Joe Rogan Experience #1119 - Howard Bloom

1. 0:03 – 0:36

   Mic check and the unexpected connection: The Culture High

   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)

2. 0:36 – 2:22

   Fifteen years bedridden: ME/CFS and the day everything changed

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:36

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

   2. 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.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:51

      What was? What did you have?

   4. 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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:09

      You didn't talk at all?

   6. HBHoward Bloom1:11

      Not a bit.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:12

      How did you communicate with people?

   8. HBHoward Bloom1:12

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

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:15

      Whoa.

   10. HBHoward Bloom1:15

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

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:21

       You couldn't have a person in the room?

   12. 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.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:54

       Did you think it was over?

   14. 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-

   15. JRJoe Rogan2:19

       (laughs)

   16. HBHoward Bloom2:20

       ... from just about scratch.

   17. JRJoe Rogan2:22

       Wow.

3. 2:22 – 12:24

   Rebuilding a self online: computers in bed, writing, and identity

   1. HBHoward Bloom2:22

      Because the one area I could handle, at least most of the time, was the internet. You know, the internet hit the music industry in 1983. And I had been lusting after it for years, 'cause only academics had access to this real high-tech thing. And, um, I had ... It took me three years to realize that every day I was trying to go up to my f- front room office and work, and that sitting was draining me of my energy. And since I only had a tiny amount of energy, if I lay there, horizontal in the bed, my voice would eventually come back. So, I had an assistant take two computers, 'cause in those days two computers was about half the size ... The processing power was half the size of your cell phone. And I had him hook up two computers and a Chinese box. Don't let the Ch- anybody tell you the Chine- Chinese don't invent things. They do. And this was a box that allowed me to control both computers from one monitor and one keyboard. So, we had the keyboard up on foam bolsters so that I could see it when I was laying perfectly horizontal in bed. So, I could still see the keys. And I rebuilt a personality online, 'cause I couldn't get any further than to the bathroom and back. That was it.

   2. JRJoe Rogan3:40

      What do you mean by you rebuilt a personality?

   3. HBHoward Bloom3:42

      Well, everything I hadn't expected. I mean, I was gonna write my first book, and I was gonna ... I, I'm a nerd from science. I got into science at the age of 10. I got into theoretical physics and microbiology. I fil- built my first Boolean algebra machine when I was 12. I coded, designed a computer that won science fair awards when I was 12. I was taken to see the head of the graduate physics department at the University of Buffalo, and disappeared into his office for an hour. My mother wondered what in the world had happened to me, 'cause it was supposed to be a five-minute courtesy call. We were discussing Big Bang versus Steady State Theory of the Universe for an hour. And, uh, when I was 16, I worked at the world's largest cancer research lab, and I came up with, up with the Theory of the Beginning, Middle, and End of the Universe, the Big Bagel Theory, or the Bloom Toroidal Model that predicted 38 years in advance dark energy. And then I ended up in the rock and roll business with this background. So, when I imagined I was gonna write my first book, I was gonna leave the rock and roll business behind, 'cause my field expedition in rock and roll, I'd learned, I thought, as much as I was ever gonna learn from it. And I'd worked with Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Kwis- Kiss, Queen, Billy Joel, Billy Idol, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, people like that.

   4. JRJoe Rogan5:03

      What, what caused this disease? Like-

   5. HBHoward Bloom5:05

      Nobody knows.

   6. JRJoe Rogan5:06

      Nobody knows?

   7. HBHoward Bloom5:07

      Nobody has a clue.

   8. JRJoe Rogan5:07

      No idea of what the ... So, in the different names, w- chronic fatigue syndrome, ME, is that what you said they called it?

   9. HBHoward Bloom5:13

      ME is, uh, myalgic encephalomyelitis.

   10. JRJoe Rogan5:16

       And is it-

   11. HBHoward Bloom5:16

       It's a more dignified name.

   12. JRJoe Rogan5:18

       Do ... Can they understand it in, to the point where they could test for it? Do they give you a blood test?

   13. HBHoward Bloom5:24

       No.

