#127 – Joe Rogan: Conversations, Ideas, Love, Freedom & The Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan is a comedian, UFC commentator, and the host of the Joe Rogan Experience. Please check out our sponsors to get a discount and to support this podcast: – Neuro: https://www.getneuro.com and use code LEX – Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/lex and use code LEX – Dollar Shave Club: https://dollarshaveclub.com/lex Episode Links: Joe’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joerogan Joe’s Twitter: http://twitter.com/joerogan JRE (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk JRE (Apple): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-joe-rogan-experience/id360084272 JRE (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQUP1qoWDoEbmsQxvdjxgQ If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/podcast or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter https://twitter.com/lexfridman, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman/, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman, Medium https://medium.com/@lexfridman, or YouTube https://www.youtube.com/lexfridman where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1434243584, follow on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc6GTFvKFPXnkCL, or support it on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman. Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 – Introduction 05:17 – Fear of mortality 06:48 – Chaos of 2020 and beyond 10:32 – Are we going to be okay? 19:30 – Violence, competition, and Sober October 26:45 – Mike Tyson 27:49 – Managing obsession 30:13 – Jiu jitsu game 35:55 – Best martial art for self defense 39:30 – Guns 43:59 – Memorable JRE moments 49:31 – Ideas breed in brains of humans 56:08 – Advice for Lex 1:06:09 – Long-form conversation 1:12:28 – Meaning of life

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 that we recorded after my recent appearance on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Joe has been an inspiration to me and I thank to millions of people for just being somebody who puts love out there in the world and being genuinely curious about wild ideas from chimps and psychedelics to quantum mechanics and artificial intelligence. Like many of you, I've been a fan of his podcast for over a decade and now somehow miraculously am humbled to be able to call him a friend. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,

• 0:42Lex Fridman?

  follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Fridman. Today's sponsors are Neuro, Eight Sleep, Dollar Shave Club, and Olive Garden, home of the unlimited breadsticks and Brian Redband's favorite restaurant. Check out the first three of the sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but I give you timestamps so you can skip. But still, please do check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. This show is sponsored by Neuro, a company that makes functional gum and mints that

• 1:26Lex Fridman?

  supercharge your mind with a sugar-free blend of caffeine, L-theanine, and B6, B12 vitamins. It's loved by Olympians and engineers alike. I personally love the mint gum. It helps me focus during times when I can use a boost. My favorite use case is to chew it for like 10 minutes at the start of a deep work session, standing behind a desk, typing frantically, and build up a kind of urgent energy around the task to get the ball rolling, which I think the first few minutes of a deep work session is actually the hardest, most difficult part. By the way, Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, a book I highly recommend, will

• 2:07Lex Fridman?

  eventually be on this podcast. I talk to him often. He's a constant inspiration. He has his own podcast, too, on productivity called Deep Questions that you should definitely check out. Anyway, each piece of Neuro gum is about one half cup of coffee's worth of caffeine. And you may know that I love caffeine. I also just love coffee and tea. Makes me feel like home somehow. Anyway, Neuro is offering 15% off when you go to getneuro.com and use code Lex at checkout. Once again, that's getneuro.com and use code Lex. This show is also sponsored by Eight Sleep and its Pod Pro mattress. You can check out

• 2:49Lex Fridman?

  at asleep.com/lex to get $200 off. It controls temperature with an app and it's packed with sensors and can cool down to as low as 55 degrees on each side of the bed separately. Anecdotally, it's been a game changer for me. I'm generally the kind of person that's not about material possessions. I don't have many fancy things in my life. So this bed has been a kind of exciting addition into the mix. There's something about the combination of a cool bed surface with a warm blanket after a long day of focused work that is just something I look forward to. Sleep in general for me lately, I don't know if it's

• 3:30Lex Fridman?

  related to the bed or not, has been full of dreams. So I've been exploring the universe, not constrained by the physics of reality, quite a bit. Maybe it's the bed. You should try it out and see. I should mention that they can track a bunch of metrics like heart rate variability, but cooling alone honestly is worth the money. Anyway, go to asleep.com/lex to get $200 off and to support this podcast. This show is also sponsored by Dollar Shave Club. Try them out with a one-time offer for only $5 and free shipping at dollarshaveclub.com/lex. The starter kit comes with a six-blade razor, refills, and all kinds of other stuff that makes shaving feel great. I've been

• 4:15Lex Fridman?

  a member of Dollar Shave Club for over five years and actually signed up when I first heard about them on the Joe Rogan Experience. And now we've come full circle, friends. I'm interviewing Joe on this podcast and monetizing it by doing a read for Dollar Shave Club. It feels kind of surreal, to be honest, to be doing a read for them, just like Joe did all those years ago. For the past few years, I just used the razor and the refills, but they encouraged me to try the shave butter, which I did, and I love it. Again, try the Ultimate Shave Starter Set today for just $5 plus free shipping at DollarShaveClub.com/Lex. And now, here's my conversation with Joe Rogan.

• 5:17Lex Fridman?

  Do you ponder your mortality? Are you afraid of death?

• 5:21Joe Rogan?

  I do think about it sometimes. I mean, it does pop into my head sometimes, just the fact that, I mean, I'm 53, so if everything goes great, I have less than 50 years left. You know, if everything goes great, like, no car accidents, no injuries.

• 5:39Lex Fridman?

  But it could happen today. This could be your last day.

• 5:41Joe Rogan?

  Could be.

• 5:42Lex Fridman?

  That's kind of a stoic thing to meditate on death. There's a bunch of philosophers, Ernest Becker and Sheldon Solomon, they believe that death is at the core of everything. Wrote this book, Warm at the Core. So, does that come into play in the way you see the world?

• 6:01Joe Rogan?

  I think having a sense of urgency is very beneficial, and understanding that your time is limited can aid you greatly. I think knowing that this is a temporary time, that we have finite lifespans, I think there's great power in that, because it motivates you, it gets you going. I think being an immortal, living forever, would be one of the most depressing things, particularly if everybody else was dying around you. And I think one of the things that makes life so interesting and fascinating is that it doesn't last, you know, that you really get a brief amount of time here, and really by the time, you're just starting to kind of figure yourself out, who you are, and how

• 6:44Joe Rogan?

  not to screw things up so bad. Like, time's up.

• 6:47Lex Fridman?

  The ride's over. What about from your, like, from your daughter's perspective? Do you think about the world we're in now, and what kind of world you're gonna leave them?

• 6:59Joe Rogan?

  I do.

• 6:59Lex Fridman?

  And do you worry about it?

• 7:00Joe Rogan?

  I do. Yeah, I do. I do when I see these protests and riots and chaos and so much, so much anger in the world today. And then particularly today, I think because of the pandemic and the fact that so many folks are out of work and through no fault of their own and can't make ends meet and these people feel so helpless and angry, it's a particularly divisive time. It's a particularly turmoil-filled time. And it just doesn't seem like the world of a year ago even, it feels very chaotic and dangerous. And it's a small thing, like in

• 7:43Joe Rogan?

  terms of the possibilities of things that could happen to the world, like a pandemic, the one we've experienced, it really just doubles the amount of deaths on a bad flu year. Relatively speaking, is a small thing in comparison to supervolcano eruptions, asteroid impact, a real horrific pandemic, or one that, you know, really wipes out millions and millions of people. It's stunning how fragile civility is. It's stunning how fragile our society really is, that something like this can come along, some unprecedented thing can come along and all of a sudden, everybody's out of work for six months. And then everybody's

• 8:26Joe Rogan?

  at each other's throats. And then politically, everyone's at each other's throats. And then with the advent of social media and the images that you can see, you know, with the videos of police abuse and just racial tensions are at an all-time high. To a point where, like, if you asked me just five or six years ago, like, have racial problems in this country largely been alleviated? I'd probably say, yeah, it's way better than it's ever been before. But now you could argue that it's not. Now you could argue, no, it's way worse in just a small amount of time. It's way worse than it's ever been during my lifetime, while I'm aware of it. You know, obviously, when I was a young boy in the 60s, they were

• 9:08Joe Rogan?

  still going through the civil rights movement. But now, it just seems very fever-pitched. And I think a lot of that is because of the pandemic and is because of all the heightened just tension. The one I liken it to is...

• 9:25Joe Rogan?

  Um, Pete, you road rage, because you know, people have road rage, not just because they're in the car and no one can get to them, but also because you're at a heightened state because you're driving fast and you know, you're driving fast, you know, you have to make split second movements. And so anybody doing something like what the people go crazy because they're, they're already at an eight because they're in the car and they're moving very quickly. That's what it feels like with today with the pandemic feels like everybody is already at an eight. So anything that comes along, it's like light it all on fire, you know, burn it down. Like that's part of what I think is part of the reason for a lot of the looting and the riots and all the chaos. It's not just the people that are work, but it's also

• 10:05Joe Rogan?

  that everyone feels so tense already and everyone feels so helpless. And it's like, you know, doing something like that makes people, uh, it just, it gives people a, a whole new motivation for chaos, a whole new motivation for, for doing destructive things that I'm, I'm never experienced in my life.

• 10:31Lex Fridman?

  And your better days, when you see a positive future, what, what do you think is the way out of this chaos of 2020? Like if you visualize a 2025, that's a better world than today. What is that? How do we get there? And what does that look like?

