Skip to content
The Joe Rogan ExperienceThe Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan Experience #1573 - Matthew Yglesias

Journalist Matthew Yglesias writes about politics and economic policy at Vox.com, a site he co-founded, and also co-hosts The Weeds: a regular podcast devoted to current events. Yglesias is also the author of two books, the most recent of which is One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger.

Joe RoganhostMatthew Yglesiasguest
Jun 27, 20243h 8mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:02 – 1:40

    Why “One Billion Americans”: population growth as a strategy vs. China and political stagnation

    1. NA

      (drum music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) Um, since we don't, we don't have, we don't record an intro for Spotify anymore, so-

    4. MY

      Okay.

    5. JR

      ... tell me who you are and what you do.

    6. MY

      I'm Matthew Yglesias. I'm the host of The, The Weeds podcast, the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm also the author of The Slow Boring Newsletter, and a book, One Billion Americans.

    7. JR

      And that's what I wanna talk to you about. Pull the sucker up so it's, like, one fist away from your face.

    8. MY

      All right.

    9. JR

      There you go. Perfect.

    10. MY

      All right, I'm closer.

    11. JR

      Um, One Billion Americans.

    12. MY

      It's a lot.

    13. JR

      So explain, if you could, um, give us the CliffsNotes of what the concept of One Billion Americans is.

    14. MY

      Okay. So the concept is that there should be a billion Americans. Um, I like to keep it simple. No, so, so here's the idea, right? So, uh, we got China. It's growing out there. There's a lot of concern, you know, internationally about America's role in the world. We've also got a lot of polarization in our politics, a lot of sort of gridlock, deadlock, um, kind of stagnation and, and infighting. And I, I'm a politics guy. I live in DC, cover Congress. I wanted to write a book that kind of elevates beyond that, thinks about America's role in the world and says the way we are gonna meet this challenge of rising international competition is the way we became such a great power historically, and that's by growing our population with more openness to immigrants, doing more to support parents and young families, and then everything that comes downstream from that, you know, where are people gonna live, how are we gonna get around, how are we gonna solve those problems.

  2. 1:40 – 6:37

    Pushback from right and left: immigration skepticism and “eco-degrowth” fears

    1. JR

      Um, how much pushback have you gotten from this idea? 'Cause it seems like a lot of people think that overpopulation is a giant problem, and then when you say, "We should triple plus the amount of people in the United States if we want to compete with the rest of the world," I would imagine a lot of people are like, "What are you smoking, Matthew Yglesias?"

    2. MY

      No, the, I mean, the book's really good, so everyone-

    3. JR

      (laughs)

    4. MY

      ... who reads it is just like, "Oh, you convinced me." And there's-

    5. JR

      At least you're humble.

    6. MY

      ... there's, there's no pushback at all. Um, no, uh, yes. Uh, there is concern about overpopulation. That's something that... You know, so there's people from the right. They don't like immigrants. They don't like immigration. Uh, they-

    7. JR

      Why is that?

    8. MY

      ... they see it through that lens.

    9. JR

      Let's, let's start with that.

    10. MY

      Well-

    11. JR

      Because this is a country-

    12. MY

      ... tell me.

    13. JR

      ... of immigrants. It's a, it's a very strange thing to have a country that is entirely comprised of people who came from somewhere else other than Native Americans. Right? Entirely comprised. And yet, there's a giant population that doesn't like immigrants.

    14. MY

      Yeah, I mean, look. Some of it's a question of taste. You know, people like different places. People like different kinds of things. I think the best parts of America are places that have a lot of people from different places. To me-

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. MY

      ... you know, whether that's, that's Austin, where we are, New York, where I'm from, it's like, it's cool. Like, that's America at its best. Some people don't like it. Uh, there's also the legality question though, right? Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, we built up a substantial group of people who were living here illegally. Uh, I'm for, you know, a-

    17. JR

      It started in the '80s? Is that when it really started?

    18. MY

      Yeah, I mean, that's when it really took off, uh-

    19. JR

      Was it because the regulations were made, made more stringent?

