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The Joe Rogan Experience

#2435 - Bradley Cooper

09 Jan 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?

0.031 - 14.665 Joe Rogan

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day hey bradley cooper what's happening baby

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15.303 - 28.943 Bradley Cooper

You know what it's like when like a Twilight Zone episode or something where like you're watching the TV. This is an episode where like I'm watching the TV. And then all of a sudden you're inside the show. And you're looking at me. Yeah. And all of a sudden I'm inside the show. It's crazy.

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29.003 - 38.797 Unknown

It's weird for me too. It's weird for me that it gets weird for other people too. Like when I see people being weird about it, I'm like, it's okay. I feel comfortable, just so you know.

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38.837 - 39.017 Bradley Cooper

Oh, good.

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39.057 - 58.843 Unknown

You look comfortable. No, no, no. It's excitement. It's weird for me. I was trying to explain this to someone. They're like, do people have a hard time being comfortable on the show? I go, I kind of do, too. It's fucking weird. Yeah. It's weird that that many people are watching. Yes. And then you start thinking, like, oh, don't fuck it up. Don't say that. Right. But if you think about it.

59.532 - 71.847 Bradley Cooper

The fact that you did this long-form setup and that we live in a culture where people at least say that it's all about short-term... Yeah. It goes against it. The people are interested. Yeah.

72.349 - 82.563 Unknown

Well... The short-term stuff does work. Short attention span stuff is very popular, even with me. But I have been resisting it more and more lately.

Chapter 2: How do actors feel about being in the spotlight?

82.643 - 107.181 Unknown

I'm like a fucking heroin addict, slowly weaning myself off the drug. And the more I wean myself, the better I feel, physically better. My brain works better. I feel more relaxed. I don't feel like this, like Sugar Sean O'Malley, the UFC fighter, he said, even when I'm just scrolling, even if it's not anything about me, he goes, there's just like a low level anxiety that I get.

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107.241 - 124.267 Unknown

I'm like, yeah, yeah, because like, you know you're wasting your time chasing a fix that you're never gonna get. And you're just like getting these short drips of like, oh, look at that. Oh, look at that. Oh, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. But that's not what people really want.

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124.467 - 144.379 Unknown

What people really want is something engaging, something you go, wow, that's like a great documentary, like which are still super popular, like a great documentary. They're still, you know, like huge on Netflix and huge on YouTube. Right. And Oppenheimer was like three hours long and made a billion dollars. So people went. Humans didn't change.

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144.719 - 157.275 Unknown

It's just you can hijack the reward system by giving them some short attention span nonsense. And it just like tricks their slow drip dopamine into like continuing to watch this stupid shit. But that's not what they want. No.

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157.255 - 177.679 Bradley Cooper

It's not what I want. No. It's the difference between just a little drip of something that has the illusion that I'm getting what I want as opposed to what I actually need. Yes. Which is sort of a reminder that I exist. Yes. Yes. And that I'm communicating with somebody and I can relate to it. Yes. Which is a different thing.

177.759 - 185.029 Bradley Cooper

And I only know this because I've never been on social media, but sometimes... There was one time I got on, somehow got on TikTok and it was all police footage.

Chapter 3: What are the challenges of long-form content in today's media?

185.69 - 200.41 Bradley Cooper

You know, like, and I was just, I remember laying on my couch, 40 minutes went by and I was just doing this. And it was like the first part of the video. And then what happened? And then like the second part, part two. And that was the only time I experienced, I thought I got to stay away from this because I won't leave the house.

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201.111 - 223.075 Unknown

It's bad. It's bad for you too because it programs you to think that that is going on everywhere in the world. Like if you have 8 billion people that are interacting with people all over the world and you only take the worst examples of that and broadcast it and then it becomes viral and millions and millions of people think, it rewires your way you think about human beings.

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224.336 - 250.062 Bradley Cooper

And the other thing is about memory. Someone was talking about Niagara Falls the other day, and I thought, I've been there, right? And then I'm like, have I been there? Or did I see a video? Or was that one of the things when I put the Oculus on? Honestly, I can't remember, but I know what it feels like to be looking at it. So it's changing the way memory works.

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250.443 - 278.913 Unknown

100%. I've hit a wall in my memory, like a tangible wall. And I think it's connected to Dunbar's number. Dunbar's number is the amount of people that you can keep in your head. Because we evolved in these tribal scenarios. We evolved with 150 people. And so the way Dunbar calculated it, there's very close, intimate, close circle people, which is a small amount.

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279.273 - 298.738 Unknown

And then immediately after that, there's a slightly larger amount. And then it gets up to 1,000 people. 1,500. 1,500 people? That's the most amount of people you can keep in your head. So it's like five people that you're tightest of tight, and then 15 slightly outside of that. And it gets all the way up to about 1,500 people, recognizable people.

300.22 - 313.909 Unknown

But I would think I'd be able to that you could keep in your head. Yeah. But I'm way past fifteen hundred people. So I'm fucked. Right. Like I am like there's people that I know really well. And then I see them and I'm like, I don't remember his name.

314.209 - 314.951 Bradley Cooper

Fifteen hundred sounds.

315.011 - 316.614 Unknown

And it seems bad.

316.675 - 319.36 Bradley Cooper

I'm like, why can't I remember his fucking name? I can't remember his name.

Chapter 4: How does Bradley Cooper prepare for playing real-life characters?

752.241 - 758.753 Bradley Cooper

And Tony was there. And he was so nice. I'd never met Tony before. And that's where I smelled the thing. You know, I did the smell.

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758.873 - 760.877 Unknown

Oh, the smell. Fuck me.

