#2254 - Mel Gibson
en
January 09, 2025
TLDR: Mel Gibson directs 'Flight Risk' starring Mark Wahlberg in theaters on January 24.

In the recent episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience," Mel Gibson shares insights into his multifaceted career as an actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. He discusses his upcoming film, "Flight Risk," and delves into personal anecdotes and broader themes around health, happiness, and the complexities of human nature.
Key Themes and Insights
Health Challenges and Personal Reflections
- Back Problems: Gibson candidly talks about his ongoing battle with back issues, stemming from scoliosis and past injuries. He emphasizes the critical role the spine plays in overall health and well-being.
- Mental Health and Happiness: The discussion touches on the societal pressure to attain constant happiness and the unrealistic portrayal of joy in media. Gibson reflects on human suffering and the need for gratitude amidst challenges.
- Natural Disasters: A conversation about wildfires in California leads Gibson to discuss emergency experiences, hinting at a possible relocation to Costa Rica due to the state’s environmental issues.
Artistic Endeavors and Film-making Insights
- "Flight Risk": Gibson describes his intentions behind his new film. He aims to entertain within a 90-minute narrative, despite the pressures of the current film industry, which often compromises creative visions.
- Historical Context in Film: He contrasts the process of making movies like "Apocalypto" and the expectations for upcoming works, alluding to the nuances of storytelling across cultures and historical periods.
- Art and Human Experience: Mel emphasizes the intertwined nature of art and history, mentioning how the process of creating and portraying stories can lead to profound human connections.
Spiritual and Philosophical Conversations
- Good vs. Evil: The conversation explores themes of morality, particularly through the lens of Gibson’s projects. He questions the nature of human sacrifice and morality in storytelling.
- Exploration of Faith: As he prepares for a new project focused on the resurrection story, Gibson discusses the importance of spiritual preparation for portraying such a significant narrative. This exchange leads to discussions about resurrection, faith, and the portrayals of Jesus in film.
Personal Experiences and Anecdotes
- Life Lessons through Adversity: Gibson shares humorous and sobering personal stories from his life, including run-ins with danger while filming and the dangers of physical ailments and injuries.
- Legacy of Previous Projects: Reflecting on past works like "The Passion of the Christ," he expresses the impact such films had on audiences and their perception of faith.
Future Aspirations
- Ambition in New Projects: Gibson does not shy away from discussing his ambitions for future films, focusing on the need for deeper exploration of spiritual themes amidst societal chaos. He emphasizes the need for profound storytelling in light of contemporary issues.
Conclusion
In this thought-provoking episode, Mel Gibson shares his journey through health struggles, artistic endeavors, and complex philosophical ideas. His reflections on the nature of happiness, morality, and the impact of cinema on society provide listeners with valuable insights into both the creative process and the human experience. With his upcoming project poised to tackle profound themes, it’s clear Gibson remains dedicated to pushing the boundaries of storytelling in film.
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The Joe Rogan experience
What's cracking? Oh man, my back just now. Fantastic. What is going on with your back? You have like, you've had back issues in the past, right? We talked about that the last time you came out. Well, I was born scoliotic, you know? Yeah. So it's like, I bought just, I just bought my own pen along so I could click the shit. Here, take all the vices away from me. Give me you remember.
You remember clicking on the pen? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm a fidget, you know, so I let me take everything off. So it's not good. Oh, yeah. Born slightly scoliotic. And then, of course, I banged myself up over the years, you know. Of course. What can you do? Do they do anything other than surgery for people with scoliosis?
They do because I don't want to do surgery. When she start opening stuff up and fooling with it, there's no going back. Especially the back. Back's a rough, I've never met anybody that had like fusions or anything where it turned out good. And like Hippocrates, you know, the father of medicine.
He said, in any ailment, look first to the spine. And it was like, he's kind of right. It emanates from the core. Well, if your back is fucked up, everything's fucked up. No matter how strong your arms and legs are, if your back is fucked up, you're in trouble. Yeah, that's true. Your brain. Everything goes to hell. Well, you're in pain all the time. People with back problems, they can't think straight because you're always like, ugh. There's a gift to not thinking straight.
Tell me, tell me more, what I know. Well, it actually takes you down some pretty weird paths, you know. If you're happy all the time, I don't know, you don't have, you don't have to strive to find thoughts to make yourself happy. Right. So it's like, it's a good,
It's a good predisposition, I think. I agree to that. I think being happy all the time, it's kind of an unlikely scenario. No, nobody is. But we all want it. You notice we all yearn for it. That's the only thing we all want, right? Just happiness.
little piece. Well it's also we're shown it like in you know television movies or we're shown happiness as this goal like sea happiness. Sure. Should be happy all the time. Happy. Should never be upset. No. Well it's not realistic. It's completely unrealistic. However it's nice to have those little journeys through art where you can actually explore those things. You can explore your id's. You can explore happiness and
so you can experience the opposite. I look at situations around me and I generally feel pretty grateful.
from what some people go through. I'm grateful. And everybody's got their crap, you know. But like this morning, for example, I would be surprised if my home is still there. Yeah, we were just talking about that. The Palisades is on fire. Yeah. My friend Tom, Tom Segura, his house is gone. Yeah, where he used to live. He sold it, luckily. Yeah, I have a son. He's in the sort of volunteer fire brigade, Milo. I call him the mayor of Malibu.
And he's running around, and I asked him, how's things looking there? Milo, he says, not good pups. He says, you're a neighborhood. And he sent me a video of my neighborhood. And it's in flames. It looks like an inferno. You think this will get you out of California, finally? Yeah, maybe. Where are you going to go?
Oh, I don't know. I got a place in Costa Rica. I love it there. Yeah, Costa Rica is nice. Yeah, I bought there many years ago. And it's in a real nice spot. It's not too touristy or dirt roads. Oh, nice. So it's off the beaten.
Does it feel safe out there? Pretty safe. I think, look, no place is safe. I mean, you've got the Dariang down there, you know? What's that? It's kind of in the, what's the next country down? Panama. And there's this no man's land where the Colombians come through and it's like, you know, all kinds of dirty dealings in the jungle with, you know, who knows, you know, drugs and mules and, you know, yeah. Yeah. So, um,
You know, it can be dangerous, and I've heard of danger happening there. You know, you hear about somebody getting chopped up by a machete. And Costa Rica, it's actually a cool place because it never had a culture of death. Like a lot of the Central American countries did. They have a culture of death, you know. Even Mexico, I mean, they used to tear people's hearts out. All that sort of stuff. Aztecs were like the Romans, the mines were like the Greeks, but they all sort of dabbled in some stuff.
Costa Rica always had a policy where they was like the Switzerland of Central America. They emphasized education and health and everybody's literate and it's kind of interesting in that way. But it deals with its own little troubles.
Yeah, well, like every country, you know, except anywhere town in that part of the world. It's just like there's so much sketchy shit going on all around you. Yeah, there can be. Yeah, one has to be forewarned, forearmed, all that. So I have a nice place down there. Yeah, I have some friends that have a place in Mexico. And I'm always like, don't you ever worry? Yeah, I work in Mexico a couple of times. I was down there and it was
It was in Barracruz, and apparently, you know, people were rolling heads into bars and stuff like that, you know, rival gangs and stuff, and they said, I'd go for a walk, you know? And they'd say, you're crazy going for a walk. You'll get kidnapped. I said, I'm not going to get kidnapped. I'm the guy that pays. You're going to get kidnapped. And I'm not going to pay your ransom. It's like, I never felt insecure in that way.
And, you know, there's something that's gonna happen that's gonna happen. Yeah, you know, if your number's up. I know, I used to watch guys who do what I do for a living, and they'd have a phalanx of bodyguards around them, you know, and like for security and stuff. And I used to have that stuff for a little while, but, yeah, it doesn't make any difference. You're gonna be okay.
Or not. Or not, right? Until you're not. Until you're not. And everybody's going to be okay until they're not. Yeah. I got in a dodgy situation one night. I act crazy. Yeah? Yeah. What happened? If you act crazy, everybody leaves you alone. Especially if you are a little crazy. You know? You're in a stress mode. So you actually get angry. If I feel like I'm threatened, I get angry.
which is what happens and then you get really in people's faces and they think this guy's crazy but all the old cultures thought that like when there were people traveling across the great plains to go west you know the active nuts they'd leave you alone because they didn't want your evil spirits so what happened with you nothing they left me alone but where was this? oh man I was in a bad neighborhood I was it was when I first got into LA and
I was to go to dinner with Costa Gavras. He was a Greek director. I went the wrong way. And it was before they had, you know, phones with like, you know, all that stuff. So Thomas Guide, it was the Thomas Guide. Anyway, I wasn't guided well by Thomas. I ended up in the wrong place. And then my muffler fell off. And I was driving a Mercedes, you know, pretty nice sporty car, you know. And I thought, ah, and I had the wife in the car.
I pulled into a side street, the sun was going down. And as I got out of the car, I thought, oh, I got to fix this muffler. I can't just drag it. People started coming from houses. And they came up to me. And I saw them coming in the rear view mirror. And I jumped out of the car and got in their face. And I said, what the fuck do you want? Because I thought I felt threatened.
And the guy said, man, I'm just looking for some money. You got any money? So I was being mugged. And it was like, I thought, I'll think about it when I'm fucking finished. Like, you know, I opened the trunk. And this is the weird part, Joe. I will never quite understand this. I opened the trunk to see what I could find to help me put the muffler back on. And sitting there, the only two things in the back of the trunk was a pair of wire cutters and a coat hanger.
It's exactly what I needed, and I don't know why it was there. That's weird, isn't it? That's very weird. So you use the coat hanger to wire up your muffler? Yep. I cut a piece of wire, wired the muffler up. The whole time, more guys are coming. Jesus Christ. And they're standing behind me, and I'm feeling like, oh. And anyway, I get up, I finished the muffler, slammed, and I'm acting mad and crazy the whole time. And I think this guy's nuts, and I get back to the car, and my wife gives me a handful of cash.
And I thought, what's this? He says, it's just wide as a once. Give it to him. So I threw it and drove off. But it was like, it was looking hairy for a minute. And you never know. What year was this? Oh my god, back in the 90s.
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So things are more dangerous now. I think they are. Yeah. I think so for sure. Yeah. Yeah. We were just talking about the wildfire situation and how crazy it is that they spent $24 billion last year on the homeless. Yeah. And what do they spend on preventing these wildfires? Zero. Zip. Zip. And in 2019, I think Newsome said, you know, I'm going to take care of the forest and maintain the forest and do all that kind of stuff. He didn't do anything. Didn't do anything. And then on top of that, they cut the water off.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's all funny. And then I think all our tax dollars probably went for Gavin's hair gel. I don't know, but it's like, you know, it's sad. It's like the place is just on fire. Well, the whole state is just so poorly managed. It's so frustrating and confusing. And then he gets on TV and pretends like everything's great. And California is the best. We have the best state. We have the most amazing economy.
You're out of your fucking mind, dude. You've ruined this day. It personally ruined it. Well, it's the same team that was up in San Francisco and I came down to LA and they're doing what they did in San Francisco. Yeah. San Francisco is kind of like apocalyptic now, you know. Yeah. I went there and it's just like people, you know, homeless, you know, it's just it's a myth. It's just unbelievable that society can crumble that quickly. It doesn't take long. It doesn't take long. No.
I read a book once by Jared Diamond called Collapse. Never read that book. Crazy, right? It says all the things you need for a civilization to cave in and collapse. And a lot of the things are present, all those earmarks, the precursors of a collapse, they're present in our time. So it's an interesting observation. And we're no smarter than our grandparents, I don't think.
