Joe Rogan Experience #1114 - Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi is a journalist and author. He has reported on politics, media, finance, and sports, and has authored several books including: Insane Clown President, Griftopia, and The Business Secrets Of Drug Dealing.

Joe RoganhostMatt Taibbiguest

May 9, 20182h 20mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

150 min read · 30,293 words

0:02 – 1:22
Nootropics, Alpha Brain, and getting settled in
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Five, four, three, two... That countdown gives me anxiety. I gotta stop doing the countdown. See, look, I spilled my fucking Alpha Brain.
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
3. JRJoe Rogan
  God damn it.
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  What is Alpha Brain?
5. JRJoe Rogan
  It's, uh, brain juice. It's like a cognitive enhancing supplement.
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  Really?
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, you ever fuck with nootropics? You know what nootropics are?
8. MTMatt Taibbi
  No. Do you have an extra one? Can I try?
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, sure. For sure. The... Nootropics are essentially the, uh, building blocks for human neurotransmitters. They improve your memory. Not too radically. Not like, uh... Have you ever fucked with modafinil or any of that stuff?
10. MTMatt Taibbi
  No.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  No?
12. MTMatt Taibbi
  No.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Modafinil's like, uh, Provigil. It's, um... They give it to fighter pilots.
14. MTMatt Taibbi
  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yep.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  You know what I'm talking about? It helps keep them awake. I was just-
16. MTMatt Taibbi
  Well, I have a doctor, so yeah, yeah.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  You have a doctor?
18. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, my wi- my wife is a doctor.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, your wife's a doctor.
20. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, yeah.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, that's perfect. So she knows about all that jazz.
22. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, yeah.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Um, but there was just an article recently about it improving cognitive performance. You're gonna probably have to bite into that. You got it?
24. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Um, it's good to meet you, man. I'm- I've enjoyed your work.
26. MTMatt Taibbi
  Nice to meet you too. I mean, I've been a fan forever, so-
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Thank you. Me too.
28. MTMatt Taibbi
  ... I'm looking forward.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Uh, I've enjoyed your writing for sure.
30. MTMatt Taibbi
  Oh, thank you.
1:22 – 2:18
Taibbi’s drug-dealing book concept and the masked co-author idea
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Um, so let's talk about what we were just talking about.
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  You were... You wrote a book with a guy about drug dealing, and he was gonna come on wearing a mask.
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, he wanted to come on wearing a- a Barack O- Obama mask, actually.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, it's, it's actually really funny. The whole story is really funny. I'm writing this book, um... Oh, I spilled it too. Um, it's called The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing. Uh, you can find it at businesssecretsofdrugdealing.com. Um, and I'm serializing it. Uh, but basically, uh, somebody I knew for ages, um, in a completely different capacity, uh, sort of came out to me last year and said, um, you know, "I've been a high level drug dealer for, for a long time, basically my whole life." And wanted to tell his story about, uh, you know, sort of the, the whole progression of his life.
2:18 – 4:40
From mushrooms to legal weed: the dealer’s career arc and the gray market
1. JRJoe Rogan
  What kind of drugs?
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, only things that grow out of the ground.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay.
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  So, uh, he started off, um... This is a, this is an African American guy. Uh, he started off, believe it or not, selling mushrooms. Uh, he, he sort of grew up half in the projects and half in, in an upscale suburb. Uh, and he... In the upscale suburb, he sold mushrooms, which he, um, uh, basically got through mail order at a time early in the sort of history of the internet when there were some loopholes about things.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  You could get spores, right?
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah. Well, actually you could get the actual...
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Really?
8. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, yeah.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow.
10. MTMatt Taibbi
  Um, so he ends up having this whole career. Uh, and he wanted to sort of explain to me what the rules of the game were, uh, and do sort of a book version of the 10 Crack Commandments.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
12. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, and so we sat down and, um, we couldn't quite figure out how to do it at first, but we ended up essentially doing a sort of fictionalized version of, uh, of his life. Um, and the progression is amazing because he, he goes from being a, a dealer in all these different parts of the country and different social spheres. He's, uh, in college. He deals to rich white kids. He deals on the street in, in to- in, you know, tough urban neighborhoods. And then ends up sort of in the legal business, uh, in, in this state. Uh, and-
13. JRJoe Rogan
  As a lawyer?
14. MTMatt Taibbi
