Name: Joe Rogan Experience #687 - Justin Wren
Uploaded: 2015-08-25T00:40:44.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #687 - Justin Wren' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-08-25. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #687 - Justin Wren' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-08-25. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #687 - Justin Wren

We're live. What's with the funky bag, fella? Look at that.
Beautiful little hippie case you got going on there.
You got the bandana rocking. The pygmy has returned.
When did you become the big pygmy and not the viking?
Yeah, I think that was just something that kind of naturally changed a couple
of weeks ago.
Oh, a couple weeks ago?
Yeah.
So you've returned, everybody, Justin Wren.
You're going to be fighting for Bellator now.
Yeah, it's Bellator 141.
Pull this sucker right up to you there.
Absolutely.
It's Bellator 141, and, yeah, it's Friday night, August 28th.
We'll be on Spike.
So you talked about doing this when you were here before,
and you said, you know, it was a good way to raise awareness for your cause,
Fight for the Vergotten.
I got the T-shirt on right now.
Is it fightforthevergotten.org?
Fightforthevergotten.org right now, yeah.
And fightforthevergotten.com will be changed in a matter of a day or two.
So you decided to make a comeback just to try to raise awareness and help these
pygmies.
That's the number one motivation for sure.
Wow.
Second would be, man, I love the sport.
I love the sport, just like you.
But, yeah, I think that's a great opportunity to give my family a voice.
And how long has it been since you fought?
It's been five years, bro.
Wow.
Five years, two months.
How old are you now?
I'm 28.
You're still a youngin'.
Damn, man.
I think I've still got at least seven years.
Yeah, for sure.
Especially heavyweights.
Right.
Heavyweights.
I watched some videos of you training, too, man.
You're looking good, dude, for five years off.
Yeah, thanks.
That's crazy.
Yeah, I guess in the forest it wasn't too much of a fatty diet like here in the
States.
Well, it's not just that.
Like, you didn't take any beatings.
You didn't, you know, no gym wars.
Right.
No stress on your joints, all that.
I got to heal up a lot on the battle wound kind of things.
I mean, I went through a lot of sickness and stuff.
But besides that, like, yeah, fighting-wise, I healed up from a lot of injuries.
Imagine if, like, you have a malaria actually gives you endurance or something
crazy.
That'd be awesome.
I'd go get it again.
You know, because they say that, like, certain things are actually good for
injuries, like bee stings, like, are good for arthritis.
I didn't know that.
In some strange way.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, like, they put bee stings on people that have certain types of arthritis
and it actually helps relieve them.
Wow.
Imagine if people found out that, like, malaria.
Because you were saying you were, like, basically on death's door.
Yeah.
I was about to die.
For sure.
One thing that's crazy, say insect bites, there's a way that they do sutures or
stitches in the Congo with these crazy ants.
And they're these army ants or soldier ants that literally they pierce your
skin.
And so they'll just take it and let it bite a wound and then they pull the body
off.
And so they leave the head, leave the mandibles or the jaw that literally close
your wound that way.
What?
Yeah, I've been bit by them, man.
They're terrible.
That's fucking crazy.
Yeah.
So you just walk around with a bunch of heads on a cut.
Right.
Absolutely.
Does it work?
It works.
It works for sure.
So it's like a staple.
Yeah, it's like a staple.
Yeah, it'd be just like getting staples, I guess.
Necessity, the mother of invention.
I don't know if you know this, but this is a crazy malaria fact you could throw
around.
Malaria has killed half of the people that have ever died ever in the world.
Wow.
That's crazy.
That's nuts.
Had no idea.
But I believe it because, absolutely believe it because it's terrible.
It's, I've known people that have thought of it.
Look at that picture.
Yeah, there you go, bro.
That's fucking nuts.
I told you that.
Yeah.
That is nuts.
Uh-huh.
Wow, those guys have some really long, we're looking at a photo of the army
ants being used
to suture a wound.
Yeah, and those ones have these crazy long and slender ones, but the ones in
Congo, they
have these thick, just nuts.
So, yeah, look right there.
Look at that one up top.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
That one might be from a shop.
That looks fake as fuck.
But.
That's just stitches.
Yeah.
That's, well, necessity, right?
I mean, you got to figure out a way to close things up.
There's no crazy glue in the Congo, right?
No.
No.
They use other kinds of stuff that's real sticky sap to kind of mend things
together.
From trees, they also use vines to tie up a bunch of stuff, like soccer balls.
They'll use a T-shirt, old T-shirt, a rag, and then they just use these vines
and tie them
so tightly that it becomes a perfectly round ball.
Wow.
Not perfectly round, but round enough to kick around.
Well, that's one of the things about soccer that people find appealing is that
it's not
that hard to create a ball, and all you need is just flat ground.
Right.
You know, that's why it's such a good sport for people that don't have money.
Yeah.
They even play with half flattened balls that they kick around because they
still use it.
Yeah.
Everybody's using the same ball.
I guess it's not as good, but.
Yeah.
They get beaten up and popped and everything because they sell the really cheap
soccer balls
anyways.
They're only going to last a couple weeks.
Now, when you say the Congo, the Congo itself is really huge, right?
I mean, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think it's as wide as the United States
of America.
Yeah.
I think it might be like three quarters of the continental United States.
Something like that.
It's the 10th largest country in the world, I believe.
And so it's massive.
It's only got about 74 million people, but I think 85% of those people, or
maybe 80, 85% live on less than a dollar a day.
