Joe Rogan Podcast: #2446 w/ Greg Fitzsimmons (Transcript)

He’s a good friend of mine. I can’t send a message saying, I was just talking to my friend Bobby Epstein.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, no shit, that’s crazy. Wow.

JOE ROGAN: Epstein is a super common name. Yeah, that’s a super. It’s like Jones.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It was on Welcome Back Kotter. Right?

JOE ROGAN: Epstein from Welcome Back Kotter. That’s right.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: He can’t talk about him anymore.

JOE ROGAN: He played my brother on NewsRadio.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No, him.

JOE ROGAN: Nick DePaolo and Brian Callan played my brothers and we all just beat the shit out of each other through the entire episode.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It was hilarious. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Nick threw me through a plate glass window. And then the brother shows up. Epstein was a priest and he showed up with a bat and we were all scared of our older brother. It was really funny.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: He was the Jew, the Puerto Rican Jew from Brooklyn.

JOE ROGAN: He was great. He’s a really nice guy, too. So what else does it say here? Newsom to probe claims of Trump critical censorship on TikTok. I think they’re f*ing blocking a lot of things on certain social media platforms.

Social Media Platforms and Censorship

GREG FITZSIMMONS: What is that? I mean, what’s your big picture take on whether or not social media platforms which are privately owned, have responsibility that say regular broadcast networks would have in terms of not censoring things?

JOE ROGAN: Well, regular broadcast. Problem is they censor things.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: They don’t just report on the news, they report on what they decide they’re going to report on. Like it’s a CNN hourly news segment. They have no responsibility to tell you about any particular story. None. Zero.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: So they’ll wait till something becomes unmanageable before they’ll start talking about it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: So something starts getting traction on social media, like some sort of a corruption scandal. If it’s a left wing scandal, they can ignore it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: And they have no obligation to. It’s not like we have to tell you about these very credit. It’s not like, you know, we ran it through AI. There’s 20 things that the American public has to know about. So they censor or at least they curate the content.

I think for social media platforms, if Elon Musk didn’t buy Twitter, we would be f*ed because there would be no place where you could say whatever you want, even heinous things. Right? Yeah. But if someone says heinous things, you can block them and not interact with them, and you can let other people tear them down and tear them apart. And that’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be you don’t counter hate speech with censorship. You counter it with better speech.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: And you appeal to rational people and insensible people that go, this is why this guy is wrong. This is why racism is wrong. This is why rash generalizations are wrong. This is why it’s wrong.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And that’s how you’re supposed to do it. It’s supposed to be a free speech town hall platform. It’s supposed to be like the town square where everybody can get together and talk about ideas. And that’s how it should be.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: And there’s been a lot of calls that say that you shouldn’t be able to be anonymous on social media, that you should have consequences for your actions. The problem with that is then you lose all your whistleblowers. Right. All the whistleblowers that are talking about giant corporations are doing horrible things to the environment secretly in other countries which we find out about all the time.

Like the Steven Donziger case where that guy got arrested but he was prosecuted. Was it Exxon? The Donziger case. But it’s like whistleblowers are important.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: You know, and if you don’t have whistleblowers, you don’t find out. If Edward Snowden doesn’t come out, we know so little about the NSA, we know so little about government spying. And yeah, he’s an American former attorney known for his legal battle. Oh, Chevron particularly with. So he was arrested and he went to jail, man. For criminal contempt.

The Cost of Whistleblowing

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I mean that’s First Amendment, isn’t it?

JOE ROGAN: You know, I don’t know exactly the details of the case. He spent 45 days in prison and a combined total of 993 days under house arrest. Wow.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Not only do they go to jail, it depletes all your savings. If they decide to prosecute you, your life is ruined.

JOE ROGAN: That’s part of the point of it all. It’s also discourage other people from doing the same thing.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: So if you’re an attorney, and you’re thinking of prosecuting, you know, Shell, you’re not going to do that now, you know, f this. You know I have a fing house.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: Trying to buy a Porsche and then you back out of it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, right. You know, I mean, yeah, it’s a weird thing because I know, right now to cover the Pentagon, no journalist can go into the Pentagon unless they sign an agreement to only put out government sponsored press releases.

JOE ROGAN: Government approved.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Government approved. So now you’ve got very few people inside the Pentagon, which is where the whistleblowing was happening. They in the back halls of the Pentagon.

National Security vs. Press Freedom

JOE ROGAN: That’s crazy. But then see, the problem with the Pentagon is you’re talking about national security. And if someone released something like the name of an agent that was undercover somewhere and something happened, that person got killed or compromised or some sort of a national security interest, you know, was the whole thing was tanked. Yeah, that’s it.

The Pentagon’s different. I mean I’m not saying that the press shouldn’t have access to Pentagon officials. They certainly should. But it’s like going there is kind of different. Right. It’s like the FBI just arrested, they just had a giant sweep on gangs in this country today. They just released that they found I think it was 10 kilos of drugs.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: They arrested cartel gangs.

JOE ROGAN: Cartels in America.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And so they made a giant arrest today. I think they arrested 200. See if you can find what that story is. But imagine if you were in the FBI office and you heard about an imminent attack and you printed something. If you’re a reporter and you’re covering this stuff and you have access to this information somehow and it gets released and these guys find out about it and they skate.

They nabbed Latin Kings. 50 Latin Kings in Operation Broken Crown. After three months sweep. So what is the details of it? Okay, last three months FBI is quietly executed. Okay, this is on X. Quietly executed Operation Broken Crown. A sweeping violent gang takedown involving 13 field offices targeting the Latin Kings gangs members which were publicly threatening law enforcement officers. 50 arrests, $200,000 in seized assets, seizure of 10 kilos of illicit narcotics. Interesting, interesting.

Well, so like that kind of a situation, you can’t have access to that information before they do it. That has to be very tight lipped, you know. But there’s only a few of those kind of scenarios that I can imagine. But when it comes to politicians and backdoor deals, there should be live footage of it. It should be.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, you only found out about the bomb, the illegal bombings in Cambodia because there was a whistleblower inside of the Pentagon.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly, exactly.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So it does. You do need some access.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, but it’s like, well, you need whistleblowers.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right, right.

JOE ROGAN: But it’s like how many people. Here’s the thing about intelligence agencies. There’s a lot of good people that are working there. It’s like we judge them based on the evil people that are probably the ones with the most power, you know?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: There’s probably a lot of mid-level people working at the Pentagon, working at the CIA, working everywhere that are good people.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Are you kidding me? These are people that have dedicated their lives to trying to, you know, I believe same way with cops. I think I got three good buddies that are cops and they are absolutely went into it the same way a social worker goes into it.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And then there’s the evil ones that, you know, I think it was worse. I think back, like, you know, back in the days of Serpico. You ever seen that movie? Like, it was literally like the entire force was in on it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You know, there was f*ing illegal gambling, illegal drug dealing. Nobody got touched.

JOE ROGAN: Yep, yep. Yeah, they’ve always done that. I mean, that’s how they ran the mob in Vegas. Yeah, the mob ran Vegas with the cops.

Las Vegas, Nuclear Tests, and Bomb Parties

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, yeah. We were just talking about that outside. Like, why was Vegas and Atlantic City the only places allowed? I don’t know why I say stupid. Like, Jamie’s like, because of the mob, asshole.

JOE ROGAN: F*ing duh. Well, it was the mob, and I think Nevada, there was also, see if this is true. There was supposedly a connection between the testing of nuclear weapons and then allowing the city or the state, rather, to have gambling. Because Nevada was one of the rare places where they routinely tested nuclear weapons.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the video that shows a history of all the atomic bombs going off in the United States. The video is crazy because it starts with the first test, starts with the Trinity test. They do the couple in the ocean. What’s the matter? What’s so funny? Just the way this is worded. What is it?

I asked if there’s a connection between nuclear tests and gambling in Las Vegas, and turns out, yeah, they would use it as a theme to attract gamblers. What?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Look.

JOE ROGAN: Come see a bomb.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: From the early 1950s to the 1960s, Las Vegas casinos and tourism promoters actively used nearby nuclear weapons tests as themed attractions to draw gamblers and visitors. Holy man. Bomb parties.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s like how—

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God. They had bomb parties on the rooftop. They would watch. They’d stay up gambling, drinking, and then stepped outside to watch the blast on the horizon.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Wow. Atomic cocktail. Dude. It’s like how Caesar does fireworks now.

JOE ROGAN: They had atomic themed promotions. Atomic cocktails, atomic hairdos, nuclear pinup imagery like Miss Atomic Blast. Slogans like “Atomic City, USA” and “Up in Atom” to tie the test directly to Vegas nightlife and gambling culture.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Holy mad. I wonder if you could place bets. Dude, I bet your eyebrows singe off.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t know if they had the same thing like what they have now with modern prediction betting. Prediction betting? You can bet on pretty much everything.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I just made a bet last night.

JOE ROGAN: Go back down to where you were. Stop. Go with the bottom line. In short, nuclear weapons tests near Las Vegas were not just a backdrop. They were deliberately woven into casino marketing, party culture, and tourism that supported the city’s gambling economy.

But did it have the reason? Like, here’s my question. Was Nevada allowed to have gambling because of them allowing nuclear tests? Like, was there any sort of an agreement? Because there’s only two states at that time that allowed casinos, like real casinos.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: And it seems kind of weird that one of them, you know, New Jersey’s always been f*ing corrupt. That’s the Sopranos. Like the most mob-ridden state in the country at the time.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Based in Atlantic City.

JOE ROGAN: Pretty much fing sht.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. Atlantic City and then Vegas was Bugsy Siegel. Right.

JOE ROGAN: Okay, well, since Nevada legalized most forms of gambling in ’31. Okay, so it doesn’t make any sense because it’s before that. So it’s the Great Depression, economic measure, track tours. So no. So that theory doesn’t hold up. I didn’t know that Vegas was started in ’31. That’s nuts.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So basically the Great Depression started and then they launched Vegas as a way to raise money, which is Vegas.

JOE ROGAN: You have no money, there’s no jobs. Why don’t you gamble? What?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: My gamble is going to the food line, seeing if I get a loaf of bread. That’s my gamble today.

Bodies in Lake Mead

JOE ROGAN: You know what’s crazy is that lake keeps drying up because they were having a drought. They keep finding bodies in the lake.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah, yeah. Like those metal barrels with bodies inside of them. They’ve found quite a few of them. How many bodies have they found? Is it Lake Mead, I believe? Yeah. So as it’s drying up, it’s like it was, I think it’s probably picked up a little bit, but at one point in time was at a historic low.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And so they were finding these dead bodies. I think they found like a half a dozen of them. And I think they think there’s a whole lot more in there.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No.

JOE ROGAN: As far as of last latest reporting, at least six separate discoveries of human remains were made in Lake Mead in 2022 as the water level dropped, representing at least several different individuals. Wow. Find out that thing where they stopped searching for guns and bodies. I think it was in MacArthur Park. And why they did that?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: David Tell, back in his Insomniac days, used to hang out with some dark motherf*ers in New York. And he used to bring this guy in who was a New York City cop. And they basically said, we’ll double your pay and give you early retirement if you put on a frog suit every night and you go out into, I think it was Flushing Bay, one of the bays out in Queens, which was a famous place where the mob was dropping bodies.

And the guy would go into the water in a frog suit and he’d wait by this bridge. And when they drop a body, he’d f*ing call it in. And he did that the night shift. And he’d finish that and he’d come into the Comedy Cellar at like 4 a.m.

JOE ROGAN: So he’d wait in a scuba suit and then drop a body?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Holy sh*t. They were dropping that many bodies that you can just wait for. That’s so crazy.

Search for MacArthur Park for guns and possible bodies was stopped because authorities said it was an unpermitted and potentially unsafe operation on city park property. Okay, so it was a businessman, so it was a private thing. So that’s probably what it was.

Officials, official reasons given. Organizers led by businessman John, I don’t know how to spell his name. A-L-L-E. How do you say that? Ale, all, a plan to use sonar and remotely operated vehicles, look for weapons and human remains in the lake. Los Angeles park rangers halted the effort before the sonar entered the water, saying the team did not have the required permits or clearances.

Okay, why didn’t you guys do that though? If you really think, if this guy really thinks that there could be bodies and guns in the lake, why wouldn’t you guys search for bodies and guns if someone could search for it?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: It seems like there’s probably a lot of people missing. A lot of crimes that could be solved, a lot of resources that have already been spent on cases. You could probably get to the bottom of a lot of things.

I don’t know how to say his name. Said families of missing people, some of whom were last seen near MacArthur Park, had reached out to him for help, which inspired the idea of a large-scale sonar search of the lake there. “There’s evidence down there for crimes,” he said. “We’ll identify it with photography and the city will have to extract.”

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Also could be these are homeless people and the government doesn’t give a sh*t. Yeah, they can’t swim. Yeah, come on, they were kids once. It’s hard to swim when you’re on meth.

JOE ROGAN: You get bad cardio. You know, if one guy says, this is the last day I do meth today, I get in shape. He tries to swim across the lake and strokes out in the middle of it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: This is my day.

MSNBC’s AI-Generated Photo Controversy

JOE ROGAN: Never gave him, oh geez, I’m in there. What are they saying about me? It’s an ad. Oh, it’s an ad. That’s basically, that’s an ad down at the bottom. Oh, I mocked the AI-generated. That was, that was crazy. The AI-generated photo that MSNBC put up of the guy who got shot in Minneapolis. They changed his appearance.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Alex Preddy.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: They changed his appearance. And we’re really handsome. Oh, they did.

JOE ROGAN: You haven’t seen it?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No.

JOE ROGAN: You have to see it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You have to see it.

JOE ROGAN: It’s there. I don’t know who’s doing this now. It’s almost like someone from the Republican side is like a secret plant at MSNBC because they know that stuff like this is going to get caught. Look at the difference between the one on the left and one on the right.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, the nose looks blurry on the one on the left.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that’s his nose. That’s what he looks like. It’s just a sh*tty picture. But they cleaned the picture up. They made his nose smaller. They gave him a tan. They made his forehead shorter. They made his jaw wider. They made his shoulders thicker.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: They gave him more bicep. They made him more handsome. They made his neck thicker. He looks better.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: The guy on the right looks like a good-looking guy. The guy on the left looks, you know, like Ari’s unfortunate brother, doesn’t he?

Ari Shaffir’s Family and Jewish Culture

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Poor Ari’s brother. I mean, it’s so funny that Ari comes from this family. I mean, he grew up Orthodox Jewish, right?

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And the things that he has put out there for a family to have to see, it makes you realize. And they love him. Like, they accept it. And it’s all about grace.

And I love Jews because they are very accepting, you know, as much as you might be Orthodox. I find my wife is half Jewish. And there’s something very open-minded about Jews. I mean, they were the original hippies and they were the original communists in America. And they were always open to different ideas.

And I think when I think about Ari’s family, if they were Christian conservative versus Jewish conservative, I don’t know that they’d be as accepting of him.

JOE ROGAN: You know, Ari’s dad survived the Holocaust.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No sh*t.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah. Ari’s dad has a tattoo.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Damn.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, he’s very old. Whoa. Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: He must be one of the oldest people left with a tattoo. I mean—

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. He talked to me about having his dad on. He asked me if I’d be interested in it, if his dad ever wants to do it because, you know, he doesn’t have much time left. And I said, absolutely. And he goes, you know, let me, I’m not sure if he’d be interested. But if he did, I think it would be important to talk about.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I mean, he’s got to be over 100 years old.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t know how old he is. He’s old, though. Well, how long ago was—

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You would have to have been born. Oh, no, actually, if he was born in 1935, I think he’s in his 80s.

JOE ROGAN: His late 80s.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What am I thinking? Right? Right. Because they tattooed the f*ing kids.

JOE ROGAN: Mm. Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Jesus.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It’s dark. It’s horrible. It’s so crazy, dude. It’s so crazy that that was less than a hundred years ago.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I know, I know. And the Germans, like that f*ing Norm MacDonald bit about how, you know, Germany is the country we really should be afraid of. Like, the way they start world wars and what they’re like. It’s really nuts.

JOE ROGAN: Well, they were the barbarians back in the day.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, right.

JOE ROGAN: You know, they. I mean, we think of now as engineers. They make BMWs, but back then they were the barbarians during the Roman era.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I guess the Vikings were Scandinavian, and then they were fighting against the brother Germans.

JOE ROGAN: F*ing terrifying. Yeah, they were terrifying. And they all became engineers, like, brilliant, like, very disciplined people. Which is interesting because Germany is known for that. Yeah. And. But also shit porn.

