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Feb. 16, 2024 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:05:04
Joe Rogan Experience #2104 - Chris Williamson
Participants
Main voices
c
chris williamson
01:20:47
j
joe rogan
01:35:21
Appearances
j
jamie vernon
02:11
Clips
b
b-real
00:02
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!
Cheap, sir.
joe rogan
Cheers.
chris williamson
What is that?
Black Rifle?
joe rogan
Black Rifle, yeah.
We're up, Chris.
What's up, baby?
unidentified
How are you?
chris williamson
Good to see you, man.
joe rogan
So, how long have you been in Texas now?
chris williamson
Two years.
joe rogan
Wow.
Do you feel like this is where you live, or do you like...
chris williamson
This feels like home.
joe rogan
Really?
chris williamson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wow.
chris williamson
Yeah, I went back home for Christmas in the UK, and it's so strange to go back to a place that you know so well, you're super familiar with, But you're kind of different and everything's changed, but everything's the same.
And you fall back into old patterns.
You remember that tree that you used to walk past on your morning walk and all of...
It's very disquieting, but it's fun.
It's nice.
joe rogan
The oddest thing for me is the contrast and the amount of freedom you have for things that you would never think were important.
Like these little nicotine things.
In California, you can't buy this because it's flavored.
In California, you can put a tent in front of people's houses and fucking cook meth and no one says anything.
No one does anything.
You could commit violent crime and you get arrested and released with no bail.
They'll never find you again.
The laws are so ridiculous.
You are not allowed to have flavored nicotine.
Flavored nicotine is dangerous, Chris.
chris williamson
They're trying to ban flavored vapes in the UK very aggressively.
Super aggressively.
It's like that's the big deal.
That being said, I think it's like some non-insignificant percentage of school children are using vapes.
joe rogan
It's very addictive.
chris williamson
There's a no vapes sign in schools.
Like that wasn't something that was already self-evident.
joe rogan
Well, cigarettes were a big deal when I was in high school.
You know, a lot of kids smoked cigarettes.
It was a cool kids thing to do.
chris williamson
What's the smoking age in America?
joe rogan
I think it's 18. Yep.
18?
unidentified
Legally, yeah.
joe rogan
Legally?
Yeah.
It's 18. But when I was a kid, people got cigarettes.
Someone got you cigarettes.
I don't know.
When I was young, I remember before I turned to 18, they changed the legal drinking age.
Because the legal drinking age, I believe, used to be 18. And then they bumped it up to 21. I was like, damn it.
chris williamson
Dude, have you ever seen the video of when DUIs came in in the 1980s?
unidentified
Yes.
chris williamson
And they're interviewing people in cars.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
That is one of my favorite videos of all time.
Please, Jamie, let me watch that video again.
joe rogan
Yeah.
The lady's like, we're going to bring in communism.
chris williamson
Don't know what the world's coming to.
joe rogan
And she's got a kid.
Yeah.
chris williamson
She's got a baby in the passenger seat.
joe rogan
No seatbelt.
chris williamson
Oh my god.
joe rogan
Anybody who did have a seatbelt.
There's no airbags.
Those things are death traps.
chris williamson
It's one of my favorite videos.
There's this weird, there's something I've noticed since being in America.
Your guys' relationship with drink driving is a little bit more lax than it is in the UK. Not in Texas.
joe rogan
If you have any alcohol in your system at all, they'll arrest you.
Like if you get pulled over and they said, have you had anything to drink?
And you say, yes, I've had one drink.
You're getting, you're getting arrested.
chris williamson
I fucking love this video.
unidentified
Drinking and driving here is viewed by some as downright undemocratic.
It's kind of getting common, it's when a fella can't put in a hard day's work, put in 11, 12 hours a day, and then get in your truck and at least run one or two beers.
chris williamson
Look at the baby!
unidentified
You can't drink when you want to.
You have to wear a seatbelt when you're driving.
joe rogan
Yeah, she's wearing a seatbelt.
It looks like the baby is more protected than I thought it was.
It had that thing in front of it, that little cushion in front of it.
So it seemed like she was a little bit more...
chris williamson
The funniest thing about that is...
joe rogan
See that thing?
chris williamson
Their issue is, it's not with not being allowed to drink, then drive.
There's this one worse.
It's drink and drive.
You mean I can't drink and...
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
Constantly.
chris williamson
Dude, I love that video.
Oh my god.
joe rogan
Yeah, you definitely shouldn't drink and drive.
That's true.
But also, you don't really want people telling you what you can and can't do.
And once they start doing it with anything, you're going to bring in communism.
I see it's cartoonish.
It's very cartoonish when they're saying that.
It's very ridiculous.
But kind of they have a point.
This is the only point.
If you let someone tell you what you can't do, they're going to expand that power of telling you what you can't do.
chris williamson
Always.
One of the problems is that puts...
joe rogan
Sobriety was somehow not fitting with the American way.
chris williamson
What?
jamie vernon
Measuring sobriety.
joe rogan
Okay, hold on a second.
During the 1950s, the American public and the judicial system were still erring on the side of the drunk driver.
Oddly enough, some people were concerned with the mechanization of measuring sobriety was somehow not fitting with the American way.
Kind of isn't.
It kind of isn't, but also you shouldn't drink and drive.
Like, both things are true.
We should, like, teach people that you should never fucking do that.
I went to high school with a kid, and he was a good guy.
I knew him from the time I was, like, 14. And then when, I guess, a senior in high school, he was drunk and he crashed his car and killed his friend.
And I remember running into him on the street.
We were both walking.
And I walked by him, and he had his head down.
And, you know, I wasn't good friends with him, but I was friends with him.
I always said hi to him.
I said hi to him.
I said, hey man, how you doing?
He's like, he was done.
He was done.
His life was over, man.
He wasn't, you know, a regular kid anymore.
He was a kid who killed his friend in a drunk driving accident.
It was a different human.
His life, he was this one guy, he was a good normal guy, fun guy.
People liked him.
He was a friendly guy.
And then all of a sudden, a pariah.
All of a sudden, everyone knows what you did.
All of a sudden, what you did, you can't believe you did.
This horrible, horrible, horrible thing.
And you did it when you were so young.
chris williamson
I'm a kid.
joe rogan
He was 16, 17, whatever he was.
He didn't know what he was doing.
He had no idea.
You're so stupid when you're that young.
Your brain's not formed yet.
And you can't treat them like they're adults.
You just can't.
They're not adults.
You know?
You're talking about a 16-year-old kid, a 15-year-old kid?
Like, fuck.
When they're doing things, they don't even know what's real.
I mean, and it's all completely dependent upon how they were raised.
Like you could get really lucky and have solid parents and really have like a good understanding of how to behave in the world.
Or you could get fucked and you got some dad who beats the shit out of you and he's always on meth and your mother's a fucking liar and she steals money and she sells people stuff.
You know, that could be your reality, too.
And to expect a person like that to behave exactly the way you do with your nice life is crazy.
It's crazy.
And it's one of the weirder things that we do.
Instead of looking at the origins of, what are the origins of horrible behavior?
It's all terrible childhoods.
It's almost all terrible childhoods.
Instead of looking at that, all we look at is a crime.
It's very strange.
It's a weird thing.
It's like to know logically that you just have to take a few extra steps and you say, well, what's the root of this problem and how do we address that?
How do we make it better?
We have so much money for other things.
We don't have any money for that.
That seems like one of the most fundamental problems any country would face is the amount of people that grow up that become violent criminals because they were fucked from the time they were young.
They had no shot at life.
Their whole childhood was just violence and chaos.
And that's not an insignificant number of people in this country and yet any foreign conflict has to be addressed with the utmost urgency when the things that are paramount to our daily existence right here What our tax dollars pay for right here are just completely ignored.
Completely ignored.
Never discussed.
They'll talk to you about climate change.
Climate change.
Let me tell you something.
If you live in the south side of Chicago and you get shot, climate change doesn't mean jack shit to you.
Okay?
We should address what the fuck is going on right now, not climate change.
chris williamson
Do you know what the ideas of luxury beliefs are?
You heard of this?
joe rogan
No.
chris williamson
So it's been repopularized by my friend Rob Henderson.
So luxury beliefs are ideas held by the upper classes that confer status on them, but often cause costs for the lower class.
So the seminal example of this is defund the police.
unidentified
Yeah.
chris williamson
I walked past a house in Austin, not far from where I live, that has a defund the police flag in the garden out front and a private security sticker in the front window.
unidentified
It's so stupid.
joe rogan
It's such a virtue.
You know, do you know Will Storr?
chris williamson
Of course.
He's been on my show.
I went for breakfast with him yesterday.
joe rogan
He's great.
chris williamson
He's fantastic.
joe rogan
Of course you know him.
Will Storr, who wrote that book, The Status Game, was explaining all this and how what people are doing, what they're actually doing.
chris williamson
He's outstanding.
So good.
joe rogan
He relates it to so many behavior patterns in life.
It's just like, oh my God, this all makes sense.
chris williamson
He's a legend of storytelling.
He's one of the best writers in the UK. There's this really interesting example of...
My friend Mary Harrington talks about how the death of chivalry has caused an increase in domestic violence.
It's very interesting.
This is a good example of this luxury beliefs thing.
So...
Yes.
During the 1960s and 70s, if you were an upper-class lady and the guys that you were dating were from households that had two parents that had taught them how you're supposed to treat people and they weren't mistreated and all the rest of it.
They grew up like a well-balanced person.
To them, it might seem a little bit patronizing for the guy to hold the door for you, right?
Or to pull the chair out or to make sure that you get home okay.
Because you live an existence in which the danger of that not happening, not going appropriately, isn't that great.
Now, what wasn't understood by a lot of the upper class feminists that were talking about this derogation of chivalry that they wanted was that that doesn't necessarily work for the working class or the underclass woman who is dating a man whose father beat him or stepfather beat him or didn't have a father or was homeless or addicted what wasn't understood by a lot of the upper class feminists that were talking about this And she thinks it's a direct line, a single spectrum from you should hold the door open for women to you shouldn't beat your wife.
And I think that it's true.
Women should be seen as something that requires additional protection, that are precious and should be respected.
If you derogate the stuff up here, sure, maybe it means that you liberate some of the upper class women to be able to go and do whatever they want.
But what does this cause downstream when you don't have those guardrails in place for the men that the lower class women are dating?
joe rogan
Well, just all men, period.
And it should be...
Here's the thing.
This is how it's looked upon in the martial arts world.
If I know that I can fuck you up, and I fuck you up, I'm probably a bad person.
It's never good that a guy who is like some trained killer goes after some regular guy, picks a fight with him and fucks him up.
It's never thought of as good.
It's always negative, like almost entirely negative, like the entire fan base will recognize that terrible behavior.
So if you're a man and you have someone who is your wife and she's smaller than you and female, you have the craziest advantage physically.
It's the most awful tyranny physically if violence is involved.
If you decide that you're going to start swinging and teaching people lessons and And then lying to police about how someone got hurt and, oh, she fell down the stairs.
And if you grow up seeing that, that's even maybe more fucked up.
Because that's your model, and that's probably what their model was when they were growing up.
But it's, as men, we have to look at that as the weakest of most disgusting behaviors.
Including beating up on people that are weak.
chris williamson
Well that's the reason for the male monkey dance as it's called.
The reason for that is that it's Rivalry between two potentially matched males and we don't know who's going to win.
That's the reason for the conflict.
If there's a huge disparity, what's the point for the conflict?
You already know who's going to win, right?
That's why beating up a 70-year-old guy or a 10-year-old boy isn't a big deal.
But if you're a 21-year-old dude that's about this high, this is exactly why you have weight classes.
Right?
It's to create this degree of intrigue and fairness in the rivalry.
joe rogan
100%.
100%.
Yeah.
If a heavyweight beat up on a bantamweight, everyone would be furious.
But that's what a lot of men are and a lot of women are.
It's crazy.
If that happened in the male martial arts world, people would be furious.
It's just It's just fucking it's horrible and it's just it's it's weird that it's always been a part of like cinema There's always been scenes like James Cagney smacks a girl in the face and there was one God, I wish I could remember the movie.
It was so crazy But the the it was like a 1950s movie and the dad was spanking the the wife spanking her like had her over his knee and the young girl Was saying that that's how he shows mommy that he loves her.
God, you remember that movie, Jamie?
I know we played it.
It was insane.
It was like this insane scene from a movie where you're like, what?
chris williamson
What the fuck am I watching?
joe rogan
But it's a time capsule into this evolving understanding of how human beings interact with each other.
That's what it is.
And it's a time capsule from less than 100 years ago.
chris williamson
What was that super famous...
jamie vernon
Is this Shirley Temple?
unidentified
Yes!
joe rogan
Yes, it's Shirley Temple.
That's what it...
Bro...
unidentified
Thanks, Mama.
You're darn tootin' I did.
That means you love her.
That's what I've been trying to tell her.
chris williamson
Oh my god.
joe rogan
Dude.
You darn tootin'.
chris williamson
Darn tootin' I am.
joe rogan
The guy's got someone's daughter over his knee and he's spanking her into submission.
Spanking her.
That'll teach her.
That means you love her, Shirley Temple says.
Shirley Temple is like the propagandist.
She's like a young propagandist.
jamie vernon
I can't tell if that's actually her.
I'm trying to type it in.
It's not her?
joe rogan
How many of them were there?
How many of them young, famous girl actors were there?
How many of them came out great?
Zero?
chris williamson
It's a mixed bag.
Britney Spears is a work in progress.
joe rogan
I do not think children should be developing in front of the world.
I think that's an insane amount of pressure.
I think becoming famous in front of the world is an insane amount of pressure.
Becoming a child as you're growing up, you're in front of the world, that's not manageable.
No one's designed like that.
You're gonna blow the hardware.
chris williamson
I had this idea about we always hear the problems of child stars.
Macaulay Culkin, Britney Spears, too much fame, too young.
And I don't disagree that thinking about, oh my God, this person's basically never known the world without adoration and attention and focus and scrutiny and all that stuff.
joe rogan
Right.
chris williamson
But there's a really interesting question about what happens if you're a...
You know, let's say, for example, Canadian psychologist who's been working away in the dusty annals of some university for a while.
and out of nowhere, you get thrust into the limelight, and then this bald MMA commentator plucks you out of obscurity, and now you're one of the most talked about people on the planet.
The interesting thing here is, as the child, yes, you didn't know what the world was like before.
I understand that can be disquieting.
But what about when you had a sense of self?
What about when you thought you knew who you were, and your place in the world, and your place in the status hierarchy, as Will would say?
What about that?
And then you just get ripped from your moorings, and you're just out in space, and the ISS is going past you, and you're...
joe rogan
You're certainly going to make some mistakes.
There's no way around it.
You've never managed those waters before.
If you just get in a raft for the first time and you're going down white waters to navigate, you're probably going to fall in.
You're probably not good at this.
chris williamson
If the acceleration is quick as well.
joe rogan
Yeah, if you're in a kayak and you're hitting rocks, you're probably going to fall in.
You don't know what the fuck you're doing.
But once you figure out what you're doing, then you can kind of achieve some sort of level of balance.
But for him, I think a lot of it was exacerbated by the benzodiazepine thing.
So he was taking anti-anxiety medication.
He didn't understand when it was prescribed to him how addictive it was and what the consequences were of getting off of it.
And he talks about it a lot.
And I think he was sick for over a year.
chris williamson
I'm pretty sure that there's a number of psychiatrists that are hesitant about prescribing that for more than a couple of days.
And Jordan was on it for months and months and months.
joe rogan
It seems like even for a couple of days, you're just kissing death.
I just want to kiss you death.
chris williamson
Have you seen the Instagram account Mug Shorties?
joe rogan
No.
chris williamson
Oh, my God.
This is one of the greatest things on the internet.
I can't believe I get to teach you about Mug Shorties.
Come on, J-Mo, let's do this.
jamie vernon
This is a fun account.
chris williamson
It's images, mugshots of girls that have been taken in for questioning.
So it'll say in the top, in the description, what they've been charged for.
Look at the comment below.
joe rogan
She can drive me while intoxicated.
chris williamson
Your Honor, we're under her influence.
joe rogan
Her eyes are intoxicating.
chris williamson
Your Honor, I think you've been drinking.
Keep going.
joe rogan
Oh my God, it's amazing.
They're very funny.
There's my Valentine.
Oh, so they're all funny comments.
jamie vernon
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, that's great.
jamie vernon
A bunch of thirsty dudes that are just like, I'll fucking...
joe rogan
Yeah, but they seem to be making funny jokes, though.
chris williamson
Consensual.
joe rogan
It seems to be funny, though.
chris williamson
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
That's fun.
What is it called?
Mugshot...
jamie vernon
Shotties.
joe rogan
Shotties.
S-H-A-W-T-Y-S. Yeah, shorties, but shotties.
chris williamson
O-W-I, possession of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia.
It was my weed, officer.
unidentified
What?
chris williamson
There's another one.
It was like possession of cocaine and someone replied and said it was medicinal.
joe rogan
Face ID doesn't want to believe that it's me with this headphone on.
It's odd.
I would think that...
You know, that would be, like, a really good place to test jokes.
You know, as a comic, like, with mug shots, it's, like, a really fun exercise just to try to come up with a funny one-liner.
chris williamson
Yeah, you've got the way that they look, and you've got a short description about the caption.
joe rogan
You know who would excel at that is Tony Hinchcliffe.
Tony Hinchcliffe would excel at that.
chris williamson
Mr. Roast?
joe rogan
He's the best at that.
There's no one better.
There's no one better at finding something funny about some horrible aspect of what just happened.
chris williamson
Jimmy Carr's pretty good.
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
Yes.
He's very good at it.
Yeah, the two of them could duke it out.
It'd be a lot of fun.
I think they might have done a roast battle.
They have.
That's right, they have.
jamie vernon
On TV. Wow.
chris williamson
That would be like an unstoppable object and an immovable force.
joe rogan
Tony comes up with them, they're so fast, you can't believe they're not scripted.
Like his brain just, oh, but it's like that 24-7.
Like in the green room, he's always like got puns for everything.
It's just, I don't, his mind just works in a really weird joke writer way.
chris williamson
Well, Mark Norman's the same, right?
He just can't not do it.
joe rogan
Can't not do it.
Very similar.
I mean, Mark's even more extreme.
chris williamson
Yeah, it's unrelenting with him.
Fucking hell.
joe rogan
Mark can't, like, he gets panicky if we're talking about something weird.
Like, he goes, I think they're gonna think it's boring!
His attention span is like, it's so short.
Like, I don't think he ever watches documentaries.
chris williamson
I think I texted him a stat about 77% of 18 to 24 year olds in the US are ineligible to join the military because of being overweight or mental or drug problems.
and he just replied with, meal team six.
unidentified
That's him!
joe rogan
24-7.
That's just how his brain works.
He's so good at it.
So good at it.
It's a marvel of personality.
When we do protect our parks, he's like a special...
If you're going to make a really good stew, it's not just meat.
You want carrots in there, you want potatoes, you want spices.
He's a critical spice.
chris williamson
He's a big carrot.
joe rogan
He's something that's very important to that recipe being delicious.
chris williamson
Fucking Phenomenal, dude.
joe rogan
He's such a good guy, too.
chris williamson
There's this idea about...
In Blackadder, Rowan Atkinson, this famous British comedy, he was saying...
You know your bits, don't you?
One of the actors says to him.
And he says, this is different.
It's spontaneous and it's called wit.
And I just always stuck in my mind that there's a difference between having prepared and well-constructed stuff in advance and then being able to, no matter what it is, whether it's insights, whether it's debate, whether it's argumentation, whether it's analysis, all of those things, the ability for someone to just turn it on like that.
joe rogan
The verbal sparring aspect of it.
Some people don't like that.
And then there's some comics that aren't really good at that.
They're not good at dealing with audience members or anything like that.
They're not good at answering questions.
But they're good at long takes on things where they sit alone in contemplation and go over some ironic aspect of a topic and then they write out really good material about it.
It's still super valid.
It's like there's no one that's better than the other.
But there's different personalities that get attracted to the idea of constructing a stand-up comedy routine.
