#300 – Joe Rogan: Comedy, Controversy, Aliens, UFOs, Putin, CIA, and Freedom

Joe Rogan is a comedian, UFC commentator, and host of the Joe Rogan Experience. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Theragun: https://therabody.com/lex – Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex and use code LEX to get 1 month of fish oil – InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off – Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex and use code LEX to get special savings – ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod and use code LexPod to get 3 months free EPISODE LINKS: Joe’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/joerogan Joe’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/joerogan JRE (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk JRE (YouTube): https://youtube.com/c/joerogan PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) – Introduction (09:03) – Discipline (13:06) – Controversy (33:22) – UFOs and aliens (43:34) – Intelligence agencies (48:58) – Trust (54:21) – Greatest comedians (1:12:16) – Childhood (1:19:46) – Advice for young people (1:30:22) – Relationships (1:35:00) – Putin, Ukraine, and Russia

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Joe Rogan, his second time on this podcast. He has inspired me for many years with his conversations to be a better and kinder person and has now been doing so as a friend. There's no one I would rather talk to on this 300th episode of this podcast on the 4th of July, both the anniversary of this country's Declaration of Independence and the anniversary of my immigrating here to the United States. A silly kid who couldn't speak English and could never imagine that he would be so damn lucky as to live the life I've lived and to feel the love I've felt from the amazing

• 0:44Lex Fridman?

  people along the way. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I love you all. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Theragun for muscle recovery, Athletic Greens for performance, InsideTracker for longevity, Aidsleep for napping, and ExpressVPN for privacy. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.

• 1:24Lex Fridman?

  This show is brought to you by Theragun, one of my favorite tools to help muscle recovery and therapy. I've had a few small injuries and one that's just been taking forever to heal, and I've been using Theragun to help with that. I guess it's called abductor leg muscle, AKA groin pull. It's been a nightmare because it's not really that injured, but it just takes forever to heal. And it takes a long time to regain confidence in order to do any kind of sort of 100% intensity training on the mat, so grappling. You can do all, you know, exercise, squats, all that kind of stuff, but grappling really

• 2:04Lex Fridman?

  requires you to have your body sort of in good working condition. And so for that, Theragun has been a huge, huge, huge positive part of my recovery and therapy. So their Gen 4 is amazing. It completely releases tension using the percussive therapy, what they call, that they're known for, which goes deep, friends.

• 2:29Lex Fridman?

  It feels kind of awesome, not in a creepy way. But there's a nice screen and a smart app that guides you through the different routines. It's super nice. Get yours at therabody.com/lex. This show is also brought to you by Athletic Greens and its AG1 drink. I drink it first thing in the morning. I drink it twice a day. It replaced the multivitamin for me. It does a lot of stuff. You can check out the vitamins and minerals they got, and they keep innovating on the thing, too. So they're staying ahead of the science. I should also mention that it's delicious. It's kind of like a reminder to me that I have my life together.

• 3:13Lex Fridman?

  When everything else is falling apart, when nothing is working mentally or physically, it's just, it's just giant chaos. I'm not getting sleep. The diet, it's a nightmare. And it's just, you know, I'm putting my life through a grinder source at times, driven by the passion, the passionate pursuit of different curiosities that I have. I just kind of Alice in Wonderland. I dive in and hang out with the rabbits, but without the LSD. And so, given all that, the one place I can return to that reminds me that I have my life together, at least nutritionally, is Athletic Greens. Twice a day. And I even travel with it. They have travel packs. It's super easy.

• 3:56Lex Fridman?

  They'll give you one month's supply of fish oil when you sign up at athleticgreens.com/lex. Join me, brothers and sisters, in this nutritional pursuit of a stable, healthy life. This show is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data. They have a bunch of plans, most of which include blood tests that collect data about your body. The blood is a beautiful thing. It has both the current state of your body and the history of your body. But they also use DNA data, fitness tracker data, all of that, using machine learning algorithms to help you plan your life out. If your life is falling apart, maybe like relationships and all that kind of stuff, they can't help you.

• 4:42Lex Fridman?

  This is just about your body. But maybe in the future, we'll be able to collect more and more data from not just the stuff below the neck, but the stuff above the neck, too, meaning the brain.

• 4:56Lex Fridman?

  Getting not just the neuronal signals, but the cognitive stuff. So the high level, the things you're worried about. Maybe we would be able to look in to the Jungian shadow of your mind, the unconscious, the subconscious mind and find there large scale data that reveals to you how you can solve that puzzle. Sort of do what psychiatry has always hoped to do, but do so systematically. I mean, we're probably really, really far away from that because I think human biology is super complicated, but the human mind is orders of magnitude more complicated.

• 5:40Lex Fridman?

  But let's focus on the human biology part. And that's what you need InsideTracker for. You can go to inside tracker.com/lex for a limited time to get special savings. This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep and its Pod Pro mattress. It controls temperature with a nap. It's back with sensors and it can cool down to as low as 55 degrees on east side of the bed separately. Now, the first part of that 55 degrees feels like heaven. Honestly, it's a hundred degrees plus here in Austin. I've been running outside, sometimes in the afternoon in that heat. It really tests the mind, really, really tests the mind, but I enjoy it.

• 6:25Lex Fridman?

  It's fine. It's just, it's just rough mentally. Physically it's good, but mentally it's rough, which is, which is fine. It's a good test for the mind. Now, when I return, take a shower. It's so beautifully refreshing, even in an air conditioned room to lay down on a chilled bed. And then with a little bit of a warm blanket, it's just heaven. Whether we're talking about a power nap or a full night's sleep, it's heaven. You can get your Pod Pro cover in USA, Canada, and the UK. If you go to eightsleep.com/lex.

• 7:03Lex Fridman?

  This show is also brought to you by ExpressVPN. I use them to protect my privacy on the internet. I know you go to all kinds of shady websites. I probably go to them as well. There's no shame in it. We're in this together. Life is short. Why not enjoy it? This is bad country after all, but when you do so, you should take precautions. Use a good VPN.

• 7:32Lex Fridman?

  And I think the best VPN, my favorite VPN, the one I've used for many, many years, religiously before any of this podcast stuff has always been ExpressVPN, had, still has a big sexy button that when you press, it just works. And it works super fast. I mean, that's, I guess, what you want from a VPN. The connection is super fast. The, the interface is intuitive. It works on any device, any operating system, including my favorite OS, which is Linux. I use, most of my machines use Ubuntu Mate, M A T E. I just love the, the interface and then based on Ubuntu, which is Debian based.

• 8:16Lex Fridman?

  It's probably my favorite Linux. I used to use SUSE a lot. I also use Gentoo.

• 8:24Lex Fridman?

  There's a lot. I mean, I've used a lot of distributions and how did this discussion about a VPN lead me to a discussion of Linux? I don't know. The point is you can go to expressvpn.com/lexpod to get an extra three months free. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Joe Rogan.

• 9:03Lex Fridman?

  Charles Bukowski said something in a poem called "Style" about art. He defined art, saying, "Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing. To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art." What do you think he meant by that? Do you agree with this?

• 9:27Joe Rogan?

  A dangerous thing with style is art.

• 9:29Lex Fridman?

  He said, "Bowfighting can be art, boxing can be art, loving can be art." Have you ever made love and it was art? No, okay, I'm not asking.

• 9:38Joe Rogan?

  Every time, bro.

• 9:40Lex Fridman?

  Opening a can of sardines can be art.

• 9:43Joe Rogan?

  I think there's something to that. Yeah, I think, I think, I call the way people live life art. Like, I wrote a foreword to my friend Cameron Haynes's book, and, uh, which is, right now, the number one selling audiobook in the world. And I, one of the things that I said was that he practices an art that very few people appreciate, and it's the art of the maximized life. And that the discipline that he displays in his life, and through his practices, and all the things that he does, it's so difficult to live the way he lives, that for someone like me, who understands it, and knows what he's doing, and appreciates it,

• 10:25Joe Rogan?

  and appreciates how insanely difficult it is to have a full-time job and run ultra-marathons, get up at four o'clock in the morning, run a full marathon before work. Like, that's the kind of shit that he, he does, when he, when he's training for these 240-mile runs, all the, at the same time, being like, a father, a husband, having this full-time job, also being the best bow hunter on earth, lifting weights. It's like, how is, how does a person do this?

• 10:59Lex Fridman?

  So, in a way, discipline is art, too.

• 11:01Joe Rogan?

  Yes, it, discipline is art. Yeah, I think it is, because it's beautiful for me to see. When I see someone who's really truly disciplined, who like a David Goggins, someone who just like truly maximizes the grind, I feel like there's an art to that. And there's an, there's an art to kindness. Like there's people that are really kind and really sweet. And when I'm around them, it's beautiful. It's like, there's an art to them.

• 11:22Lex Fridman?

  No matter what.

• 11:23Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:24Lex Fridman?

  They still, they got, you know, the world can throw a bunch of shit at you, but through all of that.

• 11:28Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, some people are just great at it.

• 11:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 11:30Joe Rogan?

  And it's a, it's a thing that you learn how to do. And it's pleasing for other people to see. And, and that I think is where the art is.

• 11:39Lex Fridman?

  Well, I think Bukowski also said, um, and I'm just a Bukowski quote generator today.

• 11:45Joe Rogan?

  I love him.

• 11:45Lex Fridman?

  I love him very much too. He's a dark and troubled and fascinating and a weird person, like Hunter S. Thompson.

• 11:52Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:52Lex Fridman?

  He said, what matters most is how you walk through the fire, I think. So there's a bit of the Ken Haynes in that too, David Goggins in that too. What do you think he meant by that?

• 12:04Joe Rogan?

  Well, how you walk through the fire, I mean, you can walk through the fire complaining along the way, or you can walk through the fire and create an example for everyone else. So that the trials and tribulations of their own life seem trivial. Because they're comparing themselves to the way you handle things. Or the way you handle things with grace and dignity and discipline can show other people that they can handle their own life this way. And there's, there's beauty in that, there really is. And there's so, there's so much, so much inspiration to be gathered from other people. If you're a charitable person, if you're charitable and, and compassionate and you, you, you can look at people,

• 12:48Joe Rogan?

  even, even people that I don't like, I try to look at the best aspects of how they live their life and, and, and recognize those aspects, admire them, give them credit for it. There's something that we can all get out of watching the way other people live their lives.

• 13:06Lex Fridman?

  So I got a chance to see you walk through the fire a little bit privately and publicly. This year in January, I gotta ask you about that. So there's like generic conversations about sort of cancel culture and all those kinds of things. But as a human being, this to me is fascinating. Sort of there's the N word highlight video. There's the criticism of the different guests, whatever the side is on the COVID pandemic. And you, I mean, there's a mass amount of attack on you.

• 13:42Lex Fridman?

  Outside of being a public persona, outside of being a comedian, podcaster, you're also a human being. So how did you survive that? How did you sort of walk through that fire? Cause you seem to do it with grace.

• 13:59Joe Rogan?

  I used mushrooms.

• 14:02Joe Rogan?

  That was one way I did it.

• 14:03Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:04Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 14:05Lex Fridman?

  What's your, as Andrew Huberman would say, what was your protocol?

• 14:07Joe Rogan?

  Uh, I took, it was probably less than a gram every day.

• 14:12Lex Fridman?

  Every day?

• 14:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. And, uh,

• 14:17Joe Rogan?

  I did a lot of like really hard working out. But also, I mean, there's a great benefit to going through anything difficult. And if you're aware, like in advance and why and during, like anything that's going to happen that's very difficult and troubling. The, the great benefit is it gives you an opportunity to grow, gives you an opportunity to express yourself under pressure, to, to show your character, to show who you truly are. And, uh, it gives you an opportunity to see how you handle a very difficult situation.

• 14:57Joe Rogan?

  It also was fascinating as a person that's involved in media. Right? Because what we're doing right now is media, even though, you know, it seems like podcasts seem like just having a conversation.

• 15:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Joe Rogan?

  And they are, in a, in a sense, it's kind of the purest form of media. Because what you're doing is you're.

• 15:22Joe Rogan?

  You're you're doing it without any fanfare. You're doing it without any. There's no executives looming over your head or network or big meetings about ratings or any of that stuff. But it is media. But what I got to see is the wiring under the machine of how the rest of media would try to take me out. And, you know, they like when CNN would be just be playing things over and over and back and forth. It was wild to watch. What was also wild to watch was people's responses. Uh, because I gained two million subscribers during that time. Like, the podcast never got bigger.

• 16:03Joe Rogan?