   14. JRJoe Rogan5:24

       Or do they just-

   15. HBHoward Bloom5:24

       They can't test for it. They don't know what causes it. There is no ... I've wr- Look, a friend approached me at one point and said, "The Duchess of Kent has what you have. Can you write her a letter about how to manage it?" So, instead of a letter, I wrote 14 or 16 pages or something like that. And so, when people have this, I send them this pamphlet. It explains how I got out of it, but what worked for me is not necessarily gonna work for you or anybody else.

   16. JRJoe Rogan5:50

       Was it a gradual slipping away of your energy, or was it a quick drop-off?

   17. HBHoward Bloom5:53

       Not that gradual. It happened on March 10th of 1988.

   18. JRJoe Rogan5:57

       So, March 9th, you're fine. March 10th-

   19. HBHoward Bloom6:00

       March 9th, I'm fine. March 10th, I'm fine. I fly down to, uh, I think it was Richmond or something like that, to go out five ... To be taken by Jeep, uh, five hours into the countryside, to meet with Linda Womack, that's Sam Cooke's daughter, and, um, her husband, uh, Cecil Womack, who was ... Wrote the Rolling Stones' first hit. He and his brother. And they have this big aircraft hangar-sized farm building. Uh, it's gonna be their home, but right now, they've just had it built. It's empty. It doesn't have heating yet, and it's March 10th. It's still the end of winter. And so we go in past the sheep and into this building, and there's no furniture in there. And I sit there and interview them for five hours and find out that there's something called a black coal mining culture, and that gospel came out of those black coal mines. I had no idea that Blacks ever got involved in coal mines, much less that that's how gospel culture began. And I ... They drove me five hours back to the airport again. I sat there on the plane with my little TRS-100, the very first laptop computer, this little gizmo that ran off of AA batteries, and, um, and then I forgot my, m- m- my laptop on the plane. I don't do things like that. S- something was a little off. The next day, I thought I had a cold. My technique for handling a cold, work your fucking ass off. Um, walk a minimum of two and a half miles and do your work. So I worked and powered my way through it. By Tuesday, um, I was so weak that my staff had to pick me up under the armpits and drag me off to the elevator, and throw me in the back of a car service car, and ship me out to Park Slope to my brownstone in Brooklyn. Gah, I don't know how I even got up the stairs, and it was all downhill basically from there.

   20. JRJoe Rogan7:54

       For 15 years?

   21. HBHoward Bloom7:55

       Fifteen friggin' years.

   22. JRJoe Rogan7:56

       That's unbelievable.

   23. HBHoward Bloom7:56

       Right. But, so ... But I still had ... I had gotten halfway through writing my first book. My plan was, okay, I'll do what I've done with all my rock and roll bands. When my book is ready to come out, I'll go do every morning television show, every radio show, every newspaper in the country. I'll stay at Hyatt houses where the sheets are sunny and yellow, and, um, where they make the bed for you. You don't have to make it yourself, and they'll feed you food and stuff like that, and I'll promote my book. That was my vision of my next step in life, my future. Well, if you can't leave your bedroom, that's all gone. That's all gone. And you have to ... And I had to walk into my office one day and say, "I have no idea of what's happening to me. I could be dying. Um, I have to be out of here in two weeks." And, um, I gave the whole thing to my staff-

   24. JRJoe Rogan8:48

       Wow.

   25. HBHoward Bloom8:48

       ... the biggest PR firm in the music industry.

   26. JRJoe Rogan8:50

       You just gave it to them?

   27. HBHoward Bloom8:51

       Yeah. And the next day, I got a call from a West Coast competitor offering me a lot of money, and I had to say, "No, I'm sorry. I gave it to my staff yesterday."

