EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,046 words- 0:02 – 2:41
Clarkson at the Mothership: what you see on TV is who he is
- JRJoe Rogan
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
- SPSpeaker
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. [upbeat music] Hey, Jimmy.
- JCJimmy Carr
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you-
- JCJimmy Carr
Good morning
- JRJoe Rogan
... friend.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I wanna thank you so much for introducing me to Clarkson.
- JCJimmy Carr
Oh, it's, it's f- it's fun, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Jeremy Clarkson is the best. He's exactly who you think he is, who you wa-
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... when you see him on TV, that's who he is. He's fucking hilarious. He was so fun to talk to. Such an interesting guy to talk to.
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, he ca- came down to the Mothership last night. I don't think he's been to a comedy club before.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's wild.
- JCJimmy Carr
He was like, "What's, what's going on? What, what's the show?"
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- JCJimmy Carr
I went, "I'm doing a thing called Kill Tony." He went, "I don't know what that is, Jim. Are you telling jokes?"
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- JCJimmy Carr
I went, "I'm sort of judging people telling... Oh, okay." And then he got, got to the Mothership and went, "Can I get a rosé?"
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- JCJimmy Carr
Uh, uh, luckily, I think your missus has a bottle of rosé somewhere-
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly
- JCJimmy Carr
... which is now missing.
- JRJoe Rogan
They keep rosé there for her.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- JCJimmy Carr
But you know the guy he was with, Willman, who's his producer, they're childhood friends.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- JCJimmy Carr
They were in school together, and they've done everything together.
- 2:41 – 6:14
Media, reputation, and “not giving a f***” as a creative superpower
- JCJimmy Carr
But, but it's that thing where you go, other people's opinions about me are none of my business.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
Like, the people are gonna write things, and that, that's okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JCJimmy Carr
It's, but at some stage you just have to go, and I think it's like a superpower. Not giving a fuck what other people think about you is a superpower, and if you can do that, like, I think, I think comics are maybe better at it, 'cause we're not entertainers in the pure sense. I remember this thing, like Robbie Williams-
- JRJoe Rogan
How so?
- JCJimmy Carr
... said this thing to me. He said, "I'm an entertainer in the pure sense. If you don't love me, I don't love me."
- JRJoe Rogan
Ooh. God, I don't think of musicians as being that way. I would never think of Bob Dylan as that way.
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, I think Bob Dylan is... I, I think the difference between an entertainer and an artist is if you say to an artist, "I love your new record."
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- JCJimmy Carr
And they go, "Well, that's interesting, but I don't give a fuck. It's my new record." And I think comics have got that thing where you go, I feel like I write the jokes, but I don't write the show.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you really think that, like, a, an artist would say, "I don't give a fuck if you like my record"?
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I, I feel like there's a spectrum of giving a fuck what other people like, but the most important thing is you being able to express yourself. That's the most important thing. If you're expressing yourself only for other people's love and affection, like, if you're just zooming in on what's gonna give them the best response, what's, what's gonna get me the best response, the most love and affection from those people, that's a trap. Like you can't-
- JCJimmy Carr
I think it's, it's, that's audience capture.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
It's where you, you, you become-
- JRJoe Rogan
But-
- JCJimmy Carr
... you become a covers version of yourself.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
That thing of, like, that fame being, like, a weird hall of mirrors where you, you kind of reflect back what you think they want you to be.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
As opposed to-
- JRJoe Rogan
Audience capture.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
Finding something kind of exciting to do.
- JRJoe Rogan
But I do think that some people who are true artists, like I've... I know musicians that are, like, really good musicians and very popular, and when people come up to them and say they loved a certain song or they loved a certain album, they genuinely get happy.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, I think that's possible.
- 6:14 – 10:28
Genius, anxiety, and the urge to build (from flow state to AI-as-God)
- JCJimmy Carr
I would, I, I make a distinction here between, um, hyper-accelerated rationality, like super smart people doing great stuff, and actual genius. I think genius always comes with a little sprinkle of crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
I think it's like there is a, there is a price to pay that you would not wanna pay. So whether it's, you know, Michael Jackson or, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes
- JCJimmy Carr
... Kurt Cobain, like tortured souls-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes
- JCJimmy Carr
... creating this incredible entertainment for us.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JCJimmy Carr
But they're, they're going to a very dark place. Like, I've got a theory about the 27 Club. You know the 27 Club of like all the people that died at age 27?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
These incredible musicians, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, and Amy Winehouse, these like incredible artists.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JCJimmy Carr
And I think it's because they are more sensitive than we are, that they've got like everything is... They're feeling everything. The, and, and to be that good, so then they're numbing themselves. The drugs are the medication to just, "I just to n- I need to not feel this."
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, there's certainly a lot of that going on. No one would deny that. You know, um, it's just, I think whenever you're trying to categorize a group as large as artists and lump them into a specific type of personality traits that, you know, a predetermined pattern of personality traits, I don't think you can do it. I, I've just met too many that are so different. I've met like really arrogant ones that are clearly mentally ill that produce incredible work. So like Kanye West clearly has some mental issues.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah, I think that's, that's-
- JRJoe Rogan
But man, that motherfucker knows how to make some bangers.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yes, it's extraordinary.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like that dude, he's-
- JCJimmy Carr
He's like the prime example of like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes
- JCJimmy Carr
... you wouldn't wanna be-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right
- JCJimmy Carr
... I wouldn't wanna be a genius. I'll be, I'll, I'll just do my thing. That's great. But that, the price to pay to be that great.
