Name: Joe Rogan Experience #683 - Ethan Nadelmann
Uploaded: 2015-08-13T22:14:18.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #683 - Ethan Nadelmann' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-08-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #683 - Ethan Nadelmann' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-08-13. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #683 - Ethan Nadelmann

Oh, an unusual early morning for me, an early morning episode of the podcast,
Ethan.
Very nice to meet you, man. Thanks for doing this.
Good to meet you, too. No, it's my pleasure.
So, Drug Policy Alliance, how far are we away? Let's get this done. Come on.
Well, it depends what it is, right? When it comes to legalizing marijuana,
I mean, we got momentum that nobody could have believed we'd had just four or
five years ago, right?
So in that sense, things are flying. I don't think it's in the bag yet, though.
You know, one of my biggest concerns is a sense of overconfidence where this
whole thing could trip up.
Yeah, my biggest concern is that, and it's also like Jeb Bush and guys like
that.
Like, if those guys, or that fat fuck from New Jersey.
Christy, can you believe the Kripola coming out of his mouth on this stuff?
Somehow he's going to identify that niche of the Republican Party that wants to
keep locking up people for weed.
And then Rubio was saying stuff like that the other day.
I have a theory. I have a theory.
I think what he's trying to do is make sure he's never president. I really do.
I really think that that guy is so deeply embedded in corruption in New Jersey
that the moment he actually becomes a serious candidate for president,
I think this shit is going to come out of the closet like a broken fire hydrant.
Yeah, it could be, Joe.
He's going to find out.
I think also his popularity has fallen so low in New Jersey right now that he
just wanted to get out of town.
I think that's why he's running president.
It's better than dealing with stuff in Trenton, acknowledging all the screw-ups
he's had.
I mean, I'll tell you something.
We led, Drug Policy Alliance led that effort to legalize medical marijuana in
Jersey back a few years ago.
Governor Corzine, last bill he signed was that one.
And then Christy came around.
He diddled and doddled and didn't want to do it.
Wanted to have Rutgers University grow the weed.
They didn't want to grow the weed.
Yeah, it was weird.
And then finally he went on vacation, like about 18 months this term.
He came back and he goes, I want to do this now.
And I kept wondering whether he had a puff on vacation.
I mean, who knew?
Now, mind you, New Jersey's still hobbling along, you know, and Christy.
The funny thing also is when it comes to ending the drug war more broadly, he's
highly unpredictable.
You know, we took on the bail bond industry, the private bail bond industry
that's trying to keep people locked up for as long as possible in local jails.
And Christy ended up coming on our side.
The bail bond industry was working to make sure that people stayed in jail?
I got to tell you, if you look at all the corrupt actors in the prison
industrial complex, you know, you get the prison guards union, you get the
private prison corporations, the private bail bond industry.
I mean, if ever there was a sordid gang, that had to be it.
And so we led that effort.
We got Christy to come along with us, push them back, you know.
So Christy's done some decent stuff.
He'll talk about addiction as a health issue.
There was an issue, you know, people dying of overdoses, and we wanted to deal
with that.
And he was initially vetoing it.
Then we got Bon Jovi involved.
He wanted to get a photo op with Bon Jovi, so whose daughter had OD'd and
fortunately lived.
So, you know, he came along then.
So he's been a mixed bag.
But for some reason on this marijuana thing, he's just going over the top anti-legalization.
I don't really get it.
I think he's—I really honestly think that he's trying to make sure that he's
never president.
I really do.
I think he understands the tide, and I think he's terrified.
I think he has a lot of skeletons in his closet.
He's involved in New Jersey politics.
New Jersey politics is so much more corrupt than New York politics, which is
the most corrupt part of the country.
Yeah, although, you know, we're breaking some records in New York.
You think just last six months, both the head of the Assembly and the head of
the Senate have both been indicted?
You know, so, you know, it's neck and neck between us and Jersey, you know.
I mean, New Jersey's got that strong tradition in history.
I remember, you know, Christie made his name by being the federal prosecutor
going after these guys.
Then he gets himself involved in this Bridgegate scandal, you know, with the
guy on one side of the bridge shut down traffic for two days because, you know,
somebody had done something they didn't like.
Yeah.
So I think Christie had his moment back in 2012, 2011, when he was hot and
riding high in the poles, and his whole bullying act was going over well.
I think he's down and done with already.
He just wants to be out of town.
Well, you can only shine like that as a bully for so long, because if you're
that guy that's yelling and screaming at everybody else and sticking your fat
gut out there,
eventually people start going, hey, man, what about you?
I mean, you know the sad thing?
That's the way Giuliani was.
Yeah.
And the only thing that saved his ass was 9-11.
Yeah, you're right.
9-11 comes along, all of a sudden he goes from being like 20% of the poles to
90%, and he's the heroic mayor.
But quite frankly, people were burnt out on his act, and it was only, and God
forbid, a crisis like that gives Christie a second run.
Well, Giuliani was like the antidote for Mayor Dinkins.
Yeah, that's right.
Dinkins was like this really calm, laid-back guy, and really racist people
would call him the janitor.
Like folks who weren't around back in the 90s in New York don't know that, like,
first of all, Times Square was a completely different animal.
Like you go to Times Square now, it's this beautiful tourist trap.
It's all neon lights and shining stars.
I kind of miss the old Times Square.
It was seedy.
It was seedy.
