EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,043 words- 0:00 – 1:16
Leaving big cities: why Austin feels more “normal” than LA
- NANarrator
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music)
- MTMatt Taibbi
So you like it down here better?
- JRJoe Rogan
I love it.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah?
- JRJoe Rogan
I love it. Yeah. People are so nice. There's less of them, so they're not a burden. Oh, yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you know, I think big cities, you just... People just become in your, they get in your way.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And no one's in your way here. Everyone's friendly.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's like normal.
- MTMatt Taibbi
That's great.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're normal people. Plus, it's not tainted by show business. As much as people try to pretend that Hollywood, uh, you know, doesn't have an effect on their lives, "I'm in real estate." Get the fuck out of here. Like everyone is tainted by that, the weirdness of that city.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause it's a city that's predicated on being full of shit. Like you have to-
- MTMatt Taibbi
I was gonna say.
- JRJoe Rogan
... pretend or something.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, like everybody, as soon as they're talking, they're, they're, they start lying basically.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, they, they-
- MTMatt Taibbi
It's like an angle they play.
- JRJoe Rogan
For sure, like, p- it's they're selling themselves.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And promoting an angle. And out here, no one's doing that.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's so refreshing.
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It's like, "This is Mike. He does, he makes barbecue." "Oh, oh, hi Mike."
- 1:16 – 2:31
COVID restrictions, power, and the psychology of fear
- JRJoe Rogan
And then I was like, "Yeah." Like I embraced it right away because, you know, we, when we moved here, um, we'd s-... I started looking in May of 2020. I was like, "I'm getting the fuck out of here. I, I see the writing on the wall."
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because there was two weeks to stop the spread and flatten the curve. Like, okay, makes sense. That makes sense. I was all on board. And then as time went on, I'm like, this is not two weeks. And then they were talking about more restrictions, and then they were shutting down outdoor dining and this and that. And I was like, "What, what are they doing?" Oh, they're, they're enjoying this. They're enjoying telling people what to do.
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is just basic human nature to pretend that they would, that government agencies, that people who wanted to be mayor, people that wanted to be governor, would somehow or another avoid all the pitfalls that are just naturally a part of being a person when a person has power, especially power over a bunch of people that are scared.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you're offering solutions and you're standing there and, "We have to keep the safety of our communities in mind."
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, you know, that kind of shit.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah. I, I, I think that's a, a big story of modern America is people just not being able to deal with the idea that there just aren't solutions for some things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
That you just... There's, for some things, you just can't fix it by fiat.
- 2:31 – 4:13
Lab-leak suspicions and the missing accountability story
- JRJoe Rogan
What's fascinating to me though is that people will blame everyone except the people that were actually responsible for the virus.
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs) Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like this is a virus that most likely... I mean, I'm not 100% sure, but I'm about 90% sure that this thing came from a fucking laboratory.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And all the stuff that I've read and all the emails from Peter Daszak and Fauci and the NIH, when you look at the way they were looking at it and how they were kind of panicked, and then you look at their, their absolute, their, their, their belief that s- supposedly they're broadcasting that it, there's no way it could have come from a lab, and then you see their actual emails and you go, "Oh, you fuckers." Like, you know, you know this probably came from a lab and you're doing your best job to try to obfuscate, to try to confuse people, to try to muddy the water and make it l- just get y- just get it as far away from you as you can. But the reality is this probably came from a fucking lab. But that's not what people are mad at. People are mad at people who take alternative medications. People are mad at people who downplay the severity of it. People are mad at... They're mad at all kinds of things, but they're not mad at the fucking source.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
The actual source, which is most likely that level four biolab in Wuhan, China, most likely.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, at minimum, those emails show that they, they thought they had a serious PR problem on their hands.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
I mean, I think you, you can look at them in a number of different ways, but at minimum it shows that.
- JRJoe Rogan
To be charitable.
- MTMatt Taibbi
To be, to be totally charitable. Um, and that should have been a big story all by itself, and it wasn't.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it wasn't.
- MTMatt Taibbi
So, yeah.
