Joe Rogan Experience #1427 - Melissa Chen

Joe Rogan 0:01 What's up, Melissa? How are you?

Melissa Chen 0:02 Hello, Joe.

Joe Rogan 0:03 We were just talking about caning and hanging in Singapore.

Melissa Chen 0:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Hanging now, is that the new one?

Melissa Chen 0:08 No, it's always been-

Joe Rogan 0:08 That's how they always do it?

Melissa Chen 0:09 I mean, caning is one of the forms of capital punishment, but they, they still, they actually hang for drugs.

Joe Rogan 0:15 What is Singapore like? I've never been. It seems like a strange place, 'cause it's relatively wealthy, right?

Melissa Chen 0:22 Yes, very much so.

Joe Rogan 0:23 And upscale and very nice, but also ruthless.

Melissa Chen 0:27 But you know what happened in, like, my generation? I've witnessed it go from third world to first world in my lifetime.

Joe Rogan 0:33 Really?

Melissa Chen 0:33 Yeah, yeah. So it's one of those success stories of nation building. Um, but it's, it's kind of like, you know those snow globes, the perfect snow globes-

Joe Rogan 0:43 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 0:43 ... with the, yeah, when you, like, turn it over and, like, everything kind of sprinkles? That's what it feels like living in Singapore. For me, at least. I, I had to get out. It's just, it's a bit sterile. It's perfect, but it's too perfect. It's almost like, there's a, somebody called it once Disneyland with the death penalty.

Joe Rogan 0:56 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 0:57 Which is a pretty good description.

Joe Rogan 0:58 And you get the death penalty for things like drugs, right?

Melissa Chen 1:01 Just possession past, like, maybe 25 grams or 25 milligrams or something, marijuana trafficking.

Joe Rogan 1:08 So if you have an ounce of marijuana, how many grams is in an ounce?

Melissa Chen 1:11 What's the conversion? I don't know. I, I haven't converted to-

Joe Rogan 1:14 20?

Melissa Chen 1:15 Your system.

Joe Rogan 1:16 28. 28 grams in an ounce? Yeah, 28. So, like, an, an ounce is a good amount of weed, but two ounces of weed, you're dead?

Melissa Chen 1:22 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:23 Oof.

Melissa Chen 1:24 Yeah. By hanging.

Joe Rogan 1:25 Oof.

Melissa Chen 1:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:26 Two ounces, wow.

Melissa Chen 1:28 Yeah, it's kind of insane.

Joe Rogan 1:29 That's, that's weird. You can go down the street and buy that at a store. You have to-

Melissa Chen 1:33 Now.

Joe Rogan 1:34 All you just have to show your driver's license, that you're over 21.

Melissa Chen 1:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:37 And you can buy that at a store. In Singapore, they'll kill you for it.

Melissa Chen 1:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:40 How many people have they killed for pot?

Melissa Chen 1:42 I, I don't, I don't know about that. But I do know, like, one time, they actually executed a Australian citizen who was on transit. So he, he didn't even get out of the airport. He was just kind of carrying the drugs on transit.

Joe Rogan 1:55 Whoa, and they executed him?

Melissa Chen 1:57 And they found him. Oh, yeah, it was hanging. It's always hanging.

Joe Rogan 1:59 And what, what, do you remember what kind of dru- was he selling drugs?

Melissa Chen 2:02 I ... He w- I- he was carrying quite a bit. He was definitely trafficking it.

Joe Rogan 2:05 Jesus Christ.

Melissa Chen 2:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:06 And they just hung him?

Melissa Chen 2:07 Yep. Zero, zero tolerance policy.

Joe Rogan 2:11 Whew.

Melissa Chen 2:11 Yeah, it's crazy.

Joe Rogan 2:11 How did it go from third world to first world so quickly?

Melissa Chen 2:14 Um, I guess the founder, you know, of the country, well, not the founder, the founding prime minister, uh, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, was probably one of the world's most famous modern statesmen. Um, he, he was resolute, like, you know, weeded out corruption. He was kind of, like, very, very tight controls on free speech, but very much a, a sort of, um, neoliberal economic policies.

Joe Rogan 2:38 Hmm.

Melissa Chen 2:38 So it attracted a lot of foreign investment, right? Because the highest income tax bracket is, like, maybe 13%. It's very low. Um, there's almost no welfare, um, at least in, in the sense of, uh, how we understand welfare. But there's a lot of ... It's a hybrid system, so there's, there's a lot of, uh, like, zero capital gains taxes, zero state taxes. Very easy to set up a business. So he had managed to attract a lot of, um, foreign businesses to set up their multinational corporation headquarters in Asia, because the other alternative would be maybe China.

Joe Rogan 3:09 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 3:10 But China would probably end up stealing all your (laughs) you know, your, your, your corporate secrets, your-

Joe Rogan 3:15 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 3:15 ... intellectual property. But Singapore was billed as, "This is the country that protects rule of law."

Joe Rogan 3:21 Mm.

Melissa Chen 3:21 Also, English. He kind of made everybody, um, speak English with the working language. So if you wanted to set up business in Asia, that was your place to go.

Joe Rogan 3:31 Oh, okay.

Melissa Chen 3:31 You got to, like, you know, if you, if you want to attract investment, you have to say, like, "Okay, what's in my, what's in my region? And how can I be, how can I have a competitive advantage?" So that was, that was how Singapore really, uh, developed and, and, you know, just gained a lot of traction as a state, city state.

Joe Rogan 3:49 The average American knows Singapore because of that kid that got caned. (laughs)

Melissa Chen 3:53 Now it's that stupid movie.

Joe Rogan 3:55 Which movie?

Melissa Chen 3:56 Ugh, The Crazy Rich Asians. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:57 Oh, Crazy Rich Asians, right, right.

Melissa Chen 3:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:59 I never saw that. Was it good?

Melissa Chen 4:02 Uh, I didn't like it, 'cause I don't like rom-coms.

Joe Rogan 4:06 Oh, okay.

Melissa Chen 4:06 And like, come on, the premise is like a girl is d- an American Asian girl is, like, dating this guy from Singapore. He, she doesn't know he's rich, and she finds out on the plane there. It's like the most bullshit thing.

Joe Rogan 4:18 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 4:18 It's just conspicuous consumption. I mean, it's-

Joe Rogan 4:21 Hmm.

Melissa Chen 4:21 ... it's got some, you know, the city looks beautiful, and in fact, I kind of grew up with some people that, that lived that lifestyle. Um, but I, I just don't like that kind of movie. It's, it's, it's a chick flick.

Joe Rogan 4:35 A chick flick.

Melissa Chen 4:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:36 Got it. You're not into chick flicks. Your Instagram is hilarious, by the way.

Melissa Chen 4:39 Instagram?

Joe Rogan 4:40 It's very, excuse me.

Melissa Chen 4:41 I don't have Twittergram.

Joe Rogan 4:42 Twitter, your Twitter.

Melissa Chen 4:42 Okay.

Joe Rogan 4:43 I get them confused sometimes. Your Twitter feed is really good.

Melissa Chen 4:47 I try to-

Joe Rogan 4:47 And it's just both insightful, but also very funny.

Melissa Chen 4:50 Yeah, I try to play both sides. But the problem is, like, you know, I think, I think today, there's a bit of a, um, if you're, if you're a girl and you're, you're kind of funny, there, there's a bit of a sense that, like, people don't really take you that seriously. So I've been told to tone it down on, on jokes.

Joe Rogan 5:05 Who's telling you that?

Melissa Chen 5:06 Well, I'm also, you know, I run, I run a-

Joe Rogan 5:08 Yes.

Melissa Chen 5:09 ... major nonprofit organization, and, and-

Joe Rogan 5:12 Want to tell everybody what it is, or keep it on the down low?

Melissa Chen 5:13 Uh ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:14 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 5:15 No, it's a, it's, it's a really, well, it's kind of right up your alley. You know, it's, it's a organization that, that really tries to promote pluralistic thinking, um, and- and, you know, basically exporting ideas to the part of the world that it's often censored and, and you have narratives that are just not, um, you know, not exposed to, people are not exposed to, the Middle East. So you know, we, we thought, you know, we spent like, what, $8 trillion on the war on terror? And what was the result? Right? Like, we, we, we marched in and said, "Okay, we're gonna bring freedom and democracy to people." But if there were no cultural institutions to kind of nudge people to, to understand why they should value freedom and democracy, is it really a surprise that it failed to take root there?So, that's what, you know, we basically, we're called, uh, the organization is called Ideas Beyond Borders. And it's kind of self-explanatory. You know, we basically take, um, acquire the rights to books, um, that are not available there, translate them into Arabic, um, for free, and then we just, like, load it up on the library site. Anyone can basically access that, download it. Um, and we do Wikipedia, too. So like, 10% of all of Wikipedia is in Arabic, of English Wikipedia.

Joe Rogan 6:31 Mm.

Melissa Chen 6:31 And, uh, so we basically try to, you know, like for example, George Orwell doesn't exist in Arabic, right? So like, if you look it up, would you even understand what the word Orwellian means?

Joe Rogan 6:43 Right.

Melissa Chen 6:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:45 So, how did you get involved in this?

Melissa Chen 6:48 Um, my co-founder is a Iraqi refugee, and he grew up under Saddam.

Joe Rogan 6:53 Oh.

Melissa Chen 6:53 And, uh, it's, it's... I, I met him when I was in grad school, and I was really compelled by what he was talking about, you know, just like, uh... As somebody who grew up in Singapore too, we don't really have freedom of speech, right? So, um, the issue with that, like for me, I, I just felt like growing up, um, I was not... I was kind of like, all right, you know what? My issue is that like, there was no, uh, freedom of, of thought, freedom of speech in Singapore. The government

Melissa Chen 7:23 just kind of controls everything. Sorry, give me a second. My heart rate is like, so high (laughs) because I've been drinking so much.

Joe Rogan 7:28 Because you've been drinking this stuff? Is that what it is?

Melissa Chen 7:31 Bang. Yeah. Sorry, just hand me a second.

Joe Rogan 7:31 I was worried that you were nervous.

Melissa Chen 7:33 No, no, no, no, no, no.

Joe Rogan 7:33 So let's tell everybody what you're drinking.

Melissa Chen 7:35 Oh my God, I'm sorry.

Joe Rogan 7:35 You're drinking this... It's called Bang. How many did you have?

Melissa Chen 7:37 This is my second one.

Joe Rogan 7:38 You weigh eight pounds.

Narrator 7:40 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 7:40 I don't.

Joe Rogan 7:40 The fuck are you doing?

Melissa Chen 7:41 I don't, sorry.

Joe Rogan 7:42 You're so tiny. This is so much.

Melissa Chen 7:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 7:45 Are you gonna-

Melissa Chen 7:46 I know, I know.

Joe Rogan 7:46 Are you gonna be the first person to die on this show?

Melissa Chen 7:48 No, no. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:49 Please don't.

Melissa Chen 7:50 Sorry. I mean, this stuff is like...

Joe Rogan 7:53 Yeah, put it away.

Melissa Chen 7:53 It's got a lot of caffeine and like-

Joe Rogan 7:54 Stop fucking with it.

Melissa Chen 7:55 Sorry, it was my second one. I had like, a really heavy workout.

Joe Rogan 7:57 You can't have second ones of those. You, you probably weigh like, 80 pounds. Like, seriously.

Melissa Chen 8:02 105.

Joe Rogan 8:02 Come on, stop lying.

Melissa Chen 8:03 105 pounds, yeah. No, I got, I got muscle.

Joe Rogan 8:05 You're, you're a tiny person.

