EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,002 words- 0:00 – 2:03
Podcast setup quirks: headphones, boards, and going live
- JRJoe Rogan
Three, two, one. Vancouver, April 20th, we're doing a 4/20 show. Cheeto Santino, Andrew Santino, Tony Hinchcliffe, and me at some big-ass arena. Go to joerogan.com. We're doing, uh, every year... Hi, Jimmy Norton.
- JNJim Norton
Hi, buddy.
- JRJoe Rogan
I do a 4/20 show. No headphones? You wanna do headphones or no headphones?
- JNJim Norton
I don't mind doing it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Casual?
- JNJim Norton
No, I don't, uh, I don't mind doing it.
- JRJoe Rogan
You do that weird thing with one in, one out.
- JNJim Norton
Well, I, well, I have to. I'm claustrophobic.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- JNJim Norton
Yeah, it feels weird.
- JRJoe Rogan
You feel like the headphones are trapping you?
- JNJim Norton
I don't know. I, uh, I feel like I'm underwater. Like, I don't like the way that sounds, and now I know... Uh, that's better. I look like an asshole-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- JNJim Norton
... but it, it feels better.
- JRJoe Rogan
A lot of people do that.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
A lot of musicians do that, they'll do, like, one in, one out.
- JNJim Norton
It's the air, it's feeling the air. I don't know why. The pressure of the headphones, I just don't like it.
- JRJoe Rogan
I like to be trapped.
- JNJim Norton
You do?
- JRJoe Rogan
Trapped in the headphones.
- JNJim Norton
No, I don't care for it at all.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I like, uh, hearing the other person's voice right next to mine so I don't talk louder than they talk, we don't talk over each other.
- JNJim Norton
That's-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what it does.
- JNJim Norton
That's professional, but I can't... Like, Howard, I heard, would do it where like, uh, they wouldn't even look at each other. Like, I have to be in the room looking at the person's mouth. Like, I, I don't like to do it.
- JRJoe Rogan
You wouldn't look at each other? What do you mean?
- JNJim Norton
No, I mean, uh, the way they were set up for the cameras, sometimes you're facing both kinda the same way because of the cameras. They weren't always-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- JNJim Norton
... I don't think face to face. If you looked at his old setup, wasn't, like, Artie sitting behind him at one point?
- 2:03 – 5:14
Why JRE stopped streaming live: clip pirates, copyright flags, and fair use confusion
- JNJim Norton
I like being live. We're live now too on w- on...
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah, I like being live.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right now on this? No, we're not live anymore.
- JNJim Norton
Oh, you don't do live anymore?
- NANarrator
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- JNJim Norton
Oh, okay. Yeah, 'cause I always liked the feeling of live 'cause if you fuck up, it's out there.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, there was companies that were, they were s- taking clips as we were live and uploading them immediately and building these huge channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
- JNJim Norton
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you could use that for anything. They were selling things.
- JNJim Norton
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
They had links to stuff. They're basically building a business off of your clips.
- JNJim Norton
So you gotta be a little bit more...
- JRJoe Rogan
You can't let that happen, because-
- JNJim Norton
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
... you also don't know what they're gonna turn that channel into. You know, they could turn that channel into anything.
- JNJim Norton
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's like, it's... YouTube is still a little bit of, like, a Wild West sorta situation. Then there was also copyright issues. Like, you get three copyright flags in a w- in a row, they take your whole channel down.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And we had gotten a bunch of 'em. We've gotten 'em for clips that we show, we got 'em for pictures. Like, you have to try to figure out, like, what's, what are the, what're you allowed to do, what are you not allowed to do?
- JNJim Norton
What's fair use? And, like, is it fair use, mean they just don't come after you for it? Like, I don't, I don't know what that, what it means either.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, it's not that clearly defined-
- JNJim Norton
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... unfortunately. But it's also, you know, like... The, the, the internet in general, you know, at one point in time, you can kinda put an... Like, it, well, at one point in time with, if you went to YouTube, you would find all kinds of shit that was on people's channels that was copyright-protected stuff. M- TV shows-
- JNJim Norton
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... movies, music, all kinds of stuff. And they've slowly started, you know, not s- well, not really slowly. Is that g- accurate to say? They've kind of eliminated a lot of that stuff now. But they're operating at an insane scale. Like, the amount of people that upload stuff to YouTube every day is, it's probably unimaginable. Like, if you could see it.
