The Joe Rogan Experience - #339 - Jacob Ward

Episode Date: March 18, 2013

Jacob Ward is the editor of Popular Science magazine.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Powerful, Jacob Ward, but you prefer Jake, right? I do, yeah, call me Jake. Jacob is very biblical. Dude, I gotta tell you, I'm sold on all of your sponsors. Really? How cool. I don't know if it's them or you or what.

Man, I'm in. I see a lot of pitches during my day, you know, I spend my professional day like, look at, people are pitching me all the time. Stuff's cool. And you actually made the name of the Galaxy sound cool, which is impossible. That's the longest name for a phone. It's a great piece of technology with a terrible name.

Yeah, Galaxy X3, Galaxy Note 4. It's just too long. I know they've got a lot of phones, but man. I was just thinking that the other day. Why don't they just call it something different? There's a lot of names in this world, I'm here to tell you. Yeah, there's no need for that, right? Why does everything have to be Note this and 3 and 4 and X and 5?

I don't know. But the tech, I mean, the stuff itself is amazing. And you're absolutely right that a couple years old phone is a great deal. They change so fast. Yeah, especially the Samsung phones. Apple, you have to wait a couple years for a new iPhone. Because each so fast. Especially the Samsung phones. Apple, you have to wait a couple years for a new iPhone. Because each one has to knock it out of the park. You've got to go all the way with Apple.

Yeah, but I don't have the confidence in them without Steve Jobs at the helm. I need a crazy person, completely obsessed with success. This regular Tim Cook fella, he seems like a regular dude. Yeah, I don't know enough about him. He's supposedly a very orderly person, which you would need like at the very least you gotta run them all out of that place i think when he gets home he probably relaxes and i don't need that i don't need that

my ceo yeah yeah you need a guy writhing around angry yeah pissed off at coders because they got something wrong in google maps with tacoma you know that's right that's right fucking tacoma washington's in the wrong place or whatever it is. Whatever it is that Steve Jobs has to go bananas for. That's right. How long have you been the editor of Popular Science? So I had a crazy experience. I was the second in command at Popular Science for five years.

I was like the doer. And then my boss decided to leave and I got promoted about seven months ago. And suddenly I'm running a 140-year-old magazine. I'll tell you right now. It's a big responsibility. And I feel, you know, I freak out each morning for five minutes. I'm like, I can't believe I'm about to go make these decisions. And then, boom, I go off and do it.

It's a great thing. It's been an honor. It's been an honor. The popular science episode or issue that I quote to people all the time is the one way back in the 1930s. Love it, yeah. Hemp, the new billion-dollar crop. Oh, yeah, totally. We were way out in advance of that. That's what's cool about popular science.

It's like we're at least five or ten years ahead. We put our flag into each issue if you look through history. I can't take credit for that personally, but it's really cool that it happens. That was on the cover of Popular... It was actually Popular Mechanics. That's cool. I hear I'll clear up a confusion for a lot of people. People are like, why is there Popular Mechanics, Popular Science,

all this stuff, and why aren't we the same magazine? We're actually competitors, which is a weird thing, but it's because we date from the era when everything had the word popular at the front of it. Popular portraiture, popular, you know, whatever. It was basically saying like, hey, normal person, come read this thing. You don't have to be an expert. Unfortunately, I was incorrect.

Popular science actually demonized marijuana. That's probably true. We probably did. Way back in 1936, it was when the government had gotten their greedy little paws. I mean, let's be fair you know that's the depths of the depression that is not you everyone's freaking out

you know that is not you and that is not the popular science of today and blaming popular science for that would be like blaming me for killing Indians and to be truthful

like there's worse stuff than that in the history of popular science we have a cover in the middle of World War II that has this cartoonish

racist caricature of a Japanese guy. And if you look at the Google archive that we have, bracketed on either side of that man's face is how we're going to drop missiles from tanks, fighter jets. Everything is military hardware on either side. To look at the archives of Pompous Ancestors is to look at an art project that is the history of America and what we were thinking about at the time, but written in these really cool covers. So it's pretty sick. Back in the day, there was so much more responsibility, too, to kind of deliver this kind of information. Joe, with all respect, you would not be on the air in 1936.

Of course not. Like the access to technology, right? The fact that you and I get to the air in 19, you know, whatever, 36. Like, the access to technology, right? The fact that you and I get to have this conversation and people are listening, right, which is such an amazing and wonderful thing, is so new. I wouldn't have been on the air in 96. Oh, God. No options. Right.

No options anywhere. That's interesting. You've been in this game long enough to know, right? Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah, it's a whole new world. And back then, you know, pre-Walter Cronkite, man, to get on the air, holy cow, was that hard.

You know, the amount of work, the amount of letter writing on letters to negotiate, you know, whether that guy's going to be a guest on Cronkite. You know, oh, my God. And the ability to control the public's perceptions of things back then was so complete. Sure. Like what Harry Anslinger and William Randolph Hearst did with controlling the public's perception on- Right. You had to be so brilliant and kind of scary to rise to the top of the money heap, and

especially to have enough of a fortune that you lasted through the 30s. You got to be a carnivorous human being. You're a scary dude. And then if you put something in your magazine or in your newspaper back then, that was doctrine. Well, yeah, but here's the thing where I would say, I see where you're going with it. And I'm with you halfway there. I think the William Randolph Hearsts of the world, you know, were very crazy and very rich and it was powerful stuff. But the people that you hire in to run your editorial product, you know, or the person you hire in to

be your publicity guy. Back then, I mean, think about the generation that generated Apollo, right, and all that stuff. Like, those guys were raised in the values of you do the best possible job you can. You repay hard work with hard work. And, you know, it was an earnest group. And so, you know, I'm like, my dad is a writer. My uncle's a writer. Everybody in my family comes out of the sort of New York magazine world in some way. And it's a real meritocracy. People are really trying. Now, that said, there was a lot of other stuff.

Everybody's white. Everybody's a man. Like there's a lot of other limitations to the – The good old days. Yeah, the good old – I mean it's what it was. It's what it was. But now it's a – but to now be able to be on the air with you like this, it's just cool. It's fun.

And more people can listen to it than ever before. Everybody can listen to this. It's so cool. I've heard people say that they believe that in today's era, the Watergate would have never happened. And that that sort of sting operation against the present. Oh, my God. Not only would it not have happened, it would be on 5,000 Galaxy S3, whatever the name of the phones are.

Everybody would have filmed it. You're not going to be able to get away with anything in the future, people. I'd like everyone to know, this is an important message from Popular Science Magazine, behave yourself. Law enforcement is about to get serious.

They're going to know exactly what's going on. Here's a crazy thing that I did a story a little while ago about this. There's a thing called IARPA, which is a – and I have to choose my words carefully because this is sort of a complicated thing or a sensitive thing. But anyway, IARPA is an advanced research project agency for the intelligence community. There's DARPA, which does it for the Defense Department. IARPA does it for a coalition, each of like the NSF, CIA, whoever will kick in dough and everybody funds little incubator projects of research to see, can you do stuff? And you basically, the way you, what you do is you issue a challenge to the public and you say,

anybody who can do this gets a million dollars or whatever the prize is. And that's how robot cars first started out. You know, those guys in the DARPA urban challenge is how these Google self-driving cars are coming about. But this one, there were these two projects that I bumped into. And mind you, I can't tell you for sure that the implications of this are what I think they are. But here's what the programs themselves do, the challenge is. The challenge is, can you identify visual information in video, basically, such that if I am looking for – well, so here's the first challenge. The first challenge is from the visual information in the photograph.

You're looking at a computer, it looks at a photograph, and from the visual information inside of it, it knows exactly where the photo was taken. Whoa. Does that make sense? Triangulate from the visual location information. And you know, right, you've got to be a hardcore New Yorker to be able to spot a photograph of any corner in New York City

and know exactly where you are, right? That's a hard thing. Imagine a computer designed just to do that thing, a piece of software that can do exactly that thing. Would it be able to triangulate anywhere in the world based on where the light source is coming from? I don't know, yeah. I don't know if it would know time of year, right?

Someday that'll be possible. I think someone was busted recently with something. I don't remember the specifics of what it was. Someone was claiming to be somewhere when they took a photo, and then some analyst looked at the photo and said that's not possible because this photo was taken in this hemisphere and the light source is from here, so it had to be taken in the afternoon. Totally.

It's all data, right? That data is out there. It's just can you parse that data fast enough? And in this case, these computer programs are saying, okay, can you triangulate where everybody is? Then another one they're working on is, can you feed a query into the database and have it return information not based on, you know how like on YouTube, you'll see tags at the bottom, right? I mean, I'm sure under our, you know, tags, Joe Rogan, whatever. Those keywords help everyone search and organize it themselves, right? But this is a program that can go in, look at the visual

information of what's being shown in front of it, and be able to come back with a correct, you know, a set of photographs or videos that, you know, correspond to those search terms. Look at Google image search. Nowadays, you can upload a photo and it will show you pretty much every similar photo. It'll show you where that photo is. In both Facebook and Google, you've got the ones that where it says, who's this, right? I put pictures of my daughter up on the internet, you know, to show her grandparents and, you know, it'll say, who's this, you know, or whatever, there's a little question mark over And it'll say, who's this? Or whatever, there's a little question mark over her face. Like, who's this little cutie?

And I'm like, I'm not telling you, Google. I don't want you to know that. On the other hand, Google, there are some good-hearted engineers there who probably have a really good, useful thing for us for being able to find pictures of your daughter wherever they are. I mean, that might be useful. It would definitely be useful. But it seems like we're resisting the inevitable

with a lot of this retaining privacy rights and things like that. I had a dream last night. But the fight should go on, maybe. Yes, I think it should. I think it should, first of all, because one of the real issues is that along the way on this fight,

the issue is being decided by people. People are deciding whether or not they can read your email. People in the government are deciding whether or not they can listen to your cell phone. How are they qualified and how are they moral and how are they better than you or how are they as good as you? We don't know anything about them, but yet they can look at your dick pics. You're totally right. You know what I'm saying? I mean, that's wrong. And how did they get to be a government person? I mean, are they really ambitious and are they really ethical or are they someone who really seeks to

change the world or are they just some schlub who backhanded his way up to the top and now he's reading your email? I like to believe that the people – I believe in civic institutions. I believe they really can function, especially when they come out of the generation – two generations ago, there's some nice – there's just – there's some good, dutiful people still in this world. You know, there's some nice – there's just – there's some good, dutiful people still in this world. You know, and I'm very cynical about that stuff too. But I'm surprised how often – like I was just at a thing the other day at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. It was one of these challenge programs and these various students, you know, young, like undergraduate age, Air Force cadets, you know, Marines, whoever they were, were coming forward with their cool science fair project, basically. And this little panel of generals was saying this one or that one. It was very cool.

But at the beginning of it, the guy who is running the show, the emcee or whatever, in military style, I don't know what an emcee is, but stands up, says hello, describes the artillery and said, but before I begin, I'd like everyone in the room to take a look at the emergency exits over to your left, and then there's one in the back, and then there's one over here. And as he pointed at each place, everyone in the room, military cadets, look to the one on the right, and the one behind them, and the one on the left. They're totally, and it turns out when you go with the program, sometimes good things result. It's cool to be in a place where when things catch fire, everyone runs for the exit in the way that you're supposed to. Not like a rap concert.

Yeah, right. Sure, right. But it's just cool. I find some of that order. If you meet a test pilot, those guys are just money. That's the world's most reliable person. I definitely believe in discipline. Maybe not with a bottle of whiskey in them.

I believe in order and I believe in discipline, but I don't believe in other people controlling people. Well, that's right. That's the real issue. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. You imposing your values on me is not okay. Right. And imposing the ability to control people by having their information.

It gets into weird areas when you don't know the motives of the people looking for the search. It's just so gray as to like who's allowed that. Now this government, this administration has made it so that there's all sorts of warrantless wiretapping, warrantless arrests and the ability to detain citizens without any due process. You don't have to have a lawyer anymore. You don't – all the checks and balances that were in place it's like someone's people a lot of people unfairly think that if you criticize the way things are it's like oh he's an anarchist no he absolutely not i i believe there should be a system of checks and balances but i also believe there should be cops i believe there should be lawyers there should be judges there should be jails because people human nature is that you

know in the the real world, people fuck up. Totally. I mean, I'm quite excited by the amount of, like you were saying, Watergate could never have happened, right? We'd been caught so quickly, right? The amount of sort of, you know, just the number of eyes on us right now mean that people are going

to behave themselves more and more, but only if there is the threat of punishment for messing around with that. And so I think that as much as I want these incredible services, the kinds of things that you, cheap software, cheap website hosting is a great idea. The cheapening and democratizing of stuff, like your sponsors represent that kind of thing.

But in order for that to happen you have to have the threat of law you know you have to have that or the threat of anonymous i think you know one of the things that i love about the internet is the rise of citizen activism and people who have look the morality of the anonymous internet is pretty outstanding if you stop and think about the people that Anonymous have gone after, they've gone after some really fucked up people, and they've kind of decided as a group,

sort of just through the internet, without even meeting in person, yeah, this is fucked up. Let's expose this. Let's go after this. And I think that's really encouraging, because when people are anonymous, and they just have the choice

to do whatever they want online, and yet they decide to try to right wrongs. It's the most evolved form of democracy. It is so granular. You've got a reliable way of measuring public approval or disapproval on almost any subject you can think of by virtue of comments and the forums, the participation that we're all suddenly having. I mean, it turns out when you take away the worry about being shamed in public, people really do bold things. They go out there and they write manifestos.

There's so many. I'm supposed to go off and do this speech to my college, a writer's conference, and I was asked in advance, you know, what's it like to be a writer now? Is this a, you know, what is the state of writing now or whatever? And my feeling is like, it's so nice to be, it's such a good time. I didn't say this, somebody else originated this, but to be, it's so much of a better time to be a reader now than it ever has been before.

You know, so much cool stuff to read because everyone can write. Everyone can get into print. I read this the other day that 90% of the world's data was generated in the last two years. Sure. It's unbelievable how much data there is. Right. And we can't, and it's a fire hose.

We don't really know how to parse it yet. Twitter is so primitive compared to what we're going to have in 10 years. Yeah, what is going to be the next one? I never saw Twitter coming. I never thought, even when it came out, I was like, okay, what the fuck is that? I know. 140 characters. It's all code.

It's text messaging to anonymous people. That doesn't make any sense. Right. And the guy, Jack Dorsey, who founded Twitter, has this brilliant thing where basically he was geeking out on the patterns of cities. He was way into police scanners and stuff and was tracking the signals that like limo services ping back and forth. He was just interested in the like, the flow of information that is generated by cities. And he saw that ambulances and limo services and delivery trucks have a system for saying, where are you? And then the truck says back, here I am.

There needs to be a system like that everywhere. And his thing was, let's give it to people. People don't have a system for reporting in their location and their status. And that's where status updates came from. It's interesting because that's what it used to be but it's not really that anymore. What it's evolved to now, at least on my Twitter, my Twitter is all fascinating articles that people send me that I retweet or weird pictures that I take. Your neighborhood

of Twitter is different than mine. It's really interesting. I've already acquainted with your followers and I'm like, oh damn. You get slaughtered up in here if you do something wrong. I'm used to polite popular science readers. Yeah. These are freaks. These are people out I'm used to polite, popular science readers. Yeah, these are freaks.

These are people out there on the fringes with shotguns in their underwear. Go on, man. It's great. When the zombies attack, I want your guys. That's right. My guys can't help me. That's right.

They know how to raise solar power. My guys probably can't, actually. They know how to hunt. Yeah, my guys would actually devise something, some piece of software that would control the Gatling gun, and we'd all be safe. Well, your guys would devise a new method of power that didn't rely on oil.

Yeah, right. Get together and, you know, my guys would be burning wood. We'll have zombies, like, walking on treadmills forever, generating power. Yes. Yeah, put a zombie in a dog collar and make him go to work for you like a gerbil. Popular Science was the only magazine my dad subscribed to as a kid growing up, like, since the

70s. What was your dad? He still does today. What did your dad do for a living? He's an engineer. Oh, cool. Yeah. What kind of engineer? He built huge batteries, backups, and stuff like that, and huge things for huge companies. That's great. Yeah.

He's tried to retire several times. He's like a master electrical engineer. Yeah. I bet he's part of the old breed. That's right. He knows what he's doing. Yeah. That's so cool.

