Joe Rogan Experience #1119 - Howard Bloom

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Try to keep this,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:03

      Try to keep this, uh, about a fist away from your face-

   2. HBHoward Bloom0:05

      Okay.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      ... is the best, the best length.

   4. HBHoward Bloom0:07

      How's this?

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      A little closer, if you can.

   6. HBHoward Bloom0:10

      Okay.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:10

      Yeah. Good? We're live? Oh, we ... That was quick. He turned away. Oh. You're, you're a wizard over there.

   8. HBHoward Bloom0:16

      (laughs) Mr. Bloom. Yes, Joe. It's great to see you.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      Thanks for doing this, man. Appreciate it.

   10. HBHoward Bloom0:19

       Well, we were in a film together, so we've been like right next to each other on celluloid. Uh-

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:24

       What film were we in?

   12. HBHoward Bloom0:25

       Um, that was The Culture High.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:27

       Oh, that's right.

   14. HBHoward Bloom0:28

       Uh, Brett Harvey, and it's, uh, you, me, Richard Branson, and Snoop Dogg.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       Oh. G- good company.

   16. HBHoward Bloom0:34

       Yes, right. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:36

       (laughs) Yeah, so, um, you were just saying right before we did the podcast, you were in bed for 15 years.

   18. HBHoward Bloom0:41

       Yeah. I was in ... I got sick in 1988. I wasn't able to make it out of that bed until 2003. But, Joe, I was absolutely certain I would never make it out of that bed again.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:51

       What was? What did you have?

   20. HBHoward Bloom0:52

       It's called ... These days, this month, it's called, uh, ME/CFS. Uh, up until now, it was just known as chronic fatigue syndrome, CFS. But it's real serious if you get a bad case of it. So, I was too weak to talk for five years. Too weak to talk.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:09

       You didn't talk at all?

   22. HBHoward Bloom1:11

       Not a bit.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:12

       How did you communicate with people?

   24. HBHoward Bloom1:12

       I didn't have the strength to puff out even a syllable.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:15

       Whoa.

   26. HBHoward Bloom1:15

       Um, and, um, I was too weak to have another person in the room with me for five years, so-

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:21

       You couldn't have a person in the room?

   28. HBHoward Bloom1:23

       My stress levels were off the charts, and the slightest thing would ... Just a crack ... My wife tried to keep me company. So, we have this big king-size bed, and she would lay in bed reading a newspaper, and the sound of the page turning went through me like a cannonball. And she ... It just tore me to pieces. And she had to build a separate room in the front of the house, and live there because I couldn't tolerate anything.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:54

       Did you think it was over?

   30. HBHoward Bloom1:55

       Yeah, I thought, first of all, something you don't know. You have a sense of humanity, and you don't know it. And something like this that wipes out your entire future, every dream you ever had for yourself, robs you of your sense of humanity. And you don't know there is a sense of humanity until it disappears. So, it took me three years. I had to rebuild a personality-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   I've never heard of…

   1. HBHoward Bloom15:00

      they tried to figure out what is reversing the aging in the muscles of the rat, the heart of the rat, the brain of the rat, the one ingredient they were able to isolate and then use on other rats to get them to get younger instead of older was oxytocin. So, in all probability, the reason I can do between 400 and 700 pushups in a morning at the age of 74, and when I was 19 the most I could do was 92 and I was working really hard at it, um, is the oxytocin.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:32

      I've never heard of anybody taking that as a supplement.

   3. HBHoward Bloom15:35

      Well, it showed up. There was a doctor named something like Seastrunk in Texas who was using it on CFS patients, and my friend, the Texas patient of my doctor, um, found Seastrunk and got his protocol out of him, in other words, exactly what he'd used to treat the problem. And we gave it to my doctor, and he sat on it for six months until he could regurgitate it as his own bright idea-

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:57

      Oh.

   5. HBHoward Bloom15:58

      ... and then, and then he prescribed it for me.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:01

      (laughs)

   7. HBHoward Bloom16:01

      And it's done wonders.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:03

      Wow.

   9. HBHoward Bloom16:03

      That and a bunch of other stuff have done absolute wonders.

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:06

       What are the other things that have worked?

