Joe Rogan Experience 1628 - Eric Weinstein (Spotify Content)

Joe Rogan Experience #1628 was an interview with Eric Weinstein by Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience. Eric showed the latest version of Theory of Geometric Unity.

Joe Rogan Experience #1628 - Eric Weinstein
Information
Host(s)	Joe Rogan
Guest(s)	Eric Weinstein
Length	03:17:14
Release Date	2 April 2021
Links
Spotify	Watch
Portal Blog	Read
All Appearances << >>

Description

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

Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:03 The Joe Rogan experience

Unknown Speaker 0:06 join my day Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

Joe Rogan 0:22 Those are the only ones I know.

Eric Weinstein 0:23 I know another sheriffin is

Joe Rogan 0:24 a salute. Mazel Tov Anaheim. nostrovia. What was the other one? scammy? What's that school?

Unknown Speaker 0:32 What school

Eric Weinstein 0:33 school? I don't know that. Swedish German something.

Joe Rogan 0:36 Was it a Viking one? Oh.

Unknown Speaker 0:39 Use your microphone, Phil.

Unknown Speaker 0:41 I don't know how to say slump day. What is that one?

Unknown Speaker 0:43 Irish one?

Unknown Speaker 0:44 Oh, I don't know that one.

Unknown Speaker 0:45 I don't know that. You know,

Joe Rogan 0:46 Jamie's throwing extra ones in there. There we go. What's up, brother? How are you?

Unknown Speaker 0:51 I'm well, how are you?

Joe Rogan 0:52 You look like a businessman.

Eric Weinstein 0:53 Is that right?

Unknown Speaker 0:54 Are you businessman? I'm

Eric Weinstein 0:54 trying to be one.

Joe Rogan 0:56 I think you're a professional clubhouse guest. No,

Unknown Speaker 0:58 no, the thing is, right.

Eric Weinstein 1:02 The only platform that I have more followers on the new because you're only there once.

Joe Rogan 1:06 Yeah. one and done. Yeah, it's just like podcasting for people don't have a podcast?

Eric Weinstein 1:12 Well, the interesting question is Do Do you think that it has any ability to figure out a way of killing podcasting? Because that's what they think

Joe Rogan 1:20 they're crazy. No, impossible, because the beautiful thing about podcasting, it's you're capturing a conversation. And it's an uninterrupted, that the thing that happened with your brother, you should have put the nail in the coffin, in that in that format.

Eric Weinstein 1:34 Oh, you mean, the struggle session?

Joe Rogan 1:35 Yes. The fact that someone can come in and kick everyone off that disagrees with them, but take over the room. And that they did it just because they decided what was the reason why they gave her the option to kick everybody out and gave her administrative power. But whatever it is, I think she'd been historically oppressed

Eric Weinstein 1:53 or something. Oh,

Joe Rogan 1:55 that's why

Unknown Speaker 1:56 I guess I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:57 Well, from what I understand the conversation before she came on was very clumsy. So everybody was saying there's like that it. It left an opening, I suppose someone like her to come and go Shut the fuck up, get out of here. But the way she treated your brother,

Eric Weinstein 2:14 and the way that listen to this, by the way, shouldn't

Joe Rogan 2:15 it'll infuriate you. The way you know, like they, they they said he was talking. He said he's an evolutionary biologist. And they were these these kids were like, oh, you're in eugenics. You believe in eugenics? He's like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And they basically just steamrolled them, call them a racist and cut them off. It was it was very infuriating. They didn't want to have a conversation with him. They wanted to be little him. They wanted him to proclaim that is anti racist. And you know, I've seen this movie before. Yeah, it's not good. But it's just the fact that that can happen. Yeah, in the platform. You know, it was just when you're doing something like that, when someone can come in and just kick all the other people out that they don't agree with? Yeah, sure. Like, you could just join in a conversation that's already rolling

Eric Weinstein 3:00 could have left. He just doesn't want to

Joe Rogan 3:03 Well, yeah, he was trying to make sense. He was trying to make sense. I know it's problems. We got to fix that. But I mean, the clubhouse thing seems like a fun social thing to do. Like, I enjoy doing it with Tim Dylan, because Tim was in here with me. And we were yucking it up and goofing on it. And then you brother jumped in on the conversation and the VA was in the conversation. That's where it gets more interesting, which is that the serendipity that's possible, because normally

Eric Weinstein 3:32 the logistics of getting us all in one place. Yes. It's difficult. It's expensive. Nobody really is up for it. Because it's probably not as high quality as a point to point conversation. But the serendipity of saying Yes, okay, I saw two people I never thought would be in the same room and then 12 other people and you know, at first I think that's exciting, but then the danger of it is that they're going to burn through the novelty effects, you're going to have seen all these people collide.

Joe Rogan 3:58 Well, maybe when there's an, you know, it's almost like chessmen, right? Like, even

Eric Weinstein 4:03 their favorite,

Joe Rogan 4:04 he'd know how the pieces move. But there's an insane number of possibilities that could take place.

Eric Weinstein 4:09 True. But I do think there's a weird way in which you're always in danger of setting up too many different ways in the same basic source that you value. And so, you know, you can say, Okay, I've got a website, I've got a sub stack, I've got a podcast, I've got a book. How many ideas do you have? I mean, that's that's kind of one of the things that I think makes you dominant is that you have an insane breadth. And most people are really not that capable of going outside of a few issues.

Joe Rogan 4:39 Well, I'm not capable of it either. I'm just curious. Scared Yeah, not scared of having conversations that are way over my head. I just think the clubhouse thing. They've got to work out that what happened, like they got to work that out. So that doesn't happen, that the flaw is in life. Having someone come in and then kicking other people out so they can't communicate anymore,

Eric Weinstein 5:04 you could do that. The the moderator privilege, there is something that you shouldn't give out like candy, because that's what opens it up. But

Joe Rogan 5:11 here's the thing, why would you want to give out the model? Or why to send to me, but why does anybody want to be the moderator because it's not good. It's horrible.

Eric Weinstein 5:18 There's an actual status and caste system of people who need more going on in their lives. Like I was called up on stage, I was made a moderator, I realized that, you know, for people whose lives have gone online due to COVID, meaning has been scarce. And so in a weird way, this is what's proxying for meaning, because the human mind will just attach meaning to any kind of distinction, like,

Joe Rogan 5:40 for a lot of comics is replaced performing. So they're not going up at night, but they're going into clubhouse every night and leave

Eric Weinstein 5:47 jail. Lamar, for example, is really, really active. And you know, what I told her was pioneer something new, don't try to do something old, figure out what this new thing is better at. And be the first Well, she has a lot of people on that. Right?

Joe Rogan 6:02 Yeah, she's got a lot more than she has on the other platforms.

Eric Weinstein 6:06 I think she's, she's doing really well. And she's doing a lot of stuff. And what I hope is that, you know, she'll pioneer something genuinely new. Like, for example, radio drama was dying. When I was a kid, there was the CBS Radio Mystery Hour or something we used to listen to that when we drive up to

Joe Rogan 6:21 I used to love those. Yeah, they were cool, right? And that's gone. And there was a bunch of people acting out voices, Eg

Eric Weinstein 6:27 Marshall was the host of those things. And it was a like a throwback to Orson Welles. And then Wouldn't it be cool to get some retro thing? Because the idea behind clubhouse is to take discord and subtract functionality from it. And that's the product. It's less, it's got less functionality than Discord. And that causes you to say, Okay, well, I can't text you. How am I going to work around all these constraints? And it's like, you know, a great wine is only supposedly grown when you frustrate the vines. Really? Yeah, that's what I that's what I hear. How's that work? Probably frustrated the mind that if you give, if you give the vines perfect soil and climate and all this stuff, they'll produce much fruity your stuff won't be perfectly optimized for fermenting into wine. Really? Look, there's a lot of BS in wines. I don't want to say 100%. But this is definitely something you'll hear.

Joe Rogan 7:18 Have you seen the documentary sour grapes? No. Oh my god, tell me you have to watch it. Are you wanting to know I like wine? I actually love one. I don't know a fucking damn thing about it. I just go, that's good. And I take pictures of it on my phone when I like it. And then I buy that wine later. I don't know what the fuck is going on? I'm as you know, really, nobody does. Almost nobody. That's what the documentary is about. The documentary is amazing. And it's about this guy who got in with all these real rich wine connoisseurs. Yeah, including a friend of mine, who's in the film. Oh, no. Yes. Yeah. And this guy realized that there is only a limited amount of rare wine like 1974, blah, blah, blah, right? So this dude decides he is going to fake this wine. And so he makes these labels him and apparently this gentleman who's featured in this film, who want him getting arrested, and he's in jail right now in Colorado, and apparently, they're, they're detaining out there. They're about to deport him because he's about to get out of jail. They're gonna deport him back to Indonesia, which stories from, but he think it's Indonesia. He had an amazing palate. He was like he was a real legitimate wine collector. And then somewhere along the line, he realized that buying and selling wine was good, because he was kind of cornering the market on a lot of wines. He's spending a ton of money. He realized, you know what, I can fake these ones. I understand what these wines are. So he started mixing wines together, and he developed all these formulas of how to mix like cheaper wines, and he would sell them as like these super rare, you know, 1970 whatever ones. But where he fucked up is spoiler alert, one of the Koch brothers bought like $4 million for the wind from them and one of his friends started he had a friend who's an investigator of wine apparently that's a thing why investigate guy who really understands wine was telling him like he bought bottles from Thomas Jefferson. Oh, yeah, from the 1700s Chateau de

Eric Weinstein 9:31 Kim of Jefferson, I think is still drinkable, really? Well, there's this one particular kind of turn, which comes from the Semyon grape in the Bordeaux region. And it's made from this noble rot, so you get the grapes to sort of have this disease that concentrates the sugar. And I believe that Chateau de Kim is like weirdly drinkable beyond

Joe Rogan 9:53 hundreds of years. Yeah, crazy. Wow. That's wild. Because this guy just the Koch brothers He just had this stuff and was just had it on display. I mean, he has this immense, worth fucking untold amounts of money. What do you do with that money, right? He just has an insane wine collection millions of millions of dollars, but he has $4 million of fake wine. And he realized that as they were going through his collection liked it. There was magnums from a year where they didn't make magnums and this guy starts going over the and then what happened was a gentleman from France got involved France, I should say, he got involved and he is an actual wine maker. And his wine was being plagiarized. He was they were faking his wine. And so he came in saw the counterfeit wines. And even in the auctions like the like he was pointing out in the auction booklet, like these are fake wines, like we did not have this wine in this year. Though the label is incorrect, this is incorrect. And then you know, there was some misspellings on some of the labels. And this guy made fucking millions of dollars in one and sold 1000s and 1000s of bottles. And so initially, they thought he was doing it all himself in his apartment. But then when they realized the sheer volume of the fake one, this guy sold and put out there, that there had to be other people involved. But he was the only one that went down for it. They think maybe his brothers in Indonesia were also involved in the scheme somehow, but they feel like there's 1000s and 1000s of bottles of this stuff still in circulation and still being sold. There was an auction that was they were selling this guy's wine, I believe his name is Rudy. They were selling his wines at a Christie's auction, like long after he had been exposed. And so these guys on these, the, you know, these wine connoisseur email list or they're, you know, emailing each other back and forth, and hey, like Rudy's wines are being sold here. This is bullshit. This is fake. And then they have these experts come in and test the stuff. But what's crazy is one guy in the film and one is like, this is one of the real bottles that Rudy sold me because Rudy was selling real wine right before he started selling bullshit wine. It's like, this is one of the real bottles. I try. And the guy tries it. He's like, Oh, yeah, this is really good. And then another guy gets a hold. He goes, when did you open this? And he goes, what a couple hours ago. He's like, he tastes it. He goes, this is bullshit. This is not real. Because this doesn't have the vivacity. It doesn't have the flavor. This is not I've tasted this one is not the one because apparently and I don't understand this at all right? The palate of a wine connoisseur is this thing where they can literally like you can give them like a flight of wines. And they can tell you, this is James Bond, teach Shiraz, blah, blah, blah. And, and I don't again, I'm so out of my wheelhouse here. I think I like Buffalo Trace whiskey with you. That's some saying I know this tastes good. Yeah. You know,

Eric Weinstein 13:01 but Okay, well, first of all, should we try to drink this in the weird wine way?

Joe Rogan 13:05 No, no, this is American. We don't fuck around here. It's got a buffalo with testicles on the label. So I'm looking at that right there.

Unknown Speaker 13:12 Like that. Yes.

Joe Rogan 13:13 This is older than America. By the way. You know, this is company, Buffalo Trace, they started making whiskey in 1773. It's literally three years old in America itself.

Eric Weinstein 13:25 So the thing that I did not understand I think about wine is that if you're trying to taste your wine you can't possibly get at what's this high end stuff because it's only your nose. That can determine that these differences that nobody's got enough stuff going on on their tongue to tell great one. So you've got this thing called the retro nasal passage in the back of your mouth.

Joe Rogan 13:48 Can you mograph Jamie, retro name a little pattern?

Eric Weinstein 13:51 Yeah, where do we replace the graphic? And so this whole thing about verbling where you turn your mouth into a bomb, right? Oh, yes. Do it.

Unknown Speaker 14:00 I do it.

Unknown Speaker 14:04 And they smell it?

Eric Weinstein 14:05 Well, you start you're getting this fountain with air coming up. And then you're opening the back of your hopefully your retro nasal passage

Joe Rogan 14:13 do get a little bit of a smell right

Eric Weinstein 14:14 and and that's where the magic happens. So the weird thing is somebody buys really expensive wine and then they try to taste it

Unknown Speaker 14:22 Ah, there we go.

Eric Weinstein 14:23 There we go. That's for beer with for anything I know but once you get interesting once you get addicted to smash it Yeah,

Joe Rogan 14:31 maybe that's like dudes are in the smell and feet. Like that's what's going on.

Eric Weinstein 14:36 You're not trapping me in that conversation.

Joe Rogan 14:38 No, we had we had a guy killed Tony. Okay, it's really in the feet. He was fucking hilarious. Were you there Jamie that night? It was a kill Tony recently Anton's in this. This kid went up. He was really funny. He was a funny comic. But it was really funny. He was talking about how he's really in a girl's feet and hit me it was like completely unapologetic. And he was hilarious. And he was just talking about how he likes to smell girl's feet. And he knows how everybody

Eric Weinstein 15:06 else's attraction is weird and whatever your thing is, it's like, Yeah, I don't know. I'm just into that.

Joe Rogan 15:11 Well, it was funny. I mean, it was definitely weird because it's unusual. Yeah, someone would be it's I don't think it's unusual that guys are going to feet I think it's a lot more unusual than you think. But I think what is unusual is that he was so open about expressing the fact that he was in defeat in front of a group of strangers yeah in a one minute set on kill Tony because killed you know how kill Tony works

Eric Weinstein 15:33 not really

Joe Rogan 15:33 kill Tony is the foundation. It was one of the foundations in Los Angeles. And I think it's going to be the foundation and Austin of the open mic community. Okay, because it gives a comic one minute the Tony has Tony Hinchcliffe developed the show. And him and Brian Redman. They do it together and Tony has a hat, they shake the hat up, and they are a bucket, they reach in the bucket and they pull out a name, okay, random. And then that person doesn't know if they're going to perform or not, is maybe 30 people that throw their names in and maybe five get to perform. And Tony pulls that name out, calls the guy or girl or non binary folk, and they come running onto the stage and they do one minute of stand up. Got it. And this guy did one minute stand up about how he he gets hard ons because of feet. And it was just hilarious. But he was talking about the smell of feet. And a girl got on stage and took her shoe off and he smelled her foot. It was just it was preposterous. Okay. But it's it gives these comics an opportunity to like that on that at that night I think was me and Adam II get that night. But it's like Donal Rawlings has been on, you know, like you name a DOM IRA's of favorite guests, like great comics are on it all the time. So there's a professional gas that sits there and talks to the comics, the comic does a set and then we'll ask them I've done it a bunch of times, we'll ask him questions. Like how long you've been doing comedy? Like what where'd you start? You know what town you started out in? And then they tell it what do you do now for money. And you know, they have great stories. And it's it's fun, because you get a chance to see the beginnings and some of those comics have gone on like Allie makowski, who has opened up for me in fucking arenas. She started out on kill Tony. Okay, yeah, it's slow. It's like, you could develop a legitimate professional career from this. But it's like, a really good path for these amateurs to get, like one minute of stage time. So they honus one minute, hoping they're going to get called onto the stage. And usually, like, if you're a halfway decent comic, and you've been doing, you know, six months a year, you probably have a minute, you probably have a minute where you could get up there and rocket for a minute. And when they do, some of them are terrible, but some of them are really funny. Some of them were the best way to get people opened up almost instantly with no foreplay to go on. Yeah, you don't there's no way you know, you have to say it's, there's a different way for you. Yeah, it would be for Jamie than it would be for me. everybody's

Eric Weinstein 18:01 seen it be different for you on different nights.

Joe Rogan 18:02 Yeah, it's always different. I always, you gotta it's like, it's a living thing. The audience is a living thing. It depends entirely upon what's happened before you went on stage. It depends entirely on what time of night it is, you know, there's a lot going on.

Eric Weinstein 18:16 I'm always a little freaked out when I see you at the store. Because I don't associate like, I got to know you before I ever got to see you be funny in front of a crowd. And it was just like, holy shit. You can do that. You know, and it's a different persona. Like, you can clearly see that a different mind has clicked it. It's like the I know kung fu moment.

Joe Rogan 18:39 It is like that, right? Yeah. And it's like, if you saw me do kung fu you'd think that I don't really know any kung fu but you know, it's a it's a thing. You know, you got to know how to do it. Then you got to when you do it, you got to treat that audience like you know, you got to bring the good shit. You gotta you gotta come with the good good

Eric Weinstein 19:00 jokes. It's like when I saw Steve Seagal playing blues guitar. I was just like, What

Unknown Speaker 19:05 Is he good?

Eric Weinstein 19:07 He I don't want to say anything negative, but I've seen parts of it that have been really, really pretty good. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm I'm I'm trying to figure out what happened to the guitar and what happened to COVID. Changing the world of guitar because every guitar, lots of people had time on their hands. Oh, just fresh eyes. And then and and the amps have gotten wildly better. In the last year. I bought a modeling amp for 250 bucks that changed my life from positive grid called the spark amp we're talking about with Jamie. And it is a replica of like all the gear that real guys have that hobbyists like, I don't even know what it is. I can play with it and it'll model all of these setups. So suddenly, like I'm smarter and then You know, that's weird thing was telling Jamie,

Joe Rogan 20:01 this hat have been developed long and advanced. It's been

Eric Weinstein 20:03 our COVID Yes, but I think a $250 item that just blows your mind may be relatively new and this I think there's one coming from Oh, with neural DSP so that there's like competing, and Jamie was talking about the helix. So there's like this collection of these things. And I hadn't spent $300 on my rig for 30 years or something. And I did this. And suddenly a little bit more magic was like, available to me. And then I put a brief clip of myself playing on Instagram. And I got contacted by like some of the Greatest Guitarists in the effing world. When when tosin abasi and Joe Robinson, and Ryan Roxy have his guitars for like Alex Alice Cooper, contact you and they're like,

Joe Rogan 20:59 this is you jammin with give me some of this. Give me some of this. You jamming to glenn beck? Is that what says

that was actually the one that's pretty fucking good. And you're doing that without a pic.

Eric Weinstein 21:26 If there's another one. Look, yeah, that one. I didn't know you were supposed to. Yeah, you. That was the one that did it. I think

Unknown Speaker 21:40 you're supposed to use it. But I didn't know.

Eric Weinstein 21:54 Basically playing your guitar with a real guitar.

Unknown Speaker 21:56 That's really good. Well, that's,

Eric Weinstein 21:58 that's the amp. And the fact that somebody set up my strat?

Joe Rogan 22:02 What do you mean, but that you didn't know you're supposed to play with

Eric Weinstein 22:04 it? I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing and how to

Unknown Speaker 22:07 learn how to do this.

Eric Weinstein 22:09 I hang out in a room alone. It's sort of dark and lonely. But

Unknown Speaker 22:13 yeah, when did you learn this?

Eric Weinstein 22:16 No, this is part of the thing I do bunch of things that I did. I don't do with other people. Right? I just learned shit on right. But

Joe Rogan 22:22 when did you learn this? How long?

Eric Weinstein 22:25 I don't even know some of it in the last year.

Joe Rogan 22:27 But when did you start playing guitar? You being quiet? No, I don't. I don't like it. I'm gonna call you out on this. I don't. Okay,

Eric Weinstein 22:33 very quiet. Had a guard. I've had a guitar since I was. I was 15. I don't

Joe Rogan 22:40 know Wayne. Okay. Yeah, I'm playing forever. But you're self taught. But

Eric Weinstein 22:44 yeah. And then you have these like plateaus where suddenly you take your head off. You're so Hendrix

Joe Rogan 22:47 was self taught. You know, almost all of the really great Stevie Ray Vaughan, I

Eric Weinstein 22:51 believe was self taught. Albert King was self taught.

