#1368 - Edward Snowden

Joe Rogan (0:11)

And okay, that'll just be — Dude, you're very professional.

Edward Snowden (0:15)

Well, you know, people are like, how do you live and things like that? They're like, are you taking money from the Russians? And of course, the answer is no.

But I do this for a living, like I speak. I don't have a YouTube channel where it's, you know, I'm Joe Rogan.

But I give speeches at universities and things like that. I do a lot of interviews, and so— We're recording now, right? I have my own set up.

Joe Rogan (0:37)

Is it possible that you could do a YouTube channel? Would that work?

Edward Snowden (0:42)

I mean, yeah, like, I mean, if you introduce me so, like, I get followers, yeah, we could do that.

Joe Rogan (0:48)

Dude, I'm all in.

That could absolutely happen. Do you want to do that? Is that something you want to do?

Edward Snowden (0:55)

No, I mean, this is a big question. So I came on because I had just written a book called Permanent Record, which is the story of my life because that's what publishers make you do when you're writing your first book.

But it's more than that because I didn't just want to talk about me. It's actually about the changing of technology and the changing of government in this sort of post 9-11 era, which in our generation just sort of happened to be growing up during. And I was at the CIA and the NSA and all this stuff. But the day that the book came out, the government hit me with a lawsuit and they hit the publisher of the books with a lawsuit because they don't want to see books like this get written. They especially don't want to see books like this get read.

And so the big thing was, we didn't know where this was going. We didn't know what was going to happen. And my publisher, of course, wanted me very badly to let people know this book existed in case the government leaned harder and harder and harder. We didn't know where that's going. The government is still pursuing that case quite strongly. They're more focused on the financial censorship side of it, basically taking the money that I made from it kind of as a warning to the others and getting a legal judgment against the publishers saying, you know, you can't pay this guy, that kind of thing, more so than taking the book off the shelves. But that's not because they're okay with the book being on the shelves. It's because thankfully we've got the First Amendment. And so they can't. And that's very rare and good thing.

But anyway, in the context of that, they were like, well, what about Joe Rogan? And you know, I had heard about you at this point, but you know, the only thing that I had really seen, that I really understood, had familiarity with, was like you talking to Bernie Sanders, which by the way, I very much appreciated hearing that, because a lot of people don't give the guy time to talk.

Joe Rogan (2:52)

Yeah, to hear him in those sound bites, you don't really get an understanding of who he actually is.

Edward Snowden (2:58)

Right, and this is the other thing, like they're like, well, you know, you can go on all these major network shows. And I did a couple of them. I did like a morning show. I did Brian Williams.

But broadly, the media, the sort of more corporatized media, as we might say, is exactly what you just described, right? They want you to be able to answer in like eight, 15 seconds or less.

And when we're talking about big massive shifts in society, when we're talking about power, when we're talking about technology and how it controls and influences us in the future, you can't have a meaningful conversation within those constraints. And so instead, these guys all wanna say, repeat these long, discredited sort of criticisms. And you know, I'm sure you'll ask the same thing, and that's okay. They're fair questions, but it's like, we can't have the conversation if we can't have the space to think and breathe and have this sort of discussion. So anyway, they mentioned you, and I was like, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, where do I know this name from before Bernie Sanders?

And I looked back through my Twitter mentions, and the funny thing is your fans have been harassing me to death for like the last years. Wonderful people, wonderful people.

But like, go on, Joe Rogan, go on, Joe Rogan. And I remember like after I had just made a Twitter account, Neil deGrasse Tyson actually helped me get on Twitter, gave me that little initial boost. And they said Joe Rogan, and so they like linked you, and you know, I mouse over your name because I use a desktop, I'm not mobile for this because of security reasons.