  It just kept kept growing and it had never been bigger than it had been like at the end of all of it. It just made it bigger. And, you know, ultimately, when if you've fucked up in the past or made mistakes or done something wrong. If that gives you an opportunity to discuss those things and to say to apologize if you feel the need to apologize. And also to just address it. And so people under that kind of pressure, they get it. It's an opportunity for them to understand how you think about things honestly, how you actually honestly think about things. And there's no more honesty that you get out of a person than when that person is under extreme duress. You know, so I think in that sense.

• 16:48Joe Rogan?

  I mean, it's horrible to say that it's a benefit, that it's a good thing that it happened. But it was a benefit.

• 16:53Lex Fridman?

  Can you see how it can break a person?

• 16:55Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 16:56Lex Fridman?

  I've gotten the chance to experience small.

• 16:59Lex Fridman?

  Small attacks here and there. Ones that get to the core of things like even just talking to, uh, about Russia and Ukraine. To Stephen Koch and Oliver Stone, looking at different perspectives. You gain a relative, for me, feeling like a sizable number of people who really don't like you.

• 17:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:19Lex Fridman?

  And say things about you that are, um, that may be cut deep for a reason I don't understand why. It's just my own psychology.

• 17:29Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's also because you can't defend yourself because they're saying it and you're not there. And you you don't have any opportunity for a rebuttal. And if you do have a rebuttal, you're doing it publicly and you're opening it up to the whole world to chime in. And there's a general. Tendency that people have towards negativity when they're interacting with strangers online, especially about controversial subjects. And even if it's only 10% of the people, it's 1 out of 10. That's a lot. That's a lot of negativity when you're dealing with thousands and thousands of tweets.

• 18:02Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, and I think, maybe I'm just a very self-critical person, but I hear their words and I probably somewhere deep inside, see the truth in the criticism, in some aspect of the criticism. And that's why it hurts.

• 18:16Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's, but it's in one aspect of you.

• 18:21Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 18:21Joe Rogan?

  You know, but when you're reading it, it's so, it's boiled down to this one thing, as if that one thing defines you totally. Like if you've made a mistake, if you've said something that you shouldn't have said, or if you said something and, you know, maybe you should have considered it more carefully, giving the gravity of the situation. You know, that's just a part of being a person. And it's also part of being a person where you're communicating with things publicly, in real time, thinking out loud, which is what we do. You know, it's complex and most people don't do it. And you're gonna have these, you're gonna have genuine hot takes,

• 19:04Joe Rogan?

  where people just see what you said and go, why did he say that? Fuck him. You know, he doesn't know anything about, he doesn't live in Ukraine. He, you know, it's like, there's, there's people that are gonna have takes on that, in that way. And then there's also gonna be these disingenuous people, who just use any kind of controversial topic or subject as an opportunity for them to get clicks or views.

• 19:27Lex Fridman?

  But that, the number of those people can be quite large.

• 19:30Joe Rogan?

  Quite large.

• 19:31Lex Fridman?

  And so, going back to, do you think it can destroy a person? Because I kind of worry about this. And you're, in many ways, but in this way, an inspiration, that it didn't seem to have destroyed you.

• 19:43Joe Rogan?

  I kept doing shows, I kept doing stand-up, I ignored everything. I didn't read any of it.

• 19:49Lex Fridman?

  It's, so it is possible to just.

• 19:51Joe Rogan?

  A hundred percent, yes. Yeah, I ignored it all.

• 19:56Lex Fridman?

  But you have like-

• 19:56Joe Rogan?

  I knew it was there.

• 19:57Lex Fridman?

  Like your family didn't bring it up?

• 19:59Joe Rogan?

  My family was very aware of it. My wife was aware of it.

• 20:02Lex Fridman?

  What was the conversation like? If, if your wife is aware of it, is there like a rule? Don't bring, pretend it's not happening?

• 20:08Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 20:08Lex Fridman?

  Just like-

• 20:09Joe Rogan?

  Well, I don't, I tell her, don't ever read-

• 20:11Lex Fridman?

  Pass the green beans.

• 20:13Joe Rogan?

  I don't ever let her like read negative articles to me. You know, I don't want them. I don't he care. I go, that's a person's opinion. You take a person's opinion, you write it down. It doesn't give it any more relevance. Like that person, you know, could have had that opinion in silence. They could have had it with some friends at dinner. They don't like me, whatever. I don't want to read it. I don't want to absorb it. I don't even know them, especially if I'm not there. And especially if it's some biased and uh, it's, it's not an objective opinion of me. It's uh, this, you know, they have a narrative and they want to stick to that narrative and they want to write an article. And they piece it all together, make you look like a piece of shit. And that's their prerogative. They're completely allowed to do that, but I don't, I, I shouldn't absorb that.

• 20:55Joe Rogan?

  I shouldn't take that in. You're not supposed to be taking in the opinion of the world.

• 21:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 21:01Joe Rogan?

  You're supposed to be taking in the opinion of small groups of people that you encounter. So that you get an understanding of how you make them feel. And then maybe you say to yourself, maybe I come across too rude. Or maybe I come across uh, too insensitive, or maybe, maybe I could do better in this way or that way. That's how we sort of shape our personalities and it's how we, we develop our social skills. But when the people don't know you and they have this like distorted narrative of you. And you know, there's fucking millions of people. There's so many people. You can't be saying-

• 21:38Lex Fridman?

  I think there's billions now, actually.

• 21:40Joe Rogan?

  I mean, millions of people that are like communicating about something. Like during the height of the, you know, the, the attempt to cancel me or whatever that is. I don't know how many people were involved in that.

• 21:51Lex Fridman?

  People take this kind of stuff seriously, but the, the problem is the uh, false narratives take hold. And then you, you, you have meetings, you have groups, you have, it builds on top of each other and there's this outrage. And then it reaches you at some point and it can just have these destructive effects.

• 22:06Joe Rogan?

  It can, but it also sometimes doesn't. And in my case, it didn't. Didn't work.

• 22:14Lex Fridman?

  What lessons did you draw from that? Mushrooms, exercise?

• 22:18Joe Rogan?

  Mushrooms and exercise, exercise is critical. It's so, I don't think the mushrooms by themselves would have worked. But that's the thing that I use for everything is the brutal exercise. Like, my exercise routines are horrible. And because of that, everything else is easier. I create my own bullshit, and my own bullshit is so much harder. And it's not just that, it's also sauna and cold plunge and these torture sessions. They, in enduring those, when you endure those, it makes enduring other things much easier. And it's also an understanding of what's happening. Like, you have to know, like, media.

• 22:56Joe Rogan?

  You have to understand, like, what the hot take, you know, YouTube, social media, podcast, ecosphere is doing. Like, if they're talking about, you know, Lex Fridman said this, and we have to comment on that. And, you know, Lex gets canceled in all capital letters on a YouTube clip. And if you, you watch that, you're fucking crazy. What are you doing, absorbing all this negativity? It's not good for you. You are you, you know you, and you know generally if you've made a mistake. And you know generally if people are upset with you.

• 23:28Lex Fridman?

  You posted this awesome video on your Instagram of a woman who was being interviewed in nineteen, late nineteen twenties, maybe?

• 23:36Joe Rogan?

  Yes, yeah.

• 23:39Lex Fridman?

  And she's, she's close to a hundred years old. So she's lived through the Civil War, through World War I. She was at the time, living through the early days of the Great Depression. So I was just looking back, you know, what have we as a human civilization in recent times survived? Especially in the United States. You're talking about the two world wars in the twentieth century, the Great Depression, the Spanish food, the pandemic at the beginning of the twentieth century.

• 24:05Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Lex Fridman?

  What do we do in the United States? Uh, nine eleven? If you think of what are the traumatic events that shook our world? It's nine eleven, it's made us rethink our place in the world.

• 24:20Lex Fridman?

  The pandemic?

• 24:21Joe Rogan?

  Pandemic is a huge one.

• 24:23Lex Fridman?

  Is, I mean.

• 24:24Joe Rogan?

  One of the bigger ones, because it also accelerated and exacerbated our anxiety, which people have a certain level of anxiety already, especially sedentary people. They have a very high level of anxiety already, because I don't think they're, they're giving their body what it, what it needs. I don't think they're, you know, your, your body has certain requirements in terms of movement. And when you deny your body those requirements, I think there's like a general level of anxiety that exists in almost everyone. And then you have people, obviously, that have mental health issues. And that also exacerbates the anxiety. The lockdown exacerbated the anxiety. Losing loved ones to the pandemic exacerbated anxiety.

• 25:06Joe Rogan?

  And then there was the, the division, the, the different schools of thought. The people that were never going to get vaccinated, no matter what, I ain't trusting it. People that thought there was microchips in there, people that thought that, you know, Fauci's the demon. And there's, there was a lot, and there's also like political leanings. The right wing people tended to not want to be vaccinated. Whereas the left wing people, for whatever reason, all of a sudden are trusting pharmaceutical companies, like explicitly. It was weird. It's a, it was a weird time.

• 25:42Joe Rogan?

  And I think, uh, over time, as it's gonna, as it gets analyzed and we, we break it down, it's gonna be one of the weirder moments for shaping human culture. And unfortunately, for throwing gasoline on this already burning fire of, you know, of, of conflict between the various factions of, of, of thought in this country. It's just a, it's already a weird time, you know, post-Trump. Like, the Trump era is also going to be one of the weirder times. When, when people look back historically about the division in this country. He's such a polarizing figure that so many people felt like.

• 26:29Joe Rogan?

  They could abandon their own ethics and morals and principles just to attack him and anybody who supports him because he is an existential threat to democracy itself.

• 26:44Lex Fridman?

  But don't you think it's not a cause, but maybe like a symptom? Like it's gonna get, you said it got real weird. Maybe it's gonna get weirder.

• 26:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I think it's gonna get weirder. He's gonna run again.

• 26:54Lex Fridman?

  You think he wins?

• 26:55Joe Rogan?

  Well, he's running against a dead man. You know, I mean, Biden shakes hands with people that aren't even there when he gets offstage.

• 27:02Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 27:02Joe Rogan?

  I think he's seeing ghosts.

• 27:04Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 27:04Joe Rogan?

  You see him on Jimmy Kimmel the other day?

• 27:06Lex Fridman?

  No.

• 27:06Joe Rogan?

  Well, he was just rambling. I mean, he's, if he was anyone else, if he was a Republican, if that was Donald Trump doing that, every fucking talk show would be screaming for him to be off the air. And by the way, I'm not a Trump supporter in any way, shape or form. I've had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once. I've said no every time. I don't want to help him. I'm not interested in helping him.

• 27:30Lex Fridman?

  The, the, the night is still young. We'll see.

• 27:33Joe Rogan?

  If I have him on, the night is still young?

• 27:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 27:35Joe Rogan?

  Think I'll have him on?

• 27:36Lex Fridman?

  I think you'll have him on.

• 27:37Joe Rogan?

  Really? Why do you think that? Cause you'll have Putin on?

• 27:43Lex Fridman?

  And you're competitive as fuck. No.

• 27:47Lex Fridman?

  I, I think ultimately, um, I mean, you had, you've had a lot of people that I think you might, you may otherwise be skeptical, would I have a good conversation? Which I think is your metric. You don't care about politics, so can I have a good conversation? And I think you, you had, uh, like people, people like Kanye on, for example, and you had a great conversation with him. I think you, I, I think, uh,

• 28:11Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but Kanye is an artist. Like, but Kanye doing well or not doing well, doesn't change the course of our country.

• 28:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but you don't, do you really bear the responsibility of the course of our country based on a conversation?

• 28:26Joe Rogan?

  I think you can revitalize and rehabilitate someone's image in a way that is pretty shocking. Look at the way people look at Alex Jones now, cause Alex Jones has been on my podcast a few times.

• 28:42Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, how do they, which direction?

• 28:44Joe Rogan?

  The people that have watched those podcasts think he's hilarious and they think that he definitely fucked up with that whole Sandy Hook thing. Um, but. He's right more than he's wrong and he's not an evil guy. He's just a guy who's had some psychotic breaks in his life. He's had some genuine mental health issues that he's addressed. He's had some serious bouts of alcoholism, some serious bouts of, you know, substance abuse. And they've contributed to some very poor thinking. But if you know the guy, if you get to know him like I have, I've known him for more than 20 years. And if you know him on podcasts, you realize like, he is genuinely trying to unearth

• 29:29Joe Rogan?

  some things that are genuinely disturbing for most people. Like, this is a guy that was telling me about Epstein's island fucking decade ago, at least. He was telling me about, I was like, what? You're telling me there's a place where they bring elites to compromise them with underage girls and they film them? Really? Like, what? Cut the fuck out of here.

• 29:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 29:54Joe Rogan?

  Like, no, President Clinton's been there, everyone's been there. Like, what? It sounds like nonsense. And not only is it true, but people keep getting fucking murdered for it. Did you see that latest Clinton advisor that got murdered about it?

• 30:06Lex Fridman?

