#2330 - Bono

Bono is the lead singer of the rock band U2, as well as an activist and author. His memoir, "Bono: Stories of Surrender," is available wherever books are sold. Watch the companion film on Apple TV+, and the soundtrack is available digitally and on limited edition vinyl. www.u2.com https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/bono-stories-of-surrender/umc.cmc.oxoxnpaecaatg9tzf6pgfsh2https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/804259/bono-stories-of-surrender-by-bono/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  The Joe Rogan Experience.

• 0:06Joe Rogan?

  Training by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

• 0:12Joe Rogan?

  Uh, I fucking loved the film. It was really great.

• 0:15Speaker 02

  You saw it?

• 0:15Joe Rogan?

  Watched it last night, yeah.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 0:17Joe Rogan?

  It was cool too, because I always feel special when I gotta enter in the password, because I know that nobody else has seen it yet, you know? I gotta enter in the email and the password, and I watched it, and I screen mirrored it on the TV. It was great, man. And it's, it was so, uh, like, almost like a fever dream. It was wild, like, the way you set it up, all black and white.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you get past the first three minutes.

• 0:37Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  I could, even my own mates were like, "Oh, don't do that." It's like, wow, and it is like a fever dream.

• 0:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  That opening, but that really happened to me, so, you know.

• 0:47Joe Rogan?

  It was great, man, it was great. And it's also like, I loved the way you did it, like, you played the beginning of some songs, and you talked about the origin of the songs. The thing that I have a hard time believing, though, is that you weren't a good singer when you were young.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  Well, you know, punk rock, you're a bit of a shouter. You know, that's really what you do, you just get up there and shout. I'm shouting at God, I'm shouting at everyone. I'm shouting at the band. That scene in, when we're doing "I Will Follow."

• 1:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  That's really true. So, I'm there, and we're improvising this song that becomes "I Will Follow If You Walk Away, Walk Away, Walk Away," and it's like this, wow, man. We're trying to get, just do something original. And we're really ripping off, the irony is, we're really ripping off Public Image Limited. This Johnny Rotten became John Lydon again for this band called Public Image Limited back in the late 70s. And, and I'm singing about, you know, it's a suicide note, really. And I'm singing about this, and they're saying like, "What's it about?" And I said, "I think it's this, it's this guy who's gonna follow somebody into the grave, you know? They're gonna, it's, I think it's about, it's, it's a child following their mother,

• 1:58Speaker 02

  missing them so much that he'll follow them into the grave."

• 2:03Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  And then... We realized that our rehearsal room, the little yellow house, is beside the cemetery where my mother is buried. And I have never visited her once, or talked about her once. And we've been rehearsing there for months. And it's funny, you know, you can deny somebody in conversation, you can deny somebody to yourself, but in the songs, all that shit comes out.

• 2:31Joe Rogan?

  Wow, wow.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  But thank you for watching it, that's, that's.

• 2:35Joe Rogan?

  I loved it. It was such an interesting way you put it all together. I've never seen anybody do that like that. Like you did, like, it's like a documentation of your career, but in this like very unique way with like talking about things and then explaining these moments and then the music plays. And it's all black and white. It was really cool.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a, there's a sort of, black and white lends it a kind of clarity. I did this series of shows in the Beacon Theater in New York. And, and it was going so well, we thought we should record it. I will tell you, the night before we opened our show in New York, my Mrs. Ally said, I don't think you should do this. Just, please, please do not do this to yourself in front of, you know, a New York crowd. Cancel it now, do what most people do on a book tour, get somebody to interview them and just they'll come anyway, everyone will be happy. And I don't know, I just went for once.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  I didn't take her sage advice and I, I did it. And the difference was with an audience, it was funny. And she was like, oh, that's the bit I didn't get in the rehearsals. It's funny.

• 3:56Joe Rogan?

  Oh, so what was she thinking? It was self-indulgent?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  It was dull, self-indulgent, here you are. I mean, all these things are a version of, here's another great thing about me. No. I mean, it is a, I was calling it a memoir. Me book what I wrote myself. It's the memoir. And it, look, there's something narcissistic and, but it's, it's your material. You know, that's what you get. You're, you know, you're, it's not just your body, your psychology is the canvas. And, you know, I grew up, John Lennon, you know, Beatles were everything for me. And, you know, John Lennon made a. Sort of performance art out of his wedding to Yoko. And he did a bed in for peace and he was ready to look ridiculous for peace. And, you know, I do ridiculous quite well, I'm told.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  So that was my definition, you know, of of art, really.

• 4:49Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Was to just just go out there. But the thing that being in U2, they've just given me everything.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Took away, if it took away anything, was, you know, people don't come along to our shows for a belly laugh. You know what I mean?

• 5:07Joe Rogan?

  Right, right.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  So as a comedian, you understand that, you know, it's it's like I.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  You know, I wrote this line, I came out of nowhere, I haven't put it in a song yet, I don't think, but, you know. I think it's laughter is the evidence of freedom. And I don't talk, I don't trust people to talk about freedom now. I want people to be free. If you are, if you talk, be be it then, be it.

• 5:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  And and so I wanted to be that on stage. I wanted to be loose. I wanted to be myself. I wanted to own up to the ridiculousness of my life, as I've just explained. The madness of my family, but turns out it's everyone's family is a little opera. And it is a bit of a soap opera, but it's also also a a real opera. These are big feelings, you know, you're going after your dad. Like you're like a young, what do you know, elk is a romantic word for it, but it's, you know, you're just taking him on.

• 6:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  And this poor man is just, he's lost his his wife. He's trying to bring up two kids. I'm just an obnoxious kind of thing who some somehow psychologically blames him for the death of my mother, because as Jim Sheridan says to me, it doesn't have to be actually true. Be psychologically true.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  And that kids feel all these feelings, you know, and they don't have to be logical. And and I went after my dad and I by playing him every night in in the Beacon Theater and around the world, I actually learned to to love him. I learned to like him, actually. I always loved him. I learned to like him. That was, he made me laugh more. So I got humor. Humor was the gift from that show and.

• 7:05Joe Rogan?

  And the humor was evident with the audience there.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 7:09Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  But not evident when my mistress came, which is why she wanted to pull the plug.

• 7:15Joe Rogan?

  Well, rehearsals are hard. It's also hard when someone is too close to you. They're there with you every day. Like, this is true with comedy as well. Like, if someone sees your act too many times, like if someone's traveling with you, like if my wife went to see my shows all the time, there's parts of it she'd be like, oh, don't do that. Oh, don't do this. Oh, like, that's not like, you get too close to it. Like, she's too close to you. But to see it with fresh eyes, like to see in front of that audience, the joy that they have when the music starts playing, when some of the songs that they love, it's amazing. Like, you could feel it in the show. It's like the pure joy, what they get so because the people that came to see it were hardcore fans.

• 8:01Joe Rogan?

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• 9:21Joe Rogan?

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• 10:05Joe Rogan?

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• 10:24Speaker 03

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• 10:46Speaker 02

  What happened was Andrew Dominic, Australian director, and he did some of the shots without any audience. Just he cleared them out on a day off. And then some of them came in, which were hardcore fans, as you say. And that was, in a way, that was the most terrifying.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Um, because I, as a performer, I'm drawn to spontaneous acts. That's what, when we started out as a band, I was attracted to performers who I thought might leave the stage. Right. And follow me home, mug me, or, you know, you know, tell my fortune, or, you know, uh, whatever. Wild people. Well, just, yeah. I mean, and I'm still a child, Iggy Pop, when I was growing up, was the, you know, Patti Smith. I'm, I'm, Patti Smith used to enter the stage elbowing her way through the crowd. Myself and Larry Mullin, drummer, and you two,

• 11:49Speaker 02

  we, we left stage one night in the, like, when we were like twenty one, twenty years old, elbing our way through, through the crowd to get out. Just got into a taxi in London, fucked off. And, and we felt a liberation, you know, breaking the fourth wall has been everything for our bands, trying to smash it by surfing it. Um, you know, by, by jumping into the crowd. I had the, um, preposterous moment of going into a crowd in the, in Los Angeles, I forget, the Forum or somewhere like that, with a white flag, right, the nonviolent white flag.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  The same flag that I'm still on about, the flag of surrender, right, in that show.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  But back then, I'm twenty three or whatever, and I'm going into the crowd and I see people who are, you know, pulling at me and all this. The next thing, I know, I'm throwing a punch. Somebody in our own, our, in our own audience. That's how much nonviolence meant to me. You that, you know, but I, I'm, I'm attracted to feral performers, I suppose is a word for it. It's just, it's, it's, you're in it and you're not fully in control of it. Right.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  And Mark Rylans is a great one. Daniel Day-Lewis walked offstage one night, saw a ghost of his father rumor had it when he was playing Hamlet. But, yeah, so having the crowd in who knew what was gonna happen, that unnerves me a bit. Because how do I surprise them? Turns out, by making, I became a sit-down comic. If you're a stand-up, for a minute, a minute. I was a sit-down comedian.

• 13:43Joe Rogan?

  Well, what you're doing, and I think what you're saying that you're attracted to is something that's not contrived. Something that's pure. It could be messy, it could be wild, it could be, you know, Patti Smith elbowing people, or you running through the crowds. It's real. And there's so much in this world that's not real. There's so much that's manufactured, there's so much that's produced and run through a focus group and there's so much that doesn't resonate. Like, you don't feel it as a piece of art. You don't feel it as like a real person pouring out their emotions and their soul. But, great music, you feel, it gets into you, it gets into your cells, you know?

• 14:25Joe Rogan?

  No one can figure out how it works, or why it works, or why this does and this doesn't. Why does Johnny Cash have such a fucking cool voice? Like, it's what is it? What is it? Like, but there's something about real, that's just, it's like a vitamin. It's like going out in the sun when it's been raining, like, ah, like, you soak it in.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is, you know? I mean, you can, there's pretentious ways of describing it, and people say it's, we first sang to each other before we spoke. You know, like, Bird Song, I don't know who said that, he's probably on drugs. But, could have been a scientist. And anthropology might suggest that we certainly, that goat song, you go back to Greek tragedy, you had a drum and a voice. So it's very primal.

• 15:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  And there is, it is the language of the spirit. It, we, we, it, it is somehow, there is worship involved, whether it's God, nature, money, a extraordinary woman has just walked across the street. But it seems to be that music is where we are creatures of awe.

• 15:47Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  And, and wonder. And, and, and, you know, you, you mentioned Johnny Cash.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  I had, I had the blessing in my life of, of getting to know him. And as a believer, I don't know if you know, I, I am a believer, I'm, I'm just not a very good one. But he, there was no, not a pious bone in his body. And, and I learnt that, about the company he would choose. He didn't like, he, he got nervous around people who were too self-righteous. And he had this huge spirit in him, you know, prayerful spirit. Myself and Adam Clayton were, were driving through America, I think around the time of the Joshua Tree. And I'd met Johnny a couple of years before he said, you know, I found out where he, where he lived.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  He had a zoo in Nashville. He had a house in Nashville. And we go in to, to, to meet June, his missus, and, and Johnny. And, and he shows us this table's filled with plates of everything. Like, I'm like, wow, we're coming, we're just the two of us. She, he said, no, honey, that's my cookbook. I'm just doing a photo shoot for my cookbook. We're in here, you know, we're having a, so we go into their kitchen. And he sat there, myself and Adam. And, and Johnny goes, shall, shall we pray?

• 17:18Speaker 02

  And Adam wasn't a praying type at that, at that time, but he was like, wow, it's Johnny Cash. So, you know.

• 17:26Joe Rogan?

  You have to pray.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  We all held hands and whatever. And Johnny Cash made this beautiful poetic blessing. And I, I just thought like, wow, of course he is touched. And then he just turned to Adam and just goes, sure missed the drugs though.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  And Adam just fell in love with them, you know? Because he couldn't be pious.

• 17:48Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  He just, he had to be himself.

• 17:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Um, years later, if it's, years later, and we really.

• 17:56Joe Rogan?

  Look at that.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Oh, wow, there you go. Oh, that's so, oh, my God.

• 18:02Joe Rogan?

  There it is.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  That's Adam there, yeah.

• 18:04Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  And he looks like he might have had a few tequilas. And, and I don't know, but, oh, wow. And I'm giving it the arty poetic face. I am a poet, like you are. And, um, I call, calls, I heard, I heard he was, um, I heard he was in trouble. He was, he was very ill. Years later than this, and I called, um, I called up and, and June answered the phone. Excuse the poor Texas accents, all you Texans out there, but she was like, or Nashville in her case. She was like, oh, Bono, wow, thank you for calling.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  It's so good to hear from you. How's Dublin? How's Ally? How's the Burlington? This is the hotel, right? And I was like, great. And we're talking, you know, phrases with, with, uh, with June. She said, what's going on with this? And I'm going, what's going on? And I said, look, eventually I said, look, June, just, I'm just calling because I heard John wasn't well. And I just, I just want you, wanted him to know and that we're thinking about him. She said, oh, honey, we're in bed. He's right beside me. And he hands me the phone, or she hands him the phone. He goes, sorry about that.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  I'm fine. And, uh, and bless her, um, actually June passed away first. And, and Johnny called Rick Rubin. And those American recordings were a result of a conversation he had with Rick Rubin, where he said, please, will you work with me? Because if you don't, I will die.

• 19:54Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  That's why, if you hear those American recordings. Um, amazing version of Nine Inch Nails.

• 20:02Joe Rogan?

  Hurt?

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Hurt.

• 20:03Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Did a version of One also. Tepesmo's Personal Jeez, I mean, it's just, what a voice.

• 20:09Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Are you a fan of, of, of Johnny Cash?

• 20:13Joe Rogan?

  Huge.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  What's your?

• 20:14Joe Rogan?

  I used to have a dog named Johnny Cash.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Does the dog bite?

• 20:18Joe Rogan?

  No, he's not anymore. He's dead. He was, he didn't bite when he was alive. He was a nice dog. It's just I had a habit of naming my dogs after famous singers.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Wow, we have a dog called Lemmy.

• 20:31Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Named after Lemmy from Motherhead.

• 20:33Joe Rogan?

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a girl, though, and I think she resents it.

• 20:37Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I had a dog named Frank Sinatra. And, uh, Marshall is named after Eminem.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Oh, man, well, they're two incredible people. Um, don't get me started on, on Frank Sinatra, cause, um, how long is this, by the way?

• 20:51Joe Rogan?

  As long as we want to go.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Well, no, cause.

• 20:54Joe Rogan?

  Why?

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Well, just Frank Sinatra, it's just two questions. One of them shouldn't be Frank Sinatra, cause I, I just, I can go on and on and on. I learned so much from him and I got to know him. And as bizarre as that sounds, um, he's such a name dropper, Frank. Um, no, but, uh, I did. And probably if you're interested in singing, I could tell you one miracle that I learned from Frank Sinatra, which is a version of, of My Way. And the original version, you know, it's a boast. And years later, he sang it and I have a copy of it.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  It's, um, and Pavarotti stars in the film, as you know, I, I'm, I, I play him for, for a moment. But it's a version of My Way with, I mean, Pavarotti's the greatest singer on earth, but shouldn't sing in English. Friends, I do it now, you don't, you don't want that. And so I have a version of it with, without the greatest singer in the history of the world, Pavarotti on it. It's just Frank singing 20 years after he'd sung My Way as a boast. Same key, same text, same arrangement.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  And now it's an apology.

• 22:18Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  And that's a, that's a thing about singing and Johnny Cash had that and, you know, I wish I aspired to the place when my voice, to try and answer your first question, when I become a singer that can do that.

• 22:36Joe Rogan?

  Sinatra, most people don't realize, had a completely different voice when he was younger. His voice when he was younger was very high pitched and beautiful and had so much flexibility to it and so much tone. And then probably all the cigarettes and Jack Daniels over the years sort of hardened his voice.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Skinny kid. He, he used to, he used to swim underwater to get his lung expanded so he could get those bigger, bigger, bigger lips.

• 23:07Joe Rogan?

  Really? And we have his mugshot out there. He got arrested, he was like a hundred and twenty-five pounds.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 23:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he got arrested for, um, what was the term? This, seduction? I think it was seduction. I think he seduced a married woman.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Oh, my lord.

• 23:24Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, there he is.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Oh, look at that. Well, he said, I'm the only, he said, you're the only, I don't know if he said cat. He said, I don't, certainly he didn't say dude. He said, you're the only something with, who wears an earring that I'm ever gonna like. You're the only cat with an earring that I'm never gonna, and, and I did, I had a, if we're gonna talk about singers, you have to talk about Sinatra. I had extraordinary times with him. Um, he used to send us, send me gifts every year. I have a gold and sapphire Cartier watch he sent me.

• 24:00Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  With, with Francis Albert on the, you know, got, um, just every year he would send stuff and, cause we did a, a duet together on his first duets album. I've got you, got you under my skin. Um, although I, we had a, our management received, I hope this is not, I'm not being, I'm in awe of Japan, so don't, please don't take this as a, as a, as a, as a. That's a cruel joke, but we did get a, it was a fax back then from Nippon EMI saying, "We hear that Barone has done a duet with a Mr. Frank Sinatra called 'I've Got You Under My Chicken.'"

