EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,014 words- 0:00 – 1:23
Meeting Jesse Welles and his DIY artistic roots
- JRJoe Rogan
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
- JWJesse Welles
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Cheers, buddy.
- JWJesse Welles
Cheers to you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nice to meet you, man.
- JWJesse Welles
Good to meet you.
- JRJoe Rogan
I've enjoyed your songs. (laughs)
- JWJesse Welles
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
How did you, uh ... Well, first of all, how long you been doing music?
- JWJesse Welles
Um, I think most of my life, you know. Um ...
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you grow up in a musical family or is it just something you picked up on your own?
- JWJesse Welles
No, I ... Everyone worked and made art when they weren't working.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, okay.
- JWJesse Welles
But, uh, no music really, but that, I, I like to, I like music.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like what kind of art did your family do?
- JWJesse Welles
Like my mom would always paint. She put like murals on the, on the walls of the house and stuff. And my old man's a mechanic, um, and he would be tinkering around, m- making all sorts of fun stuff, usually with his welder and whatnot. So I, there, I felt like they were artistic folks.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJesse Welles
You know. Um, but they didn't, they didn't necessarily, uh, do music. You know, they're smarter than that.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so-
- JWJesse Welles
(laughs)
- 1:23 – 5:55
The UnitedHealthcare assassination reaction and the healthcare ‘vampire’ economy
- JRJoe Rogan
... um, I only know of you from the videos that you put up on Instagram.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And specifically, I think it was the United Healthcare guy was the first one.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right? Which was really good, dude. It's s- the lyrics, you, and the timing of it all, you captured the moment. And that song, to me, was like, "Yeah, that's what the fuck is going on."
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what's really going on.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They don't give a shit about you and they're just trying to make money.
- JWJesse Welles
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's why when this guy got shot, there was this reaction from people.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is very rare when someone gets assassinated, when people celebrate.
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
When someone's not, like a mass murderer or something.
- JWJesse Welles
It was, it was bizarre.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was bizarre.
- JWJesse Welles
It's s- it's, it's ... I mean, it must mean something is up if people are celebrating-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JWJesse Welles
... somebody's death.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JWJesse Welles
Something is wrong.
- JRJoe Rogan
And all kind ... Across both sides of the aisle. It's not a political thing. It is a, a human thing.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That like these people, they take your fucking money, you pay them, and then when something comes up, you don't get covered.
- JWJesse Welles
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And there doesn't seem to be any repercussions, and to fight it, you have to go to court, and you usually don't have the money to go to court.
- JWJesse Welles
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they have a lot of fucking money.
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- 5:55 – 8:26
How Jesse writes ‘sing the news’: research, punchlines, and comedy parallels
- JRJoe Rogan
So how do you approach something like that?
- JWJesse Welles
I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you sit down with a pad and pen or do you start writing? Like how do you, how ... Do you start singing?
- JWJesse Welles
Uh, step one is a- avoid the work.So I went-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJesse Welles
... I, I went f-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJesse Welles
... for, uh, you know, some long jogs. Uh, I wrote a song about Amazon instead.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJesse Welles
And put up, like, Amazon is Santa Claus, and I kept sitting there, and it kept getting... You know, the situation was snowballing with the United Healthcare thing, and I was like, "Okay, you gotta write." And at that point, it's, it's a research project, you know? Let's write, let's write 2,000 words so that we can have 300 to sing, and boil down the essence of the issue and make it rhyme and, uh, and put a jolly tune behind it. That's really, that's, that's kinda how that, that goes about.
- JRJoe Rogan
That sounds like super similar to standup comedy.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah, I think-
- JRJoe Rogan
How you boil it down.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah. Get every... A- and I, and you don't... It's just punchlines, so find the punchline of everything.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JWJesse Welles
Find the punchline of everything. I never had the attention span to tell too much of a story or anything like that, so I like, I, I like just keeping it in punchlines, so I always liked M- you know, Mitch Hedberg and S- and Steven Wright, um, were so good at, were so good at that, just come out and lay out a bunch of punchlines immediately.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJesse Welles
If one doesn't land, onto the next one.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well they, uh, their whole... That was th- the daunting thing about their act, which is so impressive, is that all, it's all non sequiturs. So every subject is new.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Every time they open their mouth, it's a new subject.
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is kind of crazy.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a crazy way to do comedy.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
But when you're an absurdist, it's probably the best way, 'cause it's an absurd way to think.
