Joe Rogan Experience #1668 - Krystal & Saagar

1. 0:00 – 1:39

   Launching Breaking Points: why Krystal & Saagar went independent

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music) We're rolling. So, uh, you guys have a new show. (laughs)

   4. SESaagar Enjeti0:17

      (laughs)

   5. KBKrystal Ball0:18

      Hey, Joe. What's up?

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      I just wanna say, I told you. I knew it was gonna work.

   7. KBKrystal Ball0:22

      Yeah. You were-

   8. SESaagar Enjeti0:22

      It never would've happened without you. I-

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      I knew it was gonna work. I was like, "Why are you, like, trapped?" Yeah.

   10. KBKrystal Ball0:27

       I mean, uh, it really is actually true. We've been thinking about going independent for a while, because it's just more consistent with our values. The Hill takes money from all kinds of people-

   11. SESaagar Enjeti0:36

       Mm-hmm.

   12. KBKrystal Ball0:36

       ... that are very contrary to the things that we've been talking about. But you know, it's scary to... I got kids. I got, you know, bills-

   13. SESaagar Enjeti0:43

       Health insurance, yeah.

   14. KBKrystal Ball0:44

       ... to handle, the health insurance, all this stuff.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:45

       Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

   16. KBKrystal Ball0:45

       And so, I think especially during COVID when we couldn't actually directly interact with the audience in person, it's hard to know how real it is. So, when we talked to you and we were like, "Uh, we're thinking about it. We're kinda nervous," and you were s- you weren't just like, "Maybe," you were like, "Yes, do this," it actually really did help us to make the move. So thank you.

   17. SESaagar Enjeti1:05

       No, no question.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:06

       I am the terrible person to take advice like that from 'cause I'm always like, "Jump!"

   19. SESaagar Enjeti1:10

       Yeah.

   20. KBKrystal Ball1:10

       (laughs)

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:10

       Fucking jump!

   22. KBKrystal Ball1:11

       Well, in this case-

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:11

       No, but you were right.

   24. KBKrystal Ball1:11

       ... it was the right call, so...

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:14

       (laughs)

   26. SESaagar Enjeti1:14

       It was-

   27. KBKrystal Ball1:14

       ... broken clock or whatever.

   28. SESaagar Enjeti1:15

       It's really scary. Um, and it's one of those things where, we were telling you this before, where you're like, you don't know, uh, if you're, you're like, "Am I gonna miss this?" You have these guys. You have the support. Like, I don't have to-

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:25

       Yeah.

   30. SESaagar Enjeti1:25

       ... deal with all this, like, administrative stuff and, like, set design and upload. But honestly, we love it so much. Like, we, we wrapped, I think, our second show, so we could finally hang out. And I w- I, I text her. I was like, "This is amazing! Like, we're free!"
2. 1:39 – 3:31

   Soft censorship and access politics: the Maxine Waters 'death threat' episode

   1. SESaagar Enjeti1:39

      We do it the way that we want. We produce it the way that we want. And just having all the, like, big stuff outta your mind in terms of, like, the pressures of corporate media, because to be clear, like, The Hill never, like, directly censored us, right? But, and you've talked about this, it's about these outside interests. Like, there's interests that their company has that have nothing to do with us but could impact their interest based upon what I say. And I've told this story publicly now about what happened, but like, we were doing a segment, just a basic segment. I wanna, I wanna be very charitable. And once again, to be clear, The Hill never said anything. They said, "Don't say this," or whatever. But we're talking about the seniority system for Democrats in Congress. And I was like, this creates really perverse incentives because you have all these really old people who run Congress, like Maxine Waters, who's, like, 80 years old. Here's all I said. "Maxine Waters will be chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee till the day she dies." That's it. So, I later find out, her fucking press secretary called someone at The Hill and said, "Sagar's issuing a death threat against Maxine Waters."

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:41

      (laughs)

   3. KBKrystal Ball2:41

      (laughs)

   4. SESaagar Enjeti2:41

      Sagar's issuing... And I, I, I...

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:44

      (laughs)

   6. KBKrystal Ball2:44

      (laughs)

   7. SESaagar Enjeti2:44

      And here, what do I wanna say? I wanna say, "Go fuck yourself."

   8. KBKrystal Ball2:47

      (laughs)

   9. SESaagar Enjeti2:47

      I mean, like, literally put me on the phone with them, "Go fuck yourself," but here's the problem. And once again, The Hill didn't say anything, but I have to know this in the back of my mind. Hill reporters have to go and talk to Maxine Waters. That's literally part of their job.

   10. JRJoe Rogan2:59

       Right.

   11. SESaagar Enjeti3:00

       Like, she's chairmanwoman of the Financial Services Committee. She has a lot of access, one of the most powerful people in Washington. She does other shit with The Hill. And so, in the back of my mind, I'm like, "Can I say whatever the fuck I want about Maxine Waters?" I mean, they didn't tell me to say it, but even if it's the back of my mind, like, I would be lying if I wasn't saying that that wasn't with me a little bit, right?

   12. JRJoe Rogan3:20

       Right.

   13. SESaagar Enjeti3:20

       Like, you're always thinking. You're like, "Man-"

   14. KBKrystal Ball3:22

       Well, you're a human being.

   15. SESaagar Enjeti3:22

       "... it's not... They're not gonna fuck with me. They're gonna try and fuck with your boss."

   16. JRJoe Rogan3:25

       But they're putting it out there in the air, though, so they're making you think about it.

   17. SESaagar Enjeti3:29

       Exactly.

   18. JRJoe Rogan3:29

       Yeah.

   19. KBKrystal Ball3:29

       Right. That's exactly right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan3:29

       That's the whole purpose of it.

   21. KBKrystal Ball3:30

       That's exactly right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan3:31

       Yeah.

