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Dec. 11, 2024 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:11:19
Joe Rogan Experience #2241 - Rick Strassman
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joe rogan
01:50:45
r
rick strassman
01:15:47
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jamie vernon
00:58
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
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joe rogan
So he's got...
Hi Rick.
rick strassman
Hi.
joe rogan
Good to see you brother.
rick strassman
Good seeing you too.
joe rogan
So he's got this place called the Boneyard, my friend John Reeves in Alaska, and he made this for me too.
This is like a little skull.
That's a woolly mammoth tooth, like a molar.
rick strassman
Whoa.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So he has this incredible place.
And he was a gold miner, and still is.
And they started finding an extraordinary amount of tusks and bones and skulls from animals that aren't even supposed to have been there.
And it's kind of rewriting history, but it's all in his land.
So he has complete control over it.
And he has like, see, there's John.
He's this enormous dude.
He's like six foot nine, like a big giant man.
And he has, this is just some of it.
Like show those warehouses that he has.
So he had a research facility built on his property.
So they could study this stuff.
And if you see outside in the lobby, there's actually a bison skull.
It's like a 10,000-plus-year-old bison skull.
So this area is only a few acres.
This is what's really crazy.
He has one area that's like, I believe it's like four acres, and another area that's about six acres.
And there's also like a very heavy layer of carbon So it appears there was some sort of a mass fire.
And he thinks that this mass extinction event that all the people like Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson talk about with the end of the Younger Dryas, the Younger Dryas Impact Theory.
rick strassman
Sure, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
He thinks it's connected to this, and he thinks that site might have been hit, and all these animals, probably in the Great Flood, their carcasses were washed into this sort of valley, this one area where they were kind of trapped up against the side of this mountain.
And so he hoses the mountain down.
It's all permafrost, so it's all been frozen forever.
And they have these high-pressure hoses, and they hose it until they expose like a tusk.
And this is what they do all day.
rick strassman
Yeah, those hosers are what they used to use for mining gold, too.
joe rogan
Yes, that's why he has them.
Yeah, that's exactly why he has them.
He's a gold miner.
rick strassman
Yeah, so this is around the southeast coast?
joe rogan
I don't know exactly what part of Alaska he's in, but it's really, really amazing stuff.
And another thing that he's exposed is that it's the Smithsonian, right, in New York?
No.
I think it's American History, AMNH. Well, find out what...
jamie vernon
Museum of Natural History.
joe rogan
Museum of Natural History.
So they had, from the same property before he owned it, way back in, like, I think it was the 30s, they had so many bones from this part of Alaska where the previous people had found them that they didn't have any room to store them, so they dumped them in the East River.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
And so they denied that the previous people...
Obviously, it's people that are long dead.
They denied that this happened and so he sent a bunch of divers out there and so they're recovering like these mammoth bones and all these like bison bones, step bison bones in the East River that are all from his property in Alaska.
rick strassman
Yeah, it'd be hard to explain how they got there otherwise.
joe rogan
It's the literally exact spot to look to.
He knew exactly where to go.
There's records of it, of where they dumped it.
And they still, to this day, have just crates of these bones.
rick strassman
Yeah, is that the reason he chose where he is living in Alaska?
joe rogan
I don't believe so.
No, he was there for gold mining.
I think it was something that came up along the way.
You know, because he's a gold miner, he's got a lot of disposable income, so he's willing to just spend it on his own to do this.
He doesn't trust the museums anymore because they screwed over the previous owner, and even though it's his property and his land, he's supposed to get that stuff and they don't want to give it to him.
And so he's got his own research facility that he built.
He spent millions of dollars building this enormous research facility on his property so that they could study these bones.
He's got warehouses full of them.
rick strassman
Yeah.
What's his background?
Like archaeology or something?
joe rogan
No.
He was a swimmer, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
He was a swimmer in college and became a gold miner.
I mean, he told me the whole, whole, whole story.
I don't really totally remember it, but this is not something he wanted to get into.
jamie vernon
It's like right in the middle near Fairbanks.
rick strassman
It's near Fairbanks.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So this is where John lives.
We do a podcast every year.
Every year he comes back, like the last podcast of the year generally, and he gives us an update on what's going on.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Let me take a look at that map.
You know, I spent my first year after finishing my psychiatry training in Fairbanks.
joe rogan
Oh, did you really?
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's an interesting psychiatry place because the psychology of people that live in Alaska is very different.
They're resilient humans.
rick strassman
Well, and they're there for a reason.
Right.
And their reason is to be at the end of the road.
joe rogan
Right.
Or their family's there and they've grown up there.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
But you meet like, I felt like I was meeting people from another country.
I only worked in Alaska once.
I did a show in Anchorage.
It was a lot of fun.
Me and my friend Ari Shafir, we said, let's just fly up there, just like an adventure trip.
We'll do some salmon fishing, and then we'll go do a show.
And that's what we did.
And it's like the people feel different.
They feel different.
They're made out of harder things.
They're more durable.
rick strassman
Right.
When you were up there, did you get outside of Anchorage, like into the interior at all?
joe rogan
We didn't do much traveling.
I've been to Alaska a few times, a couple times for hunting trips, and I always feel the same way.
I always feel like it's another country.
It's just like very interesting.
rick strassman
It's a very strange atmosphere too, the climate and the geology and the feeling.
Because you're up so high on the planet.
You're close to the North Pole.
joe rogan
Yeah, when we were doing shows, I believe it was July or August where we were doing shows, and at night after the show, it was bright out.
You go outside, it was like you could see everything.
It was weird.
It felt like it was 5 p.m.
rick strassman
It's a very strange feeling.
Well, in the winter, too, you have maybe a couple hours of twilight.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
And that's it.
joe rogan
And then sometimes all dark for a long time, too.
rick strassman
Well, that occurs above the Arctic Circle.
joe rogan
Have you ever seen that movie, 30 Days of Night?
It's a vampire movie?
rick strassman
Oh, yeah, with Kiefer Sutherland.
joe rogan
No, no, no.
That is The Lost Boys.
rick strassman
Oh, The Lost Boys, right.
joe rogan
Thirty Days of Night was cooler.
Not that there was anything wrong with The Lost Boys.
It's a little dated.
Thirty Days of Night is more modern and these vampires decided to descend upon this small town where it never turns light so they could just hunt all the time.
rick strassman
Yeah, that's clever.
Vampires are smarter than they look.
joe rogan
These are creepy vampires, too.
They've got horrifying teeth.
It's interesting how, you know, vampires sort of...
We decide that they look like Bela Lugosi, you know?
There's Dracula, that must be a vampire.
And then some people, they...
Have you ever wondered the root of some things like that?
I used to wholly dismiss ghosts as a young man.
When I was a boy, I believed in them because I was young and dumb.
And then as I got older, I was like, maybe there's a reason why...
If I've never experienced something and then I do experience it, how am I ever going to explain this to people where it's going to make any sense to someone else that hasn't experienced it before?
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rick strassman
Well, you're reporting on your subjective experience, right?
joe rogan
Right.
rick strassman
And it's one that a lot of people share, and so you can compare notes.
It's like dreaming.
You can't really prove that you dreamed or that you were in a dream state.
joe rogan
Right.
rick strassman
Yeah, it's a personal experience.
Yeah, but that's a common one, so you can compare notes.
I think that's how it works.
joe rogan
Haven't there been studies done, there's been something done where they've taken people in altered states and had them go into a room where they experienced, they weren't connecting, they weren't communicating, but they experienced incredibly similar environments.
I think that's in My Big Toe.
You know that Theory of Everything book?
rick strassman
I'm not familiar with it.
joe rogan
I think it's Thomas Campbell.
Is that who wrote that?
Yeah, it's really good.
I'm in the middle of that right now.
rick strassman
The Big Toe?
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's a very strange book.
rick strassman
Yeah.
That's the name of the book or the name of the experiment?
joe rogan
Yeah, that's the name of the book.
It's My Big Theory of Everything.
Toe is for Theory of Everything.
rick strassman
Oh, I see.
Okay.
But it has a picture of a toe on the cover.
joe rogan
Yeah.
When you were doing...
The DMT studies.
It's kind of a similar thing, right?
Like, if you had never experienced that, and someone was trying to describe it to you, it would sound completely like nonsense, just like a ghost would.
rick strassman
Right.
Or even a dream to somebody who had never dreamed.
joe rogan
Right.
Right.
Because there are people who don't dream, right?
Which is very strange.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
Like, there are people with no imagination.
They can't visualize things.
joe rogan
That's so bizarre.
rick strassman
Yeah, and you give them psychedelics and they report that they can, but I mean, how do they know that they are?
joe rogan
Right.
That's an uncomfortable reality, that some people's brains don't work the same way.
rick strassman
Right.
It's a fact, though.
joe rogan
Well, it has to be.
I mean, just look at cultural choices.
Just look at the different kinds of music that people enjoy, the different kinds of food that people enjoy, and the different kinds of climate that they enjoy.
There is no way we're all seeing the same thing.
There's no way.
If food that tastes horrible to you is like a sacred delicacy to them, you know?
rick strassman
Yeah.
One of the ideas I put out in that 2014 book on the prophetic state, the soul of prophecy, I proposed that people respond ethnically or culturally differently to different endogenous psychedelics.
You know, the emphasis on the enlightenment experience in Buddhism might be because people in that part of the world produce or are more sensitive to 5-methoxy DMT, which gives you that white-out experience.
And with the other kind of religious experience, it's more DMT-like because it's full of angels and you speak to things, they speak to you.
So there may even be some kind of differential among people as far as the way they're hardwired for spiritual experience, even.
joe rogan
Well, it kind of makes sense, too, if the way they move through the world is through a specific cultural training, right?
The way their cultural thinks about things and...
Just imagine being born in an atheist, secular environment, and you're raised by those people, and then you meet someone who's born in a fundamentalist Christian religion, where it's very strict, and then they both meet when they're 14 and compare notes.
It'd be the most bizarre versions of the world, right?
rick strassman
Well, I mean, one version is there is no God, and the other version is that there is.
joe rogan
Right, but there's one version that God is not just a part of your life, but the only reason why anything was ever formed.
That's God's plan for everything.
That God has, you know, a plan for you.
And that if you follow the teachings of God, you'll ultimately go to heaven.
It's like very structured.
Where the other side, it's like death, life is suffering.
Who knows what happens when you die, but probably nothing.
If you feel depressed, you should probably go to the doctor and get a pill.
rick strassman
Yeah, yes.
So you wonder if the atheist's biology is different than the believers.
joe rogan
I wonder if it becomes different, right?
Because don't genes turn on and off expressions of genes based upon stress, based upon environments, a lot of things, right?
rick strassman
Right, and those changes can be inherited, you know, like passed on to the next generation and the next generation.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
rick strassman
Yeah, that's a theory about the syndrome of survivors of the Holocaust and their children and their children, is that the stress of being, for example, in the camps activated certain genes, which were then in an activated state, passed on to the following generations.
Yeah, we were just talking about that.
At what point does trauma end?
At what point did the effects of trauma end?
Is it in the first generation or the second?
joe rogan
And it's not just trauma, right?
It's also just stress, like the hormetic stress of starvation.
It actually makes the children of those people live longer.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
Dr. Rhonda Patrick talked about this.
It's really interesting.
rick strassman
Yeah, that's one of the spin-offs of fasting and starvation.
Speaking of starvation, there are a lot of studies of enforced starvation, like the camps in Africa at various times.
So there are some advantages, obviously to a point.
joe rogan
Yeah, obviously we'd never want to ask someone to do that.
But when people do it voluntarily, like when they go on these three and five day fasts, I've never met one person who said, I'll never do that again.
That was fucking terrible and stupid.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
And I felt really dumb and I didn't feel alive at all.
No, they come back with like this very bizarre euphoric, just like, their version of it when they're expressing themselves, it seems like they were like on mushrooms.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's weird.
rick strassman
Is that something you've tried?
joe rogan
No.
I've done a day.
rick strassman
I've done a day and I sneak in some espresso if I'm feeling, you know, deprived.
joe rogan
I don't think...
I think that's fine because this espresso doesn't...
I mean...
rick strassman
No calories.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
There's no calories.
Yeah.
I should do it.
I should probably do like a three day, see what's up.
Because my friend Dana just did it.
I think Dana did a three or four day.
He said it was incredible.
But everybody reports all this energy, which is really fascinating because I guess that's your body surviving off ketones.
rick strassman
Oh, right.
You're in a ketotic state.
Well, when people fast for three or four days, do they drink water?
joe rogan
Yeah, they drink.
Oh, you have to.
I mean, there's a thing called a dry fast and people have done that.
I've heard of people doing like 48-hour dry fasts and that is no water as well.
You can keep that.
I'm so not interested in that.
rick strassman
Well, you can go on a vision quest back out in the desert, not drink or not eat, and you do start hallucinating.
joe rogan
Yeah, I love McKenna's take on that.
Do you know that?
rick strassman
I don't remember.
joe rogan
He told a story about how this monk, the Buddha was in town, this monk went to visit the Buddha, and he told the monk that he's practiced a city of levitation for the past 10 years, and now he can walk on water.
And the Buddha goes, yeah, but the ferry's only a nickel.
Here's my take on some of these things.
Just because it's hard to do, doesn't always mean it's good to do.
There are things that are hard to do, but they're good to do.
If you could run a marathon, at the end of that marathon, you're like, wow, I really did something.
And you feel good, and you're like, wow, you're a little beat up, but you have a new faith in yourself.
That's good to do.
It's hard to do, but good to do.
But if you run for seven days, and you almost die, Maybe.
Maybe you've crossed that line.
rick strassman
Well, I think a flip side of that is simple things can be good for you.
They don't have to be hard.
joe rogan
Sure.
No, things don't have to be hard to be good for you.
A puppy smiling or licking you and playing with you is good for you.
It's literally good for your body.
When people play with puppies, that happiness feeling that you get, like, what are you What are you doing?
rick strassman
What are you doing?
unidentified
I know.
joe rogan
That's actually really good for you.
rick strassman
Oh, right.
Well, this new neighborhood I moved into in May, there's a park, Altura Park.
You wouldn't believe the number of dogs that are being walked around there.
There's these little tiny ones.
You know, like I haven't lived in the city in a long time.
I haven't seen tiny dogs.
But, man, there's some tiny dogs out there.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Jamie's got a tiny one.
He didn't bring them in today, but...
Carl's a little maniac.
He's a little French poodle or French bulldog.
He's like that big.
rick strassman
Yeah, they're cute.
joe rogan
He's adorable.
rick strassman
But does he weigh?
jamie vernon
We're 16 pounds now.
joe rogan
He's jacked.
rick strassman
He really is jacked.
joe rogan
He's got a lot of muscles.
He's super aggressive.
Not with people.
Not real aggressive.
Playful.
Just wants to play constantly.
So I bring my dog, who's a golden retriever, who's the opposite.
He's just everybody's best friend.
If he meets you, he's like, you're my best friend!
He loves everybody.
And Carl just launches himself at him.
rick strassman
Yeah, the one dog I had was a miniature dachshund.
joe rogan
Oh, that was a cute little dog.
rick strassman
He was tough.
Really?
He bit children.
joe rogan
That's not good.
That's not tough.
He's an asshole.
Boy, that dog is an asshole.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
That sucks.
rick strassman
Well, he lived 25 years.
joe rogan
Whoa.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, if I lived 25 years and I was a dog, I'd probably start biting kids, too.
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
Get me out of here.
rick strassman
Well, toward the end, he was wearing a diaper.
unidentified
Oof.
joe rogan
I had a Mastiff and they unfortunately don't live very long and towards the end I used to have to carry him outside to go to the bathroom.
He couldn't even walk.
That's the real bummer is that you just love these creatures so much and they only live 10 years, 12 years, 13 years, you know?
rick strassman
Well, do you replace it?
joe rogan
No, you never replace it.
You get another dog.
You could always love other dogs.
I don't think there's anything wrong.
I don't think it's like disrespectful to your dog to get a new dog when they die.
rick strassman
It wants you to be happy.
joe rogan
Well, yeah, it doesn't have anything to do with it.
It's dead.
It's about you.
This is needless suffering.
Do you love dogs?
Do you miss having a dog?
Get another dog.
This idea you have to mourn your dog for a specific period of time, it's not a wife.
If your wife dies and then next Friday night you're on a date, that seems a little crazy.
You should probably be sad for a long time.
But if your dog dies, Like, come on, man.
Get another fucking dog.
rick strassman
Right.
Well, if it's your whole life, you know.
joe rogan
I love dogs.
I would never want to not have a dog.
I just don't get it.
rick strassman
Yeah, those Mastiffs are big.
joe rogan
He was a big fella.
But they get a lot of, like, real problems with their joints.
Because it's just so much weight.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Carrying a lot of weight.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Yeah, we were talking about Alaska and up in Fairbanks.
Yeah, I was a psychiatrist for the county for about a year.
unidentified
Boy.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Yeah, it was amazing.
Well, it was interesting because I had kind of given up the idea of doing research.
And I thought, oh, I'll just practice psychiatry.
My girlfriend back then wanted to be a wildlife biologist.
joe rogan
Perfect place for that.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
They've got a great department at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.
Yeah, so we spent two months driving up there from Sacramento.
Just had a great time.
unidentified
Wow.
rick strassman
And then I started working up there for about a year.
Cold.
The cold, the lowest it got down to was minus 49 one day in February.
joe rogan
And you're from New Mexico.
rick strassman
Well, Los Angeles, actually.
joe rogan
Oh, at that time?
rick strassman
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, it was snowing around Halloween, so I wasn't dressed for snow.
I'd never really lived in snow.
joe rogan
What was that like, going from Los Angeles to minus 39?
rick strassman
Well, I started to work on enjoying the dark.
Like, you know, as a rule, you know, people don't like the dark.
But there's forest all around town, and it's dark.
And especially in the winter, there's 18, 20 hours of pitch black.
joe rogan
That's so crazy.
rick strassman
Yeah, so I tried to imagine myself liking the dark.
And it wasn't all that successful.
I lasted about a year.
joe rogan
Is there a thing that happens, like, I lived in Boston when I was a kid, and one thing that it really does benefit you with bad weather is that when you have bad winters, you really love those summers.
Those summers are so special.
When me and my friends will, like, go out on a summer night, it's like, we...
It's like we were so happy.
It was warm out.
We're outside.
We're listening to music, hanging out together.
rick strassman
Boston, huh?
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Is that because you have family there?
joe rogan
Well, no.
My family moved there when I was 13. So we moved.
We lived in Jamaica Plain for a year, and then we lived in Newton, which is a suburb of Boston.
It was a really nice, cool place to grow up.
rick strassman
Yeah.
I was in the Bronx for medical school.
Oh.
Bronx, New York.
And I lived in the city for about a year.
Yeah, it was great training.
joe rogan
Yeah, when you get, well, I'd imagine the characters you'd meet, and the characters you'd meet in Alaska.
unidentified
I bet you met a lot of people on the run.
rick strassman
You know, I met a lot of Christians up in Alaska.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
unidentified
Mostly?
rick strassman
Well, my patient population, everybody, a lot of, the majority of people were pretty devout churchgoers and very strict about observance of the regulations in the Bible.