Well, that brings me to one of my favorite movies of yours is Apokolipto. You know, when the Mayans were running things, like who could have ever thought when they had such an incredibly sophisticated society, unbelievable construction, like the stuff that they had built that one day you would just walk through there and there's nothing. Nothing. Nothing and nobody. In fact, there's something because it's interesting. Somebody was flying by what they thought was a volcano in the 30s, some buzz boy. And he thought, hey, that's somebody built that. Wait a minute.
four by eight foot bricks, that's not, that's man-made. And it is literally the biggest pyramid in the world. It's bigger than the ones in Egypt and it's in Guatemala. Yeah, we talked about that the other day. Yeah, it's a recent discovery, right? Well, not that reason. I was maybe 20 years ago, I visited. I went down there with the
with the archaeologist, the guy named Richard Hanson, who's from Idaho or someplace. And he's down there with his family. He's been working tirelessly for like 30 years, trying to extract this pre-classic city from the jungle. And there's not a bunch of tourists. All the pyramids in Tikal would fit inside the one big pyramid in El Mirador. Really? Yeah.
It's a monster. And so that tells you that the pre-classic civilization was bigger and grander and more sophisticated than the civilizations that came after it. Yeah Pretty interesting. Well, it is unbelievable how like when when you the accounts of like people that visited Mexico and visited the Aztecs like what the markets looked like and how insane it was and how gorgeous it was and then just
I don't know if it was disease or what. I think the people were pretty dissatisfied. It would have been hard for Cortez with his limited numbers to actually take over a civilization like that unless they kind of happened upon a civilization that was pretty dissatisfied with the way things were going. So I think they had people to help them sort of.
When you're making a movie like apocalyptic, I mean, that's a crazy undertaking. You're making an entire movie where there's no English in it at all, and it's a blockbuster. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. It was fun. That's one of the best movies, man. It's a fucking great movie. Well, because I think it's scary because nobody's speaking your language. And you're looking at indigenous peoples who you, and because they're not speaking the language, you totally kind of buy it. And you can buy the horror and
and the primal nature of the story you want to tell. And really, it's just a series of fears one after the other being chased by scary guys or eaten by wild animals or hit by blow guns. It's all like a series of these things. But I think basically what I was doing was trying to talk about our time now.
and the civilization that we live in, and how close are we to collapse? And what are the things that lead to collapse? You know, it's environmental stuff, it's human sacrifice. Yeah. I mean, we do that. Kinda, we do. Yeah, we do. We just dress it up. Yeah. When you find out medications are killing people, and they keep prescribing them, and they do it for money, that's kind of sacrifice. When you find out that wars are
irresponsible they're not just wars not just they're there for money we send our young people over there to die mm-hmm sometimes for good reasons sometimes for not I mean I love this I love the warrior I do I love the warrior but I hate the war yeah and we hate we hate an unjust war yes absolutely
Yeah. Anyway, it's a mess. But the human sacrifice aspect is alive and well in our society, I think. It really is. It's just dressed up in a different way. Yeah. Yeah, rhetoric around it. But they've always been able to justify it. Like an apocalyptic, it was like, yeah, so the crops will be better. Hey, we'll just kill a few people. Yeah. And then I had all these people come out of the woodwork. Hey, we're
where archeologists and scientists, and that never happened. So there's this revisionism about it, too, that it didn't happen. But there are accounts from the time where, yes, people did witness these things. And of course, I had a bunch of battery of archeologists and scientists and professors on my own that say, yeah, well, this stuff did happen. And here's the, you know,
the depictions of it in paintings and images. It did happen. When you set out to make a movie like that, first of all, what brings you to that? Did you get the script first? Was it an idea that you had in your head? It just came from in here, and I was working on something that a buddy of mine said, so what do you want to do next? I said, ah, man.
I want to direct something, and I always want to direct a chase film. He said, what kind of chase? I said, a foot chase. He said, what? I said, yeah, people chasing you. I mean, there's something kind of primal and scary about a foot chase. And I think in order to have a foot chase, you can't have a society where there's any kind of cars or anything like that, otherwise you'll have a car chase. But I want to film a foot chase like it's a car chase.
And he said, oh, I said, what are you thinking? I said, well, I'm thinking if you go back before Columbus discovered America, you know, and it's like people assume that Columbus discovered America and then life began. I said, I want to know what was happening right before he got there, before he got there.
And I said, so I had this idea that you see all this stuff going on, and there's no time period on it, and then all of a sudden you date it by the arrival of Europeans. And I thought, it's kind of like the Rod Serling, you know, planet of the Apes. Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's kind of a cool, cool ending. And he said, oh, wow. And he said, where do you think Columbus landed? I said, why don't let's look. So I looked up, and the first peoples he encountered were Mayan trading canoes off the coast of Honduras.
And I thought, cool, what was happening in Honduras, you know? And you look at these towns and pyramids and temples and stuff at that time. And then the story was born from there. And of course, then we read the book by Jared Diamond Collapse. I read the mind Bible, the Popofu. And, you know, they tried to delve into what they believed and what their civilization was like. And they had concepts as we do.
of heaven and hell, of punishment or reward. It was a little different, quite a bit different, actually. In fact, when I went down to the archaeological sites at El Mirador, they dug something up. And it was like, well, what is it? And I said, we don't know.
There was this carved image in the stone of this Mayan warrior drinking, and he had an ear spool. And it was like, so they dug further and further, and it went like 26 meters down. And it was the entire story of the popo vu, of the twins going into hell and getting their father's head and swimming back. And it's this crazy story. And it kind of dated that book.
because I think it was almost 3,000 years old, this mural, this carving. So it tells you the story is pretty old. And they thought initially it was probably back in the 1300s, but this confirmed that it was at least 2,600 years old, something like that. Oh, wow. Yeah, so it's pretty cool. To be there when they're digging that stuff up is mind blowing. Well, they're missing so much of the mind history. It's very interesting. You want some coffee? I want some water. That's water.
They're missing so much of the mind history, because everybody's gone. But we ever see the very bizarre carving where it looks like there's a guy who's sitting in a cockpit of a spaceship, looking through some sort of an eye thing.
Yeah, they got some weird stuff. It's like weird. Yeah. Where there's fire underneath the chair. Like, what is that? They got dudes that look like Europeans. They have these guys with red beards and helmets and stuff like these Phoenician guys who probably traveled over there early on. Yeah.
probably maybe in the sixth century or something like that. So it wasn't that long a boat ride. So they probably went over there and made contact, and they thought there were gods or something, and then they went away again, and they said, well, wait for them to come back.
And, of course, they did come back. But it didn't work out the same. No. No. No. Well, there's so many accounts of, you know, people visiting, especially when you get into the Amazon. Sure. Oh, I don't know about the Amazon. Oh, my God. What's the tell me about that? Well, first of all, the Amazon used to be filled with people. And most of the Amazon is man-made.
The jungle in the Amazon is an agriculture. The jungle in the Amazon, they didn't even know this until fairly recently. And they now know from flying over, they use LIDAR, which is this lightning radar. So when they use this laser radar shit, when they fly over it, they're finding all these grids and pathways and cities in the jungle. So the jungle had consumed
all these cities. I think there was millions and millions of people living in the Amazon and that Europeans came over, diseases, everybody dies, jungle consumes the city. People come back 200 years later looking for it like the lost city of Z, like that story. They go back to look and there's nothing left. Guns, germs, and steel. Great.
Wow. That's fascinating. I don't have to look into that. And we're going through all those things right now. Guns, germs, and steel. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. You know, germs. Yeah. The germs I had. I'm just just on the tail end of some hideous flu that was good. I don't know. Did you get the H5N1 or whatever the fuck it is? I don't know what the hell it is. Yeah, I've had that.
That was the swine thing. I had swine flu one time. I just had that 2009. Yes. Yeah. It was around then. Yeah. Yeah. It was an epidemic, a pandemic, whatever you want to call it. But it didn't have the same sort of press releases that COVID did. Sure. I got the swine flu. I acted more like a pig in a terrible, terrible wallowing in my own mud.
So I like flight risk, it's a fun movie. Oh, it's a hoo, you know, it's a hoot. I mean, I think the first thing you got to do with any film, and I think it's incumbent upon all directors, artists, to entertain first.
in some fashion, even if it's a heavy story, you have to find some aspect of it that entertains. And I think this, for entertainment's sake, is just fun, and it's quick. I'm not subjecting you to four hours of watching autism dry.
You know, it's 85, 90 minutes. Yeah, it's a good time. Yeah. And Mark is insane. Yeah, he's great in it. He plays a good psychopath. Oh, he's a psychopath. Mark's got a good dark side. There's some dark stuff there that he was able to draw from. And every now and then he'd let it out. I can't even repeat some of the stuff he'd say. In fact, we had to cut most of it out. It was like really sick. But we hint at it.
hmm anyway when you make a movie now I mean you've had such a career when you make a movie now like what motivates you at this point in your life um like how do you how do you decide let's hit the green light on this one yeah there are things that speak to me and uh and they speak for a for a long time it's uh
I remember when I was a kid in high school, I was studying English, and they were, well, where did the English language come from? And they talked about, wow, it came from this old gutter, old German, old Norse that the Vikings brought across, and I was thinking, well, that's cool, the Vikings, you know?
And then immediately I start thinking, man, somebody should make, I want to make a film about Vikings, and they only speak in Old North, because if they speak English all of a sudden, you're not buying, but if they're speaking some guttural language, you're sort of scared by him, and it's like, that's scary to me.
And then I said to myself, I'm 17 years old. Why am I thinking about making films about Vikings? I don't know anything about making films and not much about Vikings. So why the hell am I even thinking about that? But that was something that was early on was like a drive, I guess, to sort of depict things like that. So I did films in other languages, in Mayan and in Aramaic and Latin. And there's the power to that.
I noticed when I was young, I used to go and watch a lot of foreign films. And I watched French movies, right? Or German or whatever they were, Spanish. I'd watch them and I'd think, wow, the acting's great in those. And it seemed better because of the subtitles. Right. Yeah, yeah. More believable somehow.
I don't know. Right, because you're not hearing insincerity in their voice because you don't even understand what they're saying. Yeah, you just feel the emotions in the words. And then also it has to take your attention because you have to do another function you have to read. Yeah. Which is another thing that sort of maybe blinds you to the flaws in the filmmaking perhaps.
Hey, it's a great trick. It's obfuscation. There's a thing about reading it while you're watching and it's like an added element of concentration. Subtitled movies, you feel like you're a smarter person watching a movie where you're reading it as well. Yeah. And there's something about the written word that's a pretty interesting thing to throw into the mix. I know when I first started it was kind of confusing, but then I got really good at it.
And I think, especially with something like what the passion that I did, the written word was very important because it was, you know, you got all those books, the Bible, you know, you've got the different Gospels and stuff that people are quite familiar with half the time. They didn't even need to read the subtitles. They could look at it and know what was going on.