Now, you guys have transferred onto the iPad. Yeah. Now, have you noticed the subscription, the paper-based is dying for sure? Here's what's so great about working for Popular Science and this is why I'm so lucky that it's this magazine I've inherited because there's a lot of magazines with a lot

of problems. Popular Science is just like, it's a universally beloved brand. Even people who don't read it actively know or have never even read it know what it's about. And so it's such a cool universal thing to just walk in anywhere and be like, popular science. And it's like, oh, my dad reads that, whatever it is. And there's a cool sort of a hipster subset of guys like me, I think. Anyway, that's what I imagine, who are starting to pick it up in their 20s, dig it as just a thing to sort of geek out on.

But it's got a really loyal following in every medium, basically. There's the voracious internet hordes, the seething mass of internet guys come to our site and are really brutal if we get it wrong. They're great. I mean, they're exactly the kind of engagement audience you want. And in print, we have people who, we pour a lot of effort into the print magazine. We really try and uphold, you know, you're paying money for it.

So, man, I'm working to make it as good as I can. I'm glad it still exists, too, in print form. It's great to take in an airplane. You know, it's great to – it's beautiful visually. You know, and you can find out so much about various things. Now, this episode that you're – or issue, rather, that you're promoting is the brain issue. Yeah, the brain issue. So, you know, it's an amazing – what's so cool about working at Public Science is that we get to touch on everything, right?

We can do robots. I mean, literally, I would come here anytime you want, Joe, because we can talk forever, dog. Yeah, for sure. Really fun. I like how you call me dog. So the brain is one of many subjects we cover. This one is – what's amazing about it is how little we actually know. We are just starting to noodle around just around the sort of the basic functions of the brain.

We don't really have any idea how personality is built, you know. I mean, we have some idea, you know, but like the subtleties, like why we get along, whatever, all that stuff is totally unknown in terms of how the brain functions. But already, just by literally poking at the brain with, you know, zapping it and stuff, we can do amazing things already, you know, like ease the symptoms of terrible diseases and do all kinds of crazy stuff. But hey, before we get into the details of that, because here's the, like, can we talk about

something I actually wanted to ask you about, which is sort of fear in general, the psychology, like, just think about like the subtleties of personality and the brain in general. I'm really interested by how different a person I am from the people that can handle fear in any real way. And you, I know, you had to watch people be really, really

afraid for a living. Still do, really. Even more so. And even more so now, I was going to say now as a matter of now that you're you're really doing you know observe excuse me observing a sport that you love you see like how the people for me who can train themselves to be unafraid or can channel their fear in the face of getting pummeled by and by a big person right by a big dude, is an amazing thing to me. And how that trait is expressed physically in the brain

versus how a guy like me who's like, fuck, dude, I'll give you any money I've got. Don't beat me up. I'm not a fighter. The difference between our brains, who knows what that is? That stuff is so subtle. You don't need to have the ability to perform under pressure like that. You don't think?

No, but if you did, you would. You know, if your life depended on it, if you were in some sort of a walking dead situation and you had to deal with fear, you would deal with it. You think there's two kinds of people, basically. I don't even think there's two kinds of people. I'm sorry, right, no, I'm saying two kinds of people. You're thinking just one kind of person, and it's just the choices you make. Yeah, there's survivors or people who die. I mean, literally, there's no— during most exchanges in civilized society, there's no need to be afraid of other people.

There's no need to be afraid of violent altercations. It's very rare. Unless you're in terrible environments, unless you're in war, unless you're in really, really bad neighborhoods, most likely you're going to be safe in San Francisco just going to your job and interacting with human beings. But when you're forced to

in a day-to-day basis overcome stress and fear and it becomes a part of your reality. And once it becomes a part of your reality, in terms of performance, it almost becomes something that you kind of have to be inoculated to. Right, right, right.

Like you start off slowly and like even stand-up comedy. The first time I tried stand-up comedy, I was terrified. Terrifying. But now I'm not scared at all. Now it's fun. And that is like part of you've got to be competent. You've got to have your bases covered. And I remember competing as a martial artist.

There was a big difference between how I felt when I was really prepared and how I felt if I was injured or if I was sick or if there was something wrong or if I didn't train hard enough. When you have doubts, that's when you're in a really bad place. I would say, though, that the raw materials are distinct. I mean, we can agree, right, that the raw physical materials of people are distinct you know distinct from one another like my my wife is an olympic was an olympic hopeful she was a track and field runner and uh you know her body and its strength i mean she had a 30 inch vertical she's 5'8 you know like or 5'9 you know could hang from the rim like has hang time all this stuff i used to play ultimate frisbee in college.

I took her out a few times to play it with us. And we'd never had a real athlete play before. She was out running all the dudes, all that stuff. There's distinctions between people that I think are just part of the thing. And I think there is an expression of that in the brain, that the brain is built differently for different things, which is not to say that you're wrong about that. No, no, no.

But the question is, are those physical distinctions from her gifts from the womb, or is it from constant focus on athletic activity? I think it's a little of both. I mean, fast twitch and slow twitch muscles. I mean, we know that, the difference between that, like long calves versus the ones that are high and tight, and there's jumping ability, there's sprinting ability versus being able to run long distances. There's just distinctions between people physically it doesn't mean anything other than just genes are out there that's what's amazing so with the brain

with the the the way that it uh is distinct you know can do amazing things like we're literally putting pins into brains now delivering a little signal and turning off, you know, seizures and turning off stuff. Like it is amazing. Triggering memories, right? Yeah, triggering memories. So there's basically a new category of a thing called biomechanical engineering where they've taken, you know, guys like your dad who might have, you know, who like to tinker and are good at that, right? And turn that into, combine them with, you know, a little bit of medical training or maybe pair them up with a medical student.

There's programs that do that. And being a biomechanical engineer, they're literally creating little devices that'll do stuff. So in one case, in the case of dementia, it's basically putting a pin, essentially, imagine a pin, into the brain and delivering a little jolt. But first you have to pick out the pattern. So in this case, it was monkeys that had been taught a cartoon game, basically like a turn over and match the cards kind of game. And when they got it right, that signal, the computer picked that up, right? Software recorded that pattern. Then later, when, I don't know if it was the same

monkeys or new monkeys, forgive me, but when they played again, they would use the signal to encourage, to stimulate the part of the brain that had lit up when the monkey got it right last time. And they found that they could increase the accuracy of the monkey by 10% on a consistent basis by jolting them right before they were about to make a decision, like hitting them with whatever the signal was at that time. And then, this is the other crazy part of it, they then hit those monkeys each with a hit of cocaine and watched their, you know, they fell off by 20%

basically from their normal abilities in that game. Then they started doing this zapping again and could restore them to normal ability again, right? So the trouble in this case, though, I mean, or the reason that this is still a decade or more from being possible in humans is we don't know, you know, life is not like a game of flashcards. You don't know what the signals are that you're going to want to prompt ahead of time or whatever. But they think that there's some memory stuff that might be, you know, that we could in future sort of improve our memory, right? You have a little signal processor and a thing that would zap the right spots of the brain or whatever, you know, could someday. It really is such a fascinating time in regards to what we're saying earlier

about data and information, but also in the fact that we still have so much to learn when it comes to the human mind and the ability to recreate it, which is something that scientists are really actively focusing on right now. I found a, an article in your magazine that I thought was really amazing where scientists had created a tiny artificial brain that exhibits 12 seconds of short-term memory. Yeah.

How nuts is that? Yeah, I know. Exactly. How long before one of those is in your pocket? I know. I know. And has all the information of the entire universe. You know what's totally well it's a real i was just uh hanging out with this one of these total

boy genius uh kids this guy uh brilliant guy i mean aza raskin very smart dude and he was uh pointing out a thing to me about google uh where evidently one of the chief sort of uh you know math officers essentially of of google uh basically released this paper in 2000, 2001 that said that it doesn't matter how good the software is, the more data you give, you're always going to outperform even the best software. So basically, really good software, given a small data set, is not as good as mediocre software, given a small data set is not as good as mediocre software given a huge data set, right? And so data is what gives you your correct answers every time. So you don't, in fact, need the little brain. What you need is a little device that connects to the whole big brain, right, to the like the world of data around it. Well, that's sort of analogous to an educated person.

Right. You know, I mean, if a person is a clever street smart person or a person is just of average intelligence but very well educated, you would, you know, much rather go to that person. Yeah, the intellectually curious, right? The guy who, like, wants to find out the answer. Or has access. Yeah, or has access.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of really smart people that probably live in Siberia and they're forced to work a trap line catching minks and shit, you know? I mean, if you don't have data and you don't have access to more data, that's who you are. That's what you do.

You will excel in your field, but your ability to actually do things will be completely limited by the data that you have access to. Right, right, right. It's cool just to see how people are being given so much more data than they used to. It's really hard to be sort of an ignorant person these days just because there's so much information coming at us now. It's also hard to pay attention to everything.

Oh, yeah. Totally. It's like there's not enough. I literally find myself sometimes I come home and my kids are all asleep and I just get on the internet at 10. And before I know it, it's 3.30. And I'm still reading things and watching videos. And I'm like, shut this fucking thing. Jesus.

Shut up, hive mind. Yeah, but I can't help it. And I really find myself struggling with disconnecting from Twitter. struggling with disconnecting from Twitter. I have not mastered it, but I know a guy who turns it off for, he goes to places without internet connection. He takes his laptop to places that don't have an internet connection.

Maybe that'll be a new like hip thing, right? It'll be like places that don't have wifi, but you can go there with a computer and sit without wifi. And that's where he does writing or whatever, any actual thinking he has to do. Because, yeah, I'm like you, man. I get distracted.

I'm addictive. I do my writing that way where I don't go online. I have this program called Write Room. And what it does is it allows you to see only the text on the screen. The screen goes black, and it's green text on the screen. And I just – the most limited word processor. It shows you when you're spelling things wrong, and it's green text on the screen and i just the most limited word processor it shows you when you're spelling things wrong and that's it perfect and then when i want to go back and like google certain things i'll have like little highlights in certain areas and i'll go back

to those and then i can get online and do the rest of my research but i find it's too easy to look at porn it's just too easy it's just way easy. The stuff is perfectly designed to get your attention. Oh, it's so quick. By the way, with Google Chrome, all you have to do is press Y and it goes to you jizz. You don't even have to do much more than that. That's because you go to you jizz.

I know what it is. I know if I'm looking at something and I want to show my wife something, I've got to press Y-O-U-T so fast. I know. I've got to go through Y-O-U and then T. I can't because she's a clever one. She's over my shoulder and she sees me hit that Y.

I'm thinking about just putting it in the fucking bookmark bar right there, a little YouTube link. Just click the private browsing thing on Safari, which makes it so it has no cookies or anything. I don't use Safari. I find Safari to be whack. They have it in Chrome, too, I think. Is it?

Yeah. I really enjoy Chrome. I love the fact that in Chrome, I can go to the HTML, to the address bar, rather, and just type a question. And it'll take me to a Google search. It's beautiful. I mean, that is just, we live in awesome times.

It really is awesome. But still, I've described this as this time we live in now as the roaring 20s of the digital era. Oh, yeah, nice. Where you could still go like this. We don't have to have a license. We don't have to talk to a government official and get a license. And it's have to talk to a government official and get a license.

And it's still rare enough that we're popular. This makes us, we're like 7.5% more famous than other people. Someday that percentage is going to drop down because everyone's going to have access. Sure. And there's also a lot of people online that were never famous before and got famous because of their online content, which is really amazing. Comedians, I know comedians like our friend Russell, Russell Peters. Russell Peters became famous because of YouTube. Is that right?

Yeah, people found his clips on YouTube, and now he sells out the O2 Arena in London two nights in a row. Wow. That's like 18,000 people. The whole generation of those out of nowhere, literally out of nowhere success stories is so cool. And it's so modern. That's totally what we, like this era made that possible. Yeah. I love the ability to distribute content, the ability to distribute artwork and podcasts and comedy shows on YouTube or what have you. I think it's just the most amazing time ever for self-promotion, self-publishing.

Sure. We live in really cool times. Like you say, like we were saying earlier, it's a great time to be a reader. Anybody can write those. People tapping out whole novels on their phones. Yeah. There's cool stuff out there. Well, didn't Stephen Wright write a whole novel on Twitter?

Oh, is that true? Yeah, he wrote a whole novel, 140 characters at a time. Is that right? That's funny. I hadn't heard that. This fucking guy's crazy. Yeah, fascinating. Is there anything in this episode or this issue that deals with the very controversial issue of antidepressants and their effect on the human mind?

Yeah, I saw people asking about that. So, you know, antipsychotics, here's one thing that I'll say about... Or SSRIs or not antipsychotics. Yeah, sorry, not SSRIs. I don't have a good informed opinion on antidepressants. I just don't know enough about it. I wouldn't know how to comment on that intelligently. I will say that, you know, antipsychotics, which are a sort of, you know, an extreme thing, right? There's all kinds of, you know, incredible research being done, you know, but we're still, it's still very early days in our understanding of what drugs do to the brain and what happens here and there. And so, you know, antipsychotics, there was a statistically significant group of people in a, I think, God, I'm going to misrepresent this, but basically I was talking to a university professor who had done this study about, she was a clinical psychologist who had done a study about people taking antipsychotics and a certain number of the patients were so

transformed by this new generation of antipsychotics that they voluntarily went off them to go back to the hallucinations that they'd had before. It's not a lot of people. I don't want to misrepresent the number, but it was a statistically significant group of people, which means that there are people who, for whatever reason, their reaction is, I would rather... So in one of the cases that she described was a homeless man who believed that he was being pursued by the Russians and was living in stark terror in this kind of Cold War nightmare every waking moment. And he was homeless and so forth, just a ruined guy.

He goes and he begins to get this antipsychotic medication, and it turns off not just your hallucinations, but it also maintains your ability to reason and function. It can be very helpful sometimes if it works. And I'd like to point out that's not always true. But he was so destabilized by discovering that nobody wanted him. The Russians didn't want him. Nobody wanted him.

He's just a homeless guy. He's bummed out? Yeah, he's just a bum dude. But he was bummed out? Yeah, because he wasn't special anymore. He was the star of his own action movie for so long. And poor guy. And he

voluntarily went back to living that life. He took the blue pill and then wished he hadn't. I would like to see what he saw before I made any sort of a judgment on him. Because who knows? He might have been living in an awesome world, like a Winnie the Pooh ride at Disneyland. Totally, totally.

You know, just neon colors everywhere and fucking Russian agents hiding behind two-dimensional trees. Driving a convertible. Yeah, I mean, who knows what he actually saw. Anti-psychotics, although a fascinating subject, is quite different from the SSRIs. Yeah, absolutely. Which I think the SSRI subject is a really, really interesting one. Yeah, what's your feeling about it?

I mean, do you... I don't need them, so I feel like it would be really silly of me to make a judgment in one way or another. I don't have any personal experience with them, but I do have friends who have had personal experience with them, and people that I really respect, that

they changed their life for the better. That's right. So I definitely think there's certainly a benefit to them. The other thing is, which one? I have a friend, and he got on some antidepressants, and they started him off on one, and it sucked, and then they switched that and got him to another one. How do a friend and he got on some antidepressants and they started him off on one and it sucked and then they

switched that and got him to another one. How do you feel on this? And then they doubled his dose and I'm like, what the fuck are they doing? They don't have like, they don't do a blood test and give you a very specific, this is what you weigh. This is exactly the thing. We don't know how it works in the brain. The blood-brain

barrier is this, you know, basically this, the body's system for keeping things, only the tiniest molecules from passing into your brain, because it's such an important organ. Like, no one gets in, right? VIP. Except weed and booze. Get right in. They do get right in. They get the front of the line. So, you know, the ability of, you know, medications coming through that barrier to, you know to change your mood or your outlook on life, it's such a difficult thing to predict. Wow.

Yeah. And not only that, it's so variable between human beings that it's one person would describe. You'd almost think you're dealing with a completely different substance, one person's reaction to another. Sure. For some folks, it's mild. For other folks, they have horrible side effects. Yeah. And they can't tell until they put you on it.

Right. It seems like there's so many variables when it comes to any sort of a medication that affects the mind because you're dealing with who knows how many thousands of generations of genetics, where your origin was. It's pretty well known that certain people, certain nationalities have a difficult time with alcohol because they don't have a cultural history of it. They don't have a genetic history of it. Well, the truth is human beings don't have a history of alcohol. We're not evolutionarily supposed to be drinking booze.

