Best of the Week - June 28, 2020 - Joe Rogan Experience

When people, you know, like the idea of backpacking, hunting, that's what they're liking is the idea of it, because can you glamorize the shit out of it? It's fucking painful. But again, he's not a normal human. You can't go by his standards or his ideas. They say that sheep hunting is the hardest. They say that, like, Alaska sheep hunting in terms of like just the difficulty of the terrain and the dangers of it. Yeah. You agree with that? Somewhat, yeah. I would say the one, I've only been on a couple sheep hunts in Alaska, right? Most of mine have been in lower 48 or the NWT, the Northwest Territories. The thing with Alaska that's easy is you're not getting that much altitude. Distance is far. You're not, but the weather is bad. Like generally the weather is pretty bad. And then the amount of pressure now, and again, I'm not an expert on Alaska, the pressure is much worse than it's ever been in Alaska. In terms of the amount of hunters. Hunters, yeah. Yeah, a lot of hunters out there. And then animals, grizzlies and shit. Yeah, which is a fucking real ... You've seen us get charged on video, I think. Yes. When you were with the Gritty Bowman, that was terrifying. Yeah. That was crazy. I ... I'm an adrenaline junkie. I'll tell a true story. Okay. Because it's not ... I thought we were calling it moose, and I'm like looking, and I'm like, I think there's a moose coming, and a grizzly pops out. I'm like, hey, get your camera. Let's call this thing in. This is a true story, because we made it sound like it was ... Oh, here comes a grizzly. So I thought it was going to get to that fucking stump and stop, right? You called the grizzly in on purpose? Who's coming into a moose call, right? So I'm like, hey, grab the cameras. Let's get this on video, because he was looking for our moose calls. So this big bitch gets by that log, and she stands up, and she's looking around, and I'm like, oh, cool. I shut her on the video. Fuck it hit the ground, and it was coming. And I'm like, oh. Well, and immediately, me, I've been charged enough to where I'm an adrenaline junkie. Anyway, I'm desensitized, and I'm like, well, he's going to eat fucking this other dude anyway. So I'm like, you can see my camera's shifting right a little as I'm taking these photos. I didn't have a weapon at a bow. And so here pretty quick, I'm thinking, shoot this motherfucker. It's like 15 yards from us. Oh my God. And he fired off a round at its feet, and I knew his gun jammed on the second round. Sometimes. So I'm like, oh, that fucking piece of shit Brownie 8-Molt doesn't jam on the second one or whatever it was, right? Not saying a Brownie's bad. Well, it stopped, you remember? And it came again? I think it was like 12, 10 yards when it finally turned off and ran away. But 10 yards is nothing. Well, I tell you, like, that's almost like that wall. Yeah, it was big, too. It was a big one. For example, I start the book with a quote from the head of Philip Morris, who says, who knows what you would do if you didn't smoke? Maybe you'd beat your wife. Maybe you'd drive cars fast. And that's part of how I think the tobacco industry approached this. They would imagine this sort of counterfactual where a world without tobacco, without cigarettes, and then they would imagine what that would be like. And of course, they'd always imagine it was much, much worse than smoking. Much, much worse. Yeah, I read that part. And also, the man in question wound up quitting cigarettes. Right, yeah. He had to quit fairly quickly. He started wife-eating and speeding and what did he do? Right, exactly. Yeah, that was the question. And we never really did find that out. It's such a strange way to live your life, to be deceptive in a way that you know is going to... I mean, there's... I don't know how many people have gotten cancer from cigarettes, but it's probably millions. Well, and it isn't just cancer. It's heart disease, etc. So millions, I mean, I've seen an estimate that in the 20th century, smoking, killed... I want to make sure I get this right. I think it was 100 million people. More than maybe both wars, world wars put together. It's seven million a year, I think, is the global death toll. In the US, it's 480,000 a year, yeah. Directly attributable. Right. They trace it to directly attributable. Now, you know, these are extreme examples. Tobacco is the most famous and extreme example, and I talk about a lot of other examples, but I think it's actually a fairly common thing for people to go pretty far down the road of denial when they are working in an industry. And this is sort of the process I try to explore a little bit in the book. They're working in an industry. They're confronted with some accusation that they have caused harm. They check their gut, and their gut says, no. We didn't intend to cause harm. We don't feel guilty. And so their mind starts to come up with reasons why it must be wrong. And their tribal instincts, which are never more than just a millimeter below the surface for pretty much any of us, but certainly in this case, get triggered. So they immediately think, well, these people accusing me must have an ulterior motive. They must be... They want money. They want power. They want attention. They want some sinister political objective. And then the other part of that tribal dynamic is they start thinking about themselves and their truly lofty mission, which isn't just to sell a product, but something else. It's to protect freedom. Or if you're a slave trader, it's to rescue the Africans from terrible lives in Africa and bring them to the comfortable plantations. A micro