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For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG.co slash audio. That was a crazy movie because it was a great movie. But it seemed like there was resistance to that movie. Oh, yeah. No, there was, which I thought was very straight. There was like Hollywood resistance to that movie. Like people didn't like that you were making it. It seemed like. Yeah, there's a lot of, there was a lot of opposition to it. And I don't know it. I think if you ever hit on that subject matter,
you're going to get people going because of course it's big subject matter and it's like you know and my contention is you know when I was making it it was like you're making this film and the idea was that we're all responsible for this that his sacrifice was for all mankind and that for all all our ills and all all the things in our fallen nature it was a redemption so you know and I believe that
You know, I actually am, you know, I was born into a Catholic family. I'm very Christian in my beliefs, you know. So I do actually believe this stuff to the full. So depicting that was an honor, but it was also, yeah, you got the daylights beat out of you for it. Yeah, because there's resistance, first of all, from secular Hollywood, where for whatever reason,
Christianity is the one religion that we are allowed to disparage. Christianity is the one religion where people
All these progressive, open-minded, leftist people, they'll embrace all these different religions until it comes to Christianity. And for whatever reason, that represents like white male, whatever it represents, colonialism, whatever it represents, it's negative. Yeah, sure, it's gotten a bad rap. And people do feel free to beat up on it.
Even I do when I see it's like, you know, when it's not fair. Right. When I think it's off. Right. Like, you know, when they appoint some cardinal and some diocese and he's been covering up for like people who are child molesters. Yes. You know, like Theodore McCarrick or Cardinal Whirl or those kinds of guys. I mean. Or the Pope. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm Benedict. Oh, not Benny. Well, he was covering up, but like, so is the guy now. Is he really?
It's not great. I thought he was like the more progressive pope. Oh, he's very progressive, yes. But he's covering up for stuff as well. Well, they all are. I mean, it's a dark institution in a lot of ways, because it's history. Well, the institution, it was instituted by Christ, but that doesn't mean that it can't be flawed. And there's a school of thought that says,
It isn't what it purports to be anymore. It's moved away from what it was intended to be and what it is. Almost there's a guy called Bishop Vino who says it's a counterfeit parallel church. And it's running an entirely different religion.
I actually don't adhere to a post-consiliar church. I adhere. Can you define what that means? Okay. There was an event that happened in the 60s. First, there was an event in the Vatican where they elected John XXIII Pope in 1958. I was two years old.
Um, he was elected and it was a very funny thing that happened in the conclave. You know, usually there's white and black smoke that goes out of the chimneys to tell you, we have a pope, you know, Haba must pop him, you know, and the white smoke came out.
And everybody cheered and they went crazy. And then about a half an hour later, black smoke came out. That never in history has that happened. That the white smoke came out and then the black smoke. So white smoke means we've found a new pope. Black smoke means no pope. That's right. They'd have votes or there'd be one reason or another to have a round in the conclave. And black smoke would come out many times, many times maybe. Maybe it would take two weeks.
But never was it known that white smoke came out, then black smoke came out. So what was the scenario? That somebody was elected.
And that maybe something else happened, and he was pushed aside that someone else was put in. So it was power struggle, some kind of power struggle. And of course, the man who came out was a man called Angela Ronkali, and he was John the 23rd. Now it's interesting to note that never had a pope taken the name of another pope ever before in history.
But this man took the name of a known anti-pope from the 15th century that Cosimo de Medici put in there as his own man. I'll get you in the chair, and then everything will be rosy. Everything will go good for business, whatever he was putting him in there for some corrupt reason. And there have been corrupt men in that place before. I mean, there's Alexander VI and Julius II and VI, I mean, some of these guys are, you know, they're not saints.
So he took the name of a known anti-poke from the 5th century, who actually said, yes, I'm an anti-poke. Sorry, I'm not the right guy, because there was more than one, and he confessed to being. And he wanted to square things with the Almighty, I guess, so he confessed to being an anti-poke. And so he took the same name as that guy, John the 23rd.
So it's interesting, don't you think? I mean, why would he do that? Well, whenever you have that kind of power, like I'm sure you've been the Vatican, right? Yeah. It's stunning. Yes. It's huge. It's so great. When you're walking around, you see just the massive, just the dollar value in the art that they possess. Yeah. It's fucking insane. It's crazy. Yeah. And, you know, it's a very small country. It's a country. Yeah. It's a country inside of a small city.
Because Rome's not the biggest city. No. And then it's got a country inside the city. Yeah. With walls around it. Sure. And you can't extradite people. Yeah. Pretty weird. How convenient. Yeah. Even Rat Singer. He didn't drive from the Vatican to the other place. He flew. Ooh. And it was only a little while. Because who knows why? I don't know. Well, he was wanted.
Yes. One of the things that he had done was he had moved a priest that had molested a hundred kids and he moved him to some new place where he molested deaf kids.
Yeah, I know. That's the dirtiest, most evil practice that the Catholic Church has been accused of. I think so. And many institutions as well. But that is a very bad one. And I think it's all part and parcel of the same corruption they crept in. And when you asked, what's the difference between pre-Vatican II? So Vatican II happened. And of course, they took the church and they reformed it. And they changed things in it.
And it didn't necessarily agree with everything that went before it. And up to that point, yeah, you could find it agreed with itself. But all of a sudden, you got something else to the point where now, I mean, we got a pope that brought a South American idol into the church, the worship. Really? He did. The Pachamama.
He bought the South, and he got it. I don't know what that is. It's kind of like a South American God pacha mama. Why would he do that? Good question.
But he did. Did he have an explanation for why he did it? Yeah, it's kind of a weasel worded thing of like, oh, all religions are just as good as one another. But you know, if that's his contention, he shouldn't be the pope. No, I mean, how can you be the pope if they all religions are just as good? Yeah, we all worship. So yeah, there's the pajamama. There you go. So he brought that in. Yeah, into the Vatican. Then the higher he
the hierarchy even worshipped that had a ceremony around it outside. What? Well, that constitutes apostasy. Yeah. It's an apostasy move, all right? Borser being false gods. Yeah. That's number one on the mosaic hit list. Yeah. Moses goes up on the mountain, he comes back down, people are worshiping him, but a golden calf. Yeah. You know, it's that. Yeah. So you can't do that. And for me, that's a departure from
That's called apostasy. It's a falling away from it. And the very nature of apostasy means that you have to be part of it to fall away from it. So it's an inside job. So do you think there's a motive behind these things? I don't think you will. Probably. What do you think it is? I don't know. But it isn't good. I think we're looking at a world where
And this is the, in the next film, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and tackle this question. That there are big realms, spiritual realms. There's good, there's evil, and they are slugging it out for the souls of mankind. And my question is, why are we even important little old flawed humanity? Why are we important in that process where the big realms are slugging it out over us?
And I think there's bigger things that play here. And institutions that purport to touch on the divine are necessarily going to be affected by that slug fest that's going on between good and evil. And sometimes good gives up ground. Yeah. And maybe not on purpose. Maybe there's some deception involved or self-deception. Co-opted. Like every morning when I wake up, I actually pray that I don't deceive myself
Because it's like, you know, your mind is a very funny place. I mean, I've always said, you know, it's your second thought and your first action that you're responsible for. Your first thought, throw it away, you know. Right. Upon consideration. The second thought is what you're responsible for. Yeah. That's the difference between first degree and second degree murder. There you go. Right.
Right? The first degree, like, I'm plotting this out. And we take that into consideration when we sentence people. Sure. Like if you're a person who just, you're, all of a sudden you're in a fight with a guy, you didn't expect it, and you stab him and kill him, second degree murder. Yeah. But if you're like, I'm gonna kill this motherfucker. I'm gonna find out where he is. Yeah. And I'm gonna go get him first degree. Sure. I've planned a lot of murders in my life, you know. Yeah. And you will have, yeah, in your head, you're playing the murder, and you think, well, that's not a very good idea. But I think I could get away with it. Right. There's the second thought.
Yeah. That is interesting that we take that into consideration. Yeah. That we do. Like if you've had time to think about it, you're a different kind of person than person acts in the act. Sure. Yeah. You're in your act of passion. Yes. And I found this out. I actually spent a long time in my animal brain, which is a very horrible place to be. And when you say that, what do you mean by you've spent a long time in your animal brain? You're in flight or fight. Right. All the time.
You don't even sleep. It's like really not a good place to be. And if anybody looks you to the wrong way, you want to bite them.
Yeah. And sometimes you say and do things that are socially unacceptable. And, you know, I went and got a brain scan by this guy called Daniel Amen, who's this brain guy. He's against all psych meds and stuff, but he thinks like, let me have a look at your brain. And you put a radioactive tracer in me. Whoa. And to photograph my brain. He works a lot. Yeah, he works a lot of football players and guys have got brain injury. Man, it's thirsty in here.
But so he looked at my brain and he was like, and he opens the file and I'm in there with the guy and he looks up and he goes, are you okay? And he goes, first, no, first he went like this. And I said,
What? And he went, are you okay? Like that? And I said, yeah, I think so. And he came over and he sat next to me, but very slowly and cautiously, and he said, no, you're not. And I said, what do you mean? He says, you've got the worst case of PTSD I've ever seen. And I said, you mean like even worse than guys in war and shit like that? And he goes, yeah. And he says,
You're not okay. Jesus Christ. And I was like, and I started to well up, you know, like, no, no, I'm not. That's like a boy. And it was, he had a very miraculous and great remedy for it.
which was to eat a bunch of fish oil, vitamin B complex, and get into a hyperbaric chamber for 40 sessions, but make sure you do at least two or three a week. It fixed my head. Really? Yeah, it got me out of that wacky place, you know?
So it was something to do with nutrition and oxygen. Yeah. And your brain is neuroplasticity. He explained neuroplasticity to me and how, okay, you can get brain damage and like holes in your head and all, you know, concuss, I used to play rugby. I've been knocked down on the field a couple of times, you know, that explains a lot, you know, and so.
It actually, you can actually heal the holes in your head. It looks like Swiss cheese. It's like horrible. There's a lot of these football players get like that too. The poor guys, I mean, they get depressed. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hormonal imbalance, pituitary glands fucked up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, not producing testosterone or human growth hormone correctly. That's correct. Yeah. Depression, low energy, your ability.
Irritability, you want to kill somebody. Terrible stuff. And it's just not socially acceptable. Plus, I don't want to go to prison. Yeah. Well, the rugby, I bet, that's a giant factor. Yeah. I played from, like, 13 to probably my late teens. And you get knocked around a little. A hundred percent. Yeah. There's no events or butts about that. No helmet. A lot of people don't realize, like, even shots to the chest cause brain damage. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's what people are realizing now. Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, and like I'm addicted to the UFC, right? I love it. But I know that these guys are, I feel kind of sorry for them. I do as well. Yeah. And one of the guys, I knew one of the guys fairly well. And usually I'm pretty immune to like, but like, he was in there and he was fighting against Volonovski. It was Brian Ortega.
And he was getting his ass handed to him in one fight. He almost got him a couple of times. Yeah, I almost submitted him twice. Yeah, I know. But because I knew Brian, it was like my son was in there. I almost started crying. And it got to me. I was like, I should probably feel like this about all these guys, but I don't know them as well.
It becomes a problem for me when I'm friends with a guy. And then also I see when they're on the tail end of their career and they can't take shots anymore. And then when you talk to them, you recognize the speech patterns are slurring. Yeah. Yeah, I met Muhammad Ali when he was in a chair, you know, and.
And I don't know if I could even tell this story. What he said was so funny. But he was still in there and he was still a little devil. And he was like, and he was still, he was still fucking with people. Of course. But it was like, I can't tell this story. You can't? No, man. Okay. Foot note it, tell me later. I'll tell you later it is funny. But it was my assistant, you know, it was what he said to my assistant. It was like so funny.
And then he said it, and we were like, whoa! And then I looked at him, and he was just laughing. He was laughing his ass off. So he was still all in there, but it was hard, I guess, he had the damage of being punched out. Yeah. Trauma-related Parkinson's disease. Yes. Very common for fighters. Oh, my God. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. It's not good. No. I got knocked out in a fight when I was like 20. And it was like knocked out. Like...
