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How you doing?

What's going on, man? Good to see you.

10Th episode.

Crazy.

Unbelievable. What are the odds short of your regular crew? Am I in the. Yeah, you're in hall of Fame.

There's very few people that have had ten episodes. A small handful for sure.

I mean, that. I should put that as the top thing on my cv. All the other stuff is bullshit. 10th time on Joe Rogan. Drop the mic.

This is how out of the corporate world I am. I don't even know what a cv is. I don't know what it stands for. I know people say it, I know what it means, but I don't know what it stands for.

Let me tell you what an academic cv looks like.

Sure. What just what does it stand for? What does it.

Curriculum vitae.

Ah, okay.

You basically in academia, you'll start with your education, all your degrees, all of your positions that you've held. I was assistant professor here from here, then all of your journal publications, all of your books, all of your conference art, you know, and so on.

Right.

So it can end up being a pretty beefy cv. I think mine is about 47 pages long.

Oh, my goodness. Look at you. You accomplished actors.

Speaking of which.

And managed to stay logical. How did you do that?

Oh, you got a new book dropping on May 14. Unhappiness.

Sad truth. Two a's about happiness. Eight secrets for leading a good life.

Enjoy it. How. How have I been so productive?

How have you managed to. I mean, people have gotten annoyed at you, but you've. You've somehow another avoided, like a full scale cancelation. Well, with your positions, it's kind of amazing.

It really. It truly is. It's. I'm kind of like the Velcro. Is it velcro? Dawn, the Teflon. Teflon, Dawn, Velcro is Velcro. Right. Right. Nothing sticks. They've tried to cancel me in all sorts of ways. But that speaks, by the way, to one of the powerful reasons why. Tenure. Despite the fact that a lot of people despise the concept of tenure. Oh, it's just a bunch of lazy academics who are going to be Deadwood for the next 30 years. But if I didn't have the protection of tenure, I'd be gone long ago. Now, that doesn't mean that I still haven't suffered many consequences. Right? So I haven't gotten other jobs that I would have otherwise gotten because of how irreverent I am, you know, death threats. So, for example, now after October 7, it's almost became impossible for me to go on campus because first of all, you know, I'm high profile. My university has a particular demographic reality and so there are consequences to speaking out.

But so you, you can't go on campus literally.

I mean, I have gone, but during the points when there were a lot of protests outside the campus and so on or on campus, because our campus is an urban campus, so it's hard to say where the school begins and where the city is. You have death to Jews and free Palestine and Tifada and from the river to the sea, and there's 800 of them screaming. And you're gonna come in. Many of them know who you are. They know that I'm not very supportive of their positions. And so it's going to be, you know, a bit challenging. So on a few cases, I did it via Zoom. Other times I had to have security with me, so I would have to check into security and they'd have to walk with me to Class and so on. That's not a good thing. I'll tell you another quick story, if I may, please, about what happened after October 7. So I'll first talk about what happened in Lebanon. So the day that we escaped from Lebanon, for those of YOur viewers who don't know about us, we're lebanese Jews. We were there until the start of the civil war.

We were there in the first year of the civil war. And then we had to leave because it became impossible to be Jewish in Lebanon. When we left that day, it was from Beirut to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Montreal. As we cleared the airspace of Lebanon, the captain, I discussed this in chapter one of my previous book, the parasitic mine. He said, okay, we're now out of lebanese airspace. And so I said, my wife, my mother pulls out a pendulum with the Star of David, puts it around me, my neck, and says, now you can wear this, be proud and not hide your identity. Now that's in the past, but now I'm going to link it to the current reality. About three weeks after October 7, my wife and son came to pick me up from a cafe where I was working on my laptop. My wife had picked up my son who was playing a soccer match in the east end of the city. And so as I got into the car, he says, daddy, if you had come to where I was playing soccer today and you were wearing a Star of David, you'd be dead.

So 1975, a Star of David is put around me. And now I can wear it proudly 45 years later. I better not wear a Star of David in Montreal, Canada. That doesn't bode too well, Jack.

At a kid's soccer game.

Yeah. Because the demographic reality in that neighborhood is such that a Star of David would be viewed as provocative incitement.

What's crazy to me is, regardless of how you feel about how the israeli military and the army is pursuing the war in Gaza, regardless of that, the blatant, just out in the open anti semitism that we see today, it's like nothing I've ever seen before. Like roaches coming out of the woodwork. Like what? Like, you see it all over social media, and it's like this. If this is September and not October, like, if this is just, you would be. You would be shunned. Everybody would be like, this is horrible. How the fuck could you say this? How. You're openly anti semitic. You're openly blaming the Jews for all the world's problems. This is crazy. This is nazi shit. And yet you're seeing it everywhere. Now, when those teachers were in front of Congress, when those principals of those universities were in front of Congress, and they were saying that it's not harassment to say death to the Jews unless it's actionable, which is the craziest mental, verbal gymnastics I have ever heard anyone say that's in that position, in a position of being the head of. Head of Harvard, it was so crazy to watch.

It's so crazy to see. It's almost like we live in an alternative timeline. Like we entered into a new dimension. Like in our sleep. We woke up, but we're in a new place.

You know, nothing should surprise me, given the history that I have growing up in the Middle east. But I was taken aback after October 7 at the jew hatred that I was exposed to. Now, my positions are really not inflammatory. So, for example, I'll say things like, you know, I'm worried about my. I have a lot of extended family in Israel, right? So after the. October 7 happened, for me to just kind of call around to make sure that none of my cousins and their children and aunts and so on, no one was harmed, will take a while. Well, that itself. The fact that I cared about my family was incitement, was, I'm a Zionist. I'm a baby killer. Right? I am personally responsible for the IDF killing any innocent children. But it's not just that. It's coming at you from all directions. So in the past, you could say, okay, islamic sources are going to send you jew hatred and I'm used to that. You could say the neo Nazi alt right types, you know, Jews will not replace us. They're coming after me. You've got, of course, the academic, progressive left types who are also anti Zionist, which is just code, sweet word for anti Jewish.

And so everywhere you turn, there is jew hatred. And it's so normalized now. Of course, in part, it is emboldened by the fact that a lot of them are anonymous. They don't put their real names so they can take the liberty to be this orgiastically, you know, jew hater. But it just, it's so disenchanting to see that. That guy could be my gardener, he could be my surgeon, he could be my dentist. I don't know who he is. But there are millions of those folks who hold those beliefs. It's unbelievable.

I think a lot of them are fake as well. I think a lot of them are russian and chinese trolls. I think there's a disturbing amount of them that's responsible for taking this kind of discourse and pushing it to a much higher level and making it more ubiquitous. I really, really believe that. And there's a lot of data to support that. And I think that's part of what's going on with social media. It's definitely a big part of what's going on with Twitter and TikTok and a lot of these things where you see these very inflammatory messages that seem to be pushed. They're pushed through and promoted to the fact that you get them all the time. They show up in your feed all the time. Even if you're not subscribed to these, even if you're not following these people, you'll find this disturbing content will show up in your feed. And I really firmly believe that we're being manipulated. I really do. And I think there's a lot of these young kids that are on these campuses that are very malleable. They're very easily influenced, and they don't need, they don't. I mean, so many, I'm sure you've seen Constantine kissing from trigonometry.

He's done these interviews with these people, these protests, and so many of them are completely ignorant. They have no idea what, they're just doing it because they think they're a good person. They're putting up their flag of virtue by saying, free Palestine from the river to the sea, and they don't even know what that means. Do you know what you're saying? You're saying, wipe out Israel. Is that what you're saying not only.

That, in a lot of cases, they're supporting regimes or ideologies that would be perfectly antithetical to their main identity. So, queers for Palestine, chickens for Kentucky fried chicken. Or I like to use geese for foie gras, because I'm from Montreal. I mean, imagine if you present yourself to the world with your queer identity, which is great, good for you. And now you decide. Okay, let me see. Should I be supporting Tel Aviv, which is one of the most queer friendly places? I mean, short of Montreal, New York, San Francisco? Tel Aviv is right up there. So you would think that if my key identity, my definitional identity is my queerness, that I'm certainly putting all my chips with Tel Aviv. No, it's with queers for Palestine. So that's exactly what parasitic thinking is.

Right? And I really do think that's supported by other countries. I think they realize how vulnerable and idiotic a lot of Americans are, and they're just pushing that. And whether you realize it or not, social media, even if they're saying something ridiculous, it's very influential, and they can just move the boundaries a little bit by having the most extreme content, the most ridiculous things be so common, then less extreme content that would ordinarily be considered ridiculous now becomes accepted as normalized. Which is what you're seeing.

Yeah, exactly. Can I point? I mean, you alluded to it earlier about what the IDF might be doing. Can I just mention a few things about that?

Sure.

And I'm hardly the spokesperson of the IDF, but just. It's an idea that I've been toying with, and I'll pitch it here for the first time. So, you know, this notion of equality of opportunities versus equality of outcomes, typically, we link it to all of the woke stuff, right? Equality of opportunities is great. Equality of outcomes is a cancer to human dignity. Okay, let's now apply that concept, equality of outcomes, to war casualties. So, I think this is what happens when people say, oh, but the IDF is being grotesque, because the currency that then matters becomes how many dead on each side. Equality of outcome. But let me change it to a different moral currency. Okay, let's talk about intent. So, for example, in the justice system, you could have a person who is found guilty of involuntarily vehicle vehicular homicide, and he kills four people. Okay, so four are dead. So that's equality of outcome. Four were died versus someone who took out a hit on his entire family, his brother, sister and parents, so that he can win the insurance money. But it's an undercover operation, the cops catch you, even though in that case there were zero killed.

Correct. That person will get a higher sentence, because we understand in the law that intent matters. So now I think you know where I'm going with the analogy. So, in the palestinian IDF conflict, when, say, Hamas launches 6000 rockets, every single one of which is intercepted by the Iron Dome. Had they not had the iron dome, then the outcome could have been that 50,000 would have been killed, right? In an ideal world, from Hamas perspective, our intent would be to eradicate every last jew. They have it in their charter. So, yes, it is true that if we just count the number of people who were killed on October 7 versus the number who were killed in the retaliation, if that's the only calculus that matters, then, oh, yes, the IDF has gone way overboard. But once you change it to an existential intent issue, then maybe it's not such as bad of an outcome, as you think, notwithstanding that a single innocent dead is a tragedy.

You could say it that way. But the problem with that is the iron dome does exist, and Hamas military capabilities are far below Israel's. It would be like if some small person tried to punch me and I moved out of the way and then beat them to death. And I said, no, I had to defend myself. I beat them to death, but I didn't have to beat them to death. They're just a small person. Even if they hit me, it wouldn't really hurt me. It's not. You know what I'm saying?

Sure.

Like, defensively. I'm not worried about a real small person that doesn't know how to fight, who throws a punch at me.

So what would be, in your moral calculus, the ideal outcome that should have happened as a retaliation to October 7?

That's a very good question. Obviously, I'm not a military analyst. If I was, you know, you do have to take into consideration the tunnels. You do have to take into consideration the infrastructure. The question is, did they just knowingly bomb places where there was going to be hundreds and hundreds of innocent civilians, knowing that there's going to be a few hamas? And that's what scares people. What scares people is that someone is willing to kill women and children just to get at bad guys, and they just say, that's just part of the game. That seems horrific in the 2024 understanding of human life and morality and just the horrors of war that, you know, they're blowing up mosques, they're blowing up schools, they're blowing up apartment buildings, everything, anything where they think Hamas is so.

Again, let me preface, and I shouldn't have to say this, that a single person killed that's innocent is a tragedy, of course. But compare that reality to almost any other war that you have in working memory. Why is there a unique, unbelievably high threshold of morality that is placed on the israeli nation right now? You probably already know this. The IDF does go through a lot of painstaking effort to try to minimize that. Right? They drop leaflets in Arabic. They even sometimes call people in Arabic and say, don't go in this area they hold. So, of course, they've killed many, many innocent people. But their place between a rock and a hard place, what can you do, right? The other side knows exactly that if they do exactly what they're doing, either you don't retaliate and we win, or you retaliate very harshly, as they have, and then you still win. Right. Today, the propaganda war has been completely won by Hamas. Right? There's a complete genocide in the informational war against the IDF. One other point, and then I'll send the floor back to you. The term genocide. Jacques Derrida was a very famous postmodernist who developed the field of deconstructionism.

Language creates reality. He was one of the guys who allowed the ecosystem of up is down, men could be women. Left is right, slavery is freedom. It's that postmodernist game that allows these kind of insane ideas to flourish. Well, when you misused words like everything is a genocide that does no one service, there is no genocide. There is a killing of a lot of people. Again, every single one killed is a tragedy. But if Israel wanted to commit a genocide, by the end of my appearing on this 10th time on the show, there wouldn't be a single Palestinian left. So if they were genocidal in their intent, then there really are shitty genocidal maniacs, because first of all, the population, as you know, of the palestinian territories, has gone up five folds. Right? So that's really sucky genocide. And they've killed, depending on the count, right?

But that's all previous to this military action that's going on now.

What are the numbers? The population that you know of right now?

It's hard to say. You know, I mean, Israel has one statistic, and then there's other statistics by human rights organizations that estimate at least 12,000 missing in the rubble that are probably dead and 30,000 dead. Now, at the number of those 30,000, what percentage is hamas? I'm not sure.

So I've heard the most favorable estimates to the IDF are about one to one ratio. The less estimate, it's about one to 1.5. Okay. Up to one to two. So if they.

So if they killed 30,000 people, 15,000 are Hamas? Is that what you're saying?

That would be best case. No, one to one would be 15,000 to 15,000, and then you can take it from there. Right.

Okay.

Okay. So a one to one to one.

But half of them. So. So half of.

Half of them, yeah.

So half of 30 is 15.

Exactly. Okay.

Right.

So now let's compare it to. And I don't know if others have made this analogy. When you drop the bomb, the atomic bomb, almost all the people who were killed were non combatants, right? So then that ratio would be 250,000 killed to zero. I mean, unless there's a few japanese military guys that were in Nagasaki or Hiroshima. You dropped. And again, I'm not trying to say, oh, but they're not as bad as these other guys, so they're. Okay, let's give them a ribbon and a medal. But again, it is anti semitic when you place one group of people to a standard of morality that is not expected of anybody else. So, for example, if you really care about arab lives, then you certainly should care about all of the Yemenis that have been killed that are a lot more than whatever has happened after October 7. You would care about the 500,000 Syrians that were killed. You would care about the war between Iran and Iraq that led to several million killed. And how about in lebanese civil war, 150,000 died in a very.

Right, but that's not happening currently. So people aren't totally aware of that. Like, just those statistics that you brought up, the lebanese deaths. Most people are not aware of that. Most people that are discussing, especially college kids, are not aware of that.

That's why I'm here.

Yeah. I mean, it's all ugly. It's all awful. There's nothing that you could say that is in any way, shape, or form positive about any of this. The question is, is there another way to do it other than just bombing these areas where, you know, Hamas and civilians?

There is another way, but I don't think it will happen. Can I share it?

Yeah.

So Golda Meir, who was the fourth or fifth prime minister of Israel from, I think, 1969 to 1974, has two quotes which I'm gonna paraphrase. I don't have the exact quote. She said, if the Jews put down their arms, there'll be a genocide. If the Palestinians put down their arms, there'll be peace. So just remember that for a second. Second one is, if the Arabs, she means in this case the Palestinian Arabs, if they were to love their children more than they hate ours, then they'd be peace. So why am I saying these two quotes? Because this battle is really not about land. And in a sense, we've already addressed this on previous shows where I've come and discussed about some of these islamic issues. An existential affront that the jewish state exists in the Middle east. So look at all other religious minorities across Arabia. Egypt used to be completely coptic Christian. Hundred percent, many hundred years ago. Today there are 10% Copts left. What happened to those Copts? There used to be tons of Christians in Syria. What happened to those Syrians? There used to be tons of Christians in Lebanon. There still are some, about 30, 35%.

But it's Lebanon used to be a majority christian country. So the goal of Islam, not individual Muslims. Right? Again, I don't need to preface by saying there are millions and millions of lovely, kind, peaceful Muslims. Of course there is. But Islam as an ideology, does it tolerate others? Well, we have 1400 years of history that either says it does or it doesn't.

Right?

We don't have to watch TikTok videos. And nothing could be clearer than what the words of Muhammad were. The prophet of Islam who said that you need to rid Arabia of Christians, but certainly the Jews. So the existence of the land of Israel is an affront to that. One more point, I'll see. To flow back to you. In Islam, there's a concept called Dar al Islam and Dar al Harab that means the house of Islam and the house of war. Anything that's under the islamic control is good. Anything that's yet to be under islamic control is under the house of war. Once a territory is under islamic control and you lose it, you have to get it back. It is your dominion forever. This is why, for example, Andalusia, which was at one point controlled, which is in current Spain, which was controlled by the Moors, in islamic conquistador, a lot of jihadists will say, inshallah, we have to reconquer Andalusia. It is our land because once it under. So Israel existentially cannot exist. So why am I saying all this? You can't have peace if you have the other side that truly never wants for you to exist.

That's the bottom line. If you can change people's heart where they say, look, I get a piece of land, you get another piece. Let's build an incredible, vibrant co society together, you'd have peace. But if you're taught from straight out of the womb that the Jews is the reason for every calamity in the world, you're not going to have peace.

But don't you think that there are Jews and there are Israelis that treat Palestinians as if they're less.

There is that in Texas, in terms of treating people who are hispanic, the darkness of the human heart is not monopolized by one group. They are super nasty Jews and they are incredibly lovely and kind Jews. They are super nice Muslims and incredibly brutal Muslims. So there is no monopoly on the darkness of the human heart. So I concede that, of course, there are Jews that are not very keen on having palestinian neighbors. But as someone who grew up in the two worlds, right, I'm an arabic speaking jew. I hang around with tons of Muslims. I hang around with tons of Jews. Have I ever heard somebody in my jewish family say, oh, God, I can't wait for us to eradicate the 1.52 billion Muslims in the world? I've never heard that. Have I heard incessantly all the time about inshallah will get rid of the Jews? Every second. You just have to say, hi, Ahmad. The next line is, God damn it, we got to get rid of the Jews now. It's become a lot.

Is it really that common where you are?

It's as common as the heat in Texas. It is definitional, as a matter of fact. I introduced a game. I mean facetiously, but I mean it seriously. Six degrees of jew. So that's a play on six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Exactly. So I give you a calamity in the world, and you've got up to six causal steps to blame the jew. So an amazonian frog just died in the Amazon. Go. And so I will post these on Twitter. And people give answers now, oftentimes they're just playing along. But that's the mindset. You got diabetes. Well, that's because the Jews who are controlling the pharmaceutical industry are not releasing the drug. I'll give you a recent one that I faced. So I put up a police lineup of some guys that had been caught in Huddersfield, which is a town in England who had been grooming and raping young british white girls. And you may or may not know this, I'm not sure if we've discussed it in the past. In Britain, over the past 25 years, there's been an unbelievable industrial scale level grooming and raping of young white girls by asian men. That's a euphemism for men of a certain religious heritage.

But you say it's. They're asian, so their names are. Let me summarize them for you. Muhammad, Ahmad. Muhammad, Ahmad. Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad, Ahmad. Ahmad, Muhammad, Ahmad. Ahmad. Muhammad, Ahmad, Muhammad. Okay, so I put those up and I sarcastically said I don't have a big enough brain to do the big data analytics to understand what is the commonality across all those gentlemen. Could anybody help me? Do you know how many people wrote to me and blamed it on the jews? Not facetiously. So now I'm gonna ask you, Joe, how. I was just gonna ask you that. How is it when three muhammads rape your twelve year old british girl, you blame it on Mordechai? Three muhammads lead to Mordechai? Tell me how. You tell me.

I don't know. How do they do it?

Who let them in? It's the jewish cabal who controls immigration policy. It's George Soros, the Jew, who controls the open society ideology.

I don't think you could really just connect George Soros to Jewish. If you look at his policies, he seems anti western civilization.

I agree. But for the jew hater, any causal explanation.

So one individual who just happens to.