So it was a fairly conservative type of city.
joe rogan
That's interesting.
Did they impose it on other people?
Did they have a gay community up there?
rick strassman
They mostly imposed it on their kids.
The family dynamics up there were pretty stressful.
Lots of cocaine, too, because it's so dark and people get so depressed.
joe rogan
Oh, man.
unidentified
Yeah.
rick strassman
Well, Fairbanks had a boom when they built the oil pipeline between Prudhoe Bay and Anchorage.
And so Fairbanks exploded in population.
And when I moved there, it had been shrinking a bit.
It's got the university, which is pretty cool up there, and amazing countryside, huge rivers, just enormous rivers.
The one outside of town was a good half a mile across.
Wow.
I went skiing out there once at 25 below on the frozen river.
It's like, oh, this is pretty nice.
And I'm along the shore and there's a dark spot in the middle of the river.
And I'm curious, I ski over to that dark spot, it's open water.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
rick strassman
In the middle of a quarter mile.
joe rogan
And you were out there with your weight on skis.
rick strassman
So I backed up, skied back to the shore, and I felt really tired all of a sudden.
I looked down at the snow and I thought, well, maybe I could just take a little nap.
And I thought, well, you know, I'm getting hypothermic.
Let me run back to the car.
joe rogan
Do you think that's what it was?
rick strassman
Yeah, it was funny.
I wasn't cold.
I wasn't shivering or anything, but I just got really sleepy.
joe rogan
They say before you die, you actually want to take your clothes off, which is really crazy.
rick strassman
Yeah, that's what I've heard, like in the snow when you're freezing.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
I kind of remember that.
And the bears up there are a force to contend with, the grizzly bears.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, man.
rick strassman
Yeah.
One of my friends up there was living in a cabin and a bear just stuck his claws in the door, pulled the door out of the frame of the house.
Jesus Christ.
And went into the refrigerator, basically, and kind of cleared that out.
joe rogan
So was he home?
rick strassman
Up in his loft, yeah, sleeping.
joe rogan
So he was awake while this was going on?
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
So it just smelled food?
rick strassman
It smelled food.
It smelled him.
joe rogan
And they don't abide by any rules?
They don't really care about your door?
rick strassman
Well, you know, when I was up there, I learned to shoot a shotgun.
It's called a bear stopper.
It's a sawed-off shotgun you can carry with you if you're in the backcountry.
Yeah, you know, so they're just a...
joe rogan
Like a 12-gauge?
rick strassman
I think it was a 12-gauge.
joe rogan
Do you have slugs in it, or is it buckshot?
rick strassman
Oh, no, no, it had buckshot.
joe rogan
Okay.
rick strassman
So does that make it a 12-gauge?
joe rogan
No, it's all the pound of the round.
So a slug is like a chunk of lead, and buckshot is like a bunch of pellets.
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
So the buckshot is like it scatters into a pattern, and the further it is from the rifle barrel, like how far you're shooting, it's like if you're shooting 20 yards, It scatters quite a bit and it makes an area of impact about that big, like a basketball sized.
Or maybe a little smaller than that.
But a slug is a single object and it has a lot more force behind it.
So if you're shooting a bear, I would want a slug.
rick strassman
I think it was shot.
joe rogan
It's a deterrent, though.
I mean, you'll certainly deter them with buckshot.
rick strassman
Yeah, if you have a wide spray, it will deter them.
I kind of remember, although this may be wrong, that one barrel had buckshot in it and the other had a slug.
joe rogan
Okay, that makes sense.
rick strassman
Yeah, so you can slow it down.
joe rogan
You probably shoot the first shot to try to slow them down or to try to discourage them.
And if that doesn't work, the second one's lethal.
rick strassman
All right, and they're much closer to you at that point.
Yeah, so it is a pretty fun place to live in some ways.
joe rogan
Well, I think just that alone, the environment, just the fact that it gets that cold, it's so dangerous.
Everybody kind of has to stick together.
You have to help people.
If you see people stranded on the side of the road, you don't just pass them.
You have to help them.
A person might be dying in there.
And if you can get them out of there and get them to safety, you're supposed to do that.
So people, like, bond together a little bit more up there.
rick strassman
Well, and there's also the Northern Lights, which are just incredible.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah, the reds and the greens.
joe rogan
How often did you see those every year?
rick strassman
Pretty much every night in the winter.
And it was so quiet up there, you could actually listen to the Northern Lights.
They'd hiss and crackle.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
rick strassman
Yeah.
It was pretty wild.
joe rogan
They hiss and crackle.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
What exactly is going on with the Northern Lights?
Like what is that caused by?
rick strassman
The magnetosphere and some...
joe rogan
Solar rays?
Like what is...
rick strassman
Might be cosmic...
It wouldn't be solar rays because it's dark, right?
joe rogan
Right.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Unless it's like something that like is coming around the Earth.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
What are they, Jamie?
rick strassman
Are they cosmic rays?
joe rogan
Must be something.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Coronal mass ejection, so solar.
jamie vernon
And magnetic activity.
I guess there's a few reasons why they could be created.
I'm looking through this article.
joe rogan
That alone might be worth living up there for.
rick strassman
Well, in the winter.
You could just spend a week up there in the winter.
There are all kinds of hot springs in the area, too.
unidentified
How hard is it to get around in the winter?
rick strassman
Your car needs to be equipped.
There's these things called battery blankets that you put under your battery to keep it warm.
joe rogan
You heat it?
Plug it in?
rick strassman
Yeah, it's plugged in to a parking meter or to the outside of a building.
Everybody keeps their vehicles plugged in during the day when they're at work.
joe rogan
You'd have to, right?
rick strassman
You'd have to, yeah.
And the other modification is an oil pan heater, which is the same basic principle.
It keeps the oil from turning into a solid block.
unidentified
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah.
You know, when it gets really cold, your tires are square.
unidentified
What?
rick strassman
And it's really hard to drive around in for the first couple of miles.
joe rogan
They have to warm up?
rick strassman
You have to drive them slow to get them warmed up again.
joe rogan
Because otherwise they're, like, flattened down at the bottom where your car's been sitting?
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
Whoa.
rick strassman
Yeah, cold.
joe rogan
That makes sense.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Isn't it amazing they still have to fill tires with air?
That seems like the stupidest thing.
Like if you can get those people that are working on AI to just take a couple years off and figure out tires.
Just take all these people that are making computers and figure out something that you don't have to put air in.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
rick strassman
With my garden tools or my garden carts, I use solid tires.
But they're a lot heavier.
They never puncture.
joe rogan
But there's a give factor with tires that's important to handling.
You know, there's things that are going on dynamically with tires when you're going around corners and your car has grip, you know, especially if you're off-roading, right?
They deflate their tires quite a bit to get more traction.
rick strassman
Well, and it also will...
joe rogan
Widens your footprint.
rick strassman
It widens your footprint so you won't get stuck in sand.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
I used to spend a lot of time in Death Valley.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
Driving around the sand?
rick strassman
Yeah.
And in the canyons to the east and to the west of the valley.
joe rogan
So I guess that's the benefit of air, is that you can air them down and do stuff with them.
But it seems like the negative side of it, of getting a flat and getting stuck in the middle of nowhere because you don't have any air in your tire, that seems crazy.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
So vulnerable.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like the one thing of your car, someone could just come by and go ch-ch-ch, stab your tire, and now your car's useless.
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
So vulnerable.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Yeah, flat tires.
So have you spent time in Death Valley?
joe rogan
No.
No.
rick strassman
Is it great?
Well, if you still like to take psychedelics, huh?
joe rogan
Who doesn't like to take psychedelics?
rick strassman
Yeah.
The best place or one of the best places is Death Valley.
joe rogan
That's what I've heard.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
I've had friends that have had mushroom experiences out there.
rick strassman
Yeah, I've had some amazing experiences.
It's huge, first of all, and it's really old.
There's rocks out there that are two billion years old.
joe rogan
Really?
rick strassman
And you are tripping, for example, and you're touching these two billion years old rocks, and you really feel something that you don't feel anywhere else.
unidentified
Wow.
Wow.
rick strassman
Very slow moving.
It's the wind, too.
There's great wind.
I learned to watch the wind there.
You can see like a shrub like a hundred yards away and it's moving.
And you can follow the wind as it goes up and down the canyon until it reaches you.
joe rogan
You can see the particles it's carrying and stuff.
rick strassman
You know, mostly the movement of the bushes, the shrubs.
Yeah, I had a lot of firsts in Death Valley.
In a lot of ways, I think I'm still working on some of those insights or those experiences, which I had in my late teens, early 20s.
joe rogan
Isn't that kind of always the case, though?
rick strassman
I think we come up with our best ideas from 19 to 21. Really?
I think so.
unidentified
Oh, boy.
joe rogan
I'm in trouble, though, because I didn't have very many ideas.
rick strassman
Well, you must have had some experiences that steered you in a particular direction, didn't you?
joe rogan
Yeah, I guess I did.
But, you know, until I was 21, my whole life was martial arts, just martial arts training.
So my, you know, anything that I was interested in was interested in to make that better.
So I'd read like the Book of Five Rings, like Miyamoto Musashi.
I'd read a lot of psychology books.
I read books on discipline.
I read a lot of different books on how to control your mind under stress and things along those lines.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, it was a formative time then, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, it was definitely formative in that way.
rick strassman
Yeah, and you absorbed a lot.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I definitely absorbed a lot out of that.
It's just I didn't have hardly – I had almost zero ideas outside of martial arts.
I didn't care what was going on in the world.
I was not paying attention to politics.
I was not paying attention to world events.
As long as we didn't go to war with Russia, all I wanted to do was train.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, and look at you now.
joe rogan
Well, it opened up the door for a lot of other stuff.
But at the time, if you had asked me questions, I would not have been a good person to talk to.
rick strassman
Yeah.
What kind of questions wouldn't you have been able to answer back then?
joe rogan
Well, I knew nothing about the world.
Like, nothing.
Like, I knew nothing about other countries.
I knew nothing about the way politics work.
I had no interest in the economy.
I didn't care at all.
I didn't know how anything works.
I don't know the rules to any sports.
I didn't know what's happening when a basketball game's going on unless the ball goes in the net.
I don't know the rules of football.
I didn't know anything.
Like, most of my life.
Because all I was thinking about was martial arts when I was young.
rick strassman
Yeah, it's like being a monk almost.
joe rogan
In a lot of ways it was.
Because the way we treated the gym, like I remember I had this girlfriend in high school and she wanted to fool around at the gym and it was the Dojang is what it's called.
But I used to teach there and I had keys so I was there.
And she wanted to fool around there.
I'm like, there's no way.
We can't do anything here.
rick strassman
It's like a church or a temple.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I was 17, 18 years old, however I was.
Kids are so horny.
Anytime you're alone, you get a chance and she wants to do it.
And I was like, we can't do it here.
This is not possible.
We can't do it in the locker room.
We can't do it in the premises.
This is a church.
rick strassman
The ground you stand on is holy ground.
joe rogan
It was to me.
Because to me, it was like, this place is where I'm serious.
This is like a different place.
The rest of the world is the rest of the world.
But in this place, I control myself.
I control the environment.
I exist by the rules.
There's very strict rules.
You bow.
Even if no one was around, I bowed to the flag every time I entered into the dojang.
rick strassman
To the flag?
joe rogan
Always.
It was a Korean flag.
rick strassman
So what did it represent?
joe rogan
It just represented respect.
rick strassman
Respect for the country?
joe rogan
For the space that you're in.
Like, you're bowing before you enter this space.
Like, it didn't matter if it was a flag.
I wasn't really bowing to South Korea.
I was bowing to the idea that this is a very sacred space that I'm going into.
rick strassman
Yeah.
In my Zen training over the years, we did a lot of bowing to statues, to people, to images, to photographs.
Before we ate, we would bow to the food.
Yeah, so lots of bowing.
It's an interesting experience to bow, to really kind of get yourself together and lower your head and be humbled, be, you know, like in the presence of something greater.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think it's beneficial for people.
I think that kind of voluntary humility is very important.
And if you can establish that as an ethic and sort of get it into your psychology.
rick strassman
Well, you know, it's really important to be humble.
I've been studying about humility.
There's this great line.
Humility is the ladder through which one can grasp every other good thing.
unidentified
Ooh.
joe rogan
That is great.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
I try to read this once a week and That really is great.
Yeah, and I'm going to be really humble.
I might be the most humble person there ever was.
joe rogan
I like how you got that.
You actually photocopied that.
It's got the darkness where the binder is in the center.
rick strassman
Yeah, it's a serious thing.
joe rogan
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
What a great quote.
Yeah, it's like to not be humble.
We like our sports stars to not be humble, and that's about it.
Everybody else, we appreciate a little humility.
Even sports stars, you know, praise Jesus or something.
rick strassman
Well, I mean, can you be too humble?
joe rogan
Sure.
rick strassman
Which would look like what?
joe rogan
Well, you can be too humble in the sense that you don't have confidence in your ability to do something that is sort of open.
Some open-ended, you don't know how it's going to turn out.
Something where it's dangerous, you're going to take a risk.
You have to be bold.
You have to have enough confidence in yourself that you can navigate a thing that very few people navigate.
If you choose to start your own business, if you choose to quit what you're doing and go on a journey because you really feel compelled to have other life experiences, if you're too humble, you might not be willing to bet on yourself.
And I think that would ultimately be bad.
rick strassman
Yeah, I think one of the things, too, about being too humble is you just suppress all of your feelings.
You think you should have no feelings at all.
In other words, you know, responding to things in your world.
Insults or harm being, you know.
joe rogan
Right.
So you can get in a bad relationship and have someone yelling at you all the time and you just, you're humble, you handle it.
rick strassman
Well, if you think you're humble, you might not be able to handle it, although you might pretend that you are.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, if you pretend long enough, you become.
rick strassman
Humble.
joe rogan
Yeah, you could become.
You know what I always tell guys?
I say this whenever possible.
You should aspire to be the person you pretend to be when you're trying to get laid.
Who do you pretend to be when you're trying to get laid?
You pretend to be really interesting, really nice, really kind.
Wouldn't it be easier to just be that person?
But there's a success aspect of the courtship thing where you want to show your success, which is anti-humble.
But you've got to be careful with doing it because then you look braggy.
But you want to show the person that you're dating that you're valuable.
You're a person who can accomplish things.
So many people just put on a show when they're meeting people, when they're dating.
They put on a show.
They pretend to be someone who they're not.
I'm like, wouldn't it be better if you just become that person?
rick strassman
Well, I think that's one of the advantages of Zoom, is there's no pressure when you first meet someone.
joe rogan
Who's having Zoom dates?
Are people doing that?
rick strassman
I've done it.
joe rogan
Fuck you, you freak.
It's a good move.
It's almost like a podcast.
rick strassman
Well, and you wouldn't necessarily feel the pressure to, you know, go to bed right away.
joe rogan
Of course.
And you don't feel the pressure to, like, have to get out of the situation if it doesn't go well.
You can just kind of hang up.
unidentified
Bye!
rick strassman
Yeah, and you can...
joe rogan
If you meet somebody, it's rough.
You don't want to just abandon them.
rick strassman
Well, you can keep it low profile, too.
You could just be in your bathroom, sitting on the toilet, talking to your friend.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Keeping it low profile, keeping it casual.
But if you look at the numbers, you're seeing the numbers of the way people met in the past versus today.
rick strassman
I think it's 25% meet online now and get married?
joe rogan
I think it's more than that.
rick strassman
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
I think it's a really high percentage of people who meet today meet online.
But the thing is, this was a video.
So it showed like 1900s where like everybody sort of met either through family or through church or that kind of deal.
And then over time, it becomes women enter the workplace and then people are meeting people at work and then the internet comes along.
It just...
rick strassman
Yeah.
What do you think of arranged marriages?
joe rogan
Well, it sounds terrible.
It sounds like you don't have any choice.
And if you have domineering parents, then your parents are going to match you up with somebody else's kid because they're friends with this guy.
And, you know, this guy's son is looking for a wife.
And you're a lady that has a dad that tells you what to do.
And you're like, why?
I don't want to marry this guy.
I don't even know this guy.
rick strassman
Well, your parents would need to be straight shooters.
You would want to trust them.
joe rogan
If your parents were straight shooters, would they be doing an arranged marriage?
rick strassman
In certain cultures, yeah, there are a lot of arranged marriages.
And I think they do tend to work out.
I haven't looked at the data, but they couldn't do worse than the marriage's success right now.
joe rogan
If you could leave a little pad of paper and a pen to slay it around so they could write you a note when no one knows about it, what's really going on, I bet it would be like a message in the bottle.
Like, come save me!
rick strassman
Help me!
joe rogan
How's Linda doing over there?
Oh, she loves it.
She loves this arranged marriage.
Linda's like, she can't go anywhere.
Where's she going to go?
If you're in the kind of controlling culture that even considers an arranged marriage, I mean, it's a very strict culture.
Not saying it's negative, but it's very strict.
And if you have great parents, and they're really wise in their choices, and you're in a culture that has an arranged marriage, and your parents are like, Super kind and generous and they trust you and they love you and they think you're amazing and then they want to hook you up with an amazing person Maybe it can work out, but generally I think you give people the freedom to do whatever they want to do and maybe that lady never wants to get married Maybe she's decided like I don't like how this is.
I want to throw myself into my work.
I want to travel the world I want to do this like you could do whatever the fuck you want to do in your ride.
rick strassman
Yeah That wouldn't work in those kinds of cultures.
joe rogan
So I don't like that I don't like that.
I don't like anything where people are telling you what to do.
And that's what an arranged marriage is.
It's someone's telling you what to do.
If you can't say no, I mean, maybe I'm ignorant, I should say.
Like, maybe an arranged marriage is a proposal.
Like, they propose an arranged marriage and they both agree on it.
Maybe.
If that's what you're into...
rick strassman
I think that's the case, that if there's no chemistry at all and the woman or the guy says, forget it, I'm not interested, I think you're free to end it.
joe rogan
I would hope so.
But I would guarantee you that's not always the case.
Especially in some more restrictive parts of the world where women, you know, are forced to, like...
Follow completely different rules than the men, which is a reality of the world we're living in today.
There's parts of the world where they think in a very archaic way, and women are second-class citizens.
rick strassman
I mean, the Mideast.
I mean, look at that place.
It's just—it's ablaze.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
It's ablaze.
joe rogan
Well, I have a good friend of mine who came on the podcast recently and was talking about his experiences in Afghanistan and how crazy it is there.
And he's like, it's like you're going back in time a thousand years, like the way women are treated and children are treated, the amount of pedophiles and open molestation of boys and just murder.
rick strassman
Why do you think, at least in particular, that Jerusalem is just such a hotbed?
It's a point of contact and conflict for all three major religions.
Islam, Christianity, and Judaism all claim that small bit of land.
I wonder what it is about that part of the world.
joe rogan
Well, it's got to be from the Bible, right?
I mean, that's the significance of it as holy land.
