Joe Rogan Experience 1453 - Eric Weinstein (YouTube Content)

Joe Rogan Experience #1453 - Eric Weinstein
Information
Host(s)	Joe Rogan
Guest(s)	Eric Weinstein
Length	03:04:05
Release Date	3 April 2020
Links
Spotify	Watch
Portal Blog	Read
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Joe Rogan Experience #1453 was an interview with Eric Weinstein by Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience.

Description

Eric Weinstein is a mathematician and economist, and he is also the managing director at Thiel Capital. He is the host of the podcast "The Portal", now available on Spotify.

Transcript

Joe Rogan 0:01 What's up brother? Joe, how are you hanging in there?

Eric Weinstein 0:03 I have not been off of my property more or less in two weeks. So it's crazy to see another human being.

Joe Rogan 0:10 Yeah, I don't think this is healthy verse. I know. There's locked down shit. Everybody's so weirded out. He want to run into people walking dogs like they don't want the dogs get close to each other. Like, hi. Everyone's across the street. Hi.

Eric Weinstein 0:22 And I'm a hugger, right anywhere in California. So I'm a hugger in California and all of my instincts are wrong.

Joe Rogan 0:27 Everything's all messed up. Everyone's confused it. Here's the big question. How long does it take before we normalize and go back? Like, let's say, the end of July, everyone announces we got this thing locked down. We have a viable treatment. It's no different than the flu. It gets to this chloric Queen with the Z Pak or whatever the current treatment is.

Eric Weinstein 0:51 Yeah, when people start hugging again, what do you mean is that it's gonna be crazy. I mean, I think that the idea is we're all so starved for touch. Yeah, like we're going to have Have a Jubilee. Like you've never seen people gonna greet each other with tongues who are almost like just acquaintance. I don't

Joe Rogan 1:05 think that's a good idea. There's still colds and cooties, and all that

Eric Weinstein 1:08 other. I know. But I think I think everybody's losing their shit.

Joe Rogan 1:12 They definitely are. I've been talking to a lot of friends that are on the extremely cautious side, let's say that and you know, they're not going anywhere. And they're wearing gloves and masks when they step outside their house to go do something in the backyard. And they put the glove and mask down and they spray it with Lysol and they come inside and

Eric Weinstein 1:31 it's not healthy, and it is also healthy. I mean, the idea that we have not been tested and so long. It's good to remember also, that this stuff is live and real and it has always been live and real. And you know, if it was possible to live without this stuff, that would be one thing. But the 75 year nap that we've been in since 1945 is itself the greatest threat to all of us. Right and in our preparedness is just a wonderful indicator. where you actually get to see this is the quality of your experts. This is the quality of your leadership. This is what they look like when put under stress. That's true,

Joe Rogan 2:09 right? That is a good, that's a good thing. And I'm impressed with the medical community. I'm impressed with the people that are recognizing that this is a huge problem. Not so impressed with the administration of a lot of these hospitals that have been prepared in terms of like masks and ventilators and a lot of these other things. Not so impressed with politicians, but also, it just seems like everyone, like you said, was in this nap state, and hadn't really been tested and really, globally. No one had been tested since the pandemic of 1918. Like this,

Eric Weinstein 2:44 right 68 which I had, I had the Hong Kong flu and 57 were sort of the best parallels to this. You got the Hong Kong flu, and I had the Hong Kong flu and I was sick as a dog. I will San Francisco. I was like three 234 I think it went from 68 to 77 number. Oh, yeah. And I was in San Francisco, my grandma had to come up from LA to care for me. It was it was bad. There's like one of my earliest memories. Yeah. And so 68 and 57, I think are the best comparables to this garden before we go back to 1918. And almost nobody remembers these things. Like it's very weird. Many people had never heard of the Hong Kong flu when I started talking about the fact that I

Joe Rogan 3:33 yeah, I vaguely remembered it until you just said it. And I'm like, I'm slightly older than you, right? Yeah, I'm 52 and 54. Yeah. I don't remember the Hong Kong flow. But I do you know what I mean? Like, I don't remember it personally.

Eric Weinstein 3:45 No, but but you as a health geek, are up on these sorts of things. And so you understand the ways in which you know, for example, you can have a flu where the, I guess the cytokine storm, you know, as you're either the threat from your immunity, your immune system. is like bigger than the virus itself. They're all of these various weird things that happen. But I think that the, let's call it the big nap, the big nap is itself. The greatest threat to us and this is this is bad, but it is also a shot across our bow. And you know, this is what was happening in my mind when I was on here talking about the twin nuclei problem of selling atom. We didn't stop history. It's not like we're past the atomic war. Like we figured that out. We just we just hit the pause button for a little while we hit snooze.

Joe Rogan 4:29 Yeah. And the fear is also that nefarious players will take this opportunity to erode civil civil rights to erode civil liberties and then China to gain power in the US market to gobble up a lot of stocks while everything is down and try to increase their stake in our economy and try to push you know,

Eric Weinstein 4:52 China's got its hands lovingly around our throat because our elite have been moving into greater and greater states of China. dependence. Mm hmm. Right. And so, so what the BDSM community refers to as breath play, and I don't like it.

Joe Rogan 5:07 I read plays like, he kind of like half choke somebody. Yeah. How do you know that?

Eric Weinstein 5:12 What? Oh, like the fact that, you know, when I when I went to MIT, MIT is wildly into BDSM. So me, Why Why? Why are geeks and an S B's into BDSM? Somebody said lots of rules.

Joe Rogan 5:25 What's an aspie?

Eric Weinstein 5:27 Asperger's people write lots of rules. They like that. I like they love rules, because they're home. Because to do all this stuff safely, you would have to have a huge hierarchy, right? of rules. And my claim is, is that China is they supply so much of our stuff. We've moved all of our Yeah, you know, manufacturing base into these crazy supply chains. And we are completely dependent on a strategic rival. And you know, China's very careful if you remember when they when they hosted the Olympics to have these amazingly impressive displays that are always friendly. But what they're really saying is we have our shit together. And our system was hackable, it was open, as long. For example, if you have a company that has a duty to its shareholders, the directors of the company must do what is ever whatever is in the best interest of the shareholders and everything else doesn't matter. Then you can have a situation where a director has to move things to China, because that is in the best interest of the shareholders, even if it's absolutely not in the best interest of the United States. This is what Ralph gamry, who used to head the Sloan Foundation, once said in an address I was at at the National Academy of Sciences, he just said, as a director, I am incentivized to do exactly the wrong thing for the United States of America. So I'm going to put one hat on and tell you as an American, we must not move all of this over to China. And then I'm going to put my directors hat on and I'm going to vote to move everything over to China because I have no choice. And so, you know, in essence, the smart good people, all 11 of them. Were always fighting this thing about you cannot become China dependent. And in during the big nap. There was no way to make this argument convincing. You couldn't say, look, we have a serious strategic problem by your continuing moves to bring China in as the solution to every equation we can't balance. And that that is really the problem is is that there wasn't any ability to say we are way too dependent on a strategic rival. You saw this at the beginning of the pandemic, everyone was afraid of what I don't want to be appeared xenophobic. I don't appear like Chicken Little right. And so all of our friends the nutcases the marginal weirdos, the supposedly grifters and gadflies are the people who most got this one right and early. And all the respectable people like Nancy Pelosi telling people please go to Chinatown to celebrate the Chinese New Year Bill de Blasio of New York saying despite Coronavirus, get out there, let you know don't lead your lives don't don't let this thing hold you back. These people need to resign, Nancy Pelosi should resign. It's one thing to say we don't have enough information about this. It's another thing to say take the information that's coming in disregarded and get back in there and keep fueling the economy. This is exactly our leadership class their problem when they think about this in short term economics, the the long term implications of us all sheltering in place nobody can compute the consequences of not one person in the world knows what happens when you run this experiment.

Joe Rogan 8:40 Yeah, it's a new thing right? the Made in America argument was always like sort of frivolous almost seen a phobic like why do you want things made in America? What do you care Do you not do not like people from other countries do not want to buy things from other countries it was like this made of Made in America thing was like, people disregarded it in a lot of ways. But when you realize that All of our medical supplies, like so much of our electronics, so much of all the stuff that you need to kind of keep things exactly the way they are. It's cheaper to make it over there, because they will like what we saw with Foxconn, where they put nets around the building to keep people from jumping off. And the weirdest thing was people trying to argue that the suicide rate at Foxconn was essentially the same as the suicide rate in the general population. Well, you ever heard that argument? Yeah, like well, what the fuck are you talking about? That's where they work. There's nets around where they work because so many people where they work jump off the building to end their life because their life sucks that bad that they kill themselves at work, you know, rare it is to kill yourself at work. probably pretty fucking rare. You know how common it is where you have to put nets around the building. You're like, Look, we're getting really tired of people going to the roof and jumping off because it's the easiest way to kill yourself. They're gonna get more creative.

Eric Weinstein 9:59 Yeah, The problem is we are all hooked up to this need for cheap products. Yeah, profits when we can't figure out how to innovate enough to actually create the juice in our own system. And therefore we have to rationally we're gonna say,

Joe Rogan 10:13 No, I was just gonna say, I mean, also, we've gotten into this idea of every year, we have to have a newer, better piece of electronics. Like, if you had to go the rest of your life with an iPhone 11 How much would you suffer?

Eric Weinstein 10:25 Not that much. Although I would say that many of us are not that excited about the next phone that would that that itself is an antiquated thing,

Joe Rogan 10:33 right? But what I'm saying is like, why can't they make it so that you can just fix this? Yeah, you know, I mean, like, Who the fuck fixes their phone you don't fix your phone. You bring it now you're going back

to like, not depression era thinking. It's like why can't things be sustainable? No, no,

Eric Weinstein 10:52 I the plant obsolescence and the need to constantly update so that you know, you're never it's a tricky problem. If you need growth to power your system, then in a weird way, it makes sense not to build the optimal phone, right? Because if you were to build the optimal phone and then people stopped renewing everything, your systems Fine, then your system weirdly breaks down. So it makes sense at the level of the phone that you wouldn't want to do that. But weirdly, in aggregate, if you can't start innovate, if you can't figure out a restart innovation in a big way, now you're stuck with either having to live learn to live in steady state, which none of us we Americans have no program for living in steady state. We need growth. That was the whole point of the embedded growth obligation idea that it's diffused throughout every institution. Every pension plan assumes growth, right, right. All right, so now we have this problem where we don't have the growth and we need the growth. And then in a weird way, the planned obsolescence is like fake growth. It means that we're going to rebuy our phones, even as if they were now highly innovative. So there's like a weird way in which we become dependent on nonsense.

Joe Rogan 12:03 Yeah, dependent on nonsense is a great way to put it. And this is really highlighting that for a lot of people when people are home and they're with their families, and then not traveling, especially people like me and my peers, like a lot of my comedian friends who travel constantly, like, it's kind of nice to be home. You know, everyone's sort of really looking at this like, what is this life that we've sort of accepted as? This is the way things are? Is this really the way things should be? Or is this just we just got caught in a pattern and we're operating on momentum.

Eric Weinstein 12:36 If the comedian or comedian force becomes non dysfunctional, we are screwed.

Joe Rogan 12:42 Well, that's not gonna help them

acquire so many signs there's almost

Eric Weinstein 12:47 there's almost no good that is this is far away from normal as Canadian.

Joe Rogan 12:52 I know. That's why I get along with them so well, it's so hard for me to hang out with regular folk. You know, that's, that would be rough. like to live in a community of regular people

Eric Weinstein 13:02 that just work every day. What if you had like a community of only comedians, what would that look like? Oh, it'd be fun. Really?

Joe Rogan 13:08 Yeah, yeah, we'd be fun. We have that. That's the comedy. So the Comedy Store. Yeah, if the Comedy Store was locked down on like a 500 acre piece of property, and there's a bunch of houses on there with

Unknown Speaker 13:18 each other,

Joe Rogan 13:18 who just entertain each other. Well, half the fun of comedians is just us hanging out.

Eric Weinstein 13:24 We would just get together and laugh. Well, by the way, I should just say one of the great things about moving back to LA has been your invitations to come hang with the comedians at the store. What a great scene. I mean, you made this point to me about a Renaissance and then I think I sent you David Burns. book about music, the chapter on cbgb. And it's almost an exact map of what cbgb did as the Harvard of punk. To the comedy stores. Oxford of comedy. Yeah,

Joe Rogan 13:57 yeah, you you've been to the back bar. That Oh,

Eric Weinstein 14:02 well, that's this mute. You got me hammered two times ago and I was just stumbled out of that the that was the best time and I couldn't remember anything.

Joe Rogan 14:11 Well, you know, it's great to even when non comedians like yourself and you know, Melissa and Matt, and you know, some of their friends and all these other people come there, and they're around these people. They act freer. They're laughing louder. They're making you know, more off color jokes, and everyone's just laughing,

Eric Weinstein 14:31 having fun. I mean, that list is the worst. You have to be very careful. Oh,

Joe Rogan 14:35 she's hilarious. She's very funny. Yeah, most Chen By the way, shout out. Shout out to Melissa.

Eric Weinstein 14:40 Bobby, what great stuff she's doing on masks.

Joe Rogan 14:43 Yeah. Explain that.

Eric Weinstein 14:46 Well, she's just she just takes it upon herself to ask the question, why don't why don't our doctors and nurses have masks and so she's running around, trying to figure out how to connect Donors flights product. Whatever she's doing, she's she's heroically like taking a ton of this on her shoulders and not I'm hesitating because I don't even know what I'm allowed to say. Right?

Joe Rogan 15:15 Yeah, we don't have to talk. You should. She's, she's a very interesting person. I'm really glad you introduced me to her. She's fascinating. But this like, this is a great time to see what people are actually made out of. Yeah, those whose heroic the heroic impulse, sure, and and who can keep their shit together, when things go sideways. When things get Western, as it were,

Eric Weinstein 15:37 well, let me ask you a question of all of the presidential candidates that were in the race, like everybody's dropped out, and as well, which of them would you want in a COVID situation? Tulsi, Tulsi, that's, by the way, that was my answer as well. And only I didn't want her foreign policies. That's one of the reasons I wasn't like gung ho and Tulsi didn't like some of the stuff about India, there's some issues about Modi. And I don't want to get into that. But if you asked like, who would you want to, like? Who has that kind of locked down military? We have to make sense the bullshit needs to leave the room. The odd thing is it's a millennial female of color that I would immediately want to subordinate. Well, she's because she would also be no bullshit. She she had the strength to call out all of the nonsense. She I'm positive, she would just say, This is unacceptable. What are we doing? This is emergency time we had to suspend these issues. We have to get these things to our doctors, nurses, emergency technicians. I mean, look, I should say that I'm trying to be like smiling and positive, but I am just burning with rage.

Joe Rogan 16:47 I cannot believe these weren't set up correctly.

Eric Weinstein 16:51 The scale of the screw up and trying to even understand the government that I cannot trust as far as I can throw it to feel connected. temped for the Surgeon General of the United States to say that the World Health Organization is a danger to World Health to say that the CDC is lying. I hate being in a position where I believe these.

Joe Rogan 17:15 Yeah, um, what about Tulsi? She's, she's a person of real character. You know, I don't see her. Like I see a lot of these people that are running for president. I see them wearing masks. You know, I mean, I don't even need to name names, but they're doing their best impression of a politician, like a shitty comedian will do their best impression of David towel. You know, that's the best example that someone gave me of, like the comparison. There's there's there's a style of communicating that a lot of them have adopted to try to appear. And you can tell that they're coached, they're trying to appear presidential. She just that's who she is men. I've hung out with her off camera on camera. I've seen her just the way she communicates with people. Now, I don't know her down to the bone. But what I see I'm very impressed with and she's developed her character over two tours of duty overseas.

Eric Weinstein 18:13 Again, who who volunteered who takes this stuff on? This is the weird thing, because I, you know, I really before COVID, I was in this Bernie Yang Tulsi mindset, which is just what is the furball that I can shove down the throat of the DNC to make the party fall apart under that Hillary Clinton overhang? Mm hmm. The weird thing is in an actual pandemic, I'm almost positive that she has the stuff. Yeah, it may not be her year,

Joe Rogan 18:46 right. She's only 38 she's only 38. It might not be her year, but but she'll get there. But,

Eric Weinstein 18:52 but how interesting that like when the shit hits the fan, the person with the highest number of intersections points, maybe is actually the person that you want to lead on merit, right? But they don't want her which is even more

Joe Rogan 19:08 rigid. They don't want her because she can't be bought and sold. Well, that's it's really simple.

Eric Weinstein 19:12 I think that, you know, we need to revisit some stuff which

all of this

anger and ferocity that we were using to stand up to social engineering invading the mainstream conversation. I believe that COVID proves that it is deadly. That if your top concern is not appearing xenophobic people will die because you are functionally incompetent. You've just lost 40 IQ points for nothing.

Joe Rogan 19:43 Well, that was the initial response to Trump's idea of shutting down flights from China. People were furious, and they were calling it racist.

Eric Weinstein 19:51 Well, the idea that you can put a negative sign in front of Donald Trump and form an opinion that if he's stupid, then whatever the reverse of what he does is smart, right is itself moronic? It's dangerous. It's it's completely irresponsible. And here's the weird thing. I said this to you on the phone the other day when we were talking. The weird thing, Joe, is is that we are the actual adults in the room. Tulsi, you me?

Joe Rogan 20:17 I don't know. That's a huge problem. But that's lumping me in with Well, that's what I'm trying to say.

Eric Weinstein 20:21 But you but this is the problem which I think I get this actually better than you which is you have a beautiful life. And you recognize that part of it comes with humility of not thinking too much of yourself being self deprecating all these things. I think that those are all to your credit. It is also time to lead and if you believe that you having to break out of whatever mindset you're in, could be the difference between you know, saving physicians lives and nurses lives. You do it. You would do it. For sure. For sure. Okay, well this thing is the flagship of pirate radio. I mean, this is some is not for the world. And the concept of some is that that that you would have truth that would circulate underground in the Soviet Union. That would not be like you were seldom rebroadcast inside of like msnbc or CNN, except when they're like going after you. Well,

Joe Rogan 21:16 what's weird is Fox News rebroadcast me all the time?