And it was, you know, woke up in the hospital. Not good. No. Well, a few of those will explain a lot. Yes, it does. Yeah. And we didn't know that, you know, back then. That's why it always drives me crazy in a movie when somebody gets hit over the head with a gun and knocked out and then five minutes later, they're fighting and they're fine. Or shot in the arm, you know, like kill you.
You know, that always makes me laugh too, but we used to do it. Well, you kind of have to, right? Yeah, it's like part of the whole thing of telling a movie. You got a sure. I mean, Michelle. Michelle Docker, even brains Mark Wahlberg with a fire extinguisher at one point. Yeah, he's back. You know, brains and shoots him. Oh, yeah. He's a cockroach. He can't kill him.
It takes a lot more. Well, you'll find out. Yeah. But people used to think that concussions are just something you recover from, like no big deal. You get a concussion, take a break for a little while, you'll be fine. You might not be fine. No, you're not. I got a concussion at my daughter's wedding. This is really weird, OK? So she's getting married. Married a great guy. They got a great family.
A buddy of mine from Australia comes to the wedding and he comes up and I go to hug him and he ducks down and he comes up and he puts his shoulder into the point of my chin. The guy weighs 240 and he puts his shoulder into the point of my chin and knocks me the fuck out. Jesus Christ.
And, like, for the next four months, I'm messed up. I have to get, like, a guy to work cranial sacral, you know, fix me up, and stuff like that. It really messed me up. Really messed me up. Fucking Australians. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. Wild folk. Worse than Germans.
Wild ex-prisoners. Yeah, yeah. Wild prisoner of mothering. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. So this story that you want to tell about good and evil, like, do you have a script or is it just a thing in your head? What is it? Yeah, it's the resurrection story.
But it's not just, it's not linear because you can't really, it's hard to understand. So it's gotta be put in a framework.
where you answer a few other questions as well. And you have to juxtapose the event itself against everything else so that it makes some kind of sense in a bigger picture, which is a hard thing to do. And it took my brother and I about, and a guy called Randall Wallace, plus my brother and I took us six, seven years to write it.
So are you doing this with historians as well? You trying to make it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Historical stuff. Well, I regard the gospel as history. It's verifiable history. Some people say, oh, it's a fairy tale. He never exists, but he did. And there are other accounts, verifiable historical accounts, outside the biblical ones that also bear this up, that yes, he did exist. And the other aspect of that is that all the evangelists, the apostles who went out there,
Every single one of those guys died rather than deny their belief. And nobody dies for a lie. Nobody. So that's part of what I'm doing. It's like showing nobody dies for a lie.
Yeah. Well, the resurrection is the one that is the most difficult for people to swallow. Yes. That's the one that requires the most faith. The most faith and the most belief, yeah, resurrection. Yeah. Who gets back up three days later after he gets murdered in public? Who gets back up under his own power?
booted didn't do that shit right you know so you believe that was a real event yeah I do yeah what brought you to that belief is this something you've always had or is it something you you studied it and you've come to this conclusion because of the historical accounts and yes I think as a child you know one accepts things on faith because you know you're raised by people who are nice to you and they believe it
And my dad was a pretty smart guy. He was like, men saw smart, you know, like real smart.
like back in 1968 he won Jeopardy right and then really and then they brought all the Jeopardy winners back and he played all the winners and he beat all of them too so he had a mine like a steel trap and his memory was practically photographic my memory is pornographic but it's like his his was like I don't have that that kind of mind right but a more like he did math and you know I can't add but
So as a child, you learn these things and you accept them on faith. And I still have that faith, but as I got older, I
came to it through intellect and through reading and putting things together in accounts and then occurrences like in my own life. I mean, just recently, they verified the shroud of Turin. Have you seen that? I've been reading about it and I know that there's some contention, there's some discussion and debate about it, but they used to think that it was only a couple hundred years old and now they've changed that. Yeah, they've said no, it is back then.
They also don't understand how it was made, which to me is very fascinating, because it's not paint. They don't know what caused the image itself, and how that technology would have even been available a couple thousand years ago. An intense light, I mean, atomic.
to leave almost like a photographic imprint on a piece of cloth. It's wild. Pull the shroud and turn up. It's wild to look at because it's so interesting. You can see it that it depicts a first century Hebrew male because the hairstyle was from the first century.
and a Hebrew hairstyle, that he was about six feet tall, that he was completely scourged all over his body. He was crucified. The one on the left is just like an artistic rendition. That's the face. Yeah, click on that one, the face. The face, yeah, that's good enough. Good, that large. That's fucking crazy. Yeah, yeah. Scourged, beaten, a crap. The wounds on the thorns, the hands, the feet.
and the scourging and the hairstyle was from the first century and the pollens that they found in the cloth were from that region. Also the weave was the first century weave that was typical and
Another guy, an archaeologist who I knew who actually translated the passion in Aramaic, told me that if you look close, you can see that the image of a Tiberius coin marks on the eyes. Now, I don't know if that's real or not. I've never actually checked that, but there's images of Tiberius on the coin. So they would put the coins over the eyes? Yeah.
So that would date it. But they have now verified that it does actually go back to that time period for a while. They were testing pieces that had been repaired in the 13th century. Right. Right. You know, what is the latest on that, Jamie? Can you see, like, I was trying to get that. I have two different articles from within the last six months. Yeah, the Smithsonian. Yeah. Of course. Digging into which one sounded the most accurate.
Well, it's such a crazy thing to even try to verify. Like, what are you saying? You're saying that this is really the shroud that Jesus was covered in, so you're saying Jesus historically absolutely did exist, and we think that this is the shroud that covered him, just out alone. In credulity, people immediately, their hackles raise, like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Instead of, like, looking at it objectively, they almost always want to look at it from a point of view of disproving it immediately. Dismissing it immediately. But that's, you know, that's science, isn't it? You have to sort of, you know, play the devil's advocate. Yeah. And that's okay. Go for it, you know. Are you aware of Graham Hancock? Oh, no.
Graham Hancock is sort of a historian that has a very, he's got a series on Netflix. He's a fascinating guy. And his career started because he was investigating these accounts in Ethiopia of the Ark of the Covenant. And that they believe the Ark of the Covenant is in this one church that's protected by all these monks that wind up getting cataracts and radiation disease and sickness.
And they think that it's because they're protecting this arc of the covenant, this actual thing, that it's an actual physical thing that's there. And if you touch it, it gets there. Yeah. Yeah. And that even being in its presence fucks these people up. Maybe. Maybe.
Who knows? I mean, it's got to be someplace, right? They buried it. They lost track of it. Yeah. But man, it used to be. And all the stories are, if you even touch it, you fall over. Mm-hmm. Because it was instructed electrically somehow. Yeah, like, what is that? What's in there? Yeah. Why is it giving people cancer if they're really protecting it? I think it's the actual structure of the container that is the problem. That's my thought. I could be wrong. But I think inside it, they have
things from like when Moses was like manna and you know stuff like that but they they managed to keep from like for example they they say that that Golgoth of the place where the crucifixion happened it's called Golgoth of the place of the skull because that's where Adam's head is buried
Really? Yes, and that it's also perhaps the same place. And it tells you it's kind of in the same area where Abraham almost sacrifices Isaac. So it's interesting. Yeah. And the cross, when in any artistic depiction at the foot of the cross underneath it is the skull.
representing the skull of Adam. Huh. So it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. That's the skull of Adam, huh? Yep. Wow. Place of the skull memory myth in the Chapel of Adam. What did you find on the Shroud of Tor and Jamie?
Both those articles just asked one person, one researcher thought it was, another researcher based off of their research that it wasn't. Can you put it to the one that thought it was? The one who thought it was is a nuclear researcher. A nuclear researcher. Jesus Christ. The other one was like an AI artist from Brazil. I don't know who has the most
So it says study published in the journal Heritage the authors conducted dating work on a sample from the shroud coming to the conclusion that it may be a two thousand year old relic the shroud was long been the subject of intense scrutiny features a faint image of a man some believe is the body of Jesus miraculously imprinted onto the cloth while the latest studies not discuss the question whether or not the artifact was indeed Jesus's burial burial shroud specifically the authors did find its age is roughly consistent with his time
Yeah. Yeah. I think, isn't the Smithsonian guy old for it? I don't know. Maybe that's him, I don't know. But, uh, yeah. There's foreign against, there's always been. Yeah, always, but it's just, but the, but the, but the image is like, yeah. It's pretty crazy. Yeah. Whatever it is is pretty crazy. And the fact that they don't know how they made it is also pretty crazy. Yeah. It's not a painting. Nope. Then not exactly sure how it even came about. Yeah. It had to have been some kind of intense light.
Well, the thought was that even trying to replicate something like that today would be incredibly difficult to do. Sure. It's like an x-ray vision. It's like an x-ray. You really see it in the negative only. Right. It's like a negative. Yeah. Hey, I buy it. But that's not the only reason I buy it. I mean, I think there's other logical reasons why I believe.
Like what are those? Oh, okay. Stuff that happens in your own life. The results you get from actually appealing to a power greater than yourself, you know? And I mean, I don't think it's any secret. I am flawed in the fact that I am by nature born an alcoholic, right? I did drugs, I did alcohol, so. And there was nothing that could stop.
me from doing that. Nothing. So I was really kind of on, you're on a downhill run. So I regard the fact that I was able to appeal to something greater than myself to help me
and actually stop me doing that. I think that's a miracle. It is. For me, it is. And for many. You know, so. Well, that is a thing about AA, right? It's part of the whole process is appealing to a higher power. Sure. It's spiritual program. Yeah. Because you're suffering your spiritual malady. Yeah. So it's a spiritual cure. And that's the essence, I think, of why it works.
because you can't explain it otherwise. I mean, well, you kind of can, but I think what you're being asked to do is to think about other people and other things more than yourself because it's kind of an ego disease.
Yeah. So if you... That is the problem with addiction, right? It's very narcissistic. Very narcissistic. Because you're constantly thinking about yourself and what you need. I need a drink, I need a bump, I need something. Sure, I need to have... And no matter what you need, it's never going to be enough. Right, right. So you actually have to appeal to something outside that you consider bigger and better than yourself, which instantly
kind of pushes you more in the direction of humility. Yes. Because you're not the center of the universe anymore. Right. And that you can't do it. And the first step in any of that sort of stuff is accepting that you are powerless over it. That's the first, that's the first, that's the most powerful step you can do is that you're powerless. When you realize that, you're like, okay. Yeah. There's fuck all I can do about this. I have to appeal to something better than me. And that to me is a miracle.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a very uniquely human thing, the ability to course correct and also just the concept of addiction in the first place. Sure. You know, it's a very uniquely human thing that we all know there's dark roads our mind can go down and then we wonder like, what is the purpose of these dark thoughts? What is the purpose of this destructive behavior that we're all prone to in some way, shape or form?
What is the purpose of everything? I mean, why am I here? What's the meaning of this? I'm looking for purpose, and what is it we're here for? I think we have to leave some stuff, but you have to leave some good stuff. You can leave plenty of bad stuff.
And we're all prone that way. I often think about the human race as a whole. You think about guys like Stalin or Hitler or German Mao. And I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be sharing a cell in the afterlife with those guys.
I don't know where I'll be on the ladder. It depends on how you end up, right? Well, that's it. It really is. And we're allowed to make mistakes. And we do. We are so flawed. And I'm more flawed than anyone. But it's something that you, I think. And it's pretty safe to say I'm in the third act now.
