We're gonna release all of this information. We've only redacted what needs to be redacted for national security. A meme. Like, why does anything need to be redacted for national security? Like, I'm sorry. You're telling me there's a pedophile ring and we can't tell you everything about it for national security? Why would that be related to national security? I mean there's just it's like and and I do think there's something and it's very interesting because you know like we talked briefly was that on air before we were talking about we talking about Sam Harris kind of like criticized me a little bit for not having the credentials to talk about some of this stuff which you know like I even said okay he's got a point um but it's like one of the things that like guys like Sam Harris will talk about a lot is uh that like look we need trust in institutions and this this is his big thing where he goes you know these people like Joe Rogan and Dave Smith are just tearing down the institutions. And while I recognize that's an issue, I also think we need trust in these institutions.
Well, it's like Yeah, but what? Yeah. Well, if you talk in that tone, then it means you're not being emotional and you're only being logical and rational, which is like I actually don't think is appropriate when you're talking about a child rapist ring. But whatever. Um, that's my take on it. But it's like, okay, so where where are these institutions I'm supposed to trust, man? You're telling me there's a pedophile ring that is at least in some degree associated with national security? like what the and and how could you possibly have this story? Like if you did care about um the trust in institutions, then you should be even louder than me talking about like you got to tell the truth on this story otherwise we'll never have trust in these institutions.
I'm the same actually. I believe in institutions like I I think they have so this is where you and I probably disagree on the libertarian side. I think it's I think institutions if they're run efficiently can
That's right. I mean there is a utopian notion to it for sure but uh because it's very possible that bureaucracies always destroy the productivity and the effectiveness of institutions as possible.
It's a Lord Acton kind of power corrupts type deal
and and it's you're absolutely right. If you believe in institutions you should be you should want to release everything about Epstein. You should want to be transparent uh as much as possible. Yeah. I but the one thing I'm and it is very suspicious. So I'm more and more becoming convinced that there's some intelligence agency connected to it. But I also want to like setting that aside just comment on one thing where again it's super entertaining but people say about me that I came out of nowhere and that's proof that I'm intelligence. So first of all there is a track record of where I came from quote unquote. It's just people are too lazy.
Yeah. And and there is something sexy about like just saying [__] Mossad. Oh, he's denying it. [__] Mossad.
By the way, the Mossad thing is a new thing. It used to be FSB and CIA.
Uh what do I want to say about that? Oh, yeah. I've uh been gradually growing in popularity over the past 10 years. I've been doing um interviews, lectures, podcasts, and they've been just it's actually very gradual and I I don't know what else
there's a difference. There's something I know I've experienced this too, right? Like there's such a difference in perspective because like if somebody like if somebody just found me and they just found out who I am and they go, "This guy's brand new and he's doing like all these shows." But you're like, "Yeah, well I don't know, dude. Not from my perspective. I'm not brand new." Like, dude, I've been doing I've been doing standup comedy for 19 years, and I've been podcasting for like 15 years. And you're like, and then when it like starts taking off, everybody's like, "Oh, this guy just came out of nowhere." And you're like, "I mean, all right. I I wish I wish I had been aware that it was all this quick." But look, a lot of this stuff with with so much of this, too, it's just laziness and people searching for confirmation bias and people searching for a simpler story because that's easier. So if you're if they believe that Epstein was Mossad and there's a clip of you where you're like I don't know about that then they go see he's Mossad too and now that fits perfectly into my little story and I know no the truth is that there it's quite possible that people just aren't convinced. However given enough time Tim Dillon is always right about everything. So you got to eventually you'll have to admit that he got it right.