Melissa Chen 8:06 No, no, I got muscle.

Joe Rogan 8:06 Right, but you, you're very small. That is a lot.

Melissa Chen 8:09 It's also heating me up right now, sorry.

Joe Rogan 8:11 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 8:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:11 Your heart rate's pounding.

Melissa Chen 8:12 It's kind of crazy. No, I know, I can feel it. It's like, I can see words.

Joe Rogan 8:16 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 8:16 It's...

Narrator 8:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:18 What do they look like? What color are they?

Melissa Chen 8:20 Ugh, I don't know, but-

Joe Rogan 8:21 Red. (laughs)

Melissa Chen 8:22 It's, it's, it's getting crazy. Sorry, sorry about that.

Joe Rogan 8:24 Okay, just take some deep breaths.

Melissa Chen 8:25 Yeah, I know.

Joe Rogan 8:25 Calm yourself down.

Melissa Chen 8:26 I know, sorry.

Joe Rogan 8:27 Did you drink that to get pumped up for the show?

Melissa Chen 8:30 I, this is my pre-workout, so...

Joe Rogan 8:31 Oh, okay.

Melissa Chen 8:31 When I, when I did my morning workout, I drank one, and then I was like, "You know what? I didn't really sleep that much last night, so I might need another one."

Joe Rogan 8:37 Oh my God.

Melissa Chen 8:38 And then I-

Joe Rogan 8:38 What a bad idea.

Melissa Chen 8:38 Sorry.

Joe Rogan 8:39 I've had people come in here that are on Adderall, and that's always the weirdest one.

Melissa Chen 8:42 Why?

Joe Rogan 8:42 Because you just, like, you gotta slow down. Like, we're on different paces.

Melissa Chen 8:47 Right.

Joe Rogan 8:47 Not you, but some people.

Melissa Chen 8:48 I need a downer. I k- I definitely need a downer.

Joe Rogan 8:50 Want some pot?

Melissa Chen 8:50 But pot doesn't work on me.

Joe Rogan 8:52 Oh, right. What kind of pot?

Narrator 8:55 (clears throat)

Melissa Chen 8:55 Any...

Joe Rogan 8:55 I bet the pot we have will work on you.

Melissa Chen 8:57 Up to 50... I've done 55 milligrams edibles. Nothing.

Joe Rogan 9:00 That's ridiculously low.

Narrator 9:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:02 I do 200 every time I go to the airport.

Melissa Chen 9:04 Wait, 200 milligrams?

Joe Rogan 9:05 Yes.

Melissa Chen 9:06 Okay, but I'm like, a quarter of the weight.

Joe Rogan 9:07 Joey Diaz takes 1000.

Melissa Chen 9:10 All right, maybe I just haven't upped my game yet.

Joe Rogan 9:12 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 9:12 Um...

Joe Rogan 9:13 Well, you can't say pot doesn't work on you.

Melissa Chen 9:15 Okay, but I, it's, I so far have been unable to respond to THC.

Joe Rogan 9:18 Really?

Melissa Chen 9:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:19 Hm, and smoking it or eating it or both?

Melissa Chen 9:23 Uh, both. Both.

Joe Rogan 9:25 Jamey is with you with the eating. He, he's got some weird genetic disorder that doesn't, it doesn't work with him.

Melissa Chen 9:31 No.

Joe Rogan 9:31 Like, edible, he can take 1000 edibles and just hang around with people.

Narrator 9:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:34 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 9:34 Yeah, but that... So that's the thing, like people are immune, some people are immune to THC.

Joe Rogan 9:38 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 9:38 It's just not...

Joe Rogan 9:39 Some people get withdrawals too. You know, I've, I've talked to people that get actual physical withdrawals from marijuana. And I used to be really skeptical about that, but these, these are people that I actually trust. And they're like, "Wow, I would, uh..." You know, when they would go on tour, like if they have to go places-

Melissa Chen 9:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:54 ... and they didn't have pot, they would get, literally, they'd get shaky, they feel weird, and then they realize, they go, "Oh, this is, my body's withdrawing from THC." Apparently it's very rare, but common enough so that it's in the literature. They, they really, they have documented people that have like, a physical response to withdrawing from marijuana.

Melissa Chen 10:14 Yeah, I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm looking forward to more research being done on this stuff anyway.

Joe Rogan 10:18 (laughs) Yes.

Melissa Chen 10:18 Like, it's, yeah, we're, we're headed there.

Joe Rogan 10:20 Yes.

Melissa Chen 10:20 Uh, but then Trump recently said something about trying to, to get some-

Joe Rogan 10:24 I know.

Melissa Chen 10:24 I'm surprised.

Joe Rogan 10:25 He was comparing the way they handle drug dealers in China with, uh, swift-

Melissa Chen 10:31 Singapore.

Joe Rogan 10:32 ... tr- fair trial.

Melissa Chen 10:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:33 Yeah. Did he, was he saying Singapore?

Melissa Chen 10:35 No, but, but, yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:36 But that's how they do it in Singapore.

Melissa Chen 10:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:37 Swift, swift, fair trial, and the death penalty is what he said.

Melissa Chen 10:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:41 I think he's-

Melissa Chen 10:41 There, there's a resurgence of this in Asia. You see it in the Philippines as well, so...

Joe Rogan 10:45 Yes.

Melissa Chen 10:45 Duterte, you know, has this extra-judicial drug war that he's been launching.

Joe Rogan 10:50 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 10:51 So...

Joe Rogan 10:51 It's, I understand the concern with the plight. I understand that people are really worried that people getting addicted to drugs ruin their lives, it devastates families, people dying of overdoses from fentanyl, and all these different hazards that are associated with drug use and drug, drug dealing. I understand that. But this sort of archaic way of handling it, and death penalty talk in 2020.

Melissa Chen 11:19 I know.

Joe Rogan 11:20 Like, it's...

Melissa Chen 11:21 And, and one country completely, uh, decriminalized all drugs, right? Was it Portugal?

Joe Rogan 11:25 Portugal, yeah.

Melissa Chen 11:26 Yeah, they had some good results.

Joe Rogan 11:27 And they had spectacular results.

Melissa Chen 11:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:28 Low everything.

Melissa Chen 11:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 11:30 Lower incidence of HIV infection, lower drug addiction, lower overdoses, lower everything, lower crime.

Melissa Chen 11:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 11:37 I just don't... It's just messy. It's not, like if there was one thing you could do, like, "Hey, if we do this thing, then no one gets addicted to drugs and no one dies from overdoses."... well, then you do that thing. But there is no-

Melissa Chen 11:50 And that's legalization? That no one would die from overdose if you-

Joe Rogan 11:53 See, they certainly would though, people definitely will die of overdoses. If you make drugs legal across the board, the one thing that you do that's good is you stop all the flow of money into illegal drug sales.

Melissa Chen 12:07 Right.

Joe Rogan 12:07 So all the people that are selling dru- or most of it at least, all the cartel money, all that stuff goes away, because the cartels are making billions and billions of dollars selling to the United States and other countries-

Melissa Chen 12:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:18 ... they can sell to. And they're doing it because it's illegal, because it's a business they can capitalize on that American businesses are not capitalizing on.

Melissa Chen 12:26 And violence goes down too, I'm assuming, right?

Joe Rogan 12:28 Well, they have to.

Melissa Chen 12:28 Related to crime, yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:29 B- there's a correla- I mean there's, if you go back to what happened in the United States during Prohibition, what it did is prop up organized crime. It propped up organized crime in a pretty spectacular way, and it was because there was a m- massive amount of money to be made selling alcohol. The desire for alcohol didn't go away, the legality of it went away.

Melissa Chen 12:49 Right. Right.

Joe Rogan 12:50 So illegal sales went through the roof, and the people that were selling it were criminals.

Melissa Chen 12:55 I just think it's part of the human spirit, you know, that if you say you can't have something-

Joe Rogan 13:00 Yes.

Melissa Chen 13:00 ... we'll just, there's a old Arabic proverb, "That which is prohibited is always wanted."

Joe Rogan 13:05 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 13:05 And-

Joe Rogan 13:06 That's good.

Melissa Chen 13:06 And whatever you, you kind of like, y- you just drive it underground if you, if you try to ban it.

Joe Rogan 13:11 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 13:11 So it's the whole spirit of, of punk rock, of like F you to the system, and, and that just lies in almost, you know, every human heart. We actually see that with, um, our books, for example, um, you know, a l- lot of books are actually like transmitted on these Telegram groups in Arabic.

Joe Rogan 13:26 Mm.

Melissa Chen 13:27 Um, books like s- that Sam Harris writes, um, you know, Richard Dawkins, um, these kinds of, uh, ideas that are really super censored in, in, in the Middle East. So you, you know, that's kind of the, the, the gap that we're trying to plug right now, it's that, um, since books are not available in that language-

Joe Rogan 13:45 Mm.

Melissa Chen 13:45 ... it's, you know... I think, there's this crazy statistic, more books are translated between English and Spanish in one year than English and Arabic in a thousand years.

Joe Rogan 13:55 Wow.

Melissa Chen 13:56 It's kinda crazy.

Joe Rogan 13:58 That is kind of crazy. So the exposure to those ideas-

Melissa Chen 14:01 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 14:02 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 14:02 Right?

Joe Rogan 14:03 And i- the only other option is to get these people to learn English, which is a far more difficult task.

Melissa Chen 14:07 Of course, of course.

Joe Rogan 14:08 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 14:08 And, and, you know, your, your average person living in, say, a Syrian refugee camp isn't going to learn that quickly.

Joe Rogan 14:14 Right.

Melissa Chen 14:14 You gotta meet people where they are, right? So I think the statistic when we first started, 10% of English Wikipedia was actually in Arabic, which means that every time, like for example, let's say you're, you're like, "Oh, Jamie, go Google this," right? And, and, and you expect an answer, it's just, it's just at the tip of our fingertips, it's so, it's so baked into modern life now, we don't even, like, think twice about it. But imagine if like, you live in, I don't know, say Saudi Arabia, and like, okay, let's just Google it, 10 out- out of every 10 times, one time there's no answer, because, uh, the page doesn't exist or, you know, it just, the word, uh, feminism doesn't exist in Arabic, so you can't look it up, or secularism doesn't exist. Y- it's kind of, it's, how do you expect people to, to, to kind of break out of their, of their mindset, of, of their indoctrination?

Joe Rogan 15:04 Mm.

Melissa Chen 15:04 You know? And it's, it's not, we're, we're not saying like, this is a top-down thing, like, "You have to read this." It's that, I just want to live in a world where being ignorant is a choice for everyone-

Joe Rogan 15:13 Mm.

Melissa Chen 15:14 ... 'cause, 'cause it's a choice for us, like let's say like, you know, right now you're like dumb and just, just like basically you spend your nights watching The Bachelor or like, you know, whatever it is (laughs) , it's like-

Joe Rogan 15:24 I know some people.

Melissa Chen 15:25 ... uh, I do too.

Joe Rogan 15:26 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 15:26 I do too. But, uh, I know, I'm judging, but I know.

Joe Rogan 15:30 Oh, it's... Listen, it's, they, they also are into interesting things, but I know some people who do consume mindless nonsense. My friend Cam-

Melissa Chen 15:36 But exclusively-

Joe Rogan 15:37 ... he watches The Bachelorette. He does. I'm calling you out, Cam Hanes.

Melissa Chen 15:40 You're shaming him? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:41 Yeah. You know, you know you watch that shit, bro.

Melissa Chen 15:43 Which one? The female one? Bachelorette or the-

Joe Rogan 15:45 He watches both of them. (laughs)

Melissa Chen 15:46 Oh God. I only know they're still going on because I'm at the checkout line in the-

Joe Rogan 15:51 Yeah, it's those magazines.

