Joe Rogan Experience #1573 — Matthew Yglesias Transcript

Transcript

0:00 the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day Okay. gridlock, deadlock, kind of stagnation and infighting. And I'm a politics guy, I live in DC, And then when you say we should triple plus the amount of people in the United States we want to compete with the rest of the world, I would imagine a lot of people are like, what are you smoking, Matthew Euclidius?

2:14 They don't like immigration. there's a giant population that doesn't like immigrants yeah i mean look some of it's a I'm for, you know what? the border. So it used to be people would come over, they'd pick vegetables in California for We've got to be harsh. So my great-grandparents, they came to this country at a time when there was no restriction on people.

4:45 say, you should be working age, right? You should come here, get a job, pay taxes. You can't just But, you know, a lot of people on the right don't see it that way. save us. And I just don't think that's right. You know, I am bullish on technology, right? We've got It would give us about half the density of Germany, way less than half the density of the

6:40 So two benefits, right? You can get into scarier stuff eventually, you know, South China Sea, naval battles. Second, I think it'll make us a more prosperous country. china has that kind of an influence and they also think it's embarrassing like a lot of people think that's doing that to China, right? So imagine if Chinese basketball We would think of that as being pretty gross by the United States

9:48 leveling the playing field or will we just look we're corporations have a giant problem with if there's a billion people here. absolutely it's a lovely country right but so But so Sweden's a little country, right? no, nobody can say bad stuff about America. America, we've got a great tradition of free going to be in trouble. And I don't think that's a world we should look forward to.

12:32 Was that part of what you were doing? That's the official math. How do we do that? We're a little brusque there. We've got to ask, we've got to ask Southerners how to be more polite like Canadians. They value people more And I think one of the problems with Los Angeles is There's so many people and it never ends. Leave at 1.30, and you'll be stuck in fucking insane traffic

15:12 what happens in big cities in terms Yeah. People there, they're kind of assholes. And then I try to meet up with somebody and I get on the road. We're still taking up space because we're sort of building structures. to Houston or something. And it's really good. It's a big kind of success story. And in California, But also, I mean, you can't take a train if it doesn't go where you're going.

18:02 A lot of people ride the Metro there. Well, we don't want to encourage people to they they take take that metro north down yeah For sure. And I do think that focusing on what brings us together versus some of the other governments out there, and on the possibilities Like high level political concepts. even like it gets equated at least peripherally or in the neighborhood of white

21:46 This is the Abraham Lincoln We have not lived up to those ideals. Yeah. Everything else, it's nonsense. when you see those guys walking with their tiki torches going they will not replace us like It dominates everywhere. People come from Latin America. The last time I went out to get a banh mi place, there was a Cajun, Viet Cajun crawfish broil thing, comes from houston because vietnamese people came there

26:02 makes sense it's a uh friend of mine, Jenny Eight Lee, It seems like an American thing. Well, if you made the English good, people would realize it's not Chinese. I think I agree with you. You might have a point. That might't know. Maybe you're right. I'm just bullshit. You might. No, I think I agree with you. Like a lot of times they're like, you know, a stitch in time saves nine.

27:15 I'm going to say it. be fucked they rely on one day a year well but also sandwiches people get like a turkey sandwich but there was turkey dish on the menu, right? It's pretty good. and I'll just take a plate and dunk some habanero sauce all over the plate I've never brined a turkey. I cooked it on a Traeger grill, It was so good. because the smoke is really doing all the cooking for you.

30:00 you're a restaurant and you have turkey on the menu and you have turkey right next to like a Chicken is like – here's a weird thing about chicken. You just have to make sure that you're ethical in your pursuit of where your chickens are grown. I was a backyard chicken person. It created a hole, and they got out, and they were wandering around the yard.

31:54 if you want to really get into what happens when uh animals get pressured and like different They killed them because they were And so then they expand their range. One billion coyotes. Houston, coyotes. I'm going to get canceled. yeah people are mad they're mad about everything they're not necessarily mad about actual content Mostly, you know, liberal people read me, I guess.

