Name: Joe Rogan Experience #743 - Phil Demers
Uploaded: 2016-01-06T02:49:53.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #743 - Phil Demers' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-01-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #743 - Phil Demers' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-01-06. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #743 - Phil Demers

Was the correct pronunciation of your last name? Demers? Demers. Demers. Demers
works.
Yes! And we're left. Second podcast of 2016, Phil. How do you feel about that?
I'm ecstatic, Joe. I can't even begin to thank you for this.
Honestly, if it wasn't for my having been on this podcast two years ago and
returning now in a very timely manner,
I think I'd be a fish dead out of water.
What do you mean?
Well, in terms of the cause that I sort of represent and all the multiple
lawsuits that are levied against all the animal activists that I'm amongst.
Well, let's explain to everybody who is unfamiliar.
You had a lawsuit with Marine World. You used to work for Marine World.
Marine Land.
Marine Land, excuse me, which is like SeaWorld for Canada, something like that,
a type of thing, a type of SeaWorld, right?
SeaWorld's a day at the spa for animals compared to Marine Land, but yeah.
Really?
Oh, yeah. It's that much worse.
Significantly worse.
Whew. Whoa.
So you worked for them. You were released from your job, fired as it were.
I quit voluntarily. I quit amidst a—
Did they say you were fired?
No, no.
No, everybody admits you were quit.
I never gave them the opportunity to fire me. I made the first move.
They were going to fire you?
I think that's the inclination I had at the time.
But you were a trainer, and I think you opened up a lot of people's eyes to it.
This was actually pre-Blackfish, right?
This was pre-Blackfish.
Yeah. You came on—I ate pot candy and was in Hawaii once, like many years ago,
and I had an experience with dolphins where these dolphins were—we were
fishing, and these dolphins were coming by the boat, and they were jumping and
playing with us.
And I remember thinking, like, these are—they might as well be people. They
might as well be, like, water people or something.
These are—there's—it's something weird about this. Like, they're—they're
enjoying playing with us.
Like, as we yell to them, they do more stuff. Like, they came by, and they were
jumping, and they were clearly looking at us when they jumped through the water.
And I'd never been to SeaWorld before, because I had seen some documentaries on
dolphins, and I knew they were really smart.
And I'd seen some documentaries on orcas as well, and it just always seemed
really fucked up to me that they make them stay in these swimming pools.
But when you came on the podcast two years ago and illuminated what it's like
behind the scenes, at least at Marineland, it was horrific, man.
And I got a lot of tweets from people and Facebook messages that said they
would never go to SeaWorld or Marineland again.
And then they realized really what it was.
Then the documentary Blackfish came out, and the whole world was sort of forced
to take a look at this and understand that these animals are super intelligent.
Just because they can't manipulate things, just because they can't pick things
up and they can't write their name, they can't send you an email.
In their environment, that's unnecessary.
In their environment, in the natural world, they're moving through 3D space in
the water.
They have free food and fish.
They have a huge community of fellow orcas and fellow dolphins, and they
communicate with each other through a very complex language that we barely
understand.
They have a fucking language.
Not like monkeys go, ooh, ooh, and the other monkey goes, ah, ah, like kind of
a language.
No, they have a complex language with dialects.
They might as well be water people.
They've already evolved to be the top predator of the sea, so there's no need
for them to learn to email.
They have no use for it.
So they're already the absolute top predators of the sea.
Yeah, that's a way to look at it, right?
Like we have this kind of view of our position being the top.
I mean, we're kind of the top predator, but we're only the top predator because
of our minds, because we figured out how to manipulate things.
They have huge minds.
They have incredible brains.
And then they're also, they eat everything they want.
They don't need to evolve any further.
They've sort of mastered their domain.
And they're amazingly adaptable.
They evolve in every which capacity to be able to adjust to, you know, the ever-changing
world.
Killer whales now, I recently watched a documentary.
And on account of the melting ice in the Arctic in the summer, there's, you
know, the ice flows are receding.
They're becoming smaller and smaller every year.
So now orcas are now going into territories that they've never had before.
And the Inuit have documented that they've seen orcas actually hunt bow whales,
which are 50 ton larger than an orca itself.
And what they do is they isolate the animal.
They bite their fins.
They hold them underwater while another orca goes on top of their blowhole to
try to drown it.
I mean, this is amazing adapting.
Wow.
Yeah.
Jesus Christ.
Well, that's where they got their name, killer whales, from killing whales.
Exactly.
A lot of people think they're a type of whale.
They're actually a cousin to a dolphin.
That's right.
They're dolphins.
They're just the largest dolphin in the dolphin family.
They just, they eat dolphins too, which is kind of fucked up.
Killer whales.
Humans eat monkeys.
Unbeknownst to most, killer whales are, and you have to, I mean, you have to
sort of disassociate things.
You have to sort of draw a line between killer whales being cute and loving and
just how, if you want to use the word sadistic, they are.
They are evil, evil, evil in the way that they hunt and kill.
They are merciless, you know?
Well, we have this idea of Earth, you know, being like the smart things.
We're supposed to be compassionate and we're supposed to be the stewards of the
land and take care of the little chipmunks and all the other animals.
