Joe Rogan Experience #1920 - Dave Portnoy

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

0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

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

Joe Rogan 0:12 We up?

Narrator 0:12 Okay. All right. Hello, Joe Rogan. How you doing, man?

Dave Portnoy 0:14 How's it going?

Joe Rogan 0:15 Good to see you, brother. What's going on?

Dave Portnoy 0:16 Not too much.

Joe Rogan 0:17 We were just talking about how, uh, we're a couple of right-wing psychos.

Dave Portnoy 0:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:21 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 0:21 Perceived that way at least. Perceived that way.

Joe Rogan 0:24 It's so weird. People just have to lump you into one category or another, and if you're not completely aligned with the left, they'll just lump you in with the right.

Dave Portnoy 0:33 Yours is pretty easy to figure out, though, because you didn't endorse Bernie Sanders.

Joe Rogan 0:37 Did you... (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 0:38 Right?

Joe Rogan 0:39 Yeah. (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 0:39 So I mean, it- it- it should be, like, all of one second to figure out maybe you aren't.

Joe Rogan 0:44 Uh, yeah, but that doesn't mean anything to anybody. It just, uh, it's just, we live in the weirdest time. People just want to categorize people in a tweet. You know, they want to categorize people in 140 or 280 symbols. It's just, uh, they just decide that you're this or you're that, that way they can categorize you as the enemy.

Dave Portnoy 1:06 Does that bother you at all?

Joe Rogan 1:06 No nuance.

Dave Portnoy 1:07 Do you care?

Joe Rogan 1:09 I mean, I wish that they didn't, but what are you gonna do?

Dave Portnoy 1:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12 You know, I mean, does it bo- I mean, yeah, if somebody miscategorizes me or mis-, uh, mislabels me, I guess it would bother me a little bit. But that's just on them, you know, it's- it's not who I am. So-

Dave Portnoy 1:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:25 ... I- I'm a big believer in social programs. I'm a big believer in welfare. I'm a big believer in- in taking care of poor people. I'm a big believer in, like, social programs to clean up cities. And we, there's- there's a lot of shit that we should be doing in this country to- to help people that are disenfranchised, because it's not fair. Anybody thinks it is fair that someone lives in a fucking crime-infested, gang-ridden inner city and that's exactly the same as someone who grew up in the suburbs, that's crazy.

Dave Portnoy 1:52 Right. So that would go against what I think a lot of people would expect you to say.

Joe Rogan 1:55 Yeah, but I also, you know, I'm a v- cage-fighting commentator. I- I, I'm a big believer in the Second Amendment. You know, there's- there's a lot of reasons why they would decide to categorize me as a- a right-wing person. But it's- it's not correct. And also, there's all this ridiculous woke shit that's going on, this bizarre mind virus that's going from universities into- to tech companies and- and the media, and just fucking infiltrating people with these rigid ideas of what you have to say and not say, and what you can and not say. And it's like, th- none of that is liberal. None of th- none of that is really, like, open-minded or progressive. It's all just a, it's a cult. It, and so if you go against it, the only thing you could possibly be is the other.

Dave Portnoy 2:44 Hm.

Joe Rogan 2:44 So you must be, like, a MAGA supporter.

Dave Portnoy 2:47 My- my main thing with it is, if I know how you're gonna answer a question, basically, before it's asked, which I think you can do with, like, almost everybody involved in politics-

Joe Rogan 2:56 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 2:57 ... I don't trust you.

Joe Rogan 2:57 (laughs) Right.

Dave Portnoy 2:58 And- and you really can, like-

Joe Rogan 2:59 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 3:00 ... on both left and right, ask any question, you know what they're gonna answer it. So it's like, you're not, you're not thinking independently.

Joe Rogan 3:06 Yeah, there's a lot of that, right? Like, if you are on the right, I have to assume you're dismissive of climate change. You know, if you're on the left, I have to assume that you want a woman to have the right to choose, period. You know, and you, like, there's, like, things like that. Like, you are pro-abortion, or you are pro-this, or you are pro-that, and- and that, what's weird now is, like, if you're on the left, you're pro-Ukraine war. You want to send, like, you- you're pro-military-industrial complex getting funneled billions and trillions of dollars into their system to be able to create weapons to fight off Russians. Like, whoa. That's the left now?

Dave Portnoy 3:42 And, really, that should have nothing to do with either side, really.

Joe Rogan 3:46 No.

Dave Portnoy 3:46 Like, I mean, you, it, how you feel about that I don't think should be left or right. I mean, that's a super complicated issue, to be honest. For me, at least, it's like Ukraine, like I don't, you don't want a country being invaded that doesn't want to be invaded. They're not Americans, but they are humans.

Joe Rogan 4:01 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 4:02 So it's like, what do you do? What, like, what do you do there? It's a tough situation.

Joe Rogan 4:05 It's very tough. And it's also very complicated too, because there's NATO, NATO's involvement and pushing weapons closer to the border of Russia, and what, and trying to get, you know, trying to get the- Ukraine to join NATO, and god knows.

Dave Portnoy 4:18 It's like, uh, Jack Ryan.

Joe Rogan 4:20 (laughs) Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 4:20 Like, this season's Jack Ryan. It's literally sort of like that plot.

Joe Rogan 4:23 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 4:23 But yeah, no, there is no easy answer to a lot of issues. But it's just so black and white, and that- that's no good.

Joe Rogan 4:31 Tsk, it's, none of it's good. Yeah, this is a sc- scary time to be alive. You know? Um, uh, someone told me the other day that, uh, Nostradamus predicted that there was gonna be some sort of a World War III.

Dave Portnoy 4:43 Oh, it- it-

Joe Rogan 4:44 But doesn't that, every year, like, how-

Dave Portnoy 4:46 Nostradamus, though, just throws his hat on the field-

Joe Rogan 4:49 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 4:49 ... and it's like it's vague enough where anything could be true.

Joe Rogan 4:52 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 4:52 So everything he's ever said can be true.

Joe Rogan 4:55 Right. Didn't he predict someone named Hister that was going to, uh, start a world war? He- he- he came real close with, like, Hitler.

Dave Portnoy 5:05 That's an-

Joe Rogan 5:05 He's con-

Dave Portnoy 5:05 Have y- have you seen the- the Titanic book? The- the- the book that was written about the Titanic-

Joe Rogan 5:11 No.

Dave Portnoy 5:11 ... before the Titanic? If you want to Google that, there is literally a book that is called, like, I forget the name of the book. But it's like the biggest cruise ship that will ever sail is gonna hit an iceberg and it's gonna sink. That is weird. But Nostradamus, I'm not buying the hype on him.

Joe Rogan 5:30 I haven't looked into it enough.

Dave Portnoy 5:31 Now, if he has a guy named Hister...

Joe Rogan 5:34 What does it say? What fewer people have heard of a short novel called The Futility - The Wreck of the Titan, published in the US, writer Morgan Robertson. A novel that tells the story of the world's largest passenger ship, the Titan, and how it sank after hitting an iceberg. A novel published 14 years before the Titanic sank.

Dave Portnoy 5:50 That's pretty crazy.

Joe Rogan 5:51 That's crazy. It's called The Titan.

Dave Portnoy 5:53 Yes.

Joe Rogan 5:53 Wow.

Dave Portnoy 5:53 And- and an iceberg.

Joe Rogan 5:55 Wow. But I bet they hit icebergs all the time back then.

Dave Portnoy 5:58 Well, see, that's the Nostradamus theory.

Joe Rogan 6:00 Right.

Dave Portnoy 6:00 That if you do enough, like, I mean, you can, at this point, say pretty confidently there'll be another gigantic war at some point.

Joe Rogan 6:07 Yeah.... the problem is we're-

Dave Portnoy 6:08 See, how does yours stay lit? I don't-

Joe Rogan 6:10 I just keep puffing on it.

Dave Portnoy 6:12 I told you, I don't-

Joe Rogan 6:12 Gotta get better at this.

Dave Portnoy 6:14 I'm not a big cigar-

Joe Rogan 6:14 You're a toxic-

Dave Portnoy 6:15 ... told you.

Joe Rogan 6:15 ... masculinity guy. You have to do toxic and masculinity things.

Dave Portnoy 6:20 Not a huge cigar guy.

Joe Rogan 6:22 No? Not like-

Dave Portnoy 6:23 Not guy. I mean, I do like them, but I don't smoke them a lot. I kind of quit. When I started my paper route, we had a, uh, cigar company called Honeys, something Honeys. So it used to be a paper route. I delivered it, and it was like our first advertiser. I'd smoke them when I drove the Astrovan. I got so high, and I was just done with them.

Joe Rogan 6:40 When was this?

Dave Portnoy 6:41 Uh, 2004.

Joe Rogan 6:42 You had a paper route in 2004?

Dave Portnoy 6:44 Barstool started as a newspaper, so I used to like hand it out and we had those little news racks outside subway stations. For 48 hours, I'd just jump in my Astrovan and fill the news racks, drop them in bars throughout Boston.

Joe Rogan 6:56 Really?

Dave Portnoy 6:57 Yeah. That's how it started.

Joe Rogan 6:58 That's how you started?

Dave Portnoy 6:58 Yeah, as a newspaper.

Joe Rogan 6:59 Wow.

Dave Portnoy 7:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:01 So your own newspaper?

Dave Portnoy 7:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:03 You... Wow.

Dave Portnoy 7:04 I'd wake up like 4:00 AM, go to the subway, hand it out to people, like walking by me and just scream at them, like, "Take the newspaper."

Joe Rogan 7:11 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 7:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:12 What was the motivation to do that?

Dave Portnoy 7:14 So-

Joe Rogan 7:14 Like how did you get the idea?

Dave Portnoy 7:15 I was always into gambling, and I... So I had a normal sales job. I always knew I wanted to try my own thing. Flew out to Vegas, met with like the casinos. They're all like, "You gotta be a dealer. You gotta start at the bottom." I was like, "I don't wanna do that." Talked to offshore casinos and said, "How do I get involved?" And they all said... Uh, the, the internet at the time I did this, if you went to a gambling site, fireworks, pop-ups, looked like you were getting your credit card stolen. They actually said, "Get us off the internet. Put us in a physical newsletter and we'll advertise." So I sold like a year of advertising before we launched, and it was a gambling rag. It was like a four-page newspaper, but I sold the advertising and it allowed me just to morph. So like during the course of the year, we slowly moved strictly away from gambling to more like men's interests, like girls and things like that. That's how it started.

Joe Rogan 8:04 Wow. So when you were into gambling, like why did you decide to do a newspaper?

Dave Portnoy 8:10 Because I knew I wanted to do something I enjoyed doing. I was doing cold calling sales. I couldn't do that my whole life. And when I called these casinos to advertise, it, it's what I just said. The internet was cluttered. It was filled... It was a time when if y- i- it literally every gambling website had little graphics of fireworks popping up, everything. And the gambling companies wanted to get off the internet because it was too cluttered. So they, they said, "If you do a newsletter or a newspaper, we'll advertise." So that's why I created it.

Joe Rogan 8:40 How funny is that? They, they wanted to get off the internet.

Dave Portnoy 8:42 Off the internet.

Joe Rogan 8:43 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 8:43 Yeah. There it is.

Joe Rogan 8:44 Barstool Sports. Oh my God, look at that. 2003, the first issue of Barstool Sports.

Dave Portnoy 8:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:52 Wow. Hooters Football Headquarters. (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 8:55 First advertisers. Yeah. Hooters.

