EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,320 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast.…
- WSWarren Smith
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
- NANarrator
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays)
- JRJoe Rogan
How's it going, man? How are you?
- WSWarren Smith
Hey.
- JRJoe Rogan
Pleasure to meet you.
- WSWarren Smith
Thank you for having me.
- JRJoe Rogan
My pleasure. I, uh, I wound up seeing you, as many people did, on those, uh, videos that you're making where you were talking to students. You know, just kind of like exploring critical thinking and asking students questions and why they're upset about certain things and getting to the bo-... And I'm like, "Wow, this guy is like..." He's young, he's obviously, uh, an academic but super reasonable, and like really level-headed. I'm like, "We need more of this. This is really interesting." And then, (laughs) and then I found out you got fired for doing that. (laughs) And I was like, if this isn't an encapsulation of all that is wrong with, uh, our current higher education system, then I don't know what is.
- WSWarren Smith
Mm-hmm. Well, to be fair, I didn't get fired for that, technically. I think I got, I got fired for posting another one similar to it. But I think they were looking kind of... That whole thing was so bizarre for everyone. It was so big. I think there was... At the school where I teach, there's kind of one... There's echo, sorry. I gotta get used to this. One, like, person in control of everything that makes these decisions, and it was so nuts. I think they genuinely were like, "We don't know what to do 'cause if we fire him, it'll... Our name might get out there," which is their primary, you know, concern, I think, and...
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you not want their name to get out there?
- WSWarren Smith
I just... No, it doesn't feel right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- WSWarren Smith
I, um...
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not important.
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah, it's not.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, what's important is that what, what it is, is that this is a resistance to thinking. I mean, it's really what it is.
- WSWarren Smith
It's out there, for sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a resistance to questioning why people have, like, certain, like, deeply ingrained thought processes that are a part of an ideology.
- WSWarren Smith
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I think what you were doing was really pretty brilliant. It was awesome. And I, I love the way you were handling it. It was like, you know, very calm and rational, and just having discussions with students, and you kinda see, like, a lot of their flailing and trying to rationalize why they have these sort of incoherent beliefs.
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah, and I don't teach critical thinking. I was... When I was a teacher, I was teaching multimedia, like what we're doing now. Working with cameras, did a lot of podcasting. I had this lab that I developed over four years with a bunch of Mac computers with Adobe Premier Pro, Photoshop, a 3D printer. So it was using technology to make art at a special education school with kids that had behavioral challenges and some... A variety. Anything you could come up with, we had it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
... there. It was like the last line of defense kind of for public schools that couldn't handle these kids. They would send them there. And so I would just use this tech to work with them in a therapeutic way, kind of. That was my goal, the way that would most benefit them. And so one day they asked me to do a... "Hey, can you do a newscast for the school? Like, this week at the school, you know, there was this field trip, the soccer team did this, blah, blah, blah." "Sure." "And we want this kid to be on camera and, like, to do... He's really good at that." And he was getting really nervous on the day. And so I was like, "Let's just sit down. You've seen, like, Joe Rogan and stuff. Let's do, like a... Just treat it like a five-minute warmup podcast. Here, I'll sit down and be (laughs) on camera. You ask me whatever you want." "Well, you know, w-... How have your thoughts on Harry Potter changed given J.K. Rowling's bigoted opinions?" And so that's where the video came from.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
So I don't... I just wanna be clear. I don't teach... I wasn't like, "We're gonna sit down and learn..." In the moment, we do have conversations like that because when you are doing something like this with students, like, "Well, what are you gonna talk about?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- WSWarren Smith
Kill two birds with one stone to be as effective as you can. And so a lot of students have questions. Like I've had students ask me, "What's the difference between fascism, socialism? What's the difference between a Democrat and a Republican?" They don't know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
And they're genuinely curious, and sometimes you can get another... I had one teacher that... The music teacher I worked closely with, and he was like my best friend there. And he would be in the room often, and we would have little debates. And he was from Romania. Yeah. Uh, Ro-... Not R-... Um, I think Romania. I'm, I'm blanking. But... And so he had a very different political perspective. And when you're in those debates, the kids were, like, locked in, and you can tell. 'Cause normally they're just making noise and then they're just quiet in their seats. They turn around and they're, like, watching it. It's... There was an effect.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think most kids are aware that you're being forced to think a certain way, or at least to talk about things a certain way. And they're n-... M- most people are... They don't like being told what to do. P- people don't enjoy that. And when they feel like there's, like, a, a lot of social pressure to adhere to a very specific ideology, I think people don't like it. And so when you see debates where people have differing opinions and they have, you know, these sort of logical, objective ways of describing why they think about things a certain way, uh, it gets people like, "Okay, was there another way to think?" Like, is there... Like, "How's this guy doing this?" Like, what is... "What d- what does this mean?" Like, "Why do we have to say... Well, why... What is wrong with what J.K. Rowling said?" And it's exciting to people. And the videos were exciting, and they, there was a tremendous amount of, uh, response to them. I, I know you're aware of that. I mean, there's so many comments and so many people were, uh, interested in them. They got very popular.
