Joe Rogan Experience #1745 - Matt Taibbi

Narrator 0:00 (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music)

Matt Taibbi 0:12 So you like it down here better?

Joe Rogan 0:13 I love it.

Matt Taibbi 0:14 Yeah?

Joe Rogan 0:14 I love it. Yeah. People are so nice. There's less of them, so they're not a burden. Oh, yeah.

Matt Taibbi 0:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:20 Yeah, you know, I think big cities, you just... People just become in your, they get in your way.

Matt Taibbi 0:26 Right.

Joe Rogan 0:26 And no one's in your way here. Everyone's friendly.

Matt Taibbi 0:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:28 It's like normal.

Matt Taibbi 0:29 That's great.

Joe Rogan 0:29 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.

Matt Taibbi 0:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:43 'Cause it's a city that's predicated on being full of shit. Like you have to-

Matt Taibbi 0:46 I was gonna say.

Joe Rogan 0:47 ... pretend or something.

Matt Taibbi 0:48 Yeah, like everybody, as soon as they're talking, they're, they're, they start lying basically.

Joe Rogan 0:52 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 0:52 Right?

Joe Rogan 0:53 Well, they, they-

Matt Taibbi 0:53 It's like an angle they play.

Joe Rogan 0:54 For sure, like, p- it's they're selling themselves.

Matt Taibbi 0:58 Right.

Joe Rogan 0:59 And promoting an angle. And out here, no one's doing that.

Matt Taibbi 1:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:02 It's so refreshing.

Matt Taibbi 1:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03 It's like, "This is Mike. He does, he makes barbecue." "Oh, oh, hi Mike."

Matt Taibbi 1:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07 Like Mike's a normal guy, you know?

Matt Taibbi 1:09 Must take some time to sort of de- decompensate and decompress, get back to talking about-

Joe Rogan 1:13 It took a few weeks. That's it.

Matt Taibbi 1:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:16 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."

Matt Taibbi 1:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:28 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.

Matt Taibbi 1:49 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:49 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.

Matt Taibbi 2:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 2:11 And you're offering solutions and you're standing there and, "We have to keep the safety of our communities in mind."

Matt Taibbi 2:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:17 Like, you know, that kind of shit.

Matt Taibbi 2:18 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.

Joe Rogan 2:27 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 2:28 That you just... There's, for some things, you just can't fix it by fiat.

Joe Rogan 2:31 What's fascinating to me though is that people will blame everyone except the people that were actually responsible for the virus.

Matt Taibbi 2:40 (laughs) Right.

Joe Rogan 2:41 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.

Matt Taibbi 2:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 2:50 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.

Matt Taibbi 3:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:47 The actual source, which is most likely that level four biolab in Wuhan, China, most likely.

Matt Taibbi 3:55 Yeah, at minimum, those emails show that they, they thought they had a serious PR problem on their hands.

Joe Rogan 4:01 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 4:01 I mean, I think you, you can look at them in a number of different ways, but at minimum it shows that.

Joe Rogan 4:05 To be charitable.

Matt Taibbi 4:06 To be, to be totally charitable. Um, and that should have been a big story all by itself, and it wasn't.

Joe Rogan 4:12 Yeah, it wasn't.

Matt Taibbi 4:13 So, yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:13 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.

Matt Taibbi 4:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 4:21 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.

Matt Taibbi 4:48 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.

Joe Rogan 5:12 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 5:12 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.

Joe Rogan 5:23 Yeah, it's, um... We're not used to it.

Matt Taibbi 5:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 5:27 I mean, it's weird because we start so many wars.

Matt Taibbi 5:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:30 And we don't have any of them over here. (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 5:32 Right, right, exactly.

Joe Rogan 5:33 So fucked. (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 5:34 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 5:35 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."

Matt Taibbi 6:00 Right.

Joe Rogan 6:00 He goes, "At any minute you could die, so fucking party."

Matt Taibbi 6:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:03 "Party, party." Like, you know, just he was always happy.

Matt Taibbi 6:06 Right. Okay.

Joe Rogan 6:06 Like, he, he had this attitude because of the, the conditions.

Matt Taibbi 6:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:11 Because there's a real fear in the air.

Matt Taibbi 6:13 Right. The presence of death is all around you-

Joe Rogan 6:15 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 6:15 ... so you're more conscious of h- of living life. Yeah, absolutely. In America, it's completely the opposite, obviously.

Joe Rogan 6:19 Exactly. It's the opposite.

Matt Taibbi 6:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:21 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?

Matt Taibbi 6:48 Right.

Joe Rogan 6:48 'Cause I don't think you are.

Matt Taibbi 6:49 Right.

Joe Rogan 6:50 I think when the shit actually hits the fan, it's the tiniest, smallest percentage of the people that are gonna be able to, like, gather up their senses and make some sense out of this and, and regroup.

Matt Taibbi 6:59 Yeah, but I, I, I think they're not preparing because they're enjoying being miserable right now.

Joe Rogan 7:05 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 7:05 I mean, you, you were talking about that before. But yeah, no, this, this is like the most un-fun period in American history, at least in my lifetime. Uh-

Joe Rogan 7:12 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 7:12 It's, it's unfunny. Uh, e- entertainment isn't fun. I don't know. It's, uh, it's miserable.

Joe Rogan 7:19 Well, it's very tense.

Matt Taibbi 7:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:21 It's very tense and there's a lot of people that are profiting off of that tension.

Matt Taibbi 7:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 7:25 There's a lot of, uh, anger merchants out there, you know, that are essentially elevating their brand by just getting mad at things and having the least charitable view of people, the lea- least charitable vi- view of situations, the most polarizing arguments of right versus left and vaccinated versus unvaccinated and ... (exhales)

Matt Taibbi 7:48 Yeah. No, I spent a lot of time on this. The, the, the press aspect of it is just horrible because financially, you know, that's the way these businesses work now. They, um, they're trying to create the a- an addictive experience of being upset-

Joe Rogan 8:04 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 8:04 ... and they know exactly how to do it. And they've, they've kind of moved all the people in the business who used to be, um ... who used to do the job of, uh, moderating and making sure that people saw all the different sides of the issue, um, they've all been kind of shoved out of the business, and now it's just one gigantic anxiety machine. Uh, you know, if you turn on MSNBC or CNN or, you know, or even Fox, you know, th- basically their, their job is to ge- get you worked up about stuff.

Joe Rogan 8:35 Well, that's the only way they can make money.

Matt Taibbi 8:37 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 8:37 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-

Matt Taibbi 8:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 8:55 ... 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.

Matt Taibbi 9:09 Right.

Joe Rogan 9:09 There's, there's a small handful of you where I know I can get unbiased, intelligent observations.

Matt Taibbi 9:17 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-

Joe Rogan 9:32 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 9:32 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 10:05 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 10:05 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.

Joe Rogan 10:13 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-

Matt Taibbi 10:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:34 ... I'm like, "Jesus Christ, do you guys not have anybody working there-"

Matt Taibbi 10:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:38 "... that can fact ..." Look at the photo they used. It's Oklahoma in the summer and you got people with winter coats on.

Matt Taibbi 10:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 10:45 Are you guys out of your fucking minds?

Matt Taibbi 10:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:46 Like, what is going on over there?

Matt Taibbi 10:49 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-

Joe Rogan 11:09 Let's explain, explain what the story was so people can follow this.

Matt Taibbi 11:12 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?

Joe Rogan 11:42 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 11:43 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-

Joe Rogan 11:50 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 11:50 ... rural Oklahoma? Like, there, like, there, there's already a, you know, a little bit of a problem-

Joe Rogan 11:56 Right.

Matt Taibbi 11:57 ... 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-

Joe Rogan 12:14 She doubled down on it the next day.

Matt Taibbi 12:17 E- exactly, like-

Joe Rogan 12:18 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?

Matt Taibbi 12:29 I don't know. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:30 You know, billions of people. What did Peter, Peter Attia read it off to us?

Narrator 12:33 I don't remember.

Joe Rogan 12:34 It was less than 100. Ever.

Matt Taibbi 12:35 Right. I mean, it's-

Joe Rogan 12:36 Ever.

Matt Taibbi 12:36 ... it's been used for river blindness for how long, right? It's an incredibly safe medication.

Joe Rogan 12:40 40 years.

Matt Taibbi 12:40 Right?

Joe Rogan 12:41 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 12:41 Yeah. Now, that's, that's not to say that it necessarily works as a c- as a COVID treatment, right? Like, uh, but there's so much dis- disinformation-

Joe Rogan 12:50 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 12:50 ... about this whole thing.