Stuff is poison in terms of just the toxicology of it. But we evolved, literally. I mean, there's a whole field of evolutionary biology that studies the moment that we began to drink alcohol. And it was, you know, I don't even, I couldn't even guess when, you know, it's probably, you know, fifth century BC or something, something, you know, way long time ago. you know, 5th century BC or something, something, you know, way long time ago. But the idea was that, or one theory is that you would drink it in order to survive eating rotten meat.

Yeah, traveler's poisoning, they would call it. Oh, is that true? Traveler's sickness, yeah. They would drink wine with all of their food because the alcohol in the wine they thought would kill rotten meat. They hadn't really figured out how to refrigerate things. Look at you, Joe Rogan. You want a job? No, thanks. I also read a fascinating thing about the origins of alcohol being that it was with

honey. Huh. That they had figured out a long time ago that honey was a preferred method of storing things in because it prevented deterioration, prevented things spoiling. Right, it's a preservative. And one of the things that happens with honey is that it ferments and becomes mead. And mead, yeah, this was one of the theories of Terence McKenna on the changing of cultures from earlier psychedelic-based mushroom cultures to cultures that were more alcohol-based

was that they started storing their mushrooms in honey. That's so great. Is that honey. That's so great. Is that true? That's so funny. I don't know. I mean, I don't think there's... I think any history older than 6,000 BC is like... Who knows?

Good luck. Good luck. That's right. Yeah, try to figure that out. But they know that many, many cultures were preserving mushrooms in various ways. Some of them were drying them out over the fireplace. They were doing all these different things with mushrooms.

And they know for sure they started storing them in honey. And they also know that there was climatological changes where mushrooms weren't growing in areas anymore. And they had to switch to different intoxicants. And then the raping and the pillaging started. And then shit got crazy. According to McKenna, at least. That's great. I hadn't heard that.

Yeah, but mead, that's a lot of people don't know, that alcohol made with honey is an early intoxicant. I have to tell you, though, I once went to a wedding where the only drink that was announced to us when we arrived would be honey mead that the groom's brother or something had made, and everybody had honey mead that the groom's brother or something had made. And everybody had only mead. And it's not like I hold it against people, but I would have happily paid cash for a whiskey cocktail.

You know, like, oh my God. What does it taste like? It was like, oh man, I don't know. It's like weak. It's like a cross between wine and beer almost, but sort of a sour, sweet, you know what I mean? It's a weird drink. I didn't like it.

I didn't like it. Did anybody like it? No. I would say, like the whole wedding was people dumping the stuff into people, into plants. Dead plants everywhere. And over and over again, somebody would stand up and be like, and raise your meads. Oh, God. You fucking dork.

Exactly. Are they Dungeons and Dragons players? Probably. Probably. Oh, people are so silly. That's right. Careful. Those are my people. Only me., probably. Oh, people are so silly. That's right. Careful, those are my people. Only me.

They're probably my people too, but they're still fucking silly. Not that it's bad to be silly. I'm pretty silly. I was a big D&D guy. That was my thing. Roll the dice. I'm 6'7". I should have been playing basketball, but I was inside casting spells.

Really? Rolling D20. The world draws you or the universe draws you to yeah where you'll be safest yeah maybe maybe you're safer rolling dice and tricking me me this is a weird choice the guy makes it himself is that what it is i guess so yeah he was making himself and was was i've never heard of that i've heard of people making wine i've never heard anybody making their own mead yeah i don't know it was definitely a where i went to college there was a a house of uh renaissance guys uh and and at one point they uh uh they would practice basically in the courtyard of the dorm and when uh one of my friends figured out that uh if you

yelled hold it was the super secret signal for them to all – that somebody had been hurt. Somebody had been like poked in the eye with a Nerf sword or whatever. And they would all go down on one knee. And it was like their practice thing for like taking a timeout. It was like stop hurting each other. And so for like – for about a week, you could trick them every time. You could just yell hold across the courtyard and make all of them kneel.

But it only lasted for a second. Those are my people, man. I love it. The best kind. Have there ever been any studies on figuring out what it is, what the process is with people that can't handle alcohol versus the people who have a history? I'm sure. I don't know what it is, but yeah.

I mean, you know, it makes sense, right? It would be like how long did people have the gene that allows them to, you know, turn the liquor into sugar, you know, or whatever. Like, I don't know what the distinction is or if they've discovered that, but I'm sure someone's studying it. And what's the mechanism for blackout drunk? Right? What is that? Isn't it just that just tolerance though your brain just says enough when you're young one beer got you drunk and you know the more you drink it now like i could drink a million beers and not get blacked out but that's not true you can't even drink one without slurring well slurring

is different than blacked out it's true but but like if i drink jack if i if i drink jack i'll black out if i drink if I drink I mean literally if I get the best five or six beers I start to be on the verge I'm a mess the blackout thing is fascinating to me

because some folks I've seen people who are quote unquote addicts and they can't do anything they can't drink

they can't smoke they can't do anything they'll drink coffee you know coffee apparently is okay but if they have one drink they're gone they're off to the races and they're doing heroin and sucking dicks for cash money to get home whatever they just they they don't know what happened they don't know what

what it is but for me I can get fucked up and I still remember pieces and chunks and I get home and you and I don't really black out. So I have a good friend that fucking blacks out. I mean, completely blacks out. You give him two drinks. Our friend Joey Diaz says it's the Indian in him because he's Mexican and Mexicans were part Indian, part Spaniards, that the Indian in him kicks in and he's gone. He just vanishes. He's no longer there.

You look in his eyes, looks like a gerbil. He's got gerbil eyes. You know, you look at a gerbil, that motherfucker doesn't know what's going on. That's what he, I don't, what is, I mean, do you know what that mechanism is? I don't know. No, I don't know enough about it. But I, I mean, you know, like I say, though, the stuff is poison. Eventually your brain, your body is going to say, okay, enough.

Good night. No, it's going to paralyze your arms so they can't lift any more of it to your mouth or whatever. It's going to paralyze your arms so they can't lift any more of it to your mouth or whatever. There's a lot of new research being done on substances that act as a vaccine for addicts. Huh. Are you aware of any of that? Yeah, sure. I mean, one of the pieces that we are looking at here is a piece of technology that allows you to head off seizures and lets you basically not only deliver an electrical signal into the brain, but also a very precisely timed jolt of medication. your ability to not just,

it affects not just the function of the brain at the time, but can also guide it a little bit, basically. So the way it's designed is like this tiny little, you basically end up with a film, a molecule-thick basically film of, basically film on top of this electrode. And when you hit it with a negative charge, the film releases a medication deep inside your brain and it'll turn off seizures. And they think that they can also do stuff with, that it might be able to help ward off the effects of Parkinson's.

Basically seizures happen, you know, everybody, every, so many kinds of ailments can cause seizures, right? It's super useful. So, and they also think they could use it to, to turn off some of the addictive impulse that it could detect, you know, I don't know how they would do this, but somehow they would detect the signal in your brain ahead of time that signals, or maybe it's, you know, the environmental thing of like, you know, he's alone, he's been alone for the past two days, who knows how it could be triggered. And then boom, it hits you with this thing that, that, you know, jolts you up a little bit, wakes you, you know, gets you up again. Do we know the difference between the,

um, a physical addiction in the mind and the strange addictions like gambling? Sure. I mean, you know, it's the reward mechanism in your brain. Your brain is, is a, um, basically is, is rewarding you at all times for whatever it is you're doing, you know, with a nice feeling, you get a little jolt of, of serotonin, uh, for having done the right thing. You know, a lot of the time that's sort of a guiding principle of your body basically. And so you get a little thrill from things like Twitter, checking Twitter, right. Or, you know, there's a whole body of, of, uh, writing that's been done about this, like the, the addictive nature of picking up new information all the time and how that's why we can't get away from the internet.

Sometimes there's no reward and you still do it. Yeah. Well, it's right. It's compulsion. That's the thing. It becomes a tick, right? It's a compulsion. Your brain forms pathways. It, it, it literally, of your brain to reward yourself more and more deeply for that addiction over time. So gambling is exactly that kind of thing. It's, you know, what will I get? What's the little reward I'll get? And there's the expectation of it, the temptation of it, all of those things. Plus then it does pay off sometimes.

It's a crazy – just your brain is an elastic thing. It's changing and adapting to keep you alive and doing the best you can no matter the circumstances. So if you're exposed to an addictive thing enough, it's just going to adapt to that thing. Are you aware of the correlation that studies have done about correlation between brain damage and addictive behavior to gambling? No.

Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Yeah, we had a friend in here, used to be a boxer, the president of the UFC, Dana White, who has been hitting the head a bunch, and he gambles like ridiculous. No kidding. He's lost a million dollars in a night and won six million in a night. Has he ever sought a professional opinion as to why that is? He's rich.

He just keeps gambling. Cool. He just keeps party rolling. If you can, man, go. But he also has had a brain scan because he was going to enter into a boxing match about six years ago. And when that happened, they found spots on his brain. Like, yeah, you've been hit a lot, dude. Huh.

Huh. Yeah. ago. And when that happened, they found spots on his brain. Like, yeah, you've been, you've been hit a lot, dude. And that the fact that he's addicted to gambling, crazy, fascinating. The correlation between the two of them, it's like, there's damage. So your brain's just like constantly urging and this impulse to seek these rewards. We, so not to, you know, selfishly steer this to my magazine, but in this issue of the magazine, we have a thing about basically savants, the idea of being a savant. For anyone who doesn't know, it's the idea that you're just this perfect, incredibly skillful just master of a thing, whatever that thing is. master of a thing, whatever that thing is. And, um, there's a, a B basically it's the story of the, of this guy, Derek Amato, who was a, uh, he was a, you know, pushing 40, uh, uh, you know, normal guy, uh, playing, uh, football in a pool with his friends in Sioux city, South Dakota, where he's from. And somebody throws a pass to him from the jacuzzi. He leaps into the pool for it. And he whacks his head really hard on the bottom of the pool and, you know, comes up and

thinks that he's like broken his skull, you know, he's clutching his head, you know, really in agony. Goes to the hospital. He's got a very serious concussion and, but they send him home, you know, there's nothing really to be done. And so they send him home and he sleeps for like four days, basically. He wakes up, he goes over to his friend's house, one of the friends that was with him when he was playing football and sits down at the guy's piano or keyboard or whatever and just begins to play the piano and has never really played the piano before um and begins to just you know can do the triads and you know he's doing all the fancy stuff and uh the he then immediately of course goes on the internet and it like, Jesus Christ, what's going on?

And he said it was like an itch that he needed to scratch. It was satisfying to play in a way that he couldn't – had never experienced before. So he looks online and discovers that there's a whole field of study called – into what's called acquired savant syndrome where you pick up a miraculous skill like this from some sort of debilitating brain damage or whatever the thing ends up being. And so he was led to a researcher who diagnosed him as having this thing. There's like fewer than 30 documented cases in the world. Wow. But it happens.

And I'll just tell your listeners right now, don't go whacking your head on stuff. It really doesn't work out most of the time. How is that possible? Is that from memory? Well, this is what they're trying to figure out. And really doesn't work out. How is that possible? Is that from memory? Well, this is what they're trying to figure out. And so there's two things, there's two competing theories about it. One is, and maybe that one of them is wrong, so I'll keep that in mind. But one of the theories is that when you damage a part of the brain,

you can sometimes damage a part of the brain that had been inhibiting the other half of your brain, basically. The right brain, you know, it was inhibiting the left side. And by damaging the right side, the left brain becomes disinhibited. And so one of the things that they, one of the examples that they use is, you know, as we get used to stuff over the course of our lives, we begin to develop a shorthand for it in our brain, right? You don't pick out the details anymore. You're picking out the very general landscape. I was just thinking about this on the drive here, right? We're driving through Burbank and, you know, I was looking at a truck and thinking to myself, how would I see that truck if I was seeing it for the very first time with, you know, with that side of my brain disinhibited. Every rivet, right? Every little

reflector and the panels inside the reflector, like just tripping on the details. And instead my brain can go truck and boom, I'm onto the next thing. And so that kind of shorthand they think gets maybe scrambled, disrupted in some way when you damage a part of the brain and suddenly you're seeing everything fresh again. And so there's a whole world of guys who can do amazing new things. And there's a whole new world of people who do artistry. People who are old and have dementia develop an artistic flair all of a sudden. With the savant syndrome, is there like a loss correlation?

Like they lost this and so now all of a sudden that? It almost always comes at a terrible cost, yes. You know, reasoning, you know, something will come out. You know, you'll have people who are severely, you know, some of the most amazing savant stories are people who are very developmentally disabled in other ways. You know, an IQ of 54, a verbal IQ of 54, this one kid could listen to piano on TV once and play it perfectly, whatever it was, Tchaikovsky in a movie, and he'd sit down at the piano and play. And so he, but he's severely developmentally disabled. This is somebody else who's, that's not an acquired savant. That's just a famous savant case. So in some of these cases,

yeah, it comes at these terrible things. He has pain, you know, and this guy has pain, has all kinds of, you know, terrible debilitating things from his head injury, but can suddenly play this stuff, you know. And so the other theory about it is maybe in the dying of a part of the brain, there's weird electrical activity that, you know, supercharges either the area in some way or, you know, this again, they don't know enough about the brain to really have any idea. We barely understand concussions. You know, I mean, actually, we have a pretty good grasp on concussions, but we, you know, have no experience protecting people from them, you know, and all of this because the brain, just our understanding of it is so new. What is the thought on people that have autism and can do amazing things?

Like, have you seen the young man that can look out a window from a plane and draw a picture? The British gentleman, yep. He's unbelievable, right? It's insane. If you've never seen the video, folks, just Google it. I believe his name, someone on the board posted it, Stephen Wilshire, DJ Crackpot.

Nice. Thanks for putting that up there, buddy. Yeah, that's his name. DJ Crackpot. Nice. Thanks for putting that up there, buddy. Yeah, that's his name. The ability to do things that a normal person would literally never be able to do ever,

and this guy can do it every single time. Right, right, right. Is the thought that the mind is still evolving and advancing, and one day we're all going to possess those sort of abilities? I haven't seen anybody do any research that would suggest that. But I do think that there's a lot of just, and I just have to say that as the editor of the science magazine, I can't, I don't know. Just speculate it. Yeah, sure. I like that. It sounds cool, but I don't know that that's the case. Anyway, the feeling though is that, you know that autism is a vast spectrum of symptoms.

It's not at all common for someone who's autistic to also have these savant-like abilities. Those are really unusual things. What's crazy about the thing that I find so interesting is these people who are aging and developing, uh, you know, paint, being able to paint, being able to do all this stuff. Um, there's an amazing,

uh, sense. I, I, I, I like the theory just from a, like, because it's kind of nice to think about that.

There's, you know, as people's minds are decaying, certain artistic abilities or whatever suddenly begin to flourish. Like, it's pretty cool. I don't know. I find that story pretty neat.

Um, but, uh, like Lewis Wayne, you know who he is? No, no. Who's that?. I don't know. I find that story pretty neat. Like Louis Wayne. You know who he is? No, no. Who's that? He's the famous artist that used to, I think, draw for the New York Times or something like that. And then he started getting schizophrenic or started going crazy at his older age. And just his normal drawings

of cats, like here's an example. His normal drawings of cats, which were really normal looking, started to get more and more psychedelic almost looking until near the end of his life. It was straight up like a Grateful Dead tattoo almost. I've never seen that. That's really cool. The one on the right there is so complicated.

Well, that looks like psychedelics. That looks like something you would see if you're on mushrooms or on DMT or something like that. It looks like math. That's right. It's very fractal. Yeah, fractal. That's right. Which is what you see when you're on mushrooms or on DMT or something like that. It looks like math. That's right. It's very fractal. Yeah, fractal. That's right. Which is what you see when you take hardcore psychedelics.

So who knows? His mind might just be slowly flooding itself. The other one is Henry Darger. Do you know about him? Henry Darger. He's fascinating. Same kind of guy. And his art, he did so much art that he,

from the history of how it was stacked up in his apartment, when he died and his landlord found all this work, nobody knew that he was doing this stuff. And it's incredible. He illustrates whole novels of this stuff. And it's all fantastical. It's quite creepy, too. I'll tell you right now. I mean, you know, a lot of stuff about little girls and stuff.

Yeah, he's just absolutely obsessed with little girls. A lot of stuff about little girls and stuff. He's just absolutely obsessed with little girls. But the body of work got more and more intense and more and more prolific at a certain stage in his life. And then at the end of his life, it had tapered off and he wasn't doing it anymore. And they think that his schizophrenia had sort of flamed out at a certain point. Wow. Yeah.