34:50 i want to i want to talk to different people i want to reach different audiences and that just at people for having like my friend tim dylan uh had a podcast recently with candace owen Well, and there's a fantasy that you can sort of make disagreement go away if you, you know, try to shut down certain cultural avenues. but it's just true that, like, this is a big country. There's a lot of people in it.

37:32 go hunting around to say okay this thing that this person said is so outrageous that i gotta just save. Good reflexes, buddy. And once they learn how to do that, then they want to do it to others. It's people with a very limited understanding of history I mean, or fuck this. with William F. Buckley and Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky, who was young and vital,

40:19 because Noam Chomsky would be Ben Shapiro or whoever, You shouldn't give them a platform. so like you have some ideas that fit one way some ideas that fit another way you trump's actually gained some latino support right yeah so okay so they're white supremacists too Get on the bandwagon, right? And it's frustrating to me. You know where this goes?

43:15 So we can kick them out or something. Go down the list. But I do think it's like not healthy. arguing about, and the people that are going to bringing politics into all of it. And I'm like, not bringing politics for people to turn politics is that, you know, the Dallas Cowboys rather than So people see me coming, and it's like, they know who I'm voting for based on that, right?

46:31 Right, it's like But it's weird, right? bill burr my buddy bill burr had a prius forever it's not they're not the worst cars in the world That's too small. I've seen those. And the German guy's like, well, we're going to have to wait. She's like, Matt, go. It was real ugly American stuff. That's so's so rude it was she's trying to be demonstrably a cult

49:32 the channels or maybe i knew and i forgot um a fucking direct tv has a scientology channel and I wonder how they get away with it. Well, I always check my fake news. Rather, it views it as an abusive business masquerading as a religion Okay. You ever have something that you kind of like And all great actors are crazy as fuck. What does it say? It's just part of the article.

52:18 I guess. yeah it's amazing the hbo documentary the series i think was more than one thing maybe it was i So that's a long-ass time ago. someday i don't want to know i'll probably change it then right i mean i think you if you pay And I think on both of those things sometimes. It works. But what I genuinely like to do is have conversations with people.

54:52 and they only had a couple of rats, and the rats just behaved like rats. and they would time people walking from one end to the other. So they would track their And my friends that live in New York City that love it, one of the things they say is the city's got so much energy, so much energy. I think there's strange things that are happening when people around people.

57:15 because of the pandemic, maybe at a party somewhere. People trying to find more ways to have more interactions with each other. On the other hand, you do see better health outcomes in the contemporary United States in metro areas than you do in rural ones. Yeah, but New York and California Like, wealth comes out of, I mean, I'm just not sure that you can fully replicate the sort of value of in-person interaction.

1:00:34 to know what the problem is. And I don't know if there's going to be a VR solution for that. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What do you say and they just keep going? It's like, we're in the same room. and it's at the same, it's right there in the ears. And my wife, she's a waspy person, a little more reserved. difficult and oftentimes professional interviewers they actually use that to talk over each other

1:03:38 it's not a conversation. You distill it to a few quick talking points, and you just make sure to say that no matter what question you get asked. You know, like you watch those shows and you are not learning anything. But I never watch it live on television unless I'm at a fucking airport or something. I don't want to just be right. What I'm really doing is I want them to fully express what they think.

1:06:03 I'm trying to get it from their perspective. but I'm not married to my opinions. I couldn't agree more. But the idea is to learn, to persuade, to become smarter smarter to help your audience become smarter and that's not And I do agree. and there's two people like Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo agreeing on something And I think, you know, like right away, my perspective was, I don't think that that's a good idea because that's too many people.

1:09:30 of immigrants I know a lot of immigrants because I know i think the idea of american uh american people the idea of this melting pot the idea of this I mean, this is a place a lot of people have been moving to. Yeah, 100%. and the antidote for that for me is nature and so to be in a place where i can see mountains And I think it's like the one thing that I will take away from this COVID era is like I finally get it.

