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April 8, 2020 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:16:55
Joe Rogan Experience #1455 - Lex Fridman
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joe rogan
01:49:34
l
lex fridman
01:20:17
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andy stumpf
00:03
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jamie vernon
00:18
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joe biden
00:19
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matthew yglesias
00:01
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
Hello, Lex.
lex fridman
You might be wondering what I'm wearing on my face.
joe rogan
I'm not wondering.
lex fridman
No?
joe rogan
No.
It's coronavirus time.
Everybody out there is wearing a mask, so I'm assuming that's what you're wearing on your face.
lex fridman
Yeah, so this is a homemade mask.
It takes 30 seconds to make.
joe rogan
30 seconds?
Did you time yourself?
lex fridman
I don't know.
joe rogan
If you have a bra, can you cut a cup and strap, tie it on?
lex fridman
That would work, right?
Yes, probably, but as far as I'm aware, there's no scientific study of how effective bras are at filtering.
joe rogan
How effective is that thing?
lex fridman
I'm glad you asked, Joe.
I'm part of this, and I'll take this off in a few minutes.
I just want to...
One, I want to talk about some of the science, and two, I want to remove some of the stigma that's around masks.
So I'm part of this group of scientists that have put together a survey paper showing that masks work.
And it started as a movement called masks for all, hashtag.
In the Czech Republic, that essentially one of the critical components of stopping the spread of coronavirus is everybody has to wear masks.
And the science is twofold, so...
I mean, I need to break this apart, but...
joe rogan
You're gonna take the mask off eventually, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So let's just take it off now so I can hear you.
lex fridman
There's an audio?
You can't hear that?
joe rogan
It's so much better.
lex fridman
Oh yeah, nice.
joe rogan
It's like taking a condom off.
lex fridman
The before and after.
So you probably shouldn't be wearing a mask when you're doing podcasts.
joe rogan
Definitely not.
lex fridman
But everywhere else, yes.
joe rogan
So when you're going out to the grocery store, you should wear a mask everywhere.
lex fridman
Everywhere.
Okay, so some questions.
Do homemade masks work?
So there's currently a shortage of...
N95 respirator masks, which should be exclusively used as PPE, personal protective equipment, by healthcare workers.
Okay.
There's also a shortage of surgical masks, which are these non-Voen fabric masks that work very well for the thing I'm talking about, but because there's a shortage of them, we should not be buying them.
It should be saving them for healthcare workers.
And then the open question was whether homemade masks like the one I just described Work to stop as a filtration mechanism.
This is the confusing thing for the individual-centric society that we live in.
Masks are the most...
What are they actually effective for?
What they're effective for is to prevent me, if I'm infected, asymptomatic, from spreading the infection to you.
So that's where the movement of Masks for All started, which is your mask protects me, my mask protects you.
And the idea there is not...
I'm not creating a wall from the rest of society.
I am contributing to the bigger aggregate picture of it by not allowing the infection to spread.
So masks...
Is masks allow you to reduce that transmission rate to one to below one.
So allowing you to decrease the transmission rate while also allowing people to be in public.
joe rogan
How much have you been studying this disease and the potential remedies and all the different things around it?
lex fridman
A lot.
joe rogan
A lot, yeah.
What is your thoughts on hydroxychloroquine and zinc and Z-packs?
This is something that's been thought of as a potential remedy.
lex fridman
Yeah, as a potential remedy.
So on that side, I haven't studied...
So there's nothing clearly published yet.
That's the biggest problem.
When I say I know a lot, what I and others have been doing is reading a lot of papers that are coming out in the hundreds every single day.
So people doing really strong studies across the board.
joe rogan
This is pretty unprecedented, right?
Where something, a new disease comes out and everyone's scrambling to try to figure out what, if anything, can help it.
lex fridman
Yeah, there's a lot of aspects here that are unprecedented.
The scientific community has stepped up in a way that I've never seen.
I couldn't imagine it was possible to do.
Like, everybody, stop what they're doing.
And from whatever walks of life, so artificial intelligence community is really working on a lot of aspects of this, which I can talk about.
The virologists, bioinformatics folks, so everybody's working on this, looking at different angles, and obviously people who are developing vaccines and antiviral drugs are working on this.
To your question, we're all waiting for actual studies, so you can't really answer it.
You can't say something is promising or not.
So what's happening now is there's incredible candidates for vaccines, for antiviral drugs, but in order to say anything at all, there has to be at least a little sign, a little signal that this is something that can work.
So one of the things is If you look at the virology of it, just the protein structure of a corona COVID-19 virus, there's a lot of elements to it that are different from even its other family member of SARS within the coronavirus family.
So it's a totally open question whether Things from masks, what kind of things work for coronavirus versus SARS versus influenza versus rhinovirus, which is behind the common flu, and then what works on the coronavirus.
So that's true for masks, that's true for drugs, that's true for epidemiological study models and so on.
So there's a lot of uncertainty here and you have to actually do the test.
On the mask side, I'm really paying attention.
There's a guy named Jeremy Howard who brought a lot of us together from all kinds of expertise and we're putting together this giant paper showing that masks are effective.
And the same thing is happening in other domains.
The powerful thing about masks is it's something we can do.
Us individuals.
Right now, a lot of us individuals are stuck, trapped in our homes, unable to do anything.
Your only task is to remain, to practice physical distancing, social distancing, to maintain a healthy immune system, to Maintaining a healthy immune system seems to me to be the most important thing because there's so many people that are asymptomatic.
joe rogan
We don't know why, whether it's genetic.
We don't know what is causing some people to have virtually no symptoms whatsoever.
But I would think that maintaining a healthy immune system, eating healthy foods in particular, supplementing with vitamins.
For me particularly, I've ramped up my vitamin C in a big way.
Vitamin D, 4,000 IUs a day.
Exercise.
And sauna.
If you have access to a sauna, and I know most people don't, but if you don't have access to a sauna and you do have a bathtub, take yourself a hot bath.
What you're looking for is heat shock proteins.
One of the things that happens when you have a flu or when you have a fever, when your body has a fever, one of the things it's trying to do is trying to kill that virus.
It's trying to overheat it.
And that production of those heat shock proteins is very important.
There was a study written on flus and viruses and regular sauna use and it showed a significant decrease in infection with regular sauna use.
So it might not help you if you have it now, but it will help you to keep a strong and healthy immune system.
Heat and cold, those two things.
Shocking yourself with cold baths and shocking yourself with hot baths if you don't have access to a sauna.
If you do have access to a sauna, I would recommend ice baths and sauna.
It's very, very important for your immune system.
It's a way that you're giving yourself a drug that your body makes, really.
lex fridman
Yeah, I read a couple of studies actually on the use of, I don't know about sauna, but heat, like you said, hot water and then switching to cold for increasing the efficacy of natural killer, I think they're called NK, the natural killer immune cells that are essential for when...
So there's this moment when you get the disease and you progress, coronavirus, you progress from just having mild symptoms to having to go to the hospital to having to then go into a critical condition.
So that transition, the natural killer cells are essential for that.
And the variation from heat to cold in water helps.
joe rogan
How strange is that?
That's one of the strangest aspects of this disease, that people seem to have mild symptoms and then almost overnight it turns on them.
It's so strange.
lex fridman
And it depends on the, you know, and we don't understand for some people that doesn't happen for some people it does.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be a long time before they sort this out.
And the real problem with that is in the meantime, all these fucking nut jobs that want to blame this on 5G or, you know, or whatever, fill in the blank with whatever crazy conspiracy theory people have.
One that is interesting is that Wuhan apparently Had some sort of bioweapons lab there.
That's interesting to me because if that's the case It's not outside of the realm of possibility that something could be accidentally released or purposefully released.
Like if they do have a weapons lab there, I mean, why do they make weapons labs?
Why is anyone making bioweapons?
You're making bioweapons to...
The idea is you're making a disease you can inflict on the enemy, right?
Well, if you have a disease that can be inflicted on the enemy, that's just human beings.
If that stuff gets out, it would be the biggest shock of all time if it turns out that this was actually a man-made disease that was leaked from a lab.
I'm not saying it was.
Again, I'm a moron.
I'm not the guy to come to when it comes to bioweapons or viruses or any of these things, but I'm just speculating as a human being that if there is a bioweapons lab in Wuhan, Google that.
What does it say?
unidentified
No.
jamie vernon
I mean, I've heard that a few times, too.
joe rogan
When I Googled bioweapon lab in Wuhan...
Crenshaw was talking about it yesterday.
jamie vernon
It comes up, it says experts know it is not a bioweapon, know coronavirus is not bioengineered.
unidentified
How did the outbreak start?
joe rogan
It did not come from that.
How do they know?
lex fridman
Right.
So, first of all, bioengineering, let's break that apart because it's a fascinating topic.
I mean, one of the things that coronavirus is making us realize is, holy crap, there's things out there that can kill us on a scale that we've never before imagined.
And nothing like that, hopefully, will be happening here, but this is the dress rehearsal, right?
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
If it was something that has Spanish flu or that kind of potential for death.
lex fridman
Yeah, so Spanish flu is influenza.
I don't think we've seen the worst of influenza yet.
joe rogan
No, I don't think so either.
That was the scariest thing about talking to the guys at the CDC when Duncan Trussell and I did a show down there.
They were saying, we're not worried about man-made stuff.
We're worried about natural stuff.
Natural viruses that mutate and jump from animals to humans like they believe this COVID-19 is.
They're like, that's the scariest thing and you can't stop it and it happens all the time.
lex fridman
Yeah, if viruses weren't so terrifying, they would almost be beautiful.
So what is a virus?
It's some genetic code, RNA, DNA wrapped in some protein.
So it's a piece of computer code.
That goes into a human body or any kind of living organism and has them run that code in order to print stuff.
And it's able to mutate.
So there's millions of viruses out there, most of them infecting living organisms that are not human.
And they're able to spread in these insane ways, infecting billions of organisms.
That, in terms of a weapon, in terms of a natural pandemic, is terrifying.
A lot of people are worried about what's happening now with the coronavirus.
The deadliest part of the Spanish Flu was the second wave connected to the First World War.
There was a mutation which made it a lot deadlier.
So a single mutation that then begins to propagate through society can completely change the way we experience this virus.
joe rogan
And it was particularly deadly because it was really devastating to young, healthy people with strong immune systems.
lex fridman
It was devastating to everybody, which is surprising.
Usually it's a compromised immune system is what the virus is devastating to.
joe rogan
Well, this one's weird in that it's so rare that it affects children.
It's very strange that this virus has a small impact on children.
You know, but goddammit, there was a story that I saw a video about this article that was written that was talking about a one-day-old baby that died from coronavirus.
But when you go into the actual story itself, the doctor who was furious about this, who was reading this paper, was saying that, the article rather, he was saying the baby was 22 weeks premature.
So like that's probably what killed the baby and that is so premature and he was like the idea that someone is using clickbait and fear-mongering at that scale during this crazy time when people are starving for information and terrified and running around trying to find out and especially people with newborns to read that oh my god I killed a newborn and then you go and realize look no it's a complication and we don't know the baby tested positive for coronavirus but it's also 22 weeks early I mean,
if that's the first baby that's dying from this, we're very, very fortunate that it doesn't attack young people.
It doesn't attack babies.
lex fridman
Yeah, and that's a source of terror for people.
So I've interacted with folks who have families.
I mean, that seems to be one of the biggest things that people are afraid of.
joe rogan
What's bad for the flu?
lex fridman
Well, what's bad for the flu?
joe rogan
Children.
lex fridman
Yes.
joe rogan
It's devastating for children.
lex fridman
Yeah, and to think, so both sides of it.
One, children getting sick, and two, parents getting sick and thereby not being able to take care of their children.
Yeah, that's a good point.
And that can spread.
We're so sensitive now in terms of just on the verge of giving in to the fear on a mass scale.
And that's where information and sort of Inspiring words and the silly old word love is important, like community and compassion and so on to sort of fight that fear.
joe rogan
The silly old word love?
Silly old word?
Is it a silly old word?
You're so Russian.
lex fridman
Old is silly.
joe rogan
Russian John Wick says silly old word love.
lex fridman
Yeah, there you go.
unidentified
It's a clickbait title for the Joe Rogan experience.
lex fridman
No, I just mean that...
There is a danger here of people beginning to panic when the economic impact hits.
So there's 13% unemployment, I believe, in the United States.
So the Great Depression was 23%.
So we have something like that.
We're starting to creep towards that number.
So that's 16 million people out of a job currently.
joe rogan
Well, I don't think we have any idea.
In the economics right now, we're in limbo.
We really are in limbo.
Because how many businesses are going to close because of this?
How many people don't know that they're unemployed but are?
How many businesses are barely hanging on and they might not make it to the end of the year?
And if the economy takes a downturn because of all these people out of jobs, how many businesses that were barely hanging on before and they're still open now are going to be gone in a couple of weeks?
We really don't know.
I mean, how long do you think it's going to take before businesses are up and running again?
I know Wuhan is back up in business again, but there's a lot of criticism about that, and they're also saying they're seeing new cases.
lex fridman
I think it can be sooner than we think if we do the following things.
So one, I'd hate to linger on this.
I'd love to talk to you.
joe rogan
You want to talk about masks again?
lex fridman
Well, it's funny, but I know for a fact you're going to make fun of me just like I'll make fun of you right back for loving fanny packs.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
But just like fanny packs are exceptionally functional to carry on the things you need, masks are required to slow the spread of this infection.
joe rogan
Listen, I'm not an anti-mask person.
lex fridman
And one of the things you have to do is you have to start getting governors, so politicians to wear them.
Are President Trump to wear them?
joe rogan
Well, this is the Boris Johnson question, right?
Because that guy, not only was he not wearing masks, but he was shaking hands.
And he was talking about it pretty openly, and now he's in intensive care.
If he dies, that will be the biggest wake-up call for everyone.
I mean, I hope he doesn't die, but goddamn people are so mean over there.
I don't know his policies.
I don't know.
I haven't been to England in a long time.
I don't know how they feel about him, but fuck people.
Some people hate him.
lex fridman
Oh, like saying things like they would...
joe rogan
They're hoping he dies.
They hope he suffers and dies.
I've read Twitter.
Andrew Doyle.
Andrew Boyle, rather.
The guy who wrote Woke.
Titiana McGrath.
But it was actually his own personal account.
He published some of the tweets that people have written about it.
We don't have to put it up there.
I don't want to up these people's signal, but it's just so heartless.
lex fridman
So, yeah, that's masks, but testing, really, the big one is...
There's three things.
Masks, besides, like, washing hands and social distancing, all that stuff.
Masks, testing, and contact tracing.
joe rogan
Contact tracing.
lex fridman
So, this is great.
Let's talk about this.
First of all, I'm going to keep...
joe rogan
We get it.
Masks.
lex fridman
We don't get it.
We don't get it.
Have you been wearing masks?
You know how weird it is?
Like, societally for us, it's a weird step to take.
I don't know what, it's like an open question, what does it take to do that?
joe rogan
Yeah.
No, it's weird.
lex fridman
It's really weird.
So you can't see the emotional expression of the people.
There's a strange effect to it.
And then the other effect is as an individualistic society, you're wearing the mask not to protect yourself, but to protect others.
And that's a weird thing for us to do.
joe rogan
I don't think people are thinking that.
I think they think they're protecting themselves.
lex fridman
Well, you can sort of delude them or you can tell them the truth.
I mean, there's a nice positive aspect to this.
Me wearing a mask says, I care about not getting you sick.
That's a really powerful social signal for when you're hanging out with people.
joe rogan
I think there's so much ignorance going on, though.
I don't think people wear it.
There's a large percentage of people, this is my assumption, that are wearing that mask that are not wearing it because they think they're going to protect other people.
They're worried about getting it.
lex fridman
Yeah, and I don't think, I mean, this is what the WHO and the CDC, this is where I hate what they're doing, which is sort of there's truth and that there is ideas of how the truth will be misinterpreted by the public, and so you shouldn't tell people the truth.
So there's a kind of sense, like the WHO and CDC have said that masks don't work, for example, or they said that we shouldn't be wearing masks, we should save them for the healthcare workers.
joe rogan
Well, we have to be honest about what the timeline, the WHO, what they've said, they're wrong about so much of it.
They were initially saying that you couldn't transfer it from person to person.
I mean, this was just in the beginning of the year.
I mean, Dan Crenshaw went over the timeline of all the things that were wrong about what the World Health Organization said on the podcast yesterday.
It's terrifying stuff.
And, you know, and obviously newspapers were going off of that information and they were printing misleading stuff as well.
And the president didn't know.
No one knew.
The whole thing is very weird.
If you're going based on what they were saying, it didn't look like it was going to be nearly as bad as it is.
And then everyone has had to make adjustments.
I'm actually...
The one...
I'm so...
I'm so freaked out about the loss of life and the loss of jobs and how people are getting...
It's really weird.
Everything about it is weird.
It's weird in our lifetime to be a part of something that's just affecting the entire world like this.
But...
I've gotten a lot of messages from friends that are quarantined with their families and like we've never been closer and that we realize that we're in this together because we realize that, you know, during these crazy times, you realize what is important.
Love, that silly little word you were talking about.
Love and community and friendship, like my neighbors.
Everyone's so nice.
Everyone's waving now and everyone's like saying hi and, you know, talking from over the side of the yard and how's everything?
You guys alright?
Need anything?
We're right here.
There's a lot of this like comfort and warmth that, you know, I think I experienced a little bit of that post 9-11 where people get shocked.
They get shook up and then they realize what matters, you know.
lex fridman
Yeah, that's one of the things I don't like about masks, is it feels like you're protecting yourself from, like you're removing yourself from the community.
There's that look.
joe rogan
Like, get away from me, dirty people.
lex fridman
Yeah, get away from me, so the germaphobe kind of idea.
That's not what they are supposed to represent, but that's...
I'm sitting here on the signs that says we have to all wear them.
And I'm thinking, like, how's that going to change interactions?
I don't know what to do with that.
joe rogan
You're an MMA fan.
What do you think about the UFC's decision to have fights next weekend?
lex fridman
On an island?
joe rogan
I don't know.
We don't know where it is.
I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing, if I'm going to it or not.
I don't know where it is.
lex fridman
Commentating?
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't know where it is.
I don't even know if it's in America.
I literally right now, as of right now, I don't know shit.
I have no information.
lex fridman
Okay, so first off, it's in an island, like I saw.
joe rogan
Fight Island.
lex fridman
It's literally the storyline of Enter the Dragon.
joe rogan
Yes, Enter the Dragon.
lex fridman
This is like, I don't know who the Bruce Lee is or the Chuck Norris.
joe rogan
Should I get a Chinese Kung Fu outfit and do commentary with a Kung Fu outfit on?
lex fridman
100%.
joe rogan
Would that be culturally appropriating?
No, you know what I'll do?
I'll wear one of them Bruce Lee tracksuits.
That wouldn't be culturally appropriating.
That'd just be fandom.
lex fridman
In a time of coronavirus, you get a cultural appropriation pass, I heard.
To me, I think that's great.
Because...
If it's messaged correctly to show that we are while maintaining sort of social distancing all those kinds of things We're trying to fight to bring our society back.
joe rogan
Okay, let me pause it right there There's no social distancing in a fucking cage fight.
Yeah, okay They're on top of each other sweating each other's mouths There's not gonna be there's gonna be if Tony Ferguson's fighting there's gonna be blood for sure Everybody fights Tony Ferguson looks like they fell off a train So there's gonna be blood The physical distancing you want to avoid is large crowds.
Right.
But one-on-one.
lex fridman
One-on-one.
joe rogan
So what if everybody gets tested?
lex fridman
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
You think that's accessible?
How accessible are tests right now?
lex fridman
So, in America, 0.7% of the population have been tested.
In terms of testing everybody that's not accessible, but in terms of testing special events, yeah.
joe rogan
So that's possible.
lex fridman
Totally accessible.
joe rogan
What do you think they would do if, like, there's a lot of good fights in this card, by the way.
Jarzino Rosenstreich is fighting Ngannou.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, come on.
Ngannou and Rosenstreich, that is a fucking crazy fight.
What if one of those guys tests positive?
What if, you know, what if Justin Gagey tests positive?
The guy was supposed to be fighting Ferguson.
lex fridman
Do you go ahead or not?
Like, obviously you have to ask the opponent if they want to.
unidentified
Yeah.
lex fridman
I'm a little bit Russian.
I would go ahead.
I'll go ahead and...