Eric Weinstein 21:19 Well, because Fox, there are two sort of dominant narratives. Fox News is the flagship inside the right of center, gated institutional narrative. And then you have all the other organs like MSNBC, CNN, NPR, BuzzFeed, you know, whatever these things are in the left of center gated institutional narrative. Very often Fox will pick up on things that we do, if they stick it in the eye of the left. Yeah, that's exactly and so the point is, is that they selectively amplify us and that process of selective amplification is itself dangerous lot like I get invited more frequently by Fox And people and I turned them down. Because the narrative inside of like the new york times is, well, he's he's part of that right wing thing frequent

Joe Rogan 22:09 Fox News contributor Eric Weinstein Oh, that's the

Eric Weinstein 22:13 adjective adjective occupation name. Yes, frequent adjective, Fox News contributor at my occupation,

in my name, that game.

Like, if NPR would call and put me on, I would go on Fox. They're very clever game is to make it sound like oh, well, you're choosing to know you guys are choosing to ignore a lot of what's changing the culture. And they're, therefore the only people who are willing to ask us on and rebroadcast us or the people who are angry at the NPR, CNN, MSNBC.

Joe Rogan 22:50 Well, I think they realize the limitations of their medium. I really do. I think that CNBC, CNBC and MSNBC, CBS and NBC and ABC, they all realize that they're in this really weird situation where they have to do the seven minute segments interrupted by commercials. They have a restriction, they can only air at it, you know, whatever time of night The show is supposed to be scheduled. And you know, they rely on these internet clips to sort of carry the show. I mean, the YouTube clips are probably far more popular than anything they've ever released that's on the air. What that mean that their distribution

Eric Weinstein 23:26 thing is fucked. It's very, it's very bizarre. And it was very interesting watching Bill Maher sit down here. He's like, I guess this is it. The man cave? Yeah, good to see you, Bill. He's like I'm here to grovel and ask whether you'll come on my show.

Joe Rogan 23:43 Now he was trying to force me on the show. I know. Very little problem.

Eric Weinstein 23:46 He's not a Growler. No, but he's a strong armor. Well, what he is, is he's caught and he's caught between two tectonic plates. He is the closest thing we have inside of the beast, in some sense to what we're doing maybe Yeah. comic. He is a comic but he's also you know, he is the guy with real courage. Yes. And he's in a very tough I think he's in weirdly the toughest spot of us all.

Joe Rogan 24:12 Well, he's a guy who's on the left also, who thinks that a lot of the stuff as far as I do and as you do as well, a lot of the stuff that's perpetrated by the people on the left is not just dangerous, but it's it's it empowers the right and empowers Trump's support as it gets people on the fence to give up and and jump right and and get welcome.

Eric Weinstein 24:34 Yeah, I've stopped being nice to these people. They can't be

Joe Rogan 24:38 No, it's just it's so much buffoonery.

Eric Weinstein 24:40 It's it's like it's it's psychotically dangerous to watch people's continued the buffoonery in life and death situations. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:49 Yeah. No, I agree. And Bill's there on on, are you gonna do a shot? Have you done it? I'll do it eventually. I'm sure. Yeah. The only options that he gave married had gigs booked.

Eric Weinstein 24:59 I see. I think that it's really important to us. I mean, I don't know him at all, but to the extent that that was a beachhead, to connect these two universes, my model of this is that we've got this traditional legacy world. And we've got this sort of internet world that hovers above it. And in general, the insulating layer between them is astounding at this late date. The number of things that happen on the internet that don't really have any echo inside of the mainstream is astounding in 2020. And then you get these arcs that happen between the two. So for example, the famous Sam Harris interaction with Ben Affleck on Bill Maher show Yeah, it was an marking between these two universe was

Joe Rogan 25:40 also a guy on steroids. It was roid raging at a guy who actually knows what he's talking about with. That's what was going on. I mean, he was preparing for Batman. Okay, hit the math on that right.

Eric Weinstein 25:49 But then that's why he was so angry. But then Kathy Newman and Jordan Peterson was another marking where Kathy was playing the role of Ben Affleck Jordan Peterson,

Joe Rogan 25:57 not really No, she would She was doing what she was trying to get away with this same strategy that she is lazy to generate exactly for this sort of general boxing and categorizing them someone's opinions that don't really represent their represent their actual opinions.

Eric Weinstein 26:16 So what you're trying to say, so what you're saying to me, Joe, is that I have absolutely no point and I'm a worthless human being, you should never visit your shows that we're saying

Joe Rogan 26:23 what you're trying to say.

Eric Weinstein 26:24 So what what I am trying to say is that, in a generalized sense, she was just doing that same old same old thing with with a person who is not participating, I sort of liken it.

Joe Rogan 26:35 It's also that these people that they would victimized by putting them into these narratives, right, that they're accustomed to using these patterns. These people traditionally did not have any other way to respond, right. There was no internet clips that were released

Unknown Speaker 26:52 a letter to the editor. Well, to right on page 25.

Joe Rogan 26:55 Yeah. And maybe they would print a retraction. No, no, no. I mean that this is standard. Standard behavior, right for some newspapers and some journalists, right? The unscrupulous ones, unfortunately, but this, this model doesn't work anymore, because anyone can go on YouTube and instantly say, my time on the Kathy Newman show, this is what went wrong. This is why she did this. And this is what they told me in the greenroom. And this is what bah bah bah, bah. And then you lay it out sort

Eric Weinstein 27:22 of, sort of now here's me, let's play with me. Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. I don't know. My take on it. Is that the great thing about we have we have an ability to do almost anything we want on YouTube, so long as we don't get shut down. Let's say. However, you also have this concern that as long as this world remains gated. If for example, you have a closed world of people who are pretending to have conversations amongst themselves discussing the issues and then you have the institutions say we're only going to deal with the authoritative sources The problem is, is that if you have a state of pretend, you know, LARPing, or kayfabe, whatever you want to call it, yeah, that's taking place inside the gated institutional narrative, the institutions are going to predicate their actions on the official nonsense. And whatever we do on YouTube, as long as there is an insulating layer, unless we can actually lob something into the wall, you know, over the walls of the Citadel, they will continue to actually act as if we'd never said anything, we never pointed it out. It's like you're at this kid's Magic Show, which the musician the magician is completely incompetent and the lights are on and you can see all the wires and trap doors, and the magic show continues to go on. And so you may make the point, but everybody can see that it's bullshit. But as long as the institutions agree to pretend that they believe the bullshit, we have a real problem than the internet that didn't solve that, like you can,

Joe Rogan 28:51 it might not have solved it. Sorry to interrupt you. But I think what it has done is severely erode the foundation of it to the point where the Trust in it is just there's no real mainstream anymore. Like this idea that the mainstream news is the mainstream Well, how is that real? If YouTube videos get more views, like if you if you make a YouTube video and it gets 5 million views, but then something goes on MSNBC and he gets 500,000 views Yeah, what's mainstream? Well, what is mainstream now we're talking about instead of mainstream media, I think the term traditional media is the best way the same way the term

Eric Weinstein 29:31 like legacy, but keep going. He legacies

Joe Rogan 29:32 good. Okay. Well, look, for the longest time people had to use Morse code. Right. And then they figured out phones and those Morse code guys were fucked. Right. What did you do what you know, and then phones were attached to cords? Yeah, but still, no, no. is there is there still phone? No, but there's still a function,

Eric Weinstein 29:52 unfortunately to the so. I love the point that you're making. I'm just trying to figure out how to play with it. Let's assume There is no mainstream left, what we're really talking about is legacy institutional media. Yeah. And the great danger is that assume that the mainstream completely exits the building. And it's only, you know, 10,000 people trading bullshit amongst themselves, but they also control all the institutions. So like you the world gets to keep reality. Hmm. And we the institutions agreed traffic and bullshit, you can make lots of jokes at our expense. But we're also going to be figuring out whether we're going to stock masks, or what our farming policy is or how the US military should be deployed, and where we should send troops to protect oil fields and all these kind of things. And that that's what's concerning me is that a lot of us are settling for being right and having them look like idiots and their point is okay, fine. We'll continue on. We'll look like idiots. But we also still control the levers.

Joe Rogan 30:52 So with legacy media, your your assertion is that legacy media has a much more impactful presence in terms of foreign policy in terms of dealing with pandemic, the response, things along those lines,

Eric Weinstein 31:08 let's play with it and see where it goes. Okay? If you think about Wikipedia, Wikipedia might have a rule that says we allow, we don't do original research. So please link to authoritative sources. And you say, Okay, great. What are authoritative sources? Hmm? So now the authoritative sources, the CDC, or the who, or the Surgeon General or the New York Times or CNN or MSNBC,

Joe Rogan 31:32 like if you have this but as MSNBC, like, if someone just goes on on the air, and let's have a look at something, see, is that an authoritative source? Wouldn't it be like an expert in health if someone who's gone over peer reviewed studies, someone who is well, who's the surgeon, a

Eric Weinstein 31:49 surgeon general right now, I don't know or CDC is that Redfield? I'm sure he's a competent physician. I also think that there's a whole thing about pretending that masks don't work. masks don't work in the general population, please don't buy them our healthcare people need them. Is that what they're saying? Well, that's what they've been saying. Right. And so the issue is that you have some piece of nonsense. So there is

Joe Rogan 32:13 a piece of nonsense because the California is now changing their recommendation and saying, if you're going out in public, not just nonsense, it's deadly

Eric Weinstein 32:19 nonsense. It's deadly. Physician killing nonsense. I mean, I'm trying smiles everyone smile. Yeah, I mean, what we have is a situation in which we knew that the mask and personal protective equipment supplies are wildly off to say nothing of ventilators and ICU beds. And now what do we do about it? So we have rules like please don't bring masks to work because it scares the patients. Or please don't wear homemade masks, because they might actually be more germ filled or virus. So you're back propagating, what you wish to be true to get the action that you're looking for what we have is a prisoner's dilemma where everybody runs in buys up masks who, like the people, we need to be protected most of the heroes who are actually dealing with, you know, multiple COVID patients and taking huge amounts of viral load. So there's no question in my mind that those those are the people that as a society, if you would level with us, like there's a speech to give, which would go like this. You know, my fellow Americans as readiness our I am forced to tender my resignation effective Friday this week, I have failed to heed many of the warnings in our academic literature. Because our reserves are severely depleted, it is imperative that we not suffer further loss of life and therefore I am forced to make an unusual request having failed you. I'm asking everyone who stockpiled masks for personal use. To think about doing something sacrificial for the good of us all our heroes are currently exposed to the Coronavirus and taking huge amounts of viral load and I'm asking you to donate any unused masks that you have to this population as we are desperately trying to replenish our stocks please continue to shelter in place and recognize that the benefit to you is minor and the benefit to us all as major and this will be following your heroic impulse to bring us back together as a nation first of all is

Joe Rogan 34:30 there a readiness is our no okay Second of all, no one's gonna say that they're never gonna they're going to say we are tell justing our we're adjusting our fire stations based in New

Eric Weinstein 34:42 no joke, I'm going to be completely unreasonable. I know I have this mode where I just I become completely unreasonable. Okay. This is if that's where we are then it's time to revolt how I don't know. Well, we need people to civil civil disobedience like to put our healthcare people I have not been off my property for weeks. The reason I'm here in part is to do what little I can and has very little to support the people who we who are literal heroes are life and death, putting this out themselves in harm's way. The idea of her hospital administrators, abusing our physicians and nurses makes me apoplectic with rage. The fact that these people are told that they can't talk to the press, and they write to me and they're their family and the children write to me, my mother was asked to do this. My uncle works in a prison. He's not allowed to wear a mask. He's not allowed to bring a mask. I sent a mask

Joe Rogan 35:37 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, there's a lot of those stories. Okay.

Eric Weinstein 35:41 What the hell is wrong, it is time for these people to resign and it is time for us to remember that we have the ability to turn over our own government. We are so unprepared as a nation, and we have been sold out for so long by our self-appointed leadership class who nobody wants, that we either remember who we are and how this game is played—I mean, this is like, this is a pre-war footing. And this can easily lead to war, the transmission mechanism is you have everybody stay indoors, because you're worried about deaths of accountability, which is, you know, I don't think they're worried about the number of deaths. I think they're worried about deaths that result from triage, and that would result in career ending action.

Yeah, this is what you were saying on the phone. You think that's really what's bothering them?

Yes. And then, but if we all have to stay home while they replenish our supplies, then the economy goes into recession, recession can become depression, depressions lead to armed conflict and our Armed Conflict leads to war. That would be a transmission mechanism from these stupid masks to stop something that nobody can handle. And my—here's the thing. We're coming up on Passover. And we Jews have a tradition that I wish everybody had, which is that we read one stupid story every God damn year, just to drill it into your head to make sure it's always fresh. And this is: when it's time to leave, when it's time to change, don't wait for the bread to rise. This is what I say to every Jewish person, like, you're sitting around waiting for the bread to rise, because they all know the story, which is you eat the goddamn matzah because the people who waited for the bread to rise are no longer with us; their descendants are no longer with us. And it is time to revolt. This leadership class is unworkable. The reason that you and I both came to the word Tulsi instantly. I don't think you took much deliberation is because Tulsi would know what to do.

Joe Rogan 37:39 Well, she's also the least encumbered. Yeah, she's the least burdened by everybody. Everybody in the system hates

Eric Weinstein 37:47 her. Yeah, you know, and the whole point where she would put heads on pikes. Yeah, this is the moment for heads on pikes. And it's important it's not a vengeance thing. The the importance is What is the cost to you killing people by failing to heed the academic literature? If a supply was was depleted and you didn't replenish it? What is the cost to you?

Joe Rogan 38:12 Well, there's lessons in how other countries have viewed this and how they chose to act. Particularly South Korea. Right. South Korea acted quicker, smaller population than us but much more impact of the virus. They shut things down very quickly. Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 38:26 Yeah, Singapore. I don't know how Singapore very various thing. I think that they, you know, they use surveillance and tracking and, you know, making sure that they visited anybody who was known. I mean, they had a different system. And as people like you and me who love our civil liberties, I believe that in part, Singapore's draconian society lives off of things that only we can do due to our freedom. So you have to realize that freedom is itself an export and one of the great dangers is as the China has been exporting the Benefits of freedom from the United States into an authoritarian system so that they get the benefits of both worlds. They get the benefits of our middle finger, which I think is the secret of American innovation. And they get the benefits of authoritarianism where they can do things that we can't because they can order people to do the unconscionable. So, my feeling is I'm on Team civil liberties and team civil liberties has to be somewhat nationalistic, more militaristic, more commanding control, like, who would you take orders from? So in a lot of fields, I'd take orders from you, you're the big dog in this space, you know, and to the extent that you wanted to coordinate something I would use my channel I would subordinate to you and I would want sometimes people to subordinate to me if I have if I was taking a lead on something important when we have this fear of leadership, because we're all so individualistic, that we never want to take an order. Like whenever I'm training a new assistant or something, one of my always best practice This is Can I get your coffee? You know, it's very important to show that the ability to ask to serve somebody else, and the ability to lead are tied. You have to be a follower to be a leader and a leader to be a follower. You can't. You shouldn't be one of the other. We need right now a more war. We need more of a war footing. We need a war president we need. We need war senators. We need people have this mentality because the nap is coming to an end. And I do think Nancy Pelosi needs to resign and Bill deblasio needs to resign. I think that this administration, you know, made some good moves and fumbled the ball. And I believe that past administrations made some good moves and fumbled the ball. And the imperative is to stop back propagating what you want to have what you want us to do, like defeat a prisoner's dilemma and come up with the lie that would cause us to act selfishly. rationally, like, if you tell me that a mask is actually more dangerous in my hands because it becomes germ filled, then the idea is like, oh, okay, so I guess I won't use the mask? Well, yeah. Because you lied to me. And the idea is that that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to say, what would need to be true to get you to do what I want?

Joe Rogan 41:16 I don't understand what you're saying about these masks. What are you saying?

Eric Weinstein 41:19 So if I say for example, let's imagine that I don't want to put seat belts in cars. Okay? And I say, you know, Joe, a seatbelt could trap you, should your car go into the water off of a bridge, you could in fact die from the seatbelt, because you'd become entangled would not be able to save yourself,

Joe Rogan 41:35 right? But the problem with that analogy, seatbelts actually do save lives on but is it is it possible that they're just acting poorly with this mask thing, but that masks actually can contain a lot of viruses and they can

Eric Weinstein 41:49 kill you. But do you believe that's what I'm trying to do I'm trying to say is a related brake problem. Let's talk about everybody who gets sick and dies from contaminated masks. Everybody gets sick and dies from a field. The false feeling of safety. Let's just go through a huge list

Joe Rogan 42:03 of every bad thing. I see the nature.

Eric Weinstein 42:05 And now the idea is think about all the lives saved because of masks both in terms of transmission, which I don't cough on you, I cough into the mask, or in terms of I don't breathe in either aerosolized droplets, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And now the two are real, but you're focusing on like, the seatbelt deaths of entanglement, right, because you actually have a covert agenda. And like, and you're gonna

Joe Rogan 42:30 think they're covert agendas?

Eric Weinstein 42:32 Oh, I don't know exactly. But if you if I had to speculate a go, like go like this one. We're terrified of triage deaths, deaths that occurred simply because we didn't have enough resources that were mandated to be stockpiled or talked about in the literature. That's one thing, there's liability. Then there's liability, which is, oh, we were following the Surgeon General's recommendation at the time. Now, somebody suddenly found, you know, like all the masks in the world, I think that the Surgeon General would suddenly say the science has become conclusive. Because there would no longer be a worry about liability. You just get those masks the people, you'd get the masks to the people who need them. And then you'd stop transmission, you'd slow transitions. Transmissions by,

Joe Rogan 43:13 I think there's also a lot of just figuring it out as they go along.

Eric Weinstein 43:18 A lot of what's going on with there is figuring this out as it goes along. As regards the masks. I believe that everybody knows that masks save lives on balance. They know that the people who need the most have very weird rules. There's this whole thing about the states versus the federal government. There's this issue about price gouging and price mechanisms. There are all sorts of things stopping the mask problem from being sorted out it one of which is the number of masks that are produced in China. And the fact that we may have sent masks and personal protective equipment to China. So there's a huge issue of accountability and respect ability and that were back propagating our response. How much are we quarantine? How much are we locked down? What are we saying about? About what why the physicians are being told not to wear masks when they're seeing patients? I mean, I'm talking about deadly nonsense, deadly structural nonsense. And if people like you and me, don't call this out, using, like, these crazy channels that we have, then the narrative just stands. And so partially what we're doing is a parallel sense making operation to the standard media, which is on Twitter said, We will now be removing tweets, if you contradict official, authoritative health sources. So that's just what I did. Surgeon Generals lying CDC is lying who is lying? Come at me. Do you think they're lying?