- 4:13 – 8:37
America’s low tolerance for crisis—and media as an anxiety machine
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, it's a, a strange time, but it's, this is normal. This is a normal time when people are under heavy anxiety.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because most people do not know how to handle like extreme stress or scary unknown situations. That's why they like a normal job that starts at 9:00, it ends at 5:00, and you have two weeks paid vacation, and you have your this and you have your that, and everything's laid out and you know what to expect. People do not like when you don't know what to expect.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Y- yeah. I mean, th- that was a big, um, thing for me. I lived in Russia for, for so many years. And, you know, in Moscow there were constant terrorist attacks at the time because the Chechens and the Russians were having these issues. But when 9/11 happened in the United States, people were traumatized by that beyond all proportion, it seemed to me, because just in America, we're just not used to having to deal with all sorts of things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Uh, and so they, they, they just don't deal well with stress, uh, when it's an unusual situation. It has to... They have to be in the, the kind of, the, the lane of safety.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's, um... We're not used to it.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, it's weird because we start so many wars.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And we don't have any of them over here. (laughs)
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right, right, exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
So fucked. (laughs)
- MTMatt Taibbi
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
I have a good buddy of mine who's my former kickboxing trainer. Uh, shout out to Shuky. He lives in Israel, but he lived in America for a little while, and then he went back to Israel. But, um-... I, I, I was hanging out with him and his family over his house one night for dinner and they're playing the bongo drums and dancing and, like, they're really, like, festive people. And I go, "Why are Israelis, like, so happy?" And he goes, "Because over in Israel, you never know."
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
He goes, "At any minute you could die, so fucking party."
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"Party, party." Like, you know, just he was always happy.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right. Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, he, he had this attitude because of the, the conditions.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because there's a real fear in the air.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right. The presence of death is all around you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... so you're more conscious of h- of living life. Yeah, absolutely. In America, it's completely the opposite, obviously.
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly. It's the opposite.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
We are basically, like, trust fund kids, you know, in terms of, like, uh, how we handle the real adversity of, of the, the world. And, and forget about just the stuff that we create. I mean, if anything natural occurred, any, like, real disaster occurred, you'd, you'd see mad panic in the streets. All these, there's, there's so many people out there that are prepping and so many people are prep- But are you really? Do you- Are you really ready?
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- 8:37 – 10:13
Independent media’s rise: Substack, podcasts, and the collapse of trust
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what's so crazy about the world that we're living in. It's ... But what's interesting is I think the positive aspect of this ... And let's try to find the silver lining, right? I think the positive aspect of this is it's really highlighting the importance of independent media. You know, people like Kristolyn Saga from Breaking Points-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... Kyle Kulinski, Glenn Greenwald, yourself, these independent journalists who I can turn to. I go, "Okay, I know if I, I'm reading a Matt Taibbi article, you're gonna tell me exactly what's going on." And there's not many of you.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's, there's a small handful of you where I know I can get unbiased, intelligent observations.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah. No, it's great. And, and this, uh, I think a lot of people, uh, and what we're finding, and, and you're of course familiar with this, is that there's a massive audience out there that is very frustrated with traditional media, the manipulative aspects of it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... the predictability of it, um, you know, the, uh ... And so, yeah, they're, they're, they're coming to, to places like Substack. And I spent my whole life in the media business. Uh, I had an editor once who called it, uh, managing the decline. Like, the expectation in media was always that there was gonna be less and less money forever because audiences were dwindling, because they just didn't like the product we were putting out. In independent media now, it's the opposite. It, it's skyrocketing. There's incredible growth. You obviously know this. Uh, Substack is doing amazingly well.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
And, uh, it's, it's, it's a very bizarre experience as a, as a journalist to be part of that, um, but, uh, it's, it's, it's been really, really cool.
- 10:13 – 14:23
The ivermectin ‘horse dewormer’ fiasco and ideological mistake-forgiveness
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't think it would be possible any other way. I think there has to be this massive decline in the believability of CNN and, you know, and, uh, you know, fill in the blank, like whatever mainstream big time publication. Th- the fucking Rolling Stone, when they printed that horse dewormer story about Oklahoma-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... I'm like, "Jesus Christ, do you guys not have anybody working there-"
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... that can fact ..." Look at the photo they used. It's Oklahoma in the summer and you got people with winter coats on.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Are you guys out of your fucking minds?