- JNJim Norton
You can't keep up with it, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, if you had a giant screen in front of you and you saw all the videos that are be- instantly uploaded to, to YouTube r- at, at any given moment, you'd probably be like, "What?"
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- 5:14 – 7:15
Old-school comics and communication: Don Gavin, phone guys, and silent ringtones
- JRJoe Rogan
Who's, is there people out there with no internet? You know, do you know who Don Gavin is?
- JNJim Norton
I, uh, d- funny you say Don Gavin. I literally, I know who he is from all you guys. The Boston guys love him. I just got him on Spotify, 'cause I've seen clips-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JNJim Norton
... and I'm like, Dane, uh, Cook put something up that Gavin is re-releasing an album.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JNJim Norton
So I'm like, I wanna hear him really do standup 'cause I've really never watched him. He's so fucking funny. He's really good.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, he's great.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah, but I never, I never sat down and watched him do a set.
- JRJoe Rogan
Back in the day, he was the king. Like, when we were in Boston, he'd just sit back and you'd go, "Oh my God, I should quit. I should quit doing comedy."
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
He was so good. And, uh, he'd never sent a text in his life until he texted me to be on the show.
- JNJim Norton
Really?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
That was your, his first text was to you?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, he's like, "It took me about a fucking hour and a half."
- JNJim Norton
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here." Yeah, he's, um, he's so old school. Like, he d- he doesn't, just calls people.... and he, he'd never sent a text.
- JNJim Norton
Bob Kelly's like that, though.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- JNJim Norton
Like, some guys are phone g- Bob Kelly's a phone guy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JNJim Norton
Like, uh, you'll text him and you just won't hear back, and, uh, he, he likes to fucking talk on the phone. I hate it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah, Joey Diaz does that too.
- JNJim Norton
He's a phone guy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Joe, but Joey has a logic to it. He goes, "I wanna hear your voice." He goes, "I'm ins- I'm insecure. I don't wanna see no fucking text message." He goes, "I don't know what that is. What, what are you saying? I wanna hear your voice."
- JNJim Norton
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"I wanna hear the love in your voice."
- JNJim Norton
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm like, "Okay, that makes sense."
- JNJim Norton
It's also a great way to, uh, not have things recorded if you don't want them actually in print. But-
- 7:15 – 11:44
Aging, gratitude, and how success disappears overnight
- JRJoe Rogan
Dude, I was just thinking before you sat down, we've known each other for so long, and now we're like these old men on the radio. We've known each other since we were kids.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, when I first met you, we were both in our 20s, early 20s, young comics hanging around in New York, and now we're old.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah. We are old. I think the first-
- JRJoe Rogan
We're old men.
- JNJim Norton
... we did a gig together-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
... and I remember it specifically. Uh, I think you featured, actually. I think I was the host and you were the feature, and you were doing a bit about Tyson and Robin Givens. And, uh, and I, I wanna say it was 1992, up in the, uh, mountains in Jersey for a guy named, uh, Pat Guarini. I could be incorrect-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- JNJim Norton
... but, uh, I think it was around 9-, Lake Hopatcong it might've been, 1992. But I'm pretty sure that was the year.
- JRJoe Rogan
Could be. Did a lot of gigs.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's hard to remember.
- JNJim Norton
And you were close with a guy named John Tobin-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
... who I remember well. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah, it's, um... The passage of time is a strange thing, man. It really is. Because, uh, most of the time it doesn't seem like it's anything significant. It's just life. You get up when the alarm goes off, you, you eat breakfast, you put-
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... your clothes on. But then one day, you know, you're hanging out with someone like, like you, that I, I only get to see you, like, once a year, maybe twice a year.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then I'm like, "Oh, yeah, look, we're old."
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
We're, we're fucking... The, the world keeps going-
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and you keep, you keep on, keep on aging.
- JNJim Norton
But do you mind it? Like, I don't mind it because the more people you know that die, like, as you get older-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JNJim Norton
... they start dying-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
... not just from unnatural causes, but natural causes.
- 11:44 – 15:27
Shock comedy escalation: Opie & Anthony chaos, gross-out stunts, and ‘you couldn’t do that today’
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, you know, in a lot of ways, it's, there's this thing that people do, you know, we were talking about Ari before the podcast, where it's, you do things you're not supposed to do so people go, "I can't believe you're doing that."
