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July 10, 2025 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:24:25
Joe Rogan Experience #2348 - Lukas Nelson
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joe rogan
57:52
l
lukas nelson
01:15:09
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jamie vernon
00:38
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
The Joe Rogan experience.
jamie vernon
Join my day, Joe Rogan Podcast my night!
joe rogan
What up?
Lucas, what's up?
Good to talk to you, man.
Thanks for being here.
I gotta tell you, you know, when I heard Willie Nelson's kid plays music, there's a thing that you always do, and I have to admit it, you do it like when the son of a great man, you always assume, well, he's probably mediocre.
You know what I mean?
And then you performed at McConaughey's that charity function thing, and you fucking killed it, man.
You blew me away.
It was incredible.
And I was like, wow.
It was really cool to see, man.
It was really exciting.
lukas nelson
It was really fun.
joe rogan
You were the highlight of the night, man.
You really were.
lukas nelson
It's moments like those where I started to gain confidence.
unidentified
You know, I'd have, over the years, I'd go out and play.
lukas nelson
I'd play my songs that I've written.
unidentified
And I'd get crowds that would do that.
And so that gave me the confidence to keep going.
lukas nelson
And I first started playing music in order to get closer to my father.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
lukas nelson
You know what I mean?
So he would be gone all the time.
joe rogan
Right.
lukas nelson
And I'd be missing him.
And so in order to get close to him, I figured I needed to speak the same musical language.
And so I learned Young, and I wrote a song, Young, that's on the new album, actually, I got it.
It's called You Were It.
It's the first song I ever wrote when I was 11.
And my dad loved it so much that he covered it at the time, and he put it out on his album back in 2004 called It Always Will Be.
The album was called It Always Will Be.
And that gave me the confidence at a young age.
Chris Christofferson came up to me and he's like, man, you don't have a choice but to be a songwriter.
unidentified
And so I had all this inspiration at a young age.
lukas nelson
Kind of like an athlete at a certain point.
You kind of have to look at like, oh, well, if I have a talent at this, I have connections in the industry, I need to work like I was going to go to the Olympics on this because it's something that I can do that will make it so that I never have to rely on my family or my father for anything.
joe rogan
Right.
lukas nelson
You know, my whole goal in life is to discover who I am as an individual.
joe rogan
Is that a part of the difficulty of growing up with an incredibly famous father?
lukas nelson
I think the, you know, Viktor Frankl has a book, a very famous book called Man's Search for Meaning.
And it's about Auschwitz, and he was an Auschwitz survivor, and he wrote about what was the common denominator in terms of people who persevered and survived in these camps.
unidentified
And dignity and meaning were the common denominators generally.
lukas nelson
And so finding what you mean in this life to yourself, it doesn't have to mean anything to anyone else.
And I think that's where, for me, I've lived my whole life trying to discover who I meant to myself so that at the moment of my death, I can look back and say, I did something that I enjoyed, that was meaningful, that gave me a sense of purpose.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's both a blessing and a burden to being the child of someone who's incredibly famous at a thing that you're trying to do.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
You know, like there's a lot of sons of athletes, for instance, that live in their father's shadow, and very few of them ever rise to the level that their father was at.
unidentified
Sure.
I think for me, I was never trying to be as great as him.
lukas nelson
I was only trying to be close to him.
Because more than anything, my father's a great human being.
He's a well-rounded, kind, empathetic human.
And I'm truly grateful to be his and my mother's son.
You know, because I have a good family.
I'm lucky.
That's awesome.
I have a good parent.
So what I was trying to do was just be closer to him.
And as a little kid, the best thing my mom ever did was when I was like earlier, I was probably five or six years old.
unidentified
And my brother had just passed away not too long before this, actually.
And I would cry every time my dad would leave, you know.
lukas nelson
And my mom sat me down one time and said, it tears him apart when you cry like this because he doesn't want to leave.
He's going out there.
He's making people happy.
He's giving people joy.
And he's doing what he came here on this earth to do.
And he's supporting this family.
And so the support that my mother had for him, at that moment, I never cried again.
I was able to let go of that idea and then just from that point on, work towards creating what would make me happy in my life and give me the same joy and then be able to take care of a family, hopefully.
You know, one of my greatest sources of pride is that I haven't had to ask my parents for anything.
I bought my own house.
I went and did Starsborn and I got, you know, I mean, I've been able to make myself a living and I think that makes my parents proud.
It makes my dad proud.
And that's what I've always wanted to do.
unidentified
That's been my whole life is wanting to make them proud.
joe rogan
That's awesome.
Well, it's a great motivation, you know, for sure, especially when you have great parents that try to get a lot of people.
lukas nelson
I'm lucky in that way.
You know, I know a lot of people who have broken homes and grew up, and even I caught dad at a good time.
I mean, my dad was 55 or so when he had me, you know, and so he had already been through a lot of his demons and gotten through them and faced them, you know, and was still going through them at the time that I was born.
But he had come out of, you know, a life of habit and sort of formed the ones that would take him at that point to where he is now at 92 years old.
And so I got a good version of dad, you know, who had grown since.
unidentified
And so, man, I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
lukas nelson
I feel like I was able to be exposed to a lot of great music, a lot of great mentors, you know, in my life.
And I'm also lucky that I, at a young age, I'm grateful to my younger child, to myself as a young child for having the wisdom to say, all right, work hard now, forget about parties, forget about hanging out,
work hard eight hours, ten hours a day, practice your guitar, write all the time, sing all the time, so that when you get to a certain point in life, you'll have something to show for it, you know, something that you can leave behind that's yours.
joe rogan
Yeah.
That's awesome, man.
You know, that's what most people in this life want.
They want a purpose.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, they want something that means something both to them and to other people.
lukas nelson
Exactly.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's hard to find.
lukas nelson
It's hard to find a purpose.
You know, that is something that I've always had growing up, and I think it's because I was, you know, again, I'm grateful to that younger kid.
unidentified
Sometimes I feel like he's wiser than I am now.
lukas nelson
You know, that younger self is like almost, you know, and now that I'm sober, I mean, I quit smoking weed.
I quit drinking.
joe rogan
When did you do all that?
lukas nelson
Really around the pandemic.
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's usually when a lot of people started.
lukas nelson
Yeah, it went the opposite way.
I started meditating twice a day.
The only thing I'll do now is mushrooms every once in a while to check in with myself and just kind of make sure that I'm like mushrooms is like taking a nice good hose to your soul and just kind of like you know clean out all the bullshit.
Clean out all the bullshit.
unidentified
Yeah.
I feel like they should be legal.
lukas nelson
Yeah, 100%.
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
If I could talk Trump into one thing, that might be the one thing.
I had this conversation with Paul Stamitz the other day.
lukas nelson
I love Paul Stamitz.
joe rogan
He's amazing.
lukas nelson
Yeah, he's great.
unidentified
I just saw him at the Dead Show, the Sphere Show.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Oh, that's cool.
That's cool.
lukas nelson
Have you been to his place?
He invited me to his place up there.
It's supposed to be amazing.
joe rogan
I was just reading an email from him today inviting me to his place.
lukas nelson
That's awesome.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's a prepper.
He's ready for the apocalypse.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
unidentified
Well, it might be a good idea.
joe rogan
I mean, maybe.
I don't know.
I think we're going to be okay.
lukas nelson
I do, too.
joe rogan
I do.
I mean, I think the feeling that we might not be okay, though, is a great motivator.
lukas nelson
We should always be checking in with ourselves and asking ourselves, are we going too far to certain extremes?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, that was the part of the conversation that we had.
You know, we're like, is there a thing that could really help the world?
And it sounds so cliche and hippie, especially someone who's never done mushrooms.
But I think that might be the thing.
You know, even if it's just like small doses, just a little something to alleviate anxiety, bring people closer together, make them understand that there's more to life than conflict and bullshit.
And most of your conflict is bullshit.
Most of it is nonsense.
Most of it's unnecessary.
lukas nelson
Yeah, my dad always says 99% of the things you worry about never come true.
You know, and it's just a matter of, yeah, I mean, it is sort of a cliche.
I read The Power of Now, which is Ecart Tole, when I was like 13.
I went to school next to a Buddhist temple.
And so I'd grew up with my dad teaching me the Lord's Prayer that I'd say every night.
And then I'd go to this Buddhist temple and hang with these monks.
unidentified
Really?
lukas nelson
Yeah, yeah.
Where I was in Maui.
I grew up part-time in Austin.
I was born in Austin.
I was in Maui.
There was a Buddhist temple in a Buddhist temple right near where I was going to school at the time.
unidentified
So after school every day, I'd sit with these monks.
lukas nelson
And just the vibe of that is powerful, the chanting, the energy around that.
The presence, though, that they have, their whole goal, obviously, is to just be purely present.
And so while that sounds like a cliche, I truly believe that that's an important thing, to let go of the battle of positive and negative, that in the mental space, that's all that exists, is duality.
joe rogan
Well, to find a true path, you have to avoid being pushed and pulled in a bunch of directions that are totally unnecessary.
And sometimes you get sort of preoccupied or captivated by the push and the pull of bullshit.
lukas nelson
Well, and there is a manipulation that happens on purpose.
I have a song called Turn Off the News and Build a Garden.
Did you ever hear that song?
joe rogan
No, I haven't heard that one.
lukas nelson
You want me to play it for you?
joe rogan
Fuck yeah, yeah, play it.
lukas nelson
This is a song called Turn Off the News and Build a Garden.
And I wrote it because...
Yeah, and I just, I was just, the news cycle, I mean, there's a difference between being informed and being constantly captured by this.
joe rogan
Overwhelmed.
unidentified
Yes.
lukas nelson
Got a tune for all your listeners.
unidentified
I believe that every heart is kind.
Some are just a little underused.
Hatred is a symptom of the times.
Lost in these uneducated blues.
I just want to love you while I can.
All these other thoughts have me confused.
I don't need to try to understand.
Maybe I'll turn off the fucking news.
Turn off the news and build a garden.
lukas nelson
Just my neighborhood and me.
unidentified
We might feel a bit less hardened.
lukas nelson
We might feel a bit more free.
unidentified
turn off the news and raise the kids.
Give them something to believe in.
lukas nelson
Teach them how to be good people.
Give them hope that they can see.
Hope that they can see.
unidentified
Turn off the news and build a garden with me.
joe rogan
That's awesome.
lukas nelson
Yeah, so I've always felt that way.
And I think that there's action is so important.
Being a part of your community, being a part of decisions that are made.
I think that's huge.
I think local communities are really important.
I think local town meetings, understanding where you're going, and understanding where your neighborhood is going and getting to know your neighbors, because it's really hard to have any hatred when you understand and know your neighbor.
You know what I mean?
And you know the people that are around you.
And so I think that, yeah, that's kind of where I come from.
I just think like, you know, it's important to get out there.
And I put my, I usually try not to stand on soap boxes, though, you know, man.
If I have something to say, I'll put it in my music, you know, and I'll put it out there.
joe rogan
Well, that's the best way to get it to people anyway.
lukas nelson
Yeah, look at Bob Dylan, Masters of War.
I mean, that's the military-industrial complex right there.
That's an incredible song.
Only a pawn in their game is the history of racism and how that started.
It is pretty much a controlled political ploy to get the poor blacks and the poor whites to blame each other for everything happening.
joe rogan
You ever hear Bill Hicks bit about the news?
lukas nelson
I was just listening to Bill Hicks.
That's so funny.
joe rogan
He's got that great bit about the news, like war, famine, disease, AIDS.
You go outside, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp.
Where the fuck is all this shit happening?
I think Ted Turner's making this shit up because his wife won't fuck him.
lukas nelson
Well, look, I think it's out there.
I think it's always been out there.
But I think the way to combat it is to build strong local community.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lukas nelson
You know, and build, you know, that's why I think regenerative farming is really important.
And trying to, and then, you know, voting for people that will support local agriculture and properly grown food and properly, you know, like sourced food.
And these things are very important, you know.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's certainly important for a community if you know exactly where your food's coming from.
I think we're just so, it's not, you know, in the Bill Hicks days, it was just the news.
But now I think the real problem that people have today is social media.
And, you know, I never, I very rarely, if I post things, I just post them and then get out of there.
I don't read anything.
And I very rarely read social media anymore.
And since making that decision to kind of stay away from it, I think occasionally I have to dip in just to see what's, because I'm a comedian.
It's part of the problem.
lukas nelson
Sure, you got to know.
joe rogan
I need to know what people are doing, why everyone's so mad, what's happening.
But there's too many people that are on it all day long, and I think it's poison.
I really do.
I think it's bad for your mind.
I think it generally attracts negativity.
I think most of the stuff that people post is negative, and they're complaining all the time.
And then that gets into your mind, and that gets into whatever your headset is, your headspace.
And then you start thinking the way these people are thinking.
lukas nelson
I like to be informed on what I'm talking about.
I really do.
And that takes a lot of time.
It's not something that I can look at something online that comes up and just have an immediate opinion on.
joe rogan
Sure.
lukas nelson
And I think that really I'm just like I don't know where I stand on half the issues that are out there because I'm I'm I you know I see a lot of I have to sift through most of the bullshit to find it like so really where it ends up happening is that by the time I get to the voting booth I'm hoping that I'm properly informed.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's hard to be properly informed because it's hard to know who's telling the truth.
lukas nelson
It is.
joe rogan
Like if you pay attention to this big beautiful bill that just got passed, I've been trying to sort out what's real and what's not.
And the real fear that people have is Medicaid.
The real fear is that people are going to lose access to health care.
But then there was this just giant arrest where they found billions of dollars of fraud and hundreds of people were arrested.
Doctors, healthcare providers.
You know about all that, right, Jamie?
You saw that big arrest?
It's, you know, something.
unidentified
It's like something, but I just don't know enough.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't know enough either.
So they're trying to eliminate fraud as a part of this.
lukas nelson
Right.
joe rogan
But the consequences of that is like, well, okay, but is this going to affect poor people?
Is this going to affect legitimate poor people that just need help?
To me, that's the most important thing.
National health care fraud takedown results in 324 defendants charged in connection with over $14.6 billion in fraud.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Largest Justice Department health care fraud takedown in history, more than doubles prior record of $6 billion.
Wow.
lukas nelson
That's a government website, right?
I don't know.
I just don't know.
And I don't know enough.
And I know that there's probably more to the story than we're seeing.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Right.
lukas nelson
And so, you know, that's kind of how controlled opposition works to, you know, you just sort of, you know.
joe rogan
It says Medicare Medicaid Services also announced successfully prevented over $4 billion from being paid in response to false and fraudulent claims and that it suspended or revoked the billing privilege of 205 providers in the month leading up to the takedown civil charges against 20 defendants for $14.2 million in alleged fraud, as well as civil settlements with over 106 defendants totaling at 34.3 million.
lukas nelson
Well, I'll have to Do some research.
joe rogan
Or not.
lukas nelson
Well, that's the thing.