    20. MY

      Well, so what happened was in 1996, uh, they, they changed the law. They s- IRIRA is the acronym for it. And they made it a lot harder for people who had come here without papers to, quote unquote, "get legal." So even if you put roots down, even if you were married to an American citizen, there was no way to obtain legal status. They also made it harder to cross the border. So what used to be people would come over, they'd pick vegetables in California for a season, and then they'd just go back, right? They'd go back to Mexico, take their money with them, get a nice house. They made it harder to cross the border so people would stay. And people who stayed had no way to get a legal status here. So unauthorized population, it built up, it built up, it built up. There's a movement on one side to say, "Well, we should create a path to citizenship for those people." Most of them, they're living here peacefully. They're working hard. They're not doing anything. That, that's where I stand. But there's people who say, "Look, you know, they broke the rules. We, we've got to be harsh." So we've been arguing about that unauthorized immigration so viciously. And I think we've lost sight of the fact that, you know, we can just create legal pathways for people to come. You know, some people will say, "Well, my, my grandparents, my parents," whoever, "they, they came the right way. They, they didn't wanna be illegal."

    21. JR

      Yeah, but it was easy then.

    22. MY

      Exactly.

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. MY

      And it, and it's, uh, totally true. So my great-grandparents, they came to this country at a time when there was no restriction on people-

    25. JR

      Yeah, my grandparents as well. They just came over from Italy, and it was-

    26. MY

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      ... not that hard.

    28. MY

      So good for them, right?

    29. JR

      Yeah.

    30. MY

      And so, like, yes, like, we should have a legal process for people to come. We can have rules, you know, try to make sure you're... Like say, y- you should be working age, right? You should come here, get a job, pay taxes. You can't just, like, come across and collect Social Security.

  3. 6:37 – 13:42

    Market power and censorship: why China can strong-arm Hollywood and the NBA

    1. JR

      What's the benefit of having all those people though?

    2. MY

      Uh, so two benefits, right? So one, I think internationally, you know, the United States has been like the number one country for 100 years, give or take, right? Uh, we're the, the, the biggest dog out there, you know, no... everybody knows better than to mess with us. And we're losing that status, you know? We're losing that status economically to China. They're doing more stuff like, you know, telling NBA coaches like what they can tweet, what they can't tweet. They're censoring Hollywood movies because they've got the number one market out there. You can get into scarier stuff eventually, you know, South China Sea, naval battles. I'm not like a war guy, but y- you don't want that. I think, I think we wanna stay number one and growth has been important to that historically, right? Like, why is the United States a big deal country and Canada is like, you know, like our cute little brother? And it's because a lot of people live here. You know, Canada's nice, but there's no people, no real strength there. Second, I think it'll make us a more prosperous country. Uh, what we do as modern day Americans is we do stuff for each other, right? Whether that's we make show, we write books, uh, we, we teach in schools, we run restaurants. We're doing services to each other and you get more prosperity when you have more people and more ability to sort of have those interactions.

    3. JR

      When you're talking about China and the NBA and Hollywood movies, a lot of people think of those things, those... the interactions that Hollywood has, that... and the NBA has with China as being insidious.

    4. MY

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      They don't, they don't think it's a good thing at all that China has that kind of an influence and they also think it's embarrassing. Like, a lot of people think that it's embarrassing for the NBA to... when the negative tweets, uh, when they're in support of Hong Kong and then, uh, all of a sudden there was some pushback and the NBA was removed from viewership-

    6. MY

      Mm-hmm.

    7. JR

      ... in China, and there was, uh, a lot of sponsorships being pulled and it became a giant issue. And then all of a sudden you saw the NBA kind of backtrack and kind of kowtow and a lot of people found that to be pretty disgusting. We don't want the United States to ever be a country that's doing that to China, right? If China has a bunch of, I don't know what they're really into over there, ping pong players?

    8. MY

      (laughs)

    9. JR

      Like, what's their, what's their primary sport?

    10. MY

      I don't know.

    11. JR

      They have a lot of basketball players over there.

    12. MY

      Basketball. They like basketball.

    13. JR

      So imagine if Chinese basketball becomes super popular in the United States and then, uh, the Chinese basketball players in the United States start talking shit about how Apple uses slave labor.

    14. MY

      Mm-hmm.

    15. JR

      And, uh, we go, "Hey, hey watch your fucking mouth, bro. We won't, we won't pay for your Chinese basketball anymore." And then all of a sudden China backs off. Like, we would think of that as being pretty gross by the United States of ignoring some human rights violations or, or trying to whitewash them and trying to economically attack another country. So like, the saying that it's a positive that China has all these people and using as an example the fact they strong-arm Hollywood and they strong-arm the NBA, a lot of people think that's moving in the wrong direction, me included. Like, I don't want that.

    16. MY

      Well, no, I, I don't think it's positive. I'm saying-

    17. JR

      Right.

    18. MY

      ... we need to be in a position to level the playing field.

    19. JR

      But is that-

    20. NA

      Right.

    21. JR

      ... leveling the playing field or will we just... Look, we're... Corporations have a, a giant problem with infinite growth, right?

