Podcaster and media persona Joe Rogan showered praise on Israelis in his recent podcast on March 23, saying their experience in the Middle East's hostile environment has steeled them for the complexities of life and has led them to appreciate it.
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The podcast featured a lengthy discussion with tech entrepreneur Antonio Garcia Martinez on a whole range of issues, including the influence of progressives on the daily discourse in the United States, which according to Rogan, sometimes results in "nonsense problems" taking center stage. At one point, Rogan, said that Israelis generally don't have debates over gender pronouns and other progressive matters, because of the other problems in life, recalling the impression he got from an Israeli friend's attitude toward life.
"I have a good friend of mine who was my kickboxing coach back in the days, his name was Shuki. He lives in Israel now," Rogan said. "I went to dinner over to his house once and his wife and kid was there, and there he is playing bongos and there is cooking and everyone is dancing and I go, 'You are so happy, so many Israelis love to sing and dance and party and it's like a real-life version of the Zohan. I go, 'What is it?'"
According to Rogan, Shuki replied, "When you are in Israel, every day you could you die, you don't know what is going to happen ... there is constant conflict, you are surrounded by all these Arab states, any day you can die, so everybody is just in the mood for party-party-party, because when you are alive you are happy."
Rogan said that this taught him how Israelis look differently at life, and perhaps Americans don't realize that their lives are so good, because "when you have don't have a problem and a real thing to rise against, people find nonsense to squabble over."
Rogan said that in Israel "it's real life and real death, this s**t you are dealing with, but here it is about the traffic, and people hating their job. It's nonsense problems." He added, "As our society becomes softer and softer we get angry and upset about some of the dumbest things possible. Whether it's pronouns or whatever it is, the current outrage du jour, we are weird; we almost exist at our best state when we are in some life-or-death scenario."
The interview was held before the recent spate of attacks in Israel, which saw more than 10 people murdered in the span of a week.
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