Joe Rogan Experience #2045 - Jimmy Carr

Jimmy Carr visits Joe Rogan's Austin comedy club and the two spend the conversation celebrating a perceived 'golden age' of stand-up, arguing comedy is a brand-new art form that should be taught in schools and given a teachable language. They explore discipline versus freedom, imposter syndrome, gratitude as the cure for resentment, and the difference between envy (useful) and jealousy (destructive). The talk ranges widely: the Dick Gregory broadcast of the Zapruder JFK film, conspiracies and institutional capture (Catholic Church, the medical establishment), age-of-consent law, dyslexia, and addiction. They close on nuclear power, slavery in the Congo, Portugal's drug decriminalization, suicide in comedy, and whether America's best days are still ahead.

• Carr reveals he's developing a comedy course/book breaking stand-up into roughly 50 joke types, with a vision of comedy being taught in schools.
  00:08:23
• They recount that comedian Dick Gregory aired the Zapruder JFK film on Geraldo Rivera's 1975 show, exposing it publicly 12-13 years after the assassination.
  00:29:21
• Carr says during lockdown his managers offered a podcast or a book; he 'took the gentleman's option' and wrote his self-help autobiography 'Before & Laughter.'
  01:18:06
• Carr discloses he was severely dyslexic and couldn't read until about age 11, yet gamed the system to get into Cambridge.
  01:30:38
• Carr explains he discovered CBT and NLP through a corporate training budget while working in marketing for Shell Oil in his twenties.
  01:42:45
• Rogan shares a NewsRadio writer friend named Drew shot himself while on the phone with his wife, his first experience of suicide.
  02:36:19
• Carr offers a 'hot take' that empires don't fall but transform: the Roman Empire became the Church and the British Empire became a bank.
  02:42:36

• Carr claims you laugh roughly 30 times more watching comedy live than watching the same footage on screen.
  00:03:39
• Carr says he's working on systematizing about 50 different joke types to teach stand-up like music notation.
  00:09:24
• A theory that the plague reshaped the Catholic Church: it killed about 90% of priests (who gave last rites), collapsing the priesthood's barrier to entry.
  00:42:19
• Carr cites the line, attributed to Socrates, that 'beauty is a short-lived tyranny.'
  01:29:34
• Dyslexia affects roughly 7% to up to 20% of people worldwide and is highly genetic.
  01:34:19
• Hunter S. Thompson reported the Hell's Angels motto: 'two can keep a secret if one is dead.'
  02:09:18
• Robin Dunbar's research: laughter is 'remote grooming' that let humans bond in groups of ~150 versus ~60 for gorillas, enabling specialization and civilization.
  02:12:55
• Whaling was the biggest industry in the world in 1903 and vanished within about 18 months once petrochemicals arrived.
  02:35:36
• Portugal/Lisbon decriminalized all drugs ~15 years ago and redirected drug-war spending into rehab and education.
  02:40:01
• There are roughly 40 million slaves in the world today, more than in 1865 when America abolished slavery.
  02:18:36

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