Joe Rogan Experience #1706 - Billy Corben

1. 0:00 – 5:08

   Florida’s pandemic “freedom” vs. the death toll (cops, schools, and first responders)

   1. BCBilly Corben0:00

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

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Hello, Billy.

   3. BCBilly Corben0:13

      Hello, Joe.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Always good to see you, my friend.

   5. BCBilly Corben0:15

      I'm just here so you can give COVID back to Florida.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      (laughs) I wonder if it works like that.

   7. BCBilly Corben0:21

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      Florida gave it to me. I've got something for it. I'll f- I'll have to figure out how to pay Florida back.

   9. BCBilly Corben0:25

      Don't say Florida never gave you anything.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:27

       Listen, man. I had a good time down there.

   11. BCBilly Corben0:29

       Okay.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:30

       It was a rough few days.

   13. BCBilly Corben0:31

       (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       But I had a good time. (laughs)

   15. BCBilly Corben0:34

       (laughs) I feel like everybody has the same Florida story and it's just that.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       Well, Florida is just Florida, you know? I mean, one of the things that Florida's gotten a lot of, uh, positive, uh, reviews since the pandemic, you know, Florida's... Florida came up during the pandemic, right? I mean, a lot of people were negative on it. They thought that the restrictions were terrible. And, you know, he needs to do more and DeSantis is killing people. But a lot of people are like, "You know what? At least I can go to restaurants." Florida lets you go out. Florida doesn't want to have you have mandates and... the tax situation. Florida came up. You gotta admit-

   17. BCBilly Corben1:09

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:09

       ... Florida, Florida became a more attractive place during the pandemic.

   19. BCBilly Corben1:13

       August was the deadliest month in Florida in the history of the, the pandemic.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:18

       Of the pandemic.

   21. BCBilly Corben1:19

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:19

       This past August?

   23. BCBilly Corben1:20

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:20

       Yeah.

   25. BCBilly Corben1:20

       One in five-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:21

       Yeah.

   27. BCBilly Corben1:21

       ... COVID deaths in the United States occurred in Florida. Now, it's almost as many as one in four COVID deaths in the United States are occurring in Florida. We've had 13 Miami-Dade County Public Schools employees die of COVID. That includes teachers, bus drivers, people die of COVID since mid-August.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:38

       Jesus.

   29. BCBilly Corben1:39

       Last month, we had, I think, no less than 20 police officers in the state of Florida die. We had a 10-day period in which n- we had a police officer a day dying of COVID. If you go to the Officer Down Memorial Page, uh, they, the executive director there, a sergeant from Fairfax, Virginia, says that, "We, uh, by the end of the pandemic, the, uh, it will overtake the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001, as the single deadliest incident in the history of United States law enforcement." I mean, if I told you that there's a killer out there in Florida killing a cop a day, there'd be fucking martial law. There'd be tanks in the streets. There'd be guys in tactical gear and, and, and assault rifles, rightfully so. And there is. And it's- it's, it's COVID-19. And these people are interacting with the public, of course, to boot. And it's a, it's a tragedy.

   30. JRJoe Rogan2:31

       So-
2. 5:08 – 9:44

   Vaccines, healthcare access, and what “treatment” can’t replace

   1. BCBilly Corben5:08

      But I, I... There's a 27-year-old police officer, a mother of a two-year-old, five-month-old, I mean-

   2. JRJoe Rogan5:14

      She died from COVID.

   3. BCBilly Corben5:15

      ... who are, died from COVID. So, like, and these are-

   4. JRJoe Rogan5:17

      Are they getting bad treatment?

   5. BCBilly Corben5:19

      I think there are... (sighs) I think it's several things. Listen. Treatment is no substitute for the vaccine. It's just not. Okay? People... Uh, the, uh, the vaccine is helping people. It is helping people to... It's less likely they'll get infected. It's more likely they will survive. Th- that just bears out. I think it's the vaccine hesitation is what I think it is. I think that that's the major cause. And it's particularly problematic when you have public-facing people, like law enforcement officers, who are interacting-

   6. JRJoe Rogan5:50

      Yeah.

   7. BCBilly Corben5:50

      ... they could come to your window to write a, a par- uh, write a traffic ticket. And that could be a death sentence.

   8. JRJoe Rogan5:55

      But that is, it's very unusual for a 27-year-old person with good healthcare, someone who's been taken care of, to die from COVID.

   9. BCBilly Corben6:03

      Yes.

   10. JRJoe Rogan6:03

       It's very, very statistically-

   11. BCBilly Corben6:05

       Yes.

   12. JRJoe Rogan6:06

       ... unusual.

   13. BCBilly Corben6:07

       And that is anecdotal. That's one example. So I'm not saying that-

   14. JRJoe Rogan6:09

       Yes.

   15. BCBilly Corben6:09

       ... that is, is the rule in Florida.

   16. JRJoe Rogan6:11

       Whi- did she have preexisting medical conditions and comorbidities?

   17. BCBilly Corben6:15

       I have no idea, but let's be, let's be honest, Americans by and large are not in as good a shape as you're, (laughs) as you're in. Like, that's just, you know, we, we all, we're all, we're walking, talking comorbidities. That's, that's just, you know-

   18. JRJoe Rogan6:26

       Yeah.

   19. BCBilly Corben6:26

       ... the reality. But, you know, the, the, the truth is is that there is a safe and effective, and in fact, free way to ... 'Cause that's the thing too, is, is the treatment is not a, a pre-infection prophylaxis, you know? It's something you, it's something you do later, you know? It's not something you do to avoid getting the, uh, getting the virus. And here's the thing, once you have the virus, for some people that's a death sentence. It doesn't matter how you treat it. Um-

   20. JRJoe Rogan6:55

       Wait, but wait a minute. Stop.

