brought Ari
in the past, I've brought Duncan [Trussell] in the past. I bring the guys that
I think are the best guys. There's a lot of comedians that bring really bad
opening acts and the reason why they do that is they don't want to be
threatened. They'll have someone open for them who's really mediocre. Very low
level, not good. And the audience has to sit through this nonsense for 20
minutes and then when the comedian comes out who's the headliner, he looks like
a hero because the audience is tired and exhausted and they've seen this
stupid, fucking comedian go on these rambling diatribes for 20 minutes, and it
makes a comedian who's really good look so much better.
GM: It's those petty jealousies
again.
JR: Yeah, it's just weak.
And it gives the audience a bad show. Because of that, the people that you love
that come to see you, your fans, without them you're nothing, and then you're
tricking them. You're giving them a shitty show. And you're only doing it
because of your own petty ego. I bring Joey Diaz on the road with me. I can't
bring him to Canada because he has a felony in armed robbery (laughs) and
kidnapping. He's a former drug addict. A madman. But he's the funniest guy
that's ever walked the face of the Earth. And I bring him with me on the road.
Because I feel like when I'm with a really funny guy, it makes me funnier. I'm
not worried that somehow or other he's going to take away from me. I think he
adds to me. I think all these guys add to you. They inspire me and I think we
all fuel each other.
GM: It also helps that you like
hanging out with them.
JR: Yes. That's also a big
part of it. It helps when you're on the road. You don't feel lonely. You enjoy
your time together.
GM: It must be round if there's a
guy whose company you really enjoy but you don't think he's the funniest guy.
JR: Yeah, that's rough. But
it's whether or not they have potential. I've taken guys on the road with me
early in their career where I would see them and they had something. They had a
spark and I would help them: bring them in front of large crowds, get them in
front of better audiences. That's another real problem for young comedians is
actually getting a good crowd. Because when you first start out, you have to do
a lot of open mics. And open mics are wildly variable as far as what kind of an
audience is going to be there. You could have the worst crowds imaginable or
really good crowds, but it's very rare that you get a good one. And they're
never set up correctly. The comic never knows who's going on before them, you
never know what's happening in the audience. You never get, like, a nice,
packed house So I would take these guys and I would bring them on the road with
me and they would have a chance to perform in front of a nice, packed house.
GM: Makes a difference.
JR: Yeah! Sometimes for the
good and sometimes for the bad. Sometimes it exposes flaws in your act and you
get to see comics work through that. I really did get to see that. I got to see
those guys work through those dull spots and become real professionals.
GM: How long have you been doing
your podcast?
JR: Almost five years.
GM: It's always right up there,
if not the top-rated comedy podcast. Do you listen to podcasts?
JR: I don't listen to too
many other comedy podcasts, but I listen to history podcasts. I listen to
Hardcore History, this Dan Carlin podcast. I listen to Radiolab, which is a
podcast on curiosity. It's a fascinating podcast. It deals with all sorts of
interesting subjects.
GM: Yours – and Bryan's, too –
talks to authors and historians and academics. You talk serious topics. It's
not comics sitting around trying to one-up each other.
JR: I talk about things that
are interesting to me and I talk to people who I find fascinating, whether it's
a comedian or an athlete or an author or a scientist or an educator, whatever
the subjects may be. I talk to all sorts of people.
GM: Why has your podcast taken
when so many don't? There are a lot of great ones out there that I don't listen
to because who has time. But I think yours has a real point of view and you
talk about serious subjects. Do you think that has something to do with it?
JR: I'm sure it does.
GM: There's some substance to it.
JR: Yeah, well, also there's
sincerity to it. Like, I'm not pretending to be interested in these subjects;
I'm actually sincerely interested in these subjects. And I only talk about
things that I'm actually interested in. I don't need to have people on, so I
don't have people on about subjects that I'm not curious about. If I find
someone interesting, I ask them to be on the show. It doesn't always pan out. I've
had some podcasts before that people didn't enjoy. But for the most part, it
helps.
GM: And you go longer than a lot
of podcasts, too.
JR: Yeah. I think that's
important. Because I think when you talk to someone for 20 minutes, they can
bullshit you for 20 minutes. It's very difficult to bullshit you for three
hours.
GM: Three hours!
