The Joe Rogan Experience - #1628 - Eric Weinstein

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, economist, managing director at Thiel Capital, and host of "The Portal" podcast.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Boom. Salud, my friend. Oh, Mazel Tov. Nazdorov. Oh. Those are the only ones I know.

I don't know another. Sheriff in his head. Salud. L'chaim. Mazel Tov. L'chaim. don't know another. Sheriff in the Z. Salute. L'chaim. Mazel tov. L'chaim. Nestrovyev. What's the other one?

Skol. What's that? Skol. What's Skol? Skol. I don't know. Is that Swedish, German, something? Is that a Viking one?

Yeah. Oh. Slante. Use your microphone, fella. I don't know how to say it. Slante. What is that one? The Irish one.

Oh, I don't know that one. I don't know that to say it. Schlump day? What is that one? The Irish one. Oh, I don't know that one. Yeah, I don't know that either. Jamie's throwing extra ones in there. There we go. What's up, brother? How are you? Well, how are you? You look like a businessman.

Is that right? Are you a businessman? I'm trying to be one. I thought you were a professional clubhouse guest. No, no, no. The thing is... Yeah, right. It's the only platform that I have more followers on than you because you're only

there once i think yeah one and done one and done yeah it's just like podcasting for people don't have a podcast well the interesting question is do you think that it has any ability to figure out a way of killing podcasting because that's what they think they're crazy no impossible because the beautiful thing about podcast podcasting is you're capturing a conversation. And it's uninterrupted. The thing that happened with your brother should have put the nail in the coffin in that format. Oh, you mean the struggle session? Yes.

The fact that someone can come in and kick everyone off that disagrees with them, take over the room, and that they did it just because they decided what was the reason why they gave her the the option to kick everybody out and gave her administrative power or whatever it is i think she'd been historically oppressed or something oh that's why i guess i don't know well from what i understand the conversation before she came on was very clumsy that's what everybody was saying it was like that it it it left an opening i see for someone like her to come and go shut the fuck up get out of here but the way she treated your brother and the way i did not listen to this by the way you shouldn't it'll infuriate you the way you know like they they they said he was taught he said

he's an evolutionary biologist yeah well that well, that's enough. And these kids were like, oh, you're into eugenics. You believe in eugenics. He's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And they basically just steamrolled him, called him a racist, and cut him off. It was very infuriating. They didn't want to have a conversation with him. They wanted to belittle him. They wanted him to proclaim that he's anti-racist.

I have seen this movie before. Yeah, it's not good. But it's just the fact that that can happen in the platform. It was just... When you're doing something like that, when someone can come in and just kick all the other people out that they don't agree with, you can just join in a conversation that's already rolling.

He could have left. He just doesn't want to back down. He was trying to make sense. He was trying to trying to express he's always trying to make sense i know it's a problem it's real we gotta fix that but i mean the the clubhouse thing seems a like a fun social thing to do like uh i enjoyed doing it with tim dillon because tim was in here with me and we were yucking it up and goofing on it. And then your brother jumped in on the conversation and Naval was in the conversation. That's where it gets more interesting, which is the serendipity that's possible. Because normally the logistics of getting us all in one place, it's difficult, it's expensive. Nobody really

is up for it because it's probably not as high quality as a point-to-point conversation. But the serendipity of saying it. Yes. Oh, okay, I saw two people I never thought would be in the same room, and then 12 other people. And, you know, at first I think that's exciting. But then the danger of it is that they're going to burn through the novelty effects. You're going to have seen all these people collide. Well, maybe. I mean, there's an, you know, it's almost like chess moves.

Right. Like, even though you know how. Combinatorics are in their favor. You know how the pieces move, but there's an insane number of possibilities that could take place. True, but I do think that there's a weird way in which you're always in danger of setting up too many different ways into the same basic source that's the value. And so you can say, okay, I've got a website. I've got a sub stack. I've got a podcast.

I've got a book. How many ideas do you have? I mean, that's kind of the issue. One of the things that I think makes you dominant is that you have an insane breadth. And most people are really not that capable of going outside of a few issues. Well, I'm not capable of it either. I'm just curious. I'm not scared. I'm not scared of having conversations. I'm just curious. I'm not scared.

I'm not scared of having conversations that are way over my head. I just think the clubhouse thing, they've got to work out what happened. They've got to work that out so that doesn't happen. The flaw is in letting someone come in and then kicking other people out so they can't communicate anymore? You could do that. The moderator privilege there is something that you shouldn't give out like candy because that's what opens it up to. But here's the thing. Why would you want to give out? People are weak.

But why does anybody want to be the moderator? Because that's not good. It's horrible. There's an actual status and caste system of people who need more going on in their lives. Like I was called up on stage i was made a moderator and then you realize that you know for people whose lives have gone online due to covid meaning has been scarce and so in a weird way this is what's proxying for meaning because the human mind will just attach meaning to any kind of distinction like that for

a lot of comics it's replaced performing so they're not going up at night but they're going into clubhouse every night and leo lamar for example is really really active and you know what i told her was pioneer something new don't try to do something old figure out what this new thing is better at and be the first well she has a lot of people on that right a lot a lot more than she has on the other platforms i think she's she's doing really well and she's doing a lot of stuff and what i hope is that um you know she'll pioneer something genuinely new like for example radio drama was dying when i was a kid there was the cbs radio mystery hour or something we used to

listen to that when we drive up to i used to love those yeah they were cool right and that's gone you know with a bunch of people acting out voices e.g marshall was the host of those things and it was like a throwback to orson welles and that stuff wouldn't it be cool to get some retro thing because the the idea behind clubhouse is to take discord and subtract functionality from it and that's the product it's less it's got less functionality than discord and that causes you to say okay well i can't text you how am i going to work around all these constraints and it's like you know a great wine is only supposedly grown when you frustrate the vines really yeah that's what i that's what i hear how's that work how they frustrate the vines that if you give if you give

the vines perfect soil and climate and all this stuff they'll produce much fruitier stuff and it won't be perfectly optimized for fermenting into wine really look there's a lot of bs in wine so i don't want to say 100 but this is definitely something you'll hear have you seen the documentary sour grapes no oh my god tell me you have to watch it um are you a wine guy no i like wine i actually love wine i don't know a fucking damn thing about it i just go that's good and i take pictures of it on my phone when i like it and then i buy that wine later i don't know what the fuck's going on i'm i'm as you know that really nobody does almost. That's what the documentary is about. The documentary is amazing. And it's about this guy who got in with all these real rich wine connoisseurs. Yeah.

Including a friend of mine who's in the film. Oh, no. Yes. Yeah. And this guy realized that there is only a limited amount of rare wine, like 1974 blah, blah, blah. Right, right, right. So this dude decides he is going to fake this wine.

And so he makes these labels. And apparently this gentleman who's featured in this film, who wound up getting arrested, and he's in jail right now in Colorado. And apparently they're detaining him. They're about to deport him because he's about to get out of jail. They're going to deport him back to Indonesia, which is where he's from. But he, I think it's Indonesia, he had an amazing palate.

He was a real legitimate wine collector. And then somewhere along the line, he realized that buying and selling wine was good because he was kind of quartering the market on a lot of wines. He was spending a ton of money. He realized, you know what? I can fake these wines. I understand what these wines are. So he started mixing wines together and he developed all these formulas of how to mix like cheaper wines. wines together and he developed all these formulas of how to mix like cheaper wines and he would sell them as like these super rare you know 1970 whatever wines but where he fucked up is spoiler

alert one of the coke brothers bought like four million dollars worth of wine from him and one of his friends started he had a friend who's an investigator of wine apparently that's a thing wine investigator guy who really understands wine was telling him like he bought bottles from thomas jefferson oh yeah yeah from the 1700s chateau de chem of jefferson i think is still drinkable really well there's this one particular kind of sauternes which comes from the semillon grape in the bordeaux region and it's made from this noble rot so you get the grapes to sort of have this disease that concentrates the sugar. And I believe that Chateau de Chim

is like weirdly drinkable beyond... Hundreds of years. Yeah, crazy. Wow, that's wild. Because this guy just, the Koch brother, he just had this stuff and just had it on display. I mean, he has this immense... I mean, it's worth fucking untold amounts of money.

What are you going to do with that money, right? He just has an insane wine collection, millions and millions of dollars. But he has $4 million of fake wine. And he realized it as they were going through his collection, like that there was magnums from a year where they didn't make magnums and this guy starts going over the the and then what happened was a gentleman from france got involved france i should say he got involved and he is an actual winemaker and his wine was being plagiarized he was they were faking his wine and so he came in and saw the counterfeit wines and

even in the auctions like the like he was pointing out in the auction booklet like these are fake wines like we did not have this wine in this year the the label is incorrect this is incorrect and then you know there were some misspellings on some of the labels and this guy made fucking millions of dollars in wine and sold thousands and thousands of bottles and so initially they thought he was doing it all himself in his apartment but then when they realized the sheer volume of the fake wine this guy sold and put out there that there had to be other people involved but he was the only one that went down for it and they think maybe his brothers uh in indonesia were also involved in this scheme somehow but they they feel like there's thousands and thousands of bottles of this stuff still in circulation

and still being sold there was an auction that was they were selling this guy's wine i believe his name is rudy they were selling his wines at a Christie's auction like long after he had been exposed and so these guys on these the you know these wine connoisseur email lists or they're you know emailing each other back and forth and hey like Rudy's wines are being sold here this is bullshit this is fake and then they have these experts come in and test the stuff but what's crazy is one guy in the film and one is like this is one and then they have these experts come in and test the stuff but what's crazy is one guy in the film and one is like this is one of the real bottles that rudy sold me because rudy was

selling real wine right before he started selling bullshit wine it's like this is one of the real bottles like try it and the guy tries it he's like oh yeah this is really good and then another guy gets a hold he goes when did you open this and he goes goes, a couple hours ago. He's like, he tasted it. He goes, this is bullshit. This is not real. He goes, this doesn't have the vivacity. It doesn't have the flavor. This is not, I've tasted this wine.

This is not the wine. Because apparently, and I don't understand this at all. The palate of a wine connoisseur is this thing where they can literally, like, you can give them, like, a flight of wines, and they can tell you this is Petit Shiraz from blah, blah, blah. And I don't, again, I'm so out of my wheelhouse here. I like Buffalo Trace whiskey. I'm with you there, sir. That's what I'm saying.

I know this tastes good. But, okay, well, first of all, should we try to drink this in the weird wine way? No. No, this is American american we don't fuck around here it's got a buffalo with testicles on the label sign look at that right there like that yes this is older than america by the way you know this this company buffalo trace they started making whiskey in 1773 it's literally three years older than america itself so the thing that i did not understand i think about wine is that if you're trying to taste your wine you can't possibly get at what's this high-end stuff because it's only your nose that can determine these differences that nobody's got enough stuff going on in their tongue to tell great wine so you've got this thing called the retro nasal passage in the back of your mouth can i get a graph jamie

retro nasal passage yeah where do we where do we pull this graphic um and so this whole thing about burbling where you turn your mouth into a bong right oh yeah let's do it how you do it and they smell it well you start you do it? And they smell it? Well, you're getting this fountain with air coming up. And then you're opening the back of your... You're opening your retronasal passage. You do get a little bit of a smell. Right?

And that's where the magic happens. So the weird thing is somebody buys really expensive wine, and then they try to taste it. Ah, here we go. There we go. That's for beer. Well, it's for anything. I know, but it's interesting.

Once you get addicted to... Smelling shit? Yeah. Maybe that's like dudes are into smelling feet. Like, that's what's going on. You're not trapping me in that conversation. No, we had a guy at Kill Tony. Okay.

Who's really into feet. He was fucking hilarious. Were you there, Jamie, that night? I don't think so. tony okay he's really in the feet he was fucking hilarious were you there jamie that night it was a kill tony recently at uh anton's and this this kid went up he was really funny he was a funny comic but it was really funny he was talking about how he's really in a girl's feet and he was like completely unapologetic like and he was hilarious and he was just talking about how he likes to smell girls' feet. You notice how everybody else's attraction is weird,

and whatever your thing is, it's like, yeah, I don't know, I'm just into that. Well, it was funny. I mean, it was definitely weird because it's unusual that someone would be... I don't think it's unusual that guys are into feet. I think it's a lot more usual than you think, but I think what is unusual is that he was so open

about expressing the fact that he was in defeat in front of a group of strangers in a one-minute set on Kill Tony. Do you know how Kill Tony works? Not really. Kill Tony is the foundation. It was one of the foundations in Los Angeles, and I think it's going to be the foundation in Austin of the open mic community. Okay. Because it gives a comic one minute. Tony Hinchcliffe developed a show, and him and Brian Redband, they do it together,

and Tony has a hat. They shake the hat up, or a bucket. They reach in the bucket, and they pull out a name, random. And then that person doesn't know if they're going to perform or not. There's maybe 30 people that throw their names in and maybe five get to perform and tony pulls that name out calls the guy or girl or non-binary folk and they come running onto the stage and they do one minute of stand-up got it and this guy did one minute stand-up about how he gets hard-ons because of feet and it was just hilarious but he was talking about the smell of feet.

And the girl got on stage and took her shoe off and he smelled her foot. It was just preposterous. Okay. But it gives these comics an opportunity to, like, at that night, I think it was me and Adam Eget that night. But it's like Don L. Rawlings has been on. You know, like you name a Dom, Dom Iraria is a favorite guest, like great comics are on it all the time.

So there's a professional guest that sits there and talks to the comics. The comic does a set and then we'll ask them, I've done it a bunch of times. We'll ask them questions like how long you've been doing comedy? Like what, what, where'd you start? You know,

what town did you start out in? And then they tell you, what are you doing now for money? And you know what town you start out in and then they tell what are you doing now for money and you know they have great stories and it's it's fun because you get a chance to see the beginnings and some of those comics have gone on like ali mccoskey who has opened up for me in fucking arenas she started out on kill tony okay yeah and so it's like you could develop a legitimate professional career from this but it's like a really good path for these amateurs to get like one minute of stage time. So they hone this one minute, hoping they're going to get called onto the stage. And usually, like, if you're a halfway decent comic and you've been doing it, you know, six months, a year, you probably have a minute.

You probably have a minute where you could get up there and rock it for a minute. And some of them are terrible, but some of them are really funny. What's the best way to get people opened up almost instantly with no foreplay? To go on – yeah, there's no way. You have to just have – there's a different way for you than it would be for Jamie, than it would be for me. Everybody's different. I've seen it be different for you on different nights.

Yeah, it's always different. I always – you've got to – it's just like it's a living thing the audience is a living thing it depends entirely upon what's happened before you went on stage it depends entirely on what time of night it is you know there's a lot going on i'm always a little freaked out when i see you at the store because i don't associate like i got to know you before I ever got to see you be funny in front of a crowd and it was just like holy shit you can do that you know and

it's a different persona like you can clearly see that a different mind has clicked in it's like the I know Kung Fu moment it is like that right and it's like if you saw me do Kung Fu you'd think that too I don't really know any Kung Fu but you know it's like if you saw me do kung fu you'd think that too i don't really know any kung fu but you know it's uh it's a thing you know you got to know how to do it then you gotta

when you do it you got to treat that audience like you know you got to bring the good shit you gotta you gotta come with the good good jokes it's like when i I saw Steven Seagal playing blues guitar. At first, I was just like, what? Is he good? I don't want to say anything negative, but I've seen parts of it that have been really, really pretty good. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm trying to figure out what happened to the guitar and what happened to COVID changing the world of guitar because everybody was indoors. COVID changed the world of guitar?

Lots of people had time on their hands and no one could socialize. And the amps have gotten wildly better. In the last year? I bought a modeling amp for $250 that changed my life from Positive Grid called the Spark Amp. We were talking about it with jamie and it is a replica of like all the gear that real guys have that hobbyists like don't even know what it is i can play with it and it'll model all of these setups so suddenly like i'm smarter and then you know that's a weird thing i was telling jamie about this had to have been developed long in advance it's been over Yes, but I think a $250 item that just blows your mind may be relatively new.

And I think there's one coming from, oh, Neural DSP. So there's like competing, and Jamie was talking about the Helix. So there's like this collection of these things. And I hadn't spent $300 on my rig for 30 years or something. And I did this. And suddenly, a little bit more magic was available to me. Really? And then I put a brief clip of myself playing on Instagram.

And I got contacted by like some of the greatest guitarists in the effing world when when Tosin Abasi and Joe Robinson and Ryan Roxy of who's the guitarist for like Alex Alice Cooper contact you and they're like this is you jamming look give me some of this give me some of this Jamie you jamming to Glenn me some of this give me some of this jammy you jamming to glenn beck is that what it says that wasn't actually the one that that's pretty fucking good and you're doing that without a pick If there's another one Yeah, that one is that one I I didn't know you were supposed to yeah you you that was the one that did it I think

Apparently you're supposed to use a pick, but I didn't know. Basically, I'm playing air guitar with a real guitar. That's really good, dude. Well, that's the amp and the fact that somebody set up my Strat. What do you mean that you didn't know you're supposed to play with a pick? Dude, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. How'd you learn how to do this? I hang out in a room alone.

It's sort of dark and lonely. Really? Yeah. When did you learn this? This is part of the thing. I do a bunch of things that I don't do with other people. I just learn shit on my own. Right, but when did you learn this?

How long ago? I don't even know. Some of it in the just learn shit on my own. Right, but when did you learn this? How long ago? I don't even know. Some of it in the last year. But when did you start playing guitar? You're being cool. No, I've had a guitar. I don't like it. I'm going to call you out on this.

I don't like it. Okay. Very uncomfortable. I've had a guitar since I was 15, but I don't know when. Okay, so you've been playing forever, but you're self-taught. But yeah, and then you have these plateaus where suddenly you take your head out of your ass. forever, but you're self-taught. But, yeah, and then you have these, like, plateaus where suddenly you take your head out of your ass. Well, Hendrix was self-taught, you know?

Almost all of the really great people. Steve Ray Vaughan, I believe, was self-taught. Albert King was self-taught. Yeah. All of these guys were, like, on the next level. Where are they going to learn it from? You know, who creates a Danny Gatton or a Roy Buchanan? Nobody knows.