- JWJesse Welles
Mm-hmm.
- 8:26 – 10:03
Listening to the UnitedHealthcare song (full performance in-show)
- JRJoe Rogan
He was awesome. He was awesome. Um, let's play that song. Jamie, can you find that one?
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The UnitedHealthcare song? I wanna play it so people know what we're talking about so pe-
- JWJesse Welles
You paid for the building and the person and the chair. And you paid for it all, though you may be unaware. You paid for the paper. You paid for the phone. You paid for everything they need to deny you what you're owed. There ain't no "you" in "UnitedHealth." There ain't no "me" in the company. There ain't no "us" in the private trust. There's hardly humans in humanity. Now, the procedure that you're needing. Ain't the cost-effective route. And only 2% of people end up winning a dispute. So if you get sick, pray to God for health. 'Cause your doctor's gotta pray to UnitedHealth. Way back in '77. Mister Richard T. Berke started buying HMOs, putting federal grants to work. Made 50 billion buckaroos last year. The Warren Buffett of health, the Jeff Bezos of fear. Now CEOs come and go and one just wins. The ingredients you got bake the cake you get, but if you get sick, cross your fingers for luck. 'Cause old Richard T. Berke ain't giving a fuck. Commoditized health, monopolized fraud. Here's the doctors we own and the research we bought. They own the pharmacies and a lot of the meds. They should start buying graves to sell us when we're all dead. There ain't no "you" in UnitedHealth. There ain't no "me" in the company. There ain't no "us" in the private trust. There's hardly humans in humanity. There's hardly humans in humanity.
- JRJoe Rogan
Fuck yeah, dude. That's a great song.
- JWJesse Welles
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a great song.
- JWJesse Welles
Fuck, yeah.
- 10:03 – 16:47
Woody Guthrie, folk tradition, and ‘bards’ telling the truth safely (or not)
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's interesting to me how few people are doing what you're doing. I don't know of anyone else. I'm sure there probably is a few people out there that I missed, but I don't know of anybody else who takes things that are in the zeitgeist, these big stories that come up...
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and turns them into a catchy tune, and does it in a way where you're, uh, you laid out, you know, really the problem and the whole thing, like you said, in punchlines.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah. I, you know, there, there's a lot, there's a lot of folks doing it right now, and, and more every day. But there was, I mean, there's a precedent for that kinda work, um, especially as far as, like, Woody, Woody Guthrie was really the... Uh, I was reading, I was reading a Woody Guthrie biography, um, and, uh, my, uh, my old man was in the hospital. He had just had a heart attack, and we didn't, we didn't know like what way it was gonna go or whatever. Anyway, I don't know, just seeing him all hooked up to that stuff a- and thinking, if he were, if, if he died, I, I've hardly, I've hardly had any time to even know him. He's hardly had any time to know anything. We don't get very long down here. And I'm reading this, this Woody Guthrie biography and I was just like, "Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do this. I'm," uh, you know, "I'm gonna sing the, sing the news."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJesse Welles
Um, 'cause that, that's really what, what Woody was kinda, was kinda doing in his day. Uh, because there was, there's folk music around him, and he'd team up with Pete Seeger and he was on radio programs and he coulda played... He had the, he had the choice. He coulda played standards, he coulda played country-western music and stuff like that, but he liked making folks laugh and he liked telling it how it was. I like both those things.
- JRJoe Rogan
I saw Woody Guthrie live when I was a little kid, in San Francisco.
- JWJesse Welles
... Ar- Arlo or Woody?
- JRJoe Rogan
I think Woody. Which one was alive back then? Was it Arlo? Yeah, Woody died. Okay, so it must've been Arlo. Yeah.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So it was 19... Let me guess the year. I was 11?
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, maybe... Yeah. 10 or 11.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, it was San Francisco so it had to be... I, I lived there until I was 11, so it was probably around 9 or 10-
- JWJesse Welles
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... now that I think about it. But yeah, he performed live. God, I wish I could remember more of it.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah. Ar- I mean, Arlo, Arlo played, Arlo played this kind of... He went a little more surreal with it, which is super groovy. But he carry- you know, he carried on the torch for his old man.
- JRJoe Rogan
So Woody died in what year? '67. '67.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um-
- JWJesse Welles
'67. He got the, he got a Huntington's disease and was laid up in a home for quite a while. He lost the ability to speak and then-
- JRJoe Rogan
What is a Huntington's disease?