  Yep.

• 30:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Hung with an extension cord, shot himself in the chest 30 miles from his house and they're calling it a suicide.

• 30:14Lex Fridman?

  And now even Elon Musk is asking, where's the clientele list?

• 30:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Lex Fridman?

  We should, we should probably see who's been to that island.

• 30:21Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, we should probably see who's been to that island. And there's probably more of those kind of things out there that haven't been exposed.

• 30:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but sort of to push back, you, you had those conversations with Alex Jones. Wouldn't you be able to have the same kind of conversation with Donald Trump?

• 30:40Joe Rogan?

  That's the problem.

• 30:41Lex Fridman?

  Reveal, no, it's not the problem. You revealed that Alex Jones is a human being.

• 30:45Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Lex Fridman?

  He's fucked up, he has demons in his head, he's obviously chaotic all over the place, but there's some.

• 30:53Lex Fridman?

  Wisdom to the perspective he takes on the world, even though he is often full of shit. He is able to predict certain things that very few people are willing to bring up. So isn't Trump the same way? Fucked up person, egomaniac, whatever personality things you can talk about. Isn't it worthwhile to lay it out? Like, who's going to? If you listen to interviews of Trump, who has the balls to call him out on this bullshit?

• 31:20Joe Rogan?

  Chris Wallace did.

• 31:22Lex Fridman?

  No, calling out somebody on their bullshit is easy when you're just being adversarial. But as a person who is genuinely empathetically trying to understand.

• 31:31Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 31:31Lex Fridman?

  I think you're really good at that. Like, you pulled them in.

• 31:33Joe Rogan?

  I don't know if he would genuinely be there. You know what I'm saying? Like, I think he would be putting on a performance, and that's.

• 31:41Lex Fridman?

  You don't think you can break through that in like 30 minutes?

• 31:43Joe Rogan?

  I'd need more time than that. And he doesn't do any drugs. That's the thing about Alex. You can get Alex high, get him drunk, and he'll start talking about interdimensional child molesters.

• 31:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 31:54Joe Rogan?

  You know, and then you you get the real Alex.

• 31:57Lex Fridman?

  Or maybe maybe you have somebody else on as well to introduce chaos, like Alex.

• 32:02Joe Rogan?

  No, no, no, no.

• 32:03Lex Fridman?

  They have to be one of them.

• 32:04Joe Rogan?

  I would have to be just me and him. I would have to, that would be a focus thing. I would have to like really take time with with Trump. But also, I'm not well versed enough politically to know all of the corruption that's been alleged and to understand what the the whole Russiagate stuff, what what's real? Like, how much of it? It's clear that there is more than one organization that's involved in communicating with Russia before the 2016 elections. So it's pretty clear that the Clinton administration was involved. It's pretty clear that the Trump administration had some communication with some people in Russia.

• 32:46Joe Rogan?

  It's pretty clear that Hunter Biden had some very suspicious dealings in Ukraine.

• 32:53Joe Rogan?

  There's a lot going on there, man, and it's it's hard for anybody to parse. It's really hard for anybody and especially to have an objective assessment of exactly what's going on. And then to be able to do that and broadcast it publicly, that's quite a project. And I think if you really want to do that correctly, it's something that I would have to research for a long time. And to really, really, and I don't have that kind of time.

• 33:20Lex Fridman?

  Not not for maybe for certain for certain people that you're really curious about. Like you have that kind of time for Bob Lazar.

• 33:27Joe Rogan?

  Yes, yes.

• 33:29Lex Fridman?

  But maybe not for Donald Trump.

• 33:30Joe Rogan?

  No, that's different because Bob Lazar, what what, you know, what he's talking about. Like I wanted to know with the Bob Lazar thing, I wanted to know, first of all, I want to be around him and see if I could smell bullshit.

• 33:43Lex Fridman?

  Did you like, did, okay.

• 33:45Joe Rogan?

  No, I didn't, man. That was what's weird about it. Not only did I not smell bullshit, I went over all of his interviews. I went, he's he hasn't done a lot, but he's done enough. And he's done them over the course of 30 plus years. And it's alarming how consistent his story is, which is really weird when you think about, you're talking about back engineering, alien crafts and working on a, you know, a top secret government test site that's carved into the side of a mountain and to camouflage it from satellites. It's a, it's such a wacky story, but the guy really did work at Los Alamos Labs. He really is a propulsion expert. He really is a scientist.

• 34:30Joe Rogan?

  Did he really work on back engineering UFOs? I don't know. But the way he described their motion is exactly like what's been observed by some of these pilots that have these videos that they've captured.

• 34:42Lex Fridman?

  And I just love that, like NASA, I've been hearing from a bunch of folks who they're legitimately like funding research and. There's people really taking this seriously of UFO sightings, investigating them.

• 34:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Lex Fridman?

  Like adding more and more sensors to collect data from just observing.

• 35:00Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 35:01Lex Fridman?

  Higher definitions. It's cool to finally see that. He was one of the early people, whether he's full of shit or not, that kind of forced people to start taking this kind of, these topics seriously.

• 35:12Joe Rogan?

  Or at least force people to have conversations about them and maybe attempt to debunk them because it seems so preposterous, but then get sucked down the rabbit hole and start going, hmm, maybe. We're fucking, it's, the thing is like the Fermi paradox, like where are they, right? And when you take into account just the sheer raw numbers, the vast majority of people objectively assume that there is life out there. The vast majority. Well, if, if you really take into account what we understand about the universe itself, what we understand about the concept of infinity, and the way Neil deGrasse Tyson has explained it to me is that not only are there life forms out there,

• 35:57Joe Rogan?

  but there's you. You are out there. Infinity is so large that Lex Fridman exists and doesn't just exist, but exists an infinite number of times. Like the amount of interactions at cells and molecules, the same exact interactions that have happened here on earth have happened in the exact same order, an infinite number of times in the cosmos.

• 36:22Lex Fridman?

  Well, first of all, it's not certain that that's true. It's possible.

• 36:26Joe Rogan?

  It's possible.

• 36:27Lex Fridman?

  Uh, like Sean Carroll, you know, uh, especially with quantum mechanics, based on certain interpretation of quantum mechanics, that's, that's very possible. But the question is, can you access those universes?

• 36:41Joe Rogan?

  Right. And so how far away are they?

• 36:42Lex Fridman?

  The more, the more sort of specific practical question is this local pocket of the universe, our galaxy or our neighboring galaxies, are there aliens there? What do they look like? Are they, so you can have this panspermia idea where a much larger, like.

• 37:00Lex Fridman?

  Uh, like daddy civilization. Uh, like, uh, rolled by and just planted a few aliens at a similar time.

• 37:09Joe Rogan?

  Like Prometheus.

• 37:10Lex Fridman?

  Yes, a, a, a different, you know, throughout the galaxy. And those are the ones we might be interacting with. They're all kind of dumb. As we are relatively, you know, maybe, um, a few million years apart. And then those are the ones we're interacting with, and then we have a chance to actually connect with them, communicate with them. Or it could be like much more wide open and you have these gigantic alien civilizations that are expanding very, very quickly. And the interesting thing is when you look up at the sky and you see the stars, that's light.

• 37:42Lex Fridman?

  From those stars. We might not be seeing the alien civilizations until they're already here, meaning.

• 37:49Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 37:50Lex Fridman?

  Like you start expanding, once you get really good at expanding, you're going to be expanding very close to the speed of light. So right now we don't see much in the, in the sky, but there could be one, one day we wake up and it's just like everywhere and they're here.

• 38:04Joe Rogan?

  Right, but because of the amount of time the light takes to reach us. Yeah, uh, and then the, the thing that I've been really fascinated by is these alternative forms of transportation that they're discussing. Like the, the ability to harness wormholes and the, the ability to, to do things that were, uh, uh, a type three civilization is capable of. I had Michio Kaku on my podcast recently. Fantastic. Love that guy. He's so, he's so good at taking extremely complex concepts and boiling them down for digestion. And, and, you know, and saying them in a way that other people can appreciate.

• 38:45Lex Fridman?

  And not being hesitant about saying wild, crazy shit that's out there, but grounded in what's actually possible.

• 38:52Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he's all in on this UFO phenomenon now. He's now, he's like, now the burden of proof is to people, for people to come up with some sort of a conventional explanation for these things. He goes, because these things are defying all the concepts of physics that, that we're, we currently know in terms of what our capabilities are. And, and propulsion systems and, and so many other things that, you know, what we know about what current science is capable of reproducing as far as what we know. The problem is like, uh, these, um, military projects that are.

• 39:26Joe Rogan?

  Top secret. Like, how much money do they have? They have a lot of money. Like, but is it possible, and maybe you could speak to this, is it possible that there could be some propulsion systems that have been developed and implemented that are far beyond just the simple burning of rocket fuel, pushing the fire out the back, which forces the rocket at extreme speeds forward, that's something that does harness gravity, something that can distort space and time and can make travel from one point to another, like, preposterously fast?

• 40:06Lex Fridman?

  Well, not only is it possible, I think it's likely that that kind of stuff would be kept a secret.

• 40:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:14Lex Fridman?

  It's just everything you see about these, about the way, either if it's contractors like Lockheed Martin, or if it's DOD, the actual Departments of Defense, they operate in complete secrecy. Just even looking at the, the history of the stealth fighter, just even stealth technology was kept a secret for a very, very long time. And not until you're ready to use it and need to use it, does it become public. And not officially public, it's just, it's being detected out in the wild. So there's going to be a process where you're secretly testing it, and that might creep up, which is maybe what we're seeing. And then it's waiting for the next big war, the next big reason

• 40:59Lex Fridman?

  to use the thing.

• 41:00Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Lex Fridman?

  And so, yeah, there's definitely technologies now. There might not be propulsion technologies, there could be AI surveillance technologies, there could be different kinds of stealth drones, there could be, it could be also in cyberspace, like cyber war weapons.

• 41:20Lex Fridman?

  All that kind of stuff, that they're obviously going to become secret.

• 41:23Joe Rogan?

  I'm, I'm very skeptical lately. And the reason why I'm skeptical is the government keeps talking about it. The Pentagon keeps talking about it, NASA keeps talking about it.

• 41:33Lex Fridman?

  In which direction are you skeptical?

• 41:35Joe Rogan?

  I'm skeptical that it's their aliens. I think most likely it's a smokescreen. And most likely, these are some sort of like incredibly advanced drones that they've developed that they wanna pretend don't exist. That seems the more likely scenario, because otherwise, my take is like, what's the benefit of them discussing these things? Like, what's the benefit of them discussing these things openly? These are, you know, what, what, the way they described it, off-world crafts, not made from this earth? Like, why? Why would they, why would they tell us that? I mean, unless there's an imminent

• 42:13Joe Rogan?

  danger of us being invaded. And they wanna prepare people so they don't freak out as much. You know, like, maybe freak them out a little bit, say that publicly. The New York Times article, the Pentagon discussing it, all these different things.

• 42:27Lex Fridman?

  Test the waters?

• 42:29Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, well, let, let people know that this is a thing.

• 42:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 42:33Joe Rogan?

  Or, my take is like that, I don't think they do that. I don't think they tell us. I think they, I think, I think the government has a lot of contempt for, for the citizens. I really do. I think they have contempt for our intelligence, they have contempt for our need to know things. And I also think they think that they are running us. It's not, we're all in this together, and the government works for the people, and the government is of the people. I don't think they think that way.

• 43:00Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, they, the, the basic idea is you can't trust the populace to govern itself because we're a bunch of idiots.

• 43:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. I think that's accurate.

• 43:09Lex Fridman?

  Well, they're not wrong, but they're also, they're also idiots, power-hungry idiots.

• 43:14Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I don't think they're, I don't think everyone's an idiot, but I think there are enough idiots that it becomes a real problem if you're completely honest about everything you do. And, you know, you don't want to let everybody weigh in about things that are incredibly complex and that most people are ignorant of.

• 43:31Lex Fridman?

  And on top of that, there's this machine of, of intelligence. I've, I've recently been reading a lot about the KGB, about the FSB, so I've.

• 43:40Lex Fridman?

  Several things sparked my curiosity. So one, I'm traveling to Ukraine and to Moscow. And because of that, I started to sort of ask practical questions of myself, just travel and all those kinds of things. So I started reading a lot about the KGB. Jack Barsky has a book on this. I talked to him. And you start to realize, you probably looked into some of this, but you just start to realize the scale of surveillance, of manipulation. Now, a lot of them also talk about the incompetence of those organizations. The usual bureaucracy creeps in. But the point is, it seems like there's no line they're not willing to cross for the purpose of gathering intelligence, for the purpose of controlling people in order to

• 44:25Lex Fridman?

  gather intelligence. Now, this is MI6, FSB. There's not much information about the FSB or the GRU, but the KGB. So we're always like 20 years behind or more on the actual information. And so I started to wonder. So I have not officially been contacted by any intelligence agency. But I started to wonder, well, is there somebody I know that's doing that? Undercover CIA or undercover FSB, undercover anything?