Melissa Chen 15:51 ... in the supermarket line. I'm like, "Wha- why is that there?" Like...

Joe Rogan 15:53 It's so strange that people are even interested in that.

Melissa Chen 15:56 I know. I know.

Joe Rogan 15:56 It's a, it's a weird thing, very weird thing. Um, yes, that ignorance would be a choice would be nice if-

Melissa Chen 16:05 Right.

Joe Rogan 16:05 Yeah. So, so what you're saying is that these part- parts of the world, one of the problems of getting them to shift their perception of the world is that they're not exposed to all the great works, they're not exposed to the-

Melissa Chen 16:18 Different ideas.

Joe Rogan 16:19 ... different ideas and different-

Melissa Chen 16:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:20 ... different debates.

Melissa Chen 16:21 And they have a monoculture.

Joe Rogan 16:22 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 16:22 So monoculture because of, you know, society is, they, they have religions, they have ways of life that are just so deeply entrenched, right? Um, and then you also have a c- really, really heavy censorship, both from your authoritarian government and also from your religion.

Joe Rogan 16:36 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 16:37 Um, you know, the, the first word, for example, the first word in the Quran is actually read.

Joe Rogan 16:41 Really?

Melissa Chen 16:42 But it, they really mean just read this one thing.

Joe Rogan 16:45 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 16:45 And, uh, you know, just the, the sort of like habits of a free mind are not really cultivated, um, and also when you're taught, I mean, growing up not to question things. And in part I understand because, um, I think when you grow up in an Asian household with like, you know, tighter parents, there's this sense of like, "You don't question my authority," you know? So it, it permeates culture from a very, very young age, and imagine like if you kind of grow up in that environment, you're going to internalize all those things, and that's why y- it kind of, you know, it, it follows you over time. So when you're in school, you're taught no questions, it's this...

Joe Rogan 17:23 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 17:23 It's not like here where it is like, "There's no such thing as a stupid question, Chad."

Joe Rogan 17:27 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 17:27 There are in Asia, like, "You're dumb." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:29 There's definitely stupid questions over here too.

Melissa Chen 17:31 But you're told, you're at least told that you're, you-

Joe Rogan 17:33 We're giving Chad a break.

Melissa Chen 17:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 17:35 Yeah. But I, I, I understand what you're saying, and that must be really interesting for you to go from this one fairly restrictive environment to a fairly open environment.

Melissa Chen 17:45 Correct.

Joe Rogan 17:45 And d- did that shift that happened in you and being exposed to all these different ide- did that spark this-... desire to help other people sort of expand their, their, their ideas and what they're exposed to?

Melissa Chen 17:58 Yeah, because, well, I felt like a fish out of water-

Joe Rogan 18:00 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 18:00 ... growing up in Singapore. I was always the person that, like, the teachers had to call, like, you know, "Your daughter's asking too many questions. She's disrupting the class."

Joe Rogan 18:07 What kind of questions?

Melissa Chen 18:08 (sighs) I don't know. I went to Sunday school too. I was like, I was that kid who was just like, "Uh, you know, excuse me, but why, why do the dinosaurs, uh, wh- why is it in the Bible that the dinosaurs and, and, and human beings walked, you know, basically, like, days apart, when, like, we know from science that, you know, it was millions of years?" And fossils and-

Joe Rogan 18:27 Did they get mad at you?

Melissa Chen 18:28 Of course, of course, yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:29 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 18:29 No, they were like, "Just keep her out of... We'd just rather her not come to Sunday school."

Joe Rogan 18:34 Really?

Melissa Chen 18:34 Yeah, yeah. But-

Joe Rogan 18:35 No, no answers? There was no one that tried to, like, sort it through and say, "Listen, must be that God was, uh, testing people and, uh, this is why..."

Melissa Chen 18:46 That's what my mom would say.

Joe Rogan 18:47 Really?

Melissa Chen 18:47 But in class, I, it's just, you know, it's how... There's no, uh, there's no culture of dialectics of, of having dialogue and-

Joe Rogan 18:55 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 18:56 ... and, and refining your positions. It's that, it comes from authority, right?

Joe Rogan 18:59 Right.

Melissa Chen 18:59 This is a very Confucian culture. So it's like, "Well, I am your teacher, so it is the way it is."

Joe Rogan 19:05 Right.

Melissa Chen 19:05 And okay, that's one level of it, and if you, say, grew up in the Middle East, asking a question could be death, right? If you, if you even remotely, like, say, in Saudi Arabia especially, remotely reveal that you might be having atheistic thoughts, that's death. So it's like we're talking about different scales and degrees of censorship and consequences for that. And, uh, I think when I met my co-founder, Faisal, you know, I was like, "Okay, I, I guess I have, I, I had issues with the country I grew up in," but for him, it was, he ended up almost being killed by Al-Qaeda for just, like, starting a blog talking about, you know, the importance of secularism and, and, uh, countering violent extremism.

Joe Rogan 19:42 Really?

Melissa Chen 19:43 Yeah, that's how he came here as a refugee. (smacks lips) So I'm like, "Oh, shit, maybe there are..." you know?

Joe Rogan 19:48 How did he almost get killed by Al-Qaeda?

Melissa Chen 19:50 Uh, well, 'cause, uh, when, when the US invaded Baghdad and he was living in, in Baghdad at the time, um, and, uh, Al-Qaeda took over his neighborhood once there was a void. Saddam was ousted, right? And, uh, he was kind of like, you know, roaming around and, like, telling, kind of telling the youth army certain things like, "Okay, you know, like, this is where Al-Qaeda is. Uh, this is the cell. My, my friend here h- has been, like, radicalized."

Joe Rogan 20:16 Hmm.

Melissa Chen 20:16 And, uh, Al-Qaeda knew. They put him on a, on a hit list, you know, because he was not sympathetic to their cause. And, uh, so he ended up on the death list. His brother was killed. Just a horrible story. Bridget actually recently interviewed him on, on her podcast. And, and I get the sense that, like, oh shit, like, the consequence of saying what you think there is, like, at least in my case, was just like, "Hey, maybe I might go to jail-

Joe Rogan 20:44 Right.

Melissa Chen 20:45 ... in Singapore."

Joe Rogan 20:46 Well-

Melissa Chen 20:47 But, but in Iraq, it was death. And-

Joe Rogan 20:49 I think it's hard for people in America to really grasp what that environment must be like, because we're so accustomed to this idea of freedom of speech.

Melissa Chen 21:00 Yeah, freedom of thought, too.

Joe Rogan 21:00 And it's so ingrained. Yes, it's so ingrained.

Melissa Chen 21:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:05 Rebels are appreciated and tolerated here. You know?

Melissa Chen 21:08 Like-

Joe Rogan 21:08 They're rewarded.

Melissa Chen 21:08 ... exactly.

Joe Rogan 21:09 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 21:09 Yeah, it's, it's the whole maverick thing. I think, you know, as long as America still can celebrate mavericks and toler- not just tolerate them, but actually celebrate them-

Joe Rogan 21:17 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 21:18 ... we're, we're gonna be fine, right?

Joe Rogan 21:20 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 21:21 And-

Joe Rogan 21:21 Hopefully.

Melissa Chen 21:22 Hopefully.

Joe Rogan 21:23 The thing is that, if it exists the way it exists in other parts of the world, it can exist like that here. Like, the worst cases of human behavior, when you see y- you know, any form of dictatorship or control or propaganda or control by the state or by industry, that's stuff that you see in other countries. It's human beings in 2020.

Melissa Chen 21:47 Right.

Joe Rogan 21:47 I mean, our... We would like to think that our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and all of our ideals and what th- this country was founded on is gonna keep it from deteriorating like that, and most likely, it will. But the reality is, those people in Iraq are human beings in 2020, and they are living in a completely different way than we're living right now, at the sa- on the same timeline.

Melissa Chen 22:09 Right.

Joe Rogan 22:09 Just things did not go well there, and they're stuck in this horrible situation where they are controlled by these religious fanatics. And they are stuck, and there's not a lot that they can do other than escape.

Melissa Chen 22:24 Right. And, you know, right now, also, like, with, uh, the rise of China, they're also, you know, starting to u- like, basically, some form of, like, electronic tyranny, right?

Joe Rogan 22:35 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 22:35 They're able to, to really censor the internet in a way that's been unprecedented. Uh-

Joe Rogan 22:41 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 22:41 ... you can't access Facebook, Wikipedia, Tw- none of-

Joe Rogan 22:44 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 22:44 ... none of these things that you and, you and I can just, like, open on our, our apps can be accessed in, in China. So the way they just, like, c- control information and now exporting those same tools to other authoritarian countries around the world is... That part, to me, is dangerous, because, you know, I think both Faisal and I came to America (smacks lips) with this, like, "All right, this is the place that we can finally be ourselves and think for ourselves," right?

Joe Rogan 23:05 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 23:05 And we're starting to see that the whole world seems to be kind of going in the other direction.

Joe Rogan 23:10 Did, um... So there was a shift in China, and the shift was... It was initially a completely communist society, and now, capitalism, at least in a monetary sense, is embraced.

Melissa Chen 23:26 Yeah, market reforms, yes.

Joe Rogan 23:27 And so... Yes. So there's this giant shift in what China actually is, which corresponds to this huge growth. Is it possible that, in the future, this shift could move on to other aspects of Chinese culture, like discourse or the way they view the government or even some form of democracy?

Melissa Chen 23:48 That was what we expected.

Joe Rogan 23:50 That's what we expected.

Melissa Chen 23:51 Um, that was the theory.

Joe Rogan 23:53 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 23:53 But, but-... the, the way China has behaved now, you know, they call it socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Joe Rogan 23:58 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 23:59 That's the official name of, of, of this long drawn game to, you know, institute market reforms, usher in, uh, riches for the, for the middle class, lift a lot of people out of poverty, but in a very controlled way, in, in a way that's like... See, that's the thing about like Asian culture that people don't understand, it's that the- there's a fundamental difference between the China dream and the American dream, right? And, and Xi Jinping has outlined what he thinks is the China dream. It's, it's, it's basically a top down way to, to, uh, it's a goal, it's a national goal, and, and basically what they're trying to say is that, "Okay, we're gonna get, lift a lot of people out of poverty, but you have to, your generation has to make sacrifices." So it's not about the individual. It's about building a strong China and implicitly also about, uh, you know, ensuring that the CCP stays in power, the Chinese Communist Party stays in power. But it's, it's that you might have to give up, you know, personal sacrifices for the sake of China. Versus the American dream is, is bottom up. It's about your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's it. And if you do that, that's the American dream. And if you achieve a certain level of happiness, if you achieve, you know, it's all like, it's bottom up. It's not, it's not centralized and it's not something that the Chinese government is kind of trying to stuff down your throat. Um, and China's willing to play the long game. So it is still a c- Leninist, Leninist Marxist government. Xi Jinping still believes in all of that, that's why it's still so totalitarian. But it's, you know, they, they know that like, the way to get, gain power in the world is to get rich. And they did it on some, you know, on the backs of, on the back of trade with other countries, through very unfair practices actually, in many cases. So if you think about like how they... I think there, there are a lot of estimates of how much they've actually stolen from the United States in terms of intellectual property, um, corporate, corporate espionage, um, now even like academia's being infected. So...

Joe Rogan 26:00 How so?

Melissa Chen 26:01 They just arrested the head of the chemistry department at Harvard.

Joe Rogan 26:06 Oh, that's right.