All of these guys were like on the next level where they can learn it from, you know, who creates a Danny gatton Roy, you can nobody knows. I don't know who those guys are. But I'll trust you to blow your mind. Well, they want to have Gary learn. Gary Clark, Jr. Gary Clark, did you psycho? Was it say self taught pitch? Whoa. So I can't do that stuff. But the point that I'm starting to come to is I realize when different communities behave differently. They're angry, jealous communities and they're open hearted. We're glad to have you on board communities. And I could not believe the quality of the people who reached out to me to give me encouragement for whatever stupid in this day. I don't know how to hold a pic. I don't know how to do this stuff with a pic. I just can't. I think as long as the sound is good, they don't care. Is that correct? I think more than that, I think that the idea is that there's this one of us thing, like, okay, I can see that he spent time in the trenches trying to figure out what we do. And most people don't care. And he was, you know, and so, the ideas.

You know, I did a guitar podcast recently. And I just expected this other thing, which is like,

Joe Rogan 24:09 what do you mean by you did a guitar podcast,

Eric Weinstein 24:12 Ryan Roxy for Alice Cooper says, I want you on the podcast as a fellow, his podcast. So like Joe Satriani, you know, was sitting in that chair and then here I am saying like, Wow, well, but in part when people are like fans of, I mean, you do comedy, you do acting, you do jujitsu, you do so many different things. That you know that there's some things that you don't do at the same level as other things. Yeah. People see that you're like taking an interest. Like if I found out that you were, you know, a road racing by you know, bicyclist or something like that. People would be like, wow, Joe, Joe's one of us. They're happy to have you on board.

Joe Rogan 24:55 I feel really sad. Yeah. Especially like weird, esoteric thing. You know, weird,

Eric Weinstein 25:01 like mandolin. For example, whenever I do something on mandolin, you know, I have all these people. I'm one of those people too. I have a mandolin, you know, it's

Joe Rogan 25:09 probably pretty rare, right? They're playing mandolin,

Eric Weinstein 25:12 I don't know, it was it was competitive with the guitar in the late 1800s, I think. And then the guitar sort of just blew it out of the water. But there's a new thing called octave mandolin, which is down an entire octave. So it doesn't have that kind of really bright, tinny sound. And so I'm going to pursue the octave mandolin and see whether

Joe Rogan 25:33 Is there any benefit and the kid learn how to play the recorder? It seems like they're just fucking with those kids when they give them a recorder.

Eric Weinstein 25:40 Well, look, there's some cool stuff from like, telemon if you're really into,

Joe Rogan 25:44 like, no one plays professional recorder,

Eric Weinstein 25:46 right? Can you get chicks with a recorder? I don't know.

Joe Rogan 25:49 Can you get those chicks anyway?

Eric Weinstein 25:51 Well, you know the scene with Belushi in the guitar. Yes. You have to be very careful what you put. I know we all

Joe Rogan 25:58 love that scene. It's so real. It's so real. Sorry. Yeah, it's so real. I've been at a party where a guy busts out a guitar and starts singing. And you're like, Oh, my God, Who are you? What have you done?

Eric Weinstein 26:13 What are the skills that you would want to acquire at this?

Joe Rogan 26:16 I think music would be really interesting to learn. Either play the piano or play the guitar. I just don't have the time. Yeah, I don't have the time. I don't have the time to do the things that are already do.

Eric Weinstein 26:27 You know, how about hyper accelerating one of those things like getting somebody who understands your brain? Because you're a great learner.

Joe Rogan 26:33 I'm good at listening.

Eric Weinstein 26:35 Yeah. I like a beginner's mindset a lot.

Joe Rogan 26:39 Yeah. Well, I think it's helpful. I do a lot of things from scratch. You know, like, I think that's how I got good at jujitsu is listening. I didn't get good at jujitsu, because I figured it out myself. I get good because my friend Eddie Eddie Bravo, a great coach. And my original instructor, Jacques Machado was a great coach. I just listened to them.

Eric Weinstein 26:56 What made Eddie a great jujitsu intellectual

Joe Rogan 27:00 Eddie things way outside the box, way, way, way outside the box. And he's his real creative, you know, cuz he's a, he's a musician. Like that's, that's what he does outside of comedy. Yeah, he's done comedy, too. He actually, he was always really funny. And I tried to get him to do comedy like way back in the day. And he did a few open mics, but it was just too harrowing form. But then when he started doing a lot of seminars, and got really comfortable teaching, because he became a jujitsu instructor and started teaching for a living, he then he got much more comfortable in front of large groups of people. And then he started doing stand up again, within the last five or six, five years or so something like that. And then he's very funny. He's just a funny guy, like, me and him hang out, we fucking laugh so hard. He's like, other than Joey Diaz. I probably laugh harder with Eddie Bravo than anybody that I know. But he's just, he thinks different than people. And sometimes it's a problem when he starts like entertaining some ideas that are completely preposterous. And he goes deep with them, because he's figured out a way with jujitsu to take ideas that a lot of people didn't think were good. Yeah, and figured out a way to tap people out with those ideas. Like he took some ideas and he said, No, you just kind of like, like, for instance, here's a perfect example. Like there's certain kicks that if you just showed someone that they would say, well, that's not practical, right? You're not going to be able to do that. The problem is you just haven't reached a proficiency like maybe like a Steven Wonderboy Thompson or something like that where it will become practical like a specific triggers like a spinning wheel kick. It's a wild cool looking cake looks great in a Bruce Lee any right Wonderboy Thompson. He's a famous mixed martial arts fighter. He pulls that off in fights, because he's a 57 and oh kickboxer and one of the best strikers that's ever competed in mixed martial arts. So his proficiency in striking is so elite that he can do things that if you just taught, some people would say that's impractical. That'll never work in a fight. But it will work in a fight if you reach the highest level of proficiency. And Eddie had that same mindset with jujitsu techniques, and he figured out a way to make some techniques that a lot of people thought were impractical, not just possible, but really, very repeatable. Yes, not just repeatable, but high percentage, okay? Like, especially if you if someone is in a situation where they don't understand what's happening, so they don't understand what's in danger, or where the counters are aware, you know, where you're trapped. His real creative, you know, but again, like you get some tripped up, like he starts believing some wacky shit, but then he gets out of it. He'll he'll let things go after a while. But you know, he, it's because he entertains ideas. And he'll he'll because he doesn't trust, mainstream thought, well, so mainstream thought whether it's in jujitsu or mainstream thought, whether it's in economics or whatever, we

Eric Weinstein 29:58 all struggling with this a little bit. Like, there's no part of the mainstream that looks at all credible to me anymore.

Joe Rogan 30:04 Well, it's real wacky now, right. And here's a here's a wacky one with the New York Times, is they they're debunking this idea that the Wu Han lab may have been the source of COVID. When they're like when all these different people are talking about it, but on this for forever, we have been on it forever. What it's extraordinary is the The New York Times is still saying debunked claims with no evidence whatsoever. You know, saga and jetty from the rising and the hill had this whole piece about it on it is

Unknown Speaker 30:39 you love what they're doing.

Joe Rogan 30:40 They're the best. They're the best. Well, he

Eric Weinstein 30:42 has two channels if you've been on either.

Joe Rogan 30:44 Well, I've only had him on here and crystal together.

Eric Weinstein 30:48 But what I liked what you guys did right at the beginning of that, where they explained what happened, I didn't mean to cut you off. That's what happens in the cycle when your team wins and your team loses and how that they both broken out of that. And they've thrown that away. Yes. That they there was 10 minutes. Yeah, I needed to hear that. I thought you broke knew the three of you guys broke really new ground

Joe Rogan 31:07 there what we need, there's a reasonable person on the left and a reasonable person on the right. And they're both committed to honesty above all right, they might have different philosophical coming

Eric Weinstein 31:18 together to crystals coming towards saagar. Because she's seeing Yeah, so right. On the left. Yes. What my hope is, is that she's going to be a credible progressive who's rejecting all this nonsense progressivism?

Joe Rogan 31:33 Yeah, I think I think you're right. She's very smart. And so is he and the two of them together. Wonderful.

Eric Weinstein 31:38 Well, before I catch up,

Joe Rogan 31:39 what I was gonna say is, they were talking about how the New York Times is talking about this deep I forget who they were quoting, who was entertaining. The idea was that we'll see Oh, x CDC. That's right, the CDC guy, that he was entertaining this idea, this, this debunked idea of this emanating from a lab, but it's not debunked. Not only is it not debunked, it's more possible than ever. But the problem is, the idea was originally associated with Donald Trump. So these motherfuckers at the New York Times still have it in their head that they can't admit,

Eric Weinstein 32:15 I don't know that that's what's going on. I think it is, well, that what they do, it's a weird move.

Joe Rogan 32:20 We should tell people exactly what what you're saying. Okay. The the former head of the CDC is saying that it's more probable than not, he's not saying it's absolute. He's saying it's more probable than not that it escaped from a lab, right. And he details that and he actually predates it. He goes pre, he goes like deep into September, and October, he believes it might have emanated around that time started spreading. They The reason why is it all makes total sense. This is in a very unusual laboratory, the laboratory had been cited in 2018. For safety protocol violations. The laboratory works on the exact same kinds of coronaviruses. That causes worldwide pandemic, on bats. They work on bat. Yep. coronaviruses. And this is one of two level four labs that are in this area. So this this whole thing is so it's so much more likely that it emanated from the lab, but the problem is, the narrative was Donald Trump is racist. Donald Trump calls it the China virus. Donald Trump says it came from a lab, it can't have come from a lab because Donald Trump's always wrong.

Eric Weinstein 33:33 That's one possibility. I'm worried about something beyond that.

Joe Rogan 33:36 What are you worried about?

Eric Weinstein 33:38 The way that they make this move is that they synonymized the lab leak hypothesis with a synthetic virus engineered from scratch. So in other words, the idea of like maybe somebody growing horseshoe bat Coronavirus in human lung tissue to accelerate natural selection because like, we don't know how to engineer it, but if you let it feel natural selection engineering, you can accelerate that right. So right. Instead of saying, We don't know what to make of accelerated natural selection in a lab leaking, they try to make this move, which is like, you know, there's no sign that this was engineered. In a lab, you're like, Okay, well, you changed what the hypothesis is in order to say what you're saying to protect your future credibility. And the thing that I'm really freaking out about. You've been talking about it Brett's been talking about, I've been talking about all sorts of people have been talking about this one for a year. I increasingly think that none of these organizations think that they owe us any kind of truth, that when they get caught, it's just like, yeah, of course we had to say that. What? Yeah. You know, like, this Time Magazine article about of course, we fortified the election. You what? Oh, yeah. We fortified it. Oh, I Trump was right about a conspiracy like in the article.

Joe Rogan 34:58 quoting that Who are they quoting that said? If they fortified the election,

Eric Weinstein 35:01 there was apparently some entire group under one guy with hundreds of activists who told their people don't riot in the streets. Have a dance party instead. I would highly recommend TIME magazine.

Joe Rogan 35:17 I read the I read the the blurb about the fortifying. And I was like, Huh, that's a disturbing quote. But what does it mean?What does it what are they trying mean.

Eric Weinstein 35:26

with with the claim of the article is, we went right up to the door, meddling with the election. But all we cared about was free and fair. And we had a huge conspiracy. So Donald Trump wasn't wrong, there was a huge conspiracy. But we are so committed to democracy that even though we hate Donald Trump with the passion that you know, won't let go of 24. Seven, we still would never do anything against an election.

Joe Rogan 35:51 The problem is with a guy like Trump, you can almost justify some

Eric Weinstein 35:55 that's what I saw shit. If you claim that you're you have to fight all enemies, foreign and domestic. And you claim that he's a Russian asset. You're pretty much saying that you have to do something drastic. Yeah. And so the number of things that people claim is what the problem is, because they're not all compatible. And what I'm trying to get at more broadly is over and over, I see the same move, which is denied, denied, and I we get caught. Yeah. Limited Hangout. Yeah, we did that shit. That's the kind of stuff we do, because we

Joe Rogan 36:25 have to do it. But I don't think they're saying they got caught. I think they're saying that what we did was make sure the election was was,

Eric Weinstein 36:32 I think, the concept of a limited hangout where you know that something is too big to hold back. So you push a part of it into the public, not all of it that the limited. And you let the public think, Okay, well, now you know the truth and it stops there. And then they stop asking questions because they've got a new toy to play with.

Joe Rogan 36:49 Have you been paying attention to the border crisis? Shit, where it's not bad when democrats do it. It's not bad when democrats do it. And it's even worse than when Trump was doing it. But it's still not bad.

Eric Weinstein 37:01 It's bad. I don't know how to be a logical democrat

Joe Rogan 37:03 anymore. Yeah, I don't know how to do it. I

Eric Weinstein 37:06 don't like politically homeless. I'm politically homeless now. And these people have done it because it's a low IQ movement, or it's a high. It's a low integrity movement, or it's a low IQ movement. It's it can't be it can't be high IQ, high integrity.

Joe Rogan 37:22 You and I had a conversation on this very podcast and I said that I would vote for Trump before I'd vote for Biden, I really didn't want and people got mad at me. I didn't wind up voting for either one. I voted for Joe Jorgensen. Because I'm like, this is almost like a protest vote yet. I did the same, but my point was exactly what we're experiencing right now. The guy does press conferences and they're like something out of a fucking mccobb movie. I feel like I'm terrified. It's like grandpa's at the wheel dude, and he's not on his medication. This is nuts man nuts here and then now they're calling it they're not calling it the Biden administration anymore. They're calling it the Biden Harris administration, which to me is like letting you know that there's only a matter of time before it's

Eric Weinstein 38:06 a kid in Florida. i'm not i'm i'm uh, someone didn't say caretaker president. But you know, I'm just sort of here to warm the seat. You're the future. You're just thinking like, Okay, are you the oldest president in American history by a longshot? Why do we need a transition? I'm a transit. Here's

Joe Rogan 38:25 the thing Bernie's older than him. Right.

Eric Weinstein 38:29 Jimmy Carter still in the play in the game.

Joe Rogan 38:31 Jimmy Carter is still in the game because he could do a second term. Yeah, he's only 1000 years old. He just

Eric Weinstein 38:36 got over dinner. So he just, I'm just I'm hoping that I'm joking. joking. I hope so.

Joe Rogan 38:41 But Bernie is lucid is my point. I believe Bernie is at least Biden's age. My correct or is he older? Older? He's older, but very lucid. Yeah. When he talks, he talks clearly and you know, and apparently he said he's going to run again. Which is kind of crazy. So he's getting what is he gonna do? Like, how is that gonna work? It's gonna go independent.

Eric Weinstein 39:03 Why can't we have anyone younger than us? I'm five. I could vote for Tulsi.

Joe Rogan 39:11 Yes, I could vote for Tulsi. You know, who I think has a shot is the governor of Florida. Okay. I think he has a shot. I really do.

Eric Weinstein 39:20 Maybe this is gonna depress me too much. Maybe? Well,

Joe Rogan 39:23 I mean, I don't know what you have to do. To run the country correctly. What you can't do is what Trump did is, is say fuck you to the people that don't agree with you. He's you didn't unite people. He was like, I'm doing it and I'm kicking ass and you're coming in with me Nevers, like, Yeah, all the trumpsters will get but everybody else is like, Ah, this motherfucker. He he riled them up. He made them angry. He made them fury. I

Eric Weinstein 39:50 understand. But we can't have any solution that could work. So we have to select from this menu of the unworkable people.

Joe Rogan 39:56 Right? Well, I don't know if that's necessarily true. Just what we have at the moment. It's like you go to a restaurant, and you're like, well, all they ever have is hamburger. Well, that's just what's on the menu currently, like, you know, another manager can take over this restaurant and they could expand the menu. I was

Eric Weinstein 40:11 in Cambridge, Massachusetts for almost 20 years. And there was cafe Algiers, it had soup of the day. And we always used to ask because every single day for 20 years, it was lentil soup. Every day, every day soup of the day was lentil soup.

Joe Rogan 40:23 Well, glenridge is a mess. Really? Yeah. came to that crazy place. You're from Massachusetts.

Unknown Speaker 40:27 Yeah, I

Joe Rogan 40:27 used to catch rising star. All right, that was like the weirdest place to perform. It's like that was the beginning of the PC movement. It was like the PC movement in the 80s was like the first warning shots of wokeness what we're experiencing now. Actually,

Eric Weinstein 40:41 if you go back to Clint Eastwood, in one of the Dirty Harry movies, he's it's a really interesting scene where he's told that he's has to approve new candidates for the force for a detective and there's a female candidate. And he's not happy. But the reason he's not happy is super subtle. He asked how can how fast can you run the 100? Like, yeah, like his his thing is not about male versus female. Right. Like, don't don't touch the requirements.

Joe Rogan 41:11 Yeah. And that's how people feel about the military. They're lowering standards of military physical tests, right? To enable more women to get involved. And the attache people.

Eric Weinstein 41:25 I want more accepted. We know ageism in the Special Forces. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:29 Jesus Christ. Well, Tim Kennedy had a post about this recently, because there was someone who is who is hired by the Pentagon for some sort of diversity role, right? And they just let him go, because they found out that he had some posts that were very questionable on social media about Hitler and Trump until they got rid of them. They move into a new but the point was that there there's no Tim Kennedy's point was there's no room for the concept of diversity with train killers, who is their job is killing people with there's no room for woke politics or political correctness. Like we're there to get shit done. We do. Jimmy got something for us. Oh, it's like, we're Our job is to get shit done and, and kill bad people. Right? Like, there's no room for diversity. You know, we don't need to send a fucking South Pacific trans man in to do the job because it would make everybody look good in the newspaper, like, you get the best killer for the job. And they're the ones who complete the task.

Eric Weinstein 42:30 So the idea is no relaxation of staying. Totally. Yeah,

Joe Rogan 42:34 that's mean, that's what buds is right? When they, when they choose seals, it's a ruthless elimination of anybody that's going to quit. And that they you need that you can you can't lighten that up at all, because then you won't have seals, right? You'll have some fake thing that you've created some just, you know, it's like fight training or marathon running. Or you can't say, you know, like, you don't have to run the full 26 miles because you know, you're this or that, you know, you got to fucking this is this is the standard. This is what it is. The person who wins wins. Like that's how it goes. It's like, you got to get under three hours or whatever the fuck they can do it now. Is there a guy who could do it in two hours? Isn't dude, isn't that the new the new? Do went into the marathon? Yeah. Yeah, the the new.

Unknown Speaker 43:22 They've made a way for him to break it. And like with

Joe Rogan 43:25 some funky shoes, right?

Unknown Speaker 43:26 They did a lot of work to get to happen. But they did. And he's a beast

Joe Rogan 43:29 on top of that, right? Yes. You can't lighten standards, man. Yeah, you can't discourage competition, because the people that you would like to see succeed aren't succeeding. There's a place for everybody. And also, human life is a giant spectrum of activities and disciplines. And, and, you know, and things that people are enjoying, you can't you can't decide the you don't have enough of these people in this. So you're gonna change what it is. It's not basketball, we're gonna slow it down. Right? And what are you gonna do? You know, you can't actually for white ballplayer. You can't do that you can't, you know, it's like it is what it is.

Eric Weinstein 44:09 Yeah. Okay. I'm with you. I'm with you. And

Joe Rogan 44:15 the problem is, if you say that you're racist, or sexist, why don't we

Eric Weinstein 44:18 just agree that we're all of those things, pay the fine and get on with? We're not none of those things. Right. We just do matter, right? Yeah, I think that the thing that I don't want to do is I don't want to pay the tax every day. Of course, Joe, I'm not saying this. I'm not saying they want you

Joe Rogan 44:33 to do what the people that are woke what it is, is a force compliance to an ideology, and then they'll bully you into compliance before they will hear your terms. They will bully you into compliance and that's what happened with your brother in clubhouse. Yeah, they bullied him into a specific conversation before they allowed him to speak. Yeah,

Eric Weinstein 44:52 Islam, for example, has a lot of overhead In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, The Merciful and Muhammad peace be upon, but they just read pbu Ah, so Don't use a four characters, so they don't do the whole thing. But we should be able to. But what I'm trying to say is we should be able to say something like pbu Ah, about the whole thing that we have to say every time we want to have an opinion. Hmm, because it's just too expensive. The overhead is killing us.

Joe Rogan 45:15 I see what you're saying.

Eric Weinstein 45:16 I all usual caveats. I all I want to say is all usual caveats. And then I want to abbreviate that as I go. And then I can get on with what I'm saying.

Joe Rogan 45:26 My hope is that the outrage Olympics will be exhausting for people. Yeah. And they'll eventually come out on the other end and realize that what's important is just be nice. Just be nice and be a good person and Stop bullshitting people.

Eric Weinstein 45:43 How long is this taking? I mean, the late 60s were over, Depart with very quickly

Joe Rogan 45:48 weaponized, I know, right? Like accusations are weaponized. And anytime something happens, you can politicize that event and use it but is so

Eric Weinstein 45:58 effing boring. I can't stand How boring it's not just boring. It's dangerous, dangerous. And all this is the thing, right? It's, it's these twin people talking about this in terms of like combat. Yeah, dangerous and boring. And it's much more dangerous, the more bored you get, because mostly nothing's happening. Right. And that's the thing that, you know, I wrote an entire article about this with kayfabe, which is that you in order to get wrestling to be exciting, you had to move away from actual wrestling, and that's the origin of professional wrestling, right, is that batches would last too long, and then mostly nothing would happen. And then somebody be crippled for life?