Joe Rogan 44:51 Yes. Why do you think they're lying? Like give me a specific example why you feel like they're lying.

Eric Weinstein 44:58 Well, for example, But you saw this interaction with the was it Hong Kong TV asking about the who about Taiwan?

Joe Rogan 45:06 Yeah, that was insane. We'll explain that because it's fucking insane. It was insane to watch. First of all, he pretended that the head of the who pretended he didn't hear them. And then he had them say it again. First

Eric Weinstein 45:19 of all he moves like, yes, you can see his hand. Yes. Go to cut off the connection. He hung up. He said, I couldn't hear you. Okay, I'll repeat the question. He's like, no, let's go on to the next one. Well, why would you want to go on to the next one? If he didn't hear it? Come on. Yeah, I don't even have. Here's the point. We are so afraid to

Joe Rogan 45:35 explain what he did to people that don't know because people listening here and there. He was asked

Eric Weinstein 45:38 about the Taiwanese response to the COVID epidemic. And he didn't want to say Taiwan, because China claims the Taiwan is part of China. And because China exercises so much influence over the who he wanted to say some very general thing, which is like I think all provinces of China have been doing an X Yeah, that's a different country, Taiwan, because there's a dispute. So what do you think China's most interested in China, the People's Republic of China, the Communist China, Communist Chinese want no recognition of their existing something called Taiwan?

Joe Rogan 46:21 And why does the World Health Organization given to that?

Eric Weinstein 46:26 Well, how do how do different nations get control of things? You know, we have influence at the UN and we've caused the UN to do things that are America centric. You know, other countries have influence and you do this by being on particular committees rotating directorships who pays the cost I don't know how the who seems to be so in meshed with China, and I don't want to a pine about these things because I want to keep my voice.

Joe Rogan 46:56 right but it spoke volumes to watch that guy. Do that. Do that little dance try to avoid saying Taiwan

Eric Weinstein 47:02 entire life looks like that interview. I hate to say it this way, but my relationship with authority. And my big critique is is that this is the generic expectation across almost all institutions. They are all serving bizarre goals, because growth is what gave us our independence. And when we became less innovative, and we are the innovation dried up, and we couldn't grow our way into new things, the number of people who could use their middle finger effectively and say, I'm steering this, this organization to do the right thing. And this is my bed and we're going to go forward. Those people as a class were removed. If you think about like, what do you do with Churchill when there isn't a world war two to win? It's very uncomfortable, like why would you open a dry cleaner? We don't know. You have you have special people who really only shine when there's an emergency. There's a guy named Jai Prakash and Orion in India is very important. He was one of the sort of founding fathers fathers of modern India. And after Indian Indian independence was achieved, lots of the people who had been Founding Fathers went to the next phase where they became like, they enrich themselves. They did standard political things to gain power in the system. He was the one guy who sort of stayed true to the revolutionary spirit. And bizarrely, when Indira Gandhi created a state of emergency, which was a disaster in India. The people said, well, who can we turn to a dark time and oddly, I guess Prakash means light. So there's this phrase like in the darkness, there is one light Jaipur cache protests Jaipur cache, they turned to the one guy who'd become the patron saint of lost causes because he never broke faith with the revolutionary spirit. And he's got he gets called up once but he's incredibly important because everybody knows in a dark time Who they can trust. Right? That's a very important parallel to where we are now, who are the break glass in case of emergency people?

Joe Rogan 49:13 Yeah, when you when you watch the people that are talking in these presidential addresses, there's none of those. I don't see any break glass. I mean, this Fauci guy is obviously an expert in diseases and he's a doctor and he's trying to do his best to lay out the ground rules of what we need to do and what this looks like over the next couple of months. But,

Eric Weinstein 49:33 but it's like Jocko willing, you know, like, Jocko is not telling you don't worry, you don't have to change your routine. You can get up at 930 just do a little bit just a little bit. It's like, discipline equals freedom. I'm up at 430 what are you doing in bed? It's time for discipline.

Joe Rogan 49:51 Well, because he's a military guy and military people don't have any room for bullshit. They don't have a military people know Right people like seals, they don't have any room for wealth because you have to be able to perform

Eric Weinstein 50:04 well. Okay, so then in that situation, fuck your feelings get

up at 430.

Joe Rogan 50:10 That's, that's how they feel. That's what I'm trying to say those those, you can just do a little bit and that's great. That's great. You guys are enforcing mediocrity controls, but that's

Eric Weinstein 50:20 and that's what I'm trying to get at which is we have a situation where we know, but if you have two trainers and one of them is doing the Don't worry, and the other one is not gonna lie to you, you're going to be sore, you're going to be miserable. This isn't going to be fun. Which do you choose? Some people will go with the former.

Yeah, they'd like to stay fat.

Joe Rogan 50:38 So a lot of that out there. Okay, mediocrities have a very comforting thing. I hear you. Yeah, it's fucking, it's hard. It's hard to be at 430 in the morning guy. Well, some days that alarm goes off. He's got to be like, fuck this man.

Eric Weinstein 50:51 Well, you know that Jocko doesn't live that 24 seven. Yes, he does know he may live it. He may live at 18 six. Nobody knows it. Politically, you remember that thing he did about the cake? I was at a birthday party. There was a delicious Piece of cake in front of me. I struggled financially to come to I succumb to temptation. Yeah,

Joe Rogan 51:10 but I'm telling you, man, that doesn't even mean anything that goes to that fucking blast furnace of a bomb. Yeah. But I'm saying that nobody's 24 seven is a fake weakness. Yeah, he'll give into to a formula weakness. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 51:23 He just wants to be mortal like they're

Joe Rogan 51:24 appearing to make you sort of commiserate with him. He's appearing that oh, I have some failings to a cake. Yeah, well, he doesn't tell us He probably went down to his fucking dungeon basement. Every cake.

Did squats for an hour. Look, I believe that dish there's people that are really that guy. Yeah. And he's one of those those people he's really that guy. He's that guy all the time. I spent a lot of time with Jocko Okay, he's that guy. But that's because he's looking I want. I want

Eric Weinstein 51:53 I want one of those people right now. important right now.

Joe Rogan 51:57 Yeah, those guys are important and

Eric Weinstein 51:58 we have to clean out these, this class. People that put up with each other. It's like the reason they put up with each other and they don't like indict each other, so each other and supporting each other is that they're all the same. And that was the key skill for between 35 and 50 years, which is knowing what not to say to upset the institutional Africa.

Joe Rogan 52:19 Well, that is politics. And that's one of the things that disgusts people about it. That's one of the things that one of the reasons why Donald Trump actually got into office. Yes, people looked at him as an antidote. I mean, that's, that's right. cleaned up the swamp drain the swamp. That's him. Well, that's what they thought they thought this

Eric Weinstein 52:37 might bring in his own swamp, but he was against their swamp. Exactly. Yeah,

Joe Rogan 52:40 exactly. And then Bernie Sanders has his own kind of swamp. He's got a different kind of swamp. You know, everyone's got their own swamp. It's like what what is your particular pattern that you would like to push? You know what has got you to the dance? You know,

Eric Weinstein 52:57 sorry. I'm laughing but Barry Weiss was sitting here. Just like cat. So Joe, what do you think you'll vote for? And then you called me up. He's like, Eric, what did I just do? Joe, I think you might have just won the election,

Joe Rogan 53:11 well, the wrong way, or the right way. It's

the whole thing. Look, Joe Biden, being the main guy is the only reason why they went after Bernie Sanders and went after me. I mean, the whole idea was just to reinforce the idea that Bernie Sanders is making poor choices by connecting them to someone who says, fucked up things when he's trying to be funny. Yeah, you know, and, and you put it in print with some quotations behind it in like, wow, this guy's awful. You know, everything out of context is awful. And what they're trying to do, without a doubt, is the same thing. We're talking about the guy who's willing to dance with them, which is Joe Biden, the guy who's the professional politician, which they don't give a fuck if he can barely talk. They don't give a fuck if he forgets what he's saying halfway in the conversation.

Eric Weinstein 53:52 But this is the whole thing about the gated institutional narratives, they get the key issue and I learned this when I used to do immigration stuff in Washington. During the 90s, I learned this concept of steady hands. It was like one of the most terrifying phrases ever. So I told you, I think at some point that in New York whenever people are deciding to do a bad thing to screw people over, they always use the phrase. It's a beautiful thing, meaning that you can extract money from people who have no, no say in the matter in Washington is financial circles or New York finance. So whenever you hear the phrase, it's a beautiful thing, it means that somebody is being raped financially. In Washington, the phrase that I learned to fear is steadyhand. He's a pair of steadyhand. That means you can count on him to do the wrong thing and an emergency to keep everybody on the inside. Okay. And there's like a separate system for promoting the people who do the wrong thing and making sure because everybody inside is super dependent on somebody burning all of their credibility in public.

steady hands. Oh

Joe Rogan 54:57 yeah, I mean, that's the main hope of This free information society that all of these disgusting practices, these legacy practices get exposed.

Eric Weinstein 55:09 Well, here's the weird thing when Amy Klobuchar dropped out was like a baby boomer born in the USA 61, something like that. Everyone remaining was born in the 1940s. Elizabeth Warren was the youngest. Then you had like Mike Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. So everyone was like born between 41 and 49. Now, all of those people would be the oldest president, all of them. The oldest president at inauguration, like we've lost our mind. This is normal to us. This isn't really commented upon, that you would have 545 septuagenarians vying for the presidency of the United States

pretty crazy.

Joe Rogan 55:58 We just leave me The the evidence is the clearest with Joe Biden, right? Yeah, because he's showing actual real deterioration. But we've seen deterioration from Trump, particularly earlier in the first year or two of his term and some spectacular videos of him falling apart where he can couldn't enunciate words. He couldn't say words correctly, while he's speaking to the countries that his tongue was like swelling in his throat. It was very strange, right? But people think of that as maybe a substance issue. Like he goes up and he goes down, and sometimes it catches it on the wrong part of the wave. And that's when he's in front of the camera. And he, you know, he struggles through it, but he literally can't pronounce words, but then they'll bounce back and they'll be fine. Joe Biden's not bouncing back. You know whether he has an aversion to the same sort of supplements that Donald using, I don't know. I don't know what's going on.

Eric Weinstein 56:54 Yes, he has these episodes. He's inconsistent. Sometimes he seems fine. And then sometimes he seems like he's completely lost. And, you know, I learned about this was very uncomfortable for me. I was watching Stefan Molyneux and Mike cernovich going on and on about Hillary's health. And I was just thinking, these guys are actually weirdly making sense on this topic. And I've never really interacted with Stefan Molyneux at all and it sort of scares me. I don't really want him in my life. But didn't mean that he wasn't right. And he wasn't being courageous and saying, and then went to Brazil, I think, came out later and said, Yeah, there were real concerns about Hillary's health all along.

Joe Rogan 57:35 Well, she was fainting. Yeah, whenever you lose consciousness, that's, we

Eric Weinstein 57:39 don't we don't know what it was that she was doing. But what I'm trying to get at would be that we are dependent on these people that we're told or trolls as the free people and I remember Orwell talking about the proletariat, or the proletariat was weirdly free, and the central people were the ones who had no freedom. Also in the fall of the Soviet Union, I had family in Moscow and Kiev and in turn off see that we discovered right at the end of the Soviet Union, I went over the visit. And I remember preparing for that visit, I called up these people in turn off to right near Moldova, in the extreme west of the Ukraine. I said, you know, dressed like, Hello, can I hear the voice on the other end of the phone? It was like the time when long distance phone calls were still romantic. And they hear Shalom,

welcome. And I'm realizing that these are young people are still speaking Yiddish. They don't give a shit about anything, because they're not important. They're not in Moscow. They're not in St. Petersburg. They're on the periphery. And there's a measure of freedom that comes from just not being Central, right. You can communicate freely,and you can think freely

Joe Rogan 58:50 is anyone in legacy meeting media talking openly on a&e shows about Biden's deterioration. I don't

Eric Weinstein 58:57 know you know, Tucker Carlson is Another person to watch. Who is freer he's free of Fox. He's able to go against Fox. Yeah, I'm looking at Greg gutfeld I don't know what Greg has been saying. But there are a small number of interesting people who are still housed inside of the of the belly of the beast and I don't know if you've heard my theory about the rebel end of corporate the corporate end of rebel. No. So you and I, I think would be sort of well, at least I'm wearing a jacket I would be the corporate end of rebel. Okay, well yeah. You might be the rebel end of rebel I don't know you're you're faking being the rebel and that you're pretty yeah

Joe Rogan 59:39 what am I a pagan? What well look it all up in the rebel and of rebel those

Eric Weinstein 59:42 tattoos obviously wash and you put you just apply that every day. But the court the rebel end of corporate would be like Barry Weiss okay, right so she's she's in the belly of the beast, but she's pushing the edge Bill Maher would with straddle corporate end of rebel rebel end of corporate unclear, huh right and so there is an important partnership across this if you think about you remember the film Inglorious Basterds Did you like that one? Sure. Loved it. Okay, Lieutenant Aldo ray is this interface between regular army and the psychotic Jews who will kill Nazis given any opportunity? And you need people who interface between like the bad boys and the regular units. And these are incredibly important. What is the plural of Nexus next? I don't know. We got into trouble the first time with a octopus. Octopus? No, it's actually octopus. The recommended one is up top is spelled spelled octopodes real Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:44 Well, but I've seen occupy Yeah,

Eric Weinstein 1:00:46 well people people use they use octopuses occupy

Joe Rogan 1:00:51 it is plural form of Nexus is nexuses or Nexus. Okay. Oh boy, Jamie with the wind. How you Weird that it's either or that it could just be next the plural form of Nexus. That makes sense I guess. So these Nexus

Eric Weinstein 1:01:08 ness are here called Get used to it are incredibly important and we have to keep them up and I'm worried about the corporate the rebel end of corporate because these corporations are starting to realize that their need for kayfabe is just far exceeding kayfabe kayfabe kayfabe is Carnival speak for the word fake and when catch wrestling devolved into professional wrestling

Joe Rogan 1:01:39 you know about all that? That's very interesting. Yeah, that's that's a weird that's obscure to catch wrestling. Oh, Carnival wrestling? Actually, Jamie, could you bring up the word kayfabe in Weinstein, can you name any people that were involved in catch wrestling the real catch wrestling? How far do you go with this? Well, there you No farmer Burns was farmer burns farmer know, famous catch wrestling guy used to do a hangman's drop his neck was so strong he tied a noose around it and dropped six feet and hang there.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:12 So when By the way, if you want to read a great book on professional wrestling, I would highly recommend the book ringside which talks about the evolution so what I call kk fabrication, okay is the transition of something that is usually has twin attributes is very dangerous and very boring. So, old style wrestling was incredibly dangerous, and people would, you know, be crippled from about So as a result, they would often just like circle each other and not really engage. And like wars like this mostly war is extremely boring and then you know, obviously can be quite deadly. So, in order to routinize these things, we create kayfabe, which is the system of stratified lies that professional wrestling is undergirded by. Okay. So you know what to do you know to work shoot is yes. Okay, what's a work shoot?

Joe Rogan 1:03:08 Well, a shoot is an actual fight. And a work shoot like a work is a fake fight, right? So like if two guys were pretending to fight and there was there's actually there was an issue. So just to lay this all out in Japan there there's an extreme admiration for professional wrestling and professional wrestlers would get into mixed martial arts and they would get into mixed martial arts with varying levels of actual commitment. So some of them would get into mixed martial arts and have fake fights. This

Eric Weinstein 1:03:41 is like pride.

Joe Rogan 1:03:42 Yes, exactly pride and some of pride actually was founded by Hickson Gracie who was as legit as man has ever lived. And Takata who was a famous professional wrestler, and Hickson fucked up to caught in a real fight. He only would have real fights Who was the Gracie killer? Who came out of Japan? That Sakuraba? No, sorry. Yeah. Sakuraba he Well, he was a phenomenal catch wrestler. I don't want to blow you off course his his he came from, I believe Karl gotch and Billy Costello, and I think that's the name of the gentleman. There was a bunch of people who taught him catch wrestling. So his style was submission oriented catch wrestling. He had he had like, both, like he, you know, he was involved in professional wrestling as well, but he was a legit fighter. Anyway, the point was, there was weird blurring of the lines. And there was some fights like Mark Coleman had a fight with Takata where it was really clear that mark Coleman got paid to take a dive because Mark Coleman should have smash that dude, and he gets caught as he looked. He doesn't tap he's gonna tap. Then he winds up tap and everybody's like, Whoa, and he he tapped but everyone watching that nose fighting was like Get the fuck out of here. What is happening? Uh, oh my god, it's a fake fight. And it could have been a contest. So there was fake fights mixed in with real fight. Right. And it was pretty common,

Eric Weinstein 1:05:06 pretty common to decide. And this is what happened in the transition in the early 20th century between catch wrestling and professional Yeah, is that you start doping reality with fakeness. And the thing I was asking about the work shoot, it has to do with the layering of nonsense in reality. So the idea is that you have something which is ostensibly fake, then you have a breaking of kayfabe, ostensibly, which is the shoot on top of the expected work, but a work shoot is tertiary, and that the shoot isn't self fake. And so work shoot is a tertiary deception. It's a fake fight that appears real. It's a fake, real fight that appears to break out of a fake thing that is pretending to or maybe it's quaternary. Your the brain can't go much beyond four levels of lies. Right and so you had a famous storyline, I think Can't remember who it was where a wrestler was apparently supposedly having an affair with another wrestlers, wife, and that was the storyline. So the people who write the these things are called Booker's. So the Booker's had come up with the storyline. And then the affair became real. Because the brain couldn't sort of manage all of the deception. Sometimes you saw the two people actually go ahead.