JR: Yeah, three hours in, you
know who that guy is or that woman is. You know who they are. You get a deep
sense of who they are as an individual. Whereas for 20 minutes you can dance
and pretend.
GM: They're not all three hours,
are they?
JR: Most of them are three hours.
GM: Once a week?
JR: No, several times a week.
GM: How do you find the time?
JR: I just do it. That's a part
of my job. Now. It wasn't originally. Originally it was just something I did
that was interesting and I would do it once a week. And I would only do it for
like an hour at a time. And then it grew and became more popular and became
more interesting. And then people started seeking me out once they found out it
was getting x-amount of millions of downloads a week. People would start asking
to have them on my show to promote things. That made it interesting because it
started opening up the doors and started giving me this possibility to have access
to a lot of fascinating humans.
GM: Do you do prep or does your
natural curiosity take over?
JR: Yeah, there's some prep,
depending on if I need it. There's certain guests that I don't need prep for
because I'm well well immersed in whatever it is that they do. There's a guy
I'm having on today, T.J. Dillashaw, who is the UFC bantamweight champion. Just
won the title this weekend. I've worked out with this kid before. I know him
very well. I have seen him fight throughout his career. I'm well immersed in
his background so I don't need to do any prep on him. But I might still do it
anyway just because I'm interested. And that's the beautiful thing about even
the prep that I do, if I do prep for a show, well it's prep about something or
a subject or a person that I'm fascinated with already. So it never feels like
work. It always feels like I'm just feeding my curiosity.
"Look, if it was up to me, I would love for there to be a Bigfoot. I want Bigfoot to be real. If it was up to me, I would love for us to be visited by aliens. I want that to be real. But I can't prove that it is. Not only can I not prove that it is, it doesn't seem like it is. It seems like it's bullshit. So for me, it loses all of its appeal once I see bullshit."
– Joe Rogan
GM: Are you still questioning
everything on TV?
JR: I don't know if we're going
to do that anymore, quite honestly. I got out of doing the old show and now
we're talking about doing a new revamped version of it that'll be more like a
podcast than anything. The problem with that show – it's a real problem – the
fundamental problem with those subjects is that a lot of them are just bullshit.
Whether it's UFOs or whether it's psychics or whether it's Bigfoot, a lot of
what you're seeing is just bullshit.
GM: But that's good that you
expose it.
JR: In a way. But it's a lot of
the same note over and over again. As far as my point of view, I found it to be
kinda tired because I'm seeing over and over again these people that are just
liars. Either they're liars or they're delusional. Those are the two options.
They're kinda sad. So what am I gonna do? I'm going to make fun of sad,
delusional people every week? I don't think that's fun. I was trying to get to
the bottom of that stuff, whether it's Bigfoot or whether it's UFOs, I wanted
to talk to people that had dedicated their life to these subjects and try to
find out what was there. And unfortunately, over and over again, I found out
that what was there was a bunch of people that had done a really poor job of
objectively analyzing the evidence and were completely committed to this idea
that may very likely incredibly suspect, that these ideas that these people had
about whether it's Bigfoot or aliens or whatever it was, they didn't have these
ideas because it made the most sense; they had these ideas because they were
committed to this one possibility being correct instead of looking at it objectively
and saying, 'This is what I believe to be true based on all of this evidence
and despite what I want.' Look, if it was up to me, I would love for there to
be a Bigfoot. I want Bigfoot to be real. If it was up to me, I would love for
us to be visited by aliens. I want that to be real. But I can't prove that it
is. Not only can I not prove that it is, it doesn't seem like it is. It seems
like it's bullshit. So for me, it loses all of its appeal once I see bullshit.
GM: Were you ever in their shoes,
so to speak, where you weren't being totally objective with yourself?
JR: Oh, most definitely. Yeah,
yeah, absolutely. About all those same subjects, too. About UFOs, about
psychics, about all that stuff. I think there's a certain amount of romanticism
that's connected to these controversial subjects, these fascinating paranormal
subjects. They're fascinating and romantically intriguing in a weird way. I
think one of the things that human beings want a lot of the time, we want
things to be something other than what they are. We want to be the person who
exposes that. We want to be the person that sees through the haze and finds
these things: 'Look, look! I showed you! It's right here!' Wow, you're a great
explorer, you've figured this out, you've tapped into it. I don't know what
that is. I have no idea what that is about people. I guess that curiosity is
what led us to figure out fire and led us to form civilizations and all sorts
of different things that people have done throughout the years because of the
fact that we're so curious and fascinated.