   28. JRJoe Rogan8:59

       (laughs)

   29. HBHoward Bloom9:01

       So ... (laughs) And, and-

   30. JRJoe Rogan9:02

       Wow.
4. 12:24 – 21:06

   Trial-and-error recovery: doctors, protocols, shots, meds, and sleep strategy

   1. JRJoe Rogan12:24

      Now, during this time, were you getting treated? Were doctors giving you-

   2. HBHoward Bloom12:28

      Doctors don't know a damn thing about this. Eventually, my first wife, who I lost because of this, uh, l- lost a 34-year marriage because of the illness, she persuaded a CFS doctor, a doctor who specializes in chronic fatigue syndrome, to come out to my house when he was going to a party in Brooklyn and see me. And the most useful thing that he did was hand me a piece of paper with an email address on it. And he said, "This is another one of my patients. She's in Texas. I want you to get in touch with her." And the two of us went out like Hansel and Gretel holding hands going into the forest, looking for treatment modalities. We're looking for treatments that might possibly save us from our illness. So, when I tell people the stuff I take and they say, "Okay, who can I get this from?" And I send them to my doctor, my old CFS doctor, he says, "Oh, I don't give those treatments." Well, he gave them to me, but he gave them to me because those were the things that felt like they might work, and he allowed me to try them. And I ended up with, uh ... Every morning, I give myself a shot with three different things in it, half a CC of magnesium, one CC of oxytocin, and, uh, about two CCs of cyanocobalamin, which is liquid vitamin B12.

   3. JRJoe Rogan13:43

      So, B12, magnesium, and oxytocin?

   4. HBHoward Bloom13:45

      Oxytocin, the bonding hormone.

   5. JRJoe Rogan13:47

      Yeah.

   6. HBHoward Bloom13:47

      Oxytocin, the stuff that creates trust in neuroeconomics experiments. Oxytocin would ... Y- if you're a mother and you've just given birth to a baby, when you put that baby to your left nipple for the very first time, you feel, in some cases, like you've just taken LSD, because this chemical goes coursing through your body, and it's a trip. And it makes you trust everybody in the room and everybody who walks into the room. It's oxytocin. And oxytocin, I've been on oxytocin now for 20 years. And oxytocin, it turns out, also does something else. Um, there is this little experiment called parabiosis. Take an old rat. His brain is aging, his heart is aging, his kidneys are aging. You hook up the circulatory system to the circulatory system of a young rat, and guess what starts happening to the old rat? His brain starts reversing, getting, getting younger. His heart starts getting younger. His kidneys start to get younger. So, I'm about to be 75 years old in a month, and, um, I do between 400 and 700 pushups in the morning first thing.

   7. JRJoe Rogan14:55

      That's crazy.

   8. HBHoward Bloom14:56

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan14:56

      That's a lot.

   10. HBHoward Bloom14:56

       It's really crazy. But when 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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan15:32

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

   12. 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-

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:57

       Oh.

   14. HBHoward Bloom15:58

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

   15. JRJoe Rogan16:01

       (laughs)

   16. HBHoward Bloom16:01

       And it's done wonders.

   17. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       Wow.

   18. HBHoward Bloom16:03

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

   19. JRJoe Rogan16:06

       What are the other things that have worked?

   20. 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.

   21. 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-

   22. 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.

   23. JRJoe Rogan17:56

       Huh.

   24. 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.

   25. JRJoe Rogan18:32

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

   26. HBHoward Bloom18:34

       Two four-hour chunks, because-

   27. JRJoe Rogan18:35

       Do you feel like that is better for you?

   28. 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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan18:50

       Right.

   30. 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-
5. 21:06 – 24:03

   A mind that refuses one lane: space work, many projects, and being ‘typed’

   1. HBHoward Bloom21:06

      And it's only a part. I mean, right now, I'm co-designing ... So, here I, h- here I am, the guy who worked with Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, and all of those people, and I'm co-designing a multi-planetary mission at Caltech right now. I'm out here in California to do a bookstore reading, my first one on the West Coast, for How I Accidentally Started the '60s, my current book. But then, I have three presentations at the Annual Meeting of the National Space Society, and I'm on the Board of Governors of the National Space Society, and I got some important things to do there. And then, they let me sit in on the board meetings. I'm used to being on both the board and the Board of Governors. And, uh, there are some important things I need to help this group accomplish, and then I go back to New York and get, hopefully, if I'm lucky, and my planes are, are on time, I get to New York in time to get some sleep, and to get up and do an interview with a British, um, filmmaker who's making a film about Prince. In the meantime, there's a film being made about my life called Surf the Catastrophe. It's a 60- to 90-minute film, and they're finally getting, after a year of shooting, they're getting down to the editing, and it's a three-time Grammy winner who is my director, and one of the cameramen who's been with us through this whole thing. Um, a couple of Sundays ago, my director got his first, or his third Grammy, or Emmy, and my, uh, one of my cameramen got his second Emmy. So, there's all kinds of wild stuff. I have 15 projects going on at once, and I love it. (laughs)

   2. JRJoe Rogan22:41

      Yeah, I was gonna say that it seems like you get very energized when you're talking about the amount of different things that you're doing all at once.