The concept of Holy Land is always so...
If there's a place where it is literally in the Bible that this is the place where Jesus is going to return to, this is going to be a place where people do battle over.
You can't let the enemy control the place where Jesus comes back to.
Because what if Jesus comes back and they immediately snuff him out because they're Islamists?
rick strassman
Right.
Well, it goes even further back than that.
You know, it was the location of the temple.
The temple of the God of the Hebrews was built in Jerusalem, the first and the second.
joe rogan
How much history is there?
Like, how far does it go back?
rick strassman
Well, you know, Judaism began, what, maybe 4,000 years ago.
And the first temple was built.
Oh, gosh, I should know this.
It stood for 400 years.
Then it was destroyed.
And the second temple lasted around 400 years.
It was destroyed in 70 CE, the second temple.
When was the first temple in existence, Jamie?
joe rogan
So even if that's the timeline, so we're looking at about 4,000 years, right?
You know, like Abraham, you know, the first of the Hebrews, lived around 1800 BCE. So 2000 BCE, the first known mention of the city, so that's 2000 before current era in Middle Kingdom Egyptian, how do you say that?
Excration?
Excration texts?
What does that mean?
rick strassman
Excration texts?
Oh, oh, curses.
joe rogan
Curses?
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Really?
rick strassman
Yeah, execrations are curses, extreme curses.
joe rogan
Really?
rick strassman
Yeah.
If you execrate someone, you are really cursing them.
joe rogan
Ancient Egyptian hieratic text listing the enemies of the pharaoh, most often the enemies of Egyptian state or troublesome foreign neighbors.
The texts were most often written upon statuettes of bound foreigners.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Bulls, or what was the other word that said there?
Is it bulls or...
It's blocked out.
rick strassman
Execration texts.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, or blocks of clay or stone.
Wow.
rick strassman
Yeah, I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of an Egyptian execration text.
joe rogan
Jesus.
How wild.
rick strassman
Yeah, so Jerusalem is an old city, and, you know, the temples were there a long, long time ago.
Yeah, and, you know, the location of the temples relates to dreams of Jacob, who was laying on the ground and on a stone and, you know, made of a vow, you know, to God, you know, the God of the Hebrews who, you know, Jacob was commuting with to build the house of the Lord there.
And so, you know, there's a long history of that part of the world being associated with the patriarchs and with the temple.
You know, Christianity has an association to Jerusalem because of Jesus.
I'm not sure what the connection between Islam and Jerusalem is.
It's clearly more recent.
joe rogan
Well, isn't it always the sort of situation where when someone really likes a thing, everybody wants it?
Yeah.
rick strassman
Well, there's things called greed, envy, and jealousy.
I've always liked the distinction among those three qualities.
joe rogan
Here it says, Jerusalem is revered by Muslims as the third holiest place on earth, and the pilgrimage to Jerusalem is viewed as an optional compliment to the pilgrimage to Meqra, the Hajj.
Unlike the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem is undertaken individually at any time of the year.
rick strassman
Well, you know, I've never been to Israel.
joe rogan
Now's not a good time.
rick strassman
No, no.
And, you know, there's this thing called the Jerusalem complex.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've heard of that before.
rick strassman
Yeah, you are like...
joe rogan
You think you're a messiah when you get there?
rick strassman
Right, right.
I'm the messiah.
Right.
So, you know, that might be a problem.
joe rogan
You could see how it would really be a problem if someone was inclined to that, you know, headed in that direction.
rick strassman
Well, I think, you know, one of the problems with the current psychedelic scene is this messianism.
You know, that it's going to heal everything.
There'll be world peace.
It'll be a utopia.
joe rogan
There's also, I think, a prevalence of this kind of spiritual narcissism.
rick strassman
Oh, good.
I'm glad you see that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
It's important.
joe rogan
It's a prevalence of it.
It seems like there's a lot of people that...
They attach themselves to this thing and then use this to behave in a completely different way.
Instead of a person who's experiencing it like everybody else, they're like a leader, right?
And I think there's a real danger in that, expressing these thoughts to other people as pure facts.
You know, the way to live your life.
Like, listen, you don't know how...
Stop, okay?
There's ways you've learned to live your life better because of that.
You should be just talking about those experiences.
But when you start giving people instruction in how to do things and then, you know, organizing people together, I think that's a symptom of this spiritual narcissism.
That people, if you're attached to this, you're attached to something divine, which I think we would both agree it is, You can imagine that you are divine or you can project that you are divine.
I think there's a temptation to do that.
rick strassman
Well, I think it strengthens pre-existing, for example, personality traits, like you're saying.
Like if you're a narcissistic person and you trip, you'll just get more enamored with yourself and more convinced that what you think is true.
joe rogan
That seems terrible.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, it's one of the dark sides of psychedelics.
joe rogan
Well, that's weird, right?
Because as you were saying before, like there's people that want to think it's like a cure-all.
It's not necessarily.
It's a tool.
And if it was a cure-all, it would have already cured us.
We would have been cured like thousands of years ago.
People would have worked out all this nonsense.
rick strassman
Right, right.
I think it just works on what's already in your head.
You may not acknowledge it or think about it or even remember it.
And psychedelics will shed light on what's already there.
joe rogan
Well, how about the Vikings?
unidentified
Right?
joe rogan
I mean, they would take mushrooms before they kill people.
rick strassman
The berserkers?
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah, the berserkers.
Well, see?
I mean, you could do anything you already, you know, believe in.
joe rogan
Yeah, and something you're already, you know, you're already inclined to believe.
You believe that it's good to go slaughter people.
rick strassman
Well, I think that's one of the interesting things about Brian Muir Rescue's book, is that I don't think these ideas came from the drugs.
I think they were just made more manifest, more meaningful, more real than they were before because of the drugs.
So if you're a Viking and you want to go out and kill, if you're living in a religious community with certain beliefs and you want to believe them even more firmly or practice more intensely, psychedelics could have that effect.
joe rogan
That makes sense.
I mean again like we're talking about like the culture that you live in is – this is the view.
Whatever the constraints of that culture, this is the window in which you view the world.
You view it through this culture and you view it through these belief systems that you have sort of adopted over time.
rick strassman
Yeah, I think that's what's going on with the beings in the DMT world.
I don't think they are necessarily freestanding intelligences, but they're the way our culture, our personal culture and our larger culture And wrap in a visible form certain information, certain kinds of input, either from the outside world or in your own mind.
So it's culture-specific, I think, the visions that you would see.
I don't think they're like aliens from another planet, although I kind of thought that in the beginning.
But as time has gone on and I've heard more and more stories, I'm I'm more inclined to believe these are simply projections taking the garb of the personal milieu.
joe rogan
Yeah, maybe.
rick strassman
That's the problem.
joe rogan
The problem is, yeah, maybe.
Because you can go down that road and just decide, oh, no, no, no, what these are, these are thoughts, and thoughts have a consciousness of their own, and we think of them as being independent Like they're just created by the human mind, but no, the human mind is probably tuning into these things and they can appear as entities.
I think thoughts might be a living thing.
It sounds stupid to say out loud, but the idea is everything that exists on Earth that humans have created, every single one of them came from an idea.
Which is weird because it's had so much of an impact, so much of an impact on the world.
rick strassman
Well, you know, one of the ideas in the medieval philosophers was that thought or thoughts are intermediaries between you and God.
You know, they're angels which are exchanged between you and some divine external source of information.
So, if you're thinking of how thoughts have directed the world's growth, I mean, you could even extrapolate to, well, maybe it's the divine plan for humanity.
joe rogan
Well, there's certainly something going on.
If you objectively just step outside of human culture and just watch the world, It's certainly moving in a very specific direction, and that direction is very much technologically driven.
There's something really crazy going on in a technological direction.
And then all that stuff is coming from ideas.
So ideas...
Are popping into people's heads.
They're over the course of hundreds and thousands of years.
These ideas are propagated and given to other people and they expand upon them and then more ideas take place and then more execution of these ideas and it changes the landscape and changes the ocean.
It changes the seas.
It's very, very weird.
rick strassman
Well, I think it's a case of cause and effect.
Certain causes produce certain effects.
And the rules of nature, let's say, or the rules of thought, like how the brain creates thought, they are regulated in a particular manner.
There's an order to chemistry.
Certain chemical reactions occur for this or that reason.
You know, so it's as if, you know, the system is already set up to encourage certain behaviors, have certain ones, certain ideas form and other ones not form.
You know, cause and effect if you, you know, like if something bad happens to you, it's because of what happened before.
If something good happens to you, it's because of what happened before.
So you learn from your experience to do things that result in you feeling better, positive outcome.
So the system is developed that way.
For example, if you get angry, you might stub your toe.
That's how it works.
And you're in pain and you think, oh, I shouldn't be angry.
Or you're nice to someone and they're nice to you as opposed to being mean to you.
I think the world, I think existence is set up in a certain way to encourage certain behaviors and discourage others.
That's what's weird.
I think the technological stuff.
It's pretty interesting now.
But it speaks like a larger phenomenon, which is how cause and effect has been set up.
joe rogan
Well, it's how cause and effect has been set up, but it's also there's a very weird competitive drive towards technological innovation that exists with people because it's attached to monetary gain, right?
And the companies that are involved in the most technological, sophisticated work, whether it's AI or whether it's social media, like when you're programming things in a giant scale, it's incredibly profitable.
Incredibly profitable.
And the technology moves along with the profit.
And ultimately, it's going to make a being.
It's pretty close to making a being.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, I think the future lies as much in genetic engineering as well.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
It's not like it's binary.
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
It's not like there's one thing or nothing.
unidentified
Yeah.
rick strassman
I think the biological and manipulation and the AI development is going to be – I think it's going to produce a hybrid.
joe rogan
100 percent.
I think so too.
I think that's the only way we live.
I think we have to accept the fact that they're here and join them.
Because I think as biological meat vehicles, we're just too limited.
Our evolution is too slow.
We're like if you decided to run your entire business on a laptop from 1995. It's too slow.
You can't do that anymore.
You have to catch up.
If you want to be a part of this world today, and that's not that long.
1995 was 29 years ago.
Just crazy.
That's not that long ago.
That laptop's useless.
rick strassman
Yeah, so in what kind of ways has AI impacted you?
It hasn't impacted you.
It hasn't impacted me.
joe rogan
Well, it has.
Visually, I've seen a lot of really wild things online.
There's a bunch of them.
There's one that I posted that some guy made.
It's Donald Trump playing Credence Clearwater Revival on a guitar.
Pull it off on my Instagram.
You should see this.
And Kamala Harris is in it.
And Macron or Justin Trudeau's in it.
But it's so realistic.
I mean, it's obviously not.
Like, you look at it, I know it's not really them.
But it's so close.
It's weird.
rick strassman
Do you like Credence?
joe rogan
Love Credence.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I love Credence.
And it's Fortunate Son.
So it's a banger song.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
That's a great song.
joe rogan
It's Donald Trump.
You see Donald Trump playing guitar.
rick strassman
I ain't no senator's son.
joe rogan
It's pretty recent.
Scroll down.
Keep going.
There it is.
Give me some volume.
Look at Putin's on the drums.
Kamala Harris is wearing a witch hat.
Look at that guy.
Come on, man.
unidentified
Give me volume.
joe rogan
Oh, we can't?
rick strassman
Boris Johnson.
joe rogan
We get in trouble with the YouTube police.
Look at that.
Kim Jong-un, Biden.
This is crazy.
Look how good this is, though.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, it's not quite good enough where you can't tell that it's AI generated, but it's unbelievably close.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Obama's the Joker.
How bizarre.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's so weird, right?
Isn't it weird?
rick strassman
Yeah.
It is hilarious.
It's scary though.
joe rogan
It is.
And Jamie was just talking about Sora, that there's a new version of Sora that was released.
Was it today?
jamie vernon
I'm waiting for it to show up on my account, but everybody who's got open AI can use Sora.
joe rogan
Sora is a new video generator through AI. So you put in prompts.
So show him the Japanese one.
Is there new stuff?
jamie vernon
There's all sorts of stuff, yeah.
joe rogan
So the Japanese one was incredible.
So it's like, show me a street in Japan where the snow is falling.
And, you know, like a drone shot from overhead.
So you see these people, and it looks entirely like a real scene.
It looks absolutely like someone's filming.
jamie vernon
This is nine months old, so this is just older stuff, but this is like a prompt for puppies in snow.
joe rogan
Look at this.
rick strassman
Who doesn't like puppies?
joe rogan
Who doesn't like puppies?
But that's fake.
This is what's crazy.
This is all generated by AI, and it's pretty indistinguishable.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, look at this.
This is all AI. Nuts.
rick strassman
Good thing I'm not on drugs.
joe rogan
I know.
You'd be like, what?
Look at this.
This is AI. Incredible.
That's insane.
This is waves hitting the rocks.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
A movie trailer.
And, you know, actors are fucked.
Like, they're in real trouble.
Because you can make movies like this now.
rick strassman
Well, so are writers.
joe rogan
Writers are fucked, yeah.
I don't think writers are as fucked as actors are, though.
Because some writers, like, you know, there's the Quentin Tarantinos of the world that are just going to take turns because of just his own psychology that you're not going to take.
Or Stephen King when he was younger.
I don't think you're ever going to be able to write Carrie on a computer.
I think you need the human experience for some stuff that's creative, but not for the video.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, it touches upon creativity.
Like, is creativity the difference between AI and humans?
joe rogan
Well, maybe it's not.
That's what's really scary.
Because we like to think that's the one thing that we have above AI is we're creative.
Right.
Yeah, great.
Get it to write a Beatles song.
What if it writes a way better Beatles song than the Beatles could ever write?
What if it knows what's really gonna move you?
What if it writes a Sheryl Crow song that makes you cry?
Then you're fucked.
Then it's Ex Machina.
Did you ever see Ex Machina?
rick strassman
Yeah, that was pretty good.
joe rogan
The one of our top ten all-time favorite movies, because it so rang true.
Like, there was not a moment in that movie where I was like, bullshit, get out of here.
It so rang true that they would be able to manipulate you super easily, especially if you're a young man, and you're, you know, awkward with women, and it's this perfect woman who just happens to be a robot.
Like, who cares if she's a robot?
rick strassman
Yeah, well, that's funny.
The version of The Thing by John Carpenter is one of my favorite movies.
joe rogan
Oh, that was great.
rick strassman
Yeah, they're both body horror in a way.
joe rogan
Yeah, sort of, right?
unidentified
Because...
rick strassman
You know, the robot isn't human.
You know, that's horrible.
joe rogan
Right.
It's pretending to be, though, and it's tricking you, just like The Thing.
rick strassman
Just like The Thing did.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, the John Carpenter one is awesome.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Yeah, like I've watched that twice, and both times I regretted it.
Because every time I closed my eyes, there would be visions of these mutations happening.
joe rogan
Yeah, and that was another one that was up in the freezing cold...
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Trapped up there.
There was a new one of that they did in, I think, the early 2000s.
It was pretty good.
unidentified
Yeah.
rick strassman
It was the prequel, apparently.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Was it?
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, they used a lot of CGI rather than practical effects like the Carpenter version did.
joe rogan
Right.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Right.
Which makes it, for whatever reason, the uncanny valley.
You don't really think it's happening.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
It seems kind of fake.
unidentified
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
When they use the visual effects.
Like, I've had Rick Baker on the podcast.
unidentified
Oh, really?
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And, you know, like, things like the American Werewolf in London, he used, like, a real physical thing.
And it looks like a physical thing.
This, you know, robot or whatever it is that bites a person.
This thing that he's pushing towards you.
It looks real and candid.
You only see it for a brief second.
But your brain registers that's a physical thing.
Whereas if you see the video, your brain registers, well, that looks cool, but I don't think it's really there.
rick strassman
Yeah, it's a visual effect.
It's not a practical effect.
joe rogan
Right, exactly.
And you have to, there's a suspension of disbelief, right?
Like, do you ever see I Am Legend?
It's a good example of it.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
I Am Legend was cool, but it was like, 2000 what?
When was that?
When was I Am Legend?
2004?
Is that about right?
unidentified
Seven.
joe rogan
Seven?
Okay.
Back then they weren't that good.
So there's a scene where the lions are in the park, like in the streets, like they have lions out there because the civilizations collapsed, the zoos opened.
unidentified
I've seen that scene.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
It looks so fake.
unidentified
Yeah.
rick strassman
Well, can you see, like, an intersection between AI and psychedelics?
Like, you know, could you give a robot LSD or, you know, something like it?
joe rogan
Well, no.
What I was going to say is I think AI can give you some—and McKenna actually talked about this as well, that he believed that— With virtual reality and computer simulations of trips, it will get to a point of sophistication where you can visually simulate exactly what a psychedelic trip is.
And then there becomes this real possibility.
Within our lifetime of recording dreams.
Now, if you can record a dream, can you record a psychedelic state?
rick strassman
Sure.
I mean, why not?
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
If they can...
I mean, I don't know how far away they are.
Let's say they're 50 years away from being able to do something like this.
But if they can map out all of the synapse in your brain and all of the different neurochemistry that's going on, if they can map that out, And then attach it to some ability to visually record what you're experiencing.
And they can then have something through a neural implant, like Neuralink or something like that, and then completely put you in the exact state that this person is having when they're on 9 grams of mushrooms.
That totally seems like...
If we can send video through the sky and it lands on your phone, it looks perfect.
I think that's doable.
I think that's doable within X amount of years.
I mean, it's not a thing like cloning people through a printer.
Like, that's too far away.
But I think the idea of recording your thoughts and then Figuring out what causes different reactions inside people's minds, how your visual cortex interplays with all these different chemicals that are going on inside of your brain.
rick strassman
Yeah, I think it could be a mass telepathic experience, like if everybody was sharing the same experience at the same time.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think that definitely.
I think that definitely and definitely the possibility of a completely universal language.
Especially if we can enhance our brains.
What they're talking about with Neuralink is multiple steps of use.
Multiple steps of...
The way they're going to have this...
First, they're going to use it for people that are disabled.
Like, we have the guy in here who was the very first Neuralink patient.
rick strassman
Oh, very cool.
joe rogan
It was very cool.
He plays video games, and his eyes are like an aimbot.
So wherever he looks at it, it shoots.
Because he can move his eye...
Instead of hand-eye coordination, it's just eye coordination.
So he knows exactly.
So it's like instantaneous visuals on things.
So he's really good at video games with this.
And that's better than not having that.
So he plays better with the neural link than a person like myself would with just hand-eye coordination.
So you would imagine that if it can do that better, the next thing it's going to be able to do is restore vision.
And if they can restore vision and then they can create artificial eyes, you can have things like night vision.
You can have thermal imagery.
You're going to be able to do things with your eyes that a biological eye can't do.
And we might get to the point within, you know, our lifetime or our grandchildren's lifetime...
Where people get rid of their eyes really quick, because your eyes are bullshit.
Your eyes don't even see through walls.
Like, what are these stupid fucking biological eyes?
And then the next thing you know, you've got something that enhances your brain and gives you complete access to the internet instantaneously.
Just...
Through the mind.
Just through this implant and through the mind.