• 45:01Joe Rogan?

  You probably do.

• 45:02Lex Fridman?

  Have you asked yourself this question?

• 45:04Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, people that have been on my podcast. Yeah, for sure.

• 45:08Lex Fridman?

  Do you think there was actually a guess that may have been?

• 45:11Joe Rogan?

  A hundred percent.

• 45:12Lex Fridman?

  Oh, man.

• 45:12Joe Rogan?

  I would imagine.

• 45:13Lex Fridman?

  Would you know?

• 45:15Joe Rogan?

  I have suspicions.

• 45:16Lex Fridman?

  Do you care? Is this?

• 45:19Joe Rogan?

  I mean, it depends on what they're attempting to do, right? Like, if I felt like there was some deception involved and they were trying to use the podcast to manipulate a narrative in a deceptive way to trick people into things, yeah, I would care.

• 45:37Lex Fridman?

  But this is exactly what, those are the kind of things they do. They do plant narratives.

• 45:41Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. I mean, I would imagine if you have the number one podcast in the world, that people would wanna infiltrate that.

• 45:50Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's probably meetings in all major intelligence agencies about, okay, what are the large platforms? How do we, how do we spread the message?

• 46:00Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, well, I mean, that's the, the thing that really emerged when we're talking about during my cancellation, that there's a clear, there's no objective analysis of this in mainstream media. There's clear narratives that they're trying to push forward to, whether it's to promote certain ideas or to diminish the power and reach of people who are mavericks or people who, who are, you know, who aren't connected to a system that you can't compromise. That's where it gets dangerous, right? Where it gets dangerous is when someone has the largest reach,

• 46:39Joe Rogan?

  but is also completely detached and clearly is independent in the, in the sense of independent thinking, has on whoever he wants.

• 46:52Lex Fridman?

  But your mind can still be manipulated.

• 46:54Joe Rogan?

  I guess I can. I mean, I guess everybody can be manipulated a certain way. I manipulate my own mind, I'm sure, too. But I also spend a lot of time thinking about what I think. You know, I don't just accept things like, like the UFO thing. Like, I was all in for a while and now I'm like, man, something smells fishy. I'm, and then I'm thinking like, why? Here's my problem with the UFO thing. I want it to be real so bad.

• 47:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Joe Rogan?

  That's my problem with it. I'm such a sucker. I want it to be real so bad, you know? And that's, that's a problem for me, cause I'm aware of it. And so then I stop and think about like, what is, what, what is my desire for UFO truth to be exposed? Well, it's cause it's fun, you know? That's what it is. So I have a desire to, for it to be real.

• 47:46Lex Fridman?

  And I mean, I've talked to, I talked to a bunch of folks about this. So those with connection with DOD.

• 47:55Lex Fridman?

  And they do draw lines between people that are full of shit and people who are not. There's a lot of people in the public sphere that they say are full of shit.

• 48:03Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 48:05Lex Fridman?

  And you have to kind of tell the difference.

• 48:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, CNN. Watch them talk.

• 48:09Lex Fridman?

  Well, I mean, even.

• 48:11Joe Rogan?

  You know, I mean, everybody knows.

• 48:12Lex Fridman?

  On the UFO topic.

• 48:14Joe Rogan?

  Oh, the UFO topic.

• 48:14Lex Fridman?

  There's certain individuals that are like, okay, they're just like using this. In fact, like people who are not full of shit are often very quiet.

• 48:23Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 48:23Lex Fridman?

  Which is why, you know, even Bob Lazar is an interesting story because he was trying to be quiet for the longest time.

• 48:29Joe Rogan?

  Well, he was worried about his own life, according to Bob, and that's why he went public with it. And initially, the first videos he did with George Knapp, they hid his identity.

• 48:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:39Joe Rogan?

  And then he felt like that wasn't enough and he really needed to expose his own identity just to protect his life.

• 48:47Joe Rogan?

  Which is a great story, you know, so you gotta go, well, that seems so juicy. I want to buy into it. And that's where I get nervous.

• 48:54Lex Fridman?

  You don't know. You don't know who to trust in this world.

• 48:56Joe Rogan?

  Exactly.

• 48:56Lex Fridman?

  How, how, how do you figure that out? How do you figure out who to trust in your life? You're Joe Rogan. A lot of people want to be close to you, CIA agents, FSB agents, uh, people that want.

• 49:07Joe Rogan?

  I'm friends with a former CIA agent, Mike Baker, who's been on my podcast a bunch of times.

• 49:11Lex Fridman?

  Allegedly former.

• 49:12Joe Rogan?

  Former.

• 49:13Lex Fridman?

  Think about that.

• 49:14Joe Rogan?

  He's air quotes, former.

• 49:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 49:15Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I don't believe he's former. I'm sure he has some connection to him. I also believe he's a good guy. But I gain a lot of very intelligent and well-informed insights from him as to how things work. And, you know, I think, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm sure he doesn't tell me everything about everything. But he's told me enough where I, I, I think I can understand things better from talking to him about how, the way, you know, the elves. Work under the machine.

• 49:47Lex Fridman?

  What about friends? How do you know if you can trust?

• 49:50Joe Rogan?

  Well, most of my friends are old friends.

• 49:52Lex Fridman?

  Time. So time is the thing, like, uh, just going through shit together.

• 49:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and also people that, you know, first of all, comics, like.

• 50:02Lex Fridman?

  You can trust comics?

• 50:03Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, comics are pretty trustworthy. The good ones, the really good ones. There's not that many of us. If there's a thousand professional comics on earth, I'd be stunned. I'd be stunned. I don't even think there's a thousand, like, real professionals who you get booked all the time, headline weekends at clubs and theaters and arenas. And then there's levels to that, right? There's like the guys who are middle acts who kind of like barely scrape by. And then like, how many headliners are there? How many like really funny headliners that I would say, you know, if you, Lex, you tell me you're gonna be in Cincinnati. Hey, this person's playing at this club. Should I go see them? I'd be like, ah, you know, like, how many people would I give the recommendation to?

• 50:48Joe Rogan?

  And then how many people sell out theaters? How many people sell out arenas? How many? There's not that fucking many. So those people, like, at the, uh, the levels of comedy where you, you know, you've been doing stand-up for 20 years. There's a certain amount of honesty and a certain amount of understanding of each other that we all have.

• 51:08Lex Fridman?

  Oh, so that, that process of becoming a great comic is like humbling, in the way like jiu-jitsu is humbling.

• 51:14Joe Rogan?

  Very similar.

• 51:15Lex Fridman?

  Like, there's, you've taken, you've eaten so much shit that, that, that somehow, even if you're insane, if you're, even if you're chaotic, even in the way, even if you're full of shit, you lie a lot, all those kinds of things, underneath it, there's a good human. You could be surface bullshitter, but on important things, you're trustworthy.

• 51:34Joe Rogan?

  Hopefully. I mean, if you're not, then people shy away from you. And there are people like that, too, that are really successful, but that are, that are what I call islands. Um, I've, I've talked to other comics about that, like, you don't want to be an island. Cause there's these people that aren't attached to the rest of the community, and they're doing well on their own. And usually they have like one opening act, they bring with them on the road, they've worked with forever, and they don't have comedy friends. And there, those people are miserable because they can't relate.

• 52:04Lex Fridman?

  Sometimes fame in itself is isolating. So you have to actually do a lot of work and make sure you don't, it doesn't isolate you. Because if you become successful. People start wanting stuff from you.

• 52:15Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 52:15Lex Fridman?

  And then sometimes you want to push them away because of that as opposed to connect with them.

• 52:20Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I don't enjoy it when people want things from me. It's not fun.

• 52:24Lex Fridman?

  You just ignore it?

• 52:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's fucking too heavy. They want too much and it's it's too much of a disproportionate relationship. You know, it's too unbalanced. Cause there are people where you could tell that they're working towards something. They're working towards an angle and they want to be close to you because you you will benefit them. And then there's other people that are just, there's not that many of us and so we all want to hang out together. Like when I, one of the podcasts I love the most is this podcast I do called Protect Our Parks. It's a thing I do with Ari Shaffir, Shane Gillis and Mark Norman.

• 53:02Lex Fridman?

  That's great.

• 53:02Joe Rogan?

  It's so fun because we just get obliterated and we talk so much shit. Like there's conversations after that podcast where I go, hey, man, we got to cut that part out.

• 53:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 53:12Joe Rogan?

  Because like Shane will go too far, go too crazy, but we're just making each other laugh and it's just fun. And it's like that kind of camaraderie between real comics is very precious to me.

• 53:23Lex Fridman?

  My favorite part of that is like the non sequitur stuff from Mark Norman. And you guys get so trash that you don't even understand what the hell he's talking about, but it's funny to the listener. Cause he's still on point. That guy is as sharp.

• 53:35Joe Rogan?

  He's so good.

• 53:36Lex Fridman?

  Mitch Hedberg quality.

• 53:38Joe Rogan?

  Yes. Well, he's such a such a dedicated comic, you know, he loves comedy so much. That's one of the things I love about him. He's like comedy. He gets excited, like he loves it. It's as to Shane and as does Ari.

• 53:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 53:51Joe Rogan?

  You know, they really love it and it's um, that's so, so there's that, like I have friends in that way. And I have martial arts friends who are some of the also, the thing about being humbled, how things like jujitsu will humble you. Martial arts friends are, they're also, they know.

• 54:10Joe Rogan?

  They know who's been through it, you know, they know who's who really has gone through the gauntlet and emerged on the other end a better person.

• 54:19Lex Fridman?

  Well, you said there's very few of us. Let's have the goat discussion. You're not gonna pick anybody, but who are the greats of comedy? Who's the who's the who's the greatest comic of all time?

• 54:30Joe Rogan?

  Well, I don't think there is a greatest comic of all time.

• 54:33Lex Fridman?

  Is it Norm MacDonald?

• 54:35Joe Rogan?

  Norm MacDonald was one of the greats, for sure.

• 54:37Lex Fridman?

  But by the way, actually, on that topic, what what do you think about his? I think as a person who is fascinated by the fear of death and death, I think it was a truly genius thing to release a special after you're dead.

• 54:51Joe Rogan?

  I don't know how that worked. I haven't seen the special, have you?

• 54:53Lex Fridman?

  It's not, yeah, it's it's um, it's called, I think, Nothing Special.

• 54:59Joe Rogan?

  Which sounds like something Norman would say.

• 55:01Lex Fridman?

  And it's basically him in front of, I mean, I imagine he wouldn't want to have wanted it edited that way because it's made to look nicer than I think he probably would have preferred it. But it's him in front of the screen, like in a Zoom call, doing jokes without la- cold.

• 55:22Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 55:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And somehow, given his, like, dry, dark humor, it works. Because it's almost making fun of itself, almost making fun of that hole that we were stuck stuck alone inside. And because he's still acting as if he's in front of the audience and is almost making fun of the fact that this is what we're forced to do. I mean, it's quite genius. It's really well done, and the jokes are really good. But it also makes you realize how important laughter is from the audience, the energy from the audience. Because, but there's also an intimacy because it's just you and him. Because you're listening to it, you know, there's no audience. So that's, I don't know, I think it's quite genius.

• 56:05Lex Fridman?

  And he's, of course, there's there's certain comics that are like, not only are they funny, but they're truly unique.

• 56:14Lex Fridman?

  In like they're they're they're not in terms of friendship and all that kind of stuff, but in terms of comedy, they're an island.

• 56:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Lex Fridman?

  It's like they, you know, Mitch Hedberg probably is that. Of course, a lot of people then start to imitate them and so on, but.

• 56:29Joe Rogan?

  Steven Wright.

• 56:30Lex Fridman?

  Steven Wright. I mean, there's like people who are like, you know, Dave Chappelle, who's like probably one of the greats. But he's just like raw funny.

• 56:39Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 56:40Lex Fridman?

  I don't know if he's an island. He's just raw.

• 56:42Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah, I know what you're saying, an outlier, a unique individual. Yeah, he's just great. Norm was definitely unique in his greatness, like like there's only one Norm, you know, who's got a very specific style.

• 56:55Lex Fridman?

  Is there a reason you guys weren't? It doesn't seem like he was, you guys were close.

• 56:59Joe Rogan?

  I mean, I loved him. He was great. I always enjoyed talking to him.

• 57:05Joe Rogan?

  We just didn't work together that often. We weren't around each other that often. That's all it was. But it wasn't like, uh, it was, I loved him, though. He was a great guy. I had a funny story about it, Norm. Twice, just randomly, I was on airplanes next to him. Seated seated right next to him, just totally random.

