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Joe Rogan Experience #2433 - James McCann

James Donald Forbes McCann is a comedian, author, and host of “The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan." His latest special, "James Donald Forbes McCann: Black Israelite," is streaming on YouTube. https://www.jdfmccann.com https://www.youtube.com/@JamesDonaldForbesMcCann https://www.patreon.com/jdfmccann Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Get a free welcome kit with your first subscription of AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/joerogan 50% off your first box at https://www.thefarmersdog.com/rogan!

Joe RoganhostJames Donald Forbes McCannguest
Dec 31, 20252h 56mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:01 – 2:52

    Mammoth tooth on the table: ice-age elephants, extinction timelines, and ancient-history debate lines

    1. NA

      (drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

    2. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) What's happening, baby? Hello. That's fucking good.

    3. JM

      Is this where we start it, that we going?

    4. JR

      Where start ... Oh, oh no.

    5. JM

      (laughs)

    6. NA

      Not over the relics.

    7. JR

      The dirty, dirtier this, uh, table is, the better.

    8. NA

      Get it away from the ... What is that?

    9. JR

      The relics. That is, uh, that's from my friend, John Reeves. He gave that to me. That's a mastodon tooth, or woolly mammoth, or what's the difference? What is the difference between woolly mammoth and a mastodon? They must be a different-

    10. NA

      One is a bitch.

    11. JR

      ... age, a different era. But, uh, that's a giant tooth that (grunts) he ... There's a company in Alaska, I forget the name, but they, uh ... It kinda seems fucked to carve into this thing, 'cause it is 10,000 years old at least.

    12. JM

      How many of them are there, though? Do they have heaps of them?

    13. JR

      They have heaps of them.

    14. JM

      Oh, that's-

    15. JR

      But this is really cool. It's like they carved, uh, a mammoth in it. So what is the difference? According to our sponsor, Perplexity-

    16. JM

      (laughs)

    17. JR

      ... a woolly mammoth and a mastodon were related, but quite different ice age elem- elephants. Mammoths were taller, more slightly built grass eaters, while mastodons were shorter, stockier browsers that ate woody plants. Okay.

    18. NA

      I was gonna say the hair, maybe, but I don't ... It's obviously more-

    19. JR

      Woolly mammoth, right? Yeah, mastodon looks like a elephant.

    20. JM

      Yeah, the mastodon horn does look cooler.

    21. JR

      They're pretty cool. They're all pretty cool. Do you know? They lived on an ... Was it ... What ... When were the last mastodons? I wanna think ... I wanna say they lived on island until, like, 10,000 years ago or something like that, 'cause most of 'em died out. They don't, they don't know how they died out, but the- there's two theories. One, one theory is people killed them all, which is a sh- shaky theory, 'cause it's people of 10,000 years ago with fucking sticks.

    22. JM

      Were they around 10,000 years ago?

    23. JR

      Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they died-

    24. JM

      We definitely did that then.

    25. JR

      I don't think so. I think it was a cataclysm. I think it was the same thing that killed 65% of all megafauna.

    26. JM

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      That's the problem. It killed so many different animals, like, almost instantaneously.

    28. NA

      Uh, mammoths were extinct around 4,000 years ago.

    29. JR

      Yeah, that's it. 4,000 years ago. Wrangel Island, remote Arctic island off Siberia's coast, had the last woolly mammoths-

    30. JM

      Oh.

  2. 2:52 – 4:35

    Seeds as evidence: how agriculture leaves fingerprints in plant biology

    1. JR

      I actually enjoyed talking to him about non-archaeol- ... Non-, you know, ancient history-related stuff. He has some interesting things about seeds. Like, he does a lot of work in seeds.

    2. JM

      Okay. (laughs)

    3. JR

      No, it's real-

    4. JM

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      It's actually really interesting how-

    6. JM

      Like the history of seeds and-

    7. JR

      Yeah, when ... So say if you have a wild plant, then can you tell the difference between a wild plant and an agriculturally grown plant?