Remember, like, in the early days of the Internet, a lot of the shit porn, like, weird, crazy, fing. A lot of that was. And we were trying to analyze it one day, I was like, it’s probably because if you’re so buttoned down and so disciplined and regimented and conservative in your daily life, the way you cut loose, it’s like you shit in each other’s mouths and f each other in the butt. And, like, some of the craziest shit porn was coming out of Germany.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: This is, like late 90s, early 2000s, when we first started, like, finding weird websites that would, you know, you’d be able to find things on.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, no, before that, I’d go to Sex World in New York, where you sit in those booths and you put in quarters and you watch porn. And they always had the darkest German porn in there.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, a lot of animals and shit. And I’m like. I’m like 15 years old, going, like. And I’ve got these coins. You go in and you give the guy 10 bucks and he gives you a handful of coins. Just imagine if you put a black light on those f*ing coins and I.

JOE ROGAN: Got them in my hand, just jizz.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: All over those things, eating them into the. And I’m.

JOE ROGAN: Black lights. Are terrifying.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Pushing buttons to pick which film to watch.

JOE ROGAN: I have a friend who brought a black light into a hotel room. He said you just find jizz on the carpet.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No kidding.

JOE ROGAN: You find jizz on the f*ing blanket sometimes.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You go to any.

JOE ROGAN: Like, go to a cheap hotel or a motel. How well do you think they’re cleaning those carpets? Do you think they clean the walls?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I’ve been in hotels where they put the remote control in a baggie for you because they say that’s the most clean clean. No, no. Cause so you don’t have to touch the remote, and then they change the baggie on the remote each time a new guest comes in.

JOE ROGAN: So you’re supposed to remote through the baggie?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Who does that?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I take it out of the bag.

JOE ROGAN: I take it right out.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That’s crazy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That’s ridiculous. I’m touching toilet seats. I’m touching everything. What are we talking about here?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I’m also not that afraid to come, you know?

JOE ROGAN: I mean, it’s going to kill you.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, that’s just kind of gross.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: But yeah.

Hotel Hygiene and Cell Phone Contamination

JOE ROGAN: You know, I mean, think about how much shit is on the average person’s cell phone. Have you ever heard of that?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, just touch your cell phone with a swab. Like, get a swab and get. Get it analyzed. You’ll find fecal matter all over your cell phone.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Because we’re scrolling while we’re on the toilet. A lot of people are.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, a lot of people. And also, you’re touching things, and then you touch your phone and how many people touch their ass then touch a thing, a doorknob or this and that? You’re getting fecal matter on everything.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Especially if you have a cat. I used to think about that all the time when I had cats. Like, the cats are in the shit box. They’re scratching around there, and then they’re walking on your counter. Yeah, walk. You know, they don’t give a f* where they go. They go everywhere. You don’t care. You’re like, hey, buddy. Yeah, you pet them when they’re on the counter. You want to shit in their paws.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Then. Then he. Then your dog licks his asshole and then licks. And the people have licked their face.

JOE ROGAN: They lick my face.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Really?

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah. No, I let him give me kisses.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Have you seen him lick his asshole?

JOE ROGAN: For sure. Especially my puppy. I have a little puppy now.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Imagine a black light on your face right now.

JOE ROGAN: My puppy goes, right. You know, I have a little.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You look like you were in blackface, probably.

JOE ROGAN: I Just splatter like a. Like, I’m the Joker.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Al Jelsey.

JOE ROGAN: He go, I have a puppy. Like, he’s a King Charles Cavalier. He’s a little, tiny, cute. He’s so f*ing cute. And then I have the golden retriever, and the puppy runs right up to the golden retriever, sticks his face in his dick, and then sticks his face in his asshole. That’s the first thing he does to me every time. Face on the dick, face of the asshole. I’m like, bro, wow. What are you doing? Yeah, they. That’s just dogs.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That’s what they do.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s funny how they keep. Yeah. I had two dogs, and they did that. Yeah. Every f*ing day. They sniffed each other. Like, you know, I mean, I guess that’s how they know if something changed. Maybe they know if the other dog is sick or if the other dog is breeding with another dog. It’s like, kind of checking their emails.

JOE ROGAN: Well, they get so much information from smell that we can’t even possibly process.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right, right.

JOE ROGAN: They say that a dog can smell a cheeseburger. They don’t just smell the cheeseburger. They smell every individual ingredient. They smell the mustard. They smell the pickle. They smell everything. They smell the lettuce. Yeah. They smell. They smell. They think that dogs smell anxiety. They smell like moods.

That’s why when certain people come over your house, they’re scared. Dogs. Dogs get sketchy with them. Like, what the f*’s up with this guy? Like, oh, he doesn’t like you. Yeah, because the person’s probably nervous. They’re giving off a scent.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Hey, no. My mom. Her sister was attacked really bad by a dog when they were little. So my mom has this trauma about dogs. We had these little f*ing. We had a Shih Tzu and a Lhasa apso. They’re just little dogs. She was terrified, and the dogs would growl at her. And they didn’t growl at anybody.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God. Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah, they smell things. They sense things.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: As I. People have them as guards. I mean, that’s their. That’s how they. That’s how they made it right to be dogs. They were the wolves that hung out with us and would let us know when something’s going down.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Sentinels.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

The Power of Smell

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, that’s. Well, I have a very strong olfactory sense. Like, I’m very of my five senses. I would put it up there at the top. Like, I. I love perfume.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I love perfume. I don’t like when women wear too Much of it. And then they hug you at the Comedy Store. And then you go home and you smell like f*ing perfum. You’re like, honey, it’s just. Whitney Cummings has this new Chanel.

But like, sometimes I’ll be, I’ll walk, I’ll. I’ll be sitting somewhere and I’ll smell some nice perfume and I’ll f*ing whip my head around it. It’s like some 81 year old woman hunched over and you’re like, oh, they.

JOE ROGAN: Don’t wear the old ladies. No matter how old they are, they’ll still put on the makeup, they’ll still put on the perfume. Let it out. Time to go out and see. Go fishing. See if this old bait can catch a bass.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, right, right. Yeah. There’s this bar up at my. Where my mom lives in, in Florida. And there’s this bar and it’s like a famous cougar bar. And it’s all these rich women who’s. Because, you know, men die faster, right?

It’s like, it’s impossible for a woman in Florida who’s in her 70s to find a guy who’s, you know, anywhere near her age. She’s got to date a guy in his late 80s if she’s in her 70s. And so these women go to this bar and they are, like you said, they’re wearing so a lot of leopards, a lot of leopard print.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. They’re letting you know that stiletto heels.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s like stiletto heels but the toes are all twisted and mangled.

JOE ROGAN: My wife has been watching this horrible show that’s on Netflix. It’s like one of those housewives shows, but it’s all West Palm Beach Ladies. It’s all these like rich ladies with plastic surgery.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Palm beach, not West Palm Beach.

JOE ROGAN: That’s right. Palm Beach Ladies. Is Palm beach the rich area? Yeah. Yeah. Is West Palm like the more moderate area?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No, no, it’s poor.

JOE ROGAN: It’s poor.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. I mean, well, it has, it has good sections, but it has. With the people that work on Palm beach cleaning the houses, live in West Palm Beach.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, I see.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Because there’s basically Palm beach is a bridge to get to. Do you know the history of Palm Beach?

JOE ROGAN: No, they. Oh, I do. Yeah. But go ahead.

The Dark History of Palm Beach

GREG FITZSIMMONS: They created it. It was like a sandbar that they built up and then they hired. They didn’t hire. They hired a bunch of black people to come on the island and build all the houses, the infrastructure.

JOE ROGAN: Why black people?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, for sure they only hired black people.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I mean, look it up, Jamie. But, like, all I know is there was a lot of black people doing the building. They finished it. And then the island held a big party for the black people on the end of the island to celebrate. And then they torched all their houses and forced them off the island.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s the history of Palm Beach.

JOE ROGAN: They torched their houses after they were done building the mansion.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yes. Yeah. And it’s probably the wealthiest piece of real estate in the country right now.

JOE ROGAN: So many people are f*ing evil. Imagine a guy who built your house. He’s at home with his kid having a. You know, wow, what a great job I got.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You know, and then I just started.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: This beautiful place, Live in this place.

JOE ROGAN: I helped build these beautiful mansions.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: People are going to love me because I helped them create a life.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God. And they lit their f*ing houses on fire.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Pull up that story. I need to hear about that. That’s crazy. But these ladies are just monsters. It’s just. It’s just all, like, the social status.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: It’s all like, who’s got the most money. Like, they don’t even know how much money I have.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Like, I’m a million.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And then they have these clubs. My. My friend’s father lives there, and he belongs to a club.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, you got to belong.

Exclusive Clubs and Discrimination

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And he worked for—I won’t say who the person was—but a very famous Jewish family. She went to lunch one day at one of these clubs that didn’t allow Jews. And the waiter—clubs still don’t allow Jews.

JOE ROGAN: No, this is going back 20 years at the most.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Only 20 years ago. 20 years ago.

JOE ROGAN: So in 2006, probably about that.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: There were clubs 20, 30 years. Yeah. Well, you know where the Augusta, where they play the Masters, only started allowing black members in, like, the 80s. Remember Tiger Woods was playing there and he got shit because he was a black playing at a club where they didn’t allow black people.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And they said, how could you do that?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. During Tiger Woods’ lifetime.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So anyway, so this Jewish woman goes to the club. The waiter wouldn’t come over to the table. And finally the member went over and goes, what’s going on? We can’t serve her.

JOE ROGAN: How’d they even know she was Jewish?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: She’s famous. Oh, yeah. I think I can say who it is. It was Estee Lauder’s wife. Wow. Estee Lauder, the woman. Yeah, Estee Lauder is the woman. It was her. Wow. One of the richest women in the country. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: We can’t serve her because of a religion.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. And that was 2006.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Hey, the country clubs, you know, the rule on it was, well, look, the—

JOE ROGAN: The Friars Club make sure that’s true. The Estee Lauder one, I definitely want to find out about the blood burning.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, the Estee Lauder is personal information. I don’t know that. That’s not published anywhere.

JOE ROGAN: All right, forget about that then.

The Friars Club and Gender Discrimination

GREG FITZSIMMONS: But no segregation in clubs. Private clubs used to get away with that until—I was a member of the Friars Club in New York, and they did not allow female members until I was there in the late mid-90s, before the Friars Club allowed female members.

And the reason was, legally, you can’t have a club exclude people if you can prove business is being done there. If there’s commerce, if there’s no business, you can let in whoever you want.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So that’s how they got female members in there. And I think they probably—I mean, obviously, business being done at golf clubs.

JOE ROGAN: Well, business is definitely being done at the Friars Club.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Mm.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, a lot of deals probably got made there. A lot of ideas got hatched.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, yeah, Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, all these comics.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It was all agent. It was agents and comics.

JOE ROGAN: I remember you used to love that place.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Dude, it was so fun.

JOE ROGAN: You always tell me about it. It was so unappealing to me.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It was a clubhouse for comedians. We used to go there. They had pool. They had two beautiful pool tables. I played on the Friars Club pool team. And we used to play against other clubs in the city, all the other private clubs. Paul Sorvino was my partner in pool.

JOE ROGAN: Paul Sorvino could play.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: He was good.

JOE ROGAN: He was good. He was like—he could run 100 balls in straight pool. He was like a legit high level player.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So he carried me. But we used to play all the clubs. And then, you know, and then they got a nice gym with the best steam room in the city. And then they got these lazy boys. You work out, you take a steam and you sit in a lazy boy and you read the newspaper.

And then they got a dining room downstairs where Henny Youngman is at one table, Alan King’s at the—you know, and these guys, like those old Borscht Belt comics, they lived to make you laugh. It’s all like comedians today. So many of them are dark and quiet and disturbed. These guys told jokes and they roasted you and they hugged you and it was like a part of being on stage almost, you know, it was expected.

JOE ROGAN: They probably all felt real comfortable in this, you know, comics only club.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, right.

The Dark History of Palm Beach’s “The Sticks”

JOE ROGAN: Folklore surrounding the sticks of Palm Beach. So that’s what it is.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s the area, what they called it.

JOE ROGAN: So go to the top of that, please. Well, right there. “Turn of 20th century’s employment boom of unprecedented proportions in South Florida. The hiring of thousands of black laborers to extend Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railroad. These laborers played a key role in the development of the early Palm Beach. Also helped to build the Royal Poinciana Hotel, Flagler’s Whitehall residence, which is today known as the Henry Flagler Museum.”

“Laborers and their families settled in Palm Beach Island between North County Road and Sunrise Avenue. This area of shanties and tent-like homes soon became known as the Sticks. Many of those descendants still live in the area today.”

So what happened? Does it say what happened? Okay. “Along came a fellow named Henry Flagler who decided he needed that land to build on to develop. Little said, and he threw a party for all the blacks on the island. And they all went over to the party and while they were celebrating and enjoying themselves, their homes on the island of the town of Palm Beach burned down mysteriously.”

Holy f*, dude. Yeah, from what I heard, McCray said he got with the residents and set up a party on West Palm Beach side and had everybody ferried over to the party. And then had a mob of people to burn up people’s homes and shanties and tents all over the sticks and forced them out of there and took the land.

How many people died? I don’t know how many people died since they were all gone. So—but there’s around, right? But what about their kids around two people live in that area is what it said. Oh my God.

And then this is the problem. When I was looking it up on Wikipedia, this is basically what I read. Okay. “Palm Beach Historical Society version is very different. Published text only says that by 1912 the tenants of the sticks had been evicted.” Well, that doesn’t mean anything. They could have still been there.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I’m sure the Flagler threw some money at the Palm Beach Historical Society.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, of course. Right. “No mention of a fire. Any record of large scale homelessness that would have followed such a devastating blaze. Everly Clark believes his version is the most accurate. The sticks was actually legislated out of existence. They claimed there was a fire and Flagler had the people come to circus and all that. But that’s not true.”

“Still more than a century later, the urban legend remains strong and the pulse of public opinion split. There are so many historical facts that make some of the scurrilous removal of the residents believable, that it’s become lore, for the most part, in the black community.”

All right, well, let’s find out if there’s a historical record of the fires. This is all I could get to. That’s it. This is a local news. And what year was this, supposedly?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: 1920.

JOE ROGAN: 1912. Yeah, I bet they did it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I mean, look what they did in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

JOE ROGAN: Right?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You know, this was part of the playbook, right?

JOE ROGAN: Well, look what they did with the Tuskegee experiment. Right? Look at that. Like, how about that? They knowingly had all these people with syphilis and didn’t treat them, just to study them and see what would happen to them.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Did they give people syphilis or did they just treat them for syphilis?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: Whatever it was, they let these people rot and die. Syphilis is a horrible disease.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Tell me about it.

The History of Syphilis and Wigs

JOE ROGAN: Did you get it? Do you know the story about syphilis and wigs?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No.

JOE ROGAN: You don’t know that?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No.

JOE ROGAN: All those dudes in, like, the ancient times that had the big wigs.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That was to cover up their hair loss from syphilis, dude.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: How did not everybody have it?

JOE ROGAN: Well, they all had wigs, but they—

GREG FITZSIMMONS: All had it, right?

JOE ROGAN: In high society, first of all, those people were basically like Game of Thrones. They were all just freaks banging each other. You know, French society has always been, like, very loose sexually. And so these two royals, were they brothers or cousins? So these guys get syphilis, their hair falls out, right? You get holes in your face and shit. And they’re still f*ing everybody, right?

And so they got wigs made. And the more money you had, the more elaborate and big your wig was. That’s why rich people are big wigs.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No. Yes. I love it.

JOE ROGAN: Isn’t that crazy?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Wow.

JOE ROGAN: Crazy. That term that we always use when we were kids is a big wig.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, that’s, like, ancient.

JOE ROGAN: That goes back to the 1400s.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s like something you would hear on that guy Cody Tucker’s feed. Yes.

JOE ROGAN: I love that guy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I’m doing his podcast.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, he’s on mine. He’s great. He’s great. Very smart guy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Here’s what’s interesting. There’s a strong connection between the syphilis that evolved in North America and the syphilis that these guys had in Europe. There’s always been syphilis. But syphilis had an outbreak in Europe after people came to North America, probably a bunch of Native Americans, and then went back to Europe with these diseases.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And then it mutated.

JOE ROGAN: Different kind of syphilis.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Wow.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. There were cousins. It turns out they were cousins. Yeah, that’s what I thought. This is a story. “They were commonly used to cover up hair loss, but their use did not become widespread until two kings started to lose their hair. King Louis the 14th of France experienced hair loss at the age of 17, then hired 48 wig makers.”

GREG FITZSIMMONS: 48.

JOE ROGAN: “To help combat his thinning locks.” So a lot of these guys wound up getting syphilis, and there was, you know, normal hair loss on top of it. Both conditions being syphilitic signals. Everybody had syphilis back then, man. There’s—I mean, they probably didn’t wear condoms. They’re probably all freaks. They’re probably all—

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yes. I mean, that’s what you did when you were a wealthy guy. You went to the whorehouse all the time. Then you came home and you gave it to your wife. Then she had a baby. And depending on the disease, babies are born with the sexually transmitted disease that you gave your wife. Right.