- 15:00 – 30:00
So this is like…
- WSWarren Smith
of the academic year. October.
- JRJoe Rogan
So this is like when the elections are kind of heating up and people didn't think that Trump was gonna win yet?
- WSWarren Smith
I remem- 'cause I vividly remember the day of the election 'cause I was renting a house with three roommates and I was watching the election. I remember just being like, "Guys, I think Trump might win this." And they were like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- WSWarren Smith
... "We're not ... It's not even worth watching." You know? And they were walking around. Time goes by and I'm like, "Guys, like..." And then they started to, they're like, "What?" So no one saw that coming. And I, my big takeaway was, how could so many experts get something so wrong? And that caused me to question my presuppositions, basically my view of the world, and then that opens your mind to someone like Jordan Peterson and all these other great thinkers, intellectual dark web, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
But that in s- ... Suddenly it's so difficult to articulate what that does to someone like me, an average viewer, like a genuine lover of this space.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
So it's surreal to be here (laughs) because like-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- WSWarren Smith
... it suddenly causes you to f- s- if- you feel like everyone's moving in slow motion all of a sudden. You feel like you're waking up and it doesn't ... it's ... I- I don't wanna talk about The Matrix 'cause it's so ... it- it's such a strange ... it's gotten all this momentum in a different ... but that's what it felt like. It felt like you were suddenly, like, "How? What? This is so much more interesting and complicated than I thought." And there's no going back.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I think we like to adhere to certain narratives about the world. And we, we wanna think ... the big thing is we wanna think that there's a central ... there's some sort of competent control, some sort of competent leadership that exists, and that the structure of government and the structure of media is established, rock solid and logical. And that these are the smartest people in the world. That's how they've risen to this position, and now they, they are there to provide this ... You know, like, if you have, uh, a- a knee injury, you wanna go to an orthopedic surgeon 'cause he is an expert in knee injuries and he's gonna tell you what's wrong with your knee and h- what can be done. And, you know, that's a real expert. And we thought, we think of politicians and we think of the media as being real experts. Well, it turns out no. (laughs)
- WSWarren Smith
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It turns out not even a little bit.
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're terrible at it.
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're n- they're not just not good at it. They're really bad at it. They're really bad at it and they lie a lot.
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah, they're not much smarter than you or I.
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- WSWarren Smith
A- And then you realize that about your professors. You're like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- WSWarren Smith
... "This guy really doesn't know much more than, like, my m- my dad," or what's the diff- what makes you a professor? What-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- WSWarren Smith
... qualifies you? And often there's just this fac- a- and that's what, going back to that core thesis of we see the world through stories.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
A professor means something.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- WSWarren Smith
A politician means something. These are experts, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 30:00 – 45:00
And the only solution…
- JRJoe Rogan
logically because if you do, you will be cast out of this group. You'll be ostracized. Like, there's these very specific rules and they're very much like a cult.... like you have this very cult-like thinking. And if you deviate from that at all, you, you run into the possibility of social ostracization. And then, that's what happens to a lot of people, and they're scared of that. Mm-hmm. So, to defend against that possibly happening to them, they attack things, like without any logic at all. They just, like say, "You, you don't think? You don't know? Well, I'm done talking to you." Like this has been- Mm-hmm. ... and that, it's like a get out of jail free pass. You can just get away from the conversation- Mm-hmm. ... and you don't have to confront the, the logical fallacies. You don't have to contr- confront all the problems with what you're saying.
- WSWarren Smith
And the only solution I've been able to find is to just push through.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- WSWarren Smith
And I tr- I say to them, like, "Chris, like one day, I bl- genuinely believe you'll look back and understand. Like, one day."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
And I believe that.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, I believe that too, if it's done logically and you can have reasonable discussions. But even in the opposition to that, right? You have people on the right who adhere to a right-wing, cult-like thinking, right? And, you know, they'll push back against it in, in a way that's also not logical. And so, they-
- WSWarren Smith
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... dig their heels in on their ideology. You know?