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then there's this, like, thrill to that.
- JNJim Norton
There's a thrill to it, and then what happens is you have to keep upping it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JNJim Norton
You have to keep upping it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JNJim Norton
And s-... y- it's almost like you get a fear, like, "If I don't top last time, the people who like me are no longer gonna like me and I'm gonna lose this momentum I've picked up." You become afraid that the people who like you are gonna go, "You're a fraud! You're not doing what we want you to do."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
So then you keep topping yourself and keep topping y- ... It's like the kid who eats bugs.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JNJim Norton
You know what I mean? You know, then, then he's eating a roach, then the next thing you know he's fucking ... He's doing this because he, he's afraid of not topping himself, then all of a sudden, being ignored.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Like Pat, like the intern Pat.
- JNJim Norton
Oh, yeah. Pat Duffy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Pat Duffy. He was-
- JNJim Norton
Best.
- JRJoe Rogan
He ate c- ate cat shit. He drank people's vomit. (laughs)
- JNJim Norton
He, he was literally an indestructible fucking man. Like, if you, if you have to build a guy's ... like, in the military, he's the type of mentality you want.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah. For sure. You wanna get him when he's 18-
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and just turn him into a full sicko.
- JNJim Norton
Savage. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is he doing these days?
- JNJim Norton
I don't know. I haven't talked to him. I don't know.
- JRJoe Rogan
What about Pat Fraumunaki?
- JNJim Norton
You know, I thought of him recently. He's on Twitter. I don't know exactly what he's do-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is he?
- JNJim Norton
I would love to have him ... Yeah. Pat Philbin, his name is. I would love to have him onto our radio show, uh, 'cause I miss Pat Fraumunaki a lot.
- JRJoe Rogan
Dude, that day where he did the baby burr, the day where they had the eggnog drinking contest-
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- 15:27 – 18:14
Structured radio vs real conversation: fake bits, cringe promotion, and Howard vs O&A
- JNJim Norton
Doesn't have to be controlled and regimented and, uh ... What do you wanna talk ... Is there anything worse when you go to a radio show? Like, w- w- like, what do you wanna...
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, dude. I've done radio shows where they tell you they want you to bring up certain subjects where you have jokes, you know? There's, uh, uh ... Not even that long ago, man, like, less than 10 years ago, I did one of those, uh, n- national radio shows in the Midwest-
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and they asked me to do that. And I was like, "What?" And the p- the producer got upset. And I go, "I don't do that."
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I go, "I'm not gonna do that." And they're like, "We need subjects." Like, the guy was, like, pissy with me.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm like, "Oh."
- JNJim Norton
It's hard to do 'cause you feel embarrassed. It's like proc- ... You feel just, you feel dirty, like when someone's doing your bit and you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
... you're doing it and they're, "Ah-ha!" They're fake laughing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Oh, it's the worst.
- JNJim Norton
And you go, "Oh, motherf- ... This is ... Who's enjoying this?"
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what radio used to be, though. What radio used to be, like, you would go on WAAF in Boston and, you know, you would talk to the guys and you would kinda work in your bits.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? And, like, everybody did it. Everybody did their bits, so it wasn't-
- JNJim Norton
Yeah, I guess it was a part of it, but I was never good at it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, y- 'cause you're authentic. But Opie and Anthony was the first, to me ... Like, Howard's show was m- much more controlled, you know? Howard's behind the mixer.
- JNJim Norton
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's kinda controlling everything. There was a certain amount of time that he would talk to you, and then other people would come in and then, you know ... He, he had, like, a, uh, a more, more of a structure. Whereas O&A, you would go in there and Anthony would have a gun and fucking ... You know?
- JNJim Norton
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Op- Opie's behind the mixer just s- sorta watching all this chaos go on and different comics come filtering in and, you know ... Man, remember the time Marion Barry walked in?
- JNJim Norton
Yeah. He was going on sway next door-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
... and we, we ... He was, like, a little out of it and loopy and we fucking, we just hijacked him.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
And he kinda walked in like he had no idea who we were. It was really uncomfortable.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I knew he was gonna leave soon, so I immediately started asking him about crack.
