EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,306 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- NANarrator
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- CHColeman Hughes
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (heavy guitar music) Good to go? All right. Coleman, welcome. Nice to meet you.
- CHColeman Hughes
Great to be here, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is, what is X Factor? Is that your podcast?
- CHColeman Hughes
No, I wish. The X, X Factor, this is a Lauryn Hill shirt.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, I've seen you wear that on more than one occasion.
- CHColeman Hughes
You know, I just love this shirt.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, okay.
- CHColeman Hughes
It's comfortable. I look good in it, I feel good in it.
- JRJoe Rogan
You do look good in it.
- CHColeman Hughes
Thank you.
- JRJoe Rogan
You do look good in it. Um, I'm glad you agree with Jamie that golf is a problem.
- NANarrator
What kind of problem?
- JRJoe Rogan
This motherfucker-
- NANarrator
It's a good problem to have.
- JRJoe Rogan
All, all he cares about is golf these days.
- NANarrator
There's a lot going on in the golf world.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CHColeman Hughes
You know, I will say-
- NANarrator
A lot of money being thrown around.
- CHColeman Hughes
... I just, I resent golf because my dad is good, and I think he really wanted me to be good.
- NANarrator
Oh.
- CHColeman Hughes
At least I sensed that, and I never was. It's such an awkward swing.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a very weird movement. I was watching Tiger Woods' swing on, uh, YouTube yesterday-
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... for whatever strange reason.
- NANarrator
Interesting.
- CHColeman Hughes
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause they were talking about how... Look at me, I'm scared. I told you-
- 15:00 – 30:00
Mm-hmm. …
- JRJoe Rogan
because of that.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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?"
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, "What are you allowed to say? What are you not allowed to say and why?"
- CHColeman Hughes
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CHColeman Hughes
... 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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- CHColeman Hughes
... 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."
- JRJoe Rogan
That's fascinating that he's the prosecuting attorney.
- CHColeman Hughes
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
The Darden thing, uh, I, I get it from a prosecutor's perspective-
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's planting evidence.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then, and he might have planted blood too, right? Wasn't that... wasn't... didn't they think-
- CHColeman Hughes
It was, it was alleged, or, yeah, people were wondering.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then, on top of that, he might have, he might have racist perspectives.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, like you've got two things going on simultaneously. And then also, it's like everybody had seen the Rodney King video.
- CHColeman Hughes
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
This was a big part of the O.J. case that a lot of people-
- CHColeman Hughes
Huge part.
- JRJoe Rogan
... maybe have, um, forgotten.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Mm-hmm. …
- JRJoe Rogan
whole world-
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... because of that video.
- CHColeman Hughes
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Literally changed the, the landscape of r- of th- the way people think about racial interactions in America-
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... because of one video.
- CHColeman Hughes
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
One Eric Garner.
- CHColeman Hughes
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CHColeman Hughes
100%. I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
100%.
- CHColeman Hughes
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is on video?
- CHColeman Hughes
Yeah, it's on YouTube.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- CHColeman Hughes
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
What is this case?
- CHColeman Hughes
Uh, Kim Potter, she, she was a, a, a female cop.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that the woman who walked in the wrong apartment?
- CHColeman Hughes
Um, she, she's the one that, uh, if I recall the details, she thought she was using her taser.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, right. Right.
- CHColeman Hughes
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
It seems like horrible training. But I can attest to the fact that people under pressure completely fall apart.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Mm-hmm. …
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Giant advantage in jujitsu.
- CHColeman Hughes
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah.
- CHColeman Hughes
You know, why isn't that w-
- JRJoe Rogan
You'd have to require it.
- CHColeman Hughes
You'd have to require it. Well, I mean, uh...
- JRJoe Rogan
There's Carlson Gracie. And what is, what is he doing with ... Who is that?
- NANarrator
He's with ... He's with Deputy Barksdale.
- CHColeman Hughes
Oh, this is, this is Barksdale.
- JRJoe Rogan
(clears throat)
- CHColeman Hughes
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- CHColeman Hughes
... about, uh, issues in a way, in a way that people who are, who are still police often feel they can't. Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Carlson Gracie was the f-
- CHColeman Hughes
(clears throat)
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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-
- CHColeman Hughes
(clears throat)
- JRJoe Rogan
... second place I ever trained at.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
That was in Hollywood in, in the late '90s. And, uh, he was ... You know, Carlson Gracie was, uh, a legend.
- CHColeman Hughes
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, he's a guy that was, um, in the early days of no-rules fights.
- CHColeman Hughes
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to come in and fuck people up that, like-
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... Helio couldn't.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
I mean, censorship just…
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CHColeman Hughes
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CHColeman Hughes
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
It worked for a small amount of time-
- CHColeman Hughes
For... Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to get people off social media-
- CHColeman Hughes
For how long? About a-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CHColeman Hughes
... what? A year?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. It was enough, though. It was enough that-
- CHColeman Hughes
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... in many people's eyes, that became a taboo subject that was very-
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... very difficult to breach.
- CHColeman Hughes
(clears throat)
- JRJoe Rogan
You couldn't discuss it until Trump was out of office.
- CHColeman Hughes
And, but in the l- in the long run-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CHColeman Hughes
... history shows it just, it never works.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CHColeman Hughes
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CHColeman Hughes
"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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- CHColeman Hughes
I mean, well... (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... they start saying-
- CHColeman Hughes
I'm not about to argue with you, baby.
- 1:15:00 – 1:23:44
Hmm. …
- CHColeman Hughes
"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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- CHColeman Hughes
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well-
- CHColeman Hughes
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- CHColeman Hughes
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CHColeman Hughes
I mean, the fact that you're a bald white guy-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CHColeman Hughes
... that's muscly and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CHColeman Hughes
... tattooed does- does you no favors, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
And I do cage fighting commentary. I like guns. I hunt.
- CHColeman Hughes
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I bow hunt.
- CHColeman Hughes
Right, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CHColeman Hughes
Y-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's just a lot of things that don't line up with the fact that I support universal basic income.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I- I support universal healthcare. Uh, well, I was... My family was poor when I was young. We were on welfare.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'll never forget that.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'll never forget being on food stamps as a kid.
- CHColeman Hughes
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'll never forget wondering if we were gonna have enough food to eat.
- CHColeman Hughes
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
Episode duration: 3:11:48
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