Joe Rogan Experience #1915 - Brian Simpson

Joe Rogan welcomes comedian Brian Simpson for a sprawling, loosely-structured conversation that keeps circling back to the craft of stand-up: the years of bombing, following monsters like Joey Diaz and Martin Lawrence, the importance of reps, and how new comics use apps and meticulous note-taking to improve faster. They detour through combat sports, with Joe delivering long, detailed breakdowns of Jiu-Jitsu, boxing knockouts, and fighters like BJ Penn, GSP, Jon Jones, and Mark Hunt. Bigger themes run underneath: the toll of fame, foster-care childhood and ADHD meds, the COVID lockdowns and their psychological damage, and the morality of porn, prostitution, and OnlyFans. The pair also indulge in conspiracy lore from cobalt-mine slavery and CIA drug smuggling to ancient-alien Sumerian theories. It closes with a pep talk from Joe about discipline, fitness, and getting healthy.

• Joe describes the Siddharth Kara cobalt-mining episode, saying child and slave labor in the Congo sits at the bottom of every cell phone's supply chain.
  00:23:28
• Joe recounts being ringside in Brazil in 2003 when brown-belt Eddie Bravo tapped Royler Gracie with a triangle, the upset that birthed 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu.
  01:30:01
• Joe tells the Barry Seal / Mena Arkansas story: kids found murdered near a cocaine drop point, a CIA-linked smuggling operation, and Seal killed with a Bush phone number in his pocket.
  02:16:59
• Brian reveals that as a foster kid he secretly spat out his Ritalin for weeks, then heard adults praise his 'progress' when he wasn't even taking it.
  02:29:58
• Joe explains he stopped doing live comedy during the pandemic out of fear of infecting someone, returning only via tested 'bubble' outdoor shows with Chappelle.
  02:39:21
• They watch a Shark Week clip of a great white smashing through a plexiglass box, and an expert admits no cage will actually stop a great white.
  03:18:14

• Android phones reportedly passed 50% of the US market for the first time, ending Apple's lock on America.
  00:22:57
• An estimated 4.8 billion dollars was spent on OnlyFans in a single year.
  01:01:50
• A communications expert's theory holds the Australian accent stems from the drunken slur of heavy-drinking early settlers.
  01:13:53
• Zecharia Sitchin's reading of Sumerian texts described Nibiru, a planet on a 3,600-year orbit, and the Anunnaki who supposedly engineered human DNA.
  01:35:44
• Imaging research found Ritalin (methylphenidate) acts much like cocaine when injected; it is taken daily by 4 to 6 million US children.
  02:27:51
• Redd Foxx is credited as essentially inventing the comedy album, the first to put stand-up on a record.
  02:54:55
• Mike Tyson studied his manager Jim Jacobs's vast library of old fight films, absorbing the styles of Dempsey, Sugar Ray Robinson, and others.
  03:36:30
• Boxer Emile Griffith beat Benny Paret to death in the ring after Paret repeatedly taunted him about being gay.
  03:36:30
• There is a gene, believed to be ApoE4, linked to a higher likelihood of developing CTE.
  04:20:14
• The Great Pyramid contains roughly 2.3 million stones, some quarried hundreds of miles away and cut with razor-thin precision.
  01:48:18

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