• 24:46Speaker 02

  And that's just the great- Boston translation. The great surrealist anthem of all time. But yeah, for me, that was an unusual relationship. And I, if I ask myself why I would go after these great singers that perhaps people of my own generation had moved on from, but I hadn't. There is a part of me that wanted the blessing of the older generation and probably the male. I didn't really, by now, the bit of age, I realized I didn't have the sense to go after

• 25:31Speaker 02

  the same with women, but I was looking for my father in them, you know, whether it was Willie Nelson, you know, whether, you know, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Pavarotti, all these people, I mean, I would, I kind of, I became their students, really. And the band would be like, "Yeah." And I'm going, "Yeah." And there's so much for me to learn from these people, so much for all of us to learn. These are extraordinary for a reason. Sinatra had, you know, incredible sense of humor and great timing.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  What I learned from him was, he read the text of the song like an actor. So he would learn it as an actor would learn a part. Then he would, on the piano, he'd kind of roughly with his, you know, pianist, he'd figure out where to be in the bar and all of that. And then when he went into the orchestra to meet them, you know, Nelson Riddle or whatever. You actually hear him, you hear Frank Sinatra, hearing the song in its full arrangement for the first time as he's singing it.

• 26:52Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  And that's, it's fresh paint, you know, it's like, any painter will tell you, that's just the, it's like Francis Bacon, it's just that first stroke or first touch football. The great players where the ball lands at their feet, they don't stop it and pass it. They, they, they pass it as they stop it. It's, it's, it's really a very high level of, of artistry. And, and he had that. I learnt that from him. I, I learnt lots of other things. I also tried to drink with him on a few occasions, which did not work out well for me.

• 27:31Joe Rogan?

  Was it surreal when you were a young man and you were just starting to achieve success, to encounter these people that were essentially heroes? And be embraced by them and hang around them? You know, a lot of people feel imposter syndrome. Like they feel just, it's bizarre to be around these legendary human beings. Like they're right there. Like, I, I, I still kind of get weirded out by it. Even when I met you today, I'm like, oh, that's Bono. Like, it's still weird, you know, it's still weird to meet people that are like hugely famous. And when you were a young man, when, when U2 was just blowing up, was it strange that the transit, like to accept the fact like this is where we are? We belong here.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  But, but you, you, you got it right, the first time, there is a part of you that doesn't think you belong here.

• 28:21Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  And then when you're younger, you, you, you're not admitting that to yourself. And I have a, I've, I've a few annoying.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  More than a few annoying aspects depending on who you're talking to. But if I have an annoying gene, um, part of it is when I'm at my most vulnerable,

• 28:48Speaker 02

  I'm at, I give it the most swagger.

• 28:51Joe Rogan?

  Ah.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  So we were playing the Super Bowl. We walked on just after nine eleven, big emotional moments. And we're, you got eight minutes or whatever to switch over. And I've got my ears in because the only way I'm in touch with was what's going on. And we're walking through the crowd. We've got the crowd on the, on the pitch. I think one of the first times that was ever done. And, and somebody goes, yay. And they, and I can feel my ear come out. And that will mean I'm all fair. And if you look at the film, as I've had to of us walking up to get on stage,

• 29:38Speaker 02

  I am giving it so much chin. You just go, who is that obnoxious Irish fucking? What, why does he get that attitude?

• 29:49Joe Rogan?

  Here it is right here.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Oh, there it is.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  I think I'm singing there. So if you just go back a little bit, you'll get the real, that's the chin. No, no, just before there, but, but, uh,

• 30:03Speaker 02

  but look, not a care in the world. And that's, I mean, bullshit is a word for it.

• 30:10Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Swagger is another word for it.

• 30:12Joe Rogan?

  It's a shield.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  It's a shield.

• 30:14Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  And as I get older, I, you know, part of the film was taking off my armor and just dropping the sword, dropping the shield, taking it off. And now in that moment, you wake up, it's a bit like the dream where you're naked in front of the whole school. And it's really cold. And, and.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  And then you realize, yeah, your life, as you are realizing yourself now. Oh, how did this happen to me? And, and how did I get to meet these extraordinary people? And so that's why I wrote the book Surrender, that's why I did it. But, because it was just starting to realize. When I was younger, I was like, yeah, you know.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Bob Dylan once asked us, I was 24, and he says, he was recording there, I was gonna interview him. And he said, you wanna go on stage or whatever and do a song? And I said, well, he said Leopard Skin, Pillbox, Hat, amazing song. I said, oh, look, the lyrics are there too. And I'd been learning to improvise as a singer. And, and I, I went out on stage. And he said, you know Blowing in the Wind? I said, I probably, I probably got that one down, but I didn't. And I just walked out on stage. And I could see it was a home crowd, Ireland, people, oh, wow, one of ours is up there with Bob Dylan.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Wow, oh, it's Bob, wow, okay. And he's gonna sing, oh my God, he can't, oh, oh, he's changed the melody. Oh, he's changed the words. And he could just see, I mean, go down in flames. And afterwards, I see Bob, and I said, look, I'm sorry about that. I'm just, it's just the way we've been working at the moment, just kinda improvise and stuff. And he was like, it's okay, you know, everything, I, I make them up all the time. And he was generous about it. Nothing's fixed in time, something like that.

• 32:24Joe Rogan?

  That's a great Bob Dylan impression.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:26Joe Rogan?

  One of my favorite moments in the film was when your bandmates were concerned that Pavarotti was gonna show up with a camera crew. And he showed up with a camera crew.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  He did.

• 32:38Joe Rogan?

  It was just funny. It was like, it was a really well timed moment, like, and when you said it on stage, it was so well timed. Because it's like, here you're honoring this man who's like this incredible, fantastic singer. But your bandmates, they've got a good instinct, like, this is gonna be a big press op as well. Like, this is part of the reason why he wants to do this. And then, that's not gonna be fun, because it's gonna be weird, and then, boom.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of the great, one of the great arm wrestlers, emotional arm wrestlers of all time. It's interesting that there was a generosity there, which, which, which he wanted opera. Because opera was kind of the punk of its time. Classical musicians looked down on opera. Really? You know, these are stories from the street, they're, they're too accessible, you know? Really? And, oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's crazy. I would never imagine that. Opera was much rougher. And, and he instinctively knew, and he was constantly trying to make relationships that

• 33:42Speaker 02

  would cross the divide and, and make sort of opera popular. And so, to the point where, yeah, he did, he used to call our house and say, you know, at first it was with me, but then when, he would haunt our housekeeper, Theresa, and say like, "He's got at home. Well, tell God he is late on the song," or, you know. He'd do this kind of carry on. And, and I, again, this, these figures in my life, I knew that I was in, you know, on sacred ground when I was near him. I knew this.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  But the band, they didn't have the, they didn't have the relationship with opera. Well, actually, Edges' dad was into opera, but my dad, it was, it was, I, I was using Luciano Pavarotti to get to my dad. That was the real thing. And so, as you see in the film, I, I play my, my father just by turning my head. Yeah. And I become him. And, and, and I was trying to impress him. I'd be in Finnegan's pub, where we'd be sitting, not speaking to each other, and, and, and I'd try something, and I'd go, "What do you think about Luciano Pavarotti calling the house?" And he'd go, "Did he get a wrong number?"

• 35:07Speaker 02

  You know, it'd be all that. And, and so, yeah, there was an emotional through line, because our house was an opera.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, my dad was going on in him, his life was operatic. Um, but it's also funny.

• 35:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, and it's also this, you you are both celebrating the brilliance of this incredible singer and also you're you're taking the piss out of this whole cult of celebrity thing that comes along with it.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Princess Diana, the the best.

• 35:45Joe Rogan?

  The thing with your dad and Princess Diana was hilarious.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  So because Edges, Edges is is Edges' mother and father from Wales. So to, you know, so we're with Pavarotti in Modena, I think it was, and and he's so the princess of Wales is meeting the great tenor and he is offered to meet, you know, anyone who wants, you know, Edges' family, because they're from Wales, to meet the princess of Wales. And he says to me, look, do you do you does your dad want to go? And I, of course, know the reason. I know I know the answer and the reason for the answer. But he says, well, just just ask him. So I ask him.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  I just go, Dad, listen, you wouldn't want to go meet Lady Di, you know, the princess. What? What? Ah, why would I want to meet a member of the British royal family? That that's like asking me, do I want to meet the winner of the Lotto? And I'm like, OK, got it, got it, got it. And then later, she comes into our dressing room and melts him just by reaching her hand at how do you do? And he's like, oh, very well, thank you. Um, and as I say, eight eight hundred years of oppression gone in a second.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  And if you wonder about the reasoning for having a royal family, and a lot of Irish people do, there I I I'm saying is that's the reason.

• 37:28Joe Rogan?

  The weight of it, the weight of it overcame him.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:31Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It's a very bizarre relationship, though, you know, like I'm one quarter Irish and I.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 37:37Joe Rogan?

  The relationship between Ireland and. United Kingdom in England, it's like, it's complicated.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Were you, were you, I've read that you got into martial arts because you felt picked on at some point.

• 37:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yes, yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  So you don't like bullies?

• 37:57Joe Rogan?

  No, no, no, I don't like that at all. It's the weakest inclination of the human spirit, you know, to pick on the weak. It's terrible. It's a, it's a terrible instinct that humans have from, probably from the time where you had to ostracize weak people because you lived in a tribe of people barely surviving and you couldn't tolerate any weak links in the chain. I mean, that's essentially probably where it came from. It probably came out of a survival instinct. Yes, where everyone was barbarians and you had to force people to be the hardest version possible because otherwise the genes wouldn't survive.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, the survival of the fittest, it's, yeah, which is the world we live in.

• 38:40Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  I mean, this is one of the things that attracts me to Christianity is the idea of the first will be last, the last will be first is so radical.

• 38:49Joe Rogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  And it's literally the opposite of the survival of the fittest.

• 38:53Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  But America, why I love America is, is it has, I mean, the British Empire bullied it. And it stood up. I was, we were coming here, I was asking someone in the car about the Declaration of Independence and how many Irish signatures there were, it wasn't that many, I can't remember what there were. But they were all committing treason. They were putting their lives, they were pledging their lives, their fortune and their sacred honor. So America, the very essence of America is this idea of sticking it to the bully.

• 39:35Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  And, and I know America can be a bully, we all, we have our moments and all, and all that, but it's the essence of who you are. And, and it happened again with the geezer with the tash.

• 39:50Joe Rogan?

  That's a great way of calling Hitler.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  You know, but, you know, you weren't having it.

• 39:56Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  And, and I, you know, as, as an activist, which we can talk about later, but the, you know, I remember going to, it's only a few hours from here, but it was in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Warren Buffett came to one of our, it's called Heart of America tour. We were raising awareness on this pandemic, this AIDS pandemic that has killed just, you know, 30 million people at this point. And why might America be interested? And I'm very Irish and very,

• 40:35Speaker 02

  given a lot of that. And afterwards, I asked the sage of Omaha for, for any advice. And he gives me two pieces of advice, but probably, well, the one was, don't ask people to do something simple, because they won't trust you. He said, ask them to do something complicated.

• 40:54Joe Rogan?

  What do you mean by that?

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Well, I said, he said, what are you asking people to do here? And I said, well, I'm asking them to, we're asking them, the one campaign, we're asking them to send, you know, a note to their local congressperson. He said, no, no, no, don't, don't do that. Too simple. Make them do something more difficult and they'll trust you. Maybe 10 postcards. It's harder to do. And I was like, okay. And anything else? And he said something which really changed my life and changed my conversation with this country of yours. He said, don't appeal to the conscience of America. Don't do that.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Appeal to the greatness of America.

• 41:44Joe Rogan?

  Ooh.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  And you'll get the job done. Americans wanna be great.

• 41:48Joe Rogan?

  That is true.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  I think it is true and cause Ireland, we work with guilt. You know, you can guilt people. It's a lot of countries, you can work them just, you know.

• 41:58Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  But Americans not. Give them the chance to be the cavalry.

• 42:03Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  And they'll, I mean Omaha Beach, the heroism of Omaha Beach, the lives poured out. You know, and to to save Europe from from tyranny. And that's who America is. And, you know, I gave it the Joshua tree. Because I, you know, it's not just as an Irishman, but probably more because

• 42:31Speaker 02

  I, as an Irishman, fell under the spell of America. I even as kids, you know, coming here. Um, a lot of the cooler bands would just play the coasts, you know, the cooler UK bands or European bands. But I wanted, I wanted to be all over America. I mean, we played, we opened for a wet T-shirt competition in in Dallas.

• 42:58Joe Rogan?

  What year was this?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Eighty-one.

• 43:03Joe Rogan?

  I was the first one in high school.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  We, we, we in A- Austin. I don't know if if anyone can remember, but it was, it was called the Club Foot. It was a bad pun, but there was no A C. And I remember it was a tin roof and for Irish people, we were just being boiled. But I really, really great memories of just busing it through this sort of mythical landscape. You know, there was, there's nowhere, nowhere in this country I would wanna fly over. But I do now. You know, we got the plane, you got the this. But I, I just remember thinking.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  This is, there's so many Americas.

• 43:52Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  But the mythology of America, I was reading, you know, Sam Shepard, I was reading, you know, On the Road, I was reading, you know, all these great writers and just opening up my imagination, that's where the Joshua Tree came from. And, yeah, it's a mythology that then, can you imagine,

• 44:19Speaker 02

  I get to discover that in my case,

• 44:24Speaker 02

  it's not just a mythology. It, I was part of something that was extraordinary. So, former governor of this, of Texas,

• 44:40Speaker 02

  George W. Bush, conservative, starts to lead the world in the fight against the AIDS pandemic, the greatest health crisis in 600 years since the bubonic plague. And I'm like, and people say, that's impossible, it's just not gonna happen. And he does. And it becomes a bipartisan thing and 26 million lives are saved. So it's strange, the way you see things, I had this, it wasn't a naive

• 45:17Speaker 02

  sense of America, but it was a sense that everything could be possible here, that it was somehow, the landscape of America was, was a little more magical than, than everywhere else and that it wasn't just a country, America, it was an idea.

• 45:36Joe Rogan?

  Yes, yeah, at its greatest, that is what America is. At its greatest, it's an idea, and it's an idea that was, like I said, was founded with the, the concepts behind the Declaration of Independence and those, those men who wrote that, the men who signed the Bill of Rights, they were so young. They were so young, some of them were 18 years old at the time, which is so crazy.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Jefferson was 32 or 33 when he wrote that.

• 46:02Joe Rogan?

  He's an old codger.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  I mean, that's why, and then, by the way, years later. He's in France, I think he's in Baghdad, and he loved wine. And this emerged, I found this out because I saw a signature in a, in a book. I was on some tour, I like to drink red wine. I've never been to Bordeaux in my life, but I, I went with some people who knew their way around wine. And they asked me to sign a book in this particular vineyard, posh kind of vineyard. But this was across the road from the big names, sort of thing. And I asked, I said, can I see the first book? There's Thomas Jefferson's name in the first one.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  I thought, wow, this guy's dreaming up America on some very fancy red plonk.

• 46:52Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Not plonk, actually, some really, that's just, but, you know, I'm, I know there's lots of contradictions in, in America, and I know there was slavery still, and that he had slaves, and I understand. But I'm encouraged that America perhaps doesn't exist yet, that it's still been written. If you think about it as a song, you think about it as a piece of music, it's not finished.

• 47:25Joe Rogan?

  Right, right.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  It's still been written. They started at those signatures.

• 47:29Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  You, and if you let people like me stay, you know, we're still, you know, you're writing it. I'm, I'm, I'm not writing, I'm the annoying fan who follows America into the bathroom. And, and with the liner notes, which are the declarations, going, didn't you say this here? And get out, who followed me into the bathroom? It's like, but, but I, yeah, I, I, I like the idea that it's, that this is.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Far from finished this composition.

• 48:04Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  And for some people, the America that is available to you and me doesn't exist yet, but it will and it can. And, uh, and, yeah.

• 48:16Joe Rogan?

  We hope that every election cycle, like this, this will be the one that finally makes us what we truly believe we are. But the, the country is just so co-opted by this. First of all, you have this genuine issue with the fact that it's essentially a popularity contest.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:35Joe Rogan?

  To see who gets to be running the government. You have a popularity contest that's fueled entirely by special interests. And the military industrial complex and pharmaceutical drug companies and it's just, it's a, it's all, it's all the opposite of, of an authentic song.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:52Joe Rogan?

  The thing about an authentic song where it makes your fucking goosebumps stand up, you're like, god damn.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  You're saying it's an AI composition?

• 49:01Joe Rogan?

  I tell you a story?

• 49:04Joe Rogan?

  A long time ago, probably 25 years ago, I was on mushrooms with a friend of mine. And we were laying on the side of this hill overlooking this canyon and we played In God's Country.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 49:19Joe Rogan?

  And it was just the, the, the peak of the mushrooms and the songs, the melody, the way that song hit, it just, it gave me this insane appreciation for things. Like at that, it was like this very unique

• 49:39Joe Rogan?

  fusion of the beauty of the music and the love of the experience, like the, mushrooms bring out this like loving, like communal quality, like happiness and, and joy. And just lying in this field, looking up at this canyon and hearing that song. It was like, this is what, what music does. It takes these moments and wherever they're at, it breaks them through the membrane into this new place. Like this moment, it broke through this membrane and brought me to this. I think about it all the time. I think about that particular experience.

• 50:18Joe Rogan?

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• 51:04Joe Rogan?

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• 51:47Joe Rogan?

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• 52:01Speaker 02

  We need the line in that when I'm singing it is, is a line that doesn't just apply to America, but applies to us personally. Wherever you are is, you know, we need new dreams tonight. And you can't be living on, we've got, we can't be living on secondhand dreams. And that's, I think, the renewal, I think, is what, what we're all looking for and, and.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's it's something to be protected and and I not protected. That sounds like it's it's like. I think you're right, though. I but I I think I I think America is more vulnerable now than it's ever been. It feels like America has fallen out of love with the rest of the world. I don't think the world wants to fall out of love with America. It just feels like and, you know, I've twenty twenty five years and and I'm just tiny cog in, I suppose, you know, people think look at personalities or, you know, even luminous

• 53:19Speaker 02

  ones or ones that have ideas way above their station and think that will, you know, that that might change things, but it's social movements always change things. And what happened back then with that Heart of America tour was was mind blowing because I learned a few things that I wasn't expecting. Like, I had grown up with a couple of more than a few bumps with evangelicals, you know, like whoop. It's like, because, you know, how do you you can't approach the subject of God without metaphor, right?

