Joe Rogan Experience #1781 - Coleman Hughes

Narrator 0:01 (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Coleman Hughes 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (heavy guitar music) Good to go? All right. Coleman, welcome. Nice to meet you.

Coleman Hughes 0:14 Great to be here, man.

Joe Rogan 0:15 What is, what is X Factor? Is that your podcast?

Coleman Hughes 0:18 No, I wish. The X, X Factor, this is a Lauryn Hill shirt.

Joe Rogan 0:20 Oh, I've seen you wear that on more than one occasion.

Coleman Hughes 0:23 You know, I just love this shirt.

Joe Rogan 0:24 Oh, okay.

Coleman Hughes 0:25 It's comfortable. I look good in it, I feel good in it.

Joe Rogan 0:28 You do look good in it.

Coleman Hughes 0:28 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 0:28 You do look good in it. Um, I'm glad you agree with Jamie that golf is a problem.

Narrator 0:33 What kind of problem?

Joe Rogan 0:34 This motherfucker-

Narrator 0:35 It's a good problem to have.

Joe Rogan 0:36 All, all he cares about is golf these days.

Narrator 0:39 There's a lot going on in the golf world.

Joe Rogan 0:41 (laughs)

Coleman Hughes 0:41 You know, I will say-

Narrator 0:42 A lot of money being thrown around.

Coleman Hughes 0:42 ... I just, I resent golf because my dad is good, and I think he really wanted me to be good.

Narrator 0:48 Oh.

Coleman Hughes 0:48 At least I sensed that, and I never was. It's such an awkward swing.

Joe Rogan 0:53 It's a very weird movement. I was watching Tiger Woods' swing on, uh, YouTube yesterday-

Narrator 0:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:57 ... for whatever strange reason.

Narrator 0:59 Interesting.

Coleman Hughes 0:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:59 'Cause they were talking about how... Look at me, I'm scared. I told you-

Coleman Hughes 1:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02 ... I'm fucking scared of golf. I can't.

Coleman Hughes 1:04 All right.

Joe Rogan 1:04 I can't do it, I don't have that kind of time.

Coleman Hughes 1:06 Well, I feel like with every other sport, if you're a pretty athletic person, you can not embarrass yourself in a short amount of time.

Joe Rogan 1:12 Right.

Coleman Hughes 1:13 With golf, it seems like there's very little correlation between general athleticism and whether you can do this swing.

Joe Rogan 1:19 So here's a slow mo of Tiger Woods. And, you know, what it is is like I was looking at the way his body moves and then I, I remember hearing about all the different surgeries he's had on his back.

Coleman Hughes 1:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:31 And I'm like, "It kind of makes sense."

Coleman Hughes 1:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:34 If you look at the amount of torque, that-

Coleman Hughes 1:35 There, right here is where the torque starts.

Narrator 1:37 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 1:37 Let it drive through. Like, this amount of fucking power, it's such a, it is such a weird movement of the body. And you have to be, you have to like be loose and strong at the same time, right?

Narrator 1:52 Yeah, you gotta keep your arms, like, stiff, but your wrists loose, and your hips loose, but your legs stiff.

Coleman Hughes 1:59 Everything's counterintuitive.

Narrator 2:00 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 2:00 A baseball swing is so much more intuitive to me. Maybe that's 'cause I played more baseball growing up, but I think it is more naturally with the grain of how the body would just, like if, if a caveman just picked something up-

Joe Rogan 2:12 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 2:12 ... like a club, he would swing it more like a baseball bat than like a golf club, certainly.

Joe Rogan 2:16 It makes sense because the golf thing is down low.

Coleman Hughes 2:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:19 Right? And so it has, you have to stand sideways and it has to go past your legs and up.

Coleman Hughes 2:23 Yeah.

Narrator 2:23 I'm trying to find... This, this guy, he's a long drive hitter. I've s- he's pretty new to the-

Joe Rogan 2:27 (laughs) Jack Deius.

Narrator 2:28 ... thing. He's huge. He was a baseball player, but he's got this very unique swing. He calls it the Novak swing. He does a giant baseball step, but he fucking-

Coleman Hughes 2:35 Happy Gilmore swing?

Narrator 2:36 ... he blasts the ball, too.

Coleman Hughes 2:37 Oh, my God.

Joe Rogan 2:38 (laughs) Oh, Jesus Christ.

Narrator 2:40 He just rips it. Yeah. But, yeah, I've tried doing it. It really fucks up your entire swing for everything else you're doing. It's, it's only made for hitting the ball as far as possible, which is...

Coleman Hughes 2:47 Yeah, you can't putt like that.

Joe Rogan 2:48 But can you make it accurate and do that?

Narrator 2:50 Y- you can 'cause the long drive thing, you have to hit it within the fairway. You can't just smash it as far as possible and count as far as it went. It has to be within, like, the lines kind of thing.

Joe Rogan 3:00 I can't imagine that there isn't some, like, giant linebacker type dude that if you could taught, teach him correctly, that he would have immense power. Like, could you imagine if you could teach Francis Ngannou how to drive correctly? That ball might never land. (laughs)

Narrator 3:18 Well, there's a picture of Tyson Fury swinging, which I think he's pretty new to it, and he's a giant person.

Joe Rogan 3:25 He's enormous.

Narrator 3:26 It's the same kind of thing.

Joe Rogan 3:27 The amount of, the amount of torque.

Narrator 3:29 Like-

Joe Rogan 3:29 Yeah.

Narrator 3:30 ... he's, it doesn't look as impressive. You also don't have... The other part, which is, I've been figuring out as I learned, swinging as hard as you can doesn't make the ball go as far as it will as if you swing nice and soft and hit it in the right spot on the club.

Joe Rogan 3:42 That's the same-

Narrator 3:43 Which is-

Joe Rogan 3:43 ... thing with pool.

Narrator 3:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 3:44 Like, with a break shot in pool, you don't want to hit it as hard as you can. You want to kind of hit it smooth.

Narrator 3:48 It's, it's strange, but that doesn't get out your frustration of hitting a bad shot, which feels good too. I kind of think breaking a club over your leg when you had a b- bad, bad shot might be very helpful, but it's not etiquette. That's terrible etiquette.

Joe Rogan 4:01 Why would it be helpful to break a club over your leg?

Narrator 4:03 It would feel good to get out that, like... 'Cause some people want to throw the club or throw a ball when you, when you do bad.

Joe Rogan 4:09 Yeah?

Narrator 4:09 'Cause you, you're frustrated with yourself. It's all about yourself. You can't get, yell at yourself. There's players that have gotten in trouble for that because they catch it on mic. With, like, you've, I think you did it on mic.

Joe Rogan 4:17 Right, right, right, right. Yeah.

Narrator 4:19 So, like, how do you deal with that mind game if you could just break something over your leg and yell out about it?

Joe Rogan 4:25 I got a theory about why people like Tyson Fury. It's not just 'cause he's awesome, but also 'cause he has back fat. That-

Coleman Hughes 4:30 I have no idea who Tyson Fury is.

Joe Rogan 4:32 You don't know who Tyson Fury is?

Coleman Hughes 4:33 No.

Narrator 4:34 Really?

Coleman Hughes 4:34 No.

Joe Rogan 4:34 He's the heavyweight champion of the world.

Coleman Hughes 4:36 I don't follow it.

Joe Rogan 4:37 You don't know who Tyson Fury is?

Coleman Hughes 4:38 No.

Joe Rogan 4:39 He's one of the most extraordinary heavyweight boxers ever.

Coleman Hughes 4:41 Okay.

Joe Rogan 4:41 He's six foot nine. He's a gypsy, and he's a fucking character. They call him the Gypsy King.

Coleman Hughes 4:47 Wow.

Joe Rogan 4:47 He was very fat at one point in time, and then he got pretty thin. But he's still, in between fights in particular, he carries a lot of back fat, like that.

Coleman Hughes 4:53 He does not look quick or particularly strong.

Joe Rogan 4:57 Dude, he's amazing.

Coleman Hughes 4:59 It's interesting.

Joe Rogan 4:59 It's all deceptive. First of all-

Coleman Hughes 5:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:01 ... he's huge. He's so tall. I mean, he's six foot nine. And he just has an immense reach, immense reach, and he's very talented.

Coleman Hughes 5:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:10 Like, it's not just a physical advantage. You know, those gypsies, like, I don't know if you've ever seen any of those, um, documentaries on bare knuckle boxers.

Coleman Hughes 5:19 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 5:20 Bare knuckle boxers in the UK, it's like the, these gypsies from, like, Brad Pitt in Snatch. Did you ever see that movie?

Coleman Hughes 5:27 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 5:27 You didn't?

Coleman Hughes 5:27 No.

Joe Rogan 5:28 Are you just reading books all the time?

Coleman Hughes 5:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:30 Just being an intellectual?

Coleman Hughes 5:31 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:31 Like, what are you doing with your time?

Coleman Hughes 5:33 Yeah, I read books. I read articles.

Joe Rogan 5:36 (laughs)

Coleman Hughes 5:36 I record podcasts. I make songs. I watch documentaries. I watch, I watch Netflix shows.

Joe Rogan 5:41 Well, they've done documentaries on these people.

Coleman Hughes 5:43 Okay.

Joe Rogan 5:44 There's a, a whole culture of bare knuckle boxers-

Coleman Hughes 5:48 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 5:48 ... that live in caravans. They live in, like, these trailers, and they, they travel around and challenge each other. And because of YouTube, these guys have videos. So they have videos where they're challenging each other, like, "Bobby O'Dullivan, you're a fucking bag of shite. I'm gonna fucking take you out." And they have these, like, ridiculous YouTube challenge videos where they-

Coleman Hughes 6:07 So how, how do you think-

Joe Rogan 6:08 ... talk about each other.

Coleman Hughes 6:08 ... they compare to professional boxers, if you put them in a ring?

Joe Rogan 6:12 It's a different thing when you're doing bare knuckle because you could break your hands so easily.

Coleman Hughes 6:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:17 So, you have to be a little bit more cautious. There's a thought... Like, have you ever seen, like, pictures of old-timey boxers, they stand like this?

Coleman Hughes 6:23 Put 'em up, yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:24 There's a thought that they were punching like that because they wanted to hit only with these-

Coleman Hughes 6:28 Oh, that makes sense.

Joe Rogan 6:29 ... two knuckles on the front-

Coleman Hughes 6:30 Right.

Joe Rogan 6:30 ... because it's m- less likely to break your hands.

Coleman Hughes 6:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 6:33 And, you know, there's also... It's probably, they just didn't know any better. Like, they didn't... You know, no one had come along that could punch like Mike Tyson.

Coleman Hughes 6:40 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:41 That had, like, perfect technique.

Coleman Hughes 6:43 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:43 And so they thought that this is probably the way to do it, to, like, hit each other, but...

Coleman Hughes 6:47 Have you seen this documentary, One Punch?

Joe Rogan 6:49 No.