I don't know who those guys are, but I'll trust you. It'll blow your mind. Will it? I wonder how Gary learned. Gary Clark Jr.? Gary Clark Jr. is psycho. What does it say? Self-taught, bitch!

Woo! So I can't do that stuff. But the point that I'm starting to come to is I realize when different communities behave differently, there are angry, jealous communities, and there are open-hearted, we're glad to have you on board communities. And I could not believe the quality of the people who reached out to me to give me encouragement for whatever stupid, and this thing, I don't know how to hold a pick. I don't know how to do this stuff with a pick. I just can't. I think as long as the sound is good, they don't care. Is that correct? I think more than that.

I think that the idea is that there's this one of us thing like, okay, I can see that he spent time in the trenches trying to figure out what we do and most people don't care and he does, you know? And so the idea is, um, you know, I, I did a guitar podcast recently and I just expected this other thing, which is like. What do you mean by you did a guitar podcast? Ryan Roxy for Alice Cooper says, I want you on the podcast as a fellow guitarist. His podcast. So like Joe Satriani, you know, was sitting in that chair.

And then here I am saying like. Wow. was sitting in that chair and then here I am saying like, wow. Well, but in part, when people are like fans of, I mean, you do comedy, you do acting, you do jujitsu, you do so many different things that you know that there's some things that you don't do at the same level as other things. Yeah, for sure. And when people see that you're like taking an interest like if i found out that you were you know a um a road racing but you know bicyclist or something like that people would be like wow joe joe's one of us they're happy to have you on board i feel what

you're saying yeah especially like weird esoteric things you know weird like mandolin for example whenever i do something on mandolin you know i have all these people oh i'm one of those people too i have a mandolin you know it's probably pretty rare right how many people are playing mandolin i don't know it it was it was competitive with the guitar in the late 1800s i think and then the guitar sort of just blew it out of the water but there's a new thing called octave mandolin, which is down an entire octave. So it doesn't have that kind of really bright tinny sound. So I'm going to pursue the octave mandolin and see whether.

Is there any benefit in a kid learning how to play the recorder? It seems like they're just fucking with those kids when they give them a recorder. Well, look, there's some cool stuff from like Telemann if you're really into. Right. But like no one plays professional recorder, right? Can you get chicks with a recorder i don't know if you

can you you would get those chicks anyway well you know the scene with belushi and the guitar yes i can't you have to be very careful what you play i know we all do i love that scene it's so real it's so real sorry yeah it's so real i've been at a party where a guy busts out a guitar and starts singing and you're like oh my god who are you what have you done well what are the skills that you would want to acquire at this uh um i think music would be really interesting to learn either play the piano or play the guitar i just don't have the time yeah i don't have the time i don't have the time to do the things that i already do you know how about hyper accelerating one of those things like getting somebody who understands your brain because you're a great learner i'm good at

listening yeah i like uh but you're a beginner's mindset a lot yeah well i think it's i do a lot of things from scratch you know like i think uh that's how I got good at jiu-jitsu is listening. I didn't get good at jiu-jitsu because I figured it out myself. I get good because my friend Eddie, Eddie Bravo, is a great coach. And my original instructor, Jean-Jacques Machado, is a great coach. And I just listen to them. What made Eddie a great jiu-jitsu intellectual? Eddie thinks way outside the box.

Way, way, way outside the box. And he's just real creative. Because he's a musician. Eddie thinks way outside the box, way, way, way outside the box. And he's just real creative, you know, because he's a musician. Like, that's what he does outside of jiu-jitsu. Game comedy? Yeah, he's done comedy, too. He actually, he was always really funny. And I tried to get him to do comedy, like, way back in the day. And he did a few open mics, but it was just too harrowing for him.

But then when he started doing a lot of seminars and got really comfortable teaching because he became a jiu-jitsu instructor and started teaching for a living then he got much more comfortable in front of large groups of people and then he started doing stand-up again within the last five or six five years or so something like that and then he's very funny he's just a funny guy like me and him hang out we fucking laugh so hard he's like other than joey diaz i probably laugh harder with eddie bravo than anybody that i know but he's just he thinks different than people and sometimes it's a problem he starts like entertaining some ideas that are completely preposterous and he goes deep

with them because he's figured out a way with jujitsu to take ideas that a completely preposterous and he goes deep with them because he's figured out a way with jujitsu to take ideas that a lot of people didn't think were good yeah and figured out a way to tap people out with those ideas like he took some ideas and he said no you just kind of like like for instance here's a perfect example like there's certain kicks that um if you just showed someone it they would say well that's not practical right you're not going to be able to do that the problem is you just haven't reached a proficiency like maybe like a steven wonderboy thompson or something like that where it will become practical like a specific kick is like a spinning wheel kick it's a wild cool looking kick looks great in a bruce

lee movie right wonderboy thompson he's a famous mixed martial arts fighter. He pulls that off in fights because he's a 57-0 kickboxer and one of the best strikers that's ever competed in mixed martial arts. So his proficiency in striking is so elite that he can do things that if you just taught, some people would say that's impractical, that'll never work in a fight. But it will work in a fight if you reach the highest level of proficiency and eddie had that same mindset with jujitsu techniques and he figured out a way to make some techniques that a lot of people thought were impractical not just possible but really um very uh and repeatable yes not just repeatable. Yes. Not just repeatable, but high percentage. Okay.

Like, especially if someone is in a situation where they don't understand what's happening. So they don't understand what's in danger or where the counters are or where you're trapped. He's just real creative, you know? But again, like, he gets them tripped up. Like, he starts believing some wacky shit. But then he gets out of it. He'll let things go after a while. But it's because he entertains ideas because he doesn't trust mainstream thought.

So mainstream thought, whether it's in jujitsu or mainstream thought, whether it's in economics or whatever. Aren't we all struggling with this a little bit? There's no part of the mainstream that looks at all credible to me anymore. Well, it's real wacky now, right? And here's a wacky one, where the New York Times is debunking this idea that the Wuhan lab may have been the source of COVID. When all these different people are talking about it. We've been on this forever. We have been on it forever.

What is extraordinary is the New York Times is still saying debunked claims with no evidence whatsoever. Sagar and Jetty from Rising and The Hill had this whole piece about it on his YouTube channel. I love what they're doing. They're the best. They're the best. Well, he's got two channels. Have you been on either? Well, I've only had him on here and Crystal together. doing they're the best they're the best well he's got two channels have you been on either well i've

only had him on here and crystal together but what i like that was what you guys did right at the beginning of that where they explained what happens i didn't mean to cut you off that's okay um what happens in the cycle when your team wins and your team loses and how but they've both broken out of that and they've thrown that away yes that was there what was 10 minutes yeah that i needed to hear that you i thought you broke new, the three of you guys broke really new ground. They're what we need. There's a reasonable person on the left

and a reasonable person on the right, and they're both committed to honesty above all. They might have different philosophical perspectives. I think they're coming together. I think Crystal's coming towards Sagar because she's seeing the rot on the left. Yes. What my hope is, is that she's going to be a credible progressive who's rejecting all

this nonsense progressivism. Yeah, I think you're right. She's very smart, and so is he. And the two of them together are wonderful. What were you going to say before I cut you off? What I was going to say is, they were talking about how the New York Times is talking about this – I forget who they were quoting, who was entertaining this idea. Was that what it was? The ex-CDC guy?

That's right, the CDC guy. That he was entertaining this idea, this debunked idea of this emanating from a lab. But it's not debunked. Not only is it not debunked, it's more possible than than ever but the problem is the idea was originally associated with donald trump so these motherfuckers at the new york times still have it in their head that they can't admit i don't know that that's what's going on what do you think it is well that what they do it's a weird move we should tell people exactly what what they're saying okay Okay. The former head of the CDC is saying that it's more probable than not. He's not saying it's absolute.

He's saying it's more probable than not that it escaped from a lab. Right. And he details it, and he actually predates it. He goes like deep into September and October, he believes it might have emanated around that time and started spreading. The reason why is, and it all makes total sense. This is a very unusual laboratory. The laboratory had been cited in 2018 for safety protocol violations. The laboratory works on the exact same kinds of coronaviruses that cause this worldwide pandemic on bats they work on bat

yep coronaviruses and this is one of two level four labs that are in this area so this this whole thing is so it's so much more likely that it emanated from the lab but the problem is the the narrative was donald trump is racist donald trump calls it the china virus donald trump says it came from a lab it can't have come from a lab because donald trump's always wrong that's one possibility i'm worried about something beyond that what are you worried about the way that they make this move is that they synonymize the lab leak hypothesis with a synthetic virus engineered from scratch. So in other words, the idea of maybe somebody growing horseshoe bat coronavirus in human lung tissue

to accelerate natural selection, because we don't know how to engineer it, but if you let natural selection engineer it, you can accelerate that. So instead of saying we don't know what to make of accelerated natural selection in a lab leaking, they try to make this move, which is like, you know, there's no sign that this was engineered in a lab. And you're like, okay, well, you changed what the hypothesis is in order to say what you're saying to protect your future credibility. And the thing that I'm really freaking out about, you've been talking about it, Brett's been talking about it, I've been talking about it, all sorts of people have been talking

about this one for a year. I increasingly think that none of these organizations think that they owe us any kind of truth. That when they get caught, it's just like, yeah, of course we had to say that. Like what? Yeah. You know, like this Time Magazine article like yeah of course we had to say that like what yeah you know like this time magazine article about of course we fortified the election you what oh yeah we fortified it oh i did trump was right about a conspiracy like he was quoting that who were they quoting that said they they fortified the election there was apparently some entire group under one guy with hundreds of activists who told their people, don't riot in the streets. Have a dance party instead.

I would highly recommend Time Magazine. I read the blurb about the fortifying. And I was like, hmm. That's a disturbing quote. But what does it mean? What are they try they mean with their the claim of the article is we went right up to the door meddling with the election but all we cared about was free and fair and we had a huge conspiracy so donald trump wasn't wrong there was a huge conspiracy but we are so committed to democracy

that even though we hate donald trump with a passion that you know won't let go 24 7 uh we still would never do anything against an election the problem is with a guy like trump you can almost justify some but that's what i said if you claim that you're you have to fight all enemies foreign and domestic and you claim that he's a russian asset you're pretty much saying that you have to do something drastic yeah and so the number of things that people claim is what the problem is because they're not all compatible and and what i'm trying to get it more broadly is over and over i see the same move which is deny deny deny we get caught yeah limited hangout yeah we did that shit that's the kind of stuff we do because we have to do it but i don't think they're saying they got caught i think they're saying

that what we did was make sure the election was fair it was i think the concept of a limited hangout where you know that something is too big to hold back so you push a part of it into the public not all of it that's the limited and you let the public think okay well now you know the truth and it stops there and then they stop asking questions because they've got a new toy to play with have you been paying attention to the border crisis shit um where it's not bad when democrats do it it's not bad when democrats do it and it's even worse than when trump was doing it but it's still not bad it's bad i don't know how to be a logical democrat anymore yeah i don't know how to do it either democrat anymore yeah i don't know how to do it either i don't i don't like politically homeless i'm politically homeless now and these people

have done it because it's it's a low iq movement or it's a high uh it's a low integrity movement or it's a low iq movement it can't be it can't be high iq high integrity you and i had a conversation on this very podcast and i said that i would vote for trump before i'd vote for biden i didn't want and people got mad at me i didn't wind up voting for either one i voted for joe jorgensen because i'm like this is almost like a protest vote but i did the same but my point was exactly what we're experiencing right now the guy does press conferences and they're like something out of a fucking macabre movie i feel like i'm terrified it's like grandpa's at the wheel dude and he's not on his medication this is nuts man it's nuts here and then now they're calling it they're not calling it the biden administration anymore they're calling it the biden harris administration which to me is

like letting you know that there's only a matter of time before it's president harris kid in florida i'm a i'm i'm a something you know didn't say caretaker president but uh you know i'm i'm just sort of here to warm the seat you're the future you're just thinking like okay you're the oldest president in american history by a long shot why do we need a oh transitional i'm a transition here's the thing bernie's older than him right jimmy carter's still in the play in the game jimmy carter's still in the game because he could do a second term yeah he's only a thousand years old he just got over cancer we just i'm just i'm hoping that i'm joking joking i hope so but bernie is lucid

that's my point i believe bernie is at least biden's age am i correct or is he older older he's older but very lucid yeah when he talks he talks clearly and you know and apparently he said he's gonna run again which is kind of crazy so he's gonna what is he gonna do like how is that gonna work work? It's going to go independent? Why can't we have anyone younger than us? I'm 55. I could vote for Tulsi. Yes, I could vote for Tulsi. You know who I think has a shot is the fucking governor of Florida.

Okay. I think he has a shot. I really do. Maybe this is going to depress me too much. Maybe it will. I mean, I don't know what you have to do to run the country correctly. What you can't do is what Trump did, is say, fuck you, to the people that don't agree with you. He didn't unite people.

He was like, I'm doing it, and I'm kicking ass, and you're coming with me. And everyone was like, yeah. All the Trumpsters were like, yeah. But everybody else was like, ah, this motherfucker. he riled them up he made them angry he made them furious i understand but we can't have any solution that could work so we have to select from this menu of the unworkable people right well i don't know if that's necessarily true it's just what we have at the moment it's like you go to a restaurant and you're like well all they ever have is hamburger that's just what's on the menu currently. It's like you go to a restaurant and you're like, well, all they ever have is hamburger.

That's just what's on the menu currently. Like, you know, another manager could take over this restaurant and they could expand the menu. I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts for almost 20 years. And there was Cafe Algiers and had soup of the day. And we always used to ask because every single day for 20 years it was lentil soup. Every day? Every day soup of the day was lentil soup. Well, Cambridge is a mess. Really?

Yeah. Cambridge is a crazy place. You're from Massachusettsachusetts yeah i used to catch rising star all right that was like the weirdest place to perform it's like that was the beginning of the pc movement it was like the pc movement in the 80s was like the first warning shots of wokeness what we're experiencing now actually if you go back to clint eastwood uh in one of the dirty harry uh movies he's it's a really interesting scene where he's told that he has to uh approve new candidates for the force for detective and there's a female candidate and he's not happy but the reason he's not happy is super subtle he asked how can how fast can you run the 100? Wow. His thing is not about male versus female. It's like, don't touch the requirements.

Yeah. Well, that's how people feel about the military. They're lowering standards of military physical tests to enable more women to get involved or out of shape people. That's what I want want i want more septage with no ageism in the special forces yeah jesus christ well uh tim kennedy had a post about this recently because um there was someone who is uh who is hired by the pentagon for some sort of diversity role right and they just let him go because they found out that he had some posts

that were very questionable on social media about Hitler and Trump. And so they got rid of him. They moved him to a new... But the point was that there's no... Tim Kennedy's point

was there's no room for the concept of diversity with trained killers. He was like, our job is killing people. There's no room for woke politics or political correctness. Like, we're there to get shit done what are you doing jamie got something for us

oh he's like we're our job is to get shit done and and and kill bad people right like there's no room for diversity you know we don't need to send a uh a fucking south pacific trans man in to do the job because it would make everybody look good in the newspaper. Like you get the best killer for the job and they're the ones who complete the task. Well, but so the idea is no relaxation of standards. Yeah.

That's mean that's what buds is right. When they, when they choose seals, it's a ruthless elimination of anybody that's going to quit and that they, you need that. You can't, you can't you can't lighten that up at all because then you won't have seals right you'll have some fake thing

that you've you've you've created some just you know it's like fight training or marathon running or you you can't say you know like you don't have to run the full 26 miles because you know you're a this or a that you know like no you gotta fucking this is this is the standard this is what it is the person who wins wins like that's how it goes it's like you got to get under three hours or whatever the fuck they can do it now isn't there a guy who could do it in two hours isn't there a dude isn't that the new the new uh do what into the marathon yeah yeah the the new yeah they made a way for him to break it and like with some funky shoes right they did a lot of work to get it happen but it did and he's a beast on top of that correct

yes you can't lighten standards man yeah you can't discourage competition because the people that you would like to see succeed aren't succeeding there's a place for everybody and also you know life is a giant spectrum of activities and disciplines and and and you know and things that people are in enjoying you can't you can't decide that you don't have enough of these people in this so you're going to change what it is it's not enough white people in basketball we're going to slow it down right and what are you going to do you know you can't action for white ball players you can't do that you can't you know it's like it is what it is yeah okay i'm with you i'm with you and uh the problem is if you say that you're a racist or a sexist why don't we just agree that we're all of those things pay the fine and get on with it but we're

not i well none of those things right it doesn't matter get on with it. But we're not. We're none of those things. We're just humans. It doesn't matter, right? Yeah, I think that the thing that I don't want to do is I don't want to pay the tax every day. Of course, Joe, I'm not saying this. Right, but that's what they want you to do. The people that are woke, what it is is a forced compliance to an ideology. And they'll bully you into compliance. Before they will hear your terms, they will bully you into compliance.

And that's what happened with your brother in clubhouse yeah they bullied him into a specific conversation before they allowed him to speak yeah islam for example has a lot of overhead in the name of all of the compassionate the merciful and muhammad peace be upon but they just write pbuh so they only use up four characters so they don't do the whole thing but we should be able but what i'm trying to say is we should be able to say something like pbuh about the whole thing that we have to say every time we want to have an opinion because it's just too expensive the overhead is killing us i see what you're saying yeah i i just like all usual caveats i all i want to say is all usual caveats and then i want to abbreviate that so I can go, all usual caveats.

And then I can get on with what I'm saying. My hope is that the Outrage Olympics will be exhausting for people. And they'll eventually come out on the other end and realize that what's important is just be nice. Just be nice and be a good person. And stop bullshitting people. How long is this taking? I mean, the late 60s were over very quickly over the problem the problem is it's weaponized i know right like accusations are weaponized and anytime something happens you can politicize that event and and use it but it's so

effing boring i can't stand how boring it's not just boring it's dangerous it's dangerous and well this is the thing, right? It's these twin, people talk about this in terms of combat, dangerous and boring. And it's much more dangerous the more bored you get because mostly nothing's happening. Right. And that's the thing that, you know, I wrote an entire article about this with Kayfabe, which is that in order to get wrestling to be be exciting you had to move away from actual wrestling and that's the origin of professional wrestling right is that matches would last too long and then mostly nothing would happen and then somebody'd be crippled for life yeah yeah yeah wasn't a good business model yeah

um it's just we're we're at a weird time where people are pushing narratives and uh and then other people are joining in because that narrative fits along with their ideology even though they know there's some horseshit right to what that narrative is like a good example is um do you wear that 65 year old woman that got beaten up in new york city Are you aware of that 65-year-old woman that got beaten up in New York City? Oh, I'm done. It's a sad story because this guy is all caught on security camera. There's this guy.