Joe Rogan 1:06:25 Yeah. Because they were supposed to hang out and pretend right now, like, let's just do this shit.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:32 Right. And so, you know, oddly, I was fascinated by the moment where Vince McMahon declared I think, to the New Jersey sporting commission. He made this unbelievable is like one of the great moments of the 20th century, I think. He realized that he was going to be taxed into oblivion. And so we had a choice should he get should he pay this tax or do something really bold and he went in front of them, he said, you realize that everything we do is fake. Now that could have completely toppled the Wrestling World, the admission that there was no reality to this was a potential death blow. So he said, this is all staged, all the fights are the winners are known in advance, you can't tax us because we aren't actually a sport and you don't have any jurisdiction over us. And then it turned out nobody cared. Right. And so the interesting thing is that the use of this concept of a smirk a mark, as somebody who doesn't know they're being conned, a smart mark, or smart is somebody who knows that they're being conned and still continues to play. So in some sense, it was the bet that you could take all the marks and turn them into smarts and the business empire would continue, and you wouldn't have to pay the tax. I was hanging out as one does with Hulk Hogan, and I was trying to check whether or not this was true. And he said to me, Eric, you realize who came up with that strategy? Me? So I was like what? He said, Yeah, I was The one who said that we should

Joe Rogan 1:08:02 do believe him.

Eric Weinstein 1:08:03 I don't know. It's hard to tell. Well, that's the whole point of that. kayfabe

Joe Rogan 1:08:05 Yeah, that's where it gets weird. Did you ever see the interview with john stossel is accusing a professional wrestler of being fake, so he decided to smack him in the head and ask him if that was fake. It's really horrific. Because he dropped he ruptured his eardrum means this is an enormous man. I forget the guy that it ruined the guy's career. The guy who is the wrestler, but he he hits him with an open hand. I mean, it's an enormous Oh, full blast, hits him on the head with this open hand and drops him. He goes, was that fake? Who is that fake? Get up pussy. And he goes that fake and he hits me again. Drops him again. Was

Eric Weinstein 1:08:39 that fake? Well, okay, let's talk about this.

I don't think professional wrestling is fake. What

Joe Rogan 1:08:45 the fuck are you saying?

Eric Weinstein 1:08:47 Well, I know what you're saying.

Joe Rogan 1:08:48 Yeah, yeah, I mean, these guys. This is it. This is the guy

will play it so we can hear what he's saying. Okay, we'll get we'll get into trouble here with YouTube but he hits him in the side of the head and then he hits some Again as Dr. De edik Dr. Death or something that fucked him up, right? Is that him right there? Is that the guy now Jesus Christ time is cruel bitch is not the same guy.

Eric Weinstein 1:09:14 Is that him? Jesus Christ?

Joe Rogan 1:09:18 Yeah, legendary wrestler, bounty hunter and author of Don't call me fake Dr. David scholtes goes into detail about professionalism, his 2020 incident where he slapped john stossel, look, he's got a T shirt on it about it and everything. Jesus Christ. It's his whole life now.

Eric Weinstein 1:09:33 Yeah, well, that's his. That's his moment. It's not fake. No even orchestrated, it's the results are known in advance. The death rate of those guys is like nothing else. You'd have to look to like wingsuit fliers to see people who die at the level that professional wrestlers do that the punishment that they take, and weirdly, the skill level. Hulk Hogan put me in a headlock.

Joe Rogan 1:09:59 Why did you let him Do that. Did you ever see what he did to Richard belzer?

Eric Weinstein 1:10:02 Look, I'm sorry. I know that he's said and done bad things, but there's so much love that comes pouring out of Hulk Hogan.

Joe Rogan 1:10:09 And I agree, brother.

No. Anyway, he's a great guy. But he put belzer asleep on his television show and belzer film bounced his head off the ground.

Eric Weinstein 1:10:17 Hulk had me in a headlock. And I know that if that guy had so much as sneezed, my head would have just popped off my trunk. Right? I mean, that guy's a beast. This is huge, man. He's a huge man.

Joe Rogan 1:10:31 You know, he's lost like four inches of height. Because of all his back surgeries. Yeah, it was even Yeah, I first met him like way, way, way back in the day. I ran into him. I didn't meet a meet him. I just ran into him on the street in Beverly Hills. I was like, Holy fuck. And then I interviewed him for Spike TV back in the day when Spike TV was. They were doing professional wrestling on Spike TV and they wanted to me to interview him while I was doing the UFC. So I mean, we had a fight. time together. But he was considerably smaller. It was really interesting. It's like that was just oh, there's belser. So he put belzer in what we call a power guillotine and load balancers out cold right here. Watch the left arm, there it is alcohol. So it just drops them that could have killed them. That part right there where he falls, and he bangs his head off the ground like, Lee just dropped him like he was on a padded mat or something like that. You really should never do that to someone. But they don't worry about themselves because they put themselves into so much danger thing.

Eric Weinstein 1:11:31 Yeah, I mean, these guys are the punishment kings of the world. Yeah. And they're extremely files in that sense. Now. What what my belief is, is that we are it's real in the sense that the injuries the death rate, yes, skill levels, and most of those guys could really fight they may not be UFC level fighters, but they a lot of them come out of, you know, wrestling backgrounds. Yes, like legitimate a lot of are very, very tough. So in I think what was it in 2013 or 11, john Brockman asked the question, what's the scientific theory that nobody knows that would make the biggest impact in people's cognitive toolkit? And I just been allowed to answer this question along with like, actual legitimate people. And so I was kind of like, being very protective. And my wife said, you know, you could give a lot of answers that question, but that's not the one you want to give. To kayfabe. Like, I have this theory that kayfabe was the most important psychological theory, that nobody really appreciated that, in some sense, professional wrestling is lightyears ahead and understanding how the human mind actually works because of the issues of that deception. And so I wrote up kayfabe, which is going to determine wars and presidential elections, and then sure enough, Donald Trump comes directly out of WWE. Like he really understands if you look at that fight with Vince McMahon. Yeah. Donald Trump into its professional wrestling and it is a superpower. Jamie, can I ask you to bring up Weinstein in kayfabe in

Joe Rogan 1:13:08 2011, what scientific con concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Eric Weinstein, so

Eric Weinstein 1:13:15 I thought it was gonna be thrown out. And in fact, that turned out to be a very prophetic, prophetic essay. Well,

Joe Rogan 1:13:22 for sure once Trump got into office, I mean, that is an excellent point of what he does is that there's a part of his appeal is that he's speaking in. He's like, he's hitting a certain frequency that provides comfort, and it narrows the boundaries of what's possible and puts things into some very digestible form that morons love. You know, I'm talking about I'm not saying that all people that are Trump supporters are morons, there's people that support him economically, but there's a lot of people that are morons that like him because he's talking in this frequency. He He's, there's a narrow band, he's not gonna say anything crazy that's like self deprecating, or introspective or he's not going to prepare you for the great beyond or, you know, include you in his concerns for the demise of civilization. And Western values is not, that's not in him. Right? Right. He's got a bandwidth. He's got a very narrow band. And inside that band, he's the king ratings are tremendous, tremendous. Everyone's doing a great job. We're doing a great job. He says these things that key they reinforce this sort of pro wrestling sort of vibration,

Eric Weinstein 1:14:40 somewhat. I I have to admit that I don't meet many morons at all,

Joe Rogan 1:14:47 just come to comstar more often.

But it's back up. I'll bring you out some more. Oh,

Eric Weinstein 1:14:54 Joe. Joe, you don't even believe that? I think that in general people when they are given no choice All express themselves moronically?

Joe Rogan 1:15:03 When they given no choice at all?

Eric Weinstein 1:15:04 Yeah, I want a choice of an actual president that's viable. I don't have one. So then you're gonna ask me well, which, which of the non viable people do you like best?

Joe Rogan 1:15:12 Well, this is the this is the real issue with the Democratic Party. They've essentially made us all morons. Yeah, with this Joe Biden thing. They really have

Eric Weinstein 1:15:22 morons. Who do we need? I mean,

Joe Rogan 1:15:26 I need to vote for that guy. I can't vote for him. I can't vote for him. I can't vote for Trump. There. I'd rather vote for Trump than him. I don't think he could handle anything. I mean, you're relying entirely on his cabinet. Like if you want to talk about a individual leader that can communicate he can't do that. And we don't even know what the fuck he's gonna be like after a year in office. The pressure of being the president knighted states is something that no one has ever prepared for. Right? The only one who seems to be fine with it is Trump. Oddly enough. I mean, he doesn't seem to be aging at all, or any sort of decline. You know, Obama, like almost immediately started looking older. Yeah, George W almost immediately. So I think

Eric Weinstein 1:16:06 that this is not a change in Trump. like Trump in a weird way. It's just always been this right. performative. You know, like a fake alpha,

Joe Rogan 1:16:15 right? And he still plays golf all the time, like is hasn't switched up muscle. I mean, I'm sure he switched it up a little bit because of the pandemic, because he's apparently a germaphobe, which is hilarious. But this is, this could be his demise. You know, me isn't that kind of hilarious? Yeah, that might be what doesn't mean the guy's always been worried about germs, apparently.

Eric Weinstein 1:16:34 How does that work with his accent active extracurricular?

Joe Rogan 1:16:39 I don't know. I guess it was kinda I wouldn't have

Eric Weinstein 1:16:42 I wouldn't have imagined stormy Daniels would be the person that he would have chosen first, then it just it's very strange. She

Joe Rogan 1:16:47 was a hot lady back in the day

Eric Weinstein 1:16:48 was not question to that. It's just that she was also an active one. Yeah, if you're if your issue is transmission, I mean, I'm not judging anybody. I'm just saying is a is a vector of communication. Yeah, that's true. That's a good question. But of course, the porn industry weirdly has very high health standards at one level because it would have to

Joe Rogan 1:17:06 right maybe that's his rationale that they're tested. Yeah,

Eric Weinstein 1:17:09 it's interesting. So I had Ashley Matthews on my program and I and she was, you know, talking to me about it was that was actually the woman behind Riley Reid.

Joe Rogan 1:17:20 Wow. Okay. And how hilarious is that? That's like, that's her pro wrestling name.

Eric Weinstein 1:17:24 Yeah. Well, I don't know that she used her name fully, until we were talking and I said that I really wanted didn't want to interview Riley Reid. I wanted to interview Ashley Matthews. How'd that go? She was good. I mean, she was a bit of a mismatch in but she is polite and sweet to a fault. She's trying to be thoughtful. I really admire her courage. She doesn't want Body Body augmentation. So she's got A non classical porn body. She chose to do a trans scene because it was erotically interesting to her, even though she was told that it would kill her brand. She doesn't necessarily sometimes she shaves her body here. Sometimes she doesn't. Hey, so there's a lot of what she does that I think is incredibly admirable. And I got to know of her because she came to a show that I did with Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris in San Francisco, and she was tweeting out that she was a huge Sam Harris fan. And then I saw something she did where she was talking about, it was impossible for her to get banking and regular services as a pornographic actress. And thank you. Yeah, there's like a remember operation choke point? No. Operation choke point was, I think an Obama era, Department of Justice Initiative to try to make it very different. Difficult to engage in illegal occupations like payday lending and things, or porn. And so they were. Yeah. So they would the I think they use the FDIC to harass credit card companies and banks into not making it easy for these people to gain access to ordinary services. So I've been very concerned about the ways in which the authoritarians attempt to regulate who can do what who can say what say, what were get banking behavior, you know, but so that's still going on to this day. Yeah. Is a difficulty getting banking, but she can't get I think MailChimp won't work with her, because she's a pornographic actress, in terms of mailing lists, and then there's like chargeback issues where marginal businesses you know, people will cancel their credit cards, but in fact, if you're doing a business where very few people are canceling the credit cards, they'll still claim that they won't work with you because of the risk of canceling So there's this whole thing where we harass and Intex,

Joe Rogan 1:20:05 PayPal payouts no longer supported. What is this Jamie? What's this from from our blog? Yeah, we're all devastated by PayPal his decision to stop payouts to over 100,000 performers who rely on them for their livelihoods. If you have PayPal as your payout option, please select a new method and update your information. In your model settings tab. If you have a pending payment for October bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, so this is because of porn. Canadian law Okay, so this but hold on a second is this prostitution? Is that why this pay

Eric Weinstein 1:20:37 out thing to believe that once upon a time, Sam, the San Fernando Valley was the head of prostitution at the head of pornographic acting and movie production because it couldn't be charged as prosecution now as prostitution. Yeah, now actually makes the point that she is comfortable being called a commercial sex worker. So in some sense prostitution adjacent but not prostitution. And in to your question about how did that go? I was quite nervous about having a pornographic actress as a guest. I did in fact, right after sir Roger Penrose, so it was one of the one of the better transition.

Joe Rogan 1:21:15 I like it.

Eric Weinstein 1:21:16 Thank you. For my next trick. The I think it's important that we talk about porn. And I think it's important that if this is going to have a huge effect, like dark matter, you know, you feel its gravitational effect, but nobody can actually see it because you can't talk about it. Right? I think that it's absolutely imperative that we make more connection to Planet porn and talk about what's going on what does it say about us and the ways in which you know, they've got great data the way okay Cupid has great data on what's going on in the world of courtship. Porn has great data on what's going on in the world of kink of kink and eroticism. Yeah. And you know, for example, she He pointed out that incest porn searches around the holidays when people are spending time with their family. What? Wow. And incest porn is that is it a cancer is a cancer that I don't think we're even talking about. It's gotten really, really pronounced.

Joe Rogan 1:22:15 Yeah, well all taboo. porns stepmom, porn, you know, that kind of stuff, stepsister? Yeah, there's there's something about I hear. Yeah. But there's something about those things that for people. It's like, there's so much porn, that this is the last taboo. The last taboo is your dad marries his hot lady. And then your dad we have one taboo. I want you to have a good time with your mom. I'm gonna go off golfing now. Please. And stop. Yeah. You know

Eric Weinstein 1:22:45 you I think it was your line. But you could do what I read. Right? You just did to me. What's that the Sean Connery? One I rarely lift.

Joe Rogan 1:22:53 Yeah, I can do one. Yeah, yeah. Focus something about a line. porn

Eric Weinstein 1:23:04 crossing of lines? don't remember.

Sorry. They're I

Joe Rogan 1:23:10 don't even smoke pot but I wanted to tie said you don't even smoke pot

Eric Weinstein 1:23:13 hardly.

Joe Rogan 1:23:14 I wanted to talk to you about one of your podcasts I listened to least recently you listen to a podcast a controversial the O'Keefe podcast, Project Veritas QA. That's a that's an interesting one because he had a really good point in that people when they hear that this is a Project Veritas thing. And for people who don't know who he is, James O'Keefe, from Project Veritas, they've, they've done a lot of work exposing some biases that are held by some of the people that work in these social media groups is social media corporations like Twitter and Facebook and things like that. Yeah. But the way they've done it is all through hidden camera type stuff. And there's a narrative that people love to use where they go, Oh, that guy. He uses selective editing or that guy, you can't believe anything they say

Eric Weinstein 1:24:01 everything he says is wrong. But

Joe Rogan 1:24:03 that is impossible possible because you're listening to these people talking. And they're talking about how they marginalize right wing viewpoints, they look for people who have like manga and their headline and they put them in certain categories where it makes it very difficult for people to get their, their stuff that the algorithm supports, you know that they they know how to marginalize these perspectives and these points of view. And it's really weird, that no one they've found this strange way of describing it, where even though you've see it on video, you hear people say things that should be outrageous to anyone who believes in objective reality. And yet, people love to say that's just a Project Veritas thing and that guy's full of shit and then Oh, he's full of shit. Good. And then they cast it aside.

Eric Weinstein 1:25:02 Well, thank you for bringing that up the another Look, I want to take risk. And that was a huge risk. Yeah, as far as the thing is, is that if you touch these worlds, by the way, can I try one of these CBD things?

Joe Rogan 1:25:16 Yeah, well they're not in the fridge. This is the last one can't get one. Tell Jeff to get some some of the CBD kill cliffs. They're very addictive. I'm gonna warn you right now. All right, only five milligrams CBD okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:25:31 I have a friend who cannot come to the United States ever because he attempted to come in with some CBD which is not psychoactive Shut the fuck up for me from the UK.

Joe Rogan 1:25:38 Come on. He can't come into us ever. I believe they can appeal that. Now that CBD is legal here. His

Eric Weinstein 1:25:44 mom is Amanda fielding. Do you know who Amanda fielding? Yes. Do you love Amanda field?

Joe Rogan 1:25:50 No. Oh, explain who Amanda fielding is? Amanda fielding.

Eric Weinstein 1:25:56 Countess Amanda fielding is the head of the Beckley foundation for the scientific study of psychedelic and related substances in the UK who I think believe works with Imperial College. She's an

Joe Rogan 1:26:09 older lady, right?

Eric Weinstein 1:26:11 Oh, yeah. And she's, uh, she's self japanned.

Joe Rogan 1:26:15 Right? So she's right. She

Eric Weinstein 1:26:16 told me about Yeah, she's put two holes in her skull and her husband. Lord Jamie has the URL Jamie maybes URL URL Jamie. I'm sorry. I don't know these things. Okay. He's Japan as well. Oh, great. And there. They are two of the most lovely learned wonderful people in the world.

Joe Rogan 1:26:39 What's the benefit of self trepanation her termination in general? Oh, Jesus Christ is a video of her doing it.

Eric Weinstein 1:26:45 Yeah, I think it's called something like a hole in my head.

Joe Rogan 1:26:46 What is that? It looks like she did with a stick.

Eric Weinstein 1:26:49 Yeah. Or something. She did it herself. She had her own tools.

Joe Rogan 1:26:52 Why did she do that? First of all,

Eric Weinstein 1:26:55 when you are British aristocracy. This is what you do. No, you don't.

Joe Rogan 1:27:00 Yes, you do. You go on vacation? No, no, no. This lady's crazy. Jesus Christ. Look at that fucking hole she put in her head. So she drilled right through her skull. Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:27:10 All right. So the reason she did it, and I think it's an interesting one,

Joe Rogan 1:27:13 please,

Eric Weinstein 1:27:15 Joe, come on, don't be judgmental.

The belief that she had was that her brain, your brain expands to fill your brain case. And that when it runs into a hard stop, that the blood circulation has changed, and that when the blood circulation changes, you lose that sparkling clarity that comes from your sort of childhood. And so if you if you remember how clear the world was when you were a kid, her belief was by relieving the pressure from the braincase that you actually get a kind of permanent upgrade in your cognition and the level at which you're experiencing all of reality. Is that true? I don't know. I'm not self Kirpan.