Coleman Hughes 6:50 One Punch is a collection of stories of people who have killed someone accidentally with one punch.

Joe Rogan 6:56 Oh, wow.

Coleman Hughes 6:57 Bar fight, single punch, they fall down, hit their head on-

Joe Rogan 7:01 Mm-hmm.

Coleman Hughes 7:01 ... a curb, the side of a table, and they die. And it goes through their legal stories, how they got in the fight. And it's just this fascinating recalibration of, uh, what you think is possible with a small amount of violence. Like, you never think if you're gonna punch someone once that they're gonna die.

Joe Rogan 7:18 I think that.

Coleman Hughes 7:19 May- maybe you do, but 'cause you're-

Joe Rogan 7:20 I try to tell people that all the time.

Coleman Hughes 7:21 You're- you're very close to violence. But, um, I think people who aren't close to it don't realize how quickly things can spin outta control.

Joe Rogan 7:29 The thing is the hitting the head. And this is, uh... Apparently, this was in Bob Saget's, uh, autopsy. They believe that he blacked out and fell back and hit his head.

Coleman Hughes 7:40 Mm.

Joe Rogan 7:41 And that is, uh, what caused massive skull fractures in his head. And, you know, some people think, like, "Oh, my God. Maybe foul play was involved." But apparently, there's no way. Apparently, the, um, door, you know, he had a keycard to get into the door of the hotel. No one had been in it since he had been in there. No one had left. So, he opened the door, he went inside. And, you know, he was... He'd just done a show.

Coleman Hughes 8:05 Mm.

Joe Rogan 8:05 And apparently, he just fainted and banged the back of his head. And then there's a video, I don't know if you ever see the-

Coleman Hughes 8:13 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:13 ... Heather McDonald video?

Coleman Hughes 8:15 Uh, the- the writer, Heather McDonald?

Joe Rogan 8:16 No, the comedian, Heather McDonald.

Coleman Hughes 8:18 Oh, okay.

Joe Rogan 8:18 Have you seen the video of her?

Coleman Hughes 8:19 No, no.

Joe Rogan 8:19 See if you can find that. You- you... Well, you definitely can find it, it's everywhere. She's on stage and it's kind of... It's the craziest video-

Coleman Hughes 8:26 Mm.

Joe Rogan 8:26 ... because people think it's a joke.

Coleman Hughes 8:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 8:28 She's talking about how many vaccines she's had. She's like, "I'm double vaxxed, I'm boosted, I got the shingles vaccine."

Coleman Hughes 8:35 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:35 You know, and like... And- and she, right after saying that, blacks out on stage, falls back completely, bangs her head off the ground, and which is how people die. So, give me some volume on this from the beginning.

Narrator 8:50 Did shows, meet-and-greets-

Joe Rogan 8:51 No, no, go from the beginning.

Narrator 8:53 Never got-

Joe Rogan 8:53 Go from the beginning, 'cause it... Here.

Narrator 8:54 ... COVID. Clea-

Joe Rogan 8:55 No, go from the beginning so I could hear her talking about the vaccines. Here it goes. Oh, sorry.

Coleman Hughes 9:01 Trigger warning.

Narrator 9:02 ... to be here. Yeah. I don't mean to brag, I don't care, but I want you to know, double-vaxxed, booster, flu shot, (audience cheering) and I'm gonna be honest, I have the shingle shot too. (audience cheering) And I still get my period. What? Yes! Traveled, went to Mexico twice, did shows, meet-and-greets, never got COVID. Clearly, Jesus loves me the most. (audience laughing) Seriously. So nice. So nice. Oh, this is awesome.

Coleman Hughes 9:41 Oh, shit.

Narrator 9:41 Somebody once-

Coleman Hughes 9:43 Oh, my Lord.

Joe Rogan 9:45 Yeah. So, she fractured her skull doing that. (smacks lips) Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 9:51 Poor woman. I mean, but that's just a coincidence she was talking about the vaccine while that happened.

Joe Rogan 9:55 Yeah, they call it instant pharma.

Coleman Hughes 9:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:58 Which is horrible, but that's the phrase that I keep hearing online.

Coleman Hughes 10:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:02 There was a woman, uh, on German television that the same thing happened to her recently. She was talking about vaccine mandates-

Coleman Hughes 10:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:09 ... and talking about how important it is to mandate the vaccines-

Coleman Hughes 10:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:12 ... and she blacked out on television while talking about it. Just-

Coleman Hughes 10:16 Strange.

Joe Rogan 10:16 ... coincidence in the timing of, like-

Coleman Hughes 10:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 10:19 ... when the sentence was said and when she blacked out.

Coleman Hughes 10:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:22 Yeah, but the point is, falling back like that is fucking super dangerous.

Coleman Hughes 10:27 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 10:27 And a friend of mine, uh, Kevin James, in fact. Kevin James from The King of Queens?

Coleman Hughes 10:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:32 He used to work as a, uh, bouncer in a club, in a nightclub. And one of the guys he worked with got into a bar fight. They were, um, you know, telling some drunk that he had to leave, whatever, and a fight broke out. He punches this guy. The guy falls back, bangs his head off the ground, and dead. And the guy wound up doing time. Like, the bouncer wound up doing time for that.

Coleman Hughes 10:55 Yeah, the- the philosophers call this moral luck.

Joe Rogan 10:58 Mm.

Coleman Hughes 10:58 Right? It's like, um, we both commit the same action. I punch someone, you punch someone. One of these person has a prior medical condition, or just by pure dumb luck, ends up tripping, hitting their head. So, we both did the same exact action. One of us committed homicide, one of us got into a bar fight.

Joe Rogan 11:18 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 11:19 That doesn't actually speak to which one of us is a more moral human being. That's pure dumb luck. But the law can treat it as if you're a murderer and you're not, right? That's moral luck. I think it's a very interesting concept. Texting while driving is another example. I've done it. I don't do it, you know, as a- as a- as a rule, but, like, I've done it in the past. Almost everyone has. You know, there- there's someone in the world where the first time they texted and drove, they ran over, like, a five-year-old.

Joe Rogan 11:49 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 11:49 Law of averages says that must've happened.

Joe Rogan 11:52 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 11:52 And, um, on the one hand, we wanna punish those things. On the other hand, you can't really call that person a moral monster when they're doing something a lot of people are doing and just being... Getting much luckier with. Right?

Joe Rogan 12:09 Yeah, there's an interesting distinction between someone choosing to do something evil versus an evil result.

Coleman Hughes 12:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:15 Like, if your son dies because someone was texting and driving, it's the most horrible...... feeling. You'd probably be so furious and you'd want revenge. You'd wanna punish that person. But it's not that they did it on purpose. The difference between someone killing your son on purpose-

Coleman Hughes 12:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:33 ... that's, that's an evil act. This is just thoughtless and shit luck, and also not anticipating consequences.

Coleman Hughes 12:43 Mm-hmm. And that's why the law recognizes intention as a factor that distinguishes, say, one murder from a worse murder, right?

Joe Rogan 12:53 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 12:54 And, um, I think the reason we recognize intention in the law is 'cause clearly all human beings, we have this intuition that there's a dif- it's a different type of person who does a thing on purpose than does it by accident. Uh, one kind of person wishes you harm and probably will keep wishing you harm. The other, the other kind of person, at worst, was negligent. And I think there is, um... I think that's a very important observation to hold steady throughout our, uh, legal and non-legal judgments of people just in the culture, right? Like, people want to eliminate the distinction between, uh, you know, saying, uh, for instance, a racial slur, directing it at someone, and say- saying the word in quotation marks, right?

Joe Rogan 13:41 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 13:41 And I, I know that you're familiar with the fact that people erase the distinction between those two things.

Joe Rogan 13:45 Oh, I'm very familiar. (laughs)

Coleman Hughes 13:47 Yeah. I'm not that clueless that I haven't been paying attention to what's, what's going on.

Joe Rogan 13:51 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 13:51 But the point is, the same principle by which we all understand the difference between manslaughter and homicide and so forth should govern the way that we judge people for, you know, words and e- everything else, right? But c- certain people wanna say intentions don't matter. Uh, that, that just... That can't make sense. You know, you'd have to throw out our whole legal system if that were true, o- or at least overhaul it. And I think that's an important principle to recognize.

Joe Rogan 14:22 I think the, the conversations haven't been had enough, whether it is with, uh, someone doing something accidentally and having a horrible result ve- versus doing it intentionally, or someone using words versus someone that is actually trying to be racist.

Coleman Hughes 14:43 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:43 There's, uh, there's definitely a difference in those things. And I think we, as a society, we have rules that we've decided upon. And then when someone violates those rules, that person is a violator, and that person needs to be judged and dealt with because of that.

Coleman Hughes 15:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 15:01 I think we have this sort of moral righteousness when it comes to uttering certain words or doing certain things. And the, the good thing about the, the judgment that comes out of that and the inter- is, is conversations. It's like people start having conversations like, "W- what is the difference? Why is it different?"

Coleman Hughes 15:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 15:22 Like, "What are you allowed to say? What are you not allowed to say and why?"

Coleman Hughes 15:26 Mm-hmm. You know, it's interesting with, with the N-word controversy that, that happened here. Right when that was happening, I was watching for the first time ever, I'm ashamed to admit, the five-part OJ documentary from ESPN from-

Joe Rogan 15:39 (laughs)

Coleman Hughes 15:40 ... from a while back. It's like, it's been on my list to watch for a long time. I finally watched it. And you'll remember, there's this moment in the trial where, uh, you know, i- it's now known that there's probably, um, a Mark Fuhrman N-word tape, you know, like this, this cop-

Joe Rogan 15:58 Right.

Coleman Hughes 15:58 ... that, uh, f- collected the glove at the scene, has a history of using the N-word as a racial slur, directing it at, at, at people and so forth. And Chris Darden for the pro- prosecution, with the jury out of the room, he looks at the judge, he says, "We cannot allow the jury to hear this tape, and here's why. Black people cannot hear the N-word and remain objective. And the jurors, they have to remain objective. So, we can't, we can't allow them to hear. We can't admit this as evidence."

Joe Rogan 16:30 That's fascinating that he's the prosecuting attorney.

Coleman Hughes 16:33 The prosecuting attorney, made that argument. And then the defense, Johnny Cochran came back on the defense and he said, "What the hell are you talking about? The idea that a Black person can't hear the N-word in any context and remain rational, remain objective, um, understand the context of it, is patronizing, it's condescending, it's racist. I'm ashamed that you made this argument," right? And, you know, regardless of the merits of it, th- his, Johnny Cochran's view was seen to have sort of won the day among, among people, and they did admit, um, much of, um, or at least parts of the tape, and the jury heard the word. And basically, the argument was, among progressive people at that time in the '90s, was, it's condescending and patronizing to say that every ex- like, any example of that word being spoken just, like, scrambles Black people's minds or something. And I think there's been a huge sea change in what the prov- progressive argument now is. The progressive argument now is much closer to Chris Darden's point of view that any example of this word being used, whether it's in quotation marks, um, whether you're talking about the word itself, or whether it's being hurled as an insult, it's all the same. It's all so deeply, uh, you know, shattering of the, the inner psyche of a Black person. Um, so I just... I think we, at, at minimum, we should mark how much has changed there and who was making these arguments back then and who's making them now. Um, and I worry that people are basically circling the wagon on an idea that they haven't really thought through, if that makes any sense.