Melissa Chen 26:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:08 Yeah. But wasn't that, didn't they think that that guy was in connection with some weaponized... What's that article?

Melissa Chen 26:15 Oh, the virus thing?

Joe Rogan 26:16 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 26:16 No, no, no, no. That, that's-

Joe Rogan 26:17 Am I thinking of something else?

Melissa Chen 26:19 There was, uh, an article linking some Canadian researchers to the virus.

Joe Rogan 26:24 That's right, that's what it was.

Melissa Chen 26:24 No, but this was, this was different. The head of the, the chemistry department at Harvard was found to have lied about receiving money from the Chinese government. So there's this program-

Joe Rogan 26:33 Hmm.

Melissa Chen 26:33 ... called the Thousand Talents Program in China. Basically, they're offering a lot of money. The New York Times did a really good expose on this. Um, they basically offer money to like academics, because, you know, it kind of sucks to be one here in the sense of like, you're not paid that well.

Joe Rogan 26:48 Right.

Melissa Chen 26:48 But China's dangling like, a lot more money and saying, "Okay, If you, if you do research here in China, um, there's going to be like, less bureaucracy."

Joe Rogan 26:56 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 26:57 Um, so that's their way to lure these people in, right?

Joe Rogan 26:59 So he was hiding the fact that he was getting income from them?

Melissa Chen 27:02 He was hiding. Correct, correct.

Joe Rogan 27:02 How was he hiding it?

Melissa Chen 27:04 He just, he didn't report it.

Joe Rogan 27:06 Oh.

Melissa Chen 27:07 And...

Joe Rogan 27:07 But he put it in the bank anyway?

Melissa Chen 27:09 Right. And, and so at the end of the day when, when, when you do, when, when there's a relationship there, China owns your research.

Joe Rogan 27:14 Right.

Melissa Chen 27:15 And if you're researching something sensitive, that's a big issue.

Joe Rogan 27:18 There was an article today, uh, where they've confirmed that Huawei has some sort of third party back door with a lot of their electronics.

Melissa Chen 27:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:26 You know, 'cause there, there was a lot of speculation to why the United States was, uh, banning Huawei from the major providers, from, you know, 'cause they were very close to releasing some of...

Melissa Chen 27:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:36 And they have some amazing phones. And they were really close to-

Melissa Chen 27:38 I refuse to use them, but...

Joe Rogan 27:39 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 27:40 Yeah. Just on principle. In fact, like one of my girlfriends, she's kind of sponsored by Huawei. She's European. Um, wanted to take a selfie of me and I was like, "I am, there's no way that my face could ever be, you know, in your phone."

Joe Rogan 27:51 Really? That-

Melissa Chen 27:51 No. Absolutely not.

Joe Rogan 27:52 Tell me why. Like, what is, what are your thoughts on it?

Melissa Chen 27:55 Huawei is, is really ano- another just, an apparatus of the, the main party, the government. And you know, I, I really think that Huawei is, with respect to the next era of the digital world, is the next Sputnik. Like, it is the Sputnik issue of our time and we should be doing everything we can to (laughs) to, to not allow Huawei to, you know, have this big market share. And, uh, the person who started it was somebody that had a lot of party connections to, to the... I'm thinking it was a general or something. And it's really, they, they, they really operate in a way that's very opaque. Um, and you know, anyone doing business in China will have to have connections to the government, especially when you're that big. And because it's, it's a government that has such totalitarian control over everything, you can expect that, that whatever information or, or that they would have to answer to the government, whatever the government wants. If you're willing to put your privacy in the hands of an entity like that, you know, go ahead. But know also that the Chinese government has enacted all these mass surveillance policies. It's, I, I just wouldn't trust. I just wouldn't trust them.

Joe Rogan 29:15 So what is different between Huawei and there's many Chinese manufacturers of cellphones and like...

Melissa Chen 29:22 Like Xiaomi.

Joe Rogan 29:23 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 29:24 It's, it's the, it's the government connection and also that-

Joe Rogan 29:27 And Huawei's the only one that has that deep government connection?

Melissa Chen 29:30 Well, the, the founder at least was a general, that much I know. Um, and just a lot of party connections, and you know, just, it's also heavily subsidized by the government, which is one of the ways that China has been competing kind of unfairly in, in, in, in global markets, right? When you have... You can drive out innovation in the United States by, by making sure that-... your local version is so competitive on prices that they can't match you. So in a way it's like a form of economic warfare, um, which is one of the, the issues that Trump has really pushed back on. It's the China trade issue.

Joe Rogan 30:07 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 30:08 Um...

Joe Rogan 30:08 And he's been criticized by, about that. Do you think he's correct?

Melissa Chen 30:13 On China?

Joe Rogan 30:14 Yes.

Melissa Chen 30:14 On China, yes. I do think he's correct. He's been pushed back on. It's interesting because (smacks lips) I think the Democrats were a lot more, you know, protectionist when it came to trade, right? The r- the Republicans and the Libertarians are always like, "Free trade, free trade," everything, like, you know, "Let's globalize the world," uh, it was the whole Thomas Friedman position when he wrote about it in Lexus and the Olive Tree, that if we globalize the world, that economic- that you're ec- you lift a lot of people out of poverty, your, your economic pie grows, but your, uh, politics shrink. That was the idea, right? No two countries that have McDonald's would fight a war or something like that. That was his theory.

Joe Rogan 30:51 Hmm.

Melissa Chen 30:51 Um, and in the case of, uh, China, obviously that, uh, didn't happen, right? Like the part about the politics changing.

Joe Rogan 31:00 Right.

Melissa Chen 31:00 There was this quote a- by a Tiananmen pro- protestor. He said, "If the free world doesn't change China, China will change the free world."

Joe Rogan 31:08 Whoa.

Melissa Chen 31:09 And if you think about what happened with the NBA, um, you know, with the whole Daryl More tweet and-

Joe Rogan 31:14 Yeah, explain that, because that was shocking to me, 'cause the way they were capitulating to China, I was, you know, I was a little stunned.

Melissa Chen 31:22 Me too.

Joe Rogan 31:22 'Cause it was so open.

Melissa Chen 31:23 Yeah, and-

Joe Rogan 31:24 Can you explain what happened?

Melissa Chen 31:26 So Daryl More, who is the GM of the Houston Rockets, he tweeted out, um, basically a, a little picture that, that showed that he supported the Hong Kong protestors. And the Hong Kong protestors have been at it since July of last year, 2019. Um, they w- have been protesting the incursion of, of Chinese control into their supposedly autonomous region. China promised them that there would be, um, two systems, one country, two systems, after the handover in 1997 from the British to, to, to China. Um, they've slowly kind of eroded that, um, in w- in many ways. And their freedoms have been kind of, you know, diminishing over time. The straw, the straw that broke the camel's back was actually this policy that they passed, this law they passed that said that anyone can be extradited to China for trials basically. It was after a case that happened, a criminal case. And the Hong Kong people knew that h- this law, if it goes in effect, basically gives the Chinese government legal right to disappear or kidnap anyone and bring them for trial in some sort of kangaroo c- or show trial in, in, in China and that has happened. So booksellers, it's always the booksellers, in Hong Kong have been kidnapped because they were publishing these like insider accounts, like dirty secrets of the, you know, the CCP, whenever there was a leak, 'cause the, the Chinese Communist Party is huge. The Politburo is huge. And so there was a bookseller called Causeway Books and they were publishing all these like accounts from within the, the Chinese Communist Party and the owner of that bookshop one day just disappeared. And he ended up in China, um, it was basically a forced kidnapping and he, he was released, I think he was, you know, he, he did his jail time and now he's setting up another booksh- bookshop in Taiwan. Um, but, but that law basically would just have allowed China to do that legally this time. So the Hong Kong youth were up in arms. They, you know, they, they were tired of all their, the ways that their way of life had changed since the British handed, handed it over, and al- you know, in, in a way they were kind of pining for the good old times, the good old times when they were under colonial, you know, an English colonial master, which was one of those like poof moment for anyone on the left.

Joe Rogan 33:43 Mm.

Melissa Chen 33:45 Um, (smacks lips) and so Daryl More tweeted this out and of course you know how big the, the China market is for the NBA, right? Like all these players have contracts with them. In fact the Houston Rockets had a lot of contracts with the Chinese CCTV for broadcasts, um, they also had like merchandising opportunities, sneakers that were made there. And, um, (smacks lips) that caused a huge, huge outcry in China. They were just like, "Oh, he's disrespecting us," um, and they were able to force him to basically make a groveling tweet that said, "Oh, I'm sorry for hurting the feelings of the Chinese people." And then like all the other, some NBA players actually came out and, and, you know, kind of took the side of the, of the Chinese government, like, "Oh wait, who are we to-"

Joe Rogan 34:32 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 34:32 ... you know, they, they kind of like did this backpedal thing when, when they're so strong on other forms of activism here, like, like-

Joe Rogan 34:38 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 34:38 ... the NBA when it came to the North Carolina, the bathroom bill, you remember? Like the transgender bathroom bill?

Joe Rogan 34:43 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 34:43 They were, they were always on the side of the woke. (smacks lips) But then when it came to the China/Hong Kong issue, they stood with the biggest... The, the oppressor.

Joe Rogan 34:53 Yeah, it's always hard when someone does side on the woke, like what are you, are you doing this 'cause you think this or are you doing this 'cause you think it'll make people think more highly of you if you do it? It's such a contrived thing today. It's so difficult to figure out why people are acting the way they're acting. So when they were acting in that way, it was so transparent.

Melissa Chen 35:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:16 It was, there was no ifs, ands, or buts about it, like they were pressured and they were worried about the money, they were worried about economic, you know-

Melissa Chen 35:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:24 ... whatever-

Melissa Chen 35:24 The fallout.

Joe Rogan 35:25 Yeah, whatever fallout would happen.

Melissa Chen 35:27 Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 35:27 It was really obvious. It was like, "Whoa, this is not like trans people using the bathroom." This is like, "You guys are threatened."

Melissa Chen 35:35 Right, exactly.

Joe Rogan 35:36 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 35:36 But the number of companies that have kowtowed to China's, uh, you know, orthodoxy is, there should be a list, somebody should be keeping track of all of this. Um, there are companies like Marriott, uh, even like luxury brands, so I think Versace or Dolce & Gabbana got in trouble because I think on their website they listed like countries...... that, um, were in. And it was like, they put Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan-

Joe Rogan 36:02 That's right.

Melissa Chen 36:02 ... and China said, "No, no, no. What are you doing? This is all China."

Joe Rogan 36:06 Right.

Melissa Chen 36:07 If you don't change that website, you're not going to be allowed to do business. And everyone wants a share of the Chinese market. That's the problem. It's like the biggest market in the world.

Joe Rogan 36:16 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 36:17 Uh, maybe India's bigger, but, um... Well, at least in the future India will get bigger. But everyone wants access to Chinese market. So, so they're able to use that as leverage to basically bully, um, companies, even movie execs-

Joe Rogan 36:30 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 36:31 ... to produce the content they want. So several... I think World War Z was affected. Uh, you know, um, the other mo- movie was Doctor Strange, um, the Marvel movie, where the character played by Tilda Swinton was supposed to be a Tibetan monk. But you can't... Like, Tibet is this, like, hot button issue for China, right? Like, people have been fighting for independence for a while. The Dalai Lama was exiled. So they changed the character. It wasn't a Tibetan monk, it was this... They changed it to a Celtic monk and they made it to be a woman playing the character instead to appease the Chinese government.

Joe Rogan 37:04 So they, they changed it in the American version as well?