   21. BCBilly Corben6:56

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan6:56

       I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's true, because we don't know what they're doing. When you say it doesn't matter how you treat 'em, if you treat 'em with monoclonal antibodies-

   23. BCBilly Corben7:04

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan7:04

       ... in particular early on in their infection-

   25. BCBilly Corben7:06

       Which are available in Florida.

   26. JRJoe Rogan7:07

       Yeah, they're available everywhere.

   27. BCBilly Corben7:09

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan7:09

       It's shown to have an incredible rate of ... There was like, there was a recent study that Fauci actually talked about it. That 85%, uh, i- it keeps people from being hospitalized.

   29. BCBilly Corben7:18

       Absolutely. And every- And I don't begrudge anyone a cocktail or a kitchen sink approach once you get infected. You should try everything that you and your doctor-

   30. JRJoe Rogan7:27

       Right, but-
3. 9:44 – 16:21

   Ivermectin, monoclonals, and the media framing fight

   1. JRJoe Rogan9:44

      Okay, listen, CNN knows that.

   2. BCBilly Corben12:07

      Yes.

   3. JRJoe Rogan12:07

      They know that the man who created it won the Nobel Prize for its use in humans in 2015. They know that it's used for yellow fever and dengue fever and has antiviral properties. They know that. They know that it's used for river blindness. They know that it's been used for over 40 years.

   4. BCBilly Corben12:20

      Yes.

   5. JRJoe Rogan12:20

      They know that. So when they say horse paste and horse dewormer, they're not saying it-... because they want people to not take horse dewormer. They're saying it to ridicule this particular medication.

   6. BCBilly Corben12:31

      I think they have an obligation to inform people that aren't informed that, or be, that are literally going down to feed stores, which, by the way is anecdotal.

   7. JRJoe Rogan12:37

      But that's not what they're doing.

   8. BCBilly Corben12:38

      Yeah. I-

   9. JRJoe Rogan12:38

      That's not what they're doing.

   10. BCBilly Corben12:40

       I, I don't-

   11. JRJoe Rogan12:40

       They're talking about people who are taking the human drug, and they're pretending they're taking horse dewormer.

   12. BCBilly Corben12:45

       Here's the thing. It is not approved. And even the, even the big pharma company, Merck, made $46 billion last year, who manufactures and, you know, uh, uh, ivermectin, even they say this is not a proven treatment for-

   13. JRJoe Rogan13:00

       Right.

   14. BCBilly Corben13:00

       ... either to avoid the virus or to, to treat the virus. Whereas, uh, uh, a mono- monoclonal antibodies, Regeneron-

   15. JRJoe Rogan13:08

       Mm-hmm.

   16. BCBilly Corben13:08

       ... has emergency use authorization. But the reality is, first and foremost-

   17. JRJoe Rogan13:12

       You and I are not doctors. So if we're gonna get real specific about this-

   18. BCBilly Corben13:15

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan13:15

       ... and we start pulling up links, this is gonna be a long conversation about-

   20. BCBilly Corben13:18

       (laughs)

   21. JRJoe Rogan13:18

       ... COVID and ivermectin-

   22. BCBilly Corben13:19

       Yes.

   23. JRJoe Rogan13:19

       ... and, and, uh-

   24. BCBilly Corben13:20

       I'm uniquely unqualified-

   25. JRJoe Rogan13:21

       Yeah.

   26. BCBilly Corben13:21

       ... to opine on, on this. (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan13:23

       I, I know a little bit about it because of my experiences with it-

   28. BCBilly Corben13:26

       (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan13:26

       ... di- discussing with doctors. But it's not as cut and dry as anybody wants to pretend it is. And one of the reasons why Merck is d- talking about it is they're developing their own antiviral medication, and it's a generic now, which means anybody can make it. So ivermectin can be literally be made by any pharmaceutical company. There's a lot of complicated shit behind the scenes. And as a skeptic, maybe you should look at it from that perspective as well because the... What was it? The J- Japanese, the Tokyo... W- What was that c- Tokyo. The Tokyo Medical-

   30. BCBilly Corben13:56

       Yeah.
4. 16:21 – 18:19

   From “Florida fuckery” to Miami as America’s preview (climate risk and corruption)

   1. BCBilly Corben16:21

      Yeah, Florida fuckery is our genre. And it's our, also our-

   2. JRJoe Rogan16:24

      Yeah.

   3. BCBilly Corben16:24

      ... our top export-

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:25

      Right.

   5. BCBilly Corben16:25

      ... I think, is, is well. It's really what we provide the rest of the-

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:28

      But for you-

   7. BCBilly Corben16:29

      And COVID.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:29

      And, and COVID, yeah.

   9. BCBilly Corben16:30

      You, I mean, look about how much your work is about Florida, the Cocaine Cowboy series, you know, all the stuff on A-Rod, like all the- Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:38

       There's, there's so much of your, your work...

   11. BCBilly Corben16:42

       The petrifying th- I'm a Florida native-

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:44

       Yeah.

   13. BCBilly Corben16:44

       ... you know, and a lifelong Miamian. And, and I think the petrifying thing that I've learned through the years, and it's not my theory, uh, T.D. Allman called Miami the city of the future. And effectively, the Florida of today is the America of tomorrow. And e- more importantly, the Miami of today, more specifically, the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow. So if you want to know what, uh, challenges we'll face or calamities will befall us as a nation in the years or even decades to come, you need only look at the canary in the coal mine, which is, which is South Florida.

   14. JRJoe Rogan17:15

       Do you think that's because of it's very vulnerable to climate change, first of all, right?

   15. BCBilly Corben17:19

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:19

       Like, there's, there's estimates about how long Miami can last.