- JRJoe Rogan
I asked Elon Musk once about that.
- JCJimmy Carr
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
And he said, "You wouldn't wanna be me."
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
He goes, "You wouldn't wanna..." He goes, "Uh, I just, my brain never stops moving. It's like it's horrible."
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, I kind of feel the same about-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's like a storm going on in my head all the time
- 10:28 – 13:07
Egypt, innovation, and the case for lost chapters of civilization
- JCJimmy Carr
It's interesting, 'cause like you like the Egyptian culture, right? The myths and legends-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes
- JCJimmy Carr
... and, and the pyramids.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JCJimmy Carr
'Cause it strikes me that the Greeks got a lot from the Egyptians.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
The Greeks basically looked at the Egyptians and went, "Oh, they fell to, they fell to nothing."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JCJimmy Carr
Because they, they never innovated. They never changed anything. So the Greeks kind of wanted not to make... They didn't wanna make that mistake. Like we live closer to Cleopatra than Cleopatra lived to the building of the pyramids.
- JRJoe Rogan
We, yes. Crazy.
- JCJimmy Carr
That's like a weird fact.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JCJimmy Carr
They never ch- 'Cause they, once they, once they had it locked in, they just went, "Okay, that's us. This is our system."
- JRJoe Rogan
They-
- JCJimmy Carr
As opposed to the-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's a, that's a narrative of, uh, of history.
- JCJimmy Carr
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you should look into the work of your fellow countryman, Graham Hancock. Do you know who he is?
- JCJimmy Carr
No, I don't know him.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay, Graham Hancock had a show on Netflix for two seasons. I don't know if they're gonna do a third, but it's called, uh, Ancient Apocalypse. Is that it? That's it, right? And it's all about how-
- JCJimmy Carr
Was this ma- was this made for you?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- JCJimmy Carr
This feels like it was made specifically for you.
- JRJoe Rogan
I, I've been a fan of his for a long time. He has, he was actually one of the first guests I ever had on this podcast, actual g- guests.
- JCJimmy Carr
Oh, wow, okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Other than being comedian friends of mine, me and Duncan, uh, convinced him to do the podcast when the podcast was, like no one was on it.
- JCJimmy Carr
I think I, I think I have heard this guy on here-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes
- JCJimmy Carr
... when he came back.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's been on many, many times.
- 13:07 – 20:02
Gatekeeping Egypt, underground structures, and catastrophic resets (impacts & volcanoes)
- JRJoe Rogan
... that idea doesn't hold up anymore. There, there's a lot of information about the actual design of the inner dimensions of the pyramid, the, [clears throat] of the pyramid that leads a lot of legitimate, especially younger archaeologists now, to try to exam- examine what exactly this thing is. Do you know that the, do you know about all the new discoveries that they found-
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah, the, the, the-
- JRJoe Rogan
... because of the ground-penetrating radar?
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah, I d- I, I don't, kinda don't know what to make of it because-
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't either
- JCJimmy Carr
... it feels to me like the, the, the news cycle now, it feels like that would've been a year's worth of news had that happened 15 years ago, and now it feels like we move on so quickly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, the problem is it's very gatekept in Egypt. Like, that guy that I had on my podcast, Zahi Hawass-
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... he's in charge of whatever gets distributed about whatever official narrative, whatever press releases. He's sort of at the front of the li- and he has been for a long time, and they're very reluctant to give up those reins to any new discovery that doesn't have his name on it, and doesn't have their name on it. It's not approved by them. It's a real problem because there's this, there's this, uh, labyrinth that was discovered by, well, it was r- documented by Herodotus, so we're talking-
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... thousands of years ago. This incredible structure underneath Giza that's greater than Giza. Now they know that's real now.
- JCJimmy Carr
I was-
- JRJoe Rogan
They've done... Yeah, they've, y- use ground-penetrating radar now, and there was also an explorer, I think, was it the 1800s who went down there? But he could only go so far. So the water table changed. They had built a dam in the 1960s, and that was, really fucked it up, where they can't go back in there anymore. And so when they built this dam to help the agriculture, it raised the water table all around the Giza Plateau, and this labyrinth, this under- incredible underground structure, was all flooded. So they're trying to figure out what to do about that now, but because of ground-penetrating radar, not only do they know that this exists, without doubt, like they can absolutely document the immense size, but that there's also a 40-meter-long metallic object that's in the center of a large atrium-
- JCJimmy Carr
Oh, fuck
- JRJoe Rogan
... that looks like a Tic Tac. They don't know what it is. They don't know what metal it is, but they do know it's made out of metal, and it's 40 meters long, and it's underground in this insane structure.
- JCJimmy Carr
And this is from 5,000 years ago?
- JRJoe Rogan
Probably longer. This is-
- JCJimmy Carr
Okay. Well, then I mean, this is-
- JRJoe Rogan
This is the real problem.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah. The, it feels like-
- JRJoe Rogan
The real problem is we don't know what the origin story-
- JCJimmy Carr
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
... of humanity is accurately. We don't know.
