Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2026 - Peter Berg
Uploaded: 2023-08-29T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2026 - Peter Berg' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-08-29. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2026 - Peter Berg' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-08-29. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2026 - Peter Berg

- Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!
- What's happening?
- Good to see you. - Good to see you, my friend.
- Your show is fantastic. It's really good, man.
- Thank you. - Painkiller on Netflix.
Can't recommend it enough. I'm only two episodes deep.
I started the third today. It's so fucking good, dude.
And it's so disturbing because it's true.
It's an accurate account of how this all happened.
It makes you so uncomfortable to think that there's people in the world
that would do what the Sackler family did.
- Do you know anyone who's gone down from opioids?
- Quite a few. - Yeah, same here.
When they first came to me and asked me if I was interested,
my buddy Eric Newman, who put the whole thing together,
he said, "Do you want to do something about the Sacklers?
Do you know who the Sacklers are?" And I did.
I knew they were the family behind OxyContin.
And he said, "Are you interested?"
And I started thinking and I started counting the people I know
who've died or whose kids have died because of OxyContin and opioids.
And I quickly got off of both fingers, you know?
And then I started thinking about some of my heroes, my artistic heroes.
Chris Cornell, Tom Petty, and like one of my big heroes was Prince.
I was a huge, huge Prince fan.
I went to school in Minneapolis when he was coming up.
I was an extra in Purple Rain back in the day, you know?
- Wow. - First Avenue in Minneapolis.
And, you know, those three guys.
When Prince died, you know, Prince was, he was, had such a,
he was legendary for his work ethic and his lifestyle.
No alcohol, no swearing, and just incredible work ethic.
Yeah.
And the fact that OxyContin got him.
Yeah.
And that, that really kind of fucked with me.
So when they came to me and, you know,
started talking to me about doing something about the Sacklers,
I was like, "Yeah, I'm all in."
And the more I dug into it,
the more experts and writers who have been covering this epidemic for so long,
the more I learned.
You know, I'm not necessarily the biggest conspiracy guy of all time.
I do, I'll, if the proof's there, I'm, I'm down.
But the more I learned about the Sacklers and how they maneuvered
what is essentially just heroin and like a little M&M pill, you know,
how they were so artful and so good at manipulating the system.
I was shocked and I, I was all in on painkiller.
Well, I'm glad you were all in because people need to know this story
and a lot of people aren't going to watch a documentary and, you know,
they're not going to read about it.
This is a very entertaining show that shows accurately how this went down.
And, you know, there's a, there's a moment and I don't want to give too much
away,
but there's this one moment where this ethical doctor confronts the sales girl.
And that's a very, very, very powerful moment.
Yeah.
Because that, the ethical doctor who knows everything about opiates is
essentially explaining to this very young girl,
just a beautiful sales girl.
Yeah.
That you're selling heroin.
You, if this is heroin, it's indistinguishable to the body.
It's heroin.
It's just, you're calling it a different thing.
And this idea that it's only 1% of the people have problems with it is, those
numbers are all lies.
All lies?
They're always lies.
They lie about how many people died.
They lie about how many people get addicted.
It's all a lie.
And if they can keep lying and not face any repercussions, they'll keep lying.
Because that's, they almost have an obligation to their shareholders to do that.
Yeah.
And in this case, they didn't even have shareholders.
It was a private company.
That's crazy.
Richard Sackler and his, his uncles were making all the money.
They completely lied.
I mean, there were doctors and they knew how powerful the, the opioid dosage
was.
And they knew there were, and what else is crazy is they knew that if they just
kept, they, they would make so much more money by what they call titrating up.
Right.
So, you know, we put you on 10 milligrams of Oxycontin because you're, you blew
out your back in the gym and it works for a bit.
And then when it doesn't, we're like, oh, well, we just gotta, we gotta, we
gotta kick you up.
Yeah.
So let's put you on 20 and then let's put you on 40.
And they got up to 85 milligram Oxycontins.
They call them Oxycoffins.
That was in the word on the street.
And these, these reps, these cute little reps, these pretty little college grad,
you know, graduates who were just looking to make some money were paid based
bonuses based on the amount of milligrams in the pill.
So I'm, I'm trying to convince you if, if I'm a rep and you're a doctor, just
to kick it up, doc, prescribe 20 or 40 or 85 milligrams and everybody will make
some more money.
And that was the game that the Sacklers were playing.
And like, you know, I've said like, I'm, I'm down with capitalism.
No problem.
Like make money, do it.
And if, if you just look at the Sacklers, you know, from a capitalistic
perspective and you apply, you know, rules of capitalism and you're on their
grade, they get an A plus.
They were fucking good at making money.
You put like that much morality into the equation.
And these are some evil human beings.
It's unquestionably evil.
And what's even more evil is they got away with it.
They paid off.
They had to give away a certain amount of money.
I think it's $6 billion.
See if you can find the settlement.
A little bit around six.
And now they can't be prosecuted.
So they essentially bought their way out of going to jail for directly being
responsible for the deaths of how many people?
Hundreds of thousands?
So in the most bizarre coincidence I've ever experienced in my years of being
in the business, the day painkiller came out, the Supreme Court paused that
decision.
Have you heard this?
No.
It's a, it's a fascinating story.
You should read about this.
The day we came out was about 12 days ago.
