Joe Rogan Experience #1732 - Ben Shapiro

(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Hello, Ben Shapiro.

Well, hello, Joe Rogan.

Good to see you, buddy.

It's good to see you outside LA.

I know. I'm a free man now and as are you.

Oh, yeah.

We've escaped the criminal communist state of C- California.

We both look about 25% happier.

Uh, I'm definitely happier. It's way easier to live here. It's, like, l- less traffic and, uh, just forget about all the d- draconian COVID restrictions and dealing with, uh, an inept, bullshit government-

Yep.

... which is what it is.

You save yourself some money too.

It's that, but it's, people are nicer.

Yes.

It's like-

Yes.

... you're living in a r- a d- they're r- regular folks. Like, California is so polluted by show business, it's hard to really reconcile it. It's hard to really understand how bad it is until you leave, and then you go, "Oh, okay. That's not normal. This is normal." Like, just regular people.

It's crazy. So I grew up in LA, right? I mean, I, I was in LA all the way up until last year basically, and the only three years I wasn't in LA I was in Boston for law school. So I- I've only been in, like, big blue cities my entire life. And when you grow up in LA it's like there's no other place... It's like growing up in New York. There's no-

Yeah.

... other place that exists in the country. And then you leave and you're like, "Whoa, the rest of this country is kind of fantastic." And people are. They're way nicer, just way nicer. Like, in LA there's a thing you do where you walk down the street, if you're not driving, you walk down the street, you spot somebody who you don't know, you c- you kinda lock eyes with them. The first thing you do is you look away, right? You don't, you don't, like, you don't catch eyes with somebody and have a conversation with them just in the normal course of business in LA or New York. You move outside LA or New York, you're walking down the street, you lock eyes with somebody, you're like, "Hey, how are you?"

Yeah, they say hi. (laughs)

It's crazy. It's like a crazy thing. (laughs)

Well, there's a thing that happens when you just get too many human beings living together where people become a nuisance, you know? It's just, there's the, well, the population density of Los Angeles is replicated in rat population density studies that they've done. Have you ever seen those?

No, I haven't seen these.

They're really fascinating 'cause they, what they do is they've taken rats, and they take them, and they have a certain number of these rats together, and they behave fairly normally. And then as they increase the population of rats, you start seeing what you see in large cities. You start seeing rats, like, huddled in the corner nodding and shit. You see, like-