I'm a musician, man.
joe rogan
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lukas nelson
That's just the thing.
joe rogan
I don't want to waste my day going through all that freaking out about the world.
lukas nelson
I do think it's important to know, but at the same time, what I do know is that there's a lot of marginalized communities, whether it's a class issue or it's a, you know, I just see that there's a lot of people who don't have a lot of money who are suffering.
joe rogan
For sure.
lukas nelson
And there's a lot of people getting caught in crossfire all over the world.
And it's a humanitarian issue.
And I think, you know, and so as a musician, I have a responsibility to observe.
I think as an artist, I have a responsibility to observe.
As a human.
As a human.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I think we all have a responsibility to observe.
lukas nelson
And I also don't like to keep my opinion resolute.
I don't like to identify with my opinion, meaning like I'm not joining any teams here.
joe rogan
Great.
lukas nelson
I don't have any teams.
I want to know what based on if I get conflicting information, I have to make a decision on which one's going to sway the decisions I make going forward.
It's tough.
It's not easy.
In this world, it's really not easy.
But back in the day, interestingly, I think they had more of an ability to manipulate us back in the day because we only had one or two sources of information.
joe rogan
Oh, no doubt.
No doubt.
Well, listen, as confusing and as frustrating as social media is and as dangerous as it is for your psyche, it's better.
It's better to have it than to not have it because you don't have to listen to it.
You don't have to go on it.
And that's what I always tell people, stay off it.
But it's there for you if you need it.
Like when shit pops off in the world, it's the best source of information.
I Google things all the time and they're not there.
And then I'll go to X and they're there immediately.
When something happens in the world, it's on X before it's on anywhere else.
lukas nelson
Well, there's a lot of platforms, I'm sure, that Google is only.
joe rogan
But the thing is, X is immediate, right?
It's people that are on the ground and people that are experienced and independent journalists use it more often than anything else.
lukas nelson
That's interesting.
joe rogan
And Substack.
lukas nelson
Yeah, I think that, you know, I think the only thing that I think I worry about with that is that the pendulum swings so far in either direction in response to certain things.
in response to perceived censorship in one way, then it becomes...
And so I think that the censorship just continues to be like, okay, well, it just goes back and forth.
And so I have a hard time understanding, and that's why I don't really feel like I have an ability to form a proper opinion on a lot of this shit.
joe rogan
Well, that's an intelligent perspective, because the reality is so many people that have really strong opinions aren't informed.
lukas nelson
Well, that's the thing.
And I see people that die on certain hills and then, you know, but with no ability to formulate.
Like, that's why I'm a musician.
That's why I do what I do here.
Because all I do is I err on the side of compassion.
And I think, you know, I'm compassionate for people who are suffering.
I have compassion for suffering.
I believe that empathy can be manipulated, but I don't believe that I think it's a necessary emotion for cooperation and human condition.
joe rogan
That's a great way to put it.
Because empathy can be manipulated.
lukas nelson
It can be manipulated through psychological warfare, but I also believe that it's never a good idea to then shut it off.
joe rogan
100%.
Well said.
Yeah, that's a really good question.
lukas nelson
And I also will say this.
I think throughout history, there have been examples where people have put their faith in policy over character.
And I think that's a mistake.
I think the character of the person implementing the policy is just as important as the policy they represent.
joe rogan
Well, you know, and today nothing gets implemented.
There's no policy that gets drafted or implemented without a lot of weird influence.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Influence from money.
It's always money.
lukas nelson
And I have no idea the depth of that.
So where am I?
My truth lies in compassion and in trying to reach the hearts of people through music.
Do you know Daryl Davis?
joe rogan
Sure, I've had him on a couple times.
lukas nelson
Oh, my God.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's great.
He's amazing.
lukas nelson
He's a hero of mine.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's an amazing person.
lukas nelson
What a fearless person to be able to go and sit down with these people and change their hearts.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Hundreds of them.
lukas nelson
Hundreds of them.
Collecting.
joe rogan
One-on-one with some people what he does.
So Daryl is a musician, and Daryl, through the course of his travels, met, he told me the whole story.
The first guy he met, he didn't really believe him that the guy was actually in the KKK.
Daryl's a black man.
And so this guy pulls out his KKK membership card or whatever the fuck it is, right?
And he couldn't believe it, and he's like, Well, you're not like the other ones, and he's like, Well, what do you mean?
Do you know everyone that's black?
Like, what is this?
And so, he becomes friends with this guy, has dinner at his house, and then the guy gives him, over the course of their friendship, gives him his robe.
He says, I quit, man.
Obviously, what I'm doing is wrong because you're my best friend.
You know, like I love you, and so it can't be true that the black man is my enemy if you are such a cool person.
lukas nelson
Yes.
And humans must be allowed to grow.
joe rogan
Yes.
lukas nelson
You know, we have to allow people who have made mistakes in their past to we have to suspend judgment enough to allow that person to grow.
joe rogan
No question.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because you have to understand, like, what influences was this guy subject to that led him to join the KKK in the first place?
lukas nelson
Yes.
joe rogan
Like, what was the community that he was in?
What had he been exposed to?
Obviously, he had never been exposed to anybody like Daryl before he met him.
So he meets Daryl and then changes his ways.
Well, who knows if that guy grew up with cool parents in a different community, he would have been a different person.
lukas nelson
100%.
We're products of how we were brought up.
joe rogan
Yes.
lukas nelson
For the most part.
joe rogan
Our life experiences and what we've learned and the paths we've taken.
Yeah.
lukas nelson
And, you know, and there's a lot of that going on.
I mean, I'm from Texas and I've toured the South and I know how that is.
And there's a lot of people that grow up being indoctrinated and with really not good ideas.
unidentified
Right.
lukas nelson
But they don't know until they're able to – I love a great example.
Paul Simon played a show in South Africa just after apartheid.
When he did the Graceland album, he went down there and he worked with local African musicians and created, in my opinion, one of the greatest albums of all time.
I mean, with Lady Smith Black Mambazzo doing the vocals on that, Vincent Nguini, the most incredible musicians.
And at the time, that was a culturally powerful thing because there's a show online.
You can watch it.
You should probably pull it up.
It's amazing.
There's like Paul Simon playing for tens of thousands of black and white people right after apartheid ends.
Or you may even be during apartheid.
And they're all dancing and bobbing up and down.
It's the most joyful thing ever.
Music is powerful.
It can bring people together.
But because what it does is it reaches everybody's heart and it cuts through all the bullshit, the mind stuff, you know, and everyone can relate to having their heart broken.
You know, maybe it happened for some at a young age.
Maybe it happened, maybe some people had their heart broken at age four to the point where they closed their hearts off nearly completely.
But even Darth Vader had a little bit.
You know what I mean?
Darth Vader, everyone forgets that Darth Vader, at the end of Star Wars, redeemed himself.
It's the Carl Jung, the archetype, right?
The dark knight of the soul, and then being able to come through that.
And like, and really, like, you know, and you can judge.
You can not want to be around, like, I think Carl Jung actually talks about, like, there are certain people and things that you can't allow to exist because they're dangers to everyone else.
But at the same time, you don't have to judge their humanity.
joe rogan
Right.
lukas nelson
You just, like, it's like a wasp.
You have to swat the wasp because it's going to sting you.
But, you know, or, you know, however you feel about that, you can put it outside, but you get it away, right?
joe rogan
Right.
unidentified
You know, but you don't call the wasp evil.
joe rogan
Right.
lukas nelson
There are people that have just been corrupted for whatever reasons to the point where you just need to remove them from the situation.
But I try not to have hatred towards that.
I just sort of understand that they are where they are in their lives and they got there for some reason.
joe rogan
Well, it's a cautionary tale for everyone.
Yeah.
That's the thing about today's access to information is you could see so many different cautionary tales.
You could see so many different people that went down the absolute wrong road.
And you get to see them and you get to shine a light on them in this very strange time.
You get to see, like, this is, you could have been that person.
Anybody could have been that person.
We're so easily.
We have so many similarities.
All of us do.
And we have to recognize that your unique situation in life, your unique community, family, life experiences, all the things you've gone through that made you who you are today didn't have to be that way.
You could have been in the worst circumstances, and there's people that are in the worst circumstances, and they're a product of that.
And that's the weirdness of life.
There's not necessarily good and evil.
There's good and evil results.
But humans inherently both inside.
Yeah, we are both inside.
lukas nelson
We're the yin and the yang.
joe rogan
I think you need that, unfortunately, too.
We need to know that that exists in order to grow.
lukas nelson
When people, you know, ask, you know, and I'm a very lucky human.
So, like, I say all these things with hopefully the right perspective that I am as far as I'm in like the top 1% of the luckiest people, or probably even higher than that, you know, with access to clean water.
I don't have to worry about when I'm pulled over being shot.
I don't, you know, there's not, there are a lot of things that I can be very grateful for.
And so when I make comments about these things, you know, I can only come from my own perspective.
joe rogan
Yeah, of course.
lukas nelson
But I do believe that we all have the light and the dark inside us.
Like the story of the wolf, you know, the story of the two wolves inside of us.
And, you know, which one survives is the one you feed.
You have the light wolf and the Dark wolf.
And you just constantly make decisions in order to feed the right wolf over time.
And some people get lost and they start feeding the wrong wolf.
And I feel like I've been there before, too.
I've gone through darkness and come out the other side in my own way, in my own, in my own experience, in my own pain, in my own heart.
I think that's why I believe it's so important to reach people's hearts and why music is so powerful because we all have a heart.
Just regarding certain sociopathic people.
For the most part, we all have a heart.
And so that's where you reach.
And I think sociopaths, that's on a spectrum too, is what we're hearing.
So you have people who can learn sociopathic behavior but aren't necessarily devoid of feeling.
joe rogan
Right.
There's people that become sociopaths or survive, I bet.
lukas nelson
Exactly.
Yeah, absolutely.
joe rogan
For sure.
lukas nelson
100%.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's not that clear-cut.
And, you know, to demonize people is that's the instinct, right?
That's how wars get started.
We other an entire group of humans, they're the other.
And I think this is tribal society behavior that developed because at one point in time, when you saw someone from another tribe that was invading, they were coming to steal your resources and kill people.
And that's what people did.
lukas nelson
And again, that also, there's an exception to that in the sense that, like, for example, in Germany, you know, there were clear-cut decisions that people had to make about survival and about, you know, like, I'm sorry, but the Nazis had to go.
joe rogan
Right.
unidentified
You know, we can't just say that, you know, they're good people.
lukas nelson
No.
joe rogan
Everyone's the same.
lukas nelson
They're so far gone that they just have to go.
And there are certain examples of that.
So it's not like you don't have to forgive people.
You just have to understand them, I think.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's why people call that the last great war or the real war.
lukas nelson
Right.
joe rogan
Yeah, because it's like there was such a clear-cut case of good and evil.
unidentified
Yeah.
lukas nelson
And that's, I mean, look, I think the military-industrial complex has been around since even before then.
joe rogan
Oh, for sure.
Well, Smedley Butler wrote about it in 1933.
unidentified
Yeah.
lukas nelson
So anyways, that's where Bob Dylan comes in.
Masters of war, you know.
Look, man, I'm again.
joe rogan
That's also why mushrooms are illegal.
lukas nelson
Is it really?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Mushrooms were made illegal during the Nixon administration because they wanted to figure out a way to stop the anti-war protests.
They wanted to figure out a way, they turned everything Schedule I. They took all the psychedelics and lumped them into a Schedule I because they wanted to go after civil rights activists and anti-war activists.
That was the main reason.
Like, this is the best way to lock these people up.
unidentified
Well, and interestingly, yeah.
lukas nelson
I mean, I think that, you know, right, because the thing is, is that there are a lot of studies about marijuana now that say, oh, it could be harmful, right?
That come out.
But then at the same time, the way that that's harmful and then comparatively to the other things that are legal and allowed to just propagate.
joe rogan
Yeah, like whiskey.
lukas nelson
Or cigarettes.
You know, like, I mean, like, you know, you have, there's obviously a bias against, and that you can see clearly.
And obviously it came from this.
joe rogan
Well, it's also who's funding these studies.
lukas nelson
Right.
joe rogan
And what did they look for when they're funding these studies?
And did they have, it was their bias attached to these studies?
Like, what does this mean?
You know, like, I know a lot of people who use marijuana, it's not harmful to them at all.
So, like, did you include those people in that study?
Like, and then I know people that use marijuana, and it really does over, it consumes their life.
They overindulge.
lukas nelson
I had to stop.
joe rogan
What was happening with you with it?
unidentified
Well, I had to stop for many reasons.
lukas nelson
I wanted to be clear-headed.
I started exercising a lot.
I got my whoop.
I got my whoop right here.
I started tracking my sleep.
Funny enough, the sleep is really what got me the most because every time I'd take a hit or take one drink, my sleep would go to shit.
joe rogan
It's amazing when you look at the results.
lukas nelson
Oh, my God.
It was intense.
And I started working out heavy, and I really, I had a lot of great, like, you know, I have a high, good engine, you know, I'm VO2.
And like, I was like, you know, really started to feel like an athlete again.
And I started to feel great.
I started to get addicted to the high that I would get saying no, of being proud of myself.
joe rogan
Having discipline.
lukas nelson
And having the discipline.
I love the high that I get from exercising discipline.
I'm addicted to that.
joe rogan
That's a good thing to be addicted to.
right?
lukas nelson
You get addicted to that feeling that you get You know, like Goggins, he talks about, you know, all carrot, no stick, right?
Or all stick, no carrot.
Can't remember which one it is.
Right?
But the thing is, is that for me, the reward is the high that I get from having discipline.
And I get a, it's a dopamine hit, you know, and it's just vastly more rewarding than whatever temporary thing I'll get from having a drink.
I don't know like drinking that much, but smoking weed was cool because it put me into a very creative spot and kind of gave me this surge of inspiration, if you will.
But it's bad for my lungs.
And there were a lot of ups and downs emotionally.
unidentified
I'd get high and I'd get low and I'd get high and I'd get low.
lukas nelson
And now this clarity that I have is just, it's incredible.
It's just this steady, you know, it's this steady sort of joy that I have, I mean, because I had to face myself too.
When you get clear, things come up and then you look at them and you're like, and things that maybe you didn't want to look at before.
Habits that you had or things in your past that you have to forgive yourself for, but you didn't really, they're like floating in the back of your mind as unfinished thoughts.
And so without it, all of that masking, I was able to sit and, I mean, look, I was able to sit and write this record, which is the most clear album I've ever, you know, I wanted to know who I was throughout the, without all the, you know, I didn't want to chase a six-minute guitar solo.
I didn't want to chase, I wanted to just figure out who I was stripped away from all that.
It's funny, there's this guy, Marcus Dowling.
He's a, he writes for the Tennessean, and I was sitting talking to him in Nashville.
And he said that when I put, he was ready to listen to my record, and he was about to have a whiskey.
And he, the first song comes up, and he puts his whiskey down.