Joe Rogan 12:50 It's a d- it's a different conversation. That's right. Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 12:52 That's a different conversation. But the thing about Rachel retweeting that and doubling down, what's so interesting about that, and this is a phenomena that's c- that's completely new in, in my experience in media, is that we, uh, uh, companies now know that their audiences will forgive them for making mistakes as long as the mistakes are in the right direction.

Joe Rogan 13:12 Right. As long as it's ideologically correct.

Matt Taibbi 13:14 As long as it's ideologically correct. So there was a whole generation of reporters who were r- who were raised, like me, like, I, uh, our whole thing was the night before we published something, we, we couldn't sleep because we were afraid of that one thing that would be fucked up in the, in the report-

Joe Rogan 13:31 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 13:31 ... that somebody would catch the next day and that might end your career, right? Like, if you got something really, really badly wrong, it was potentially a career-ending thing, especially if you've, if you made some kind of ethical mistake in forgetting to check something. Um, so that terror was, was common to all reporters until recently. Now all of a sudden, when you make a really, really bad mistake, no one... Your audience is probably gonna be fine with it. They don't punish you for it in the same way. And they've basically brought in a whole generation of people who have this ethos of, "Well, if I make... So what if it's wrong?"

Joe Rogan 14:07 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 14:07 You know, which is, which is why all these people no longer have faith in these companies and, and they can't see it. It's amazing that they can't see it. They c- but people are leaving these companies. They're, they're no longer trusting them and they don't see that correlation, which is incredible to me.

Joe Rogan 14:23 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-

Matt Taibbi 14:38 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:39 ... 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."

Matt Taibbi 15:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 15:01 "It has nothing to do with being attached to any other organization that's gonna siphon money off of you."

Matt Taibbi 15:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:07 And so look at them. They're n- they, they were number one almost instantly-

Matt Taibbi 15:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:10 ... and they've maintained that position the entire time, and they're bigger than ever now.

Matt Taibbi 15:13 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.

Joe Rogan 15:25 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 15:25 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?

Joe Rogan 15:41 That's cool.

Matt Taibbi 15:41 But a lot of people who came up, who came up-

Joe Rogan 15:44 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 15:44 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 15:59 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 15:59 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.

Joe Rogan 16:07 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.

Matt Taibbi 16:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 16:20 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.

Matt Taibbi 16:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:40 And I was like, "What are you talking about?" Like, "This is-"

Matt Taibbi 16:42 Why would I do that? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:42 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?"

Matt Taibbi 16:50 Right.

Joe Rogan 16:50 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.

Matt Taibbi 17:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 17:03 That gave their podcast over to this network and became a part of it, and now they're probably kicking themselves.

Matt Taibbi 17:08 Right.

Joe Rogan 17:09 'Cause, like, I'm sure it's, like, a permanent deal. Like, I'm sure they own 50% of it forever or whatever percentage they... I mean, maybe they started with 50 and negotiated down. I don't know. But the point is there's so many people that when given the opportunity to have, like, some real security, like, this is gonna... You're gonna be connected to this network, they're gonna protect you, they're gonna bring in the ads, you don't have to do anything, and they just take a percentage of it, but you will always have income 'cause you'll be connected to us and we are a big corporation and you're like, "Oh, just like when I was on NBC."

Matt Taibbi 17:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 17:42 "This is gonna be great. Like, it'll give me security." And you start thinking about your mortgage and you start thinking about your kids' college and all that stuff and you go, "Okay, this is a good thing." And it's hard. It's hard to just say, "No. No, I'm gonna be independent." But this is the time. This is the, this is the best time ever to be independent.

Matt Taibbi 18:00 Yeah. No, and, and that, that's why it, it, it is a very hard decision for people to walk away and go independent and, and do the thing. You know, what I did, what Glenn did-

Joe Rogan 18:09 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 18:09 ... what Kristel and Kyle did. Um, but it works and, uh, th- and the other choice, staying with traditional media, is increasingly not a good bargain for you. Not only, um, you know, are, are... I- is the piece of the pie there getting smaller and smaller all the time because their ratings are getting worse, the advertising revenue's dropping off, but the ideological conformity in those-

Joe Rogan 18:32 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 18:32 ... in those organizations is getting worse. And, and, um, that is something that never used to exist before. Uh, or ne- at least not to this degree, anywhere near this degree. So you're gonna be misible- miserable doing that. You might as well do the job the way you want to do it, do it correctly, uh, and get paid, you know, in, in, in a commensurate way for doing it.

Joe Rogan 18:52 I think there's a bunch of people, though, that haven't established a large following that are worried.... rightly so, of being lost in this. You know?

Matt Taibbi 19:01 Sure.

Joe Rogan 19:01 So, I don't think this is available to anyone. It's obviously available to you and to Glenn and to Jimmy Dore and a lot of these other people that have al- ar- they've already gathered up a large loyal audience because they know that they can trust these people.

Matt Taibbi 19:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 19:13 Or th- the people, rather, know they can trust them to, to be honest and to just give their, their take on things. But there's a lot of people that are, they're stuck 'cause, you know, they're not really well known and they're kind of in this system and they're realizing while they're in this system that it's, it's pretty fucked. And you have two choices: either you try to fight against it and you might get ostracized and, or you try to conform and then you get lost-

Matt Taibbi 19:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 19:39 ... and then you become what you, what you despise.

Matt Taibbi 19:42 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:42 Which is more common than not, right?

Matt Taibbi 19:44 Yeah, I think that's what's happening. Uh, e- either they're moving you, the people out, which y- y- you know, you see at a, an organization like the New York Times where they're just kind of moving the old guard out.

Joe Rogan 19:55 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 19:55 The old, the old traditional reporting types. Uh, and they had a lot of really amazing reporters at the New York Times, people who really knew how to do the job, and they're just kind of being pushed out-

Joe Rogan 20:04 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 20:04 ... whether, you know, for one reason or, or another. Um, or, you know, the, the other thing is you, you stay in and gradually the mindset takes hold of you and you, and you, and you get lost mentally. You know? And I think that's what's happening to a lot of people.

Joe Rogan 20:17 (exhales)

Matt Taibbi 20:17 I mean, I, I knew Rachel back in her Air Amer- Air America days. Um, you know, we were friends once, sort of, and, uh, it's just, it's amazing to me what's, what's happened. Uh...

Joe Rogan 20:30 I read your book, um, with her and, uh, who else is on the cover?

Matt Taibbi 20:34 Hannity's on the cover.

Joe Rogan 20:35 Hannity's on the cover?

Matt Taibbi 20:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:35 Is that...

Matt Taibbi 20:37 Hating.

Joe Rogan 20:37 Hating, that's right.

Matt Taibbi 20:38 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:38 I didn't want to fuck it up, so I didn't want to mess.

Matt Taibbi 20:40 (laughs) That's okay.

Joe Rogan 20:40 But, um, y- when you compared her and you said Rachel Maddow is, is Bill O'Reilly-

Matt Taibbi 20:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:47 ... you're like, "Jesus Christ." And then, but you're like, "But wait. I think he's right." Like, it's just ideologically opposite, but the same kind of thing where there's this like blind allegiance to the party doctrine.

Matt Taibbi 21:03 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:04 And he's not a reporter anymore.

Matt Taibbi 21:06 No. And, and w- what O'Reilly did during the Iraq War era, you know, he was, he was using this sort of hyper-patriotic persona. His whole thing was, um, y- you know, sort of bullying people who, uh, you know, weren't behind the war effort enough or who, you know, if, if they, if he didn't like them, he would've sort of accused them of being, s- you know, in sympathy with the terrorists. And, you know, Rachel's basically doing that same gig with... But it's Russians this time around.

Joe Rogan 21:37 Yes. Yes.

Matt Taibbi 21:37 You know? It's, it's the same act. It's just the, a different audience. Uh, and they're using exactly the same me- it's, it's this audiem- audience optimization method of making money where you identify the audience, then you give them a whole bunch of information that you know is gonna, you know, sort of please their sensibilities and, and, uh, tickle their prejudices, uh, and you just keep feeding that stuff to them over and over and over again. Uh, and, and yeah, she's playing that game. It works to a degree, but then-

Joe Rogan 22:08 She's so rich.

Matt Taibbi 22:10 Right. Yeah. She's taking this new job.

Joe Rogan 22:12 She's balling out of control.

Matt Taibbi 22:12 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:12 She's balling out of control and now she only works like, what?Like way less hours or something?

Matt Taibbi 22:16 Right. Yeah. I don't know exactly what the new deal is, but, um...

Joe Rogan 22:21 But it's like way less broadcast time.

Matt Taibbi 22:23 Right. Yeah. For more money. Yeah. And I mean, that's a tough job. I mean, you would know, right? I mean, like f- four hours, how- however many, um, you know, days a week doing, doing live work like that is-

Joe Rogan 22:33 Let me stop you right there. It's not hard.