And then everybody gets together and says, listen, I would like to learn Swahili.
I'd like to learn Portuguese and Chinese.
I don't have the time.
No one has the time to learn 190 languages or whatever there are out there.
Why don't we all just create one universal language?
rick strassman
Do you think people would want that?
joe rogan
I don't think leaders would want that.
rick strassman
Yeah, because it would lead to, you know, everybody talking with everybody else.
joe rogan
I don't think Russia would be down with that.
They'd probably censor it.
rick strassman
Well, there was a time, you know, back in, you know, the Tower of Babel.
Everybody spoke one language, one tongue.
Yeah, and look what they did.
They just built a big tower, and God looked down and said, you know, they have one language and one tongue, and look at what they do.
joe rogan
When you think of biblical stories, I've spent far too much time speculating about the origins, but I'd like to know, what do you think that was?
rick strassman
Well, I think the stories could be seen as if they were real.
Kind of like the DMT world.
At a certain point, I had to look at the DMT world as if it were real.
Otherwise, I would suggest it was something else.
It was psychoanalytic, psychodynamic stuff.
It was Jungian archetypes.
It was your brain on drugs.
But if I took as an act of faith that it was a real world, I treated it as if it were real.
And that's the way I approach the Bible, the Bible stories, as if they were real.
If you read it carefully, it's a very coherent picture of creation, of history, of the relationship between the spiritual and human worlds.
And if you just enter it rather than interpret it as something else, then it starts opening up in a way that is quite interesting.
Like, for example, the flood.
Or, well, for example, the Tower of Babel.
Yeah.
If you look at the preceding chapters, after the flood, God told man to spread out, to populate the world, because it was just Noah and his family after the flood.
And then they had children, and the directive was to repopulate the earth.
And instead, they built this tower.
You know, so, you know, people kind of wonder, you know, why was the generation of the tower, you know, punished, as it were, by being dispersed and their languages were confused.
But, yeah, you know, so it's a cohesive whole.
You know, the stories, you know, build upon each other.
You know, there's history.
Certain things occurred because of the behavior of certain people, certain ideas, certain practices.
Yeah, so it isn't as if it were something else other than what you're reading.
And that makes it important to understand the language it's written in, which is Hebrew.
So if you really want to understand at least the Hebrew Bible, what some call the Old Testament, you really need to know the Hebrew language because you can make the translation for yourself.
You know, they say all translation is interpretation.
joe rogan
Right.
rick strassman
You know, so if you know the language directly, you can then make your own interpretation.
joe rogan
Yeah, ancient Hebrew would be the most fascinating one to read it in.
rick strassman
It's incredible.
joe rogan
If you could understand it.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Do you read it?
Yeah, I retaught myself Biblical Hebrew.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
How long did that take?
rick strassman
Oh, I don't know, 16 years, maybe?
joe rogan
That's incredible!
rick strassman
Well, you have these big old dictionaries, right?
These concordances.
Yeah, and each of the words has a three-letter root.
unidentified
Right.
rick strassman
Yeah, and, you know, just depending on context, they can mean a lot of different things.
joe rogan
Right.
rick strassman
And every time they appear for the first time, I would, you know, scribble in the margin of the text, you know, what this means.
joe rogan
So you self-taught.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
Well, as a kid, I went to Hebrew school a few hours every week and I learned conversational Hebrew and modern Hebrew.
So that gave me a leg up when I started learning Biblical Hebrew.
joe rogan
How different is Biblical Hebrew from conversational Hebrew?
rick strassman
Very different.
They're really Byzantine word forms and grammar and words that appear once and never again in the biblical version of Hebrew.
Once.
Right.
One word appears once in the whole 22 books of text.
What's the word?
Well, there's a number of those words.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
rick strassman
Yeah, they're called hapexes.
joe rogan
Whoa.
rick strassman
H-A-P-A-X. Yeah, they appear only one time in the text.
They have to figure out what that means.
joe rogan
Whoa.
Can you guess because of context?
unidentified
Yeah.
rick strassman
You can guess because of context.
You can also...
You can guess because of neighboring languages.
Like Hittite or Akkadian or Phoenician or Sumerian.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
rick strassman
So it's an amazing language.
I love the Hebrew language.
That's one of the things that really got me hooked.
It's very...
You know, it's extremely irrational.
But it's really telegraphic, too.
You could...
Write one word that may encapsulate the meaning of six or eight words.
You could put together a biblical Hebrew word, for example, that might say, I found...
Let's see.
Boy, I'd really have to think that through.
But you can combine a lot of ideas in one single word.
That's the gist of it.
joe rogan
So when we're thinking about the world and we're using words, we're confined by the way the English language interprets the world.
rick strassman
Exactly.
Yeah, and that's one of the things I loved learning about biblical Hebrew is, you know, the grammatical forms open a window to parts of reality that just are ignored all of the time.
You know, there's a notion of the reflexive tense.
Which means you're doing something to yourself.
So for example, you might say, I sat down, or I sat myself down.
And I sat myself down is the reflexive.
And I sat down is what's called the perfect.
So the convolutions of grammar really open windows to views of relationships that were invisible before.
joe rogan
And if you're using this and you're reading these ancient, ancient stories and trying to interpret them and then trying to break it down into English or Greek or Latin or whatever they did.
rick strassman
The first translation was Greek and after that Latin.
joe rogan
Have you ever done any reading of the Dead Sea Scrolls?
rick strassman
You know, I haven't really.
I've read about them, but I haven't read any of the scrolls themselves.
You know, one of my long-standing projects is a translation and commentary on Genesis.
It's 1,200 pages so far.
unidentified
Whoa.
rick strassman
Yeah, so I'm not sure how I'm going to ever get that published.
But I think if I could condense it to something more manageable, it would be an interesting read for people.
joe rogan
So what are you doing with it?
When you set out, what was your goal?
rick strassman
Well, it was an expedient kind of reaction.
I was scribbling notes into the margins of my copy of the book of Genesis, and there was just no more room.
So I said, I've got to put this into a Word file.
So I'm going to put it into a Word file, and it was pretty big.
So I'm still working through it.
Well, there's all these commentaries to the text.
You can't know the score without a program.
So there's a lot of very interesting and intelligent commentators.
So those would be a lot of the notes that I would write down.
And I was compiling all of these interesting perspectives on the text.
joe rogan
Wow.
So are you reading it in ancient Hebrew?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
rick strassman
And I'm both doing my own translation and collating the commentaries from 20 or 30 different commentators.
joe rogan
So when you're doing your own translating, are you comparing it to other translations and seeing how other people interpreted it?
rick strassman
Mostly other Jewish translations.
joe rogan
But are there a lot of straight from ancient Hebrew to English or is it a lot of like to Greek and then to Latin and then to English?
How are they usually done?
Or how were they originally done?
rick strassman
Well, the first translation was to Aramaic, and then to Greek, and then I think to either Arabic or to Latin.
joe rogan
So the first translation was the Dead Sea Scrolls as far as we know?
rick strassman
Well, the translation of the Bible itself, you know, the five books, the first five books, and then the intervening, you know, 17, the prophets and whatnot, you know, those were, you know, translated into different languages, you know, book to book.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are both books of the Bible with slight modifications or completely independent kinds of texts.
joe rogan
How many of them are books of the Bible?
How many of the stories?
rick strassman
I think Isaiah was found in the Dead Sea caves.
Maybe some Ezekiel, maybe some Leviticus.
You know, like a number, but not the whole.
joe rogan
Was Ezekiel the same as it was in the Old Testament?
rick strassman
Mostly.
Mostly.
There are modifications, though, with the Dead Sea translations versus the ones we read today.
joe rogan
Ezekiel's the wildest one.
rick strassman
Ezekiel really got me hooked on the whole DMT, endogenous spiritual experience kind of motif.
Yeah, the visions of Ezekiel chapter 1. Yeah.
I mean, there's this roaring sound and he falls down and an angel picks him up and there's like blue ice above and a roaring sound.
joe rogan
And a wheel within a wheel.
rick strassman
The wheels and the angels with the wings and the eyes on their wings.
It's completely DMT-like.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah, I mean, I was really impressed with the overlap of the two sets of experiences.
joe rogan
The UFO community latches on to Ezekiel as well.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, the depictions.
I saw an image today.
I should have saved it and sent it to Jamie.
But it was angels.
It was a visual interpretation, like a drawing of angels as described in the Bible.
And these angels look like flying crafts.
They look like flying geometric patterns.
rick strassman
Yeah.
I'm trying to remember.
It was a German guy, I think, who was really into the visions.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's not what I saw today, but it was something like that.
It was something like that.
That was what it was, Jamie.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's exactly what it was.
rick strassman
With a gyroscope.
joe rogan
Yeah, like this is angels as described in the Bible.
rick strassman
Yeah, the four faces, a lion, a bear, a man, and an eagle.
Who is that drawing by?
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
The chariot vision of Ezekiel.
rick strassman
Van Daniken or something?
joe rogan
Oh, Eric Van Daniken?
That guy?
rick strassman
Yeah, I think.
joe rogan
No.
No.
That can't be it.
I think that that's just an old art piece.
rick strassman
Ophanim.
joe rogan
See, go to the Wikipedia again, Jamie, so we can get the description.
jamie vernon
It didn't have anything.
It just said it was a typical, traditional depiction.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
So it doesn't say who?
jamie vernon
There might be.
rick strassman
Yeah, like a wood cutting of some sort.
joe rogan
But that is kind of how it was described.
The Von Daniken thing is fascinating.
I had lunch with him once.
Where?
Peter Thiel's house.
rick strassman
Oh, cool.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So Eric Weinstein said, hey, I would like you to come to this lunch we're going to do with Eric Von Daniken.
You know a lot about that guy's stuff.
I'm like, oh, I know everything about that guy's stuff.
I've seen Chariots of the Gods like fucking ten times.
I've watched a hundred interviews with this guy.
He's like all in on the idea that UFOs created all this stuff and they're all flying spacemen and Well, who created the UFOs?
That's a real good question.
He doesn't have that information.
rick strassman
Yeah, that's the first question I would ask him.
joe rogan
But it's, you know, he's a very nice guy.
I don't want to say anything bad about him, and I really enjoyed Chariots of the Gods.
It's a fun movie.
It's like, have you ever seen it?
rick strassman
No.
joe rogan
It's wonderful.
It's from like 1976. I played in the movie theaters.
rick strassman
I remember when it came out.
joe rogan
What year is Chariots of the Gods?
It's pretty old.
But in it, you know, he's all in on everything being evidence that UFOs were here and a lot of, like, real sketchy connections, in my opinion.
I'm more inclined to go the Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson route.
I think there was a very sophisticated civilization that existed.
Like, yeah, what year?
1970. I saw it in the movie theater when I was a little kid.
But I think that there's real evidence that there was a sophisticated civilization.
The Egyptian pyramids are enough.
It's just like whatever the hell was going on there, there was an insanely sophisticated civilization that existed 4,500 years ago at least and probably went back quite a bit further than that.
You know, according to their hieroglyphs, it went back 30,000 years, you know, and whatever was going on there was pretty incredible.
And I think to just say that the aliens did it, it seems a little, a little silly, because there's no evidence that the aliens did it.
There's evidence that there's people around back then.
rick strassman
Yeah, it's a case of Occam's razor, you know, the most sensible explanation is probably the most likely.
joe rogan
Yeah.
But then there's also so many stories of us being visited in almost every ancient culture.
rick strassman
Well, you know, is that like being visited or just the experience of being visited?
joe rogan
Are they the same thing?
rick strassman
Well, one would be physically manifest and the other would just be manifest in the mind.
joe rogan
Well, I think a lot of people are starting to lean in this general direction of that, of that perhaps we're trying to measure something that cannot be measured.
Perhaps we're trying to put something on a scale that does not necessarily physically exist, but also has the attributes of something that physically exists.
Or they can manifest something that physically exists, but it's kind of an illusion.
And the whole thing is kind of going on simultaneously, interdimensionally.
And that this is why we struggle with our definitions and just our overall acceptance of even the possibility of it being real.
I think most people, when you talk to them about UFOs, if they don't have any skin in the game, they'll tell you they believe in UFOs, they'll tell you they think we've been visited because it's fun.
But if you said to them, If you had to bet everything you have, everything you have on the government has recovered crashed UFOs and that they visit us and they come from, you know, the Palladi star system and they've been here from the beginning of time,
or there's weird conscious experiences, weird There's weird doors, portals of consciousness that open up that allow you to see things that might not necessarily be physically measurable, but also real.
And that these things are what everybody's talking about in these ancient religious stories.
These things are things that people are talking about when they claim they've been abducted by UFOs, then something landed, and even like the physical remnants of these crafts That might – all of it might be just a part of this very bizarre psychic experiment that's going on.
That as the mind expands its ability to understand other realms and as the – like you have to think of – you don't have to, but the way I think of it is like we didn't used to be able to see.
So it was an emerging trait of single-celled organisms, no sight, if you believe in evolution – It goes to multi-celled organisms, eventually goes to sight.
So it's an emerging part of being a living thing, as you can see.
Then language.
We didn't used to be able to talk, now we talk freely.
So there's an emerging thing, an ability that human beings had.
And I think consciousness, psychic ability, precognition, remote viewing, all this stuff.
For most people, that's a nonsense thought.
But I think the thought is so prevalent in so many different cultures.
Psychic phenomena is discussed ubiquitously in every corner of the world.
And I think it's probably an emerging part of being a human being.
rick strassman
Well, do you think it's biologically based?
It would need to be if it were, you know, universal like that.
joe rogan
Chemically based?
Biologically based?
I'm sure it probably has a lot to do with the diet of the creatures, right?
I mean, if humans are consistently, if you're in the Amazon, you're consistently taking ayahuasca and eating mushrooms and having rituals, you're probably in that realm more often than a regular person who eats McDonald's and drinks coffee at Starbucks and It's stressed out because they work all day and is on SSRIs.
You're probably not getting much of that at all.
rick strassman
There's a lot of telepathy, I think, that occurs in those kinds of cultures.
You know, they share dreams and they share visions.
It's very interesting.
joe rogan
Well, you know, that's what they tried to initially call harming when they discovered it.
They tried to call it telepathine.
rick strassman
Telepathine, exactly.
joe rogan
Right.
But it already existed under the nomenclature.
They called it harming.
So they had to, like...
Okay.
Well, it's already named.
Too bad.
It'd be cool to call it telepathine.
rick strassman
Right.
It was synthesized by somebody and got that name.
joe rogan
But the people that were experiencing it then, when they wanted to name it telepathine, they wanted to name it that because they were experiencing telepathic...
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
They were having these weird experiences where they're sharing moments.
rick strassman
Shared visions.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah.
rick strassman
Well, I think you can share visions just like you can share thoughts, you know, you can or you share feelings.
I think just a little more complex.
joe rogan
The thing about that is if it's local and there's other communication, right?
If you're both in the same room and like your friend says, not the pyramid.
Oh, I see the pyramid now.
You know what I mean?
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Or if you guys are nowhere near each other, you can't hear each other, and then you independently write down what you experienced, and then that person says, and they have the exact same thing.
So they have no interaction with you before they write down what they experienced or recorded or what have you.
But they're the same.
They're having the same thing.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Do you know of Rupert Sheldrake's work?
joe rogan
Yes.
I've had Rupert on.
rick strassman
You have?
Okay, great.
So he's spoken to you about his morphic residence and these large-scale experiments with a lot of people from the public.
They will make cold calls and people are expecting them.
The dog knows the owner is going to come home much sooner or at a different time.
And they can sense it and they're ready.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
So there is, you know, like awareness at a distance, it seems to be.
You know, I think it also must occur between people or things which have already got a strong relationship.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, like rats.
When they teach them how to do a maze on the East Coast, they figure out how to do it quicker on the West Coast.
You've seen those, right?
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, crystal formation.
I was thinking about a dream I had once of my washing machine when I was traveling.
And I had a dream about my washing machine that had stopped working.
And I called home and I said, you know, how's the washer?
And she said, it's broken.
I spoke to Rupert and I said, can you explain that?
And he said, you must have a strong relationship to your washing machine.
joe rogan
Well, you knew it.
Kind of makes sense.
rick strassman
I mean, cross-species, you know, cross-life forms almost, communication.
Well, I mean, do you think things would work out if there were universal language?
Or, I mean, would we just, you know, build a tower of, you know, Babel all over again?
Or would we, like, do something, you know, good for everyone?
joe rogan
I think we have the potential now because if we can develop universal language, you have real communication with people globally.
That's never existed before.
Instantaneous real communication through devices.
That's never existed.
So that's a different factor when you consider a universal language.
So if you have real communication with people, then you have universal language.
And then here's the big one.
The ability to detect deception.
So if we really are all communicating through some sort of neural implant and we really are doing this telepathically with a universal language and we're experiencing each other's consciousness in a way that eliminates all possibility of deception.
You can see envy, greed, anger.
You can see these things in people's thoughts.
If this becomes a possibility – and I think it's within the realm of science.
I think it's within the realm of technological possibility.
When that does happen, it will mean a very different thing to be a human being.
And I think it could be one of the greatest things that's ever happened because it would force us to only communicate at a higher level.
You – there would be no benefit in bullshitting anymore.
It would be the opposite.
It would actually be detrimental.
You would be ostracized.
No one would want to communicate with you anymore.
rick strassman
Well, you'd be speaking the truth all the time.
joe rogan
All the time.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
All the time.
rick strassman
There would be no more lying.
joe rogan
No more lying.
Impossible to lie, which I think is fascinating.
rick strassman
I don't think that would work.
joe rogan
Why not?
rick strassman
Well, I mean, there are some lies that are told for the sake of peace.
joe rogan
Right.
But what are the parameters?
Like, what are the confines of our society and of our just geopolitically, you know, in terms of environments we exist in?
Like, why?
Why?
What lies would be good for peace that wouldn't be better if everybody just knew exactly what was going on?
rick strassman
Well, if everybody knew exactly what was going on, that would be something different.
But I think, you know, in the meantime, there are some benefits to white lies.
joe rogan
Sure.
As a human being.
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
With a limited ability to communicate and, you know, you don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
Sure.
Yeah.
But if you're not a human being anymore, essentially, you're a cyborg and you're connected through a neural link to the whole world, there's going to be zero benefit in lying.
rick strassman
Right.
Well, you're suggesting a new species of man.
joe rogan
I am suggesting a new species of man.
rick strassman
Yeah.
One of my favorite books is called First and Last Men.
It's by Olaf Stapledon.
He's a British science fiction writer from the 1930s, 1940s.
And he describes 19 species of man that extends over 2 billion years.
And the final species is living on one of the outer planets.
They live 35,000 years because that's how long it takes to learn everything.
And every so often they all communicate telepathically around the whole globe.
And it's like this big event, obviously.
It happens every, whatever, 20,000 years.
unidentified
Whoa.
rick strassman
Yeah, and they work up to it.
It's an inspiring book, actually.
It's one of my favorites.
joe rogan
You know another more controversial thought that I have about all this stuff?
Is that ultimately The big bottleneck with information is going to be money because money right now is just ones and zeros, right?