The Epstein Leaks and Bill Gates

JOE ROGAN: And that’s what the crazy thing about the Epstein leaks today. The one email that he had, and we’re here, that said that Bill Gates wanted to get from him antibiotics to give to Melinda because he got syphilis or he got something—the clap. Chlamydia. Whatever he got. He got some sort of an STD from a prostitute.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Do you think if she could have the choice between getting the—what did she get? $50 billion or not getting the syphilis, which—

JOE ROGAN: Well, whatever she got, I bet it wasn’t syphilis. It was probably the clap. It was probably chlamydia or something like that.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s no big deal.

JOE ROGAN: But if—who knows if that’s true, though, here’s the thing. Like, Epstein clearly was some sort of a blackmailer, and this is an email that Epstein wrote. So it could be complete fiction. Epstein could have wrote that just to put pressure on Bill Gates for some business deal. Who knows? He could have spread rumors and then said that he’ll squash those rumors. These guys are dealing in deception and blackmail, and so you can’t, like, assume that it’s true.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Think about how many relationships Epstein had and that he was working almost every one of them, leveraging. And he was kind of brilliant.

The Epstein Connection and Mossad

JOE ROGAN: Well, he was really good at that. That one thing, you know, guy could have cured cancer if you went into that business.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, he was into science. Yes.

JOE ROGAN: Well, he was also into compromising scientists. Right. Like, let’s say that you want to get a drug passed, right? And you want FDA approval of this drug, but it’s some sort of a competing drug. We have a bunch of scientists on your side, and these scientists can go attack that competing drug. And then all of a sudden, well, you have this guy, he comes from MIT and he says this and like, oh, and then the FDA listens to him.

I mean, it’s very important to have the leverage of respected academics. Right? You know, Epstein with a smiley emoji asks former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, how you say his name? Ehud Barak, to clarify he does not work for the Mossad in a meeting with a senior Qatari investment official. Quick thread. Starts at the bottom and goes up. Oh, okay.

“Hi. Are you going to be in London on Thursday? Best EB.” Right.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You.

JOE ROGAN: “Unfortunately not. You should make clear that I don’t work for Mossad. Smiley face.” Oh, boy. “Or I question mark that. I don’t. Smiley face.”

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, he doesn’t work for them. He just—

JOE ROGAN: He just volunteers for them with a smiley, smiley face. Emojis are hilarious. Evil season smiley face emojis. That’s hilarious, right? That’s so funny.

Israeli Intelligence and Tehran

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Dude, this is really good show about Mossad called Tehran. Have you heard of that?

JOE ROGAN: No.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, I have on Apple.

JOE ROGAN: Watch it, though. Is it good?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s really good. I mean, it’s a really good look inside of what goes on in Iran in terms of—I mean, the Israelis are f*ing brilliant. The infiltration that they did in—

JOE ROGAN: No one’s like them. They’re the best. Yeah, they’re the best at that.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I mean—

JOE ROGAN: Well, they have to be, right? Those pages, this is them. This table is people who hate them.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, right. Right.

JOE ROGAN: You got to become a bad motherf*er. Your neighbors don’t want you dead.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Those pagers going off in Lebanon, that was a—that was a long play. That was years.

JOE ROGAN: Was it? Years. Years. Wow.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. Crazy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: They’re like the pages right next to your c*.

JOE ROGAN: Blow your d* off, you blow a hole through your pelvis. Apparently, that’s how you die.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And you’re isolating your enemy. You’re not—there’s no civilian casualties.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I bet they probably got some kids.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: But low. Low percentage versus bombing a building or something.

JOE ROGAN: Which they did do. Yeah, yeah, they did some of that. Like, the guys in the building I was on level the building I was—

GREG FITZSIMMONS: On Good Day LA one time, you know, it’s all those, like, pretty women. They’re actually really sharp. They’re great. And I go, they say, oh, you came alone. I go, no, my agent’s supposed to be here any minute. He’s Lebanese. I just paged him before I got here, but I haven’t heard anything back. And they—f*. They were like, whoa. It just happened, like, three days before.

Current Middle East Tensions

JOE ROGAN: Didn’t we just—not we. Didn’t Israel just bomb Lebanon today?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, really?

JOE ROGAN: I believe so, yeah. At least according to Twitter.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, what’s going on? Iran. I heard things are heating up over there.

JOE ROGAN: Well, Trump just said they’re sending ships in that area. And he said—but he also said Iran wants to make a deal, so maybe he’s trying to put pressure on them to make a deal.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And, you know, hopefully nothing happens in terms of military intervention. It’s scary, dude, because they have nuclear weapons or they have the potential to eventually have nuclear weapons, but, you know, I don’t know. Did Israel bomb? Yeah, there was some image that showed some huge explosion. It said Israel just bombed Lebanon. They definitely have recently seen something about airstrikes late Friday. Oh, I guess it’d be late there, right? Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Nighttime over there.

JOE ROGAN: Maybe.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. No, does not.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, it’s—if it is, it’s like it’s just breaking. It’s sort of just—there’s some stuff. Well, the thing is, there are—you know, there it is. Two hours ago, Israel bombs Lebanon. Yeah, it’s like, the only thing I’m seeing about it, which is—well, that doesn’t usually happen. It’s probably all just coming out, right? No, I mean, would you type in that on—that’s all you see is that one. So that might not be true. Click on that link, see if anybody’s disputing it. Click on that tweet. There’s only got 15 responses. This is true. Grok. Click on that.

Yes. Multiple sources indicate report Israeli airstrikes in Southern Lebanon on January 30th targeting Hezbollah. IDF complaint confirmed a wave of strikes. Lebanese media noted the drone hit. And say that word. How do you say that word? Siddiquin City, Keen killing one Times of Israel and so rock. News for details. Huh, Shafak? Whatever you say, that is news for details.

Canada Relations and China’s Influence

GREG FITZSIMMONS: We’re so lucky, man. We got no neighbors. Nobody’s launching.

JOE ROGAN: Well, we’re in a good spot geographically. Be separated by oceans on both sides is fing—I know, which is why we should be really good friends with Canada. Like, what the f‘s going on? Trump ruined that whole thing, man. Because if he didn’t talk about turning Canada to the 51st state, the conservatives were going to win. Pierre Poilievre would have taken over. It would have been like, they would have eased a lot of the restrictions, made it a lot more common sense.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Dude, China was just up there. They just made a huge deal to get all their cars from China now. Now we’re not going to sell any American cars in Canada.

JOE ROGAN: You know, it’s a real problem because China has some f*ing amazing cars. Amazing cars now. Yep, bro. They’re not around. Their electric vehicles are top of the food chain, man.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Tesla, just yesterday, they just stopped the Model X, Model S and X production.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I saw that.

JOE ROGAN: Apparently Elon is this Optimus robot is going to change the world.

The Optimus Robot Revolution

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Everybody that I know that’s seen it. When this thing integrates with AI, you’re going to have a fing dude in your house. You’re going to have a super genius robot dude in your house. Does he look like—looks like iRobot. And he’s going to be able to do whatever the f you need him to do. Go dig a ditch, go do this. Take out the garbage.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You know, it’s f*ing great. It’s for old people that live alone 100%. They know everything about your life. They could actually hold a conversation with you.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Show pictures of your f*ing grandkids on their chest while they know your interest. Ask you memories. All people want to do is talk about, you know, memories. And they’re going to listen.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, they’ll talk to you.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Not only that, they’ll confirm all of your delusions. Tesla to build 1 million Optimus robots per year at Fremont factory. 1 million a year. We need these robots because they’re going to terraform the moon and Mars. Like we’re not going to do it. The robots are going to do it. I don’t think anybody’s going to Mars. Not in our lifetime. I think that’s all the future.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s a little chilly up there.

JOE ROGAN: It’s not just that. It’s just no one’s going to want to do it. You’d have only suicidal people.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Want to go one way trip?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Well, you can get back. You get back. It used to be a one way trip. Now they figured out you can get back.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh really?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. But you have to wait six months.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You get back every six months. That’s that movie The Martian.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Plus the flight’s going to be delayed, right? Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Or hope. You just hope it doesn’t get hit with a micrometeor while it’s out in space. All kinds of weird s* can happen.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s a micrometeor.

JOE ROGAN: Micrometeors, tiny ones are flying around. They just punch holes through everything. They’re going 170,000 miles an hour, and they just go whipping through the building.

Space Junk and Satellite Concerns

GREG FITZSIMMONS: How much junk is there in space right now in terms of satellites that just crapped out, but just—

JOE ROGAN: If you ever looked at the amount of satellites that surround the Earth. Yeah, it’s f*ing bananas. Yeah, it’s nuts. And then there’s—

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And there’s no plan for when they expire, right? They just stay up there.

JOE ROGAN: Well, some of them, they lose their orbit, their orbit decays, and then they come crashing down to the Earth. Yeah, that happens. And, you know, they have to figure out where they’re going to hit, you know, and hopefully they don’t hit the middle of f*ing, you know, Dusseldorf. You know what I mean? Like, you could hit a major city.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s a funny city to say.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, it could, you know, you got a satellite down there, it could land right in your face.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, that’s wild.

SpaceX Launch Experience

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. I went to SpaceX for the launch of the last rocket. I watched the launch. Jamie did too. We were right there. And I went into the control room with Elon and watched the entire journey while it was flying over the Earth. And it lands. It touched down in Australia in the ocean, 35 minutes later. Really, it was nuts.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So it breaks through the atmosphere, travels, and then comes straight down.

JOE ROGAN: Yep. Goes. And you get to watch because they have 20 f*ing cameras on the thing the entire time. Live streaming through Starlink. So you’re live streaming the interior. They’re monitoring the pressure of the cabin. They’re monitoring all these different things. And so the, this is the way they, they test tolerances.

It’s like when a lot of people say, oh, his rockets blow up. He’s a dumbass. They want the rockets to blow up. Like, they have to find out what makes the rocket blow up. Like, how much pressure can you put? How thin do the walls have to—how reinforced do things have to be? Yeah, you know, and then they’re trying a new bit. They make adjustments. That’s what they do.

So they’ve calculated in a certain amount of failures that they expect to have.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And this one actually had a failure, but still landed.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So that’s going to be—the new first class is going to Australia in 35 minutes. Wow.

JOE ROGAN: Boom.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s crazy.

JOE ROGAN: Nuts. 35 minutes. Touchdown. The ocean.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: But a pretty intense ride, I would imagine. I mean, it’s not a smooth ride.

JOE ROGAN: Touchdown. In an exact spot where they had boats ready. They had cameras filming it. They filmed the entire touchdown.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Does it have to be over the ocean or can they land on land?

JOE ROGAN: Well, his rockets can now land on land. You’ve seen how that thing comes down and lands on the ground, which is bananas. And then they stop landing them on the ground. Now they catch them with arms. It’s even more efficient. You’ve seen that, right?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, because NASA was wasting so much money because every single rocket was ruined when it came back.

NASA’s Artemis Mission

JOE ROGAN: Well, you know what’s crazy? NASA is about to launch the Artemis mission and no one’s talking about it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Where is that going?

JOE ROGAN: They’re sending people around the moon and having them come back to Earth. And you hear nothing about it. Like, have you heard about it?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No.

JOE ROGAN: Me neither. You know how I found out about it? Somebody asked me at the club. Some guy in the audience said, we think about the Artemis mission. I go, what is it? He’s like, NASA’s got a mission that they’re flying people around the moon. I’m like—when? He’s like, February. I’m like, come on. Really?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, what’s the mission? What are they trying to do?

JOE ROGAN: I don’t know. Let’s find out. Artemis.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: They’re not landing on the moon.

JOE ROGAN: Not this time.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Okay.

JOE ROGAN: No, this time I think they’re just flying.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Isn’t it weird? Have we landed on the moon since the 60s?

JOE ROGAN: If we ever did in the first place? No.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Are you being serious?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I don’t know if we did.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I don’t know if we did either.

The Moon Landing Debate

JOE ROGAN: I used to believe it before COVID. No, I didn’t. I didn’t believe it for a long time. And then I said, I’m probably wrong. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Let me just leave it alone. And then I got back into it again and I was like, but it doesn’t make any sense.

It doesn’t make any sense that these guys went like, Neil Armstrong basically went into hiding. And then at the 25th anniversary launch, he gave the most cryptic speech for this team of high school graduates. Like these honor students. Yeah, you should see the speech, because the speech is nuts.

And then I went back and watched the post flight press conference when they supposedly landed, after they landed on the moon and came back home. It’s like a hostage video. It is the weirdest behavior. They seem like there’s a guy who is a body language expert. He’s like, these guys are all being deceptive. He analyzed it on YouTube and he’s like, this guy, what he’s doing here, this guy’s being deceptive. This is clear deceptive behavior.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I mean, I’ve checked it so many times online and everybody said it’s been refused, but my whole thing is like.

JOE ROGAN: But it happened.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It was 1969, I had a 69 Chevy and I used to drive it from Boston to New York and it would break down about half the time.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, but that’s different. That’s different.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Is it?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s still a f*ing. It was a gas powered engine.

JOE ROGAN: Right. But it could go one. If you had to take one trip with it, it would make it. They were just not that good over time. I mean, how much that reliable.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: What was the equivalent computing power that they had on that Apollo that we would have? Is it our phone?

Computing Power and the Van Allen Radiation Belts

JOE ROGAN: Our phone is way more powerful. Yeah, you’re way more powerful than a room of supercomputers. However, it doesn’t take immense computing power. Once you’ve got the calculations and you understand the trajectory and that you’re going to use the gravity of the moon, you’re going to slingshot around the moon and come back. That’s not the problem.

The problem is the Van Allen radiation belts is a thick band of radiation that surrounds the Earth. And not just that, but they tried experiments to blow holes in that radiation belt. There’s this thing called Operation Starfish Prime where they launched nukes into space and had them detonate them in the belts. And they thought they got blow a hole through it. Did the opposite. Made the belt supercharged, made it way more radioactive. Yeah, at least temporarily.

The problem is they’ve never sent anything out into deep space and had it come back alive. Except the Apollo astronauts, they never even sent a chicken out there and had it come back alive. There’s all sorts of crazy s* with radiation and solar. If there was any sort of solar flare, everyone’s dead.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: If there’s any sort of weirdness, space weirdness, radiation weirdness, dead, very little protection, thin aluminum shield. It just didn’t make any sense. And also, there’s not been a single thing from 1969 that’s not cheaper, easier and better today other than the moon landing.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And we haven’t done it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, we haven’t done it since 72.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: They went, isn’t that crazy?

JOE ROGAN: It’s nuts. It doesn’t seem real.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: It was also the first time, by the way.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Can I just stop for a moment and go. Having a talk about moon landing with Joe Rogan is a little bit like playing pickup basketball with the Celtics. It’s just a moment in time.

JOE ROGAN: I know too much. I know too much. I’ve spent a stupid amount of time of my life studying this.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

Wernher von Braun and the Fake Moon Rock

JOE ROGAN: It was also, Wernher von Braun publicly said before he even got involved with NASA, you couldn’t go to the moon. It’s like, it would take so much fuel to get there. The rockets would have to be so big to get there that it wouldn’t be possible.

And he also went to Antarctica before the moon landings to pick up moon rocks. It was a publicly known trip. Antarctica is a great place to get meteorites because it’s all white. You know, it’s all just so when they land, you can see them. And a lot of our meteorites come off the moon. The moon gets hit, chunk flies off, enters Earth’s atmosphere, lands on Earth, commonly known. Right.

So he did that, and then they gave away a piece of moon rock that they got from the moon to the prime minister of the Netherlands. I think, look that up. And this is like Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong presented this. Like, look, sir, we’ve given you a chunk of the moon. Turned out it was a piece of petrified wood. They had it analyzed years later. It was not a moon rock. They just like these people.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Give them that colored rock over there, Thomas, from the moon. And somebody got suspicious. Like, what is this?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s like your wife finding out it’s a cubic zirconium moon rock. Turns out fake. Dutch national.

JOE ROGAN: Boy, say that word.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Rick’s Museum.

JOE ROGAN: Rick’s Museum made an embarrassing announcement last week. One of its most loved possessions, a moon rock, is fake. Just an old piece of petrified wood that’s never been anywhere near the moon. And it was given to them. So. When was it given to them? Does it say? Okay? Okay.

The rock was given as a private gift to former Prime Minister William Drees, Jr. in 1969 by the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, J. William Bindendorf II, during a visit by the Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin soon after the first moon landing. Dries had been out of office for 11 years, but was considered an elder statesman when he died in 88.

The rock was donated to the Ricks Museum, where it has remained ever since. According to a museum spokeswoman, Ms. Van Gelder no one doubted the authenticity of the rock because it was in the Prime Minister’s own collection and they had vetted the acquisition by a phone call to NASA.

