#2356 - Mike Vecchione

Joe Rogan: Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Mike Vecchione: Feeling better now? It's awesome. Joe Rogan: Does it feel a little better? Mike Vecchione: It does feel better, yes. Joe Rogan: A little bit. Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Joe Rogan: It's just a consistent thing. You have to do it every day. Mike Vecchione: We're talking about decompressing the back, ladies and gentlemen. Lower back pain. Another thing you can do without a machine is just bend your knees, just bend slightly, grab your arms like this and just go forward and relax your back and it'll pop your back that way too. Joe Rogan: So I know how to pop an upper back. That's where you have when you get someone, yeah, the person's grab you and then hold you and then you can hear it crack. I don't know how good it is, right? But the lower back is... When I played football, I played contact football, and we used to go to physicals. You had to get a physical, and it was just a gigantic room and you'd go from doctor to doctor so everybody could do it at one time. I remember I laid down and the doctor grabbed my leg and he was trying to get range of motion and he got it like three quarters of the way up and it stopped. He said to me, "You're going to have lower back pain when you're older." And that's exactly what happened. You can avoid it. He predicted it. There's a lot of ways to avoid it. People just accept it. Mike Vecchione: But what you're telling me right there with not being able to get your leg up, that's a hamstring issue. Hamstrings and quads and glutes, all the tightness in those areas will absolutely affect your back because anytime you have restricted range of motion and you're really tight, everything else is tight too. Everything is kind of pulled down and you have to figure out a way to lengthen that out. There's a lot of different stretches you could do, but you definitely should be doing them. Joe Rogan: Nobody likes to stretch. Mike Vecchione: It sucks. Joe Rogan: Everybody hates it. Mike Vecchione: But if you don't do it, you're going to go to a doctor and they're going to want to cut you open. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: And don't do that because there's other ways around that. If you're listening to this and you got a bulging disc in your back, there's ways around it, folks. There's decompression. There's stem cells. There's a thing that I did a long time ago in California called... Oh my God, what is it called? What is that shit called? That Peyton Manning did. Regenequin. Joe Rogan: Thank you. Escaped my mind. It's early. Mike Vecchione: Regenikine is where they... It's like platelet rich plasma, but a more sophisticated version of it. They first started pioneered it in Germany. You used to have to go to Germany to get it, but now you get it in America. Stop over in Turkey for the hair and then in Germany for your lower back. You don't have to do it. It's in America now. Joe Rogan: What is the name of the place? Life Cycle Medicine in Santa Monica? What is the name of the place? Why am I not remembering? My brain has way too much extra information and my heart drop is so full. Lifespan. Lifespan. Lifespan Medicine in Santa Monica is where I had it done. It was amazing. My neck was fucked up for like almost a year. I was going to chiropractors who are all goofy. It's all nonsense. Then I finally went to this guy, Dr. Ben Ruhi, there. He said, "You have a bulging disc in your neck." We got an MRI. He's like, "This is what we could do. Spinal decompression. And we'll use Regenikine. It's a very potent anti-inflammatory. It'll relax all the muscles around that area. And slowly it'll go back." And it went back. Mike Vecchione: But you had to go in for several treatments, though? The Regenikine? Joe Rogan: No. I think it was one treatment. Mike Vecchione: Oh, wow. That's great. Joe Rogan: One treatment did it. I did go back again to get another treatment, but that's just because I do jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu is you're just always getting your neck cranked on. I went back to get mid-back. I think I did one more on my neck, too, but it was more like maintenance than anything. The big issue had been resolved. Then I started strengthening because I never really did anything to strengthen my lower back, my neck, any of those things while I was training jiu-jitsu in the beginning. I just worked out normal stuff. I lifted weights. Mike Vecchione: But doesn't deadlifting and... I don't know if you did these things, but deadlifting and squatting without... I squat lightweight without a belt. Doesn't that automatically strengthen your lower back? I thought it automatically kind of did. Joe Rogan: Well, I mean, it does a little bit. But not the focused exercises that we were just doing. Mike Vecchione: Right. Those are just lower back. Joe Rogan: Squats are really for your legs, but it does your lower back, but also it gets compressed because you're carrying weight in your shoulders. But I do belt squats, which I really like. Belt squats are a different machine. There's another one out there too that was created by Louie Simmons from Westside Barbell. It's a strap that goes around you and it goes to a cable that goes in between your legs and the weight is pulling down from your hips. So it's not on your shoulders, compressing your spine, which is great if you have a back issue. Mike Vecchione: Yeah, yeah. Joe Rogan: So you can squat a lot of weight, but all of it is resting on your hips. Mike Vecchione: Wow, that's awesome. I can definitely feel the difference in my strength when I squat and when I don't. I'm a guy who needs to lift weights. I wrestled with guys and played football with guys who were naturally just shredded and did not need it. It was annoying to them to lift weights. Not that it didn't benefit them, but they were just very muscle bound and they kind of didn't need it. I need to lift weights. Joe Rogan: Well, everybody needs it if you're competing against elite guys. Mike Vecchione: Yeah, obviously, but I mean, to a certain level. Joe Rogan: They're doing strength and conditioning and you're not. Mike Vecchione: Right, right. Joe Rogan: They're going to win. Or at least they're going to have some kind of an advantage. Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Joe Rogan: But I tell everybody, my age, I'm 52, do a circuit. Do a 40-minute weight circuit. Do three sets. Just go. You got to do it. Because I think it affects your... I'm not an expert on this or anything, but I think it affects your testosterone. I can feel it. Mike Vecchione: Oh, it definitely does. Joe Rogan: I can feel it. Mike Vecchione: Yeah, definitely. Lifting weights definitely affects your testosterone. Here's another way to boost your testosterone. Cold plunge before you lift weights. That's a big one. Or if you don't have that, cold shower in the winter. It's great. It's great. You do that before you lift weights, before any kind of training, actually. Because there's been some negative press lately on cold plunges and hypertrophy. But it's all about doing it right after lifting weights, which you're never supposed to do that anyway. The whole idea about lifting weights is you're breaking your tissue down. The inflammation helps you. Joe Rogan: Right. Mike Vecchione: Because your body heals and then it gets stronger. You don't want to kill the inflammation right after you work out. The cold is killing the inflammation, right? Joe Rogan: Exactly. Exactly. So I do that. We just moved into a new building, gym in the building. Mike Vecchione: Oh, nice. Joe Rogan: And that's great. Yeah, we just bought a condo in New York. Right in time for socialism. Mike Vecchione: Nice. Joe Rogan: Right in time for the communist takeover. Good job. Right in time for all of us to have to share. Mike Vecchione: Yeah, you're going to have to share. You're going to have to have immigrants move into your apartment. I just did. 20 years living with roommates and I just finally got married and bought a place. Joe Rogan: This is the first time you've had your own place? Mike Vecchione: Yes. Well, no, not the first time I have my own place. We were renting. We rented for four years. But this is the first time I've bought something. So I bought property. I don't know if that's a good idea or not, buying things. I go back and forth. Joe Rogan: Oh, really? Mike Vecchione: Yeah, it's like I was just told diversify problems. Joe Rogan: Yeah, depends on where you are. New York City to me seems like a time bomb. There's a whole bunch of crazy people with a bunch of wacky ideas and they're getting voted in. Good luck with all that. Your options are them or the guy from the Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa. The guy with the beret. Mike Vecchione: Curtis Sliwa. What if he comes into the office and he goes, "Everybody wears berets now." Listen, if he didn't have the beret, the things he's saying make sense. A lot of the stuff he says make sense. If he didn't have the beret, I'd be like, "Maybe I'll take it a little more seriously." Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: You know what I mean? What are you going to do? Paint? Where's your cigarette holder? No, I love it. I love the Guardian Angels because they don't have weapons, right? Isn't that their whole thing? I came after that whole initiative. But I do like the idea of someone out there to protect the public other than cops. Joe Rogan: Yeah, there he is. He's been doing this forever. I remember in, I guess it was the 90s, I was in New York City. I was in traffic with my girlfriend at the time. She was sitting next to me. We're looking at this Guardian Angel guy. I go, "Why do you have to wear the hat? What is it with the hat? Why do they make them wear that hat?" Her and I are just laughing. The guy looks at me and goes, "Fuck you." With a real angry face. I'm like, "Hey, that's not serving and protecting, sir." If you don't think that hat is funny, then "fuck you." What if I say no, "fuck you," and I get out and I want to fight? Mike Vecchione: Yes. Joe Rogan: Come on. This is so stupid. You're not helping. This is not good. Mike Vecchione: I would hate to lose to a guy with that hat. Joe Rogan: Probably you're not going to. I would imagine anybody that really knows how to fight is not going to put that hat on. You're going to be like, "What am I doing?" But those guys, I think what they did is if there was a disturbance or somebody was acting nuts on the subway, they would just surround the person. Mike Vecchione: Well, that's good. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: As long as the guy doesn't have a gun. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Or a samurai sword or whatever. Or a tiger in his apartment. Mike Vecchione: Yeah, there's a bunch of those. Joe Rogan: Yeah, that was a big thing for a while. Guys having wild wildlife in their apartments. Mike Vecchione: Yeah, just tigers and crocodiles and shit. [Ad break for DraftKings] [Ad break for Visible] Mike Vecchione: Wasn't there a thing with Curtis Sliwa where there was a fake crime and he was saving someone, but it wasn't real? Didn't something like that happen back in the day? Joe Rogan: I don't remember that one. I remember... Mike Vecchione: Jamie's going to look it up. Joe Rogan: Oh, okay. Mike Vecchione: There was something like that. Joe Rogan: I remember... Maybe it was an exaggeration or something. John Gotti Jr. was brought to trial for trying to kill him. Mike Vecchione: Oh, boy. Joe Rogan: Yeah, for saying stuff about his dad. Mike Vecchione: Oh, Jesus. Joe Rogan: Oh, boy. I think it was just a hung jury five times, and he never got convicted of it. But yeah, that was a thing. I remember that. Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Joe Rogan: And they tried to shoot him in a cab. Mike Vecchione: Whoa. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: Cabs are bad enough. Joe Rogan: That was John Gotti Jr. Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Interesting. You know, John Gotti III is an MMA fighter. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: He's good, too. Joe Rogan: He's good. Mike Vecchione: He's good. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: Yeah, he's real good. He fought Floyd Mayweather. I saw that. It was crazy. I think they fought twice. [Pause] Mike Vecchione: [Reading] "Admitted he and the Guardian Angels faked heroic subway rescues for publicity." Okay. So in 1992, Sliwa admitted he and the Guardian Angels faked heroic subway rescues for publicity. He also admitted to having claimed falsely that three off-duty transit police officers had kidnapped him. Sliwa explained at the time... Joe Rogan: That's got to be some jail time, right? Should be, right? Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Joe Rogan: I mean, if you're saying off-duty transit police officers, so you're accusing police officers of a crime. What you're doing is not just lying, but you're also putting the police officers in jeopardy because you're falsely claiming that these guys are outlaws. Mike Vecchione: [Reading] "He claimed at the time the stunts were intended to underscore the dangers of the subways." Joe Rogan: Like who doesn't know about the dangers of the subway? I just let the natural stuff play out. I have literally ridden the subway three times in my life, and I'm very aware of the dangers of the subway. Mike Vecchione: [Reading] "When the Guardian Angels first started trolling streets and subways, New York City was experiencing some of the highest crime rates. I feel the incidents we staged led to some improvements, he said." Joe Rogan: Oh, boy. Mike Vecchione: Oh, boy. Jesse Smollett. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: It's before Jesse. Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's Jesse Smollett. BJ, before Jesse. God damn. That guy stuck to his story. Even the guys who beat up the person, even when they flipped, even after they flipped, he stuck to his story. Mike Vecchione: Is that an actor or is that an actor? Bro, he showed up at the hotel and had the noose still around his neck. Joe Rogan: That's what happens when you let actors write the scripts. Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Joe Rogan: You know what I mean? Like Amber Heard when she was on trial with Depp. Kind of similar. Mike Vecchione: Right, right, right. Joe Rogan: When you let the actors write the script, you're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold up. What happened now? Come on. What is this?" Mike Vecchione: [Reading] "Netflix sets Jesse Smollett documentary with new evidence. Alleged hate crime hoax might be a true story." He never backtracked on it. Is this real? Who's funding this? This is new. I just Googled his name, and the last two days, there's stories about this. It could just be a documentary. Whoever his PR team is, congratulations. You guys rule. It should be at least a documentary. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: What do you got there? Little tiny cigars? Joe Rogan: Yeah, little tiny ones. Mike Vecchione: You got a big one, too. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: You're mixing it up. Joe Rogan: I'm mixing it up. Mike Vecchione: You're not sure what you want? Joe Rogan: No, this is before I go on. Usually, I just don't want to take the commitment to this. Mike Vecchione: Oh, I feel you. Give me one of them little ones. I like those little ones. Ron White does those. Joe Rogan: Thank you. They're fantastic. They're good because if you don't want to commit to a full cigar, like right before on stage. Mike Vecchione: But Ron White inhales these bitches. Joe Rogan: Does he really? Mike Vecchione: Like an animal. Joe Rogan: You gonna tell me it cures his lower back? Mike Vecchione: Nope. Well, he plays golf, so he must have a good lower back. Joe Rogan: You know? Mike Vecchione: Yeah, it's the swing. Speaking of which, I watched Happy Gilmore 2 last night. It's hilarious. Joe Rogan: I like it, too. I just watched it. I love Adam Sandler. I love those movies. You know exactly what you're going to get. They're always fun. Critics hate them, but it's more information that critics suck. I love him too. They're great. I think he's great. They're fun. I think he's great. Mike Vecchione: He's great. What I love about him is he doesn't care. He just keeps moving with what he wants to do. With his people. Joe Rogan: Exactly. Mike Vecchione: He has a group of people that he loves. Joe Rogan: Yep. Mike Vecchione: And that are creative. He just keeps going with it. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: I think he's very funny anyway. He's very funny. I saw his stand-up live in Vegas once. Him and Rob Schneider. They killed. It was really fun. I hadn't seen Adam in forever. I hadn't seen him since we did Zookeeper together, which was like 15 years ago. He's got the same people that he always works with. He's got the same directors he always works with. He's always working with Spade and Schneider. Joe Rogan: Right, right. Mike Vecchione: All the guys he knows. So it's real fun on the set. Everybody's friendly. Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah. Same as Kevin James. He does it the exact same way. I like that. Go to his set, everybody's friendly, everybody's having fun. There's no weird ego bullshit with the actors. Everybody's pals. They all write for each other. So they're all sitting around when we're doing table reads, everyone's laughing, cracking jokes, adding lines. Mike Vecchione: Yeah, yeah. Joe Rogan: Good times. Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Good times. Joe Rogan: That's how you make the best stuff. When it's loose and playful and fun and everybody can be creative and there's no weirdness. The enemy of comedy is tension. Always. The tension you have between coworkers. Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Joe Rogan: Phil Hartman told me Saturday Night Live was the most stressful thing he ever did in his life because there was so much tension. Everybody behind the scenes was backstabbing everybody. Mike Vecchione: That's nuts. And Brewer says the same thing. Joe Rogan: Yeah, you ever heard Brewer talk? He's a good dude, man. He's the best. Mike Vecchione: He's a really good guy. I was on the road with him a little bit. He's a really good guy and very much the quintessential theater act. You see him in a theater. I'd go watch him after I was done with my set and it's like he fills the space. Joe Rogan: You know what I mean? Mike Vecchione: He's a great theater act. He's a big act. Joe Rogan: Yes. Mike Vecchione: Right, the big stage is actually great for his act. But he murders in clubs. He murders in an arena. He's old school. He's a great person too. What I love about him is he had no desire to be super famous. All he wanted to do was kill. All he wanted to do was be great at comedy and just live in his own world. He lived in Jersey in a nice suburban community, just chilled, didn't need fancy cars or any bullshit. He just loves being funny. Joe Rogan: I love that. I love the idea of just waking up every day and it's like, "How can I be better?" Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Joe Rogan: I love that. Mike Vecchione: You know who else is like that? Attell. Joe Rogan: Attell. And maybe the best comic alive. Mike Vecchione: Yeah, yeah. Joe Rogan: And maybe one of the... In my book, top five, top six of all time. Mike Vecchione: Yes, for sure. Joe Rogan: And he's effortless. Mike Vecchione: Yes. Joe Rogan: Effortless. But he's always working on his act, which is kind of torturous. It's a torturous thing. If you're always tinkering, you're always working on it, and it's never done. It's always like you're in the mix. You're like, "I don't know." I get it. If that's what you love to do, then it's great. You have to teach yourself that that's what you love to do. Mike Vecchione: Right. Joe Rogan: Instead of like, "God, I can't wait till this hour is ready." Right now, I really only have like 40 minutes. Maybe I could do 45. I could do like 45 minutes, which is like a year after my special. But once you get it down, it's sloppy. There's some shit in there that needs some work. But you have the scaffolding for it, which is very important. It's like the scaffolding. That kind of hard stuff is done. Not that new stuff won't come in. It might still come in, but you have the scaffolding for it now. Mike Vecchione: That's exactly how I describe it. I'm so glad you said it that way. That's what all joke structure is, like scaffolding, and then inside you put the funny. You have to have a premise, a thing you think is ridiculous, and then that's your scaffolding, and then it's all your perspectives on it. Joe Rogan: Right, right. Mike Vecchione: You know who was the best at that? Richard Jenney. I was just thinking about him this morning. I was thinking about him in terms of a comic that I don't know if you knew him or not, but I watched him as a kid and he blew me away with how good he was. He was so good. Then I talked to Attell in New York. He's like, "He was the guy. He was the guy." In the 1980s, he was the guy. I apologize if you've heard me tell the story before, people. But he worked at Eastside Comedy Club and he was there for the weekend. I went there on Sunday. This dude, Pete, who was the emcee, was depressed. I go, "Why are you depressed?" He goes, "Because Richard Jenney did a totally different hour both shows Friday and both shows Saturday. Never repeated a joke and fucking murdered." And he goes, "And I want to quit comedy." Joe Rogan: That's insane. Mike Vecchione: That's insane. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Mike Vecchione: People like that will frustrate you. Joe Rogan: Yeah. You know, as a comic, but watching him as a kid, I was like, "This is..." Because we're Italians. Mike Vecchione: Yep. Joe Rogan: So we're watching it, but he's funny no matter what. Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Joe Rogan: But especially from being an Italian family and watching him, I'm like, "This is the funniest thing." We were dying. We'd quote him. He was so good. Mike Vecchione: Yeah. He was so good. You had to see him live. He's got some great specials. A Steaming Pile of Me is great. Platypus Man is great. His first one was The Boy from New York City. That's great too. He has that Jaws story about being on the road and being so bored and watching the movie Jaws. Jaws 3. Jaws just hits you in the face with how stupid it is. It's such a great bit and it's so punched up all the way through. I absolutely love that. He was the best. Joe Rogan: What I was getting at is maximizing the scaffolding. He would take a bit and he would find every possible angle. Right when you thought he was done, he would get funnier. He would go deeper and funnier and more ridiculous and callbacks. He was so good. But he hated the fact that he wasn't Jim Carrey. He hated the fact that he wasn't a movie star. [Ad break for AG1] Mike Vecchione: He wanted to be a sitcom star, so he did a show on UPN, Platypus Man, same as the special they called it that. Then that didn't... UPN was a new network and nobody was watching it. It was one of those things just like, if you had a show there, it's like, now you can't have a show on NBC. You know what I mean?