And for some personalities, they're not like a conflict personality or, yeah, well, you're a this.
They're not that guy or that girl.
They're someone who gets some subject, bothers them, whatever it is, climate change, whatever it is.
And they just sit on it.
And they're like, what?
And then they'll be alone.
They'll be in front of the computer.
They'll get a notebook out.
They'll just sit on it for fucking days sometimes.
Bounce it around back and forth.
Twist it around.
Start it from this way.
Start it from the back.
Back it up.
Go from the conclusion first and then explain your conclusion in a hilarious way.
See if it works better that way.
And you'll do that.
And then that type of comic, like that mindset, can create great bits.
They're great comics.
But they just don't like to do the audience thing.
But that's okay, too.
It's like, you can't ask someone to change their personality.
But Tony is like, he's a razor-tongued man.
If you talk shit to Tony, he's gonna fuck you up.
chris williamson
Dancing with death.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, and he's not physically imposing whatsoever.
So it makes it even more brutal when he comes after you.
chris williamson
The same with Michael Malice.
Yes, exactly.
Michael once told me, he said, I couldn't get away with half of the shit that I say if I wasn't five foot seven.
joe rogan
Yeah, it helps.
It certainly helps.
It helps to be, yeah, like someone who you can't hit because they're weaker than you.
Yeah.
But Tony walks that fucking line.
unidentified
Woo!
chris williamson
Whitney was telling me before, I did a little tour toward the back end of last year, which was pretty interesting.
And I was saying, what should I expect?
He says, expect to get a bit more boring as it goes on.
It's like, what do you mean?
He said, well, in order for art to imitate life, you have to live a life.
And the problem is, if you're on the road, all you know are airports and hotels and dinners and shows.
And that's it.
And she was saying that she was in a Hollywood scriptwriters meeting.
And they were saying, it's a Saturday morning.
Where is she?
And someone shouted from the back, she's in a baby shower.
And Whitney was like, who goes to a baby shower?
All right.
She's doing a wine tasting.
She's like, no one goes to a wine tasting.
And the room turned and apparently said, no, Whitney, you don't.
Other normal people do that.
So you've got this vicious trap of success.
It must happen with musicians as well.
How are you supposed to...
If you're some heartfelt singer talking about your make-ups and break-ups of relationships, and now you're dealing with the fear of me too, that doesn't exactly give beautiful romance around what you're talking about.
The same thing goes for comedians, the same thing goes for anything.
The whole point of what you're trying to do is be representation, be representative for the normal person.
joe rogan
Yes.
chris williamson
And the more that your life becomes strange and rarified and on the road, the less of that you get to experience, which is less inspiration for the art.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah.
It's a matter of, like, what are you doing when you're on the road?
Are you on the road just to make money?
Because then you just have to just treat it as a very fortunate job.
And you definitely are not going to get the same kind of life experience.
You're not.
You're just not.
You're gonna be traveling all the time and you're gonna be staying in hotels.
You're gonna be doing gigs.
Most of your time you'll be thinking about doing the material that you prepared and getting your set together.
But you could still take stuff in if you choose to.
You know, you can go to cities and check out museums.
You can go to cities and, you know, go on a tour of the town.
You just have to be proactive.
And you could watch documentaries.
I like to watch documentaries on the road.
I try to educate myself more on the road than watching something just entertaining.
So I'm on the road.
I'm supposed to be doing stand-up.
I'm awake.
Let me watch something on Nepal.
You know what I mean?
Let me get interested in something.
Let me get my mind stimulated with something other than just performing and traveling.
chris williamson
Yeah.
joe rogan
But you have to choose to.
You have to choose to go to the gym.
Everyone's like, how's the jet lag?
I go, you just got to kill it.
It's just like a thing you have to do.
It's like jumping in the cold water.
It sucks, but if you do it, you'll feel better.
You got to go right to the gym.
The moment you land.
Plane lands.
Check into your hotel.
Gym.
Right away.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
Go to the fucking gym.
Or do a hotel workout.
You could do a great body weight workout.
You could do a yoga routine.
chris williamson
Staying in hotels with gyms is the easiest hack for that.
joe rogan
Oh, it's so nice.
If you go to a hotel and they have kettlebells, like, oh my god, this is amazing.
chris williamson
Game over.
joe rogan
Yeah, this is amazing.
And so you just get a nice workout in, really fucking exert your body, get that sweat going, get your heart rate up, and you'll settle in.
All that jet lag shit, it's nonsense.
It all goes away, even when you travel.
When I go to overseas, it's like, just fucking work out one day really hard.
chris williamson
Pretty much resets everything.
joe rogan
Resets everything.
It's like a threshold.
You want to like really sweat, like really get something, like push it a little bit.
So you're like, alright, now we're back.
Just whoop!
chris williamson
Normality.
joe rogan
Yeah, total normality.
And then also, you've got to make sure you're hydrated.
That plane travel is just a brutal thing in your body.
You're probably getting radioactive waves at an unhealthy level.
Like those stewardesses?
chris williamson
I'd love to see a study looking at what's happening to their telomeres, what's happening to their DNA, you know, of pilots and stewardesses and stuff.
joe rogan
Is there anything like that?
chris williamson
I have no idea.
I'd love to know it, though.
There must be.
Someone must have done a longevity study on that.
joe rogan
You got to think, when they first started doing that, like, for all of human history, they didn't fly people in the air.
And then they first started doing that.
They had no idea.
What if it made them psychic?
What if like all those, all that radiation, what if it was like a comic book type deal?
Like instead of, you know, instead of, you know, you get cancer, you get some crazy new power.
In comic books, everybody gets power.
Nobody gets power in the real world.
chris williamson
They'll come back down and they're green or they're invisible.
joe rogan
They see things.
chris williamson
Yeah.
joe rogan
They can see things.
chris williamson
They can turn you gay.
joe rogan
Oh, Jesus.
I think our government's trying that one.
unidentified
They can do basically whatever they want.
joe rogan
They can see through walls.
We can come up with all kinds of superpowers that they would get.
But the idea is, like, we really didn't know what radiation did for you.
You know, that's what those terrible injuries that those women got that were using loom, the radioactive loom.
What is that shit called again, Jamie?
chris williamson
Radium?
joe rogan
Radium.
chris williamson
Yeah, to make the watch faces lighter.
joe rogan
Oh, so horrible.
chris williamson
And they were having babies as well.
They were pregnant and their kids had problems.
joe rogan
They had holes in their faces.
Their faces rotted off.
unidentified
It was horrible.
I'm pretty sure.
chris williamson
Didn't Marie Curie also have some problem like that as well?
Like, everybody that did research around radioactive substances, early 1900s, just got fully, fully fucked.
joe rogan
Have you seen the hands of the ladies who used to test the x-ray machines?
chris williamson
No.
joe rogan
Oh, it's a horrible injury, man.
Because back in the day, before they knew that x-rays were dangerous, they had to make sure the x-ray machine worked in the office.
So these ladies would put their hand in every day.
chris williamson
Oh, before the patient came in?
So they were getting a dose of one hand, dose of...
Every day.
joe rogan
Every day.
chris williamson
And presumably, oh, was it all with the same hand?
joe rogan
Look at the hand.
It's fucking gross, man.
It's just, their hands got cancer.
They just got hand cancer.
Their hands are all shriveled up and fucked up.
Yeah.
That's an illustration of one, but there's photographs of one.
That one up above the top row, the middle and the top, that's the one.
Look at that dude.
That's a lady who got too many x-rays.
unidentified
Just cooked her hand.
chris williamson
This hand showing damage from radiation exposure back in the 1900s.
joe rogan
See, they didn't know.
That's what I'm saying.
Like, they really didn't know what was going to happen.
chris williamson
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, they would test that motherfucker.
Look at that dude's hand.
jamie vernon
Cooked.
joe rogan
Yeah, so he just tests the hand.
chris williamson
See ya.
joe rogan
So this is the 1900s, Jamie?
1865 to 1904 is when this guy lived.
A glass blower.
jamie vernon
Wow.
joe rogan
He would test x-ray tubes he made on his own hands and died after developing aggressive cancer.
Aggressive cancer is such a scary word.
chris williamson
He had both of his arms amputated in an unsuccessful attempt to save his life.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
Shortly after his death, Thomas Edison abandoned his research on x-rays.
Shortly after.
chris williamson
Dude, I gotta teach you about this.
joe rogan
The other guy's fucked too.
jamie vernon
There's two guys here.
joe rogan
Everyone's wrecked.
Yeah, what happened to that guy?
Jesus Christ.
chris williamson
He was saved by the beard.
I've got a new man crush that I need to teach you about.
joe rogan
Uh-oh.
chris williamson
And he died 60 years ago, so it's okay.
I'm sorry.
So, Jamie, I think this guy might have the best top paragraph Wikipedia description in history.
Can you just Google the unkillable soldier and you'll see a Wikipedia entry at the top.
joe rogan
Is this a real human?
chris williamson
A real human.
joe rogan
When did he live?
chris williamson
1880 until about 1960 or so.
So he went through...
jamie vernon
Ooh, is he...
He's Sisu.
No?
chris williamson
Sir Adrian...
unidentified
No, in the beginning of the movie, that's the legend.
jamie vernon
Maybe it's not a real guy.
joe rogan
Well, Sisu's a Scandinavian movie, isn't it?
It's a British guy.
chris williamson
He's a good British...
joe rogan
Is it Swedish?
Who made Sisu?
Did you see Sisu?
chris williamson
No.
joe rogan
Bro.
chris williamson
What is it?
joe rogan
It's amazing.
chris williamson
What is it?
joe rogan
Is it John Wick in World War II? It's this one fucking badass soldier that kills all the Nazis.
It's incredible.
It's one of the most satisfying revenge movies.
chris williamson
Yeah, so go to his Wikipedia, Adrian Carton de Watt.
I think he might have the best...
There it is.
Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Paul Gislaine Carton-du-Art was a British Army soldier, officer, born of Belgian and Irish parents.
He was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration awarded for valour in the face of the enemy in various Commonwealth countries.
He served in the Boer War, First World War and Second World War.
He was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip and ear, was blinded in his left eye, survived two plane crashes, tunnelled out of a prisoner of war camp...
And tore off his own fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them.
Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, frankly, I had enjoyed the war.
joe rogan
There's dudes like that out there.
You just have to know there's guys like that out there.
chris williamson
This guy's story.
Let me tell you about him, man.
So he gets born in 1882, aristocracy in Belgium.
And you think he's going to go through the typical aristocratic route.
He goes to Balliol College in Oxford.
His father wants him to go and study law.
And you think, right, that's the end of the story there.
At 19, he decides that he wants to go and see war, sneaks away without telling his father, and literally offers himself to either the Boers or the British.
The British take him.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
chris williamson
He's like, I just want to be in war.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
chris williamson
His father doesn't know.
So he's away in war.
gets shot in the leg and the groin, gets shipped back home.
His father says, you were supposed to be in university, you've now been shot.
Okay, well, I'll bless this new military campaign you want to go on.
He says, I want to be redeployed.
Gets redeployed again to South Africa.
He was at the head of the Camel Corps, which was literally a group of people who rode into battle on camelback.
So he gets shot.
He gets shot in the ear and then in the eye, and then a bullet ricochets and hits him in the same eye again.
unidentified
while he's leading these guys into battle.
chris williamson
He gets sent back home.
The British military say...
He wants to go out on the First World War.
He wants to go to the front lines of the First World War now.
But they said, we can't send a guy with one eye out there because it's going to look like we've got really weak soldiers.
So they give him a glass eye and say, the only way that you can go back out is if you wear this glass eye.
And he says, okay.
In the taxi, leaving the hospital, takes it out, throws it out of a window and starts wearing an eye patch.
The first battle that he's in, when he rejoins the army in World War I... A piece of shrapnel explodes his hand and all that's left are two fingers hanging on by the skin of the palm of his hand and his watch actually embeds itself in his arm too.
So this is the first thing that he's encountered again.
Goes to the field hospital.
The doctor declines to amputate the fingers.
So he just rips them off in front of him because he's in so much pain.
The arm then has to be amputated.
So he says to the guys again, I want to be redeployed.
Like, you are now a one-eyed amputee.
I want to be deployed.
Battle of the Somme, his next battle that he goes into.
There's reports from other soldiers seeing Carton Duarte running into battle, pulling the pins out of grenades with his teeth, throwing them at the enemy and reloading a revolver with one hand.
So this guy is a single-armed killer.
During that, he gets shot through the back of the head.
Through the head.
Doesn't die.
In subsequent battles, oh, he got promoted for 24 hours before he threatened to punch his superior and then got demoted again.
So he's just like this totally wild dude.
Anyway, he goes through this series of different difficult military exposes.
He takes over three squadrons who don't have a commanding officer.
None of them have any communication.
So he, this one-armed, one-eyed guy, decides to run back and forth between the three different companies, communicating his own orders.
Rather than using a messenger, he just does it himself.
That was what he got the Victoria Cross for, which is our equivalent of the Medal of Honor.
During this time, he shot a bunch more.
You think, right, okay, this guy's just led the most insane campaign through the Boer War and the First World War, time for him to retire.
60 years old, in 1940, he gets conscripted and drawn back up to help run secret missions.
So his first mission, one of his first missions, he gets shot down in a fjord going toward Romania.
There's a German plane that shot his plane down, circling overhead.
Rather than get into the dinghy, because it would be an easy target, this one-armed, one-eyed guy and all the rest of the crew just bob under the water until this German fighter plane runs out of ammunition.
That goes away.
He finally gets picked up.
Second time he goes up in a plane.
This plane crash lands and he swims to shore carrying an injured comrade who survives.
One arm, but swims carrying this other dude.
Gets captured by the Italians.
He's then part of five escape attempts and digs a 60-meter tunnel with one arm and a bunch of other dudes.
Then he spends a full week hiding out in northern Italy, despite the fact that he's 62 years old, one-armed, one-eyed, can't speak Italian, and has covered in scars.
Then he finally, finally gets picked up and released.
They said the only thing that the Italians had left to do was to use him to enable an armistice.
They wanted to no longer be a part of the war.
They use Carton Duarte to be an envoy between the two nations.
And they said, well, you've been a prisoner of war for nine months.
You don't look or smell the way that you should do.
Why don't we give you a nice Italian tailor?
And he rejected their offer to give him an Italian suit and said he would only wear one if they got it from Savile Row because, quote, he didn't want to look like a gigolo.
unidentified
LAUGHTER This guy's a human badger.
chris williamson
He's 31 medals, shot nearly as many times, got used...
He insulted Mao.
He insulted Chairman Mao in China when he got used by Winston Churchill.
There's photos of him stood behind Churchill, eyepatch, just a fucking sleeve, and he's my new...
Look at him!
Look at him!
joe rogan
Wow.
chris williamson
One of the coolest people from history that no one knows about.
joe rogan
What an animal.
What an animal.
chris williamson
Jesus.
joe rogan
Why hasn't anybody done a movie on that guy's life?
chris williamson
I don't know.
There's another that doesn't even really have a particularly good book.
He wrote a memoir called Happy Odyssey, which is like, it's written by him as opposed to, you know, a bit more exciting.
Alistair Urquhart, this guy called The Forgotten Highlander.
This is probably one of my favorite books.
I taught Ryan Holiday about this and it fucking blew his mind.
So this dude was 18 years old and got conscripted in World War II. He was Scottish.
Scottish regiment gets sent to, I think, Singapore.
Then Japan joined the war.
The Japanese just invade fucking everywhere.
Take everything that they can, including him.
So this guy...
Is made to forced march for weeks with nothing, a loincloth, bloody feet being cut up by the surroundings.
He has every tropical disease under the sun for five years straight.
Dysentery and malaria and everything that you can get, probably yellow fever and full works.
He's part of the forced labour group that's made to build the bridge over the River Kwai, the famous movie.
One of the prison guards tries to sexually assault him.
So he kicks him in the nuts and runs away and hides.
But there's not much...
What are you going to do?
What are you going to run to?
You can't survive without the meager amounts of rice that they're giving you.
So they find him and lock him in an open tin box to bake in the sun for three days.
Doesn't die.
Like, right, okay, well, this guy's sufficiently resilient.
We can probably use him.
If he's this resilient to survive this, he'd probably be a good worker.
So let's keep him and we'll do the rest of it.
So they then pull him out.
They need to transport all of these prisoners.
So they put them on what they called a hell ship.
And these hell ships were just huge tin boxes with no Swiss cross on the side, which is what you should have to say that you're transporting prisoners of war so that it's not a military vehicle.
And they would just toss tiny morsels of food down to 100 men.
That were in the hold of this ship.
And it was baking hot in the midday sun as they're traveling over the water.
And these guys still doesn't die.
They're stood in their own feces.
People are dying left and right, starting to decompose.
So because they didn't put the Swiss cross on the side, a US military, I think it was a boat or a submarine, sent a torpedo at them.
So his boat that he's on explodes.
He then catches a piece of flotsam or jetsam or detritus, like a little bucket that he can sit in so that he can float around.
Basically has a fight with another Japanese guy who's also doing the same thing.
Finally washes up on shore.
He's free, briefly, but he's in Japanese territory.
I can't remember what country he washes up on.
Maybe Singapore again.
He then gets recaptured, put back to work again, and gets knocked off his feet by the bomb blast from Nagasaki.
He gets hit by the bomb blast and knocked off his feet by it.
50 years, this guy doesn't talk about it at all.
Doesn't say a peep for 50 years by orders of the British government.
And then finally writes this memoir as a call to arms to bring the Japanese to account for the atrocities.
You know, we had the Nuremberg trials and stuff for the Germans, but there wasn't that similar kind of reckoning for the Japanese.
And he thought this is unforgivable because of what he went through.
For the rest of his life, he could only eat tiny, tiny amounts of rice.
His stomach, his whole digestive system was ruined by starvation.
just extended starvation for this five-year period and very, very tiny morsels of food.
So his stomach had adapted to that.
And that was this guy.
And he died in the early 2000s and then wrote this book, The Forgotten Highlander.
joe rogan
Wow.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
I gotta get that.
chris williamson
It's so fucking good, man.
joe rogan
That's on the list now.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah, I read The Rape of Nam King years ago.
chris williamson
What's it about?
joe rogan
It's about Japan during the war.
What they did in China.
Just the atrocities they did with people's children, their babies in front of them, the way they just tortured people.
What people can justify doing in times of war is absolutely terrifying.
And when you read about it, and you read about it from a time that's less than 100 years ago, it's so shocking.
It's so shocking.
Because when you think of Japanese, when I think of Japanese, I think polite culture, warrior society, a long history of martial arts, amazing engineering, incredible automobiles.
I think of all these positive things.
I don't think of what happened during World War II. It's really terrifying.
There was a documentary about it, too.
I remember I had to buy online from VHS tape.
It was very hard to get.
It was some sort of a educational documentary, like something that they would show at a university.
It was like, oh, God.
chris williamson
It's horrible.
About the rape of Nanking?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's just horrible.
Just to know that people are capable of doing that to other people, to children and women and just anybody.
Anybody that's not them.
And you can get away with it because this is war.
chris williamson
There's been an awful lot of very atrocious things that have been justified by those people are different to us.
Let's do something to them.
joe rogan
Any reason, whether those people vote Republican or those people don't believe in masks or those people, you know, they have a different belief.
Those people don't believe in our one God.
Those people, they're of the unclean faith.
There's so many different ways people can look at someone as an other.
It's insane what we're capable of when we do that.
People openly justify horrible things to people online.
I see it all the time from Twitter.
Justify horrible things to people because the people don't believe what they believe.
Attribute the most nasty fucking descriptions of people just because they don't believe what they believe.
It's like the least charitable view is highlighted the most.
It's this thing that we have, this ability to other people.
It's one of the worst aspects of human beings.
unidentified
I think it...
chris williamson
I think more people are bound together over the mutual hatred of an out-group than the mutual love of an in-group.
joe rogan
Yep.
chris williamson
Sure.
I think there's this really great psychological study that was done where they bring a big group of people into a lab and they toss a coin.
And if it's heads, you're blue team.
And if it's tails, you're red team.
