Joe Rogan Experience #1706 - Billy Corben

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   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. 15:00 – 30:00

   I don't know if…

   1. BCBilly Corben15:00

      uh, authorized that, that you can, you can get. I think that, you know, we know that two of the biggest studies on ivermectin have been withdrawn for all sorts of, you know, reasons and potential-

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:08

      I don't know if that's true.

   3. BCBilly Corben15:09

      ... potential fuckery that-

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:09

      There's a lot of studies on ivermectin. If you go to the Critical Care COVID Workers' w- website, they detail or there's a long list of studies that they've shown ivermectin to be effective in preventing death and preventing hospitalization.

   5. BCBilly Corben15:24

      And-

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:24

      See, I... This is the thing where, like, you and I are arguing about some shit we don't really have expertise in.

   7. BCBilly Corben15:28

      I think that that's absolutely true.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:30

      Yeah.

   9. BCBilly Corben15:30

      It's why, it's why Netflix publicist didn't want me to talk about it.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:32

       Ah, too late.

   11. BCBilly Corben15:33

       (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:33

       But you went right into it, motherfucker. Look at you.

   13. BCBilly Corben15:35

       Did I go right into it? No, you asked about Florida.

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:36

       You went right into it.

   15. BCBilly Corben15:37

       I didn't go right into it. I went into a whole, um...

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:38

       Oh, yeah, I asked you about Florida, and you went right into COVID deaths.

   17. BCBilly Corben15:42

       Di- is that what happened?

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:42

       Yeah, you went into police officers and more people dying of COVID and...

   19. BCBilly Corben15:46

       Well, you asked me about the, the state's response to this pandemic.

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:48

       I was just gonna talk to you about the preposterous nature of your state that you love so much.

   21. BCBilly Corben15:52

       (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan15:53

       You're a defender of s- Florida in its most ridiculousness. And one of the things that I wanted to talk to you, 'cause I haven't talked to you since the pandemic started. Last time I talked to you was Screwball, right? Like, how long ago was that?

   23. BCBilly Corben16:04

       Oh, yeah. What? 2019?

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:06

       Yeah, it was 2019.

   25. BCBilly Corben16:07

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:07

       Right before the shit hit the fan. That was the last time we talked.

   27. BCBilly Corben16:09

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:10

       We were talking about that documentary. And then when all this happened and so much of the wackiness and the, you know, the, the controversies coming out of Florida, like, you embrace the chaos of Florida.

   29. BCBilly Corben16:21

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

   30. JRJoe Rogan16:24

       Yeah.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   (laughs) …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      that you take that you do it in IV form and, like, almost immediately afterwards you feel great. Um, but this stuff is brutal to take. And it usually takes about two hours in a drip because you wanna take it very slowly, 'cause when you take it fast, it just kill... It's, it's the most unpleasant, uncomfortable feeling in your stomach, unless you're high. When you smoke weed, I turn that thing up full crank-

   2. BCBilly Corben30:25

      (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:25

      ... and I go through a full bag in 10 minutes, and I'm telling you, I barely feel it. And I was... When I was doing that I was like, "Oh, well this is probably the nausea preventing aspect that chemo patients enjoy and people that... you know, people with AIDS, people that have a really hard time eating food." And the, the, the... Something about marijuana and nausea-

   4. BCBilly Corben30:45

      Honestly-... I, I know that it's a medicine. You know that it's a medicine. I think most people even who participate in the prohibition, uh, which has been the, incidentally the deadliest thing about marijuana has been the prohibition.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:58

      Of course. It's-

   6. BCBilly Corben30:59

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:59

      ... with every drug.

   8. BCBilly Corben31:00

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan31:00

      You're, you're boosting up organized crime.

   10. BCBilly Corben31:02

       And I just, so but, the point is, I also, when it comes to the legalization, I don't care that it has a medicinal purpose.

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:11

       Right.

   12. BCBilly Corben31:11

       That whiskey does not have a medicinal... Well, a hot toddy when you have a little cold maybe.

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:14

       Yeah.

   14. BCBilly Corben31:14

       There's no medicinal purpose. You do it for fu- And I don't give a shit, you know? That's, that's, that's, that's the autonomy, you know? (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:21

       Right. Of course.