Joe Rogan 8:56 Hooters was your first-

Dave Portnoy 8:57 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:58 Wow. Hooters is apparently in trouble. I just read something about Hooters is not doing well.

Dave Portnoy 9:04 The... Your... That's the fake story?

Joe Rogan 9:05 Is it a fake story?

Dave Portnoy 9:06 I don't know. The one that they're... that people aren't interested in tits anymore.

Joe Rogan 9:10 Well, that's a fake story.

Dave Portnoy 9:11 I don't know if that's the one. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:12 That's not true.

Dave Portnoy 9:13 I think that, that is... That's a ridiculous conclusion. Like just because a business that has girls, you know, with, uh, owl eyes over their tits-

Joe Rogan 9:22 I don't know how they get away with it. I've always wondered that in this, like, culture, basically-

Dave Portnoy 9:27 Hooters?

Joe Rogan 9:27 ... where it's, where you can just hire on looks.

Dave Portnoy 9:29 (smacks lips) Yeah. That is true, right? But don't, don't they do that in strip clubs too?

Joe Rogan 9:34 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 9:35 I mean, they kind of do.

Joe Rogan 9:36 (smacks lips) Yeah. But I don't know how, like-

Dave Portnoy 9:38 Yeah, there's no equality in strip clubs. They're all in-

Joe Rogan 9:40 No, some are better than others, but yeah, it's based on looks. Yeah, all that body positivity shit that does-

Dave Portnoy 9:45 Out the window.

Joe Rogan 9:45 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 9:45 So how... You figure, like how do they get away with it? How does a restaurant get away with it?

Joe Rogan 9:49 Uh, it's a good question. But it's the same thing in like those Chippendale shows.

Dave Portnoy 9:53 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 9:54 It's... Yeah. I mean, that's what you're selling. If that's what you're selling-

Dave Portnoy 9:57 You get away with it.

Joe Rogan 9:58 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 9:58 That must be the case.

Joe Rogan 9:59 It is the ca-... It got... I mean, but it's not with models anymore. Like now you can be an obese model.

Dave Portnoy 10:05 Well, that... Yes.

Joe Rogan 10:06 But that's also because you're selling clothes to people that are obese.

Dave Portnoy 10:10 Well-

Joe Rogan 10:10 Because there's a lot of people that are overweight and you can-

Dave Portnoy 10:12 Correct.

Joe Rogan 10:12 ... sell them clothes and... I guess it's good to have an overweight model because if you are an overweight person, you buy clothes like, "Oh, that would look good on me. It looks good on her."

Dave Portnoy 10:21 Yeah. It's half, it's half public pressure and half business because like Victoria's Secret got basically bullied out of their fashion show and their entire model by only having like m- uh, like the perfect Victoria's Secret Angels. They had to go plus size. Now, they did that because of public pressure or because of business decision or kind of both? You know, where they stuck to their guns of like, "Our business is killing it. We don't care what you say." I don't know.

Joe Rogan 10:50 I wonder. I bet it enhanced their business to have plus size.

Dave Portnoy 10:53 Plus... Correct. So-

Joe Rogan 10:54 It's probably a good, good business move.

Dave Portnoy 10:55 Are they doing it right? Are they doing it... I'm one of those guys, I don't think there's any s- uh, I forget the word that I'm gonna say. Um, altruism. I don't think there's an altruistic act in the world. I think every single thing somebody does is... E- even if it just makes you feel good, well, that's not altruistic.

Joe Rogan 11:13 Right. Yeah. I've said that before about being kind and generous, that it makes you feel good. It's actually good for you too.

Dave Portnoy 11:20 Correct.

Joe Rogan 11:20 But it's still kind and generous. It's like just because like someone enjoys it doesn't mean it's not altruistic. It's just that there is a benefit to the person that does it too. The... I, I think a lot of people have this idea of altruism that you only, uh, you're only benefiting the person you're helping, and that's the only real altruism. But I think it's... You're also... Yeah. I mean, it, it benefits you, but it's... It benefits you and it just... It feels good. It's like, I think people look at... (smacks lips) When people have

Joe Rogan 11:50 ulterior motives, if someone has a... Like, like charities bother me when I find out that the people behind the charities are making millions of dollars.

Dave Portnoy 11:58 That's the worst thing in the world.

Joe Rogan 11:59 That is scary.

Dave Portnoy 12:00 So-

Joe Rogan 12:00 That freaks me out.

Dave Portnoy 12:01 W- we've almost... So we've done a lot of charity through... And obviously, anytime you say do charity, it, it is self-enhancing. But we've done a ton of charity and it started... We did it with, um...

Narrator 12:10 ... Boston Marathon. So we were in Boston at the time of the bombings. That's the first time we did it, and we don't really ever give our money to anybody else. We control it. We give it direct to the people because of what you said. Like, I don't trust charities for the most part.

Joe Rogan 12:23 Yeah. There's just too much overhead.

Narrator 12:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:26 I mean, when you give to charities, there's a, there's a list of charities that you can find online where, like, you can see what their overhead is and how much money actually gets to the people, and it's a very small percentage in most of them.

Narrator 12:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:38 What's, like, the lowest charity in terms of, like, the worst charity for, like, you give them money and how much of it actually goes to the charity? Because some of them are pretty good, but, man, some of them are shockingly bad. Like, you know, 10%.

Narrator 12:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:56 Like, which is crazy. You know, when you got executives making six figures, and...

Narrator 13:00 Yeah. It, it, well, it becomes a business.

Joe Rogan 13:02 Yeah.

Narrator 13:02 It's no longer, like, charity.

Joe Rogan 13:04 Yeah, that's real common though. Like, a lot of people freaked out when the Black Lives Matter people were buying mansions and shit (laughs) .

Narrator 13:11 Yep. Well, I mean-

Joe Rogan 13:11 You know?

Narrator 13:11 ... rightfully so. Make-A-Wish.

Joe Rogan 13:13 Oh, my God, look at this. The name game.

Narrator 13:16 Yikes.

Joe Rogan 13:16 "A very commonly known and respected group is the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This organization spends the vast majority of its donations on children. Kid Wish Network. However, it spends only three cents of every dollar collected on kids. But their website and solicitations are designed to look and sound like Make-A-Wish. In fact, they count on confusion to gather contributions." What?

Narrator 13:41 Do, uh, do we just bury Make-A-Wish? I hope not.

13:43 No, it's not Make-A-Wish. It's this, this Kid's Wish Network-

13:46 Oh. Oh.

13:46 ... is the one that's copying Make-A-Wish.

Joe Rogan 13:48 Kid's Wish Network.

Narrator 13:49 Put it on the record, we're not-

Joe Rogan 13:49 Okay, so this is addicting.

Narrator 13:50 ... we're not burying Make-A-Wish.

Joe Rogan 13:51 Make-A-Wish is a very respected group. That organization spends the vast majority of its donations. But the Kid's Wish Network spends only three cents of every dollar collected on kids.

Narrator 14:01 Well, that just sounds like a, a group that may be trying to trick people.

Joe Rogan 14:04 It is. Yeah, so they're designed to m- look and sound like Make-A-Wish, 'cause it's the cutest.

Narrator 14:10 You got a, you got a special spot in hell if you're doing that.

Joe Rogan 14:12 Yeah, that's evil shit. Three cents on every dollar?

Narrator 14:15 And you're using a name.

Joe Rogan 14:17 Yeah.

Narrator 14:17 I'm surprised. I don't know how you get away with that.

Joe Rogan 14:20 Yeah. The Kid's Wish Network.

Narrator 14:22 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:22 Yeah, well, what the fuck?

Narrator 14:23 Make-A-Wish, Kid's Wish.

Joe Rogan 14:24 Three cents of every dollar? Yeah, there, there's a hustle in, in advertising like that. There's a, there's definitely a hustle in some charities.

Narrator 14:31 Yeah, I don't know how that wouldn't be a copyright.

Joe Rogan 14:34 It should be.

Narrator 14:35 Maybe we just blew the lid off that.

Joe Rogan 14:37 I hope we did.

Narrator 14:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:38 Yeah, 'cause you get something in the mail, Kid's Wish Network. You're like, "Oh, I wanna help these kids."

Narrator 14:42 And you may think it's Make-A-Wish.

Joe Rogan 14:44 Yeah, which is a great organization.

Narrator 14:45 Great.

Joe Rogan 14:46 Yeah, it's a...

Narrator 14:47 Which we almost just buried.

Joe Rogan 14:49 Not really (laughs) .

Narrator 14:49 Well, we were.

Joe Rogan 14:50 We were close (laughs) .

Narrator 14:51 We were one (laughs) , we were one quick clear up there.

Joe Rogan 14:54 Yeah.

Narrator 14:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:56 Yeah, well, that's why they, they do it that way, so they can, they can trick you thinking that they're a part of that. There's so many of those organizations. So that's, that's, like, kind of a fake charity.

Narrator 15:06 (whistles)

Joe Rogan 15:06 But, like, for, like, let's go to, like, a Red Cross. Like, how much of the money, like, if you donate to the Red Cross, how much of it actually goes to charitable interests?

Narrator 15:16 Do you care about anything you say?

Joe Rogan 15:19 In what way?

Narrator 15:20 Like, I have one off the top of my head. I don't wanna say it because I, I've heard many times that it's not great with donating, but I'm afraid to say it.

Joe Rogan 15:27 Like, what is that? "The Red Cross is proud that an average of 90 cents of every dollar spent invest in delivering care and comfort to those in need. The remaining 10 cents help to keep the entire Red Cross running by supporting routine but indispensable day-to-day business operations." That's fucking great.

Narrator 15:43 Can I say one? And what, what-

Joe Rogan 15:45 Yeah. Yeah.

Narrator 15:45 ... what if I...

Joe Rogan 15:46 Red Cross is fucking great.

Narrator 15:47 This, yeah, Red Cross. I, I have one-

Joe Rogan 15:49 That's great.

Narrator 15:49 ... that I know, that I've heard is not great.

15:52 I'll check.

Joe Rogan 15:52 What's the name?

Narrator 15:53 Wounded Warriors.

Joe Rogan 15:54 Wounded Warriors?

Narrator 15:55 Yep.

Joe Rogan 15:56 Really?

Narrator 15:56 That's the one and why I didn't say it, but I love military causes. We've... But that's one I've heard is not ideal with getting most of the money out.

Joe Rogan 16:03 Let's find out. Yeah. I mean-

Narrator 16:06 I apologize in advance if that's incorrect information.

Joe Rogan 16:09 Uh... We'll just edit it out just to avoid trouble if it's incorrect.

Narrator 16:14 It does, it does, it does say it has a good rating, but it also says scandal, and I have to investigate what scandal means, I guess.

16:18 Like, we-

Joe Rogan 16:19 Scandal.

Narrator 16:19 ... we, we move to, um... We, we, well, we've done a bunch. We did Head- we do Headstrong, um, Fisher House.

Joe Rogan 16:27 "Wounded Warrior Project's top execs, execs fired ame-" Oh, boy. "Wounded Warrior Project's top execs fired amid lavish spending scandal." Fuck.

Narrator 16:37 So, it's something there, uh...

16:39 What is the, uh... Oh, it's got Adblocker? These motherfuckers. Hmm, C-E-O... So, it might've been just the people that were running it.

Joe Rogan 16:49 Could be.