- JCJimmy Carr
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is what the Jesus story is, and the Adam and Eve story. There's all these stories, but what we get is there was probably some sort of an event, and then people talked about it for hundreds of years before anybody ever wrote it down, and no one who wrote it down was there, and no one has an accurate, r- a really accurate representation of what that person says, including the works of Jesus.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah. Well, this is like the... I suppose it's that thing of the, uh, the carcass of the whale. Like, the idea that we're living in a world that we couldn't build again. Like, like, um, you know, for Britain, you go, we were the first industrializing nation, right? We built the first railways.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JCJimmy Carr
And now we are totally incapable of building a railway. Like, the last 15 years, 20 years, the, the Chinese have covered themselves in high-speed rail, and we've covered ourselves in environmental reports.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
We seem incapable of kinda getting shit done. So you go, you have these weird things where you go the, the, the pyramids are there, and we've, we've kinda lost the instruction manual. We couldn't do that again now-
- 20:02 – 23:53
Supervolcanoes, asteroid fears, and the strange biology of reptiles and frogs
- JRJoe Rogan
It knocked humanity down to a few thousand people.
- JCJimmy Carr
I think it's 60,000 is, like, the little, is the, is the thing, the lowest we got to, I think.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. And-
- JCJimmy Carr
Which is extraordinary when you think about it
- JRJoe Rogan
... from a supervolcano. And so a supervolcano is, uh, you know, it's not extraterrestrial. It's a thing that's actually here. It's a natural disaster that occurs periodically on Earth, whereas the sky is a shooting gallery. I mean, we are, we are in a m- the middle of a crazy pathway where we run into 900 plus thousand near-Earth objects, and we're spiraling through the galaxy, hurling into space at an insane rate of speed.
- JCJimmy Carr
The, this, I mean, it kind of makes me-
- JRJoe Rogan
And then there's these-
- JCJimmy Carr
... feel dizzy
- JRJoe Rogan
... city-sized objects that are just floating around, and occasionally they come rocketing in [laughs] at five times the speed of sound and slam into the Earth, and it rings like a bell for a million years, and that's what killed the dinosaurs.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I mean, within-
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, well, the dino-
- JRJoe Rogan
... seconds it was miles-
- JCJimmy Carr
The dinosaurs as well was-
- JRJoe Rogan
... into the Earth
- JCJimmy Carr
... the dinosaurs were, um... I forget what the name is. There's a biological term for it, but the, the eggs below a certain temperature were male and above a certain temperature were female. Dinosaur eggs.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JCJimmy Carr
So, and that would, that would work, that worked pretty well for-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right
- JCJimmy Carr
... for the distribution of gender.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JCJimmy Carr
Uh, and so when the, when the asteroid hit, obviously it kills a couple of dinosaurs that it hits, but what really happens is the Earth cools by two degrees and their system just goes, so they're all born female.
- JRJoe Rogan
That makes sense.
- JCJimmy Carr
And then they all die out. So any animal with that system. So then there's ones that didn't die out that didn't have that system. So the reason, you know, crocodiles or sharks, they're, you know, things from that era that just didn't, didn't depend on that system for gender distribution.
- JRJoe Rogan
I was just reading about an animal, some sort of a reptile that they've f- just recently observed getting pregnant without a male involved, and that this was, uh, unsuspected. They didn't think that they could do this. It was r- God, I wish I was paying more attention to it. But that happens all the time in the weird lizard world. Like, the same kind of creatures that can grow their own legs back when they lose a leg, they also-
- JCJimmy Carr
What's that? What's going on there?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. What the fuck is going on there?
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And how come we can't do that? That they also get heavily affected, uh, their sexual organs get affected by things like herbicides like atrazine. You know that stuff that, that gets dumped into the water that turns... Alex Jones famously said turns the frogs gay.
- JCJimmy Carr
Oh, right. Okay. Well-
- 23:53 – 31:26
Pandemic division, AGI worries, and distrust in medicine (polio, DDT, and pharma scandals)
- JRJoe Rogan
Pandemic did for a little bit, I think. I think in the, the beginning it kind of brought people together and sort of settled people down to, like, what was actually important in life.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The very early days when we were really worried that people were gonna die from it, there was like... No, when no one knew what the severity of the infection was, and we were just hearing about this disease from China, and we're locking down the country, that was genuinely terrifying.
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, but the idea that-
- JRJoe Rogan
And sobering
- JCJimmy Carr
... everyone went through the same thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
Everyone had the same experience. People reacted very differently to it, but everyone went through the same experience. Like, that, that kind of, that, the global lockdown.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
Where... But It, it, yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
It wasn't uniting, though, after a while.