   3. HBHoward Bloom22:47

      Yeah, it's fabulous.

   4. JRJoe Rogan22:47

      Like, this is part of what gives you juice.

   5. HBHoward Bloom22:49

      Yeah, because, uh, for whatever reason, if ... I refuse to go into any niche. I refuse to go into one specialization and see the walls close in on me and get buried there. And my goal since I was 16 years old in working at the world's largest cancer research facility has been not to be a mole digging a hole so deep you can't see anything, um, but to be the eagle flying over the landscape and taking each of those mole holes as pic- pixels in a big picture. So, I do all the sciences.

   6. JRJoe Rogan23:19

      What is that term, autodactic?

   7. HBHoward Bloom23:21

      Yes, autodidact, right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan23:23

      Autodidact, right.

   9. HBHoward Bloom23:23

      Well, I read two books a day from the time I was 10, and by the time I got to college ... Remember, I'm there with the, at the age of 12 with the head of the graduate physics department, not just the physics department, the graduate physics department. And we're talking as equals, which is really weird. So-

   10. JRJoe Rogan23:42

       That is pretty weird.

   11. HBHoward Bloom23:43

       So, by the time I got to college Ar- and ended up with four, um, fellowships in neuroscience, I realized that, for me, graduate school would be the Auschwitz of the mind. Um, I felt I was in a boxcar on my way to the end of everything I wanted to understand in life.

   12. JRJoe Rogan24:02

       Why is that?

6. 24:03 – 40:36

   The mechanics of mass ecstasy: Hitler rallies, rock concerts, and human longing

   1. HBHoward Bloom24:03

      Well, because since I was 12 or 13 years old, I wanted to take all the panorama, the full palette of the sciences, and I wanted to use them among other things to understand ecstatic experiences. I wanted to understand-... how Hitler put together this performance, torchlight parades where 15 guys are walking down the streets abreast of each other carrying torches at 10 o'clock at night, and people on the Unter Verl- Van Linden, the big boulevard, are packed so tight that if you pulled up your feet, y- you wouldn't topple over because the crowd would hold you up. They were crowded in on either side of you, supporting you. And people had a sense of being lifted out of themselves and having a transcendent experience, and becoming part of three things: Ein Volk, one tribe; ein Reich, one state; ein Führer, one leader. But it gave them, we all need a sense of being a part of something bigger than ourselves. I wanted to know how that sense of e- ecstatic dissolution into something bigger than yourself happens.

   2. JRJoe Rogan25:10

      Do you think that w- in Hitler's case, that this was an accident?

   3. HBHoward Bloom25:15

      No, I think Hitler-

   4. JRJoe Rogan25:16

      This is something that he designed?

   5. HBHoward Bloom25:17

      I think this- this was ... Yes, he did design it. He absolutely designed it.

   6. JRJoe Rogan25:20

      So he knew that he could create this sort of ecstatic state in, in these people?

   7. HBHoward Bloom25:23

      You bet. Um, he was an ecstatic, and he was preaching to people to bring them to a state of ecstasy.

   8. JRJoe Rogan25:31

      How di- how did he know all this?

   9. HBHoward Bloom25:33

      How did he know all this?

   10. JRJoe Rogan25:33

       H- yeah, how did he know all this?

   11. HBHoward Bloom25:35

       The way any artist knows how to achieve things that he may never have seen achieved before in his life. It's i- intuition. We're all built with certain, uh, supernormal responses inside of us, certain gushes of emotion you can hit if you hit just the right stimulus. And he hired Albert Speer to be his art director, so Albert Speer would art direct these massive events like this, but it was Hitler who would go into a state of ecstatic preaching, as if preaching-

   12. JRJoe Rogan26:06

       Right.