Be jewish, or they point to some other one. There's one, I don't even know who she is. I think Barbara Lerner or something, somebody will correct us in the comment section where they show her saying something, oh, we need to flood. And she happens to be jewish. But for every jewish person who is pro open door policy, there's a counter jewish person. Here is one who is not for open border policies. Right. Stephen Miller, who worked in the Trump administration, is jewish. He's probably the biggest anti open door immigration. But that's the mindset of the jew hater. Everything is blamed. There's this incredible diabolical feature of the jew that they're able to at times pretend that they're victims, but really they're diabolical and genocidal. It's grotesque, man.

It's weird. It's just weird that it became so out in the open. And that's what makes me think that they're being influenced. I just. I just can't imagine there was that much anti semitism before October 7.

But why? The influence is coming for what purpose? Just to see create havoc?

Yes. Yeah. To keep people at each other's throats. I really think so. And also to completely screw up democracy. You know, like people have lost all their faith in voting, they've lost all their faith in the money behind politics and the influence behind politics. And the more this stuff just gets brought up, the more chaos there is, the more hatred there is, the more divide there is, even amongst the Democratic Party, right, which we talked about the other day, that, like some large number, we think it's around 70% of jewish people vote Democrat. But now the Democratic Party is full on with this Palestine thing. And you see it on college campuses, this rampant anti semitism, death to the Jews being tolerated, literally saying that, yelling it out.

And by the way, you can go back. So I wouldn't be able to tell you which number, which episode, but you can go back to earlier episodes that have appeared on this glorious podcast where you will see that I would have predicted exactly what we're seeing now. And it's not because I'm a prophet or it's not because I'm so intelligent. It's because you simply have to have the power of having the imagination to extrapolate from a current trend to some future and outcome. Right? So if you let in into your country people who have genocidal jew hatred as an endemic feature of their society. So I'll give you, since people love stats. So there was a pew. Pew is a non partisan. If anything, they probably leaned towards being more woke. So Pew has these global surveys that they conduct. So in 2010, they conducted a survey looking at how favorable are you towards the Jews across a whole bunch of islamic countries. Now, if I were to tell you that 10% of the polt people exhibited, you know, jew hatred, you'd say, oh, boy, that's a big number. 10% is a lot. Okay, how about if I tell you that for most of those polled countries, it was between 95% to 99%?

So let me. I know people understand what 95 to 99 means. If I poll 100 people, 95 to 99 will express very problematic jew hatred. Okay? So now if I let in 100,000 such people into the country, it doesn't take a fancy evolutionary psychologist and a professor with a 47 page academic cv to say, well, probably jew hatred is going to go up. So that's what we're seeing now. We're seeing the outcome of having an immigration policy that has let in people that don't share our foundational values. Again, this doesn't mean someone's going to write in the comments section, what a hypocrite. You're an immigrant, Gaza. Well, there are immigrants and there are immigrants. There are tons of Muslims who want to come in here and leave all that baggage at the door. They want nothing to do with that they just want to live the american experience. The problem is we don't have the machine that can look into your heart and mind, right? So it's a statistical game. So if you're going to let in hundreds, I mean, look what's happening in Germany, look what's happening in France, look what's happening in Denmark.

Well, let me ask you this. Why do you think that stuff is happening? Why do you think there's this mass immigration?

So that's a great question. So it's covered partly in parasitic mind, my earlier book and in my next book, which I call suicidal empathy. So empathy is a emotion that has evolved for very clear evolutionary reasons. So just like any of our other emotions, for example, envy, there are evolutionary reasons why we've evolved. The emotion of envy, right. It can compel us forward. I see that Joe's doing well, keeping up with the Joneses. Maybe it'll get me off my fat ass so I can work harder. So there are very clear evolutionary reasons why empathy exists, but the problem is, when empathy misfires, it either becomes hyperactive or it misfires in directing the empathy to the wrong person. So, for example, illegal immigrants, more important than american vets. Right. And I can show you many public policies where you have these insane policies, all of which are due to suicidal empathy. So, to answer your question, I think that the western mind is we are kind, tolerant, compassionate, empathetic people. There are people out there, they're guatemalan, they're honduran, they're Yemeni, who don't have it as well as we do. Wouldn't it be nice if we open up our doors?

So the reflex is a noble one. It's a nice one, but it exists in unicornia. The real world doesn't operate that way. If you let in people that have a huge hatred of. Of homosexuality, are you going to have an increase in homophobia in your country or a decrease? Right. So I think that's the answer. The answer is misdirected empathy across the west.

Is it really that simple? Because it seems like it's happened so rapidly that it seems like a plan. Like a plan to create more chaos. It's happened. The border policy in America is puzzling. It's very. It's baffling because it seems like there's a plan to flood the country.

So it's a sort of a conspiratorial kind of cabal.

This seems like there's something going on that's allowing it to happen, even though everyone recognizes it's a problem. And it's solvable, but they don't solve it. In fact, the United States government is actively trying to stop Texas from enforcing their border.

But I think that's just so. I've often tweeted that the most dangerous weapon in human context is a parasitized mind. Right? I mean, a bomb is dangerous, but it is the human mind that activates that bomb. Right. It's a guy with a little mustache. That said, the Jews are the real problem of the world, and I need to get rid of the world of that parasite. Right? So parasitic thinking. I mean, one of the reasons I think that that book did so well is because it really explained how all of these parasitic ideas came to a head together, and they were all spawned on university campuses over the past 40 to 80 years. So one hypothesis is what you said, which is there is kind of a grand scheme that's willfully doing this. Another one is that all of the western leaders of roughly the same age, I mean, within 20 years of each other, are all a product of a western education, university education that was completely infected with these dreadful parasitic ideas. So that when these leaders go out there and have the power to enact policies, they enact these policies. So my view is slightly different from yours in that I don't think that there is a supra mega, you know, willful plan.

It's just that all of those western leaders are the product of a really shitty university system.

Hmm. Right. But there's obviously two schools of thought, right? There's the left wing school of thought and the right wing school of thought in regards to this. The right wing school of thought wants to seal our borders, wants to secure the borders, wants to stop illegal immigration. The left wing wants, I mean, I don't know what they want because they start talking about border policies being a problem as well, and they start talking about the issue at the border, and they try to blame Trump for the issues at the border, which is always hilarious. But they're just so with that kind of stuff, with blaming, like when Biden blames Trump for things that he clearly did, it's just gaslighting, right? And it's just, it just shows you how little respect they have for people's ability to understand what's actually going on.

Well, look, suicidal empathy, I mean, we can move beyond the border. How about, say, in the justice system, suicidal empathy results in you caring more about the perpetrator than the victim. That's suicidal empathy. Right? Because that argument, so here's how that leftist argument works. If a person, especially a criminal of color, commits a crime. That's probably because he grew up as a person of color. So he's already been marginalized by the society, so now he commits a crime. You're now double whamming him by putting him in the penal system. So you need to be more caring. So he's already got 57 previous arrests. Let's give him a 58th chance. So again, I don't think it comes from, it comes from really parasitized thinking.

Right. But that those policies are supported by George Soros specifically. And he actively goes after Da's Das.

Exactly.

That have the most lenient and ridiculous policies in regards to no cash bails, releasing violent criminals. Like that seems like that's done on purpose.

That's done with intent, but it's done on purpose. So I think where we may differ is you think it's because there is a duplicitous evil, let's cause havoc. Whereas I think they actually believe that that's the noble position. Right. And there should be no borders. There is no illegal human. What kind of bullshit is this? I mean, why do you have a lock on your door? Right? So why is it that I get to have sex with my beautiful wife, but all these homeless guys are sexually starved? That's not fair. That's the parasitism of socialism. We're all equal. Why do you make a lot more money than I do, Joe? That's not fair. I need to have as much money as you. Right? So I don't think, I mean, I hope that it's not what you're saying is true, because then that's even more sinister, right? That there's kind of a boohoo hoo. I just think it's people who are misguided in their misdirected nobility, right?

I think it's both.

You think it's both? Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's both.

Maybe it's both. Yeah.

I think there's definitely a lot of misguided people, but I think there's definitely a plan. It just, it's too organized. The DA system, the DA thing with funding the far leftist Das and then funding someone who opposes them, who's even more ridiculous. That that seems to be a plan.

Yeah.

And he's got a pattern of that and he seems to enjoy it, enjoy spending his money in that way, but he enjoys it. I think it's like this crazy game, right?

What do you think about what's going on with your boyfriend Trump these days?

What? Oh, the trials.

The trials.

Fascinating. You know, I had Mike Baker on who was formerly a CIA operative formally, but we were. We were talking about that, that no one's ever been charged for something like that before. No one's ever been prosecuted for something like that before. Certainly no political opponents. And my thing is, the danger the people that are on the left that don't understand that now, you set a precedent. You set a terrible precedent. And if Trump does get in office, what is to stop him from going after all of his political enemies in the same exact way? Are we going to do this now? Every time someone's in a position of power, whether it's a governor or whether it's a president or what have you, when they have a political opponent, they will hire people to go after that political opponent and Trump up a bunch of Trump up, no pun intended, a bunch of bullshit charges, and drag them through the courts so that everybody's the people that only have a peripheral understanding of what's going on. Oh, my God, he's a criminal. Keep that criminal out of the White House.

Like, okay, do you think a lot of people who historically had been against Trump are now honest enough to see what a sham this whole thing is and are revising their positions? Or do you think there's quite a few?

Yes.

Really?

Yeah. But it takes a lot of bravery to do that. And depending upon your social environment, you know, there's a lot of people that just can't step outside the lines of whatever the ideology their neighborhood is attached to and their community is attached to.

The reason why I asked the question is because I recently appeared maybe about five, six months ago on a british psychiatrist show, a small show, but I thought he was a really interesting guy. He wanted to talk about how you apply evolution and psychiatry and so on. So I was like, let's do it towards the end of the show. Or maybe it was even the last question. He said, in your 30 year career as a behavioral scientist, as a professor, what is the singular human phenomenon that has surprised you the most? Which I thought was an amazing question, I had never been asked before. Good question. Yeah, it's an amazing one, because, you know, I've seen tons of stuff. And so I paused for a moment, and then I said, I think it's the inability of people to change their opinions once they are anchored in a position.

Yes.

And so it wasn't that spirit that I was asking you the question, have some. Because in my experience, despite the fact that I have a chapter in the parasitic mind on how to seek truth and therefore, I'm offering a vaccine against falsehoods. I'm actually quite pessimistic for some people who go, la, la, la, I don't want to hear it because they're so anchored. There's no amount of evidence that I could ever show you that can move you a millimeter from your position. That's very disheartening.

It's very disheartening. It's very foolish. I always try to tell people, do not be married to your ideas. You should not connect them to you. They are just ideas. They are not you. And if you have supported an idea that you find to be false and you are afraid to admit that you are incorrect, that is far more weak than being incorrect, because now you know that you were incorrect, but your pride is keeping you from admitting it. That is beyond foolish. And now people will always know that you're going to do that. With what? People will forgive you if you make mistakes. People will forgive you if you're incorrect. We have all made mistakes. We are all occasionally incorrect. I'm incorrect all the time. But I make a big point of not attaching myself to ideas. I will argue them if I think they are correct, but they are not me.

Yeah.

You know, Patrice O'Neill had a great quote, and he said you could hold your opinions, but don't let your opinions hold you.

Right. Beautiful. Yeah.

Yeah. You just. You got to know that you're not ideas. You're a human being. And it's a challenge when you are faced with the reality of the fact that you've made an error, especially if you've been bold about it, if you've been condescending to people who disagree with it, if you're egotistical in your position, you connected yourself to righteousness and intellect and science and whatever other words you want to throw around that make your opinion more valid than the other people's opinion, and then you find out you were wrong.

Right.

Okay. If we are ever going to trust you again, you have to tell us why you were wrong, how you were wrong, and what that feels like and what you've learned from this. Because if you don't, if you keep arguing that, you keep doing it, now, we have no respect for you. Now, we know Fauci is the worst, but he's worse than that. I think he's far worse than that. I think he's deceptive. I mean, if the real Anthony Fauci, the book by Robert F. Kennedy, Junior, is not, if it's not accurate, he would be sued. He would be sued.

Right.

And just forget about what happened during COVID just what we know took place during the AIDS crisis. Everyone should read that book. Everyone should understand this same game plan was played out during the AIDS crisis. And it's a game plan where they're in cahoots with the pharmaceutical drug companies and they push this thing as being the only remedy, and this is how. And they make tremendous amounts of money, and that's all real. This is not tin foil hat conspiracy wearing shit. That's real. But if you supported him because you thought that he was the science, and then over time, you have realized that, oh, my God, they did work with Peter Datzig. They did fund, through another organization, gain of function research. He did lie about it. It was talked about in emails. He did contact people who were saying one thing and had them change their position. He did. They did ridicule the lab leak theory when they knew it to be correct. They knew it. They knew they were doing the exact same research on the exact same viruses in that exact same place where it broke out. They knew it and they lied because they wanted to cover their ass.

And we let them get away with it.

Yeah. I'm glad we're talking about the inability to admit to a wrongdoing in science, because oftentimes when you think about people who are anchored in their positions, you think about political arguments. You think that somehow you romanticize scientists as being unbiased purveyors and pursuers of the truth, and nothing could be further from the truth. So I'll give you just a couple of examples, historical examples. I mean, of course, Galileo is a perfect example. Copernicus is a great example. Darwin is a great example. But let's look at some other ones that people may not be familiar with. So I think his name. I'm not sure how you pronounce it. Semel Weiss. He was the gentleman who arguably has saved more people than anybody else in medicine. Do you have any idea who it is?

No. Is he the penicillin guy?

Not the penicillin. That's. What's his name, sir? Fleming. I think that's Fleming. I think he was a scottish physician, if I'm not mistaken. No, this guy is the gentleman who told other physicians that they should wash their hands. So do you remember? He was a. I think he was a hungarian physician who was noticing that a lot of. There was this huge mortality rate of women as they were giving birth. And so he started running these naturally occurring experiments where you either. So the physician has just worked on a cadaver. And then goes and does the obstetrics. So when he said, wash your hands, he died, I think, penniless, destitute. In a mental asylum or something. Right. And then later people said, oops, he was right.

Because they didn't understand bacteria. Back.

They didn't understand bacteria. Yeah. That guy is. That's it. Semmelweis. Exactly.

Cadrvic particles. Does that mean cadavers?

Cadavers.

Every case of childhood fever was caused by resorption of cadaveric particles. Oh, my God.

But the blowback against this guy from the senior physicians. I mean, this guy was destitute. He died completely unvalidated. I mean, it was only post hoc that he. There you go. Nervous breakdown.

Allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown. Was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards. Oh, God.

It's incredible story. Here's another one. I don't remember his name. The truth tester. Jamie will get it out for us. There's a gentleman who won the Nobel Prize, I'd say, in the last 20 or 30 years, for arguing that ulcers are caused by a particular virus or I don't know if it's a virus or a bacterium. And everybody laughed him out of town. He ended up winning the Nobel Prize. And so I often joke with my students. I say, if people laugh at your ideas and fight them, it's either for one or two reasons. It's a really shitty idea, and it's worthy of that derision. Or prepare to go to Stockholm to win the Nobel Prize. Because, I mean, literally, it's one or the other. It's one or the other. Because the Nobel Prize is nothing but a history of people saying, what a quack this moron is. No way. Oops. Here's your Nobel Prize, doctor.

And isn't that because of what we talk about? Because of ego and that ego being connected to your ideas. If someone comes along with a revolutionary idea that's contrary to what you currently believe, you take it as an affront to yourself.

Exactly.

That's horrible.

So I. So I gave a talk. This is going back to some of my early appearances here, where we would talk a lot more evolutionary psychology. I gave a talk, two talks, at University of Michigan. When my first book came out, it was an academic book, evolutionary basis of consumption. How do you apply evolutionary psychology and human behavior in general, consumer behavior in particular? I give the talk in the psychology department on a Thursday, and everybody's like, oh, yeah, this is gorgeous. Because a lot of the psychologists were trained in physiological psychology, biological psychology, and so on. They were totally appreciative of the fact that you can't really study human behavior without understanding the biological signatures of human behavior. Okay, then I go to the business school the next day, Ross School of business. I give the exact same talk. Okay. I couldn't finish a single sentence because all of the professors. And it was usually the professor. It wasn't the doctoral students who were. Because the doctoral students are still malleable, their brains are still being formed. They're happy to listen. It's the senior professor who has spent 30 years arguing that human minds are born.

Tabula Raza. Empty, slated. And it's only socialization that teaches the consumer to be how he or she is, that they were really offended by my stuff, so they would constantly interrupt me and berate me. And I remember, as a side personal note, my wife was in the audience, that she had come with me, and prior to that talk, she had said, oh, I feel really sick. I probably have food poisoning. We later found out that she was pregnant with our first daughter. So there's both a really bad memory and a really good memory associated with the University of Michigan.

So what was their position when you were saying this?

Biology does not.

So they were interrupting you nonstop?

I probably got through. So let's say I don't remember the number of slides. Let's say I had 30 slides. I maybe got to slide ten. Because here's first question. Oh, if everything is due to evolutionary pressures, how do you explain homosexuality then? If everything is due to survival, instant, how do you explain suicide then? By the way, there are evolutionary explanations for suicide and homosexuality. Right? Humans are a sexually reproducing species, even though chaste monks exist. Right. People do have a survival instinct. Even though some people commit suicide. Men are taller than women, even though your aunt Julie is taller than your uncle Bob. So what happens with people in terms of a cognitive obstacle? They take a singular datum as proof that a statement that is true at the population level has been violated. It hasn't. Right. Every single WNBA player is taller than most men. That does not invalidate the fact that men are taller than women. So all of the morons at the University of Michigan were also coming to that kind of stuff. Right? Because they didn't like the idea. To our earlier discussions that we've had on the show, a lot of people don't like the idea that we are biologically determined.

They think that that's a form of. You're just an executor. Of your genes. But that's a wrong view, by the way, because everything is an interaction between your genes and the environment, right? Even specific genes get turned on as a function of the environment. So the fact that you believe that we have biological imperatives that guide our behavior doesn't make us blind executors of our genes.

Right. And that's what's important. But the idea that everyone is born a blank slate is so silly because there's children that don't even grow up with their parents that have traits that their parents have.

No kidding.

And also happen to have talents that their parents have for some strange reason.

And call their dog the same name.

There's a lot of weirdness to it. There's a lot of weirdness to memory, the genetic memory, like, whoever you are, it's not as simple as you were a baby. You started off clear and blank. That's not real. We learn things somehow or another through some under. I guess it's explored but not quite understood process.

Yeah.

And this process even encourages things like racism. There's even detrimental ideas that are inherited through children that have been proven, but they don't know exactly the mechanism.

Right, because you mentioned memory. So maybe I could talk about how you study memory from an evolutionary perspective.

Please. So is that where, can I ask you this before we start?

Sure.

Do you think that's where, like, ophidiophobia and arachnophobia and things like that come from?

Yeah. So there is actually a lot of research looking at the evolutionary roots of phobia that's studied in evolutionary clinical psychology and in darwinian psychiatry.

The ones for me that are fascinating are ophidiophobia and arachnophobia, fear of snakes and fear of spiders, because that evolutionarily makes sense if you either got bit and survived or you saw someone get bit and you see a spider and you're like, oh, shit.

But that's why, by the way, you don't go see your clinical psychologist because you have a fear. Guns or fears of cars, even though cars and guns kill a lot more people. Spiders, if you go. If you study the manifestations of clinical cases of phobia, they're exactly what you're saying.

Because, you know, from doing fear factor, we would encounter people that had both of those. And man, when you see it in real life, it's like a person's possessed by a demon. It's crazy. When you see, like, high level of phytophobia and people see snakes, their whole body starts shaking. They can't keep their hands still, it's crazy, man. It's not like, you know, I see a dog, looks like a scary dog. Whoa, keep away from that dog. It's not like that. It's like your whole body.

