DC: You’ve talked in podcasts and interviews about how you have something of an obsessive personality… like the videogame Quake (which is where I first ran into you online). So, when you got into martial arts, did that come into play? Did you just jump into it with both feet?
JR: I’ve always been obsessive about pretty much everything from the time I was a little child. Anything I got into, whether it was drawing or anything, I got into it like crazy. Martial arts was really the first thing that ever gave me hope that I wasn’t going to be a loser. So I really, really gravitated toward it.
DC: Not being a loser… that’s a big thing for you.
JR: Yeah, well… I grew up around a lot of losers and one of them was my dad. There was a lot of desire to not be like that guy and not be like all of these people around me who had no hope and no future. And when you’re insecure and your parents break up when you’re really young and you grow up poor, there’s this overwhelming desire to make sure that this never, ever happens again. When I was young, I wasn’t concerned with “Hey, I just want to go and have some fun and hang out with my buddies.” It was “I don’t want to be a loser when I grow up.” That was the number one theme in my head. Martial arts was really the first thing where I was a clear winner at something. Like, “Hey, I’m good at this. I have an identity now. I am somebody. I can be good at something.”
DC: There’s obviously this positive aspect of training, but have you ever encountered anything negative?
JR: To training?
DC: Yeah, for instance… you’ve talked about how you’ve blown your knees out.
JR: Well, overwhelmingly it’s been positive because even the knee surgery thing… I still practice martial arts and I have no knee problems. Fortunately, they have surgery now and they can fix things. There are always injuries and there are psychological setbacks and things can be very, very difficult. But those things – those setbacks – are good because you rise above them and you learn. “Hey, when things are bad and when you fuck up, you can actually take that fuck up and grow because of it.” You can use it as a tool and learn from it. So, I would say that it was overwhelmingly positive. It’s a huge learning experience. I think for kids one of the most important things for them is to do something really difficult so that they learn that they can do something difficult. That something that seems insurmountable like when you’re first learning martial arts and you take your first class and you throw a kick and you’re all off balance and you feel goofy, you will never imagine that one day you’ll be throwing three-sixty spinning wheel kicks in the air. It’s like, “There’s no way I’m going to be able to do this, no way I’m going to win tournaments against some of the best guys in the country. There’s no way that’s going to happen.” It seems like it’s impossible. It seems so far away that it can’t be reached. But it can be reached. You can make it. You just have to believe in it and you have to keep growing and keep going and keep moving forward.
I have this new tattoo that’s of this samurai Miyamoto Musashi fighting this tiger and it’s my whole right sleeve. One of the reasons I got it is… pretty much my whole life… I read this Miyamoto Musashi quote when I was young from THE BOOK OF THE FIVE RINGS and it’s that once you understand The Way broadly, you can see it in all things. What he’s saying is that once you understand what it takes to get good at something, once you understand what it takes to get Zen, to fall into whatever it is – the mindset, the discipline plus energy plus focus – all those things to get great at something, you can do that with ANYTHING. You can do that with music. You can do that with writing. You can do that with anything. It’s just a matter of time and focus and energy, and it is truly all the same thing. It all comes from the same place. It’s all focusing on whatever that is and then channeling the energy of the universe to create something. And that, to me, was the biggest lesson in martial arts. It was that I could DO this and, if I could do THIS, I can do anything. It’s really the same thing that got me good at standup comedy. It’s the same thing that gets me good at every aspect of my life.
DC: Some of the best lessons I’ve ever learned have been found in failure and getting my ass kicked both figuratively and literally. And as painful as those lessons were, they all taught me something which, in the long run, made me a better person. Failure can either make you or break you. You learn from those mistakes and those defeats, and it all helps to hone the blade. So, because you do live – what with working for the UFC and with your own training – in a world of violence, and considering that a lot of things in life come out in art, do you think that violence in art can go too far?
JR: Not too far… I mean, it can go too far for me where I don’t enjoy it or it might go too far for you. But my “too far” might not be as far as your “too far”, and your “too far” might not be as far as another guy’s “too far.” It’s all subjective. For one person to say that a violent movie is too violent… No, it’s too violent FOR YOU. The person who created this movie obviously enjoyed it. There are a lot of films that are very disturbing. Look at SE7EN… that was a fuckin’ deeply disturbing movie. To some people it was too much. To some people it was like, “What is the point of making a movie like this?” But not to me and I’m going to assume not to you. It might not be good to you, but what is it? Whatever anybody’s done in a movie, it does not come close to depicting what must have been experienced by real, live people during The Holocaust. All the shit that you hear about experiments that were done on people, some of the crazy shit that the Japanese were doing… Art often mirrors real life and, if that’s the case, then there is no line that you can cross because every fuckin’ horrific thing imaginable has actually been done by someone. You might not want to see it and that’s understandable, but that’s your choice. It’s not like someone’s going all CLOCKWORK ORANGE on you and propping your eyelids open with toothpicks.