He's kicking. He kicks this 65-year-old woman down and kicks her when she's down, stomps her. It's horrific. And there's these three guys, at least two guys, that are watching and they do nothing. They're inside the building and they're watching. Like this carjacking video where the guy's just filming and doing nothing. Yeah. But anyway, this guy is kicking this woman while these two guys watch. And then de Blasio goes on TV and he blames it on Trump.

He blames it on the White House and the current administration because it was an Asian woman. But what it was was a guy who was released from prison who had stabbed his mother to death so the guy was he was criminally insane and because of these liberal ideas about rehabilitation i can't and murder this guy had only done i think he'd only done like 10 10 10 or 12 years in jail for stabbing his mom to death. And so they let him go. And what does he do? He finds some woman and kicks the shit out of her.

Now, here's where it gets weird. Did he kick the shit out of her because she was Asian, because he was aware of the propaganda against Asian people that de Blasio believes was influenced by Donald Trump's portrayal of the virus as being the Chinese virus. I don't know. I can't. I don't know. But every time we consider these things. But the point is, the reason why that guy did that is because he's criminally insane. It's not because of Donald Trump.

The reason why that guy did that is because he shouldn't have been on the street. Yeah, but why? Because he's a bad person. But they're forcing us to talk about it over and over. The more we have to debunk this stuff. It's just a fire hose of debunkable stuff, and everything takes a half an hour to explain what somebody screwed up in four seconds. But I think it's good to talk about.

I agree. And then people realize, like, okay, why would he say that? Well, because he's a bad mayor. He's a bad mayor. He's bad at his job. You saw the video that he put out about how we have to bring back New York City with culture. Did you see that?

You want to see the craziest fucking thing you've ever seen in your life? Jamie, find that. It's on my Twitter page. It seems like a sketch from SNL back when SNL was funny. It is. SNL's still funny sometimes. I shouldn't have said that. I take it back.

It goes for periods where it is and then it isn't. Well, it's hard to do 90 minutes of live shit every week. But the point is, it seems like a sketch. It seems like a parody. Here's what it seems like. It seems like a scene in a Coen Brothers movie where a mayor is out of his fucking mind. Go full screen and give me some volume. Because this is fucking completely crazy.

Watch this. You're not going to believe this. So people just listening. There's people dancing. Completely out of sync. We're going to do that. We're going to really bring back the heart and soul of New York City. We need our arts and culture back.

And we need people to see it and feel it. To participate in it. To know that that essence of New York city has not been defeated by the coronavirus but will come back strong in 2021 month after month in 2021 as you see the city come back to life culture will lead the way open culture is another if you saw the video of this you would know how fucking preposterous this is and then this guy is talking about they're doing... I mean, they got the lispiest, most Hispanic gentleman they could find to speak about this. Hashtag open culture. And so listen to this music.

It's fucking terrible. And what are these people doing? What is this dance? So they're spending money on this. So this is... The city's fucking terrible. And what are these people doing? What is this dance? So they're spending money on this. So the city's falling apart. Restaurants are disappearing left and right. Small businesses are disappearing left and right. 90% of all the moving trucks are going out of New York City.

And this is his solution to this. Because these people don't have any respect for business. They somehow or another think this money falls out of trees and that you just need to redistribute this money because the rich people, they have too much of it. So redistribute this money. And the way we're going to redistribute it, we're going to open up culture. We're going to bring back dance.

Like, what the fuck is that? Like, what is that? Imagine that you are the mayor of one of the biggest cities on planet earth and that's your solution like this is a big video that you put together and you have these people dancing and doing all this it's so uncoordinated the music is so bad it seems like a sketch this is what you're dealing with and this is the same guy that was saying that Donald Trump was responsible for this criminally insane person who kicked the shit out of this poor old lady. I can't.

I listen to this stuff, Joe, and I just despair. I know what we're capable of. I know how amazing we are as human beings. And I watch this stuff. Imagine you had Palabolas, right? You ever seen Palabolas? What's Palabolas? Can I say this stuff. Like, imagine you had Palabolas, right? You ever seen Palabolas? What's Palabolas? Can I say this?

Yeah. Jamie, pull that up. Pull up Palabolas, Jamie. Seems like an old Greek guy that I'm not aware of. Yeah, one of the great dance philosophers of all time. Palabolas? Palabolas. Jamie, you're not aware of it either?

Good, I don't feel alone. I know what you're saying. I mean, even if you're going to make a wrong point, you're in New York City. How much great dance is there? I've seen stuff on the subway using the poles and everything that's available. It'll blow my mind.

Yeah. Guaranteed. They could have had break dancers out there. They could have had hip-hop guys out there doing like stance elements, guys. And it would have been amazing. What do you got? You got something crazy?

Why are you smiling? I'm not sure what I'm looking up. Palabolas dance? Okay. All right. Palabolas dance. Is this Palabolas? There he goes.

We are Palabolas. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. So these are talented dancers. this is difficult yeah it's unbelievably difficult unbelievably gorgeous beautiful difficult okay if you saw that as an example that can blow your mind very quickly and sure yeah yeah for sure yeah no i'm not against dance i got your point.

But that thing was nonsense. But here's what I think. It's almost better when it's irrefutable. When the nonsense like de Blasio's video or him saying that this guy who got out of jail recently for stabbing his mother to death, that the reason why he kicked the shit out of this Asian lady was because of Donald Trump. This guy might not have even known Donald Trump was a thing. Asian lady was because of Donald Trump. This guy might not have even known Donald Trump was a thing. Did you see my graph from like Google Ngrams,

which was diversity and inclusion usage versus most qualified. And they cross in 2017 and most qualified is going down and diversity inclusion is going through the roof. You know, like we can talk about this, but I want to know every cool thing that you know and like this it's just dumb it is and it's corroding my soul but it's happening i'm getting worse it's like it's like playing tennis with people who can't play tennis right and you used to be really good at tennis and now like when you fight people do you want to fight people who suck no you certainly

you're gonna get injured well worse than that're going to get a false sense of your abilities. Yeah, and you're also going to degrade. Like all sorts of bad things. Jamie's got something else going on. I was looking this up. This is what I was seeing, that he blames the parole system. State parole system. Oh, well, he's right about that.

But what I saw him saying that it was Donald Trump. Am I incorrect here? I tried to find even him blaming Trump for it and wasn't seeing that. Well, he was blaming what happened in Dc that's what he was saying and someone someone had a video exposing that that it was not as well it could have just if that's true well he's correct here he blames the state parole system well then i take it back because he's absolutely right with that there's no way that guy should have been let out maybe he had one statement on it and now today he's released a different one because he wasn't standing in front of these flags like this.

It was a different scene, I believe. And you saw that carjacking in D.C. I did. I'll take this back then, because he's definitely correct. There's no way that guy should have been on parole. That guy murdered his fucking mother. And then he attacked that lady in Midtown. So maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I got duped because I watched a whole video where they were explaining what was, I forget, I don't even remember who was hosting the video, but they were talking about how wrong his perspective is on that. Hey. But I did see the guy that got his car car i just i just despaired the fact that the girl you know that's incorrect i guess this is for an older thing though this is from 2016 where he's blaming trump and hate speech for rise and hate crime so no that was a different one okay

well i don't think he necessarily said trump he was just talking about well i don't know i'm not sure but the point is yeah he's right he's right it is the parole system that did that but this uh this carjacking this is these are my perspective on the carjacking is different because they're a 13 year old and a 15 year old kid they're children can i freshen you yeah. I mean, you're talking about a really unfortunate situation where you have these young kids that stole this Uber driver's car and he tried to stop that from happening and wound up dying. It's horrific. If you've never seen the video, please don't watch it.

It's horrible. Well, the hardest part for me is where the girl says, my phone is in the car. Yeah. And the guy is dead. Nobody cares about my phone is in the car. Yeah. And the guy is dead. Nobody cares about the guy thrown from the car. The troops or the National Guard doesn't seem to care. The girls don't seem to care.

I don't think the National Guard at that moment necessarily knew what happened. Well, it was very confusing. But, you know, she practically trips over the guy trying to get to her phone in the car. No, it's awful. It's certainly awful. But I think my soul is corroding from all this stuff. I'm watching this and I'm internalizing it and I know I'm supposed to sort of take a step back.

I am so worried about the degradation of who we are because we can't figure out how to say no mas. I think this is different. See, I'm not in any way exonerating those young girls who stole that car and killed that guy. But I think the National Guard people that pulled up on the scene, I don't think they knew what happened. I don't think they had any. There's no way they could have known these girls stole that car. It's a confusing situation.

This guy's dead. The car's flipped over. The girls are in shock. Right. The girl's saying, where's my phone? I know. I don't blame the guard guys probably are horrified once they realize that this these girls had stole this guy's car and i don't if you're a

13 year old kid and you steal a car and all of a sudden the guy's dead you're probably you're probably your whole life is probably like yeah but what i'm worried about is no idea what the fuck just happened i'm worried about something I'm calling video game mode, which is the more I stare at my screen and then I have to context switch between my screen and real life, my screen and real life, the more real life feels like my screen.

The more I can't tell the difference. And it's not that I'm dumb. It's that my evolutionary programming doesn't know anything about this screen. I know what you're saying. And my concern is that we don't feel our own life and our own interest anymore like we don't realize what we're doing we imagine that we are characters in a video game there's always a restart there's always some exploit that you can use to start again. And I'm increasingly feeling like reality is slipping away from us because the phone, it's a little bit like what happened with porn. We

thought that porn was going to habituate us to like non-standard sexual practices, and to an extent it did. But I don't think what we really understood is that it was going to rewire us so that it was very difficult to get aroused about anything because it changes your hedonic thresholds. I think the same thing is true for real life versus the phone. The phone is, in some sense, so much more intense for most people that that environment starts to blot out the feeling of being fully alive. So you think that the reason why they were so desensitized... I can't say that because it's shock.

It's a crazy situation. It's the first few seconds. Fog can be the explanation. However, I increasingly see people like the Capitol Hill thing on January 6th. Very clearly that woman was dealing with a loaded pistol. you know dealing with a loaded pistol right and you see the guy who's holding the gun take the finger and bring it inside the trigger guard and then he goes back out because he's like pointing it at her and he understands what he's doing it's like please don't advance and she she has an idea that somehow she's protected because she's part of this romantic

she she has an idea that somehow she's protected because she's part of this romantic yeah story in her own mind and yeah i see what you're saying you know i i really believe that the viking and like all of the trump you know and all of the stuff people don't feel fully alive they don't realize we are actually attacking the capital building of the united states of america that they didn't realize what they were doing while they were doing it. I don't think that's true. I think the idea is we're in a sort of live action role playing, and I believe that sometimes people probably go into combat that way. Maybe.

I think those people genuinely thought that they were patriots. Yep. And I also think a lot of them are genuinely not bright. There's a lot of those guys that i saw being interviewed where they were talking about why they were doing out of it i watch people snap out a lot of people like the moment that i realized i was too far in and then such and such it was like you get caught up in the crowd yeah you get caught up in the narrative but also i watched people like particularly that guy with the buffalo hat on that got interviewed that's a dumb guy he's a dumb guy who is good at stringing words

together with you know q anon themes the guy smiling with the podium with the lectern yeah yeah there was a lot of that going on these these are men mostly there's a few women but men who are unexceptional that think they're exceptional because they're tied into a thing that they believe is like a movement to free. I think they just believe democracy is being served in some strange fucking way. Look, there were two narratives. Yeah. There was a narrative called Stop the Steal and there was a narrative called Certify the Election. And they avoided themselves as long as they possibly could i was watching them and i did a tweet storm on

january 4th because i could see january 6th was going to be the arc point very often you know when you say twitter isn't real life it really isn't up until it arcs and then you get a spark across it and then holy shit it becomes like real life yeah exactly it is real life right and so there are these twin narrative problems where you've got these two incompatible worldviews and these stories and they avoid each other like two guys circling each i'm gonna fuck you up yeah but both of them know that like once we actually engage it's pretty unpredictable what's about to happen that's what i think you could see coming for january 6th it had to happen that way in a weird way because they the narratives that avoided each other from the maximal length of time because

nobody wanted to have this out and then it was impossible to stop the two from arcing and the plates got too close together that's what i really believe i see what you're saying so what you're saying is that you think that there's two worlds that aren't communicating with each other and both of them believe wholeheartedly in what they're doing without listening to whatever might be reasonable that's coming from the other side and then they collide and there's no way of squaring the circle like at some point there will be a donald trump presidency or a joe b presidency. And once you realize that your story has collapsed, it's like a doomsday cult.

You say it's going to end on such and such a day, and then it doesn't. And then what happens to the cult? Because everybody had the same concept. I think that if you look at like, if you listen to the audio from the Jim Jones, Jonestown massacre, it's very clear that they got caught up in a story that they couldn't get out of.

That's what happens in all cults right yeah exactly and the story becomes the software that you're running like there's this one woman um named hyacinth who hid under her bed and survived you know survived jonestown You know, her sister perished. And somehow she ran a program that was different than the program that... Because you have the recordings. People know that they're going to their death. They know the software is telling them that this is the right thing. It's a revolutionary suicide. And I saw this with people.

You know, I was trying to tell people... Because I didn't believe the election was necessarily free and fair, but I also didn't believe that it was stolen in the way that Donald Trump was saying it was stolen. I feel the exact same way. Yeah. So I was watching people who couldn't negotiate. They couldn't keep their footing. And this is the really tough- They're also struggling to find common like, common ground with their team.

Exactly right. I was going to say the same thing. People who feel comfortable being alone are in a different situation than people who say, well, I have to pick a team constantly. Yes, right, right. And, you know, the greatest thing that has ever happened to me is the ability to stand alone for some periods of time. I do need a family. I need to be a part of something. But there are

times when there is no team that it represents reality we all need people we all do i hate to admit it but you're right yeah we all need loved ones and friends and people don't operate well that's why when you're in prison the worst thing they could do to you in prison is to leave you alone yeah you're in a fucking cement building filled with rapists and murderers the worst shit they can do is leave you alone it's a really interesting point strange we are uh very social animals but the one it's like the ones that can go the longest in solitude and just think by themselves there's a great benefit to that i was forced into it because when i was a when i was a

kid we moved around a lot we moved when i was seven to san francisco when i was 11 moved to florida when i was 13 we moved to boston i was forced to form my own opinions about things because i didn't have a steady group of friends where we all agreed on a certain narrative right that's a real problem with people in this country, agreeing on a certain narrative where you know socially that you have a contract you have to uphold. You're socially intertwined with this narrative. And you can't think outside the box. If you say, hey, guys, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Like, let's look at this logically.

What the fuck is wrong with you? And then you got a real problem because the people, people want compliance. This is what's going on with wokeness with what a lot of what wokeness is is these Socially low status people who are gaining power right by Enforcing this narrative and attacking people who don't enforce the narrative right? They're bullying people who don't enforce the narrative right they're

bullying people who don't enforce the narrative you know you know the phrase hurt people hurt people yeah all the time well people have been bullied they tend to bully people kidding and a lot of fucking dorks when you know they've been pushed around in high school and college and socially they've been very awkward my god they get on that goddamn computer and they attack and they love to attack well tim ferris tried to do bigoteer and other people tried cry bullies so what's a bigoteer bigoteer is somebody who traffics oh that's that's pretty good right great phrase tim's good yeah um but cry bully is another one and hurt people hurt people all of these things get at this concept and i do think that this issue about how what does it take to be alone for a long time and then the part of the problem is those of us who

are very good at being alone for a long time can overstay you can overstay being alone then you're next thing you know you're ted kaczynski well mathematician yes speaking of which i asked you for this date april 1st this is a favor to me yeah why i want you to have this what is this nonsense you give me a stack of papers you know i don't like reading you're not gonna be able to read it oh this is your new your unity theory this is the first copy that got to version 1.0 i I want you to have it. Listen, you already lost me. There's all these equations in here. Jamie, take this and make something out of it. What is this?

I believe, and this is the hardest part. How do you have time to do this while you're still in Clubhouse? I'm not really in Clubhouse. It's a bot. That low-quality stuff i push up um this is something that i've been uncomfortable about sharing i've been in a what i call the ice cave for about 37 years and i shared a little bit of it in 2013 and i shared a little bit of it last year april 1st and i am coming to grips with a story. And in part, you don't know this,

but you've been playing a large role in my thinking about this. Well, that's a problem. No, no. I reviewed this weird episode of you at the store when you took a break for seven years. And I looked at the courage that you had to do, that you had to have to do something unfunny in a funny context. I think it was an incredibly difficult situation. And I think I've been running from a similar situation my whole life. I don't want to

face certain unpleasant facts that are out of keeping with the joy that I feel, with the love, with the creativity that I feel. And I don't want to let certain kinds of negativity take over my life. And then I have this other thing, which is I legitimately believe that if we are not very careful, theoretical physics is coming to an end. And I believe it is our only hope for getting outside the solar system. When you have Elon on and he talks about Mars or bust and all this kind of stuff, I cannot understand how mankind has gotten to the point where we are not spending our efforts trying to figure out how to spread out so that we don't self-extinguish on one, two, or three rocks. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And the best hope we have is to go beyond Einstein.

And we're losing the belief that we're capable of it. We're so worried about the professional norms and humiliation and what's going to happen if we say something and what our colleagues are going to say and all of this stuff that we're self-censoring and we're silencing ourselves because we'd rather be in good standing on the titanic than risk saying holy shit we're in an iceberg field. Let's think about how we're going to survive this. And I've been being a pussy about this. Well, what is it?

Explain what it is. What is this thing that you handed me? What is this? It is, okay, this is the hardest thing for me to say because I have to not hedge it. I think it's the theory of everything. And what do you mean by that? There is a moment where you have to say

this I believe about a radical departure and you don't want to say it because you want to hedge it. It is, Jamie, if you could bring that up and you go a little bit, maybe two pages in. Is this available online so someone can peruse it?

