Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast - 539 JRE Review of Zach Bush

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

This week on JRE Review, we break down Zach Bush's appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. Bush takes Joe from coffee and modern work culture into cancer, the microbiome, glyphosate, regenerative agriculture, AI, ancient civilizations, telepathy, autism, and the idea that modern humans have become disconnected from the biological systems that sustain us. There are some genuinely fascinating ideas here, especially around purpose, health, nature, and the limits of reductionist thinking. But Bush also makes some enormous scientific claims that deserve serious scrutiny. We get into what was compelling, where the evidence gets thin, and why this still felt like a classic old-school JRE conversation. Thanks to this weeks sponsors: Shop now at Fabletics dot com slash jrer to get 70- 80% off everything when you sign up as a new VIP For more Rogan exclusives support us on Patreon patreon.com/JREReview www.JREreview.com For all marketing questions and inquiries: [e-mail] Please email us here with any suggestions, comments and questions for future shows.. [e-mail]

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the JRE review. Today, my guest is actually an old school host from the beginning of the JRE days. Dave Guerrera. What's up, David? Hey, it's good to see, good to see you and hear you. It's been a long time since we've done a review or even chatted at all. It was at the beginning of your journey here. And I don't even remember what we were talking about. So it was, it's good to be back here.

Yeah, we reviewed a bunch back in the day. Yeah. You were a solid co-host for a long time. I think actually you were pretty pinnacle in me kind of like sticking at this too, because I know you're doing your voice over stuff and we talked about that a bunch and I know I got better equipment. You actually were the first person to help me learn the program. I needed to edit this show.

Right, yeah, because I was... Yeah, you showed me through that. And, yeah, appreciate you, brother. I was, oh, my pleasure. It's great to be here. And, yeah, I remember that because we were doing, I was doing some short story audio books at the time. That's it.

Yeah, yeah. And that was at the time I wanted to also get into, doing the readings for Bigfoot erotica. I really wanted to corner that market and be that guy. I never got the job, though. I read a bunch of those excerpts and sent them off. And I was like, man, if I could get this, if I could corner this, it was hilarious.

It was just like the silliest thing I could think of. And I was like, I'm doing it. I'm going to try. I wasn't good enough, Dave. You should have practiced. well you're the perfect person to come in and review Zach Bush there's been a lot of talk about Zach recently he's been making uh the podcast circuit and has a bunch of great clips out there and you know I think he's inspiring a lot of people and um very few people I've talked to that have heard

his stuff and I can't even tell you how many messages I got about people either wanting to review this one with me or just sending me excerpts of stuff that he said. I think he really hit a positive nerve with people, if that's such a saying, because I think he just resonates with people. And in today's world where we're like inundated with basically every distraction and poison and social media and all the things that are kind of throwing off our mental health, I really felt like, yeah, he had some interesting things and you and you kind of have to take a step back from i guess a lot of kind of like logic and the way that we live just to say hey let's give him three hours to take us on this journey and and just ask what if what if this is true right right i mean i so it was a great

podcast. It was a great conversation and Joe Rogen, obviously, he reached a lot more people on that platform, but you could see the joy that he just has in conversation. Joe Rogen has it too, the two of them, just connecting. And he talks about that and they get into it quite a bit about interconnectedness. But when I first came across Zach Bush, it was probably the end of 2023 when I was just getting sober. And my brother was sending me stuff because he had just lost his wife. And so he was reaching out and doing yoga and, and sort of trying to connect to something a little bigger than himself. And, um, and he sent me this conversation. I think it was on like the Rich Roll podcast and it was Zach Bush and they were having this conversation. Or at least I went

down this deep dive because I saw this excerpt that my brother sent. And then I went on this deep dive, you know, mini deep dive of Zach Bush. And I found some more podcasts and I listened to what he had to say. And he was talking about his experiences in hospice care. And, Then he said some stuff about addiction, and I was like wide open to like a sponge to just anything, anything literature wise or talks about what addiction was is, is, and how it would help me. And he referenced this guy, T.J. Woodward and this other book called Conscious Recovery. And it just sort of opened up my eyes. And it led me down this great, like, little poetry of life of like, you know, one reference leads to another. and so on and so forth. And then I just kept, because he can be intense,

Zach Bush, and it's hard to take in. But the beautiful stuff that he, that he talks about is like this reconnection with nature. And, and, you know, I picked and chose, like, what resonated with me because of my addiction.

But the more later on in life, later down the road, a couple years down, I go back and listen to him now. And it's this thing of reconnecting with this. this human thing that we're connected to the earth. And that makes sense to me because I spend a lot of time trying to get out.

