Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1783 - Ben Burgis
Uploaded: 2022-02-24T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1783 - Ben Burgis' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1783 - Ben Burgis' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-24. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1783 - Ben Burgis

Joe Rogan podcast check it out the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan
podcast by
night all day cheers so this is for you thank you so much your own it's got a
little Jerry
label on the back of it this is your own but in the side this little thing oh
yeah this is a part
of a thing we did with fight for the forgotten yeah which is I don't know if
you know what that
is but it's a charity that my friend Justin Wren put together they build wells
for people in the
pygmy pygmy population in Uganda and in the Congo as well and so they did a
thing with Buffalo Trace
where we picked out one very specific batch and they they literally gave us a
barrel of whiskey so we
one giant bottle and then a bunch of these bottles to give out to guests so
there you go
nice oh man this feels strange I uh you know I've got to tell you in the late
90s I watch news radio
all the time so you know get the uh you know feels uh feels weird having a
drink with you
yeah it feels weird just being me so it's weird for people to feel weird to
meet me so that's that's odd
too um so your book uh is uh speaks to my heart did you bring a copy uh I did
not you have a book with
you no I have a book with me this is uh this is a book by my friend Adolf Reed
uh so it's um about
growing up in New Orleans under Jim Crow and like kind of how the south and the
country has changed and
how it hasn't changed so uh this is good stuff but okay cool well that's a good
book too but tell
everybody about your book yeah so my book is called canceling comedians while
the world burns a critique of
the contemporary left and I wrote that a while ago so that was before we went
through this like
surreal experience where during weeks that the United States and Russia have
been like closer
to the brink of war than the Cuban Missile Crisis you know than they have been
since the Cuban Missile
Crisis somehow we've had new weeks of news cycle about Joe Rogan you know I don't
know I don't know
how that happened yeah I'm a controversial character apparently apparently yeah
and apparently
those controversies are the most important thing in the world
well the most important thing in the world in media is ratings and
unfortunately outrage is what sells
and uh if you could be upset at something and so there's like a perfect storm
with me
first of all it was uh questioning the COVID narrative and then it was having
on doctors
who also questioned the COVID narrative and then it was me getting COVID and
recovering very quickly
but taking the wrong medication in their eyes and then it was you know like
posting up the brought to you by Pfizer videos and like showing like these
these people like bought and
paid for by pharmaceutical companies and then it's all the other things it's
like every clip that we
talked about before the podcast like every clip that I've ever said taken out
of context and if you
smoosh them all together how horrible it looks but it's not really it's it's
not really that they think
it's important it's they don't give a fuck what's important they're just trying
to stay alive and
they're trying to get as many views as possible and they're trying to escape
what is
this undeniable demise of modern mainstream news well that's the yeah we're
talking about this a little
bit before uh before we started and I think what's really I mean whatever this
is not like a mind
shatteringly original insight or whatever you know lots of people have said
this but I think what's
really gone on is that the economic collapse of traditional media has meant
that the profit incentive
now is just to cater to whoever you have left right so so if you have you know
like if you're on Fox
then like you know whatever like couple million conservative old people or you
know watching at
any given time you want to give them the narrative that's going to keep them
scared and angry and
watching the news if you're on MSNBC then you know you spend the entire Trump
years talking about
Russia you know because like that's what like that's what scares their audience
yeah uh and uh people
don't uh you know and one thing that that really disturbs me about this I mean
like the book is about all of the
things that people who I basically agree with are getting wrong right so in
other words like I'm a
socialist I'm a columnist for Jacobin magazine I and you a straight up
socialist are you a democratic socialist
because I know that you you've been represented as a democratic socialist yeah
so I mean look the
reason I put democratic in there right you know which uh you know which I which
I do but you know
the reason I put democratic in there is because there are obviously countries
that have existed that
have you know called themselves socialists that have uh you know not had things
that I care about
like you know free speech and you know multi-party elections and and so I
certainly don't want to
associate myself with that but look I mean short term I care very much about
you know having you know
socialized health care about uh about having you know like tuition-free higher
education so people
can go to school without being having to be in debt for like decades which is
obscene I mean that's
ridiculous yeah I'm with you 100% on both those things you know and um and I do
think that like
the level of inequality that we get from our current system is indefensible
that in other words uh that
if one person has more than another just because they like chose to work harder
then like that's one
thing right I could you know like right that you know I would you know person a
wants to stay home
and watch Netflix and you know person b you know one that wants to work uh for
for more hours than like
you know person you know person b should get more money I am totally fine with
that but what bothers