You're an act too, right? Good student type, but I'm I'm like I'm in the third act man. So you have to think about The other side. Yeah, think about what comes next Is there a next yes? There is I believe there is and I think it's Depends on how you live now and and the beauty of believing is that
Even for your transgressions, you can be forgiven and you can be redeemed, but it's all up here. Right. You know. Is the true acceptance and understanding of what you've done and what you should do? Sure. You have to look at yourself, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Honestly, you have to be able to accuse yourself and
and understand that it's a great deal of mercy involved in the fact that I believe that God sent his son down to tell us, OK, I'm going to ransom you people from your fallen nature. And I'll give you a roadmap on how to do it. And people do it. There's even people that do it that I've never even heard of it.
You know, some guy in the jungle someplace, I'm sure. Right. Because the Creator is above the law. It's an interesting fact to note that the first canonized saint, you know who it was? No. The first ever confirmed canonization as the saint.
It was dismiss. You know who dismiss was? No. He was hanging. He was the thief on the cross next to Jesus. Oh. And he says to him, you're going to be okay. This day you'll be with me. Unbaptized criminal. All that stuff. So wow. The lawmakers above the law. So there's a lot of mercy.
What about people that never experienced Christianity? What about the contacted people? That's right. That's what I'm saying. Something in the jungle. It's been known that it's called invincible ignorance because they don't know what the truth is. It's possible that they can be saved as well. So what are your thoughts on evolution?
The Darwin thing? Yeah. I don't really go for it. No? Yeah. Ice age, dinosaurs, you know, what did they turn into? I mean, things became extinct at some point. I don't think I was some kind of like, you know, legless thing that crawled out of the ocean. I don't think I came from that.
I think I was created. Do you think other things were legless things that came out of the ocean? Do you think like multi-celled organisms came out of single-celled organisms and there was some sort of a natural selection and random mutation and it led to everything else but us?
Sure, look, a gain of function. You can make stuff happen. I'm sure stuff did happen. But I think it's all part of creation. I think it's all ordered. I think anything left to itself without some kind of intelligence behind it will devolve into chaos. And so that there has to be some big intelligence that orchestrates everything. Not that we don't have chaos in the world, but I think that's our own making.
But what do you think separates us from all the other creatures? Wow. I think we have a soul. We're created with a soul. And, you know, I went to a restaurant last night. It was a steakhouse in Austin. And it was interesting because all the pictures on the wall are pictures of animals that look resentful, like cows and steers staring at you, looking angry as you rip into a steak.
But I just believe we are higher than those creatures because we have a soul, we have an intellect above theirs. And we aspire to hire things. We have aspirations. And this is part of why people drink and smoke and do dope and all this kind of stuff is because they're looking for a spiritual experience. They actually call alcohol spirits. They're looking for something higher.
And I think we all have that yearning in that we want to be happy and we want to be at peace and we want everything to be hunky dory. So there's this yearning in building all of us for that to aspire to something greater.
And that's why we're inspired by stories, I think, because it's like, you know, hero stories. You know, Joseph Campbell's stuff, the hero of the thousand faces and stuff. It's like, these stories inspire us. I met, I was at a party the other day.
in Tennessee. And you think, Tennessee, what's going to happen there? It's going to be a squeal like a pig, no. Man, there's some people that live in Tennessee. Sure. But like amazing people. And I found myself in a conversation with four tier one dudes, all of who did something extraordinary. And it was that Tom Slatter's Lee guy, it was the Black Hawk Down guy.
There was Sean Ryan, you probably heard of this guy. Yeah, front of us. Yeah, right? Yeah. There was a guy called Christian Craighead. You know who that guy is? No. Whoa. And then there was Eddie, they wrote a book about him. Eddie Gallagher? Yeah. Eddie Gallagher. I was talking to four of these guys at the same time. And I didn't know who did, who do you even talk to?
But their stories are amazing, especially, and the one guy I ended up talking to was an SAS guy, British SAS. And he just looks like a bank teller. But he did something extraordinary and incredibly brave. And with no regard for himself, only regard for other people. And it was like, whoa.
You hear these stories and it's sort of just like it pumps you up. You think, could I do that? Could I be that person? I don't know if I could. In a way, I don't even want to ever find out because you have to be in an extreme situation. But hearing about other people and how they behave in situations that are difficult is very inspiring.
Yeah, there's so many of those stories and through history. Well, that's another unique thing about human beings is that we learn from others in a very extraordinary way. And that's one of the reasons why we like stories. Yeah. Why we like myths and fables, because there's lessons you can apply to your own life without having to actually go through those things. Yeah. Well, that's right. I made a film about that guy, Desmond Doss. You know, I don't know if you saw it. It was like Hacksaw Ridge. It was this film and it was about a medic.
who figured so much killing going on he's going to go into the battlefield and save lives and he didn't have a weapon and he was in the worst place on earth and he got a congressional medal of honor because he kept going in to the worst place possible and dragging wounded guys out with no regard for himself i mean who does that kind of stuff right and over and over again he didn't just do it once
He did it hundreds of times. He finally got hit with shrapnel and a bunch of other stuff. But he lived to be an old man. But wow. And it was just pure faith. So those kinds of stories inspire the hell out of me. Anyway. So back to this idea of evolution. So do you believe that evolution exists in animals?
But do you think there's some sort of a natural selection process or do you think that it is all intelligent design? Well, I think everything was created.
Right. And maybe things do move on and adapt and change through time. But I think that that's a function of an intelligence also. And, I mean, look at the fires in LA, you know. I mean, what's that gonna do? It's gonna give me a new house, you know, maybe. Maybe. And are a new place to live? Yeah, something.
Yeah, I'm just not totally convinced. I feel it. And I can't really, I'm sorry, I can't intellectually tell you why I don't believe in evolution, but I don't.
It's just a feeling. I don't think I was some ape. Or, I don't think my ancestors were. I think they had to be pretty smart to survive. So what do you think all these pre-human hominids are that they keep discovering? Like, tell me what a pre-human hominid is. Like, Australia-pithecus. Alright. Or some of the other human-like creatures that never made it. Like, Denisovans, Neanderthals. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. Okay, well, they've got something called Xinganthropus. You remember him? No.
And he was like, hmm, you look kind of like this. But it was like they looked at it and they did some core samples on it. It was put out there by people advocating evolution and they discovered that it was a human skull attached to the jaw of an ape.
Oh, I do remember this. So it was a hoax. Yeah, there's been some hoaxes. Yeah. Yeah. But there's also been real stuff. Really? Yeah. You don't think so? Well, maybe. Well, what do you... Well, you know, like, I don't know, tell me. Well, what was that one that we looked at the other day that was one of the first pre-humans that buried their young, or buried their dead, rather? It was a homo, Nanaldi, what was it? You remember that?
I can't remember how to say it, but... No lady. Yeah. Pre-human hominid, very small creature that buried their young, or buried their dead, rather keep saying, buried their young, they buried their dead. You know, Australia-pithecus. There's a bunch of different, you know, the Lucy skeleton. There's a bunch of different pre-human hominids. Yeah, maybe they're monkeys, I don't know.
Well, they're similar to us just not where we are. They're on the road to becoming what it means to be a human being. I don't know. What do you think those are? I don't know. They could be animals or they could be like, look at today. I mean, you can get some mosquito can bite you and your kid can be born with a malformed skull or something. It's like, you know, they have those, you know.
Yeah, but this is like a genetic thing. They've mapped the genome of these creatures. Oh, they have? They're different. Yeah. Well, I don't know how to explain those, Joe. I don't know. But you do think that human beings were created by God? Sure, I do. When do you think that happened? When? Probably not that long ago.
Really? No, not really. Like what do you mean by not that long ago? Probably only about 8,000 years ago. Really? Yeah. So what do you think things like go Beckley Tapp-A-R when they find these constructions that are dated, carbon dated to 11,000 plus years old? I question carbon dating. Really? Yeah. Well, that makes things a lot simpler. Well, yeah, there's a lot of money in claims and I don't know. Really? Water's there. Yeah.
Well carbon dating seems to be pretty rock solid studies. Yeah. I mean science, the science behind radiocarbon dating and then detecting carbon isotopes. It's like that's pretty legit. Yeah. I don't know. I can't square it.
Yeah. Well, you don't have to. And I don't have to. And what differences are you going to make to me? Yeah, that's the thing. It doesn't make a difference in terms of your experience in this life on Earth. No. Like, you can have your faith and your ideas and live a great life from beginning to end. And it might not suit you to really ponder evolution and all the puzzles and problems.
It doesn't. And I just like, you know, I look at all sorts of stuff like that. Like, you know, the iceberg's melting and the water overflowing. It's not. Ever having a glass full of ice and watch it melt? Did you ever see the glass flow over? No. Takes up less room, you know. Yeah.
You know, the hot greenhouse, whatever. Well, there's a lot of horseshit that's involved in climate change for sure. I've studied that and I've had many discussions over the last four years. The problem with anything is that once a narrative gets established and then there's a profit attached to the solution to that narrative. Yes. And that's green energy and green energy bills. And there's businesses that are wrapped around there. And then there's also this fear.
that they love to pump into people about climate change that, you know, they terrify the shit out of young people that we're going to destroy the world and climate change you must act now. And then you become beholden to the political party that is espousing these ideas. And then your enemy is the deniers of this science, even though you don't even understand the science. Yeah.
Yeah. And did you see the Washington Post article that they published recently about temperature change on earth? No. Well, there's a down, like what they've realized is over the last, you know, X amount of thousands of years that the temperature on earth is plummeting. Yeah. And it's dropping. And then when they look at the dips, this is the most important thing for anybody that's really freaked out about climate change.
There's no static temperature of Earth ever. There's never been a time where it maintains a temperature until human beings came along and fucked it all up. That is just not real. Before human beings ever existed, if you trust these core samples, there's been a giant rise and fall and this constant dip. There it is.
Scientists have captured Earth's climate over the last 485 million years. Here's a surprising place We stand now look at the dip at the end. Well, that's where we are. Yeah, that's that's reality Okay, and then if you look at the course of history you look at the rise and fall like it's never a straight line way before human beings ever existed if you believe these silly people way before human beings that ever existed there's always this rise and fall and
This idea that the whole thing is based on carbon emissions from human beings is total bullshit. It's not true. We might be having an effect, but we're having a small effect, a very small effect. And the other things are completely outside of our control, including solar activity, the distance between the earth and the sun.
There's a lot of factors. There's all sorts of factors involving natural activities like volcanic emissions, which devastate the entire human race was knocked down to a few thousand people at one point in time because of the Toba volcano.
Yeah, no light. Yeah. No light for years. Yeah. Good luck. Yeah, yeah. Good luck. And the people that survive are fucking barbarians. Yeah. This is the most savage. And then they take a long time before they can figure out civilization again after that. It's like dinosaurs. They just stop. Mm-hmm. So what are they evolving to?
Chickens. I guess. Birds, raptors. Well, they think a lot of dinosaurs had feathers now. Yeah. That's the newest thing. Maybe. You don't think so? I don't know. I need to take a pee. I'm so desperate. Let's take a pee. We'll take a break. We'll be right back. I need to take a piddle.
It's a nice picture. That's gotta be a moment in your head where you're just like every now and then just go fuck. Yeah, yeah. It is funny. Yeah. But it was a good picture. The only thing that was going through my head was... Okay. I just can't look bad.
And I didn't have anything, no grooming implements. So I just tried my best to not look too bad. There you go. Yeah, you talk about humility. Like what gives you more humility than being publicly humiliated? Sure. Public humiliation. And you know what? For most people.
