#1916 - Jon Bernthal

Jon Bernthal (0:10)

You know, I grew up in DC and I think about the people, you know, who are my teachers and, you know, my parents, my friends' parents. And, you know, they're sort of at the forefront of, you know, troops coming home and getting spit on. And you got people, you know, you're coming out of, you know, Jim Crow and people, you know, people going down south and getting lynched in Meridian, Mississippi. And then these assassinations, I just can't imagine what that must be, like a string of assassinations. And just given the conversation, if you're talking about the most fucked up time when you think everything is going to complete shit, and it's just Harry Carrey. Imagine if right now, in the string of next week, Kanye was assassinated, Trump was assassinated. I guess you had the thing at Pelosi's house, I guess that's kind of weird, but it's also kind of like...

Joe Rogan (1:08)

That's just weird.

Jon Bernthal (1:08)

It's just weird, right? But imagine that, imagine what we'd all be saying. I think in the last couple of years, we really saw how close, how fragile this whole thing is, and how close this thing can go to just breaking down, and you're kind of on your own, but I just...

You know, to have both...

Joe Rogan (1:28)

Yeah, you got a good point.

Jon Bernthal (1:30)

Like what did that feel like?

Joe Rogan (1:32)

John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. Malcolm X, all these murders, all these assassinations, very close to each other.

Jon Bernthal (1:40)

You're talking about what, like 68s? And then also you have, I mean, not to the same extent, I don't know how it would have registered now, but you had Altamont, you had...

And then again, just scores of... You had troops coming home.

Think about how we regard our military now and the reverence and respect that we treat our military. And think about these troops coming home getting spit on. People throwing red paint at them in the airports. Think about that, what that says about us.

Joe Rogan (2:14)

Imagine if they had social media back then.

Jon Bernthal (2:16)

You know what I'm saying?

Joe Rogan (2:18)

Yeah, that's true. That's a very good point. And then all the other people that died during that time, like all the rock stars, like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, everyone's dying. Yeah, it's just like...

And then the 70s come along and you have fucking Watergate and Nixon's gone and all the chaos in the country.

Jon Bernthal (2:40)

Totally. And everybody's just manically horrified. You have the previous generation just absolutely fixated on this new war on drugs and what that means. And then you have these great... I mean, who would be the equivalent of Hendrix, Morrison, and Janis Joplin now if they all died just like that? I mean, look, we've got people getting shot in the street.

You know, we've got, you know, what was his name from? Migos, he just died.

Offset just died.

Joe Rogan (3:12)

No, no, no, not Offset, the other guy.

Offset's still alive. He's the one who's married to Cardi B.

Jon Bernthal (3:19)

Right, it's...

Joe Rogan (3:21)

The other guy got accidentally shot by one of his friends. They were in the middle of some gunfight and one of his guys accidentally shot him.

Yeah, but there's just... We're so aware of the violence now, gun violence in South Central and gun violence in South Side of Chicago and gun violence in Baltimore.

I think we're probably more acutely aware of the, like, just because of the news cycle, just because of social media, but I think you're right. In terms of the turmoil, and also you go from, like, the tone of the 50s to the 60s, you have, like, a completely different style of culture is emerging. The psychedelic style of culture and the music is different. You got Woodstock, and it seems like there's this... You know, Hunter S. Thompson wrote about it. Like, what happened after all that happened was, like, you could just see this wave of change, and then it pulled back.

Jon Bernthal (4:20)

Got a little bit too much for everybody, you know?

Joe Rogan (4:22)

Yeah, I guess. I mean, is it?

But it's all, like, these monumental shifts, and then everything sort of kind of tries to balance itself out, and then you have these new dilemmas and new problems.

Jon Bernthal (4:33)

I would imagine it is.

You know, I have a friend named Tony Maggio, who's a sort of legendary, legendary drug cop in Baltimore from the East Side, and he's from the community. He's got the complete and sort of utter respect of everyone in that department, not just on the East Side, but citywide in Baltimore, and also he's got the respect of people on the street. And he sort of talks about now, just talking about these soldiers coming home in the Vietnam era and what that was like. I really equate that to kind of everything that law enforcement's going through right now. We have these, for the first time, with Vietnam, you have these images. Look, I wasn't alive, but from what I hear, you had these images coming into people's living rooms of these horrible situations.