- JNJim Norton
You went right into-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- 18:14 – 21:47
Cancel culture, taboo words, and intrusive thoughts: when fear makes you slip
- JNJim Norton
So how do you handle this, man? This whole culture we're in, it's like i- i- it's, it's, it's not-It's not scary, it's more irritating. Like, anything you say, people k- who are looking to ... I don't mean if you say something horrible, they're gonna react like you said something horrible.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
But anything you say, people are looking for a reason. Like, they're looking for something, because the high that they get is by going after you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JNJim Norton
And they're gonna know that they're high doing it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you see that lady that was talking about the Kobe Bryant death and she accidentally said the N-word? Because-
- JNJim Norton
Oh, she said nakers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
Nakers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. She was trying to ... She thought she was either saying the Knicks-
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... or the Lakers.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And she said the, the nakers.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah. I, I think she said the N-word, but she said, she said she said nakers, but I, I, you know, I, I, I think she said the N-word. I think it just ... It's almost like it's so taboo that it's in people's heads.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JNJim Norton
Like, on Martin Luther, uh, King's birthday-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JNJim Norton
... there's always an anchor that gets fired 'cause he can't remember that Martin, Luther, King, Junior are all separate words, and you should not conflate the last two or you're gonna get fucking fired. King and Junior, they put it together too fast-
- JRJoe Rogan
June.
- JNJim Norton
... and it comes out wrong. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, yeah.
- JNJim Norton
That's what happens.
- JRJoe Rogan
That happens all the time.
- JNJim Norton
All the time.
- JRJoe Rogan
The word, the word coon is such a weird one too, because who the fuck calls Black people coons?
- JNJim Norton
That's a really old school-
- JRJoe Rogan
Old Southern-
- JNJim Norton
... weird one, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... weird racist one.
- 21:47 – 24:12
De-radicalization by friendship: Daryl Davis and Jim’s teenage anti-Klan calls
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I had this, uh, guy in here the other day, Daryl Davis, who's, uh, this guy right here.
- JNJim Norton
I, I think I s- I saw his picture, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, this is his, uh, his music. He's converted 200 different KKK and, uh, Nazis to, to leave the organization. 200, by just hanging out with them and being friends with them. Just getting to know them. And a lot of people were like, "I never, never really sat down and had a drink with a Black guy before." He's like, "How is that possible?"
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"How is that possible?" And so, just ... And he's a musician by trade. I mean, that's what he is, a really good musician. And just by doing that, just by getting to know these people, just getting ... And they were like ... They just were afraid.
- JNJim Norton
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They didn't know any people. They just felt like they did ... And he's super articulate as well. So, like, talking to him, you realize, like, "Oh, this guy's really smart." And then if you talk to him time after time after time, hours after hours after ... You realize, like, "This guy's fucking smarter than me." So when you're doing that, you're realizing like, "Oh, p- ... There's no way Black people can be inferior. This is nonsense. This guy is a Black guy right in front of me right now, and he's talking using words that I barely understand."
- JNJim Norton
That's how the guy in the Klan would see it, you're saying?
- JRJoe Rogan
That's how the guy in the Klan f- felt.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And after a while, h- he asked him to come to his house. And he said, "I'm quitting. I'm quitting the Klan." He gave him his robe.
- JNJim Norton
Really?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, so he collects robes now. He came in, he brought, like, grand wizard robes and grand dragon robes. He had a Nazi outfit. He had, uh, Nazi flags that guys have given him.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah. Do you know when I was a teenager, I was so ... I was very, you know, I was y- ... I was drinking. And I remember I was so anti-Klan. I had read some book on the Ku Klux Klan, and it was the preacher for the Klan, his name was in the book. So I called the, uh, information. Um, I called the FBI and I tried to stop a Klan rally, but I called this guy at home, this, this Klan preacher. And I started, uh, you know, "That's wrong and you're a racist." You know, I was 14. And, uh, and he told me like, "Oh, I left the Klan. I'm not in the Klan anymore." And he actually talked to me for a few minutes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah. But that was before you could v- ... You know. I was fucking just 14 and drunk and trying to make a difference.
- JRJoe Rogan
How cool is that though, that he talked to you?
- JNJim Norton
He did talk to me, yeah. And I'll never forget it. And I ... My father, I think, knew I was drinking afterwards 'cause he's like, he heard some of the conversation. But I think it started with me calling the FBI or the C- ... I, I could ... You called the FBI a few times back then.
- JRJoe Rogan
You called the FBI?