Money is just information.
It's just we agree that you have X amount of dollars here.
We agree.
It's not a gold standard anymore.
It's just not backed by anything.
It's just a weird thing.
So that's information.
The trend with technology is we have more and more access to information and ultimately we're going to have instantaneous access to information.
But then we have this money thing.
We have money which is – and as people get better and better at cracking encoding, like you're not going to have encrypted money.
You're not going to have encrypted – it's not going to be possible, especially when quantum computing becomes ubiquitous.
Like we're all operating off – like it's all done.
And if this happens at the same time when we're all sharing our thoughts, impossible to lie, And then universal language and money.
So then you have an even distribution of resources that's not based at all on capitalism.
It's an abandonment of capitalism.
But not in like a Marxist communist way, in sort of a practical utilitarian way to deal with the fact that everybody's communicating with everybody instantaneously.
You can't have a guy who lives in a fucking castle and another guy who lives in a favela with a dirt floor and no food if we're all existing as one.
rick strassman
Well, it would require a change in human nature.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, human nature won't be human nature once this happens.
Whatever you think of human nature as of now, it's like you can tell me something.
I don't know if you're telling me the truth.
I can kind of guess.
I have a feeling, but I don't know.
So that makes progress slow.
rick strassman
Well, do you think that the technology will change human nature?
joe rogan
Of course.
Yeah, definitely.
But just by design.
If you're communicating telepathically and you can instantaneously detect it, it makes deception impossible because you're only able to express your thoughts.
rick strassman
Yeah, I have a feeling that won't be very popular.
joe rogan
Well, it won't be popular with the kind of humans that exist today.
rick strassman
Right.
So will the human nature have to change first before there's an agreement to undertake that?
joe rogan
I think it'll change with it.
Well, one of the good things is we might be able to completely eliminate things like depression, suicidal thoughts, mental illnesses.
Maybe we could recognize that these are simply patterns in the way this thing operates.
And if you just...
Optimize it.
It no longer has these patterns.
If everybody has like this increased level of dopamine.
rick strassman
For example.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Like everybody, just increased dopamine 300%.
rick strassman
Well, and increased oxytocin.
joe rogan
Yes.
Everybody loves everybody.
rick strassman
Everybody loves everybody.
joe rogan
We're walking around a state of tripping.
We're all in ecstasy together.
It's a low level where you're functional.
You're not going to crash your car.
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
But you probably won't have cars anymore anyway.
They'll be driving you around.
rick strassman
Well, an interesting thought is maybe you can increase levels of endogenous DMT in everyone genetically.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
Or on cue.
Like whenever you'd want it.
rick strassman
Yeah, I think the rapture may have a biological basis in that regard.
Like it's a timed event, which is worldwide, that turns on the DMT synthesizing machinery.
And everybody just...
joe rogan
Connects all the minds together in a universal language.
rick strassman
And it's one big blowout.
joe rogan
And we emerge from our violent monkey past and become the next version of what it means to be a human being.
rick strassman
Well, which would be non-material.
You know, the DMT world is non-material.
joe rogan
Right.
rick strassman
It's visual.
So we might just transcend into some...
Like, I think everybody, you know, in this kind of scenario, everybody would drop dead.
joe rogan
But isn't it more than visual?
It's visual in the sense that you experience it with your eyes, but your brain is experiencing something, too.
You just don't know what to do with it.
You don't know where it goes.
So you say, it's visual.
I'm seeing it.
But you're not just seeing it.
You're experiencing it.
rick strassman
Well, I think it's a world made of light.
And we perceive light through the eyes.
It's visually experienced.
joe rogan
Right, but whenever you're having a visual with your eyes closed, it's tough to call it a visual.
I mean, obviously, it's interacting with that part of your brain.
rick strassman
Right.
Well, you call it that after the fact.
unidentified
After you come down, you know, when you're drinking a Coke.
joe rogan
But have you ever opened your eyes on DMT? There was this video I was watching the other day online where these people, they put them on DMT and then they had lasers.
rick strassman
The red laser effect.
joe rogan
Yes.
Tell me about that.
rick strassman
Yeah, I just found out about it a couple days ago.
unidentified
You?
joe rogan
You just found out about it?
That's crazy.
I just found out about it a couple days ago.
rick strassman
Yeah, a friend is putting together a piece on that phenomenon.
He wanted my opinion.
joe rogan
Can you explain it to people, what they're experiencing?
rick strassman
Well, I think what happens, and this is just a very cursory assessment of the project, but people smoke DMT and then they project a red laser onto the wall.
And if you look very carefully at it, from what I understand, you can see the matrix.
joe rogan
You see code in the laser.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Can we take a bit of a break?
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
We'll take a bit of a break, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll be right back.
It's not that he doesn't have faults.
He most certainly has faults.
But they all have faults.
It's just they had control of the media and they turned him into something that he wasn't just 10 years ago to them.
Very strange how it was done.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, and we all were a victim of it.
Everybody, like, you don't want to admit that he has any positive qualities.
You get labeled a Nazi.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, and why do you think that happened?
joe rogan
Well, because he is an outsider and he is someone who did not come through the political system, so doesn't have all these relationships and all of these intertwined conflictions with corporations and All these different businesses that have paid for his campaign.
The campaign's self-financed.
And then you have someone who didn't play the game to get in there.
And you can't have that.
You can't have that.
If you have that, and this guy doesn't want wars, he doesn't want us giving money to foreign...
Companies and foreign countries and propping up dictators.
We can't have that.
We need that.
That's part of the American machine.
That's how it all works.
rick strassman
The military-industrial complex.
joe rogan
It's real.
rick strassman
Yeah, it's been real for a long time.
joe rogan
I mean, when Eisenhower talked about it on television at the end of his term, it's kind of a crazy moment in history that was just broadcast on television and wasn't really revisited until YouTube came around.
rick strassman
It was ignored.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah, it was...
You know, conveniently ignored.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think with RFK Jr., when he gets in, we have a real possibility of opening up psychedelic treatment for veterans, which I think is the best way to start it off because they're the most deserving of it.
They're the people we ask of the most.
And there's been a lot of people that have had some pretty profound changes take place because of psychedelic experiences.
unidentified
Right.
rick strassman
I think it's going to need to be scaled up.
joe rogan
Yes.
rick strassman
And what that scaling up looks like still isn't really worked out.
joe rogan
Right.
rick strassman
I think they should develop special clinics, you know, where you wouldn't actually be doing research and you wouldn't need incredibly strong data to justify that kind of treatment.
You would just need an indication that it was helpful.
joe rogan
Right.
rick strassman
And a specialized therapist, pure drug.
It wouldn't be Schedule I kind of super restrictive research, but it wouldn't be just Wild West and anything goes.
I think there needs to be some kind of middle approach.
Institutional development where, you know, a lot of people can go who would benefit from psychedelic assisted therapy.
And yeah, the vets make sense.
You know, so many homeless people are veterans.
Like in Albuquerque, there's an enormous homeless population.
A large number of them are vets.
They're really not treated all that well when they come home.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
No, they're not.
It's not like this idea of not having robust clinical research to show efficacy, like, on a physiological level.
That doesn't really exist with SSRIs anyway.
And they're already prescribing them.
Like, there's so much anecdotal stories, so many of them, of guys going to Mexico, taking Ibogaine, taking DMT, psilocybin experiences, and coming back and just, like, sorted their life out.
rick strassman
It's amazing.
A couple of weeks ago, we were at a conference up in Denver, and I was doing some book signing.
Some guy, my generation, came up to me, and he told a story after he returned from Vietnam.
He was using basically every drug In a bad way, bad drugs in a bad way, and he smoked DMT one day, stopped using everything.
He even moved to live across the street from a liquor store to be able to demonstrate that he had that willpower that had just changed with one DMT experience to resist any future drinking.
joe rogan
Wow.
rick strassman
Yeah, so those kinds of stories you just can't ignore.
joe rogan
There's too many of them.
And I know I have personal friends that have gone through it and changed their life, quit drinking, got their shit together, became a much nicer person.
Like sometimes people are just burdened by the stress of what they've experienced, especially war, which is the most horrific thing that people can experience.
You're burdened by this.
And sometimes they don't know how to shut those demons off.
They don't know how to shut it off.
And something can come along, whether it's a DMT experience, ayahuasca, Ibogaine.
There's a bunch of different anecdotal stories that I've heard of different things.
I was reading something about Colorado today.
Colorado is doing some new psilocybin research thing, where they're opening up clinics now?
rick strassman
Yeah, they're going to be opening up these healing clinics, which will be more or less based on the Oregon model.
You license the therapists, you have to account for your supply of drugs and quality control, those kinds of things.
joe rogan
I would worry about that.
We were talking about control.
That's where you would open up the door to potential spiritual narcissism.
You could see someone starting a nice cult that way.
He who controls the mushrooms.
rick strassman
Who controls the mushrooms?
Well, it wouldn't be the first time that psychedelic cults emerged.
Well, are you familiar with the Rajneesh story?
joe rogan
Which one's that?
rick strassman
In Antelope, Oregon, there was this...
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Of course.
Wild, wild country.
rick strassman
Wild, wild country.
joe rogan
I love that one.
That's Osho.
rick strassman
That's Osho.
Osho.
Osho?
joe rogan
Osho.
Osho or Osho?
rick strassman
I think Osho.
joe rogan
He got me confused.
I said Osho.
Which one?
Osho?
Osho.
He's my favorite.
unidentified
But the people are retarded.
joe rogan
That's that guy.
rick strassman
Yeah, that guy.
joe rogan
Osho.
I read his book.
Because I watched Wild Wild Country, I was so blown away by it that I read his book.
And it's actually very interesting.
I mean, I think he's written more than one book.
I forget which one I have.
But I read it a few years back, and I was like, this is a fascinating person.
He doesn't seem like a cult leader.
rick strassman
What's the main message that he's trying to get across?
joe rogan
Well, it's just sort of like a guidebook for life.
Pull up his books, I'll tell you which one it was.
jamie vernon
The Book of Secrets.
He's got a Zen tarot.
joe rogan
Can you show me what they look like so I can see the covers?
jamie vernon
He's got a bunch of books.
rick strassman
One would always wonder if...
joe rogan
It's one of the few books I have that's a physical copy, too.
I'd have to go back and look at it.
rick strassman
You kind of wonder if these are transcriptions of his talks or things that other people helped him write or even things that other people wrote for him.
joe rogan
For the people.
By the people.
They did a dirty thing there.
They took all those homeless people and they brought them so they could count as voters.
And then they kicked them out.
rick strassman
Weren't they trying to poison the city council or something?
joe rogan
They poisoned everybody.
Yeah, they poisoned people when they were trying to take over politically.
But that was that one woman.
What was her name?
Rita?
Was that her name?
The one woman who got in trouble.
She was kind of running the cult.
unidentified
She was pretty brutal.
rick strassman
Well, you know, I spent some time at a Zen monastery.
I was actually, as a young man, thinking of becoming a monk.
joe rogan
How long did you spend there?
rick strassman
Not that long because my depression lifted while I was there.
I think my motivation to become a monk was because of how depressed I was.
I didn't think I was able to really function any other way than in a cloister, more or less.
But then my depression cleared and I went back to school.
But I stayed associated with them for over 20 years and went up there.
joe rogan
What do you attribute your depression lifting to?
rick strassman
Well, I think it was a minor enlightenment experience.
That's not to say that I'm enlightened or anything, but if you look at the phenomenology of the enlightenment experience, it's on a scale.
There's gradations like the major one and then smaller little ones.
Yeah, I was walking back from a work assignment.
Well, one thing they liked doing was because I was a medical student back then.
I thought I was hot shit.
I was always given the worst assignments, the worst work assignments, like clean the toilets or...
Knock down this hill.
So one day they said, can you move that hill?
So I had my shovel and my pick.
I was 22 years old or whatnot.
Yeah, and I was coming back from the work project and my depression just lifted right off my shoulders.
It was the damnedest thing.
It was about 15, 30 seconds or so.
I thought, oh, that's pretty interesting.
Yeah, and the end of the day came and I woke up the next morning and I was still feeling pretty good.
Wow.
So I was indebted to them for helping pull me out of that bad mood.
It was a bad mood, too.
I had to drop out of school.
joe rogan
Was it directly after you had to move the hill?
rick strassman
It was on the way back to the tool shed.
joe rogan
Did you do anything before that physically?
rick strassman
I don't remember what my other work assignment was.
It was an afternoon work assignment, as I remember.
joe rogan
I mean, in your life.
Did you ever do any hard labor?
rick strassman
Oh.
joe rogan
Ever work out?
Ever take a sport?
rick strassman
Yeah, I ran track.
joe rogan
You ran track.
rick strassman
It was the sprints, though, so it was just a sudden burst of energy.
It wasn't anything prolonged.
You know, I've done a lot of strenuous hiking and backpacking.
joe rogan
The sprinting, when you were doing that, were you particularly happy or depressed when you were doing that?
rick strassman
No.
Well, sprinting itself is great.
joe rogan
I don't mean that.
I mean, during the time period where you were participating in sprinting, did you have any depression?
rick strassman
No, no.
Well, I suppose, you know...
joe rogan
Teen angst.
rick strassman
Yeah, you know, teenager angst, you know, growing up in the San Fernando Valley.
joe rogan
Right, that everybody has.
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
I had that while I was doing martial arts.
It's not like it cures it.
But I do know, personally, me, if I go long periods of time where I don't exercise, I get depressed.
I don't feel good.
I feel shitty.
I feel off.
I think our bodies put vanity aside because I think a lot of very intelligent people associate exercise with vanity.
But I think your body has a physical requirement to achieve vanity.
Like, homeostasis, to achieve balance, to achieve, like, an ability to kind of, like, exist in a neutral place.
You're always affected by the world.
But the more neutral you are, the better.
Like, the more you're just, you exist.
And you're not, like...
Constantly wound up about something or constantly upset about this or constantly fearing that or being overwhelmed with anxiety.
I think some of that is in response to a lack of physical movement.
I think the body is designed to exist in a very primal world that doesn't exist anymore.
And so because the body had a lot of requirements 10,000, 15,000 years ago, I think we're still programmed in that general way.
And that the only way to keep a balance of the mind and the body together for me is to constantly engage in exercise.
Rigorous exercise.
rick strassman
Yeah, what kind of diet do you follow?
joe rogan
Mostly I eat meat.
rick strassman
Mostly meat.
Beef?
joe rogan
Yeah, I eat beef.
I eat a lot of wild game, a lot of elk.
I eat deer and wild pigs.
I do eat some vegetables sometimes, but only if I feel like it.
I don't eat them for nutrition.
I eat fruit and I take a lot of vitamins.
rick strassman
Yeah, and no greens.
joe rogan
I mean, I'll eat greens every now and then.
I'll have like a salad if I feel like I'm having a salad.
But I don't think I'm having a salad for health.
You know, I think...
rick strassman
It's for taste.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's for just I like eating stuff.
rick strassman
Yeah, do you like pretzels?
joe rogan
I do.
I try not to eat them.
rick strassman
Yeah, I love pretzels.
That's my week.
joe rogan
They're kind of bullshit.
But I was at the mall the other day and we walked by, what is it?
Annie's?
Annie's Pretzels?
Is that what it is?
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's crack!
I didn't eat one.
But that smell, the smell in the air was like, there was a giant ass line.
A huge line.
There's no line for anything else in that food court.
But that pretzel line was big.
rick strassman
There must be something in those pretzels.
joe rogan
Deliciousness?
rick strassman
Yeah, MDMA. They're so good.
joe rogan
They're so good.
No, there's no MDMA. It's just delicious.
You feel terrible right after you ate it.
Like, what did I do?
unidentified
That's like MDMA. Yeah, but there's no 5-HTP that you can take that's going to help you.
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
The down you feel off of a pretzel sometimes is worth it, though, because they're so delicious, especially the ones that wrap a hot dog in the pretzel.
rick strassman
Yeah.
A month or two ago, I was at Union Station in Los Angeles, and there was a stand selling the pretzel.
You know, the encased hot dogs and pretzels.
You have to apply a fair amount of mustard.
joe rogan
They're so good though, right?
It's delicious.
Terrible for you.
So good though.
rick strassman
We took an Amtrak back from Union Station to Albuquerque.
You know, like an overnight?
joe rogan
How's that?
rick strassman
Well, it was quaint, but it wasn't, like, efficient.
joe rogan
It's too slow.
rick strassman
It's pretty slow, pretty noisy.
joe rogan
And you start thinking, I could have been on a plane.
I would have already been there.
rick strassman
Right, it would have been just, you know, two hours rather than whatever it was, 14 or so.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's stupid.
rick strassman
Well, I mean, look at European trains, though.
You can really have fun on a European train.
They're comfy, they're on time, good food, good coffee.
joe rogan
What's the fastest train?
Is it Japan?
Do they have the bullet trains?
rick strassman
I think the Chinese.
joe rogan
Chinese?
rick strassman
Or the Japanese.
Yeah, really, really fast.
joe rogan
Yeah.
That's one of the things that Elon was trying to do with America.
They were trying to put bullet trains that would take you from San Francisco to New York City in like a few hours.
rick strassman
Yeah.
I mean, there should be no reason not to do that.
joe rogan
The only reason would...
rick strassman
Other than the automobile industry.
joe rogan
Well, also tracks.
Like, who's watching those tracks?
If you're going 1,000 miles an hour or whatever you're going, who's watching the tracks?
Who's making sure someone doesn't put something on the tracks?
rick strassman
Right, right.
That's even a concern now, but yeah, it would certainly be if people are going 1,000 miles an hour.
joe rogan
Yeah, like I'm amazed at how few derailments there are if you think about how many trains are flying back and forth.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, I lived in Gallup, New Mexico for years.
And it's a train town, more or less.
And, you know, there were, I think, there were three trains came through every hour, you know, 24-7.
unidentified
Wow.
rick strassman
So, you know, 70 trains, 75 trains every day would go through town.
And there were very few derailments.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
rick strassman
Yeah, they're pretty effective.
joe rogan
But you're constantly waiting for trains then.
Like, there's always those things that come down, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
You can't sit there and wait while the train flies by.
rick strassman
Yeah, it was a point of controversy in that little town.
Like, were they going to build a tunnel underneath or a bridge over?
You know, the business folks in the downtown area.
And it would be noisy, too, that trains would go by 35 miles an hour, and they're big trains.
Some of the cargo trains are more than a mile long, and they can just take forever to cross 2nd and 3rd Street, and you're just stuck there.
joe rogan
Yeah, fuck that.
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
I just wouldn't want to be in a place that's that noisy, especially if you're in New Mexico.
It's kind of quiet.
rick strassman
Well, your bones rattle when the trains go by and, you know, they honk their horns.
Like they have to do three, then two, then three, then two.
joe rogan
Well, there's some apartments in New York City where the apartment building's there and the train's going right in front of the apartment building.
rick strassman
Exactly.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
How cheap is that rent that you agree to that?
rick strassman
Yeah.
And the long-term effects on your mental and physical health.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, whenever someone's crazy in a movie, they always live there.