3. 3:31 – 5:59

   Sponsor suspicion and credibility: the Steven Donziger/Chevron story

   1. KBKrystal Ball3:31

      And there were things too, like, I didn't even want... Because the whole ethos of our show is we're independent minded, right? We're not carrying water for anyone. We have our views. We're very upfront about those views, but we're not doing partisan cheerleading here. We're not carrying water for any corporation or entity or anything like that. And so, even the appearance of, The Hill's a corporate entity and they're taking money from these various places, that's their right to do, the, even the appearance that that would affect our coverage really, really bothered me.

   2. JRJoe Rogan4:01

      Mm-hmm.

   3. KBKrystal Ball4:01

      And so I'll give you a perfect example. I don't know if you, do you know about this case of Steven Donziger? It's a crazy thing.

   4. JRJoe Rogan4:07

      What's the-

   5. KBKrystal Ball4:07

      He, so He's the-

   6. SESaagar Enjeti4:08

      He's a lawyer, yeah.

   7. KBKrystal Ball4:10

      He's a lawyer who won a massive lawsuit against Chevron for the horrific things that they did in Ecuador and basically, like, destroyed the whole area. And he wins a $9 billion, I think it was, suit against them, largest in history. They hit him. They're trying to fight back against him. They hit him with a contempt of court charge, which is a misdemeanor, which is nothing. He's been under house arrest for now two years, completely unprecedented. Show trial, it's, it's an insane situation. And we were working on getting him booked to talk about this, and meanwhile I'm seeing tweets that are saying, "Krystal and Sagar aren't covering this-"

   8. SESaagar Enjeti4:44

      Yeah.

   9. KBKrystal Ball4:44

      "... because The Hill's taking money from the American Petroleum Institute."

   10. JRJoe Rogan4:47

       Mm.

   11. KBKrystal Ball4:48

       Now, that wasn't true at all. We were working-

   12. JRJoe Rogan4:50

       Yeah, we booked it.

   13. SESaagar Enjeti4:50

       (laughs) Yeah.

   14. KBKrystal Ball4:50

       We booked it. We talked to him. We talked to other people about the case.

   15. SESaagar Enjeti4:52

       Right.

   16. KBKrystal Ball4:52

       We, we covered the case. But I hated that that was even a, a legitimate, by the way, question in people's minds. So it was things like that. And I have to say, like Sagar... I was worried there would be things that I really missed about having the corporate structure, like just that support system around. We feel so free. Doing the show is just an absolute pleasure. We feel unencumbered. It's, it's actually even more of a relief, and the audience has showed up for us-

   17. SESaagar Enjeti5:18

       Mm-hmm.

   18. KBKrystal Ball5:19

       ... even more than we ever could've expected.

   19. SESaagar Enjeti5:21

       It was amazing. I mean, it, I mean, I got, you know... Maxine, you can't control me now. You don't... I got... You, you got nothing on me.

   20. KBKrystal Ball5:28

       Yeah. No.

   21. JRJoe Rogan5:28

       Well, that's, it's, like, the thing is, like, what they did by saying that you issued a death threat against them-

   22. SESaagar Enjeti5:33

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan5:33

       ... is literally, that is everything that's wrong with politics and everything that's right about your show, is that you guys are just present and honest. And you see things and you talk about those things without biases. And you have, you have perspectives, but you don't have biases. And the problem with these people is it's all bullshit. And so, like, by saying that, they know you didn't really issue a death threat.

   24. KBKrystal Ball5:55

       Of course.

   25. JRJoe Rogan5:55

       That's cause... By saying... Everyone knows.

   26. SESaagar Enjeti5:56

       He knows. He knows. He knew when, when he opened his mouth.

   27. KBKrystal Ball5:58

       Of course.

   28. JRJoe Rogan5:58

       Everyone knows. Everyone knows.

4. 5:59 – 7:46

   Corporate pressure playbook repeats: TikTok complaint + Huawei advertising

   1. SESaagar Enjeti5:59

      And the, the crazy thing is-

   2. JRJoe Rogan5:59

      But they're playing a game.

   3. SESaagar Enjeti6:00

      ... th- this, this happened twice. So this happened to another time. So, I was doing a lot of reporting around TikTok. And I was noticing all of these former Republican lawmaker lobbyists are working now for TikTok 'cause I heard they were paying top dollar rates. So I do some investigation. This is basic Google. I went on Google, and I was looking at who TikTok has been hiring. And one of them, and I'm not kidding you, is the former head or a part of the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity Division-

   4. JRJoe Rogan6:27

      (laughs)

   5. SESaagar Enjeti6:27

      ... who is now working for TikTok.

   6. KBKrystal Ball6:30

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SESaagar Enjeti6:30

      The Chinese government.

   8. KBKrystal Ball6:31

      Mm-hmm.

   9. SESaagar Enjeti6:31

      ... okay, for a Chinese-controlled app. All right. So, I put that on the show. I did a whole monologue about all these people who work in Washington. You know, I was like, "You wanna see the revolving door? This is it." These people are complete, like, uh, like, murderer for hires, in terms-

   10. KBKrystal Ball6:45

       They're mercenaries.

   11. SESaagar Enjeti6:45

       They're mercenaries.

   12. KBKrystal Ball6:45

       Yeah.

   13. SESaagar Enjeti6:45

       They don't give a shit about you. They don't give a shit about America, any of this stuff. The former cybersecurity lady is now working for TikTok. All right. And it's public. And so I put it on the show. What do you think happens? TikTok calls somebody over at The Hill and says, "Sagar is threatening the lives of the people at TikTok."

   14. JRJoe Rogan7:01

       (laughs)

   15. SESaagar Enjeti7:01

       And I'm like, "Fu-"... Yeah, once again-

   16. KBKrystal Ball7:03

       Sagar's-

   17. SESaagar Enjeti7:03

       "... Fuck you."

