#906 - Henry Rollins

Joe Rogan (0:00)

Shit, I'm really looking forward to it.

Two, one, boom, and we're live. Henry Rollins, we are live.

Henry Rollins (0:08)

All right.

Joe Rogan (0:09)

I like how you do the one ear off. That's the Jim Norton approach. He likes that.

Henry Rollins (0:12)

Yeah, I've always done it this way, so I can hear the room and hear me as well.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

Keep your eye on the door.

Henry Rollins (0:17)

Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

So listen, man, I heard you on Ari Shafir's podcast. Ari's one of my best friends.

Henry Rollins (0:23)

He's a good guy.

Joe Rogan (0:24)

I love that guy.

Henry Rollins (0:25)

Yeah, he's funny.

Joe Rogan (0:25)

He is very funny.

Henry Rollins (0:26)

We were both doing his thing at that club, right? You tell the story.

Joe Rogan (0:30)

Yes.

Henry Rollins (0:31)

And I saw yours, and I think I did like the month after you. So I saw yours on the internet, and then I did one, and he's the host, and that's how I met him.

Joe Rogan (0:39)

This is not happening. Yeah.

Henry Rollins (0:40)

Yeah, that's it.

Joe Rogan (0:41)

And didn't you guys meet somewhere?

Henry Rollins (0:42)

Yeah, last year in August at the Fringe Festival, he was doing like 30 nights there, and I was doing like five.

And so I guess the agent said, hey, do this thing with Ari. I went, sure. And so he met me in the lobby where I was staying, and he brought his gear, and we just did it.

Joe Rogan (0:59)

It was cool because there was background noise. You could tell you guys were doing it.

Henry Rollins (1:02)

Yeah, we were in the lobby of a hotel, with, you know, revelers outside. I mean, the whole, that whole part of Scotland is full of people for 30 days. It's amazing.

Joe Rogan (1:09)

Well, what was amazing is the way you're living your life, man. It's really fascinating. Oh, thank you. And this, the conversation that you guys had, it really blew me away because you're really doing it. You know what I mean?

Henry Rollins (1:21)

I'm trying, yeah.

Joe Rogan (1:22)

You're really doing it. Like you pick a spot on a map and you just fucking go there. You don't know anybody there. You go by yourself and you just fucking hang out.

Henry Rollins (1:31)

You see what happens, yeah.

Yeah, and that's usually, like say I'll go to a place like Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia for like five days or whatever. For two days, you get a tour guide, just so you can get the history, like this museum, not that one, this temple, not those two, just whatever. And what I always try and do in a place like that is get the tour guide and break them.

And I'm like, okay, so tell me about the corruption in your government. Well, sir, we don't have any. Ma'am, I'm gonna ask you one more time. And by the afternoon, they finally submit. I'm like, okay. And when I was in Mongolia, the woman, by the end of the day, she said, you know what, I called this guy, he's like this total insurgent rebel guy. He wants to meet you. And I'm gonna be the translator because he and his guys are starting movements in this country to overthrow the government and he really wants to meet you. I said, I really want to meet him because they're rebelling against the government who's selling out that country for the titanium, the copper, all the mining. I think to some Ivanhoe, some Canadian extractive firm. Anyway, we go like an hour out of town to some like spy bar where there's like nobody and you walk in and everyone's like, you must be on the up and up. And I sit at this table with this guy just because I was able to take the tour guide and be like, tell me everything. And I'll do that for a couple of days and try and get a real understanding of where I am. And then I just leave the hotel or the tent, whatever I'm staying in with my camera, my backpack with some water. And I just start walking. I go, well, here's the street. Look at that slum or that village or that souq or that bazaar.

In I go.

And so far, all 10 fingers still work. And I've been to about 100 countries in all seven continents. And the only times I've almost been killed, which was twice, was America, by comparison, the rest of the world has been very friendly.

Joe Rogan (3:24)

Where were the places where you were almost killed in America?