• 10:46Joe Rogan?

  It's a good question. I, I, I can honestly say I don't know. And I wouldn't have said I don't know a year ago, a year ago, I would have said, we're going to be okay. As much as people hate Trump, the economy is doing great. I think we're going to be fine. That's not how I feel today. Today, uh, I don't think there's a, a clear solution politically because I think if Trump wins, people are going to be furious. And I think if Biden wins, people are going to be furious. Um, particularly like if things get more woke, you know, if people, uh, continue to enforce this, uh, forced compliance and make people behave a certain way and act a certain way, which seems to be a part of what this whole

• 11:29Joe Rogan?

  woke thing is, that is the most disturbing for me is that I see what's going on. I see there's a lot of losers that have hopped on this and they, they shove it in people's faces and it doesn't have to make sense. Like there was a Black Lives Matter protest that stopped this woman. At a restaurant, they were surrounding her outside a restaurant. They were forcing her to raise her fist in compliance. This is a woman who's marched for Black Lives multiple times, Black Lives Matter multiple times. And the people all around her doing this were all white.

• 11:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 11:59Joe Rogan?

  It's all, it's all weird. My friend Coach T, he's a wrestling coach, is also on a podcast, my friend Brian Moses. His, his take on it is that black, and he's a black guy. He says, Black Lives Matter is a white cult. And I'm like, when you see that picture, it's hard to argue that he's got a point. I mean, it's clearly not all about that, but there's a lot of people that have jumped on board that are very much like cult members. Because the thing about Black Lives Matter or any movement is you can't control who joins. There's no entrance examination. So you don't go, okay, how do you feel about this? What's your perceptions on that? Like, what do you, how, you're like the, the man who shot the Trump supporter in Portland? You know, that guy who murdered the Trump supporter, then the cops shot him?

• 12:45Joe Rogan?

  That guy was walking around with his hand on his gun, looking for Trump supporters.

• 12:50Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 12:51Joe Rogan?

  Just want, I mean, he's a known violent guy who was walking around looking for Trump supporters, found one and shot one. That has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter. He's a white guy, he shot another white guy. It's just, it's just madness. You know, and that, that kind of madness is, uh, it's disturbing to see it ramp up so quickly. I mean, there's been, there's been riots in Portland every night. Oh, excuse me, demonstrations for a hundred and one days now. Hundred and one days in a row of them lighting things on fire, breaking into federal buildings. It's like, whoever saw that coming? Nobody saw that coming. So I don't know what the solution is. And I don't know what it looks like in five years. So 2025, to answer your question, like, it could be anything.

• 13:36Joe Rogan?

  I mean, we, we could be looking at Mad Max. We could be looking at the, the apocalypse. We could, we could also be looking at an invasion from another country. We could be looking at a war, like a real hot war.

• 13:48Lex Fridman?

  To put a little bit of responsibility on you, like for me, I've listened to you since the Red Band Olive Garden days, the very beginning. And there was something in the way you communicated about the world, maybe there was others, but you're the one I was aware of, is you're open minded and like loving towards the world, especially as the podcast developed. Like you just demonstrated and lived this kind of just kindness, or maybe even like lack of jealousy in your own little profession of comedy. It was clear that you didn't, you didn't succumb to the weaker aspects of human nature and thereby inspire like people like me, who I was, I was naturally, probably especially in like the twenties, early twenties,

• 14:33Lex Fridman?

  kind of jealous on the success of others. And you're really the primary person that taught me to truly celebrate the success of others. And so by way of question, you kind of have a role in this of making a better 2025. You have such a big megaphone. Is there something you think you can do on this podcast with the words, the way you talk, the, the things you discuss that could create a better 2025?

• 15:03Joe Rogan?

  I think if anything, I could help in leading by example, but you know, that's only going to help the people that are listening. I don't know what else I can do in terms of like make the world a better place, other than express my hopes and wishes for that, and just try to be as nice as I can to people as often as I can. But I also think that I've fallen into this weird category, particularly with the Spotify deal, where, um, you know, I'm one of them now. I'm not a regular person anymore. Now I'm like some- Famous rich guy.

• 15:42Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Joe Rogan?

  So you go from being a regular person to a famous rich guy that's out of touch. You know, and that that's a real issue whenever you're talking about the economy, about just real life problems.

• 15:54Lex Fridman?

  It's it's interesting. It kind of hurts my heart to hear people say about Elon Musk. He's just a billionaire.

• 15:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:00Lex Fridman?

  It's an interesting statement, but I think if you just continue being you and he continue being him, people, people, I think people are just voicing their worry that you become some rich guy.

• 16:13Joe Rogan?

  I don't even know if they're doing that. I think they're just finding the way he describes it, an attack vector.

• 16:20Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 16:20Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and I think he's right. I think they just they can dismiss you by just saying, oh, you're you're just a that. You know, you're a, you know, you're easily definable.

• 16:32Lex Fridman?

  Right. But there, I mean, there's truth to that. You if you're not careful, you can become out of touch. But you, that that's an interesting thing. Like, how, why haven't you become out of touch? Like, as a human off the podcast, you you don't act like a, like you, you talk to somebody like me, you don't talk like a famous person, or you you don't, you don't act rich.

• 16:56Lex Fridman?

  Like, you're better than others. There's a certain, listen, I've talked to quite a few. You have too, but I've talked to especially kind of group of people that are like Nobel Prize winners, let's say. They have sometimes have an air to them that's of arrogance.

• 17:10Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:11Lex Fridman?

  And you don't. What's that about?

• 17:13Joe Rogan?

  Well, you gotta know what that is, right? Like, that air of arrogance comes from drinking your own Kool-Aid. You you start believing that somehow or another, just because you're getting praise from all these people, that you really are something different. Usually, it it exemplifies, there's there's something there, there's where there's a lack of struggle, you know? And I think struggle is.

• 17:41Joe Rogan?

  Probably one of the most important balancing tools that a person can have. And for me, I struggle mentally and I struggle physically. I struggle mentally in that I like, we were talking about on the podcast we did previously. You and I on my podcast said, I'm not a fan of my work. I'm not a fan of what I do. I'm my harshest critic. So anytime anybody says something bad about me, I'm like, listen. I said way worse about myself. I, you know, I don't like anything I do. I'm ruthlessly introspective and I will continue to be that way. Cause that's the only way you could be good as a comedian. There's no other way. You can't just think you're awesome and just go out there. You have to, you have to be like picking apart everything you do.

• 18:26Joe Rogan?

  But there's a balance to that too. Cause you have to have enough confidence to go out there and perform. You can't think, oh my God, I suck. I know what I'm doing, but I know what I'm doing because I put in all that work. And one of the reasons why I put in all that work is I don't like the, I don't like the end result most of the time. So I need to work at it all the time. And then there's physical struggle, which I think balances everything out. Without physical struggle, I, I've, I always make the analogy that the body is in a lot of ways like a battery. Where if you have extra charge, it's like it leaks out of the top and it becomes unmanageable and messy. And that's how my psyche is. If, if I, if I have too much energy, if I'm not, if I'm not exerting myself in a violent way,

• 19:10Joe Rogan?

  like an explosive way, like wearing myself out. I just don't like the way the world is. I don't like the way I interface with the world. I'm too tense. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm too quick to be upset about things. I'm too, but when I work out hard and you know, I put in a brutal training session, everything's fine.

• 19:30Lex Fridman?

  Well, the first time I talked to you on Jerry, you were doing October.

• 19:37Joe Rogan?

  Sober October.

• 19:38Lex Fridman?

  Sober October. And there's something in your eyes, like I think you've talked about that you, you know, you exercise the demons out essentially. So you exercise to get whatever the parts of you that you don't like out. There is a dark, there's a darkness in you there, like the, the competitiveness and the focus of that person.

• 19:58Joe Rogan?

  That was a scary time in a lot of ways, that sober October thing. Cause uh, My friends, we're all talking shit, right? Because we're competing against each other in these fitness challenges. And you had one point for, like, you got a certain amount of points for each minute that you went at eighty percent of your max heart rate. And one day I got eleven hundred points. So I did seven hours on an elliptical machine, watching the bathhouse scene from John Wick, where he murders all those people in the bath. I watched it probably fifty times in a row. I went crazy. I went crazy, but I went crazy in a weird way where it brought me back to my, um, my fighting days. It was like the same, that person came out again. It was like, well, I didn't even know he was in there.

• 20:44Joe Rogan?

  It's like they're like, like, like an assassin, like a killer. Like, I felt, I felt like, I felt like a, like a different person.

• 20:55Lex Fridman?

  Is it echoes of like what Mike Tyson talked about essentially, like the?

• 20:59Joe Rogan?

  Maybe, but no orgasming or notions.

• 21:03Joe Rogan?

  All the crazy shit that he was saying.

• 21:04Lex Fridman?

  Is there, is there that, is there a violent person in there?

• 21:07Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of violence in me for sure. I don't know if it's genetic or learned or it's because during my formative years, from the time I was fifteen till I was twenty-two, all I did was fight. That was all I did. That was all I did. All I did was train and compete. That's all I did. That was my whole life.

• 21:26Lex Fridman?

  Is it connected to, um, so you, uh, your, your mom and dad broke up early on. Is it connected to the dad at all?

• 21:34Joe Rogan?