1:12:21 There's certain things. This was the only way you were going to survive is if you caught a fish. like there's a physical requirement and you feel like a better person you feel like a better version of yourself when you can go on a hike in the mountains Like this is the real life survival skills. There's something beautiful about starting a fire. the entire trip was just,

1:15:10 so we used corn chips, like Fritos corn chips. dried it out and we got a fire going. but the point is this fire was like a drug. We had, you know, merino wool and, you know, down puffy coats on. And fun stories. described it accurately is you're kind of just fucking with the fish. You know? Because you're not really... And then they're like, I'll let you live.

1:17:39 don't do that with anything other than predators with other animals they actually net them they like through that, they've figured out how these things, And there's something about hiking. you gotta keep the keep the business alive there's nothing wrong with doing a lot of things are always like that i mean that's's never the human experience at its finest.

1:19:38 No, it doesn't make sense. because it's like, I was trying to read a book, Tom Cruise played Jack Reacher. He did. Yes. It all circles back around. I love those books. it was like a jack reacher book so oh really so not that smart that's funny tom cruise played But that's like the little guy, and he's scrappy. The book, he's always like, Lee Child's always writing about how huge his hands are.

1:21:23 start writing the series. well that fucking makes sense Huh. You know, the other thing, you imagine the rock in like top gun yeah and it's like no because you're not gonna be a fighter pilot at It doesn't look like The Rock's back. when he's killing all those people i believe it yeah he's intense he dials in yeah it works everybody's acting weird everybody's nervous there's these hand sanitizer

1:25:08 That we've ever seen. Yep. It's not coincidentally. bounce back was appropriately wild right the war roaring roaring twenties where that's a wild ass time. nervous about. And so they're concerned about that. I mean, I don't know if we can look it up. They've taken the common cold vaccine and added this to it. the readout from Pfizer and Moderna, BioNTech,

1:28:25 I wouldn't do it just for fun. That's just the injection site didn't feel bad right but it was fine you know i felt okay this is it's in the feed You went way too far. removed it from my instagram that's kind of crazy because this was a i believe it was an NBC interview. They removed it. Okay, it hasn't been removed then. It's concerning. fairly high dose. And so, you know, to get the antibodies, some of the other vaccines are going,

1:32:11 The FDA, I think, will do a good job of that despite the pressure. If that is all it is, So I just want to get the numbers. the the side effects of of this vaccine i've never seen one of them that relegated it to 10 I have one set of conversations with people, and they're saying, who's going to be able to get the vaccine? serious but that's just like i i would really like to not get covid yeah sure so what if i mean i

1:35:16 means um so it just means that it's trick it's not giving you a like a dormant version right so I'll take it. Like vitamin D deficiencies are a huge part of negative COVID outcomes. anybody telling you to supplement with vitamin D. You're not seeing this from any of the leaders, I don't know. but I have heard this So if you think about nursing homes or you think about prisons, right, you're talking about populations that, you know, for different reasons, obviously, if you're in prison, you're in prison, but are not having, you know, outside time and exposure to sunlight, right, and the natural

1:38:29 I don't know if Fauci or whomever else has been vocal on this. it's important to do those kind of studies you know what I mean it's like that have a better outcome is huge. It's impact on the immune system. what hospitals do, we're glad that that exists. that's what's keep me sane this whole time right um and you know so that's good. That's an unusual situation. You see death rates for children plummet when vaccines come in for these other childhood ailments.

1:41:44 That, to me, is bizarre. It is important to try to do. that's out of the gym, that's healthy. who does not do as much as they should Although fortunately, we are getting some pharmaceutical breakthroughs, it looks like. Right. Don't say that. How many packs a day? That's a big one with cancer. How old were you when you quit? Lots of people have quit smoking over the years.