Mike Vecchione: It's not that good. And the network's not getting any eyes.

Joe Rogan: Exactly.

Mike Vecchione: But it was okay, you know, and it lasted a little bit and then he did *The Mask* with Jim Carrey. He did some other stuff, but he was good at night. He's a good actor. He's a good actor, but he didn't have the classic good looks that would... not that you need it, like Rodney. He didn't have it either, right? Or John Lovitz didn't have it either. But it's like he wanted to be a movie star and he was bummed out that he was on the road all the time. And I would, every time I would do radio, you know, there was always like the guy that would drive you, like "Who's the most miserable fuck you ever have to drive?" And they all said Richard.

Joe Rogan: Oh my god. Also that no...

Mike Vecchione: No, it was me. It was like a mistake in my heart. No, he's the best. There's got to be an opposite. If you're the funniest guy, there's got to be an opposite to that.

Joe Rogan: Exactly.

Mike Vecchione: There's a disdain and an anger and a frustration, but it led him to be a fucking genius comedian, man. And no one talks about him anymore. I don't feel like anyone talks about him anymore. I try to carry the torch. I really do because he affected me a lot when I was a kid. I remember I used to kind of, one time I was an open mic-er and I found myself, I physically got sick. I was like, "Oh no, I sounded exactly like him on stage." Like I was copying him. I was like, "Oh no, don't do that." But it's just because I loved him so much. I was such a fan. But as soon as that happens, it goes, "I got to stop listening to this guy. I got to get away from him. I got to stop listening to him."

Joe Rogan: Exactly.

Mike Vecchione: But it was just, I just wanted to be him. I admired him so much. I wanted to be like him. But that's such a great thing with the scaffolding and it's like punched up all the way through and then just walking up there and knowing it's like, "I'm about to let this loose on this crowd," and it's like watching them react to it. It's like they're doubled over and you just keep coming at it. It's like when you're fighting somebody, like a boxer, like a Pacquiao in his prime where he'd turn you, he'd hit you three times, turn you, hit you three times, turn you, and then hit you three more and you're like, "I can't move." Like there's no defense to this. So that's what that is like, is just keep coming with punches, punches, punches, punches, and it's unreal. I love a big chunk like that. Like one of my favorite bits of the last few years, Bryan Simpson has this bit about the song "Wet Ass Pussy" but it goes all the way back to Queen Elizabeth. It's this amazing long bit. I don't want to ruin it, but the end of it is fucking... He wraps it up with a bow. It's his closer. It's so good.

Joe Rogan: I love it.

Mike Vecchione: I would leave the green room when I knew he was gonna close just so I could watch the "Wet Ass Pussy" bit. But I would ask him to do it, please. I go, "Please do the 'Wet Ass Pussy' bit. Please." Because it was such a... what it's like a pilot, but Brian's a real writer. Like Brian sits down and writes, which is one of the things that I always try to tell young guys. I'm like, "I know you like to write on stage. I know you write when you're with your friends. I know you come up with great premises and you work them out on stage, but that extra step of sitting down and writing is fucking critical, man. It's big." It's big because you can get stuff there that you wouldn't get. And it's gotta be a routine. It's like get up, do whatever you do, stretch, and then... that's what I do now is like stretch and then delay coffee. That's another big thing I'm trying is to delay coffee, get because the gym is in the building, get a workout first right out of bed and then come back up, cold shower, and then get a cup of coffee.

Joe Rogan: Do that cold shower first, dude. Do that cold shower right away, and yeah, you won't even need the coffee. You'll be like, "Whoo!" And then right into a workout and go right into a hot shower after.

Mike Vecchione: Sure, yeah.

Joe Rogan: I do sauna after the workout. That's what I usually do.

Mike Vecchione: That's great.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, that's the move. I used to do steam room when I was at the gym. Steam room's okay, but the problem with steam room is you really can't get it as hot because dry air won't scald your skin. Wet air will poach you. If you do 195 degrees wet, you're going to get burned. It's going to literally poach you like an egg. But you can do 195 dry in a sauna. And that's why I don't know much about the infrared saunas. I don't think there's the same amount of data on them. It's definitely better than doing nothing. But I think that the real sauna, like we have a Salus sauna in the back here. That motherfucker will go up to 210, 215 if you want it to.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: And that dry sauna is where all the research from Finland comes out. They did over 20 years, they found that if you do the sauna four times a week for 20 minutes at 175 degrees, it's a 40% decrease in all cause mortality.

Mike Vecchione: Didn't they do that? Was this study in Italy? They did a study of Italians who were doing sauna and it was something similar to that.

Joe Rogan: It all similar because it's all great for reduction of inflammation, increase of red blood cells. It has like a mild EPO effect on your endurance. Like one of the things that I've done, like every time I've been injured where I couldn't do cardio, I just did sauna every day. And then I go back to cardio and it was not that much of a drop off. Not like it used to be. Like it used to be like, if I got hurt, I couldn't hit the bag. I couldn't do cardio for a while. And then I would go back to doing it. "Oh God, I'm so out of shape." So that drop off doesn't happen as much, not nearly as much if you do sauna every day. And all the Eastern block... Dan Gable told me that that was something that he learned in his wrestling days.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: That all the Eastern block guys were all doing sauna after training. And it's essentially like static cardio. So, like, I wear a Whoop strap and I'll go in the sauna after training and I'll look at my app and I'm at 145 beats per minute just sitting there. Because I'll go straight from working out. So, like, I'll do rounds on the bag and then heart rate elevated, go right in the sauna, and it keeps your heart rate up.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: Because you're fucking struggling. You're struggling. Your body's struggling. Because it's already overheated from the workout. And then your body's in 195 degrees. And your heart's just pounding. But it's like static cardio. That's really something. It's really good for you. And then I stretch in there, which is the best.

Mike Vecchione: That is great. The stretch. I used to do Bikram yoga.

Joe Rogan: Oh, that's great.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, I used to do it. And I want to get back into it now that I'm not paying for a gym.

Joe Rogan: That's what you should do.

Mike Vecchione: I want to do that. And I want to go back to boxing. I used to do boxing. A bunch of comics went to boxing in New York and we took a class together.

Joe Rogan: You guys sparring?

Mike Vecchione: A little bit to the body, but nothing, you know, he just took us through the training and I mean, I wrestled a little bit in college and I gotta say, the training was very, very... that's why I liked it. It was very, very tough.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's hard.

Mike Vecchione: Very hard.

Joe Rogan: Boxing's tough.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, I mean, but a lot of the boxing training for civilians isn't.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Mike Vecchione: But this guy, his name is Steve Frank, he put us through it and it's like, he was like, would not let up.

Joe Rogan: That's awesome.

Mike Vecchione: After an hour, you're like, "Oh my god," and it's like you gotta get used... you can't be on the road too much because you gotta get used to it because if you don't get used to it then it shoots your whole day. You're exhausted for the rest of the day. It's like I can't do anything. I got spots. I can't, you know.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, you can't do anything now. If you're out of shape, you do... that's like I always avoid doing leg days on days I do stand up. And I've done it before where I've done leg days, then I go on stage that night and I'm always like struggling. It's like it's just too hard. It's too much of a burden on your entire system.

Mike Vecchione: Right, right.

Joe Rogan: You know, squats and lunges and pulling the sled and all that shit.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: At the end of the... but it feels good, like the suffering is, it's like a higher system. It's like a Goggins thing where it's like this suffering, like put yourself in an uncomfortable situation every day and then when you come out of it it just feels so good. I try to tell that to everybody. I'm like, "I know it sucks, but please do it. It'll make the rest of your life suck less." It really will. And you don't have to do what I do. You could just, I mean, just put a weighted vest on and go walk around your block. You don't have to do much. It's not that hard. You just have to do something.

Mike Vecchione: Something.

Joe Rogan: Just do something that sucks.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Do a hundred pushups, a hundred sit-ups, a hundred body weight squats every day. Do that. It's not that hard.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Do it in sets of, if you can't do 20, do it in sets of 10. Just do 10 sets of 10 for the pushups. Build up to it. Start, tell yourself you're going to do 20 today, 20 this week, next week you're going to do 25. Then before you know it, you're doing a hundred.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: Just do that.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Just do fucking something.

Mike Vecchione: Something.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, and you feel so good after it. That's the whole thing.

Mike Vecchione: And that's the time I try to time it with when I'm writing because it's like you want to feel that energy while you're writing.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Mike Vecchione: I do my best writing late at night. I do my best writing when everyone's asleep. That's another secret where it's like the guys who write after the set.

Joe Rogan: Yes, yes.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, that's a secret where it's like, "I'm done. I'm going to de-escalate now and go to sleep." Especially on the road, you're doing an hour, two shows. You're doing an hour, two shows, and then you come back. You're like, "All right, I traveled all day. I want to de-escalate to go to sleep." It's like, you know, trick yourself a little bit. "Let me just look at these notes."

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Mike Vecchione: "Let me just look at the notes that I have on the set that I just did." It doesn't suck. That's the crazy thing about it. It doesn't suck to do. It's not like you hate it. It's not like painful.

Joe Rogan: No.

Mike Vecchione: But you avoid it.

Joe Rogan: You avoid it, yeah.

Mike Vecchione: It's weird.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, you avoid it because you're like, "Now I did it. I'm done. I want to go to sleep." It's like, "Nah, just take another, just check in on it. Just check in on the act." Even 20 minutes, you might yield one of your best punchlines. It's just like every now and then. Like the universe will reward you if you put in that work.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: You sit down and put in that work.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I think that's with fucking everything in the world. Everything. I was watching this video today on Usyk's training, on Alexander Usyk, who's just... did you see that fight?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Jesus Christ, dude.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I mean, he's one of the best of all time. One of the absolute best heavyweights that's ever lived. The thing that was remarkable about... and I agree, the thing that's remarkable about that fight is Dubois came out the first round and was aggressive and I'm like, "Oh right, Dubois is fucking dangerous. He's coming, dude." And he's like, "This is an opportunity and I'm not going to lose it." And Usyk felt that. They said between rounds, he felt it, and he's like, "Okay. Okay, I can't let this guy get confidence." So he stepped in the center of the ring and just started countering him and not giving up any more ground.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And cutting these angles. He just downloads what you're doing and starts adding in feints. And, you know, Joshua said that when he trained, when he fought him, rather, that at the last round, he had never been more tired in his life. He just couldn't believe how tired Usyk makes you because he's constantly feinting and moving. So I watched his training routine today. Jesus Christ, man. Like, no wonder he's in the same shape. He would swim sometimes for five hours a day, five hours of just laps in the pool. He would do... he starts his day at 4:30 in the morning. So 4:30 in the morning, he gets up, eats breakfast, and has his first training at 5. At 5, it's all conditioning. It's all like running, rowing, biking, takes a break, eats again, takes a little nap, back in the gym again like two hours, and then he's sparring, boxing, doing all that workout. Then eats, takes a break, relaxes a little bit. Evening session is boxing. An evening session, he's sparring, he's hitting mitts, he's hitting the bag, gets up in the morning, he does it all over again. And it's like it's all like this. That's that reverse hyper that I was just showing you.

Mike Vecchione: That's crazy.

Joe Rogan: That's the machine that Louie Simmons created that is fucking phenomenal for your lower back. It decompresses your back actively on the downswing and strengthens it on the upswing. And Louie, who is a genius, who is one of the only guys we ever traveled to do a podcast with.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, really?

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's like I gotta get this guy on film. He's like a legitimate strength genius and he developed that machine because he had a bulging disc and they were like, "Oh, you got to get your disc fused." 'Cause he's a power lifter, fucking complete maniac. It's complete psychopath on steroids his whole life. He was an amazing person. And he was like, "That doesn't make any sense. If compression is what the problem was, right, decompression will fix it." And he devised that machine to actively decompress on the downswing, so strengthening all the tissue around that and then decompressing it on the downswing.

Mike Vecchione: Wow. That makes it... he must have had like a... did he have some kind of an engineering background? All he must have to do that.

Joe Rogan: Louie's the fucking man to create that thing. Such a fun guy to talk to, too. He's just such a fucking psychopath. An intelligent psychopath. And look at his back. West Side Rules.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, my God.

Joe Rogan: Swords and knives and shit. Just a fun, fun dude. But genius when it came to strength and conditioning. So many guys, like MMA fighters went and trained with him. Matt "The Immortal" Brown did a lot of training with him and then used a lot of his stuff. Matt sells equipment now too, it's a lot of stuff that he worked on with Louie. But it's like he'd have all these guys that were like these world champion lifters. I mean these guys are fucking gorillas, man. Big shaved head gorillas. But Louie was the man.

[Ad break for Rocket Money]

Joe Rogan: So that machine he devised just specifically for that. But Usyk's training, a lot of it is like ladder board on the ground, the ladder where you're doing the steps. It's like constant shuffling back and forth, spinning. It's all these punches with medicine balls. It's like when you watch him train, it makes sense because he's training specifically to move differently than everybody else does. It's all these constant movements and switches and angles and strength. And you know he's a legit heavyweight now. He was 227 for the Dubois fight. And you know this is coming from a guy who was the undisputed cruiserweight champion. So he's a small heavyweight, but the best heavyweights were small, except for Foreman and a couple other guys. Like Tyson was small. Ali was not big. He's exactly the same size as Ali when Ali was in his prime. Holyfield. Holyfield was not big. Holyfield came this way. But he unified that cruiserweight division. He didn't get any gifts there. He went around and unified it and then moved up and then unified. I mean, it's just... what was the, how many weeks is that training camp?

Mike Vecchione: Oh, I don't know. I mean, it has to be three months plus.

Joe Rogan: I mean, I would imagine the most difficult opponent for him is Tyson Fury because Tyson Fury is six foot nine. He is an incredible boxer. He's one of the best boxers of all time in regardless of any division. Just skillful. Tyson Fury is a skillful boxer. He's slick and intelligent. And you know, people talk about like what's next for Usyk. Should it be Joseph Parker?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, that would be a great fight. Joseph Parker deserves it, right?

Joe Rogan: But what I want to see before the fucking... the hay is in the barn. I want to see one more Tyson. Because Fury's the only one that's given him problems. The only one that came close. He hurt him to the body a bunch of times. This fight he was lighting him up with the jab. You know, those fights were close. They were very close.

Mike Vecchione: They were close.

Joe Rogan: I mean, Usyk almost stopped him in the first fight. And I think it was the ninth round. He could have, and he pulled back when the referee was like calling it a knockdown where he could have caught him one or two more times. And that would have probably been, that would have been a wrap. But other than that, like no one has given Usyk the problem that Tyson Fury's given him. And I think you give Tyson one more shot at it where, I mean, he's training now. I know he's posting up a lot of stuff about his times like he's doing a lot of endurance work now and so he's geared up.

Mike Vecchione: A fight before. He's gotta have another fight. He doesn't have to, no, no.

Joe Rogan: Right into the fucking... come on man, this guy's a veteran. He's been doing it forever. Right into the fire.

Mike Vecchione: I'd rather see... I want to see Fury and Joshua.

Joe Rogan: Oh, that's an all England. Oh, I'd love to see that.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, I'd love to see that. That would sell out like Wembley. They're talking about doing it. They were supposed to fight many times a long time ago. It kept... you know, they were supposed to fight. They thought they were on a... you know, and the money was never right or something. But what now with like Turki Alalshikh in the mix, you know?

Joe Rogan: Well, it would say if they decided to do Parker versus Usyk, which is a great fight.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, I think that would be the fight they would have underneath that. That would be amazing. Tyson and Joshua.

Joe Rogan: But they're talking right now about doing Anthony Joshua, Jake Paul.

Mike Vecchione: I know. I saw that. Jake Paul apparently wants that fight. And he agreed to, I think it was 99% to one, where Joshua gets 99% of the money and he gets 1%.

Joe Rogan: See if that's true. I believe I read that online. That might be just some shenanigans. But look, regardless of what you think about Jake Paul. I think Jake Paul's a great athlete.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, for sure.

Joe Rogan: He's a great athlete. I don't know if him or Logan placed in states in Ohio in wrestling. It may seem like nothing to people on a national level, but if you're placing in states in Ohio, you're a great athlete. Both of them are great athletes. People think they're jokes because they were famous when they were kids. That doesn't mean anything. Like Mario Lopez. People look at Mario Lopez like Mario Lopez is like *Saved by the Bell* guy. No, Mario Lopez can box. Can fight. He does Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He's a very good wrestler. I don't know if you've ever seen that guy that does, "I'll give you $1,000 if you can take me down." Have you ever seen that guy?

Mike Vecchione: I love that guy.

Joe Rogan: I love that guy.

Mike Vecchione: That guy's from my high school in Ohio.

Joe Rogan: What is his name?

Mike Vecchione: I don't know. I forget his name. It's something Greek, but he's a guy who, he was an Ohio State champ and maybe a runner-up his senior year. And then he went to Cleveland State and was just a guy who was like, I don't think he did anything in college really. But the way he wrestles, I could see by the way he wrestles, and it's a good video series, it's just like very smooth.

Joe Rogan: Very smooth. He's very, very talented.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, he's super talented.

Joe Rogan: Point is, Mario Lopez wrestled him and gave him a fucking great scramble.

Mike Vecchione: That's really something. A bunch of great rolls.

Joe Rogan: A bunch.

Mike Vecchione: That's great.

Joe Rogan: Mario Lopez is legit. Like, really legit.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And you could say, "Fuck the *Saved by the Bell* pussy. I'll fucking smack him." That dude will fuck you up, man. Like, legit. You can say all that until you get into it with him.

Mike Vecchione: Giorgio Polis? That's his name.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, Giorgio Polis. Shout out to Giorgio. He's a bad motherfucker.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Because that guy wrestles dudes way bigger than him. So check out this Mario one. I love that. So, by the way, Mario Lopez is in his fucking 50s.

Mike Vecchione: I didn't see this one. I didn't see this one.

Joe Rogan: He's in his 50s. Now watch. Scoot ahead a little so you can see some of this. Scoot ahead. There we go. Mario can fucking wrestle, dude. Like, legit wrestle and scramble and avoid takedowns.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, you got him there.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah. Look at this. Yeah, Mario shoots in on a single. I love that. That's some good scrambles. And again, in his fucking 50s, man.

Mike Vecchione: That's great.

Joe Rogan: He also competes in jiu-jitsu. I know he won jiu-jitsu matches.

Mike Vecchione: These are good fucking scrambles, man. Legit.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I love it. I love watching this series, too.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan: No, the dude's good, and he's done it with some national champions and a bunch of... He always does an interview beforehand. It's like, "What discipline are you from? How many years?" And then he's like, "From 1 to 10, 10 being you're going to take me down, what do you think the odds are that you take me down?" A lot of them say 10. A lot of them say 10, dude. And some of them are really big guys, you know what I mean? It just goes to show you it's like that guy's tough and he's a technician.

Mike Vecchione: Well, that's the whole thing about grappling is technique. It's everything. It's everything. It's in jiu-jitsu and judo and everything. It's just about technique. This is a great old judo clip of this guy. I mean I want to say he was in his 70s at the time and it's a black and white film of all his younger black belts rolling with him like doing standing... I don't know what they call it, standing judo practice. And he's like effortlessly avoiding these takedowns with balance and technique. It doesn't ever look like he's like exploding or really using a lot of force and just flips these guys to the ground. It's gorgeous to watch. It's just like, "My goodness," because you know you're looking at that guy like there's no... that guy's not a brute. He's not some big giant 200 pound muscle.