Unknown Speaker 46:36 Yeah,

Eric Weinstein 46:36 yeah. Yeah, was the good business model.

Joe Rogan 46:39 Yeah. Um, it's just were at a weird time where people are pushing narratives. And, and then other people are joining in because that narrative fits along with their ideology, even though they know there's some horseshit right to what that narrative is, like a good example is, do you were that 65 year old woman that got beaten up in New York City Hall, it's a sad story. Because this guy is all caught on security camera. There's this guy, he's kicking, he kicks the 65 year old woman down and kicks her when she's down stops her and just it's horrific. And there's these three guys, at least two guys that are watching and they do nothing. They're inside the building. And they're watch

Eric Weinstein 47:23 like this carjacking video, are the guys just filming and doing nothing?

Joe Rogan 47:27 Yeah, but anyway, this guy is kicking this woman while these two guys watch. And then de Blasio goes on TV, and he blames it on Trump. He blames it on the White House and the current administration, because it was an Asian woman. But what it what it was, was a guy who was released from prison who had stabbed his mother to death. So the guy was he was criminally insane. And because of these liberal ideas about rehabilitation, so I can't and murder this guy had only done I think he'd only done like 10 1010 or 12 years in jail for stabbing his mom to death. And so they let him go and what does he do he find some woman and kicks the shit out of her was now here's where it gets weird. Did he kick the shit out of her because she was Asian because he was aware of the propaganda against Asian people that he that de Blasio believes, was influenced by Donald Trump's portrayal of the viruses being the Chinese virus. I don't I can't I don't know. But But every time we can point is the point is Yeah, the reason why that guy did that is because he's criminally insane. It's not because of Donald Trump. The reason why that guy did that is because he shouldn't have been on the street.

Eric Weinstein 48:38 Yeah, but why he's a bad PR forcing us to talk about it over and the more we have to debunk this stuff. It's just a firehose of debunked double stuff. And everything takes a half an hour to explain what somebody screwed up in form,

Joe Rogan 48:52 but I think it's good to talk about it. Because then but then people realize like, Okay, what is why would he say that? Well, because he's a bad mayor.

Eric Weinstein 48:58 He's guys, man.

Joe Rogan 49:00 He's bad at his job. He's, you saw the video that he put out about how we have to bring back New York City with culture. Did you see that? You want to you want to see the craziest fucking thing you've ever seen in your life? Right. Jamie find that it's on my Twitter page. It is it seems like a sketch from SNL back when SNL was funny. It is how SNL still funny sometimes. I shouldn't have said that.

Eric Weinstein 49:21 Because it goes through periods where it is

Joe Rogan 49:22 yeah, and it is. Well, it's hard to do 90 minutes of live shit every week. But the point is, it seems like a sketch. It seems like a parody. It's here's what it seems like. It seems like a scene in a Coen Brothers movie, where a mayor is out of his fucking mind, go go fullscreen and give me some volume. Because this is fucking completely crazy. Watch this. You're not gonna believe this.

So people just listening to recovery that brings back dancing and the energy of this city

Unknown Speaker 49:55 to be a part of and we're gonna do that.

Unknown Speaker 49:57 We're going to really bring back the heart and soul in New York City. We need arts and culture back and we need people to see it and feel it to participate in it to know that that essence of New York City has not been defeated

Joe Rogan 50:09 by the Coronavirus. But we'll come back strong in 2021, month after month and 2021. As you see the city come back to life, cultural will lead the way. Open culture is another thing. If you saw the video of this, you would know how fucking preposterous This is. And then this guy is talking about they're doing. I mean, they got the list BS. Most Hispanic gentlemen, they could find to speak about this hashtag open culture and cultural community. So listen, this music community is our home. It's fucking terrible. And what are these people doing? What is this dance? spending money on this? So this is the city's falling apart, restaurants are disappearing left and right, small businesses are disappearing left and right 90% of all the moving trucks are going out York City, and this is this is his solution to this. Because these people don't have any respect for business. They they somehow or another think this money falls out of trees. And that you just need to restrict redistribute this money. Because the rich people they have too much of it. So redistribute this money. And the way we're going to redistribute it, we're going to open up culture, and we're going to bring back dance like, What the fuck is that? Like? What is that? Imagine that you are the mayor of one of the biggest cities on planet Earth. And that's your solution. Like this is a big video that you put together, and you have these people dancing and doing all this crazy. It's so uncoordinated. The music is so bad. It seems like a sketch. This is what you're dealing with. And this is the same guy that was saying that Donald Trump was responsible for this criminally insane person who kicked the shit out of this poor old lady in.

Eric Weinstein 51:49 Like, I listen to this stuff, Joe, and I just despair. I know what we're capable of. I know how amazing we are as human beings. And I watched this stuff. Like, imagine you had propolis. Right? You ever seen parabolas? What's parabolas? Can I say this? Yeah. Jamie?

Joe Rogan 52:11 pull that up. Pull up. Pull up those Jamie. Seems like an old Greek guy that I'm not aware of.

Eric Weinstein 52:16 Yeah, one of the great dance philosophers of all time. labialis is a loveless

Joe Rogan 52:21 Jamie. You're not aware of it either. Good. I don't feel alone. I know what you're saying.

Eric Weinstein 52:26 I mean, it's terrible. Even if you're gonna make a wrong point. Your New York City how much great dances there you know, you buy stuff on the subway using the pole and everything that's available. Yeah, blow my. Yeah, guaranteed.

Joe Rogan 52:40 They could have had breakdancers out there. They could they could have had hip hop guys out there doing like stance elements, guys, and it would have been amazing. weather got some crazy. I smile and I'm not sure what I'm looking up. Pull up this dance. Okay, that's alright. Paul. labialis dance is this palapas There it goes. We are palapas Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. These are talented dancers. Yeah, this is difficult.

Eric Weinstein 53:08 Yeah, it's rough. believably difficult. Unbelievably gorgeous. Beautiful. difficult. Okay. If you saw that as an example, that can blow your mind very quickly. And sure. Yeah,

Joe Rogan 53:20 yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, I'm not against dance. I got your point. But that was that thing was nonsense. But here's what I think. It's almost better. Yeah. When it's irrefutable when the nonsense like the Blasio is video or him saying that this guy who got out of jail recently for stabbing his mother wrath, that the reason why I kicked the shit out of this Asian lady was because Donald Trump, this guy might not have been known Donald Trump was a thing.

Eric Weinstein 53:45 Did you see my graph from like Google engrams, which was a diversity and inclusion usage versus most qualified in the cross in 2017. And most qualified is going down. And diversity inclusion is going through the roof. You know, like, we can talk about this. But I want to know every cool thing that you know, and like, this is just dumb. It is corroding my soul. But it's happening in Word. It's like It's like playing tennis with people who can't play tennis. Right? And you used to be really good at tennis. And now, like, when you fight people, you want to fight people who suck.

Joe Rogan 54:21 Now you certainly are gonna get injured. Well, worse than that, you're going to get a false sense of your abilities.

Eric Weinstein 54:26 Yeah. And you're also going to degree, like all sorts of bad things. Jamie's

Joe Rogan 54:29 got something else.

Unknown Speaker 54:30 I was looking at this up. This is what I was seeing that he blames the

Joe Rogan 54:34 state parole system. Oh, well, he's right about that. But what I saw him was saying that it was Donald Trump mining correct? Yeah. And I

Unknown Speaker 54:40 tried to find even him blaming Trump for it and wasn't seeing

Joe Rogan 54:43 well. He was blaming what happened in DC? That's what he was saying. And someone Someone had a video exposing that it was not so well could have just been if that's true, he's correct here. He blames a state parole system. Well, then I take it back, because he's absolutely right with that. There's no way that guy should have been let out. Maybe he had one statement on it. And now today he's released a different one. Because he wasn't standing in front of these flags. Like this was a different scene, I believe.

Eric Weinstein 55:08 And you saw that carjacking in DC did this is

Joe Rogan 55:11 I'll take this back then because he's definitely correct. There's no way that guy should have been on parole that guy murdered his fucking mother. You know, and then he attacked that lady in in Midtown. to maybe I'm wrong. Maybe maybe got duped because I watched a whole video where they were explaining what was I forget, I don't even remember who who was hosting the video. But they were talking about how wrong his perspective is. on that. Hey, I didn't see the the guy that got his car cried.

Eric Weinstein 55:47 spared. The fact that the girl You know

Unknown Speaker 55:49 what, Jamie? Correct. I guess this is for an older thing. Now. This is from 2016 where he's blaming Trump and hate speech for rise in hate crime. So

Joe Rogan 55:56 no, that was a different one. Okay. Well, I don't think he necessarily said Trump. He was just talking about. Wow. I don't know. I'm not sure. But the point is, yeah, he's right. He's right. It is the parole system that did that. But this, this carjacking? This is these are my perspective on the carjacking is different because they're a 13 year old a 15 year old kid, that children

Unknown Speaker 56:20 can i freshmen? Yeah. I mean,

Joe Rogan 56:22 you're talking about, you know, re a really unfortunate situation where you have these young kids that stole this Uber drivers car, and he tried to stop that from happening and one of dying. It's horrific. If you've never seen the video, please don't watch it. It's hard. It's horrible.

Eric Weinstein 56:40 But the hardest part for me is where the girl says My phone is in the car. Yeah. And the guy is dead. Nobody cares about the guy thrown from the car. Now the the troops of the National Guard doesn't seem to care. The girls don't seem to care.

Joe Rogan 56:53 I don't think the National Guard at that moment necessarily knew what happened. Well, it was very confusing, but

Eric Weinstein 56:57 you know, yeah, she practically trips over the guy trying to get to her phone in the car.

Joe Rogan 57:01 Now. It's awful. It's certainly. But I think

Eric Weinstein 57:04 Seoul is corroding from all this stuff. I'm watching this, and I'm internalizing. And I know I'm supposed to sort of take a step back. I am so worried about the degradation of who we are because we can't figure out how to say no mass.

Joe Rogan 57:20 I think this is different. ck the the I'm not in any way exonerating those young girls who stole that car and killed that guy. But I think the National Guard people that pulled up on the scene, I don't think they knew what happened. I don't think they hadn't. There's no way they could have known these girls. This guy's dead. The cars flipped over. The girls are in shock, right? The girls saying Where's my phone? Like, I don't blame the, the guard guys probably are horrified once they realize that this these girls had stole this guy's car and I don't. If you're a 13 year old kid, and you steal a car, and all of a sudden that guy's dead. You're probably you're probably your whole life is public.

Eric Weinstein 57:59 Yeah, but no idea what the fuck just happened. I'm worried about something I'm calling video game mode, which is the more I stare at my screen. And then I have to context switch between my screen and realize my screen in real life. Yeah, more real life feels like my screen, the more I can't tell the difference. And it's not that I'm dumb. It's that's my probe. My evolutionary programming doesn't know anything about the screen. I know what you're saying. And my concern is, is that we don't feel our own life and our own interest anymore. Like, we don't realize what we're doing. We imagine that we are characters in a video game, there's always a restart. There's always some exploit that you can use to start again. And I am increasingly feeling like reality is slipping away from us because the phone is a little bit like what happened with porn, we thought that porn was going to habituate us to like non standard sexual practices and to extend it did. But I don't think what we really understood is is that it was going to rewire us. So that was very difficult to get aroused about anything because it changes your hedonic thresholds. I think the same thing is true for real for real life versus the phone. The phone is in some sense, so much more intense for most people, that that environment starts to blot out the feeling of being fully alive.

Joe Rogan 59:20 So you think that the reason why they were so desensitized? I can't say

Eric Weinstein 59:25 that because it's shock. It's Yeah, crazy situations, the first few seconds, fog can be the explanation. However, I increasingly see people like the Capitol Hill thing on January 6, very clearly that woman was, you know, dealing with a loaded pistol, right? And you see the guy who's holding the gun, take the finger and bring it inside the trigger guard. And then he goes back out. Because he's like pointing it at her and he understands what he's doing. It's like, please don't advance in She, she has an idea that somehow she's protected because she's part of this romantic.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:05 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:06 story in her own mind. And yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:09 I see what you're saying, you know,

Eric Weinstein 1:00:10 I really believe that the Viking and like all of it, Trump, you know, and all of this stuff, people don't feel fully alive, they don't realize we are actually attacking the Capitol building of the United States of America,

Joe Rogan 1:00:22 that they didn't realize what they were doing while they were doing it. I

Eric Weinstein 1:00:25 think that's true. We're in it's sort of live action role playing. And I believe that, you know, sometimes people probably go into combat

Joe Rogan 1:00:32 that way. Maybe I think those people genuinely thought that they are patriots. Yep. And I also think a lot of them are genuinely not bright. There's a lot of those guys that I saw being interviewed, where they were talking about why they were doing out of it, and watch people snap out a lot of people's like,

Eric Weinstein 1:00:50 the moment that I realized I was too far in and then such and such

Joe Rogan 1:00:54 get caught up in the crowd.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:55 Yeah, you get caught up in

Joe Rogan 1:00:57 it. But also I watched people it particularly that guy with the buffalo hat on there got interviewed. That's a dumb guy. He's a dumb guy who is good at stringing words together with, you know, q anom. theme,

Eric Weinstein 1:01:10 the guy smiling with the podium, the lecture.

Joe Rogan 1:01:12 Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of that going on these. These are men, mostly is there's a few women, that men who are unexceptional that think they're exceptional, because they're tied into a thing that they believe is like a movement. Yeah. to, to free. To the I think they just believe democracy is being served in some screen. Well, no. Look,

Eric Weinstein 1:01:38 there were two narratives. Yeah, there was a narrative called stop the steel and there was a narrative called certify the election. And they avoided themselves as long as they possibly could. I was watching them and I was I did a tweet storm on January 4, because I could see January six was going to be the arc point. Very often, when you say Twitter isn't real life, it really isn't up until it arcs and then you get a spark across it. And then it comes like real. Yeah, exactly. It is real life, right. And so there are these twin narrative problems where you've got these two incompatible worldviews and these stories, and they avoid each other, like two guys circling each other. Fuck you. Oh, yeah. But both of them know that, like, once we actually engage, it's pretty unpredictable what's about to happen. That's what I think you could see coming for January six, it had to happen that way, in a weird way, because they've the narratives that avoided each other for the maximal length of time, because nobody wanted to have this out. And then it was impossible to stop the two from marking and that plates got too close together. That's what I really believe I see what you're saying.

Joe Rogan 1:02:41 So what you're saying is that you think that there's two worlds that aren't communicating with each other. And both of them believe wholeheartedly in what they're doing without listening to whatever might be reasonable that's coming from the other side. And then they collide, and there's no way of squaring the circle. Like at some point, there will be a Donald Trump presidency or a Joe Biden presidency.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:03 And once you realize that your story has collapsed. It's like a doomsday cult, you say it's going to end on such and such a day. And then it doesn't, and then what happens to the cult because everybody had the same concept. I think that if you look at like, if you listen to the audio from the Jim Jones, Jonestown Massacre, yeah, it's very clear that they got caught up in a story that they couldn't get out of.

Joe Rogan 1:03:25 That's what happens all calls, right.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:26 Yeah, exactly. And the story becomes the software that you're running. Like, there's this one woman named hyacinth, who hid under her bed and survived, you know, survived Jonestown. Oh, you know, her sister perished.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:45 And

Eric Weinstein 1:03:47 somehow she ran a program that was different than the program that we because you have the recordings, people know that they're going to their death. They know the software is telling them that this is the right thing. It's a revolutionary suicide. And I saw this with people. You know, I was trying to tell people because I didn't believe the election was necessarily free and fair, but I also didn't believe that it was stolen in the way that Donald Trump was saying was stolen. I feel the

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 exact same way.

Eric Weinstein 1:04:14 Yeah. So you know, I was watching people who couldn't negotiate, they couldn't keep their footing. And this is, you know, the,

Joe Rogan 1:04:21 they're also struggling to find, like, when I went around with their team,

Eric Weinstein 1:04:26 exactly what I was gonna say the same thing. People who feel comfortable being alone are in a different situation than people who say, Well, I have to pick a team. Yes. Right. Right. And you know, that the greatest thing that has ever happened to me is the ability to stand alone for some periods of time. I do need a family. I need to be a part of something. But there are times when there is no team that represents reality. We all need

Joe Rogan 1:04:49 people. We all do. But you're right. Yeah, we all need loved ones and friends and people don't operate well. That's why when you're in prison, the worst thing they could do to you prisons to leave you alone. Yeah, you're in a fucking cement building filled rapists and murderers, the worship they can do is leave you alone. It's a really interesting, strange. We are very social animals, but the one it's like the ones that can go the longest in solitude and just think by themselves. There's a great benefit to that I was forced into it because when I was, when I was a kid, we moved around a lot. We moved when I was seven to San Francisco when I was 11, moved to Florida, when I was 13, we moved to Boston, I was forced to form my own opinions about things because I didn't have a steady group of friends. Well, we all agreed on a certain narrative, right? That's a real problem with people in this country agreeing on a certain narrative where you know, socially, that you have a contract, you have to uphold, you're socially. You're, you're you're intertwined with this narrative. And you can't think outside the box. If you say, Hey, guys, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Like, let's look at this logically, what the fuck is wrong with you? And then you got a real problem because the people, they people want compliance. This is what's going on with wokeness. With what a lot of what wokeness is, is these socially low status, people who are gaining power, right, by enforcing this narrative and attacking people who don't enforce their rights, they're bullying people who don't enforce the narrative. You know, you know, the phrase hurt people hurt people. Yeah, all the time. Well, people have been bullied, they tend to bully people kidding, and a lot of fucking dorks when, you know, they've been pushed around in high school in college, and socially, they've been very awkward. Oh, my God, they get on that goddamn computer and they attack and they love to attack.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:46 Well, Tim Ferriss tried to do big a tear and other people tried cry bullies. So it's a big tear bigger tears.

Joe Rogan 1:06:53 That's pretty good, right? great phrase who Tim's good? Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:57 But cry ball is another one and hurt people hurt people. All these things get this concept. And I do think that this issue about how what does it take to be alone for a long time. And then the part of the problem is those of us who are very good at being alone for a long time, can overstay

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 you can overstay being alone, then your next thing you know, you're ted kaczynski.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:17 Well, mathematician,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:20 yes.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:20 Speaking of which, I asked you, for this date, April 1, this is a favorite to me.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:26 Yeah. Why?

Eric Weinstein 1:07:29 I want you to have this

Joe Rogan 1:07:30 What is this nonsense? You give me a stack of papers? You know, I don't like reading, you're not gonna be able to read it. Oh, this is your new your unity theory.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:38 This is the first copy that got to version 1.0. I want you to have it. And

Joe Rogan 1:07:44 with your you asked me there's all these equations in here. And, Jamie, take this make something out of it.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:52 What is this? I believe? And this is the this is the hardest. This is the hardest part.

Joe Rogan 1:07:58 How do you have time to do this while you're still in clubhouse?

Eric Weinstein 1:08:02 Not really a clubhouse. It's a bot. low quality stuff. This is something that I've been uncomfortable about sharing. I've been in what I call the ice cave for about 37 years. And I shared a little bit of it in 2013. And I shared a little bit of it last year, April 1. And I am coming to grips with a story. And in part, you don't know this, but you've been playing a large role in my thinking about this. And well, that's a problem. No, no, I reviewed this weird episode of you at the at the store. When you took a break for seven years. And I looked at the courage that you had to do that you had to have to do something unfunny in a funny context, I think was an incredibly difficult situation. And I think I've been running from a similar situation my whole life, I don't want to face certain unpleasant facts that are out of keeping with the joy that I feel with the love with the creativity that I feel. And I don't want to let certain kinds of negativity take over my life. And then I have this other thing, which is I live legitimately believe that if we are not very careful, theoretical physics is coming to an end. And I believe it is our only hope for getting outside the solar system when you have Ilan on and he talks about Mars or bust and all this kind of stuff. I cannot understand how mankind has gotten to the point where we are not spending our efforts trying to figure out how to spread out so that we don't self extinguish on one two or three rocks. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And the best hope we have is to go beyond Einstein. And we're we're losing the belief that we're Capable of it. We're so worried about the professional norms and humiliation. And what's going to happen if we say something and what our colleagues are going to say, and all of this stuff that we're self censoring, and we're silencing ourselves. Because we'd rather be in good standing on the Titanic, then risk saying, holy shit, we're in an iceberg field. Let's think about how we're going to survive this. And I've been being a pussy about,

Joe Rogan 1:10:29 well, what is it? Explain what it is

Unknown Speaker 1:10:31 what it is,

Joe Rogan 1:10:32 what is this thing that you handed me? What is this?

Eric Weinstein 1:10:35 It is okay. This is the hardest thing for me to say, because I have to not hedge it. I think it's the theory of everything.

Joe Rogan 1:10:43 And what do you mean by that?

Eric Weinstein 1:10:47 There is a moment where you have to say this, I believe about a radical departure. And you don't want to say because you want to hedge it. It is it. Jamie, if you could bring that up. And you go a little bit, maybe two pages in

Joe Rogan 1:11:04 is available online, so someone can peruse it?