• 57:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Joe Rogan?

  And one time, we're on this airplane and we're having this talk. And I was like, yeah, I quit smoking. I was smoking a lot and I just, yeah, terrible, terrible smoking, it's terrible for you. And we have this great conversation. We get off the plane and he sprints towards a store and buys cigarettes, like in the airport, and is lighting it on the way out the door. And I go, I thought you quit smoking. He goes, yeah, I did, but all that talking about smoking made me want to smoke again.

• 57:55Joe Rogan?

  So before he's getting through the door of the airport, he's lighting it up. I can't wait. He can't wait to get that cigarette in him. It was, he was just so crazy and impulsive and loved to gamble, loved gambling.

• 58:10Lex Fridman?

  And in that way, he embodied the joke. Like you can't even tell that certain people just like live in a non sequitur.

• 58:20Lex Fridman?

  Ridiculous, absurd, funny way.

• 58:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that was him. I mean.

• 58:24Lex Fridman?

  Nonstop, just.

• 58:25Joe Rogan?

  There was nothing artificial about Norm. You know, that that was who he was. His brilliance was his essence. That was who he was, you know? But it's in terms of like the greats. The godfather of it all is Lenny Bruce. I mean, I have a bunch of Lenny Bruce concert posters at my house and photos that I have framed. And Whitney Cummings actually gave me this brilliant photo of him when he got arrested for one of the times where he got arrested for saying obscene jokes. He was the most important figure in the early days of comedy because he essentially gave birth to the modern art form of standup comedy.

• 59:06Joe Rogan?

  Before that, it was a bunch of guys that were like hosting shows and they would tell jokes. They were just like, you know, you know, two guys walking to a bar, that kind of stuff.

• 59:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 59:16Joe Rogan?

  And he would talk about social issues. You know, he would talk about life. He would talk about language. He would talk about laws. And it was just, he was the very first guy who did modern standup. And what's fascinating is if you go and you try to watch it,

• 59:40Joe Rogan?

  if you try to watch Lenny Bruce today, it doesn't work because society has evolved. Like, in many ways, art is a window, especially like pop culture art or modern, you know, at the time, culture, art, art that discusses culture is a window into that time period. It's a little bit of a time machine. So you get to like, you have to pull yourself, like, what was it like to be in 1963? Like, what was he saying in 1963? What was this like to hear him say this? And the. The civilization that existed in 1963, although it looked pretty similar, they're all driving cars and they're all wearing suits and they're all, it seems normal.

• 1:00:25Joe Rogan?

  That's a, it's a different world. And the things that he was saying that are so taboo are so normal today.

• 1:00:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Joe Rogan?

  That they're not shocking and it's not, not that good. It's not that funny.

• 1:00:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, you have to do the same kind of stuff for, um, like there's a D H Lawrence, there's a book called Lady Shadowy's Lover. And I know it sounds ridiculous, but it was one of the early books, I believe it that, uh, over a century ago, that was very controversial for its sexual content. It's sort of one of the great books because it dared to actually talk about a woman cheating on her husband.

• 1:01:02Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:02Lex Fridman?

  And like, and do so in the highest form. And the same thing with Gulag Archipelago, talking about, talking about some of the darkest aspects of human history, right when all of that stuff is forbidden.

• 1:01:14Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:14Lex Fridman?

  When it's banned. Cause now it's like not, you know, yes, we all know this history, but when in the middle of it, when you're risking your own life, when you're risking your book being banned or burned, or, uh, you being in prison, that's when it matters, like taking that risk.

• 1:01:30Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and no one took that risk more than Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce was arrested many, many times and, uh, ultimately it wound up costing him his life. I mean, he died on the bathroom floor, shooting heroin and trying to cope with all the lawsuits that he was going through. I mean, this guy was constantly being arrested and constantly going through lawsuits. And then his, his comedy deteriorated horribly. There's some footage of him, uh, towards the end of his career where he's essentially would go on stage with legal papers and read from the legal papers about his case. From then it's Richard Pryor. From him, then the next great is Richard Pryor. And he had the most profound impact on me when I was a kid. When I was 15 years old, my parents took me to see Live at the Sunset Strip,

• 1:02:14Joe Rogan?

  which is, uh, Richard Pryor's concert film. And I'm, uh, remember very distinctly being in that audience. And laughing and looking around at all the people in the audience who were like falling out of their chairs, just dying laughing, just swaying back and forth. And I was laughing hard too, and I was like, my God, this guy's doing this just by talking. And I thought of all the great movies that I'd seen that I loved that were hilarious comedy movies. And I was like, nothing that I've ever seen is as funny as this. And all he's doing is talking. And that planted a seed in my head for my love of standup comedy and my curiosity about the art form.

• 1:02:56Joe Rogan?

  And that's what got me interested in, you know, watching it on television and then ultimately going to open mic nights and then eventually doing it.

• 1:03:04Lex Fridman?

  I've actually been going to open mics a lot recently, just listening.

• 1:03:09Joe Rogan?

  For psychological examinations of people?

• 1:03:11Lex Fridman?

  No, I, it's actually really inspiring to me to see people that, you know, some are funny, some are not so funny, unapologetically trying.

• 1:03:23Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Lex Fridman?

  Putting it all out there, night after night, like eating shit.

• 1:03:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:28Lex Fridman?

  My favorite is when, you know, you're talking about like five people in the audience and the jokes are just not landing. And they still, I don't know, it feels like even just empathetically, there's few things as difficult as that.

• 1:03:45Joe Rogan?

  It's hard. I, I still remember those days. Many comics will say this, and I think Dane Cook was the first person I heard say it publicly, that if he ever had to go back and do it again, like from scratch, doesn't think he could do it, doesn't think he could endure the struggle of open mic to, you know, ultimately to success. And the numbers of people that try it and fail versus try and succeed are off the charts. I don't know if there's any other art form that has such a low rate of success.

• 1:04:18Lex Fridman?

  Cause it's psychological, it's torture.

• 1:04:21Joe Rogan?

  It is torture and it's also not something you can learn. Like, here's the thing, like, if you, you play guitar, you can learn to play guitar. Somebody can teach you the chords and if you do it and you could, you could do all along the watchtower, you could play it. You can't teach someone how to do comedy.

• 1:04:40Lex Fridman?

  You think it's you're funny or not, or can you? Can you still figure it out?

• 1:04:45Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Lex Fridman?

  Like, can you still learn?

• 1:04:46Joe Rogan?

  You can figure it out. Yeah.

• 1:04:48Lex Fridman?

  Can you be on, can you start unfun, can you start being unfunny?

• 1:04:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:51Lex Fridman?

  And become funny?

• 1:04:52Joe Rogan?

  Yes, it's possible. It's not easy, though.

• 1:04:55Lex Fridman?

  You're gonna have to eat a lot of shit.

• 1:04:57Joe Rogan?

  You're gonna have to eat a lot of shit and you're gonna have to examine why you're not funny. And you're gonna have to spend a lot of time with uncomfortable thoughts. And try to figure out what it is. Like, what's missing? Like, you know, could, could you edit your stuff and make it better? Do, uh, maybe you need to do drugs. Maybe you need to get involved in psychedelic drugs and rethink the way you interface with reality itself. Maybe you need your heart broken. Maybe you need to be in love. Maybe, there's a lot of maybes there. Like, maybe you just need more life experience. But, you know, when I started comedy, I was 21 and I was a moron. I had no information. You know, I, I, I could do impressions of people and I could talk about sex.

• 1:05:40Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Joe Rogan?

  Those are the things that I was interested in back then. I doubt, I mean, if I was talking philosophically, I didn't have, I didn't have a philosophy. I didn't have a, a, a a unique perspective on life. I hadn't experienced much.

• 1:05:53Lex Fridman?

  So every time you bomb, it forces you to introspect, to, to ask questions of yourself and then that's how you actually develop a philosophy?

• 1:06:00Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Lex Fridman?

  Or what you actually believe.

• 1:06:01Joe Rogan?

  You learn through doing. And I think you could say that about podcasting, too. You know, I'm certainly way better at having conversations than I ever was when I first started doing comedy. Or, excuse me, when I first started doing podcasts.

• 1:06:14Lex Fridman?

  You should learn, stick with it, kid, because one day you'll be able to interview Donald Trump. You'd be mad enough to, to handle that conversation.

• 1:06:25Lex Fridman?

  How hard is it to do? Cause I've been really curious, uh, it's been on my bucket list because I'm terrified. I wanna do everything I'm terrified of.

• 1:06:32Joe Rogan?

  You gotta do stand up?

• 1:06:33Lex Fridman?

  No, but I do wanna do like one fi- five minute, like, open mic.

• 1:06:38Joe Rogan?

  Why don't you do Kill Tony?

• 1:06:39Lex Fridman?

  How hard is it to do five minutes, would you say?

• 1:06:41Joe Rogan?

  It's hard. Well, it depends on, you know, how long you've been thinking about doing comedy. It depends on how you look at things. And also depends on your style of comedy. Like, the most difficult style of comedy is like, I think, like Steven Wright's style is probably the most difficult style of comedy, complete non sequiturs. One subject doesn't lead into the next. There's no flow to it. It's just, I noticed this, I noticed that. And then there's this, and then there's that. And that, that's hard to memorize. And it's really hard to piece together an hour of non sequiturs.

• 1:07:15Lex Fridman?

  But it's easier because you can rely on the joke. It sits more with the joke. Like, whether you're funny or not is on the, on the actual material versus like the timing and the, the energy, the dance with the audience, right? Cause like, if you don't have the raw jokes, like Steven Wright does, or Mitch Hedberg, then you have to, it's all about the delivery.

• 1:07:38Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and, yeah, that, they either kill or they bomb.

• 1:07:42Lex Fridman?

  Is it random? Like?

• 1:07:44Joe Rogan?

  Whether they kill or bomb?

• 1:07:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Joe Rogan?

  Well, I mean,

• 1:07:46Lex Fridman?

  In the beginning, I mean.

• 1:07:47Joe Rogan?

  You're essentially a different person every day of your life. You know, you're similar, but you're more tired, you're more rested, you're exhausted, you're refreshed, you have vitamins and food nourishment in your system. You just got your heart broken, you haven't slept in days. You're a different person all the time. And you go on to that stage. You're in the neighborhood of who Lex Fridman is. You're in the Lex Fridman neighborhood. Which Lex Fridman am I gonna get?

• 1:08:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Joe Rogan?

  You know?

• 1:08:19Lex Fridman?

  Energy levels.

• 1:08:20Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Lex Fridman?

  It depends, it all depends. But, oh, the other thing with Kill Tony is it's videotaped. Yes. So you eating shit.

• 1:08:29Joe Rogan?

  Is on there forever.

• 1:08:30Lex Fridman?

  Forever.

• 1:08:30Joe Rogan?

  The world can see it. But it's one of the most important shows in comedy. It's the most important show in comedy. Because, first of all, it establishes stand-up in a sense that, like, for the open micers, for the people that are starting it out, it establishes that the most important thing is to be funny. Like, this is what the art form is all about. And there's a lot of insecurity attached to that, a lot of fears. And so, to alleviate some of those insecurities and fears, people will decide that the message is more important. And they'll pretend that, you know, like, you have to have, like, you have to have...

• 1:09:11Joe Rogan?

  You have to be socially aware that you have to promote things that are positive in your comedy, which is bullshit. They're all, the people that say that, they're all bad. They're all bad at comedy. And that's where the insecurity is. It's like, they can't just kill. So they have to pretend that they're supposed to be socially aware. And that being socially aware is an important part into society. Like, let me explain something really clearly. It's not a fucking person on earth who's ever changed their life because of a joke. That's not what they're there for. They're there for jokes. The people that say that, they, well, they say that socially important comedy is the only comedy that's necessary. The only comedy that you have to do. That is just because they suck.

• 1:09:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Joe Rogan?

  That is it. It's like, the cop out is that they can't do the real comedy. They can't crush. It's not like someone goes from being, you know, take a, like Shane Gillis, one of the best comics up and coming right now. He's fucking fantastic. I can't recommend enough seeing that guy live. I worked with him in Irvine and I hadn't seen like his whole set. I was crying. I mean, he's so good.

• 1:10:18Lex Fridman?

  I heard he's a racist. So I haven't listened to any of his material, no.

• 1:10:22Joe Rogan?

  He's so good. And his comedy is just all, just trying to be as funny as possible. There's not a chance in hell that guy's just gonna go woke. And he's just gonna start promoting some sort of, you know, socially conscious agenda that's, you know, facetious and just a bunch of nonsense. And he's trying to elevate his own personal brand and virtue signal. That's not gonna happen. The thing about Kill Tony is, in that, because you only have one minute, and because it's live, and because you don't want Tony shitting on you or everybody else shitting on, everybody's just gearing up to try to be as funny as possible.