- JWJesse Welles
It's some... A rare genetic disorder. I don't really know what it does other than, um... Yeah, look. He was, he was pretty young.
- JRJoe Rogan
Breakdown of nerve cells in the brain. Ew.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
His mother also suffered from the same illness.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
What causes that?
- JWJesse Welles
I...
- 16:47 – 23:38
From old asylums to lobotomies: medicine as control and tragedy
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, and then people glorify that as like, "We need more h- mental health institutions. That's why there's so many homeless people on the street." And like, have you ever been? (laughs)
- JWJesse Welles
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
We definitely need more mental health.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
We w- 100% those people need care.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But do they need the kind of care that they were getting before they were released on the street when they were giving people electroshock therapy-
- JWJesse Welles
Uh, that-
- JRJoe Rogan
... and fucking cooking their brains?
- JWJesse Welles
Those, at, at least whatever's going on in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is essentially a prison.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Well, they're all essentially-
- JWJesse Welles
A prison with electroshock therapy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and-
- JWJesse Welles
You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
... and lobotomies.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Until like '67-
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... they were just cooking people's brains with a wand.
- JWJesse Welles
God.
- JRJoe Rogan
Getting in there and scrambling up your brain.
- JWJesse Welles
It's, it's just...
- JRJoe Rogan
D- Dude, they did lobotomies for decades.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Decades. Until enough people had their loved ones turned into zombies that they were like, "Hey, maybe we should probably fucking stop that."
- JWJesse Welles
Di- Didn't they lobotomize, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Kennedy.
- JWJesse Welles
... Kennedy?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yep.
- JWJesse Welles
Um-
- 23:38 – 35:15
Modern ‘lobotomies’: benzos, pharma dependence, and psychedelic alternatives
- JWJesse Welles
So what's the modern lobotomy? What are we doing right now that we're gonna read on Wiki or, you know, whatever?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, there's probably quite a few of them.
- JWJesse Welles
You know, 15, you know, and then we go-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's probably quite a few of them.
- JWJesse Welles
... holy cow.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm sure gender transitions for children.
- JWJesse Welles
We were taking-
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm, I'm sure that's gonna be on that list.
- JWJesse Welles
Or taking, I don't know, like, like ben, like prescribing benzos and stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah. Oh, that's gonna be on that list for sure.
- JWJesse Welles
You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Benzos is the craziest one.
- JWJesse Welles
That's just like a, like a chemical lobotomy or...
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, benzo doesn't give you a chemical lobotomy, but it does make you 100% hooked on it.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah. Well, it's just the diffi- th- the stress you would undergo getting out of the addiction, you might never...You might never come, come back fully or get your life all the way back after an addiction like that, you know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I know several people that have had that problem, and it is a real struggle.
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, Jordan Peterson has publicly talked about it. It took him over a year to recover-
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... physically, just from being addicted.
- JWJesse Welles
And that's actually going to rehabs-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yep.
- JWJesse Welles
... and stuff like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Or giving up the money.
- JWJesse Welles
There's a lot of folks, most folks they ain't, they ain't going-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. They don't have the money.
- JWJesse Welles
... nowhere.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JWJesse Welles
You know, they get off it and then drink themselves to death or-
- JRJoe Rogan
Or do cocaine or-
- 35:15 – 43:11
America’s violent past: scalp bounties, Wild West lawlessness, and moral whiplash
- JRJoe Rogan
Streamline your hiring with ZipRecruiter. See why four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Just go to this exclusive web address, ziprecruiter.com/rogen. Again, right now, try it for free. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/rogen. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. (sighs) Chihuahua's bounty program fortune- offered fortune seekers 150 to 200 Mexican pesos for each Apache, depending on age and sex, men worth 50 pesos more than women and children, and children.
- JWJesse Welles
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Today, that equates to about $8,200 per scalp.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
This is far more than most prospectors would ever make in the California gold fields. $8,000 per scalp. That's crazy.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
How many people, just innocent people, that just happened to have dark hair got scalped?
- JWJesse Welles
And... Oh, they would... And, like, in, in McCarthy's book at least, which it, it follows the Glanton Gang, I'm pretty sure at times they kill some of their own gang.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm sure.
- JWJesse Welles
Uh, just because they were, they were dark haired.
- JRJoe Rogan
The most prolific of these operatives was an Irish American named James Kercher, who led a massacre of more than 150 Apaches in 1846 and ultimately killed at least 320 Indians during his bounty hunting campaigns.