Eric Weinstein 1:11:07 In fact, okay, right there on the left. Go down that table, you see where it says x four? Yes, x four is four parameters. It could be salty, sweet, sour, bitter, it could be low, treble, medium, base and volume. And the question that I took from Einstein was, can we generate the world, everything from something as innocuous as four parameters? And if you think about a fertilized egg, somebody can hand you a picture of an embryo and in vitro fertilization, you know, like, but that's your, that's your child to be like, get the fuck out? Well, that fertilized egg somehow self assembles into something that you cannot even imagine. And that's a mystery. The question is, in some sense, can for parameters. bootstrap itself it Jamie, if you go to the first picture of the two hands, the Escher sketch? Yeah. Yeah. That is, this weird paradox can a piece of paper effectively, we'll do hands into drawing each other into existence. That's what I believe makes the theory of everything so difficult. I don't think it's the Wait a minute.

Joe Rogan 1:12:34 Yep, piece of paper didn't will introduce themselves into existence that the point is on an idea

Eric Weinstein 1:12:40 MC Escher had an idea of what Douglas Hofstadter called a strange loop. And it's a depiction of something that can't happen, but in some sense, at least was conceived of as being happened at being able to happen. Okay, and so that's what I tried to give you, which is I am scared to do this thing. I've been avoiding this for let me ask you this.

Joe Rogan 1:13:04 Yeah. What's been the criticism of this? Well, because people have criticized it right.

Eric Weinstein 1:13:10 In one year. I've seen one

Joe Rogan 1:13:14 actual critique. Only one only one. Is that because you haven't look for other ones? No,

Eric Weinstein 1:13:20 I think two guys. I think it's two guys. One of them is anonymous. And I refuse to deal with an anonymous coward who critiques me came up with three basic criticisms, and they'll have more because there'll be errors in this but two of the criticisms are inferential, they imagine that I'm doing something that I'm not doing one of the criticisms is valid but it's something that I would have brought up anyway. The most astounding thing about their so called paper is that it shows that what I put out a year ago in a lecture on YouTube is understandable. In other words, they got from the lecture what the basic setup of this

Joe Rogan 1:14:04 this theory is, I want you to boil this down so that someone who doesn't understand physics at all great will understand this in a way that they can maybe even explain to someone else go to Jamie

Eric Weinstein 1:14:17 pull pull that up Jamie calm try pull that up. Jamie calm.

Joe Rogan 1:14:33 Okay, a collection of videos in support of geometric unity.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:38 Epic troll.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:43 Who put that a

Eric Weinstein 1:14:45 go to the bottom of this. There is a team of people. Brooke Dallas Brendan stone Boku a mysterious German who does amazing graphics. Tim the mirthless Swagman from Australia aardvark and Nick who have been? Let's just go up to the top. So for example, the drought dramatizing Einstein's the greatest insight of the 20th century arguably hit, click on the one on the left and blow it up. Einstein took a curvature tensor, which has three components called vile traceless Ricci and Ricci scalar. snapped the vile off and readjusted the vile scalar. To get it to live in a space not called curvature, but metrics that is saying that curvature influences how we measure length and angle. Okay, now, this is an Einsteinian metric for two dimensions you can have it this

Joe Rogan 1:15:41 he gave me something that looks like hedge clippers,

Eric Weinstein 1:15:45 well, it's two rulers here their hair ties on the two rulers and a protractor. Okay? Okay, so there are three dimensions of ruler, two dimensions of ruler and one dimension of protractor. Okay. Now, if you'll, the idea is heat, Einstein took curvature, and fed it back into the space of rulers and protractors to say, how the rulers and protractors would warp. Okay, so that we can actually define gravity. Now, that's, that is a visual depiction of the Einstein field equations, which if I wrote them down would mean nothing to you. Okay. And the key point is that Einstein figured out, you had to get rid of a component called the Weyl. curvature, and readjust the Ricci scalar. To put it into the space of rulers and protractors, which I bought from Amazon, strangely enough, and people you see, I don't think in symbols, I think in pictures. Now, the insight is geometric unity, if you'll go zoom out, is that if you if you do the smaller neck, like we had a huge bottle to get it into metrics, there's another space

Joe Rogan 1:16:55 people are listening to this, you know, they're not just seeing it, very few people are saying, well, maybe like 30%. Okay, if this is a problem, yeah, this conversations a problem, because people are gonna have to the people are tuning out right now. Okay. Well,

Eric Weinstein 1:17:11 if you go to pull that up, Jamie deck, look, there's no way in which I can talk about tensor analysis, curvature tensors, the Theory of Everything understand,

Joe Rogan 1:17:18 I want you to boil this down, you're not boiling it down at all. Why did you do this? And what are you trying to accomplish with this?

Eric Weinstein 1:17:24 Well, first of all, what I'm trying to do is to say we don't have to talk about this. This is just something I wanted to do on your show as a thank you, because you've been you've been huge for me. And the courage to take the slings and arrows that are gonna come at me as I put this online, which is what I'm going to do today.

Joe Rogan 1:17:43 Today. Yeah. This hasn't been online before, correct. I mean, these are the people that are going to do it in front of us. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. It's gone down.

Eric Weinstein 1:17:52 Alright. So this says launch GPU, boom, people can now and it's going to be tomorrow, because we don't release today. But it's April Fool's. And they can download this as of tomorrow when they see this, okay? And they can peruse it. And there can be all sorts of problems and errors, but it's a it's a complete story of who we are, what this place is. It's my guess universe, like everything, everything, everything.

Joe Rogan 1:18:18 What made you want to do this?

Eric Weinstein 1:18:21 What made me What's the problem? Well, yeah. Tell me, Joe, when you ask why as a kid? What happens if you keep asking? You either end up in theoretical physics or an insane style?

Joe Rogan 1:18:35 Right? Alright, just keep asking questions. So

Eric Weinstein 1:18:37 you stopped somewhere, you stopped somewhere. If you don't end up in theoretical physics, it means you stopped at some point asking why. And so I just didn't stop. And the issue of like, we're here, and we're looking at all these crazy things you have arrayed in front of us. These things are understandable. But they're locked in a system of symbols. So if I put a page of the stuff in front of you, Mego as they say, my eyes glaze over, right? So for example, the light in this room is tied to something called a u one principle bundle, but you're not going to understand what a u one principle bundle is. However, I got your present

Unknown Speaker 1:19:22 was that it's water

Eric Weinstein 1:19:23 that is a u one principle bundle. It's a water wagle. But remember the time I showed you the Hopf fibration in your like, What the fuck is that? Right? That was a you one bundle over the two dimensional sphere, which was the earth. This is you one bundle over the one dimensional sphere, alias the circle. And as you do that fidget toy, you're spinning that circle over and over again. So this is an actual model of a gauge theoretic concept that somehow nobody in the history has ever mentioned to me that you can buy you one principle bundles from Amazon for under 10 bucks. And I could you if we had the opportunity, I

Joe Rogan 1:19:59 don't know why. The fuck you just said? How about that? Okay,

Eric Weinstein 1:20:01 do you?

Joe Rogan 1:20:03 Do you know what he said? If I showed,

Eric Weinstein 1:20:06 like, I can show you on video, but then we're not on video, right?

Joe Rogan 1:20:09 We are 30% of the people are watching.

Eric Weinstein 1:20:11 Yeah, but we make more, I don't. But they can go to pull that up Jamie calm, yes, they can watch these videos. And what I'm going to do over time is to show people visually without symbols. In other words, if I say a Romanian metric, they're not going to know what I'm talking about. If I hand them rulers and protractors, and a video of it, they're like, I don't know about the symbols, but I can follow an actual concrete thing. That thing that water wiggle, the idea that that's a huge one principle bundle. That is one of the deepest things we only figured out in the 1970s that the light in this room comes from effectively seeing the world as having a waterwheel structure on top of it. Now,

Joe Rogan 1:20:52 I'm not expecting on this show what that means, the light comes from having seen the world having a water on those structure on top of that,

Eric Weinstein 1:21:00 that you can rotate these right? If I if I if I squish a water wiggle and it goes around, yes, that is called a G action. g is the group of symmetries I am taking the symmetries of a donut. Okay, and I'm playing with this thing and it's going out of my hand, right? This is the structure that gauge theories, which we've talked about before which Lawrence Krauss has been on your problem, nobody can define what's the gauge theory, man, it's just some mumbo jumbo, he

Joe Rogan 1:21:28 had a hard time describing, okay,

Eric Weinstein 1:21:29 if we spent an afternoon with a waterwheel or those videos, which we can't do, because of your audience, I understand that you could understand what a gauge theory is because you'd never see a symbol, there would never be a symbol between you and understanding why there's light in this room. The light in this room comes from a water wiggles structure about a circle that nobody's ever seen that is at every point in space and time, which is one of the great discoveries that we've made that nobody seems to care about.

Joe Rogan 1:21:56 So how is it a water wiggle structure,

Eric Weinstein 1:21:59 because there's a there's a circle, at every point that we can't perceive the circular everywhere, in space in space above space, that we can rotate

Joe Rogan 1:22:08 a circle how big we don't know. Okay, but this circle somehow or another, does rotates,

Eric Weinstein 1:22:15 rotates. And there is a four dimensional cross section like this is three dimensions here. And one dimension of time because our conversation is progressing. That's four dimensions, that four dimensions, forms a cross section to that water wiggly structure that we didn't know about, because it's invisible.

Joe Rogan 1:22:34 Okay? And that's what photons are, how do we know about that waterwheel structure?

Eric Weinstein 1:22:38 We know about that water wiggle structure, because we wrote down the equations called Maxwell's equations that unified all sorts of things that have to do with photons, magnetism, electricity, x rays, radio waves, all of that stuff got subsumed into one, really one equation called called Maxwell's equation. That equation presupposes a circle out of nowhere. We didn't know that there was a circle. But we wrote down equations. And the equations told us Hey, numbnuts, there's a circle that rotates just the way this water wiggle rotates, at every point in space time that you can't see it, because that's the only way those equations make sense. Now, you'll hear people like you'll have Shawn Caroline, who want to talk about the multiverse right? Or Neil deGrasse Tyson will want to tell you how big the universe is. And somehow people don't want to tell you, there's a circle around so we can see each other. I don't know why it's not fascinating.

Joe Rogan 1:23:33 It's very complicated. And even the way you're explaining to me it's not resonating.

Eric Weinstein 1:23:37 Well, if I can show it to you on a video, but I don't want to ruin ruin the show. So the

Joe Rogan 1:23:42 part of the problem is that I'm not sure that the video would even show Do you understand what he's saying?

Unknown Speaker 1:23:47 Well, little, but not really, you know,

Eric Weinstein 1:23:50 in essence, the photons that we see are the levels from which we measure a derivative, which is rise over run above the level, the level that we see is the photon, in essence, and the thing that we're differentiating is the electron. So electrons are like, functions. And photons are like horizontal levels from which we measure rise over run to take the derivative. And then the idea that we have partial differential equations is how photons zing off of me and hit your eye and we see each other, okay? That world of waves colliding, like everything in this in this place, is waves in collision with each other waves interact. The story of us is the story of interacting waves and the waves of a partial differential equations. So the fact that you have derivatives, which allow you to define the derivative in partial differential equations, differentials or derivatives are determined by levels, which is on this page of videos we've made for you guys. And those things allow you to define the equations for waves which we are So when you talk about the theory of everything, what you're actually saying is, tell me about a medium waves in the medium, and rules for how waves behave moving around in the medium. That's what a theory is. Okay? That's what this is. It's a theory in which four dimensions, births, some elaborate, crazy setup, which has interacting waves that look like electrons up quarks, down quarks, protons, neutrons, began radiation, beta radiation, alpha particles. That's the story of us. And how did all that weird shit get into our world to form, like, everything in here is made up of of quarks down quarks and electrons held together by force particles, it's like an incredibly economical statement about look at all the different shit here. That's what this is about. And what I believe is, is that we'll never have will never take the time to like, let's spend a day talking about this shit. And do it at a blackboard and do it with videos like we spent hundreds of hours making these videos to show you what these concepts are. Now I understand the constraints of the show. And I'm totally fine with that. But the point is, I believe that with artists, and with imagination, we can actually show you what these structures are, I can draw lines with pens and show you what a derivative is on a waterway. And you can say, okay, you're doing calculus on a water wiggle. And there's a water wiggle like structure in the world, which I never heard about. And that's what gives me light, electromagnetism, all this, all the stuff I know and love that keeps electrons bound to protons and hydrogen atoms. That weird world of waves interacting with each other according to derivative equations, where the derivatives are determined from levels called gauge potentials, is visualizable. With with videos that we've been making, and the hope is, is that this is for experts, and they're gonna have their day, and they're gonna piss all over, and they're gonna be angry and mean, and that's gonna happen. But at the end of that process, hopefully, the ideas here in contained could change the world. It's the first time I've ever seen somebody tell a complete story about how did this place fill up with all this crazy stuff. Assuming almost nothing to begin with. It's like a fertilized egg hypothesis, show me a minimal amount I can assume and drag out the, you know, falling in love on a park bench in in early May, you know, like that. That's how crazy the story has to be when you have a fertilized egg and it becomes your child. The story of development of how the how something births itself, is what this is the story about,

Joe Rogan 1:27:45 and that literally can explain falling in love on a park bench. We

Eric Weinstein 1:27:49 can't get there. But we don't believe we're materialists. We believe that there's nothing other than protons, neutrons, electrons, gluons holding these things together, we're

Joe Rogan 1:27:59 materialists.

Eric Weinstein 1:28:02 If I wrestle with, if I say this, I believe about this, I have to wrestle with the problem, that there's not a lot of room for magic.

Joe Rogan 1:28:13 But isn't magic subjective?

Eric Weinstein 1:28:15 Isn't the idea of magic, just our own personal experience, because everything is magic, if you've never experienced it, if it didn't exist, you know, there was this guy, Paul Dirac, who was really Einsteins, only rival in the 20th century. And in 1963, he wrote this article in Scientific American, where he said something insane. And he said, Schrodinger was led into error, because he put too much weight on the particulars of agreement with experiment with his equations, and he was missing something called spin. But the essence of his idea was so beautiful, that if he embraced the beauty rather than the scientific method, he would have gotten farther, quicker. And almost everyone who tries this crashes on the rocks, everybody who tries to throw away the scientific method, and in in service of beauty, almost cracks up. And the exception is the three guys who really wrote down physical laws that govern everything else that we know about the world. But

Joe Rogan 1:29:17 why? Why do you have to throw out the scientific method in service of beauty? Like, couldn't it just be a part of the equation of life itself?

Eric Weinstein 1:29:25 It's a human exists inside the experience of human beings. Ultimately, humans can't throw out the scientific method. Scientific Method is the last word.

Joe Rogan 1:29:33 Right. But what but why would you in the service of beauty I don't understand why the two are mutually exclusive. Because

Eric Weinstein 1:29:39 if I say something early, and there's the slightest problem with what I say, that is the instance of what I'm saying, I have an idea, which is, you know, I've got it. We're going to sell skulls to Native Americans, right. Okay. That's an instance of an idea, right? It's not you The general idea might be let's go into business and sell things. Okay? The initial instance of every great idea about the world has always been wrong. Einstein ways. Yeah, well, I think if you take the let's take the 20th century, start with 1900. Einstein gets it wrong initially, his first equation is wrong. Dirac who gives us the equation for matters. So Einstein does gravity. Dirac tells us that the proton and the electron, which are oppositely charged are anti particles of each other. And Heisenberg says, You're an idiot. The proton is enormous, the electron is tiny, they'd have to be the same math,

Unknown Speaker 1:30:39 math. Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:30:40 Then Dirac gave us this theory of matter, we couldn't compute with it for almost 20 years because everything blew up in our face. These are the instances the instantiations of great ideas. The instances of great ideas are almost always flawed. And Yang and Mills, who came up with the generalization of the light equation, Maxwell's equations didn't have mass in their equations. So they couldn't suppress something called beta decay, which is a kind of radioactivity, and the world would be taken over by beta decay if you couldn't make certain particles massive. Every time we try one of these things. Our first few instantiations are usually wrong. Okay. And what Dirac was giving us and which we didn't understand, is he saying at the beginning, don't take the training wheels off the training wheels are like beauty. Look for internal coherence, look for some kinds of symmetry look for some deep idea. And don't immediately run to say, is there an error? Is there an agreement with experiment because those things will have to wait for the mature instantiation rather than the first instance? Pause right

Joe Rogan 1:31:48 here? What do you what do you mean by beauty? What do you mean by magic? I these are subjective concepts that maybe that are only with human beings. Dogs don't see beauty. Or if they do, they don't express it. Like dogs don't see flowers and become perplexed. They don't stare at a mountain and sit down and take a deep breath and sigh

Eric Weinstein 1:32:12 I don't first of all agree with that.

Joe Rogan 1:32:14 Dogs stare at the sky and sigh dogs look at flowers. AWS is fucking amazing.

Eric Weinstein 1:32:21 Certainly dogs are very focused on smell. The olfactory sense of what is fascinating to a dog is not highly subject

Joe Rogan 1:32:30 by board talking about beauty.

Eric Weinstein 1:32:31 Yes, I'm talking about

Joe Rogan 1:32:32 beauty. I'm talking about awful smells is that we're talking about? Absolutely. Okay. We I don't think we can imagine what a dog smells right. Because their their sense of smell is so far. Absolutely. Yeah, they can smell cancer.

Eric Weinstein 1:32:46 Dogs. Yeah, well, okay. But if for example, we're

Joe Rogan 1:32:49 cutting hairs here, what I'm saying is the human beings subjective experience they're gonna do it is very unique to us. You're gonna say that, but if I go into any culture, and I go, huh, hmm. Every culture has that interval was men's a who heave Whoo. Okay, okay, that is universal. Okay, that's not beauty that right? No, it's art. When you let go. We're talking about different things. You

Eric Weinstein 1:33:17 let your vocal cord vibrate. implied in that thing. You may say I'm, I'm singing the note C. But you're not. There's an entire chord. Okay, called the overtone series. And that sounds good to every culture because it comes it's not about you or me. It's about our throat. It's about the one dimensional nature of a vibrating column always produces that music

Joe Rogan 1:33:39 music resonates specifically with human beings. But

Eric Weinstein 1:33:42 can we agree that music is people are always gonna want to say it's totally subjective.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:47 It is.

Eric Weinstein 1:33:48 It's not totally simple.

Joe Rogan 1:33:49 How so? If I want to at least partially subjective, it's partially subjective. Some people don't like jazz at all. Some people live for it so it's subjective right some people hate rap music. Some people love it. Some people hate metal Some people love it. Some people hate country Some people love it. It's it's as subjective as tasting food

Eric Weinstein 1:34:12 no house well first of all you're bitter responses in general protective of you

Joe Rogan 1:34:18 so that some people enjoy better food I

Eric Weinstein 1:34:20 was gonna say that you have to usually learn which foods are safe and then you have an acquired taste. That's what very often bitter foods or taste culture

Joe Rogan 1:34:29 is already figured out what foods are say but you

Eric Weinstein 1:34:32 know the most part it's local. You know that that thing like if you are going to eat Cabrales cheese, which has maggots infested. If you come from Spain, you understand the kabbalists is safe. So you call it a delicacy because it's some stupid stuff that you happen to have local information to know that it's safe. This is Brett Weinstein, one on one sure, but even in Spain, there's people to find it testable. But my point to you is is that what we are hiding behind the universals? It is true We all have subjective components. But it is not the case that, like you and I will have a conversation about whole lot of love. And we will have an idea like that is just the best song. And you will know that you have to say, Okay, well I understand that some people don't like it, but then when you get drunk, you're gonna say how can you not like whole level of

Joe Rogan 1:35:19 Yeah, but I mean, he would say that but you know, you say that but you're joking. Like when I say how can someone not like elton john, I get it. I get the you don't like elton john. I fucking love elton john. But some people they hear Saturday night. They don't want to hear that shit. Stop, stop, stop, right. They don't want to hear they don't like elton john. It's objective.

Eric Weinstein 1:35:38 There is a non subjective component to music. You can you can focus on the fact that what

Joe Rogan 1:35:46 is non subjective about it? I just told you but you're not correct. If people don't like it, and some people do like it, that is the essence of subjectivity.

Eric Weinstein 1:35:58 Do you remember what you said to me about Gary Clark Jr. When you introduced me to him at the store?

Joe Rogan 1:36:04 My personal opinion proper talk is one of the saddest motherfuckers alive.

Eric Weinstein 1:36:08 He said this is the greatest guitarist

Joe Rogan 1:36:10 alive. Yeah, my opinion. That's my opinion, my opinion.

Eric Weinstein 1:36:13 Yeah, but that's my opinion, clear. And I don't necessarily think that he is necessarily the greatest guitarist lie to me that I

Joe Rogan 1:36:19 listen. But he's objectively I listen to numb.

Eric Weinstein 1:36:23 He's amazing.

Joe Rogan 1:36:25 Yes, he's not effectively because some people don't think he's good at all. They don't like that kind of sound. It's like people, some people like weird sounds, man, so people

Eric Weinstein 1:36:34 don't like necessarily layouting on Art Tatum as a pianist. You cannot sit me down to watch Art Tatum and say, that is not amazing.