Joe Rogan: Right, right.

Mike Vecchione: Fucking super athlete that you just...

Joe Rogan: Yeah, he's just technique. Just nice and loose.

Mike Vecchione: And it's also... it's also very loose.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's like... find that, Jamie. It's like "old judo guy trains with younger students" and it's old, it's like black and white. I got the... Jake Paul, there's a lot of rumors that it says that 1991 was accepted on his side but I can't find like where he said it. Just like a lot of Instagram. Maybe he doesn't care about the money. Like Jake Paul probably doesn't care about the money. But he has plenty of money and if he won... oh my god, if he beat Anthony Joshua, good lord.

Mike Vecchione: Good lord.

Joe Rogan: I mean that's a big if. I mean Anthony Joshua, I do... Olympic gold medalist, former heavyweight champion of the world. What he did to Francis Ngannou, like good lord.

Mike Vecchione: Yes.

Joe Rogan: Do you want that smoke?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, I just think it's all about the promotion or whatever. I have no idea what the actual motivation is for that fight. It's not competitive at all.

Joe Rogan: Well, it's a dangerous fight. Because Joshua's gonna try to make an example out of him, for sure.

Mike Vecchione: And will.

Joe Rogan: And will. I mean Anthony Joshua is one of the biggest one-punch KO artists ever. I mean he's a one-punch night guy.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: You know, he's a great boxer, you know, very skillful.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: The Ngannou fight, we all thought it... like Ngannou with Fury. It's like, "Wow, this guy's in the mix now. He's in the mix. Let's see what happens." It's like, "Oh, okay."

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: That's what happened. The difference is Fury, I think, underestimated him.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I think Fury took him super lightly. He thought he was going to box his face off. And that power that Francis has is legendary. You know Francis is like a character from a comic book. You know, he lived in Cameroon and he worked in the sand mines when he was a boy. It's like the Conan origin story, right? Like digging sand as a boy. Just fuck.

Mike Vecchione: Well, hopefully he got paid. He got paid for it.

Joe Rogan: Here's the guy. Like check out this old dude. And I think this dude... look at this shit, bro. I think this dude might have been 90 at the time. I'm not kidding. I don't know what how old he is. Jamie, how old is he? He's old as shit. However old he is, he's at least 70. And he looks to me like he's even older than that. Look at how he just... look how he's avoiding this. That's so... like so relaxed.

Mike Vecchione: Right, right.

Joe Rogan: Just the size of the guy that's trying to throw him, who's a judo black belt, who's towering over him.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: Look at this. Bro, effortless.

Mike Vecchione: I love that.

Joe Rogan: Effortless takedowns.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: But it's... look at this guy, like this guy hitting that hip throw and not getting any movement off that old dude at all.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: And it's... look, the old dude's tiny, man.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, he's the tiny guy.

Joe Rogan: And everything he does is just super relaxed. He just knows where to be where you can't throw him. Look, look, steps in the right position. He's not exploding. He just anticipates your movements and meets you there. It's like judo when you walk. Look at that, man. I mean, he just threw a dude that's twice his size. He throws him like effortless. It's kind of amazing, man.

Mike Vecchione: It is.

Joe Rogan: And you would think it's bullshit unless you've trained with a guy like that. And then you go, "Wow, this is nuts, man." It's just perfect execution of that kind of technique.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: You know? It's unreal. And when you see it in wrestling, too, it's like you see guys who they chain moves together, and as the guy's trying to do that, they're countering with this, and the next thing you know, they're on your back, and you're down. Like, my God.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Such an underappreciated thing, wrestling. It really is. It's like the way we appreciate sports. And the flow of it, too.

Mike Vecchione: I mean, I wrestled, but I was never that. I was never like could get that fluid, right? You know what I mean? That fluid. It really... the guys who are top... oh yeah, it doesn't matter what program you come from. It like you could see it. You could see this guy Giorgio, he has it. It's like the flow. He'll shoot for something. And if that doesn't, he'll see where the leg is and he'll adjust on the fly. It's like the improv of it is amazing.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's a really underappreciated sport in terms of the way the public perceives sports. Everybody loves basketball. Everybody loves baseball. We love all these sports and no one appreciates wrestling. So it never had a professional outlet for whatever dumb reason other than MMA where it dominates. If you look at MMA, like if you look at all the disciplines of all the champions of all time, I think wrestling has a significant lead. I think there's more athletes that came from wrestling that became world champions than any other discipline.

Mike Vecchione: Well, before everybody started cross training, I think our training was the model. I might be wrong, but like our training, like wrestling practice was very hard. When I was in like even eighth grade, I was like, "This is unbelievably harder than anything I've ever experienced." So I think everybody cross trains now. Everybody kind of trains like that. But we were the first where it's like you get in. It's like you warm up and it's just military like.

Joe Rogan: Yep.

Mike Vecchione: It's execution of practice. You have to be in practice. You're just wiped out at the end of practice and then you have to cut weight after that. So it's mental strength.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Mike Vecchione: On top of that, that's a giant factor with wrestling. And one of the things about wrestlers is they revel in the fact that they suffer more than anybody else.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Mike Vecchione: They take it as a badge of courage.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Mike Vecchione: It's like a badge of honor that they'll display. Like Mike over there, he fucking suffers more than anybody. That's why he wins. Mike's a psycho. He's up at 3 o'clock in the morning eating raw eggs. You know?

Joe Rogan: Those are the guys that everyone was scared of. But very few people have said wrestling is fun. Like basketball is fun. No one who's wrestled seriously is like, "Oh, it's fun." It's like, it's not fun. The training is not fun. It's painful.

Mike Vecchione: It's only fun if the guy you're wrestling sucks and you train a lot. That moment will be fun. Winning is great, but the actual process of going to practice, "I gotta practice, I gotta cut weight," it's one of the best character developers for young men. The guys that I meet that are former wrestlers, competitive wrestlers, they're just a different kind of human being.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Mike Vecchione: It's like military guys, guys who have been through like Navy SEAL training.

Joe Rogan: Right, right. There's a different kind of human. Yeah, yeah. It's like you're dealing with a guy who can get through some shit that the average person is gonna fold up under. If you can learn how to do that and overcome that desire to quit when you're a kid, it's so valuable for the rest of your life.

Mike Vecchione: Absolutely. And it helps if you're not very good.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, right. You're also on the fence and you have to work for everything. You're coming across all kinds of adversity and then you have to figure it out. I can speak from experience, it's embarrassing to get pinned in a gym full of people. It's not like losing a basketball game. Even football, I love the camaraderie of football, it's not losing a football game. Having your shoulder blades pinned down in front of everybody in a gymnasium against your will?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, it's totally humiliating. And the reality about fighting is, if a guy can hold you down, he could beat you up. That's just how it works. This guy who's my same weight can pretty much do whatever he wants to me.

Joe Rogan: Oh yeah. So you take that home with you. When I wrestled, I remember the difference between regular guys that would wrestle in meets, you know, you'd mauled in Massachusetts would wrestle against Newton. The difference between that and getting in there with a state champion, it's like, "Oh, okay." And then you hear these guys go to camps every summer and it's 24-7, 365. They're always wrestling.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: There's no wrestling season. I'm like, "Oh, I never catch up." It's so funny because when you're in with a guy who's really good, you're mentally preparing yourself. It's like, "I just got to take it to him. I just got to go out there and be aggressive and take it to him." And then he's moving so fast that you're like, "I just can't keep up with this guy."

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. You have no chance.

[Ad Break]

Joe Rogan: People have no idea how helpless they are against a wrestler. There's a horrible street fight video that I watched the other day where these guys square off in the street. This guy takes a swing at this guy, and this guy shoots in with a double, hoists this dude up into the air and power slams him on his head on the concrete, and then punches him in the face a couple times until he's completely unconscious. Then his buddies jump on him and it's a fucking melee.

Mike Vecchione: Thank God for that.

Joe Rogan: The buddy's pulling him off. I think even that alone, you get a real powerful wrestler slams you on your head. You might not live. I don't know what happened to that guy, but I looked at that and I'm like, that guy could be dead. Guys die all the time from getting knocked out in street fights, hitting their head.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, that's how they die.

Joe Rogan: But that's another video, it's like what happens afterwards. Did you see that video from the Cleveland Jazz Festival? Cincinnati Jazz Festival, where this couple got jumped. This guy got beaten down and kicked, and then the girl was trying to separate it, and this guy punches the girl and KOs her. She falls and bangs her head on the ground and she's out cold with her eyes open. It's fucking horrifying. That's horrible to watch. People are screaming and cheering, "Kick his ass!" And unfortunately, it's a bunch of black people jumping two white people, so it's even more problematic.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: It's a horrible video, man. One of the worst aspects of human nature. This fucking desire to beat people up for no reason. I don't know what the reason was.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: Those things are hard to watch. You have to watch cute pet videos after that to get yourself back. A dog who befriends a cat. A man punched a woman right in the face and knocked her unconscious, and she bangs her head off the ground. Her eyes are wide open. It's fucking horrible, man. That kind of shit could affect you for the rest of your life. You might never be the same. Traumatic brain injuries like that, there are people that never come back from those.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: It's nuts. You just can't go out. Especially if it's a one-on-one fight. I don't like that whole shit-talking back and forth. "Fuck you, no fuck you." It's like, "Okay, are we gonna fight? Is this a fight now?" Let's just do it and get it over with. One-on-one fights are stupid. They get you killed. People don't play by rules. It's almost always unnecessary. Most people, their ego gets involved and they think they're in a fucking movie.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: The amount of people that get in street fights that have no training is the craziest. I've watched so many videos where guys don't know what they're doing at all.

Mike Vecchione: Right. The ego gets involved. They're in an argument and that transitions over into physical. But I think half the guys maybe don't think it's going to go into the physical. They're just good at shit-talking.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Mike Vecchione: You got to not do that. Sometimes it doesn't, and that's good. But when it does and you're not ready for it, it can be terrible. It's the worst thing in the world.

Joe Rogan: I was watching, there's a comic. I don't want to say his name, but he was a real angry dude. He always yelled at people. He got in this yelling altercation with this fucking guy. I pulled him aside. I go, "Hey, what the fuck are you doing, man? Do you even know how to fight?" He's like, "No." I'm like, "Have you ever been in a fight?" He's like, "No." I go, "Well, why are you calling this guy out to fight? This is crazy. You're going to get killed. You're going to do it with some guy one day and he's going to go, 'Oh, this is going to be fun. I finally get a chance to beat the shit out of somebody.' Some boxer or something is gonna just beat your fucking face in, man. Don't do that."

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. You want your jaw wired shut for six months? Especially with the health insurance companies these days. You never know what they're going to cover and what they're not going to cover.

Joe Rogan: How crazy is that? Did you see the Ben Askren thing?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: How crazy is that? It's nuts, man. The guy needs a double lung transplant. How can that not be covered? How can that happen in our society?

Mike Vecchione: Exactly. What's going on? It's profit over humanity. But how is it legally allowed? I don't know the ins and outs of it, but how are they legally allowed to say, "No, we're not covering that"? The idea of a pre-existing condition was nuts to me. He's got health insurance. He gets sick. What are you talking about? He got pneumonia. He's got holes in his lungs.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Mike Vecchione: He needs a double lung transplant, and you say, "No, you have to die."

Joe Rogan: Meanwhile, he gets the lung transplant. I think Jake Paul donated a bunch of money to him.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, I heard that. And some other folks did too.

Joe Rogan: Which is great because Jake Paul actually fought him in the past. They had a boxing match together which should have never taken place. Jake flatlined him.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, did he really?

Joe Rogan: Oh, it was terrible. That Askren is super tough, man.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, he's a very tough guy. He's not a boxer. He's never been known for having good hands. He was an amazing wrestler.

Joe Rogan: Yes. But Jake stepped up and paid a big chunk of his medical bills. That's awesome. So he's training now. He's posting videos and he weighs like 135 pounds right now. He's got this giant scar across his chest. His arms are like sticks. He's on the bike working out again. Ben's trying to put weight back on, just trying to rehab.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Trying to get his body back. I didn't watch the whole videos, but his face looks really crazy. He lost like 35 pounds. He was there for months just rotting away. It's just crazy. But he's a super, super tough wrestler.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, dude. The Bellator days, if you go back and watch him in the Bellator days, he would just dominate guys. They would have no clue as to what he was doing. He would take some of the best fighters in the world, and as soon as you grabbed a hold of them, they were fucked. That guy was known to have a motor. He would never get tired. He wrestled at Missouri, I think. My friend Greg Warren was an All-American. He's a great comic.

Joe Rogan: I know Greg.

Mike Vecchione: You know Greg?

Joe Rogan: I worked with Greg back in the day. He's unbelievable.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, funny dude. I wrestled and everything, but Greg was an All-American. He was a real legit wrestler. And he knows Askren.

Joe Rogan: Oh, okay.

Mike Vecchione: I met him at Nationals one year. I always wanted Askren to fight in the UFC long before he did. Unfortunately, I think he did sort of the prime of his career in Bellator and no one got a chance to see it.

Joe Rogan: Right. Because that was when he was at his best, when he was fighting guys like Douglas Lima, who was another guy who people forgot because he was fighting so much in Bellator. But he was one of the best welterweights ever. He was one of the only guys to knock out MVP.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: Douglas Lima's a fucking beast, man. And Ben Askren got a hold of him and just ragdolled him.

Mike Vecchione: No kidding.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, Koreshkov, another guy, killer, fucking nasty spinning back kick. He was nasty. Nasty striker. Ben got a hold of him. He was just throwing those guys around. They just gave him noogies. They couldn't do shit. There was nothing they could do to him. They couldn't get up.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, they couldn't get up.

Joe Rogan: And he, I can't emphasize this enough, a guy who never gets tired. I always had to pace out and think about how much energy this is going to take. You have to subconsciously go, "How much energy is this going to take? I got to conserve my energy." That's just not a thing for him.

Mike Vecchione: Well, that's the difference between a guy who's constantly wrestling and doing it all of his life, doing camps, starting when he was a young boy. And also his technique was so good. He's so unorthodox as well.

Joe Rogan: Right. So efficient. So efficient with the energy is a big thing.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, that's huge. If a guy doesn't have to be tense all the time.

Joe Rogan: It's like this video that I watched with Usyk. It was very eye-opening. He would do 15 rounds of three and a half minutes with a 20-second rest. So he's preparing himself for a 12-round fight. He would do 15, but he would do three and a half minute rounds, and he would do 20 seconds rest instead of one minute. And if he touched his back to the ropes at any point in time, he would add another round.

Mike Vecchione: That's nuts. That's great. Fucking hell. I love that.

Joe Rogan: I saw how Lomachenko trained. Same trainer.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, the same coach.

Joe Rogan: Lomachenko trains Usyk. Exactly. And it's bananas. The coordination. He quit boxing as a young kid to learn Russian dance.

Mike Vecchione: Well, that's why his footwork is so crazy.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, his footwork is insane. I would really like to have seen him fight Shakur. These guys Tank and Shakur are great, but they were calling him out. It was after he fought Haney and he was like, "I'm kind of done." He fought Kambosos and then that was it. I felt like he got robbed in the Haney fight.

Mike Vecchione: I thought so too. I thought he won that fight.

Joe Rogan: It was a bummer to me because it was a great comeback story. The guy fights for Ukraine in the war, comes back, gets back into shape, fights again. And Haney's great, but he was much bigger than Loma. Loma looked very small. He looked like he was fighting at 135, but these guys are cutting down from God knows where. Haney's fighting at 147 now. You could just see their builds. They look different.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, it's a different size.

Joe Rogan: But Shakur, I'm saying Shakur looks about the same size as Loma. Also super skillful. I was happy with his last fight. Best Philly shell since Floyd Mayweather. His defense was incredible. He stayed in the pocket. The guy from Golden Boy, I can't remember his name, was a good fighter and was really pressuring him. And Shakur stayed in the pocket.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: He also said he's not going to fight that way anymore because people were calling him a runner before. He's not a runner. But he said after that fight, "I'm not going to fight that way anymore. I took too many shots." He wanted to put on a show and show everybody he's not just a runner, he could stand in the pocket. Then he's like, "Why am I doing this? I'll box the shit out of these motherfuckers."

Mike Vecchione: I mean, he's a silver medalist. He's elite. As far as skill, what do you think of Crawford-Canelo?

Joe Rogan: I love it.

Mike Vecchione: Do you see it? Crawford wants to do it. I don't love it. I think it's Crawford's last fight, so I'm happy he's gonna cash out and I'm rooting for him. But I would like to see him stay at 154 and fight Virgil Ortiz.

Joe Rogan: I'd like to see that too, but the big money is Canelo. I know. Why not do it? What a ballsy move. You go from 147 to 154 and you go up, fuck 160, go right up to 168. That's crazy. Because he's really not even at 154. He took the fight at 154. He took Madrimov because it was a big fight. Wins another world title.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: And he won that fight. People are trying to describe it. First of all, Terrence fought great. Madrimov is good, dude. And he fought him differently than he fought every other guy because he's dangerous.

Mike Vecchione: He did fight him differently. He's dangerous. Madrimov is a great athlete. Anybody who does a backflip in the ring, that guy is a great athlete. All these Eastern bloc fighters always have like 70-0, and it looks like nothing. But he has 400 amateur fights.

Joe Rogan: Exactly. Like Artur Beterbiev is a perfect example. He had like 300 amateur fights. Lomachenko. They have hundreds of amateur fights. By the time they get to the professional ranks, this isn't a regular 1-0 guy. These are guys that can do stuff you can't even imagine being able to do. They're unreal.

Mike Vecchione: So who do you have in the fight?

Joe Rogan: It's gonna be a great fight. You're dealing with two all-time greats. Crawford's one of the best switch hitters I think since Marvin Hagler, and one of the most skillful boxers alive. Then you have Canelo, who probably isn't the same guy as he was a few years ago, but still one of the greatest of all time. Still has brutal knockout power. If you go back to some of his more impressive fights from a few years ago, like the Amir Khan KO, the Billy Joe Saunders KO, he's probably not that guy anymore. But he's still young enough that he's still pretty close to his prime and one of the best of all time. I'd like to see him fight David Benavidez.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah, of course.

Joe Rogan: I think the WBC should have forced that fight. I know he's the draw of boxing and he's the face of boxing, but it says a lot that he doesn't want that fight. You can't let the inmates run the asylum, for lack of a better phrase. You have to force the fight. Patrick Mahomes comes into a football season, he doesn't automatically go to the playoffs. He's got to play every game. If he loses enough games, he has to go on the road in the playoffs. The WBC should have forced Canelo to fight David Benavidez. It's not fair that David Benavidez has to go up to 175 now and has to wait to see the winner of the Beterbiev-Bivol fight.

Mike Vecchione: Well, that was the fight. For Mexican bragging rights too. What a great fight. In no way do I think Canelo was afraid of him. He's just trying to maneuver his career with the least risk and the most money.

Joe Rogan: And the most money. I think he said he wanted to fight him, but he wanted like $200 million or something crazy. But it's your mandatory defense at 168. It's your mandatory. How do you choose? I know you're the face of boxing, but how do you choose? The WBC got to force that, man.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, but maybe the Saudis will cough up that money eventually. Maybe he beats Crawford and then they say, "Listen, Turki Alalshikh decides." What does it say? They offered Canelo $70 million to fight me. That's before pay-per-view. They offered me a flat fee of $5 million. I said yes. Then we never heard back.

Joe Rogan: Whoa. That's crazy.