Matt Taibbi 22:35 No? You don't think so?

Joe Rogan 22:35 Not this. This is not hard.

Matt Taibbi 22:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:37 This is the biggest scam that's ever existed, this job.

Matt Taibbi 22:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:39 The fact that people think this is hard. Now, I've had hard jobs. This is not one of them.

Matt Taibbi 22:43 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 22:44 No. I mean, it requires you to pay attention.

Matt Taibbi 22:46 Right. That's true.

Joe Rogan 22:46 What the fuck? You know?

Matt Taibbi 22:47 Right.

Joe Rogan 22:47 I like to pay attention anyway.

Matt Taibbi 22:49 Right. Right.

Joe Rogan 22:50 It's not hard.

Matt Taibbi 22:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:51 It's not hard.

Matt Taibbi 22:52 Well, yeah. Um-

Joe Rogan 22:54 There, there's hard jobs out there. This, it would be a fucking-

Matt Taibbi 22:57 That's true.

Joe Rogan 22:57 ... travesty to call this a hard job.

Matt Taibbi 22:58 Compared to a real job-

Joe Rogan 23:00 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 23:00 ... I, I keep forgetting that...

Joe Rogan 23:01 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 23:01 Yeah. Which is something that, uh, one should never do.

Joe Rogan 23:03 Yeah. We're, we're, we're removed from real jobs-

Matt Taibbi 23:05 Right.

Joe Rogan 23:05 ... by too many years.

Matt Taibbi 23:06 No, I've, I've had real jobs. In fact, believe it or not, I, uh, y- you, you played the Wilbur Theater, right?

Joe Rogan 23:12 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 23:13 So, uh, I worked demolition once and I demolished, uh, my crew demolished that basement.

Joe Rogan 23:20 No shit.

Matt Taibbi 23:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:21 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 23:21 Yeah. That, so we, we did the job that, uh, helped turn that into the Wilbur Theater.

Joe Rogan 23:26 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 23:26 That, that cellar a million years ago.

Joe Rogan 23:28 That's pretty cool.

Matt Taibbi 23:28 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-

Joe Rogan 23:41 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 23:41 ... I ended up doing demolition for a long time in Boston, so it was-

Joe Rogan 23:44 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-

Matt Taibbi 24:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:03 ... in, um, in somewhere in Massachusetts and it was during the summer so it was hot as fuck, muggy-

Matt Taibbi 24:08 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:09 ... and I was carrying cement and pressure-treated lumber all day.

Matt Taibbi 24:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:12 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.

Matt Taibbi 24:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 24:23 And I remember r- thinking to myself like, "This is a very important moment for me because I could just be doing this forever."

Matt Taibbi 24:30 (laughs) And, and you, you'd want to be doing anything but that.

Joe Rogan 24:33 Anything but that.

Matt Taibbi 24:33 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 24:34 I was 19 and, uh, it was a real wake-up call. I was like, "Okay."

Matt Taibbi 24:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:37 "We gotta figure this out because there's no way this is gonna work. I can't do this."

Matt Taibbi 24:41 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-

Joe Rogan 24:47 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 24:47 ... go down? So, we had to basically jackhammer a whole bunch of concrete out of that floor and then figure out a way to get it up into a dumpster. Like, you know? So it, it was big, big chunks of, uh, concrete and stone a- and we tried all these different ways, like driving a bobcat up the stairs, like all these different things. There was no way to automate it. The only way to do it was to put it in a rubber bucket and have two guys carry each one up-

Joe Rogan 25:10 Oh.

Matt Taibbi 25:10 ... up and down the stairs. So, the guy I was with had just gotten out of jail and he was like, um, "This is what the, the, the people who built the pyramids must have felt like," you know, carrying, carrying that stuff up the stairs. So, yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:22 Yeah, if that's how they did it. Um-I used to work in that basement. There was a comedy club in that basement called Duck Soup.

Matt Taibbi 25:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:30 Yeah, the guys who owned the Comedy Connection, uh, uh, Bill Blumenright, who eventually took over The Wilbur, he bought it after these guys, had kind of failed this one pro- they- they decided to try this project of- of a really high-end comedy club that only did clean comedy for, like, respectable people and then, like, they- they served really nice food, and it did not work out.

Matt Taibbi 25:52 Huh.

Joe Rogan 25:53 It's like-

Matt Taibbi 25:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:53 'Cause right across the street was Nick's Comedy Stop-

Matt Taibbi 25:55 Right.

Joe Rogan 25:55 ... which was, like, wild, and they were, they were literally offering you, you can get paid in cash or cocaine.

Matt Taibbi 26:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:01 Like, it was, that's real. Like, that was really-

Matt Taibbi 26:03 That sounds like where all the actual comics would want to-

Joe Rogan 26:06 Exactly.

Matt Taibbi 26:06 ... go play. Right.

Joe Rogan 26:07 So we would work across the street, but you had to, like s- you had to d- do surgery on your act. You had to, like, remove parts of your act to- to be able to work there.

Matt Taibbi 26:15 What did they put in the sign, like, "Comedy but less funny," or is that-

Joe Rogan 26:18 (sighs) No, the, you know, the idea was, like, the, uh, Duck Soup, the- the great Groucho Marx-

Matt Taibbi 26:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 26:23 ... uh, Marx Brothers movies, um, that movie was, you know, they thought it was, like, one of the great classic movies and they thought it would be fun to, like, have this classy comedy club. And so they had all these other options, you know, there was Stitches and The Comedy Connection, all these other clubs. They're like, "Let's have one club that's, like, very high-end and- and beautiful," and it didn't work.

Matt Taibbi 26:42 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 26:43 And so then it became an improv after that. The Improv took it over after that, and then eventually it just went under. And then Bill, who's a, uh, he's a real businessman-

Matt Taibbi 26:53 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 26:53 ... he- he turned it into The Wilb- uh, they, they did Faneuil Hall for a while, and I think that's when Bill bought them, and then he- they converted The Wilbur, is now, uh, like, the g- the big, like, when comics come to town, they work there.

Matt Taibbi 27:05 Right, yeah, that's the big-

Joe Rogan 27:06 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 27:06 ... big venue now.

Joe Rogan 27:07 Yeah, I did my last Netflix special there.

Matt Taibbi 27:09 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 27:09 So, yeah.

Matt Taibbi 27:10 Exactly, exactly.

Joe Rogan 27:10 It's a great place.

Matt Taibbi 27:11 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:13 You know, but th- those really hard jobs are very important for people.

Matt Taibbi 27:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:17 That- that way you can never say a podcast is hard work. (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 27:20 (laughs) Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 27:22 It's- it's not even close.

Matt Taibbi 27:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:23 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-

Matt Taibbi 27:37 Uh, that's been unbelievable. Go ahead.

Joe Rogan 27:38 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.

Matt Taibbi 27:57 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-

Joe Rogan 28:35 Right.

Matt Taibbi 28:35 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 28:49 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 28:49 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.

Joe Rogan 29:17 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.

Matt Taibbi 29:43 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:44 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?

Matt Taibbi 30:12 Right, yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:12 It used to be I could just read the New York Times and this is the story. Hey, Jamie, I made a little sp-

Matt Taibbi 30:18 Want something?

Joe Rogan 30:18 Chuck me something over there.

Matt Taibbi 30:21 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 30:23 This stuff, I'm, um, um, subconsciously trying to pour it out 'cause I know-

Matt Taibbi 30:27 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:27 ... I'll drink the whole goddamn thing.

Matt Taibbi 30:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:29 This is this black rifle coffee sugary-

Matt Taibbi 30:32 It's- it's actually-

Joe Rogan 30:34 Too good.

Matt Taibbi 30:34 ... it's really good, yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:35 It's too good.

Matt Taibbi 30:35 Yeah, this is gonna become a new problem, by the way.

Joe Rogan 30:37 It's got 300 fucking m- milligrams or grams of, uh, what, yeah, milligrams of, uh, caffeine. That's a lot.

Matt Taibbi 30:43 That's awesome.

Joe Rogan 30:45 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.

Matt Taibbi 31:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:18 And now it's clearly established, like, that is th- uh, 100% the best form of martial art for an actual physical confrontation, is a combination of all the things.

Matt Taibbi 31:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:27 But you s- it's like with everything, when something new comes along that's superior, there's a rejection of it, there's a- an attack against it, and then...Eventually, the dust settles and people realize, like, "Oh, this is what's going on."

