Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Brian Simpson (2025) - Epstein, MMA and Cults

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Brian Simpson (2025) - Epstein, MMA and Cults · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap and before we get going, please
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest episodes in your feed.
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  So today we are jumping into JRE Tag 2414 with the comedian Brian
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  Simpson. And this one was a massive
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  conversation. It went everywhere.
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  Oh completely from a leap athletic culture like the
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  Dagestani fighters. All the way to media
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  gatekeeping, viral trends, and even some pretty heavy
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  historical stuff. It was a wild ride, but that's
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  what we're here here for, right? To kind of distill it all.
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  Exactly. Our mission today is to pull out
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  the core ideas about what it really takes to succeed.
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  You know what's the real cost of extreme discipline?
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  And why something like comedy is still a meritocracy.
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  And we'll get into the surprising truths about how the
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  body, and even business actually work.
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  Let's start with that extreme discipline.
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  I mean, we have to talk about combat sports and the Dagestan
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  model. Yeah, specifically Islam Maka
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  Chef. The guy is just he's the most
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  dominant 155 LB champ we've seen.
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  And now he's talking about going up to 170.
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  It's insane. And what's so fascinating is the
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  technical evolution from his mentor Khabib.
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  Right, with Khabib, his stand up was always functional.
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  A means to an end. It was there to set up the
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  takedown. Exactly.
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  He'd throw a punch just to make you react so he could grab you
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  and, you know, start the smashing.
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  But Islam is different. He's like a fully integrated
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  fighter. Totally.
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  He's actually kowing people. I mean that head kick on
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  Alexander Volkanosky. That changed everything.
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  His striking is a legitimate threat on its own.
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  It's not just a setup. It makes him dangerous in like 2
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  completely different phases of the fight.
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  And that skill doesn't just come from a normal gym, it comes from
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  that whole Dazzistani culture. You just have to listen to that
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  quote from Bilal Muhammad, who's a top fighter himself.
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  Oh yeah. He said.
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  I thought I trained hard until I trained with those guys.
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  That says it all, doesn't it? It.
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  Really does. It's this environment that's
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  super religious, super focused. They pray five times a day.
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  And there are 0 distractions. No gambling, no drinking, no
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  partying. None.
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  It's all about the craft. They're just creating this iron
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  sharpens iron environment where everyone is a killer.
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  It's basically a factory for producing elite fighters.
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  And the foundation for all of it is wrestling.
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  Wrestling, they said. It's the number one base for MMA
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  because it teaches you one thing above all else.
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  The willingness to suffer. Yes, to just absolutely suffer.
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  The stories about wrestling practice are brutal.
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  It's not about sparring, it's about breaking people down.
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  Every single practice. You are conditioned to be
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  uncomfortable. And that's formalized in their
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  background with combat Sambo. Which is such a unique sport.
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  You've got the judo G top, shorts, wrestling shoes.
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  And you can do everything, kicking, punching, ground and
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  pound. It's like a raw early form of
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  MMA. And the system works.
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  I mean Khabib's father, Abdulmanab.
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  The Russian Book of Records recognized him as the most
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  successful combat Sambo coach. Ever having trained 18 World
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  Champions, 18. Including Khabib and Islam.
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  It's not just the style, it's a dynasty built on just extreme
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  self denial. But that level of suffering, it
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  comes at a huge cost, a really brutal physical and mental cost.
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  Let's talk about the weight cutting, it's so central to the
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  sport. And the damage it does is it can
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  be permanent. The story they told about the
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  guy who was 5 foot 6 but his brothers were both over 6 feet.
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  Yeah, because he was the only one who cut weight his whole
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  childhood. It literally stunted his growth.
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  That's horrifying. And it goes beyond just height,
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  right? It rewires your body signals.
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  Completely. They mentioned a former wrestler
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  who, years later, genuinely doesn't know when he's hungry.
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  He just forgets to eat. His body's natural cues are just
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  broken. The kind of neurological damage,
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  really, and it leads to serious problems later on.
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  Like the guys who stopped competing and then just blow up
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  like balloons. Because they've developed actual
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  pathological eating disorders from all that restriction, their
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  body just doesn't trust their mind anymore.
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  So all that suffering in the gym, we think it's for weight
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  loss, but the data point they brought up was shocking.
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  It was someone ran 30 miles, 30. That's more than a marathon.
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  Over 10 hours of grueling. Work and the total calories
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  burned only 1000. Just 1000 calories.
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  It's nothing. It just proves the diet is
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  everything. You don't really lose the weight
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  in the gym. No, you lose it in the kitchen.
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  The gym is for conditioning, for building capability.
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  The weight loss is discipline and diet.
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  And if you're going to talk about overriding your body's
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  signals with discipline, you have to talk about David
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  Goggins. Oh absolutely, he is the
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  personification of that boss in your brain idea.
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  He pushed himself so far he developed a condition called
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  Rhabdomyolysis Rabdoe. Which sounds terrifying.
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  It is. It's where your muscle tissue
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  gets so damaged from exercise that it leaks myoglobin into
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  your blood. And that can cause acute kidney
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  failure. Right.
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  The sign is your urine turns dark brown, like looking like
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  Diet Coke. Just awful.
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  But the key to the Goggins mindset is what he did after.
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  Exactly. He goes to the hospital.
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  He recovers. And then he goes back to the
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  exact spot on the course where he stopped.
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  And finishes the race. It's just a different level of
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  commitment, treating a life threatening injury not as a stop
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  sign but as a checkpoint. Right, so you see the thread
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  between the Dagestani fighter and Goggins?