I live in cities. I live in Los Angeles and I'm in New York City right now, but I spend a lot of time going to the parks, recharging, because I see, I feel the things that are disconnecting me with where I'm from. So this, his stuff is just, it resonates with me in that respect. Sure. I mean, even in this podcast, they kind of opened up with really, I guess, like, the more mild addiction, which is like coffee, caffeine, those sorts of things.

And Joe was just straight up. Like, is this good or bad for you? And he immediately reframed it. And I thought that was so useful to do because he reframed it in a way to say, you know, not is it good or bad, but what is your relationship to it? Why do you need it? Exactly. And how do you use it? Yeah, and I took some notes last night and this morning, because I will listen to the podcast again, and they were talking about coffee, right? He says, you're not an isolated system. And he saw coffee as a drug that is bypassing the felt sense of being human that you're undermining your potential to be alive. And it's becoming. a distraction to life. You know?

Right. Beautiful, right? It's, I mean, the stuff that, he's a very quotable man, Zach Bush empty. And anyway, it's the stuff, the even more stuff down the road, he talks about addiction, too. And addiction is the necessary behavior of an organism that believes itself to be abandoned by its infinite reality. You know, and then we get like. that's big picture. You know, and he could get, and they went down, you know,

they said they went down the Wu, main street of Woo Woo-Woo Town, and they were running red lights, and I was like, yeah. And I like that. But, you know, because that was right when they started talking about the antenna, and that the antenna of the human brain, the antenna is wide open and what Zach Bush's experience with hospice care

and how he saw people crossing the veil. It's like, that's some, like, his experiences are fascinating. Sure. Sure. I mean, the way he talks, it almost sounds like, you know, if he didn't have that background in this huge experience and also the, I mean, he's a doctor, you know, he's not just some guy that just smokes so much weed that this is, this is his theories, which honestly, there are some weird overlaps, but there's a massive credibility that comes from these experiences. I mean, he's done research, he's done science, he's been fully locked into the systems, and then he just took a step back and went, wait a minute, where is health really coming from? Right. I mean, talk about taking your oath seriously. Yeah, and it's great because it resonates with a broader, you know, a broader population of

humans because we see what the health care system looks like, and we see like, we're trying to treat this thing instead of prevent this thing, you know, and a lot of our health care, you know, being the greedy for-profit situation it is, it doesn't make a lot of sense. You know, there's a lot of people like me that don't have health insurance. And I have to think about, you know, what do I do for myself so that I don't get sick? Right. And then, you know, the bigger thing, which gets, you know, obviously more, you know, confusing. to understand is like he was a cancer research guy like he did he was in the labs developing

chemotherapies yeah and i don't understand any of that but i do know i do like the idea of cancer like when he starts talking about it it's part of who you are it's part of your body it's part of your ecosystem of your body and to to i try to isolate it inside your body and attack it kills you as well as it. It's like they say the chemo kills you sometimes. Right. Knowing people that are saying bacteria, you use antibiotics. Cancer, use chemotherapy.

Viruses use antiviral drugs. Any inflammation, you need to suppress it. And he's making this bigger point that the way we go about tackling all those things is actually kind of the opposite of what we should be doing. Now, you know, you got to take everything with a grain of salt. And he even said that. There is a place for antibiotics. You know, there is a place for some of these medications at times. But also, I think, on the bigger picture. He's just saying that,

you know, getting your system in a place of health, opening that antenna, you know, getting back to nature, it's like your body either doesn't put itself in this position

or it can heal itself. Right. Nature always wins, you know, the bodies, bodies will always win, you know, that's the theme there, you know, or the theme throughout is like everything is perfect, which is an interesting

philosophy. Yeah, he brought that up really early on. And I think that it took Rogan some time to really, I guess even understand what he was getting at. What was your thoughts on that when he said it? Like, how did you hear that? Well, and again, this goes back to that first. reference when I came across T.J. Woodward's conscious recovery in that recovery book, because I'll relate things to how I perceive them like we all do, right? And how it affects my life. And when I was reading conscious recovery, he talks about the human being, the human, as a perfect system, right? And

I guess I can translate to everything is perfect because everything happens and it's going to happen and work itself out. But for me, the concept of like I'm somehow defective because I'm an addict didn't really work for me. And this book goes into the fact that you're actually perfect from birth and all of these things that you were trying to do were these brilliant strategies to deal with it. Eventually, those strategies like addiction to drugs and alcohol in my case, ended up being bad and ended almost killing me. But at first, they were great strategies to deal with how I was handling life. And so it didn't make me out to be like, it's my fault because I'm some bad person for being an addict. And so that in a sense, like, you're perfect from birth.