Narrator 16:49 "They were fired by the charity's board amid criticisms about how it spent more than 800 million in donations over the last four years. The development was confirmed by Abernathy McGregor, a public relations firm hired to represent the veteran's charity. The best effectuate these changes, to best effectuate these changes and help restore trust to the organization amongst all constituents, sees WWP serves the board determined the organization would benefit from new leadership," blah, blah, blah. What does it, what would, what happened though? What, what'd those guys do?

17:23 Uh...

Joe Rogan 17:23 They said-

Narrator 17:23 And what, when was this article?

17:24 ... they were fi- so this is 2016. Uh, it says they were fired for, uh, how they sp-

17:30 There were-

17:30 Fired by the board for criticisms on how they spent $800 million in donations.

Joe Rogan 17:33 Right. But did, did, does it say that they stole it? Like-

Narrator 17:37 Uh...

Joe Rogan 17:37 ... no. Just say they spent-

Narrator 17:38 There it is. "Non-profit watchdog, Charity Navigator, says Wounded Warrior Project spends just 60% of its budget on veterans."

Joe Rogan 17:44 Hmm.

Narrator 17:46 "The Marine Corps' Law Enforcement Foundation provides more than 98% to veterans."

Joe Rogan 17:51 Wow. Yeah, it's a, it's a-

Narrator 17:54 Now, maybe it changed since then.

Joe Rogan 17:55 Yeah, maybe it did. And also, I'd like to know, like, why. Like, maybe, maybe there's some logistical explanation for why it, they have to spend so much money. I mean, what, what does that mean? I don't know.

Narrator 18:06 Because that's a cause. You hear the name.

Joe Rogan 18:08 Yeah.

Narrator 18:08 And it's, like, "We've donated tons of different millio-" That's someone you wanna get behind right off the bat.

Joe Rogan 18:13 Of course.

Narrator 18:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:13 Just the way it says.

Narrator 18:14 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 18:15 Yeah. Uh, the same with, like, Make-A-Wish. "Oh, kids."

Narrator 18:18 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 18:19 Yeah.

Narrator 18:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:19 For sure. Dying kids?

Narrator 18:20 Yep.

Joe Rogan 18:21 Yeah. But that's the, the problem with fucking sleazy people. It's like they'll hide behind bu- I mean, that's-

Narrator 18:27 You hear a lot of athlete ones, obviously.

Dave Portnoy 18:29 ... like, the Brett Favre stuff's crazy.

Joe Rogan 18:31 (clicks tongue) Yeah, I didn't look into that that much, because I'm not, I'm not the biggest football fan, but it looked pretty sad.

Dave Portnoy 18:37 Yes, very sad from what it seems. Like, uh, the money that should have been going to the state was going to build a, uh, a volleyball court at the school because his daughter played volleyball.

Joe Rogan 18:47 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 18:48 Not great.

Joe Rogan 18:49 D- did... And he was aware of all that?

Dave Portnoy 18:51 Certainly seems that way.

Joe Rogan 18:53 (clicks tongue) Doesn't he also have, like, probably pretty significant CTE? Th- there was a thing about Brett Favre, but, like, he thinks he's had a thousand concussions.

Dave Portnoy 19:02 A thousand?

Joe Rogan 19:03 Yeah. Wasn't... That was him, right?

Narrator 19:04 Yeah. It was because just, like, every time... Any shaking could be a concussion, so he was considering, like, the definition of concussion to be like, "Well, then I've had thousands of them."

Joe Rogan 19:12 Yeah. It was... He was talking about how many, how many times he's got his bell rang.

Narrator 19:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:15 That is a concussion for the most part. It's, uh, certainly close to it.

Dave Portnoy 19:20 Is... I've always had this question. You're an MMA guy, obviously. So the NFL, the concussion thing, I think, is because if they start acknowledging it really, they got, they're, they gotta go all the way back in time and deal with ex-players and things like that.

Joe Rogan 19:34 Mm-hmm.

Dave Portnoy 19:34 MMA guys get hit in the face every two seconds.

Joe Rogan 19:36 Yep.

Dave Portnoy 19:37 Are they just released? Is that why no one ever talks about concussions in MMA, but in football, it's a huge discussion?

Joe Rogan 19:44 I think in football it was never known, whereas in boxing, it was always Punch-Drunk. Everybody always knew about it. So, I think you thought going into it that this was a risk that you were taking if you wanted to be a fighter. So, the... I think the thought b- behind it was, "Look, everybody knows what happened to Muhammad Ali. Everybody saw Joe Frazier at the end of his career. Everybody saw all these guys who could barely talk, who used to be these great, great fighters." And everybody who was aware, who's in the game said, "Look, you gotta talk to your fighters when it's time to leave, and you gotta be aware of the risks, but you know what you're getting into when you get into it." You know, just like y- you know, if a, a guy is a BMX jumper and he does those flips on dirt bikes and then he falls and fucking breaks his neck, like-

Dave Portnoy 20:33 Yep.

Joe Rogan 20:33 ... you know he knew that that was, that was... It's on the menu.

Dave Portnoy 20:37 Yeah, I get it.

Joe Rogan 20:38 It's possible.

Dave Portnoy 20:38 You, you, you know the risk going into it, where football they-

Joe Rogan 20:41 I think they didn't know.

Dave Portnoy 20:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:42 I don't think people really knew-

Dave Portnoy 20:44 And he hit it.

Joe Rogan 20:45 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 20:45 Goodell hit it.

Joe Rogan 20:46 Yes. Yeah. How did they hide it?

Dave Portnoy 20:50 Cl- I mean, they just... I believe they buried the surveys, at least from that movie Concussion with Will Smith.

Joe Rogan 20:56 Yeah. I didn't watch that movie.

Dave Portnoy 20:58 Yeah, it-

Joe Rogan 20:59 But I've seen that guy, the original, uh, doctor that was the motivation of that movie.

Dave Portnoy 21:05 Yeah. I think they buried, buried a lot of it, released their own, control it. I mean, I, I... I've had my issues with the NFL. I think they're, like, maybe the most powerful group there is.

Joe Rogan 21:16 It says, "Various players have filed lawsuits against the league for the concussions, accusing the league of hiding information-"

Dave Portnoy 21:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:22 "... that linked to head trauma and permanent brain damage, Alzheimer's disease, and dementia. Some teams choose not to draft certain players in the NFL draft due to their past concussion history." (clears throat)

Dave Portnoy 21:32 And I think that's part of the problem, moving forward with it a little bit, is, if you admit it or change, you have this laundry list of lawsuits that can-

Joe Rogan 21:42 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 21:42 ... come forward then.

Joe Rogan 21:43 Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. But, but the more the information comes out, it kind of, kind of traps them. So, like, what are you gonna do? Like, you have to admit that all those other players...

Dave Portnoy 21:57 Yeah. Well, I think, uh... According to what we just read, and from the way I understand it, you gotta slant it like it's new information.

Joe Rogan 22:04 Mm-hmm.

Dave Portnoy 22:04 Like, "Well, we didn't know, so what... You can't... We didn't know that, so how can you hold us responsible?" If they can prove, well, you did know that and you hit it, then I think you got a lot of issues.

Joe Rogan 22:12 When did they know? When did they first find out about it?

Dave Portnoy 22:15 I think a lot of that's in the movie, but there's different studies and-

Joe Rogan 22:18 "The NFL tried to intimidate scientists studying the link between pro football and traumatic brain injury." And this is in 2017. "Rather than honestly deal with this burgeoning s- concussion problem, the National Football League went after the reputation of the first doctor to link the sport to degenerative brain disease. He named chronic traumatic encephalopathy."

Dave Portnoy 22:39 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 22:40 So, it was back in 2002, and that's-

Dave Portnoy 22:42 I think that's the guy that-

Joe Rogan 22:43 ... the doctor.

Dave Portnoy 22:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:44 Yeah, Dr. Bennet, uh, Omalu.

Dave Portnoy 22:46 Hmm. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:49 Yeah, it's real, man. And I think with football it's probably even more pronounced, because if you think about what they're doing, they're running full clip into each other, so you have these giant super athletes, 300-pound guys capable of generating preposterous amounts of power and force, and they're just fucking... (grunting)

Dave Portnoy 23:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:10 Boom!

Dave Portnoy 23:11 The flip side, I think 99% would sign up for that anyways. Like, I've always said that. If you told me I could be one of those people. Now, maybe not now, because I... I don't know about you, like, I ne- I didn't dream I'd have the life I had now, but for 99.9% of Americans, I would think being a star athlete football player is worth that risk. I think most of them, even if you said, "You may get a concussion. You may get brain damage from doing this," they'd still probably do it. I mean, you live a life, uh, that you really can't compare to from what? Your, when you're 15 years old or whenever you start being that athlete to well into your 40s. Yeah, the end of your life is gonna suck, but not people... People don't look forward to that. Like, people don't worry about what's gonna happen to them generally when you're 20 at 50.

Joe Rogan 24:05 Yeah, they don't think about it. They also think about-

Dave Portnoy 24:08 Warren Buffett quote, "Content to be living and dying in three quarters time."

Joe Rogan 24:12 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 24:12 That's that. It's like, live your fullest when you can live.

Joe Rogan 24:15 Yeah, and that life, I mean, the, the life of living a star NFL football player's life, that's a crazy life. You're driving around in a Rolls-Royce. You got diamonds on your fingers.

Dave Portnoy 24:24 You got everything.

Joe Rogan 24:25 You... Like Joe Namath showing up with a fur coat on.

Dave Portnoy 24:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:27 Like, you're the fucking man.

Dave Portnoy 24:29 So, i- if someone said you can do that but at age-... 50, you're gonna have unbelievable problems.

Joe Rogan 24:36 People don't think about that.

Dave Portnoy 24:37 And I would s- generally, I even now, that ... Most people would sign that contract. If you told me I was still cold calling my nine to five, I'd be like, "Sign me up."

Joe Rogan 24:47 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 24:47 I'm not worrying about 50.

Joe Rogan 24:49 Yeah. And they also think, "By the time I'm 50, someone's gonna figure out how to fix that."

Dave Portnoy 24:54 Yes.

Joe Rogan 24:54 There's always like this thought of like medical interventions and stem cells.

Dave Portnoy 24:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:59 And-

Dave Portnoy 24:59 I guess-

Joe Rogan 25:00 ... hyperbaric chambers.

Dave Portnoy 25:01 Everything.

Joe Rogan 25:01 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 25:02 Your, your office.

Joe Rogan 25:02 Mm-hmm. (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 25:03 (laughs) You're coming up to Joe Rogan's office.

Joe Rogan 25:06 Yeah, I think that, um ... I think that people don't generally think about the risks in terms of the future. They think of, "How do I feel right now?" You know? Es- especially fighters. And the glory of winning a fight, the glory of getting your hand raised, it's so above and beyond normal life experiences that even guys who have, you know, taken some shots and, and probably do feel the effects, they take a few months off and they wanna get back in there again, because it's so much more exciting than regular life.

Dave Portnoy 25:38 I've been blessed at this point with things that I never thought I'd be able to do, ever. Walking in with Paddy, I got to walk in with Paddy in London when the crowd was chanting his name. That is still, like, maybe the best thing that I've gotten to do.

Joe Rogan 25:54 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 25:54 I can't imagine being a fighter, like, in the tunnel, coming out. There is nothing really else like it in sports, in anything, the walkout.

Joe Rogan 26:02 No, there's nothing like it. Especially for-

Dave Portnoy 26:04 I saw you, by the way, roll your eyes when Paddy won.