It's now got over top the other way, you know, where it's like Disneyland on 42nd
Street.
Who would have ever imagined that, though?
If you could ever go back to New York City in the 1980s and then see what Times
Square was like and then come back again.
You know what it is?
I mean, because I live in New York City, and so I live in the center of the
universe.
And what you realize is that there's only so long the center of the universe
can go on without, you know, people reinvesting in it.
The island of Manhattan has got to be the most amazing island in the world.
And, I mean, it's just glowing these days.
What do you like about it?
Well, first of all, I mean, I like being in this, you know, some people say it's
a nice place to visit.
I want to live someplace else.
For me, I want to live in New York.
I want to ride that energy.
And then as long as you can get out often, I mean, the key is being able to get
out of town.
And I'm out of town about half the time.
So I get to go out, see the stars, see the ocean, you know, take hikes, and
then go back and ride that energy.
I love the fact that it's a pedestrian city.
I don't own a car, right?
I can walk to work.
I can take the subway, you know.
And then I want to beauty.
This past weekend, for the first time, you know, Californians and others might
not appreciate this, but you're all over the place.
I drove my bike from the Upper West Side of Manhattan down to Brighton Beach,
about a 20-mile bike ride, over the Brooklyn Bridge, through Brooklyn, along
the New York Harbor.
It was gorgeous.
And the next day, I took my bike up the Hudson River, up to Dykeman Street.
So there's great beauty there.
Everything's there.
I could live my entire life and not go more than five blocks from my apartment,
and everything's available.
So the diversity of people live in there, you know, everybody comes through
there, and New York's just the center.
It's hopping.
To you.
It's perfect for you.
It's perfect.
My friend Jeff, my manager, actually, is a great friend of mine.
He's been there forever, and he couldn't imagine living anywhere else.
But he also has a house on an island that he visits occasionally, and he'll
stay there for a week.
Yeah.
And just sort of like, ugh.
Oh, I got to tell you, you know, there's this place called Fire Island, which
is about an hour outside of New York.
That's where he lives.
Yeah, and so there's the famous, you know, the Pines is the famous where all
the gay community is.
And then there's all the other little towns, you know, and I've been out there
twice this summer.
It reminds me almost of Venice.
It's an island with no cars.
And you take a one, my office is half a block from Penn Station.
Jump on the train, one hour, then a half-hour ferry, and also on this gorgeous
little island that's got no cars on it, and you just relax.
And the no cars things is what keeps people away.
There's a lot of deer on that island, too.
Yeah, there used to be more.
You know, now they're putting all this birth control stuff in the water for the
deer.
Isn't that hilarious?
Yeah.
You know, they had to do it.
Birth control in the water for deer.
Or not the, I shouldn't say in the water, because that would be, get everybody,
but yeah, they had to deal with that problem.
What are they doing it, in food or something, leaving it in pellets?
Something like that, leaving it, yeah.
Costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, by the way.
Is that right?
Yeah, they're trying to do the same thing to the Hamptons, because the Hamptons
has a real deer issue, and there was two options.
One, bring in hunters, and they were going to hunt at night, snipers.
You're reminding me, there was a piece in the Wall Street Journal, I don't know,
years, years ago, maybe decades ago.
The Institute for Advanced Study is like, it's this gorgeous place next door to
Princeton University, and it's where Albert Einstein was.
Some of the greatest philosophers and scientists, it's where they go when they're
in their older years, and do their thinking, bucolic setting.
And they were overwhelmed with deer.
So the question was, what to do?
Well, you couldn't shoot them in this bucolic place, right?
So what they did was, they hired archers, professional archers, to kill them
with bows and arrows.
And there was this uproar, you know, like this thunk, thunk, you know, all of a
sudden, you know, they're with the philosophers in the middle here, thunk, thunk,
some deer bites the dust.
But yeah, you know, one way or another, you've got to deal with that stuff.
Well, it's food, too.
These same people are eating cheeseburgers, they're eating turkey sandwiches,
they're eating dead animals that are killed in a way more horrific way, and
live in a way more horrific condition.
I know.
I've always thought I have an obligation as an occasional meat eater to
actually see the process by which the food I eat is produced.
I have to admit, I've never made good on that commitment to myself.
I just started doing it about three years ago.
I started hunting three years ago, and I'm addicted to it now.
I love it.
I get almost all my meat from hunting.
I had bear last night.
I served bear to my five-year-old and my seven-year-old.
Wow.
See, now, me, I grew up Jewish and kosher.
I'm still kosher.
It's the one relic of my traditional upbringing.
And so, traditionally, Jews don't hunt, you know?
Although, it's weird.
You meet Jews from the South, you know, Jews who hunt.
It's kind of a contradiction in terms.
Are there Jews in the South that hunt?
Oh, my God, yeah.
You know, it's part of the culture, part of the tradition.
You know, most of those Jews don't keep kosher, so they don't care.
So, there's got to be some.
And then you've got Texan Jews.
They're a special breed.
They got to do it.
There's Texan Jews?
They probably hide.
Oh, no.
Probably, like, Jews in Lebanon we were talking about yesterday.
Oh, God.
When you say that you're kosher, what exactly does that mean?
Like, you have to have a rabbi kill your beef, and he has to, like, say some voodoo
and then cut its throat?
More or less.
It's, you know, I mean, basically, it's this, you know, some of it's ground in
the Bible.
Yo