Joe Rogan Experience #1801 - David Mamet

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. DMDavid Mamet0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays) And we're up and running. How are you, sir?

   4. DMDavid Mamet0:15

      I'm great. Happy to be back in the United States. I've been in, uh, California for the last-

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:20

      (laughs)

   6. DMDavid Mamet0:20

      ... uh, little-

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      The People's Republic of California?

   8. DMDavid Mamet0:24

      Yeah, exactly so.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:25

      Yeah, it's, uh, an interesting turn of events. California has become a strange new place.

   10. DMDavid Mamet0:31

       Yes, it has.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       A- almost unrecognizable. (laughs)

   12. DMDavid Mamet0:34

       Yes. Well, it'd be recognizable to George Orwell.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       Y- well, yeah, right? Even he probably been like, "Wow." H- he was probably ... If, if you could get George Orwell from, you know, the time he wrote 198- ... When did he write 84?

   14. DMDavid Mamet0:48

       Oh, that's pretty good. I, uh, I don't know. I think it was the late '40s. We can, we can l- look it up.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:54

       And then to see, uh, the ... you know, in 2022, he was, he was in the neighborhood.

   16. DMDavid Mamet1:00

       He-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:00

       He definitely was pretty close.

   18. DMDavid Mamet1:01

       He was off like, oh, 1.2%.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:03

       (laughs) There it is, '49.

   20. DMDavid Mamet1:05

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:05

       Wow, interesting.

   22. DMDavid Mamet1:06

       You know, George Orwell said ... He was a interesting guy. He was a cop in, um, Burma. He was a, a, a-

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:13

       Really?

   24. DMDavid Mamet1:13

       Yes. Uh, he was a hook- colonial cop, and then he was a, a roustabout, and he wrote, uh, Down and Out in Paris and London. He was a bum. And, uh, he said, "When thought control comes, it will come not from the right, but from the left."

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:27

       Wonder why he thought that?

   26. DMDavid Mamet1:29

       Well, because he got around.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:31

       Mm-hmm.

   28. DMDavid Mamet1:31

       I mean, he ... That guy had seen a huge bunch of life and he looked at what things were from every angle, right? He was a well-brought-up Englishman, and then he was a, a tramp and a dishwasher and a cop. And, uh, he saw it all. He saw it clearly.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:47

       But it's ... When y- ... Classically, like, when we think about depictions of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, when I was a kid, we always thought of it as being a right-wing thing. It is like a ... There was always, like, a right-wing dictator-type character that imposed censorship and authoritarianism. You didn't think of it as something that would be coming from the left.

   30. DMDavid Mamet2:11

       Well, but, uh, you know, who was Stalin? Who was Trotsky and Lenin? They're certainly the left.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Because- …

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      do you think it's a death cult? Like, what, what do you, what are you saying?

   2. DMDavid Mamet15:02

      Because-

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:03

      What about it is death cult?

   4. DMDavid Mamet15:05

      Well, lookit, if you say, uh, uh, as I've heard, perhaps you have... So, people say, "You know, my kids don't want to have kids because we live in such a dreadful place."

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:11

      I joke around about that on stage. I'm like, "Yeah, why would you want to have kids today with all the books and medicine and shit?"

   6. DMDavid Mamet15:16

      Yeah, really. (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:17

      (laughs) It's so stupid. The reason why people are here is because people had sex before they even had a language.

   8. DMDavid Mamet15:23

      Yeah. And people say, "Well, wait a second. Uh, the seas are rising. The seas are rising. Al- although the seas are rising, I'm gonna buy a house in Martha's Vineyard," right?

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:33

      Right.

   10. DMDavid Mamet15:34

       And although we're f- poisoning the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and inert gas, I'm gonna fly in my private plane that b- been s- uh, three-

   11. JRJoe Rogan15:44

       Right.