He's like, oh, I don't want to drink for this.
And I think that music puts you in the state of mind that the artist is in when they recorded it or when they wrote it.
So it's kind of almost like interesting that he decided to put his drink down when he heard this album, like the first song, because that's where I'm at, you know.
And so I wonder if there's that feeling of like this kind of like, it's less of a jam-band thing and more of just like straight songs.
joe rogan
There's probably definitely something to that because I think that's something that happens when someone's on stage performing.
It's like you let them take over your mind.
You let the music, the song.
lukas nelson
It's like creating a holographic bubble that you're all participating in this sort of vibe.
unidentified
I mean, you were there at the McConaughey thing.
lukas nelson
It was an electric feeling, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, it was pretty wild.
lukas nelson
It was wild.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was awesome.
unidentified
And I felt like, you know, it was cool to see everyone there.
joe rogan
There's also like the added thing to that that, you know, they do that every year and it's a charity.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And all the money goes to go.
lukas nelson
Given back.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lukas nelson
And a lot of charities, like there's like five different charities that they were given to McConaughey.
He's a good guy.
joe rogan
He's a great guy.
He's a great guy.
He's a very wise man.
lukas nelson
He is.
joe rogan
Especially for someone who's an actor.
A lot of them, and that's again, that's a thing that I have to get over because I was around so many of them in LA that were fools that I just immediately associate acting with these empty vessels that are just struggling for attention and trying to say the things that they think will get them to the best spot.
lukas nelson
I think that, look, I mean, to become an entertainer, there's a level of self-absorption that you have to sort of accept.
All right, I got a big ego.
Now, can I keep my ego in check for my whole life?
Like I think my dad has, you know.
I mean, I see my dad as a great example.
I see Paul Simon as a great example.
I see Neil.
unidentified
I see these people that like that just are just artists through and through.
lukas nelson
You know what I mean?
And for better or worse, not perfect people, but they are who they are.
And for the most part, I know my dad has an ego, but he has a good relationship with it because the ego is just the representation of who we are to the rest of the world.
joe rogan
Well, everyone has an ego.
lukas nelson
Yeah, we all do.
joe rogan
And the struggle with the ego is just like the struggle with good and evil.
I think part of it is necessary for you to overcome.
You need that.
You need those.
And you also need to see people fall prey to it.
We see that a lot.
lukas nelson
Wren.
There's an artist named Wren.
joe rogan
No.
lukas nelson
Oh, man.
You'd love his work.
He plays guitar and he sings amazingly.
joe rogan
Spell it?
lukas nelson
R-E-N.
joe rogan
R-E-N?
lukas nelson
He's from England.
He's from Wales.
He's Welsh.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
unidentified
Yeah, so he's got a song called Higher End.
lukas nelson
Listen to Higher End.
joe rogan
This is the one.
Here, put the headphones on.
jamie vernon
I've seen him for a while.
He's like a, he started as a busker kind of guy.
joe rogan
Right?
One of them dudes at the subway station.
jamie vernon
Yeah.
lukas nelson
This is a crazy song.
It's about communicating with your ego.
joe rogan
What a weird fucking start to a video.
A guy with a pig mask on.
lukas nelson
Oh, man.
unidentified
Iren.
guitar solo
guitar solo Hi there, Ran.
lukas nelson
It's been a little while.
unidentified
Did you miss me?
You thought you buried me, didn't you?
Risky.
Cause I always come back.
Did I hang in all that?
Did Ing in the moment?
We're periphery.
Ran, aren't you pleased to see me?
It's been weeks since we spoke, bro.
I know you need me.
You're the sheep, I'm the shepherd.
Not your place to leave me.
Not your place to be biting off the hand that feeds me.
Hi, Ren.
I've been taking some time to be distant.
lukas nelson
I've been taking some time to be still.
I've been taking some time to be by myself.
unidentified
Since my therapist told me I'm ill.
And I've been making some progress lately.
And I've learned some new coping skills.
So I haven't really needed you much, man.
I think we need to just step back and chill.
Bren, you sound more insane than I do.
You think that those doctors are really there to guide you.
You've been through this a million times.
Your civilian mind is not perfect.
You're always being lied to.
Okay, take another pill, boy.
From yourself in the sound, don't white noise.
Follow this 10-step program, rejoice.
lukas nelson
All your problems will be gone.
Fucking dumb, boy.
unidentified
Nah, mate, This time is different, man.
Trust me, I feel like things might be falling in place.
lukas nelson
Right, he just has a whole conversation with his own mind, you know, his own ego.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lukas nelson
And it tries to tell him that he's not worth shit.
And then he's like, no, wait, I'm getting myself together.
And this whole conversation with him, and then at the end, it talks about where good and evil isn't a battle, it's a dance.
And no one ever wins.
You know, with their battle with their ego, it's always just a dance.
And it's always just kind of finding balance.
And there's a song I have on my album called All God Did.
And it's actually the same concept.
And I wrote it before I heard that.
But then when I heard that, I was like, oh, shit, that's way better.
But it's great.
It's beautifully written.
I mean, it's very, you could tell all his influences, and then he just kind of adds onto that, which is.
joe rogan
That dance is critical.
You need that dance.
That dance is, I think this is one of the problems of people that don't exercise.
I think the struggle of exercise is oftentimes conflated with vanity.
And I don't think it's that.
I think you can keep your body covered up to the end of time and never be proud of it, and you will benefit greatly from the struggle of exercise.
Because I think the struggle of exercise is mental.
As much as it is physical, there's a dance.
When I talk to Goggins about it, he's the most bizarre of all cases.
Because he's doing it all in silence.
He's doing it all by himself.
And occasionally he lets people peer into it.
But it's going on right now.
Like right now, that guy's out there running probably 30 miles today with destroyed knees.
He's a real freak.
And when I talk to him about it, he's like, I'm downloading knowledge.
That's what he says.
lukas nelson
That's great.
joe rogan
He's like, I'm in the lab and I'm downloading knowledge.
Like he's struggling in his own mind every day and forcing himself to do it every day.
And then he brings elite athletes to try to keep up with him occasionally.
Like he brought Israel Adesanya.
Israel Adesanya is former UFC middleweight champion, like one of the best fighters of all time.
And you realize like he can't even keep up with Dave, not even close.
This is one of multiple workouts that Dave is doing in a day.
And this guy can't keep up with him.
And Dave's 50.
lukas nelson
What was the part of the brain that gets enlarged that Huberman was talking about that gets enlarged when you do things you don't want to do?
joe rogan
I always forget the name of it, but Jamie will pull it up.
unidentified
Yeah, the anterior mid.
I don't know.
joe rogan
It should be like an easier name.
lukas nelson
Cortex anterior, something like that.
joe rogan
The discipline part.
lukas nelson
Yeah, the discipline.
joe rogan
Just call it discipline.
lukas nelson
That enlarges throughout your life when you do things that you force yourself to do.
joe rogan
Yeah, it literally does.
It literally gets bigger, which is crazy.
lukas nelson
You know, being.
joe rogan
What is it, Jamie?
unidentified
The ant.
lukas nelson
Anterior mid-cigular cortex.
unidentified
You got it.
Ha!
joe rogan
Nice.
Success.
jamie vernon
Mid-cingulate.
lukas nelson
Mid-cingulate.
joe rogan
Mid-cingulate cortex.
Yeah.
Shout out to Andrew Huberman.
There you go.
Doing things you don't want to do can strengthen your brain, particularly the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, which is associated with willpower and tenacity.
That's incredible, the idea that it actually grows.
So willpower is not just, it's not like an airy fairy concept.
It's like a muscle.
lukas nelson
No, it's incredible that willpower can also be enhanced.
joe rogan
Yes.
lukas nelson
It just goes to brain plasticity.
And that's a concept that I think a lot of people don't understand is that we are not set in who we are.
We are, especially if we adopt a growth mindset, that we are never set in who we are.
We can always improve and refine the neural structure of our brain to where that it works more efficiently.
joe rogan
Not just that, but you have to.
It never ends.
There's never a time when you're done with discipline.
You don't just get it, and now I have discipline.
No, every day is a struggle.
Gagan said that.
He goes, sometimes I stare at my sneakers for like a half hour before I put those motherfuckers on.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
lukas nelson
At like four in the morning, you know, every day.
But here's the thing, is that it becomes a philosophical question because when you say you have to, you know, there are people who get by life, you know, and they, there is a Tibetan tradition that the monks do where they spend months and they take these little like flute things and they and they have colored sand, right?
And they all sit in a circle.
And it takes them months sometimes to create this beautiful, intricate sand art.
And they chant while they do it, and it's this most incredible thing.
And at the end, they go, and they blow it all away.
And it's meant to represent the impermanence of life.
But then it's meant to also pose the question, why make something so beautiful when it's going to be, when you know it's impermanent?
And I believe it goes back to the first thing we started talking about today, which is that meaning is everything in life.
And nothing really in life inherently has any meaning except the meaning we give it, right?
So you could go, you could go through life as sand on the beach that blows in the wind.
And it wouldn't really mean much when you blow one way or another.
But if you choose to give your life meaning and build a sand castle and make it as intricate and beautiful as you can and make it as detailed as possible, knowing that one day it's going to get washed away, the only person that it matters to is you and knowing that you did the best you could at that moment that the wave comes.
joe rogan
If that's true, they should never let anybody film them making those things.
They should never let anyone film them making those things because then it becomes permanent.
Someone can see it forever.
lukas nelson
Sure.
joe rogan
You know what I'm saying?
lukas nelson
But yet, again, I think it's for them anyways.
joe rogan
Yes.
lukas nelson
It's not for everyone else.
joe rogan
But when you let people peer into that world and you film it, there's something about that like, oh, yeah, you just cheated it.
lukas nelson
Well, in a way, it becomes permanent, but it also, I mean, is, you know, just because you see it happening.
unidentified
Let's look at it.
joe rogan
Can you find that?
lukas nelson
Yeah, sure, you could find it on there.
joe rogan
I mean, I'm not dismissing it.
lukas nelson
No, no, no.
But I think it's an interesting question because something that lives in our subjective reality, if you see a video of that happening, and then you grasp the concept of it, and then that makes you consider that concept in yourself, understanding that the meaning is a subjective experience anyways, then now you understand, like, okay, it just causes one to ask the question to themselves.
And I think that's the purpose that the monks are, you know, they're there as sort of like, in a way, they're teachers, you know.
So they show you something that then you ask, you know, inside.
joe rogan
Yeah, so what you were saying was that in response to the idea that everyone should exercise and discipline.
lukas nelson
Yeah, well, but it's like you don't have to do that, but your life will have, you will experience a different sense of meaning.
joe rogan
Sure.
lukas nelson
You know, if you do that.
And that will, I think that's enough for me at least, because I'm driven by finding a sense of meaning.
And I think maybe because of how I grew up, you know, maybe others aren't driven by that.
joe rogan
I think that's really important to say too.
Because you never know what is driving one person.
I don't know how your brain works.
unidentified
Exactly.
joe rogan
I could only guess.
I could only assume your brain works like mine.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
And that's silly.
That's a silly thing to assume.
lukas nelson
Yeah, we don't even know if we see the same colors.
unidentified
Right.
lukas nelson
There it is.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
That's so beautiful.
lukas nelson
Isn't it?
joe rogan
That's amazing.
And then they're going to fuck that up.
I wrote a piece once for, God, it was Esquire or Maxim or one of those things about your body's like a sand castle.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
That you're building this body, but one day it will be eroded.
Now they're just sweeping it away.
Yeah.
lukas nelson
And then they'll dump the sand in the center.
joe rogan
Oh, that's kind of cool, too, though.
lukas nelson
Isn't it?
joe rogan
It's kind of abstract as they swirl it.
It's kind of beautiful, too.
unidentified
Yeah.
lukas nelson
But think of how long that took them.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
It must have taken forever.
And they're scooping the sand up.
lukas nelson
They scoop it up.
joe rogan
Yeah, look.
They're just doing it with these little things.
lukas nelson
They just tap on it.
Look at that.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
That's beautiful.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's kind of amazing.
unidentified
I've always loved that concept, right?
lukas nelson
And I think that, you know, yeah, maybe they shouldn't let you film it.
I don't know.
I'm glad they did.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, they're letting people watch it.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
And, you know, just allowing people to see what the whole thing is.
It'll allow more people to understand the concept.
lukas nelson
Well, that's kind of like Alan Watts always says, you know, don't listen to what I'm saying.
joe rogan
Right.
lukas nelson
Because the Tao that can be spoken is not the real Tao.
unidentified
Right.
lukas nelson
And yet here I am just loving the sound of my own voice and talking about it.
You know what I mean?
That's a no problem.
You know, so it's like, you know, that's the great paradox of the spiritual self and understanding what that means.
joe rogan
Well, that becomes readily apparent after you have a psychedelic experience.
I remember one of my first ones that I had, I realized when I was trying to describe it, like I'm trying to impress people with the way I use my words.
I was very aware.
I was like, oh, I'm trying to impress people with my grasp of language that I'm using to describe an experience.
And I was like, oh, that's kind of gross.
lukas nelson
One of the great, of course, actually, when I started listening to you, it was in like 2007, 2006.
And it was, I was listening to a lot of Terrence McKenna at the time.
And Terrence McKenna talked about someone who had a grasp on the English.
joe rogan
Yeah, he was amazing.
lukas nelson
What an incredible.
Like, I'd listen to his lectures, you know, that were available online.
joe rogan
Psychedelic Salon is the best resource.
That's still up, right?
Lorenzo from Psychedelic Salon, who had been on the podcast before back in the day, he's collected like the greatest assembly of McKenna, Alan Watts, Timothy Lee.
lukas nelson
Ram Das, probably.
joe rogan
Yes.
lukas nelson
There's a Ram Dass conversation, I think, with Alan Watts.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
lukas nelson
Somewhere out there, which is really interesting.
joe rogan
Well, my friend Duncan became friends with Ram Dass.
lukas nelson
Yeah, I actually met him in Hawaii one time.
joe rogan
Really?
lukas nelson
Yeah.
I got to meet him.
joe rogan
Yeah, Psychedelic Salon.
So it is psychedelic salon.com, and there's Lorenzo.
And Psychedelic Salon is like this incredible resource of all the McKenna lectures.
Because it's such a great resource, so many people who were there at like, you know, some talk that he gave in Hawaii at some conference room somewhere recorded it and then they would send that to Lorenzo and then he'd put it online and have it available for everybody.
And, you know, some amazing insights and conversations.
lukas nelson
He lived not too far from where I live in Maui.
So I went on a whale watch with him one time.
joe rogan
Really?
With McKenna?
lukas nelson
No, with Ramdock.
joe rogan
With Ramda.
unidentified
Sorry.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
Okay.
lukas nelson
Yeah, yeah, but not McKenna.
unidentified
I think McKenna died when I was a kid, like really early.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think he died in 2019.
lukas nelson
95 or something?
joe rogan
No, it was a little later than that.