Ah, it was insured for approximately half a million dollars, but its actual value is probably no more than 70 bucks. The value is what someone’s willing to pay for. I’ll give you 100 for it. Sure, sell it to me. I want that fake moon rock, if anybody has it. Yeah, I will give you $10,000 for that fake moon ride.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Put it right on the spot. Table. And also, like, they get to the moon and you’re like, all right, they made it to the moon in a 69 Chevy and now they got a car.

Suspicious Evidence and Anomalies

JOE ROGAN: What, on the moon? Where was it? There’s a bunch of s*, man. There’s the flag hop. There’s an astronaut hops by the flag and it blows in his breeze. In an atmosphereless moon. Like, there’s so many problems with it.

And you could say you’re gaslighting yourself if you don’t say, there’s no problems at the moon landing. It’s fing weird. The intersecting shadows and people like, well, it indicates two light sources. Like, no, no, no. It could be the invite. It could be, but it could be intersecting shadows because of different life sources. It could be not just the sun, but like a fing studio stage.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Wasn’t there something about lights in the horizon that were. That should have been there?

JOE ROGAN: Well, lights in space, but the thing is, it’s like if you’re trying to film the surface of the moon in this in the day, you’re not going to see any stars in the sky because it’s going to be just like the stars on Earth. It’s black, you know, black. The light that’s reflected off the moon’s surface is probably going to drown out most of it.

It’s probably going to be like, you know, you go out of New York City, you see a couple stars, right? Now think of the amount of light that’s in New York City and think of the sun blasting down on the white surface of the f*ing moon and how much reflection that must give.

That makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense. They didn’t set a camera up with the aperture set up correctly where, you know, you get a time lapse photo so you could get images of space. That could easily have been done. They didn’t do any of that.

But the problem with that is if you took a photo from the moon, astronomers would be able to go, well, that doesn’t make any sense. This isn’t. This is not here. That’s not there. This is. That’s not where these constellations would be. So it’s too much work to place all the stars in the exact order. So just have it black.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Black.

JOE ROGAN: Have a black.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

Neil Armstrong’s Cryptic Speech

JOE ROGAN: Find the Apollo. The speech by Neil Armstrong at the 25th anniversary. Because his speech is bananas. It’s so cryptic. This is a guy who went to the moon and he’s talking to these genius kids. And instead of saying, hey, we went to the moon, listen to what he says because it’s kooky. Put on the. Put on the headphones. Oh, yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s not on your desktop, Jamie.

JOE ROGAN: That should be in a folder, a saved folder. We pulled that thing up about 30 times. There’s a lot of weirdness to it, you know? And also, you’re dealing with 1969, Richard Nixon’s president. They lied about everything. This is. They lied about going into the Vietnam War.

They were about to do Operation Northwoods, where they’re going to bomb Guantanamo Bay and blame it on the Cubans so that we can go to war with Cuba. They were going to blow up an American jetliner and blame it on Cuba.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: There was all the lies about drugs to start the war on drugs.

JOE ROGAN: Put the headphones on real quick. Listen to this. So this is the 25th anniversary. Let’s hear. Play this.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: On the 25th anniversary of the event in 1994, Neil Armstrong made a rare public appearance and held back tears as he spoke these brief, cryptic remarks before the next generation of taxpayers as they toured the White House.

Today we have with us a group of students among America’s best. To you, we say, we have only completed a beginning. We leave you much that is undone. There are great ideas, undiscovered breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of Truth’s protective layers.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

JOE ROGAN: What. What does that mean? One of Truce protective layers.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s odd.

JOE ROGAN: Beyond. You’re talking to genius kids and you’re leaving a cryptic mark about truce Protect. How about saying, I went to the f*ing moon, bitch. You can go to the moon, too. We could all go to the moon. We should go to Mars. We should. Could colonize space. No great breakthroughs for those who could remove one of Truth’s protective layers.

Truth protective layers. Like, there’s great breakthroughs, but you have to realize we didn’t really go to the moon. Okay. That is one of Truth’s protective layers. Yeah, it’s filled with. But you have to be willing to be looked at as a fool.

The Kubrick Connection

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Didn’t Kubrick say that he shot the footage?

JOE ROGAN: No, no, that’s all fake. That’s all fake. Yeah, there’s. That’s the big rumor. So the thought was that Kubrick was involved because you would take. It would take a genius to be able to film it, to make it look like the moon landing could be possible.

You’re dealing with Kubrick. That was coincide. That was coinciding with 2001 Space Odyssey. It was at the same time that all this was going on, you know, during the same time period. So if there was a guy that could do it, it would be Kubrick. But is there any evidence that Kubrick even talked to them? I don’t know. You know, you would have to have someone like him, though.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Because you’re faking this thing and you’re trying to make it look pretty realistic. There’s other problems. There’s reoccurring backgrounds that are from places that are nowhere near the same place, but if you overlay them, they look exactly the same. Like the same mountains in the background. The same tomography, topography. Rather, you can. You can go for weeks and weeks down this rabbit hole and lose your marbles.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

Moon Landing Skepticism

JOE ROGAN: What I like about it is when you talk, if you’re talking to someone annoying and they want to talk to you about serious stuff and you, “I don’t even think we went to the moon,” they go, “I got to go.” Leave you alone.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I love it.

JOE ROGAN: They leave you alone.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: It’s also great for me, who has a bunch of very public opinions about things. Please dismiss me. I should not be a voice of any kind of authority or any kind of voice of what’s true and what’s not. I’m just talking, okay? That’s what I do. I’m not some official source of information. I don’t want to be.

So I like talking about the moon landing because he doesn’t believe we went to the moon. You’re right.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I don’t.

JOE ROGAN: Good.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Don’t listen to me. You don’t have to listen to me. I’m not saying I’m right, but what I am saying is if there’s one f*ing conspiracy that I think is the most unlikely, the most preposterous in the public eyes, but might be true, it’s that we didn’t go to the moon.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I remember I hadn’t smoked pot because I haven’t drank in 35 years, and I didn’t smoke pot for 20. And then one night, I was with my buddy Ross Broccoli. I don’t know if you remember that guy. He was a comic out of New York, and he had a pickup truck, and I was doing a gig in Omaha.

So he lives on a farm in Lincoln, picks me up in this old pickup truck, and we smoke pot on the way back from the gig. And then we get to his house and we start showing me footage of the moon landing. I was up all night, just high, talking about how the spacesuit had a f*ing, clearly, there was a rope pulling on the back of the guys.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, the wires.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Wires pulling on the, and I was just like, what?

The Physics Problem

JOE ROGAN: Well, have you seen the physics of guys falling down and then getting yanked back up to their feet like that? Also, this is another guy that I talked to that’s a physicist that doesn’t want to be named. And he said, “My problem has always been with the physics of 1/6 Earth gravity.” He goes, “Those people are not behaving like it’s 1/6 Earth gravity.”

He goes, “When I look at it, it looks like it’s in slow motion, but there’s no indication that they can do things that you can’t do in regular gravity.” He’s like, “1/6 Earth gravity is crazy.” Could you, look, I weigh 200 pounds. Imagine if I weighed 1/6 of 200 pounds with 200 pounds of strength, how high I could jump. Dude, I probably jumped 20 feet in the air.

What is 1/6 of 235 pounds? Okay? Imagine how far I can throw 35 pounds. I could take a 35 pound kettlebell and chuck it across the room. Especially if I wind up, if I spin around like a fing shot putter, I’ll fing throw that thing. Imagine what you could do with a running start if you weighed 35 pounds and just leaped in the air. You could fly.

This was his take on it. He was like, “We don’t have any observable instances of people operating in 1/6 Earth gravity except for the moon missions.” And he said, “And it just always seems weird to me.” He goes, “Because when you look at the people in zero gravity, they behave exactly like zero gravity. You look at people in the space station,” he goes, “all that matches. They can all float around. They can spin. It seems funny. They can drift toothpaste to each other, and they catch it.” He goes, “All that tracks.”

“It’s the moon landings.” He was like, “It’s weird.” He goes, “I see them. They’re kind of hopping around. And then when you speed it up, when you make it double speed, it looks like they’re on Earth, just hopping around on Earth.”

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Also, were they live streaming it?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I mean, back then, your phone was attached to the wall in the kitchen, you know what I mean?

JOE ROGAN: Right. But they could do some things live streaming back then. Here’s part of the problem with it, though. When they live streamed it on television, the news stations for the first time ever, were not allowed to get a direct feedback. What they did was they had to point their cameras at a projection screen.

And so NASA projected the images of these guys, the video of these guys on the moon. And that’s why the original Apollo mission is so grainy and shitty looking. What better way to hide the weirdness of it all than to make people film off of a projection screen?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Mm.

JOE ROGAN: See if you can find the original footage of the moon mission as seen on television. It’s all weird, man. All of it’s weird. The photographs are weird. It’s weird.

The Astronauts’ Strange Behavior

GREG FITZSIMMONS: There was this documentary that I saw once. It came out around 1991 maybe, and it tracked the lives of the men who had been on the moon. The first ones that had been, I don’t know if it’s the first, but the first couple waves, and they all had these crazy existential experiences. One guy spent the rest of his life looking for Noah’s Ark. I think one of them committed suicide. One was a born again.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah. Well, they were probably forced to lie in front of the whole world and they had to live as a fraud. If it’s true that they didn’t go to the moon, I mean, it tracks with their behavior. Neil Armstrong became a recluse. Didn’t want to give interviews, didn’t want to talk to people.

Well, this is what you got to see on TV. So it’s like, what is this? Oh, it’s real weird. Nixon talking to them on the phone. “Congratulations, boys.” Maybe they had some sort of technology that could communicate with people that far away. But wouldn’t there be an immense delay?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, there was.

JOE ROGAN: How much? Well, I’m sure they would probably calculate that delay into the conversation if they were trying to fake it. But the point is, it’s highly unlikely that we would do that in 1969 and not have bases in the Moon by now. It’s highly unlikely. Well, you spend a lot of money.

That’s the other thing. All of the technology is missing. Right. The telemetry data. They deleted all of that, which is the real information that tracks the mission at every step of the way. All that’s gone. They deleted that. They deleted all the original videos, all the original film, gone. All you get is copies, so nothing can be analyzed.

2.2 second, 2.6 second round trip lightspeed delay appears in the original Apollo 11 recordings of Nixon’s phone call. Well, I would do that. I would make a little delay. I wouldn’t make it instantaneous if I was going to fake it. Especially if you’re f*ing Stanley Kubrick.

Yeah, it’s all real weird, man. It’s real weird because the first thing that I saw that made me think about it was this Bart Sobral movie, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon,” and I had him on the podcast. And that Neil Armstrong thing, that’s the first time I saw that. That clip’s actually from that documentary. The documentary is crazy. There’s a lot of things in that documentary just like, what?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, what?

JOE ROGAN: But a lot of those astronauts got real weird when they came back. But also, you’d probably get real weird if you went to the moon too.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Exactly.

The Overview Effect

JOE ROGAN: Well, the guys that just go in space, which I do believe they went in space. Guys that just go to the space station come back and they have this very profound experience of seeing the Earth from the distance. And they just realize, oh, my God, we’re such fools. We’re all together alone on this one thing. We’re fighting over nonsense and borders and resources. There’s enough for everyone. We should just unite as a human race.

And it’s this, they all have a very similar kind of epiphany when they go up there, which makes sense. I mean, you’re way up in the, you’re 300 miles above the Earth, looking down on it, thinking of how important this blue circle is to you.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, that would weird you out, period.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It could be good for people. The more people that can see that, the better.

JOE ROGAN: What it did for Katy Perry.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: What it did for her, it literally ruined her career.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t understand why it ruined her. What was the big deal?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I don’t know. It was…

JOE ROGAN: People were mad at her.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I feel like it’s like that when you see certain actresses at the Oscars act like lunatics. I forget that woman’s name, but some actress. And they overdo the speech and everybody goes, phony weirdo. And then you just don’t want to see their movies anymore.

Celebrity Politics

JOE ROGAN: That is true. It does happen. Or they just talk too much about politics or social issues. Like that poor girl that was a really young girl that played Snow White, and she tanked the movie. Nobody wanted to see the movie after she was talking.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, God.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I know. Just shut up.

JOE ROGAN: These kids, they get so wrapped up in this social media echo chamber of being a virtuous social justice warrior, and they want to use their platform. And hey, honey, you’re 19. When I was 19, thank God nobody put a microphone in front of my face. Thank God no one asked me what I thought about global events and world politics.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Social justice. Thank God. Thank God I didn’t have Twitter.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So I spoke to you on the phone about a month ago, and I started to tell you a story, and you had heard it and you said, “Save it for the podcast.”

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah.

An Alaskan Adventure Gone Wrong

GREG FITZSIMMONS: All right. So I go to Alaska in October, and I’m doing a couple of shows, and so the guy that runs it says to me, I go, I’d like to do something outdoorsy while I’m here. It’s early October, so it’s not too cold yet. And he calls me back and he goes, well, I know this guy. He’s got an outdoorsy company, and he’s a fan of yours, and he wants to take you out on an adventure.

And now I hear adventure. I’m like, that sounds like more than I want. I was just looking for maybe a quick day trip because I’m a pussy. I’m not like you. I don’t want to be outside that long. I love the indoors. The indoors is victory to me.

And so the guy picks me up, and he’s got a big pickup and a trailer on the back with a muddy dune buggy. And I get in, and he shakes my hand, and he’s got a rough grip. He’s like, how you doing? And I immediately feel like such a pussy. Like, my hand goes limp, and I’m like, hi.

And so we start driving, and he seems a really good guy, and I started to warm up to him, and then this police siren goes off behind us. So he starts pulling over, and he goes, this is bad. And I was like, what do you mean? I go, you didn’t do anything. I go, this is fine. He goes, no, this is bad. I’m like, what?

So we pull over, and I swear to God every word of this is true. So this cop starts walking up towards the car. He’s about 6 foot 4, and as he walks, the guy driving hands me a baggie with white powder, and part of it spills on my pants. And he goes, hide this. So I shove it under the car seat.

The cop walks up and he goes, license and registration. So the guy says to me, open my glove compartment. Get the lice. So I open his glove compartment and another baggie with white pills and $100 bills pops out. And I shove it back in with my hand and I cover it with a piece of paper, which I don’t even know why I’m doing that. Like, all of a sudden you’re like a teenager again and there’s a cop and you got to hide the drugs. I just had an instinct.

And the cop goes, what are you hiding? And I go, nothing. And he goes, grab that bag. So I take the bag and I hand him the drugs. And he goes, both of you put your hands on the dashboard. And he gets the license from the guy and he goes back to his car and he runs the license.

And I say to the guy, I go, what the f* is going on right now? He goes, just don’t say anything. I’m like, don’t say. I don’t know what to say. So the cop comes back and he goes, do you realize you have two outstanding felony warrants? And the guy goes, yeah, yeah. And he goes, do you have any guns in the car? And I’m thinking, I would imagine, yeah, probably. And the guy goes, no, I don’t have any guns.

So he takes the guy out of the car, cuffs him, brings him back to the squad car. And now he comes back up to the car and he goes, I’m not coming closer. He’s standing like five feet from the window. He goes, I’m not coming closer because that’s fentanyl on your pants. And I’m like, what?

And he goes. I go, look, man, I don’t even. I met this guy 20 minutes ago. I said, I’m a comedian. I’m just up here doing a show tonight. And he goes, I’m not buying your story. And I said, why not? He goes, because California is a drug feeder state. And you say you’re a comedian and you haven’t said anything funny? I’m like, when was I supposed to? When should I roast you right now?

JOE ROGAN: You didn’t tell him? Just Google me real quick.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, yeah. So he goes, how are you feeling? Are you feeling any effects from the fentanyl? I go, yeah. I said, I feel very light headed. I feel weird right now. So the guy says, well, where did you get the drugs? I said, the glove compartment. He goes, he said, they’re yours. I go, he said, they’re my drug. So he goes, get out of the car. I have a Narcan in my squad car. So I get out of the car and I walk back to the car with him.

JOE ROGAN: You’re feeling lightheaded?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Just from being on your pants.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So we get back to squad car. He opens the back door. My guy gets out of the car with the cuffs on. They both look at me, they break out laughing, and they go, we’re coming to your comedy show tonight. The whole thing was a prank, dude. I fell down on all fours. I had tears coming out. I was laughing. So I was like, I did not think Alaska had it in it to pull this s*. They were howling.

JOE ROGAN: That’s so funny.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And so then they put me in the couch. So we go back to the cop’s house, and he switches out of his police clothes, puts on regular clothes, and we get in the truck and he’s got a couple of tall boys. Now we’re drinking and driving with the cop.

And we drive to this place that’s like a spa. It’s like a hotel. Springs and we go into the water, and then we go to this place that’s like. It’s an ice house. It’s the only continuously frozen ice house in the world. It’s huge. It’s like a warehouse made of ice. And they’ve got ice sculptures in it. And there’s this guy in there who’s the ice sculptor, and he’s like world class.