  I, I'm sure it's connected to him also because he was violent and it made me feel very scared to be around him. But I also think, um, it's connected in who he was as a human is transferred into my DNA. You know, I think there's a certain amount of, I mean,

• 21:52Joe Rogan?

  I mean, to be prejudiced against myself, I look like a violent person. You know, if I didn't know me, I'm just even the way I'm built, not even just the working out part, just the size of my hands and like, there's the width of my shoulders. Like, there's most likely a lot of violence in my history, in my past, in my ancestry. And I think, um, I think we minimize that with people. So much of your behavior, like I, when I see my daughter, I have a one daughter that's obsessive. In terms of like, she wants to get really good at things like could she, and she'll practice things all day long. And, and it's 100% my personality. Like she's me in a female form.

• 22:33Joe Rogan?

  But without the anger as much and without the fear, like she has, you know, loving household and everything like that. But she has this intense obsession with doing things and doing things really well and getting better. With the point, we have to tell her, stop, like, stop doing handsprings in the house. Stop, stop, come on, just sit down, have dinner. Like one more, one more, like she's just like, she's like, she's psycho. And I think there's a lot of

• 23:03Joe Rogan?

  behavior and personality and a lot of these things are passed down through genetics. We don't really know, right? We don't know how much of who you are genetically is learned behavior. You know, nature or nurture, we don't know if it's learned behavior. Or whether or not it's something that's intrinsically a part of you because of, you know, who your parents were. I think there's, there's certainly some genetic violence in me.

• 23:30Lex Fridman?

  And then you channeled it. So you figured out is basically your life is a productive exploration of how to channel that.

• 23:37Joe Rogan?

  Yes, try how to figure out how to get, get that monkey to sit down and calm down. There's another person in there, like there's a calm, rational, kind, friendly person who just wants to laugh and have fun. And then there's that dude who comes out when I did Sober October. That guy's scary. I don't like that guy. That guy just wants to get up in the morning and go, you know, it's like, it's. I mean, when I was competing, it was necessary. But it makes me remember. I didn't really remember what I used to be like until that. It's like when I'm working out seven hours a day and just so obsessed. And all I was thinking about was winning. That's all I was thinking about.

• 24:20Joe Rogan?

  Like if they were, if they were working out five hours a day, I wanted, I wanted them to know that I was going to work out an extra three hours. And I was going to get up early and I was going to text them all, hey pussies, I'm up already. Take pictures, send selfies. You know, I was like, you're gonna die. Or I kept telling them, you're all gonna die. You try to keep up with me, you're gonna die.

• 24:38Lex Fridman?

  You weren't fully joking.

• 24:40Joe Rogan?

  No, I wasn't joking at all. That's what was fucked up about it.

• 24:43Lex Fridman?

  The scary thing when I interacted with Goggins and what I saw in you during that time is like, this guy, like, like, this is why I've been avoiding David Goggins recently.

• 24:57Lex Fridman?

  Is like, because he wants to meet, he wants to do, like, talk on this podcast, but he also wants to run an ultra marathon with me. And I felt like this is a person, if I spend any time in this realm, if I spend any time with a Joe Rogan of that sober October, like, I might have to die to get out. Like, there's this kind of, uh...

• 25:16Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, there's a competitive aspect that's super unhealthy. I mean, you saw the video that we watched earlier today of Goggins draining his knee. That would stop me from running ever again, because I would think in my head, okay, I'm gonna ruin my cartilage. I'm gonna need a knee replacement. I would start thinking, I would go down that line. But he is perpetually in this push-it mindset. You know, what he calls the dog in him, you know, he's got, that dog is in him all day long and he feeds that dog. You know, and that's, um, that's who he is. That's one of the reasons why he's so inspirational. And he's fuel for millions and millions of people. I mean, he really is. He motivates people in a way that is so powerful. But it can be very destructive.

• 25:58Joe Rogan?

  I just, I know, I know now, especially after the sober October thing, that that thing's still in me. You know, I didn't know. So I really haven't done anything physically competitive. Except one time I was supposed to fight Wesley Snipes. It came out then too. That came out too. That got creepy too. But luckily that never happened. But that was many months of training, like training twice a day, every day. Kickboxing in the morning, jujitsu at night. I was just going, going and going and going. And I was just thinking just all day long. And it, but it, but it fucks with all the other aspects of your life. Fucks with your friendships, fucks with your, your, it fucks with my comedy, fucks with everything. Because that mindset is not a mindset of an artist.

• 26:42Joe Rogan?

  It's a mindset of a conqueror.

• 26:44Lex Fridman?

  A conqueror.

• 26:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Lex Fridman?

  Destroyer. That's why it's so interesting to see Mike Tyson make the switch. It's clear that like, whatever that is, however that fight goes, he made us, there's a switch of a diff, he stepped into a different dimension.

• 26:56Joe Rogan?

  Roy Jones Jr. is coming on my podcast soon. And, uh, you know, Roy's gonna be on, uh, before the fight. I'm, I'm so curious to see how it goes down, but genuinely concerned. Cause Mike Tyson is a heavyweight and Roy Jones at his best was 168 pounds. And, um,

• 27:14Lex Fridman?

  I don't know if Roy has that room in his house, mental house of where Mike Tyson goes.

• 27:19Joe Rogan?

  I don't know. I don't know if he has that room. Mike, Mike doesn't have a room. He's, he's got an empire in there. He opens up the door. He's opens up the door. There's, there's a whole empire in his head and he's, he's in that firmly. You know, when he got out of the weed and, and started training again, like you could see it in him. And by the way, physically in, in person, he looks spectacular. He looks like a fucking Adonis. I mean, he looks ready to go. It's crazy.

• 27:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I watch videos of him. What about you, uh, have you ever considered competing in jujitsu?

• 27:52Joe Rogan?

  No, for that very reason, I don't want to get obsessed. That's my, my number one concern. I had to quit video games.

• 27:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Joe Rogan?

  When we were playing video games at the studio, I had to quit because I was playing five hours a day, like out of nowhere. All of a sudden I was playing five hours a day. I was coming home late for dinner. I was ending podcasts early and jumping on the video games and playing. I get obsessed with things and I have to recognize what that is. And these competitive things, like competitive, especially like really exciting competitive things like video games. They're very dangerous for me. The ultimate competitive video game is like jujitsu. And if I was young, I most certainly would have done it if I didn't have like a very clear career path. It was something that I enjoyed. My concern would be that I would become a professional jujitsu fighter when I was young. And then I would not have the energy to do stand up and do all the other things that I wound up doing as a career.

• 28:44Joe Rogan?

  When I was 21, I quit my job teaching. I was teaching at Boston University. I was teaching Taekwondo there. And I knew, and I also had my own school in Revere. I knew I couldn't do it right. And also be doing stand up comedy. I knew I couldn't do both of those things. There was no way.

• 29:04Lex Fridman?

  You have to be cognizant of that obsessive force within you to make sure.

• 29:09Joe Rogan?

  Yes. I'd have to know how to manage my mental illness.

• 29:12Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 29:13Joe Rogan?

  That's, that's a very particular mental illness. And I think that mental illness, again, my formative years from 15 till I was, you know, 21 ish, 22, those, those years were spent constantly obsessed with martial arts. That was my whole day. I mean, I trained almost every day. The only time I would not train is if I was either injured or if I was exhausted, if I needed a day off, but I was obsessed. And so that part of my personality that I haven't nurtured is always going to be there under the surface. And when it gets reignited by something, it's very weird. It's a weird feeling. And

• 29:53Joe Rogan?

  it can get reignited with a video game. It can get reignited with anything. That obsessive, that, you know, whatever it is, that competitive demon.

• 30:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. The way you talk about guitar, I know you would love, fall in love with playing guitar, but I think you're very wise to not touch that thing.

• 30:08Joe Rogan?

  That's why I want golf. I have friends who want to golf. I'm like, I don't fucking with that thing.

• 30:13Lex Fridman?

  So a lot of people ask me about, like, what's Joe Rogan's jujitsu game like? Like, like. Like assuming that I somehow spend hours rolling with you before and after. I mean, what's a good, you should at some point show a technique or something that'll be fun.

• 30:31Joe Rogan?

  Sure. I mean, I've got.

• 30:32Lex Fridman?

  What's your game? Oh, there I saw. I saw you doing a, I think, head and arm, uh, something online.

• 30:39Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I did. That was, I fucked my neck up doing head and arm chokes. I did them so much that I, I, you know, because you use your neck so much with head and arms chokes. I developed like a real kink in my neck and it turned out I had a bulging disc and, uh, you know.

• 30:55Lex Fridman?

  So you do it on that, just one side?

• 30:56Joe Rogan?

  Well, it was, uh, no, I could do it on the left side, but I definitely am better on the right side. The right side was my best side.

• 31:03Lex Fridman?

  So if you were to compete, let's say, like, what's your A game? What would you go from standing up? How would you go to submission? Would you pull guard? Would you take down? Well, how would you pass guard? What's?

• 31:15Joe Rogan?

  I don't have good takedowns. I was not a good wrestler, so I would most likely either pull guard or I would pull half guard.

• 31:22Lex Fridman?

  Do you have a good guard?

• 31:23Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 31:24Lex Fridman?

  Are you comfortable being on your butt on your back?

• 31:26Joe Rogan?

  Yes, I'm very flexible. So I have good, my rubber guard is pretty.