Joe Rogan 1:27:57 I have not well drilled a hole in my head. Did She say that this was like an effective method.

Eric Weinstein 1:28:02 I think both she and Jamie say that it's been very positive

Joe Rogan 1:28:08 the fuck out of here with that. Well this is a different flavor. We got a great flavor here 25 milligrams CBD that's crazy though so this guy is permanently barge here, sir without having anything permanently permanently barred from the United States. Yeah because of that. CBD yeah and psychoactive, right maybe they just knew his mom was a nutjob that drills holes, she's not

Eric Weinstein 1:28:30 a nutjob. She was the one who changed my mind about psychedelics. She changed them.

Joe Rogan 1:28:36 Yeah, I was a totally I was totally opposed. I wish I was there to show you that it's can be done without having a hole in your head. I

Eric Weinstein 1:28:45 I said if you've been taking LSD regularly these areas since the since the late 60s. I said well, how is it that you seem to be completely all there? So it really doesn't have any negative effects. Well, I'm trying to race through the story rather than me. Yeah, perfectly accurate. So then what did we get wrong in the 60s? And she said, Oh, dosages, I said, What do you mean? This, this is just moronic. And so people were just putting huge amounts of LSD and things and having terrible experiences. And I thought, Well, okay, this is completely, she's crazy, because I know it's acid. And so I just had this image that you pour acid on a brain and it turns it into emmentaler cheese with all the holes. And sure enough, like we don't even know what the lethal dosage of LSD is, right? at a physiological rather than at a software level. It seems to be incredibly well tolerated because it's the only thing that has this effect and such tiny trace amounts.

Joe Rogan 1:29:47 Yeah, it's the same as psilocybin and LSD. 50s. outrageous. You have the pounds of it.

Eric Weinstein 1:29:52 And so she changed my mind where I realized that I had been thoroughly propagandized and then I had never examined my beliefs. around these chemicals, and then in fact many of the most powerful appear to be very well tolerated. Yes,

Joe Rogan 1:30:08 yeah, the most powerful ones, in fact, but they're also the ones that most closely resemble human neuro chemistry.

Eric Weinstein 1:30:15 So which is weird too? So I think that look, I'm a fan of eccentrics and SRU. Yeah, for sure. And I don't think Amanda is crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:30:23 Oh, she's definitely crazy, showed holes in her head.

Eric Weinstein 1:30:27 It gets weirder than that.

What else?

She had a pet bird called birdie. And she built a mausoleum to her pet bird in the form of some sort of a conical Earth outcropping that in order to reach it, I think you have to walk over Doric columns that cross and call like, you know, these old columns, from Greek temples, okay. And so the tops of them form steps across a moat. And it's guarded by attack swans. Like you can take nothing at all psychoactive and then you're visiting this woman visiting her birds, Mazel Liam being attacked by swans walking over Greek columns to cross a moat. Yeah, but

Joe Rogan 1:31:14 that's just fun. drilling holes in your head is really, really where I draw the line. Cheers to that.

That just seems I mean, I don't think there's any real science to relieving pressure by drilling a fucking hole in your head. I think you're just relieved by the fact that you've taken this really radical step outside of the norm, and decided you're going to be the person who

Eric Weinstein 1:31:37 I'm sorry, I'm team Amanda fielding. She met she may have made a crazy decision in her life. But keep doing

Joe Rogan 1:31:45 it every now and then drill a new hole.

Eric Weinstein 1:31:47 But you know, it's like it's like plastic surgery. You get addicted to it pretty soon there's nothing but

just holes.

Yeah, Swiss cheese head. No, these these are two of the most lovely and cerebral people around

Joe Rogan 1:31:59 No she on acid when she drilled the hole.

Eric Weinstein 1:32:01 I doubt it.

Joe Rogan 1:32:03 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:32:03 I mean, I don't think she's sorry. I just I just I think she's as eccentric as the day as long but I'm, I'm such an admirer of people who are willing to try to cross the adaptive Valley and do it and fund their own expedition. Yeah, right. So this is like a giant risk.

Joe Rogan 1:32:23 Which is crazy that so was her son that was barred from coming in this country, the filmmaker? Just imagine if you had a cannabis 25 milligram CBD kill cliff, like, you fucking criminal, get out of our country

Eric Weinstein 1:32:37 for a bit, but we're using these things as excuses. Yeah, like I desperately need to have Douglas Murray come to the US. But people don't like Douglas because of some of his opinions. But he's been here. I don't think he can come now. Why? I don't know. There's some issue.

Joe Rogan 1:32:53 Was this recent? He was on the podcast.

Eric Weinstein 1:32:55 When was he last year

Joe Rogan 1:32:56 was done this

Eric Weinstein 1:32:57 four years ago,

Joe Rogan 1:32:58 two, maybe two years ago was he In the old spot of the new spot affiliate, it was the new Xbox. It was here. Yeah. So it's within two years.

Eric Weinstein 1:33:08 He can't come to the United States. I think he can't come to the United States. And I'm very angry about that. And I'll tell you another one that I'm really angry about is Alex green, the CEO of symmetry labs. Do you want to bring up the tree of 10? Or a T n e r e from Burning Man? Oh, boy.

Said Brian, man, what's wrong with Brian Have you been?

Too many feet?

Joe Rogan 1:33:34 Too many one too many feet. Too many dirty people.

Eric Weinstein 1:33:37 Okay, if you can find a video of that. Here's

Joe Rogan 1:33:39 where all the masks are. They're fucking hoarding them for Burning Man. So

Eric Weinstein 1:33:45 like, maybe the third one to 2017

Okay, okay, so the guy

Oh, that's beautiful. So this is a tree and Burning Man. They've got all these.

Yeah. And the guy the guy who came up with this is riding right now in federal prison.

Joe Rogan 1:34:00 The guy who came up with this tree

Eric Weinstein 1:34:02 Yeah, for what? He's a physicist, musician, very good friend of mine somebody I leave my children with. Great family friend, wonderful Passover and Shabbat dinner guest and currently in jail for weed. What? weed? Yeah, but like, I want you to think about and they're much better videos than this where these giant waves and things go through the people who are bringing transcendence and grace and beauty to our lives when they're hounded because of like, what language they've used things that like self experimentation, advocacy for psychedelics, I'm very, it's very important that we have rule breakers, Mavericks, people that you might call crazy or lunatics and that we be very gentle and celebrate. What is

Joe Rogan 1:34:55 the gentleman's name again, Alex green, Alex green and Alex green is was rested for distribution? Yep, I think so. How much did he have? I don't know.

Eric Weinstein 1:35:04 Where was he arrested? I think it was New York. New York is still illegal, as weird as it may well be. But my point is, I want I want isn't Yeah, he's in federal prison. I don't know. Couple few years, I don't know, with parole, he's in a treatment facility. But, you know, I just, I got a call from my, the person I lead my children with when I go out of town, sitting in federal prison. You know, it's like, this call originates from the US correctional Jesus Christ. And this guy's you know, he's a he's a genius, CEO of a beautiful mathematical art company. And I just feel so powerless to figure out how to move people along.

Joe Rogan 1:35:49 Was he targeted or did he just fuck up and try to buy a large number of a large quantity of it so that you didn't have to

Eric Weinstein 1:35:57 go imagine that he was involved in some I don't know the specifics of his plea, and I don't want to say anything that could screw him up. But I imagine that you know, the issue was something to do with a large cannabis business.

Joe Rogan 1:36:13 Okay, so he had some sort of distribution business in New York.

Eric Weinstein 1:36:16 I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not opining that he didn't break the law. But I also think at some level when you go back, I mean, you know, when you see cannabis being advertised everywhere, and you grew up in a world in which, like, only bad people did that. Yeah. It's pretty infuriating. Yeah, it is, you know, and at some point, I was so angry about Alex that I started talking about coffee and wine as drugs. Would you like read drugs or white drugs today? Yeah, you know, hey, should we get go get some drugs down at Starbucks and people would be like, very weirded out. But like, tell me those things aren't drugs or

drugs or drugs. Their drugs always have been I only

smoked cigarettes for one weekend and years ago, man did I not know, cigarettes or a drug I was

Joe Rogan 1:37:06 applying to, I don't smoke, but I have smoked before shows. Okay with Chappelle. He's given me cigarettes and Tony Hinchcliffe he's given me cigarettes for shows and I've smoked a cigarette then we got on stage and it's like, you're you're on a drug. It's a cognitive enhancing drug,

Eric Weinstein 1:37:24 by the way if right, and then you're I'm so jittery I can't

Joe Rogan 1:37:28 even definitely can do that. I can't think yeah, if you do a bunch of them it there's society has accepted a bunch of drugs and a lot of them that will fucking kill you. And then they've made some drugs that are some of the most powerful drugs in terms of their force on creativity to make cannabis is one of the most amazing drugs ever. Did you firearms of creativity. Do you believe that's as true of indika as as it is of steel? Yeah, indika definitely gives you some pretty wild thoughts. It's really it perturbs normal consciousness, right? And in that, that perturbation that if that's words that a word, that's a word in that adjusting of your normal perceptions, that's where these new ideas come come in. That's where these new it's almost like you get a little a little a chance to pop your head off the top of the clouds and look around and go, Oh, this is not what I think it is. This is some weird thing. You know, and I got really high the other day, and I made a post on Instagram, about Joe exotic and Donald Trump. And then this this thing, and I was like saying, like, here's what's weird. Like, the thing that keeps coming to me when I get high is not it's that this is the idea that one day thing is going to get back to normal. And the idea is that there would never really wasn't normal, that it was just an attractive illusion. And then it's a comforting and attractive illusion. And I use the photo of Joe exotic and one of Donald Trump's most ridiculous his tweets, where he was talking about the Coronavirus and how he's a huge hit. And how James Joyce ratings Joe exotic from the new Netflix documentary series called Tiger King, which must be a part of your life. Get on board right away. I don't know anything about it. And then the other one is, look at this. That's Joe exotic. It's amazing. He's the guy who smokes meth. He's married to two different guys at the same time. They all live together. It's great. I don't want to tell you anymore. Or spoiler alert, but good. Jimmy, go. Jamie go to my Instagram. So you could see the Trump tweet that I also included in this post with this image of Joe exotic because these two things together was just like I was stunned. And Tim Dylan actually had sent me this this tweet by Trump. And I was like, it's the second image of the Joe exotic. It's like a double post. So if you click on the image like look at that President Trump is a ratings hit since

Providing the daily White House briefings, Mr. Trump, and his Coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million views in reading

roughly the viewership of the season finale of The Bachelor. numbers continue to rise. He writes, numbers continue to rise. What am I reading? Joe? This is Donald Trump, the President of the United States makes a self congratulatory tweet that he is talking about a pandemic virus that could potentially kill as many as 200,000 American

Eric Weinstein 1:40:35 Revolutions

Joe Rogan 1:40:35 guilt

Eric Weinstein 1:40:36 revolution, Joe,

Joe Rogan 1:40:37 look at this.

Eric Weinstein 1:40:38 I want to revolt. I can't I can't

Joe Rogan 1:40:41 I get your I get your wind the revolt. I get that but me as a high person in the valley, sitting on my back porch while my kids are asleep. Looking at this tweet, I'm like, Well, I don't think there is a normal I don't think normals real I don't think normals real I think we've been we've been hoodwinked normals, not real. I don't think it is. I don't think it's real. I think it's, that's one of the things that I love about nature. You know, we were watching a video yesterday of an owl eating the head off of a hawk because I was explaining that it was sort of a hawk war that went on in my backyard at one point time these owls killed these Hawks. And I would find these headless hawks like owls or mean motherfuckers Oh man, there's so many they look wise and kind but

Eric Weinstein 1:41:26 they are they're badass so

Joe Rogan 1:41:28 mean, I know they eat the Hawks heads. That's like the way they do it. And I found this out by googling little fucky talks heads I finally find these hawks in the middle of my my yard with no fucking hat. I'm like, What is this? It's great owls, man. They were these

Eric Weinstein 1:41:44 badass owls. That would fly the way these hawks great recommendation from you? What bunny UFC bunny. I had never seen rabbits fighting. Oh yeah, there's Oh my god. There's like I tried to figure out why. Which are the animals that I want to see fight the most? Yeah, so giraffes are way the hell up there.

Joe Rogan 1:42:05 Oh yeah, they fight while giraffe

Eric Weinstein 1:42:07 battles are the best fighter UFC is so funny. funnier. It's like It's like kangaroo fighting for sure.

Joe Rogan 1:42:14 Well, we didn't know how mean they were to each other until my daughter's got two male bunnies and we left them in a coop together. Oh, well, this is not good. And they grew up together. I mean, these weren't like bunnies it didn't know each other, but they would fight to the death. And they would fight all the time. Their ears were all torn apart. We had to separate them. Yeah. So this is this is that they fight all the time. They're the rodents, man.

Eric Weinstein 1:42:36 Have you seen penis fencing? In flatworms?

No, no, I have not. Penis focus fantasies and flowers.

Okay, Jamie.

Joe Rogan 1:42:47 I learned so much from you about bizarre animal sexual behavior all the way back to the the cuttlefish that pretend to be women. Yeah,

yeah, that was a good one. That's a really good one. Okay, cuz there's a

lot of men out there like that in society. So this his penis fencing with flatworms.

Eric Weinstein 1:43:03 So this is like in terms of why do people who like social engineering, not like biology, flatworms have two different life cycles, a male and a female life cycle. And they don't know when they encounter each other and romance calls, whether or not they will be male or female, and it's decided by a violent contest. So they've got I believe two, plural penis

bi, let's go with Pina.

I know I only see one at any given moment. They have two penises. And they attempt to stab each other. And whoever penetrates the other succeeds in what might be termed traumatic insemination, and the loser is assigned the feminine gender Right. So the idea is that it's more costly to bear the young than it is to pierce the opponent. So female is given to the loser.

Joe Rogan 1:44:12 Whoa. So they just do battle until someone fucks the other one right so person becomes a check. Now, that thing

Eric Weinstein 1:44:20 now, there's a worse species what bedbugs. bedbugs have no vaginal opening. So make one. The only way that a female can bear young is if a male attacks her thorax and breaks it open in an act which is definitely called traumatic insemination. So, you know you have a situation in which violent rape is the only method by which females can leave young.

Joe Rogan 1:44:50 So what they do to you when you stay in a hotel is just Child's Play,

Eric Weinstein 1:44:54 compared to what they do to my point is if you want to talk about eradicating bedbugs with DDT I'm off They are the the feminists worse. Nightmare species and I you know, you and I talk about the natural world look like? Well they blow up like balloons, I think so if you see one that's flat it hasn't really gorged. So they're like ticks ish. Anyway that we had them under control, I believe due to DDT. And but on my list of 10 nightmare species, bedbugs and flatworms for the twin traumatic inseminations would be way up at the top so

Joe Rogan 1:45:39 it's like a needle. So they literally puncture through the thorax with another we go Oh Christ.

Eric Weinstein 1:45:47 Yeah, now these these are if there is a good lord, boy, this does he or she have a lot to answer for.

Joe Rogan 1:45:56 Yeah, what did you do you fuck

Why don't you make bed bugs? And why'd you make it like that? Imagine what kind of natural selection takes place where the only way that you can reproduce is through violent rape.

Eric Weinstein 1:46:09 What's interesting, there's a different system, which I think is fascinating, which is there's a conserved quantity in dung beetles, where they have weaponry on their heads in the form of antlers for fighting the males. And it turns out that there's an inverse relationship. So there's some resource that's allocated between the copulatory equipment and the weaponry that the the the bed that the dung beetle has. If they have a lot of weapons out there. It goes to Sean Connery. That's good, bro. Yeah, I love

Joe Rogan 1:46:48 it. Excellent. I've tried it for years. I can't do it now

Eric Weinstein 1:46:50 is that I don't know if it's just a failure.

The larger the weaponry, the smaller the copulatory apparatus.

Joe Rogan 1:46:59 Looks like a monster truck thing.

Eric Weinstein 1:47:01 Yeah. If you don't have it going on, you got to go get yourself a monster truck. Let's make that tiny little gun invented. Anyway. So what happens is, is that the size of the copulatory apparatus may be the engine of speciation, that when a male's equipment no longer fits the female that may be the cue that some dung beetles will speciate because they can't reproduce effectively. And we don't know why. The conserved quantity would be spread between fighting equipment which is used only to displace rivals and the size of the package.

Joe Rogan 1:47:45 When I went on a tour, the Vatican had a really great guide. It was really cool. He took my family through this thing and he was he was a professor and he was really happy that I was so curious about things So I was on my family. And so we were wandering around billions of dollars of stolen art. And one of the things I kept saying, I go, Why are their penises so small? Like what's going on with that? And he was like, that's a really important question. And he's like, back then, the thought was that bigger penises were brutish. And that they were that these, you know, you got to realize these are people that were fending off barbarians. And the idea was that their gods would be beautifully proportioned. But they would have these small sort of less dangerous penises. It's very interesting. Yeah, yeah, they would, they would make them like that on purpose. They were all they all had little dicks, all of them. And I'm like these guys. Like, if you looked at these guys, like just the way they're built. Yeah, the reality is most of them would have hogs, right? These are heavily muscled Yak. Thick men with a lot of testosterone, they would have big dicks most likely, right? That's the reason why women find that build attractive probably other than the fact that it's gonna be the person who'd be more successful at protecting you from said barbarian.

Eric Weinstein 1:49:15 Well, I think is it true that the castrati of Italy, or sought after as lovers, they could still perform? Really? Yeah. But then you didn't need to worry about pregnancy.

Joe Rogan 1:49:26 How could they could get a wrecked Yeah. When they were castrated? That doesn't make any sense that wrong? Yeah, I don't think that's correct. I think they're Unix. I think that's why they would do that to men. I mean, men who would work in castles and they would have Unix, they would work with the Queen if they could leave.