So, toss a coin, and it's around about an even split.
Maybe 50-50 people.
And they go over to the blue team and they say, so, what do you think about the red team?
Well, I mean, they're not as smart as us, are they?
They're a bit, like, fucking stupid.
You've seen them over there?
Like, I mean, we're definitely the best.
unidentified
You actually just saw...
chris williamson
The selection criteria.
The selection criteria was heads or tails, 50-50, completely arbitrary.
Immediately, as soon as you give people the opportunity to find some tribal bias to lock onto, they go.
joe rogan
Yeah, well people are cowards too.
That's part of it.
There's a lot of strength in being a part of an aggressive group that believes one thing.
You know, that's why I see like a lot of people that have been sort of bullied their whole lives become the biggest bully.
If they're on like something, some side of something that they think is like moving progress, moving social progress in a certain direction.
They get super hyper aggressive.
You know, it's like this is their chance.
chris williamson
This is what I think most people don't understand about evil.
The number of evil people in the world is probably quite low.
What you have is people doing evil things for what they think are good ends.
Almost all of the atrocities that we've seen throughout human history are people trying to—doing something they feel is righteous.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
Because that's what would motivate them.
It's very unadaptive for us to do something that we know is wrong.
joe rogan
Right.
chris williamson
The best way to get someone to be a part and go along with an atrocious act is to make them think that it's in service of good.
joe rogan
Definitely.
Yeah.
Which is why we enjoy movies like John Wick and Sisu.
chris williamson
Retribution.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
These people deserve it.
Show him the trailer for Sisu.
It's amazing.
chris williamson
How old is this movie?
joe rogan
It's not that old.
Two years?
jamie vernon
It was made during the pandemic.
It came out in 2022. There's maybe like three words said in the whole movie.
chris williamson
There's all of those stats about the number of people that Keanu Reeves kills.
Sorry, I can't.
I'll ask after this.
unidentified
Oh, that's so good.
joe rogan
It's so good!
chris williamson
He throws a mine and hits a dude in the head with it.
joe rogan
It's so good.
chris williamson
He's a John Wick-pilled, gun-maxing killer.
joe rogan
Look, I'm a giant John Wick fan, but it's John Wick times two.
Because it's Nazis!
He's not just killing dumb Russian hitmen.
He's killing Nazis.
They tried to steal his gold!
jamie vernon
It was made after the Unkillable Soldier.
It said it was modeled after Rambo, basically.
unidentified
What?
jamie vernon
From First Blood.
joe rogan
Rambo from First Blood was a great one.
jamie vernon
And a real-life military sniper named Simo Haya.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, I heard about that dude.
It's funny when you think about a movie like Rambo.
Rambo is a film that's another time capsule.
It's indicative of a kind of a corny time.
People are kind of corny.
chris williamson
It's a bit cheesy.
joe rogan
Movies are just like...
They're hard to...
Things are so much more identified, like patterns of behavior.
People are so much more sophisticated socially, I think, about stuff.
It's very difficult to get a Rambo-type movie made today.
Some of those, like the first Blood ones, there was just some Chuck Norris movies.
They're fun to watch, but they're so indicative of the time.
What's this one?
jamie vernon
This is the trailer.
joe rogan
Oh, the trailer.
jamie vernon
Oh, it's just a lot of talking.
I thought it'd be more action.
unidentified
Aw, dude, I miss this guy!
chris williamson
One man.
joe rogan
One man, they push too far.
jamie vernon
We've talked about him a few times because of the Gray Man, but they recently just said, Sly said that Ryan Gosling could be the only guy who would, like, vouch for Rambo.
chris williamson
Oh, to carry on the torch?
jamie vernon
Yeah, he might be too pretty to do it, though, or something.
joe rogan
Look at this shit, Adam, he's gonna jump in the water!
chris williamson
This is basically the full movie.
jamie vernon
Just a long trailer.
chris williamson
Everyone's TikTok brain wouldn't allow a trailer this long anymore.
You and all your men couldn't handle him before now.
What makes you think you can handle it now?
jamie vernon
Because God knows what damage he's prepared to do.
Explosions.
chris williamson
Fucking brilliant, dude.
joe rogan
But it's a sign of the times.
It's like that...
Did we find out who the little girl was in that movie?
unidentified
Oh, I did.
jamie vernon
I found the movie.
It's called...
Hold on, I have to pull it back up.
Frontier Gal is what the movie was called.
joe rogan
Frontier Gal.
jamie vernon
And...
It wasn't Shirley Temple.
Beverly Simmons is the...
joe rogan
So that was a time capsule.
And Rambo's a time capsule, too.
It's a time capsule to a time where the art form was just different.
That was her.
chris williamson
Can I just check?
I don't seem to recall the complex plot of John Wick.
Is he still killing people because of his dog?
unidentified
Well...
joe rogan
See, they dragged him back in.
See, here's what happened.
He killed everybody because of his dog, and then he was ready to retire.
chris williamson
How far did that go?
First one, second one?
joe rogan
Second one.
chris williamson
Okay, so two full episodes of killing.
joe rogan
Yes.
Well, he had to get his car back in the second one.
chris williamson
So first one was dog, second one was car.
joe rogan
Yeah.
In the second one, he shows up, he kills everybody at the warehouse that's storing all the stolen cars.
And then he toasts, make a toast with the Russian mob boss to peace.
And, you know, it's like, can a man like you really know peace?
He's like, why not?
He's like, okay, cheers.
So the guy freaks out that John Wick doesn't kill him.
John Wick leaves.
Goes back to regular John Wick.
He doesn't have the slick back hair anymore.
He's not wearing the suit anymore.
Just like a regular guy.
And he's got his car.
It's all fucked up and they fix his car.
And then a dude that he owed a marker to comes to visit him and says, I want you to kill my sister.
And he has to do it because he had this marker with his bloods in it.
And so then he's back in the business.
chris williamson
That's the second one.
joe rogan
Yeah, and then he kills that guy.
Spoiler alert.
And then the whole world's after him.
chris williamson
That's John Wick 3. And then there's a fourth one.
joe rogan
And then there's a fourth one, which is basically a superhero.
And the fourth one, they're over-the-top crazy.
I enjoyed the fourth one, but it's a very different thing than the first one.
The first one, you could kind of believe that all that could really happen.
By the fourth one, they had a band and all that shit.
They have bulletproof jackets, and they're running into bullets.
It's just...
It's cartoonish, but it's fun.
chris williamson
The most crazy movie-across-into-real-world thing that I've learned about is this modified RX-9 Hellfire missile.
Have you seen this?
joe rogan
No.
chris williamson
This thing is insane.
Do the honors, Jamie.
Let's look at this.
joe rogan
Is it one of the hypersonic missiles?
It changes directions?
chris williamson
This is...
More precise.
So what they realized was that collateral damage is a big deal in war zones because if you kill people that aren't just the target, you galvanize that group against your...
Yeah, there it is.
America's secret ninja bomb packed with blades that shred militants alive.
So there's no explosive in the front of it.
It gets deployed using an existing platform.
But rather than having an explosive payload, these razor-sharp, six razor-sharp swords come out the side of it and just turn human flesh into smoothies.
Look at what it does to a car.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
chris williamson
But how precise this thing is.
It's so precise.
You have the flying Jinsu.
I think it's colloquially called the jihadi blender.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
And they just shoot it into cars.
chris williamson
So it's so precise that you need to know which seat of the car the...
joe rogan
The bad guy's in.
chris williamson
Bad dude's in, yeah.
Because if it was a long enough vehicle, front right seat and back left seat, back left seat will be scared, but it'll be fine.
So there was this dude, supposedly one of the masterminds behind 9-11, they'd done surveillance on this guy and every morning he'd come out and drink his coffee on his balcony.
Same balcony, he'd come out and he'd drink his coffee and...
And look out.
So they just timed two of those things.
Comes out.
And that's it.
There's no explosion.
There's no nothing.
And this guy just gets turned into dust.
joe rogan
They shot two of them at him?
chris williamson
Two.
Just in case the first one missed, I think.
Laser guided, set it off.
And here's the other thing, because it only propels for the first two seconds, and then after that it's just using fins.
So it works out the trajectory.
So there's not even the sound of engine coming toward you.
It's just silence, and then blades, and death.
joe rogan
It's a flying rage hypodermic.
Do you know what a rage hypodermic is?
Rage hypodermic is a wild mechanical broadhead that they invented for bow hunting.
So instead of a bow hunting broadhead being a fixed blade, like a solid piece of metal that's screwed into the end of your arrow, instead it's a mechanical broadhead.
That upon impacting tissue opens up into this huge opening.
They make giant holes.
They call them rage holes.
And they kill animals quick.
And it's kind of controversial in that if your blade hits a branch on the way in or like a stalk of hay or something like that, it could trigger it and then it would fuck up the trajectory of the arrow and it might lead to a bad shot.
So there's that, and then it could get deployed accidentally in your quiver, and you might not know it when you're drawing and shooting.
It could be open, and it could open up in flight.
But if it stays close and it does impact, it makes a giant hole.
chris williamson
Cam took me to the bow rack.
joe rogan
Ah, you did lift, run, shoot.
chris williamson
I did.
He fucked me up.
He made me go up the hill.
joe rogan
That was brutal.
chris williamson
He made me carry that rock.
joe rogan
How long did you...
What is it, like two miles?
chris williamson
I don't know.
I think it's maybe about a mile up and a mile down, but it's pretty steep.
And, I mean, there's a 72-pound rock with you.
joe rogan
You got to carry the rock down?
chris williamson
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think...
Did we carry it down?
I can't remember.
I think it's supposed to.
But he made me do the trail, but he taught me to shoot, and I was looking at, with gruesome glee, looking at all of the different types of arrows in the bow rack, looking at all of these different heads and all of the different attachments.
unidentified
Yeah.
chris williamson
It advertises exit wound three-inch diameter, exit wound five-inch diameter.
joe rogan
Cam shoots this thing called a carnivore.
And the carnivore is a broadhead that's got four blades.
It opens up a canal in these animals.
Yeah, it's like for bow hunting though, it's extremely effective.
If you can get it into the vitals, that's a lethal shot every time.
It's such a big hole.
chris williamson
I wonder how many...
Is it more humane to kill something more easily?
Is my question.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's more humane to use a rifle.
In a lot of circumstances.
chris williamson
That's literally just the non-rocket propelled version of what we just saw.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's like a carnivore.
Go back to that carnivore thing so you can see what it is.
So that's a really big one.
So the controversy in bow hunting is always like fixed blades are more durable, but mechanical blades have more cutting surface.
chris williamson
What is that?
joe rogan
What is that?
Jesus.
chris williamson
Turns stuff into pizza slices.
joe rogan
Colorful eagle.
That's what it's called.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, that seems like it wouldn't fly good.
See, the problem is they have to fly good, too.
And the more metal surface area you have, the more you have a chance of what's called planing.
So as the crosswinds hit your arrows, your blade can drift because the wind hits the broadhead.
So if you have a wide-cut, solid blade, Like, fixed blade broadhead.
That's another sort of thing that can catch wind.
Yeah, people tune them.
Like, so if you have, like...
A single bevel broadhead.
So there's a single bevel broadhead which is a broadhead which is a fixed blade broadhead that has only had the edge sharpened on one side.
And that encourages rotation.
And that rotation has to align with the helical of your veins.
You don't want them to be fighting with each other.
So if you have a left helical on your veins of your arrow, you also want a left helical on this broadhead.
And so these are tuned in tightly together.
And so it's a very painstaking process.
You have to make sure you're doing it right.
You're going to move your rest a little bit.
But once you get it dialed in and you can shoot accurate out to like 60, 70 yards with it, you know that it's called broadhead tuned.
So with field points, you don't really have to do that because the fletchings, they steer it enough, and you just have to be kind of on target.
You have to be closer.
But with broadheads, you have to be like really, really locked in.
So that's the negative of the broadhead.
chris williamson
They made me shoot through the paper to see where are you pulling accidentally, and then they adjust and tune.
Dude, I loved it.
I love seeing...
Anyone that loves anything that much.
That degree of passion to me is...
So me and my housemate Zach watch these videos of motocross, you know, the Colin McRae...
Oh, is that Rallycross?
Sorry.
And these dudes will go out to buttfucknowhere Scotland in November, and it's pissing down with rain, and they're in ponchos, and they do it to see...
And then they turn to each other and go...
And they just lose their shit.
And it's so...
Dude, it makes the hairs on my arms stand up.
Jamie, see if we can find some of these videos.
It's the most pure, loving...
Wayne Endicott at the Bow Rack, just the way that they play with the bow and they know that if they add a tiny little bit of flame from a lighter to the sight, that it'll sort of cinch it in a different way and it heats the sinew of the thread and it tightens that in.
Seeing anyone that loves anything that much is just...
There's something very gentle and honest and peaceful and beautiful about that.
joe rogan
It is.
chris williamson
It fires me up.
joe rogan
I couldn't agree more.
I love watching people make things and put things together.
And I love watching people work on cars, do mechanical things.
I love that shit.
But the bow rack...
One of the things that's interesting about archery...
Is that even if you're just interested in target archery, any kind of archery that you're interested in, unless you are shooting a traditional bow where there's no sights on it and you're just kind of like doing it by feel, then you learn how to aim depending upon how much your arrow weighs.
You can get pretty accurate with those things, but not nearly as accurate as you can with a compound bow.
And with a compound bow, it has to be fitted to your frame.
You have to go to a place like the Borac.
And if you're lucky and you have a place like that, that's great because they're really good at it.
But you might not be lucky, so you might have to travel hours to go to some place.
chris williamson
People were.
When we were there, I think it was maybe a Saturday morning, and we've driven six hours to come to this place.
joe rogan
And you have to go to a good place, too.
Because the first place I went to, my draw length, they had an inch longer than it should have been.
The peep site was weird.
I had to, like, cock my head weird to look at the peep site.
And then I went to a good place, and they fixed it right.
And then I went, oh...
chris williamson
This is an extension of my body now.
joe rogan
It becomes, if you practice it enough, it never really becomes an extension of your body, but you do get so comfortable in that activity that it becomes a normal thing to you.
So then that activity is all just about the fine details of breathing and thinking and shot execution in your head.
And the goal is always, at least the way I do it, is always to make a surprise shot.
I never want to get it to go off.
I want to be in full draw, I want to have my pin on the target, and I want to just be concentrated on that arrow hitting the mark, and then I just go through this shot execution thing and it goes off.
And when it goes off, the ultimate goal is just watch that arrow go exactly where you wanted it to go.
And when I do that at like 74 yards, It is the most satisfying feeling in the world.
Just targets.
Just shooting at a foam target.
It's so satisfying and it requires so much concentration that in that act of doing that, the world goes away.
And that's the key to it.
That's the key to anything that I really enjoy doing that's very difficult.
I think you need little vacations from the world.
And if you have an hour and a half to shoot a bow, It can provide you with a vacation from the world.
It's so difficult to do and it's so involving and it's so rewarding when you get it right that you're completely locked into this one activity and the world goes away.
chris williamson
I love it, man.
I love the solitude and the peace that you get doing something that you know well and that you can get better at.
And I often think about three types of Chris.
Dopamine Chris, serotonin Chris, and cortisol Chris.
And my goal is to spend as much time in serotonin Chris as possible.
But, you know, dopamine, Chris, plays on modern wisdom and growing the channel and money and new stuff and traveling to new places and novelty.
And cortisol, Chris, is dealing with the operations and its executive function.
It's answering emails and it's dealing with challenges.
And cortisol is kind of exciting, too.
But serotonin, Chris, is walking with your friends in nature and calling your mom and catching up and having dinner, going to a comedy show, watching live music.
When I'm not feeling balanced in myself is when I'm spending too much time.
And things aren't bad.
Things are going well.
They could be even going excellently.
But I'm still in dopamine, Chris, a lot.
And he's gangster rap and a V8 engine.
And I want to be magic mushrooms in a hammock.
joe rogan
But wait a minute.
Pause, please.
Because you just bought a Camaro.
chris williamson
I did.
joe rogan
You son of a bitch.
You bought an SS too, right?
chris williamson
Two SS. Yeah.
6.2 liter V8. Yeah.
joe rogan
You embraced American culture.
chris williamson
I just need to get some beers.
joe rogan
Did you get a manual transmission?
chris williamson
No.
I've spent...
So, in the UK, almost everybody learns to drive manual.
So there's two types of license in the UK. Manual license and an automatic license.
If you learn in an automatic, don't get to drive a manual.
You have to take the test as a manual.
joe rogan
Oh my goodness, that's a smart move.
unidentified
Yep.
joe rogan
That's one case where England's got us.
chris williamson
Fuck yeah!
joe rogan
You guys win on that one.
chris williamson
Hell yeah, we got it.
joe rogan
I think...
You know, it's a dying thing, obviously, because it's not as smart.
Why do I have to use my left foot?
chris williamson
Dude, your entire...
In the UK, the left side of my body, left arm and left leg, just go chill out.
Go on holiday for the next hour while I do this journey.
I can use right arm only and right leg.
But yeah, I remember hearing...
I think it was Tim Kennedy talking about...
If you're a guy who is cared about preparedness and you don't know how to drive a manual car, that's not preparedness.
Imagine that you're halfway up a mountain and only one car works or you need to get somebody down or there's been a car wreck or something and it's a manual car.
Are you going to work it out on the fly?
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
How many people know how to drive manual cars in America, do you think?
joe rogan
Let's guess.
I would say...
10%?
I'll guess 10%.
What do you think?
What do you think it is?
chris williamson
I have no idea for America.
I would have hoped 50%, but I don't know how many people are exposed to them.
In the UK, I would say 90%.
90% of driving license holders We'll be able to drive a manual car, at least.
joe rogan
That's interesting.
Yeah, I saw a lot of them in Italy.
Everybody had a manual.
Everywhere.
chris williamson
They don't give a fuck about their cars either.
They're just crashing, like little dinks.
You know, we're so precious, especially in the UK. I don't know how it is in the US so much.
So precious.
But the little scratch, you better get that painted up in Spain or France or Greece or something.
That's just, that's a bit of, what's it called?
Patina.
It's a bit of patina on it.
It gives it character.
joe rogan
Well, some cars, they look at it like here.
Like if you have a Jeep or something like that, you get it all scuffed up, that's fine.
But yeah.
Yeah, it's a good thing to know how to do.
The real problem is, if there's some sort of an electronic blast, if something happens, like a solar flare that takes out the grid, and the only...
Because if electronics get fried, and this is a real possibility, I know you're like, what are you saying?
First of all, you have to understand, entire planets get fried by supernovas.
It's not just electronics.
You know, things happen in intergalactic space that would end everything for us.
And it 100% could happen.
That's a real thing.
But solar flares taking out power grids, that's a fucking real possibility.
Taking out satellites, that's a real possibility.
And one of the things about most modern cars is most modern cars are essentially run by a computer.
So if all the computers get fried, guess what?
Your car doesn't work.
I mean, if we're running into some sort of situation, some horrible event, where all the computers get fried, that means your fucking car doesn't work.
chris williamson
You also can't move anywhere.
joe rogan
Unless you have an old car.
Now, if you have an old car that works on carburetors, you know, those are cars, like, if you have an actual real 1969 Camaro, not like the ones that...
I have ones that have new stuff in them.
So all the new stuff is computers.
They'll be useless.
All the ECU that powers all the ignition and the electronic fuel injection...
That shit's out the window.
chris williamson
Your car's now controlled by China.
joe rogan
No, it's not controlled by anybody.
It's a lump.
It's a lump.
Unless I could figure out how to put a carburetor on it, and I can't, I'm fucked.
You'd have to gut the whole system.
All the electronics are wired into it.
The speedometer's wired into it.
chris williamson
I was hearing that my neighbor has a Tesla, and I think he gets his insurance through Tesla, but they can see the diagnostics of how he drives the car.
So his insurance is way more expensive because it knows how late he brakes, how fast he accelerates, how close to other cars he is.
You want to talk about encroachments on freedom?
joe rogan
I didn't know they did that.
chris williamson
There's a...