• 31:30Lex Fridman?

  You go to rubber.

• 31:31Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I have good arm bars and good triangles off my back, but, um, I also have a very good half guard, but my top game is my best. I have, I have a very strong top game.

• 31:42Lex Fridman?

  Do you have a half guard? Do you have, do you have a preference of like what kind of guard and how to pass that guard? And, uh, like, yeah, like, is there a specific game plan? Like, do you?

• 31:53Joe Rogan?

  Double underhooks from half guard is the game plan for me. If I can get double underhooks from half guard, I could sweep a lot of people.

• 32:00Lex Fridman?

  Underhooks of what? Sorry, the arms or the legs?

• 32:02Joe Rogan?

  So half guard lockdown, right? Half guard, go into lockdown, double underhooks.

• 32:07Lex Fridman?

  Got it.

• 32:08Joe Rogan?

  Clinch to the body, suck the body and tie.

• 32:10Lex Fridman?

  Pressure?

• 32:10Joe Rogan?

  And yeah, massive pressure and then inch my way into a position we call the dog fight. And inch my way to a position where I could get the person on their back.

• 32:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that's what, cause you did show me, I still disagree with you about the tie thing. Uh, that you can choke somebody with it. It's so wrong. It's so wrong.

• 32:28Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's not wrong with you. With you, it's wrong, cause you.

• 32:31Lex Fridman?

  No, I think there's a system. I've, I've, I've, I have this thing with Donna. How we're gonna figure it out. Okay. But, uh.

• 32:37Joe Rogan?

  Have a little Velcro on the back.

• 32:39Lex Fridman?

  See, that's you're just not

• 32:41Joe Rogan?

  Cheating?

• 32:41Lex Fridman?

  You're not, you're the, yeah, exactly. That's cheating.

• 32:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, you did. I did feel when you showed me, I think you showed me the rubber guard because it's still a guard. That's a little bit foreign to me. I just felt that you can immediately feel, not with the rubber guard, just, but the way you move your body is you're like a Shangji type of guy who knows how to control another human being. So like, some people are a little bit more, I would say agile and like playful and kind of

• 33:10Joe Rogan?

  Loose.

• 33:11Lex Fridman?

  Loose and they work on transition, transition, transition. You're a control guy. Like you know how to control position and advanced position. Donahue is the same way. He's all about control.

• 33:21Joe Rogan?

  My, my game is smush. That's my game. Smush you. Grab a hold of you. Once I have you, why would I let you go? That's my thought is like, why would I let you go? I just want to incrementally move to a better position until I can strangle you. But I'm much more into strangling people than anything else.

• 33:39Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, which is a great MMA

• 33:41Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 33:41Lex Fridman?

  approach for jiu jitsu.

• 33:44Joe Rogan?

  Well, too many people don't tap when you get their arms, you know, and it's not, I'm not opposed to arm bars. I love arm bars, but everybody goes to sleep.

• 33:53Lex Fridman?

  Yep. And, and quit from pressure too. I mean,

• 33:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Lex Fridman?

  quit mentally.

• 33:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 33:59Lex Fridman?

  There's nothing like

• 34:00Joe Rogan?

  You can't breathe. You know, if you got a guy who's like a really good top game guy and he mounts you, and I'm a big fan of mounting with my legs crossed, you know, like a guard, like a top guard. And so I can squeeze with both legs, smush. And I'm just, I'm just looking for people to make mistakes and slowly incrementally bettering my position until I can get something locked up. I love jiu jitsu though, man. I just wish it didn't injure you.

• 34:26Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 34:26Joe Rogan?

  You know, jiu jitsu is like, if your joints were more durable, they could figure out a way to make joints more durable. God, I could do jiu jitsu forever.

• 34:34Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 34:34Joe Rogan?

  So much fun.

• 34:36Lex Fridman?

  I actually, I talked to this roboticist, Russ Tetrick. He builds, one of the world-class people that builds humanoid robots. You're interested in Boston Dynamics.

• 34:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 34:44Lex Fridman?

  One of the key people in that kind of robotics. So I asked him the stupidest question of like, how far are we, we from having a robot be a UFC champion?

• 34:55Lex Fridman?

  And yeah, it's actually a really, really tough problem. It's, it's the same thing that, you know, makes somebody like Daniel Komi, it like on the wrestling side special because you have to understand the movement of the human body in ways that's so difficult to teach. It's so, it's so subtle, the timing, the pressure points, like the leverage, all those kinds of things. That's just for the clinch situation. And then the movement for the striking is very difficult. As long as you're not allowed as a robot to like use your natural abilities of having a lot more power.

• 35:27Joe Rogan?

  Right, a lot more power and then more durable.

• 35:29Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 35:30Joe Rogan?

  The human body, like especially meniscus, like, like you see the, the heel hook game, like everybody's involved in leg locks and heel hooks, like all those guys wind up with torched knees. Everyone's got torched knees. Everyone's knees are torn apart and you don't grow new meniscus. You know, that's like one of those joints where, man, when it goes, it's like, you know, those guys are 28 years old, have blown out knees.

• 35:54Lex Fridman?

  Let me ask the ridiculous question. What do you think, we're talking about cops, so what do you think is the best martial arts for self-defense?

• 36:01Joe Rogan?

  For sure jiu-jitsu. Yeah, for sure.

• 36:04Lex Fridman?

  Wrestling?

• 36:05Joe Rogan?

  I, I think grappling, I should say. What judo as well, especially in a cold climate, if you get someone who's got like a heavy winter jacket on, my God, like judo is an incredible martial art.

• 36:14Lex Fridman?

  Plus concrete.

• 36:15Joe Rogan?

  That's the worst place to be with a heavy winter jacket with a judo specialist and you're standing up with them. Oh my God. But I think grappling, because in most self-defense situations, it usually winds up with grappling. You're definitely better off though, knowing some striking, because there's nothing more terrifying than when you go to take someone down, they actually have takedown skills, but they can fight. And so they have takedown defense and they know how to fight and then you don't know how to stand up. Like the, the worst thing in the world is seeing someone like reaching who doesn't know how to do striking and someone cracks you.

• 36:48Lex Fridman?

  What about all that Krav Maga talk, which is like, you know, the whole line of argument that says that jiu-jitsu and wrestling and all of these sports, they fundamentally take you away from the nature of violence. So they're just teaching you how to play. Versus the reality of of violence that is involved in like a self-defense situation that is is a totally different set of skills would be needed.

• 37:15Joe Rogan?

  In general, the people that say that jujitsu or other martial arts don't, it's more of a sport and they don't really understand and they don't really understand violence. In general, the people that say that suck.

• 37:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 37:31Joe Rogan?

  Anybody who thinks like someone's like, you know, hey, man, I'll just bite you. I'm like, are you gonna bite me? Okay. Do you think I'm gonna bite you too? What do you think of that? What if I punch you in your fucking face? You think you're still gonna bite me? When you can't even see?

• 37:44Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 37:45Joe Rogan?

  When you're you barely even know you're alive and I choke you unconscious? If someone's really good at jujitsu, good luck stabbing them with your keys. You know, you don't have a chance. You don't have a chance. If someone's much better than you and they trip you and get you on your back and then they fucking elbow you in your face and then get a head and arm choke on you, all that Krav Maga shit's out the window, son. You're way better off learning what works on trained killers. Like this whole idea that you're gonna poke someone in the eye and then you're gonna kick them in the nuts and like you're you're going through these drills that yeah, it's good to know what to do if you run into someone who doesn't know how to fight. It's way better to know what to do to someone who knows how to fight. That's the best thing.

• 38:27Joe Rogan?

  Learn how to fight against people who know how to fight. Like all that practice self-defense and they go like it's gonna come at you with a knife, you're gonna grab the wrist and do that. Look, it's good to know self-defense. But it's much more important to understand martial arts comprehensively. When you understand martial arts comprehensively, like there's no Krav, I shouldn't say there's no Krav Maga guys, but it's it would be shocking if a Krav Maga guy and a mixed martial arts guy had a fight and the mixed martial arts guy who's a trained killer all around didn't fuck that guy up. That's that's what I would expect would happen. I would I would I would not think that some guy who has a little bit of this and a little

• 39:11Joe Rogan?

  bit of that and prepares for the streets is gonna be able to handle a person who trains with killers on a day-to-day basis, who rolls with jujitsu black belts, who trains with Muay Thai champions, like. The best martial arts are the martial arts that work on martial artists, not the martial arts that work on untrained people.

• 39:30Lex Fridman?

  What about, we're in Texas now, what about guns?

• 39:33Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's the best martial art.

• 39:34Lex Fridman?

  No, but would you, like, in this crazy time, should people carry guns?

• 39:40Joe Rogan?

  It's not a bad idea to have a gun, because if you need a gun, you have a gun. And if you don't need a gun, if you're a person with self-control, you're not gonna use it. You're not gonna just randomly use it, but you have something to protect you. This is the whole idea of the Second Amendment. The whole idea of the Second Amendment gets distorted by mass shootings, or by terrible people who murder people and do terrible things. But it's, that, all those things are real, but they don't take away from the fundamental efficacy of having a firearm and defending your family or defending your life. And there are real live situations where people have had firearms, and it's protected them, or their loved ones, or they've stopped shooters.

• 40:23Joe Rogan?