• 1:11:02Joe Rogan?

  And no one cares if you are gay, or straight, or Asian, or black, or trans, or non-binary. Nobody gives a fuck. Are you funny? If you're funny, you're in. And everybody loves you. You could be 80, you could be 20. Nobody gives a shit. You could be a woman or a- Man or ambiguous, nobody fucking cares. Are you funny? And that's the most important thing for a community of comedy. To really promote comedy, just funny, just be funny. And so in that sense, Kill Tony is a real cornerstone of comedy.

• 1:11:38Lex Fridman?

  It's a reminder what comedy is supposed to be.

• 1:11:39Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Lex Fridman?

  That said, even the funny, like the funniest stuff has underneath it some wisdom.

• 1:11:45Joe Rogan?

  Sure.

• 1:11:46Lex Fridman?

  Goes out of it, but that's not the the primary goal of it.

• 1:11:48Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I mean, it might be inspiring and fun. Oh, Tim Dillon is a great example of that. Yeah. He's had some amazing insights in his comedy, but it's still.

• 1:11:57Lex Fridman?

  It's all about.

• 1:11:58Joe Rogan?

  Fucking comedy.

• 1:11:59Lex Fridman?

  It's all about the funny.

• 1:12:00Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's all of the funny. He's got, he's the best at doing that, especially in a podcast form. About weaving like really important points in with hilarious, you know, obviously. Just, you know, just jokes.

• 1:12:15Lex Fridman?

  Let me ask you, speaking of Tim Dillon, a chaotic fucked up individual.

• 1:12:22Lex Fridman?

  Can we go to your childhood real quick?

• 1:12:25Lex Fridman?

  A brief stroll. So your mom and dad split up when you were five. From a, from a Jungian perspective, if you look at your subconscious. What impact do you think that had on you? Informing who you are as a man, as a human being.

• 1:12:41Joe Rogan?

  Well, at the time, I thought that my father was like a hero. You know, he was my dad. I think every kid thinks like that about his dad. His dad is like, your dad's your protector. Your dad is like the coolest guy in the world. That's what you like. Yeah, yeah, everybody wants to be like their dad, especially if your dad is like an imposing figure. I remember one time me and my cousin got in a fight over nothing. It was like over, uh, who's tougher, King Kong or Godzilla?

• 1:13:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, over nothing. That's an important, but yeah.

• 1:13:13Joe Rogan?

  And he said.

• 1:13:14Lex Fridman?

  Actual fight, actual.

• 1:13:15Joe Rogan?

  Oh, I punched him in the face and. Uh.

• 1:13:18Lex Fridman?

  This is when you were like five?

• 1:13:20Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah, and so.

• 1:13:21Lex Fridman?

  Which side were you on?

• 1:13:22Joe Rogan?

  King Kong.

• 1:13:23Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 1:13:24Joe Rogan?

  I was wrong. Godzilla's like way bigger. Godzilla's 500 feet tall and he shoots fire out of his mouth.

• 1:13:31Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Yeah, are you sure? I mean, there's, there's an argument to be made. It's not all about size, right?

• 1:13:38Joe Rogan?

  No, there's no argument to be made. 500 feet tall versus 50 feet tall. One's a gigantic dinosaur. One is a stupid monkey who gets shot down by a plane.

• 1:13:47Lex Fridman?

  You don't think a monkey can ride Godzilla like take it back?

• 1:13:50Joe Rogan?

  No, no. You can't kill Godzilla with a plane. Meow, da, da, da, da, da. Like, that shit wouldn't work in Godzilla. Killed King Kong. Um, King Kong in the new movies kept growing.

• 1:14:03Lex Fridman?

  He's getting bigger and bigger, yeah.

• 1:14:04Joe Rogan?

  Got to the point where he's as big as Godzilla.

• 1:14:06Lex Fridman?

  It just feels like King Kong is stronger.

• 1:14:09Joe Rogan?

  Stop.

• 1:14:12Lex Fridman?

  Backtake, backtake, immediate backtake. You don't think there's a backtake? There's a difference.

• 1:14:16Joe Rogan?

  If he's the same size.

• 1:14:18Lex Fridman?

  Human weapons and two animals going at it of a different size. You don't think there's in, in the jungle, a smaller animal could take on a bigger animal? Oh, you got monkey versus a, let's see, a lion? Monkey versus a bear?

• 1:14:32Joe Rogan?

  What?

• 1:14:32Lex Fridman?

  Who wins?

• 1:14:33Joe Rogan?

  A monkey versus a bear?

• 1:14:35Lex Fridman?

  Not a monkey, what's the strongest ape? Uh, gorilla, no, but gorilla, see, okay, gorilla can't do backtakes. I'm thinking of like a smaller, you know what I'm saying? Cause in jiu jitsu, you see this all the time.

• 1:14:47Joe Rogan?

  Did you remember that scene in Talladega Nights? Do you know Talladega Nights? Where the, the little boy's talking to his grandpa? I'll be all over you like a spider monkey.

• 1:14:56Lex Fridman?

  Exactly, spider monkey, I was thinking, alright.

• 1:14:59Joe Rogan?

  There's some animals, like here's a better example, a wolverine. Wolverines chase wolves and bears off of their kills. And they're not very big at all. They're just so ferocious and they're so durable. Like, it's very hard to kill a wolverine.

• 1:15:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, and there's videos of like cats, like not actual cat, like domestic cats. Or or domestic dogs, starting shit with much larger animals.

• 1:15:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Lex Fridman?

  And if they're ferocious enough.

• 1:15:25Joe Rogan?

  Well, pit bulls are a great example of that. Pit bulls are small, like real game bred pit bulls are like thirty five, forty five pounds. And they'll kill much larger dogs.

• 1:15:35Lex Fridman?

  Anyway, you were on on King Kong's side.

• 1:15:37Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, so.

• 1:15:37Lex Fridman?

  Shit out of your cousin.

• 1:15:38Joe Rogan?

  I remember he said to me, uh, like, I thought it was in like real trouble because I remember my cousin's mom was yelling at me and was like, you monster, all this crazy shit. So, um, my dad got me alone and he said, tell me what happened. And I told him, you know, we got in a fight, we're arguing, or King Kong, Godzilla. And I punched him in the face. And he goes, did you cry? I go, no. He goes, good. Don't ever cry.

• 1:16:09Joe Rogan?

  And I remember that, like, whoa, okay. And I remember thinking, all right, I'm just gonna start punching people.

• 1:16:17Joe Rogan?

  Because like, obviously, my dad thinks it's a good idea if I go running around punching people as long as I don't cry, like.

• 1:16:25Joe Rogan?

  It, I remember certain things about, you know, and also, like, this is, again, like, we're talking about

• 1:16:34Joe Rogan?

  watching Lenny Bruce and getting a timeline of what the world was like back then. This is a different world.

• 1:16:40Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:41Joe Rogan?

  You know, in nineteen seventy, this would have been nineteen seventy two. It's a different world back then, man, like a really different world.

• 1:16:49Lex Fridman?

  Is some of that, so Carl Jung talked about the shadow, it's the unconscious, where you have dark stuff and oftentimes you use it to project the stuff that you're very self critical about yourself. But because it's in your unconscious, you use it to project onto others. You see it as flaws in others. And that's a good way to, like, whatever, um, he gives a quote, like, everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

• 1:17:19Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:19Lex Fridman?

  So that's, that's a nice way to investigate yourself, like something that pisses you off. You start asking questions of your own mind and that's how you bring it to the surface. But anyway, from that, those are formative years. From that time, is there still stuff in your unconscious you think you haven't examined? Some dark shit?

• 1:17:39Joe Rogan?

  I don't think so. I don't, I'm not aware if it is, because I've looked. You know, like if someone, you know, someone says, you know, I, I left something over your house. Like, where'd you leave it? I don't know, like, all right, I'll go look.

• 1:17:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Joe Rogan?

  I gotta get a real thorough look.

• 1:17:56Lex Fridman?

  But I'm pretty sure.

• 1:17:57Joe Rogan?

  Pretty sure it's not there.

• 1:17:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I don't know, I think I've looked. I mean, it certainly had an, I think the positive effect also was compounded by the fact that when my mother married my stepdad, who's a great guy, who was a hippie, very different, we moved around a lot. And so the bad thing about that was I didn't really develop long-term friends. The good thing about that was that I was forced to develop my own opinions about things. Instead of adopting an opinion of the neighborhood and the group about anything, I was forced to form my own thoughts and opinions about almost everything. And so it made me much more of an independent thinker.

• 1:18:40Joe Rogan?

  So that on top of the fact that, you know, losing, you know, my quote unquote hero very early on, and then having to form my own opinions about things, it left me with a very, very independent streak, you know, in terms of, and, and if I hadn't done the things that I got interested in, martial arts and then, and then comedy, if I hadn't gotten interested in those things, I would have been fucked. Because I was just too independent for normal jobs. I was too independent for school. I just didn't want to listen to people. I was too feral. I just didn't want to, didn't want to sit still.

• 1:19:21Joe Rogan?

  If I was with the wrong parents, especially today, I most certainly would have been medicated.

• 1:19:28Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's so many possible trajectories you can imagine where you would have not been the person you are today.

• 1:19:33Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:33Lex Fridman?

  This is probably one of the best possible. You're living this, you know, this particular storyline you're living through is, was one of the better ones.

• 1:19:42Joe Rogan?

  This timeline is as good as it gets for someone like me.

• 1:19:44Lex Fridman?

  Is there advice you can give to people, to young, to young kids that are living through a shitty situation of any sort, a tough life?

• 1:19:55Joe Rogan?

  Find a thing you like. Try to find a thing that you really enjoy. Try to find a thing that you're passionate about.

• 1:20:00Lex Fridman?

  Like an activity?

• 1:20:01Joe Rogan?

  Yes. For me, early on, it was drawing. It was illustrations. It was comic books. I wanted to be a comic book illustrator. And then it went from comic book drawing and illustrations to martial arts. So, but it was just another thing that I was very, very passionate about. And that was my vehicle out of my dilemma. That was my vehicle out of my, my own anxiety and trauma and my own issues and insecurities and... Find something. Find a thing that you genuinely enjoy because getting good at things you genuinely enjoy

• 1:20:43Joe Rogan?

  is extremely beneficial for young people because it lets you know that, like, everybody thinks they're a loser. Every young person thinks they're a loser. At least a young person in the situation I was at. Like, I didn't know I wasn't a loser until I started winning, until I started doing martial arts. Martial arts taught me that, like, I could get better at stuff, that it wasn't, I wasn't really a loser. I just was someone who was like in a fucked up situation. But you could channel all that energy that you have as a young person into something and get better at it. And then all of a sudden, people admired me. I was like, this is crazy. So I went from being someone who was incredibly insecure.

• 1:21:24Joe Rogan?

  And basically a failure to someone who is really successful at this one thing that was very dangerous that other people were scared of. And that gave me immense confidence and also a real understanding of the direct correlation between hard work and success.

• 1:21:42Lex Fridman?

  And a kind of understanding that you're not a loser.

• 1:21:45Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:21:46Lex Fridman?

  That there is some diamond in the rough.

• 1:21:48Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and also an understanding that you can't listen to people because even my parents didn't want me to do martial arts. They didn't want me to fight. They didn't want me to do stand up. There's like, you have to understand like who you are and then in the face of other people's either criticism or, you know, lack of faith in your ability to succeed, you push through and there's great benefit in that. And then you realize that you can kind of apply that to other things in life. You can apply that to critics. You can apply that to social media commentators. You can apply that to a lot of things.

• 1:22:26Lex Fridman?

  Okay, what about, uh, young people in their 50s? Can you give advice to, like, imagine you're sitting, you're sitting back, probably still here in Texas, in your 90s, looking back, what advice would that guy give to you today? Or like, people, you know, people that have done some shit in their 50s, you've gone through a hell of a life, there's potentially some incentive to settle down. You got a great family to relax, um, but maybe there's some incentive to still do epic shit. Still be David Goggins running in the middle of the desert screaming shit into a camera.

• 1:23:06Joe Rogan?

  If you're David Goggins, you have to be David Goggins. I don't think there's a path for that guy that exists at this stage of his life, other than that.

• 1:23:16Lex Fridman?

  You think he'll be 70 and still screaming?

• 1:23:18Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:23:19Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 1:23:19Joe Rogan?

  A hundred percent. Hundred percent. If David and I are alive, we're both, we're both 70, he's gonna call me up and say, "Stay hard, motherfucker." Guaranteed, guaranteed.

• 1:23:33Lex Fridman?

  So lean into whatever the fuck you are at this point.