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, what is going on over there?
- MTMatt Taibbi
I- So, so what happens in media is we have this expectation that if something is published in another reputable news organization, we assume that it's been checked and that it's true, that somewhere down the line, whoever did the original reporting actually checked it. Uh, and what happened in that case is, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Let's explain, explain what the story was so people can follow this.
- MTMatt Taibbi
So basically, uh, an ER doc, if I remember correctly, in, uh, in Oklahoma, in rural Oklahoma, uh, gave a, uh, an interview to a TV station, uh, and essentially he was saying that there was a, a problem with, um, people who were taking ivermectin, um, and, and they were getting so sick that they were lining up outside, uh, the ERs and preventing people who had gunshot wounds from being treated, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Now, me as a reporter, if I hear that story, the first thing I'm gonna think is-... are there really that many gunshot victims in, in-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MTMatt Taibbi
... rural Oklahoma? Like, there, like, there, there's already a, you know, a little bit of a problem-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... with that, right? You would want to check that right away. What actually happened is some wires got crossed, like the guy was talking about one thing and, and somebody who saw the story assumed a correlation that wasn't there, and then it got retweeted by Ra- Rachel Maddow. And then that-
- JRJoe Rogan
She doubled down on it the next day.
- MTMatt Taibbi
E- exactly, like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is wild. The fact that the, the facts were clearly available and she doubled down on it. First of all, do you know how many people that have ev- actually ever even gotten sick from ivermectin? Ever?
- MTMatt Taibbi
I don't know. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, billions of people. What did Peter, Peter Attia read it off to us?
- NANarrator
I don't remember.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was less than 100. Ever.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right. I mean, it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Ever.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... it's been used for river blindness for how long, right? It's an incredibly safe medication.
- JRJoe Rogan
40 years.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right?
- 14:23 – 23:06
Leaving the ‘club’: creator independence, network “vultures,” and editorial control
- JRJoe Rogan
It's very strange, but again, it fuels this thing that I think is very good, which is trustworthy, independent media. Like, Kristel and Saagar, when they were... When they had their old show, uh, Rising on The Hill-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... um, they decided to leave, and when they decided to leave, we were all... We had a group conversation on the phone and, uh, and, you know, they w- asking me advice and I was like, "I think you guys are gonna be gigantic when you leave. I think it's gonna be bigger than ever. You'll, you'll be completely free. You won't have to worry about any editorial control. Y- and you don't need anybody. I mean, I'll help you, everybody else will help you. The show's already excellent, but it's excellent entirely because of you two."
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
"It has nothing to do with being attached to any other organization that's gonna siphon money off of you."
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so look at them. They're n- they, they were number one almost instantly-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and they've maintained that position the entire time, and they're bigger than ever now.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right, yeah. And they were raised... They had that hesitation because we're raised in, in media, in, in professional corporate media to be terrified of leaving the fold.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Now, I actually came up through alternative media, so I wasn't afraid of, of leaving it. I had my own newspapers when I lived overseas. Um, th- the idea of being out in the wilderness didn't frighten me so much. So when I moved to Substack, I, I just thought, "This is probably gonna be cool. It's probably gonna work," right?
- JRJoe Rogan
That's cool.
- MTMatt Taibbi
But a lot of people who came up, who came up-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... you know, they... You, you do think, "Wow, I'm never gonna, I'm never gonna get back in to the club. And if I, if I don't make enough money, that's it. You know, that's it for me," which is why they're staying. But you're... Look, look at, look at how much success they've had. The audience out there is huge.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
They're probably making more money than they ever dreamed that they, they would, they would make. And, um, you know, there's opportunities to do all kinds of amazing things now because of that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, there really is. And, um, you know, I was really fortunate that I had other jobs when I first started doing this podcast, and the podcast was never... When the... The beginning of it a- at first was never for money, it was just for fun.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I never thought of it as a job at all. And so when I'd gotten it to the point where it started to become valuable, there were a bunch of vultures that tried to buy half of it or take over. Like, o- one... There was one, like, podcast network that literally wanted to take 50% of the show just to be on the network.