Matt Taibbi 31:40 Yeah. No, there's, there's a, there's a total blindness within the, within the media business to, uh, th- they just can't see how audiences perceive them. Um, you know, o- once upon a time, I think the, the idea within the news business was pretty simple. Like, reporters were raised, basically, "We'll get all the facts, we'll work really hard on getting it right. We'll give it to you, and then you do what you want with it." It's, it's, (clears throat) it's not our job to tell you what decisions to make. It's our, just our job to get it correct. Right? And then that's the news. After that, you know, it's up to you to make your own political decisions. Um, but that's why political affiliation didn't necessarily mean so much back in the day. It wa- it was always true that basically all reporters were Democrats, but it didn't show so much in the news media once upon a time because we had a professional ethos that just said, "We're not supposed to care." Right?

Joe Rogan 32:36 Right.

Matt Taibbi 32:37 We go into, we, we go into cover whatever. We're just gonna collect all the facts, get all the quotes, put it out there, make sure everything's been checked, and then it's your, it's your deal. Now, there's this new ethos that, that, what, uh, Wesley Lowery, the reporter, calls the view from nowhere journalism, which is what I just described. Um, but that's not good enough that we, uh, they have to compensate for inequities in the system by basically trying to impact how people behave, uh, through coverage. And this is what they do all the time, and they're, they're trying to get you to, to make political decisions by how they cover things. And I saw this early on as a, as a campaign reporter, uh, once when I was much younger, you know, in 2004 and 2008. I would sit in the bus with the reporters, and they would be discussing which candidates they were going to describe as fringe, which ones they were gonna, were going to be described as electable, which ones would be serious. Right? Because they want ... They, they enjoyed having the power of deciding for people, you know, who got to be taken seriously and who, who didn't. Um, and I- I think that, that urge to mold how people act is just ingrained in the business, and it's so off-putting. You know? I think-

Joe Rogan 33:58 It is.

Matt Taibbi 33:59 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-

Joe Rogan 34:30 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 34:30 ... that Donald Trump took it, you know?

Joe Rogan 34:31 Did you see that Fauci had actually written a paper on the effectiveness of h- of chloroquine and on, uh-

Matt Taibbi 34:37 I didn't.

Joe Rogan 34:37 ... coronaviruses?

Matt Taibbi 34:39 What did he say? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:39 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.

Matt Taibbi 34:54 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 34:55 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-

Matt Taibbi 35:06 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:06 ... Trump.

Matt Taibbi 35:06 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 35:07 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.

Matt Taibbi 35:47 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:48 This evil Trumpster and this evil Trump thing that's happening.

Matt Taibbi 35:52 Right. Yeah, no. A- and, and, and that, again, that's new.

Joe Rogan 35:55 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 35:55 That's a new thing in our country.

Joe Rogan 35:57 It's a new thing.

Matt Taibbi 35:57 So, so another example of that is what you were talking about before, the, the lab leak story.

Joe Rogan 36:02 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 36:02 Right? Trump believed it, therefore it must not be true.

Joe Rogan 36:05 Right.

Matt Taibbi 36:06 Whereas, I think the old school reporters would look at it, "We wouldn't give a shit." Right? Like it's, it's-

Joe Rogan 36:11 Right.

Matt Taibbi 36:12 ... 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?

Joe Rogan 36:22 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 36:23 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?

Joe Rogan 36:36 Right.

Matt Taibbi 36:37 Uh, we stopped looking because it had been decided just sort of collectively that, well, here's the story we're gonna have, we're gonna stick to it. Anybody who has any other point of view on it is clearly a Trump lover or whatever, and we have to denounce that person, we have to call them a conspiracy theorist. Um, we're gonna f- we're gonna have this fact-checking, um, that, you know, piously declares that this is wrong, you know? And, uh, and of, of course it turns out, and then, then they backtrack and they think that there's not gonna be repercussions for that. Well, you know, that's why people are, are, are fleeing traditional media.

Joe Rogan 37:13 Don't you think they were forced into it, though? They were forced to backtrack.

Matt Taibbi 37:16 Yeah, they had to because ... Well, actually, I mean, that, that's still a little bit of a mystery as to why they suddenly decided to-... to back off.

Joe Rogan 37:27 Well, Josh Rogan was res-

Matt Taibbi 37:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 37:29 ... responsible for quite a bit of it, and he's done amazing stuff. I mean, his, his work in exposing the, the, the whole disinformation campaign and wh- wh- the, the emails and the fact that Fauci was the one that restarted the gain-of-function research and funding gain of... gain-of-function research, all that stuff, I mean... And, and he's a Washington Post guy. He's, I mean, he's rock solid.

Matt Taibbi 37:52 Right.

Joe Rogan 37:52 And, and then the... I think there was a bunch of people that kind of... when he started reporting all this stuff and saying all these things, a bunch of people that were like, "Fuck, he went out there."

Matt Taibbi 38:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:01 Like, you know, he went out the door and he's like, (sniffs) "Guys, I can breathe."

Matt Taibbi 38:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:05 And then everyone's like, "Fuck, should we go outside?"

Matt Taibbi 38:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:07 You know what I mean? (laughs) Like...

Matt Taibbi 38:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:08 You know what I mean? Like, if there was... Here. Oh, is this, uh, the Fauci thing?

Matt Taibbi 38:12 S-sort of.

Joe Rogan 38:12 "2005. 2005 studies, uh, found that chlor- yeah, chloroquine, not hydroxychloroquine, was effective in inhibiting the infection and spread of SARS-CoV, the official name for SARS. The research was conducted in cell culture conditions, so, uh, in vitro, meaning the drug was not administered to actual SARS patients." That's the same thing that they found with ivermectin, that it stops viral replication in vitro.

Matt Taibbi 38:37 Yeah, that's the...

Joe Rogan 38:37 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 38:37 If you look at the, the announcement for the, uh, Oxford study on ivermectin, they use very similar language-

Joe Rogan 38:44 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 38:44 ... to say that this is a drug that has had, uh, in vitro success as... and it has some antiviral, viral properties.

Joe Rogan 38:52 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 38:53 Um, you know, not, uh... There isn't a long record of it, but it has some, right? And that contradicted this... Again, it was, it was much more of a faith-based thing in the reporting.

Joe Rogan 39:05 Exactly. Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 39:06 It's, it's, "We believe that this n- is not true, so therefore, um, we're just not gonna touch it," uh...

Joe Rogan 39:14 Well, the horse dewormer narrative is where i- where it got really weird, because it was clearly the same language over and over again, which by the way, um, that stuff is in heart dewormer for dogs. I have heart dewormer for my dog. Uh, I didn't, I didn't... I don't even know who bought it, but it was in my house. And the other day, I was like, "Look at this. What's in this?"

Matt Taibbi 39:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 39:33 And I pick it up and it's fucking ivermectin.

Matt Taibbi 39:35 Really?

Joe Rogan 39:35 Yeah. And it was, you know, like heart... i- like, that company, I think it's called Heart that makes it.

Matt Taibbi 39:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:43 Isn't that what it's called? H-A-R-T or something like that?

Matt Taibbi 39:45 Heartgard?

Joe Rogan 39:46 Yeah. Is that what it is?

Matt Taibbi 39:47 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 39:47 But whatev- whatever it is, it was for dogs. There's a picture of a dog on it, and I didn't even know we had it in my house. And I open up the package and I look at it, I'm like, "Motherfucker." But what... Th- but they didn't say, "Heart..." That's it, Heartgard.

Matt Taibbi 39:59 Heartgard, yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:00 That's it.

Matt Taibbi 40:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:01 That shit. That shit's ivermectin. There it is. So, when they started saying horse dewormer, like that was the thing that kept getting said over and over and over again. Horse dewor- horse, horse, horse, horse.

Matt Taibbi 40:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 40:16 Like, why... Like, what happened there? Like, how did that narrative get out there when you're talking about a drug that's been administered to, I think it's more than four billion times. Four, four billion prescriptions have been filled for that stuff. There's only like... I wanna say there's like two billion dog... or two billion, um, horses on Earth.

Matt Taibbi 40:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:40 Like how many, how many billion horses are there? I bet there's not even... There's probably not even two billion horses. So there's like no way... Why would you confuse that, a drug that's been given to so many people, why would you confuse that as being primarily a horse drug? 58 million. There's only 58 million horses.

Matt Taibbi 41:00 So we far outnumber horses. This is something I, I never knew.

Joe Rogan 41:03 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 41:03 It's amazing.

Joe Rogan 41:03 I, I was pretty sure of that.

Matt Taibbi 41:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:05 But the fact that you're talking about a drug that couldn't have been given to all the horses, even if they gave it to every fucking horse.

