Joe Rogan Experience #2204 - Matt Walsh

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

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) All right. Joe, what's happening?

Matt Walsh 0:14 Hey. Great to be back.

Joe Rogan 0:16 Good to-

Matt Walsh 0:16 Thanks for having me.

Joe Rogan 0:17 Your movie is really funny. It's really-

Matt Walsh 0:19 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 0:19 ... funny. By myself, laughing out loud hysterically today. Had, m- I watched it-

Matt Walsh 0:24 Well-

Joe Rogan 0:24 ... in the sauna, I watched it in the gym, I watched it, uh... It, it was... It's one of the best comedies I've seen in a long time (laughs) 'cause there's so many moments in it that are so uncomfortable.

Matt Walsh 0:36 Uh, that means a lot. I appreciate that. Yeah. That's what we're, what we're hoping for.

Joe Rogan 0:39 The Robin D... (laughs) The Robin DiAngelo one, where you gave that guy money for reparations and you got her-

Matt Walsh 0:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:46 ... and she thought it was uncomfortable. (laughs)

Matt Walsh 0:48 Yeah. That was kind of a-

Joe Rogan 0:50 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 0:50 ... we got... When we-

Joe Rogan 0:53 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 0:53 When we had the idea for the, for the film, to talk about race, we knew we needed to get Robin DiAngelo. I didn't think we'd get her, 'cause I figured she'd be a lot more-

Joe Rogan 1:01 Savvy?

Matt Walsh 1:01 ... cautious.

Joe Rogan 1:02 Yeah.

Matt Walsh 1:02 Yeah, savvy and cautious. Uh, but apparently she doesn't, she has no idea what's happening outside of her bubble at all. So, she didn't know who I was. I mean, I gave her my name and she had no clue. So...

Joe Rogan 1:13 Wow.

Matt Walsh 1:14 Uh, so, but we, we kinda went into that knowing wha- what the end was supposed to be. If we could get her... We came up with that idea, we went to a bar, uh, the night before the interview, and we came up with this idea, could we get her to actually pay reparations to Ben, our Black producer?

Joe Rogan 1:31 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 1:31 And, uh, we had to kinda talk him into it.

Joe Rogan 1:33 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 1:35 And, you know, it was really just like, in real time, I was there for about two hours, and it was an hour and a half of the most mind-numbing conversation where I'm just... None of that's in the movie, 'cause it's just me, like, fluff questions, and I, and I'm, and I'm repeating back to her own ideas so she knows that I'm a safe person.

Joe Rogan 1:53 Right.

Matt Walsh 1:53 It's a safe space. And then you gotta build to it, and build to it, and build to it, and then finally you get to a point where you can do something a little weird.

Joe Rogan 1:58 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 1:59 And she'll, and she'll probably go along with it. And, um... And she did. I mean, you saw in, we, we'd go through a whole, we have a whole series of exercises we, we wanna do with her, and she went, she did it. She was, uh, she was game.

Joe Rogan 2:11 Phew.

Matt Walsh 2:12 So, that was, uh, and that was one of the first things we filmed, so after we got that we knew that, okay, we have a movie here.

Joe Rogan 2:20 I feel-

Matt Walsh 2:20 You-

Joe Rogan 2:20 ... like you got your money's worth with her seeing as it's $15,000, but I feel like you got robbed by the, the lady that got upset about the mascot.

Matt Walsh 2:28 (laughs) Um-

Joe Rogan 2:29 $50,000, you barely got anything out of her.

Matt Walsh 2:31 Yeah. That was... Well, it... Part of the, the point of the movie is, that's why we put the, uh, the price tags on the screen, um, we want people to see how absurd it is. So in a certain way it was like, it... The, the higher they quoted, the price, we said, "Great, we'll pay, we'll pay that." 'Cause this is, this, we want this in the movie.

Joe Rogan 2:50 Right.

Matt Walsh 2:51 Um, because if all these people had said, "Oh yeah, I'll do it for free," or, "I'll do it for 200 bucks, just pay my travel," doesn't really make the point.

Joe Rogan 2:57 Right.

Matt Walsh 2:57 But they all were, uh, were quoting exorbitant prices, and she was, she was the most.

Joe Rogan 3:03 $50,000.

Matt Walsh 3:04 And, and then she basically said almost nothing. But, um, but it was, it was okay.

Joe Rogan 3:09 No one ever found out who the identity of the mascot is?

Matt Walsh 3:12 No. I don't think so.

Joe Rogan 3:13 Got it. It would've been hilarious if it was a person of color.

Matt Walsh 3:15 Well, it-

Joe Rogan 3:16 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 3:16 ... it almost certainly was. It, it almost certainly was, because if it was a white guy-

Joe Rogan 3:20 They would've thrown him under the bus.

Matt Walsh 3:21 Yeah. Yeah. They would've. So the fact that they didn't... You know, 'cause it was probably some, like, Hispanic kid or something.

Joe Rogan 3:27 And you gotta imagine, you can't see real good with that fucking costume. You ever put a mascot costume on?

Matt Walsh 3:34 I haven't, but I can tell that there's little eye slits. You can't even see what's below you.

Joe Rogan 3:39 Exactly.

Matt Walsh 3:40 And that's why-

Joe Rogan 3:40 Duncan-

Matt Walsh 3:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:41 Duncan and I did a whole podcast where we pretended to be furries. We lasted... We, we... Every podcast we do, we dress up. We'll dress up like Star Wars people or whatever, spaceship people. We did a podcast as furries, we kept the helmets on for maybe five minutes, we were like, "I can't fucking do it." And we both took them off.

Matt Walsh 3:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:57 I'm like, props to the furries. If you could run around with this thing on, this is hard to do. Like you can't see shit. You can't-

Matt Walsh 4:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:02 ... breathe.

Matt Walsh 4:03 And the fur-

Joe Rogan 4:03 So the idea that he missed those kids is like-

Matt Walsh 4:06 And the furry, the furries are doing a lot more than running around in those things too, so that's the-

Joe Rogan 4:09 They are.

Matt Walsh 4:09 (chuckles) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:10 They are. I think-

Matt Walsh 4:11 I-

Joe Rogan 4:11 ... they designed special ones for that.

Matt Walsh 4:12 Yeah. I don't even wanna know. But I, but-

Joe Rogan 4:14 Like a hatch.

Matt Walsh 4:15 But that's, it's actually a perfect example of the, what these people do, these, these race hustlers, that something happened, it was a little bit unpleasant-

Joe Rogan 4:24 Yes.

Matt Walsh 4:24 ... not a big deal. There's a million ways to interpret that. It's just a normal human thing that happens in the world, like things happen that are a little bit unpleasant, you're disappointed your kid didn't get a high five, okay, it happens. Uh, but for them, they have one lens for seeing the world, and the lens is through this left-wing racial ideology, so everything that happens is colored by that.

Joe Rogan 4:42 Right.

Matt Walsh 4:43 Uh, and everything is understood through that lens, so anything... I mean, you think about, uh, Michelle Obama when she was First Lady, she had multiple stories that she would tell about as First Lady being discriminated against because of her race, allegedly. And one of them was, um, she was in line for ice cream or something and someone cut in front of her, and she told this story in some interview, this very dramatic story about, well, they didn't see her 'cause she's Black. And meanwhile it's like, we've all been cut... Lady, people have cut in front of all of us. It's just that if it happens to me at Walmart I don't think of it racially, I just think, "Oh, this person is an asshole."

Joe Rogan 5:23 Exactly.

Matt Walsh 5:23 But for her, it's all, it's all racial. So that's kind of-

Joe Rogan 5:25 But that's a crazy one, to say that someone cutting in front of you, a selfish act, is somehow racist. Just because... That's like looking for racism everywhere.

Matt Walsh 5:34 Right.

Joe Rogan 5:34 'Cause that kind of situation is so normal. It's so normal that some dick cuts in front of you.

Matt Walsh 5:40 Right, exactly. It, it's a, it's an unpleasant thing that happens to all people, and if, and if you're not in the, uh, kind of race hustler bubble, you don't, you don't see it that way. But that's...

Joe Rogan 5:51 But it's interesting that nobody wants to call that out, nobody wants to be reasonable. Nobody wants to say, "Well..." Is that... Like, you just say, "Oh, wow." You know, you have to listen to it. That's part of the problem. Like, you can't say, "Are you sure that's racist?" 'Cause then you're a racist apologist, and then you're racist by proxy.

Matt Walsh 6:06 Yeah, and how do you know ... So, how do you know what's in that other person's mind? How can you ascribe motives to them?

Joe Rogan 6:12 Right.

Matt Walsh 6:12 This, it, it drives me nuts that this is what, this is what we do now, where if someone does something or says something, someone else is offended by it, that person who's offended gets to decide what the intent was behind the other person's action. To the extent that if the other person says, "No, no, no. This was my intention. I'll tell you what it was," they don't get to have a say in their, the intentions behind their own actions.

Joe Rogan 6:34 Right.

Matt Walsh 6:34 They, they are, they are suddenly not authorities in, in their own behavior.

Joe Rogan 6:38 Exactly.

Matt Walsh 6:39 This other person who was the offended party gets to inform you what you meant by that thing. Um, which is really what the, the ... You know, I mean, the movie's called Am I Racist? But in reality, uh, there's only one person who can answer whether you're a racist person, and that's you. And if you don't think that you're racist, then you, then you aren't. Because racism is a thought process, and if it's not in your head, then you're not racist. You might, uh, you might have stereotypical views about people of other races. Everybody does to some extent. You might think things that are even insulting about people of other races. But it's not, it's not racist, because-

Joe Rogan 7:18 Right.

Matt Walsh 7:18 ... racist means you hate people of other races or you think they're inferior to you.

Joe Rogan 7:22 Right.