   11. HBHoward Bloom16:07

       I think gabapentin. Without that, I mean, I was on my way to Moscow once I finally got out of bed. I was gonna address an international conference of quantum physicists about why everything they know about quantum physics is wrong. And, um, I was fine. Uh, I mean, this was my first traveling since I'd gotten out of bed, and it was taking a huge chance, 'cause it was a huge chance of throwing me back into bed again. And I flew all the way to Germany and was doing just fine. I was exhilarated that I was doing so well. And then halfway between Germany and Moscow, the CFS symptoms began to come back. And that was scary. And then I reviewed what I was doing, and I realized I'd missed all my afternoon pills. And I ... And, and as soon as I was able ... Well, m- we had to find, uh, a bed in the infirmary, which is scary, uh, at the Moscow Airport, because there were people walking around with machine guns in military uniforms. And they wanna take my passport away in order to allow me to lay in a bed in the infirmary. And so, I could be disappeared at any second. But when we finally got to our hotel and opened up my drug roll, um, I took th- the gabapentin, and within 15 minutes, the symptoms were gone.

   12. JRJoe Rogan17:20

       Wow. So, did y- have you ever tried to isolate individual ones, r- remove some of them from the protocol to see if those are the-

   13. HBHoward Bloom17:25

       I once removed one, amitriptyline. It's an antidepressant. That's what it was originally designed for. And I figured, "I don't need this anymore. I'm perfectly healthy." It was a big mistake. I started having these blinding stomach aches, and they went on for a lo- I mean, for months and months and months, until I finally got fed up and started researching on Google, "What do you do about stomachaches?" Well, guess what one of the primary things you do to stop stomachaches is? Amitriptyline, the very thing I had gone off of.

   14. JRJoe Rogan17:56

       Huh.

   15. HBHoward Bloom17:56

       So I had to go back on it. So, it's a whole network, a mesh of supplements, drugs, and lifestyle. I don't sleep the way normal people sleep. I sleep from ...... 4:00 in the morning until 8:00 in the morning, I get up, I listen to magazines on the Kindle while I'm taking my bath and shaving and all that stuff. I meet with my assistant, I give her her marching orders for the day. I go back to sleep at 11:00, and I sleep until 3:00. And then I get up for my second work day. Um- Mm-hmm. ... and that's when I do all my writing and all that kinda stuff.

   16. JRJoe Rogan18:32

       So, you, d'you sleep in four-hour chunks? Why-

   17. HBHoward Bloom18:34

       Two four-hour chunks, because-

   18. JRJoe Rogan18:35

       Do you feel like that is better for you?

   19. HBHoward Bloom18:37

       My body was refusing to do the eight-hour thing, so one of the first symptoms of, uh, of CFS is insomnia. Okay, now, Joe, if your body is refusing to sleep for eight hours straight, listen to your body.

   20. JRJoe Rogan18:50

       Right.

   21. HBHoward Bloom18:51

       S- give it what the hell it wants. And so, these are the hours my body demanded. Um, and they, I had been working often until 8:00 in the morning from roughly 11:00 at night or something like that, and losing track of time, and it was very disorienting. And once I started this two periods of sleep a day, my day stabilized. Um, and there's other stuff. I mean, listening to Pandora, you would think, "What does that have to do with your illness?" Well, I work at a cafe. That's a vital part of things 'cause I'm surrounded by people, and I've slowly built community in this cafe, other workaholic writers like me, a neuroscientist, a novel- novelist, and all kinds of people who just sit there and slave away all day. And, but I'm listening to Pandora. That gives me a sense of life. For some reason, it's as, it's as positive as an elixir would be. Um, and it gives me a sense of control over my environment, and I don't hear the conversations going on around me so I can really focus on my work. I've written four books this way so far, in cafes. All of this stuff, walking five miles a day, um, in two bursts. I mean, there I am going through a meadow in the middle of a park at night. Uh, how many New Yorkers do you know who go out and walk through a park in the middle of the night? Um-

   22. JRJoe Rogan20:09

       Robbers. (laughs)

   23. HBHoward Bloom20:10

       Yeah, right, that's what you'd think. But I have the time of my life looking up at the stars out in the middle of the meadow and being where I'm not supposed to be. Um-

   24. JRJoe Rogan20:18

       Are you not supposed to go to the park at night?

   25. HBHoward Bloom20:20

       Well, they let you. Um, I have been thrown out six times by the police because I've over s- I've overstepped the boundaries. I've been out there after 1:00, and they do close the place at 1:00 and throw us all out.

   26. JRJoe Rogan20:33

       Mm-hmm.

   27. HBHoward Bloom20:33

       But no, in, in New York lore, unless you're walking a really big dog-

   28. JRJoe Rogan20:37

       Mm.