- JCJimmy Carr
No, when on-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because after a while it became very divisive, especially when there was the whole are you with or without the vaccines? Like, are you Apple or are you Android? It's like, it, it, it's one of those tribal things that people do. Are you Republican, are you a Democrat? Even wh- whether they're skeptical about pharmaceutical drug companies, normally they'll abandon all that if there's some sort of an ideological group that you're a part of that thinks one way or another, and that happened during the pandemic.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah. I think it was-
- JRJoe Rogan
Which I never thought we would see
- JCJimmy Carr
I think it's a little window into-
- JRJoe Rogan
Fierce fights about pharmaceutical drugs and whether or not you believe in the pharmaceutical drug company, and that the people on the left would be the ones that were telling you these massive, multibillion-dollar corporations that have the highest criminal fines in all of human history, those are the ones we should be trusting. But that happened in this country, and it happened all around the world.
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, it happened all over the world. I mean, it was a, it was a, it was a, a shit show. I mean, it, it shut down everything. I mean, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
That was the divide. The divide was the medication and what path we took to get out of it. If that didn't exist, if it was just there is no, there's no medication, the only thing you could do is be healthy enough to be resilient and get through the cold, but we're all gonna get it.
- JCJimmy Carr
But is this, is this-
- JRJoe Rogan
If that was the narrative
- JCJimmy Carr
... is this not what's happening right now, though, in terms of going, if you look at what we're doing, right? Gain-of-function re- research, which is it almost certainly came from gain-of-function research.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
Which is like looking for a gas leak, leak with a, with a lit match, right? So it's just inherently dangerous. But this is kind of the, um... I don't know if it is even a conspiracy now, but the, the, the search for AGI strikes me as a similar kind of thing, right? The, the, the, you're searching for the, the last invention, the last thing that you'll ever need. Um, you know, this con- the conspiracy about solstice.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think AGI has a legitimate potential to change our lives for the better. It's just, will it?
- JCJimmy Carr
Yes. I- is the, is the future-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's, there's no way
- JCJimmy Carr
... is it Star Trek or Star Wars?
- JRJoe Rogan
But here's why that's a bad analogy. There's no way, uh, these engineering viruses to be more vir- virulent, to be more, uh, infect more people more easily, to kill people more. There's no way that's good. There's nothing good out of that.
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, well, maybe-
- 31:26 – 36:39
Why fentanyl hit North America: opioids, cartels, and the “OxyContin Express”
- JCJimmy Carr
Here's a, here's a, here's a strange thing, right? I've been traveling around Canada, America on tour. You know, I'm kind of always on the road, and you notice things, right? So you notice like the fentanyl thing happens in North America.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
But it does not happen in Europe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
What's going on there?
- JRJoe Rogan
The Sackler family. Do you know the whole story?
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, the Sa- I, I remember the, the, the, the kind of controversy about people giving out the idea that you should never be in pain-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right
- JCJimmy Carr
... was kind of promoted. The idea that any kind of pain or discomfort is unacceptable, so you need to be no pain at all, so pushing the idea of those painkillers, which were opiates.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, yes. Not just that, but also saying that they're non-addictive, and then also promoting this idea that you're just kinda on them all the time and everything's fine.
- JCJimmy Carr
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's what you need. Just be on them all the time and you're gonna be fine. And they got doctors to go along with this. They got doctors to subscribe to these ideas and promote them.
- JCJimmy Carr
But why is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Money
- JCJimmy Carr
... but the fentanyl, the, the idea... This-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because it's an opiate
- JCJimmy Carr
... this synthetic... Yeah, but the, the idea, how is that happening only in North America-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, because we're next to Mexico
- JCJimmy Carr
... and they're not selling it in... Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
We're connected to Mexico, and that's where it's coming in, and China's bringing in the precursors. So China ships the precursors to Mexico, the cartel makes the fentanyl, they sneak it across the border. And that has been going on because there's an opioid crisis in America. Mariana Van Zeller, do you know who she is?
- JCJimmy Carr
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
Brilliant reporter. I mean, like, a real courageous woman. Boots-on-the-ground journalism. Went to Colombia and was with people while they were making cocaine and walked with them through the jungle as they packed it out. She mean- she, she goes to crazy places where she can get killed all the time. And she started out- Well, well, well, I became introduced to her from a, a piece she did called The OxyContin Express. And The OxyContin Express, it was all about Florida, and Florida had these pain management centers. And say, if you hurt your back-
- JCJimmy Carr
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... you go to a pain man- "Oh, I'm in pain."
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"Well, you should go to the pain center." If you're, if you don't know anything about how corrupt the medical system is, you, you would go, "Oh, that's the thing you go to for pain. They're pain experts. Fine. Uh, they'd probably tell me what to do." You go there. They only prescribe OxyContin. So there's a pharmacy connected to the pain management center. You go to the pain management center. "What's wrong, Jimmy? Your back hurts? I gotcha."
- JCJimmy Carr
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
They right- You go right next door. Right next door, and all they sell is OxyContin and no database. So you leave that pain management center and you go to another pain management center a mile away, and then you go to another pain cent- And they're all over Florida. And so people would go and fill their trunks up with OxyContin and then drive up through Kentucky and Ohio, and that's the OxyContin Express. And that made addicts, like traceable destruction of communities all throughout the land. And this was all because-
- JCJimmy Carr
That's disgusting
- JRJoe Rogan
... of corrupt politics. It was all because of corrupt pharmaceutical representatives. It was because of corrupt doctors, that everybody turned a blind eye to make a ton of money. And most importantly, the Sackler family. This one family made billions and billions of dollars promoting this idea that you should be on pills all the time.