• 54:00Speaker 02

  So literalism is by its nature anti metaphor. And, you know, Jesus, all we know is that he spoke in parables because they're not literal. How do you explain these as poetry, as music? And I found it really difficult to be around evangelicals because they were so, you know, just literal about everything. And then on that same tour where I met Warren Buffett, I ended up at a college called Wheaton College, which is like a big in Chicago, it's a big evangelical thing. And they were like, they were really helpful. And there was like, I realized that these were kind of, and this is not to be at all

• 54:44Speaker 02

  dismissive of of some credible people, but it was like, I felt there was there was sort of narrow minded.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Sort of, what would I say, just sort of narrow my, the, the, the vision, if I could just open the aperture of their vision, just a little bit wider. Yeah. That they could be the most incredible force for good because they just worked harder. They didn't tell lies. They, they were just great people. And I think they, they led part of this movement that then ended up saving 26 million lives, you know, and it's called PEPFAR that George Bush started and Obama continued. Then I go to Catholics. I'd end up in Notre Dame. Now, I had a few Bruce Catholics over

• 55:36Speaker 02

  the years too. And I'm meeting these people and they're like, no, no, we're, we, we, we wanna, we, we, we believe in the value of human life and we, if we can do this, how much does this cost? And I'm like, well, you know, all of foreign aid is probably just less than 1% of government spending, but the part that keeps people alive is on, is half of that. So it's like half a percent. Now, it's not my money. It's up to you if you wanna do that. But they did. And lots of people came together. It was priests and

• 56:15Speaker 02

  punks, you know, it was the wildest collection of people. And, and just recently, like in, in the last three months, and this is not about politics because I've worked with conservatives, I've worked with liberals. I don't care, you know, I don't have those. I'm Irish. I don't have a chance to vote. But all of that was torn down without a heads up, without any notice because people thought foreign aid was like 10% of the budget or 20% and it was doing things that it shouldn't have been doing. And I'm sure there was some waste,

• 56:55Speaker 02

  but I can tell you as a person who, who saw what the United States were doing around the world and saw this.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  There's, I saw America display itself at its finest. And I remember being in the Oval Office with President Bush and had, and these anti-retroviral drugs, I said, "Paint them red, white, and blue, Mr. President. These are the best advertisements for America there'll ever be." And he's looking at me, thinking I'm taking the piss, but I'm not. And he wasn't, as it turns out. And, and he, he spoke about the, the least of these, which is a wild concept. I don't know if you know this, but it's like the, it's, it's in Matthew, I think it is. It's, it's, it's the only time that Jesus speaks of judgment.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  It's not like, "What's going on in your pants?" It's not like, "What's going on over here or over there?" The first time Jesus Christ speaks in kind of force of judgment is the way we treat the poor, the poorest of the poor. And he says, "Well, in the way that you're treating these, the least of, of them, the, the sick, the blind, the people who, who are suffering from malnutrition, that's how you treat me. I am them." And so now, when we cut to the people, like you went to Boston University, you taught at Boston University.

• 58:32Joe Rogan?

  I taught martial arts there, yeah.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  So, so just recent report, it's not proven, but the surveillance enough suggests 300,000 people have already died from just this cutoff, this hard cut of USAID. So there's food rotting in boats, in warehouses. There is, this, this, this will, will fuck you off. This will not, you will not be happy, no American will. But there is, and he has 50,000 tons of food that are stored in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai, and wait for it, Houston, Texas.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  And that is rotting, rather than going to Gaza, rather than going to Sudan, because the people who know the codes or for the warehouse, they're, they're, are fired, they're gone.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  And so this, I don't know, I just, it's, and what do you think? What, what, what is, what is that? That's, that's not America, is it?

• 59:40Joe Rogan?

  Well, they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:43Joe Rogan?

  Right, this is the problem. The problem is, for sure, there have been a lot of organizations that do tremendous good all throughout the world. Also, for sure, it was a money laundering operation. For sure, there was no oversight. For sure, billions of dollars are missing. In fact, trillions that are unaccounted for, that were sent off into various, they, they, they don't even know where because there's no receipts. The way Elon Musk described it, he said if any of this was done by a public company, the company would be delisted and the executives would be in prison. But in the United States, this is standard. When Biden left office, when it was clear that Trump won in the seventy-three days,

• 1:00:28Joe Rogan?

  they spent ninety-three billion dollars from the Department of Energy on just radical loans, just throwing money into places.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:39Joe Rogan?

  And there's no, no oversight, no receipts. Like, the, the whole thing is, it's, there's a lot of fraud, a lot of money laundering. But also, we help the world. And when you're talking about making wells for people in the Congo to get fresh water, when you're talking about food and medicine to places that don't have access, like, no way that should have been cut out. And that should have been clear before they make these radical cuts. Like, there's gotta be a way to keep aid and not have fraud. And you can't have, you can't say, we're gonna kill everything so that there's no fraud. But then you're killing all the good and you're doing it without letting anybody know it's gonna happen, so no one's, it's not like they had three years to prepare, let's

• 1:01:24Joe Rogan?

  build a new infrastructure, let's make sure that everything's set up. They wanted change and they want to change quickly and do the nature of American politics, they have about two years before the midterms, right? So everything has to get done as quickly as possible. You have to show a growth in GDP, you have to show that the economy's booming again. These ideas, make America first, tariffs for the world, bring back American manufacturing, and this mad rush to do it all as quickly as possible while cutting out as much waste as possible.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Joe Rogan?

  But the ironic thing is, even though Elon Musk has proposed all these things and the Doge Committee has proposed all these things, they've made no cuts in terms of the budget. They've cut nothing.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  It's such a tiny part. I mean, if, if, if, if it's big government or whatever, people wanna, wanna shrink, I, I, I, I, I get the instinct, but this, the life-saving part.

• 1:02:19Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  It, it, it's like the little finger of the giant.

• 1:02:23Joe Rogan?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  I mean, and, and I, I've met all these people, and I'm sure there's, there's part of it, you know, there's, I think about 10% of it goes to things like governance and, you know, the human rights organizations. You might say that's political and we shouldn't be involved in that, and there's reforms, I imagine, that might have been necessary, but you have the reforms, but, but to, to, to destroy, to vandalize, I mean, it felt like with glee, these life support systems were being pulled out of the walls. And I was, I was reading today, you know, it's like, I think it's in Christianity today,

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  and they're just talking, I think it's called Christian Relief, one of these organizations, and they're dealing with malnourished kids, and they are having the conversation now about, we don't have the funds, we have to choose which child to pull off the IVs. And it just seems to me like a kind of, I, I, I don't know if, if evil is a strong word, too strong a word, but what we know about pure evil is it rejoices in the deaths, you know, of, the squandering of human life, particularly children.

• 1:03:45Joe Rogan?

  And suffering.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it actually rejoices in it, and, and I just, you know, whether it's, whether it's incompetence, whether it's unintended consequences.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  It's it's not too late for people like I I had conversations with with Marco Rubio. He's convinced people aren't dying yet. It's it's I don't know who's telling him or not telling him rather, but he his instincts are correct. He you know, he wants to die. He used to wear a one campaign armband. Americans, no matter what political color, they just they just they just you see them just the size. Sort of they just grow in stature when they know they're being useful. I had a truck driver on that same tour. He like tattoos all over his head and whatever. And he was just saying, can I drive?

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  I heard fifty percent of all truck drivers in Africa are gonna die. Is that right because of this disease AIDS? I said, yeah. He said, can I give you my number? I will drive like that's America. And and yeah, this the bureaucracy, the the the pen pushers. I get it. I get people's frustration for it. But but I'm just I just want to remind Americans of the size of their country. And it's and I'm not talking about the geography.

• 1:05:13Joe Rogan?

  The impact.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  I'm just the the size of the idea. The the the, you know, it's just it's it's just an extraordinary thing. It's an idea I think big enough to fit the whole world. And when it becomes a continent, you know, when it becomes an island rather than a continent. I think it's a subcontinent. What is it? I should have should have gone with geography lessons more. But you know, you know what I'm talking about. When it shrinks, America seems to stop being America. And I know you don't want to get into wars and you shouldn't. But that don't concern you.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  But but there's this this word freedom, land of the free.

• 1:06:03Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  That's and the brave. This is this is who we look to you for. And we look to you for these qualities. And I believe they're everywhere and I don't believe any one party has a

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  has a hole on them.

• 1:06:24Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  On these on these qualities. But, you know, it's a it's a funny one for me. I one of the reasons I came on on the show I wanted to on the show was

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  I wanted to interview you. I wanted to. I just wanted to get your take on where America is at the at the present time. Because because you're talking to everyone, you know. And this isn't this is a compliment to you. But my book, you know, I wrote this book, Surrender. And sort of if there's a point to it at the very end, it's it's just I'm I'm shouting at God, I'm having my wrestling match with my maker. And you just get this thing of and you've probably picked it up by now. Shut up and listen. And I need to listen more.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  You are an amazing listener. And I don't know who it was or some who said, listening doesn't grant the other side legitimacy, but it grants them their humanity and restores your own. You sit in this room and you listen to everybody. And that makes you very valuable in to the country. And and I wanted to just get your your take on it. What what would your advice be to me and people like me who are not part of the

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  Big industrial complex, we just, we just, we just wanna serve

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  the idea of America and the people who depend on that idea.

• 1:08:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I, I think-

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  What would your advice to me?

• 1:08:15Joe Rogan?

  I would give you zero advice. I don't know if I'm qualified to give advice. But I would say that America goes through these great periods of overcorrection. It goes, these great periods of, like, you, you saw it during Covid, during the lockdowns and the authoritarianism. And we fell into a kinda state of tyranny where there was just massive oppression of free speech, including government-sponsored oppression. They were contacting, uh, different social media platforms and banning legitimate doctors and scholars because they had different opinions about how things should be handled. There was, uh, wide-scale censorship, a push for a changing of the First Amendment. The First Amendment means to be overhauled.

• 1:08:59Joe Rogan?

  The First Amendment doesn't apply to hate speech or to disinformation. There was all these, like, new ways of talking about censorship in this country and condoning censorship. And it's very dangerous because it's all about money. It had nothing to do with protecting people.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  That's what I worry about. The, the argument about free speech is that it seems to be sponsored by a lot of people who you sense don't really respect it so much. And it, but it is a very economic, um, for them to not have to to live with the consequences-

• 1:09:36Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  -of, of a story. I think, well, is it the communication? I think it's that, it's 1996, this is a long time ago, Communications Act, Decency Act. That meant the internet did not have to apply by the same rules as the rest of the media.

• 1:09:55Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  So we could say anything we wanted. And at first, that felt like liberation, but I'm not so sure anymore. And so, I mean, I, I, you can tell me more about this. I'm, I'm, I am not a free speech absolutist. Um, but I like, I do, one, believe in free speech. But I'm nervous that the people who are supporting free speech and, and using their bots and their-

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  Their their own activists are are people from countries who would not at all respect our, your, mine ability to express ourselves. And that's what I worry about is, I think, I think the the old interweb is being is being played like a like a harp.

• 1:10:51Joe Rogan?

  Unquestionably.

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  Like like an orchestra.

• 1:10:53Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  And the people, you know, behind the curtain would would surprise us, I think, if we knew.

• 1:10:59Joe Rogan?

  I think it's worse than that. I think it's programmed like an EDM concert. I think I think it's not even an orchestra. I I I worry, and this has been substantiated by data, that more than fifty percent of the interactions going on on the internet and social media are not real.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  It's wild.

• 1:11:17Joe Rogan?

  There was a former FBI analyst.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Sounds right, though.

• 1:11:20Joe Rogan?

  Yes, former FBI analyst that said it might be as much as eighty percent.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:11:25Joe Rogan?

  It's bots, as you said, and this is this is a problem with the concept of free speech. I'm I'm completely wholly in favor of free speech, just like the ADL was back in the day when they let the Ku Klux Klan march. They they like, look, you you've got to.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Joe Rogan?

  The way to combat bad speech is with better speech. The way to find out whose arguments are correct is to let them debate in the marketplace of free ideas and expose these people for what they are and have the people that are on the sidelines that are letting these great thinkers have these discussions say, okay, this guy makes sense. This guy's clearly a grifter. This guy has ulterior motives. This guy has an ideology that's very toxic and he's trying to push this on the whole world for control, for power, for money, to benefit the special interest groups that he's a part of, or whatever it is. That the problem with free speech is you're you're also going to get a lot of ugliness because there's a lot of ugliness in the world. You're going to get a lot of people that say horrible things.

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:24Joe Rogan?

  And I think the only way we sort through all that is you have to let them. And then you have to let people rise up that oppose those horrible ideas. And those people become heroes. Those become the Martin Luther King Jr. Humor helps.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  Like, uh, hu- hu- humor helps. The one thing we know about the Ku Klux Klan is if you mention the silly costumes. They, they don't like that. They, you know, i- it's like, they want you to be afraid or you want to be nervous, but it's like, dude, look at the stage gear.

• 1:12:54Joe Rogan?

  You're in ghosts.

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  It's like, come on.

• 1:12:57Joe Rogan?

  Do you know who Darryl Davis is?

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:12:59Joe Rogan?

  Darryl Davis is a musician who, um, he's, was a traveling blues musician. And, uh, did some shows where afterwards he met some people that told him that they were in the Ku Klux Klan. And he was like, are you kidding? And they show, the guy shows him his fucking grand wizard identi- ID card or whatever the hell it is. He becomes friends.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Here's my card.

• 1:13:22Joe Rogan?

  Darryl's black.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:23Joe Rogan?

  Darryl's a black man and becomes friends with this guy, uh, goes to his house, meets his family. The guy throws the robe away, gives up his membership in the KKK, renounces his membership and gives Darryl the ropes, says, I want you to have this. Darryl has done that personally. The last time I talked to him was a few years back. He'd done this personally to over two hundred people. Just by being an amazing human being, by being a brilliant artist and, and hanging out with them, just being kind and talk, and as an example of just a great human. And they were like, I guess I'm wrong. I guess I'm wrong. This idea that black people are inferior and the white man is the superior race, that can't be true because I love this guy. And so they would just quit.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Joe Rogan?

  They'd quit and he has a stack. It's a terrible theory, but if you're in a place with only terrible theories and that's what you grew up, there's Darryl. And they give him all his robes.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  You know, good man.

• 1:14:23Joe Rogan?

  He's a great man.

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  Good man.

• 1:14:25Joe Rogan?

  And he, he's a kind, like, very peaceful, like, when, when you speak to him, he's but real, he, he's amazing.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  One of your, you know, again, one of the reasons I'm, I'm here is

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  The, I think there is a sense that people just wanna be part of something. And, you know, when we were growing up, there, there were clubs you could be a part of, you know. There, there, there's, there are, there's people you could hang out with and you knew where that was going. But if you wanted to belong and have a sense of purpose, you ended up there. And, and so, I think that it's okay to,

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  on, for, for, for, for men to admit that in this moment, they are probably, you know, we're, we're, we're a little adrift. I hear this from my daughters, I hear this from my wife. And it's, it's like, that's where, this feeling of, of, of being dislocated. It's, it's, so you're attracted to these simple ideas. You know, the, the concept of the gang or America, like it's a team sport between the Reds and the Blues.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  America's the team. That's all, you know, that's, and, and, and this thing, and, and, and, look, I'm vulnerable. We were, we are all, especially when you're growing up, teenagers. You know, you are very vulnerable to, to those points of view. Yes. I, you know, early on, we had sort of, yeah, I would say I had a,

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  I, I got close to what you might call fundamentalists. And this is all versions of fundamentalism. There are, it's all a very narrow view. Yeah. And, and, you know, what you see going on, right, in, in Gaza is you see, you see Palestinian people.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  Being held hostage by Hamas. It's not just Israelis that are being held hostage by Hamas.

• 1:16:53Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Palestinian people and the fundamentalists in Israel, in the cabinet, these far-right fundamentalists. Because at a time, you remember a few years back, everything was kind of wishy-washy and kind of the new age and whatever you have in yourself. And now these strong, clear points of view have arrived.

• 1:17:17Joe Rogan?

  It's the great overcorrection.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  It's the great overcorrection.

• 1:17:20Joe Rogan?

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• 1:18:04Joe Rogan?

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• 1:18:48Joe Rogan?

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• 1:19:33Joe Rogan?

  Veteran-founded, American-roasted, Black Rifle Coffee is America's coffee. Yeah, there's a real problem with ideology, and there's a real problem with fundamentalism, and there's a cowardice in it. And there's a cowardice in "I'm the only one that's correct." There's a cowardice in not listening to any other ideas, not listening to any other positions. And we're being played against each other in this country. The thing about the bots and the social media stuff is it just accentuates this divide between the left and the right, which I think is mostly bullshit. Most people are good people. Most people just want to be happy and healthy and have friends and family and do what they want to do for a living and have the freedom to pursue those things. Most people aren't trying to victimize people.

• 1:20:17Joe Rogan?

  Most people aren't trying to destroy other people's lives and destroy society. They just want to live their life, but they're being sucked into one side or the other, which is radically opposed to each other. The great overcorrection.

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  Did you think that President Zelensky was being bullied in that meeting in the Oval Office? Like, is that just, just to think about it as a playground? This is a guy, his, maybe, maybe his life depended, but certainly the life of many, many people he knew depend on, and he had to, he had to listen to that.