Matt Walsh 7:23 Uh, but you could be not a racist person and think that, whatever, uh, Asians are bad drivers. You know, you could think that that stereotype is, is true. Whether it's true or not, you just happen to think that that's a true thing about this group. Doesn't mean you hate them.

Joe Rogan 7:36 Right.

Matt Walsh 7:36 Doesn't mean that you think that they're inferior. It's just-

Joe Rogan 7:39 You can say frat boys are annoying and not hate men.

Matt Walsh 7:43 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 7:43 Yeah. This show is sponsored by Better Help. It's a really healthy, good thing to talk about what you're going through with people, the good and the bad. Don't keep it all bottled up. And sometimes, it c- that can be friends or family, but it also helps to talk to pros, and that's where Better Help comes in. It's therapy that's totally online, which makes it so easy to get started. You just fill out a few quick questions and they match you with someone to talk to. And if you don't get the right match at first, you can switch therapists at any time for free. It's easy, it's flexible, it's wherever you are. Seriously, it's a great thing to try. Scan to get started or visit betterhelp.com/jre today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com/jre. This episode is brought to you by blinds.com. Do you know that the right window treatments aren't just about privacy? They could actually save you some serious cash on your energy bills too. But is it really worth the hassle? It's a lot of waiting for some pushy salesperson to come to your house with an overpriced quote. Sucks, right? Well, say goodbye to all that nonsense, because blinds.com has revolutionized the game. blinds.com lets you do a virtual consultation with their award-winning design experts whenever you have time. No pushy sales rep in your home. Just hop online and blinds.com will send free samples right to your door. How cool is that? Whether you're a do-it-yourself beast or you prefer professional installation, blinds.com has you covered. And guess what? You can get your entire house done for one low price. No hidden fees, no showroom markups. What you see is what you pay. Now, I get it, ordering online can be sketchy, but not with blinds.com. They've covered more than 25 million windows and they've got a 100% satisfaction guarantee. blinds.com is hooking up my listeners with an exclusive $50 off when you spend $500 or more. Just use the code ROGAN at checkout at blinds.com. Go to blinds.com and use the promo code ROGAN. Limited time offer. Rules and restrictions apply. See blinds.com for details.

Matt Walsh 10:03 Exactly. Whether, and, and most-

Joe Rogan 10:05 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 10:05 Exa- And most of the time, these stereotypes, they didn't just fall outta the sky.

Joe Rogan 10:09 Right.

Matt Walsh 10:09 Like, they're, they're grounded in something.

Joe Rogan 10:10 It's j- If they did, no one would ... It wouldn't make any sense.

Matt Walsh 10:13 Right. Uh, and nobody would be offend- That's the thing. Nobody would be offended by a stereotype that-

Joe Rogan 10:17 Right.

Matt Walsh 10:17 ... no, that, that really was not true at all.

Joe Rogan 10:19 Right.

Matt Walsh 10:20 They're, you're only offended because it rings true at least a little bit, because otherwise it would just be ar- It'd j- It would be-

Joe Rogan 10:26 Exactly.

Matt Walsh 10:26 ... absurd. Which is why when you get ... I mean, in the movie we go, uh ... There's a, a section where we go kinda outside the, this bubble, and we go down and we talk to s- bikers at a biker bar in the South. We talk to the poor Black community in, in New Orleans. And, um, the only reason we did that was just ... Well, like, let's, let's find people who are not ... They probably didn't go to college, so they didn't get, they didn't get brainwashed there. They're not getting the corporate DEI seminars. They're not list- They're not reading Robin DiAngelo or any of these people. Um, what do they think about this stuff? What are the ... Are they worried about systemic racism? Do they see everything as racist all the time? And what we found is, no, they're just not even th- Th- They, they don't, they don't even speak that language. When you say the term systemic racism to them, they say, "Well, what do you mean by that? What is that?"

Joe Rogan 11:12 Well, this was something that ... Like, look, people are always concerned about people being racist, but there's something that happened in this country somewhere around 2012-ish where things really, really ramped up.

Matt Walsh 11:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 11:24 And it, it just became, it just became much more of a subject, a subject that was like constantly around, you know, worrying about racial bias and, and it, and it, and it ramped up, right? It ramped up 'til you get to the point where you do have some of these race hustlers that are saying everyone's racist. You're all ... You must confront your unconscious bias, and we're all ra-

Matt Walsh 11:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:47 And you're just constantly hearing about it. It's like-

Matt Walsh 11:50 I think bec- And I think you're right that it was around 2012. BLM, uh, came into formation in 2013, I think. That was the Trayvon Martin thing. Um, and it's ... So it's not a coincidence that it seemed like race relations in this country were improving-

Joe Rogan 12:05 Yeah.

Matt Walsh 12:05 ... decade after decade. They weren't perfect, but it seemed like they were pretty good.

Joe Rogan 12:08 Much better than the '60s.

Matt Walsh 12:10 Yeah, the '90s.

Joe Rogan 12:11 Right.

Matt Walsh 12:11 I grew up in the '90s. It was not perfect, but ...I grew up in a diverse area, I went to public school, a lot of people of different ethnicities and races. We didn't, we weren't talking about racism all the time, it was basically fine. Uh, and, and then something happened in the, you know, middle part of the, you know, first decade of the 2000s where it seemed like things started backsliding, and that's right at, right at the time when, when, uh, Barack Obama was elected, and that's not a coincidence. Like, a lot of people have noticed that, you know, it's odd that we had a Black president, and then all of a sudden now we're having race riots again. And I think the reason is that when you elect a Black president, I didn't like O- Obama, I didn't vote for him, I think his policies are terrible, but you would think that at least one positive you could draw from that is that, "Well, at least that means that systemic racism is not a problem in this country anymore." I mean, if the, if a Black guy could rise to the top of the system and run it, then clearly the system is not racist against Black people. Uh, and in fact was, was overwhelmingly voted into that position by Americans, which is true, so that is evidence that America isn't systemically racist against Black people, but the race hustlers don't want us to draw that conclusion. They're worried that we'll look at Obama as president and say, "Okay, well, racism isn't a big issue anymore," and that's a problem for them because there's a lot of power, money, and influence to be found in the racist narr- racism narrative. So they had to kind of, like, double up on their efforts to convince us that America's actually racist, which is why during Obama's term, that's when we started getting all these race hoaxes and the race riots and BLM. Uh, that's when things like m- people started talking about microaggressions and all this kind of nonsense, because they needed to tell us that, "Yeah, you might think, uh, that this issue is kind of solved now, but it's not. Racism is actually, is actually worse than you ever imagined, it's lurking everywhere." And now we're at a point... Yeah, and then, and then not long after that they started tearing down, you know, Confederate Civil War monuments and stuff, stuff that's been there for, like, 100 years, which was always weird because 100 years ago people could w- whatever, walk by a Robert E. Lee monument and not care, it wasn't a big deal to them, Black or white. Now all of a sudden it's a bigger deal to us than it was to people whose, like, parents fought, you know, their, they have, they had grandparents who fought in the Civil War or died in the Civil War. They were okay with it, and yet for us, what? The wounds of the Civil War are fresher or more raw for us than they were for people a century ago? It makes no sense. How are we less able to be objective and non-emotional about the Civil War than people who, who had family member... I mean, slave, ex-slaves were, were still living back then. Um...

Joe Rogan 14:53 Well, I think it's because it's just, like, a religious ideology. Like when the Taliban started blowing up those ancient statues of Buddhas. Do you remember that?

Matt Walsh 15:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:01 B- because, like, they could... Like, they destroyed things that were a part of human history that we would have studied for thousands of years.

Matt Walsh 15:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:10 And they destroyed them because they didn't go along with their religious ideology. And I think part of the woke thing is this religious ideology that has to be followed, and you, you cannot stray from the lines, you have to stay inside whatever this ideology is promoting and telling you what to do. And one of the things was that you had to take down all these statues of terrible people, and I remember Trump saying at the time, "Well, the problem with that is, like, eventually they're gonna take down George Washington." And everybody thought he was crazy. Like, that's a crazy thing to say. But once they got past Civil War people, then they got to who owned slaves, and then they got to taking down... They wanted to take down statues of Thomas Jefferson and eventually did get to George Washington.

Matt Walsh 15:55 Yeah. And that was always, it was always gonna go that way, because George Washington... The Founding Fathers owned slaves. Uh, not only that, but they were rebels, you know, rebelling against a governmental authority, and if they had lost then they all would have been, uh, hanged as traitors and that's how they'd be remembered. Thankfully they didn't, but... So there's a... It's actually, there's a, there's a... It's not that far of a leap to go from, from one to the other, and of course the issue is that everybody who lived on Earth prior to about, certainly prior to 100 years ago, is racist by our standards today. Every single one.

Joe Rogan 16:37 Right.

Matt Walsh 16:37 There was no one who lived on Earth 100 years ago who w- we would not consider racist. Anywhere, of any race. Um, if you go back 200 years or, or earlier than that, almost everybody either owned slaves or was okay with slavery as an institution. You go back 500 years, and there was nobody on the planet who, who considered slavery to be wrong fundamentally. They might have had issues with how slaves are treated in some contexts, but it took, like, thousands of years for it to ever even occur to a single human on Earth that slavery is actually fundamentally wrong. Uh, which is a crazy thing, and that's actually an interesting thing we could, you could talk about and, and think about, like, why is that? How could it be that-

Joe Rogan 17:20 Right.

Matt Walsh 17:20 ... it's so obvious to us, but the, some of the greatest minds of history, they never thought of it? Uh, but we can't talk about that because we have to talk about slavery and racism as if they're exclusively white Western phenomena.