So my main concern is how will the general public interpret it?
Because you want to do everything you do now should be done in a way that, one, is positive, like inspires us towards the community, and two, gets us to do the right thing scientifically.
I don't know if a COVID-infected person fighting would inspire others to say, oh, if they're doing it, it's okay for me.
joe rogan
Well, I don't think they would allow it.
I have a feeling that if someone did test positive, they would kick them off the card.
lex fridman
Yeah, probably.
joe rogan
I shouldn't say kick them off the card.
I should say remove them from the card.
lex fridman
I take it back.
That's probably the right thing to do.
joe rogan
I would imagine it has to be the right thing to do.
And then you would also have to quarantine the people that worked with him in training camp, and you'd have to test everybody.
lex fridman
Yeah, that's by the way what contact tracing is.
Once you find somebody who's...
unidentified
Got it.
lex fridman
And there's a technology for...
I mean, that's a really interesting infrastructure there.
But I still...
I love the idea that they're pushing forward and doing the fights.
joe rogan
There's a lot of people that are very upset with it.
It's very controversial.
The whole thing's controversial.
lex fridman
Why do you think they're upset?
joe rogan
Because they don't want anybody to do anything out of the norm.
Of social distancing and of quarantining and, you know, we're on lockdown right now.
And for them, look, even Nevada, which relies almost entirely on casino money.
I mean, Vegas at least.
Vegas relies almost entirely on casino money, right?
All the other businesses are so supported by the casinos.
Those casinos are shut the fuck down.
Cannot have the fights in Vegas.
lex fridman
But those are large crowds in physical spaces.
joe rogan
No, I understand that.
lex fridman
We're going to be...
This is going to be a long...
This is not going to be a month.
This is not going to be two months.
joe rogan
How many months do you think this is going to be?
lex fridman
I think before we're back to normal, I think it will be a year.
And in terms of when it's going to reopen the economy, I think it's...
joe rogan
Summer.
lex fridman
Possibly late summer.
joe rogan
Unless there's some sort of an effective remedy that we know for sure.
lex fridman
Definitely, definitely.
Antiviral drugs or vaccine.
joe rogan
Well, vaccine's going to take a long time.
lex fridman
There is some really impressive work on vaccines.
They're accelerating the crap.
It's supposed to take 10, 15 years for a vaccine.
And then they're saying 18 months, obviously.
joe rogan
But that's still a long time.
lex fridman
That's a really long time, but they're doing some impressive fast testing on vaccines.
Obviously, mass-scale vaccines is something you want to be exceptionally careful.
joe rogan
I wonder what they're going to do with the U.S. election.
lex fridman
Malin.
Oh, no, no, no.
I have an idea.
We'll just postpone it until...
I'm just kidding.
joe rogan
Postpone it's not a bad idea.
lex fridman
No, it's a terrible idea.
joe rogan
Oh, one thing I do have to say, because I can't believe this is still going on.
Because there was a big dust-up recently because I said that I wouldn't vote for Biden, that I'd vote for Trump before I voted for Biden.
I just want people to know, first of all, folks.
I'm barely paying attention, okay?
If you're getting your political advice from me, I'm a moron, okay?
I am a comedian slash cage-fighting commentator.
You know how you have friends that don't know much about fighting and they'll say something like, I think Bruce Lee could kick Jon Jones' ass.
Yeah, that's me with politics, okay?
Don't listen to me for political advice.
You want to listen to people for political advice?
Listen to people that are actually paying attention.
Listen to guys who, that's their living, guys like Kyle Kalinske.
Listen to Jimmy Dore.
He does a fantastic job breaking down politics.
He understands it, right?
Listen to the people that, The Hill, watch that show.
It's fantastic.
It's on YouTube.
There's a lot of people.
David Pakman, he understands politics.
I'm not that guy, okay?
But what I am saying is, I don't want to vote for someone that has a mental problem.
He's got dementia.
That's all I'm saying.
My parents called me.
My mom's like, I heard you're a Trump supporter now.
I'm like...
I would never vote for a person who obviously has dementia.
I said I would vote for Trump before I'd vote for Biden.
That's what that means.
You know, and there's been fucking dozens of articles written about this.
I'm like, Jesus Christ.
lex fridman
Trump tweeted.
joe rogan
He tweeted that?
lex fridman
He tweeted a clip of you saying that you're a Trump supporter.
joe rogan
No, he didn't.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
When did this happen?
lex fridman
Like shortly after.
joe rogan
Get the fuck out of here.
lex fridman
I'm pretty sure.
I retweeted or tweeted.
I'm not sure.
joe rogan
That's hilarious.
lex fridman
Yeah.
unidentified
Could have been one of those fakey Donald Trump accounts.
lex fridman
No, I'm pretty sure.
joe rogan
Maybe it was Trump Jr.?
Was it Donald Jr.?
lex fridman
I have a programmatic way of following Twitter and I follow Trump.
joe rogan
Okay, either way.
I just want everybody to know this is all I'm saying is I think the Democrats are making a horrible mistake by putting in a...
He just had another huge stumble yesterday.
The man is ill.
I wish him no ill will.
I'm not a Biden hater.
I just think it's wrong to take a guy that you clearly can tell is struggling.
He's an older guy who's got some sort of a mental breakdown issue.
He's got what appears to be, according to Some experts who have analyzed what he's doing.
It's some form of dementia.
He has a problem maintaining conversations.
lex fridman
That's all I'm saying.
joe rogan
That's all I'm saying, folks.
And also, I'm a fucking comedian slash cage-fighting commentator.
You don't need to come to me for that.
What is this?
Donald J. Trump retweeted.
He-he-he-he-he!
unidentified
Oh!
With an American flag in the background.
lex fridman
Beautiful hair of Eric Weinstein.
joe rogan
This is what, again, this is what I said.
This is what I said.
You shouldn't have that guy.
I would vote for any of the other ones.
Any of them.
Bring them back.
Amy Klobuchar, bring her back.
I'd vote for her before I'd vote for Biden.
I'd vote for Buttigieg.
I'd for sure vote for Tulsi.
I love Tulsi Gabbard.
I'd for sure vote for Bernie.
That's all I'm saying, folks, is you shouldn't have someone who's clearly got something really wrong and just prop him up and weekend at Bernie style and fucking bring him up to the podium.
It's crazy.
lex fridman
Bring back Andrew Yang.
joe rogan
Fuck yeah!
lex fridman
Do you actually know?
joe rogan
I love Andrew Yang.
lex fridman
I was trying to figure out if it's possible to bring back people at this stage.
joe rogan
I don't know.
lex fridman
So much has changed.
COVID changed everything, right?
unidentified
Yes.
lex fridman
You should be able to run stuff back.
joe rogan
Well, what they should be able to do is someone should, I don't know, I think they're just hoping and praying that Biden can hang in there long enough and people's hatred for Trump will get it to the finish line.
And that they could win.
And they can keep him from having these conversations where he stumbles a lot.
But it's not fair to him as a human being.
It's not fair to us that this is their only choice they're giving us.
I mean, there are so many people that were involved in those debates Kamala Harris, bring her back.
Bring them all back.
Bring any of them back.
They would be a way better spokesperson for the Democratic Party.
This is just a terrible idea.
That's all I'm saying.
That's all I did say.
But it's like, I just can't believe that someone like me Has any impact at all in people's political choices?
It doesn't make any sense.
Don't do that.
Rely on people that are paying attention.
Rely on people where that's their job.
Let me hear the new one.
Let's hear the new one.
unidentified
We cannot let this...
joe biden
We've never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around 16. We have never, never let our democracy...
Second fiddle way that we can both have a democracy and elections and at the same time correct the public health.
joe rogan
Well, that's not too bad.
He's just kind of stumbling for his words.
There's been some real bad ones.
But, you know, you got to think he's probably medicated.
They're probably juicing him up to get him to that state of health anyway.
Like, these people are not stupid.
These people that are involved in running his campaign, they're probably giving him IV vitamin drips and doing everything they can to try to get him as healthy as possible to bring him to that state.
It's just not good.
It's not fair.
It's not fair for us.
It's not fair for him.
lex fridman
So, to try to play, because I kind of agree with you.
It's so...
I cringe every time.
joe rogan
It's sad.
lex fridman
But I was, I think, what was it, 2016 when Hillary Clinton ran?
I was...
I like Biden until I hear him talk.
There's something there that he's just not good at.
We keep seeing things like this that are just a little bit off.
And...
To me the question is, so obviously I'm awkward at speaking.
joe rogan
Yeah, but you also speak Russian.
lex fridman
No, I think that there's a brain thing there.
joe rogan
Well, you might be too smart for us.
For regular conversation.
lex fridman
That's a very nice way of putting it.
And he used to stutter.
Do we need our presidential candidates to be eloquent?
Is, to me, an open question.
joe rogan
That's a good point.
lex fridman
Because he might just be...
I would vote for Biden if he just never talked.
unidentified
Yeah.
lex fridman
So, back in the, you know, especially in 2016 and so on, just every time, because he's like a, he's kind of like a blue collar.
He has a story with his son, a vet dying.
I mean, there is so much depth to him as a human being, to his story.
He, obviously, as you've mentioned, he's done quite a few shady things like lying and plagiarizing speeches and That was back in 88 when he was running for president.
Yeah.
I mean, but in terms of his long track record of just being as part of the system, whatever you think about the system, he just knows at a time like this, when you need government to work well, no matter who you are, government needs to work well now.
So you have to ask yourself, who is the person who will make government work well?
Right.
joe rogan
I don't know if it's him.
I don't know who it is.
I don't think it's a good idea to have one person have the kind of power that a president has.
I mean, just imagine you're Donald Trump, right?
You're not just responsible for dealing with international relations with North Korea.
You're also responsible for the environment.
You're also responsible for this COVID-19 outbreak.
You're also responsible.
I mean, you can keep going.
It's crazy to think that one person should have responsibility for all the things that happened to the United States of America.
It's nuts.
lex fridman
Yeah, it's totally crazy.
I think they don't have to be responsible.
So to me, the best for president is to inspire the entire population, just to be a sort of talking head that inspires the world and the United States, and two, hires the best people to take care of each of those things.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
So attract, so inspire the best in the world to come work for him, whether that's military, whether that's the environment on the science side.
And that's how, to me, that's how you should elect a president, is who inspires the best people in the world.
joe rogan
I think you're right.
Yeah, I just think that it's an impossible task for an individual.
And I don't think, I think we should rethink it, but good luck with that.
I mean, the crazy thing about the United States is really, I mean, I had a bit about it, that the United States was founded in 1776. People lived to be 100. That's three people ago.
lex fridman
Three people.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm like this is how recently this is and this is a bit about President Trump about him being elected about how crazy and the bit was about we went from Obama I went from this really intelligent very articulate person and it's like we were involved in a relationship with a really and now we're dating a whore Yeah, it was just this crazy bit that I had about it's like we're on the rebound and we're just in a nutty relationship now.
But I just I don't think anybody should be president.
I just I don't think it's a good position for human beings.
I think it was a great idea when we're tribes, when we're a tribe of a few hundred people or a mayor of, you know, a town.
That's great.
Yeah, mayors make sense.
It makes sense that one person, it's a very stressful job, very difficult, but it seems tenable.
It seems like a mayor can be.
You know, a mayor can really control a city and do a good job.
I just think when you get to the scale of the United States of America, it just seems nuts.
It just seems nuts to have one person run the whole show.
And then also, clearly not, because, you know, you have this gigantic organization behind it that requires all the money from the donors and special interest groups and lobbyists and all these moving pieces are involved to make sure that the people that get in place are going to suit your interests and fulfill your needs.
And it's all going on right now while a fucking pandemic virus is sweeping the entire globe.
It's really weird.
It's a really weird time.
lex fridman
Yeah, and I mean, I wish we could just rerun the whole thing because some of the ideas like Andrew Yang's ideas with universal basic income.
joe rogan
Yes.
Obviously, he's right.
You know, what he said about automation now applies to this virus.
There's people that need money.
Yeah.
And this is where it's really weird.
And I wish I'd brought this up with Dan Crenshaw yesterday.
A lot of Republicans want smaller government, right?
They want less government.
But this is a time where big government is necessary, where you're dealing with something like a pandemic virus.
You're dealing with the situation where you have to look out for the welfare of all these people.
andy stumpf
You have to re-stimulate the economy.
joe rogan
The government has to pour money into it.
This is a time where big government is necessary.
And this is a great argument for balance, right?
This is a great argument for big government.
lex fridman
Well, the goal, I think, for both Republicans and Democrats is effective government.
And then Republicans would say that big government is actually increasing the bureaucracy, not the effectiveness.
So this is the question now with testing.
How do you get at a large scale?
We're at 0.7%.
We need to test half the population.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't know.
Obviously, I don't know.
But I would imagine if tests exist, right?
We have a test.
So what we need to do is figure out a way to ramp that up.
And I'm sure that's being done right now.
We're just not aware of it.
I'm sure that they're trying to figure out a way to get it to everybody.
lex fridman
I mean, some of that is just mass production of testing kits.
So the main tests they're using are molecular-based tests.
There's other ideas.
Like in the artificial intelligence side, there's ideas of how to use CT scans, chest scans, and try to detect the early onset of COVID versus just regular pneumonia.
Because there's a lot of sort of neighboring conditions here, too.
We're still suffering from flu, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, that's the thing I was going to say that some enormous percentage, like 85% of people that come in that are sick are not infected with this because this is flu season.
And the flu so far has killed an extraordinary number of people, which is really weird.
Like, while this is going on, and this is not to diminish the deaths of the people that have died from COVID, because it's all horrible, right?
Anyone that loses a loved one, I, you know, my heart reaches, I ache for all of you.
I feel terrible for anybody who loses someone that they care for, whether it's an old person or a young person to a disease.
It's horrible.
But why is it that we're so terrified of COVID, clearly because it's new, but when the flu is killing more people right now than COVID is, and we're not worried about that at all.
I mean, we should clearly be worried about both things.
And this is, again, it's a great advertisement for strengthening your immune system.
This is a great wake-up call for a lot of people that are unhealthy, that are eating unhealthy and living unhealthy.
Please.
Like, if you value life and it's like, it's so easy to just assume you're always gonna be okay if you're okay now.
You know, this is the sort of mentality that a lot of us go through life with, that everything's fine, now it'll be fine.
And this is where preppers go off the rail the other way, right?
They're like, fuck, the sky's falling, it's all gonna fall apart.
And those people, I'm fascinated to see how they're gonna freak out.
Like, now that this is real, and that, like, it's probably a good idea to have stored food, it's probably a good idea to have a small supply of water that's gonna last you a few weeks, this is all a good idea.
Like, how are those motherfuckers gonna react to this?
lex fridman
Well, they're ready.
What do you mean?
joe rogan
Well, they're going to ramp it up even further because now they're going to be justified.
Like, they were right.
lex fridman
So what you might very well see, especially in the South, is a lot of people have guns, right?
And with coronavirus, you don't want infected people in your town.
So you could very easily see people barricading roads and saying you're not allowed to enter the town.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, you're seeing that in some places where people have vacation homes.
And they're leaving the big city and going to the vacation homes and the people that live in these small communities are freaking out because they don't want these infected people coming into their communities and infecting them.
And they're trying to keep them out of their homes, out of their second homes, which is like, look, you can't keep someone out of a fucking house that they own, okay?
You can't just decide that you're gonna throw the Constitution out the window and these people don't own their own property anymore.
But it gets to this weird state where everybody's in a panic.
lex fridman
So this, to me, is where the president is essential, is to, when people are in a panic, there's so much uncertainty, to inspire the world and sort of take us back to reminding Americans, reminding the world what everyone did in World War II. Yeah.
Sort of the huge things we've overcome as a civilization, that this is one of those cases.
And sort of, as opposed to trying to defend your little corner of this land, seeing us as all together, as a community, and sort of inspire that.
And trying to remove, I think, in terms of winning elections, like if Donald Trump wants to win the election, is just do that.
Because in these times, difficult times, presidents are popular.
And if you just forget the stupid red-blue divide and just inspire the whole country, he'll run away with it.
joe rogan
It's true, but it's hard right now to even have that.
He's kind of...
He's a guy that when someone comes at him, he comes at them harder, you know?
He describes himself as a counter-puncher, right?
Someone hits him, he hits him back even harder.
And the media just can't let him go.
There's a lot of...
There's a lot of currency in attacking him and coming up with a great gotcha moment that gets captured in video and then gets released online.
And so you get all these reporters that have this rare opportunity to talk to him.
We talked about this one lady who just kept being upset that someone in the administration, apparently she said, had referred to it as the Kung Flu.
And he's like, what did you say?
And she said, Kung Fu.
He said, say that again?
Kung Fu.
So she said that.
And he goes, who said that?
She didn't know who.
He was like, someone said it?
Like, you heard someone said it?
Like, is this really your question?
Like, is this really what we're worried about?
Is a joke someone might have made in the middle of a horrendous crisis that they call it the Kung Fu?
Oh, Jesus, let's stop the presses.
First of all, Kung Fu is awesome, okay?
There's nothing wrong with Kung Fu.
Is there anything wrong with saying that?
I mean, look, the flu, it's not a flu.
It's a virus.
It's horrible that it's devastating all these people.
But is it more horrible if you call it kung flu?
Is it so much more horrible that we have to...
I mean, is it that racist?
lex fridman
Well, to me, that's a beautiful moment to say, let's put our shallow...
joe rogan
Let's put this bullshit aside.
lex fridman
Let's put this bullshit aside.
Unfortunately, he was almost there.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
And instead, he made it more like about himself and just didn't...
joe rogan
Well, with that conversation with that lady, I don't think he did.
I think that conversation with that lady was like, who said this?
lex fridman
But that lady represents a large percent of the population full of ridiculous ideas such as that.
And he gets a chance to speak to inspire that part of the population and say, let's put this social justice warrior stuff aside for a brief moment as we fight a thing that threatens the economic well-being of our nation.
joe rogan
Well, you hear very little about transgender people using restrooms right now.
You know, there's a lot of things that you don't hear about.
You don't hear about gender pronouns and a lot of stuff that was so supposedly important just a small amount of time ago, and it's not to diminish the rights and the values of transgender people.
It's just to say, I think a lot of what people were complaining about and The reasons why people were up in arms about things is not just because we have real issues with discrimination, but more so that we don't have real problems.
So we look to amplify problems that might not be nearly as big as they are, or as we would like to think they are.
You know, I mean, when we're dealing with something that's a real life-threatening, a real huge issue, no one gives a fuck about your gender pronouns.
You know, no one gives a fuck if you're a they-them person.
Are you they-them?
Okay, congratulations.
I don't know what to tell you, but we're in the middle of something that is a new disease.
It's killing people and some people it's not killing them at all and they're spreading it around and it's weird.
So we don't have time for nonsense and we're in a lot of ways because society is so I want to say this in the best way possible.
This is the greatest time ever to be alive.
Even now.
Even now with all this craziness.
If you compare the world today with the way we're connected to each other, yeah, there's problems.
There's always gonna be problems.
We're a bunch of fucking weird territorial monkeys.
Living on a planet, you know?
There's gonna be problems.
We're sorting through all these different things out, and there's varying levels of economic disparity, physical disparity, mental disparity.
There's so much difference between all of us.
There's no chance.
For complete total harmony.
It's not going to exist with these territorial apes with thermonuclear weapons.
It's not going to exist, you know?
What's one of the first things that people did when all this happened?
They went out and hoarded toilet paper and bought guns, okay?
That should let you know.
This is what people are all about.
When the shit hits the fan, they want guns and they want to be able to wipe their ass.
And this is what people panicked about.
This is still...
One of the best times ever to be alive.
And the thing that gives me hope is the way I feel in my community and the way I feel with my friends.
I've had so many friends reach out and just say, are you okay?
How's everything?
If you need anything, I'm here.
That's beautiful.
I love that.
I love this feeling of community that we have.
Real community.
It's this like, especially in the stand-up comedy world, There's an incredible sense of community right now.
People are reaching out to help people.
People are donating to people.
People are sending people money.
They're checking in on each other.
And it's like we're appreciating each other.
We're appreciating each other in a way that I think is beautiful.
It makes me sad that it kind of has to coincide with a tragedy sometimes, but we're humans.
Sometimes we need a wake-up call.
We need a little something that lets us know, hey, you know, this is a temporary situation, this life in general.
Everything about it is temporary.
We are finite life forms on a finite planet that's heated by a finite star.