• 1:20:50Joe Rogan?

  Well, the whole thing is strange, right? I mean, the argument in the White House of like, you don't have the right hand of cards and, you know, just the fact that this is all being done publicly is very strange, right? That there's cameras and photographers. Like, I don't like live podcasts. Sometimes, I've done them before, but there's something about having an audience where you're playing to an audience, having, you know, these conversations should be just... Couple of people in a room, that's what I think. I think that's the ones that resonate with me the most. Yeah, this is, I just think it's the best way to do it, the way that resonates the most. I think the kind of conversation that you're gonna have with a world leader shouldn't be performative.

• 1:21:32Joe Rogan?

  And it certainly shouldn't be with a bunch of people snapping photographs and pointing cameras and then pushing each other back and forth, you know? You don't have the right hand of cards. This is not cards. You are playing cards and it's just a cra- it's a crazy way and each calling each other disrespectful. It's a crazy way to handle any world events. It's just terrible platform for it.

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, just think of, again, I think of America, the Americans of Omaha Beach, the people who, like, the level of courage.

• 1:22:05Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  And I think of these people on the front line in Europe. I mean, I haven't really spoken about Europe with you, but, you know, if, if, if, if America's the melting pot, I would say Europe's the mosaic, you know? It's all these different people who speak with a different language, but have, are trying for one voice in Europe, which is, you can sound like cacophony. They call it Euro babble in, in Brussels. But I'm, I've really, I'm really now realizing how romantic it was, you know, with the Enlightenment, with the Renaissance, you know?

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  We've got, we've got a lot to offer and, and, and Europe has, Europe's under threat. And those bots, every election now that, where this candidate is pro-Europe and pro-European unity, they are just getting a shitstorm of disinformation. And I just think, wow, but it's, I think Europe is, and America are just sexier than these people. It's not a trite thing to say, but it's like they're, they're so kinda... Unsexy, you know, that's, I mean, that's, sorry, I have driven up.

• 1:23:31Joe Rogan?

  Unromantic.

• 1:23:32Speaker 02

  Unromantic, it's, that's right. It's just these very dull, not funny people.

• 1:23:40Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:23:40Speaker 02

  And are trying to take over the world. They're not funny. Lukashenko of Belarus, that dude is not funny. We don't have to go further. We don't have to go further.

• 1:23:52Joe Rogan?

  Who do you think's the funniest world leader?

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Who, yeah, that's a really good question.

• 1:23:58Joe Rogan?

  It's gotta be Trump. He's the funniest.

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  Well, he has a thing that a lot of stand-up comedians have, which is, he can say the thing in the room that no one else is gonna say.

• 1:24:14Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  And that generally creates a laugh. And, um, but I also think he mightn't be able to take a joke.

• 1:24:24Joe Rogan?

  Well, he's not good at that. He doesn't enjoy a joke coming his way. No, he doesn't.

• 1:24:29Speaker 02

  I mean, Zelensky's actually a comedian.

• 1:24:32Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  I, I met him before he became president.

• 1:24:35Joe Rogan?

  Played piano with his penis on television.

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  It, it's quite, it was quite a piano.

• 1:24:42Joe Rogan?

  I mean, it's funny to go from playing piano with your penis to becoming the president of the Ukraine.

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  Becoming the president of the United States.

• 1:24:50Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  By all accounts. So, so, um, but he, he came to Ireland as a comedian. He told me, I didn't know, and he played like small towns. I think he played Dundalk or Drutha, somewhere in the east coast of Ireland. But comedians can read a room. I mean, performers. I think.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  Comedians are at the top of the food chain because you don't have a band. You don't have a fucking tambourine. You don't, you just have the read of the room and the material has to be really funny. I use this sometimes with our band. Not, a lot of our music is just experimental and innovative. We improvise and then we try to turn it into songs. But sometimes we'll write a pop song and, and we'll end up with a pop song. And I'll say, well, the thing about a pop song is it is empirical. It's like it either is or it isn't. It's like a joke that doesn't have a punchline. It's like a comedian does not walk out on stage and tell a joke.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  And if people don't laugh, go, they just don't get it. It just means the joke isn't funny. So I, it's not a popular theory in our band, by the way, but I hold on to it very tight. I just say, if you can't go out and play this song and it just connect, then it's not a pop song. We don't, we only do a few pop songs every, every decade probably. Because a lot of what we, U2 does is different kind of rock and roll. But I do think there's something empirical about some songs are better than the others.

• 1:26:38Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:26:39Speaker 02

  I witnessed a, I witnessed one of the most ridiculous moments in, in my life, but it was kind of funny. Oasis, you know Oasis, they're all good.

• 1:26:51Joe Rogan?

  Sure.

• 1:26:51Speaker 02

  They're amazing bands.

• 1:26:52Joe Rogan?

  Love them.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  I just love them. And so I witnessed this, it couldn't be a more childish fight between two of my friends. Liam Gallagher was a friend at that point. I know Noel better now, but, and Michael Hutchins, who was the singer of Inexcess. And they really were doing the, my song's better than your song.

• 1:27:19Joe Rogan?

  Oh, no.

• 1:27:20Speaker 02

  I know, no, what about, no, no. And, and, and I was thinking, I was laughing to myself and then I thought.

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  It's interesting. Both of them have a point. That song of theirs might be better than that. And I started to think about it. And comedians don't get a chance to have, to be subjective. It's not like Prince walks out and plays a whole new album and can go, they just don't get it. It's like, you're either funny, or you're not.

• 1:27:56Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  You're going down. Have you gone down in flames?

• 1:27:59Joe Rogan?

  Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:28:01Speaker 02

  Whereas, what was your worst gig?

• 1:28:02Joe Rogan?

  Oh, I've had so many. Especially in the early days. You're, you're trying to figure it out and, you know. The, the thing about material is, material is essentially like, like a calf that's newly born. And it has awkward legs and it has to develop into a bull. But it takes a long time. It takes crafting. You have to sit with it. You have to go over the, some guy, ideas come to you in full form and some ideas, you have to believe in them. You know there's something there and you have to dig and, you know, trust the muse and find it. And, you know, sometimes those bits would just fucking bomb. And you have to just like, oh God, should I abandon this? Should I keep working on this?

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  Do you have a team of writers?

• 1:28:47Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:28:49Joe Rogan?

  No, I just write everything myself.

• 1:28:50Speaker 02

  You're kidding?

• 1:28:51Joe Rogan?

  No, always. Yeah, always have. Always write my, I just like, my, my view on stand up, the kind of stand up that I do is supposed to be, here's the world through my eyes. This is how I'm seeing things from the most ridiculous, awestruck and laughing at everything perspective. And I have to, it has to be through my lens.

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  Well, that's amazing. I mean, cause I've seen, you know, on Saturday Night Live when we do it, or I've seen some of the talks, I see these geniuses. You know, crunching jokes and coming out with material and.

• 1:29:23Joe Rogan?

  That's a different thing.

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  It's a different thing.

• 1:29:24Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, like a Saturday Night Live monologue or, you know, a Tonight Show monologue or any of that kind of thing. It's a, that's a different thing. The, the real stand up is clubs, you know?

• 1:29:33Speaker 02

  I went to a club with Dave Chappelle to a club and he brought me to, it was amazing. Are you still friendly with him?

• 1:29:39Joe Rogan?

  Oh, real good friends. Yeah, I love him to death. Yeah.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  He's, he's, he's incredible. That's jazz.

• 1:29:45Joe Rogan?

  Yes, he's a real artist.

• 1:29:46Speaker 02

  He can go, well, you know, it's like. Yeah, no, I, I, I think, why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this, oh yeah, because people can't take a joke.

• 1:29:57Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  And some people, I mean, we don't need belly laughs out of our leaders.

• 1:30:02Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 1:30:03Speaker 02

  We just need vision.

• 1:30:03Joe Rogan?

  You need vision and kindness.

• 1:30:05Speaker 02

  But to deal with the Ku Klux Klan?

• 1:30:09Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  Humor helps. To deal with the fascists or whatever, I mean, certainly Hitler in, I think, late 30s was getting rid of the Dadaists and the Surrealists. Because the language of fascism was to fight back, but that, they liked that language. And, I mean, the, the language of resistance against, you know, Hitler was to fight back. And, and, but that suited them. They did not like being laughed at. Zafio did not like being laughed at.

• 1:30:40Joe Rogan?

  Well, because if you can mock something, like you can, you can have a position or an opinion on something and someone can disagree strongly, but if they make everyone laugh at that position, now you're, now they've made a real point. Because it's actually an opinion that you might not have even agreed with has caused you a belly laugh. Like, oh god. Like, that's how you really get it. Because if you go on stage and just have a bunch of opinions and just lecture people, there's people in the audience that'll go, well, fuck you, I feel differently. But if you could go on stage with that opinion and make people laugh at something they know they shouldn't be laughing at, oh my god. And you're like, then you're introducing ideas into a person. It's a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, you're certainly the, because with rock stars, and again, I honestly feel like I'm just impersonating one. I don't think I, I am the material, really. But people, when they see me coming, they sit in their wallet. You know what I mean? They're like, whoop, here he comes, and he's gonna have a sign up, and it's like, whereas comedians, people are much more open.

• 1:31:47Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  People will, people will, are just more open. I think that's a, that's, it's a responsibility, but it's, it's something to be valued. It's just, I, I was saying to somebody recently,

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  I'm not sure I trust people anymore who aren't a little bit funny.

• 1:32:09Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  I mean funny in the not the funny peculiar.

• 1:32:12Joe Rogan?

  Right, right.

• 1:32:13Speaker 02

  There's a place for that too.

• 1:32:14Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  But you know, people who make you laugh are open.

• 1:32:18Joe Rogan?

  Yes, and also the contradictions of the world and how bizarre things are.

• 1:32:22Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:32:23Joe Rogan?

  It's just ripe with humor and if you don't ever pick up on it, like what are you focusing on? Like you don't ever see the hypocrisy and the ludicrousness of just this existence, this temporary existence on a spinning orb hurling through the universe and concentrating on who gets to use what bathroom? Like is this like, you know what I mean? It's like we're weird. We're very weird and if you don't see that, you're not paying all attention. You're not all in. You're certainly not balanced.

• 1:32:54Speaker 02

  Those mushrooms were working very well for you.

• 1:32:56Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I'm telling you, man. In God's country, that's the ticket.

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  That's beautiful. I, I.

• 1:33:03Joe Rogan?

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• 1:33:43Joe Rogan?

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• 1:34:27Joe Rogan?

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• 1:35:05Speaker 02

  Wow, I'm so touched. That album. You know, a lot of the songs on that were, you know, very vulnerable, you know? And I don't know if you know, Brian Eno was a producer, invented ambient music. And worked with David Bowie, Talking Heads, you know?

• 1:35:29Speaker 02

  And recently Coldplay and other people. But he was, had a profound influence on us. Because we didn't go to, I didn't go to art college, all like the Beatles, the Stones, they all went to art college. We went to Brian Eno. And he had this incredible musician in partnership with him for the production of that album. Called Daniel Lanois, one of the greatest musicians you'll ever meet in your life. And that, some songs come really quickly, like bum, you just. But some are just like what you're saying, they're like the, the, the foal. The, the legs are going around.

• 1:36:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:09Speaker 02

  And the one that was like that was where the streets of No Name. And so we were working on it for what felt like weeks. And Brian Eno came in and he just said. I am not having us spend one more minute on this song. And he went to wipe it. So he was actually gonna wipe it. Whoa. And so there's no other copies. And Pat McCarthy, who was our engineer, went on to produce R E M and Madonna, great dude. He physically blocked Brian from it. And but that song for me. And it's it's not the lyric that I'm most proud of or anything.

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  Because it's Brian was just saying to us, just go with your first sketch. Remember talking about paint on canvas? Yeah. But I'm saying, but it's not it's not that clever. I want, you know, he's, don't let it be clever. Just that's what you said, that's what you meant. And it's the strangest thing, Joe, because

• 1:37:17Speaker 02

  we go on stage and I sing that song. We sing that song, we play that song. And it's like, what the fuck, where the streets of Nony, what's that about? I started it in Africa when I was with my wife when I was a kid. And you were twenty five, something like, maybe twenty six. She was twenty four.

• 1:37:43Speaker 02

  And it was about the devastation that was happening in the Ethiopian famine. And I just couldn't explain it to myself. There was other inferences about the song. But none of them matter

• 1:37:56Speaker 02

  as much as this question to your audience, which is, do you want to go there to this place, the place of imagination, the place of soul, place of that other place? Do you want, do you want to go there? Do you want to go there together? And everybody feels it. Because we all want to be.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  Outside of ourselves at a certain time. And we all wanna have that experience, that meeting with. Some call it the universe, some call it God, some call it themselves, whatever. But it's, it's music now. I think, you know, all art aspires to the condition of music. But, but we, I was saying, we go to church in the dark. You know, that's what rock and roll is. And we're just looking for little shards of light. We find it in, in an audience. We find our transcendence together. But the movie, we also go to church in the dark.

• 1:39:04Speaker 02

  And cinema, you're sitting, you're in, you're in a dark space. And it's projected light, telling other people's stories. And somebody said cinema is like being born. Like you go into the womb. It's like you're floating around in the, as Jim Sheridan would say, he's, I hear, a psychological genius, Irish director, My Left Foot, The Boxer, some great films. He'd say, yeah, you're in the amniotic fluid. You're inside the mother. And, and you're about to come out into the light. That's cinema. Great cinema is that journey towards the light.

• 1:39:49Speaker 02

  And I love that. And I love that. But it's the same, for some people, their, their cathedral is a hike. The natural world.

• 1:40:03Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:04Speaker 02

  Have you ever heard of Richard Rohr?

• 1:40:06Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  R O H R. He lives in Albuquerque. He has a thing called, it's called the center of, the center of.

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  Action and contemplation. And I really love that it's that way around. And he's a Franciscan friar. And but very otherworldly thoughts about the natural world and finding the divine in it. As well as just in each other, but just seeing it in the world around you. I think you'd enjoy him. He's worth a read. Do you, is, if Rogan, is it Irish? Is it Catholic Irish?

• 1:40:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:40:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:56Speaker 02

  Okay, you might enjoy him.

• 1:40:58Joe Rogan?

  I'm sure I would.

• 1:40:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's a, he's a, he's a real beauty. He lives, he's got a little hermitage. And, and, and yeah, and he's, he's good. He's great on the Enneagram as well. Do you know the Enneagram?

• 1:41:13Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 1:41:14Speaker 02

  It's a sort of archetypal thing. Goes back to Sufi, I think early Sufi. And then the Christian Fathers. What are they called? The Desert Fathers in the fourth century. But it's a way of recognizing archetypes and our own. I, I, it's not, it's not a big thing for me or anything. It's like archetypes. But I think my, our daughter Eve's an actor. And she said, a lot of writers are interested in it. And she said, in some of the clever schools, they teach this, the Enneagram. He's, anyway, Richard was an expert in this.

• 1:41:55Joe Rogan?

  I think, oh, here it goes.

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:41:57Joe Rogan?

  Enneagram three centers.

• 1:41:58Speaker 02

  Oh, looks like a cult.

• 1:42:00Joe Rogan?

  Of intelligence. The mediator, peacemaker, so the perfectionist, reformer, the giver, helper, supporter, performer, achiever. Romantic individualist, the observer thinker, the loyal skeptic, the trooper, the epicure, enthusiast, generalist, and the protector, the leader, the boss.

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  What would you say you are?

• 1:42:20Joe Rogan?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:42:20Speaker 02

  I don't know how you could tell.

• 1:42:22Joe Rogan?

  I wouldn't.

• 1:42:23Speaker 02

  At this point.

• 1:42:24Joe Rogan?

  I think I just keep on keeping on. I try not to pay attention to me as much as possible. I think there's a thing that happens, what you're talking about on stage, where everyone.

• 1:42:36Joe Rogan?

  Achieves a higher state of consciousness through a song. I think that's, that's where it is really like a church. That's where it is really like a religious experience. When, when a great song is playing that like really, like when people hear it and like, ah. You know, maybe it's the first couple of bars of Sunday Bloody Sunday. They hear it and they're like, yes. It's like this thing that washes over everyone collectively. We're all experiencing it together and it takes you away from yourself. You know, everyone's caught up in their own struggle and their, their self and how they exist in this world and all the problems of reality. And then there's something about these moments of divine inspiration where they impact people. It's very profound way.

• 1:43:20Joe Rogan?

  And I think that's one of the reasons why people are so deeply drawn to music and especially live performance. Cause music is wonderful. Music by yourself is great. I love listening to music in my car. I love listening to music period. But music, when you're in a live setting, when everyone's experiencing it together, it's, it's a religious experience. There's something, there's something attuned to it. There's a reason why they sing in church, right? It achieves very similar.

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I miss that. You know, when we were kids growing up, the tunes weren't that great in the church. And I said to my, I mean, no offense to whoever was there, but they.

• 1:43:55Joe Rogan?

  I agree.

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  But you know, I was like, I, I said to our kids, you know, as, and they were all, none of them were baptized Protestant or Catholic. Cause my father was Catholic, my mother's was. I just said, you wanna be Christian, wanna be Christian, but you decide. So you know, I never got religion rammed down my throat. I'm certainly not gonna put it down yours. So we'd go and sometimes you just get a feeling in a place. I said, just trust that feeling.

• 1:44:23Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:24Speaker 02

  And they might say, well, the tunes aren't that good. And I'm like, it's okay. But, but I, I, I would, I remember when I was really young, walking in and hearing like the Salvation Army band and people singing. I remember getting the shivers, just thinking, these are, these are, these, these hymns, these ancient.