Schizophrenia wears off? Well, they don't know, but over the course of, as you get old, the brain changes, and somehow it changes. So, yeah. It's crazy, because if you get, yeah, some of this stuff is very disturbing.

And when you get in there, the note there in the bottom, I'm sure, like he has all this mythology. He wrote all this stuff. He had two races, the Tatalingians versus the such and such. I can't remember what it is,

but it's two armies going up against each other. Wow. Yeah, crazy stuff. It's so fascinating how someone can lose their mind and in their artwork you could sort of see the the the window into their craziness you know like through their their their their offerings through their creativity it's manifest yeah the human mind is such a strange thing in that we're the only animal that we know of that's truly aware of what the fuck is going on and that is also truly aware of its origins and development we have some sort of sketchy

information about dolphin intelligence and we we there's a lot of speculation when it comes to what they can and can't do but the reality of what humans can do as opposed to like what they used to be able to do you know000, 100,000, a million years ago. I mean, when we go to Australopithecus and we see the little pieces of stone that they used to chip into a slight edge to cut meat, and then you look at a cell phone. That's right. That's right.

I'll tell you right now, there's an app we made where you can take a photo of yourself as an Australopithecus or as Neanderthal and see what you would have looked like. It literally maps the details of your face. If anyone wants to check man, you know, so much stronger than we are right now. Would totally tear apart the greatest UFC fighter just because they're just so much heavier. They were really short too. Built for battle. Yeah, they're short. Five feet tall, 200 pounds. Totally.

Built completely different than a human. But would get in there and like stab a rhino in the heart with a spear, a sleeping rhino. That's how they would hunt. Do that and then run is like their job. So they would find – this is one of the theories about why they would find the vertebrae of buried Neanderthals would be all messed up. Because from terrible falls and being like trampled and rolled by some rhino, they just stabbed the bravest people. Or just dumb as fuck and really strong. But they're why we're here, right? pulled by some rhino. They just stabbed, you know, the bravest people. Like, you know. Or just dumb as fuck and really strong.

But they're why we're here, right? I mean, like, they had to do it. Well, they're totally separate from us, Neanderthal. I mean, we carry around some of their genetics. But there's a lot of speculation as to whether or not we interbred with them or whether or not we just have similar origins. They think that because they, you know, were around at the same time, it may have happened at some point. They had larger minds, too, which is even crazier yeah yeah they had larger brains

and people what probably means or i don't know probably it's not the right word but but may mean that you know they had different senses right different other capabilities like larger eyes too yeah right like maybe time slows down right for like anderson silva time is you know certain slowness when the punch is coming or whatever. And these guys probably could see it from a mile away. They can see that rhino tusk coming around. Yeah, you probably had to. We know by their bone structure and what we know about their tendon structure,

they were ridiculously physically strong. Oh, God. Two, three times stronger than a normal human. Oh, yeah. Like literally could tear your arms off if they got a good purchase on you. Like really strong people. Have you seen this thing recently where these Harvard scientists are trying to talk a woman into giving birth to an Neanderthal?

Oh, my God, no. You haven't heard of this? I mean, I've heard of it, but I don't know anything directly about it. Yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah, they're trying to find a brave woman. Oh, I thought you meant that they had found one and were trying to talk her into it. I'd heard about the thing, but... Well, they're trying to find one.

They're willing to implant the embryo of a Neanderthal. I was imagining the actual negotiations with the specific woman and found myself thinking that'd be a tough day. It would be tough because there's plenty of crazy people out there, I'm sure, that would do it just to become famous. If they thought they could be the next Kim Kardashian

if you threw a fucking caveman in their pussy. The reality show of that? Like going around to the Shishi Mall or whatever. Yeah, with a Neanderthal baby. That's hilarious. Well, they're really trying to do this. It would be amazing. I don't know that it's, I think it's a great idea

to actually bring one back. Terrible idea. Amazing science, I'm sure. I mean, what if we find out that, you know, that we had to fucking kill them off because they were killing people, you know,

and they were our mortal enemy and that they were trying to... Can we split the proceeds on this movie that you're writing right here? Can we somehow... I think it's already been written. I think there's probably...

Because it sounds good. I would see that. Well, I mean, we really are entering into very unexplored territory. Right. There's a new frog that has been extinct for over 30 years that they just have created in a lab the one that births

uh it's young through its mouth that was with its trait i guess wow yeah through its mouth is where it gives birth crazy and they've created the first embryo of this now extinct frog the de-extinction movement there's a thing. I'm really not down with that. Yeah. You know, some of it, though, is, I mean, I'm with you. Yeah. I don't want them, like, you know, letting loose herds of 25-foot sheep, you know, just because that's a better meat source.

Mammoth. Yeah. You don't want the, you know, you want a little government regulation on this one, I think. I'm not sure if the government's wise enough. Yeah, maybe not. Regulation of some sort. Yeah, whatever it is. Something.

Something. Some scientific consensus. Somebody. Yeah, whatever it is. Something. Something. Some scientific consensus. Somebody needs to hold that back somehow. But anyway, but yeah, it's a, you know, there are some things where you could, you know, where we could learn all kinds, you know, it'd be amazing to know exactly what we had in common with XYZ. Sure. You know, person.

I mean, you know, the amount of mileage that people get out of even the most, you know, loose stories about like, you know, we may have inherited, you know, this trait for aggression. It's like people love reading about that stuff. You know, that's a really interesting trope for a lot of people. But to know like this Neanderthal was this way, you know, it compares to, I'm just kidding here, but like, you know, it'd be like the way that, you know, an animal correlates to its modern day incarnation, right? And what that connection is, what they have in common, what they don't would be incredibly valuable science. But I'm not qualified to speak to whether or not that's a really good idea. I don't think anybody is. I really don't think that anybody can extrapolate what happens when you start making a neighborhood of Neanderthals. You know, no one knows. No one

knows Neanderthal. No one knows. And I think there's this issue with, we're always going to be curious and we're always going to want to come up with the newest, latest, greatest thing and figure out the newest, latest, greatest thing. But like the creation of the atomic bomb, it's almost like once you start that process, you kind of have to see it. You kind of have to see, can we make this? Can we do this? There was the famous thing from the Manhattan Project is evidently at Los Alamos when the explosion was happening, when the cumulus cloud was going up is when, holy cow, wow,

I can't believe I'm going to blank his name, Robert, somebody help me. Oppenheimer? Yes, thank you, Oppenheimer. My God. Robert Oppenheimer's famous phrase, I have become death, destroyer of worlds, and is wracked by guilt. The Bhagavad Gita.

Right, the Bhagavad Gita. Quoting the Bhagavad Gita. Richard Feynman, who's like 22 or something at the time, is up in an airplane watching from above, taking notes, and he remembers, and he wrote this in a book, he remembers that he thought to himself, oh, that's how clouds are made.

Like, he was already on to the next thing. Like, you know, he wasn't thinking at all about the moral implications of what had happened below him. He was like, that's how a cloud's made.

That's so cool. Like, he's a scientist. He's a nerd. You know, he's thinking that he's the best kind of geek and you need those guys who just want to find out how stuff works. That Oppenheimer quote is the creepiest thing ever.

Also because the translation is so odd. I am become death. I am become death. Destroy your world. Yeah, I know. Can you imagine just not knowing, not having any idea how this is going to be used, seeing it explode and going, oh, fuck, what have we done? This is impossible power.

Can you imagine the feeling of the shockwave going by when they're all in that bunker? And one of the clearest examples of us really not knowing the implications of these things is watching those early government tapes where they would send the military towards the blasts. Right, right. Everyone get under your desks. tapes where they would send the military towards the blasts right right everyone get under your desks or no when they would they would blow the atomic bombs up and then have the military run towards the blast man those guys are dead as fuck all those guys that did that right they died horrible deaths right and they didn't know they just like let's see see what happens when make the soldiers run towards the blast yeah i mean the the videos are really really creepy these these poor guys they're in the they're in a ditch they blow up the bomb

shit's flying overhead i mean the the whiplash from that fucking explosion must have been insane yeah sure i mean it's the the they you know the the electromagnetic pulse that goes through all of this just the concussive force of that is so unbelievable. And all kinds of, you know, that you were talking about, you know, your friend had white spots on his brain. You know, there's so much of that kind of brain damage out there in the world, especially people who've had their bell rung by a big concussion like that. It's a terrible injury. Yeah, that's a lot of things that, or one of the things that people are finding out about folks that are recovering from traumatic brain injury in the military now is that they can save many more people than ever before.

But you're getting many more people that have these brain injuries just from the concussive effect. Who don't show any other physical signs of injury. That's the other crazy thing. They're not – they walked away and are lucky to have done so. That's the other crazy thing. They're not, you know, they walked away, you know, and are lucky to have done so. You know, that's the sort of medical evaluation or it used to be. And now they know that there's an invisible, you know, effect in the brain. There's a shearing force that passes through the brain that, you know, can mess things up. And that's, you know, a lot of the both football concussions and these kinds of things like this.

Just, you know, the brain is fragile, we're learning. And that kind of concussive blast, an IED going off by the roadside is really a terrible, can ring your bell and really damage your brain. Yeah, we're just not that fucking durable. It seems like we're not really, look at these guys watching this blast,

just staring at it, and then they climb out of this ditch and they run towards the explosion. Jesus, wow, I've never seen that footage. Oh, it's so gross. I wonder what the purpose was of taking, I guess just... Seeing what happens. Wow. That's what it is.

I mean, they just, look at that. Oops, I got hit in the face with nuclear waste. Boom. I mean, look at the... I mean, these guys are a couple miles from... Yeah, that's the thing. It's probably hitting them just after. Yeah.

And then they jump up and they... Let's run towards the blast. Like, we're going to go get the Reds. I wonder... Yeah, I wonder if it was at a time when they actually thought they would follow up the blast with, you know, invading, I guess. Yes, that's exactly what it was. Look, these guys are walking towards a goddamn mushroom cloud. Wow. I've never seen that footage. Huh. Yeah, it's

insane. It's completely insane. And this was just a couple of decades ago. One of the things that I brought up on this podcast before that is one of the wildest statistics is that from the invention of the airplane to the time someone dropped an atomic bomb from an airplane was less than 50 years.

Wow. That's crazy. You know, there's this long history of, you know, when the military funds a technology and goes after it, you know, they master it quickly. You know, they bring a lot of resources to it, and they get it done. They have unlimited budgets.

Yeah, unlimited budgets. That's right. Especially when it's classified. It's like you can have line items that are, you know, $600 million, you know, boom. And it'll say just like, you know, project roundup, you know, and you're like, what? You know, and then that's $600 million of just line item, whatever they're spending. And, you know, I did a TV show for Discovery a little while ago that was about this. And, like, they've got, you know, these whole hangars set up for private contractors

out near Edwards Air Force Base at area – Plan 42. And they just build – you know, sometimes you'll have two private contractors, like a Boeing and a Lockheed, both building the the same thing not knowing that the other is also building it. And it's the military funding two competing prototypes and then melding them or whatever. See who makes the best product. See who makes the best product, right? And they both will throw all the money at it, that kind of stuff. It's crazy.

But when the military throws money at a problem, they tend to solve it. I've seen a stealth fighter fly overhead. Oh, wow. We were in Palmdale. It's near the Edwards Air Force Base. We were out there filming Fear Factor several times. Oh, is that right? We watched these things fly over, especially because when we first started Fear Factor,

it was right after September 11th. Fear Factor went on air, I think, 2002. So we would watch these things fly overhead. It would be like, whoa, that is a goddamn spaceship. Look at that thing. Totally, totally. With all the angles on it, it only has like two or three angles built into the whole thing to minimize the radar signature. How does that work?

Do you know? It's literally that, like, if you have a, if a, if a, if radar hits a thing, you know, it needs a certain number, you know, a certain amount of the radar has to bounce back, basically. And the, and the more that you can make the angles of the body of the plane match, right? So that's why you get those sort of like Batman kind of, you know, crackler kind of, what am I trying to say? Serrated edges. It's to make those angles line up, and it's because that's a lower radar signature. There's less for radar to pick up a disturbance, basically. Radar sucks. Yeah, well.

It's not really good. I mean, it's awesome for 1945. That's a subject I don't know enough about. You're making me realize, like, that's totally a thing I need to look into. What is the state of radar right now? Is there a new upgrade? I don't know enough about that. You can get a fucking gigantic spaceship with weapons.

Well, it makes me wonder, right? And you don't even see it coming. Or enough cameras. With enough cameras, do you even need radar? It's like all those radar signatures of UFO sightings. That's one of the things they always point to for evidence. These radar, they showed up on radar. You're telling me that we can make a ship that doesn't show up on radar

and the fucking aliens haven't figured that out yet? Right, right, right. That seems so preposterous. It doesn't make any sense at all. Right, right. It's like the same as their butt tests. It was the last time you went to a doctor and you stuck something up your ass. It's pretty rare. You have to have an ass problem.

But almost every alien abduction leads to an anal test. Right, right, right. Did you know Radar from M.A.S.H. lost all his fingers on the left side of his hand? I don't think that's related. But no, I did not know that. How did he do that?

Actually, they were just born smaller. Half small. Oh, so he didn't lose them. No, I did not know that. How did he do that? Actually, they were just born smaller, half small. Oh, so he didn't lose them. No, I'm sorry. Thanks, Internet. Yeah, powerful Internet. Yeah, so just to get away from that sort of technology, the state of understanding of the human mind today, what is like one of the most bizarre things that they've discovered recently? About human beings? About the human mind today. What is like one of the most bizarre things that they've discovered recently?

About human beings? About the human mind. Well, I mean, to me, the money that is about to be proposed, the rumor is that President Obama is going to put up a $3 billion proposal for a brain map project, a federally funded brain map project. It's like, you know, going to Mars, right? It's a great national ambition. And, you know, I am as frugal as the next person, and I understand that we're in a time of austerity, but I also think that these kinds of projects can really pay off and that you can get

incredible amounts of research done at a great value these days. And so, and it would be really nice to understand the brain better than we do. Well, it's ridiculous to think that a few billion dollars is a lot when you consider the military budget and there doesn't seem to be a lot of people complaining about that. Totally. Some folks are, but it's not like no one's saying, listen, we have to stop spending money on the military. Right, right. If you look at the social and economic payoff of a lot of the military-funded or government-funded research projects, the internet has, I think we can all agree, has paid off pretty well. That technology is working pretty good, I'd say, right now. LCDs were created under, you know, a government program.

You know, there's all kinds of things that make, you know, our lives possible that get off the ground that way. And the brain is such an unknown. You need that bridge of money to get from here to then when the private sector will take over, when we know some stuff. There's going to be a lot of economic activity that comes out of this. So to me, I would love to know better. Basically, what they want to do is we don't know right now what neurons in the brain correspond to what behavior in the body.

We don't know what the thing is, what the connection is yet. And they want to try to map that out. I mean, as best they can. What's the general consensus as far as what created the doubling of the human brain size? One of the things that I read about the human brain's development was that one of the biggest mysteries in the entire fossil record is the doubling of the human brain over a period of 2 million years. Right, yep.

So the sense that I have of it, and I don't know that area too well, but the eating of meat set off the explosion of the brain, supposedly. Like eating animal protein, suddenly, boom, we were able to grow our huge brains bigger. The process is so slow. Evolution moves so slowly that like you know that that process of that time you know for it to show up in the fossil record

is means it happens so quickly in evolutionary terms eating meat makes sense if cougars are super smart you know why why did people get really smart unless i guess they had to figure out how to get that meat and since we're so kind of physically weak. Yeah, scavenging and trying to stay alive. That's right. It's all we had. I mean, it was so important, right, that we're one of the few mammals that has babies that are born defenseless, utterly defenseless. And it's because the brain is so large that the body has to give birth to the baby before the baby is truly qualified to be outside

of the body. Well, it's just ridiculous that people have sex in the same place where the baby comes out. This little tiny penis and a fucking baby supposed to come out of a hole that keeps that thing tight enough to create friction. The human body should be like a clam. It should be like you cook that baby inside you and then boom, you hatch it out, you know, a nice hard clam to protect the baby. That's funny. Air things out a little. Yeah. Just open it up and then that, you hatch it out. You know, a nice hard clam to protect the baby. That's funny. Air things out a little. Yeah, just open it up and then that's how the baby comes out. That's right.