Now the Supreme Court said, hold up.
You, you, you cannot cut a deal.
Wow.
Yeah, there it is.
The Supreme Court blocks Purdue Pharma's $6 billion Sackler opioid settlement.
The justices will examine if bankruptcy court can force claimants to sign away
their legal rights in a settlement.
So let me break it down quick, because this is actually fascinating for anyone
who's paying attention.
The deal that they cut, Purdue cut, was $6 billion.
We're going to pay $6 billion to all the victims of Oxycontin, but we're going
to do that over the next two decades.
We're going to parcel it out.
And Sacklers have maybe 15 bill in the bank, give or take.
So they, they're just counting on interest rates to pay that $6 billion.
And the deal they had cut said, we'll pay you the six, but you can never, there's
no more.
And you can never come after any more of our money.
And you can never come after us for any criminal charges.
So they were basically buying their way to safety for six bill.
And they, that deal was taken.
The Supreme Court just said, hold up, not so fast.
We're not going to accept that deal.
You may have to pay more and we may go after you.
So now the potential for them to face true bankruptcy and maybe more is on the
table.
How accurate do we know, like some of the, I know this is a docudrama, right?
Is that how you would describe it?
Sure.
Or based on a real life, real life events.
Yes.
But some of the things that he, that Sackler said in both the, the older Sackler
and the
younger Sackler, Richard and what was his dad's name?
Arthur.
Arthur.
His uncle.
Yeah.
His uncle.
Sorry.
Both of those, the, the statements that they're, they're so horrific.
Do we know they definitely said that?
Well, so there, yes, there's so many horrific things they said.
One of the things we know that they did said, which was like, like there, one
of the original
strategies that Purdue Pharma had that they were advised to, to adopt by, you
know, their
lawyers and their advisors and their marketing guys.
When they realized that people were dying, the kids were crushing up Oxycontin
and snorting
it and getting addicted and overdose.
And when they realized it was being misused this way, their strategy was quote,
hammer the
abusers, hammer the abusers.
And that was literally said out loud or written down.
Like that was the strategy and to blame abuse on addict addicts and to say
anyone who has
a problem with Oxycontin.
So it's not our fault.
They're just drug addicts.
It's not our fault.
You know, we gave, yeah, we gave them heroin, but they're at, but they're, they're
hammer
on the abusers.
Mass Attorney General alleges Purdue Pharma tried to shift lane for opioid
addiction.
Yeah.
So think about that.
Think about you being the parent.
And if you, you know, see the show, we open each episode with a, a parent, you
know,
you know, we, we were told right, right when I got ready to lock the show, I
got it.
I had to get on a zoom with all the legal, you know, from Netflix and others,
because the
Sacklers are really good at lawyers.
You know, Giuliani was, was one of their main attorneys, Mary Jo White.
I don't know if you know who she is.
Um, she's a very powerful attorney and others.
Uh, so they, you know, there's a lot of fear about being sued, you know?
And I, I, I have my talking points here about what I'm not supposed to say.
Uh, so again, everything I'm saying is, is, you know, more or less my theory
and things
that have been backed up by books like painkiller by the very talented Barry
Meyer, who wrote
investigative reporter for the times who wrote it.
But we were told by legal that we had to put disclaimers in front of each
episode.
You know, what you're about to see is based on fact, but some of the facts have
been changed.
And you know, so it's not all true.
We've changed some of the facts.
Um, and that didn't really sit right with me because yes, we have interpreted
things and
changed some things.
But the reality is the Sacklers did what they did.
And I didn't, I thought like just putting a standard disclaimer would be kind
of letting
them off a bit.
Um, and I was thinking about it.
I'm like, well, what if we had, uh, uh, 50 year old woman sitting, reopening.
So 50 year old woman staring at the camera and she reads the disclaimer exactly
as legal
says, you know, what you see, um, is based on fact, but some of it has been
fictionalized.
And then she stops and she says, but what, what hasn't been fictionalized?
Is it my 22 year old son, Tommy, and she holds up a picture died of an oxycontin
overdose.
And, um, that was, you know, the kind of thing that was, I think, very
important to me and
to all the makers of the show that as if we were going to veer from the truth
and we were
going to potentially occur the wrath of the Purdue legal, we did it in a way
that never
let them off the hook.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I like that.
Um, it's, it's so weird how many people are on it.
Um, I had a conversation with a friend of mine about his mom, his mom's 90 and,
um, you
know, she's had health issues.
Um, but could you imagine when we were kids if, uh, you told me that, uh, your
friend's
mom was on heroin and that we had to get her more heroin and the doctor's not,
there's something
wrong with her prescription.
So what had happened was, um, the pharmacist, the doctor had screwed up and
prescribed more
pills, uh, verbally than he wrote it down on paper.
Like he told her you have to take two a day, you know, and this is supposed to
be good
for, you know, whatever it is, 30, 60 days.
But he wrote the wrong number.
He, instead of like 180, he wrote 90 or something.
I don't remember what the mistake was.
He overprescribed by accident?
He underprescribed by accident.
Oh, okay.
And so they were thinking someone was stealing her pills.
Oh.
So there was just like, she doesn't have enough.
Like it gets to the end of the month and she's out of pills and they're calling
the doctor
and the doctor's like, what's going on?
They're like, I don't know what's happening.
Is someone stealing her pills?
So t