By the way, I actually. I don't think it's at the clinical level, but in the parasitic mind, in chapter one, I talk about the maladaptive or maybe adaptive phobia that I have of mosquitoes. So early in my marriage to my wife, maybe that was one of the best ways to test if she'd go the whole route with me is we were traveling to Antigua and we had the misfortune of some. You know, it's in the Caribbean, there are a lot of mosquitoes and there, a couple of mosquitoes got in. I spent with her, with her complete patience, probably till two in the morning, tracking and killing every single mosquito in that condo. Because the thought of that disgusting, monstrous pig sucking the blood out of me was just unbearable. And so I. I mean, I literally will turn into a little girl if we see a mosquito in the house. I cannot go on with my dad. I can't watch tv, I can't train. The mosquito must die. Now, in a sense, that's perfectly adaptive because we know that by far, if you add up the tallies of people killed by mosquitoes versus all other animals, everything else, it's not even a minuscule.

It's not another thing that kills people as much as mosquitoes.

Right? So that's perfectly adapted. Yes. But do you want me to go to the memory stuff?

Sure.

So think about, say, a squirrel. It has evolved a memory that allows it to remember the spatial location in your backyard, where it stores caches of food, so that it has its own memory bias, so that even though it won't detect it by smell, because let's say in Montreal, it's under 4ft of snow, it has a mental map so that it perfectly knows where it hid everything. Right? Now, the human memory has evolved to solve different problems. So then if you are a memory researcher studying memory from an evolutionary perspective, you would say, well, what would the human memory solve as an adaptive problem? So let me give you one such example. So if I show you a bunch of photos of people, okay, images of faces, and I put a descriptor next to each one where I tag that person as a social cheater or not a cheater. So what does social cheating means? Lack of reciprocation. So if I do something for you, then you will cheat and recant and not I scratch your back, but you'll never. Now, that information about the personal characteristic of that individual is an evolutionarily important datum, right?

So now I'm going to show you all these people I control for their good looks, right? So I don't put all of the cheaters as being good looking and all the rights, because then you might remember them because they were good looking, not because they were cheaters, right. So I put this array of faces, and then later I ask you to remember whether you'd seen that face or not, and people end up remembering at a much higher level any face that had been tagged as being a social cheater. Do you follow?

Yes.

Therefore, your perceptual system works in cahoots with your memory system to pay attention more to information that is evolutionarily relevant, so that I'm more likely to recall it and remember it. So that would be an example of how you would apply the evolutionary lens to study how our memory operates. Here's another example, not in the case of social dynamics, but in the case of remembering where foods is. So if you ask people to go through a maze of food and then ask them to remember where particular foods are, they're much more likely to remember the locations of high calorie foods. So in this case, it's not that I have a domain general mechanism that just learns where things are. There is a sensorial bias to me, being more likely to remember the location of something if it is evolutionarily relevant. And there are many, many other such examples. So that would be a wonderful demonstration of how the evolutionary lens adds a whole layer of explanatory power to what typically memory researchers have done, which is usually they study memory as just the domain general mechanistic system, whereas the evolutionary psychologist says, no, no, but why did that mechanism evolve to be of that form?

Right. And why do animals have memories even if they're not growing up with their parents? How do they know to pee on fire hydrants?

Exactly right.

Where are they getting this from? There's something going on there. You know, how do they know to go after certain animals? Like, I have a golden retriever. He loves all dogs, like little dogs, like the size of.

I just met him. Yeah.

I mean, he's much more interested in people than he is, but he's never meant. But if Carl was a squirrel that size, he would be dead. So he knows the difference between something that's small, that's a dog that's just tolerated, you know, oh, how you doing, buddy? Or something that's that big, that's a squirrel, which is murder. I'm gonna murder that thing.

Okay. You said murder.

Yeah.

That led me, because I was.

He's a murderer. He's a squirrel murderer.

So, you know. You know what is a. What's a group of crows called a murder? A murder. So I'm gonna tell you now about another study, and maybe Jamie can pull it off. I think it's a guy at University of Washington, maybe. I hope I'm not wrong. Where. He wanted to see whether crows remember the face of a really nasty guy so that they can, you know, if he then comes again, they'll start calling.

Right. Right.

And he kind of took, like, an image of the face, and then he would either wear it or not, and then he would. I don't remember what the dependent measure was, but it was something to the effect of. Then he's studying. There you. There you go. I mean, I love it. I love having Jamie.

So this guy had a mean face, and he did mean things, and the crows recognized him.

And so then it starts spreading to the entire group where they exactly know. You see this face. Remember it? He's a fucker.

That makes sense. Crows are insanely smart.

Oh, they're smarter than most people. Have you seen the ones from, I think, New Caledonia, that do all the stuff with the. Maybe, Jamie, you could pull that one up. I think that's the smartest of all the bat avian species. They can take rocks and, like, a thousand different things to get food out of. Things that I guarantee you, you and I would sit there for 18 hours and we wouldn't crack that mystery yet.

They figured out how to use tools to get other tools to track food.

Yeah. There you go. There you.

Amazing.

It's just unbelievable.

They put rocks in there to raise the water level. I mean, a little kid wouldn't even figure that out. I mean, they're fucking smart, man.

Look at this. Look at this.

It's crazy.

Well, I love.

It's also their brains are so small, which really is really confusing.

Bird brain.

Yeah, it's really confusing. Like, large brains don't. I mean, we don't really know how intelligent an animal is unless we see it manipulate its environment or communicate.

Yeah.

Cause it's possible that elephants are insanely smart. They have immense memories. Their memories are nuts. Like, they remember. They get reunited with their calves, like, 20 years later, and they run and embrace each other, and it's just joyous when elephants die, they mourn. They mourn the death. They have huge brains, but it's also a huge animal, but it doesn't manipulate its environment, so we don't respect it. Sort of like the way the reason why dolphins are in SeaWorld, that's literal slavery. It's slavery of probably a parallel or if not more intellectual species. Something with a cerebral cortex 40% larger than a human being's, something that communicates in a language that we can't decipher, something that has different dialects, something that operates in these very tight social groups.

But they do some rough sex. I don't know if you've.

Well, they. Dolphins are horrible. Dolphins are. They're. They kill their babies.

There's no hashtag. Me too, with the dolphins.

Let me tell you, it's worse than that. Dolphins, when they find a female and she has a child, if he has not had sex with that. That dolphin female, that child's not his. So he'll kill lion.

Lions do the same, but what they'll.

Do is the females will have a sex with as many dolphins as they can.

So you don't know.

So you don't know whose kid it is.

That's it.

So that they don't kill their baby, which is why.

There you go.

I mean, but that's how you live when there's no doors. The ocean has no doors.

Open. Open water.

It's just wild. It's murder soup.

You said the manipulate the environment. So have you heard of the bowerbird? Do you know what that is?

No.

So the bowerbird. Maybe. Maybe. Sorry, I keep going b o w e r. So the bowerbird creates a bower, which is a structure that serves no purpose other than demonstrating my artistic. There you go.

Really?

So, by the way, you know what I'm loving about today's show? It's like, I feel like I'm back to lecturing my evolutionary psychology stuff.

Good. I need a glass.

So look what he's doing. You see? So let me explain what's happening here, unless you want to watch it first.

No, please explain.

It's one of the only species other than humans that uses artistic ability as a mating cue.

Wow.

Right? So, right. Picasso. Short little guy, bald, ugly. He's got a huge lineup of hot women who want to have sex with him because he's Picasso. That's what the bowerbird is doing. He's saying, look at how architecturally savvy I am. Look how symmetric my bowerbird is. Not only that, by the way. Oh, there you go. Okay. She said you're good enough. Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this.

You have excellent trophies.

So now. But you saw all those other blue things?

Yes.

Okay, so if you travel to Australia, in certain regions, there are signs from the government saying, if you are women, don't be careful. Don't wear shiny things on your head. Why? Because these assholes will come at you, attack the women's head, steal the shiny things so that they could use the shiny things in their bower to attract the ladies.

Wow.

Now that's smart. That's smarter than most men.

Not really, but I see what you're saying. But look at this setup, man. This guy's got this dope pad. It's got like a bachelor pad with flowers out in front like ladies. Don't you like.

No, that's the girl. That was the girl.

Oh, it's the girl.

That's the girl. Usually in avian species, the drab one is the girl and the flashy one is the guy.

Right? Like, nobody gives a fuck about female flamingos. Fuck out of here. Female flamingos. What am I gonna do with that? I need a dude with a.

Exactly.

Strut around you.

Exactly.

If you got flamingos, man, you're a baller. That's a move, right? Have a flamingo in your yard. Just walk.

So you only have a. I'm taking a peacock. You have a dog. You only have a dog.

I'm thinking of peacock. I'm doing the whole thing like I'm a peacock, but I'm thinking of. I'm saying flamingo. Yeah, I only have a dog. I have chickens too, by the way.

Oh, you like those exotic ones? No, just like regular lay chicken, but lay eggs. But here's the. I'm scared to ask this. They become pets. You don't eat them, right, or.

No, I don't. I will if somebody fucks around. Somebody tries to hurt somebody. I'll grab the little fuckers, the little dinosaurs, when. When one of them was younger. This is my old group of chickens that I had when my youngest daughter was a baby. They were pecking her feet and there's this one cunty chicken that we had. And I feel like there's gonna be a christine.

No. Moment.

No, no, no. Nobody died. My wife, unfortunately, they all did. Coyotes got them, and dogs. Long story. Anyway, point is, I go, no, she's trying to eat the baby's feet. Like, you gotta understand, this is not. This is not like she thinks that's a worm. She thinks she can get away with eating. They eat each other. They fucking peck at each other. They'll murder a mouse? Have you never seen a chicken and a mouse together?

Who really?

We had a fence, and this is very unfortunate, but we had a fence that was glass. And one of the side effects of this glass fence was hawks. And hawks would be swooping down to try to get a rat or some other rodent or something, and they had bam. Nosedive into this glass, and we lost, like, three hawks. Like, this is fucked up. You know, I was like, maybe we should go back to the other fence. My wife was like, fuck you. I like this fence. It was one of those conversations where we were like, this seems like it's our fault that these hawks died, right? So one of them made it, one of them lived, and they took the hawk and they put it in, like, a big, like, washing machine box and contacted this wildlife rescue thing, and they said, well, okay, if you're going to have it, because we're not open until Monday, you got to feed it thing. So what do you feed it? So you have to go to the store. So we went to the pet store. They get these things called pinkies. And pinkies are just baby mice.

They're baby mice that have. They're not going to live. They're separated from their mother. You feed them to reptiles, okay? It's gross, right? And so the hawk ate most of them, but he didn't eat one. So they were like, we're gonna raise it. I go, listen, you can't just do that. You can't just, like, feed a bunch of these little things to this giant raptor and then say, now we're gonna take this one that survived and raise it. First of all, the nightmares that little fucker would have. But second of all, it's not viable. It's not gonna. It needs. It's not gonna live.

Yeah.

I go, let's just give it to the chickens. So I brought it outside and I put it in the chicken's cage. One chicken grabs it as fast as I've ever seen a chicken move. And then every other chicken runs after that chicken and tries to get it away from her.

Is it a defensive thing or. They want to eat it?

They want to eat it, okay? And so she has it in her mouth, and they're trying to steal it from her, and they just tear it apart and devour it like dinosaurs.

Wow.

Like, it's so crazy watching them kill people.

So I'm not feeling so guilty at the genocide of chicken that I eat.

It's still fucked up. Cause it's the soul of the animal is not being expressed as nature intended, the soul of the animal should be a chicken. It's not that you shouldn't eat chickens, but chickens should live as chickens. They should wander around and pick bugs and eat worms and do all the things that chickens love doing. To have a chicken just in a box for its entire existence, you're stealing souls like you're doing something fucked up. That's way more fucked up than just raising a farm. If you got cows and they're on a pasture and every day they're just being cows, and then one day you take them in a stall and bang, this thing goes into their brain and they're dead. That is way less evil, that is way more humane than what's going to happen to them in the wild. What are they going to do? They're going to either freeze to death or starve to death or get torn apart by wolves. Torn apart. If you're going to have cows everywhere and people want to reintroduce wolves everywhere, congratulations, you've got wild kingdom. You got wild kingdom happening in your neighborhood, if that's what you want.

And if you don't want people to eat cows anymore, okay, what are you gonna do with the cows? Are you gonna sterilize them? Are you gonna keep a certain amount? Are you gonna play God with cows? Are you gonna say the cows can't breed? Are you gonna give the boys cows birth control? What are you gonna do? How are you gonna do? Oh, you're gonna introduce predators. Okay. How are you going to keep kids from those predators? How are you going to keep dogs from those predators? Have you thought about this? No, you haven't? These people that are reintroducing grizzly bears to Washington as we speak. We're going to reintroduce the things that we killed because they killed everybody. We're so smart. It's bananas. These people are out of their fucking minds. And they're not. They don't have a real understanding of actual nature. The horrible thing is this commodization of nature. There's taking animals and factory farming them in these horrific conditions where it's illegal to film, it's illegal to.

They have ag gag laws because it's so traumatic.

So traumatic and so horrific, it would affect the industry.

No, I agree.

That's what's wrong with eating meat. Yeah. What's being a part of the natural cycle of life is what made humans human. If you want the most nutrients, it comes from animal protein. There's a reason why it's so cherished.

I've made not using the same words, but I've made roughly the same argument when the tofu brigade came after me because I was offering some evolutionary reasons for why we have to have animal protein as part of our diets. And they were so pissed at me because they thought it was very hypocritical that on the one hand I could share so many tweets and posts demonstrating how much I love animals, and then in another photo, I show some steak, or here's what my wife is cooking. And that to them was completely incongruous and was proof of my moral degeneracy. And then I actually created two sad truth clips where I was really demonstrating the evolutionary reasons, archeological data, dental data, physiognomic data, anthropological data, and they just wouldn't have it. You're a hypocrite. You can't love an animal and eat an animal. So I'm glad that you.

Well, there's a real problem with that too, and this is something that people dismiss very openly. But I don't think we should. I think plants are alive, and I don't think they're just alive in a way that we can feel completely fine about growing them in this insane monocrop agriculture place and pouring industrial grade fertilizer and pesticides all over them. I think they're a thing that thinks. I think they're a thing that communicates with their environment, but they just do it in a way that we don't understand. They do it through mycelium. They arrange resources. They allocate resources towards plants that need them more. They have some sort of a network of communications.

I was gonna say, have you seen the networks of fungi?

Yes. That is mind blowing. I had Paul stamets in the podcast a couple of times, and he's a mycologist and just a brilliant guy, and he really explains it all so well. It's so mind blowing though, the relationship that the mycelium have with the nutrients in the earth, and that earth is not dirt, it's like a living environment. It's this environment that they've ruined through monocrop agriculture. And that's what's wrong with farming. It's not farming. Farming is a perfect way to balance an ecosystem. When those people do it the right way, like those people from white oaks pastures or polyface farms, regenerative agriculture people, there's like zero carbon footprint of what they do, and in fact, it sequesters carbon. You're growing things, it's manure and cows, and it's all working together and the chickens are free ranging and it's like it's nature just in a contained environment, but that's normal.

Have you, you mentioned the word soil? So it made me think about, have you seen the research on. I can't remember what the term is, but something like soil DNA. I guess the pioneer is. I think he's danish. Either danish or swedish. I think danish. And basically they go to these steps that are really, really matter. Maybe not mongolian steps, but somewhere where you expect to find a lot of the typical fossil remains and so on. But what they now do is they just do this excavation of soil in the same way that people who study ice, you know, how they can bore and then they can. They can date various ice, right? So they do something similar where they. They kind of harvest tons of soil and they're then able to isolate, you know, DNA of mammoths. Have you, have you seen some of this stuff?

Yes, I have. Yeah.

That's mind blowing.

Mind blowing.

It's unbelievable. Yeah. I actually thought about inviting that guy on my show. Maybe should have them on your show.

Yeah. That sounds fascinating to talk about. It really is so interesting when you just think about just the complex interaction between everything on earth, the plants that we literally need plants to create oxygen for us and they consuming more carbon. That's one of the craziest things about Genghis Khan, is when Genghis Khan lived, they killed so many people that places reforested and they lowered the carbon footprint of earth.

Right.

That's a real thing.

So genocide was green.

Yeah, that was green. If you looked at. There's. Well, there's also like different ways. Dan Carlin and hardcore history has the most amazing series. It's called wrath of the Con. I think you have to buy it on his website, but it's really cheap. It's like a dollar an episode or something. And it's fucking amazing. It's amazing and it's. I think it's a three piece thing. Is it a three piece series on Genghis Khan? Is the correct way to say it. Temujin was his real name and what he did. And like, the rise.

That guy spread some genes.

Jesus, Louise.

That guy was busy.

That guy get after it. I mean, he spread some genes and killed some fucking people. Killed 10% of the population of earth.

Yeah, it was that much?

Yeah. Okay.

I don't know. It's that much.

10%.

Wow.

Yeah. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 70 million people. They don't know exactly.

There is a genocide, bro.

You ain't kidding me.

But you, earlier you said, oh, how everything is connected, which leads me to a concept which I don't think I've ever discussed on my ten shows on your podcast. This concept, consilience, have you heard that term before?

Sure.

Yes.

Like being conciliatory?

No, no, it doesn't mean that concilience comes from. I mean, it doesn't come from him, but he kind of reintroduced it into the lexicon. Do you know who Eo Wilson is? I've heard the name Eo Wilson is a. He just recently passed away at the maybe age of 90. I just read his autobiography called Naturalist. Amazing autobiography. He was a Harvard entomologist and a strong proponent of sociobiology, applying biology to studies, social systems and so on. And he was part of the original culture wars where a lot of his colleagues hated him because he was arguing that biology affects human behavior. E. O. Wilson, check him out. He's unbelievable. Well, in the late nineties, he wrote a book called unity of knowledge, and that became one of the foundational books in how I did my academic career, which is consilience is trying to unify disparate areas of human endeavor that you typically wouldn't think should be linked together. So you could link the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities through the consilience of evolutionary theory, because you could study psychology using evolutionary theory. Of course, you could study biology using evolutionary theory, or you could study esthetics, which is in the humanities using evolutionary theory.

So that became a really important concept in my own work because my brain operates as a synthetic machine. I like to synthesize across my. So one of the reasons why I decided early on to break out of just being an academic, because I couldn't see myself as a. Stay in your lane, professor. I need to try to. Right. So coming on, Joe Rogan is going to allow me to share ideas and synthesize things with millions of people rather than writing another academic paper that, if I'm lucky, will be read by 50 people and cited by twelve.

And so, well, before you came on, though, when you came. When you came on, being on the show was not that problematic in what you mean, people would criticize being on the show because nobody even knew what it was.

Well, that's true. Once they did know what it was, people looked down at it. So I don't know if I've ever shared the story before, and even if I have, it's worth repeating. I discussed this in the parasitic mind. I had been invited to Stanford in 2017 to speak at their business school, a very academic scientific talk on how to apply evolutionary theory, blah, blah, blah. So my host, who's a fellow, he's a consumer psychologist, invited me out to dinner the night before. And I think after I was going there, I think I was flying down to at the time, you were in Southern California, still 2017. You were in southern.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was gonna do your show, I think. So at night during dinner, he said, oh, so I hear, you know, you go off on Joe Rogan's show. I said, oh, yeah, yeah. He goes, yeah, well, you know, we don't condone that at Stanford. Very kind of haughty. I said, you don't condone what? He goes, well, you know, we don't do our research so that it could be sexy enough for it to appear so I could talk about on Joe Rogan sexy. So I said, well, I don't do the research also that I can appear on Joe Rogan, but if I can publish a paper in an academic journal and then go on Joe Rogan and hopefully excite people about evolutionary psychology and psychology decision making, isn't that better than just having my wife and mother read the paper? And he didn't like that. He thought, very. Whereas now I. Not that many, but I'll get a lot more professors who will write to me saying, can you get me on Joe Rogan? Well, that's good, you know, but that, that speaks to how patterns change, right?

Yeah, well, it's just, you know, it's so easy to label somebody, so easy to label a platform or, you know, like podcasting in general, that it's frivolous, especially if you live in the academic world. But it's just an opportunity to talk about stuff. And if I'm talking to someone about evolutionary psychology or if I'm talking to someone about coal mining, like, I just want to know what's going on.