Matt Taibbi 41:11 Right, yeah. Now, this was amazing, wh- when, when they did that. I mean, I had arguments with other people in the business about this 'cause I, I wrote a couple of stories about ivermectin, um, mainly because the, uh, some of the internet platforms were shutting down people who were, um, who were talking about it, right? So, companies like Facebook.

Joe Rogan 41:33 YouTube.

Matt Taibbi 41:34 Uh, and YouTube, right? Um, yeah, that's right. It was YouTube. Uh, had eliminated, among other things, like congressional testimony, uh, about this. And that, that seemed to me just crazy, like-

Joe Rogan 41:45 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 41:45 ... you know, what... Even if the person's wrong, you have to leave it up there as a public service. It's, you know, you, you should be able to find it. But, um, but reporters were absolutely convinced that this drug was evil because, I guess, because it wasn't the vaccine. Um, and just the whole concept that people would be looking for some other kind of treatment or might, or might welcome it was just deeply and profoundly offensive to them. So, they c- they came up with this pejorative term, the horse... you know, this horse dewormer thing. And i- it was amazing, the unanimity, like... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:23 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 42:23 As you said, it's, it was in every single story. Like, the, the language was exactly the same.

Joe Rogan 42:28 Yeah, it was really strange.

Matt Taibbi 42:29 Right? And what... and, and even that is odd because of wha- again, once upon a time, the... your, your classic journalist was somebody like Seymour Hersh, and the whole idea of being a journalist was to not think like other people. Like, you, you were, you were your own person, you thought for yourself, you, you made your own decisions about things.

Joe Rogan 42:47 And that was valuable.

Matt Taibbi 42:49 The, the whole point of the job was to be like that-

Joe Rogan 42:52 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 42:53 ... because it, it, it re- it required somebody who had the ability to k- to look at every situation completely objectively, um, and not be affected by peer pressure. Like, that, that was a, a prerequisite for being able to do this job well. The idea that we're all gonna parrot each other's, uh, thinking about things is totally alien to what this job is supposed to be about. And now all of a sudden, it's become the opposite. It's become if you even, uh, uh, try to opt out of doing that, you know, you're a suspect. You're, you're gonna be... you're gonna be drummed out of the business, which is just nuts.

Joe Rogan 43:29 It's very strange. Another thing that's...One of my favorite things to watch is the, um, compilation of all of the people on the left talking about how they would never take the vaccine because you never know what's in it. If Trump's hands are on it-

Matt Taibbi 43:46 Oh, God.

Joe Rogan 43:47 ... that it's gonna... you know, who knows what the long-term consequences of it are going to be.

Matt Taibbi 43:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:51 And this is, uh, Biden, fucking Biden when he was running for president. "Are, are you gonna take the shot? Who knows what it's gonna do to ya?"

Matt Taibbi 43:57 Kamala.

Joe Rogan 43:58 "There's no long-term tests." Kamala saying she wouldn't take the shot. So many fucking people. And those same people are the ones that, "Just take the shot, man."

Matt Taibbi 44:07 I know.

Joe Rogan 44:07 You know? Like that, the same people.

Matt Taibbi 44:09 Well-

Joe Rogan 44:09 The very same people. The same people made it. The same people pr- you know, they produced it, they sold it. Th- this is the same people.

Matt Taibbi 44:16 Yeah. And, and, uh, they came up with this whole phrase, uh, pandemic of the unvaccinated.

Joe Rogan 44:22 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 44:22 Right? So the, the... exactly the same people who were, who were having vaccine hesitancy the year previously, uh, came up with this phrase. And, and here's the parts that's, that's shameful. It's one thing for a politician to use a phrase like that that's clearly cooked up, um, you know, with their consultants, uh, in whatever, you know, evil political lab- laboratory they, they, they sit around and decide how they're gonna, you know, do their messaging campaigns. But then for, for, you know, an anchorperson to get up and repeat it like it's his or her own thinking, that's just embarrassing. You know?

Joe Rogan 44:57 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 44:57 Like, uh, since when do we... since, uh, you know, let, uh, politicians write our material for us? I mean, it's, it's, it's just... it's shameful.

Joe Rogan 45:07 It is. But I think it's just the last d- death twitches of that business. I, I just think this is a sign of the times in that if you think about it, uh, uh, a decentralized source of news is really the only way we're gonna trust it today, something that is completely independent of a large corporation where they have a lot of vested interesteds... a lot of vested interests in pushing a certain narrative. Those thing... they're never gonna be pure, not anymore. I mean, whatever, whatever the fuck they did when they allowed pharmaceutical drug companies to advertise on television. And we're onl- one of only two countries on planet Earth that allows that. They allowed the deepest roots of corruption and of influence to ge- get in the way of all narratives, of everything-

Matt Taibbi 46:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:02 ... we say and do.

Matt Taibbi 46:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:02 And the, the, the fucking sheer amount of money that's being generated by that is almost unstoppable. You could never cut all those roots. There's no way. And at-

Matt Taibbi 46:12 And it's-

Joe Rogan 46:12 ... this point?

Matt Taibbi 46:13 Yeah. It's, it's... and that amount of money is nothing to them. I mean-

Joe Rogan 46:16 Nothing.

Matt Taibbi 46:17 ... loo- look, look at the amount of, uh, the profits that companies like, you know, Moderna and-

Joe Rogan 46:21 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 46:22 ... Pfizer are making right now. And, you know, like, um... The, the, for... to buy the ascent of basically all the networks, all, all you have to do is, you know, send a tiny percentage of your quarterly profits to, uh, a handful of news networks. And to them, it's like manna from heaven. I mean, again, the, the news business is so starved for revenue, um, that they'll, they'll, you know, they'll bend to anybody basically.

Joe Rogan 46:46 Did you see that... um, I mean, I know Jimmy Dore covered it, but quite, quite a few other people have realized it now. The amount of money the... that Bill Gates has spent on, uh, influencing media.

Matt Taibbi 46:59 No. I, I, I didn't know-

Joe Rogan 47:01 It's somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 million-

Matt Taibbi 47:03 Geez.

Joe Rogan 47:04 ... he's donated to of... these various media organizations-

Matt Taibbi 47:08 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 47:09 ... which for sure has some sort of an impact on how they cover him.

Matt Taibbi 47:14 Right. Well, of course. Yeah. And, and, uh, look, the... once upon a time, we were, uh... I have to say that many times, we were trained to, to know, uh, that, for instance, think tanks, right? Like, uh, who they w-... who w- was funding them because think tanks are who get quoted, uh, in, in The New York Times and The Washington Post, right? So, uh, they're generating research that goes to journalists and, and, and, like, sort of surreptitiously, that then ends up becoming what's covered. And so that's how, like, the Gates Foundation, for instance, will work its way into coverage. Uh, you know, it will sponsor research in an area like education. That's one of the things I'm covering now. Um, and its research becomes, you know, uh... i- it gets, it gets into the news that way. Um, but we were supposed to once have, uh, uh, you know, our ears up and, and be conscious of who was paying for all this, this research. Where was that information coming from? And, you know, people don't really even think about it now.

Joe Rogan 48:14 See if you can find that story, Jimmy.

Narrator 48:16 I'm looking. I'm looking right now. I'm reading a article about someone, uh... last year, actually. I was looking into it. Uh, here, I'll show you. Journalism's Gateskeepers is what it's called.

Joe Rogan 48:28 Mm-hmm.

Matt Taibbi 48:29 This is-

Joe Rogan 48:29 Columbia Journalism Review.

Matt Taibbi 48:31 CJR.

Joe Rogan 48:31 Is that a res- respected publication?

Matt Taibbi 48:34 Yeah. No, I mean, look, they've had their issues but they're... that's the top media criticism outlet, right?

Joe Rogan 48:42 Okay. So this is last year. It says, "A recently examined nearly 20,000 charitable grants the Gates Foundation made through the end of June and found that more than 250 million going towards journalism."

Matt Taibbi 48:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:52 Receipts included news operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision Medium, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde. Le Monde? Is that how you say it?

Matt Taibbi 49:05 Yeah, Le Monde. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:06 And the Center for Investigative Reporting charitable organizations affiliated with news outlets like BBC Media Action, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, media companies such as the participant whose documentary Waiting for Superman, uh, supports Gates' agenda on charter schools, journalistic organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Press Foundation, and the International Center for Journalists, and a variety of other groups creating news content or working on journalism such as the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency the Gates... that Gates commissioned to create a new site to promote the success of aid groups. In some cases, recipients say they distributed part of the funding as sub-grants to other journalistic organizations which makes it difficult to see the full picture of Gates funding into the fourth estate."

Matt Taibbi 49:59 Yeah. And, and as a reporter, you may not ... may or may not be aware of all the different ways that money will get in, you know, uh, work its way into the business. But unconsciously, it just sort of seeps in, like you-

Joe Rogan 50:10 Right.