• 1:44:45Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:44:46Speaker 02

  Songs, they, they really connect us. And I I miss that. And I I think people, I think people would return to religion if if if religion wasn't so fucked up.

• 1:45:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:01Speaker 02

  And and I think people, you know, the the church has to serve the people and and and not the other way around. And, you know, the church presently, I don't know how many churches you'd have here in Austin, Texas. But I'd probably say if there's two hundred and seventy six different kinds of um churches. You know, it's it's just one church, it's just in two hundred and seventy six bits, pieces. It feels sometimes like it's at odds with science, but it's not.

• 1:45:46Speaker 02

  Science is the pursuit of truth. And so these are pilgrims too. Great scientists are trying to crack the code of the physical world. The great theologians are trying to crack the code of the metaphysical world. And nobody knows, that's the thing about ritualism, you know. That beautiful thing in, you know, everyone has it at their wedding, love is patient, love is kind. And we can roll over, you know, love is this, love is that. And then it goes faith, hope and and love, but the greatest of these is love. And I remember talking with somebody and I'm saying, well, why is love more important than faith?

• 1:46:29Speaker 02

  Why is love more important than hope? And the clue is a few verses later where it says, we see through the mirror darkly.

• 1:46:45Speaker 02

  But one day, we'll see face to face. We know now in part, but one day, we will know fully. As we ourselves are known.

• 1:46:59Speaker 02

  You cannot be a fundamentalist and not

• 1:47:06Speaker 02

  understand that that is an explanation to just realize that you can have faith, you can have hope, but love means you need love. We need love because we cannot be sure. Our certainties, our certainties, that's the scary thing. And, you know, I trust a feeling as a musician, I trust it when I'm going, you know, to sing or to improvise, but they're not certainties.

• 1:47:35Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:47:35Speaker 02

  They're instincts.

• 1:47:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:37Speaker 02

  And, and I love that you feel that music is still a communal place, our festivals are amazing and, and people, people, people are deprived presently of, of a place where they feel comfortable. I'm comfortable in the back of a cathedral. I'm comfortable at some, what's your friend, the Blues guy or, you know, a gospel church.

• 1:48:07Joe Rogan?

  Gerald Davis, yeah.

• 1:48:07Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm, I'm just, I'm just looking for the spirit.

• 1:48:12Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:13Speaker 02

  Wherever I find it, in a conversation.

• 1:48:16Joe Rogan?

  In a song.

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  I can feel it when it's happening.

• 1:48:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:18Speaker 02

  When we're having an honest conversation, you feel it, it's a, it's a thing and I'm, and I can put down my salesman and just have a conversation. Because the three on that Enneagram is probably my number. I, I, because it's so excruciating, but it's the salesman. I sell ideas as well as songs and I sometimes just have to just.

• 1:48:45Speaker 02

  Just shut up.

• 1:48:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I think we're all those things, just to varying degrees. And I think the spirit of the thing is what you're talking about. This intangible moment where everybody realizes they're in it, whether it's in a church where they're singing. One of my favorite moments with you was on the Jimmy Fallon Show, singing Ordinary Love.

• 1:49:08Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:49:09Joe Rogan?

  I loved it. We played it on the podcast when it happened. The next day when it got out on YouTube, I brought it in here and I go, "You gotta listen to this." This is just such an amazing rendition of a song, because it's just you sitting on these chairs. And Jimmy Fallon is next to you on the table, like this is it here.

• 1:49:30Speaker 02

  What a beauty.

• 1:49:31Joe Rogan?

  We played this, I want to listen to it. Let's put this on, put the headphones on. I fucking love this version.

• 1:50:46Speaker 04

  Birds fly high in the summer sky And rest on the breeze The same wind will take care of you and I We'll build a house in the trees Your heart is on my sleeve Did you put it there with a magic moth? For years I would believe That the world couldn't wash us away We can't fall any further in We can't feel ordinary love And we cannot reach any higher

• 1:51:30Speaker 04

  If we can't deal with ordinary love We can't fall any further in We can't feel ordinary love And we cannot reach any higher If we can't deal with ordinary love

• 1:51:53Joe Rogan?

  Roots? Ah, yeah. Yeah, I love this part. Aw, come on.

• 1:52:33Joe Rogan?

  Chris Love!

• 1:52:41Joe Rogan?

  That is, that is without a doubt, hands down, my favorite performance ever. Ever on a talk show. Ever. Cause it was so, first of all, it starts out so relaxed, you're sitting on the couch, and you're singing it, and you're just so on it. You're so on it, that everyone just gets captivated by it, and then the music builds, and then you bring in Roots, it's fucking phenomenal. And that's like, that is what we're talking about, that's like this moment that elevates people. It takes people out of their life, and just this joy of expression, all happening simultaneously with everybody in the crowd and every, and then when you stand up and you start dancing, and Roots are playing, and whoa, it just washes over everybody.

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  That is, it's odd that you should, should bring it up because I was sitting at a table with a couple of journalists, um, friends of, a friend of mine, this economist called David McWilliams, you'd love him, by the way, he's the guy who says, um, "The poor think in minutes, the, the rich think in years," you know, they're kind of, one of the, one of his quotes. But anyway, sitting with a bunch of people, and they're from, from London, and this guy's going, "Yeah," he says, "McWilliams here, he's all about you two, he's all about you, yeah, he hasn't got any of your fucking records.

• 1:54:06Speaker 02

  I have your records, I've got all your records, I've fucking gone off you, right? Gone right off you, that fucking song, Ordinary Love Night," he's got whatever, a glass in his hand, and he's getting the, the Dutch and the British courage, and the Irish courage, and he's going, "That song, about Mandela and all that," so I listened to it, it's like fucking nothing. And then, "I, I, I was watching Jimmy Fallon, you played the same song." And he said, I was in tears, he said, "It's just something, something happened."

• 1:54:47Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:48Speaker 02

  So...

• 1:54:50Speaker 02

  I look at it and I'm going dodgy haircut on the singer. But I am also being defensive because I can feel something too. There is something going on. That is the thing. And you two, you know, were making an album at the moment and it has to be framed around that. Not that song, not that even style of songwriting, but that thing, the thing, the moment.

• 1:55:17Joe Rogan?

  The spirit.

• 1:55:18Speaker 02

  Whatever that is.

• 1:55:19Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:20Speaker 02

  And the conversation you're having with your audience, with somebody, a deep listener. By the way, that same woman who said about listening, she said, deep listening is an act of surrender. And so it's coming full circle for me.

• 1:55:45Joe Rogan?

  Well, if you're in that audience, there's an act of surrender, for sure.

• 1:55:47Speaker 02

  And if you're in Arctic, if you're singing it.

• 1:55:49Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:55:50Speaker 02

  That's you have to.

• 1:55:51Joe Rogan?

  Yes. And everyone recognizes that, that's why it resonates.

• 1:55:54Speaker 02

  So I mean, I, I just think if we're a rock and roll band, but there's four people in your band, there's nobody sounds like Adam Clayton, you know what I mean? There's nobody sounds like Edge, there's nobody sounds like Larry Mullen, and there's nobody wants to sound like me. No, no, there's, I can sing, I can sing. And I'm becoming the singer I, I am. And that's the reason I'm still in a band, because we all have to answer that question, don't we? Why, why would we still be in a band? We've got to feel that it's our best album that's going to come.

• 1:56:30Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:56:31Speaker 02

  But if it is, it's going to be because we frame it around that moment in the room when that happens.

• 1:56:41Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:56:42Speaker 02

  I promise you, I can deliver, I promise you for every song on the album, I'll come back if you have me and I'll play you some of the, the, the songs, but.

• 1:56:54Speaker 02

  But but for the live rock and roll pieces, it has to have that. I recognize that.

• 1:57:00Joe Rogan?

  You can come back anytime you want, by the way.

• 1:57:03Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:57:04Joe Rogan?

  Anytime. But yeah, that that that's what everybody wants out of entertainment, out of celebration. That's what everybody wants, these moments.

• 1:57:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:13Joe Rogan?

  And that was a real moment, man. That was a real moment that resonated through the television. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to be in that room. And I was thinking that, like, God, I wish I was there. Because, you know, you see Will Smith, and Will Smith's in the corner. You see him just taken over by the music, like, nodding his head like, oh, my God, just in that moment. It was so pure.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  Strange resonance, I don't know if it was mentioned, but he played Nelson Mandela. No, he played Muhammad Ali.

• 1:57:41Joe Rogan?

  He played Muhammad Ali, right, right, right.

• 1:57:43Speaker 02

  I got that wrong. That would just would be funny.

• 1:57:44Joe Rogan?

  That would be funny, yeah. But it was, that's what everybody's looking for. That's what everybody's looking for out of art, out of religion, out of just love and community. We're looking for these moments that elevate us above everything else. And there's a moment when a a great performance like that, just when everyone in the audience realizes what you're doing, and we're all in it together, and people at home are in it. Like, that was so powerful. It's, everything through the television is like sixty percent of what it is in person, at the most.

• 1:58:21Speaker 02

  Well, you know, we we used to avoid TV because, it's actually Bruce Springsteen advice years and years ago. He said, be careful being on TV because people can turn you down. You know, they can go off to the kitchen and, you know.

• 1:58:38Joe Rogan?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:58:39Speaker 02

  Make coffee, so he's kind of right about that. It can it can take away the mystery. But, you know, that that studio that he's in, Jimmy, you know, that's a historic place, you know. Beatles, or whatever, you know, think of all the artists that have been in on the. So there's something going on there.

• 1:59:00Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:00Speaker 02

  And. And he he's he's a very beautiful spirit. He he just really is.

• 1:59:07Joe Rogan?

  He seems like it. I don't know him, but he seems like a real sweetheart.

• 1:59:10Speaker 02

  I've been out late night with him. I've been, you know, in in in all kinds of situations. And is just a really a see through heart, you know, tran- tran- transparent person. Just you you see, you see, you see what he's thinking. Now, how he does that night after night, I will never know.

• 1:59:34Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:35Speaker 02

  Like, I'm I'm terrified going on those shows. This is easy for me because I'm talking, I don't do full stops and commas. But, you know, I don't have to. You're not asking me to. I'm just having a conversation. But to be sharp and be on it.

• 1:59:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:54Speaker 02

  I don't know if I'm gonna be sharp or on it. And part of being in U2 is I have to be true to my mood. And then I've I've to allow the the song to take me somewhere else. And, yeah, my my, yeah, it's it's a funny thing, you know. Yeah, this performing, there's not much psychology written about being a being a being. You know, books about on about the psychology of a singer. Probably there is for comedians or actors.

• 2:00:28Joe Rogan?

  I think the problem is that only the people that can truly do it, understand it.

• 2:00:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:00:34Joe Rogan?

  That's the problem, you know, the the problem. And then you the the what you're talking about, confinement for the talk show format. That's also what makes that moment so much greater is because you realize. Yes, it's just.

• 2:00:48Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:00:49Joe Rogan?

  It's it it's it doesn't belong there. That that format is for hollow platitudes and selling a new television show and getting in and out before the seven minute commercial break. It's a very, it's the worst way to have a conversation where you're gonna get the most out of people. Because the most that you, when you have time constraints on conversations, you immediately feel under the gun, so you're kind of like tense and you're pressured and you don't know when. And then and then the the audience is staring at you and then there's bright lights. Everything is wrong. Everything is. It's opposed to the way a normal, comfortable, human conversation and connection works.

• 2:01:32Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:01:32Joe Rogan?

  It works with silence around you and just people talking or in a pub or wherever you're at. You know, in a living room with friends at a party like that's the real human connection where it's open-ended and you're just talking.

• 2:01:44Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:01:45Joe Rogan?

  Soon as you like lock it down and then you know you have to lock it down for commercials and you you have to button this up and there's a new person coming in in five minutes so they gotta shuffle you out the door and hold up your album and tell everybody to buy it and then you leave and like was that good? I guess it was good. It's like, you know what I mean? It's I don't I never liked doing them. I always felt confined and I would never do stand-up on them. I was always asked to do stand-up on them like that's not where stand-up belongs like but if someone can pull it off, like there's been great comedians that pulled off incredible Tonight Show sets like Richard Jenny and George Carlin.

• 2:02:18Speaker 02

  Who's your, yeah, who's your favorites? I mean, apart from me, I'm not gonna ask you about your mates, but people that you we were talking earlier about singer people that I just looked up to. Who were who were the ones that formed you?

• 2:02:30Joe Rogan?

  Well, when I was a child, I was probably, I guess I was fifteen or sixteen. My parents took me to see Live in the Sunset Strip in a theater and it was Richard Pryor. He performed, he did a concert special in the theater and I think it's his greatest performance. And when I was there in the theater, I was laughing so hard and I remember very clearly looking around at all these people and they were falling out of their chairs laughing. People were just falling back, slapping each other, going, oh my god, oh my god, like they couldn't breathe. And I remember thinking, this guy is doing this just talking. And I remember all the funny movies that I'd seen like Stripes and you know, all the great comedies, Animal House, funny comedies.

• 2:03:14Joe Rogan?

  Nothing compared to this. And this guy's just talking. It was incredibly profound moment for me. I remember I got obsessed with Richard Pryor. I started buying Richard Pryor cassettes.

• 2:03:25Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:03:26Joe Rogan?

  I would buy like whatever I could, you know, you could find them. I found a bunch that were like you had, there were like weird printings of him at Red Fox's Comedy Club. I actually found them. In a truck stop once, they were selling these cassettes. I was like, what is this? And then I I bought them and there were the incredible performances, like fifteen people in the crowd, he's just ranting and going on these like unhinged rants about things and just having fun and being really loose. And I just couldn't believe that someone could do that, that he could just by talking. This theater filled with people were just falling down laughing and just blown away. So that was probably my first thought about stand up comedy, my first real thought, just how, what a

• 2:04:08Joe Rogan?

  crazy power to have, like what an unbelievable thing to be able to do with just your words.

• 2:04:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw Robin Williams do that a few times I was in a room with him. And I just, he just couldn't not turn it off. It was just, and it was wild. It was, he he was certainly not in control of it.

• 2:04:28Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:04:28Speaker 02

  That's, we, there's a genius comedian called Tommy Tiernan, I don't know if you've seen him.

• 2:04:34Joe Rogan?

  I've heard of him.

• 2:04:35Speaker 02

  He he again, when he goes out, and he doesn't go out often because I think it scares the shite out of him, what he's gonna say next.

• 2:04:42Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:43Speaker 02

  And so that is the thing of having the material and then being able to blow, you know, just let go of the material.

• 2:04:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:52Speaker 02

  That's, I think, must be part of this, is it?

• 2:04:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:56Speaker 02

  I mean, I I don't know, I I am.

• 2:04:58Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's part of it. Yeah, the these ideas they come to you and you just have to decide whether to embrace them or not.

• 2:05:04Speaker 02

  And you get yourself into such trouble.

• 2:05:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:07Speaker 02

  Because you just, you say the thing.

• 2:05:09Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:09Speaker 02

  Thought of, but the art is in fact being able to say the thing you've thought of, that's, it's a strange one.

• 2:05:16Joe Rogan?

  Truly realized that, and I never had any aspirations of comedy whatsoever when I was young. When I was in, when I loved Richard Pryor, I just loved it as a fan, just like I loved rock and roll. I didn't want to be a singer, I just loved it. And then I saw Kinnison and.

• 2:05:33Joe Rogan?

  I think that was the first moment where I went, oh, this is comedy too. Wow, okay, what is comedy? You know, because everybody else had been like telling jokes or with prior, it was like these stories of life. That was so like revealing and so vulnerable, but also hilarious, like deeply fun, just like so accurate in the caricatures of people. And then there was Kinnison. I was like, okay, this is comedy too. And the the first thing I ever saw of him, I was actually introduced to him by a girl that I worked with. A girl that I worked with at a gym. I worked at the Boston Athletic Club. I was a trainer. I was teaching people how to lift weights. And there was a lady who was a volleyball player who I was friends with that worked there. She worked the front desk.

• 2:06:16Joe Rogan?

  And she was like, I saw HBO last night. This comedian was so funny. And in the parking lot of this gym that we worked out, she did Sam Kinnison's bit of homosexual necrophiliacs paying a bunch of money to be with the freshest male corpses. Have you ever seen the bit?

• 2:06:33Speaker 02

  I have not.

• 2:06:34Joe Rogan?

  So the bit is the guy, he goes, imagine this, you're at the end of your life. You know, you're lying now. You're like, well, I guess I'm dead now. I'm gonna be alone with Jesus and that's gonna be great. I'm gonna be in heaven and hey. He starts rocking back and forth. What is this? It feels like someone's got a dick in my ass. You mean, life keeps fucking the ass even after you're dead? It never ends. It never ends. Oh, oh. She's doing this impression. She's lying on the parking lot, on her stomach, going back and forth. And I'm dying laughing. I was like, I gotta see this. So my first introduction to Kinnison was this friend of mine, her doing it on the concrete.

• 2:07:15Speaker 02

  You did, that was good.

• 2:07:16Joe Rogan?

  It was amazing.

• 2:07:16Speaker 02

  You, no, no, you're, you're doing her doing him.

• 2:07:20Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah, it was, she did a great job. She had me howling.

• 2:07:22Speaker 02

  Who else?

• 2:07:23Joe Rogan?

  Uh, well, he was a huge one. Um, Eddie Murphy, for sure, that was a huge one. But then again, that was also like. I I still didn't think I was going to do stand up until I saw Kinison. The fir- when I first saw Kinison, that was when I was like, maybe I can do it, cuz I had friends telling me to do it. But it was friends that I did martial arts with, so we would have to, from the time I was fifteen till I was like twenty-one, twenty-two, all I did was travel around the country competing. And I was with this-

• 2:07:55Speaker 02

  Such a wild combination, if you don't mind me saying. It's just like, it it just, the martial arts seems so unfunny.