   12. DMDavid Mamet15:44

       ... 3,000, blah, blah, blah. And there's... And, uh, uh, you know what also? There's no such thing ab- as men and women. I know people have, um, overlooked this for a million years of human history, but now we know it's true, so we have to teach our chil- children this, right? And s-

   13. JRJoe Rogan16:00

       I don't think they're saying there's no such thing as men and women. They're saying it's flexible and you could be whatever you want.

   14. DMDavid Mamet16:05

       Well, yeah, except anybody who's ever been in the backseat of a Chevy knows it's not flexible, right? You can behave in any way that you want, right? But there are men and there are women saying, "No, no, no, that's not a, that's not a fact. That's not a fact, and you mustn't mentioned it."

   15. JRJoe Rogan16:21

       Have you ever, uh, read any of Douglas Murray?

   16. DMDavid Mamet16:23

       No.

   17. JRJoe Rogan16:24

       D- Douglas Murray was a brilliant guy, a British intellectual. He's, he said something that I've never forgot. I, I, I keep harping on it, that at the end of every civilization, when a civilization starts to crumble, they become obsessed with gender. They become obsessed with swapping gender, acting out-

   18. DMDavid Mamet16:40

       Sure, yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan16:41

       ... different genders, like, g- gender nonconformity. And he, he doesn't have an answer why, but it seems like they... when things... w- for whatever it is, whatever cause of society collapsing, there's something where they become obsessed with definitions and-

   20. DMDavid Mamet16:59

       Well-

   21. JRJoe Rogan16:59

       ... particularly gender definitions.

   22. DMDavid Mamet17:01

       Well, uh, definite- yes, they become obsessed with definition. They also become obsessed with sex because it offers experience, right? The problem is, if you become sex... You know, when I was a kid, we used this joke about say, "You know what? I betcha if we got an old guy, he could rent a post office box, we could get Playboy."

   23. JRJoe Rogan17:23

       (laughs)

   24. DMDavid Mamet17:23

       Right? Now, Playboy, those Playboys, they look like the Shipping News, right?

   25. JRJoe Rogan17:28

       I know.

   26. DMDavid Mamet17:28

       But the problem is you can just sh- chase pornography so far, right? We'll say, "We'll show this, we'll show that, we'll do this, we'll do that." Everything's permitted. And then people get bored. So what's happening in the younger generation, in their 20s, they're bored with sex. They don't wanna have sex. They want to stay in their rooms with porn. They don't want to get married. They don't want to have kids. And-

   27. JRJoe Rogan17:48

       Really?

   28. DMDavid Mamet17:49

       Yes. And Allen Bloom talked about this, the great Allen Bloom. In 1988, he wrote a book called the... I think it's called The Death of the American Mind. And he said that he saw at the University of Chicago that there was no eros, uh, the, the longing for the other, that the kids weren't longing for the other. They also weren't longing for the other in wisdom. They weren't interested in wisdom. They-

   29. JRJoe Rogan18:11

       What year was this, when you're saying?

   30. DMDavid Mamet18:12

       '88.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. DMDavid Mamet30:00

      time in human history, rather than worrying about, "How am I going to get enough calories to keep from dying?" they worry about, "How can I lose weight?"

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:07

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DMDavid Mamet30:07

      Right? Rather than saying thank God, you know, we became the, the power, the world power, the greatest power the world's ever known in the 20th century. But wait a second, here we still are, what do we do now? Huh. What about the Vietnam War? Let's fight that. That's a good idea. Although we said from the first there's no particular end to it and we can't win it. W- now we've got into it, how do we get out of it? So the problem about prosperity is you, one of them is you make choices, and then you have such an infrastructure you can't correct them. Right? That, th- th- that, that gets us into the Vietnam War. You make choices, let's have a representative government, and it's so powerful that they, they, uh, of course are going to take on them- on themselves the responsibility of ru- running your life. Because somebody goes into Congress, they say, "Okay, you know, ma- da, da, da, da." They say...Ho-, uh, Wa- Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, right?

   4. JRJoe Rogan31:06

      Right.