   17. BCBilly Corben17:23

       Yeah. They're not good.

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:24

       Like... Yeah, they don't think-

   19. BCBilly Corben17:25

       Grim.

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:25

       They think you got about two decades, right?

   21. BCBilly Corben17:28

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:28

       Isn't that the, the current thought?

   23. BCBilly Corben17:30

       I'm a renter.

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:31

       (laughs)

   25. BCBilly Corben17:31

       Let me put it to you that way. I've lived there my whole life. I don't own any property-

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:36

       Really?

   27. BCBilly Corben17:36

       ... in Miami.

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:36

       It's probably a good move.

   29. BCBilly Corben17:37

       I'm not bullish on it.

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:38

       It does... It seems-
5. 18:19 – 21:10

   Sunny-day flooding, sea walls, and choosing vanity projects over resilience

   1. BCBilly Corben18:19

      And so I'll tell you right now as we speak, this is the, um, the king tides. You know what the king tides are?

   2. JRJoe Rogan18:25

      No.

   3. BCBilly Corben18:25

      They happen every September, October, and November, not the entire time, but there's like a week here, a weekend there for those three months. It is what we call sunny day flooding.So it has to do with the tides. It has to do with the, the s- the distance between the sun and the moon and the earth. And it floods in the sunlight. It, we can get as much as 12 inches, 12 inches above the highest high tide of the year. Uh-

   4. JRJoe Rogan18:53

      So it just, it's not from rain?

   5. BCBilly Corben18:55

      It's not... Now here's the problem. We're still in hurricane season, which means rain exacerbates it. Inclement weather can... We're totally fucked when it rains on top of the king tides. But this is just like a day, like you just wa- uh, if you were in a low-lying area or waterfront or oceanfront, bay front, that's just what, sunny day. Per- it's perfectly, it could be perfectly beautiful and you could have as much as 12 inches, uh, above the highest high tide.

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:18

      So it's just an unusual level of the ocean.

   7. BCBilly Corben19:21

      Yeah, it's just a quirk of, of the tides. It happens every year f- uh, o- uh, off and on for three months. Yeah. That's in, in the day, s- we call it sunny day flooding.

   8. JRJoe Rogan19:30

      Jesus.

   9. BCBilly Corben19:30

      That's a thing that we have there. I mean, you know Miami we make it rain.

   10. JRJoe Rogan19:33

       Yeah. (laughs)

   11. BCBilly Corben19:33

       But we now, we have sunny, sunny day flooding is a thing. Uh-

   12. JRJoe Rogan19:37

       And there's nothing they can do, like New Orleans, like put up some sort of a, some sort of a wall-

   13. BCBilly Corben19:44

       A dam or...

   14. JRJoe Rogan19:44

       ... a dam.

   15. BCBilly Corben19:44

       So the, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed a kind of futuristic post-apocalyptic, you know, after the flood, well pre-flood kind of a wall. And Miami said, "No gracias. No thank you. We don't want that. We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll fend for ourselves." And-

   16. JRJoe Rogan20:00

       Did they say no because it was too expensive?

   17. BCBilly Corben20:02

       (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan20:02

       Or did they say no because-

   19. BCBilly Corben20:03

       No, the Army Corps of Engineers I think was gonna, everything was gonna be federally funded. They just didn't want this unsightly, unseemly kind of a wall in our beautiful town.

   20. JRJoe Rogan20:12

       (laughs)

   21. BCBilly Corben20:12

       And, but what they did want-

   22. JRJoe Rogan20:13

       (sighs)

   23. BCBilly Corben20:13

       ... is they wanted a signature bridge. We're building like this $800 million bridge that we don't need that's, but it's, it's super, it's super pretty as we say in Miami.

   24. JRJoe Rogan20:21

       Mm-hmm.

   25. BCBilly Corben20:21

       It's super pretty.

   26. JRJoe Rogan20:22

       And somebody probably got a good deal.

   27. BCBilly Corben20:24

       Oh, yeah. Oh, you-

   28. JRJoe Rogan20:25

       To put it together.

   29. BCBilly Corben20:25

       ... you better believe the contractors, th-

   30. JRJoe Rogan20:26

       Yeah.
6. 21:10 – 26:33

   Miami as a recording capital: legendary albums, cocaine logistics, and ‘piano tuning’ invoices

   1. JRJoe Rogan21:10

      And it's always been that place. It's always been that party place. You were, you were-

   2. BCBilly Corben21:13

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan21:13

      ... telling me before about how during, uh, w- was it, was it the '70s or the '80s these recording artists would go-

   4. BCBilly Corben21:19

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan21:19

      ... down to Miami?

   6. BCBilly Corben21:20

      Mi, yeah, like listen, uh, M- Miami is just, it's America's Casablanca. You know? And so some of the biggest records of all time, um, I mean, back when that was a business, like you could sell tens of millions of albums, uh, everybody went to Miami. Eric Clapton was one of the first, Jimmy Buffet, The Bee Gees, The Eagles, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, um, The Allman Brothers, Fleetwood Mac. And they were doing all those records that we all still know today from the '70s. They recorded, uh, mixed or mastered at least in part. Um, uh, uh, uh, Glenn Frey and Don Henley wrote the lyrics to Hotel California in a rented mansion on Miami Beach-

   7. JRJoe Rogan22:00

      (laughs)

   8. BCBilly Corben22:00

      ... uh, where it, it had, that had been the love nest, um, of Howard Hughes and Ava Gardner. Uh, uh, Winston Churchill used it as a, a winter home. Uh, and, um, the Watergate burglars and Howard Hunt used it as well. And then, um, Stephen Stills used it. He was hanging out there with like Shel Silverstein. They were, it was like a weird scene. (laughs) And then, uh, eventually The Eagles came down to do Hotel California and wrote the lyrics. They locked themselves, these two guys, in a fucking room. And they w- they just, uh, the housekeeper left sandwiches and, and drinks-

   9. JRJoe Rogan22:33

      Wow.