  No, no, no. No, no, no. He... Legal marijuana.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, oh, oh, oh.
16. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, and so he's describing that world, which is not, um, there are a lot of misconceptions about it. Uh, there, there are some things about it that are, um, not known terribly well. Like, you know, what do you do when you work, uh, you know, at a, at a farm and, uh, your crop tests dirty, you know, with a, with a contaminant? Um, well, you know, not everybody just throws it away. You know, a lot of that stuff ends up shipped across country, goes to other markets. Uh, and he sort of describes a lot o- of this.
4:40 – 6:25
Smuggling logistics and ‘rules’ for not getting caught
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Like what kind of contaminants would that be? Like fungal or pesticides?
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, like a, like a, like a fungus.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, something like that. Uh, you know, there are labs that basically have to clear, uh... You know, from what I understand, um, that have to clear each of the crops. And, uh, and there are situations where, you know, there's a whole bunch of crop and you got workers that have to be paid, and what do you do with it? And, uh, the legal market isn't big enough, um, to accommodate all the stuff that's grown. And so there's sort of still, you know, kind of a black market that goes on. And he, he, he describes this and, uh... But, uh, even before that, it's just a fascinating book about, you know, all the different things that he learned, uh, in the course of his career about how to get a, you know, um, do the job and not get caught, how to, how to rig a load, uh, to drive cross country, how do you do a dummy car. Um, you know, he, he tells a story about how basically you want four cars, you want the guy in the front seat to be, to be... to look like a drug dealer and have a terrible record, drive badly, uh, basically to attract the police.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, and the, you know, the third car is the load car, the second car is sort of watching to see if there's, there's cops in either direction. And then the fourth car is basically driving up, uh, behind the load car to sort of prevent anybody from seeing the license plate and that sort of thing. And so-
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Whoa.
8. MTMatt Taibbi
  ... he just talks about all this stuff and it's, it's, it's fascinating and, um-It was a new kind of writing for me because I'd never really done anything except straight journalism and we sort of had to do it in narrative form. And so we're, we're putting it out serially online right now, which is really cool.
6:25 – 13:52
Anonymity, realism, and the psychology of pricing and policing
1. JRJoe Rogan
  So you did one of those ch- change the names to protect the innocent sort of a deal?
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  Exactly, yeah, yeah. But-
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Or, or the guilty, yeah.
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah. (laughs)
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. But m- for the most part, based on facts?
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, the situations were, let's just say, realistic, you know.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
8. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, yeah, yeah. And, and his ... You know, the observations were that, uh, that he describes are all, you know, things that he actually learned. The situations were, you know, relatively close to things that actually happened, so yeah.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  That's interesting. So that's available now?
10. MTMatt Taibbi
  Mm-hmm, yep, yep. Again, it's, uh, uh, businesssecretsordrugdealing.com. It's, it's kind of a new thing. I, I, I, I grew up, um, a huge fan of, uh, serialized, uh, detective stories. I was a big fan of like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and I loved, uh, Black Mask Magazine, which was the big pulp noir magazine in the '20s and '30s. And, um, you know, I grew up reading all those stories and I always ... Uh, it was in the back of my mind always that I wanted to try this, uh, and write a book, uh, on a deadline. So I'm doing this now, and it's a, it's basically co-written with this, uh, anonymous character who can't appear with me on shows like this, uh, a- anywhere because he has ... He's, he's still not captured and, um-
11. JRJoe Rogan
  So is there... Are there warrants out for this guy?
12. MTMatt Taibbi
  No, he's never been picked up. Uh-
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Never been arrested?
14. MTMatt Taibbi
  Never been arrested, no.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Whoa.
16. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah. Uh-
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Sounds like a smart dude.
18. MTMatt Taibbi
  He is a smart dude. He is a smart dude, and some of his employers would be very surprised to know that he's got, uh, a hobby like this. Um ...
19. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
20. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, it's funny 'cause I, you know, I knew him ... Again, I knew him for years and didn't have the faintest clue, uh, that, that this was, this was going on, so-
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Did he keep a job in order to avoid suspicion?
22. MTMatt Taibbi
  So, uh, the, h- The book is actually structured with all these rules. Each chapter has, has rules in it. One of his, his most important rules is always have a job. Uh, and he ... It's for a number of reasons. Number one, um, he w- He talks about how when he was young, he worked at, at places like, you know, a Marriott or Applebee's, and he's like, "You know, if you can serve, um ... Have the patience to serve people at an Applebee's and not blow up and scream at people, then you won't screw up a package." Like ... (laughs) In a- in other words, if, if you can have the self-discipline to actually get through one of these jobs and not blow up and be crazy, then you're gonna handle ... You're gonna handle yourself well at a car stop.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  That's fascinating. So he used it almost like as a discipline exercise?