Algorithm that's used in China that when someone is applying for medical insurance, it uses the website to track the number of typos and the movement of the mouse.
And they've mapped that with an algorithm to predict pre-Parkinsonian, pre-Alzheimer, dementia, all of these things.
So basically, if you're filling in your medical insurance in China and you fuck up a little bit, your premium goes up.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
That's coming.
All that stuff's coming.
And a lot of dummies are going to sign up for it because they'll attach it to something you think is important, like climate change.
And that's how they're going to get you.
chris williamson
One third of Gen Z kids say that they would accept the installation of surveillance cameras inside the home to detect wrongdoing.
One third.
unidentified
30%.
joe rogan
I wonder if they really believe that or if they say that because they know it's not happening and they just want to say that they're a good person.
chris williamson
It's a lot.
joe rogan
You're also a dumb young person that doesn't understand what you're giving up.
chris williamson
Well, I think another potential reason for it might be you're part of a generation that has traded your...
joe rogan
Privacy.
chris williamson
Precisely.
From the moment that you were born.
joe rogan
You know what they do?
Snapchat.
They give each other their locations.
chris williamson
Yes, yes.
Snap map, I think.
joe rogan
Yeah, so all the kids know exactly where all the other kids are.
So if you're dating some gal and, you know...
chris williamson
See her with that other person that's on your friends list.
joe rogan
And you see you're not where you said you were going to be.
So what do people do now?
They just, where are you?
I see where you are.
That's kind of weird.
chris williamson
You read the terms and conditions of TikTok a while ago.
I can't remember whether you saw...
TikTok has written into its user agreement that it can use the front-facing camera to detect micro-expressions and use that to inform the algorithm.
unidentified
Fuck.
joe rogan
Yo.
Yo.
So if you like see something and go, yo, like see some crazy Instagram video.
chris williamson
There it is.
Whatever it is that they know, yo, there's pleasure, there's disgust, there's anger, there's anger.
joe rogan
And I bet it's cross-platform.
I bet if they have that app, they have that ability and you have it open, I bet they use it no matter what you're doing.
I bet if you're flipping over and now all of a sudden you're on Instagram or now all of a sudden you're on Facebook or Twitter, I bet they still can see all your time.
I bet they see exactly what you're seeing.
chris williamson
Well, think about with the Apple Vision Pro that Jamie's going to have to debate about whether or not he takes it back over the next 12 hours.
How much eye tracking?
What is that able to tell from what you're doing?
What about the latency between your fingers and your eyes?
Is that able to predict early onset dementia or some neurological decline?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Or could that be used against you if they decide, like, what do we get Chris on?
You know, I don't like Chris being the CEO of this company anymore.
Let's decide that he's in decline.
chris williamson
Oh, and let's use that.
joe rogan
And also, we'll start gaslighting him.
Like, you okay, Chris?
chris williamson
You seem a little...
joe rogan
Like, you just seem off lately.
chris williamson
Dude, did you...
joe rogan
Just hot gaslighting.
chris williamson
Did you see the outcome from this special counsel report on Biden?
joe rogan
No, I did not.
Okay, let me pee, because this is a big one, and I'm holding in a pee.
chris williamson
Let's pee together.
joe rogan
Okay, let's do that.
We'll be right back, folks.
chris williamson
Fun as well.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm watching a movie.
chris williamson
17 hours, it's miserable enough as it is.
I don't need to make it any worse.
But yeah, hydration.
Hydration on planes, people don't think about.
It's so important.
joe rogan
Or radiation.
Do we find out about that?
chris williamson
Do people die on planes?
joe rogan
Has there ever been a study on the radiation that pilots and flight attendants receive?
jamie vernon
I was digging into it.
There was not a lot of studies available.
One study I found was from 1992. And it just said that, like, pilots die sooner after they retire, and it wasn't showing, you know, not radiation.
joe rogan
Yeah, but isn't that applicable to most men that quit their jobs?
jamie vernon
Right, it could have been something.
A lot of things could have gone into that.
joe rogan
People fucking die when they don't have meaning and purpose, too.
chris williamson
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's a real factor.
chris williamson
People that retire die significantly sooner.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
Way sooner.
It's one of the reasons I think everybody, when they retire, should be issued a dog.
joe rogan
Aww.
unidentified
Yeah.
chris williamson
Like a little Carl?
joe rogan
How's Carl doing over there?
Is he sleeping?
Carl's the cutest little thing ever.
chris williamson
He's amazing.
joe rogan
Yeah, that would help.
But I think what also would help is have things you enjoy doing.
You can still enjoy your life without having a job.
And if you've got enough money where you can retire and you feel like you could pull that off, you should do stuff.
Yeah, but some people don't know what the fuck to do when they're not working, and work was their everything.
It was their entire existence.
It was their social status.
It was how they made a living.
It was their social community.
It was all their friends, really, because you're with your workmates more than you're with your partner, your wife, your husband.
What's the number when you're awake at home?
You get home at 6 o'clock.
You're only going to be awake till 10 if you have to work, if you're doing a 9 to 5. If you're a crazy person, you're up at 11, 11.30, and you don't mind being a little tired in the office.
But if you're, like, trying to be on the ball, you're going to go to bed as early as you can.
You've got to get up at fucking 6.30.
You've got to commute.
How much time are you together?
chris williamson
I've been thinking about this idea of hidden and observable metrics for life.
So an observable metric would be something like the amount of money that you earn per year.
It would be the value of the car that you drive, or the engine size of the car that you drive, or the value of your house.
A hidden metric would be something like the quality of your relationship with your partner, the amount of time that you get to spend without tasks to do, the I think?
We're going to need you in the office earlier.
And you're going to be in charge of this floor of 10 people.
Okay, how much more money have you got?
Well, I've got $15,000 added onto the observable metric.
But what's the hidden metric cost that you're paying for that?
Well, peace of mind.
And time with your partner.
Or you take another job somewhere else and your commute is now 45 minutes longer in both directions.
It's 90 minutes a day that you're not spending with your kids or with your wife or with whatever.
And because money is the ultimate game, it's the best game.
It's literally global.
It's universal.
It can be exchanged between different currencies.
I know your game can be compared to my game, can be compared to anybody else's.
But I don't get to see the dashboard that tracks the quality of your sleep or the peace of your mind or the relationship that you have with your kids or your wife or the amount of time that you just get to yourself.
And I think people should be very cautious of trading observable metrics for hidden metrics.
And one of the ways that you can try and fix this is to bring the hidden into the observable.
So using a tracker of some kind maybe to track your sleep.
That would be a good start.
Or if you were to note down in a journal how you feel each day.
Oh, well, maybe I feel a little bit better today because I did some...
That's just fine.
joe rogan
Don't worry about it.
Put that thing down.
No worries.
Yeah, no, I think just overall general happiness gets thrown out the window in terms of the metrics of the numbers.
The numbers and the observable things that make you superior.
The car, the watch, the stuff, you know.
But yeah, I always tell people, one of the things about a house, I've said this many times unfortunately, but when I first got my first really nice apartment, when I first moved to California, I realized pretty early on, after a while, I was like, oh, this is just my house.
This is just where I live.
It feels just like the place that I had in New York that was a shithole.
You know what I mean?
It's just where you live.
chris williamson
Because you adapt to it so quickly?
joe rogan
Yeah.
This is home.
All you need is a safe, comfortable place, a place where you can cook and eat your meals, and a television or a computer.
And it's basically the same experience.
chris williamson
Have you seen those memes of guys just need this to survive?
It's like a lawn chair, a PS5, big TV, and a mattress on the floor.
It's like guy apartments or something.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
If you're living with all dudes, there's a chance that you're both...
chris williamson
Or just you on your own.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
That's it.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
chris williamson
Tell you who I was talking to.
I was talking to Dan Bilzerian about this.
He's kind of on an interesting arc because he's sort of stepped back a little bit from public life, from doing the stuff that he was doing before.
And I was asking him basically whether he thought he'd overshot Dopamine Dan.
And he said he was considering shaving his head, shaving his beard and going working in an Amazon warehouse for six months to try and do like a hedonic reset.
To see.
The problem is, it was kind of like when Tim Kennedy did the waterboarding thing.
There's a difference between electing to do something and being forced to do something.
joe rogan
Right.
chris williamson
And the fact that you know at any moment you've just got the eject a seat button or that it's going to be over in six months or that it's going to be whatever.
I wonder if that changes.
But yet he basically said, you know, this rapid use and abuse of all of the things that you can, the partying, the cars, the girls, the jets, the holidays, travel, the drugs...
Where do you go from there?
It seems like having things isn't fun.
Getting things is fun.
joe rogan
Not knowing if you're going to get things and then getting them is fun.
chris williamson
That's the middle of dopamine.
joe rogan
Once you have things and you know you can get things, getting them doesn't become that exciting anymore.
chris williamson
How do you mean?
joe rogan
Because if you could just get whatever you want.
You don't get that excited about it.
Like, when I got my first nice car, I got a, I think it was a 95 Toyota Supra Turbo.
And it was awesome!
I couldn't believe it!
It's like, this is like a real nice new car.
And like, the car I wanted, a Supra Turbo, was this shit.
I couldn't believe I had it.
When I'd drive it around, I'd be like, oh my god, I can't believe this is mine.
I'd park it, I couldn't believe it was mine.
But after a while, you get another car, and then you get another car, and then getting a car is just like, this is a great car.
But you can just do it when you want to.
So you get to a point where I call it guerilla Buddhism.
So when people say that material things possess you, they possess you if you're really connected to them and they are your only measure of worth.
But the only way to know that material goods aren't really – you're not a slave to them is get them.
Get them, have them and then go, okay.
This is not that important.
This is bullshit.
This is bullshit.
You don't feel better in a $10 million house than you do in a $5 million house than you do in a $1 million house.
You don't feel better.
You feel like you're in your house.
As long as it's not shit.
As long as it's like rats or bugs or you want cleanliness and safety.
You want normal stuff that people like.
You want to be able to chill on the couch.
Couches aren't that much money.
Most of the stuff is bullshit.
chris williamson
My friend James says all wins feel the same.
And as you start to go up and up and up, the first time that you hit a thousand subscribers on your YouTube channel or the first time that you buy a Toyota Supra is the same or maybe even kind of less than when you get a Rolls-Royce Cullinan or you get a gold plaque from YouTube or you get whatever.
All of these wins feel the same.
So I got this other idea that I love about how people sacrifice the thing that they want for the thing which is supposed to get it.
So a lot of the time we will sacrifice happiness in order to be able to achieve success so that when we finally have enough success, we can allow ourselves to be happy.
So you sacrifice the thing that you want, which is happiness, for the thing which is supposed to get it, which is success.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
And it's a super common pattern amongst high performers.
You know, they grow up and maybe their parents have high standards for them.
And they say that the subtext is that love is contingent on what I can bring to the world.
And growing up, this person internalizes the lesson.
It is very important for me to overperform and they're driven by this desire to do more and to prove people wrong and a chip on their shoulder and all of this.
The problem is, I think that on average, high performers are more miserable than the average person.
I think that more people are driven by fear and anxiety and a lack – a desire for validation and to prove themselves to the world and a desire for acceptance than some perfectly balanced – Optimal, loving, I just want to make life the best that I can.
That's not to say that there aren't people like that, but I think on balance, most people are driven by that fear of insufficiency and they're hoping that the next thing is going to be the answer.
But another friend, Alex, says, you've already achieved goals you said would make you happy.
You've already achieved goals you said would make you happy.
How can you presume that your happiness sits on the next side of the next set of goals, given that right now you are on the other side of your last set of goals?
joe rogan
So is the key to learn happiness while you're succeeding?
chris williamson
It has to be.
It has to be.
joe rogan
You just have to rewire your...
Your value system.
The word gratitude gets abused.
It really does.
It gets tossed into that word that just makes things sound stupid.
But gratitude is very important.
And if you can actually appreciate where you are and what you're doing, even if you're not doing what you want to be doing, you're going to look back on these days, if you're successful in life, and you're going to look back on the days when you're kind of struggling, like, wow, I was...
Finding my place in the world then.
Those are exciting times.
If you could be excited while also motivated, it'll help your life immeasurably.
And I don't think it's going to steal from your drive and ambition.
I don't buy that.
chris williamson
I don't buy that either.
I used to think that.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't buy it.
I don't buy it.
I know some pretty happy, driven people.
They exist.
chris williamson
There's a fear that some people have that haven't really thought about it.
that if I allow myself to be too happy or grateful for the things that I've done, what if it kills my itch?
It's like, dude, you are powered by a nuclear furnace of ambition.
You think that giving yourself a little bit of gratitude or acceptance or love or serotonin for the things that you've done is going to nuke that?
No way.
It's not going to nerf any of it.
joe rogan
It might if that's your only drive.
If your only drive is to achieve financial success.
But hopefully what you're doing is rewarding in a way on its own.
One of the beautiful things about stand-up is people do stand-up for free all the time.
Like big name comedians.
Like Dave Chappelle does free stand-up all the time.
Just show up at a club and do a guest set.
Just pop in.
He's not on the list.
He's not supposed to be there.
Just does it for free.
How many people's jobs do they just show up and just do them for free?
If you can find something like that, then all the success, that's all wonderful.
But you enjoy doing it so much.
It's such a fun activity that you're doing.
It's not just a making money vehicle.
It's an enjoyable activity.
It's so enjoyable, you'll go out of your way to do it for free.
chris williamson
Yeah, Robert Sapolsky, who you've had on the show, he says, dopamine is not about the pursuit of happiness, it's about the happiness of pursuit.
That it's as you move toward things.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
One step at a time.
It's not the destination.
joe rogan
It's the journey.
chris williamson
It's so fucking trite.
You're so right with what you say about gratitude.
We need to rebrand.
There needs to be...
Like, it's not you, it's me.
Like, how many people want to...
Oh, Netflix and chill.
Like, these things get captured by cliches.
And you're like, no, fuck, damn it.
I mean it my way, not that way.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
But, yeah, the...
That idea of it's far easier to achieve your material desires than to get rid of them, than to renounce them.
It's way easier to drive a beat-up Chevy truck if your last car was a Ferrari, because you've closed that little loop.
Mark Manson talks about, he has this great question, what pain do you want in life?
And he says that it's a much more accurate way of asking the question...
else but feels like play to you.
That's like a common thing.
What can you do that is play that to everyone else is work?
That's a competitive advantage.
That might be comedy for you, for Chappelle, etc.
I would happily do this for free.
There are other people out there who would need to be paid an awful lot of money to go through the drama of getting up on stage.
Mark's contention is that any pursuit, even the most existentially aligned, will regularly feel like work.
So what you need to look at is what are the pains that you can deal with better than everybody else?
Like if you, there is pain associated, I'm sure, it's not just pure joy as you stare at a Google Doc or a note in your phone and you're like, how am I going to get this bit out?
Like, how do I actually, I can't, I need to make this joke about cigarettes or something, and I just can't get it to work.
You're grappling with something.
There is a kind of pain.
It's not pure pleasure every single moment.
And I think assuming that your pursuits are always going to be perfect, just blissed out, man, and there should be no challenges.
Like, no, that's not the way that it's going to work, even if it's your calling in life.
So a better way is what pains can you deal with better than everyone else?
joe rogan
Yeah.
And how much do you discipline yourself?
How much do you really put a rigid schedule towards achieving goals and an understanding that there's going to be these uncomfortable things?
Like the creative process.
It's uncomfortable.
That's why people avoid it.
That's what Steven Pressfield's book is all about, The War of Art.
chris williamson
I love that guy.
joe rogan
It's a great, great, great book.
Such a good book.
Such a good book for creatives.
I still have a stack of them out there, right?
jamie vernon
He's got a fresh stack.
joe rogan
We've got a fresh stack.
I gave them out to so many listeners.
Because there's so many creative types that don't understand that there's this fucking weird thing that's going on in your head called resistance.
And it keeps you from doing the work that you want to do that's almost always satisfying when it's done.
And when you're done, you're like, God, I did it.
But part of you is going to go, let's not do that.
Let's check out YouTube.
Let's, you know, let's look at this.
Let's look at the news.
Let's go on the news, man.
Maybe some weird shit's happening that you need to pay attention to.
And then next thing you know, it's an hour and a half later and you could have been writing the whole time.
And every time I do, just sit down and write, I'm always happier.
But there's always this little bit of a resistance.
So it's kind of the same feeling that I get before a workout or before a cold plunge or before anything.
It's just this feeling of knowing that there's some shit you gotta do.
chris williamson
There was this story that I learned about Victor Hugo.
joe rogan
A jiu-jitsu guy?
chris williamson
No, this is a writer, I want to say.
joe rogan
Victor Hugo is a world champion jiu-jitsu guy.
chris williamson
He might also be a writer from the 1800s.
He might be both of those things.
Could be.
He's a time-traveling man.
So he was a writer, and he paid his servant to come in every night during the middle of the night while he was asleep and pull the bedsheets off of him, off his bed, Leave six pieces of paper in his bedroom and a pen or a quill and lock him in.
And until Victor had slid all six pieces of paper written on underneath the door, his servant wouldn't let him out.
The level that people get to.
But think about when you're really struggling with the creative process, the ridiculousness of the things that will look attractive to you.
It's like, I haven't sorted these cigar cupboard things.
Alphabetically in quite a while.
I really think that the cigar cupboard could do with...
That's interesting, that brick that's been outside.
I really should find a place for that brick.
And the bird feeder needs refilling.
You just find these bizarre things because your body is just doing everything it can.
This is Huberman's thing, right?
What's it called?
The mid-singular cortex, MSC. It's that thing.
Apparently Goggins has got the biggest one in the world.
It's just the thing that allows you to overcome doing hard stuff.
joe rogan
Right.
That actually grows.
Yeah.
It actually grows upon exertion.
chris williamson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Doing things you don't want to do.
Yeah.
I think it's real.
I think I've always recognized that that's a thing.
Because when I take time off of working out, it's really hard to go back to it.
But if you do it all the time, it just becomes a normal part of your life.
chris williamson
Dude, routine is such a vicious cycle up and down.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I think the whole body's that way.
I really do.
I think, like, basically the way you can strengthen your muscles and you can strengthen your cardiovascular system, I think your mind works the exact same way.
I really 100% believe that.
And I think also the neglected conjunction of the two is significant.
It's very important.
So many intellectuals just don't think about their bodies and it's so unfortunate.
You're just racked with inflammation and, you know, just weak joints and weak muscles.
Muscles and just you can't open up a jar of mayonnaise.
It's like you don't want to live like that, man.
You don't have to.
It's like the idea that the two are mutually exclusive is stupid.
That's a stupid idea.
The idea that you shouldn't take care of your body and that you should really concentrate on your mind.
That's just dumb.
It's a dumb thing to do.
You're not going to be doing complex math 24 hours a day.
You can take the time to do some fucking push-ups.
chris williamson
How many people do you think have it the other way around?
joe rogan
Oh, 100%, yeah.
Well, also because it's in today's day and age, there's doing it for the gram, right?
So there's like people that are really jacked that want everybody to see their muscles.
And so you're doing it...
All day long you're lifting weights you're you're involved in Recovery and all sorts if you've got the time to do that It's most as if you have a job too.
Well, what the fuck?
How do you have the time?
But if you don't have a job if that you're like a fitness influencer, you know, I mean that is your job You're fucking busy man.
You you want to be jacked online all the time?
unidentified
Like yeah, you're probably not reading a lot of books Probably not meditating all that much Maybe you are.
joe rogan
Maybe that's part of your vibe.
Maybe you're giving off that holistic vibe.
That's what you're trying to push.
You're falling into that line.
You're bowing to people and shit, saying namaste.
chris williamson
You've got to be careful with that, though.
I tried to come up with a name for a trend I saw in myself, which was productivity purgatory, which is even the things that I was supposed to be doing for leisure I was justifying because they somehow contributed to my output for work or, you know, I wasn't taking a walk in nature because I wanted to enjoy it.
It's because I once watched an Andrew Huberman episode that said 15 minutes of sunlight in the eyes improves your productivity throughout the day by whatever, whatever.
I was like, if you're not careful, you're...