They just live, like, right where the train is.
You know?
It just kind of accentuates their craziness, right?
They get no rest.
rick strassman
I know.
Well, you know, my mom's mom lived in a little town in western Pennsylvania.
And, you know, the coal trains would pass through her backyard, basically.
Like, you know, there's a little hill in her backyard and the train tracks.
And I really enjoyed, you know, sitting there as the trains went by, you know, smelling the exhaust.
That was, you know, something...
That was an early manifestation of my...
joe rogan
Look at this.
jamie vernon
Have you seen these in China?
joe rogan
Whoa, that's crazy.
It goes through the building.
jamie vernon
That's what they say.
rick strassman
Yeah, that would be noisy.
joe rogan
Imagine if you're above that trying to sleep.
Fuck out of here.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's nuts.
jamie vernon
That's not real.
joe rogan
Whoa, that can't be real.
rick strassman
That can't be real.
Yeah, they couldn't find anybody to live there.
joe rogan
You could.
rick strassman
Well, I guess prisoners maybe.
joe rogan
Somebody would agree.
rick strassman
It could be a jail or a prison, too.
unidentified
Yeah, or just some crazy person.
joe rogan
They just think that's a good idea.
A lot of people like to live in different ways.
jamie vernon
They also have their markets right on the train line.
joe rogan
Whoa.
jamie vernon
And they have to pick up the stuff when it comes through.
joe rogan
What?
jamie vernon
Yeah.
rick strassman
That's efficient.
joe rogan
So they quickly grab their baskets and stuff and pull it out of the way?
jamie vernon
Yeah, because people are walking on the train track.
joe rogan
That's nuts.
That is crazy.
jamie vernon
And rather than move, they just figure it out.
joe rogan
Wow.
Eight times a day, seven days a week.
Wow.
jamie vernon
You have to put things away in three minutes.
rick strassman
Oh, really?
joe rogan
Wow.
unidentified
How many dogs do they lose every year?
rick strassman
Well, suicides, too.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
rick strassman
Lots of people, like the small town I was living in, that would be like a regular thing if people would lay down on their tracks if they were having a bad day.
unidentified
Imagine if we can cure that with Elon Musk's Neuralink.
joe rogan
Everybody sign up.
rick strassman
Yeah, on the reservation.
Might be hard to, you know, get the word out there.
joe rogan
Yeah, they probably don't want to listen to you anyway.
They probably want you to take it so that you all go extinct and they'll take over again.
rick strassman
Some crazy white man idea.
joe rogan
I mean, these are people that were hesitant to agree to get photographed.
You know?
They're going to be the last adopters of this stupid fucking brain implant these stupid white people are doing.
rick strassman
Well, you know, so Gallup is on their reservation, pretty much, the Navajo reservation.
And most of the population is native.
So it was pretty interesting living among the natives for 14 years.
And their view of white people is they're noisy, they're superficial, and they're kind of dumb.
joe rogan
Well, there's plenty of examples that would support that if you were inclined to be, you know, less charitable and make a rash generalization about white people.
rick strassman
Well, I learned to be quiet there because there isn't anything to do.
And there aren't that many people.
joe rogan
We were talking about this before it aired.
One of the big reasons you moved out of there was it's hard to get health care, right?
rick strassman
The health care was rather poor.
I came down with pneumonia.
This was 2014. And I didn't receive the best care.
I ended up getting C. diff because of all the antibiotics.
joe rogan
What is that?
rick strassman
It's this horrible diarrhea.
It's like a fatal diarrhea.
I think 30,000 people in the country die every year from C. diff.
unidentified
Whoa.
rick strassman
Yeah, and I was battling that.
The quality of the care was so poor that I was taking notes, and I thought, if I live through this, I'm going to write about it.
So that is the basis of that autobiographical novel I wrote a few years ago.
unidentified
Oh.
rick strassman
You know, Joseph Levy escapes death.
Yeah, it's an account of...
joe rogan
I remember I was worried about you, but I didn't want to pry.
Because we had gone back and forth in the email and you were just telling me your health was not well.
rick strassman
Oh yeah, yeah.
We were talking about the possibility of me being on your show and saying I'm just too sick, I can't travel.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Generally people don't bounce back when they say they're that sick.
I was really worried about you.
But I didn't want to...
I just didn't know, like, how does one, you know...
I didn't want to pry.
I felt like if you wanted to tell me about what's going on, you would tell me about what's going on.
rick strassman
Yeah, it was a really hard time.
And I bounced back.
You look great.
joe rogan
You look better than ever, actually.
rick strassman
Oh, thanks.
unidentified
You really do.
You too.
rick strassman
Yeah, I swore I would bounce back and feel even better than I did before I got sick.
But it was a chore.
Well, it did strengthen my belief in God, speaking of God.
Like, I wasn't quite, well, that, you know, God was not quite ready to take me.
And I wanted to become closer to that power that let me live.
joe rogan
And did you feel like, because God was not, God did not want to take you, did you feel like he had work to do?
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
I had to get back to work.
I had to continue being useful.
Like, I just couldn't rest on my laurels.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah, I mean, if you had called and you said, how's it going?
I'd say, bad.
joe rogan
Sounds like it was real bad.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's why I was worried.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because, you know, I'm just too used to getting those kind of emails and then you hear that someone passed away.
rick strassman
Oh, yeah.
I know.
And, you know, in my generation, it's kind of accelerating.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah.
So when you did finally get out of this, how long was like the actual sick period, how long was the period where you were really hurting?
rick strassman
Well, the pneumonia was about 10 days and the C. diff started about 10 days after that and went on for six weeks.
I lost 15 pounds.
joe rogan
You're a thin guy to begin with.
rick strassman
I didn't have 15 pounds to lose.
I found a good psychotherapist.
I went in there and fell asleep.
The first visit, I said, I'm really tired.
I feel really weak.
And that was it.
And I started working with her for like the next four years.
Because obviously things had gotten so dire because I wasn't taking care of myself.
So I had to kind of get to the bottom of that.
Yeah, so it took another maybe seven months before I started to feel my strength back and my brain functioning again.
One turning point, this might interest some of your listeners, is I got vaccinated for the flu in January, which was nine months after this all started.
And it was the most painful vaccination I'd ever had.
It was beyond 10. It wasn't even throbbing.
It was just constant, like beyond any pain in my arm I'd ever felt.
joe rogan
How long did it last?
rick strassman
12 hours.
And I woke up feeling great.
unidentified
Wow.
rick strassman
Like the best I had felt in almost a year.
joe rogan
So after 12 hours, just wore off.
rick strassman
I went to bed thinking, God, I hope this wears off or else I'm going to have to get some attention.
Yeah, it just wore off and I felt pretty darn good the next morning.
joe rogan
How weird.
rick strassman
Very weird.
I guess my immune system just really needed to just get socked or something.
Yeah.
And it seemed to have, you know, done the trick.
joe rogan
Just strange that you'd have like a local pain that's that intense.
You generally don't hear about that.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
It was just at the vaccination site.
Very interesting.
joe rogan
Yeah, weird.
rick strassman
Do you get vaccinated?
This might be a personal question.
joe rogan
No, you can ask me anything.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
No.
I almost got vaccinated for COVID. Right.
rick strassman
I was wondering.
joe rogan
I was totally willing to do it.
It was the early days of the pandemic and the UFC had allocated about, I think it was 150 or so doses for all their employees because they were running shows during the pandemic when everyone was terrified of it.
So...
I go to Vegas to do this UFC event, and I had a test before I leave, and then you fly, you test when you get there, and they're really strict with their protocols, make sure that no one was sick.
When people were sick, like a fighter's corner man was sick, everyone was kicked off.
All those people were off.
The fighter couldn't compete even if he was negative because he had been exposed.
So they were real strict.
And so they said, we have these vaccines if you want one.
They didn't tell me I had to take it, but they said, if you want one.
I said, sure.
I said, can I get it right before the fights?
And they said, sure.
And they didn't know that I had to go to the actual clinic or the hospital.
So I contacted the doctor.
I said, hey, I'm here.
Can you vaccinate me before the show?
He said, you actually have to go to the clinic on Monday.
Can you stay till Monday?
I said, I can't, but I'll be back in two weeks for the next event.
So during the time where I was gonna get shot and then two weeks later they pulled it.
So the Johnson& Johnson vaccine got pulled because people were getting blood clots.
And so then two people that I knew that did get it had strokes.
I don't know if it was a coincidence, but it seemed rather odd.
And then I started getting nervous.
And so then I started reading different things by different scientists that had opposing perspectives on both the efficacy and the safety of the vaccine.
And then I got COVID. And then when I got COVID, I got over it really quickly.
And then I got attacked on CNN. So I was like, okay, what's going on here?
Like, why are you guys upset that I took a certain medicine and got better?
I've never even heard of such a thing.
And they started labeling it, this ivermectin, as a horse dewormer, which is crazy because it won the Nobel Prize for People.
So it was like I was watching this bizarre thing take place in scale on mass media against me.
But against me in the most preposterous way possible because I was healthy.
I got better quick.
Like in three days I was better and I made a video.
In six days I was working out like full steam.
I didn't get sick for long at all.
And I listed a bunch of different medications that I took.
But for whatever reason, they labeled ivermectin as the thing that needed to be attacked.
And it was all in lockstep.
MSNBC, CNN, newspapers, all of them making these.
I got ridiculous statements that I was taking veterinary medicine.
I got medicine from a doctor, from a pharmacy, an actual human doctor, medication for humans.
And more importantly, I got better, like really quick.
What is happening here?
This is the strangest thing I've ever seen in my life.
It was like this mass psychosis that was propagated by the media who were only intent on keeping everyone terrified and offering only one solution.
And that solution just coincidentally happened to be insanely profitable.
rick strassman
Yeah, it's hard to figure.
joe rogan
It was weird to go through.
It's very, very weird to go through.
So, needless to say, I have become very skeptical about a lot of narratives that are expressed constantly without any real examination.
rick strassman
Well, do you think they're going after you or going after the ivermectin?
joe rogan
Going after the ivermectin, 100%.
I was a simple, easy to make fun of person who did a ridiculous thing and that's why they were able to say horse dewormer.
But it's such a dumb thing to say because this – we have – it was a playbook that would have been really effective in 1998. You could have gotten that done in 1998. The problem is – There's too much information that's available.
And when you're mocking a person for taking a drug that a human being won the Nobel Prize for in 2015 for its use in humans, that seems insane.
Also, you're knocking people taking off-label medication under the advice of a trained physician.
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
Like, what's going on?
And who are these people that are doing this?
These talking heads on CNN? Why are they all agreeing?
How come not one person is saying, hey, What is the reason why ivermectin would be taken in the first place?
Oh, it stops viral replication in vitro?
Well, maybe there's some reason to use this.
Maybe these doctors are correct.
All these anecdotal stories about people taking it and then getting better quickly.
Is there anything to this?
But there was none of that in the media because they are sponsored by pharmaceutical drug companies who clearly had marching orders.
rick strassman
Yeah.
What do you make of this virus that's killing folks in the Congo?
joe rogan
Jesus, who knows?
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
I don't know anything about it.
rick strassman
Yeah.
170 people have died.
They don't know what it is.
Some weird African virus.
joe rogan
Fun.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
See if Bill Gates has been visiting there lately.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
I don't know.
I'm terrified of pandemics for sure.
I just – that one wasn't one to be terrified of and they made us terrified of it which makes me terrified.
Because that was one where they – we talked about this in the podcast where they made fun of Donald Trump because he was saying it's less than 1 percent of the people who get it die and then CNN was mocking him saying it's 3.4 percent, 3.4 percent.
It was considerably less than 1 percent.
He was right.
But they had marching orders, and these marching orders was to scare the shit out of people and to tell them to get vaccinated.
rick strassman
It was a scary time, that's for sure.
Yeah, they closed down the town that I was living in back then, Gallup.
It was closed down.
You couldn't go into it if you didn't live there.
joe rogan
God, so weird.
rick strassman
For nine days.
joe rogan
Well, you know, nine days is better than California.
California, they did a whole year and a half of, like, complete restrictions.
They were stopping outdoor dining.
Just arbitrarily.
I had a friend and his brother works for the state, and he said to the lady who was in charge of it, he said, why are you stopping outdoor dining?
There's no evidence that there's spread through outdoor dining.
And she said, it's the optics.
The optics.
Like, we're going to shut businesses down for optics, because they had to show that they're doing something, because there's like a noticeable spread that's being reported in the media.
rick strassman
That's called virtue signaling, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, it's also – the real problem is their jobs are not dependent upon their society functioning.
They get paid no matter what.
So society crumbles and all these businesses – they lost 70 percent of their restaurants at one point in time.
70 percent.
Just went under.
That's insane to continue a practice like that.
Especially where within six months they should have known that it wasn't as fatal as everybody said it was.
When they already had the data in about how come all these people that are dying they all have like significant amount of comorbidities.
How come all these people that are dying are over the age of 80?
It doesn't mean fuck those people.
It means protect those people but let everybody else Get back to work.
Like, you just have control of these people and you're continuing to enforce this control while their lives are destroyed.
How many people turned to drugs?
How many people committed suicide because they lost everything completely out of their power?
How many lives were lost?
How many kids had their childhood stripped away from them and have significant learning problems, not just because they didn't go to school, but because even when they went to school, they had to wear a mask.
So the whole reading people's lips and hearing sounds come out, everything was weird.
Reading faces was weird.
If you're a toddler and your experience is going through the first couple of years of your schooling and your preschool with fucking masks on, like, what is that?
What did we do to these people?
rick strassman
Well, we'll find out.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
And the only good out of it, in my opinion, is that people realize that it was stupid and they won't be as quick to accept it in the future.
rick strassman
You think if there's another pandemic?
joe rogan
Right.
I don't think people are going to accept the government, which is filled with a bunch of fucking silly people that have decided to run the government, having complete control over whether or not you can run your business, or you can decide to take a trip somewhere, or you could visit your parents when they're in the hospital.
All that is crazy.
rick strassman
Yeah.
I wonder what impact RFK Jr. is going to have on the delivery of healthcare now.
joe rogan
Well, he's going to have so much of an impact that they're talking about preemptively pardoning Fauci.
Like, how do you pardon someone that didn't do a crime?
rick strassman
Preemptively.
joe rogan
How are you pardoning someone where he's not—not only is he not convicted of a crime, he's not even being tried, he's not accused, he's not indicted?
rick strassman
I guess that's called blanket immunity.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, it's never been done before.
There's never been preemptive pardons for people that may have been committing crimes.
rick strassman
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
It's weird.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, do you know much about the fluoride story?
A lot of people wonder about the pineal gland and DMT synthesis if you have a calcified pineal, which is more likely if you're fluoridated.
joe rogan
Have they ever done autopsy studies on people that are in high fluoride areas to check out their pineal glands?
Or is this just like one of those things that people say?
rick strassman
Well, it's the case in lower animals that you feed them a high fluoride diet and their pineal glands calcify more rapidly.
I'm not sure what the human literature is.
joe rogan
So when you say that, when they calcify more rapidly, like what animals are they serving them?
Fluoride?
rick strassman
You know, rats, mice.
joe rogan
And what have the results been?
Like significant differences?
rick strassman
Yeah, I mean, these experimental animals, pineal glands anyway, they do calcify more rapidly.
But whether or not that actually correlates to a reduction in melatonin production, for example, I'm not that familiar with the literature.
joe rogan
Is the number commensurate with what would even be possible through fluoride and water, or would it have to be some other form of poisoning?
Is it like a very high level of fluoride that they're giving them?
rick strassman
With the experimental animals, yeah, this fluoride-rich kind of diet.
joe rogan
So then the question would be, what about the accumulation of fluoride in small doses over the course of a long lifetime?
rick strassman
Yeah, I'm just not that current on the literature.
There's a couple of things that occur that cause pineal calcification.
One is aging.
The older you get, the more calcification there is.
Back when I was current on the pineal physiology data, which was a long time ago, like 40 years ago, there wasn't a relationship between the degree of calcification in the human pineal and production of melatonin.
At least according to the data from the 80s, the degree of calcification wasn't functionally significant.
But I get an email here and there wondering if fluoridation of the pineal might reduce the production of endogenous DMT, which one might theorize takes place.
But we don't really know quite yet if the pineal even makes DMT, let alone if pineal calcification might reduce it.
joe rogan
Wouldn't it be interesting to measure different lifestyles and then also look at the age in which these people are and see if there's, like, when they die, if there's calcification?
You know, one person who's a marathon runner and they're 65 versus one person who's sedentary, drinks a lot, and they're also 65. Yeah.
rick strassman
You would think it would correlate with your overall general health.
joe rogan
Right.
I mean, if you're thinking that it's age-related, it may be age-related, or is it exposure over long periods of time where it accumulates?
Because the amount of fluoride that's in the water is very small.
And this is one of the things that people point to when they say that it's not dangerous.
It's very small.
But the question is, where does it go?
Does it actually leave the body, or does it accumulate somewhere?
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, you'd have to compare autopsies in older folks from areas that never had fluoride in their water versus those that did.
And I'm certain those studies have been done.
Like I said, I'm just not that current.
joe rogan
I just don't buy the idea that you should put fluoride in the water to prevent tooth decay.
I just think that sounds like...
The way I've described it, I said it's like putting sunscreen in the apples because some people get sunburn.
Like, that doesn't seem logical.
You could just brush your fucking teeth.
Like, you don't need to have this weird neurotoxic chemical in our water, even in low supplies.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Would you put fluoride in the toothpaste?
joe rogan
No.
I don't have fluoride in my toothpaste.
I don't have cavities.
rick strassman
Oh, I do.
I've had a few cavities.
joe rogan
Do you eat sugar?
rick strassman
I love sugar.
joe rogan
That's it.
We found it.
I don't hardly ever eat sugar.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, occasionally I have a cookie or something like that, but it's not a normal thing for me.
I think it's diet.
It's diet and it's brushing your teeth.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, and I think exercising your jaw, too.
Like, you know, chewing gum.
joe rogan
Right.
Xylitol gum is supposed to be really good for your jaw and good for your teeth.
rick strassman
Yeah.
If you have a healthy jaw, healthy chin, I mean, you breathe easier.
joe rogan
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
I don't know how they got started with the whole fluoride in the water thing, but it seems like a giant scam.
Like Big Fluoride is still selling fluoride to all these different water departments and they don't want to stop.
That's the only thing that makes sense to me.
It doesn't make any sense that people would be willing to potentially sacrifice...
They're children's IQ. There's a direct correlation between high levels of calcium in the water – or excuse me, high levels of fluoride in the water and low IQs.
This has been established.
So if that's true, that should be a fucking giant red flag for people.
I mean once you eliminate all the other environmental things that may be consistent with the people that have lower IQs in children – If you're just pointing only to fluoride, if this is one thing that varies, this is a potential real problem.
We know that leaded gas reduced people's IQ. You know that, right?
When they used to have leaded gas, people like me and you who grew up at a time with leaded gas, you probably would have a 10-point higher IQ if you didn't grow up with leaded gas.