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And the left digs their heels in. And, you know, you s- you have things like, people say, "People on the left don't get it. People on the left this." Like, no, there's a, there's a giant spectrum-
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... of people on the left and a giant spectrum of people on the right. I don't like any of those labels.
- WSWarren Smith
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't-
- WSWarren Smith
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I really don't like it 'cause of me. Like, I don't fit in there.
- WSWarren Smith
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- WSWarren Smith
Exactly. I've been... (sighs)
- JRJoe Rogan
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- NANarrator
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- WSWarren Smith
If people wanna box you in on that, and this goes, goes back to seeing stories, which story do you fit into? Like, my mom has this story of what a Democrat is. She can never think of, like, a story of what a Republican is.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
And she'll never deviate from that.
- JRJoe Rogan
My parents are the same.
- WSWarren Smith
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly the same.
- WSWarren Smith
And-
- JRJoe Rogan
They're-
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Mm-hmm. …
- JRJoe Rogan
of them being riddled with crime and gangs.
- WSWarren Smith
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, uh, it could be fixed. There's been no effort. There's been n- no real national effort to, uh, take impoverished, gang-ridden, crime-ridden neighborhoods and rehabilitate them. The more you do that... If you did that, you would have less losers. If you have less losers, you have a better country. And that's including, like, the Appalachias, like, areas of West Virginia that are filled with people that are addicted to pills and committing crime because they're drug addicts, that are all poor, white people, coal mining people and those, those folks. It's everybody. It's, it's just crime and poverty. And crime and poverty causes people... You, you imitate your environment. You imitate your atmosphere. If you grow up in a crime-ridden, gang-ridden neighborhood, the chances of you getting involved in gang activities and crime are much higher than if you don't grow up in an environment like that.
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah, I'm from North Carolina.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
Ashe-... Like, near Asheville.
- JRJoe Rogan
Asheville.
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's rough out there. Which people don't, don't believe. You look at Asheville-
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... you're like, "Mountains? Beautiful."
- WSWarren Smith
Right. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, it's like very high per capita crime rate.
- WSWarren Smith
It is the meth capital-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
... (clears throat) right near where I live. And so I've... I agree with you, the thing is, if we look at it... I agree, if we look at it through a socioeconomic lens. So I had a profes-... One of my professors from Emerson, he's like, "I solved racism." There... This was in one of the videos.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, boy.
- WSWarren Smith
I was like, "Sure, come over. Let's record."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- WSWarren Smith
"Hit me with it." So the solution is we're gonna, um, have a tax for... So if your an-... If you can trace your ancestry, then you're gonna... You don't have to pay taxes or some form of tax. It's like, okay, but what about the white person in Appalachia w- who was in an equally bad socioeconomic position, but they don't get the, the tax or whatnot? (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
The award w-... Your solution?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WSWarren Smith
Well, their ancestors weren't oppressed, so I would be all for it if it was looking through a consistent, applied across all demographics equally, s- socioeconomically.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, you're never gonna stop racism. You- you're never gonna stop ignorant thinking. I mean, unless there's some sort of, uh, a groundbreaking human neural interface that completely changes our cognitive function and, and d- dissolves all boundaries. The, you're not going to stop people from... There's, there's people that don't like people from other cities because they play sports against them, you know? They... Like, "I hate people from Philly." There's, there's always going to be e- people that discriminate against other people because there's always gonna be ignorant people. So it's gonna be... And it's easier to do that. It's easier to decide, "This person's my enemy. These, these are... These people are on my side." It's easy to be tribal. It's like, it's much simpler.
- WSWarren Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It d-... You don't have to think as much.
- WSWarren Smith
I mean, like, Ana Kasparian got sexually assaulted by a homeless person, so when she's walking down the street, she's probably going to b- recoil a bit, maybe, and if she sees someone home-... You know? It's g-... There's a human psychological element. She's gonna try, probably (laughs) , not to do the... But it's just human nature. If you have a bad experience, then it's gonna... It goes back to how we see the world. But you're right, yeah, that we'll never be able to solve racism.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, that's the type of bias that, like, is kind of logical. Like, if you see a guy and he's covered in his own shit and he's, uh-
- WSWarren Smith
(laughs)
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
I don't know which…
- JRJoe Rogan
that, Jamie?