Everything that you do is infused with this desire, this need, this compulsion to be productive.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
And I think that that's dangerous.
joe rogan
It is dangerous.
It's just not good to be a human being with that.
But if you want to be the best at something, it's really the best strategy.
If you really want to compete against other...
Top dogs.
You're going to have to do more or be better, be smarter, figure something out that they're not figuring out.
chris williamson
It's really a game of who's prepared to sacrifice most.
joe rogan
It's also who's prepared to learn the most, right?
Who's good at recognizing what actually happened?
Versus what you've been comforting yourself with what you mean if there's a bad result Whether it's a bad result of business or a bad result of your personal life like there's always this Desire that people have to find a reason why it wasn't their fault because it's uncomfortable, but if you can recognize oh this product tanked because of me and This is a stupid idea and I need to course correct and I need to realize what I did wrong.
Instead of blaming the suppliers or blaming the manufacturers or blaming the other people on the design team or blaming this but whatever the fuck you're making or whether it's an album you just put out that just everybody hates it.
What did I do wrong?
Don't bullshit.
What do I need to do different?
And for a lot of people that is an uncomfortable moment that they don't want to experience.
So if you're a high performer, the more you could recognize what you've actually done wrong and course correct and not just be...
If you're like a CEO of a company, you've got so many people kissing your ass.
It's like your ego's got to be inflated.
It's gonna be so hard to see the forest for the trees.
It's like being a movie star on a set.
You know, everybody loves you.
Here's your bagel.
unidentified
Mr. Williamson, can I get you anything?
joe rogan
You get a delusional perspective.
It's like, amongst those people, how many of them can keep their humanity?
How many of them can actually just be a human?
And then your metrics.
How many of them are happy?
If you can be a guy who's a super high performer and also be happy, I don't know how happy Elon is, but I know he laughs a lot.
I've been around that dude a lot, and he's always laughing about shit.
He's always laughing about shit.
He's clearly under an extreme amount of pressure.
He's clearly a high performer, but he also seems to be enjoying a lot of it.
chris williamson
Did you see his interview recently with Lex?
I think it was maybe four months ago?
joe rogan
No, I didn't.
chris williamson
So, on that, there's a really interesting point where Lex is asking him basically what it's like to be Elon.
And Elon says, most people think they would want to be me, but they do not want to be me.
My mind is a storm.
They don't know.
They don't understand.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
He said that to me too.
chris williamson
It's fucking apocalyptic and terrifying.
We spoke about this last time, Tiger Woods, the price that people pay to be the person that you admire.
Tiger Woods goes through this really difficult period with his father and all the rest of it.
And this is the best remedy for envy.
That I can think of.
Because people look at Elon as this dude, he's sending rockets to Mars, and he's making the coolest cars on the planet, and he's on stage in Japan or China or whatever doing weird robot dances and shit, and he's super rich.
And you go, you don't know the price that he's had to pay for that.
You don't know the internal texture of someone's mind.
Your heroes aren't gods.
They're just regular people who probably got good at one thing by sacrificing literally everything else.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Especially as a high-performing athlete, what are your options?
If you want to be a fighter in the UFC, you can't also be coding.
You can't also be working at Microsoft.
chris williamson
Can you also have a functioning relationship?
joe rogan
The thing about fighters is you do have a lot of downtime when you have to recover.
You train a lot during the day, but if you make a living fighting, you will be able to have a relationship.
And with some of them, that relationship offers them a significant amount of emotional reinforcement.
chris williamson
Parasympathetic activation.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah.
It gives them comfort.
It makes them feel normal.
Some guys separate from their families for camp because they just want to be animals.
They just want to sleep in a fucking hotel room and just get up and train every day like a soldier.
Their mind is on one thing, this six-week-from-now event.
And until then, I don't want to hear shit.
When Marvin Hagler's kid was born, he didn't go to the hospital.
He wasn't at the hospital.
He was in camp.
Yeah, Marvin Hangler would go off to Provincetown, just down the Cape, and he would run.
He would run in the fucking winter on the sand.
chris williamson
There's that famous Darren Till interview where he's saying, I've got a two-year-old daughter.
Don't care.
All I care about is legacy and greatness.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
It's a high price that people pay.
I mean, Sean Strickland, who continues to seem to...
He seems to be sparring like any YouTuber or streamer that's prepared to get into the ring with him.
joe rogan
Well, he beat up that kid who's a smaller-than-him streamer named Sneeko, which is not a good look.
He beat the shit out of that guy.
chris williamson
Yeah.
joe rogan
I just don't know why he wanted to do that.
It was so easy for him to beat that guy up.
chris williamson
It was what we were talking about before.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's not fair.
I don't know what that kid thought.
First of all, he's so silly for doing that, for agreeing to do that with Sean Strickland.
chris williamson
Because you know that he's never gonna have that hold back.
joe rogan
If you agree to do that with Israel Adesanya, Israel Adesanya will take care of you.
I swear to God.
He'll pop you a little bit and let you know that you're helpless.
But he won't fuck you up.
He'll smile and laugh and he'll hug you afterwards.
You could spar with him.
I guarantee you could spar with him.
And then just touch your face, just to let you know.
Like, you would have been knocked out, but I just touched your face.
Just gonna touch you a little bit.
Move around.
You can't touch me.
I touch you.
Here's a faint and that's coming at you.
And if he's not, if he's kicking, you're fucked.
But even if he's just using his hands, if you're like some streamer, he wouldn't hurt you.
But Sean Strickland's a different animal.
Sean Strickland has, you know, he's got this fucking man code and he believes in it.
Like, you got to get your ass kicked every now and then.
He spars all the time.
Spars constantly, and if you agree to get in there with him, you're essentially agreeing to let him beat the fuck out of you because you don't really have a chance.
Like, you have no chance.
But, in Sean's defense, When he lost to Alex Pajeda, one of the first things he did was go to Connecticut to Glover Teixeira's gym where Alex trains and train with him.
When we was training with Alex Pajeda, he was light sparring.
So this is fucking light.
Find the video of Sean Strickland training with Alex Pajeda.
Because he's smart.
Because you can't...
That guy's not Sneeko.
You can't just...
That guy already knocked you out.
Pajeda knocked him out in the first round.
He hit him with a left hook and then a right hand as he was going down.
Pejeda's a monster.
So he was sparring with this monster.
He's like, let's just fucking be friends.
Let's just be friends, buddy.
chris williamson
Teach me your cheat codes.
joe rogan
Exactly.
And Pejeda teaches people, which is very interesting.
He's that confident in his ability that he'll take a guy that he just fought and a guy who is now the current...
Look how they're sparring.
Nice and light.
See this?
They're just touching each other, just using distance and sparring.
And there was an actual...
See, these guys are sparring, but they're not hitting each other hard at all.
And there was a very interesting video that I just watched yesterday where this guy was talking about that in martial arts.
I don't know if you'll be able to find it.
But you know what?
I guarantee you it's on my list of shit that I just watched, because YouTube will give you a list of shit you just watched.
chris williamson
Oh, the history?
joe rogan
Yeah, which is nice.
But it was very interesting because it was talking about the importance of play when it comes to martial arts sparring.
In that sparring, you know, the only way to learn is to not be under this intense, high pressure, high stress situation.
And for most people, sparring is terrifying, especially sparring if you're sparring someone who's like really dangerous.
unidentified
Is it in this video?
joe rogan
Yes, this is that guy.
jamie vernon
It's a long video though.
joe rogan
Yes, and Max Holloway talked about how he doesn't spar.
But if you...
What he's essentially saying is he breaks down the mind and how...
Where is your optimal time to learn?
And he talks about how animals play and about young animals, like when a lion is jumping on another lion, they're learning to play.
And the ties.
He also breaks down how the ties spar.
Ties spar...
Very light.
They just touch each other.
They're just touching each other.
chris williamson
I've been out to Thailand.
I've seen it.
joe rogan
It's amazing.
High-level guys do that.
And they do that so they can fight all the time, because they fight almost every week sometimes.
chris williamson
Weekends, yep.
joe rogan
So when they're training, they can't be getting beat up all the time.
So they learn how to...
And, you know, that's Faraz Ahabi.
I actually talked about that.
chris williamson
That guy was fascinating.
joe rogan
Faraz is a genius.
He's one of the greatest martial arts trainers of all time, if not the best.
So, see these guys, they're training and they're touching.
See, they just touch each other.
And when you do that, you don't have the fear of getting hit back as much and you learn combinations better, you learn timing better.
When I first started coming to California, I started training at this place called the Jet Center.
It was Benny the Jet Urquidez, who's this world-famous kickboxer.
And he had this place in California that we...
It was like two places I wanted to go to when I came to California.
One was a comedy store and one was the Jet Center.
And unfortunately, they had just been damaged.
They had the roof damage from an earthquake.
And so they had flooding problems and stuff, and they had to move out of that location.
So I was only there for a short period of time before they went under.
But there was guys you could spar there that were really good kickboxers, but they knew how to spar correctly.
So there was this one dude that I used to spar with all the time, and I was getting so sharp, because we never hit each other hard.
And I knew I could trust him, and he knew he could trust me, so we were sparring all the time.
And I was not getting fucked up.
Like, I'd spar on a day that I had to film something.
chris williamson
And you'd be able to still go to work without a bloody nose or a black eye.
joe rogan
So I did all my hard work on, like, the heavy bag, but then when I was sparring, everything is just movement.
chris williamson
What is...
What are the bad habits that someone who does that too much can...
Would you maybe begin to habituate pulling your punches, not telegraphing sufficiently?
joe rogan
No, you would never.
If you fought before, you'll never pull your punches.
chris williamson
That's not a concern.
But you know what I mean?
Because obviously you are dialing back that power, that penetration.
joe rogan
You could say that with point karate.
Because point karate, they kind of dive in and just touch each other.
But...
They all know how to hit bags.
They all know how to hit mints.
They all know how to hit tie pads.
They all know how to do that.
They know how to hit things.
It's just the real skill level is in control.
The real skill level is in being able to counter quickly but know exactly where your hand is going.
And you can do that.
You can learn how to control force in a way that, like, when I used to do Taekwondo demonstrations, like when we'd open up a new school, one of the things you'd have to do is, like, Throw kicks at people's faces like stop it at their face just to show them like the kind of control that's possible and you would have your foot like literally fly up like right in front of someone's face and you would have someone stand there who's another student you would demonstrate on them and You just gotta stand there, not flinch?
Yup, and you just stand there.
And my instructor used to do it to me all the time.
He would do it to someone in every class.
Like, in the front row, he would demonstrate by stopping the kick in the air in front of your face.
chris williamson
Fuck, that's cool.
joe rogan
Yeah, and so you would learn how to do that when you would do that.
So the ability to pull a shot is a part of being a really high-level martial artist.
And the ability to spar, and spar fast without hitting each other hard, It's also, it's like something you should know how to do.
It's a part of the, but once you know that you're hitting, the only thing is like the anxiety of being hit.
That's, and the danger of being hit.
Because if you're just used to like pulling shots, you could get an uncomfortable sense of your, like a dangerous sense of your safety.
Your robustness and your safety.
Because any one shot takes you out.
Any one good shot from a strong striker can take you out.
So you want no shots landing clean.
You want everything to be moving away from you.
chris williamson
This is new though, right?
I've heard a lot of guys, older school UFC guys saying that this light sparring thing is a pretty new invention.
joe rogan
Totally.
chris williamson
People were getting knocked out in sparring.
joe rogan
All the time.
Yeah, some of the old school training camps, like you'd hear stories about, like, particularly shoot-the-box in Brazil.
In Curitiba, they had some of the best fighters of the golden era of pride.
They had Vanderlei Silva, they had Ninja, Shogun, Anderson Silva.
They had so many killers that came out as one gym.
And bro, they beat the fuck out of each other.
They beat the fuck out of each other.
They knocked each other out all the time.
Vandele Silva and Shogun famously had a fight to see whether or not one of them would pay for a pit bull.
Because one of them had the pit bull.
I think Shogun had the pit bull and he was offered to sell it to Vandele and Vandele said, I'll fight you for it.
And so they fought and Vandele apparently won and got the dog.
chris williamson
Just in the gym.
No one's getting paid, apart from in a dog.
joe rogan
No, they would fight, fight.
Like, fight, fight.
So when they would go to fights, they're so used to fighting.
chris williamson
I'd fight over, Carl.
joe rogan
The thing about it is, though, man, it's going to shorten your career substantially.
Substantially.
It'll shorten your durability towards the end of your career substantially.
You see it in every fighter that comes from that sort of environment, and the traumatic brain injuries that they get when they spar like that all the time, especially when they're not slick.
The thing about, like, Anderson Silva above all those guys is that Anderson was slick.
He was very difficult to hit clean.
So Anderson Silva, when he's sparring, he's flowing and moving.
He's very difficult to catch.
Those guys would go to war.
Just point on the mouthpiece and fucking rah!
Do you ever see Vanderlei Silva fight?
chris williamson
Yeah, I think so.
joe rogan
His next name is the Axe murderer.
chris williamson
Vanderlei Silva in Brazil.
Let's go now!
Let's go now!
joe rogan
Was that him with Chael?
But that was at the end of his career.
That was at the end of his career when he came to the UFC. Post-TRT. Yeah, he'd gotten off of all the stuff that he was on when he was in Brazil.
You want fully roided Vanderlei in Brazil when he was a young man.
He was a fucking animal, dude.
He was an animal.
b-real
He was so scary.
joe rogan
This was the bare knuckle days.
This was like his first fight.
chris williamson
Bare Knuckles coming back.
joe rogan
Yeah, it is coming back.
Well, Bare Knuckle for UFC was how they first started.
Yeah, look, Vandele was, and he had a cool tattoo on the back of his head.
He was an animal, dude.
He was an animal.
I saw him meet a fan.
I saw him meet a fan once.
The guy had the same tattoo on his head.
chris williamson
Oh, you can do head kicks on the ground.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, everything.
chris williamson
You can do whatever you want.
I love the briefs.
joe rogan
This isn't Brazil.
This is where it all started, man.
This is how they did it in Brazil, man.
In Brazil, bare knuckle, Vale Tudo.
It's just when the United States got involved that it became the thing that it is now with the gloves.
Yeah.
I mean, they were stomping and kicking each other in the balls.
This is Vandele when he got to the UFC. So in these days, this was the UFC with zero testing.
And you see him, he looked fucking shredded.
And then, I mean, Vanderlei was a terrifying force.
And then he goes over to Pride, and he becomes a champion of Pride, but he was fucking people.
And there's him against Guy Metzger, who was a very good fighter.
And Vanderlei just overwhelmed him.
Bro, overwhelmed him.
It's just headbutts everything.
Knees, see that headbutt?
I don't think that headbutt was legal, by the way.
I don't think that was legal back then, but it didn't matter.
They weren't gonna stop it.
And then Vanderlei puts him away.
chris williamson
I wanted to...
joe rogan
Monster, dude.
He was a monster in his prime.
He had to get his face reconstructed because his nose was so flat that he couldn't breathe out of it at all.
So they took a big chunk of cartilage out of his rib and reconstructed his face.
And he had a totally new face.
They made it big.
He got a big nose so he could really breathe.
Yeah, he looked like a different human.
Like after the surgery, he showed up one day and I was like, what is going on?
I knew that he had got his nose fixed, but they gave him a different nose.
Like it's way bigger.
So he could breathe more.
He was beating the fuck out of people.
He wanted more air.
Vanderlei was an animal!
chris williamson
Who do you think's more?
Is there anyone else that was more psychopathic or more of an animal across your commentary career?
joe rogan
There's so many of them.
chris williamson
Who ranks close to the top?
joe rogan
Mike Perry, who's one of the bare-knuckle fighters now.
He's about as ferocious as a human being gets.
chris williamson
He's the dude that chipped Luke Rockhold's tooth, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
He told them what was gonna happen before the fight.
He's gonna, I'm gonna fuck you up and you're gonna quit.
He just went out and made him quit.
Did exactly what he said.
He's an animal, man.
He's a real animal.
chris williamson
This BKFC thing's interesting.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, it's a very different kind of fighting, man, when you don't have the protection of gloves.
You know, every punch hurts way more.
And it also hurts your hands.
chris williamson
Is the wrapping on their wrists just to provide a little bit of support structurally when they're hitting?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Structurally, it'll probably prevent some breaks.
That's basically all it does is prevent some breaks.
It connects your thumb to the hands too because the thumb breaks easy.
The thumb like on a missed punch might hit a forehead with the thumb and the thumb will snap.
So it'll protect it a little bit.
See, Luke cracked him there with a good left hand.
And Luke was a fucking hell of a fighter in his prime, man.
He was UFC middleweight champion and in his prime when he beat Chris Weidman, he was a motherfucker, man.
He was a motherfucker.
But Mike Perry is not a guy that you can think you have.
He's just so tough.
He's gonna keep coming.
And if Luke stuck and moved and maybe had a different strategy, maybe he would have had a better time, but you let Mike Perry start mauling you, he's so dangerous, man.
He's such a fucking killer.
And he doesn't feel pain.
Or if he does, he doesn't let you know.
He's just uniquely built for that sport.
chris williamson
I wanted to teach you about something that I'd learned on the show.
So you've had a number of conversations about trans athletes in sport and about the dangers potentially of biological males moving over into women's leagues.
And it always kind of...
It comes back to the same, well, if we can get the hormones down to this particular kind of level, basically, can we reverse some of the structural changes?
And it kind of gets into this realm of hormonal fuckery, which is fine, but I think that's kind of been talked to death.
There's something that I learned about on the show that I thought was even more important.
So the male and female brain difference can be detected in utero I think?
93% accuracy of an MRI between a boy and a girl.
That's exactly or that's around about the same as your accuracy of detecting whether it's a man or a woman based on looking at their face.
That's the same degree of difference.
So one of the arguments that will be put forward is social roles theory.
So social roles theory is that boys behave like boys because they see boys behaving like boys and girls do the same.
They're socialized into doing this.
That doesn't seem to be true, because this is universal, it's across the board, it's present before anybody's even been born, and it's present before androgens.
But the reason that this is, I think, important towards sport is that one of the key differences is in what's called visuospatial abilities, and males have a huge advantage in visuospatial abilities.
This is preschoolers, Age three and four, their throwing accuracy and their throwing distance already begins to diverge from girls.
By the age of 19, there's essentially no crossover at all.
You could understand why this might be the case because, well, if you're an ancestral hunter, you need to, as a man, be able to see this is an animal running this way.
I have this particular spear in my hand.
I'm going to throw it to intersect this.
So you go, okay, well, one of the problems of using that is you can't bifurcate a male's performance, especially with something like throwing, visual-spatial, from the physical structure that they have, which is impacted by androgens.
So men have longer forearms.
Their shoulders articulate in a different way.
They might have more trunk rotation, perhaps.
So they did a study to try and work this out.
Instead of having them throw things, The lecturers at this university brought their undergrads in and used a tennis ball firing machine like you use for practicing returns in tennis as dodgeball.
And the guys in the class topped out the ceiling.
They were very, very difficult to hit.
The same wasn't true for the girls.
The reason is that the male proclivity to be able to see things in space, understand how they fit together, understand the proprioception of where my body is and how I can interact with this...
Is very, very different.
It's a sizable, statistically significant difference that you find between males and females.
Now, females have their own advantages.
Social cognition, which is otherwise known as emotional intelligence.
Reading faces.
Lying detection.
What's called, like, I think it's local memorization or spatial memorization.
So you know those games where you've got a load of cards down on the table and you've got to match them?
Girls would wipe the floor with guys at that.
So there are...
Predispositions mentally that men and women have.
And this is something, this is not, and this is the important thing, this is not impacted by testosterone level.
So you as a biological male can't take a ton of estrogen or hormone blockers and have your visual spatial ability be down-regulated to that of a woman.
So this to me explains an awful lot about why the WNBA is struggling because you are talking about a very different set of capacities.
And unfortunately, I guess, the way that sports are done is it needs to be visually compelling, right?
You want to see cool things happening.
You want to observe shit going on.
A lying detection test or someone turning over cards and matching them doesn't lend itself to being a spectator sport as much, which means that males have this predisposition which is more entertaining given the current rule sets of sport.