It's like your sexual organs, I mean, this dual purpose thing is just so nutty. And pee comes out of there too. Right. On the other hand, you know, an engineer would say, you know, that's sufficient. That's really efficient. You want as few openings in the body as possible. That's what they said of the Model T when it came out as well. I think one of the issues with human beings, obviously, is that we are pretty much the same as we were 50,000 years ago biologically, but the world has changed dramatically.

Yeah, sure. There's so many more of us. That's right. Yeah. That's right. So many more. What's the future going to hold for overpopulation? It's crazy, man.

There's a whole category of sort of architecture that thinks about the density of stuff, you know, how we'll all live. And one of the amazing things, you know, these sort of things are the megalopolises, these huge cities of greater than 30 million people. And they think that in the next 15 to 20 years, we're going to have several of them. Lagos, Nigeria is on course to be a 30 million person city by whatever that year is. It's unbelievable. And so the patterns of life for when we're living in cities that huge. It's also really ridiculous that we still have cities like New York City is a perfect example where there's

not a single farm there's no one's growing shit you have eight million plus people living in this one tiny little island and you got to get all your food from somewhere else yeah that's right don't get your gas there you don't get your your food there right I mean, I think that's one of the most ridiculous things about human beings that we still rely on shipping and transportation. It seems that we should I mean, everyone says you should source

things locally. It's good for your environment, good for your community. That's all well and good, but it also, for survival sake, when you see like what happened with Hurricane Sandy, where New York City was just shut down. New York City, the most advanced city in the world, shut down. No one can get gasoline.

Like, wow, you've got to rethink this whole thing, because that fucker was designed when people were on horses. Yeah, that's right. I highly recommend a book, The World Without Us, by Alan Weissman, who writes writes about like what would happen if if human beings vaporized from our places now like what would happen on the next day basically and it was it's his stuff about like you know everything from like feral cats right would would those that weren't locked in you know the ones that were locked in would die and then this number of them would be out there and they would decimate the rodent population like he basically takes that fantastical moment when everyone is vaporized and then it's like how long will the nuclear power plants last how long before the houses you know break down

100 years and they all fall apart this office plaza would just like come apart in 100 years yeah you know that kind of stuff is is uh fascinating and and it's because like it requires so much little gritty granular maintenance to keep something like New York City going. Well, not only that, the world, the erosion, just the changing of the seasons, the moving of the dirt on the ground due to seismic activity. We don't think about it in our time because we only live to be 100 years. And in 100 years, not only live to be 100 years. And in 100 years, not a whole lot of things happen. But over the course of a billion years plus, there's nothing left. Nature will have its way with you. With everything. I was in Montana

recently. And one of the coolest things about, I was in the Badlands. And when we're hiking through these hills, you find seashells all over the place. Because Montana, that area of Montana used to be something called the Great Western Inland Sea. Billions or millions of years ago, there used to be fucking dinosaurs in Montana. In an ocean, an inland ocean. Yeah, amazing. And you're like, wow, this ain't permanent. This whole thing just keeps changing and shifting.

I mean, California where we live, right? All these dramatic seascapes and so forth, all the, you know, waves crashing on the beaches and all that stuff, all that imagery. Like, man,

we are, uh, utterly, uh, living in a place that's crumbling into the ocean. Like it's just being eaten away. And the people who have a house on the beach, you silly asshole.

Are you crazy? Like, I know a guy who was building this, I think it was like a several million dollar house. He's super rich. His whole family's rich. He's like one of those old money dudes. Just seems to always have cash. And we were talking about this place.

Shows me these architectural designs. I'm like, that's on the water. What makes you think the water is going to stay there? Like, what if it goes back? Do you have a contingency plan? No, no. You're just going to spend fucking $8 million on this crazy-ass house that's on the water, like right there.

Go to a lake, dude. So beautiful. Lakes are so much more stable. For a few years, man, that'd be a nice place to live, but you're right. Can you even get insurance that the ocean will eat your house? Yeah, they know better now, right? I talked to a guy, interviewed a guy recently who is a, his job is, he owns a contractor, a construction company or a deconstruction company really that pulls oil rigs out of the ocean, wrecked oil rigs. And he,

in his 20s, was designing oil rigs and was describing what it was like to design them back then. And he said that the uh, um, the, uh, the instructions from the instructor back then was build it to this 60 year storm standard. And he was like, but we've only been designing oil rigs for 35 years. How do we know what a 60 year storm looks like? And they're like, nevermind kid, you know, keep drawing. So he's making these things. He was explaining this by way of his then experience. When Katrina hit the waves were so

massive. It was like a hundred greater than a hundred year storm where these decks that were designed for 60 feet got hit with hundred foot waves. It's unbelievable and everything got torn down and this guy now runs Versabar,

this company that builds this thing that can pull a whole oil rig out of the ocean and carry it into land because there's so many that got wrecked by Katrina. It's like its own industry. Yeah. And by 100-year storm, you mean once every 100 years, something this crazy happens. Right. Every year, there's a one in 100 chance or whatever. Yeah, exactly. It's the 100 year storm. That's right. That's one of the creepiest ideas about what's going to happen because of the warming of the planet

is that these storms are going to happen more and more often. And we had a guy on here that was talking about the possibility of Hurricane Sandy being something that happens every year. You're going to have one of those a year. That could change to two a year. That could change to three.

You know, the planet is built for equilibrium. It's always trying to get to equilibrium, and yeah, it just keeps changing. That's right. And you're a Northern California guy, right? You live up there? I live a weird life, actually. I go back and forth between New York and California

every month. I'm in New York for one week a month, and then my wife and daughter are in Oakland because we just, we love California. And I happen to be living here when, when the job came up. So. Oh, wow. So, you know, in today's day and age, how much do you physically have to be in a location anymore? Yeah, I live in a, I, I, I'm sort of testing out that theory that you don't have to be right with the people you work, you know, so you work with. So my staff is all in New York and I communicate with them largely through the phone, I would say most of the time now. But I went hard at the video telepresence thing.

And I found that it's really useful for a few kinds of conversations. You know, I can like make an announcement or I can settle a debate. You know, I hear two sides and I make a decision or something like that, you know, but it's not good for, like, catching up with someone. It's not good for, you know, sort of a confession, right, or, you know. Interpersonal stuff. Interpersonal stuff. Anything where you want to win trust or influence somebody. You know, I don't want to meet somebody that I'm trying to impress that way.

Yeah. And instead of trying, you've got to be face-to-face to really connect with somebody. Isn't that a fascinating aspect of the human being and the human mind is the need for, like, if we were having this conversation, there was six more feet of desk between us. That would change the nature of the conversation, right? It's good that we're not sitting at this table the other way. That's funny. It's weird, right? That's funny, yeah.

That'd be like a banquet. I mean, we have headphones on. I could see you if you were over there, but it would feel weird. Right, it would. This is like a good amount of distance. We're like four feet from each other. That's right, that's right. We don't touch toes under the desk too many times.

Totally. You know that theory. That's why I made it this wide, because at the Ice House, we have another place at the Ice House, and I was always touching toes with people under the desk. That changes the conversation. Yeah, it's fucking footsie. I don't mean to do that.

People wonder, is he trying to say something? No, he's trying to talk. Like, when I want to talk, I'll touch your foot. Yeah, exactly. But what is that about humans where we need this sort of, we need a closeness? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a, I don't know, but it's definitely hardwired.

There's the uncanny valley is this whole thing that they determined where basically if you show somebody a fake human face, the brain immediately is like, oh, this is fake. And if you make it more and more lifelike, basically roboticists study this

and try to create a robot that could fool the human or make a human comfortable. And so when you take a kid, well, so when it gets more and more uncanny, right, more and more like a person, there's a point at which just before real acceptance where you've really fooled the person, where the acceptance rate drops off. Like right as you get, the closer you get to actual reality, the more it freaks people out to be talking to a fake person. A really lifelike fake person is way scarier than a not at all lifelike person. I'm sure. You know, like a really lifelike fake person is way scarier than a not at all i'm sure you know like a really lifelike fake person that wants to fuck you how creepy would that be like listen man i don't think if you don't know what it feels like to be

a person you're just imitating it if i say no what the fuck are you gonna do no means yes no means yes yeah like a fake A fake crazy robot girl That wants your dick And you gotta go Listen This is not gonna work That is funny man What is your thoughts

If any On remote viewing Are you aware Of the phenomenon Of remote Is that Is that real Yeah I don't think it's real

Or at least It's never been real enough That we wanted to do a story on it So I don't think of it As a real thing But I'm interested to hear Any thoughts anyone has about it Yeah I don't know If it as a real thing. But I'm interested to hear any thoughts anyone has about it. Yeah, I don't know if it's real, but we're having this guy.

His name is Russell Targ, and he's a physicist. And he's also a pioneer in the earliest development of the laser. And he's a future upcoming guest. And he's written quite a few books on it. I'm in. I'll listen. Yeah, one on remote viewing and one on the reality of ESP. It's called A Physicist's Proof

of Psychic Abilities. I just got it in the mail today. I haven't gotten into it, but at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s and 80s, Targ and his colleague, a guy named Harold Putloff, co-founded a 23-year, $25 million

program of research into the psychic abilities and their operational use for the U.S. intelligence community. Time travel chair, like I said a couple months ago. I don't know what that means. Including the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Army Intelligence. And these abilities are referred to collectively as remote viewing. And they both express the belief that it's possible and that they believe that there is actual physical evidence that proves that people can accurately describe and depict things that exist somewhere where they're nowhere near. It would be fascinating to know whether they can prove it.

I would love to see it. Yeah, you guys haven't looked into any of that yet? I mean, I know about it. And, you know, in the spirit of not saying anything negative about something I don't know a lot about, I don't want to shoot it down right off the bat. But it doesn't sound likely to me. It sounds like fuckery, right? It does. It does.

It sounds like it to me. But we've had a friend, Tim Ferris, in here who described studies that are done where people accurately describe things through remote viewing. So I'm really interested in that. It also has been, I should say this is controversial, but it's been written at least, that it's been proven statistically that people can tell when people are looking at you, that someone can more often than not be accurate about whether or not someone is looking at you, like you could feel someone's eyes on you. I don't know. I don't know whether that's true or not. But I do know that there is a, you know, there's a there's a, if you talk to a police detective, you know, they'll tell

you that when you interview witnesses, they, you know, to an auto accident, let's say they typically say that they saw the cars collide when in fact they typically heard the sound, whirled around, and then saw the aftermath of the actual collision. But their memory tells them this was me seeing the cars collide. And so I wonder how much of it is hindsight, you know? Where's the memory stored? Yeah, good question. Good question, right? I mean, the ability to really know where stuff is happening is totally unbelievable. You've got the prefrontal cortex that controls how you move your arms. We know some things about where stuff is kept kept but like how it is affected how it truly is stored is it is it binary or is it analog right is it zeros and ones or is it like a you

know some sort of physical arrangement of stuff like you know we don't know and we know that if you stimulate certain parts of the brain you can rekindle memories right or at least rekindle the way the ability you have to retain memory. I don't know that you can bring them back, but you can certainly, you know, you can stimulate the part of the brain that can help foster that for some reason. But again, this is us like, it's us like poking on the outside and seeing like, oh, sorry. You know, there's a far side cartoon from years ago where the group of doctors is around the table and one of the legs is going out one side and the doctor, the nurse says, you know, careful doctor, you know, don't touch that part or leave that part, you know, or whatever it is. And that's totally, you know, that's sort of where we're at in terms of, you know, brain

research. I read this speculation once where they were thinking that it was possible that memories were in fact stored in the neurons. thinking that it was possible that memories were in fact stored in the neurons. And the idea behind it was that human cells regenerate every seven years. Like pretty much every cell in your body is completely regenerated every seven years, except the neurons. The neurons tend to stay with you for the rest of your life.

Yeah, that's interesting. That might be the only place for memories. But I thought about it and I said, well, maybe that's why your memories suck when they're older than seven years old. Because they're like copies of copies, like an old VHS tape. Right, right, right. Remember when things would just get real fuzzy. Gets grainy. Gets a little grainy. In fact, you were the hero of that story.

Yeah. Right, right, right. Because I've gone back over things. I mean, I have some really definitive life-changing moments in my life that I'm pretty sure I have the events accurately. Locked in clearly, right. But if I allowed you into my mind to look at what data I have, I mean, you basically have me regurgitating some shit that I might have said when I was 10. And then I'm saying it over again when I'm 13, then again when I'm 16, and again. You know what I mean?

And it's like I've kept repeating this and referencing it or considering it so I have this image of it. But if you looked into my head, some of the things that I've done in my life and some of the things that – really big moments in my life, all you'd find is like a few fucking blurry images and maybe some reference points. That's right. I mean, and if you look at the way that, you know, we have learned, I mean, one place that we have learned the brain pretty well is anesthesia

because you end up, we know now how to turn off things like short-term memory. So the latest forms of anesthesia. Well, there's that. That's the way to do it. like short-term memory. So the latest forms of anesthesia. Well, there's that. That's the way to do it. That's solid, exactly. But if you're going to crack open the chest to get the baby out or whatever the thing is. The clam. The clam.

You're going to need some serious drugs. So they turn off your memory, basically. And it's not so much that they're turning off the body's sensation of the pain as much as they're turning off your memory of it so that you're not really experiencing it consciously. But you still, in that state, your blood pressure goes up like your body is feeling pain. And an anesthesiologist is managing that pain for you. But the idea is to turn off your memory more than your nerve receptors, which is amazing. So when you're unconscious in an anesthesia state or an anesthetized state, your body

still is sending the signals, but not like a sleeping person who would wake up, the memory shut off. Yeah, you're not having the experience consciously. And so your body is not jolting you awake. It's just turning that off. So you're not absorbing it at all. The hippocampus is not translating that into long-term memories for whatever reason. I'm not sure quite how it works.

But as a result, yeah, your body still is free to respond. And I think that an anesthesiologist would say, A, it really depends. There's some procedures where that's not the case. But it also is healthier not to turn off too much. You don't want to turn off a lot of the body. Well, you know, they have to sometimes depending on the procedure, but you want to, I think, keep a lot of it as, you know, going of its own accord as much as possible. Well, then there's brain surgery, which is even fucking crazier. And the fact that there was a general

consensus amongst doctors and scientists just... I mean, how many decades ago were they doing lobotomies? Where they were going, this dude's fucked up, let's drill a hole in his brain, scramble that frontal lobe, and see if we can get a nicer person out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know, it's

the idea that anybody would sort of really mess around with the brain back then, considering how little we know now. You know, the fact that we need $3 billion worth of research to get oriented is basically what that would do. Man, you know, like, yeah, nobody should be scrambling anybody. Yeah, what is that? What was it called? Trapanning, I think, where they would drill holes in the skull to release pressure.

Man, man. And sometimes they have to do that, you know, like emergency surgery. You have to, you know, somebody will whack their head and they'll be, I mean, you know, and then they have to do that sometimes. But yeah, the idea that you would do that to try and sort of like affect behavior is nuts. You know, on the other hand, they have discovered things like, you know, what's it called? Shock treatment, right? what's it called? Shock treatment, right? Was this desire to sort of, you could calm the brain in a way by hitting, by jolting it. And it comes, it was discovered basically by,

or the original sort of discovery that led to that was in slaughterhouses, they would stun the cattle ahead of time with like a shot to the, basically with one of those – not nail guns but a rivet gun. And as a result – and the cow would go incredibly calm. And then a whole body of research sort of grew out of that dynamic trying to figure out like what is the shot to the system that calms the body, calms the mind for a second. And for the longest time, they weren't doing electroshock therapy on humans. They stopped doing it. Like there was the sort of one flew of the cuckoo's nest way of looking at it. Like, oh, you just ruined that guy.

You calmed him down, but you shut, you know, the Jack Nicholson drooling at the end of the movie where it's, oh, he's gone. He's fucked. He cooked his brain. Whereas now it's commonly done to people that are fucked up. Well, I think they also know now. So back then, you had what were called, you know, we're back on anti-psychotics here, but you had positive and negative symptoms, and that's a technical term. It doesn't mean good or bad.

It means positive symptoms were the symptoms where you have an outburst. Sorry, they're outwardly noticeable, you know, yelling, hallucinations. Those are positive. And the negative is a lack of emotional connection, lack of reasoning. Your cognitive ability starts to go away. And those were a whole separate category of symptoms. And back then, in the early days of something like electroshock therapy, they typically only had something like Thorazine, lithium to sort of turn off. All it would turn off was your positive symptoms, but it didn't affect any of your negative symptoms. You're still lethargic.