- JNJim Norton
That's what I would do when I drank, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
I was a fucking crazy person.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
I called the FBI, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I remember when I met you, like ... Ugh, fuck. We were probably early 20s, right?
- JNJim Norton
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I was like, "Why'd you quit drinking?" And you're like, "Well, why'd you quit doing drugs?" You're like, and you're like, "I, I, I had to."
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"I had to."
- 24:12 – 36:15
Jim’s early addiction spiral and childhood sexual experiences (explicit, self-disclosed)
- JNJim Norton
I called a bomb threat into my high school, I remember. I cleared the high school.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
I did that when I was, uh ... I wanna say I was 17 or 18.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
And we used to get drunk in my friend's house and there was a, there was a, some number that you could call for, like, help from nuns?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
So I would have my friends sitting around and I would always call up and pretend that ... Like, I would make up these horrible incest stories and terrible sexual things that were happening to me, and my fucking friends would be laughing. And the nuns would be trying to counsel me on the phone.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus.
- JNJim Norton
And then I called a bomb threat.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
I did it a couple of times and it didn't work. And the third time I did it, the final time I did it, uh, they actually had people leave the school and go outside while they searched the school.
- JRJoe Rogan
Drunk bomb threats. Didn't fucking TJ Miller do that recently?
- JNJim Norton
It was-
- JRJoe Rogan
He-
- JNJim Norton
... something with him on a train, but it wasn't a threat. He, I, I think he had something with a woman.
- JRJoe Rogan
But didn't he call a bomb threat in?
- JNJim Norton
I don't know if it was a threat or if he thought she already had one. Like, I, I never got the full story. Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
He thought she really had one?
- JNJim Norton
That I don't know.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
I remember reading it and I don't remember what the conclusion was.
- JRJoe Rogan
If you're really fucked up and you think somebody might have a bomb... Like, paranoia, like real, like full-blown paranoia, like I remember, um, you know, uh, Jim Brewer, of course, who was a-
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... legendary pothead. And one time he quit. And he quit for quite a while. And I said, "Well, why? Why'd you quit?" He goes, "Dude," he goes, "I started getting really paranoid. Like, paranoid that people were listening to me and that people were following me and watching me."
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
He goes, "It was not healthy. It was not good." And, you know, I wonder about that. Like, when you perturb normal states of consciousness, when you take, like, the normal way you are and you start d- changing it a little bit with a little bit of booze, little bit of booze, little bit of anxiety, little bit of depression, little bit of bad things, little bit of this, little bit of that. I'll take a little Xanax, take the edge off.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Then I'll take a Valium so I can go to sleep. Then I'll take a, uh, an Ambien if the Valium doesn't work. And you keep going and going and going and going. You're, you're like... You know how, like, there's certain things you could do that can give you arthritis, right? There's certain things that corrode your joints. There's certain things you can do that, that make you ti-... Like, the more chemicals you insert into your body, the more things you do, the more you shift from, like, your comfortable baseline of who you are when you're at your-
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... your healthiest. You change. You become a different thing. And I think pot is just as likely to do that as anything. If you're doing it the wrong way, if you abuse it, I think alcohol can do it. I think pot can do it. Pills, speed, I think all those things can surely do it. But it's strange to see when someone starts to slip away and they start to go towards this, like, very strange version of themselves that you know they don't have-
- 36:15 – 44:42
Trans attraction, shame, and identity: why men struggle to talk honestly
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's, you know-... it, it's if someone's trans and they don't wanna transition and they don't wanna have a, a vagina, they just wanna keep their penis, then there's not a whole lot of options.
- JNJim Norton
Oh, yeah. You fuck them or they fuck you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
I mean, there's, there's two. You know? There's two options.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
So it's kind of a, you know, you switch off.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. It's, uh, w- it's interesting how the, the, just the amount of people that are ... just people talking about trans people has changed. You know? Like what, the numbers. You never heard that when I was a kid.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You never heard it. When I was in high school you never heard about it. No one was trans.
- JNJim Norton
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
No one thought they'd be trans in high school. Now kids in high school are trans, like a lot of kids are trans, and you gotta wonder, like, "What, what is that?"