None of this is going to last.
It's gonna last for a long time, but it's not gonna last.
Enjoy this.
Enjoy this and let's enforce and let's encourage good values, healthy values, community values.
We can get through this and be a better country.
I really believe this.
I really believe this.
I think the survivors of this can get through this as long as we can retain these lessons.
It's so easy.
Once something happens and then that thing normalizes and we get back to Air quotes, regular life.
It's so easy to forget the lessons.
But if we can reinforce those, we can remind ourselves of this, we can have these moments, you know, like so many cultures do where they have these religious ceremonies.
You know, I was talking to Eric Weinstein.
We were talking about Jews and they were talking...
What was the fucking...
Was it Passover?
Yes, it's Passover.
And he was talking about how they tell the story every year.
And the reason why they tell the story every year is to remind everybody, to remind people that you're here because others went through some horrendous shit.
And let's thank them, let's praise them, and let's remind ourselves we're very, very fortunate.
And remind ourselves that we're a community.
lex fridman
And the scale of...
World War II did that from where I came from in Russia.
That's where I have my guitar here.
joe rogan
You want to play a song?
lex fridman
Well, maybe.
joe rogan
Come on right now.
lex fridman
Okay.
joe rogan
I'll spark up a joint.
I want to hear this.
lex fridman
But the reason I actually messaged Jamie...
And ask, do you think it's okay if I play a song on Jerry?
joe rogan
Come on, man.
Your poem that you read last time was the shit.
unidentified
Well, but I messaged him without having a song.
joe rogan
You didn't have a song?
lex fridman
No, no.
I was just thinking about...
So I've been reading a lot about World War II recently, before the coronavirus.
And then I found out, I learned about my grandfather, who was at age 17, which actually tells you a lot.
You have to be 18 to be in the army.
And he sort of faked his documents.
That was what everybody did.
Young kids wanted to fight for their country.
It's an interesting kind of story.
They weren't dodging the draft.
Everybody wanted to fight for their country.
At that stage, in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the order from Stalin was that if you get captured, you have to kill yourself.
So there's no surrender.
So you have to...
I mean, that's the spirit that you're fighting with.
And so the only way out is if you're a soldier is death or severe injury.
And in terms of being lucky, I've been thinking about my grandfather a lot.
Who was severely injured.
He was on a machine gun.
He fought actually alongside Mikhail Kalashnikov, AK-47 inventor.
unidentified
Really?
lex fridman
Yeah.
So AK-47 came from World War II. That's a design from there.
And so your job is...
So Germany in the fall of 1941 is marching towards Moscow.
And your job is...
Basically to be a human, just a thing that slows them down long enough to where they don't reach Moscow until winter, which would allow Moscow to defend easier.
So winter is very difficult to fight, even in World War II in Russia.
So your basic job is to slow down the troops.
So you're sitting there with a machine gun, which is exceptionally difficult to carry, and you're just emptying all your bullets.
And so most people are dead.
joe rogan
How heavy is that machine gun?
lex fridman
That was one of the huge criticisms.
There's a particular model, I forget, but most machine guns at the start, they were using basically World War I weapons in World War II. And the machine guns that they were using had this giant metal shield that you hide behind as you're shooting.
And that shield would turn out to be exceptionally heavy.
So it's not something you can carry easily.
So I would venture to say it's probably like 200 pounds, that kind of thing.
joe rogan
Fuck!
lex fridman
Yeah, so you're dragging it, you know, through the mud, through all of that, and while bullets are flying.
joe rogan
That's it right there?
lex fridman
I don't know the exact...
unidentified
Pretty close, probably.
lex fridman
Yeah, probably.
unidentified
Wow.
lex fridman
But you have to look at Soviet Union, where the equipment was not great.
So you're basically throwing human bodies.
And I mean, so I was thinking about how lucky, because I'm alive because the bullets, like he got hurt, his leg, he got hurt in his leg, and I'm alive because he got hurt, because severely where he couldn't continue, because that's the only way out.
And sort of most of his, most of his brothers are dead.
You're talking about 75 million people died in World War II, most of them in Europe, and 50 million of them, 50 million is civilians, so people without a gun.
joe rogan
50 million.
lex fridman
50 million died, and it's different than the virus.
I mean, it's different.
There's something...
joe rogan
Particularly ruthless.
lex fridman
It's something ruthless about war.
But the stories they tell is of brotherhood, as you've known from Jocko and everybody.
The kind of friendship, the kind of connection, it's incredible there.
And this is our little bit of World War II moment.
unidentified
Because it's a global...
joe rogan
Sebastian Younger's book, Tribe.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's a great book on that.
I highly recommend it to people to try to understand why that tribal connection, why the community connection of people that have gone through war is so strong They actually prefer war in a lot of ways, some of them do at least, to being home.
They prefer that camaraderie.
When you're tuning this up, how are you doing this?
I never understood this.
lex fridman
There's a thing...
joe rogan
Jamie thinks it's funny?
Why do you think that's funny?
lex fridman
So you can do it by ear?
But I'm actually kind of scared shitless.
unidentified
Guitar tuning.
joe rogan
Yeah, but I don't know what's going on.
lex fridman
So like this is a low E. E. Okay.
That was out of tune.
A. D. And there's a little mechanism.
You just attach the guitar.
I think it actually doesn't go by audio, but by vibration.
joe rogan
Oh, that thing's telling you if it's correct?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
What is it doing?
What does it look like?
Are you seeing a reading on it or something?
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, that's electronic.
That looks like a little galaxy watch.
lex fridman
And when it hits blue, that's on tune.
unidentified
A, D, G, B, E. Perfect tune.
joe rogan
Oh, that's dope.
lex fridman
Do you know how terrifying this is?
Okay.
joe rogan
Come on, bro.
lex fridman
Come on, bro.
joe rogan
You're a bad motherfucker.
lex fridman
Here's the lyrics.
joe rogan
Here's the lyrics?
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Should I sing along?
lex fridman
No, don't.
Please.
unidentified
Okay.
lex fridman
It's bad enough for me to sing.
Although I do want to play a silly song later on.
joe rogan
Okay.
Is it a weird Al Yankovic song?
lex fridman
No, it has to do with...
joe rogan
He had the best tweet about this.
Did you read that?
He goes, we're all Howie Mandel now.
Imagine how Howie Mandel is, right?
He's probably completely freaked out.
We should probably get him in right after it's over.
What's this song about?
lex fridman
About my grandfather, about the time we're in, about Love.
joe rogan
Did you write this song?
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Okay.
lex fridman
Oh, okay.
Oh, the other thing is, I'm a huge Hendrix fan.
So I wanted to play, like last time I chickened out, I wanted to play Hendrix.
You know, Hey Joe or Voodoo Child or, you know...
But your videos get taken down, as I've learned now.
They don't get taken down, it's revenue sharing.
joe rogan
Well, someone tries to steal your money with that, with the music part.
Yeah, we did that with when Gary Clark Jr. sang that Almond Brothers song with Suzanne Santo, which was crazy.
They sang Midnight Rider.
They did a version of it that's so different than the original, but they're like, fuck you, pay me.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Crazy.
lex fridman
So you can't even do your own...
unidentified
Mechanical licensing.
joe rogan
Mechanical licensing.
Yeah.
lex fridman
And a lot of it is automated, actually.
Oh, I don't know.
joe rogan
I've said this before.
One of the things I love about music is I have zero talent.
I have none.
I don't know how to play anything.
That's why, like, Jamie thinks it's funny.
I don't know what tuning is.
I love things that I don't know nothing about.
And I know that there's a rabbit hole of learning music that, like, did you ever see the movie Groundhog Day?
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Great movie.
lex fridman
Great.
joe rogan
Saw it last night.
We have family night.
We're watching movies.
lex fridman
You're going like old school movies.
Like I saw you watching Adam Sandler or something.
joe rogan
I'm an Adam Sandler junkie right now.
I've watched them all.
Dude, his fucking movies are so overrated.
It's insane.
lex fridman
Underrated.
joe rogan
Say over?
Yeah, I'm saying that a lot.
Underrated.
unidentified
At least you got the names right of the movies.
joe rogan
Yeah, I got the names right.
I saw the Bert Kreischer thing.
Excuse me.
His movies are so fucking underrated.
They're amazing.
Look, the fucking Zohan, Don't Mess With the Zohan is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.
I was crying laughing in the movie.
He just goes for it.
These movies are so silly.
They're so good.
lex fridman
But his serious movies are really good.
Like his latest one is really good too.
joe rogan
I heard it's amazing.
I haven't had a chance to see it.
Uncut gems.
But anyway, in Groundhog Day, which is a Bill Murray movie, different thing, but another old school movie from like 90-something, Bill Murray lives the same life over and over again.
unidentified
And...
joe rogan
No matter what he does, kills himself, keeps waking up, same guy over and over again.
But he learns how to play the piano because he's like, fuck it, I should just learn a bunch of things.
And so by the end of the movie, spoiler alert, I mean, it's a fucking 30-year-old movie, but he knows how to play the piano.
He knows how to do a million different things.
And I remember thinking, like, that is really almost what it takes To be an adult and learn how to play the piano, you must have an unlimited amount of time because to delve into music, to really learn how to play...
Like if you're a Hendrix fan, I'm a huge Hendrix fan, right?
That's the reason why this podcast is named The Joe Rogan Experience.
I stole the name from Hendrix.
But the idea of me learning how to play guitar, being a Hendrix fan, trying to be as good as Hendrix, or trying to mimic what he...
That's too much.
That's too far.
I'm like, you're walking to the sun.
That's too far.
matthew yglesias
You're never going to get there.
joe rogan
You know how much time...
That's how I look at it.
I look at it like it's an impossible time hog.
lex fridman
Well, let's see if you can comment on this.
Because for me, people ask me about guitar.
Like, how the hell do you...
Because I do like...
You know, I'm a scientist that's doing stuff.
Like, how do you have time for the guitar?
And the way I've learned guitar...
And I won't show off the things I could do today.
I'll just show off my terrible voice.
Is to practice...
Every day for, I would say about five years to practice for like 30 minutes a day.
So you just have to, you shouldn't look, I mean you know this, you shouldn't look how far to go to learn Hendrix.
joe rogan
Right.
lex fridman
Because Hendrix particularly is exceptionally easy scales and chords.
You can learn in a day everything he uses.
And then just slowly practice.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
Because he uses the basic blues scale.
He's a basic blues musician.
How dare you?
Well, it's like a lot of comedians, they're basic comedians, but they master the timing.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think fundamentals is a word that doesn't offend people that means the same thing.
In jujitsu, you're a jujitsu black belt, you understand.
That's a thing that for whatever reason is, it's bothered so many people that Vinnie Magalesh was talking about Minotauro.
They were on the Ultimate Fighter together.
Minotaur was one of the coaches and Vinny Magaless was working with someone else and he was saying that Nogueira, who's Minotaur Nogueira, who's a legend.
I mean just a fucking legend.
When he was in his prime, man, he's one of my all-time favorite fighters ever.
His fight with Bob Sapp was probably one of the most legendary fights in all of mixed martial arts and one of the best examples of technique over brawn.
I mean, and he's an unbelievably tough guy.
Minotaur was just an all-time great, but Magalesh, who's a legit world champion, Vinny Magalesh, was talking about Minotaro's jiu-jitsu game, and he said it's very basic.
But Minotaro got offended by that.
It was really upset at him.
But he tried to say, like, I didn't, and I've talked to him about it personally, he's like, I didn't mean it in a bad way.
He took it in a bad way, but I was just saying it's the basics.
It's like, he does arm bars, triangles, rear naked chokes, guillotines, but it's like razor sharp.
Hodger Gracie is a great example of that.
Crone, Crone Gracie is a great example of that.
Fundamentals just sharpen to a fucking razor's edge where they just have the perfect guard pass, but standard guard passes, right?
The perfect rear naked choke, the perfect triangle choke.
They just know those values.
Fundamentals that you get taught when you're a blue belt, but they have them down to just the most refined way possible.
So that's basics in jujitsu.
It gets discussed like that.
And some people, for whatever reason, they get sensitive about it.
lex fridman
And even the modern guys, even Gordon Ryan and all the Donaher death squad people, they have actually very fundamental jiu-jitsu.
joe rogan
Oh, unquestionably.
They have those techniques for sure.
The difference between the Donaher people...
There's two differences.
One, they have a phenomenally dedicated group of people that have come out of Henzo's because Henzo is an amazing guy and he fostered an incredible sense of community.
Also, he's legacy.
I mean, Henzo's Henzo Gracie.
andy stumpf
He's a legend.
joe rogan
And he comes from the most famous family in the history of martial arts.
And he is easily one of the nicest and friendliest ones of that incredible family.
So he's got this gem that's just filled with all these people that are, first of all, honored to be there to train with a legend in a legend school.
And two, they all have this incredible sense of community because of Henzo and because of the people that Henzo has taught there.
And then you have Donaher.
Who's this wizard?
This New Zealand fucking psychopathic genius character.
He's awesome!
lex fridman
He finds the system behind everything, which is amazing.
I mean, listening to him talk, he's a modern-day philosopher warrior.
joe rogan
He's a different thing, man.
He's a different thing.
Donaher's a different thing.
And he's a mean genius, you know?
And he breaks jujitsu down.
And I say mean genius, only compliments.
Only compliments, I'm saying.
I mean, he knows how to teach you how to fuck people up, man.
And he does it in an incredibly scientific, systematic way.
The way he makes his system and how these guys can progress from being a beginner to just a few years later being able to tap really high-level black belts is sensational.
lex fridman
And that's what people, the reason I brought them up is people often don't think of footlocks or the lower half of the body as a part of the basics, quote unquote.
But I think Donahar is one of the people who, with Dean Lister and so on, who helped discover the basics of footlocks.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a famous quote from Lister.
Why would you ignore 50% of the body?
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
And Donagher talked about it on my podcast and he's like, why would you?
You see that fucking genius brain spinning?
lex fridman
That was the greatest podcast ever.
joe rogan
I enjoyed the shit out of it.
lex fridman
He was correcting your flawed breakdown of different fights.
It was great.
joe rogan
I love his breakdown also of Gordon Ryan versus Cyborg.
That was very, very interesting.
Very, very interesting, because that was a big moment.
When Gordon Ryan tapped Cyborg, everybody was like, whoa, holy shit.
Like, people knew he was for real.
It wasn't like people were doubting he was an amazing grappler.
But when he pretty easily tapped Cyborg, it was a real wake-up call for a lot of folks.
lex fridman
Yes, but on the point of basics, it's interesting when compared to music, this is what's mysterious to me about watching Jiu Jitsu, watching Haja Gracie, is you watch him do basics and destroy some of the greatest black belts ever.
But I can't see...
I can't see what he's doing, actually.
So when you roll, I rolled with Salo Hibero and Shanji Hibero.
joe rogan
Both guys, another example of that style.
Crushing pressure passes, too.
Their top game is just fucking horrendous.
lex fridman
But they're doing the same stuff I do, but it feels different.
And only by feeling it do I discover it.
The cool thing about music is I can actually, it's more, it reveals itself clearer by, you can hear the difference between Hendrix, like Stevie Ray Vaughan playing a bend.
Like I played Comfortably Numb, a cover of Comfortably Numb, and I put up a video.
And a bunch of people were like, your bends are not quite like David Gilmour.
The way you bend this, you know.
Yeah, that sound, that special sound, the Gary Clark Jr. sound, the Stevie Ray Vaughan sound, the Jimi Hendrix sound.
They're playing some basic shit.
I know how to play all of it.
One of the first things I learned is Texas Flood by Stevie Ray Vaughan.
I know how to play it, but there's got to be a soul in there that requires decades of playing the same stupid bends.
And then also dating a few questionable women, having an alcohol problem, drugs, all of that's in there.
joe rogan
Isn't that interesting that it is in there?
lex fridman
Yeah, so that and the same with jiu-jitsu.
In order to do that X-joke from Mount that Hadjir does, there's something in there.
Like he's been through some wars in order to achieve that brilliant simplicity.
joe rogan
No doubt.
Yeah.
There's a thing about music too that it seems that there's a big difference between doing it Figuring you like paint trying to keep track of what the chords are and what the notes are and Someone who knows knows they know know they get their deep in it So there's no wondering whether or not they can play it It's just simply an expression of mood in the midst of playing it that you get from like Some of Stevie Ray Vaughan shit is a good example that he
had a very bluesy moody version of guitar playing you know like some of his stuff like you could you could you could feel like pain in it you know you could feel pain and some of some of his course along with his voice too right he had that live hard voice Yeah, but it was a more of aggressive kind of pain.
lex fridman
If you look at like a B.B. King, that's more blues.
There's this like soulful, like mellow pain and the thrill is gone.
joe rogan
Yes, yes, yes.
lex fridman
And all of it's the same stupid bends.
It's all the same music, but they, yeah, achieving that.
I mean...
But the whole point of guitar or music is to discover your own sound.
joe rogan
Did you see that...
I mean...
When you say your own song...
I was going to show you something.
When you say your own sound...
Is it a combination of a bunch of other people's sounds that you've kind of put together and adopted as your own sound?
Is it the classic sounds that you've reworked to become your own?
Like what is your own sound as a musician?
lex fridman
I think it's probably similar to comedy.
Your own sound is discovered only once you get technically just good enough to mimic others and then you can just put all the technical bullshit aside And be good enough to try to hear your own voice.
So when I played the David Gilmour solo for Comfortably Numb, it doesn't feel like me, to me.
joe rogan
Does it not feel like you?
Do you because you feel like you're imitating somebody?
Or you're just trying to do the music?
You're not feeling it?
lex fridman
No, no.
I'm feeling it.
I'm feeling it.
But I feel like I'm visiting a good friend.
I feel like it's not home.
And that's something you develop over time.
There is a home.
There is a something...
joe rogan
That's a great way of putting it, visiting a good friend.
lex fridman
And I think the early days, I really want to make clear, because this is embarrassing, I'm not playing guitar enough these days to be impressive, so...
unidentified
Don't!
joe rogan
Get out of your own head.
Get out of your own head.
Dude, I love acoustic music.
I posted, when Bill Withers died, I posted Ain't No Sunshine, the acoustic version.
Goddamn!
Goddamn that was good.
That fucking acoustic version.
You know, I started...
It's so sad when someone dies.
You, um...
That's when you really get into them.
I've been on this crazy Bill Withers kick for the past couple days since he died.
That Use Me song?
Goddamn, is that a good song?
lex fridman
I don't know that one.
joe rogan
Oh, I wish we could play it.
I wish we could play it.
God, after the show, I'll play it for you.
Fuck.
There's so much of his stuff.
You know, it just makes you want to close your eyes and rock your head back and forth, you know?
It's just...
And when a guy dies, you go, Oh, yeah!
Oh, Grandma's hands!
Oh, yeah!
lex fridman
Yeah, Grandma's hands.
joe rogan
Oh, Lean on me!
Oh, shit!
You know?
lex fridman
That's one of the things I did, you know, self-isolation now, is for the first time in a long time, this will sound weird, is I actually like laid in bed and listened to music for like, just listen.
Maybe a lot of people do this.
I don't usually do it.
Usually I'm doing something else.
I actually like laid there for the explicit purpose of just listening.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
It's kind of, it's amazing.
It's an amazing experience.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's some real value in that.
And we just put music on while we do other shit.
lex fridman
Like working out and stuff.
joe rogan
You know who's really into that just listening to music is Henry Rollins.
When I did the podcast with him, he really improved.
Did we do two?
We did two, right?
Was Rollins on twice?
Anyway, maybe.
I think he was.
I love him.
lex fridman
It's like giant speakers or something.
joe rogan
Well, he has these crazy fucking...
Yes, he was.
Thank you.
He's got speakers that are worth like a quarter of a million dollars or something preposterous.
He's dumped all of his money in his speakers.
He said, I fucking love him.
He's so unique.
And he just picks out a record and he treats these records and the creation of these records with reverence, right?
And it's really interesting to me because he's a guy who became famous as a musician.
And doesn't even do music anymore.
He basically does spoken word.
He does like his version of like kind of stand up and he's always writing.
He's very inspirational in terms of his work ethic.
He's always writing.
He writes constantly for a bunch of different publications weekly.
And then he also puts together a radio show every week.
So he puts together a playlist and he puts it on the radio and he narrates it and talks through it and guides people through his musical selections.
But he'll just sit there.