You're this beautiful. And then he, T.J. Woodward in conscious recovery, talks about going back to source. and it gets very metaphysical of that sort of talk. And Zach Bush goes into it too because he worked with beginning of life and end-of-life care. And the end-of-life care, you know, where your people are crossing the veil and understanding that moment when their antenna goes wide open, they're understanding that everything in their life was perfect. It didn't matter.

those things that we think that matter like being this way or that way and acting a certain way didn't matter at that time. So yeah, it's just interesting. And then when you zoom out and talk about the collective human species, right, we are at a hospice stage of our species, potentially. And I would agree there with him. I felt like that was a really good analysis. Yeah. He said we're not experiencing a poly crisis, we're just experiencing a hospice moment for humanity. Right. And does that end with our extinction or does it end with some sort of transcendent thing?

And I like the whole telepathy and autism angle that was happening. That to me is fascinating. Yeah. Now, he said that he was featured on the telepathy tapes. I think the second season of that. Have you gone through that whole series? No, I'll have to check that out. See, this is like...

It's incredible. We could go into like more and more podcasts about Zach Bush, I'm sure, and talk about and do more of a deep dive on his stuff as far as that goes. Because when you start talking about the pyramids and all of that and that human beings at one point in our, you know, in our existence, had this wider antenna. Fascinating. How cool would that be? You know? Like, and I would love to do as much as I can to widen my antenna.

Like, that sounds awesome. It makes me think, like, imagine if you can travel back in time, and then you're this futuristic thing, you know, and you think you'd just go there and impress them with your knowledge and technology. And then they would look at you as a person. And they're like, why is this hyperactive, distracted? Yeah. super ADHD.

Like maybe to everybody, even the calmest person today would just look like a complete spas. An abstraction, right? He talked about abstraction. They're like, wow, this guy doesn't hug any trees. Never. What is that future?

What's wrong with them? Do you have trees? We're like, yeah, we have trees. We just cut them all down and build stuff with them. Talking about building things, this was an idea that I was just not wrapping my head around that I was trying. Like, I like to do that when I review any show

and he brings someone on that has very different thought processes to me or just something I've never heard of. I just try to allow them, I guess, to kind of think for me in that way. You know, it's like going to a good comedy show. When you're really vibing with a comedian, you're allowing them to think for you.

And that's what's so funny. It doesn't mean you agree with everything. you're just giving them a chance to be like, what are they saying, could I imagine thinking this way? But when he was talking about building things, building anything, and he was like, well, one,

he was connecting it to money, what do you need money for it to build anything? And what do you need all these people for it to build anything? And did these people in the past, they didn't build anything, they just created it. And I don't know if he was trying to speak literally or if this was just some sort of metaphor but I'm like dude I'm pretty sure somebody would

have had to build the pyramids and you need right you know separation of labor and you need schematics and you've got to do a lot of work he was almost implying that it just it just creates itself there's this frequency we can get in and things get created well as I missed something Well, we're also trying to explain it through our limited five senses, right? We're also trying to understand this thing that we can't understand. And if there is this sort of telepathic power that these people had, how are we supposed to logically explain it with our brains? Right. If it was assembled, you know, by these people coming together, because he talks about the fact that, like, the same thing was assembled off the coast in Japan at the,

the same time as the Aztecs and the same time as the Egyptian. So there was this communication that they might have had across the globe. Right. But we don't know that for sure. And our little brains can't wrap our heads around it because we're trying to, you know, be logical about it. Sure. I mean, we're living in a very different time.

And I think we just assume that we always were the same thing and how we build stuff today in a way that's how they must have done it back then but with less equipment yet somehow they built better more impressive completely impossible things and there's no good answer for it you might as well give them the benefit the doubt and say yeah with their mind they could mount giant rocks together and move them around because right why not right why not if that's what you need to explain it sure but also what we do know is that they aligned these like 13 degree angles, and I don't know the exact stuff about it, but like they aligned with the stars, with the things that they were looking at in constellations. So that's a great example of what he's talking about, the connection between Earth and the universe.

So they were, they had this other, you know, more, you know, universal connection, I guess. Yeah, and they often attribute this to, you know, it's the summer solstice, the winter solstice, this and therefore it was just kind of this calendar planning system for crop growing and rotation which would that makes a lot of sense but there also seems to be a lot of other alignments that were done that don't necessarily relate to that right and also incredible moon tracking and um i mean do all those things relate to the practical need to grow things or are they focusing on something else that they're trying to kind of honor or worship or it was this there another reason for all that right yeah and it gets

to be you know unknown and and yet unexplainable you know like that one way in their conversation he's like rogan calls out the you know you know archaeologists and anthropologists that are just like trying to explain this and he's like, you don't know. You don't know how they did this. It's true. We don't know. It's not compelling what they tell us.