   29. HBHoward Bloom20:37

       ... you do not go out into parks at night. And, but you put this whole lifestyle together, and it's not just any individual ingredient that's making me better. I'm happier than I was when I was 19. I'm stronger than I ... I walk a lot more slowly than when I was 19, but in terms of push-ups and other exercises, I'm stronger than I was when I was 19 years old.

   30. JRJoe Rogan21:04

       That, that is a crazy journey, Howard. That's crazy.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   The truth at any…

   1. HBHoward Bloom30:00

      I hadn't gotten the artist and the other artists in the studio a single job. And I'm an obsessive-compulsive, so I called Columbia where I was supposed to go to grad school and said, um, "You know, I have a back problem. I won't be showing up this year." "Joe, the truth at any price, including the price of your life, is one of my religious principles. It's the first rule of science. The second rule of science is look at things right under your nose as if you've never seen them before and then proceed from there."

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:24

      The truth at any price-

   3. HBHoward Bloom30:25

      The truth at any price-

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:25

      ... even if that price is-

   5. HBHoward Bloom30:25

      ... including the price of your life.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:27

      Hmm.

   7. HBHoward Bloom30:27

      You know, so when people tell me-... for example, about my book, The Muhammad Code: How a Desert Prophet Brought You ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram or How Muhammad Invented Jihad. So when people realized I was writing this, they said, "You can't write that. You'll get killed." Who the fuck cares? The first rule of science is the truth at any price, including the price of your life, and if you tell me I can't write it 'cause it's gonna get me killed, I know that it's doubly important for me to write this because nobody else is gonna have the guts to. So the, the... it falls on me, so screw that. Um-

   8. JRJoe Rogan31:01

      You seem to be approaching all these different things, whether it is sitting in the cafe listening to music, being surrounded by people, poetry, uh, the, the l- the go- the ecstatic state that you were studying when it comes to Hitler or m- rocks- rock music. You seem to be looking at this as almost like a form of, uh, not necessarily uncharted energy, but, uh, undocumented. Uh, almost as if it's like there's a... there's fuel out there that you're, you're tapping into and utilizing that you know that everybody's kind of aware of, but I don't think they're thinking about it the same way that you are.

   9. HBHoward Bloom31:44

      No, when I'm looking at this in the context of everything from the Big Bang to what's going on in our brains while we're having this conversation in the future you and I are fashioning through our actions-

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:53

       Mm.

   11. HBHoward Bloom31:53

       ... at this point, I'm looking at this in terms of a very, very, very big picture.

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:57

       Yeah.

   13. HBHoward Bloom31:58

       And, and I get disturbed when it looks like I'm gonna get typed. Like, I've spent so much time on s- on space in the last few years that I'm afraid people are gonna type me, and I refuse to be typed.

   14. JRJoe Rogan32:08

       As the space guy.

   15. HBHoward Bloom32:09

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:10

       Yeah.

   17. HBHoward Bloom32:10

       Because I need to have access to every field that I can possibly understand because I'm in the process of putting together a big picture.

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:17

       When you say you're worried about being... I mean, after all you've accomplished, how could you be typed?

   19. HBHoward Bloom32:22

       Oh, it's real easy.

   20. JRJoe Rogan32:23

       But by who? By fools?

   21. HBHoward Bloom32:25

       But I'm not... W- uh, partly by myself-

   22. JRJoe Rogan32:28

       Ah.

   23. HBHoward Bloom32:28

       ... but, but also by others.

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:30

       Interesting. By yourself?

   25. HBHoward Bloom32:31

       Yes. Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan32:32

       You're worried about yourself.

   27. HBHoward Bloom32:34

       I... Yes, I absolutely... In order to be happy, I need to be in a dozen fields simultaneously.

   28. JRJoe Rogan32:40

       That's fascinating. I, I am much less intense about it, but I share a similar desire to be fascinated by many different things at the same time.

   29. HBHoward Bloom32:49

       And you gotta see where they all fit together.

   30. JRJoe Rogan32:51

       Yeah.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   God, they had so…

   1. HBHoward Bloom45:00

      tremendous within the rock crit or was tremendous within the rock crit establishment, um, the rock cr- among the rock critics. And it goes-

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:07

      God, they had so much power back then. It's so crazy.

   3. HBHoward Bloom45:09

      But they were so rigidly conformity-enforced.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:12

      Yeah.