- 36:39 – 50:48
Gambling, dopamine, and Rogan’s pool-hall years (plus gratitude and “gambling on yourself”)
- JRJoe Rogan
There's always going to be addictions that, um, y- you can avoid, right? Like a great one is gambling. It's very controversial in America. Like should gambling be legal?
- JCJimmy Carr
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm a guy who's been to Vegas a million times. I'm a guy who is, uh, I work for the UFC. I do comedy shows in Vegas. I'm always-
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... I like the idea of going there. Don't blow all your money, stupid. It's like-
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... at what point in time do we take responsibility for y- if you don't have any money, don't gamble it.
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, I think it's that thing with-
- JRJoe Rogan
But when-
- JCJimmy Carr
I think young men... I mean, I, I've got a, a bit on this. Like a, not a joke, but like an idea on this. So I'm like, y- you know, young men in crisis. I'm like, I'm pro-gang, pro, um, pro-gang, pro-gambling, and, uh, pro-drinking. Like I think, you know, that thing of like gambling is, uh, not sports gambling. Not gambling on something to give you a cheap little dopamine hit whenever you need it. Like that thing of like the interval reward system.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you have gatekeeped gambling?
- JCJimmy Carr
No, no. The idea of gambling on yourself.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- JCJimmy Carr
The idea of like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay
- JCJimmy Carr
... the big gamble in life. If you take a big gamble, then you don't need those little gambles, right? We got very lucky. We got into comedy. So it's like it's a gamble. I'm gonna try this line. It's like we, we get the dopamine. There's good ways to get it and bad ways to get it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Yeah.
- JCJimmy Carr
So, so encouraging the good ways. Human nature is fixed and flawed, right? Young men are gonna want dopamine and risk.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
But how do we, how do we sort of point them towards something that's useful? So my thing was like gangs, terrible. Gangs, you know, shoot each other and, and deal drugs. But not all of them. A lot of gangs are just, it's young men together, and the idea of like drinking as a... Like I've set up youth clubs all around Great Britain, right? And there's pool tables, and there's jukeboxes and music, and there's, there's booze. And, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Social places.
- JCJimmy Carr
No, they're called pubs.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah. And that's where I think young men, where should they be? Together.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
They, they ch- they check each other very well. But the idea that they should be together. The drinking age should reflect reality rather than a wish. Like it's 21 in America. That's insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
So it's insane.
- JCJimmy Carr
16-year-olds drink. I don't think they should be allowed to drink alone. But like it should be a social thing that we go as humans. We go, okay, where do you learn to get on socially with other people? It's not, uh, the school.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
It's a, it can be a bar, but the bar can have a, a football team and a, a baseball team, and it can be a place where you learn how to interact with other people.
- 50:48 – 1:11:48
Comedy as a teachable craft: Carr’s joke book, mentorship “dojos,” and building community
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah
- JCJimmy Carr
... the jumping off point. So the discipline of martial arts, the pool, you could kind of see where that's going. And then comedy came along kind of at the right time to kind of... 'Cause comedy feels like it's, it, it's, it's such an interesting thing to get in- I want more people to kind of get into comedy. I think that's the, uh, g- like, you know, that idea of, like, the opposite of being a spectator is not being a professional. The opposite of being a spectator is being a participant.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JCJimmy Carr
And I think, like, comedy's such a wonderful thing to kind of... 'Cause you, you're, you're writing down and ordering your thoughts, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JCJimmy Carr
Uh, and you, you sort of think about what you, what you really think about something. Like, what could you say that no one else could say? And then you're learning how to communicate that with other people. It's such a transferable skill. Like, we should be teaching it in schools. There should be... Like, the drama class should have a comedy element-
- JRJoe Rogan
100%
- JCJimmy Carr
... because it's, it's such a useful skill in life to be able to... It's just giving something your attention. I'm gonna think about this thing. I'm gonna think of a funny angle. Well, that gives you a bit of perspective on life. You're kind of stepping back and seeing it for what it is and kind of looking at it from different angles, trying to find something funny in this. It's, like, a great sort of way to improve your disposition-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's-
- JCJimmy Carr
... just to try and see something funny even in the terrible.