   5. DMDavid Mamet31:06

      So here I am, I'm not very good at anything, but I can smile and kiss babies. Oh, guess what? I can have all the sex I want, and I can go on TV, and I can gain power, and I can, uh, raise money to gain power and gain power to raise money. What else can I do? I can trade favors with that guy over there. He wants to build a bridge in Alabama. I know it's a bunch of bullshit, but I wanna build a courthouse in Louisiana. So we'll trade favors, right? And so the government becomes so powerful. They say, "Well, let's have an income tax." Okay, 1%, good. 2%, good. Now, you live in California, that's 60% of your income. It doesn't make any sense, right? The government is in charge of your pocketbook. They're in charge of everything. But it w- it but it got that way because of prosperity. So the, uh, the Asians, uh, some of the Asian sects, they say that a b- successful man, when he turns 56, 60 years old, he says, "Okay, good. I'm gonna become a monk now." Right? It makes some sense. The question is, how do you correct for the, uh, accelerated decay of age? 'Cause people will decay in age. A- all, um, human endeavor decays with age. Right? Wh- where's ancient Greece? Where's Rome?

   6. JRJoe Rogan32:27

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DMDavid Mamet32:27

      Great Britain was the greatest power in the history of the world in August of 1914. You know, where were they at, at, uh, two, uh, four years later? Uh, that, that's inevitable. So what the conservatives are saying is, "We don't know, but we got a good guide. That guide is called the Constitution. Let's go back to this simple 20-page document about how the co- the country should be run, and let's stick to it, 'cause that's all, that, that got us here. Let's, let's not, let's not say it's a living constitution."

   8. JRJoe Rogan32:59

      I'm still confused at how the, this idea of prosperity affects the left more than it affects the right.

   9. DMDavid Mamet33:07

      It affects everyone.

   10. JRJoe Rogan33:08

       It affects everyone, but like, why is it that you, you seem to be, uh, concentrating on the, the left is responsible for this sort of m- decay that we're in?

   11. DMDavid Mamet33:19

       No.

   12. JRJoe Rogan33:19

       But- No?

   13. DMDavid Mamet33:20

       Ah, good.

   14. JRJoe Rogan33:21

       So prosperity's re- responsible for it? The left is more susceptible? Like, what are you saying?

   15. DMDavid Mamet33:26

       It occurred to me, um, just 'cause I, I spent this, you know, I worked, wr- wrote this book. I spent a couple years writing these essays. I said, "You don't understand." I was asking myself the same questions you're asking me. How did we get here? Why, why, why? And I look at all these people in office, you know, we call them politicians, and most of them are thugs and whores and thieves and fools and blah, blah, blah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan33:46

       He said that, not me.

   17. DMDavid Mamet33:47

       What, I said that? Well, you know, you know it's-

   18. JRJoe Rogan33:48

       (laughs)

   19. DMDavid Mamet33:49

       ... you know it's true.

   20. JRJoe Rogan33:50

       I know.

   21. DMDavid Mamet33:50

       There, there are, there are some exceptions, but I thought, "Well, wait a second. Who would've thought that those were gonna be the politicians?" Well, everybody who wrote the Constitution thought that.

   22. JRJoe Rogan33:59

       Right.

   23. DMDavid Mamet33:59

       E- e- everybody who, who ever read the Bible thought that, 'cause that's what happens when people have power. So I thought, "But wait a second. These people, you know, these people in high office, is it possible that they had the power to, to warp a civilization so that we dealt with prosperity through fear?" 'Cause that's what we see around us all the time. It's called, uh, it's called anger, the anger of the left. It's not anger. It's really fear. Is it pos- ... Why would ... These people are idiots, right? And you know, I'm not gonna mention any names, but, you know, you, you people can fill in your own. They're, they're idiots who say that we have to get out of, uh, Afghanistan and leave everything there, or we have to give Iran the nuclear bomb, or that we have to stop ti- digging for oil though we're gonna import oil, et cetera, cetera, cetera. The, uh, they're fools. What happened was not that they caused the decay of the civilization. What happened was that the civilization went through a transition and they came out of the woodwork.