- JNJim Norton
You know, I think people are gentler with it now. That's one thing I think the younger generation is a little smarter with, is that they don't just judge you for it and people can kinda be comfortable being who they are.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
'Cause the people, I mean, I'm sure trans people existed, but you just ... I, I ... you didn't know what to call it? Nobody ... And I didn't know what it was when I first saw it or encountered it. I, I had no idea what it was.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, there's a movie, or a book rather, that I read about Custer and, um, one of the parts of the book is about this guy who went somewhere and came back and his wife had died. (clears throat) And it turned out that his wife had been a man and everybody found out. And so he had like this, this thing. He said, uh, you know, "If anything happens to my wife," you know, like, "don't touch her. Leave her alone. Wait till I come back."
- JNJim Norton
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, they didn't do that. They did an examination, they found out that she had a dick and, uh, the guy wound up killing himself. But so this was something that was going on in the 1800s in the Wild West. So this guy was in like this Wild West town and, uh, he had a trans wife and he just ... he, they had to keep it quiet and when people found out about it, he wound up killing himself.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah, there's so much shame. It's funny, I just talked about this somewhere else too, but there's so much shame around it for the men, not just for the trans people but for the men who like trans people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
There's fucking just shame.
- JRJoe Rogan
Of course.
- JNJim Norton
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
I ... That's one of the things I really appreciate about you, that you don't give a fuck. You talk about everything that you like, you talk about everything that you don't like about yourself and I think because you do that on the radio and because you do that freely and openly, I think you help a lot of people, man. I really do 'cause I think you make it 'cause everybody loves you, right? So like-
- JNJim Norton
Thank you.
- JRJoe Rogan
... you can come on this podcast and you know you could say anything. You know I love you. And there's no way, uh, uh, your sexual desires or interests is gonna affect that in any way.
- JNJim Norton
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so you could be free and then we could all talk about stuff and then there's probably some kid out there that's going, "Oh, I, I, I think I'm okay."
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"I think I'm okay. I'm not, I don't think I'm a freak. Fucking everybody loves Jim Norton. Like, it's okay."
- JNJim Norton
I get emails from people, a lot of guys have sent me messages too, going, "Hey, man, thanks for talking about that 'cause it made me feel like it was all right to like that."
- 44:42 – 53:40
Online mobs and performative virtue: Ari Shaffir’s Kobe backlash and the escalation trap
- JNJim Norton
When people, like, you know, and again, we, we mention Ari, you know? I know, I know you love Ari, I love Ari, I've known him for many years. When you're- when, when someone says dumb shit, and people do say dumb shit, and then there's... People get... There are times when people are justifiably mad at you. Like, "Hey, look, you said something really stupid publicly."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
So people heard that in the middle of their grief-
- JRJoe Rogan
(coughs)
- JNJim Norton
... and they're like, "Hey, fuck you, pal." Like, people are angry.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
But then it gets to a point where those, that day has passed and then there are people who just wanna hurt you for it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JNJim Norton
There's people who just wanna punish you. There's people who just wanna see you suffer. So like, how do you tell all the time who's just reacting to something you said? 'Cause as a comedian, I say public things. People who are in the public with me have the right to say something.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Yeah. Well, I think what Ari did, you have to come up with a new word, 'cause I don't d- think dumb is good enough. We need a better word. It's, it was so stupid. But it's also what you said earlier, that you gotta keep ramping it up.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You do think, like we were talking about earlier? Was that before the podcast? I think it was.
- JNJim Norton
Uh, before Adan, I think, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What the, the thing is, when you do outrageous things just to get people to, like, "Oh, look at... Jimmy's crazy. Look at the c-" You gotta, you get caught in a trap and you keep doing it more and more outrageous. And with Ari, he's always done this thing where when people die (clears throat) he would make the meanest comment, even about someone he loved, like Tom Petty. He said some horrible shit about Tom Petty and Aretha Franklin and all these different people that died. But he just did it for shock value.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you gotta keep upping that every time. Like, e- every time someone dies, people, like his sicko fans (laughs) would go straight to Ari and want Ari to comment on it.
- JNJim Norton
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, you know, it's a trap, man. That's a, that's a terrible tra- And you, you see guys lean into those things, right? Like, it becomes a part of their persona, it becomes a part of their identity.