   10. BCBilly Corben22:33

       ... at the door 'cause the door was closed. And they came down in bathrobes one day with, with legal pads, yellow legal pads and said, "We have it."

   11. JRJoe Rogan22:42

       Wow.

   12. BCBilly Corben22:42

       "We have, we have, we have the lyrics." And so everybody, everybo- and it was a, a communal scene too. It's kinda like your place with the, you know, (laughs) everybody just sort of like stops by.

   13. JRJoe Rogan22:50

       Oh, people come in and get tested? (laughs)

   14. BCBilly Corben22:52

       Yeah. (laughs) Yeah. People stop by to ge- It wa- It was like that because you had all these artists in every room. Like, so there was pickup basketball games outside. You'd drive up and there'd be The Bee Gees playing The Allman Brothers playing Eric Clapton in a pickup basketball game. And they, they, to this day, Criteria Studios, they have an, a wooden upright piano. And the, rumor has it one day there was an artist, I won't mention the name, was playing and had a baggie of cocaine on the top of the piano. And he was playing. And the baggie fell open, fell, boom, puff of smoke on the keys of the piano, uh, appropriately. And he grabbed the bag and salvaged what he could. And then for the next several months, the people at the studio who worked at the, would stick a straw between the keys (laughs) on the, on the piano and try to s- mostly dust they were probably snorting.

   15. JRJoe Rogan23:37

       (coughs)

   16. BCBilly Corben23:37

       But like would just try to salvage whatever they could from there. So the, the, the, the joke was that, um, they had, uh, a line item on the, uh, the bills that, 'cause that's the thing. They were away from the watchful eyes and ears of the labels, which were all based in New York and LA. So they would go to Miami and no one knew what the fuck was going. I didn't have publicists or producers from, or executives rather, from, from the recording studios. So they would send them bills to pay for the studio time. There'd be a line item for cocaine, but you couldn't say "cocaine". Um, and I think, by the way, cocaine was, at that time, was probably part of the appeal of bringing the artists to Miami, to be fair. Uh-

   17. JRJoe Rogan24:13

       Probably, right?

   18. BCBilly Corben24:14

       But it was under the, the category of piano tuning-

   19. JRJoe Rogan24:18

       (laughs)

   20. BCBilly Corben24:19

       ... was, was the cocaine. So you get, uh, like some, you know, someone at, you know, accounts in, at a record label would call up and say, "Hey, I have a question about this, this invoice. Um, it's, it's, there's $5,000 here for piano tuning, but there's only one ballad on the album."

   21. JRJoe Rogan24:32

       (laughs)

   22. BCBilly Corben24:32

       "So what's with all this fucking piano tuning you had here?" There's, there was an act, oh, God, I C- I'm not gonna say it. But there was a band who came down in the '80s to record at Criteria.... and then they came down again in the '90s. And the guy who runs the studio, Trevor, his mom was the manager before him. So he was a little kid running around this scene, if you can imagine a little kid in Miami in the '70s running around this scene. This is an incredible place. Aretha Franklin did the Respect record at Criteria. James Brown did I Feel Good, recorded that song at Criteria. It's a really historic place. And so he... This band comes in and he says to the lead singer, he says, "Hey, listen. I don't know if you remember, you were down here 15 years ago, whatever, back in the 8-, late '70s, early '80s doing this, this record." And the singer says, "I have no memory of that whatsoever, except for one thing." He said, "One night apparently, we were done recording here and someone took us into the neighborhood." It's like in a residential kind of area. "Into the neighborhood, to this woman's house, and she brought out a brick of cocaine, an entire kilo of cocaine." He said, "I'd never seen that before. She put it down on the coffee ta-... We're sitting on the couch, she put it down on the... Like, this is a big band. Uh, they put it, she put it down on the coffee table. She cut it open and all I remember from my entire experience in Miami is the smell of that entire kilo of cocaine." Like just-

   23. JRJoe Rogan25:53

       (laughs)

   24. BCBilly Corben25:53

       ... what it feels like when an enti- the... Like an entire kilo of cocaine is opened up before you and it hits, and it hits you.

   25. JRJoe Rogan26:01

       Have you ever done coke?

   26. BCBilly Corben26:02

       Never.

   27. JRJoe Rogan26:03

       Me neither.

   28. BCBilly Corben26:04

       Never.

   29. JRJoe Rogan26:04

       But hearing that, I wanna sniff.

   30. BCBilly Corben26:07

       (laughs)
7. 26:33 – 35:14

   Drug cycles, fentanyl-laced cocaine, and why Billy says ‘legalize and regulate’

   1. BCBilly Corben26:33

      But I went, I went to an arts high school in the '90s, so cocaine... You know, drug trends tend to be kind of cyclical. You know?

   2. JRJoe Rogan26:40

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BCBilly Corben26:40

      Um, they run in the... Like nostalgia cycles.

   4. JRJoe Rogan26:42

      Yeah.

   5. BCBilly Corben26:42

      They kind of run in 20-year kind of things. Oh, this decade is defined by this. You know, um, so, you know, you had psychedelics in the '60s. Cocaine, uh, uh, cocaine kind of comes in vogue in the '70s and the... Obviously, there's some overlap, you know. Um, beginning of the '70s is like the end of the '60s, et cetera, so-

   6. JRJoe Rogan26:59

      But in the '90s it kind of died away.

   7. BCBilly Corben27:01

      Totally. And of course pot's a perennial.

   8. JRJoe Rogan27:03

      Yeah.