Yeah, it's the flip-flops between the poorest country in the world and second
poorest, but it is the most underdeveloped country.
So least amount of roads, clean water, education, medical, like it's just the
most underdeveloped.
Like when I go to Uganda, I kind of get the feeling of whenever I come back
from Africa to the United States and how it's just like, wow, this is really
developed compared to there.
When I go from Congo to Uganda, I feel like, wow, Uganda's really developed.
They got 3D movies, a yogurt land, they have a KFC.
Actually, they have like four or five KFCs now.
Wow.
How racist.
First thing that gets there, a KFC.
Yeah, but there it's...
What's next, watermelons?
Assholes.
They have, what is it?
Oh, it's kind of fine dining at KFC.
KFC is?
Yeah, they have a waiter.
Really?
Yeah, it's real nice.
You got a charging station for your smartphone and you got onto...
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
KFC is pretty goddamn delicious.
I know it's supposedly not good for you, but I'll tell you what, man.
I indulge in KFC every couple months.
I'll buy some KFC and I either eat it or I wait until it gets cold and I eat it
with hot sauce.
KFC with some habanero hot sauce, get some El Yucateca, the real Mexican shit
that you got
to go to those funky grocery stores to buy or online.
Some good stuff.
Oh, dude.
It's just not good for you.
Yeah.
Apparently.
And we were talking about how they're putting sucralose in Diet Pepsi.
You need to figure out a way to make Kentucky Fried Chicken good for you.
Yeah, that'd be great.
That's the worst thing about all the tasty food is it's bad for you.
Exactly.
It's the opposite.
Fuck, man.
What's up with that?
This is first world problems, like literally.
If anybody can talk about first world problems, it's you.
I mean, a guy who goes from being a reality star on The Ultimate Fighter,
fighting in the
UFC, and then all of a sudden you're living in the Congo.
For folks who don't know Justin's story, Justin's been on the podcast a couple
times, and the
story is compelling, it's crazy, it's heartwarming.
It's an amazing tale of a guy, you, who goes to the Congo and falls in love
with these
people that don't have a voice.
And you've done incredible things.
And because of the money that was raised because your show's on here, there's
the Fight for
the Forgotten website.
Oh, yeah.
How many wells have you created now?
We just celebrated, as of yesterday, our 25th water well.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, and what's so great about that to me is we were, I was there for the
first 13 water
wells.
And now we've built, so what I love, and that website that was up was we're
partnered with
Water4.
Now it's water4.org, so the number four.
But, man, it's kind of like we set up an exit strategy.
This is a lifelong goal for me, and I'll be going back wholeheartedly,
everything else.
But our goal is to empower the locals to be able to do it themselves.
And so I was there for the first 13 water wells, had people from the director
of implementation
of Water4 come in and teaching our guys hydrology, geology, all the different
ins and outs of
how to drill a well and protect it and all the sanitation.
But we're investing in the locals so that they can be the answer to their own
problem, if
that makes sense.
And that way, now we have 17 full-time employees.
Wow.
Yeah.
And we have two well drilling teams.
There's 14 guys on that.
And then when they go out into a community, we invite the community into the
project.
We want them to feel a part of it.
There's a lot of organizations out there, and I'm not trying to talk bad about
them, but
they'll go in with a million-dollar drilling rig and Westerners that are, you
know, water
engineers, and that's great.
But they'll go into a community and kind of say, you know, get back.
We're here to do this for you because you can't do it for yourself.
And then the parts are so expensive, they're not going to be able to repair it
when it breaks.
And there's a good chance, like, I think, two and three of those expensive ones,
or at
least, no, one-third of them don't operate after a year of drilling it.
And so what we want to do is go in there, teach the locals how to do it
themselves, create
a local economy for it, and, like, stimulate that, give people jobs, and then
let the community
feel a part of it.
So we look for day laborers in the communities we go to and give them a job
while we're there.
Invite them in on the process, teach them some of it.
We've acquired some of those guys that are just big, strong, love helping
people.
Now they're part of our team.
But the core of our team graduated from university in degrees of community
development.
So that's what we want to do.
We want to go in there, empower the locals.
And yeah, I'm a big part of it.
And, but what I want to do is be able to fan the flames and say, you can do it.
Because a lot of international aid tells the locals that they can't do it for
themselves.
Maybe they don't say that, but it's kind of the way they go about attacking the
problem.
And you've got to go about it in a way that kind of creates dignity for the
locals instead
of kind of robs them of dignity where they feel like they can't help themselves.
That's a great way of approaching it.
I'm really, I'm so happy you're doing that.
I love that.
I love that you're trying to help these people become a part of this solution,
you know,
instead of, like, someone solving it for them.
Now, when you, when you're involved in digging these wells, and you're saying
these expensive
wells break or the machines, like the pumps, how many parts are involved?
Is it like, there's like a lot of stuff?
Is there different ways to do it?
It's a lot.
It depends on how deep it is.
Yeah.
There, there are multiple ways of, of drilling a well.
Um, the way we go about it is, I would say more simple, but harder, a lot
harder labor intensive.
Um, but it's just as safe.
Um, well, we, for instance, like the, the deep wells, those are great.
And honestly, like in a place like Ethiopia or places where it's, uh, the water
tables are
super deep, you're going to need those.
So those are absolutely part of the solution.
We need those water engineers.
We need those people doing that.
But whenever say in the Congo, it's a place that is, um, dangerous.
There's lots of rebel groups,