Joe Rogan 26:07 Shouldn't have won.

Dave Portnoy 26:08 I thought that, I thought it was a close decision.

Joe Rogan 26:10 Uh, I thought Jared won. I taught- I thought Jared Gordon won that fight. But-

Dave Portnoy 26:15 Did you see-

Joe Rogan 26:16 It was a good fight. It w- it certainly wasn't a blowout. It wasn't one of those fights where there's no fucking way. Uh, it was, it was a close fight.

Dave Portnoy 26:25 Did you see the fight, uh, Twitter war I got in with, um, a guy after the fact?

Joe Rogan 26:29 No.

Dave Portnoy 26:30 Justin Gaethje.

Joe Rogan 26:31 Oh, Justin Gaethje? Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 26:33 Yeah. He and I, he threatened to beat me up.

Joe Rogan 26:35 Well, he definitely could. (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 26:36 That's, by the way, that's not saying much. Like, your producer could beat me up. So I don't ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:41 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 26:41 That's not much of a threat. I've never been in a physical altercation in my life.

Joe Rogan 26:45 He's the most violent man in MMA. Justin Gaethje's a fucking savage.

Dave Portnoy 26:49 Is, is he capable of beating up a civilian?

Joe Rogan 26:53 Would he? No, he wouldn't do that.

Dave Portnoy 26:54 That's good to know.

Joe Rogan 26:55 No, he wouldn't do that. He's not stupid.

Dave Portnoy 26:57 'Cause th- this is what happened. After the fight, Paddy in the ring, "Fight of the night." He said, "Fight of the night." The third round, they didn't throw a punch. It wasn't fight of the night. But he's, he was talking fight of the night. Paddy's our guy.

Joe Rogan 27:09 Well, he's just a fun guy.

Dave Portnoy 27:10 Yeah, so we're saying-

Joe Rogan 27:11 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 27:11 ... "Fight of the night, fight of the night." He got mad at us. He's like, "You're trying to steal money from the actual fighters who won fight of the night." We're like, "No, we didn't." People went into his background and, and ... Wait, what did he say exactly? What was his quote to me? He said, uh, embarrassing ... What was the ... No. He ... Something, "We gotta be better. We don't stand for this." People, the comments littered. He was out with like a third world, like, dictator.

Joe Rogan 27:41 Oh, the Chechnyan guy.

Dave Portnoy 27:44 Yeah, so I hit him back with that. I'm like-

Joe Rogan 27:45 Oh my God.

Dave Portnoy 27:46 ... uh, uh, you know, we just said Paddy was fight of the night. You were out with a d- the Chechnyan dictator, who's one of the worst guys on the planet. One thing led to another, he threatened to beat me up.

Joe Rogan 27:56 Mm.

Dave Portnoy 27:57 Yeah, yeah, Bar Stool guys (laughs) , this makes the Bar Stool guys look really bad.

Joe Rogan 28:01 Uh, bending over for the lad. Fight of the night. Bar Stool can give him 50K, but that performance will never get you a bonus in the octagon. Eh. Eh.

Dave Portnoy 28:13 I quote tweeted, "This makes the Bar Stool- Stool guys look really bad." I said, "S- ... " Uh, it's probably there, so, oh yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:21 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 28:21 There it is.

Joe Rogan 28:23 People are telling me that Justin Gaethje was recently seen hanging out with a warlord accused of brutal crimes against humanity, so it's hypocritical for him to say we look bad supporting Paddy when he supports a warlord. I'm gonna take the high road plus not mention it. (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 28:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:39 Yeah, and then he got mad at you for that?

Dave Portnoy 28:40 Yeah. Yeah, he's like, "I didn't, I wasn't, I didn't do that. Find me a picture of me with the warlord." But he does have a picture with his son at his birthday party.

Joe Rogan 28:49 Oh.

Dave Portnoy 28:51 So he maybe ... He got paid to go there with some other guys.

Joe Rogan 28:54 There's a lot of guys who got paid to go there. A lot of guys go there.

Dave Portnoy 28:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:58 He's been doing that for years. He's a big MMA fan and he brings over champions and I guess they hang out and train.

Dave Portnoy 29:04 What are your thoughts on that?

Joe Rogan 29:06 I don't know exactly what he's done or what he is, uh, accused of doing.

Dave Portnoy 29:11 I think it's pretty bad stuff.

Joe Rogan 29:12 But, you know, it's Chechnya is a d- a brutal part of the world and there's some fucking crazy shit that's happened in Chechnya. I mean, that's where Khamzat Chimaev is from. It's, uh ... And Khamzat trains with that guy. There's videos of him like wrestling with him and grappling with him.

Dave Portnoy 29:28 Yup.

Joe Rogan 29:28 And, uh, I know that he's been involved in, uh, with a bunch of MMA fighters. That's his thing. You know, he's a, he's a fucking savage dude. He brings over savages.

Dave Portnoy 29:40 It's a savage game.

Joe Rogan 29:41 Yeah. Yeah, the warlord game. (laughs) Shit. (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 29:44 Yeah. No, the warlord third, that's a savage game.

Joe Rogan 29:47 Yeah, it's a, that's an interesting decision, right, to decide to go over there? And many fighters have gone over there.

Dave Portnoy 29:53 And others haven't.

Joe Rogan 29:54 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 29:54 Like, when we did that, some fighters were like, "Well ..." I think, um-

Joe Rogan 29:58 Sugar Sean O'Malley.

Dave Portnoy 29:58 S- yeah, he said he got offered. Yeah, he wouldn't go.

Joe Rogan 30:01 Sugar Sean's the man. Yeah, he's like, "Fuck that. I'm not fucking going there." Yeah, I mean, how much is he offering you?

Dave Portnoy 30:09 Probably a lot, I would guess.

Joe Rogan 30:10 I wonder. Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 30:12 Because you have to know ...

Joe Rogan 30:14 You gotta know.

Dave Portnoy 30:15 That that ... Right.

Joe Rogan 30:16 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 30:17 I mean, he's out there shooting guns on his, like, ranch or whatever.

Joe Rogan 30:19 Yeah, it's not like ... He's a warlord.

Dave Portnoy 30:22 Yes.

Joe Rogan 30:22 There's not-

Dave Portnoy 30:22 There's no other way around it.

Joe Rogan 30:23 It's not a c- there's no confusion.

Dave Portnoy 30:26 (laughs) None. None.

Joe Rogan 30:27 You're like, maybe he's not. Maybe it's propaganda. You know? It's like when you hear things about Zelenskyy, you know, you're like, "Well, he seem- he started off as a comedian." You know, like there's like, there's room, there's wiggle room. He's being attacked.

Dave Portnoy 30:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:40 What ... Is there something where Ukraine is cracking down on the media?Somebody sent me something about the UKaine, uh, Ukraine trying to control the media now.

Dave Portnoy 30:50 Are we anti-Ukraine?

Joe Rogan 30:52 They're, they're taking steps... No. No.

Dave Portnoy 30:53 Oh.

Joe Rogan 30:54 No.

Dave Portnoy 30:54 Why would they crack down on the media?

Joe Rogan 30:55 Well, I think because of the war effort. You know, if the media is saying things like, "Oh, you know, Ukraine is corrupt," or, "Oh, Ukraine has done this." (clears throat) Critics say a new media law signed by Zelenskyy could restrict press freedom in Ukraine. Lawmakers who passed the bill said it would help meet European Union conditions for membership, but journalists have denounced it as a move towards censorship. Oh. Imagine if you have to, to join the European Union, you have to fucking... What is that? Some of the law's most stringent provisions were relaxed in response to the criticism. Serious concerns about the independence of the regulatory body remain, domestic and international news media groups said on Friday, noting that they were still receiving details of the final 279-page legislation. The law expands the authority of Ukraine's state broadcasting regulator to cover the online and print news media. That's not good. Previous drafts gave the regulator the power to fine news media outlets, revoke their licenses, temporarily block certain online outlets without a court order, and request that social media platforms and search giants like Google remove content that violates the law. Well, you know, they're doing that over in America. I mean, we found out that because of the Twitter files, when Elon released all the Twitter files, they found that the United States government was actively trying to suppress the voices of certain people that were saying things they found disagreeable on Twitter.

Dave Portnoy 32:20 Yeah, to me-

Joe Rogan 32:21 Like, that's a fact.

Dave Portnoy 32:21 ... yeah. I... Now, I got attacked for this take. I said that was like a... And I get it, obviously, but I assume... That was like a "no, duh" to me. Like, I, I, that's what I expected. Like, I wasn't... Like, I get suppressed. Like, the second Elon took over, my Twitter... And I'm sure... I don't know if you use Twitter, but mine went way up. Like-

Joe Rogan 32:43 I got 900,000 new followers-

Dave Portnoy 32:45 Yes.

Joe Rogan 32:45 ... in like a couple of weeks.

Dave Portnoy 32:46 Correct. So I-

Joe Rogan 32:46 It was crazy.

Dave Portnoy 32:47 ... I didn't get to that, but I, I... Direct up arrow.

Joe Rogan 32:49 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 32:49 Like, I went from couldn't gain a follower to-

Joe Rogan 32:51 Right.

Dave Portnoy 32:52 ... up. So-

Joe Rogan 32:52 You're being suppressed.

Dave Portnoy 32:53 I, it... And I knew I was-

Joe Rogan 32:54 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 32:54 ... so I wasn't surprised. That's why I was like, "Oh, that's not surprising if you're paying any attention." I got attacked b- uh, people don't pay any attention. They acted like I was on the left on that. It's like, no, I was one of the ones being suppressed.

Joe Rogan 33:05 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 33:05 I'm just saying, yeah, no shit. That's what they do.

Joe Rogan 33:08 Yeah, I don't complain about that shit, but I'm definitely aware of it. My Instagram used to move way quicker.

Dave Portnoy 33:13 Same.

Joe Rogan 33:14 And then something happened a while back where it's slowed down by a significant margin, the amount of growth. And I'm like, how do you complain when you have 16 million followers? Like, do you really complain that you're not... That you're somehow or another suppressed? Or am I really suppressed? Or maybe it's because I'm not doing Reels. You know, what... Maybe this is like a leg- logical reason for it. I don't know. I mean, I think there's a lot of fucking algorithms and weird shit at play when it comes to, uh, Instagram and all-

Dave Portnoy 33:41 I think there's-

Joe Rogan 33:41 ... those social media companies.

Dave Portnoy 33:42 ... also, it's not only the handpicking of people, but there... If people complain, if they just... "This is offensive," "This is whatever," there's a certain number of those that will trigger you to get pushed down. Now, for whatever reason, one thing that also, I think, is kind of self-evident, if you're talking left and right, the left is far more savvy, like with social media.

Joe Rogan 34:07 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 34:07 Like, the, the right will generally just wants to sling it out. They'll, they'll let you say anything, and they're not gonna complain, and they're not gonna try to violate, like, "Ooh, that's a violation." Complaint. The left will, and it's a good tactic to get the right off.

Joe Rogan 34:21 But it's also because the left is in control of all of the social media platforms-

Dave Portnoy 34:26 100%.

Joe Rogan 34:26 ... where the right has nothing.

Dave Portnoy 34:28 100%.

Joe Rogan 34:29 I mean, there's no social media platform. I mean, there's people that are trying to accuse Elon Musk of being right-wing, but I think that's just because Elon Musk has said that Democrats are out of their fucking minds.