- JWJesse Welles
(sighs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Scalp trade, $8,200 for scalps. Can you imagine, like if you, if you have a lawless country, which is essentially what the Wild West was?
- JWJesse Welles
What that was, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then, you, you offer up $8,000 every time you kill a person.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ooh, you can get rid of people, people quick.
- JWJesse Welles
And you're gonna have the wildest of the wild are gonna go out there and tame that land, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, the craziest of the crazy.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's essentially-
- JWJesse Welles
Calls 'em, calls 'em out. The... (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs) Oof.
- JWJesse Welles
And-
- JRJoe Rogan
And that wasn't that long ago, man.
- JWJesse Welles
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what's so crazy. You know, we're talking about 150 years?
- JWJesse Welles
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, what is it? But how long ago was it? Not that long ago.
- NANarrator
Uh.
- 43:11 – 51:07
Primeval violence vs. idealism: war, resources, and the PSYOP problem
- JWJesse Welles
I, I think of, like, uh, do you ever see a, and this is some, this is Hollywood, but, uh, Apocalypse Now?
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- JWJesse Welles
With, what is it, Francis Ford Coppola?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JWJesse Welles
And this guy like Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando, and Dennis Hopper and Robert Duvall, and all those cool cats and dope movie. But it's written on this premise of a, of a book that was written in, like 1899 by Joseph Conrad, like Heart of Darkness.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow. It's that old?
- JWJesse Welles
And Heart of Darkness was talking about a conquest of, I believe the Dutch, I'm not sure, into the Congo, and some atrocities and stuff that were happening there, treating people as subhuman. And I don't know if there was, I don't know if there was scalping or anything. But I think that there was slavery and that sort of thing. But Coppola was able to adapt that and then put the Vietnam War as the new premise, going into, I think they, I think Sheen's mission in, in the, in the movie at least, was to go, go up river into Cambodia or Laos, I'm not sure which, and take out a rogue US general who had basically enslaved a population of, uh, of indigenous there. All that to say, like I w- I wo- um, I wonder if, like in, in Vietnam, if, if the, if the folks fighting out there felt, like in that moment, in that moment where you're, where you're killing somebody, if you realize at that point that nothing has ever changed. And that this is, this is, this, there's something primeval in, in man of, with this violence, that this violence is innate. Or c- y- you know, is this violence innate? Is it, is this how f- folks are and there's no helping it and there's nothing that's ever gonna change it? 'Cause you can get kinda cynical that way. Or, and I, and I kinda tend on this more idealistic, and at times it seems naive or stupid, to have an ideal that folks can, could live in harmony, in peace, without taking one another's lives, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
The problem is, they've never done it before.
- JWJesse Welles
I, that's, that's mind-boggling.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mind-boggling.
- JWJesse Welles
Because it is in all... I think it's in a l- in, in a lot of us, deep down, to, I don't...
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it has to be.
- JWJesse Welles
That, to not harm-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because it's the only way we survived. That's the only way we got to where we are today.
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause we existed before language, we existed before empathy, before we understood each other, before we could communicate.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So any being that you didn't know, from somewhere else, wanted what you had and they would try to take it by force. So the bigger, stronger ones survived, and that's why the best genetics kept going and going and going. I mean, it was just survival of the fittest. It exists in nature and it exists with humans. And that's the basis of our DNA, unfortunately. Like, that's how we started, right? And so, that, the way it manifests itself today is fucking drone warfare.
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And bombs, and, you know, dropping bunker busters out of B2s. You know, that's what it is. Or B12s, is that what it is, the B12? What's the big one? B2. B2? Feels like it should be a bigger number, 'cause it looks like a spaceship.
- JWJesse Welles
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJesse Welles
You see how they flew it over Putin?
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, "Look at my dick."
- JWJesse Welles
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"My flying dick. Da, da, da, da, da."
- JWJesse Welles
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You see? Trump did that when Putin was in Alaska. They flew a, a bomber over his head. Like, "What are we doing? Why are we fly- why are we flying the radar-resistant bomber over Putin's head?"
- JWJesse Welles
That just, it sounds like a show of force.
- JRJoe Rogan
Look at my dick.
- 51:07 – 58:04
War as a Racket and the ‘Business Plot’: coups, profiteering, and impunity
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you ever read, um, that, uh, War as a Racket: Smedley Butler?
- JWJesse Welles
Smedley Butler?
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you ever read it?