You still can't make connections to people. You're still not thinking well. Plus, you're sort of sedated. So they talked about the Thorazine shuffle. You know, that was back. And so I wonder if some of it, I'm just making this up, but I wonder if some of it is people would get jolted and then after that be on this medication typically and be shuffling around and people would all be like,

oh, that guy was never the same since he had his electroshock therapy, but maybe he was also on the drug that was turning him off. I'm just, I don't know. I'm just making that up. Yeah, it certainly could have been both. It's so funny how we look back at those days and go, oh, those fucking dummies, they didn't even know what they were doing. But guaranteed, people a thousand years from now are going to be looking at us

and going, we're so silly. We didn't know anything. We didn't even have artificial brains yet. We're still driving ourselves. Yeah, that's right. What is your thoughts on Ray Kurzweil's idea of humanism, that we are eventually going to be symbiotic with some sort of machine counterpart? I love it.

I mean, I think it's a really interesting, you know, it's a great time reference. That's basically what he's trying to do is say, like, here's the next great milestone in innovation and development. You know, and I think it's a nice, a really good organizing principle. It's inspired a lot of great thinking. It's a nice, a really good organizing principle. It's inspired a lot of great thinking. You know, whether it's going to turn out that we really do create, like, a symbiotic, you know, relationship, I don't know. But in a way, we already have, right? Like, if you've got the new galaxy, blah, blah, blah, blah, with Google, when you turn on that first little screen that tells you, like, here's the time, here's the weather near you. It'll also follow, you know, it'll track

your time, like where you are, and begin to pick up the history over time of where you are. And it'll start to suggest, like, here's a better route to take to work. Or, you know, here's food near you. And it's telling you information before you're even asking for it, which for me is a totally new, you know, a crossing this line where it's no longer like, oh, I'm hungry. I want to go eat something. And then you pull out your phone to ask it how to do that. Instead, the phone is telling you, hey, I've got an idea.

Why don't you get a burger? And you're like, thanks, phone. And so in a way, we've almost already gotten there, you know. And the biggest giveaway is how weird you feel when you leave it at home. You forgot your phone. Jeez. I didn't use my phone for almost two days this weekend. It was the best feeling ever.

And I've noticed that one of the biggest things with hipsters nowadays is that they don't have cell phones anymore. And I could kind of see myself even going back there. Is that really the big thing with hipsters? Is that a hip thing? I hadn't heard of that. Yeah, the new thing is hipsters don't have cell phones anymore. Dude, that's great. I hadn't heard that. They just write letters.

I'm being 100% serious. I just found out about it this week. Where did you hear this from? This girl I know is working on a movie. I guess there's a couple people that are so hipster that they don't have phones. She has to email them. That's great.

I'm into it. It's like the steampunk thing like looking back you know nostalgic at that time try to find out if a movie is good if you don't have a phone that's ridiculous that's funny that's so stupid why you don't have to use it dummy but the fact that you don't have one yeah but i'm an addict man out of here but fuck not using your phone for two days. Yeah, what did you do? What did you do with yourself? I ate mushrooms and swam with dolphins. Well, I did it when I went to Montana for six days. For six days, no cell phone. It felt great, right? Yeah.

Well, it's also good to get the fuck away from the hive, because we were camping for those days that we were out there. So it wasn't just no cell phone. It was no contact with civilized world. It was just the natural world of walking around and hiking. It's a completely different feeling than when you're constantly checking your email and constantly watching the CNN screen at the airport

and all that, the constant input of information. Do you have any experience at all in sensory deprivation tanks? No, not me personally. I am really interested in, you had said earlier when we were looking at that footage of the cumulus cloud and the soldiers running toward it, like how fragile the body is. That's my like, that's the subject

I geek out on hardest. I really am fascinated by exactly that. And like, you know, sensory deprivation tanks, it's just funny. We're so vulnerable. We're such vulnerable little creatures. And it's so unbelievable that we move around the world and live around the world where we do, how we do. Louis C.K. has that great thing about people complaining about the Wi-Fi not working on the flight.

He's like, you're being thrown to the sky in a chair. Come on. And that's totally how I feel about everything. When I look at airbags, safety restraint systems, pressurization on planes, all that stuff, it's unbelievable. Yeah, what I meant, though, is the actual effects on the mind or sensory deprivation. You never experienced that at all? I haven't.

I haven't gone in and done a tank. No, I've never. Why not? I don't know. I just haven't had the opportunity. I'd love to. It sounds great. You're leaving soon.

Otherwise, I would suggest a place here. But in Northern California, there's a gang of places you can go to. And I'm sure Twitter people attack. Go send them some links. You've got to try it. If you're fascinated by the human mind, you really need to try that state. Cool. Because it's not available anywhere else in the world. How would you describe it? Have you done it? Oh, yeah. I have got to try it. If you're fascinated by the human mind, you really need to try that state because

it's not available anywhere else in the world. How would you describe it? Have you done it? Oh yeah, I have one in my house. No kidding. Yeah, I do it almost every week, many times a week. So what's it like? What's the effect? Well, there's no senses coming in. I mean, even having this conversation,

there's no distractions, but every now and then you hear that truck that goes by next door or you feel you have to shift your butt because you know it gets uncomfortable all that's input all that's input when you're in the tank there's nothing there's no input and much like we're having this conversation if a truck goes by it's a slight distraction if you were trying to formulate words and that truck was really loud it would be annoying because you have to deal with that input you have to deal with that that information that's coming towards you. When you're inside the tank, it really is the only environment in the world where you

don't have your body talking to you. You're floating in water that's the same temperature as your skin. There's a thousand pounds of salt in that water, Epsom salt. So you float like you're completely buoyant. And because your temperature of the water is the same as your skin, you don't feel it after a while. You literally feel like you're flying through space. What does it do to your mind?

Total darkness, total silence. Well, your mind has no sensory input, so there's no distraction. So it's super powered. It's ridiculous. Just as your brain is compromised when there's a jackhammer next to you, your brain becomes equally magnified when there's nothing. If I have any problems whatsoever, if there's things that are bothering me, I go in the tank and it's like having a seminar on my life. It's like all of a sudden I can see things so much clearly,

and so much more clearly. And you're completely outside of the world. I mean, you're not lying on a bed. You're not in an ashram. You're not even in a human body anymore. It's your consciousness literally untethered from the human body that's awesome yeah you need to do it yeah i will i will i'm in i'm in that sounds great i didn't invent this fucking thing and i can't believe that i tell so many

people about it and they're like wow i need to do that i'm like jesus it's 2013 why the fuck are these things not everywhere? They're so incredibly beneficial. And they give you a lot of the benefits of psychedelic drugs without any of the worries about tripping out and losing your mind. And a lot of people know someone that's lost their marbles on LSD or something or had a bad emotional experience on mushrooms. And so when they think about the idea of taking a drug to detach from the reality to gain a fresh perspective, it's terrifying. But you can achieve psychedelic states in a sensory deprivation tank with no worries at all. Totally.

I will try it out. I've never done it. Get on it, son. Or just eat mushrooms. It's better. It's not better. You don't even know. You haven't even tried an isolation tank.

How are you talking about? It doesn't beat mushrooms. You don't know that. You don't know anything. So you're saying isolation tank beats mushrooms? I'm saying it's the same sort of experience. You can have the same experience that you can have on a heavy duty mushroom trip in an isolation tank. And by the way, a mushroom trip in an isolation tank is a thousand times more intense. Weed is more, for you, self-examined. Give me the fuck out of this room. That's the last thing you want. It's just an incredibly unique environment

that I'm shocked isn't available at major universities. I think it should be everywhere. I think people should have that. I mean, it should be, you can go anywhere and you find a yoga studio. Try finding a century's deprivation template. I think the reason, Joe, is that a lot of people it doesn't work on.

That's not the reason, Brian. The reason why it's not available is not because a lot of people it doesn't work on. No, I mean, that's why it's not as popular, because a lot of people do the isolation tank and it does nothing for them, so why would they go back to doing it? What are you basing this on? I know several people that have come up to me and talked

to me about isolation tanks because they've heard it on this podcast, and they were like, i've done it three times it's i've nothing to me it's just kind of boring i just sit there and that's happened to me at least three times those are the people that are desperate to talk to you they have limited resources all right i'm telling you because i fucking have one in my basement i know it works I use it all the time. Maybe it's just on you. You just need to learn how to let go and concentrate. It's not like it's an immediate jolt into hyperspace. But what it is, is an environment where you can truly be away from the influence of the body. And if you're on any sort of substance, any psychedelic or anything, it's magically enhanced inside the tank. You eat a pot cookie and get in an isolation

tank and tell me that's not a trippy experience, I'll tell you, you're crazy. It's so beneficial. There's a couple issues. One, most people who do it, they don't do it enough to get truly relaxed in that environment because a lot of the sensory

deprivation tank experience is about letting go it's about learning how to relax and learning how to let go and not concentrating on the fact that you're in a tank and not bumping up against the walls you got to get good at it and you got to get good at the whole letting go thing it's not easy it's just like meditation it's a difficult thing to do. But you can achieve some pretty powerful states in meditation. You can achieve much more powerful states if you're meditating inside

an isolation tank. I just wanted to know if you knew anything about the actual effects of the mind. Do you remember that movie, Altered States, when the dude was wired up with all these electrodes and they were monitoring his mind while he was in there? I haven't seen it. You haven't seen Altered States? I'm sorry, I haven't. Well, it was all based on John Lilly, who was, by the way,

used to take acid and talk to dolphins. That was his thing. That's what I did. He was a pioneer in interspecies communication. And Lilly would get an isolation tank and set it up right next to a tank filled with dolphins and hop in the isolation tank and trip his balls off and have this experience but he created the sensory deprivation tank there was a couple different versions of it the first

one he was vertical with sort of like a space helmet on for his air and he would like float based on this tank like he would kind of be floating from his head wow yeah and then the second one he figured out okay if you lie vertically and fill the tank with salt, you'll float. So he even rigged it up so that he could, he had like a tube that was collecting waste and sucking waste out of it. So he was spending a long time in there. Well, Lily was also famous for his love of ketamine. So he would take ketamine and go on these uh six hour k-hole trips inside this tank and if you gotta take a leak you know just pulls it out of you yeah joe i was peaking hard

during these uh this mushroom trip though like i ate i just i ate a cap i just went into a little and i started like to the point where my hands were melting and i had to go into this water and it was intense like sure i was like trying to like talk to the dolphin where my hands were melting and I had to go into this water and it was intense like sure I was like trying to like talk to the dolphin with my mind like staring at it in its eyes and stuff and how'd that go it went pretty good I mean it was pretty ridiculous but the crazy thing is that the dolphin racked me twice didn't hit anybody else and then at the end busted me on the lip with its tail you got lucky too dolphins. Dolphins are strong. Yeah. So what are you thinking?

That the dolphin was like hearing your cries and wanted to beat the shit out of you because you were annoying? I have no idea. And the only other thing I can think of is I was at the end of the line. So when they were like, all right, we're going to flip the dolphin over. Everyone pet its stomach. Well, I was petting the vagina the whole time. Didn't even know it.

And then she's like, see, this is the vagina. And there's a slit on each side of the vagina that the the dolphin feeds out of i'm like whoa i'm touching it like like she is what do you mean you didn't know you've told me about that i was shrooming dude i was like touch item that's in front of me you didn't even know what it looked like i i mean at the time i was just like wow it's soft it's awesome but then did you get to write you you did this before right no i did not i'm i'm really against dolphin captivity i think it's really fucked up i think the idea of taking a super intelligent animal like a dolphin and putting in a swimming pool and having a bunch of people touch it is just like taking a person and putting them in a fucking box and having a

bunch of fish come and stare at you i think it's ridiculous they do eat like crazy and they seemed all very happy and dolphins are the only ones that you's ridiculous. They do eat like crazy and they seemed all very happy. And dolphins are the only ones that, you know, if they don't like life, they just stop breathing. Like they're voluntarily breathing. They're the only species that voluntarily breathes. And so that's why a lot of times when dolphins will just commit suicide if they're unhappy.

And they would all commit suicide if they were unhappy, wouldn't they? That's silly. That's instincts. I mean, you're saying that their life has to be so horrible that they commit suicide. There's a lot of people that are ridiculously unhappy in prison that aren't committing suicide. It doesn't mean that prison is awesome. By that logic, that doesn't make any sense at all. Wouldn't there be

some dolphins that killed themselves then if they were unhappy? I mean, they pretty much just got fed the whole time I was watching them. But they have no freedom, man. They have no freedom. Not only that, they steal them from their mothers. Killer whales are very famous for that. And killer whales, by the way, the only incidence of killer whales ever murdering people

has been in captivity. They hate it. They don't want that. That's a riding dolphin. Those are dolphins of killer whales. Dolphins are just cousins of killer whales. I just think it's a fucked up replica. It's a remnant of the past

where we didn't understand these animals. These are super, super intelligent animals. And just like the cove is fucked up because it's fucked up to murder them, it's fucked up to imprison them too. It's not like these were bad dolphins and we had to remove them from the dolphin population, which dolphins, by the way, are fucking bad. They do a lot of crazy shit. They rape.

They kill babies. I mean, just because they're intelligent, they don't follow by the morals and the ethics that human beings would like to think of Flipper having. You know, dolphins do some dirty shit. We have a story coming up in a couple of issues by this guy, Brian Lamb, who runs the thing called the Wirecutter.

He's a cool guy. But anyway, he's a good writer and did a story for us about basically going and tagging along with this kind of not quite ragtag crew, but like, you know, crew scientists, but they're by their nature a little crazy in that they're out hand tagging sharks. They get them up on the boat, you know, like dangerous, you know, hammerheads, you know, the whole deal. And they tag them with these very improved tags that are far more technologically sophisticated

than what we have now, and as a result are giving us all this new data about sharks and what they do, where they live, how deep they go, all this stuff. But he was describing what it's like to, in the story he describes what it's like to try and get in the, to be in the water with a shark,

and how incredibly scary that is. Like, those things are just built for death they are you know the nature's perfect weapon those things yeah that must be absolutely horrifying um one of the things one of the reasons why i'm so uh adamant about the the dolphin thing was that i had a psychedelic experience with dolphins too from eating pot and being on a boat and that's that that bit that i do or the story that I wrote. These dolphins were playing with us. They were jumping next to us by the boat.

They're really playful. They're really obviously intelligent. They don't fall for the hooks. They're not biting our bait. We're fishing. They don't worry about it at all. No one catches a dolphin on a hook. It just doesn't happen.

The only way you catch them is by netting them like you Know corralling them in with their fucked, but you don't hear about dolphins falling for a fake worm right? You know it doesn't happen I've always liked the bit the people who say you know people who've spent time with them sometimes say you know man It's it seems almost as if they've evolved past where we are you know like they shed their possessions Well, they don't have the ability to change their environment But other than that they they have an amazing ability to communicate.

And they have a nice environment. Have you seen their ears, Joe? This is like a higher technology than us. It's a pinhole. It's just a little dot. And they're also born with mustaches when they're young. And you can see the holes when they're older where the mustache used to be on their lip. And they're so badass, they're born with mustaches.

I wonder what purpose that serves. Evolutionarily. Fucking fresh. Looking fresh. A nice little pimp, thin stache. I think it is, too. I think it is a thin stripe. Like one of those Eddie Murphy ones

where it's just a tiny line of hair above the lip. Yeah. I don't know. I think it's cool that you did that. They're going to be in that Sea world place whether you go there or not but i don't want to go there i've been to the zoo high and i don't like it you know i wrote this whole thing when i went to the zoo about it's like this animal prison you see these primates screaming in their cage i was at a zoo once there's this one monkey i don't remember what monkey it was but it was by

itself in this little cage it was smaller smaller than this room, and this fucking thing was screaming. And I was like, that is madness. That's an intelligent animal that someone has decided to make it stay in this one spot, and it's going insane, screaming. What seemed like that to me was the chamus, or the killer whales. That to me, I thought the dolphins looked like they were all having a great time, but the killer whales looked, that was kind of fucked up, because it was just a huge tank,

and they just were swimming in circles nonstop. That's all they did. God, that drives me nuts. Yeah, that was awful, but I thought the Shamus were pretty cool. You know what a Balboa is? You thought the dolphins were cool. You know what?