DC: You always have the remote to shut it off. Do you think your experiences with things like DMT and other psychedelics have opened up your imagination to certain genre films and literature? I mean, once you’ve seen reality take a distinct and mind-expanding bend, are you open to more expressionistic art and concepts?
JR: That’s an interesting question. I think once you’ve seen what you can see in a full-blown DMT experience, it does sort of open you up. In your mind or in your imagination, there’s a fence somewhere where everything past this fence is preposterous and the DMT experience is so preposterous, but so real, that you kind of go, “Do we need these fences anymore? Let’s just knock these down, because even if I don’t go there, we don’t need these fences.”
DC: I equate it to pain tolerance. I mean, you talk to a young girl and she cuts her finger and it hurts. But then, you talk to a woman who’s given birth and that cut finger is no longer a concern because, as you’ve said, the fences have been moved. Now, her concept of pain and your concept of what is preposterous have been altered.
JR: I think it certainly changes. I think your perception of everything changes when you have such a mind-blowing experience. People have talked about how much being abducted by aliens has altered their view of the world. They don’t feel as if they live in this innocent world anymore. They feel like everyone around them really has no idea. They’re almost like children who are insulated from this brutal reality. The reality of what alien abduction probably is… I don’t know what people are experiencing, but it’s most likely that they are having a DMT experience which is happening organically. Almost all alien abductions take place while people are sleeping. We know that when you’re sleeping, you’re brain is producing psychedelic chemicals. People can have panic attacks. People can have adrenaline rushes. You could easily be having some sort of DMT rush and you can have it while you’re sleeping. You can have some incredibly intense experience that feels real. And you know what… this whole idea of discounting it by saying, “Ohhh, it feels real that you went to some other dimension and were taken aboard a spacecraft, but it’s really a hallucination.” I’m not even sure about that. I’m not sure that it, instead of a hallucination, is not possibly a real experience. Like what you’re experiencing is not a chemical that perturbs reality, but in fact the chemical that opens up a gateway to another reality. That’s just as possible.
DC: Someone on your messageboard asked a question about “sleep catalepsy” or “sleep paralysis” and, because I happen to work a regular job in sleep medicine, I tried to explain what was going on. But what was interesting was that my post explaining this was sort of dismissed because the idea that something spooky was going on was sexier, you know what I mean?
JR: That’s a good point.
DC: People really want to believe that something otherworldly is going on.
JR: They want to believe SO much. It drives me crazy because I want to believe, too, but I recognize what it is. I have a lot of friends that have real fuckin’ issues with UFOs. Some of them WANT to believe. I’m not saying that UFOs aren’t real. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t take a position unless you’ve had personal experience, and even that personal experience should be evaluated as objectively as possible. “Was I hallucinating? Did I have some sort of schizophrenic experience? Am I looking at this from a realistic point of view, or am I just tricking myself into thinking this is really happening?” Critical thinking is really lacking from people who are looking for that “sexy” experience.
DC: Have you ever gone to a UFO convention?
JR: I haven’t actually. I’m sure they must be fuckin’ crazy.
DC: Some of them are crazy. They’re so intent on it all being real. It reminded me of this documentary I saw that talked about how we make up our minds on a visceral level and then we begin to accept or reject information filtered through that emotional decision we’ve already made in our minds.
JR: Absolutely. We look for validation to confirm our ideas and it’s not objective. That is my problem with a LOT of people when it comes to this goddamn UFO experience. I’ve talked to people that say, “I’ve done research, man! I’m watching these YouTube videos… All these people can’t be lying!” Oh, yes they can! Is it possible that there is a liar? Yes! I know liars. Do you know liars? Yes. We all know liars. So it’s possible that there are a thousand liars. Or a million. And some of these people might not even be liars. They might be crazy or imbalanced. You’re telling me that you can’t find a hundred imbalanced people? I can find a hundred unbalanced people in a day. If you just let me drive around Los Angeles and just stop people on the street and ask them a few questions about Life… “What do you think about this? What do you think about that? Has this ever happened to you? Do you believe that you’re psychic?” I guarantee you… You give me a full eight-hour day and I can find a hundred unbalanced people easily. A hundred people where you couldn’t trust a goddamned thing they said. If they said the sky was blue, you’d need to double-check on that. If they said that the water is wet, you’d say, “I’m not sure! If you say water is wet… we might have to check.”
DC: And yet these are the people that get held up as “authorities.” Art Bell used to do it and now George Noory does it on Coast To Coast AM… They have these people talking just crazy shit in an authoritarian manner and people believe them. I mean, the guy may be a little sketchy, but the fact that he’s preaching to the choir, he gets a pass.
