Joe Rogan on Somali Pirates Watching Captain Phillips

Um, did you watch the Tom Hanks movie? I? Watched 45 minutes of the Tom Hanks movie in Somalia In Somalia while you're captive. Yeah, holy shit What is that like? Well, I so I knew that I knew Captain Phillips was gonna be a movie when I left That was already clear I was still very good already announced there's something so they had announced it when you left and you got to watch it When I was Somalia, yeah, because by the time this was towards the end of my captivity I had a shortwave radio, so I was listening to the radio By the time it came out and went to the Oscars. It was all over the BBC. So I knew about it I knew it was out like okay. So I'm missing captain Phillips. Whatever wonder what that's like and then One day all the guards got new smartphones Pretty fancy smartphones and they were apparently loaded with a new collection of films and music and whatever to keep them occupied One afternoon I saw two guards just completely wrapped by some sort of film on the phone And I heard some American voices. I'm like, I wonder what this film is and finally I said Fuck me. That's Tom Hanks So I knew what they were watching and two weeks later one of the guards actually handed me the phone and said You know Michael look and so I saw about 45 minutes of it Wow, and of course when he handed me the phone the first thing I went that went through my mind is like, okay I'm gonna call mom and find a way to turn down the volume and and and call California He took the phone away before I did that but I had a whole plan I developed a whole plan while I was watching captain Phillips, you know get on the plane in Boston Logan or whatever Wow It was so atmospherically. It was a pretty good pretty well done movie But there are a couple of scenes where that would just wouldn't have happened in real life. I didn't watch the movie So what was inaccurate about it? There was one scene where? There was some selection of Pirates On the beach. So in public And I thought gosh, how did they get that? That's that's I've never even heard of that before and then I thought about it and thought And realized well that yeah, actually wouldn't happen like that in public. That was just for dramatic purposes You know, I was I was envious of their material at first and then everyone's not they made that up So Things like that, but the Pirates were fascinated to see people like them and in some cases their friends Portrayed on screen and even though we all know how it you know, the movie ends very badly for Somali pirates So they knew about the story that was based on yeah, no question Not only that but one of them said that he was friends with one of the Pirates involved and I believe him actually he had the right clan Affiliation for that so it's it's quite possible. What was it like to see them? Watching their story being depicted on the other side of the planet. Well, that's what was weird is that they they were so fascinated by it, but we you know otherwise, they didn't necessarily like to talk about bad news for Pirates or you know, like I said when the hostages were released Or rescued in the first few days of my captivity I kept hearing that the hostages had been killed So they like to spin things in a good way for for Pirates in general So I just would have assumed they would just ignore Captain Phillips because it ends so badly They were just fascinated. They really were and so what was daily lifelike for you? Like you do you ate with them? Well, I Separately, but sometimes in the same room they they made very bad food boiled beans and flavorless boiled goat and that kind of thing But they would eat from a communal platter Sort of elsewhere within sight. I didn't have to eat from the same platter They eat by hand. Yeah by hand. Yeah. Yeah, that's very common in that part of the world Yeah, it really is because utensils just aren't aren't that common and they really like spaghetti So they sort of wrap the spaghetti around your fingers and I had done that as a free man You know, I sort of sat with some Ollie's and ate that way. But as a hostage I was in no mood to be that You know that friendly Yeah, they they gave me a fork and I could eat my own my own So how like what kind of physical state were you in after two and a half years? Yeah, it was pretty bad. I was my My immune system had started to fall apart so I don't go into detail too much about this in the book, but I had a Staff infection of my skin and some other kind of infection in my ear and I was just something in my lungs I was just not very I was sick And I was sick constantly for several months before I got out So I knew something had really changed and I think the Pirates were aware of that too slowly You think that probably possibly contributed to them lowering your ransom possibly but but I You know, they not that they were sympathetic, but I it's possible they saw me sort of reaching Reaching my physical limit slowly. Yeah slowly