1:45:37 and the airports and stuff. It was hard to quit. It's a really hard thing to quit, and they've engineered it because he was testifying about these these chemicals that they're putting into these I mean, I loved it, but I hated it. Being like what I ought to do right now No that would be terrible right and then when you sit down you don't have a mask anymore but we're all breathing the same air yeah

1:48:40 Much more widespread. I know. because they have their own lab has not been our greatest hour as a country no no it hasn't we weren't prepared um i think one And it's just masks and not true. And the problem with that is, of course, then everybody's like, well, what the fuck? but, you know, the military Because some of this stuff, the surgeon general the cdc like everybody's got to get alignment so like what happened here

1:51:39 That's that's not how anything goes. What's going on? there's a thing that's going around that uh that it's a video clip that's been edited. profit yes he's saying it you would like and it's really disingenuously edited What he was saying is, Not this one. You've invested $10 billion in vaccinations over the last two decades, and you figured So if you just look at the economic benefits, that's a pretty strong number compared to anything else.

1:55:37 Put something recently. Without the editing. you literally save millions of return. So if you just look at the economic benefits that's a pretty strong Here, yeah. Helping young children live, like, oh my God, this guy's a monster. You remember Microsoft Word? Yeah, he sucked. Nope. more analytically about what's a high value. He calls it their investment, right, in making the

2:00:11 And, you know, what Gates is saying than he was saying, companies at all no his whole business model is really around like a giant percentage of his and i look at the first thing i saw it i was like what is he saying why would he say it like that here we go in the context old Twitter Yeah. Now you've called Ben Shapiro a Nazi. I actually do try to stay away from Nazis.

2:03:55 it's like there's a lot of uh topics to disagree about there's a lot of people being nazis but Right. I don't have the time to check in five minutes how many people have responded. That's the problem. And then feeling when someone was angry, Like literally genuinely mentally ill. Did you learn anything about people during this time? twitter addicts are mentally ill there There's something wrong with that.

2:07:22 minds about twitter i have see people and I see myself sometimes out there wasting time. And beneficial occasionally. No bodies are dunking on me. They might be Russians. What? I don't know. this viewpoint i want to be clear but i do think a lot lot of Americans don't understand how Russian nationalists see against Russia's traditional ally in Serbia, all these different kinds of things. I don't,

2:11:03 You say, well, how does it help to be, like, Right. or someone did. The government executed him If you're not on our side, we'll kill you. i mean have you uh you know um brian fogel the guy who did that documentary icarus you know he The work that he did with Icarus was bananas. Yeah. We'll see. particularly the algorithms in social media, they accentuate that.

2:15:46 it's like people aren't focused on the sort of tangible parts of politics and are very focused But I don't know. get the most views let's do a show that will get the most views let's do a show that will create the It's the problem of the person creating it because you've decided to create something that it's only designed to get a lot of views i agree it's like an algorithm you're

2:18:40 that we're going to be more open to immigrants, that we're going to build the infrastructure at the scabs of sort of division And nobody in America thinks that's good, right? That like when you compare us to china this is gulf right and like don't we want It's supposed to be Tibetan. Yeah. So then it's like, well, maybe you shouldn't criticize that.

2:21:24 They're big. It's a clever little way of being a bitch. uh bind in that regard but it's you know it's troubling right like when you see It's called Taiwan. Isn't that amazing though that they're willing to capitulate? You're like, what? be more outspoken that like you know because each little compromise i'm sure whoever in the script I think that the more America has clout,

2:25:06 well, Doctor Strange's mentor And we ought to say, I mean, It made him look like a buffoon. Not for Shannon Lee, not for Chinese Okay, look at that. The film will not... It was funny. Scroll down on it. But it's not really fair to him. Okay, look at that. Bruce Lee was very wise, that he said that maybe he was arrogant. to be the very best way of expressing martial arts what he did was he's literally the founder

2:28:05 And he didn't change it who don't like them. It's Tarantino. Yeah. Yeah. You go for a Tarantino movie, you know they're wild movies man it's hard to be genuinely shocking in this day and age and also like dust till dawn that's a rodriguez film it's got tarantino's actually in it right yeah he's one He wrote it. much more hatefully visionary yeah than looking at reservoir dogs and pulp fiction and saying oh well these are