   13. HBHoward Bloom26:06

       ... in tongues, but preaching in one tongue, German.

   14. JRJoe Rogan26:09

       Mm-hmm.

   15. HBHoward Bloom26:09

       And who could bring that audience to that ecstatic level. Um, he was-

   16. JRJoe Rogan26:15

       Does it disturb you to study someone as fucked up as Hitler, though, and look for the genius in his approach, especially as a Jew?

   17. HBHoward Bloom26:22

       Yeah, you bet your ass.

   18. JRJoe Rogan26:24

       Yeah.

   19. HBHoward Bloom26:24

       Of course. Um, but I figure if Hitler could use this for evil, the big trick is to understand it and use it for good. And in fact, it turns out that a rock concert has these ecstatic elements-

   20. JRJoe Rogan26:37

       Sure.

   21. HBHoward Bloom26:37

       ... in it. And, you know, you hear about audiences getting off. That's what the p- people on stage are constantly trying to achieve. That's an ecstatic state.

   22. JRJoe Rogan26:48

       Is this what f- was fascinating to you about rock in the first place-

   23. HBHoward Bloom26:51

       Yes.

   24. JRJoe Rogan26:51

       ... that led you to become a publicist?

   25. HBHoward Bloom26:53

       Right. 'Cause remember, if I had gone to grad school, I would have been giving paper and pencil tests-

   26. JRJoe Rogan26:57

       Right.

   27. HBHoward Bloom26:57

       ... to 22 college students in exchange for one psychology credit. Now, how much was I gonna learn about mass ecstasies, the forces of history-

   28. JRJoe Rogan27:05

       Right.

   29. HBHoward Bloom27:05

       ... in that college class? Nothing.

   30. JRJoe Rogan27:06

       It's fascinating, though, that you, uh, you had this foresight, because for many people, the idea of going to grad school and becoming a professor, like, that was the, that was the golden pot at the end of the rainbow. It's just-
7. 40:36 – 46:32

   PR as ‘secular shamanism’: authenticity, shaping narratives, and critic groupthink

   1. HBHoward Bloom40:36

      And there is a good chance that you were having a kind of out-of-body experience of one kind or another because something deeper inside of you takes you over and performs through you. It's not you, but of course it is you. So if you were gonna come to me when I was in the rock and roll business and you wanted to be my client, I would give you a lecture. I would say, "You have to understand something. If you are coming to me to fashion an image, to brand you, and to make you a superstar, I'll get you an appointment immediately, within the hour, with my best competitor." Um-

   2. JRJoe Rogan41:12

      (laughs)

   3. HBHoward Bloom41:13

      But if you're gonna work with me, you have to understand that music is not an exchange for pieces of plastic. It is not an exchange of downloads. It is not an exchange of money. It's not about markets and branding and all of that stuff. Music is about an exchange of human soul. When you sit in front of a blank piece of paper at 2:00 in the afternoon to write a lyric, you know you can never write a lyric again 'cause you have no idea of how you've ever written lyrics in the past. And at 4:00 in the afternoon, very often there's a lyric there. My job is to find the self inside you who wrote that lyric and introduce it to the self that says, "Hello. How are you? Fine, thank you very much," and all the ritualistic aspects of life. When you go on stage, you have the kind of experience that I had. You are out of your own body, you are danced around as if you were a marionette. You feel a 17,000 souls coursing through you to something higher, being transmogrified and channeling back to those people in a continuous loop. My job is to find that soul inside of you that dances you on stage and introduce it to the self of, "Hello. How are you? Fine, thank you very much." So if you're willing to give me six weeks to study you and then come out to your environment and see you in your environment for anywhere from one to three days, my job is secular shamanism. Find that fucking soul that dances you.

   4. JRJoe Rogan42:35

      So you would go and hang out with them for-

   5. HBHoward Bloom42:37

      Uh, not really hang out. It would be a very intense interview. With John Mellencamp, we started at 9:00 in the morning at his home in Seymour, Indiana. We finished at 4:00 in the afternoon. John looked the way that he only looked when he came off stage. He looked hollowed out. He looked like a, a scarecrow. Um, he had s- empty caverns where his eyes should have been. He was wiped. He was totally wiped. And that interview allowed me to-... find the authentic John Mellencamp and preach it to the press, and turn the press who hated John Mellencamp around, and-

   6. JRJoe Rogan43:12

      Why'd they hate him?