- JRJoe Rogan
This episode is brought to you by Call of Duty. Modern Warfare IV is coming, and they're going all in on this one. The kind of missions that make you go, "Dude, did they really just do that?" Set during a full-scale North Korean invasion of South Korea, expect a real boots on the ground experience as young South Korean recruits fighting to protect their homeland and North Korean forces, hunting traitors, interrogating civilians, and more. Modern Warfare IV is available now. Order digitally or pick up your physical disc at your local store. Visit callofduty.com for more. Rated M for mature. Probably the most popular art form that's not documented and studied in, in terms of, like, having a structure to having, to, to learn how to use it-
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, that's why I wrote the, I wrote this book about... I wrote this book on jokes, um, y- with two friends. You know, this is... Like, I wrote this thing with, uh, Amanda Baker and Abi Grant, this book On Jokes, which is, like... So it's in thirds, so that it's, like, the taxonomy of jokes. Like, the descriptors of all the different joke types. Not the function of the joke, but the type of the joke.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
Because people talk about observational comedy. That's like saying, um, songs about girls is a genre. There's no... Like, what, how, how's this work? Is this pull-back reveal? Is it a pun?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JCJimmy Carr
You know, what kind of wordplay is this? How does it work? And then how to put together routines, and then how to perform because I think comedy can be taught. I don't think it's an immutable characteristic. I don't think it's something that, that you're born with. I think you could have, like, a... You could be drawn to it, and then the idea of having some kind of structure. 'Cause when you think about... Like, people often say comedy can't be taught. Jerry Seinfeld said, "You can't teach comedy." I think he's one of the greats. And I think, uh, Doug Stanhope said, "Comedy courses are raging scams." They're two of my favorites, right? Uh, but they both had teachers. They were both taught comedy. But they had a home club, and they had a mentor. And you know, guys that we know started on the door, and they ended up the headliner.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
Right? So you go-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes
- JCJimmy Carr
... Tony Hinchcliffe used to park-
- JRJoe Rogan
Perfect example
- JCJimmy Carr
... used to park cars [laughs] and, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Now sells out Madison Square Garden
- JCJimmy Carr
... and you go-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah
- JCJimmy Carr
... and that, that's a dojo.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JCJimmy Carr
But not everyone has access to that dojo.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
You know, and you... It's the Comedy Cellar. It's the Comedy Store. It's the Mothership. It's like these clubs, but there aren't enough of those clubs.
- 1:11:48 – 1:32:58
Rhythm, drugs, and lost potential: Mitch Hedberg, addiction, and sensitivity in performers
- JCJimmy Carr
... here, here's my thing about rhythm, okay? Which I think is kind of interesting and slightly heartbreaking for us, okay? So I would say pound for pound, best joke writer of the last 30 years was Mitch Hedberg, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Pretty, like, pretty great fucking jokes.
- JCJimmy Carr
Pretty great jokes, right? You see them written down, you go, "This guy's, he's gotta be..." But his, uh, rhythm, uh, his, his pacing was inconsistent, which is worse than being fast or slow. It was just... So half the time he would kill and half the time he would die.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- JCJimmy Carr
And why? And a hack, a hack comic doing hacky shit with great fucking rhythm would, would beat him, you know, 99% of the time. That's, that's crazy. It's heartbreaking to me that no one took him to the side and went, "No, no, you just gotta, like, you've got this lovely cadence to your speech, but it's, you gotta keep the same rhythm for it to work every time." I mean, he was a fabulous-
- JRJoe Rogan
He was a fabulous comic, but he was also a, a real heroin addict, uh, a real bad one.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
To the point where he got gangrene in one of the shots, one of the areas they shot.
- JCJimmy Carr
Lo- lost a leg, I think, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, he didn't lose a leg, but he almost died.
- JCJimmy Carr
I thought he-
- JRJoe Rogan
It was, it was one of the-
- JCJimmy Carr
Well, I mean, he died
- JRJoe Rogan
... I mean, at the time, uh, he almost died before that. He almost died when Stan Hope-
- JCJimmy Carr
Wow
- JRJoe Rogan
... and I were doing The Man Show in, like, 2003, and then he wound up dying after that. But, uh-
- JCJimmy Carr
I know his folks up in-
- JRJoe Rogan
... that was part of the issue was-
- JCJimmy Carr
You know JFL flew him up, flew his folks up?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, did they?
- JCJimmy Carr
It was such a sweet thing. It was, like, one of the nicest things I've ever seen at a festival.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's nice. He, um-
- JCJimmy Carr
Wow
- JRJoe Rogan
... he had amazing- ... joke writing, and he was very prolific, but he was also doing heroin all the time, and it was part of the vibe on stage, and it was part of the thing where it could go south. It could really get away from you. You know, like if you've got a guy who's relying on substances, especially heavy stuff, you know. Like, uh, I've seen people-
- JCJimmy Carr
Who's the other guy? Uh, Gr- Greg Giraldo had, you know, the, uh, those kind of demons.
- JRJoe Rogan
He did-
- JCJimmy Carr
I saw him last-
- JRJoe Rogan
But he cleaned up for a long time-
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... and then fell off, and that's when someone gave him a pill, and he died. Um, but that, that was part of the problem with Mitch, I think, was just that he, you know, they, it w- nobody could get him to quit, too. He was like, "I'm never gonna quit." He, he was not interested in quitting. It was like, he's like, "Uh-uh." Like, "No, I'm doing heroin."
- 1:32:58 – 1:41:45
The Fourth Turning: collapsing institutions, myth cycles, and ancient megastructures in India
- JRJoe Rogan
We're back.
- JCJimmy Carr
We're back. Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
So fourth turning.