• 1:23:35Joe Rogan?

  Well, if you're enjoying it, but if you're not enjoying it, rethink your life. Try to figure out why you're, why you're not enjoying it.

• 1:23:42Lex Fridman?

  You still think it's possible to shift things in your 50s?

• 1:23:45Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. If you're alive, you can get better.

• 1:23:48Lex Fridman?

  No matter what.

• 1:23:49Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, no matter what. If you're alive, you can shift things. I mean, if you're 90 years old and you know, you have a month to live, you could apologize for the things you think you did wrong. And maybe sort of reconcile and, and shape relationships that you have with the people that are around you better. So that they, they feel differently about you after you're gone.

• 1:24:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I always love people in their seventies who are like, like getting back into dating or something like that.

• 1:24:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. I was watching a video about a woman who's in her sixties who just started powerlifting.

• 1:24:18Lex Fridman?

  Nice.

• 1:24:19Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:19Lex Fridman?

  And same with jujitsu. You see people get into jujitsu.

• 1:24:22Joe Rogan?

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 1:24:23Lex Fridman?

  A white belt, a white belt that's like 70. Yeah.

• 1:24:26Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of, if you're alive, you can get better at stuff. And I don't think people are happy if they don't have puzzles and complex tasks and things that are interesting to them. Whether it's an art project or whether it's learning something completely new like standup comedy. Like doing things that are difficult is, it, it, it's as much of a nourishment of the mind. As food is a nourishment of the body. I think you need things that, that are puzzling to you. Where you have to find your own human potential in the difficulty of the task.

• 1:25:12Joe Rogan?

  And, and work your way through things, at least for me. For me, I mean, I can only speak for me because I'm the only, I'm the only life that I've ever lived that I'm aware of. And in my life, that has been a 100% constant. I, I am a very happy person and I have never had a moment where I'm not doing difficult shit.

• 1:25:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:33Joe Rogan?

  Ever.

• 1:25:34Lex Fridman?

  Uh, what matters most is how well you walk through the fires. You just keep starting fires for yourself to walk through.

• 1:25:40Joe Rogan?

  Well, they don't necessarily have to be fires, right? Because fires are like kind of out of control.

• 1:25:46Lex Fridman?

  Lukewarm.

• 1:25:47Joe Rogan?

  Tasks.

• 1:25:48Lex Fridman?

  The surfaces.

• 1:25:49Joe Rogan?

  Tasks. Give yourself something, an arduous, difficult task where you're challenged. Challenged mentally and challenged physically. One of the great things about being challenged physically is it's also mental. The people that don't understand that have never really been challenged physically. People that think that physical challenges are just like, just physical. It's just. Brute grunt work. It's not. It's emotional intelligence. It's understanding your desire to quit and, you know, conquering your inner bitch. All that stuff is, it's mental. It's playing out inside your head. And there's a mental strength that you acquire from that, that you can apply to intellectual pursuits.

• 1:26:33Joe Rogan?

  And the, the people that don't think that are the people that haven't attempted them. And there's an arrogance to people that only pursue intellectual exercises, only pursue intellectual things. And don't pursue anything physical, that the physical stuff is base, it's grunt work, it's primal, it's not necessary. I don't think that's accurate. I don't think that they're, I mean, obviously there's people like Stephen Hawking's who have no opportunity to do anything physical, right? His physical dilemma is keeping us, or was, keeping his heart beating. But for most people, I think you can really benefit from physical struggle. And you benefit from it in a mental way.

• 1:27:17Joe Rogan?

  And I think that is overlooked. That's unfortunately overlooked by academics and intellectuals. Who, they make excuses for why they're fat and lazy or scrawny.

• 1:27:28Lex Fridman?

  Well, they don't need to be, it's not even about the fat or all of that. It's like literally, there's something about the physical challenge that's really good for you, especially if you're academic. Especially if you do intellectual type stuff. There's this great roboticist at MIT, Russ Tedrick. He runs barefoot to and from MIT every day.

• 1:27:48Joe Rogan?

  I love it.

• 1:27:49Lex Fridman?

  Um, like seven, seven to 10 miles each way.

• 1:27:52Joe Rogan?

  Barefoot?

• 1:27:53Lex Fridman?

  Barefoot. Well, he's, uh, he studies legged locomotion, legged robots. So for him, it's also interesting how the human body moves. He sees the beauty in all of, in all movement.

• 1:28:03Joe Rogan?

  What do his feet look like?

• 1:28:05Lex Fridman?

  You know, calloused.

• 1:28:06Joe Rogan?

  Destroyed, right?

• 1:28:07Lex Fridman?

  No, just calloused. They're nice. They're, they form a nice, it's not like I gave him a foot massage. But, but I mean, they, they look, uh, and I don't have a foot fetish, so I don't, uh, I'm not able to correctly invest, evaluate another man's feet. I apologize for this, but they, uh, they don't look fucked up.

• 1:28:26Joe Rogan?

  Does he run on concrete?

• 1:28:28Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, he runs all surfaces.

• 1:28:30Joe Rogan?

  And he does everything completely barefoot?

• 1:28:33Lex Fridman?

  Uh, the, the running part at work. So one of the things he has to do is fit into society, which means he has to change clothes and appear normal.

• 1:28:41Joe Rogan?

  Right. So does he wear like, uh, zero shoes? You know, those

• 1:28:45Lex Fridman?

  No, he's not.

• 1:28:46Joe Rogan?

  Barefoot type shoes?

• 1:28:47Lex Fridman?

  No, because that's like very hippie, woken type of thing.

• 1:28:50Joe Rogan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:51Lex Fridman?

  No, like he doesn't, he's barefoot when he's running and then he wears like normal looking stuff, like dress shoes.

• 1:28:57Joe Rogan?

  How do you work him, his way up to running barefoot?

• 1:29:00Lex Fridman?

  Uh, so he was significantly overweight and his advisor, uh, this, this, this other, uh, famous person at MIT who was a roboticist, took his own life and that made him, uh, that made Russ face his own mortality. I think, I mean, the, you, you, you start to ask big questions about your wellbeing, like holy shit, this racket ended at any moment. And so he started taking his sort of physical wellbeing seriously, but as a result of that, not that he, that he become like shredded, but he's also discovered the intellectual value, uh, the humbling value of physical exercise.

• 1:29:41Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:29:42Lex Fridman?

  So he's not preachy about it all. I don't think, I actually rarely hear him advise it to anyone. He just does it as a, as a, almost like meditation or something like that. It's,

• 1:29:52Joe Rogan?

  It's definitely a form of meditation and you can attest to that, right? You do quite a bit of running. There's a, a thing about a

• 1:30:01Joe Rogan?

  it get you kind of, almost like a mantra gets formed and you, you get into it.

• 1:30:05Lex Fridman?

  You know, it's great here in the Austin heat, hundred degree weather.

• 1:30:08Joe Rogan?

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 1:30:09Lex Fridman?

  That, that tests you.

• 1:30:10Joe Rogan?

  You know what I love to do outside?

• 1:30:11Lex Fridman?

  What's that?

• 1:30:11Joe Rogan?

  Pull sleds. That's my thing. I love to pull sleds outside.

• 1:30:16Lex Fridman?

  In the heat.

• 1:30:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. I did it today.

• 1:30:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:19Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 1:30:20Lex Fridman?

  Uh, so you're also, your wife is incredible. You're in a relationship. What, uh, and you're married. You have a, a great family. What advice would you give, uh, to me and to others like me who are dumb fucks and, and have not found a relationship?

• 1:30:33Joe Rogan?

  Well, you're a great guy, so this definitely doesn't necessarily apply to you, but be someone who someone would want to be in a relationship with. There's a lot of people out there that want a great partner. They want someone in a relationship, but. Why would someone want to be in a relationship with you? You know, maybe you bicker a lot, maybe you're jealous, maybe you, uh, maybe you lie, maybe you, you know, maybe you're cruel, maybe you're, you don't have a sense of humor, maybe you're, you know, you're not kind, like, what is, what is it about you that people would not enjoy being around? Or that people avoid? Fix that.

• 1:31:14Lex Fridman?

  Well, this, this applies to me as well, like you, you said something with Cam Haynes. One of the things he admire is the, the discipline it takes to sort of juggle so many things and do it successfully. I'm not sure I'm very good at that.

• 1:31:27Joe Rogan?

  So juggling all this hard work and then also a relationship.

• 1:31:30Lex Fridman?

  Also a relationship, also family, all of those kinds of priorities. I mean, that requires having your shit together.

• 1:31:36Joe Rogan?

  It does, it's a different thing, but it's also you gotta find the right person. There's a lot of people who self, they settle for sexy, they settle for hot.

• 1:31:45Lex Fridman?

  Oh, for, uh, okay.

• 1:31:45Joe Rogan?

  They settle for the wrong person, like you can get hot and nice, they're out there.

• 1:31:50Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Joe Rogan?

  But don't get hot and mean, hot and mean is not fun, then you get Amber Heard.

• 1:31:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:55Joe Rogan?

  You know?

• 1:31:56Lex Fridman?

  And then you end up in a trial.

• 1:31:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:58Joe Rogan?

  You can be deceived by perfect symmetry.

• 1:32:02Lex Fridman?

  So you don't think it's a good idea to record your partner?

• 1:32:05Joe Rogan?

  I think you should record all conversations, the CIA is doing it no matter what. I assume that every conversation I have is recorded, because I'm pretty sure it is.

• 1:32:15Lex Fridman?

  Even when we had dinner with Alex Jones, he was recording.

• 1:32:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:17Lex Fridman?

  I still remember that.

• 1:32:20Joe Rogan?

  I didn't know they'd know that was recording.

• 1:32:22Lex Fridman?

  He might, you know what would be funny if he is the CIA?

• 1:32:25Joe Rogan?

  He could be, could be.

• 1:32:27Lex Fridman?

  Let that be the ultimate goal.

• 1:32:28Joe Rogan?

  My advice about relationships is be somebody, and then also, like, find someone who you can grow with, right? You don't want to be with someone who doesn't share your, uh, your values, someone, you don't want to be with someone who makes excuses, you don't want to be with someone who's lazy, or who's spiteful, you want to be with someone who's like genuinely kind. That's one of the things that I really love about my wife, and she's very smart and she works hard. She's like, she's a dedicated, disciplined person, which is also really nice. That's why, one of the things I liked the most about her, she's so nice, she's always smiling.

• 1:33:10Lex Fridman?

  And that energy is great.

• 1:33:11Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I mean, you've seen us together.

• 1:33:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:13Joe Rogan?

  You've hung around with us. She's fun.

• 1:33:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:15Joe Rogan?

  She's a lot of fun.

• 1:33:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, she makes you just feel great to be alive. It's good to have people like that around you.

• 1:33:21Joe Rogan?

  She's happy. She's a happy person. She's happy to be around. That's the kind of people that you could have in your life as friends and as coworkers and as lovers and wives and husbands. You can find those people. They're real. And when you find those people, your life is better. Like, to have a good tribe is very important, to have a good tribe of people, you know? And I think if there's anything that I'm very, very fortunate about, it's the people that I'm around. I have very good friends, and one of which is you. It's so valuable to have quality people around you because it makes you want to do better, because you admire the hard work that these people put in, like Mike Camhains or Goggins or many of my friends.

• 1:34:06Joe Rogan?

  And people that are generous and people that are curious and people that are honest, they inspire you to do the same, and it's extremely valuable. It's one of the most valuable things, is to surround yourself with positive, healthy, friendly, generous people.

• 1:34:26Lex Fridman?

  That's why I cut out Tim Dillon from my life. I broke up with him.

• 1:34:29Joe Rogan?

  I thought you guys were getting married.

• 1:34:30Lex Fridman?

  No, it's over. It's none of those things. The sexist, nonstop, the nonstop conspiracy theories, the nonstop mocking of my Eastern European origins.

• 1:34:45Lex Fridman?

  It's just not healthy for me. Plus, he's physically abusive and towering figure.

• 1:34:50Joe Rogan?

  He's a big boy.

• 1:34:51Lex Fridman?

  Physically. No, I love him.

• 1:34:54Joe Rogan?

  If he worked out, he would be a house. He's got such a large frame, you know?

• 1:35:00Lex Fridman?

  So if I interview Putin, what should I ask him?

• 1:35:04Joe Rogan?

  How's the cancer? How's it doing, buddy?

• 1:35:08Joe Rogan?

  That's question number one in Russian. Do you think he has cancer?

• 1:35:13Lex Fridman?

  I don't think so.

• 1:35:14Joe Rogan?

  That the narrative is terrifying, right? Dictator of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, who also has cancer and he just invaded a sovereign country. That's a terrifying narrative because that's what we're all afraid of. Someone who has nothing to lose, who just decides to let loose a nuke.