• 2:08:04Joe Rogan?

  It's very unfunny.

• 2:08:05Speaker 02

  You you you know, you you were you were fighting for your life.

• 2:08:09Joe Rogan?

  It's very scary, so in the, when it's terrifying like that and everyone's nervous, that's when gallows humor comes in.

• 2:08:15Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 2:08:16Joe Rogan?

  And I was the guy who ma- I always needed attention when I was young. So I was getting my attention from being really good at fighting. But then I was also getting my attention around the, also the people that are really good at fighting at being funny. So when we were all like, you know, a bunch of fucking crazy people, the the their hobby was to travel around the country and trying to kick people unconscious, right? So this is the-

• 2:08:39Speaker 02

  It's my job.

• 2:08:39Joe Rogan?

  This is the group that I'm hanging out with.

• 2:08:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:41Joe Rogan?

  And, you know, most of them were older than me. Uh, I was the youngest cuz I was in high school at the time. Most of these were grown men, and I was competing against grown men while I was in high school. Which is another crazy thing, my instructor was hardcore and he threw me to the grown men when I was sixteen. It was terrifying, but because it was so terrifying, I developed this way of releasing steam. And so my friend of releasing, my way of releasing steam, I'd make fun of different guys that we trained with, having sex, like how he probably does it and this and that, and we were always just, I was just always trying to crack people up. And I had one friend that I'm still really good friends with to this day, my friend Steve Graham, who talked me into doing stand up. And I never thought, I'm like, you think I'm funny because you like me.

• 2:09:26Joe Rogan?

  I go, but you're crazy too, like you're a fucking psychopath as well, like you're, you think I'm funny because you're doing the same thing that I'm doing. Like, we're nutty people, we're not normal, other people are gonna think I'm an asshole. And then-

• 2:09:36Speaker 02

  The, when you walked out though, you you to tell me what, how, was he there when you walked out?

• 2:09:43Joe Rogan?

  The first time?

• 2:09:43Speaker 02

  The first time.

• 2:09:44Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah, he was there the first night, yeah.

• 2:09:46Speaker 02

  So, so can you paint me the picture?

• 2:09:48Joe Rogan?

  I was in a comedy club, I was terrible. I went to open mic night, I did like five minutes, it was horrible. But I got a couple of laughs, I got a couple of chuckles. And I, I was like, I got off stage, I was like, I think I could do this. The weirdest thing was like, I had probably, at that time, I was 21 years old. I'd probably fought at least a hundred times. And I was way more terrified of doing comedy. Way more scared. Way more scared. Like, fighting was scary, but I was like, I know it just has to start. Once it starts, I know what to do. Like, the real fear of comedy or of fighting was before the fight. It was all the demons. All the thing, why am I doing this? Why are you doing this to yourself? That's what you're fighting. You're fighting the fear.

• 2:10:31Joe Rogan?

  But I knew, once it started, I wouldn't be scared at all. Because you don't feel fear when you're fighting, because it's, you're so in the moment. You're, you're in the moment, you're, you're zen, you almost don't exist. You know, you have to, to operate at the highest level, to have like instantaneous reactions, and to be able to manage your pace and all these different things. You can't think about yourself, or how you look, or how you feel, or whether your girlfriend's mad at you, or whether you're gonna fail out of high school. You have to be locked into what you're doing. So I wasn't afraid of fighting, I was afraid of everything before fighting. I was afraid of feelings. And so, but that's where the comedy came from. The comedy came from like alleviating that, you know?

• 2:11:11Speaker 02

  Right, so there is a symbiosis there, yeah.

• 2:11:15Joe Rogan?

  There's, there's a thing in it. It's a task, a very complicated task. The way I describe fighting is, it's high level problem solving with dire physical consequences. That's what it really is. You could call it fighting, you could think it's brutish and aggressive.

• 2:11:31Speaker 02

  Just say that again, it might be the title of our new album.

• 2:11:32Joe Rogan?

  High level problem solving with dire physical consequences. So as, as far as like sport.

• 2:11:38Speaker 02

  I just put meta in front of the physical consequences.

• 2:11:40Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:11:41Speaker 02

  We got ourselves an album.

• 2:11:42Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:11:44Joe Rogan?

  It's the most consequential of all sports. Because when someone beats you, they don't just beat you, they take away everything you are as a man. When someone destroys you in, in a competition. You are not a man anymore. You are significantly decreased in your value. Everything about you, you feel terrible. It's good, you were, you are as good the day you walked in there confident. And you still feel like shit. Where you felt like you could take on the world. You have the same skills. You're as good as you felt when you could take on the world. And now you feel like utter dog shit.

• 2:12:21Speaker 02

  And yet, we know that failing is how we succeed. You know, the Samuel Beckett lines. Fail, fail again, fail better. I may have failed to get the quote right, but that's it. You know, fail, failure and fail better.

• 2:12:37Joe Rogan?

  That pain is fuel.

• 2:12:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:39Joe Rogan?

  The pain of failure is the most potent fuel. The most potent inspiration known to man. And the more terrifying the failure. Whether it's failure in stand up comedy or it's failure in.

• 2:12:50Speaker 02

  That's very high stakes. If you think about it, I'm just thinking this through the second. Both your chosen passions entail the risk of humiliation.

• 2:13:04Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, you have to have that. That's the only way you get better. It's the only way you really get better. Yeah, super tricky.

• 2:13:11Speaker 02

  I, my, I grew up, my best mate, um, since I was three years old. Um, he just gave me my name, my Bono. He gave us all names. But, and his family names is genius, really. Um, painter, became his painter, his father. There was tough stuff going on on our street in their house. And, um, he, he grew up, well, they, the father used to, was kind of religious.

• 2:13:44Speaker 02

  Extremist, let's call it that. He used to humiliate the kids by putting a bowl on their hair, on their hair and cutting their hair. So he'd walk around with these pudding bowls. So everyone would be like around and be like, ah.

• 2:13:57Speaker 02

  They were just so fast, they were all, they could all look after themselves and.

• 2:14:04Joe Rogan?

  Like the boy named Sue.

• 2:14:05Speaker 02

  It's, it is the Johnny Cash song, Boy Named Sue. They are, they, and so Googie, my mate, so I grew up sparring with him. This is, this is how, literally how we grew up. And his, so we watch all the boxing matches, all the obvious ones. And he just really went into, his obsession became mixed martial arts. So he wants his kids. He's, you know, they're going down to the gym. And then my godson, okay, his name is Noah. And he comes, this is not a joke, this is not a joke. So Googie, my mate, since I'm three years old, comes up and he goes.

• 2:14:45Speaker 02

  He says, Noah, he wants to give up fighting, you know, cage fighting. And I said, oh, that's, that's okay. I said, what does he want to do?

• 2:14:57Speaker 02

  He wants to be a doctor. And I'm like, Googie, this is a really, your kid wants to be a doctor? And you're disappointed, but he could be such a great fighter. And I tell, I said, Googie, he wants to be a doctor, this is, by the way, he became a doctor. This is not, this story, that's how it ended. But I said, and he, Googie's, but, oh, he was such a good fighter. I said, why did he give up? He said, he's down the gym, he said, I can't even beat the best guy in the gym. If I can't beat the best guy in the gym, there's no point in me having a big career. He said, the best guy in the gym was Conor McGregor.

• 2:15:35Speaker 02

  And, and he was a few years older. So it's, and then two of the other kids are fighters now.

• 2:15:43Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:15:43Speaker 02

  So I've, I've grown up around it and because of my mates and his, and his kids. And, but that thing of, of combat.

• 2:15:57Speaker 02

  Being comfortable in combat is a thing you need to be careful of. Because you can end up there. And sometimes I do. Well, you, it's, it's, because it's an art form for you, it's, it's, it's, it was a, you know, profession, it was a, it's different. But people like me, fight or flight is a problem. Because sometimes fight is on.

• 2:16:24Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 2:16:25Speaker 02

  And I, and there is no fight.

• 2:16:26Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:16:27Speaker 02

  So that's part of the shut up and listen instructions I'm receiving from, which is, I'm kind of born, that's with my fists up. And, and from every way, just growing up and being around what I was around. And experiencing what I experienced, I have that. And, and, and, and, and even in the band, I'm a bit like that. And, and so I've got to be careful. Because it's not always somebody coming around the corner who wants to take you out. And they might actually just want to take you out.

• 2:17:05Joe Rogan?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:17:06Speaker 02

  And it's, it's not becoming of, to, to, to be combative at all times. So I'm, I'm, I'm learning to put my fist down. I'm learning to spend those times i- in the morning, thanking God that I'm alive. Because I had a heart surgery, as we talked about earlier. And just waking up is great, just like, wow, I've just woken up, what a thrill. And I'm trying to get to that place with, not with the world, but with myself. I've not made peace with the world. I certainly have not. But I am making more peace with myself, which is sometimes a bit harder.

• 2:17:51Speaker 02

  And, and, and, and the family and listening to them more. And, and, yeah, that's, that's, that's it. This, this combat thing is, is interesting. Were you in, in the neighborhood, I asked you earlier, but were there people?

• 2:18:10Speaker 02

  Is there people you can remember?

• 2:18:13Joe Rogan?

  Sure, from like.

• 2:18:14Speaker 02

  Like us being like on you.

• 2:18:17Joe Rogan?

  Compete it?

• 2:18:18Speaker 02

  On you.

• 2:18:19Joe Rogan?

  On me?

• 2:18:19Speaker 02

  On you.

• 2:18:20Joe Rogan?

  Not from the time I started training. Once I started training, I got very good, very quick, and I became kind of known for it.

• 2:18:27Speaker 02

  Okay, so people stop picking on you then?

• 2:18:28Joe Rogan?

  Cause I was, I was doing it at a, in a crazy way. It wasn't as simple as like, oh, he takes karate. It's like, no, he, on the weekends, he's traveling around the country and fighting in tournaments. You know, and I, I was winning them, you know, so I was, it was, I found a thing very early on that I could excel at that was scary. That people, and I've realized through that thing, you can get good at anything. You just have to put your attention and focus to it. And well, when do you put your attention and focus to something the most? Well, when your literal health relies on success. It was so scary that you couldn't half ass it. Which is like, I have a problem with things that involve too much personality and charisma

• 2:19:13Joe Rogan?

  where they could mask truth. And I think this is the problem with evangelical preachers. This is the problem with politicians.

• 2:19:21Speaker 02

  I'm rock stars.

• 2:19:22Joe Rogan?

  And it could be anybody, but it's like, there's this siren call that will lead you to the rocks. And it's believing your own bullshit. And fighting was, it didn't matter what your personality was. It didn't matter.

• 2:19:39Speaker 02

  It's empirical.

• 2:19:39Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it did, nothing mattered. It didn't matter how many people liked you. If you get kicked in the head, you get fucked up. And on the flip side of it, I used to love when I would go to someone else's hometown. And they had all these people beating, like cheering for them. All these people like, you know, you're gonna fuck him up, all these people cheering in the corner. I would love that, it was my favorite thing. My favorite thing. So I was like, they can't help you.

• 2:20:03Speaker 02

  Do you have rage?

• 2:20:07Joe Rogan?

  Me now?

• 2:20:07Speaker 02

  No, I'm just, when you're fighting, I mean, obviously, what we do in music is we try to turn rage into something beautiful, and that's what rock and roll is, the sound of, you know, I think it was Neil Young said something like the sound of revenge.

• 2:20:24Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:25Speaker 02

  But whatever, it's rage, for sure. There's rage. That's what separates certain bands. You wanna know what the difference between a pop band and a rock and roll band?

• 2:20:33Joe Rogan?

  Rage.

• 2:20:33Speaker 02

  It's rage.

• 2:20:34Joe Rogan?

  Rage against the machine.

• 2:20:35Speaker 02

  And you bet.

• 2:20:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:36Speaker 02

  And, and.

• 2:20:37Joe Rogan?

  Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me.

• 2:20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we, we, we had that, and that was, that was coming through me.

• 2:20:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:45Speaker 02

  And, and I had to, so I'm just wondering where you, where'd you get that rage from? Or, or maybe you didn't have it. I mean, I'm told by some people that it's, like, Mike Tyson had rage, but some boxers, you know, they didn't. They could, they could, they thought it made them weak.

• 2:21:02Joe Rogan?

  It, it, well, it gets in the way of clear thinking. And, you know, I had this guy named Yuri Prohaska on the podcast recently. He's a brilliant fighter, who's in the UFC, who was the light heavyweight champion at one point in time, and is still one of the top light heavyweights in the world. And we were talking about anger and rage, and then it leads you down a bad path of decision-making when you're fighting.

• 2:21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:23Joe Rogan?

  It interferes with the flow. It interferes with the way. And like I was saying before, when you're competing, you know, and I've never competed at that level. When you're competing at a world championship level, anything that fucks with your mind, anything where you're doubting yourself, or talking to yourself, or all that is resources that is being allocated towards something that's completely useless, as opposed to being like completely in the moment and in the zone. If you get taken out of it for a moment, if they feel for a moment that you're thinking, like you're looking for a way out, you're looking to quit, you're gone, you're done. Like, when your friend was saying that his son didn't wanna be a fighter anymore, this is my advice always. Whenever someone says, I'm thinking about stopping fighting, I go, quit.

• 2:22:05Joe Rogan?

  Quit right now. Because somewhere out there, there's someone who's not thinking about stopping at all, and they're gonna fuck you up. They're gonna come for you. It's gonna, they're gonna, it's gonna be terrifying. You're locked in a ring with Mike Tyson. Tyson and you've been thinking about getting a regular job? Like, yeah, you're fucked. You're fucked. Because there's all in people, in my opinion. I, I love fighting, but I think only all in people should be fighting. And the moment you're not all in, get out. You gotta get out. Because the difference between an all in person and a one foot out the door person is enormous. It's enormous. Even if skill level is similar, the, the person who's all in is a terrifying person. They, they, all they wanna do is this one thing.

• 2:22:49Joe Rogan?

  They're completely focused on it. Just being the best in the world, this one thing. They're gonna find holes in you. They're gonna find, they're gonna find your weaknesses. They're gonna push you in a way that maybe you didn't push yourself as far in the gym. So come the second round, come the third round, you start breaking down. And they're not breaking down at all, they're breaking you down. It's a terrifying place to be. When you know you're not all in and the other person's all in. So anybody, if that was my son, he's like, I'm thinking about quitting. I'm like, good, quit. That's what I'd say, quit. Find something else you love. Find what you love, you don't have to do this. But if you're gonna do this, you gotta, you gotta only do this. This has to be your fucking life.

• 2:23:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:23:27Joe Rogan?

  Your fucking life. I mean, I don't want you to be a rock star and a fighter. Shut the fuck up. You can't be both.

• 2:23:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:33Joe Rogan?

  It's not possible. If you wanna do that thing, that thing is your whole life.

• 2:23:37Speaker 02

  There's a, I don't have any, uh, tattoos, but if I did.

• 2:23:42Joe Rogan?

  Kind of amazing you got this far without no tattoos.

• 2:23:44Speaker 02

  If I did, it, it's, I have a, um, there's a quote, it's from Nietzsche. And I wouldn't normally quote from Nietzsche, you know, I'm not that interested in Nietzsche, but I'm, he's done, he's written some, some, some aphorisms that I like and whatever. But i- i- in our summer place in, in, in, where we go to, there's a little trail called the Nietzsche Trail. And it's apparently, he apparently came up with this line, which is, for anything truly great to take place, there requires, and this would be my tattoo, a long obedience in the same direction.

• 2:24:25Joe Rogan?

  Ooh. Oh, that's good.

• 2:24:28Speaker 02

  So, so.

• 2:24:29Joe Rogan?

  That's so.

• 2:24:30Speaker 02

  And I think of edge when I think of that. I don't think of me. I'm, I'm sort of, I'm just, um, I'm, I'm, I just, my, I'm just, my curiosity just takes me into place I shouldn't be. But that long obedience in the same direction, that's, that's what you're talking about.

• 2:24:52Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:24:53Speaker 02

  Um, does reply to people, to tickling. I always wondered, would it be great? If you're like the biggest fighter ever and just getting a little tickle. And it's like, maybe that's.

• 2:25:06Joe Rogan?

  I don't think that would work. I think people would have already tried that.

• 2:25:09Speaker 02

  Come on, man.

• 2:25:10Joe Rogan?

  Totally unaffected.

• 2:25:11Speaker 02

  You gotta do it.

• 2:25:12Joe Rogan?

  You're so filled with adrenaline, you feel tickles. Yeah. You're sparked out.

• 2:25:17Speaker 02

  Did you know there was a group comedian called Ken Dodd? I remember from Liverpool when I was a kid growing up. He had a, he had a feather. He used to just tickle people.

• 2:25:29Speaker 02

  I'll get the tattoo. You get the, you get the feather.

• 2:25:33Joe Rogan?

  The feather's awesome.

• 2:25:34Speaker 02

  Oh, fair.

• 2:25:34Joe Rogan?

  It is a funny thing. That, that quote is so accurate. It's, it's one of the greatest quotes of all time.

• 2:25:41Speaker 02

  I think it's a strong quote and, and it's, you know, it's a person who's, he was pushing away higher. The, even the concept of higher consciousness for a lot of his life.

• 2:25:52Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 2:25:53Speaker 02

  And yet, he managing to bump into it. There's a quote of his, I swear I, I'd read, but when, when we were doing the book, we couldn't find it anywhere. So I might've made it up. But he was, he was, cause that's the history of that in our family.

• 2:26:08Joe Rogan?