   18. KBKrystal Ball7:04

       ... a very dangerous man over here.

   19. JRJoe Rogan7:04

       Yeah, I'm a dangerous man. I'm an extreme dangerous-

   20. SESaagar Enjeti7:07

       You're a crazy person.

   21. JRJoe Rogan7:07

       Left and right.

   22. KBKrystal Ball7:08

       You're very, you're very brave for inviting him in here today, Joe. (laughs)

   23. SESaagar Enjeti7:10

       Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Joe. Um, I know you're MMA-trained, but apparently, I'm-

   24. JRJoe Rogan7:12

       But there's no weapons.

   25. SESaagar Enjeti7:13

       Yeah, I'm issuing, uh, I'm issuing death threats, like, left and right. But again, now once I have to think about this. I'm like, "This is crazy." And here's the other problem. The Hill was taking ad dollars at the time from Huawei. So, Huawei, which is a Chinese telecom company.

   26. JRJoe Rogan7:27

       Yeah.

   27. SESaagar Enjeti7:27

       And I was thinking in the back of my mind, "Man, if TikTok was real smart, they would buy some advertising at The Hill." Because then I'd really have to be like, "Oh, shit."

   28. JRJoe Rogan7:33

       Why was The Hill taking money from Hua-... Was this pa-... after the ban?

   29. SESaagar Enjeti7:37

       I don't-

   30. KBKrystal Ball7:38

       Look-
5. 7:46 – 9:17

   Media business model in decline—and why audiences are revolting

   1. KBKrystal Ball7:46

      ... whoever they can. I mean, the media business in a l-... Some ways, it was really brought, you know, back from the dead by Trump because he increased traffic so much and subscriber numbers so much for The New York Times and Washington Post. I mean, that's the irony of his whole attack on the media was the best thing that ever happened to the media. But the overall model is in free fall. And people are revolting. I mean, that's really what w-... with the success of your show, with, you know, what, what has happened with Breaking Points, our new show that has been totally wild, is people don't want this spoon-fed narrative. They don't want to have to think about, like, "Why is this paper covering these politicians in this incredibly fluffy way?" Because they're more interested in maintaining their access and maintaining their social status within that club than they are in actually getting the facts right in a way that can be... that can require sometimes courage, that can be uncomfortable sometimes with your social set. And so I really do see it as kind of a, a watershed moment where some of the old models are dying and people are, are, are sick and tired of having their attention monetized. They're sick and tired of being fed whatever the, like, safe mainstream narrative is. And all they want is just someone who, look, may get it wrong sometimes, but is really just trying to figure out what the truth of, of the matter is.

   2. JRJoe Rogan9:09

      Yeah.

   3. SESaagar Enjeti9:09

      Right.

   4. JRJoe Rogan9:09

      Yeah, it's, it's some... It's actually a viable strategy to tell the truth now-

   5. KBKrystal Ball9:14

      (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan9:14

      ... as far as, like, a marketing-

   7. SESaagar Enjeti9:16

      Yeah.

   8. KBKrystal Ball9:16

      Y-... True, yeah.

   9. SESaagar Enjeti9:17

      ... strategy.

   10. KBKrystal Ball9:17

       Yes.

6. 9:17 – 10:38

   Behind-the-curtain moments: Epstein, John Cena, and the China market reality

   1. SESaagar Enjeti9:17

      Do you remember that clip of the Amy Robach and Epstein, where the Disney-

   2. JRJoe Rogan9:20

      Yes.

   3. SESaagar Enjeti9:21

      She worked for E-... And that, that... She laid it all out there-

   4. JRJoe Rogan9:23

      Yes.

   5. SESaagar Enjeti9:23

      ... and she didn't even know. But this is what I'm talking about. She was like, "Oh, the Palace got involved."

   6. JRJoe Rogan9:27

      Right.

   7. SESaagar Enjeti9:27

      "And they started calling this, and then Will and Kate's what..." That's it.

   8. JRJoe Rogan9:30

      Yeah.

   9. SESaagar Enjeti9:30

      That's all the... a little peak behind the curtain, and it repeats itself.

   10. JRJoe Rogan9:33

       Isn't that amazing that that lady, like, her doing that in front of the camera just, like... and, and not knowing that they were even filming-

   11. SESaagar Enjeti9:39

       Exactly.

   12. JRJoe Rogan9:39

       ... and then someone takes it and releases it. Everybody gets a chance to see.

   13. SESaagar Enjeti9:42

       So, what do they say not on camera?

   14. JRJoe Rogan9:44

       Well, there's a few-

   15. SESaagar Enjeti9:44

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan9:44

       ... of these things that are happening, right? Like, h- how about the John Cena one?

   17. SESaagar Enjeti9:47

       Oh, yeah. Yeah, the John Cena one was crazy.

   18. KBKrystal Ball9:48

       This was called Wild West, right?

   19. JRJoe Rogan9:49

       The John Cena one was a wake-up call for America.

   20. KBKrystal Ball9:50

       Yes.

   21. JRJoe Rogan9:50

       'Cause all these fucking pro-wrestling fans are like, "Wait a minute."

   22. SESaagar Enjeti9:53

       (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan9:53

       "He's speaking Chinese." Like, "This is real."

   24. SESaagar Enjeti9:55

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan9:55

       "This shit is real."

   26. KBKrystal Ball9:56

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan9:57

       "John Cena's speaking Mandarin. He's apologizing for calling-"

   28. SESaagar Enjeti9:59

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan9:59

       "... Taiwan a country."

   30. SESaagar Enjeti10:00

       Yeah. "I know." (laughs)
7. 10:38 – 12:41

   Hollywood’s China dependence: Fast & Furious, Mulan, and corporate complicity

   1. SESaagar Enjeti10:38

      That movie proves everything about what went wrong with America, with Hollywood entertainment. That movie, Vin Diesel begged to open that movie in China because all of their opening dollars come from China.