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760.857 - 779.735 Bradley Cooper

That shit is no joke, dude. Yeah. And that was the first time Will ever went up. And we were just trying some of that material and went up as Alex Novak. Because I was like, when do you have an opportunity as an actor to actually do the thing you're preparing to do? Right. And think about how much that would cost. You can go into a room where there's real people.

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780.155 - 780.315 Unknown

Right.

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780.596 - 794.011 Bradley Cooper

And then every step that you're taking, you're in a club. So he did that. And then when we went back to New York, he did it like three times a week. four or five times a night for like six weeks. Wow. Just so he could understand what it's like. And some people didn't know who he was.

794.071 - 808.81 Bradley Cooper

You know, you get a lot of tourists come into New York City and there were nights where you knew that he, when he said Alex Novak, they're like, cool. Right. Not like you're not Alex Novak. Right. You know, they're like, okay, let's see what you got. And so that was really, that was really great.

809.451 - 811.654 Unknown

How did you, who wrote this film?

811.82 - 835.84 Bradley Cooper

He wrote it with this guy, Mark Chappell. It was a movie that was more about his, based on this guy, John Bishop, who's a real comedian, is a very successful comedian in the UK. And he, Will met that guy on a barge somewhere and he was talking about his story and he was like, yeah, I was doing something else. My wife and I were breaking up and I walked into a bar, a pub one night.

835.86 - 850.101 Bradley Cooper

I didn't want to pay the cover. That really happened to this guy. So he put his name down and they called him. And then he was like, yeah, I'm getting a divorce and got a couple of chuckles. But he just loved it. Never done comedy, nothing before that. And he kept going back and he like was obsessed by it.

Chapter 5: What insights does Bradley Cooper share about passion and success?

4652.934 - 4662.489 Bradley Cooper

It won't take you far enough. It's just not enough fuel to keep doing it. Right. Because if you don't love it, I think you would find it monotonous and maybe boring and tedious and inconsequential.

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4662.749 - 4669.797 Unknown

You're going on a road trip with an eighth of a tank of gas. You're not going to make it. You're not going to make it. You're stomping on the gas and trying to pull out of the parking lot, but it's not that.

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Chapter 6: How does failure contribute to growth in acting and creativity?

4669.958 - 4680.11 Bradley Cooper

Yeah. It's a long drive. And my experience in the 26 years I've been in this is like most of the people, if not all, that I've worked with, they love it. Yes. They love it. They have to.

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4680.13 - 4683.734 Unknown

Otherwise, yeah. If you want to be great at something, you have to love it.

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4683.914 - 4685.256 Bradley Cooper

Yeah. I can't imagine.

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Chapter 7: What does Bradley Cooper reveal about the impact of AI on creativity?

4685.276 - 4686.137 Unknown

There's no point.

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4686.117 - 4691.143 Bradley Cooper

Because it's not even that you want, yes, you want to be great at it, but you just love doing it. Right. That's it.

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4691.163 - 4693.766 Unknown

Right. And the love is how it becomes great.

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4693.886 - 4712.928 Bradley Cooper

And then the fear is when you get famous or people get popular early, that can be confusing because you start to have like, I have to maintain a certain, you start getting careful. Like I was thinking about when you said like, what is that thing when it's just, it's hypnosis. The key to that is... willing to fail.

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4713.169 - 4719.958 Bradley Cooper

That's what I learned as an actor is like, Oh yeah, just don't take it too seriously. Here we go. We're rolling the camera.

Chapter 8: How does personal experience shape the understanding of purpose and fulfillment?

4719.978 - 4738.264 Bradley Cooper

We can, let's just, here, let's see what happens. I'm going to go out on a limb. Maybe it won't work, but like, yeah, be willing to like completely fail. And the minute you do that, it's like, Oh, and all of a sudden there's this reservoir of space in your head and your soul to actually, um,

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4738.244 - 4758.784 Bradley Cooper

create even more of an imaginary circumstances now if you haven't done your work you're fucked anyway but like but once you're there it's like once you're like oh yeah everybody we could just fail let's just let's just fail how do you does that make sense 100% makes sense it makes sense because the only way you're gonna really find out what it is is to like try it all kinds of ways yes yeah

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4759.169 - 4777.089 Unknown

I was just having the conversation, you know, Brian Callen, our mutual friend, he texted me last night. He's like, I got a new bit and I just ate a dick. I have to go up on stage with it tonight. It's fucking terrible. He goes, but I know there's something in there. And we were talking on the phone right before the show. He's like, dude, my fucking new bit just bombed a dick last night.

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4777.109 - 4785.264 Unknown

I don't know what to do. But I know there's something there. It's like you've got to be willing to bomb. You got to be willing to eat a dick.

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4785.364 - 4790.19 Bradley Cooper

If you don't, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. If you're careful, it's over.

4790.25 - 4790.631 Unknown

You can't.

4791.011 - 4792.213 Bradley Cooper

Careful is death.

4792.233 - 4812.48 Unknown

I talked to Chris Rock once, and he told me that that bit that he did, it was one of his all-time classic bits. I love black people. I hate N-word. Right, right. He goes, that bit bombed for like a year. Right. He couldn't get it to work. He's like, I know there's something in there, but I have to find it. Yeah. And it took a fucking year.

4812.46 - 4833.127 Unknown

And we're talking about a year of going up at the store, going up at the improv, going here, going to the laugh factor, going here, going there. Fuck, pulling your hair out. Fuck, trying to figure it out. A fucking year, man. And when you're Chris Rock, you're already Chris Rock. You know, you can talk about getting your dick sucked. You can talk about something. People will laugh.

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