- NANarrator
I don't know which case, I don't know which case you're talking about specifically.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, where you were saying that, like, there was a video that we were gonna put up, but it had a strike, and you, you were gonna have to do, like, training? Remember that?
- NANarrator
That was already up there, though. That was f- That w-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- NANarrator
That wasn't re-uploaded. That was from the past. That was, like, a clip we put up-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, it was?
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, we're still-
- NANarrator
I remember putting clips up on that channel.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, it was a clip-
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that was the problem?
- NANarrator
Yeah, pretty sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, but it wasn't the full episode, was it?
- NANarrator
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then, when we uploaded the full episode, then it, it applied to that, right?
- NANarrator
It just still had ... I, w- we, there was no way around not doing-
- JRJoe Rogan
... the education-
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... fucking thing, or whatever it was called.
- NANarrator
Right. Really?
- JRJoe Rogan
Here's the problem. No way around it.
- NANarrator
Did you have to do that? No, I'm not doing shit. (laughs) And they made you do it? (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
But here- (laughs)
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. But here's the problem. That clip was accurate. The problem is, the things that they were saying were accurate.
- NANarrator
Yeah. Something changed in the news and they're like, "That's actually accurate now," but the system had alre- it, there was, there was no way to change it in the system, whatever.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. It was always accurate. It's just, the news started reporting it accurately.
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- 1:15:00 – 1:18:21
Why didn't they adapt?…
- JRJoe Rogan
been like this. It's Los Angeles. It's Los Angeles.
- NANarrator
Why didn't they adapt? Like I... I lived in LA for two years. I'm on the volunteer fire department in my town where I live now, in Massachusetts, and we don't have fire hydrants.
- JRJoe Rogan
Pfft. (laughs) That's so crazy.
- NANarrator
We're out by Concord, like near there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I know where that is. Yeah.
- NANarrator
So, there's no fire hydrants. And so we bring our own water.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's so crazy.
- NANarrator
But it's possible, is my point.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- NANarrator
Uh...
- JRJoe Rogan
It's possible. And the problem with this past fire... And there's a, there... Here's another thing that's a lot of weird pushback against, that it was arson-caused. Hey, some of it was arson-caused. Fact. They've arrested people.
- NANarrator
They know that now? Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
They arrested people for starting fires. They've arrested multiple people for starting fires. My friend, Andrew Huberman, filmed people starting fires. They were starting fires in the middle of this fire disaster.
- NANarrator
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
C- because... It doesn't mean it's the cause of it.
- NANarrator
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
It means, along the way, there was a lot of arson. Like some people were saying that, uh, you know, "Oh, there's this false narrative that it was the homeless people." Like... Okay, whether they had a house or whether they didn't have a house, some people started fucking fires. There's video footage of the three fires that are started se- semi-simultaneously that are near the Palisades. And on one of the video footage, it's very clear that there's a human being. This is, like, from the sky, where they're filming this. There's a human being that's near the fire. Most likely, the cause of the fire was a person who either accidentally did this or did it on purpose, lit a fire. So, the problem is not fucking climate change. The problem is LA is extremely vulnerable-
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... when it comes to fires and always has been, and they've done very little to mitigate this yearly disaster problem that they have. That's the facts.
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the reality of it. That's, that's indisputable. You see-
- NANarrator
Do you think Gavin Newsom's gonna... Is this gonna be the end of him or are people gonna put up with it?
- JRJoe Rogan
I would like to think that people would wise up. I mean, there's been a trend in California to, to vote in the opposite direction. If you look at the map of 2020 versus the map of 2024-
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the counties that went red, like a significant number. But the high population centers are in the trance. The, the... San Francisco, Los Angeles, very difficult to get those people to vote anything other than blue. And so, if the people that are Democrat are giving them the exact same solutions, exact same gaslighting, and they keep buying it over and over again and they still win elections, then there's no incentive for them to correct course. So, this is why. California has been essentially blue since... Except for the time where Arnold won, which is weird, right? Because he was kind of like a moderate Republican and also famous, and that probably led to him winning. But other than that, since Reagan, um, he... What did... He did something where he allowed people that came here and were... W- what is... What was the issue that Reagan did? There was some sort of a voting issue where he allowed people from... I think it was people that emigrated here illegally from Mexico... There's, uh, coffee and water. Uh, whatever you'd like.
Episode duration: 2:49:39
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