Uh, and you know, not to say the cliche cheesy thing, but it is true that the comedians sometimes say kind say the obvious thing that people are a little resistant to say it ends up being uh being true. Now we just landed some more credibility to Tim Dillon's insanity. Great. Now I I do want to comment on the there's the other aspect of me that came out of nowhere fine but I do get to talk to world leaders which I have to really admit I don't understand why. So the experience I've had is you basically gain a reputation like I talked to a lot of scientists early on. you get a reputation like that this is this is a interesting person to talk to and that travels and then over time you just you get fans and world leaders are humans too like they listen to the stuff and sometimes it's their family that listen
yeah often times right like their kids it seems to be a big one
and so and that that's just how it happens and so you sent an email hey you want to talk and then the their team or them directly in several cases just they just respond, "Yeah, and that's it. It's as simple as that." And they're like they're they're human beings. And I think a lot of them as human beings are exhausted by journalists, by shitty journalists, I should say, that and it's hard for them to know which is the good journalist. By good, there's the cynical view that they want they want somebody who's just going to spout propaganda that aligned with their propaganda. No, they just want a good faith person in front of them. now like and I should also say that there no single world leader has told me which questions to ask. There's no uh there's this meme about my conversation with Modi that it's like scripted. Nope. There was zero oversight. I have full control. Well, it's also like there's I mean obviously one of the major dynamics which is just like one of the um most interesting kind of themes in the world I think right now, but it's particularly true in in America. um is that like the corporate media is just shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and this whatever this is
um which is so weird that we still all call them podcasts cuz it's just not the right name for them at all and none of us have had an iPod in quite a long time and like I don't it's just such like the first thing person came up with it it's a cast on an iPod it's a podcast and we all still use that term even though it's but whatever these these shows on the internet have the audience and so that's a big factor just that it's like oh this is where you can go to the audience and then I would say and I don't know exact like I have no idea I should say the motivations inside any individual's heads but I would say like in the case of Vladimir Putin he is completely blacked out in American media and to the point that even RT has been blocked out they they never play any of his speeches they never allow you to hear like look this is what this guy's perspective is. It's a It's very interesting in the same way that they kind of all flipped out when Osama bin Laden's letter to America went viral on on Tik Tok and um you know then all the talks of banning Tik Tok increased and stuff. So for him say like when he did the Tucker interview or if he does an interview with you well that's a way for him to do an end run and allow his perspective to be heard which I personally think is like obviously a good thing. Like if you're going to go in a war and we're kind of at a war with Russia right now, you should know what is the other guy's perspective is. Not that you should take it as gospel, but and then from Netanyahu's perspective, I would imagine, you know, they Israel has a lot of control in a lot of different areas, but they have been losing the internet battle very, very badly. And it's a major problem for Israel. I mean, I don't know. I I still think I think in a very strange way everybody seems to be underest underestimating how grave the implications of all of this are. But Israel the view of Israel from the world is never going to be the same at what it was before. the entire and the generational divide on it is so stark like everybody, you know, 40 and under who very quickly, you know, the time goes by quickly. Pretty soon that's, you know, the the 40 and over crowd gets aged out pretty quickly. And this is just go it's never going to be the perception of Israel that my parents generation has ever again because of this war. And you know, I'm sure to some degree at least Netanyahu is like feels like he has to try to get his perspective into that internet conversation area. And so I think a lot of different people, you know, obviously it was Donald Trump's it's in a way it's kind of shocking and and I guess kind of um Bobby Kennedy when he was running for president and Vivek Ramaswamy when he was running for president they kind of were doing some of it even before Donald Trump was. But it is kind of crazy in a way that it took this long for politicians to figure out that it's like, oh well, I guess we got to go where the audience is. That's the point of doing shows, right? I mean, like, would you rather do a show, you know, like with a million people or with 10 million people? It's like, well, okay, you guys do CNN all the time. Why wouldn't you do Joe Rogan's podcast? It's just a bigger audience and those people get to vote, too.
You reminded me with Netanyahu that one of the goals I have with the podcast is to have the kind of conversation that a historian would find useful 20 years from now, which is tough to do because you're going to get punished for it cuz it's mostly I want to reveal as much information as possible without the signaling, without the you just want to know who was this person.