It is their number one fear. Sure. It's public humiliation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Public speaking and because of that, public humiliation. Sure. Yeah. Happens all the time. Because we're so concerned about other people's opinions of us. I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Because we're not sure our opinions about it. Well, you've been through a lot. Well, so have you. Yeah. I mean, I remember, you know,
I think they were giving you a grilling once for taking horseworm medicine. Yeah, funny. Funny how that works. Funny how that works. Funny how that does work. Yeah, what's really funny is how that was a part of the demise of mainstream media. Because people were like, well, this is crazy. Are you guys really the news? Like, what is this? Yes, I know. They seem to be complicit with a 100%. And you think, well, why?
Why because of money? I think this is what we're talking about before that there is good and evil Yeah, and sometimes it manifests itself in a very clear and obvious way and I think that's what that was that was evil that was putting people's lives Second and putting money first. Well, I don't know why Fauci's still walking around
How is that guy still walking around? Just people understand the history of the AIDS crisis and what that guy did back then. Did you read that book? Yeah, I read the book. I listened to it. I drove up to San Francisco and I listened to it and I had road rage. Oh, yeah. And it was like, whoa. How is he still there?
How was, first of all, people that don't believe it, how come RFK Junior didn't get sued? How come there's no lawsuits? If there was a lies, there would be lawsuits. It would be publicly humiliated. Instead, they kept that book off bestseller lists. That book sold millions of copies. They hit it. That's when you find out that bestseller lists are actually curated. It's not really bestseller. It's censored. It's all censored. Everything's censored.
But that book is an accurate depiction of what Anthony Fauci did during the AIDS crisis, which probably was an AZT crisis. It's fairly incontrovertible now that he was fooling with gain of function.
Right. Or at least free. Right. Right. And no repercussions. Yeah, whatever happened to that story where, you know, the wombat and the weasel got together and the horse and around and a bat pissed on him with a golden shower and all of a sudden it was in a wet market. Yeah. Very wet market. You got, you know.
Complete total horseshit and totally the scientist that we're supposed to trust. Yeah pitching that horseshit. It was like the AIDS thing some green monkey, but if you want to steward on the ass, then he went around the world and got everybody sick and it was like, you know, ridiculous. If you want to go to the AIDS rabbit hole, look up a guy named Peter Duesberg. Oh, yes. I know. Yeah, I read that book. Yeah, that is crazy. He's telling the truth. This is the fucking COVID crisis times a thousand. Yeah.
I had him on the podcast way back in the day. It was one of the earlier guests that I had. It was like way back in like 2010. It was one of the first times I got openly attacked for someone being on the podcast. There was like blood is on your hands. I'm like, first of all, no, it's not. It's 2010. Who's dying of AIDS? Zero people. So stop. It's not bloods on your hand. Like if this guy's correct, he's a tenured professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is like
His work on cancer is, you know, everybody thinks it's groundbreaking work, brilliant doctor, but he was a heretic. He was a guy who stood outside of Fauci's doctrine and the narrative, and he said, I don't believe that HIV is what's causing this, when all these people that are having these immune systems are all heavy drug users.
He's like, I think this is a disease of a decimation of the immune system due to heavy drug use. And then on top of that, you're prescribing this chemical, this AZT, that kills people. They stopped using it for chemotherapy because it was killing them quicker than cancer was. I was in the Sydney theater company in the 90s, and I was going to a funeral once a month, a friend.
They were all dying. It's crazy in the 80s and 90s. And they were all getting AZT? Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. Well, the ones that were getting AZT, even the ones that were asymptomatic, like Magic Johnson, they were giving Magic Johnson AZT had to stop taking it. Yeah. Because he was making him sick. He was killing him. Yeah. Yeah, I read it. It's even with RFK's book.
And he's an amazing guy. People say, oh, he's kooky. He's crazy. He's not crazy. He's not. He's one of the most erudite. They say, he's an anti-vaxxer. He's not. He's not. He's like, he's a very shrewd. He's never lost a case, I don't think.
when he brings something to suit. I don't think he's ever been defeated. But that book is not just him. It's him in about a thousand highly qualified scientists and physicians commenting on the whole situation. So when you read it, it's a pretty convincing document. And you're right, nobody sued him for it. It's pretty scary.
Well, not only do they not assume their responses to try to ignore it. They don't want to debate him on it. They don't want to do anything. No. They want to just ignore it and hope it goes away. But it doesn't go away. And the more people talk about it, the more people read it. And when you do read it and you go, if this is true, what the fuck is going on? And how is that monster still loose?
Yeah. Oh, well. And he seems like a monster. The way he talks about things. He just seems... Well, first of all, there's so many instances of him lying. There's so many, like, where he said one thing, two years later, it turns out to be a lie. He said, like, whether it is the... The mask thing. Yeah. The mask thing, whether it's the natural spillover,
You know, the lies about gain of function to Congress, you know, when he was lying to Rand Paul about whether or not they did gain a function research. Like, how was that not perjury? How is he not in trouble? Yeah. Well, well, hey, other mysteries, you know. Well, then the Biden administration is now talking about taking that guy and giving him a full pardon. It's like, yeah, fucking crazy. Yeah, they might, you know, I gave Hunter a pardon.
Yeah, but... But Hunter's... Hunter didn't need a pardon. Was he indicted?
Well, I mean, he was in trouble for tax evasion. No, I think. There's a lot of tax problems. He definitely did some uncool things. And then there's the barisma thing. But the crazy thing about his pardon is it starts at the time of him being involved in barisma. So it's from 2011 all the way to today. That's what he pardoned him. It's the biggest sweeping pardon that anyone's ever received ever.
And Biden's pardoned more people than anybody ever, too. He was already over 8,000 people pardoned. Yeah. A lot of criminals on death and all that stuff.
well there's that and but then there's also people that like the kids for cash judges you know the where they were locking up kids and putting them in child detention centers because they want money they're doing it for kickbacks yeah he's a documentary yeah evil again what we're talking about good and evil yeah like there there's a real things and
rational people that profess themselves to be intelligent and secular. They don't want to believe in good and evil. They don't think that they just think people do bad things. People have motivations. They do bad things, but they don't want to believe in the concept of good and evil because these are biblical concepts. They are, right? Yeah. And I, you know, they've been around since the beginning.
And people want to pretend they're smarter than the people that sort of embrace these biblical concepts. Right. Or, yeah, I think that goes into evolution. Yeah. Are we smarter than our grandparents? You know, I don't know. Well, we are about some things, but we can't survive the way they did. Nope. They are obviously intelligent. Yeah. Just they didn't have access to information the way we do, but there's a difference between information and intelligence. Sure. Yeah.
I don't have many devices for information. I read books. I read mostly history books. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I got to recommend a book to you. Okay. It's fascinating. And it's like, it's called the frontiersman. And it's about a guy called Simon Kenton. You ever hear this guy? No.
And it was written by a guy who's now deceased. His name is Alan Eckert. And it is really about opening up Ohio and Kentucky and places like that with this guy, Simon Kenton, who was just an Irish immigrant. He wasn't much for farming and stuff, but he thought he killed a guy.
And so he ran away because he thought he'd be indicted for some crime or something. And he ended up being this frontiersman. And it's a very interesting document because
you get the history of what was going on at the time when the country was opening up between the settlers and the Indians, the Shawnee. One of the most brutal books I've ever read. Really? Oh, it's very well done. And it has a narrative, but it's reconstructed from all kinds of historical documents and letters and diaries and all this kind of stuff. So I think the guy took about 15 years to sort of compile all this stuff and write it.
And the first half of the book is about this guy, Simon Kenton, and the second half is about Tecumseh, you know, the chief.
really great book one of the one of the most fascinating books I read you can't put it down really yeah because it's just like it's like little chapters I'm gonna get that right now yeah you ever read the Empire of the Summer Moon no Empire of the Summer Moon is about the Comanche oh yeah and it's all about the settling of this area right it's fucking incredible and again one of the most brutal books ever so this is the frontiersman the frontiersman by Alan Eckert yeah
I'm going to check that right now just so that I make sure that I have it. Yeah. And it's all in a little bite-sized chunks. And it actually, for a history book, it has this incredible narrative with heroes and villains and all the players. Very interesting document. I'm getting it right now. Oh, yeah.
Don't read it before bed. No? No, it gets pretty. It gets pretty dark. Why are you so drawn to history? I don't know. I think because maybe I'm trying to learn something. It's been about 80 years since the last big war. Alan Eckert got it. I think I just want to learn.
I mean, my dad went to World War II. He went to Guadalcanal, right? He got bit by mosquitoes, he had malaria.
which is interesting to note that he used to take hydroxychloric when they get a malaria. Isn't that crazy? And then when I tried, when my doctor recommended I get it when I had COVID, they gouged me 800, it used to cost him 30 bucks. They wanted 800 bucks for, they were gouging. Well, not only that, when Trump talked about it, then all of a sudden they demonized it. Yeah, yeah, they laughed.
Yeah. Which is crazy because it's an antiviral. It works. Yeah. It works on malaria. Yeah. Yeah. And people have been taking it forever. Sure. Pregnant women can take it if they have the flu and it doesn't hurt the baby. You know, it's pretty safe. It's like Ivermectin. But that's what's so bizarre about the time that we just went through because there's more information now available to people instantaneously than ever before. Yeah. You look it up on your phone and instantly know, oh, Ivermectin, the guy who created it won the Nobel Prize. Yeah.
2014, for use in human beings. So what the fuck is going on? Who's running this thing? And it's harmless. And it wasn't made for horses. It was made for people. And then they used it for horses. Well, it's like saying penicillin is for horses because they use that on horses too. That's stupid. They told me it was for moldy bread.
That's what it was from, yeah. But I mean, there's a lot of medications used on animals too. You can't say it's a veterinary medication just because it's also used on animals. No, that's true. It's been used on literally prescribed billions of times on human beings. Yeah, it's like the stem cell stuff. They started using it on horses with emphysematic lung conditions, race horses, because they would bleed. And they got the stem cells from the umbilical cords of their offspring, injected it into them, and it healed their lungs.
which is part of my story. Because I smoked for 45 years and I couldn't stop. And I read this silly book by Alan Carr, not the little guy who, you know, managed the village people in the caff to end the little fat guy. But no, this other guy, Alan Carr, and he wrote this book. And it's the only thing that made me stop. It worked like crazy. But the book made you stop. The book made me stop. I read this book.
It was the book called The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. And it's a silly title, right? And it was sad that my son gave it to me. He said, stop smoking, dad. Here, here's this book. I left it on. I used to walk past the bookshelf, like a dumb book, dumb title, you know. And then I finally, my doctor said, you have first stage emphysema. And I'm like, you got to be kidding me. He says, yeah, you got to get the smell. I better read this book. So I read the book and I stopped.
So it was, I think it was like neurolinguistic programming or something like that. You read it and you're kind of self hypnotized yourself, but it worked. What did the book tell you? It said, it didn't tell you you're bad, you're going to die. I didn't tell you all that sort of stuff. It was like,
I mean, they had things like, maybe I'm blowing it, but they had a chapter where it says, OK, we focused on the negative aspects of smoking. Now we're going to talk about the good aspects of smoking in the next chapter.
And then you turn the page and the page is empty. And it's just a trick. It's a mind trick. The whole thing was a mind trick, but it worked. And I don't know why it worked. But it was sort of like self hypnosis while you're reading the book. And it wasn't a negative thing like, I've got to stop this. It's bad. It's bad. I'm scared. It wasn't even that. In fact, if I hadn't had the stem cells afterwards, my lungs completely healed from that, by the way.