   2. JRJoe Rogan10:50

      Yeah.

   3. SESaagar Enjeti10:50

      Fast and Furious 9. First, I, I did a whole monologue about this and I was like, "Do we really need 9?" That's, like, the first question. (laughs) I'm like-

   4. KBKrystal Ball10:56

      Mm, I don't even know.

   5. SESaagar Enjeti10:56

      ... "Question one, do we need 9?"

   6. JRJoe Rogan10:58

      We do.

   7. KBKrystal Ball10:58

      (laughs)

   8. SESaagar Enjeti10:58

      Uh, I mean, look, they are...

   9. KBKrystal Ball10:59

      (laughs)

   10. SESaagar Enjeti10:59

       The ones with The Rock, shout out to The Rock, are actually awesome. But-

   11. JRJoe Rogan11:01

       This one doesn't have The Rock?

   12. SESaagar Enjeti11:03

       I don't know, actually.

   13. JRJoe Rogan11:03

       Oh, boycott. I'll boycott.

   14. SESaagar Enjeti11:04

       I think... (laughs)

   15. KBKrystal Ball11:05

       (laughs)

   16. SESaagar Enjeti11:05

       Whatever F6 is, where The Rock was in it, I love The Rock.

   17. JRJoe Rogan11:08

       Yes.

   18. KBKrystal Ball11:08

       You were fine with the John Cena thing-

   19. SESaagar Enjeti11:10

       Right.

   20. KBKrystal Ball11:10

       (laughs)

   21. SESaagar Enjeti11:10

       But you draw the line at no Rock. That's it.

   22. JRJoe Rogan11:12

       Yeah, no Rock?

   23. SESaagar Enjeti11:12

       Right.

   24. JRJoe Rogan11:13

       How are you going to have Fast and Furious- That's bullshit.

   25. SESaagar Enjeti11:14

       Without The Rock?

   26. KBKrystal Ball11:14

       It's a joke.

   27. JRJoe Rogan11:15

       That's outrageous.

   28. SESaagar Enjeti11:16

       But F9 makes all of its money in China. And so-

   29. JRJoe Rogan11:19

       Yeah.

   30. SESaagar Enjeti11:19

       ... what happens is that Hollywood-
8. 12:41 – 17:56

   Woke branding vs worker reality: Amazon, BLM banners, and warehouse conditions

   1. KBKrystal Ball12:41

      The country's not about anything other than money. I mean, we just abandon every value other than-... profit maximization and the bottom line and-

   2. JRJoe Rogan12:50

      That's what people need to understand about all this woke shit.

   3. SESaagar Enjeti12:52

      Yes.

   4. JRJoe Rogan12:52

      It's really not about changing culture.

   5. KBKrystal Ball12:54

      Uh, yeah, it's about money. I mean, that's, that, I was just-

   6. JRJoe Rogan12:57

      Yeah. It's about power.

   7. KBKrystal Ball12:58

      You know, it's just, like, it's funny. There's a big, um, article in New York Times today about inside an Amazon warehouse, right? And Amazon was the first to say, "Black lives matter," and put that, uh, banner up on their page and everything. And look, I support a lot of goals of that movement, but you read through this article and you find out, first of all, the way they treat their largely Black and Brown warehouse workers, I mean, it's despicable. They intentionally make sure they cannot move up the ladder, r- that's part of their business policy is if you're an hourly worker, you're not gonna get promoted, and they try to force you out after three years because they think you're getting lazy. So, this is the company that can, on the surface level, say, "Black lives matter," because they think that's good for their profit maximization and their brand and their shareholder value. Um, at the same time, what they're actually doing in real life, wildly different than that. So, y-

   8. JRJoe Rogan13:50

      Are th- and they specifically target Black and Brown people in this way?

   9. KBKrystal Ball13:53

      Well, they target their warehouse workers who are ... So, the ... Warehouse workers are 50 some percent Black and Brown. Management is 50 some ... is overwhelmingly white and Asian.

   10. JRJoe Rogan14:04

       What is... I thought the whole thing about Amazon was that you could move up the ladder.

   11. KBKrystal Ball14:07

       Nope. Walmart, who I'm also not a fan of, they actually promote from within. So, most Walmart managers start out as hourly employees, so at least they have a track up. And again, I'm not a fan of Walmart, okay? Amazon intentionally, and this is what the New York Times revealed, they intentionally have a system because Bezos said he believes that these human beings are lazy and that after, you know, that they're gonna do the bare minimum-

   12. JRJoe Rogan14:33

       Was co- he was quoted saying this? Bezos was quoted saying they're lazy?

   13. KBKrystal Ball14:35

       I'm going ... I will, I'll find you-

   14. SESaagar Enjeti14:36

       Let's ... Or, or Jamie, if you can pull him-

   15. JRJoe Rogan14:37

       Yeah.

   16. KBKrystal Ball14:38

       Yeah, I'll actually-

   17. JRJoe Rogan14:38

       I think there's a difference-

   18. SESaagar Enjeti14:39

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan14:39

       ... between lazy and having a shitty job.

   20. SESaagar Enjeti14:41

       Mm-hmm.

   21. KBKrystal Ball14:42

       Like, exactly right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan14:42

       And people need to understand that.

   23. KBKrystal Ball14:43

       When you're abused, you're treated like a robot and a cog day in and day out. You're fired, like-

   24. SESaagar Enjeti14:48

       Yeah.

   25. KBKrystal Ball14:48

       ... if you are a little bit slow on your tasks, you might get fired by a freaking app. Like, that's how dehumanizing it is.