Matt Taibbi 50:11 ... you, and, and that's how it works. Like, you, nobody comes and tells you, "Well, don't cover this." Um, well, maybe they do now actually. Uh, or, or, you know, "Take this approach to covering education." You, you, what ends up happening is that you just kind of get a feel based on the reaction of your editor to whatever pitch, uh, you're giving at the, at the moment. "Hey, would you, you know, would you be interested in a story about whether or not, um, you know, this approach to, uh, standardized testing worked?" Right? Uh, and if the re- editor says, "Yeah, that's interesting, maybe," right? Then you know just never to broach that again, right? But if, if it's with, you know, in the cer- in the right ideological slant, um, they're gonna be hot for it, right?

Joe Rogan 50:59 Interesting.

Matt Taibbi 51:00 Yeah. And that's how it works. That's how it works with everything. It works, you know, in, in, with foreign policy. Uh, I mean, when I worked in Russia, um, if you sent a sto- if you pitched a story to an American editor about how, uh, the US-based, the US-funded reform effort was working, and there was a growing middle class in provincial Russia, um, that was prospering, and people were now taking vacations to Ibiza and stuff like that, you could get anybody to buy that story.

Joe Rogan 51:31 Mm-hmm.

Matt Taibbi 51:31 But if you came to them with a story about how actually, um, you know, the tran- the transformation to capitalism has been really slow, people have lost their healthcare, um, there's an out- explosion of violent crime, uh, and, and addiction, and people are more and more gravitating towards right-wing politics, uh, you know, in large part because of the, the rapid changes that they weren't ready for, um, you could not get that story sold, right? So, what, what ended up happening when I was in Russia is they kept sending back all these, these pos- positive reports about what was happening, this is before Putin, um, and Americans got this idea that things in Russia were going great, you know, uh, and the, the, the company was really prospering. In fact, you know, I was doing stories when I was there about how money didn't even exist in, in th- in the villages. Like, the only people who would actually have cash in, in most remote Russian villages would be pensioners, because they would get it, um, you know, once a month from the mail system. Uh, I, I went to places where the people actually bought and sold things with, uh, moonshine, like the Russian equivalent of moonshine, 'cause that was like a unit of currency. Think-

Joe Rogan 52:44 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 52:45 ... they were doing subsistence farming. I mean, it was completely fucked, li- li- life in rural Russia. But if you picked up The New York Times, what you read is, you know, the emerging middle class was doing great.

Joe Rogan 52:56 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 52:56 Uh, you know, people have, people have VCRs in, in Samara and stuff like that. And that's how it works. Like, you, you get a sense of what they want, you give it to them, and, you know, over time, you just stop thinking about it. Uh, but it's, it's, it's not a healthy way to do it.

Joe Rogan 53:12 The idea that there's no currency at all and they're just subsistence farming and trading-

Matt Taibbi 53:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:17 ... and trading in moonshine, that's wild.

Matt Taibbi 53:20 Yeah. We- I, I actually did it myself. It was the, the ... I did a story about this. I used to travel the country with this guy who was a, believe it or not, a professional clown.

Joe Rogan 53:29 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 53:29 So, we would, uh, we would do these things where we would, we would get jobs in, you know, provincial Russia doing different things, you know, whether it was bricklaying or, you know, working in, um, you know, agriculture, that kind of stuff. And in one place we went to, um, the, you know, we, we would do like a construction job and we'd get paid in what they call samogon, which is, uh, like moonshine.

Joe Rogan 53:51 Was it nasty?

Matt Taibbi 53:52 Uh, it, it works. I'll tell you that.

Joe Rogan 53:55 Megan Murphy gave me some shit from Mexico that it's ... How rough?

Narrator 53:59 Crunk bad, bad. I can still ... it's like nightmares. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:03 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 54:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:03 It's so rough and she drinks it all the time. I don't know what's wrong with her. But we open up the bottle, I was like, "Jesus."

Matt Taibbi 54:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:10 Whoo.

Matt Taibbi 54:10 It's like getting hit with an oar when you drink this stuff, so.

Joe Rogan 54:13 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 54:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:14 Have you ever seen Werner Herzog's, uh, documentary, Happy People?

Matt Taibbi 54:18 No. Although I love Werner Herzog but I, what was it about?

Joe Rogan 54:21 It's about people living in rural Russia.

Matt Taibbi 54:23 Oh, really?

Joe Rogan 54:23 Life in the taiga.

Matt Taibbi 54:25 Wow.

Joe Rogan 54:25 Happy People. It's one of my favorite documentaries. It's really fascinating.

Matt Taibbi 54:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:28 Because, um, these people live just hunter-gatherer, fisherman, trapper existences.

Matt Taibbi 54:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:37 And, uh, I, they, I believe they sell pelts and they'll use that for snowmobiles and tools and things like that. But essentially, all of their food, all of their subsistence comes, this is it, comes entirely from hunting and trapping, and they have no mental health problems. They're all unreasonably happy.

Matt Taibbi 55:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:00 They, they're really like, when you, you know, you're, you're getting translations of them, you know, it's all in subtitles, but they're talking about how happy they are, and they, they talk about all the things they love about this particular way of living. And, you know, and this is what a man needs to do, and this is what a trapper does, and this is what a hunter does, and this is what ... And they're talking about it with this, this pride and this ... I, I don't know, man, this like really unusual resolve, like they've found their niche. They don't have this desire to escape. Like, they enjoy life.

Matt Taibbi 55:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 55:38 And so, he called it Happy People. And, you know, he's doing the, uh, the, uh, narration, which makes it interesting too.

Matt Taibbi 55:45 No, his narrations are always great. (laughs) It's fucking hilarious.

Joe Rogan 55:47 A Year in the Taiga is what it's called.

Matt Taibbi 55:49 Let me-

Joe Rogan 55:49 It's fucking great.

Matt Taibbi 55:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:50 It's really good.

Matt Taibbi 55:51 That sounds awesome.

Joe Rogan 55:52 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 55:52 I mean, it make, it make, it makes sense that, uh, you know, whatever, whatever it is we're doing, um, that, that if you can avoid (laughs) having to have-

Joe Rogan 56:01 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 56:01 ... interaction with that, uh, that would be ... sounds like it would be a great life.

Joe Rogan 56:05 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."

Matt Taibbi 56:24 Oh, thank you.

Joe Rogan 56:25 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.

Matt Taibbi 56:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:37 As odd as that sounds, there's, there's not that many.

Matt Taibbi 56:41 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.

Joe Rogan 57:28 Right.

Matt Taibbi 57:28 Um, foreign reporting.

Joe Rogan 57:30 How would you pay for that without crowdfunding it? And if you crowdfunded it, wouldn't everybody know what you were doing?

Matt Taibbi 57:36 Yeah. I, uh, um-

Joe Rogan 57:37 That would be a problem, right?

Matt Taibbi 57:38 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.

Joe Rogan 57:51 Well, let me ask you this.

Matt Taibbi 57:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:53 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.

Matt Taibbi 58:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 58:03 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.

Matt Taibbi 58:11 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-

Joe Rogan 58:18 Yeah, but that's ... There's profit on the end of that, right? There's millions.

Matt Taibbi 58:21 Uh, there can be.

Joe Rogan 58:22 If, if you're lucky. If you have a good-

Matt Taibbi 58:24 If you're lucky.

Joe Rogan 58:24 ... a good book.

Matt Taibbi 58:24 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.

Joe Rogan 58:51 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.

Matt Taibbi 59:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 59:17 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.

Matt Taibbi 59:52 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-

Joe Rogan 1:00:10 That's terrifying.

Matt Taibbi 1:00:11 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.

Joe Rogan 1:00:59 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:00:59 Right? Like, there, there's, there's some of it out there. There's plenty of ... Th- th- there are people who do good work, but they have difficulty getting people to, um, to follow it because people do love the, the shit that's out there, right?

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:01:11 They, they, they, they eat up the culture war stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:01:14 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:01:14 Um, so those are, those are two problems. I think y- uh, I've always approached it that part of the job is, is a sales job. Like, you, you have to get people interested in stuff that's important. You have to find a way to do it, whether y- you're using humor, whether, you know, you're using illustrations. It doesn't matter whether you use fiction-writing narrative techniques to get people hooked on something. Um, you know, that's, that's part of the job, I think. Uh, and, and you have to do the investigative stuff. So it's, it's, it's a tough thing. It takes a while to develop all those skills, and they're not teaching, um, kids in journalism to do that as much anymore.

Joe Rogan 1:01:55 Do you think that with the rise of independent journalists, do you think that it's possible that that might open up and people might look at that as a viable career path, and they might say, "Hey, this is actually ... It's actually coming back"?