me is when you have these massive inequalities that have huge effects in people's
lives that are
linked to things that aren't under their control and I think we have a lot of
that too I would agree
with you 100 percent um my position on this whenever people push back against
the concept of socialism or
when I was uh supporting Bernie Sanders for president I was saying that we'll
look at all the things that
are technically a socialist concept that we accept like the fire department
imagine if you had to have money to get your fire put out like we don't think
that like if your
house burns down we call the fire department they show up our taxes fund the
fire department that is
essentially a socialist endeavor I mean it's a socialist institution yeah it's
it's taken outside of the
it's taken outside of the market it's provided just as like a right that you
should have
right just for just for being a person right you know you shouldn't have to do
anything special
to get your house put out if it's on fire and you also shouldn't have to do
anything special to get
treatment if you're sick right to to go to to go to college in the first place
it seems to be that
a lot of people who like don't think that there should be a higher minimum wage
are the same people
who will go turn around and say oh if they wanted to make more money they
should go back to school
but then they don't want to pay for that right so which exactly which one is it
right like should they be
paid more doing what they're doing or should they go back to school because if
it's none of the above
then it sounds like you just don't think those people should have like good
lives or at least you
don't have a plan to help them have good lives what's fascinating to me too is
when you look at public
school versus uh public services like the fire department fire department
people get paid well
it's a good job if you're a member of the fire department i have friends that
are in the fire
department it's good benefits the hours are cool because you get to work like
24 hour shifts you
sleep there you work there you like my friend ray was a fire fireman for years
and he would say like
he worked like a few days a week and then you know there were long shifts and
they weren't always
called to fires so sometimes they're just cooking and working out and hanging
out around the firehouse
but it's a great job it's it's like a a job that people look forward to getting
it's it's difficult
to get how come that's not the same thing with teachers like what what kind of
a fucking world do we
live in where teachers don't get paid well i mean i'm not saying fire
department people shouldn't
be paid well of course they should be paid well they should be paid great it's
a fucking very risky
job it's very valuable to the community but fucking so is teaching now is there
such a disparity
so is teaching and it's crazy that there are so many people who look at k-12
teachers and say
like oh how come you know how come they get summers off or you know whatever
you know or like don't like
that the uh you know which no it's ridiculous so stupid and they don't um you
know and i guess what
gets me is when people see someone like a unionized school teacher who has some
good benefits a little
bit of job security not nearly as good as it should be like we've been talking
about right you know but
like and they say oh well why should they have those things when i don't
instead of saying well
how can i get those things yes right so i could have them too yeah you know
because it doesn't you
know it doesn't benefit you right as an ordinary person if like somebody uh who
has a job like that
is paid less in fact what it does is it's bad for your kids if they go to
public schools because the
kinds of things that teachers unions want like smaller class sizes are things
that are you know
like the conditions that they teach in are the same conditions that the kids
are are learning in right
so i think it actually benefits everybody like i think that uh finland uh
supposed to have the best
public schools in the world by a lot of um by a lot of metrics the best school
system you know in the
world uh they actually don't really have private schools in in finland and you
know it's very
strong unions you know people are certainly you know certainly getting a better
deal as teachers
there than they they are here but so many people think the solution is to you
know is to privatize
things or you know is is to you know that's the solution if there's no other
options i mean if you
like if you're a guy right now and you have a child and you have enough money
to put them in a really
good school that you have to pay for versus a really shitty school that you get
for free
that makes sense yeah i don't blame anybody for making that decision as an
individual i mean like
what i would have they shouldn't have to make that decision yeah exactly i
think what we should have
are like excellent public schools yeah so that like everybody can just do that
imagine i mean
imagine that that's controversial like literally one of the most important
things for the future of our
society is raising children correctly and educating them by correctly meaning
like giving giving them
the opportunity to grow and pursue their interests and find out where they fit
in life and have
enthusiastic well-paid teachers not people that feel like they're being taken
advantage of and fucked
with and just just exhausted all the time well it's weird too because a lot of
the same people who are
hostile to that will say when they're talking about like corporate ceos like oh
you can't complain about how much
they're paid because they have to be you know like like you have to have that
as an incentive or they're
not going to give you their best work if they're not being paid you know 500
times more you know than
people who work there uh but it's like wait a second so so why doesn't that
logic go for like teachers
or other public employees that like if if they're paid more you know then you're
going to get you know
then you're going to get a better performance out of them why is it only ceos
well it's just we have a very
distorted set of values whe