  There's many of these stories, but people don't like those stories, because then it tends to lead to this gun culture argument, this pro-gun culture argument, that people find very uncomfortable. It's, it's, human beings are messy. And we're messy in so many different ways, right? We're messy emotionally, we're messy physically, but we're also messy in what's good or bad. What's, we want things to be binary. We want things to be right or wrong, you know, one or zero. And they're not. But, but there is crime in the world. There is violence in the world. And you're better off knowing how to fight, and you're betting, better off knowing how to defend yourself, and you're better off having a gun.

• 41:03Lex Fridman?

  I generally think that guns, I do like the idea that guns, Second Amendment helps protect the First Amendment. There's a kind of sense that makes, puts me at ease, knowing that so many people in this country have guns, that, I mean, Alex Jones, I just listened to one episode of Infowars for the first time. Boy, he reminds me, like, when I drank some tequila, I felt like I'm going to some dark places today. That's how I feel like, listening to him. But he talks about, like, that it's, he worries about martial law.

• 41:38Lex Fridman?

  So basically government overreach by which happened throughout history like there's there's something to worry about there but it's it puts me at ease knowing that so much of the population has guns that people government would think twice before instituting martial law in cities but I actually was asking almost like on the individual level I maybe shouldn't say this but I don't yet own a gun and I felt that if I carry a gun statistically just for me as a human knowing my psychology I feel like I'm more likely to die like I feel like I would put myself in situations that I shouldn't like the way

• 42:18Lex Fridman?

  I I will see the world will change because my natural feeling is like when somebody when I was in Philly and I knew late at night in West Philly when some guy looks at you you can immediately calculate that this is dangerous human being there it starts with a monkey look at first like I'm a bigger monkey than you and that's where I found like for example I'll do the beta thing of just looking down and turning away and just getting out of trouble like very politely and basically that kind of approach because if you have a in terms of getting out of serious violent situations like serious something

• 42:58Lex Fridman?

  where you could die versus if I had a gun I feel like I would want to be that that would be that cowboy monkey thing where I would want to put myself in situations where I'm a little bit of a savior even of myself and almost create danger which can no longer like the escalation of which I can no longer control.

• 43:20Joe Rogan?

  Well, you're talking about taking a gun somewhere versus having a gun in your home.

• 43:24Lex Fridman?

  Yes, yes, I mean carry on me.

• 43:25Joe Rogan?

  That's a different situation and much harder to get a warrant for or a license for that you know control concealed carry licenses especially in Massachusetts they don't come easy.

• 43:36Lex Fridman?

  Well, Massa- yeah, that's a whole nother thing.

• 43:37Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Lex Fridman?

  But you're saying gun in the home.

• 43:39Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, gun in the home having a gun having knowing how to use a gun like I know how to use a gun I've trained you know many hours learning how to shoot a gun at tactical places you know there's a bunch of videos of me doing it on Instagram I I practice and I think it's good to to understand how to be accurate.

• 43:59Lex Fridman?

  So I've been a fan of your podcast for a long time. You don't often talk about it because you're always kind of looking forward. But if you look at the old studio that you just left, is there some epic memories that stand out to you that like you almost look back, I can't believe this happened?

• 44:17Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah. Almost too many of them to count.

• 44:20Lex Fridman?

  Is there something that pops into mind now?

• 44:22Joe Rogan?

  All of them. Elon Musk blowing that flamethrower in the middle of the hallway. I got a video of that. Have you ever seen the video of it?

• 44:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I think you posted on Instagram.

• 44:30Joe Rogan?

  I think I did, too. Yeah, he's a madman. Having Bernie Sanders in there, you know, just all the fun Fight Companions we did and all the crazy podcasts with Joey Diaz and Duncan Trussell. And there were so many. There were so many moments, you know, it's podcasts, this is a weird art form and it almost seems like, it sounds silly, but it almost seems like something that chose me rather than I chose it. I think of that all the time in some strange way. It's like I'm showing up as like an antenna and I just plug in and twist, twist on. And then I take in the thing and I put it together and I'm like a passenger of this weird ride.

• 45:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, you've talked about this before. I really like this idea of that human beings are just carriers of these ideas.

• 45:21Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:21Lex Fridman?

  Ideas are the ones who are breeding.

• 45:23Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:23Lex Fridman?

  So in a sense, like the idea found you as a useful brain to use to spread itself through the podcasting medium.

• 45:30Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Lex Fridman?

  Something that's on the, but because when I think about your podcast, I think about Joey Diaz. I think about all those comedians you've had. I mean, I think you've had Joey on, I mean, maybe close to 50 times, 60, some crazy number. Is there, I mean, he is over the top offensive. Just that's who he is to the core. Is there some sense where you?

• 45:59Lex Fridman?

  You wondered like whether it's right to have the Spotify episode number one with Duncan Trussell for five hours.

• 46:08Joe Rogan?

  No. I wanted to do it that way. That's why we wore NASA suits and we got high as fuck. It's like that's the whole idea behind it.

• 46:16Lex Fridman?

  I mean, can you introspect that a little bit? Like, can you think like, what is that? Because that's rare. It's such a rare thing to do because they're, you're not supposed to talk to Duncan Trussell with a huge platform that you have five hours.

• 46:32Joe Rogan?

  Why not?

• 46:33Lex Fridman?

  Because Donald Trump apparently watches your podcast. So, so just the idea that there's these, I mean, that's what I think about, you know, these CEOs write to me that they listen to the podcast that I do. And I have somebody like a David Fravor. And I was nervous about it. I was nervous to have a conversation. For me, David Fravor is a Duncan Trussell, which is like.

• 46:56Joe Rogan?

  Just because of his experiences with the UFOs.

• 47:00Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, just even just the way he sees the world because he is open. I don't know if he's always like this, but he opened himself to the possibility of unconventional ideas. Most people in the scientific community kind of say, well, I don't really want to believe anything that doesn't have a lot of hard evidence.

• 47:16Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 47:16Lex Fridman?

  And so that was to me like a step. And as the thing somehow becomes more popular, there becomes this fear of like, well, should I talk to this person or not? And I mean, you're an inspiration in saying like, do whatever the hell you want.

• 47:31Joe Rogan?

  You have to. First of all, I have what you call fuck you money. And if you have fuck you money, you don't say fuck you. What's the point of having the fuck you money? You're wasting it. Like you're wasting the position. Like someone said to me like, why do you, why do you like sports cars so much? Like, how many cars do you have? A bunch of cars. Like, because if I was a kid and I said, hey, if I was that crazy, rich, famous guy, like, I would want to have a bunch of cool fucking cars. Like, so I, so I would do that. Like, because not everybody gets to do that. Like, if you're the person that gets to do that, you're kind of supposed to do it. Like, that's if you, if you want to, if that really does speak to you. And, you know, I've talked to you about this before, muscle cars.

• 48:14Joe Rogan?

  Specifically ones from the 1960s and the early 70s. They speak to me in some weird way, man. I could just stare at them. Like I have a 65 Corvette. I walk around it sometimes at night when no one's around.

• 48:26Lex Fridman?

  What's your favorite muscle car? Like, what's your most badass late 60s?

• 48:33Joe Rogan?

  Probably that car, probably that 65 Corvette.

• 48:35Lex Fridman?

  65 Corvette.

• 48:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I walk around it when no one's around.

• 48:39Lex Fridman?

  I think I've driven a 69 Corvette. Is there a particular year that?

• 48:43Joe Rogan?

  65 is generation two, 69 is generation three, 69 is like the, it's even more curvy. They're both awesome, just awesome in different ways. But I just love muscle cars for whatever reason. But, but the point is like, I like what I like. And if I can do what I want to do, I should do what I want to do. And it's not hurting anybody. And the thing is like, I would do the Duncan podcast if no one was listening, right? If it was, if we were just starting to do a podcast together and no one cared and it got like 2000 views, which we did for years.

• 49:16Lex Fridman?

  For a long time, yeah.

• 49:17Joe Rogan?

  I would do it with Duncan and we would get high and we'd talk crazy shit about aliens and spaceships. And maybe dude, maybe ideas are living life forms and they're inside your head and that's how things get made.

• 49:26Lex Fridman?

  Man.

• 49:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, man. I've just kind of morphed me and him together in that because the life form, idea, life form idea is mine that I've really, I really think about a lot.

• 49:37Lex Fridman?

  I think about it on a technical side, by the way. Like I, when I heard you say that, cause I've been thinking, I was like, whoa, that's interesting.

• 49:45Joe Rogan?

  It might be, they might be alive because they, I don't know what the fuck they are. But when someone has an idea for, you know, whatever, an invention, a toaster. And then they think about this, all it'd need is like these heating elements and a spring. And then it pops and it's done. So I have a timer and then they build this thing. Now all of a sudden it's alive. It's like you manifested it in a physical form. Toaster is not the best example, but a car, an airplane. You're thinking about a thing, like an idea comes into your head. And you could say, oh, well, it's just creativity. It's a part of being a person. It's how we invented tools and how, you know, we became better hunters. All those things are true. It's, I'm not, I'm not saying that there's some magic to what I'm saying, but.

• 50:29Joe Rogan?