  Jamie will find it.

• 2:26:09Speaker 02

  Um, well, it's not, it's, it's a, Jamie, it's, it's, it's about friendship. And I don't think it's, freile, nature? I don't think so, but it's, the idea is that friendship is, is, is deeper, kind of wider. It's less dramatic than, you know, romantic love. But it is, it's, it's somehow, the essence of great relationships is, is actually friendship. I think that's nature, but we couldn't find it. So I may have just made it up.

• 2:26:52Speaker 05

  Though love be deeper, friendship is more wide, from like Chronicles of Narnia.

• 2:26:56Speaker 02

  Oh, I'll take that too.

• 2:26:58Joe Rogan?

  Something like that.

• 2:26:59Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jamie. I'll take it. My dad was funny. He, he used to quote this playwright, Irish playwright called Singh. He say, because he was suspicious of nationalism, because in Ireland, you know, he would be. Because the country was nearly at civil war and along sectarian lines. So, he used to say, Ireland, what is Ireland but the land that keeps my feet from getting wet? So, that's a great quote of Singh's. So, when we did the book, Surrender book was on Gnot. So, they went off, couldn't find it anywhere. He couldn't find the quote anywhere, because he made it up.

• 2:27:40Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:27:40Speaker 02

  And, and it's a great quote, and I think it's okay. If you say something three times, it's yours, right?

• 2:27:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:47Speaker 02

  So, I'll, but, you know, I'm in a band with my friends. And that friendship is pulled and pushed and it's difficult. And at some point, one of us is usually trying to break up the band. But, it's a very deep bond.

• 2:28:08Joe Rogan?

  Can I say something about that?

• 2:28:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:09Joe Rogan?

  That was really great about the film as well. Where you went into the fact that it's a true democracy in your band.

• 2:28:16Speaker 02

  It's annoying, isn't it?

• 2:28:17Joe Rogan?

  But it's, but I would expect nothing less from you.

• 2:28:21Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:28:21Joe Rogan?

  When, when you said that, and I wasn't aware of that, I was like, of course. Of course, that's how you would set it up.

• 2:28:27Speaker 02

  Well, we, well, it's, it's fine to be a democracy, but we share things also, the economics.

• 2:28:34Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:28:35Speaker 02

  That's where you find out.

• 2:28:36Joe Rogan?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 2:28:37Speaker 02

  And, and we had a manager, Paul McGinnis, for most of our life. And it was one of these things, he said, just don't ever be fighting about whose song it is. And, because in the background, it's like, I want my song on the album, or I've got two. Just get rid of that.

• 2:28:52Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:52Speaker 02

  Just share everything and make sure that you all feel like a stake in each other.

• 2:28:58Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:28:58Speaker 02

  And, and so the arguments in you two.

• 2:29:03Speaker 02

  Are never about, oh, this is my idea, so you're really stepping on my toes. We've developed, I would call it, a sort of band ego. Bigger than individual egos. Even an ego as big as mine. This is bigger, this is even bigger. And it's the quiet ones. But, um, yeah, I think we've learned to just, the great, we don't, we don't argue about what's very good. Uh, sorry, we do argue about what's very good. We don't argue about what's great.

• 2:29:38Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 2:29:39Speaker 02

  So if we're talking about, is that good, that chorus, nah, that guitar, nah.

• 2:29:44Joe Rogan?

  But it's all for a purpose.

• 2:29:45Speaker 02

  We're all just talking about, we never, but when it's great, people just back off. We just know, it's like greatness has its own, what's the word? Has its own, brings with it a certain acquiescence to that thing. And then you learn that very good is the enemy of greatness. It's not even next door neighbors. Like, we, we used to be with you two, we were really crap or great. But then we got very good, very dangerous. Being very good is not helpful because there's a chasm, chasm, between what is very good and great.

• 2:30:28Speaker 02

  Greatness, what you were talking about there back on, on Jimmy Fallon, that's a moment of greatness. It's, it's, it's not, which is different from saying, we were great, it was great. And, and very good could be just sitting there playing the song. Good, it's, it's a very fine song and these are very fine players. But that could just be very good.

• 2:30:55Joe Rogan?

  It didn't make that moment that resonated so deeply with me that I brought it up. We played it multiple times on this podcast over the years.

• 2:31:03Speaker 02

  I'm really happy you did. And that's what the, my friend, I forget his name, or my friend that I just met for the first time at the kitchen table, who was, who had, you know, had the guts to say, he's so disappointed because the recording of that song was just very good. That's really what he was saying.

• 2:31:26Joe Rogan?

  Yes, yes, you hadn't captured like that. But I think that unique moment of the way you guys did it is what made it so special. It's because, you know, Jimmy Fallon's sitting there, Will Smith is sitting there, and you're just on these chairs. And you're singing on the chair, and so you're moving on the chair. And then eventually, everything picks up and you're standing up and dancing. And the whole crowd like felt it, it was like this build up to it, it all flowed together, but it just.

• 2:31:55Speaker 02

  I haven't seen that back, by the way.

• 2:31:56Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 2:31:57Speaker 02

  No, no, I haven't seen it. I'm probably saw it on the night or the next day.

• 2:32:00Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:32:01Speaker 02

  So I haven't.

• 2:32:04Joe Rogan?

  I sent that to everybody.

• 2:32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:06Joe Rogan?

  I sent that to all my friends when, as soon as it came out online, I was like, you gotta see this. This is incredible.

• 2:32:10Speaker 02

  Thank you for that. But there might be something to do with the fact that the four members of that band feel equally involved in that song.

• 2:32:26Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 2:32:27Speaker 02

  There might be. And that, the democracy, which is such a pain in the hole, is actually one of the reasons that when U2 walks onto a stage, people tell me, even if they're not bands, you know, they just come along as guests, their hair's come up in the back of their neck. And I explain, actually, that happens to us too. It's a strange thing when we walk out. And it seems to me, that I haven't figured this out, that.

• 2:33:03Speaker 02

  The whole, the universe conspires to break up great relationships, right? You fall in loves, romantic, it's because this, this is families now. This doesn't have to be your partner in life, your wife, your husband, your families, kids, everything. It's, it's just the whole world is just seems set against it's them surviving. You know, all the, it just pulls at us like gravity itself, you're resisting. And so when you manage to get through it and you're standing there, the four of us,

• 2:33:48Speaker 02

  and there's something going on that feels like you've resisted gravity or whatever the forces that pull you apart. There's something about it and some nights it's really not easy. And, but, I mean, not the music, but the, the friendship. And, but we, we, we've, we've, we're through it right now and you feel it in these recordings. And you'll feel us in a way rediscovering each other.

• 2:34:23Joe Rogan?

  That's amazing.

• 2:34:23Speaker 02

  I haven't been playing for, we just played in London acoustically at the Ivor Novellas. It was the first time in five years the four of us played together because Larry had a back injury and, um, so. But yeah, there's something in the chemistry.

• 2:34:39Joe Rogan?

  Well, there's also the fact that you guys continue to create because one of the things that happens to great bands is they become a prisoner to their old songs.

• 2:34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, we gotta be bit careful there.

• 2:34:49Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, a lot of bands like.

• 2:34:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, Ordinary Love, that's what's so beautiful because that's in the last, is that, that's like 10 years old or something.

• 2:34:58Joe Rogan?

  Something along those lines.

• 2:35:00Speaker 02

  Which is a mere, a mere minute if you've been around for, we'll be around, I think the first time we met in Larry's kitchen.

• 2:35:10Speaker 02

  Is it will be fifty years next fall. In the kitchen. Drummer wants musicians, whatever, we're literally and in the in the film, you know, we've got the the kitchen table. We got the chairs, you know, because I'm on the road with, you know, two hundred and fifty Mack trucks and a space station and whatever else with you too. But here you could put everything into a station wagon. It's like a literally a table and chairs. And the chairs are Ed, Adam and Larry. And and I've got to, you know, I use the kitchen table as operating theater. So it starts with the surgery, heart surgery.

• 2:35:53Speaker 02

  It's the it's the hospital bed where my father says goodbye with the to me with the expletive. And and it's and it's the kitchen table where all operas really begin in the kitchen, don't they? It's like you're sitting there and in our case it'd be me, my father, my brother. Mother's passed and we're just it's just male rage. And it's different shapes and forms. So I get to to be on the road

• 2:36:29Speaker 02

  with a table and chairs. But then I get to bring out the chair. There's Larry. Uh, yeah, there's Ed. There's Adam. I introduced them as chairs. And it was it was amazing for me to have that

• 2:36:47Speaker 02

  experience of of doing things and telling their story. If their memoirs come out, I'm fucked. No, I really am. But it's over and.

• 2:37:02Speaker 02

  I'm done with the past. I'm not sure the past is done with me. But I'm doing my very best to deal with the past in order to get to the present, to make this the sound of the future. So the songs on the next album, when you are, or whomever you're with, or your kids, or whatever, are out at the Joshua Tree, or wherever it is, park, or at the lake here in Austin, Texas, and you're listening to our new album, that we will take you somewhere.

• 2:37:44Speaker 02

  Because it has to be, these songs have to be, they have to be everything, or what's the point?

• 2:37:51Joe Rogan?

  Right. What is the creative process for you? When you are, when you have a concept for a song, when you have an idea? Like, how does it work? Do you, do ideas just come to you? Do you sit until they come to you? Do you sit in front of a pad and write them down?

• 2:38:07Speaker 02

  Is it, that has never been an issue. Like, Edge and myself are the sort of song starters. And, and, I mean, he is. I think we were counting them up the last time. He had like 526. He said, 526 songs I have here. I said, Edge, they're not songs, they're ideas. And he goes, well, this one's a song. And I go, oh, yeah, that might be. And, and I will have, and have stuffed in my phone, and paper, and Air India sick bags, and whatever else I've written in my life, and the glimpses that you get.

• 2:38:51Speaker 02

  And I don't write out of misery, which is great, because I know some people have to be really miserable before they write. I write out of joy a lot of the time. Sometimes, I'm

• 2:39:03Speaker 02

  I'm riding my way out of a situation.

• 2:39:08Speaker 02

  But but most times, I'm riding my way into something. And and especially with this next album, I just think the world needs. It needs some, it needs some, yeah, some wild guitar music, but it also does not need the blues.

• 2:39:27Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:39:28Speaker 02

  We're in the blues right now.

• 2:39:29Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:30Speaker 02

  And.

• 2:39:31Joe Rogan?

  Well, we're in danger.

• 2:39:33Speaker 02

  We're in danger, but you you did say on one of your recent podcasts, you were saying, hold on a second. Still, more people got access to water and heat and or air conditioning than have in the history of the planet. So we've got, we want to keep, we just don't want to lose that.

• 2:39:53Joe Rogan?

  Perspective.

• 2:39:54Speaker 02

  And we don't want to, you know, this incredible thing in in twenty years, if you think about it. I mean, maternal mortality halved, more than halved. And people coming out of extreme poverty, some of this is China, some of this is capitalism, some of this is that. But it's, I do, I don't want to lose the sense of the next chapter could be our best. And and that's gonna need vision.

• 2:40:31Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:31Speaker 02

  And I'm not talking about U2's new album.

• 2:40:33Joe Rogan?

  But but that is part of it, because art changes the collective consciousness of a civilization. And songs that really deeply resonate with young people that have a, that that are great songs, that also have a message and carry with them conversations that people have about the songs and about what's going on in the world. It shifts consciousness. It shifts consciousness in a positive way, and those young people may grow up to become people that aren't corrupt politicians, that aren't corrupt congress, that that don't give in to the lobbyists and the special interest groups, but really look out for their constituents, and they they get into it for the right reasons. Because everybody's gonna be co-opted if you don't.

• 2:41:15Speaker 02

  But you're right.

• 2:41:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, we better be good then.

• 2:41:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:19Speaker 02

  And you and I, for me, the go to group was Beatles and.

• 2:41:23Joe Rogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:41:23Speaker 02

  And I I had this moment where Paul McCartney um picked me up at John Lennon Airport. He was driving the car and brought me and kind of showed me where the different neighborhoods of the Beatles. And which is an amazing experience. And he'd stop and he'd say, oh, this is where this happened and that's where I'm at. He said, do you mind me telling you this? And I'm like, are you kidding? And and then he stopped at the traffic lights and he said, oh, yeah, that's where I had like our first real kind of conversation, you know, with with me and John. I said, hold on a second, I'm a bit of a Beatles student. Didn't you have that when you were in the Quarryman and such?

• 2:42:06Speaker 02

  He says, no, no, no, no, it was a different level. He bought a bar of chocolate and after the war, you know, chocolate was really hard to come by, you know? It was kind of a real luxury. And and he bought the bar of chocolate and he didn't give me a square.

• 2:42:24Speaker 02

  He broke it, Cadbury's Milk Chocolate, broke it in half. And I said, oh, so you're into sharing too? He said, yeah. And he says, I don't know why I'm telling you that.

• 2:42:38Speaker 02

  And he drove on and I just thought, oh, I know why you're telling me that. Greatest collaboration, not just in music, in the history of music. Maybe the greatest collaboration in the history of culture started with half.

• 2:42:53Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:42:55Speaker 02

  They shared, they gave it. My mate, Gogi, who I just spoke about, the who knows all about you and knows all about your your your sport. He taught me everything he had and and they came, you know, it was tough at times, as I told you, in their house. And he just gave me half of it, every go, just half. So when I were in U two and our manager McGinnis says, you should share everything. I was like, yeah, I'm sharing everything. I've been sharing everything anyway. And it's, and even now, Edge and myself, we're sitting in our house, you know, we share this place in the south of France, we've been there for thirty years, all our families

• 2:43:40Speaker 02

  have kind of grown up there, French are too into themselves to bother us, which is really the way we like it. And, and we sit there, and we think, the real owners are gonna come.

• 2:43:52Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:43:53Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Because we still, we still don't really believe this has happened to us. And you know what? I think that's probably right. Because we don't really own this stuff. You, you, you, you get it for a short period, and then you hand it on. I think it, I think something about the four and the way we share is in the sound of our music.

• 2:44:20Joe Rogan?

  I think so too.

• 2:44:20Speaker 02

  Is that too?

• 2:44:21Joe Rogan?

  No, no, no, I think you're dead right.

• 2:44:22Speaker 02

  I think that when you, you know, and I was just standing there with the tambourine, Jimmy Farmer's, and he's, but it's him playing the tambourine. And, and, yeah, there's something, again, there's not much scholarship about this type of stuff that you can read up on.

• 2:44:40Joe Rogan?

  But it resonates, right?

• 2:44:41Speaker 02

  You can feel something.

• 2:44:42Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I believe it. I think there's something to it. It's, it's a, you've, you've made decisions that have sort of affirmed this commitment to a higher goal. It's not a hierarchy of, you know, who's, who's the lead singer?

• 2:44:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:44:59Joe Rogan?

  Who's this, who's that? It's not who's the big star. It's just we're all together to do this thing.

• 2:45:05Speaker 02

  I'm in a band where every member of the band thinks they're the leader.

• 2:45:10Joe Rogan?

  I think that's every band.

• 2:45:11Speaker 02

  And, and it's, and I voted for this.

• 2:45:15Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:16Speaker 02

  And, and it's sort of great.

• 2:45:19Joe Rogan?

  Look, it's worked out, you know, and you guys are still together, you know, which is also a giant win, you know? I mean, that's one of the most difficult things.

• 2:45:28Speaker 02

  Could run out of road any minute, but whilst whilst we're whilst we're running down the road, it's it's it's it's a thrill.

• 2:45:35Joe Rogan?

  I think that's also what makes you great, is the same feeling that some of the real owners are gonna come. Like, like, you never really buy into it, even though it's you. And that's that's real, that I think we all should have that, and I think if you lose that, you're in trouble.

• 2:45:51Speaker 02

  By the way.

• 2:45:52Joe Rogan?

  I think we should all have that.

• 2:45:53Speaker 02

  I I think that that's right. I call this, I'm gonna learn some of this from my wife. He used to say, don't, you know, look up to me, don't look down at me as a woman, look across to me. That's where I am, okay? And there was a lesson in that about horizontal

• 2:46:18Speaker 02

  relationships rather than vertical ones.

• 2:46:20Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:46:21Speaker 02

  I don't have a boss, I don't wanna be a boss.

• 2:46:25Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:46:26Speaker 02

  I mean, I I have that relationship with the band that is equal, I have it with my mates. And it's just, I it's just the way I I know it to be the most efficient. And, you know, the boss is the boss. I mean, Bruce, it's an amazing thing, what he does. And it's it's his vision, and he's found a team around him to help him realize his visions. Like you going out on on the boards, you write your own material, it's your point of view. That's not, I'm I'm part of, I think, isn't there two stories they say in the cinema?

• 2:47:08Speaker 02

  There's the the gang and the man against, stranger comes to town, I think it's one. That's, and then there's the stranger goes off in the odyssey. But usually, there's a gang, and that's a different story, that's a third story maybe. I'm in the gang.

• 2:47:29Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Comedians are in a gang too. Uh, we're in a gang at a club. We're in a gang together, like we all convene together. And I mean, I mean a gang in terms of like a collaborative gang too. We work together, we work on ideas together. We talk about bits together, you know? Especially in my place at the Comedy Mothership, it's set up like that. The whole club was set up entirely for comedians. Completely different pay structure than any other club. Pays way more than other clubs do. The comedians get most of the money. We get most of the, most of the, we get the money from liquor, essentially. Liquor and a small percentage of the ticket sales. But most of it goes to the comics. And the, the, the vibe of the place is not that it's my place.

• 2:48:14Joe Rogan?