GM: I'm a skeptic, too, but I
love that stuff.
JR: Yeah, I think it's good to be
both of those things.
GM: I watched a documentary on
Netflix the other night about people being abducted by aliens and I thought it
was fascinating if were true but it just seems like complete bullshit.
JR: Well, it's not necessarily
complete bullshit. The thing about the fascination that we have with these
subjects is that there may very well be something to some of them. And that's
one of the reasons why they're so intriguing. The problem with it, of course,
is that it becomes the only option because it's a romantic option and that hint
of possibility is sort of chased down ad nauseum. The really fascinating thing
about alien abduction is that these researchers don't want to look at... What
are the possibilities? The possibilities they look at is whether alien
abduction is true, whether people are getting abducted by beings from other
planets or dimensions, or whether or not they're making things up. So they
chase it down, they find all these people with incredibly similar stories and
they say, 'You know what? These stories are just too similar, too many people
who are unconnected have very similar stories. I think it's real.' And that's
the conclusion that the romantic people make. Bu what they don't take into
account is human brain chemistry. All of these abductions happen in the middle
of the night. All of them. They all happen while you're sleeping. Nobody gets
abducted in the middle of the day while they're in the middle of working on a
farm. They don't get abducted while they're sawing wood. They don't get
abducted while they're building houses. They get abducted while they're sleeping.
Well, when you're sleeping, your brain produces psychedelic chemicals. It
produces chemicals that make dreams. The dream state, when you have these wild
halucinations – you feel like you were chasing Godzilla and you were on a
skateboard and there was hailstorms but instead of hail it was frogs – people
have crazy dreams. What are those dreams? Those dreams are halucinations or
your imagination influenced by psychedelic chemicals that are endogenous to the
human brain. Your brain produces the chemical dimethyltryptamine, which is the
most potent psychedelic drug known to man. And it produces it during heavy REM
sleep. So what these people are experiencing, the reason why the same
experience over and over again manifests itself is that it's the same drug.
They're all on drugs! Your natural human drug.
GM: Then why aren't more people
experiencing it?
JR: They are. They're just
not remembering it. More people dream than not dream. People dream constantly.
Do you know what it's like how when you dream and then you wake up from the
dream and you can't remember it? It's like you remember it but it sort of slips
through your hands and then later that day you're like, 'God, how did that
dream go?' And you try to remember it. That is exactly the same as if you take
dimethyltryptamine. If you take that psychedelic drug that the human brain
produces – and it's also in thousands of different types of plants – that's one
of the things that is mirrored in the experience. It's very difficult to
remember the psychedelic trip. For whatever reason your brain knows how to get
rid of that stuff.
GM: I would imagine that also the
reasons why a lot of the stories are similar is because these people are
interested in the topic and we've been hearing about the visitations, etc., for
generations now. So people kind of know what aliens are supposed to look like
and what happens when you're abducted.
JR: Yeah. Absolutely. They
become iconic. Yeah, they become these archetypes that people see over and over
again and look for.
GM: You guys never covered things
like the 9-11 Truthers or the Kennedy assassination?
JR: No, no, no. I think that
stuff's been beaten to death. And I wasn't interested in doing a conspiracy
theory site because then you open yourself up to those fucking loons. Because
we did do chemtrails, which is a really common conspiracy theory. These people
believe the government's spraying the skies with artificial clouds. Ugh, it's
so fucking taxing talking to these people! It's so dumb. It's just such a dumb
theory from dumb people and it's exhausting having those conversations.
Absolutely exhausting.
GM: Was there a backlash from
them after the show?
JR: Oh, huge, huge backlash.
Not just a backlash, just annoying, annoying morons accusing you of being in
cahoots with the government, selling out, and all this nonsense. And it's just
a simple lack of understanding of the process of a jet engine passing through
haze. When jet engines go through various levels of condensation in the
atmosphere, there's different results. And in that hazy state, like right
before a cloud is formed, when a jet engine passes through that state, it
creates clouds. There's moisture that's created by the engine and how it
affects the atmosphere and high altitudes. It creates clouds.