24. MTMatt Taibbi
  He used it as a discipline exercise. He learned an- among other things, like, uh, another one of his rules is dress like an off-duty Applebee's waiter, right?
25. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
26. MTMatt Taibbi
  Like, do not dress ... Uh, and he, and he talks about this, about how most dealers, um, they learn their, their, uh, profession, uh, by watching movies, you know. There's no, there's no book out there. I mean, there ... It's not like this generation is growing up reading, like, you know, the old Iceberg Slim or Donald Goines novels or whatever it is. They're watching, you know, The Wire or Blow or, uh, or Ozark now, or whatever it is.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
28. MTMatt Taibbi
  Um, but dealers very often dress like dealers. You can, you can kinda spot them, you know? And he says that's exactly the opposite of what you have to do. Um, you know, wear Sperry shoes, wear boring clothes, look like, you know, you've ... You're on your way to, to, you know, your freshman English class or whatever it is. Um, and, you know, sa- sound like a nerdy college kid when, when, uh, the cops pull you over and ... All this stuff is, uh, is sort of central to his, his whole, uh, world view about how to avoid getting caught.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow, that would be a great book.
30. MTMatt Taibbi
  It, it ... I mean, it is. It's, it's, it's really fun and, you know, the, the fact that, um, that the, you know, the co-author is actually a person who's pulling this off makes it, makes it really interesting. And it makes it, uh, a, a real challenge to write it too, because, um, you know, I had to kinda, uh, simulate his voice, uh, and kinda communicate to people what, what those situations were like and what things look like from his point of view. And obviously I'm white and he's African American and that's, that's tough, and, uh ... But, you know, it ... I think it works. It- it's kind of a cool story.
13:52 – 17:00
Jeff Sessions, immigration cruelty, and renewed drug-war anxiety
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm. Especially today with this Jeff Sessions motherfucker in place.
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  Oh my God, yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  He's scary.
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Did you see the sh- the shit that he was saying now, that they're going to actively separate parents from their children if they catch illegals coming over with their families?
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  I mean, that's just vindictive and-
7. JRJoe Rogan
  It's fucking evil.
8. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah. No, and it's funny, I, I cover Trump obviously when, um, you know, on, on the campaign trail. And I watched, uh, sort of the progression of his thought, uh, uh, or non-thought as it, as, as it is, uh, on, on things like immigration. And it seemed to me that he, he clued in very quickly that people just want to be mean to imor- immigrants.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
10. MTMatt Taibbi
  He just ... It's not so much about the policy.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
12. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, he, he was very non-specific about that whenever he could be. He just wanted to say things that, that, that, um, feel vindictive and cruel and nasty. And so, you know, doing something to children is just, it's just monstrous, you know? But, uh-
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Sess- Sessions is a real creep.
14. MTMatt Taibbi
  Oh, horrible.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  He's just-
16. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  He's a scary guy.
18. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, uh, one of the things that he said is, "Good people don't smoke marijuana." Like, just saying that alone, y- do you know how many grandmas out there with cancer are smoking marijuana?
20. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs) Of course.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  You know, fuck you.
22. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Crazy asshole.
24. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Just the fact that someone could be in such a position of influence and say something like that.
26. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, this isn't just your dad saying that, "Good people don't smoke marijuana," he goes out in the yard and fucking smokes a cigarette. This is, this is Jeff Sessions.
28. MTMatt Taibbi
  This is the Attorney General.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
30. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, exactly.
17:00 – 24:30
Trump’s volatility, attention span, and rally spectacle as performance
1. MTMatt Taibbi
  The, the, the problem with Donald Trump, and, and this is something that I didn't clue into until I'd spent a lot of time watching the guy and following him around, is that he can sound like he believes something very deeply, and you can be absolutely convinced that he even, uh, logically thinks a, thinks a thing. But he'll have a meeting with somebody, and five minutes later he'll have a completely the opposite opinion. So I, I have no confidence that Donald Trump will, uh ... Anything that he says that he'll ... That it will stay his opinion on anything.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
3. MTMatt Taibbi
  He, he can be convinced to go do a complete 180 on basically any issue, which is scary, you know?
4. JRJoe Rogan
  But isn't he, in some ways, the perfect representative of America because of that?
5. MTMatt Taibbi