Melissa Chen 37:07 Yeah. Yeah. There's n-

Joe Rogan 37:08 So that woman wasn't supposed to be-

Melissa Chen 37:10 The American version is-

Joe Rogan 37:11 Right.

Melissa Chen 37:11 Because the studios, they're all going in on these deals with China. China's financing all these movies now.

Joe Rogan 37:18 Wow. So that woman in Doctor Strange was initially supposed to be a Tibetan monk.

Melissa Chen 37:22 A male.

Joe Rogan 37:22 Supposed to be a male.

Melissa Chen 37:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:23 Wow.

Melissa Chen 37:23 Yeah. But they ch- they rewrote it to, to reflect a Celtic, Celtic female monk. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:30 Whoa.

Melissa Chen 37:31 And then I think the Top- recent... The, the Top Gun, um, the movie that's coming out with Tom Cruise too, partially financed by China. And they have these... Uh, like his jacket, people noticed that there was a patch that was, like, missing. And it turns out, like, that patch, it was like a... For some reason, China was just triggered by it and, um, it was gone. Like between the Top Gun 1 and Top Gun-

Joe Rogan 37:54 So they digitally remove it?

Melissa Chen 37:54 No, no. They... It's just in the costume. Wasn't there.

Joe Rogan 37:57 Oh, this is it.

Melissa Chen 37:59 Oh, yes. Yes.

Joe Rogan 38:00 What, what was the problem? Was it the Japanese flag?

Melissa Chen 38:02 That's the Taiwanese flag, the red and blue.

Joe Rogan 38:05 Oh.

Melissa Chen 38:05 Yeah, the USS Galveston. See? It's...

Joe Rogan 38:08 Wow.

Melissa Chen 38:09 But, but that, that's what, that's what makes it so scary, that they're able to pressure people to, to change their behavior from afar without-

Joe Rogan 38:17 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 38:17 No bullets. This is just-

Joe Rogan 38:19 Money.

Melissa Chen 38:20 Money. It's just access to Chinese market.

Joe Rogan 38:22 Whores.

Melissa Chen 38:22 I know.

Joe Rogan 38:23 So many whores.

Melissa Chen 38:25 But that's why I think, like, one of the solutions to this, is to really like start... I don't know. Somebody should really start a website, maybe it should be me, um, to just track all this stuff. All the companies that have cow- are kowtowing to China, all the ones who are standing their ground, you know, and so you can decide where to put your money.

Joe Rogan 38:40 So it's just a giant part of the market that's the problem with these films. It's like, it's probably the Top Gun over in China... First of all, China invests and then they sell those movies over there. And they're... It's an enormous part of their overall budget, right? What, how much money that comes in?

Melissa Chen 38:55 And the largest, the... In terms of the box office, the... Outside of the United States, the second largest market is China.

Joe Rogan 39:01 Oh.

Melissa Chen 39:01 The third one is Japan and it's, it's like-

Joe Rogan 39:04 That's crazy.

Melissa Chen 39:05 ... one fifth of China, basically.

Joe Rogan 39:07 Hmm.

Melissa Chen 39:08 So it's not... Nowhere, nowhere close. And, you know, we're all driven by profits. It's capitalism.

Joe Rogan 39:14 I think they tried to get Quentin Tarantino to change his movie for China. They told him to go pound sand.

Melissa Chen 39:18 I think so. I remember-

Joe Rogan 39:19 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 39:19 Was it the Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood?

Joe Rogan 39:21 Yeah, the new one. Yeah.

Melissa Chen 39:23 Well done.

Joe Rogan 39:24 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 39:24 Well done.

Joe Rogan 39:25 It's, uh... It's weird that it's that easy. Just, just throw some money around and people change their culture.

Melissa Chen 39:32 Right. I mean, Google was developing a search engine for China that-

Joe Rogan 39:37 Yeah. They... Well, I knew some people at Google while that was going on and their, their position was, "If we don't do this, they're gonna copy our search engine and just steal all the intellectual property. Or we can work with them and provide a censored version of Google."

Melissa Chen 39:54 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:54 And I remember sitting there going, "This is almost like legalizing drugs." Like it's messy. There's no good way here. This is... They're both, they both suck. Like bo- bo- it sucks if they steal, you know, the intellectual, uh, copyright.

Melissa Chen 40:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:09 If they, they steal the ideas and create their own version of Google. It also sucks if Google goes over there and self-censors-

Melissa Chen 40:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 40:16 ... and provides them with, you know, the ability to filter out information.

Melissa Chen 40:20 But I, I think also that if... There's also an argument that if it was Google, at least maybe they, they have one tentacle in China, and so therefore it might be able to change things or keep a pulse on, you know?

Joe Rogan 40:31 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 40:31 Have their pulse on something. There's the argument. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 40:35 At least they blocked Huawei, or I don't... I shouldn't say at least, but it's interesting that they blocked Huawei from using all of their apps. So Huawei no longer has apps. Uh, they didn't have... No- no longer have access to the Google Play Store.

Melissa Chen 40:49 Oh.

Joe Rogan 40:49 So their, their new phones, they have to have their own apps.

Melissa Chen 40:54 Really?

Joe Rogan 40:54 Yes.

Melissa Chen 40:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:55 This is with the, uh, the Mate P-... I think it's P40, I think it's what it's called, their newest, latest flagship phone. They, they can't... They don't have access anymore. There's some, uh, some apps you can sideload from the web and you can download them directly to your phone, but for the most part, their access to the Google Play Store is completely shut off. So the thousands and thousands of apps that if... Like, if you want... If you... For a lot of people, apps are everything.

Melissa Chen 41:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:23 It's not the phone itself-

Melissa Chen 41:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:24 ... it's the apps. If you don't have Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and, uh, you know, whatever the, you know, equivalents are in different countries, you're, you're kind of shit out of luck.

Melissa Chen 41:36 But I, I think reciprocity is a, is a good policy to abide by, right?

Joe Rogan 41:39 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 41:39 So if like... If China can influence us, i- if you want... 'Cause the Chinese, they always use the- their market as... Like, "We'll shut you out of our market if you don't do this." Well, we should be doing the same.... which I think is what Trump had tried to do with the tariffs. "We're going to shut you out of our market, we're going to penalize you-"

Joe Rogan 41:54 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 41:54 "... um, unless you open up some things. You've been, you know, um, there have been un- unfair trade practices for a while."

Joe Rogan 42:00 It's hard for us to understand what's really going on because, you know, the news will show this anecdotal story of a farmer who's upset because his, you know, he's losing money because of Trump's tariffs. And then people go, "Oh, tariff's bad."

Melissa Chen 42:12 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:13 You, you, you know, I think it's a r- to have a really comprehensive view of it, it's gonna take a lot of studying. You're gonna have to dive deep and really try to understand the economics behind it all, and I think most people aren't willing to do that. So, we get sort of sold a narrative o- on the news.

Melissa Chen 42:28 I think the same thing happened with, like, so- so-called, like, industries that were important to our national security like steel-

Joe Rogan 42:35 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 42:35 ... you know, like some of the, like... Those are things that we want to be careful how much we actually do outsource to overseas, because there might come a time when we'll need those, you know. I, I mean, what happens if you globalize to the point that China's producing all your steel and then we have a war? And where's our steel gonna come from? It's just so easy to be cut off, so it's-

Joe Rogan 42:54 Are you really worried about a hot war?

Melissa Chen 42:57 Um, we're definitely in the f- in a cold war right now with China-

Joe Rogan 43:02 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 43:02 ... it feels. But, you know, China does have military ambitions. I mean, the, the, their actions in the South China Sea have shown that. They, they do want to be at least militarily strong. They haven't, you know, to their credit, haven't taken any, um... They didn't go into Hong Kong with tanks or anything, right? So, no bloodshed o- on that account yet. Um, but it's one of those things also that in 2047, Hong Kong is going to return to China fully anyway.

Joe Rogan 43:30 Oh, it is? It's this year?

Melissa Chen 43:30 So, they're willing... Yeah, 2047, 'cause the handover, it was only, like, four or 50 years before. This is just the transition. So-

Joe Rogan 43:37 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 43:38 ... the long game belongs to China, and they know that. They know that.

Joe Rogan 43:43 Oof, this is not good.

Melissa Chen 43:45 It's not. It's not.

Joe Rogan 43:48 And there's no hope in your eyes of China eventually becoming what they hoped it would be once capitalism was sort of introduced?

Melissa Chen 43:56 If people got information, if there were ways to resist the encroaching, um, tyranny, especially digital tyranny, right? The, in all forms, so it's not just mass surveillance. All this AI stuff, they're, they're sort of, like, collecting people's, uh, like, facial scans.

Joe Rogan 44:14 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 44:15 It's, it's this, it's such a dystopian nightmare. It feels like it's, like, a science fiction film, frankly. Um, if... I don't know. Unless the revolution kind of comes from within and enough people woke up, maybe it can be averted. But, uh, you know, otherwise, we're just gonna, you know, it's gonna be headed to it's this weird bipolar world where there's a new axis and the new allies.

Joe Rogan 44:43 That sucks.

Melissa Chen 44:44 That will suck.

Joe Rogan 44:44 That sucks already.

Melissa Chen 44:45 'Cause you've seen-

Joe Rogan 44:46 Sucks already if it's happening.

Melissa Chen 44:47 ... you've seen, like, there are, you know, Russia has taken the side of China, Pakistan has taken the s- side of China now.

Joe Rogan 44:52 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 44:52 So, there are, there, there is a, you know, an a- an alliance kind of forming. Um, you can see it in, you know, what happened with, uh, the UN passed this resolution condemning China's treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

Joe Rogan 45:05 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 45:05 And the signatories to that, um, to that bill, that UN bill was basically, um, United States, New Zealand, the Europe, a lot of European powers. The so-called, you know, like, these are countries that are often accused of being Islamophobes because they won't accept Muslim refugees, or that many Muslim refugees. But you have Pakistan and even some, you know, majority of the Gulf countries siding with China, defending China on, on their treatment with, with the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. And it's one of those things that's just like, "What? Pff. How, how is this happening?" You know? It doesn't make sense.

Joe Rogan 45:41 Does anybody have a road map of how they expect all this to play out?

Melissa Chen 45:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:47 Because it seems that this, this could be a real problem in the future, and most Americans up until this whole, um, the, uh, up until this trade issue with the Trump administration, most Americans didn't even think about China.

Melissa Chen 46:04 I don't, no, I don't think, I think Hong Kong was the-

Joe Rogan 46:07 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 46:07 ... was the thing that kind of lit, you know, the whole barrel.

Joe Rogan 46:08 Just seeing the hundreds of thousands of people in the streets every day-

Melissa Chen 46:12 Right.

Joe Rogan 46:12 ... for weeks after months after-

Melissa Chen 46:13 Really young people too.

Joe Rogan 46:15 Yeah, yeah.

Melissa Chen 46:16 Yeah. Um, I think the, the thing has, that has kind of, like, descended into police brutality, like, protests against police brutality now, um, but it's still going on. There's still-

Joe Rogan 46:24 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 46:24 ... you know? And then now with the whole coronavirus, you know, flaring up there, it's, it's highlighting a lot of issues with the, with the Chinese government. Um, Taiwan is another issue still. There are the three Ts you can't really talk about in China now, Tiananmen, Tibet, Taiwan. These are three things that absolute, you know, no-go, no-go zones.

Joe Rogan 46:45 Now, what year did you come over here? How old were you?

Melissa Chen 46:48 17.

Joe Rogan 46:48 17?

Melissa Chen 46:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:49 What was the shift like going from Singapore to the United States? You lived in New York then?

Melissa Chen 46:54 No, no, Boston. Boston.