JR: Preaching to the choir is really dangerous. You need people to step in and question what is going on because these people really don’t want it to be fake. They don’t want these people to be crazy. It’s a belief system that’s just as rigid and silly as Christianity or anything else.
DC: Look at Jesse Ventura…
JR: Yeah! Everything, man… “9/11 was an inside job.” Do you know for sure, man? Is it possible there was incompetence? Is it possible that it was a combination of incompetence and SOME PEOPLE knowing? Did they maybe know something was going to happen, but didn’t know the extent?
DC: I wanted to talk to you about your messageboard. I’ve been a member there for seven or eight years, give or take, and I am fascinated by it. Not only because it is such an eclectic collection of people, but it’s become my number one news source… as weird as that sounds. [laughs]
JR: Mine, too.
DC: It’s a place where I can get instantaneous spin in both directions. And… where else can you get hard news backed up against World Star Hip Hop videos? [laughs] So, how did it all come about? Was it an organic thing?
JR: Yeah, completely organic. It was started in 1998. It was some free EZ Board software. Andrew, the guy who created my website and has created every single incarnation of it except the latest one, said, “Hey, maybe we should have a little messageboard where we could all post shit.” We were thinking it would be like ten people, and that’s what it was at the time. A lot of it was the guys we played Quake with. It was just all of our friends online, just a small handful of people. Then, somehow or another, it got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and before you knew it, there were thousands of people… and before you knew it there were a million posts… and before you knew it there were MILLIONS of posts. And it just got crazier and crazier. It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever experienced.
DC: I’d been online for a long time when I found it and was pretty hardcore… You know, getting in people’s faces, “flaming,” etc., but when I encountered your board, that was the one place I felt like I needed to step back and lurk a little. I just found almost everyone there not only really funny, but really smart and well informed. They were also amazingly adept at taking someone’s argument and pulling it apart. Almost immediately I was hooked and being there got me into your comedy and your outlook, and I’ve been there ever since. That said, I can’t help but feel like it’s also a huge promotional tool for you.
JR: I guess so, but I very rarely use it as a promotional tool. The Board is pretty much The Board. I think if I went on there and was like, “Hey, guys… come support me and vote for me on this and buy my shit and do this here and do that there…” If that was everything I did… Even on Twitter, every now and then, I’ll say, “Hey, I’m performing here” or “Hey, this is going on” and I’ll get all these people saying, “How about using Twitter for something other than marketing?!” People just douche on you left and right over stuff like that. If I had done that, I don’t think The Board would have become what it is. I think what it is is… it’s The Board. It’s its own thing. I mean, it has my name on it and I guess I have to take some sort of responsibility because I’ve nurtured this environment where you can post photoshopped pictures of people with dicks in their mouths and the next post is about the Large Hadron Collider and its effects on humanity and then right after that is a post about how many dicks has Sasha Grey sucked in her life and it’s a real debate… [laughs]
It’s the strangest board ever. It’s like religion and philosophy and psychedelic drugs, but really what it mirrors more than anything are my own personal interests and my mind and the personal interests and minds of like-minded people. That’s what we’re getting at the place. There are so many people who think so very, very similarly and all of us together are in this group and we found sort of a home where a bunch of other people think that way as well and we can meet up online. There are a lot of silly people on The Board. There are a lot of people who are Conspiracy Theory people. There are a lot who are hardcore vegetarians and vegans and they want to argue about shit. There are people who are Conservative and they want to argue about Liberals. There’s just a lot of shit going on that is not necessarily along the lines of how I think, but just having them all there in this sort of big group hive, I think it provides a chance for everyone to evolve and see all these different people’s experiences and different points of view and get a feeling for it. It’s just a very, very rare environment, very rare opportunity we have to have all that together in one meeting spot where you kind of know what you’re going to get. You’re going to get freedom. You don’t know what you’re going to get as far as topics. Any day you can click on Shit Talking 101 and be blown away by some new, weird revelation, discovery, or scientific innovation. There’s always something going on or someone who has a point of view that you disagree with or agree with or someone who posts a video that makes you rethink your whole life. That happens EVERY DAY on that board.
DC: What I find interesting is that without too much intervention by you or the moderators there’s an equilibrium that gets established. The community supports the people who make good points but also squashes down the radical goofballs. And, in the end, if you read everything and you keep in touch, you get a really good barometer of how people are thinking… especially people who are pretty smart. I think even the “dumbest” person on your board could probably be the “smartest” person on somebody else’s board, you know?