In fact, okay, right there on the left, go down that table. You see where it says X4? Yes. X4 is four parameters. It could be salty, sweet, sour, bitter. It could be low, treble, medium, base, and volume. And the question that I took from Einstein was, can we generate the world, everything, from something as innocuous as four parameters. And if you think about a fertilized

egg, somebody can hand you a picture of an embryo and in vitro fertilization. You're like, well, that's your child to be. You're like, get the fuck out. Well, that fertilized egg somehow self-assembles into something that you cannot even imagine. And that's a mystery. The question is, even imagine and that's a mystery the question is in some sense can four parameters bootstrap itself and jamie if you go to the first picture of the two hands the escher sketch yeah yeah that is this weird paradox can a piece of paper effectively will two hands into drawing each other into existence that's what i believe makes the theory of everything so difficult i don't think it's the wait a minute yeah piece of paper didn't will two hands into drawing themselves into existence that's the point is so not an idea mc escher had an idea of what uh douglas hofstetter called a strange loop

and it's a depiction of something that can't happen but in some sense at least was conceived of as being happened being able to happen okay and so that's what i tried to give you which is i am scared to do this thing i've been avoiding avoiding this for... Let me ask you this. Yeah. What's been the criticism of this? Well... Because people have criticized it, right? In one year, I've seen one actual critique. Only one?

Only one. Is that because you haven't looked for other ones? Nope. I think two guys, I think it's two guys. One of them is anonymous, and I refuse to deal with an anonymous coward who critiques me. Came up with three basic criticisms, and they'll have more because there'll be errors in this. But two of the criticisms are inferential. They imagine that I'm doing something that I'm not doing. One of the criticisms is valid, but it's something that I would have brought up anyway. The most astounding thing about their so-called paper is that it shows that what I put out a year ago in a lecture on YouTube is understandable. In other words, they got from the lecture what the basic setup of this theory is. I want you to boil this down so that someone who doesn't understand physics at all will understand this in a way that they could maybe even explain to someone else.

Go to pullthatupjamie.com. Try pullthatup jamie.com okay collection of videos in support of geometric unity epic troll who put that up go to the bottom of this there is a team of people um brooke dallas brandon stone boku a mysterious german who does amazing graphics tim the mirthless swag man from australia aardvark and nick who have been, let's just go up to the top.

So for example, dramatizing Einstein's, the greatest insight of the 20th century, arguably, click on the one on the left and blow it up. Einstein took a curvature tensor, which has three components called vial, traceless Ricci and Ricci scalar, snapped the vial off and readjusted the vial scalar to get it to live in a space not called curvature but metrics. That is saying that curvature influences how we measure length and angle.

Okay. Now, this is an Einsteinian metric for two dimensions. You can have it. He gave me something that looks like hedge clippers. Well, it's two rulers. There are hair ties on the two rulers and a protractor okay okay so there are three dimensions of ruler two dimensions of ruler and one dimension of protractor okay now if you the idea is he took einstein took curvature and fed it back into the space of rulers and protractors to say how the rulers and protractors would warp okay so that we can actually define gravity now that's

that is a visual depiction of the einstein field equations which if i wrote them down would mean nothing to you okay and the key point is that that Einstein figured out you had to get rid of a component called the vial curvature and readjust the Ricci scalar to put it into the space of rulers and protractors, which I bought from Amazon, strangely enough. And people, you see, I don't think in symbols. I think in pictures. Now, the insight of geometric unity,

if you'll go zoom out, Insight of geometric unity, if you'll go zoom out, is that if you do the smaller neck, like we had a huge bottle to get it into metrics. There's another space. People are listening to this, you know. Okay. They're not just seeing it. Very few people are seeing it. Maybe like 30%. Okay.

This is a problem. Yeah. This conversation is a problem yeah this conversation's a problem because uh people are gonna have to the people are tuning out right now okay well if you go to pull that up jamie duck look there's no way in which i can talk about tensor analysis curvature tensors the theory of everything i understand but i want you to boil this down you're not boiling it down at all why did you do this and what are you trying to accomplish with this well first of all what i'm trying to do is to say we don't have to talk about this this is just something i wanted to do on your show as a thank you because you've been you've been huge for me

and the courage to take the slings and arrows that are going to come at me as i put this online which is what i'm going to do today today yeah so this hasn't been online before correct i mean so the people that are you're going to do it in front of us live oh my goodness it's going down all right so this says launch gu boom people can now and it's going to debut tomorrow because we don't release today um but it's april fools and they can download this as of tomorrow when they see this okay and they can peruse it and they can download this as of tomorrow when they see this okay and

they can peruse it and there can be all sorts of problems and errors but it's a it's a complete story of who we are what this place is it's my guess

the universe life everything everything everything what made you want to do this what made me want to study the problem yeah

tell me Joe when you ask why as a kid what happens if you keep asking you either end up in theoretical physics or an insane asylum right or you just keep asking questions no no you stopped somewhere you stopped somewhere if you don't end up in theoretical physics it means you stopped at some point asking why and so i just didn't stop and the issue of like we are here and we're looking at all these crazy things you have arrayed in front of us um these things are understandable but they're locked in a system of symbols so if i put a page of the stuff

in front of you you may go as they say my eyes glaze over right so for example the light in this room is tied to something called a u1 principal bundle but you're not going to understand what a u1 principal bundle is however i got your present It's a water wiggle. That is a U1 principal bundle. It's a water wiggle. But remember the time I showed you the hop vibration and you were like, what the fuck is that? That was a U1 bundle over the two-dimensional sphere, which was the Earth. This is a U1 bundle over the one-dimensional sphere, alias the circle. And as you do that fidget toy, you're spinning that circle over and over again.

So this is an actual model of a gauge theoretic concept that somehow nobody in the history has ever mentioned to me that you can buy U1 principal bundles from Amazon for under $10. And I could, if we had the opportunity. I don't know what the fuck you just said. How about that? Okay. Do you? Do you know what he said? If I show it, look, I can show you on video, but then we're not on video, right?

We are, 30% of the people are watching. Yeah, but we- Maybe more at the end of the month. But they can go to pullthatupjamie.com. Yes. They can watch these videos. And what I'm going to do over time is to show people visually without symbols. In other words, if I say Ramanian metric, they're not going to know what I'm talking about.

If I hand them rulers and protractors and a video of it, they're like, I don't know about the symbols, but I can follow an actual concrete thing. That thing, that water wiggle, the idea that that's a U1 principle bundle, that is one of the deepest things we only figured out in the 1970s that the light in this room comes from effectively seeing the world as having a water wiggle structure on top of it

now i'm not expecting on this show what that means the light comes from having seen the world having a water on those structure on top of it that that you can rotate these right if i if i if i squish a water wiggle and it goes around yes that is called a g action g is the group of symmetries i'm taking the symmetries of a donut okay and i'm playing with this thing and it's going out of my hand right this is the structure that gauge theories which we've talked about before which lawrence krauss has been on your problem nobody can what's a gauge theory, man? It's just some mumbo jumbo. Yeah, he had a hard time describing it.

Okay. If we spent an afternoon with a water wiggle or those videos, which we can't do because of your audience, I understand that, you could understand what a gauge theory is because you'd never see a symbol. There would never be a symbol between you and understanding why there's light in this

room the light in this room comes from a water wiggle structure about a circle that nobody's ever seen that is at every point in space and time which is one of the great discoveries that we've made that nobody seems to care about so how is it a water wiggle structure because there's a there's a circle at every point that we can't perceive. Circle everywhere. Yes. In space. In space. Above space that we can rotate. A circle how big?

We don't know. Okay, but this circle somehow or another does what? Rotates. Rotates. And there is a four-dimensional cross-section. Like this is three dimensions here and one dimension of time because our conversation is progressing. That's four dimensions. That four dimensions forms a cross section to that water wiggly structure that we didn't know about because it's invisible.

Okay. And that's what photons are all about. And how do we know about that water wiggle structure? because we wrote down the equations called Maxwell's equations that unified all sorts of things that have to do with photons. Magnetism, electricity, X-rays, radio waves. All of that stuff got subsumed into one, really one equation called Maxwell's equation. That equation presupposes a circle out of nowhere. We didn't know that there was a circle,

but we wrote down equations, and the equations told us, hey, numbnuts, there's a circle that rotates just the way this water wiggle rotates at every point in space-time that you can't see it because that's the only way those equations make sense. Now, you'll hear people, like you'll have Sean Carroll on who want to talk about the multiverse, right?

Or Neil deGrasse Tyson will want to tell you how big the universe is and somehow people don't want to tell you there's a circle around so we can see each other i don't know why it's not fascinating well it's very complicated and even the way you're explaining to me is not resonating well if i can show it to you on a video but i don't want to ruin the show so the part of the problem is i'm not sure that the video would even show... Do you understand what he's saying? A little, but not really, no. In essence, the photons that we see

are the levels from which we measure a derivative, which is rise over run above a level. The level that we see is the photon, in essence. And the thing that we're differentiating is the electron. So electrons are like functions and photons are like horizontal levels from which we measure rise over run to take the derivative. And then the idea that we have partial differential equations is how photons zing off of me and hit your eye and we see each other okay that world of waves colliding like everything in this in this place is waves in collision with each other waves interacting

the story of us is the story of interacting waves and the waves obey partial differential equations so the fact that you have derivatives which allow you to define the derivative in partial differential equations, differentials are derivatives, are determined by levels, which is on this page of videos we've made for you guys. And those things allow you to define the equations for waves which we are. So when you talk about the theory of everything, what you're actually saying is, So when you talk about the theory of everything, what you're actually saying is, tell me about a medium, waves in the medium, and rules for how waves behave moving around in the medium. That's what a theory is. That's what this is. which has interacting waves that look like electrons, up quarks, down quarks, protons, neutrons, gamma radiation, beta radiation, alpha particles. That's the story of us.

And how did all that weird shit get into our world to form? Like everything in here is made up of up quarks, down quarks, and electrons held together by force particles. It's like an incredibly economical statement about, look at all the diverse shit here. That's what this is about. And what I believe is, is that we'll never have, we'll never take the time, it's like, let's spend a day talking about this shit and do it at a blackboard and do it with videos. Like we spent hundreds of hours making these videos to show you what these concepts are. Now, I understand the constraints of the show and I'm totally fine with that. But the point is, I believe that with artists and with imagination, we can actually

show you what these structures are. I can draw lines with pens and show you what a derivative is on a water wiggle. And you can say, okay, you're doing calculus on a water wiggle, and there's a water wiggle-like structure in the world, which I never heard about. And that's what gives me light electromagnetism, all the stuff I know and love, that keeps electrons bound to protons and hydrogen atoms. That weird world of waves interacting with each other according to derivative equations where the derivatives are determined from levels called gauge potentials is visualizable with videos that we've been making.

And the hope is that this is for experts, and they're going to have their day, and they're going to piss all over, and they're going to be angry and mean, and that's going to happen. and they're going to piss all over it, and they're going to be angry and mean, and that's going to happen. But at the end of that process, hopefully, the ideas herein contained could change the world. It's the first time I've ever seen somebody tell a complete story about how did this place fill up with all this crazy stuff, assuming almost nothing to begin with. It's like a fertilized egg hypothesis.

assuming almost nothing to begin with. It's like a fertilized egg hypothesis. Show me a minimal amount I can assume and drag out the, you know, falling in love on a park bench in early May. You know, like that's how crazy the story has to be. When you have a fertilized egg and it becomes your child, the story of development, of how something births itself,

is what this is a story about and that literally can explain falling in love on a park bench we can't get there but we don't believe if we're materialists we believe that there's nothing other than protons neutrons electrons gluons holding these things together are you a materialist if i wrestle with if i say this i believe about this i have to wrestle with the problem that there's not a lot of room for magic but isn't magic subjective isn't the idea of magic just our own personal experience because everything is magic if you've never experienced it if it it didn't exist. You know, there was this guy, Paul Dirac,

who's really Einstein's only rival in the 20th century. And in 1963, he wrote this article in Scientific American where he said something insane. And he said, Schrodinger was led into error because he put too much weight on the particulars of agreement with experiment with his equations, and he was missing something called spin. But the essence of his idea was so beautiful that if he'd embraced beauty rather than the scientific method, he would have gotten farther

quicker. And almost everyone who tries this crashes on the rocks. Everybody who tries to throw away the scientific method in service of beauty almost cracks up. And the exception is the three guys who really wrote down physical laws that govern everything else that we know about the world. Why do you have to throw out the scientific method in service of beauty? Couldn't it just be a part of the equation of life itself it's a human exists inside the experience of human beings ultimately humans can't throw out the scientific method scientific method is the last word right but what but why would you in the service of beauty i don't understand why the two are mutually exclusive because if i say something early

and there's the slightest problem with what I say. That is the instance of what I'm saying. Like I have an idea, which is, you know, I've got it. We're going to sell skulls to Native Americans. Right. Okay. That's an instance of an idea. Right. It's not, you know, the general idea might be let's go into business and sell things okay the initial instance of every great idea about the world has always been wrong einstein always yeah well i think if you take the let's take the 20th century start with 1900 einstein gets it wrong initially his first equation is wrong dirac who gives us the equation for matter, so Einstein does gravity. Dirac tells us that the proton and the electron, which are oppositely charged,

are antiparticles of each other. And Heisenberg says, you're an idiot. The proton is enormous. The electron is tiny. They'd have to be of the same mass. Then Dirac gave us this theory of matter. We couldn't compute with it for almost 20 years because everything blew up in our face. These are the instances, the instantiations of great ideas. The instances of great ideas are almost always flawed. And Yang and Mills, who came up with the generalization of the light equation, Maxwell's equations, didn't have mass in their equations. So they couldn't suppress something called beta decay, which is a kind of radioactivity. And the world would be taken over by beta decay if you couldn't make certain particles massive.

Every time we try one of these things, our first few instantiations are usually wrong. And what Dirac was giving us, and which we didn't understand, is he's saying, at the beginning, don't take the training wheels off the training wheels are like beauty look for internal coherence look for some kinds of symmetry look for some deep idea and don't immediately run to say is there an error is there an agreement with experiment because those things will have to wait for the mature instantiation rather than the first instance let me pause right here what do you mean by beauty what do you mean by magic these are subjective concepts that maybe that are only with human beings dogs don't see beauty or if

they do they don't express it like dogs don't see flowers and and become perplexed they don't stare at a mountain and sit down and and take a deep breath and sigh i don't first of all agree with that dogs stare at the sky and sigh uh dogs look at flowers this is fucking amazing certainly dogs uh are very focused on smell the olfactory sense of what is fascinating to a dog is not highly subjective right but we're talking about beauty yes i'm talking about beauty i'm talking about beautiful smells is that what you're talking about absolutely okay we i don't think we can imagine what a dog smells right because their their sense of smell is so far beyond absolutely yeah i mean They can smell cancer.

Dogs? Yeah. Well, okay, but if, for example... Right, but we're cutting hairs here. What I'm saying is the human being's subjective experience of beauty is very unique to us. You're going to say that, but if I go into any culture and I go... Every culture has that interval. Every culture has that interval.

Wise men say, who heave, who. Okay. Okay. That is universal. Okay. That's not beauty though, right? No. It's art.

It's a different thing. We're talking about a different thing now. When you let your vocal cord vibrate, implied in that thing, you may say, I'm singing the note C, but you're not. There's an entire chord called the overtone series. And that sounds good to every culture because it's not about you or me. It's about our throat. It's about the one-dimensional nature of a vibrating column always produces that same heavy chord. Well, music resonates specifically with human beings.

But can we agree that music is people are always going to want to say it's totally subjective it is it's not totally subjective how so if i well it's at least partially subjective it's partially subjective some people don't like jazz at all some people live for it so it's subjective right some people hate rap music some people love it some people hate metal some people love it some people hate country some people love it some people hate country some people love it it's it's as subjective as taste in food no how so well first of all your bitter response is in general protective of you so that some people enjoy bitter food i was going to say that you have to usually learn

which foods are safe and then you have an acquired taste that's what very often bitter foods are acquired taste culture has already figured out which foods are safe but you don't for the most part but it's local you know that that thing like if you were going to eat cabrales cheese which has maggots infested yeah if you come from spain you understand that cabrales is safe so you call it a delicacy because it's some stupid stuff that you happen to have local information to know that it's safe this is brett weinstein 101 sure but even in spain there's people that find it detestable but my point to you is is that what we are hiding behind the universals it is true that we all have subjective

components but it is not the case that in like you and I will have a conversation about whole lot of love and we will have an idea like that is just the best song. And you will know that you have to say, okay, well I understand that some people don't like it, but then when you get drunk, you're going to say, how can you not like whole lot of love?

Yeah. But I mean, you would say that, but you know, you say that, but you're joking. Like when I say, how can someone not like Elton John? I get it. I get that but you're joking like when i say how can someone not

like elton john i get it i get that you don't like elton john i fucking love elton john but some people they hear saturday night they don't want to hear that shit stop stop stop right they don't want to hear it they don't like elton john it's subjective there is a non-subjective component to music you can you can focus on the fact that what is non-subjective component to music. You can focus on the fact that there is... What is non-subjective about it? Well, I just told you. But you're not correct. If people don't like it and some people do like it,

that is the essence of subjectivity. Do you remember what you said to me about Gary Clark Jr. when you introduced me to him at the store? My personal opinion probably we're talking it's one of the baddest motherfuckers alive you just said this is the greatest guitarist alive yeah in my opinion that's my opinion in my opinion yeah but that's my opinion clearly and i don't necessarily think that he is necessarily the greatest guitarist a lot to me when i listen but he's objectively if i listen to numb he's objectively. If I listen to numb. He's objectively amazing.

He's objectively amazing. But it's not objectively. Because some people don't think he's good at all. They don't like that kind of sound. It's like some people like weird sounds, man. Some people only like classical piano. Look, I don't necessarily love putting on Art Tatum as a pianist. You cannot sit me down to watch Art Tatum and say, that is not amazing.

Okay. But if you don't enjoy it, it's subjective. I may not enjoy it. But it's subjective. You might say that that is a guy who's very good at doing a thing that I don't enjoy doing. Listen, man. Yeah. You're splitting hairs.