And that was like, listening to him talk about that was one of the first times I've ever actually considered like, oh yeah, there's like real value in just sitting down and just listening to music.
lex fridman
And one of the things that worries me about Henry is, so he's not, I don't think, married and doesn't have family.
While that life seems appealing, I was, because I'm in danger of going that direction.
joe rogan
How old are you?
36. Come on, man, you're fine.
lex fridman
No, but I love so many things about this world, just like Henry, right?
unidentified
Right.
lex fridman
That it's easy to let life slip away.
Yes.
It's a funny thing.
Because taken in one way, family and kids and wife is a kind of distraction.
It's just yet another passion in a sea of passions.
It can often just be a distraction.
But at the same time, The ability to share that over a long life, to share your passions, seems to be...
Like, everything I've seen, I don't have the experience, right?
But everything I've seen, it is a profound additive...
It's a profound thing to be able to share your passions with others close to you.
I guess that doesn't have to be family.
joe rogan
It is that, but...
There's something different on top of that.
My friend Ray, Ray who goes by, what is he called?
unidentified
Ragunoff?
joe rogan
How do you say it?
His name is Ray Capo.
He said something to me once when we were both really young, more than 10 years ago, probably when I was training with him, probably 2013, like 15, 16 years ago, maybe even 17 years ago, somewhere around that range.
But we were younger and he was talking about children and having children.
That for him it was there was part of it that was for his own personal edification Like he thought of children as being important for his own like growth as a human and you know raise of deeply spiritual guys a yoga teacher and he's like And I never thought of it that way.
I was like you look at it like for your own and I'm like, okay and I think As a man and in raising these little girls and seeing these daughters grow up and for sure I've learned a lot about human beings.
But also, I learned a lot myself about my perception of humans, of babies to people.
And I've talked about this on stage briefly, but it's too weird to sort of articulate in a joke.
I used to always think of people as being a static thing.
Like I'd see a guy and he's a 55-year-old, you know, truck driver.
And I would think that guy has always been that guy.
unidentified
And now I go, oh, you used to be a baby.
joe rogan
Like, I knew.
Like, if you asked me, hey, was this guy ever a baby?
I would say, well, of course he was a baby.
But I had never intellectualized it.
I never looked at it.
And it instantly gave me so much more compassion and so much more, like...
Acceptance of people, like a relaxed acceptance, like a forgiveness of a lot of stupid shit that people do and have done.
I almost immediately, in raising kids, shifted that and thought, oh, you guys just got fucked over.
You meet an asshole, you're like, oh, your dad was probably a piece of shit.
And you probably grew up in a terrible neighborhood.
And you're probably, you know, ruined by your older brothers who are assholes.
And maybe you lived in a neighborhood where kids were stealing from you and beating you up.
Fuck!
Like, that's how you get to be this guy.
You don't get to be this guy because you just choose to be a piece of shit.
You know, that's not what happens to people.
You become something from your circumstances, your genetics.
There's so much involved in who you are.
And we, I don't think there's any, there's not much value in being mad at someone for who they are.
You know, you could kind of be mad at the impact that it has on your life, their stupidity, and we're all, you know, justified in doing that.
But I think one of the things about having children of your own is you realize when you see someone who's a mess, like, okay, I kind of see, I understand how that can happen now.
It was before I would just be mad that it's there.
lex fridman
It's kind of amazing, though, that...
A lot of us, I mean, at least for me, you remain, from the self, from the ego perspective, you remain the same person.
Like, there's a lot of parts of me that it's still, like, sometimes I feel like I'm the same 12-year-old kid.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
lex fridman
And especially when there's trauma, then that stuff gets stuck, right?
Like, you had Eric Weinstein on, right, a couple days ago.
He just released this...
I'm plugging theoretical physics, right?
His Geometric Unity lecture.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
And that's something he's been holding on for more than 30 years.
And there's been a lot of...
That's something that's been occupying his mind space.
He's just a 20-year-old kid releasing this now.
That's why it's such a liberating step.
And for a lot of us, it's...
I'm the same.
Probably this guitar is the same 12-year-old, 13-year-old kid who fell in love with music, and the same just goes to everything else.
How old do you feel?
joe rogan
When I'm talking to my mom, I feel like I'm like 15. 15?
Yeah, for real.
lex fridman
You sound different?
joe rogan
No, I sound the same, because I always sound like a 15-year-old.
lex fridman
Well played.
joe rogan
Yeah, true.
I feel like my mom's kid.
You know?
I talk to her now.
It's like they're real worried about this stuff.
They're real worried about coronavirus.
lex fridman
How is she?
Society-wide or just individual?
She's like literally...
joe rogan
She's worried about it physically.
You know, she's a woman in her 70s.
It's just, you know, my stepdad too.
It's like, their feelings are justified.
It's dangerous.
It's dangerous for them.
It's different than it is for us, you know?
And even for us, it's not universally gonna be okay.
There's people that are very young that have had serious complications and even have died.
Guys in their early 30s, dead.
So, you know, everybody's a little weirded out, but when I talk to my mom, I always feel Like I felt when I lived in the house.
I don't know if you ever experienced this, but one of the things that I experienced is when I went back home, when I went back to Newton.
I grew up in Newton, Upper Falls.
When I went back, when I was a grown man with a television show, I was on TV, I felt like a loser.
Still felt like a loser.
I'd go back to that town and I feel like I felt, when I was in high school there, I felt like an outcast and I felt like a weirdo and I felt like a loser.
And so I'd go back there and all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I'm a loser.
I gotta get out of here.
There's like a part of you, I mean, I went back again with my family a few years back and I didn't have that feeling anymore.
But then you were the father of That helped too, but it's also a lot of thinking, you know, years and years and years of thinking and years of trying to appreciate all the things you've learned and process them correctly.
Do your best to have the best, most balanced perspective on what this all is.
So then when I was going back, I was just...
Really what I was tripping out more than anything is about the concept of memories, you know, because I have this weird database where I can go to this strange part of the planet Earth, this weird patch of land known as Newton Upper Falls, and I can go.
And it was surprisingly rural.
That was what was really weird.
I kind of remembered it, but then I didn't...
My wife grew up in a terrible neighborhood.
And when we went together, she grew up in a really just crime-ridden when she was really young.
And so when I took her to where I was like, you grew up easy.
This is nothing.
We were laughing about it.
But it was a lot of fields.
The Charles River was right behind my house.
I could go right across the street and hang out in the Charles River.
A lot of woods.
There was a lot of rural shit there that I kind of forgot about.
lex fridman
But it's a kind of time travel, just going back there.
joe rogan
It is.
It's also like you're accessing files.
Like, I stood in front of my old house, and I'm accessing these files.
I'm like, whoa.
And I remember there's stairs that I always...
There's these stairs that lead up...
I lived next to a place called Echo Bridge.
Echo Bridge is kind of a famous landmark, because you can go under Echo Bridge and yell, and Echo Bridge echoes, and has this crazy, like, thing.
And so we'd get drunk and go into there and sing Billy Squire songs, like...
unidentified
Lonely is a night when you find yourself alone.
joe rogan
That was my, you know, 1980s style high school experience.
But going back there as a grown man, you know, and then...
And a grown man who's at least gained some Grasp of perspective, you know, I was in my 40s at the time and Wandering around this town.
It just was very interesting to to This the concept of memory was very stunning to me the concept of Accessing all these different moments where I'm thinking about different times in my life I was in these different areas and different things happen and interacted with people and I can kind of pull those up and then so it's a memory is such a strange thing man It's so strange because we all know it's flawed.
We all know it's filled with holes.
It's it's like a terrible representation of reality like if you bought memory and Like if you said, you know, hey, I'm gonna get a memory.
This guy was, he fucking won the Heisman in college and I'm gonna download his memories.
It should be awesome.
You get that guy's memories like this is nothing.
You barely remember anything.
You have a slideshow and a narrative.
You have a weird blurry slideshow that you can kind of play in the back of your head and then you have a narrative of how it all went down.
lex fridman
But that narrative, I mean, it's terrible in terms of accuracy, but in terms of its power and influence on your life is amazing.
joe rogan
Oh, undeniable.
Yeah.
Undeniable.
But, you know, pro and con, right?
lex fridman
That's what psychiatry is about, is rewriting narratives that are the cons.
joe rogan
Yeah, exactly.
Sure.
And perspectives about that, too.
That's where psychedelic drugs come in play, too.
lex fridman
Psychedelic, too, yeah.
And, yeah, I still feel like a loser when I go back to my parents.
I become a 13. It's so weird!
I find myself, like, defending, like, basically saying, you know, Mom and Dad, I'm not a loser.
unidentified
Like, I'm trying to justify...
joe rogan
Well, how about all these poor people that have to move back in with their parents because they lose their house because of this fucking crisis?
lex fridman
And maybe lose their dream if they're doing a small business.
joe rogan
Yeah, how many restaurants are going under right now?
lex fridman
I mean, it might be more than 50% of small businesses.
joe rogan
Goddamn.
lex fridman
And I don't think we've felt the pain.
There's people suffering right now quietly.
And we haven't seen...
joe rogan
It's so weird.
It's such a crazy subject because I could feel the opportunities for people to get outraged at us even talking about it.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
In this sort of speculative way that we're doing like now, like how many people are gonna like it's almost like people could think that it's not it doesn't give enough respect to the enormity of the moment because it's so so scary for all of us We're all in the middle of this shit right now, man.
It's fucking crazy.
This is the craziest time I've ever experienced being alive.
Driving down the streets in LA and there's no one on the road.
You know, drive to a grocery store.
There's fucking no one out there.
There's people headed to hardware stores and grocery stores.
Or gun stores.
lex fridman
It just feels...
One of the unfortunate things is it feels like we don't know what's happening out there.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's new.
But here's the good thing.
This is one thing that I want to crack home to people.
It is not good that all these people are out of work, but look at how much compliance we have when we know we have to work together to save lives.
lex fridman
Yeah, that's amazing.
joe rogan
Yes.
It's not like all these bars are like, fuck you, we're open.
It's not like people are just flooding the streets.
I mean, you had a bunch of young people that are having spring break that got in trouble and people were mad at them.
You gotta realize these are 18-year-old people.
Their fucking brains aren't even formed.
Their brains are mush.
You can't fault them.
You would be doing the exact same thing.
We would all be doing the exact same thing.
These are children.
But for the adults, It's kind of incredible.
They shut everything down.
They really did.
It's shut down.
Everybody shut down.
You do a few things, you go home, and everybody settles.
There's not this mass traveling and constant interaction with people, this swarm of interactions that could lead to the spread of a virus.
Instead, there's Pretty fucking incredible levels of compliance.
If you look at the United States overall, you look at this human race that's stuck on this continent together.
Overall, there is a stunning level of compliance that I think is beautiful.
I think it's beautiful.
I think it's people realizing, okay, it's time to realize that some shit has actually happened, and we've got to band together, and we've got to figure this out.
And you got the usual suspects, conspiracy theories and 5G and fucking, they just pulled the David Icke interview.
David Icke did an interview with London Real.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
I don't know what he said.
I didn't watch it.
I watched a small clip of it.
It's something to put up.
I wanted to see what kind of wackiness he was saying.
You know, he's a guy who thinks that all the elites are lizard people.
unidentified
Do you know that?
lex fridman
No, no.
I never fully investigated that.
joe rogan
He's a conspiracy guy.
I don't know if he goes into the lizard people shit anymore, but he used to think they were literally like Transformers.
Like they were transforming to lizard people behind closed doors.
Well, YouTube took his video down, which I found very interesting.
lex fridman
The London Real conversation?
joe rogan
Yes, they deleted it.
Yeah, YouTube pulled it.
So, the question is, like, when it comes to these kind of, like, there's so many wacky theories that are online, right, about everything.
It's craziness, right, about virtually everything.
At what point in time do these media companies have a responsibility to pull that stuff down?
And how do they decide?
How do they know who's right and who's wrong?
I'm not saying he's right.
I don't even know what he said.
But how do they make the distinction that what he's saying is incorrect?
There's so much incorrect shit that's online.
Are you going to pull all that too?
Is it just because it's COVID-19?
Is it because it's a global pandemic and we need to make sure that the right information gets out there?
lex fridman
Yeah.
So having talked to YouTube engineers and execs, they kind of have these policies.
There's these quote-unquote policies, right?
So you want to remain science-based, fact-based.
You want to avoid conspiracy theories and so on.
Which to me always feels...
Okay, a lot of people agree with that policy.
Even conspiracy theorists agree with it in the sense that let's remove lies and keep only the truth on our platform.
But the point is, how open-minded are you to what the truth is?
Right.
joe rogan
Let's get to something that's like a universally accepted story.
Well, not universally accepted, but universally recognized story.
The Kennedy assassination.
Universally understood.
What I mean is it's a story that everybody knows.
And the story is questioned.
Almost universal.
Here's a better one.
Epstein.
Epstein's killer.
That's one.
Nobody thinks that that guy hung himself.
No one.
How about that guy?
So if you have various theories or various stories that people come out and talk about with that one, Yeah, and I just actually, yesterday, listened to Eric Weinstein's solo podcast on Jeffrey Epstein.
lex fridman
I don't know if you've caught it.
He talks about his kind of conspiracy view of it.
joe rogan
I wish I was there when he met him.
That would have been fascinating to see.
Eric is too smart.
He's almost like too smart.
He's one of those guys you talk to him like, oh, you poor bastard.
You're burdened.
You're burdened trying to make sense of the world around apes, you know?
lex fridman
And all the trauma of, like we were talking about, he's still also the 13, the 20-year-old kid.
So he's seeing, he had a few run-ins with authority, which makes him suspicious of authority.
And I think our life experience defines that.
So you can see Epstein in a lot of different ways depending on how you've experienced life.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
lex fridman
If you were there...
I can tell you...
Very nice.
joe rogan
A little CBD kill cliff on your...
lex fridman
I like it.
I know actually quite a lot of people that have met Epstein.
joe rogan
Do you really?
Yeah, because you're in the scientific community, right?
lex fridman
Yeah, and especially at MIT. He was a big donor.
joe rogan
He tainted a lot of people's reputations by knowing him in a weird way.
lex fridman
Basically, if you took a picture with him, your reputation is tainted.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, whether you knew him or not.
lex fridman
But I think...
I do think that, outside of conspiracy theories, that he was an exceptionally charming person.
So he was good, you know...
joe rogan
At charming people, you mean?
lex fridman
At charming people.
Yeah, and I don't mean to make it sound...
joe rogan
Yeah, I know what you're saying.
lex fridman
Positive or negative, it is what it is.
The devil is gonna be charming, so...
joe rogan
Right, right.
lex fridman
And the other thing is he genuinely showed curiosity Towards scientific ideas, even out there, big scientific, especially...
joe rogan
What do you think that was, though?
Have you ever thought about that?
Do you think that it's possible that...
Look, I mean, if you just look at it from a perspective of the big theory, the big theory, right, is that he's some sort of a intelligence operative, right?
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
So if he's an intelligence operative, Don't you think it's part of his job to try to infiltrate these scientific communities?
I mean, there must have been a directive.
If he really is an intelligence operative, it's not like they're like, hey, go pursue your interest.
Hey, I hear you have a really big love of science.
Just feel free to do that on the side.
No, what the fuck was he doing?
If he's an intelligence operative, what is the intelligence of having sex with underage girls?
It can't be that.
lex fridman
Well, the idea that Eric pushes forward...
By the way, I'm talking to him on the podcast I do tomorrow, which is why I'm talking about him a lot.
So I've been preparing for like a three-hour conversation with Eric Weinstein, which will kill most...
joe rogan
Have you met him before?
lex fridman
Yeah, yeah.
I already did a podcast once.
And I've met him and I hung out with him and you and at the Comedy Store.
joe rogan
Oh, that's right.
That's right.
lex fridman
But it's always an overwhelmingly intense experience intellectually.
And in a podcast form, you have to call people out on their bullshit, which is very hard to do with Eric Weinstein.
joe rogan
Yeah, that theory, boy, I checked out 10 minutes into that theory.
lex fridman
Oh, the geometric theory?
joe rogan
Yeah, and I tried to go back to it and listen to it again.
I'm like, while he was talking, I'm like, okay, I'm so far behind here of what he's, I'm just gonna, like, try to keep up, but recognize that I'm not going to, and then go back.
And then listen to it again.
lex fridman
Well, he hates putting stuff into words simply.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
He's like allergic to saying simple stuff because it's not beautiful and witty.
So he always like drenches everything in humor and wit and this like beautiful language.
joe rogan
Well, he talks to the initiated.
When he's describing complex things, he describes them to people that understand complex things.
lex fridman
No, but it's also, I mean, this is the criticism I have, this is what I'm going to nail tomorrow and always tell him, is he almost, he hates explaining the basics of something.
He just skips ahead, right?
Even for the initiated, it's nice to go to the basics to explain, like, what are the ground we're standing on.
He skips right into the depth of things, which is beautiful, but sometimes requires you to listen.
joe rogan
Again, he's too smart.
He's hanging out with apes like me.
lex fridman
But he, on Epstein, he thinks that, yeah, his arm, it's possible that Epstein is, sorry, what was the term you used, of the intelligence?
joe rogan
Intelligence community?
Is it operative?
Operative of the intelligence community, but the the pedophile thing is a mess up on the part of the intelligent so they didn't know they didn't know so well it could it could also be That he felt like he get me remember when this is all started out when he started out doing that It was all before social media, right?
So he probably thought that he had this incredible amount of power because of the fact that he was connected by the intelligence community, if he was.
He probably thought he could get away with it.
lex fridman
Makes you wonder of all the horrible things that happened in this world before social media, before the spread of information was possible.
joe rogan
Oh, craziness.
Just sheer craziness, you know?
And it's like, how about the Catholic Church?
lex fridman
Still might be going on, right?
joe rogan
It's 100% going on.
It's not like, hey guys, the fucking heat's too hot.
Let's stop fucking kids.
No, they're still getting away with it somehow or another.
You know, the Vatican is still its own country.
You know that, right?
It's sort of recognized as a country.
They have their own laws.
They don't extradite people.
So there's a bunch of sex criminals that live in the Vatican.
And there was a recent thing with Australia where they acquitted some, I believe it was a cardinal, that was accused of sex crimes with children.
It's awful, man.
The idea that that one church is so connected to that.
Like, there's not another church you go, oh, kid fuckers.
Catholic Church, kid fuckers.
They're like that.
They go hand in hand.
You don't, there's nothing like that with, like, Mormons.
There's nothing like that with Presbyterians.
But the Catholic Church is, like, inexorably connected to child molesters.
That is fucking crazy.
And that we all know that they have shielded these people and moved these people around.
There's been horrendous documentaries that if you watch them, your jaw drops.
You can't believe it.
Did you ever hear No Evil?
Did you ever watch that documentary?
lex fridman
That's not the one where the Boston Globe...
joe rogan
I don't know.
lex fridman
The one that won the Oscar.
joe rogan
I don't know if that was...
lex fridman
A documentary, sorry.
joe rogan
It was a documentary.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
No, it was all about this...
Well, there's a bunch of them.
I mean, I don't even want to get into depth about it because I get disgusted.
There's quite a few documentaries about sex crimes in the Catholic Church, and one of the more horrendous crimes involved that guy Ratzinger that they had to kick out as a pope.
You know, that guy was personally responsible for moving a priest who was molesting kids, moved him to a new place where he molested 100 deaf kids.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Just imagine.
Just imagine that you could be, that that person can exist inside the structure of the Catholic religion or the Catholic Church.
And that doesn't mean they're all like that.
I mean, I'm sure there's a large amount of beautiful people that are involved in the Catholic Church.
You know, there's probably a large amount of people that really only want to do the work of God and become a better person, and that's why they're in it.
But You also can't deny that this is a thing that exists.
And even in 2020, this is still an issue.
It's crazy, man.
lex fridman
And one of those issues, just like influenza, that we've accepted as a thing that...
joe rogan
Yes.
lex fridman
Because it's not new.
joe rogan
Yes.
unidentified
Yes.
lex fridman
What is that?
joe rogan
That's so weird.
That's so true.
What you just said.
You just nailed it.
lex fridman
Yeah, it's just, and there's all kinds of other types of suffering that's just in the background.
Malaria.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
All the problems that only Bill Gates worries about.
joe rogan
Well, everybody, apparently people that were at his, were you at his 2015 speech when he was talking about it?
lex fridman
Have you listened to that speech?
joe rogan
No, I have not.
lex fridman
He's like spot-on predicting everything.
unidentified
Really?
lex fridman
Yeah, I mean, and he's still right.