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
And I was like, "What are you talking about?" Like, "This is-"
- MTMatt Taibbi
Why would I do that? (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They, they go, "Well, well, well, you'll have more ad revenue 'cause you'll be connected to our, um, whatever, our network." I go, "What fucking network?"
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, the... Like, this is a podcast, man. This is a different... Like, they didn't even understand. They're... Th- and this was quite a few years ago before I did... gotten big. But, but the point is I know friends that took that deal.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
That gave their podcast over to this network and became a part of it, and now they're probably kicking themselves.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- 23:06 – 27:23
Real jobs, demolition stories, and how comedy venues evolve
- MTMatt Taibbi
No, I've, I've had real jobs. In fact, believe it or not, I, uh, y- you, you played the Wilbur Theater, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MTMatt Taibbi
So, uh, I worked demolition once and I demolished, uh, my crew demolished that basement.
- JRJoe Rogan
No shit.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah. That, so we, we did the job that, uh, helped turn that into the Wilbur Theater.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- MTMatt Taibbi
That, that cellar a million years ago.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's pretty cool.
- MTMatt Taibbi
I was being punished for, for, uh, getting, um... I got in a scrape, uh, in, like a drugs thing and so my parents decided that I needed, uh, um, to learn a little bit about real work, so I end-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MTMatt Taibbi
... I ended up doing demolition for a long time in Boston, so it was-
- JRJoe Rogan
Dude, I had a construction job when I was... Well, I've had m- many of them because my father was an architect growing up. But, um, when I was 19 years old, my buddy Jimmy, Jimmy Lawless. Shout out to Jimmy. Um, he got me a gig working with him. I think I only lasted like a month. They, uh, we were building a Knights of Columbus hall-
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... in, um, in somewhere in Massachusetts and it was during the summer so it was hot as fuck, muggy-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and I was carrying cement and pressure-treated lumber all day.
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's all I did. And I remember I would... And this was back when I was still competing, so I would go to the gym after work and I could not do anything. I, I could barely hit the bag, I was so tired.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I remember r- thinking to myself like, "This is a very important moment for me because I could just be doing this forever."
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs) And, and you, you'd want to be doing anything but that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Anything but that.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
I was 19 and, uh, it was a real wake-up call. I was like, "Okay."
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"We gotta figure this out because there's no way this is gonna work. I can't do this."
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, i- i- in that first job that I did, you, you know how the s- the big stairs there at the, at the Wilbur Theater-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 27:23 – 33:59
Media attacks on Substack and the end of ‘view from nowhere’ reporting
- JRJoe Rogan
But the- the thing that's going on now that's really interesting is watching all these pieces shuffle and move around, like the Substack thing and the podcast thing, and- and watching the reaction that traditional media has to it, 'cause-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Uh, that's been unbelievable. Go ahead.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why? It's because it used to be they ignored it, and then they recently just have started attacking it. And it's- it's fascinating to watch because, like, their- their ship keeps sinking, and as their ship is sinking, they're like, "You fucking... You guys suck." You know, like, "This- this is terrible. What you're doing over there is ter-" And they're- they're going under while they're doing it.
- MTMatt Taibbi
It- it- it's a- it's amazing. I- I first started hearing about this, uh, last year. Uh, I knew somebody who worked at the Times and he- and- and, um, he was basically saying that, you know, the- the op-ed page is really worried about Substack. I'm like, "Why would you be worried? Like, you're the New York Times, you got seven million subscribers, who cares?" But they- they were really worried about it and, uh, they did, you know, this series of hit pieces have come out over and over and over again. It's one line of attack after another. "It's misogynistic, it's, uh, it's anti-trans," it's this or that. Um, and the- i- i- it's- it's- it's just a mechanism, it's a cash register, it's not anything. It's not really-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... a company, you know? Um, but it- it speaks to the desperation within the- the news business that they s- they are convinced that if they are losing audience, it must be because somebody is stealing it from them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Uh, whereas what happened in r- i- in fact is that they lost their audience first because, and this goes all the way back to the WMD episode, uh, and then after that I think Russiagate was a big one, uh, that- that turned off a lot of people. Uh, and, you know, they've been steadily losing audience just because of factual issues, and people are s- ha- they were already out there, that audience was already out there as you know. Um, but they, you know, they're- they're trying to blame it on somebody.