   5. HBHoward Bloom45:12

      Now, this wasn't unique to the 1970s and 1980s, because Carlyle, the social commentator, Thomas Carlyle in England in approximately 1832, wrote about the pop culture critics of his day. In his day, pop culture was novels and plays, and how ... and he compared them to sheep. And he explained how, if you take a cane and you put it out with the sheep walking single file, you can get 2,000 sheep all walking in single file. And if you put your cane out in front of the lead sheep and the lead sheep jumped over your cane, and then you withdrew the cane, every one of the other 4,999 sheep would jump at precisely the same spot, even though there was nothing to jump over anymore. Well, that's how I perceived the rock crit elite, and my job was to turn them around. But my job was also to see true ecstatics, like Prince, like John. Michael Jackson was not an ecstatic on stage. Michael Jackson was an incredible, astonishing performer who had studied his craft from the age of nine, and so he worked out every single move in advance. John, uh ... You never knew from one night to the next what Prince or John Mellencamp were gonna do in performance. They didn't know.

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:32

      How well did you know Michael Jackson?

   7. HBHoward Bloom46:35

      I thought very, very well, and he was the most remarkable person I've ever met in my life. And when I tell people how remarkable, they don't believe me. He was ... You know, you and I and Jamie are on a certain level, and we don't know we're on a certain level, 'cause we figure these are the range, this is the range of humanity. Um, if we go out and meet anybody on the street or even anybody famous, I work with Buzz Aldrin these days, what we're gonna encounter is another person pretty much like us. Sorry. In Michael Jackson's case, he did not fit on this normal plane at all. He was on a plane somewhere where you've never seen a human being before. So, the first time I met him, we were at his brother Marlon's, um, uh, uh, hou- pool house. It's a little house with just enough room for one, big room on the first floor and another big room on the second floor, with a little tiny staircase between them. And there's a billiard table in the middle of the room, and there are arcade games, which at that point in particular, 1983, um, were unattainable.

   8. JRJoe Rogan47:42

      (laughs)

   9. HBHoward Bloom47:42

      No human could afford arcade games, um, unless you were Steve Wynn and you were actually equipping an arcade. Um, so we're in the middle of ... we're in this room, and Michael and I are standing next to each other. So, his elbow is at ... his left elbow is at my right elbow. His left knee is at my right knee. And we have a meeting with the art director from CBS. I'm condensing this story. There's lots more. But we're having a meeting with the art director, and she walks in with five of the most gorgeous portfolios you've ever seen in your life, hand-carved cherrywood, hand-carved leather, um, and these are from guys I know, because I was, I started in pop culture in the art business, and these were my legendary competitors. And, um, and Michael opens the first page of the first portfolio and he gets a square inch into it, a postage stamp-sized piece into it, and he goes, "Oh," and his knees begin to buckle. And he gets another two square inches into it, just lifts the page a little bit further, "Oh." He lifts it in even further, "Oh." Michael was seeing the infinite in the, the, in things that even the artist didn't see it with such infinity as Michael is seeing it. And by the time he gets to the full page, he's having a full-scale aesthetic orgasm. "I have never seen anything like this in my life." And remember, the first two rules of science-... are the truth at any price, including the price of your life, and look at things right under- right under your nose as if you've never seen them before, and then proceed from there. Michael was seeing the infinite in the tiniest of things. And you've never seen a human with this degree of awe, wonder, and surprise anywhere in your life. And I will never see another human like that again in my lifetime. Michael was beyond belief, utterly beyond belief. And his commitment to his audience, to his- the people he called his kids- (phone ringing) Oh, God. I forgot to turn this off.

   10. JRJoe Rogan49:46

       (laughs)

   11. HBHoward Bloom49:46

       Uh, we have to, we can't take the call.

   12. JRJoe Rogan49:49

       (laughs)

   13. HBHoward Bloom49:50

       Um, so let's find-

   14. JRJoe Rogan49:52

       Of course you're an Android guy too.

   15. HBHoward Bloom49:54

       Yes. Uh, oh, God. How do we 9O-

   16. JRJoe Rogan49:57

       You want- you want my help?

   17. HBHoward Bloom49:58

       ... we pull down from here.

   18. JRJoe Rogan50:00

       (laughs)

   19. HBHoward Bloom50:00

       I'm an incompetent with this stuff.

   20. JRJoe Rogan50:01

       How can you be inc- people- for people who don't see you right now-

   21. HBHoward Bloom50:04

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan50:05

       ... because a lot of people are listening, he has literally a Batman utility belt, um, with two Kindles. You have two Kindles strapped to you-

   23. HBHoward Bloom50:14

       Right. Right.