Forget coronavirus.
I mean, basically, the thing in this century that's likely to kill 500 million people is natural pandemics.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
I mean, what we're going through now is nothing.
So, like World War II, for example...
Like the stories of just thinking like learning more about my grandfather what was going through Russia and Europe We take for granted now that we can go to the grocery store.
We still have food We're kind of talking about it, but like imagine there's no food.
unidentified
That's it.
No food.
lex fridman
That's it.
that you're starving so millions of people are going to die from start imagine what you're going to do for your family if there's no food especially so world war ii had the nice the horrible but the nice property that there was an enemy but when with the coronavirus the enemy is other people yeah yeah
and that when things get really bad not coronavirus i shouldn't say that because that's not going to get bad but a natural pandemic it's it can do it can wreck i mean it can destroy societies in ways we can't imagine and Bill Gates was basically, in his very polite, nerd way, saying that we should really be worried about it.
We should really be investing in a huge infrastructure for vaccine development, for testing, all those kinds of things.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think because of his charities, you know, he's sort of looked into it a lot deeper than a lot of other folks have.
And because he has an infinite amount of time and money, he's probably sitting around thinking like, what is, how come people aren't looking at that?
Hey!
lex fridman
Do you think he's ever done psychedelics?
joe rogan
If I had to guess, yes.
I mean, so many people of his era did.
You know, it was a big part of Steve Jobs and his revelations.
Although I think he probably should have done more of it.
unidentified
Steve Jobs?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Relax him.
Make him a little bit nicer.
lex fridman
That intensity, that passion is what fuels great engineers.
joe rogan
It does.
That's the problem, right?
It's like to get something that great, you almost have to have that maniacal vision behind it.
lex fridman
What do you want, a nice guy or an iPhone?
I think you want the iPhone.
joe rogan
That's a great meme.
That's a great meme.
Steve Jobs looking angry.
It just says, what do you want, a nice guy or an iPhone?
Bill Gates once coyly defended LSD use by saying, I never missed a day of work.
Oh, there you go.
Yeah, of course he did it.
Yeah, of course he did it.
They all tried it back then.
Why wouldn't they?
You know?
lex fridman
Yeah.
I think he got into a little beef with Elon about...
I think he said that Tesla...
He said something bad about Tesla not being...
joe rogan
Oh, no, no, no.
He was actually defending...
He was talking good about tie cans.
About Porsche tie cans.
And Elon said he was very unimpressed with him.
lex fridman
Because you're reminding me with memes.
Somebody replied with a meme of, not a meme, a real video of Bill Gates jumping over a chair.
They said, I don't know, I find him impressive.
And Elon said, yeah, that's pretty impressive.
I love when tech CEOs of major companies can be silly like that.
joe rogan
Elon's very silly.
He responds to people on Twitter.
He gets silly.
He's having fun.
He's having a good time.
This is Bill Gates jumping over a chair.
That's a pretty good jump for a nerd.
Not bad.
lex fridman
What the hell do you mean for nerd?
I hate that word, by the way.
joe rogan
I love nerd.
It's a good word.
lex fridman
No, but you don't use it.
You don't mean...
joe rogan
I don't mean it in a positive way?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yes, I do.
lex fridman
Okay, let me...
joe rogan
I do often.
lex fridman
You do often.
joe rogan
I mean a guy who is wearing glasses with a fucking sweater with a collared shirt underneath it.
He looks like a nerd.
lex fridman
So you use it positively in that silly kind of way, but you don't think of a nerd as an ideal of a man.
joe rogan
There's nothing wrong with nerds.
No, I disagree.
My perspective is never like that.
Look, I'm a nerd about a lot of things.
I mean, there's certain things that I'm a nerd about, for sure.
lex fridman
No, I totally...
I guess what I'm speaking to, and that's relevant for our time, is that science is not admired in ways...
Because I've seen the alternative, especially in the Soviet Union.
The way people admire scientists is the way...
They admire great athletes, great creators of all kinds.
And nerds sometimes diminishes that in ways that it seems like a peculiar quirk of a human being.
It connects it to going to Comic-Con conventions kind of nerd.
joe rogan
That's different.
That's a dork.
lex fridman
The dork.
joe rogan
You're a Comic-Con dork.
I think we've gone over this recently.
Dork is rarely positive.
Dorf is good if it's self-deprecating.
Call yourself a dork.
God, I'm such a fucking dork.
But it's very rare that dork is positive, whereas nerd is often positive.
Nerd is like, yeah, he's a science nerd.
Heavy, heavy science nerd.
Like, that's just a fun way of saying someone's really smart about a certain thing.
I know what you're saying, but I don't think the way around that is to eliminate words or even stop using certain words.
I think the way around that is just to appreciate people that are really great at science.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's the way around that.
The words don't really matter.
It's perceptions that matter.
And I don't think necessarily that science has a bad perception.
It just doesn't have a glamorous enough perception.
How many people can name Oscar winners that are just really good at lying?
They're just really good pretenders.
And we can name them, but how many people can name Nobel Prize winners in science?
There's very few, right?
lex fridman
Exactly.
And I guess the thing I was also speaking to, and definitely keep using the word, preventing words is...
joe rogan
I don't let nerds tell me what to do.
lex fridman
See, there you go.
So that's actually the point I was trying to make.
Nerd is synonymous with weak.
That I always hated as a person who loves fighting...
I like the fact that people are complimenting sort of the pursuit of your scientific curiosity.
That is great.
But I just never liked...
It's the thing I've experienced in this country is nerd as an image is seen as weakness.
It gets picked on.
And it always annoyed me because to me, intelligence...
And nerds annoyed me.
Nerds annoy me because they, like, lean into it.
Like, most people I know are kind of like, don't work out much.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
And they kind of lean into that idea.
joe rogan
Do you think they lean into that because they were bullied by people who work out a lot, so they think of those people who work out as like, I don't want to get into their thing.
Those people suck.
They were always mean to me.
lex fridman
Yeah, something like that.
And you kind of create a narrative where, like, jiu-jitsu or fighting is like a brute thing, just like you talked about with Greek statues having small penises.
You say all those barbarians with their big penises.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what he was telling me.
That's what the professor who was giving us a tour was telling me.
lex fridman
I think you can be a noble person and have a big penis.
joe rogan
Whoa, is that a humble brag?
unidentified
It was an analogy to let people know.
joe rogan
It's all right.
No, I agree with you, man.
lex fridman
But that's what people listen to this.
joe rogan
That's what people don't want.
You don't want a guy with a bigger dick than you that's smart.
That's like the same thing.
You don't want a guy or a woman or a guy.
You don't want a woman who's hot and smart.
You know, like when people think of really beautiful women, they automatically assume that woman's dumb.
And oftentimes that is not the case.
Sometimes people just have awesome bone structure.
And if they stimulated themselves mentally, if they pursued things, if they had an interest in certain scientific or esoteric ideas and you underestimated them, you'd feel really humiliated if a super smart but super hot girl put you in your place and let you know, not only am I hot, but I'm fucking smarter than you, stupid.
Men don't ever want to think that.
They almost always love to assume that someone who is pretty is dumb.
lex fridman
Yeah.
I love seeing women who dress up pretty sexually.
They're not trying to...
And are also brilliant.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
It's like an F you to society.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
I can be both things.
joe rogan
Listen, man.
Women like dressing like that.
We're different.
You know, for us to try to imagine why they like doing it.
Well, they're trying to look sexually attractive.
Yes, for sure.
But why are they trying to do that?
They actually like it, too.
They like dressing like that.
If we...
I often wonder, like, if women were into us dressing like women, like, how many people would do it?
If that became a new thing, like, girls really want to fuck guys who wear skirts.
lex fridman
Isn't that a big deal in Scotland?
joe rogan
That's a kilt.
It's a different thing.
lex fridman
You mean like a miniskirt?
joe rogan
I'm like fucking the hot little latex jammy that, you know, hugs your curves.
lex fridman
I think you see some dudes in miniskirts.
joe rogan
Shave your legs to do that.
unidentified
That would be like the step.
joe rogan
Maybe not.
unidentified
A lot of people wouldn't.
joe rogan
Maybe they wouldn't have to shave their legs.
unidentified
No, if you had to.
If they're like in, you have to shave your legs to show off those.
joe rogan
Maybe that would be the end.
But it depends.
Why do girls do it?
By the way, how many people find out what their woman really looks like now?
They can't do their eyelashes, they can't do their eyebrows, they can't do their hair, they can't do their nails.
Woo!
lex fridman
Well, your haircut is the right haircut.
joe rogan
Oh, this is what everybody should get.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
I wish I did it when I was younger.
lex fridman
It's liberating.
joe rogan
Yes.
From the moment I did it, I was like, of course.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
God damn it.
Especially for someone that's losing their hair.
I'm like, please, just shave your fucking head and just accept it.
Even if you've got a weird-shaped head, that's you.
Okay?
lex fridman
Accept it.
joe rogan
You're not going to do any better with some weird hair hanging off the back of it.
lex fridman
I'm growing it out.
joe rogan
You should.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
You got a beautiful head of hair.
Look at it.
So thick.
It's like a brush.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
You could use your hair to brush other people's hair.
lex fridman
Thanks for the idea.
Yeah, the fact that the barbers are all closed, I mean all of these little aspects of society just kind of, it's kicking in.
It's kicking in.
joe rogan
I'm hoping things restart and normalize.
I'm hoping the economists can figure out some sort of a stimulus package to get things rolling again.
I hope we have the resources.
I'm hopeful.
And I'm also hopeful that the positive aspects of it will stick.
This is my perspective.
lex fridman
The keto diet is pretty good for this.
joe rogan
Is it?
lex fridman
I've been enjoying it.
joe rogan
Why's that?
lex fridman
Well, I don't know.
I feel like I can not eat for long periods of time.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
lex fridman
Like fasting, I guess.
Yeah.
But it does...
I mean, I like it.
You're not so...
You lack the discipline to stay on keto.
I just saw your Instagram post today.
joe rogan
Well, I was very rarely keto.
I did carnivore, though.
That was my favorite diet.
lex fridman
Yeah, that's why I'm still doing carnivore, just eating burger patties.
joe rogan
I just decided while this is all going on, if we might have an issue with food, I'm not going to be picky.
I'm just going to eat.
lex fridman
For sure.
joe rogan
That's just my perspective during this thing.
Once everything normalizes, if and when that happens, I'm going to go back to carnivore, I think.
But like right now, I'm just going to eat.
I'm not going to worry about that.
I'm just going to be thankful that I have food.
lex fridman
Yeah, carnivore is amazing.
It's great for...
I've been running longer and longer distances.
I did David Goggins.
joe rogan
Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that.
Tell everybody what you did because it's crazy.
You ran four miles every day or every hour.
lex fridman
Every four hours.
joe rogan
Every four hours.
lex fridman
Yeah.
It's not that crazy.
It's crazy for me.
I'm not a runner.
So it's 48 miles over a period of 48 hours to two days.
The mileage is not that crazy because I was doing like a nine or ten minute mile.
So it's not, you know, I'm just running old lady pace.
joe rogan
It's a lot of time.
lex fridman
The time is in the mind.
I decided after each time to record myself saying something that I'm grateful for, which is a stupid fucking idea.
unidentified
Why?
lex fridman
No, it's a beautiful idea.
But the recording part, because I hated life and I hated everything like halfway through.
So I had to be positive when I'm recording myself.
joe rogan
So you could only sleep for a couple hours at a time?
lex fridman
A couple hours at a time.
joe rogan
Were you tired all the time?
Like how did that work?
lex fridman
I wasn't tired.
I was like high.
I was like unsure what's happening.
I was delirious.
Because your body is exhausted in a way that's like, like after a good workout, but it continues going farther and farther into that direction.
joe rogan
Runner's high, right?
lex fridman
Yeah, it's a high, but there's an exhaustion too.
And I was a carnivore.
I was hungry, but also overeating.
For some reason, I really wanted a full oven-roasted chicken.
So on one of the runs, I ran by the grocery store, picked up an oven-roasted chicken, and just ate the whole thing.
And then just the whole experience is a mind...
joe rogan
Don't you think you're burning off an insane amount of calories running four miles every four hours?
lex fridman
It's not that insane.
I would say it's probably the whole thing is probably, I don't know, 10,000 calories.
So over two days.
It's not too crazy.
joe rogan
Yeah, but you're basically running a marathon a day.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
lex fridman
For two days.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's crazy, dude.
Why are you trying to downplay it?
lex fridman
No, it was great.
I mean, the whole thing was crazy.
joe rogan
What do you think, Jamie?
I'm not wrong here, right?
unidentified
It's in the middle.
jamie vernon
I understand what he's saying, though, also, because you get a little break.
unidentified
Four miles isn't the longest run.
jamie vernon
That's like a 5K. You can get it done in less than an hour.
It's 45 minutes.
joe rogan
That's even long if you're going at his pace.
Is that what you're doing about 45 minutes?
lex fridman
45, yeah.
Sometimes I would stop.
It's cool.
You get pretty far through an audiobook.
But the sleep thing was crazy.
I think the only reason I did it, which is a good lesson, is I saw Goggins post this on Instagram.
And I announced on social media that I'm going to do it, which is the only reason I did it.
I mean, it's a good thing to...
It's nice.
It's nice to just announce that you're going to do it because then you feel like such a...
joe rogan
You're accountable.
lex fridman
Yeah.
So, I mean, I thought maybe I could just delete the tweet.
Just to walk back.
joe rogan
That was great about our Sober October challenges.
You have to do it, you know?
The first one was so easy, the yoga one.
It was just 15 hot yogas in a month.
It was yoga every other day.
Not that big a deal, but it seemed like it.
It's hanging over your head.
But that's nothing compared to what you did.
lex fridman
Well, the nice thing also, David Goggins on his Instagram went live every four hours.
So every four hours beforehand, I'm just like sitting here watching this crazy shirtless man like screaming.
unidentified
Stay hard!
lex fridman
Yes.
Of course he was making it seem like it's gonna be easy and let me kind of walk it back like the gratitude thing was the filming was hard and but it's actually a really cool experience so before the run I wrote down 12 things I'm really grateful for like family like Family, friends, my childhood.
And as I ran, I thought about it, like what I'm going to say.
And that thinking, it's weird.
It was all for doing like recording myself, right?
But the result was like pretty profound for myself as an experience.
It's kind of similar with podcasts.
Like you and I wouldn't have this conversation without microphones.
joe rogan
Right, right.
Especially wouldn't have it this long.
lex fridman
This long.
joe rogan
Sitting across from each other.
Yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
lex fridman
But recording yourself was like, I really have to now think that I'm thankful for my family.
And really put that into mind.
That was big.
And also just, by the way, if people are thinking about that for you, because I had so many people message me about the challenge.
If you're thinking of doing it, please don't.
joe rogan
Do it, bitch.
Don't listen to him.
lex fridman
I think just running 48 miles is a better challenge.
Because this was torture.
Okay, if people are thinking of doing it, realize that you're not doing a test of...
It's not a running test.
It's not a marathon test.
It's a test of...
It's a mental test of how much you want to do something really stupid.
I guess it's a marathon test, but you have so much more time to think about how stupid the thing you're doing is that makes it a really big mental challenge.
joe rogan
Would you, if you had the option halfway into it to just finish the run, just keep going until it's over?
lex fridman
100%, yeah.
unidentified
Really?
lex fridman
I would just do it.
unidentified
Interesting.
joe rogan
So you think it might have been more torture to do it with those breaks and the rest and the food and relaxing for a little bit?
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because it hangs over your head?
lex fridman
It hangs over your head.
The fact that you have to wake up in three hours...
So I never slept in my bed.
I just laid face down on the carpeted floor.
joe rogan
Did you substitute any of those runs for jiu-jitsu?
lex fridman
I substituted one of them for jiu-jitsu, but at the end I ran eight miles because I thought it was...
joe rogan
Like a cop-out?
lex fridman
Yeah, a cop-out.
But I did jiu-jitsu.
So jiu-jitsu I did, shout out to Broadway Jiu-Jitsu.
They're all closed now.
joe rogan
Yeah, jujitsu gym is going to be a while before they open up again, right?
lex fridman
Yeah, I hope they don't close.
joe rogan
I know, man.
It's just so many people are going to be freaked out by germs.
lex fridman
Yeah, but it feels weird to talk about.
But yeah, I felt really, really good.
joe rogan
When did you do this?
lex fridman
Pretty close to this whole outbreak.
Maybe a month ago, a month and a half ago.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was like February then?
lex fridman
Yeah, February.
joe rogan
End of February-ish?
Yeah.
lex fridman
And I actually gave a big talk to a large audience in Philadelphia on March 8th or something like that.
joe rogan
I was in Vegas for the UFC that weekend.
That was the last weekend I traveled.
So I guess it was March 7th.
lex fridman
That might be the last time.
Isn't that weird?
What was the last time you did a stand-up?
joe rogan
That week.
I did some shows at the Improv and then I was supposed to do some shows at the Comedy Store and we were talking about it and they said the room's too big because they were limiting the crowds down to 200 people.
That was the first thing they did.
So they were going to move the crowd.
They were going to move my show to another date and then open up the original room, which is a small room of 150 people.
And they were asking me if I wanted to go in there or if I wanted to just cancel and reschedule.
We were working all that out.
And then they contacted us.
They were asking me and a bunch of other comics, like, what do you think we should do here?
You know, because there's part of us that thinks we should just shut down.
And they shut down before the order was given to shut down.
They decided this is...
You know the comedy store doesn't want anybody to get sick and they were worried about people losing income But they were also saying like it's probably the right idea to just shut down and then the improv shut down shortly after But they all shut down before they were required to they just shut down because it just seemed like the walls are closing in But did you realize at that time this might be the last time way man because it might be I am I don't want to say anything but it might be a long time before you do stand-up comedy What do you think?
Another six months?
lex fridman
I think it's...
Okay, here's what I think.
I think it would be longer than six months for sure.
joe rogan
Really?
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Why do you think that?
lex fridman
Because gatherings of large groups...
I'm hoping there'll be a lot of interesting innovations of what gatherings of large groups will look like.
Like I can see you doing stand-up to a small audience that's tuned in, like people remotely tune in at a larger scale.
What?
Something like that.
joe rogan
Online?
You can't do it.
lex fridman
No, not online only.
joe rogan
You can't do online, period.
Because people record it.
unidentified
You're working on your new stuff.
joe rogan
People are assholes.
No, they're not.
They're very good, which is one of the reasons why most sets don't get leaked.
When they leak the Louis C.K. set, it's almost understandable.
lex fridman
His special just went live.
joe rogan
Did you see it?
I haven't watched all of it.
I watched half of it.
It's weird to...
lex fridman
Sorry to interrupt.
joe rogan
No, it's okay.
lex fridman
It was weird to watch because it's good.
It's intense, like his other specials, right?
He talked about pedophilia and everything.
But it feels weird to see a crowd and to listen to a comedian in this time not mention coronavirus, right?
So it made me realize that I have a hunger, as probably a lot of people, to hear a comedian talk about We want to see stand-up comedy about the virus.
I guess a podcast is a kind of replacement.
joe rogan
We want some normalcy, right?
We're all alone with our thoughts and our paranoia and then news media, which in many cases is accelerating our anxiety because there's value in developing stories and writing stories that get people outraged or clickbait.
You know, so there's that.
And we need people just talking.
Just talking.
Just people that are just like you, talking about stuff, various walks of life.
That helps us.
This is a certain e-community that we're all a part of, you know, and...
I feel very connected to that now, you know, because this podcast is it's kind of taken on a different form over the last few years, which is one of the reasons why I actually have to address people talking about politics in me.
I'm like you guys are out of your fucking mind if you're listening to me, but I have to accept that that this is part of the new form this thing is taken and And another form this thing has taken is that it's sort of like an electronic campfire in a lot of ways.
There's a great value to people just sitting around shooting the shit.
And I know there's a lot of people at home that can't You're not chiming in.
You wish you would.
You probably have some things to say.
It's one of the reasons why comments get so aggressive sometimes.
Because people are listening, they have something to say, and they can't.
You just keep talking.
And they're like, fuck!
And they're like, but maybe you should fucking listen to your guests!
unidentified
Or maybe you should...
joe rogan
It's really they have a thing in them that they want to express too.
Like you're talking, they have some interesting shit to say too, and a lot of them do.
lex fridman
Yeah.