Joe Rogan 18:18 The Darden thing, uh, I, I get it from a prosecutor's perspective-

Coleman Hughes 18:23 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 18:23 ... because he doesn't want them to dismiss...... this, this character in his case, which is Mark Fuhrman, who on top of that also has been accused of planting evidence.

Coleman Hughes 18:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 18:35 So, there's like a two thing going on with Mark Fuhrman. You're dismissing his validity, first of all, because he's doing something illegal.

Coleman Hughes 18:43 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 18:43 He's planting evidence.

Coleman Hughes 18:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 18:45 And then, and he might have planted blood too, right? Wasn't that... wasn't... didn't they think-

Coleman Hughes 18:49 It was, it was alleged, or, yeah, people were wondering.

Joe Rogan 18:52 And then, on top of that, he might have, he might have racist perspectives.

Coleman Hughes 18:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 18:58 So, like you've got two things going on simultaneously. And then also, it's like everybody had seen the Rodney King video.

Coleman Hughes 19:04 Yes.

Joe Rogan 19:05 This was a big part of the O.J. case that a lot of people-

Coleman Hughes 19:07 Huge part.

Joe Rogan 19:07 ... maybe have, um, forgotten.

Coleman Hughes 19:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 19:10 But when people saw that Rodney King video, which is really one of the first viral videos-

Coleman Hughes 19:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 19:16 ... and you see Rodney King on the ground, and these multiple white cops beating him with sticks, i- and the fact that those cops got off-

Coleman Hughes 19:26 For no possible reason.

Joe Rogan 19:27 It's... well, what was the f- what was the story? That he was running from them, and he was on PCP, or something like that?

Coleman Hughes 19:34 Who knows?

Joe Rogan 19:34 Like, what was the story? Like, why...

Coleman Hughes 19:36 Uh, you know, I- I- I don't remember the details. But, the, you know, the... as it dragged on, and they, they keep beating him more and more senseless-

Joe Rogan 19:44 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 19:44 ... it just becomes more and more obvious that there's- there's no reason that they had to beat him th- that much, right?

Joe Rogan 19:51 Yeah. Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 19:53 And...

Joe Rogan 19:54 And they got off.

Coleman Hughes 19:55 And they got off.

Joe Rogan 19:55 And so when O.J. got off-

Coleman Hughes 19:57 Completely scot-free.

Joe Rogan 19:57 ... everybody was like, "Well, we got that one."

Coleman Hughes 19:59 Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 19:59 It was, it was a thing where they felt like-

Coleman Hughes 20:02 It was a revenge mindset.

Joe Rogan 20:03 Yes.

Coleman Hughes 20:04 I think that that's very unhealthy, I have to say. I don't think... I mean, listen, it's a cliché that two wrongs don't make a right. But it's a very, it's a very deep cliché. It's a cliché for a reason. And, um, like the, like the notion that because the cops did something completely unforgivable, horrible to Rodney King, and got off for it, and, and, you know, that did prove all of the wider in- in-... you know, the wider points about the systemic practices of- of the LAPD, that's all valid. The fact that people couldn't separate those true and important points from this other trial, about this, you know, this wealthy former football player that quite clearly killed his wife, um, you know, I think that... W- we have to insist that people be able to think two things at once. I mean, that's just one example of it. But, you know, i- it's- it's possible to acknowledge everything true and valid about the Rodney King case, and still say, "I'm sorry, O.J. is guilty." And there weren't that many people, um, certain that... certainly weren't that many Black people at the time, it seems, that were really emphasizing that bright line that we can think two things at once here, folks.

Joe Rogan 21:22 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 21:22 And it doesn't make us look good to conflate the two. It's actually not just.

Joe Rogan 21:26 Well, there was a- a real underlying thought that the- the Los Angeles Police Department was corrupt.

Coleman Hughes 21:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 21:35 And it wasn't just that, it was also the Rampart, um, Division. And there was allegations that cops that were involved in that were also involved in the killing of Biggie.

Coleman Hughes 21:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 21:47 Um, so there was, there was a lot of shit going on with LA cops, where there was no internet back then. So, we have to remember back in the day, like these discussions were had with people just talking about it at a bar or over the dinner table, and no one had like real data to pull from, and there was no like real investigative journalism that was being done where you could show it. I remember the Rolling Stone article on, um, Biggie's murder, it implicated, uh, Rampart. I think it was... I think they were saying it was Rampart cops. They- they- I think they even narrowed it down to the specific cops they think had something to do with the murder, where there was a bunch of ro- And they know this was a fact, there was a bunch of rogue cops that were doing murders for hire. They were, they were basically organized criminals-

Coleman Hughes 22:39 Wow.

Joe Rogan 22:39 ... that were operating under the gang of the Los Angeles Police Department. Remember, like Colors? Remember the movie Colors?

Coleman Hughes 22:45 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 22:45 Sean Penn?

Coleman Hughes 22:46 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 22:47 Ice Cube, or Ice-T rather, had that song, hit song, Colors. It was a- a song with a... it was a movie about... with Robert Duvall and Sean Penn about corrupt LA cops. And so we kind of got it through pop culture. We got it through conversations. But when we- when people saw the Rodney King beating, and then they saw that those guys got off, that was one of the very first sort of like public acknowledgements, like there's a real fucking problem with this police department.

Coleman Hughes 23:16 Imagine how many Rodney Kings there were that just didn't get filmed.

Joe Rogan 23:19 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 23:20 And this is... I mean, we now live in an age, just in the past 10 years really, where everyone in America virtually has a fairly high definition camera in their pockets at all times. And some police departments have moved to universal body cams and- and so forth. And that's been... uh, I think that's changed incentives, uh, you know, almost more than any law that we pass could, right?

Joe Rogan 23:48 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 23:48 The- the understanding every cop has, that when he or she is policing the public, the public can simply whip out their phones a- at any time, has... I mean, that has to seep into the consciousness of- of police officers, knowing that they're being watched. And, you know, that's a double-edged sword though, 'cause on the one hand, um, it's way harder for a cop to abuse someone, uh, now, now that everyone can- can film. Um, on the other hand, because everyone has a phone in their pocket, the availability of bad things happening-... has just skyrocketed.

Joe Rogan 24:29 Mm.

Coleman Hughes 24:30 Right?

Joe Rogan 24:30 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 24:31 And in a country with over 300 million people, it gives us the impression that horrible things that are actually extremely rare are in fact happening all the time.

Joe Rogan 24:42 Just by numbers.

Coleman Hughes 24:43 Just by numbers.

Joe Rogan 24:44 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 24:44 And, I mean, the way I think about this is, for instance, if we talk about, uh, unarmed civilians getting killed by the cops. Um, unarmed citizens. If America were exactly the same, but the size of Canada, like, you know, one ninth the population, it would mean that we would have roughly one ninth the, you know, interactions between cops and, and, and, and cit- citizens, and o- one ninth of the opportunities for, for things to go left, and, uh, one ninth of the videos, um, of, of cops killing people, unarmed. And it would seem like it were happening a lot less. But in fact, the state of the country would be the same, right? So like just the fact that we have such a large population makes it feel like lightning strike rarity events are happening all the time.

Joe Rogan 25:39 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 25:39 And the media obviously thrives on that.

Joe Rogan 25:41 Well, those are the ones that are very popular, and those are the ones that, um, people want to share. But there's a lot of those... there's a lot of ones with cops getting attacked too, and people don't seem to care about those.

Coleman Hughes 25:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:51 There's a, a website that I follow, a Twitter pa- uh, Instagram page rather, called Police Posts.

Coleman Hughes 25:56 Mm.

Joe Rogan 25:57 Go to, uh, Police Posts. There's one that they put up today about this guy, um, responding to a call and, uh, this, uh, man is at the door and the cop is walking towards the door and the guy is saying, "Hurry up. She's choking on her own blood." Something to that extent.

Coleman Hughes 26:14 Is it?

Joe Rogan 26:14 Here, yeah. Play this.

Coleman Hughes 26:15 Uh...

Joe Rogan 26:16 See, do it from the beginning so that you could see. The, no, do, do, do it from the beginning-

Coleman Hughes 26:20 All right, all right. I will, I will.

Joe Rogan 26:20 ... because otherwise it's gonna fuck it all up.

Coleman Hughes 26:22 I will.

Joe Rogan 26:22 Okay, here. Give me some volume. All right, here we go. No! So the suspect's saying, "Come on, come on." No, no, no, bro. "She's choking on her blood." No! "Come on." Who's all in the house? So the guy's walking towards the door. Who's all in the house?

Narrator 26:33 Me. (gun firing)

Joe Rogan 26:36 Ah! Get down! Hey! Just... Hey! (gun firing) So as the guy's walking towards the house- 9-8-9! 9-8-9! I've been shot! 9-8-9! As the guy's walking towards the house, the guy is standing in the... You can play it again. The guy is standing in the middle of the door- No! No, no, no, bro. No, no, no, bro. No! ... and he's got no shirt on and he's saying, "Come on." Who's all in the house? You know, "She's choking on her own blood." Who's all in the house?

Narrator 27:00 Me. (gun firing)

Joe Rogan 27:00 And as he comes close, the guy just pulls out a gun and just opens fire at point blank range. Ah! And lights this cop up.

Coleman Hughes 27:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:09 This is a thing that, you know, when, when we, you see horrible interactions between cops and civilians, you don't see too many of those.

Coleman Hughes 27:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:18 But there's a ton of those. And if you follow-

Coleman Hughes 27:21 And the cop sees those certainly.

Joe Rogan 27:22 Well, they're terrified. Cops ha- do, do you know how many cops have PTSD?

Coleman Hughes 27:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:26 They, they every day see people get shot, every day see people get run over by cars.

Coleman Hughes 27:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:29 Like the amount of shock-

Coleman Hughes 27:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:32 ... that's in their system and then every time they pull a car over and they have tinted windows, they don't know.

Coleman Hughes 27:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:37 They don't know what's going on inside that car. They don't know who the driver is.

Coleman Hughes 27:40 So, this is the point I tried to make during the year of the George Floyd protests and riots. People would often say, "Well, look at Western Europe, look at Canada, look at all of these places, uh, where they have cops and, and in certain of these places, the cops don't have guns. Some- sometimes they do. How come you're not seeing video... how come it's only in America that we're seeing videos of cops killing unarmed people?" Right?