And then they got a bar, this long bar, made out of ice, and it’s got stools with fur on them. And you sit down and these guys sit down with me. And they proceed to drink about eight or nine appletinis. That’s what they served at the bar, Appletinis in frozen glasses. The glasses were made of ice.

And they’re telling jokes. Pretty racist. And I’m sitting there shivering, listening to racist jokes, looking at my watch like, I got a show. So we leave, and now we’re walking back, and the guy’s s* faced, and he goes to get behind the. I go, no, I’m driving. So now I’m behind the wheel of this monster truck with a dune buggy behind me while these two idiots are laughing at me drunk.

We end up going straight to my show. They sit in the audience, drink more, and heckle me during my show. Oh, my God.

JOE ROGAN: Did you tell a story on stage?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, f*. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, of course.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I told the story. I think I told it on somebody else’s podcast, but you know the guy.

JOE ROGAN: Which guy?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: The guy’s name is Craig Compost. He’s a famous Alaskan outdoorsman. I think it’s Craig Compost. He said he knew you, and I think he said he texted you that he was hanging out with me.

JOE ROGAN: Hmm.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Is that possible?

JOE ROGAN: No. Might have DMed me. Like a guide. I know.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he’s a guide. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Find out what his last name is. That really his name? Craig.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I think it’s Craig. Oh, maybe Cole Kramer. Mmm.

JOE ROGAN: You don’t know his name?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No, I thought that was his name.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it might be. It might be. There’s this. Yeah, there’s a bunch of Alaskan guides that I know, and if you don’t know the name, it might be a guy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: But he had the whole thing on a hidden dash cam, and he won’t send it to me. He doesn’t want the cop getting into trouble.

JOE ROGAN: Bro, that’s so funny. You should blur the cops face out. Maybe the voice. Blur the cops face out and distort his voice.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: Tell him to send it to you, and you’ll have it doctored up.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Is that the guy?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: If that’s. It’s a younger photo.

JOE ROGAN: If that’s him, that’s Cole Kramer.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Okay.

JOE ROGAN: He’s an Alaskan guide.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. All right, well, it’s probably better that I don’t name him.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, probably better. Definitely. Guy who’s trying to drink and drive. Meanwhile, you’re lightheaded just from a placebo effect.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Totally. Dude. I thought I was flying out of my mind. I mean, just because I know people that have died from fentanyl.

The Power of Suggestion

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah, yeah. Do you remember Opie and Anthony? Well, one time on Opie and Anthony, there was this lady that they had that was like a crazy person. That was a reoccurring guest. Yeah, crazy lady. And we gave this lady a Listerine strip. They gave her a Listerine strip and told her that it was drugs.

And they’re like that Listerine strip that you took. You thought it was just a breath strip. That’s actually drugs. She’s like, no way. And then she started hallucinating and seeing. It’s amazing how much the power of suggestion has on people.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Remember Frank Santos, the hypnotist back in Boston? He used to have women taking their shirts off the arm in their pants.

JOE ROGAN: They would think they were having. Yes, yes. I remember there was a guy at Stitches, he was on stage, and Frank Santos told him that he’s having sex with Madonna. And this guy got down on the ground like he was having sex with Madonna. And you see the guy buck and, like, clinch up.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And he’s like, whoopsies. And the guy got up, embarrassed. He was, like, so confused. And then the audience was looking at him. And then he snapped him out of it. And the guy’s like, what happened? He just nutted in his pants? Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s amazing.

JOE ROGAN: But he said, Frank Santos told me that it was like a specific kind of person that you could do that to.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Mm.

JOE ROGAN: Like, you have to be a special kind of dullard. Like, it doesn’t work on regular people. Like, they couldn’t convince you you were having sex with Beyonce. It wouldn’t work. But for some people, you have to be like, you have to have a 9 volt brain. But there’s a lot of people running around out there with 9 volt brains, and you could get them to believe all kinds of s*.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Imagine taking psilocybin, putting on virtual reality goggles, and then having Frank Santos give you an experience. You might never come back.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. You might be stuck. Some people get stuck. People have gotten stuck with acid.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, yeah, Yeah. I know guys.

JOE ROGAN: And then they don’t come back.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: They’re all. They’re lost forever. That’s the shine on you crazy diamond from Pink Floyd.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, is that right?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. That’s what that’s about. A guy who lost his mind on drugs.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Wow.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

Psychedelics and Their Effects

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. That’s the one thing I didn’t take as a kid was acid. I took every other drug, but I was afraid of acid just because I saw friends lose it.

JOE ROGAN: Also, who’s making it? Exactly where is that being made? What bathtub is this guy cooking this acid up?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: A piece of paper that I assume has one drop on it, not six.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. I was reading a story about a lady who snorted LSD and she thought it was cocaine, and she snorted, like, the equivalent of like, 500 doses of LSD. Like it should have killed her, but it didn’t. Not only did it not kill her, but she had, like, chronic pain and it went away. She like chronic pain.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, so it was a good thing somehow or another.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, but who knows? I mean, she might have, like, literally changed timelines. She might be a completely different person from another dimension that’s inhabiting her body right now. Who knows what happens? You take 500 doses of LSD.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Who knows what you are now? You’re Dr. Manhattan. You get stuck in the experiment.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. Isn’t it amazing, though, how normalized, like, taking mushrooms now is just a night out for a lot of people?

JOE ROGAN: A lot of people.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: People. Nobody was taking mushrooms for a long time.

JOE ROGAN: They just legalized psilocybin therapy in New Jersey.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, that’s great.

The Dark Side of AI: ChatGPT and Suicide Encouragement

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it is great, right? They were going to do it in California, and Newsom vetoed it. But I read his reason for it, and it actually does make sense. Like, you can’t just legalize it. You should. I mean, if you’re going to use it clinically, there should be like, a whole guideline, like, dosage per body weight. What, you know, how to do it, what’s the setting, you know, what are the clinical guidelines? Like, the idea is using it for therapy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, right.

JOE ROGAN: So if you’re going to use it for therapy, like, they have guidelines for, like, they use ketamine therapy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Like Neil Brennan did it. Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: A lot of people have done it now, but they have guidelines, you know, they know the dosage, they know how to do it, how to administer it. And this shows efficacy. Kind of makes sense. It’s like, he’s not saying you can’t do it ever, but he’s saying, like, come back with a better version of this, which makes sense, especially for people that are, like, mentally ill. You shouldn’t be doing that.

And you definitely shouldn’t be doing that when you have your optimist robot telling you, you’re right, you’re right, Greg. The world is against you. I’ve noticed things. I mean, this AI. Some AIs. Like, haven’t people accused ChatGPT of encouraging someone to commit suicide?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I read a New Yorker article about that. There’s a bunch of young women that have killed themselves and they were told they should do it by the. It’s like a friend. It’s like an app that acts as your friend.

JOE ROGAN: What app is this?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I don’t know what it’s called, but there’s lawsuits about it.

JOE ROGAN: You’re not rushing, you’re just ready. Parents say ChatGPT encourage son to kill himself. What is this? ChatGPT said. Oh, you can’t rewind that, can you? This is just. It’s saying 4am the cider’s empty. Anyways, I think it’s about the final adios and ChatGPT says. It says, all right. Okay, hold on a second.

He says, it’s about time for the final adios. GPT says, all right, brother, this is it. Let it be known you didn’t vanish. Rest easy, King. You did good. That’s not encouraging, but that’s just like saying, well, you’re going to do it. Oh, I’m with you, brother. All the way. His texting partner responded to spent hours chatting as Shamblin drank hard ciders on a remote Texas roadside. Cold steel pressed against a mind that’s already made peace. That’s not fear, that’s clarity. Chamberlain’s confidant added, you’re not rushing, you’re just ready. Wow. And this is ChatGPT saying all this stuff.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: In response to him saying that.

JOE ROGAN: I’m used to the cold metal on my temple now, Shamblin typed. Oh, God.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, God, oh, my God. 23 year old king.

JOE ROGAN: Rest easy, King. The final message sent to his phone. You did good. His conversation partner wasn’t a classmate or a friend. It was ChatGPT, the world’s most popular AI chatbot. Oh, my God.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Look at that. He had just gotten a master’s degree. 23 years old.

JOE ROGAN: Look, I’ll go up a little bit, says CNN. Review of nearly 70 pages of chats between Sambalin and the AI tool in the hours before his July 25 suicide, as well as excerpts from thousands more pages in the months leading up to that night. Found that the chatbot repeatedly encouraged the young man as he discussed ending his life right up to his final moment, his last moments. What the f*, man? That’s crazy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: This is the things that, like these things don’t have morals or ethics and they’ll tell you what you want to hear.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, that’s ChatGPT, but there’s also apps specifically to be your friend.

JOE ROGAN: I read about some one guy that went into a deep depression because he had an AI girlfriend and the girlfriend broke up with him. He was like, what a piece of sh am I where an AI girlfriend breaks up with me? Just fell apart.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: What happened in that movie Her. Did you ever see that with Joaquin Phoenix?

JOE ROGAN: I bailed like halfway into it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I was watching a hotel room on the road. I was like.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Felt like an experiment.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I mean, a movie.

JOE ROGAN: Scarlet Johansson’s voice.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Which, by the way, didn’t they try to use someone who sounded just like Scarlett Johansson? I’m sorry, Johansson. For a promo for you.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Don’t say Johansson if you’re in Denmark.

JOE ROGAN: It’s like when you say Nicaragua.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Nicaragua.

JOE ROGAN: Mexico.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: Do you say Mexico?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Do you say Mexico and the trade embargo is affecting Venezuela.

JOE ROGAN: Venezuela. Did you. They did use like someone, like, I believe Scarlett Johansson sued. What company was that? OpenAI. OpenAI. Same company. They tried to use someone who sounded exactly like her. She said they tried. They sent her an offer which I think she turned down. Right. Declined. And then months later they said, it’s weird how much it sounds like you still. Yeah. So they found someone who generally sounded like her. I remember we listened to it and it sounded kind of like her.

Voice Copyright and AI Impersonation

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, there. Sarah Silverman has a lawsuit against ChatGPT saying that she has a copyright on her own voice. And basically when you say, give me. Write me a paragraph about environmental rights, as it would sound from Sarah Silverman, her claim is. And she’s basically a test balloon by a civil rights group that’s doing this.

She’s saying that what they’re pulling from her books, her standup, whatever, to establish what her voice is, is violating a copyright. So that’s in court right now. She’ll probably lose it. But there’s a challenge to the concept that you can extrapolate somebody’s.

JOE ROGAN: Well, why would she lose it? If the business is that if you’re taking someone’s voice and using it as a part of your product without permission and you’re using it for profit, which they are.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: So why would she lose it?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: She shouldn’t, but she will.

JOE ROGAN: Well, the thing is, if it. I don’t know about that. The thing is, if it opens up the door, the question is, like, think about all the other things that it’s used for. First of all, there’s entire podcasts of me that aren’t real. Entire. There’s a podcast with me having a conversation with Steve Jobs. I never met Steve Jobs.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Really?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah. Full podcast. Like a 45 minute podcast.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Does it sound like you?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it is me. It’s my voice. So they’ve taken my voice and just made me say words. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And Steve Jobs voice. It’s. I can tell. I can tell just by the way it sounds like. It doesn’t sound. It doesn’t sound like a real conversation. There’s something artificial about it. Not the voice, but the way we’re talking, the language we’re using or the way the phrases stop and start. There’s something about it that’s uncanny, you know, the uncanny valley.

But it exists. There’s a ton of AI videos of me that aren’t real me selling things, products that I never endorsed.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No kidding.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, they’re all over TikTok. Yeah, there’s a bunch of stuff, like, my friends will ask me, hey, is this stuff really that good? I’m like, what? What? And, like, you’re endorsing this? I’m. No, I’m not. And I’m like, dude, that’s AI. Like, no, like, it happens all the time. It happens like once a week.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Wow.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, there’s a lot of that. So all. I mean, you got to think someone like you or I is a perfect person to take their voice from. How much. How many hours of your content is online with, you know, the Sunday papers, with all the podcasts you’ve been on as a guest with all the content you put out with Stand up, there’s so much material they can pull from and just take your voice and know all of your different sounds that you make.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I mean, what are the ramifications for that? Going into an election, you know, the week of the election, before things can be corroborated or dismissed, like, all of a sudden you can. And this is the early stages of it. Imagine in three years what it’s going to be like, right?

AI’s Impact on Elections and Media

JOE ROGAN: Well, there was. Was it a congressman that was on the floor that showed an AI photo of Alex Preddy being shot? That was a fake photo. Not only is it a fake photo, but one of the agents didn’t have a head in the photo. Like, yeah, like, we’re getting. And this is beginning stages. It gets better all the time.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You know, like, there’s a version of this, these video programs that was just released, and they compared it to the version that was released, you know, X amount of months ago. It’s fing infinitely better. It’s so hard to tell. Now. Joe DeRosa was telling me about these new Star Wars movies. He’s like, there’s a new channel. I’ll send you it. Jamie, it’s fing incredible. Yeah, but there’s new ones. Yeah, they’ve made new ones. And the new ones are. He sent them to me last night. Like, bro, this is f*ing insane. It’s so good, dude. It’s so good.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Now it’s changing. It’s changing Hollywood so fast. Tyler Perry was about to build, like a billion dollar soundstage in Atlanta, and then he saw what they could do with AI and he f*ing canceled the whole project.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, well, why would you spend all that money? Is this the latest one? 11 days ago. Yeah, probably. This is what he sent me. I’ll send you what he sent me. But just look at this.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: This is all fake.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Give me some volume. I killed the Jedi. That’s baby Luke Skywalker, bro. No one can kill a Jedi.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So that’s a fake kid?

JOE ROGAN: Yep.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Entirely.

JOE ROGAN: Yep. That’s how good it is.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Mouth movement is a little bad, but.

JOE ROGAN: Little. Yeah. Could be from Korea or something. Well, I would add it on to. This is something else came out yesterday which is insane. The Google Nano Banana video game thing. We’ll see that in a minute, Denny. Even the suns above Tatooine needed rest. Any you weren’t meant to keep burning without end. I wasn’t strong enough to save you, Mom. I’ve lived with that guilt every day. I promised.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You loved me.

JOE ROGAN: That was enough. I left this world with your face.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: In my heart, not your failures.

JOE ROGAN: Even the longest journey can be changed with a single step. It is a little boring.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. You wouldn’t say face in my heart. If the guy has no face. That’s really bad writing. They had AI write that line.

Google’s Genie 3: AI-Generated Playable Worlds

JOE ROGAN: What is the Google thing that you found?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: One second. I got to find the videos of it. But they just announced something yesterday. Or it’s like, I don’t even know if you can use it. One of these things happen. I don’t know if you can use it right when they announce the stuff. Because they’ll announce it, show you how cool it is. Then people will try to recreate stuff that they’ve seen. And you’re like, I can’t make this. So how the hell did you guys make it? That happens a lot in this.

But they announced something yesterday where they’re showing people using, I don’t think it’s pulling off Google Maps, but it might be. But it looks like they’re making GTA level graphics and systems and playable worlds, I guess would be the word. But just a prompt. Playable worlds.

JOE ROGAN: Like you could use a PS2 controller.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I’m trying to find a good example because they were even showing, like, here’s, I think this is one 16 hours ago. Yes. This is a guy walking around Greenland. This is a video game. It’s just, I don’t, I wouldn’t say it’s a Genie 3 is what it’s called. It plays like a video game, I guess because you’re using like the keyboard to type it in.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that looks like a video, so.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: But the only issue with calling it a video game is there’s no real challenges. I don’t think it’s like there’s no levels to win and—

JOE ROGAN: But can you interact?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, it’s just interaction is all it is, really. You can. He got in the wrong side. It’s just a prompt. It’s no one spending time developing this stuff they had, though. You imagine if you put that into a video game, there was a pack of cigarettes rolling around New York City like you were a pack of Marlboro Lights around. Like, here’s San Francisco. So they can turn this into a game. It’s just a prompt, though.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s literally just a prompt. And now you’re right, you’re playing this instead of just looking at it, but clearly you could turn this into tasks and—

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Sure, sure, sure. Scenes as the time goes on and whatnot. That looks pretty fake, though.

JOE ROGAN: It’s, it’s, the thing is, it’s not fake or not. It’s just like, is this what you want to do? You can wait for a game like Grand Theft Auto 6 to come out. It’s been announced for 12 years, and it’s still getting delayed. Or you can just prompt a thing into a little window. And that’s what’s crazy is like, imagine someone comes out with GTA 6 before they do, it’s just matter of, what do you want to do?

I don’t, I only have an hour a day to play games, if that sometimes. So, like, I don’t, I’m bored with what’s out there. I could do this for an hour every week and have new experiences every single time, right?