   24. JRJoe Rogan50:14

       ... at all times. You have the headphones for the podcast-

   25. HBHoward Bloom50:17

       I have-

   26. JRJoe Rogan50:17

       ... but then underneath them, you have other headphones.

   27. HBHoward Bloom50:18

       And I have spar- I have- I have a total of three pair of headphones on me.

   28. JRJoe Rogan50:22

       Three?

   29. HBHoward Bloom50:22

       Because they were out so quickly.

   30. JRJoe Rogan50:24

       They were out. (laughs)
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   But is the issue…

   1. HBHoward Bloom1:00:00

      and, and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, that's a long time ago. That's two generations, two and a half generations ago. And kids in America have lost that dream of creating a paradise above the sky, because NASA's abandoned them. And it's, NASA's been forced to abandon them by these congressmen and senators who steal this money from the NASA budget. But if that money were used, look, that $3 billion a year would mean that you could develop an entire Elon Musk space program, program and launch roughly 20 rockets.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:33

      But is the issue the, the actual engineers and the scientists themselves? I mean, they must obviously-

   3. HBHoward Bloom1:00:37

      No, it's the politicians.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:38

      Right, but the politicians, are they able to dictate what the actual scientists and engineers create?

   5. HBHoward Bloom1:00:43

      Yep.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:43

      And say, "Hey, you must create something that is disposable."

   7. HBHoward Bloom1:00:47

      Uh, yes. They-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:49

      But, but is that really a conversation that's taking place? What have they even said?

   9. HBHoward Bloom1:00:52

      Yes, because these guys have said, "Okay, we wanna use, um, uh, space shuttle, leftover space shuttle technology." And we ... And they've, they've mapped out the specifications of the rocket that they want. These guys are doing what-

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:01:07

       Congressmen and senators?

   11. HBHoward Bloom1:01:07

       Yes, that's right.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01:08

       How is that possible?

   13. HBHoward Bloom1:01:09

       Oh, it's easy.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:10

       That seems disgusting.

   15. HBHoward Bloom1:01:11

       They control the budget, and one of the tricks that the SMIC, the space-military-industrial complex, has known for a long time, is you try to parcel out jobs to as many states as possible. So major programs, like the, uh, the latest, uh, f- fighter, um, that the Air Force and the Navy are being told to use, um, those represent jobs in roughly 45 states each. That means that if you're Lockheed Martin and you wanna keep your contract for a plane that people are claiming can lose to a 1951 era MiG, um, all you have to do is hit the congressmen and senators from those 47 states, and they'll all back you. Why? Because they're counting on your campaign contributions. Where are you gonna get the money to give them campaign contributions from that billion-to $3 billion nipple per year that NASA has been forced to extend you, or that the Air Force has been forced to extend to you? It's a very corrupt system.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:02:13

       That's a dirty system.

   17. HBHoward Bloom1:02:14

       And it means that the Russians and the Chinese can develop equivalent aircraft, for example, for one-tenth the price-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:02:22

       Wow.

   19. HBHoward Bloom1:02:22

       ... and deliver them for one-tenth the price.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:02:24

       Imagine where we would be, I mean, you're t- only talking about two super geniuses, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Imagine where we would be if they didn't exist. And-

   21. HBHoward Bloom1:02:31

       Exactly.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:02:32

       ... the odds are very high that they wouldn't exist, especially-

   23. HBHoward Bloom1:02:34

       Uh, the odds are very high that somebody could do away with them. It would be fairly easy.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:02:38

       Hey, don't even put that out there.

   25. HBHoward Bloom1:02:40

       Yeah, well, the tr-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:40

       Come on, man.

   27. HBHoward Bloom1:02:41

       On Friday, or no, Sunday, at the National Space Society's annual event, I'm talking about China's New Silk Road versus America's Highway in the Sky. Um, the New Silk Road, the Chinese government's gonna put in a trillion dollars. It's total of a $20 trillion project. It pulls together something like 66 countries and 3.3 billion people. And I co-founded and chaired something called the Asian Space Technology Summit in Kuala Lumpur last May, just about exactly a year ago, and it was obvious, being in Malaysia, that China has bought Malaysia's heart, that Americans don't count for much anymore, because the Chinese are already spending money. They already own 15 to 20 ports. They own 15 to 20 ports. Piraeus, which is the port of Athens, the city that was the cradle of Western civilization, guess who owns it? The Chinese. And they're upgrading these ports to do things that no port we've ever seen before has been able to do. So because they have a big vision, a really big vision, they're gonna dominate the 21st century. The 20th was the American century. This is gonna be the Chinese century, unless we counter with an equally big vision. And the big visions are not coming from Donald Trump in Washington DC or from senators and congressmen. They are coming from precisely the people you fingered. They're coming from Washington. They're coming from California. They're coming from Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the two guys who can save us by opening a platinum highway in the sky. What does that mean? A platinum highway in the sky means a space economy. One meteor called something like, uh, Amen 335 has, um, more resources than the gross domestic product of England, France, Italy, and South Korea combined.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:04:34

       In one meteor, to mine this meteor?