   26. JRJoe Rogan14:54

       Well, let's explain, let's explain to people don't understand how it works over there. Y- does anybody wanna explain?

   27. SESaagar Enjeti14:57

       Yeah. I mean, they work in the ware- ... Right. So, they have ph- phones that are on there. Ev- everything's tracking your movements, steps, bathroom breaks as well. So, the warehouses are also very large, so let's say you technically have a 20-minute break, it might take you 10 minutes to actually walk to the break room and back. So, you actually have what, like, a two-minute break while you're in there. And the whole thing around Amazon and why everyone should care is because Amazon under the pandemic exploded. Their stock price went up from, I think, 1,000 or so to a couple, 3,000. Bezos personally, his wealth increased by $70 billion. Amazon is now the second-largest employer in the United States. And this is incredibly important because as more Amazon market adoption happens, they are basically going to become the employer of choice. Whatever your grocery store or whatever was in your small town, these are the rural working class Americans, this is their only job. So, when you have one company which has all of this overwhelming power over rural working Americans and even suburban Americans, because this is Amazon's strategy. Dayton, Ohio is a good example. Alec MacGillis, he wrote a great book on Amazon, shout out to him, talked about how Dayton was like this Silicon Valley of America in the 1900s, and s- you know, it's manufacturing, middle-class jobs. Now, Dayton's prized economic value comes from the fact that it's one day's drive from one-third of the US population, so it's a great place for cardboard. So, everybody there is also involved in creating cardboard and other Amazon infrastructure. So, the Amazonification, so to speak, or whatever, of America makes it so that if y- let's say 30 years ago, you grew up in your town, you may have to go to Walmart, H-E-B were here, you know, I grew up here in Texas, Kroger as well, McDonald's, something like that. Now, it's basically like McDonald's, Dairy Queen, and Amazon. And when Amazon is the prime market employer, they are the sole determiner of market conditions increasingly. So, it's Walmart and Amazon, which are number two. And we're talking about millions of people who are now working at this company. So, people are like, "Why do you guys talk so much about Amazon?" Because I can see the trends. This company's not going anywhere. Look, props to them, like, they're ... I love Amazon. Like, I order a lot of stuff on Amazon. But increasingly becoming aware of the price of what it takes to do overnight delivery to your house at 4:00 AM in the morning, or increasingly becoming aware of the fact that they are basically on this mission to drive price down as much as possible and squeeze as much out of their workforce, that is where it's troubling. What was the furniture thing that we just covered?

   28. KBKrystal Ball17:27

       Yeah. That was-

   29. SESaagar Enjeti17:27

       This was crazy.

   30. KBKrystal Ball17:28

       Well, and did you see their delivery drivers-
9. 17:56 – 27:00

   Bezos ideology, union busting, and Amazon’s PR/troll tactics

   1. JRJoe Rogan17:56

      We- We kind of glossed over this thing-

   2. KBKrystal Ball17:58

      Y-

   3. JRJoe Rogan17:58

      ... where you said that Jeff Bezos-

   4. SESaagar Enjeti17:59

      Oh, right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan17:59

      ... said that people are lazy.

   6. KBKrystal Ball17:59

      Yeah, so I got the quote. So, here's, here's what the New York Times says. "Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, did not want hourly workers to stick around for long, viewing a large disgruntled workforce as a threat." Um, this other executive requi- recalled, who worked at Amazon, but then left. "Company data showed that most employers became less eager over time," he said, "and Mr. Bevo- Bezos believed people were inherently lazy. What he would say is that our nature as humans is to expend as little energy as possible to get what we want or need. That was embedded throughout the business from the ease of instant ordering to the pervasive use of data to get the most out of employees." So, guaranteed wage increases stop after three years, and Amazon provided incentives for low-skilled employees to leave. So, every year they would offer associates thousands of dollars to resign. They made sure that any position, they gave people sort of the illusion of promotions being available, but then there'd be one promotion available for hundreds of people. And they very seldom, um-... uh, higher or higher management from within their own ranks. It's like, they view a s- th- it's totally class stratified, is basically the bottom line. And of course, lower classes in America are disproportionately Black and brown. It's not like they're specifically targeting Black and brown people. But you have one class of people that they see th- as worthy of doing the grunt work and shitting in the bag, and one class of people that they think of as worthy of, like, actually having the, the more intellectual jobs and running the place. It's, you know, it's a really abhorrent way of viewing human beings, of, essentially. And so, this is part of the kind of, again, rot of America that I also think is reflective with the John Cena, thing, et cetera. It's like, you're certainly more of a capitalist than I am, but you can't have a country where the only fricking value is money.

   7. JRJoe Rogan19:40

      No.

   8. KBKrystal Ball19:41

      Like, that's, it's just, it just, you, you see the sickness of people who have all these addictions and are di-... The last year was the worst year on record for overdoses. You see the suicide rates spike. I mean, you see people who just feel like they have no meaning and no purpose and no grounding and no community. And all the life being sucked out of these human beings in these communities, it's just disgusting.

   9. JRJoe Rogan20:02

      The problem is money's quantifiable.

   10. SESaagar Enjeti20:04

       Mm-hmm.

   11. KBKrystal Ball20:05

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan20:05

       And happiness and love and comradery-

   13. KBKrystal Ball20:07

       It's squishy.

   14. JRJoe Rogan20:07

       ... and friendship is not.

   15. KBKrystal Ball20:08

       It's squishy.

   16. JRJoe Rogan20:09

       It's, it's... You can't put it on a scale. Put that quote back up again. This kind of shit drives me nuts, and I can't believe they actually report this. When it says, "It's been alleged that Bezos has barked out questions like, 'Are you lazy or just incompetent?' at employees and referred to the publishing industry as a sickly gazelle."