- JRJoe Rogan
I- whether it's factual or not, I think pe- people are very tired of being lectured to in this sort of, like, very clear ideological bent. This- the- the- the- the angle that they're taking in these- these papers when they're discussing a real news story, when the actual facts are available to people, as th- there's, they start seeing the facts, and then seeing the big picture, and then they go back to that original article they read, they get angry, they get annoyed.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, "You guys are bullshitting me." Like, "This is a bullshit version of what happened, and it's so clear that you keep doing it in the same direction." So now, every time you read the New York Times or Washington Post or whatever paper it is, you have to go, "Okay, how much of this is legit? Well, who's writing it?" You have to think, like, "Which guy is writing it and how accurate is his reporting? How full of shit is he? How- did- you know, does sh- is she a hardcore lefty or is she, like, a centrist?" Like, what- what did- what do we- what am I getting here?
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It used to be I could just read the New York Times and this is the story. Hey, Jamie, I made a little sp-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Want something?
- JRJoe Rogan
Chuck me something over there.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Thank you.
- JRJoe Rogan
This stuff, I'm, um, um, subconsciously trying to pour it out 'cause I know-
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... I'll drink the whole goddamn thing.
- MTMatt Taibbi
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
This is this black rifle coffee sugary-
- MTMatt Taibbi
It's- it's actually-
- JRJoe Rogan
Too good.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... it's really good, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's too good.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, this is gonna become a new problem, by the way.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's got 300 fucking m- milligrams or grams of, uh, what, yeah, milligrams of, uh, caffeine. That's a lot.
- MTMatt Taibbi
That's awesome.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, so I spilled it. Um, yeah, it's- it's strange but I think this is just what happens when something new comes around. It's always what happens. There's always, like, this attack against it, the denial that there's anything wrong with the original product and... I saw it in martial arts. I mean, I was a part of martial arts when, you know, I was a child, and then when the UFC came around- aro- along there was all of this, uh, rejection of the idea behind it, it was barbaric, it was, you know, you only need this and you don't need to learn how, all this other stuff and- and then eventually everybody gave up.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- 33:59 – 56:05
Pandemic narratives: hydroxychloroquine, lab-leak, and censorship reflexes
- MTMatt Taibbi
What people, and especially w- with something like the pandemic, people are desperate. They really, really need just to get the basic information. And instead, you know, when the pandemic happened, we were in the middle of this super intense culture war that was revolved around Trump. So everything was viewed through that lens, you know? Like hydroxychloroquine, Trump liked it, or Tr- Trump said he was taking it, therefore it must be bad. Therefore, you know, it must not work. But that's not how it worked. Th- th- it's not the drug's fault that Don-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... that Donald Trump took it, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you see that Fauci had actually written a paper on the effectiveness of h- of chloroquine and on, uh-
- MTMatt Taibbi
I didn't.
- JRJoe Rogan
... coronaviruses?
- MTMatt Taibbi
What did he say? (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It was from 2000 ... I want to say 2015 or 2016, but there was, uh ... He, he gave a statement about the effectiveness of chloroquine and coronaviruses.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
See if you can find that. 'Cause it's, it's really fascinating. But yeah, it's one of those things that when it came up, when ... I mean, Tr- Trump fucked so much up just by being-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... Trump.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
He broke people's ... That Trump derangement syndrome, I used to think that was a funny thing that, you know, not even that funny, but a thing that Republicans would say to try to invalidate anything that Left, that liberals would say. Like, "Oh, they've got Trump derangement syndrome." But as time has gone on and you've seen it over and over again, and the, the justification for not just bias, but blatant distortions of the facts in order to, to impart a narrative, like clearly doing it on purpose, and they'll, they've done it with almost this righteousness because they're combating something, this evil.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
This evil Trumpster and this evil Trump thing that's happening.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right. Yeah, no. A- and, and, and that, again, that's new.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
That's a new thing in our country.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a new thing.