- JCJimmy Carr
The fourth turn. So there's a theory that li- that the, this guy Neil Howe wrote this book called The Fourth Turning in like 1996, and he predicted everything that's happening in the world right now.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oy. [laughs]
- JCJimmy Carr
He, he basically said l- l- like the world moves in these, uh, four eras, first, second, third, and fourth turning, and we're entering the fourth turning now. So you go... It's almost like the thing that, uh, that I think's happening is we've gone from being n- 1945, the end of the war, is our foundation myth, right? We won the war, and that foundation myth is crumbling. And as that myth crumbles, so too do our institutions. Like, we're, we're living through a revolution. If you think about what a revolution is, it's the replacement of elites. So, uh, these elites are falling, so you got academia has lost all credibility. There's a replication crisis in the social sciences.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JCJimmy Carr
The traditional political parties are kind of falling away. Everything's lurching to the left and to the right at the same time, and w- we, we'll... Like the, the, we were talking about it earlier, the, the, the medical community that we would've trusted, uh, of course, uh, like we, we, we're not trusting any of these institutions anymore. It's falling away, and so these crisis times happen every 80 years or so, and then we rebuild.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JCJimmy Carr
And there's been sort of, there's been four of these kind of in American history, but in global history. A guy called Vico, uh, used to talk about these, and Vico was like an ancient, um, Italian philosopher, and he had the same sort of theory of like four periods of humanity along human life, and the person that really... The way this gets interesting is Star Wars.
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- JCJimmy Carr
Okay. So I can link this back. All right. So, um, there's a book called Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. It's like arguably the greatest work of literature in the Western canon. It's a wonderful book, and a guy called Joseph Campbell studied it for his PhD, and he wrote about the myths in- inherent in James Joyce's, uh, Finnegans Wake, and he wrote this book. Uh, he wrote his dissertation on this book. Took him years, and then afterwards he did a like too long; didn't read version of it, which is called The Hero Has a Thousand Faces and The Hero's Journey, and then George Lucas picked up those books, and he made Star Wars.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JCJimmy Carr
So Star Wars is a too long; didn't read version of Finnegans Wake-
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- JCJimmy Carr
... which is a version of Vico. And Finnegans Wake's got these incredible things in it of like, like he sort of predicts AI. He talks about these thunderclaps, these moments. He's got these 100-letter words, 10 of them in the book, where he predicts like the big, uh, leaps forward in humanity-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm
- JCJimmy Carr
... like the invention, uh, like fire and clothing and, um, uh, agriculture, uh, all th- these kind of revolutions through time, and he, he marks them with these 100-letter words.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- JCJimmy Carr
And, and the, the last one is 101 letters 'cause he'd, he was doing a, a reference to the Thousand and One Nights. Everything's a reference to a reference. It's all, it's incredibly dense, but the idea that AI is V- Vico called them, um... He, he would refer to them as, um, uh, gods which we don't have a name for yet, the idea that these, these kind of, these things happen and change everything.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JCJimmy Carr
And are we in one of those periods now?
- JRJoe Rogan
I, I think not only are we in one of those periods now, I suspect that we've gone through one of those periods in the past. I think, um, probably the ancient Egyptians, uh, had something akin to this. I re- I really do. I, I, I think there's probably... The idea that we're the first people to reach this sort of level of technological proficiency and power and innovation, I don't think that's accurate. I just think just the structures that were left behind that are completely unexplained. You know, there's this cave in India that's carved straight into the mountain. They have no idea how they did it. They did it thousands... I think it's Barador, I think it's called. Um, it's thousands of years old. It's, uh, perfectly polished. The geometry inside of it is impeccable. Uh, it's... They no idea who did it. The, uh, conventional explanation is they built it to stay dry during the monsoons-
- JCJimmy Carr
Sure, sure
- JRJoe Rogan
... which doesn't make any fucking sense when you see the elaborate interior of this place Who fucking did that and how did they do that? We don't know. There's a bunch of shit that's left behind from ancient cultures that we have zero explanation for. I think-
- JCJimmy Carr
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
... if we died off today, if we got hit by comets and asteroids and there was a, a time period of 10,000 years before people started investigating what happened to us, I think they'd have a very patched up, uh, g- gap-filled version of what we are. Particularly because everything, all of our documentation is now on hard drives. So it would be a real problem. They'd have to find a few books. There'd be very few books remaining, and what they would find if, uh, if there was a cataclysm, if we went 10,000 plus years before civilization rebuilt itself in this area, we, we'd have a, a very distorted version. So this is the cave. It's fucking insane, man. They don't know who did it. They don't know wh- they, they have a rough idea of when. The estimates are between 1500 years ago and, and later. They don't know why.
- JCJimmy Carr
Where, where is that?
- JRJoe Rogan
It's in India.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah, where, whereabouts?
- 1:41:45 – 1:59:36
Food, fuel, and geopolitics: fertilizer dependence, stockpiling, drones, and a shifting world order
- JCJimmy Carr
... I was, I was thinking about this recently, right? There's four things that hold up the world, right? So there's, it's ammonia, steel, concrete, and plastic, right? That, that's what holds up the world, right? It's not tech, it's those f- four things. They all involve huge amounts of petrochemicals, right? So the ammonia is the interesting one. Some chemist in Germany in 1909, no one knows his name, he's not famous, but invented, uh, ammonia fertilizer, like a way of making fertilizer with ammonia-
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- JCJimmy Carr
... and petrochemicals, and 48% of the world's population rely on that fertilizer for food. 48%.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you're talking about nitrogen?
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah, nitrogen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JCJimmy Carr
So it's an ammonium, ammonium-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's Fritz Haber.
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So Fritz Haber... You wanna know a crazy story about Fritz Haber?