   29. HBHoward Bloom1:04:35

       In one meteor. Oh, and I forgot to throw in India. India's in that list too. Combined.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:04:40

       So is the idea to mine this meteor-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:19:13

   Wow. …

   1. HBHoward Bloom1:15:00

      giving me this transcendent humor that just took me out of my state at that point. So, I tried to write transcendent humor, and I wrote this story of how I accidentally helped form a movement on the West Coast that had no name, and then I left the country. And when I got back, the Luce empire at the time, Life empire, had given it a name. They called it the hippie movement.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:22

      Wow.

   3. HBHoward Bloom1:15:22

      And I tried to write it as absolutely and as funny a manner as possible. And then, when I was finished writing it, I wrote, 'cause I couldn't talk, I wrote a letter. In those days, they had to be snail mailed because most people didn't have email back then. I did, but most people didn't. And I snail mailed my friend, Eric Garner, because Eric Garner had started out in the music business as a roadie for the Jefferson Airplane. And I wrote Eric and said, "Eric, I've just written this book."

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:51

      (laughs)

   5. HBHoward Bloom1:15:51

      "Could you get it to the Jefferson Airplane?" 'Cause if I could get them to say something positive about that, about it, that validated it 'cause they were a key act in the 1960s. And Eric said, "No, no, no. I have somebody better. Send me the manuscript." So, I sent him the manuscript, and he got the manuscript to this other client of his, and the other client came back with a quote that said, "It's a monumental masterpiece of American literature and filled with wow, woo, and aha experiences and nonstop waves of scientific comedy routines and nonstop waves of hilarity," and compared it to James Joyce and said, "Wow, woo, aha." And h- and signed it Timothy Leary.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:16:27

      Hmm.

   7. HBHoward Bloom1:16:27

      And I thought, "This can't be for real. This just can't be for real." But it was 1995, and what I didn't know, it took me 15 years to find out, is that Timothy Leary got this book when he was sick in bed like I was. He was dying of prostate cancer. This book reached him six months before he would die of prostate cancer. And I had written the book to be on a plane of humor that would yank you out of your body and yank you up to an ethereal plane of humor.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:16:56

      'Cause you were trying to do that to yourself.

   9. HBHoward Bloom1:16:58

      I needed to, uh ... Since these two guys had done it for me, I needed to do my best to do it for others and to attract people to stick with me, 'cause I sent these things out as letters, the chapters out as letters to friends, hoping a few friends would still stick with me. And, um, when Leary read it, apparently, it did for him what Wodehouse and Dave Barry had done for me, and I was stunned when I found that out. Absolutely stunned. So, yes, Virginia, you can be in the worst of all possible circumstances, and you can pull together something from those circumstances as a gift to your fellow humans. And yes, you will doubt that it will ever be of value to any human on the planet 'cause that's what, that's how us humans feel about most of our endeavors. Um, but someday, it just may save somebody who's in a position equivalent to yours.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:17:49

       That's amazing. That is amazing. What are the other things that the quantum physicist got wrong?

   11. HBHoward Bloom1:17:56

       Well, um, all of them for a four ... There was a four-day conference, um, in a pension just outside Moscow, 50 miles outside of Moscow. It was a worker's paradise built in the 1960s. And, um, and all the people there, all the physicists were going around drawing the same diagram on napkins to explain what they were talking about, and it's a diagram of how Schrodinger's equation manifests itself in one single isolated electron. Well, guess what, Joe? There's no such thing as an isolated electron in this universe. There's no such thing as an i- uh, an isolated quanta of light, an i- isolated photon of light. There's no such thing as an isolated anything. I mean, when you look up at the night sky, what do you see? Stars. Some of those stars are 13 billion light years away. It's taken 13 billion years for that light to get to us. But we can still see those lights with a telescope. Is, if there is light flooding the entire universe from those stars, how could this be ... How could there ever be a particle living on its own, not awash in light, gravitational effects, electromagnetic effects from all the other things in the universe, or at least a good many of them?

Episode duration: 2:53:52