   7. HBHoward Bloom43:13

      They hated him because he had signed with Tony Defries, who was managing David Bowie. And Tony Defries thought that his magic came from changing people's names. David had ... Dave Bowie had been named David Jones, and he had changed it to Bowie. And so, he called John, uh, Johnny Cougar. And then, he did something that sounds devilishly clever, but was the opposite of clever. He, um, had a book made with one page on each of all of the dominant critics of the day. One page, a picture, a little write-up on each of them. And the press perceived this as trying to buy them, and they don't like being bought. Um, so they rebelled. And the word went out in the press that John Cougar was a prick, that he was just an obnoxious, horrible human being, and that his music was crap. And so, even my friend, Ken Emerson, my impression from Ken, Ken was, at that point, the Record Reviews editor for Rolling Stone, and eventually he'd be an editor at the New York Times Sunday Magazine, a very influential magazine, nationwide. And, um, my impression was that Ken wrote his review of John's album without ever opening the shrink wrap, without ever listening to it, because everybody ... it was assumed in that community, that you knew what John's music was, crap, and you knew what his personality was, crap. And if you opened the album and listened to it, you would be expelled. People would shun you at the next launch. They wouldn't want you there or the next generation.

   8. JRJoe Rogan44:51

      So, you shouldn't even listen to it-

   9. HBHoward Bloom44:53

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan44:53

       ... because it's that bad.

   11. HBHoward Bloom44:54

       Exactly.

   12. JRJoe Rogan44:54

       You just, you had to, uh ... the group think had been established.

   13. HBHoward Bloom44:57

       Yeah, and peer pressure is tremendous within the rock crit or was tremendous within the rock crit establishment, um, the rock cr- among the rock critics. And it goes-

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:07

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

   15. HBHoward Bloom45:09

       But they were so rigidly conformity-enforced.

   16. JRJoe Rogan45:12

       Yeah.

   17. 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.

8. 46:32 – 52:54

   Michael Jackson up close—and a detour into Howard’s always-on tech life

   1. JRJoe Rogan46:32

      How well did you know Michael Jackson?

   2. 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.

   3. JRJoe Rogan47:42

      (laughs)

   4. 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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan49:46

      (laughs)

   6. HBHoward Bloom49:46

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

   7. JRJoe Rogan49:49

      (laughs)

   8. HBHoward Bloom49:50

      Um, so let's find-

   9. JRJoe Rogan49:52

      Of course you're an Android guy too.

   10. HBHoward Bloom49:54

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

   11. JRJoe Rogan49:57

       You want- you want my help?

   12. HBHoward Bloom49:58

       ... we pull down from here.

   13. JRJoe Rogan50:00

       (laughs)

   14. HBHoward Bloom50:00

       I'm an incompetent with this stuff.

   15. JRJoe Rogan50:01

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

   16. HBHoward Bloom50:04

       Yeah.

   17. 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-

   18. HBHoward Bloom50:14

       Right. Right.

   19. JRJoe Rogan50:14

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

   20. HBHoward Bloom50:17

       I have-

   21. JRJoe Rogan50:17

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

   22. HBHoward Bloom50:18

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

   23. JRJoe Rogan50:22

       Three?

   24. HBHoward Bloom50:22

       Because they were out so quickly.

   25. JRJoe Rogan50:24

       They were out. (laughs)

   26. HBHoward Bloom50:25

       And I need to replace them. Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan50:26

       What are you doing with them? Chew on them?

   28. HBHoward Bloom50:27

       Well, no, I'm petting dogs-

   29. JRJoe Rogan50:29

       (laughs)

   30. HBHoward Bloom50:29

       ... and that yanks them around. Uh, the- the- the best quality sound that I've been able to get is in $8 headphones.
9. 52:54 – 1:02:41

   Reusable rockets and private space: Bezos vs. Musk and why NASA is stuck

   1. HBHoward Bloom52:54

      I would imagine that when it comes to Blue Origin, his rocket company, that he is not cheap.