Joe Rogan 28:06 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 28:07 And, uh, I mean, I think there- there's a serious conversation to have, to be had about the culture of the American police being, being seriously flawed. Uh, at the same time, the fact that this happens in America means that policing in America is not the same as it, as policing in, in, in the UK and other countries, right? America's a country with more guns than people, and, uh, that fact alone means that when a cop pulls over a suspect in America as opposed to an... almost any other nation, or, or any of, other, our, our peer nations, they have a little thought in the back of their mind that is reasonable, which says, "The thing he's reaching into his pocket for could be a gun. Could be a wallet, but it could be a gun." In other countries, cops don't really have to have that thought because it's always a wallet. And, and that's a, that's a systematic difference between policing in America and policing in, in other nations that makes it harder and makes it, um, makes it a facile comparison to simply say, "Why isn't this stuff happening in Western Europe?"

Joe Rogan 29:16 There's that, but then there's also the history of police violence and abusive police officers-

Coleman Hughes 29:23 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:24 ... in America that's different than the history of cops in any other place. And I think that that has to be taken into account too, that there's an enemy, uh, perspective that a lot of people have. When they look at the cops, they think of the cops as the enemy.

Coleman Hughes 29:38 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:38 I don't necessarily know what it's like in Europe, but I've got to think that the polarization between cops and citizens and a lot of it is-

Coleman Hughes 29:50 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 29:51 ... uh, you know, broadcast via these cellphone videos. Like the George Floyd incident, it was a girl, a 17-year-old girl filmed it on her cellphone.

Coleman Hughes 29:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:59 Changed the whole world-

Coleman Hughes 30:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:01 ... because of that video.

Coleman Hughes 30:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:02 Literally changed the, the landscape of r- of th- the way people think about racial interactions in America-

Coleman Hughes 30:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:09 ... because of one video.

Coleman Hughes 30:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:10 There's so many people that think of cops as the enemy because of these videos. And there's so many of these videos. If you look at...... the perspective that people had, you know, um, my parents were hippies in the '60s, and, you know, they grew up during the Civil Rights Movement, and they were around during, you know, marches and protests. And when Muhammad Ali refused to go to fight in Vietnam, and they stripped him of his title, and there was, there was this understanding of the difference between the way cops treated Black people versus cops treated white people. But it wasn't on YouTube.

Coleman Hughes 30:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:50 It wasn't available in your fa- so tha- this data that you're talking about, tha- that's disproportionate because there's so many bad ones, even if there's millions and millions of interactions, it only takes one that becomes viral that will change people's opinions.

Coleman Hughes 31:04 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:04 One Eric Garner.

Coleman Hughes 31:05 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:05 You know, one George Floyd, one video that changes people's perspective on how... what, what goes down between cops and citizens and what is wrong with the cops. This, this didn't exist before. And so when you see videos like this where this guy who's a cop gets shot at and you see, you know, these other interactions, like, we're, we're not getting, like, necessarily a balanced perspective. There's clearly a problem in the way cops deal with all citizens. There's clearly, uh, there's a, there's clearly a culture of abli- abusive police officers in some precincts, in some place.

Coleman Hughes 31:46 100%. I mean-

Joe Rogan 31:46 100%.

Coleman Hughes 31:47 I, I, I remember... It's fresh in my mind 'cause I saw the, the O.J. documentary, but there was, um, th- there was some tape that was released of cops, like, privately talking about Black people, and they had some horrible name, I, I can't remember what it was, but that they thought was hilarious, right? Uh, and it just... It was this, this moment where it was just... it was perfectly clear that they saw themselves as one kind of people, and they saw their selves that they were... the, the people they were policing as a totally different set of people, unlike them. Um, and that was almost, you know, psychologically akin to the relationship of, of colonialism in, in some way. Um, but, but I do want to... I mean, the, the way the media has portrayed this issue in, in recent years, uh, has been to skew the discussion of shootings so as to only show the Black victims of these kinds of, uh, of these kinds of killings, right? I, I wrote a long essay, uh, in 2020, and one of the points I was trying to make in that essay was, uh, you know, unarmed white people get killed by the cops every year in circumstances identical to the ones that we see, uh, unarmed Black people getting killed. That doesn't mean racism doesn't exist. I think the, the, the majority of racism m- almost certainly occurs in the kind of non-deadly interactions and harassments and racial profiling of people, but if we're talking narrowly about killing unarmed civilians, you know, I took as an... uh, just as a, as an experiment to show how often this happens, I took a single year. I, I closed my eyes and picked it at random, and I picked 2015 and just listed 10 different unarmed white people that got shot by the cops, uh, and killed that year. Most of the cops got off. One of them is a six-year-old kid. And, um, you know, these are... you know, like, nobody knows these names because it only gets pumped into the national media when it's a Black person, which gives the false impression that it only happens to Black people, right? Like, everyone knows the, the name George Floyd, as they should. Uh, but, uh, very few people know the name Tony Timpa, I found, which is this guy from Dallas in 2017 that was killed on camera with a knee on the top of his neck for 13 minutes and the cops joking the whole time. It was the closest example to a George Floyd that, um, that, that I'm aware of in, in recent American history.

Joe Rogan 34:19 This is on video?

Coleman Hughes 34:20 Yeah, it's on YouTube.

Joe Rogan 34:22 Really?

Coleman Hughes 34:23 Th- 13 minutes, these cops have their back on... uh, it wasn't the neck. It was the very upper back, but, you know, strangling in, in the exact same way. And this poor guy, he's calling out for his mother. He's clearly, he's clearly struggling and i- and in pain, and the cops are joking. They're making jokes. They're like, "Wake up for school, Tony. Wake up for school." Uh, blah, blah, blah as he's passing out. They're making jokes about how he's... And, and he died. And that was 2017, and he was a white guy. And, um, you know, nobody... very few people are aware that this even happened because of the color of his skin, right? He wasn't... he didn't fit the narrative that this only ever happens to Black people, and I think that that narrative has a cost, which is that, uh, we misperceive the problem with these shootings as being only about racist cops. Now, I've no doubt some of these, uh, examples, uh, is like the cop wouldn't have shot if it was a white guy, you know, the, the white guy reachin- reaching into his pants, um, for, for what looked like a gun just, it wouldn't have scared the cop so much if he was white. I have no doubt that that has happened. But in this day and age, I think pretty much e- no cop wants to be the, the next Derek Chauvin, right? They, they... w- when it comes to shootings, at least, um, you know, they have to be exercising, uh, a, a pretty r- unique amount of restraint at least in the past few years. And I think it's... you know, we, we have minimized unfairly the role of bad training, the role of bad incentives, how cops almost never get punished for these kinds of things. Um, that, that's starting to change. I mean, just today, Kim Potter got sentenced to, uh, to, I think, uh, about a year in prison for, uh, uh, for shooting the, the... I forget the, the guy's name. But, you know-

Joe Rogan 36:15 What is this case?

Coleman Hughes 36:16 Uh, Kim Potter, she, she was a, a, a female cop.

Joe Rogan 36:19 Is that the woman who walked in the wrong apartment?

Coleman Hughes 36:22 Um, she, she's the one that, uh, if I recall the details, she thought she was using her taser.

Joe Rogan 36:28 Oh, right. Right.

Coleman Hughes 36:29 She says she thought she was using her taser, which is ... I don't know the details of it to, to judge the plausibility of that excuse, but it, uh, at the very (laughs) minimum, it seems like horrible training.

Joe Rogan 36:40 It seems like horrible training. But I can attest to the fact that people under pressure completely fall apart.

Coleman Hughes 36:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 36:48 And some people under pressure fall apart way worse than others.

Coleman Hughes 36:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 36:53 There's something about adrenaline and fear and physical violence that narrows people's windows of perception and their ability to make rational decisions, and they don't know what they're doing.

Coleman Hughes 37:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:05 They can't... I remember I was watching a fight, not a, a, a, a professional fight. I was watching a street fight at The Comedy Store. I was, um-

Coleman Hughes 37:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:15 ... at the, um, um ... We were, like, in the front bar area, and across the street, on the other side, was the House of Blues. And there was these guys that were arguing, and they started fighting. And one guy literally was ... His face was like this, and he had instigated this, and he didn't know how to deescalate, and he was arguing with this guy and like, "Fuck you," and, "Fuck you." And then all of a sudden, he's in a physical confrontation with this guy. And you see him literally, like, in full-blown panic fear, and he's doing this-

Coleman Hughes 37:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:52 ... flailing with his hands like he's ... He has no idea how to hit someone.

Coleman Hughes 37:56 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:56 He probably can't believe it's happening, and I could just see the constriction of his thinking, the full panic in his movement, full on, just l- locked in, doesn't know what's happening. And a car, like a bus, pulls in front where, uh, I see these guys swinging.

Coleman Hughes 38:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:18 And a, a car pulls in front, and as the car passes, I see the guy laid out, just completely flat-lined, and the other guy runs off.

Coleman Hughes 38:27 Oh.

Joe Rogan 38:27 So he got knocked unconscious, and it ... He c- he c- he had no business fighting-

Coleman Hughes 38:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:32 ... but he was in this, "Oh, oh." You could see him in just full panic, and me as a person who's been around people fighting their whole ... I see that, I recognize it.

Coleman Hughes 38:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:41 I'm like, "This is someone that's probably never done this before." And it, it's-

Coleman Hughes 38:44 I think a lot of cops panic.

Joe Rogan 38:45 Oh, fuck yeah, they panic, man.

Coleman Hughes 38:47 You know?

Joe Rogan 38:47 This has happened before. There was a, uh, a person, uh, in Oakland, I believe, who did the same exact thing, went to reach for their taser, pulled out a gun and shot a guy, and it's on video.

Coleman Hughes 38:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:57 And this was at a, at a, um, at a, uh ... It's not a subway. What do they call that? The BART, BART system in San Francisco?

Coleman Hughes 39:04 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 39:05 And this person, same thing, just thought they had the taser and pulled out a gun, so it's not unprecedented.

Coleman Hughes 39:11 No, yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:11 It's people fucking lock up under panic, man.

Coleman Hughes 39:15 Mm-hmm. I had this guy, uh, Anthony Barksdale on my podcast. Anthony Barksdale was the Deputy Commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department for years in the 19... Like, I don't know, something like starting in 2007 or something like that. And, uh, he was ... Fun fact is that he was the namesake of the character Avon Barksdale on the show The Wire. Um, who, whoever the w- the, the writers were studying the B- BPD at that time, or studying Baltimore, they took his name-

Joe Rogan 39:42 Oh.

Coleman Hughes 39:42 ... and made it into one of the main characters. It's a great show. Anyway, Anthony Barksdale is this guy. He's from Baltimore. He grew up in a time of ... In an area of great violence. He, he told a story about, uh, being a kid on a sports team, and a shooting broke out, and his ... The coach would hide them in a dumpster to p- to, to hide them from the bullets.

Joe Rogan 40:06 Whoa.