Did it do it intravenously? Yeah, intravenous. And it gets stuck in your lungs. And is this Dr. Reardon? That was Reardon? Yeah. And we talked, yeah. Yeah, it worked. Stem cells are incredible. And the fact that you can't get them the way they can get them in overseas, that we can get it in Panama where Reardon has this clinic.
Tijuana. They're getting better here. They're getting better, but there's so much resistance because the FDA. Yeah, sure. And the resistance is purely because of money. It's, again, it's an evil thing. It's not because they're not effective. It's not because they're dangerous. It's just because of money. I think so. And, you know, there's an agenda. I think, you know, pharma wants to keep you on stuff. Yeah. I want to sell you something. So if there's a surefire cure for something, it's not necessarily hailed.
No. Well, and then there's also the problem of the media. The media is lockstep in with these businesses that are promoting these things. Yes. And they're not giving you information. They're giving you propaganda before they're giving you information. Propaganda is more important to them than information. Yeah.
And that's what's crazy. We're counting on you guys and you fucked us. You fucked us for four years with this COVID thing. And now you expect us to listen to you about the fucking swine flu or the bird flu or whatever other thing you're trying to freak us out about, which always coincides with some sort of a political event. Like here it is, the inauguration of the new president. And oh, look at this. There's a new disease. What do we got now? What is it? Do you think there will be?
Well, there is, there's this fucking swine flu, each five and one, whatever it is. I thought it was bird flu. One bird flu, one person died, one person in America, first person died, 65 years old with a bunch of comorbidities. Yeah, okay. And which is usually what it is. But by the way, 65 people with a bunch of comorbidities die all the time of nothing. They die of anything. I mean, this is like a car that's fallen apart and you run over a nail and all the nail killed the car. No, that car was falling the fuck apart.
The nail you ran over was the last nail in the coffin, but the thing was falling apart. I got COVID from my gardener, and he had it first, and then I got it. I was like, ah, did I grab the hose or what, you know, I don't know. But it was, I knew the guy for 20 years, and we both went to the same hospital, and he died and I didn't. I think we both got remdesivir.
Yeah, not good not good not good causes kidney failure I know I couldn't walk for three months after I had that stuff really because it kills you I found after it was it kills you and that's why I wonder about Fauci you know Oh, you should wonder about that guy would meanwhile they were trying to stop people from getting monoclonal antibodies. Yeah, yeah
Yeah. They've restricted monoclonal antibodies, which is fucking insane because they wanted to promote that vaccine because they wanted a profit off of it, which brings us back again to evil. Evil's real. It's real. Putting money over human lives is evil. It's a real thing, and there's a temptation to do it, too, which is even more crazy.
I don't believe that there is anything that can afflict mankind that hasn't got a natural cure for it. I think that there has to be, it just makes sense to me. No, I couldn't prove that, but I just believe that. That there's got to be something that cures things. And I'll tell you a good story. Okay. I have three friends.
All three of them at stage four cancer. All three of them don't have cancer right now at all. And they had some serious stuff going on. And what did they take? Yeah, Jesus. They took some what you've heard they've taken.
I'm hearing that a lot. They drank hydrochloride something or other. There's studies on that now where people have proven that they've been drinking methylene blue and stuff. Yeah, methylene blue, which was a fabric dye. Yeah, it was a textile dye. You know, they find it has profound effects on your mitochondria.
Yeah, the stuff works, man. There's a lot of stuff that does work, which is very strange because, again, it's profit. When you hear about things that are demonized and that turn out to be effective, you always wonder, well, what is going on here? How is our medical institutions, how have they failed us so that things that do cure you are not promoted because they're not profitable?
that they can't control it. They don't have a patent on it. Whether it's vitamin D, K2, and magnesium, you know. Well, yeah, I'm zinc and corsetune. I do all that stuff. Did you do the breakup thing?
Yeah. Yeah. Me too. I lost 30 pounds, right? That's fantastic. I was talking to Dana and he said, oh, you know, I was, you know, and he, and I said, yeah, I got to do something about this. I'm like, I'm five, 10 to 35, you know, that's too fat. Yeah. So I had to, I had to sort of roll it back some. Now I'm under 200, which is great. Should be, you know, but, and it was that, uh, breakfast stuff.
Mm-hmm. No, Gary's a national treasure. Yeah, and he gets shit on all over the place, too. Oh sure. Yeah going to sauna, but I feel better. Oh, yeah. Oh, I do all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, cold plunge sauna. I'm ritualistic with it. Yeah, that's part of my everyday life. I hear your your cold plunge is like 34. I don't understand that though. I mean, dude, I'm 34 degrees. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah, it's cold. That's hardcore.
Yeah, you get accustomed to it. It to me is not. I mean, it sucks. Every time I do it, I'm like, don't do it. There's like the part of me that's like my inner bitch. He's like, oh, we don't have to do this. We don't have to do this. But luckily, the general is stronger than the inner bitch. The general is always telling, shut the fuck up and get in there. And I just get in there every day. I do like 48, man. That inner bitch is always talking, though. He never shuts up. No.
Never shuts up. Don't ever think that it, like even though I do it every day, anybody who's like, I don't know how you do it. I don't know how I do it either, but I fucking do it. I make sure I do it. I just, I'm the boss. Yeah. Do you do the saunas, too? Oh, yeah. Do you do the red light bed? I have a red light bed. Yeah. I have a sauna, red light bed. I have a hyperbaric chamber. Wow. I have everything. Yeah. I have a baric chambers. Yeah. It's incredible. Incredible work. I got to get back in there. I feel like I got more holes in my head.
It's phenomenal for just overall recovery for everything. It's also been shown to lengthen telomeres. They did a study out of Israel. They gave people a protocol over 90 days. You do 60 sessions of 90 minutes over 90 days and it's shown to lengthen telomeres and decrease your biological age.
And you just feel fucking great. That makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah, you're flooding your body with oxygen. Most diseases, a lot of them, come from a lack of oxygen. You know, your body not having enough oxygen is very bad for you. Yeah, I used to have a chagung master. This is what kind of blows my mind about medicine and about ancient stuff. This guy is from Shanghai. He didn't speak much English, right? A little bit. His wife would translate for him.
And he'd come in and he could like point at you, right, from this far away and you'd feel it. But like, feel it like to the as palpable as someone pushing you around, it's like,
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not kidding. He like, what year was this when this was happening? Oh shit. I met him when I was like 40. Yeah, he only just passed away. Damn, too bad. I looked to meet that guy. Oh no, there's people like him. There are others like it. Oh yeah, he's not the only one. He learned it from somebody. And I think he, I think he imparted some knowledge.
But he would get you and he could point at you and stuff like that. And it makes you wonder, how did they build the pyramids? I mean, if he can use his mind and kind of get into quantum physics and move shit around with thought and with energy, there's actual energy coming out of his fingers. They could have built the pyramids like that. I don't know. Maybe somebody had that down somewhere. But well, I'd like to hear a better explanation. Me too. Well, it was really weird.
He, uh, one time he was working on me and he was working on my liver. He said, your liver's blocked because he looks at you. And if you look at him, he looks away and his wife engages you while he checks you out. And then he gives you a little body map and he puts X's all over it and he goes, yeah, that's right. I got a pain here and a thing there. You know, he knows where everything is. He knows exactly what's going on. Did you ask him what he's seeing your aura? Like, what is he seeing? Everything. He sees everything.
He was an allopathic doctor first. He went to medical school. He could write your prescription. He could do all that stuff. He was a doctor. And then he saw a chagung master, this old guy, and people were lining up getting cured, and he thought, that's really interesting.
And he learned that on top of being an allopathic doctor. So one day he's at me on my back, and he's pushing, and I can feel my back. And I'm at the wall. And there's a poster of a film on the wall, my office. And I can see him in the background. And he's down like this, like, ah.
like Kung Fu pointing rays of energy at me. And he hit me, he started yelling at my organ, at my liver, like, ugh, cut out, you know, whatever. And I went up the wall and there was like eight inches of air under my heels.
And I was up the wall and I was like, whoa, and I came back down and he freaked me out. And I looked at him and he just went, ah, he said, don't, he's just science like that. He was just science, okay. Just science? Yeah, just science. And I was so freaked out. I went to a priest. I said, is this guy demonic or something? He's lifted me off the wall.
And the priest was like, he was an old Jesuit, a traditional old guy. And he was a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Omar Fudd. That's the way he sounded. And I said, is this anything demonic about this guy?
He says, whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, did he heal you? Like that. And I said, why? Yes, he did. And he said, that's all right then. And he says, I have no trouble with something like that. Because it was within the realm of possibility that somebody had power like that. And then it's inexplicable. But that it works. And it did work.
Yeah, he just passed away. He was pretty old. There was a place that, you know, I bought a comic club out here, and before the building that we bought was the Ritz Theatre on Sixth Street, but before that I was under contract to another building, and then this other building was owned by a cult.
And this is a crazy story. The cult was awful, horrible. There's a documentary on it. It's called Holy Hell. And this guy who is a gay porn star and a hypnotist is a yoga instructor. Got a bunch of people in West Hollywood and then eventually moved them all out here to Austin.
But what this guy was doing, one of the things that he would do is disciples is he would do a thing called the knowing. And they had to be chosen for it. They had to earn it. And when he would get them and bestow the knowing upon them, he would touch their head and they would have this incredible experience where they said they contacted God. Now, all these people denounced him eventually. They left the cult. They all said he was a con man and this and that. But they all talked about that experience.
and they said it was the most profound experience of their life, that they really do feel like they came in contact with God. And it's like, what can a person, if a person truly believes, and this other person truly believes that they can do this to them, and they have this moment, and something does happen? Is that all inside of us? Do people have ways of pulling that out of you that we've lost track of, that we don't know, and even an evil person,
was running a cult and manipulating people and exploiting people, he still has this thing that he was able to do to them that even after they've admitted that this guy exploited them, they say that was the most profound moment of their life. That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. Because I think, yeah, there are party tricks that you can get.
But is that party trick, if it really is a pathway to connect you, at least temporarily with God, that there is a thing inside of us? Well, that's why I went to the priest because I thought, right, because I'm off the floor. Right. So I thought I got to check this out because this is too weird. And he said, did he heal you? And I said, he did. And he said, that's all right then.
Because the guy wasn't trying to get anything out of me. Right. In fact, he never charged me. Really? The first time I went to see him, he charged me. And it was like, okay. And then he never charged me again. And he used to call me when I was sick. Really? I wouldn't call him. He knew when I was sick. He'd call me. He said, I need to come see you. I'm like, okay.
So he had like some sort of a direct line with your energy. Something. Pretty amazing. Yeah. And he could, oh, this is the other thing. He could teach you martial arts like quickly without you having to know what to do. It was a weird thing. He did it firstly with my son who he got him for a couple of weeks. And like he said, I'm going to show you something. And I went out there and he blindfolded me. He had these two swords. And he was doing all this crazy stuff. I'm like, what?
I said, how did he learn that so fast? He said it was in him. I'm like, whoa. And then he started to do a thing that he taught me how to harness this energy and to actually begin
what seemed to be almost like involuntary movement, and depending on the hand mode you took, it would create a style of kata, or self-defense. I used to do a crude martial art, not crude, but like a hard martial art.