And this to me is a much more compelling unfairness When you're talking about male and female capabilities within sport, this doesn't have anything to do with what time would they put on hormone blockers.
This doesn't have anything to do with what is their testosterone level at.
This is innate, inbuilt predispositions.
joe rogan
But doesn't it have to be agreed upon by the people that are making these sort of decisions?
Because most people...
There's people that resist that.
They might even think...
They might not think you're lying, but they might resist that.
They might resist that and say it's not valid, doesn't matter.
chris williamson
Statistically significant.
joe rogan
Right, but you could see how people would have an issue with that, right?
Even though it's statistically significant, people would go like, who did the study?
You know, if you're trying to, like, say that trans women are women, there's a lot of things that you could say that they have an advantage with physically.
Proving it mentally just based on that, I agree.
It seems an issue.
Well, you know how big of it's an issue?
It's an issue in pool.
Pool's not a strength game at all.
It's a finesse game.
It's a game of, you know, executing shots under pressure.
It's a game of angles, and it's a game of geometry and feel.
But very few women Ever get to the level of, like, an elite professional male.
It's like there's a small handful in history.
In history.
chris williamson
And that's completely controlled for articulation of the shoulder, strength, maybe a tiny bit of strength on the break, I guess?
joe rogan
Could be on the break.
But there's a lot of girls who break very well.
And the break today is more of a controlled break because they're breaking on cloth that's a Simonis 860. It's a very fast, clean cloth.
chris williamson
Dude, your obsession with pool makes me laugh every time that I hear about it.
It's so funny.
It's like this other wing of you that I never think about.
And then every time I walk in and I see that there's like a pool hall basically in here, I'm like, ah, yeah, the fucking pool obsession.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm obsessed with it.
But there's women that are really good.
They're better than me for sure.
But they never reach the level of like a Shane Van Boning, who's like one of the best ever.
They just don't get to that place.
chris williamson
I just think it's an interesting addition to the discussion because you're always having the same conversation.
Well, what about if we get the hormone levels to here?
Well, actually, we don't suggest that testosterone level.
What about people that have got naturally high levels of testosterone?
It never gets to innate, inbuilt, unchangeable differences about our capacities, about when it comes to the field of play.
Mm-hmm.
If you were to take the top 100 female WNBA players and the top 100 male NBA players, and you were to say, let's just shoot free throws.
Let's just see how many are made.
That should be a pretty even playing field, and I bet that it would be...
The disparity will be very high.
joe rogan
Very high.
In the pool world, the reason why I was bringing this up, recently a woman made it to the finals of a tournament with a transgender woman and just quit.
She said, I'm not going to play you.
chris williamson
In pool?
joe rogan
And this transgender woman, and by the way, with pool tournaments, I guarantee you they're not like checking estrogen level.
There's zero control.
All you have to do is say I'm a woman and you can play.
I can say I'm a woman and I can play.
Put on a dress and I'll play.
Fuck you, I'm a woman.
And if you let it happen, you're going to get crazy people that do this.
And this lady, she took a stand.
She's like, you're not a woman.
I quit.
chris williamson
You saw that.
joe rogan
Check your hand.
chris williamson
You saw that Canadian powerlifting coach that just entered a competition, just didn't do anything.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm a woman now.
It's really bizarre that they're letting this happen.
It really is.
It's so strange.
It's like women's rights have gone out the window in this sense over the name of virtue.
The virtue that you're a good person and you say trans women are women.
Okay, in real life maybe, yeah, but not on sports.
You're a biological male.
It's the same thing as if you tell someone, hey, I don't do steroids now, but I've done steroids straight every day for 20 years, and I'm so fucking strong, I've run through a wall, but I'm going to stop doing steroids and I want to compete with natural people.
Well, fuck you.
unidentified
Fuck you.
joe rogan
You cheated.
You changed your physique.
You changed it.
Well, that's exactly what you would say for a woman.
If you had a woman athlete, and that woman athlete developed a male voice and giant muscles, but was still a woman, was beating up all these women, you'd be like, oh, that woman was on the sauce.
She cheated.
She cheated.
Well, if you're going through puberty, guess what, fuckface?
You're taking testosterone.
If you really say you're a woman and you're going through all that, and then you're after puberty, you're an adult, and then you're going into your 30s, you have your whole life of producing testosterone.
You have male tendon strength.
You have the male bone density of different shaped hips.
Everything's different.
Your competitive drive's different.
It's so dumb that we're having this conversation.
And the people that suffer are the biological women.
And that was the thing that we were always supposed to be protecting with Title IX. That's the whole idea of developing regulations so that women have sports that they can play that are just with women.
It's a fair playing field.
The same reason why you don't let third graders play with fucking high school seniors.
It's real simple.
You have someone play within the parameters of a fair playing environment and you're always going to get outliers.
You're always gonna get people that are like exceptionally strong and fast for their weight and their age, and then you're gonna be at people that are struggling physically, they just have no experience whatsoever in athletics, and you gotta find the comfortable medium, but it's within a fair parameter of the biological gender.
This fucking thing that's on your birth certificate.
What is it?
That's what you can compete in.
What's your chromosomes?
Do you have XY? Yeah, you gotta go with those guys.
That's it.
You don't want to fight anymore?
Okay, well then don't fight.
But you can't beat up women just because you decide you're a woman.
That's crazy.
That's just crazy.
It doesn't make any sense that we're allowing that.
It's not compassionate.
It's not open-minded.
It's not progressive.
It's just stupid.
You're just caught in some cult-like mindset.
And the people that are suffering are the women.
The women that would be competing in just sports.
You see that thing in Canada where the volleyball players, it's five biological males on a volleyball team and the biological women were sitting there on the bench waiting while the biological males were dominating this fucking woman's volleyball game?
See if you can find that.
Because it's so crazy.
It's like, it's literally South Park.
It's South Park.
Like, we're watching South Park.
chris williamson
Strong woman!
joe rogan
Yeah, it's absolute insanity.
You have crazy people.
Crazy people.
chris williamson
Talking about basketball, I had Seth Stevens-Davidowitz on the show.
He's an ex-Google data scientist.
He wrote a book in 30 days using AI, breaking down a ton of stuff that no one ever knew about basketball, and it is so fucking cool.
For every inch in height that you gain...
The chance of you going to the NBA doubles.
So 6'1 is twice as likely as 6'1, and 6'2 is twice as likely as 6'1, and it just continues to go.
It continues to go all the way up.
The most common name...
Oh, here we go.
joe rogan
Go ahead.
chris williamson
Get it in there.
joe rogan
Most common name.
Five trans players dominate women's college volleyball games.
Come on, this is so crazy.
chris williamson
How many players is there on a game of volleyball?
jamie vernon
They're actually on different teams.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's like three on one and two on the other.
And they played during the entire game while the biological women sat on the bench.
chris williamson
Let's see if I can pick them up.
jamie vernon
Oh god, this is a real...
joe rogan
Oh, so people were freaking out?
Yeah, well they should be freaking out.
It's fucking insanity.
It's insanity and it's this thing where you're supposed to pretend that they're not lunatics.
Like, there's a man in Canada that was a 50-year-old man that decided he identified as a 15-year-old girl, so he's competing in girl swimming events, and he was changing in the same locker room as the girls.
Hey, what are the odds that guy's a creep?
chris williamson
Might be one to put on the watch list for the police, I think.
joe rogan
What are you talking about?
It's so dumb.
It's just so dumb that we're accepting it.
And more people are accepting it than should.
It's insane.
And it shouldn't be a sign of whether or not you're progressive.
You should recognize that this is a dangerous opening.
You're leaving a very dangerous opening here.
And the people that are suffering are the women.
And the women that are athletes that are suffering, it's going to ruin their chances at college.
You could change the direction of their life.
They might not get a scholarship they should get.
Because they had to compete against biological males.
chris williamson
The Enhanced Games.
Get everybody off the Enhanced Games.
The Steroid Olympics.
Peter Thiel just put a ton of money into that.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's going to be interesting.
How long before the government cracks down on them?
chris williamson
Well, the problem is, it seems like, from what I read, it seems like they supply The steroids.
joe rogan
That's what I'm saying.
Like, that seems super illegal.
chris williamson
Are you a sporting body?
Are you my steroid dealer?
joe rogan
And then you have to think, like, what kind of an influence does that have on young people?
Like, one of the things about steroids being shunned and illegal, even if it was irrational in some sense, like that if you have an adult male and this guy is 35 years old and he just decides, you know what?
I want to take steroids.
Why is that not okay?
But you can prescribe him a ton of different fucking things that can kill him.
You can prescribe him anti-anxiety medication.
You can prescribe him painkillers.
You can prescribe him Ozempic, because he wants to lose weight.
You can prescribe him all kinds of things that might have adverse health risks, but you can't.
Nothing that makes you stronger.
We have a limitation on that.
It's very odd.
And I can see how you would make it banned for sports.
But why is it banned for people?
Like, says who?
chris williamson
I just want to get jacked.
joe rogan
Says who?
But it's like, says who?
Says one adult says another adult can't do this?
Do people vote on that?
Did medical experts vote on that?
If they did, how'd they let fentanyl in?
chris williamson
I can't remember.
I feel like it wouldn't be surprising to me if the cascade was, this ruins fairness in sports, and then we retroactively change the gym rat Normal population rule set to ensure that the sporting rule set isn't wrecked.
I feel like it was probably the trickle down that way from sports and elite sports and tested sports into the public.
But Derek from More Plates, More Data has talked about this, how if it hadn't been for the fact that there were controlled substances, we would have way safer, better researched compounds.
You know, we're still using like Trenbolone.
It's from like the 60s or the 70s or something.
joe rogan
That stuff's supposed to be scary.
chris williamson
Oh yeah.
joe rogan
I've heard scary stories of people being on that stuff and losing their fucking mind, like literally becoming animals.
chris williamson
You get this cough.
joe rogan
It's a trend cough?
chris williamson
Trend cough, yeah.
You pin yourself and you get this trend cough, supposedly.
Terrifying.
Going back to that basketball thing, the most common name of basketball players in the NBA Christopher, I missed my calling.
joe rogan
Damn, that's the most?
chris williamson
Yes.
So the reason for this, and it's really interesting, Seth used a ton of different AI programs to analyze all of this data, and he said he was able to do what would have taken him three years in 30 days.
He wrote this book in 30 days.
unidentified
Whoa.
chris williamson
It's insane.
It's really, really good.
Who Makes the NBA, I think it's called.
The reason that it's Christopher is that Christopher is the sort of name that is given by middle-class parents to their child.
So it's really an indicator of social class.
And there is this belief that in basketball, it's a meritocracy where the underclass, hardworking athlete can clamber his way up.
You know, this is LeBron.
LeBron, single mother who was 16 years old, makes it to the top.
He's an outlier.
That's not that common.
The most common path is someone that comes from two-parent households that's relatively well off and, you know, like classic advantages that you get.
Christopher is the sort of name that's given.
I think Michael is another one that's up there and he does this big word map thing where you can see the size of the names and the bigger the name, the more likely it is.
One of the other things that no one really ever thinks about is handspan.
Handspan, one of the biggest determinants for success in the sport.
So Shaq has a 14-inch handspan from finger to hand because palming the ball, you know, if you're up there and you're able to palm the ball, that's a huge advantage.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's terrifying.
joe rogan
That's so big.
chris williamson
Absolutely terrifying.
joe rogan
Just grab that ball.
Yeah.
Makes sense.
Makes sense to give you an advantage.
Yeah.
It's fascinating when you break down data like that and you try to figure out what are the contributing factors.
I wonder if they've done that with martial arts.
I wonder if someone's done that with fighters like height and reach and things like that.
chris williamson
What would you be interested in?
joe rogan
Height and reach.
It's a big factor.
But it's also like, are you as durable?
Like sometimes the stockier...
chris williamson
Neck width, maybe, something like that.
joe rogan
Yeah, neck width.
The size of the chin.
I think it's jaw size.
chris williamson
Hand size would definitely be one.
So I worked on the front door of nightclubs forever running our events.
And one of the really naughty things that door staff would do, maybe they do this in America as well, is they get like a lead cylinder.
And in their leather gloves, they put it on the inside.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
So the hand now weighs a pound and a half more than usual.
You hit someone and that's like a fucking hammer.
So if that's the case, that rule is mass of hand equals damage.
So someone that has denser bones or more muscular hands or bigger hands, that's basically just more weight on the end of your arms that you're swinging at someone's face.
So yeah, I mean...
joe rogan
Giant advantage.
chris williamson
I think that breaking down sports in this way...
That's why Moneyball was so cool, right?
People loved, like, oh my god, this is so interesting.
joe rogan
I never really paid attention to that.
What is Moneyball?
chris williamson
So, Moneyball was an assessment of the MLB done by a guy that was picked up by the Oakland A's, and he was using very advanced mathematics to look at...
You got something, Jimmy?
jamie vernon
I was just going to say Billy Beans' name.
I was trying to just...
chris williamson
Yeah, Billy Beans.
And he looked at undervalued players and what contributes to winning a game.
And there were players that would bat in a weird way, that would throw or pitch in a weird way, but their numbers were fantastic.
And he was the first guy that really, really assessed the numbers of baseball in this manner.
Now it's very, very common.
Baseball is largely a game of maths.
They know exactly where hitters like to swing.
They move the field around based on all of the statistics that they've seen, all of the analyses that's been done.
But yeah, the movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt is outstanding.
If you've never seen it, you absolutely should watch it.
It's so much fun.
But yeah, I think this assessment...
I don't think it removes the magic of sport.
I don't think it gets rid of the magic of sport to...
joe rogan
It just makes people nerd out harder.
chris williamson
Deconstruct, yeah, and it allows us to obsess.
joe rogan
It still doesn't make it easy to do.
So when someone does hit a fucking home run, it's still amazing.
chris williamson
Yeah, but...
jamie vernon
This is a good scene from the movie.
I'm not going to play the whole thing, but just what's going on here is he's explaining to them the idea of what he was just talking about, the Moneyball, but there's a bunch of old scouts.
These guys have been around forever, and they're just like, what are you talking about?
We can't do it that way.
joe rogan
So he just figures it out numerically.
jamie vernon
Spoiler alert, it works.
They won the World Series like the next year or something like that.
joe rogan
And it's based on a true story?
chris williamson
Oh yeah.
joe rogan
And so he had himself an autistic kid.
unidentified
Yeah, that's exactly what he was.
chris williamson
That's the secret advantage.
Find people that have got autism.
joe rogan
There's an advantage in that.
jamie vernon
I just heard the guy, the Chiefs that just won the Super Bowl, they have a guy like that that's worked with the coach the entire time.
They call him...
Shit, I forget what they call him.
He has a name.
He's like the analytics guy.
No one knows what his job is.
chris williamson
Mr. Numbers or something.
jamie vernon
We just listen to him and we trust whatever he says.
chris williamson
Fuck, that's cool.
joe rogan
It's pretty cool.
Yeah.
chris williamson
Dude, let's talk about this special counsel report thing that just came out.
unidentified
Oh, yes.
joe rogan
We were going to do that before we peed.
chris williamson
Yes.
joe rogan
Special counsel report on Biden.
chris williamson
Yeah.
So these Afghanistan documents, these top secret Afghanistan documents that were supposedly held in his garage, as you'd say, there's photos of how it was.
It was just an open box in the middle of the garage.
joe rogan
Wasn't it in his Corvette or something?
chris williamson
I'm not sure.
The photos I've seen are just an open box with files in, like you just have lying around here that need to be cleaned away.
joe rogan
I think he had one of those boxes in the back seat of his Corvette.
jamie vernon
Well...
joe rogan
Yeah, there it is.
Yeah, there's his Corvette.
That's a Corvette that doesn't even have a backseat.
That's a fucking dope Corvette.
That's like my year.
I love that year.
chris williamson
That's pretty nice.
joe rogan
So the classified docs were found in his garage, where his Corvette was.
So there's the box right there.
That's it?
chris williamson
Yeah.
joe rogan
And what's in those things?
chris williamson
Classified Afghanistan documents.
I think it was from earlier.
joe rogan
Oh my god, you can read them.
chris williamson
Garage box after repackaging January 3rd, 2023. So did he forget he had him?
So that's the argument.
And the thing that most people are jumping on to do with this report isn't that.
It's the assessment.
I think it was her that's the dude that did it.
It was the assessment of his mental state.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
Basically, yeah.
Mr. Hur suggested that Mr. Biden's memory was failing and questioned some of his actions, even though the special counsel had found no basis to prosecute the president.
The issue that he says, basically, in the report is, if you try to prosecute this guy...
Mr. Biden would likely present himself to the jury as he did during our interview with him, which is as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.
That's literally what it says in the report.
Well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.
So basically, you can't prosecute this guy because he's not compass mentis, but you can let him run for the President of the United States in November.
So that's the world that we've managed to get into.
joe rogan
But don't you think that that's a ruse?
That him running for president?
chris williamson
You don't think he's going to run?
joe rogan
No.
No, I think they're going to get rid of him.
I think they're going to move him out.
They're going to force him to step down.
That's what I think.
If I had to guess, and it's just speculation, I'd say they're setting up Gavin Newsom for it.
That's what I say.
That's what I think.
That's what it looks like to me.
I think more and more comes out about this stuff and more and more comes out about the Burisma thing and the Penn State thing, you know, where the Chinese donated money to Penn State and then he got a million dollar a year gig where he didn't even have to show up.
That's old school.
That's like mafia stuff.
Was it a million dollars a year?
How much was it that he got from Penn State?
And he was telling people, he said, I'm a professor at Penn State.
Everyone went there.
Didn't teach one class.
Look, some of it is part of its fun.
Like, if he wasn't the president, it would be really fun.
Because he's like, oh, he's making stuff up.
He calls people the wrong name.
He talks about someone that's dead.
You know, it's constant.
jamie vernon
It was Penn, not Penn State.
joe rogan
Penn State.
Excuse me.
Penn.
Yeah.
Was paid one million dollars a year to teach but never taught a single class.
Yeah, University of Pennsylvania, that's what it is.
That is a mob job.
I had a friend of mine who had one of those jobs.
He didn't have to really go to the Javits Center.
chris williamson
It's like an honorary thing.
joe rogan
He's a mob guy.
He got a gig.
Yeah, he got a gig.
And there was like, if you had made a union negotiation back in the day, like we're talking back in the day-day, they would throw in a bunch of no-work jobs.
So no-work jobs were a part of the thing.
chris williamson
It's just a little sweetener on top.
joe rogan
Yeah, so if you're a mob guy and you're connected to some...
It's a construction company.
They would find companies that they would buy into and own pieces of so that they could kind of funnel their money out.
They could say, I'm in the construction business or I'm in the sanitation business.
They always had something that they were attached to.
But they had no show jobs.
You got real money.
You know?
Got a real fucking salary, a real paycheck every week.
And you never did shit.
You didn't do a goddamn thing.
You never went there.
You're just a mob guy.
chris williamson
I can't help feeling kind of sad about how difficult it must be to be Joe Biden.
Like, if you're this dude who is...
I mean, what the fuck are they pumping him with?
Like, he is...
joe rogan
Fun stuff.
chris williamson
I mean, he's having a great time.
Like, first thing in the morning, Mr. President, come in for your happy pills or whatever.
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
That he has fucking IV testosterone and cocaine right into his system.
chris williamson
So you think, you know, this guy who's holding on as best he can, like trying to get through the presidency and there's all of this scrutiny and people are making jokes about him and his team are like, oh, let's put a fucking meme out of him with red eyes after the Super Bowl and then he's got to deal with all the rest of that stuff.
joe rogan
What is that?
chris williamson
And then it just makes me feel like, fuck, like that must be really rough.
To be that guy, to actually be the human that is Joe Biden, that must be really fucking like, I don't know, you're going to be aware, you're going to be self-aware of the fact that you're failing, that your mental faculties aren't there, and you're like being pushed and just this RPM is being pushed higher and higher, 8,000, 9,000, 10,000.
joe rogan
I bet he doesn't do much.
I bet the cabinet takes care of everything.
