#905 - Shane Smith

Joe Rogan (0:00)

Let's do the countdown, you have his hand out. False countdown, four, three, two, one, yee-haw!

And we're live.

What's up, my brother? That was quick. How are you? I know. That's how it goes, I like it that way.

Shane Smith (0:11)

Very efficient, very efficient.

Joe Rogan (0:12)

I like it, just start, just start. Boom.

Make it happen.

Shane Smith (0:16)

I like it.

Joe Rogan (0:17)

So, things are getting weird, real quick.

Shane Smith (0:19)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:20)

What are you thinking about this orange fella?

Shane Smith (0:25)

I mean, I gotta say, for me, it's the best time ever to start a news service.

Joe Rogan (0:31)

Oh yeah.

Shane Smith (0:31)

And we started our daily show about a month before, and it just is like, wow.

Joe Rogan (0:37)

And you're doing it on Vice, on your channel?

Shane Smith (0:39)

No, it's with HBO. It's a daily news show on HBO. It's like we were doing so well on Weekly. I don't know about shit, why don't I know about this? We did our weekly show, and then that was doing well, so they gave us a daily show, and they were gonna just put it on HBO Now and Go, but then it was doing so well, they put us on the air, on TV, so it's every night.

Joe Rogan (0:57)

This is the best possible compliment for your show. Your show is like what I would expect someone who's never done a show before to do if you just gave them a fuckload of money.

Shane Smith (1:08)

Yeah, that's probably, that's exactly.

Joe Rogan (1:09)

And gave the hosts who have really never hosted anything before and gave them a fuckload of money.

The whole thing feels so, the wrong word to use is unprofessional. Right, unpolished. Unpolished, unfakified.

Shane Smith (1:23)

There you go, it's unpolished.

Joe Rogan (1:24)

There's no one talking like this. There's no Brian Williams.

Shane Smith (1:28)

We didn't know what we were doing. And when we started, the criticisms came. My favorite was from The New York Times, was it's just a bunch of hipsters and skinny jeans and tattoos high-fiving in war zones.

And I was like, if you aren't criticizing the news, aren't criticizing the truth or the facts or the stories, you're just criticizing that we have tattoos and we don't look like you, we won.

Joe Rogan (1:53)

Yeah.

Shane Smith (1:54)

Fuck you.

Joe Rogan (1:54)

Perfect.

Shane Smith (1:55)

So, that was our first season and, yeah, ever since.

Joe Rogan (1:58)

Why wouldn't they celebrate that? That's really interesting.

It's really interesting to see a bunch of young weirdos in war zones. There was one that you guys did, I don't remember the location it was, but one of your reporters was out there and he had a flak jacket on and he was surrounded by all these rebels in these bombed out buildings. And you would hear, boom, you hear things going off in the distance. And he's like kind of calmly explaining, okay, so what's going on is they're bombing the location very close to us and they're over there. And he's like pointing at it. I'm like, holy fuck.

Shane Smith (2:30)

It's probably Ben Anderson. That guy's a savage.

Joe Rogan (2:31)

I think it was Ben Anderson.

Shane Smith (2:33)

We just did a thing on the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and how it's basically going back to the same borders that it was pre-invasion.

And he's under fire the whole time and he's just like, pchoo, pchoo, pchoo, you know, and he just goes down on one knee and he keeps talking, unfazed. And as they're driving back, they're clearing out these IEDs and they're just pulling it with a rope and pulling out the IEDs with a rope. And he's just standing there calmly.

Joe Rogan (3:00)

Hoping they don't blow up?

Shane Smith (3:01)

No, no, he's calmly talking to the camera as all this shit is happening. And you're like, this guy is fucking special, dude.

Joe Rogan (3:09)

Is he on antidepressants?

Shane Smith (3:11)

I asked him about it one time and he goes, you know, I have this thing where there's like a 30 second lag between some guy like, you want to die? And he's got a 30 second lag between like when he realizes that. And so he comes across as just sort of like, you know, unflappable, but.

Joe Rogan (3:28)

Wow.

Shane Smith (3:28)

It's like it's a genetic thing. He's also fucking the best war journalist out there.

Joe Rogan (3:32)

Did he fall on his head as a youth?