assault would be making a small but racially salient comment in the presence of a person of that race. Oh, so it's not even an assault assault? Not necessarily racist. No, it's not an assault. No, these people... Violence is all words and discursive aggression. So a micro assault can just be an insult? And they're all insults. Micro everything has to just be words or standing in the wrong place. Oh, boy. Jamie just pulled it up here. A micro assault is an explicit racial derogations characterized. Look at that expression. A micro assault is an explicit racial derogations. So you've put somebody down on purpose. I know, but that's a weird way of describing it. N explicit racial derogations, plural. Oh, yeah. N, which is singular. Who wrote that? Yeah, that's not right. Yeah. They need an editor. N, there's your hyphen. Avoid and behavior, or purposeful, discriminatory, dot actions. The other grammar on that is broken all the pieces. It's a mess and that's kzoo.edu, reason.kzoo.edu. Nice. I mean, it's like... They didn't even bother editing that motherfucker. Look at that. There's so many of these things that are for education that are like this. And it's like they say stuff like themself. And it's just like, this is supposed to be for education. It's barely literate. What is going on? Well, that's a problem when you're using they and them as well, right? You start using they and them pronouns, which are really supposed to, I mean, for the most part, indicate multiple people. Yeah, right. Yeah. Right, yeah, singular they. And you could say, they, you know, so this guy, you could say they thought, or they thought they would get away with it. I mean, you could say it. You could say, but it's hard to use it that way all the time. Right, it's hard to use it intentionally actually. It comes up naturally sometimes and then it's fine, but it's hard to use intentionally. Yeah, if a person wanted to go to the store, they could go. Right, and so there's something like kind of totalitarian about making people do things like that that are difficult, like jumping through these little hoops and then holding them to massive account. And it's like, I mean, even like the Black Lives Matter thing, like Black Lives Matter as a sentence is obvious, forcing somebody to say an obvious thing. That's a great name because you can't argue with it. You also can't argue with it. Yeah, I mean, of course they matter. Yeah, because what are you gonna say? And of course it's, I mean, it's so complicated because it's like, if somebody asked me, they said, okay, do you support Black Lives Matter? James, do you support Black Lives Matter? And of course they're gonna try to catch me on this. And it's like, which one? There's at least five. I support one of them and I think the other four are nuts. I was at his house January of last year, January 2019. Tiffany Haddish took me to his house. And it was this night that I was really not supposed to be there. I wasn't invited, but Tiffany was like, come with me. And I'm like, hell yeah. So I went and it was this incredible fucking night at Eddie Murphy's house where I walked downstairs. First of all I see is Jamie Foxx. I was like, hey man, what's up? I'm like, what's up Jamie? And he's like, yeah. And then I turn, I see Neil Brennan and then I look at the bar and I see Sasha Baron-Conan and Isla Fisher sitting at the bar and I'm like, what the fuck have I won? Then I see Kimmel, then I see Bill Hader. And then I hear behind me, yo, is this what you comedians always do, hang out with each other? And I turn around and it's Q-tip from a tribe called Quest. And I'm like, what up, Tip? And they're like, what the fuck is going, what have I walked into? Wow. And then Jeff Ross was there and then Chappelle came, Chris Rock came. And I was like, what have I fucking walked into? But the good thing is, you know, because you were comics, we all know each other. And then I'd only met Eddie once, for like a split second at a fight. And he knew my name then, but when I walked in the basement he goes, hey Russell, thanks for coming. I'm like, Eddie Murphy knows my name. That's all I kept thinking. Holy shit, Eddie Murphy knows my name. I met him once with Charlie. I rented Charlie. Charlie was so great. He was such a sweet guy. Charlie and I did a tour together for Maxim, the Bud Light comedy tour with John Heffron. And then just randomly, I was in Maui. And just Charlie was in Maui. And I went over and sat with him and Eddie Murphy was weird. Was so strange. How was he when he was with Charlie? He was real friendly, man. Yeah, he was really nice. There was like nothing weird about him. No, he's super friendly. First words, he goes, you're a funny motherfucker. Yeah. And I was like, oh my God. Yeah, these are the things. My faint. Yeah, dude. That whole night, I honestly didn't say a fucking word to anybody. I was just in shock the entire time. I was just like, I know. Every time I turned my head, and then I was standing in a doorway like that. And it's me standing beside Eddie, and then Chris Rock, Jamie Foxx, and Neil Brennan. And they're all trying to convince him to do stand up again. Wow. And I'm just there. I have nothing to add to this conversation. I'm not on Jamie's level, I'm not on Chris's level. Neil created Schabelger. I'm like, I'm just there. But they didn't make me feel like, what are you doing here? They made me feel included. That was nice. That is nice. But Eddie was like, I haven't done it in 30 years. I'm pretty sure you've still got it. Oh, he's got it. He said he's got about five minutes. I got about five minutes. But you guys are out there doing it every day. And I know he wants to do it.