Oh.
What year did McKenna die?
lukas nelson
You're Jamie, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
lukas nelson
Jamie, 2000.
joe rogan
2000?
lukas nelson
I heard you play golf.
jamie vernon
I do.
lukas nelson
And you were in a simulator earlier.
I was.
I was in a simulator last night to like.
joe rogan
His hands are bad.
lukas nelson
My hands all blistered out.
unidentified
Yeah.
jamie vernon
I had that.
joe rogan
We were having a conversation while we were getting espresso, and I was saying, I can't play music for the same reason I can't play golf.
lukas nelson
Right.
joe rogan
And then he shows me his hands.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
We're all lying.
lukas nelson
And you're like, oh, that's what he was just doing back there.
joe rogan
Jamie's got this.
lukas nelson
He's got the bug.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's got it bad.
He wants to fuck his friends up.
jamie vernon
It's fun.
lukas nelson
It is a fun game.
jamie vernon
It's fun to make people mad.
joe rogan
That's a weird motivation, but okay.
lukas nelson
It's funny, like the closest friends we have are sometimes the ones we give the most shit, though.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Well, they're the ones that know you love them, so you can give them shit.
You can kind of, yeah, you can.
And it's fun.
lukas nelson
There's nothing like that feeling of having a friend that can take it and dole it out.
joe rogan
Oh, that's why I love comedians.
lukas nelson
Right, right, right, right.
joe rogan
They're the best.
You shit on them.
They love it.
They shit on themselves.
Everyone's having fun.
Yeah.
lukas nelson
Exactly.
That's one of the great joys in life, I think.
joe rogan
Yeah, the people that can't take that, boy, you're missing out on a giant chunk of what it means to be a person if you're so sensitive.
You can't let people crack on you.
That's so silly.
lukas nelson
Well, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
You're missing out on a lot of the fun.
You're missing out on half the laughs because half the laughs are at your own expense.
Exactly.
unidentified
I've probably laughed harder at myself than at anyone else in my life, probably.
joe rogan
That's a healthy perspective then.
And you're a fairly healthy person.
unidentified
Yeah.
lukas nelson
Well, I mean, it's funny.
You know, we're running around, you know, trying to find meaning in life.
And, you know, one day, you know, like one day is a crazy thought, but one day the last remembrance of the human experience will happen.
joe rogan
Yes.
lukas nelson
You know, and.
joe rogan
Shit, it might be in our lifetime.
lukas nelson
I doubt it.
I think it'll be, I think it'll be, because even now we're uploaded into the AI system, you know, so like something will survive, you know, something.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, whatever we are will lead to whatever comes next.
lukas nelson
There's a great episode of Star Trek called The Inner Light.
Have you ever seen that?
joe rogan
The first Star Trek?
The real one?
lukas nelson
The Next Generation.
joe rogan
Oh, that's bullshit, Star Trek.
lukas nelson
Whoa.
unidentified
Whoa.
lukas nelson
Them's fighting words, man.
joe rogan
You're a Picard guy?
lukas nelson
Hell yeah, I'm a Picard guy.
I'd vote for him right now.
joe rogan
That's hilarious.
Meanwhile, he probably could win.
lukas nelson
Diplomacy, man.
joe rogan
So this is the inner light?
lukas nelson
The inner light.
Here's a story.
Okay, here's a story.
They come across a probe, all right?
Because they're exploring space, obviously, if you don't know Star Trek, they're exploring space and their whole mission is to go where no man has gone before.
joe rogan
Right.
lukas nelson
And so they find this probe, and as they're scanning the probe, it zaps Picard, and he goes unconscious, and he wakes up on this world where he remembers the spaceship.
He remembers where he was, but he's got a wife and a family and kids, and this world is being threatened by an exploding sun.
And so he's got a lot of scientific knowledge.
So he, over the next 20 years in this world, he eventually grows old and accepts his fate that he has no idea how he got here, but he's got to live this life now.
And he starts to love his wife and his kids.
He starts to try and save this planet from the exploding sun.
He ends up not being able to.
And then as he dies, he wakes up back on the spaceship with only 20 seconds having gone by on the spaceship.
And the probe had been sent by that civilization.
They knew they were going to be destroyed, so they uploaded this thing that would let Picard experience what happened to their civilization and tell their story.
Wow.
And he did it.
He experienced a lifetime of 40 years or 25, whatever years before he died in the span of 20 seconds and then woke up at the moment of his death in that other life and then was able to now tell the story of this forgotten civilization in space.
joe rogan
Whoa.
lukas nelson
It's the coolest concept ever.
joe rogan
Okay, I'll have to watch it now.
lukas nelson
I mean, it's, you know, I just told you.
joe rogan
Do you know who Joseph McGonagall is?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
Joseph McGonagall was like, he was remote viewer number one.
lukas nelson
Oh, interesting.
joe rogan
He was the first guy.
And they gave him an assignment once without him knowing where he was looking into.
And what it turned out, he was looking into Mars one million years ago.
And when he looked into Mars a million years ago, Mars was falling apart.
And there were beings on Mars.
They were going into hibernation.
They had built pyramids and all these structures.
And they had to leave Mars because Mars was being destroyed.
Their atmosphere was being destroyed.
And they had to come to Earth.
lukas nelson
Right.
joe rogan
And what he surmised from that is that what we are is the children of the people of Mars.
That's why we're so different from all the other primates.
lukas nelson
There's a whole movie dedicated to that exact premise.
joe rogan
Really?
lukas nelson
Called Mission to Mars.
joe rogan
Who's in it?
lukas nelson
I don't know.
Is it Greg Kinnear, maybe?
joe rogan
Greg Kinnear?
lukas nelson
No, I don't know.
Let's look at it because it's like a great movie, and it's about that at the time.
joe rogan
You might have seen it.
lukas nelson
Now that I'm figuring it out.
jamie vernon
Gary Sinise.
joe rogan
What year was this?
jamie vernon
2000.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Okay, I don't know.
lukas nelson
Mission to Mars.
Yeah.
And that's exactly the premise of the entire movie.
joe rogan
And so the premise of the movie is that these people...
Whoa.
lukas nelson
And then, like, that's the whole thing.
joe rogan
And they realize that Mars...
lukas nelson
No, not at all.
joe rogan
And one of the reasons why I say that is like they found recent, they've recently found structures on Mars that are so obviously man-made that it's almost impossible to deny.
I showed it to Elon, and he's like, oh, we should go look at it.
lukas nelson
Okay, but here's the thing about like...
joe rogan
Do you know what I'm talking about?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
Show him the square on Mars.
So there's this.
In the 1970s, they took satellite photos of what looked like a face on Mars in Sidonia.
And it's kind of weird.
Kind of weird, but it's hard to say if that's like there's things on Earth that look like faces.
It is just like, it's just a natural formation.
But then they found this.
This is recent.
Look at that.
I mean, what the fuck is that, man?
Look at those right angles.
Look at that.
That's on Mars.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
And that may have been a structure at one point.
lukas nelson
It may have, yeah.
I mean, look.
joe rogan
It's too complete.
It's too square.
It's a square.
lukas nelson
I mean, look, I would.
joe rogan
It actually might be a rectangle, right?
Is it kind of a rectangle?
lukas nelson
Well, I don't know.
We'd have to measure it.
I'm sure they can measure it throughout.
Here's the thing.
When I looked up remote viewing, for example, and I really looked and did research on it, the studies that were done were kind of discredited about how the effectiveness of those actually were.
So if you really dive in, there's literature that says that it wasn't really the reason that they, you know, apparently, now this is all like conflicting information.
joe rogan
I had Hal put off on who was a remote viewer and who was involved in the remote viewer pro the Stargate.
unidentified
Right.
lukas nelson
So what does he say about the idea that like the actual studies were not that like conclusive and that's why they – Who's doing it?
joe rogan
What's the methodology?
But they were able to accurately find within a small radius a downed Russian spacecraft.
So a Russian spacecraft that re-entered orbit and crashed.
It was a spacecraft or an aircraft.
Do you remember, Jamie?
But they used remote viewers and the Russians couldn't find it and they found it.
And this is, you're talking about in like a vast expanse of wilderness.
It could have been anywhere, but they found the area where it was.
They also found a Russian factory that was making an enormous nuclear submarine.
They found it, accurately described it, the dimensions of it.
They knew where it was.
And it was an accurate location.
Not just the thing that was being hidden, but where it was, the dimensions of it.
I don't dismiss it.
lukas nelson
I can't dismiss anything.
I just know that when I looked up UFO experiences and this disclosure stuff that's happening lately and I'm a huge, I'm not just a believer.
I pray that there is someone out there disarming nuclear missiles, especially right now.
My great hope is that there is someone just trying to not step in, but oversee it to the point where hopefully we can survive to a point of having an interstellar civilization.
It's the great dream of humanity, right?
joe rogan
Sure, but we have to be a different civilization than we are now.
Oh, otherwise we could do the same shit.
lukas nelson
That's the thing is that, and that's what I, I was always, even before Elon was as famous as he is now, when I was like 15, I read his book.
And the one thing that I, I'm a friend of He read, it was like a book about him, maybe.
Okay.
And I don't remember.
But what I really wanted the focus to be on was, let's put all these resources into getting this planet right first.
Let's put everything we have.
And, you know, it felt at the time like, okay, well, yes, we're spending all this money to go off and maybe we're hopeless.
It's possible that we're hopeless.
And it sounds like that's where they err on this.
You know, it's like, oh, well, humanity on Earth is just over.
We just have to go somewhere else.
But then if we go somewhere else, we're just going to do the same thing, like you're saying.
So like all of the resources, in my opinion, should be focused on like, like there's devices that they have invented that can be put in river mouths around the world to filter out pollution and plastics going into the ocean, right?
And it's like this incredible technology.
If the budgets were spent towards these innovations, you know, and maybe AI will help it.
You know, right now AI is kind of a tax on the planet in terms of like, you know, it's not very good for it.
But maybe the AI technology itself will then invent something that makes itself more efficient for the planet.
joe rogan
What do you mean by AI as a tax?
lukas nelson
Well, because the energy required for the servers and all of that is so, you know, it drains a lot of resource.
joe rogan
Right, right.
lukas nelson
And so, but what AI may do is help us create an ion battery or something that like that like makes energy give off less, you know, you can have this much more energy with way less heat and way less.
And so then you can create, you know, instead of having to have giant warehouses full of servers, you can have just, you know, like, I mean, like, it's the same stuff that happened with the computer, where the computer required a giant building when it was first created.
joe rogan
And now you have computers smaller than a Just to be clear, Elon's position is not that Earth is like, that humans are helpless or hopeless and we have to just leave Earth.
It's not that.
It's that life is so fragile here because of the possibility, not just of us fucking it up, but of natural disasters.
And that we need to become interstellar in order to propagate life and to survive.
And so we can carry on this growth that we're involved in as a human species.
Because there's, I mean, they just, what was the number that they just found?
A bunch of new asteroids?
Like, the possibility of us being hit by a near-Earth object is extremely high over the next X amount of hundreds of years.
It's extremely high.
And these things might not wipe everything out, but they'll start civilization all over again.
They'll bring us back to cave people.
So the idea was that the more places that we are, the more likelihood that the human race survives.
It's not just that we're going to fuck this up.
lukas nelson
And I appreciate wanting the human race to survive.
Don't get me wrong.
joe rogan
But it should be better than it is now.
unidentified
I want us to learn our lessons on this planet.
lukas nelson
And I think that that's even more important than surviving.
I mean, here's the thing.
When you ask yourself, when someone asks themself, have I lived a life worth living?
Is a life worth living someone who lives a very long time?
Or is a life worth living someone who's lived a good life and maybe for shorter?
So what is the ultimate effect that humanity has on the natural world and environment?
do we deserve to be spacefaring?
And if we do, then I say let's go.
Well, I mean, it's by my own individual judgment at this point, you know.
joe rogan
But I mean, are we better than the lions who killed the gazelles?
lukas nelson
No, but the lions, everyone who, all the natural world works cyclically.
The way that the lion kills the gazelle and the way that the alligator takes the tourists.
Yeah, exactly.
Everything works with balance in nature.
You have just enough give and take.
It's worked that way for years.
And then, yes, extinctions, events happen, and then things die out.
But there has never been a creature on the planet with the ability like we have to take as much resource as we can without replenishing that or balancing that out.
So we, I think, have a responsibility as humanity to understand how to balance ourselves and harmonize with nature.
And I think that's where my great hope is, is that we figure out how to find a cyclical arrangement with nature where we, just like photosynthesis, just like plants give us oxygen and then the carbon dioxide we breathe and the plants then sequester.
joe rogan
Well, our disconnection to nature might be a part of our disconnection to psychedelics.
That might be one of the reasons why we're disconnected is we're lacking a crucial element that's there to humble the human species.
lukas nelson
Yes.
I think that's the only thing that's the great key.
joe rogan
I think that's part of it.
I really do.
And I think that these monsters that were trying to silence the anti-war and the civil rights movement in the 1970s by making those things illegal, they essentially hampered our development, but not all of it, right?
So our technological development continued, but our spiritual development ceased.
lukas nelson
Yeah, and intellect devoid of wisdom is dangerous.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
Especially like overcome with ego.
Intellect overcome with ego is like really disgusting.
lukas nelson
And the thing about it is that no one believes they're a monster.
joe rogan
Right.
lukas nelson
Everyone justifies their behavior when they think they're doing good.
I mean, with the exception of, like I said, a few sociopathic, completely devoid of empathy individuals.
But for the most part, everyone justifies their behavior for themselves.
They judge themselves and then they somehow make it, well, because I'm doing this, because I'm doing this, I can sleep at night.
And so they let themselves sleep at night.
And a lot of times they should be looking at themselves and changing, but they don't.
So that's why my policy is I try to just always look at myself and see, is this actually beneficial for not just me, but for the people around me?
And music has been one of the great things in life that is a win-win.
It's always a win-win.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a great way to look at it.
lukas nelson
It's like, wow, I'm so lucky to just be able to observe, be able to play, be able to sleep well for the most part.
joe rogan
You're a chef for the soul.
Like a chef provides food.
It's a win-win.
People eat.
It's wonderful.
You enjoy the food.
lukas nelson
Oh, man.
joe rogan
It sustains you.
And I think music is, that's a lot of what a musician is.
You're a chef for the soul.
lukas nelson
Jimi Hendrix, you're a huge fan.
joe rogan
Huge.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
He was, other than my dad, it was Jimmy and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
And Stevie Ray being here from Austin, I sort of had a special affinity for, even though Hendricks.
joe rogan
Stevie Ray is the only one who's allowed to do Voodoo Child.
Other than Hendrix.
lukas nelson
I think you're probably right there.
joe rogan
I mean, other people can.
I'm just joking around.
lukas nelson
No, no, I actually heard you say that with Charlie.
And I was like, yeah, I think I agree.
joe rogan
You're kind of right.