  The vibe is that this is our place. I, I paid the bill, but I shouldn't have had that much money in the first place. It's ridiculous, like the whole thing is crazy. Like that you could do something like this. And if you could do something like this, you're supposed to. If you're the person that for whatever reason, the universe has blessed you with so many zeros, throw it at something fun, let's do it. And so it's ours. And so there's, there's that in comedy too.

• 2:48:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't, uh, I mean, it sounds clear actually as I say it, but you know, I've lived, we've lived, you can't outgive God.

• 2:48:43Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 2:48:44Speaker 02

  It's like, you know, you just, the more you, the more you, that's, and that's what I'm saying also about the blessing on America. You know, one of the things I do like about so- some of these churches is not the ones that put pressure on you, but you know, people will give some cash every week to help with what's going on, you know, in faraway places or whatever. They tithe, I think they call it tithing.

• 2:49:08Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:49:09Speaker 02

  And, and it's, it's just part of the blessing of America. Is this, okay, so it's, it's, it's, it's, it's less than one percent. It's half of one percent of the government budget to keep all these people alive all over the world. They love America. Because they love America, they're not gonna be a problem for America. They don't love, it, it takes them away from terrorism, takes them away from anti-Americanism. It takes them, puts points in the direction of freedom. That's a blessing. So if you count your zeros and you say, oh, that's mine, that's ours. We're not sharing that with those people.

• 2:49:52Speaker 02

  The definition of neighbor is, oh, it's just next door.

• 2:49:56Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:49:56Speaker 02

  Be careful because.

• 2:49:59Speaker 02

  Because there is a bigger blessing out there. There's just a bigger blessing and.

• 2:50:05Joe Rogan?

  There most certainly is.

• 2:50:06Speaker 02

  And you, it sounds like you're in it. And, and, and it is in the, by the way, it is in the business where you'll see it. Cause people have, have a, a great mouth on them. I have a big fucking mouth, but it's not about what you're talking about. It's what you're doing. It's how you're living. It's how you, it's, that's the you two thing. It's not just about the songs. It's the, it's the way. You, did you use the word way a minute ago? You said it's the way when you're fighting.

• 2:50:37Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:38Speaker 02

  The, anything that takes you away.

• 2:50:39Joe Rogan?

  Sure.

• 2:50:40Speaker 02

  What is, what did you mean by that?

• 2:50:42Joe Rogan?

  There's a great quote by Miyamoto Musashi. This is the guy I actually have tattooed on my right arm. It's, once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things.

• 2:50:53Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 2:50:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. And the, the concept is he was the greatest samurai that ever lived. He killed sixty men in one-on-one combat with swords. He got to the point where.

• 2:51:03Speaker 02

  No problem.

• 2:51:04Joe Rogan?

  He was killing people.

• 2:51:05Speaker 02

  No problem.

• 2:51:05Joe Rogan?

  He was killing people so easily. He decided to stop using swords and he would like fashion a wooden sword out of an oar from a boat on the way over to go kill the guy.

• 2:51:15Speaker 02

  Sounds like Googie.

• 2:51:16Joe Rogan?

  He, he was an extraordinary human being, but he wrote a book on strategy called The Book of Five Rings. Yeah. And Go Rin No Show, The Book of Five Rings. And it's, it, this book is all about.

• 2:51:28Speaker 02

  Where's he from?

• 2:51:29Joe Rogan?

  Japan. All about how you, it's from the fourteen hundreds. But you, you had to be balanced in everything. To be a great warrior, you had to be great at calligraphy. You could, you had to be great at poetry. You had to be an artist. You, you had to be able to meditate. You, you had to be balanced. You had to know the way. And don't let any bullshit. It'd be, this is the modern interpretation. Don't let your ego, don't let other people's perceptions, don't let insecurities in, don't let any of these things in. Stay on the way. And the way is like this way of thought that once you, you know, everybody says how you do anything is how you do everything. This was his earliest. Version of it.

• 2:52:09Speaker 02

  This is wonderful to hear.

• 2:52:10Joe Rogan?

  You understand the way broadly, you will see it in all things. It's that Nietzsche, this path to greatness. Once you realize what that is, like, oh, this is. This is this intense focus and dedication to something that could be applied to anything. You could be applied, you could apply it to being a better father, you could apply it to being someone. Who writes books, you could, you could apply it to music, you could apply it to anything. But it's, that's what it is. It's like finding what the thing is. And throwing the essence of you at that thing, like really doing it. And to do that correctly, you can't have, you know, macho issues. You can't have insecurity, things that you're compensating for, you, you should be pure.

• 2:52:54Joe Rogan?

  You have to, and it's a constant struggle.

• 2:52:57Speaker 02

  Stunning, they have stunning insights. In my path, or I suppose, or whatever you call it, my practice. I have this, I am the way, the truth and the life, this is what I learned from Jesus. Become a bumper sticker, probably taken the, the, the meaning of it away. But it's, but it's the same thing. I've got to, because when I focus on this. This kind of, this, this radical.

• 2:53:31Speaker 02

  Idea to serve, you know, you know, rather than to lead. To, to be no greater love and all that, all this stuff. Unfortunately, this language has been ruined for you guys. I'm so sorry.

• 2:53:44Joe Rogan?

  Kind of, but no.

• 2:53:45Speaker 02

  But it's powerful.

• 2:53:47Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's real.

• 2:53:48Speaker 02

  And it's, and, and this, this Jesus is a long way from. The one that you, you meet on these kind of sales programs. And, but it's, it's, it is humility and it is.

• 2:54:05Speaker 02

  It is, it is service and it is discipline and it is not my will, thy will. It is indeed surrender. And anyone, wherever they are in the world, Japan in fourteen hundreds or the fifteenth century, wherever we are, anyone, scientists, you know, the pursuit of truth, it just gathers. There's a, yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's something about, I'm trying to think of the word, this sort of gathering where you, you, you, we, we will all end up in the

• 2:54:45Speaker 02

  same place if we're really, and I'm not talking about a life after death, as like if to, you know, enter a competition, but we all, we're, we're in the same, concilience, I think is the word. I think it was, I think it was, I don't know who wrote, wrote a book called concilience, but it's the idea that all disciplines, all art forms, everything comes together on a point, a kind of convergence, but the word is concilience. And if it isn't, I just made up a great word.

• 2:55:15Joe Rogan?

  It's a great word.

• 2:55:17Speaker 02

  There you go, Jamie.

• 2:55:19Joe Rogan?

  Well, that, that, those moments that were

• 2:55:22Speaker 02

  That's the book.

• 2:55:23Joe Rogan?

  Where great art hits that peak.

• 2:55:24Speaker 02

  Oh, really good. Thank you. That's really good.

• 2:55:27Joe Rogan?

  Jamie's the best.

• 2:55:28Speaker 02

  How did you not know of? How long have I been talking?

• 2:55:32Joe Rogan?

  Almost three hours.

• 2:55:33Speaker 02

  Because I, this, I mean, I don't know why you, this, my family at this point will be gone to bed, it'd be just the two of us at the fire.

• 2:55:41Joe Rogan?

  Jamie's locked in. Jamie's locked in.

• 2:55:43Speaker 02

  They'd be like, see you later, dude.

• 2:55:45Joe Rogan?

  That thing, though, is like what we all, it's what, we, we know how hard it is to reach too. Like Ordinary Love, like when you guys were doing that, we know that that's not a first take, you know, that's not like you just wrote the song and you guys are out there jamming. No, that, that's, it's a polished song. And the fact that you're doing this. And you're you're you're you're doing it acoustic, right there, sitting on a chair. Like, everything is off, right? Like, you're not on the stage, there's not a spotlight on you, there's no mist, there's no lights. They're like, all the theatrics are removed. You're in a brightly lit studio, sitting down with a bunch of people beside you, which is like the most un-rock and roll thing of all time.

• 2:56:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:24Joe Rogan?

  Right? It's corporate, almost. Like, no one does that.

• 2:56:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got a corporate haircut, too.

• 2:56:28Joe Rogan?

  But yet, you fucking nailed it. And it that moment, it took everybody to a better place. That's what we're all hoping for in in everything. That we're hoping for the for our from our leaders. We're hoping for that one speech, that one JFK speech. Where you just go, oh, my god, yes.

• 2:56:50Speaker 02

  That's that's that's the prayer. We don't wanna be.

• 2:56:53Joe Rogan?

  Clinton, when he was young, he had some bangers. Obama, when he was young.

• 2:56:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:57Joe Rogan?

  They had these speeches that made us feel better about human as as human beings, better about the country. That's the danger of the conflicted times that we're in, is that people don't feel good even about America. There's people that think that the American flag is a symbol of injustice. It's like, it's that's a crazy thought. Like, America's you too. It's not ju- you too, the band, but it's all it's it's us. It's all of us human beings, regardless of your political ideology. And we gotta think of that first. We're a community. We're a neighborhood, you know? We we should think of ourselves as a giant neighborhood. And we don't. We we think of ourselves as opposing tribes that are in in this battle to stay in control

• 2:57:41Joe Rogan?

  of whatever the direction of the country is. And it's being orchestrated by artificial intelligence bots that are constantly battling with people online and state actors and intelligence agencies and money. And all this shit is together, and it's all confusing everybody as to what is the purpose of being a human being that's alive with other human beings? The pur- the purpose is community, communing. We're supposed to be a United States. We're supposed to be a. Community and all the differences that we have, the political differences in the idea. They should be so fucking secondary that it should be a a small part of the elections.

• 2:58:25Joe Rogan?

  A small part of the election should be policy. Cause we should just all agree that we should figure out, you wanna have a good use of AI? Figure out what's the objective best use of resources to support the collective whole? And how does that get accomplished? How's that get accomplished without fraud and waste? And what's the best way to to navigate where it doesn't have fraud? That should be done, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, it should be like, what are we looking for? We're looking to clean up the lakes. We're looking to stop pollution. We're looking for clean energy sources, we're looking for education, we're looking for healthcare, we're looking for housing.

• 2:58:59Speaker 02

  Reach it.

• 2:59:00Joe Rogan?

  We're looking to get people off the streets that have mental health issues and get them help. And don't just give them fentanyl and give them money for needles, that's stupid. Don't let them camp on the street, that's stupid. Also stupid ignoring them, right? That's stupid too. So some real resources. And once we do that, we could all do better. The whole country can do better, we'll be less at each other's throats. There'll be less anxiety. It can be accomplished. But we have to address the the the primary factor in this country. For crime and horrible behavior. It's completely disenfranchised neighborhoods. It's areas that have been fucked since the nineteen forties. And they're no, they're not doing anything to change them.

• 2:59:44Joe Rogan?

  And no one's pouring any resources to try, there's no plans to try to revitalize these communities and elevate these people out of like dire poverty and gang violence and and and drug use. There's, there's a way to do it. It's not impossible, but there's no resources put at it at all. That should be another thing. That shouldn't be a Republican thing or a Democrat thing, why should we spend money on them? But it shouldn't be, it should be community.

• 3:00:10Speaker 02

  The people who who voted for Donald Trump, who I'm not a fan of, and I know you have respect for him and I I respect that. But the people who voted for him. I have immense respect for them and their sense that they felt left out of the American dream, a lot of people. And in so many ways, when, you know, the world got globalized and a lot of people did very well out of that, particularly in the global south, but everyone in America, I think, you know, a lot of people, a lot of communities paid the price for that.

• 3:00:54Speaker 02

  And I don't know what the pie was grown, if NAFTA, I think, was supposed to be a trillion dollars, it ended up being, the pie was, I think it was one and a half trillion. So there was enough money to reinvest in communities, but it never happened. And so people were pissed off. If, if, and I'm, I think we should be with those people. I'm not sure this is going to be the answer that they're looking for. And if it's not, I would encourage people, because I'm not American, I can, I don't vote, I'm Irish, just, you'll know. I trust in the wisdom of crowds, I really do. I mean, I mean you too.

• 3:01:36Speaker 02

  And I, you know, Americans will know and they, and they, and they must, I can see where they're going right now, they're trying out this new version of themselves. And where it's, where we're not interested in the wider world as much, we're trying to fix our own problems. I would say they are bound up in each other. And I would say there's a higher purpose for America than the one that's being offered presently. But I don't want to get into the politics of it.

• 3:02:05Joe Rogan?

  I think it's an overcorrection. Yeah, I think.

• 3:02:08Speaker 02

  I just don't, you know, I really hope so, because we really, really, really need you. The world, we need America. And this, this European project, we, we have a land war.

• 3:02:26Speaker 02

  On the outskirts of Europe. It is the most astonishing thing. And we don't know what's next. Poland, have you ever, you know, the Polish people, if two million Ukrainians staying with them, they never complain. These are the most remarkable people you'll ever meet. There's all that money that was invested in by guess who? George C. Marshall, an American general who became Secretary of State, who had the cleverness to say after the war, the Second World War, and I think it was like 4% of the GDP was invested in the rebuilding of Europe.

• 3:03:08Speaker 02

  And the idea was, we have to make Europe succeed. And that's how we will defeat communism. And so when Ronald Reagan, you know, pronounced the death sentence on the Soviet Union, and the reason Mikhail Gorbachev threw his hands up and said, we've got to, this project is over, is because he knew that people could see it was dysfunctional. And he knew that was a better life across the wall, the other side of the Iron Curtain. And sometimes it takes putting your money where your mouth is to show what freedom is. America did that.

• 3:03:53Speaker 02

  We owe America. And we need you. That's all I want to say. We need you. And together, wow, there's 450 million people in Europe. It's like, you know, we don't have to be fighting with Canadians and Mexicans here. You put all this together, this is formidable. And these boring people who are listening to you are probably tuning in now. What they saying?

• 3:04:26Speaker 02

  They said something about the good good country. Like it and and he had the mushroom. It's like, you wouldn't know, you've never been lifted by music, sir. You know, you know, you wouldn't know. They send people to death, but some millennium of the bum. This is like, come on. It's like you come in, your time's up. And, you know, I know we want to rewrite history and all the rest of it, but but he can't do that. We are free people. And it is great to be free. And I.

• 3:05:06Speaker 02

  I I'd I'd want to stop singing songs about freedom. I want to be it. And that's what we talked about earlier, and that's.

• 3:05:13Joe Rogan?

  I think.

• 3:05:14Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 3:05:14Joe Rogan?

  As human beings, there's a constant struggle. I think there's a constant struggle to find the path. And I think we go through a series of overcorrections. And a series of going really far left and really far right and, you know.

• 3:05:29Speaker 02

  Order disorder reorder.

• 3:05:30Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:30Speaker 02

  That's Richard Rohr's thing.

• 3:05:32Joe Rogan?

  It's part of the battle of good and evil. There's there's a thing that's.

• 3:05:36Speaker 02

  Well, you believe there's good and evil.

• 3:05:37Joe Rogan?

  I do.

• 3:05:38Speaker 02

  I do.

• 3:05:39Joe Rogan?

  I I believe it. I I think it's naive to think that if evil acts occur, there is no true evil. I think it's naive and evil acts are undisputable. And the concept of evil has always existed. I I I think.

• 3:05:51Speaker 02

  And we can become part of it.

• 3:05:52Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 3:05:52Speaker 02

  You've seen it outside a pub. When people that somebody's down, kid goes down. People are just kicking. You've seen it at a football match.

• 3:06:00Joe Rogan?

  Yep.

• 3:06:00Speaker 02

  Well, probably in American football, you you don't. But in in Europe, in football, in soccer, you see mad violence. And it's like a spirit, you can watch it in a crowd.

• 3:06:10Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:11Speaker 02

  And and it's we've, you know, I'm look, we've all we've all been part of it. Not it's not like we're separate from it.

• 3:06:19Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 3:06:19Speaker 02

  It's an it's an entanglement.

• 3:06:21Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 3:06:21Speaker 02

  But rarely is evil so obvious. There's great, um, there's a great book by by Bulgakov called The Master and the Margarita. Have you heard of it?

• 3:06:33Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 3:06:33Speaker 02

  So the devil appears in the rooftops of Moscow and he goes, oh, this is gonna be fun. Nobody believes I exist. It's one of the great, the stone sympathy for the devil, I think that's inspired by it. But. This, it's insidious sometimes. Evil is harder to spot. But I think we know, we kind of know it when we see it at full force.

• 3:07:00Joe Rogan?

  We just can't be afraid of sounding foolish.

• 3:07:03Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:07:03Joe Rogan?

  And when you say that I think evil's a real thing, you can sound-

• 3:07:09Speaker 02

  You can't measure it.

• 3:07:10Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 3:07:10Speaker 02

  You can't prove it exists.

• 3:07:12Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 3:07:12Speaker 02

  But, you know, that's what I say, you know. But science, you know, science, we need science. We don't need science to prove that evil exists. We need religion to suggest that it exists and how we might deal with it. And in ourselves first, I would suggest. You were talking about fighting. The biggest opponent, it would appear, is indeed yourself.

• 3:07:40Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:40Speaker 02

  You're up against yourself. I've got to that place, and I'm not a sportsman competent. But just in my own walk, I realize, wow. All these people I thought I was, you know, I was up against, you know, in my head. It's yourself.

• 3:07:57Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 3:07:58Speaker 02

  I love this thing of the way. I'm gonna remember that. And I love the truth. And I love, I love being alive. I love the life. I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold on to that.

• 3:08:13Joe Rogan?

  Please do. And keep doing whatever you're doing, man. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thank you for coming here.

• 3:08:18Speaker 02

  You're-

• 3:08:18Joe Rogan?

  It was a lot of fun.

• 3:08:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 3:08:19Joe Rogan?

  Loved it.

• 3:08:20Speaker 02

  And absolutely-

• 3:08:21Joe Rogan?

  I enjoyed it.

• 3:08:38Joe Rogan?

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• 3:09:20Joe Rogan?

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