Yeah. No, I think I think that's that's exactly right. And I think this was kind of what Daryl was saying. I think that the part of the the awful thing of always using World War II as the next example for the next war is that it's almost like you're never this is, you know, they hate us for our freedom or Vladimir Putin's just mad and he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union. It's like you they always insist that we can never treat our enemies as people and be like this is a real person with real grievances. And even they might be a fanatic also. Like I'm not saying they're not, but it's just like that there there are these like human qualities to it. And it's always like, you know, whatever. Even when they were going um before they did the uh Obama and Hillary Clinton did the regime change war in Libya, it was like all this propaganda, they're like, he's buying up Viagra to rape all the women and he's going to go genocide. This guy had been in power for decades. You know what I mean? Like it hadn't done that. And it's just like, oh, it's like the way you're supposed to think about war is almost like these people have been possessed by pure evil. They are monsters and there's no talking to them. There's no dealing with them. It's just simply this. But look, a good example just this recent conflict with the Houthis where you have the Houthis in Yemen which Saudi Arabia invaded in 2015 with the full backing of the United States of America. The Houthis maintained power for eight years through that. They maintained power until the until the Saudis finally gave up. And it was literally like the Saudis were just killing hundreds of thousands of people. And then the Houthis would like get like a drone off at one of their oil refineries or something like that. And that eventually they were just doing enough damage that it was like, ah [__] all right, this isn't worth it anymore. And so they end it. And so anyway, you have this thing. You're like, "Okay, so if they did if they went through a total war for eight years, what you think Trump sending a few tomahawk missiles over there is going to stop them from doing this?" Okay, but then they didn't do anything, and this is according to all reporting on it. They didn't do anything during the ceasefire. It was only once the ceasefire broke down that they went back to attacking ships again that were coming through. So, you just see this thing where you're like, it's nothing right or wrong or who's good or bad. It's like, look, sometimes there's a diplomatic solution and there's not a military solution. And like in this case, you're like, it just shows you, okay, if there was a ceasefire here, these guys will chill out. What do you want to do again? Do you want to go to total war with it? Cuz like, okay, we could overthrow the Houthis. We if the US invades Yemen, like that's kind of what it would take. He's like, does anyone here really have the appetite for another catastrophic war in the Middle East against the poorest country in the Middle East, you know? or we could pursue this diplomatic route which seemed at le I mean I'm just saying based on the evidence that they weren't attacking ships during the ceasefire seems like there could be a diplomatic solution here and so there's just like a lot and and the problem is when you don't like if you make everybody monsters and they're not human beings well you can't do diplomacy with monsters you can't make a deal you can't negotiate with monsters but you can with humans and like you know I'm sure there are you know like to our earlier discussion like maybe there are times where you're not you shouldn't negotiate or you can't negotiate with humans but it's better if you can and and we could use a lot more of that thinking.
Can we take that idea and uh move to the war in Ukraine?
What do you think is the path for peace there?
Well, I think what Trump is pursuing is like infinitely preferable to what Biden was doing. you know what puts Donald Trump and and I don't think everything he's done has been perfect. Um and I really did not like that mineral uh deal that he was floating out for a while there. And I and I think maybe that might be the best thing that came out of that Oval Office thing is that maybe that you know Donald Trump is going to be very tough to do business like this and it's like yeah we shouldn't be doing this business deal anyway. Um but and and by the way I don't think we should do it on a few re number one principally I think it is kind of like bullying Ukraine out of resources and from what I understand they don't even have that many like fine minerals but whatever. Um but it's also like well look if he's he was selling it to Zelensky that's kind of a security guarantee you know cuz like hey if we're in business then if Putin messes with you he's messing with us. But from my perspective, like that's the whole point is you don't want to get into the business of giving out security guarantees. I mean, this is a real this is why George Washington was against entangling alliances. Like you give out war guarantees to too many places, you might have to fight a lot more wars than you otherwise would have fought. And also like there's simply we're in this weird position where America postures like they're so tough, but really when it comes down to it, we're not going to war in Ukraine. There's no political will here. Like I'm so you try to convince the American people we should send our boys to like I understand you're from the region but like for you or you have roots from there but like to the average American the idea of going to war over whether Luhansk is ruled by Kiev or Moscow is just they they don't even know what Luhansk is and if they met someone from there they would probably just assume they were Russian. You know what I mean? Like they and they might be but whatever. I think the first step to a payoff to peace is that you have to want to get a path to peace. So I think Trump's doing a good job in that.
Do you think all three sides want peace from what you understand? Obviously Trump legitimately fully with an urgency wants peace.