Joe Rogan 46:55 Boston?

Melissa Chen 46:55 Your, your hometown, right?

Joe Rogan 46:56 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 46:57 Yeah. I lived in Boston for 10 years. Um, really enjoyed it actually. Kinda miss it.

Joe Rogan 47:01 It's cold as fuck.

Melissa Chen 47:03 It... No, I, I like it.

Joe Rogan 47:05 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 47:05 I know, I'm a skier, so I, I really like it. Um, but the, there was huge culture shock. Um-

Joe Rogan 47:09 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 47:10 In a way, I knew what I was signing up for. I, I chose Amer- like, it's actually easier for a Singaporean to plug and play into any of the Commonwealth countries because it was a former British colony. So, all your credits would just transfer kind of more easily to a university in England, for example-

Joe Rogan 47:25 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 47:25 ... or Australia. But I chose America precisely for the First Amendment.

Joe Rogan 47:30 Really?

Melissa Chen 47:31 Yeah, it was very, it was a very strong motivating factor for me. Um, and also just the, the culture of, of, uh, like we said, celebrating weird people. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:39 Yes.

Melissa Chen 47:40 Um, because I was weird, so I wanted to be in a place where I thought I would be accepted.

Joe Rogan 47:43 What made you weird?

Melissa Chen 47:46 Um, so I-Singapore is pretty conformist in terms of, um, you talk about monocultures. There, there is a, a conformist tribe. Like, there is the right schools you go to, the right paths you take, very entrenched. And, uh, I really rebelled against that. Like, you know in Singapore, chewing gum is banned, right?

Joe Rogan 48:07 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 48:09 I have it here.

Joe Rogan 48:09 Look at you.

Melissa Chen 48:09 It's always ...

Joe Rogan 48:10 Do you always bring chewing gum-

Melissa Chen 48:11 It's just always.

Joe Rogan 48:11 ... because it was banned in Singapore?

Melissa Chen 48:12 It's one of those things. It's just like stuck in my mind. I-

Joe Rogan 48:15 Freedom.

Melissa Chen 48:15 Had I grown up here, I probably wouldn't be chewing this right now.

Joe Rogan 48:18 Mm.

Melissa Chen 48:19 It wouldn't, just wouldn't matter. Um, but when, when somebody says I can't, like, like, "Do not touch wet paint." I'm like ... (makes mouth motion) .

Joe Rogan 48:26 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 48:27 Um-

Joe Rogan 48:27 This has always been a part of your personality from the time you were young?

Melissa Chen 48:30 Yes.

Joe Rogan 48:31 Is this something-

Melissa Chen 48:31 I've always been kind of disagreeable and ...

Joe Rogan 48:33 Was- Was this nature or nurture?

Melissa Chen 48:35 Don't know. I, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 48:37 Hmm.

Melissa Chen 48:37 I really ... But-

Joe Rogan 48:39 So when you came to America when you were 17, you said?

Melissa Chen 48:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:41 Was that like, " (sighs) "?

Melissa Chen 48:43 Yes, it was. But it was also, there were a lot of culture shocks that I had to adapt to. Um, you know, for starters, it definitely felt like a bit of a, a step back for me in terms of, um, how, i- in terms of comfort of li- like standard of living. The United States was kind of a third world country compared to Singapore.

Joe Rogan 49:02 Really?

Melissa Chen 49:02 Yeah, when-

Joe Rogan 49:03 Boston?

Melissa Chen 49:04 Oh, when I landed in Logan and we were taking that drive to, you know, like at the time I was gonna be living in Cambridge, we went by under these like highways and I'm like, "It's rusting." This was kind of like bef- just like-

Joe Rogan 49:14 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 49:14 ... slightly before the Big Dig was done and the infrastructure was kind of broken, the potholes, your healthcare, what the hell is up with that? So it was kind ... a step back in material comforts for me.

Joe Rogan 49:24 Hmm.

Melissa Chen 49:25 And in Singapore, you, you know, if you grew up even middle class, like the 50th percentile family can afford a domestic helper. So many Singaporean kids, in fact 90% of all the kids I know growing up, all grew up with maids.

Joe Rogan 49:40 Wow.

Melissa Chen 49:40 Yeah, picking up after them, doing their laundry, everything.

Joe Rogan 49:43 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 49:43 So (laughs) Singapore has no minimum wage.

Joe Rogan 49:47 No minimum wage?

Melissa Chen 49:47 No minimum wage. And so if you measure employment in that country, it's, it's, in some economic measurements, uh, the way they do it, it's almost like it's overemployed. We don't, don't have an unemployment problem.

Joe Rogan 50:00 Everybody has a job.

Melissa Chen 50:01 Pretty much.

Joe Rogan 50:02 No minimum wage, but what, what, how do people take, be taken advantage? How are people taken advantage because of that?

Melissa Chen 50:09 Well, that's why wages are on average low in that, in, in Singapore. Um, they're, they're not that high. The United States practices what you call efficiency wages, which is, you know, they, they kind of pay people a little bit more to, to extract a better performance, right?

Joe Rogan 50:26 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 50:26 In- incentives matter.

Joe Rogan 50:27 Right.

Melissa Chen 50:28 Um, but in Singapore that's not the case.

Joe Rogan 50:30 But in Singapore, the streets are ta- ca- taken care of better.

Melissa Chen 50:33 Yes.

Joe Rogan 50:33 Bridges, all that stuff-

Melissa Chen 50:34 Oh, the gov, like-

Joe Rogan 50:35 ... infrastructure.

Melissa Chen 50:36 You know, I, I tweeted, um, maybe like last week saying something like, uh, especially now we're in like political debate season. I'm so tired of this whole left/right argument. Like, "Small government." "No, big government." "Government's a problem." "Government's solution." It's, it's about effective government, and I think that's something that the, the Singapore government have really perfected. It's, it's effective governance. It's not about the size. We're gonna ... I don't care whether this is a policy that came from the right or the left. It's what works. People respond to incentives, right? And if you want to, um, encourage a certain kind of behavior, you ... there's carrots and sticks to, to basically encourage that behavior. Um, and so it's, there, there are things that the government would do in a way that just would never fly here, where, where you, we, you know, we treasure civil liberties too much in a way, um, which I personally came here for that reason, but I'll give you a good example. Social cohesion is engineered in Singapore. So, uh, there's, it's very, very multicultural, multiethnic society. You have Malay Muslims, Indians, Hindus, Chinese who are Buddhists, Christians, and you know, Caucasians all living, uh, in a, in a, on an island city state that's about five million in terms of population. And how the government manages this multicultural project is that 80% of people actually live in public housing. That's very high. It's like a socialist thing, right, public housing that the government builds for you. And each block has to mimic the racial demographics of the whole country. So you don't have ghettos, right? So you imagine like a, a housing estate that basically mirrors like, okay, if the total makeup of the country is 60% Chinese, 20% Malay Muslims, it has to follow. So you can't have basically an area like Birmingham in the UK where all the Muslim immigrants or, or you know, something like Dearborn, Michigan or Minnesota with all the Somali immigrants. You are forced to integrate. It's a, it's a way to force people to integrate and have, you know, neighbors that are just not, not your own kind.Um, and that's how they've created this like national identity that's very strong.

Joe Rogan 52:49 That's interesting because everybody would want that, but they wouldn't want it engineered.

Melissa Chen 52:56 Correct.

Joe Rogan 52:57 You know what I'm saying?

Melissa Chen 52:58 Exactly. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 52:58 It's like everybody would love if the country, if all of our neighborhoods were integrated and everybody just got along with everybody. I think ... I've always felt like that's one of the things that New York has a, a large advantage over Los Angeles, is interaction. People are constantly on the subway and walking on the streets with everybody.

Melissa Chen 53:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:15 Of all different classes.

Melissa Chen 53:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:16 All different backgrounds. And I think that's really good.

Melissa Chen 53:20 I think it's good too.

Joe Rogan 53:21 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 53:21 It's the contact hypothesis, right?

Joe Rogan 53:23 Yes.

Melissa Chen 53:23 Like, I feel like if kids grew up with ... Like, if you had a Black friend growing up, like s- since you were, you know, three or four, you, you would never in your, you would never think to be racist. Like, it's just one of those things that's like early contact with different people, and it's the same with ... That's what I feel about ideas too.

Joe Rogan 53:40 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 53:40 Early contact with different ideas really helps. And, um, that's, that's ... I don't know. I've kind of devoted my, my, my life to, to that cause almost. It's just-

Joe Rogan 53:50 Do you know who Daryl Davis is?

Melissa Chen 53:51 Yes, of course.

Joe Rogan 53:52 Yeah. Okay.

Melissa Chen 53:52 I wrote about him.

Joe Rogan 53:53 Oh, did you?

Melissa Chen 53:53 One of my articles ... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:55 Um-

Melissa Chen 53:55 I was at that conference that-... that he... (laughs) We were speaking at, we were speaking at the same conference and y-... That's the conference that Daryl Davis was called neo-Nazi. Did he talk about that on your show?

Joe Rogan 54:05 That someone called him a neo-Nazi?

Melissa Chen 54:08 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:10 How do they... How?

Melissa Chen 54:12 Because-

Joe Rogan 54:13 Let me explain to people who he is if you didn't listen to the podcast that I did with him.

Melissa Chen 54:16 Yep.

Joe Rogan 54:16 Daryl Davis is a musician and he, uh, was doing some shows at this country western bar and met some people from the Klan. And through just communicating with them and being friendly with them over a period of many months, he got them to quit. They quit the Klan on their own. He didn't even request it. And then, over the course of several years, he's gotten more than 200 people to leave the Klan, leave neo-Nazi organizations and he, he, they give him their robes-

Melissa Chen 54:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:44 ... and their flags and he brought them all in here and-

Melissa Chen 54:47 Oh my God.

Joe Rogan 54:47 He's a inspirational human being.

Melissa Chen 54:49 Very much so.

Joe Rogan 54:49 But he essentially was reinforcing what you were saying, that these people were never around anyone. Like, one of the guys that he met initially was saying, "I've never had a bl- a drink with a Black man before." And he's like, "How is that possible?" And he's like, uh, "I'm in the Klan." And he's like, "I've never, I've never had a drink with a Black man." And so he's like, "This is the first time I'm ever having a drink with a Black man," and they were, like, making this big deal out of it. And then eventually, Daryl was going to his house and, and eating dinner with him and hanging out with him and then, and then the guy's like, "I can't do this anymore." Like, "Why am I in the Klan?" And he quit.

Melissa Chen 55:23 Wow.

Joe Rogan 55:24 And he quit just from Daryl being this really friendly, articulate, brilliant guy who clearly didn't fit their narrative of what they thought their, their racist depiction of what a, a Black man is.

Melissa Chen 55:39 Right. Right. So the incident that happened was, uh, this group called, uh, Mythicists Milwaukee had organized a conference. It was one of those-

Joe Rogan 55:48 What had it called Milwa- what?

Melissa Chen 55:49 Mythicists.

Joe Rogan 55:50 Mythicists?

Melissa Chen 55:50 Yeah. That was the name of the group. But they, they were kind of like a secular... So the Mythicists believe that Jesus Christ was a, like, He didn't really exist as a historical figure. That's what a Mythicist is. But in any case, it, it is, it's, it's a secular group that, that put on a conference and they've been doing that for years. Um, and they had, alongside, you know, s- people like Sargon of Akkad, you know, Count Dracula, the guy who taught his pug to do the salute.

Joe Rogan 56:19 The Hitler thing?