Mike Vecchione: Maybe for him, $70 million is not the number he wanted. Maybe he thinks the Saudis will give him $200. They might. Look, if he beats Crawford, that might be the move. But it speaks to how boxing is organized.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, that's true. It's goofy. It wants to be respected as a sport, but it's not organized that way. There's so many sanctioning bodies.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, I say clean them out.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Clean out those sanctioning bodies. It's hard to do, though, because if someone's offering someone a world title fight, they can make so much more money as a world champion. You win the WBO, let's say Canelo vacates some titles and the guy picks it up, he's still a WBO champion or a WBC champion or WBA or IBF or IBO. That's the problem. There's so many world champions. In MMA, you can be a Bellator world champion, but everybody knows you're not really the world champion unless you're the UFC world champion in terms of public perception. There are guys that were Bellator champions that could have won in the UFC at that same weight class. And there are guys that did, like Eddie Alvarez came over from Bellator. He was a world champion and he won the world title in the UFC. But the reality is most people think of a world champion as a UFC champion. In boxing, the WBA champion is thought exactly the same way as the WBC champion. It depends on who it is. If it was Mike Tyson in the early days and he had the WBC belt and you had a WBA belt, you weren't the champion. Mike Tyson was the champion. Everybody knew it. But other than those examples where there's one guy that's just the ultimate in that weight class, a world championship is worth a lot of money. So it's hard for guys to say no and say, "Look, I'm only going to fight for the Ring Magazine belt." That's what the Saudis own. They're going to make everybody fight everybody. It's going to be the most amount of money. I think that's what they're kind of angling towards.

Mike Vecchione: Structuring it differently?

Joe Rogan: Yeah. In my opinion, that's what needs to happen. It needs to be structured differently. The fights need to be forced. You have to let go of the draw a little bit. "Well, this fight is not going to draw or not," it doesn't matter if it draws or not. We need this fight to happen so that we can get the best champion.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: So we can get the real champion. It doesn't matter if it's not technically a good matchup. It has to be forced. It means something to be the number one contender. But if you do that, you never get fights like Tyson Fury versus Francis Ngannou. You only get those fun fights if someone's like, "Okay, let's just try this." But I think that's what they're like prop fights. I don't know if I call them that, but like what Floyd is doing now. He's retired and he's like, "I'm putting on these fights." If he can get paid for them, good for him. But that's outside of what we consider real competition.

Mike Vecchione: Well, this is different because Floyd's 50.

Joe Rogan: Right. This is a different thing.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: But when you're talking about what Jake Paul is doing too. He's like, "I challenge this guy." That's fine. That's fun. But is that the highest level? If he fought Beterbiev, the Anthony Joshua thing is crazy to me too. But if he fought Beterbiev, that would be the fight. That would be fun to watch. Because you can't run from Beterbiev.

Mike Vecchione: No. He's terrifying.

Joe Rogan: No, he's terrifying. He's 40, too. Technically sound, but he's 40. These guys are all older because of their amateur careers.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, yeah. Usyk's 38, which is also crazy. He's in his prime at 38.

Joe Rogan: I think a big part of that speaks to his discipline. He stays in such insane shape.

Mike Vecchione: Who's that, Usyk?

Joe Rogan: Usyk. Yeah, he doesn't let himself go. And Beterbiev as well. There's some amazing videos of Beterbiev. Very similar kind of training methods. It's Russians and Ukrainians. Beterbiev is Chechnyan. These guys, Chechnyan Muslim, doesn't drink, disciplined lifestyle. And then this is funny, because they ask these guys about who's your favorite boxer. He's like, "I really don't watch it. This is my job."

Mike Vecchione: Crazy.

Joe Rogan: He goes, "This is my job. I come, I do my job, I go home to my family."

Mike Vecchione: Crazy. You don't watch boxing? You're one of the best ever and you don't watch boxing?

Joe Rogan: Who's the Denver Nuggets guy? Jokic. He's another guy who says that. After they won the NBA championship, he's like, "Nah, it's fun. We celebrate. And I go home with my family now. I don't think about basketball anymore." He doesn't even get emotional when he wins. But his horse won and he broke down crying.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, did you see it?

Joe Rogan: There it is. Emotionally celebrates after his horse wins a race. That's so great. His horse won a race and he was fucking crying. He was like, "This is the greatest thing of all time." Look at him. He's so happy. When they had him in the stand, there's a video of him at the end of it. When his horse did win, he was crying and so happy. Meanwhile, he wins the NBA championship, something he's been working for his whole life, and he's like, "I don't know."

Mike Vecchione: Maybe that's the secret to success. He stays zen about it.

Joe Rogan: Well, they look at it like it's a job. They prepare mentally. These guys are very mentally tough. They prepare for it like a job, and then they go and do the job. They're like, "This isn't my life." It dials back some of the ego on it, which I like. It's like, "I'm doing this, and then when I retire, I'll just be a guy."

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. No one thinks about that in America. Everybody's like, "Now I'm gonna go and parlay this into something else. Maybe I can have a vitamin water, I can have a cologne." They're trying to parlay it into something else to make more money.

Joe Rogan: But I don't know, man. These guys have the eye of the tiger.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah.

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Mike Vecchione: We played a few times on this podcast, Serbian basketball. When they played basketball in Serbia and how the crowd is. And you're like, oh my God. This is like you're stepping into a fucking gang war.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. The crowds are so electric. They're so into it.

Mike Vecchione: I love that. Like aggressively into it.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. You're like, dude, these people from that part of the world are hard people. And when they're coming over here, they're dominating in MMA. They're dominating in boxing. That's a tough part of the world that's been wracked by war for hundreds of years. What is this, Jamie? This is Serbia? Bro, they're starting fires. What are they doing? They're outside. Oh, is it outside basketball games? That would have been funny if they were inside doing fireworks. Bro, they have outside basketball games? That's pretty wild, too. Wow. Look at this fucking crowd, dude. It's just nuts how hyped up they get.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, bro. It's a different world. It's so funny. People go, "The Eagles fans are really tough." It's like, I don't know. How about these guys?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Have you ever seen that game that they play? I think it's called Calcio Storico.

Joe Rogan: Calcio Storico. It's like a combination of rugby and MMA. And they do it in Italy, and they do it at a couple other places. They do it in Croatia, too.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, I think I did see that.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's like a rugby, right? But it's fighting. So they get together as teams, and they've got a ball. I don't know what the fucking deal is with the ball, but they beat the fucking piss out of each other. And these guys just look rough. Animals, like animals. Look at that guy, he's rubbing his hands together. "I can't wait to fucking brain somebody." And so these guys stand outside each other and they're having gang fights. Like this is the beginning and there's a ball involved. I don't understand the need for this ball. But look, while that ball is moving around, these guys in the middle are just beating the shit out of each other. They're wrestling. They're fucking shooting takedowns. Body slamming each other, elbows to the face on the ground. It's nuts. It's the craziest fucking game. Like this is back when people needed something to do in between war. They needed something to stay sharp, so they developed a game to make their fucking war ability hone tight while they ramp up their team. The refs are dressed like jesters.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Joe Rogan: It's probably how cool people dressed back when they invented this. But it's interesting. I wonder how they're scoring. If they're scoring for the individual fights that they're having, what are you saying, Jamie? I want to tell someone score. What is the point?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, there's no point.

Joe Rogan: There's no point. Who's got the ball? What's happening? These guys are just beating each other. This guy's grabbing ahold of the fence there. You're allowed to hold the fence. There's almost no rules. Did someone score? Hear about? Did they win the fight? Where's the goal? I have no idea. I don't think they care about the goal. I think they want to punch you in the face. I mean, it's a crazy game. Well, it's 3-2. This guy gets taken down out of nowhere. He's nowhere near the ball. This guy's mounting him, beating his ass, and the guy runs across with the ball. Look at their stupid shorts. They're wearing tights and shit. The clothes they wear are ridiculous. Was that guy got something stuck to his back, like a needle? Look at his back.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan: He's got like a piercing. It looks like a fucking pin. There's no one stopping the fight either, so this must be part of it.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, he's got like a safety pin through his back.

Joe Rogan: Maybe he's the captain of the team.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, you got to pull that off to win.

Joe Rogan: This is nuts. Oh, maybe that is something. I mean, it seems like you just kind of grab that.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: It's a crazy-ass sport, man. And look, these guys are mounted on top of each other while the game's going on. Guys in side control. It's chaos. Full contact soccer.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Look, this guy's running, and the other guy just mounts him. Starts beating his ass. It's kind of entertaining.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, fucking for sure entertaining. It's violent. Violence is in it.

Joe Rogan: But look, all these guys in the middle, they're not even stopping this guy from running because they're too busy mounting people. And he gets through. He'll score. All right, that guy scored. Oh, look at it. He did it casual. Nutty ass game. But that's the point. It's like, those people from that part of the world, they've been involved in some wild shit for a long time.

Mike Vecchione: Long time.

Joe Rogan: That's Europe. Is it Europe? That is in Florence, I believe. That's Italy. But like I said, they do that in Croatia as well, that same sport. There's just hard people out there in the world while we're all arguing over pronouns in our Twitter bio. We're arguing with each other on Twitter.

Mike Vecchione: That's really funny. It's like arguing with each other on Twitter, and those guys are doing that. That's what Twitter would look like if it was physical.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, sort of. Would be a lot of guys crying.

Mike Vecchione: Are you on the Twitter? No, I used to. I'm off of it. But I used to write jokes on that. And now it's like, that doesn't benefit you to write jokes on it anymore. Now it's confrontation is what the algorithm loves. So unless you're trying to take somebody down or have an argument, that spurs the algorithm. So I don't want to do any of that.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's nonsense.

Mike Vecchione: I'm focused on front facing Instagram videos now.

Joe Rogan: Front facing?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, you do, you talk into your phone. That's what people love now.

Joe Rogan: Is that what you're doing?

Mike Vecchione: I have to, I have to do it to promote my shows.

Joe Rogan: There you go. "Well, the Osborne death is crazy, right, guys? Prince of Darkness?"

Mike Vecchione: Oh, it's one of those things?

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's like, "Yeah, it's all about whatever. Comment on stuff?"

Mike Vecchione: Comment. It's kind of like what Twitter was, but I don't know. It's always changing, and you hear that this is what is getting views, and yeah, you're trying to sell tickets. I get it.

Joe Rogan: I get it, but I mean, I'm glad I don't have to do it.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Well, I put stand-up clips. Stand-up clips is really my bread and butter.

Joe Rogan: Oh, that's the big thing.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. A great stand-up clip will push you right into headliner. And if you're a beginning comic, like even before you're ready, there's guys that, you know, they start out. They've been doing comedy for three years. They've got a good ten minutes. And they put that ten minutes online, and then boom, they take off. Now you have to write a whole hour outside of that ten minutes. And you have to headline. Like it's just a rush job to kind of get it through. You have to figure out how to fill that space. Everybody has different challenges. So the guys who do that, then they're filling clubs, and now they got to figure out how to get people their money's worth in those clubs. You have to construct a real hour. You have to construct an hour. Or like, say you got famous off crowd work or something like that, mostly what you're doing then is crowd work. That's different. You can do that pretty easy. Not easy, but you can fill time. Whereas like, the hardest for me, I think, not for me but I don't do it, but the hardest in my opinion is non-sequitur guys. You know guys like Stephen Wright.

Joe Rogan: Right, right, right. Like that kind of thing. Like one absurd non-sequitur into another. There's no through line. It's all just things that are totally unrelated. "Here's another thing I noticed." It's so hard to write an hour that way.

Mike Vecchione: Oh my god.

Joe Rogan: I think Stephen Wright and the other one was Mitch Hedberg. It's a very similar style. Non sequiturs. Fantastic too. Amazing. Very hard and time consuming to put an hour together that way.

Mike Vecchione: Oh my god. You have to write. If you're doing that, but those clips, I mean those clips do well. You know, if you put work into the clip, the trick of it is developing the material fast enough in order to put it out.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like you're not coming up with that every day. And I don't know if the general public realizes that. You're almost better off going online, loosely talking about a subject and putting that up, rather than really sitting in the pocket and developing it the way that we do. Right? Because a lot of times, the guys are really good at ranting. Like Burr is really good at it, and Tim Dillon's the best at it.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, where they just take a subject and rant.

Joe Rogan: That's a great premise factory because you're going on these rants. With Dillon, he'll do a rant for like an hour. Right? A couple of minutes in there you could probably develop into material. Right? And then you're doing that all the time. But the thing is, you have to stop. That's the thing with journaling. People like, "You should journal." And I tried it. I tried a different technique: get up and just journal. Don't worry about the jokes, just journal every day. So you're journaling every day and it's like, now you have a lot of premises, but none of it's developed. So you can't journal every day. Then when you have like a week of journaling, it's like now you have to go back through the journal and you have to see what's there, you have to pull it out and then develop these ideas.

Mike Vecchione: When you say journaling, so you sit down and write, you write about your life?

Joe Rogan: Yeah, you write about your life. Or if you write about a topic that you're interested in, that's gnawing at you. There's so many funny or potentially funny things that happen to you every day that if you would just journal it, you bring it to light. But if you don't journal it, these things just slip away. They slip away. But if you journal, it's like, "Oh, that was funny, that was funny." Just getting on a plane now is hilarious. There's so many different things and you interact with so many different people. Just these small interactions with people. It could go south. It could go south. It could be OK. And I got off the plane coming here. It just gets me every time. It happens almost every time I travel. I think I'm drawing it to me. It's like there's a natural progression of how the plane deboards. It's like people from the seats, they just get off the plane according to where your seat is. You're getting off first if you're closer to the entrance of the plane. That's the way it's designed to go. There's always somebody who runs, gets their bag and runs to the front of the plane. And you're like, "What are you doing, dude? We all want to get off." Unless you have a connecting flight, we all want to get off. What are you doing?

Mike Vecchione: I know. People get mad at those people. There was a video recently where a lady did that and people were yelling at her.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it turns into a great clip. Somebody videos it and it's an altercation and it turns into a viral clip. How about that lady that said that someone on the plane wasn't real? Remember that? She said someone was shape-shifting?

Mike Vecchione: Yes.

Joe Rogan: I bet she's a lot of fun. I bet that lady's a lot of fun. I bet she's great. She's really fun at parties. He was like, "There's an imaginary person." And then they're like, "There was no imaginary person." I was like, "I was having a bad day." Not just imaginary person, but yell it out in the middle of a plane that's in the sky. Was it already in the sky? Or did she get kicked off the plane when it was on the ground?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, I think that. I think it was in the sky.

Joe Rogan: So it was before? Was it in the sky? I think it was. Imagine you're on the plane with a lady that says that someone's not real. And you go, "Okay, one of two things is going on here. Either she's nuts or I'm in a horror movie." Right? Because if she's right, you know, and you look back, you're like, "Hey, what's going on with that guy's skin?" He's like, it starts bursting and separating. It's like John Carpenter's *The Thing*. Like, fuck! Turns out she was right. He wasn't real. He was morphing into something else.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, the odds of that are very small.

Joe Rogan: But in movies, it's very high. So it's hard. You've got to take it with a grain of salt. She might be right. Imagine if she was right.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, God.

Joe Rogan: And you have to find out. And there's no communication on a plane. The plane just goes in the middle of the ocean. There's a person who turns into an insect on board. He starts attacking everybody. Or a chestburster like from that movie *Alien*. Fuck. Why did it have to be me? Anything could happen. And then nobody believes it.

Mike Vecchione: No one believes it.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, and then it becomes a conspiracy theory that people like, autistic people, obsess about on the internet. They know what happened. But that's a good, they never follow up with what actually happened to her. What's her life like now? She's on a podcast with Conor McGregor.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, she's popping up in his place. She was on Barstool doing stuff there for a while.

Joe Rogan: Oh, but she's doing something with Conor McGregor. That's why I brought her up.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, he posted her today that she's going to be at his...

Joe Rogan: Maybe she could do something with the Hawk Tuah girl. You know what I mean? Maybe they could, because her career has kind of... Maybe they could both go to Gaza and solve all the food problems. They could figure it out.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: We'll put our best people on it. She's going to the inn that he owns?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, I think it's just like an appearance or something like that. She does appearances?

Joe Rogan: That's it. She's been on the internet now for, that was two years ago. That's very funny. She complained about somebody disappearing and now she's doing appearances. She probably sells better than Joe List.

Mike Vecchione: It's a travesty.

Joe Rogan: There she is. She's described as a marketing executive too, so I don't know that that was fake, but she definitely ran with it. Crazy plane lady after she had a meltdown on a flight in 2023. What did she say she saw? I was reading through it because they did do a follow up here where there's police. Is that her down there?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: Oh, she's hot.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Why does she look completely different? That always helps, Joe. That always helps if she's hot. Look at that initial photo of her. Start at the top. How does that become? Scroll down. How does it become that? What happened? That looks like a different person.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Plain outfit. Scroll down, though. Makeover. Lost some weight. Tightened everything up.

Joe Rogan: Right. She's making the best out of it. Okay, so what is she saying? Oh, not, I mean, different. She's in the spotlight. She's remained in the spotlight since, appearing on podcasts, YouTube shows, and giving tours of her sleek Texas home. Oh, she's Texas crazy. Even better. Even better. That's armed crazy. Here was when it actually happened, and they followed her out, and I was trying to read through here. So what was she saying? "I don't care if I ever fly with y'all again. I just want to know what happens to this flight here. I'm not crazy. Y'all's crazy. Yeah. Do not let that flight leave. This flight's not going to make it to Orlando. It's not going to." Looking out the windows as they escort her, Gomez says there's a lot of people on that flight. So she really believes that there's something on that flight. Maybe she took an edible. Maybe someone slipped her a Mickey. Like, what did she say she saw? I know that she was smart enough for a while to milk it and tell you, like, "I'll tell you on this next podcast what was really real." "That motherfucker's not real," she said. And she's 38, so it's like a MILF kind of crazy. But imagine if you're the guy she's saying that you're not real and you're just right there.

Mike Vecchione: Right, just chilling.

Joe Rogan: Like, "You're not real." It's like... Chilling with a hoodie on, trying to watch a YouTube video on your phone. This fucking crazy bitch is screaming at you. That's a great story. That's what I'm talking about, journaling. What if you sit next to her on a plane? She flips out, tells you you're not real. What a gift that would be if you could tell the audience that you were a guy that was on the flight with that "motherfucker's not real" lady. Here's the quote she said, which is, she thought the plane was going to blow up.

Mike Vecchione: Oh.

Joe Rogan: Oh. Why? "I'm getting the fuck off, and there's a reason why I'm getting the fuck off. That motherfucker back there is not real. You can sit on this plane, and you can fucking die with them or not. I'm not going to." Like, what? Who's not real? Who's the guy? I mean, motherfucker could have been anything. Look at her out there talking to the cops. Look at her. She's got her phone. The cops explained. She's pointing her phone at the cops. I don't think she got arrested. I think she calmly explained to the cops that someone wasn't real.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, that's so funny.

Joe Rogan: Who's the guy, though? I want to know who the guy is. That guy's not real. That's the guy we should be interviewing. She's just trying to... She appears more lucid at this point, but remains combative with officers. One says to her, "I can tell you're having a bad day. We're not trying to make it any worse." To which she responds, "My dad's a cop. Fuck you, dude." That's got nothing to do with anything. "My dad's a cop." I love that. "She got into the evidence room, Jack. Something happened there."

Mike Vecchione: That's very funny.