I think for sure Trump wants peace. I also think Putin wants to wrap the conflict up. And I think that Putin has Putin has been willing to deal for the entire leadup to the war and pretty much throughout the war. And there's been a lot of solid reporting on this. And I mean the sources on it are pretty impeccable. The the head of NATO Stoltenberg, I always mess up his name, but he literally said that in late 2021 that Vladimir Putin actually sent a draft agreement to NATO and that his condition for not invading, he's like, I will not invade, but you have to put it in writing. Like he sent a a draft treaty to them. You have to put in writing that Ukraine will not join NATO. And then uh Stoltenberg bragged about how he said no because we we won't let Vladimir Putin dictate to us whether we can expand NATO or not. And then he was bragging he was like and look what he got more NATO expansion Finland and this and that. So look at that. Didn't even seem to notice like that. Wait a minute. You're admitting that you could have just promised not to bring Ukraine into NATO and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Seems like it would have been a much better deal. It's it's going to be a much better deal than what Ukraine will ultimately end up getting. So I do think I think uh also the Joe Biden's CIA director who was a CIA director's whole four years uh uh William Burns uh when he was ambassador to Russia he wrote the Nuland memo and in the memo and again this was dumped by Julian Assange. This wasn't for the public. This was just him writing to Condoleezza Rice to tell the secretary of of state his assessment. And he said that his exact words were a decision Russia does not want to have to make. And this was the decision about whether to invade Ukraine or not. And he was like, they say if you keep pushing for Ukrainian entry into NATO, this could lead to a civil war and even worse. And in that situation, Russia would have to decide whether or not to intervene. A decision Russia does not want to have to make. So essentially, it's like I think it's pretty clear from all sides that Putin didn't want it to come to this. And and look, I mean, even after the coup in 2014, he he took Crimea, but he didn't invade the country. I he sent he may have sent special forces in, but I mean, not the full-scale 2022 invasion. And even for the civil war going all that, you know, he did, it seemed like he I'm not defending the decision. I'm just saying it seemed like he reluctantly uh debate, you know, what was it in 2014 or 15 when they had the plebiscite in Crimea and in the Donbass region and they voted to be independent. He didn't take him then. I mean, he could have used that as a pretense for like, hey, they voted to be with us and he didn't. I think he wants to end the war. Zelensky from everything he's said publicly seems like he still feels like uh I mean I'm just taking him at his word here that it's like well no look like we could end the war but we got to end the war. It seems like he's moved from his position being like no we have to reclaim reclaim all of our territory to now his position is kind of like all right maybe we don't reclaim all of it but we got to be given some type of security guarantee in the future. I think the problem with that is just again like I don't mean to be cruel about this because like it sucks that there's little countries that are next to big countries that kind of get bullied around about them, but there also is a bit of an entitlement to demanding a security guarantee. Like what exactly do you mean from America? What that'll go to war if you're invaded? Why are why do we owe that to anybody? Like that's crazy. I'm sorry. You can't just sign up to say that we'll go to war if anybody invades anybody. I mean, I hope nobody invades anybody, but that I don't want us to get dragged into that. That's a recipe for always being at war, you know, and I don't think that's right for our country. So, essentially, I think Trump and Putin want peace. And if that's the case, I think we'll ultimately get to an end of this war.
So, there's a lot of stuff to say here. Let's actually start at the at the beginning at the foundation of this. I think the thing that we left unsaid uh that's important to say is that Putin invaded Ukraine in uh February 24th, 2022. And I think he is, at least from my perspective, the person who started the war. You could talk about NATO expansion. You could talk about any other thing that led to it. You could start at the collapse of the Soviet Union. You can go all the way back as he did a thousand years. The reality is, and this goes to our like deep discussion about the morality of war, no matter the reasons, the guy that like pulls the trigger first unprovoked and keeps pulling the trigger, that's the guy who's at fault.