Eric Weinstein 1:49:42 I don't know what what the definite what operation was performed on the castrati? They would there's all that the dosterone Okay. But I believe that there was a way in which they were sought after as lovers. Maybe that's probably what it is. What just kind of Lingus Yeah. I actually think that they were able to set I'm not sure what operation was done, but I believe that they were able to sexually perform in a conventional way. Jamie and if you could find the plural for penis, it's got a penis. Yeah,

Joe Rogan 1:50:12 yeah. penises just sounds so fucking crude but they're I know well Dix is real that's the right way to say it. Cox a lot of Cox Yeah, you don't say cock I

Eric Weinstein 1:50:28 might start.

Joe Rogan 1:50:29 Do you know the the Michael Jackson story. You know some of this is one of the Michael Jackson stories that I was promoting before it actually was confirmed by his doctor, the doctor that wound up killing him and went to jail. I was like the way that guy sings because I was aware of products. I'm like, he sounds like one of them. Yeah, he sounds like his his permanent female voice. Well, the doctor that went to jail for sedating him and when he wound up dying, Dr. Jackson, right. Right, whatever the guy's name was, that guy confirmed that Michael Jackson was chemically castrated by his father to preserve his voice. And they did did it to him at a young age. Wow. Because when it makes sense,

Eric Weinstein 1:51:11 well, in retrospect, it's like the end of the usual suspects, like

Joe Rogan 1:51:15 100% Make sense? If you look at the rest of his family, look at Tito, or Jermaine, they look like men. Right? They're these thick men like a normal man. Yeah. And then you look at him, he's incredibly slender. Like, he has no muscle at all. And he moves. Like, he's got this, you know, this, this dance style. That is like Kwazii feminine, almost, right? It's like, he's singing like a woman. Like, it's like, why, why? Tell him that it's human nature. Like what what is that? That's not a male voice right, and hits incredible notes. Well, the idea was that his father wanted to preserve what got them to the dance. I mean, this is a perfect Forming entertaining family. He was the number one.

Eric Weinstein 1:52:03 He was the genius. It was. Just, yeah. Well, you know, what else? Do you know that? Okay, here's what we're doing the rivalry between the Nikolas brothers and I think the berry brothers. Do you know have you heard the story was the berry brothers? They were two dancing groups. And the Nicholas brothers were just in terms of riffing off this Michael Jackson brought back the Nicholas brothers. The Nicholas brothers if you can find this were maybe two of the greatest dancers ever. What years they came out of probably like the 1930s and 40s and like Fred Astaire and array of and all these people just thought

Joe Rogan 1:52:49 these are the guys

Eric Weinstein 1:52:50 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:52:52 Oh,

Eric Weinstein 1:52:53 I am so these I think that may be kept Callaway even Yeah, I believe that is Just in terms of like, the femininity the elegant nature of these guys, and both of them geniuses and they could do anything.

Joe Rogan 1:53:09 Yeah, they're incredible. Look how great they dance. Oh, my God. Look at oh my god the way he's moving his hips back and forth and his legs go sideways. Like what incredible control

Eric Weinstein 1:53:21 is just say how much I love being an American. I love all the stuff that comes out of this country and I we need to get back to being ourselves.

Joe Rogan 1:53:29 What are you talking about? We're being ourselves right now. No, we're not. We're not. What are we doing?

Eric Weinstein 1:53:34 Well, right now we're looking. Now if you check out

Joe Rogan 1:53:37 Look at us castrati. We're also supposed to be great lovers. They could last long says tomassini to say that name monta squee How do you say that to Mantis Mantis qui men describe they would have inspired a taste for Gomorrah and people whose tastes is the least to pray for Blood. And when Casanova fell in love with a castrato, who conveniently turned out to be a woman in drag. He asked her to dress as a castrato in bed, Okay, I'm done. Check please, for those women, for those women who choose as dried and put it to, in quotes in soft eunuchs place their bliss and shun the scrubbing of a bearded kiss. Yeah, they wanted someone who eats a lot of Posey affairs were idolized and safe, but bed hopping could be risky for the castrati. One was assassinated by his lovers furious family, and another who wrote to the pope requesting permission to marry on the basis of that his castration had been ineffective, received the reply, let him be castrated better. The Pope said no, you can't get married. We're going to cut your notes off. Better to do a better job. All mouth and no trousers castrati had more fun than You could think Hello guardian. Great fucking Samantha Ellis meets a singer who wishes he'd had the chop. Oh, cry. Yeah, just kidding. But see, this might just be a story. You know. I mean, the guy says I regret not having been castrated they go get cast right here. So I'm crazy. But that's one of those things where that's just, that might be a story like a good way to write something maybe no and click Beatty, and it's an insurance going around for a long time. Here's something you may not know, the last castrato

Eric Weinstein 1:55:34 was recorded. There's actually

Joe Rogan 1:55:37 played in about a dozen times. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty gross. It's not

Eric Weinstein 1:55:41 he's not he wasn't a talented one.

Joe Rogan 1:55:43 Well, no, it's not what's gross was gross is the thought that this was a child that was taken and castrated. And then for me to

Eric Weinstein 1:55:50 live this life. Look, it's it's absolutely ridiculous. But getting back to Michael Jackson. I think there is. Is that right? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:55:57 Alessandra Maura chechi. More set more steep more SG more SG Alessandro more SG. The last castrato Christ the complete Vatican recordings. What did they do that man's mouth while they had him there?

Eric Weinstein 1:56:13 So what was the berry brothers is the berry brothers were a rival team to the Nicholas brothers.

Joe Rogan 1:56:19 We see what those guys the berry brothers are the Nicola Nicholas

Eric Weinstein 1:56:22 brothers. Nobody remembers the berry brothers. If anybody remembers anything. They remember the Nicholas brothers. Okay, but the issue is that the berry brothers were, there's the berry brothers, oh, brothers, that this you'll see that they're much more athletic, in a certain sense and much less refined. So doing a lot of cane twirling. Yeah, but if you go to the end of this one, I believe it's pretty awesome.

Look, I mean,

there's a scene where they you see those stairs. there they're about to do some things. Christ

Joe Rogan 1:56:57 Look at that. Yeah, oh spinning and then drop it into splits all right well keep keep keep on this running up the stairs and then oh my god. Oh my god. They jumped off the top of the stairs which we're talking about a good solid 10 feet and they landed into a split

Eric Weinstein 1:57:19 all right now that's a nut smasher okay?

Joe Rogan 1:57:22 These guys look at that way that BAM That is insane that three of them and then they did backflips right three of them oh my god that's a very impressive feat that's like that's like parkour but you never heard of these guys with a ball slam no but I mean it's like the 1920s right?

Eric Weinstein 1:57:39 Well it's gonna be later than the 20th wasn't

Joe Rogan 1:57:41 yeah god damn 30s 40s amazing the way they jumped off the top and

Eric Weinstein 1:57:47 ever seen the hell's a bobbin sequence?

Joe Rogan 1:57:50 No was that

Eric Weinstein 1:57:51 put in Hell's a bop and this is this is just an Elisa boppin Elsa bop and then dance

Joe Rogan 1:58:01 Hell's a bop and dance. Hell's about Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:58:04 Okay now go into the middle of it because there's a bunch of setup here that no farther. Okay?

Joe Rogan 1:58:11 Jesus Christ. Oh my god. So this is a guy and a girl and so he throws her over his back oh my god means people can do anything.

Whoa. But the amount of practice and how you would practice something like this the real thing that would be insane to practice is that jump off the top into the split well this man

Eric Weinstein 1:58:35 it's athleticism or artistry and I mean, and you know this is also Wow, that's incredible. Oh my god, it's pro wrestling

Unknown Speaker 1:58:46 Oh

Eric Weinstein 1:58:47 my god.

I mean, what is that? Well, we should be listening to the music but would get

no don't don't do that but I want people to

Joe Rogan 1:58:57 be aware of the level of artistry and skill that came out of places like hard Harlem is just all of this is pure American engineer and this is 41 and you know these are hard shoes with like slippery soles that oh my god what is it what's amazing is that these guys can get any traction to do anything and the colonel just did that to him. Holy shit this is the best the best.

Eric Weinstein 1:59:22 This is the odd

Joe Rogan 1:59:24 right my god amazing what I love

Eric Weinstein 1:59:28 about this program Joe is I get to take stuff like this and blow it out to people at like millions at a time.

Joe Rogan 1:59:34 Oh well that's what I love about having you on I would love to learn something about this this is how the fall

in the balls and send them fly and oh my god, I have people on YouTube watching you have to Google Oh,

okay. Yeah, please do this is insane. And this is 1941

my god

Eric Weinstein 1:59:53 right and if you want to think about like partnerships between men and women, and the way in power is is passed back and forth between People have equal abilities just astounding.

Joe Rogan 2:00:02 Well, yeah, I mean, there's no one person who is the the head of this. Like

Eric Weinstein 2:00:08 he's throwing her around the room and throwing him around the room and like, Oh my gosh, I mean, all they did.

Joe Rogan 2:00:15 Wow. Oh my God, that's incredible that they can do that.

Wow, that's one of the more amazing things about computer technology like the the footage that they did with World War One, where they took some of that footage and colorized it and smooth it out and you know, use computers to sort of fill in the choppiness of it, and it's almost like,

Eric Weinstein 2:00:35 have you seen my friend Lee? You should have Alicia Leah on the show rose, but AI is going to make models. a thing of the past she can generate, like 10s of thousands of people who have never existed and you can't tell the difference. And, like, you know how your optometrist says is it better like this, or like this? testing? Yeah, she could create for you You're absolutely perfect. You know, visual mate, and there's no way of having this person or asking them out because they don't exist. And there's no way of telling whether they're real or fake. So it's increasingly I just can't. What is her name? Yes. Alicia Lee, Leisha Li Yeah, she's a PhD in like math or statistics from Berkeley. And again, one of these people who can do absolutely anything art, dance programming, high level theory. And so her company is rosebud AI, sir.

No, okay.

She's She's also an actress. Wonder Woman.

Joe Rogan 2:01:42 Jesus, one of them, huh? Yep. When I'm confusing people,

Eric Weinstein 2:01:45 one of them confusing people. But it's unclear whether models will still have a job.

Joe Rogan 2:01:52 Wow, good. Gotta work. Skinny bitch

becomes something more interesting than just hanger.

Eric Weinstein 2:02:02 How about that?

So whatever I've said what? What other episodes of my of my pocket?

Because I lost theirs.

I launched it off of this one.

Joe Rogan 2:02:12 Yes, I listened to Werner Herzog. Yeah, I thought that was interesting. Although he's a little bit self congratulatory, which was a little shocking. But

Eric Weinstein 2:02:18 here's the most interesting man universe. Very

Joe Rogan 2:02:19 interesting guy. He's also been in some really terrible movies like using that jack Reacher movie with Tom Cruise. The best part about that movie is that he drives a Chevelle

Eric Weinstein 2:02:28 1970 Chevelle I don't know about you don't

Joe Rogan 2:02:31 know about 70 Chevelle. Did you listen

Eric Weinstein 2:02:32 to that bread up? Brett? episode? Brett Weinstein.

Joe Rogan 2:02:37 Oh, your brother. No, I did not. Listen to that one. Okay, I've only listened to five or six.

Eric Weinstein 2:02:45 If you listen to Episode 19, which is the bread episode, I think that's been the most important one, except for the one released today.

Joe Rogan 2:02:57 That sounds like you gear me up for the one released today.

Eric Weinstein 2:03:00 Well, I start with the I would start with the Bret one. And what's

Joe Rogan 2:03:03 so important about the Brett one?

Eric Weinstein 2:03:04 The Brett one is a story about his prediction that all the laboratory mice that we use from the major supplier, which is the Jackson laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, may have been compromised by their breeding protocols, which allowed the telomeres to radically elongate. And that we thought that these mice were representative of all mice, and that they had radically elongated telomeres at the end of their chromosomes, which appear to mediate the level of mitosis that can happen during histological repair. So if you imagine that your cells can divide a certain number of times, if, if there isn't a counter, that stops the number of divisions, everything can become tumors. And since you have like 30 trillion or hundred trillion cells in your body, it means every cell almost can kill you. So it appears that the reason we may die from senescence, that is aging is that that's our anti cancer mechanism. So if you eliminate like infectious disease like viruses and insult from, you know, being hit by a car, the two things that you have in the end is either you die from immortality, which is cancer, which where cells can divide an infinite number of times, or you die from the recursion limit, which is how many times the cell can divide called in biology, the hayflick limit. And Brett predicted from first principles that what we thought about mice, which is that they have radically elongated telomeres was only true for laboratory animals because all the laboratory animals in which we test things like drugs have been broken.

Joe Rogan 2:04:42 They've been broken because of selective breeding.

Eric Weinstein 2:04:44 Yep. Because the breeding rotations, privileged much younger mice and removed all sorts of threats from the environment. And so because telomeres are not protein coding, they're sequences of nucleotides that repeat as a counter. Rather than coding for a translation in the ribosome into amino acid sequences, what you have is that the body can mutate, if you will, until use the Jackson laboratories concept of this very rapidly because it's not building something structural, it's just a question of, do we have 17 on the end or 170 on the end, because it's acting. nucleic acid has multiple ways in which it can participate in regulating the body's responses. So in fact, the breeding protocols constituted a novel system of selective pressures that destroy the efficacy of all of our laboratory animals, potentially, oh, shit,

so so he

predicted from first principles, he said, I bet if you test wild type mice, rather than laboratory mice, you'll find that their telomeres are not long as you believe. And this was actually carried out by Carol gross writer who did not acknowledge the prediction.

Joe Rogan 2:06:03 She didn't acknowledge the prediction, you should listen to the show.

Eric Weinstein 2:06:06 Why did she not acknowledge them should listen to the show? Okay? It's It's okay. It's no because it's it's it's this is serious. It's a Nobel laureate on the other side of this. So we're taking some risk over the over there at the portal. That's really interesting. So the consequences of this could be grave. Could be that so much of the studies that are predicated on these mice tests are, they're useless. Well, I've called up the Jackson laboratory and asked them when did have you had any changes in your breeding protocol or you? They said, We don't even count the number of telomeres the telomere length? I say do you have a history of when you've changed the breeding protocols? Are you aware of these articles? And she said, like what I said, you know, these articles of Carol Greider, they said, How do you spell glider like the plane? I said, grider like the Nobel laureate and how do you spell that gr E. d r. And so, and then they said to me, Well, we don't remember if we've changed the protocols. I said, you're producing laboratory animals, I would imagine you would have a documented history of every change in the time series of how these animals were prepared. Well, I don't know if there's anyone around from that. It's like are you kidding? Were you absent the day they taught science? Who are you? You know, this like a single point of failure. If true, I can't even we've been at for 20 years, we've been trying to get an answer

as 20 years

that no one will break the story. I mean, this episode, which is almost impossible to listen to, because at the beginning of the episode, I'm absolutely insufferable to Brett because he won't tell the story he's afraid to tell his own life story.

Why won't he tell the story

because As an academics the idea of some punk kid alleging that they predicted in a telephone call to a Nobel laureate, that if they would test wild type mice, the telomeres would be radically along radically shorter than the elongated telomeres of the laboratory test and then the person refuses to acknowledge that such a prediction was made even though we have emails from the lab that so she refuses to acknowledge it or she doesn't I cannot find a single I've been over the literature, there is no mention anywhere. of and I live this with bread in real time. So I I know the events were happening we have communications with that lab.

Since

there is I cannot find any acknowledgement from the Johns Hopkins University laboratory that this interaction ever took place. And that because he called and wrote and did not write an email, he did not have a paper trail of that prediction. Now there's consequential consequential emails that show the interaction between the labs. But how many times have you ever heard anyone predict a molecular result? from first principles in evolutionary theory, this is what Brett was supposed to be famous for. And then, you know, he became like this obscure professor at some ridiculous college. And then this thing happened to him. But that's not his origin story. His origin story is that he is the badass of biology who was able to make this prediction from first principles and may have advanced the theory of why we have to die balance between deaths from immortality, that is tumors and deaths from recursion limits that is telomere mediated hayflick hayflick limits.

Joe Rogan 2:09:56 So, what if anything has been done since this event? formations gotten out.

Eric Weinstein 2:10:02 The world went crazy for the episode. And there was silence everywhere inside of what I've called the gated institutional narrative.

Joe Rogan 2:10:08 Because to acknowledge it, yeah, they really have to throw out how much research?

Eric Weinstein 2:10:14 We don't know. I don't know. But it puts the question out how much research is compromised by the Rabb laboratory breeding protocols and breeding rotations from a single point of failure at the Jackson laboratories in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Wow.

Episode 19, you know, and you will hear me in a way where you will just say, Eric is the biggest dick I've ever heard in my life. But it's all to push Brett to actually talk. You should have him back on the show to talk about its kill. I would love to know.

Joe Rogan 2:10:48 So he just wants to he kind of wants to soft dance it is that what it is

Eric Weinstein 2:10:53 soft stuff is just wrong. I mean, here's the problem. There's a point after which I'm not Mr. Nice Guy. And I'm just like at adamant bread is simply wrong. It's a it's a result and a story that needs to be told. If there is another side of the story, we need to hear the other side of the story. And my goal is to have Carol Greider say, you know what this interaction did happen, and I probably could have handled this better, because she has work that she's done, which is beyond question some of the most important work that has nothing to do with anything Brett has done. But it does not give that laboratory the scientific right to deny the existence of this interaction, the importance of the interaction, and because there are potential downstream consequences in pharmaceuticals, we need to have an answer. And every answer is interesting. Like if the laboratory mice having radically, radically elongated telomeres is not a problem in some way. That's fascinating. How could you have an animal that has this huge adaptation to the laboratory not effect things that would be interesting if it does affecting that's fascinating,

Joe Rogan 2:12:04 especially if you're, if you're running tests on it that have anything to do with telomeres, right?