No, it's like, are you sure, dude? Really? I think, I think that once they really get into the, you've seen those structures under the pyramids that they've scanned for, right? I haven't seen that footage. So I'm excited to check out some of the stuff that he was talking about because I didn't, I mean, I knew that there was things underneath the pyramids, but I'd never seen or read about the footage or the layout.

There's basically this Italian group of scientists that developed this satellite system that can scan into, like deep into the ground or deep into mountains, and then measure things almost perfectly. And they've proven it over and over again. So they've taken military sites. You know how they build a thing in the mountains, you know, like a bunker or whatever? So they have all the schematics for it.

They know exactly what the shape of the thing in the mountain is. And even while it was all classified information, the scientists scanned in the mountain, came back with their measurements and said, this is exactly what this thing looks like to our scans. And to the shock of the military there, they were like, yeah, that is exactly the shape of the dugout, you know, underground bunker that we've built. Well, then they decided, let's point them at the pyramids and see if there's anything under there.

And it comes back with eight giant columns. I mean, we're talking giant. They go down a mile or two miles, like a ridiculous amount of distance. They're perfectly spaced out under the pyramid. and then each one has huge spirals that go down to these four giant block columns at the bottom that are somewhat hollowed and I mean it's so beyond the building of the pyramid itself to even put that in that it I mean it changes it would change everything that we know about archaeology and human history, and no one's rushing to go down there and dig it up.

I think the archaeologists are scrambling to go, we're going to look pretty dumb if they find us. Yeah, because it sounds like the alien landing is a good explanation if we're trying to explain it. You know, like the pyramids were landed here versus right here, maybe. A machine was shot into the ground to explore. to extract something, probably a ton of energy or just something immense. But good luck explaining that with, you know, they dragged it on ropes and shipped away. And I mean, that theory is falling apart. I think that, yeah, right.

And so all this evidence is actually supporting the idea that maybe humans were more advanced, a wider antenna as they say as they said in the as Zach Bush says back then and uh yeah definitely like tied into something else right which does make you think as well it's like if you get to that point what I wonder what starts to happen is that a thing a time of like no disease like he even he even alluded to it a time of no war and people just living exceptionally long lives. I mean, is that the kind of purity that gets created? Yeah, I don't know that the longevity of life is the point

because he talks about, you know, we have this whole perception of death as being the end. And, you know, he talks about crossing the veil into, like, you know, energy systems and things like that. And that sounds cool to me. As an atheist and someone that's a non-believer in heaven and hell and stuff, the end of life, after-life thing, I've always sort of just subscribed to the fact that we don't have a consciousness after death and that our bodies go into this energy and go out into the universe. I like that idea. Makes sense to me.

Particularly when he's talking about when he breaks down the science of what life is, life, light energy per cubic centimeter. And how he's scientifically broken that down to what our life biologist, right? Our life systems have more light in them than the star, which is crazy to think about. Yeah. So that human beings are this vessel for, you know, ultimate life and the highest. form of life on this planet. I mean, it's definitely an incredibly complex system. Yeah, it's an ecosystem in itself, yeah.

That we take for granted all the time. And that we've ruined with gut lining and by destroying the soil and all the other things that we've done, we've contaminated our ecosystems. Sure. Well, he brings up like the Agent Orange thing. thing. They write glyphosate. That's a big one. Can you believe that they couldn't get that out of our food system? That RFK, like, lobbied that hard for it and somehow the meetings ended with, we're just going to keep this in. Yeah. Yeah, no, it doesn't surprise me because, you know, ultimately we've become so greedy that we've abandoned all reason.

and that is a difficult thing to wrestle with. You know, for me, I have to just have some sort of faith in the core of humanity and being a good person that when institutions fail and ultimately, you know, in the wrong about something so big as our food, I have to just go, okay, what can I do now? to do my own research and try to eat healthy because it's scary to think that on a broad scale, we had to, what did you say about, back it happened, started back in the, in the 50s and 60s, right? We had to poison the chemical treatment of the, of the, of the, of the chemical, chemically treating agriculture so that we could feed everyone. right? We decided that that was the way to go. Yeah. Well, stick a bunch of nitrogen in the soil. So we supercharge it, but then deplete all the rest of the nutrients out of it. And then we can just grow food quickly and cheaply. And then we needed to make it last a long time.

And that was the next poison we would add in. So put in a bunch of preservatives, bleach the breads. you know, sterilize everything. Right. Yeah, the Keystone species thing, right? There's some interesting stuff. Keystone species. I was like, what does that mean? And it is true about the sterilization aspect.

Right. I mean, you know, they open these parks. I think it was in Sweden for kids to play in. And it was all the plastic park, you know, slides and the rest of it. and then the ground had that spongy tire rubber stuff on there. And they replaced it with like the old style wooden ones. It's like wooden slides and things they can climb on.