• 1:35:30Lex Fridman?

  Well, I do think maybe it's projecting, but if I had cancer, or if you think about leaders that have cancer, you're facing your own mortality. I would think he would be more focused on his legacy and the dropping nuclear bomb is not good for legacy. I do believe he wants to be remembered as a great leader, as a lot of leaders do, as a lot of even dictators do. And I think he wants to figure out a way to pull out a win so he can say that whatever this thing was, whatever this invasion was, was good for Russia, was good for the nation. He ultimately made it a greater nation than it was before.

• 1:36:12Lex Fridman?

  And perhaps he could justify an escalation of war to be that. But I don't, and it's just the cancer thing concerns me so much because it's been so often part of this propaganda that's been told about Putin, that he's sick. I don't know why. It's always, people kind of wonder that a lot about, especially dictators. But you had that even like with Hillary Clinton and obviously with Biden. That narrative is stickier. So for some people.

• 1:36:41Joe Rogan?

  Well, that narrative is transparent and obvious.

• 1:36:45Lex Fridman?

  But the degree of it is a question with Biden as it is with everyone. Like what's, you know, how healthy is this leader? That's the question people often ask.

• 1:36:53Joe Rogan?

  Sure, always. They were doing that about Trump, too. The thing about Putin though is like his appearance is altered, where he looks very bloated. His body doesn't look much bigger, but his face looks like puffy and swollen. I had a friend who had sarcoidosis.

• 1:37:12Joe Rogan?

  And they prescribed prednisone, which is a type of a steroid. And one of the things that would happen when he was on it is he would, his face would get really big. It was like, he would blow up, like swell up, maintain a lot of water and inflammation. And that's what it looks like when I'm looking at Putin.

• 1:37:33Lex Fridman?

  So actually, like if you're sitting with him, one question is about health. That's, has, has, has Biden been asked that kind of question? No, like without mockery?

• 1:37:43Joe Rogan?

  He would have to go on Fox News. Like, the mainstream media treats him with kid gloves in a way that I've never seen. I mean, it's, it's so obvious. There's something horribly wrong with his cognitive function.

• 1:37:56Lex Fridman?

  Well, I, I, to push back, I don't know if it's horribly wrong.

• 1:38:00Joe Rogan?

  You don't think it's horribly wrong?

• 1:38:01Lex Fridman?

  I think it's, no, I think there's uncertainty to which degree is wrong. I, I would love there to be a serious, like, conversation about it with him. In fact, I, I actually have to now look, because of course Fox News will mock his, like, decrease, declining.

• 1:38:18Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:38:18Lex Fridman?

  Mental health. And then I would love, like, sort of an objective discussion. Are you aware of this? Are you, like, what are you putting in place? Are you yourself? Because if I was a, a, a person with a declining mental abilities, like, you have to start, you have to start thinking about that kind of stuff. Like, who is around you? Who are the advisors? What if you start, stop being able to see the world clearly?

• 1:38:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:44Lex Fridman?

  I would be transparent about that kind of stuff.

• 1:38:47Joe Rogan?

  Well, you would be, but you're also would never be a politician.

• 1:38:50Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:50Joe Rogan?

  Because you're too fucking honest.

• 1:38:52Lex Fridman?

  Well, yeah, but actually, from a conversation perspective, it would be nice if that kind of discussion was had.

• 1:38:58Joe Rogan?

  It would be, but all jokes aside, with Putin, I would ask questions about.

• 1:39:06Joe Rogan?

  Democracy versus what they have. I mean, without, without any disparaging descriptions of what is going on over in Russia. It's clearly not a democracy. It's they, I mean, the way he has it set up, the elections are a joke. He's

• 1:39:28Lex Fridman?

  So he would push back, that's not clearly not a democracy. He is still very popular. So majority of people are huge supporters of Putin inside Russia. The he would, the, the people that push back against that would say that that's because any serious opposition is pushed out of the country.

• 1:39:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Lex Fridman?

  So his competition.

• 1:39:45Joe Rogan?

  And murdered.

• 1:39:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:47Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:47Lex Fridman?

  But yes, that's a really, really good question.

• 1:39:49Joe Rogan?

  The, the value of dictatorships. One of the things about the United States that's fascinating to me is that every four years, unless it's, uh, it's four to eight years, right? Someone does two terms, but every four years, there's an opportunity for someone to be new and completely inexperienced at the most difficult job in the world. Which is ridiculous.

• 1:40:13Lex Fridman?

  So the, the interesting thing is it actually makes sense after eight years, you've gained the wisdom.

• 1:40:20Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:20Lex Fridman?

  You would actually be a pretty good leader to keep going.

• 1:40:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:23Lex Fridman?

  But there is some problem where you, the power gets, started getting to your head.

• 1:40:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:27Lex Fridman?

  And so like from Putin's perspective, I think he genuinely wants the best for Russia. I don't think he's lost his mind in terms of like, it's all about greed and so on. Uh, same as Stalin. I think Stalin, until the end of his days, wanted the best for the Soviet Union. So it's not like you become, Hitler, I think, lost his mind during the war. Like where it was like, he wasn't seeing clearly at all. What Putin believes is that he is actually the best person to bring out the best. For his country. Now, the problem is maybe refreshing the leader is in fact, in the long term, the best thing versus every leader believes they know what's best for the country. The whole point is to keep refreshing it.

• 1:41:10Joe Rogan?

  Well.

• 1:41:11Lex Fridman?

  And that's the case for democracy. That's the case for the system we have that creates a natural, maybe emergent, balance of power.

• 1:41:20Joe Rogan?

  I think it makes it evident that there is no clear cut, real right way to do it. And that if you had the perfect person in, having them for 12, 20 years would be amazing. If you had a perfect benevolent leader who clearly only cared about the people, was doing their best and striving hard and got great satisfaction in knowing that he is a dedicated civil servant that only wants to lead the country in a way that's going to benefit the most people in the most profound way. But we have a dirty political system. It's completely corrupted by money, completely corrupted by influence. The fact that, you

• 1:42:03Joe Rogan?

  know, the lobbyists, I mean, there's an area outside of Washington DC. It's one of the richest areas in the country and it's where the lobbyists live. There's so much money involved in being a lobbyist. There's so much money involved in special interest groups and how much of an impact they have on who gets elected and what decisions get made once that person gets elected. We know this, right? We know it's not for the people, by the people. It's just not what it is. I mean, this country is an experiment in self-government and if we could do it all over again, I would say the most important thing is to have laws in place to keep money out of politics and to make it a heinous crime for someone to

• 1:42:47Joe Rogan?

  influence laws and, and policy.

• 1:42:53Joe Rogan?

  Based entirely on the amount of profit it could generate for a party or for a company that is investing in a candidate. That's fucking incredibly dangerous and it's corrupt. And that corruption has been accepted. We've just accepted that it's this corruption exists, you know?

• 1:43:15Lex Fridman?

  Last question. If Putin asks to see this watch, what do I tell him? Would you give it? Would should I? Should I let him see it? Because we know what happens with a Super Bowl ring.

• 1:43:24Joe Rogan?

  I think a Super Bowl ring is unique. He could buy a watch like that. Pretty easy, you know?

• 1:43:31Lex Fridman?

  But this particular, isn't that a power move?

• 1:43:34Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:34Lex Fridman?

  So this is the watch you gave me.

• 1:43:36Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:43:36Lex Fridman?

  There's a story.

• 1:43:37Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:43:38Lex Fridman?

  I would probably share it with him. The story.

• 1:43:41Joe Rogan?

  And then maybe you go, look, can I see this watch?

• 1:43:44Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:44Joe Rogan?

  And then he puts it on and says, thank you.

• 1:43:46Lex Fridman?

  Do you say no?

• 1:43:47Joe Rogan?

  Uh, you go like this. Yeah, there it is, bro.

• 1:43:51Lex Fridman?

  Bro. I'm seeing so many words. I'm going to have to find translations. Buddy, bro. Um, I guess bro is brother.

• 1:43:57Joe Rogan?

  I mean, if he takes your watch, I'll buy you another one. If Putin steals it.

• 1:44:01Lex Fridman?

  Keep him going.

• 1:44:02Joe Rogan?

  I'll just, I'll just give you the same exact watch.

• 1:44:06Lex Fridman?

  Well, first of all, thank you for this.

• 1:44:07Joe Rogan?

  My pleasure, bro.

• 1:44:08Lex Fridman?

  I really wanted to talk to you because um, in a couple of days, I'm leaving to Ukraine and Russia and I hope I'll be back in one piece and drink whiskey with you once again.

• 1:44:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I hope so too. I'm nervous about you going over there. You know, I know journalists have been killed now. It's um.

• 1:44:29Lex Fridman?

  But they don't know jujitsu.

• 1:44:30Joe Rogan?

  Uh.

• 1:44:32Lex Fridman?

  No, I, I think you'll be, it'll be okay. And I think there's certain things you do in life that just kind of your heart pulls towards that so much.

• 1:44:39Joe Rogan?

  What's your objective over there?

• 1:44:41Lex Fridman?

  I'm not somebody who thinks about objectives clearly. It's just something about me says, uh, I need to go there. Uh, but the, to put in loose words is to.

• 1:44:53Lex Fridman?

  To try to understand what that world is now. So I remember what it was years ago when I was there. I know my family, I know the generations of family that was there on that land in Ukraine and in Russia. And the soul of the people, the love that's there, the beauty of the culture. And I want to see what it is today and what this war has created. Both the anger and the love in the people and just hear them out and just talk to them. No recordings, none of that, maybe a little here and there, but mostly just for me. And to see, I don't know, this sometimes it's just, it, something pulls you to a place.

• 1:45:34Lex Fridman?

  And I also, because I'm able to speak Russian and some Ukrainian, I do want to try to have these, a couple of the political leaders involved, talk to them. And I have all the right connections. Everybody has said yes. Of course, you don't know the likelihood it finally happens, but I want to at least have that possibility there. Sometimes you have to go to a place to really understand it. You can't just read about it. You can't just talk to the people that are living there. You have to be there. And I've never been in a war zone. I've never been in, in a land that's been damaged and wiped by the weapons of war.

• 1:46:16Lex Fridman?

  And I just want to feel that because so much of that land is, I remember, you know, I remember when everything was flourishing. Yes, corruption, all those kinds of things, but people were there and the culture was flourishing and people were happy. There was lots of struggle, but they were happy. And now people are extremely angry. There's hate in the air on all sides. I want to, I want to see that. I want to understand. Sometimes it just pulls you and you have to go. So it doesn't make any sense perhaps, but you just got to do it.

• 1:46:46Joe Rogan?

  What's the timeline?

• 1:46:48Lex Fridman?

  Of when I'm going?

• 1:46:49Joe Rogan?

  How long?

• 1:46:50Lex Fridman?

  Not one way. I don't have a plan.

• 1:46:53Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:46:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. So I'm hoping back in, in a month.

• 1:47:01Lex Fridman?

  But also not, just to clarify, I'm not somebody who seeks risk. And like, you're somebody who seems to be terrified of bears and sharks. So you don't, like, so why go swim out, why go surfing, why go swim out in the ocean? So I'm somebody that's the same, probably with sharks too. I'm not taking unnecessary risk, but certain things that just mean a lot to you, you take the risk. And so a little bit of risk, willing to take to, to, uh, to discover something about myself. Honestly, it's probably what it, what it all boils down to, try to understand myself. Cause so much of my, me is from that place.

• 1:47:42Lex Fridman?

  Well, this is the beautiful thing about America is it's like stitches together all these different cultures. Everybody came from somewhere else.

• 1:47:49Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:50Lex Fridman?

  And you try to understand, in order for me to be a good American, I need to understand who I was, where I came from. And that's, um, nothing reveals the spirit of a people better than war. It's like, there's something about this conflict that's really, uh, cuts all the bullshit. This is who we are. This is who we are as a people. So I want to, I want to see it. I want to understand. And I, like I said, want to come back, drink some whiskey with you.

• 1:48:24Joe Rogan?

  All right. Well, I hope that happens. I really do. And I hope you're safe over there and I hope you come back with whatever insight you're, you're trying to achieve.

• 1:48:35Lex Fridman?

  Thank you for doing this conversation.

• 1:48:36Joe Rogan?

  My pleasure, brother.

• 1:48:36Lex Fridman?

  Thank you for everything you, you've done for me, for the support, for the love and everybody around you. Thank you for everything you're doing for everybody around you, for, for giving, for giving, for giving back, but for just giving and being kind to everybody. I love you, brother.

• 1:48:50Joe Rogan?

  I love you too. Thank you.

• 1:48:52Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Joe Rogan. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with one of Joe's and one of my favorite quotes from Miyamoto Musashi. "Once you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.