Joe Rogan 17:32 Well, v- I've had friends that have a different perspective on the Obama situation, and, uh, my friend Willie was talking to me about this, and he was saying that what happened was when you... Look, one thing that we can be sure of is that racists are real. There are real racists in this country. There's real anti-Black racists, anti-Asian racists, there's certain people that have hateful ideology in this country, just in, a certain percentage of them in the world, so th- those are real. And when Obama became president, those people became more emboldened, and he said that he saw a lot more of that online and a lot more attacks and, especially in uncensored online forums like 4Chan and places where you can kind of get away with saying whatever the fuck you want. He said he saw a lot more of that on the streets, and he said this is probably why he believed Michelle Obama didn't want to run for president, because she experienced so much of that hate while they were in the White House. Forget about hate for their...... their policies and w- what you think about them as president and vice- and- and first lady. But the- the racism hate. So, his perspective as a Black guy was like, you had to be a Black person to realize how angry people were that there was a Black guy who was president, because that was real too. It was real that racism in America and racial relations in America had changed radically since the 1960s, certainly since the 1920s and '30s, and- and over the years, just kept getting better. But i- in his mind, there was something that happened where when, uh, Barack Obama got into the White House that the real hardcore racists got very vocal. And he experienced it. And I think this is akin, in some ways, to what's going on with antisemitism online because, uh, I think there's always been a certain amount of people in this country and in the world that are like, deeply antisemitic and, uh, they just don't like Jews. And when something happens where all of a sudden now it's okay to criticize Jews because of Israel's position in Gaza and what they've done, now you see antisemitism just pop out of the woodwork. I think there's- there's something like that where people feel emboldened to talk about things. So- so like, maybe we just don't have an accurate account of how fucked up some people are. But the general population, and whether you're conservative or whether you're a l- liberal, everybody kind of agrees that racism is a stupid thing. There's amazing people of all ethnicities and colors and you should judge people, like Martin Luther King said, by the content of their character. We all agree with that. But there's a certain amount of people that are always going to be racist. But when you start looking for it everywhere and saying everything is racist, first of all, you are... It's an insult to real racism. It's an insult to the people that are the victims of real racism when you consider microaggressions or cutting in line in front of you to get ice cream. That's a vic- there's people that are real victims of racism. And pretending that everything is racist just minimizes that and in fact makes, probably makes more people racist. It's gonna make a bunch of dumb liberals like- like- drop to their knees or give you money for reparations. But it's gonna make a bunch of other people really resentful and it just polarizes us and- and drives people further and further apart.

Matt Walsh 20:56 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 20:56 It's just genuinely stupid.

Matt Walsh 20:59 Uh, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and I- I think that's- that's true, um, uh, what- what he said about... I'm sure that when there's a Black president that... We know there are real racists out there.

Joe Rogan 21:11 Yeah.

Matt Walsh 21:11 There are anti-Black racists, there are anti-white racists, but they're out there and social media was also really coming online around that time so people had a- a forum to express this kind of stuff and-

Joe Rogan 21:23 And anonymously.

Matt Walsh 21:24 Anonymously. And so yeah, those people come out of the woodwork. I'm sure... That did happen, I don't deny that. The difference though is that, uh, that kind of racism is personal and individual. It's not systemic. It's not in the system.

Joe Rogan 21:40 Right.

Matt Walsh 21:41 And also, it's absolutely rejected, uh, by society. It's absolutely rejected by polite society. So, there's a reason why they had to go to 4chan or whatever to express those views 'cause you can't come out in public and say it. Uh, with... And if you do, it'll be like the end of your- whatever your career is. It's probably the end of it. Uh, and that's kind of... That's the most you're gonna... When it comes... As you said, there's never gonna be a time when there's no racists in the world so the most you can do is, "Okay, we're not gonna have this stuff systemically. We're gonna- the system's gonna treat everybody equally, great. We've crossed that off the list, we've already done that. Um, actually we've gone too far because you have affirmative action where now you're discriminating against white and Asian people but... So anti-Black racism is out of the system. Fantastic, that's good. Uh, it's not accepted by mainstream society. Great." And then... So that's kind of it. I mean, what else can we do with this? Uh, you can't- you can't get inside people's hearts and make them not feel things. Those people are gonna be out there. They know that it's not accepted in mainstream society and uh, and I- I kind of think y- you- you could sort of move on from it culturally to other issues. It's not a major issue anymore. Um, but they won't allow it, and you're right that then it's got this pendulum thing where okay, well if you go after white people and you demonize them relentlessly, and you do it practically from birth now through the school system, some of those white people are gonna end up being s- stricken by guilt or they're gonna walk around feeling like they're guilty for something. That's the- the white guilt liberal thing. But then you're gonna have others who, uh, kind of become exactly what you accuse them of being because they're like, "Oh, you know what? If you're gonna call me racist anyway then you know what? Fine." Um, and there's been a resentment that builds up and- and you actually create more of it, which I think they're happy about. If- if actual racism i- is increasing in society, I don't know if it is or not, but I think the people that call themselves anti-racists are quite happy about that.

Joe Rogan 23:42 Well, business is booming, but the other thing is like, think about Robin DiAngelo who you said l- just lives in her own bubble and really doesn't- didn't know who you were and didn't catch on at any point in time that-

Matt Walsh 23:54 Right.

Joe Rogan 23:54 ... n- any of this stuff was ridiculous. Like these people that this... If that's all you think about and that's all you kind of... Like I have friends that, uh, live in California and every now and then I'll talk to them and w- some politics issue will come up and they give me this fucking CNBC, they give me this MSNBC, this fucking propaganda viewpoint on something that's so wrong which is so... And I just go, "Okay. I- I can't." Like you're- you're in. You're- in your bubble, there's no... there's no real discourse.

Matt Walsh 24:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:27 There's no real disc- there's no discussions about whether or not what these people are saying is correct. It's just you're part of this tribe and this is what you believe.And I think that's the case with these anti-racist people too. They might not... Some of 'em might be, like, just hardcore grifters. Like, they could be playing three-card monty, or they could just get corporations to give them money by, by saying that everybody's racist. There's some people that are definitely like that. But there's other people that are just, that's their friend group. Like, that's their social circle. Their social circles, all people believe this stupid shit, and they all yap it to each other and they, they say it like it's a mantra and they pray five times a day with it. You know, it's really like a religious thing.

Matt Walsh 25:10 I think it is like a re- yeah, I think you're exactly right about that. I, that's, that's why for me, the more... So, the grifters that are getting paid, that's not that complicated to figure out why they're doing it. Like-

Joe Rogan 25:20 Yeah.

Matt Walsh 25:20 ... they're getting, they're getting paid.

Joe Rogan 25:21 A lot of 'em.

Matt Walsh 25:22 Uh, a lot of them are. And, and even when they're not, there's pow- there's still power and influence, and they're being consulted as kind of these moral gurus, which is v- which is very, it strokes the egos. So, they-

Joe Rogan 25:32 100%.

Matt Walsh 25:33 That's rewarding for them. The, the, the more interesting thing is, what about the people who go to those people and consult them as moral gurus? I mean, in the movie, we have this race to dinner, where you've got these white women who sit around a table and they invite these other two women, Cyber Rauh and Regina Jackson, to come to dinner. They pay them to come to dinner and call them, them racist for two hours. And it's like, why would you subject yourself to that? It's, it's so, it seems like the most miserable experience to volunteer to be broken down and insulted and degraded, which is what happened to these women. I mean, I saw it. They were, it's like two hours of them just getting, "You're racist, you're racist, you're racist."

Joe Rogan 26:13 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 26:13 They had to go around the table, confess their racist sins, uh, and then they all, they each go and they say what their racist sin, like, what, what's a racist thing you've done recently. They all confess. And I'm listening to it, and it's like, "None of you have actually done anything racist. I listened to all your stories."

Joe Rogan 26:29 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 26:29 "None of that is racist." There's a, there's a woman who said that, uh, she's married to a Black guy, and she...

Joe Rogan 26:37 Yeah.

Matt Walsh 26:37 He, he's loud and she tells him to quiet down sometimes.

Joe Rogan 26:39 Ugh.

Matt Walsh 26:41 What wife has not said that to their husband?

Joe Rogan 26:42 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 26:44 So, uh... So-

Joe Rogan 26:45 Exactly.

Matt Walsh 26:46 What do, what-

Joe Rogan 26:47 I get that once a month.

Matt Walsh 26:49 Right. So what do they-

Joe Rogan 26:49 I think my wife is racist.

Matt Walsh 26:51 (laughs) She, she could be.

Joe Rogan 26:52 She could be.

Matt Walsh 26:52 Uh, sexist, sexist against me at least.

Joe Rogan 26:54 She's racist against me.

Matt Walsh 26:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:54 Or, actually, sexist against me.

Matt Walsh 26:55 Uh, so what are they... Why... What are they getting out of it? And I think it's-

Joe Rogan 26:58 Well, they're getting out of it... First of all, they're terrified of being called racist. So, they jump the gun. So, they, they headed off at the path. Like, "I'm gonna make sure I'm not racist, so I'm gonna become an anti-racist." You know, I talked about this before, but when my kids were young, like, um, uh, my youngest was pretty young when, um, they started doing this anti-racism thing at the school, where they said, uh, "It's not enough to be not ra-" This is actually right after we left. So, it was right after, like, the George Floyd things popped off. They said, "It's n- not good enough to not be racist. You have to be anti-racist."

Matt Walsh 27:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:35 You're talking about some of these kids in that school are six.

Matt Walsh 27:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:40 Like, what are you saying?

Matt Walsh 27:41 It's not enough at six, you gotta-

Joe Rogan 27:42 What are, what are you saying? Are you saying a six-year-old has to be an anti-racist? Can't they just play with their toys? Can't they just go to the park and hang out with their friends? Can't they just play sports? Can't they just enjoy each other's... Six-year-olds don't give a fuck what color somebody is. They don't. They all just play together. They just want to play with the people who are nice to them and who they have fun with and laugh with. And here you've got some fucking grifter who latches themselves onto some school system that's filled with all these terrified liberals that are just terrified of being called out for anything. And then all the rules are changing and everybody's like, "Oh." And so they bend the knee, they bend the knee.