GM: The contrail?
JR: Yeah. They vary. Some
contrails dissipate quickly and some contrails linger. And the contrails that
linger and look like clouds, they are clouds! That's what they are! They are
clouds that are stimulated by jet engines. And does it have an effect on the
environment? Yes. Does it have effect on the atmosphere? Yes. But it's not some
insidious plot by the government to spray the skies. That's just idiots.
GM: Were some of the people
telling you you're in cahoots with the government Joe Rogan fans?
JR: Sure, yes. Absolutely.
GM: But they still listen, I
guess.
JR: I don't know! Some of
them listen, some of them don't. Some of them really believe that the
government got ahold of me and scared me and told me to lie about chemtrails.
It's so stupid. These conversations are so dumb.
GM: You say you might revamp the
show into something more like a podcast. How would it be different? Wouldn't
you be talking to the same kinds of people?
JR: No. There were certain
subjects that we covered in the show that were 100 percent real. Real and
fascinating. Like transhumanism. This concept that human beings will eventually
create something that allows us to live forever, whether to download our
consciousness into some new artificial mind that we've created that lives in
some sort of computer-created world, or whether it's an actual physical being:
a robot or some sort of cyborg, some sort of an artificial tissue, a body
that's created by some process. They've already figured out a way to create
artificial blood cells – O-positive blood cells – that can work with a human
body as a universal donor. They've already figured out a way to make artificial
limbs. They've figured out a way to make carbon fibre hands that can move and
you can manipulate them almost the same way you can do a human hand. And those
are getting better all the time. It's just a matter of time, I think, before
technology creates an artificial body. And the real question is can you take
the human mind and download it into this immortal artificial body? Is that a
possibility that we might actually see some day? Those kind of subjects are
absolutely fascinating to me.
GM: More scientific.
JR: Yeah, more scientific.
Just real things. Things that are real. There are things that are real that are
way more interesting than Bigfoot. The concept of 'Questions Everything' was
supposed to be about questioning things. And especially about questioning
things that I actually find interesting. And somewhere along the line I think
it lost its way when we started talking about chemtrails and things along those
lines and it became things that I was just sort of debunking. And I'm not
really interested in doing that anymore. I think those debunking things, it's
kind of fun for a little while but you run into too many idiots. You run into
too many fools that just do not want to see the truth. They are invested
whole-heartedly in this illusion that they have created.
GM: I'm kind of thankful for them
and for the debunkers, and just let them fight it out and maybe one day Bigfoot
will come walking out of the forest.
JR: (laughs) Well,
there's something to be said for, just as a human nature experiment, just
watching what people are attracted to and what people find fascinating. There's
something to that.
GM: Because of the success of The
Onion, there are these so-called satirical sites that aren't funny in the least
and––
JR: Exactly. I know what
you're going to ask me.
GM: About you killing a mountain
lion, right?
JR: Yeah.
GM: You can't tell from reading
these sites that they're satirical.
JR: Exactly. They're not
satire; they're just lies. It's very annoying.
GM: The Onion does it so well
they think they can do it, too. But they don't get that The Onion is actually
funny.
JR: Not only is The Onion
funny, The Onion's obviously funny.
GM: When you're the subject of
it, does it just roll off your back?
JR: Yeah. I mean, it doesn't
bother me, but, God, I hear about it every day. My own sister texted me to ask
me if I killed a mountain lion. It's like, 'Are you crazy? Do you know how hard
it is to kill a goddamn mountain lion?' You would think it's so stupid that
people would just sort of know that it's dumb.
GM: I guess that's why the
creators think it's obviously funny.
JR: There's another one
that's out right now where people believe that Angelina Jolie was running for
Congress. It's the same thing; it's just bullshit.
GM: You should go along with it.
JR: Nope. Not interested.
Nope. No.
GM: Okay. Probably wise.
JR: Yeah, I don't have the
time.
GM: You have good instincts when
it comes to your career.
JR: Not only that, if you do
that, then people are gonna suspect that you're lying about all sorts of other
things, too.
GM: Yeah. Once again your
instincts are right. Okay Joe, it was great talking with you.
JR: Great talking to you,
too. Thank you very much, man.
No comments:
Post a Comment