   17. SESaagar Enjeti20:28

       (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan20:28

       Well, first of all-

   19. KBKrystal Ball20:29

       (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan20:29

       ... what is, wh- how the fuck does that get printed? "It's been alleged that he's barked out questions." Unless you have a video of him saying that, shut the fuck up.

   21. SESaagar Enjeti20:39

       (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan20:40

       Because you, th- that, that kind of shit is nonsense. Like, you can't say it.

   23. SESaagar Enjeti20:43

       This is a problem. I actually know Brad Stone-

   24. KBKrystal Ball20:44

       Well, especially-

   25. SESaagar Enjeti20:44

       ... a little bit.

   26. KBKrystal Ball20:44

       ... especially when you have, when it's not attributed.

   27. JRJoe Rogan20:48

       Right.

   28. KBKrystal Ball20:48

       So like, this is different. This is in The New York Times article I was referencing, where they actually, they talked to the workers. They, some of these e- ex-executives who worked with Bezos went on the record, and then you can judge, like, who's telling the truth here.

   29. JRJoe Rogan20:59

       Yeah.

   30. SESaagar Enjeti20:59

       Right.
10. 27:00 – 33:15

    Fixing the imbalance: unions, shareholder capitalism, and China’s ‘money weak spot’

    1. SESaagar Enjeti27:00

       Right. Mm-hmm. So what is the, the solution to something like that? It seems like when you start putting money as the most important thing, above the, the health and the happiness of the people that work for you-

    2. KBKrystal Ball27:10

       Yeah. That's a great question.

    3. SESaagar Enjeti27:11

       Like, what is the solution? And is the problem stockholders? Is the problem the fact that this is a private comp- or public company rather, and so there's a lot of different people that get a chance to... They, they, they have a say because the ultimate duty is to make sure that the company continues to make more money-

    4. KBKrystal Ball27:27

       Right.

    5. SESaagar Enjeti27:27

       ... every year. No one's happy with just things-

    6. KBKrystal Ball27:29

       No one's satisfied.

    7. SESaagar Enjeti27:30

       ... being flat. They're doing their job.

    8. KBKrystal Ball27:31

       Yeah.

    9. SESaagar Enjeti27:31

       Yeah. Here's the problem. We actually solved this over 100 years ago. They're called unions. And this is something that Krystal and I- Yeah. ... I definitely depart from a lot of my conservative friends on this, which is that if you really think about it, a union is a very inherently conservative organization. It's a non-governmental institution of people who band together and then use their collective power in negotiation with management. Now, the problem though right here with Amazon is Amazon is virulently anti-union. They will basically do anything they possibly... And this isn't... basically an official Bezos policy. Like, "We will not negotiate on unions." They threw everything they possibly could at the Bessemer election. And look, I mean, they did win, and that's... The reason why they wa- they raised their wage to, like, $15 an hour, or I think it's $17 an hour now, and they're like, "We have the best healthcare," and all of this, is because it's basically like, "You're gonna get this, but don't you goddamn dare unionize." And it's not just Amazon. Walmart, I think, um, just recently gave... They said they're gonna give all of their employees a free Samsung phone, but it's like 729,000 employees. And buried within the stuff is that you're gonna be tracked, like, when you get that phone. Like, now the phone is with you, and that's the company phone. And the company phone is gonna collect, like, all of this data, exactly as you're talking about. "You only have 15 seconds in order to go and get this and place it into the bin, which is the average time. And oh, you have sciatica? Fuck you. Oh, you have... your leg is broken or, like, you're in a boot or something because you were injured on the job? Fuck you." I once read this Daily Beast story, which was horrific, where it aggregated, like a FOIA thing, of all of the suicide calls-

    10. KBKrystal Ball29:05

        Hmm.

    11. SESaagar Enjeti29:05

        Mm-hmm.

    12. KBKrystal Ball29:05

        Ugh.

    13. SESaagar Enjeti29:05

        ... from Amazon warehouses. So it's like, "We got another one over here at the plant." They're like, "We got another one." They're like, "Ope, you know, somebody just jumped." They're like, "Ah, this guy's, you know, he's saying..." Now, look, a lot of people work in Amazon plants, so it's not like... There's a law of numbers and stuff here. And I'm not just singling out Amazon because actually, like I was explaining, it's... They're the top of the labor market. So like, the problem with our labor market is that our current workforce does not have enough power to negotiate with the shareholder class. We solved this in the 1920s and '30s. Like, we had a whole fight about this in our politics around unions and worker power and wages. And I mean, I saw, um, I saw a politician, I can't even remember who it was, talking about this with relation to Uber, where they're like, "Well, you know, they, they, they can just go, and they can leave if they have... if they can just leave and go work somewhere else." But in many cases, like I'm explaining with Amazon, if you work in a town where the only thing you can do is work at the warehouse, you don't have a lot of power.

    14. KBKrystal Ball30:02

        Right.

    15. SESaagar Enjeti30:02

        And so, we have to go back to a scenario where workers have some power in negotiation. Look, I think shareholder capitalism has run amok. We have a lot of problems. That being said, there's a lot, obviously, to the engine of why we are the preeminent world economy and the preeminent society. The problem is that it's become unchecked, is that basically 1975, 1980s and so onward, the shareholder march, that's what led us to the China problem. These are the... Wall Street and the shareholder class are the ones, they knew that it was gonna screw working class jobs here in the US. They're the ones who pushed for more free trade with China, and then the political class are the ones who said, "Not only is shit gonna be cheaper," 'cause that was the trade-off. They were like, "Shit's gonna be cheaper in America." Congratulations, it's all cheaper. We also lost our entire middle class, especially in the industrial Midwest. But China's gonna become more liberal and free and open. And that was a total failure. Instead, we have imported Chinese autocracy to our country. Fucking John Cena, LeBron James, and James Harden are on the side of the CCP over their own citizens. Shaq is the only guy who spoke up for Daryl Morey-

    16. KBKrystal Ball31:11

        (laughs)

    17. SESaagar Enjeti31:11

        ... whenever it came to... Shaq-

    18. KBKrystal Ball31:13

        I love Shaq.