And then they just had like mud and bark on the bottom. Right. And all of these kids, immune systems, rapidly increased. And kids were getting sick a lot less, which is so counterintuitive. even with my daughter, my wife's like, don't get out of the puddles. Stop playing in the mud. And it's like, yeah, that makes sense. That's logical.

But then with every surface sterilized, they're not around these things. You know, you don't want to throw them out of the woods with all the ticks. Like, don't get me wrong. There's a balance there. Sure. But as we know, nature has a way of sorting itself out

and has a way of rebirth, you know. Look at the forest, right? The forest, you know, trees fall, the decays, things grow out of it. Mm-hmm. And he talks about all the fungus and the, you know, the, what was the guy, Paul Stammats, who talked about how mushrooms can save the world? Yeah, yeah, that guy's great. Yeah.

What happened to him? He's around. Is he? Okay. Yeah. He's still scared of the, uh, Portabella, big portabella people. Right.

It's a famous clip on Rogan where Rogan like brings up something about portobella mushrooms and how they may have a certain toxin in that people know about. And he Paul like backs off from it. He's like, I can't talk about this. And it was like quite a famous clip and an awkward

clip in the Rogan sphere. And they never really cleared it up. I'm sure he spoke to Rogan about it afterwards. but there sounds like there was like legitimate threats towards him from big portabella about what's going on i wonder if that's why we didn't hear from paul stamets for so long you know because he had that whole thing how much that ted talk that was so popular at least in some circles um about how you could treat uh crops without having to poison them with mushrooms yeah with mushrooms and so essentially

the bugs would eat this thing that he developed and then they would go back into the the bug would eat it die and then grow a mushroom out of it and so it would just all it would all just work itself out sure and so that tech that sort of like innovation biological innovation was you know that information was sort of suppressed of the mont Santos of the world and they don't know they don't want that they don't want that that's no good They come in hard. They come out of your heart. Do you ever watch the Monsanto, a Netflix documentary back in the day?

Remember when Netflix was pretty brand new to streaming? Yeah. And it had just the best completely out there documentary group. Yeah. And it was, you know, a lot of them now have kind of been debunked because it was a free-for-all. They just like let on anybody's ideas. So people would just go down crazy rabbit holes. Yeah.

But the Monsanto one was solid and super eye-opening to a lot of people, how they'd come in and they created what they called the Terminator seed or something. And it was a seed that you couldn't save and store. So where these farmers in the past would just save all their seed for the next crop cycle, they created this seed that you could just use once. So you had to buy from them again. and then other farmers seeds would blow onto their land these farmers that didn't want to buy from them it would grow and then they would immediately come in and just sue the hell out of them right yeah

they just and you're like wait a wait a minute are you guys here to just make sure that our food grows and grows well so we have lots of it or is there something far far different going on. And I think that was the eye-opening part. Right. Like we just didn't know. We believed in this future we were moving into. It's all about innovation and technology and speed and convenience. Right. And then we look at what that cost is, not just the cost on ourselves, right? This whole thing that Zach's talking about like

shutting down your antenna and moving away from nature and not connecting with yourself and your microbiome and all the rest of it. But in the bigger picture, it's like in order to create this system, there's like a lot of nefarious behavior going on. Right. And it's, and from my perspective, it's based in greed. And it's, it's all based on wanting to make more money, putting profits over people. And that's the sort of existence that we're in right now, and I think a lot of people are fed up with that, from an economic point of view, and from just a purpose of life point of view. Realizing that it goes back to the whole office worker thing that they talked about in the beginning, too.

You know, like, they look at their lives and they go, what am I doing this for? You know, at the end of my life, at the end of life, I'm not going back. I wish I would have worked in the office a lot longer, you know. So I think that there's a lot of people. And for me, you know, almost 50 now. So that happens to you. Carl Jung talks about when you're, you know, when you're 40, you start realizing these things that all the things that you've done in the past, you know, climbing the ladder of society doesn't really, you know, isn't the most important thing anymore. There are other things that take priority.

So and, and in, you know, for me also in recovery, things are more, prioritized things more. And so purpose in life is important for me to find. But I think collectively we're seeing that too. Collectively, human beings are tired of the rat race. They're looking at like, what's the payoff here? I feel like I've been lied to. Well, think of the kids coming up. They just went through COVID.

You know, they were isolated from everybody. Maybe that happened while they were in high school or middle school or whatever. very unusual. They're young, so they just have to believe that the adults know what they're doing. And there's all this separation and sterilization and, you know, waded out and it lasts for years. Isolation, online bullying went through the roof. And then all of a sudden they're like, yeah, now go to college, which is going to cost you $150,000. But don't worry, we'll give you the money for it.