- JNJim Norton
Well, the trap is also when you... If there's something you don't wanna say or if you're like, "Nah, that's too fucked up to say, but if I don't say it, they're gonna think that I'm selling out or I'm not the same performer."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JNJim Norton
Like, you have to be willing to, uh, disappoint people that wanna hear that too if you're gonna survive in that kind of a, i- in doing that stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I don't know how, what's gonna happen with Ari, like how he's gonna get through this. But in some ways, and I never wanna say it is a good thing that he did that, but he needed to know that there are consequences for just, just saying ridiculous shit that you're not supposed to say when people die. You know? And he's a... The thing, the really fucked up thing about Ari is he's a really good guy but in his persona sometimes, he's a heel. And he does it on purpose.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? And so, like, you see that video and he's an- you know, he's like smiling and laughing 'cause Kobe Bryant's dead. That's his heel persona.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And he thinks he's playing it up like, "Oh, this is gonna be great. People are gonna be so mad." But he had no idea. He had no idea.
- JNJim Norton
He misjudged, uh, the country's grief.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- JNJim Norton
And obviously I think there's, he didn't know who else was on the helicopter.
- JRJoe Rogan
He didn't know who else was on.
- 53:40 – 1:07:33
Becoming a better comic: phases of standup, old notebooks, and fashion crimes
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, especially when you start developing an audience, and that audience is like, you know, that's- those are the people that actually like you. They actually love you. They actually will come p- pay to see you. They're- and so you go, "Okay, what do I have to do to get them..." Do you ever- like, here's a good example. Like, my early act, when I first started doing standup was terrible. But what- I realized that there was three stages of standup in my career. The first stage was I was doing anything to get a laugh.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it was basically like a tool. Like, uh, I was like I had a ruler or a hammer or a nail, and I- I had no connection to that material. I would tell joke jokes, like street jokes. If someone told me a street joke, I would tell that on stage.
- JNJim Norton
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was no- there was no art to it.
- JNJim Norton
Nah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I was just terrified, and I wanted to get laughs. Then, once I started doing pretty good and started- I would work professionally and I was getting some gigs and stuff, u- then I started doing stuff that I thought was funny. And I was- I r- I remember being so happy with that, because I'd be like- instead of being so scared of, like, just being out there and, "God, I gotta get a laugh, gotta get a laugh, gotta get a laugh. What do- what do I gotta do to get a laugh?"... instead of that, then I would get into, like, what do I think is funny?
- JNJim Norton
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then, t- then I would just go, "Here's what's fucked up to me." Like, "Why is this?" And then, like, people would go, "That's really smart." Like, I remember peop- people saying, like, "Oh, that's good material. Th- your new stuff? I love your new stuff." I'm like, "Oh, okay. Finally, I'm doing stuff that other people that I like," like, people that appreciate things that I appreciate would think are funny. Then once I got better at that and I became, like, a real, like, a headliner and established, then I started turning ideas into comedy. Then I would turn ideas like, like, I had some complicated ideas that I'd worked on for years to try to turn into bits. And one of them was the, the, the de-evolution of man. Like, I put it on my 2005, uh, Netflix special. I don't even know what's on Netflix anymore. Showti- it was, uh, it was just called Joe Rogan Live from 2005.
- JNJim Norton
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it was a bit that I worked on for years about, um, how dumb people out-bred smart people, and that's what the pyramids are. Like, we out-fucked the smart people and they just left us with a bunch of shit we don't understand.
- JNJim Norton
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it was this long... It took me forever to work that bit in. And that bit, to me, was like, it was like, okay, now I understand how to turn a concept into a, into a bit. Not just s- things that I think are funny, but things that I think are interesting, and try to get those interesting ideas and, and put them into standup form.
- JNJim Norton
And things you wanna say. Like, the key for comedians, and where a lot of comics go wrong is m- like, e- it's gotta be funny too. Like, we have to be funny while we're... Like, I never go on the, uh, stage and think I'm gonna teach the audience to fucking-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, God.
- JNJim Norton
I'm not there to educate the fucking audience.
- JRJoe Rogan
I hate that.
- JNJim Norton
If they learn anything from it or if they lie, it's gotta be funny first, though.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JNJim Norton
It has to be fucking funny. And I look at my old stuff, man. Ugh.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ugh.
- JNJim Norton
Oh, it's bad.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, me too.
- JNJim Norton
Fucking. That was a character.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
Happy-go-lucky, "How we doing?" Like, ugh. It's repulsive.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JNJim Norton
Dude, it's fucking repulsive.
- JRJoe Rogan
But isn't it so nice you got through that? And now you're something different.
- JNJim Norton
Thank God I got through it, yeah.
Episode duration: 3:05:40
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