Matt Walsh 28:25 And it's r- with kids, it's so insidious because, yeah, kids don't care about race. Uh, they notice it though, which is fine, but then you, you, you give them like this complex from such a young age, which is so unnecessary. And that's why... I mean, I remember w- when my oldest daughter was five, we were at the mall or something, and, uh, this Black family walked by and she, like, pointed at them and said, uh, "W- why do pe- why do, why do, why are people Black? Like, how do... Why is their skin like that?" She wanted to know what, why are, why are, why do skin, why does skin color exi- like, what, why... How do some people have different skin color than other people? And, uh, and of course, you know, I told her, well, uh, it's like, uh, to be polite, we don't point at people in public, so I told her that. But then we talked about it. It's not... It's okay to wonder that, it's okay to notice that. I think with these anti-racist people, I, you know, if I was listening to them, I should have... Like this was, this would have been an opportunity for me to give her a whole lecture about racism and make her free- feel really bad for noticing that and asking about it.

Joe Rogan 29:27 Yeah.

Matt Walsh 29:27 Um, and then you create this complex. And yeah, fast-forward 20 years and she's one of these women at a race to dinner.

Joe Rogan 29:36 Exactly. Yeah.

Matt Walsh 29:37 You know? It's, it's, it's awful. But it's very... It's a very potent thing. I mean, white guilt, the fear of being called racist for... It's hard for me to understand because, you know, I get called racist all the time, 50, 50 thou- thousand times a day. And it, it just rolls off my back. I don't care 'cause it, it's just, it's... I'm numb to it.

Joe Rogan 29:55 It doesn't mean anything anymore.

Matt Walsh 29:56 It doesn't mean anything, but... For, for you and I, it doesn't mean anything, but for a lot of j- nor- normal people, especially-

Joe Rogan 30:03 It's a death sentence.

Matt Walsh 30:04 Right, to be called that-

Joe Rogan 30:05 Socially.

Matt Walsh 30:05 It's like the worst thing in the world.

Joe Rogan 30:07 Yes. Yeah.

Matt Walsh 30:07 They're terrified of it. Uh, they'd rather, they'd literally rather be called anything than racist.

Joe Rogan 30:13 Yeah.

Matt Walsh 30:14 Um, and then f- so for them, once you... Those kinds of people, when that's the threat, ra- when being called racist is a threat, you can get them to do anything.

Joe Rogan 30:24 Yeah.

Matt Walsh 30:24 And, um, we've... I mean, I don't... Spoilers or whatever, but the, in the movie at the... uh, the last thing in the movie when I do my own anti-racist workshop-

Joe Rogan 30:33 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 30:33 ... with these people, and they're all real people.

Joe Rogan 30:34 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 30:35 And we, we get them to join in on some things that are really, like, morally repugnant.

Joe Rogan 30:42 Ugh.

Matt Walsh 30:42 Uh-... be- because they, they're terrified of being called racist publicly. They, they, they can't stand that thought.

Joe Rogan 30:48 And the other thing that happens with kids is if you have a thing, like, you're telling the kid they have to be anti-racist, well some kids are gonna use that as a, a platform to increase, you know, what- whatever social cred that they have and they get feedback from it, it's positive feedback, and they, they, they get very vocal. And the more vocal, the more people are impressed and the more work they do, the more people are going, "You're doing great work." And then you get what's essentially, like, the racial version of Greta Thunberg. Like, what i- what is that lady? That lady's moral outrage and, "What have you done? How dare you?" And everybody's like, "Yes." (claps)

Matt Walsh 31:25 (claps)

Joe Rogan 31:25 "We like what you just did." And so now you do it all the time. And so now, somehow or another, a 16-year-old kid travels all over the world telling everybody they're bad, flying around in jets telling everybody they're bad for ruining the environment. Like-

Matt Walsh 31:38 And, and she gets to feel-

Joe Rogan 31:40 Morally superior.

Matt Walsh 31:41 ... super- Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:41 Morally superior. Virtuous. And, e- for a child to be in a position where they become virtuous is ... you know, they love that. They love that.

Matt Walsh 31:50 To be in a position where they can lecture adults.

Joe Rogan 31:52 Yes. Lecture-

Matt Walsh 31:52 Where adults are looking to them as l- as authorities.

Joe Rogan 31:55 Yes. Um, k- college kids love to do that. The moment they're out of their house, the moment they don't have their parents telling 'em what to do anymore, now they can tell other people what to do. And it's just like ... It's ... One thing that you see online (clears throat) from people who have been bullied in the past, um, people that have been picked on and fucked with, boy they like to do it to people, like o- online, on Twitter mobs. They like to jump in. And I know a lot of people that have, that I've, I've known a lot of people that have engaged in these things. I've, I've known them personally. These feeble, weak, terrified men and they say the most heinous things about people. Like, uncharitable, not knowing, you, y- like, what, what kind of response these words are gonna have in that person. And they, they bully these people because they've been hurt. You know? It's that hurt people hurt people thing. That's what it is. But they don't think it's a violent ... They don't think it's as bad as bullying, like, in real, real life bullying's terrible. You're gonna hit somebody? How dare you, you fucking monster. Well, you're emotionally scarring people online every day and you think you're doing it through this ... When y- it's like, one of the things ... Elon's talked about this, that one of the things that woke does i- it allows really mean people, this ideology allows really mean, shitty people to have a, a virtuous way of expressing that.

Matt Walsh 33:13 Yeah. I think that's, that's right. And, and also the internet ... I mean, the whole idea that the internet isn't real, we hear it all the time. That's why I hate it when people say, uh, "Well, Twitter isn't real life." But ... And I understand what's meant by that when people say that, but it actually is real life because these are, these are human beings who are communicating with each other. Now, there are bots too, but if you're a human being on Twitter saying something, that's real life. It's not, it's not fake. This isn't happening in some kind of dream world.

Joe Rogan 33:42 Right.

Matt Walsh 33:42 Um, so but then people think that, "Well, okay, if I just say this on Twitter, I put it, put it in a YouTube comment section, and it's this heinous, awful thing, it doesn't count, doesn't mean I'm a bad person, 'cause it's not real life." Which is like, that's like writing on a loose leaf paper, calling someone a piece of shit, and handing it to them, and then they get mad at you and you say, "Hey, man, it's the paper. It's not real life."

Joe Rogan 34:04 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 34:05 Like, it just, it just happened on the paper. It's a, it's a, it's a method for communicating.

Joe Rogan 34:09 Yes.

Matt Walsh 34:09 And, uh, and so I think people have been conditioned that in this world it's like a moral exception so you can s- do and say whatever you want and you don't have to feel bad about it.

Joe Rogan 34:19 Right.

Matt Walsh 34:20 And then it turns people into sociopaths after a while, I think.

Joe Rogan 34:22 I think it does too. And I also think it ramps up anxiety in a huge way for the people that are actually engaging in it. You know? The people that actually do it, I think they're just fully anxious all day long and I think it's terrible for mental health. Even if you're, like, quote/unquote winning these verbal battles online that you're engaging in, I think it's terrible for everybody. It's really terrible for the people that are just, like, all day long negative. Like, there's ... And arguing with people. Like, why do you want that in your life? That's, that's a very unusual position to be in, where all day long you're in conflict. That's only war. In the real world, most of the day there's no conflict. That's why conflict is so uncomfortable, 'cause it's so unusual.

Matt Walsh 35:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:03 If you're used to conflict with people all the time and you see some guy and he's like, "Fuck you." "No, fuck you." But if you're not used to someone saying, "Fuck you," and then all of a sudden, "Hey, fuck you," and you're like, "Uh, what?" Like, you're terrified, you're freaked out, like, "What's going on? Oh, my God, this is conflict." The kind of conflict, uh, verbal conflict that people engage in online all day long has the same sort of effects on your psyche. You are perceiving the world to be this ... This, this is one of the things that's so polarizing about this particular election, right? That people are willing to accept propaganda because it feeds into their view of the world, which is that they're engaged in this moral battle, v- good versus evil. And both sides think they're good and both sides think the other side is gonna be the end of the world. And it's accentuated heavily by mentally ill people that are on Twitter all day long.

Matt Walsh 35:55 Yeah, I'm one of them. So, uh ...

Joe Rogan 35:58 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 35:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:58 You seem fine.

Matt Walsh 35:59 Uh, but I, I mean, I, I am guilty of some of this. I do. I'm on it way too much, first of all. But I ... But then I have my excuse, which is it's part of my job.

Joe Rogan 36:08 It's part of your job.

Matt Walsh 36:09 Uh, I do often think if I didn't do this for a living at all, I, I don't think I'd be on any of this stuff.

Joe Rogan 36:15 I think I'd be off everything.

Matt Walsh 36:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:17 If I was not a quote/unquote public figure, I would be off everything.

Matt Walsh 36:21 'Cause I have n- I don't know if you have a pro- ... If I go on vacation or something and I'm, and I'm taking Time Out, I have no issue putting it down. I don't, I have no compulsion to look at it. In fact, I have to, when I come off vacation, it t- I- it's effort to get back in it. It's like, "Okay, I gotta get back into this again."

Joe Rogan 36:34 Mm-hmm.

Matt Walsh 36:35 It takes me a couple days. Then after a couple of days, now it's a compulsion again. But-

Joe Rogan 36:38 Right.

Matt Walsh 36:38 ... I have to, I have to reignite this weird compulsion to constantly look at my phone.

Joe Rogan 36:43 ... but I, I have a problem too in that I'm a comedian and that I'm also a gold miner. Right? So what that means is when I'm going through my newsfeed, my newsfeed is the thing I'm the most addicted to. I'm mining for gold. Like, "What's going on here? What'd they do? They did what? They, (laughs) they fucking what?" And I, I need those. Those are really important to me, 'cause, like, those can be my next hour of standup. Those can be... Th- they're chunks.