Matt Taibbi 1:02:10 I would hope so. I mean, if, if the money's there, it's the greatest job in the world. I mean, like, you know, this, this job has taken me all over the planet. I've gotten to meet every conceivable kind of person o- on Earth, everyone from presidential candidates to professional athletes, to people in prison, to, you know, e- everywhere. And you can go anywhere doing journalism. Um, and y- you, you get to play detective sometimes, right? Which it's, it's a really cool thing. You gotta, you gotta do the work of, you know, coming to a situation and figuring out who did what, and that's mentally and intellectually stimulating. It's, it's a, it's a great, great job. Um-... but people have been, um, I think they've been, uh, turned off to it because this new version of, of the job is much more like professional flattery. It's much more political. Uh, they're, they're, they're training kids to be like courtiers basically, and they, the people who come out of pr- journalism schools now, they, they want to be close to power. Like, they, they, that, that's the attraction for them is, is the, the idea of being the person who gets to sit next to a Hillary Clinton aide at a bar, um, you know, at the end of a day and, you know, "Oh, I know this person." Or, "I hang out at a party with this person." Like-

Joe Rogan 1:03:29 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:03:29 ... that, instead of, you know, going around the world or breaking a big story, like, that, that, that's what it is. And, uh, uh, I, I think it's unfortunate because it's a cool job.

Joe Rogan 1:03:39 I- it is a c- it's not just a cool job. It's a cool job with romantic roots.

Matt Taibbi 1:03:43 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 1:03:44 You know? Yeah. I mean, think about how many incredible stories have been broken and, you know, Woodward and Bernstein, how many, ho- how people look at these people, you know?

Matt Taibbi 1:03:53 Yeah. Think, think of the people who, who've been journalists-

Joe Rogan 1:03:56 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:03:56 ... who, who've done such incredible things, you know, everybody from, like, Ida Tarbell to Mark Twain to, um-

Joe Rogan 1:04:02 To Hunter Thompson.

Matt Taibbi 1:04:03 ... H- Hunter Thompson, E- Evelyn Waugh. Like, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:04:05 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:04:06 It, it's, it's a great place for, for, uh, if you, if you want to be a writer. I mean, that, that, that's how I got into it 'cause I, I, I, I wanted to be a writer. Um, but if you wanted to, if you want to be a great investigator, uh, you know, you can do, uh, that's a way into it too. Um, you know, the, th- there's the whole tradition of what we, uh, what we call participatory journalism where you do something and then you, and then you write about it.

Joe Rogan 1:04:30 Mm-hmm.

Matt Taibbi 1:04:31 Um, you know, the, George Plimpton was famous, right, for, for, you know, uh, playing professional football, uh, the Paper Lion story. Uh, but, you know, I, I've done some of that, you know, like doing w- you know, work in Russia or, uh, you know, going undercover. I lived in a church in Texas, uh, for a wh- uh-

Joe Rogan 1:04:49 Did you really?

Matt Taibbi 1:04:50 Yeah, yeah. Actually the, the John Hagee, uh, uh, church in San Antonio. Um, I sort of joined that church and wrote a r- r- wrote a, uh, w- about my experiences there.

Joe Rogan 1:05:00 What were you doing there?

Matt Taibbi 1:05:01 Um, so it was like an apocalyptic church. It was one of those-

Joe Rogan 1:05:04 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:05:04 ... churches that sort of believes the w- uh, end of the world is coming.

Joe Rogan 1:05:07 Did they have a date?

Matt Taibbi 1:05:08 Um, they didn't have a date, uh, but they had, they had all these crazy... Like, we had a retreat, um, where they taug- taught us to vomit our demons out into a paper bag.

Joe Rogan 1:05:18 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:05:18 Uh, so we had, we all got together and, like, we had to, uh, to do that. So, I had to pretend to be this, like, confused, spiritually confused person.

Joe Rogan 1:05:27 Mm-hmm.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:27 I feel kind of guilty about it in retrospect. It was kind of, um, not so sure about it.

Joe Rogan 1:05:31 Well, isn't everybody a little spiritually confused?

Matt Taibbi 1:05:33 Uh, we all are. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:34 So...

Matt Taibbi 1:05:34 I guess so. But it's, you know, it's, it, it's a fun job. I mean, it's, it's, uh, and, and I think it's really, really necessary too when done right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:43 I, I was just reading something. D- they didn't have serpents, did they? D- they used serpents?

Matt Taibbi 1:05:47 D- they didn't. No, that's like the Pentecostal thing, I think.

Joe Rogan 1:05:49 Right, right, right, right, right.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:50 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:50 They were the ones who spoke in tongues too, right?

Matt Taibbi 1:05:52 Speaking in tongues. Well, we did do that.

Joe Rogan 1:05:53 Really?

Matt Taibbi 1:05:54 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:05:54 Oh.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:55 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:55 Interesting.

Matt Taibbi 1:05:55 I wasn't so good at that.

Joe Rogan 1:05:57 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:05:57 Uh...

Joe Rogan 1:05:58 It all sounds the same. (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:06:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 It all, it all goes into this (imitates gibberish)

Matt Taibbi 1:06:03 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:03 It, it all sounds like a fake language.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:05 Like, no one does it well. No one does it where it sound like, "Wow, that sounds like..." Do you, um... What is that, um... Oh, God. There's a manuscript that they think is fake and it's been around forever.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:19 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

Joe Rogan 1:06:21 No, no, no, no, no. The Voynich... What is it called? Mm... The... Something, the Voynich Man.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:32 Is it the Voynich manuscript?

Joe Rogan 1:06:33 That's it. The-

Matt Taibbi 1:06:34 Three-point codes or something?

Joe Rogan 1:06:35 Yes. There's this ancient book and they don't know how old it is. How old do they think it is?

Matt Taibbi 1:06:42 Uh...

Joe Rogan 1:06:43 So, they were thinking before it was like a long lost language.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:46 Oh, makes sense.

Joe Rogan 1:06:46 And as time's gone on, now they're kind of thinking it's not a language at all. That it's like someone just made up a language.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:51 Just gibberish?

Joe Rogan 1:06:52 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:52 Oh, they made it up?

Joe Rogan 1:06:53 But it's really good. So, it's c- it's confusing people.

Matt Taibbi 1:06:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:57 See if you can, uh, uh, pull up some images of it. So this, it's got drawings and this language-

Matt Taibbi 1:07:04 Oh, that's beautiful.

Joe Rogan 1:07:04 ... that they thought... Yeah. It's, it's really interesting. It's old as fuck. But, like, look at how all the letters are written. It's all beautiful and no one knows what the fuck it says. They have-

Matt Taibbi 1:07:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:16 ... no idea. And there's a lot of theories, but for the longest time, they were trying to decipher it. And I think... I, I might be speaking out of tune here 'cause it, they might have changed, but I think they decided somewhere along the line that it's not really a language, that someone just made up a fake language.

Matt Taibbi 1:07:36 So, so I'm, I'm assuming that they had, like, uh, linguists and code breakers take a crack at it-

Joe Rogan 1:07:41 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 1:07:41 ... and they just-

Joe Rogan 1:07:42 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:07:42 ... couldn't, right?

Joe Rogan 1:07:42 They can't. It's early 15th century, so somewhere in the early 1400s, somebody... So, r- c- clear that, was the v- uh, manuscript decoded? I don't think it has been, right? 2019, the manuscript was propelled back to the headlines once again when an academic made the explosive claim that he had success, succeeded where everyone had failed and successfully decoded the mysterious text. I think that's horseshit though. I don't think that's true. I don't-

Matt Taibbi 1:08:09 If s- if somebody 500 years ago made this beautiful thing, but made it complete gibberish just to fuck with us in the future, that's kind of amazing.

Joe Rogan 1:08:18 (laughs) Right, like-

Matt Taibbi 1:08:19 Like, I, I really respect that.

Joe Rogan 1:08:20 Yeah, if that's what they did. I don't know what they did.

Matt Taibbi 1:08:23 Yeah, that's funny.

Joe Rogan 1:08:24 I, I think they think that somebody might have made it to sell to someone, like someone ha- might have made it in the early 1400s to sell as, like, some ancient text. It currently consists of around 240 pages. There's evidence that additional pages are missing. Some pages, uh, are foldable sheets of varying size. Most of the pages have fantastical illustrations or diagrams, some crudely colored with sections of the manuscript showing people, fictitious plants-

Matt Taibbi 1:08:56 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:56 ... astrological symbols, et cetera. The text is written from left to right. The manuscript was named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who pur- purchased it in 1912.

Matt Taibbi 1:09:06 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:09:07 Yeah, I don't think that anyone has translated it.