   2. JRJoe Rogan53:00

      Oh, I didn't even know he had a rocket company.

   3. HBHoward Bloom53:01

      Yes, he has a rocket company.

   4. JRJoe Rogan53:02

      What's he think? He's Elon Musk.

   5. HBHoward Bloom53:03

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan53:04

      Look at you over there, Jeff.

   7. HBHoward Bloom53:05

      He's- he thinks that-

   8. JRJoe Rogan53:06

      With your rocket company.

   9. HBHoward Bloom53:06

      ... he thinks that- that SpaceX and Elon Musk are the hare and he's the tortoise.

   10. JRJoe Rogan53:12

       Ah.

   11. HBHoward Bloom53:12

       So, he has launched a rocket, the same rocket eight times now, and landed it again.

   12. JRJoe Rogan53:18

       Really?

   13. HBHoward Bloom53:19

       Yes.

   14. JRJoe Rogan53:19

       The same rocket?

   15. HBHoward Bloom53:19

       The same rocket. So he's demonstrated multiple reuse. The problem is that his rocket can't- can only get to the fringes of space. It can't really get into orbital space.

   16. JRJoe Rogan53:30

       There he is right here. Jamie just pulled it up. You could look at it right there.

   17. HBHoward Bloom53:33

       Aha. Yes.

   18. JRJoe Rogan53:35

       That's it.

   19. HBHoward Bloom53:35

       That's it.

   20. JRJoe Rogan53:35

       Wow.

   21. HBHoward Bloom53:36

       You got it.

   22. JRJoe Rogan53:36

       Is that real?

   23. HBHoward Bloom53:37

       That's real.

   24. JRJoe Rogan53:37

       Is that real, Jamie?

   25. HBHoward Bloom53:38

       That's totally real.

   26. JRJoe Rogan53:38

       Why does it look fake? Because you haven't seen it before. I don't know.

   27. HBHoward Bloom53:42

       So-

   28. JRJoe Rogan53:42

       Doesn't it look like CGI to you? I'm well- I sound like Eddie Bravo. (laughs)

   29. HBHoward Bloom53:47

       (laughs) so it could be-

   30. JRJoe Rogan53:48

       Wow. That's amazing.
10. 1:02:41 – 1:05:43

    China’s big vision vs. America’s: the ‘highway in the sky’ and space mining

    1. 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.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:04:34

       In one meteor, to mine this meteor?

    3. HBHoward Bloom1:04:35

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

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:04:40

       So is the idea to mine this meteor-

    5. HBHoward Bloom1:04:42

       Yes.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:04:42

       ... to land on it and-

    7. HBHoward Bloom1:04:43

       Yes, exactly.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:04:44

       ... somehow or another extract resources-

    9. HBHoward Bloom1:04:45

       Yes.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:04:46

        ... then bring them back to Earth?

    11. HBHoward Bloom1:04:46

        But if NASA seriously wants us to develop that space economy, they have to do their part. They have to ... Uh, Elon and Jeff are, are bringing the rockets to the table right now, reusable rockets, like the 737s that we have now that we turn around in LA and send back to New York, and then turn around in New York and send back to LA for 35 to 40 years each. They amortize their cost. They allow you to get a round trip ticket for as low as $220 on a really good day. Um, that's what's happening with space. But where's the mining equipment gonna come from? That's something NASA needs to be working on, plus the mining equipment for the moon, to turn the moon basically into a fuel station for rockets.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:05:30

        How do you have time to think about this while also thinking about all the other things you think about?

    13. HBHoward Bloom1:05:32

        Because I do my best thinking-

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:05:34

        (laughs)

    15. HBHoward Bloom1:05:34

        ... when I'm thinking about 15 things at once.

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:05:36

        (laughs)

    17. HBHoward Bloom1:05:36

        And that's why the music is there, 'cause my mind is empty if I don't have ... 'Cause that's another thread going on at the same time.

11. 1:05:43 – 1:22:59

    Physics heresies: entropy, anti-entropy, and why ‘The God Problem’ argues science is off

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:05:43

       I wanna bring you back to something you said earlier that you sorta glossed over, but you were talking about quantum physicists-

    2. HBHoward Bloom1:05:48

       Right.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:05:49

       ... getting everything wrong.