Matt Walsh 37:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:07 E- every... And it's not every day. It's like, I can go through 30 days of nonsense and just not one thing, but every now and then there's a chunk of gold in there. I'm like, "Oh, I got one." And then I put that in my notes and I justify endless scrolling to get to those gold nuggets.

Matt Walsh 37:24 D- but if you didn't do any of this for a living, if you just worked at Lowe's or something and, y- you know, do you think you'd still be...

Joe Rogan 37:30 The problem is I'd still be me and I still have this v- really intense curiosity. I'm, I'm really curious about all kinds of things.

Matt Walsh 37:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:38 There's so many subjects I'm really, really interested in. I mean, I would, I would for sure still be paying attention to, you know, science issues and space travel and, you know, n- new discoveries in the universe. And there's a bunch of stuff that I would just be... Ancient history, ancient civilizations. I would be... There's no way I would not be fascinated by them, because they almost have nothing to do with my job.

Matt Walsh 37:59 Yeah. I think I, I think I would be the same, but I, I don't think I'd feel the need to... I would like to absorb all that interesting information, but I wouldn't feel the need to say, "Hey world, here's what I think about this."

Joe Rogan 38:09 Right. And-

Matt Walsh 38:09 I would just absorb it.

Joe Rogan 38:10 The problem is if you do and you do it just once and then you get feedback, and then people say, "Hey, I really like what you posted," and you're like, "Oh, great." And then, and then all of a sudden you're connected and then you're, like, looking for this feedback. So you're trying to post things to get likes and you're trying to post things to get reposts and get comments and you're engaging in the comments. And now, now it's... Now you're fucked. Now you're locked into this weird ecosystem with these people you don't even know. They might be all stupid. They might be all, you know, really annoying people that you would avoid in real life. Like, if you work with them, you're like, "Oh, there's Tom. Let me get the fuck outta here." And you go to the other side of the office. But now you're engaging with them.

Matt Walsh 38:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:46 People that you avoid having conversations with you are now m- like, in mortal combat with words on Twitter and it's fucking stupid.

Matt Walsh 38:55 And not only that, but their engagement with you is, is cheap. It's, uh... They don't care that much. So even if someone gives you positive feedback and they say, "Oh, that was a great tweet," they've forgotten about it two seconds later.

Joe Rogan 39:07 Right.

Matt Walsh 39:07 Y- you're just, they're just scrolling. You're just the, the latest thing they saw.

Joe Rogan 39:10 Mm-hmm.

Matt Walsh 39:10 And then they're scrolling and they've already forgotten about it. They don't care. If they cuss you out 'cause they're mad at you, uh, same deal. They forgot about it two seconds later. So, yeah, I guess it could be kind of intoxic- intoxicating to get the engagement, but then, uh, it doesn't matter. And that's one of the, that's one of the things that makes it so, so toxic is how, uh, sort of like nihilistic it all is. That, that's why... And this was, this never was an issue before, but now I feel like when I go on social media, uh, I'm constantly seeing these horrific videos of people dying. Like-

Joe Rogan 39:42 Oh, yeah.

Matt Walsh 39:42 ... snuff films-

Joe Rogan 39:44 Mm-hmm.

Matt Walsh 39:44 ... are all over, uh, social media now. Uh, it feels like a, a relatively recent development, and that's really horrible what it does to... I, I don't even think we quite understand what it's doing to our minds. I actually think we all, are all traumatized from it. And I don't, I don't use the word trauma loosely, but what's, what's traumatizing is not only are you seeing somebody die, but it's the context. It's like y- you see this horrible video, someone just got shot, and then you keep scrolling, and a second later you're w- reading something about whatever, you know, c- celebrity news or you're watching a, a cat video.

Joe Rogan 40:20 Right.

Matt Walsh 40:21 So it's like this, it's this horrific human thing that happened, but for you it's just content. You absorb it that way. Um, and I don't know, after a while of just absorbing human suffering in this, in this way, uh, it's gotta mess with your mind, I, I think.

Joe Rogan 40:35 Of course it does. I mean, you're the product of what you take in. Even if that information is, like, low impact, it's not the same impact as being there when the hitmen show up and gun the guys down in front of the cafe. Like, I've seen these videos where it's just mass shootings. This one video I saw the other day of some gang violence situation, these guys drove by, gunned these guys down, and then the guys started shooting back and they were all shot while they're shooting back. And then the car backs up and then they gunned them down more.

Matt Walsh 41:03 Yeah, I've seen-

Joe Rogan 41:04 It's fucking crazy.

Matt Walsh 41:05 ... seen that one.

Joe Rogan 41:06 But i- it's not the same as being there. If you were there, that would haunt you for the rest of your life. If you were across the street and you watched that happen, you watched these people die, it would haunt you for the rest of your life. But it just... You get a little blip. Instead of getting 100% dose, you get like a little 1% dose, little 1% dose, and you get them all day long. And by the end of the day you're just like, "What the fuck is the world?"

Matt Walsh 41:26 Yeah. But it sh- it's the thing, it kinda should haunt you for the rest of your life.

Joe Rogan 41:30 Right.

Matt Walsh 41:30 It's a horrible thing to see.

Joe Rogan 41:31 But it's like Twitter in that it's not a full experience. Like, the full expe- like if you were having the kind of exchanges that some people have with each other where they're just ruthlessly insulting and shitty to people, if you were having those in person, there's a high probability that that's gonna lead to violence, actual violence.

Matt Walsh 41:48 Yep.

Joe Rogan 41:48 Like if two men are in a room and one man starts insulting this other person, like really, like viciously, and, and talking about their life and their family and all kinds of crazy shit that people do online, there's a probability, it's more than 0% that this is gonna result in violence. But there's zero possibility of it online. It's just, it's just free. It's a free shot. And that's part of the problem as well, is that it's not a real human interaction. So you're getting like these little doses of shittiness from people, but you're not getting this one burst where you and this guy are about to throw down, because he's, like, he's insulting you to the point where like this person's actually dangerous. Like this is actually... This person hates me. Like this could be a real bad situation here. And I think much like w- that exists on Twitter where you have these little shitty interactions that's like 1% of real hate and it just adds up over time, that's the same thing as seeing violence, seeing all these executions, seeing all these botched robberies, seeing all these people that get murdered in some, you know, third world country.... you, you just get a little, little tiny piece of it all the time, and it's, it normalizes it. It's probably really, really bad for us.

Matt Walsh 43:03 Do you, uh, do you pay attention to what people say about you online? Do you-

Joe Rogan 43:07 No.

Matt Walsh 43:08 You never do ... You never-

Joe Rogan 43:09 No.

Matt Walsh 43:09 ... search for Joe Rogan and, uh-

Joe Rogan 43:10 Nope.

Matt Walsh 43:11 Never?

Joe Rogan 43:11 Nope. Shouldn't do it.

Matt Walsh 43:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:14 It's not good for you.

Matt Walsh 43:15 Yeah, I'll admit that I've done it on occasion, and it-

Joe Rogan 43:17 It's just-

Matt Walsh 43:18 It's just, it's nothing but ... If you wanna just destroy your- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:22 (laughs) Your self-esteem?

Matt Walsh 43:23 ... self-image, you could, you could do it pretty quickly.

Joe Rogan 43:25 Well, that's what they want. That's what people wanna do when they say things like that. Like, "This is my opinion." And, you know, a lot of it, it's, like, really outta line. Like, a lot of it is just, like, the worst possible t- Like I said before, like the least charitable takes, the least nuanced, the, this, uh, ridiculous caricature of a human being just to try to, just to try to demonize them to make yourself look virtually or v- virtuously superior. It's just dumb. It's a dumb way for people to communicate, and the kinda people that do it are all losers.

Matt Walsh 43:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:58 There's no, like, really exceptional fascinating people that engage in that kinda stuff.

Matt Walsh 44:02 Well, the, the thing that gets me, I don't mind ... When people insult me, I, I, I don't care. Uh, I'm used to it. It's the lies. Like, when I see something about myself that's just a straight-up lie-

Joe Rogan 44:14 Mm-hmm.

Matt Walsh 44:15 ... totally made up, and then it c- picks up traction and people are ... Sometimes it could be, you know, even someone Photoshopping a tweet that I never said-

Joe Rogan 44:22 Mm-hmm.

Matt Walsh 44:23 ... or whatever. Anything. Uh, that stuff still, still, uh, like bothers me. And it ... And, and then I try to tell myself, "Well, it shouldn't bother me," but at the same time, it should. It's like no- It's normal for a person to be bothered when you're, when you're being lied about-

Joe Rogan 44:38 Right.

Matt Walsh 44:39 ... and other people are believing a lie. I think it's a normal human reaction that I'm like, "I don't want ... That's not fair. That's not true." You know, you could attack me for things that I really have said and done, but that's ... You can't do that. That's not true. Um, but then at a certain point, you just have to sorta give into it and realize this is the way the internet works, I guess. But-

Joe Rogan 44:58 Well, it's also who knows who's doing it. And at this point in time, we have to accept the reality of propaganda, and that there ... You know, we've talked about this ad nauseum, but I'll say it again. There was a, an FBI, uh, former analyst did, um, some sort of a study on Twitter where he was, uh, estimating the amount of bots versus ... This is be- like right around the time when Elon was saying that it's more than 5%. He said he thinks it's about 80%. He thinks 80%-

Matt Walsh 45:24 80%?

Joe Rogan 45:24 ... of the accounts. Yeah, 80% of the accounts are fake accounts, which just stop and think about if you're in a country, okay? Let's imagine you want the politics of America to swing in a certain direction, 'cause we most certainly do this in other countries. I mean, w- we don't have to educate people on the long history of interventionist foreign policy, where we have gone in and installed new leaders of countries and organized all kinds of shit. So, we do it, and we do it, and we know they do it, but isn't it, like, the cheapest way to do it, wouldn't it be to do it on social media?