    8. JM

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      And the way is the seeds change. So when you have a wild seed, it is, uh, more conducive to the growth of the plant if the seeds break off easier and scatter, and, and they, they get into the ground easier. So they, they break free of the plant. But then when you use agriculture, the seeds don't become important for the creation of new plants because you're always taking the seeds anyway and planting the seeds, right? So those steeds- seeds are more robust and they hang on more.

    10. JM

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      So you could s- You could tell by looking at the actual seeds themselves whether it's an agriculturally based seed or whether it's a wild seed.

    12. JM

      That is good. I hadn't thought about that.

    13. JR

      Yeah, it's r- It was really cool. That part was cool. The, the, the shittiness is not cool in calling Graham Hancock a, a racist. They do that with, like, everyone. Everyone who has anything to say about, uh, the historical narrative that doesn't fit into exactly what they're teaching or what they have been teaching, they're, like, so unwilling to accept that there's any alternative timeline. But they keep getting fucked because over and over again, they keeping finding these new things that are older and older.

    14. JM

      Yeah, but this happens every-

    15. JR

      Like, go back ... He was the big one. It happens in every discipline.

    16. JM

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      Yeah. I mean, it happens in comedy. There's people that don't like new comedians that are coming up 'cause they don't like what they're doing differently or they-

  3. 4:35 – 6:34

    Comedy trends and backlash cycles: props, ukuleles, and copying what works

    1. JM

      You said a thing last night about prop comedy.

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. JM

      You're like, everyone just stop doing prop comedy at a certain point. I s-

    4. JR

      Well, it's 'cause of Carrot Top.

    5. JM

      It's 'cause of Carrot Top, and also because the bullying you would receive-

    6. JR

      Right.

    7. JM

      ... at the moment for having props. There's one, Rick Glassman. Am I getting his name right? I don't know. But he had some props, and he was really funny, and he got away with it. But he's the only person in America, other than Carrot Top, I've seen with any props.

    8. JR

      But when I started out, there was a bunch of guys who had props. There was a, there was a bunch of guys who had props, and it was fun. It was fun to watch. There was a ... God is it ... Doctor Wid? I forget his name. Doctor Wiz? I forget his name, but he was a, a guy when I first started out in like the 1980s. He had p- props, and he was good. He was a funny comic.

    9. JM

      But it'll be cyclical. It'll come back, like ladies with ukuleles had to go away for a time.

    10. JR

      (laughs)

    11. JM

      It was necessary that we purge ukulele women from comedy.

    12. JR

      How many were there?

    13. JM

      Oh my God, I don't know. There was ... Is this him?

    14. NA

      Doctor ... The legendary Wid?

    15. JR

      That's it, the legendary Wid. Yeah, that's the dude, and he, uh, would do, like, science-based humor. He was a funny guy. So this is ... You know, I saw him in like '88, '88, '89.

    16. JM

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      But the point was that guy was really funny when he started busting out the props.

    18. JM

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      And, uh, and we were all like ... I was like, "Why don't you just do prop?"

    20. JM

      This is your thing.

    21. JR

      Yeah. Like that kind of humor, his kind of humor, it's almost like it's missing something in just the, just the straight standup form.

    22. JM

      But there's like, there's waves of ... Things become trendy, and then people who can't really do it very well jump onto it, and then it gets lame, and people stop doing it.

    23. JR

      Well, a lot of it is one guy gets really successful doing it-

    24. JM

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      ... and then that becomes his thing.

    26. JM

      We had a run of people pretending to be retarded.... in Australia. It was like five years.

    27. JR

      How hard did they try? (laughs)

    28. JM

      Uh, really hard.

    29. JR

      Were they on the border and just, like, slowed it down a little?

    30. JM

      People had... No, no. Weird sweaters, people having, like, fireworks that they would fire into themselves. And everyone would, like, come out with cards and read their act.

  4. 6:34 – 9:33

    Australia’s recent mass stabbing/shooting discourse: hero narratives, religion, and group-lumping

    1. JM

      And then somehow we still had a massive shooting. And now the response is, "Well, maybe we could take even more of them away."