Joe Rogan 1:36:42 Okay, but if you don't enjoy it, it's subject I may not enjoy it. But it's subjective. You might say that that is a guy who's very good at doing a thing that I don't enjoy doing. Here's Listen, man, you're splitting hairs, okay? You either enjoy something you don't that is the different subjectivity. Okay? You either think it's good, or you don't it doesn't mean you look, just because you'd know that some people enjoy. It doesn't mean it's objective. That it's great. Like you don't enjoy it. Like it doesn't have to

Eric Weinstein 1:37:12 be this Can I recognize something like the millennial whoop, you know about the millennial whoop, now, this thing? Oh, 535. Right. There's this thing that all these millennial songs have, okay. Now, I don't necessarily enjoy that. Okay, but I can recognize it. So the first step is, is it objective Li recognizable? Can I train myself talking about

Joe Rogan 1:37:33 a sound that you know exists? Yeah. But that doesn't mean you like it. Okay, so if you don't like it, it's subjective. Right? Just like food, just like movies. Just like clothing. There's a lot of things that people enjoy that other people don't enjoy me.

Eric Weinstein 1:37:49 Statistically, we just all had a high probability of thinking The Godfather was a great film. I know that some people don't like that film. They don't like violent pictures. They don't like tension. They don't like mafia. They don't like the portrayal of Italian Americans. They don't like

Joe Rogan 1:38:03 movies letter from that era. Exactly. slower.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:06 I

Eric Weinstein 1:38:07 agree with that. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:38:08 Okay. But it's the subjects in on film.

Eric Weinstein 1:38:12 Joe, I have a different belief structure. I believe that we're hiding behind subjectivity. I believe that what we've figured out is is that there's a subjective component to everything. Okay. And you're absolutely right about

Joe Rogan 1:38:24 your over complicating pies, tastes. Michaels likes and dislikes the real, right? Some people like pop music, some people like Beethoven, that is the nature of subjectivity.

Eric Weinstein 1:38:39 What I'm trying to say is that what you were saying is true. We have different likes. Yes. And that's a really far downstream process of can we recognize what's going on? Okay, what's our association with it? If you were tortured to the most beautiful music in the world, you're probably not gonna love it. Right? Sure. If you watch Clockwork Orange, you got really screwed up about it.

Joe Rogan 1:39:01 Well, I think that's what they did to Manuel Noriega when they tried to get them to leave Panama. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Same song over and over and over again. That's probably a great song.

Eric Weinstein 1:39:11 I'm sure. The first 12,000 times you hear it. So but that's not what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is, is that there is a huge component about what we like and don't like, that's objective. And there's a huge component about what we like, we don't like that subjective. And in our time, we've all been taught the same move, which is back off claims of objectivity. Every one of us, myself included back off claims of

Joe Rogan 1:39:37 objectivity, who I've never I don't agree with that at all. We've been told to back off claims of

Eric Weinstein 1:39:43 if I say to you, Charlie Parker is subjectively one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. You will have a negative reaction. No, I won't in general.

Joe Rogan 1:39:52 No, no, I've listened to Charlie Parker. He's brilliant. To you.

Eric Weinstein 1:39:55 Yeah. Okay, and somebody else doesn't like him.

Joe Rogan 1:39:58 Yeah, but you asked me You said I We'll have an objection to that. I

Eric Weinstein 1:40:01 won't. Okay, that's not true. So, who are the people that now I'm really confused because before I thought you were telling me that these things were subjective. And what I'm trying to say is, you are willing to accept these things.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:15 Now you're now you're you said me personal. Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:40:17 So you personally believe that Charlie Parker is objectively great jazz musician,

Joe Rogan 1:40:22 I believe, personally, Charlie Parker is a great jazz musician to you.

Eric Weinstein 1:40:26 I see. So you objectively believe that you subjectively

Joe Rogan 1:40:31 The problem is we're conflate conflating objectivity and subjectivity here we're getting into this weird area. It's subjective, whether or not I enjoy it. Right. It's subject if I if I, if you say, is this person really good at something that I have no interest in? Like, are they a really good badminton player? Right, and I watch them and they win. I'm like, yeah, that guy's really good. I don't give a fuck about badminton. Right. Right. If badminton just vanished.

Eric Weinstein 1:41:02 Yeah, but even the last even there. I heard old basketball guys asked about Steph Curry. Isn't he amazing? Like, I don't know what he's doing. He's doing a bunch of three point shots. I played in the paint. That's basketball. I don't know what he does. This is not my game. Right? But you get that from fighting. You get that from high jumping. You get it from that table tense. It's a little jolt if I'm not sure. Who's making whose point now. objective or subjective.

Joe Rogan 1:41:27 It's subjective, whether or not you'd like that style of basketball. So we're like Riemann. Some people like brawls, some people like Floyd Mayweather, because he's super technical. And he's, he's clever defensively.

Eric Weinstein 1:41:40 I totally agree with this. At the level of, there's a whole bunch of process that happens. And at the end, you say I like it, I don't like right. And there's no way to tell because if if you like something I can make you hate it by associating with something negative.

Joe Rogan 1:41:54 But let's look at the Webster Dec definition of objectivity. bring up the subject, bring that up. Let's pull that up the Webster definition of objectivity and the Webster definition of subjectivity. And let's look at this and see if we're talking about the same fucking things here. Because we're getting I think we're getting a little bit into the weeds here.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:16 Here we go.

Joe Rogan 1:42:19 That's the Jamie home. Built to spend, like, what's that?

Unknown Speaker 1:42:23 As I'm typing it in, there's a brown.edu dissertation about this, but no, just whatever, whatever the definition,

Joe Rogan 1:42:31 that's definition of objectivity, just see what we get. Here we go. Bam, Okay, here we go. That's based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes or opinions objective of a person, or their judgment, not influenced by personal feelings, or opinions in consideration of expressing and representing facts. Okay, so objective, it's not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. So you can say, objectively, someone is a very talented guitarist because you see how complicated their movements are and how they're hitting the strings. But you could say subjectively, I don't enjoy that muse.

Eric Weinstein 1:43:25 I agree with that.

Joe Rogan 1:43:26 Now, now pull up pull up subjective, just so we are clear about that. subjective definition, based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes or opinions. Yeah. So personal feelings, and opinions and how you feel about something is subjective. Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:43:44 But if I say to you, is Eddie Van Halen, objectively a talent? Was he a talented guitarist?

Joe Rogan 1:43:51 He's clearly a talented guitar. I

Eric Weinstein 1:43:53 didn't say clearly.

Joe Rogan 1:43:54 Yes. I think

Eric Weinstein 1:43:55 somebody else says that in 2021. The next move in the conversation is actually I don't think he's a talented guitarist. I've heard him I find talent is really about playing with feeling and all of these crazy moves and the tapping and the the winds and the squeals to me that's not telling you

Joe Rogan 1:44:16 motherfuckers never listened to running with the devil. Now your play run you run both sides of it. Yeah. But running with the devil is like that. The fucking movements and the way he plays guitar, it's he's clearly got amazing ability with a guitar. I now actively you could say I think that musics trash.

Eric Weinstein 1:44:39 Somebody else is going to make the claim in 2021. I think you're on my side of the issue and you're still wreck. This is very interesting.

Joe Rogan 1:44:47 I think we're crossing over on both sides. Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:44:49 I think what you're now saying is expressing the tension of our moment. The tension of our moment is as soon as somebody says that something is objective. So Somebody will say actually, to me your definition of that isn't how I define it and therefore I reclaimed the subjectivity of it. I can turn Andre Segovia or Eddie Van Halen, or Jimmy Page or any of these people into not a good guitarist by redefining what a talented guitarist is, is if I redefine the concept of talent on a guitar, and I say, talent on a guitar is somebody who can convince me of emotions that they're playing with and I didn't feel anything

Joe Rogan 1:45:29 maybe the problem is the word talent. Exactly you say if someone is objective Lee proficient about the guitar

Eric Weinstein 1:45:37 is Jimi Hendrix proficient he was incredibly sloppy in a weird way he's timing actually varies it's not it's not incredibly rigorous. You

Joe Rogan 1:45:48 know, end result was subjectively amazing.

Eric Weinstein 1:45:53 I know people who say what is this noise?

Joe Rogan 1:45:56 Who the fuck are those people?

Unknown Speaker 1:45:58 Not that he couldn't but what if he couldn't read music? Does that make it any better? No,

Eric Weinstein 1:46:03 I don't I don't think

Unknown Speaker 1:46:04 Joe and I would know No. saying like if you throwing him into another situation be like okay, play with these guys. And then he might think them more academically

Joe Rogan 1:46:11 wouldn't be as proficient like in terms of like he had to write the music down and teach it maybe

Eric Weinstein 1:46:16 I think he took something like guff. Do you know, Guthrie? Govan is no Guthrie Govan is arguably the greatest guitarist of our age. And one of his tricks is you tell him a guitarist and he will play in that person style in and of what he does on his own room. Yeah, so effectively, he can mimic anyone's style

Joe Rogan 1:46:35 so he has a proficiency of technique that

Eric Weinstein 1:46:39 if anyone is a good guitarist Guthrie Govan can represent that person's guitar in a way that if you were blindfolded, you would say boy, BB King is having a great day.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:47 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:46:49 All right. So that would be a proof that Guthrie Govan is like it's a Turing test. Basically, the Guthrie Govan can emulate any guitarist. So if you believe anyone is subjectively talented, then Guthrie Govan is objectively talent.

Joe Rogan 1:47:03 That's the thing about guitar is that it is an instrument with six strings. But people can make radically different noises with those six strings.

Eric Weinstein 1:47:14 toasting the bosses is not six string nurses. So yep, it is not 16 even that,

Joe Rogan 1:47:18 okay, yeah, we just I'm just trying, I'm trying to say we can also do those double guitars and some of those wacky, but I can roll it

Eric Weinstein 1:47:24 even if we know. Yeah, those are always sort of dorky sort of

Joe Rogan 1:47:27 days. What are those? What's that called? The double neck? Yeah, well, usually

Eric Weinstein 1:47:30 it's a 12 string and a six string so that you get these sort of resonance.

Joe Rogan 1:47:35 So it's 18 total. So which one's 12?

Eric Weinstein 1:47:37 And I don't think all of the strings are doubled on a 12 string. So I think it's only summer. I'm not exactly sure. But those things are based on the idea that you're trying not to switch guitars in the middle of a song when you're trying to do two things, or Stanley Jordan will tap on two guitars simultaneously with his fingers as if he's playing the piano. Alright. Which is insane. 100 she's

Joe Rogan 1:48:02 play Star Spangled Banner with his teeth.

Eric Weinstein 1:48:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:48:07 And nobody teaches you that I who used to do maybe someone will teach you that after he did that movie August rush now,

Unknown Speaker 1:48:15 right? It's Robin Williams, isn't it? It's about a little kid proficient, whatever. But doesn't doesn't matter what style of guitar he's playing. He's slapping the guitar tuned in in a very strange way. It's hard to recreate but he's doing these. Like what he's saying is like tapping on like a piano. I'll show you what he's doing the kids acting, but someone was actually playing it. It's not guitar playing. Like you're used to seeing and

Joe Rogan 1:48:37 never heard of it. Yeah, I mean, that's a different thing. Right? You can, like there's people like Gary Clark is a perfect example. Like I said, like Gary Clark. I'm pretty sure I played this for you. When Suzanne Santo and Gary Clark and Ben Jaffe were, we did this show in downtown LA. And they played midnight rider. Yeah. And Gary Clark attached his sound to that classic Allman Brothers song midnight, right. Yeah. And it was fucking amazing. Because you could clear if you if you just tuned into it, you're that's Gary Clark. Like there's this there's a style of sound that Gary creates that's uniquely him. Stevie Ray Vaughan is another example. There's a style of sound and Stevie Ray Vaughan created that was uniquely him.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:24 Sort of clip this kids finding out how to play a guitar. This is a little too much. It's like movie magic. But this is what I'm talking about. He's not strumming it. Like you're used to seeing or hearing. He's almost playing. But the bongos using the reverb of the room, adding into what he's doing.

Joe Rogan 1:49:43 That's pretty badass. This is called August rush.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:47 It has movie it's an interesting movie. Watch different watch. It's

Unknown Speaker 1:49:50 been out for a while.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:57 Just a very strange thing you're doing

Joe Rogan 1:50:00 Robin Williams is one of those guys I want to see him like it's sad. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:50:03 It's a very good movie. For you to know it was

Joe Rogan 1:50:08 a met him once. So weird a story of told, unfortunately I've told it already. So forgive me if you've heard this, but I was at the improv did a show at the improv. And afterwards, there was a line of people's taking pictures of people saying hi after the show, and this dude with glasses, and this thick white beard of baseball hat was in line. And he was telling me how great the show was really enjoyed it. He's talking about specific bits. And we're talking about all Thank you. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. glad you enjoyed it. And then in the middle of talk this guy go. Holy shit is Robin Williams.

Eric Weinstein 1:50:40 Fuck you.

Joe Rogan 1:50:41 He's just in line. I didn't even know it was him. It is crazy white beard. I didn't know it was him. I had no idea it was him until in the middle of talking. I realized it was him. He waited in line by himself. There was all these people. No one noticed it was him. What a compliment to you sir. It was wild. It was really really, really weird. It was right before I did triggered. It was like I was tightening up my act. It was like getting, I was getting everything together. I think it was around then I'm pretty sure in that. But it was I was in the middle of about to do a special. So everything was very tight. And I remember seeing him going in the middle of the conversation going. Holy shit is Robin Williams.

Eric Weinstein 1:51:22 I saw him when I was in like high school in an LA comedy club at the improv. And there were two guys in LA, I can't remember the other guy, who the thing about them was is that you were just convinced that their brains were 12,000 times faster than anybody else you'd ever met like that they were just in a weird way smarter. And Robin Williams free association. It was like being on a Nantucket Sleigh Ride of the mind. And it comedy was how it expressed itself. But it wasn't about comedy. It was about just like having thoughts interact with each other. And you have to justify them by turning every thought into a joke that's influencing every other thought. It was like almost like excusing madness that was purposeful and painful and amazing to watch. And unfortunately, he

Joe Rogan 1:52:21 repurpose some other people's material. Is that right? Yeah, he was known for that. And I think that was part of the manic nature of this style was that like sometimes he would come across a subject that he was just you know, because he was free balling. And he would just use material that he knew of?

Eric Weinstein 1:52:37 Well, my guess is that the speeds he was at, he probably couldn't slow down to ask Where did that thought come from?

Joe Rogan 1:52:44 Is that the maybe Okay, or maybe the ends justify the means. And then what it really was doing is just trying to put on the best performance that he could. And he had this idea that he knew wasn't necessarily his, he cut checks to a lot of people and there was a there's a lot of issues. I know Kennison and him had a big squabble because of it. And I'm pretty sure he cut a check for Kinison and cut checks for other guys that were at the store like when you want to because he had to not because

Eric Weinstein 1:53:07 either material on TV. So let me ask you a question about this. I guess I was reviewing that night in your life. And I was looking at the fact that it wasn't that funny. When you went up and you said what had to be said. And I think about comics that died at the Comic store when I left. Yeah, yeah. And it was a painful for me to watch in a way because it was both courageous.

Joe Rogan 1:53:31 But that's, you know that there was a weird situation where I was called back on stage. By Carlson said there wasn't there wasn't like, I mean, no, I made a statement. I'd already done my SAT. I didn't stand up. And then I went back because he called me out. That, you know, like, the me leaving the Comedy Store was not even my idea. It was like they banned me.

Eric Weinstein 1:53:57 It didn't last in the story just didn't you know, I don't think so. I think at some level, you throw your hat into the ring. And you almost certainly knew. Like, they said, Why don't you take a break or take some time off or some soft and

Joe Rogan 1:54:12 that I said, there's no fucking way I'm going to do that. I'll never come back

Eric Weinstein 1:54:15 that I think what you did is you obligated yourself into a role where you actually had to stand up for something and the thing that the thing I'm wrestling with it because I reviewed this whole story a few times is this question about, like, I look at your energy and you're such a positive person in my life. And I look at that energy and you were trying to take care of somebody like Ari. You know,

Joe Rogan 1:54:38 it wasn't just our nose. It was creativity in general. In general, it was the concept that there was a guy who was more successful than everybody else, who would just suck up everybody else's material and profit off of it. It was also that nobody else was saying it was also that they were they knew it was everybody was talking about it and there was a silence. Bill Burr told me a story where he was He was performing there. And he said to the guy that was a manager, the guy that had the issue with, he said, fuck, I don't want to go on stage. You know, fucking Carlos is here he goes, Oh, don't worry, he doesn't steal from guys like you. He only steals from the younger guys, because what the fuck did you just say? So you know, he steals from the young guys. He goes, it's not what I said he was. That's what you just fucking set. It's exactly

Eric Weinstein 1:55:20 just a set and it doesn't feel that way. That's the thing that

Joe Rogan 1:55:24 you know what man, it was a time before accountability with the internet, the internet came along. And you know, by the time that like when that instance happened, people recognize Oh, there's like legitimate accountability for doing things along those lines.

Eric Weinstein 1:55:41 This is from 1964. What is it? It's a FOIA request made for the Freedom of Information Act, Freedom of Information Act for the file of Barack Hussein Obama, senior, as a graduate student in the economics department at Harvard University. Okay. Obama has passed his general exams, which indicates that on academic grounds, he's entitled to stay around here and write his thesis. However, they are going to try to cook something up to ease him out. All three, that is all three Harvard people will have to grill on this. However, they are planning on telling him that they will not give him any money, and that he had better returned to Kenya and prepare his thesis at home, which means he will never get his PhD. Remember, when they said take a break to you? This is my alma mater. This is the thing I've been uncovering. You know, there's this whole story about what happened in my early life and why I don't talk about it publicly. And this is why this is interacting with your story about joke thievery. Because it's weird for a comic not to turn that into a joke. And it wasn't funny to you. In around, I don't know, 1988 1989 Harvard University told me to remain in good standing in this program, you cannot live in Massachusetts. Why? And I said, What? How can you tell me where I can live and where I can't let? It wasn't until somebody Floyd Brock, Obama's father in his file. And I read the story, that I realized that Harvard has a program for how it gets rid of people it wants to get rid of who are in good standing. There is a move, it makes them move so that they can't complete their thesis,

Joe Rogan 1:57:38 why they want to do that with you.

Eric Weinstein 1:57:41 Probably because I'm as learning disabled as the day is long, probably because I took a an unpopular stance that the equations that people were working with called the Donaldson theory, self-dual equations, were not the right equations to be working with, and that we had somehow been assuming that they were highly peculiar to dimension four, and the difficulty of the equations, which is what was giving us all these great results, I had effectively gotten on the wrong side, I proposed some equations that were I was told were insufficiently nonlinear. Nevermind what that means that in 1994, effectively, the same equations took over the entire field. Whatever it was, and this is like part of the idea of reclaiming your own story. It was so crazy that the university would tell me what state I could live in.

Joe Rogan 1:58:34 Can I stop you? So the people that are telling you this? Yeah, they're operating on a preexisting solution to deal with people that they find undesirable or problematic. You

Eric Weinstein 1:58:46 saw them,

Joe Rogan 1:58:48 right. So it's written somewhere,

Eric Weinstein 1:58:50 I don't know. Or it's, you know, it's like people maintain, for example, one way of getting rid of a tenured professor, that's known is that you ask the person to report on their research, and you load them up with teaching and you give them a lousy office, and then eventually, they'll just quit because you make their life hell. So people know that there are these kind of secret quiet ways to do the undoable

Joe Rogan 1:59:15 Can I ask you this? What did you think about Cornel West being denied tenure from Harvard? First of all, I thought I assumed Yeah, he already had it. Mean, Cornel West is this loved intellectual? When I found out they denied him tenure? I was like, What the? What? How do you? How do you deny Cornell West tenure? Like what is that? What did you think about that?