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  It's this acceptance of self-inflicted pain that seems
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  insane to most people. OK, so let's take that idea of
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  merit and suffering and shift ears completely.
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  Let's talk about the comedy world.
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  Yeah, because Brian Simpson had a really sharp critique of how
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  that landscape has changed. He talked about how
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  historically, getting into a big festival like Aspen could make
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  your career. Right, because the industry
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  execs, the tastemakers, actually trusted their own instincts and.
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  Now. Now they just wait.
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  They wait for a viral clip or for someone else to build
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  momentum. He called them business people
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  pretending to be artists. I thought that was a great line.
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  It is because they miss out on real talent.
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  They don't have the gut for it anymore.
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  And then there's the pressure on the real talent spotters like
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  the club bookers. Yeah, like Adam Egan, people who
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  have a real eye for it, they're getting pressured to book based
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  on. Demographics and quotas instead
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  of just who is the funniest. Which leads to the core argument
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  that comedy is one of the last true meritocracies.
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  Because you can't cheat the crowd.
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  You can't. A joke lands or it doesn't.
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  You can get pushed and promoted all you want.
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  But if you get on that stage and nobody laughs, it's over
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  publicly and immediately. It's the purest form of
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  feedback. Speaking of pure optimization,
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  this connects back to athletic performance, specifically
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  altitude training. Right.
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  There's a whole science to this now, and the current theory is
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  kind of counterintuitive. You sleep high, but you train
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  low. Exactly.
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  Sleeping at high elevation forces your body to adapt to
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  make more red blood cells for oxygen.
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  But you can't train hard up there because there's no oxygen.
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  So you go down to low elevation to do the actual work.
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  You have more oxygen so you can do more reps, go harder and get
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  the maximum benefit from all those new red blood cells you
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  build while sleeping. The classic cautionary tale here
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  is Cain Velasquez losing his title in Mexico City.
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  Mexico City is at 7350 feet. Cain only showed up 10 days
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  before the fight to acclimate. Which is nothing His opponent,
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  Fabricio Verdam. Verdam was smart.
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  He showed up two months early and set up his camp even higher
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  at 12,000 feet. So when the fight started,
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  Verdam was perfectly conditioned and Cain just gassed out
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  completely. It's proof that strategy and
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  preparation can beat raw talent every time.
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  OK, so from pure strategy, let's pivot to, well, pure chaos.
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  The randomness of viral success. The Baby Shark video is the
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  ultimate example. 16.4 billion views.
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  I mean, you can't even comprehend that number.
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  It's staggering, but the irony is the company behind it really
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  struggled to make money from it. Because of all the restrictions
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  on advertising for kids content. So massive views didn't equal
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  massive profit. Then you had these physical
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  trends, like the Laboux toys. The stuffed animals in a mystery
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  box. It's basically a real life loot
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  box. And people go crazy for them.
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  They retail for maybe 28 bucks. But they can resell for over
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  100. Yeah, and they've auctioned
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  human sized ones for $150,000. It just shows how scarcity and
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  the element of chance can create this unpredictable massive
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  success. So from the randomness of toys,
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  the conversation took another really sharp turn into something
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  much heavier. Yeah, into matters of public
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  trust, government secrecy, and some really controversial
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  historical. Events.
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  So we just want to be clear, we're relaying the context of
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  the conversation here. Right.
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  It started with the Waco siege in 1993.
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  David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.
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  An event that just escalated horribly.
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  It ended with tanks and a fire that killed almost everyone
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  inside. Men, women and children.
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  Just a complete catastrophe. And before Waco, there was Ruby
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  Ridge in 1992. Another horrific standoff that
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  started over relatively minor firearms charges against Randy
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  Weaver. It spiraled out of control and
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  the most devastating part is an FBI sniper shot and killed
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  Weaver's wife, Vicki. While she was holding her baby.
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  And what's crucial is that afterward, the Weavers were
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  acquitted of almost all the serious charges.
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  These events just fundamentally eroded public trust in federal
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  agencies. It felt like catastrophic
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  overreach. Which brings us to today and the
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  discussion around the Epstein files.
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  Congress voted 420 to 1 to release them.
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  And they talked about that single no vote from
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  Representative Clay Higgins. His reasoning was that a broad
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  reveal could end up hurting innocent people.
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  Right witnesses, family members, people whose names are just in
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  there for non criminal reasons it.
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  Highlights that really complicated debate between the
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  public's right to know and the risk of collateral damage Much.
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  So when you pull all these threads together, what do you
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  have? Well, we've gone from the insane
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  discipline of Dagestani Wrestling and David Goggins.
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  Through the meritocracy of comedy.
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  And into these huge battles for transparency and truth against
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  government secrecy. And I think the common thread
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  through all of it is the cost, the cost of pursuing truth and
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  maintaining integrity. Totally.
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  Whether it's physical integrity where you have to override your
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  own survival instinct, or institutional integrity.
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  And that brings us to the final provocative thought that was
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  left hanging in the air. We talked about the reasoning
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  for that one no vote on the Epstein files, the fear of
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  hurting innocent people, but. Then you look at something like
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  the JFK assassination files. It's been 62 years and the vast
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  majority of them are still sealed.
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  So you have to ask yourself if a secret is still being guarded
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  that tightly after more than six decades.
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  What devastating institutional revelation could be in there?
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  What are they protecting that is so fundamental it could
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  completely destroy the public's belief in the integrity of the
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  process itself? Yeah, that's definitely
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  something to think about long after this deep dive is over.