Okay. You either enjoy something or you don't. That is the essence of subjectivity. Okay. You either think it's good or you don't. It doesn't mean... Look, just because you know that some people enjoy it doesn't mean it's objective that it's great like you don't enjoy it like it doesn't have to be the first

thing is can i recognize something like the millennial whoop you know about the millennial whoop no this thing oh yeah 535 right there's this thing that all these millennial songs have okay now. I don't necessarily enjoy that okay But I can recognize it So the first step is is it objectively recognizable can I train myself? You're talking about a sound that you know exists, okay, but that doesn't mean you like it Okay, so if you don't like it, it's subjective Right just like food just like movies just like clothing there's a lot of things that people enjoy that other people don't enjoy let me ask you a question do you think statistically we just all

had a high probability of thinking the godfather was a great film i know that some people don't like that film they don't like violent pictures they don't like tension they don't like mafia they don't like the portrayal of italian americans they don't like movies that are from that era. Exactly. Because they're slower. I agree with that. Yeah, okay.

It's a subjective film. Joe, I have a different belief structure. I believe that we're hiding behind subjectivity. I believe that what we've figured out is that there's a subjective component to everything. Okay? And you're absolutely right about this. But you're over complicating people's tastes people's likes and dislikes they're real right some people like pop

music some people like beethoven that is the nature of subjectivity what i'm trying to say is that what you were saying is true we have different likes yes and those are that's a really far downstream process of can we recognize what's going on okay what's our association with it if you were tortured to the most beautiful music in the world you're probably not gonna love it right if you watch clockwork orange you got really screwed up about it well i think that's what they did to manuel noriega when they're trying to get him to leave panama oh yeah yeah i remember the same song over and over and over again exactly that's probably a great song too i'm sure the first 12 000 times you hear it so but that's not what i'm trying to say what i'm trying to say is is that there is a huge

component about what we like what we don't like that's objective. And there's a huge component about what we like and we don't like that's subjective. And in our time, we've all been taught the same move, which is back off claims of objectivity. Every one of us, myself included. Back off claims of objectivity? I don't agree with that at all. We've been told to back off claims of... If I say to you charlie parker is

objectively one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time you will have a negative reaction no i won't in general no no i've listened to charlie parker he's brilliant to you yeah okay and somebody else doesn't like him yeah but you asked me you said i will have an objection to that i won't okay that's not true so who are the people that now i'm really confused because before i thought you were telling me that these things were subjective and what i'm trying to say is you are willing to accept these things now you're now you said me personally okay so you personally believe that charlie parker is an objectively great jazz musician i believe personally charlie parker is a great jazz musician

to you i see so you objectively believe that you subjectively think the the problem is we're conflating objectivity and subjectivity here we're getting into this weird area it's subjective whether or not i enjoy it right it's subject if i if i agree if you say is this person really good at something that i have no interest in like are they a really good badminton player right and i watch them and they win i'm like yeah that guy's really good i don't give a fuck about badminton right right if badminton just vanished yeah but even less even there i heard old basketball guys asked about Steph Curry. Isn't he amazing?

Like, I don't know what he's doing. He's doing a bunch of three-point shots. I played in the paint. That's basketball. I don't know what he does. This is not my game. Right, but you get that from fighting. You get that from high jumping.

You get it from hard bat table tennis. It's subjective. I'm not sure who's making whose point now, objectively or subjectively. It's subjective whether or not you like that style of basketball. So we're in agreement. Some people like brawls. Some people like Floyd Mayweather because he's super technical and he's clever defensively. I totally agree with this at the level of there's a whole bunch of process that happens. And at the end, you say, I like it. I don't like it. And there's no way to tell because

if you like something, I can make you hate it by associating with something negative. Well, let's look at the Webster definition of objectivity versus subjectivity. Let's pull that up. The Webster definition of objectivity and the Webster definition of subjectivity. And let's look at this and see if we're talking about the same fucking things here. Because I think we're getting a little bit into the weeds here. Here we go. That's the Jamie Humm. Build suspense.

What's that? As I'm typing it in There's a brown.edu Dissertation about this No just whatever Whatever the definition of Definition of objectivity See what we get Here we go

Okay Here we go Based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions, objective of a person or their judgment, not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in consideration of expressing and representing facts. Okay, so objective. It's not influenced by personal feelings or opinions

in considering and representing facts so you can say objectively someone is a very talented guitarist because you see how complicated their movements are and how they're hitting the strings but you could say subjectively i I don't enjoy that music. I agree with that. Now, pull up subjective, just so we're clear about that. Subjective definition. Based on or influenced by personal feelings,

tastes, or opinions. Yeah. So personal feelings and opinions and how you feel about something is subjective. Right. But if I say to you, is Eddie Van Halen objectively a talent? Was he a talented guitarist? He's clearly a talented guitarist.

I didn't say clearly. Yes. I think objectively. Somebody else says in 2021, the next move in the conversation is, actually, I don't think he's a talented guitarist. I've heard him. I find talent is really about playing with feeling. And all of these crazy moves and the tapping and the whines and the squeals, to me, that's

not talent. That motherfucker's never listened to Running with the Devil. Now you're... Play Running with the Devil. You're on both sides of this. Yeah, but Running with the devil is like that the fucking movements and the way he plays guitar it's he's clearly got amazing ability with the guitar now subjectively you could say i think that music's trash somebody else is going to make

the claim in 2021 i think you're on my side of the issue and you're still right. This is very interesting. I think we're crossing over on both sides. Okay. I think what you're now saying is expressing the tension of our moment. The tension of our moment is that as soon as somebody says that something is objective, somebody will say, actually, to me, your definition of that isn't how I define it. And therefore, I reclaim the subjectivity of it.

I can turn Andre Segovia or Eddie Van Halen or Jimmy Page or any of these people into not a good guitarist by redefining what a talented guitarist is. If I redefine the concept of talent on a guitar and I say, talent on a guitar is somebody who can convince me of emotions that they're playing with and i didn't feel anything maybe the problem is the word talent exactly you say uh if someone is objectively proficient about the guitar is jimmy hendrix proficient he was incredibly sloppy in a weird way his timing actually varies it's not it's not incredibly rigorous you could make end result was subjectively amazing i know people who say what is this noise who the fuck are those people not that he couldn't but what if he couldn't read music does that make it well no no i don't i don't think joe and i would no i'm just saying like if you're throwing him into another situation be like okay play with

these guys and then he might think then make them worse academically he wouldn't be as proficient like in terms of like if you had to write the music down and teach it maybe i think if you took somebody like guth do you know who guthrie govan is no guthrie govan is arguably the great guitarist of our age and one of his tricks is you tell him a guitarist and he will play in that person's style in and of what he does on his own. Really? Yeah. So effectively, he can mimic anyone's style. So he has a proficiency of technique.

That's the whole point. If anyone is a good guitarist, Guthrie Govan can represent that person's guitar in a way that if you were blindfolded you would say boy BB King is having a great day okay right and so that would be a proof that Guthrie Govan is like it's a Turing test basically that Guthrie Govan can emulate any guitarist so if you believe anyone is objectively talented then Guthrie Govan is objectively talented, then Guthrie Govan is objectively talented. That's the thing about guitar is that it is an instrument with six strings, but people can make radically different noises with those six strings. Tosin Abbas's is not six strings.

Narciso Yepes is not six strings. Even that. Okay, yeah. I'm just trying to say. We can also do those double guitars and some of those wacky rock and roll guys do. I know. Those are always sort of dorky and some of those wacky rock and roll guys too. I know. Yeah.

Those are always sort of dorky and sort of cool. What are those? What's that called? Double neck? Yeah. Well, usually it's a 12 string and a six string so that you get these sort of resonant. So it's 18 total.

So which one's 12? And I don't think all of the strings are doubled on a 12 string. So I think it's only some. I'm not exactly sure. But those things are based on the idea that you're trying not to switch guitars in the middle of a song when you're trying to do two things or stanley jordan will tap on two guitars simultaneously with his fingers as if

he's playing the piano right which is insane well hendrix used to play Star Spangled Banner with his teeth. Yeah. Yeah, nobody teaches you that. Who used to do that? I mean, maybe someone will teach you that after he did it. Have you seen that movie August Rush? No. Robin Williams is in it. It's about a little kid, proficient, whatever,

but it doesn't matter. The style of guitar he's playing, he's slapping the guitar. It's tuned in in a very strange way. It's hard to recreate, but he's doing these, like what he's saying, he's like tapping on like a piano. I'll show you what he's doing. The kid's acting, but someone was actually playing it. It's not guitar playing like you're used to seeing in any way, shape, or form.

Put it up. Never heard of it. Yeah, I mean, that's a different thing, right? You can, like, there's people, like Gary Clark is a perfect example. Like I said, like Gary Clark, I'm pretty sure I played this for you, right you can like there's people like gary clark is a perfect example like i said like uh gary clark uh i'm pretty sure i played this for you uh when suzanne santo and gary clark and uh ben jaffe were we they did this show in downtown la and they played midnight rider yeah and gary clark attached his sound to that classic almond brother Brothers song Midnight Rider and it was

fucking amazing because you could clear if you if you just tuned into it it was you know that's Gary Clark like there's a there's a style of sound that Gary creates that's uniquely him Stevie Ray Vaughan is another example there's a style of sound of Steve Ray Vaughan created that was uniquely him this little little clip this kid's finding out how to play a guitar this is a little too much it's like movie magic but this is what I'm talking about he's not strumming it like you're used to seeing or hearing. He's almost playing the bongos. Using the reverb of the room adding into what he's doing. Oh, that's pretty badass. This is called August Rush.

Yeah, this movie. It's an interesting movie. Watch it if you want to. It's been out for a while. Just a very strange thing you're doing. Robin Williams is one of those guys that when I see him, I get sad. Yeah. It's a very good movie. He's acting in that people met him. If you didn't know, he was in that when I see him, I get sad. Yeah. It's a very good movie.

He's acting in that people met him. If you didn't know, it was in it. I met him once. It's the weirdest story. I've told it. Unfortunately, I've told it already. So forgive me if you've heard this. But I was at the improv.

I did a show at the improv. Then afterwards, there was a line of people taking pictures of people saying hi after the show. And this dude with glasses and this thick white beard, a baseball hat, was in line. And he was telling me how great the show and this uh dude with glasses and this thick white beard a baseball hat was in line and he was telling me how great the show was he really enjoyed it he's talking to me about specific bits and we're talking i'm like oh thank you thanks man i really appreciate it glad you enjoyed it and then in the middle of talking to this guy i go holy shit this is robin williams fuck you he was just in line i didn't even know it was him he had this crazy white beard i didn't know it was him i had no idea it was him until in the middle of talking i realized it was him

he waited in line by himself there was all these people no one noticed it was him what a compliment to you sir it was wild it was really it was really weird it was right before i did triggered it was like i was tightening up my act it was like getting i was getting everything together i think it was around then i'm pretty sure it was in that but it was i was in the middle of about to do a special so everything was very tight and i remember seeing him going in the middle of the conversation going holy shit this is robin williams i saw him when i was was in high school in an LA comedy club at the Improv. And there were two guys in LA. I can't remember the other guy.

The thing about them was that you were just convinced that their brains were 12,000 times faster than anybody else you'd ever met like that they were just in a weird way smarter and robin williams free association it was like being on a nantucket sleigh ride of the mind and comedy was how it expressed itself but it wasn't about comedy it was about just like having thoughts interact with each other and you had to justify them by turning every thought into a joke that's influencing every other thought it was like almost like excusing madness that was purposeful and pointful and amazing to watch and unfortunately he repurposed some other people's material oh is that right yeah he was known for that and i think that was part of the manic nature of this style was that like sometimes he would come across a subject that he was just you know because he was freeballing and he would

just use material that he knew of well my guess is that the speeds he was at he probably couldn't slow down to ask where did that thought come from is that maybe okay or maybe the ends justified the means and then what he really was doing was just trying to put on the best performance that he could and he had this idea that he knew wasn't necessarily his he cut checks to a lot of people and there was a there was a lot of issues i know kinnison and him had a big squabble because of it and i'm pretty sure he cut a check for kinnison and cut checks for other guys that were at the store like when you want to because he had to not because do the material on tv so let me ask you a question about this i guess i was reviewing that night in

your life and i was looking at the fact that it wasn't that funny when you went up and you said what had to be said and i think about comics that died at the comic store when I left yeah and it was painful for me to watch in a way because it was both courageous

but that's you know that was a weird situation where I was called back on stage by Carlos Mencia that wasn't that wasn't like

I know I made a statement I had already done my set I already didn't stand up. And then I went back because he called me out. That, you know, like me leaving the comedy store was not even my idea. It was like they banned me. So it's like it was less outrageous.

No, I don't think so, Joe. I think at some level you threw your hat into the ring and you almost certainly knew. They said, why don't you take a break or take some time off or some soft pedal. And then I said, there's no fucking way I'm going to do that. I'll never come back. I think what you did is you obligated yourself into a role

where you actually had to stand up for something. And the thing I'm wrestling with, because I reviewed this whole story a few times, is this question about, like I look at your energy, and you're such a positive person in my life. And I look at that energy, and you were trying to take care of somebody like Ari. You know?

It wasn't just Ari. Well, I know. It was creativity in general. Bobby, in general. It was the concept that there was a guy who was more successful than everybody else who would just suck up everybody else's material and profit off of it. It was also that nobody else was saying. It was also that they knew it was happening. Everybody was talking about it and there was a silence.

Bill Burr told me a story where he was performing there and he said to the guy that was a manager, the guy that I had the issue with, he He said fuck. I don't want to go on stage. You know fucking Carlos is here. He goes. Oh, don't worry He doesn't steal from guys like you He only steals from the younger guys. He goes what the fuck did you just say? So, you know, he steals from the younger guys. He goes that's not what I said He was that's what you just fucking said. It's exactly just said and it doesn't feel that way That's the thing that that you know what man it was a time before accountability with the internet the internet came along and you know by the time that like when that instance happened people recognize oh there's like legitimate accountability

for doing things along those lines this is from 1964 what is it it? It's a FOIA request made for the Freedom of Information Act for the file of Barack Hussein Obama Sr. as a graduate student in the economics department at Harvard University. Okay. Obama has passed his general exams, which indicates that on academic grounds, he is entitled to stay around here and write his thesis. However, they are going to try to cook something up to ease him out. All three, that is all three Harvard people, will have to agree on this, however. Harvard people will have to agree on this. However, they are planning on telling him that they will not give him any money and that he had better return to Kenya and prepare his thesis at home,

which means he will never get his PhD. Remember when they said, take a break to you. This is my alma mater. This is the thing I've been, you know, there's this whole story about what happened in my early life and why I don't talk about it publicly. And this is why this is interacting with your story about joke thievery, because it's weird for a comic not to turn that into a joke.

And it wasn't funny to you. In around, I don't know, 1988, 1989, Harvard University told me to remain in good standing in this program you cannot live in Massachusetts why and I said what how can you tell me where I can live and where I can't live it wasn't until somebody foiled Barack Obama's father in his file, and I read this story, that I realized that Harvard has a program for how it gets rid of people it wants to get rid of who are in good standing. It makes them move. It makes them move so that they can't complete their thesis.

Why did they want to do that with you? Probably because I'm as learning disabled as the day is long. Probably because I took as learning disabled as the day is long. Probably because I took an unpopular stance that the equations that people were working with called the Donaldson theory self-dual equations were not the right equations to be working with and that we had somehow been assuming that they were highly peculiar to dimension four and that the difficulty of the equations, which was what was giving us all these great results, I had effectively gotten on the wrong side.

I proposed some equations that were, I was told were insufficiently nonlinear, nevermind what that means, that in 1994, effectively the same equations took over the entire field. Whatever it was, and this is like part of the idea of reclaiming your own story, it was so crazy that a university would tell me

what state I could live in. Can I stop you there? So the people that are telling you this, they're operating on a preexisting solution to deal with people that they find undesirable or problematic if you fall afoul of them right so it's written somewhere i don't know or it's you know it's like people maintain for example one way of um getting rid of a tenured professor that's known is is that you

ask the person to report on their research and you load them up with teaching and you give them a lousy office. And then eventually they'll just quit because you make their life hell. So people know that there are these kind of secret quiet ways to do the undoable. Can I ask you this? What did you think about Cornel West being denied tenure from Harvard? First of all, I thought, I assumed he already had it i mean cornell west is this loved intellectual when when i found out they denied him tenure i was like what the what how do you how do you deny cornell west tenure like what is that what did you think about that i first of all am not knowledgeable in that

area i think of him as a very bright superstar of some sort of part academic part social crossover high impact human being i was there when larry summers was president of um har, when he went out and said, effectively, too many people are using the Harvard label, and we're going to be reining it in and going back to hard rigor and basics. Let me tell you what people don't understand about Harvard. Harvard is two separate structures fused together. One is about power, and one is about achievement. And the two of them are interlinked in a way that cannot be separated. Without the achievement, Harvard wouldn't have this kind of glowing reputation that causes us to sort of ooh and ah over it historically. Without the power, it wouldn't be able to attract the money and it wouldn't be able to constantly position itself. So through achievement, it gets enough cachet to wield power. Through the power,

it gets the resources to buy achievement. And this sort of thing is not understood. And I've been on both sides of this thing. One of the things that happened was that the Boskin Commission in 1996 tried to figure out how to cut Social Security and raise taxes without getting caught, because that's the third rail of politics. we measure inflation? Because tax brackets are indexed and because entitlement payments for Social Security and Medicare are indexed. If we claim that Social Security, sorry, if we claim that inflation is overstated by 1.1 percentage points, we will gain a trillion dollars in savings. And the public won't be able to object to it because we're going to be just adjusting a dial. We're going to say that this dial was broken and we got some technocrats to fix it. So they figured out we want to get a trillion dollars over 10 years. They backed out. That would require 1.1% overstatement. They broke into two teams. One team came up with 0.5. One team came up with 0.6. 0.5 plus 0.6

equals 1.1. Totally fictitious. They got a proposal for a trillion dollars that they were going to steal, effectively, from Social Security. And they described this action publicly? Robert Gordon, who was one of the five Boskin commissioners. Jamie, could you bring up something called Boskin wild versus mild they brag about these things power wants to explain just how powerful it is and you remember the scene in the big short where they're talking to these guys in florida and saying why are they confessing and somebody says they're not confessing they're bragging are they confessing?