- JWJesse Welles
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's really good.
- JWJesse Welles
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not long.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's really good. And it is essentially outlining what we're talking about, but it was in 1933.
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And Smedley Butler, who, when he went to all these places and did all this work, he thought that he was doing good. He thought he was protecting people, even though-
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But then at the end of his career, when it all, like, the fog of war had kind of faded and he rec- recognized the patterns, like, "Oh, each time..." Pull it up, Jimmy, just so we can get a look at it real quick.
- JWJesse Welles
Was Smedley the one where there was a coup and they had asked him to-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. They asked him to take-
- JWJesse Welles
All right.
- JRJoe Rogan
They asked him to overthrow the fucking government of the United States of America.
- JWJesse Welles
There was a, a documentary I used to watch, uh, by Francis O'Conolly, I think is his name, but it's called Everything's a Rich Man's Trick, and he would always talk about Smedley D. Butler.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. He was a bad man, um, in a, in a good way. But this, this thing that he wrote, um... See if you can get a, just a... If you get, get, just go to the Wikipedia site, War as a Racket.
- JWJesse Welles
So this, I mean, this is before even World War II.
- JRJoe Rogan
There it is right there. It contains this summary. Make that a little larger, please. There it is, scroll up a little.
- JWJesse Welles
"Who makes the profits? Who pays the bills?"
- JRJoe Rogan
It says, "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives... A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to be to the majority of people."
- JWJesse Welles
"To the majority of people."
- JRJoe Rogan
"Only a small 'inside group' knows what it's all about. It's conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the very many... Out of war, a few people make huge fortunes. Butler confessed that during his decades of service to the United States Marine Corps... 'I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1909 to 1912, where I've learned...'" Where have I heard that name before? I don't know. Uh, "I brought light to the Mi- I brought light to the Dominic- Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I have given Al Capone..." Oh, "I might have given Al Capone a few hints." Kind of crazy.
- JWJesse Welles
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause they've been doing that forever. And if it wasn't for this one guy writing about it, this one very decorated man who g- pull up the thing about the coup, where they tried to enlist him, which is part of the reason why, I, I'm sure he wrote this.
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's like, he was like, "What the fuck is this?"
- JWJesse Welles
Right.
- 58:04 – 1:37:38
Bots, manufactured chaos, and the ‘Vegas’ conspiracy vortex
- NANarrator
(laughs) Who, who really genuinely believes that anybody cares about us at this point?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, there's some lobotomized, no, no pun intended, suckers out there.
- NANarrator
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's some suckers out there. And then there's a lot of bots. There's a lot of people that aren't real people, um, that are-
- NANarrator
Like on the-
- JRJoe Rogan
... commenting on both sides of the issue.
- NANarrator
Like on the internet, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. On both sides of it. Stay out of the comments, kids. Stay out of commentary-
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 'cause it's not real. You're, if you're, you're interacting with narratives that are, are propped up, might be propped up by AI, might be propped up by bad state actors. There's a lot going on, folks. It's n- it's not all people talking about things, and that should be illegal.
- NANarrator
Are there bot wars now?
- JRJoe Rogan
100%. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. There's bots fighting against bot-
- NANarrator
Like my bots-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, yeah.
- NANarrator
... versus your bots.
- JRJoe Rogan
100%. It's probably a giant chunk of the internet.
- NANarrator
Are they actual bots or are they like people in a call center-
- JRJoe Rogan
Both things.
- NANarrator
... like going-
- JRJoe Rogan
Both things. Both things are real. There's AI for sure that people are running programs that are, uh-
- NANarrator
AI could do it, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that are saying certain things and try... But there's also people that get hired to do it.
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, there's some... These pro-American sites, you know, and then people have done like an IP trace and they find out these people are in fucking Karachi. (laughs)
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They're in fucking Pakistan and-
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, you know, they're, they're in India, they're in China. It's like who knows who's doing it and why they're doing it. But there's a bunch of foreign countries that would have, uh, a vested interest in keeping America very unstable. You know, it's really good to k- to have us at our each other's throats politically.
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's good for them. It's, it's good to crush our, uh, faith in democracy and make people consider communism and... It gets, it gets really weird, you know, when you have a bunch of people that are throwing a bunch of opinions into any sort of like real important discussion, uh, about civilization and you realize like oh my god, 80% of the people talking aren't just people.
Episode duration: 2:26:49
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Transcript of episode VB5V6ciwu2s