    22. MY

      Yep.

    23. JR

      This is a thing that seems completely totally preposterous, but it's the norm and the standard in the business world. You, you want your growth to increase every year no matter what and God knows where that goes.

    24. MY

      (laughs)

    25. JR

      I'm not a mathematician or an economist, but if you f- you f- extrapolate and keep going with that, it leads to preposterous outcomes, right?

    26. MY

      Mm-hmm.

    27. JR

      That's what people would be worried about tenfold if there's a billion people here. They'd be like, "Oh my God, it would be even more ruthless and more cutthroat and, and more like, maybe more competitive with the rest of the world?" But in what way?

    28. MY

      Well, so here, let- let's talk about the China thing.

    29. JR

      Okay.

    30. MY

      Right? So the NBA is under China's thumb.

  4. 13:42 – 19:03

    Crowding vs. density: traffic, housing supply, zoning, and why Texas grows

    1. JR

      Well, one of the things that I think, and one of the things that I've said about, uh, Austin in particular is that I love the fact that there's friendly people, and I think one of the reasons why they're friendly is there's not that many of 'em.

    2. MY

      Hmm.

    3. JR

      They value people more. I think people get devalued when you get high population densities. I'm not saying that it has to be like Los Angeles in order to reach three billion, or a billion people in this country, rather.

    4. MY

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      I don't think it does, right? It's not like you're trying to turn the whole country into Los Angeles.

    6. MY

      No.

    7. JR

      But there's a problem with Los Angeles, and I think one of the problems with Los Angeles is there's an insane amount of people jammed into one area.

    8. MY

      Hmm.

    9. JR

      And when you're on the highway, like if you drive and you have to go to Orange County and you're on the 405-

    10. MY

      (laughs)

    11. JR

      ... you just want Godzilla to come out of the ocean and just start eating cars. You're like, "This is fucking ridiculous."

    12. MY

      (laughs)

    13. JR

      There's so many people. And it never ends. It's like every time you wanna go ... If you wanna go to Orange County, so if you wanna go to ... You wanna go to Disneyland or something like that-

    14. MY

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      ... and take your family, you gotta leave hours earlier. Hours earlier than you think you need to. You wanna be there by 5:00 PM? Oh, Christ. You gotta leave at like 2:00. You gotta leave maybe at 1:30 if you wanna be safe, leave at 1:30. And you'll be stuck in fucking insane traffic and never-ending road construction, and it never ends. And a lot of people get ... They get real testy when there's that many people. And this has been recreated in rat population density studies. I'm sure you've probably gotten into some of this when you started looking at populations-

    16. MY

      Well, the rats don't really drive though.

    17. JR

      They don't. But they- it does, when, when they have these rat population density studies, it does mimic what happens in big cities in terms of violence, in terms of mental illness. Like, when you have a certain amount of rats in a large containment ... You, you know about all this, right?

    18. MY

      Yeah, I, I got it, rats, yeah.

    19. JR

      Yeah.

    20. MY

      (laughs)

    21. JR

      But if you ever-

    22. MY

      I have, yeah, yeah.

    23. JR

      R- read or r- read, read it rather?

    24. MY

      I have.

    25. JR

      Any of the stuff? Yeah.

    26. MY

      So, okay, so let, let, let's, let's distinguish a couple things, right?

    27. JR

      Okay.

    28. MY

      So, I'm not so sure about the friendliness, right? 'Cause you get into like ... I don't wanna cast aspersions but you ever been to, like, New Hampshire?

    29. JR

      Yes.

    30. MY

      Like small towns up there? People there, they're, they're kinda assholes.

  5. 19:03 – 25:06

    Patriotism, nationalism, and resisting the “white nationalism” label

    1. JR

      But-

    2. MY

      ... and having some sustainability. But, uh, uh, the other thing is that, like, we as a country need to get along with each other-

    3. JR

      Yes.

    4. MY

      ... more than we have been doing lately.

    5. JR

      For sure.

    6. MY

      And I do think that focusing on what brings us together, versus some of the other governments out there, and on the possibilities of growth, like actually helps do that. Like, I'm a, I'm a liberal person, a left of center person. Um-

    7. JR

      Me as well.

    8. MY

      But I get pushback from people, you know, quote, unquote, "on my side," just about the idea of patriotism in the book, the idea of national greatness, the idea that America should want to be number one.

    9. JR

      Right.

    10. MY

      But I think that's something that's important to a lot of people, moderate people, conservative people.

    11. JR

      I don't think it's a bad thing.

    12. MY

      It's not a bad thing.

