#1250 - Johann Hari

Joe Rogan (0:02)

Here we go, five, four, three, two, one.

Hello, Johann. What's happening?

Johann Hari (0:16)

Yeah, good. We were just saying before we went on camera that I've made a note to myself that says, talk slow, talk American, because although I spent about half the year here, we British people, there's a reorientation where you suddenly realize, I was once in an IHOP in Cactus, Arizona, and I was saying to the woman, I'll have some pancakes, whatever it was. And she kept looking at me going, what? What?

And after about literally three minutes, she goes, do you speak English? I was like, my people fucking invented it, right? But no one was there to laugh at my sad joke because they didn't understand what the fuck I was saying.

Joe Rogan (0:50)

Arizona is a strange place. I really love Arizona. There's great parts, like Phoenix is amazing, Tucson's a great place too, but it's a wild west sort of a state.

It's one of those weird holdover states that have a lot of weird old school laws. Like, I think you could just walk around with a gun.

Johann Hari (1:08)

Yeah, you can. My main experience in Phoenix was in Arizona, in fact, was going out with a group of women who were made to go out on a chain gang, wearing t-shirts saying I was a drug addict while members of the public mock them and jeer at them. Right, because I was written this book about, wrote this book about the war on drugs.

Yeah, Sheriff Arpaio, no longer Sheriff now, thankfully. But yeah, Arizona is a deeply weird place.

Joe Rogan (1:30)

It's weird. A lot of really nice people, but it's 150,000 degrees.

Johann Hari (1:36)

Yeah, well literally almost nobody lived there until air conditioning was invented, right?

Joe Rogan (1:39)

Right.

Johann Hari (1:40)

And you see, I once made a horrendous mistake, in fact, in Phoenix, where I had to walk somewhere and I could see on the map it was like a mile away. So I was like, oh, just walk, it's fine. And I get like halfway there and people are literally stopping their cars going, are you okay? Because the only reason anyone would ever walk in Phoenix was basically if your car had broken and you didn't even prepare to them, I might have actually just chosen to walk, right?

Joe Rogan (1:59)

Plus you're so white.

Johann Hari (2:00)

I am literally the whitest person.

Joe Rogan (2:01)

Like you must have been like beat like a tomato.

Johann Hari (2:03)

Yeah, I used to go out with a Brazilian who would literally just look at my body and laugh. I'd be like, you're so white.

How could a human be so white?

Also, I never have a nose color. Like I'm either this albino color or red, right? I never, there's no rich brown hue there ever. None of my ancestors, they're Scottish and Swiss. So they never saw the sun, right? None of my ancestors.

Joe Rogan (2:25)

My friend Jamie was over my house once, and he's not this friend Jamie, a different friend Jamie, who's British as well. And my daughter, who was at the time, I think she was like 10 or something like that. She goes to my wife, she goes, mommy, he's so white. And she goes, yeah, she goes, no, no, like he's white like paper.

So from then on, Jamie became Jamie white like paper.

Johann Hari (2:50)

That's a very accurate description of my lack of pigment. It's cruelly true.

Joe Rogan (2:54)

It's funny how much we appreciate the English accent though. The English accent is like one of the best tools for selling things to very gullible Americans.

Johann Hari (3:03)

British people benefit from constant positive discrimination in the United States, right? It's like having a 10 inch dick, just having a British accent. People go, oh my God, you got an accent. And it's like, yeah, all humans have accents. I've just got a slightly different one.

Joe Rogan (3:15)

But it's a cherished one. It makes you feel like you're more sophisticated, you're more well read, you're more aware of the world.

Johann Hari (3:26)

I mean, I just am sophisticated and well read. Anyway, no, but you get this constant, yeah, constantly people ascribing to you much better qualities than you actually have.

Joe Rogan (3:36)

But what does it work in reverse, like in England? What is the reaction to American accents? It's mostly disgust, right?

Johann Hari (3:44)

I don't know. There's a mixture, Americans, we grow, I always think like the relationship of Britain and America is like one of those police mirrors, because we grow up constantly looking at the United States, right? We're constantly staring through. We are immersed in American culture. But when Americans look back at us, they're just seeing like a reflection of themselves. I mean, Americans watch Downton Abbey and know about like the Queen or whatever. But there isn't that two way dialogue that there is, that, you know, yeah, so it's a slightly weird, so I think we feel very American, right? And I spent half the year here, and I, you know, every now and then you come up against these deep cultural differences that you're just like, oh, fuck, okay, right, this is really not my culture, right? And it's those moments of disorientation are really strange.