Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2129 - David Holthouse
Uploaded: 2024-04-02T17:00:23.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2129 - David Holthouse' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2129 - David Holthouse' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-02. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2129 - David Holthouse

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
How are you, man? Good to see you again.
Good. Thanks for having me back, man.
My pleasure. You made another awesome one, man.
This, uh, the Krishna's one. Oh, my God.
Whew. There is something about these cult documentaries.
Right.
It's just, whew, that one's heavy.
Do you remember the Hare Krishna devotees in the airports?
Because you're, like me, like, you're old enough of that generation
that you might remember the white robe, like,
they'd have the flowers and they'd be selling books and shit in the airports.
I don't know if I remember them at the airports.
I remember them in some places.
I never have seen them, you know?
Yeah.
But, um, I just always thought they were just kooks, you know?
It's just, it's, it's interesting, you know, knowing what I know now about the
60s
and, you know, what, what was done to sort of, to kind of, uh, crush the hippie
movement.
Right.
You know, it's interesting to see that this was connected to, you know,
the Beatles and peace and love.
And then you see this sect that this, this, what was his name again?
Kirtan Ananda.
Yes.
Was the guru that went.
Right.
Went way wrong.
Yeah, went way wrong.
Yeah.
But it is, uh, well, let's just get into from the beginning.
How did you get involved in this particular subject?
So there's a production company, Marwar Junction,
and they had actually sold this show to Peacock
and they, uh, were looking for a director.
So this is the first show that I've made or helped to make
that I haven't been involved in the sort of conception of the story from the
jump.
So they had developed the story and sold it to Peacock
and they were shopping for a director and they liked my work.
And so they hired me to make it.
And so did you have any experience with the Krishnas before this?
No, no.
And I had a lot, you know, like a lot of people had a lot of misconceptions
about them.
Like I thought that there was a, uh, that the Hare Krishna movement
was invented in America in the 1960s.
I just had it associated with the sort of the hippie movement, you know,
and that's not the, that's not the truth of it at all.
It's like actually a spiritual tradition that, you know,
dates back thousands of years, like far predates, uh, Christianity.
It's based in these ancient spiritual texts called the Vedas that, you know,
the written version is like at least 3,500 years old.
And the oral tradition goes back thousands of years beyond that.
So, um, I learned a lot about, uh, you know, Krishna consciousness in the
making of this
and the show is about a particularly dark chapter in the history of the
movement in the seventies
and eighties that I don't think is, uh, representative of the movement like
today.
Like I think it's, it's a force for, for good in the world today, actually.
Yeah, I think the principles behind it, if you pay attention to the main guru,
what was the older Germans?
Prabhupada.
Prabhupada, yeah.
Yeah.
My friend Duncan loves that guy.
Yeah.
And what the whole concept behind it sounds beautiful.
You know, it's all just love and, you know, relinquishing your possessions
and the hold that they have on you and just living this very peaceful, loving
life
and not just forgiving your enemies, but letting them into your home.
And it's all that sounds great, but all it takes is one psycho.
Yeah.
One psycho.
Well, Prabhupada took a risk.
I mean, so Prabhupada was a guru.
So several gurus, Krishna consciousness gurus had come over from India to the
UK
or to the US, you know, in the 1800s, even through the first half of the 20th
century
and had no luck because their timing wasn't right or they weren't the right
person or both.
But Prabhupada was the right dude at the right time.
He showed up in Greenwich village, New York city, 1965 and started preaching
Krishna consciousness.
And it's just like, you know, took off like wildfire.
And, you know, like Allen Ginsberg got down with it.
Wasn't maybe a full-scale devotee, but like he was hanging out with them.
And, but Prabhupada was already an old dude when he showed up in the US.
And so in 1977, he died.
So that's 12 years.
And by that time, Krishna consciousness, there were like Krishna temples all
over the country
and in the UK because George Harrison had converted.
Right.
That was one of his like strokes of brilliance, Prabhupada, is he like sent a
group of devotees
to go camp out outside the Apple records office and just like chant and dance
until they basically
got a meeting with the Beatles.
And he was literally like, let's see if we can make the Beatles, you know,
Krishna's.
And with Harrison, it took, you know, and that song, My Sweet Lord.
I mean, that's, that's what it's about.
That's about Krishna consciousness.
Yeah.
So, but when Prabhupada died in 1977, you know, he hadn't had a lot of time to
build up successors.
And most of the, most of the leaders of the movement were young, or most of the
members
of the movement were young.
So he took a risk and I don't think he had a choice.
And he appointed 11 of his closest, longest time devotees, all men, to be the
gurus that
would carry the movement forward.
And while you could say that it worked and that Krishna consciousness is still
around, it's
bigger than ever, a few of those, these are dudes.
These are like dudes in their twenties, okay, that suddenly are being worshiped
as direct conduits
to the divine.
In other words, treated it as gods on earth.
Yeah.
And some of them were not spiritually prepared for that.
Yeah.
Would be a kind way to put it.
And some of them went wrong.
And one of them in particular, Kirtan Ananda, whose, you know, government name
was Keith Hamm,
went really wrong.
I like the term government name.
Well, that is a thing that they always do, right?
They give them spiritual names.
Yeah.
You relinquish your, you know.
Your original existence.
Yeah.
And take a Krishna name.