We won't give you the money for anything else. She can't buy a car or a house or you don't trust you that, but we'll give you this debt that you can never get rid of. And then hopefully there's a job at the end of it, and AI hasn't taken it all. And even if you get that job, it's a nice little cubicle. Yeah, it's not. And everybody wants to be a YouTuber.

Well, and I think, interesting, yeah, right? You know, I think some of the parts of the new generation aren't buying it. They're not, they're not, they're done into it. And so they're going to go down this, hopefully they'll go down new avenues and we'll see that sort of, you know, transition. There is a, there is a resurgence and a remembering that Zach Bush talks about, about this reconnection with nature. And now that I, my, my Instagram algorithm is sort of programmed that way, I'm seeing different people pop up that that are influencers in that world, I suppose. They could call them that. but they are going back to living according to, you know, the land and developing, you know, getting more in touch with the ancestry of the land and all that.

We have abandoned as a culture. Sure. So, yeah, it's interesting to. And the irony that they have to do it over Instagram, which is a thing that they, it would be like people in the past coming into. the cities and saying get out of this city yeah i've come in but just to tell you to get away from it's it's true and you know i suppose there's a balance to it all because i still want to i still want to go into big cities and you know work in the theater and entertain people but i also don't want to live that way i don't want to live in big cities anymore, I realize. I like the energy that they provide, and I think

that there's, you know, there's a lot of really great parks and things like that that keep that energy alive. But I see myself more attracted to rural living. And I don't know how to set that up for myself, but I want to. Right. Well, the problem is all the jobs are in the cities. Right. So much of the opportunities, or so-called opportunities, right? I guess we're kind of programmed to think that's where it is. Right. And then otherwise you have to commit to some sort of, you know, farming life or create a commune and live outside the city or something. And that to me, you know, I don't know.

Sounds like a whole. Yeah, people have tried that. It gets to, it gets to guruy. Yeah. And then all of a sudden one guy is trying. trying to have sex with all the women, and you're like, oh, we've gone too far. Maybe I'll try Zach Bush's journey. I mean, they have to pay a bunch of money to do that, but he makes it somewhat affordable.

If you go to his website, it's not crazy expensive, but still, it's monetized. You know, he's not offering this shit for free. Yeah. What does it entail? I haven't looked at this. It's, the journey is more like, it's like going on a retreat, I think. Okay. To look more into it.

But then there's also, you know, the book, Biological Elegance, which I want to pick up read that because that's that's an entire conversation with AI which is going to be fascinating to read um sure him he's not a fan of that but he accepts it and he accepts it as this is the next step for the the either the transcendence of of human humankind or you know the the hospice stage of extinction you know if we're going to only be around here what did you say 10% of hospice patients actually survive. If 10% of the human population survived, how many people would that be?

Right? I would do the math. Yeah. It's still be a decent amount. 800 million. Right? Huh? That's a decent amount of people. Right, but it's still enough.

Yeah. It's still enough to repopulate. You can keep you going. Yeah, you could keep you going for sure. It sounds like a brutal path, though. It sounds like a good movie or a good series. It'd be rough to watch 90% of everybody die. We felt COVID was annoying.

Right. Well, that's what Thanos, the supervillain does, right? You know, he basically, he goes to planets and he wipes out half the population because they're overpopulated. Uh-huh. For all you marble moves out there. Everyone knows that. Come on. So what do we take from this?

You know, I mean, you've already taken a lot from Zach with addiction. and sobriety and you've already been on a bit of a journey with him by your side, which has been very useful. But for people listening to Rogan's conversation and then going, wow, that was super interesting, right, let's head back to work and carry on with our lives. What are the takeaways do you think that you felt were new to you and applicable and could drive in a different path? What changes could be there that are positive?

Yeah, that's a big, that's a big question, right? Mm-hmm. There's so much. It's how we wrap them up, Dave, with big questions. Yeah, I mean, the fact that if we can think about the, that if we were collectively abandoned, if we think that we're abandoned by nature, and how do we reconnect with that in this new complex society, what's you know for me it's like what's within inside what's within my control which is very much the theme of recovery circles right and the theme of ancient philosophies too stoic philosophy all that stuff it's been really helpful for me but what's inside my control what can I do now to make myself more connected to to nature taking some sunshine on a daily basis sit down take your shoes off and get connected to the earth go for a walk

in the park and do all those things that seem simple and trivial, but they matter. They matter to our nervous systems are shot, and the science is actually showing that. If we're connected to social media and all the other things that we, that are inundated with a short attention span lifestyle that we have distractions left and right, Addiction can take many forms, you know, social media, porn. There's all kinds of things that addiction can take form in. Sugar is a big one, right? He talks about high fructose corn syrup.