Eric Weinstein 1:59:43 I first of all, I'm not knowledgeable in that area. I think of him as a very bright superstar of some sort of part academic part social crossover high impact human Yeah. I was there when Larry Summers was present. Didn't have Harvard when he went out and said, effectively too many people are using the Harvard label. And we're going to be reining it in. And going back to hard rigor and basics. Let me tell you what people don't understand about Harvard, Harvard is two separate structures fuse together. One is about power. And one is about achievement. And the two of them are interlinked in a way that cannot be separated. It without the achievement, Harvard wouldn't have this kind of glowing reputation that causes us to sort of una over a history. Without the power, it wouldn't be able to attract the money. And it wouldn't be able to constantly position itself. So through achievement, it gets enough cachet to wield power through the power, it gets the resources to buy achievement. And this sort of thing is not understood. And I've been on both sides of this thing. Like, one of the things that happened was that the Boskin Commission in 1996, tried to figure out how to cut social security and raise taxes without getting caught. Because that's the third rail of politics. And what they said is if we change the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, the way we measure inflation, because tax brackets are indexed, and because entitlement payments for Social Security and Medicare indexed, if we claim that Social Security, sorry, if we claim that inflation is overstated, by 1.1 percentage points, we will gain a trillion dollars in savings. And the public won't be able to object to it. Because we're gonna be just adjusting a dial, we're gonna say that this dial was broken, and we got some technocrats to fix it. So they figured out we want to get a trillion dollars over 10 years, they backed out, that would require 1.1% overstatement. They broke into two teams, one team came up with point five, one team came up with point 6.5 plus point six equals 1.1. Totally fictitious. They got a trip they got a proposal for a trillion dollars that they were going to steal effectively, from Social Security. And they described this action publicly, Robert Gordon, who is one of the five Boston commissioners, Jamie, could you bring up something called Boskin, wild versus mild? they brag about these things. Power wants to explain just how powerful it is. And you remember the scene in The Big Short, where they're talking to these guys in Florida and saying, Why are they confessing? And somebody says they're not confessing their bragging? It's a question of what are you proud that you're able to do? Right? So until Robert Gordon, did this PowerPoint presentation, we did not have understand what happened to the work that I did with my wife in economics, which is that we were trying to show how you could actually compute the Consumer Price Index objectively, using gauge theory. The same year, they were trying to figure out, how do we steal a trillion dollars over 10 years? By doing funny games with the gauge called inflation? You find the wild versus the mild? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 2:03:21 I did. It's just loading a PDF. It's like taking a bale. It's like if so this

Eric Weinstein 2:03:25 thing, perfect. If you go to go about five or six slides in. We'll see how that works. Okay. Keep going. You find the word is somehow keep going. Okay, Dale said 1.1% implies 1 trillion in silver Social Security savings over 10 years, somehow are separate efforts came up with the 1.1% bias number. In other words, they came up with the target, which is let's save trillion dollars. And then they came up with, we have to say it's overstated by 1.1. We then broke into two groups and somehow keyword, we put them numbers together and we got the target. This is academic malpractice practice in the absolute extreme. When Harvard was doing that it was acting in its power capacity. And the way they did it was they buried what I think is probably the best work in 25 to 50 years in mathematical economics that happened in the Harvard economics department, which is a second so called Marginal Revolution, where we change the calculus underneath all of economic theory.

Joe Rogan 2:04:45 So how does something like this happen? Is there a concerted effort to they get together and they have this idea? This is

Eric Weinstein 2:04:52 how we're going to dive person commission behind closed doors that meets at the cousin's house of somebody on the commission. Florida in an another presentation in Florida, Florida man. In another presentation they say we solve this at the kitchen table of my cousin's house in Florida. And you're thinking like, okay, so it's five guys. Bob packwood and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat and Republican got together to pick five economists who are willing to play the dirty game. The dirty game broke into two teams, they knew exactly what they had to do. They found the results to put them together to put in front of Congress to put in front of the National Academy.

Unknown Speaker 2:05:34 And then were they ever held accountable for No,

Eric Weinstein 2:05:36 there's an entire book called the physics of Wall Street, in which my wife and I are chapter 10. And the epilogue, which it talks about, they made Weinstein and mulani go away. Right, so what I'm trying to talk to you about is like this, this experience for me, I've never talked about this with anyone. I've never, I mean, I've talked to tons of people privately, this is going to go out into the world. I was you know, you know this question like what is Eric Weinstein ever done? I did that I did the marginal revolutionising

Joe Rogan 2:06:12 question is Tim Dylan joking around? Yeah, I know. He said, What did he never created the potato. He was joking. He's fucking around. That was the funny part about it.

Eric Weinstein 2:06:21 He was joking, but

Joe Rogan 2:06:22 he's saying that because he knows you're brilliant. And the only reason why you can say that if you're a loser, Joe, he couldn't say Oh,

Unknown Speaker 2:06:29 you don't need to make me feel good about me.

Joe Rogan 2:06:31 I know. But you brought it up again. No,

Eric Weinstein 2:06:32 I'm tight. I'm saying something completely different.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:34 Okay. Okay.

Eric Weinstein 2:06:35 I actually have been scared of this question. What question that Tim's question taken seriously. He's gonna take it seriously. I'm taking it seriously.

Joe Rogan 2:06:46 Okay. You're in a weird world. Okay, here's, here's your weird world. You're in a world of serious intellectual people. Your hands straight. You're also hanging out with Tim Dylan in Maine. And I love it. But it's the problem is like you're relating these to Joe. No, Joe, I'm

Eric Weinstein 2:07:03 not that angry. Tim Dylan's not I'm not

Joe Rogan 2:07:05 that angry. to hear that. You heard that word. You heard the word that

Eric Weinstein 2:07:09 that's a problem. You're not that angry Crossman. See,

Joe Rogan 2:07:11 I'm not angry at him at all. I

Eric Weinstein 2:07:12 know when I'm sad. I'm sad for him.

Joe Rogan 2:07:17 Anyway, shouldn't be sad for Tim. Wait, wait, wait. He's one of the most important comedians of art. Okay.

Eric Weinstein 2:07:21 How dare you, Derek. I took me It gave me a moment to reflect. I realized something which is I don't want to talk about this shit. publicly. I don't want to say Dale Jorgenson is the guy who buried one of the most important innovations in economics. You just did. I just did. And that's what I just done. That's what I realized by reviewing your history and revealing your seven years away from the store. I don't want to be associated with Dale Jorgenson. I don't care about him. I want to be associated with gauge theoretic economics. I see what you're saying. And what I realized is I don't want to be associated with the shit that happened over something called the SEIBERG Witten equations. What I just handed you, one of the reasons I've held it back is that it very clearly gives an alternate definition, that alternate motivation and derivation of the equations that revolutionized gauge theory, which is what I was thinking about in around 1987 1988. And I've lived afraid of my own story, because it's such an ugly story. This story of a guy who was not allowed to attend his own thesis defense to any academician, you hear like, What do you mean, you weren't allowed to you present your thesis? No, no, no, I was not allowed in the room of my own thesis to so this

Joe Rogan 2:08:43 is why Harvard wanted you to move out of state,

Eric Weinstein 2:08:46 Harvard and I got into a thing because of that, because of a conflict because also of this, because of geometric unity, because I said, I want to do physics. And I have an idea about how physics goes. And to be brutally honest, I was technically underpowered. I am technically underpowered. I was conceptually amazing. I was very creative, very generative. Tons and tons of great ideas. I think. I'm being honest on both fronts. Technically underpowered. Okay. I couldn't accept myself in this world of like, you know, if you play classical music, everybody's technically brilliant. There's no technically weak people in classical music. I was like a guy was like, it was like john Lee Hooker in the orchestra of you know, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra on one string and a guitar playing with some weird syncopated rhythm Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, gonna shoot you right down. Yeah, exactly. Mom said, Daddy said let the boy buggy it's in and it's got to come out. That thing. I'm scared of why scared because it's my history because I don't want to go back into it. I don't want to go back to being The guy begging Dale Jorgenson, oops pretty pleased with sugar on top. Let me innovate your entire field. I don't want to go back to the Harvard department and say the words Clifford Taubes you had Gary Taubes on your program. Clifford Tubbs was the guy who told me I had to move out of state. Clifford town is a Gary Mays is a brother. Yeah, he was the guy who held the secret seminar. And the thing is, is that I'm not against the person in the story. I don't want to have it. I don't want to be involved with him. I want him to go and be successful and have a good career. But my story, when I put forward those equations, and he said they're insufficiently nonlinear, and he said, self duality doesn't have anything to do with spinners. Because if it did, Nigel Hitchens would have told us, okay, Nigel would have told us he didn't say Hitchens. He was wrong. And then when I gave him the opportunity, he didn't say, you know what, Eric Weinstein brought these equations up. And I told him, no. And that thing is like something I've held open the door. He's now in his mid 60s. I was like, you really couldn't just say, maybe I screwed up.

Joe Rogan 2:11:11 He should cook. You know why? I'm choking.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:15 I know.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:22 Such a dick.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:26 I had to.

Joe Rogan 2:11:29 I thought you're gonna cry for 30 seconds ago,

Eric Weinstein 2:11:31 you have a tissue. somewhere that, that. But this is this is the thing I've been writing what I realized through Tim, it wasn't a question of being angry at him. Really. I've been running away from my own story. Just the way I don't like you associated with I haven't mentioned the guy who was the joke thief. And this entire time.

Joe Rogan 2:11:51 Yeah, I asked him what you saying,

Eric Weinstein 2:11:52 right? It's like, why are you and he entangle this story? Because he has nothing to do with your life.

Joe Rogan 2:11:57 It's okay. It doesn't bother me that I'm entangled with him.

Eric Weinstein 2:12:01 What bothers me that I'm entangled with this stuff.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:04 Um, I know you're saying,

Eric Weinstein 2:12:08 because I want to be joyous. I want to produce positive things that uplift us to give us a hope of breaking like the Einsteinian speed limit. You know if this is wrong, I want to know, I think it's right. I think with all my flaws and all my failings and being 25 years out of the field, I believe that this story is going to be fixed by people who are trying to shoot it down and say Holy shit. I think there's something here

Joe Rogan 2:12:36 well now we're going to know right i think i'm hoping released it today on geometric unity.org.da and go to pull that up, Jamie calm and you can watch all the videos that we didn't show you. There it is pulled it up. I'm a little conflicted with that. Are

Unknown Speaker 2:12:53 you I we can talk afterwards.

Eric Weinstein 2:12:55 He should have thought of it first.

Joe Rogan 2:12:57 He's got a shirt that says pull that shit up. My apologies.

Unknown Speaker 2:13:00 No way to Oh, what is it? okay to talk about it yet.

Joe Rogan 2:13:04 We get surprised. And what website would that be? JAMIE? Very young Jamie. calm.

Unknown Speaker 2:13:07 That's correct. vailable. They're

Eric Weinstein 2:13:09 the breakout breakout star.

Joe Rogan 2:13:13 But we're at dinner yesterday. Yeah, eating barbecue. And I asked him your question in the fucking wire goes. Holy shit. It's Jamie. It was hilarious.

Eric Weinstein 2:13:24 JB Do you get recognized like, cuz you're like, wait,

Joe Rogan 2:13:27 he fucking panicked. When he saw Jamie. he panicked. Really? Holy shit. It's Jamie.

Unknown Speaker 2:13:33 That's good.

Joe Rogan 2:13:34 It was kind of hilarious. In the server world. It was funny though. It was it was an interesting moment. I'm pretty sure that was the first table that dude ever waited on him like it for sure. Yeah, he was. He told us he was a trainee. And pretty sure if it wasn't his first table, it was definitely his first 10 Yeah, he's a little perplexed. I'll make it but seeing Jamie It was. It was fucking hilarious.

Eric Weinstein 2:14:02 Do you hate being famous?

Joe Rogan 2:14:06 If I hated it would be pretty fucking stupid that I continue to pursue fame. I don't do pursue thing. Well, I mean, I'm doing this thing that makes you famous. I mean, I'm not pursuing fame. I don't but it's an after effect of the

Eric Weinstein 2:14:22 there's no way to. I think that there's no way to go through life trying to do what you're doing without getting famous as a byproduct.

Joe Rogan 2:14:29 You could get marginally famous and stay alive and feed yourself and, and do well, but you wouldn't impact

Eric Weinstein 2:14:37 you wouldn't have the ability to impact as many people you wouldn't have the ability to get the guests you get.

Joe Rogan 2:14:42 Here's the thing. It's like I would like to pretend that I'm so smart that I figured this out in advance, but I didn't. It was just all luck. It was all this job of being a podcaster mixed in with my mental illness of comedy was calm. too, but it's also I'm an obsessive person. When I find things I get on them and I yeah, do get good at my my main problem is that there's too many things I'm obsessed with. Like when people tell me they're bored I just go It's weird. That's That's crazy. That's like someone told me they breathe underwater. I don't know what you're saying. I don't I just I have so many interests Yeah, I wish I had multiple lives to lead simultaneously then I will pursue each thing that I'm fascinated with with with like, single

Eric Weinstein 2:15:32 minded determination apps. Exactly,

Joe Rogan 2:15:33 exactly. So I stumbled I almost I mean, I don't really believe this but I almost believe this that this thing found me that it's almost like there was like, totally understand what that means. Like Like an attractor in like, how you ever see when neurons

Eric Weinstein 2:15:56 Yeah, trying to find each other?

Joe Rogan 2:15:58 Yeah, it's fascinating. And they speed it up see because I think Friedman I think Lex Friedman had it on his Instagram. These neurons are there for that they don't see right that's not they just send stuff as

Unknown Speaker 2:16:13 chemically Yeah,

Joe Rogan 2:16:14 some way they find this thing. And I feel there it is Lex. And there's something that I feel like about life that if you just open if you just if you don't bullshit yourself, yeah. And you you're willing to take risks. Those things find you when you find them and then once you get going once you the easiest part is once you've already started just continuing the hardest part is getting going with everything. The hardest part showing up for the first class.

Eric Weinstein 2:16:47 Yeah, the easiest part 1000s one I'm backing away from fame. How you doing that by

Unknown Speaker 2:16:55 being on the show? clubhouse clubhouse,

Unknown Speaker 2:16:59 that's the clubhouse was

Unknown Speaker 2:17:04 busted. Fucking

Unknown Speaker 2:17:08 Jamie It was a closed app.

Joe Rogan 2:17:11 10 million people follow you bitch to

Unknown Speaker 2:17:13 what do you

Unknown Speaker 2:17:16 why you piker? I think I have 4000 Yeah,

Eric Weinstein 2:17:18 cuz you showed up once it seven might not even have 4000. Joe, the issue was you're probably tried doing something checked. I tried doing it. And it got big. Oh, yeah. And that was an accident in a weird way. And so

Joe Rogan 2:17:31 you're good at it. You're good to talk Joe like hearing you. But I love it. I love it. And I love a large part of being a should be on only with Tim Dylan. Just you and him together?

Eric Weinstein 2:17:39 Should we have an only fans page together?

Joe Rogan 2:17:42 No. Just you guys only on clubhouse? Yeah. And you have to be in the same room together. We've done a bunch of rooms, I'm sure but only in the same room room. Like way you have to look at him.

Unknown Speaker 2:17:55 Play you have to look

Unknown Speaker 2:17:57 to try to be serious with Joe. Listen.

Joe Rogan 2:18:02 I'm serious for a little bit.

Eric Weinstein 2:18:04 I know. I'm struggling with it. And I was wondering whether or not because you know, in a weird way, you you very clearly scope your life like this and not that I'm going to do this publicly, I just I'm going to retreat into my own. I just said

Joe Rogan 2:18:19 instincts. Yeah. And my instincts are. There's a great benefit for me personally, to do this podcast, to talk to interesting people and to have these conversations and most certainly been educated beyond my wildest dreams and the 11 years that I've done it. I've learned so much about just the broadest spectrum of ideas. You're going to claim you're not doing it for

Eric Weinstein 2:18:44 the world because the world is not paying for the world. No,

Joe Rogan 2:18:46 I'm not I'm doing it. We're different than for my personal edification. I'm doing it because I enjoy it. I'm doing it for the money. I'm doing it because I do think that it's true. I'm doing it for all those things. I'm doing the money. The reason why I'm doing it for the money is because there's a lot of freedom and money. And there's like the trappings of money. Like you know, you start people get crazy like they start buying fucking diamond encrusted watches and shit and bigger houses. And it's freedom

Eric Weinstein 2:19:14 that freedom is the biggest insecurity like I would buy I would buy body guards and assistance and lawyers.

Joe Rogan 2:19:23 Yeah, it's very valuable. The freedom aspect of is very valuable. But But when you reach a certain number, then why are you still doing it? Well, I'm still doing it because I enjoy it. I do enjoy it. Like there's not a day that I do this. Why go fuck, I'm gonna go to work a single day. It's and no, partially is because I pick all the guests. Like there's no one that's a guest that's I don't want to be on. Like we have

Eric Weinstein 2:19:47 an easy time saying no.

Unknown Speaker 2:19:49 I just don't. No,

Unknown Speaker 2:19:50 I know. I know.

Joe Rogan 2:19:52 I don't say no, I just don't say yes. Just don't. You know, it goes there's a filter system. So like when I send my guy people to go contact that. I don't know. Yeah. Then the people that I do know eye contact, right? So it's like half of them get booked by me on my phone. And half of them, I get someone to contact for me and like, Hey, I read this guy's book. He's really interesting. Can you get ahold of them? Or hey, I saw this guy's documentary. This is crazy shit. This

Eric Weinstein 2:20:20 is the best part of the fame thing. The best part of the fame thing is getting your call answer when there's something like I desperately wanted to talk to PJ O'Rourke. I don't know if you've talked to him. Right now. I

Joe Rogan 2:20:29 have not, but I know he unbelievable

Eric Weinstein 2:20:31 writer. Yeah, I just think he's one of the greatest writers in the English language full stop. And I told my producer, can you get me PJ work? And he's like, Okay, well, he's booked. I'm just like,

Unknown Speaker 2:20:43 Yeah, you got him?

Eric Weinstein 2:20:44 I got him. Yeah. And you know, it was meaningful to me that, like that particular person who's I've read so much missed, I've gone over and over, like, how did he make that sentence sing like that? Just tell me how that sentence happened.

Unknown Speaker 2:20:57 Probably the third or fourth draft

Eric Weinstein 2:20:59 it maybe, or maybe the, I think actually what it was, in part was that he imitated so many people's styles initially, that he became very adept at, like, pulling from the great grab bag of tricks that everyone had used. And then he built his own voice.

Joe Rogan 2:21:14 And that's the benefit to reading as well as writing, right? Like all the great writers read a lot.

Unknown Speaker 2:21:19 Are you a great reader?

Joe Rogan 2:21:21 I do more books on tape than I do reading. But I'm reading more lately. Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 2:21:27 And when you write comedy, is writing comedy, a great exercise for you? Does it feel good or relative to doing comedy?

Joe Rogan 2:21:37 Writing is very important. There's a lot of bits that I come up with, that I would not have come up with, if I didn't just sit alone with a computer. It's very important for me, some of my best bits that I've ever done. Closing bits, yeah, signature bits have come from writing? And how much of that?

Eric Weinstein 2:21:54 How much do substances break into new space, like the space was always there to be broken into, but it wouldn't be so easy to find it.

Joe Rogan 2:22:02 I think there's there's multiple variables that are apply. And I think performing is a big one. And lately, I haven't been doing that much of that because of the pandemic and trying to be responsible and not do that many shows, you know, shows without people being COVID tested, right? So, and I'm hoping that as we come out of this, and it seems like we're coming out of this, it'll be easier. And I'm also buying a club in town. So once that happens, I'll be doing the same thing. There were COVID testing everybody and trying to get the ball. So there's that right. But then there's also you have to think a lot. You can't just perform, because if you do like one of the things that comics felt trapped to in the early days, not really, you know, last 1020 years was they would do a lot of jokes about being a comic on the road, hotel rooms. Airplane travel that problem, right, which you know, exactly, that's a problem. And I think you have to experience life. And you have to think, and you have to experience. You have to experience different mindsets, you have to experience different subject matters that you're contemplating and you're puzzling, you're puzzled about. You have to perform a lot you have to write, I think you have the right to I don't think you can just perform a lot. Some people can some people just write in their head, and they go on stage. And they continue to craft these ideas and some of the best comics alive. But I think they would have more choose from if they just sat in front of the computer and forced themselves to write. And some guys will say, I don't like it, because then my material seems like I wrote it. It comes out like like a script. And I understand that. But I think the workaround for that is what I what I've done. And I've talked to a few other comics that do the same thing. Felicia Michaels, she said she does it this way too. I write essays I write. I just write on a subject. Like if I'm going to write on getting drunk. Yeah, the perils of getting drunk, the pros and the cons and what feels good and what feels bad. And what what what, what's good about it, what's bad about it, why, what do I hate about it? What I love about it, and then out of this, I might write 3000 4000 words. But out of it, I might have one paragraph that comes across that become that's it. So the idea is,

Eric Weinstein 2:24:22 weirdly, the throwaway because the product. Exactly. So this is fascinating to me, because my guess is that somebody else would publish the essay and we'd be saying, Wow, like we I read this thing Joe wrote in The Atlantic, it wouldn't be terribly funny. I would change it.

Joe Rogan 2:24:36 What I was gonna do that I would write it as an essay, but the the essay is essentially for one, a one person audience, that person's me. And then I smoke a joint and then I go over it, and then I go, Oh, that's it. Right.

Eric Weinstein 2:24:47 Well, so one of the things that I learned from sort of studying when you do a bit and I see it multiple times I learned about when you find the rhetorical formulation And that allows you to get closer to the truth without paying the outsize price as some somehow that unleashes comedy magic. Like I remember you, you had something about getting high and having kids. And it was a very difficult issue, because obviously people do get high and they do have kids. And then we have this idea. You know, it's like, it's like, being sexy leads to kids, but sex and kids have to be kept apart all of these weird ways in which normal adult behavior and children are incompatible. Right? And so there was like a William Tell act, in some sense, that had to be negotiated, which is how am I going to talk about two things that are not supposed to coalesce? But obviously, they call us in people? How do I find the skill, and that's sort of what I wonder about when you hone a bit is that you can get closer and closer to the truth. Because you find the formulation that actually works without blowing up in your face. It's like, I can throw this grenade and wait to the point where it's maximally effective without losing a hand.

Joe Rogan 2:26:01 Well, the beautiful thing is, sometimes you lose hands. That's a beautiful thing. You try it out and you lose a hand and then you go, well, that fucking sucks. And then you come back tomorrow with a new approach. Okay, well, then it wasn't

Eric Weinstein 2:26:12 really losing the hand because it was in a comp that then if you're Michael Richards, and somebody's got a phone up, then you're not losing a hand, you're losing a career.