JR: It’s intimidating and I think it keeps really, really dumb people from expressing their opinion because they read all the shit that people talk about. A perfect example… there was a recent thread where two guys were having a debate on the pros and cons of growth hormone therapy and they started getting into all these fuckin’ crazy details about science and it got really heavy. Really intense, intelligent discussions, breakdowns, and scientific analysis… and I thought, “What a weird board this is!” It’s such a weird place that such a really deep and intelligent discussion can take place right next to “scat porn.” You can literally scroll down to the next post in that same thread and see a guy on his keyboard covered in shit with a log of shit in his mouth. [laughs] There’re no rules, man. It’s like your mind. At any moment you can be standing next to some old lady and the thought comes into your mind, “I could, if I wanted to, kick this old lady into traffic.” You don’t do it, but that thought is there and it’s like that on this board. Somebody might be debating the UFC and out of that – BOOM! – there’s a photo of two guys fuckin’ each other in the mouth. [laughs] It’s like, “Why is that there?!?” [laughs] I don’t know, but that’s how it goes there.
DC: I see the board and your involvement on Twitter and the podcast you do as part of this new model of interacting with one’s audience. Your access to your audience is amazing and you’re really free about it and you’re really giving in how you give out information. I’m now seeing other people in the public eye adopting what you’ve been doing for a long time. Did you at any time say, “This is the way of the future. This is the way that we ought to go” or was it, again, more organic?
JR: Totally organic. The Twitter thing was organic as well. I’m looking at my Twitter right now and here’s this guy that has an Albert Hoffman/Alex Grey portrait as his avatar and he’s letting me know that there’s a NOVA special on fractals coming up. Then there are people from the UK who want to know when I’m coming to do a show there, and then there’s another one that wants to talk about some shit that’s going down with the Wikileaks papers that are being released about the Iraq War. It’s really very similar to the messageboard. I post things that I find interesting. I post up things on my Twitter that, to me, are intriguing and things that I think are something I would like to know about if somebody else had this information… Show me! Tell me what’s up. Here’s a study on psilocybin at John Hopkins Medical Center about how psilocybin leads to spiritual realizations. So I put this up on my Twitter, and then all these people thank you and they retweet it. It really becomes just like the messageboard. It’s very, very similar. But there are more people on my Twitter than are even on the messageboard. I mean, how many members are there? I think it only has forty-five thousand or something like that, but my Twitter has like two hundred plus. So it’s really the same thing. It’s like “build it and they will come.”
DC: And the weekly podcast came about the same way?
JR: Yeah, same thing. The podcast was totally organic. It started out with me and Brian Redban sitting in front of laptops bullshitting. It’s kind of beautiful in that respect. It’s almost a year old now and, in that year, you can see the full evolution from sitting in front of a laptop to professional microphones and a mixer and a soundboard. For a long time people were complaining about the sound issues so… we figured it all out. We got it all together slowly over time. Now, it’s not just me and Brian… Now, I’m getting guests and every day I’m getting emails from people who want to promote their books or their thing, some guy from Vegan.com wants to come on and debate me about eating animals… There are all sorts of different things that are happening with it now. Again, it’s totally organic. It just sort of happened. I didn’t sit down and say, “Hey, what I’m going to do is that I’m going to create my own radio show. Since nobody wants to give me a radio show, I’m going to make my own.” No. It just sort of fuckin’ happened.
DC: Did I hear something about the podcast being picked up by Sirius satellite?
JR: Yeah, it’s picked up. We’re working out the details right now as far as revenue and advertising and stuff, but yeah… it’s going to be on Sirius. It should be cool. But honestly, I don’t know how many more people it’s going to reach on Sirius than it’s going to reach on iTunes. We’re getting hundreds of thousands of downloads every week.
DC: You said recently that when you were abroad people were coming up to you and saying, “Your podcast is really changing the way I’m thinking.”
JR: A LOT of people are saying that.
DC: How heady is THAT?
JR: It’s very heady because it’s something I never considered. I just thought we were entertaining, but… We’re stoned as fuck and we start talking about Life and Philosophy and I start talking about how I really and truly feel and how I think about things… I take a lot of time to consider my opinions. I don’t have flippant opinions on things, and if I do, I’m more than willing to reconsider those opinions and talk about them. I’m not married to any of the ideas that I keep in my head. So when I talk about this and my critical objective reasoning that I use when I’m thinking about something or when I’m considering a subject, those methods, that way of thinking and communicating… There’re a lot of people who don’t get that. They don’t have that around them. They’re surrounded by the same sort of knuckleheads that they grew up with or work with or whatever and they don’t have… you know… drug-addled weirdos around them or whatever it is. [laughs] Or people who are open-minded or free thinkers or someone who’s not chained-down to a job where they can’t be free to express themselves. That’s a lot of it, too. The reason why people think a certain way is because they kinda have to, man. If you’re in a fuckin’ job where you work for Verizon in Corporate Sales, you can’t be running around talking about DMT.