Coleman Hughes 40:07 So he, he grows up ... You know, he grew up. He's from the city, and he grows up determined to make a change by becoming a cop. And he eventually rises through, through the ranks, becomes, um, you know, uh, the, the commissioner, deputy commissioner, and, um ... He just, you know, told all these stories about these tense situations he had got into with subjects that were violent, subjects that were mentally ill. And, um, you know, one of the biggest assets that he had was that he was very comfortable in physical altercations. He's a black belt in jujitsu, and he was able to deescalate so many situations without going for his gun because he had a kind of confidence and knowledge-

Joe Rogan 40:56 Mm.

Coleman Hughes 40:56 ... that he could use his body to subdue and arrest a subsu- suspect without hurting them, without hurting himself, and he tried to train, um ... I mean, he, he, he couldn't formally through the, through, through the department require BJJ training, but he would take his people and do, and incentivize them, um, to train in BJJ outside of the, the official training.

Joe Rogan 41:20 The thing about jujitsu that's different than other martial arts is that you do it full blast.

Coleman Hughes 41:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 41:24 Like, uh, a lot of martial arts, like sparring, is, uh, very, uh, s- very muted. Like, you're kinda, like ... You're not really supposed to spar full blast in, like-

Coleman Hughes 41:35 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:35 ... a karate class.

Coleman Hughes 41:36 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:36 You're supposed to control your strikes. And because of that, you don't get to experience the chaos of a real human being trying to take you out.

Coleman Hughes 41:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 41:46 And in jujitsu, because of the fact that it's grappling, it's unique in that you can go full blast, and instead of getting hurt when you get caught in something, you could just tap out and keep going.

Coleman Hughes 41:58 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:58 So if someone catches you in an armbar, you just tap, you keep going, and then you get accustomed to a human being resisting with all of their, their might.

Coleman Hughes 42:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:08 So, like, if you're in a situation with a person and all of a sudden it escalates into a street fight, you're so comfortable with this kind of confrontation, you're so comfortable with the kind of physical chaos that's involved in a human being resisting. Also, there's, like, a language of the way a body moves that you become very fluid with. You understand weight and balance. You understand, like, how to control a person.People who don't have any experience in martial arts and they wind up being police officers are fucking dangerous-

Coleman Hughes 42:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:42 ... because they're, they're relegated to weapons. They're all ... All they have is fear, they can scare you, or they can shoot you.

Coleman Hughes 42:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:50 They can tase you or they could beat you with a club. There's-

Coleman Hughes 42:53 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 42:53 They don't have the ability to control you. Like, if I'm around a person who is my size and they have no martial arts training, and all of a sudden this person starts getting threatening with me and they, you know, th- they start, like, saying they're gonna kick my ass or something like that, my thought is, "Okay, what am I gonna do to you? Am I gonna hit you or am I gonna strangle you?"

Coleman Hughes 43:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:15 That's what my thought is.

Coleman Hughes 43:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:16 If I know this person doesn't really know how to fight and they're, they're saying crazy ... Or they don't have, like, real experience-

Coleman Hughes 43:23 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:23 ... and they're saying crazy things, my thought is not, "Oh my God, I'm in trouble."

Coleman Hughes 43:27 Yeah, you're calm-

Joe Rogan 43:28 My thought is-

Coleman Hughes 43:28 ... which allows you to be rational.

Joe Rogan 43:30 Exactly. And that is very difficult to acquire.

Coleman Hughes 43:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:33 That requires decades of training.

Coleman Hughes 43:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:37 And for a person to achieve a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu, like, it's very rare that someone ... I mean, BJ Penn's the quickest I've ever heard of. He got it in three years.

Coleman Hughes 43:45 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:46 So that's crazy, though. I mean, he was training every day, hours and hours a day, fully obsessed. For most people, it's, like, 10 years plus.

Coleman Hughes 43:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:53 So that, that is ... It's like most things. You acquire a level of ability over thousands of hours, and the level of understanding of what you can and can't do, what ... the way things work. If you don't have that and you're a police officer, it's like, it's like being a writer and you don't understand language.

Coleman Hughes 44:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:15 It's ... Uh, you know, it really is. It's-

Coleman Hughes 44:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:17 You don't have the tools for that job. And-

Coleman Hughes 44:20 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 44:20 ... you know, Andrew Yang said it best. He said every police officer should be at least a purple belt in jujitsu.

Coleman Hughes 44:26 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:26 I think he's dead right.

Coleman Hughes 44:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:27 I think it's a great suggestion.

Coleman Hughes 44:28 How long would it take to become a purple belt usually? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:31 It depends on the amount of time-

Coleman Hughes 44:33 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 44:33 ... that you put into it and how much drilling you do, and also your physical attributes. You know, some people, maybe they, uh, they started off as, like, a break dancer or a gymnast and they have-

Coleman Hughes 44:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:42 ... a huge advantage.

Coleman Hughes 44:43 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:44 Huge advantage, 'cause you have, uh, a, a real understanding of how your body moves. You have, like, a ... Y- you, you have a ... Y- you have a comfort-

Coleman Hughes 44:54 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 44:54 ... level with physical movement and you have this just innate understanding of how to balance yourself and, and the strength that's involved in that. If you come from a background of gymnastics or you come from a background of dance or acrobatics or anything like that, you have a giant advantage.

Coleman Hughes 45:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 45:11 Giant advantage in jujitsu.

Coleman Hughes 45:13 So I would argue if we lived in a rational and wise society, one of the things that would've come out of the racial reckoning in 2020 was some billionaire or groups of very wealthy people creating some kind of fully funded jujitsu training for police officers.

Joe Rogan 45:35 Yeah. Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 45:37 You know, why isn't that w-

Joe Rogan 45:39 You'd have to require it.

Coleman Hughes 45:41 You'd have to require it. Well, I mean, uh...

Joe Rogan 45:42 There's Carlson Gracie. And what is, what is he doing with ... Who is that?

Narrator 45:45 He's with ... He's with Deputy Barksdale.

Coleman Hughes 45:47 Oh, this is, this is Barksdale.

Joe Rogan 45:48 (clears throat)

Coleman Hughes 45:48 Yeah, this is Anthony Barksdale on the right there. Um, really, really a just brilliant guy. He's now a commentator. I don't know if he still is, but, uh, when I had him on, he was a commentator on CNN now. And he's, he's a retired, so now he feels he can really speak freely-

Joe Rogan 46:03 Hmm.

Coleman Hughes 46:04 ... about, uh, issues in a way, in a way that people who are, who are still police often feel they can't. Uh-

Joe Rogan 46:10 Carlson Gracie was the f-

Coleman Hughes 46:12 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 46:12 ... one of the first guys that I ever trai- The first guy I ever trained with, uh, I w- I trained with Luis Hereda as a, at um, Rickson Gracie's place. But Carlson Gracie was the-

Coleman Hughes 46:21 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 46:21 ... second place I ever trained at.

Coleman Hughes 46:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:22 That was in Hollywood in, in the late '90s. And, uh, he was ... You know, Carlson Gracie was, uh, a legend.

Coleman Hughes 46:29 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:30 I mean, he's a guy that was, um, in the early days of no-rules fights.

Coleman Hughes 46:34 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:35 He was the cleanup guy where ... When Helio Gracie lost to certain people, they would send in ... I think Waldemar Santana was the guy, and they'd send in Carlson Gracie to clean up because he was the badass of the family-

Coleman Hughes 46:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:47 ... to come in and fuck people up that, like-

Coleman Hughes 46:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:49 ... Helio couldn't.

Coleman Hughes 46:50 Me and my girlfriend, a couple weeks ago, we watched the, uh, Rickson Gracie documentary on YouTube.

Joe Rogan 46:55 Rickson.

Coleman Hughes 46:55 Rickson.

Joe Rogan 46:56 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 46:56 Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Joe Rogan 46:57 R, Portuguese yeah.

Coleman Hughes 46:58 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 46:58 Choke.

Coleman Hughes 46:59 Yeah. Choke, yep.

Joe Rogan 47:00 It's amazing.

Coleman Hughes 47:01 Yeah, that's right, that guy is.

Joe Rogan 47:01 It's one of the greatest documentaries of all time.

Coleman Hughes 47:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:04 He was-

Coleman Hughes 47:04 So good.

Joe Rogan 47:05 And still is, very unique.

Coleman Hughes 47:06 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 47:06 Very unique. Uh, it's an honor to know him. And ... But, um, Rickson was very unique because he had all the things. He had ... First of all, his father was Helio Gracie, who was the, one of the most important figures in the history of martial arts.

Coleman Hughes 47:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 47:25 He was the guy who was a small man. He only weighed, like, 147 pounds, and he was out there having these no-rules fights with these big giant guys-

Coleman Hughes 47:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 47:35 ... and he relied completely on technique and leverage, and developed this system of technique and leverage as applied to the ground game with, uh, Carlos Gracie and with, uh, a bunch of the other people like Carlson and a few of these other, like, early jujitsu practitioners.

Coleman Hughes 47:52 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 47:52 So he gave birth or, you know, he fathered, rather, Rickson. And Rickson was unique in that he grew up with it and also that he was very physically powerful.

Coleman Hughes 48:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:06 He was unusual in that he got really obsessed with yoga.

Coleman Hughes 48:09 Yep.

Joe Rogan 48:10 So he had incredible flexibility. He was obsessed with breathing, so he had this incredible control of his breath and control of his mind because of that. And he would do, like, cold water immersion where he would get into, like ... That's that scene in the, in the film where he gets into this freezing-

Coleman Hughes 48:27 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 48:27 ... glacial river in Japan-

Coleman Hughes 48:29 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 48:29 ... and, you know, up to his neck and he's breathing this water. And he was a completely different type of person that-

Coleman Hughes 48:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:36 ... changed jujitsu.

Coleman Hughes 48:38 Yeah. The breathing thing is, is interesting. I mean, I remember ...... you know, my mom was super into Iyengar yoga. She would take me to yoga when I was, like, three and I would play with my little action figures while they were doing their thing or whatever. And I, I would, uh, watch videos of Iyengar-

Joe Rogan 48:55 What is Iyengar yoga? What is the difference?

Coleman Hughes 48:57 It's, uh, you know, they're just like different strands of yoga, y- yoga from different, I don't know what you'd call them, like grandmasters, whatever is Iyengar and like Vinyasa. I'm probably sounding very ignorant to someone who knows about it. But Iyengar yoga was, was the one that, that my mom did and it's, it's from this guy, Iyengar. And there's a video of him on YouTube, um, just like reciting this little poem about the breath and then he does a demonstration and he exhales for about 60 seconds.

Joe Rogan 49:29 Wow.

Coleman Hughes 49:30 Which is like, how long can you exhale for? It just... I mean, obviously if you're letting that much air through, you can do it for a while. But there's no pace low enough that I could exhale consistently for a full minute. It doesn't even seem real and I, you know, I've... There's a little part of me that still somehow thinks it's doctored or-

Joe Rogan 49:50 No, you can do it.

Coleman Hughes 49:51 ... it's like... But, like, he just does it and it's incredible, that level of training.