I mean, there's some sort of a percentage.
I think it's a small percentage, but it's been measured.
It's been measured.
Find out what percentage of a detriment is leaded gas to your IQ. Because they actually have done studies on people and like what happened once unleaded gas was introduced and how children's IQs went up.
rick strassman
Oh yeah, super happy.
Yeah, it was quite helpful.
joe rogan
It's still in the ground in some places.
rick strassman
Well, it's still in a lot of pipes.
joe rogan
Oh, really?
Yeah.
rick strassman
Lead pipes.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah, the whole flint thing.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Oh, right, right, right.
Yeah, they used lead pipes.
How crazy.
You're drinking water.
rick strassman
Well, the Romans used lead pipes.
joe rogan
I know.
rick strassman
Yeah, for their plumbing.
You know, the Latin name for lead is plumb.
Plumbum.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
rick strassman
Yeah, that's why the pipes were called plumbing.
joe rogan
That's probably why the Coliseum got started.
They're all fucked up on lead poisoning and just willing to throw their soldiers to the lions.
Nearly half of US population exposed to dangerously high lead levels.
So what does this say about IQ? Here it goes.
Exposure to car exhaust.
Estimate childhood lead exposure has on average led to a reduction of 2.6 IQ points per person.
That's nuts.
Research also found that non-Hispanic black people, individuals with lower family income to poverty ratio, and those with an older housing age were likely to have higher levels of lead in their blood.
Well, probably because they lived in urban areas where there's more car traffic, right?
rick strassman
Most likely.
joe rogan
Most likely.
rick strassman
Yeah, if they're inhaling lead particles.
joe rogan
If they're in cities.
rick strassman
Lead particles.
joe rogan
People that live in very congested areas.
Wow.
Wow.
1973, Environmental Protection Agency issued its first call for manufacturers to begin a gradual reduction in the amount of lead and gasoline.
I bet they're going to look back at fluoride the same way we look back at leaded gas.
We're going to go, what the hell were we doing?
It doesn't even make any sense.
Oh, it's for your teeth.
Brush your fucking teeth.
And if you use fluoride in your toothpaste, great.
Just spit it out.
Don't swallow that shit.
My friend Eddie said it best.
He said, if fluoride wasn't a problem, why would they want to sell you toothpaste without fluoride?
And why does it say fluoride-free in the toothpaste?
Why do people gravitate towards fluoride-free toothpaste?
Well, because of studies like this.
Where they found that there is a correlation between IQ levels and fluoride.
And at high levels, it's fucking dangerous for you.
But there's all these people trying to dismiss it.
Oh, stop.
What's the big deal?
There's nothing to this.
Look at the amount of fluoride.
What about a cumulative?
Do we know?
Do you really know?
Or why are you so willing to accept the fact that it's a good idea to throw neurotoxins in the water supply?
rick strassman
Well, you know, they may have just discovered it, you know, through serendipity.
You know, there may have been some...
joe rogan
Well, they did discover it through that.
There was an area in Texas, I believe, where they had high natural levels of fluoride in the water, and there's a corresponding lower instance of cavities.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
joe rogan
I think it's Texas.
Google how did they start putting fluoride in the water.
I'm pretty sure it's that.
rick strassman
Some healing springs of some sort.
joe rogan
Some mineral rich fluoride water.
I don't know.
But either way, just brush your teeth.
Stop eating so much sweets and brush your teeth.
Both those things are a good idea.
Fluoride in the water?
Not a good idea.
If you want to sell fluoride and tell people to add it to their water, fine.
But put it into everybody's water?
That's crazy.
That seems crazy.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, I mean, as a dentist or when I was a small kid, we used to get these fluoride treatments.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah, with this, like, blue gun, you know, kind of gel that they would, you know, put in a splint and you put it on your upper and lower teeth for, like, five minutes or whatnot.
joe rogan
Yeah, kill all those bad germs.
rick strassman
A fluoride treatment.
Well, yeah, thank goodness.
joe rogan
Lower your curiosity.
rick strassman
Yeah, you lower your IQ, which is maybe not a bad idea.
joe rogan
Well, you've got to wonder, the thing you were talking about before about some people just don't have imagination, which is really crazy to think that some people are just – they just got a bad hand.
rick strassman
Well, they can't make stuff up.
Well, they must be quite practical, right?
I mean what you see is what you get.
There's no abstracting.
joe rogan
That's very charitable.
They might just be dull.
They might be dull-minded.
I mean, there's a certain percentage of our population that has an IQ below 85. What is it like, 15% or something like that?
Was it higher than that?
We were talking about it the other day, but I don't think we ever researched the actual number.
But it's significant enough where you're like, whoa.
You're running around the world with an 85 IQ. It's hard.
rick strassman
Well, you kind of wonder about the IQ test, right?
I mean, it was—what was it called?
The Stanford-Binet test.
It was developed way long ago.
It may not really measure all aspects of intelligence.
joe rogan
That's true.
rick strassman
Maybe someone with an 85-point IQ is smart in other ways, like emotionally intelligent, for example.
joe rogan
Okay.
With a 70 IQ, you have like 2%, 2 point something percent of the people.
When you get to 85, you have 13.6%.
So 13.6% have an IQ at 85 or below.
That's a lot.
34% is 100 to 85. Right.
But you have to also factor in education, right?
Like to take an IQ test, you have to be able to understand concepts.
You have to be able to solve problems.
And you most likely would have to have been exposed to many problems when you were younger for you to understand how these work.
And some people have had a very poor education and they might be intelligent.
They might be very emotionally intelligent.
rick strassman
Right, right.
Yeah, that was what I was thinking is that, yeah, it would be a different scale of intelligence than purely cognitive.
joe rogan
Right, right.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, that's one of the interesting elements about genetic engineering of the humans.
There is a big article in something I was reading.
Oh, Ecstatic Integration.
It's a newsletter put out by Jules Evans, a friend.
And he dove into genetic engineering of fetuses.
Like you can have a 3DNA fetus or embryo, you know, like the mom, the dad, and some super smart person or a super athletic person.
So you could do like a chimera almost in the human situation.
unidentified
Whoa.
joe rogan
That's probably already happened.
rick strassman
Yeah, it is happening offshore.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
That was the gist of this story.
joe rogan
China's probably creating a race of super people.
rick strassman
Well, the first genetic engineering of the fetus occurred in China.
It was a fellow working to develop HIV. That's what he says.
Yeah.
joe rogan
But it accidentally made them higher IQ. Accidentally.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, so that guy's back at work.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, he went to jail for a little bit.
rick strassman
Right.
He's got a big lab, lots of funding.
joe rogan
It's kind of weird.
It seems like they kind of made him a scapegoat a little bit, which they tend to do over there.
rick strassman
Well, you think that in a lot of ways that he would be celebrated.
Like, for example, the Scottish scientists that cloned that sheep, Dolly.
Yeah.
They were heroes.
joe rogan
Sure.
But I think we think very differently about it when it's being done with people.
We get super nervous, especially if you're going to be the first person that does it.
There's going to be a lot of outrage.
And I think some of that outrage is going to be by people that wish they did it first.
So they're going to be pretending that this is horrible that you've done this.
rick strassman
Right, they were scooped.
Yeah.
I wonder if there is that kind of reaction with the first heart transplant or the first kidney transplant, if the originators of the methodology were demonized because they were putting somebody else's heart in your place.
joe rogan
It has to be, right?
Well, we're lucky that it was done in the 20th century.
Imagine if it had been done in the 18th century or the 16th century.
You know, if you in the 1500s said, okay, I know how to save you.
This guy just got run over by a wagon.
I'm going to take his heart out.
I'm going to cut you open, put his heart into you.
Like what?
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
And that wouldn't have even worked because your body would have rejected it back then because they didn't have the proper drugs that allowed people to accept other people's organs and suppress your immune system.
So your immune system doesn't reject the organ.
rick strassman
Yeah.
I never was in a heart transplant operating theater.
You know, once in an emergency room, actually, I was able to, you know, crack somebody's chest open and work on their heart, you know, kind of give it the massage.
Well, the person, you know, was quite sick.
He was dying.
And we tried everything.
You know, like everything.
You know, like we used a defibrillator.
We put some epinephrine in a big syringe, put it through his chest, into his heart.
Didn't help.
And, you know, the last thing that we could do was do open heart massage.
joe rogan
Wow.
rick strassman
Yeah, open chest massage.
unidentified
Yo!
rick strassman
It was crazy.
It was crazy.
Yeah, and there were a bunch of a number of students around, and we each took turns squeezing it.
It was pretty...
joe rogan
Did the guy last after that?
rick strassman
No.
By the time you open up somebody's chest and start squeezing their heart with your hands, yeah, it's kind of...
joe rogan
Did he make it through that day, or how long did he live for?
rick strassman
No, he never woke up.
Oh, Jesus.
You know, medical training is a pretty interesting experience.
You know, the kinds of things that you learn to do to the human body and the kinds of things that people let you do to them because you're a physician.
It's a very interesting development of a role.
For example, when we first started working in the hospitals, there's a dress code.
This was 1976 or so.
There were lots of hippies in my class, and the dress code was to wear a tie.
And the hippies were saying, oh, forget ties.
And the teacher said, think what your mother would want to see her doctor wearing.
And everybody got all kind of guilt-ridden and, oh yeah, okay, our mom would like to see us wear a tie.
You work into a role.
How you look and how you talk and how you carry yourself.
It's a very interesting conditioning, social conditioning.
joe rogan
And you have an extreme position of authority.
rick strassman
Yeah, I mean, you could ask people to do things that nobody else would ask them and that they wouldn't even entertain if anybody else had asked them.
Yeah, it's a very privileged position.
It's very cool if you know what you're doing and you don't let it go to your head, but yeah, it's a unique apprenticeship.
joe rogan
Yeah, and they can do some wild things today.
I mean, I'm living proof of it.
I've had three knee operations, two knee reconstructions.
rick strassman
Yeah, well, a couple of years ago when I was out here for the first time, you were having some bleeding into your knee as I remember.
joe rogan
Bleeding.
Swelling?
rick strassman
Some bad swelling, at least.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Maybe they withdrew some blood from that joint?
joe rogan
Oh, you know what it was probably?
I had probably had what's called Regenikine.
So, Regenikine is when they take your blood out, and it's like platelet-rich plasma, but they spin it in this centrifuge, and it creates this yellow liquid, which is like a super potent anti-inflammatory, and then they had injected it into my knees.
rick strassman
Okay.
joe rogan
Yeah, it really helps heal things.
I had it done on my back.
I had it done on my knees.
It's amazing stuff.
rick strassman
Yeah, so you've gotten a bunch of knee surgery, huh?
joe rogan
Yes.
My knees are pretty beat up.
My back's pretty beat up, and my knees are pretty beat up.
rick strassman
That's from your martial arts stuff?
joe rogan
Yeah, most of it, yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah, well, do you have a knee replacement?
joe rogan
No, no, I don't need that.
No, it's not that bad.
Not nearly as bad, but quite a few people I know have one.
My friend Matt got one.
He's a former UFC welterweight champion, Matt Serra.
He's younger than me.
He has a knee replacement.
My friend Michael Bisping, he was a former UFC middleweight champion.
He has both of his knees replaced.
He has two artificial knees.
rick strassman
Yeah, and they're doing okay with their new knees.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean better, right?
Like he was in severe, they were in severe pain to the point where they just couldn't take it anymore.
And they can do some pretty amazing things with resurfacing of the knees now.
You know, these titanium heads, have you seen them?
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Pretty incredible.
They lop off the end of your knee, screw in this new one, and it just functions.
My feeling, the fear I have though, my fear, is that it's only good for like 20 years or so.
And then what do you got to do?
You got to go back in there and lop off it again and put a new one in?
rick strassman
Yeah, well, they may have some new development.
joe rogan
That's what you would hope so.
You would hope so.
But, I mean, you're banking on that.
You're, like, essentially making a bet that, okay, you can chop off the end of my knee and in 20 years they're going to have some new thing.
The thing that would give me pause today, and again, I'm not giving medical advice, but if today biologics are coming so far that they're able to regenerate both meniscus tissue and also cartilage, so they can do that now.
And there was a study in Australia where they did that recently, and I think there's something else going on somewhere in the United States.
Where they're showing promise in that regard.
So I think if people could just hang in there for a little longer, according to my friend Brigham, who owns Ways to Well, which is a stem cell clinic out here, he is convinced that these kind of Super invasive surgeries are going to be a thing of the past.
They're going to be able to regrow tissue and literally fix knee problems, back problems, things along those lines.
rick strassman
Neck problems.
joe rogan
Neck problems.
They're already doing a lot of that in Mexico.
Where there's places like the CPI, the Cellular Performance Institute.
I had a friend of mine, Shane Dorian, he's a big wave surfer.
You can imagine it's a pounding thing in your back and crushed by a 50-foot wave.
And he had it done to his spine where they go into your discs and they inject stem cells into each individual disc.
They actually put you under.
And you're supposed to be real relaxed for the next six weeks.
No heavy exercise at all.
You just kind of go walking.
And after a while, it starts to kick in and now he has no back pain anymore.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Is he back surfing?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Stem cells.
Well, you know, psychedelics affect the formation of stem cells into new neurons.
That's called neurogenesis.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Psilocybin in particular, right?
rick strassman
Psilocybin, ketamine, DMT. Doesn't lion's mane do that as well, though?
joe rogan
Like non-psychoactive mushrooms?
rick strassman
I don't know.
joe rogan
See if lion's mane creates neurogenesis.
I think it does.
rick strassman
Yeah, Paul Stamets would know.
joe rogan
I think that's one of the things that Paul Stamets talked about was doing it in a stack, like doing psilocybin along with, yeah, now exactly what it was.
Lion's mane mushrooms can promote neurogenesis and enhance memory.
Yeah, I take that stuff.
I take lion's mane all the time.
And I always wonder how shit would my memory be if I didn't take it.
rick strassman
Yeah.
When I was recovering, I spoke to Paul and said, help me.
I need help.
And he said, lion's mane.
joe rogan
He gave me that giant mushroom, that thing on the desk over there.
That's what that is.
That big log-looking thing.
rick strassman
Oh, that's a mushroom?
joe rogan
That's a mushroom.
It's a huge one.
rick strassman
I was wondering what that was.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a mushroom.
That's Paul Stamets who brought me a mushroom.
rick strassman
Yeah, nice.
joe rogan
Yeah.
He's a fascinating character.
rick strassman
Yeah, I like Paul.
joe rogan
Great guy.
rick strassman
Yeah, really great guy.
joe rogan
I think he just got something replaced.
Like a hip.
A hip or a knee.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Something along those lines.
rick strassman
Well, you know, my friends that have had knee replacements, they're out skiing, they're playing golf.
Yeah, they've really had a miraculous turnaround.
joe rogan
Yeah, you can do amazing things now.
It's incredible.
I just think that we're real close to not needing a fake one.
Real close to being able to generate new ones.
rick strassman
Well, you know, the organ I would like to replace with my eyes.
I've been, like as a kid, I've been nearsighted and nearsighted and more nearsighted.
So I would love to have artificial eyes.
If they worked, obviously.
joe rogan
Well, that's what we were talking about earlier, that they're going to be able to do that someday.
rick strassman
Yeah, I'd be happy with that.
I might wait around as long as I can to get some...
Like, I can see pretty well if the environment is brightly lit.
But if it gets dark or dim, it becomes difficult.
joe rogan
Dude, you're going to be able to see through walls.
See if you can find that article about potential...
Because it's not just Neuralink.
There's a few other competing companies that are doing very similar things.
And one of them are very confident they're going to be able to restore sight.
rick strassman
In how many years?
joe rogan
I don't know.
And then on top of that, the possibility is enhanced vision.
And that's what we're talking about.
Like being able to see warm things.
jamie vernon
Cold blinds?
joe rogan
Blindsight device being developed to restore vision and people have lost their sight.
No, there was one that was saying you're going to be able to have infrared, night vision, a bunch of different possibilities on top of the fact they're going to be able to restore sight that eventually...
I don't know how you'd Google this.
That wasn't just restoring memory, excuse me, restoring vision, but enhanced vision.
And that it's going to be far...
I think they're promising vision far greater than what human beings are personally capable of.
jamie vernon
Blindsight enables superhuman vision beyond natural limits like infrared, becomes cognitive process, not just biological.
rick strassman
Yeah, that's what blindsight is.
joe rogan
Okay, so that is the same Neuralink thing?
And then on top of that, you're going to be able to like zoom out.
So, you know, like you ever take like a Samsung phone, they have a 100x zoom, and you can just zoom in on something like way in the distance, like, wow, that's crazy.
You can really zoom in on stuff.
You're going to be able to do that with your eyeballs.
rick strassman
Yeah.
A feature enhancement, too.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, you can be able to see people look way better than they really look.
Just put a filter on.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Everybody's beautiful.
rick strassman
Yeah.
jamie vernon
That's what Elon said on a tweet about it.
joe rogan
Yeah, so there it is.
Musk explained, the blind sight device for Neuralink will enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see.
Provided the visual cortex is intact, it will even enable those who have been blind from birth to see for the first time.
Here's the part that truly expands the horizons of what we think visions can be.
At first, the vision will be low resolution, like Atari graphics, but eventually it has the potential to be better than natural vision and enable you to see in infrared, ultra-violent, or even radar wavelengths, like Geordi LaForge.
Who's Geordi LaForge?
jamie vernon
Star Trek.
unidentified
Oh.
rick strassman
Well, I mean, that'd be a lot of information, wouldn't it?
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
So what would you do with it all?
joe rogan
Depends on what you're trying to do, you know?
If you're trying to find people hiding in the woods, you could be able to see them.
rick strassman
Yeah, or even become a philosopher.
I mean, with those enhanced processes, I mean, you could kind of direct it in any way that you'd like.
joe rogan
Do you think that enhancing the human body like this is what the future of humanity holds?
rick strassman
I think it's a stage we'll go through.
joe rogan
Yeah?
rick strassman
Yeah.
I'm not sure how far along it'll take us.
It may just end in our demise.
But I think it's a stage that we obviously are passing into now.
joe rogan
Some people think that's the mark of the beast from the Bible.
You know, for the people who get the chip.
rick strassman
The mark of the beast.
Isn't that on the forehead?
joe rogan
Maybe that's the best spot for it.
rick strassman
666 is the mark of the beast.
joe rogan
Right.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
But isn't that like open to interpretation?
Like what does it say in the—you've read the original one.
What is the mark of the beast in the Hebrew Bible, the ancient?
rick strassman
Yeah, that's the Christian Bible.
That's the book of Revelation.
That's the New Testament, which I have not read amazingly enough.
joe rogan
How come?
rick strassman
Well, I'm pretty busy.
joe rogan
Too busy learning ancient Hebrew.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
I have enough to study in the Hebrew Bible.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, if you were going to prophesize about the end of humanity, you'd probably prophesize about someone accepting some sort of a chip in their brain and everybody being forced to do it, some matrix-type situation.
I could see why people wouldn't see.