Oh, I I agree. I'll say one standard, like one standard for everybody. The standard that I laid out before is the same one I said. It's Did you absolutely have to do that? you know, once you start killing people by the hundreds of thousands, it's like, was there any other option? Are you telling me like you absolutely had to do this? Um, and I don't think that's right. You know, my my friend Scott Horton, who I was talking to you about, um, who just totally brilliant guy, even in his book, there's a whole chapter of all the other options of what Vladimir Putin could do. So, you're absolutely right. And there's a weird thing where like people say um like if you say that the west provoked this conflict, that is a very different thing than saying that this conflict is that this invasion was justified. And in in the same way that like you know if you if if you were at a a bar and someone goes and spits in another guy's face and then he pulls out a gun and murders them right there. Like he's not justified in doing that. That that is not okay. You don't get to murder someone because they spit in your face. Also, if you were talking about like why did he murder that guy? I'd be like, "Oh, cuz he walked up and spit in his face. That's why it happened." And that that is essentially my contention about this war. And it is I I think it's just crystal clear that that's why it happened. And listen, it may be right or it may be wrong. Um, but if China or Russia ever like backed a street push to overthrow the democratically elected government in Mexico and then install a pro-Chinese or a pro-Russian government and then started pumping arms into that conflict and then kept floating out the idea that they were going to bring them into their military alliance, we would simply not allow that. You cannot do that any more than the Soviet Union could put nukes in Cuba. Like, sorry.
That should be said that that's really cold war 20th century thinking, right? It is the way the world works. But like, that's you should still punish. I don't think outside of the neoconservatives I listen whether you're talking about the neoconservatives or going way before the neo any other group that has ever had control of US foreign policy going back to the um the cold warriors the Truman administration the Eisenhower administration I think you could take this back to Thomas Jefferson if this happened in 1801 there is simply no way that they would allow a foreign great power to come bring our neighbor, overthrow their government, and then bring our neighbor into their military alliance. I think there's no great power that would ever tolerate that.
First of all, we're in a post-nuclear world, right? So, meaning post there's nuclear weapons. So, the threat of somebody being on your border is just not the same kind of threat when you're a nuclear power, which is why, you know, you look at Finland.
No, I think in some ways it's more it's more of a threat in some ways. Well, he's not there's Putin is not upset about Finland joining NATO nearly as much.
Look, I'm just saying to Vladimir Putin in his own words, what his issue always was was the military hardware that comes along with NATO membership. It's not just that you get into NATO, but then you get all that military hardware there. And he made a huge deal about the dual use rocket launchers in Poland, which George W. Bush put there after 9/11. So, I think all of those things are factors. I think Ukraine the Crimea being their only year-long warm water port. I think there's like several, you know, like elements to it, but I do think a huge part of it is that there also the country's been invaded through Ukraine uh multiple times. And so there's just Yeah, it's it's he I think very reasonably within grading on a curve of how reasonable governments are, he saw that as a security threat. But I we should make very clear because the way that comes across the full responsibility of the invasion of Ukraine lays at the hands of Vladimir Putin.
Sure. I completely agree with that. Vladimir Putin is uh Vladimir Putin launched a war where again I I don't know exactly what the numbers are. I've read a whole bunch of estimates, some that contradict each other, but the consensus seems to be it's at least in the hundreds of thousands, possibly well north of a million if you're talking about the casualties on both sides. And Vladimir Putin launched a war that led to that and he's responsible for that. That being said, you can also point out that the, you know, really what we're talking about here is the George HW Bush administration, the Clintons, Bush again, Obama, and then Trump. And the people who were in charge of the foreign policy in that in in those administrations, the same ones who gave us Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, they were also in charge of our European foreign policy. and they had the most reckless foreign they the most reckless policy of all was their NATO policy and that they they drove up to this conflict with Russia with nothing but off-ramp after off-ramp after off-ramp and consciously decided that we're not going to take any of those. We're going to drive it all the way up to this point. And Thomas Friedman for the New York Times interviewed George Kennan in 1998. And this is George Kennan was the the um like the cold warrior. He was he's he's credited as founding the containment strategy in the Cold War and he was talking about uh the first round of NATO expansion which he and many other foreign policy grey beards opposed and he was talking and he was like this is the worst thing we could possibly do after the fall of the Soviet Union to now say that we had this alliance in NATO that was an anti-Russian military alliance and now that the Soviet Union isn't there anymore and it's Boris Yeltsin's Russia that now we're going to expand NATO because of that. And he literally said in 1998, he goes, "The people advocating that we expand NATO are going to continue advocating it and advocating it and advocating it, and then there will be a Russian reaction, and then they'll say, see, that's why we were right to expand NATO, but they'll get this completely wrong."
When do you think a deal is reached?