Dave Portnoy 34:38 He's said what I've said in many different way... Now, I don't know how I... I go back and forth on how I feel about Elon. Sometimes I think he's genius. Other times, like, he may be getting a little full of himself. Like, I don't think he bought Twitter for the reasons he's saying he did, to be some great humanitarian. I think he could... Tried to... He bought it because he got mad almost, and then he tried to get out of it. But they held... That's the other thing. Like, stop complaining on the left. They... He tried to withdraw from buying Twitter, and the CEO or whatever, stuck him to the price because it made money and they got a great price, so-

Joe Rogan 35:09 They got a ridiculous price.

Dave Portnoy 35:11 Ridiculous.

Joe Rogan 35:11 He gave them way more than what it's worth, and he had a mindset of going into it... There was two things going on. One, he believed that it's, it's very bad for democracy in general when you have suppression of free speech. And I agree with that. He really means that. And he sees it happening to him, right? And so he sees it happening to people that he knows and people whose voices he's respected. And he saw that like, uh, the Babylon Bee got banned-

Dave Portnoy 35:37 Which is crazy.

Joe Rogan 35:38 ... which is crazy-

Dave Portnoy 35:39 Crazy.

Joe Rogan 35:39 ... for calling Rachel Levine-

Dave Portnoy 35:41 Crazy.

Joe Rogan 35:41 ... the Man of the Year-

Dave Portnoy 35:42 Yeah, cra-

Joe Rogan 35:42 ... which is, a biological male, calling him the Male of the Year, like that-

Dave Portnoy 35:45 Crazy. That, that's crazy.

Joe Rogan 35:47 Yeah, that, that's so offensive that-

Dave Portnoy 35:50 The Babylon Bee getting kicked off, crazy, yes.

Joe Rogan 35:52 Yeah, so he was like, "Well, that's enough." And then the reason why he tried to pull out of it, he's like, "They're not giving me data on the actual amount of fake accounts."

Dave Portnoy 36:04 Correct.

Joe Rogan 36:04 There was an... A former FBI guy. Pull up that story, Jim. This former FBI guy estimated the actual amount of fake accounts on Twitter, and he was like, "It could be as high as 80%." So, if you're buying something, and they say, "Well, it's 95% people, it's 5% bots, but we're trying to figure that out." And he's like, "How are you trying to figure that out? Show me," and they won't show him. And he's like, "Show me your data that shows you."

Dave Portnoy 36:26 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:26 And they show him 100 accounts. They went over 100 accounts. Uh, over 80% of Twitter accounts are likely bots, former FBI security specialist, which is fucking wild. So, if that's like 20% of the people on Twitter are actual humans and 80% of it is propaganda, either by publicity firms or, um, Super PACs or whoever the fuck is trying to manipulate narratives. And one of the things that you saw with Elon was like, there's a bunch of tweets that people retweeted. They're from wildly different accounts-... that were all the exact same tweet. And he's like, "These are bots." Like these are-

Dave Portnoy 37:02 There's 1,000% bots.

Joe Rogan 37:04 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 37:04 I mean, I was so phased-

Joe Rogan 37:05 So many of them.

Dave Portnoy 37:05 ... like you, I couldn't even... If I posted something, it was all bots.

Joe Rogan 37:08 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 37:08 100%. So I don't dis-... There's a million percent bots. They probably weren't giving the right information, but he did want to pull out.

Joe Rogan 37:16 Well, I think if they found out that information, Twitter would be worth substantially less.

Dave Portnoy 37:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 37:23 And that's also what he was trying to do. He was tr-... I think he was trying to probably talk them into a better price. Because if you, if you find out that a company is 95% horseshit-

Dave Portnoy 37:34 Right.

Joe Rogan 37:34 ... or, or 80% horseshit and 20% what they say it is, like if that gets out, that's-

Dave Portnoy 37:39 But he also-

Joe Rogan 37:39 ... devastating to the company.

Dave Portnoy 37:40 100%. He also has such fuck-you money though. He was upset about the suppressing, and I'd probably be the same way if I had that type of money. It's like, "I'm just gonna fucking buy you."

Joe Rogan 37:50 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 37:50 Like, and that's essentially what he did. And I do think, like you said, the bots and going back and forth, he wanted to get out. That's the one thing, though, the Twitter approach where everyone's like, "I'm gonna get off my..." My, my dad was one of those guys. "I'm leaving Twitter." It's like, "What are you talking about, Dad?"

Joe Rogan 38:03 Why was he leaving Twitter?

Dave Portnoy 38:04 'Cause Elon. My dad-

Joe Rogan 38:05 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 38:05 My, so my dad, which people... My dad is like a, a very liberal guy. Like, hated Trump, hates him, hated him before he became president, just hate him. So I interviewed Trump, and I FaceTimed my da-... I tried to keep it a secret, and I like FaceTimed him when I was doing it, just to see my dad's reaction. He turtled. My dad turtled when he saw. It was like-

Joe Rogan 38:26 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 38:26 ... "Oh, hi."

Joe Rogan 38:26 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 38:26 But I mean, he, he hates him, hates him. But he's one of those guys, and my dad's one of those guys... So it's been interesting with my dad, because I have been relentlessly attacked by the left, and he is a left guy. So we get in these little things. I'm like, "Do you still think the New York Times is, like, unbiased?" And, and he can't answer. He's like, "Well, do you think Fox News is unbiased?" I'm like-

Joe Rogan 38:49 Right.

Dave Portnoy 38:49 ... "No, definitely not, but do you think the New York Times..." He has a very hard time bringing himself to it. But it is eye-opening for him, I think.

Joe Rogan 38:56 I think it's eye-opening for a lot of people. But for a lot of people, for a long time, that informa- that information never got to them. They didn't really know. Th- That's one of the most substantial and significant aspects of Elon buying Twitter, is these files being released, where you're getting to see the actual involvement of intelligence agencies, the actual, like, banned lists and blocked lists and shadowbanned and how they're suppressing people's signals. It's pretty fucking wild shit, and it's almost entirely done to people that are on the right.

Dave Portnoy 39:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:29 The, this... And then the people that are on the left that are dissenters, right, the people that, uh, went along with the Great Barrington Declaration and didn't think that we should shut the country down during the pandemic... And the Great Barrington Declaration was-

Dave Portnoy 39:42 I have no idea what that is.

Joe Rogan 39:43 ... legitimate scientists, like top of the food chain, epidemiologists, virologists, who said that we are handling the pandemic absolutely wrong, and then there was internal emails and memos from Fauci calling to publicly discredit these people, who were legitimate, like absolute top-of-board scientists that were saying that this is not how you handle a, a, a viral pandemic, and that we don't need to do it this way, and they were suppressed.

Dave Portnoy 40:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:12 They were s-

Dave Portnoy 40:12 See, that's one of those issues that will get, I know for a fact, used, suppressed on social media. Like COVID was-

Joe Rogan 40:19 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 40:19 ... the all-time. Like, I went back and forth on it, and... Because I, in the beginning, like the wearing the masks. I was like, "I don't, I don't know if there's science. I don't know if it's true." I do know this, if there's a .00001% chance that you can get COVID or whatever the thing gone, I'll wear a fucking mask. What do I care? It doesn't matter. I don't think they should shut down business. I thought it was totally up to them. So I, I became pretty pro-small business, let people make their own decisions, but that, that slant will hurt you on social media.

Joe Rogan 40:52 Yeah, it would then more than it does now, but as time goes on, more and more information comes out about how deceptive they were about their studies and how many actual risks there are involved in the vaccines and how much damage it did to small businesses and all that shit. When that starts coming out more and more and more, there's so many people that had this, like, dug their heels in stance on what is right and what is wrong, and now they're being forced to reevaluate. And it's also, they're, they're confronted with the overwhelming evidence that pharmaceutical companies have been doing this forever. They've never been honest about stuff. They've always hid information. Not only have they hid information, they've actually... The way they run their studies is so fascinating, because when a sc-... When, when, you know, you hear like, uh, peer-reviewed studies, the, the scientists that have value peer-reviewed studies from pharmaceutical companies don't get the data. They get the review of the data by the pharmaceutical companies, and then they study that.

Dave Portnoy 41:50 So do you trust anybody then? Like, e- even here, we're pulling up articles, and who knows who wrote these articles? I've always said about me, there's articles that we can pull up on me, and I'd read it, and I'd be like, "This guy's Hitler."

Joe Rogan 42:04 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 42:04 Like honestly, they're that bad. You... And if somebody just read it and didn't do it, they'd be like, "This guy... No shit, this guy's the worst guy on the planet."

Joe Rogan 42:11 Right.

Dave Portnoy 42:11 So, who do you-

Joe Rogan 42:12 But that's why freedom of information is so important and freedom of expression is so important, because you've, you've gotta be able to find out what's true and what's not, and the only way is you get differing opinions and differing perspectives. And someone could write a very biased perspective on you, and they're doing it on purpose. It's a hit piece. They're trying to make you look bad. But then someone can write a glowing review that might ignore some of your flaws and some of the things you have done, and that's not real either. So like, you need to sort it out over time, and the only way that gets done is through freedom of information, freedom of expression. And if we don't have that, we're fucked.

Dave Portnoy 42:47 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:47 Because then whoever's in control of the media, whoever's in control of social media or whatever the narrative is, they're the ones who get to dictate what's real and what's not real, and you can convince a lot of fucking people that things aren't true.

Dave Portnoy 43:00 Yeah, so do you try... Like, if you're trying to read up on something, I'm talking now the major, like, outlets. So whether it be a, you go on Twitter, you're, Facebook, but I'm going New York Times, Washington Post, they're one side, Fox News is the other. Is there any place where you're like, "I wanna get a clean slate"?

Joe Rogan 43:18 Not from, uh, I don't think from mainstream media. (sighs) I think, first of all, mainstream media is so controlled by advertising. There's so many... Like, if you know that 75% of all advertising on television is pharmaceutical companies, 75%, that's a big fucking number.

Dave Portnoy 43:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:36 If you think that they are going to have an unbiased, negative perspective on pharmaceutical drugs or the pharmaceutical industry, that's not gonna happen. That, they're gonna suppress that because that's bad for their business. It'll shut them down. If they lost 75% of their advertising, they would fucking go under. Spe- think about a company like CNN, right? CNN is already hemorrhaging money, hemorrhaging viewers. I mean, they've dropped radically since Trump left office, right? If they came out and started attacking pharmaceutical companies and they lost all their ads-

Dave Portnoy 44:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:10 ... then they're, they're fucked. So you're not gonna get a, an unbiased, really honest perspective on anything that has to do with pharmaceutical companies when it comes to CNN or when it comes to any of these mainstream news platforms that rely on pharmaceutical companies for ads. You're just not-

Dave Portnoy 44:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:27 It's like-

Dave Portnoy 44:27 Well, I mean, I don't think any of those are. Uh, the, the ones you just mentioned, I mean, I'm super jaded now at this point, but...

Joe Rogan 44:33 And then you have ideological perspectives. You have the people that are in these audiological camps where you, this is this and that is that, and you can't differ from, you can't, like, have any sort of nuanced perspective or look at people that have a different point of view in a charitable way.

Dave Portnoy 44:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:51 You can't do that because then you're a sympathizer or you're a, you're platforming these bad and evil people and you're carrying water for... There's all these stupid fucking phrases that they like to use.

Dave Portnoy 45:02 It's crazy how quick-

Joe Rogan 45:03 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 45:03 ... they jump. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:04 Yeah. But also, they're fucking dying too. Like all those media companies, uh, they're, no one can trust them anymore. And the reason why no one can trust them anymore is because they're not trustworthy.