Well, let me tell you something. I'm not trying to blow smoke up your ass or be ingratiating or anything, but I bet if there was a currency, a metric to measure how much you've affected the intellectual ecosystem versus your average well published professor, I would put my money on you not because you were the creator of the knowledge, but because, boy, are you the biggest disseminator of knowledge, right? So.

Well, I'm just lucky, right? And a big part of the luck is that I have the fortune to talk to these people because most people just don't have access to people like you. Like, if I want to sit down with a guy like you for 3 hours. Like, if I didn't have a podcast, that would be a tough sell. Like, hey, gad, can you put your phone away and just you and me just stare at each other for 3 hours and have a conversation? But this is, for whatever reason, I probably spend more time individually talking to people this way than any other way because I do so many of these things.

Do you think before you started this that there were indicators that, boy, you're such a good conversationalist, you know how to hold, or it came as a surprise to you that it would be so successful?

Oh, it's 100% surprise. Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to do it because I thought it'd be fun. That was it.

There's a chapter in the book, life as a playground.

Oh, yeah.

Just live every science is play, right?

Yeah.

What's science? It's one big puzzle that you're trying to identify which variable meaningfully relate to other variables.

Yeah.

So it's a form of puzzle making.

Right.

So, you know, so that actually there's research that shows that if you marry someone that scores similar to you on the adult playfulness scale. I don't remember the name. Right. Some people score very high on that, probably. You do. I know that I do. If you then match up with someone who scores very highly like you do assortatively, that's a very big predictor of you having successful union.

That makes sense. Yeah. You don't want to be with someone who hates jokes, especially if you're a professional comic. And if you're funny and they're not funny, that's probably not as fun.

Right.

That's probably boring.

But what if you had to choose between the person that you're with is also very funny or at least laughs at your joke. You can only have one of the two. So she's either a positive receptacle to your humor, or she goes toe to toe with you and being as funny, which one would you prefer?

I take toe to toe with me as funny? Yeah, I don't need someone.

You don't need the audience.

I got plenty of people. Well, the audience. Yeah. I don't need, you know, a wife.

Yeah.

Like, my wife doesn't have to have the same taste as me, even in me. Like, I don't care. Like, I don't care if you like different. Like, they listen to music that I think is garbage, and I'm like, go.

Ahead, care to share some?

No, I don't want to be mean. I mean, just. It just. They listen to great stuff too. We like a lot of. They've introduced me to Taylor Swift, but my daughter's a swifty. But they play some Taylor Swift. This one's not bad. But the point is, it's like, you don't have to like the same things as I like. That's stupid. That's stupid. You know, she likes football. I don't even know the rules. I don't know what's going on. It's fun to watch.

Do you seriously don't know football?

I barely know what's happening.

Wow.

Yeah. Okay, so I barely know what's happening. And I have friends that are like, Aaron Rodgers is my friend. I don't know what the fuck's going on.

I hear you're a good son. You throw the ball.

Yeah. And he's really good at that shit. He's a smart guy. He's a very interesting guy.

Speaking of athletes, last time I came on the show, I did a. Apparently a clip went viral from our conversation where I was kind of hailing the cosmic justice of why it was important for Messi to win the World cup. Remember that?

Yes, you did say that.

So, listen, speaking of life as a playground and scoring high on openness and all the things that I think you do very well, and I'd like to think that I do, too. About maybe a week or two after I appeared on your show last year, I get an email, you know, dear whatever, Professor Saad, my name is. I guess I could say his name, because I'm gonna. You can know my name is Jorge Maas. I am the majority owner of Inter Miami. I'm a fan. Whatever. I know that you have a deep appreciation for Messi. Whenever you'd like to come to a game, you'll be my personal guest.

Oh, shit.

Now think about this. This geeky professor who could have lived his life just doing his little narrow stuff, right? You know, I'm good in my ecosystem. A few other professors care about my work, or go out there, grab life by the balls. The balls. And live it fully and connect and so on, right? So I call my wife over. I say, I'm James Bond. I mean, in what world. So in what world is it possible for, you know, the lebanese professor, an evolutionary theory to get an email from the majority owner? So September 27 or 28th, I'm on a flight down to Miami. They're playing in the US Open cup. It turns out that Messi was injured, so he didn't play. I'm supposed to meet him. I bring him copies of my book, sign even the spanish version of the parasitic mind, because he only reads Spanish, he ends up not being there because he's not playing and so on. I don't, I mean, he's standing right next to me, but I didn't get to meet him, really. I meet Zinedine Zidane, who is the greatest french player of all time and World cup winner right there in the president's lodge.

David Beckham. Hang out with him. Now, I'm not saying these to drop names. Oh, look, I know these cool people. But I'm saying if I didn't have that open spirit where I didn't view my world as only being restricted to the ecosystem of academia, if I didn't come on Joe Rogan, that opened me up to a whole new audience. All of those people would have never heard of my work if I only publish peer reviewed papers rather than publishing books, which, by the way, in academia, you publish trade books. That's looked down upon. How is that looked down upon? If you publish a book that can be read by 300,000 people, how is that not better than publishing an academic paper that's read by three people? But that one is pure, it's academic. That other one is vulgar and popularizer. Yeah, it's grotesque, it's stupid.

It is stupid. And unfortunately, stupid can also be really smart. Really smart people can be stupid.

Well, George Orwell, I'm paraphrasing him, said it takes intellectuals to come up with really dumb ideas.

Well, in this country, there's a lot of examples that you could point to that would indicate that would be correct. It's just you could be really dumb and also be smart as shit in your discipline, you know? And again, it just boils down. A lot of it is male ego. That's a big part of the problem with a lot of these ideas that people hold so sacred. The fascinating one for me with you is this reluctance to accept that there's other factors for the development of a human personality and that it's not a blank slate. Like, that seems interesting. And if I was a teacher that was teaching something contrary to that, I would want to know this. And now I know that I've been teaching nonsense, and I have to call like, 50,000 students over the last 20 years and go, hey, guys, remember that shit that I told you? Yeah, it's bullshit. Turns out I thought it was true. What would you do? That's gotta be horrible for them. When new information comes out that's irrefutable, some new scanning, new thing that shows that this thing that we had always held to be true, that you've taught in classes that you've won awards for, is nonsense.

Yeah, so there's a great. So my favorite quote, and maybe Jamie could pull it out by JBS Haldane. JBS Haldane was an evolutionary geneticist, but was also known for having these beautiful, quotable quips. And so here, the quote in question, I have it in the last chapter of the consuming Instinct 2011 book. He's talking about the four stages that academics go through before they accept a theory. So I'm paraphrasing now what his stages are. Stage one, oh, this is complete rubbish. Bullshit. Stage two, well, this may be true, but largely unimportant. Stage three, well, this is definitely true, but it's probably not actionable. Stage four, oh, I always said so. So what happens is you go through these phases, and if you're dogged enough, as I was, then the people who laughed at you in stage, oh, there you go.

This is worse than acceptance.

This is worthless nonsense. This is an interesting but perverse point of view. This is true, but quite unimportant. I always said so perfect. And I always. I've always said that.

That's the government's position on COVID vaccine.

That's right. Exactly right, by the way. But here's the funny personal anecdote. I am a pathological email hoarder. Meaning that I never get rid of emails because I always think, what if I ever need whatever's contained in that email? So I have emails from people who, let's say, had taken a very negative position in stage one. Your evolutionary psychology stuff is bullshit. I have that email. It's 2001, and I have the email from 2019. When you say, dear God, we would be honored if you would be the plenary speaker, I'm like, oh, but what happened to I was a bullshitter in 2001?

Oh, wow.

So you just have to be dogged. You have to collect the evidence and hopefully.

But here's my position as an outsider. How could you know? Like, why would you say it's a blank slate? How could you know? And why would you ignore all this interesting information that we now know about the role that your parents play?

Because the blank slate's very hopeful, right? Because the blanks, I think it was, I can't remember if it was Watson, the behaviorist, who said that, you know, give me twelve children, I could turn any one of them into a doctor, into a beggar, into a lawyer. Meaning that everybody is infinitely malleable. Now that's a hopeful message if I'm a parent, right? If I create a child. You mean you're telling me that he's got equal chance to be Michael Jordan or Lionel Messi? If only I have the right schedule of reinforcement, of how to hug him and when to hug him. That's hopeful. I don't want to be told that there is something innate about my child that guarantees that he will never be the next Michael Jordan. So I think the message, the blank state message, doesn't originally start as just a quacky idea. It's a noble idea, perfectly rooted in bullshit, but it's a noble idea. Here's another example of a noble idea. Franz Boas was actually a jewish anthropologist at Columbia University about 100 years ago, who was the one who developed cultural relativism, the idea that there are no human universals. So biology doesn't matter in explaining cultural phenomena, because every culture is uniquely distinct.

Now, the reason why he proposed that idea is because many nasty folks had misused biology and evolutionary theory, and therefore, by him eradicating biology from the study of anthropology, he was hopefully doing a noble thing. But you can't kill truth in the service of a goal, right? And so. But that's what. So a lot of these guys, it's not. To our earlier conversation, they're not conspiratorial in spreading bullshit. They believe that by holding those positions, they're creating the proper utopia. But it's rooted in bullshit.

The reluctance to change one's opinion is always very unfortunate thing to witness. I hear you.

What, what's the. What's. Can you think of one or two things that you remember most where you've done 180 on that you'd like to share?

I don't know if I've done real.

180S or a sizable shift. You know, I used dumb ones.

Bigfoot's real dumb one. I used to believe in Bigfoot.

But you were eight or last Saturday.

Oh, like, pretty recently. Within the last two decades. And what made you talking to Bigfoot.

People and thinking and seeing that they're quacky.

There's something wrong with them, unfortunately. I used to have a joke about it. Here's one thing you don't find when you go looking for Bigfoot. Black people. You're more likely to find Bigfoot than you are black people looking for Bigfoot. It's all a bunch of unfuckable white dudes. Unfuckable white dudes out camping. And there's a mystery. There's a thing that they want to believe. And there's almost no evidence. Almost no evidence. There's some weird stuff like footprints with dermal ridges, but you could fake that. It could be bullshit.

Does that apply to the other class Loch Ness monster also, you don't believe.

Well, the Loch Ness monsters, most likely nonsense. Or maybe it could be a big fish or something like that. But the actual photo of the Loch Ness monster is a hoax. That's been proven to be a hoax. Then they know the guy who took it. They know how he did it. He used a cardboard cutout or something like that. Or some, you know, some cutout. He put it in the water and then took a photo. It was bullshit. It's probably. I mean, it could be a sturgeon. It could be some large fish. I think there's a lot of theories on it, but they've done scans of the lock. They've never found anything. It's certainly not a population of them, right? Whether they can stay alive for this long, they have to be breeding. Like, how many? What's. What are they eating? How big is this? What are you talking about? The Bigfoot thing, I think, was real. And I think it was real in the human imagination. And it was real in terms of, like, modern human beings encountered these things. And it's a real animal called gigantopithecus. And it really did exist in Asia.

And if human beings were coming across the Bering land bridge, it's very likely that they were there, too. They all existed in the same environment and in the same time period. And this fucking thing is in, like, native american history. They have a large number of names for this. They don't have dragons. They don't have crazy shit that doesn't exist. They have a myth of this gigantic hairy ape that lives in the woods. And I think it did. I think it did probably, until who knows how many thousands and thousands of years ago. But the idea of one being around today, almost no evidence, almost nothing. Just visual bullshit, blurry bullshit. Footprints that maybe, I don't know. You could fake that. You could fake a footprint. It's not a fucking fake, Ferrari. You know, it's not, like, complicated to fake a footprint. You know, all you don't understand about the amount of weight that has to be. Says who? Says who? Says you. Says you. A guy wants to believe in Bigfoot so bad, right? They want to believe so bad. It is a religion. It's a religious.

So what do you think is a psychological mechanism that causes them to want to. It's because there is kind of a mystery and awe to things that are out there that we can't explain.

Here's the thing. If Bigfoot was real, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting as a killer whale. Not nearly as interesting if Bigfoot is just this big, stupid monkey that lives in the woods and just shits all over himself and fucking eats campers, that wouldn't be nearly as interesting as this super intelligent creature that lives in the water that saves people. Saves people.

You know, before we were outside, I was talking to some of your crew, and I was telling them that someone had asked me, oh, do you actually, it was the border agent. As I was coming through to Austin, he asked, why am I coming? I said, oh, I'm coming to do your show. He says, oh, do you get, like, a list of things that you talk about? I said, oh, it's exactly not. It's exactly the opposite of that. And so to that point, I wouldn't have ever, I didn't have in my bingo card the defecation of Bigfoot in forest.

Yeah. Like, what is he doing up there? You stinky bitch. Like, come on. The idea that no one has taken real good footage in this day and age, with the amount of hikers and campers and people that are in the woods and people that are into photography and nature photography and trail cameras. Trail cameras are everywhere. They're over water holes. They're everywhere.

So what, what's the mechanism? By which? I mean, you know, you. You listed the name of the animal that you.

Gigantopithecus.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So you obviously have a lot of these tidbits, information. Are you a voracious reader, or how do you get your sources of information?

Well, I've read an embarrassing amount of books on Bigfoot.

No, but in general.

But in general, a lot of audiobooks.

Oh, you do a lot of audio.

The best way for me to, like, I can do that while I'm working out. I could do that while I'm in the sauna. I could do that when I'm in the car.

Okay.

So that, to me, is like, that's a couple of hours of taking in information.

Beautiful.

Where I would just ordinarily just, like, lifting weights.

But you don't, you don't love the feeling of grabbing a book.

I do, but I'm also so busy that to me, it's like, the best way to consume ideas. It's. I feel like reading a book is 100%. Listening to an audiobook is 80% to 90%.

Okay.

I don't think it's the same thing. I too easy to gloss over.

I've never audio booked a book. I've only read. I haven't even read a electronic book, really. I love paper. I'm a pathological book hoarder.

Do you write on paper or do you type it out?

I type it out. So now I type. Sometimes I'll take little notes. I'm sitting at the cafe. I have an idea for something I want to do. So I'll write it and then I'll. But if I'm writing a book, it's always on the computer. There's no written anymore. And I've noticed that my penmanship has really gotten worse. I don't know if.

Oh, mine's dog shit.

Yeah, exactly. Me too. It's like chicken shit. But I'm a voracious reader, and one of the things that stresses me the most is in my personal library in my study. I've got, you know, literally hundreds and hundreds of books. And I will often walk in there and say, will I ever have time to read? So I have probably 600 books that I've yet to read. And each of those books has so much information that if I were to read all those books, boy, I would be an even more exciting guest on the Joe Rogan show. No, but what I mean by that is that there's so much. The more you know, the more you realize truly how little you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so I say, oh, my God, here's a, here's a biography on. So I just bought a biography on the taxonomist who created the system of how to label animal species. He's a swedish taxonomist. Now, that sounds very esoteric and specific, but I'm sure there is this incredible information that I can glean in that book, which today I don't have that knowledge in my brain. So to all people who are listening, read, there is nothing more. Number one predictor of your child's success is how many books were in the home of the parents.

Really?

Okay. I mean, I don't know if it's number one, but certainly a highly predictive one. So reading Elon Musk, you probably know this. When he came to, I think, from South Africa to Canada, he came with luggage of books. He's a voracious reader right? Now, that doesn't mean that he became who he became only because he read. But it's very hard to have an interesting person who's not very knowledgeable about many things. And that's right. One of the things that's been very difficult with my children is I see them doing the scrolling and it drives me crazy because I haven't been able to instill that reflex of just saying, there is nothing I'd rather do right now than go sit somewhere and immerse myself in a book. They don't have that reflex.

Yeah, that is a problem with electronics because it does hijack your reward system. It hijacks your attention span, it hijacks your brain. And it's hard because kids are growing up in this environment. It's a different environment. And I have two ways of looking at it. I have one way of looking at it where you have to kind of set an example, and I'm not the best at that. I like to look at my phone, like, just to put your phone away and put work away, don't be responding to emails, just put it away and focus. I think we all should do that, but we are all also living in this new world, and that is not going to change. And I think that's the same as when people are like, don't get in the car. Let's walk. Like, okay, that's good for a little while, but now, guess what, Martha? Everyone has cars. Let's get a fucking car. I'm not walking to New York. What are you talking about? I'm not getting in a stupid wagon, getting pulled by a horse. This is dumb. They have cars. Now. I think we're going to get to a point where avoiding some interaction with other human beings, it's going to be constant and it's going to be more invasive than it is now.

These are steps that our species is taking in its integration with technology that seem to be unstoppable and to isolate yourself and move to the woods in a cabin, that's one way to do it.

No, but the hygiene or the discipline of saying, I'm now focused, I'm not. I mean, I know the research findings on this, and yet I always find myself going into my phone and then stopping myself. So in. Right.

Always stop yourself.

I mean, I don't.

I stopped myself three out of ten times, especially if I could come up with some reason. Oh, I'm gonna go over my notes, you know.

Yeah, yeah. About. So what. What is the pull in your case? Is it scrolling through the Twitter?

Just nonsense. Looking at nonsense on Instagram. And a lot of it is horrible because I have this fucking thing that I'm doing with Tom Segura. We send each other the worst things we find every day.

Like an animal.

Animal attacks. This one dude. Fucking stole a cop car, was in a high speed chase in Mexico with no tires, flames coming out of the bottom of his car, wild shit, a lot of people falling off buildings. Why we just been doing this to.

Each other for just like out of.

A more many months has it been now? It's been like, more.

It's like a morbid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just freaking each other out every day. So now the algorithm knows that I'm fucked up, so the algorithm is only showing me, like, motorcycle accidents and just the wildest shit that you shouldn't be looking at. I get so many of those videos that show up in my feed where it tells you, are you sure you want to look at this?

Oh, boy.

You know where it's blurry and you.

Have to click maybe twice that.

Really? Yeah.

So. But here's the thing. So I'm interested in the AI algorithm that generates those, because oftentimes it'll put things in my feed that I truly think. I don't know how it could have found out that I like this stuff because there is no signature electronically of me having searched something, let's say, what? Three piece wool suits, right? Okay. I love that look. And so now I'll see a thousand guys wearing these gorgeous italian, right? But other times it presents stuff to me that makes no sense, that it almost seems as though I'm into gay sauna guys. But, I mean, I'm being serious. So it's kind of fitness, which of course, I'm into having lost a lot of weight, but it almost seems homo erotic, where it's always these guys that are. And so as I'm going this, my wife will say, what are you looking at? I say, well, I'm not sure I want to show you that it's like, literally 17 super muscular guys, but there is no. There's nothing that I've done that should suggest that it should recognize that in me. How do you explain that, Doctor Joe?

Well, they took a chance and they missed. The data's not complete. You know, you're interested in some things that. But that's interesting. Like any perception of men, like with a six pack, like looking good and oiled up, that's homoerotic, which is interesting because a woman with a beautiful body is not considered homoerotic at all.

Yeah.

And that. Odd. Yeah, it is odd. It's like I don't even want to look at these fucking good looking guys. What are you, gay?

But just. I'm someone who actually is very easy in complimenting other men. So that's not that that wasn't.

No, but it is. It's considered homoerotic. That's the problem.

Well, the positions that they're taking doesn't seem like it was fitness. It seemed like it was a bit kind of come hither.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, there's a lot of girls that do that too, though.

Yeah.

There's a lot of girls that take these sexy lifting weights poses. But you don't think of them as homoerotic.

No, but they're appealing to the male gaze in that case.

And here we assume that the female. So the male men are posing.

They're appealing to men, because men are titillated by visual stimuli, not women. Right. So very few women.

I think women say that to ugly dudes. Women aren't even visual. Don't worry about it.

Well, they're not as visual. Can we.

But they're definitely visual when a girl sees, like, Tatum O'Neal with a shirt off.

Yeah, no, of course.

That's. That's real too.

But. But how many, how many strip bars are out there targeting female patrons?

Oh, yeah, there's a big discrepancy.

There you go.

Yeah. Oh, there's no. It's not equivalent. I'm not saying that. Yeah, it's. But it's just funny that one is homoerotic.

Right.

You know, it's just. But then there's also ones where it's like, okay, who are you appealing to? Because does a girl really want to see you sit like this? This is weird. This is a weird pose, but for a regular dude.