Matt Walsh 46:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:02 And if you did it, why would you do it with, like, one account? Why wouldn't you have a million accounts? I would have a million accounts. Like, uh, just gotta get a computer that keeps making new accounts. And you run a program. It's not the most difficult thing to do. For people that know how to actually code operating systems. You don't think there's someone out there that can code a computer program that can operate millions of different Twitter accounts, and you run it through some sort of a AI that you've developed, some large language model on things to say about MAGA, or things to say about abortion, or things to say about conservatives, or things to say about liberals, and you put a fucking American flag in your little bio and ... Or you put a pronoun thing, he/hur/zis/zir, whatever it is. And then you just flood the internet with fake anger and fake discourse, and you lie about people, and you ... A- anytime there's a post about anything controversial, you insert something in there that gets people even more riled up. You could get people ... You could swing the vote. You could swing the vote in one way or another, especially with fence-sitters, with people that are not sure, like, "I don't know. Is Trump really the answer?" And then you get online, and you see a- a- all this hateful shit, or you might get on a MAGA forum, and you go, "Oh, the, the, the ... There are, they are eating cats. He was telling the truth. ABC's biased." And you could swing it one way or the other, and I think they're all trying to manipulate it. All these foreign governments, and I think internally in the United States, I'm sure there are groups that are doing it too, that are manipulating things in one way or the other in a disingenuous way because it's available. And I don't know how to stop it. I think the only way for you to not personally be really affected by it is you have to understand that it exists, and then you have to recognize that, you know, some of these takes are not even real human beings. So, instead of saying, "Jesus Christ, people really think that way?" Go, uh, "Maybe not." Like, maybe this isn't ... Maybe there's a few people that think that way, but you're being led to believe that it's a huge movement of people when it might not be. But the problem is when it b- ... Even if it's fake, people are so stupid that even if it's a fake thing that becomes a bit of a movement online with fake, dumb people will jump in there, and then it'll become a real thing.

Matt Walsh 48:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:14 Like, you aware of, uh, (laughs) the, uh, the free bleeding movement that 4chan pushed?

Matt Walsh 48:21 Yeah, I think I heard of that.

Joe Rogan 48:23 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 48:24 But then it, it became kinda real, didn't it?

Joe Rogan 48:25 It became real! That's what I'm saying. Or flat Earth. It's the same thing. It became a joke. Uh, people were fucking around at first. We've known the Earth has not been flat for a long-ass time-

Matt Walsh 48:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:34 ... and then-

Matt Walsh 48:35 But now that's totally real, right?

Joe Rogan 48:36 Now it's totally real. Now there's massive groups of people that think the Earth is flat.

Matt Walsh 48:40 Which isn't ... I, I can't.

Joe Rogan 48:42 I can. I can't-

Matt Walsh 48:43 I don't know how that ... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:44 Yeah, you can't, but the thing is, that's how dumb people are, that you can have a fake thing and say it enough times and enough people jump in and be on board with it, and then it becomes a real thing. And then you don't even have to, like, uh, use propaganda anymore. These morons are doing it for you.

Matt Walsh 49:01 The thing that gets me about the flat Earth thing is, uh-... 'cause I didn't realize that it was a real thing until, I don't know, a few years ago, I did... I wrote s-... I posted something about it.

Joe Rogan 49:09 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 49:10 And all these comments from, from real people, that, uh, that, uh, that... Eh, what, what gets me is... Well, yeah, the people that say, "I think the Earth's flat," and that's ins-... You're just, just really stupid. But what I... I was more fascinated by the, like, 80% of people who... 80% of the f-... of the flat Earth crowd, 80% of them, their take was, "Well, I'm, I don't... I'm not saying the Earth is flat, but I'm, I'm open to it. So I'm-"

Joe Rogan 49:37 (laughs)

Matt Walsh 49:37 "... I'm open to the possibility." How are you... I, I get it if you're just completely stupid and you got sucked into this cult thing, but what I don't get is, how can you be... (laughs) how can you be on the fence about whether... about the shape of the Earth?

Joe Rogan 49:50 Well, it's just people that really are not educated. That's, that's number one. And people that believe that there's a collusion that's so large that all of the space agencies, from Japan, from China, from Russia, all of them are liars. That all of them are colluding together to hide the true shape of the Earth, because if we really knew the Earth was flat, then we would... it would... i- it always is connected to some sort of a Bible thing. Like, it's the firmament and they believe that, that we're, we're hiding the fact that God is real and somehow there's some mass conspiracy that all these world governments and e-... a- every person that ever was involved in the space agencies, they've all hid from us.

Matt Walsh 50:33 Yeah. A- and the m-... The... Your moon landing, you're not a... You, you believe in the moon landing, right?

Joe Rogan 50:40 I used to believe in the moon landing.

Matt Walsh 50:41 You don't anymore?

Joe Rogan 50:42 I had a joke in my act about it, that before COVID, I would have told you vaccine's the most important invention in human history, and after COVID, I'm like, "I don't think we went to the moon."

Matt Walsh 50:49 Yeah, I know that was in your act, but do you-

Joe Rogan 50:51 Yeah.

Matt Walsh 50:51 You actually think that?

Joe Rogan 50:52 I think there is a less than zero possibility that we did not go to the moon.

Matt Walsh 50:55 Oh my gosh.

Joe Rogan 50:56 I know. Why do you think we went to the moon?

Matt Walsh 50:59 Well, 'cause it's exactly what you just said about... Well, there's a lot of reasons, but the main thing is what you just said about the Earth. The, the, the vastness of the conspiracy that would be required to fake that, it's so vast that it's just... It's, it's a lot more incredible to believe that we faked it than to believe that we just went. And going to the moon, don't get... I... It's a ma- massive achievement. Um, eh, w- I w-... But I, I think the greatest human achievement of all time. But even so, to fake it would be even more massive, uh, because not only would you need all of these, you know, space agencies and all the different, whatever, people in Amer-... eh, eh, American, eh, American institutions to be colluding, but you'd also need w-... foreign governments, including adversarial foreign governments, who at this point certainly would know we faked it, and for some reason haven't blown the lid on it. So they're, they're letting us, like, take this achievement that they know... Like, why haven't the Russians s-... come out and said-

Joe Rogan 51:52 All those things you're saying are true.

Matt Walsh 51:54 Right.

Joe Rogan 51:54 I, I don't, I don't argue with any of the things you're saying. But one of the things that I think you have to consider is, if it's not possible for human beings to safely go through the Van Allen radiation belts and out into deep space without much protection, and face the temperatures that are on the s-... the surface of the moon, which get up to 250 degrees, and 250 degrees below zero in, in the shadows, it's a... there's no environment there. It's, uh, eh, hostile beyond belief. Micrometeorites are flying into the moon all the time. They're flying through space all the time. We've never had a single biological organism go out into deep space, past the Van Allen radiation belts, and then come back to Earth and come back alive, except human beings during the Apollo missions. Every single space station mission, every th-... single space shuttle mission, all of them are inside 350 miles from the Earth's surface. The only time human beings have ever been past that and through the Van Allen radiation belts was the Apollo missions. And we were the only humans that were ever d-... able to do that. The Russians never figured out how to do it. No one else figured out how to do it but the Apollo astronauts. And we did it seven times, six successfully, from 1969 to 1972. If you told... If you said to me, "Do you think that they could fake the moon landing today?" I would say, "No." I would say, "No, no, no, no. People are gonna be able to track it. They're g-... Th-... It's, uh, very easy. They have satellites. They're, they're gonna know everything." But in 1969, the technology was so crude that the fir-... When they first showed the Apollo 11 landing, they didn't even show a direct feed to the networks. So, like, if you're on CBS News, you don't get a direct feed. What you do is you point a camera at a projection screen. So that's why the, the film looks so shitty. The camera's pointed to a projection screen where you see the astronauts jumping around on the moon and you see this weird grainy, eh, third generation image, right? And we did it, and we have never done it since. And we've always said we're gonna do it, and no one's ever even come close. No one's ever even gone into deep space since 1972.

Matt Walsh 54:05 We also haven't been trying.

Joe Rogan 54:07 We haven't been trying.

Matt Walsh 54:08 But-

Joe Rogan 54:08 But we always talk about going back, uh, including... Herbert Walker Bush talked about going back, uh, George W talked about going back. They, they all talk about going back, but nobody ever gets anywhere.

Matt Walsh 54:18 Well, I think that's 'cause we lost the, the spirit, uh, and hunger for discovery, which is a, is-

Joe Rogan 54:23 We didn't just lose that. We lost all the technology from the Saturn V rocket. They don't even have that anymore. In fact, they don't even have the original film. They, they erased all the original footage of the Apollo missions, so you just-

Matt Walsh 54:34 So you-

Joe Rogan 54:34 ... have copies of everything.

Matt Walsh 54:36 Y- you could develop the technology again. You can do all that. If, if-

Joe Rogan 54:38 Sure you could. If you can get through the r- Van Allen radiation belts-

Matt Walsh 54:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 54:42 ... into deep space with human beings and have them safely come back.

Matt Walsh 54:45 But I, I think what you're describing, to me, it... All that does is highlight th-... how incredible the achievement of... was-

Joe Rogan 54:51 If they did it. Right, if they did it. But-

Matt Walsh 54:53 Right. But there's... But I don't... Eh, well, here's the main point. I don't... I... There's no, there's no evidence, because saying that it was a hoax is an assertion of a d-... It's not, it's not... You're not just denying an event. You're a-... you're asserting a whole other event that you say happened instead. And-... there is evidence that we went to the moon. Now, now, someone who's a skeptic might say, "I, it's not enough evidence," or, "It's not good evidence." There's, like, evidence. There's eyewitness te- (laughs) there's people that went and came back and told us. There's, uh, there's footage. There's a lot-

Joe Rogan 55:25 Okay.