And somebody says, they're not confessing, they're bragging. It's a question of what are you proud that you're able to do? So until Robert Gordon did this PowerPoint presentation, we did not understand

what happened to the work that I did with my wife in economics, which is that we were trying to show how you could actually compute the Consumer Price Index objectively using gauge theory.

The same year they were trying to figure out how do we steal a trillion dollars over 10 years by doing funny games with the gauge called inflation. Do you, do you find the wild versus the mild? Yeah, I did. It's just loading a PDF and it's like taking it. I bailed.

So this thing, perfect. If you go to, the wild versus the mild? Yeah, I did. It's just loading a PDF and it's like taking it. I failed. So this thing, perfect. If you go to, if you go about five or six slides in. We'll see how that works. Okay. Keep going. You'll find the word somehow. Keep going. You'll find the word somehow.

Keep going. Okay, Dale said 1.1% implies $1 trillion in Social Security savings over 10 years. Somehow, our separate efforts came up with the 1.1% bias number. In other words, they came up with the target, which is let's save a trillion dollars, and then they came up with, we have to say it's overstated by 1.1. We then broke into two groups, and somehow, key word, we put the numbers together and we got the target. This is academic malpractice in the absolute extreme. When Harvard was doing that, it was acting in its power capacity. And the way they did it was they buried what I think is probably the best work in 25 to

50 years in mathematical economics that happened in the Harvard Economics Department, which is a second so-called marginal revolution where we changed the calculus underneath all of economic theory. So how does something like this happen? Is there a concerted effort? Do they get together and they have this idea, this is how we're going to do it? There's a five-person commission behind closed doors that meets at the cousin's house of somebody on the commission in Florida. And in another presentation- Fucking Florida.

Florida man. In another presentation... Fucking Florida. Florida, man. In another presentation, they say, we solved this at the kitchen table of my cousin's house in Florida. And you're just thinking like, okay, so it's five guys, Bob Packwood and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat and a Republican, got together, picked five economists

who were willing to play the dirty game. The dirty game broke into two teams. They knew exactly what they had to do. They found the results to put them together, to put in front of Congress, to put in front of the National Academy. And were they ever held accountable for this? No. There's an entire book called The Physics of Wall Street, in which my wife and I are chapter 10 and the epilogue, which it talks about, they made Weinstein and Malani go away. Right? So what I'm trying to talk to you about is like this experience for me.

I've never talked about this with anyone. I've never, I mean, I've talked to tons of people privately. This is going to go out into the world. I was, you know, know this question like what has eric weinstein ever done i did that i did the marginal revolution using gauge theory no no that question is tim dylan joking around yeah i know he said what he never created the rotato he was just joking he was fucking around that was the funny part about it he was joking but he's saying that because he knows you're brilliant.

I love him too. Do you understand the only reason why he can say that? If you were a loser, he couldn't say that. Joe, Joe, Joe, you don't need to make me feel good about myself. I know, but you brought it up again. No, I'm saying something completely different. Okay. Okay.

I actually have been scared of this question. What question? Tim's question taken seriously. Who's going to take it seriously? I'm taking it seriously. Okay. No okay no no you're in a weird world okay here's here's your weird world you're in a world of serious intellectual people you're damn straight you're also hanging out with tim dillon and me and i love it but it's it's the problem is like you're conflating these two things no it joe i'm not that angry at tim dillon it's not i'm not that angry at Tim Dillon. Not that angry?

Do you hear that? You heard the word? You heard the word that? That's a problem. Well, you're not that angry at Carlos Mencia. I'm not angry at him at all. I know. I'm not angry at Tim Dillon at all.

I feel I'm sad. I'm sad for Tim Dillon. Anyway. Shouldn't be sad for Tim. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He's one of the most important comedians of our time. Okay. How dare you?

How dare I? It gave me a moment to to reflect and i realized something which is i don't want to talk about this shit publicly i don't want to say dale jorgensen is the guy who buried one of the most important innovations in economic but yeah you just did i just did and that's what I've just done. That's what I realized by reviewing your history and revealing you're seven years away from the store. I don't want to be associated with Dale Jorgensen. I don't care about him. I want to be associated with gauge theoretic economics.

I see what you're saying. And what I realized is I don't want to be associated with the shit that happened over something called the Seiberg-Witten equations. What I just handed you, one of the reasons I've held it back is that it very clearly gives an alternate definition, alternate motivation and derivation of the equations that revolutionized gauge theory, which is what I was thinking about in around 1987, 1988. And I've lived afraid of my own story because it's such an ugly story. The story of a guy who was not allowed to attend his own thesis defense to any academician.

You hear it like, what do you mean you weren't allowed to? You present your thesis. No, no, no. I was not allowed in the room of my own thesis defense. So this is why Harvard wanted you to move out of state. Harvard and I got into a thing.

Because of that? Because of a conflict. Because also of this. Because of geometric unity. Because I said, I want to do physics. And I have an idea about how physics goes. And to be brutally honest, I was technically underpowered. i was technically underpowered i am technically underpowered i was conceptually amazing i was very creative very generative tons and tons of great ideas i think

i'm being honest on both fronts technically underpowered okay i couldn't accept myself in this world of like you know if, if you play classical music, everybody's technically brilliant. There's no technically weak people in classical music. I was like a guy, it was like John Lee Hooker in the orchestra of, you know, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. On one string and a guitar playing with some weird syncopated rhythm. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Gonna shoot you right down. Yeah, exactly.

syncopated rhythm boom boom boom boom gonna shoot you right down yeah exactly mom said let that daddy said let that boy boogie woogie it's in him and it's got to come out that thing i'm scared of why scared because it's my history because i don't want to go back into it i don't want to go back to being the guy begging dale jorgensen oh pretty pleased with sugar on top let me innovate your entire field. I don't want to go back to the Harvard department and say the words Clifford Taubes. You had Gary Taubes on your program. Clifford Taubes was the guy who told me

I had to move out of state. Clifford Taubes. Is he related to Gary? Yeah, he's his brother. Yeah. He was the guy who held the secret seminar. And the thing is, is that I'm not against the person in the story. I don't want to have it. I don't want to be involved with him.

I want him to go and be successful and have a good career. But my story, when I put forward those equations and he said they're insufficiently nonlinear, and he said self-duality doesn't have anything to do with spinners because if it did, Nigel Hitchens would have told us. Nigel would have told us. He didn't say Hitchens. He was wrong. And then when I gave him the opportunity, he didn't say, you know what, Eric Weinstein brought these equations up and I told him no. And that thing is like something I've held open the door he's now in his mid-60s i was like you really couldn't just say maybe i screwed up you should go kick his ass no why

i'm choking i know well but wait a second joe such a dick. Such a dick. I had to. Come on, bring some levity to this. I thought you were going to cry 30 seconds ago. Do you have a tissue? No.

Somewhere. Yeah, it was over there. But this is the thing. I've been running, what I realized through Tim, it wasn't a question of being angry at Tim, really. I've been running away from my own story. Just the way I don't like you associated with, I haven't mentioned the guy who was the joke thief in this entire time.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Right? It's like, why are you and he entangled in a story? Because he has nothing to do with your life. It's okay. It doesn't bother me that I'm entangled with him. What bothers me that I'm entangled with this stuff um i know what you're saying because i want to be joyous i want to produce positive things that uplift us to give us a hope

of breaking like the einsteinian speed limit you know if this is wrong i want to know i think it's right i think with all my flaws and all my failings and being 25 years out of the field I believe that this story is gonna be fixed by people who are trying to shoot it down there and say holy shit I think there's something here well now we're gonna know right I think I'm hoping you released it today on geometric unity org and go to PullThatUpJamie.com, and you can watch all the videos that we didn't show you. There it is.

Pull That Up Jamie. I'm a little conflicted with that. Are you? We can talk afterwards. You should have thought of it first, Jamie. Jamie's got a shirt that says Pull That Shit Up. I have a good one on the way, too. What is it?

I can't talk about it yet. It's going to be a surprise. And what website would that be? Jamie Vernon? YoungJamie.com? Yes, correct. Available there. The Breakout.com.

Breakout star. We were at dinner yesterday. Yeah. Eating barbecue. And I asked Jamie a question. And the fucking waiter goes, Holy shit, it's Jamie. It was hilarious.

Jamie, do you get recognized a lot? Because you're like behind the scenes. That waiter, he fucking panicked. When he saw Jamie, he panicked. He's like, holy shit, it's Jamie! That's good. It was kind of hilarious. I'm big in the server world.

It was funny, though. It was an interesting moment. I'm pretty sure that was the first table that dude ever waited on, too. It seemed like it, for sure. Yeah. He told us he was funny though. It was an interesting moment. I'm pretty sure that was the first table that dude ever waited on too. It seemed like it for sure. Yeah. He told us he was a trainee. And I'm pretty sure if it wasn't his first table, it was definitely his first 10. Yeah.

Yeah, he was a little perplexed. I'll make it. But seeing Jamie, it was fucking hilarious. Do you hate being famous? It was fucking hilarious. Do you hate being famous? If I hated it, it would be pretty fucking stupid that I continue to pursue fame. I don't hate it. Do you pursue fame?

Well, I mean, I'm doing this thing that makes you famous. I mean, I'm not pursuing fame. But it's an after effect of the thing that I do. I think that there's no way to go through life trying to do what you're doing without getting famous as a byproduct. You could get marginally famous and stay alive and feed yourself and do well. But you wouldn't impact as many people. You wouldn't have the ability to impact as many people. You wouldn't have the ability to get the guests you get.

You wouldn't have the conversation. Here's the thing. It's like I would like to pretend that I'm so smart that i figured this out in advance but i didn't it was just all luck it was all uh this job of being a podcaster mixed in with my mental illness of uh comedy well it's a comedy too but it's also i'm i'm an obsessive person when i find things i i obsess on them and i yeah you do get good my my main problem is that there's too many things i'm obsessed with like when people tell me they're bored i just go that's that's crazy that's like someone telling me they breathe underwater i'm like i don't know what you're saying i don't even i have so many

interests yeah i wish i had multiple lives to lead simultaneously. Then I would pursue each thing that I'm fascinated with. Single-minded determination. Absolutely. So I stumbled. I mean, I don't really believe this, but I almost believe this, that this thing found me. That it's almost like there was like i totally understand what that means like like an attractor and and like how

you ever see when neurons yeah yeah trying to find each other yeah it's fascinating and they they speed it up so because i think friedman i I think Lex Friedman had it on his Instagram. These neurons, they don't see, right? No, they just send stuff out chemically. Yeah. Some way they find this thing. And I feel, there it is. That is Lex.

And there's something that I feel like about life that if you just open, if you don't bullshit yourself and you're willing to take risks, those things find you. Or you find them. And then once you get going, the easiest part is once you've already started, just continuing. The hardest part is getting going with everything the hardest part is showing up for the first class yeah yeah the easiest part is showing up for the thousandth one i'm backing away from fame how are you doing that by being on this show clubhouse by being on clubhouse that's what clubhouse was... Hey, smart guy. You got busted. Fucking Jamie.

Jamie, it was a closed app. That's fine. I know. I get it. I know. A fucking million people follow you, bitch. Two. What are you talking about? 2.8.

Why? You piker. I think I have 4,000. Yeah, because you showed up once at 7. I might not even have 4,000. Joe, the issue was... They probably abandoned you. I tried doing something. I haven't even checked. I tried doing it, and it got big.7,000. I might not even have $4,000. Joe, the issue was I tried doing something.

I haven't even checked. I tried doing it, and it got big. Oh, yeah. And that was an accident in a weird way. No, you're good at it. You're good at talking. People like hearing you. But I love it, and I love a large part of being fans.

You should be on Only with Tim Dillon. Just you and him together. Should we have an Only Fans page together? No, just you guys only on Clubhouse. Yeah. And you have to be in the same room together. We've done a bunch of rooms together. I'm sure, but only in the same room room. Like where you have to look at him.

You have to look at his eyes when he's talking shit. Why do I fly to Austin to try to be serious with Joe? Listen, you can be serious for enough. You can be serious for a little bit. I know. I'm struggling with it. And I was wondering whether or not, because in a weird way, you very clearly scope your life. Like this and not that.

I'm going to do this publicly and then I'm going to retreat into my own little world. I just have instincts. Yeah. And my instincts are there's a great benefit for me personally to do this podcast and to talk to interesting people and to have these conversations. And I've most certainly been educated beyond my wildest dreams in the 11 years that I've done it. I've learned so much about just the broadest spectrum of ideas.

And you're going to claim you're not doing it for the world because the world has been not doing it for the world i'm not i'm doing it we're different than for my personal edification i'm doing it because i enjoy it i'm doing it for the money i'm doing it because i do think that i love that you said that by the way it's true i'm doing it for all those things i'm in the money the reason why i'm doing it for the money is because there's a lot of freedom in money and there's like i'm the trappings of money, like, you know, you start, people get crazy. Like, they start buying fucking diamond-encrusted watches and shit and bigger houses. It's freedom. Freedom is the biggest thing.

And security. Like, I would buy bodyguards and assistants and lawyers. Yeah. It's very valuable. The freedom aspect of it is very valuable. But when you reach a certain number, then why are you still doing it? Well, I'm still doing it because I enjoy it. I do enjoy it.

There's not a day that I do this where I go, fuck, I've got to go to work. Not a single day. Partially, it's because I pick all the guests. There's no one that's a guest that I don't want to be on. You have an easy time saying no. I just don't answer. I know, I know.

I don't say no. I just don't say yes. I just don't. You know, there's a filter system, right? I know. So like when I send my guy people to go contact that I don't know, and then the people that I do know, I contact. Right.

So it's like half of them get booked by me on my phone and half of them I get someone to contact for me. I'm like, hey, I read this guy's book. He's really interesting. Can you get a hold of him? Or, hey, I saw this guy's documentary. This is crazy shit. This is the best part of the fame thing.

The best part of the fame thing is getting your call answer when there's some like i desperately wanted to talk to pj or work i don't know if you've talked to him or read no i have not but i know he is unbelievable writer yeah i just think he's one of the greatest writers in the english language full stop and i told my producer can you get me pj work and he's like okay he's booked i'm just like holy crap yeah you got him i got him yeah and you know it was meaningful to me that like that particular person who's i've read so much of this i've gone over and over like how did he make that sentence sing like that just tell me how that sentence happened probably the third or fourth draft maybe or maybe the i think actually

what it was in part was that he imitated so many people's styles initially that he became very adept at like pulling from the great grab bag of tricks that everyone had used. And then he built his own voice. Yeah, that's the benefit to reading as well as writing, right? Like all the great writers read a lot. Are you a great reader? I do more books on tape than I do reading, but I've been reading more lately. And when you write comedy, is writing comedy a great exercise for you? Does it feel good relative to doing comedy?

Writing is very important. There's a lot of bits that I come up with that I would not have come up with if I didn't just sit alone with a computer. It's very important for me. Some of my best bits that I've ever done, closing bits, signature bits, have come from writing. And how much of that, how much do substances break into new space?

Like the space was always there to be broken into, but it wouldn't be so easy to find it. I think there's multiple variables that are at play. And I think performing is a big one. And lately I haven't been doing that much of that because of the pandemic and trying to be responsible and not do that many shows, you know, and certainly not do shows without people being COVID tested, right? And I'm hoping that as we come out of this,

and it seems like we're coming out of this, it'll be easier. And I'm also buying a club in town. So once that happens, I'll be doing the same thing there. We're COVID testing everybody and trying to get the ball. So there's that, right? But then there's also, you have to think a lot. You can't just perform. perform because if you do like one of the things that comics fell trapped to in uh the early days not the early you know last 10 20 years was they would do a lot of jokes about being a comic on

the road hotel rooms airplane travel that problem right which you know exactly that's a problem and i think you have to experience life and you have to think and you have to experience you have to experience life and you have to think. And you have to experience different mindsets. You have to experience different subject matters that you're contemplating and you're puzzling. You're puzzled about. You have to perform a lot. You have to write. I think you have to write too. I don't think you can just perform a lot.

Some people can. Some people just write in their head and they go on stage and they continue to craft these ideas and some of the best comics alive but i think they would have more to choose from if they just sat in front of the computer and forced themselves to write and some guys will say i don't like it because then my material seems like i wrote it it comes out like a like a script and i understand that but i think the workaround for that is what i what i've uh done and i've talked to a few other comics that do the same thing felicia michaels she said she does it this way too i write essays i write i just write on a subject like if i'm gonna write on um getting drunk yeah the perils of getting drunk the pros

and the cons and what feels good and what feels bad. And what's good about it? What's bad about it? What do I hate about it? What do I love about it? And then out of this, I might write 3,000, 4,000 words. But out of it, I might have one paragraph that comes across that becomes... That's it. So the idea is that the essay is weirdly the throwaway because the product exactly

exactly so this is fascinating to me because my guess is that somebody else would publish the essay and we'd be saying wow like i read this thing joe wrote in the atlantic it wouldn't be terribly funny i would change it if i was going to do that i would write it as an essay but the the essay is essentially for one a one person audience that person's me and then i smoke a joint then i go over it and then i go oh that's it right well so so one of the things that i i learned from sort of studying when you do a bit and i see it multiple times i learn about when you find the rhetorical formulation that allows you to get closer to the truth without paying the outsized price.

Somehow that unleashes comedy magic. I remember you had something about getting high and having kids. And it was a very difficult issue because obviously people do get high and they do have kids. And then we have this idea, it's like being sexy leads to kids, but sex and kids have to be kept apart. All of these weird ways in which normal adult behavior and children are incompatible. And so there was like a William Tell Act in some sense that had to be negotiated,

which is how am I going to talk about two things that are not supposed to coalesce, but obviously they coalesce in people? How do I find the skill and that's sort of what i i wonder about when you hone a bit is that you can get closer and closer to the truth because you find the formulation that actually works without blowing up in your face it's like i can throw this grenade and wait to the point where it's maximally effective without losing a hand well the beautiful thing is sometimes you lose hands that's the beautiful thing you try it out and you lose a hand and then you go well that fucking sucks and you come back tomorrow with a new approach okay well then it wasn't really losing a hand because it was in a comp that then if you're michael richards and somebody's got a phone up then you're not losing a hand you're losing a career yeah that's a different situation he's on

coke you know but what the difference is also he wasn't really a comic like that was a disaster that was just the difference is you you're the like you you have an idea and you're not exactly sure how this idea is going to best be expressed to a group of strangers this is what I love about the idea of the store and the experimental thing. When you and I got together and had the conversation about David Byrne's, how did CBGBs work for punk? And you said, this is the same thing as the store for comedy.