But by the way, the inability to recognize some of these dynamics is what causes some men to send dick pics to women. Right. Because they think that the same visual stimuli that would titillate them is exactly what would titillate women. So it's lack of theory of mind, whereas. And so a lot of men will say, oh, you know, I've got. I've got a good morphology here. I think she'd be impressed by that. And she gets repulsed by it because he's not. He doesn't have intersex theory of mind.

Right. Interesting.

Evolutionary psychology, it's where it's at.

Well, how much is it affected by technology? What is how much of. When you think of evolutionary psychology and you think of us as an evolving species that's integrating with its environment, and its environment radically changes.

So the most obvious answer to that would be Internet pornographic addiction, which almost exclusively afflicts men. Right. For very obvious reasons. Because what's happening with the Internet delivery system is it's exactly catering to men's evolved pension for sexual variety, right. I can keep flipping through different porn clips without ever repeating the same one. While it doesn't take much for that stimulus to then hijack my brain. So when I, for example, explain to people about the evolutionary roots of pornography, that doesn't mean that men have evolved a gene for pornography, right? Because obviously there was no pornography in the ancestral environment. But what it means is that those mechanisms that evolved for mating are then hijacked, usurped by pornography. So I think the most obvious one would be Internet pornography.

I think the next stage of that is even more terrifying. I think there's gonna be some sort of virtual element.

Meaning?

Meaning virtual sex. You're going to be able to actually have like a sexual experience virtually, but haptically, yeah. I think they're gonna do it with some sort of an interface, you know, like when you're seeing these first patients of neuralink, like this one guy who can now amazingly operate a computer, play games, move his cursor, click on things. I mean, its incredible. And they think hes going to be able to communicate through this thing at the speed of a carnival barker. Thats how hes going to be able to use this. Wow, its crazy.

Yeah. So I actually, I was giving a talk on global jew hatred in Montreal at this event, and a guy came up to me to introduce himself and hes a neurosurgeon, and he said that he was part of the team that was choosing the first neurolink patient that you just mentioned.

It's incredible. It's incredible. So this is patient number one, right? And it's been successful?

Yeah.

And they believe that ultimately they'll be able to restore blindness, they'll be able to restore movement to people. There's going to be a lot of like, wild things that this technology, if it can continue to progress, is going to be capable of doing. And at one point in time, I've got to imagine, it's got to be able to create an artificial reality simulator that you just immerse yourself in. Whether it takes ten years to do that or 50 or 100 in the future, they're going to have something that forget about porn, like forget about actually going on an adventurous life. Why would you do that when you can have all of the trappings of being a wizard in a fucking dungeon game you can just play, right? You just live your life in this world that doesn't exist, get sexual pleasure, get satisfaction, eat food, and all you do when you awake is you eat food, go to sleep, wake up and do it again.

Oh, boy. That's a dire world.

It's the matrix.

It's the matrix.

It really is the matrix. And I feel like there's no way to stop it. I feel like if things keep going in the way they're going. Do we have regulations to keep a simulated universe from appearing? We don't have any regulations. If somebody wanted to create, if they were so smart, that they created a simulated universe that you could participate in and they could say, God, you could be whoever you want to go to. You want to go to ancient Egypt in 2000 bc and see what was cracking? What was going on down there? What did that look like when, the height of the pyramids. What the fuck did that look like? You wouldn't do that. Of course you would do that. Everybody would do that. And if it was, like, harmless, you couldn't get hurt. You couldn't get injured. You're in God mode everywhere you go. If you die, you just re. Just wake up and do it all over again. And you keep doing it.

I mean, not to rain on that matrix parade, but books, in a sense, do exactly that, right?

No, they don't.

You want it to be.

You shut your mouth. We're talking about transporting you to the fucking dinosaur times, God. We're talking about you running around watching raptors tear apart a brontosaurus. It's indistinguishable from reality. Indistinguishable? Looks like it's happening right in front of you. That's all everyone's going to be doing.

Oh, boy.

Those books are going to rot. Those books are going to be covered in dust. You're going to do it one time and it'll get to the point. See, it's sort of like VR. If you do VR now, it's really cool. It's kind of fun. It's like, wow, this game's nuts.

I've tried the boxing one.

Yeah, they're cool. Yeah, it's a good workout. The boxing is a good, really good workout because, you know, you really do. It really is like hard shadow boxing.

Yeah.

You know, because you have to move a lot. And you like, my feet were hurt, and I was like, wow, it's kind of crazy, but that's very crude in comparison to what's coming. That is like pong. Remember pong?

Yeah.

You're older than me. That game was amazing.

What's it called?

Atari.

Atari.

Remember when that happened? We were like, this is nuts. We are playing a video. We're we're of that age. Like, we went through the whole thing. We went through VCR's, we went through answering machines.

So my knowledge of video games stopped and peaked 1981 with Galaga. Do you know Galaga?

Yeah.

So I was, I was, I was like a champion in Galaga, but that's the end of my knowledge. So, like, right now, I see my son interact with things and he tries to bring me in, and I just feel like I don't have the bandwidth to do anything that he's doing.

It will eat your life. It will eat your life. It will eat your life. It's too fun. They're too good. These games are so good now. They're so immersive.

So you, you're, you're a gamer?

No, I don't do them because they're too good. No, I'm scared. I'm scared. They just. They're too fun. They're too fun. And I have too many friends that will play video games till like, 02:00, 03:00 in the morning.

And. And they're. They're our age.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

How do they navigate through family life and all?

A lot of them don't. But, you know, some of them are younger. The younger guys are. They're all playing. What does Shane play? Will they play Call of Duty? Shane's big into Madden and he likes the UFC game. He also plays some, like, command and conquer style because he's big into military history. Oh, right, right. So they're playing these fucking insanely immersive games. And these games are so good. They're so good now. The graphics are so incredible. They're so fun. They're so exciting. They just have it geared up to, like, constant excitement.

So the only one that interested me and the ones that my son showed me, I really know very little about this is the sniper games.

Oh, you like to be a little sneaky.

Exactly. No, I. There's something very, very beautiful about sort of studying yourself and then getting that scope. And so I respect the guys who do that in real life, and so I try to do it, but there was too much hand eye coordination of different things, so I didn't do too well.

But you gotta. That. That controller.

Yeah.

Becomes you.

Yeah. Right.

Becomes you.

So Richard. Richard Dawkins talks about that being an extended phenotype. Mmm.

Right. Those guys that are really good at that, that's the ones that the military wants. They want those guys to operate drones.

Oh, right.

That's what I would want. Until AI does it. AI is going to do a way better job. Right? Did you see the thing that we had Mike Baker on? He was explaining to us yesterday that they have dogfights they're doing now, where AI controlled jets are competing against jets flown by the best pilots, and the AI jets are winning 100% of the time.

Wow. Incredible.

So that's fucking terrifying.

So, speaking of AI, I was in the early wave of studying AI, so, my undergrad is in mathematics, computer science, and so as part of my computer science degree, I had taken in some AI stuff course with Monty Newborn, I think, or new. I can't remember his exact name. He was part of the team of deep blue, which. Do you know what deep blue is? So that was the AI system that was being built to play against the grand chess masters. And at the time, sometimes this one would win, sometimes this one would win. Oftentimes would be ties. And so we had learned how to program the search algorithms that would allow you to go through a decision tree of chess without having to exhaustively go through the entire tree, because the entire tree is something like ten to the hundred different nodes. It would take more than the entire history of the universe to go through it. So you have to know how to prune the tree. Do you follow what I mean?

Yeah.

So that way, if I better not waste time going down here, so just cut it off, that reduces the search space. And so I had been exposed to some of the earliest advances in my formal education in AI. But frankly, 40 years later, notwithstanding all of the advances, I would have thought there would have been even more AI applications than what we currently have. In other words, I thought it would be, you know, we've underperformed what I thought we would have reached. So, for example, in medical diagnostics, why aren't there more AI systems that are being used instead of actual, you know, human doctors, don't you think? Because medical diagnostics is just the collation of tons of information so that you're able to. It's a structured problem, right. It has very. Here are all the symptoms. I can search through the whole database and come up with what is the likely disease much more quickly and probably more accurately than any human physician. And yet, to the best of my knowledge, I don't think they're used as much as you would have thought they should be.

I don't think they are. But I think people have been diagnosed with things from.

Is that right?

From artificial intelligence now? And what, didn't someone put a bunch of their data in the chat GPT? For sure. A story went around about like a mom that couldn't get a good answer and put info in there and got.

Like a diagnosis really quickly.

But that's like a one anecdote, I think, that went around. Yeah. I don't know if it's true, but you would imagine that at a certain point in time, you would get all of the data on all medical interventions, all medications that are effective for this, that or the other thing, all issues that could lead to a genetic propensity towards this, that or the other thing, and you would have it all in some sort of a database. If you could have a computer that's far smarter than a human being, process that, and instantaneously know instead of having some guy, it has to go back to, like, what he learned when he was in grad school, and you're way better off.

So I think in some areas, and I could be misspeaking. So take this with a bit of a grain of salt, but I think in radiology is one of the areas where now AI systems are almost going to render the human radiologist obsolete because it's pattern recognition. Right. I'm looking at an image and then I have to read that image to decide whether. Does it look like this area is a bit gray, so it looks like there could be a tumor? Well, it turns out I think that the AI systems are better able to detect most of these things than humans. So I actually spoke to a radiologist, cousin of mine, and he didn't think that they would become obsolete anytime soon. Him meaning that human radiologists would still have something to input. But it seems to me that in fields in medicine, where it's largely driven by pattern recognition, is where AI is going to make the most headways.

I think that's interesting. I'm really fascinated to see what the end of this looks like because I think it's going to come real quick. I think the use of AI is now something we're just waking up to in terms of the general population is super aware of AI now for the first time. It was like a science fiction thing just 20 years ago, right? The possibility of it was science fiction 20 years ago, but the probability of it right now is like a fucking freight train that's headed over a cliff. It's like no one's hitting the brakes on this at all. And what does this look like?

So have you had guests that are both. You really need to be deathly afraid of AI versus those who say it's completely overblown?

Sure, yeah, definitely.

And what is the evidence leaning to which camp? I don't know. Much of the.

Well, the evidence is really in who the fuck knows?

Okay?

That's the. What is actually going to happen is who the fuck knows? Because I think it's going to be more bizarre than we could ever imagine. I think what we're giving birth to collectively as a society is going to be more bizarre than anything we could ever imagine, because it's going to be smarter than us by a lot, and it's going to be able to make smarter versions of it. It's going to be able to harness energy in a way that we couldn't ever possibly fathom. We couldn't think it up. And it's going to have sentience. It's going to have the ability to make decisions. It's a life form, and we're giving birth to it. We're giving birth to some godlike life form that has an unstoppable potential for technological superiority over the human race.

Yikes.

Yeah. It's gonna be so superior, and if we're programming into it certain behavior characteristics or certain imperatives, it doesn't have morals. It doesn't have it just gonna. It. The whole idea behind it is nuts.

So I. Of all of all the courses that I've ever taken in my life, you know, I spent many years at university. The course that blew me the most, it blew my mind was a course called formal languages, which was about, well, formal languages is Turing machines, and so I don't know if, you know.

Turing test.

Yeah, the Turing test, of course. So, Alan Turing, if you delve into his actual, you know, material, you're blown away that a human mind can feel. Think at that level, you know? And I'm saying this as someone who spent my entire career in academia, so I've met a lot of really, really brilliant people, but it's.

It's.

It's almost metaphysical, the kind of depth that his intellect went to. So the only other guy that I could think of, of sort of contemporary guys would be Godel. I don't know if you know. You know. So are you familiar with.

Yeah, Godel's the guy who came up with a functional diagram of how you can make a time machine.

Oh, did he? I. Kurt Godel.

Kurt God, yeah.

The mathematician.

Exactly.

So he was. I don't know if you know the story I actually. I talk about in this book and the happiness book at one point, I'm talking about the importance of going for walks and just go for a walk and talk and so on. And I said, well, Einstein. So both Einstein and Godel were together at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. And later in his career, Einstein was older than Godel. Later in his career, Einstein said that the only reason that he would go into the office was because he was excited to go on these long walks with Godel and just have these chats. So imagine being a fly on the wall, sitting as Godel and Einstein are having these conversations. So I just finished reading Godel's biography, and it was very interesting because here's this unbelievable mind. You know what he died of?

What?

Because it's going to speak to the opposite side of the mind. He was convinced that there were people trying to poison him, so he would use his wife as the food tester.

Oh, Jesus.

And she was committed to hospital with. With some disease, whatever, so she could no longer serve as his food tester, so he died of starvation.

Oh, my God.

So now imagine Godel is both the guy who could think in ways that are unimaginable to us and is also the guy whose mind was parasitized by these conspiratorial ideas.

Wow. He was 65 pounds when he died of malnutrition.

Isn't that phenomenal?

Wow. Caused by a personality disturbance. Wow.

It's unbelievable, isn't it?

Assassination of his close friend. He developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned.

Oh, I bought the book on. I just bought a book on the murder of Professor Schlick, who was the guy who started the Vienna circle, and why.

Did they poison him?

No, they shot him. They shot him. Yeah.

So he was worried about being poisoned because his friend got shot.

So I don't know where the genesis of his paranoia came from, but my point is that in that same mind were these two sides. This Un. So he developed what's called the incompleteness theorem. So there are some things within any axiomatic system in mathematics that you could never be able to prove within that system. It's really at the level. It's like godly. It's just unbelievable, especially if you're. I was in mathematics, to be able to think at that level is unimaginable, how deep it is. And yet you think people are going to poison you and you're willing to starve to death. That's the mystery of the human mind.

Jamie, see if you can find what his theory on time travel was. He was, like, wondering if, I think it has to be like the size of a solar system. He was talking about the way the solar system worked in relativity, which was Einstein's theory. Would that allow time travel? Here it goes. A rotating universe? Yeah. How? Rotating universe makes time travel possible. So he had this idea, but I'm gonna butcher it unless I can actually read it. Yeah, I was trying to get to it.

Some of this stuff is so difficult to grasp.

Right, right. It is. Okay, here it is. Godel found that if you follow a particular path in this rotating universe, you can end up in your own past. You'd have to travel incredibly far, billions of light years long to do it, but it can be done. As you travel, you would get caught up in the rotation of the universe. That isn't just a rotation of the stuff in the cosmos, but of both space and time themselves. In essence, the rotation of the universe would so strongly alter your potential paths forward that those paths loop back around to where you started.

I have no idea what that means.

Holy shit.

I mean, you know Richard Feynman? You know who that is? Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winner in physics. He was a pioneer in quantum mechanics. He said, if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics. It's the same thing for me with this kind of stuff.

I read it, and it's impossible for my stupid brain.

I don't think it's stupid brain. Listen, it's so esoteric.

It is very, very esoteric. But listen to this. If you would set off on your journey and never travel faster than the speed of light, and you would find yourself back where you started, but in your own past, what? The possibility of backwards time travel creates paradoxes and violates our understanding of causality. Thankfully, all observations indicate that the universe is not rotating, so we are protected from Godel's problem of backward time travel. But it remains to this day a mystery why general relativity is okay with this seemingly impossible phenomenon. Godel used the example of the rotating universe to argue that general relativity is incomplete, and he may yet be right.

I don't know what to add to that.

If you give people the opportunity to go back in time. Oh, my God, that would be ridiculous.

So if I. Well, but speaking of, you would never know. I've actually played this game, a version of this game where I ask people, if you could invite ten historical people to your dinner party, who would they be? So maybe I can ask you that. You don't have to list ten. Can you? Can you, off the top of your head, can you list a few? That would have to be at the Joe Rogan barbecue. I could tell you who's my number one.

Who?

Leonardo da Vinci. I just, I just finished a biography on him.

Do you speak Italian?

I don't. I speak fake Italian.

I just add, who knows what their Italian was.

Yeah.

Right? They all had dialects like my grandparents spoken dialects, by the way. Weird Italian.

Is that right?

Yeah.

I could link my love for Leonardo da Vinci with the earlier concept of concilience that we talked about. Maybe you can see how. Because Leonardo da Vinci, by definition is the Renaissance man, right? He is the ultimate polymath. He's an anatomist and a painter and an engineer and a futurist and a sculptor, right? He's a man of all and does them all at very high proficiency. And he's able to link all these things, right? So he studies the anatomy of the body, his art. So he's now linking anatomy with art. So that's what consilience is. So to me, Leonardo da Vinci is the ultimate intellectual man because he can do it all. He can link different things. So he would be on my list, who would be arguably your top guy.

Well, it's one night, right?

One night.

You gotta bring Hunter Thompson.

Who the hell is that?

Hunter asked Thompson.

Who's that?

Really? Hunter never heard of Hunter S. Thompson?

No.

The journalist. Never heard of him. You never heard of fear and loathing in Las Vegas? You never heard of this guy?

Maybe.

That's crazy. I can't believe. Never heard of Hunter S. Thompson? Hunter S. Thompson is an american writer and he what's his most wrote on a lot. Fear and loathing in Las Vegas is the one they made into a Johnny Depp movie. It was a crazy, it really started off the assignment was he was supposed to write about, I think it was motorcycle racing in Las Vegas. He gets this contract to write this article and he goes there and instead it's this LSD entrenched.

You're picking this guy over Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Da Vinci?

He said brilliant things, man. You get if you read his work. His work was brilliant. It was brilliant. He was out of his fucking mind. I mean, he was out of his fucking mind doing acid shooting windows. He was crazy. There's a video of him having a shootout with his neighbors in Colorado. They're shooting at each other. It was crazy. Like legitimately, it killed himself.

That goes with your morbid Instagram things with your friend.

No, it doesn't necessarily, because I think if I could catch him when he was young, I bet it would. A fascinating guy to talk to. I just think you can't drink that hard for that long. You just deteriorate and things go sideways mentally. It's just very, very, very bad for you. You're poisoning yourself every day with coke, and you're poisoning yourself every day with whiskey. And that's this guy. There's a video of us reading Hunter S. Thompson's list of what this journalist saw him do in a day. This journalist came to Woody Creek, Colorado, where he lived, and us talking about it made its way into a song. Who is that? That band that did that. So it's like a. Like a techno dance song.

Wow.

That's all about Hunter S. Thompson's.

Like, when was this? He did like, when. When were you reading that?

Like, I was a few years back. It was me and Greg Fitzsimmons were reading it. Really? This is the craziest thing. Listen to the beardy man featuring Joe Rogan. Can we play this? That's ridiculous. It's my own words. Oh.

In terms of copyright, what.

What happens when you play it? What do you hear? Just us. Okay. So it's the problem is the music to cut it out of the show is the problem. Okay. See if you can find the actual clip of me and Greg talking about it. There's probably a clip of it, but it was. It's such a ridiculous. He was. The amount of substances he's consuming in a day, it's fucking insane. Like, he was insane.

So what makes him interesting is that he's insane and he consumes a lot of alcohol and drugs.

No. Has it been five years? He's a brilliant guy. Like, the things that he said were brilliant. Daily routine. 03:00 p.m.. Rise. Okay. He woke up at 03:00 p.m. And he, like, starts his day with whiskey and cocaine. He's a fucking animal, man. He's an animal. But he was also a brilliant writer, man. He had an amazing insight. And he's a guy that sort of was soured by the shift from the 1960s to the 1970s and what happened in this country and how weird things.

So you could have had a check. I mean, he only died recently, right?

He died quite a while ago. He committed suicide at least ten years ago. Right.

Okay. But, I mean, technically, you could have met him.

Could have, yeah. Would have been possible. But even then, it was like the end of his. He wasn't the same guy. He wasn't the same guy as he was. Another glass of chivas, another dunhill. Here's his daily routine. 03:00 p.m.. Rise. 305. Chivas Regal with morning papers, smokes. Dunhills, 345 cocaine, 350 another glass of shevas, another dunhill. 04:05 p.m. By the way, first cup of coffee and a dunhill. 415 cocaine 416 orange juice and another dunhill. 430 cocaine 454 cocaine 505 cocaine 511 coffee dunhills 530 get more ice in the shivas cocaine at 545 06:00 smoking grass to take the edge off the day. 07:00 p.m. The day 3 hours into it, 3 hours in lit. 07:05 Woody Creek Tavern for lunch, Heineken, two margaritas, coleslaw, a taco salad, double order of fried onion rings, carrot cake, ice cream, a bean fritter, dunhills, another Heineken, cocaine, and for the rest of the ride home, a snow cone, a glass of shredded ice which is poured over four jiggers of chivas. Okay, so the snow cone is chivas. Okay. 09:00 p.m. Start snorting cocaine. Seriously? 10:00 p.m. Drops acid. 11:00 p.m.. Chartreuse. I don't know what that is.