    2. JR

      Um, what was the nationality of the people that caused the shooting?

    3. JM

      The son, I think, was born in Australia and the dad... There was a big fight over it on Twitter where people were going, "He's Pakistani."

    4. JR

      Right. I remember that, but I didn't... I don't anymore.

    5. JM

      He's not quite Pakistani. No.

    6. JR

      I don't anymore. I don't get in there.

    7. JM

      The, the big argument was over the religion of the hero who took one of the guns away. So like, the cops were apparently cowering.

    8. JR

      Right.

    9. JM

      That's the narrative. I don't know.

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. JM

      But one guy ran up and... It's G- a great video of a guy, like, he's s- he runs at a guy with a gun.

    12. JR

      Yeah.

    13. JM

      And wrestles the gun off him, and aims the gun at him, and lets the... He does let the guy get away. He doesn't want to kill him. But then-

    14. JR

      Which is kind of crazy. The guy just kills how many people?

    15. JM

      Oh, and then i think the guy gets a gun and goes on killing people. But he-

    16. JR

      No.

    17. JM

      Yeah. But he's not a killer, this guy who wrestled the gun off him. He was just a heroic man.

    18. JR

      Well, beat him in the head with a butt, like in the movies.

    19. JM

      I don't know what I... I mean, I wouldn't have ever s-

    20. JR

      He hit him and then they go to sleep.

    21. JM

      I would never run up to a man with a gun. I would have been out of there. But the argument was what religion was the guy who took the gun because people on the right really didn't want him to be a Muslim. They were like... It was a huge thing on X of people going-

    22. JR

      People on the right didn't want him to be a Muslim?

    23. JM

      Yeah. Because it was Muslim shooters, but then it, it looked like he was a M- his name was like Ahmed Al-Ahmed or something.

    24. JR

      But hold on, why would the people on the right not want him to be a Muslim?

    25. JM

      Because then you can go, this is a Muslim thing. Muslims were doing the shooting and we can just go, "Let's deal with the Muslims."

    26. JR

      Oh, you mean the people, the guy who captured the guy?

    27. JM

      The guy who wrestled the gun off him-

    28. JR

      Right.

    29. JM

      ... was also a Muslim, which then makes it like-

    30. JR

      Oh. So was he?

  5. 9:33 – 14:53

    Defining ‘right-wing extremism’ and the slippery slope of state power

    1. JM

      But this is what's we... So after that, the government comes out and is, like, cracking down on right wing extremism.

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JM

      Because it's a lefty government and they go, "We have a pr- clearly we have a problem with right-wing extremism." So now they're trying to reclassify, like, you know, globalized, infidelted jihadism as a form of right-wing extremism. Which I'd never, which like, yeah, I guess it's not-

    4. JR

      Well, you have to-

    5. JM

      ... commie lefty stuff, but-

    6. JR

      Well, you have to look at it on paper. Objectively, it is.

    7. JM

      Yeah, but I don't know how much they hang out. I don't know if these guys-

    8. JR

      They don't.

    9. JM

      I don't think these guys are reading, like, I don't know, William F. Buckley Jr. and stuff.

    10. JR

      It's still, uh, let, let's break down what is right wing then, okay?

    11. JM

      (laughs)

    12. JR

      Let's say this. Okay. Do they want to completely control women's behavior and completely dictate whether or not the woman can leave the house with certain clothes on, what they're allowed to do? Right?

    13. JM

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      That sounded kind of a right-wing thing, isn't it?

    15. JM

      Yes.

    16. JR

      Total religious ad- adherence. They want a religious state.

    17. JM

      Yeah, but the Taliban want to dance with little boys.

    18. JR

      Okay.

    19. JM

      That seems like a left-wing thing. (laughs)

    20. JR

      That's a separate break-off group. They're like the Baptists. (laughs)

    21. JM

      (laughs)

    22. JR

      They're like the Catholics. You know what I mean? You got your regular Christians.