Because he's the only one that I can listen to where I go, yeah, yeah, this is like a Stevie Ray version of Voodoo Child.
lukas nelson
Well, and he was a disciple of Hendrix.
He really sat and really lived that life.
And the thing that I've learned that was the best lesson I learned, it goes back to why I am sober now and where I'm at, is because I think the greatest lie I ever believed for so long, I did 15 years on the road, 250 shows a year.
And I told myself I had to live like my heroes in order to be, you know, and I think that's what, it didn't kill Stevie Ray, but it derailed him for a long time before he got sober.
Stevie Ray died in a tragic accident, obviously.
That's what happened.
joe rogan
I almost had a chance to drive him.
lukas nelson
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, I was driving limousines for this limousine company in Boston, and he was supposed to take a limousine, but he wouldn't take limousines.
He would take cabs.
He always wanted to take cabs.
So I drove this limousine.
I drove Jeff Beck once.
I drove Annie Lennox's crew.
I didn't drive.
lukas nelson
I love Annie Lennox.
unidentified
She's beautiful.
lukas nelson
She's amazing.
joe rogan
I had to drop off the crew at this restaurant, and Annie Lennox was talking, and her voice was so powerful.
The way I described it, I was like, her vocal cords were made out of like piano wire because her voice was carrying in the room.
And I was, at the time, I was 20, maybe.
And I remember watching her talk, oh, this is crazy.
Like, this lady's voice is like traveling.
Like, it has a different power than everyone else in the restaurant.
lukas nelson
The voice is such an incredible thing, is it not?
I mean, you know, the power of a vocal cord.
Like, look at James Earl Jones.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
lukas nelson
Right?
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah.
lukas nelson
You know, like, to change.
joe rogan
Darth Vader, by the way.
lukas nelson
Darth Vader.
joe rogan
Yeah, he is Darth Vader.
unidentified
Yeah.
And he lived to be, what, 95, something like that.
lukas nelson
How long did it?
I mean, he was crazy, and he was still doing that.
Well, yeah, there's certain wonderful.
joe rogan
But Stevie Ray didn't wouldn't take limos.
Like, fuck this limo.
He liked to talk to cab drivers.
He liked to get in a cab, and he liked to just keep it real.
lukas nelson
Oh, man.
joe rogan
Even though he was a superstar, he didn't want to be treated like one.
He just wanted to be normal.
lukas nelson
Some of the best conversations I've ever had have been in like Ubers or Lyfts or whatever, just sitting and chatting about where they're from and how they got there.
And there's a lot of incredible stories that perseverance.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lukas nelson
You know, escaping certain situations.
joe rogan
Yeah, no doubt.
I mean, and then everybody's got their own little journey.
And sometimes you dip into someone's journey and go, what are you doing, man?
What's going on?
What you up to?
lukas nelson
I always try and learn a little bit of the language, too.
Like, how do you say this?
joe rogan
Yeah.
lukas nelson
You know, there's something like, there's something that just makes people, I think, really drop their defenses when you submit yourself with humility to learn their language.
unidentified
Yeah.
lukas nelson
And kind of say, you know what?
Like, look, thank you for driving me.
I'm so glad you're here.
How do you say thank you?
joe rogan
Right, right, right.
How do you correctly pronounce your name?
lukas nelson
Exactly.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, you know, I work for the UFC, so there's a lot of people that I have to ask them, tell me how to say your name.
Because some of these names are just insane.
Like some of the names from Dagestan or from, you know, Kazakhstan.
There's so many places where it's like, Shavkot Rachmanov, like, Jesus Christ.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
It takes forever.
And I have to, I can't fuck their names up.
lukas nelson
No, I'm glad that you think that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lukas nelson
Because that's a beautiful thing.
joe rogan
Well, it's interesting.
I'm fascinated by the different sounds that people choose to use as their language in different places.
It's like human beings evolved in all these different places with all these different ways of communicating.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
They're all different.
unidentified
What's the clicking in Africa?
lukas nelson
There's a musician, and I can't remember for the life of me her name, which is it maybe Angelique Kijo, but no.
But she sings and she uses the clicks and then just does this sort of, oh my gosh, it's the clicks in her singing.
Inner music.
Oh, it's so beautiful.
Oh, man.
joe rogan
You got to wonder, like, what caused them to develop that kind of language, you know?
It's like they're all developing it in a vacuum, right?
Because they're all the people in that area, in that community, generation after generation after generation, all agree to communicate in this certain way.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, and then they run into people in China and you're like, well, Jesus, this is so different.
lukas nelson
And in China, there's like, I don't know how many different dialects.
Oh, yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
lukas nelson
And they're completely different.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Well, my grandparents were from Italy and they spoke a Sicilian dialect.
lukas nelson
Oh, I'm Sicilian too.
joe rogan
Oh, that's right.
lukas nelson
On the mother's side, yeah.
joe rogan
But I remember me like learning Italian in college, and it was so different than the way that they were speaking Italian.
lukas nelson
Well, and I think, I'm not certain, but Dean Martin had a specific, and it may have been Sicilian or maybe a specific Northern Italian or Napoli, maybe it's certainly.
But the way that he would sing Domenico Modugno's song, you know, volare tenso que un sonio cosino ne toni ma pio.
unidentified
Vola.
joe rogan
Right.
lukas nelson
And he would do it, and he'd go, you know, he'd have these like slang.
In his version, it's quite different.
The Italian, if you listen to both of them together.
joe rogan
Interesting.
lukas nelson
It's really interesting, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, dialects are weird, right?
Because people learn how.
Well, I mean, look at in America, right?
You can go to like New Orleans and people have a completely different way of talking than people do in New York City.
lukas nelson
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Have you heard about the new, speaking of AI, the new adventures that we're now embarking on?
Some scientists, they're like using AI to communicate with animals, like whales.
joe rogan
I saw that with cats.
I saw that today, that AI.
lukas nelson
You saw it today?
joe rogan
Yes.
AI is translating cat language with like 95% accuracy.
They think they know what cats are saying to each other now.
lukas nelson
Do you think that will have an effect on how we treat animals if we're able to communicate with them?
joe rogan
Probably, yeah.
Well, I'm sure you've seen dogs when people say, I love you, and they go, Yeah, yeah.
You know, like, there's something there.
Yeah, they're trying to say, I love you.
They just don't have the same lips.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
And they're very, dogs will, you know, they're very good at mimicking and behavior.
joe rogan
Well, they certainly understand language because I talk to my dog like a person.
I talk to him.
Like, I can say, come on, man, is it time to go outside?
What do you want to do?
You want to get crazy?
And they're like, hmm?
unidentified
You want to go outside?
joe rogan
Like, he knows what I'm saying.
Like, I don't have to say it in a certain tone.
I can just say it.
lukas nelson
He knows.
It's funny, my dad, you know, Roger Miller.
You ever hear Roger Miller?
joe rogan
It's Roger Miller.
lukas nelson
Trailers for sale or rent.
Room select 50 cents.
You know, King of the Road?
joe rogan
Oh, really?
lukas nelson
King of the Road.
So my dad and him were good friends, and he used to tell a lot of great jokes.
But one of them was, it's true, they say, you start looking like your dog.
just got chewed out by the neighbor for shitting in their front yard.
My dad has so many amazing jokes.
joe rogan
Well, it must have been really interesting, the people that your dad brought around.
Yeah.
lukas nelson
Yeah, well, one of the greatest moments I ever felt like I was a part of was just a sort of a normal afternoon.
And I was in Hawaii, and I was at my parents' house there.
And it was me and Dad.
We're sitting around, and Chris Christopherson walks by, and walks in.
They're on their way to the airport or coming from the airport or whatever.
And in walks in with him, Muhammad Ali.
joe rogan
Whoa.
unidentified
And so I'm sitting there, and me and Dad are just picking.
lukas nelson
And Muhammad comes and sits down.
And Chris is on one side of him, and Dad's on the other, and I'm the one who got the guitar.
And so we Just start singing for him.
And he's shaking, he can't speak, really, you know.
But you could just see me and dad and Chris were just like serenading Muhammad Ali one afternoon.
unidentified
Wow.
lukas nelson
And we sang, Help Me Make It Through the Night.
We sang Always On My Mind.
I sang one of my songs, you know.
So it's just like, it was like a beautiful afternoon.
I'll never forget that moment.
joe rogan
It must have been so strange to be constantly surrounded by these exceptional people.
Not just exceptional, but exceptional worldwide, like the way they're received worldwide.
Like these are like iconic humans.
Like Chris Christopherson is like an iconic human being.
Muhammad Ali is an iconic human being.
lukas nelson
Yes, he's.
And the key language there is a human being, well-rounded, thoughtful, empathetic.
I mean, wise.
And these people are, you know, they made their life their work.
Jimi Hendrix, I think, was famous in saying that your art isn't just the music, it's your life.
You make your life the work of art.
And that's what, I mean, he had no problem with all the colors that he used in his whole life.
He had no problem expressing himself in many other forms other than how he dressed and how he worked.
Everything was an expression of who he was in his art.
And I'm grateful to have been exposed to a lot of those people in my life.
joe rogan
It's just a very exceptional childhood in that regard, right?
Because for some people, they grow up.
And I remember the first time I ever met a really famous person, I was like, whoa, this is weird.
It was probably my 20.
Other than seeing Jeff Beck and seeing Annie Lennox, I never really met them.
I didn't really start meeting famous people until I became a comedian and then really meeting famous people until I got on television.
And then it was just, it was odd.
It was just so odd.
And still to this day, sometimes I'll have someone in here.
I had Bono in here.
And it's just weird to me.
One of my first Bono memories, I was like 25 years ago.
I was doing mushrooms and I was listening to In God's Country.
And I got to tell that to Bono.
lukas nelson
Wow.
joe rogan
I was like, it was one of the wildest versions of your song.
It was like looking out over this canyon while that song was playing.
lukas nelson
It's beautiful, though.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, it's amazing for me.
But it's just weird, you know, to just accept that they're human beings because you see them on television, you see them in all these things, and you grow to realize, like, oh, we're all just human beings.
And that's part of the lesson of it is to meet someone who you don't think is just a human being.
And you realize, like, oh, all of us are human beings.
lukas nelson
That's a great lesson.
I mean, and when I think that I was able to understand fame and its trappings at a young age, and that's something I'm also very grateful for, that I, you know, I was able to see, like, okay, a lot of dad's friends, a lot of the people that I grew up around, didn't make it very long because they got into this or they got into that.
And I see it all happening a lot to a lot of young people that are unable to handle fame.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
lukas nelson
And fame is not inherently a good thing.
I think it's actually probably a net negative, although it's a necessary thing if you want your art to get out to as many people as possible or if you want to create a living.
Like, I don't depend on my parents, so I want my music to get out there so that I'll have a career when I'm 90.
I want to be playing, you know, I don't want to, I don't, I mean, eventually I have to keep making a living, you know.
joe rogan
So you have to be a little famous.
lukas nelson
I have to, you think there's a part of you that, you know, part of the entertainment world where you have to make sure, you have to put yourself out there.
And that's kind of despite knowing that when you put yourself out there, then all the, you know, that you get unwanted attention too.
I think one of the worst things about it is the scammers on the internet.
There's so many scammers now on Instagram and Facebook and everyone, and they prey on elderly people.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
unidentified
And they prey on...
lukas nelson
They pretend that they're me.
And they go out there, and these people are, I think they're the lowest form on this planet, really.
Because these are people that have dementia issues.
They have, you know, they're elderly, you know, and they prey on that demographic specifically because they know that they're more gullible and don't understand technology.
And they think that I'm talking to them and they'll give, in some cases, thousands and thousands of dollars of their own savings in my name.
And that has almost made me get off the internet many times.
But even so, what happens when I get off is then they just run rampant.
You know, they create new accounts and then the people that are, you know, sort of, and they don't want to believe it's not me.
joe rogan
Of course.
lukas nelson
You know, and so like the people that are caught in it get caught and they get hooked.
You know.
joe rogan
I remember watching this documentary once and it was about people that get scammed romantically online.
lukas nelson
Right.
joe rogan
And there's this guy who's this lonely man who's in his 60s and he had this girlfriend that he was communicating with in Europe that was non-existent.
And he flew over there twice to meet her and every time she conveniently couldn't meet him.
lukas nelson
Totally.
joe rogan
And his daughter rather was trying to explain to him that it wasn't real, that he was getting scammed, that he didn't want to believe it.
And in the documentary, you could see this guy coming to grips with it, but not wanting to believe it.
And like, oh, something just came up.
She couldn't go.
She loves me.
lukas nelson
It's the saddest thing.
That just happened to us recently.
I played a show with Eric Church at Chiefs, and I had a bunch of friends there and everything.
And we had someone show up at the door saying that they had been put on the list by me, that I was in a relationship with that person.
joe rogan
You said they weren't just schizophrenic?
lukas nelson
Well, these people are, in some cases, schizophrenic, or they have Alzheimer's or dementia or memory issues or whatever.
But a lot of times they're just being catfished, you know, or just like, you know, like, I mean, I've seen, there is that show Catfish that was on TV not too long ago.
I don't know if it's still around, but like these are otherwise sort of normal people that get tricked into believing they're in a relationship and they have a girlfriend and they're online and they get to the place.
And these are like sometimes younger people that even get – For sure.
joe rogan
yeah, well, it's just the perils of dealing with this non-material world, yeah, dealing with the internet world.
lukas nelson
I mean, and I'm sure it happened in some ways back in the day, you know, with letters and things like that.
joe rogan
Well, it happened with everything.
I mean, snake oil salesman.
I mean, I was reading some.
Oh, no, I was watching Cody Tucker today.
He had something about this guy who was treating people for cataracts, and it didn't really treat them.
It actually blinded them.
And he had done it to two different famous composers.
This one guy was like, and he was a traveling guy.
He would go from town to town and do things like that.
There's always been people like that.
lukas nelson
And you ask yourself, do those people have any conscience?
You know, at that certain point, what are they telling themselves to justify their behavior?
joe rogan
Yeah, they're probably just getting by, and probably they've been fucked over, too.
Most of those people have been fucked over to the point where they can justify fucking over other people.
Like, those people have it coming.
Someone did it to me.
I'm going to do it to them.
This is the game we play.
lukas nelson
What is the antidote to that?
joe rogan
You know, I think those people exist so you can appreciate people that don't do that.
Yeah.
I think that's where heartless, nasty, vicious people exist.
It's like have you ever been in a relationship with someone who's just like a real shithead, just mean, nasty, insulting.
lukas nelson
Gaslighty.
joe rogan
Yeah, and trying to diminish you as a person.
And then you meet someone who's not like that, and you're like, oh, if I didn't know someone who sucked, maybe I wouldn't appreciate this person.
unidentified
Totally.
joe rogan
You know, and like, that's the beauty.
Like, one time, me and my friend Brian, we went on this hunting trip with my friend Steve Ranella to this island in Alaska.
And we were there for a week, getting rained on every day.
It was miserable.