   9. BCBilly Corben27:03

      Pot is always hot. But by the '90s what happens is, yeah, cocaine kind of fell out of favor. Um, also I went to i- arts high school. No one could afford cocaine. But the psych- the '60s drugs kind of came around again.

   10. JRJoe Rogan27:15

       Right.

   11. BCBilly Corben27:15

       People were doing mushrooms, acid, MDMA became... You know, ecstasy became a thing. So that trend kind of came around again and people weren't really doing cocaine when I was in, in high school.

   12. JRJoe Rogan27:25

       Mm-hmm.

   13. BCBilly Corben27:25

       They were doing a lot of other shit, uh, though.

   14. JRJoe Rogan27:27

       When, when I was in high school people were doing coke, but in the '90s after that I remember someone saying something about coke and someone was like, "You do coke still?"

   15. BCBilly Corben27:37

       (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan27:37

       Like, in the '90s people had stopped, but then somewhere in the 2000s it seemed to kick up again, and it's all... It's like people forget. It's like a group of people ruin their entire lives with coke and then... I don't know if you know about this, what's going on right now in LA, but there was a terrible tragedy amongst these comedians where four comedians at a party overdosed.

   17. BCBilly Corben27:57

       The lace gang.

   18. JRJoe Rogan27:57

       Yeah, and they're, they're getting cocaine that's, that's laced with fentanyl. And, uh, one of them survived and she's in the ICU now, and she started to talk again and text people and stuff, so she seems like she's gonna make it. But three people died.

   19. BCBilly Corben28:11

       Legalize it, regulate it.

   20. JRJoe Rogan28:13

       Yes. Yes.

   21. BCBilly Corben28:14

       I mean, who the fuck knows what you're getting?

   22. JRJoe Rogan28:15

       Exactly.

   23. BCBilly Corben28:15

       You could get a pill or a pow-, a bag, a baggy of powder from somebody in a club or whatever.

   24. JRJoe Rogan28:19

       Yeah.

   25. BCBilly Corben28:19

       I mean...

   26. JRJoe Rogan28:20

       Stan Hope wrote about it on his Instagram, was getting into it with people. But it's 100% true, because if... then you would get actual cocaine. And actual cocaine, you'd probably feel like shit in the morning, but you'd survive.

   27. BCBilly Corben28:30

       (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan28:30

       And you would, it would... You would at least know, like, you know, if we had this whiskey. You have a shot of whiskey, you know what it is. It's a shot of whiskey. We all know what it means. We know, we know what that dose is.

   29. BCBilly Corben28:39

       Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan28:40

       We know what that's gonna do to us. And you can overdose on whiskey. Anyone can. We... You can all go to the store and buy enough alcohol to drink yourself to death on a daily basis. But at least you know what it is. With these, these cocaine laced with fentanyl products that people are getting or heroin laced with fentanyl, you have no idea. You're, you're just rolling the dice that the cartel didn't fuck up in this mix.
8. 35:14 – 44:27

   Weed, edibles, creativity, and the ‘write sober, punch up high’ craft debate

   1. BCBilly Corben35:14

      It's what's, it's what's been so frustrating about the, the medical marijuana, uh, uh, fucking, uh, uh, uh, sh- just like, mm, uh, trek. It's just like, it's this never-ending saga in Florida is that like, I remember when I went... So I didn't smoke pot until I was, when I tried, I was like 37 years old, 35 years old.

   2. JRJoe Rogan35:32

      How old are you now?

   3. BCBilly Corben35:33

      I'm 43.

   4. JRJoe Rogan35:34

      Oh.

   5. BCBilly Corben35:34

      So I tried pot very-

   6. JRJoe Rogan35:35

      So when I met you-

   7. BCBilly Corben35:36

      ... very late.

   8. JRJoe Rogan35:36

      ... you had just started.

   9. BCBilly Corben35:39

      I just... Well, I, I don't smoke it reg- I tried it.

   10. JRJoe Rogan35:41

       When do you smoke it? Like how often?

   11. BCBilly Corben35:43

       Never.

   12. JRJoe Rogan35:44

       Never?

   13. BCBilly Corben35:44

       I just tr- I was in, I was in Colorado, and that's like, you know, it's like going to Italy and not eating pasta.

   14. JRJoe Rogan35:48

       So you rarely smoke pot is what you're saying?

   15. BCBilly Corben35:51

       Yeah, I never, I almost never smoke pot and I, I, I-

   16. JRJoe Rogan35:54

       But you do smoke pot sometimes?

   17. BCBilly Corben35:56

       I do take, uh, like a gummy sometimes.

   18. JRJoe Rogan35:58

       Oh.

   19. BCBilly Corben35:58

       I don't smoke it. Yeah. But that time-

   20. JRJoe Rogan36:00

       Like a 10 milligram? Like a little one?

   21. BCBilly Corben36:01

       I'm a lightweight. Yeah. I mean-

   22. JRJoe Rogan36:02

       Listen-

   23. BCBilly Corben36:03

       ... I don't-

   24. JRJoe Rogan36:03

       ... 10 milligrams is, it's nice.

   25. BCBilly Corben36:05

       It's-

   26. JRJoe Rogan36:05

       It's a nice feeling.

   27. BCBilly Corben36:06

       (laughs) I, I didn't... I don't know. I didn't care for it. I, I said to my... I remember I was in this pot smoking, I was in this pot church in Den-

   28. JRJoe Rogan36:16

       Whoa.

   29. BCBilly Corben36:16

       ... in Denver.