    13. JR

      And I don't, and I don't think it has to be xenophobic either.

    14. MY

      Well, and I think it's part of inclusiveness, right? Like, what holds this country together, people with different religions, people of different ethnic backgrounds, people with different ideas, is loyalty to, you know, certain concepts, right?

    15. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. MY

      Like high-level political concepts. And it's not bad to be a little corny and, you know, wave the flag a little bit, if that's how, like, we can all be Americans together.

    17. JR

      Right.

    18. MY

      And to me, that's, that's important, you know? And I was surprised, doing some of the virtual touring on this, at how much, uh, conservative people were like, "Wow, I can't believe you wrote this book." And how much some people on the left were just skeptical of, not like the specific ideas, but of the general concept of like, wanting America to be awesome.

    19. JR

      Of n- a positive feeling about nationalism.

    20. MY

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      Yeah, nationalism, when you say even the word t- Something's happened over the last decade, where you say the word nationalism, and somehow it gets e- like, it gets equated, at least peripherally or in the neighborhood of white nationalism.

    22. MY

      Mm-hmm.

    23. JR

      It's like, it's one of those weird words. You know, like, if you say, uh, you know, "I'm a Texas chauvinist."

    24. MY

      Mm-hmm.

    25. JR

      Like, "What do you mean?"

    26. MY

      (laughs)

    27. JR

      "Do you hate women?" Like, "No, no, no, no, I just think Texas is the best."

    28. MY

      (laughs) Right.

    29. JR

      Like, people get mad at you because it's too close to male chauvinist. Like, male chauvinist-

    30. MY

      (laughs)

  6. 25:06 – 33:36

    Comedic detour: fortune cookies, turkey, backyard chickens, and coyotes

    1. MY

      You know, there's like cool stuff. I went, um, to ... In, in the suburbs of DC there's a lot of Vietnamese people, a lot of Vietnamese restaurants out there. The last time I went out to get a banh mi place, there was a, um, a Cajun, uh, Viet-Cajun crawfish broil thing, which comes from Houston. Because Vietnamese people came there, Louisiana people came to Houston.

    2. JR

      Oh.

    3. MY

      They got this fusion cuisine. Now they exported it to other Vietnamese enclaves around America.

    4. JR

      God dammit-

    5. MY

      And someday-

    6. JR

      ... Matthew, you made me hungry. That sounds fucking great.

    7. MY

      Someday someone's gonna open one of those places-

    8. JR

      Hmm.

    9. MY

      ... in Ho Chi Minh City. You know?

    10. JR

      Right, right.

    11. MY

      Like, it's gonna, it's gonna come back out. Like-

    12. JR

      Yes.

    13. MY

      ... there's, uh, I mean, uh, they, I, I went to, uh, Shanghai and I met somebody there whose idea was they were starting a business that had fortune cookies. Uh, 'cause that's, that shit's American.

    14. JR

      Right.

    15. MY

      You know? But it's cool.

    16. JR

      So fortune cookies came from America? They added it to American Chinese food?

    17. MY

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      No kidding. Well, that makes sense.

    19. MY

      It's, uh, uh, a friend of mine, Jenny Eight Lees, she wrote a book, uh, called Fortune Cookie Chronicles.

    20. JR

      You wanna talk about a-

    21. MY

      It's about, it's about Chinese food. It's really the only ... I wish I could write a book about Chinese food. Uh, but it's a fascinating subject. Fortune cookies, 100% American.

    22. JR

      It seems like an American thing. But you wanna talk about an industry that clearly has had no growth. The fortune cookie industry is stagnated.

    23. MY

      (laughs)

    24. JR

      The English is so bad, still. The fortunes aren't even fortunes. Like my fucking 10-year-old read a fortune cookie the other day. She goes, "How is this a fortune?"

    25. MY

      Well, if you made the English good, people would realize it's not Chinese.

    26. JR

      Hmm. Oh.

    27. MY

      You gotta-

    28. JR

      So it's on purpose?

    29. MY

      You gotta fake it. I don't know.

    30. JR

      Maybe you're right.

  7. 33:36 – 1:00:30

    “Canceling,” platforming, and why talking across lines still matters

    1. MY

      I'm gonna get canceled.

    2. JR

      Y- you think so?

    3. MY

      Yeah, again.

    4. JR

      Hmm. Are you really worried about that?

    5. MY

      Well, people, people are mad about you.

    6. JR

      Hmm.

    7. MY

      Me too. I don't know. I'm just saying this.