Melissa Chen 56:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:20 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 56:20 So these people all came for, for a conference and so was Daryl Davis and, you know, it was, it was a good... It was a bunch of people, but on, on the spe- on, on, on the political spectrum basically. And it was about promoting discourse, civil dialogue, that, that kind of thing. Um, Andy Ngo was there as well. So (sighs) basically 'cause, you know, um, af-... When the conference was happening and, and, and Antifa kind of found out about it, they, uh, started protesting the conference. They, they called the, the con- the venue to basically, you know, get it canceled. Um, they said it was a neo-Nazi rally, Klan rally. Ironically, you know, (sighs) the greatest irony was that, that Daryl Davis was there and he got tainted as well. So I started calling this the political one-drop rule, where it's like kind of what happened to you. If you are associating or talking to somebody that... or, or just a whole range of people, like normal distribution of people, you will be tainted by the most right-wing person-

Joe Rogan 57:18 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 57:18 ... that you're in orbit with. That's just how it goes.

Joe Rogan 57:21 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 57:21 And that's what happened to Daryl. So when we w-... Had the after-party to the conference, Antifa was gathered outside the bar, the Pitman, New Jersey people, 'cause Tim Pool was there too, and the Pitman, New Jersey people had a... Police had to station themselves outside of the bar and, um, you know, they were kind of protecting this event. It wa-... It's, it's ridiculous because, you know, yes, you might find Sargon's politics objectionable, but w- w- why is everybody who's associated, you know, with the conference also lumped in with this? And why is the response that this needs police protection? It's just, we're just talking about it. It doesn't make any sense.

Joe Rogan 58:00 No. This desire to shut down speech is very dangerous and it's very stupid and it's childish and it's this thing that it gets... It, it, it just gets reinforced in that culture, the, this, uh, you know, the culture of either Antifa or people that support Antifa. They don't understand the consequences of shutting down speech.

Melissa Chen 58:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 58:18 You think that you're just gonna shut down speech and deplatform people that have marginally offensive views? And the problem with that is, first of all, you close the door for them to be influenced in a positive way or for other people to learn from them being influenced in a positive way.

Melissa Chen 58:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 58:33 And second of all, the way to shut down ideas is not stop the person from talking. It's to combat those ideas with better ideas and then everyone around them gets to see the discourse. W- when you have these debates online and people discuss these things online, it benefits millions of people.

Melissa Chen 58:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:52 When you shut that down, it benefits nobody but your cause and your cause is probably incorrect. Like, your, your ideas are probably wrong. And in the case of Daryl Davis, you're definitely wrong. He's not a Nazi. So if you shot, shutting that down and saying-

Melissa Chen 59:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:05 ... "These people are Nazis," well, you're wrong and you're censoring people that are trying to get to the bottom of things. And getting to the bottom of things, I mean, discussing things and trying to figure out tenable solutions or a more comfortable middle ground, that takes forever. This is not like... You know, you have Christina Hoff Sommers and she has this discussion and, and, and they pull fire alarms and, and yell-

Melissa Chen 59:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:28 ... that she's a Nazi. Like, she's a feminist. Like, you're, you guys are crazy. Like, this... Everyone has to comply with woke ideology 100% with no deviance whatsoever and everyone has to take an impossible-to-pass purity test. It's, it's... This is a dumb way-

Melissa Chen 59:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:46 ... to communicate.

Melissa Chen 59:47 But you ever notice something too? It's, it's always that it's... Why is the concern always that if we have this battle of ideas that the person would shift to the right?

Joe Rogan 59:57 Yes.

Melissa Chen 59:57 Why is it... Why are you not concerned about the other way, right? It's, it's kind of, like, reminds me of, like... 'Cause I grew up pretty evangelical, my mom was very religious, it was that she tried to-... t- it's that, okay, if you're, if you're a good Christian, you might get corrupted by bad ideas, so we have to ban... I don't know like Harry Potter books are banned in my household. It's like we had to ban all these-

Joe Rogan 1:00:17 LOL.

Melissa Chen 1:00:18 (laughs) Because it, it encouraged witchcraft, so I wasn't allowed to celebrate Halloween.

Joe Rogan 1:00:22 (laughs)

Melissa Chen 1:00:22 You know.

Joe Rogan 1:00:23 Encouraged witchcraft? Wow, that's heavy.

Melissa Chen 1:00:25 Yeah, yeah. It's pagan stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 That's heavy.

Melissa Chen 1:00:26 It's satanic. But, but that's what I mean. This is like, this is satanic, this is evil, and it, it has taken on this religious dimension-

Joe Rogan 1:00:34 Mm-hmm.

Melissa Chen 1:00:34 ... this liturgical dimension because it's, well, they're always so concerned that the corruption is just going, like they're gonna drift to the right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:41 Of course.

Melissa Chen 1:00:41 They're never concerned that, that somebody might be convinced by the arguments and go to the left. Why? I don't get that.

Joe Rogan 1:00:47 Well, the drifting to the left, first of all, they think would be a good thing. The problem is-

Melissa Chen 1:00:52 But why don't they think it would happen?

Joe Rogan 1:00:54 Oh, well, they don't worry about it. They're not worried that someone would drift to the left. You mean by looking at someone's offensive views and that they would be more likely to drift to the left? Is that what you mean?

Melissa Chen 1:01:03 That like... Okay, it's like let's say we expose everybody to all ideas.

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 Right.

Melissa Chen 1:01:08 Why are we so concerned that, that the individual, that they're, you know, the, the target I guess would be, would be shifted right and not shifted left if-

Joe Rogan 1:01:16 Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah.

Melissa Chen 1:01:17 ... if there's an equal.

Joe Rogan 1:01:18 I think it's they have an infantile perspective on ideas and they're worried about people being indoctrinated. They're worried about... What they're not worried... Look, if you, if you have someone talking and this, this person is preaching some rid- ridiculous thing and someone starts becoming indoctrinated and gravitates towards that, the real problem is that these people that are being indoctrinated are gullible and they're foolish. That's the real problem. And in your eyes, they're l- they're going in the incorrect way.

Melissa Chen 1:01:49 So it's infantilizing.

Joe Rogan 1:01:50 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 1:01:50 Yeah, it's actually patronizing.

Joe Rogan 1:01:52 It is patronizing.

Melissa Chen 1:01:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:53 Yes.

Melissa Chen 1:01:54 I think that's, that's what I couldn't stand about it.

Joe Rogan 1:01:56 You, those people are dumber than you, you're smarter, you know better, you need to stop these people from being tricked-

Melissa Chen 1:02:04 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:02:04 ... into this right-wing ideology. I mean, I've, I've heard intelligent people make this conversation about other intelligent people that disagree with them, like Ben Shapiro. That like Ben Shapiro should be deplatformed because Ben Shapiro is indoctrinating people towards right-wing ideology by having these salient points and articulate sentences and th- these, these rants that he goes on are... He speaks very fast.

Melissa Chen 1:02:31 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:31 He's got a great grasp of the English language and it's very compelling.

Melissa Chen 1:02:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:34 And the idea is that (bangs table) he's indoctrinating young people. Well, no, he's speaking with passion. W- I don't agree with him on a lot of things-

Melissa Chen 1:02:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:44 ... but I, I f- certainly agree with his right to express himself and he's not convincing me. W- who is he convincing? Like when he talks... When Ben Shapiro... Here's a, here's an area where we deeply disagree: gay people. He thinks it sh- it's immoral.

Melissa Chen 1:02:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:59 He thinks he would never go to a gay person's wedding. He wouldn't have, uh, he wouldn't even go to the celebration, the afterparty of a gay wedding.

Melissa Chen 1:03:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:03:08 And I'm like, well this is, uh, all for rel- religious reasons.

Melissa Chen 1:03:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:03:12 I'm like that, that's r- I think that's ridiculous. That's not convincing me. So who is it convincing? Is it convincing someone that's a baby? Are, are you d- dealing with children or are we dealing with uneducated people? Are we dealing with people that don't have positive influences?

Melissa Chen 1:03:26 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:03:26 What's wrong with letting him express these ideas?

Melissa Chen 1:03:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:03:29 These ideas are hot... I mean, he and I had like a long conversation about it on the podcast where I, I was like, "I think it's ridiculous." Like, what do you care? My, my perspective is what do you care, and his perspective is he couldn't support that because of religious reasons. So then we go deep into the hole with why.

Melissa Chen 1:03:45 Moral objections, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:46 Yeah. But, and what are these religious reasons? Like how deep do you go with this? Do you think Jesus came back from the dead? Like he doesn't. He's Jewish, it's a different perspective.

Melissa Chen 1:03:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:03:53 But do you think, you know, th- th- there's... Do you really think that God thinks that homosexuality is some sort of a carnal sin and, and, and terrible? If so, God made everything, why did he make homosexuals? Please explain that. What, what kind of a weirdo is God-

Melissa Chen 1:04:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:11 ... that he gives people this urge to be gay but then he tells them, "Fight that urge," and then he makes this comparison to... that it's like murder. Sometimes you wanna murder people. I'm like, okay. (inhales) I think that's different because you don't wanna murder people all day every day. I know a lot of gay dudes who wanna fuck dudes all the time.

Melissa Chen 1:04:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:28 It's like (laughs) it's... God did a crazy thing to their system. And for you to believe in God but have a problem with that, to me, is ridiculous. So now we're banking on these really ancient words-

Melissa Chen 1:04:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:41 ... that were written by people with no grasp of science, no understanding of biology, no understanding of the culture of the world, no understanding of the, the, the sheer number of these people and taking into perspective-

Melissa Chen 1:04:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:51 ... that, you know, you're literally dealing with I don't know what percentage of the population is gay, but it's a significant percentage. So you're saying all of them are frying in hell. Do you know how dumb that is? That's really fucking dumb. Like if they're your neighbors and they're just happy and loving, what do you care? The goal should be a cohesive society where people are comfortable being around each other with all their differences and just nice.

Melissa Chen 1:05:13 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:05:13 People just nice to each other.

Melissa Chen 1:05:14 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:05:14 Like it doesn't matter if you're gay or straight or trans or Black or white or Asian or fucking whatever. It doesn't, it shouldn't matter. The individual should matter and the way we interact with each other, that should matter. And we have to take into consideration that if you're gonna live your life by these things that were written down thousands of years ago before people had any of these understandings of all the subtle nuances of humanity and all the differences that people have and, and, and now the biological understandings of why they have these differences, well you're dealing with ignorance. You're, you're-

Melissa Chen 1:05:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:45 ... you're, you're applying these ancient ignorant rules to a modern world where we have a, an- a vastly expanded understanding of human beings.

Melissa Chen 1:05:56 Right. But to Ben's credit, I mean, he's friends with Dave. He doesn't let that-

Joe Rogan 1:05:59 Sort of.

Melissa Chen 1:06:00 He, he, he, he doesn't-

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 But he wouldn't go to his wedding.

Melissa Chen 1:06:01 Yeah, but he says he's gonna... He, you know, he's-

Joe Rogan 1:06:03 I'd cut him off.

Melissa Chen 1:06:04 (laughs) Right.

Joe Rogan 1:06:05 If I invited him to my wedding, he's like, "I can't. You're a sinner." Be like, "Fuck off."

Melissa Chen 1:06:09 But you know what? A lot of us who have parents who are-... super Christian.

Joe Rogan 1:06:13 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 1:06:13 Like I, I understand. Like my, my, at the end of the day, you know where that's coming from? She ... My sister's gay. And, and-

Joe Rogan 1:06:20 Uh-oh.

Melissa Chen 1:06:20 ... at first, she didn't, she didn't accept that. And, and the reason for that was that it was coming from a good place. Like for her, it was, "I don't want my daughter to go to hell."