By the way, on that point, I know you don't check comments, but I'm actually...
I kind of enjoy checking, especially yours.
I'm a fan of yours.
I like being a fan of cool people.
And I'll just go on your Instagram and just comment.
And there'll be some...
There's always some percentage of people who are so shitty.
But most of them, that's where I disagree with you, I think most of them are really cool.
joe rogan
Yes, I think so too.
No, I think so too.
lex fridman
But also there's this, I think most people, not most, but there's a big percentage of the population who just enjoy being shitty, but they also enjoy being nice.
joe rogan
Sometimes, yeah, because they're not being shitty for real.
They're just shitposting.
lex fridman
Yeah, so as long as you're able to inspire them to be nice, or at least more, because shitposting done well has a humor behind it, and actually a love and respect behind it that's kind of obvious.
joe rogan
Yes!
Look, one person has to take the hit.
Whether it's you or me, or whoever it is that they're shitting on, if they're saying something funny, and one person takes the hit, but a thousand people reading those comments go, bah!
That's so true!
Hey man, I get it.
I'm not trying to stop anybody from commenting.
You know, there was a time where the comments were blocked off because the streaming didn't allow comments because we didn't have a chat in the streaming.
If you have a chat in the streaming, it devolves into racial slurs and ethnic slurs and anti-Semitic slurs.
It's fucking chaos sometimes because people just want to see if you're reading that while you're talking, they want you to react.
So they'll write some horrible shit just so that you react sometimes.
We can't have that.
I'm not going to read that.
So I'm like, just shut off the chat.
We'll stream the show live.
But then we were uploading it.
Comments were shut off because of some sort of a flaw in the way it was processed.
So you had to have the chat on for comments to be on or something like that.
But they fixed that.
But I was...
I really wanted people to know.
If you want to talk about what we're talking about, I want you to be able to.
I can't read it because I don't have the time, and I don't think it's healthy.
lex fridman
It's not.
It does something bad to your mind, but I feel like that's a technology problem.
My dream would be for somebody like you to be able to read comments every once in a while in a way that is healthy.
joe rogan
No, I could.
I could.
That's not the problem.
The problem is for me personally.
There is so little time to just process life that any time that I spend trying to rationalize or trying to accept or trying to process someone's comments, like, There's not enough time for that.
I would love to do...
I try very hard to do my best.
That's what I try to do with everything.
And with this podcast, I try to do my best.
And I know sometimes I talk too much, or I talk too much, or I stumble through my words, or I'm overbearing, or this or that.
Yeah, it's a balancing act.
Sometimes you stumble.
It's weird.
It's all live.
Everything I'm doing is live with no script that millions of people get to see and listen to.
lex fridman
How do you get that signal though?
One of the things I enjoy before I block them is people who are truly rude.
Do you enjoy that?
No, I don't enjoy it, but I think it's constructive in the sense that within the rudeness there's often opportunity to improve.
Often not.
joe rogan
Often they're just like… Oh, so you're saying they're rude but they have a valid point.
lex fridman
Because I find that rude people are more likely… Like I'm so fortunate to be part of a community who are really nice to me and just in general nice.
I find that they're unable to tell me sort of constructive criticisms in the following… Like if I mumble or if I'm not articulate with my ideas or if I use a certain word too much or if I'm too stuck in a certain kind of perspective, you need the asshole to come along to call you like a liberal douchebag or something like that.
joe rogan
Yes!
Well, that's what friends are for.
You know, friends are for busting balls.
I mean, that's one of the things about comedians that a lot of people had a hard time.
When we started doing podcasts, one of the things that a lot of people had a hard time with was how mean we are to each other.
Like me and Brian Callen and Eddie Bravo and Brennan Schaub when we start goofing on each other or other comics that come in here and goof on each other.
When we goof on each other, we goof on each other hard.
You know, but there's fun in that.
Like, we all enjoy it.
Like, comedians to each other, some of the fucking meanest people ever.
Like, when no one's around, we say, some of the fucking group chats I'm in where people shitting on each other, it is hilarious.
It's so mean, but really fucking funny.
And we also do that as an exercise because it calluses you to other people's insults and to that.
Like, there's...
It's a thing that men do to each other.
They shit on each other.
First of all, to keep each other in check.
And they expect you to do that to them.
But also, to kind of toughen you to people that don't love you.
They're going to talk shit.
You know, you're used to it.
You know, look, if you grow up in a place like, you know, that is filled with people that are always drunk and it's cold out, like Boston.
People talk a lot of shit.
Talk a lot of shit to each other.
That's one of the reasons why so many great comics came out of Boston.
It's because it's fucking cold and people don't have time for your bullshit.
And because of that, because of that lack of attention span or short attention span, you learn how to come out of the gate fast and you learn how to appreciate people's time.
lex fridman
It's a way to show love.
Isn't that weird?
unidentified
Yeah.
lex fridman
But it's funny because people I love most and I'm closest with talk a lot of shit, but you have to earn that right.
joe rogan
Yes.
lex fridman
It's funny.
Some people walk into my life talking, busting my balls, and it's like, well, we're not there yet.
Right, right, right.
It's an interesting kind of...
joe rogan
Well, you have to know that they love you.
lex fridman
Yeah, that has to be underlying it all.
By the way, I do think you guys are too rough on calendars.
I'm just a fan who showed up to comment in person.
joe rogan
Listen, he loves it.
He loves it.
He gets such a kick out of it.
He brings it on himself.
But by the way, he has the thickest skin of any fucking human I've ever met in my life.
Never, in all my years of knowing that guy, and I've known Cal for 25 years, 25 fucking years, never have I seen him get upset at someone mocking him or insulting him, getting legitimately insulted by it.
I've never seen him.
Never.
It just goes like this.
Bounces off like rhino skin.
He literally loses zero enthusiasm.
And it's not that he's not an introspective guy.
It's not that he's not an objective guy.
He has a unique ability to handle insults.
And he'll even rebroadcast those.
Like if his friends are shitting on him, he'll be like, can you believe these guys?
Like openly disrespecting my age and my looks.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
It doesn't bother him.
He's got a great perspective.
He's a very unique guy, Brian Callan.
Very, very unique.
I don't know anyone like him.
lex fridman
So the silly song I have is written by him, actually.
joe rogan
It is?
lex fridman
Yeah.
Well, not kind of.
I talked to him.
I texted him back and forth, but he uses words, whatever.
I'll tell you later.
joe rogan
Do you want to do the silly song first?
lex fridman
No, let me do the serious one first.
unidentified
All right, here we go.
joe rogan
Should we calm ourselves?
Should we light some sage?
lex fridman
And I also have a question for you.
joe rogan
A big one?
You want to go to the question first?
lex fridman
No, no, no.
joe rogan
You leave me in anticipation.
lex fridman
No, I gotta ask you something about Trump.
joe rogan
Oh, really?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Demons!
Be gone!
lex fridman
See, Duncan Trussell was speaking of demons be gone with a mask thing.
He wore a mask.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
lex fridman
He was early on in that.
joe rogan
Well, he also wore a ghillie suit, so let's not get carried away.
lex fridman
So my voice is terrible, so this is more like a poem.
joe rogan
Don't get in your own head, man.
lex fridman
Let it go.
will sink in sadness And the way of them to talk Don't lose yourself to madness The way out is love When the New York towers crumble We were all New Yorkers too For a moment all just human Not the same old red or
blue And the wicked will go on scheming For the power in the pain But the heart that longs for freedom Is a fire they'll never tame Some days will sink in sadness The weight of them to talk Don't lose yourself to madness The way out is love The
virus took our comfort that was never ours to own When the enemies inside us were together but alone This life is so damn fragile,
a leaf caught by the wind But every breath that's tragic Ignites a hope within Some days will sink in sadness The way of them too tough Don't lose yourself to madness The way out is love Lex Friedman, ladies and gentlemen.
joe rogan
When's the album coming out?
unidentified
No album ever.
joe rogan
What made you decide to want to come in front of millions of people and sing a song?
lex fridman
I don't know.
joe rogan
You just had a thought in your head?
lex fridman
I just had a thought.
I'm thinking about my...
joe rogan
Mix it up?
lex fridman
Mix it up.
joe rogan
A challenge like that?
Four miles every...
lex fridman
Well, it's...
Okay, I'll tell you what.
joe rogan
Four hours?
lex fridman
It's kind of a challenge.
It scares the shit out of me.
It's the scariest thing ever.
But I also wanted to be a...
Because I kept thinking about...
Last time I came on, I really wanted to play Hendrix.
And I actually had my guitar, and I chickened out.
So I thought, okay, because it's actually technically really difficult to play in front of a lot of, you know, because you're not going to let me, like, try a few times, right?
joe rogan
Right.
lex fridman
I have to do it, like, without any mistakes.
And...
What happens if you try to play Hendrix?
Hendrix on acoustic guitar is really tough to play.
It's easier to play voodoo child with distortion because you can mess up.
It's also a nice blues scale so you can let it ring.
You can just jam out.
You can go Gary Clark Jr. mode.
But with acoustic, every mess-up has a, like, it's silence after.
So acoustic doesn't ring for a long time when you play individual notes.
It dies quickly.
So you can hear mess-ups really easily.
So I knew if I mess up, it's going to just sound bad, and I knew I would freak out and so on.
So I just thought to do something where I just strum chords, where I can't screw it up at all.
And then...
The virus thing just made me think.
I was talking to my dad a lot about my grandfather.
It made it so real to me because I studied World War II a lot, especially the Holocaust and all that.
But the fact that just learning about my grandfather just made it so real to me.
It kind of connected everything together.
Plus, there's a book I recommend people read by Albert Camus called The Plague.
That he wrote right after World War II. I don't know if you know who he is, he's like an existentialist philosopher.
Existentialists believe that you have to live, like life is absurd, life is suffering, and there's no meaning to it all.
You just have to live the moment and take each moment as it comes and live it to the fullest kind of idea.
So he described this town that got overtaken by the plague in the book, The Plague.
Kind of similar to Bubonic Plague, basically similar characteristics.
And writes about how everybody reacts in different ways.
The main character is a doctor who basically sees the absurdity of the suffering around him, that there's no meaning to it all.
That's the thing about the virus.
Like with the Nazis and with wars, there's an enemy.
You can kind of trace back and understand what was happening.
But the virus, it just seems like it comes out of nowhere.
And it breaks the spine of the way we think of regular life.
Like some people try to cling on to regular life as if nothing is happening.
Which, by the way, it's kind of like what a lot of our society is doing right now.
We're not yet...
We haven't really felt the pain yet.
And hopefully won't.
But there's this kind of calm before the storm kind of period.
And then some people become more religious.
They start to search for the bigger meaning of life outside of the material possessions.
And then the doctor represents the idea that no matter what, he gives himself fully to his craft of helping other human beings.
And overall there's a story that This idea that suffering is just part of life and the only way...
There's a natural temptation when there's cruelty and suffering all around you to isolate yourself and to withdraw from life because anything you do in life is going to lead to suffering.
Dating, like if you get married, it's going to lead to suffering because eventually you're going to lose the people you love.
So there's a natural desire to withdraw.
But in fact, what he found, the doctrine, what he saw around him, is that love and compassion, like giving yourself fully to the love of other human beings towards community, is the only way to deal with that kind of suffering.
To me, it's a really profound story about About love being the right response in a time of crisis.
And a crisis that hits everybody.
You want to kind of hide from it, but it's actually where more suffering happens.
It's a kind of profound book that I recommend people read.
Most people have read him in high school.
There's a book called The Stranger.
But that one in particular seems so connected to us.
Oh, sorry.
He wrote it as an allegory for World War II. So the plague in that case is the Nazis.
That it just hits out of nowhere.
His book was really popular.
I think in 1947 he wrote it as a kind of allegory of World War II, a way to talk about the virus that first infects the rats and then affects the weaker humans and then affects everybody.
It was a connection and an allegory and analogy to the Nazis.
And so I saw the connection between now and the Nazis.
Of course the scale there with World War II was much more intense.
And finally just how fragile this whole damn thing is.
My grandfather had probably a single digit percentage chance of living.
Most people died.
Most soldiers died, especially in those early years of 1941 when the Nazis...
Basically, Stalin was using Russian soldiers and just human beings as human shields.
Yeah, just threw bodies at the problem.
So the fact that my grandfather survived seems crazy.
And I do all these things.
I'm here talking to you, wearing a stupid tie.
All of that is connected to he somehow survived.
All those ripple effects, me doing research, I hope to impact Billions of people one day.
Those little ripple effects, how fortunate I am to be part of that.
It just all seemed to be connected to me.
joe rogan
You have to go back before him, right?
He is here because someone won a fight with a rock.
Some time in history, there was probably one of his ancestors that clubbed someone to death with a rock who was breaking into his house.
lex fridman
And not that many humans ago, as you put it.
joe rogan
Not that many humans ago.
Yeah.
Not that many.
You know, if you go, like, let's think.
I mean, they're constantly pushing back the age of the oldest human.
They recently pushed it back even further.
See what that study said.
The age of the oldest human, they bump back another half a million years or so.
I think they're talking about Australopithecus and another ancient human all lived together at the same time.
There's quite a few, quite a few different styles of human that lived together at that same time.
lex fridman
By the way, at that time, sorry to interrupt, but at that time, along with humans lived millions of viruses.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, of course, yeah.
lex fridman
So they too, not to give any shout outs to viruses, but they too survived because their grandparents have clubbed somebody over the head.
joe rogan
Well, Bill Hicks called people a virus with shoes.
You know, he was joking around, obviously.
lex fridman
There's truth to that.
joe rogan
There's something to that in that what is...
If you stopped and think if you were a cow or a carrot or tomato plant or avocados or chickens or...
Think of the things we fucking consume.
Think of the living things that we pull out of the ground and shove into our bodies and Consume now think of that was something else think of that was you know if there was A population of animals, like tuna, that just got wiped out by something the way we wipe them out.
You go, whoa, like, oh yeah, there's a tuna virus, and it's literally killed 80% of all the tuna in the ocean.
We're down to like 20% capacity in tuna.
Fuck, man, what happened?
Yeah, it's called sushi.
It's called people.
This virus with boats literally goes hundreds of miles out into sea with these giant fucking fiber nets that it's created.
And it sucks these things into the nets and pulls them out with giant cranes and dumped them into a refrigerated hull and then brings them back to shore to get cut up and sold.
Like, fuck, man!
lex fridman
But at the same time, it's...
joe rogan
Tuna's delicious.
lex fridman
Not that, but also if you zoom out, it's kind of beautiful.
The way that life propagates is just beautiful.
So I've been reading a lot on viruses, and the way they work is incredible.
I would say viruses, there's obviously debate on whether they're living or not.
It's just definitional.
They're like the simplest example of the beauty and power of the evolutionary process.
Because we humans are kind of complicated in terms of killing tuna.
There's a lot of things going on in our bodies.
Viruses are the simplest possible...
I think they're living.
I think it's the simplest possible life form that just shows that anything is possible.
All the damage that's being caused now with the coronavirus...
There's like one guy that mutated and jumped from a certain speed.
We can trace the evolutionary path backwards.
joe rogan
There was a recent CNN article that was wondering how long it's been around.
They were saying, see if you can find this, was COVID-19 around in humans longer than is currently believed?
They think it might have existed for months, if not years, before it broke loose and became a pandemic.
lex fridman
Oh, did it mutate?
joe rogan
I don't know.
I didn't read the article.
lex fridman
It's a video, not an article.
joe rogan
Oh, it's not?
unidentified
Did you say CNN? CNN. Fake news.
joe rogan
You heard me, bitch.
lex fridman
Where'd you learn that?
CNN? Library.
joe rogan
It's the news, folks.
It's the news.
Leading scientists tell CNN that it's...
Listen, CNN's trying to do their best.
But they have perceptions that other people don't agree with, just like everybody else.
Leading scientists tell CNN that it's possible the virus didn't just come from bats in the past months, but it may have existed in humans many months, even years before it grew into a deadly pandemic.
CNN's Nick Palton Walsh reports.
lex fridman
By the way, CNN is not doing a good job.
I think the entire...
joe rogan
What are they doing bad?
lex fridman
The incentive, like, they're choking out the investigative, deep investigative journalism.
It's exactly what you said, the clickbait.
Like, look at the title.
Look at the...
joe rogan
I think they're trying to stay alive.
lex fridman
Well, yeah, but that's a problem.
joe rogan
I think it is a problem, but I think in the defense of particularly online journalism, I think they're trying to stay alive.
I don't think it's a good time for journalism now.
From what I understand, the only thing that keeps New York Times functional is the podcast.
lex fridman
The podcast, yeah.
joe rogan
Their podcast is huge, and that podcast earns a lot of money.
lex fridman
But that's not...
That means they need to innovate.
They need to become the podcast.
joe rogan
Well, we need the fucking New York Times, though.
They need to figure out a way to make money off of it, but we need the top of the food chain journalism, right?
And that's what the Times has always represented.
We need them.
So when someone's done something for the Times, it's not so good or flawed, yeah, okay, but it's still not.
That one person, that one article, whatever it is, is not the Times.
The Times stands for something, right?
What the New York Times is supposed to stand for, what it always did when I was a kid, and does now to a lot of people still, it's the cream of the crop.
It's the very best journalism.
It's the very best.
It's the ones that have the deepest insight, the ones that nail it.
And we'd like it free of bias, but it's run by humans.
You know, this is the problem with CNN, it's the problem with any news source, but we still need news sources.
lex fridman
But it's run by humans that need high salaries and there's a huge amount of people involved in making that system that is a CNN. So there's several mechanisms of innovation required.
First, like this podcast here, podcasts in general, require very few people to run.
Now that there's an infrastructure to communicate with a lot of people.
And then there's the Wikipedia model.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
So, like, Wikipedia is thousands of contributors that create extremely strong factual information.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
And that's not, like, there's very little money required to run Wikipedia.
Incredibly so.
joe rogan
There are some journalists out there that are online, though, that are thriving because of the problems with legacy media.
It's an opportunity.
It represents, for God's sake, Tim Pool, my friend Tim Pool.
Tim Pool's a fantastic journalist.
He's really objective.
You might disagree with him or you might not find his perspective.
To be in the line with yours, but that guy, he holds those journalistic ethics at the highest level.
I mean, to the highest standard with him.
It's everything.
And when you read his take on or see him make a take on things, he is giving you the most honest, objective take on it possible.
And it's really hard to get that from a network.
First of all, it's really hard to get what he does for a network because you're going to get these giant chunks Where he can talk about something for as long as it takes to describe what the issue is.
Whereas CNN has a segment, man.
That segment is fucking seven minutes long.
You better be dumb by seven minutes.
We're going to commercial, and then we're coming back with Don Lemon, and he's got a sassy take on things.
And then Andrew Cooper's got new glasses.
Look at that, handsome bastard.
And then they're all going to talk about shit, and you've got to listen.
And it's Trump is bad, coronavirus deadly, and holy shit, Chris Cuomo's got it.
Let's go to Chris.
He's in his basement.
And then you see Chris in his basement with Sanjay Gupta, and they're holding up chest x-rays.
You know, they...
There's segments, man.
Segments are bullshit.
It's dumb.
You have these standards that you've created a long fucking time ago, and this is the biggest handicap that legacy media has other than their inability to be free, like a guy like Tim Pool is.
He's an independent.
They can't be free like he is.
You have too many working pieces, too many producers, too many people that are telling you what direction.
There's people that bring you the segments.
You're a talking head.
There's a lot of shit going on there, man.
A lot of shit going on there.
lex fridman
Well, but you have to innovate, and you have to make more.
I actually disagree with you about Tim Poe.
I mean, I think it's impossible to be perfectly objective or whatever.
He's just one voice.
joe rogan
He tries to be perfectly objective.
He tries to be as objective as he can be.
lex fridman
No, I know.
You need to...
Aspire to it and not be polluted by other influences.
But I can see people, like I think I'm objective, but I have very different views than Tim Pool on some things and not others.
joe rogan
Well, there's subjective objectivity, isn't there?
lex fridman
I don't know.
Only one of us is just small.
joe rogan
It's possible, but people can look at things like you have an idea, a subjective idea of what something means when you're looking at it objectively.
So you're looking at a thing objectively.
You're being honest about what it says.
But you also have preconceived notions of what each individual aspect of that certain thing means and what's good and what's bad.
That's where the subjective aspect of objectivity comes in.
When you look at certain things that happen, there's certain ways you can look at something and not have a bias, but look at something and you have a preconceived idea of what aspects of it should or should not be tolerated.