- MTMatt Taibbi
So, so another example of that is what you were talking about before, the, the lab leak story.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right? Trump believed it, therefore it must not be true.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Whereas, I think the old school reporters would look at it, "We wouldn't give a shit." Right? Like it's, it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
... whether it came from a lab or whether it came from a cave somewhere, we don't care. Like, we're not supposed to care. Our, our job is just to find out, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Uh, and, and so they would dig and there, there was not a satisfactory explanation. There, you know, throughout all of last year, we, we didn't know exactly, uh, where it came from. So why did we stop looking?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 56:05 – 1:12:39
From tongues to the Voynich manuscript: a detour into gibberish and belief
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you feel an obligation? 'Cause there's not that many of you.Um, I mean, I'm not trying to blow smoke up your ass, but I will. There's not that many of you out there. There's not that many people that I can say ... Like, I could send an article that you wrote and I can go, "This is legit." You know? I'll send it to my friends, like, "Read this. This is crazy."
- MTMatt Taibbi
Oh, thank you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Th- there's not a lot of you out there, though. Like, if the government wanted to change the news, they'd just have to whack you and Glenn Greenwald and a couple other people, and it would be a lot different out there. That's real.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
As odd as that sounds, there's, there's not that many.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah. It's, it's a weird feeling. I, I'm not ... Um, you know, o- obviously I've been doing this for a long time, but this current situation where, uh, the news is kind of split into three parts, right? There's right-wing media. There's, you know, hashtag resistance media, and then there's this independent thing where it's, you know, it's people like you and me and Glenn and Crystal and Kyle, and stuff like that. It i- it is small and, and, and emergent, and, um, um, it's a- it's a lot of attention. I think there's a lot of pressure on us to figure things out because we ha- we haven't figured things out. Like, uh, Substack is really great for getting a couple of us paid, uh, a good deal of money, but we haven't figured out how to do, like, um, in-depth investigative reporting. We haven't figured out how to pay for that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Um, foreign reporting.
- JRJoe Rogan
How would you pay for that without crowdfunding it? And if you crowdfunded it, wouldn't everybody know what you were doing?
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah. I, uh, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
That would be a problem, right?
- MTMatt Taibbi
I- i- it would be difficult. I think the, the problem is that th- this model works because people really, really like the content, so they want a lot of it. Um, but, you know, the job I used to do, I ... You know, I would take eight to 10 weeks to write a single story.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, let me ask you this.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Say if you have a story that you would normally get funded for by a large, uh, organization. How much money are we talking about? Like, say if you have a really important story.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
How much money are we talking about? How much would it cost? Like, say if you wanna do a, a deep dive into the Steele dossier.
- MTMatt Taibbi
So it d- it would depend on what it was. If it were, if it was, like, a book-length thing, you know, I think you know how much book deals usually cost, right? Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but that's ... There's profit on the end of that, right? There's millions.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Uh, there can be.
- JRJoe Rogan
If, if you're lucky. If you have a good-
- MTMatt Taibbi
If you're lucky.
- JRJoe Rogan
... a good book.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah, I mean, I think mo- mostly, you know, the investigative reporters, you know, they'd, they'd be mostly happy with any kind of six-figure advance to do something like that. Uh, in the magazine business, if you were gonna do a, uh, a big whack at something like that, you know, 6,000 words, 10,000 words, you'd ... Once upon a time, you would get, you know, uh, $15,000, $20,000 to do that because you n- you n- you n- you know, you need it to take a while to, to do that work.
- JRJoe Rogan
See, I feel like if there's, like, real stories out there, there could be a fund that's dedicated to real stories. And in place of an editor, like, who would have, uh, control over the narrative, you could have a committee of people like yourself and Kyle and Crystal and Saagar, and, and where you would have, like, a, a Signal group chat.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Where you talk about, uh, an issue. Like, "Hey, there's a thing we wanna do on this. You know, it's probably gonna cost $20,000 to get all the pieces moving. You know, can we, can we do something like that?" And then, I think easily you could have a GoFundMe or a, you know, whatever, any ... Patreon, something along those lines, where people just donate to this fund that goes towards journalism, and then at the end of the year, there could be an accounting of it so that everybody knows it's all legit and no, no one's siphoning money off of it. I don't think that it's that hard.