    19. SESaagar Enjeti31:13

        ... who was like the face of America, you know? It's like, it's totally crazy.

    20. KBKrystal Ball31:17

        The Chinese, the Chinese understand us better than we do in some ways.

    21. SESaagar Enjeti31:20

        Yeah.

    22. KBKrystal Ball31:20

        Because they, they get that, like, money is the weak spot, and so you ask what the answer is. I mean, look, it's, it's not straightforward, but basically there's two pieces. There's a policy piece that Saagar's talking about, you know, giving workers, rebalancing the scales. There used to be a balance on the scales where workers... they had more power within the workplace. You had, um, fewer of these gigantic firms that just controlled the entire market. So there's a, there's a policy piece here that's extraordinarily important. There's also a societal choice. Like, do we want to put-... cheaper, cheaper, cheaper as the only thing that we care about, right? It is that fundamental choice of, like, if you can click the button on Amazon that's like, "I'll pay a little more," or, "I'll wait, like, an extra half a day for the worker to be able to feed their family and, like, live a decent life-"

    23. JRJoe Rogan32:04

        Mm-hmm.

    24. KBKrystal Ball32:04

        "... and not have to shit in a bag," do we want to make that choice? Because right now, the whole structure of society is basically set up to cater to, frankly, people like us who are doing well and we want to have everything at our fingertips, as cheap as possible, as soon as possible, every experience, et cetera, et cetera. And it's become wildly unbalanced so that if not a majority, close to a majority of the population, it- it really is very hard to live. Um, housing prices are going insanely up, so the idea of a working-class family affording a home anywhere in America is just wildly out of reach. That's the one way that you can basically build wealth in America. You have no choice in terms of employers, so if you hate Amazon or they fire you or whatever, you're fucked because there's nothing else in your town because everything's else been sucked out to China-

    25. JRJoe Rogan32:51

        Especially during the co- the coronavirus pandemic.

    26. SESaagar Enjeti32:53

        Yes!

    27. KBKrystal Ball32:53

        Oh, absolutely! It was a disaster.

    28. SESaagar Enjeti32:53

        And they're the only ones hiring.

    29. JRJoe Rogan32:55

        Yeah.

    30. KBKrystal Ball32:55

        A disaster.
11. 33:15 – 35:13

    Pandemic policy and culture war incentives: payroll backstops vs ‘essential’ favoritism

    1. JRJoe Rogan33:15

       This is one of the reasons why the really skeptical people, the people that are very cynical about things, think that some of the lockdown was on purpose.

    2. SESaagar Enjeti33:24

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan33:24

       And that what people were trying to do was trying to accentuate the power that these big corporations had. It's a-

    4. KBKrystal Ball33:32

       See, I think it's more of a failure. I- I- I dissent in that I think we needed to make sure we got the virus under control and all those things. But at the beginning, there was a false choice that was made.

    5. JRJoe Rogan33:43

       Yeah.

    6. KBKrystal Ball33:43

       There was this false choice where they said, "Well, you can either have your job or you can have lockdown." Well, we didn't have to do it that way. There was a- a possibility of just, "Hey, listen. Backstop people's payrolls, keep them attached to their jobs." We- if we had done that from the beginning-

    7. JRJoe Rogan33:56

       Yeah, but this-

    8. KBKrystal Ball33:56

       ... we would have spent so-

    9. SESaagar Enjeti33:56

       Oh, yeah.

    10. KBKrystal Ball33:57

        ... much less money than we ultimately spent.

    11. JRJoe Rogan33:58

        That's part of the problem, but the other problem was essential businesses.

    12. SESaagar Enjeti34:01

        Yeah.

    13. KBKrystal Ball34:01

        Yeah.

    14. JRJoe Rogan34:01

        Deciding which businesses are essential, deciding that Walmart-

    15. KBKrystal Ball34:04

        Right.

    16. JRJoe Rogan34:04

        ... is essential, but a small restaurant is not.

    17. SESaagar Enjeti34:06

        Correct.

    18. KBKrystal Ball34:06

        Oh, it's very-

    19. JRJoe Rogan34:07

        That kind of shit is crazy.

    20. KBKrystal Ball34:07

        ... it was wildly arbitrary. It's because the Walmarts of the world have power.

    21. JRJoe Rogan34:11

        Exactly. That's what I'm saying.

    22. KBKrystal Ball34:12

        Yeah. That's what it was.

    23. JRJoe Rogan34:13

        And that they knew-

    24. KBKrystal Ball34:14

        Absolutely.

    25. JRJoe Rogan34:14

        ... they had to know that some of this was going to result in businesses going under and that was gonna r- result in their market share growing.

    26. KBKrystal Ball34:22

        A- absolutely. Absolutely.

    27. SESaagar Enjeti34:23

        Oh, and they, and they-

    28. JRJoe Rogan34:23

        That's where people are cynical-

    29. SESaagar Enjeti34:25

        I know.

    30. JRJoe Rogan34:25

        ... and conspiracy minded. They look at this and they say, "This is almost like a calculated attack."
12. 35:13 – 1:03:28

    Jon Stewart’s lab-leak rant, Fauci emails, and the collapse of institutional trust

    1. JRJoe Rogan35:13

       Did you guys see the Jon Stewart rant?

    2. SESaagar Enjeti35:16

       We just saw it this morning.

    3. KBKrystal Ball35:17

       We were just-

    4. JRJoe Rogan35:17

       Fucking brilliant.

    5. KBKrystal Ball35:19

       ... like, "Wait, I haven't seen it yet."

    6. JRJoe Rogan35:20

       Fucking play it.