  There's also a possibility that we're simplifying something by saying that it's just creativity, that it's just a natural human inclination to invent things. Why? Is it possible that ideas like creativity, like we are the only animal other than, there's a few species that create things like bees make beehives and, but it's very, they're very uniform. You know, some animals use tools, you know, like, you know, chimps will use like sticks to get termites and things like that. But there's something about what we do that's, it makes you wonder, because we look at the, just look at this room that we're in, look at all these electronics, look at all

• 51:10Joe Rogan?

  this crazy shit that human beings have invented and then built upon others' inventions, improved and innovated. These all came out of ideas. Like, the, the idea, they, it, it germinates in someone's head, it bounces around, they write it down, they share it with others, the other people who have similar ideas or ideas that are complementary, they work together and they, they, they change the world.

• 51:36Lex Fridman?

  And the new thing in that is the ideas, not the people. It's like, we think we found the ideas, but it's more like the ideas.

• 51:42Joe Rogan?

  The ideas.

• 51:42Lex Fridman?

  Found us.

• 51:43Joe Rogan?

  Find you, yeah. They're literally in the, in the air.

• 51:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 51:47Joe Rogan?

  They, they come to you. I always felt like that with bits, like when I come up with a bit, that's why I'm, I'm always telling people at the Steven Pressfield book, The War of Art, because he talks about respecting the muse and the idea that your ideas come when you sit down and you do the work, or you sit down like a professional and you, you talk to the muse, like come, tell, tell me what to do. Like if the muse was a real thing, as if it, muse is like a, some mystical creature that comes and delivers you ideas. Even if that's not real, that's how it works.

• 52:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 52:20Joe Rogan?

  It does work like that. If you do treat it like it's a muse and you treat it with the respect and you, you treat it like a professional, the ideas do come to you.

• 52:28Lex Fridman?

  I never thought about what he's doing is just sitting there waiting for the idea that's trying to breed to find him.

• 52:34Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Lex Fridman?

  That's, that's a, that's a trippy thing.

• 52:37Joe Rogan?

  If you show up.

• 52:37Lex Fridman?

  It's trippy.

• 52:38Joe Rogan?

  If you show up and put in the time and focus your energy on that, the, the ideas, they will arrive. That will arrive. And that's the same with writing comedy. Like, there's been many, many times where I'll come home from the Comedy Store, and I just sit down and I start writing, and I just, I've got, I got nothing, there's nothing there. I'm just writing, it's all bullshit. Nothing's good, it's just like, hmm, and then all of a sudden, bam. There's the idea. And then all of a sudden, I can't stop, and then, you know, a couple of hours later, and I'm like, whoa. And then the next night, I'm on stage, and I'm like, how about that? Boom, and it gets this big laugh. I'm like, holy shit. And I know that came out of the discipline to sit down and call the muse.

• 53:21Lex Fridman?

  I mean, the cool thing is the ideas have found you to like, oh, I'm gonna use this dude, like, he seems to have a podcast that's popular. I'm gonna breed inside his brain and spread it to others. It's the same.

• 53:35Joe Rogan?

  And it, or an inventor, you know, I'm gonna use this guy who's like desperately seeking some sort of a, a product to bring to market, some guy who wants to invent things, is thinking about inventing things all the time. Like, these ideas, they weasel their way into your head. And it seems to me also that you're, the frequency that your mind operates under has to be correct. Because one of the things about creativity seems to be if you think about yourself a lot, if you're really into yourself, or your image, or, or you're selfish, those ideas are not, they don't find you.

• 54:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's funny. It stifles the creative, yeah, yeah.

• 54:12Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 54:13Lex Fridman?

  It stifles the opportunity that the idea has for to finding.

• 54:16Joe Rogan?

  Yes, which is one of the reasons why joke thieves, people that steal jokes are terrible writers. There's never like really good writers who are also joke thieves. It's just joke thieves, and then, you know, when they have to write on their own, if they get exposed, they become terrible comedians. They, they're a shadow of what they were when they were stealing other people's ideas. Because the thing that would make you steal a person's idea is that ego part. The, the, like, the wanting to claim it for yourself, the wanting to be the man. I'm gonna, or, or the woman, you know, you wanna be the person who gets out there and says it, and everybody's gonna love me for it. Like, you can't think like that and be creative. It requires a humility, and it requires a detachment from self in order to create.

• 55:00Joe Rogan?

  Like, when I'm writing, I'm blank, I'm like, I'm just staring, I'm like, I'm, I'm just, the part of my mind that's active is not like me. It's like this weird core function part where I'm not, I'm not aware of. My personality, I'm not aware, I'm not aware of anything. I'm just trying to put it together in a way that I know works.

• 55:24Lex Fridman?

  Just being there, being present.

• 55:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 55:25Lex Fridman?

  The press field is just, I'm a big believer, just sitting there, even staring at a blank page.

• 55:30Joe Rogan?

  Have to.

• 55:31Lex Fridman?

  Putting in the time.

• 55:31Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and sometimes it's not that way. Sometimes it's an inspiration. Like, sometimes I'll be sitting there at dinner and I'll be like, I got, I got, I got an idea. And my wife's really cool about that. I'm like, I have an idea and I, I have to just run out of the room real quick and I write it down on my phone and then I can come back, you know, because those are, those are like little gifts that you get sometimes from the universe out of nowhere. And some people rely only on those gifts, you know? And I've talked to comics about it, like, ah, I can't come up with my best ideas when I don't write. I'm like, no, I do too. I come up with great ideas when I don't write, but I also write. Like, you can do both of those things. They're not mutually exclusive.

• 56:08Lex Fridman?

  You mentioned fuck you money. I, I feel like I have fuck you money now. A year ago, I was at zero. I have fuck you money now because probably my standard is my, I, I don't need much in this world. But because also, probably because of you, uh, but it's 300 to 400,000 people listen to every episode I do.

• 56:28Joe Rogan?

  That's a lot.

• 56:29Lex Fridman?

  And that result is weird.

• 56:30Joe Rogan?

  That's a successful television show on cable.

• 56:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 56:33Joe Rogan?

  It's all you.

• 56:34Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's hilarious.

• 56:36Joe Rogan?

  That's amazing.

• 56:37Lex Fridman?

  But at this point, that also resulted in F you money in a sense that I don't, um, yeah, I don't need anything else in this world. But so by way of asking, I've looked up, you've inspired me for a long time. Do you have advice? You've done this on the podcast side of life. Do you have advice for somebody like, for me and somebody like me going on this journey? Eric Weinstein is going on this journey. Is there advice, both small and big, that you have for somebody like me?

• 57:14Joe Rogan?

  The advice is to keep doing what feels right to you and do what you're doing. Obviously, it's resonating with people if you're getting that big of an audience. And I've listened to your podcast, you're very good at it. So just keep doing it the way you're doing it. Don't let anybody else get involved.

• 57:30Lex Fridman?

  What about you've connected, I think you met Jamie at the Comedy Store.

• 57:34Joe Rogan?

  I met him at the Ice House.

• 57:36Lex Fridman?

  At the Ice House?

• 57:37Joe Rogan?

  Well, I think I met him at the Comedy Store, but then we talked at the Ice House.

• 57:40Lex Fridman?

  I mean, what?

• 57:41Joe Rogan?

  You'd have to ask him.

• 57:42Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, did you think deeply about, because like, you know, you basically have nobody on your team. And so it almost feels like a marriage. Where is it, were you selective about like a Jamie to somebody to bring into your little circle?

• 57:57Joe Rogan?

  Well, Jamie's exceptional.

• 57:59Lex Fridman?

  He is, he truly is, he's a special. I mean, he might have grown, I don't remember how he was in the early days, maybe you could say, but.

• 58:05Joe Rogan?

  He's definitely better at it, but he right away, he's exceptional. He's got very little ego.

• 58:11Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 58:12Joe Rogan?

  He's, he's not a guy who needs a lot of attention. He's not a guy who overestimates anything. Like in terms of like negative or positive, like his, like his, his interpretation of whether it's good things that happen to the show or bad things that happen to the show. He just takes it all like flat. He's chill. He's just cool as fuck and he's so smart. And he's so good as an audio engineer and as a podcast producer. He's the best.

• 58:43Lex Fridman?

  But he's basically one of the only people on your, on this whole team. So.

• 58:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 58:47Lex Fridman?

  How do you find, I mean, when you let people in?

• 58:52Lex Fridman?

  I mean, I'm sure other people wanted to get involved, like, why don't you have a co-host? Like you basically kind of, well.

• 58:57Joe Rogan?

  You, well, here's the problem with the co-host. Like when you and I are talking, when we're talking, I'm tuned in to you. And I'm waiting to hear what you're saying and I'm listening and I'm interpreting it. And then I'm calculating whether or not I have anything to say, whether to let you keep talking, whether I maybe have a question that lets you expand further, or whether I have a disagreement or like there's a dance that's going on. Now, when there's another person there. Chiming in too, it fucks the dance up. It's like dancing, like if you're doing a, a dance with someone, you know, like if you're slow dancing with someone and then a third person's there stepping on everybody's feet. Sometimes it's fun.

• 59:39Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 59:40Joe Rogan?

  Sometimes having a third person is fun. Comedy podcast, sometimes it's fun.

• 59:43Lex Fridman?

  Debate kind of structured.

• 59:45Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, debate structures, but even then it gets difficult because people talk over each other and also, um, I find that without headphones, it's way easier to talk over each other. You make mistakes.

• 59:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 59:57Joe Rogan?