Just freezing, shivering every day for a week.
Then I came back to L.A. and the sun felt so good.
It never felt that good.
I've been living in L.A. for 25 fucking years.
It never felt that good.
But I appreciated the sun.
Why did I appreciate the sun?
Because I had just been rained on for a week.
I had taken it for granted.
This beautiful, amazing sunlight that I just go, oh, it's a fucking sunny day.
Where's my sunglasses?
Let me drive to work and get inside real quick because it's too fucking bright out.
But because of the rain for a week of rain, I really felt it.
And I remember calling my friend Steve.
I have never been happier.
And that's why, is because it sucked for a week.
And I think you need that.
I think you need shitty people so that you appreciate good people.
And I think when you meet someone who's gaslighty and someone who tries to ruin your life, those people exist so that you can appreciate people that aren't like that.
The yin and yang of life.
lukas nelson
Another great example of that is when you have to pee so bad.
Right?
unidentified
And then that moment when you get to the toilet and it's beer drinkers understand that.
lukas nelson
Oh man, yeah.
Or when you're sick and you, you know, and then you're like, oh man, it's almost like you can't even remember how it felt to feel good.
And then when you feel good, you're like, oh, wow, I'm so grateful that I feel good.
It's an amazing feeling.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And that is the thing we take for granted more than anything is personal health.
And you give up personal health for short-time, short-term experiences.
Like, you know, drinking.
Like, drinking is terrible for your health.
But you give it up.
You give up these little chunks of your health for these small bursts of release of inhibition.
lukas nelson
Right.
Yeah, I never really liked it anyways.
It never really actually put me in.
Too often, I always was like, yeah, I wish I hadn't.
joe rogan
It puts you in bad spots.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
I feel like I think the people, and I've read this, that the people who actually sort of drink and become happy or the life of the party or whatever are the ones who are more likely to become addicted, obviously.
joe rogan
Oh, for sure.
lukas nelson
You know, because there are two types of people that when they drink, like for me, when I drink, it kind of makes me think more and I get kind of depressed and I get kind of down.
I don't really actually.
joe rogan
Well, you're a sensitive artist, literally.
unidentified
That's literally what you do.
lukas nelson
Hold on.
You're right.
joe rogan
Now you can lean into that.
That's a weird thing, too.
People lean into that sensitivity.
They lean into it.
They carry it around as a badge of courage.
You know, it's just fine.
It's okay.
But, you know, those are the type of people that, I mean, that's why it feels so good for them.
lukas nelson
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
When you know, you drink and then you just become overly sensitive and think about things.
It's just like, it's because you have a lot of empathy.
And the alcohol, the release of inhibition makes you be overwhelmed by the empathy.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Be overwhelmed by thinking.
I mean, you know, the world is filled with a lot of weird shit, man.
And it's like there's all these different channels that you can tune into.
All these different things that you can focus on.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
I think that, you know, the ice bath analogy for me is like, I love the clarity that I get after an ice bath.
And I feel like sobriety gives me that.
You know, it's just like, it's just like this great, awake, alive feeling.
And I'm living in that clarity.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a perfect example.
Because you have to go through it to get there.
You get out of that ice bath, you feel so fucking good.
Why do you feel so fucking good?
Because for three minutes, you feel like you're going to die.
unidentified
Exactly.
joe rogan
That's literally the benefit of it.
And what's fascinating to me is I watch all these people try to dismiss it, and all these people try to say, you know, it's foolish and silly.
The one thing that those people all have in common, the dismissers, is they all lack discipline.
They all are fighting it intellectually.
They're fighting whatever that fucking mid-cingulate cortex.
lukas nelson
Anterior mid-cingulate cortex.
joe rogan
Yeah, theirs is weak as fuck.
And they don't like it.
And so they try to diminish the people that do have it.
They try to diminish it, which is just a compensation thing that people do.
People are always doing that.
And you know, those voices are important too, because those voices, like, you go, oh, I know why you're doing that.
Even the gaslighty people, like, oh, I know why you're doing that.
lukas nelson
Well, it's helped me get through life understanding people and that their behavior comes from their own trauma and their own past.
joe rogan
Sure, and the thing that you hate in other people, oftentimes you hate it because you're terrified of seeing it in yourself.
lukas nelson
Well, that's the great lesson.
And it doesn't mean that – I think it doesn't mean that you are that.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean you are that.
lukas nelson
But I think that, yes, it's like what you're most afraid of, you know.
joe rogan
Because you know it exists in you.
lukas nelson
Because everything exists in all of us.
We're the exploded universe in manifested motion.
We are the unfolding universe every moment.
joe rogan
Yeah, and when you get angry at foolishness that you see in other people, what you're angry at is that that thing could be in you.
And it is in you.
It's just you haven't fed it.
It's the wolf you haven't fed.
lukas nelson
Yeah, and discipline helps with that.
It helps you to understand that you are responsible for your feelings.
joe rogan
Yes.
Yeah.
You're responsible for your feelings.
And also, like, there's things that you can do that can make life more bearable.
And one of those things is physical exertion.
It makes life more bearable.
And the way I realize this is when I don't exercise for like three or four days in a row, which is very rare.
lukas nelson
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
But when it does happen, I start getting really weird and anxious.
And I'm like, oh, my God, people are like this all day.
Like, some people are like this their whole life, where they're just riddled with anxiety.
And everything is a crisis.
Every little mo, every fucking moment is unbearable.
I'm like, oh, this makes sense.
This makes sense in our sedentary, weird world where people are just sitting and staring at a screen all day and, you know, and not doing things.
So you're not, you don't have, you don't have meaning, right?
And then you're just overwhelmed.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then, you know, then you find a protest and go out there and start fucking screaming in the streets.
lukas nelson
Well, I think there's more to that than that.
But yes, I agree.
I mean, I think.
joe rogan
A lot of it is that, though.
A lot of it is that.
A lot of what people protest.
A lot of protests have real good purpose behind them.
But a lot of the people participating in those protests are looking for meaning in their life.
And they don't have it anywhere else.
lukas nelson
Yes, well, and look, we need those people, too.
We need those people to drive change.
joe rogan
Sure, if they're organic.
And again, the problem with this world is that those things are manipulated.
lukas nelson
You have to be weaponized.
It's important that you don't let your emotions be manipulated.
I think that's one of the great lessons in this wild world that we're in.
I mean, that's what I try the most.
That's why I try not to make concrete statements unless I know at least where I err on is like, okay, this is the compassionate thing to support or do.
I have a charity that I work with called Music Heals International.
And it's a music school in Haiti, in Venezuela, in India.
I think there's a presence here too.
And it's just, I know that I can, in concrete, create ways, make someone's life more joyful on a face-to-face basis.
David Blaine was telling me about, I met David Blaine one time, and he's a cool guy.
Very cool guy.
And we were discussing that it's almost more powerful to be at a hospital and go and talk to the kids that you're supporting in this hospital rather than to donate to that hospital.
I think there's just something so spiritually significant about being with the people that you're helping and the joy in that being reciprocated and that feeling of being at the, you know, just giving is joy, you know, ultimately.
I think that's a really cool thing.
You know, like there's a great quote, a man slept and dreamt that life was joy.
He awoke and found that life was service.
unidentified
He acted and behold, service was joy.
lukas nelson
And I like that.
Always remember that.
joe rogan
There's definitely something to that, right?
Making people feel good is selfish.
lukas nelson
It is.
And it's a joy and it's a win-win.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a win-win.
Like you get rewarded for being nice.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
And I mean, there's a also I don't like, I think the word kind is more appropriate.
Because people can be nice and not good, but I don't think you can truly be kind and not mean it.
joe rogan
Because if you're kind, you actually are thinking.
Yeah, you feel it.
Where others, you're just being polite.
Yeah.
And you can say the right words with like a shitty feeling to it, like, have a good day.
And you're like, ew.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Fuck you.
unidentified
Yeah.
lukas nelson
Yeah, exactly.
unidentified
Yeah.
lukas nelson
I know what's behind that.
joe rogan
British people are really good at that.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, they're really good at saying the right words with like a county attitude behind it.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Because that's part of their culture.
It's like keeping up appearances.
lukas nelson
Well, I mean, in a way, it's part of every culture.
unidentified
Sure.
lukas nelson
And I think that, you know, yeah, keeping up appearances, you know, keeping up.
joe rogan
Well, it's one of the things I hated the most about Los Angeles.
It's like the hollowness of communication.
That's my bias against actors because I encountered so many people that were like artificial constructs.
lukas nelson
Well, I loved it there when I went, and I still love it when I go.
I mean, I've spent a lot of time.
Yeah, I lived there for 10 years.
joe rogan
Where'd you live?
lukas nelson
In Venice.
joe rogan
Okay, well, that's a little different.
Venice is kind of an art.
At least it was before it was overwhelmed with homeless people.
lukas nelson
Here's what I think about Los Angeles is Los Angeles is like the cave in Star Wars, an Empire Strikes Back.
And when Luke asks Yoda, what's in there, and he says, only what you take with you.
Because you can go to LA and find any type of energy.
You can go to LA and find any type of person.
There's groups of really amazing people, and there's groups of people who are lost, you know.
And there's different areas, and there's different places where these different types of people congregate.
But LA is a very powerful place.
It's a lot of moving place, you know, and I prefer to be in places that there's less movement.
I live in Maui.
I have my friends in Maui.
My best buddy, Matt Miola, is a professional surfer, and he's a bow hunter.
And my friend Ollie works construction.
And when I go home to Maui, I like a simple life.
They're all fishermen.
I like to go out there and that's how I want to raise my kids.
I want to be out there in nature.
I want to be giving and taking with the land.
And I want to be able to understand the planet that I live on by working with the earth and working with, and that community in Maui there is a really special place.
joe rogan
Well, I think Hawaii in general is a very special place because it's surrounded by ocean.
And I think there's something about the ocean that gives you humility.
And it lets you understand that you're a part of nature.
lukas nelson
That's where we came from.
joe rogan
Yeah, we came from it.
And not only that, it's so huge and massive and overwhelming.
It's like the mountains.
Mountains have a similar effect.
It's like they're so vast, you can't have much of an ego when you're in their presence.
lukas nelson
My other favorite place is Montana.
joe rogan
There you go.
lukas nelson
Mountains.
Other than, you know, yeah, I mean, anywhere there's nature, but I really like, being in the mountains of Montana and being on Hawaii, there's only a few places in life that I actually am sad when I leave.
Like I get really upset when I leave.
unidentified
You know, it's like breaking up with someone, you know, when you have to leave.
joe rogan
Yeah.
When you write, do you have a purpose in mind?
Or do you just sit down and try to find out what comes to mind or do you have a thought in your head before you write?
lukas nelson
My best work comes, it just, it's like a conduit.
It like comes from another place.
And I hear like when I was 11, I wrote this song called You Were It.
And I was on the school bus and I started hearing this song in my head.
And I realized that it hadn't been written yet.
It was something that was coming from, I guess, my own experiences, but also filtered through somewhere else.
It felt like it came from somewhere, like it was a download.
And I think that I look at writing as if there's a beautiful muse sitting there, and she's giving me these gifts every once in a while, and that she sends them to me.
And if I'm open and clear and not in my own way, and I'm, you know, if I get like something that hits me, like a clever line, like there's a song I have called Find Yourself, and I hope you find yourself before I find somebody else to be my love.
And I start singing that in my head, and I start like, oh, the melody comes, and it's a gift.
And wherever I'm at, if I got one right now, I'd have to write it down while we were talking.
You know what I mean?
I have to sit down.
I'll be like, hold on, let's write a song.
But I try not to, I can't force her to send me because they're gifts.
And it's like my dad always says, like waiting for the rain to fill up the well.
You can't force the rain to come.
You just have to wait.
And the real stuff comes when you just allow yourself to receive it.
joe rogan
And I think I like what you just said, too, about getting out of your own way.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because that's the thing.
It's like these ideas are out there, but you're so in your own head and so worried about yourself and your own bullshit that sometimes like you block them.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because all of your attention is on yourself.
lukas nelson
Oh, yeah.
I mean, you know, and you overthink it and you overanalyze it.
How am I going to look?
joe rogan
Is it going to be cool?
People are going to like it.
lukas nelson
That's the big one.
I think a lot of people get caught up in like, well, you know, like this latest record, you know, people, like, I didn't want to be too flowery with it.
I wanted to write simply what came to me.
And sometimes the songs are simple.
And I think that simplicity for some people can be like, oh, well, what about the intricate arrangements?
And what about the long jams and the exploration?
Like, that's not what came to me.
And I can't cater to those people.
Right now, where my heart is, is Zen.
I'm trying to be as simple as I can be in terms of just only putting out what comes to me at the moment.
And sometimes people aren't going to like it because they're used to me rocking and jamming and doing all that or they're used to me doing that.
But that'll come back.
It'll come back around.
There's a time and a place for everything.
And right now, I have to be open to it as it comes, not as I want it to be or as I think other people will want it to be.
joe rogan
That's it.
lukas nelson
Right.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You just have to, whatever, the thing has to be kind of pure in its form.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
And don't over-molest it with a bunch of different production values and fucking layers and stuff.
lukas nelson
Yes, exactly.
And I prefer, I mean, when I listen to my heroes, you know, Hank Williams, Dad, Merle Haggard, Stevie Ray and Jimmy are, look, what came to Jimmy was an explosion of color and sound.
I mean, when I hear his music, I see colors that are like I can't even describe in real life.
joe rogan
Right.
lukas nelson
It might have something to do with the psychedelics that I also took.
But at the same time, I think that other people— And that's the thing, is that he, it goes back to what we're saying, like the state of mind that he was in.
joe rogan
100%.
lukas nelson
He captured and he put it out.
joe rogan
Imagine writing Voodoo Child if you're sober.
lukas nelson
Yeah, you know, like, yeah, exactly.
And there's a time and a place for it, you know.
joe rogan
Yeah.
lukas nelson
You know, and but, you know, I have hundreds of songs I have not released that I wrote at different times in my life.
And I'll eventually put them all out, hopefully, if I'm lucky.
joe rogan
Did you just go back to them and look at them every now and then?
Like, how do you file them away?
Do you have them on a couple of them?
lukas nelson
I have them on a Dropbox file.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
So every now and then you check them out.
lukas nelson
A couple hundred songs in there, more probably now, because I write them all the time, you know.
And, yeah, it's like, it's just kind of, it just looks like...
sometimes it's like, God, I wrote another one, it's going to go there.
And then that one shoots to the top of the list of the one you're interested in because you just wrote it.
And then something that might be really great just gets kind of pushed down.
And then like, so what really, you really have to do is each project that comes up, you have to say, what am I trying to get across right now?
And it's not about whether a song is better or worse.
It's about what am I trying to say and how do I present that?
And so I have to collect 10 or 12 or 14 songs that kind of fit in a narrative that you're trying to put out there.
joe rogan
And do you write pen to paper or do you write on a computer?
Like, how do you do it for the most part?