I think it's called a Balboa. Is that what it's called? Where it's like a dolphin, but it's white, and it's got a huge, crazy mushroom head. Oh, I know what you're talking about. It's a type of dolphin. Yeah. It's a white. I think it's actually a type of whale.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I don't know the name of it, though. They're opening up next month where you can hang out with those guys, and that shit looks badass because it looks like Star Wars. You know what you're talking about they're opening up next month where you can hang out with those guys and that shit looks badass you know what man this is how they should do it if they really want to have a relationship with dolphins

they should give them food and put up a center in a place where the dolphins live naturally and put people in submarines but the idea that you should put them in a fucking fish tank and by the way that water is probably chlorinated how else are they going to have it it was salt water it tastes like salt water The idea that you should put them in a fucking fish tank. And by the way, that water is probably chlorinated. How else are they going to have it? It was salt water.

It was salt. It tastes like salt water and shit. Oh, okay. It was gross. That makes sense, actually, because I have a salt water pool. You can get away with that without the same principle of the isolation tank not getting funky. Nothing really can grow in the salt water. Right. But I just think that we don't need to do that anymore, man.

Even zoos. I mean, I take my kids to the zoo because the zoo is there, and for them it's fascinating, and they go crazy, but if it was up to me, we wouldn't have zoos. It just seems crazy to have a prison for gorillas. They're just staring at you, and they're fucked. Just the whole thing is

a relic, I think. No, it's true. It's funny when you go, the American Museum of Natural History in New York has this whole wing of its stuff that it inherited of like, you know, stuffed animals. And, you know, I love the American Museum of Natural History. I think they do amazing work, you know. But, you know, it's just funny to go and stand in front of like

what was the zoo back in, you know in the 19th century, 18th century. The desire to shoot and stuff an animal. Well, how about African men? I mean, there's been exhibits at zoos before where they had black men. I think they had pygmies at zoos before. Yeah, I mean, they've the ability to justify the imprisonment of an intelligent animal. It's really weird when we

start and think about what an intelligent species from another planet would do to us. If they came here and found out that Kim Kardashian was the most famous woman on the planet, what is to say that they want, these dumb motherfuckers, let's just lock them up in a cage and give them food as long as they have food they'll be happy there are i mean on the other

hand though i would point out that there's like you know there is some at least some understanding of what animals need to thrive in an environment and zoologists do do a great job or try to do a great job anyway of creating environments where the the animal is you know maybe tricked is one way to put it, but like, you know, feels comfortable in the environment. And there's all kinds of crazy optical illusions. At the Seattle Zoo, there's the savanna kind of curves. It's almost like you're on the top of a dome, sort of, but it's a very gradual dome.

But it's enough that for a long time, it looks as if there's a long horizon out in front of you. It blocks out the background. You're not seeing any trees in the background or whatever because it's sloped up just slightly. And, you know, I wonder if that's, I don't know, but I imagine that's like designed to make, you know, to keep a lion's eyes sharp or whatever the thing is that they're trying to do. Well, if they really wanted to be nice to the lion, they would let goats loose. That's a good point.

They would also let goats loose in there like they do in Asia. In Asia, the way they treat tigers, it's really not sporting whatsoever because they back a truck up and they lift up the forklift in the back of the truck or whatever the cab in the back of the truck, and the goat falls out. The tigers just tear it apart. Wow. Have you ever seen that before? No, I haven't.

Cue the video. just tear it apart. Wow. Have you ever seen that before? No, I haven't. Cue the video. There's also a zoo in Iraq, and that's one of the first videos I ever saw about it online

where they released a goat and these lions came running out and ripped the goat apart in front of all these GIs that were there with cell phones. Whoa. Yeah. At least that's normal.

I mean, that's what they do. That's right. The idea of sliding a tray under the cage with some cold meat. Yeah, right. The whole reward system that an animal has, especially these predators, their entire reward system is based on chasing and catching things. I mean, if you roll a ball in front of a cat, it's going to go after it. And that's because it's got... I mean, they say one a ball in front of a cat, it's going to go after it. And then that's

because it's got, I mean, they say one of the big things about mountain lion attacks is they attack joggers a lot because they think you're trying to get away. Right, right. There's that thing they tell you about pick up any small children in order to, because a mountain lion's instinct is to go after the smallest one and And little kids are prone to running away. And that is what turns on the instinct, the prey drive. So you have to pick up your kid if you see a mountain lion. Well, and coyotes as well. You know, there was a big bear last year.

There was an attack. A five-year-old was attacked by a coyote right in front of his father. Oh, wow. Yeah, the coyote tackled the kid and just tried to fucking eat him. You know? Man. Yeah. As a father, I Oh, wow. Yeah, the coyote tackled the kid and just tried to fucking eat him. You know? Man. Yeah. As a father, I would freak out.

Yeah, so here, they drop this thing out, and they just grab a hold of it and just start pulling it apart. Wow. What is that? Is it beef? Some sort of a sheep or a goat or something like that. Yeah.

And this is lions here. God, those things are strong. Yeah, the lions take a little more time than the tigers. The tigers grab a hold of it and it's almost instantly a wrap. They just yank them

and rip them apart. But I mean, if you're going to have animals like that, it seems kind of fucked up to have them in a place where they can't run around and they don't have

anything to chase. Right, right, right. Their whole reason to live. That's right, they've evolved all these incredible abilities. The teeth and the prey drive, the eyesight, all that stuff. And you do need to keep that. Right. That's right. They've evolved all these incredible abilities, the teeth and the prey drive, the eyesight, all that stuff,

and you do need to keep that. Right. Keep it sharp. It's like vegans who feed their dogs vegan dog food. Like, oh, you fuck. How dare you? Like, you know that dog's barely surviving

on that shit. By the way, I was talking about a beluga whale earlier. Oh, yeah, that's it. Are they as smart as a dolphin? That's a good question. I think it's the same family. I mean, they're definitely the, you know, yeah, that's it. Are they as smart as a dolphin? That's a good question. I think it's the same family. I mean, they're definitely the, you know, it's that family.

Yeah, I think there's a whole gang of smart marine animals, you know. Right. And we're willing to imprison all of them. What's really also amazing is seeing the stingrays. They have this whole thing where it's just this pool where you can touch and feed stingrays. And these stingrays would just come up out of the pool and they look like little dogs that instead of having feet have like you know like like wings almost it was really amazing because they're so domesticated yeah yeah yeah i've fed them in hawaii there's a tank and at the big island where you uh you swim with them

you put a snorkel on you swim with uh stingrays and all these other fish. And fish poop, by the way, everywhere you look. It's not even a tank, actually. It's like a big pond. And they'll allow you to feed them. And little kids feed them. They hold food out, like scallops and stuff in their hands. And the stingrays come up and they're crazy mouths and they just suck it right out of your hand.

SeaWorld's badass, though. That's all I have to say. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it is badass, but I can't agree with it morally. I just think they're intelligent, and I think we have to sort of draw some sort of a line as to how we deal with intelligent beings. Our attitude is like, what are you saying? I can't understand you.

Do you want to fish? Then you have to do the trick. It's kind of fucked up i had a friend who was a trainer i don't know where where it was but somewhere in hawaii he was training dolphins or he was a graduate student and was doing this work and and um he said that by the end of it the dolphins had trained him that basically like he was only getting into the pool when he like they would behave a certain way to get him to behave a certain way is how he just like wound up one day realizing that not disagreeing with you in any

way, but it is nuts that they're just, they are really, really intelligent. Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, they're,

they're trying to express something and if he's paying attention, he's going to sort of catch on and move with them. They would do that. They would do the trick to, to get him to give them the treat, but then they would withhold the trick and then do it really well. They would do like, they'd mess with him and train him

to just deliver the fish. If I could live comfortably and not have to worry about money, I would just take care of dolphins for my job. That's how attached to that experience to me was. It was just, there's something with dolphins that haven't been found out yet.

They're amazing. It's not that it hasn't been found out. It's just we can't understand them. They're very intelligent. Their cerebral cortex is 40% larger than a human being's. And I mean, that experience that I had when I was in the boat in Hawaii with those wild dolphins playing, that was, it seemed very tangible to me. And it changed the way I look at human beings. It changed the way I look at consciousness in general.

I started thinking that their consciousness is probably quite a bit like a human's consciousness. They just can't alter their environment. We can't understand them, and they can't alter their environment. But they seem like if you encountered, I mean, we take for granted the fact that the way they move is very much like a fish. So we sort of categorize them sort of how you were talking about trucks earlier like oh that's a truck oh that's a dolphin right their method of locomotion is one thing but if you met a dolphin in space if it was like something like that where it had that sort of intelligence and it was communicating and moving around more like a human if it was bipedal and bipedal, but you looked at it and made noise

and it interacted with you, you would freak the fuck out. Yeah, you'd run. Yeah, well, you would just freak out. You'd be so flabbergasted that you're dealing with this alien intelligence that's just like you. Dolphins exist in this world where they can move through three-dimensional space, so they don't need to be able to touch things with fingers

and manipulate the world. There's all kinds of studies about the inner life, the emotional life of animals. Elephants that bury their dead, grieve for their dead. Elephants can recognize themselves in the mirror, know who they are. All that stuff is amazing. They can paint themselves.

Yeah, paint themselves. You ever seen that? Yeah, yeah. That is a trip. That's amazing. When you see the elephant painting an elephant with his nose. Yeah. And grief is a big one.

Like when we look back at the evolution of people, one of the great turning points in evolution is when we began burying our dead. And the idea that we began having these sort of, you know, a scientist would say, you know, sort of inner lives, an imaginary life almost, right? We just develop an abstract sense of death. That's when we become sophisticated. You know, that's when our brain, our mediating brains begin to really do it. That's one of the things that trips me out the most about Ray Kurzweil is that he believes we'll be able to transcend death. And we'll be able to download consciousness into a computer. And he takes 100,000 pills a day and you know

watches his diet in order to extend his life to that point where he gets to do that yeah that's a very i wonder if i would opt for that you know like i find myself thinking about like how i would want to go given like infinite technological stuff i would want to go out on top i wouldn't want to like you know what i mean like you don't want to fade anymore you want all the medical research working to make you think like you are playing in Game 6 of the World Series. Well, it's a real wrestling match between our instincts and the reality that we're a finite being and the reality that we are also a part of a process. We are one piece of a superorganism, which is the human race. But our ego tells us, no, I'm the most important.

I must survive. I must. i am important it is i it is me you know it's the thing that is always amazing to me about people who can be so brave and you know reckless with their bodies and so forth it's like they're they're getting they're they're taking what you're describing and sort of uh somehow of resisting it in a weird way like your brain has evolved to basically keep you alive, keep you out of danger. And the idea that people can sort of voluntarily enter dangerous situations

is to me an amazing thing. You mean like fighters or something? Fighters or like, you know. Wing suit people? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Extreme athlete stuff is unbelievable to me. I just think that's so, you know, it's amazing and thrilling and wondrous and also scary as hell and sort of nonsensical from an evolutionary perspective.

Like the idea that you would voluntarily leap off a cliff, you know, you have to resist so many millennia of programming to do that. You know, it's nuts in a great way. I guess we have the luxury of doing that. Yeah. And it's also that weird thing that we do where we try to outdo that yeah and it's also the that weird thing that we do where we try to outdo each other and who can do the wackiest craziest scariest shit i mean that's how these x games things like the right they've had to like put limits on people like say okay you can't do that anymore because someone just died trying like stop with a quadruple flip off of the top of this ramp it can't you know either it's not going to be done or it's going

to be done and 20 of the people are going to die and that's not acceptable. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. I mean, you can't really regulate what people are going to do, you know, just to give them a suit, you know, those guys are mostly doing it illegally, but man, just the ability to, you know, I was once interviewing a fighter, a test pilot who went on to become an astronaut. a fighter, a test pilot who went on to become an astronaut. And I was asking him, how do you not freak out when you are sitting atop this bomb on the launch pad? Like, how do you not just, like you were saying, you know, about getting out of the sensory deprivation tank, like, you know, leap to your feet, scramble at the door.

Like, how do you resist the impulse to do that? And he said, well, you know, we're trained, you know, we're recruited and trained for a specific ability, you know, and situational awareness is what he described it. And he said that one of the examples of it is what he called winding the clock. And I was like, what's winding the clock? He had been a test pilot out of Edwards over here and was one day assigned to shoot down a drone to test a new air-to-air missile. was one day assigned to shoot down a drone to test a new air-to-air missile. And so he comes out of this steep turn, fires the rocket, and it doesn't leave his wing. He hears it go, but it doesn't actually leave the jet. Oh, Jesus. And he looks over, and it's armed right in his wing.

So it's ready to blow up? Ready to blow up. It's armed. It's ready to make impact. And you're done. Christ. And so the moment, the reaction you're having, even to hear this story, is the same reaction

I had and the same reaction so many people would have. Eject immediately or panic. It's just bad news. And he said that in that moment, they're trained to wind the clock. They literally would reach up to a cheap clock that they had duct taped to the dash of this fighter and wind it

to keep it going. And you're trained to do that in order to have a little downtime to think through what you're going to do next. And in the amount of time it takes him to reach up and crank that dial, he is hearing, you know, thinking through, okay, well, it's kind of a nice day. Would I go out? Shall I go out across Los Angeles and over the ocean and ditch there he's like well no first of all you know that's that's a lot of people and i can't go over with an armed missile over a lot of people and then i don't want to be the guy who lost the 40 million dollar airplane so he then thinks it through this morning he's like the weather is pretty good today

i think i can probably make it and by god he lands it he totally like goes does the corkscrew and comes in and lands a plane with live armament attached. Oh! And makes it, right? What are they telling him at the base when he's like, hey, guys, I'm flying in hot? I wonder. I bet there's a procedure, right? Air Force people probably have a procedure for that.

Yeah, they get in their car and they fucking run. Run. That's right. Out into the desert. They get every general with a mile radius. But I said to him, I don't understand how you're able to do that. And he's like, yeah, we're just trained to, you know, we have that ability, you know, and that's true when you look across all, you know, there's another astronaut story. This guy, Franklin Chang Diaz was a Costa Rican national who was an astronaut on the shuttle.

And he narrowly avoided being killed in both the Columbia and the Challenger disasters. He was training for both and through a fluke of scheduling did not go on either and saw all of his friends and colleagues killed in these two disasters. I mean, an unbelievable tragedy for this guy twice. And he still shares the record for the most times in space and has done, I think, more spacewalks than anybody else or something like that. He's just an absolutely superlative human being. And he had this story of floating out there with this $60 million piece of equipment that he's got to move from this place to this place or whatever.

And as he's doing it, he looks down, and the clouds have parted beneath him, and there's Costa Rica. And he realizes, I'm the only person of my nation who will ever have this view, you know, in all likelihood. And he's got his camera attached to his belt. And he said he was thinking to himself, I can just reach down and grab the camera and take the photo of, you know, that all Costa Ricans will have on their wall, basically. I'm sure he didn't have that thought. But, you know, to me, that's what it is.

And he doesn't do it because he would have had to let go of this piece of equipment and go for the camera. And he's got a duty to perform. He's like, they brought me here to do this job. I'm going to do this job. And he scoots it over. But again, that's a piece of programming that he's resisting. Like by his training and his steadfastness and whatever it is in his brain, like, man, the guy doesn't just do what I would have done, which is throw the piece of equipment out into space and take, you know. Yeah, training is a fascinating thing.

Right. The idea of developing your skills and your mindset to the point where you can do extremely dangerous things and keep your composure. And that's – it's very attractive to us. We're fascinated by heroes. Right. That's why – And we need them. Yeah, we need them.

We need them. We need them. They have to be able to do that. Even when it doesn't mean anything like this, I think that's part of the reason why I think like X Games and stuff along those lines, it's part of the evolutionary process to compete against each other

to see who can do the more and more fucked up things. Yeah, sure. And that there's something that gets developed along the line. Totally. It's testing the limits of the human body. I think everybody just really wants to be able to fly or do whatever. There's this extreme, and it's cliche to say it, but an extreme.

You're trying to find the extremity of life. You're trying to find how close to death can I get? And in finding the limits of human performance, and I think it's a part of the grand equation of the human race period it's like it is a part of the of the the numbers right like now we know that people can run a four minute mile now we know that people can do that you know it's all these things sort of aid in the the progress of the race yeah that's right some strange way well you need you know you need the person to go first you need the person to come pull people out of burning buildings there's a there's you're absolutely right there's a there's a you know a person to go first. You need the person to come pull people out of burning buildings. You're absolutely right.