Dave Portnoy 45:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:14 It's not, it's like, it's real simple, it's real clear. It's not like fucking, you know...

Dave Portnoy 45:18 So you l- you lashed that cigar with one light-up, huh? (blows smoke)

Joe Rogan 45:23 No, I had to hit it a second time.

Dave Portnoy 45:24 Okay, good.

Joe Rogan 45:25 I hit it with this little lighter. I just, it wasn't as loud. (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 45:29 That's good.

Joe Rogan 45:30 Yeah, it goes out. I think that, uh, you know, it's an interesting time though because it's caused the emergence of, uh-

Dave Portnoy 45:36 You.

Joe Rogan 45:37 Well, the, me, yeah, but also independent journalism. Like guys like Matt Taibbi, guys who were with these corporate news structures who left and now they're doing it on their own. Glenn Greenwald, uh, you know, uh, Krystal and Saagar from Breaking Points. All these kind of people that you can trust because even if you don't agree with them-

Dave Portnoy 45:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 45:55 ... you know they're not lying. That's all I need.

Dave Portnoy 45:57 Same.

Joe Rogan 45:58 So you can, you can have opinions that I don't agree with and I, I 100% support your ability to do that. I don't wanna s- I don't wanna suppress people I don't agree with, but I want you to be honest. I want you tell me what the actual data says and I want... And even if your perspective on that data I don't agree with, at least I know you're telling me the truth. That's all I need. And there's not a lot of that in mainstream media and that's why mainstream media is dying. It's too controll- it's controlled by these corporate interests that really care more about money than they do about anything else. Then, then, like, if you think that, like, The Washington Post or The New York Times is really just about getting out the truth, that's not real.

Dave Portnoy 46:35 No, and those two are extreme examples-

Joe Rogan 46:37 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 46:37 ... at this point.

Joe Rogan 46:38 They're, they have an ideology that they adhere to.

Dave Portnoy 46:40 But I do. And, and what is str- I don't know what the right word is. I, if I wasn't doing what I was doing, I would still, because I don't pay enough close attention, I would still sort of believe The New York Times-

Joe Rogan 46:52 100%.

Dave Portnoy 46:53 ... was like a, a real thing.

Joe Rogan 46:54 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 46:54 I just grew up, New York Times, "Oh yeah, why would they have..."

Joe Rogan 46:57 If I didn't have a podcast and I didn't talk to people all the time and talked to people from different walks of life and d- different perspectives and d- different careers, I would have no idea. I would have no idea. If I was just a comic, I wouldn't, I would kind of vaguely know that they're probably corrupt, you know, vaguely know that they're full of shit. But if I read something and was like, "Oh my God, this is terrible," I would just take it at face-

Dave Portnoy 47:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:19 ... face value.

Dave Portnoy 47:19 Same.

Joe Rogan 47:20 Especially if you have a regular job where you don't have the time to be looking into this shit, you're, you're busy all day and then maybe you have a family and obligations and b- fucking bills that are piling up and you don't have the time to be sorting out whether or not The Washington Post is being honest about gender-affirming care. You know?

Dave Portnoy 47:37 And, uh, on top of that, what, like Twitter is not the real world.

Joe Rogan 47:42 Right.

Dave Portnoy 47:42 It's important, but you step outside, you walk down the street and most people don't even know what's going on at Twitter.

Joe Rogan 47:48 Right.

Dave Portnoy 47:48 They're just, it's, we're in it so you see it and you, you pay attention to what people are saying. But I, I always, if I'm in the center of a controversy or something's going on, I focus like, "Oh my God, the world, everything's happening here." And then you go outside and nobody knows.

Joe Rogan 48:05 I think Twitter's radioactive. I think that you can stay in it and you'll get sick. That's what I think. I think, but if you just visit briefly and get the fuck-

Dave Portnoy 48:13 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 48:13 ... out of there and then take care-

Dave Portnoy 48:14 Just coughing.

Joe Rogan 48:14 ... of yourself, you're gonna be all right. (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 48:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:16 But I don't think it's good for people.

Dave Portnoy 48:18 It's the old, uh, Ricky Gervais, he's like my favorite comedian of all time. He had a quote... Do you like Ricky Gervais?

Joe Rogan 48:24 Yeah, he's great.

Dave Portnoy 48:25 He had, what was the, uh, he has one about Twitter that the, someone posts something in a town square, I'm botching his line, has nothing to do with you but people run up to it just to complain about it. That's kind of it.

Joe Rogan 48:36 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 48:37 It's, uh, his talk, it's an echo chamber. It's t- toxic.

Joe Rogan 48:39 It, it's also, but I think, uh, legit- legitimately bad for mental health to communicate that way. To communicate just through text and it's almost all of it is aggressive and almost all of it is insulting and almost all of it is disparaging of people. The, the, the amount of like anti or negative tweets versus positive tweets, I mean, I wonder if anybody's done a study of that. Like how much negative tweeting versus positive tweeting-

Dave Portnoy 49:00 It's... (laughs) ... probably, I would guess like 90%.

Joe Rogan 49:02 It's probably somewhere like that. It's just bad for you. It's bad for you to ... If you, if you went to a bar, and every time you went to a bar people were fucking arguing and screaming at each other, you'd be like, "Fuck this bar."

Dave Portnoy 49:13 100%.

Joe Rogan 49:13 "This ain't fun. I wanna go have a good time. I don't wanna be around these people." It's- it's not a normal way for human beings to communicate, where they're not looking at each other, across the- a table, having a drink, just s- s- looking at each other as another human.

Dave Portnoy 49:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:27 Appreciating each other as a person, a human being. When you just see text on a screen and you're like, "I'm gonna fuck this guy up," and you go-

Dave Portnoy 49:34 And it's easy to do it.

Joe Rogan 49:36 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 49:36 You can say whatever you want.

Joe Rogan 49:38 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 49:38 And then i- i- there's been plenty of times I've seen examples where someone tracks down, like, the commenter.

Joe Rogan 49:44 Mm-hmm.

Dave Portnoy 49:45 And then the commenter apologizes, goes, "Oh, I didn't know you'd say..." You know? It's a different-

Joe Rogan 49:47 Yeah. Of course.

Dave Portnoy 49:48 It's a different mentality when you get to that.

Joe Rogan 49:49 Of course, of course. It's not normal. Humans are supposed to communicate with words in front of each other. That's how we're supposed to commu- That's how we're- we evolved. That's what we're capable of understanding and appreciating, you know? And you know when someone's bullshitting you, and you know when someone's, like, got a secret agenda, you're like, "This guy's kind of a creep."

Dave Portnoy 50:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:06 You, you get it, you know?

Dave Portnoy 50:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:07 And then you get some people, like, "I really liked talking to that guy," and then you can't wait to talk to him again. And then you kinda have an agreement. When you see each other, you know that he likes you and you know that you like him, and you know he's a nice guy and he knows you're a nice guy, and you gen- "Let me buy you a drink." "All right, let's have a drink." Yeah, yeah.

Dave Portnoy 50:21 And you never know what you're ta- Twitter.

Joe Rogan 50:22 Yes.

Dave Portnoy 50:22 It's like you could be getting worked up on what, like, an eight-year-old says. You have no idea.

Joe Rogan 50:26 Easily. Or a bot.

Dave Portnoy 50:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:27 There's a lot of that. There's a lot of that. And there's, you know, these Macedonian fucking troll farms where they have thousands and thousands of accounts, and they're just trying to undermine democracy 24 hours a day, and they're literally being state-sponsored to do that. There's that, too. And that riles people up. You know they found out that, like, 19 of the top 20 Christian sites on Facebook were run by troll farms?

Dave Portnoy 50:49 No, I didn't know that.

Joe Rogan 50:50 19. So there's 19 out of the top 20 Facebook Christian pages that are not real. All they are is riling up people against whatever it is, Islamic people or gay people or transgender people, whatever it is. They're just trying to get people to argue about shit, getting people angry about shit.

Dave Portnoy 51:10 It's really easy to do that, too.

Joe Rogan 51:12 Very easy.

Dave Portnoy 51:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:13 So the- I think the solution is post and ghost. Post shit that you want, don't read the comments, get the fuck out of there, and don't engage in back-and-forth disagreements with people on the-

Dave Portnoy 51:23 That's so much easier.

Joe Rogan 51:24 I don't.

Dave Portnoy 51:25 I don't, but so much easier said than done. So many people you preach that, it's hard to do. I don't.

Joe Rogan 51:30 It's very hard to do. And also, like, I have a podcast, so I can actually sit down and talk to people, which most people don't have, right? So you don't have that opportunity to, like, work things out with someone and try to find out what they really feel and what they believe face-to-face in front of 'em.

Dave Portnoy 51:43 Right.

Joe Rogan 51:43 It's the best way to talk. It's the best way to communicate ideas. And so, I don't communicate ideas in a piss-poor way, 'cause I think that way sucks. And so if I get to do the best way all the time, which I do, why would I engage in the worst way? Like, just back and forth with people on Twitter that just wanna make you feel bad? Like, not interested in that.

Dave Portnoy 52:03 Do you have any dream guests?

Joe Rogan 52:05 No.

Dave Portnoy 52:05 None?

Joe Rogan 52:06 Mm-mm.

Dave Portnoy 52:06 Never?

Joe Rogan 52:07 No. I like talking to people. I don't care who they are. I mean, I like talking to my friends. I like talking to ... I had a lady in recently that was a beekeeper, a fucking-

Dave Portnoy 52:17 I saw that.

Joe Rogan 52:18 I had a guy the other day that, uh, he, he has a giant piece of land in Alaska and they're finding wooly-

Dave Portnoy 52:22 I saw that.

Joe Rogan 52:23 ... wooly mammoth bones. Like, th- I like that. That's what I like. I, I like talking to fighters, I like talking to you, I like talking to whoever. I just like talking to people. It's fun. I, I like seeing how different people see this world. It enhances my perspective. I've gotten, through this podcast, a very unexpected and, uh, accidental education. That's what I think. So because of that, like, I don't have any desire to communicate in an ineffective way that makes me feel bad.

Dave Portnoy 52:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:50 You know, read a bunch of mean things that people say about you and just go back and forth with them and, like, saying things that's not true. It's like, ugh. You're welcome to have your thoughts. Good luck, son.

Dave Portnoy 52:59 It's a good way of looking at it.

Joe Rogan 52:59 I'm not gonna engage in that.

Dave Portnoy 53:00 See, I, I'm like a petty person.

Joe Rogan 53:04 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 53:05 I'm quite petty, actually. So, like, if somebody says something I don't like, not once, but if someone says it a bunch, th- it, I, I keep a record. I keep a mental record.

Narrator 53:18 What'd he do? The champagne bottles?

Dave Portnoy 53:20 Champagne bottles, yeah. That I, that I became ... That's something so ... (laughs) I had champagne bo- I have champagne bottles engraved with the top-of-the-list enemies of mine. And I wait for them to fuck up-

Joe Rogan 53:36 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 53:37 ... and then I pop them.

Joe Rogan 53:38 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 53:38 So, like, the most famous example of that is John Skipper, the old ESPN guy.

Joe Rogan 53:44 I don't know who that is.

Dave Portnoy 53:44 He, he ran ESPN.

Joe Rogan 53:46 Oh, okay.