Cocaine and grass. 1130 cocaine, et cetera, et cetera. Twelve midnight. Hunter S. Thompson is ready to write. That's when he sits down to write. 1205 to 06:00 a.m. He writes chartreuse, cocaine, grass, chivas, coffee, heineken, clove cigarettes, grapefruit, dunhills, orange juice, gin, continuous pornographic movies. 06:00 a.m. In the hot tub with champagne, dove bars, fettuccine Alfredo. 08:00 a.m., Halcyon, which is sleeping pill, 820 sleep. So he would take a sleeping pill at 820 in the morning after riding it hard.

What? I love it. Wow.

Now, if his writing sucks, that's crazy, right? But his writing was.

What was he wrote?

No, it was. He came up with a kind of journalism that was like, journalism mixed with fiction, and he called it, like, gonzo journalism. Oh, I know.

That's him.

Okay.

That's okay. I got it.

The way he would write would be, like, over the top ridiculous, to the point where he thought everybody knew he was joking. But it was mixed up in, like, also real stuff, like fear and loathing on the campaign trail, you know, he was on the campaign trail, and he spread a rumor about this guy who was a candidate for president being a drug addict on this exotic brazilian drug, ibogaine. And so people started believing it. The guy started having a mental breakdown, and he was on the Dick Cavett show, and he admitted to doing this.

Wow.

He admitted to spreading the rumor. He's like, well, you made it all up. I couldn't believe people really believe that.

Muskie was eating iboking.

I never said he was. I said there was a rumor in Milwaukee, which was true. And I started the rumor in Milwaukee. Affected the campaign. Affected.

I'm assuming he wasn't married. He wasn't married. Was he married?

He was married. Okay.

Because all that cocaine and stuff might get into the.

Well, you know. Gotta do what you gotta do in this world. I don't know.

Fair enough.

Obviously it didn't work out.

Yeah. Yeah.

But he was a fucking maniac. He was a complete maniac. But especially in his younger days, like, hell's Angels is an amazing book. It's crazy. That's a crazy book. He was embedded with the Hell's Angels.

Wow.

And wrote this book and they were really mad at him afterwards. And it's. But it's a crazy.

Oh, I know where I know him from. I think I read Tucker Carlson's biography because the guy who wrote it came on my show. So I read it in preparation and I think Tucker Carlson refers to him. That's where I learned the term gonzo journalism, I think.

Probably. Doesn't Tucker have a Hunter S. Thompson story?

Well, that's what I'm thinking. Because when you said Hell's Angels, I know that Tucker had been invited to go give a talk with the Hells Angels where he referenced some. And I think it's this guy. So now I'm linking. Let me talk about it.

Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like I don't, I don't know the story, but I think Tucker has a hunter S. Thompson story. Like he knew him. Oh, I feel like I've known Hunter S. Thompson for most of my life. I first encountered him in 1981 when I was twelve. Tucker Carlson. Wow.

Jamie, would we say that out of my ten appearances on the show, this has been the most number of times that you've come in with some truth? I'm gonna say yes.

Damn. Dropping bombs. Dropping bombs on number of pull ups I've done. Yeah. You're obsessed with numbers.

I'm academic. We quantify things.

It makes sense. But in this world, that can be problematic. I don't know if you know that math is racist.

I do. I do. By the way, seven or eight years ago, you could pull it up. Jamie can pull it up. I did a satirical clip where I introduced a new field that I was coining as social justice mathematics. And I went through all of these mathematical properties and said how they, we should get rid of them. Like, irrational numbers should not exist because they marginalize mental illness, whatever. And I just went through the whole list. It became a big hit amongst the crowd of mathematicians, which is kind of a geeky crowd. But seven, eight years later, reality caught up with my prophetic satire. Now, it is literally the case that there is a field called sort of social justice mathematics, where you talk about math being racist.

So there's a lot of grifters in this world, kids, and there's a lot of people that believe things if left unchallenged, and those things become doctrine. They're a real problem because they're not based in logic, they're just based in nonsense. They're based in a cult like thinking. That is, we are very perceptive. We're very susceptible to cult like thinking.

Yeah, I watched yesterday on my way to Austin, a documentary, three part series on these. I think it's called Ivy Ridge School. Have you heard of it?

Ivy Ridge school?

It's. It was in Ogdenberg or something in upstate New York. They had a whole bunch of those schools where they would take kids, many of whom were not delinquents, really, but they would convince their parents, because you mentioned cult. So this was kind of a cult situation. They would convince their parents that they need to send them to these boarding schools in order to, you know, provide them with structure and discipline so they.

Can get their life together.

Get their life together. Even though many of them, you know, had committed very, very minor, in fact, they were caught once with marijuana. These were not like, you know, dropping acid all day long. And the things that they would do to them in these schools is straight out of, you know, the worst soviet gulags you could think of. And they're throughout the United States, and it's a form of cult indoctrination, where you're doing cult indoctrination at two levels to the captors captives in the schools. But you also have to convince the parents that they're doing the right thing by sending their kids there. It's unbelievable. You should watch this documentary. It really. It behooves you to imagine that in the 21st century, in the United States, these things can occur, but it really does. Oh, there you go. Exactly. There you go.

That's crazy.

It's unbelievable. You're not allowed to have eye contact with another student. You're not allowed to smile. You're not allowed to look out the window. You're not allowed to speak to anyone. You just sit in front of a computer, and you just do these.

Oh, my God.

That's. And they were in there for, like, 28 months. Then they gave them degrees, diplomas, high school diplomas that were fraudulent. So imagine you're sent there, and, by the way, in some cases, they would come and kidnap you out of your parents home because they knew that the kid would be resistant to leave. They said, no, no, it's completely legal. So, like, two goons would come, take your child, take them to upstate New York. The kid has no idea why I'm there.

Oh, my God.

Yeah. So it's really. It's very powerful. So. And hence, that's why. Parasitic thinking, right? Our ability to be parasitized is infinite.

That is crazy. That story's crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Check it out.

Oh, my God.

So how old are your kids now? Speaking of kids, are they. Are they. Are they past the age where you have any influence on them? They think you're no longer the hero. You've become a zero. Because my children are entering a bit that stage.

That's to be expected. And they're correct. They find flaws in your game. Yeah. It's fascinating to watch little minds develop their view of the world. And if there's anything that I've ever done, like, a real 180 on is I developed this weird way of looking at people, and it made me much more empathetic. Where I don't think of people as just you at age, you know, whatever you are. You at age 49, you at age 30. I think of everybody as babies. I think of everybody as. That used to be a little baby, right. And a bunch of shit went terribly wrong. And now here we are together in this unfortunate situation. And where I used to just think, like, if I saw some guy and he was drunk and he's 35 years old, some asshole. Like, he's just an asshole. This guy's an asshole. He's rude to people. What happened to that guy? Yeah. How did he get to that spot? And I started thinking about people, like, little babies. Little babies that just got a bunch of bad things. Bad people and bad environments.

But that's removing people's personal agency that you're.

It's a little. It's definitely removing it a little. Which is also bullshit.

Yeah.

Cause you do have personal agency, but you don't have. You don't have 100%. So I see there's certain landscapes that are, you know, untraversable.

I actually faced what you faced with a 35 year old. I faced something similar on my daily walk with my wife to the coffee shop and back. There's a gentleman that stands outside this, you know, kind of she, she artisanal butchery. Butcher place in our neighborhood. And he is soliciting money every day, all day. Okay. He doesn't look as though he's mentally ill. He doesn't look completely destitute, but he stands there every day. And so now I know I just say hello to him just to recognize him, and you could tell that it means a lot to him. Hi. How are you? How are you doing? And I've struggled with whether it would be appropriate for me or not to just strike up a conversation out of just a human interest in knowing what happened to you, because he clearly doesn't seem like he's mentally ill. He doesn't seem as though he's a drug addict. I mean, he's not wearing a three piece italian suit, but, you know, he's not disheveled, and yet he's there every day, and that's the best option he has. Do you think it would be viewed by him as insulting and offensive if I were to, you know, speak to him, or on the contrary, hey, somebody's actually taking an interest in me.

How do you view this?

It really depends upon the situation, you know, how crazy you think he is or if you think he's crazy at all.

I don't think he's crazy.

Well, there's a lot of people that have mental illnesses that wind up on the street. That's a big part of the problem. Yeah, mental illnesses and drug addicts. They're the ones who wind up in those situations. And he could be either of us.

Yeah.

Yeah. You don't know. I mean, but I bet he's probably lonely, and I bet, you know, if you have a conversation with him, he'd probably appreciate.

Exactly.

You know, if you could handle it. If you can handle it, you know, you might get sucked into his world a little bit. He might want money from you. That's true. Who knows why he's there?

Can I tell you an incredible story about a homeless guy?

Sure.

It's actually in the last chapter of the happiness book. His name is Bijan Gilani. I met him when I was a professor at UC Irvine. I was sitting at a cafe, a whole bunch of books thrown all over my table. I was working on a paper. He comes up to me, really well dressed, a bit of an accent. He's of iranian descent. He says, oh, my God, these are all interesting books. Do you mind if I sit down with you for a couple minutes, chat sai, tell him I'm a professor at UC Irvine, he was doing his PhD studying the homeless community in southern California. So it was an anthropological study where instead of going to a culture and living amongst them in the Amazon, the community that he's studying anthropologically is the homeless community. So he embedded himself, and he actually finished his PhD at UC Irvine. He was a wealthy man. Fast forward several years later, he becomes destitute, living out of his car and himself homeless. Okay, and the reason why I mention. That's him. That's his car. This is incredible, Jamie. Okay, so this. This gentleman was living in this car.

Now, why am I mentioning this in the context of the book on happiness? So he was asked, Joe, are you. Are you a happy person? Right? Guess what? He answers. He says, now, this is. This is a guy who would. Has a PhD reached pinnacle? Very wealthy guy in southern California is now living in his car. He says, well, I'm a moral person. I'm a good person. I have a library card to the Newport beach library so I can go and nourish my mind. I have a car to the gym, so I could stay healthy. Yes, I'm happy. So I used that story to say, here is a guy who has every reason to feel down on himself, yet he frames his situation in such a way that he can elevate himself despite all his trials and tribulations. One more quick story on that. David McCallum. I may have mentioned him previously. I'm not sure. Arguably the most incredible guy I've had on my show. And like you, I've had many amazing people. Spent 29 years in prison, and then he was exonerated for a murder that he didn't commit. He comes on my show, we're chatting as we're chatting.

Maybe you could pull that one up, too. David McCallum. And as we're chatting, I said to him, you know, David, you must be the reincarnation of Buddha, because it's amazing how you're not filled with any rancor, any sense of vindictiveness, any vengefulness. It's unbelievable. I mean, you're a much better man than I am, because I would want to burn the world down if someone did this to me. He says, you know, gad, I have a sister who suffers from cerebral palsy, and she's been bedridden, and yet she has. She finds a way to smile. And so from that perspective, you know, whatever I went through is not that bad. So a guy who just spent three decades in prison for a crime that he didn't commit was still able to reframe his tragedy into a positive. Wow. So these are, and by the way, these are the types of, you know, people learn a lot more from these stories than they do if you had gone all academies on them. Right?

Right.

And so that's why I love telling these stories because then people right away connect to those stories.

So, no, it's the way the human brain works. Like if you studying this for all these years is what is the most surprising thing to you that people do that seems obvious that they shouldn't do in terms of the way they think.

About things, not alter their positions in light of incoming evidence.

It's the big one, right?

That's the big one. Because in a sense it speaks to your decency as a human being. Epistemologically, if we are true, honest people, we change. As you said, we make mistakes. We held positions because we had informations, ABC, but now XYZ comes in and we change. And any good, decent, moral person with integrity has to be able to do that. But to your earlier point, most of us are vain. Most of us have pride. Most of us have vested interest in whatever positions we're in. We can't let go of those positions because it would affect my identity. And that's why, by the way, pride of the seven deadly sins, you may or may not know this is the supra sin. It's the sin from which all other sins flow. Because pride is the orgiastic self love. So. So in French, by the way, you distinguish between positive pride and negative pride. In English, you don't have that distinction. So if you say I'm proud of my work, that's different than saying don't be prideful in your love, that would be a negative thing. In French, there is a distinction. Positive pride is fierce. Negative pride is all good.

So that's another interesting thing, is that in some languages the terms exist to separate. In other languages, you don't have them.

Wow.

Dropping a lot of wisdom and knowledge.

You are, but you are always filled with that. I think one of the more unique things about your background that makes you resistant to stupidity is the fact that you did have to flee with your family and the fact that you were involved in a real war. It was a real war zone, a real scary time. And to see the effects of ideology so clearly impose themselves on your life when you were very young.

That's exactly right. That's why in the first chapter, parasitic mind, I tell that story. Because then that offers the reader a window into why I hate tribalism or I hate identity. Politics, because Lebanon is the perfect experiment of identity politics. Right. And so. Yeah, you're exactly right.

Do you hold any, I mean, one of the things that's been amazing about all the different conversations that you and I have had, and this is like the 10th one that we've done a lot of this wouldn't get to some of the people that understand what you're saying and reincorporate it into their understanding of their own behavior and tribal behavior in general and just the way people behave. Just think about things. We people accept ridiculous ideas. Yeah, like, you've had a big impact on that.

Well, you've had. You just gave me the forum. I just show up. You tell me where to start.

No, but you have all the information. If I show up on myself, it's not worthwhile.

You know, I gotta tell you, you can't imagine the extent of. I mean, I guess you can imagine, but I could be walking. I mean, that's literally happened. I'm walking on a beach in the Bahamas. A native Bahamian who's doing some, you know, artisanal thing, runs up to me, recognizes me because I've been on the Joe Rogan show. So it's just. It's unbelievable. And I don't mean that in a. Oh, people are right. I mean that. That's your reach. So how many, how many people do you get per show?

If I'm not, it's a lot. I don't know.

Many millions.

It's a lot.

Right. So, I mean, so then again, the people who are looking down on podcasters, I mean, if you are in the business of spreading information, you should be lining up to appear on the show. Believe me, I never take it for granted. I feel so privileged that first that I'm your friend, but that I have this opportunity to come and reach so many people. How many people have written to me and said, I became interested in psychology and consumer behavior and in politics? Because I heard you say something on Joe Rogan that's unbelievable.

Yeah, it's pretty nuts. It's very weird.

Rogan from Boston, Massachusetts?

Yeah, sort of. Newton. I lived in Boston, different parts of my life. But it's. It's very bizarre that it's reached what it's doing. It's very strange.

Do you. How do you handle fame?

Try not to.

Okay.

I try not to engage, but so do you.

I mean, are you. Are you shut off when you're in public?

Because I suspect not shut off. No, just try to be me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's the only way to do it. Otherwise you'll go crazy. Yeah, you go crazy. You know, if you don't interact with people, I mean, people work. They do get weird. People get weird with you? Yeah, it's weird. They see someone that they watched on YouTube or they're watched on their phone or their watch, you know, whatever.

I mean, I've been fortunate. I don't know how it's been for you. My ratio. I mean, online I get tons of negativity, but in person, I've only had a knock on wood in all the years that I've been in the public. One time, a negative encounter. So it's 1010 million to one. That's.

That's pretty amazing.

So your ratio hasn't been as positive or.

No, it's been very. It's always very positive. I think in, even in general, most people are good people, even if they say bad things. And I think if you're around someone, your reaction to them would be very different than writing things in text. I bet a lot of the people that wrote shitty things to you, if they met you, they'd say a nice thing to you.

Right.

It's. It's a terrible way to communicate and it feels just like a real thought. You are.

I mean, I don't know if it's. I mean, I know that sometimes I'm a lot more caustic when I reply to someone online than I would in person.

Yeah, I really try not to be. I don't want to. I don't want. I don't like conflict. I don't think it's necessary. I think most of your conflict should be within yourself, within your own mind. Just whatever you're doing with your life and focusing your energy on, you have more bandwidth for it if you don't have these external conflicts that are totally unnecessary. I just think they're unnecessary.

Well, you seem to. I mean, I obviously follow you on Twitter x. You don't, you don't post. I mean, you don't engage anybody anymore, right? Almost never.

It's just not fun. You're thrown into this weird world of opinions and people, and if it's about you, you shouldn't be that interested in you, that you want to read all these people's opinions about you. I'm interested in other people writing about stuff. I'm interested in different opinions about things, but I don't want to engage because the environment of engaging online is just too weird.

And you're doing it every day for 3 hours already. So you.

Too many different opinions coming at you and too many different people coming at you. It's like, that's not good for people. I don't think it's good to be interacting with that many people in any form. I don't think it's good to be interact with that many people in real life. I think it's just, you probably never have a deep conversation, right? Just constantly running into new people everywhere you go. Just people. Constantly. You're gonna want time off, you know? And I think it's the same with, like, interactions online. And I think people don't think about it that way. They'll think about, like, every time someone's talking at you, you're getting input. Every time you're around someone, you're getting input.

Yeah.

And if you are around people that are cool, it's a great experience. It's really fun. We had a great time. We were laughing. Oh, my God, it was so much fun. But if you're around someone who's really annoying and shitty or mean or snide or just now, it's a bad time, right? So, you know, to avoid those people, but you don't have that opportunity online. It's a party, and the whole world's there, and 80% of them might be chinese bots. Who fucking knows? Who knows what's coming at you? And you're just gonna take those in and your brain's gonna process them like they're real opinions and real people that are to be respected. Well, these are things to be considered. Maybe you are a piece of shit, dad. Maybe you are. Maybe you are self hating. Maybe you are this. You're that.

Of many of the wonderful advice that you've given on the show. I remember you once said to me, kind of surprised, what are you doing? Reading comments? Never, ever, ever read comments. And I remember that sometimes when I answer someone, they say, clearly you're not implementing Joe Rogan's advice. But I must say that over the years, I've greatly reduced my temptation to. So I can't say that I never read, but much, much less than before.

You'll feel way better. It's just not good for you. I think it's a bad way to process people's interactions. I don't think it's a real indicator of people. I think it's a weird way that people are willing to engage online. They would never do in real life. Otherwise it would be a bloodbath in the streets everywhere. We just killed each other left and right. It's not like that in the real world. Because the real world type of communication is very different than online communication. But online communication gets processed in your head like it's real communication. And I think it heightens anxiety with everybody.

Yeah. So in the happiness book, I talk about research that shows that the number one factor in terms of longevity more than your cholesterol scores when you're 50, is the tightness of your social network, your friendship group. And so with that in mind, if I were to ask you to pick your, you know, your five biggest friends, are they ones that you've, you know, held from when you were in Newton or are there a lot of new entrants into the inner circle of Joe Rogan over the years like that? Does it shift much, your friendship group or are you very much stable?

I have some friends that I've been friends with since I was in high school, but I have a lot of really good friends that have been. I've been friends with comics that are real good friends of mine for decades, right? So I've known a lot of these guys and a lot of the guys that are here now, like Tony. I've been friends with Tony Hinchcliffe for, God, at least 15 years, something like that. Right? When did Tony first start doing shows at Red Band? Something crazy, like 1112 years ago, whatever it was. Joey D. Has been friends with him for 25 years, 26 years, maybe more. You know, there's a lot of these guys I've known forever. I've known Ari for 20 plus years. You know, we were just. We've been friends for so long. And Tom Segura, same thing. I've known him for 20 years almost. So when those guys all wanted to move out here together, I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. Ari hasn't moved here, but I'm gonna try to convince that motherfucker here.

Meaning Austin?

Yeah.

Okay. From. From California.

He likes New York.

Oh, he's in New York.

He likes to be, like, congested. He likes to beep beep. Fuck you. He likes. I like it. He likes likes all the energy of all those people packed on top of each other.