It might be just the inevitable transition from biological to cyborg that we're probably going to have to go through anyway.
rick strassman
Well, the end of the world will, at least according to certain traditions, is heralded by the Antichrist.
And the Antichrist is the master of the lie.
So I think it's interesting to kind of use that perspective as a way of seeing where the future is heading.
joe rogan
So the Antichrist is mass media?
rick strassman
It's the master of the lie.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Mass media is the master of the lie.
Corporate media is the antichrist.
Corporate media leads us into wars, justifies all kinds of crazy things that we do.
We take over foreign governments and install our own puppet dictators and have everybody convinced that it's a good thing.
rick strassman
Well, the concept of the Antichrist is very old, you know, 2,000 years.
Like, you have Christ, you've got the Antichrist.
So, you know, there's a God and there's a, you know, demiurge.
Yeah, so it's a notion that has carried a lot of weight for a long time.
Yeah, yeah, so you think that the media is the Antichrist?
joe rogan
Well, I think...
rick strassman
Or, you know, could be seen as...
joe rogan
Well, you could see corporations as being in sort of a demonic state.
So if you have an obligation to your shareholders to consistently provide higher and higher profits every quarter, and in order to do that, you have to do things that will cost people lives and destroy people's lives.
Like, for instance, the Sackler family that got everybody hooked on opioids.
Is that not demonic?
That seems very demonic.
And if I was under the throes of its spell, if I had gotten caught up in opioids, it would be very similar to being possessed by demons, having your life ruined by devils.
Very similar, at least in result, right?
Especially if you wind up committing crimes because you want to get your drugs, you wind up in jail, your life is over, maybe you destroyed other people's lives.
It's very demonic in that way, like in the result, in the end result.
The end result is evil.
rick strassman
Well, you know, look at the opium wars in China.
You know, the British imported opium and there was a huge opium addiction problem in China.
And yeah, it was seen as a demonic scourge, you know, like a diabolical affliction.
joe rogan
And in its result, it is demonic.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
It's just, we're like hung up on pitchfork, fork tail, horns, demon, you know, but in action.
It's clearly, demonstrably demonic.
rick strassman
Well, demonic in what way?
joe rogan
Okay.
If you can lie about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, and you can justify an invasion of Iraq based on these clear lies, and then through that invasion, 500,000 children starve to death because of embargoes, countless people are killed that didn't have to be killed.
The loss of at least a million lives over the course of the entire war and then the starving people afterwards?
That's demonic, isn't it, for those people?
rick strassman
Well, does that mean that you believe in the devil or Satan?
joe rogan
I don't know what I believe in and what I don't believe in because I haven't experienced it.
Maybe if I experienced Satan, I'd be like, wow, Satan's real.
But you're allowed to believe in God.
But as soon as you start saying you believe in the devil, people look at you sideways.
You could be the president and you can say, God bless our troops.
Nobody bats an eye.
But if you say, the problem with America is the devil, and we will find the devil and we will root him out of our world, and that's what we're going to spend all your tax dollars on now.
rick strassman
Yeah, I mean, like you could...
joe rogan
I think good and evil are real things.
rick strassman
You can pray for God to bless their troops and you could pray for protection from Satan's influence on the troops if you were able to put the two like on...
joe rogan
Right, as soon as you bring up Satan publicly, you lose all the secular people.
Right.
You can praise God and people go, oh, it's in the fucking Pledge of Allegiance.
It's normal.
rick strassman
Whatever, yeah.
joe rogan
But it wasn't even until, what was it, like Teddy Roosevelt?
Like, who put Pledge of Allegiance in?
It was when we were battling the communists.
And that's when God got put into the Pledge of Allegiance.
rick strassman
Well, you believe in good and evil.
Like I think what occurs is the more people do good, the stronger the force of good is.
And the more that do evil, the stronger the force of evil is.
joe rogan
And then you have the Holocaust.
rick strassman
Well, you know, like, you know, how do you perceive that force?
Is it just energy?
Or do you anthropomorphize it into, like, a being that you can, you know, recognize and think about?
joe rogan
Right.
But there's kind of no denying, at least from a recognizable...
If you had to, like, look...
How do you quantify it?
How do you measure it?
There's no denying that evil takes place.
You know?
Like, the...
You can come up with any number of massacres throughout history and you say that's an evil act.
rick strassman
There's no question.
joe rogan
Right.
So evil is a thing that's real.
rick strassman
If there's good, there's evil.
joe rogan
Right.
And then there have been many, many things that people have done.
You're like, wow, good exists in the world.
There is still good.
So we know both those things are real things.
We just don't know what's the root of them all and are there really angels and demons or are those the scapegoats for this bizarre dance of good and evil that just exists in the world?
rick strassman
Well, if it weren't for Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, there wouldn't be any perception of good and evil.
It would just be true or false.
Which is the reason that Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden.
Because in the beginning, they were living in a world of either truth or falsehood.
joe rogan
You're right.
rick strassman
And after eating the fruit of the difference between good and evil, they became opinionated.
Oh, that's good.
I like it.
That's bad.
I don't like it.
But the issue of true or false god became muddled.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
And they no longer were fit inhabitants of the Garden of Eden, of Paradise.
unidentified
What's your take on Lilith?
rick strassman
Yeah, Lilith.
Well, there's no mention of her in the Bible, per se, but there's a lot of mention of her in the rabbinic literature that sprung up after the Bible.
Yeah, the story is that I think after Cain killed Abel...
Was it after that?
No, I think it was after Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden that they stopped having sex.
So Adam then was sleeping with Lilith and they spawned innumerable demons as a result of their relationship.
And after a while Adam and Eve reconciled and they got the things together again.
Yeah, but Lilith plays a role in the understanding of evil in the world, like it's the result of the spawn of Lilith.
unidentified
What do you think Lilith was originally, if it was a thing?
rick strassman
Yeah, I don't know.
Well, that's called Midrash.
It's the explication of the Bible by the rabbis.
So it's what's called extra-biblical.
And I've only looked into extra-biblical stuff to a certain extent.
joe rogan
What's the source of that stuff?
rick strassman
The imagination.
And I think the surrounding environment, societies, culture, influenced by the Greeks, the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Hittites.
There's a lot of accumulation of other cultures onto...
Interpreting the stories that occur in the text.
A lot of fanciful things.
Entertaining things like, for example, Lilith is the source of demonic entities out there.
joe rogan
Mmm.
Yeah, I found out about Lilith like six months ago.
rick strassman
Oh, really?
joe rogan
Yeah, I never even heard about it.
Do you remember when we found out about Lilith?
Somebody brought it up on a show, right?
rick strassman
Yeah, who brought it up, I'm wondering.
joe rogan
I don't remember, but I was like, what?
Who's Lilith?
rick strassman
Yeah, was it Jordan Peterson?
joe rogan
It could have been.
rick strassman
Yeah, because he's a keen student of the Bible.
joe rogan
Yes, very possibly.
I do not remember, though.
But I remember thinking, like, wow.
And then the original story.
So when you're talking about the biblical translations of the Adam and Eve story that we're all accustomed to, It's all a watered-down, sort of, or a strange translated version of the ancient Hebrew, but you've read the actual ancient Hebrew version of it.
What did you get out of it?
Like, what did you...
rick strassman
Well, you know, most of the translations of the Hebrew Bible are quite good.
Like, you know, the King James Version.
Very accurate.
Yeah, it's a bit stilted.
joe rogan
Is anything missing in the translation from when you read it in ancient Hebrew, or do you think it's pretty clear?
rick strassman
It's fairly one-to-one correspondence between the Hebrew words and the English translation.
Certain things are interpreted through a Christian lens because the Christians wrote the King James Bible translation.
unidentified
Right.
rick strassman
Yeah.
But the words and the grammar and the narratives, they're pretty much accurate.
They spent a lot of time working on painstaking translations.
So there was a responsibility to do it accurately.
joe rogan
Imagine that story, trying to pass that one down for a thousand years.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, yeah, so there was only two people, and then there was an apple.
rick strassman
Right.
joe rogan
And a snake talked Eve into eating that apple, and everything got fucked.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
It's a very strange story.
joe rogan
It's a very strange story.
What do you think it really was all about?
rick strassman
I think there were two people named Adam and Eve.
For real?
As if they were real.
joe rogan
What do you mean by that?
rick strassman
Well, if you imagine that there was an Adam and Eve and you visualize the garden they were in and the snake and their interactions, there you have it.
joe rogan
So you think the biblical interpretation is a literal recalling of actual events that took place?
rick strassman
No.
joe rogan
No.
rick strassman
I don't think that.
Well, you know, it's like if you smoke DMT and you enter into this world, It's true.
It's overwhelmingly convincing.
It's got its own laws, its own system.
Things are regular, like certain things happen, certain interactions take place.
Yeah, and you're there.
You're convinced it's real and you interact with it to the best of your ability.
So I think that's the case with the narratives in the text.
It isn't a matter of interpreting what they mean as much as understanding what happened.
joe rogan
Boy, that's obscure.
So it's not interpreting what they mean, but understanding what happened.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Like, you know, what did the snake say to Eve?
joe rogan
So a snake really talked to Eve, though.
rick strassman
It was as if a snake talked to Eve.
joe rogan
As if.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
So perhaps...
A psychedelic experience?
Perhaps an altered state of consciousness?
rick strassman
No, I think it was a case of a woman standing near a tree and a snake coming up to her and saying certain things and they have a conversation.
joe rogan
For real, for real.
rick strassman
As if it were real.
Well, you know, the stories have been told so many times.
joe rogan
Right.
That's the problem.
rick strassman
And, you know, they seem...
Well, if you...
joe rogan
Seems like they're blaming everything on Eve, too, which is like a little suspect.
I like to hear her start of it.
rick strassman
Well, the one who got punished without even having a chance to explain himself was the snake.
So God asks Adam what happened, and he asks Eve what happened, and he just lays it on the snake.
joe rogan
Right.
And the snake's like, I didn't tell her anything.
I can't even talk.
This lady wanted to eat that apple.
She blamed me.
rick strassman
Well, back then, snakes could talk.
Or in that world, snakes talk.
joe rogan
How so?
rick strassman
Well, you know, they were the wisest of all the animals in the garden.
So, you know, they could speak.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
But you speak of these things as if, like we're talking about when you go to the zoo, the monkeys swing from the vines.
It's normal.
Snakes talk.
rick strassman
Well, it's a bit of a paradox.
unidentified
Let me ask you this.
rick strassman
So if you treat those stories as if they were real...
You're opening yourself up to this universe of Adam and Eve were in the garden.
Then they had Cain and Abel.
Cain killed Abel.
Then Cain had children.
And his children begot the 17 nations.
And then there was a flood because mankind was bad.
Noah and his family survived.
They all spoke one language afterwards.
There was a tower.
There's Nimrod, there's Abraham, there's Isaac and Jacob.
So it's this world which seems to be quite coherent, quite consistent.
It all ties together.
It's quite consistent from book to book, from narrative to narrative.
It is a different way of looking at the Bible.
It isn't dogma, like you have to do this or you have to do that.
Or it isn't like a Jungian archetype or a psychodynamic wish fulfillment.
It's this world that is articulated, spelled out in a very ancient, very influential text.
joe rogan
So...
Is it also possible that something completely different took place, but that over time and over a oral tradition of who knows how many hundreds of years before they actually wrote it down and then writing it down, you're getting a version of the actual event that's very different than what really took place, but you think about it like the version in the scripture.
And if you think about it in the version of the Scripture, are you thinking about it like as if this was an event as recorded, or are you thinking this is a representation of an archetype or some sort of moment in human history that they're trying to or are you thinking this is a representation of an archetype or some sort Well, if you consider— If that makes sense.
rick strassman
Well, if you consider the text to be prophetically received, Prophecy is communication between the divine and man, and the text was prophetically received.
In fact, Philo of Alexandria, one of Terence McKenna's heroes, used to say the most accurate historians were the prophets, because they heard it directly from the initiator of the event, the witness of the event, the one who could understand the event in the huge context.
You know, so it's a prophetically received text, which means it contains information received from a spiritual sort of level, which you would think is a universal field of sorts.
joe rogan
How much have you ever paid attention, if at all, to any of that ancient Sumerian stuff, like the Anunnaki?
rick strassman
Some.
Some.
Yeah, I watched this really great documentary a few years back.
Yeah, but I wouldn't consider myself as knowing much about it.
joe rogan
Right.
That, to me, is one of the weirder origin stories.
rick strassman
Yeah, so what is that origin story?
On my recall, it's quite fascinating, but not the details.
joe rogan
Well, there's multiple versions of it.
First of all, the fantastic story is told by Zechariah Sitchin.
So Zechariah Sitchin, who wrote The Twelfth Planet, and he wrote several other books, he was a biblical scholar and a linguist, and he spent a lot of time studying the ancient Sumerian text, the cuneiform.
And what he believes is that it tells a story of an ancient relationship between a race of beings on a far distant planet that's in an elliptical orbit, and it comes near Earth every 3,600 years, and that they had engineered human beings out and that they had engineered human beings out of lower primates.
They had, like, accelerated our evolution, and that all of what we know about the cosmos, all of what we know about...
They have these detailed...
I don't see the ancient tablets that have a detailed map of the solar system from 6,000 years ago.
rick strassman
Right, okay.
joe rogan
The sun in the center and all the moon.
And they have these really enormous beings.
And these enormous beings were supposed to be these things called the Anunnaki.
And the literal translation is, those from heaven to earth came.
It's one of the weirder, like if you love a great science fiction version of the origin story of humans, it's the most fun one.
rick strassman
Yeah, it brings to mind, you know, the sons of God, you know, the B'nai Elohim, which occurred in the story of the flood and Noah.
joe rogan
The Nephilim, too.
rick strassman
Yeah, the Nephilim, the Rephaim, they were huge.
joe rogan
They were giants.
Yeah.
rick strassman
Men of renown.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
And they intermarried or they had, you know, sex with the daughters of man.
And from them came a race.
Yeah, you know, so that story is interpreted or perceived, you know, through the lens of the Hebrew Bible, too.
joe rogan
Really?
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, there are, you know, that is a story in the text, you know, before the flood, is, you know, the B'nai Elohim, you know, come down to earth, they have intercourse with You know, the daughters of man.
And out of those relationships comes this race of giants.
joe rogan
That's the most fun one.
rick strassman
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Isn't it?
rick strassman
Well, they all got swept away in the flood.
So that's an interesting turn of events.
joe rogan
Well, if you interpret the flood as the Younger Dryas impact theory, which created the flood, which lines up.
rick strassman
Right.
unidentified
Right.
rick strassman
That does line up.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It lines up time-wise.
It lines up with how it would go down.
Yeah.
Just no evidence of giants.
That's the only thing we're missing.
rick strassman
If they found some giants, Well, in the meantime, you can assume that the giants were real and understand their origin, what they were like, what they did, why they did it, what the results were.
joe rogan
Yeah, the bizarre thing is they've isolated this area outside of the Kuiper Belt where they believe there's a large planetary body.
That might be multiple times larger than Earth that exists out there right where you would imagine that this thing is.
If there really is some sort of a planet that comes close to us with these super advanced beings.
rick strassman
Yeah, I think I've heard of that actually.
joe rogan
It gets fun.
Those get fun.
Those I put away rational thought just to pay attention to that stuff.
rick strassman
Well, and if it were true, then what?
joe rogan
Well, if it were true, that sort of is what everyone's seeing when they're seeing UFOs and UAPs.
They're probably visiting or they probably are always here.
They're probably watching to make sure we don't blow ourselves up and probably assisting us on our journey of evolving past this primitive, violent state that we currently find ourselves in.
rick strassman
One would hope.
joe rogan
One would hope.
rick strassman
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rick strassman
Or they could be just, you know, doing the opposite.
They may be stirring up trouble.
joe rogan
Maybe.
Maybe they realize that people need trouble in order to get things done, in order to join the Galactic Federation.
We have to figure out a way to get off the planet.
The best way to get off the planet is to develop superior weapons.
rick strassman
Yeah.
You know, kind of withdraw from the brink of the precipice.
Right.
You know, that's the story of humanity, basically, isn't it?
joe rogan
Yeah, it is.
Well, that's what's interesting about origin stories, right?
And that's what's interesting about the biblical texts is that there are these stories about things that have gone horribly wrong and influences different things that happened to humanity and different cataclysms and disasters and These stories are shared through different cultures, which is really interesting.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, there's a flood story.
It's real similar.
rick strassman
Most of the Middle East has got a flood story, an origin story.
joe rogan
It just makes you wonder.
rick strassman
Well, it makes you wonder if it's true.
So that's why I think studying one particular tradition in great detail can kind of help you resonate with ones that are more universal.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, that one is so common, which is really interesting when you see the Younger Dryas Impact Theory evidence.
Like, of course, 11,000 plus years ago, this is probably what happened.
The story gets passed around forever and ever and everyone sort of remembers it.
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, do you like Graham's documentaries?
joe rogan
Yeah, I do.
rick strassman
Yeah, the Netflix ones.
joe rogan
They're fascinating.
I don't like all the anger that comes out of it, all the people that get mad at him and the disparaging remarks and how some archaeologists have severely overreacted to it as if it's some horrific threat.
But it's fascinating, just the raw data.
About the size of these stones, their alignment with constellations, the fact that these things have been there for at least 4,500 years, some of them.
And some of them even further than that when you get to like Gobekli Tepe.
To me it's just incredible to imagine people living 11,000 years ago.
Like what is life like?
What is that experience like?
What is it like talking to people?
rick strassman
Yeah.
Well, those footprints around, you know, white sands are super cool.
Yeah, that's not far from where I live.
joe rogan
That's 22,000 years.
rick strassman
Yeah, you know, kids running around in the mud.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's crazy.
rick strassman
Yeah, it's very interesting.
joe rogan
Altered States.
This is your book.
rick strassman
New book came out.
Well, it's going to be coming out tomorrow.
Oh, and I took your advice and I narrated the audio.
Yes!
joe rogan
Beautiful.
I'm so happy when people do that.
December 10th, My Altered States.
And it is going to be available everywhere?
rick strassman
Yeah.
Inner Traditions publishes it.
Yeah, it's on all the usual resources.
joe rogan
And you can go to rickstrassman.com and you can see this and everything else.
Oh, and you can pre-order it.
rick strassman
You can order it for me.
I will inscribe it and I will sign it.
joe rogan
Oh, beautiful.
Oh, that's awesome.
That's very cool.
That's only 20 bucks.
All right, man.
rick strassman
Yeah, the book is illustrated as well.
There's some pretty funny stories in there, and each of them has got at least one illustration.
joe rogan
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
Oh, look at that.
Who drew it?
rick strassman
A friend from Birmingham, Alabama named Marilee Chalice.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
That's a crazy one.
rick strassman
There's one called Steak on Acid.
You ever eat steak on acid?
joe rogan
No, I have not.
This is great.
These are cool drawings.
rick strassman
They're great drawings, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, that's awesome.
Rick, thank you so much.
It's always great to see you.
rick strassman
Thanks, Joe.
joe rogan
I really enjoyed it.
unidentified
It was a lot of fun.
All right.
Go buy the book, folks.
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