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Fritz Haber, the same time-
- JCJimmy Carr
No one knows his name, other than you
- JRJoe Rogan
... that he was getting the Nobel Prize for this invention, he was wanted for war crimes because he had invented mustard gas. He had invented toxic gas. So that was during World War I. So he was the guy invented Zyklon A. So Zy-
- JCJimmy Carr
How did he inven-
- JRJoe Rogan
He invented-
- JCJimmy Carr
He's the same guy.
- JRJoe Rogan
The same guy. He invented Zyklon A, which they eventually took the smell out of it and turned into the Zyklon B, which they used to gas people during the concentration camps. So Zyklon A had a toxic smell to it to let you know that you were in the presence of it, so you'd get the fuck away from it. They took that out and turned it into Zyklon B-
- JCJimmy Carr
Jesus
- JRJoe Rogan
... so they can gas people. Same guy. Also a Jew. Also one of the few Jews during World War II that was allowed to stay in the administration up to a certain point, where it got to a point where his life was in danger because he was Jewish, and so he had to flee the country. And so while he was in the ... process of fleeing the country, he died of a heart attack. But he's a, he's a crazy story. His wife committed suicide 'cause she knew what he was doing. He was gassing people, right? And his wife was at home with their 13-year-old son. She shot herself, and he left to go to the front line. He left his 13-year-old son with his wife after she shot herself, so he could go to the front line and make sure the gas was administered properly. This is the same guy who developed-
- JCJimmy Carr
Oh, sorry. This, this was in-
- JRJoe Rogan
... the Haber method
- JCJimmy Carr
... this was in-
- JRJoe Rogan
World War I. This is the same guy who developed the Haber method of extracting nitrogen from the oxygen, which is responsible for 50% of the nitrogen that we use today. It was the Haber method. The same fucking guy.
- JCJimmy Carr
That is insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
Insane.
- JCJimmy Carr
Wow. [coughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
Insane.
- JCJimmy Carr
I did not know that. I, but the reason to, to mention the fertilizer now is because you got, with everything that's going on in Europe at the moment, everything that's popping off, and it feels like whatever your, whatever your priors are, you're seeing play out. You know, you're watching France on fire.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 1:59:36 – 2:16:07
Phones as religion, AI devouring books, and rebuilding healthy discourse and purpose
- JCJimmy Carr
Yeah, but it's, again, it's that thing where you go, you have to right-size this. S-sometimes I tell a joke, and some people don't like it. That's about as serious as it gets. That's not... You know, the, uh, uh, cancel culture thing is like, uh, uh, it's the new burning books, I guess. It's... There's worse things than burning books.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JCJimmy Carr
Not reading them is one of them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh. [laughs] Is that true that AI companies are buying... Did we ever sort that out-
- JCJimmy Carr
Buying books to destroy them?
- JRJoe Rogan
... that they're buying rare books and then, uh, putting them into AI and then burning them? Didn't we discuss this off the air?
- SPSpeaker
Sort of, I think. One read, explanation I read-
- JCJimmy Carr
I don't... Well, you, well, hey, you're gonna have to ask AI that question.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hold, hold on. When, when we don't have headphones on, we have to... Put headphones on so we can talk to Jamie-
- JCJimmy Carr
Hey, okay. Hey, hey
- JRJoe Rogan
... 'cause otherwise we're all talking over each other. Sorry, Jamie.
- SPSpeaker
One thing, explanation I read is that... I don't, and this is just an explanation, I don't know that it's real or true, uh, is that after they copy the book, they have to destroy the copy they have 'cause then now they have a... Like, you know when you buy a, like, a VHS tape, there was, like, that weird copyright thing at the beginning that said you, you're not allowed to distribute this or make copies of it?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
That, that's making a copy of it. So, like, they're a public company. They could get sued for breaking all those rules.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they have to destroy the book? [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
I think so. That's what I mean. I-
- JCJimmy Carr
On what? I mean, that's a... It feels to me like-
- SPSpeaker
It's an explanation. I don't know if that's-
- JCJimmy Carr
... you've asked AI, "Are you destroying books?" And AI's gone, "What? Me? No."
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- JCJimmy Carr
"What? No, look over here. No, read this."
- SPSpeaker
Yes, but I also don't know that they're doing it. People were showing videos of them, like, scanning books, and I don't know that that's the easiest way to get that information either.
- JRJoe Rogan
O- Okay, but after we talked about Fritz Haber and gassing people during World War I, after we've talked about all the horrible things that people have done, you don't imagine that people would burn books? I think they would. I think if they thought they could be sued, per your explanation, or an even worse explanation is they only want those things to be accessible through AI, and they also want to limit what you have access to.
- JCJimmy Carr
I, I wonder is there gonna be a premium. I gotta take these off.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- JCJimmy Carr
Um, I, I wonder is there gonna be a premium on books written before 2022 because you know it was done-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh my God, it's true
- JCJimmy Carr
... bulk acquisition companies-
- JRJoe Rogan
AI companies, including Anthropic and Amazon, are buying physical books in bulk, cutting off their spines, scanning the pages for AI training data, and then destroying or shredding the originals.
- JCJimmy Carr
So Amazon started buying books.
Episode duration: 2:50:35
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