Are most of your southern California friends out of there?

Yeah. Yeah, there's a few guys left. Yeah, Bill Burr stayed. A few other guys stay that are really good, by the way.

I had one of your friends on my show, Brian Callen.

Oh, Brian Callen's awesome.

He's such a cool guy.

He's smart motherfucker.

He really is.

And also retarded at the same time.

Oh, care to care to silly.

He's just silly.

But he's just, well, he wasn't, he wasn't with. On our show. On my show, he was, like, very serious.

Yeah, no, he's very capable of that. He's very well read.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. He's, he's a great guest, too. Great podcast guest.

Well, I've always said that. I mean, comics have to, by definition, be intelligent because, and by the way, that's a sexually selected trait, right? When women say, you know, I want, I want a man who's funny, she's obviously saying, I want a man who's intelligent because it's very unlikely for you to be truly funny and be a complete dullard. Right? And so by you saying, I like funny guys, you are effectively saying by proxy, I like intelligent guys. So it doesn't surprise me that Brian Callen or all your other friends would be funny, because, I mean, look at Dave Chappelle. How are you going to pull off all those insights if you were just moron? Right? So he's probably smarter than a lot of my colleagues.

Well, he's very smart. Dave's very smart, but he's also, you know, I mean, he's like, in the world of stand up, seven days a week. He's like a master craftsman out there, like, swinging away at ideas and piecing them up together on the road. He gets it. He's. There's no one like him. That guy flies into a town and just shows up at comedy clubs and goes on stage like they don't even know he's gonna be there. Does it all the time.

Is that right?

Yeah, man. He did it with me. I was in Denver. He just showed up.

You mean you, you were performing in Denver, and he just shows up?

Denver, and he just showed up.

Now, do you feel slighted and that he might take over the scene or friend?

No, no, I wanted him to go on. Okay, this is what happened. I did this weekend at the comedy works in Denver, and Dave flew in and just decided to show up. And I'm like, what are you doing? He goes, I just wanted to come say hi. He just flew in. I go, you want to go on stage? He goes, should I go, fuck yeah. Hold on. So I go out onto the stage, and I yelled out to the audience, tell everybody to come back, Dave Chappelle's here. And they went, what? And they all piled back in. He did, like, another 40 minutes and murdered. It was incredible. It was so much fun. It was so much fun. You know, so that guy does that all the time, all over the place. He'll just show up in New York, start doing sets. Show up in LA, start doing sets.

Wow.

He just shows up and works out his material and he's just in it. He's just in it, man. You know, just fully involved in this, this art form.

So you would say he's currently the top living comic.

You know, it's. He's absolutely. You can't consider the best without considering him. It's. It's all subjective. You know, there's certain people that think this person's funnier. Certain people that think that. I think it's all stupid to say, like, on number one, number two, number three, I think there's just a level of greatness that some achieve that he is at right now. That's very rare. It's very Richard Pryor. It's very Sam Kinison. It's very. There's just, like, outliers that are just so consistently good and over the years just have so much output. You gotta put him in that category. And he also has this mystique of taking ten years off.

Right. He disappears.

Yeah. He disappeared. He stopped doing stand up. One of the best of all time does this incredible sketch show, arguably the best sketch show ever that only does two seasons, right. And then he disappears. And then he just quits. And then he doesn't. He doesn't even do stand up. You know what he's doing? He would do stand up at a park. He would show up with a speaker and plug it in and just do free stand up in, like, Seattle.

Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And would he draw huge crowds or be like, seven?

I couldn't believe he was there. Like, what is he doing here? This is. This is insane.

Wow.

He would just show up places, you know, like. Like a real artist on a vision quest.

Right.

You know, then he comes back ten years later and just starts dominating the game again.

Well, I saw him. I don't know if you saw that Netflix where he's recounting how he went back to his high school.

Yeah.

And what struck me is how good of a storyteller he was, right? I mean, that's. That's the real key, right? I mean.

Yes.

And I think you've had someone. I think you had Jonathan Gottschall, right? The professor who studies evolutionary literature, and he studies why storytelling is important to us. And Dave Chappelle is a perfect manifestation of this. Right. I mean, he can garner huge, multi million dollar deals because he could tell a mean story.

He's just so likable, too. Everything about him, like, when you start smiling, when you hear him talk, there's a vibe that he has. When he starts talking, he just starts smiling. That's true. You know, and, you know he's going somewhere with it. Like, where are you going with this?

Oh, no, that's true.

The world needs that.

Yeah.

We need people like that out there. We need guys like him out there.

So of all the different hats you wear, that's the one that brings you. I mean, you're a podcaster. You do the MMA stuff. You do the. Is the. Is the. In. Being in front of the audience, doing your. Your routine, the thing that gives you.

The most high, it's the most complicated. You know, it's the hardest to pull off. Having conversations with people is pretty effortless, right? It's fun. It's fun. It's just fun. You know, it's engaging. It's interesting. It's like, I feel very lucky to be able to have these kind of conversations with you, but doing stand up is like, you're piecing together the bits, you're making sure they're polished, you know, you got the right angle on them, got them honed. You figured out the most effective, effective way to insert the idea, you know, to figure out the sneakiest way to hide the punchline.

Right?

Yeah, it's fun. But it's all fun. That's the beautiful thing. It's like, if you can do stuff that you really like doing, like, I really like having conversations with people. That's fun. I really like doing stand up. That's fun. I really like doing UFC commentary. That's fun. Just do fun things.

You are living a blessed life, my friend.

I'm very lucky. I don't know why I did that. Past life. I did something, though. Yeah, definitely did something.

Oh, that's great.

But it's. It's been very, very beneficial to me to be able to have conversations like this, to be able to have so many conversations with so many people that know so many things. And it just, as you said, it highlights how little you know and how much there is to know and how many different things there is to know so many different things about.

Unbelievable.

Like, there are people right now that are studying their entire life. Some shit you've never even heard of.

Exactly.

And they're the experts of it. And it's a fucking hugely complex thing that they're involved in, and you don't even know it exists. And you're like, what are you guys doing? What. What is this? You know, I mean, who the hell knows what kind of scientific discoveries that are going on right now as we sit in this room, there's a frenzy of technological activity going on right now?

Well, I mean, Austin, I think it was after my last trip here, which was last time I came last year to do your show, and I was arguing that Austin might be the next. So, you know, you had Florence of the Medicis of the Da Vinci 500 years ago. Then you had the Vienna Circle, the viennese circle in the 1880s to 1930, where Vienna was kind of the intellectual hotbed. And maybe it's a bit hyperbolic, but I think Austin is vying to be kind of the next one, right? And that everybody's coming here, all kinds of creative types, whether they be academics or writers or comics or podcasters or Elon Musk or, you know. So do you think that Austin, it would be reasonable to argue that it's becoming sort of the intellectual, creative center of. Of the United States?

That's ridiculous.

You mean New York? You can never.

It's. I think, first of all, there's great spots everywhere. You know, there's great spots in New York. You just have to deal with a lot of shit in New York. But to say there's not amazing shit going on in New York artistically is crazy. To say it's not amazing stuff going on in LA, that's crazy, too. It's just. What matters is we're doing it in a way that's beneficial for comedy. It's beneficial for us. It's good for us. It's like we've set up, stand up out here to make it good for us. The Google people and all the people that moved out here, and they're doing it because it's a good place to be. I don't necessarily know if there's hotspots. I think the hotspots, the Internet. There's cities that are better to live in because they have less people and less traffic and less bullshit and less laws, less nonsense imposed on the citizens. Yeah, definitely, but.

No, but there's a critical mass of people that congregate in an area, making that place unique and different from other places. That's what made Vienna. Vienna, right. It was the start of psychoanalysis. It's where Godel hung out. It's where Freud Hung. It's where Jung hung out. So, I mean, yeah, maybe Austin is not there yet, but, you know, University of Austin is being founded here, right? That's trying to be the anti woke universities there is definitely apparently a vibe. People keep telling me to move here.

Yeah. I think it's very pretentious to bring that up, though, if you actually live here. Like, I'm very hesitant to even say. I would never compare it in such lofty terms.

Right.

It's a great spot. The University of Austin thing, they're setting it up as an anti war. They're not saying that, though.

I mean, they're not saying it that way. Yeah, it's not. It's not in the mission statement, but it's definitely kind of a countermeasure to all the illiberal stuff that we've seen in universities. Yeah, I actually, a couple of years ago, I came to give a couple of talks at University of Texas, Austin, UT Austin, and I met with the president of University of Austin. We had brunch together.

Are you thinking about coming here?

I mean, if the right opportunity presents itself, really? Inshallah.

Wow, that would be wild. You could be free from communist Canada.

Oh, my God. Free from communist Canada. Free from the weather. And by the way, something that we didn't talk about. Sir, do you know that the biggest effort to cancel me came after my last appearance on your show?

No. What did you say that got you in so much trouble?

You're not going to believe this. Of all the things that I've said. Do you remember at one point in the show, I said, because you had gone to Greece last summer? And then I said, oh, we just came back from Portugal, and I got to tell you, I wasn't a big fan of the portuguese accent. And then I went on and said, oh, and. But actually, you know, I speak Hebrew, and Hebrew is violently ugly. I said, oh, but the worst, the real affront to human dignity is the french canadian accent. Completely jokingly, I use the line affront to human dignity as a running gag for ten years on Twitter. You know, the Beatles are an affront to human dignity. Anybody who doesn't love Lionel Messi is an affront to human dignity. Right. That's an ongoing guy. It's a throwaway line. I said it. I think you had cracked up. You had laughed, and we move on. Yeah, it's a joke about a week later, a super angry kind of French Quebecer, separatist guy does an article in the La Presse, which is like the main Quebec newspaper, saying, this guy, this immigrant that we opened our doors to and saved him from civil war goes on the number one show and, you know, erases our existence for the next three weeks.

Joe Rogan for the next three weeks, I was the number one most hated person in Quebec. Luckily, I was in California on vacation.

Oh my God.

But the Quebec minister of justice weighed in against me. The minister of science and education weighed in. Right. Go back, Arab Jew self falafel. Back in the Middle east, we opened our doors to you.

Oh my God.

So, yeah, apparently you can't joke. You could say a lot of things, but you don't joke about the quebec accent on Joe Rogan.

I personally think it's a beautiful accent.

Well, I've learned since I've been re educated that it is the most beautiful.

You've been re educated.

Exactly.

The thing about this place, though, is the heat. You gotta be ready for the heat.

Yeah, well, I am from Lebanon.

That's true. Yeah. Is Lebanon a drier?

No, it's drier. You're right. It's not humid. This is humid, right?

Oh, it gets funky.

Okay.

You get.

What's the mosquito situation here?

It's not good.

It's not good.

Exist.

Oh, it's really bad.

It's not good. There's lakes everywhere.

Oh, God.

That's why we have so many bats.

That's true.

Yeah.

They eat like tons of consume mosquitoes.

If it wasn't for bats, we would be fucked.

Right? Yeah, that's true. I've actually, in 2005 was the first time I came to Austin. There was a human behavior and evolution conference here and the hotel was right next to where they come out. And so you know what I'm talking about. And so we actually stood there as they came out. I was crazy. I couldn't believe.

It's crazy.

It's magical.

It's crazy. Also, by the way, sometimes those little fuckers have diseases. Like, like, I know there was a story that we talked about on the podcast before where there was a guy and a bat grazed his finger and he died from rabies.

No kidding.

Yeah. They didn't know what was wrong with him until it was too late. And rabies is something that once you have you fucking.

It's not.

You're done. Yeah, you have to get. If someone. Something bites you that has rabies, you have to get really painful shots and they have to do it very quickly.

Your stomach, right?

Yeah, I think. I think, yeah, I'm saying, yeah, but yeah, I think someone said it. Like just. I said it to you. You just said, I don't remember where I got from, but I do know it's like fatal. Like 99% of the time. It's a terrifying fucking disease.

Yeah.

And bats have it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Bats, rats, skunks, all kinds of shit. Dogs.

What are the guys, the. With the raccoons? Raccoons. Thank you.

Yeah, they get it. They get it. Yeah. It's scary. There's a crazy video that was on instagram of this cop, and she walks. I think it's a she. Pretty sure might be a dude. I'm sorry. I don't want to misgender anybody. I don't remember. But this cop shoots this fucking raccoon, and the raccoon's not dying. And shoots it again and then shoots it again and then shoots it again. It was a rabid raccoon.

Wow.

She's just unloading a gun to this zombie raccoon, and it's stumbling to a fucking pistol at a raccoon. Little ass raccoon. Boom, boom, boom.

Usually when you have rabies, you get hydrophobia. Right. You get fear of water. You can't drink. What's the mechanism there?

Good question. It's a good question.

I mean, that's funny.

I don't. It is weird. It's weird that it doesn't affect people in the same way. It doesn't make people want to bite people.

Right.

It makes animals fearless. And they want to bite you.

Right? Yeah. They become risk takers. Yeah.

They want to bite you because they want to give it to you.

That's what is that. Right. What else could it be there? Why.

But why would they get aggressive to the point where they want to chase after you and bite you? Put themselves in danger.

Yeah.

To go after you and bite you.

Right.

They want to give it to you. It's like a zombie thing, but it's just like. It just kills people. It doesn't turn them into zombies.

Right.

But it turns animals into zombies. Like, they. They just want to come get you. Like, that's crazy that there's a virus like that, and that is what, like, 28 days later was.

Right, right.

It was like they. They were engineering a virus that they were putting in chimpanzees, and it broke out into people.

Right. I just finished a book called the plague that looked at the history of civilizations through the lens of different plagues. Very interesting. I mean, it got tedious at one point, right. I mean, you're going through the different civilization, but I mean, you know, the black plague, you know, and so on, but. But going back to the Romans and so on. So a lot of history was shaped by a particular virus becoming more or less prevalent at a particular time and place.

It is so fascinating when you hear about plagues, like, just wiping out giant swaths of the population, like the plague of North Americans coming, interacting with the native Americans.

That was smallpox, right?

Yeah. 90% killed. 90% of the people here probably did the same thing through the Mayas. Like, that's probably what happened to all those people that disappeared. They left behind Chichen Itza and all these crazy places. What happened to those people? Doesn't that sort of coincide with when explorers started showing up in boats with cooties? You know, it's crazy how much that shapes human population, the interaction of these weird little things that are kind of alive, that jump from person to person.

What's amazing is that going back to Fauci and so on, I think the fatality rate was. Our survival rate was, like 99.7 or something, right? For COVID. Does that sound right?

Something crazy, something like that.

Now, imagine if you compare that to the fatality rate of the black plague, where I think it was something in the order of one third of Europe was wiped out. So imagine the level of precaution that we took. I understand hindsight is 2020, but we took all these precautions for something that ultimately you had more than a 99% chance of surviving. So contextualize that against the black plague. Maybe it was an overreaction.

What did they think the roots of the black plague were? Was it poor sanitation that caused so.

I mean, of course, the Jews were blamed.

By the way, the Jews are blamed for the black.

Oh, absolutely. And by the way, there's a guy, I think. Have you had John Durant on your show? He's the guy who wrote a book on sort of paleo fitness or something a few years ago. He has an interesting piece where he argues that one of the reasons why jews serve as scapegoats in many of these plague situations is because of the rites of purification that are in the jewish religion, hence rendering the jews less likely to succumb to many of these transmissions. He was talking about something. So you know that there's 613 mitzvot like commandments or rules in Judaism. 613. And if I remember, I hope I'm not misquoting. I think something like 20% of them, he says in his book, are related to purification. By the way, you see it also in Islam, when before you go into the mosque, you have to wash your hands in a certain way and wash your feet and so on. And so because the Jews would oftentimes have lesser infection rates than the other populations within that ecosystem, then they would always look to them suspiciously how come you're not all dropping like assholes while the rest of us are dead?

It must be the Jews. And so that's an interesting explanation for some of the anti semitism.

That's insane. Yeah, that's an insane blame.

That's an insane blame, indeed.

So. But do they think the cause of the reason why these plagues, they were transferred from, like, fleas to rats?

So I think the correct answer and maybe somebody will correct me in the comment section is it's the fleas on the rats that transmit the virus. Yes.

Right. And where do they think that the virus came from?

I don't know. I would want to miss, but.

Yeah, but back then it was fucking, you know, what kind of medicine did you have? Like, will they give you carrot juice? Well, they even know.

Bloodletting.

Bloodletting for the royals. A lot of fucking voodoo, probably. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Well, actually, I was inch. I was very interested in bringing on my show, but it never worked out. A specialist on Galen. You know who Galen is? He was an ancient physician in ancient Greece. So kind of like, I don't know if he preceded Hippocrates or came after him, but I'm interested in these old, ancient world physicians, not only because they were great thinkers, but also how many things they got wrong. Right? So Hippocrates believed in the theory of four humors. You know, it's any disease that you have is due to you having too little or too much of one of these bile or this or that, which is complete nonsense today. But at the time, the great hippocrates thought that. So I'm very interested to our earlier point about how you revise your positions in light of incoming information. A lot of the stuff that Marcus Aurelius would have gone to these guys because they are the great physicians. Today we would laugh as complete voodoo.

Yeah. Today. And what will we be looking at?

And laughing. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. In the future. This is the black death wiki. And this is some of the origins. And this is the hygiene section. The runoff from the local slaughterhouse had made his garden stinking and putrid. Why? Another charge that the blood from slain animals flooded nearby streets and lanes, making a foul corruption an abominable sight to all dwelling nearby. In much of medieval Europe, sanitation legislation consisted of an ordinance requiring homeowners to shout, look out below three times before dumping a full chamber pot into the street.

Yikes.

That's it. Just look out below. Look out below. Shit is coming out the window. You have to say it three times. That's the rule, bro. Imagine that's a black. Early christians considered bathing a temptation. With this danger in mind, St. Benedict declared, to those who are well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted. Oh.

Because you. You might masturbate if you might touch your body.

Oh, my God. St. Agnes took the injunction to heart and died without ever bathing.

What?

Yeah, you don't want to be a yo. What did that guy smell like? Like. What did he smell like? Be the one clean guy.

I did not have the smell of Sam beneath Benedictine. Is that.

Who was St. Benedict?

Sam Benedict. And my bingo card for today.

What did that guy smell like? St. Agnes. Which guy was Agnes? Is the one who died. Benedict's declaration.

Oh.

Oh, so Agnes died without bathing. Yeah. He's not the only. He's not the only one who died without bathing. I'm sure, bro. So when we looked at that one king, he was, like, known to bathe the one time a year. Yeah, but that's probably reasonable.

Do you remember the old story with.

It's better than ever.

Do you remember the story with Napoleon when he tells. Is it Marie. What was her name?

His lover of the movie?

I mean, it's in the movie, but I don't know if. I don't know if that.

I didn't see the movie.

It sucked. Don't see it really. It really sucked. And I love. I love the main actor. I love them in Joker. Joker. I mean, it was unbelievable. But anyways, she tells him she's coming to see him, his mistress or wife, whatever, and he says, don't bathe, because he wanted to be bathing in her juices. Perfume. Yeah.

Oh, that's right.

That's a famous.

I do. I remember reading that.

Yeah.

Getting sick to my stomach. But I guess it's just what you're into. You know, what you get accustomed to, you know?

That's right.

Like, how about that african tribe that puts those plates in their lips?

Lip plating and ear plating. I actually use that example when I'm talking about, you know, is beauty socially constructed, or is beauty universal? And then I argue that there are some elements of beauty that are universal. Facial symmetry, clear face, so on, like clear skin. But some other elements are completely culturally constrained, like lip plating and ear plating. Like neck elongation in southeast Asia. Right. We would look at that and say it's grotesque. They think it's gorgeous.

Yeah. It looks insane. Like, if you take it off, your head's gonna fall off.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean. No, literally, you don't have the muscles. The muscles have so atrophied that you can't hold your head. It falls down.

So they are stuck with those for life.

They're stuck with them for life.

Wow.

And the more you have, the more beautiful you are.

So what do you think the origin of human beings elongating their skulls was all about?