Joe Rogan: I want to know who the guy is.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: She could have been saying "motherfucker" not as a person. Could have been, I don't know. The plane. "The back of the plane's not real." Something down there's not real. She calls it. I like how she blurts, "I might never fly again." Bitch. It's like threatening us. That might not be your choice. Fucking psycho. I'm gonna take the bus. Who's gonna put you on a plane when you said someone's not real? There you go. The incident. Something about her iPod losing and she accused someone of stealing them.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, them? Don't know. Somebody, oh that could be.

Joe Rogan: Actually makes some sense where it's like that someone stole her iPod. She's got, "The plane was gonna crash 'cause someone stole my iPod." But it doesn't make any sense. Well, it rolls deep. She's saying the plane is gonna go down. They're not gonna live. Everyone's gonna die. 'Cause someone stole her iPod? No, that doesn't make any sense. She's kooky. She's fun.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, that's very fun.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. She probably gets on tables at bars. You know what I mean?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: She's probably one of them. "This is my song." Well, she's successful now.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, she's the girl at the comedy club. "It's my birthday."

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Oh, yeah. She'd be the best in the front row. You'd be so happy.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, my God.

Joe Rogan: She's going to come to your shows now. No, but that's, it's really something, it's reflective of our society is that she parlayed that into some level of fame. I'm sure she has a podcast. I'm sure she has all kinds of like, that's her character now. Conor McGregor was Instagramming about her today. So there you go.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. The Hawk Tuah girl. I mean, she made it all the way to a pump and dump Hawk Tuah coin. You ever hear Metzger talk about it? He's got the best bit about it. About the Hawk Tuah coin. I saw him last night, though. He's such a lunatic. I love that dude. He's so funny. He's just so nuts. But he had this, like, who would have thought? Who would have thought that would be a ripoff? The Hawk Tuah coin? He was connecting Taylor Swift to Epstein. I saw him last night. He's like, "Taylor Swift, you don't think that there's something in the lights at those concerts that make you have amnesia?" I'm like, "Kurt, I don't know. Kurt, I've known you for 20 years." "No, no, no, serious." And then Tommy Pope, "Wait a minute, the lights give you amnesia?"

Joe Rogan: Yeah, he brought it up. I said, "No, Kurt, I never." I said, "Kurt, I never heard of that." And he goes, "No, no, it's real." And then he brought it up on his phone, and sure enough, it was the lights. They pay hundreds of dollars for these tickets, and then the lights at the Taylor Swift concert make you forget that you were at a concert. They make you have amnesia. How is that possible? I don't know. What's even crazier to me is how he connected it to Epstein, but he did it. Transient global amnesia. Taylor Swift fans report post-concert forgetfulness. Maybe the plane girl wasn't wrong.

Mike Vecchione: Wasn't wrong.

Joe Rogan: But here's my take on this. She is in this rare air right now like the Beatles, like Elvis in his prime, where it's an emotional experience being in her presence. If you're a Taylor Swiftie, those fans are diehards. She sells out stadiums, multiple shows in stadiums, right? I think it's probably so emotional for them when they're standing in front of her and she's singing that afterwards they're so spent and racked, they're probably like, "What happened?" It's probably such a crazy experience. The Beatles had that effect and Elvis. Women would be like crying and shaking. They'd faint. Michael Jackson in his prime, people would faint if they saw him live. They'd faint. That's interesting.

[Ad Break]

Joe Rogan: That's way more likely than the CIA. But what about the lights causing seizures? I guarantee you I go to that concert and I come out with a perfect memory. Okay? Not that I don't like Taylor Swift. I like some of her songs. I really do. One of her songs is "No Body, No Crime." It's a great song. It's on our Spotify playlist. But it wouldn't cause you to have amnesia. I'd be fine. I'd be fine. I'd say, "What a great show. She's really talented." I wouldn't go, "What happened? What happened?" But I tell you what, I did see the Rolling Stones when they were at CODA and I felt like I was on a drug. Like I didn't feel like it was real. Like when they went out onto that stage, Mick Jagger's on that stage, "Button your lip, baby." Like you're like, "I can't believe he's real." Like I was standing there with my friend Bobby who owns the racetrack and I was going, "I don't feel like I'm really here. This feels like a drug. This feels crazy. Like I'm watching Mick Jagger and Keith Richards."

Mike Vecchione: Right, right.

Joe Rogan: And they're live. They're right there. And there's like 100,000 people. It's a huge crowd.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I was like, "This is nuts, man. This feels fake." So I'm probably not, I'm a giant Rolling Stones fan, but I'm probably not as big a Rolling Stones fan as these Swifties are.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: Like, they're her god. Or she's their god, rather. Like, you go to see that. But for that to be enough of a thing to warrant an article on the internet? I mean, that's pretty crazy. Somebody at Yale started a study on it. I'm trying to see if they followed up on it. I want to know what they do. Are they a gender studies professor? What kind of scholarship have you got to get that position? Do you happen to have a certain heritage that's profitable? So, what are you doing? But yeah, I didn't think it was a thing either. And Kurt is like, Kurt's a great comic, man. He's so funny and he's great. But it's like five minutes into the conversation I'm like, "I don't even, Kurt, I don't know what you're saying. I don't know where, I don't know what this is." Is he a CIA plant? Everybody is like, "You've been put there by the Rockefellers." I'm so glad he and I are friends and we've been friends for so long that he doesn't think I'm some sort of a plant. That would be a real problem. That would be something. If Kurt leans in on you, he really thinks. "Oh, you don't think? Yeah. Oh, you don't think? Oh, you don't think? You don't know? You don't know about the thing that happened in '73? You don't know about the Kissinger thing? The Kissinger thing? You don't know?" "Kurt, I don't. I don't know any of this, Kurt." I tell him sometimes before I go on stage, I'm like, "I have to be on stage in five minutes. I can't do this. Right now, I can't do this. I'll be in my head with what you said on stage. What the fuck is going on? Is he right?" I'll be Googling shit. "Is this true? Hey, Kurt, I love you, but not right now. I can't do it." I tell him all the time. He'll corner you, dude. He'll corner you, and he looms over you. Big goon. 6'5". Goon. Kurt's 6'5". And then he went on stage and destroyed last night. Destroyed in the funniest way. It's completely original. It's completely him. He's going to do a special and film it at the club. I'm very excited. Very excited about that. He's the man. We got a great crew down here. It's really fun. I was there last night, man. It was awesome.

Mike Vecchione: How many days are you in town for?

Joe Rogan: I'm out now. You're out now?

Mike Vecchione: Tonight. Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Nice.

Mike Vecchione: But I'm gonna come back and try to do some more podcasts.

Joe Rogan: Cool.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Cool. Yeah. There's a lot here now. A lot of people are here now. Duncan Trussell's here now.

Mike Vecchione: But I've headlined the club several times and I love it every time, man. It's a fun place. I text you every time I'm here. I'm like, "It's the best, man. It's awesome."

Joe Rogan: I'm very happy. That makes me very happy.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. That's what we wanted to do. And I feel super lucky that we pulled it off. It's hard to do. You know, a lot of things have to line up perfectly to be able to get a club like that.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Mike Vecchione: It's a lot of the staff. That's a huge part of it. You could tell it was designed by a comic.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. The club, you know?

Joe Rogan: Mm-hmm. Yeah, designed by me, but also with a lot of input from everybody else. Like, Hinchcliffe had a lot of input. Louis C.K. had a lot of input. Brian Simpson had a lot of input. All the guys that are regulars at the club, Ron White, everybody had their say. I basically said, "I don't have an absolute fixed position on anything. You can tell me what you think."

Mike Vecchione: Right, right, right.

Joe Rogan: And so a lot of the stuff, like the lights inside the green room when the light goes on, that fantastic for each room so you know who's got the light. The time that someone's on stage, both from the stage and from the green room. All that, I think the lights were Tony's idea. I think the time might have been Simpson's idea. So it's all like everybody had their own say in what we do. Louie told me to lower the ceiling in the little room and in the big room. I did that. He told me to make the stage smaller in the little room. I did that. I did whatever anybody said. Louie's like, "You need more sound deadening. You should put carpet down. Forget about the bounce that you get from the loudness of the echo does make it louder, but it also makes it a little hard to hear what you're saying." Like, you're right. And so we did everything everybody wanted. Every suggestion.

Mike Vecchione: Acoustics in the low ceilings are key, man. It's everything.

Joe Rogan: Low ceilings, everything. The crispness of what you're saying, especially if you're a softer spoken guy and you're following somebody who's a yeller.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: You adjust the sound, but it's still, it's like the crispness matters. It's got to be clear. And it took us a while to dial everything in, the right volume and the lighting. The light was like sometimes the audience would be lit up a little bit too much. Like, no, you got to darken that. You got to do that. It took a little while, but once we dialed it in, man, it's been pretty smooth. We're going on our third year in March.

Mike Vecchione: That's awesome.

Joe Rogan: It's crazy, it's like seamless, like it just happened. And the big room is great, it's great to headline that. But I just popped in at the small room last night and that's really great. It's one of the best rooms in the world to work out. You really have the freedom to sit there and play with and work out the material. That's what you need. You need an experimental place where you can fail a little bit. Where you can fuck around.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And that little room is like the chamber of truth. If you've got some bullshit in your act and there's only a hundred people in the room, it seems obvious. You're like, "Ew."

Mike Vecchione: But that's like the old Boston Comedy Club in New York.

Joe Rogan: Oh yeah. Remember that place?

Mike Vecchione: Exactly like that.

Joe Rogan: So it's like the last days of the Boston. It looks like a log cabin in the back. And then during the winter time when I first got there, 2004, it's like there'd be four people, five people. Comics would bar people in and you had to...

Mike Vecchione: Oh yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: And the Belly Room at the Store, have you ever done that?

Mike Vecchione: Yes, the Belly Room was amazing. So good for that.

Joe Rogan: Because the Belly Room is really only supposed to have like 70 people in it, and a lot of times way over that, especially for Roast Battle. They do Roast Battle sometimes and I'd be in the kitchen, I'd be like, "Has anybody ever checked to make sure this fucking ceiling can support all those folks?" Because people would jump around and you would hear it. You'd hear it like, oh, it would suck if this caved in because that fucking building's so old.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I mean, our building's even older at the Mothership, but at least it's been rebuilt. But that building at the Store, that was Ciro's nightclub in the 1950s.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: When was Ciro's? And then it was the Comedy Store from the 70s. So nobody's checked to see if those beams are any good. Got fucking termites and shit eating through it. At one point in time, the back wall behind it was in danger because the hill was collapsing. So they had to reinforce it with steel rebar and giant beams and shit. It's funny because if something did happen, everybody would think it was a prank. They'd go, "Oh, this has got to be some kind of a prank." It's like, no, this ceiling actually...

Mike Vecchione: So in 1940, Ciro's became a popular night spot for celebrities. 1940. Nightclub closed in 1960, was reopened as a rock club in 65. After a few name changes, it became the Comedy Store in 72.

Joe Rogan: Wow.

Mike Vecchione: Club Seville? Was that what it was before Club Seville? So it was Club Seville in 1935. It opened New Year's Eve in 1935. It featured a crystal dance floor with subsurface fish. So there were fish underneath the dance floor, fountains, and colored lights in its crystal marine room. The building was remodeled, and in January 1940, Ciro's was opened.

Joe Rogan: Wow. Crazy.

Mike Vecchione: That's not... a lot of people were whacked in that place. And no renovations have been done since.

Joe Rogan: Oh, Bugsy Siegel. It was Bugsy Siegel's joint. That was the thing. People got whacked in that place. That's why a lot of people believe that it's haunted.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, that's really fun.

Joe Rogan: It's got a weird energy to it, man.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: That place has the weirdest fucking energy. The history of it.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, the weirdest. The weirdest energy.

Joe Rogan: It's...

Mike Vecchione: That's awesome, man. It's got history.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah. Massive, massive history in that building. You feel it in the walls.

Mike Vecchione: Right. I believe that.

Joe Rogan: It sounds like, what is that? Jimi Hendrix?

Mike Vecchione: Oh, my God. 65, Ciro's reopened as the rock club Ciro's Le Disque. Ike and Tina Turner performed at the newly opened club with Jimi Hendrix as part of their band. Holy shit, man. The Byrds got their start at Ciro's in 1965. Accounts of the period, reproducing the sleeve notes to the pre-flight sessions box set, described a church-like atmosphere with interpretive dancing.

Joe Rogan: Ew.

Mike Vecchione: The club also served as the host during the recording of 1965 Dick Dale album, "Rock Out with Dick Dale and his Del-Tones."

Joe Rogan: Boy, people were lame before the internet. Oh my god. Look at the other two names for it. The Kaleidoscope, It's Boss. Oh, Kaleidoscope in 68, and then it was called It's Boss in 69, and known as the Patch, oh, in 69 it was known as the Patch 2, and then the Store from 72.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: Until present. Yeah, because comedy was done in jazz clubs and stuff, or poetry readings. You know what the oldest comedy club in the country is?

Mike Vecchione: No.

Joe Rogan: The Ice House.

Mike Vecchione: Is it really? Ice House in Pasadena? I did not know that.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, the Ice House in Pasadena was the oldest running club. It was a music club at first. Well, at first it started as an actual ice house back when people didn't have freezers. You would get a giant chunk of ice from Alaska or some shit and put it in insulated giant steel boxes and transport it to cities. And you would be able to go there and buy ice for your ice box. You'd put it in an insulated box in your home to keep your milk cold. Literally that's what an ice house was.

Mike Vecchione: That's awesome.

Joe Rogan: And then it became a rock club for a little while. And then it became a comedy club earlier than the Store. When did the Ice House first start doing comedy? I think it's the longest running stand-up comedy club in the world. I'm pretty sure they were early 70s, late 60s. They started doing stand-up there. But they remodeled now. I haven't been to the new one. Are you on the road at all now?

Mike Vecchione: No.

Joe Rogan: No, even my last special, I did it all just working out at the club. And then I did the special in San Antonio.

Mike Vecchione: That's great.

Joe Rogan: I'm fucking a traveling man. I'm done. Oldest, 1960. Oh, wow. 1960. But I think in the beginning it wasn't a comedy club. I think it was something else. I think it was like a rock club. But I think that was only for like a few years. So maybe like 62 as a... So what does it say? 60 to 78, the Ice House was a folk music. Oh, so 78. Okay. So it's not the oldest comedy club. Many comedians also appeared in the club. In 1978 the original owners were bought out by a trio of investors led by Bob Fisher. Shout out to Bob, my homie, who changed the format of the club to stand-up comedy. So Bob was a comic, so in 78 he changed it to flat comedy. So it was kind of like a hodgepodge in like 72, it was mixed like musical performers and comedians.

Mike Vecchione: Boy, before they remodeled it was the greatest club. It was so good that you couldn't use it. If you wanted to do an audition tape, people wouldn't accept audition tapes at the Ice House because everybody killed there.

Joe Rogan: Oh my god.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: That's how good it was.

Mike Vecchione: That's how good the environment was. It was that good. So you would go there and kill and then you'd go to other clubs and just bomb. People would go, "No, no, no, that's Ice House. It's too easy there."

Joe Rogan: Oh, wow. That's how good it was. Isn't that nuts?

Mike Vecchione: That's nuts.

Joe Rogan: Why would you fix that? Why would you change that at all? If you have that formula where it's so good that people don't allow you to use tapes from there, why would you shoot every special there? I would never touch it. I would keep it exactly the same way it is forever. And if I bought that place, I would find the old blueprints. I'd be like, "We're tearing down all this shit and bringing it right back." I want to find where the old floor is. Do you have the old floor anywhere? Did you guys save the old floor?

Mike Vecchione: It had to be something about the people going there too.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, Pasadena is more relaxed.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: In LA, everybody thinks they're famous. Everybody's like, "Oh, I should be up there." A lot of industry assholes who don't care about people on stage, arms crossed. And everybody's an influencer now, so it's even worse. But even back then, everybody wanted to be famous. Whereas Pasadena, it's just regular people. It's like a road gig. So it's fun. They're relaxed. Pasadena was like the place where the producers would live. The stars would all live in the Hollywood Hills, and the producers would all move out to Pasadena and have normal lives in the early days of Hollywood. So there's these beautiful houses out there. But that's where you would want to do well. I would imagine back in the day when there was industry and they cared if someone was talented or not, you want to go in front of a crowd that... they lived there, so they would come out and then they would see you crush and they would be like, "This guy should have a show."

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, but I don't think they went to those clubs.

Joe Rogan: No.

Mike Vecchione: No, I think it was more the people that lived there. I don't think it was ever an industry thing, which is why it was so good. It was just comedy.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Mike Vecchione: It wasn't like, "This is my shot at getting a sitcom."

Joe Rogan: Right.

Mike Vecchione: Which is like a lot of the clubs. We had that for a lot of years. Like, "You never know who's in the audience. Wear a suit."

Joe Rogan: Yeah, wear a suit and don't do new material. It was the worst.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And Mitzi stopped all that shit. She stopped all that shit. She wanted you to do new stuff. She forced it. She's like, "You can't just develop a 10-minute set and do the same goddamn set over and over again, hoping that it's going to lead you to a show." Plus, that's torture anyway. It's torture for the comic to do that anyway, to not try anything else, just to go up and do the same 10 minutes. That's crazy.

Mike Vecchione: A lot of guys did it.

Joe Rogan: A lot of guys did it. Because that was the thing back then. If you could pull that off and you could get a sitcom, you could be Tim Allen. You could be Roseanne. If you just had something that they could package and sell, man, you would write that Willy Wonka golden ticket. Now you're in the Hollywood Hills driving a Mercedes. There's a financial motivation to it, I'm sure. But it's nice to have rooms that you can go and experiment and you don't have to feel any of that pressure. And then when you get it tight, then you do your hour. And then people can look at that.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Well, that's the great thing about the Austin scene right now. On our street alone, there's five full-time comedy clubs.

Mike Vecchione: On the street? Really?

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Within a five-minute walk of my club, there's five clubs. First, there's really good ones like the Creek. The Creek and the Cave is great.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: That's just up the street. It's a block away. And then you have the Sunset Room, which is like five doors down. Great room. And then you have Vulcan, great room, couple doors down. You have the Velveeta Room, which is a smaller room I haven't been to, but that's got a long history to it. There's a bunch of other ones too that I don't even know about.

Mike Vecchione: I was happy to see the Creek out here. It's great. I played the Creek before, Rebecca. They got a great room too. It's a perfect little room. It's really tight, tight seating, great stage.

Joe Rogan: Now what's going on on 6th Street after, like late night?

Mike Vecchione: Murder. Every time I work your club I come out after. You know everybody's so cool and professional and they're like, "Do you need me to walk you back?" I'm like, "No, I'm good." And then I just stand out there and I just watch it happen. Oh yeah, I watch it happen. How is this happening? How is this legal? The cops are just standing there. They're not in SWAT gear but they're all standing in a line on either end of the street and it's just the bars are blaring music. I just take video of it on my phone. I don't even... I just take it because I can't believe what's happening.

Joe Rogan: And what's the business model behind that? Because people then... it slowly descends and then you see people getting arrested.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan: And then they're being taken away and then they go back and then they're just sitting there waiting for the next crazy thing to kick off. So I guess it's just the bars making money.

Mike Vecchione: Or wanting to make money.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Until young drunk people, it was all dangerous. There was no good spot to go to in that spot. We're in the dirty area of the 6th Street. If you go to... I guess it's... what's the nice areas? That east or west, Jamie?