2:31:30 and I want to know who they are. You do long shows, and problems with nuclear waste and problems with industrial waste. But it is 100% true that the more people you have, transportation stuff, the book is in it for you. But the infrastructure build- out is not great. What do you mean waste? Well. We are, you know, even beyond like the electric cars and all that really good stuff, even

2:35:17 One of the things that happens is the ocean becomes impossible to go into. water or the oil from the roads rather because the it never rains and when it does rain you're that there used to be much, much more severe problems with wastewater runoff But so, I mean, this is definitely the area where I kind of take the most heat from people Other drawbacks.

2:38:34 You got to have an anchor. They're running for president. If the Apollo program, if it had taken until 1971 Ten times what we have now? America's got too much food. America, we should eat our own food. And yet way, way, way more food. And they have to replenish that soil with nitrogen. They're supposed to eat the grass and then shit. jack-in-a-box you're not going to get that through the same kind of regenerative agriculture because

2:42:37 Well, this is not really about population growth, but about the sustainability of the food system and also climate change, right, and probably not sustainable But we are on the wrong side already of that curve, right, in terms of these, like, meat yields and factory farming and overuse of the antibiotics and stuff there, people, you're going to have to cut out meat

2:44:29 We'd be consuming them domestically. that should probably be addressed. Fuck your alfalfa. It's 100% real. We made these huge payments to American farmers to make up for their sort of loss of those external markets. trade would go in the other direction, right? Exports would come, you know, raw materials from But that's because their farming operates on totally different principles

2:47:23 capital-intensive system. because they're very efficient in that sort of sense. But we may want to rethink it because How so? I mean, I was just saying we grow plenty of food right but then you were bringing up these points about the top Hunger, yeah. It's a miracle. that soil vibrant and i don't know what that would be i mean it seems like there's a problem

2:51:09 I mean, we do it. Yeah, it's not great. You can't smell outside because outside smells like shit, like literal shit. Like no matter what you do, you're smelling shit. pig shit in a i think probably beyond theoon level to like pipe it into this place. figuring out a way to incorporate animal manure How would you solve the topsoil issue? And what do you do?

2:55:06 just i'm just i'm trying to say to you right so like we have a global food system now obviously The other question is moving a bunch of people into the country that don't exist here right now. People like to go there. because of the sort of terrible stuff that's happening in Venezuela. Right. And then there's we got to give people with young kids more money.

2:57:37 So parents of young children get a few hundred dollars a month to help with the financial how much is that going to cost? there would be a lot of pushback on this idea? Because it seems like you're asking for people to pay for other people's lifestyle. I mean, at least for kids, right? So one way to do it is to phase it out. get to social security hmm i think bill should opt the fuck out how about that well you know

3:00:06 They do a phase out, you know, like you were suggesting. Sherrod Brown and Michael Bennett had a proposal that's similar to this. They call it the American Families Act. So there's a fair amount of political support for these kind of ideas. sorry sorry how much to be clear because it replaces some of the existing child support programs. That's what it costs to give this few hundred dollars per month to all these families.

3:02:35 problem with welfare they think that it reduces incentives it reduces people's desire to do better When people are desperate, this family and these people that I love so dearly. successful. Sure. You know, also, economically speaking, right, it's like the value of having somebody work 70 hours a week as opposed to 40 as a low-paid retail worker. Look, I think that we have more cases where people are going to be able to work their way up if they, as children, are well taken care of.

3:05:44 and that it pays off in the long run yeah i mean he's talking on on the very the very low divvy up this money correctly and then you're relying on the government with no auditing at all sometimes people will say it's very fashionable But like, does anyone really believe that Congress is going to sit down and make a program that trains everyone? training programs,

3:08:04 airport. Oh, no. No need to wreck the vibe, but I think I'm going to have to get to the airport. I really appreciate it. And good luck with your book. This is like a ton of fun. thank you