    23. JM

      We deny that.

    24. JR

      And then you got some other motherfuckers that are out there running wild with new rules.

    25. JM

      But you're talking mainline.

    26. JR

      Mormons. How about this? You know what I mean?

    27. JM

      What, Mormons?

    28. JR

      Yeah. You know, but, but that's what I'm saying.

    29. JM

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      It's like their break-off group. It's not... The ones that are banging the boys, that's not normal. There's a lot of guys out there that are Muslim that are not banging boys. So when you connect them with the Taliban, they're like, "Hey, bro, I'm just praying over here."

  6. 14:53 – 25:35

    Crime, poverty, and “untapped human potential”: fixing neighborhoods without militarizing them

    1. JR

      Well, there was a thing in that film that was interesting though, towards the end, where you see like, some of them are trying to like, move away from that life.

    2. JM

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      That girl, one girl got sober. So there was like a take to it where they realized like, "Hey, this is not sustainable. This is a crazy way to live. I'm a mother. Like, what am I doing?" You know? And she was trying to get out of it. Which I think a lot of people do come to the realization if you're in that kind of a community, "I gotta get the fuck away from these crazy assholes and stop doing meth."

    4. JM

      It is ... Yeah, I think-

    5. JR

      But it's how do you do it? See, this is the thing. This is the thing. When you say like, is it a, is it true that m- there's a higher percentage of murders that occur in Black communities? Right. Right. But as opposed to poor communities? Like, what about like, in deeply impoverished communities? Like, and then when you introduce a history of gang violence and crime and no one ever does anything to stop it, it's gonna stay the same.

    6. JM

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      Whether it's in Appalachia or whether it's i- ... Like, the Hatfields and the McCoys, all those motherfuckers that were killing each other back in the Wild West days. I mean, it was probably horrible back then. Why? Because they let it be that way. Nobody did anything about it. You couldn't stop them.

    8. JM

      And I think some of the solutions for it are very bad. This is my, it's ... I don't wanna speak outta turn 'cause it's not my country, but like, when I've been driving through-

    9. JR

      Please. People love to come to America and tell us what to do. I love it.

    10. JM

      Well, I lo- I think it's the greatest country in the world. And I'll repeat that again.

    11. JR

      Me too.

    12. JM

      But when I drive through like a bad area and there's like a Planned Parenthood with a line around the block-

    13. JR

      Yeah.

    14. JM

      ... and things set on fire. And you can just t- like, I know that Planned Parenthood started out as a eugenicist organization where they went ... Like, that was the lady who founded it. That was her thing. And you can really see in those neighborhoods, it's like if you have a child here, you're gonna be tied to this community. We want you to get out. We want people who have the spirit to get outta here and to live a good full life in America, not to be tied down to being in like a really difficult crime-riddled area.

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. JM

      So abort your children so you can get out seems to be the ...

    17. JR

      Hoo. (sigh)

    18. JM

      I think they're still doing the eugenicist thing of being like, "Just be free." For different reasons, not 'cause they wanna dilute the numbers in the population or whatever. But because they go, "You've gotta be a free person who can leave and children will tie you to a place."

    19. JR

      Yeah, that's a way to look at it.

    20. JM

      That was ... When I was driving through, I forget what, Wisconsin? Northern Wisconsin? I don't know. I just hit with this s- ah, man, it's like usually the, the rough area of a town is lifted up by a freeway in America. Like you don't see ... If you drive into Chicago, you're just way up here on a freeway and then you come down into like the most beautiful buildings you've ever seen in your life and people go-

    21. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    22. JM

      "It's very scary over in the other part of Chicago." And you go, "I never saw it. I was-"

    23. JR

      Above it in a, yeah.

    24. JM

      "I was 30 feet in the air."

    25. JR

      Yeah, that's a good move.