I really have no idea what the timeline's going to look like. I'm hoping sooner rather than later. I think like um I think Donald Trump would love nothing more than to have some type of like big spectacle of ending this war, some type of big press conference or some type of you know what I mean? And so I'm sure like if I my guess would be that's where Trump's mind is is how to do this in the best way that sells him the best and and you know um but I I think that already we're in a position where Donald Trump has put a lot of political capital chips into the middle of the table that I can end this war you know and he's going to look very very bad if he can't. So, he's very highly incentivized to get this thing done as quick as possible. And so, hopefully um that can that can happen soon. It would be great if it could happen in the next month.
Yeah. People on both sides outside of Donald Trump were telling me that it's a it's a process.
There's a kind of implication it's going to is going to take a while, which I really hate. I really love Donald Trump's urgency.
Well, it's also terrible. There's something really awful like, you know, look, when in innocent people dying in war at any time is is terrible, but there is something profoundly awful and I've I'm old enough now that I've seen this a few times happen or I've lived through it a few times. I've read about it happening earlier, but it's like once you've kind of already decided the war is over and people still die, you know what I I mean, there's something almost like sadder about that cuz it's always like, "Come on, you already know." You know, like when there'd be like a big, you know, there'd be like a bombing campaign in in uh in Afghanistan, like when we already knew we were a few months away from ending the war, you're like, "Ah, you got to kill more people like on the way out. We already know we're leaving. We already know that because there's something at least in the beginning they could kind of hide behind this justification." Or they could be like, "Listen, we're going to overthrow the Taliban and we're going to install our new government. They're going to be a democracy. It's going really good. We have to do this in order to do this bigger project. But then by the end, you're like, we're not even pretending anymore that we're doing anything more positive. It's just someone dying in a senseless thing we never should have been in.
Well, in the spirit of that, that's why I traveled to Moscow and we'll travel to Moscow again in the near future to likely interview Vladimir Putin and uh hopefully travel back to Ukraine, which I did to uh talk again with uh Volodymyr Zelensky or uh with whoever the future president is.
You'll be the only guy who's interviewed both of them, I think. Yeah.
And I have to say the border crossing is getting increasingly more intense. Like,
yeah, I went I went to Canada last week and I didn't care for that. So, I'm sure
primarily it's a nation at war as it was in Ukraine and it's [__] it's like as dangerous to do both. It's also like I think something that um I think something that's a little bit foreign, no pun intended, to America is, you know, like we've fought in a lot of wars over the last say 25 years, you know, 50 years, whatever. But all of them um including in a way the the World Wars even in the 20th century like but it's been since 1812 that we fought one on our shores and none of the other ones I mean I guess Pearl Harbor but even Pearl Harbor that was a one-off and it was only kind you know it was America technically but it wasn't mainland America you know and so we're fighting wars like halfway across the world but is a very different thing for two neighboring countries to fight. And even though most of the fighting's been done on the Ukrainian side, not all of it, like there have been, you know, there I think there still are areas in Russia, like inside Russia's borders where there's action. And so it's just like there's something so much more real about that. That's not just like, you know, the wars we're used to are we we send a military that is a hundred thousand times more sophisticated than anything it'll be meeting on the ground over to a third world country to go do that. Now, as we've found out over the years, there's still a lot of challenges to that. Even when your side has night vision goggles and the other one doesn't and your side can call in air strikes and the other one can't and your side has all the sophisticated training and the other side's practicing on monkey bars, still very hard to occupy a people and dominate them and defeat an insurgency. But that's very different than like two nation states on right next to each other on the border. Like there's just a real feeling of like survival in that moment. And I I do think that probably I don't understand this as well as you do and probably you don't even understand it as well as maybe like an older generation um of of Russians and Ukrainians would. But like there's also something about like both Russia and Ukraine in their own ways got so absolutely [__] over in the 20th century multiple times in a way that Americans just it is just too foreign to us to even understand anything like that like millions of people starving to death being invaded the entire nation collapsing and the the Russian uh government collapsed twice in a hundred years right that's That's pretty like that's traumatic and we just simply have never been through anything like that. And so if when you have that kind of like trauma as a society and then there's a war on your border, I'm sure there's a whole lot of different kind of feelings that we just can't relate to.
Plus a history in both nations of super sophisticated and expansive intelligence agencies.
Right. Right. Right. Yeah. That's a very good point. Yeah.