There's a purpose to having that kind of alpha person. But as we become a more and more advanced society, that need sort of recedes. Maybe it's going away. That's interesting. I think it is. I mean that's why a guy like you can – you're obviously a successful, intelligent guy. But you're like joking around about, oh, I can't handle fear. It's because you don't have to.

Yeah. And I never will. That's exactly right. Well, I mean, that's not true. That's not true. I might, right? And I have in my personal life experienced, you know, extreme situations. I'm sure everybody has. Everybody has tragedies in their lives or, you know, stuff that's gone on. But, you know, the consistent ability to resist fear and do, you know, the needful in the face of terrible odds. That is a crazy thing. At the same time, though, we just did a story recently about how there's a whole DARPA challenge

around creating rescue robots that would replace firefighters, would replace people, not in all circumstances, but in circumstances like Fukushima where there's radiation. You can't send people right into the middle of it. But you want to be able to send in a robot that can cut its way through a door, look around, maybe bring somebody back. And so the challenges that DARPA are putting out there include literally being able to cut through a door with a sawzall, drive a car. The thing has to be able to get into a car and drive away with it. It's literally like the rules have been written by an eight-year-old. I mean, it's incredible the challenge that they're putting out in front of these people

and people are doing it. The DARPA robots are some of the creepiest things that have ever been created by humans. Those dogs and cheetahs. Totally. The one that looks like a pack mule. They're disturbing to look at, right? The latest model can throw things now. I forget, like bricks, I think it is latest model can throw things now i forget like bricks

i think it is it can throw bricks oh it ejects yeah yeah yeah yeah there's a whole also there's a whole field of study around trying to make robots we were we were messing with this on our cover when we were putting together the cover a couple issues ago we put one of these robots on the cover um from virginia tech it's a real robot what we put in there is like actually what it you know could someday look like it's definitely what it's headed for. And they've built the legs and the whole thing. It's just unbelievable. But when we first put the cover together, it was reaching for you, trying to save you through a broken window, basically, in this sort of ruined environment, which is the environment that the thing is going to have to compete in.

But it looked like it was reaching for you to kill you. It was a scary cover. The robot looked frightening. And we decided in the end, like, wait, we've got to make this thing not look like it caused all this damage because we as people are terrified of robots. They just look scary. And if you make them all black and militaristic, you know, like the graphite look is scary.

And so you've got to paint them like ambulances. That's what these guys are all learning. Look at this robot throwing a cinder block. It just whips a cinder block. While balancing itself. Yeah, but look how it uses its legs, too. I mean, it does a shot putter. It kicks it.

Yeah, that's a cinder block, man. I mean, could a human even do that? And what if that's a grenade instead of a cinder block? Yeah. You show this to little kids, and it just scares the hell out of them. Yeah, it's like Star Wars. It's a creepy spider-looking thing. It's like our natural instincts

would be terrified of that. Do you see that tarantula that has antlers? It's got a defect that's growing antlers. It's a real tarantula? Yeah, Harold Sheen. It's crazy. There's another robot that they've invented that drives up to a wall

and then it can spring up through the air. It can clear these big walls. Totally. We gave that an award this year. Yeah, it's an amazing thing. It can jump like 30 or 40 feet. It can clear a single-story building. The idea being that it can get in wherever you need it to. You're up on a ridge, you send it down, and it can leap off a cliff.

That's the other thing is you can roll it off a cliff and it'll survive the fall. It's incredibly hardy. It's crazy. Look at that. This is a tarantula that has grown at birth defect that started growing antlers. Whoa. Wow.

And Jamban's scared of spiders, we just found out, because he can't even look at this photo. Yeah, that's a weird-looking thing. Those little antlers. Well, that's like when a person's born with a tail. You're like, what is going on in the genome where that's representing itself? That's a strange little animal.

Well, spiders in general are creepy as fuck. I have trouble with those snakes. I have the natural evolutionary response to snakes. That's literally spineless quality. What's that called? Aphidiophobia? Arachnophobia of spiders. I think it's called aphidiophobia. What's that called? Aphidiophobia? Is that what it's called?

Arachnophobia spiders, yeah. I think it's called aphidiophobia. Yeah. It's very common, though. Sure. They just move in a way that my eye doesn't like to follow. Well, people that, you know, I think the proponents of epigenetics would say that it's probably somewhere in your evolutionary past

or somewhere in your genetic past, rather, that someone got fucked up by a snake and either one of your ancestors saw it or one of your ancestors was wounded and we we did a story about um we have a section of the magazine where we basically ask incredibly dumb questions of incredibly smart people and uh and it's great because they they play along in this wonderful way so one of them was um what's the world's grossest sound and literally there was a guy who had done a study to determine it.

And he had determined that the sound was the sound of vomiting. And they simulated it by pouring a bucket of baked beans into another bucket while somebody else was making yakking noises. And they played all these different noises for people.

And that was the one that was grossest. And the reason they think, the evolutionary purpose of that in theory is that when you as a group were eating diseased elk or whatever around a fire 20,000 years ago and someone started to get sick, everyone would know it and would also throw up so that no one in the tribe ate the diseased stuff.

That totally makes sense. Isn't that interesting? I've always wondered why. Well, that also, by the way, can be bypassed. And I can tell you that from personal experience because when I was a kid in high school, if someone threw up in the hallway, which always happened in school, I would start throwing up.

And a lot of other people would start throwing up too. No, it's just built in. Like that scene in Stand By Me where there's a pie-eating contest. Well, that doesn't work on me anymore. Because of all my years of Fear Factor, I've seen so many people throw up. Really? Yeah. That's really interesting.

I don't know how many people I've seen throw up. We did 148 episodes, and every episode somebody threw up. You totally are a test case. That's really interesting. So nothing makes me throw up anymore. I could be right next to someone throwing up on the ground, and it doesn't bother me. In fact, my wife threw up in her car once,

and she was all upset because she couldn't clean it because she would throw up again. I was like, I'll clean it. It didn't bother me at all. Interesting. I could smell a puke in her car in August, and it didn't bother me at all. I smell a puke in her car in August and it didn't bother me at all it just goes away

it totally goes away that's great I can be at a bar and someone threw up in a urinal I'll pee on it it doesn't freak me out wow I think the grossest sound

is two guys fucking anyway I don't think how do you know what that sounds like busted oh shit I got you son well unless you were gay

then that would be the most awesome sound ever well that was like the idea of like do gay guys get accustomed to the smell of poop of you know of is that is that like an okay smell to them because they're in the anal sex I don't know I mean the what what causes certain connections what causes you to be repulsed by certain things is always very fascinating. But that thing of the

throw-up sound totally makes sense. Yeah, it just makes perfect sense. I think that's right. Anything liquid and squishy. Death is, I think, actually the worst. The smell? That's also a useful instinct.

When you smell it, you want to go the other way. That's a good idea. Yeah, when I was a kid, someone died in our apartment building, and they didn't find the, it was an old lady, and they didn't find her body for a while. And it was the entire floor had this horrible, horrible odor to it. We would walk in, you know, and then eventually they found out that this lady had died, and they went and cleaned it up. But the smell lasted forever.

Sure, sure. It took the longest time to clean that out. It's not like any other dead smell. Yeah, no. I mean, it really is that thing of like, it's also, too, we were talking many hours ago about trying to have as few openings as possible in the body. That's the other reason you want as few as possible,

because there's some stuff you've got to keep in there. You don't want it out in the world. And think the fear that smells probably to discourage predation yeah and and you know when we were really starving to death and people would find a dead person right we'll fuck him i might as well just eat him yeah i bet that is part of it or i would i would i'm sure one could make that argument and you know the feeling of of there being uh you know a purpose to uh staying away from you know you know that like dysentery results from you know if you don't have adequate waste systems and people are around you know if it infects the drinking water like there's so many reasons to stay away from from uh yeah the the dirtiest parts of people that's right yeah the

evolutionary desire to escape stinky people that's right right. Right? That's right. There's a whole thesis there, I'm sure. Yeah. Why is bad breath so horrible then? I mean, that can't really affect you for real. I guess it can. Maybe if the person's sick though, right? Sometimes it can be a symptom of disease. That's interesting.

Yeah. Maybe that's why. That's right. This guy's not well. I got to get out of here. That's funny. Well, listen, man. This has been a fascinating conversation.

Dude, this has been fascinating. You guys are a good company. Thank you. This is really a good company. Thank you. This is really a lovely place. Anytime you'd like to do this again, we'd be more than happy to have you on.

You're way, just to say this right now, but you guys are on it. This is a much, I was on my toes this whole time. No dummy, Joe Rogan. No dummy.

Thank you. I'm glad you had a good time. If you want to take mushrooms and hang out with Brian in a dolphin tank, I'm sure we can accommodate you. See, I wonder if there's experiments going on like that. If I want to take mushrooms and hang out with Brian in a dolphin tank, I'm sure we can accommodate you. I wonder if there's experiments going on like that. If I had a dolphin, I would be doing

weird things like that. There's definitely two researchers who could compare notes and come up with something like that. You should read Lilly. He was a pioneer in interspecies communication. He actually peer-reviewed stuff on dolphin intelligence because of psychedelics and getting in dolphin tanks

or getting in isolation tanks. You need to take an isolation tank trip too, man. All this crazy poo-pooing of it without any personal experience. No, I'm not poo-pooing it. I'm just saying that I'm sure it doesn't work on some people because I've had people tell me it didn't work on them. That word doesn't work is like saying, you know,

I have a computer and I don't know how to get on the internet well I think you know some people's minds are just too active to slow down to the point where that would be you know helpful for them like there are you know almost 80 D I agree I agree with what you said except the word to I don't believe that their minds are too active I believe their minds are active I believe they don't know how to manage that but that can be taught the amount of emails that I get every week, the amount of Twitter messages and Facebook messages

by people that have positive experiences in isolation tanks and how much it helps them and changes them. Fighters. A lot of fighters started using them to meditate and to practice relaxing. Plus, it's an awesome source of magnesium. You just need to do it, dude. I mean, it's so crazy that you haven't done it.

It's not like you're busy all day. No, no. What is that? Destroy hat. What is that? Destroy? I don't know. It's just a hat I got.

What is that on the hat? A dude on a rocket? I think it's the red skull or a dude. Satan or a red skull on a rocket. Dude, that's fucking badass. Where'd you get that? San Diego. Powerful San Diego.

San Diego's awesome, isn't it? I would almost move there if it wasn't for the military presence. The people are all ex-military, so everybody acts crazy. The bouncers of every bar are so much more strict and intense. This woman came up to me, and I was smoking a cigarette. She goes, are you smoking pot? I'm like, no, this is a cigarette. She goes, let me see that.

Okay. She just walked away. Who was she? What the fuck? No, I had no idea who she was. A lady on the street? Yeah, you could tell she was a goes, let me see that. Okay. And just walked away. Who was she? What the fuck? No, I had no idea who she was. A lady on the street? Yeah, you could tell she was a military chick, though. Yeah, yeah.

And then it was just like, that was everywhere I went. It felt like that. And then, I don't know, it just felt. That is a side effect. Strict town. That's without a doubt a side effect of a military area. If I could live near Mission Bay, I tell you, that is the most beautiful area. And the sea, what is that, sea is the most beautiful area. And the sea,

what is that, sea lions? Those retarded animals of the night that just go, like, listening to that is some of the

funniest shit ever because out of nowhere that one would just go, oh! You're like, what the fuck is going on? By the way,

that's also what attracts sharks. Oh, really? Yeah, sharks love to eat the fuck out of those things. I feel bad for those guys. They're just like

big fat retards that live in the city. Big meat popsicles, right? That's what they're there for, I think. That's so delicious. That's probably what they're there for. I mean, what else are they doing? They're providing food to sharks. Looking up in the sky.

They go, uh. Yeah. Running for it. Poor walruses that polar bears run up to and they can't get away. They're on the ground. Why can't they get away? Because nature doesn't want you to get away, dummy. You're a big meat sickle.

Someone's got to feed this big guy. Listen, man, thank you very much. We really appreciate this. I'm so glad we did this. And let's do it again. Yeah, sounds great. And you can follow Jacob on Twitter. What is your Twitter handle?

You've got a bunch of lines. It's got an underscore. I was late. I'm sorry. So anyway, it's underscore Jacob Ward underscore. Can you get Jacob Ward pop sign? Just search for my name and you'll just find me. Okay.

Jacob Ward. It's underscore Jacob Ward underscore. Yeah, I'm sorry. Oh, what? You need to change that. I don't say it out loud ever. I would say this is the only time I've ever had to say it out loud. It's easy to find.

Ward signs. Just go Jacob Ward. Just look for my name on Google. You'll find me. Do you have a little check next to your name so everybody knows it's the real you? Are you verified? No, you're not. Oh,. Just go Jacob Ward. Just look for my name on Google. You'll find it. Do you have a little check next to your name so everybody knows it's the real you? Are you verified? No, you're not. Oh, I don't even know. You don't even know about that? I haven't even done that. I'm sorry.

Yeah, once you get... You gotta get into that world of fake Jacob Wards. I guess so. God damn it. I gotta get verified. Because a bunch of people are gonna have fake Jacob Ward accounts and post a bunch of non-scientific shit and attribute it to you. That's funny that could happen that's funny you know what sucks joe is that i don't have it and i have a bunch of fakes

that are actually acting like me and stuff like that and i just found out there's this uh guy that's on uh twitter that has like 2 000 twitter followers and his name is like spilled bag of ice yeah and he's verified huh he's verified a bag bag of ice. Let me show you this. I know that account because do you know what spilled bag of ice came from? No. It came from a UFC fight where a bag of ice spilled in the octagon. And I gave a whole commentary for like three minutes on these guys cleaning up the ice because it was so ridiculous. And I was like, get back in there.

And it was funny. And so this guy became spilled bag of ice. And he's verified. And he's verified. That's the internet telling you to go fuck yourself. Yeah, I'm done. Listen,

I'm gonna go. And Wikipedia, I bet he's got a Wikipedia page too. I'm sure I'm escaping. Live a dolphin. Someone can tell you how to get verified. I'm sure there's a, there's a convenient way to do it.

You just have to find it. It's supposed to be if people, if there's enough people that are acting like you and there, there's so many people like I, even like I, I don't even say, I know is acting like me online. And people are actually asking him questions like, hey, Red Band, what's going on? You're talking about that crazy dude that we both know? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. But you have the most, right? Huh? Yeah, but it's just annoying that there's at least two people maybe that are thinking

this is him. I don't know what you mean. You've made it. That's what this is. I think you've made it. You've got people pretending to be you. I just want a checkmark. Yeah, he just wants a Wikipedia page and a blue checkmark.

The kid's illegitimate. He's hurting. He's hurting on the inside. Underscore Jacob Ward underscore or do a Twitter search for Jacob Ward on Popular Science Magazine. Editor-in-chief. Thank you very much, man. Really awesome time. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in to the

podcast. We apologize again one more time for that drunk podcast of last week. But that's what happens, folks. That's what happens when you go off the rails. Let's submit that to the podcast awards. Thank you to Ting for sponsoring our podcast. Go to rogan.ting.com and save $25 off.

It's a service credit or device discount. And it's an awesome cell phone company that supports our podcast. Thanks also to Squarespace. If you go to squarespace.com forward slash Joe and enter in the code joe3 you can save yourself 10% off of any new website that you develop on Squarespace including the the ability to create your own online store which is very fast and very easy Squarespace everything you need to create an exceptional website. And remember, squarespace.com forward slash Joe. Enter the code word Joe and the number three together to save yourself 10%. This is the month of March if you're listening to this.

If it's April, I'm sure it will be Squarespace 4. But right now it's Squarespace 3. You mean Joe 3? Joe 3, yeah. What the fuck am I even talking about? Joe 3. What the fuck am I even talking about? Also, Onnit.com. Go to O-N-N-I-T and use the code name

Rogan to save 10% off any of the supplements. We will see you tomorrow with our buddy JD, who's a long time member of the website. And then we'll be here on Wednesday with Ben Hoffman from Comedy Central's new show.

What is this show called? The Ben Hoffman Show or something like that? But very cool guy and very funny guy and we'll see him on Wednesday. All right, my friends. This weekend, Nashville at Zany's.

Me and powerful Tom Segura. Friday and Saturday night. Tickets are going fast. There's not much left. So get in there, son. And we'll see you tomorrow. We love the shit out of you. Bye. Thank you.