I bet the press secretary makes all the tweets.
I bet they dope him up.
Every now and then they make him talk.
And they probably give him a lot of amphetamines or something.
They probably give him something to make...
I don't know if it's amphetamines.
I would imagine.
chris williamson
That's you using your Hitler model.
joe rogan
What I was going to do.
If I had a guy like that and they said, hey Joe, this guy is really out of it.
Let's pretend it's not Biden.
It's some other guy that has to go and speak in front of people.
He's really old and, you know, like, okay.
You know, he could die.
He could die if you do this.
But what I would say is, like, let's start banging him up with testosterone.
Give him, like, a good dose.
Like, ramp him up slowly.
We want to get him up to, like, 30-year-old levels.
And then some kind of amphetamine.
And then a big nootropic stack, like a heavy stack.
Theanine, you know, acetylcholine.
chris williamson
Alpha-GPC, yeah.
joe rogan
Alpha-GPC, yeah.
Let's stack shit.
And I want like multiple modalities.
I want a bunch of different ones coming out.
Mushroom ones, all kinds of stuff.
We've got to do our best here.
chris williamson
The adaptogens, we've got everything going in there.
joe rogan
And then we're just like, I've got to break things down on cue cards.
I mean, we can do this.
And that's what they've done.
They've definitely done the cue cards part.
There's photos of his cue cards, like, stand there, say brief remark.
It's all capital letters.
Have you seen those?
chris williamson
No.
joe rogan
He holds on to them, and then they take pictures of it, and they zoom in on the picture, and they go, look what it says.
See if you can find that, Jamie.
chris williamson
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's like, you can't, you shouldn't have, like, this is his card.
Presidential cue cards.
Oh, he has cue cards for staff, too.
That makes sense.
But there was a cue card that he had that they were reading while he was on stage, where he was giving some sort of a presidential address.
chris williamson
You enter the Roosevelt Room and say hello to participants.
You take your seat.
joe rogan
You give brief comments.
All caps with you.
chris williamson
Man, I feel so bad for him.
joe rogan
That's amazing.
chris williamson
I feel so bad for him.
joe rogan
It's amazing.
Well, he just can't keep a thought in his head when he starts talking about things.
He forgets what he's talking about all the time.
He goes, well, whatever.
He just says, well, whatever, and just drifts off.
chris williamson
So he did this after the report came out.
He did this emergency press conference, which wasn't, I don't think, a particularly good idea.
joe rogan
How did it go?
chris williamson
I would say suboptimally.
Did he fail to impress?
Someone asked him, how good is your memory?
And he said, my memory is so bad, I let you speak.
joe rogan
Oh, boy.
chris williamson
Like, what?
joe rogan
Oh boy.
chris williamson
Sorry, what?
My memory is so good I let you speak.
What?
What?
There's no way that I can repurpose that quote for it to make sense.
joe rogan
No.
chris williamson
Meanwhile, the new president of El Salvador just won with an 85% vote.
85%.
So El Salvador went from having the highest murder rate in the world to now the highest incarceration rate in the world.
This guy is locking up everyone.
They have a brand new 40,000 person prison that's the size of seven football stadiums.
Jamie, have a look at this football stadium thing.
It is wild what they've done.
He's cleaned up the streets.
He's gone super aggressive.
There's some dangers of what he's done, which is they're being very indiscriminate.
with who gets convicted.
12-year-olds can be, I haven't heard if they are, but 12-year-olds can be treated like adults and thrown into the prison as well.
You know, if they break down the door and come in this room and you're a bad guy and me and Jamie are not bad guys, we're probably going to prison as well.
So there's probably a good bit of collateral damage that's come with this.
But It's insane what he's been able to do.
And yeah, 85% was the vote.
Yeah, here we go.
joe rogan
Wow.
Inside El Salvador's mega prison.
chris williamson
Turn the volume on, Jamie.
unidentified
You'll find some of El Salvador's most dangerous gang members packed into massive cells, towers of bunk beds, in what looks like bird cages.
It's a source of pride for President Nayib Bukele that almost two years ago declared a war on crime.
A detention center the size of seven football stadiums with capacity to hold 40,000 prisoners, the largest of its kind in Latin America.
Known as the Center for Terrorism Confinement, it opened its doors in 2023 after the government declared a state of emergency.
Look at the tattoos, dude.
chris williamson
Look at that!
unidentified
Wow!
The director says the detainees have to sleep on hard surfaces to avoid giving them mattresses that could be used to hide objects.
Their diet consists of simple meals that repeat every day.
chris williamson
Beans, rice, one hard egg in the morning.
unidentified
Wow.
chris williamson
Yeah.
joe rogan
This guy just put the hammer down.
That was, you know, with Duncan Trusholm, when we were in L.A., when the George Floyd riots hit, one of the first things he says, dude, we're going to have a right-wing authoritarian president now.
That's going to be the next person.
Like, the next, like, when this all collapses, the only response to that is people go hard, right?
They go hard, right?
chris williamson
Oh, my God.
joe rogan
That's nuts.
That's nuts.
chris williamson
I think it's MS-13 is one of the big gangs.
I can't remember what the other one's called.
joe rogan
If you wanted to stop this at its tracks, you're not going to cure those guys.
unidentified
And how many people in each cell?
Oh my god.
If you've got to go, you've got to go.
joe rogan
But I guess.
If you want to really clean it up, it's not going to be pretty.
If you want to really clean up a very dangerous, gang-infested place, it's not going to be pretty.
chris williamson
You saw Batman.
That's what he did, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
Recodes like 100, 500 people.
unidentified
Yeah.
chris williamson
The insight around during a time of upheaval and uncertainty, looking for a more dominant leader and a more authoritarian leader, that has roots in evolution as well.
So this is something that Will Storr talks about, which is there's multiple roots to status.
There's fewer roots to leadership.
So there tends to be two, one being dominance and the other being prestige.
So dominance is the more authoritarian you will do this because there are negative outcomes if you don't do this and it's more overbearing.
Prestige is earning reputation through being positive some.
During times of war and strife, tribes would look for a more dominant leader because you have threat from the outside, so you're going to have someone that's going to be aggressive, they're going to lean in, they're going to try and fix this problem.
Of course that's going to be who you choose.
Problem is, if you have someone who is a dominant leader, For times of war, when it becomes a time of peace, that dominant leader isn't just going to step aside.
They're dominant.
They're going to hold on to this power.
They've usually managed to embed themselves.
They've got sycophants.
They've got a distribution network of people that can help to enforce their rule.
That's the problem that you have.
But this absolutely has its roots evolutionarily.
joe rogan
Also, what a bizarre way to run anything.
To have the guy who runs it be very vulnerable and only have a four-year term.
And then you can only do two of those four-year terms, and then people are constantly trying to figure out a way to manipulate the reality of the world to get their guy past you, including high-level gaslighting.
I mean, we've seen some wild gaslighting just the past couple of weeks talking about the economy.
I missed that.
chris williamson
What was that?
joe rogan
Gaslighting.
Well, one of them was Gavin Newsom talking about how great Biden was and how the Democrats record that this has been one of the greatest presidencies ever, full stop.
It's like hot gas in your face.
It's burning your lungs.
It's just gas lighting.
It's gas lighting.
You can't have a great economy if you're spending hundreds of billions of dollars financing wars overseas.
It's not even possible.
You're gonna have inflation.
How'd you get all that money?
Where'd you get another 95 billion that you passed in the middle of the night?
Like, where's all that going?
Who's paying it back?
chris williamson
Yeah, I mean...
unidentified
Woo!
joe rogan
That's a lot of money.
chris williamson
I often think about the guys that are staples of the government, not the people that are part of the president.
Say it.
joe rogan
Say it.
The deep state.
chris williamson
The deep state.
Yes, the people that are in charge.
We all know who we mean.
Yeah, Taylor Swift.
joe rogan
That is a hilarious fucking theory.
chris williamson
I love the conspiracy theories around that.
joe rogan
But did you see that there was actually like a conversation that was had?
What was the actual roots of it?
There's an actual video where they talk about it in like, God, it's like 2017 or something like that.
They talk about using a really popular person like Taylor Swift as like an asset.
chris williamson
The Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's relationship is a deep state psyop to be able to...
joe rogan
Wild.
chris williamson
I love that conspiracy.
joe rogan
It's a wild conspiracy.
But the problem with the conspiracy is they're saying this is why Taylor Swift is so big.
Like, no.
You got to see how 15-year-old...
Like, I have a 15-year-old daughter.
When they're around Taylor Swift songs, they all scream.
They go nuts.
They love it.
chris williamson
That's not a psyop.
joe rogan
She speaks to them.
It's not a psyop.
She's super talented, fucking driven as hell, writes her own songs.
Like, she speaks to them.
You know?
I don't know.
It's great.
The whole thing is, you know, it's wild.
It's wild to watch a new Michael Jackson, because that's kind of what it is.
chris williamson
That's a good point.
I mean, how many times...
I would love to know how many times the Super Bowl cut to her.
jamie vernon
I saw someone win a bet that was like over 15 or something like that.
chris williamson
There was an over-under on the number of cuts to Taylor Swift.
jamie vernon
Let's go!
joe rogan
One of them, she chugged a beer.
One of them, she chugged a beer and slammed it down.
jamie vernon
A guy won a bet because he bet on the streaker bet, and then he...
chris williamson
Was he the streaker?
jamie vernon
Yeah, that's what he said.
chris williamson
Oh my god, that's a...
joe rogan
Well, if they don't specify, that's a good move.
If they don't specify that you...
I mean, look, a deal's a deal.
chris williamson
That is a 200 IQ move.
The only other 200 IQ move that I've seen recently, there's a new type of sexual kink which is called solo poly.
So polyamorous but solo.
So fuckboys have rebranded themselves as solo poly.
joe rogan
Okay.
chris williamson
That is a 3000 IQ move.
Don't kink shame me.
I'm not sleeping around.
I'm solo poly.
joe rogan
Solo polyamorous means someone who has multiple intimate relationships with people but has an independent or single lifestyle.
They may not live with partners, share finances, or have a desire to reach traditional relationship milestones in which partners' lives become more intertwined.
Well, I think that seems to make sense with all the dating apps today and all the Instagram DMs and all the people just...
There's so many more options people have today.
It makes sense that more people would agree to polyamorous interactions.
They want to hedge their bets.
It's a weird time to be a young person.
Imagine you're just getting out of high school, just getting into college now, and you're entering into the romantic workforce.
unidentified
Good luck!
chris williamson
The meat grinder.
joe rogan
Good luck!
chris williamson
Good luck!
joe rogan
It's crazy out there.
chris williamson
It's crazy.
The percentage of people that say they're not looking for casual or long-term relationships is at an all-time high.
It's really, really scary.
joe rogan
As are country music sales.
There's like a swing in the other direction, too.
What do you mean?
More people are like, look, we've got to get to a simpler life.
There's more people who listen to country music now than I think ever before.
chris williamson
Right.
joe rogan
There's a reaction to that.
Like, I don't want to do this.
chris williamson
They're finding solitude from a confusing world in Luke Coombs songs.
joe rogan
Yeah.
The guy never sings about tweets.
You know?
chris williamson
Right.
Yes.
Fucking hell.
Well, I saw Jelly Roll was on the Super Bowl commercial.
That was pretty cool to see him.
And then Shane Gillis managed to pop half of his face when the camera panned in on the Bud Light.
Balcony or whatever it was called.
joe rogan
Yeah, Shane Gillis is now a spokesperson for Bud Light.
And we kind of manifested it on the podcast.
Because we were talking about it so many times, like, why wouldn't they use you?
They're fucking smart.
They use one of the funniest guys alive who's a legitimate Bud Light drinker.
He never stopped, even during the controversy.
He never stopped.
The first couple of shows he did afterwards, he wouldn't bring cans on stage.
He'd pour it into a glass because he didn't want anybody to hear it.
But he's still drinking Bud Light.
And then on the podcast, you just, like, you're going to have to drink Bud Light out and they'll be like, fuck yeah.
chris williamson
Dude, when you find your beer, you find your beer.
joe rogan
Well, with Shane, that's the case.
It was just a match made in heaven.
Like, it's smart.
It's the right time where they could take a chance on a wild dude like that.
chris williamson
What a turnaround, man.
I mean, I'd said this at the time.
I thought it was interesting that a lot of people whose common talking point was, don't judge someone just based on one misdeed that they do, based on one misspoken thing about some new social campaign or whatever it might be.
It didn't seem to extend the same kind of leeway to Bud Light.
Now, I don't know.
joe rogan
I don't know.
Weird, right?
chris williamson
I don't know how deep that ran.
There's someone that says it was a marketing intern.
There was another that says it went right to the top.
And this shows that Bud Light were the lib cucks that we've always known that they were.
I'm like, I don't know.
But if it wasn't infused into the company, what you're doing is taking a very isolated incident and using that as the canary in the coal mine to say, See?
They're part of the deep state.
They're taking over.
They're doing the whatever.
joe rogan
Well, sort of.
It was not one thing.
It was two things that combined together.
So the one thing was the Dylan Mulvaney picture on the beer can that drove people nuts.
But then there was the video of the woman who was in charge who was explaining that they had to rework the image of the brand and that it was a fratty, sort of like bro-heavy, I forget the words she used, but it was a juvenile.
She was trying to literally- To be a brand.
But it's literally, you're talking about your entire customer base.
So she's deciding that the customer base should now be trans.
Or the customer base should...
I mean, literally.
I mean, she's literally deciding she's going to make the customer base gay.
It's going to be friendly to the LBGT community.
It's going to be sponsoring floats on Pride Parade.
And that's what they did.
Under her guidance, she was like, I'm going to fix this.
We're going to make it just like I believe the world is, coming from universities that are hyper-liberal into a community where you're in a corporation that's also...
Subject to all those DEI restrictions and you think this is like the way of the world today and then you do that one thing and then they catch you on video saying all those things about the customers and then the coup de gras.
Kid Rock shoots your beer.
When Kid Rock shoots your beer, that's a wrap.
chris williamson
Fucking game over.
Until you get Shane Gillis.
joe rogan
Yeah, Shane Gillis.
And then you sponsor the UFC. Like, it'll turn back around now.
It can turn back around.
Shane Gillis on stage with Zach Bryan?
Oh, shit.
That's amazing.
When was this?
jamie vernon
At the Super Bowl.
They had a big party in Vegas.
chris williamson
Did he sing?
jamie vernon
Yeah, I mean, it's the revival.
joe rogan
Which song?
Is he singing All Night Revival?
jamie vernon
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, that's incredible.
unidentified
Put Johnny on the vinyl.
joe rogan
The whole crowd sings along to that.
I went to see Zach when he was out here and they did that.
He tried to get me to sing.
I'm like, fuck you.
I'm not going out there.
I don't want any attention.
chris williamson
Punch someone in the face.
joe rogan
I want to enjoy the show.
It was a fucking amazing show, man.
He's so talented.
chris williamson
Where was that?
joe rogan
That was out here.
It was like the Two Step Festival.
Where was that?
Georgetown?
Yeah, I think so.
Not far from here.
chris williamson
I learned from Schultz this interesting thing that I called Schultz's Razor, which is it's not coordination, it's cowardice.
From the outside, things look like a coordinated attack.
From the inside, it looks like people not trying to lose their jobs.
So I think a lot of the presumption is that there is some grand plan.
Maybe it's a conspiracy or maybe it's just coordination.
What it is from the inside is this guy has just bought a new house that his wife wanted and his kids go to private school and he needs to keep this job, man.
And the thing that is currently being pushed at the moment is, okay, we need to go along with this new campaign.
Sure, let's just do this thing.
That to me is a much more...
I hope that it's true.
The reason I hope it's true is it's a much more reassuring way for the world to be, a lot of these incidents.
Because what it shows is that people are just responding to incentives.
you can change the social structure of this stuff, you can quite easily change behavior.
If it's coordination as opposed to cowardice, that's much more difficult.
If everyone's actually bought into this and they're part of some deep state conspiracy and it's all psyoppy and all of this stuff, that you go, oh, this is completely out of my control.
And that's much more scary.
But I think on balance based on the stuff that I see, I think that Andrew's right.
I think that it is more likely to be cowardice than coordination.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think there's definitely both elements.
I think specifically with some issues, there's coordination online.
And one of the ways they do that is through bots.
They do that through social media campaigns that are like fake accounts or Hired accounts.
There's that too.
That does shift the narrative in a certain direction.
But there's a lot of people that are terrified that they're going to get fired and there's a lot of people that are terrified they're going to get labeled or ostracized or kicked out of the social community so much so they're willing to go along with really ridiculous stuff because they think like that's where the tide of progress is now.
This is where the world is.
And, you know, you're seeing both things happen.
You're seeing cowardice and you're also seeing...
Coordination.
It's kind of naive to think that if you were a world power that is doing everything you can to sort of like balance things in your favor, including...
Launching spy satellites, establishing a space force, ramping up your nuclear capabilities, developing these weapons that fucking shred people with precise impact.
For sure you're going to do whatever you can to change the way a society views things and to influence things in a particular direction.
He'd be a fool not to.
I mean, if that's what other countries are doing, you'd be a fool not to do that.
You'd be a fool not to do it internationally.
You'd be a fool not to do it locally.
It's kind of the job of the person that's the evil fuck that's running the world.
That's part of the gig.
Part of the gig is if you want to lie to people about the economy, you want to gaslight him about the record of the president and gaslight him about the immigration crisis and gaslight him about how much money we're spending on these overseas wars, you would gaslight him online too.
You wouldn't just have the fucking White House press secretary lie and make shit up.
You would have a bunch of people doing it all over the internet.
You'd have a bunch of articles written that are just ridiculous, and then people would retweet him.
Yeah, his age really is a superpower.
Yeah, man.
Seth MacFarlane retweeted that and said, this is a million brave, crazy, so brilliant that they did this.
What did he say?
chris williamson
Stunning and brave?
It wasn't stunning and brave, was it?
joe rogan
No, no, no.
He didn't say it like that.
He's a funny guy, but he said something like, this is written better than I could have written it, but exactly my sentiments.
I was like, this is so crazy.
You're talking about a guy who can't speak.
We all know you're doing this.
You're gaslighting.
And you're doing it because you think that this is the good side and the bad side is bad.
And you do whatever you can to change the way people view things.
And so you have these people that are doing it for virtue signaling.
They're doing it to signal to the tribe that they're a strong, dominant member of this tribe.
And even they're fighting for you.
Yeah, there's something that I've been rattling around in my brain for some time.
And Bill McBidden finally articulated here better than I ever could.
It's worth a read from start to finish.
Opinion.
Age matters, which is why Biden's age is his superpower.
Come on.
chris williamson
That actually sounds like a Family Guy sketch.
joe rogan
100%.
Well, definitely a South Park sketch.
It's crazy to say.
But if you're that guy and, you know, you're signaling to the tribe and you wanted everybody like a rational person.
Who is a left progressive person would say, we have to figure this out.
This is bad.
This is bad.
You can't just pretend it's good.
The whole other side sees how bad it is.
The world sees how bad it is.
People in quiet say how bad it is.
Most people in Hushland were alone having dinner.
You're like, what the fuck do we do?
Trump's going to win with this guy.
chris williamson
Yep.
I don't think no matter who wins in November, I don't think that either side is going to accept the outcome.
joe rogan
No way.
Not anymore.
chris williamson
I think we saw one, two elections ago, the final accepted.
And even that wasn't, right?
There's Russia collusion and all the rest of it.
joe rogan
And then how much are we going to see of organized violence?
How much are we going to see of organized protesters?
Organized protesters are a real thing.
Funded protesters are a real thing.
chris williamson
Did that stuff turn out to be real about the piles of bricks?
unidentified
Yes, yes.
chris williamson
The piles of bricks?
joe rogan
Yes, yes.
During the George Ford riots.
Yeah, during the George Floyd riots, and some of them they attributed to different things.
Some of them they said it was just a construction site that was nearby.
It was just coincidence.
And some of that I'm sure is true.
But the people that I talked to that said, no, stacks of bricks would just show up on their block.