Yes, yeah. We were in the back bar, the secret bar that non-comedians are not supposed to even go into unless he knows everybody. What bar? But that weird thing about, like, I keep thinking about it about why don't we have a secret bar for math and physics you're remembering it incorrectly though okay i'll just tell you that you were the one who equated it to cbgbs because i don't really know that much about cbgbs you said this is essentially what cbgbs is it wasn't me i came up yes yeah but then you said this is exactly right exactly yeah and so i was trying to

be well when you were there i mean like fucking bill burr was walking in chappelle was out there it was like crazy that's how it is there that's well how it was there now it's a fucking ghost house you know now it's boarded up well but you're gonna do something here right are you gonna turn austin i mean because like you're basically hoovering up everybody i like and moving them to austin i've hoovered up a lot of good people yeah i even got brian holtzman to move out here the um the idea is to throw up the bat signal and to let all of them know that they can be free here really that this is this is a place where i'm as opposed to every other person who opens up a comedy club every other person who opens up a comedy club opens up a comedy club to make money right they say i'm gonna have these comedians

you know i'm gonna make x percentage of the door and they're gonna make this and i'm gonna make a good living i'm not saying that at all my idea is to break even if i can break even i'm happy i just want to make it the most comfortable place for comedians and i want to support the art form you said the store ultimately is a venue for people doing creative shit. And you said don't fetishize the fact that it's a particular kind of magic. There may be magic, but ultimately

it's a facilitator of magic. The magic was Mitzi Shore. The Mitzi Shore let us be who we were. She would cackle, call it the island of misfit toys, and she would go, ah, the inmates are running the asylum. That was her thing. She loved it.

She loved the fact that she let these crazy people just go nuts on her stage. Then why did she let you leave for seven years? She wasn't in good health. She didn't. She got weak. She gave me a spot that night. I know. The night that I got banned, she gave me a spot.

I called her. I told her what was going on with the video. And goes wow just keep away from them and she said to me what time do you want to go up i go what time do you want me to go up she goes how about 10 30 and i go okay i love you she left me back it's the last time i talked to her is that right yeah can i bring somebody up on the show because it's hugely at scale named Isidore Singer? Jamie, can you show somebody named Isidore Singer, I-S-A-D-O-R-E-S-I-N-G-E-R, who's my version in some sense of this guy who saved my ass? Who the fuck's that, dude? This guy is one of the greatest human beings.

And the privilege of coming to this show, he is one half of the Atiyah Singer Index Theorem, a courageous guy, brilliant beyond words, who changed the entire face of mathematical physics. And a human being who I had a falling out with over the National Academy of Sciences. I hate mushrooms more than anything in this world. I ate a plate of steamed, sauteed mushrooms. Why do you hate mushrooms? I can't stand a gag. Really?

And his wife, Rosemary, is a wonderful gourmet chef, and she made a plate of it. You ever had morels? Dude, I can barely get down four sigmatic. Do you ever had morels dude i can barely get down four four sigmatic do you know what morels look like now tell me morels are like they're almost like meat okay they're like i've tried that with shiitake people say these things but shiitake's good too i ate a huge plate for this guy okay without showing any discomfort when i got to the bottom and i want i thought i was gonna throw up at this table why mushrooms i can't stand mushrooms fucking mushrooms fuck

them i hate them i hate them what do you love everything come on what do you love uh i love parmesan cheese i love salmon i love uh noodle kugel i love uh grits sure i love pozole you're cool with grits you're not cool with mushrooms fuck mushrooms wow okay but the thing is i just lost this guy i'm not i'm not um gonna see him again i have two years ago i went to massachusetts to try to see him and you know this idea that mitzi stood up for you and she was just in bad health and all this well this guy stood up for me and saved my ass and I never got a chance to resolve my you know like you say I'm never gonna see this I didn't see this person again I didn't see this guy again and I have so much love for

him but I understand what happened you're not explaining this very well. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, like the very top. He was the head of the committee called COSAPUP, which is the Holy of Holies. Okay. And I discovered that the National Academy of Sciences had faked a shortage of scientists and engineers.

They did a secret study where they looked at supply and demand and decided that the price of American scientists and engineers was going to hit six figures. And they subtracted the demand curves and they said, let's fake a demographic supply crisis where we wouldn't have enough scientists. They got us to pass the 1990 Immigration Act, which came with H-1B. And I told Iz this. And it put him in a position where the thing that he loved, which was the system, because he was the guy who made the system work. He was like Harriet Tubman. He would do things. He saved me. He saved me. He loved the system. And then I had to show him that the system had gotten so corrupted that we

were going to give it all away to China. We were going to allow the Chinese to populate our labs and put a proctoscope in the entire university system, which is where we do our research, so they would get the benefits of totalitarianism and the benefits of our freedom. They'd learn all the stuff we were doing with our freedom, and then they'd go implement and execute with totalitarianism. And Iz was so angry at me that I had found the study in 1986 done with the National Science Foundation and the National Academy to fake a fake shortage of scientists and engineers to pass the 1990 Immigration Act that led to H-1B, that he and I got to a point where we couldn't talk to each other. What was his rationale for faking it? know he didn't want to fake it he understood what

i said but the point was is that he had attached himself to the system he was well he was what made the system great the system used to be much better he recognized your your dilemma is love me is fucking love right but did he recognize your dilemma? Yes, yes. We got to a point where the world divided us. I was his postdoc. I was his postdoc. And we weren't just postdoc. It wasn't just a formal relationship. I'd go up to his office and we'd talk about jazz and love and children and heartbreak and all sorts of stuff.

And he believed in this that I showed you. Okay? heartbreak and all sorts of stuff. And he believed in this that I showed you. Okay. He had so much confidence that when I came to Cambridge, shit out of luck, when Harvard was trying to asphyxiate me, he stood up for me and gathered the entire creme de la creme of the MIT math physics world to hear what I had to say because he believed. And then he made sure that I got an NSF postdoc and that I got a postdoc at MIT and he repaired my story, right? And I love this guy.

I love this guy so much. And he was at my wedding and I never got a chance to say goodbye to him. And the New York Times did an obituary. And the New York Times hasn't talked to me for like eight years almost, something like that. And I looked at the obituary to the New York times hasn't talked to me for like eight years, almost something like that. And I looked at the obituary to hear about his singer. And like,

I'm the major quote because they were still talking to me and they do the obituary so many years in front. I've met a tiny number of people who will be remembered a thousand years from now. This is one of like three people I can say for sure. If people are still talking a thousand years from now. This is one of like three people I can say for sure, if people are still talking a thousand years from now, they're going to remember him because he did this wonderful thing, the E.T.S. Singer Index Theorem. It's just so foundational. You can't even imagine how

beautiful this thing is. And, you know, it was shocking. It was shocking to remember that I had been enough part of the system that I could be respectable, that I could be trusted to say something about this great man who just passed. I don't know, 96. And I never got a chance to say goodbye or repair the relationship. And, you know, I was in touch with his daughter who writes for the New York Times. Iz had a cabinet. And if you said something really brilliant,

like really fucking brilliant, he'd often go to the cabinet and say, you know, it's funny. I haven't thought about that for N years. And he'd pull out a piece of paper. And there was your brilliant idea, which he didn't even think to publish because it wasn't ready yet and on the one hand you were just devastated like holy shit you had that thought

and on the other hand you were like i had a thought that is singer hit you know it's like there's this level like if carlin might maybe you know for some for some comics or or uh or lenny bruce or Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor or Dave Chappelle or somebody like that there are these relationships where people are just at such an incredible level that you can't even believe that some human being has ascended and the period of time that I spent with him taught me more about what the human mind is capable of than just about anything. He's the smartest, most brilliant man I've ever had the pleasure to know really, really well. I still don't understand the falling out.

He didn't want to give up on the idea that the National Academy was good. It was locked in. Well, sometimes things can be good and flawed, right? But for him to actually take what I was saying, that the National Academy was acting against the American interest by narrowly saying we need to make American scientists and engineers cheaper, that we need to flood the market, we need to interfere in the wage mechanism, we need to allow China first look at everything we do. The concept that the problem was the National Academy when he was the National Academy. I still don't understand. What was the motivation of the National Academy to do that? In the Reagan administration, for the first time, they appointed somebody to come in from industry rather than academics to head the National Science Foundation, a guy named Eric Block. And I think he came from IBM, not sure. Eric Block took a sort of green eye

shade view of the world, like, holy shit, we're going to have to overpay for American scientists and engineers. How do we avoid having to pay six figures for new PhDs? How do we avoid letting the genius of the market solve the problem of supply and demand? Because there's no such thing as a labor shortage in a market economy long term, right? The wage mechanism will rise and you'll get as many people as you want. And when Eric Block did this, he went through a guy named Peter House, and they picked an economist named Miles Boylan, whose name I've never said, who in 1986 wrote a study that said, here's how expensive it's going to be to pay for scientists and engineers who are American in the future. from first principles that they had done an incompetent economic study and that they had faked an incompetent demographic study by subtracting a demand curve. So they hid the competence and pretended that they were incompetent to pass the Immigration Act of 1990, which brought us the H-1B, which brought us huge numbers of Chinese graduate

students who currently staff our labs and who we're addicted to. And this gives China the benefit, a first look at the benefits of freedom and the benefits of the ability to execute with an iron fist. The idea that I was telling Isidore, you don't understand your organization is doing the wrong thing you have to stand up against your own organization what was his response how dare you but did you show him the data he was on it he was on a trip he was on a trip to washington dc and he said prepare a report for me on what you're saying and i sent him the secret study that i had uncovered okay and he said how dare you it was too cognitively dissonant you're picking on the one thing that i don't want to talk about because did he say that yes he said you're picking

on the one thing i don't want to talk about you joe you're picking on his low i love this guy this he made a bad call the great isidore singer made one bad call did you have a conversation with him about this i tried he wouldn't talk to you so this guy who you loved and he loved you and you had long conversations loved me. He just stopped communicating with you. We couldn't get past the idea that something called COSAPUP, the Committee on, I forget what it's, it's an acronym, on Public Policy, had gone in a direction that was long-term deleterious to the United States.

He was a patriot. He had stood up for Star Wars under Reagan at great cost to himself he was a he was a guy who loved his country he loved science the national academy he had courage like you wouldn't believe so essentially he had a blind spot a blind spot didn't allow him to even he didn't understand that it was changing everything was changing and the thing that he loved which was the system which had been you know the thing that he loved, which was the system, which had been, you know, the thing that put us on the moon, right? The thing that won World War II

was stabbing America in the back. The National Academy of Sciences, something called the Government University Industry Research Roundtable, and something called the Policy Research and Analysis Division of NSF, the two main science groups, National Academy and National Science Foundation, teamed up against American science for the benefit of employers to make sure that they would never have to pay market prices. And fuck these people. They gave away our advantage, our geopolitical strategic advantage. And they spun an entire story about we need the best and the brightest,

but it was all about money and this guy miles boylan who's an economist who's i believe sort of semi-retired from nsf is the name i've held back my you know like i'm saying names that i don't normally say in public we i i lost somebody i cared so much about over this issue. Right? Because I told Iz, the National Academy of Sciences has gone bad. They've had me there four times to tell them that I've caught them. There's no record. At some point, they had a reporter from Science Magazine.

And I spoke. And there's no record that I said anything. I got a standing ovation at a conference for talking about the fact that I had caught them in this conspiracy against American scientists. And I learned about what happens when like you're going and you say can you please report this it's like suddenly your voice vanishes and I said you know is they've had me there four times they've asked me four times to tell them how

I've caught them and it was too much for him he couldn't come to grips and like I don't want to be talking about that I want to be talking about the Atea Singer Index Theorem or Ray Singer Torsion or any of the beautiful things, the BPST Instanton, all the wonder that is Singer brought into the world. I want to talk about him saving my career if I'd wanted one. This was the thing that didn't go that way. It was me saying, you know the thing that you loved? It's gone

bad. And I lost- It's gone bad because of economics because of economics because this thing i talked about about embedded growth obligations when the growth ran out people became sociopathic okay like you don't like this you know i looked what you did with the store where the guy who was the booker was the bad actor right and then you said well that's the thing about the store nothing ever made sense about the store. That was what was great about the store. It's true.

Okay. You want to know what I love? I love this country and I love our science establishment. I love our universities. And there's nowhere to stand because they've been acting bad for so long. They've been so corrupt in terms of shepherding the research enterprise. And I caught them. And they knew that I caught them.

And they invited me back to tell them over and over again how I caught them. What was their response to you explaining how you caught them? They hired a guy, well, they invited a guy named Sherwin Rosen who said, scientists are like cattle you breed them you birth them you feed them you slaughter them you repeat the cycle he really said that yeah the economist uh from university of chicago and i was at this and i was supposed to respond to this because scientists scientists are not economically minded, so you can take advantage of them because they're thinking about data. That's right.

Because we're all vulnerable. Because we all believe in the best and the brightest. And we're heads down in our work. Wait, wait a second. I got up and I said, Sherwin, very interesting that you think scientists are like cattle. Let me tell you a different story about economists. And then I went through what I unearthed. And I brought a room that was in an academic conference to a standing ovation.

That never happens for an academic conference. Because people wanted to hear the truth. And Sherwin Rosen went off to the airport and said, that was the most impudent young man I've ever talked to. And then I got invited to the COSAPUP committee. And the COSAPUP committee said, Eric, the problem with your model is scientists are not in any way motivated by money. They only care about the truth.

And that's why all of your models don't work. And I said, great news, because I have a friend who's got a wife who's eight months pregnant being paid $14,000 a year. So I'm going to open my briefcase, and we're going to use the tool called Revealed Preference, and we're going to go around, given that you're all doing very, very well in your lives, and we're going to open up the briefcase, and we're going to allow you to put in an IOU for how much money you don't care about to help the struggling young topologist and his wife. And I looked at each member of the COSPOP committee and I got to one of them. He said, OK, Eric, you've made your point.

And one of them said, well, who did this dastardly thing? And I said, the Government University Industry Research Roundtable. And all eyes turned to this woman. I think her name was Mary Ellen Fox. She said, well, Mary Ellen's the head of that. So then Mary Ellen invited me. So then I gave this talk again and again and again and again, right? And they wanted to know, how much do you know? How much do you know? And then there's no record that any of this happened. And one of the reasons I don't talk about this, it's not that I don't have the goods, it's that I don't want to ruin the beauty of who we are and what we do. I keep waiting for these people to retire

and stop ruining our universities and stop ruining the next generation of kids and stop charging people so much that they have to effectively go into gray area prostitution in order to pay off their student loans. I keep saying, when are we going to get rid of this class of people that ran everything into the ground? And I've now given up. And that was one of the things that I did by reviewing what you did with joke thievery, as I realized that you said, joke thievery isn't actually funny. There are things that aren't funny. And these things that I'm talking about, about burying careers, about destroying people, about interfering with the wage mechanism, about giving away our advantage to our geopolitical rivals are not funny. And they're not cute and i've realized that

this is the thing that i'm unwilling to talk about i don't want to get into the ugliness of going up against the national academy of sciences and saying what the hell is wrong with you people but now i've decided i'm going whole hog and i'm going to be who i am. One of the things that I'm worried with when it comes to woke culture is not that people think the way they think because I think a lot of young people think that way. A lot of young people have socialist, Marxist ideas because it seems like it's a good thing to think of. And then woke ideology,

at least on the surface, seems to be spreading what you would call social justice, which seems to be a positive thing, right? On the surface. these Chinese scientists is that what my real concern is and I think this is probably actually happening right now is the way that people are expressing things online is not entirely organic.

I think it's partially organic but I think it's influenced by foreign entities. I think it's influenced pretty considerably entities i think it's influenced pretty considerably i think there's a lot of elevating and escalating a lot of the the rhetoric incentivizing they're hacking our openness as a system yes and they're they're accelerating the rhetoric and pushing the narrative because like this the thing about this woke ideology that we were talking about before with this forced compliance is that people feel compelled to agree with everything. They feel compelled to go along with whatever the ideology is proposing. can insert almost like bad code into an operating system, like a virus into an operating system,

and accentuate or advance things past the point that just a few years ago would be considered preposterous. And I think that this woke ideology, the way it permeates through academia, and the way it doesn't allow for reasonable debate it doesn't allow for uncomfortable ideas and it enforces things like safe spaces and and trigger warnings and all this shit that's just not supposed to be any not supposed to have anything to do with learning and growing and exploring ideas that we are empowering what are essentially our economic enemies and our political enemies we're we're empowering other countries i think these things are all connected and i think the economic motivation that allowed those people to essentially cut the Achilles heel of science by making it so that these scientists

could only earn a certain amount of money and disincentivizing people who are economically... I want to make scientists reasonably middle class or better. I want men and women who are raising families. I want them not to have to worry about money so they can pursue science. Yes, I want gay couples to be able to raise kids, but I want them in the same state. Yeah. I know people who are two states away who think that they have jobs close to each other. Okay?

What do you mean? Like somebody will have a job in Arizona and somebody will have a job in Wyoming they think they have job what do you mean by the jobs are so scarce that married couples will live in different states Oh scientists scientists right women will beat I interviewed investigators for the American Society of Cell Biology, and principal investigators who were at the top of the bio pile say, we're supposed to not have children because we have to show that we're serious. Oh, Jesus.

Right? And one claim was, we make people wait to get tenure into their late 30s and early 40s because some percentage of females discover that motherhood is as interesting as science like i unearthed so much crazy stuff people talking about the joys of slave labor what you would talk to somebody and say look you know you can say what you want about best and the brightest but really what i enjoy is having a slave labor force. Americans don't actually listen to directions. Who the fuck said that? A particular PI. I don't understand what that means. What do they mean by that? Somebody is trying to say the system is broken and trying to tell me in an anonymous interview. I worked for the American Society of Cell Biology through the

National Bureau of Economic Research and the Sloan Foundation. And I interviewed, I think it was like 25 leading, called principal investigators in biology. And these people told me the most hair-raising things about the nature of biological research. Okay? And I thought, why are you telling me all these things? What does that have to do with slave labor?