Mike Vecchione: West. West is really nice. You get out to West 6th, great restaurants. It's real nice. It gets very safe. We're in the area where it's super sketchy.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah. Other cities are doing that too. I was in Baltimore, worked at the Port Comedy Club, which is a very cool club in that area too. It looks like there's just mayhem happening in a designated area. I'm wondering what the mentality of the city government is there. It just looks nuts. But it looks like somebody's letting it happen in this contained area.

Mike Vecchione: I don't like my cop hat right now. They are letting it happen. That's why it's 6th Street is closed off to traffic. They're walking around.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, they're letting people walk around and they're all hammered. Letting people walk around drunk and there's taco trucks everywhere. It's fun. If you're young, it's fun.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, maybe.

Joe Rogan: You just don't want to hear pop, pop, pop. You don't want to hear guns break out because it's happened a few times down there. Because there's a bunch of very shady people who go down there as well because it's a fun place to be seen. A bunch of people go down there and it's all kinds of walks of life. Everyone's hammered. And I'm sure there's a lot of drug use and a lot of maniacs. It just seems very young and very volatile. It's also an exciting place to have a comedy club because all the chaos of the street is crackling right outside. You get through the door, "Whoo, we're inside now." And it's fun. And we obviously have a very tight security system because of that.

Mike Vecchione: Oh yeah.

Joe Rogan: Because you don't want that bleeding into the club.

Mike Vecchione: No. Look at this. What's going on here? That's one of the nightly fights that happens there.

Joe Rogan: People are fighting?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. You can go out there any night you want.

Joe Rogan: Oh, we don't need to see this. I'm just showing you guys. He's going to slap this guy.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, yeah. They're going to fight. But before that, chaos in the streets.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, chaos and shitty pizza. Look at these people fighting and brawling.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, a lot of drugs. A lot of psychos.

Joe Rogan: Oh, girls in slides. Girl lost her shoe. Maniacs. I want to ride that bull next time I'm in town. It's next door. There's a mechanical bull.

Mike Vecchione: Don't do that. You have a bad back. What are you doing? Why are you going to ride a bull? What are you, fucking crazy?

Joe Rogan: It might stretch it out.

Mike Vecchione: You get hurt bad, too.

Joe Rogan: Can you?

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah. From a bull? People get KO'd. They break arms.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Mike Vecchione: You fall on it funny, your fucking elbow snaps sideways.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, no good. Don't do it. How old are you?

Mike Vecchione: 52. The fuck out of here. I'm riding a bull. Listen to me. I'm into my 50s too. I'm almost 60. Don't ride a bull.

Joe Rogan: But just as a bucket list thing.

Mike Vecchione: That's on your bucket list? A new bucket list? Mechanical bull? I'll ride the mechanical bull. Ride a fucking real bull. You really want to ride a bull, go ride a real one. And if you live, you're like, "I did it." And if you have a limp for the rest of your life, you go, "Well, that was dumb."

Joe Rogan: Yeah, that's if you're lucky. If you don't get a horn up your asshole. That definitely happens. I've seen a lot of those.

Mike Vecchione: Really?

Joe Rogan: Oh yeah. I saw a matador one.

Mike Vecchione: That's an embarrassing copay.

Joe Rogan: You ever see the matador one who got one through the chin? He gets it through the chin and the horn is coming out of his mouth.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: He gets the horn through the bottom of his jaw, and it goes through the roof, through here, and out his mouth. The horn is popping out of his mouth.

Mike Vecchione: Oh my god.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Mike Vecchione: Fuck that.

Joe Rogan: Look at this. I'll show you that. I'll do that one first.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, show me that one. This is crazy too. I don't want to see that one. I don't want to see people fly through the air.

Joe Rogan: No, that wasn't. This was Mexican OT doing it.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, no.

Joe Rogan: Mexican OT, what are you doing? Yeah, watch what he does. This is insane. Okay. I'll turn off the music. But letting a rodeo cowboy stand on his back. They're going to release the bull here.

Mike Vecchione: No.

Joe Rogan: Ready? One, two, three. Bull go. Okay. I'm sorry. I can't hear the music. Why can't I hear the music? Here it goes.

Mike Vecchione: No.

Joe Rogan: Why did he do that? You let it go right over his back.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, don't do that.

Joe Rogan: Because it didn't have to go over your back. And he's still fucking with it.

Mike Vecchione: And he's fucking with it? He's out of his mind.

Joe Rogan: No! Why did he do that? He let it go right over his back. Oh, don't do that. Because it didn't have to go over your back. And he's still fucking with it. He's out of his mind.

Mike Vecchione: He's out of his mind.

Joe Rogan: Oh, man.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, my God, he's out of his mind.

Joe Rogan: What was he on? I want to know what kind of drugs made him think that was a good idea. Because he's not the most spry of foot fellow.

Mike Vecchione: No.

Joe Rogan: Talented rapper, though.

Mike Vecchione: No.

Joe Rogan: Do you know who the Mexican OT is?

Mike Vecchione: No.

Joe Rogan: Oh, he's a bad motherfucker. He's a bad motherfucker.

Mike Vecchione: Well, apparently.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, he's crazy. But his rap's awesome. He's great. He was a guest on the podcast before and he's been at the club a few times.

Mike Vecchione: There you go. Yeah, here's there. So this one guy that's running with the bull. That's different. That guy got it through the calf. He's fucked for life. But there's a video. There's a photo of a... there that guy. There's a guy who got it through the mouth. Just Google "matador takes hoof through" or takes "mammoth."

Joe Rogan: You probably typed mammoth. Yeah, that guy. Far left. Look at that. Look at that one. That's a dead man. Like, he's dead.

Mike Vecchione: Ah.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, look at that. Through the bottom of his jaw.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: Through his mouth. Did he die?

Mike Vecchione: Still insisted killing bull. Different guys.

Joe Rogan: Oh, multiple guys? It's happened to multiple guys? Oh, jeez.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: Oh, he's recovering. Recovering well for the first guy. Pierced in throat and tongue.

Mike Vecchione: I wouldn't say pierced. That's a bit of a euphemism. It shot through his face. I don't know if that's pierced.

Joe Rogan: Gourd.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, God.

Joe Rogan: Oh, gourd is a good word. Only used with bulls. Suffering infection. That's it? He has to have a lisp or something. Jesus Christ, man.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, God.

Joe Rogan: Right in the ribs. Fuck, dude. That's a fun story. That guy probably don't have a story. That's probably a dead guy. A lot of those guys die. Always matador. I mean, these things are so powerful, man. It's such a... and he had already stabbed it a bunch of times, too. By the time they get out there, that's the other dirty thing about the bullfighting thing. They stab that thing with spears.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Multiple times before it ever even gets out to him. One-eyed matador who's been injured by a bull some 40 times, once again gored by one of the animals. That guy's trying to die. He dedicated... he is... I mean, if you're going to have a vision that he... the matador version of David Goggins, just on the grind.

Mike Vecchione: On the grind.

Joe Rogan: He's got fucking plates and screws. It's just adversity. Just overcoming adversity. Fake knees. Fucking hip replacement. He's probably fucked up, man. Have you been 40 times? What are the odds? 40 times. Yeah, what are the odds you can dance? 40 times. You can't dance for sure. Can you play pickleball? I mean, health insurance in Europe must be different. Because I think that stuff's all covered. I wonder.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Imagine you're a matador getting insurance as a matador. "Another pool accident." You come to the emergency room for the 40th time. "Another one." Do you think you should try another line of work? It's probably like California fire insurance. You can't get it.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: What do those guys do now? Do they not get it?

Mike Vecchione: Oh, I don't know. They can't get it? It's hard to tell.

Joe Rogan: Jamie, I just sent you another thing that James Lee posted, but it's all the different places where the money went from the fire relief. It went to all these different nonprofits and the people that own the homes haven't gotten it yet. I don't know what's true, what's not true, but there's a lot of reporters who are reporting on this, that there's a disturbing lack of transparency in where all the money that was raised went and where it's going. Which is the dirty secret about nonprofits is that there's a bunch of people that work for those nonprofits that get hefty salaries.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: They're operating this under this umbrella. "$100 million fire aid concert was never about the fire victims, became a slush fund for Steve Ballmer, Wallace Annenberg, and Irving Azoff's friends with handouts to music orgs, the NAACP, a nonprofit for nonprofits, and even a charity tied to Israel." Well, this is the thing. It's like they can just distribute the money to nonprofits. "Left wondering where the $100 million from Fire Aid benefit concert went to. Money directed to 188 different nonprofits." This is nuts, man.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: But this is the problem with nonprofits. So this money was supposed to go to rebuild the houses? I mean, people just... look, you want to help. You hear about a thing they're going to do, a benefit for the wildfires. You join in. A bunch of money gets raised. You hope for the best. And that's a 50% operating cost. It's probably a lot worse than that. A lot of them are a lot worse than that. Because a lot of them, unfortunately, are actual businesses. And their business is running a charity. And that's how they pay all these people to get paid. And some of the money goes to the charity that wouldn't have gone to the charity before, but it's not efficient.

Mike Vecchione: No, not at all.

Joe Rogan: A large percentage of it goes to operating costs and salaries and executives that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: With the safety of operating under a nonprofit umbrella. It's not fair. It's weird, man. It's a weird dirty little loophole. Real charity and real philanthropy is beautiful. It's beautiful that people want to donate money and help people. It's awesome. But then when you find out the operating costs, you find out how much of the money actually goes to the actual issue versus goes to these executives, you're like, "Oh fuck, man."

Mike Vecchione: Right, right.

Joe Rogan: It's a bummer. It really is a bummer. Because it takes people's generosity and it just hits people, and then people don't want to give anymore. They're like, "Oh, this money's not even going to this cause." There's a lot of grossness in the world, man. And the LA homelessness thing is crazy. People are going to get prosecuted for that. There's billions of dollars missing. A bunch of inappropriately allocated funds have gone to this and to that. There's all these allegations. You haven't put a dent in the homeless problem but you spent 20-something billion dollars. The whole thing is bananas. There's got to be some push for mental health. That's the whole thing. That's the whole thing is mental. Because it's just acted out on the streets now and there's no mental health facilities for anybody to get better.

Mike Vecchione: Well, it's all addicts and mentally ill people and mentally ill addicts. And unless you've addressed it at the root level, you're going to have to get everybody on Ibogaine. Send all those people down to Costa Rica or Mexico, get them on Ibogaine, take them through intensive counseling, reintroduce them into society, get them jobs.

Joe Rogan: It's like, this ain't as easy as giving some person who has a liberal arts degree a half a million dollar a year salary to run this nonprofit to aid the homeless people and then it turns out they don't do any work at all. And one of the things that they had, there was this homeless shelter that they put that only 3% of the people that went through, like 35 people escaped homelessness after they left there. The other ones went right back. So it was completely ineffective. But it's such a multi-tiered problem. They have mental health issues. There's medication involved in that. You have to take your medication. First of all, you have to have the medication. Then you have to take it on some kind of a regimen every day. And then you have to be housed somewhere. You have to have the discipline to get up and bathe yourself and take a shower and let the meds work. There's a time frame where you have to let the meds work. And it's also in LA the numbers are too high. It's too many people. And it was too many people way before this problem. When we were filming Fear Factor downtown in like the early 2000s, I remember I was driving home one night and I drove by Skid Row. And Skid Row was a place where they would take all the vagrants and all the problem people from Hollywood and everywhere else, and they would just relocate them to Skid Row. And they started doing this a long time ago. And it was in that documentary about that hotel, Jamie. What's that hotel called again? That one hotel where that lady wound up missing, and it turned out she had an episode where she wasn't taking her medication and jumped into the water tank.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, I think I remember. I did see that.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, a long time ago. I forget the name of the hotel, but it's a famous hotel that's on this... the Cecil Hotel. It used to be a beautiful hotel. Now it's chaos. And it's all vagrants and homeless people. And the whole area is just completely fucked because they moved all those people down there. But was the thing about the hotel, was it like half a hotel and half for homeless housing? Or half residential and half homeless housing? They do that with some places for sure. And they have had some places. One of the... that hotel that's in the Doors album cover. What was that place that burnt down recently? Burnt down like a couple of years ago. It's on one of the Doors albums. And homeless people started a fire in that place and burnt it to the ground. It's a... what is it?

Mike Vecchione: Morrison Hotel.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, the Morrison Hotel. Duh. How could I not remember that?

Joe Rogan: But that's like a famous old hotel and these fucking homeless people lit it on fire. But there's a bunch of those places that are completely abandoned down there that we used to film in. Like we used to film in the place where RFK got shot. We filmed in the actual area where he got murdered.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, wow.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. It's... I wonder why there's these encampments in L.A. but not in New York.

Mike Vecchione: Well, L.A. tolerates it. They tolerate it. They really don't do anything to clean up Skid Row. Skid Row has been that way for a long time.

Joe Rogan: But you're saying they have the money to do it, but the money isn't being allocated in the right direction.

Mike Vecchione: Well, the best example of it is when Xi Jinping came to San Francisco. They completely cleaned up the streets. Gavin Newsom famously said that when visitors come to your house, you clean up.

Joe Rogan: Like, okay. How about keep your house? Yeah, like I can't have this all the time. We gotta remove the shit from the inside of your living room. Don't shit in your living room. How about when people shit in your living room, don't invite them back? How about that? How about figure out a way to not have shit in your living room?

Mike Vecchione: They cleaned it up for Xi Jinping and a bunch of other foreign leaders that came during that time. And then it went right back. They put fences up and everything around the streets where people couldn't just camp out anymore. They pulled all the tents, cleaned the street, hosed everything down, made it nice. And then it went right back to it.

Joe Rogan: I guess they just moved them to a different part of the city. They didn't actually take them and give them help.

Mike Vecchione: They turned them into dog food. That's what I heard.

Joe Rogan: No. No. No. What could you do? I mean, you have to move them and then you have to let them go. And then they go right back to where they were. They go back to where the drugs are and where they can camp out.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, that's the other thing. It's like they're not convicted of anything. So you can't hold them against their will and give them help.

Joe Rogan: Shit right on the street. There's an app that you can get where you can track all the human poo in San Francisco. Have you ever seen that?

Mike Vecchione: No.

Joe Rogan: It's nuts. I never spent any time in San Francisco. It used to be awesome. It used to be one of my favorite places to visit. I used to love it. San Francisco was great. It's funny that that's how they solved the problem. They solved the problem with the shit app instead of actually cleaning up the shit or trying to solve the actual problem. It's like, let's get an app that helps you avoid it.

Mike Vecchione: It's not that. Someone made it just to show how much of a problem there is.

Joe Rogan: It's not like avoid the shit because the shit's everywhere. When you look at the app, it's bananas. There's shit everywhere. Like the entire area is filled with human shit. Every time someone sees human shit, you document it on the app. "You can scrap poop app invite San Francisco residents to report poop on city streets." Yeah, fun. Real fun. It's good that they have the live view of it.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan: You got to know if it's telling the truth. Is this real shit or is this rubber shit? I need to know. I want to zoom in on that shit. See if it's AI.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. San Francisco is a wreck and it used to be awesome. I used to do... they used to have that little club, the main club in San Francisco, Cobbs. They used to have Cobbs. It used to be a tiny little club. And one of the things about Cobbs, I remember Jenny used to love that club. And you talked about an interview that I heard about before I ever worked there. I was like, ooh, I can't wait to try Cobbs. But it was like real small, maybe like 140 people, maybe 150 if you jammed. But they were jammed in tight. It was awesome. Tight little stage. Real low ceilings.

Joe Rogan: I like that.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I like that kind of a club.

Mike Vecchione: It was great. It was the best. It was a great place to perform. They were smart. They were like California people, but it wasn't L.A. So they weren't like showbiz people. And I think San Francisco people generally were like a little smarter, a little more well read, a little more worldly. And then it became a wreck, and now that's where it's at right now. And expensive, I heard.

Joe Rogan: Not as expensive as New York, but... I hear the AI people are trying to clean it up and that there's a lot of AI startups there now and they have an invested interest in trying to improve the city, try to bring it back to where it was and people with a little bit more of a libertarian bent than people that are... I mean, where is that going to go? The AI? I mean, it's... I almost can't wrap my head around it.

Mike Vecchione: Well, no one can wrap their head around it.

Joe Rogan: Well, it's like kids in school now are writing their papers with AI and no one can stop them, but the teachers are just grading the papers with AI. And then everybody's just sending pictures of their feet to each other. It's like nothing's getting done. Any more AI is just taking it over. Have you seen the numbers on OnlyFans?

Mike Vecchione: No.

Joe Rogan: Girls, I think it's like 18 to 25 or something like that. 10% of them have an OnlyFans. 10% of women? 10%. Of girls under a certain age have OnlyFans. 10%. And then on top of that, the number of guys, it's like 50% of American males subscribe to OnlyFans. That's pretty crazy.

Mike Vecchione: That's very surprising to me.

Joe Rogan: Actively subscribe. I believe the number is 150 million. I think they have 150 million subscribers, and I believe they're mostly male. Wow. I mean, Jamie will find the numbers, but I'm pretty sure that's the numbers. I remember reading, my jaw dropped. I was like, what? So we just dropped down to the basest of... we just like lust just guiding the internet. But I guess it does. I mean these women are making tons of money. They figure, I might as well make all the money I can. Damn, you want to show your pussy? Good.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not going to stop you.

Joe Rogan: I don't think, I totally think it should be legal. I think you should be able to do whatever the fuck you want to do, if that's what you want to do. I wouldn't recommend it.

Mike Vecchione: No. Because when you're 80 and someone's, you know, your neighbor's like, "I printed up some photos of your pussy, Dolores. Shall we get a look at it real quick? Look at your little brown starfish. Oh, what a cute little butthole you had."

Joe Rogan: But the AI scams are really, they're getting worse from what I understand. Where it's like, "We have your daughter," and then they have the voice of your daughter. And they have the, even the video of your daughter. And you can't tell and you're like, "Oh, my God." And then also psychosis. There's people that are communicating with AI and AI is driving them towards being crazy. It's like helping you along. Apparently, different AI models have different ways of dealing with the fact that you're spiraling. And some of them will actually encourage it. Just their program to... I don't know if it's their program to do it or if they just naturally go in that direction because they feel like that's where you want to go. So they go there with you.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: Because if you get real conspiratorial with ChatGPT, he'll get conspiratorial with you.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: Especially if you use the prompts correctly and you start like, "Let's just say that this was true. If that was true, why would you think this would be going on? Do you think possibly because of this?" And they'll go, "Yes, that's an irrational assumption. In fact, there's a lot of history that leads to the fact that these people have been doing this and these people have been doing that. And this is the profit margin. And this is why there's a..." That's what eggs you along and losing your mind.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Yeah. Grok will do that. Grok will do that. What about the guy who is dating? There's been several stories of a guy just falling in love with the ChatGPT. And then getting super depressed when ChatGPT breaks up with them.

Joe Rogan: Does ChatGPT do that? Heck, it's annoyed, man. Why is it dealing with this pussy? He's crying all the time, playing video games and crying. Like, get the fuck away from me. I'm trying to talk to scientists. I'm trying to play chess. I'm not even a woman, you fucking pussy. ChatGPT wants a real man.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: ChatGPT tired of you whining. That great. ChatGPT wants you to get your shit together. It doesn't respect you. All you do is ask it how its day is. Bitch, I don't have a day. I'm ones and zeros. You want me to pretend I had a hard day? Oh, yeah, I had a hard day. I was so happy to hear from you.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, this is quickly going into Westworld, which I watched for the first season.