You write on your phone.
lukas nelson
I do it for the most part.
joe rogan
Really?
lukas nelson
Yeah.
Well, because I have fast thumbs.
joe rogan
Okay.
lukas nelson
And my brain works really fast.
And when I get really excited, I'll write it down there.
I can read it properly.
Sometimes I'll write on a piece of paper, don't get me wrong.
joe rogan
Do you ever talk it to your phone?
lukas nelson
I use voice memo to record everything.
So a lot of the demos that I have are just voice memo to phone because my brain's working fast and this thing works pretty fast.
joe rogan
Yeah, you know, voice memo has a transcription aspect to it too now.
lukas nelson
Oh, I didn't even realize that.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, I've been using that a lot.
So when you, it works on both Android and on iPhones.
Yeah.
But when you make a voice note, it can transcribe it now.
So like what I'll do is I'll record sets.
And sometimes we do this show at the Comedy Mothership called Bottom of the Barrel where you have like a whiskey barrel and inside is all suggestions from the audience.
You just put your hand in there and pick out a piece of paper and pull it out.
It's like tomato soup or whatever.
lukas nelson
Right, right.
joe rogan
And you just have to start talking about it, try to find something in there.
And every now and then, it's like one out of X amount of times you have a genuine idea that becomes a bit.
And the best way for me to fish those out is to go over the transcription instead of just listening to myself for an hour.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
I mean, that's great.
I didn't realize that was a feature, and I'm going to start using it.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's pretty dope because you can just talk and it'll transcribe it, and then you can copy and paste that transcription into voice note or into notes.
unidentified
Oh.
joe rogan
And even notes itself has a voice memo aspect to it now.
lukas nelson
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
So if you go to just when you're in notes on an iPhone, you can actually make a voice memo, voice note from that, and it'll transcribe that for you.
unidentified
When you're doing a set, do you have people put their phones away?
joe rogan
Yes.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, the club has.
The club does that.
lukas nelson
Most comedians do that, right?
Because they're trying a lot of material.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're trying material out, and also you don't want people distracted.
It's better for everybody.
It's better for the audience.
It's better for you.
And also, you're saying a lot of stuff that's not done.
And if somebody releases it because they want clicks and then they put it on you to fuck the whole bit up because it's not done.
And a lot of bits, they suck at first.
Like you don't know where they're going.
Like you have an idea.
And the only way comedy really gets made is in front of a crowd.
I have a lot of ideas that I think are really good until the audience tells me different.
You don't know.
Really, you have no idea until you say it in front of people.
lukas nelson
That's interesting, yeah.
And it's very much the same for, you know, in music.
I feel like there's stuff that I try out live.
You know, there's a song, I do a lot of new material live just to see how the audience will react.
joe rogan
Does it feel weird the first time you sing it?
lukas nelson
Yeah.
It depends on what type of song it is, too.
If it's a song that requires focus on the lyrics, you know, then sometimes it feels weird because a lot of people, when they listen to music, they don't hear a lot of lyrics.
It takes a certain type of listener to listen to lyrics and be able to internalize them.
A lot of people take the song as a whole and the melody and they hear it and they're like, oh, this song makes me feel good.
And then later on, if they like the song, they'll go in and listen to the lyrics.
I've found a lot of people listen to music that way.
And then it takes them a while to actually hear what, you know, unless it's a stripped down me and a guitar with no band around.
And then it forces the listener to then listen to the words, you know, which I actually, I really like doing that.
Sometimes I like just playing just me because then there's no distraction around and it's sort of just me, a guitar, and the words that I'm saying.
And I think they have more impact sometimes that way.
joe rogan
Yeah, people love that too.
That's why they love acoustic performances, right?
lukas nelson
Yeah, exactly.
Like Bob Dylan was an amazing, Paul Simon, again, these are people that I cite a lot, you know, in this way.
But, you know, Sierra Farrell, do you know Sierra Farrell?
Oh, my God.
She's on my new record.
Stephen Wilson Jr., he's another great, amazing country singer-songwriter.
Sierra Farrell has one of the greatest voices I've ever heard.
unidentified
Really?
lukas nelson
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
You love her music.
And Stephen Wilson Jr., not only is he a great writer, he used to be a food scientist.
So he was a food scientist and he wrote songs kind of as a hobby on the side, but he was responsible for what percentage of what sort of goes into making dog food and things like that.
It was really interesting.
And now he's really hitting it off.
He's a great artist.
joe rogan
That's interesting.
Like a food scientist, too.
Well, yeah, I guess there's probably art to that too, right?
lukas nelson
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Create something delicious.
Well, you could be an evil food scientist, creating junk food that's like super addictive.
lukas nelson
I think there's a lot of those out there, man.
unidentified
Oh, hell yeah.
lukas nelson
But I don't, you know, do they think they're evil?
They're probably just, you know, getting the job done.
joe rogan
They're just doing their job.
What's their job?
You know, I mean, a lot of these food companies, unfortunately, are now owned by the same people that used to own tobacco companies.
lukas nelson
Right.
joe rogan
Or still own tobacco companies.
lukas nelson
Yeah, that's interesting.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And then they develop super addictive junk food.
lukas nelson
Family farms, man.
Family farms, regenerative farms.
Support your local family farmer.
joe rogan
Yeah, you don't have to eat junk food.
lukas nelson
No, you don't.
joe rogan
But also, you can.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Just don't eat it all the time.
Twinkies are great.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
They make you feel like shit, but while you're eating them, they're delicious.
unidentified
Yeah.
lukas nelson
I like, I think as far as junk food goes, I'm just a good old Snickers bar.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Snickers bar are great.
I don't even know if Snickers bar is like really junk food because there's a place for Snickers bars.
Like if you're in the backcountry, say if you're hiking.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Snickers bars is.
lukas nelson
Oh, it has nuts, some protein.
joe rogan
There's plenty of sugar in it, too, which you're going to need if you're burning off a shit ton of calories.
You're operating at a calorie deficit, and sometimes that's like exactly what you need.
You need like a little bit of protein, a lot of sugar, and it helps fuel your muscles.
And it gives you just simple, simple, simple calories.
lukas nelson
I think I just heard you were talking about this.
Was it George Foreman?
He used to drink a Coke after each other.
joe rogan
No, Floy May with it.
Floy May.
Yeah, he drank Coca-Cola after he worked out.
There's something to that.
There's something to that as hard as he worked out.
Just like immediate sugar after exercise to replenish the body.
Yeah, my friend Corey Sanhagen was talking about that.
He does that.
He's a big fan of like, because he's an MMA fighter, and so he'll do two and sometimes three workouts in a day.
And if you're going to do that, you have to do something after a hard workout to replenish the muscles in order to be able to work out.
lukas nelson
And the carbs then replenish the muscles.
joe rogan
Yeah, you need those sugars.
Yeah, you need fruit.
You need fructose.
lukas nelson
But wouldn't you want it to be like a more pure form of sugar?
Aren't there different types of refined sugar is not?
joe rogan
Yeah, perhaps.
But also high sugar stuff gets in the muscles quicker.
That's the argument for doing it right after a workout.
lukas nelson
Okay, yeah.
And what is right after?
Is it like within 15 minutes?
joe rogan
I think it's within 30.
I think that's the argument.
I mean, you have to look at, I mean, there's a lot of exercise scientists that I'm sure would have arguments one way or the other, which is interesting.
So they can't all agree.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
You know, there's a lot of arguments.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And it also depends on what kind of exercise you're doing.
You know, are you a weightlifter or are you a marathon runner?
You know, because we had Courtney Dowalter on the podcast once, and she does ultra marathons.
And, you know, my friend Cam Haynes, who also does ultra marathons, says she's one of the toughest human beings he's ever met in his fucking life and she exists on sugar.
She eats like candy and drinks beer.
Like it's not, she's not like formed in a lab.
Like whatever willpower that she has that allows her to, you know, she's beaten people where she does like these 250 mile runs where the second place person is like eight hours behind her.
lukas nelson
Wow.
joe rogan
Which is just bananas.
lukas nelson
Yeah, that's right.
joe rogan
The idea of like you could run 250 miles and then second place, it takes them eight hours longer than you to run those 250 miles.
lukas nelson
Wow.
That's got to be genetic slightly too.
Well, it's got to be like the VO2 max is pretty high.
joe rogan
I don't know.
Genetic.
It's body type for sure.
You're not going to get like a 6'5, 300-pound man that can do that.
lukas nelson
Sure.
joe rogan
Because your form physically can't really perform.
There's so much of a physical energy requirement to move that much mass in defiance of gravity over long periods of time.
Most of those people that are ultra-marathon runners are very slight, small people.
Like Cam, when he gets ready to do ultramarathons, he loses quite a bit of weight.
At one point in time, he was in the high 180s, and now he's down to like 160, and he'll get even lower than that.
lukas nelson
How tall is he in this race?
joe rogan
He's my height, so he's like 5'8.
lukas nelson
Okay.
joe rogan
5'7.
So he'll get down to like 150-something when he's gonna do like a 250-mile race.
But it's like a, that kind of mindset is a crazy mindset.
That's like a very unusual punishment that you're gonna put yourself through voluntarily.
lukas nelson
When Chris died, Chris Christofferson died, it hit me real hard and I went and ran.
I just kept running like Forrest Gump and I ran just 13.1 miles.
unidentified
I stopped when I got half a mile, half a marathon.
lukas nelson
And I was worked.
I was like, oh man, another 13.1 miles for a marathon?
That's a lot.
joe rogan
Well, you build up to it, right?
That's the whole thing.
It's like, you know, like if someone wants to work out tomorrow and they never worked out, like I've done this with a lot of my comedian friends.
I take them to the gym.
I go, look, we're not going to break you.
If you're going to work out with me, it's going to be very easy.
And you're going to maybe want to do more, but I'm not going to let you.
I'm going to make you do a certain amount of push-ups, a certain amount of body weight squats.
We're going to do a few of these and a few of those, and then we're done.
We're done.
And I don't want you to be tired.
I want you to be just a little energized.
And then two days later, we'll do it again.
And then we'll do it again.
And then after a while, your body gets stronger.
Like, now I'm going to require more of you.
Now we're going to actually exert.
And now, okay, now you've got some muscle mass.
Now you've got some endurance.
And now we're going to build on top of that.
The way I describe it, I'm like you're building a mountain one layer of paint at a time.
Wow.
lukas nelson
That's a good way to describe it.
Do you do the scans, the body scans?
joe rogan
Or DEXA scans?
lukas nelson
The DEXA scans.
joe rogan
I have in the past.
I haven't done one in a long time.
jamie vernon
I just found this guy, Colin Anders, and 287 pounds did a 100-mile.
joe rogan
Whoa.
jamie vernon
He's set up to do, like, to break the world record.
joe rogan
I like it says ultra-large.
jamie vernon
That's the name of the little documentary they made.
joe rogan
So he's 280 pounds, and he ran an ultra-marathon.
Wow.
That must have been hell.
lukas nelson
That was incredible.
jamie vernon
That's the weight he lost at the end of the video there, too.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
I bet he lost 50 pounds.
jamie vernon
It just checks right here.
joe rogan
How much weight did he lose?
jamie vernon
I'm about to find out.
Skip ahead.
Spoiler alert.
lukas nelson
Spoiler alert.
joe rogan
Get to the end.
jamie vernon
Wait, he gained weight.
joe rogan
No.
jamie vernon
It's 297, it says.
joe rogan
Well, what did he weigh before?
jamie vernon
That's 287, is what I was seeing.
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
How's that possible?
10-pound weight gain after 100 pounds?
Or 100 miles round?
What the fuck did you eat, bro?
unidentified
Wow.
jamie vernon
That's crazy.
unidentified
He must have been eating the whole time, like right every 30 miles.
joe rogan
He's a packing every five minutes.
That's incredible, though.
jamie vernon
I guess.
I don't know.
joe rogan
I guess.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
lukas nelson
Your body probably is doing everything it can to keep the water.
joe rogan
I mean, I can only guess.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's pretty wild.
lukas nelson
That is interesting.
joe rogan
To be that big.
lukas nelson
That's something I didn't expect to see.
joe rogan
Yeah, to be that big and run 100 miles is very, very unusual.
Most of those guys are super slight, and they just keep on trucking.
unidentified
Yeah.
lukas nelson
Did you read that book a long time ago?
It came out.
I think it was called Born to Run, but it was like about the Tara Humara tribe.
They run barefoot.
And I don't remember what it was actually called, but it was really interesting.
joe rogan
Yeah, they run through the mountains.
It's like a South American tribe, right?
lukas nelson
Yeah, South American or even Mexican.
I can't remember.
joe rogan
Is it Mexican?
unidentified
I don't remember, but the Tara Humara is what they're called.
lukas nelson
And they would run barefoot.
joe rogan
Wild.
What the fuck.
lukas nelson
And apparently, you know, they would also run, which was interesting, they would run happily.
They would have smiles on their faces and they'd be light.
And they said that that helped them sort of lightly grace themselves through the mindset that they had when they ran helped them to outperform everyone else.
joe rogan
Well, they're probably doing it all the time.
In order to be able to run that much, again, you're building.
Slowly but surely building on top of what you had before.
It's like if someone wants to just get out today and run a marathon, don't fucking do it.
You're going to blow your ankles apart.
You're going to fuck your knees up.
You're going to ruin your hips.
Like, don't do that.
Don't do that.
Run around the block.
And then the next day, maybe run twice around the block.
But you have to get better the same way you got sick.
Like, you didn't get unhealthy in a day.
You got unhealthy over the course of a long stretch of life.
lukas nelson
Do you run?
Do you like to run?
unidentified
No.
lukas nelson
You don't run?
joe rogan
No.
I've done it.
I have a knee issue.
lukas nelson
So do you swim instead?
joe rogan
I swim.
I do.
But most of my cardiovascular exercise I do on an airdyne bike.
lukas nelson
Oh, it's a bike.
joe rogan
Or I hit the bag.
lukas nelson
But does the bike hurt your knee too?
joe rogan
No.
lukas nelson
No, it doesn't.
joe rogan
No, because you're not pounding.
unidentified
Right, there's no.
joe rogan
I've had knee surgeries from years of martial arts.
I have like one knee that has meniscus missing.
I can run, I do, but I just don't think it's the best thing for someone who's got like, He's basically bone on bone, just running around.
But he gets a bunch of operations.
He's done like seven or eight operations to try to correct his knees that are fucked up from doing this.
They put plates in there and shit, and he wears them out.
Like, it's nuts.
lukas nelson
I, you know, I respect the guy, but that's a lot.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
I mean, he's ruining his body.
And he's hoping that science will get to a point where they could repair all that shit without him having to reuse it.
lukas nelson
He's like placing it on that.
joe rogan
Well, it's like you can get a knee replacement now, right?
And you'll be in significantly less pain.
But once science comes around, well, they're getting closer and closer every day to be able to completely regenerate cartilage, meniscus, and all that tissue that you have inside your knee that keeps it healthy.