Narrator 1:09:12 There was so much fuckery back then.

Joe Rogan 1:09:13 Oh, yeah. There was, right?

Narrator 1:09:15 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:09:15 That's hilarious.

Joe Rogan 1:09:16 There was-

Matt Taibbi 1:09:16 That reminds me of the, uh... Oh, go ahead.

Joe Rogan 1:09:18 I was gonna say, the, the, like, the earliest books, while I was reading something about some of the early... Somebody brought it up, and then I read something. Somebody... I think somebody brought it up on this podcast.

Narrator 1:09:26 Yeah. I, that's... I remember reading through this, and I thought we had come to an answer, but I'm... I don't remember it, and I'm not finding it.

Joe Rogan 1:09:32 The, the answer-

Narrator 1:09:32 Like-

Joe Rogan 1:09:32 ... whether or not it's legit?

Narrator 1:09:34 Yeah, like, even I thought they found out what some of the stuff was saying, and it was just, like, nonsense or...

Joe Rogan 1:09:38 Yeah, I don't know if that's true. I think there's-

Narrator 1:09:39 Yeah, I don't remember.

Joe Rogan 1:09:39 ... it's really under debate. But the earliest books, the real successful ones, were about, like, how to spot witches.

Matt Taibbi 1:09:46 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:09:47 Like, everybody thinks, like, "Oh, well, once they started printing books, that's when people started learning things."

Narrator 1:09:52 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:09:52 Like... (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:09:53 No.

Joe Rogan 1:09:53 That was kind of like today.

Matt Taibbi 1:09:54 Right, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:55 You know?

Matt Taibbi 1:09:55 They do... There's a lot, there's a lot of witch hunting going on today.

Joe Rogan 1:09:57 Like, all the... Like, if you think of, like, if, if YouTube was dominated by QAnon-

Matt Taibbi 1:10:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:03 ... QAnon theories, that was, like, ancient publishing-

Matt Taibbi 1:10:06 Yeah, amazing.

Joe Rogan 1:10:06 ... when they first started writing bo... 'Cause I never even thought of that. I forget who brought that up. Someone brought that up on the show, that the earliest books were about witches, and, and I was like, "What?" And they go, "Yeah, that was the most successful books at the time. Once they started printing books, like, how to spot witches."

Matt Taibbi 1:10:21 Right, right.

Narrator 1:10:22 You talked about it on the ninth episode.

Joe Rogan 1:10:25 But who was it that... The ninth episode ever?

Matt Taibbi 1:10:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:28 Oh, Jesus.

Narrator 1:10:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:29 Wow.

Matt Taibbi 1:10:30 Wow.

Narrator 1:10:30 With whom?

Joe Rogan 1:10:31 My memory's gone. My memory is like a hard drive that it's like a one-gigabyte hard drive, but I'm trying to stuff 18 gigs of information in there. It just spills over.

Matt Taibbi 1:10:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:10:40 And then someone will bring something up, and I'll go, "Oh, yeah. Oh, now I remember that. Okay, I found the folder," and then I'll, you know...

Matt Taibbi 1:10:45 Yeah, no, I... For, for me, I think I'm just actually... It's shrinking in size, that, uh, that, that hard drive.

Joe Rogan 1:10:52 Yeah, well, it's-

Matt Taibbi 1:10:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:53 It's definitely not working that good.

Matt Taibbi 1:10:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:55 Um, but this Voynich manuscript, uh... I forgot what my point was. It's, uh, just...

Matt Taibbi 1:11:02 It reminds me of the, um... Remember the amazing story about the Zodiac code?

Joe Rogan 1:11:06 Yes.

Matt Taibbi 1:11:07 Uh, when (laughs) they published it in, like, the NSA, the CIA, uh, and the FBI? Like, their cryptographers couldn't crack it, but then this couple in s- like, uh, Sausalito were just, like, sitting at their breakfast table and, and, and they were the ones who figured it out.

Joe Rogan 1:11:23 Oh, is that true?

Matt Taibbi 1:11:24 Yeah, it is true.

Joe Rogan 1:11:25 Really?

Matt Taibbi 1:11:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:25 Interesting.

Matt Taibbi 1:11:25 It's, uh, it's, it's in the original, um, Zodiac books, the, the, the, the cartoonist Robert Graysmith. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:11:32 We were going somewhere with this when I got to the Voynich manuscript. What the hell were we talking about right before that?

Matt Taibbi 1:11:38 You just...

Joe Rogan 1:11:40 There was a point. Don't remember.

Matt Taibbi 1:11:43 Media business, professional standards.

Narrator 1:11:44 Uh, talking in tongues.

Joe Rogan 1:11:46 Talk... Oh, that's right.

Matt Taibbi 1:11:46 Speaking in tongues, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:47 That's right, that's right.

Matt Taibbi 1:11:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:11:48 So, you, we, you were... We were just talking about gibberish. Um, that fake languages-

Matt Taibbi 1:11:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:11:52 That fake languages all sound the same. They all sound... Sabalabalabalaba.

Matt Taibbi 1:11:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:56 Nobody does it where it sounds like, "Wow, that sounds like a good fake language."

Matt Taibbi 1:12:00 No, it's, it's in- it's incredibly unconvincing, except th- but it was very hard for me to do. I've, I've found, like, uh... That, that was the hardest, hardest part of the gig.

Joe Rogan 1:12:09 Didn't J.R.R. Tolkien write a whole fake language to go along with The Lord of the Rings?

Matt Taibbi 1:12:15 Oh, like Hobbitish or something like that?

Joe Rogan 1:12:16 I think he did.

Matt Taibbi 1:12:17 Or Elvish?

Joe Rogan 1:12:18 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:12:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:18 I think he did write somethi- some Elvish language. I think he wrote a fake language to go along with his books.

Matt Taibbi 1:12:25 So did, um, Anthony Burgess. Well, he just basically took Russian words and made them into slang for A Clockwork Orange.

Joe Rogan 1:12:31 Oh, really?

Matt Taibbi 1:12:32 Yeah. Uh, but, uh, yeah, he had his, his own sort of slang, slang language. It's a cool thing to do, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:12:39 Did this, uh, church that you... Did... Were they, uh, some of the people that did the Pray The Gay Away stuff?

Matt Taibbi 1:12:44 Um, so there, there was a little bit of that.

Joe Rogan 1:12:47 (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:12:47 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...

Joe Rogan 1:13:15 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.

Matt Taibbi 1:13:26 Was it a Buddhist church?

Joe Rogan 1:13:27 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?

Matt Taibbi 1:13:52 Right, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:54 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.

Matt Taibbi 1:14:21 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.

Joe Rogan 1:14:29 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:14:30 There have been, you know, a lot of changes in... Since then.

Joe Rogan 1:14:33 Well, changes in acceptance hopefully-

Matt Taibbi 1:14:35 Acceptance, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:35 ... but also changes in an understanding of homosexuality, that it's... This is not a choice. It's like, this i-

Matt Taibbi 1:14:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:14:43 The idea that it is a choice is nonsense.

Matt Taibbi 1:14:45 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 1:14:46 And, and we, you know-

Matt Taibbi 1:14:47 Although they're, they're now changing the, the, the thinking on that.

Joe Rogan 1:14:50 Really?

Matt Taibbi 1:14:51 Well, I mean, that's... Uh, uh, not to wade into an area that's completely radioactive, but, you know, they're, they're-

Joe Rogan 1:14:56 Too late. (laughs)

Matt Taibbi 1:14:57 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.

Joe Rogan 1:15:11 Oh, okay. So, well, trans-

Matt Taibbi 1:15:12 Gender fluidity.

Joe Rogan 1:15:13 ... is very different though, right?

Matt Taibbi 1:15:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:15 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.

Matt Taibbi 1:15:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:15:37 This is very common.

Matt Taibbi 1:15:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:39 So, I don't think it's quite the same as gay. It's, it's very different in that it's... Whatever it is in the human mind that makes you identify with another gender, it seems to have nothing to do with your sexual preference.

Matt Taibbi 1:15:54 Hmm. Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:15:56 Yeah.

Matt Taibbi 1:15:57 I know absolutely nothing about it, so I- I- I shouldn't opine.

Joe Rogan 1:16:00 I know enough about it. Well, I, I knew almost nothing about it until I got, like, a- attacked for attacking a, um, uh, female MMA fighter who used to be male for 30 years and then wasn't telling anybody that she used to be male and transitioned. And fought two different times against females that thought she was a biological female, and beat the fuck out of them.

Matt Taibbi 1:16:24 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:16:24 I mean, like, horrendous beatings. Broke this lady's skull. Like, literally fractured her face. It