I don't know. Like for me, the takeaway is try to find a way to eat healthier, to reconnect with nature on a more regular basis, and to keep that connectivity between. my fellow humans. You know, one of the things they talk about in recovery circles is, is the opposite of addiction is connection. And that's a famous TED talk that goes around the circles. And because when we're in a half active addiction, oftentimes we isolate. We isolate. We become sick and we feel like, and they talk about this with the sociopath example, right?

The isolated person becomes malignant to society. And the cancer, It translates to the cancer thing too, right? Where if we isolate the cancer cell, then it becomes malignant to the body. And we're all part of this same ecosystem. And I think that's the biggest message is that how do we find the balance and how do we reconnect to nature in a very technological-driven society? and a society that wants us to make money and to go back to the office

and to be good workers. How do we assimilate there? And I think that there's going to be a and I'm a big, I was a big fan of the Emerson and Thoreau movement back in the day, the nonconformity. But I think there's going to be a big movement of people that are going to have to stand up

to the social norms of today and in order for that to change. Right. I would encourage people to look in about how to do that in your own life and your day-to-day life. How can you stand up to social norms and still be, you know, connected to society? You know, one of the things about recovery for me was rejoining society, right? It was very isolated and I was, you know, down a dark path. But I got out of it and I started to rejoin society.

Well, I also have these resentments against society. I have resentments against institutions that I can. can't control things that are like, you know, why do I want to rejoin a society that's sick? Well, what can I do to help that society not be sick anymore? Maybe it's, maybe it's returning to nature. Maybe that's the answer. And that's, according to Zach Bush, that seems to be the answer for everyone because nature will work itself out.

Sure. Yeah, first help yourself. So, you know, and that you drew on a. important point that I took away like the addictions of everything as well. Right. Like this is this is the traps that you can fall into. And, you know, I always recommend. And my vision of things gets a bit skewed because I'm a therapist.

So I do therapy. So I hear these stories all the time and they, many of them repeat. And a lot of the sadness is coming from people's addictions, whether it's all the way down to social media. media and yeah, porn, alcohol, whatever, just distraction after distraction, right? Because we're trying to get to this place of satisfaction. We don't know the path, which Zach is saying, reconnect with yourself and nature and those sorts of things. But ultimately, it's like, identify those addictions in yourself. And we all have some, you know, make a solid list of them.

And next to it, just write the time that you are engaging in them. A lot of it can be time-based. I mean, people like to measure things, too, like how much alcohol and how much. But that could also be done with time. If you're like, I spend this much time engaging in this activity, right? If it's large amounts of time and they're clearly all addiction-based. And then you ask yourself, well, how happy and satisfied am I? If it's not a lot, then you're plugged in too deeply with those addictions.

and probably your concentration is bad, you're prone to distracting yourself, which means you don't want to sit there with your own thoughts, which is something the nature forces on you. I think possibly that's why it's uncomfortable for some people to even consider. And then you can go down this path of basically learning to be bored again. Just bored. You know, remember back in the day before smartphones,

when we'd sit on the bus or the train and you just stare out of the window. Yeah. You know, people would think you were a psycho if you did that today. Why did you just glued to your phone the whole? How can you even stand in line for 10 minutes without checking your phone 14 times?

Do we even know how to just stand and kind of stare at a wall and wait patiently? I'm one of those people that looks crazy then because I'm on the subway now back in New York City and the phones work on the subways now in certain places. Most places, they work now. So everybody's on their phones. And I don't like to spend a lot of time on my phone.

I try to, like, limit it. And so when I lived here 20 years ago, it wasn't like that, you know. It was like, okay, I'm getting on the subway. And, you know, I'll talk to you when I get out of the underground tunnel. But now, yeah. Read a newspaper. Yeah, read a newspaper. I would read.

stuff like that. Yeah. So we do need to disconnect from our devices because those are big addictions and they are a distraction from real connection. Like we might think that we're connected, you know, through social media and through things. I mean, it's great to be able to talk to you through technology. That's a real connection. We're having a real conversation. But some of these other systems of social media are phony. And they're not. And they're not real connections. They're not, you know, it's nice to have that, you know, database of friends to connect to and if you need to reach out in person. But there is a level of addiction that is unhealthy. Like you mentioned, you mentioned people being cyber bullies. That happens on

social media too. So, well, the trick is to make these technologies work for you instead of you work for them. Right. And every time you're doom scrolling, you are working for a large social media company. You are giving them data, which is what they monetize, and you're stuck looking at ads every 10th scroll.

Right. And you're literally doing work for them for no money, and they're taking your time. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost more nefarious than alcohol. At least you can drink that. At least there's some sort of like instant gratification with that.