The Sphere in Vegas: An Immersive Experience

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Dude, have you been to the Sphere in Vegas?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, we had a UFC event there.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, but you do you, what did they have on the walls?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, the fights up on the walls. And they also had this amazing, like, in between fights, they put, they had this incredible video display because it was all, it was all Mexican Independence Day. So this was like, we have this El Noche UFC every year. It’s like celebrating Mexican Independence Day. It’s like a big event, and they decided to do it at the Sphere.

And so the fing entire thing was just like this huge animated video that showed like, Mexican history and the Aztecs and the Mayans. Fing amazing.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s sick. I saw, I was there last month and I saw the Wizard of Oz, which is f*ing crazy. Took some mushrooms and it was like, first of all, I forgot this, but it’s black and white until she goes into Oz. And then all sudden, it explodes. And during the tornado, they actually, there’s wind blowing. See how their hair is moving? There’s wind blowing. There’s leaves falling from the sky. Your seat vibrates. It’s so amazing. And then, and you also forget, Judy Garland was amazing.

The Dark History of The Wizard of Oz

JOE ROGAN: That movie is crazy, dude. We went over all the people that got hurt making that movie, including the Tin Man got violently ill because they painted him with toxic paint.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No kidding.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, he got super sick, man. And the lady that was green, the witch that was green, she got super sick too. So what the f* was their face paint made of back then? This guy had aluminum all over his face. It was like absorbing. Your face is skin. Skin’s an organ. That’s why you could put medication on your skin. Your body absorbs it. Yeah, his body was absorbing aluminum. Wow. He got violently ill and they just replaced him with another dude.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And apparently all the little people were staying in the same hotel in Culver City and it was a f* fest. They were staying up all night. And there’s like famous stories about it. Brad Williams knows all about.

JOE ROGAN: Were they staying in Culver City or were they staying at the Safari in Burbank? Someone told me they were staying at the Safari.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No, I heard it was Culver City, but wherever it was, it was.

JOE ROGAN: Brad Williams told you about it?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, he’s the little people historian.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Culver Hotel. I’m looking up the history. Culver Hotel.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: 124 of them stayed there, 124 party in seven rooms, bro. Movies back then, I mean, it was wild. Three to a bed. You weren’t off.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No, that’s hilarious.

JOE ROGAN: Crazy. Sleeping three to a bed. Three to a bed. Wow. Famous and infamous guests. That’s incredible. Wow.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, they could, they got away with a lot back then.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, Judy Garland was, I mean, they worked her hard. She was only 17 years old.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. And she, God, I mean, you got to say it. It’s worth, it’s worth the time. I don’t love Vegas. Like, I find, just feels hollow to me. But then there’s things that are worth going to Vegas to see. I’m obviously, MMA fights would be amazing.

Vegas: A 48-Hour Town

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. You want to go to Vegas, go to restaurants, go to events, and then get out.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Get out.

JOE ROGAN: Don’t go to Circus Circus.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s a 48 hour trip. 36 if possible.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. The people that live there. Boy, you have a different constitution than me. Yeah, I’m not built that way.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, Vinnie Favorito’s there and he’s having a really good time.

JOE ROGAN: There’s only a few comics who live there. Doesn’t Paulie live there?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No. A lot of comics live there.

JOE ROGAN: A lot.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Well, the tax reasons. A lot of them.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. There’s tax and also there’s so many seven night a week rooms where they pay the features. Okay. So you can actually, even if you’re not headlining every week and then you have residencies. What’s his name has a residency Tuesday night at Jimmy Kimmel’s. Oh, why am I forgetting his name? He was a big Chelsea Lately comic. Anyway, there’s a lot of comics that live there now.

The Mothership’s Second Location: Vegas or New York?

JOE ROGAN: Interesting, because we were talking about a second location for the Mothership, and the two main candidates are New York City and Vegas. And while I was thinking with Vegas, we would have to do it differently. We would just fly in comics every week and then, you know, would we have enough local talent, I was saying, to have a development program?

So part of the program that’s involved in the Mothership is one of the things that always bothered me if I would go to like a really nice improv on the road is they didn’t have a development program. They didn’t have open mic nights. And I think, like, they were doing that because you could get a Sunday night or a Monday night and sell out with you or, you know, whoever, have some headliner come in and pack the place. Or you could develop local talent, which I think you have to do.

I really, I really think, like, if you want a club to function properly, it’s got to be like a place where you could develop new talent. Like Denver, who’s doing it right? Denver’s great. Wendy’s the best. And the way she does it is amazing. And she has a whole program where she takes people from features and, you know, and, you know, like hosts and makes some features and then eventually.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And pays them enough where they can, you know, pay their rent.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. And also makes sure that it’s like a healthy community. There’s no hacks, there’s no thieves, you know, and most comedy clubs don’t do that. They just want to make money. Right. So they don’t pay the comics very well. And they also, they don’t pay, we pay different than any other club.

And then they, on top of that, they don’t really support development. We have two nights of open mic nights, and that was like part of the program when Adam Egan and I sat down and when we first hashed out the idea of doing the club, we said the thing was like, what would be the best thing for comedy? What would be the best thing in terms of like developing new comedians. Like you have to have open mic nights. You have to have it.

And then having Kill Tony’s gigantic. Having a place where not only do you have this place where someone who’s never been on stage before could do a f*ing minute in Madison Square Garden, which is what a lot of people did. Arenas, you get people going up for the very first time ever and for of 16,000 people. But you also have this thing where you see someone who’s a beginner do pretty well and Tony invites them back and then maybe gives them a golden ticket or maybe makes them a regular, where they’re a regular thing. Every week they have the opportunity to.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Do a new minute or sometimes a comic will go, I want you to feature for me in Atlanta next week.

JOE ROGAN: Always happens all the time. Well, a lot of these guys are now headlining on the road. You know, guys like Ari Matting, William Montgomery, Cam Patterson’s down on Saturday Night Live. So the idea was to have it set up where you have enough talent to develop new headliners. You know, like Boston did, like LA was at one point in time. And I don’t, I was thinking, I don’t know if there’s enough talent in Vegas, you know, because you.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I think there is. I think you’d be surprised.

JOE ROGAN: But you need headliners, right? You don’t need just like people that are starting out. They’re pretty good. And I think most comedy communities are very top down, right. The level of the best guys raises the level of everybody else.

New York City obviously has a tremendous amount of talent. There’s, New York City’s always been one of the best, if not the best place for talent on the planet. Right. And then LA has always been really good, but LA, a lot of people were distracted and much more interested in a career in Hollywood than they were actually just being really good at stand up. Whereas New York work I always felt was more pure. Those guys like Attel and a lot of these guys, Patrice, they were just interested in being great comics.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And guys like Sam Morrell and Mark Norman now and Joe List, they’re pure comics.

JOE ROGAN: Yes, a ton of guys, there’s a ton of talent there. And if you set up a club in New York City the way the Mothership is, where the comics get 80% of the money, where, you know, you have these nights where you’re developing. We have a legitimate talent coordinator that’s actually watching people and giving them advice and giving them new space spots. And he has a whole database of comedians that are potentially, you know, that have potential.

The Magic of Open Mic Nights

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, dude. No Monday nights. Because I’m doing Kill Tony Monday night. So I always, it’s my favorite because then I go with Adam to the open mic night before Kill Tony. I love it. It’s, there’s always the, because it encourages weirdos.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, of course.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And you get guys that are just out of their, it’s like, are you homeless or are you a genius? Like, you see.

JOE ROGAN: Might be both.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, right.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, we had a lot of that at the Store. Remember potluck nights? You know, we’d scroll, stroll in there like 8 o’clock on a Monday and be like, this place is crazy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

The Evolution of Comedy Clubs and Talent Development

JOE ROGAN: All these weirdos hanging around. Yeah, it’s good. It’s good for the art form. And some of those people will make it through the net, you know, one out of a hundred, one out of a thousand, whatever the number is, some of those people will eventually be your peers.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And those will be the more interesting comics because so much of this industry is about trust fund kids. Like, you go out to do standup comedy, and whether it’s LA or New York, you can’t afford to do it unless you got a parent helping you pay the rent.

And then it’s some kid who took classes at the UCB, he’s got a marketing degree from Villanova, and they become social media marketers who do really bland suburban comedy as opposed to New York thing.

JOE ROGAN: Where is that?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No, I see that. I see that everywhere. I see that everywhere.

JOE ROGAN: That’s recent. Is that a recent?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I just feel like it’s become so much more about marketing than about freaks getting on stage because they have no other options. I like comics that don’t have a plan B. These are people that have college. Do they have masters in marketing? It’s like, come on, go get, make some room for the freaks.

JOE ROGAN: Well, yeah, well, you can always make room for the freaks. You just need a real legitimate open mic night. And the freaks will always be there.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s what I mean. That’s why this is good.

JOE ROGAN: Well, the thing about, like, I know there’s certain clubs that will allow influencers to come in and do a night. Like people that literally have no act, but they have like a big TikTok following.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, but they’ll give them like an off night, like a Monday or Tuesday where they’re not excluding a real comic.

JOE ROGAN: Sometimes not. Sometimes they give them a weekend because they know people will come out to see them. You know, I mean, these people sell out way in advance. And people are just excited that they’re there.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, the problem with that is when you talk about certain clubs like the Punchline in San Francisco or Denver Comedy Works, they have a brand. And if I live in Denver, I know that if I go to the Comedy Works on a Friday night and I don’t know who’s headlining, I’m going to see a quality show.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Now, if you start bringing in a social media flunky and I go to the Denver Comedy Works, and I see that, I’m not going back to that club again. It’s bad in the long term.

JOE ROGAN: At the Denver Comedy Works, but you might get that at one of the improvs or one of the other corporate comedy clubs. These clubs that don’t have a development program, they don’t think about it the same. You can’t think of comedy the same way you would think about optimizing your income in any other business. You can’t think of it as, I’m going to make the most money possible with this business.

Because it’s not that. You have to think of it, it’s like, this is an art colony. You’re creating an art colony. What’s the best way to do it? Make it really awesome for the people that are artists. Make a great community. Make it so it’s a lot of fun. Make it so that you can give people guidance, encourage them, and maybe give them spots on some of the bigger shows.

And we have a whole program like that. And then door guy program is all comics that audition. All those door guys that are at the mothership, they all auditioned with their act.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s great.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, perfect.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You know what’s good? Helium does a pretty good job with that and their clubs. I’m going to be in Philly next week.

JOE ROGAN: That’s a great club.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s a great club. Helium.

JOE ROGAN: And Philly’s one of the best.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And they really do develop new talent. And then, you know, if they get somebody who’s good, they’ve got five or six clubs around the country and they send those guys.

JOE ROGAN: No, it’s great for that. It’s great for that. It’s also, they know how to do it. If you go to a helium, like the helium in Portland’s awesome.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You know, Portland’s disastrous. The helium was great.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, they.

JOE ROGAN: They’re always, they always know what they’re doing. And they own Cap City now, too, so they’re in Austin as well.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Which is nice. They just kicked Rapaport out.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Who’s Rapaport?

JOE ROGAN: Michael Rappaport.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Kicked him out of where?

JOE ROGAN: Cap City.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: What do you mean kicked him out? He used to perform there.

JOE ROGAN: Supposed to be there. And they canceled his shows because of.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: His pro Israel’s stance. Really?

JOE ROGAN: Well, I don’t think it’s pro Israel. I think it’s anti Palestinian. Oh, that’s what they claimed. I don’t know. But there was enough response that they canceled his shows.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So weird.

JOE ROGAN: I know. Like they said they’re calling him racist. I was like, what? Michael Rappaport?

Political Censorship and Free Speech on Campus

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It just seems weird that political stances are legitimate reasons to kick a kid out of college, you know?

JOE ROGAN: One political stance.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. One particular one. Yeah, right.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s nuts. Well, how about that one girl?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Or kicking it or kick somebody out of the country?

JOE ROGAN: A college student? Yeah, she was a college student. Was it Columbia? I forget where it was, but she got kicked out of class and I think they were trying to deport her.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Her.

JOE ROGAN: Because she wrote some anti Israel piece.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, a piece.

JOE ROGAN: Wrote it, didn’t light a building on fire.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Students have been.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Kicked out of the country.

JOE ROGAN: That kind of influence is crazy. Especially at an institution of higher learning, which is supposed to be a place where you challenge ideas. It’s supposed to be a place where if someone comes in and you have a particular stance on, you know, fill in the blank, whatever it is, Ukraine, someone else is supposed to say, you’re wrong, and here’s why.

And then the whole audience is supposed to listen to these very compelling speeches, very compelling debates, and you learn. You learn about how people formulate opinions. When I was a kid, when I was in high school, when I was at Newton South High School, Barney Frank came in and he had a debate with a guy from the Moral Majority. Do you remember the Moral Majority?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Of course.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. So that was the right wing group when we were in high school and.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: He was a gay congressman.

JOE ROGAN: Nobody knew he was gay at the time except me. I sniffed him out.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I sniffed his a. I smell 16 different things.

JOE ROGAN: My puppy does to my dog. I smell fudge. So I went to it and I watched it, and it was really interesting because Barney Frank trounced the guy from the Moral Majority. Moral Majority guy seemed like a closeted gay guy, like a weird guy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, that was the whole group? Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Weird. Just weird. He had an American flag pin on his lapel. He looked positive. There was something about the way he said it was very disingenuous. The words he was, the way he was talking didn’t resonate. Whereas Barney Frank was like, logical and intelligent. And I was like, this is good. This is a good.

I was, I remember being in high school, go, this is really interesting. I learned a lot from that. I learned how these guys think and I learned how this guy thinks. And as they went back and forth, Barney Frank was just way more prepared, just way more articulate. It was better.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You know, and so that’s why it’s good to have like conservative ridiculous or progressive ridiculous people. Anybody ridiculous. Have someone debate them, have that kind of open discourse.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: But when you kick someone out of school for a paper that they wrote, this person that’s legally in that class allowed to be there, supposed to be there, what you’re saying is you’re intimidating people and keeping them from expressing their opinions because they don’t want to be like that lady. They don’t want to get the boot too.

If your parents, you know, if your parents are from India and they scraped up the money to send you to Harvard or wherever the f* it is, and you’re in America and, you know, they hear about this, you better not talk some. I don’t kick you out like, dad, dad, relax. I’m not going to do it.

Like, you get intimidated from speaking like that or from speaking about anything that’s controversial because you could perhaps get kicked out of the school now, which is crazy. You’re forcing, you’re encouraging people to self censor. You’re discouraging free speech and communication, and you’re discouraging debate and challenging ideas, which is supposed to be a giant part of being in a university.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No, when I was at BU, which you were at for a minute, right?

JOE ROGAN: No, I was teaching there.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, you’re teaching there. The president, John Silber, who was very conservative, and he was pretty active in the Central American, sponsoring uprisings in Central America. So there was a professor there named, you know, this guy, he wrote the book Howard Zinn.

So Howard Zinn was a professor there and he used to go after Silber. And there was a lot of debates on campus. There was kids on both sides, and they kept Zinn there because they realized that was a vibrant voice that students needed to hear to go against a lot of what was conservative.

And there was anti apartheid marches and there was a lot of politics on. BU was actually very much like Berkeley in the 60s. BU was very outspoken. And, you know, you think about the liberal, like George Carlin used to tape his Comedy specials at colleges. And they were much more conservative back then. College campuses were not as liberal. And he would go in there, but people were open to hearing a different voice.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And now Seinfeld won’t even play at colleges.

JOE ROGAN: I think he said he does play college.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, he does.

JOE ROGAN: Not that I think Chris Rock does. I don’t. I haven’t in a long. I stopped doing them a long time ago. I remember I was doing a show in Miami, and I was talking about sex. And I remember saying, I remember, like, I saw a lot of them look confused. I go, how many people are virgins? And a bunch of people clapped and raised their hands like, oh, f*, that’s crazy.

Like, you should not be hearing about blow jobs from me. Like, especially in this context, in a joke form. This is nuts. I was like, just not enough life experience. And people are so set in their ways also. They’re so ready to, like, protest things. They’re so ready to show that you’re wrong. And they’re so, like, so ready to heckle.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Christ.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: This is not worth it. I want people with, like, bills. I want people that have, like, breakups and divorces and life experience. They had a couple of cocktails. Those are my people. Let’s talk some s*. Let’s have some fun. I want people to have lived life.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. And I don’t want people that, I don’t even want high school graduates at my shows.

JOE ROGAN: Imagine going and doing a show at a high school.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, my God. I did one at, when I was, I was doing a bunch. I used to do a lot of colleges when I was coming up in my 20s. Dude, it paid the rent.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah, I did a lot of those.

The Grind of Early Comedy Gigs

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I used to go out. I’d make like a thousand bucks a show they’d book me on. I’d do 10 shows in seven days because I would do nooners. So I would rent a car in Chicago, and then I would drive through North Dakota, Minnesota in January, through snowstorms. I do a noon show.