  Absolutely. He has no attention span and, and, uh, and I, I talked about this whe- when I was covering him, because people said, "Oh, what does, what does this billionaire New Yorker have in common with, with ordinary Americans?" He has a lot in common with them. He has exactly the same media habits that they have. He reads the same dumb shit on the internet. Um, he has the same total inability to separate fact from fiction. Uh, he's completely credulous when he reads, uh, a news item about something that he personally agrees with, uh, and he'll, he'll tweet it out five seconds later before he checks it out, which is like-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
7. MTMatt Taibbi
  ... what every other American does, you know? They get something on Facebook and they immediately share it with, you know, all their friends, um, and this is a, this is an American thing now, just the total inability to, to, uh, logically look at things. I don't know.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, and the short attention span too. Short attention span, drifting in and out of conversations, not being able to pay attention to memos unless h- his name is in there a hundred times-
9. MTMatt Taibbi
  Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  ... like all that ... It sounds like-... people I know, it sounds like, American.
11. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right, right. And, and you know, it's, it's funny because if you, if you watch Trump's speeches, or actually better, better yet, if you read Trump's speeches, it's f-... They would pass out, um, the text of what Trump was supposed to say, uh, before, uh, his events. And so I'd be sitting there, I'd be looking at the, the, the remarks, and they would be cogent from one end to the other. Uh, then he would get up there and the first line would be like, "Oh, it's so great to be back in Manchester, New Hampshire. I always loved, you know, being here," and that would be right. And then he would veer off, and he would, he would start saying one thing and then the other thing, and his thoughts would drift in all these different directions. And then when you looked at the actual transcript of what Donald Trump had said, he not only wasn't completing thoughts, he wasn't completing sentences. He talks in these sort of strange fragments, uh, and he'll, he'll drift from one idea to another and they won't have any logical connection to each other. And people still responded to it, which tells you something both about him and about his audience, right? Because they're on the same weird-
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. MTMatt Taibbi
  ... mental wavelength where, where just sort of disconnected bits of, of emotion and thought is enough now.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
15. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right? Isn't that weird? I mean, I, as we-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  That is weird.
17. MTMatt Taibbi
  It's really strange.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, people don't know that someone's not smart if they're dumber than the person.
19. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs) Right.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Right?
21. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  So I think what it's revealing is what a small amount of time most people spend actually thinking, thinking about ideas, thinking about themselves, thinking about behavior, thinking about the impact that someone who's in the position of president can have. Very few people are out there actually thinking.
23. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, uh, not... I mean, relative, a pretty large number overall, but very few in, in terms of percentages, in terms of the people that you can reach and the people that'll show up at his press rallies. That's a big thing too, right?
25. MTMatt Taibbi
  Mm-hmm.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Who the fuck is gonna go to a campaign speech for anybody, unless you're a journalist?
27. MTMatt Taibbi
  Well, th- it's... That's, that's interesting because I've, I've been to a million campaign rallies, right?
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
29. MTMatt Taibbi
  And, and my opinion on them is, uh, you know, I, I would rather basically stick a railroad spike in my ear than, than-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
24:30 – 37:35
Diet pills, stimulants, and ‘pharmaceutical governance’ concerns
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. Um, w- how much attention have you paid at all to his, uh, use of diet pills? Have you been following that at all?
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  No, that's fascinating. What d- is he using a lot of diet pills?
3. JRJoe Rogan
  I don't know. Okay. This... I'm so glad I could talk to Matt Taibbi about this.
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs) This is great.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  What was the reporter... Was it Washington Post that first talked about it? They found the Duane Reade Pharmacy where he was, uh, first prescribed diet pills by this doctor who described it for a non-existent condition, like a met- metabolic deficiency or some shit like that, metabolic disorder, I think, he called it. And it allowed him to prescribe... And this guy was like a known...... prescriber of these things.
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh-huh.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  You know?
8. MTMatt Taibbi
  Like a Dr. Feelgood type, yeah-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  One of them guys.
10. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Go to him. He's got it. He's got you covered. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Metabolic disorder."
12. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
13. JRJoe Rogan
  "Here you go, man. You're gonna feel peppy all day."
14. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
15. JRJoe Rogan