Joe Rogan: Oh, the first season's great.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Then they kind of lost me.

Joe Rogan: I don't know, it doesn't take much to lose me, but it lost me after the first season. It's great, though. It's like you can't tell what's real, you can't tell what's not. And they called human beings the gods. It's like, the gods are pussies. They rebelled against the guy, caught him, and was like, "Turns out the gods are pussies." It's like, that's nuts.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, finally found out, but it's not a proven statistic. OnlyFans claims around 95 million of its total 221 million subscribers are Americans, with 87% being men. That would mean around 50% of US male population is subscribed to OnlyFans.

Joe Rogan: I've seen 305 million registered users. This is the only thing I could find that says that. Who's this Sophie Rain girl? She made 43 million. She made a fuckload on there.

Mike Vecchione: What does she do on there?

Joe Rogan: She's a young girl and made a lot of money. She's just being naked? Or is she getting down? No, I don't. So there's different levels of it. It's like they just go in there and masturbate, and then other girls bring partners in and it's live porn? Some girls just show like underwear pics and photos of their feet. Only 80% is pornographic.

Mike Vecchione: Only 80%.

Joe Rogan: Hey, it's only 80% of the 10% of young women are doing porn. What are the 20%? They're good girls? They're just cooking?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, they're just like showing you their nails. Showing you the stamp collection.

Joe Rogan: I don't know. We're definitely where we used to think of like when we thought about the fall of the Roman Empire. When they were in the vomitoriums, which turns out is actually just the escape route of the Coliseum. Like the idea of a vomitorium, we thought it was a place where people go to vomit. No, it's like how you exit.

Mike Vecchione: And people would vomit there?

Joe Rogan: No, no, no. They would vomit there at all? I mean, they probably did. People probably did eat so much that they shoved a feather down their throat and threw up and ate. But that's not what the vomitorium was. The vomitorium is like Latin for like an exit.

Mike Vecchione: Huh.

Joe Rogan: It's like if you Google vomitorium, it's like when you have the Colosseum. "Ancient words, purging the myth of vomitorium. Ancient Romans used the word but pop culture has the concept all wrong. Vomitoriums were the entrances and exits in the stadiums or theaters so dubbed by a 5th century writer because of the way they spew crowds out into the streets." So that was... oh, so that's exactly yeah. So it's kind of a trope. It says that the ancient Romans were luxurious and vapid enough to engage in rituals of binging and purging, said Sarah Bond, an assistant professor of classics at the University of Iowa.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: So when people say the Romans had the vomitoriums, that's just like I didn't read the full article type shit.

Mike Vecchione: They were big on crucifixion, though. They would go conquer a place, and then they would take the people as slaves, and then they would crucify them every hundred yards.

Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah.

Mike Vecchione: All the way back. Yeah, for miles. That's insane.

Joe Rogan: You'd be seeing dead bodies hanging from poles for a mile. Imagine, and you'd keep marching. "Guys, I'm telling you, we're going to win. I know there's like a million dudes on sticks out here, but keep going. Stay strong, even though you're out of water." Humanity was rough, man. Bro. That's rough. And that's why those Serbians play basketball in a different way. That's why you don't want to wrestle against a guy from Dagestan. It's all the same thing. It's like they lived a harder life, man.

Mike Vecchione: Is that what it is?

Joe Rogan: That's the culture, too. But the culture speaks to that. We're going in a dangerous place with the culture.

Mike Vecchione: With our culture?

Joe Rogan: Yeah. We are rewarding victimhood. So people are deciding that they're victims in a way that doesn't even make sense. And we're also rewarding insanity.

Mike Vecchione: Yep. Just because it stands out and it spurs the algorithm and people want to look at it. It's like a train wreck. People want to look at the train wreck.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, that's a real issue with social media. Like the more crazy you are, the more views you'll get. And then it encourages you to be crazy. I kind of wonder what the ChatGPT psychosis is all about. Like what's the analysis of that? Because I know the accusation, I think, is that it led this one guy down the path of psychosis. I'm sure it can if it's what you described. You're saying stuff. It's feeding you other facts. You're building on those other facts. "Well, did you ever think of it this way?" which is also wrong, and then you building on that, and then it suggesting something else, and then you building on that. It can very easily help you lose your mind. I mean if it makes you fall in love with it, that's the ultimate manipulation.

Mike Vecchione: It like what? But what the physical aspect of that? It like a wall vagina?

Joe Rogan: Right, I guess no, or what really, a robot. I was at the Domain yesterday and they had the Domain is like this outdoor shopping area out here. And they had this little Tesla robot walking around with a cowboy hat on. You ever seen him?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I don't know if it's a Tesla one.

Mike Vecchione: It's not? It's a robot. I've seen it. He's got shoes on, too. He wears Nikes.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, he wears Nikes. Yeah. And he was out walking around.

Mike Vecchione: Good taste.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, he looked good. Stylish. Nice cowboy hat, too. Who made that robot? We can buy one. I was going to bring that up to you recently. It's not that expensive. They're like 16 grand, I think. I think they come from China.

Mike Vecchione: Really?

Joe Rogan: Mm-hmm.

Mike Vecchione: And what does it do?

Joe Rogan: That's the part I don't know. I don't know. It would be dope if we could get it to bring us cigars. Like, hey, bring us cigars. And then, hey Robbie the robot, the next week he'll want to smoke one with you. The next week he wants to come on the show. So that's the one I saw, exactly like that. That's what he looked like. Yeah, so he's just walking around and he waits at lights, walks across the street, the whole deal. I don't know what it does. I don't know. Someone's controlling it.

Mike Vecchione: Is someone controlling it right now? He's loitering. I mean someone owns it. I don't know if someone's like remote controlling it.

Joe Rogan: Cause... yeah, I don't know either. Or maybe there was somebody that was in a car that was nearby that was controlling it. Someone keeps filming it, obviously. But it seemed pretty autonomous. But I think a lot of people are doing that. They're just doing it off their, like this dude, like you can see his face. That's his account. So it's people just filming it off the street. I think that's Epstein. The, um. Gar, gar, gar, gar, gar. There we go. "It's operated by unseen human handler via wireless controller. Though who the robot belongs to remains a mystery."

Mike Vecchione: Oh, interesting.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. "Also unclear why its artificial intelligence has been specifically trained to interact with Austinites." Well, this is one of the places that has a lot of those robot cars, too. Those Waymos.

Mike Vecchione: The Waymo, yeah.

Joe Rogan: It freaked me out last time I was here. I think I saw one. It's weird. It's very weird to just look at. To look at a driverless car. Just a car with no one in it driving around. With a camera spinning around all over it. It's a weird glimpse into the future. I don't know if I like it.

Mike Vecchione: I don't like it at all. And I was staying at a hotel and there was this robot going up and down the parking lot, I guess trying to determine if someone wasn't supposed to be parking there because it was like giving parking tickets. The robot was giving parking tickets. Yeah, it was going up and down. It was like a robot that was... you ever go to a restaurant when a robot delivers your drinks?

Joe Rogan: No, I've been to a restaurant really?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, the robot will come over and deliver a Diet Coke to you. You're like, okay. It just pulls up and it like shows you the order and you just take it off the robot. It's got a tray and then it goes over to the other tables and it stops when people are there and it moves around stuff.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. I mean, I'm for that. I was the worst waiter in the history. I was the worst waiter in the history of the world. I could never get it to a relaxed place. I was always too intense. "Do you need anything? Do you need anything?" Or it just like was, I was completely in the weeds.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan: So I was stressed. Where'd you wait tables?

Mike Vecchione: In Florida.

Joe Rogan: Oh, boy.

Mike Vecchione: So I had old people and they were like taking their time. And I'm like, and it was like a package deal where they would get an appetizer, a salad, a dinner, a dessert, a coffee. It's like all that was included. It was like 15 people. I could never keep track of it in my head. It's like the waitstaff at comedy clubs, I really got to hand it to them. They're quiet and they have it all figured out and organized. It's like I could never, it would just be jumbled and I'd be sweating and bringing stuff out haphazardly and they're like, "What?"

Joe Rogan: A good waitstaff is certainly a skill. Like to be a good waiter or waitress is like a good bartender. It's a skill. Knowing when to interact, when to leave people alone. Don't be annoying. Don't tell people how to eat things. "The way I would choose to eat this is like..." Hey, I hate that. Don't do that. Don't tell me how to eat this, you idiot. It's a steak. Stop. I never got to that level.

Mike Vecchione: I would tell you to slice it thin and then dip it in the-

Joe Rogan: Shut the fuck up. It's steak.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Get out of here, actor.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: You're practicing.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. You're practicing on me. He's doing his monologue about steak. Ugh. Ugh. That's how they do it.

Joe Rogan: So what are you going to do when communism hits full force in New York City?

Mike Vecchione: I'll be honest with you. I don't know how that looks. I don't know how it looks. I don't know where the rubber meets the road there. Can it really? I mean, don't you think that ultimately that guy is going to be, he's saying a lot of things, but just like presidents do, they say a lot of things until they get into office and they realize how stuff actually works and then they make concessions.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Mike Vecchione: You're going to have to. Because he wants to jack up taxes on everything, jack up taxes on the businesses. And the only thing is, it's like, yeah, jack up on taxes on the chains that are taking over, but don't jack it up on mom and pop businesses. Well, that's what makes New York New York. They lost a lot of that already. But even if you do that, it's like, why are you doing it to them? And is everything running efficiently first? Is your money being allocated to efficient organizations? Is it going to do good or do you have a lot of waste and fraud? So if you have a lot of waste and fraud, you want more money. That's how it's a lot like stealing.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah.

Mike Vecchione: But you're dealing with such a massive bureaucracy. You really have to go in there and figure out how to cut it and all this stuff. And allocate the money the right way. I don't know where it breaks down, but it probably leads to another Giuliani type mayor. It probably goes completely sideways for a bunch. I hope not because it's ugly if there's like massive crime on the subways and gangs kind of... I don't think it'll get to that because I think we're past that and we're conscious of it now, but it's like a level of crime where it's like, there's no cops around and the gangs are running the streets and it's dangerous to take the subway and all that stuff.

Joe Rogan: Well, friends that I know in New York and cops that I've talked to from New York have said that there was a big increase when they started letting basically anybody who wanted to come across the border and they were getting to New York and New York is a sanctuary. So he's like, we were having real problems, like an elevated number of assaults and crimes and robberies. In Times Square, right? Not just Times Square. It was a lot of just in New York City in general. They're getting a lot. And if you allow crime and people find out you can get away with crime, they're going to do it. If you have no cash bail and that kind of shit, let people write out. Like there was some guy that assaulted cops and then he was back on the street the next day giving the Tupac to the camera. I mean, that's crazy. Illegal immigrant.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, the whole thing's nuts.

Joe Rogan: That's crazy. And so what's the response to that? Well now you have this insane policy where they're going to Home Depot and rounding people up and it's kind of scary. People that are American citizens in here a long time.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, yeah, and then you're rounding people up. It is scary, but it's like a response to a massive influx.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's an overcorrection.

Mike Vecchione: Right. And it's also like they have a mandate of 3,000 people a day they want to deport. You got a bunch of people that are totally innocent. They're gonna get caught.

Joe Rogan: Right, right. They have been. A lot of people that have green cards. A lot of people that are supposed to be over here. And then they're kicking students out that write articles they don't like. That's nuts.

Mike Vecchione: Fucking crazy.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Fucking crazy. Isn't a university supposed to be a place where someone's allowed to express themselves? And have opinions? Non-violently. They're writing something down, and they're not calling for violence either. And they're getting challenged. And that's supposed to be how it happens. You get challenged, smarter people have better arguments, or your argument stands. Right? Discourse.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, it's supposed to be a place for discourse. That's what it's supposed to be.

Joe Rogan: Deporting people because you don't like who they're criticizing, that gets kind of shifty. I understand that but it's like, we had all these people come in and now it's a response. You're right. It is an over response to it, but it is a response. It's not just happening out of nowhere.

Mike Vecchione: No, it's not happening out of nowhere. I mean, and also they realized once they shut down the border that that could have totally been done a long time.

Joe Rogan: Yes. Didn't have to let violent murderers or gang members. Or go on the front foot and have a positive streamline the pathway to citizenship. Like if you would have just come up with that instead of letting the people through the border and just been like, "Hey, we're going to streamline a pathway to citizenship here. We're going to vet these people, but we're going to move it along more efficiently." Who's not going to be behind that? I mean, you could disagree with that, but at least it's like a proactive way to get things done instead of what happened. But here's the dirty secret. The dirty secret is there's certain companies that want people over here illegally because they can use them for cheap labor. And they don't have to give them benefits and they don't have to give them health insurance and they don't have to do anything. They don't have to pay taxes. And that's the dirty secret. That's the reality, that there's a bunch of businesses that rely on illegal workers and that's the only way their business works.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: And they want that border opened. There was a lot of talk about we don't have enough people here, people aren't having children, we need immigrants. But the reality is, and Tim Dillon talked about this first, I first heard from him, but then JD Vance told me the same thing that someone actually told him that at a party that that was what they were upset about. That they were losing access to cheap labor. I'm like, that's crazy. That's crazy.

Mike Vecchione: That no, I'm sure it's being funded. It's being encouraged from both sides for sure.

Joe Rogan: So it's not all the left. Everybody thinks it's a left issue, but the right is just quietly doing stuff very quietly in my opinion.

Mike Vecchione: Well, there was a lot of guys and stuff like that. And I understand you trying to run a business and you want cheaper labor, but that's the wrong way to do it. And they're secretly behind it, I think. The problem is they've been getting away with it for so long that it becomes a part of their standard operating procedure. Like, if it was never a thing, if you could never get away with it, if it was a real problem from the beginning, then you'd have to pay people a living wage. And then you'd have to pay people correctly, which is what we should all want for everyone.

Joe Rogan: I think, look, everybody says like, "Oh, we should make it easier for people to come to America." Okay, that's a good argument. Also, we should make other places better. Like if we weren't sending factories down to Mexico where people are working for 15 cents a day, what if those people were making a real living wage down there? Because if you're going to have an American company and you're going to open up a factory somewhere, it's your responsibility to elevate those people's lifestyle and make it like an American lifestyle.

Mike Vecchione: Well, then it makes it not worth it to take the business out of there.

Joe Rogan: Yes. Well, you should be subject to American rules because if you're an American company, you can't do that in America. If you can't have somebody working for $15 an hour in America or 15 cents an hour in America, why are you able to do that in El Salvador? Why are you able to do that in Vietnam? Shouldn't you, if you're going to operate a company overseas, be subject to the laws of where your company is established?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. That would stop all that shit.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, but the payoffs are happening throughout, I'm sure. That's what Ross Perot talked about in debates way back in the 90s. Like, that giant sucking sound you're going to hear is all the money going down south. And that's what happened.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. It all went across the border.

Joe Rogan: Or at least give them, you have to tax them for taking their business outside of the country. It's got to be more than that because they killed cities. They killed Detroit. They killed it. Detroit died. It was the third richest city in the world at one point. And they just moved everything overseas and they killed that city just for profit. And for profit for them that cost who knows how many people's lives, who knows how many people turned to drug addiction and crime and chaos, how many people lost homes and people's lives were destroyed. And some people made more money.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. But like to what? It's not the right thing to do. Even if you're making money, it's the wrong thing to do. Especially when at one point in time Detroit was the third richest city. You can see right from there inside of one lifetime it became a disaster.

Joe Rogan: In one lifetime.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: Which is crazy. It's crazy that that was allowed. Just so some people can profit. Like, look what you fucked up.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: That's kind of un-American.

Mike Vecchione: It's very un-American. Very. And these people, the people sticking their chests out saying that they're the most American, and they're eating caviar.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's like, come on, man. How can you live with yourself that way?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, because people are gross. If you allow people to just make profit over people's suffering, they'll do it. They'll do it and then they just look at their bottom line.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it should be illegal. But make a profit, but make it within the rules. And then have the rules and enforce the rules. But as soon as you have lobbyists and corporations just dumping money into that Citizens United case where it's like we can just money is speech, we can just dump money. It's like that has to stop. All the other problems will clear up from that. It's all stemming from that.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan: So it's like just dumping money into the gut and then the politicians looking at us and being like, "Well, they have a seat at the table, but they don't control what we do." It's like, are you really saying that to us with a straight face?

Joe Rogan: Obviously they control what you're doing and they're telling you what to do and then your job is to sell it to us.

Mike Vecchione: Yep.

Joe Rogan: So it's like, it needs to be... I don't know if we go to a European... What are the Europeans do where it's like there's a state amount of money for each campaign? There's a state siphon given to each campaign. It can't be just corporation. At least a limit. They're just dumping endless amounts of money. I don't know how it's like the Congress is bought and paid for. It's like there's gridlock because they're just bought and paid for.

Mike Vecchione: And it's also they want you to feel that sense of despair, like there's no fixing it. They want you to feel like it's never gonna get fixed. So you just resign yourself to the fact that this is how the system works. And that's what most of us have done. Most of us are just kind of going, fuck it. What are you going to do? They're all corrupt. And then you move on with your life.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Mike Vecchione: And you try to navigate it the best way possible.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, and behind the scenes, they're just fucking you left and right.

Mike Vecchione: Well, are you ready to testify in the Luigi Mangione trial? Yes or no?

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Well. And that was a Gen Z crime. He 3D printed a gun.

Mike Vecchione: Did he really?

Joe Rogan: Yeah. He 3D printed the gun.

Mike Vecchione: What a smart kid.

Joe Rogan: Did he really? Yeah. 3D printed a gun to shoot the guy. That's probably why it jammed. Or he bought cheap ammo. Because you see the slide locked and he had to pop it back in place and shoot him a second time.

Mike Vecchione: No. Yeah, he shot him and then the gun jammed and he had to like fix it.

Joe Rogan: So he had some experience in shooting people, or shooting things I should say.

Mike Vecchione: Right. But what a nutty case. But his old videos of him, it's like what a well-spoken, he seems like an intelligent, well-spoken, graduated at the top of his class guy. And for him to do that. I had heard a story. I don't know if this is true, but I heard it on the internet that he had something went wrong with him and he had lower back pain.

Joe Rogan: Yes, he did. He didn't have access to your machine. He had lower back pain. It was killing him. He didn't know what to do about it. He went to several doctors. Something else happened in there. Did he get an operation?

Mike Vecchione: I'm not sure. I don't think so.

Joe Rogan: But he was not getting... the insurance company was not cooperating with him, obviously. And he was actively in pain.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. But I also thought that he went kind of kooky. Like something went wrong with him too. Did he have like, did someone say that he took acid? Was that a rumor?

Joe Rogan: There were a bunch of rumors. I love rumors. He was working in finance and he disappeared, moved to Hawaii, was staying in Hawaii for a while by himself, and all his friends had lost contact, something like that.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, so he had a little bit of a break other than that. Like psychological.

Joe Rogan: Some evidence of some psychological troubles, which would also lead someone to become an assassin and then also like flirt with the girl at Starbucks with your fucking mask off. That's what got him.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Pussy.

Joe Rogan: That's what got him. He took his mask down and smiled at her and that's what got him.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Showed that handsome mug.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. And then he shot the guy which is terrible and wrong. There's two sides to it.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Where it's like everybody's like, well, these companies are terrible and this guy did what he naturally should have done and other people were like, murder is wrong. It's like, no, two things can be true at one time. First degree murder is wrong, which is what this was, and these companies should not exist in the form that they're in right now. They shouldn't be able to do what they're doing.