Matt Walsh 55:25 ... there is evidence.

Joe Rogan 55:25 Okay. There's-

Matt Walsh 55:26 But there's, but there's no evidence of the hoax. Like, no one has come and said, "Here's my affirmative evidence that this hoax happened." It's never happened, r- as far as I'm aware.

Joe Rogan 55:37 Okay.

Matt Walsh 55:37 No one, no one's ever provided that evidence.

Joe Rogan 55:38 I, I see what you're trying to say. Um, there, the evidence that they went to the moon, there's a, a bunch, right? There's moon rocks, that's one. There's, uh, lunar reflectors that they placed on the moon, that's another. Um, and there's a couple problems with those. First of all, the Soviets put s- l- uh, so- th- uh, laser reflectors on the moon as well. Um, and also, the moon itself, in many places where you shine lasers on it, it bounces back by itself. The reflective quality of the moon, the reason why the moon is so, so bright and white in the sky when the sun hits it, there's a certain amount of ref- you, you get a certain amount of bounce back off of different things with lasers. Um, there's some photographs that are interesting. What was it, was it India? What was the one where they got the most high resolution photos of the lander... I'm looking at it, Wikipedia right now, of, uh, all third-party evidence of the Apollo missions. One of the things that's interesting is they gave a moon rock to, um, (smacks lips) was it a prime minister of Holland? Is that what it was? Which one was the moon rock they gave that turned out to be petrified wood? So, the Apollo astronauts gave a moon rock to, uh, some foreign dignitary, and it turned out to be a, a piece of petrified wood. Um, they do have samples of, uh, moon rocks that came from the moon. But we also have those on Earth. In fact, Wernher von Braun, in 1968, I believe, went to Antarctica. There's all these photographs of him in Antarctica. Antarctica's a great place to take moon rocks, because, uh, Antarctica is just this gigantic sheet of white, and you can spot the meteorites in the ground. So, this is the photo. And this is from what, what is this from?

Matt Walsh 57:17 Uh...

Joe Rogan 57:18 What is the, um ... so this is an India, yeah, India, Indian Space Research Organization's ... I don't know how to say that word, Chand- Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter captured images of NASA's Apollo 11 and 12 landing sites and lunar modules from 100 kilometer altitude. Apollo 12 image, astronaut boots tracks are still even visible. Due to the recent interest in another post I shared, decided to download, uh, view the, uh, raw imagery. So, that looks like there's some kind of thing on the moon.

Matt Walsh 57:50 It's pretty good evidence.

Joe Rogan 57:51 It is evidence that something's on the moon. It's not evidence that human beings went to the moon. See, we have things that are on the moon, we have things on Mars right now.

Matt Walsh 57:58 Well, I think that-

Joe Rogan 57:58 We have things that were, uh, we, we'd shot things into space, for sure.

Matt Walsh 58:02 Yeah. But as, it's evidence, it's c- it's not proof in and of itself, but it is evidence.

Joe Rogan 58:06 Listen, I'm not saying we didn't go to the moon. What I'm saying is the subject is complex. And it's not even a little complex, it's really complex. There's a documentary called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon with this guy, Bart Sibrel, he's been obses- he was a guest on the show too, been obsessed about this his whole life and absolutely believes that we never went to the moon. And there's enough shit that you go, "Okay, if he's right about any of these things, it's weird." One of the things was some of the photographs of the moon, they ran through a, one of those, um, AI detectors that can tell you whether or not something's false or, uh, artificially generated. And it showed different images from, I think it was a Chinese satellite of the moon. They said this is legitimate. But then it got to these Apollo images, and they said these had been doctored. This AI decided-

Matt Walsh 58:53 Who s- who said that?

Joe Rogan 58:53 This AI program that they ran-

Matt Walsh 58:54 All the images or a few of them?

Joe Rogan 58:55 A few of them.

Matt Walsh 58:57 But then other ones were found to be authentic?

Joe Rogan 58:59 I don't think so. I think they only ran a few images through. See if you can find those, Jamie. Find what they did. Again, this is not saying that we didn't go to the moon. It could be, and this was a fact with the Gemini 15 program, where Michael Collins, there was a, a photograph of Michael Collins that they took in one of his, um, one of his training exercises, where he had, uh, you know, those, those packs that they put on where they can move around while they're doing m- uh, moon walks, where, or not moon walks, space walks outside of a-

Matt Walsh 59:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:29 ... where they're connected b- uh, by a tether. And he was, like, w- in this harness and manipulating this device, and what they had done is taken a photograph of him training, and then someone, probably some overzealous PR person, had taken that photograph and then blacked out the background and pa- tried to pass it off as a really clear photograph of him out there on a space walk, which is probably very difficult to get, right? You'd have to have another person at the camera, frame it right. They had this photo, they're like, "Look, he did it. Let's just pass this off as the real thing." Which is, you know, you're also talking about the Nixon administration, where they were just f- full of shit constantly. If you remember, this is where he tried-

Matt Walsh 1:00:09 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:00:09 ... to claim it was from, which is f- a Russian video, and now- Yeah. So, there's different video where they, they ran it through and they said it was real, and it was the, was it the Chinese program? But when they ran the American ones, the American images, they said that they were doctored. Again, it doesn't mean that we didn't go to the moon. But it does mean, okay, there's that. That's weird. Have you ever seen the Apollo 11 post-flight press conference?

Matt Walsh 1:00:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:36 It looks like a hostage video. It looks like a bunch of guys who don't wanna be there, they look real fucking nervous, and they look real deceptive. And if you watch that video, it's weird.

Matt Walsh 1:00:44 Well, but I think that's just, that's the temperament it requires to do something like that.

Joe Rogan 1:00:48 Could be.

Matt Walsh 1:00:49 'Cause it, it's basically s- it's almost suicidal to go to the moon.

Joe Rogan 1:00:51 Right.

Matt Walsh 1:00:52 Uh, and so, you have to be, like, not, barely even a human, uh, uh, psychologically, to do it. So, I don't, so that, to me, is just like ... and they just went through this whole experience. I mean, who knows what that does to the human psyche? Um, uh, e- to even just, like, be in the vastness of space, even on the Space Station, I can't i- like, I feel like that would change me-

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 Oh, yeah.

Matt Walsh 1:01:12 ... as a person.

Joe Rogan 1:01:12 But d- it does.

Matt Walsh 1:01:13 Not necessarily for the best.

Joe Rogan 1:01:14 Well, there's actually, like, a psychological condition that they talk about that is this sort of understanding that we're all connected, that a lot, it's like a, akin to a r- a religious experience that many astronauts get-

Matt Walsh 1:01:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:24 ... when they go up to the Space Station and look down at the Earth and they go, "Oh my God. What are we doing? Like, we're all together in this thing, and we're so alone in the universe. And for us to be fighting over these trivial differences and these stupid lines in the dirt that we draw, when we are, like..."... just clinging to this ball in the middle of everything.

Matt Walsh 1:01:41 So what ... So then what would you say, or someone who is a, a full-on believer, as full-

Joe Rogan 1:01:47 Not a full-on believer.

Matt Walsh 1:01:48 Someone who is a full-on believer in the Moon hoax, what would they say to my other point that there is evidence we went to the moon. You can try to, uh, nitpick the evidence.

Joe Rogan 1:01:59 Mm-hmm.

Matt Walsh 1:01:59 There is zero evidence of a hoax, 'cause that's a whole other event that would've had to have happened. There is no evidence at all, not one sliver of evidence ever, of that hoax having ever happened.

Joe Rogan 1:02:12 But I think that's a weird way to frame it. Right? Is there evidence of a hoax of the JFK assassination? That L- Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone? Do you think there's evidence?

Matt Walsh 1:02:22 Well, but, but the, the event itself, being that J- JFK was killed-

Joe Rogan 1:02:26 Right.

Matt Walsh 1:02:26 ... happened.

Joe Rogan 1:02:26 But, but ... Right. But that's not the conspiracy. So the, the conspiracy is, did he act alone? And is there evidence that he didn't act alone? What do you think?

Matt Walsh 1:02:35 Uh, I'm, I'm very skeptical that he acted alone. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:39 Right. But the-

Matt Walsh 1:02:40 But I don't know-

Joe Rogan 1:02:41 But from what I know-

Matt Walsh 1:02:41 I don't know exactly what happened. I don't know what he does.

Joe Rogan 1:02:42 Exactly.

Matt Walsh 1:02:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:44 Same exact perspective. Uh, same exact perspective about this Moon thing.

Matt Walsh 1:02:48 (sighs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:48 Like, it y- it may have happened, but this was a time of deep deception in, in the American world.

Matt Walsh 1:02:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:54 This is a time after Operation Northwoods. This is a time after the Kennedy assassination. This is a time ... I mean, this is a weird, fucking shaky time in terms of propaganda. This is after Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex. This is like ... There was a lot of deception. Gulf of Tonkin incident. There's a lot of open deception that the-

Matt Walsh 1:03:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:14 ... American people were being subject to. And then there was this Cold War between us and Russia. This, this space war for superiority.

Matt Walsh 1:03:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:21 There was ... We, we was ... We wanted it so bad we brought in Nazis.

Matt Walsh 1:03:25 But I still ... But I think ... I mean the, the JFK is an interesting example but, uh ... 'Cause yes, there are things that I'm skeptical of that are claimed-

Joe Rogan 1:03:32 Mm-hmm.