And maybe sometimes it takes someone else to come along and say, okay, well, why do you hold these beliefs?
lex fridman
So, yeah, you're absolutely right, but the problem is that Based on your skill set and your momentum in history, you might look at a very particular aspect objectively and not see the bigger picture.
Tim Pool has revealed and has focused on certain aspects of problems in the system.
And he continues to focus on them, maybe not seeing the bigger picture.
That's impossible for any one person to see the bigger picture, I think.
I tend to see, in a lot of things, the beauty of things.
And I focus on the positive.
joe rogan
You talk about that even with viruses.
lex fridman
Even with viruses.
But is that not objective?
Beauty is not an objective word, but I just mean...
joe rogan
Well, it kind of is what we're just saying.
There's a subjective aspect to your objective view of a virus.
lex fridman
Right.
But it's choosing on which parts I focus in on.
And also the other thing is choosing the ways you talk about it.
So the ways you reveal that objectivity.
unidentified
Right.
lex fridman
You can be positive, you can be negative, you can be very cold and fact-based, you can be very flamboyant and very kind of excited, use a lot of visuals, all those kinds of things.
And all of that changes the way the message is carried.
unidentified
Yeah.
lex fridman
Which is why we should have thousands of tin pools.
joe rogan
Well, I think they're going to spring up out of the void that's been created by this distrust in legacy media.
lex fridman
Especially now, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but YouTube, there's so many people, like my brother, has now put the camera on themselves and say their opinions.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
You know, say, like, he's doing, like, a bunch of reviews of scientific papers.
Like, they're all, like, they started a show.
Like, there's so many just, there's thousands of shows springing up.
joe rogan
Dude, there's 900,000 podcasts.
lex fridman
Yeah, it's crazy.
It's over a million now, I think.
It's hit a million.
joe rogan
When did it hit a million?
Probably last week.
I'm sure people are starting podcasts right now.
It's a crazy number.
Well, especially now, right?
While they're on lockdown, people are doing the Lockdown Chronicles.
I think it's a symbol of where we're going.
Right?
You're becoming...
Look, when I do this thing, I'm doing this thing four or five days a week, and I'm becoming more connected with people in some weird way that no one ever thought it was ever going to happen before.
Where there's people that are listening to my voice right now in their ear while they're running.
Right?
A lot.
Not a small amount.
If you could see the actual number of people right now with earbuds in, running, listening to this podcast, you'd be like, whoa!
That's kind of crazy.
lex fridman
Stay hard if you're running.
joe rogan
Stay hard, motherfucker!
lex fridman
Run faster right now.
joe rogan
This kind of connection is a dip into the next dimension.
That's what this is.
And it seemed like it wasn't.
It seemed like it was just a radio show you were doing on the internet.
But then somewhere along the line, it became this weird thing.
And that's what it is now.
Podcasts are a weird thing, especially one that reaches the numbers of people that this one reaches.
And for that to be in my hands is a weird position.
And while it's happening, I'm like, oh, look how fucking strange this is.
Huh.
I didn't anticipate this.
I always anticipated this being some weirdo fringe thing that very few people would connect with, which is why I never tried to censor it at all.
I tried to do a vast majority of it completely high out of my mind and hang out with fun people and just talk shit and have a good time and not have a different perspective.
Some people have a public voice and a private voice.
I try to have the same voice.
Just be me.
Just do that.
lex fridman
Yeah, that's what I tell people when they say, what's Joe like behind the scenes?
That'd be awesome if you were totally different.
But I just tell them it's the same guy.
joe rogan
Wouldn't it be a bummer if someone was like a super dick behind the scenes?
lex fridman
Yeah, that'd be a bummer.
You don't have to be a super dick, but you're just a totally different person.
joe rogan
Put it on an act?
unidentified
Yeah, like you put on that miniskirt.
lex fridman
Take off the tattoos.
joe rogan
Hug those curves, baby.
But the point is, what I think this is, is a step into the way humans are going.
And this is just one step that we didn't think was a step.
It's a podcast.
I thought it was just like a radio show that you do on the internet, but it's not for some reason.
It's more involved and more entangled and more intense.
And then also, it has an impact, right?
I can get guys like Osterholm on to talk about stuff.
We can get an understanding of these things.
lex fridman
By the way, he was wrong about masks.
But he didn't know at that time.
joe rogan
Yeah, that was not that long ago.
Isn't that interesting that they didn't know about masks and they weren't sure.
lex fridman
He was incorrect about a few things, but I'm not going to point him out.
It doesn't matter because he was stating the best available knowledge at the time.
joe rogan
Well, he was also incorrect about CWD, chronic wasting disease, not being an elk and some other ungulates.
He's wrong about that.
My friend Doug Duren corrected that to me.
He sent a text to me about it that...
He listened to a few of the aspects of that podcast and he was like, he's incorrect about several things.
He was correct in the dangers of CWD, which is chronic wasting disease, which is a disease that they are absolutely terrified is going to make the jump from animals to people.
It's very similar to like a mad cow disease.
But it has its own prions.
He also sent me a text explaining that prions are not actually alive.
They're not a living thing.
It's like a protein or a type of protein.
Is that what it is?
Prions?
Whatever the fuck it is, you can't kill it.
It's almost impossible to kill.
They can sterilize it for three cycles of medical sterilization techniques and for three cycles of insane temperatures.
And there's still trace elements of prions on the medical equipment.
It's a crazy thing.
If that gets into people, we have a real huge problem.
So this is a real dress rehearsal.
Have you seen all these people that are recovering from this?
There's nobody recovering from chronic wasting disease.
No one.
Every deer that gets it dies.
They all die and they die in a horrible way.
Their body rots away.
And they're walking around like a skeleton and they're vomiting all this goo and slime that comes out of them that's infected with CWD and then these animals come along and eat those leaves that they were eating and that they threw up on and then they get it too.
It's crazy.
This stuff even can get apparently into the DNA of some plants.
lex fridman
One of the really interesting things that's amazing on a positive note is that it seems like we haven't seen a virus that's both, or any kind of thing that jumps to humans, that's both deadly and spreads easily.
So there's viruses that...
joe rogan
Like Ebola.
lex fridman
Like Ebola, that kills like crazy, but doesn't spread too easily.
joe rogan
Right.
lex fridman
And there's viruses that spread easily but don't kill.
There's no...
In terms of biology, there's no good reason why that should be the fact.
joe rogan
But isn't that just how the world works in general and systems?
I mean, look at humans.
We have a spectacular ability to control our environment.
We have the ability to use materials from the outside world and construct them into weapons that lets you kill at distance.
But...
We're made out of jelly donuts.
We're like this soft bag of shit.
Like even a really hard person, a knife goes right through them.
You know, we're really mushy.
Whereas like a water buffalo is dumb as fuck, but goddamn are they tough.
You know, there's a balance to this.
lex fridman
There is, but that's a kind of romantic notion that I don't know if it applies.
Like, the biology and the physics of it doesn't make sense.
joe rogan
It doesn't, but when would it change?
When would it become something that does tip that scale and become something more catastrophic?
Well, if you were looking at it objectively outside the system, you would say, well, when one part of the system becomes overbearingly powerful— That's us.
That's humans.
lex fridman
We're that virus.
joe rogan
Well, we are on everything.
We are rats on a sinking ship.
We're on every little patch of land.
You find spots in Antarctica, you find people taking shits, digging holes in the ground to bury it.
lex fridman
And hopefully soon on Mars and the rest of the solar system.
joe rogan
If you want to do that, yeah.
The numbers that we have right now are fucking incredible.
We've propagated the whole globe.
lex fridman
Well, ants are still...
joe rogan
Biomass-wise, yeah.
lex fridman
Far ahead of us.
joe rogan
Yeah, but they don't do shit.
lex fridman
And viruses are really ahead of us.
Like, most viruses are running the show.
We're just, like, a little fun...
joe rogan
Right, but in terms of the impact on the planet, I don't think you can make...
Like, ants might have the same...
They have the same biomass as us, right?
lex fridman
In terms of total volume, yeah.
joe rogan
So the weight of ants is the same as the weight of all the people.
That's how many ants there are, which is pretty crazy if we stop and think about it.
But they don't have the same impact in terms of their impact on other creatures, like the tuna that we're pulling out of the sea, their impact on the pollution.
lex fridman
But viruses, on the other hand.
joe rogan
Viruses, they can ruin a whole species.
Yeah.
lex fridman
A whole, even, you know, certain, like, microorganisms.
They can just kill everything.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
And...
joe rogan
Well, plagues.
What is the most devastating historical plague?
lex fridman
Black death.
joe rogan
And how many?
lex fridman
The body plague.
joe rogan
How many did that kill?
lex fridman
200 million.
200 million.
Mostly in Europe.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
That number's crazy.
lex fridman
Well, Spanish flu is 50 million.
joe rogan
200 million makes you just step and go, whoa.
lex fridman
No social media though, so we don't...
I mean, it's death that's forgotten.
joe rogan
Well, not only that, death that was probably left to rot out in the streets and horrendous smells and people didn't understand viruses and diseases back then.
lex fridman
Smallpox, I would say, like when I talk to a virologist, they say smallpox is the scariest of them all until we develop the vaccine.
But smallpox, you Native Americans, I mean, they decimated, smallpox decimated.
Probably, I don't know what the number is, but more than 50 million.
joe rogan
Yeah, the number is supposed to be stunning.
In some places, as many as 90% were killed by European diseases, smallpox and the like.
90%.
I mean, imagine something that just comes to America and wipes out 90% of us, and then you understand what it must have been like for the Native Americans when they encounter the European diseases that the Europeans had already developed antibodies for.
lex fridman
Just everyone around you is dying.
joe rogan
Imagine that, 90%.
You know, I mean, we're looking at something that's, right, what is the global death rate?
I mean, it's kind of thrown off because of Italy, because Italy has a very high death rate in terms of people that get infected.
lex fridman
Well, we often confuse death rate.
So if you look at the deaths divided by the population, that number is...
I want to be careful saying small, ever.
But it's a very small percentage.
joe rogan
No, I understand.
What I'm saying, though, is overall the number of people, the percentage of people that have died from this and then compare that to the impact that smallpox had on Native Americans.
You'd be like, whoa.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
The difference between 90% of the population gets killed and the high in Italy is, what is the percentage of death?
I think it's 10% of people who get it are dying.
Right?
lex fridman
No.
It's definitely way lower than that.
In Italy?
joe rogan
I thought it was 10%.
lex fridman
I mean, it's possible.
I haven't been too close to following.
joe rogan
I think Italy is an outlier and it's really high.
lex fridman
Usually the way they get that number is dividing by the number of cases.
joe rogan
Okay, Italy.
No, it's right there, man.
Coronavirus cases, 135,000.
Deaths, 17,000.
lex fridman
The problem is those cases were the reported cases.
So you don't know.
Right.
joe rogan
Right, you're saying there's a lot of people that just weren't tested.
lex fridman
That weren't tested.
joe rogan
Right, but isn't that kind of like the Nielsen's?
You kind of look at it, you have to divide by and then...
lex fridman
No, no, no, because I don't know how the Nielsen's works, but this is not randomly sampled.
So if they randomly sample the population and then look at the deaths per, that would be more statistically accurate.
This is just people who have reported.
joe rogan
But don't you think that a bunch of people could have died from the coronavirus and they didn't attribute it to them?
Yes.
So it could be higher than that.
lex fridman
It could be higher.
joe rogan
Okay, that's what I'm thinking too.
That's what they're saying in America as well, by the way.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
They're saying there's a bunch of people that die and they don't know what to do and they don't have the tests.
lex fridman
Currently, given the tests, it's much more likely that...
The number is lower, meaning that it's just we're not testing nearly enough.
So if we randomly...
So Iceland did this random...
joe rogan
The test is lower, I'm sorry, for deaths or for infections?
lex fridman
For deaths, so...
joe rogan
For infections as well, though, right?
lex fridman
Yeah, for infections, yeah.
Oh, sorry, yeah, for infections.
But you need the infection number to calculate the percentage of the deaths correctly.
So you have to test, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's a very large percentage of population, probably 20-30% of the population.
You have to sample randomly, not people who are showing symptoms, not people who are, like, no, just sample randomly to get that number accurately.
joe rogan
There's something about every apocalyptic movie.
There's something that happens where you realize that these people have accepted a new normal.
You know?
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Whether it's Mad Max or A Quiet Place.
You ever see that scary movie?
Is that what it's called, Jamie?
A Quiet Place is a movie about aliens that come here and you gotta be real quiet around them to fuck you up.
lex fridman
So what do you think is the new normal here?
joe rogan
Well, how about social distancing?
I've been watching a lot of movies because we have movie night at home every night.
And, you know...
Watching movies where people are hugging and shaking hands.
lex fridman
It feels weird.
joe rogan
It's weird.
Like that.
That's the new normal.
Like if that was in a movie or a dystopian version of the future on a Hulu show, like the Handmaid's Tale.
Is that it?
Handmaid's Tale?
Handmaid's Tale.
I had to quit that one.
I was like, this is too...
I'm not going to get anything good out of this.
This is going to bum me out.
lex fridman
Too much touching you mean?
joe rogan
No, no.
It's just too...
The dystopian version of the future is too depressing.
It was too awful.
Great show, but I'm like...
lex fridman
You don't think we'll come back to hugging and...
joe rogan
I don't know, man.
I don't know, but I'm saying if there was a movie or a television show where people behaved with social distancing and everyone was afraid of everyone's viruses, like the reality that we're experiencing right now.
If there was a television show like that, you'd be like, what?
What kind of weird fucking show is this?
You would think it's so strange that there's a virus that makes New York City quiet.
Like, drive down New York City, you see a car.
There's a second car.
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
There's a third car.
lex fridman
It's deserted.
unidentified
It's surreal.
joe rogan
My friend John Joseph sent me some videos of him riding his bike around New York.
And he's like, look how fucking crazy this is.
There's no one out here.
There's no one out here.
And he's, you know, turning his phone and showing all these empty streets.
It's weird.
It's weird to see.
Real weird.
unidentified
Yeah, like airports, all that.
joe rogan
So you flew here by yourself on a plane?
lex fridman
By myself.
joe rogan
There was no one else on the plane with you?
lex fridman
Yeah, on the plane.
joe rogan
But they still fly?
lex fridman
Yeah, and nobody behaved like that.
Nobody treated me special.
Wow.
What was surreal is that the airport's empty, but they're fully staffed because you still want to give...
I think part of the stimulus package is giving money to the airlines, so you want to make sure people stay employed.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
Make sure the planes are still running.
joe rogan
That's so crazy that they're flying with one guy.
You had a private flight.
lex fridman
Private flight.
joe rogan
Across the country.
Did you lay back and take up all the seats and switch seats in the middle of the flight?
lex fridman
No, I just try not to get freaked out.
I watched, what is it, Tiger King?
Yes!
joe rogan
Do you get any booze?
Are they serving booze on the plane?
lex fridman
No, no liquids, nothing.
joe rogan
They don't serve anything.
lex fridman
No.
joe rogan
Because they don't want to touch you, right?
lex fridman
Yeah, I don't think they've interacted with me at all.
joe rogan
No interaction with you?
lex fridman
No.
joe rogan
You, the one guy on the plane, they don't even ask, how you doing?
You alright?
lex fridman
No, they were all wearing masks.
I was wearing a mask.
We're all...
But they're friendly.
I would say the least friendly.
And that was weird going to the airport.
Everybody's working and it's just me and my stupid mask.
It was definitely surreal.
But it seemed okay.
The thing that I don't like is how people behave at grocery stores.
The thing you've said, actually, is they don't want to get close to you.
joe rogan
It's strange.
lex fridman
It's so strange.
They're almost like afraid of this, and that really worries me because it has a potential of just separating us, damaging the sense of community.
joe rogan
There's long-term ramifications if we keep this and not hugging each other shit up.
lex fridman
And we have to all be aware of that fact.
This has to be temporary.
joe rogan
Well, once they come up with a...
A remedy, a cure.
If you just know that all you have to do is go to the doctor and the doctor is going to give you a thing and you're going to be fine.
unidentified
Oh, phew.
joe rogan
Like staph infections.
Have you gotten staph from GGSV yet?
lex fridman
No.
joe rogan
Well, it can fucking kill you.
You have to take care of it.
Staph can kill you.
And there's a lot of people that don't even know what it is.
And you get infected and then it gets systemic.
Gets in your blood and you know there's a lot of people that just don't know any better and they're not good at going to the doctor and they Develop some sort of infection by the time they go somewhere and take care of it It's really bad and they're in trouble like they could die, but thank God they have fucking medicine for that at least they can give you a fighting chance So people aren't afraid of jujitsu.
You still do jujitsu even though people get staph.
You know, I know a bunch of people that have gotten staph from training.
A lot.
They could all be dead if it wasn't for remedies, right?
If it wasn't for antibiotics, if it wasn't for, you know, taking the proper care and treating it.
Apparently some people have treated staph organically.
And Rhonda Patrick was actually talking about, I think she had MRSA. At one point and as part of the treatment along with antibiotics, she introduced garlic into the actual wound itself and apparently that had a pretty profound effect.
lex fridman
Oh man, I'd love to see the studies on that.
joe rogan
I wish I remember what she said about that.
lex fridman
She usually comes with studies.
joe rogan
Oh, she's got a fuckload.
She's got studies about everything.
She's one of the smartest people I've ever talked to.
lex fridman
Actually, I haven't followed what she's saying now on the virus.
I'd be curious to see.
joe rogan
She's talking about different nutrients that support your immune system, particularly vitamin D. She takes a lot of vitamin D. But she's just talked about all the various forms, whether it's through sauna or cold plunges.
She's the one who turned me on to that, all that stuff, heat shock proteins, cold shock proteins, and the impact of it.
And there's some videos that you could find online of her talking about it.
She's also written some articles about it, and she's just a huge fan of that hormetic response and how important that is to your system, keeps your system healthy.
Dude, I've been doing it seven days a week, which I wasn't doing before.
lex fridman
Sorry?
joe rogan
Yeah, seven days a week I do it now.
lex fridman
And you just do salt, you jump in, do you do the cold?
joe rogan
No, I haven't been doing cold.
I want to get a cold plunge thing here.
I think I'm going to get something and replace one of my, not in this room, bathroom out there.
lex fridman
What's a cold plunge?
You mean like a tub full of ice water?
joe rogan
Yeah, like one of them big steel tubs and you throw bags of ice in there.
And I'm going to get an ice machine and just turn that room into a freeze your dick off room.
lex fridman
Yeah.
That's my next move.
I've done it a few times.
It's awesome.
It's tough.
joe rogan
Really good for you, right?
lex fridman
It's good for you, yeah.
joe rogan
Well, I think making your body deal with those responses makes it stronger.
I'll tell you what, man.
I've been working out a lot because of this lockdown.
I've been doing a lot of Muay Thai, too.
A lot of hitting, punching, and kicking shit.
That always makes me really sore makes my joint sore and That fucking sauna every day is kind of knocked all that out.
I feel great You know and I've been throwing a lot of power kicks and punches and all this shit and everything feels good Everything feels real good.
I just think there's a giant Benefit to doing that on a regular basis.
You can buy one and put it in your backyard.
If you have that kind of scratch, I say do it.
I'm telling you.
lex fridman
What's the temperature of the water?
joe rogan
Well, sauna is dry.
lex fridman
Oh, is it a dry sauna?
Oh, you mean like a dry sauna?
joe rogan
Yeah, not a jacuzzi, bro.
Those are probably good for you, too.
lex fridman
I thought it was like a wet one.
No.
Like a steam room?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
The problem with that is you can't get as hot because you'll cook.
You know?
lex fridman
Okay.
joe rogan
Like, if you have 190 degree air, you're okay.
If you get in 190 degree water, you're going to die.
lex fridman
Oh, with the steam room, you're essentially...
I mean, you're in a liquid...
joe rogan
Exactly.
You're gonna die.
You're gonna get cooked.
lex fridman
Dry heat.
joe rogan
Dry heat you can tolerate.
I mean I throw a little water on it.
There's actually a little scale in the sauna.
It's like the top of it is the degrees and the bottom of it is the humidity and you're supposed to calculate those and find out exactly how hot it feels.
But either way, you throw a little bit of water.
I throw three little spoonfuls of water on that bit and just sit there and fucking suffer.
And when you get out of there, everything just feels looser and more relaxed.
