Name: Joe Rogan Experience #337 - Justin Wren
Uploaded: 2013-03-13T08:47:01.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #337 - Justin Wren' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2013-03-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #337 - Justin Wren' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2013-03-13. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #337 - Justin Wren

this episode of the joe rogan experience podcast is a bonus episode we had no
idea we were even
going to be able to do this as recently as yesterday you fucks okay we're
making it happen
so the only sponsor is onnit.com that's o-n-n-i-t use the code name rogan save
yourself 10% off
any and all supplements shortest commercial ever cue the music justin the viking
wren is in the
house to tell us about some amazing adventures it's going to be educational
enriching good for the soul
the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day
justin wren first of all thanks for doing this i'm so glad we could fit you in
i was i was a little
worried we're going to be able to get you before you got back to the congo
because you're on this
kind of a whirlwind thing you know you're back at la for only like a few days
right actually i head out
to vegas after this and then i'm driving there and i fly out tomorrow so for
those who don't know
justin was a contestant on the ultimate fighter is a mixed martial arts fighter
in the heavyweight
division for the ufc and then i started reading some stuff i think the first
thing i read about it
was uh on the underground uh which is mixed martial arts.com it's this great
website that we both belong
to it's uh probably the best uh mixed martial arts message board in the country
uh in the world really
and uh there was a a a thread where it was talking about you uh going over
there and helping people
in the congo and working with these pygmies and this had become something you
were really really
devoted to and i was like wow like who saw that coming like check this guy out
i saw a picture of
you before that with a pig that you had killed with a knife over your shoulder
you know this i'm
like this guy's a fucking savage he's got a pig over his shoulder yeah there's
a picture of you
with this uh with this wild hog over your shoulder i'm like i want to party
with justin wren and the
next thing you know you go from there and you're uh you're mixed martial arts
fighter hog killer
pygmy saver i mean you're over there helping all these people in the congo how
did all this
get started man i just heard about how much they were suffering and uh i i had
no clue like
i i fighting i wanted to fight against people you know and uh i wanted my
dreams my everything
and then when i heard about the pygmies i just heard the suffering that they
were going through
i heard that they uh felt forgotten i heard that they were enslaved i heard
that the
four out of ten is the small stat that you can find four out of ten of their
children die before age
five and so for me i was just like man that's brutal and i knew that they were
not given citizenship
in their own country and so i just went there to just learn and see and sit
with them live with
them sit around the campfire that's where i've learned most whenever the slave
masters aren't
around whenever uh whenever those guys are asleep then they'll really open up
and tell you what
everything's happening um and so it's just a ton of suffering that's how i went
over there just went
with a burden to find out what was going on could you put that a little closer
to yeah absolutely what
did how did you find out about it at first what was the uh what what i mean
what led you to this
uh i had a buddy that was having a plan to go to the congo and he was going all
by himself
and i mean just completely utterly alone and it was like the worst conflict
zone on the planet
and uh heard about what he was doing heard about uh what was happening with the
pygmies and uh heard
his wife uh was a little worried that he was going and uh i just was looking
for something with purpose
and passion and i felt like i could be passionate about fighting four people
and so i went with them
and uh heard all the terrible stuff that was going on and we went there to see
what we could do to help
wow that's so inspiring and for folks who haven't seen it there's a video that
justin did that's gone
viral and this has really brought a lot of attention to your cause and and what
you're doing there's a
video of you with these young pygmy children that are is this the first time
they're seeing a white man
to preface the video this is actually not the pygmies the video it's actually
the bantu and the bantu are
the tribe that's actually enslaving the pygmies oh my god and so it was yeah it
was uh around some
of the pygmies but this was the least remote location like you'll see that
there wasn't many trees
where i went was 85 kilometers deep in the jungle where you couldn't even see
the sky because the
canopy of the rainforest is so tall and so this was the bantu people and the bantu
people are ones that
enslave them it was actually a gift because i don't that video to me is a real
gift it shows me
uh even though i hated their parents um you know you can't even see that in the
video that i actually
would just had a hatred in my heart towards the parents of these kids um but
yeah so that was
brutal because i on the ug also i posted a video um or actually a thread about
how i i buried a uh
one and a half year old in the congo and his name was andy bow and so this
video that's playing right
now you can't even tell that they were uh that that their parents are
responsible for the grave that
i dug i think two days before that video so these are the buntu peoples bantu bantu
b-a-n-t-u
and the bantu people are enslaving the pygmies and this has been going on for
how long
uh it's actually rather recent i mean there's been types of it for hundreds of
years but uh
they have different kinds of slavery within the pygmies there's ones that they're
held
to gunpoint uh there's by the rebels and the gold and coltan and diamond mines
uh and then there's
