Joe Rogan Experience #1878 - Roger Waters

Roger Waters joins Joe Rogan for a wide-ranging, largely political conversation framed by his mother's lifelong lesson: read deeply, study all sides, then do the right thing. He defends the BDS movement and his criticism of Israel as apartheid, insisting it is not anti-Semitism, and argues for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations in Ukraine, reading aloud his open letter to Vladimir Putin. Waters hammers on money in politics, Citizens United, corporate power (Chevron, Meta, Davos), and a mainstream media he sees as propaganda for a ruling class. He also turns personal, recounting his creative process, writing a 500-page memoir during lockdown, the heartbreaking mental collapse of bandmate Syd Barrett, and a moving story about underprivileged kids who sang at his shows.

• Waters reads his full open letter to Vladimir Putin urging a ceasefire and asking Putin to renounce any wider European territorial ambitions.
  00:39:42
• Instead of going to Davos one Christmas, Waters flew to northeastern Syria to help rescue two children of an ISIS fighter and return them to Trinidad.
  01:06:25
• He recounts Syd Barrett's breakdown, including Barrett standing at Hollywood and Vine saying 'it's nice here in Las Vegas,' then darkening and spitting out one word: 'people.'
  01:41:48
• A father called the production office to explain the surly Oakland kids who sang at his show all came from broken homes, and the show was the first thing they were ever proud of.
  02:21:31
• Waters got rich friend Steve Bing to send those Oakland kids a large check (around 50-100k) to fund theatrical work.
  02:23:40
• Waters explains he refused the 'intellectual dark web' label and mockingly renamed it the 'international dork web.'
  01:53:45
• He reveals he wrote a roughly 500-page prose memoir during the COVID lockdown after discovering he could write prose.
  01:21:32

• Waters has long invited 8-12 local children, often from undernourished communities, to sing on stage with him during his tours.
  00:01:39
• After being persuaded to cancel a Tel Aviv gig, he moved it to an ecumenical agricultural community and 60,000 Israelis attended.
  00:06:54
• He cites the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, where JFK and Khrushchev secretly negotiated a missile swap, as a model for diplomacy.
  00:24:36
• Waters notes Tibet is roughly one third of China's land area and a critical source of water and minerals.
  00:29:14
• He has been in a 10-plus-year court battle supporting Amazon pollution victims against Chevron, alongside jailed lawyer Steven Donziger.
  00:31:50
• The episode plays General Wesley Clark's account of a Pentagon memo to 'take out seven countries in five years': Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.
  01:18:20
• Waters has never smoked marijuana because it makes him paranoid, though he was once heavily addicted to nicotine.
  01:39:13
• He argues Gaza functions as an open-air prison and that occupied people have a legal right under the Geneva Conventions to resist occupation.
  02:31:30
• He traces his entire philosophy to a couplet in Pink Floyd's 'Echoes': 'two strangers passing in the street... and I am you and what I see is me.'
  01:50:08
• His song 'Hey Teacher Leave Them Kids Alone' became a protest anthem in apartheid South Africa and again in Iran after Mahsa Amini's death.
  02:00:31

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