Joe Rogan 2:26:20 Yeah, that's a different situation. He's on coke. Know what the difference is? Also, he wasn't really a comic like that was a disaster. That was just, the difference is, you're the like you, you have an idea. And you're not exactly sure how this idea is going to best be expressed to a group of strangers. So this

Eric Weinstein 2:26:43 is what I love about the idea of the store and the experimental thing. When I got together and had the conversation about David Burns. Why did cbgbs work for punk? And you said, this is the same thing as the store for common? Yes,

Joe Rogan 2:26:55 yeah, we were in the back bar, the secret bar this show non comedians not supposed to even go into a bar. But that

Eric Weinstein 2:27:03 that weird thing about like, I keep thinking about why don't we have a secret bar for math and physics?

Joe Rogan 2:27:09 Why don't you remembering it incorrectly, though? I'm going to tell you that you are the one who equated it to cbgbs because I don't really know that much about cbgbs. You said this is essentially what cbgb says, wasn't me.

Eric Weinstein 2:27:21 I came up Yes. Yeah. But then you said That's exactly right. Yeah,

Joe Rogan 2:27:26 so I was trying to be well when you were there I mean, like fucking Bill Burr was walking in Chappelle was out there. It was like crazy. That's how it is there. That's well how it was there. Now it's a fucking Ghost House. Now Now it's boarded up. Well, but you're gonna

Eric Weinstein 2:27:39 do something here, right. Austin because you're basically hoovering up everybody I like and moving them to asked I've hoovered

Joe Rogan 2:27:46 up a lot of good people. Yeah, I even got Brian Holtzman move out here. The The idea is to throw up the bat signal and to let all them know that they can be free here really, that this is this is a place where I'm as opposed to every other one. I guess he opens up a comedy club. every other person who opens up the comedy club opens up a comedy club to make money, right? They say I'm gonna have these comedians, you know, I'm gonna make x percentage of the door and they're gonna make this and I'm gonna make a good living. I'm not saying that at all. My idea is to break even if I can break even I'm happy. I just want to make it the most comfortable place for comedian.

Eric Weinstein 2:28:22 Want to sit? Of course. You said this. The store ultimately is a venue for people doing creative shit. Yes. And you said Don't you know don't fetishize the fact that a particular kind of magic there may be magic, but ultimately it's a facilitator of man.

Joe Rogan 2:28:35 The Magic was Mitzi shore, the Mitzi shore. Let us be who we were, that she would, she would cackle you know, called the Island of Misfit Toys. Okay. The inmates are running the asylum. That was her thing. She loved it. She loved the fact that she let these crazy people just go nuts on her.

Eric Weinstein 2:28:53 Why should she leave for seven years?

Joe Rogan 2:28:55 She wasn't in control. She She didn't she got she gave me a spot that night. I know the night that I got banned. She gave me a spot. I called her I told her what was going on with the video. And she goes Wow, just keep away from them. And she said to me, what time do you want to go up? I go What time do you want me to go up? She goes, How about 1030? I go okay, I love you. She loved me back. Last time I talked to her. Is that right? Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 2:29:19 Can I bring somebody up on the show? Because it's hugely at scale, named Isadore Singer. Jamie, can you show somebody named Isadore Singer is a D o r e si en je er, who's my version? In some sense, this guy saved my ass.

Joe Rogan 2:29:35 Fox that dude.

Eric Weinstein 2:29:36 This guy is one of the greatest human beings and the privilege of coming to this show. He is one half of the Atiyah Singer index theorem. A courageous guy brilliant beyond words, who changed the entire face of mathematical physics.

Unknown Speaker 2:30:00 And

Eric Weinstein 2:30:03 a human being who I had a falling out with over the National Academy of Sciences. I hate mushrooms more than anything in this world. I eat a plate of steamed sauteed mushrooms.

Unknown Speaker 2:30:15 Why do you hate mushrooms?

Eric Weinstein 2:30:16 I can't stand on a gag. His wife Rosemary is a wonderful gourmet chef and she made a plate of it.

Joe Rogan 2:30:22 You ever had morels?

Eric Weinstein 2:30:24 Dude, I can barely get them for four sigmatic

Joe Rogan 2:30:27 Do you know what morels look like? Now? Tell me Morales. They're like they're almost like meat.

Eric Weinstein 2:30:32 Okay, they're like I've tried that was just hockey. People say these things. But talk is good too. I eat a huge plate for this guy. Okay, without showing any discomfort when it got to the bottom and I want I thought it was gonna throw up at this table. I mushrooms. I can't stand much in front of them. I hate them. I hate them. I hate you love everything.

Joe Rogan 2:30:54 Come on. What do you love?

Eric Weinstein 2:30:55 I live in Parmesan cheese. I love salmon. I love noodle kugel. I love

Unknown Speaker 2:31:03 grits.

Unknown Speaker 2:31:03 Sure.

Unknown Speaker 2:31:04 I love pasola you're cool with grits. You're

Eric Weinstein 2:31:06 not cool with mushrooms, fuck mushrooms. Wow. Okay. But the thing is, I just lost their guys. I'm not. I'm not going to see him again. I have two years ago, I went to Massachusetts to try to see him. And you know, this idea that Mitzi stood up for you. And she was just in bad health and all this? Well, this guy stood up for me and saved my ass. And I never got a chance to resolve my, like, you say, I'm never gonna see this, I didn't see this person. Again. I didn't see this guy again. And I have so much love for him.

Joe Rogan 2:31:42 But I understand what happened. You're not explaining this very well.

Eric Weinstein 2:31:45 He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences like the very top he was a head of the committee called COSEMPUP, which is the Holy of Holies. Okay. And I discovered that the National Academy of Sciences had faked a shortage of scientists and engineers, they did a secret study where they looked at supply and demand and decided that the price of American scientists and engineers we're gonna hit six figures. And they subtracted the demand curves. And they said, Let's fake a demographic supply crisis where we wouldn't have enough scientists. They got us to pass the 1990 Immigration Act, which came with H1B, and I told Is this. And it put him in a position where the thing that he loved, which was the system, because he was the guy who made the system work. He was like Harriet Tubman, he would do things He saved me. He saved me. He loved the system. And then I had to show him that the system had gotten so corrupted that we were going to give it all away way to China. And we were going to allow the Chinese to populate our labs and put a proctoscope in the entire university system, which is where we do our research. So they would get the benefits of totalitarianism, and the benefits of our freedom. They'd learn all the stuff we were doing with our freedom. And then they go implement and execute with totalitarianism. And Is was so angry at me that I had found the study in 1986, done with the National Science Foundation and the National Academy to fake the fakes shortage of scientists and engineers to pass the 1990 Immigration Act that led to H1B, that he and I got to a point where we couldn't talk to each other.

Joe Rogan 2:33:20 What was his rationale for faking it?

Eric Weinstein 2:33:23 He didn't want to fake it. He understood what I said. But the point was, is that he had attached himself to the system. He was well, he was what made the system great. The system uses it bad

Joe Rogan 2:33:34 he recognize your dilemma.

Eric Weinstein 2:33:38 Is love me? is fucking love. Right. But

Joe Rogan 2:33:41 did he recognize Yes, dilemma?

Eric Weinstein 2:33:42 Yes. We got to a point where the world divided us like I was, I was his postdoc. I was his postdoc. And we weren't just postdoc. We it wasn't just a formal relationship. I go up to his office, and we talk about jazz and love and children and heartbreak and all sorts of stuff. And he believed in this that I showed you. Okay? He had so much confidence that when I came to Cambridge, shit out of luck, when Harvard was trying to fix the eight, me, he stood up for me and gathered the entire crème de la crème of the entire MIT math physics world. To hear what I had to say, because he believed and then he made sure that I got an NSF postdoc, and then I got a postdoc at MIT. And he repaired my, my story, right? I love this guy. I love this guy so much, and he was at my wedding. And I never got a chance to say goodbye to him. And the New York Times didn't obituary, and New York Times hasn't talked to me for like eight years, almost something like that. And I looked at the obituary does hear about Is Singer and like, I'm the major quote, because they were still talking to me and they do the obituary so many years in front. I've met a tiny number of people will be remembered 1000 years from now. This is one of like three people I can say for sure. If people are still talking 1000 years from now they're gonna remember him. Because he did this, this wonderful thing. Atiyah–Singer index theorem, it's just so foundational, you can't even imagine how beautiful this thing is.

Unknown Speaker 2:35:17 And,

Eric Weinstein 2:35:20 you know, shocking, it was shocking to remember that I had been enough part of the system that I could be respectable, that I could be trusted to say something about this great man who just passed like, I don't know, 96 I never got a chance to like say goodbye or repair the repair the relationship. And you know, I was in touch with his daughter writes for the New York Times, is had a a cabinet. If you said something really brilliant, like really fucking brilliant. He'd often go to the cabinet and say, you know, it's funny. I haven't thought about that for 10 years, and you pull out a piece of paper. And there was your brilliant idea, which he didn't even think to publish, because it wasn't ready yet. And on the one hand, we were just devastated. Like, holy shit, you had that thought. And on the other hand, we're like, I had a thought that Is Singer had, you know, it's like, there's this level, like, if Carlin might maybe, you know, for some for some comics, or or, or Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor, or Dave Chappelle or somebody like that. There are these relationships where people are just at such an incredible level that you can't even believe that some human being has ascended. And the period of time that I spent with him, taught me more about what the human mind is capable of, than just about anything, is the is the smartest, most brilliant man I've ever had the pleasure to know really, really well.

Joe Rogan 2:36:52 I still don't understand the falling out.

Eric Weinstein 2:36:55 He didn't want to give up on the idea that the National Academy was good. It was locked in.

Joe Rogan 2:37:01 Well, sometimes things can be good and flog,

Eric Weinstein 2:37:05 right, but for him to actually take what I was saying that the National Academy was acting against the American interest. By narrowly saying we need to make American scientists and engineers cheaper, then we need to flood the market, we need to interfere in the wage mechanism. We need to allow China first look at everything we do. The concept that the problem was the National Academy when he was he was the neck

Joe Rogan 2:37:30 I still understand what was the motivation of the National Academy to do that.

Eric Weinstein 2:37:35 In the Reagan administration, for the first time, they appointed somebody to come in from industry rather than academics to head the National Science Foundation, a guy named Eric block. Okay. And you have to he came from IBM, not sure. Eric block took a sort of green eyeshade view of the world like holy shit, we're gonna have to overpay for American scientists and engineers. How do we avoid having to pay six figures for new PhDs? How do we avoid letting the genius of the market solve the problem of supply and demand? Because there's no such thing as a labor shortage in a market economy long term? Right, the wage mechanism will rise and you'll get as many people as you want. And when Eric Bloch did this, he hired a he went through a guy named Peter house. And they picked a an economist named miles Boylan, whose name I've never said, who in 1986 wrote a study that said, here's how expensive it's going to be to pay for scientists and engineers who are American in the future. And that was it, I had deduced from first principles, that they had done an competent economic study, and that they had faked an incompetent demographic study by subtracting a demand curve. So they, they hid the competence and pretended that they were in competent to pass the Immigration Act of 1990, which brought us the h1 B, which brought us huge numbers of Chinese graduate students who currently staff our labs, and who were addicted to. And this gives China the benefit of first look at the benefits of freedom, and the first in the benefits of the ability to execute with an iron fist. Okay. The idea that I was telling is a door. You don't understand your organization is doing the wrong thing. You have to stand up against your own organization, what

Joe Rogan 2:39:28 was his response?

Unknown Speaker 2:39:30 How dare you?

Joe Rogan 2:39:33 But did you show him the data?

Eric Weinstein 2:39:35 He was on a trip, he was on a trip to Washington DC and he said, prepare a report for me on what you're saying. And I sent him the secret study that I had uncovered, okay. And he said, How dare you? It was too cognitively dissonant. You're picking on the one thing that I don't want to talk about because Did he say that? Yes.

Joe Rogan 2:39:59 He said you're picking on the one I don't want to talk about you, Joe.

Eric Weinstein 2:40:03 You're picking on his low. I love this guy. This he made a bad call. The Great Isadore Singer made one bad call.

Joe Rogan 2:40:13 Did you have a conversation with him about this? I tried. He wouldn't talk to you. So this guy who you loved and he loved you and you had long conversations, I'm sure he stopped communicating with you. We couldn't get past the idea that that that something called Kosta pub, the Committee on I forget, but it's an acronym and public policy

Eric Weinstein 2:40:34 had gone in a direction that was long term deleterious to the United States. He was a patriot. He had stood up for Star Wars under reagan at great cost to himself. He was a he was a guy who loved his country. He loved science, the National Academy, he had courage like you wouldn't believe so

Joe Rogan 2:40:54 essentially, he had a blind spot blind blind spot didn't allow him to even he didn't

Eric Weinstein 2:40:59 understand that it was changing. Everything was changing. And the thing that he loved, which was the system, which had been you know, the thing that put us on the moon, right, right, the thing that won World War Two, right, was stabbing America in the back, the National Academy of Sciences, the something called the government University industry research Roundtable. And something called the policy research and analysis division of NSF, the two main science groups, National Academy and National Science Foundation teamed up against American science, for the benefit of employers to make sure that they would never have to pay market prices. And fuck these people. They gave away our advantage, our geopolitical strategic advantage. And they spent an entire story about we need the best and the brightest, but it was all about money. And this guy, miles Boylan, who's an economist who's I believe, sort of semi retired from NSF is the name I've held back my you know, like I'm saying names I normally say in public. We I lost somebody I cared so much about over this issue. Right? Because I told is, the National Academy of Sciences has gone bad. They've had me there four times to tell them that I've caught them. There's no record. Like some point, they had a reporter from Science Magazine. And I spoke. And there's no record that I said anything. I got a standing ovation at a conference for talking about the fact that I had caught them in this in this conspiracy against American scientists. And I learned about what happens when, like you're going and you say, can you please report this? It's like, suddenly, your voice vanishes. And I said, you know, is they've had me there four times. They've asked me four times to tell them how I've caught them. And it was too much for me couldn't come to grips and like, I don't want to be talking about it. I want to be talking about the T Is Singer index there. And we're racing or torsion or any of the beautiful things that bpsd instant taught. All the wonder that Is Singer brought into the world, I want to talk about him saving my career, if I'd wanted one. This was the thing that didn't go that way. It was me saying, you know, the thing that you loved, it's gone bad. And

Joe Rogan 2:43:23 I've gone bad because of economic

Eric Weinstein 2:43:24 because of economics, because this thing I talked about embed embedded growth obligations when the growth ran out. People became sociopathic. Okay. Like you don't like this, you know, I looked what you did with the store where the guy who was the Booker was the bad actor, right? And then you said, well, that's the thing about the store. Nothing ever made sense about the store. That was what was great about the store. It's true. Okay, you want to know what I love. I love this country. And I love our science establishment. I love our universities, and there's nowhere to stand because they've been acting bad for so long. They've been so corrupt in terms of shepherding the research enterprise, and I caught them. And they knew that I caught them. And they invited me back to tell them over over again how I caught them.

Joe Rogan 2:44:12 Right was their response to you, explaining how you caught them.

Eric Weinstein 2:44:18 They hired a guy. Well, they invited a guy named Sherwin Rosen who said scientists are like cattle. You breed them. You birth them, you feed them. You slaughter them, you repeat the cycle.

Unknown Speaker 2:44:35 Who really said that?

Eric Weinstein 2:44:36 Yeah, the economist from University of Chicago.

Joe Rogan 2:44:39 I was at this. And I was supposed to respond to this because scientists are not economically minded. So you can take it and i and i said thinking about data. That's right.

Eric Weinstein 2:44:48 Because we're all vulnerable because we all believe in the best and the brightest, and we're heads down in our work. Wait a second. I got up and I said, Sherwin, very interesting that you think scientists are like cattle Let me tell you a different story about economists. And then I went through what I unearthed, okay? And I brought a room that was in an academic conference, to a standing ovation that never happens for an academic conference. Because people wanted to hear the truth. And Sherwin Rosen, you know, went off to the airport. And so that was the most important young man I've ever talked to. And then I got invited to the coastal pup committee. And the coast pup committee said, you know, Eric, the problem with your model is scientists are not in any way motivated by money. They only care about the truth. And that's why all of your models don't work. And I said, Great news, because I have a friend who's got a wife who's eight months pregnant, being paid $14,000 a year. So I'm going to open my briefcase. And we're going to use the tool called revealed preference, and we're going going to go around, given that you're all doing very, very well in your lives. And we're going to open up the briefcase, and we're going to allow you to put in an IOU for how much money you don't care about to help the struggling young topologist and his wife. And I looked at each member of the cusp of committee, I got to one of them. He said, okay, Eric, you've made your point. And one of them said, well, who did this dastardly thing, and I said, the government university research Roundtable. And all eyes turned to this woman, I think her name is Mary, Ellen Fox. She said, Well, Mary Ellen's the head of the Mary Ellen invited me. So then I gave this talk again and again and again and again. Right. And they wanted to know, how much do you know? How much do you know, and then there's no record that any of this happen. And one of the reasons I don't talk about this is not that I don't have the goods, it's that I don't want to ruin the beauty of who we are. And what we do. I'm keep waiting for these people to retire, and stop ruining our universities and stop ruining the next generation of kids and stop charging people so much that, you know, they have to effectively go into a gray area of prostitution or to pay off their student loans. I keep saying when are we going to get rid of this class of people that ran everything into the ground, and I've now given up and that was one of the things that I did by reviewing what you did with joke thievery is I realized that you said jokes, thievery isn't actually funny. There are things that aren't funny. And these things that I'm talking about, about burying careers, about destroying people about interfering with the wage mechanism about giving away our advantage to our geopolitical rivals are not funny. They're not cute. And I've realized that this is the thing that I'm unwilling to talk about. I don't want to get into the ugliness of going up against the National Academy of Sciences and saying, What the hell is wrong with you people, but now I've decided I'm going whole hog, I'm going to be who I am.

Joe Rogan 2:48:02 One thing that I'm worried with, when it comes to woke culture, is not that people think the way they think because I think a lot of young people think that way. A lot of young people have socialist Marxist ideas, because it seems like it's a good thing to think of, you know, and then, you know, woke ideology, at least on the surface, it seems to be spreading what you would call social justice, which seems to be a positive thing right? On the surface, whatever what my concern really is. And I think what's highlighted what you were just expressing about these Chinese scientists? Is that what my my real concern is, and I think this is probably actually happening right now, is the the way that people are expressing things online is not entirely organic. I think it's partially organic. But I think it's influenced by foreign entities. I think it's influenced pretty considerably. I think there's a lot of elevating and escalating a lot of the the red

Eric Weinstein 2:49:12 incentivizing their hacking our openness as a system.

Joe Rogan 2:49:15 Yes, and they're they're accelerating the rhetoric and pushing the narrative because they like this. The thing about this woke ideology that we're talking about before with this force compliance, right, is that people feel compelled to agree with everything they feel they feel compelled to go along with whatever the ideology is proposing. I think a bad actor can insert almost like bad code into an operating system. And like a virus into an operating system, and accentuate or advanced things past the point that just a few years ago would be considered preposterous. And I think that this Woke ideology, the way it permeates through academia. And the way it doesn't allow for reasonable debate. It doesn't allow for uncomfortable ideas, and it enforces things like safe spaces and, and trigger warnings and all this shit that's just not supposed to be any that's supposed to have anything to do with learning and growing and exploring ideas that we are empowering. We're essentially our economic enemies and our political enemies. we're empowering other countries, I think these things are all connected. And I think the economic motivation that allowed those people to essentially to, you know, they essentially cut the Achilles heel of science, by by making it so that the scientist could only earn a certain amount of money and descent disincentivizing people who are economically, I want to make scientists reasonably middle class or better. I want men and women who are raising families want them not have to worry about money, so they can pursue science.

Eric Weinstein 2:51:09 Yes, I want gay couples to be able to raise kids, but I want them in the same state. Yeah, I know, people who are two states away who think that they have jobs close to each other. Okay. What do you mean? Like somebody will have a job in Arizona and somebody will have a job in Wyoming?

Joe Rogan 2:51:28 I think they have jobs. What do you mean by the

Eric Weinstein 2:51:30 jobs are so scarce that married couples will live in different states?

Joe Rogan 2:51:34 Oh, scientists, scientists,

Eric Weinstein 2:51:36 right? Women will beat I interviewed investigators for the American Society of cell biology. And principal investigators who are at the top of the bio pile say we're supposed to not have children, because we have to show that we're serious. Oh, Jesus. Right. And that one claim was we make people wait to get tenure into their late 30s and early 40s. Because some percentage of females discover that motherhood is as interesting as science. Like, I enter so much crazy stuff, people talking about the joys of slave labor, what you would talk to somebody and say, Look, you know, you can say what you want to bet best in the brightest. But really what I enjoy is having a slave labor force, Americans don't actually listen to directions. Well, the fox said that a particular PI.

Joe Rogan 2:52:29 I don't understand what that means. What do they mean by that?

Eric Weinstein 2:52:32 Somebody is trying to say the system is broken. And trying to tell me in an anonymous interview, I worked for the American Society of cell biology, through the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Sloan Foundation. And I interviewed, I think it was like 25, leading, called principal investigators in biology. And these people told me the most hair raising things about the nature of biological research, okay. I thought Why are you telling me?