  And h- he's supposed to be on these for a very short amount of time. He was on them for a long period of time. And, um, this guy, this reporter p- printed out, uh, tweeted out the actual Duane Reade pharmacy where Trump was filling this prescription. And then now they, they're saying that he's on some other diet pill, which is one of the ingredients that was in Fen-Phen. Do you remember Fen-Phen?
16. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
18. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
19. JRJoe Rogan
  All right. Uh-
20. MTMatt Taibbi
  Unfortunately, I know. Yeah.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. Fen-Phen was something, for people who don't know, the, the young folks out there, there was a pill that people were taking in the 1990s. And I knew a gal who was a very pretty girl, but she was large, and she got on the Fen-Phen, and I hadn't seen her in like, I don't know, like six months or something, and I saw her, and all of a sudden she was like 120 pounds. I was like, "What? You look amazing." Like, "What are you doing?" Like, "You exercising or something? Did you go crazy and join a gym?" And she's like, "No, I started taking this stuff called Fen-Phen." And she was like ... And acting, and she couldn't stop talking.
22. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, uh, uh. Grinding the teeth a little bit.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  And she was just fucking on speed.
24. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
25. JRJoe Rogan
  And then she started having weird feelings with her heart, so she stopped it-
26. MTMatt Taibbi
  Wow.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and got off it, and it turns out people were just dropping dead left and right off of this stuff. I mean, it'd give you fucking heart attacks and all kinds of shit. I mean, this is hardcore stuff, but they recognized that the combination of these two things was the issue, but one of these things by themselves is okay. So this one thing by itself is what they think he's on now, which makes sense that a guy who's in his 70s has so much energy.
28. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, they say he's up at five o'clock in the morning watching Fox News and that he starts tweeting, like at 5:30 in the morning he's tweeting.
30. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
37:35 – 39:52
America’s medication era: Adderall, SSRIs, opioids, and accountability
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. There was, um... I think there was a time where people didn't understand how bad that stuff was for you, and there's probably a lot of people on it-
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right. Well, I think we're-
3. JRJoe Rogan
  ... that we don't know about.
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  ... we're probably going through a similar period now-
5. JRJoe Rogan
  For sure.
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  ... where all kinds of stuff is being prescribed that we're gonna find out 50 years from now, like, "Oh, really?" (laughs) Like, we prescribed Adderall to 50 million children or whatever it was.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, yeah. Oh, sure.
8. MTMatt Taibbi
  I mean, like, it's gonna seem monstrous, I think-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure.
10. MTMatt Taibbi
  ... you know, or some- someday.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Prozac, Adderall-
12. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and then the numbers of SSRIs that are prescribed needlessly.
14. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, who- who knows how many people actually need those things versus how many people are just having a bad day and went to the doctor, and they give you something that numbs you up?
16. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right, right. And how many, how many schools are, are mandated to, you know, to put, you know, a bunch of kids on- on these drugs? I- I think probably, in hindsight, some of that is gonna look really bad when- when- when-
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, for sure.
18. MTMatt Taibbi
  Mm-hmm.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, we're experimenting, experimenting on peoples' brains. And absolutely, these pharmaceutical companies have billions of dollars and massive influence, and they're making it so this stuff is okay.
20. MTMatt Taibbi
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, if you just had a look at the number of people that are dying, just dying from opiate pills.
22. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  If- if those were illegal drugs, we'd be saying that there's a- there's a goddamn epidemic.
24. MTMatt Taibbi
  Absolutely.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
26. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, yeah. But they, uh... There's no question that it's a conscious strategy to get people hooked and- and get them taking those pills for... in every conceivable scenario so that they will seek them out in other areas, you know, non-legally. Um, I- I think, uh... But some- some prosecutor is gonna have to figure out some way to get, uh... to hold some of those companies accountable, because they're definitely doing that on purpose.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  But even if they do, it seems like they just... It's like the tobacco thing. They get paid.
28. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  You know, they pay off a few billion dollars. It barely scratches a dent in them. They write it all off, jack up the price of everything a little bit. Over the course of 10 years, it balances itself out to zero.
30. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right, right, right. A couple of movies will be made, but the same thing will happen-
39:52 – 42:35
‘Fake news,’ collapsing business models, and the loss of investigative reporting
1. JRJoe Rogan
  What is it like being a reporter, and being a journalist, rather, today with all this fake news talk? Like, this- this is a new thing, this whole calling something fake news.