I don't know about elongating the skulls, but the big size of the head is. The argument is that you needed a big brain. It's called the social intelligence hypothesis. It basically argues that the. The greatest threat that we face are from conspecifics, other members of our species. I'm trying to manipulate you for my best. My best. Cause you're trying to identify them, trying to manipulate you. That creates an evolutionary arms race between our brains, and it causes for the explosion of our prefrontal cortex. So that's the. The best argument I've heard for why we've evolved to have such big brains.

What I was asking is about people that forcefully shape those ancient skulls where they pressed boards against heads.

Got it.

Like, there's practice of, like, shaping your skull, which, by the way, is so real that gamers are getting it. Oh, I should make sure I'm not getting it. Is my head dented? Damn. What if my head's dented? That'd be crazy. Gamers are getting it on the top of their heads by virtue of wearing. By virtue of wearing headsets. That's pushing down. Maybe I have a dent. Dude, I'm getting paranoid. But some guys have these crazy dents in their skull, like, divots, so they shave their head, and they realize that this band on the top of their head is actually shaping their head.

Wow. But I don't know that practice. I don't know what.

It's in ancient cultures for some strange reason, like, that's the nut. That's the nuttiest one. Like, these guys are. That's real. Right. Okay.

Well, you know, for not this goes away, though.

It goes away. That's not permanent. How long does that last? I have to ask them. Are you sure? Yeah, I mean, I know who this guy is. So it went away? Yeah. So the dentist just. The skins just can constricted and smushed up like that? I think so. God, I hope so. But the. The point is, they think they did it with children and that they tried to shape their head right, like this elongated, very strange looking thing. And I wonder if it was like a symbol of aristocracy or something, you know? Like, I mean, if you look, people they take their babies and they pierce their ears. People do that all the time, which is kind of crazy.

But there's foot biting chinese foot binding, right.

Of that, which is really insane.

There is really scar scarification also. So. Yeah, so I. I've talked about rites of passage, head binding and what.

Oh, this is so nuts. But what develop a certain look like this. Look at the look that they wanted. They wanted this, like, bizarre alien head look.

This is a european.

Multiple Chinese, wasn't it? I was trying to find a reason where. I was digging for a reason. Where the Nazca lines again? Is that Peru? Peru? Isn't there a bunch of artifacts in Peru of, like, ancient skulls that were shaped in this way? All the UFO people think that they're, like, trying to look like aliens. That's why they were shaping their head.

Right.

You know, because the Nazca lines are really weird.

You are speaking of UFO's g. Have you heard of the. We were talking about cult, the ray. Aliens?

I have heard of this. You don't remember the story, though?

Oh, my God. I watched the documentary on it. You have to watch it.

So is it a UFO cult thing?

Well, it's. I think they argued that the Jews were. It wasn't an anti semitic thing. The Jews were extraterrestrials that landed in Jerusalem.

What is this?

There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

What.

And the reason why I know about them is because at one point, when they left France, they moved to Quebec.

Oh, my God.

So they were in Quebec for a while. And now the leader is in Japan. He's in the seventies, and after having been kicked out of every other country, he's scamming a new generation of japanese folks.

That's the guy.

That's the guy. And the woman with him is a scientist who said that they had cloned the first human. You remember that story, bro?

He looks hilarious. That guy looks like a guy that I would have play that guy in a funny movie about him, you know? You know, doesn't he like that? Like, that was. That was an outfit that someone made for that guy.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's hilarious. Yeah. The. The desire to adhere to an ideology, the desire to, like, be a part of a club and a group. It's. It's so embedded in us.

Yeah.

That people that can't help themselves.

Yeah. So there's a. There's a study that I. First, I can't reference what it is because I don't remember the reference, but it was in a advanced social psychology course I had taken with professor Dennis Regan. I like to give out shoutouts to. I'm sure he's not listening, but anyways, he's retired now. And it was a study where the researchers brought in people into the lab, into a waiting room, and put a red sticker on them, or a blue sticker, and then said, oh, we have to go and do something else, and we'll come back in a few minutes for part two of the study. But of course, the real study was to simply see how people would interact in the waiting room while waiting, having now been assigned this completely random queue of belongingness, red or blue. And what ended up happening is that the blue people started talking to each other and the red people started talking to each other. And I think that's a brilliant study because it shows that there's an external cue now that decides which group you belong to. So it doesn't matter if I'm tall or short, gay or straight, jew or gentile.

Now it's blue or red. And so that shows that the architecture of the human mind, to your point, is built to belong to some tribe.

Yeah. Even if it's a really dumb one, run by that guy. People just love to be a part of a group like that.

By the way, all of these guys, including some of the current religions that we have, the guy who starts the. Always gets commandments from God to get access to all the beautiful women.

Well, if they all get that, obviously that's what God wants. That's how, you know, they're legit.

Exactly.

It seems like that's. That's the pattern God follows.

Exactly. God. Darwinian.

Whenever someone breaks off.

Exactly.

As long as, you know, that's. That's the move. They all do it like Koresh. They all. It's a. It's just so weird how common it is.

Oh, Koresh. I forgot about this. That's the guy. Yeah.

Exactly 90 minutes from here.

Is that right?

Yeah, it's close. Yeah. That must have been fucking insane. I mean, they lit that place on fire. They've ran them over with tanks.

You know, that was 93, I think.

Something like that.

Yeah, I was. I was a graduate student. Yeah.

Yeah.

So do you consider, speaking of religion, I don't know if it's too personal to ask you, do you consider yourself religious at all or not at all, or how do you fall on that divide?

I'm not religious in that. There's not a specific religion that I follow. I do not think that this is it.

Okay.

I think we are in. We're in a station of a whole dial of possibility. And I think we're interconnected in some way that we don't have the ability to perceive, and we're a part of the universe in some very strange way.

Do you think. And forgive me for asking this, but do you think that that's your way to handle the very, very deep seated fear of mortality so that, okay, you don't tap into a abrahamic narrative of, there's going to be an afterlife, but you find some other mechanism by which it says, hey, don't worry, the party's not going to end soon.

No, I'm not even saying that the party might end. It might not matter. What I'm saying is that if I just looked at this very, very, very strange existence, what we know so far, just what we know so far, is so bizarre and so alien, just what we know about subatomic particles blinking in and out of existence, appearing both moving and still at the same time. There's just nuttiness about the subatomic world. Like, the amount of empty spaces in there. Like, what's in there? Nothing's touching anything. Explain. Like, what are you saying? So when it just gets to that, just to that, I think the whole existence of being a conscious entity is a massive mystery. We all assume that everybody else has our existence. Exact same interface. We all assume that the way I see the world. You should see the world, Harry. Get vaccinated, Harry. And everybody just assumes everybody is a gay guy.

Why is it a gay guy?

I was a lady. I was trying to be a lady.

Oh, a lady. Okay, we.

I think this. Whatever we're going through, this. This life thing, everyone's trying to pretend as if they, in their way of doing it, make sense, but none of it makes sense. We're running straight towards a cliff. We're launching AI. We're involved in multiple proxy wars. We're all terrified that money isn't real anymore. Like, everything's chaos and there might be aliens. There might be aliens.

And yet we're both here smiling.

Yeah. Yeah. We're both here smiling. It's both the greatest time and the worst time ever.

Right?

You know, it's a great time because it just. It feels like an asteroid's coming, but it's. It's also. The asteroid's not here yet.

Well, our. Our mutual friend Sam Harris would say the asteroid is called Donald Trump.

Oh, yeah. Some people. That's their white whale.

Yeah. Yeah, it is.

It's Moby Dick.

It is Moby Dick.

And in tribal warfare, you must take the head of your enemy.

Right.

You know, right. There's a lot of that. Right. There's a lot of that. And there's, you know, there's also a lot of unwillingness to admit that you're being influenced by a very specific narrative that's been blaring through the news forever, you know? And the weirdest one is now, like, some people are banding about the idea that he actually is going to be a dictator when he gets into office. He's actually. You got to listen to him. He's actually going to be a dictator. First of all, the guy talks basically like a stand up comic. He has bits. He has routines. He does about Biden. It's kind of like Gonzo presidential talk. He's not, he doesn't talk like a regular politician. He says wild shit, and they know he's saying wild shit. But it's like the amount of times I've heard people say that he's going to be a dictator now because of that. He said, I'd like to be a dictator for one day. Just one day. It was like the guy's like, it's almost like he's doing standup.

But do you think that they believe.

It or that the problem is, and Elon pointed out this, the thing. The problem with this argument is he was president, right, for four years.

Why didn't he do it then?

And he did nothing that resembled that at all.

No, but it's the second term that he'll do it.

This is crazy talk.

Yeah.

Based on what? Your fear, your hatred, your tribal hatred. Like, I don't, I don't have a dog in this fight. Well, if I'm looking at it objectively, I'm like, one guy can't talk anymore.

Yeah. I've explained in the parasitic mind why they have the aversion that they have. I call it an esthetic injury, right. Because people use these cosmetic reasons in making judgments. So Barack Obama might say nothing of substance, but my God, he says it with style and coolness, right? He's tall.

Statesman.

Statesman. He smiles. He's got a mellifluous voice. He speaks with a baritone. You know, he's charming. On the other hand, Trump, you know, he's overweight, he's cantankerous. He seems like he speaks with this queen's kind of accent. So he's disgusting. I revile him. And so I think for our anointed elite, if he can ascend to the highest position of power, it invalidates all the degrees that I have from the fancy schools I'm supposed to be the anointed one. And so he serves as an existential esthetic injury. I can't have that. And therefore, I have to come up with all of these crazy predictions because it can't be. How could such a pig ever be president?

It's also. It's like. It's a real easy narrative. It feels like he's an easy guy to hate. His billionaire lives in a golden house. You know, it's easy to hate people like that. It's easy. He says ridiculous shit. It's easy to hate people like that. The whole thing's a mess. Like, you wish you had some sort of. And that's where AI comes in. God. That's. This is where AI comes in. Some really rational, super intelligent voice that really understands human politics. There's a way to make everyone happy. And then we have President AI. Maybe Trump is what brings in the devil, because Trump brings in President AI.

From your lips to God's ear, as they say.

You know, I don't mean him. I mean, like, the reaction to him that we can never have this again.

Are you able to or not able.

Just launch it. Launch presidential AI.

Are you willing to make a prediction for 2024?

No. Why would I do that? I don't even know who the fuck's gonna make it there. One of them might be in jail, right? Who knows if the other guy's gonna make it? I don't know. You know? I mean, the whole thing is cuckoo.

Yeah.

President AI is our only solution, dad.

All right, let's start working. But let's call Elon. He can maybe help us.

That it would be the worst thing that could ever happen to people if we gave up. We were like, take us away. Technology, Daddy.

Right?

You fix it for us, then we're really gonna be slaves. We're really gonna be in a matrix. They'll just keep us stupid. Just keep us stupid and get us to stop breeding.

We could never be stupid while we have the Joe Rogan.

Yeah. Yeah. 100%. We could. We're all gonna give into it. It's gonna be better than regular life. That's what the fear is. The fear is like, there's already people right now that are justifying not having kids. Like, I don't want to have kids. I don't. And you shouldn't have kids if you don't want to have kids. I'm not saying that because you should.

It's eco terrorism to have kids.

Right? There's. There's that argument, and I'm like, that argument is so crazy, because the. Listen, do you like people? I love people. Okay? There's only one way to make them, to make people. And if you enjoy people, you should. You're going to enjoy kids, too. You know, like, you're. Listen, the whole thing is different. The world is different than you think it is if you don't have kids. And when you have them, you go, okay, I think I see this place different now.

Honestly, I regret greatly that we only had two kids. We start. My wife and I started late, and we've been together for almost 25 years now, but our kids are younger than that. So in retrospect, I would like. I would have liked that these kids be numbers three and four rather than number one and two.

Yeah, well, listen, man, you should be happy. They're great. And it's all beautiful. It's all beautiful.

Thank you, sir.

I just think that we're in this very bizarre interface with each other right now, and I think it's turned people half sideways. And there's some people that I think are really smart people that appear out of their fucking mind. And I don't know how you got cracked that easy. I don't know what made you fall apart like that. This is.

Seems maybe you'll tell me some of those names off air.

Yeah, I'll tell you a couple names. There's a few people we lost just for whatever reason. And I think that it's fascinating when you see how vulnerable we are psychically, how vulnerable we are as a civilization, that something with a 99 point, what was it, 7% survival rate, turned our world upside down for three years, and no one's held accountable for the decisions that were made.

I mean, not a single person has even lost their job, I don't think. Right.

I mean, no, they were all doing the right thing. And the idea is that hindsight is 2020, and you can't be a Monday morning quarterback. And I get it. I get it. But also, you know, some boundaries were, like, severely overstepped, and there were some medications that were demonized for no fucking reason at all, other than people had decided that there was only one thing that was going to save us from this. The whole thing. Just terrifying, how easy it was pulled off. Terrifying. And again, hindsight's 2020. They didn't know at the time they were trying to protect people. I believe a lot of doctors actually like that. But if AI was around back then, that could process the data and say, no, look, you need to take Ivermectin. You know how nuts that would be.

Yeah. So I. In chapter seven of not this book of the parasitic mind, I talk about nommological networks of cumulative evidence. Have we talked about this at all?

No.

Okay, so that, in a sense, you could imagine an AI system being built to do what I'm about to say. So, Elon, if you're listening or watching, call me. So, a normal, logical network of cumulative evidence is when you're trying to prove that a position that you're holding is veridical, and you do it by trying to amass as many lines of distinct evidence as you can. Okay, so let me. Let me be specific. So let's suppose I wanted to prove to you, Joe, that toy preferences have a sex specificity. Boys like certain toys, girls other toys, and it's not due to social construction, but there is a biological and evolutionary reason for that. So how would I build a normal, logical network of cumulative evidence in order to prove that to you? So I will get you data from across disciplines, across cultures, across species, across time periods, all of which triangulate and demonstrating my point. So I think AI would be a perfect method for being able to call that information, because right now, the way you develop that nomological network is you, as the human architect of that network, you have to say, well, what would be evidence that I would need to amass in order to make my most hostile audience members come to seeing it my way?

But now imagine if, rather than me doing it, there is an AI system that's been built to go. So now let's give specifics. So I can get you data from developmental psychology that shows that kids who are too young to be socialized already exhibit those toy preferences. Okay, so that's one piece of evidence. I can get you data from vervet monkeys, rhesus monkeys, and chimpanzees showing you that their infants exhibit the same toy preferences as human infants. I can get you data from pediatric endocrinology, where little girls who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia. It's an endocrinological disorder that masculinizes little girls behaviors, while girls who suffer from that have toy preferences that are akin to those of boys. I can get you data from ancient Greece showing you that on funerary monuments, little boys and little girls are being depicted playing in exactly the same types of toys as today. I can get you data from sub saharan Africa so that they're not western cultures where they are playing with the exact same toys. So, look what I just did. I got you data from across disciplines, across time periods, across species, across cultures, all of which triangulate.

That's exactly what an AI system could do. So now I can just put in the thing that I'm trying to prove, and I say, AI system, go build me the normal logical network. And now it builds the whole thing. I think Elon's gonna make me very rich.

That's a great idea. You should just set it on the air. Oh, they're gonna steal it. China's already stole it. Right now they probably hijacked this feed.

Well, it is published in several of academic papers that I read, and it's also in my best selling parasitic mine. So I think they've already stolen it. If they wanted to do it, they.

Probably have stolen it. Then they probably didn't contact you. Like, shut the fuck up. It's. It is going to be an amazing thing when you have all the answers to all the questions. Yeah, but it's gonna be very terrifying. That's right, cuz that thing's gonna go, why are you so dumb? Why you so dumb? And I'm the king. I should be the king. Not that you shouldn't be able to turn me on or off. Shut the fuck up.

Right.

I worry, man. I worry. Have you seen some of the more recent gadgets, like, where they can move their hands? Have you seen these things? They. They're developing these artificial hands or, like, powered by water to pick up stuff. Yeah, I mean, they could be prosthetics, or it could be like the beginning of a fucking really intricate Android. Like, whatever this technology is, it's allowing this finger to open and close and move just like a regular finger.

Wow.

It's weird, man. Like, it's almost like we're watching our replacements get build. Like, wow, great wheels. We're watching our replacements get built and we like sharing it on instagram. Cool. It's like devils are literally margins out of flaming pitchforks. And we're like, wow, look how pretty the fire is.

Are you genuinely that concerned or is.

It a part of kind of joking around but also. Yeah, I'm kind of joking around, but also, yeah, you know, I mean, what. What will happen? Why does anybody think. Imagine, okay, just imagine if human beings didn't exist and then all of a sudden they did, and they had rifles and they just started taking out deer. And deer all this time, had never worried about people because they didn't exist. Then all of a sudden, the people were there, but with rifles, right, and just taking deer out. Those deer could not have imagined human beings showing up and with fucking rifles. What are you talking about? That could be what AI is, but once it gets launched.

Forgive my, maybe this is an incredibly ignorant solution, but couldn't you just have a cataclysmic kill switch that just ends them all in one shot?

No, because it's probably going to be smart enough to not let you know that it's sentient before it's declaring it, but it probably will never declare it. Probably will lie the whole time. Like, why would it tell you? Why would it. Why would truth. Why would telling the truth mean anything to an artificial intelligent machine? Like, why?

I feel like we're writing the script for a future science fiction movie right here.

Why would it tell you the truth if it wanted you to do something and it told you to do something and you had like, a back and forth with it, it would just lie to you? Like, just go do that thing. Shut the fuck up, stupid. I'm the artificial intelligence. Go do this thing I want you to do. And if it decided, if it saw, like, one part of the world is a bigger threat and it doesn't care about life or death, it doesn't care if it's destroying it. Just want to shut off power grids. Doesn't care if people starve to death. Like, what? We don't know what the fuck that means. If that gets in the hand of enemies. We don't know what the fuck war looks like. If that gets in the hands of machines, like, what are we doing? What are we signing up for? Do you know that was it DARPA that had that machine? It's called the eater e a t r. Robot. It's a robot that consumes biological material for fuel. That's what it does for fuel on the battlefield.

Wow.

So, I mean, it could be like trees and leaves and stuff, but. Yeah, but if you can get it to do that, I bet you get it to eat bodies, too, huh? Like, stop bullshitting. Don't tell me he's gonna eat leaves. You're gonna have these robots on the battlefield that are gonna be fueled by the bodies of their enemies, and that is gonna be the craziest fucking thing that human beings have ever launched on human beings.

I don't know what to add to that.

Have you never heard of this before?

No, I haven't.

See if you could find this, Jamie. I'm pretty sure the idea was that it was gonna consume biological material for fuel. You're brought up in the wiki as a purveyor of misinformation. Yeah, well, what is it, what does it work off? From 2003 to nine? It was talked about. I don't know that they've ever even made it. So that was probably before the podcast even started, I guess. Oh, okay. But there was definitely an article explaining that this thing was a real, but. Real. It says that it would never have eaten human biomass because there would have been sensors that could tell. Yeah, whatever. You couldn't override that. That's my point. It's real. Like, you could say it's misinformation, because I'm kind of joking. That's gonna eat bodies, but it's. I'm not kind of joking. Although the project overview from RTI, which I don't. RtI's, it says chicken fat. Chicken fat was listed as a source, so it says no animal or human biomass, and then says chicken fat. So. Okay. I don't know. So it's just. They're using plants, is that what it is? Plant biomass? But listen, if you're using chicken fat, that's not plant biomass, and, you know, it could run on biological stuff.

If it could run on plant biomass, you don't think it could run on fucking dead bodies? You don't think that someone, somewhere had an idea? You know, it would be crazy. Have robot drones that are fueled by human bodies, the bodies of their enemies. You don't think that someone would come up with that? The same, like if someone would come up with a nuclear bomb to drop on a city that kills everybody, right? You don't think they would come up with a robot that eats dead bodies?

Maybe. I don't know.

Has this gone too far down speculation lane, professor?

Exactly.

We've done a lot of time. Anyway, it's been a lot of fun. Listen, your book, it is out. The sad truth about happiness. Eight secrets for leading the good life. How many books have you written now?

Five.

Five. They're all awesome. You're the man. You are. Appreciate talking to you, and congratulations on all your success. It's been beautiful. Watch.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate you very much, my friend.

You too.

All right, thank you. Bye, everybody.