    26. JM

      But in some places I have driven through it and I've gone or I've stopped and you go, "This ... Someone's g-" Like, if I lived here ... I mean, there are some areas that are so rough (laughs) where it's like, man, if I lived here, I would go and steal and kill from the people who live 20 minutes up the road for sure. Do you know? Like, you just drive 20 minutes up the road and there's a German town and everything's perfect.

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. JM

      And everyone's rich and everyone's beautiful.

    29. JR

      Yep.

    30. JM

      And you ... This doesn't happen in ... I don't know. I'm from a very flat country by comparison.

  7. 25:35 – 34:05

    Mainstream media vs. podcasting: bubbles, ‘intellectual’ gatekeeping, and why long-form works

    1. JR

      Here's the thing. There's a lot of people that become experts, and I'm guilty of this as well. By, uh, you're- you're talking about something where you maybe watched a YouTube video. (laughs) You know what I mean? Like, maybe you, uh, maybe you read an article about it-

    2. JM

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      ... in some fucking Politico ... Who knows? Who knows where you read it? Some, it could be some crazy right-wing source. You read something, you took it as fact, and then you talk to a bunch of other people that also take it as fact. And next thing you know, you start talking and you start-

    4. JM

      You have the biggest show in the world?

    5. JR

      ... saying shit. Yeah. That's me. (laughs)

    6. JM

      Okay, but people always criticize that. People always have a go at the podcasters for, like, spouting off on things that they're not.

    7. JR

      Yeah, but that is what I do.

    8. JM

      They don't have a PhD in it. But how come there's no responsibility on the mainstream legacy media for having gotten really, really boring over the last-

    9. JR

      Not just boring.

    10. JM

      ... 15, 20 years?

    11. JR

      Boring is, uh, that's a, no, no, compromise.

    12. JM

      I would say lying as well. But people-

    13. JR

      Completely compromised, totally untrustworthy, completely compromised.

    14. JM

      I just got the New York Times app 'cause I thought, "I'll have a look at the..." I finally got enough money where I can pay a dollar a week to be on the New York Times app.

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. JM

      And it's so, um, I mean, it's ju- they've built Twitter. Like, the experience of it and the scrolling on it, it feels like you're in Twitter, but only mediated through-

    17. JR

      Mm.

    18. JM

      ... selected journalists from The New York Times. And suddenly, you're like, "I'm just stepping into, for a moment, whatever bubble that is." I just, I wanted to take a look at it.

    19. JR

      Well, I-

    20. JM

      It's ins-, it's like-

    21. JR

      I think they're all gonna have to course correct. I think they're all gonna have to realize that it's-

    22. JM

      They're trying.

    23. JR

      ... not, it's not being intellectual, like a true intellectual, a true progressive, by only looking at things from one perspective. And to automatically assume that anybody that has a different perspective-

    24. JM

      Oh.

    25. JR

      Hey, we're back.

    26. JM

      There we go.

    27. JR

      Where was I?

    28. JM

      You ta- So they need to have a course correction. We're talking about the mainstream media and that they've-

    29. JR

      Well-

    30. JM

      ... lost that, many people.

  8. 34:05 – 1:01:59

    Politics as a rigged game: corruption, insider trading, and manufacturing trust in elections

    1. JM

      And the people around her... This is what I me- there's like, there's something that has... The right used to have this as well. And both sides of politics had it. And I remember there was like... Howard Dean, I think it was, did a weird scream one time.

    2. JR

      Yeah, one scream. Ah!

    3. JM

      And the whole thing fell apart.

    4. JR

      (laughs)

    5. JM

      And that really stayed with me. That I remember watching politics, and there was some sense of like, everything is very manufactured, and if you make a single mistake, oh my God.

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. JM

      You're gonna lose the primary. It's all over.

    8. JR

      Yeah.

    9. JM

      And Trump destroyed that with the Republicans, where it all became very, we've just got to, like, hang out and talk, and-

    10. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    11. JM

      ... everyone got very loosey-goosey on the right.

    12. JR

      Yeah.

    13. JM

      And the Democrats have not adjusted to that and had their... Like, Bernie could do it. They just froze Bernie out, and they did everything they could to stop him coming through.