Dave Portnoy 53:46 Dana just talked about him the other day because he said he was anti-MMA, the deal never woulda happened. He ran ESPN. So we had a show on ESPN, um, Barstool Van Talk, and it, it maybe set a record the last one episode. He canceled it, for things we said which, in hindsight, I wish we didn't say 'em what- that- the way we did. Um, but it was years in the past. So we launched one episode. ESPN had a multi little uprising about doing business with us, and, uh, they canceled after one episode. They didn't tell us. And John Skipper was quoted as saying, "I didn't realize Barstool Van Talk ..." That was the name of the show, Barstool Van Talk. "... would be associated with Barstool." That was a direct quote he had.

Joe Rogan 54:30 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 54:30 So we put him on a champagne bottle. Literally, like, three days later, he got blackmailed by his coke dealer.

Joe Rogan 54:36 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 54:36 Supposedly. This is what happened, and had to s- and had to step down. According to John, it's the only time he used this guy. He found a random coke dealer off the street, impossible to believe, and got blackmailed. So he popped the champagne bottle. It was like per- it was perfect timing.

Joe Rogan 54:51 He had to leave ESPN because of a coke dealer?

Dave Portnoy 54:54 S- that's, that's the story.

Joe Rogan 54:56 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 54:56 That's the story. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:58 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 54:59 And, and then he went o- (laughs) he went over to run DAZN.... uh, how-

Joe Rogan 55:03 He runs the Zone now?

Dave Portnoy 55:04 He used to-

Joe Rogan 55:04 Oh.

Dave Portnoy 55:04 ... he doesn't anymore. Um, so yeah, that, but the champagne bottles, and then, uh, HBO did a quick little, like, documentary on us. I thought it was gonna be fair and even. That's one of the last times I'll... That was almost the last time I believed the media would be fair. It wasn't. It was a hit piece, but they showed the champagne bottle, so people became aware of it.

Joe Rogan 55:23 Mm, that's funny.

Dave Portnoy 55:25 You know?

Joe Rogan 55:25 Yeah. That's funny. (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 55:26 So I am petty in that respect. I, I-

Joe Rogan 55:28 Well, you should be petty about that. It's just fucking so stupid, the guy was doing coke. (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 55:33 Imagine getting bla- And by the way, who c- like, if he's just like... I don't know, maybe I'm naive, but to be like, "Yeah, I've done coke." Like, who cares?

Joe Rogan 55:42 Yeah, I think in that world, you can't even admit you did coke.

Dave Portnoy 55:45 Which is crazy.

Joe Rogan 55:47 It's a stupid world. It's a stupid world, where you have to pretend to be a fake person.

Dave Portnoy 55:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:51 Like, look at these people on Good Morning America that are having a, an affair.

Dave Portnoy 55:54 Yeah, see there it is.

Joe Rogan 55:55 "John Skipper details his ESPN exit and a cocaine extortion plot." Dun-dun-dun...

Dave Portnoy 56:01 27 years.

Joe Rogan 56:02 Jesus Christ. The guy did good work, so he likes to do a little coke. He had a substance addiction. What did it say there? He has an addiction. Da-da-dun...

Dave Portnoy 56:11 I don't even think he admitted to that. He's just like, "I did, I tried it." He called it-

Joe Rogan 56:14 He's the only guy-

Dave Portnoy 56:15 ... but he called it, he called it a substance addiction.

Joe Rogan 56:17 Did he?

Dave Portnoy 56:17 Yeah. "John Skipper suddenly resigned-"

Joe Rogan 56:19 Oh.

Dave Portnoy 56:19 I thought he said it once.

Joe Rogan 56:20 Yeah, "to seek treatment." That's what you do when you get busted. "Skipper, 62, the married father of two sons, was raised in North Ca-" I don't give a fuck where he was raised. 27 years at Disney. There, washed down the toilet for a little coke. Meanwhile, you look at the body of work that he did, did he do a good job? I don't know. But I mean, if you kept him fucking hired for that long, I would assume he was doing good work. Fucking knuckleheads.

Dave Portnoy 56:40 He says he did it on his own-

Joe Rogan 56:42 Just a little blow.

Dave Portnoy 56:42 ... that he resigned.

Joe Rogan 56:43 Just a little blow.

Dave Portnoy 56:43 Who cares?

Joe Rogan 56:44 Who cares?

Dave Portnoy 56:44 I think I wrote that, most likely ... Well, how did I phrase it? Not necessarily do it, but, like, people act like coke, it, it, I don't, I don't know what they act like. It's like, if you haven't been around coke in your life, you're probably a loser.

Joe Rogan 56:58 (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 56:58 Like, honestly, if you haven't been around it, I'm not gonna say do it, but if you haven't been around it at least once-

Joe Rogan 57:03 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 57:03 ... you're probably not the most fun person ever.

Joe Rogan 57:07 Yeah, I've been around it. I've never done it, but I had a friend in high school, and his cousin was addicted to coke. And, uh, this was like when I was, this was a formative period of my life, when I was doing martial arts. And, uh, for the longest time, like from age 15 to 21, I did no partying, I did no- all I did was train. I mean, I trained every day. I just, I ate clean, I slept well, I didn't-

Dave Portnoy 57:32 How old were you?

Joe Rogan 57:32 15 to 21.

Dave Portnoy 57:34 Huh.

Joe Rogan 57:34 From 15 to 21. Those were like, you know, high school-

Dave Portnoy 57:37 How'd you get into that?

Joe Rogan 57:38 Uh man, um, w- I was bullied, l- like most people. You know, got, I didn't know how to fight. I was scared. And I was like, "I need to learn how to fight." And, uh, I joined a martial arts school, and, and I just got obsessed with it.

Dave Portnoy 57:51 Because that's early, like that, the reason I'm asking, that's before the trend of MMA.

Joe Rogan 57:55 Yeah, but martial arts had always been around, and you know, I was a big Bruce Lee fan, Chuck Norris fan (clears throat) . Watched a bunch of those movies and shit, and went, "God, man, amazing to do that. How, how cool would it be to be able to do that?" And then I watched a bunch of kickboxing matches, and I got into it, and then, uh, coming home from a Red Sox game, it's a crazy story. Um, I would, I already been taking karate a little bit, but it was too far from my house, it was hard to get there, my parents didn't wanna drive me. And, uh, this place was right off the T. Um, so I was, uh, at Fenway Park with a buddy of mine, went to see a baseball game, and then, I was like 14 or 15. And when we were walking home from the baseball game, there was so many people waiting in line for the T. You know how it is after a game.

Dave Portnoy 58:35 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:35 So we decided to, uh, just fucking walk upstairs and see what this, uh, Taekwondo school was all about. And as I was walking up the stairs, I was hearing this sound, and it was like whomp, kachink. Like, it was whomp, kachink. And w- what it was was this guy kicking this heavy bag, and the bag was flying, and the kachink was the chains that was holding the bag. And I got up there at the top of the stairs and watched this guy, John Lee, who was the national champion, who was training for the World Cup. So he's hi- at his peak of training. And he was doing a, a spinning back kick over and over again into this heavy bag. And I remember watching it, and I could not believe what he could do. I couldn't believe the power that this guy could generate in that kick. And he became, like, a mentor to me. And, uh, this guy, who was, like this wild street guy from Chelsea, Massachusetts, who was this elite Taekwondo fighter. Like, he wasn't like, you know, like, bow, like he-

Dave Portnoy 59:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 59:41 ... was like, "Hey what's up man?"

Dave Portnoy 59:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:42 "What the fuck you doing, man?" He was a funny dude. He would like, uh, eat food right before he fought. "Ah, fuck these people, man. I'm gonna fuck these dudes up." He was a street guy who was really good at martial arts. I mean, he bowed and said, "Yes, sir," to everybody and all that stuff, but when people were not around, he was just cool.

Dave Portnoy 59:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:58 He was hanging out. He had drug problems, there was a lot going on. But in that moment where I saw him, he was in the, he was 27 years old, he was in the prime of his career, and he was the elite of the elite. And I-

Dave Portnoy 1:00:09 And that's how you got hooked.

Joe Rogan 1:00:11 I got hooked, hooked, hook, line, same thing. I, I went there the next day, I signed up, and I was there every fucking day.

Dave Portnoy 1:00:18 Huh.

Joe Rogan 1:00:18 Every day. Yeah, I became obsessed.

Dave Portnoy 1:00:21 Interesting.

Joe Rogan 1:00:22 So, I didn't want to do anything that fucked me up. And my f- my friend Jimmy, his cousin, was selling coke. And I knew, uh, his cousin Mike from, like, when he wasn't selling coke. Like, he was a mechanic, he was a cool guy, you know, fixed my car for me. He was just a fucking guy from the neighborhood. We'd hang out with him. And then him and his girl got into coke bad. He was selling coke, and then he was just fucking, just emaciated, he looked like he got bit by a vampire.

Dave Portnoy 1:00:47 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:47 And they would hide in their, they had an attic apartment. They would just go in that attic apartment and do coke every day, and I was like, "Fuck coke." And it-

Dave Portnoy 1:00:54 That's hardcore to get h- like, hooked like that.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 He got hooked. Well, he was also selling it.

Dave Portnoy 1:00:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:59 So he had all this access to coke. But it was, people in the neighborhood, I saw them doing coke, and they just wanted to do coke all the time. They wanted to get out and do coke. And...... as a kid who was, like, finally ... I was a loser my whole life, and then finally when I was 15, I found this thing that I got obsessed with that changed the way people looked at me. Like, I was ... Now all of a sudden I was good at something, like, really good at something. And then I became state champion four years in a row, and I won the US Open, and I won these national tournaments, and it was a big fucking deal for me. So, I was like, "I am not doing anything to jeopardize that."

Dave Portnoy 1:01:31 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:31 And Coke to me was the big one. Like, I knew that that was a ... I felt like if I got drunk, in which I did occasionally, I would feel like shit the next day. I couldn't train well. I was hungover, and, and I'd get beat up in sparring. I was like, "I can't do this."

Dave Portnoy 1:01:45 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:45 So, I just cut most partying. Like, I smoked pot a handful of times. I got drunk a handful of times during high school and in, in my early 20s. And then, uh, I just ... In the comedy world, Coke was a problem with there too. I saw, I saw all th- ... When I ... I used to work at Nick's Comedy Stop in Boston.

Dave Portnoy 1:02:03 Yeah, sure.

Joe Rogan 1:02:04 Where it was ... And they, (laughs) they offered to pay me in Coke or money. Like, the ... When you worked there for the weekend, like, "You wanna get paid in Coke, or you wanna get paid in money?"

Dave Portnoy 1:02:12 And even trade? Like, same amount of Coke, but it's all valued?

Joe Rogan 1:02:14 Well, some guys went half-half. Yeah, some guys went half-half.

Dave Portnoy 1:02:17 I guess, uh, if, if you like it, it's easy access.

Joe Rogan 1:02:20 But there were so many guys that got hooked on Coke. I knew so many guys that had Coke problems that I was like, "That is a pitfall." Like, I wanted to succeed, and I felt like that was one dr- ... And also it was a drug that got you hyped up.

Dave Portnoy 1:02:31 Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 1:02:32 And I li- ... I liked being hyped up. And my friend Jimmy said this to me. He goes, "Don't do Coke. You'll like it." I was like, "Oh, no." (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 1:02:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:39 I'll never forget this. It was me and my friend Steve. We were driving home from, uh, Kelly's Roast Beef in, uh, Revere, Massachusetts.

Dave Portnoy 1:02:47 Yep, overrated.