You host a podcast called Part of the Problem.
What have you learned through that whole process of um interviewing some interesting people? And are there topics you cover that make you sweat still to this day? It feels like going into the fire.
What I what I've learned just from the podcast is that there is um there there's something there there's an interesting like relationship that you build with your audience. Um, and you know, I I travel a lot and I do shows a lot. So like I'll I meet people who listen to the show and I know like I've had this experience before. I kind of have this experience with you um where like me, you know, me and you met once I think before today. We were me me and you actually met on a very interesting night. I don't know if you remember this, but we were at um was before the comedy mothership was built. You came by a Joe Rogan and Friends show at the Vulcan.
And it was the It was while Joe was going through the [__] storm of cancel culture and he was on the phone with Dana White and stuff in the back. It was a wild night.
But then at the same time, right, like
we just kind of met that one time and then we talked on the phone and now we're doing the show. I kind I know you already like I already know you and it's not just that we have friends of friends but I've just like seen so much of your stuff that it's like I know who you are and then and then it's weird cuz people come up to you and they're like that it's like they know you and I've had this experience. I had this experience with with Joe. Like I I knew him before I knew him. And so that was kind of like one of the things that I really learned from doing the podcast over the years was like how much that's actually a relationship. like you actually have a relationship with your listeners and and almost like in the same way in the same way that like you know you can't lie to people like in your life you also can't lie to your like they're a relationship too like you can't lie to your your audience and that I think that there's like there's there's often almost like kind of shortcuts that are presented before you but there is a payoff to not taking the shortcuts and to like kind of doing it the way you want to or what
what do you think is the number of hours it takes to form a relationship? Cuz I I absolutely agree with you. First of all, I should say I'm a huge podcast fan. I've listened to you as a guest and your own show a lot. So yeah, there's I think with you I've already crossed the threshold of hours where like I feel like
We're friends. Yeah. One way, and I guess because you listen to me, it's the other way, which are like separate parallel dimensions.
It's very weird. It's very strange in a way. Very interesting. And it's also there's something there which is kind more your area of expertise than mine, but there's something there where like technology is playing this wild role. Like we could have a two-way friendship without actually having to meet each other, all facilitated by the machines that we built. It's very trippy. I think it's probably like I'll say it's like 50 hours, maybe 20 to 50 hour range is when you're like, okay.
It's kind of interesting in a way, right? Because like the thing before, like the Joe Rogan Experience, was like kind of the thing that made comedians big. The things before that used to be like Letterman and Leno and Conan. Like comedians would get like a seven-minute set on there, and even if you do great, like if you're just like you killed and someone watching is like, I love that comedian, that comedian's amazing. First of all, unless they were like on social media and then went and like shoot you, there was no way to connect. It'd just be like, love that guy, anyway, back to my life. And then maybe you'll remember him.
Maybe when he's coming to town, you'd see, oh, that same guy I saw on Conan is going to be at the local comedy club or something, maybe. But then like Rogan became the main thing, and now they didn't just see you do seven minutes of stand-up. They sat and listened to you for three hours. So even let's just say even off that one three-hour podcast, you come away knowing a lot more about that person. It's not like just a little taste. You know a lot about it. But there is I probably would put the threshold at 40 to 50 hours.
Like if you've consumed 40 to 50 hours of somebody, especially when they're doing what we do on these shows where you're just speaking in a very unguarded manner. Even though like this is your show and you asked like a lot of questions, you don't know exactly where this is going to go. You know, then you're seeing what I say and then go, 'Huh, okay. Well, let me ask something based off that. Let me make a point based off that.' We're both kind of like unguarded. And when you consume somebody like that for like 40, 50 hours, you do see into their soul. I think there's almost no way, there's no way to avoid that.
And also, I would say if they're not letting you see into their soul, you'll notice that and you know that about them. Like this is a guarded person. This was ultimately Kamala Harris's issue, right? And this is why she was probably, you know, correct not to do Rogan, even though everyone looks back at that and says like, 'No, no, no. This was the big disaster of her campaign.' It's like, I don't know. You know, she was so guarded in every single interview that she ever did. She was always constantly not trying to let you see who she really was. And if she was going to try that on Rogan, that would have been so apparent to everybody involved.