There's a place out here.
You know, I built a comedy club.
And before I got the spot that I have now on 6th Street, I bought a place
called the One
World Theater.
And the One World Theater was owned by a cult.
And I, it's a beautiful theater.
And I had heard about it from my friend, Ron White, because we would, I was
telling him, you know, I think we should open up a comedy club.
And he said, you should buy that theater.
It was owned by a cult.
And I was like, that would be hilarious.
Buy a theater that was owned by a cult.
And there's a documentary on them called Holy Hell.
Okay.
And it's the same sort of deal.
Yeah, I know that.
I know that, Doc.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they start off, it seems wonderful in the beginning.
Everyone's doing yoga.
They're hanging out together, cooking meals together and dancing.
And, and like, it seems like all cults, it goes sideways.
In the beginning, it looks like a wonderful idea.
Like society sucks.
The way, you know, the modern world, the way it's set up, materialism, it's all
foolish and, and spiritually vacant.
There's a way to do this and the way to live.
And this is the way.
And everybody joins.
And, and then Waco comes along and the cult awareness network starts
investigating this guy.
And so he changes his name for the third time.
His name is Jaime Gomez.
He was a gay porn star and a hypnotist.
Right.
So.
He led a rich life.
Yeah.
So he was, he was already on a certain path and then starts this play.
He changed his name again.
And he changed his name to like, I forget, there's two different names.
One was Michelle and I forget what the other one was.
So he changed his name again, moves to Austin and starts this cult and has his
followers build him this theater so he can dance in front of them.
And that was the place that I bought.
But it was all fucked up.
And we wound up getting out of the deal.
And because there's like a lot of problems and a lot of issues that had to be
resolved with the property.
And they didn't disclose that.
So I got out of it and then got this place on sixth street.
But I, you know, in the process, I really started investigating the cult.
And I didn't investigate it, unfortunately, before I signed contracts.
And I had gotten a call from my friend Adam like, hey, man, did you watch the
documentary on the cult?
I was like, oh, no.
Whatever is a documentary on the cult, it's generally a cult that went bad.
Right.
And this one went bad.
But it was the same sort of deal.
They all got names.
They were all given, you know, spiritual names.
And they were told that you're reborn.
Yeah.
Reborn in this new persona.
Well, even in the 60s and 70s, I don't think it'd be fair to call Krishna
consciousness a cult.
But the way that this, so this guy Kiritananda, one of the 11, you know,
disciples that Prabhupada appointed to carry on the movement.
He already had a commune up in the hills of West Virginia that's still there.
That's called New Vrindavan.
Because the city of Vrindavan in India is the sort of mythical birthplace of
Krishna.
That cult, that compound is still there?
Still there.
Yeah.
But it's not a cult.
It's not a cult.
And it's like, right now, I've been there twice.
And like today, again, it's like, it's a really like positive place with a
great spiritual vibe.
But when Kiritananda was in charge in the 70s and 80s, like some really dark
shit went on down.
How did they turn it around?
Well, like, well, they finally like his followers turned on him, you know, and,
and ISKCON, which is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which
is sort of the formal name for the Hare Krishnas, what we call the Hare Krishnas.
They actually like, you know, kicked the New Vrindavan out of the movement.
For a few years, for a few years, half a decade or so.
And then like, kind of gradually brought that, that compound, that commune, it's
not compound, that commune back in.
But they had this fucking temple there, the palace of gold, like Prabhupada's
palace of gold that they were originally building for Prabhupada to live in.
But then he died before it was completed.
But it's like this, it's like this Taj Mahal-esque structure that's in, yeah.
That's it.
Yeah.
That's in the, that's in the, kind of the middle of nowhere in the, in the
hills of West Virginia.
I mean, there's just, you know, it's like a couple hours, a couple hours from
Pittsburgh, basically, and up in the mountains.
So, God, it's beautiful.
Yeah.
Look at the images.
And these are like untrained, you know, disciples making this just based on
like ancient texts that they studied.
So they just figured out how to do all this artisanship?
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
It really is.
It's, it's worth visiting for sure.
It's, it's, it's mind blowing.
I like there's a big box of cash.
And so, yeah.
And so, but this place, I mean, even, even now it's like, it's, it's, it's,
well, for sure in the 60s, for sure in the 70s, it was cut off from the rest of
the world.
I mean, these young kids would join the Hare Krishna movement.
And basically a lot of the fuck ups in the movement would get sent to Kirtan Ananda
at New Vrindavan because he'd put them to work building the temple.
Right.
So if you like joined and you were like, you know, not fitting in for some
reason, a lot of times they'd buy you a one-way bus ticket to like Morgantown
or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
And you'd wind up up there, you know, in the hills under Kirtan Ananda's tutelage.
Right.
Which is, which is, and that, it went, it went sideways in a hurry, especially
after Prabhupad died.
He was already running New Vrindavan, like Prabhupada had visited it and
approved of it.
And actually Kirtan Ananda had gotten booted out of the Krishna movement
because he kind of tried to take it over.
Yeah.
And at a certain point, like Prabhupada, you know, kicked him out.
And, and Keith Hamm, Kirtan Ananda, like mind fucked this, this local sort of
like philosopher dude that, that owned the land into, into, into signing it
over, promising to be like a non-denominational spiritual moveme