Joe Rogan 1:02:48 And we're ... Yeah, it's a little overrated.

Dave Portnoy 1:02:50 The beef is, but ...

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 Yeah, the clams were pretty good.

Dave Portnoy 1:02:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:52 So, we were, we were driving, and there was car next to us. And they had the dome light on, and there was a girl in the back seat doing blow off a mirror. So, she's there-

Dave Portnoy 1:03:00 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:01 ... doing blow, and she looks over at us. And we're loo- ... I'm looking over at her, and she goes ... (laughs) just for no reason.

Dave Portnoy 1:03:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:07 Just, "Fuck you." (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 1:03:09 (laughs) I mean, that was Revere Beach.

Joe Rogan 1:03:10 But that's Coke too.

Dave Portnoy 1:03:11 Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 1:03:11 And then I was like, "No Coke." And then I also had another buddy who got arrested who was selling Coke, and he got arrested for murder. And this was a scary murder where they beat-

Dave Portnoy 1:03:22 How close were you with this guy?

Joe Rogan 1:03:24 He was a training partner of mine.

Dave Portnoy 1:03:25 Yeesh.

Joe Rogan 1:03:26 Yeah, I knew him very well. I don't think he did that murder. He might've did that murder. I don't ... he wa- ... He did some shit. He wound up going to jail. He went to jail for quite a long time, um, quite a few years, and then he came out, and he was just a totally different person. He came out super jacked, and all of ... He had a bunch of, like, really bad tattoos, and all of them were now these heavy keloid scars. Like, he had, like, burned off his tattoos or cut off his tattoos or some shit. I don't know what he did in prison. He was real vague about it. But when he came out, like, he was a fucking different human. He was an animal. You didn't want ... If you sparred him, like, when we sparred, they weren't sparring matches. They were fights. Like, they were full-on fights. Like, we would spar like we were trying to kill each other. It was very dangerous. And, uh, he was doing ... I knew he was selling Coke and doing coke, and then he got arrested for this murder where they took this guy and, um ... Again, I don't know if he did it, but he did, he did get arrested and then released. They broke all the bones in this guy's body with a hammer, and they kept injecting him with cocaine to keep him awake.

Dave Portnoy 1:04:34 What?

Joe Rogan 1:04:35 Yeah. And then they cut his hands off, and they cut his head off, and then they left his body somewhere. And that ... I think the idea of cutting his hands off was to hide his fingerprints. And then this dude got, uh, arrested for that crime. And then I was like, "Geez," so it was more evidence to me, like, Coke is fucking crazy business.

Dave Portnoy 1:04:53 I mean-

Joe Rogan 1:04:54 You know?

Dave Portnoy 1:04:54 ... yeah. Well, you just described a guy ... (laughs) It's not funny, but I mean, getting all his bones smashed with a hammer, his hands ... Did you say his head cut off?

Joe Rogan 1:05:04 Yeah, they cut his ... (coughs) cut his head off, cut his hands off. Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 1:05:09 Yeah, no, that's, like, pretty bad.

Joe Rogan 1:05:10 It's the baddest of the bad. It's, it was horrible shit. But I knew a lot of guys like that. I knew a lot of, uh ... Because of, uh, the martial arts, there was a lot of, like, really tough guys that gravitated towards-

Dave Portnoy 1:05:21 I truly hope you didn't know a lot of guys like that.

Joe Rogan 1:05:24 I didn't know a lot of guys like that, but I knew h- ... I knew guys who were hitmen.

Dave Portnoy 1:05:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:28 I knew a guy who was a hitman for Whitey Bulger. I trained him. I, I trained ... And I remember, like, teaching him shit, because I was ... Once ... After like a year or two of, uh, doing TaeKwonDo, I ... My instructor offered me, uh, a job. And I was basically, like, teaching the younger, uh, like, um, lower belt classes, teaching them basic techniques. And I would teach, like, early classes and kids classes and stuff like that in, in ch- exchange for training, so I didn't have to pay for training anymore. And I'd get a key to the school. I could go anytime I wanted. It was like they would do that with, like, the, uh, prospects-

Dave Portnoy 1:06:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:06:05 ... people that they thought really could have a potential. And so I was trea- teaching a lot of people, and I was teaching this one guy. And I remember he goes, "You wanted to kill somebody. Where would you hit 'em?" It was, like, a real question. It wasn't like an asshole just fucking around, like, "Eh, if I was gonna kill somebody." It was like, "If you wanna kill somebody, where would you hit 'em?" I was like, "The neck maybe?" He goes, "That sort of thing is okay, probably the neck." I was like-

Dave Portnoy 1:06:27 What crew were you running with?

Joe Rogan 1:06:28 It was very strange. Well, I was ... M- most people were respectable. But it's like, you know, if you have hundreds and hundreds of students and your, your, your business is teaching people how to fuck people up, you're gonna get bad people-

Dave Portnoy 1:06:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:38 ... that wanna learn those skills. That guy went away, and I kn- I knew a couple guys who went away who, uh, were in the, the South Boston mob.

Dave Portnoy 1:06:46 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:06:46 And that was the reason why Dana moved out of Boston. The South Boston mob, they were, they were shaking him down when he was running a boxing gym. It was scary. There was scary fucking people. That's the Whitey Bulger situation, because he was in bed with the, the FBI. Like, they were letting him kill people.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:01 They were letting him sell drugs. They were-

Dave Portnoy 1:07:03 Departed.

Joe Rogan 1:07:03 Yeah. The bar- ... Th- the movie.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:05 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:05 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:05 Departed, yeah.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:06 That's real. Like, that was all going on when I was a kid in Boston, and I was connected to people that wound up ... Like, a good friend of mine who was a comic, his brother was in Whitey Bulger's crew and wound up getting arrested and going to jail.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:20 Ah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:21 His brother that I knew very well from the gym.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:23 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:24 So, I knew a few of those guys.... yeah.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:28 I don't have any of those stores. I grew up in a little suburb.

Joe Rogan 1:07:30 I did too.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:31 Granted...

Joe Rogan 1:07:32 I grew up in Newton. I was living in Newton.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:33 Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, that sh-

Joe Rogan 1:07:35 But the school was in Boston, so I would go into Boston and most of my friends were from the inner city. Most of my friends were from, uh, Chelsea, and, you know, Dorchester.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:48 And these, you know, young tough kids who had come from these, you know, bad neighborhoods and bad households. Those are the ones that made the best fighters.

Dave Portnoy 1:07:56 Uh, well, that still remains true.

Joe Rogan 1:07:57 Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure, yeah. So...

Dave Portnoy 1:08:03 Still getting it.

Joe Rogan 1:08:04 That's how I kept the fuck away from coke. (laughs) People don't believe me. They, they think I'm lying. Why would I lie? I lie, I tell the truth about everything.

Dave Portnoy 1:08:11 Yeah, people always... It, it, there was a phase where everyone called me a coke head. I'm not. Uh, like, I've... A handful. This is a Bar Stool, like, people make fun of it, but I've, I've done coke less than a handful of times. Adderall, yes. Coke, no.

Joe Rogan 1:08:23 Well, (laughs) my friend, Duncan Trussell has a great joke about Adderall. The Adderall is like someone did coke and they were a scientist, and they went, "I can fix this." (laughs)

Dave Portnoy 1:08:32 (laughs) Maybe. No, Adderall, I, I, I was warned even for this podcast, they're like, "Don't do too much Adderall. You'll talk too much." It's like, but I did a little.

Joe Rogan 1:08:41 How much do you do?

Dave Portnoy 1:08:42 I've, I've toned it down, but like, you know, a 30 a day? If I, if I have to think, it makes me feel like I can cure cancer.

Joe Rogan 1:08:50 Really?

Dave Portnoy 1:08:51 Yeah, it makes me... I love it. Like, I don't get jittery. At least I don't think I do. Coffee, Adderall, I like, it gets the brain going.

Joe Rogan 1:08:57 Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 1:08:57 But I have tried to wean off of it 'cause I don't want it not to work when I need it.

Joe Rogan 1:09:01 Right, right. So you want it to be a tool.

Dave Portnoy 1:09:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:03 Uh, well, we were just looking that up last night and we were trying to figure out how many people are on Adderall, and there was 41 million prescriptions, I think, in 2020. 41 million. Now how many of th- How many of those are-

Dave Portnoy 1:09:17 Fake?

Joe Rogan 1:09:17 No. It's like how many people are doing it. If you have 41 million prescriptions, like, will you get a prescription? Like, if you get a prescription, is it for 30 days or for 60 days? Like, how many prescriptions do you get a year? Like, how many humans are we talking about?

Dave Portnoy 1:09:29 Yeah. I mean, that's-

Joe Rogan 1:09:31 I mean, you're saying 41 million prescriptions, like, how many people? If it's 41 million people on Adderall, we got a fucking meth'd up country.

Dave Portnoy 1:09:40 (sighs)

Joe Rogan 1:09:40 You know?

Dave Portnoy 1:09:40 Yeah. Everyone's like, you'll wait, I mean, for documentation that it's really bad for you, but who knows?

Joe Rogan 1:09:46 (smacks lips) Well, is coffee really bad? I mean, I think-

Dave Portnoy 1:09:48 Coffee is good for you.

Joe Rogan 1:09:49 Some of it. Yeah.

Dave Portnoy 1:09:51 I've, I've gone to war on this. Cof- The studies say, like, uh, it's pretty good for you.

Joe Rogan 1:09:55 There's some studies that say it's bad for you.

Dave Portnoy 1:09:57 Well, that's...

Joe Rogan 1:09:58 They used to say that it dehydrated you.

Dave Portnoy 1:09:59 You can find that with everything.

Joe Rogan 1:10:00 But now they find out that coffee actually can hydrate you.

Dave Portnoy 1:10:02 That I don't believe.

Joe Rogan 1:10:04 Yeah. It g- It is. It's liquid. Coffee hydrates you.

Dave Portnoy 1:10:07 I see that's... It can't. I know what it does to me. I, I...

Joe Rogan 1:10:10 Well, it makes you urinate because it, it does, i- it is in some ways, it dehydrates you because it is a stimulant. But you're also drinking in so much liquid that it doesn't dehydrate you.

Dave Portnoy 1:10:22 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:10:22 Like people... Google that. Make sure that's true.

Dave Portnoy 1:10:24 I think you can-

Joe Rogan 1:10:25 But the problem is like you got-

Dave Portnoy 1:10:25 ... I tell you you can find both. I think you can find both.

Joe Rogan 1:10:27 Here it is, "Does coffee hydrate you? The answer is yes. Coffee does count towards your daily water intake. However, drinking huge amounts of caffeine can be dehydrating."

Dave Portnoy 1:10:35 That may be from big coffee though.

Joe Rogan 1:10:36 It could be. Ah, "That's because the increase in urination- Drip drop on you. ... could result in a higher risk of dehydration." I don't think it is, uh... That's not a coffee website.

Dave Portnoy 1:10:44 Yeah right, it's from big coffee.

Joe Rogan 1:10:46 I don't think they... But the thing is, like, I don't think they need to be- to say coffee is okay. Everybody is hooked on coffee. ... Yeah. Joe Rogan. I fucking love the stuff. Mayo Clinic. Caffeinated drinks-

Dave Portnoy 1:10:56 Yeah, Mayo seems legit.

Joe Rogan 1:10:57 ... can contribute to your daily fluid requirement.

Dave Portnoy 1:11:00 All right, good. Listen, I'm