As soon as your body comes back to a normal temperature, you just feel so much better.
It's so valuable, man.
lex fridman
Well, exercise right now, I highly recommend.
joe rogan
What are you doing?
Because you can't go to jiu-jitsu and you were doing a lot of that, so what are you doing for your exercise?
lex fridman
So body weight.
I do have a cowbell, but I kind of avoid it because it's like hell.
It's too intense for me.
joe rogan
How much does it weigh?
lex fridman
30. 30 pounds?
Yeah, so it's hell.
I'm trying to remember if it's kilograms or pounds.
joe rogan
It's probably 35 pounds.
If it's 30 kilograms, that's heavy as fuck.
lex fridman
Yeah, no, it's not 30, never mind.
joe rogan
30 kilograms is what, 65 pounds?
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Is that what that is?
lex fridman
It's something that kills me if I do like swings and basic stuff for 30 minutes.
joe rogan
Okay, like probably 35 pounds, yeah.
Keith Webber, have you ever done his series?
He's been on the podcast before.
It's this extreme kettlebell cardio workout that we sell it on it, but I found out about it.
We sell it because I found out about it.
I found out about it, I believe, through...
I think I just found it on the internet.
I got a DVD. And it's brutal, man.
And I was like, one little 35-pound kettlebell?
I'm like, bitch-ass little weight.
What the fuck's that going to do?
Dude, four minutes in, I'm like, how long is this?
40 minutes?
There's no fucking way!
And the sorest that I had been in a long time was just one 35-pound kettlebell doing this extreme kettlebell cardio routine put together.
He's got two of them.
I think he might have three.
He definitely has two of them.
They're fucking brutal.
lex fridman
But it's mostly swing bait?
Like you're mostly on your feet?
joe rogan
Oh, no, bro.
You're doing everything, bitch.
You're doing windmills.
You're doing hot potatoes.
You're doing renegade rows.
You're doing everything, man.
You're doing cleans, overhead presses, and squats.
And it's just a nonstop...
And he gives you these little breaks that last like 10 or 15 seconds.
And then, boom, you're moving to the next exercise.
And you're like...
Holy shit!
And you realize how much work you can get in with just a kettlebell.
lex fridman
Just a little bit, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, like people are like, I got no room for a gym.
If you can afford a kettlebell, please, just buy a kettlebell.
You don't have to buy an Onnit kettlebell.
Onnit?
lex fridman
They're probably out of stock.
joe rogan
We're out of stock at Onnit.
lex fridman
I mean, people realize, because gyms are all closed, so you don't know what to do, so...
joe rogan
You know who else makes great shit?
Rogue.
Maybe Rogue has them.
They make awesome kettlebells.
They make awesome everything.
Here it is.
This is Keith Weber.
My man.
So this fucking workout goes on and he's shredded.
Look at my boy Keith.
Look at him.
Showing you how to get your fuck muscles going.
But this is him explaining the correct way to do kettlebell swings.
But I... I mean, you can get a lot of his workouts online.
There's a lot of workouts online from people.
If you've got a YouTube account or a computer that gets online, go to YouTube and find these kettlebell workouts that people put online for free because they put a great workout up there for free just so that you subscribe to their page.
They'll give you some value and what you're giving them is a large audience.
There's some fucking great workouts.
Bodyweight workouts as well that are free.
Free videos online.
Follow along and you can do everything from your living room and you can get blasted.
I mean, you can have a crazy workout from a lot of videos.
There's so many of them.
lex fridman
I do more chill kind of working out so I run for longer distances.
So what I recommend if you're not as intense is like I run about six to eight miles every day and push-ups and bodyweight squats.
joe rogan
I love bodyweight squats.
lex fridman
Bodyweight squats are always surprising to me how much they can kill you.
Everyone who thinks they're badass even can squat a lot.
Even if you can squat, I don't know, 400, 500, 600 pounds, try to do 50 bodyweight squats.
Something happens.
joe rogan
What's the most you've ever done in a row?
lex fridman
I know I usually start suffering at 20, and maybe I've done 40 before.
I don't know.
Why?
joe rogan
You can get up to really high numbers and it's a glorious form of torture and it's crazy how much it develops your legs.
Particularly the quads like right above the knee.
You know these little muscles that are on the side?
Like that hurts from Hindu squats more than fucking anything I've done.
Ever.
It targets those so uniquely because when you're at the bottom, when your heel is up and you're on the ball of your foot and you rise up, it's like all that muscle for the whole beginning of the rise.
It's all that part of the quad right by the knee.
It's a really unique way to target that muscle.
And guys who do it a lot, like a lot of those dudes are really into catch wrestling.
They would do like 500 a day, every day.
They all have these like preposterous legs.
And that was, like, a big part of the development of their strength, was just doing ridiculous numbers of Hindu squats.
lex fridman
And you can also do, like, I usually, I used to do them a lot, like, especially when I competed in the jiu-jitsu and wrestling, I would do a lot of them, and I would also, like, jump.
So, like, you explode into the squats, as opposed to sort of slow.
But that, you know...
joe rogan
Do you ever hear Carl Gotch?
lex fridman
Yeah, the catch wrestling guy.
joe rogan
Yeah, Carl Gotch was famous for his bodyweight conditioning programs.
He was just a stickler for having his wrestlers be in insane physical condition.
It was a prerequisite for training with him.
lex fridman
That's awesome.
joe rogan
Yeah, no, he had a preposterous workout.
I think he was really into clubs too.
I think he was really into those club bells and a bunch of those other kinds of workouts too.
lex fridman
I actually competed in a couple of catch wrestling tournaments.
joe rogan
Did you really?
unidentified
It was cool.
joe rogan
What are the rules?
You can get pinned, right?
lex fridman
Yeah, you can get pinned.
It felt so weird because I won a couple matches by pin, and it felt like this is so stupid.
I didn't even submit the guy.
It felt...
Oh, and I did a lot of interesting things.
So I pulled butterfly guard a few times, meaning you can get pinned, but you don't get points for an almost pin.
joe rogan
Okay.
lex fridman
So you can play guard as long as you don't get your back.
joe rogan
You have to elevate.
lex fridman
You have to elevate regularly.
I don't think you can get pinned if you didn't get past the legs.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
So as long as you're in the butterfly guard, even if you're flat on your back, if you have him in your butterfly guard, he's not pinning you.
lex fridman
Yeah.
Of course, it was confusing the refs and stuff.
Oh.
It was cool because the guys that did it, it felt more like UFC back in the Tank Abbott days.
It was more ghetto.
It was people wearing wrestling shoes and you could kind of see them.
They just got off their like...
joe rogan
Wrestling shoes?
lex fridman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Can you heel hook them?
lex fridman
Yeah, I think so.
Wow.
I think, yeah, everything's legal.
joe rogan
That is a weird choice to wear wrestling shoes if someone can heel hook you.
Unless you're like a heel hook Dean Lister master.
One of those Gary Tonin type dudes that knows how to do it from every angle.
Like for them, actually, I would say like a...
Pride was still around.
Pride let you wear wrestling shoes.
There is a significant advantage from being able to wear wrestling shoes.
Significant.
Not just for your wrestling, but also for your striking.
And Crow Cop wore wrestling shoes for a little bit.
Crow Cop head kicked someone with wrestling shoes on.
I don't remember who it was.
Might have been Mark Hunt.
And I remember thinking, fuck man, he could kick people with shoes on?
That almost seems nuts.
Because the amount of traction that you can get from a rubber sole with texture on the bottom of it versus just your foot, your slippery-ass, bullshit foot that's slipping around on the canvas.
With your wrestling shoes on, you get traction when it's wet.
You get traction everywhere.
Even if there's a puddle on the floor, you get traction with a wrestling shoe where you wouldn't get it with a bare foot.
lex fridman
But at the same time, it's kind of weird that we're bare feet.
joe rogan
It is kind of weird, but it's not.
I think you should be bare...
Well...
lex fridman
You should be naked.
joe rogan
I used to think, yes, you should have a hard-on, or you can't fight.
I used to think that you should have to have no gloves, but then I've been watching this bare-knuckle boxing, and people's faces get fucked up so bad.
You see Chris Lieben?
He fought Dakota Cochran, and his face looked like someone hit him with a machete.
It was crazy.
The most enormous scar I've ever seen on a man's face in a fight.
So now I'm starting to rethink that.
Like maybe those knuckles are just...
lex fridman
Yeah, something about blood.
joe rogan
No, it's not that.
It's about damage to your tissue.
I'm not worried about the blood.
I'm worried about scarring people up for life.
lex fridman
What about Joanna?
Her injury.
joe rogan
Crazy, right?
lex fridman
Yeah, it was crazy.
I didn't check in.
Is she okay?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
Yep, she's fine now.
Her swelling has all gone down, but she had black eyes for a couple weeks.
All that fluid she had on her forehead.
She's so tough, man.
She's so tough.
She's such a savage.
lex fridman
That was a great fight.
joe rogan
She's so admirable.
Like, watching the way she fought that fight, both of them are.
But it was such a back-and-forth brawl of a fight.
It was so perfectly matched.
There was a draw or...
I mean, you can make the argument Ioana won.
You can make the argument Whaley won.
You can make the argument it was a draw.
You can make any of those arguments because that's how close the fight was.
It's all like what you think about this.
There's a lot of people that thought Ioana won it.
But the most important thing is...
Juana fought like a champion.
I mean, they both fought like champions.
Whaley fought like a champion.
It was about as good of a fight as you're ever going to get.
So evenly matched.
So perfect.
So much heart and conditioning and skill.
They had everything.
Everything.
Spectacular fight.
lex fridman
I actually forgot the other fight on the card.
That's how good that fight was.
joe rogan
The other fight was Stylebender versus Yo Romero.
lex fridman
That's right.
joe rogan
It was forgetful.
It was a fight that was forgettable.
lex fridman
It seemed like huge, huge beforehand.
By the way, who you got in terms of...
Do you think Ferguson and Khabib will go down?
joe rogan
Who knows, man?
Not if fucking...
Not if something happens this weekend.
Justin Gaethje's a monster.
Justin Gagey is a monster.
He's a monster.
He's a terrifying individual.
I mean, in a sport that's violent, it's an inherently violent sport, he stands out as the most violent.
You know how crazy it is?
I mean, you watch his knockout of Edson Barboza.
You watch how that motherfucker attacks people.
There's a reckless abandon to his calculated wildness that is terrifying.
He's something special and he's better all the time.
The question is, how much has he been training?
He's taking a fight on very short notice.
He's taking a fight on essentially two weeks notice.
lex fridman
Also, it might be kind of weird to train now in these coronavirus times.
joe rogan
Sure.
lex fridman
With training partners, I don't know.
joe rogan
Well, Ray Longo, who I respect very much, said that fighters shouldn't be fighting because, I don't know if he said they shouldn't be fighting, but he said he definitely felt like it wasn't fair to the fighters because they don't have a full camp.
They're not going to be able to show who they really are.
lex fridman
That's a really good point.
joe rogan
It's a really good point, man.
It's a really good point.
This is a wild situation.
Where there's a guy who's going to fight for the interim title.
He gets the call.
Look, that's also how Nate Diaz beat Conor McGregor in their first fight.
Remember that?
That was 11 days out.
They call Nate Diaz.
He's eating tacos.
Fucking drinking tequila in Mexico.
lex fridman
And probably doing triathlons, but...
joe rogan
Well, on the side, for sure.
Well, he's never out of shape, really.
Like, a normal person out of shape, like you or I would get.
But for Justin Gage, it really depends entirely on how much time he's been spending in the gym.
He's a man with a plan, right?
He's trying to be the UFC lightweight champion.
So he's probably not getting too out of shape.
And he probably knew that in this case there is a potential that one of those guys could drop out because they've already made that fight four fucking times and it fell apart.
So this is the fifth time it's fallen apart, which is nuts.
lex fridman
That's crazy.
joe rogan
So it might be that Justin Gagey knew that this was a possibility that he could be called in as a replacement.
He might be in full camp mode.
We really don't know.
We'd have to talk to him.
lex fridman
Conor McGregor knew all along.
joe rogan
Conor McGregor knew.
He did knew.
I called it.
He was another one that I'm sure was probably getting ready.
I'd love to see him fight in 2020. Conor McGregor versus Tony Ferguson would be fantastic.
lex fridman
Why didn't that happen?
jamie vernon
Do people have to be on standby for last minute fill-ins?
joe rogan
I think there are some people that they asked to be on standby.
They have definitely done that before and they've asked guys to make weight and there's a lot of guys that have been through a full camp and they're paid for a full camp and they're paid to make weight.
This is something that's happened several times in the UFC's history where guys show up because they're there to fight and step in if something falls apart.
Especially if you have a guy who maybe struggles with weight cutting and you might fall apart and get pulled from a fight.
Or someone who's maybe injured or sick and they're like a little nervous with this fight.
unidentified
We're getting super fights every week, do you think?
joe rogan
I don't know, man.
If they build Enter the Dragon Island.
lex fridman
You're going to commentate, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, onto the Dragon Island.
I don't know.
I don't know how we're going to do it.
I don't know how it's going to be done.
lex fridman
Please wear the tracksuit.
unidentified
Please.
joe rogan
I want to dress like Bruce Lee.
lex fridman
Yeah, I did want to really quick ask you.
Did you consider interviewing Trump on this?
joe rogan
Well, he's never asked to do it, and I've never asked him to do it.
Would you do it?
I don't know.
What makes you...
Why do you ask?
I'm trying to stay out of politics, bro.
unidentified
It's too sketchy.
lex fridman
You think it's politics?
Interviewing somebody like Trump?
joe rogan
No, it's not politics at all.
What?
lex fridman
No, meaning...
Well...
joe rogan
It's a political thing.
I mean, just even having him on.
lex fridman
Oh, it's a statement.
joe rogan
He's a politician.
He's a professional president.
I mean, it's politics.
lex fridman
But the nature of long-form conversation is such that you're not doing talking points.
joe rogan
Why do you ask?
lex fridman
Okay, so I'd love to see him on the show, first of all.
And I actually was in the works of interviewing him.
A year ago.
joe rogan
For what?
lex fridman
For the AI podcast that I do.
joe rogan
Really?
lex fridman
But it was more of a supposed to be about the AI initiative.
That would be a short...
I mean, I imagine it would be a short thing about saying how...
joe rogan
Were you going to be in person?
lex fridman
In person, yeah.
joe rogan
That would be an interesting conversation.
lex fridman
I would like this kind of conversation.
I just wanted to talk – not wanted, but I think what they wanted is to talk with the NSF and certain heads of the administrations and just saying this is a really – it's important for us as a country to stay ahead on innovation in terms of artificial intelligence.
So that kind of conversation.
It's a little bit – It's a little bit less about getting into the human story of a human being, which I think Trump is one of the most interesting people that have been in office.
joe rogan
Yeah, if you're studying humans, he's definitely one of the most interesting.
lex fridman
The reason I bring that up is I was thinking...
I had this kind of question of...
If there's a person that talks – because I thought Trump would be incredible for this.
There's a bunch of people in this world which are incredible for this podcast.
Like, only you can have that conversation.
So I started asking myself, like, what is the conversation I could have that only I can do?
Not only, but, like, I'm especially well-equipped for.
joe rogan
Yeah, I would say it's well-equipped better.
I don't think there's anybody that only I can talk to.
lex fridman
Right.
I misspoke.
joe rogan
I know what you're saying, though.
lex fridman
And for that, that's why I think there's agreement now is I'll interview Vladimir Putin.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
lex fridman
I think he has not been interviewed well.
I have all the connections.
joe rogan
And you speak Russian.
lex fridman
Yeah, so it would be a mix of Russian-English, yeah.
joe rogan
Well, that would be the big thing though, is to talk to him in Russian and then relay it in a way that makes us understand it.
lex fridman
That's actually an interesting question.
I would probably talk in English with a translator.
joe rogan
Why would you do that?
lex fridman
Because the ultimate result has to be in English.
Not has to be, but we have to translate on the fly.
Because the, how do I put it?
Translators won't do a good job of translating.
So I'll understand everything he's saying in Russian.
And he'll actually understand everything I'm saying in English.
He speaks pretty good English.
joe rogan
Okay.
lex fridman
But he's not allowed, I mean not allowed.
joe rogan
So you think that would be better than subtitles?
unidentified
Yes.
lex fridman
I think it's more human.
It's more real.
It's like you with Joey Diaz and...
joe rogan
Yoel.
lex fridman
Yoel.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
You didn't do subtitles for that.
joe rogan
No, that was...
lex fridman
But he also speaks pretty good.
joe rogan
Joey's perfect.
He's perfectly bilingual.
So that was a great situation.
And also, Joey's from Cuba.
So together, that was amazing.
lex fridman
So the translator that Putin has is actually really good translators.
They're not some generic folks.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
lex fridman
They're friends.
Like, they're not friends, but...
joe rogan
They know each other.
lex fridman
They know each other well.
So that's...
It's almost...
It's a very similar situation, except that person's not a Joey Diaz at all.
joe rogan
Right.
lex fridman
But it's...
That creates that kind of...
Atmosphere where you can, when there's some uncertainty about the statements that you're making, you can play with that.
But it's an interesting thing.
joe rogan
Do you think he would do that?
lex fridman
The interview?
joe rogan
Yeah.
lex fridman
Yeah.
Well, there's two parts.
I know I have all the right connections for it.
I think he would do it because he will understand who I am.
And the second part is I have a little bit of a Conor McGregor situation going on where everything I've done in my life that I decided I'm going to do always happens.
joe rogan
Everything?
lex fridman
Yeah, everything.
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
What do you think that is?
Do you think you got some Mystic shit going on in there?
lex fridman
I don't know.
joe rogan
Mystic Lex?
unidentified
I don't think so.
joe rogan
Should we call you Mystic Lex?
lex fridman
Like Mystic Mac?
No, that's wrong.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's his thing.
Mystic Mac.
Dude, we're three hours and 20 minutes in, if you believe it or not.
lex fridman
That's a good place to end on Putin.
But can I do this silly song?
joe rogan
Yeah.
We'll end on a silly song.
No pressure.
It's been an amazing podcast so far.
This song doesn't...
If it doesn't hold up, we're just going to cut the power.
lex fridman
Just cut it off.
unidentified
We'll blame it on Brian Callen.
joe rogan
Yeah, we'll blame it on Callen.
Good call.
lex fridman
So I did this video where I played the Joe Rogan Experience theme.
unidentified
Okay.
lex fridman
So what many people think...
Can you hear the guitar, by the way?
unidentified
Yeah.
lex fridman
What many people think is Brian Redband, shout out to Redband, was the one who came up with that from GarageBand.
But it turns out there's actually words to this song.
joe rogan
Brian Callen wrote?
lex fridman
Brian Callen, he sang it in a few episodes.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
I know this stupid song.
We'll end with this.
Lex Friedman, thank you for being here.
I appreciate the fuck out of you.
Tell everybody your Instagram.
Friedman spelled weird like Fridman.
Yeah, F-R-I-D-M-A-N. Lex Friedman, Instagram.
Do you use the Twitter as well?
lex fridman
The Twitters, yeah.
joe rogan
Same thing on Twitter?
lex fridman
Same thing on Twitter.
Listen to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's been fun, buddy.
lex fridman
If anyone wants to do any weddings or bar mitzvahs for musician-wise...
joe rogan
He'll sing his ass off.
Come get some.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
Thanks for being here, man.
I appreciate it.
unidentified
Thank you, brother.
joe rogan
Let's go.
unidentified
This is the stupidest thing I've ever done.
lex fridman
So this is a story.
unidentified
Okay.
In the desert I met a man With an eagle perching on his hand And he asked me, son, what can I do for you?
lex fridman
Definitely the stupidest.
Father, I said, I'm looking for The meaning I should be living for He put a finger to my lips and said, shh, let the old man speak They call me Brian Callahan.
unidentified
In this cruel world there is a man you should listen to as you journey on through life.
His name is Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan.
Shoulders for days and a really wide bag.
Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan.
Barrel of snakes for a bag.
Then he mounted his horse And he looked to the sky And he rode to the sunset With a tear in his eye And the legend goes The old man rides on Singing the words To this terrible song Joe Rogan You
fucked up.
joe rogan
You should have never done that song.
It was terrible.
People are going to never forgive you for that.
Thank you, buddy.
unidentified
I regret nothing.
lex fridman
Thank you, brother.
joe rogan
Thank you, brother.
Bye, everybody.
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