   24. JRJoe Rogan35:00

       They came out of the woodwork how so? Like ...

   25. DMDavid Mamet35:02

       Well, th- look at this. Anybody ever meet any good teachers? Maybe a couple, right?

   26. JRJoe Rogan35:09

       Mm-hmm.

   27. DMDavid Mamet35:09

       But we don't r- ... We remember lovingly that one good teacher that we might have met.

   28. JRJoe Rogan35:15

       Mm-hmm.

   29. DMDavid Mamet35:15

       But we remember with shame and hatred the teacher who abused us, who humiliated us, who, uh, dissed us, who called us stupid. We remember those all our lives.

   30. JRJoe Rogan35:26

       Sure.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   That's right. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      If you wanna say that human beings should be able to express themselves and we need to do it with, with, uh, in a way that doesn't harass people or dox people, uh, but, and, uh, or threaten people, but we have to be able to express ourselves 'cause it's the only way we sort out what's right and what's wrong, I'm with you. But as soon as you start saying, "I wanna only hear thoughts that I agree with," well, that's not, that's not discourse. That's propaganda. You want, you want only your side-

   2. DMDavid Mamet45:31

      That's right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:31

      ... to be t- t- to be represented, which is crazy, and that's what's happening on social media. That's what's happening in Twitter. That's what's ha- happening in all these things. And that g- that's the same with everything. That's the same with, uh, whether it's anti-racism, that's the same with corporate greed and anti-capitalism, that's the same with... When people start, like, going after stuff, like when people start deciding that this d- this thing that we've always accepted for so long is no longer acceptable and now we have to attack it and we have to attack it by the parameters that I believe are just and right, you go, "Oh, Jesus Christ."

   4. DMDavid Mamet46:05

      Well, it's terrorism 'cause, uh, terrorism, the, the way terrorism works is not, "If you do A, I'm gonna punish you." The way terrorism works is, "Figure out what you wanna do, and I'll figure out if I wanna punish you," right? Uh, you, you might say, "Wait a second, I thought that was permitted." "Uh, uh, uh."

   5. JRJoe Rogan46:21

      Mm-hmm.

   6. DMDavid Mamet46:21

      So now you're not gonna fucking say anything. That's what we're looking at now in, in... Uh, there's a suit in Texas, uh, maybe you're aware of it, that Texas passed a law that said, um, that social media carriers cannot s- um-

   7. JRJoe Rogan46:36

      Can't censor conservative voices.

   8. DMDavid Mamet46:38

      ... can't, can't censor for content.

   9. JRJoe Rogan46:39

      Yeah, but I don't th- I don't think that works. I mean, I, I-

   10. DMDavid Mamet46:41

       Of course, it doesn't.

   11. JRJoe Rogan46:42

       ... don't think they really ha- uh, they, they don't ha- really have any teeth to that.

   12. DMDavid Mamet46:45

       Well, what-

   13. JRJoe Rogan46:45

       I mean, they would maybe if Twitter was, uh, centrally located in Texas.

   14. DMDavid Mamet46:50

       But-

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:50

       I thought it was Florida, by the way. Is that-

   16. DMDavid Mamet46:51

       No, it's Texas. I'll tell you why I know, that, that the, the, the social media guys got together and formed the Consortium of Liars and sued the State of Texas to overturn the law.

   17. JRJoe Rogan47:01

       Doesn't Ron DeSantis institute some sort of a similar...

   18. DMDavid Mamet47:04

       He, yes, he did, but this w- I'll tell you why I know it's here, because the guy who's in charge of the, uh, defending the law asked me to write a, a brief, a little amicus brief about, uh, free speech. So that's what I-

   19. JRJoe Rogan47:16

       Mm-hmm.