other ones where they're they're in shackles uh but then the ones that we've
actually i didn't get
to say that yet but we've actually set some slaves free some pygmy slaves that
were from the bantu and
we negotiated with the bantu people uh who go up and they buy up the land from
underneath the pygmies
pygmies don't have a way to make any monetary gain they don't get paid anything
in money they get
paid sometimes corn sometimes bags of salt sometimes bars of soap like a bar of
soap for two days of
work they might get a bar of soap to bathe with um and so yeah the bantu people
are the ones that are
enslaving them that we're actually uh negotiating with them to to free them wow
yeah what a crazy
environment that must be the congo itself not being able to see the sky and
having all this insane
conflict going on underneath the canopy of these trees also primitive dealing
with things like slavery
yeah and forcing people what's really crazy is forcing people to work in the
mines to create the
very things that we need to power our most technologically advanced pieces of
electronics
like these laptops yeah that coltan right yeah coltan i think 80 to 90 percent
of it is found in the
congo so it's only found in two places in the world 80 to 90 of it's the congo
100 of it's rebel owned
there's not a legit mine and so that's insane most of it's pygmy slave mined a
hundred percent of it
is rebel owned from the congo yes the democratic republic of congo all of it is
rebel owned so there
is no karma free cell phones electronics no no not smart phones not max not
flat screen tvs so i mean i
support it even i have the apple products ipad iphone everything what a bizarre
fascinating sort of uh
statement on humanity that is yeah it's actually pretty crazy man because i had
um some pygmies come
one time and give me some coltan i didn't know what it was though at the time i
didn't know i knew that
there was golden diamond mines there and that they were slaves in those but i
had no clue what coltan
was uh and that was after my first trip but they actually put some coltan in my
hands and i was
holding it and they were really excited to give it to me you know this is why
they're slaves
and and and so they thought i'd be ecstatic and so i'm having to ask my
translator like what
like what is this stuff they're handing me i didn't know if it was like uh
rough diamonds
or if deep inside there there was gold or what it was but it was coltan what
does it look like
it's like this black um dark mineral it's almost some of it almost looks like a
crystal or i don't
know if you can throw up a picture almost like coal yeah almost like coal um it's
it's long and jaggedy
it's kind of uh i don't know you know those like crystals that you can you used
to be able to buy
like that are oh yeah long like that it'd be a black one of those almost and
sometimes it has more of a
coal like charcoal kind of feature to it and it's it's heavy uh but it's it's a
great conduit for
electricity and that's why we're using in all our smartphones and everything
and that's why they're
slaves but i wasn't excited about it and i didn't know what it was and i but
for them you know think
how think how crazy that is that's why they're slaves yeah and i don't even
know what it is
yeah and they're just ecstatic to give it to me meanwhile it's a huge source i
mean you need it
all over the world yeah and most people are completely ignorant to what it is
and a set
especially where it comes from right yeah it's very bizarre like i had
explained that to someone
when they were talking about um how much better it is to have an electric car
and i'm like do you
understand that that car is filled with conflict minerals yeah like it's not
that simple it's not
as simple as like you're good and the guy with the gas guzzler is bad like no
there's a lot of
fuckery in creation of your car batteries like lithium ion that's another
reason why we're in
afghanistan there's lithium stores there's trillions of dollars of lithium in
afghanistan and that's what
you need for lithium ion batteries yeah yeah it's man it's insane i i can't
even i don't i mean i
know we have two hours but i don't even know if i could get into some of the
the stuff i know that
uh shane from vice has been on here and then someone was saying someone else on
here tomorrow
is he really yeah man i wish i could meet that dude uh he's hands a cool guy
you want to meet
him if you could stay till tomorrow you can meet him all right we'll have to
see about my plane
back or something move it back yeah he'd be happy to meet you man he's the
coolest motherfucker on
earth dude i i think he's awesome yeah he's a great guy he's super easy to talk
to too just
really like down to earth yeah he goes to some of the craziest places oh yeah
oh yeah he's returning
back and forth you know i wonder what he'd think about me going for a full year
just i know that he
said it was a crazy time going there and uh and i just would want to pick his
brain what part he went
to is that what you're doing now you're about to go for a year for a full year
yeah i'm gonna go for
a full year and uh i'm partnering with the oldest university in the congo and
they have been working
on this project for seven years and we kind of just linked up together to where
uh our visions just
are kind of the same we want to free these people and give them a sustainable
ways of life so
i'm one of my best friends now was born and raised in the congo was educated
got his doctorates in
australia but then he came back to the congo and he's the dean of the school of
community development
so he teaches them different ways of agriculture water wells all these kinds of
things so he's
actually setting them free that's what we did in september we saw 60 slaves be
set free put on 30
acres of land and get a water well now it's doubled now since i've been back
here it's been 120 slaves
set free uh men women and children put on 60 acres of land and then now uh you
know we're wanting to
find a way we think that me going there for a year and if we were able to
fundraise fifty thousand
dollars so we could find a thousand people at fifty bucks thousand people fifty
bucks that's a thousand
slaves freedom and i