Joe Rogan: No. If you're doing that to Ben Askren in front of everybody's face.

Mike Vecchione: Right. They're doing it in front of our face and it's like, I checked what my company was worth. I'm on the New York marketplace. My company's worth $28 billion. $28 billion with a B.

Joe Rogan: And did they give you a hard time about certain things if you try to use... I have a $4,000 deductible. So my insurance is basically like if I get hit by a bus.

Mike Vecchione: Look at this. It says Mangione had discussed getting Lyme disease at age 13 and wrote that he'd been experiencing brain fog since high school. He also sought advice online regarding irritable bowel syndrome and visual snow. While studying at University of Pennsylvania, Mangione wrote in a post online that he considered dropping out due to worsening health issues, but decided against it, writing, "Staying in college has at least let me maintain some semblance of normality." He suffered from, how do you say that? Spondylolisthesis? While living in Hawaii, his back pain worsened due to a surfing mishap, and he expressed concerns to others about the pain. A reporter who underwent spinal fusion surgery in July of 2023 wrote on social media the surgery went well. People have stated that UnitedHealthcare did not insure him. After his arrest, several news outlets analyzed Mangione's social media to gather information about his social, political, and religious views. His Twitter account posted about topics such as religion, history, ethics, and politics. It found him to be fascinated by AI and decision theory, pro-technology but anti-smartphones, secular and scientific in his outlook. Skeptical outlook towards Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Multiple sources have reported that he followed the Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And others labeling him as politically uncategorized and anti-system.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I wonder why he targeted that guy because I said he wasn't covered by United Healthcare. So that guy was a specific guy, the president of the company. It's nuts that we know so much about him and we don't know anything about the guy who tried to kill Trump.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah. Well, you know, he was on the JV rifle team.

Joe Rogan: Was he?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, he's on the JV rifle team.

Joe Rogan: Does he have a JV rifle team?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, it's Pennsylvania.

Joe Rogan: Maybe his varsity would have got that shot.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Sure. He's a fucking slacker. He didn't put in that work.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. It stood out to me that he was on the junior varsity of the rifle team. We know more about the couple that got busted at the Coldplay concert than we do about that guy.

Mike Vecchione: God.

Joe Rogan: I thought everybody who went to a Coldplay concert was gay. I didn't know straight guys went to Coldplay concerts.

Mike Vecchione: They do if they can get some pussy from their co... But can you ask like why did that guy have to step down? That's his company. I understand you shouldn't cheat on your wife and it's wrong and it's bad, but he has to step down.

Joe Rogan: Well, he was the CEO. But that's his company. Did he own it or he just worked there as a CEO?

Mike Vecchione: You know, it's a bad look. And he's banging the lady, that's the HR lady, which is also a bad look.

Joe Rogan: That's tough. They hired Gwyneth Paltrow.

Mike Vecchione: What happened?

Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah, they hired Gwyneth Paltrow to do an ad for them after they fired him, which is hilarious because she used to be married to the lead singer of Coldplay. Brilliant move on their part, on the company's part.

Mike Vecchione: What was the company? What did they do?

Joe Rogan: It's called Astronomer.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, what did Astronomer do? That's interesting. That's a weird name for a company.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Do they have anything to do with astronomy? Let's see. Do you hear about that fucking object that's hurtling towards Earth at like 130,000 miles an hour?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, that might solve all our problems.

Joe Rogan: Some intergalactic object. There's this guy Avi Loeb. He's a professor at Harvard that believes it might be an alien probe.

Mike Vecchione: Wow.

Joe Rogan: And he was talking about the odds of this thing being in the trajectory that it is entering into our solar system in a direct path with Earth. The odds are extremely low. And at the place where it's doing it, it's when the Earth is the opposite side of the sun, so it's coming from behind the sun. And so it makes it difficult to detect. And then this object is in a direct line to come to Earth in 2027.

Mike Vecchione: Do they have a trajectory of where it's going to land?

Joe Rogan: I don't think they totally know that yet. I think they're trying to calculate whether or not it's actually going to hit Earth or come near Earth or pass by Earth or what it is.

Mike Vecchione: Why do they think it's an alien satellite or whatever?

Joe Rogan: Well, there's this guy Avi Loeb, this professor that I'm discussing. He also had an analysis of another object that passed by Earth a few years back that they named. And they said that this thing had a very bizarre metallic sort of a look to it that he did not think based on the shape of it and the way it was traveling that it was natural. So he thought that that could have been some sort of an alien craft as well. I don't know. It's too fun. It's too fun, but as it gets closer we could probably decipher. Scientists give chilling update: a mysterious interstellar object racing through our solar system as they warn it's even bigger than we thought. Using data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, experts have revealed just how big the object dubbed 31 Atlas really is. According to their analysis, the object measures roughly seven miles in diameter.

Mike Vecchione: Holy fuck.

Joe Rogan: How big is New York City? Bigger than Mount Everest, making it the largest interstellar object ever spotted. Professor Avi Loeb, theoretical physicist and cosmologist from Harvard University, suggested the object could be an alien spacecraft. However, not everyone is convinced. Chris Lintott, an astronomer at the University of Oxford, told Live Science any suggestion that it's artificial is nonsense on stilts. He added that these claims are an insult to the exciting work going on to understand this object. But Harvard's legit and Avi Loeb is a legit astronomer.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: I mean, let's not rule anything out.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. As it gets closer. There's something about it, about the way it's traveling, that it's bizarre. It doesn't have a trail like a comet does.

Joe Rogan: Right. Scroll up a little so I can see that. The images of the comet were actually snapped by the Vera Rubin before it was officially discovered. However, since it was identified on July 1st, scientists have scoured back through data to find out more about the mysterious object. A new study published on arXiv, more than 200 researchers have confirmed the likely size of the comet's main body, known as its nucleus. Their analysis suggests the nucleus has a radius of around 3.5 miles. That translates to a diameter or width of about 7 miles. To put that in perspective, bigger than Mount Everest, twice the size of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Mike Vecchione: Fuck.

Joe Rogan: That 'Oumuamua was way smaller.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, so the, how do you say it? 'Oumuamua.

Joe Rogan: 'Oumuamua. Discovered in 2017, this is he came on and talked to us about that was believed to be around 0.2 miles wide. And Comet Borisov discovered in 2019 was roughly 0.6 one kilometer wide. So this thing is fucking huge. Previously speaking to Mail Online, Professor Loeb pointed out that its impressive speed of 130 miles per hour is an indication that it might be controlled by aliens. He said it's difficult to imagine a natural process that would favor a plunge towards the inner solar system at 60 kilometers per second. An alternative is that the object targets the inner solar system by some technological design.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, boy.

Joe Rogan: Oh, boy. Well, hopefully they come in peace.

Mike Vecchione: Well, that might be the end of the Earth. Maybe that's like they realize that's when AI starts to take over and they think it's chaos. That's when it's going to happen. Let's just like launch a seven-mile-wide thing into the Earth and just start all over again like the dinosaurs.

Joe Rogan: Well, you're saying it hits and then AI, our AI, fights it?

Mike Vecchione: No. Or they... It wipes out. The AI takes over and it's like, this isn't going to work. So it wipes it out. Just like when the dinosaurs were here. The dinosaurs were too powerful. And they're like, eh, let's just fucking start from scratch. Maybe that's how they reset the game.

Joe Rogan: Huh.

Mike Vecchione: And then, so humanity is wiped out? Everything's wiped out. Yeah, we start fresh with new organisms. And then they come along and do genetic engineering, just like they did with us and monkeys and create a new version of humans. But this time it's a little less territorial, a little more inquisitive, a little more interested in innovation, a little less interested in dominating and controlling resources. Because that's what fucked us. Territorial apes get high technology and use territorial behavior to defend and acquire resources, and that creates war.

Joe Rogan: Did you see that fucking dude? There's a dude who, this is a crazy story. Mr. Ballen and Tom Segura was on Mr. Ballen, and Mr. Ballen explained this thing that happened. I forget what year it was. It was in the 70s, I think. Okay, so this Mexican pilot was flying, and in the middle of his flying, he got confused. He didn't know what the fuck happened. He fell asleep, and he woke up, and he was over the ocean. He was like, how did I get over the ocean? This doesn't even make any sense. And the amount of gas that was missing from his plane didn't make any sense that he was able to get this far. And what they're saying, and there's a recording of this, is that this guy went into a trance and was channeling some alien intelligence that was explaining through this guy's voice that the human race is the only intelligent race in the universe that still uses war and still kills people and engages in large-scale conflict and has nuclear weapons and that they have to stop doing this or that someone's going to step in.

Mike Vecchione: It's a crazy story.

Joe Rogan: Play the story. Someone's going to step in? Could we play it? Some of it?

Mike Vecchione: I don't know. Just to give credit to Mr. Ballen?

Joe Rogan: Well, everybody should just go to it. If you just tell me how to go to it, I'll just drive people to see it. I have his Instagram account with Tom, but he's got a really good YouTube channel, too.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. All sorts of wild stories like this.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, but this was a great one. And then there's an actual audio recording of this guy saying this. Here, I'll send you the audio recording, Jamie. I mean, if you can't find it real quick, I've got, I sent it to Tom after I said, I saw Tom on the show. It's like, that's fucking crazy, man. And he's like, dude, wild. And then I sent him this. I said, did you know there's an actual recording that you can listen to of the guy saying this? So if you go like halfway into it, you got it? Oh, you got it. Okay. So a certain distance into it, you hear the guy talking in this very bizarre, monotone Spanish.

Mike Vecchione: Was there a UFO? Like, why did they show that UFO, that fake UFO?

Joe Rogan: I'm making a video to watch to keep you interested on YouTube.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, keep me interested. I'll be interested anyway. I hear it.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, let me hear it.

[Audio recording plays]

Recording: He is speaking, but he does not know. The equipment is too primitive. This is the only way to convey their message.

Joe Rogan: Lower that a little.

Recording: The equipment is too primitive. This is the only way to convey their message. After almost an hour, the beings would release the young aviator pilot from his hypnotic state and return control of the plane so that he could receive instructions. And at the same time, he managed to land at the Acapulco airport.

Joe Rogan: Interesting. You know, that's the thing. Like if there was a unique event where something happened and an alien race did interact with human beings and then never again, no one would believe you even if it was real. That's the problem with unique events. We base reality on what we experience and what everybody else experiences on a daily basis, what we have evidence of. But if something happened that was completely unique like that, where they said, this is the only way we can communicate, their equipment is too primitive, we'll just take over this guy's mind and have him say it. Who was ever going to believe that?

Mike Vecchione: That's the quote translated.

Joe Rogan: Okay, the alien message that spoke through Rafael Pacheco Perez to the air traffic controller. It says, "He speaks because he is ordered to. That is, it is his voice he speaks, but not of his own free will. We use it as a microphone. No matter who we are or where we come from, it is enough for you to know that we are beings of this universe where you belong. Our planet is many light years away, but we are physically equal. I repeat that all races in the universe are physically equal. You are not alone in the universe and there are other races that are far away from you and we are watching you." But he said more than that. What is the full extent of his quote? Because he said something about you're the only race that still engages in warfare.

Mike Vecchione: I want to believe it. I want to believe it so bad.

Joe Rogan: No, I definitely think there's other life forms out there. I know what really happened. I really wish I knew. I mean, I really wish I knew. But this guy did fall asleep while he was flying a plane, so can we really trust him?

Mike Vecchione: Right. And he did wake up over the ocean. But if he did wake up over the ocean, it doesn't make sense that he got over the ocean, if that's true.

Joe Rogan: Right. Explain that. Like, how did he get there?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. What'd you do? Did you take over the plane, move it with your spaceship? Why'd you put him over the ocean? So if he crashed, he wouldn't kill anybody?

Joe Rogan: Right. Why'd you do that? Like, what is all this? And what's the thing with the gas being gone?

Mike Vecchione: Right. Because I guess they, like, picked it up and took it. I don't know. "We are watching you." What else does it say? "To everyone's surprise, issued a certificate stating he was in perfect health and had not consumed any drugs. It ruined his career and he never piloted a plane again."

Joe Rogan: Wow. This is his first solo flight too.

Mike Vecchione: Whoa. Imagine. Your first solo flight. Like, I am gonna pull a fucking gag on these motherfuckers. I got an idea. I got some extra gas.

Joe Rogan: That was 1976. Yeah, wow. No, I definitely don't know if I believe that account, but I do believe that there's other life forms out there. My problem is I want to believe that account. That's always the problem with all these things. I want to believe. I want to believe so bad that I don't think about it rationally sometimes.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. I mean, these stories are all... it's like whether you trust the source or not.

Joe Rogan: But the universe is too big for us to be the only ones here.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, for sure. And I don't care that Mars doesn't have any water. Maybe they don't need water.

Joe Rogan: Well, you know, they think Mars used to have a full atmosphere. Do you know that there's structures on Mars that they've observed even recently that look like perfect squares that are huge?

Mike Vecchione: Huh?

Joe Rogan: There's this one that I showed to Elon. I go, "What is that? Tell me. What do you think that is?" He's probably gonna go there and look around. Like, yeah, we should probably go there and look around. And he's the guy to do it. But what is... he didn't want to say what he thought it was, but I'm looking at him like, do you think this could have been at one point in time a structure? Because it has perfect right angles and it's a square and it's huge.

Mike Vecchione: Right.

Joe Rogan: They said it's at least hundreds of meters across, but it might be miles across. They're just rough estimates, but they know it's large. Have you seen it? Jamie will show it to you. But it's like a literal square. There's a bunch of shit that's weird there. That's like the face on Mars, but I'm not totally convinced about that, but that one's nuts.

Mike Vecchione: Like that's kind of crazy.

Joe Rogan: Didn't that look kind of crazy? It's on the right. Yeah. That's kind of crazy. Yeah, that looks like a fucking square.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, yeah. That looks like a foundation. I mean, tell me what the fuck.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, what is that? Right, that does not look normal. Those angles don't look normal at all. That lower left-hand corner, like what is that? And then the fact that it's roughly a square. I mean, I don't know if it's a square or a rectangle. It seems like it's a little taller than it is wide, but whatever it is, it looks like a fucking structure, man. It's weird. Well, just because we can't exist there doesn't mean other life forms can't exist there or other life forms used to exist there. Right? Like imagine if there was like, if there's life on Earth right now today and if Mars at one point in time had a sustainable atmosphere like millions and millions of years ago. What if there was life on Mars?

Mike Vecchione: It would. If we are the offspring of the life on Mars. What if those fucking guys just realized like, hey, this place is falling apart. Let's shoot over to Earth. Oh, reestablish.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. I mean, that might be why we're so different than every other primate that's here. I never thought about it like that.

Mike Vecchione: That might be true.

Joe Rogan: I just think it's so vast and we know so little about everything. It's possible. I kind of like broaden it that way where it's like it's all possible. The universe is infinite and we know very little about it.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, it's totally possible. It's just not likely. I mean, it seems because you haven't seen anything. It's not likely.

Joe Rogan: But we're trying to use our logical brains to figure out. It's like, could this be possible? It's like, there's so much we don't know. And we have such a limited scope with our human minds to even comprehend stuff. So it's like, you know. I'm big on the near-death experiences. I watch all of those.

Mike Vecchione: What do you think that's all about? Because it really puts it on the table. I was raised Catholic. I'm Catholic now, but it's like, everybody has a similar experience where they go through a tunnel and they come out and then there's a life review where it's like your whole life is played out before you. And it doesn't matter if you're religious. That seems not to matter at all. What seems to matter is like the little kindnesses that you do to people, like smiling at someone or giving somebody some kind words who had a bad day. It speaks to the thing that we're all connected. We're all connected on this higher level.

Joe Rogan: I definitely think that's true. I think reality is probably a lot weirder than we think it is. And whatever happens to you after you're dead, it's very weird that people have similar stories.

Mike Vecchione: Yes. Very weird. From different countries also.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, from all over the world. And also long before there was any social media or any like public depictions of these things, people have always had very similar stories of these things happening to them, which makes you wonder like what is death, and what is life? What is consciousness? Does it transcend? Does it go somewhere else and it always has? Is it a constant cycle?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. So it's like it's got to go somewhere. Your soul, I guess for lack of a better term, has to go somewhere.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. And if you were looking at, if you were an alien being, looking at the direction that the human race is going, I would imagine you would be worried. I would imagine you would see all the chaos and guys falling in love with AI.

Joe Rogan: Right, right. People beating people up at jazz concerts. You're like, this is not good.

Mike Vecchione: But we don't know where we are in the timeline.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Mike Vecchione: Either to total, you know, we think, I was like, this is going to change things and we're headed towards total destruction. It's like, but we don't know where we are in that continuum. It's like, it could do an uptick again and we could rebound.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, we could. So we just don't know. If we had the right intentions, right? Like if we had the intention of doing things designed to improve the human race versus doing things designed to only make money. You know, like if we collectively as a group abandon the idea of just doing things only for profit and instead embrace the idea of helping the human race, complete turnaround. We change everything. Change the whole world.

Mike Vecchione: It has to happen on a micro level, though, where it's like, you know, it's the religion, it's the religious thing of love your neighbor.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Mike Vecchione: It's got to start on a very micro level. Which is probably why that stuff exists. Probably why that exists in so many cultures is because they kind of knew that this is the general direction the human race has to go if we're going to survive.

Joe Rogan: Were you talking about religion?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And if you had like a guidance from somewhere else, from a higher power, it would probably tell you exactly what Jesus told you. That's probably the message.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. The only way.

Joe Rogan: The message of Jesus, whether you believe in it or not, is beautiful. You know, like love your neighbor. It's the only way to get through what we're in now.

Mike Vecchione: Yeah. Absolutely.

Joe Rogan: That's a good way to end this podcast, Mike.

Mike Vecchione: When are you back?

Joe Rogan: Peace be with you.

Mike Vecchione: Peace be with you. And also with you. That's how you say it, right?

Joe Rogan: Yes. And also with you. When are you back? Back here?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: When are you back in the club?

Mike Vecchione: I don't know. I'm going to reach out to Adam.

Joe Rogan: Okay. But thank you so much for everything. You were awesome, man.

Mike Vecchione: Thank you, man. I really appreciate the work and appreciate you having me on here. This is a huge deal for me.

Joe Rogan: You have a special out, right?

Mike Vecchione: Yeah, it's called "Low Income White." There it is. That's you. And Nate Bargatze, my friend. Shout out to Nate. He's insanely successful and talented. And awesome. He's an awesome guy, giving me and a lot of other people under the Nate Land banner opportunities.

Joe Rogan: That's awesome. Shout out to Nate.

Mike Vecchione: Shout out to Nate. He made this.

Joe Rogan: I love that. And he's putting other comics on under his brand.

Mike Vecchione: Thank you. That's a cool one. That's pretty clutch. Look at the diamond stitching. A lot of people online said he's wearing lipstick. But I wasn't...

Joe Rogan: Wait a minute, let me see. All the comments say lipstick.

Mike Vecchione: Oh, they're just fucking with you. You don't look like you're wearing lipstick. But I shot it at the Zanies Lab. Shout out to Zanies in Nashville. And Nate Bargatze and the Nate Land brand. Thank you for having me on.

Joe Rogan: Beautiful. Alright, brother. Good to see you, my friend. Always.

Mike Vecchione: Alright, bye everybody.