Eric Weinstein 2:12:09 Well, no, but if it doesn't have to do like, for example, let's say you have a really toxic substance, right? And it causes a lot of cell death that requires histological repair. Well, if you have huge, long telomeres, you're going to have an ability to metabolize that toxicity very much better. Right? Right, you'll be able to take the insult that comes from this. And so these mice are probably preternaturally disposed towards radical histological repair. That's why they remain youthful and young. And if you test something that might be you know, if you're doing toxicology studies, it could be that the telomeres even though you're not testing the telomeres, what you're actually doing is picking up that these broken mice are like the world champs of repair, but they suck at cancer. They all die of cancer, all of them. Yeah, almost essentially all The mice with radically elongated telomeres let go long enough all die of cancer, because they're they're tricked out for one special thing, which is weird. We Yeah, we are the best at repair. Wow. Right. So think about it is the theory of death and clear away all of the noise There are two ways that that nature can't figure out an escape from either you dive in mortality, which is that you think all your cells want to want to live forever, you know, and that's a huge death, huge danger or we called a resource leak leak in computers or they die because the only thing nature configure out to do is to say you only get a finite number of cell divisions upfront now that there's some adjustments to the theory, but if you only get it like if you if you look at the moles on my face, which your people love to comment on the comments section, they probably started as a runaway replica replicative process that arrested at the border of The mole in order to keep that from killing me. Alright, so we have cells that go rogue all the time. But then what happens is, is that there's some means of making sure that the process doesn't take down the entire organism. But think about 30 trillion assassins as the cells in your body all of which might kill you at any moment. It's like terrifying.

Joe Rogan 2:14:23 And today's podcast,

Eric Weinstein 2:14:26 today's podcast, so first of all, you can reach it now I finally got a website, which is Eric weinstein.org. And I told you that we have to leave this planet and that

it's hard not to laugh. Sorry. It's just hard not to laugh.

Joe Rogan 2:14:47 But you're serious. And we have to leave this planet. We

Eric Weinstein 2:14:49 have to leave this planet. Why?

Why do we have to? Well, it's

because we can't all be

Joe Rogan 2:14:55 despised the best beaches.

Eric Weinstein 2:14:56 This planet this guy says China, Russia, Iran. In the United States under current ridiculous leadership, there's lots of reasons why we have to leave this planet. We're not good stewards. We're not wise enough to stay on this planet. We're too powerful. We went through this. And by the way, you pointed out this quote, which is we are no gods, but for the wisdom, and that became a meme. So it was very interesting. The I gave these lectures in 2013, as

Joe Rogan 2:15:23 best quotes ever, isn't it? Don't know.

who originated that quote?

Eric Weinstein 2:15:31 There was me. There was Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:15:33 When did you say on your program? What day? Which one? remember which one? You've probably tried to unclip. I'm trying to think about what just came off my tongue and you. It's one of those ones where I'll drive down the street. And it'll pop in my head, like the nice person. No, no, no, it's it's a fantastic quote. But it's so right. It's like every now and then someone can get the whole thing in a sentence. We now Gods but for the Wisdom.

Eric Weinstein 2:16:02 So that's why we have to get off this planet diversify, because there are too many people have godlike powers. like Donald Trump commands a tremendous amount of godlike power thanks to our physics community.

Joe Rogan 2:16:14 Well, his ratings, see how hard they are.

He says so hard to stay on focus, sorry. Okay. Okay. So be too much godlike power, right.

Eric Weinstein 2:16:26 So the best hope that I can come up with and it's a slim one is is that if we could figure out what goes beyond Einstein's theory, the Einsteinian speed limit might be bendable or breakable, because we would be in a framework that was larger than Einsteins people often interpret this as what they call FTL are faster than light travel. But that's not what I mean necessarily. What I mean is, is that the underlying source code gives us opportunities that we don't normally half so. Seven years ago, I tried to release I tried giving these lectures at all Oxford, which is probably the university that is spiritually closest to what I care about because they care about geometry and physics and they in a relationship, they've kept the face with faith with that tradition through people like Roger Penrose and Michael atea. And I released this theory of geometric unity. Or rather, I released the video of the lecture that introduces this theory. So this was the first time since 1983 84 that I talked in public when I started this program, when I was 1819, something like that. And I just released the video Today on our YouTube channel.

Joe Rogan 2:17:47 And it's the video of you giving this discussion.

Eric Weinstein 2:17:50 Yeah, so it's introduced by Professor Marcus DeSoto, who has Richard Dawkins old job is the simony professor for the public understanding of science and He just met me in a bar. And he got me a little drunk. I said, Okay, what are you really working on? And I told him, and at first it sounded crazy. And then he started thinking about it. And he asked me more questions and he brought me over to Oxford. He got me an appointment had me talked to their experts. And then he decided that he wanted me to give this what he called special simony lectures. And they are an attempt to go beyond Einstein to look for a unified theory of physics between the two major branches that have resisted unification. Now that's usually in the modern era confused with the idea of quantizing gravity, but quantum, the quantum gravity imperative is a it's a political program that comes out of what would have been the quantum field theory community before it became the string theory community. The idea is we have to take Einstein and make him submit to the will of bore and I don't think it's exactly like that. There. I think they got it wildly wrong. And they synchronized themselves and sort of took the field off the cliff. And they weren't able to ship a product, they couldn't deliver on any of this promise. And so when I saw that they were about to go off a cliff, I switched fields, as an undergraduate into mathematics. And use mathematics is a stalking horse to study the same sort of underlying structures, but not to get swept up in the politics of physics. And I had this theory, which I can now talk about for the first time in like 37 years, or whatever it is. And like Today's the first day that I'm sort of free, because I've kept this to myself. So if you want to ask any question about geometric unity,

Joe Rogan 2:19:39 but why Why did you keep this to yourself? Because I don't trust these people. You don't trust these people in the sense like, I know there was some people that have written some article wasn't Sean Madden.

Eric Weinstein 2:19:50 It's not them. It's it's an entire system that believes in peer reviewed who believes in force citations, you have to be at a university you have to get an endorsement to use that paper. server. It's too few resources, too many sharp elbows. Do

Joe Rogan 2:20:05 you think that there's, there's a logic to that method? No, I think to preserve it from charlatans, and yeah, you have to do crackpots that are, yeah. They just want to publish stories. Yep. So this way you have to be sponsored. It makes sense, right?

Eric Weinstein 2:20:19 Yes. But to whatever I'm doing whatever mistakes I'm making. Assume I assume I'm wrong about it. But this theory, which is fine. I'll find out that I'm wrong.

Joe Rogan 2:20:30 Give me the layman's version of the theory. All right. First time ever. Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 2:20:37 Do you know that? Let's start off with Escher drawing hands. Hmm. So do you, Jamie, do you have a picture for that? The key problem that we have in a fundamental theory that people don't think about is not why is there something rather than nothing? I don't think we can answer that. It's why is there so much that is that is rich. Out of almost nothing. And so this issue shows that if you had a piece of paper could you will into being the hands holding pens using ink to draw each other, right? That problem is akin to the problem that we face in a fundamental theory. If you had the canvas, how would the canvas bring all of the richness that you see around you into being? And what I did was I said, Okay, we have to go below Einstein. So we have four degrees of freedom, but they're not yet space and time. It's proto space time, but before and then I said, Okay, that those four degrees of freedom are like the stands in a stadium. And the stands somehow need to build the pitch. And the pitch is a 14 dimensional space. So if let's imagine that you had Okay, we've got four objects here, right? So the four degrees of freedom correspond with four objects, then we need a ruler to measure how much of each of these four objects we have. So that would be four additional variables. And then you have angles as length and angles, what Einstein gave us in space time, so the angles between any two objects are the same as the reverse of the angle. So then you can count it up, and there's six angles to be had. So there's four degrees of freedom, plus four rulers, plus six protractors, which is 14. So there's a 14 dimensional auxiliary space, in my estimation, you and I are in some ways, potentially having this conversation in a 14 dimensional world that we perceive back in the stands rather than on the pitch. As a four dimensional conversation, that is we're in the three dimensional room going forward in time. So I've called this the observers and the observers is to spaces rather than Einstein. One space.

Joe Rogan 2:23:01 Stop right there. Why 14 dimensions,

Eric Weinstein 2:23:04 because I'm saying that the fields, that is the stuff is dancing not mostly on the four dimensions that we think we perceive. But it's also dancing on the rulers and the protractors. So in other words, if I have x, y and z, I need rulers in the x direction, in the y direction in the Z to measure things. And I need a watch, which would be like a ruler in the time direct. So those four rulers are in fact in play as well. And they're the protractors because of the space time is four degrees of freedom plus rulers and protractors. I'm saying work over the space of all rulers and all protractors as part of where these particles and fields condense. So the rulers and the protractors are part of the system, not just a choice of particular rulers and particular protractors. So by choosing particular rulers in particular attractors, Einstein is grabbing a tiny filament of the space of all possible rulers and protractors. So in effect, space time is recovered. As the act of the observers contemplating itself. That's a little bit poetic. But I mean that the choice of a space time metric, inside of the space of all metrics is a section of a 14 dimensional bundle over a four dimensional space. Now, that's the first sort of mind bending weird thing is, is that this is not happening in one place. It's happening in two places, in x and in Y, the stands and the pitch, there things that are happening in the stands, and the things that are happening in the pitch. So you know, when a guy's like trying to make a free throw, and everybody's waving their giant noodles, trying to get them to miss. There's an interaction between what's happening in the stands and what's happening on the floor. And the observers is the bundling of two spaces and saying, hey, you you're confused as to what's going on here. Some fields are happening. in the stands, some fields are happening on the floor. And they're everything feels as if it's happening in the stands, because that's where you're sitting in some weird way. Then you've got this really crazy stuff, which I think one aspect of it is everybody in theoretical physics is looking to figure out whether there are three or more generations, that is copies of matter. Everything in this room is generation one. It's all made up of up quarks, down quarks and electrons. So that of quarks and down quarks give you protons and neutrons and electrons give you the sort of interesting personality of the various chemical elements. They're also neutrinos, but they're streaming through us, so I'm not going to count them. And that's all generation one of matter. So everything in that think of that is like plastic Lego. Then there's another Lego set made out of wood. And then there's another Lego set made out of like, led, you know, and we don't see those other two LEGO sets, except if we're doing very energetic experiments. So there were three Copies of matter, and everybody was trying to figure out three or more. And I thought maybe it's two or fewer. And so one of the aspects of this theory is, is that the third generation of matter is an imposter. It looks like this generation of matter in terms of its particle personalities. But if you were actually to heat up the system, it would unify with a bunch of particles nobody's ever seen before. And so their predictions for what those new particle properties would be. There's also a fourth pseudo generation of what would be called spin three halves matter, which is not prohibited, but has never been seen as a fundamental. So it makes predictions for the particle properties of new spin half a new spin three halves particles. It attempts to say that there are sectors of matter that I think decoupled that the universe is not in fact left right a symmetric which would be called Kairos ality. And if you think about the week for so if you have a new neutron on a table, it'll decay and I think something like 17 minutes on average, half life

When it decays, there's an asymmetry in that decay called beta decay. And that was found by a woman bring up Madame boo from Colombia and the cobalt 60 experiment. So in the 50s, this, this gal Madame Wu, who should have won a Nobel Prize, discovered that when cobalt 60 decays through beta decay, the electrons come spin out one side and not the other, meaning that the universe is like Marilyn Monroe or Cindy Crawford having a birthmark that lets you tell the left from the right. So this is like the ultimate experimental badass who never got recognized fully. And she did an experiment based on work of Yang and Lee, that for the first time showed that the universe had a preference of one of its leftover, it's right, if you will. I don't believe that preference is fundamental. I believe that there's an another copy of matter that So the analogy I give is that if you think if you look at your three fingers in the center of your hand, your middle finger, which is my favorite, is obviously symmetrical about itself, your digit ratio two and four is pretty close, but is determined by the amount of testosterone you're exposed to in utero. And then your thumb and your pinkie are wildly off. But you could try to make it symmetric and say, Well, you know, a pinky is like a lame thumb, which it isn't. If you're just looking at your hand, you're trying to figure why is my hand asymmetrical. But you don't realize that you've got another hand. And it's thumb to thumb, not thumb to Pinky, that is the symmetry. So when you, you know, place your fingertips together, you see that if you didn't know if you were like, all of her sex out, and you could only see part of your body. You think about the world is asymmetric? Well, my belief is that in weak gravitational situations, this other matter decouples so you only see one hand or the other and we're, we're all in one hand in this. So What I'm starting to do is is that I'm terrified of talking about this stuff. I don't have the right credentials. I'm not a physicist. I've been out of this game for forever. So I often say the wrong things and break rules. And who knows what, and I haven't really talked about it. This is like really a very loans. I mean, I've been completely alone on this project. Double my life, what do you think the end result of this project? potentially could be?

Joe Rogan 2:29:29 Because you're saying we could get off this planet? What would like what are you talking about in terms of the actual implementation of this, this theory of yours? So Jamie, if you could bring up

Eric Weinstein 2:29:40 my answer to the final edge question, which is what is the last question john Brockman asked when the final year that he conducted the annual edge question. And

Joe Rogan 2:29:49 that is the annual edge question. Yes.

Eric Weinstein 2:29:51 He would ask like 200 people, many of them physicists, or biologists or mathematicians, you'd ask a question and they'd write an essay and then every year you'd publishes a book. And so I did that for 10 years. Finally got tired of it. And he said, Okay, this is my final year we've exhausted this. What is the last question? So this is the question that I asked. So

Joe Rogan 2:30:12 does something unprecedented happen when we finally learn our own source code?

Eric Weinstein 2:30:19 Now, nobody picked up on this, but that's my concern is, which is what happens when the universe finally contemplates itself? When we're the first like, we're always worried about the AI becoming self aware. Allah Skynet.

Okay, we are the AI.

We're about to become self aware if we can figure out what our own source code is. So we are Skynet.

Joe Rogan 2:30:44 So you're talking about the source code of reality itself? Yep. And that our perception, our limited perceptions of reality are giving us a distorted view of what the landscape actually is

Eric Weinstein 2:30:57 where I'm trying to make sure I was somewhat holding this back because I'm afraid of what it unlocks. And now that I know that we're willing to elect Donald Trump, not store masks, play footsie with China, be Putin's bitch, all of this stuff. To hell with this, we're going to mismanage this planet into Armageddon, if we don't get some grownups into the room, and so, I don't know that I'm a grown up, but I'm willing to vie for leadership by putting something up having it investigated and seeing where it goes, What

Joe Rogan 2:31:30 is your number one fear about this? This source code being, I don't know, of a better term mastered?

Eric Weinstein 2:31:38 Well, the last time we gained some serious insight into the way nuclei worked. That with a little bit of geometry from Stanislav Lem, and Edward Teller gave us the namesake of the bikini. That was a terrifying moment we change everything change At 19 I think that was 50 for the namesake of the bikini Bikini Atoll was an island in the Pacific, where we blew up a hydrogen device.

Joe Rogan 2:32:10 Is that that and set those insane images where you can see the water going a mile high into the sky. Gorgeous. Yeah. Is that what that is? Yeah. But they did that a lot.

Eric Weinstein 2:32:20 Right? Well, they did it for a period of time. Now. And so when to your question, what if what, so it's still expensive to create fusion devices? So we don't know of any individuals who own the ability to create fusion devices. If you recall, at some point. Somebody made a functioning nuclear reactor out of discarded smoke detectors. and ran got like 500 smoke detectors took out the radioactive element created a reactor really think so. So kid, right, yeah. Probably a kid who couldn't get into Harvard. So we have a situation In which we don't know, when ordinary humans will gain limitless destructive power, you know, try to imagine the Columbine kids weaponizing viruses or something like that. So one of the great dangers is that great power. I can't tell what the power would be if the theory is correct. It might give us the ability to escape. It might

Joe Rogan 2:33:24 say escape, though. Yeah. Why do we have to escape? This is what what I'm mostly so confused about. Like, cuz. Even when Ilan talks about going to Mars?

Eric Weinstein 2:33:34 Yeah. Mars sucks. Mars sucks. Can

Joe Rogan 2:33:36 you fix here? Would that be the best approach? Well, you and I agree on that.

Eric Weinstein 2:33:41 Yeah. What we don't agree on, I think is is that I'm convinced that we don't have the ability to steward this place. Why

Joe Rogan 2:33:51 don't you think we're better at it now than we were 1000 years ago? No, no, no, no. So Ganga is Khan was doing a better job.

Eric Weinstein 2:33:59 Kangas calm is doing better job because he didn't have limitless power. Just try to imagine it Try to imagine a full on nuclear interchange. And then we're having this conversation afterwards.

Joe Rogan 2:34:10 So you you're concerned that nuclear war is not just possible but inevitable.

Eric Weinstein 2:34:19 It's certainly inevitable given a long enough time series, because all these weapons simply will become cheaper. There's no countermeasure that we it's too easy to destroy things relative to building. Right.

Joe Rogan 2:34:32 Do you think that when we're looking at the failure of leadership on the scale that we're seeing play out because of this pandemic, that this is indicative of how it would go no matter what went wrong? Yes.

Eric Weinstein 2:34:44 Yeah, like, if this was an issue of forest fires, if it was an issue of climate destruction, if this was an issue,

Joe Rogan 2:34:52 volcanoes hurricanes, nuclear war, same thing,

Eric Weinstein 2:34:55 same thing like you know, here's a weird one the suit Look at, look at The history Jamie of the Soviet eruptions by years since the 1800s. But my guess is that Wikipedia would probably have a list. And the last one was in 1944 45. During World War Two granted a bunch of planes. And then Vesuvius stops erupting. Went wildly overdue for Vesuvius eruption and then when Eyjafjallajökull erupted in Iceland like we hadn't realized that the era of jet travel in the developed world had happened during an incredibly quiet period volcanic activity. So did we build any kind of volcanic sensitivity into these planes? No, we just grounded the fleet. Right and there's a there's a volcano not so far from Eyjafjallajökull called Katla. Some makes Eyjafjallajökull look like a like child's play. Yeah, so You have to look at the Big Nap as the greatest danger to all of us. And this point about, about being Jewish is, you know, to be really Jewish yet, Ben Shapiro makes a point which is not very popular, which is a lot of people call themselves Jews aren't actually Jews, they're really Jews on the way out. People who can't figure out why they're keeping these traditions up, they sort of like to go three days a year, mumble a few words. There's something intrinsically Jewish about wanting gold bars someplace where you can grab them, you know, knowing where the exits are on a building. Like, you have to be prepared, because the problem of anti semitism to leave at a moment's notice and Jews have always lived like this and many of us have forgotten because we've, we've gotten soft, in a in a world with, you know, knock wood, anti semitism, well prevalent has been under control in the US for a long time. And I think we've weirdly become de natured Because we haven't been living with open anti semitism, you see it crop up in the comment section of every video. But it's incredibly important to stay in a state of readiness. And I've tried to keep that story about Passover and the exodus into Israel from what Jews call mitzrayim, which means the narrow places or Egypt. So my contention is, the Jews had a great run in Egypt, and we are all the Jews in earth is Mitch Ryan.