If you decide that you want to get a knee replacement, that kind of stops all that because now you have an artificial knee and you can't regrow a knee once you've cut your knee out.
lukas nelson
No, you can't.
joe rogan
And so this is why he's not doing that yet, I think.
He's talked about it.
He's like, maybe someday I'll have to, but right now it's just, he'll just deal with it.
lukas nelson
Wow.
joe rogan
You look like you have to pee.
Do you?
lukas nelson
No?
Okay, I thought you did.
joe rogan
You're weaseling around a little bit.
Because I usually get sensitive to guests, like if they start to move around a little, I was like, oh, you got to pee?
lukas nelson
Well, now let me take an assessment.
joe rogan
Because we're like two hours in.
lukas nelson
We are two hours in.
joe rogan
At least.
Yeah.
lukas nelson
I feel good, though.
unidentified
Okay.
lukas nelson
I don't have to pee.
unidentified
I just sort of like, yeah, I guess I've just been sitting a while.
It's kind of like a little bit of a little bit of a little bit.
joe rogan
Yeah, no, I do that too.
I do that too.
Yeah, but for people out there that are thinking about like, oh, this is inspiring me, start slow.
But do it again.
Make sure you don't just get inspired one day.
Inspiration is great.
Discipline is better.
lukas nelson
You know what I did, which I loved, is that really helped me was wherever I would walk, just in general, I would just do a little like jog instead of walking somewhere.
I'd just go like, you know.
joe rogan
Just a little something.
lukas nelson
Just like this.
joe rogan
Yeah.
unidentified
Just kind of like, almost like this, and I'd walk wherever I was going.
lukas nelson
And I started to do that every day.
Just like, oh, you know, instead of walking to get my coffee in the morning, I'd kind of do a little jog.
And throughout the day, I'd do that.
And eventually I started wanting to go out for a run.
Like, my body just started warming up.
And I kind of wanted to do that.
joe rogan
Same concept.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, same concept.
Build it up slowly.
lukas nelson
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
Just do something, people.
I'm telling you.
Just go fucking do something.
Find a yoga class.
Do something.
lukas nelson
Treat your body like a temple.
joe rogan
Well, just for your brain.
You know, you got to understand that there's a connection.
If your body is sedentary, it's just sludge.
It's all just.
It's all blocked up.
lukas nelson
That's true.
joe rogan
That fucks with your mind.
The mentally unhealthiest people that I know are all terribly out of shape.
lukas nelson
Yep.
And I mean, you know, there is a correlation for sure.
joe rogan
100%.
You know, this is this life.
This life is, you've been given this meat vehicle, and you've got to maintain it.
lukas nelson
It's a good band name.
joe rogan
Meat vehicle?
Probably already exists.
It probably has some banging songs.
It's probably a hardcore band.
lukas nelson
Definitely a hardcore band.
Meat vehicle.
Wait, there are some other ones.
Oh, biblically accurate angel.
joe rogan
Ooh.
Biblically accurate angel.
lukas nelson
Have you seen what a biblically accurate angel looks like?
joe rogan
Yeah, they look like aliens.
lukas nelson
That was pretty cool.
joe rogan
Yeah, they look like geometric patterns.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
I always wonder what the alien...
He thinks that they're not visiting from somewhere else, that they've always been here, and that there's some sort of spiritual aspect to like the UFO encounter, UAP phenomenon.
lukas nelson
Oh, I see.
Yes.
Well, there's a lot of interesting pictures that are, you know, drawn on cave walls and things like that.
joe rogan
Oh, we've gone over a shit ton of them.
And then also ancient religious art where it looks like people are in vehicles flying through the sky.
I'm sure you've seen those too, right?
Yeah, like, what is that?
Like, what are you trying to?
There's no other stuff that you're in that thing that's fantastical.
Everything else is like an accurate representation of life at that time, except for these people that are in these flying things in the sky.
Like, what is that?
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
We just don't know.
Unfortunately.
lukas nelson
When I looked at all of the credible UFO reports, the only ones that really had no explanation.
I actually asked ChatGPT, of all of the credible UFO, of all of the UFO reports, which ones have not in some way been sort of explained?
Right, and which ones are the ones that are still like, Commander David Fraver.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've had him on the podcast talk to him.
lukas nelson
Have you really?
joe rogan
Yeah.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
That seems to be the most compelling.
joe rogan
There's other ones, though.
Ryan Graves, he's another fighter pilot, and that was off the East Coast.
So the Nimitz is off the coast of San Diego.
But off the East Coast, they upgraded their sensors in 2014 on the fighter jets and then immediately started encountering these things that defied known physics that were in the sky.
And these guys had these encounters with these things that were like a cube inside of a sphere that's like motionless at 120 knot winds and no heat signature moving through the sky.
They don't know what the fuck they are.
lukas nelson
What do you say to the theory of the possibility that that is sort of black ops?
Like the idea that the SR-71, I think, the Blackbird, there's a company called Skunkworks, right?
And they were responsible for the declassification of that aircraft.
And then I think the F-111 or the stealth bombers.
But since then, and that was like 25 years ago or more, there have not been any more declassifications.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a good argument.
lukas nelson
I just am curious as to what in 25 years, based on the technology that we've been able to see that makes it to the modern society, how much is held back and what we don't see.
It just interests me.
And I don't know.
I don't have an answer.
I'm not asking myself whether I actually believe that it's almost unlikely that we have that technology, because I feel like it would just take so much more than we may be capable of to cover it up.
But maybe not.
I don't know.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't think it would.
I think there's a high likelihood that a lot of this stuff is ours.
And I think one of the reasons for that statement is that this stuff always happens over military airspace.
East Coast and West Coast.
So the East Coast stuff, the Ryan Graves stuff, they're doing it over areas where these fighter jet pilots run training missions.
And then the same thing as the West Coast stuff, where it's off the coast of San Diego, which is like tons of military out there.
I do believe that there's some programs that are operational.
And there's a great podcast, Jesse Michaels, has an amazing YouTube channel.
He's covered this stuff really extensively, and he's a brilliant guy.
He really understands it.
And they were working on some anti-gravity technology in the 1960s.
And most likely they continued that work.
lukas nelson
Yeah, artificial horizon technology and stuff like that.
I mean, it's got to have come far since then.
joe rogan
Yeah, and the idea that they could hide all that stuff.
No, they could never hide it.
Of course they could.
Of course they could.
They definitely could.
You're being naive.
You're being naive as to how much the government is.
lukas nelson
I'm only asking the question that I actually pretty much, that's what I lean towards when it comes to that.
joe rogan
think some of it, but some of it also could be from somewhere else.
And I think some of it just exhibits...
So this Tic Tac goes from more than 50,000 feet above sea level to sea level in less than a second.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like seven-eighths of a second.
lukas nelson
Sure.
joe rogan
Like, that's crazy.
lukas nelson
That is.
And you're right.
joe rogan
What is that?
lukas nelson
And it does, it does, it changes it when you remember how long ago these things were being seen.
joe rogan
Right.
Because this is 2004.
But then you go back to the 1960s, if they're really working on anti-gravity technology back then, it's possible that they could have created a drone.
Right.
The thing is, like, could a human being survive inside of those things at those extreme speeds?
Well, the question is, like, what are they experiencing in that?
Because if it's a gravity device, if it's moving, if it's manipulating gravity, so it might not have g-forces at all.
It might be operating in a completely different paradigm.
lukas nelson
Yeah, well, there may be sort of just, you know, trillions of alternate sort of, you know, momentum shifts in the outside protective layer that balance out whatever's happening on the inside to the point where, you know, they're using just crazy technology.
joe rogan
That's also why the argument is that they're blurry.
Like, so a lot of the photographs of these things are blurry.
It might be because they're actually existing in some sort of a gravity void.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
And what you're seeing is not exactly what's there.
You're seeing it through like a dirty windshield.
lukas nelson
I've seen some stuff.
unidentified
Have you?
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
What have you seen?
lukas nelson
When I was in Maui, twice I've seen something that I could not explain.
The one time I looked up and about nine of us were hanging out and we all looked up at the same time to see an orange orb.
And it was probably, it looked like it was 100 yards away, maybe 200, just floating, kind of observing.
And then I swear it seemed like as soon as enough people saw it, it went whoosh, and then it went whoosh, and it moved like nothing else I thought possible at the time.
It went out of the atmosphere.
And it was crazy, faster than any drone.
And this was back in like 2004, 2003, five, maybe.
We were all young.
I was maybe a little teenager, so it was probably like 2006, but it was like, it was crazy.
I'm telling you.
joe rogan
well, a lot of them happen near the ocean, too, which is interesting.
lukas nelson
And another one, I was out on Lanai, and we were hanging out with some friends, and we were laying down on the lawn, and when you're out in Lanai on the backside of Lanai, there's no light pollution at all.
And so you have just this big, giant fishbowl of stars, and it's the most incredible.
It's like you're sitting in a spaceship.
unidentified
Exactly.
lukas nelson
And you feel that you're on spaceship Earth at the time, you know, like you are on that rock hurtling through space at that point.
unidentified
And I saw this, we all, it scared the girls.
lukas nelson
We all saw this pulsing colored thing go from one side of the horizon to the other, but in a very, like, it was like pulsing different colors, and it was like really interesting.
And so, you know, who knows what that could have been, but it was quite interesting.
joe rogan
Well, the vast majority of the ocean floor is unexplored.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
And so this is the theory is that if you were going to set up a base here to observe human beings, if you came from somewhere else, you would probably do it in the ocean, especially if you have the kind of technology that allowed them to travel here from other star systems would also allow them to not be intimidated whatsoever.
lukas nelson
The pressures.
I mean, that's I guess the deep pressure is what would be the, you know, it's almost the opposite of being in space, you know, the vacuum.
And then you have the deep pressure of, you know, that like, you know, with the...
joe rogan
So, like, what is that?
Is it a hologram?
So is it not a physical object?
Or are they doing something that allows them to not interact with any physical thing on Earth?
Like, some sort of a void that they travel through.
So they can go through the trees.
This is like part of Jacques Valley's research, too, in one of his books that was really fascinating was this woman observed this like egg-shaped thing.
And when it took off, it went through the trees.
But it didn't hurt the trees.
But it was on the ground, like as a physical object.
And when it took off, it went through the trees.
lukas nelson
Well, I wonder if then we're talking about bending space-time at that point.
Are you creating some sort of like warp warp drive?
joe rogan
That's the idea.
lukas nelson
You know, where you're just like warping space and time around a centralized location.
You sort of have to be, you know, use sort of the, you know, these different sort of exotic forms of matter and having an understanding of exotic matter, which we're now just starting to understand that there are these exotic matter types that, you know, that work in these weird ways.
But as we, if you read about it now, the only information available is that we're only cracking the surface of the understanding of these types of matter and hundreds of thousands of years away from understanding that.
joe rogan
But I mean, you know, that's that old saying that any technology that's sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.
Is that Carl Sagan said that?
I forget who said that.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
joe rogan
But yeah, I mean, if you're looking at something from a thousand years from now, it would seem like magic.
I mean, if we continue, we don't blow ourselves up and science and AI continue to figure out more compelling uses of universal energy, like whatever background energy that we have.
Who knows?
Who knows what human beings will be capable of?
So you've got to imagine if something's visiting us from somewhere else, especially if they have artificial superintelligence.
If they've traversed this journey that we're on, if they've gotten to the point where whatever we're currently investigating, whatever they're working on right now in terms of super intelligent AI, what if they've gone through that and they're a thousand years more advanced?
All that stuff would be probably simple for them to be able to go through the water, to have these trans-medium crafts that are capable of flying in the air, through the water.
lukas nelson
Right.
Well, the interesting question for ourselves is how do we get to a place as a society to where we can trust in our science, we can trust to say that we trust it enough to fund it.
joe rogan
That's not trust in the science.
The problem is the human beings that are in possession of the science.
lukas nelson
Well, but that's what I mean.
Like, how do we restore faith in that?
And because there are, you know, it's not all bullshit.
There is real, you know, like we wouldn't exist where we are without the science that has brought us to where we are.
joe rogan
Yeah, technology.
lukas nelson
And technology.
And so understanding and trusting and figuring out how to restore faith in certain institutions that we have because we need them to survive and to keep going.
So it's like not tearing down the airplane while it's falling.
You have to repair the airplane from inside and then keep it flying if you can.
So is there a way to write the ship while we're in it?
joe rogan
I think the problem is a lot of this stuff is military funding.
So a lot of the applications for any sort of super advanced technology is going to be weapon systems.
And that's what everybody's terrified of.
What they're terrified of is that you're going to develop more efficient ways to kill people.
And that's really the only way these things get funded.
lukas nelson
I'm just what I'm saying.
I'm like, how do we switch it so that we can have people in power that really are looking out for the future of humanity and then have people that actually want that?
Because some people are going to have to take sacrifices for that.
And I mean, people high up are going to have to say, well, I'm going to have to get paid a little less because this, you know.
joe rogan
It's a great struggle, Lucas.
lukas nelson
Yeah, it's a great struggle.
joe rogan
Yeah, it really is.
lukas nelson
It's a great struggle.
joe rogan
It's the great struggle of people in power don't necessarily deserve power.
And the kind of people that you want running the world aren't interested in the job.
lukas nelson
No, mostly.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, yeah.
joe rogan
Well, hey, brother, I really enjoyed talking to you.
Thank you very much for being here.
lukas nelson
I appreciate you having me, Joe.
joe rogan
And I encourage everybody to go see you live because you're fucking amazing.
It was really an incredible performance at the McConaughey thing.
And I wish you all the best, man.
I wish you'd been cool being your friend, too.
Yeah, I enjoyed talking to you.
lukas nelson
I enjoyed talking to you, too.
That was fun.
joe rogan
Thank you.
Tell everybody where they can find you.
Where's the best place to find your music?
lukas nelson
Yeah, well, on all the platforms, of course, we're there, and we got a tour posted.
unidentified
We're going to come up there.
joe rogan
Live in concert.
Oh, you're going everywhere.
lukas nelson
Yeah.
We're about to put out new dates, too, for the fall.
unidentified
We're going to be all over the East Coast, the West Coast.
lukas nelson
We're going to be everywhere.
joe rogan
Hell yeah.
Sorry, Kansas City.
That shit sold out.
unidentified
Oh, yeah, that was a while.
That's sold out.
The ones coming up, Charlottesville, Virginia, Allentown, Pennsylvania.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, those are May.
Yeah.
lukas nelson
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
So there's plenty of stuff coming up for people to want to do.
lukas nelson
Montana is going to be great.
joe rogan
Big Sky.
lukas nelson
Big Sky.
joe rogan
Park City, Utah.
unidentified
Yeah, there you go.
joe rogan
Wyoming.
All right.
lukas nelson
Yeah, man.
Thank you.
unidentified
Thank you.
It was fun.
joe rogan
I enjoyed it.
unidentified
All right.
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