   30. JRJoe Rogan36:17

       That's always a bad place to be.
9. 44:27 – 51:37

   Comics bombing, Carlin stories, and what standup teaches about risk

   1. BCBilly Corben44:27

      A lot of that is w- you know, I had to... When I was (laughs) here last time, I had written a play for some reason, and so, um, like, writing is the hardest thing. It's the hardest thing. It's very isolating. I literally went into hotels. I got hotel rooms just by myself just to, to sit and write. And it's so... And writing on command, it's like standup com- like, I think standup comedy is like one of the bravest, (laughs) one of the bravest professions 'cause it's like, "Go be funny now. Be funny now." It's like you have a date and a time when you have to go and be funny.

   2. JRJoe Rogan44:57

      Right.

   3. BCBilly Corben44:57

      And it's just like, I think... And it's, and it's fucking stressful, and it doesn't matter how good the material may be in advance. Sometimes it's not gonna work, you know? I've seen like... My appreciation for, for standup comedy came from watching legends bomb.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:11

      Mm.

   5. BCBilly Corben45:11

      I've been in a room where, like, I'm the only motherfucker laughing at Gilbert Gottfried. I've been in a room-

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:17

      Where, where have you been? Where was that?

   7. BCBilly Corben45:18

      That was at, that was at the old Miami Improv. Remember the one at the, uh, the Seminole-

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:21

      Coconut Grove?

   9. BCBilly Corben45:21

      The... No, that was at... No. Well, the o- not the oldest Miami Improv but the Miami Improv before the la- now it's in Doral. Uh, it was at, uh, uh, Hollywood, the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel.

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:31

       Oh, okay.

   11. BCBilly Corben45:31

       That one.

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:31

       Yeah. Yeah.

   13. BCBilly Corben45:32

       I saw him bomb there. I went to Vegas in like 2000-ish, and I got to town on my girl's time, and I saw Carlin's name on a marquee. And I was like, "Well, that settles that." Like-

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:45

       Right.

   15. BCBilly Corben45:45

       ... I got on the phone, and I was like, "Carlin tickets." And my grandpa knew some high roller at that hotel. I forget which hotel it was. And they got us front row, and so-

   16. JRJoe Rogan45:54

       Ooh.

   17. BCBilly Corben45:54

       ... it was like a comedy club. It's a cabaret, like, you know, like style room, but like, um, it was w- you know, with the table, you know, perpendicular to the stage, you know, and we were sitting... Like, the fucking stage was right here, and then Carlin was like right up here. And so he was doing that bit about... 'cause he was, he was actually obviously trying out material for his, his HBO next stage, which, which, which was the, the God bit, the "I don't believe in God. I believe in Joe Pesci. I believe in the sun."

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:20

       Mm. Yeah.

   19. BCBilly Corben46:20

       That whole God bit, he's doing this whole God riff, which he was clearly still, I think, working on at the time. And so I'm hysterically laughing, and I'm realizing that o- other than Carlin's voice, the only thing I'm hearing is my laughter-

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:39

       Oh, God.

   21. BCBilly Corben46:39

       ... in an empty, sold-out fucking showroom. And I, I literally turned 'cause it... I became self-conscious about it, and I turn around. As you imagine the shot from my POV. I kind of pan the room, and I look at these people, these just good God-fearing 'mericans who just-

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:59

       (laughs)

   23. BCBilly Corben46:59

       ... were not about Carlin dissing the, the, the, the big guy or the big girl. And h- and they're just like stone f- It's like the audience of The Producers watching Springtime for Hitler.

   24. JRJoe Rogan47:09

       Right.

   25. BCBilly Corben47:10

       They're just like fucking appalled. And so I, I sweep the room. I come back, and I look up here, and George Carlin's nose is right here, and he's bending down off the stage at me.

   26. JRJoe Rogan47:24

       (laughs)

   27. BCBilly Corben47:24

       And we're practically nose to... And he goes, "Thank you, sir."

   28. JRJoe Rogan47:28

       (laughs)

   29. BCBilly Corben47:28

       And then, and then walk- 'cause I'm the only motherfucker laughing in the room. He goes, "Thank you, sir." And then wa-

   30. JRJoe Rogan47:33

       (laughs)
10. 51:37 – 57:48

    Celebrity fans and the ‘Cocaine Cowboys’ phenomenon (Janet Jackson, Bourdain, and Joe’s praise)

    1. BCBilly Corben51:37

       And some of them are much cool, me rest assured, much cooler than I am. Um, I had w- uh, wound up, I wound up at Janet Jackson's mansion one- one time in Miami Beach-

    2. JRJoe Rogan51:46

       Whoa.

    3. BCBilly Corben51:46

       ... 'cause she like summoned us to the mansion.

    4. JRJoe Rogan51:49

       Summoned?

    5. BCBilly Corben51:50

       She-

    6. JRJoe Rogan51:50

       How does she do that? Does she have a horn?

    7. BCBilly Corben51:51

       Through an agent.

    8. JRJoe Rogan51:51

       Ho ho!

    9. BCBilly Corben51:54

       (laughs)

    10. JRJoe Rogan51:54

        (laughs)

    11. BCBilly Corben51:54

        Yes, like the- it's a shofar really, and so we got a- a call from, uh, an agent who was a mutual friend and he said, "Janet is in town. She's renting a mansion on La Gorce Island."

    12. JRJoe Rogan52:05

        God, that's so wild.

    13. BCBilly Corben52:06

        La Gorce Island is where Sal Magluta from Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami-

    14. JRJoe Rogan52:09

        No!

    15. BCBilly Corben52:09

        ... rented a mansion as well. So that's how I knew La Gorce. I'm like, "Fucking Sal Magluta's mansion, rental mansion?"

    16. JRJoe Rogan52:14

        (laughs)

    17. BCBilly Corben52:14

        So she says, "She's here recording an album. She wants to meet you. She's a huge fan." And I was like, "She- who?"

