#1479 - David Pakman

Joe Rogan (0:00)

Coming to us live via technology from the other side of the continent, David Pakman, ladies and gentlemen.

David Pakman (0:08)

So good to be back with you.

Joe Rogan (0:09)

Good to be with you too, and I love your facial hair, as I was saying before. I say stick with it all the way, maybe get some kind of a cult leader guru thing happening.

David Pakman (0:18)

I'm actually five days from a man bun, and I want to see what you thought about that.

Joe Rogan (0:23)

The man bun is the starter kit for a cult leader, right?

The man bun is like, I'm trying to get people to listen to me more and take me more seriously. I'm spiritual.

David Pakman (0:32)

I need like a gimmick of some kind.

Joe Rogan (0:34)

I think your gimmick is just being a nice guy.

How about that? That's rare.

David Pakman (0:38)

Nice to a fault.

Joe Rogan (0:39)

Oh, yeah? You're nice to a fault?

David Pakman (0:42)

I don't know. I get emails from people who are like, you don't have to kowtow to the dumb part of your audience. You don't have to say stuff like, listen, I want to apologize in advance for using a slightly off-color phrase, but people are like, you just shouldn't do that. It's better for the show for you just to say the thing.

Joe Rogan (1:02)

I love that you listen to those people. I think you should be yourself. And if you feel like you need to say that, I feel like you should just say that. It's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't hurt my feelings when you say things like that.

Even if I understand what you're doing, it's no big deal. I feel like there's too many opinions, and it sucks for the people with opinions. And I think it's one of the problems with what we do, and one of the reasons why people get so angry at us. So, if you and I are having a conversation, and maybe perhaps we agree on something, but someone listening is like, fuck that! This is what's wrong with that idea, and they want to say it, but they can't.

And so, the comments are almost inherently angry, because it's really, so much of it is just people who want to say something, but there's no forum for them. They only can say it in the comments. They feel like they're in on this conversation that they want to jump in on and interject.

David Pakman (1:56)

Well, I got an email today from someone who said, I love everything you've been doing for the last six years, but yesterday you used the word anti-vaxxer, and I just, that's it. That was it. When you used that word, that was it for The David Pakman Show. And it's like, you can't win with that. You can't win.

Joe Rogan (2:13)

But it's the same thing. It's like they're angry, right? And this is the way to get you to listen. Like, oh, you're leaving? Wait a minute. They're being completely unreasonable. Can you imagine if there was a show that you enjoy, and the guy said one thing that you disagreed with, especially something like calling someone an anti-vaxxer, and you're like, fuck this. It's over. My relationship with you is over.

That purity standard is impossible to achieve, especially when you're doing something like what you and I do, where we're basically just talking with a very, I mean, I'm sure you have some bullet points of things you want to cover, but you're ad-libbing all the time, what we call free-balling all the time.

And it's a crazy standard to try to hold, to ask someone to not say anything that you're going to disagree with. I say things I disagree with.

I'll listen to it a half hour later, or I'll think about it a day later. I'm like, why did I even say it like that?

David Pakman (3:06)

I have videos from seven years ago where it's not that my foundational values haven't changed, but I do look at it and I say, if I had known then what was going to happen four months later, I never would have done it that particular way.

Joe Rogan (3:23)

Yeah, there's a lot of things that happen in the news that force you to sort of shift your opinions and go, oh, that kind of stuff does happen.

Oh, I've been naive. I've had this perception of whether it's the government or the intelligence agencies of being like beyond reproach. And now I find out, oh, all right, now I got to go and revisit a lot of things that I was saying were nonsense. A lot of things that I was dismissing openly. Now I've got to go, oh, well, we like to think that when it comes to governments and intelligence agencies, we'd like to think that there's some level of, whether it's government or military, there's some place that you could reach where you're like a super person, where you're not going to make any of the mistakes that we'd attribute to people based on greed or ego or pettiness or shortsightedness, that when you get to that point, you're a proven commodity and that you are what we're looking for as a leader. And you have to uphold these very strict standards at that spot. And we assume that there is an actual thing like that. And I think it's one of the reasons why people get so frustrated at Trump is because he doesn't even try to pretend he's one of those things. He behaves the same way he used to.