And it's time to go.

Where are we going?

We don't know that we can go anywhere. This is a recapitulation of our previous conversation, right? We have to know whether exoplanets are viable, whether we can spread out and whether or not they're in the middle of a big sleep. Well, they may be, right if we're running a million different experiments, it's different than if we're running one correlated experiment. with Donald Trump at the helm of the most dangerous machine ever created in the world, like that was not my plan.

Joe Rogan 2:38:07 So, the formulation of this theory, what you're trying to do is revolutionize space travel. No,

Eric Weinstein 2:38:14 what you're trying to do is make it possible for us and we might start out. We've been stalled out for almost 50 years in theoretical physics, so stalled out so. So the simplest way of saying it is no one younger than Frank wilczek, who was born in 1951 has gone to Stockholm for a discovery in theoretical fundamental physics. made since like 1973. Physics effectively the prestige part of physics came to an end in the early 70s. When everything changed across the board. We had a broad economic change in our world. Jamie Do you want to bring up g GDP versus median male income. something bizarre happened in the early 1970s that we should all be talking about that almost nobody knows about. And one of the things that happened was is that physics effectively came to an end. A lot of physicists will write you see that graph. So gt explained to people, they're just listening. So what it shows is from what is it 1947 till about 1973 GDP and median male income are going up in lockstep, they're almost perfectly correlated. Mm hmm. And then abruptly median male income flatlines from about 1973 to 2010 2010 on this graph, and GDP keeps going up. Now, that is, people always talk about the singularity when like we will become one with the robots and AI will take over this was the actual singularity that happened and it happened relatively unnoticed. That's what began to drain again, median male income is irrelevant. It's just one indicator that's particularly clean. To show you that that's, that's when the action happened. My belief is that since the early 70s, very little in our society has been progressing. That's not true for computers. That's been like the big bright spot. Not true for fracking. There's some innovations in imaging. But in general, in an average room, if you subtract off the screens, you can't get definitely tell that that room didn't exist in 1973. Because we stopped growing, we got crazy, because everything was built on growth. Everything was a scheme that became a Ponzi scheme when growth ran out. So we've sort of been hollowing ourselves out from that time and getting crazier and farther away from reality. And we have to actually figure out where we are. And my belief was that our economy was almost completely created by theoretical physics theory. Physics underlies chemistry. So the chemical revolutions like plastics from from the graduate, it gave us the semiconductor from which we do our computing, to give us the World Wide Web which came out of CERN. It gave us telecommunications, which use the electromagnetic spectrum gives us medical imaging from tomography. We don't really appreciate the theoretical physics has been the great success story of our time. And the theoretical physics community is the intellectual seal team six of the world and we underpaid them. They're under resource. They're now completely unethical because we've underpaid them. And

so what ethical house Oh,

they won't talk about their failures. They don't talk about who did what they're not fair and decent because there's not enough resources. And so when resources get scarce, people become psychopathic. And like string theory is just an utter failure that we can't discuss because the baby boomers use that as well. We're making huge progress while they're actually doing Nothing. I mean, I don't say they're doing nothing. They weren't making contact with physics. They became mathematicians like a bunch of soldiers and generals who are playing war games during peacetime. There's, it's related to what they're supposed to be doing, but there's nothing for them to do. So it sort of went to the gym and ran on a treadmill rather than actually running marathons. So we have a terrible situation in that the community that powered our economy and gave us this incredible power in the world through like nuclear weapons and the Rad Lab at MIT and whatnot, has gone into decline. And it's very dangerous to restart theoretical physics. So it's been safe because there's been nothing new that we can use coming out of it. My net my belief now is that we have to talk about 1000 year solution to human life with weaponized viruses with weaponized nuclei. I mean, that The amount of damage we can do is astounding. And that's going to restart at some point. Since the nap is now coming to an end, like we're living this is the end of the nap

three months ago we were all just leaving la la, you know, beautiful lives, doing whatever, who were struggling. We were, you know, frustrated but we weren't in Boise think this is not something that's gonna we're going to overcome and we're going to get back to business as usual December 2019. So assume that we do.

Okay, okay. So we come up with a killer treatment. We replenish all the masks. We have vaccines. We all just spent how long watching our leaders tell us to shelter in place. Make I mean we all went through this movie. I don't think like I'm watching conversations about open borders change. Do you want We talk about open borders today.

Joe Rogan 2:44:02 Let's just keep going about escaping the planet and your your theory. Well, okay, because we we've taken many deviations before 30. All right, is it any real time? Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 2:44:13 Okay, so this theory, geometric unity replaces space time. So think about a fundamental theory as a newspaper story. It's who What? Sorry, it's, it's where when, which is space and time, who What? Who would be fermion? That is matter, electrons quarks, and what would be the force that pushes them around? How and why? How would be the equations? And why would be something called a Lagrangian. And what this does is to say that there used to be two origins for for physics, there was space time, which Einstein gave us and then there's this thing called su three cross u su two cross u one which comes from nowhere that anyone knows. What is that? Well, you and I are seeing each other through photons photons are scattering off us and being perceived in by our eyes. photons are associated with electromagnetism. And there's actually a circle at every point in space time. So here we are in space, my fingers are up here between us, I'm going to snap at a particular instant. At that point at the snap, there was a circle as there is a point, a circle at every other point in space time that we do not perceive that generates all of electromagnetism. So call this the mysterious you one. We don't know where this one comes from. Why is there a hidden circle that generates the electromagnetism that you and I use to make visual contact that we use to send electronic signals like our Wi Fi. Not only is there a circle, there's also a three dimensional object called su two and an eight dimensional object called su three. And effectively, Su two generates the weak force that's not quite right. It's called actually weak basis. In an SU three generates a strong force, which is sort of on the nose, which is why the protons in your body don't all push apart given that they're positively charged and like charges repel. So why don't you explode? That's the strong force and comes out of something called su three. We have two origin stories. One origin story is the story of space and time. The other origin story is the story of su three quest su two cross u one. And what I did was to get rid of the freedom to choose the symmetries that generate the personalities of the of the particles that make up this place. And then the question is okay, I call it the magic beans trade because if you think about jack in the beanstalk, jack gives away the family cow to get beans, which seems like the worst trade of all time, but the beans actually had much more in them than was understood. And so jack gets the better of the trade because the beans allow him to do something crazy. So that's what I did. I gave away the freedom to choose the symbol trees to generate the particle properties, I tied my hands the way Einstein would tie his hands. And then I tried to show that you could recover these particle properties by trusting that the theory would self assemble, and that's the hands drawing hands. So the idea is that I generated the fermions on top of the space of all rulers and protractors, on top of the four, four dimensions, and the natural object, which would be called spinners, or commerical, spinners. When perceived on the four dimensional object, that is, when you pull back the information from the second world that got created into the first from the pitch into the stands, the particle properties appear to be more or less the right particle properties of the particles that we see. Now when I started this in the early 80s. We didn't know that neutrinos had mass. And so we thought that there might be only 15 particles in a generation and my stuff would only work if the number of particles in generation was two To the end. So the joke when I was in college was a sure hope that two to the fourth equals 15. Now it can't be to the fourth is 16. But then, luckily for me, nutrients were were found to have mass and that sort of changed the probability that there are 16 particles. So this is some weird thing to deal with the fundamental incompatibilities of the two theories, general relativity of Einstein and quantum theory of Bohr and Iraq. In the 70s, we found out that there was a geometry that governed the board to rock part of the world, called Eris money and geometry from Charles Eris mana and elevation. And Einstein did use Bernard Riemann, a German mathematician, his geometries. So my Gambit and why it's called geometric unity, is that the two branches of physics are derived from two geometries. Rather than saying it's about quantizing geometry, which is the quantum field theory imperialist perspective, we, Einstein must submit to bore, the real issue is that there's a fight between the parents, that is Bernard Riemann and Charles Eris.

Now, we don't know those names nearly as well. And so my goal was to say, is there any world in which these two geometries and the advantages of these two geometries could be made to play together? And in general, there isn't. But there is one case in which it works, which is this issue of natural spinners. And so the whole gambit was to say, What if the world is not a generic world, but a very natural and peculiar world, where certain games work, that would not work in a generic situation. So what I tried to do is to recover Einstein the way Einstein tried to recover Newton from a more fundamental theory and the in compatibility is that Einstein had to compress something called the full remote curvature tensor, which is the sort of measure of how warped something is. So he broke that beast that tells you the warping of something into pieces, he threw one of them out called the viol curvature. And then he adjusted the properties of the other two that were left to create general relativity. So my thing does that but it also has another property called gauge invariance, engage in variances, this sort of sinequan on of the particle theory. And this is only possible in very limited circumstances. And the the gambit was what if the world is in that tiny class where this this game can work? So it's sort of a career suicide theory. Because if it doesn't work this way, you don't really get anything in the end. So you know, think about that exhaust vent in the Deathstar. This tiny little vulnerability, and man, you better hope that thing goes in.

Joe Rogan 2:50:52 What are you trying to do with this, but by by releasing this with this, this discussion, this video that you're putting out Are you hoping that more people examine it? And try to actually implement it? And then ultimately, this will be something that allows people to, to do what to revolutionize space? Try? I don't know.

Eric Weinstein 2:51:20 I didn't know whether I wanted man to have his own source code. So I was divided

Joe Rogan 2:51:25 This is, but you were serious about this. So this is like, very close to

Eric Weinstein 2:51:31 I love you came on this program and I said it straight. We have to get off this planet. We made a joke about getting high and all this stuff. But I've always been dead serious about what I'm saying. Now, if you ask me at a personal level, I started this for lots of personal reasons. I always thought that the idea of wanting to go beyond Albert Einstein was something everybody would grow up wanting to do. didn't create To me that there was another thing that you'd want to do with your life like that. That seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I want to understand why we're here.

Joe Rogan 2:52:05 Well, that means you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. Yeah,

Eric Weinstein 2:52:08 you found your niche. I found my niche. And, and then it started this kind of completely bizarre thing because I was it was not a good math student, but I had to go to the best place. And so how does a b minus math student in high school, go to Harvard University with a master's degree at 19. You know, it's like just sheer will because I was not a good math guy. So I just willed it into being I got myself there. I taught myself whatever it is that I do. I don't have an advisor, which is very unusual. And I became intertwined with this, this theory, and this theory has been separating me also from people I love in the world that I'm in. I've never known whether I'm crazy or whether or not I have something. I don't know whether it unleashes power if it works or it only unleashes

Joe Rogan 2:52:59 destructive power. Are you willing to have conversations like debates with detractors or critics of this?

Eric Weinstein 2:53:05 I'm willing to have discussions with constructive critics construct and in fact, I've done well, because publicly you have

Joe Rogan 2:53:13 you said privately, privately,

Eric Weinstein 2:53:15 yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've talked to people like Nima or Connie Ahmed at the Institute for Advanced Study. Who I just think is fantastic. There's another guy named Luis Alvarez Gumby at the Simons Institute,

Joe Rogan 2:53:28 so very hard for the average person to follow. But I think it's not about each person. I understand him, but I'm saying I think it would be incredibly valuable. Just release it for the average. I'm sorry to everybody. Yeah. But I mean, this conversation, I know you're saying it's not for the average person, but just to have it available to everyone. So if they want to, they could slowly go over it and try to understand it bit by bit and put it together. I should talk about this. I'm building

Eric Weinstein 2:54:01 I shouldn't even say I'm building it. There is a fanatical community arising around the portal for what we're doing. That's different. And there's a 24 seven Discord server where people are talking, like if you're ever bored or lonely, these people are always on and it's never that bored of me. It's not for you, baby. But we've been trying to recruit a bunch of artists. Because I believe that art is part of the secret weaponry of pushing out. Like I don't think you know how crazy was when we did the Hopf fibration up here. It was like close encounters. All these artists start creating hop vibrations like I went to Temecula and this guy Nico Nico miners has a huge hot vibration in his backyard coming off of this program. It's like when people tattoo your face on their arms, right?

Joe Rogan 2:54:51 I'm aware of all this stuff. I just choose to shut the door.

Eric Weinstein 2:54:55 I'm I'm in there with them. Yeah, and do that. Good luck well, cuz I'm were smaller.

Joe Rogan 2:55:01 That's true. It is that too, but it's also a lot of what I do requires me thinking on my own. I have to be by myself and spend a lot of time staring off into space.

Eric Weinstein 2:55:15 Yeah, me too. But what I'm saying is, is that when it comes to people following the story, mm. artists and computer, people are going to help us push out aids to like, Can you pull up Eric weinstein.org there's a visualization that sketched in the door. There's a portal in the website.

There go.

Okay, so go down. All right. You see that door now? Yeah, I don't know why. That's the clip they took. Okay. Beyond that, there should be something okay right here. This is a picture of a fiber bundle and the path lifting Property relative to a connection. So those floating planes, that was what generates electromagnetism called horizontal subspaces. And you're actually looking at a gauge theory in that picture.

Joe Rogan 2:56:11 And so what you're saying is that what's valuable about the artists getting on board with this is that they can make a visual interpretation of this. There can be

Eric Weinstein 2:56:20 cartoons like there's a guy named if you had grant Sanderson. No, he does a show called three blue one Brown, which is some of the best math videos you've ever seen gorgeous stuff just sucks people in. And you're like, you're learning relatively hard math that somebody made visually beautiful. Sky is a national treasure. And I'm hoping to get grant on the program. You know, we've been experimenting when we had Roger Penrose on the program. I said, I'm not going to talk to you about quantum consciousness. I'm going to talk to you about twisters, and about your contributions to the field. And what my community did is they built something called Like the portal dot wiki. So if you bring up the portal dot wiki, there's an entire ecosystem that's digesting what happens in our episodes. For the lay public some of the more amazing things about the internet and about something like your podcast is if you build it, they will come you know you have a bigger audience. I will say that I think I have the world's best audience these guys

Joe Rogan 2:57:29 like go to go to going into episodes or how many episodes have you had so far? I'm 28

Eric Weinstein 2:57:35 Yeah. Oh, Eric Lewis By the way, you should have in the greatest pianists now playing in my opinion. So if you if you like, if you go to go to the graph wall, I love

Joe Rogan 2:57:45 that you're doing all this and yet you're still interviewing porn stars, and James O'Keefe.

Eric Weinstein 2:57:49 Hey, we want everybody

Unknown Speaker 2:57:50 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 2:57:51 I'd love to hell with this cancellation. Yes.

Joe Rogan 2:57:54 Well, not just that. I just love that. You're just a curious person that actually wants to communicate with On top of being this Spaceman

Eric Weinstein 2:58:03 so for example, we have this graph wall tome project where we start off with this paragraph from Ed Witten, if you go down, you'll see that they're figuring out how the paragraph from Ed Witten fails over into this wall that was chiseled in Indiana limestone in Stony Brook in New York, which has all of these below that. So that's the paragraph that tries to sum up the universe, as we understood it in the modern era in prose, and I recommend everyone read that. And then if you go down from that, there's this plant. Right, right. Yeah, go go. There's a clickable thing under that neath that graphic. So for example, this is the plan for this sculpture that Jim Simons, the world's greatest hedge fund manager paid for, and if you click on any one of these things, these ruins so it's like the uncertainty. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. My people are digesting everything that we say everything that we point to and helping each other understand what goes on on my program so that I don't have to spend all the time in the shallow end.

Joe Rogan 2:59:14 Wow. So like, it's just, this is heavy shit.

Eric Weinstein 2:59:17 Oh my god.

Joe Rogan 2:59:18 But this is what's interesting is

Eric Weinstein 2:59:20 I learned this from you actually. You said because like I didn't think this was a smart idea at all. And people are people are so eager to break into what's next we want to spin our crystal chrysalis and become the butterfly that we were meant for tired of being caterpillars.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know, you're hearing five Meo DMT. But that wasn't what I was thinking. No,

Joe Rogan 2:59:43 that that's, I mean, I really think that that what you're showing that that is a branch of what humanity is trying to do with creativity with, with curiosity, with the thirst for innovation. That's it.

Eric Weinstein 2:59:59 Well, it's time to go The next level and we are trying and the funniest part is like brought to you by Athletic Greens and theragun

Joe Rogan 3:00:08 good products Yeah, they bought

Eric Weinstein 3:00:10 this The funny thing about sponsorship. You see my grandfather was a salesman. And so in a weird way I'm living a romantic dream of connecting to my grandfather who sold like use clothing and clothing door to door. He was a schmatta salesman, and I've been astounded at how much I enjoy all of the products that I'm advertised. Like the sleep pad that cools us so you don't wake up in a pool of your own sweat. Unbelievable great. I've lost 17 pounds through Athletic Greens.

Joe Rogan 3:00:40 Well you've also stopped stuffing your face with stuff you shouldn't eat now only Athletic Greens know the point

you know in your face looks thin.

Eric Weinstein 3:00:49 Yeah, it is but in part is because it I figured out how to integrate it into a program where intermittent fasting started paying off.

Joe Rogan 3:00:56 Hmm, Listen, man, we get Not forever, but I have to wrap this up, unfortunately, but I'm gonna watch your video. And then I'm gonna watch it. Hi. I'm going to do two. Okay, twice and I'm going to try to figure it out

Eric Weinstein 3:01:09 and Joe, at some point, let's just hang out and I'd love to like just show you exactly what it is tailor made to whatever questions without any worry about yes about and

Joe Rogan 3:01:20 let's do that. I can't

Eric Weinstein 3:01:21 wait. And I just wanted to say thanks again for everything but you do now only two appearances on your show. I haven't called either of them. And and thanks for calling me on your show.

Joe Rogan 3:01:31 Yeah, to on your show.

Eric Weinstein 3:01:33 Yeah, my show. Well, sorry. On my shirt on my

Joe Rogan 3:01:35 shirt. Yes. Yeah. Okay, you got it. All right. I owe you two. You're the best. Thank you, sir. You're the best.

Eric Weinstein 3:01:41 Bye, everybody. We one thing, but Eric weinstein.org. Please sign up for our mailing list so we can find you after the

Joe Rogan 3:01:49 Yeah, go get your mind fucked. Good luck. Good luck, everybody. Thank you, brother. All right. Bye, everybody. Stay safe.

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