You know, yeah. Yeah, it gets kind of scary when we've been monetized and turned into data for consumption. You know, it gets a little bit like the Matrix, right? We're all stuck in the Matrix. Yeah. So wake up, everyone. It's not as gruesome as being plugged into a pod, but you were getting more. mold plugged in. Yeah, we need to wake up. I think that a lot of people are waking up and

can't force, can't force the situation. You kind of have to do it like a flower blooms, but, you know, I feel like I've definitely, my eyes are wide open. I've always been some one of those kind of people, though, that's sort of amazed by everything. But, you know, I feel like, like I've, I have a better outlook on life now, even though I have a lot of resentments towards the collective. But I see there's such beauty. Reconnecting with people in person is such a beautiful thing. Friendships are such a beautiful thing. This trip I'm on right now, I've reconnected with old friends and seen their children.

And like, just that joy of a child's laughter from a buddy that you've known for 20 years. It's just like the most incredible feeling, like on the swing set, just like pushing the kid. You know, just like, wow, that's pure, pure joy, pure of beauty. And you would have enjoyed that in the past as well. I've known you a long time. Yes. But you also might be thinking, well, we pushed him enough. Should we just go for a beer now?

Exactly. And then that's the addiction. Right. It's like, I've pushed him enough. I just need to check my phone. Yeah. I've pushed him enough. Right.

Yeah. It's like just keep pushing. Just keep doing it. Yeah. Just keep, yeah. And if it feels a bit boring and you're not getting that dopamine, you know, hit constantly, then allow it. Practice being bored. Yeah, this guy is fascinating.

And I would say to anybody listening, if you heard this and we're like, ah, this is wacky, people built stuff. This is all nonsense. Just take this step back and say, really ultimately how satisfied am I with how I feel and myself. And if it's not on the higher mark and you're being really honest with yourself, then consider incorporating some of these behaviors and some of this philosophy for a time and see if it feels different. I would have to agree with that completely.

You know, you can check out his stuff. at his website and go down that rabbit hole and then there's tons of other podcasts he's been on but man if you just watch that Rogid podcast again or listen to it again you'll get something else out of it.

It's long. Yeah. It's comprehensive. I went through it twice and I will say the second time I could kind of put myself in his seat much easier and kind of incorporate

some of that thinking. And again, yeah, it was like, woo-woo is hell. Yeah, when you... But it's kind of fun sometimes take yourself out of your own thinking and just say,

all right, what are you got for me? Take your out of journey. Totally, because when they get into technology of the pyramids and telepathy, it gets really woo-woo. But when he talks about biosis, biosus is the interconnected relationship that makes life possible.

Like, I can get down with that. You know? Interconnected relationships that make life possible. me and you talking right now. Right. Yeah. My friends that I connected with and their children and my friend who I'm staying with right now,

you know, in his family home, these are the things that make life possible and beautiful and that keep us thriving. Yeah, but again, he even said it. You don't get to the end of your life and say any of the thoughts were like about the work you did. Right. And they definitely won't be about the time you're. spent scrolling. I think everyone's going to feel immense shame about that. Right. You know, you break down hundreds, if not thousands of hours by the end of our life. Yeah. Just feeding

social media companies. It'd be like, man, I could have gone on some cool adventures. Yeah. And think about the feeling, right? The feeling that I get when I go to like the Redwood Forest, the feelings that I get when I go and I'm immersed in nature and I'm looking up at the stars. It's a beautiful thing. It's a connected feeling to life. And, uh, yeah, I'm just going to try and do more of that. I love it. Yeah. Well, look, Dave, I need to wrap this up because I'm going to hit the bar and then I'm going to scroll for five hours. And then I'm going to go. I can't keep doing this, but no, I love having you on. This was great. We got to do more of these. And, you know, I'm excited for Zach to come back on.

I think he got an overwhelming positive response from the Rogan audience and got people thinking. And honestly, this is exactly what Rogan show was designed to do. Curiosity. Yeah. Right? Bring on somebody that just has a completely new way of looking at things and just challenge this system that we are all stuck in whether we like to believe it or not. And I love that.

Getting out to millions of people, especially a lot of young people. Yep. That don't have mentors, that don't have people saying, hey, try this. Maybe they've never been camping in their entire life. Right. What did you say three days of camping will reset your entire nervous system or something like that? That's wild. And I believe it.

Recently, I took a trip up to Bozeman, Montana, where I used to live. and after a couple of days we reconnecting with friends and doing these things that were a lot of fun we went on the Yellowstone River we did a float for the whole day you know there's no phones I mean some people took some pictures

but that's a bit different and you know it's just not it's just mountains and the river and rowing and laughing and connecting and they for real you don't even have to be woo-woo there's such a different

feeling when you're done and you like there's no point in your mind where you're like well that was a wasted day you know yeah it's like man yeah i can do this i can do this more well thank you dave i appreciate you as always and for everyone listening thanks for listening and we will talk to you guys next time later