    18. JRJoe Rogan52:23

        Did she think you were the guy from The Smashing Pumpkins?

    19. BCBilly Corben52:24

        Yeah, I was like, "Who does she-"

    20. JRJoe Rogan52:25

        (laughs)

    21. BCBilly Corben52:26

        What the fuck? I'm the guy, I'm the one with the hair.

    22. JRJoe Rogan52:28

        (laughs)

    23. BCBilly Corben52:28

        Does she know that? I'm like, not Billy Corgan. And who incidentally has @billy on Twitter? Was he like a fucking investor in Twitter? Like, how did he got @billy? So-

    24. JRJoe Rogan52:37

        I don't know. Billy's smart.

    25. BCBilly Corben52:39

        So what happens is when people go, wanna- wanna tweet at him, they go @billycor and my name I get's like autofills-

    26. JRJoe Rogan52:47

        Oh.

    27. BCBilly Corben52:47

        ... because they go right past @billy which he has @billy and so I get all kinds of-

    28. JRJoe Rogan52:52

        (laughs)

    29. BCBilly Corben52:52

        ... like when they're like upset at how he treated Daisy on wrestling on Sunday or we're-

    30. JRJoe Rogan52:56

        (laughs)
11. 57:48 – 58:41

    Inside ‘Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami’: deleted scenes, long production, and ‘frame-f***ing’ the edit

    1. BCBilly Corben57:48

       Yeah.

    2. JRJoe Rogan57:48

       ... I guess we should talk about this. We have a fucking whole series on Netflix now. How many episodes is this?

    3. BCBilly Corben57:52

       Six.

    4. JRJoe Rogan57:53

       I'm only two in. I'm two in now.

    5. BCBilly Corben57:55

       Yeah.

    6. JRJoe Rogan57:55

       But goddamn, it's good. It's like all your shit, man.

    7. BCBilly Corben57:57

       It gets better.

    8. JRJoe Rogan57:58

       Ah-

    9. BCBilly Corben57:59

       It does.

    10. JRJoe Rogan57:59

        ... I can only imagine. It's, it is a m- fucking amazing how many insane stories have come out of this one part of the country. And, you know-

    11. BCBilly Corben58:10

        (laughs)

    12. JRJoe Rogan58:10

        ... I had a buddy of mine, I think I told you this, my good friend Steve Graham did his residency, he's an ophthalmologist, he did his residency in Miami during the '80s.

    13. BCBilly Corben58:20

        Yeah.

    14. JRJoe Rogan58:20

        During the chaos days, and he would like save Polaroids-

    15. BCBilly Corben58:23

        Yeah.

    16. JRJoe Rogan58:23

        ... of like just some of the craziest shit that, that they saw.

    17. BCBilly Corben58:27

        Best place to ply your trade.

    18. JRJoe Rogan58:29

        Oh, yeah.

    19. BCBilly Corben58:29

        I mean, really whatever business you were in, especially in those days. You were in law enforcement, you were a lawyer-

    20. JRJoe Rogan58:34

        Yeah.

    21. BCBilly Corben58:34

        ... a prosecutor, a doctor.

    22. JRJoe Rogan58:37

        Yeah.

    23. BCBilly Corben58:37

        And you name it, that was the place that you wanted... A journalist.

    24. JRJoe Rogan58:40

        Yes.

    25. BCBilly Corben58:40

        God knows.

    26. JRJoe Rogan58:41

        Oh, yeah.

12. 58:41 – 1:26:27

    Cocaine-era Miami economics: laundering, banks, political proximity, and the ‘hustle’ legacy

    1. BCBilly Corben58:41

       That was where you wanted to ply your trade. I know a, pardon me, a guy was working as an ER doctor, uh, at Jackson at the trauma center, uh, d- in 1980. The Mariel boatlift had just happened. You remember, this is how Scarface opens.

    2. JRJoe Rogan58:54

       Oh, okay.

    3. BCBilly Corben58:55

       Um, Castro opens up the Mariel Harbor and sends, allows people to leave-

    4. JRJoe Rogan58:59

       All these criminals.

    5. BCBilly Corben59:00

       And he empties the prisons-

    6. JRJoe Rogan59:01

       Yeah.

    7. BCBilly Corben59:01

       ... the mental institutions, the hospitals, and just, he said, "I flushed the toilet of Cuba-"

    8. JRJoe Rogan59:05

       Right.

    9. BCBilly Corben59:05

       "... onto the United States." And it created a real crisis. I mean, four counties in South Florida nearly got bankrupt because you're absorbing 150 refugees, some small percentage of which are, you know, dangerous people, and you don't know who they are.

    10. JRJoe Rogan59:19

        True, right.

    11. BCBilly Corben59:19

        How, yeah, you can't weed them out. And so, but then you have to absorb the infirm and the sick and the young and people who don't have, you know, healthcare or housing or, or food. And so, um, Miami Beach looks a lot like, like Havana, like the sea wall, you know, like the, the sea wall and the Malecón. It's like, it's so, a lot of... And at that time, it was just like it was in Scarface. It was like, it was like 75% plus Jewish, a lot of Holocaust survivors, literally just God's waiting room they called it-

    12. JRJoe Rogan59:47

        Hmm.