Matt Walsh 1:03:32 ... that I don't really have evidence that the thing didn't happen or that it didn't happen the way they say, but I'm still skeptical, so I get that. But, uh, it feels different to me because the JFK assassination did happen. The question is, how did it happen? Uh, but if we're going to assert that a major historical event, probably the greatest, th- the, the most significant historical event in, in history, or one of them, did not happen at all, no one did it, then like I said, that's ... So what you're actually claiming is that some other thing, this, this ... They went somewhere and they pulled off this hoax and they planned it and they did ... Like an event happened-

Joe Rogan 1:04:05 Mm-hmm.

Matt Walsh 1:04:05 ... where they were faking it.

Joe Rogan 1:04:06 Right.

Matt Walsh 1:04:07 And, uh, so what I would want to see, has anybody come out, any whistleblower ever to say, "Hey, I was involved in the shoot," or, "I, I'm in Hollywood. I talked to a guy who was there."? "I, uh, you know, here's the-"

Joe Rogan 1:04:19 Well that's not even, that's not even evidence. You know? Real evidence would be some sort of documentation. Some sort of a, some sort of a way to go over like ... (sighs) There's, uh, a binary code that shows the distance between the earth and the lunar module at every stage of the, of the journey, but, uh, that's missing. That stuff's missing. All the tracking data's ... They can't find it. Um, all the original footage is missing. And that could just be people are really bad with historical items. That's possible. Um, but to say that faking the moon landing would be a bigger achievement than actually going to the moon, I would say only if people could actually go to the moon. So here's the question: Can we really ... Everyone's, everyone wants to dismiss it. Can we really send a biological entity into space, go through that radiation, which is thick, covering the earth, and have it come back alive? Well, supposedly this is the only time people have done it, and supposedly the way they did it was by going through the top area of the, of the earth where the, uh, Van Allen radiation belts ... It's like, kind of like a donut that surface that covers the earth. It's not uniform and this ... And there's an area at the top where you can go out. But according to Bart Sibrel they didn't go that way, 'cause he would have had to launch from Antarctica to do that. It's not really possible that that happened, that they went that way. So h- he doesn't ... He thinks that if they did go through that, there i- there is no other examples of living things that have done that and come back alive. And they've known that this is an issue. They've known that this Van Allen radiation belts, which is this band of heavy radiation that covers the earth and protects us. They've known that it's out there because they tried to blow it up once. There was a thing called Operation Starfish Prime where they, this, they l- they launched one of several nuclear bombs into the radiation belt to try to blow a hole through it. And unfortunately-

Matt Walsh 1:06:21 When did that happen?

Joe Rogan 1:06:22 60 ... God, was that ... '67 maybe? It was Starfish Prime. Um, but it did the opposite effect.

Matt Walsh 1:06:31 And why, why s- why did they do that? Just for the-

Joe Rogan 1:06:32 They wanted to see what happens.

Matt Walsh 1:06:33 ... shits and giggles?

Joe Rogan 1:06:33 Well, they were ... They had so much power and, you know, you've got nuclear bombs and you can't blow people up but you're still doing studies. So they're, they're doing tests all throughout Nevada and they, I mean that's what killed John Wayne. John Wayne got cancer 'cause he was working on a set doing a Western right next to where they were blowing up ... nuclear bombs. There were like 200 people on his, on his, uh, on the set got cancer. Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States, a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Atomic Support Agency July 9th, 1962. So this is like while Kennedy was in office. They were trying to figure out how to ... "We will get to the moon. Not in this decade, but in the other," or whatever he said. Uh, high-altitude nuclear test. So the thing it did, unfortunately, was it supercharged the bands and it made it much, have much more radiation. Not only that.

Matt Walsh 1:07:25 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:25 It, uh, it blew out power in some parts of Hawaii, I think. I think it cooked, it cooked a few satellites, right? We talked about this the other day. It cooked a few satellites.

Matt Walsh 1:07:35 Okay so, w- can I ask this though? Do we have examples ...... uh, so- so they were saying, "Well, we- we don't know if a human can go through the ..."

Joe Rogan 1:07:42 Right.

Matt Walsh 1:07:43 The ... I would say, well, we do know because they did.

Joe Rogan 1:07:46 If they did.

Matt Walsh 1:07:46 But well, but if we're gonna-

Joe Rogan 1:07:49 Listen, we know they sent people into near-Earth orbit. That's a fact. We know that there-

Matt Walsh 1:07:54 Yeah. Well, how do we know that if we don't know, I mean maybe there's space stations-

Joe Rogan 1:07:56 Because we actually can see that. We can see where they launched, you can follow the trajectory, you can know about the propulsion units that they used, you know about what they were trying to accomplish, and you could watch it.

Matt Walsh 1:08:07 So my, but my question is, have we tried to send humans through the radiation belt and not been able to? Has that happened?

Joe Rogan 1:08:16 They never even tried that. They just did it.

Matt Walsh 1:08:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:08:20 That's what's even crazier.

Matt Walsh 1:08:21 So but, but how do we know, so the-

Joe Rogan 1:08:23 So how do we know they did it? If the only time they did it was-

Matt Walsh 1:08:25 How do we know they can't do it?

Joe Rogan 1:08:25 The last time they did it was 1972, you don't think that's a little weird?

Matt Walsh 1:08:31 Not really because I-

Joe Rogan 1:08:32 No, no, no, no. Listen, listen.

Matt Walsh 1:08:33 I don't think it's weird.

Joe Rogan 1:08:33 Even if they did go to the moon, let's say, let's say, I'll say they went to the moon, it's fucking weird. Everything from 1969 is easier, cheaper, and faster to reproduce today, except the moon landing, except space travel.

Matt Walsh 1:08:46 I just don't think there's a will.

Joe Rogan 1:08:46 But we've thought... What?

Matt Walsh 1:08:48 I don't think there's a will-

Joe Rogan 1:08:48 Do you know how much fucking resources there is on the moon? Do you know how many valuable minerals are on the moon and trillions of dollars of things that are very difficult to find in the United States are on the moon?

Matt Walsh 1:08:57 I don't think, I don't think the Amer- I, like, the people in the 1960s, the American people cared deeply about going to the moon. I don't think that these days most pe- I think we should care about that, but most people don't care about the-

Joe Rogan 1:09:10 If we found out that we didn't have to dig for lithium, that we could just go to the moon and pull giant chunks of it out and not have slave labor and no one has to feel bad about using your iPhone, (laughs) you don't think that they would do that? Of course, they would do that, if they could.

Matt Walsh 1:09:26 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:26 If you could have a mining station on the moon, no problem at all, totally safe, of course, they would do that.

Matt Walsh 1:09:32 Yeah. And I think, and I, I, I agree.

Joe Rogan 1:09:34 And it only takes two weeks to get there. People, they go, people mine in northern territories. Like, people mine in, in Canada in these horrible conditions.

Matt Walsh 1:09:41 I know.

Joe Rogan 1:09:41 It's fucking freezing cold out and-

Matt Walsh 1:09:43 It, but, but it probably takes a lot of time to get to a point where you can do that consistently, and it's cost-effective.

Joe Rogan 1:09:47 Right, but it's so valuable.

Matt Walsh 1:09:50 I know.

Joe Rogan 1:09:50 The idea that they wouldn't do that and they haven't done anything even remotely close to that since 1972 is weird.

Matt Walsh 1:09:57 I agree that it's... I mean, weird, weird makes it sound necessarily nefarious. I think it's-

Joe Rogan 1:10:03 No, just weird. It's very unusual.

Matt Walsh 1:10:06 It's, it's-

Joe Rogan 1:10:06 It's unusual technologically.

Matt Walsh 1:10:07 It's incongruent.

Joe Rogan 1:10:09 It's incongruent with technological p- progression.

Matt Walsh 1:10:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:12 That we ha- we have that with everything else, everything else, phones, phones are in your fucking pocket now, and they have more computing power than the entire cluster that they used to launch the, the Apollo program. The Apollo program was a fucking giant room full of computers. Your phone is significantly more powerful than that.

Matt Walsh 1:10:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:30 Everything else got better, except that. We thought that people were gonna be going to space all the time. You ever watch that TV show Space: 1999 when you were a kid?

Matt Walsh 1:10:38 No.

Joe Rogan 1:10:38 You're, you're younger than me. There was a stupid show called Space: 1999, and they thought, "Boy, by 1999, we'll be flying around in spaceships, and people will be living on the moon." Every time they've done, like, in the past, like, after the moon landings, every time they did any sort of, like, science fiction movie, it always involved, like, colonies already, uh, uh, established on the moon and on Mars and people traveling through- Because we thought that was gonna happen. Orville and Wilbur Wright, right? Think about the launch of the first airplane and then the launch of the Apollo program. It's only like 60 years. It's kinda crazy. The launch of the first airplane ever and dropping nuclear bombs out of an airplane is only like, what is it, 50 years? I think it's something like fi- something kooky.

Matt Walsh 1:11:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:25 50, 60 years. That's nuts.

Matt Walsh 1:11:27 I agree, but I, as-

Joe Rogan 1:11:28 But, but then now you have supersonic jets, like, 100 years later.

Matt Walsh 1:11:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:31 Now you have insane capabilities of, like, Air Force fighter jets, unbelievable power and m- maneuverability far beyond anything anybody would have possibly imagined when Earl v- or, or Orville and Wilbur had that stupid fucking bird-looking flimsy thing. So everything progresses technologically, except...

Matt Walsh 1:11:53 Well, but here's what I would say to that.

Joe Rogan 1:11:54 Except traveling to other planets.

Matt Walsh 1:11:56 Well, I would say two things. Number one, I think that it just, it does take... Yeah, we're kind of spoiled by the fact that there was this burst of incredible technological advancement.

Joe Rogan 1:12:06 In everything, in everything.

Matt Walsh 1:12:07 Right. In t-

Joe Rogan 1:12:07 In automobiles.

Matt Walsh 1:12:08 It doesn't necessarily, not every facet of technology is gonna continue at that pace forever, into i- uh, an infinity. So I think it does take, especially if you take a historical perspective, a