Joe Rogan 49:56 We... I showed you the sensory deprivation tank-

Coleman Hughes 49:58 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:58 ... earlier today that we have here. Um, one of the exercises I do is 30 seconds in, 30 seconds out.

Coleman Hughes 50:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:04 That means I take a breath for 30 seconds, a slow breath for 30 seconds. It's very hard to do and I count to 30 as I'm breathing in and then I count to 30 as I'm breathing out.

Coleman Hughes 50:14 So wait a minute, I just don't understand how, like what's getting trained? Is it your lung capacity is getting trained or-

Joe Rogan 50:20 Your lung-

Coleman Hughes 50:20 ... your diaphragm?

Joe Rogan 50:21 Your lung capacity, but also your willingness to tolerate discomfort.

Coleman Hughes 50:26 Ah, okay.

Joe Rogan 50:26 So it's not just like, like here. If I'm gonna breathe, right? So like right, ready, set, I take a deep breath. (breathing)

Coleman Hughes 51:36 Holy shit, man.

Joe Rogan 51:36 So I'll do that.

Coleman Hughes 51:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:40 And I do that over and over again and so there's a moment-

Coleman Hughes 51:44 Oh my God.

Joe Rogan 51:44 ... afterwards where you, where you wanna go (gasps) .

Coleman Hughes 51:47 Right.

Joe Rogan 51:47 But you have to resist that. So you have to resist that moment and then again (breathing) and you just do it over and over and over again and it's-

Coleman Hughes 51:58 And do you notice the time you can do it increasing?

Joe Rogan 52:02 (sighs) I pro- I mean, I probably could go longer if I had to go more than 30 seconds, but it's fucking hard. It's hard to do 30 seconds in, 30 seconds out and keep going.

Coleman Hughes 52:10 Right. But do you, you, you just did it once.

Joe Rogan 52:11 Because I just did it once.

Coleman Hughes 52:11 Do you notice progress over time, from when you started doing this?

Joe Rogan 52:15 You n- you notice what your ability is.

Coleman Hughes 52:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:17 Like sometimes there's a thing where your, your, your body says, "Just quit. Quit now."

Coleman Hughes 52:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:22 "Quit now."

Coleman Hughes 52:23 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:23 You know, and you have to get over that hump.

Coleman Hughes 52:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:26 That's the cold water thing too.

Coleman Hughes 52:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:27 That's a thing, like a cold water immersion.

Coleman Hughes 52:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:30 There's a moment where you get in, your body's like, "Let's get the fuck out of here."

Coleman Hughes 52:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:34 And you have to get past that.

Coleman Hughes 52:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:36 You have to just accept it.

Coleman Hughes 52:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 52:37 And the way you accept it is to concentrate on your breathing. Like I did a video where I got into a 33 degree, um, ice bath for 20 minutes and I said, "Well, let's see how long I could do it. I'll just do it on Instagram."

Coleman Hughes 52:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:53 So I made a video. So I posted this video, I just sat this camera up and I p- got into the thing and every minute I'm like, "One more minute, let's do one more minute." And I just kept going, "One more minute, one more minute." And the whole thing I'm doing, I'm just doing this breathing exercise where I'm just (breathing) .

Coleman Hughes 53:09 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:13 So by, by breathing hard like that, one of the things you're doing too is you're tightening up your core so you're kinda heating yourself up a little bit.

Coleman Hughes 53:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:21 You're heating up your muscles by straining and resisting and you're resisting the cold plunge.

Coleman Hughes 53:25 Yeah, this is the video I was talking about.

Joe Rogan 53:29 Give me some volume on this. No, it's just... We'll just rep.

Coleman Hughes 53:33 But he says a really cool thing in the, in the beginning actually.

Joe Rogan 53:37 (laughs)

Narrator 53:58 That is inhalation. (laughs)

Coleman Hughes 54:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:02 (laughs)

Coleman Hughes 54:02 At the beginning he goes, "The mind is the king of the breath."

Narrator 54:06 I assure you, the-

Joe Rogan 54:06 Let me hear that. Give me a, give me-

Coleman Hughes 54:07 It's actually a really nice little parable.

Narrator 54:10 The mind is the king of the senses and the breath is the king of the mind.

Joe Rogan 54:19 Yeah. (laughs)

Coleman Hughes 54:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:20 That should be a, that should be my ring tone.

Coleman Hughes 54:23 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:23 When people call me up, "The mind is the king of the senses."

Coleman Hughes 54:27 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:27 There's nothing cooler than, like, an Indian guru.

Coleman Hughes 54:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:31 You know, a yogi.

Coleman Hughes 54:32 Yeah, that's why Osho was able to, uh-

Joe Rogan 54:34 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 54:34 ... get away with all that shit.

Joe Rogan 54:35 Exactly. Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 54:36 'Cause people fall for that shit so easily.

Joe Rogan 54:38 Oh, shows that one thing where, uh, do you ever see the video where he talks about people being retarded?

Coleman Hughes 54:44 No.

Joe Rogan 54:44 "But the people are re-"

Coleman Hughes 54:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:46 You ever heard that? I'll, I'll send-

Coleman Hughes 54:47 Oh yeah, I have seen that one.

Joe Rogan 54:48 I'll send it to-

Coleman Hughes 54:49 You gotta remind me then. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:50 (laughs) I'll send it to Jamie.

Coleman Hughes 54:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:52 'Cause (laughs) it's, it's so not what you would think of-

Coleman Hughes 54:57 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:58 ... when you think of, like, a guru, you know?

Coleman Hughes 55:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:01 Like-I know I have it in here somewhere, Jamie, but I might have a hard time finding it.

Narrator 55:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:05 Government- Here, here, here it is. The government.

Narrator 55:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:09 By the people- (laughs) ... of the people, for the people. (laughs)

Narrator 55:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:20 But the people are retarded. (laughs)

Narrator 55:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:22 (laughs) Ah. Ah. So, let us say, government by the retarded.

Narrator 55:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:36 He's not laughing. For the retarded-

Narrator 55:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:46 ... of the retarded. (laughs)

Narrator 55:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:50 (laughs) "But the people are retarded." Whew. Yeah. That's, uh-

Coleman Hughes 56:00 It's easy to feel that way sometimes.

Joe Rogan 56:02 It is. But it's easy to be cynical, you know? I think, I think the thing about human beings is that you can always find evidence of both. You can find evidence of very interesting, cool, compassionate people that are, you know, very charitable, wonderful to be around, giving, love everybody. And then you can find evidence of cunts.

Coleman Hughes 56:23 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 56:24 There's people that are just assholes.

Coleman Hughes 56:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 56:26 You know, they don't give a fuck about anybody else but themselves.

Coleman Hughes 56:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:28 They want everybody else to suffer. They want themselves to, uh, exceed and to excel. You can find those things, and I think there's more evidence of both of those things now than we've ever had to face before, and it really begs the question, like, what do you do with your time? Do you immerse your, your, yourself in positive people that are thinking about all aspects of humanity and trying to advance the way they view the world and advance their own perspectives and, and enhance their education and, and fill their mind up with new ideas? Or do you just complain?

Coleman Hughes 57:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:07 Do you just bitch about things?

Coleman Hughes 57:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:08 Do you just ... I mean, we're in ... We were talking before about the, uh, Brazilian version of me today-

Coleman Hughes 57:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:16 ... uh, before the show, where Glenn Greenwald had, uh, set me hip to this guy. I don't know his name, um, but he is a Brazilian podcaster who's very popular, and, uh, he likes to do his shows intoxicated, like I do. And, uh, apparently Glenn said that what he said was he doesn't believe anybody should be deplatformed, and he said, uh ... And someone said, like, "Including Nazis?" And he said, "Yeah, I don't think you should deplatform Nazis," which, as we were saying before, was, like, the original position of the ACLU.

Coleman Hughes 57:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:48 The ACLU, which a lot of them are, like, Jewish attorneys, were, they were saying, "No, y- we shouldn't deplatform Nazis," and this is, like, 30 years after the Holocaust, right?

Coleman Hughes 58:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 58:01 Fresh in our mind. So, for us today, I mean, you're ... This is, like, 1990. Imagine if the Holocaust was in the '90s.

Coleman Hughes 58:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 58:09 And then today in 2022, we're saying, "No, you shouldn't deplatform Nazis." And so this guy was saying, "I don't think you should deplatform Nazis," and, you know, "I don't think you should deplatform anybody," and so a bunch of people started saying, "He's a Nazi." And he was saying, "That's not what I'm saying," and they kicked him off of his platform. YouTube apparently won't let him ... He still has a YouTube account, but YouTube won't let him start a new account, and, uh, people want him deplatformed off of everything, and whatever platform he was on where he was getting paid for his podcast, he got fired from.

Coleman Hughes 58:45 Yeah. I mean-

Joe Rogan 58:47 Here's ... What is this guy's name?

Coleman Hughes 58:49 Bruno ... Bruno ... There we go. Ai- Ayub? I don't know how to say that.

Joe Rogan 58:55 Yeah. Okay, well, it says it right here. Three years ago, video game streamer Bruno Ayub decided to start a new podcast, Flow, modeled on The Joe Rogan Experience. Okay, he said, uh, "Man, it'd be really cool if I did that in Brazil since nobody else has." Told The New York Times he interviews comedians, academics, government officials, ufologists, drinking alcohol and smoking weed. It's the exact same show. This motherfucker, he stole my show.

Coleman Hughes 59:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:18 Anyway-

Coleman Hughes 59:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:18 ... his meteoric rise is due in no small part to model developed by his hero, as he learned last week. Aping Rogan comes with a risk. February 7th conversation, the two members of the Brazilian Congress, Ayub ... I hope I'm not saying his name wrong ... argued that Brazil should embrace free speech absolutism, including legalizing the currently illegal Nazi party. He said, "In my opinion, the radical left has much more space than the radical right," he told his approximately 3.6 million YouTube subscribers. "Both should be given space. I am crazier than all of you. I think that a Nazi should have a Nazi party recognized by law." He added, "If someone wants to be anti-Jewish, I think he has the right to be." Ayub woke up Tuesday to thousands of people calling him a Nazi on social media. Sponsors pulled funding, and government ... The government opened an investigation into the alleged offense of Nazi apologism. Uh, and his podcast production company announced they will be severing ties with the 31-year-old provocateur. So, there you go.

Coleman Hughes 1:00:24 I mean, censorship just almost never works, right? Like, every one of the major ideas that rule our world right now, right? Let's say the right loves Christianity. The left is, you know, largely secular. Both of those ideas have, at different points in history, been highly censored.