Like, what?
chris williamson
The net result of all of this, I think, is people just feeling very uncertain about the future.
I don't think that anyone's really convinced of any one narrative at the moment, but everybody is just uncertain and anxious.
There's some really interesting surveys showing that the number of Americans that say, I do not fully feel in control of my life just continues There's very much an externalized sense of agency.
I don't happen to the world.
The world happens to me.
I'm skeptical about a lot of these things.
It's basically a soup for ambient anxiety.
You're just causing people to be uncertain about stuff.
And I don't know.
If you were trying to make people just feel more and more and more shitty, all that they're doing is spending time inside on their phones.
They're watching porn.
They don't have as many friends.
The number of men in 1990 that had one or more close friends was...
Sorry, that had zero close friends was 3%.
In 2020, it was 15%.
So it 5X'd from 1990 to 2020. So people are more isolated than ever before.
It doesn't surprise me that people feel despondent or nihilistic or fatalistic or uncertain.
It's not good.
joe rogan
And then they're being manipulated on top of that.
So you're already vulnerable.
You're already scared.
And when you have more of an isolation from community, you're more likely to get sucked into subgroups.
You're more likely to get sucked into echo chambers because finally you have some people that are connecting with you.
You don't have any connection.
It's like part of this little social dance you're doing.
chris williamson
You remember that we were talking about how you work out whether someone is telling the truth or not?
This interesting sort of set of questions that I think people can ask themselves, which is, when was the last time that this person I am friends with or whose content I consume on the internet, when was the last time that their opinion surprised me?
When was the last time that they gave a take?
And I was like, huh, I might not agree with it, but that's not what I would have predicted had I have known them.
Something occurs and their response is different.
When was the last time that they publicly admitted that they were wrong?
Also really good, difficult to fake signal of authenticity.
When was the last time that they brought someone on or had a conversation with something that they don't agree with or someone that they don't agree with for a reason other than just mocking them?
what it is that they're doing.
And then the fourth question is, do they bind their group together over the mutual hatred of an out-group or the mutual love of an in-group?
Is it because of othering or is it because of us-ing?
And I think othering is always, that's the scapegoating.
It's not about them.
They're coming for us.
It's this sort of anxiety-fueled thing.
But if you know one of someone's opinions and from it you can accurately predict everything else that they believe, they're not a serious thinker.
joe rogan
Right.
That is a hallmark of bad, independent political journalism.
It's like ripe with othering.
It's ripe with casting the blame on the other side.
It's ripe with not looking internally.
There's very little introspection thought.
Maybe I'm wrong.
It's always coming from a position of confidence that these other people are pieces of shit and we're going to lay out some out of context examples with no context into why they think they think this and what could steel man that and how can we look at it from their perspective and what's wrong about Everything is always highlighting what's wrong, highlighting the cruelty, gaslighting.
And they're doing it because they're a part of an ideology.
They're a part of a political group.
They're a part of this little gang.
And they want the love of the gang.
And there's people that fancy themselves as like hitmen for the gang.
They're going to go out there.
And there's a lot of that during the...
The Black Lives Matter riots in, was it Portland or wherever it was?
It was like literally like crazy violent people.
They're just wild Antifa dudes that got lumped into these serious conversations about what's ethical and what's not ethical in terms of like what should be done about police brutality and just psychos got involved in it with guns.
You know, there's this one guy who wound up getting killed.
He killed some guy, but he just killed someone who was on the other side.
Just decided, I'm going to go kill somebody.
And you can have that.
And if you just have that thing that happened in Seattle where they had that whole section of the city that was closed down.
Oh, Chaz?
chris williamson
Chaz Chop?
joe rogan
Police just gave it up.
Just gave it up.
You guys have this.
They took over the police station, took over buildings.
And they ran it for quite a while with all sorts of chaos going on.
chris williamson
I think they starved.
After a while they ran out of like sanitation and water and food and they tried to grow a vegetable patch.
joe rogan
And then they had the mayor on television saying that maybe it was a summer of love.
Like, what are you talking about?
But all these things just highlight how uncertain people genuinely feel today because we know those things took place just in really recent time.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
It was just a minor thing in terms of...
I mean, it was a major thing in terms of the world, the impact of coronavirus.
But it wasn't like...
Airborne Ebola, you know, it wasn't like something's gonna kill everybody like what what would break down that we broke down for a disease that killed a very small fraction of people and Those people almost all of them had four plus comorbidities almost all of them.
It's like in the high 90% Wasn't it?
It was like 94% or something like that of people that died from COVID had four plus comorbidities.
chris williamson
Jesus.
I didn't know that.
joe rogan
It's something nutty like that.
And it was mostly people that are obese, diabetic, unhealthy.
chris williamson
It was a big predisposition.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And imagine, everything went that fucking haywire for something like that.
chris williamson
It was wild, dude.
I mean, to have lived through that, it feels like a fever dream.
joe rogan
Fever dream.
chris williamson
To think about that, like...
That really happened.
It's going to be weird.
You know, we're going to be talking to our grandkids and they're going to be like, granddad.
joe rogan
CDC studies have over 75% of COVID-19 deaths in vaccinated people were amongst those with at least four comorbidities.
That's vaccinated people.
And this is from 2022. What I had read was people that got COVID before the vaccine.
And they were talking about, they were trying to figure out who's dying and why.
And one of them, a big one, was ventilated people.
Apparently, that was a big mistake that they made.
That was something that they learned when they went to, I think Elon Musk talked about this when he went to China.
Like, what was the biggest mistake that they made during the pandemic?
They put people on ventilators.
Apparently, that fucks you up.
And some high number of people, like 80% or something like that, people who got put on ventilators died, as opposed to most of the people that get it.
It's not that high.
Especially amongst healthy people and definitely not amongst children.
It's very low amongst children.
So when they did that, it was just like, what are you doing?
You're just putting people on ventilators?
And they didn't know.
They thought they had to do it.
And then, you know, and then the vaccine comes along.
And when you find out that 75% of the people who died from COVID... Have four comorbidities.
Well, that's the problem.
That's the problem.
Comorbidities mean you're dying.
That's the problem.
But think about how much society collapsed for that thing.
Not good.
Obviously, COVID is not good.
Obviously, a tragedy.
Definitely sympathetic to anybody who lost someone.
That was, in terms of what could happen to the world, a fairly small event in terms of what could happen, like a war, like a nuclear war with Russia.
chris williamson
Even the severity of a different pathogen.
joe rogan
Yes, severity of a different pathogen.
Solar flares take out the power grid.
So this feeling of anxiety, like, oh my god, this is not that stable.
That's a valid feeling.
It's a valid feeling.
Because it went so haywire just for this one thing that most people wind up getting.
chris williamson
I think it pulled the veil off of a lot of people's eyes that we are in control.
joe rogan
Right.
chris williamson
That we have mastered Mother Nature.
unidentified
That we figured it out.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
Yes.
You know, it's been so long since there's been a full-scale kinetic...
two countries that the people in charge are a part of.
It's been so long since that's happened.
And I think there's this sense, we've kind of outgrown that.
We're beyond that.
The 1940s, you know, that was the last dying gasps of this sort of brutal, tribal, primitive version of humanity.
We're beyond that.
We've ascended.
Look, we can control the weather in Dubai.
They seed the clouds.
We can communicate to each other instantly across the internet.
We can have video calls.
We've conquered many of the diseases that were going to stop us previously.
All of these things, look how sophisticated we are.
We have also overcome our nature.
No.
No, we haven't.
And look what happens.
Our grandkids will speak to us and go, like, Grandad, what was it like during 2020?
Tell us, tell us, what was it like?
And you have to say, fucking mental.
Absolutely fucking mental.
And I lived through it.
We all lived through it.
And it blows my mind.
And this is the thing with this ambient anxiety that people have.
I think it causes them not only to be uncertain outwardly toward the world, but it's uncertain inward as well.
So my friend did a mushroom trip and this question came to him, which I fucking love.
He said, does the world love you for who you are or for what you do?
Does the world love you for who you are or for what you do?
joe rogan
Isn't it a more profound question that you're assuming the world loves you?
Why are you assuming the world loves you?
chris williamson
Well, does the world hate you for who you are or for what you do?
joe rogan
But it's an interesting question.
It phrased it in a weird way.
It's almost like a trick question.
It's almost like if I ask you, does your mother know you're gay?
chris williamson
Dude, let me teach you about this.
So that's called a Milgram question.
There's a name for this.
I learned about it.
It's called a Milgram question after the Milgram experiments where they shocked people.
So a Milgram question is where any truthful response is so socially cancerous that it's impossible to give a real response.
It forces you to comply.
The ultimate Milgram question would be, when did you stop beating your wife?
Another one would be, what makes a woman attractive?
joe rogan
Oh.
chris williamson
Because the socially acceptable answer to that is one that is untruthful.
joe rogan
And the problem with this is— What is the socially acceptable answer to that?
chris williamson
It would be to do with—it's about grace and poise.
You know, it's anything that isn't big titties.
Like, if you say big titties, that's—you failed.
Right?
You can't say big titties.
You can't say a nice ass.
joe rogan
Well, you can't if you're single.
You can't if you are worried about acquiring a mate.
You can't if you are of a social dynamic that needs to have your job and you have a human resources center that's very stringent.
They're very strict about what they allow their people to...
It might affect your possibility of getting a promotion.
It might affect your standing amongst the women in the office.
You know, they don't like when you tell the truth, Chris.
You work with women, you can't say, I think women with big asses and big tits are hot as fuck.
You can't say that.
You can't say that, even though they know that it's true.
You can't be a good person.
You can't be a good person and even admit that.
That's what I'm attracted to.
Which is odd.
chris williamson
When punishment for what people say becomes widespread, Right.
unidentified
Right.
chris williamson
because I'm not going to change your opinion.
- Right.
- Do you really think that by telling me that I can't say a thing, that I'm not going to think the thing?
- Right. - I'm just not gonna say the thing and think the thing in private.
So limits on speech become limits on sincerity.
And this is the issue with the Milgram question.
It's the issue with this circular purity spiral of the firing squads online.
We were talking about it before, this sort of toxic compassion thing.
This prioritization of short-term emotional comfort of everybody, especially dispossessed groups, over everything.
unidentified
Truth.
chris williamson
Long-term flourishing.
Everything.
So a perfect example of this would be body weight has no bearing on health or lifespan outcomes.
Because you don't want to make people who are overweight feel uncomfortable.
Even if your message of you're healthy as you are, you're living your true self, even if that message causes those very people to actually die sooner, the short-term emotional comfort prioritization sweeps everything to one side.
It sweeps rationality.
It sweeps long-term outcomes, all of that stuff.
Another one would be there is no advantage or benefit to children growing up in a two-parent household.
joe rogan
Right.
chris williamson
Even if that causes teachers and parents to misunderstand why their kids that may come from broken homes behave in the way that they do, you don't want to do something or say something that disparages hardworking single mothers.
So instead, you do the toxic compassion thing, which is the prioritization of short-term emotional comfort over long-term flourishing.
And you see this everywhere.
This performative empathy, toxic compassion thing, the reason I think it's so prevalent online is it's perfectly geared to be mimetically driven.
All that's happening.
If you have some harsh truth tweet, some people are going to push it, and it may catch fire if it's a real truth.
But a lot of the people that don't want to hear that, they're going to say that you're being judgmental, that you're being misogyny.
misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, whatever it is.
But if you say something which is comforting, like we need to push back against these white men, like everyone can get behind that because it seems empathetic.
It's one of the problems that anyone who isn't a like hardcore card carrying liberal has on the internet at the moment, which is if you're not prepared to If you're going to tell people things that they don't want to hear, you're going to come across like a bit of a dick for quite a lot of the things that you talk about.
And that's not particularly good.
But yeah, this uncertainty, this like...
Do people love you for who you are or for what you do?
I think is a really interesting question to ask ourselves because it's that success and happiness thing again.
Are you trying to achieve happiness through success?
Are you trying to make the world love you, to force it by promising your value, by promising your validation, by saying, look, I must do this.
But the interesting thing, and this was like the second half of his mushroom trip, was he asked himself, Do I love me for who I am or for what I do?
So I'm asking the world to love me for who I am.
Because if the world loves me contingent on what I do, then it feels more fragile.
It feels like it can be taken away from me.
If I stopped doing what I do, my love would also cease.
joe rogan
Well, that's a real problem with guys that are in the closet.
Especially guys in the closet in show business.
chris williamson
How so?
joe rogan
Because they think the world loves them.
But the world loves them for a thing that they're not really.
They're hiding their true self.
And they're terrified the world will withdraw its love if they tell the truth.
chris williamson
If they change.
joe rogan
Yeah, if they come out.
If they come out of the closet and say, hey, I've been gay the whole time.
If you're an actor, it's a death sentence.
Because you cannot play straight male roles anymore.
When was the last time a guy came out of the closet because it was a leading man in a major blockbuster movie?
It's never happened.
It's not going to happen.
chris williamson
That's a really good point.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's the one area where homophobia is sort of guaranteed.
Leading men playing straight men in movies.
You do not want to see it.
Nobody wants to see it.
It doesn't happen.
chris williamson
That's broken my brain.
No, that's really interesting.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's the one guy, the Doogie Howser guy.
What's his name?
Neil Patrick Harris.
He played like in a sitcom, but it was like a cartoon version of a straight man.
Nobody believed it.
chris williamson
Kevin Spacey?
joe rogan
Kevin Spacey was in the closet.
He was in the closet for a long time.
I mean, he came out of the closet when he got accused, remember?
That's really when he came out of the closet.
Everybody kind of knew he was gay.
People that work with him certainly knew he was gay, but I think publicly it wasn't something that he acknowledged.
But it's a thing where...
And he's an older man, too.
It's a different sort of thing.
But if you're a young, handsome movie star, Daniel Craig-type character, people find out you're gay.
No one wants you making out with that girl anymore.
I don't buy it.
unidentified
God!
joe rogan
You know?
It's interesting.
It's interesting because it's that—so I would imagine that if you're one of those people that—and I know a couple of guys that are in the closet, and I've encouraged one of them is a friend of mine to try to come out.
Not a good friend.
He lives back in L.A. But he wanted to, and then he would not, and then he'd want to, and then he would not.
I go, well, if you ever do, you know, people still love you, man.
I swear to God.
It's all in your head.
Just don't.
It'll be a huge weight relieved off you when you realize how much people just love you.
They don't care.
No one really cares.
Especially in the comedy world.
God.
The comedy world is so open-minded.
It's one thing.
Are you funny?
Everything else is just nonsense.
It doesn't matter where you come from, what part of the world.
Are you good?
Are you funny?
chris williamson
If you make people laugh, then you win.
joe rogan
And can you hang?
Are you cool to hang out with?
Or are you just like a psycho that only wants to be the only one that's funny and you hate everybody else who's funny?
There's just a few of those guys out there, too.
chris williamson
Yeah, well, that's one of the interesting challenges, I think, that no one really ever gets to see about the gamesmanship that goes on behind the scenes.
Like, no one knows about how easy Alan Richson from the new Reacher movie or Guy Ritchie or someone else, like, no one knows about how easy they are to work with.
But, you know, there'll be guys that have been on your show or been on my show or whatever, and you're like, I actually quite enjoyed the episode, but I find them very difficult to deal with.
Like, they're really difficult to deal with outside of that, and...
They're at a disadvantage if they're not very personable.
If they're not really...
If they don't respond in a timely manner, whatever.
joe rogan
They don't understand the dynamics or imbalance between a famous person and a person trying to talk to the famous person.
chris williamson
Absolutely.
All of these things, right?
And you're like, well, that puts you at a disadvantage.
But that's not anything that's ever going to be front of house.
joe rogan
Right.
chris williamson
And, you know, you saw this with a number of the late night show hosts recently that kind of...
Tide came back in and who was swimming naked or swimming with a whip in their hand or being mean to the people that they worked with.
That kind of got shown.
And this, again, it's that toxic compassion thing.
And this comes full circle to what we were talking about.
You were saying a lot of people assume kind of the worst of intentions.
Here's a little morsel of something.
That's them being a really bad person.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris williamson
I think that that's because deep down, a lot of the people doing the performative empathy, toxic compassion thing know that they're projecting a lie.
They know that they aren't being truthful, that if someone did open the cupboard and have a look inside, that it's full of disgusting, scary lies and fakery and persona and all this stuff.
So they assume that theory of mind for everybody else as well.
joe rogan
Right.
chris williamson
They can't imagine a world in which this slight slip-up by somebody...
Couldn't be indicative of their entire personality because they themselves know that this super cutesy, sweetsy, toxic compassion, performative empathy front is just that.
That if you poked it hard enough, there would be a hole and you'd find out that it was hollow inside.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think...
I think obviously all of that is accentuated by social media.
And unfortunately, when I really extrapolate, when I really look forward, I think the way out of this is mind reading.
This is what I'm really concerned with.
I'm really concerned with the way out of this being some sort of new level of integration that we're all going to enjoy because of technology.
chris williamson
Neuralink type stuff?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
Yeah, and that that would be really a solution to all that ails us in terms of so it would it would be like snap map times a billion It would be crazy everyone would know everything about everybody's thoughts But then it would be that thing like hey, what do you got to hide?
chris williamson
You know there's gonna be a lot of dummies that are gonna go along with that But you're gonna find out how fucking insane a lot of people are too if you can actually look into their mind and see the wiring well, I bet I That the people who are out front the most empathetic, kind, loving, caring people, they are going to be...
They would be first on my list for...
Get inside that guy's mind.
Have a look at what he's doing.
Because I think that he's probably a piece of shit.
joe rogan
He might be.
chris williamson
Well, anyone that's working that hard to be like, look at how nice I am.
Look at how completely unfettered snow, completely untouched, all of this stuff...
joe rogan
It's always like the male feminists or some of the biggest creeps.
chris williamson
Sneaky fucker.
Fucking hell.
Have you been observing or have you been seeing this skew of young boys to the right and young girls to the left in terms of their political perspective?
Dude, I think that will be the story of 2024. I think that's the story of this year.
This huge breaking of young Gen Z males, teenage boys mostly, to the right and of girls really sharply to the left.
joe rogan
Yeah, you know what's going to change that?
An actual hot war.
Everybody will go right over, right back over.
You think?
Yeah, when the ladies need, they need men to take care of them and that the men that have joined their side are all cowards and they're going to cry.
Yeah.
Yeah, they'll go to the other side quick.
chris williamson
There's a lot of news stories at the moment about left-leaning girls struggling to find a guy that they're attracted to.
Like, you know, none of the guys I'm dating want to hold the door open for me and none of them really want to pay for dinner.
That's called a conservative.
That's called someone who's right-wing.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're looking for all your cake and you want to eat it too.
chris williamson
Yeah.
Because people date within their political sphere, typically, it's not just a political crisis, it's a mating crisis as well.
It's a behavior crisis.
One third of Democrat parents say that they would be afraid of their son or daughter dating a Republican.
joe rogan
Wow.
chris williamson
So you've got this assortative mating thing, but going forward into the political cycle this year, I think that you're going to see...
Not only is it a political war, but it's a gender war, too.
joe rogan
It's gonna be a lot of fun for us, buddy.
chris williamson
We're gonna have lots to talk about.
joe rogan
We're gonna have lots to talk about.
It's gonna be like, what a harvest we have coming up.
We're farmers.
We're growing pumpkins.
It's a banner year, buddy.
Look at those fucking pumpkins.
What a year.
Chris, you're an awesome guy to talk to.
I really appreciate you, man.
And I really enjoy your show.
Tell everybody where to watch it.
Your set's amazing.
The set you set up in LA is really cool, too.
chris williamson
Thank you.
We're working hard with this.
I really appreciate it.
You've been super kind, super supportive, so I very much appreciate that.
Modern Wisdom, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever else you listen.
joe rogan
It's a really good show.
I really, really enjoy it.
You're such a great conversation list, and so many of the topics are so well covered.
It's just a really solid show, man.
chris williamson
I really appreciate you.
joe rogan
My pleasure.
I appreciate you too.
Welcome to Texas, motherfucker.
unidentified
We did it!
joe rogan
I'm glad you got a Camaro.
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