  You don't, you don't hear it the same way. When you have headphones, you, I hear what you hear. It's all one sound and I, the audience hears exactly, uh, or rather I hear exactly what the audience hears. Whereas over here, my, my voice is louder than yours because you're over there. And if I don't have headphones on, it doesn't, it's not all together.

• 1:00:18Lex Fridman?

  On that point, one of the interesting things about your show is, uh, you don't almost never have done, and you just generally don't do remote, like, um, sorry, not remote calls, but you don't go to another person's location, like.

• 1:00:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I've only done a few, a small handful.

• 1:00:34Lex Fridman?

  And then just like, uh, with the Sapolsky, he should be.

• 1:00:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:37Lex Fridman?

  He should do this, but I actually, uh, we went back and forth on email. I told him he needs to get your, his ass back in, in, in this, in this studio. Uh, he's working on a book.

• 1:00:45Joe Rogan?

  I was a fan of his a long time ago because I became obsessed with toxoplasmosis, you know, and, uh, I, uh, I've reached out to him a long time ago before he, uh, was willing to do it, but then I caught him in downtown LA. He was there for something else and I just greedily snatched up an hour of his time.

• 1:01:04Lex Fridman?

  Well, he doesn't get, I think, some of those folks don't get how much magic can happen in this podcast studio, like bigger than anything they've ever done in terms of their work. Not, I mean, not talking about reach, but in terms of the discovery of new ideas, there's something magical about conversation, like that, like somebody as brilliant as him, if he gives himself over to the conversation for multiple hours at a time, that's another place where you've been an inspiration, where I like, you know, I'm getting more and more confidence of telling people like Elon Musk, that like, you know, a lot of CEOs are like, well, he has 30 minutes on his schedule. I'm like, no, uh, three hours.

• 1:01:47Lex Fridman?

  And then they're like, so some say no, and then they come back. There's people have started coming back to like, okay, we're starting to get it. They start to get it. And you're a rare beacon of hope in that sense, that there's some value in long form. They think that nobody wants to listen for 30, for more than 30 minutes. They think like, I have nothing to say. But the reality is, if you just give yourself over to like, the three hours, just let it go. Three hours, four hours, whatever it is, there's so much to discover about what you didn't even know you think.

• 1:02:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, you have to be confident that you could do it. And in the beginning, I just did it because that's what I wanted to do. And no one was listening. So I've always been a curious person. So I've always, I've always been interested in listening to how people think about things and how, and talking to people about their mindset and just in expanding on my own ideas, just talking shit. And so we would have these podcasts and they would go on forever and my, I've, my friend Ari, I've, I never let him die, never let this die down. I've let him forget this. He was always like, you have to edit your podcast.

• 1:03:02Joe Rogan?

  I'm telling you right now, you're fucking up. I go, why? He's like, because people are not going to listen to it. I go, they don't have to.

• 1:03:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Joe Rogan?

  I go, you listen to part of it. He goes, he goes, just do it. Just, I'm telling you, trust me. Cut it down to like 45 minutes. That's all you need. And I'm like, no, no, I don't think you're right. I go, I like listening to long form things. No one has that kind of time. I go, okay. I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna keep doing it this way. So.

• 1:03:25Lex Fridman?

  And, and.

• 1:03:26Joe Rogan?

  No, he doesn't. No, he doesn't. His are like two and a half hours long now.

• 1:03:31Lex Fridman?

  You won. But you wouldn't like say, I mentioned to you this before, this is gonna happen. It's actually made a lot of progress towards it. I'm gonna talk to Putin. But you wouldn't travel to Putin if you wanted to talk to you?

• 1:03:42Joe Rogan?

  Putin is a dangerous character.

• 1:03:44Lex Fridman?

  He's not. He's not.

• 1:03:46Joe Rogan?

  You ever talked to, have you seen the thing with Jerry Craft, where they stole his Super Bowl ring?

• 1:03:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah, those, I think that was a little bit of misunderstanding.

• 1:03:55Joe Rogan?

  Oh, really? I think it's a little bit, he just decided he's gonna steal that Super Bowl ring.

• 1:03:59Lex Fridman?

  Kind of, I think there was a.

• 1:04:01Joe Rogan?

  Kind of.

• 1:04:01Lex Fridman?

  He thought.

• 1:04:02Joe Rogan?

  Can I see your ring? He shows him his ring, then he puts it on and says, I can murder somebody with this ring.

• 1:04:06Lex Fridman?

  So he.

• 1:04:07Joe Rogan?

  And then he walks off with it.

• 1:04:08Lex Fridman?

  It's possible he did it as a, he's a big believer in displays of power.

• 1:04:14Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Lex Fridman?

  So like, it's possible he did that, but I, I think he sees himself as like, a tool with which to demonstrate that Russia still belongs on the stage of the big players. And so he, a lot of actions is selected through that lens, but in terms of a human being, outside of any of the evils that he may or may not have done, he is a really thoughtful, intelligent, fun human being, like the wit. And the depth from the JRE perspective is really interesting. I'm like his manager now, so like, the, he's a judo guy.

• 1:04:54Joe Rogan?

  Trying to get Trump, he's really good at judo. I have seen him practice judo, he's a legit black belt.

• 1:05:00Lex Fridman?

  And not only that, he loves it, not just skill wise, but to talk about it, to reason about it, to think about it, to MMA as well, so, you know, it'd be, it'd be a good conversation. But you wouldn't travel to him.

• 1:05:16Lex Fridman?

  Well, that's, hold to your principles, so that's the core of the advice, just hold to whatever.

• 1:05:19Joe Rogan?

  I would rather, here's the thing, there's not a person that I have to have on the show.

• 1:05:27Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 1:05:27Joe Rogan?

  And I'm happy to talk to anybody. I'm just as happy to talk to you as I am to talk to Trump, as I am to, probably more happy to talk to you, as I am to talk to Mike Tyson, as I am to talk to Joey Diaz. I like talking to people. I enjoy doing podcasts, I enjoy talking to a variety of people. And I schedule them based on, I wanna like, I try not to get too many right wing people in a row, or too many progressive people in a row, I don't wanna get repetitive. I try not to get too many fighters in a row. I try to balance it out, not too many comedians, comedians are the one. One group where I can have three, four in a row, five in a row, because that's my tribe. You know, those are my people. It's easy. We could talk about anything.

• 1:06:09Joe Rogan?

  It's a weird dance, you know, the conversations that you're doing on a podcast are, they're, they're a strange dance. And you wanna, you know, you wanna not step on your own feet and you wanna make sure that you do it in a way, do the podcast in a way that's entertaining for people. And it's, it's a conversations are learning how to talk to people. It's a weird skill.

• 1:06:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Joe Rogan?

  It's a weird skill that took a long time for me to get good at, and I didn't know it was a skill until I started doing it. And then I, I just thought you're just talking. Like, I was just, I know how to talk. We'll just talk to people. And then along the way, I realized like, oh, and then when you talk to people that are bad at it, you realize that it's a skill. Like particularly, one of the things about my people, about comedians is a lot of them tend to want to talk, but don't want to listen.

• 1:06:57Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 1:06:58Joe Rogan?

  So they're, they're waiting for you to stop talking so they can talk, but they're not necessarily thinking about what you're saying. You know, and they're just, they're just waiting for their opportunity, or they talk over you, or they, and I try real hard not to do that. And sometimes I fail, but my, when I'm at my best, I'm, I'm dancing.

• 1:07:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Ultimately, the skill of conversation is just really listening.

• 1:07:23Joe Rogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:23Lex Fridman?

  Like really, and listening and thinking.

• 1:07:25Joe Rogan?

  Listening and thinking and being like genuinely curious and, and really having, um, uh, you know, a, a take on what they're saying. And, and, and, uh, and, uh, maybe a follow-up question, or maybe, you know, it's gotta, it's gotta be real. It's gotta be authentic. And when it is authentic and it's real, it resonates with people. Like they're listening and they go, oh, like I'm locked in with the way you're thinking. Like you two guys are in a conversation and I'm locked in, you know, when she talks and you listen, I'm, I'm listening too. You know, when he says something to her, or when she says something to. To him, like there's a thing that happens during conversations where you're there, like you're listening to, and it's with me, when I listen to a good podcast, I feel like I'm in the room.

• 1:08:10Joe Rogan?

  I feel like I'm in the room and I'm like, like I'm like the friend that got to sit down and listen. Like, oh, yeah, that's a great conversation.

• 1:08:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Joe Rogan?

  You know, I love conversations. So I love listening to them and I love putting them together. And the fact that this podcast has gotten so fucking big, it's stunning to me. It blows me away. I'd never anticipated it, never thought for a second that that stupid thing that I used to do in my couch, in my, my office, was the biggest thing I've ever done in my life by far. Like, people used to make fun of it. Like, there's a Comedy Store documentary that's coming out. And one of the parts of the documentary is my friend, Tom Segura, when he first started doing my podcast, he would, he would be leaving and he would talk to Red Band. He's like, what the fuck is he doing?

• 1:08:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:56Joe Rogan?

  Like, why is he doing this? Like, who's listening? He's like, oh, some people like it.

• 1:08:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Joe Rogan?

  And he's like, fucking nonsense, waste of time. And like, in the documentary, it shows like 2,000 views, like one of the early Ustream episodes.