Joe Rogan 2:53:01 What does that have to do with slave labor?

Eric Weinstein 2:53:04 That the PI's, the heads of labs, need an army of people to do exactly what they say in order to be competitive to win grants and get prizes and publish papers.

Joe Rogan 2:53:16 And they described it as slave labor. They basically talked about undergraduates know, what are they talking about graduate students, graduate students.

Eric Weinstein 2:53:24 Graduate students aren't students, they're a labor force. They're minimally students, postdocs and graduate students are a labor force.

Joe Rogan 2:53:34 So the idea is that they provide a service, but ultimately, it will lead to them being PhDs. And

Eric Weinstein 2:53:43 yes, but very often what they're really doing, the foreign ones are very often trying to immigrate. And so the idea is that the way into the country is that I'm going to contribute N years of labor at a very high level at a very low price, pretending that I'm not a worker, that I'm a graduate student into the system. China, for example, will get the ability to look at what we're doing because their people are in our labs, the PI gets low cost labor, to carry out the research. And the system is based on the idea that pliant labor is in an abundant supply. So I forget, like a quarter of PhD's went to China, something like that. And we talk about them as students. So the whole thing is like, if people want to unionize, how can you have a union of students--they're students! Well, really, they're a cryptic labor force. The work that's getting done is being done by the students who are really not students. You're a student, probably for the first year or two of graduate school, then you're a worker.

Unknown Speaker 2:54:49 And

Eric Weinstein 2:54:51 so the whole thing is completely corrupt. It's cryptic. There's like a system called fringe rates as a system called overhead. It's funny money through and through. And this whole thing is organized so that senior principal investigators PI's, can run their careers with these labor forces. And then they take pictures and they say, look at our lab and how wonderfully international it is. But what they're really selling is immigration.

Joe Rogan 2:55:18 Whoa,

Eric Weinstein 2:55:19 right. So yeah, this is why the National Academy and I

Joe Rogan 2:55:23 this is fucking heavy.

Eric Weinstein 2:55:24 No kidding. But the point is, is that we just gave away our technical advantage. Because we couldn't get the money to pay for our own labor, because we actually have the best and brightest people right here in the States.

Joe Rogan 2:55:36 So these people learn, as graduate students on these projects, and then take that information and go back overseas

Eric Weinstein 2:55:43 Or they stay here. And they have a very strong tie, because very often our professors in order to remain competitive, have to take on this kind of science knows no boundaries. Well, if science knows no boundaries, why are our tax dollars supporting it? So this is how you get to a situation like where the World Health Organization refuses

bingo

Joe Rogan 2:56:03 say the name Taiwan?

Eric Weinstein 2:56:04 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 2:56:05 Because they're so economically

Eric Weinstein 2:56:07 and our people are not. I have this quote, which is very difficult for people. But it says, The idealism of every age is the cover story of its greatest thefts. And one of the greatest threat thefts is sciences, International. Science is international. A result it's true about a virus is true one place and true in another, you know, right, same thing about a theorem. But we maintain a national science program, in part to give us advantage. Economic advantage, military advantage, we've got all the smartest people retiring, and what we've done, you see, I want China to say shit, we're cut off from the benefits of freedom, we're gonna have to free up our own people, if we want top tier science, we can't do this totalitarian stuff anymore

Joe Rogan 2:56:59 the same way, they've sort of opened up their economy to a version of capitalist version,

Eric Weinstein 2:57:04 I was competent, I want to say, Look, I don't want to, I don't want to fear you. I want you to be more open to your people with their middle fingers up telling you to go fuck yourselves. And in order to get that freedom, remember Tiananmen Square, and the Statue of Liberty and all that kind of stuff. In order to get that we can't give them the benefits of both systems, what we've done is we've given them the benefits of freedom by taking all the stuff that they can see that we're doing. And then they have all the benefits of command and control. So they execute like crazy. And they listen through their people here. And then they build, you know, programs where people go back and forth. And so what we're doing is, we have a group of people who are so idealistic, like, I can't see these boundaries. I can't believe you're bringing up the specter of nationalism. Okay, well, this is the idealism is the cover story of a theft, the theft, is that we have the greatest educational system, we train the best people. We have high schools in New York that have won more Nobel prizes in science than all of China. Okay. And we are destroying ourselves lying that Americans can't do science.

Joe Rogan 2:58:18 I see your complaint. But what can be done about it?

Eric Weinstein 2:58:21 Well, one thing is, is that if I have a friend who has a ridiculously large podcast, I can go on about once a year, and I can say crazy shit. And then maybe, maybe somebody will write about this, somebody I'm talking about. I know. That's

Joe Rogan 2:58:37 Joe, that's pie in the sky right there.

Eric Weinstein 2:58:40 I don't know what to do about it. But what I've been trying to do is I made

Joe Rogan 2:58:42 a very good point, it's it's really interesting, because I didn't know it work that way. And the way you described graduate students as essentially, like, almost like indentured servants. Well, this

Eric Weinstein 2:58:52 is the thing about this is why is and I lost our friendship is is that I tried to say, let's think about what's really going on. And he looked at it, and he's just like, I can't go there. In fact, he said to me, at some point, it's like, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying, I, I can't

Joe Rogan 2:59:09 just he's too embedded into the system. Because he,

Eric Weinstein 2:59:14 look, this is a guy who made the system run. Like if you're proud of our universities, if you're proud of our government, if you're proud of journalism in a previous era, this was the kind of guy who would break the sons of bitches who would do bad things. He cleared stuff out of people's way he knew who was who was not, who was nice, and he made sure that his people survived.

Joe Rogan 2:59:39 There's another thing though, it's like rebellion is a young man's endeavor. At a certain point in time a man gets settled into his life in his position, and who he is and, you know,

Eric Weinstein 2:59:51 it's hard to not i'm not bitching about him. I

Joe Rogan 2:59:54 know. I know you're not but you know. I think you're He says very important. There's a lot of shit you said that I don't understand at all. I just let you talk. I don't know why you got hair ties on your fucking thing here. Because though Yeah,

Eric Weinstein 3:00:11 because those are one degree of freedom as you push them up and down. That's remember three degrees of freedom.

Joe Rogan 3:00:16 I opened up a can of worms. You should

Eric Weinstein 3:00:18 check out. pull that up, Jamie calm.

Joe Rogan 3:00:21 You just stay off clubhouse. How about that?

Eric Weinstein 3:00:23 I happened largely. So do I have a regular gig here? Monday, Wednesday and Friday when you come back? Anytime, brother. You

Joe Rogan 3:00:31 gotta you gotta get out of La though before it implodes. They're falling apart. I just killed their gang unit today. You

Eric Weinstein 3:00:36 know that? Oh, no. Yeah, I'm waiting to get the I'm waiting to get the Lex Friedman invitation. He's

Joe Rogan 3:00:41 already moved here and moved here today. I

Eric Weinstein 3:00:42 know because you invited him. You haven't told me You haven't told me to move here. You

Joe Rogan 3:00:46 want to move here. Now? You should move here today. It's pretty everybody should move here. It's awesome. But then nobody should move here because there's too many people. Exactly. Travis already has so hard. Dude. Sometimes it takes five extra minutes to get where you have to go it crazy. Oh my god. That's terrible. Joe traffic here is so cute. Like the traffic is crazy. Like, you need to go to Orange County at three o'clock in the afternoon. Just take that fucking suicide drive. So

Eric Weinstein 3:01:15 you got Suzanne to move here. You got Lex to move here. Did you do Ilan? No, I

Joe Rogan 3:01:21 don't think so. No. Ilan was fed up. No, no, Ilan, and I didn't even talk about it. We both kind of came to the same conclusion organically. I got I think Holtzman probably moved here because of me. Tim Dylan, Tim Dylan moved here because of me. For sure. He thought about suing me, because when he moved here, the ice storm hit. Tom Segura definitely moved here because of me. This there's more. There's waves. Once this the club opens, then then the full wave, then I'm gonna do scholarships. I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I can to get people here. I have a plan. It's a weird plan. You know, it's, but it's a it's throbs in my head, like a weird sound that only a dog in here. You know, I have an idea. What's the plan, the plan is to turn this into the hobbit stand up comedy, there's a lot of logic behind it. One of the big pieces of logic is that there's no reason for us to be in Hollywood. The only reason for us to be in Hollywood is we were always chasing sitcoms before. But now if a comic gets a sitcom, it costs you money. It's It's, it's, it's a loser. It's a loser in comparison to a podcast and you got a bunch of suits around you telling you what to do. Hey, easy on the suits, Bro, I have a couple of those. But it's like, I've done it. So it's, well, I you know, I can be at this moment in my life, this stage of my life, I can be a reasonable spokesperson. And that I really am just doing this for the art form. And then I really do love the art form still. And I think that we for somehow because of economics, we've been embedded in Hollywood in terms of like acting like actors, and you know, and television shows, but we are as far from actors, as a creative endeavor can be like comics are as real as you can get. There's no there's no acting. You know, I think we as a writers, I

Eric Weinstein 3:03:12 produce it in comedy. Those are the great signs of intelligence.

Joe Rogan 3:03:16 Well, it's it's an underappreciated art form. And it because it's

Eric Weinstein 3:03:21 because you guys are all broken.

Joe Rogan 3:03:22 It's all it's a little bit of that, but it's also because it seems normal. It seems like you just talking. It's like if I see Gary Clark playing guitar, I go, Oh, I definitely can't do that. But if I see someone talking, I go, Well, I can talk. He's just talking. He makes some good points. But I can make a good point. It's the instrument is an instrument that everyone uses all day long every day. So it's it gives off the illusion. Yeah, that the art form of communication of comedy, right? It gives us this illusion that it's not that big of a deal. Right? But to people that do it the guys like the Tim Dylan's yas Papa he's another guy got to move here. He comes here next week. There's there's more comment though. But the these the guys who are really doing it, they understand and they understand that I am really in it for the right form genuinely is gonna be Mecca. I want it to be okay. I think it can be and I think it can be for the good of the art form. Because I think if I can provide a base like a real home base where they know this every home Bay every comedy club that we've ever had even though they've been great, they've been run with a an economic motivation, right? This is not going to be run with that it's

Eric Weinstein 3:04:32 going to be rockin afford not to do

Joe Rogan 3:04:33 I just want to breakeven, that'd be my goal. But if it doesn't break even I'm okay with that, too. I just want it to be right. Want to set it up, right? And once I set it up, right, I want everybody to grow and it's like a gym. If you have a bunch of killers in the gym, you get better. You get you get better by music scene here. enhances it.

Eric Weinstein 3:04:54 Yeah, sure, for sure. That's for sure people are in that they've got that muscle.

Joe Rogan 3:04:58 Yeah, pretty strong. Well, it's It's tight here. It's real good. It's real good scene. And you know, Gary also helped me move here too, because when Gary Gary Clark Jr. Yeah, he moves here. He lives here. Yeah, he was. He was here before me though. He was living in LA. And you know, when he and I were talking, and he moved back, I go watch him move back. He's like, man, I just was not fucking feeling Hollywood man. He's like, it's just not me. I'm from Texas. He was like, I'm a simple dude. I like brisket and Cadillacs and guitars. And I mean, that comes forth in his music, you know, like the purity of his music. And he that made that made sense to me. And that was before the pandemic. That was before it. You know? And what Texas blues

Eric Weinstein 3:05:39 by the way is its own sub thing of the blues. Yeah, I mean, whether it's I don't know, like

Joe Rogan 3:05:44 that pay stubs were Chappelle in our plan. Stevie Ray Vaughan used to go there and work for food. They used to feed him. That's how he would go out there and play and they would feed him in the early days of his career.

Eric Weinstein 3:05:56 I didn't know you're a big SRV guy.

Joe Rogan 3:05:58 I'm a huge SRV guy. Yeah, I so I still work out his music.

Eric Weinstein 3:06:03 Are you an Albert kingo?

Joe Rogan 3:06:06 I've heard his music. Yeah, I'm, I'm up.

Eric Weinstein 3:06:11 I think I think of Stevie Ray Vaughan is like, really, some major insight on top of a few select voices. And I mean, huge amounts of new stuff. But really, the amount drawn from Albert King was pretty, pretty amazing,

Joe Rogan 3:06:28 huh? Well, you know, blues all comes from a bunch of different sources, but they all feed off of each other. Right? You go all the way back to Robert Johnson. And it's like, that's one of my favorite stories of all time, said he was so good. Everybody thought he sold his soul. And if you go listen to it, now you go. No, it's just good. You know, but Oh,

Eric Weinstein 3:06:49 those recordings? It's like two records only right. Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker 3:06:52 believe so. And

Eric Weinstein 3:06:54 it's brilliant. But the number of saw the number of standards that he came up with even minor ones like hands on my trail, and yeah, sweet home Chicago.

Joe Rogan 3:07:05 He was clearly especially for the time like, What year are we talking about? Robert Johnson's 20s 30s? Yeah, so he was clearly on another level. But there's always LeBron James. You know, there's always some person that just like But

Eric Weinstein 3:07:21 okay, I think that BB King and Albert King, it's sort of hard for us to understand a Friday King, Freddy King is super important. But I don't think I think that the issue of bending notes that BB and Albert did in their particular boxes next to each other on the guitar neck, in which like one of them you associate with with Albert, which is cut meaner, and more minor. And the BB box, weirdly, is all about this major, minor alteration through bending like you don't hit a note, by playing the note, you hit a note underneath and you move up. Okay. And so it's this vocal articulation of particular kinds of vibrato. And the weird thing about like super technical players like the most like a john Petrucci or something is you say, like, well, who do you revere? And they'll say, BB King, and you're like, Hi, he played super slow. And well, yeah, but with with five or six notes, so just break your heart. infinitely, you won't care. You'll just stay there. Yeah, right. And it's sort of this idea of really deep musicianship that. I took me a lot a lot longer to appreciate Albert, because Albert was gritty. It was much more idiosyncratic. He played, flying the upside down and backwards. The gauge of the strength, everything was like really weird. And he knew that he was doing everything, quote, wrong. But I think Stevie Ray Vaughn really just said, Okay, this, this guy has said so much, I'm going to prove it. And I'm going to prove it by building my legacy on top of what this guy contributed. I'm going to show you how brilliant this guy was. He

Joe Rogan 3:09:00 changed my mind think that's one of the interesting things about any genre. Yeah, is that people piggyback on the work of others. It's clearly the case of comedy. You know, it's,

Eric Weinstein 3:09:10 who would you say are your greatest influences?

Joe Rogan 3:09:11 Well, everybody comes from Lenny Bruce, everybody, all of us. Lenny Bruce kicked open the door and was the Robert Johnson. He's, he's the guy who started it all off. But it's hard because comedy is not. It's it's, it's hard to listen to Lenny Bruce today like you listen to prior today. Probably I think prior to what Lenny Bruce is doing. It made it a lot funnier. You know, Pryor figured out a way to just be more vulnerable, and more, you know, more self deprecating and personal and just figured out a way to just be more honest. Not that Lenny Bruce wasn't honest, but it just wasn't as exposed as prior was prior still to this day is hilarious. He's one of the few guys that it resonates today like you go and listen to old Pryor. It's still really Really funny, you know, where's Lenny Bruce is like, you got to kind of put yourself in the times of Lenny Bruce, you got to put yourself in the 50s and 60s and try to imagine what it was like to be in this incredibly suppressed.

Eric Weinstein 3:10:14 I think I so much of what I believe is important about the 50s is that jazz and comedy and a few of these things like maybe beat poetry, were so dependent on the oppression of the normies. Right, that there were these just islands of

Joe Rogan 3:10:31 magic, and they were so oppressed, that things that are standard to us today. Were just revolutionary to that. Well, that's

Eric Weinstein 3:10:37 the thing is, is that I listen for what these guys were doing. And I think about there were these math and physics seminars in the Soviet Union, that we did not understand were entirely dependent upon the fact that everything in the Soviet Union sucked, right, and so that you could go to these places. And this here's an island of transcendence in a sea of shit. Right. And so in a weird way, I think the the US had this, and I don't know if I mentioned this to you before, at some point. They held San Francisco home movie night at the Castro theatre, and I went, and they asked everyone to send their old home movies of San Francisco. And people were filing out of Candlestick Park or something in 1962. And I noticed that half the people looked like modern human beings. And half of them had that glazed look that you'd have with a formal hat on your head and like a suit jacket that you associate with, with photographs from like an earlier time. And so it was like, you were looking at cardboard cutouts and modern human beings simultaneously. So

Joe Rogan 3:11:41 a melding of the time

Eric Weinstein 3:11:43 Yeah, that there was some transitional thing. Like if you ever watched Albert Einstein, everybody's in a suit and tie and he's in the sweatshirt. Yeah, you're thinking like, wait, you were in a sweatshirt when everyone else was doing something else? Yeah. There is sort of almost no trace of this and George Thurgood was the guy who said when I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, he said was the first time I saw young people having fun in public on TV, like just not performing. They were just having a blast, right? And I didn't realize the extent to which this was the oppression that animated the Lenny Bruce mill you in the you know, if you were gonna see Lennie Tristano, or, you know, Dizzy Gillespie or bud Powell, though, don't you know, like, if you just think about the beginning of how you know this thing about I've seen the best minds of my generation, blah, blah, blah. People are seeking something authentic and real. And the hippies aren't yet. You know, we just lost Lawrence ferlinghetti, the great last beat poet of the city lights bookstore in San Francisco. I don't know how he lasted this long over 100. I think. I think we forget about the beats as as important to that time.

Joe Rogan 3:12:55 Well, I think people are being suppressed in a different way. Now, I agree to being suppressed by people that purport to be intellectually open minded and progressive. And it's not necessarily true. And there's a suppression on the other side of that. And unfortunately, a lot of people are embracing, like, far right wing ideology to combat that, because they feel pushed into a corner. And there's this is a different kind of pressure. But it's all it's always pressure to get people to conform, pressure to get people to comply. It's always pressure to get people to accept an ideology or a way of life that they don't like, but the comedian takes the opposite.

Eric Weinstein 3:13:32 Yes, like, the pressure to think for yourself. That's what

Joe Rogan 3:13:35 we do.

Eric Weinstein 3:13:36 And why is it the calm? You know, the thing that you said to me that really still resonates, as you said, for a while we couldn't figure out how to tell jokes. I really remember this, they were saying that we would go to college campuses that wouldn't work. And then we gradually realized how you had to tell a joke. And then it became the golden age of comedy. This is a conversation you and I had,

Joe Rogan 3:13:55 I think what's going on right now is a good thing for comedy, because comedy is become radioactive, and certain words are forbidden. But that just makes it so that you have to figure out a more clever way to describe things in a way that resonates with people better in a way where, while also being funny, you're figuring out a way to let these people know you're a good person. You're a good person, but you're talking shit.

Eric Weinstein 3:14:22 So what confuses me is I would imagine that our comedy right now and our music right now would be as good as they've been for a long time. And I think our comedy is pretty amazing. And I think our music is not hitting the same heights.

Joe Rogan 3:14:36 I don't know that. I don't know that if you

Eric Weinstein 3:14:39 just like to look at musical complexity. There's been all these recent studies about what is the music needs some repression.

Joe Rogan 3:14:49 Think repression to the ultimately, look at all the like what happened in the 60s it was responsible. It came out of the repression of the 50s. I think that's real. I think we Need an opponent we need an antagonist and a protagonist. So

Eric Weinstein 3:15:03 this is the the yin and yang where people don't understand about my reaction to whap is

Joe Rogan 3:15:09 you have a reaction to wow yeah for sure. Just say what I suppose you can you say that? Say that?

Unknown Speaker 3:15:15 Say if one would ask plus one there

Joe Rogan 3:15:16 you go. You say he said he went off Mike. What? My reaction is the same as my reaction to little NAS x. Given Satan a lap dance. Well, okay, like You go girl, that's my reaction.

Eric Weinstein 3:15:34 My reaction my reaction is you're you're screwing up the repression angle. If you want to say something like, what as Posey you want to do it in a way that is you're you're frustrating it making it difficult, so you have to work for

Joe Rogan 3:15:50 just saying, but you can say it. It's just like it's it's a wave man is coming in. It's going out. It's splashing against the rock you kid. It's chaos. It's chaos. I hate it Mr. Weinstein off my Alon Alright, I gotta wrap this up. I love you. Being here you have an open invitation. You know, this is the best next time no hair ties. I don't know what the fuck is going on with that. But check out check out Eric on clubhouse. He's there. 24 seven. And you get a great podcast to tell everybody where they can get that figured out. It's everywhere. The portal the portal. It's everywhere. The portal. You got it on? Is it on YouTube?

Eric Weinstein 3:16:29 It's on YouTube. I should be. I'm gonna go back to one

Joe Rogan 3:16:32 video. Okay. talkies? No, but I mean, I know you mostly do audio, right?

Eric Weinstein 3:16:39 I had been avoiding the studio. I didn't like the idea of doing okay. I don't like Skype interview right. I don't either. So I tried to wait it out. In part. I'm gonna go back to doing real interviews and

Joe Rogan 3:16:52 vaccinate people. All right. Tell them to wear three masks. Get in studio. Alright. Hello, everybody. Thank you. Bye, everybody.

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