    7. KBKrystal Ball35:20

       "Sorry, I thought I had seen it." I wanna see it.

    8. JRJoe Rogan35:21

       Play it on, uh, Stephen Colbert.

    9. SESaagar Enjeti35:22

       I literally just saw it this morning. Right.

    10. JRJoe Rogan35:24

        It's fuck- and Colbert tries to jump in-

    11. SESaagar Enjeti35:27

        I know. I know.

    12. JRJoe Rogan35:27

        ... and stop him.

    13. SESaagar Enjeti35:27

        "He's a huge lib now! That's his whole thing."

    14. JRJoe Rogan35:29

        And he plows over him. Colbert was a Catholic.

    15. SESaagar Enjeti35:31

        Yeah.

    16. KBKrystal Ball35:31

        Oh, Colbert used to be so good. The old show-

    17. JRJoe Rogan35:33

        Yeah!

    18. KBKrystal Ball35:34

        ... was-

    19. JRJoe Rogan35:34

        Well, because he was a parody.

    20. KBKrystal Ball35:35

        ... brilliant.

    21. JRJoe Rogan35:36

        And now he's the real person.

    22. KBKrystal Ball35:37

        Yeah.

    23. JRJoe Rogan35:38

        But anyway.

    24. SESaagar Enjeti35:38

        He's like this pure Biden lib. Like, what happened to you?

    25. KBKrystal Ball35:41

        Ugh, it's sad.

    26. JRJoe Rogan35:41

        It's yuck.

    27. SESaagar Enjeti35:41

        Yeah.

    28. KBKrystal Ball35:41

        It makes me really sad.

    29. JRJoe Rogan35:42

        It's yuck.

    30. SESaagar Enjeti35:43

        Yeah.
13. 1:03:28 – 1:22:02

    From January 6 to a new domestic surveillance era: ‘dangerous ideas’ and war-on-terror logic

    1. KBKrystal Ball1:03:28

       Do I think that our political class is gonna do anything? No, of course not. Of course not, because it implicates too many of them, so they'll just search for the partisan answer. They'll search for the answer that hands them more...... power and hands the sort of surveillance state and police state more power. We're already seeing that. Joe Biden just made a big announcement about all of that.

    2. NANarrator1:03:47

       Mm-hmm. What was the announcement?

    3. KBKrystal Ball1:03:47

       And then we'll move forward. So he announced, and I, I have, haven't had a chance to read through all the details, but there's an, a new big initiative to essentially use the, um, the powers that we deployed against, uh, Islamic terrorists now against the domestic population. So treating sort of domestic extremism in the same way that we treated-

    4. NANarrator1:04:06

       How do you define domestic extremism though?

    5. SESaagar Enjeti1:04:07

       Yeah. That's a good question.

    6. KBKrystal Ball1:04:09

       So well, that's, so that's the question.

    7. NANarrator1:04:10

       Like slide the scale.

    8. KBKrystal Ball1:04:10

       And that's, that is the-

    9. SESaagar Enjeti1:04:11

       And that's what January 6th commission is about.

    10. KBKrystal Ball1:04:12

        That, that is the question.

    11. NANarrator1:04:14

        Right.

    12. KBKrystal Ball1:04:14

        Because, look, today, look, I fucking hate white supremacists. You know, I mean, all these, that's, it's a monstrous ideology. But one day it's that, and the next day, just like we saw with Islam, I mean, some of these people who were arrested for supposedly aiding, aiding and abetting terrorism, it was totally set up. They never would have even thought about a plot if the FBI hadn't encouraged them to create a plot. It helps to bolster someone's career because then they can say, "Look, we went out and got the bad guys, and we disrupted this bombing plot," et cetera, et cetera. They get elevated in the m- the media. Their career flourishes. You've got people who now have even more surveillance powers into all of our lives. And that question of, "Okay, now who is a domestic terror..." Like, that is the question, and that's where this all ends up, um, ultimately becoming very scary.

    13. SESaagar Enjeti1:04:58

        I saw this in the New York Times post-January 6th. They're saying that, you know, people are now using encrypted messaging in order to pass potentially dangerous ideas.

    14. NANarrator1:05:06

        Right, right. Right.

    15. SESaagar Enjeti1:05:06

        So what is the, what is the, what is the implication of that?

    16. KBKrystal Ball1:05:08

        Dangerous ideas.

    17. SESaagar Enjeti1:05:09

        You have to, well, we, we need, uh, we need access to Signal we- because people are having dangerous conversations. Some ex-white supremacists use Signal maybe in order to plan January 6th. Okay. Um, a lot of people use the phone in order to do ki- all kinds of shit.

    18. KBKrystal Ball1:05:23

        Right. (laughs)

    19. SESaagar Enjeti1:05:23

        Does that mean that all phone conversations should be tapped-

    20. KBKrystal Ball1:05:25

        We need to shut down the phones.

    21. SESaagar Enjeti1:05:26

        ... all of the time? This is insane.

    22. KBKrystal Ball1:05:28

        Or they said the same thing, they said the same thing about podcasts.

    23. SESaagar Enjeti1:05:29

        Yes, RSS feeds. Yeah.

    24. KBKrystal Ball1:05:30

        I'm sure you saw that too, right?

    25. NANarrator1:05:31

        Yeah.

    26. KBKrystal Ball1:05:31

        There was a big New York Times article about how podcasts are this unregulated, un-

    27. SESaagar Enjeti1:05:36

        Yeah, misinformation. Right, right.

    28. KBKrystal Ball1:05:37

        ... un- unfettered, that's the, the word they liked, unfettered conversations are happening on these podcasts.

    29. NANarrator1:05:41

        That's what we do.

    30. KBKrystal Ball1:05:41

        And we have to shut that down.

Episode duration: 3:28:12