• 1:09:08Lex Fridman?

  Hilarious. And they don't just like it, really, they, they form a friendship with you. It's like, even me, when people come up to me, like the love in their eyes is kind of beautiful.

• 1:09:20Joe Rogan?

  It's weird, right?

• 1:09:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's like.

• 1:09:22Joe Rogan?

  You're a part of their life.

• 1:09:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And I don't know, it's, it's also heartbreaking because you realize you'll never really get to know them back. Like, because they, they clearly are friends with you.

• 1:09:33Joe Rogan?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:09:35Lex Fridman?

  And it's sad to see a person who's clearly brilliant and interesting and is friends with you,

• 1:09:41Lex Fridman?

  but you don't get a chance to return that love. And I mean.

• 1:09:45Joe Rogan?

  My kids, it took them a while to figure out what's going on, but people would come up to me and, you know, they would say something like, hey, man, I fucking love you. Thanks, man. All right. Hey, brother, nice to meet you. My daughter was like six, she'd be like, do you know him?

• 1:10:00Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Joe Rogan?

  I'm like, no, I don't know him. She's like, how does he know you?

• 1:10:05Joe Rogan?

  It's very weird conversation that I used to have with young kids. When I'd explain, I'd do this thing called the podcast and millions of people listen. So now, one of my daughters is 12 and one of her friends is 13 and he's a boy and he goes to school with her and he's obsessed with me. And so she's weirded out and she says to him, I don't even think you like me. I think you're just into my dad, you fucking weirdo.

• 1:10:29Lex Fridman?

  She's gonna have that conversation a few stages in her life.

• 1:10:33Joe Rogan?

  Oh, probably.

• 1:10:34Lex Fridman?

  That hard conversation with a boyfriend.

• 1:10:35Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, probably. Yeah. Well, that's the thing about men, too. This podcast is, my podcast is uniquely masculine. I'm a man and I'm not, I'm also a man that doesn't have to go through some sort of a corporate filter. I'm not going through executive producers who tell me, don't, don't have this guest on, don't talk about that. You know, we looked at focus groups and they don't, they don't seem to like when you do this. Like, there's none of that. I just, and I, I, I just do it. So if that's, so I have a whole podcast where I just talk about cars. And people are, I don't want to hear you talk about cars. Well, good. Congratulations. You found what you like. Here's good news. There's 1,500 other ones.

• 1:11:18Joe Rogan?

  Go listen to the other episodes where I don't talk about cars. You know, you don't have to listen.

• 1:11:23Lex Fridman?

  And it's not like your brand, you just are who you are and that's what you do.

• 1:11:27Joe Rogan?

  But it's like, it's authentically what I'm interested in. All the podcasts, whether I'm talking to David Fravor about his experience with UFOs, whether I'm talking to David Sinclair about life extension, whether I'm talking to you about artificial intelligence or what, it's because I want to talk to these people. And that, that resonates. I, I like when people are into shit. You know, I've talked about this before, like things that I have no interest in making furniture, but I like this PBS show where this guy makes furniture by hand. I love watching it. Cause he's so into it. He's sanding this and polishing that. I'm not gonna do that. I don't give a fuck about furniture. Furniture for me is function, like this desk. Function, it works, but I love when people are into it.

• 1:12:12Joe Rogan?

  You know, and I'm happy that someone can make it and they do a great job, but I'm not, I'm not interested in the, the task is, or the, even the finished product as much as I'm interested in someone's passion for something.

• 1:12:25Lex Fridman?

  The passion that they've put into this, that shines through. Last question.

• 1:12:31Lex Fridman?

  I sometimes ask this just for to, uh, what is it? To challenge, to make people roll their eyes, to make legitimate scientists roll their eyes. Ask, uh, what is the meaning of life?

• 1:12:45Lex Fridman?

  According to Joe Rogan.

• 1:12:46Joe Rogan?

  I do not think there is a meaning. I think there's many, many meanings of life. I think there's a way to navigate life that's enjoyable. I think it requires many things. It requires, first of all, it requires love. You have to have loved ones. You have to have family. You have to have friends. You have to have people that care about you and you have to care about them. I think that is primary. Then it also requires interests. There has to be things that stimulate you. Now, it could be just a subsistence lifestyle. There's many people that believe and practice this lifestyle of just living off the land and hunting and fishing and living in the woods, and they seem incredibly happy.

• 1:13:26Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Joe Rogan?

  And there's, there's something to be said for that. That is an interest, right? There's something and there's a, there's a, a direct connection between their actions and their sustenance. They, they get their food that way. They're connected to nature and it's very satisfying for them. If you don't have that, uh, I think you need something that is interesting to you, something that's, you're passionate about. And there's far too many people that get sucked into living a life where you're just doing a job. You're just showing up and putting in your time and then going home, but you don't have a passion for what you're doing. And I think that is, that's a recipe for a boring and very unfulfilling life.

• 1:14:07Lex Fridman?

  You mentioned love. If I could just backtrack, what, uh, we, we talked about the demons and the violence in there somewhere. What's the role of love in this, in your own life?

• 1:14:19Joe Rogan?

  It's very important, man. And it, that's one of the reasons why I'm so, uh, I'm so interested in helping people. I, I'm very interested in people feeling good. I like them to feel good. I want to help them. I like, I like doing things that make them feel like, oh, you care about me. Like, yeah, I care about you. I really do. Like, I want people to feel. Feel good. I want my family to feel good. I want my friends to feel good. I want guests to feel good about the podcast experience. You know, I, I am, I'm a big believer in as much as I can to spread positive energy and joy and happiness and, and relay all the good advice that I've ever gotten. All the things that I've learned and if they can benefit people, then I find that those

• 1:15:03Joe Rogan?

  things benefit people and that actually improve the quality of their life or improve their success or improve their relationships or I'm very happy to do that. That, that means a lot to me. The, the way we interact with each other is so important. It's one of the reasons why I like, if someone gets canceled or you get publicly shamed, it's so devastating because there's all these people that negative, all this negative energy coming your way and you feel it as much as like to pretend that you, you're immune to that kind of stuff. And some people do like to pretend that you feel it. There's a, there's a tangible force when people are upset at you and that's the same with loved ones or family or anytime someone's upset at you, whether it's a giant group of people or

• 1:15:46Joe Rogan?

  there's a small amount of people, that has an impact on you and your psyche and your physical being. So the more you can spread love and the more love comes back to you, you also create this butterfly effect, right? Because where other people start recognizing like, oh, you know, when he's nice to me, I feel better and then I'm going to be nicer to people. And when I'm nicer to people, they feel better and I feel better. And then, and it spreads outward. And that's one thing that I've done through this podcast, I think, is I've, I've imparted my personal philosophy on, in kindness and generosity to other people.

• 1:16:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. I mean, to correct you, you didn't do it. The ideas that are breeding themselves through your brain have figured out.

• 1:16:26Joe Rogan?

  The ideas that are alive in the air have made their way into my head.

• 1:16:30Lex Fridman?

  Love is a more efficient mechanism of spreading ideas they figured out.

• 1:16:34Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:16:37Joe Rogan?

  Probably, man, probably. So as far as like the meaning of life, that's, that's a bit, without that, you have nothing. You know, one of the biggest failures in life is to be extremely successful financially, but everybody hates you. Everybody hates you and you're just miserable and alone and angry and depressed and sad. You know, when you, you hear about rich, famous people that commit suicide, like, wow, you missed the mark. You got some parts right, but you put too many eggs in one basket. You put too many eggs in the financial basket, or the success basket, or the accomplishment basket, and not enough in the friendship and love basket. And there's a balance to that. And when I talked about the violence and all

• 1:17:19Joe Rogan?

  that stuff, like, that to me is me, understanding, recognizing that, is me trying to achieve that balance. It's to like, go kill those demons so that this boat is level, you know, because if it's not, then the boat is like this, and then everything's all fucked up, and every time we hit a wave, things fall apart. Balance that boat out, figure it out, like, know who you are. Some people don't have that problem at all. Some people, they could just go for walks and they're cool as a cucumber. I need more, you know, I need kettlebells, I need a heavy bag, I need, I need the Echo bike, you know, the aerosol bike, I need some hardcore shit. And if I don't get that, I don't feel good. So I figured that out, too, and that makes me a nicer person, and that makes my interactions nicer,

• 1:18:03Joe Rogan?

  it makes, it, it, it changes the quality of my, my friendships and my relationships with people.

• 1:18:10Lex Fridman?

  I think we mentioned Neuralink. I can, I can certainly guarantee that this is one of the memories I'll be replaying 20, 30 years from now, once we get the feature ready. Joe, it's a huge honor to talk to you. I hope-

• 1:18:22Joe Rogan?

  It's an honor to talk to you, too, man. I'm glad you came down here for this. The first week of me doing this here, and it's, it's, it's very cool to have you always.

• 1:18:31Lex Fridman?

  I hope you make Texas cool again, and, and do your podcast for another 10, 11, whatever, however many years you could, you're still on this earth.

• 1:18:40Joe Rogan?

  All right. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you, man.

• 1:18:43Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Joe Rogan, and thank you to our sponsors, Neuro, Eight Sleep, and Dollar Shave Club. Check them out in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Fridman. And now, let me leave you with some words of wisdom from Joe Rogan. The universe rewards calculated risk and passion. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.