    8. JR

      People are mad. (sighs) Yeah, people are mad. They're mad about everything. They're b- they're not necessarily mad about actual content, they're mad about perceptions. They're mad about what they want you to be versus what you actually are sometimes.

    9. MY

      (laughs)

    10. JR

      You know? And then, they're also... You're dealing with, it's not a large number of people that are mad. It's a, a small number of very aggressive people that want to affect the way you do things.

    11. MY

      Mm-hmm.

    12. JR

      And wanna change the way you talk and change who you talk to and change what you do.

    13. MY

      (laughs)

    14. JR

      Yeah. It's annoying.

    15. MY

      Well, that's the thing, you know, I was, uh... So, I've been promoting a book for a while.

    16. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    17. MY

      Doing different shows, going on different things. Mostly, you know, liberal people read me, I guess. Uh, then I went on, uh, went on Ben Shapiro's show and-

    18. JR

      Do you get canceled for that?

    19. MY

      Well, I'm, you know, it's just like a lot of people yelling at me. They're like, "Why'd you go on that guy's show?" I said, "Well, it's a big show."

    20. JR

      Yeah. And you wanna-

    21. MY

      A lot of people listen to it. (laughs)

    22. JR

      You wanna have a debate with this guy-

    23. MY

      I mean-

    24. JR

      ... about some of these ideas.

    25. MY

      You wanna be... I just like, you wanna introduce yourself-

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. MY

      ... to as many people as you can. Like, you don't get to be... Like, I, I wanna sell books.

    28. JR

      Yeah.

    29. MY

      I want people to listen to my podcast.

    30. JR

      Yeah.

  8. 1:00:30 – 1:23:53

    Why cable news is broken: latency, talking points, and the loss of real conversation

    1. MY

      Well, I think it's... I, I'm, I'm not, I'm not quite technical enough to know what the problem is. But to me the issue with all kinds of Zoom things, right?

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. MY

      It's not the visual experience, it's the lags. You know, like the hardest thing for me as, as a professional talker about anything remote, you know, not just video, right? You do, um-

    4. JR

      Just latency?

    5. MY

      Yeah, the latency. It's hard, it's hard to have a conversation when you're constantly worried about the timing...... and the interruptions-

    6. JR

      When you talk, yeah.

    7. MY

      ... and how that back and forth works. It's very unnatural. And I don't know, like, if there's gonna be a VR solution for that. Like, I think that latency's a killer.

    8. JR

      The latency is a killer, but the latency is not as bad if you have headphones on, if both of you have headphones on. The problem is o- oftentimes one person has speakers and the other person is using headphones, and when the one person is talking, the way Zoom works and Skype works, it's very difficult for you to hear the other person talking while you're talking. It sort of drowns everything out.

    9. MY

      Mm-hmm.

    10. JR

      And it, it, it fucks up... I've had some brutal conversations with people-

    11. MY

      (laughs)

    12. JR

      ... where they literally don't even hear what I'm saying. Like, they're saying something wrong and I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What are you sayi-" And they just keep going. I'm like, "Hold on. Hold on. Hold on! You can't... That's not real. Like, stop."

    13. MY

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      And they're like, "Oh, Jesus." And then you realize, like, okay, they, they could barely hear me while they were talking. I can't really talk. Whereas, like, if you're talking and I'm like, "What?" And then you hear it, it's like we're in the same room. We're also wearing headphones together, which is better than even being in the same room and not having headphones on-

    15. MY

      Mm-hmm.

    16. JR

      ... because your voice in my ears, like, there's a couple times I've talked to you earlier where I realized it as I was doing it. I was like, "Oh." Like-

    17. MY

      (laughs)

    18. JR

      ... "I don't wanna do that." Like, it's just the thing of learning the rhythm of people communicating, but when, when the headphone's, your voice is as loud as my voice.

    19. MY

      Right.

    20. JR

      And it's at the same... It's right there in the ears. So it locks you in.

    21. MY

      Well, and we're, uh, you're, you're Italian? Is that-

    22. JR

      Mostly.

    23. MY

      Yeah, yeah.

    24. JR

      Yeah.

    25. MY

      And I'm, I'm Jewish mostly and, you know, New York, New Jersey and, you know, uh, it is a stereotype people are like, "Oh," but, like, we're always talking over each other at dinner-

    26. JR

      Yes.

    27. MY

      ... you know, family and my-

    28. JR

      Yes.

    29. MY

      ... my wife, she's a, she's a, a WASPy person, little more reserved and-

    30. JR

      (laughs)

Episode duration: 3:08:43

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode 8vjhgiHI1hE

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

iOSAndroidClaudeChrome