Joe Rogan 1:00:43 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:00:43 Right? Like, Christianity was highly censored at one point. Later it became the law of, of the Roman Empire. Um, atheism through- I mean, has been heavily censored on pain of death for hundreds and hundreds of years and now it's rather mainstream. I mean, those are big examples of censorship not working in the, in the grand arc of history, but we also have just very recent examples, you know. Lab leak-... you know, regardless of what you think about it, and I, I think it's probably true, but regardless of what you think about it, what's clear is that the attempts to brand it as misinformation did not work in terms of getting people not to believe it. This-

Joe Rogan 1:01:26 It worked for a small amount of time-

Coleman Hughes 1:01:27 For... Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:01:28 ... to get people off social media-

Coleman Hughes 1:01:28 For how long? About a-

Joe Rogan 1:01:29 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:01:29 ... what? A year?

Joe Rogan 1:01:30 Yeah. It was enough, though. It was enough that-

Coleman Hughes 1:01:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:33 ... in many people's eyes, that became a taboo subject that was very-

Coleman Hughes 1:01:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:38 ... very difficult to breach.

Coleman Hughes 1:01:40 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 1:01:40 You couldn't discuss it until Trump was out of office.

Coleman Hughes 1:01:43 And, but in the l- in the long run-

Joe Rogan 1:01:45 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:01:45 ... history shows it just, it never works.

Joe Rogan 1:01:48 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:01:49 And that's even truer nowadays, because way back in the day, the Catholic Church didn't like something, they had a decent chance at being able to burn every copy of that book. They did that sometimes. They're like, "Okay, we burned the very last copy. Maybe someone can reproduce it from memory, maybe it's gonna bubble up somewhere else, but we really burned the last copy of that book." In those cases, you can sometimes argue censorship kinda works, but even then... Nowadays, the internet, you can't burn copies of every book, and there's this attempt now from the right to get books banned from public school libraries, you know, certain books like, you know, uh, Ibram Kendi sort of woke racist books, like Antiracist Baby and, like, all these ridiculous books that I think are crazy too. But I would never say ban them from the public school libraries if that's gonna do anything. All it does is it hands that author a PR victory where they get to say, "Look, they're trying to censor me."

Joe Rogan 1:02:49 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:02:49 "I must be right about something, right?" And in the age of the internet, your kids are going to be exposed to all kinds of ideas, no matter what.

Joe Rogan 1:02:57 I think as a culture that we need to have this conversation when it comes to ideas. I think it's a very, very important stand to take that we have to engage with almost all ideas.

Coleman Hughes 1:03:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:03:13 I mean, I don't think there's, uh, uh, fucking, there's an argument for eating babies, right? There's not... If, if someone s- makes a baby cookbook and-

Coleman Hughes 1:03:20 I mean, well... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:22 ... they start saying-

Coleman Hughes 1:03:22 I'm not about to argue with you, baby.

Joe Rogan 1:03:22 ... "There's too many people. The pa- the, the, the roads are crowded. We gotta eat babies." Like-

Coleman Hughes 1:03:26 There, there is a famous, uh, philosophy paper asking why isn't it... Why is it wrong to eat babies? And philosophy students in Ivy League schools will study this paper as a thought experiment. Like-

Joe Rogan 1:03:40 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:03:40 ... "Hold on, why is it wrong to eat babies?" And you go through all the reasons it might be wrong, and the, the point of the thought experiment is not to justify eating babies.

Joe Rogan 1:03:49 Right.

Coleman Hughes 1:03:49 It's to get to what your basic principles are, like why are things wrong? And then from there, you build up a worldview. Okay, well, if that's the reason why something is wrong, if it's that suffering, the human suffering, is inherently wrong, now let's apply that principle, now that we've worked backwards, build up, uh, an idea of what other things are wrong and why rather than simply taking for granted, uh, that certain things are wrong, right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 I think there's also a thing that's going on in this culture today where people want things (snaps fingers) now, and when you have a complex idea that has to be debated, like here's one. Why do we still have deeply impoverished neighborhoods-

Coleman Hughes 1:04:30 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 1:04:30 ... that have been in the same state of crime and of gang violence (phone chimes) and, uh, have been going on... Was that a photograph? What was that? (phone chimes)

Coleman Hughes 1:04:38 I did not know I had mute on. Sorry.

Joe Rogan 1:04:40 Oh. (laughs)

Coleman Hughes 1:04:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:42 You taking a screenshot? The, uh, wha- I mean, why have these civiliz- why, why, why have these communities stayed in the same state without any government intervention? Like what is-

Coleman Hughes 1:04:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:04:53 What... Why is that?

Coleman Hughes 1:04:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:04:54 Like wha- the, the, the, this is a complex issue that if you wanted to discuss it and you wanted to develop solutions and you wanted to, like, work, work out, it's gonna take a long time-

Coleman Hughes 1:05:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:07 ... and a lot of people are gonna have to contribute, and it's going to have to be a... And, and because of that, it's too complicated. People just leave it alone. They... Like, Baltimore is Baltimore. Leave it alone.

Coleman Hughes 1:05:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:18 South Side of Chicago is fucked up. Leave it alone.

Coleman Hughes 1:05:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:21 And it never gets the kind of attention that other simple things to solve get attention.

Coleman Hughes 1:05:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 Like, like this guy. This is a simple thing to solve. In s- in, uh, the, the eyes of a person who's a censor or the eyes of a person who is a, who's all for deplatforming people, fuck him, get him off the air. (snaps fingers) Solved it. We got a real quick solution. It's not a real solution, but it's a quick way to solve something.

Coleman Hughes 1:05:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:48 And I think something like a thought experiment of why you shouldn't eat babies and if human suffering is the problem, now let's expand what other forms of human suffering can-

Coleman Hughes 1:05:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:59 ... we find solutions to that we've ignored?

Coleman Hughes 1:06:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:06:01 And why are we accepting certain forms of human suffering? Like, why are we accepting the death penalty when we know that X amount of people who are in jail are unjustly, uh, unjustly imprisoned.

Coleman Hughes 1:06:13 I, I heard your podcast with Josh Dubin, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:06:15 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:06:15 Josh D- that's his name, right?

Joe Rogan 1:06:16 Yes.

Coleman Hughes 1:06:16 Yeah, that, that was i- the Innocence Project. That was really, really amazing.

Joe Rogan 1:06:19 We've done a series of them, and through those podcasts, multiple people have been released.

Coleman Hughes 1:06:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:24 You know, the, the last one we did, not the, the current last one-

Coleman Hughes 1:06:27 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 1:06:27 ... the one before that, because of that podcast, two people were released.

Coleman Hughes 1:06:31 Yeah. It's amazing.

Joe Rogan 1:06:32 He's amazing. He's done...... incredible things. And, but that's a perfect example. It's not fucking easy-

Coleman Hughes 1:06:39 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:39 ... what he does. I, I mean, it requires deep thought. He has to have a m- a massive amount of research that he does on each subject. He has to educate people on junk science when it comes to physical evidence. Like, uh, there's people that have his hair samples at scenes that clearly show the hair has been pulled from someone's head-

Coleman Hughes 1:06:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:06:59 ... there, there is not a hair that has been left behind. So this, this hair could have been pulled from a cadaver, it could've been pulled from, uh, a person that's in jail, and that these things sometimes are planted, bite mark evidence. There's pl- he has a whole podcast on-

Coleman Hughes 1:07:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 ... the junk science-

Coleman Hughes 1:07:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:16 ... that's involved in prosecuting people, and p- how many people are wrongly convicted.

Coleman Hughes 1:07:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:21 It's fucking complicated. Like there's so many things. Like those, whenever we do one of those podcasts, we generally spend time talking about general, uh, g- general issues with wrongful convictions, and then we'll find, like, one or two cases and go over those one or two cases. And you realize, like, just this cursory examination of one or th- one or two cases takes so much time, and so much heartache is involved in these people's lives. And a lot of 'em, like, they're poor, or, or some of 'em don't speak English well, and they become patsies.

Coleman Hughes 1:07:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:52 And they use them, uh, you know, because the prosecuting attorney needs to have someone, uh, you know, a DA needs to have someone that they pin the crime on. And once they decide, "Okay, let's go with Jorge over here," and then boom, they just throw everything they can to try to win the case.

Coleman Hughes 1:08:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:08 Everything... And this is, it's a giant problem with our legal system, and it's a complex problem. It's not a problem that's easily solved. If you have thousands and thousands of people that are wrongly convicted, which we probably do-

Coleman Hughes 1:08:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:19 ... there's probably thousands and thousands of people right now that are in penitentiaries, and they're in there for th- something they did not do.

Coleman Hughes 1:08:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:27 That's a big fucking problem.

Coleman Hughes 1:08:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:28 I mean, that's a giant problem, and it's not an easy one. It's not like, "Kick this guy off of Twitter. He said that Nazis should be able to talk."

Coleman Hughes 1:08:35 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:36 "Fuck him. Get rid of his sponsors. We're done." So that kind of censorship, that kind of short-term solution to a much larger problem is-

Coleman Hughes 1:08:45 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 1:08:45 ... foolhardy, but I think it's an artifact of the kind of culture that we live in, where people want quick, easy solutions to things.

Coleman Hughes 1:08:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:52 And they wanna make a thing into a much bigger problem than it really is. What he's saying is not-

Coleman Hughes 1:08:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:59 He's not saying it the best way, but he's probably a little drunk, and he's prob- well, um, speaking from my own personal experience-

Coleman Hughes 1:09:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:09:06 ... like how I do a podcast. You get lit and you just start talking.

Coleman Hughes 1:09:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:09:10 But b- his idea is sound. His idea is you shouldn't deplatform people. We were talking about Daryl Davis-

Coleman Hughes 1:09:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:09:17 ... before this podcast as well. And Daryl Davis, who is a guy who's a blues musician, who has personally b- through his own conversations with people, he's gotten more than 200 KKK people and neo-Nazis to turn over a completely new life and to give him their outfits, give him their wizard costume or whatever the fuck it is, and their Nazi outfit. And this one man, just through having conversations with people and just being this undeniable amazing human has changed the way people think about these racist ideas that they have.

Coleman Hughes 1:09:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:09:54 Just by being himself, just by no- not by censoring people.

Coleman Hughes 1:09:57 Yeah, I, I think that happens a lot. That happens more than... I mean, like, Daryl Davis i- is amazing and i- exceptional in many ways, but I think that those kinds of changes of heart are actually far more common than you might suppose, just kind of observing the tenor of the media in our times. Like I was just talking to my, my friend Noam Dormon, who owns, owns A Comedy Cellar, and he's Jewish. And he has, he, he said over the years he's had a lot of Arab people working for him, coming from Arab countries where they've never met a Jew and have crazy ideas about Jews, like insane. And, you know, he was like, "I would never use that as a reason not to hire somebody, of course." And he, he's like a very pro-Israel guy too. He's very, very proud of being Jewish. But he, they become friends, and their ideas about Jews change over time as a result of interactions.