    13. BCBilly Corben59:47

        ... just playing out the rest of their lives. In efficiencies on Ocean Drive, flop houses that would like, $125 a week maybe. That was high. Like, that's what you could live in Miami Beach for. So people on fixed incomes, you know, Social Security, elderly, retired. And then it attracted a lot of the, the, the Mariel, Marielitos, particularly the criminal element. And there were places where like the Miami Beach Police Department would just literally just drive around the block 'cause they'd keep getting calls to go to this, "Oh, this guy just got shot. This guy just got stabbed. This guy..." And it was over dumb shit. It was Wild West shit. It was like over a dominoes game, you know? And so one day, this trauma, uh, surgeon is working at the ER, and in comes a Mariel refugee with a gunshot wound. And he says to the guy, who's bilingual, he says, tells him something, he says, "Listen, you're very lucky." He said, "If you had been shot, you know, just millimeters this way, it would've hit a vital organ. You would've bled out. You would've been dead before you even got here." Saves the guy, guy goes on his way. Days later, he gets another guy, another patient, a Mariel refugee, with a gunshot wound in exactly the same place he told the other guy that, "If you shot..."... he got shot there, he would die. And this guy died. And he could never prove it, but he always believed that that was a retaliation shooting-

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:01

        Mm-hmm.

    15. BCBilly Corben1:01:02

        ... for the first guy that he had in there. But like that happened, like sto- people have like stories like that for fucking days. It was the number one, uh, Mayor's Jewelers in South Florida, number one seller of Rolex watches. The Mutiny Hotel, which is, we talk about in the doc, in, in actually several docs, which was the inspiration for the Babylon Club in Scarface. They were the number one seller of Dom Perignon. They had to like convert hotel rooms into refrigerated walk-in units for the Dom Perignon because they could not keep it, uh, in stock. They al-

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:28

        Whew.

    17. BCBilly Corben1:01:28

        ... they also filled the tubs, the Mutiny Girls would fill the tubs in the, in the, in the rooms with the, with the Dom Perignon as well so they could bill the customers. But, so that was part of where the, (laughs) where the supply was, uh, going. But that was a different kind of party depending on what you were willing to pay. But Miami is just one of those pla- in that era, you know?

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:01:43

        Yeah.

    19. BCBilly Corben1:01:43

        When it became America's Casablanca. I mean, look, the, the, our number one and two industries at that time, still today, um, early 1980s Miami, uh, number two was tourism, generating upwards of about seven billion dollars a year into the Miami-Dade economy. Number one, I should say legitimate industry, uh, was real estate, generating about nine billion dollars a year into the economy in Miami. The drug trade at the time was estimated to bring in upwards of 12 billion dollars a year into our local economy. (whoosh sound) So what you're saying is our number one business was an illicit trade, was the illegal drug trade, the money laundering. And I will tell you, I believe it to be the only case study, I should say the only successful case study of Ronald Reagan's trickle down economics. It's the only time it worked was in the drug boom in Miami because bandidos rob a bank and they ride on into the next to- town, right? And they spend their ill-gotten gains. They stayed in Miami. They kept that money in Miami. So that trickled down from the kingpins to banks into real estate, into people who were not in the illicit trade, but just... You know, I'll give you an example. Somebody, um... Let's do the bottom of the food chain in the drug industry. If you were a weekend warrior, you would want to show up and maybe do some grunt work, do some, you knew a drug smuggler, which was not uncommon in Miami. Everybody knew a drug smuggler. Marco Rubio spent a summer living in a cocaine stash house that belonged to his, to his, uh, brother-in-law.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:03:06

        Really?

    21. BCBilly Corben1:03:06

        In Miami, we're all guilty by geography, you know? (laughs) Like we're all complicit by just virtue of proximity to c- colorful characters. Yeah, he, Marco Rubio was like 14. He wasn't in the drug trade, but his brother-in-law was a major cocaine trafficker and they lived in, uh, West Kendall in Miami-Dade, Southwest Miami-Dade in a cocaine stash house for a summer. That's like a rite of passage, like a quinceañera or bar mitzvah (laughs) in Miami. Like, "I spent the summer in my brother-in-law's cocaine stash house" by Marco Rubio. Uh, must have made a really interesting paper for, uh, (laughs) for high school, what I did with my, with my summer vacation. Um, but that's just like, that's Miami. We're all touched by this. And so let's say you say to your buddy, "Hey, listen, I want to come out and just help you unload a plane." Right? Grunt work, physical labor. What do you get? The guy says, "I'll give you $10,000 to come out, cash, tax-free. Come on." So here's a guy not really in the drug business, just comes out to do some manual labor, gets $10,000 cash. This is a guy probably making in those days about $15,000 a year on the books, taxable income. But he's getting $10,000, let's say once a month, cash, in Miami. So he's got $120,000 cash where? Stashed somewhere. Where do you even put it? Cash became like a real liability because it was just, it's so bulky and annoying. People are putting it in walls and burying it and, uh, banks are charging you a vig to deposit cash 'cause they had no fucking place to put it. And so, but you have $120,000, so people spent it. It went into everything. And that was the thing. If you weren't ad- addicted to cocaine in Miami, you were addicted to that, that money. And that's, that's the legacy too, is that hust- is, is, you know, the tech hub hustle, it's just the new cocaine.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:04:43

        Mm-hmm.

    23. BCBilly Corben1:04:43

        It's just the new Hollywood East, never happened. It's just the new modern art hub, never happened. It's just, it's a hustle. We just, we have to subsist that way 'cause we don't have any other, any other industry.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:04:55

        Well, it also, it, it, it's the center of flossing in the country. Right? If you think about people that are just driving Lamborghinis and wearing giant rope chains, you think about Miami. Like, the, the, the culture is so flashy.

    25. BCBilly Corben1:05:10

        Fake it to make it.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:05:11

        But it's, it's fake it to make it, but it's also people that have it and want you, want you to know. It's all those things, right?

    27. BCBilly Corben1:05:17

        Yeah, but that's like some nouveau riche business. That's what I said.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:05:19

        Yeah. Yeah.

    29. BCBilly Corben1:05:19

        People from money don't necessarily-

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:05:22

        Right. No.

Episode duration: 2:59:49