   16. BCBilly Corben31:21

       That you, it's your body. It's not affecting other people.

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:24

       Right. Of course.

   18. BCBilly Corben31:24

       And you wanna, you wanna enter into some sort of, you know, deal or contract with a, with a certified, (laughs) you know, marijuana dealer or, or a dispensary or cocaine dealer for that matter.

   19. JRJoe Rogan31:34

       Yeah.

   20. BCBilly Corben31:34

       What do I care about that?

   21. JRJoe Rogan31:36

       I feel the same way about everything. I feel the same way about cigarettes, motorcycle racing. Like you do whatever the fuck you want, man. As lo- as long as it's not hurting me-

   22. BCBilly Corben31:44

       Right.

   23. JRJoe Rogan31:45

       ... I am, uh, 100% for you making your own choices.

   24. BCBilly Corben31:48

       Your right to wave your hands-

   25. JRJoe Rogan31:50

       Yes.

   26. BCBilly Corben31:50

       ... ends, ends where my nose begins.

   27. JRJoe Rogan31:52

       Yes.

   28. BCBilly Corben31:52

       Bottom line. If you're over there-

   29. JRJoe Rogan31:54

       There, yeah.

   30. BCBilly Corben31:54

       ... what the fuck do I care?
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Mm. …

   1. BCBilly Corben45:00

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:11

      Mm.

   3. 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-

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:17

      Where, where have you been? Where was that?

   5. BCBilly Corben45:18

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

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:21

      Coconut Grove?

   7. 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.

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:31

      Oh, okay.

   9. BCBilly Corben45:31

      That one.

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:31

       Yeah. Yeah.

   11. 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-

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:45

       Right.

   13. 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-

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:54

       Ooh.

   15. 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."

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:20

       Mm. Yeah.

   17. 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-

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:39

       Oh, God.

   19. 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-

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:59

       (laughs)

   21. 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.

   22. JRJoe Rogan47:09

       Right.

   23. 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.

   24. JRJoe Rogan47:24

       (laughs)

   25. BCBilly Corben47:24

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

   26. JRJoe Rogan47:28

       (laughs)

   27. 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-

   28. JRJoe Rogan47:33

       (laughs)

   29. BCBilly Corben47:33

       And then stalks off back off the stage. And I was just like-

   30. JRJoe Rogan47:36

       Wow.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:12:55

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. BCBilly Corben1:00:00

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:01:01

      Mm-hmm.

   3. 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-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:01:28

      Whew.

   5. 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?

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:01:43

      Yeah.

   7. 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.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:03:06

      Really?

   9. 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.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:04:43

       Mm-hmm.

   11. 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.

   12. 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.

   13. BCBilly Corben1:05:10

       Fake it to make it.

   14. 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?

   15. BCBilly Corben1:05:17

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

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:05:19

       Yeah. Yeah.

   17. BCBilly Corben1:05:19

       People from money don't necessarily-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:05:22

       Right. No.

   19. BCBilly Corben1:05:22

       ... behave. They usually don't want you to know-

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:05:24

       Right.

   21. BCBilly Corben1:05:25

       ... that they have money. It makes them vulnerable. It makes them targets, you know?

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:05:27

       Right.

   23. BCBilly Corben1:05:27

       And so they're, you know, if you're rich, you don't tell people you're rich.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:05:30

       Yeah.

   25. BCBilly Corben1:05:30

       If you're smart, you don't tell people you're smart.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:05:32

       I knew this guy who was, his family was ex- insanely wealth- like generational wealth, and they got mad at him when he bought a Porsche. They got mad at him. They're like, "What are you driving? What are you doing with this fucking thing?" He's like, "It's a nice car." They're like, "You fucking idiot." Like they wanted like everybody to shut the fuck up 'cause they were billionaires. They were like, "Shut the fuck up."

   27. BCBilly Corben1:05:51

       I think about De Niro in Goodfellas when you say that.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:05:53

       Right.

   29. BCBilly Corben1:05:54

       The cast, the woman with the-

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:05:54

       The guy with the cat-

Episode duration: 2:59:49