   20. DMDavid Mamet47:16

       That's what I realized about myself is, uh, the reason I'm not dead or in a mental institution or in a, a joint or... is because of free speech 'cause I c- came up in a time when it, uh, it was just assumed that if you could write, you could put your play on in a garage. Maybe they'd come, maybe they didn't, but if they did, maybe you'd put your play in a little theater. And if they liked it, maybe you could put your play on on Broadway, and then you could buy a c- buy a car and get married. So that's-

   21. JRJoe Rogan47:44

       (laughs)

   22. DMDavid Mamet47:44

       Uh, right? Because that's, uh... In some, some order. But that's, uh, so that's the United States of America, and people died for this right forever. And talking about racism, I'm very good friends with Shelby Steele, right? Shelby wrote, uh, notably, White Guilt where he says, "Black power and white guilt are the same thing." And I was talking-

   23. JRJoe Rogan48:02

       How is that-

   24. DMDavid Mamet48:03

       Well, he said-

   25. JRJoe Rogan48:04

       How is black power and white guilt the same thing?

   26. DMDavid Mamet48:06

       He says the only black power, he said in the book, everybody should read this book. It's genius. A Black guy, genius writer. He said the o-

   27. JRJoe Rogan48:12

       Sorry, what's the book called again?

   28. DMDavid Mamet48:13

       It's called White Guilt.

   29. JRJoe Rogan48:14

       White... Okay.

   30. DMDavid Mamet48:15

       He said-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:14:23

   Well, that sounds like,…

   1. DMDavid Mamet1:00:00

      and B, uh, uh, the reason it might think it's funny is it's true," right? We're sending up something that we're all concerned about. But when you can't send up something that you're all concerned about, what are you joking about? Where's the humor anymore? The only funny thing anybody said for two years was Chris Rock. He says, "I'm glad I, I didn't insult Alec Baldwin's wife." Right? Where, where was the humor, uh, uh, of the last two years? Everybody's afraid to joke 'cause humor's all about repression.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:27

      Well, that sounds like, the Williams-Sonoma thing sounds like you just caught the wrong person at the wrong time-

   3. DMDavid Mamet1:00:33

      Ah, I know.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:33

      ... and you had the wrong joke and she didn't like it.

   5. DMDavid Mamet1:00:36

      But it's a good story.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:37

      It's a decent story.

   7. DMDavid Mamet1:00:39

      A decent story, right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:39

      I wouldn't say ... I'm not gonna repeat it.

   9. DMDavid Mamet1:00:41

      Okay. (laughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:41

       It's not so good that I'll be telling my friends, "You're not gonna ... David Mamet was on my podcast. Let me tell you his story."

   11. DMDavid Mamet1:00:47

       Yeah, really.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:47

       It's not that.

   13. DMDavid Mamet1:00:48

       You're right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:48

       You know what I'm saying?

   15. DMDavid Mamet1:00:49

       Yeah. Of course I do.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:00:50

       They kicked you out of Williams? Did they bar you? Did you try to come back the next day with a different outfit? (laughs)

   17. DMDavid Mamet1:00:53

       No, no, I just, I kind of barred myself. I didn't want to go back there and to, and take it again.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:00:57

       So, she's just upset that you came in the wrong door?

   19. DMDavid Mamet1:00:59

       No.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:00:59

       That was it?

   21. DMDavid Mamet1:01:00

       She was upset, she was upset, she said, said she found the comment-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:01:04

       Oh.

   23. DMDavid Mamet1:01:04

       ... deeply offensive.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:06

       That you're an illegal immigrant? Yeah. That subject is so strange. It's subject is so ... It's, it's a strange subject because some people think it should be okay to be an illegal immigrant.I'm like, "Well, you know, this country's founded on immigration." You know, my grandparents were imm- immigrants. My, my entire-

   25. DMDavid Mamet1:01:23

       (exhales)

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:23

       ... family line came from Europe. My, my grandparents came from Italy, and, uh, one of my grandfathers came from Ireland.

   27. DMDavid Mamet1:01:30

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:30

       So no one-

   29. DMDavid Mamet1:01:31

       My grandparents are immigrants too.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:01:32

       No one came from America.

Episode duration: 2:57:50