    4. HBHoward Bloom1:05:51

       So I go-

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:05:51

       Are you talking about entropy?

    6. HBHoward Bloom1:05:52

       So I flew to Moscow. Uh, no, and I've debunked that in a book called The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates that has five, uh, heresies. And heresy number one is that one, uh, i- is that, uh, A does not equal A. That's Aristotle's primary law of identity. No, it's not always true. Um, one of the laws is the theory of entropy is so fucking wrong that it justifies the-

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:06:15

       Explain entropy to people that might not know exactly-

    8. HBHoward Bloom1:06:16

       Okay. Entropy means that all, everything is falling apart constantly, and that in order to make something positive happen, you have to shed more negative energy, not really negative energy, more dispersed waste energy. And in fact, the universe doesn't l- work like that. The universe, uh, in the very beginning it formed quarks from, from nothing but motion. Quarks from motion? Are you kidding me? Yeah, the first things from movement? Are you joshing? No. And then the quarks had to get together in groups of three, 'cause this is a profoundly social universe where they couldn't survive. And one form of quark, like this, with one up and two down or something like that, is a neutron. And the other direction, three quarks, is a proton. And all of this is anti-entropic. And then what do all of these billiard balls do? What do all these particles do? 280,000 years later, they begin to sweep themselves together in these massive social agglomerations that look like big potatoes. And those are the beginnings of galaxies.... before they form their spiral arms and stuff like that. Uh, and then within the, the spiral arms of these galaxies, gravity balls (clears throat) are competing with each other to see who's the biggest gravity ball, and the biggest wins, and what does he do to the losers? He swallows them and gets even bigger, which makes it possible for that gravity ball to confront another bunch of gravity balls and beat them out for size and swallow them. Eventually, what happens is, you get so much gravity and so much matter in this gravity ball that the gravity ball explodes. That's called a sun, a star. And around it are smaller gravity balls that manage to hold their own in competitions, and they're planets and moons. How the hell do you go even this short distance into the life of a galaxy that's been around for 13.7 billion years with precisely the opposite of entropy happening?

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:08:11

       (laughs) What is the official definition of entropy? How is it defined by Webster's Dictionary? Do you know?

    10. HBHoward Bloom1:08:17

        It's usually a weasel definition.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:08:19

        Weasel? (laughs)

    12. HBHoward Bloom1:08:20

        Yeah. In other words, it's deliberately obscure. Um-

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:08:23

        Ah, because it's such a weird subject?

    14. HBHoward Bloom1:08:25

        Yeah. Um-

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:08:26

        Mm. That's funny.

    16. HBHoward Bloom1:08:26

        L- but every priesthood has a Shibboleth. A Shibboleth is a magic word, if you can't pronounce it, you're dead.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:08:33

        Ah.

    18. HBHoward Bloom1:08:34

        And so every tribe wants you to believe in something that's impossible. Remember the Red Queen or the White Queen-

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:08:41

        Right.

    20. HBHoward Bloom1:08:41

        ... in Alice in Wonderland said, "Sometimes I dream up six impossible things before breakfast."

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:08:46

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    22. HBHoward Bloom1:08:47

        And you have to pass the test by showing that you believe in something that's obviously fatuously wrong. And that's the e- and, and the Shibboleth for being considered a legitimate scientist is preaching allegiance to pledging allegiance to entropy.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:09:03

        Pull it up, let me see what it says here.

    24. HBHoward Bloom1:09:05

        Okay.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:09:05

        It says, uh, "A measure of the unavailable energy in a closed thermodynamic system that is also usually considered to be a measure of the system's disorder, that is a property of the system's state and that varies directly with any reversible change in heat in the system and inversely with the temperature of the system broadly, the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system." So that's what they're saying it is, the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system.

    26. HBHoward Bloom1:09:39

        Now, obviously, that's a very lucid explanation.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:09:43

        Mm.

    28. HBHoward Bloom1:09:43

        And you could recite it to a five-year-old-

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:09:45

        (laughs)

    30. HBHoward Bloom1:09:46

        ... and he'd understand exactly what you were saying.

Episode duration: 2:53:52