Joe Rogan 1:10:50 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:10:51 It's, it's not, uh, like, a- again, as exceptional as Daryl Davis is, it's not, uh, you know, that is, that kind of thing is happening by the millions in people's lives in ways that will never make it into the media, um, all the time. And that's another reason why people underestimate, uh, others' ability to, to change their ideas. I mean, there's this-

Joe Rogan 1:11:15 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:11:15 ... I've heard people argue that, you know, persuasion is actually not a good strategy. Persuasion just doesn't work. And, um, you know, I think that's, that's just not true, you know? What is true is that people very rarely change their opinions in real time on camera on the shows that you're watching.

Joe Rogan 1:11:34 Right.

Coleman Hughes 1:11:34 Because people, uh, myself included, have a vested interest in showing that we know what the fuck we're talking about. And, you know, you're, you're actually very unique in this way of, you know, if a guest shows you something and it's a fact you haven't seen and it contradicts your belief, you will often change your belief in real time, right? Like, that, no one does that. So people watching the media get this perception that, "Well, no one's ever changing their mind, everyone's just set in their ways," but I think the truth is people are changing their minds all the time in private by listening to podcasts by themselves, by watching stuff by themselves, where they don't pay a reputational price for changing their mind. So just because we rarely see evidence of people changing their minds through persuasion doesn't mean it's not happening all the time.

Joe Rogan 1:12:21 It happens all the time. Um, it, it happens through experience and hopefully it happens because the person is capable of recognizing their flaws. The real problem comes when someone has a belief that's-... it's not accurate, and you stick to it anyway-

Coleman Hughes 1:12:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:12:43 ... because you don't want to lose.

Coleman Hughes 1:12:45 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:12:45 And that's a giant problem.

Coleman Hughes 1:12:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:47 And in my mind, that's a tremendous weakness.

Coleman Hughes 1:12:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:12:51 And I don't like finding weakness in me.

Coleman Hughes 1:12:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:12:55 When I find a weakness in me, I eradicate it.

Coleman Hughes 1:12:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:57 I find it, and I go, "Okay, that's a flaw."

Coleman Hughes 1:12:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:13:00 That's why I change my opinion in real time-

Coleman Hughes 1:13:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:13:02 ... because I refuse to support an opinion or a, an, a false idea that I have espoused. And I, I ve- I refuse to connect my mind with ideas. My mind is not... I... Whatever idea, whatever fact that I s- I think is true, if that fact turns out to be incorrect, I will abandon it immediately if I can.

Coleman Hughes 1:13:32 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:13:32 A- a- as long as I'm, as long as I'm sure.

Coleman Hughes 1:13:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:13:35 I think you have to. I don't think you're- you are your ideas. I think you are this thinking entity that is trying to solve as many problems as you can that are around you and that are involved in your life. And as soon as you are willing to commit to an idea that you know is incorrect, you've done yourself a massive disservice in service of your ego, which is the worst fucking thing that you could ever fuel. Like, you should never fuel your ego.

Coleman Hughes 1:14:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:14:07 It exists whether you like it or not. You should try to control it, and humble it, and to try to keep it to be... Uh, keep it, have it the least intrusive factor in your thought process. So, the moment the ego gets challenged, you have to be able to accurately assess whether or not the information that you've clung to is valid.

Coleman Hughes 1:14:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:14:30 And if it is not valid, you have to discard it.

Coleman Hughes 1:14:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:14:33 It's very important.

Coleman Hughes 1:14:35 Yes. I, I totally agree. And I was reading the coverage of your cancellation, like, a week ago in the New York Times, and there was one article where they had a little box graphic in between the text, sort of providing one of these short summary explainers of the whole situation, and they said, "Joe Rogan's brash personality has been part of his appeal as a podcaster." And I ad- my- I, I haven't seen or heard the word brash in long enough that I looked it up, and it, it was, uh, "self-assertive in a rude or overbearing way."

Joe Rogan 1:15:20 Hmm.

Coleman Hughes 1:15:21 And I thought to myself, "Is Joe Rogan brash?" Because, like, (laughs) you just gave a spiel about how important it is to say when you're wrong, to admit you have an ego. Have you ever heard a brash or over- overbearing person? I mean, like, the definition of overbearing is the guy that never fucking a- admits he's wrong, right, doesn't listen, and blah, blah, blah. It's like, h- the notion that, that y- you could be described as brash, to me, it betrayed... I was like, they're, they're not even trying to hide the fact that they just fucking hate you.

Joe Rogan 1:15:59 Well-

Coleman Hughes 1:16:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:16:00 ... I think they're, like, hardcore lefties, right? And hardcore lefties don't know what the fuck to do with me 'cause I look like a Trump supporter.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:08 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:08 (laughs)

Coleman Hughes 1:16:08 I mean, the fact that you're a bald white guy-

Joe Rogan 1:16:11 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:11 ... that's muscly and-

Joe Rogan 1:16:12 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:12 ... tattooed does- does you no favors, right?

Joe Rogan 1:16:13 And I do cage fighting commentary. I like guns. I hunt.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:16:18 I bow hunt.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:18 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 1:16:19 Yeah.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:19 Y-

Joe Rogan 1:16:19 There's just a lot of things that don't line up with the fact that I support universal basic income.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:16:25 I- I support universal healthcare. Uh, well, I was... My family was poor when I was young. We were on welfare.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:16:31 I'll never forget that.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:16:32 I'll never forget being on food stamps as a kid.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:16:35 I'll never forget wondering if we were gonna have enough food to eat.

Coleman Hughes 1:16:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:16:39 And that m-... In my mind, the system worked with my family, and they provided us with assistance. And then, my parents started making money, and we got off of welfare, and they started doing really well. And then, by the time I was in high school, they were doing great, and they had a thriving business. So, I, I, I got to experience how social systems, s- social support systems and social safety nets can really be beneficial to families.

Coleman Hughes 1:17:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:17:13 And I think they're huge.

Coleman Hughes 1:17:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:14 I think they're very, very important. And I fully, fully support that. And I am way more left wing than I... Uh, the, the only things that I think of that I r- I think people could point to that are right wing with me are gun control. Like, I believe in the Second Amendment 'cause I, I b- I believe there's times where you're going to have to, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, if the wrong thing happens, the wrong person invades your property, tries to harm your family, you want to be able to defend yourself. We don't live in a world where there's no guns.

Coleman Hughes 1:17:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:17:46 We don't live in a world where it's even and equal, and people are u- unanimously generous and kind, and no one's violent. That's not the reality of the world we live in. And so, because the Second Amendment does exist, and because we do have gun rights, I don't, I don't agree with stripping those rights from people. I don't agree with this, uh, idea that the problem is guns. I think the problem is human beings.

Coleman Hughes 1:18:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:18:13 I think the problem is human beings and human behavior, and I think it's exacerbated by social issues. And I think that, really, one of the better ways to stop violence in this country is to alleviate it at the bottom floor, which is poverty. Poverty and crime-ridden communities.

Coleman Hughes 1:18:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:18:31 And I think it's like... One of the most frustrating things to me when I look at our, our culture is, like, what we were talking about earlier, that there's, there are these communities-

Coleman Hughes 1:18:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:18:39 ... that have been largely ignored-

Coleman Hughes 1:18:40 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:18:40 ... by charitable ventures.

Coleman Hughes 1:18:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:18:42 Like, they just don't put enough time or effort into it. The government will spend trillions of dollars in Iraq, and they'll give no-bid contracts to Halliburton to rebuild shit we blew up, but they don't do anything-

Coleman Hughes 1:18:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:18:53 ... with these impoverished communities.

Coleman Hughes 1:18:54 Well-

Joe Rogan 1:18:54 So I'm super left wing-

Coleman Hughes 1:18:56 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:18:56 ... in most ways.

Coleman Hughes 1:18:58 Yeah, I think... So when it comes to th- these places that have just had intergenerational poverty, intergenerational v- violence, intergenerational single parent homes-

Joe Rogan 1:19:10 Redlining laws.

Coleman Hughes 1:19:12 ... and chaos. Yeah. Um, I mean, the, the equilibrium we're at, at the country, i- in the country right now seems really dysfunctional to me because basically what you have is, um, you know, you have a right-wing media that will... The- they will talk about things like, uh, you know, the constant drive-by shootings and kids getting caught, uh, you know, usually Black kids getting caught in the crossfire. And th- they'll talk about the insane homicide rate for, for young Black men, which is the number one cause of death for, for Black men in their 20s. But they'll do it in a way where you know it's about political point scoring, right? It's like when Tucker Carlson talks about, you know, Black on Black crime and the problem with homicide, you don't get the sense that he's deeply motivated to actually focus on this and, and rebuild these communities. Um, and you know, maybe I'm slandering his motives, but, uh, I think, uh, you know, one doesn't get... One gets a sense that the first purpose of raising those points is to point the finger at, at Democrats, Democrat-controlled cities and, uh, you know, just partisan point scoring, right? And so that's what you have on the right basically. And what we have on the left is anyone who mentions these problems, right? You mention the fact that homicide is the number one cause of death for, for Black men in their 20s and for no other race of men. A- and you try to tug at people's heartstrings for these stories of, you know, little girls dressed up in, in bumblebee costumes for, for Halloween getting caught in the crossfire and the wider consequences of growing up in such environments, how it dooms kids, um, to, to failure and, and, and so forth. Um, you know, i- it's, it's made difficult to acknowledge the reality of the issues and to talk about it in a common sense way without being accused of being a racist.

Joe Rogan 1:21:26 Right.

Coleman Hughes 1:21:26 Right? It's like y- "Oh, you're just talking about Black on Black crime. Um, if you're white, you're a racist. If you're Black, you're an Uncle Tom." And basically, we don't want to talk about it unless the cops did it, right? If the cops, if the cops kill a, kill a Black person, we will shut down everything, right?

Joe Rogan 1:21:43 A good example is that guy who drove over that crowd of people at the Christmas parade in Wisconsin-

Coleman Hughes 1:21:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:21:48 ... and they were saying the accident caused by an SUV. They kept saying that because the perpetrator was a Black guy-

Coleman Hughes 1:21:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:21:54 ... and the Black guy who had just gotten out of jail, who had just gotten out of jail for trying to kill his, uh, his, I think his kid's mom, his, his girlfriend, trying to kill her with a car.

Coleman Hughes 1:22:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:22:07 So he gets arrested, goes to jail, gets out on very low bail. I think it was like... I don't remember how much it was, but thousands of dollars, not much, and then plows over a whole group of people. And the coverage was bizarre because, like, they were bending over backwards, they were doing mental gymnastics to try to not say, "This Black man-"

Coleman Hughes 1:22:28 That he was Black.

Joe Rogan 1:22:29 "... drove over all these people-"

Coleman Hughes 1:22:30 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 1:22:31 "... this, this random crowd of people." Because they didn't want to be accused of being racist-

Coleman Hughes 1:22:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:22:34 ... or they were woke or they were... You know, whate- for whatever, whatever their reason was-

Coleman Hughes 1:22:38 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:22:39 ... for whatever their ideology was for portraying the story in the way they did, that's how they w- decided to portray it.

Coleman Hughes 1:22:45 To