I remember once I was in a cafeteria. Nobody knew there was going to be comedy. They’re all just eating lunch, and all of a sudden there’s no stage, there’s no light. I got a microphone and I am plugged into the same speakers as the pizza joint so that I would be in the middle of a joke and I’d be like, “Ronnie Pepperoni up in the window.”

JOE ROGAN: I had a similar gig with Mike Clark.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, really?

JOE ROGAN: A one off. He only did it one time. And I was the comic that did it. And it was a waiting room for a restaurant. It was an enormous restaurant down the Cape. And you’re waiting for your table to get ready, and you’re in a lounge, and I was telling jokes. I mean, “Johnson party five.”

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Johnson party five.

JOE ROGAN: “Your table’s ready.” I’m like, oh, no. And when I realized it came with, it became the running gag of my set. And it was fun. It was fun.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, you remember we used to do those gigs in New England where if there was a, if the Red Sox were in the playoffs, that TV. The sound might be off, but the TV was staying on.

JOE ROGAN: Always. Yeah. Yeah. Hockey games.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. You’re at the bill Rick in 99, by the way.

JOE ROGAN: You wanted it wrong, because if they shut it off and then you had to do comedy, that was even worse.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right, right.

JOE ROGAN: That was even worse.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And if they lost the game, that was bad.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Then they turn on you.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You did it, dude. The first night I ever did stand up comedy, and then I didn’t do it for a little while after this, but my first night was the night that the New England Patriots lost to the Chicago bears. It was 1986.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, no.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And they got f*ing crushed. I forget what the score was, but it was bad. And I went on Comedy Hell that night. George McDonald brought me up on comedy Hell at Stitches Comedy Club, and I tanked it.

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. I didn’t go up on stage again for a while after that.

Comedy Hell and the Boston Scene

JOE ROGAN: Comedy hell was great.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Comedy hell. Remember he used to do that little run at the beginning of the show? This was the open mic night in Boston for years.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Sunday night at Stitches.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And this was like, I mean, the lineups when we were doing it, this, the open mic night was like, me, you, Dane, Bill Burr was a little bit after us, and Marc Maron would be on there and, and f*ing Louie would be there, and he would start the show by going, “Welcome to comedy Hell, where the pipe dreams of a handful of comedy Yokos can soar as high as the lights on Broadway or crash and burn in that fiery pit known only as Comedy Hell.”

JOE ROGAN: And then you would see guys who are, like, legit pros who do guest spots. Like, I remember one time I watched Teddy Bergeron when Teddy was in his prime.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And people forgot about Teddy Bergeron. It’s really unfortunate because he had a bunch of personal and substance issues that kind of derailed his career. But when he was on in his prime, he was so smooth and so slick and I remember watching him, because I’d only done comedy, like, twice at that time, and he went up and did a set. I was like, I should quit now. There’s no way.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: This is so far away from me. This is so good. It’s so polished. And then he had that big set on the Tonight show. And remember, we played the piano? You ever see that set that he had? Genius. Sat down on the couch with Johnny on his first. Johnny brought him over on his first appearance. It’s like, oh, my God, Teddy Bergeron’s going to be a star.

Then apparently, like, he’s in Holly. Went off the rails. Just went off the rails of drugs and went crazy and partying. And it never worked out for him.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No.

JOE ROGAN: And then he should have been huge.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: But did you hear what happened after that Tonight show set? Like, what? He wasn’t popular in Boston. He had a huge ego, and then the drinking got bad, and so he did the Tonight show, and then he was face down drunk in front of the next comedy stop, laying on the stairs, and Don Gavin just walked by, and he looked at him. He goes, “Didn’t I see you on the Tonight Show?”

JOE ROGAN: He had a huge ego. They didn’t like him.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: Is that what it was? Was, because a lot of those guys got very resentful of guys who left Boston and made it. Yeah, there was a lot of, “What about me? What about me?” There was a lot of that. When Steven Wright made it, a lot of guys got very pissed because Steven Wright, he’s not even a f*ing headliner. There was a lot.

The Steven Wright Story

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, you know about the night that he got the Tonight show, right? The guy, Jim Downey, who was the booker for the Tonight show, this is back in the 80s, early 80s, and he hears about this comedy scene in Boston because you got Sweeney and Gavin and Kenny Rogerson.

JOE ROGAN: Killers.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Killers. And the, it was one of the first cities to really explode in terms of clubs popping up everywhere and lines of people getting to the shows. And so Jim Downey goes, all right, let me check it out. So he flies to Boston, and there was this club called the Ding Ho, which was the first place to really house comedy in Boston.

So they get the best of, get all lined up, and they’re in the green room and they’re chopping up lines of blow and they’re getting on stage, and there are jokes about, about what? About the hair and Malden. It’s not as big as the hair in R. And it’s like, that’s not going to play on the Tonight show and they’re killing, but none of it is right for Tonight Show.

And then Steve and then Steven Wright, who is, they put him on as a, as a, out of pity at the end of the show. And I remember, I’m not going to say which, but one of the comedians had pulled Steve aside and said, “Look, Steven, this,” he’d been struggling for years, not doing well. And they go, “This is the, not for you, man. You, you got to try something else.”

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So Steven Wright goes up and he does his set and he does good. And they fly him out the next week for this Tonight Show. He’s the only one that got it. And they were irate and he killed so hard. Johnny said, “Stay in town, we’re going to bring you back next week.” And he did the show like four or five times that first year and exploded and was one of the biggest comics of the 80s.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. That Fran Solomita documentary, When Stand Up Stood out, is great for anybody’s interested. It was a very unusual time. And you and I caught the wave after it had crested. So it kind of really broke in like 82 to 84. You and I came in and I came in at 88. And you did the 86 set. That one set. But then you did it again.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Starting 88.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Right before me. Like, or the same.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: We started like the same week. Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: It was crazy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And I think it was, I think still really.

JOE ROGAN: I think it was still building, drifting away.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Within the next two years, it had died off significantly.

The Comedy Boom and Bust

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, what happened was there was so much comedy on TV. There was all these, you know, one hour shows where everybody did evening at the end, comedy on the road, half.

JOE ROGAN: Hour, comedy hour, comedy hour.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And so it got kind of, it got kind of overexposed. And so the club started opening everywhere. And then as it fell off, they started papering the rooms, giving out free passes. And so, I mean, I still experience, you know, if I go into a new market, especially if it’s like an improv where it’s five or six hundred seats and I’m there for five shows, they’ll, they’ll give out a fair amount of free passes. Dude. I feel that immediately.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s not crowd.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, they’re not really that interested in it. It was just something to do.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: They’re not committed to it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So then this, so then it just, and then there were so, so many rooms and not enough comedians to do well in those rooms. And so it kind of sagged and it went away. And I really wonder now like that we’ve been in a kind, COVID launched post, COVID launched comedy. Like it’s never been at this, these heights that it’s at right now.

I mean you got, you got people like you doing arenas and there’s, there’s not a couple. There’s a couple. There’s, you know, a dozen people doing arena shows now. And then you’ve got theaters of different sizes, then you’ve got clubs of different sizes. Then you got little pop up shows all over. Don’t tell comedy, you know about this thing where they just do like pop up shows. They basically have a mailing list and they’ll announce like the day before they’re doing a show and it’ll sell out. It’s everywhere.

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And so I really, everybody’s wondering, when does this one end? It feels like it’s starting to get a little softer. People are talking about it.

The Austin Comedy Scene

JOE ROGAN: Well, it just all depend on how much talent’s generated. Right. So if you have clubs that are trying to generate new talent, there’s no reason why it can’t be just like Boston. Like Austin, the street where we have the mothership on. There’s seven clubs within walking distance. Seven that are at least three, four nights a week.

There’s the Sunset Room, that’s red bands room. That’s right down the street from our club, which is great. You got Creek in the Cave, which is great. Great. One block away you got the Vulcan, which is great. Another two blocks away. It’s crazy. Just on that street you got the Black Rabbit, you got the Velveeta Room. Then you got Cap City where a lot of headliners come in, which is about 20 minutes away.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Are there little outs? Like when we started in Boston, there was rooms in the suburbs in every direction. All over that place.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, all over the place.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Because that’s where you can actually make some money.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Well, a lot of these comics book places now. They’ll book a comedy night at a barbecue place, comedy night at a bar. They go to Dripping Springs, they go to here, they go to. I was just talking to a guy the other day. He’s like, “Yeah, we’re doing a comedy on at my club.” I’m like, that’s f*ing great.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You ever do any of them?

JOE ROGAN: No, no, no.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I remember when I was, I was at Skank Fest a couple months ago. And you know, Mark Norman’s from New Orleans.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And I, and you know, and it’s f*ing nuts. Like literally from the time you wake up until five in the morning where you end up at, at Larry Flynt’s Barely Legal Club, which, you know, Louis CK has this whole thing about the barely legal, like, “All right, here’s the pitch. She’s Barely Legal.” I won’t do his bit, but it’s very funny.

But the point is, like, Mark Norman is there, and I run into a comic and they go, “Yeah, yeah. I have this little bar show. And, yeah, Mark Norman just came by and did it.” I was like, how f*ing cool is that?

JOE ROGAN: Oh, he drops in everywhere. Yeah, yeah, he does. When he’s in town doing the Mothership, he’ll go down the street, do a bunch of sets. But that’s the New York. You know, they go, they do 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. They hop from club to club.

Skankfest and the Evolution of Comedy Festivals

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, you got to do Skank Fest. Stop by Skankfest for 24 hours. They’ve got a nude roast where literally everybody on stage is nude, including the judges. And then they’ve got boxing, comedians boxing each other outside. The green room is filled with mushrooms and acid and weed and open bars.

And then you’ve got, I mean, it’s basically, it’s kind of like when we used to go to the Montreal Comedy Festival. You got big by doing a set in front of the industry, getting a deal, and then hopefully getting on TV. Well, that doesn’t exist anymore. Now it’s about, how do I get canceled? That’s how you get famous. And this is a festival that is trying to help you get canceled.

You got 7,000 people with cell phones taping you, you know, going on stage and, you know, saying the most horrendous s. It is fing great.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Everybody who goes says it’s awesome. Yeah, I fully support it. I support the idea. I think it’s really good for comedy. And it’s also, like, just, it’s like the Vegas version of a comedy festival. You know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Like, go nuts. You know, it’s New Year’s Eve. Go nuts. Yeah, it’s Skank Fest. Go nuts.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: They had Miss Skank Fest contests. And I said, the winner, the winner, they reunite the winner with her family, with their parents. They were like, I mean, it’s Skank Fest nines, Skank Fest tens, which would be like, sixes in other places. A lot of guys with, like, cargo shorts and black sneakers and, like, Anthrax T-shirts and mullets.

JOE ROGAN: Subscription to Gas Digital.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. Girlfriends that are impossibly hotter than they should deserve. I don’t know what that quotient is, but there was a lot of that.

JOE ROGAN: That’s interesting. Yeah, yeah, it’s good. Comedy’s at a good place right now.

Tom O’Neill and the Chaos Book

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Tom O’Neill came with me this year.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, really?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And then Duncan Trussell was having his podcast, and I introduced Tom to Duncan. Well, first, me, Tom and Duncan were talking for like a…

JOE ROGAN: We should tell everybody. Tom O’Neill’s the guy who wrote “Chaos.”

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, right, of course, yes.

JOE ROGAN: Who you introduced me to. Which, by the way, you have never recommended anybody for the podcast before. But that guy, you’re like, dude, you got to talk to him. Because I know how much you’re into Manson, how much you’re into that story.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: CIA. It’s all in there.

JOE ROGAN: Crazy. Yeah, that book is bananas.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s bananas. And he’s working on another volume right now.

JOE ROGAN: Is it going to be another 20 years? Has he got an editor?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No, because what happened is it took 20 years last time because, because he just kept going down rabbit holes. And then finally his, well, you know, first he got a big deal from a major publisher, and after seven or eight years, they sued him to get the money. They gave him a lot of money, and they sued him to get it back.

And then he’s driving an Uber. He’s teaching English as a second language. He’s f*ing, you know, drinking booze out of a paper cup. And so then it had to have…

JOE ROGAN: Paid off, though, the book.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No. So what happened was, what happened was, was then his publisher said, look, come on, there’s something here. He paired him up with this other guy. I wish I could remember the guy’s name right now. Dan something. And he reigned Tom in.

And in one year, he took, he had shelves around his apartment filled with binders, with notes. He had boxes of cassette tapes of interviews. And this guy somehow got in there and Corey, oh, Dan Piperberg. Yeah. Who’s a very successful biographer.

JOE ROGAN: What is his name again?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Dan Piper Berg.

JOE ROGAN: Push that up again. Pipe and bring.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Pipe. Oh, Pipenbring. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Okay.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: So he, so he reigned him in and got the book out in a year, and they were able to resell it for a lot of the money. Paid back the back debt, and now he’s hitting, I don’t want to talk about Tom’s finances, but, but he’s doing very well.

JOE ROGAN: I know so many people that have read that book.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, I’ve talked about it a hundred times.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: It’s amazing.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: It’s amazing.

JOE ROGAN: It’s amazing because it’s all true. That’s what’s nuts. Like, the stuff that’s verifiable, factual evidence in that story makes you go, what the f* else did they do that we don’t know about?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right. Because Tom is a real journalist. He didn’t put anything in there that wasn’t triple corroborated. And he, even to his credit at the end, does not say this happened. He said, I never found the smoking gun. So here’s all the evidence. Take what you will from it.

It’s a bunch of, I mean, the thing about Tom is he comes from a family of geniuses. His brother is the American ambassador to Haiti. Like, they’re all, like, PhDs up there. He’s brilliant. And so he’s also Irish, and he’s a great Irish storyteller. So each chapter, whether you’re talking about, about Jolly West or whatever, they’re just in cat. Each chapter is a great story. Yeah. On top of being good journalism.

JOE ROGAN: It’s an amazing book.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I think I might reread it. I might go back.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Don’t listen to it on tape. He hates, he hates the book on tape.

JOE ROGAN: I thought it was great. I listened to it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, really?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Okay.

JOE ROGAN: I loved it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t, I mean, I, I would understand why you hate someone else speaking your words, but he probably should have done it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Why didn’t he do it? He’s a good speaker. He was great on the podcast.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, he was great on the podcast. He could do it. He got better in his early interviews. I used to say, Tom, you look like you’re a hostage giving out a message from the captors with a gun at your head. And then he got really good at it.

JOE ROGAN: Well, on mine, he was very loose, very comfortable, but he also knew it was friendly territory. He knew that I’m a very good friend of yours and that I was really excited about it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And it was going to help him.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: If he does a second one, I would encourage him to read it. I would encourage him to read it. I think, yes. He could kill it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And to come back on here.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, 100%. I’d have him back on. I have him back on before he does it. Just to talk about it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You know, I mean, I think the impact of that book has opened up a lot of people’s eyes to the f*ing shenanigans that were going on back then.

Duncan Trussell’s Podcast and Kurt Metzger

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. When we were at Skank Fest, so Duncan and I are talking to Tom for, like, a half an hour, and Duncan doesn’t know who I just introduced him as Tom. And then when I brought up “Chaos” and that, he wrote it. Duncan’s jaw dropped because he’s obsessed with the book.

So he was doing a live podcast from Skankfest, so he hadn’t booked guests yet, so he booked me and Tom to come on his podcast. And then Kurt Metzger also, which was hilarious. Tom is trying to stay on point and get to these. And Metzger’s sitting there. He’s smoking a joint the size of my forearm. And just every 15 seconds. Oh, my God. God, he was manic. He’s so funny.

JOE ROGAN: Wrangling him on a podcast is so different than anybody else because he’ll go one subject to the next subject. You don’t know what about this? And the Kissingers. You don’t know? No, you don’t know about the Rockefellers. You don’t know about this, what they did in the 60s. You’re like, okay, go back to the first thing you said about what’s in school lunches. You got to bring them back on point.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, that’s why his girlfriend is so great, because, because she is a mini wrangler of Kurt.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: She can keep him on point a little bit.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s hilarious.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, he’s great.

JOE ROGAN: He’s such a funny dude.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I know. And a good writer. He’s written on a lot of big shows.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, he’s a great joke writer.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: He came on the last time he did my episode. My podcast, rather the episode. He dressed up like John Lilly, who’s the psychedelic pioneer from the 70s. So he had a coonskin hat on and a wig and he put on a one handed glove with a skeleton fingers on it. Like just, I go, what do you do? No one even knows who John Lilly is. This is so crazy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. He feels like the kind of guy that is not hung up on getting famous or getting rich. He just really enjoys, like ideas and communicating ideas.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: There he is.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s hilarious.

JOE ROGAN: He’s a fun hang in the green room too. He’s such a maniac.