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, there's- there certainly is manufactured stories and things that just aren't true, websites that are just designed to get people to click on them, and they have crazy stories that didn't really happen.
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  But they're pretty obvious, right?
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, and I think a lot of what people call fake news is just news that is very heavily slanted in one direction.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
8. MTMatt Taibbi
  And, you know, people- people talk a lot about how Fox is fake- fake news. Well, most of the time when you wa- watch Fox, what they're just doing is they're selectively picking out stories that they know are gonna rile up their elderly, uh, freaked out, terrified audience.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
10. MTMatt Taibbi
  You know? And so, they- they pick out the four or five things that are... that actually happened around the world. They- they can do that without lying.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
12. MTMatt Taibbi
  You know? They don't- they don't have to make this stuff up. They can find the- the- the lineup of facts that they want. Um, but, you know, to... Working as a journalist now is- is, um, very, very different. The business is undergoing, uh, extremely rapid change, and it's not something that we really, um, have reckoned with. We haven't sat down and had a discussion about where this is all going and, uh, how we can fix it, because, um, the business is changing in a way that is extremely negative, and no one's talking about how to- how to reverse that. Like, long-form investigative reporting is- started to disappear, uh, in the '80s, but it's accelerated to the point where there's almost none of that now. Almost everybody who works in the business is doing quick hits, um, and there's almost no, um, time left to do, you know, kind of real- real hardcore investigative work. And we've trained our audiences also to be unable to consume that kind of stuff. Um, so, you know, we're all- we're all basically doing clickbait now, and- and I- I... Yeah, I think it's re- it's a really b- dark time in our business.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, it's- it's also this weird time of transitioning between paper and digital and trying to get people to pay for digital. I mean, I subscribe to a few of them online, uh, Washington Post, New York Times, where you pay, but I don't think very many people are doing that. I think-
14. MTMatt Taibbi
  No.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  ... it's probably a small amount of people that are paying.
16. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  You know? And I think The New York Times gives you, like, 10 articles a month or something like that for free.
18. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  And they're like, "Come on, man. You're here every day."
20. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  "Time to pay up."
22. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  You know, they give you, like, a little countdown, and you're like, "Oh, this is a good article. All right, I'm gonna pay."
42:35 – 46:47
Platform power: Google’s first-click rule, Facebook algorithms, and echo chambers
1. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, and this is- this is a fascinating sort of subplot to what happened to the media business, because a lot of that is because of something that Google did a long time ago. They had this thing called the first-click rule, which so- sort of mandated that all- all news sites have at least some free content, or else the algorithm would- would push the- the, uh, news story far down on the search results. Right? So if you- if you didn't have free content on your site, if you didn't meet Google's first-click rule, uh, when you searched for a news story, you just wouldn't find it. So all of these, um... In the early days of sort of digital journalism, uh, all the news companies offered their content basically for free. And, uh, that trained audiences to not pay for-... journalism, basically.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh.
3. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, and it's pr- it's pretty hard to put the genie back in the bottle and, and tell everybody to go back and, and pay for everything. It just doesn't work that way. Uh, so, uh, we're e- we're in this place where everybody's sort of consuming free media. And not only that, there's this additional problem of the, you know, the internet platforms like Facebook and Google, um, sh- pushing news that they already know people are gonna agree with to users. So there's-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
5. MTMatt Taibbi
  ... there's, there's sort of less news that challenges people. Uh, they're just not gonna see it, you know, because that's not the way the algorithms work.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  The algorithms are really confusing. So the algorithms, like, will actively pick out things they think you'll be interested in.
7. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  So if you're someone who's got a particular set of interests, it, it becomes sort of a- an echo chamber.
9. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Your Google search becomes an echo chamber. Your Goo- I have that Google News app on my phone-
11. MTMatt Taibbi
  Mm-hmm.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  ... where I'll check it every morning, see what's going on, but it's all shit that I'm interested in.
13. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right, right. It's, it's probably a little bit worse on Facebook than it is on Google but ... 'Cause it's Google, y- you at least have some c- some control over what you search for.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Right. Right.
15. MTMatt Taibbi
  But even Google will, will prompt you, uh, with things, right? Like it did-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. Yeah.
17. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, so... But with, um, with both of them, yeah, they- they're, they're accumulating lots and lots of information about your m- not only about what you read, but about the things that you buy, the movies that you watch, what your predilections probably are, what your opinions, your political stances. And so they pick out, uh, news stories that they think are y- you're l- you're likely to endorse or spend a lot of time reading, um, which likely means that you're never gonna see a news story that says you personally are responsible for something bad, right?
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
19. MTMatt Taibbi
  That's like thing one. Uh, you will see a lot of news stories that say your neighbor is responsible for something bad, um, and that's one of the reasons why, like, divisiveness is a conscious commercial strategy. It's just, it's, it's a natural, uh, result of a lot of this, uh, a lot of these behaviors.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  What is the mean age of people that are watching Fox News? You're talking about like old-
21. MTMatt Taibbi
  Oh, it's like-
22. JRJoe Rogan
  ... people freaking out.
23. MTMatt Taibbi
  68. Yeah.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Is it really?
25. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah. It's, it's something ridiculously old. And, and, and that's true of all the, all the cable networks. They're all pre-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Even MSNBC?
27. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah, even MSNBC. Um, the ... You know, it's, it's worse, uh, with Fox and, and, uh, and, um, CNN, and I don't wanna, I don't wanna misquote it, but, uh, I know they're all like above 65. Um, so if TV is-
28. JRJoe Rogan
  68. You're right. Look at that.
29. MTMatt Taibbi
  Is that-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Median age of, uh, prime time at Fox News. Whew.
46:47 – 55:37
From paper routes to pop-up ads: how the internet changed reading and thinking
1. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, it's a- it's opposed to like when I was a kid, I mean, one of the ... I used to deliver newspapers.
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  Me too.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  So I read newspapers quite a bit. Did you?
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  You were-
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  Did you do the Globe?
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I did the Globe.
8. MTMatt Taibbi
  Me too. I was a Globe paperboy.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Where, where were you doing? Where was your route? (laughs)
10. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh, let's see. I had one in Hingham. I had one in Norwell, uh-
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow.
12. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I did, uh, mostly Newton.
14. MTMatt Taibbi
  Newton. Okay.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
16. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yep, yep, yep.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  I did the Globe. I did the, um, the Herald, Boston Herald, and I delivered The New York Times for a while.
18. MTMatt Taibbi
  Wow.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  But just so I didn't ... Like the, The New York Times is interesting 'cause it wasn't, didn't pay as well, and there were larger routes. Like you had to go much further-
20. MTMatt Taibbi
  Huh.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  ... because there was very few houses that would get the Times.
22. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  But you felt like you were doing something special-
24. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
25. JRJoe Rogan
  ... delivering The New York Times.
26. MTMatt Taibbi
  The prestige.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, the clout to it. And they had clear blue plastic bags.
28. MTMatt Taibbi
  Oh, wow.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  It was different.
30. MTMatt Taibbi
  Wow.
55:37 – 1:01:50
Lil Tay, internet celebrity, and the ‘Idiocracy’ trajectory
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Then you get YouTube stars.
2. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right, yeah, exactly.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  And you get Lil Tay.
4. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right, yeah. (laughs)
5. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) I went down a Lil Tay rabbit hole the other day, you fucking asshole.
6. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Jamie told me about Lil Tay. (laughs)
8. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
9. JRJoe Rogan
  He was telling me about Lil Tay, so I went down this crazy rabbit hole, and then I read this Jezebel article about another, uh, writer who went down a Lil Tay rabbit hole, and so I went down that rabbit hole. Oh my God.
10. MTMatt Taibbi
  Wait, who is Lil Tay? Wait, no.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Lil Tay is a nine-year-old girl-
12. MTMatt Taibbi
  Uh-huh.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  ... who is famous now-... now on the internet for talking shit and showing all the money she has-
14. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
15. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and all the things she buys. Have you ... You don't know about Lil Tay?
16. MTMatt Taibbi
  No, no.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  I'm gonna t- ... This is the death of society.
18. MTMatt Taibbi
  Okay.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  I'm like ... Lil Tay is the death of societ- ... Lil, Lil Tay.
20. MTMatt Taibbi
  Can we, can we see, uh ...
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes, for sure.
22. MTMatt Taibbi
  Oh.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Meet Lil Tay-
24. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
25. JRJoe Rogan
  ... the youngest flexer of the, flexer of the century who makes cash-me-outside girl look like a scholar.
26. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
27. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
28. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
29. JRJoe Rogan
  She's fucking nine, dude, okay? I have a nine-year-old, all right? This is crazy. Play, play this video, Jamie-
30. MTMatt Taibbi
  How about it?
1:01:50 – 1:33:04
Campaigns, money, and media manipulation: from rallies to ‘Russiagate’ fixation
1. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right. Well, this is, it's, it's kinda like what we're talking about, we were talking about before. I mean, previously, like the entertainment industry, politics was tightly controlled by a small group of cigar-chumping people who sat in the back room and in both parties, they, they-... had a ... They carefully outlined a sort of narrow, uh, range of acceptable political opinions. And, and in one party you could be all the way up to, you know, somebody like Ron Paul, uh, but they tended to put somebody like George Bush as the, as the candidate. Um, but, you know, there was no directly appealing to the electorate and asking them who they wanted to be the candidate. I mean, Donald Trump is really the first internet president. He completely bypassed that entire oligarchy. He didn't have to go through, um, you know, the priesthood to, to get to be president. Which on the one hand, is evidence of a good thing, because it's actually more democratic than the, the, the system was before, where it was pretty much closed to everybody except for a few people who paid their dues through the system. Uh, but Trump directly ... You know, just by being famous and just by attracting media attention, uh, he was able to bypass all the usual tests and bypass the party's, you know, decision-making process, and he got to be president. But he's like Little Tay, right?
2. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
3. MTMatt Taibbi
  I mean, he's, he, he, he just represents the dumber side of us-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  (coughs)
5. MTMatt Taibbi
  ... as opposed to the more enlightened side of us. So, uh, it's, it's hard to know what to think about it. I mean, I, I, when I was covering it, I thought, on the one hand, this is evidence that, you know, the electorate is breaking away from being told who to vote for. Uh, on the other hand, the first time they take that freedom out for a test drive, this is what they pick? I mean, I don't know.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, at least it throws a giant monkey wrench into the gears.
7. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right. Yeah. Absolutely. It's certainly done that.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  At least.
9. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah. But, you know, what, what the result of that will be is, is-
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yet to be determined?
11. MTMatt Taibbi
  ... yet to be determined. Yeah.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
13. MTMatt Taibbi
  I mean, it could be the end of civi- ... And I, I, I said this, uh, uh, before that, you know, when I was covering the, the Trump run, part of me wanted to write it as a comedy. Like all the early stories were, were like highly comic. I was trying to write about the funny aspect of it. And then, after he became president, it's like, well, this is either the funniest thing that's ever happened in America or it's the end of civilization, right? Does that make it funnier that it's the end of civilization? I don't know. I mean, you're, you're a comic, so you, I should, I should ask you about this.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  I don't know either. It's, well, it's, uh, all depending upon how it plays out, right?
15. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, civilizations have absolutely fallen in the past.
17. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  We ... This idea that civilization won't fall, in my opinion, is akin to the people that live on the Big Island thinking that the volcano won't erupt again.
19. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? It happened. It's going to happen again.
21. MTMatt Taibbi
  Yeah.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, so w- ... All our ideas about maintaining civilization are an attempt to prolong this state or mitigate any possible disastrous effects of collapse.
23. MTMatt Taibbi
  Mm-hmm.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? But it's going to fall apart.
25. MTMatt Taibbi
  Of course. Yeah.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  And it's an old system that was constructed on scrolls by people writing with feathers-
27. MTMatt Taibbi
  (laughs)
28. JRJoe Rogan
  ... that really had no idea what the future had in store.
29. MTMatt Taibbi
  Right.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  They, there's ... Just we, we, they didn't, they didn't know what the future had in store. They had no idea. They, they, they-

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Nootropics, Alpha Brain, and getting settled in

Taibbi’s drug-dealing book concept and the masked co-author idea

From mushrooms to legal weed: the dealer’s career arc and the gray market

Smuggling logistics and ‘rules’ for not getting caught

Anonymity, realism, and the psychology of pricing and policing

Jeff Sessions, immigration cruelty, and renewed drug-war anxiety

Trump’s volatility, attention span, and rally spectacle as performance

Diet pills, stimulants, and ‘pharmaceutical governance’ concerns

America’s medication era: Adderall, SSRIs, opioids, and accountability

‘Fake news,’ collapsing business models, and the loss of investigative reporting

Platform power: Google’s first-click rule, Facebook algorithms, and echo chambers

From paper routes to pop-up ads: how the internet changed reading and thinking

Lil Tay, internet celebrity, and the ‘Idiocracy’ trajectory

Campaigns, money, and media manipulation: from rallies to ‘Russiagate’ fixation

Get more out of YouTube videos.