What was it? Chokushankai. Okay. Yeah. Way back. Chokushankarati. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's Korean. It's Japanese. It is. Yeah. I can't remember. But it's like, you know, I didn't stick with it. But it was... But he got this whole other approach of breathing and visualizations that would actually draw energy.
into your lower chakras and then you, you know, you'd release the energy and it would create this kind of movement. And I showed it to a friend of mine who was a martial artist. And I said, tell me about the footwork I'm doing here and what I'm doing. And he looked at me and he says, that looks really good to me. I said, it was kind of like, what's that really soft kind of marketing? It was like that. I was doing stuff like that. It was crazy. And it was really a great release, but it was about visualization and breadth.
Yeah. And the release of those, that energy that you pent up from all around that you visualized coming, manifesting itself in you. There's got to be something to all that stuff. People have been practicing Tai Chi for a long time. Yeah. They wouldn't be practicing to save movements for all these years if it didn't do something. Yeah. Pretty interesting.
Yeah. It keeps people young and healthy. They do it in China. You see groups of people out in Asia sort of out there in groups doing all in unison. It's like, it's a good thing. Exercise. Yeah. What do you do now for exercise? Oh, gosh. I'm terrible. I've been, I've come off, I'm falling apart. I got this, I got dead, dead guys parts in my shoulder. I've got, you know, cadaver parts and the shoulder fell apart, this shoulder fell apart, a hip.
a foot terrible. I couldn't walk for about a year almost. Really? And so, you know, you fall down. That's partially why I had to go and see Breckett, is it?
Get the couch potato stuff off, but you know, I lift weights and I do some, you know, walking and stuff like that, like really get your heart rate up and stuff like that. So, you know, I'm trying, hey, I'm, you know, I'm 69 years old, so it's like it's getting to be like seven decades or, you know, yeah.
but I want to stay fit if I can. And I bang myself up a little too much in my early life, so I'm paying for it now. And in your sixties, man, you're not there yet, but stuff starts giving up on you. It's like... No, I feel it in my fifties. How old are you? Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight is when it starts, man. Jesus. That's when I first noticed it. It was like, oh, what's going on with this here? The shoulder.
And I went down to Riordan, of course, who shot it up the stem cells, and it was good for like two years, you know. You just gotta keep going back. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't go back often enough. That's the thing. I think it's just your body's just not gonna heal the way it did when you were younger, unless you consistently get therapy for that. Yeah, yeah. You're in good shape though. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So I was in reasonable shape at 58. And I think I'm in reasonable shape now.
But I'm just trying to push the old man off. And there's various methods to do it.
Yeah, that's what it is. Keep the body as young as you possibly can. Yeah. Yeah, and demand a lot from it. That's what I do. Yeah. I just demand a lot and make sure I recover. I think a lot of it's about meditation too. You can actually get into a good head space that kind of cools you out and stops the stress, even no matter what's going on. I'm going to have to do it tonight when I find out whether I still have a home or not. Yeah.
Well, if anything looks demonic, it's the fires in Los Angeles. I remember one time we were filming Fear Factor and we had a drive home. We had to cancel a shoot or ended early and drive home because the fires had hit. And this was like, we were off the five and driving home for 50 minutes on the highway. The right side of the highway was in flames.
like Lord of the Rings, like Sauron is coming over the top. It looked fucking insane. It's biblical. It looks insane. And you've got to be careful too, because you could die. Oh, if you can't breathe. If you can't breathe, or if the car is in front of you, catch fire, and the wind blows this way, and all the cars catch fire, and you can't get off the road, because to the right of you is on fire, to the left of you is on fire, and the fire is coming up the highway. People have died that way. And it can happen. I got hung once by mistake.
And it was on a film set. And I had my neck in a noose, and I was directing the film. So I'm on a ladder. And I'm like, so I'll just be hanging here like this. And then the next thing I knew I was waking up, I was on the floor. And there were all these people standing over looking at me and I'm saying, what are you people doing? Get the work. It was like, and they said, well, you hung yourself. I said, whoa.
kidding me it happens in an instant and you don't know it wasn't painful nothing I was just gone well you probably got choked out yeah by that by the news and then they grabbed me by the legs and got the rope off Jesus like during Braveheart it was oh really oh wow it was funny so I found out what it was like to sort of
going to the next realm. But of course, I was fortunate enough to work with Horion Gracie 39 years ago. Yeah. You know, he'd just come from Brazil. Well, I remember when you were doing Lethal Weapon. It was the first time I'd ever seen Jiu Jitsu in a movie. A leg choke on film. Yeah. He taught, yeah, Horion taught me the leg choke. He said, now you grab your foot. And you were like, OK. And it was cool. But it was, now my girlfriend does it.
And she's like a purple belt. So I've really yeah, I've learned not to talk about legit. Yeah, she's legit. Purple belts. The purple belt is basically a black belt. You just need a little bit more time. Yeah, if you can get I always tell all jujitsu students if you can get the purple belt, you are a black belt. You're going to be a black belt. Oh, she will. You just got to stay on that path. No, she is. She's obsessed with it. Yeah. And she's, you know, as I say, I don't talk back to her.
I think the purple belt is the hardest belt to get to. It is. Because it's just like in the beginning, you're just getting crushed. That's jujitsu, especially for women. It's so difficult for women because they don't have the physical strength that the men have. Because you can kind of get away with a lot. If you're a big strong guy, you can get away with a lot of shit. But then by the time you get to purple belt, like, man, you have to have real technique and you have to have a real understanding of what's going on. She got a good mind. And I think she's like a chess player.
Mmm, it is like that. Because I know from fighting with her. She wins arguments when she's wrong. Sometimes you let them win though, right? Yeah, I have to. Just like you got to walk away. Oh, yeah. Sometimes it's like, oh, you got to go. OK. It's my second thought of my first act. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. But she got the purple belt. That's amazing. Yeah. Good for her. It's good for her.
Yeah. Yeah. A woman black belt, that's an unbelievably exceptional woman. They can get to that because they have to roll with men. And it's just a... Oh, she does. ...disadvantage. Big dudes and stuff. And she's like, you know, she's done some exceptional things I've heard. So it's like, yeah, it's pretty good. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't follow it up.
You can still do it. Nah, I'm a more baseball bat gun kind of guy, you know. I'm in trouble, I just think, you know. That kind of stuff. Well, be careful with that in California. You can wind up being in jail. Yeah, that's true. You wind up using it to protect yourself and to lock you up. Yes, it's also evil. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that happens a bit. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh, well. Yeah, there's a perverse nature in our society right now with the law.
You know, when you look at your life now and you're on your third act, as you were saying, what do you look forward to these days? Is it creating things? It's creation. Yeah. I think it is. It's about creation. And I figure... I'm pretty average at most things.
But I'm good at a couple of things. I know how to tell a story on film. I know how to do that. I don't know what that's a weird place to be, but I think a lot can be achieved by art and image. And you can convey a lot without actually having to say it. You can do things to affect people emotionally or spiritually
even without being overt. I always like to reference just a shot.
And it's in a Ridley Scott movie, right? And you don't know why it works, or why it's effective on some level, but it's kind of a profound, effective shot. And it's that first shot in the Gladiator movie where he's running his hand over the week, right? With that music and stuff. Why does that work? I don't know. You can't explain it, but it works.
Well, Ridley Scott is a master. That's a visionary human being. He sees things. He knows how to shoot. And that's really good. It's a valid pursuit, I think, in storytelling, if you can do that. Every time he goes out there, it's eye candy. It's a feast for the eyes.
Do you have different goals with like different projects? Like obviously flight risk is entertainment. Yes. It's fun. It's entertaining. Yeah. And yes, different goals. And it was the other thing too, is it's like we're living in a different time now in the film world. I mean, everything's upside down and you have to compete in a medium where you have less time, less money. Do it fast, do it now. And it's like, wow, can I do that?
always had the luxury of, like, you know, big budget and 3,000 people on horses, all this kind of stuff, or, you know, and was able to take my time with stuff. But I had 22 days. And here you got to tell this story in 22 days. So I felt the challenge of being able to do that and being able to make something.
really got people like they could watch it and enjoy it. And I'm glad you saw it. I'm glad you liked it. And that's all I want. I just want people to have a nice little ride, a fun ride, entertainment. But yes, you have different goals with things. I mean, the next thing I'm going to tackle is more profound for me. It's going to take more out of me. This is the resurrection story? Yeah. And I even have to change my entire life to do it. How so?
You can't go into a project as profound in nature as that.
without somehow preparing yourself for it. It's like preparing for a fight. It's like you have to be fit for the fight. And yes, so you have to spiritually prepare yourself for that. And that's going to take some sacrifice. Because I profess this and I profess that. I'm not a great example.
of Christianity. I'm flawed and I make a lot of mistakes, but I have to try and be better somehow in order to go in and make that film. So what does that mean? I think I know what it means.
Well, one of the things that I thought was fascinating was reading and listening to Jim Caviezel talk about his experience playing Christ in your film. It just truly changed that guy's, the course of his whole life. Well, it was fascinating to watch him work, actually. And most of the time, I just like backed away because he was doing something that, and I've seen a lot of people portray Jesus in films, right? And I never buy it.
You can't quite buy it. Something creeps in the color that's not something something's not right or discordant It and some of them are pretty good, but You never quite believe it all the way. What was the Willem Dafoe movie? Oh That was a Scorsese film, right? What was that? Called the last temptation. That's right. That's right, which interestingly enough I was in a hotel
In the Savoy and I had food poisoning. I was near dead. I had a bad oyster in London. And I was dying in a hotel room. And I couldn't even leave. It was the worst. I think it was like salmonella or something. And I saw this cord on the side of the bed and I pulled it. And all of a sudden, a door opened up and a butler like Jeeves came in. And he says, yes, sir. And I'm like, whoa.
And I said, I'm really sick. I said, what do you think I should eat? Might I suggest some warm comes to me in the cup of tea? I said, OK. So this butler took care of me in this hotel. But while I was there, Scorsese calls the room and she says, come here, I want to talk to him. So I go in and talk to Martin.
And he's in his room and all the windows, the screens are drawn. He's got 18 different TVs going on at the same time in this dark room. And he's talking to me about the last temptation of Christ. And he wants me to play Jesus. And I said, whoa, I'm not doing it. And I sort of got out of there. And then I went back to my room and they changed my room. This is really weird. They had changed my room and moved my stuff.
And they told me they were going to do it, but I forgot. So I'm using a key to get into my room, and it won't work. And the door opens up, all of a sudden, and it's Keith Richards and this underpants standing there staring through me like, and there's a girl in a mink coat walking around it, mink coat nothing else walking in the background.
And Keith Richards stand there in his underpants with a spliff. And I'm like, I tried to explain that I thought it was my room, but it wasn't. And it was ridiculous. I'm 26 years old. And he just looks at me like,
He shuts the door in my face. I said, well, that was my meeting with Keith Richards. He slammed the door in my face. It was like, fantastic. Anyway. But what were we talking about? Oh, Camille Christ. He did something I think that nobody else did. And I think he pulled it off because I totally believed it. I believed it too. And it was like, what did he do? He emptied himself out. Yeah.
and he invited something else in. And he left it. He didn't try anything. He emptied himself out, and he meditated, and he let Christ in.
And that role seemed to have had a profound effect on him as a human being. Oh, absolutely. And kind of fucked him up in his career a little bit. Because people associated him entirely with that film, and then they associated him with Christianity, and then they associated him with right-wing politics. Yeah. And then, you know, he got sidetracked by a few guys. I mean, there's some people out there.
They get in your ear, and it's like Cassius talking about this. And they get you up to just make a speech somewhere. And next thing, it's like, you know, people throwing eggs at you. And you wonder, should I even be saying this?