- MTMatt Taibbi
I, uh, I think it would work. It would definitely work fin- financially. Um, it ... You know, ProPublica sort of is based on that model. The, the, th- the ... There's, there's only a couple of problems. The pro- ... One is that there aren't that many people who know how to do the job that well left. Like, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's terrifying.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah. No, it is. It's, it's, it's pretty scary. I mean, I think, um, uh, you could've found, uh, a, a fair number of reporters who, who, who knew how to do hardcore investigative journalism, you know, 10 years ago or 15 years ago. But, uh, uh, the current generation has been raised on a different model that's based on being quick, uh, you know, getting a couple of quotes, putting something up fast that ... And it's brief, and it's more of a take than it is a dig. Uh, and so that mentality is, is ... Of just investigative, uh, work is, is, is disappearing. So you'd have the problem of finding people who can do it. The other problem is audiences don't necessarily love what we, we, we call, like, e- eat-your-vegetables journalism.
- 1:12:39 – 1:29:30
No-fly zones in discourse: trans debates, deplatforming, and free speech institutions
- JRJoe Rogan
Did this, uh, church that you... Did... Were they, uh, some of the people that did the Pray The Gay Away stuff?
- MTMatt Taibbi
Um, so there, there was a little bit of that.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MTMatt Taibbi
Uh, they didn't, they didn't do conversion therapy exactly, uh, but they, they definitely counseled people who were, uh, uh, who were in that situation, let's put it that way. Um, I, I was... I, I, I thought about doing one of those, but then, uh... Where I would actually join one of those retreats, um, a- and see how they, they went about trying to convert people, but, um, yeah, that never worked out. Uh...
- JRJoe Rogan
There was someone who was a famous politician, and their husband was involved in one of those things. I'm trying to remember who it was.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Was it a Buddhist church?
- JRJoe Rogan
But her, her... No, no, no. It was a, a female politician, and the husband seemed... He seemed gay, and he was involved... I mean, that's a weird thing to say, but, you know, you... Some people do seem gay. I... You know, it's, it's like you risk being criticized and being called a bigot for saying that, but if someone's talking like this, it's very rare that it's a straight person, right?
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. For whatever reason. This is not a... This is in no way a judgment against gay people. But this guy was doing Pray The Gay Away stuff, and someone did some investigative reporting and did something, and it was like, this guy, like, clearly has a hard on, and he's, like, behind me, hugging me, and telling me that, you know, Jesus does not want him to be gay, and that we're all gonna work through this, and he, he's like... The whole thing was, like, uber bizarre.
- MTMatt Taibbi
That's crazy. It's amazing that that, that, that whole conversion therapy thing was, was such a big deal, like, even 10, 15 years ago.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MTMatt Taibbi
There have been, you know, a lot of changes in... Since then.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, changes in acceptance hopefully-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Acceptance, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but also changes in an understanding of homosexuality, that it's... This is not a choice. It's like, this i-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
The idea that it is a choice is nonsense.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, and we, you know-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Although they're, they're now changing the, the, the thinking on that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- MTMatt Taibbi
Well, I mean, that's... Uh, uh, not to wade into an area that's completely radioactive, but, you know, they're, they're-
- JRJoe Rogan
Too late. (laughs)
- MTMatt Taibbi
It's the, you know, the trans issue. The, the whole idea that you... The... Something like that is determined by biology runs a little bit counter to, to current thinking.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, okay. So, well, trans-
- MTMatt Taibbi
Gender fluidity.
- JRJoe Rogan
... is very different though, right?
- MTMatt Taibbi
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The, the reason why tran- trans is different, because there are trans people, right, that start off as biological males, and they identify with being a female. But they've had children with females, and they've had relationships with females. And then, as they transition, they remain attracted to females.
- MTMatt Taibbi
Right.
Episode duration: 3:21:01
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