But it's because we're so far ahead of all the other animals that we kind of,
that's how, that's, you know, we kind of feel bad.
The way we treat each other, we want to kind of treat other animals that way,
which is why, you know, animal rights organizations and all these people that
really, really love and care about animals, that's where they sort of come
under fire.
It's because they want people to treat animals different than animals treat
animals.
So animals are fucking mean as shit to each other.
And that's just the way of the world.
One of the videos that stood out for me and actually was like a sort of a wake-up
call for me was just how, was how nasty nature is.
And it was a video that you actually shared and it was of a bear taking down a
deer.
And so when I...
That dude's yard?
Yeah, and that guy's backyard.
Yeah.
I mean, that's tough to watch, right?
It is.
It was screaming.
Yeah.
The deer was screaming.
The bear was just eating it.
Like ferociously.
Well, that's the thing about bears as opposed to cats.
When a cat gets a deer, they go right for the neck and they kill it pretty
quick because that's all they do.
But bears do a lot of things.
They eat berries and roots and plants.
So they don't always kill things.
As a matter of fact, they probably eat more plant matter than they do animal
matter.
So when they kill things, they basically just hold these things down and start
eating.
It's a question of opportunity, I guess, if it arises.
They're hungry.
Well, they eat a lot of fawns.
That's a big issue in Canada where you're from, sir.
That's right.
They eat a lot of moose, like moose calves and deer fawns.
They eat them like as they're coming out.
They actually smell the placenta and like the, you know, all the stuff that
surrounds the baby.
And they'll find these moose as they're giving birth and just literally pull
them right out of their body.
Fucked up.
You know, I'm an animal rights activist by, I suppose, that's just the label
that I've been given.
But I should mention that there are a lot of animal rights activists that owe
you a great deal of credit for your sort of, your, I want to use your sort of
advocacy, despite the fact that there are, there's a stark line between those
who believe in, you know, not killing animals and everything else.
But then there are also other people that can appreciate how nature operates,
predator-prey relationship, and can also appreciate that, you know, at least in
what you've said before, you yourself are opposed to the captivity of animals.
I mean, the last time we were on, you mentioned of going to a zoo and maybe
eating a pot cookie and, you know, having a look at the monkeys and being like,
you know, you're throwing bows through animals.
And I very much respect the fact that the way that you hunt and the way that
you eat is the kill what you eat movement or whatever you want to call it.
And as an animal rights activist, I can say that that is a far more responsible
way than, you know, when I take a look at the factory farming things and
whatnot.
But, um, uh, I forget, shit, I forget the point I was making.
Well, I know what you're saying, that it sort of almost would seem like I'd be,
uh, against them in some sort of a way because I eat meat.
But the, the reality is a lot of animal rights activists have fucking cats, man,
and they feed their cats cat food.
And guess what? That shit ain't growing on a cat food tree.
You know, there's, there's a reality to the world and cats are brutal.
Cats are vicious little fuckers and they need protein.
And if you have a cat, and I have two of them, I love them.
They're awesome.
They come cuddle with me when I'm watching TV.
On any given day, I've got five cats, uh, three that I claim as my own, two
that just sort of come and go at will.
Wildcats?
Uh, well, one is, one, the neighbor sort of, I would say that he's sort of
neglected it in, in terms of how you care for a domestic cat.
Um, and when he moved away, he said, look, you know, you, you take care of this
cat, which I did.
On my second level balcony, I built this thing I called the Taj McKitty.
It was this place where the cat could come live in, in the winter, right?
And it's real cold.
And, uh, so he said, you know, do you want to keep this cat?
Sure.
So I got it fixed and whatnot.
And, uh, he likes to show his gratitude by bringing us, uh, baby rabbits.
If you've ever seen a baby rabbit, the cutest thing in the world.
And he maliciously licks them down to the point of just chewing them until the
sound stops and leaving them as gifts.
And you can't help but love Eugene.
I mean, Eugene is the, is a amazing and loving cat.
He's also, uh, just a cold blooded killer.
That's why they're alive.
We don't want to think about it that way, but animals today that are alive
today in 2016 are alive because their ancestors, especially predators like cats,
were fucking vicious.
They were vicious and ruthless and they made sure they killed everything they
could because if you don't kill that little baby rabbit, there might not be
anything left for you to eat that day.
And you might starve or you might be too weak to get away from something that
wants to kill you.
Exactly.
You might be too weak to get away from a wolf or you might be, you know, it's,
we, we have a beautiful situation.
We go to the store, we buy food that someone else killed for us and we can get
it every time.
It's not like a rare thing that you have to wait for it.
If you have to put in a lot of effort to get it throughout human history, it's
always been difficult to acquire food until recently.
Recently, it's become so ridiculous.
You don't even have to get out of your fucking car to eat.
You literally pull into a fucking drive-thru, you hand these people paper,
within seconds, they hand you already cooked meat in a sandwich, a ground beef
sandwich.
You put it on your seat, they give you a glass of liquid sweet shit, you stick
that in your little cup holder and you're eating.
That's insane.
Never before in human history has that happened.
And that lack of effort and lack of connection has bred a lot of people that
have a really distorted understanding of life itself, really distorted
understanding of what