    14. JR

      Right, like Marjorie Taylor Greene. You could not have a person like that before Trump. That would... There's no way. There's no way.

    15. JM

      I mean, you can't have her. We've... She's gone, right?

    16. JR

      (laughs) She's gone now.

    17. JM

      She's gone.

    18. JR

      But she wouldn't have existed without him. Like that sort of-

    19. JM

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      ... brash, crazy personality, that had not existed in a congressperson.

    21. JM

      And there will be someone on the left who can do that at some point.

    22. JR

      Jasmine Crockett. She's doing that.

    23. JM

      Man, maybe.

    24. JR

      She gets aggressive-

    25. JM

      She does.

    26. JR

      ... and loud, and they get crazy with each other.

    27. JM

      I like-

    28. JR

      Listen, it's a reality show now.

    29. JM

      I like her. I know people don't like her. I think she's hip. She would maybe come on the show.

    30. JR

      Mm-hmm. Okay.

  9. 1:01:59 – 1:07:24

    The future shock: AI inevitability, deepfakes, mind-to-mind tech, and ‘digital god’ fears

    1. JR

      It's a good idea for now. I think what we're gonna really be able to know within the next few years is whether or not you're telling the truth. I think with, uh, wearable electronics, I think-

    2. JM

      Ugh.

    3. JR

      ... ultimately they're trying to do something that allows you to communicate head to head. Have you seen that stuff where they do it?

    4. JM

      I'm not getting it. I don't want it.

    5. JR

      Have you seen ... Well, the ... What they have right now is a wearable. These guys put it on, they think something, and then the other person hears it. It-

    6. JM

      This is one of the worst things I've ever heard.

    7. JR

      Oh, you have to see it.

    8. JM

      We're doing that?

    9. JR

      You have to see it. It's crazy when you watch them actually do it. So right now it's attached to an actual computer behind them, but that's for now. I- eventually it's going to be wearable. Just like everything, it gets smaller. I mean, this is bigger than-

    10. JM

      You're, you're so much more relaxed with the AI stuff and the technology than I am.

    11. JR

      You can't-

    12. JM

      I'm fighting it.

    13. JR

      If you see the asteroid coming, you have to realize you're gonna die. Like, there's nothing you can do about it.

    14. JM

      The Amish have continued very happily-

    15. JR

      I don't-

    16. JM

      ... with their carts.

    17. JR

      ... think it's going to be as disastrous as everybody thinks. I just don't believe that. I think we'll figure it out. But I think it's gonna be a massive upheaval of our total ... Uh, completely our economic system, our life system, the way we interact. But we have to realize, this is what's really important, the way we interact is really new. The way we live in cities stacked in high rises and driving around in cars, this is a tiny little blip in time that the human race has existed like this. Before that, we had a totally different thing. And for the longest time people, traded things back and forth and they, they used gold coins and silver coins and, and there was no stock market. Like, this whole thing that we're doing right now with automation and you're worried about it's taking jobs, those jobs weren't even a thing-

    18. JM

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      ... in the past. Yeah, we've built this giant population based on the fact that jobs would exist, or it gave people the confidence to procreate, get married and have kids and, and this ... We'll find another way. We'll have to. People will have to. It'll ... It's just it's not gonna be pretty, but it's just like everything else that happens, it's this massive change in society and culture. We're gonna have to adapt.

    20. JM

      I'm in, I'm in flight mode on it. I wanna be-

    21. JR

      I know you are.

    22. JM

      ... on an acreage, you know I am. (laughs)

    23. JR

      You get nervous when I play AI music in the green room.

    24. JM

      I do. When I go, "This is good." And you go, "AI!" And I go, "Gah!"

    25. JR

      Oh, yeah. Yeah, you love that country-

    26. JM

      That's true, um-

    27. JR

      That country one I played the other day?

    28. JM

      I-

    29. JR

      That was good, right?

    30. JM

      The 50 Cent stuff is fantastic.

Episode duration: 2:56:50

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