And I thought, why are you telling me all these things? What does that have to do with slave labor? That the PIs, the heads of labs, need an army of people to do exactly what they say in order to be competitive to win grants and get prizes and publish papers. And they described it as slave labor? Yes, slave labor. They basically talked about undergraduates? Nope. What are they talking about? Graduate students.

Graduate students. Graduate students aren't students. Graduate students aren't students. They're a labor force. They're minimally students. Postdocs and graduate students are a labor force. So the idea is that they provide a service, but ultimately it will lead to them being PhDs and... Yes, but very often what they're really doing, the foreign ones, are very often trying to immigrate. And so the idea is that the way into the country is that I'm going to

contribute N years of labor at a very high level at a very low price, pretending that I'm not a worker, that I'm a graduate student, into the system. China, for example, will get the ability to look at what we're doing because their people are in our labs. The PI gets low-cost labor to carry out the research. And the system is based on the idea that pliant labor is in an abundant supply. So I forget, like a quarter of PhDs went to China, something like that. And we talk about them as students. So the whole thing is like people want to unionize.

How can you have a union of students? They're students. Well, really, they're a cryptic labor force. The work that's getting done is being done by the students who are really not students. You're a student probably for the first year or two of graduate school then you're a worker so the whole thing is completely corrupt it's cryptic there's like a system called fringe rates there's a system called overhead it's funny money through and through and this whole thing is organized so that senior principal investigators, PIs, can run their careers with these labor forces. And then they take pictures and they say, look at our lab and how wonderfully international it is.

But what they're really selling is immigration. Whoa. Right? So, yeah, this is why the National Academy and I. This is fucking heavy. No kidding. But the point is, is that we just gave away our technical advantage because we couldn't get the money to pay for our own labor because we actually have the best and brightest people right here in the States.

So these people learn as graduate students on these projects and then take that information and go back overseas. Or they stay here and they have a very strong tie because very often our professors, in order to remain competitive, have to take on this kind of science knows no boundaries. Well, if science knows no boundaries, why are our tax dollars supporting it? So this is how you get to a situation like where the World Health Organization refuses to say the name Taiwan. Exactly. Because they're so economically...

And our people are not... I have this quote, which is very difficult for people, but it says, the idealism of every age is the cover story of its greatest thefts. And one of the greatest thefts is science is international. Science is international. is international a result that's true about a virus is true in one place and true in another you know right same thing about a

theorem but we maintain a national science program in part to give us advantage economic advantage military advantage we've got all the smartest people and they're squandering that and what we've done you see I want China to say shit we're cut off from the benefits of freedom we're gonna have to free up our own people if we want top-tier science we can't do this totalitarian stuff anymore the same way they've sort of opened up their economy do a version of capitalism version I want competition I want to say look I don't know if I don't want to The same way they've sort of opened up their economy to a version of capitalism. A version. To encourage competition. And I want to say, look, I don't want to fear you. I want you to be more open to your people with their middle fingers up telling you to go fuck yourselves.

And in order to get that freedom, remember Tiananmen Square and the Statue of Liberty and all that kind of stuff? In order to get that, we can't give them the benefits of both systems what we've done is we've given them the benefits of freedom by taking all the stuff that they can see that we're doing and then they have all the benefits of command and control so they execute like crazy and they listen through their people here and then they build you know programs where people go back and forth. And so what we're doing is we have a group of people who are so idealistic, like, I can't see these boundaries. I can't believe you're bringing up the specter of nationalism. Okay, well, this is the idealism,

is the cover story of a theft. The theft is that we have the greatest educational system we train the best people we have high schools in new york that have won more nobel prizes in science than all of china okay and we are destroying ourselves lying that americans can't do science i see your complaint but what can be done about it well one thing is is that if I have a friend who has a ridiculously large podcast, I can go on about once a year and I can say crazy shit. And then maybe, maybe somebody will write about this. Somebody will talk about it. Good luck finding that.

I know. Joe? That's a pie in the sky right there. I don't know what to do about it, but what I've been trying to do is I'm going to say it. You made a very good point. It's really interesting because I didn't know what to do about it, but what I've been trying to do is I'm going to say it. You made a very good point. It's really interesting because I didn't know it worked that way. And the way you describe graduate students is essentially almost like indentured servants. Well, this is the thing about, this is why Iz and I lost our friendship,

is that I tried to say, let's think about what's really going on. And he looked at it and he's just like, I can't go there. In fact, he said to me at some point it's like i'm not saying you're wrong i'm just saying i i can't because he's too embedded into the system because he look this is a guy who made the system run like if you're proud of our universities if you're proud of our government if you're proud of journalism in a previous era this was the kind of a guy who would break the sons of bitches who would do bad things he cleared stuff out of people's way he knew who was who was naughty and who was nice and he made sure that his people survived there's another thing though it's like rebellion is a young man's endeavor

a certain point in time a man gets settled into his life and his position and who he is and you know it's hard to i'm not i'm not bitching about him i know you're not i know you're not but it you know i think you're uh what you said is very important there's a lot of shit you said that I don't understand at all. I just let you talk. I don't know why you got hair ties on your fucking thing here. Because those are one degree of freedom as you push them up and down. Remember three degrees of freedom? I opened up a can of worms.

You should check out pullthatupjamie.com. You should stay off Clubhouse. How about that? I have been largely staying off Clubhouse. So do I have a regular gig here Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? When are you coming back? Anytime, brother. You've got to get out of LA, though, before it implodes.

They're falling apart. They killed their gang unit today. You know that? Oh, no. Yeah. I'm waiting to get the Lex Fridman invitation. He's already moved here. He moved here today. No, I know, because you invited him.

You haven't told me to move here. You want to move here? No. You should move here. Should I? Everybody should move here. He's already moved here. He moved here today. No, I know, because you invited him. You haven't told me to move here. You want to move here? No. You should move here. Should I? Everybody should move here. It's awesome. But then nobody should move here

because there's too many people already. Exactly. Traffic's already so hard. Dude, sometimes it takes five extra minutes to get where you have to go. It's crazy. Oh my God, that's terrible, Joe.

Traffic here is so cute. They're like, the traffic is crazy. Like, you need to go to Orange County at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Just take that fucking suicide drive. So who have you gotten to move here? You got Suzanne to move here. You got Lex to move here. Did you do Elon?

No, I don't think so. No, Elon was fed up. No. No, Elon and I didn't even talk about it we both kind of came to the same conclusion organically um i got uh i think holtzman probably moved here because of me is tim dillon tim dillon moved here because of me for sure he thought about suing me because when he moved here the ice storm hit uh tom segura definitely moved here because of me uh there's there's more're coming. There's waves.

Once the club opens, then the full wave. Then I'm going to do scholarships. I'm going to do whatever the fuck I can to get people here. I have a plan. It's a weird plan. But it throbs in my head like a weird sound that only a dog can hear. I have an idea. What's the plan?

The plan is to turn this into the hub of stand-up comedy. There's a lot of logic behind it. One of the big pieces of logic is that there's no reason for us to be in Hollywood. The only reason for us to be in Hollywood is we were always chasing sitcoms before. But now if a comic gets a sitcom, it costs you money. It's a loser.

It's a loser in comparison to a podcast and you got a bunch of suits around you telling you what to do hey hey easy on the suits brother i have a couple of those but it's like i've done it so it's you know i can be at this moment in my life this stage of my life i can be a a reasonable spokesperson in that i really am just doing this for the art form and then i really do love the art form still and i think that we for somehow because of economics we've been embedded in hollywood in terms of like acting like actors and and and you know and television shows but we are as far from actors as a creative endeavor can be. Like, comics are as real as you can get.

There's no acting. You know what I think is science, music, and comedy. Those are the great signs of intelligence. Well, it's an underappreciated art form. Because you guys are all broken. It's a little bit of that, but it's also because it seems normal it seems like you're just talking

it's like if I see Gary Clark playing guitar I go oh I definitely can't do that but if I see someone talking I go well I can talk he's just talking

he makes some good points but I can make some good points it's the the instrument is the instrument that everyone uses all day long

every day so it gives off the illusion yeah that the art form of communication of comedy right it gives off the illusion yeah that the art form of communication of comedy right it gives off this illusion that it's not that big of a deal right and but to people that do it the guys like the tim dillons yannis papas he's another guy i got to move here he comes here next week um there's there's more coming but the these the guys who

are really doing it they understand and they understand that i am really in it for the art form genuinely this is gonna be mecca i want it to be okay i think it can be and i think it can be for the good of the art form because i think if i can provide a base like a real home base where they know there's every home base every comedy club that we've ever had, even though they've been great, they've been run with an economic motivation. Right. This is not going to be run with that.

You can afford not to do it. Yeah, I just want to break even. That would be my goal. But if it doesn't break even, I'm okay with that too. I just want it to be right. I want to set it up right. And once I set it up right, I want everybody to grow. And it's like a gym if you have a

bunch of killers in the gym you get better you get you get better by the music scene here enhances it yeah sure for sure that's for sure people are in that that they've got that muscle yeah pretty strong well it's it's tight here it's real good it's a real good scene and you know gary also helped me move here too because when gary junior yeah he moves here he lives here shit yeah he he was he was here before me though he was living in la and you know we were he and i were talking and he moved back and i go why'd you move back he's like man i just was not fucking feeling hollywood man he's like it's just not me i'm from texas he was like i'm a simple dude i like brisket

and cadillacs and guitars and i mean that comes forth in his music you know like the purity of his music and uh he that made that made sense to me and that was before the pandemic that was before it you know and well texas blues by the way is its own sub thing of the blues i mean whether it's i don't know that place stubs where where Chappelle and I were playing? Steve Ray Vaughan used to go there and work for food. They used to feed him. That's how he would go out there and play, and they would feed him in the early days of his career.

I did not know you were a big SRV guy. I'm a huge SRV guy. Yeah, I used to work out to his music all the time. Are you an Albert King guy? I've heard his music, yeah. I think of Stevie Ray Vaughan as like really some major insight on top of a few select voices and, I mean, huge amounts of new stuff. But really, the amount drawn from Albert King was pretty amazing.

Well, you know, blues all comes from a bunch of different sources, but they all feed off of each other, right? You go all the way back to Robert Johnson, and it's like, that's one of my favorite stories of all time, is that he was so good, everybody thought he sold his soul. And if you go listen to it now, you go,'s just good you know but oh i don't know those record it's like two records only right yeah i believe so and it's brilliant but the number of song the number of standards that he came up with um even minor ones like hellhounds on My Trail and Sweet Home Chicago.

He was clearly, especially for the time, what year are we talking about with Robert Johnson? 20s, 30s? Yeah. So he was clearly on another level. But there's always a LeBron James. There's always some person that's just like. Okay. I think that B.B. King and Albertbert king it's sort of hard for us to

understand about freddie king freddie king is super important but i don't think i think that the issue of bending notes that bb and albert did in their particular boxes next to each other on the guitar neck in which like one of them you associate with Albert, which is kind of meaner and more minor. And the BB box, weirdly, is all about this major minor alteration through bending. You don't hit a note by playing the note. You hit a note underneath and you move up into it. And so it's this vocal articulation, a particular kinds of vibrato.

And the weird thing about super technical technical players like the most like a john petrucci or something is you say like well who do you revere and they'll say bb king and you're like huh he played super slow and well yeah but with five or six notes so just break your heart infinitely you won't care you'll just stay there you know right and it's sort of this idea of really deep musicianship that um i took me a long a lot longer to appreciate albert because albert was was gritty it was much more idiosyncratic he played flying v upside down backwards the gauge of the string everything was like really weird and he knew that he was doing everything quote wrong age of the string everything was like really weird and he knew that he was doing everything quote wrong but i think stevie ray vaughn really just said okay this this guy has said so much

i'm going to prove it and i'm going to prove it by building my legacy on top of what this guy contributed i'm going to show you how brilliant this guy was it changed my mind i think that's one of the interesting things about any genre yeah is that people piggyback on the work of others it's clearly the case with comedy you know it's um who would you say are your greatest influences well everybody comes from lenny bruce everybody all of us lenny bruce kicked open the door and he's the robert johnson he's he's the guy who started it all off, but it's hard because comedy is not – it's hard to listen to Lenny Bruce today. Like you listen to Pryor today. I think Pryor took what Lenny Bruce was doing and made it a lot funnier.

Pryor figured out a way to just be more vulnerable and more self-deprecating and personal and just figured out a way to just be more honest. Not that Lenny Bruce wasn't honest, but it just wasn't as exposed as Pryor was. Pryor still to this day is hilarious. He's one of the few guys that it resonates today. You go and listen to old Pryor, it's still really funny. Whereas Lenny Bruce is like you've got to kind of put yourself in the times of Lenny Bruce you got to put yourself in the 50s and 60s and try

to imagine what it was like to be seen this incredibly suppressed I think I so much of what I believe was important about the 50s is that jazz and comedy and a few of these things like like maybe beat poetry, were so dependent on the oppression of the normies, right? That there were these just islands of magic. And they were so oppressed that things that are standard to us today were just revolutionary to them. Well, that's the thing is that I listen for what these guys were doing. for what these guys were doing. And I think about there were these math and physics seminars in the Soviet Union that we did not understand

were entirely dependent upon the fact that everything in the Soviet Union sucked. And so that you could go to these places and here's an island of transcendence in a sea of shit, right? And so in a weird way, I think the U.S. had this, and I don't know if I mentioned this to you before, at some point they held San Francisco home movie night

at the Castro Theater, and I went. And they asked everyone to send their old home movies of San Francisco. And people were filing out of Candlestick Park or something in 1962. And I noticed that half the people looked like modern human beings and half of them had that glazed look that you'd have with a formal hat on your head and like a suit jacket that you associate with photographs from like an earlier time.

And so it was like you were looking at cardboard cutouts and modern human beings simultaneously. So a melding of the times. Yeah, that there was some transitional thing like if you ever watch albert einstein everybody's in a suit and tie and he's in a sweatshirt yeah and you're thinking like wait you were in a sweatshirt when everyone else was doing something else yeah um there is sort of almost no trace of this and george thorogood was the guy who said when i saw the beatles on ed sullivan he said it was the first time i saw young people having fun in public on tv like just not performatively they were just having a blast

right and i didn't realize the extent to which this was the oppression that animated the lenny bruce milieu and that you know if you were going to see lenny tristano or um you know dizzy gillespie or bud powell don't you know like if you just think about Tristano or, you know, Dizzy Gillespie or Bud Powell, you know, like if you just think about the beginning of Howl, you know, this thing about I've seen the best minds of my generation, blah, blah, blah. People are seeking something authentic and real and the hippies aren't yet. You know, we just lost Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the great last beat poet of the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. I don't know how he lasted this long, over 100, I think. I think we forget about the beats as important to that time.

Well, I think people are being suppressed in a different way now. I agree. They're being suppressed by people that purport to be intellectually open-minded and progressive, and it's not necessarily true and there's a suppression on the other side of that and unfortunately a lot of people are embracing like far right-wing ideology to combat that because they feel pushed into a corner and there's this there's a different kind of pressure but it's all it's always pressure to get people to conform pressure to get people to comply it's always pressure to get people to conform, pressure to get people to comply.

It's always pressure to get people to accept an ideology or a way of life that they don't like. But the comedian takes the opposite angle. Yes. Like the pressure to think for yourself. That's what we do. Yeah, that's the job. But why is it the – the thing that you said to me that really still resonates is you said, for a while we couldn't figure out how to tell jokes.

I really remember this. You were saying we would go to college campuses and it wouldn't work and then we gradually realized how you had to tell a joke and then it became the golden age of comedy this is a conversation you and I had I think what's going on right now is a good thing for comedy because comedy has become radioactive and certain words are forbidden. But that just makes it so that you have to figure out a more clever way to describe things in a way that resonates with people better, in a way where while also being funny, you're figuring out a way to let these people know you're a good person.

You're a good person, but you're talking shit. So what confuses me is I would imagine that our comedy right now and our music right now would be as good as they've been for a long time. And I think our comedy is pretty amazing. And I think our music is not hitting the same heights. I don't know that. I don't know that. If you just look at musical complexity,

there's been all these recent studies about what is the... Maybe music needs some repression i think repression to the ultimately look at all the like what happened in the 60s it was responsible it came out of the repression of the 50s i think that's real i think we need an opponent we need a an antagonist and a protagonist well this is the people we need a yin and a yang where people don't understand about my reaction to wap is you have a reaction to wap oh yeah for sure just say wet ass pussy can you say that say that say it for me wet ass pussy there you go you say he said he went off mic what my reaction is the same as my reaction to little nas x

given satan a lap dance well okay like you go girl that's my reaction my reaction my reaction is you're you're screwing up the repression angle how so if you want to say something like wet ass pussy you want to do it in a way that you're frustrating it and making it difficult. So you have to work for it. Just saying it. Yeah, but you can say it. It's just like it's a wave, man.

It's coming in. It's going out. It's splashing against the rocks. You kids in your ways. It's chaos. I hate it. Mr. Weinstein. Get off my lawn.

All right. I got to wrap this up. I love you. And you, sir. Thank you for being here. You have an open invitation. You know this. You're thestein. Get off my lawn. All right. I got to wrap this up. I love you. Thank you for being here. You have an open invitation. You know this. You're the best. Next time, no hair ties.

I don't know what the fuck's going on with that. Check out. Check out Eric on Clubhouse. He's there 24-7. Stop it. And you get a great podcast, too. Tell everybody where they can get that. They'll figure it out.

It's everywhere. The portal. The portal. It's everywhere. The portal. You is it on YouTube it's on YouTube I should be I'm gonna go back to one yeah video okay talkies no but I mean I know you mostly you do audio right I had been avoiding the studio I didn't like the idea of doing over. I don't like Skype interviews. Right. I don't either. So I tried to wait it out in part. I'm going to go back to doing real interviews and just vaccinate people.

All right. Tell him to wear three masks. Who gives a fuck? Get in studio. All right. I love you, buddy. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Thank you.