Joe Rogan 1:06:30 Dude.

Melissa Chen 1:06:30 So it's like, it's like, it's again, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right?

Joe Rogan 1:06:34 (sighs)

Melissa Chen 1:06:34 And so, so the only reason she was objecting to it was because of this belief that she's gonna end up burning in hell. So it was coming from-

Joe Rogan 1:06:40 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 1:06:40 ... ironically a place of love.

Joe Rogan 1:06:42 Right.

Melissa Chen 1:06:42 Um, it's judgey, yes, and, and it's based on Bronze Age ideology.

Joe Rogan 1:06:47 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 1:06:48 But (sighs) but, you know, I, I don't think that, that either of us ever doubted that she loved her.

Joe Rogan 1:06:52 Right.

Melissa Chen 1:06:53 And it's ... So I kinda understand where Ben comes from in, in that sense, even though I, (exhales loudly) I, you know, it makes me angry. Like I, you know, reject all that stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:07:02 It's just silly. And it ... What's interesting is he's so smart.

Melissa Chen 1:07:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:06 And when he talks about that, it's all of a sudden you see him stammering and he gets weird.

Melissa Chen 1:07:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 'Cause he knows it's nonsense. But he's such-

Melissa Chen 1:07:13 I don't know if he knows. I wouldn't-

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 He's got to know.

Melissa Chen 1:07:15 ... I wouldn't embrace it.

Joe Rogan 1:07:15 He's got to know. He's just deep ... He's just balls deep in his religion.

Melissa Chen 1:07:19 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:19 Which is ... I like the guy a lot, I really do, and I've gotten so much shit for saying that I like the guy. You know, I, I-

Melissa Chen 1:07:25 No, we need more of that.

Joe Rogan 1:07:26 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 1:07:26 We need more of the hate the, you know, hate the sin, not the sinner. And, and-

Joe Rogan 1:07:29 But it's-

Melissa Chen 1:07:29 ... practice on both sides.

Joe Rogan 1:07:30 But I think he and I only ha- ... We, we disagree on some issues and some political issues, but he's a decent person. He's a nice person. He's very friendly. He's funny. I enjoy his company a lot. I like Ben Shapiro.

Melissa Chen 1:07:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:44 I really do. And I think he's a brilliant guy.

Melissa Chen 1:07:46 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:47 I mean, the, the gay thing is the biggest one, 'cause to me, that's the dumbest one. Like th- my, my, my ... It always comes back to, why do you care? That's all it is to me. Like why do you care? I don't care. Like why do you care if someone's gay?

Melissa Chen 1:08:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:08:01 Like if it, if- does it affect you? How can it? How can it affect you?

Melissa Chen 1:08:06 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:08:06 Are you ... Do you have your fingers in everybody's business? Like it's crazy.

Melissa Chen 1:08:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:09 Doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, it's-

Melissa Chen 1:08:11 I mean, that was the argument against, uh, gay marriage. Like why-

Joe Rogan 1:08:13 Yes.

Melissa Chen 1:08:13 ... why does it affect your heterosexual marriage?

Joe Rogan 1:08:15 Exactly, it shouldn't. Well, the sanctity of marriage, mah, mah, mah, mah, mah.

Melissa Chen 1:08:19 Yeah. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:08:19 It's so dumb. The sanctity of marriage. How about Vegas? You could go to a fucking drive through, you can get a, you can get married-

Melissa Chen 1:08:25 Like Lady Gaga.

Joe Rogan 1:08:25 ... at a drive through movie theater.

Melissa Chen 1:08:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:27 I mean, that's really what it's like.

Melissa Chen 1:08:29 Right, exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:08:30 You can get married anywhere. That's so dumb, so, so ridiculous. I, I just, I feel like at this stage of civilization, that we- there's- that we have to figure out what stuff we're gonna abandon from the old days and what stuff we're gonna keep. And th- we've already abandoned a lot of things, right? In, in Christianity, if you leave, they don't kill you anymore. You know?

Melissa Chen 1:08:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:08:53 We're not ... Yeah, this ... They, they got rid of some of the things during the Enlightenment.

Melissa Chen 1:08:57 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:08:57 Yeah. They changed a lot of the aspects of Christianity that we associate today with more repressive religions.

Melissa Chen 1:09:04 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:09:04 Yeah. That used to be Christianity.

Melissa Chen 1:09:06 You know, I am, I'm a huge fan of the Enlight- the Enlightenment in general. Um, in fact, the, you know, Steven Pinker wrote that book, Enlightenment Now. That was the first book we chose to translate into Arabic.

Joe Rogan 1:09:17 Oh.

Melissa Chen 1:09:17 And then it became the, um ... Like recently, there were a lot of protests in the Middle East and we started distributing that book. Like it, it was actually ... Somebo- the person who was coordinating some of the protests there was telling us, "We want to get this book out to, to the people, because a lot of these youths, like they're, they're really jaded by, by theo- theocrats in the region, by authoritarianism."

Joe Rogan 1:09:38 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 1:09:38 "And, and they're like, 'You know what? You know what our religion had never gone through? Not the Reformation, we don't want the Reformation, we want the Enlightenment.'" Because Enlightenment was what constrained Christianity, in a way.

Joe Rogan 1:09:48 Yes.

Melissa Chen 1:09:49 Um, and it l- and it really, if you look at one of the greatest intellectual achievements of, of Europe, it came outta there, right? Um, this idea of the social contract, uh, of, of, you know, eroding monarchy, absolute monarchy, um, separating church and state. All these wonderful invent- like in- innovations and ideas came out of the Enlightenment. And it was, uh, you know, promoted this idea of like maybe people should be free to have their own conscience and think differently. Um, and that's something that, that, um, really, really is needed in, in, in, in the Middle East.

Joe Rogan 1:10:24 Well, I think the way that your organization is going about it is probably the best way to get books translated, get ideas translated to people that maybe didn't, weren't ever, uh, exposed to these concepts before.

Melissa Chen 1:10:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:10:37 And maybe that'll help. (sighs)

Melissa Chen 1:10:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:40 It's just ...

Melissa Chen 1:10:41 But th- that's the thing. So, so you know, plu- uh, pluralism, when I, I see that as, as, you know, that's what we're doing, promoting pluralism, this idea that you can have all these competing narratives. And so you ask me what my cult- you know, like when I came to America, like how, what was my, my experiences moving here. Um, yes, it was very freeing and liberating because I, I felt like I went to a place that, that was pluralistic, that tolerated all the weirdos. Um, and then maybe in like 2014, you know, things started to change on, at least on campus, when s- you know, pluralism wasn't tolerated. You started-

Joe Rogan 1:11:16 Right.

Melissa Chen 1:11:16 ... to see the rise of, of this, uh, sort of more intolerant, um ... You, you have to, you know, kind of kowtow to this, uh, intersectional- intersectionality and critical race theory.

Joe Rogan 1:11:28 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 1:11:28 Um, so that was an interesting experience and, and I think, um, was ultimately very detrimental to the r- to the, the actual project of, of liberalism. It's, it's counter- it's, you know, working against that.

Joe Rogan 1:11:40 Exactly. Yeah, that's, that's the really frustrating part of it.

Melissa Chen 1:11:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:44 Like what you're claiming to be preaching, your ideology is actually working against it ultimately behind the scenes, and you just can't seem to see the pattern-

Melissa Chen 1:11:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:11:54 ... where it's going. You can't stop people from discussing things and say that you support free speech.

Melissa Chen 1:11:58 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:11:58 That's not free speech. You know? And, uh, one of my favorite things with Ben, with Ben Shapiro, is watching him talk to those people. He is one of the best at taking questions and just decimating these, uh, social justice warriors. Go da- go and watch Ben Shapiro-

Melissa Chen 1:12:15 Destroy libtards.

Joe Rogan 1:12:15 ... versus ... (laughs)

Melissa Chen 1:12:16 I know, I s- like that's just so-

Joe Rogan 1:12:18 He's so good at it though.

Melissa Chen 1:12:19 I know, but I just hate the way they're captioned. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:12:21 Well, the captions are ter-

Melissa Chen 1:12:22 It's so funny.

Joe Rogan 1:12:22 It's very clickbaiting and it's-

Melissa Chen 1:12:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:24 ... not him. He doesn't make those captions.

Melissa Chen 1:12:25 I know, I know.

Joe Rogan 1:12:25 It's his supporters. But goddamn, is he good at it. He's a-

Melissa Chen 1:12:28 I secretly laugh at it.

Joe Rogan 1:12:29 ... he's a master.

Melissa Chen 1:12:29 I know it's kind of bad for our discourse.

Joe Rogan 1:12:32 I don't secretly. I do it right out, right out in the open. He's great at it, because he's, you know, he's logical and v- very intelligent. So when these kids are saying these things that, you know, they just learned last month in their gender studies class and they're, they're yelling it at him and he breaks it down...It's just one of my favorite things. But tha- those kind of discussions are important, first of all so that these kids realize that, hey, there is this brilliant right-wing guy that can decimate your argument really quickly. He talks quickly too.

Melissa Chen 1:13:02 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:02 You know (laughs) , and it's, it's, you know, and he'll smash your argument. He's very smart. And so you need to know that your argument sucks. It's like having bad kung fu. You know, you're running around the world thinking you're gonna kick everybody's ass 'cause you've never really been tested.

Melissa Chen 1:13:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:13:15 And everybody who you're training with says your kung fu's amazing. And then you go into a gym where someone doesn't believe in your kung fu and fucks you up, and you go, "Damn, that's important. I needed to know."

Melissa Chen 1:13:25 That's one of the culture shock things for me when I first moved to America. It was that, you know, I think a lot of American kids were told, like participation trophy culture.

Joe Rogan 1:13:33 Yes.

Melissa Chen 1:13:33 A lot of them were told that they were the best, like, you know, like Tommy, like you are, you know, there's-

Joe Rogan 1:13:38 "Tommy, you're amazing."

Melissa Chen 1:13:38 ... nothing you can do. Yeah. "You're just, like, so amazing." And I'm like, do these people... It's like American Idol. You know, we used to get the, uh, the seasons in Singapore too and it's like, these people can't sing. And that's actually why they're putting them on. They're awful.

Joe Rogan 1:13:53 Yeah.

Melissa Chen 1:13:53 And nobody told them, like, are you telling me that like, the- they've been telling their friends, "Oh, I'm practicing. I'm going on American Idol." Did nobody tell them that, "Bro, like you should just be singing in the shower." Nobody told them.

Joe Rogan 1:14:05 Well, there's a couple things going on. First of all, some of those people are trolls. They're going on there, they know they suck, and they're going on because they're gonna get on TV, and the best way to get on TV is actually to suck.

Melissa Chen 1:14:15 But okay, there's no, there's no concept-

Joe Rogan 1:14:17 American Idol, if you don't have any talent-

Melissa Chen 1:14:17 ... of shame? Like...

Joe Rogan 1:14:18 They wanna do it. They wanna be on TV. Look, I used to host Fear Factor. Don't talk to me about shame. Okay. I understand.

Melissa Chen 1:14:24 But there's no shame in that.

Joe Rogan 1:14:26 People just wanna be on television.

Melissa Chen 1:14:26 There's no shame in attempting to eat bull testicles. Actually, I think-

Joe Rogan 1:14:28 Right.

Melissa Chen 1:14:28 ... that's heroic.

Joe Rogan 1:14:30 That's definitely not heroic. (laughs)

Melissa Chen 1:14:31 And it's now a show on Food Network, right? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:34 Well, bull testicles are actually a common food.

Melissa Chen 1:14:37 Yeah, yeah.