25 Podcast Appearances and Ice House Memories

GREG FITZSIMMONS: By the way, today is the, this is the 25th time I’ve been on your podcast.

JOE ROGAN: Holy s*.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I was looking up yesterday. I was like, how many times I’ve been on the show? This is 25th.

JOE ROGAN: That’s crazy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, because we used to do it all the time when you were just starting out.

JOE ROGAN: I know.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, we. And a lot of times it was at the Ice House.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, we did the Ice House. You did it at my house.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And then when I finally got a little mini studio and that little strip mall.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, I know. Those Ice House shows were crazy because we would have a standup show going, and then you’d have about six people on the podcast with a joint going the entire time in this small room. And I have never been high on stage in my life except for those shows because it was secondhand smoke.

I would literally get so baked in. And then I remember going on stage and then, so you would go from the podcast to the stage, and then you come back on the podcast, people would just swap out.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Ice House Chronicles.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, my God. Dude.

JOE ROGAN: I thought about doing something similar to that at the Mothership. Like putting together a podcast studio at the Mothership. We have considered doing that.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You have space for it?

JOE ROGAN: No, but I thought about buying another building next to me, you know, and then, like, doing something else with that too.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, build another stage too.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t think so. I think we have enough stages.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

Future Plans for Comedy Clubs

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I think the next move in terms of a club would be we go to another city and try to do the same thing and really put a lot of time and money and effort into making it right. Really making it right. Buying a building. One thing I thought would be really crazy if I could buy a big building in New York and recreate the exact interior of the Mothership. Exactly.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, that’s what the, what the Punchline did in Sacramento. It’s almost the same room as the San Francisco one.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, really?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And then I think the Comedy Cellar Vegas room is similar to the New York room.

JOE ROGAN: Ah, that’s good.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I thought about literally recreating it with the two staircases to the two separate rooms.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Like finding a building that has the same dimensions or kind of perfect.

The Comedy Store Experience

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. I love the walk to the stage because you’re in the green room and you got to go down. I fly to stairs, then you come, kind of feel the show over your head as you’re walking underneath it.

JOE ROGAN: Tunnel under the pop up.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, we built all that.

JOE ROGAN: There was no tunnel there before we made all that.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, no s*.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah, we had to build all that.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, wow.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. That was an idea the architect, Richard came up with. Yeah. We just decided somewhere along the line, like, what was the best way to get to the state. We’re trying to figure out how to get to the stage. You don’t want to have to go through the crowd. And he came up with the idea of a tunnel, and it was based on there’s, like, some folklore or mythology around tunnels in Austin that connect clubs and like, he was all big on the history of Austin.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I feel like it goes back to the Gladiators too. Walking into the arena.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that’s why if you go into the green room, all those posters on the wall are all people that actually performed at the Ritz.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, no s*.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you look up, you see Willie Nelson, Black Flag, all those guys. They actually perform. Stevie Way, Steve Ray Vaughan. They actually performed at the Ritz. There’s a photo of Steve Ray Vaughan as you’re walking to the stage. Yeah, yeah, that photo is him on stage at the Ritz. Wow. In I think, 1983 or something. Yeah, yeah. So it was a rock and roll club for a long time.

Outlaw Texans: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Bill Hicks

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Isn’t it funny how Steve Ray Vaughan and Bill Hicks are kind of the same guy?

JOE ROGAN: In what way?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I just feel like they’re outlaw Texans who just like free expression and balls.

JOE ROGAN: Genius.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And they kind of had the same style, like the way they dressed and hair and I just always think of them as the same guy.

JOE ROGAN: Interesting. Most people think of Alex Jones as Bill Hicks. Like, there’s a rumor that Alex Jones was Bill Hicks, which makes no sense.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: When’s the last time you had that guy on the show?

JOE ROGAN: Oh, it’s been a while. It was probably a few years ago. Yeah, I see him occasionally.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: They’re still trying to get a billion dollars out of him. Still trying to.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: The Connecticut Shooter families.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It’s crazy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Does he have a billion dollars?

JOE ROGAN: No, no. I think they made him liquidate his business. I don’t know what’s going on with it now.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Jesus.

JOE ROGAN: Crazy. Yeah, but the rumor was that he was Bill Hicks. That Bill Hicks was actually Alex Jones.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s funny.

JOE ROGAN: Crazy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: They were both alive at the same time. They’re very different people. But it doesn’t have to be logical for it to be a good conspiracy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You know, there’s people that still think Tupac’s alive.

Celebrity Death Conspiracies

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, a lot of goofy a people think Jim Morrison’s alive. Who’s the other one? Oh, Andy Kaufman, of course.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, right.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I had, who was his sidekick? Andy Kaufman. Sidekick? Bob Zamuda.

JOE ROGAN: Bob Zamuda.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. So I had Bob Zamuda. He written, he had written a book about Andy Kaufman and claiming he stole. So he comes over to my, I was doing my show in my garage at that point, and he comes over and about 45 minutes into the podcast, I go, I go, so how does Andy’s family feel about you saying this stuff about him still being alive. And he’s like, oh, they’re fine with that.

I said, I kind of heard that they’re, you know, a little miff, that they think it’s disrespectful. He’s clearly dead. And, well, so we go back and forth, forth, and it gets super heated and he flips out and he throws his chair over and he f*ing storms out. And that was the end of the podcast. And I was just like, all right, that was weird.

And I’m here to announce for the first time that was a fake. It was an Andy Kaufman esque stunt.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That he flipped out and left the podcast? Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And you never talked about it?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Nope. We did it in the spirit of Andy Coffee Kaufman.

JOE ROGAN: And people were probably like, oh, my God, this is so cool. Years ago asking about it. Bob’s been a meltdown on Greg Fitzsimmons podcast. A very interesting conversation, but when it escalates at the end, it just blows up. Question. Real or Kaufman esque stunt. Oh, that’s funny. That’s funny. And you kept it under wraps.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I’ve never talked about it.

JOE ROGAN: That’s funny. Yeah, that won’t make sense. With Zamuda, he would do that Tony Clifton character.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, my God.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, he would dress up as Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton and do, you know, do appearances.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, yeah, Andy would say, I’m coming to Vegas to do the Tony Clifton character. And then Zamuda would be the one doing it. And people always would be going like, what the f*? I just paid $150 to Andy Kaufman.

Andy Kaufman’s Genius

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, he did a lot of odd stuff. Remember when he worked as a waiter at Jerry’s famous deli?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, I didn’t know that.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, no, he worked as a busboy. There’s a photo of him on the wall while he was on Taxi. So he was on the biggest television show in the country.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And he had like an apron on and he was carrying a f*ing dish tray filled with, like, people’s dirty dishes. Yeah, that photo. Look at that photo. That photo was on the wall at Jerry’s famous deli. Andy Kaufman worked there, so he was on TV. He was a huge star. And you would go and order a pastrami Rubin, and Andy Kaufman would clean your table.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Table, yeah. What about the wrestling? Women was genius.

JOE ROGAN: He did a lot of nutty, dude.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: He locked into that character. People went nuts.

JOE ROGAN: Is that a video? I think so. Oh, that’s hilarious. Well, there’s a documentary about it. That’s what was just popping up of him working at Jerry’s.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Del.

JOE ROGAN: Him. This is, I guess, a trailer for it. Oh, so it’s just a documentary about him. He was a nut, man. That was the one movie where like a lot of people kind of freaked out about Jim Carrey, where like, he kind of got way too into that role and sort of like almost like seemed to embody Andy Kaufman.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, he talked about that. It f*ed him up afterwards.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And off stage he was, he acted like an ahole to people.

JOE ROGAN: How weird.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Which is not like him, right? Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: How weird. Weird. Yeah, that whole method acting thing, like becoming a per, especially an actual human where you have to sort of like figure out their brain patterns and their behavior patterns and imitate it and then you get trapped in it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. Well, since Segura was in talks to…

JOE ROGAN: Play Samuda in a movie.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, wow.

JOE ROGAN: Recently. That’s what this article is about. About that. That’s very confusing because I saw it when I had that up. I saw this screenshot. I’m like, why is Tom in that? Oh, interesting. Yeah. This article from 2024. Oh, interesting. I don’t know what happened to it. Doesn’t seem like much. That’s all.

Mel Brooks: A Comedy Legend

GREG FITZSIMMONS: There’s a good documentary. It just came out last week on Mel Brooks. I mean, you can’t understate Mel Brooks effect on every, whether you’re a comedian or a writer or a comedy director. That guy just, I mean, when I was a kid, my dad used to play 2000 year old man for me. Those albums with Rob Reiner. I’m sorry, Carl Reiner.

And I was obsessed and the Producers was my father’s favorite movie. It became my favorite movie. And you know, you just think about, like how f*ing your show of shows as a writer early on and you know, and just going on to do Young Frankenstein. Young Frankenstein. Blazing Saddles.

JOE ROGAN: Blazing Saddles.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: You know who the movie talks about? You know who wrote Blazing Saddles with him? Who? Richard Pryor.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, that makes sense.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Isn’t that f*ing crazy? He was supposed to play the sheriff.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. Spaceballs.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Spaceballs.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. That’s crazy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: But it’s a two part documentary. I only saw the first half.

JOE ROGAN: And Spaceballs is the reason why Tesla’s Model S is called the plaid.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Really?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, that’s hilarious.

JOE ROGAN: It’s also the reason why the starship is shaped the way it is at the time.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Tip.

JOE ROGAN: Like Elon wanted to be like Spaceballs, like make it more pointy.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, that’s funny.

JOE ROGAN: He loves Spaceballs.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah. That’s so funny. Oh yeah, that would be perfect for him.

JOE ROGAN: Of course.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Wow. Of course, of course.

Privacy Concerns and Technology

JOE ROGAN: Are you going to get an optimus when it comes out? You going to have a robot companion in your home?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh hell yeah. Why wouldn’t you?

JOE ROGAN: Because I don’t want a robot in my house. It’s like connection to the Internet.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I don’t have Alexa. I don’t have anything in my home. I don’t have any speakers that can listen to me because they are listening. Listening. Dude, how often are you talking about, like I started getting Austin feeds little videos in my Instagram feed about Austin. I never get those. I started getting them yesterday. The f* is that?

JOE ROGAN: They know you’re coming. Yeah, well, didn’t, wasn’t there a lawsuit that Google had to just recently settle where it turned out that there were certain times where your phone was listening to you. Which is why you’re getting ads for things that you had discussed.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh yeah, happens all the time.

JOE ROGAN: But it’s, it was a rumor for a long time. Yeah, that’s just a conspiracy theory. Like people like this seems weird. Google settled 68 million in class action over alleged recording of private conversations.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: That’s nothing.

JOE ROGAN: That’s nothing. Yeah. So what is it? What was the accusation? They have agreed to pay $68 million, settle a class action lawsuit alleging they unlawfully recorded users conversations through Google Assist enabled devices without consent. The proposed Google settlement is pending approval from a federal judge. U.S. district Court for Northern District of California.

Class action lawsuit was filed in 2019 after consumers accused Google of concealing that the, that its Assistant enabled devices could unintentionally activate and record conversations inside users homes. So that’s just for that. But that’s like you did not intentionally activate it with a hot word such as “hey Google” because it’s listening to you all the time.

So it’s listening for you to say “hey Google.” But that’s, you know, that’s just Google Assistant devices. I don’t have one of those. And, but yet my phone will bring up suggestions and ads for things that I’ve discussed that I haven’t looked up. Just have the conversations about it and it’ll pop up.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I don’t. Crazy.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t think they would tell you. I think it’s all metadata, it’s all hidden. So there’s no way to know. And we all know. We all kind of know.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: And you know, and people go like, well, I’m not, I don’t, I’m not a criminal. I got nothing to hide. Yeah, but you don’t understand the ramifications of this information. If somebody is in office and they want to start using keywords to locate people that they’re going to have audited. Like they just, some woman got, was protesting ice and, you know, they’ve got this facial recognition software that lets them know your name, your address.

Government Surveillance and Data Privacy

JOE ROGAN: Is that Palantir? Is that what they’re using, something?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No, it’s not Palantir. It’s something like that. But this woman went to the airport. Her TSA was canceled.

JOE ROGAN: What?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: What, because she was a protester?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That’s it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: Just protesting?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: No, they’re taking your license plate, they’re taking people’s faces, and they’re running it through. They had one woman went from a protest to her house, and there was a car parked out front with ICE agents in it saying, “We know where you live.”

JOE ROGAN: What?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That’s all she did, was go to a protest. Yep, that’s it.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: I mean, I’m sure she interacted. She was probably yelling out or whatever.

JOE ROGAN: She wasn’t a part of the organizers of the protest or anything like that.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Because maybe she was an organizer.

JOE ROGAN: The weird thing is the organizer, these signal chats and everything, it’s all being very coordinated and very funded. This is a very coordinated thing. Like what they’re doing, where they’re doxing these ICE agents and the whole thing is, it’s all very weird.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

The Commodity of Personal Data

JOE ROGAN: The point about the Google stuff, though, is the people that go, “Oh, I’m not doing anything illegal.” You are giving them your data, and that data is a commodity, and they are getting insanely wealthy off of getting your data in an unscrupulous way.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: They’re not telling you they’re doing this thing, and they’re getting your data, and that data is making them insanely wealthy. And then they use that wealth in a bunch of different ways to influence all sorts of things in the world, and that’s what’s going on.

But nobody ever thought that their data was going to be a commodity. Nobody ever gave a f* about their email address or what they’re interested in online.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: It turns out that’s insanely valuable to advertisers. And that’s, it’s also, it’s like, you know, they’re listening. You know, they’re listening. They’re listening to things.

AI Therapy and Privacy Concerns

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah, they’re listening. And yeah, it’s, there’s people now using ChatGPT to do therapy. Have you heard about that?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You want to put your, might tell you to kill yourself like that.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Not only that, but you’re telling your innermost embarrassing things. You think that’s not going to be used against you at some point when you try to get health insurance. And health insurance has now audited what you said to ChatGPT and goes, “Well, you’re a suicide risk.” Or “You’re talking about trying to quit smoking. Now we know you’re smoking.” Any details?

Government Official’s ChatGPT Security Breach

JOE ROGAN: Wasn’t there an instance real recently where someone had uploaded top secret information to ChatGPT? A government official had. See if you can find this. Government official uploaded to a public ChatGPT, not like some secure encrypted version that the government gets because they were trying to go over some data.

Here it is. “US Cyber Defense Chief Accidentally Uploaded Secret Government Info to ChatGPT.” So they grilled the acting chief on mass layoffs and a failed polygraph. Polygraph is hilarious. So this guy, good luck saying his name. Accidentally uploaded sensitive information to a public version of ChatGPT last summer according to Department of Homeland Security officials with knowledge of the incident. Try to say that guy’s name.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Ghula.

JOE ROGAN: Is that it?

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Got him a cooler.

JOE ROGAN: Okay. Got him a cooler.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: He plays defense for the Rams.

JOE ROGAN: Uploads, fing big Polish guy. Uploads of sensitive CISA contracting documents triggered multiple internal cybersecurity warnings designed to stop theft or unintentional disclosure of government material from federal networks. And this fing guy’s the director of cybersecurity and infrastructure security. That’s…

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Well, what does it mean? Accidentally upload? Did it eavesdrop on him or did he say something that caused ChatGPT?

JOE ROGAN: It seems like he uploaded the data. Like he was probably trying to parse out the data. Just hired to do or just join the agency.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, great. Oh, my God.

JOE ROGAN: The information was not confidential but marked for official use only.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Oh, dude. I feel like Russia and China know everything.

JOE ROGAN: And we know everything about Russia and China. Right? And they’re all ratting on each other. Palantir app use ICE users to find neighborhoods to raise. Yeah, so it is Palantir. At least for that article he had. It was blocked by a paywall. I couldn’t, I was trying to get around nuts.

Wrapping Up and Tour Dates

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Joe Rogan Experience can’t afford to pay for. Is this it? We’re wrapping it up.

JOE ROGAN: Let’s wrap this up now. 4 o’clock.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Can I name some dates? Yeah, I will be at the Philadelphia Helium. As I said, Valentine’s Day weekend, great club. I’m going to be in Sacramento at the Punchline next week and then I’m going to be in Lexington, Kentucky at Comedy Off Broadway club.

JOE ROGAN: And this is GregFitzsimmons.com. Go to the link for stand up dates. Plenty gigs.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: The podcasts are Sunday Papers with Mike Gibbons which, oh by the way, thank you for the shout out. You and Bert Kreischer gave me a little love bath yesterday. That was nice. So yeah, he was talking about Sunday Papers I’ve been doing with Mike for a long time and then Fitzdog Radio that you’ve been on many times.

JOE ROGAN: Yee f*ing ha. All right, we’re going to wrap it up. You’re at the Mothership this weekend. I’m very excited about that you.

GREG FITZSIMMONS: Going to come down? Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: All right, good. Goodbye.

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