Joe Rogan Experience #1173 - Geoffrey Miller

Geoffrey Miller is an evolutionary psychologist, serving as an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico and known for his expertise in sexual selection in human evolution.

Joe RoganhostGeoffrey MillerguestJamie VernonguestGuest (unidentified, brief participant)guest

Sep 25, 20183h 2mWatch on YouTube ↗

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150 min read · 30,030 words

0:00 – 3:59
Cosby sentencing, statute limits, and media-driven “diagnoses”
1. JRJoe Rogan
  ... for 4, 3, 2, 1. (gavel bangs) Jeffrey.
2. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Hey. Joe.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Hey. Thanks for being here, man.
4. GMGeoffrey Miller
  How you doing?
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Appreciate it.
6. GMGeoffrey Miller
  It's my pleasure, and honor.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  And, uh, on the day where Bill Cosby goes to the pokey. (inhales deeply) Crazy.
8. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Sad story, that.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Uh, sad for some people, happy for others. Sad that he's only going away for ... F- ... I wonder if that's a death sentence for a man at his age? Essentially it is, right? He's like 81 or something like that.
10. GMGeoffrey Miller
  It would be weird if justice took into account, like, your health status in awarding sentences.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Right. I think they have done that, though. Didn't they do that with that guy who was Speaker ... Hassert? Who was Speaker of the House, who was convicted for molesting a large number of boys when he was a wrestling coach?
12. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Oh, yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Do you remember that man?
14. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
15. JVJamie Vernon
  He did 15 months.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  15 months. Imagine. They mu- ... I mean, that's, that's pure insanity.
17. JVJamie Vernon
  He was in a wheelchair when he was 15.
18. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
19. JVJamie Vernon
  That could've been ...
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, there's-
21. JVJamie Vernon
  ... darker.
22. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Exactly.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  There's no way, if he was a 25-year-old able-bodied man who had done the exact same thing, he would have gone to jail for 15 months for, uh, admitting to molest a large number of kids who were under his care, uh, when he was a wr- ... He was a wrestling coach, right?
24. JVJamie Vernon
  Uh, I think so. That sounds right.
25. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
27. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Oh, he was the guy the movie-
28. JVJamie Vernon
  Yeah.
29. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... was made of. No.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  No.
3:59 – 6:53
Hypocrisy, moral idolization, and the thrill of transgression
1. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Well, he's got a deep, dark streak. That's for sure.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Phew.
3. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Um, I mean, the weird thing is, though, a lot of people who are successful have a little bit of that dark streak. They have a little bit of that sociopathy. Like-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
5. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... they can kinda step back from normal human relations and they can either turn it into, you know, abuse and exploitation like Cosby did, or they can kind of civilize themselves-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
7. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... right? And they can harness that to, to do something that's g- good and- and where they're kinda using their ability to take a different viewpoint on things.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
9. GMGeoffrey Miller
  To, um, analyze human behavior, or invent things, or, or, you know, propose new policies or whatever. And, um, so I think that kind of dark streak, you know, if you have it, you have to recognize it and, and kind of tame it and work with it. And the people who do, I think can often do great things for a society. And the people who don't end up in jail.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, this is one of the reasons why I wanted to bring this up to you. As an evolutionary psych professor, l- looking at the human mind and looking at behavior patterns and what, what's clearly (smacks lips) some sort of ... I, I, I h- I hesitate to call crime an addiction, but it seems like an addictive pattern that he has, that there's a com- compulsion to doing this to people, that it's not as simple as he wants women to have sex with him, they don't wanna have sex with him, so he drugs them. I don't think it's that simple. I think there's some getting away with it thing. There's gotta be some he's better than everyone thing, because he's ... You know, he's royalty in the t- ... in terms of, like, Hollywood, in terms of show business, in terms of standup comedy. He's always been treated as royalty. I mean, he's been allowed to essentially criticize anyone he wants. He's, he's ... Rarely is there a rebuttal to the, the things that he says. And, you know, he's been criticizing the Black community for its use of bad words and for its use of sexually explicit, uh, language and, and depictions, and ...... meanwhile, though, the entire time, he's raping people. I mean, it's fucking amazing.
11. GMGeoffrey Miller
  I think one thing that might happen is if you've got this public image as being, like, squeaky clean, family values, and you've got the burden of kind of being a moral exemplar like that. You know? Just like, um, televangelists, right-
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
13. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... or anybody who, who has a big religious following. Like, the pressure to be good all the time, I think, can kinda tip people into this.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
15. GMGeoffrey Miller
  The thrill of transgression, uh, I imagine-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
17. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... could be quite, quite kind of addictive. And I think that's a real danger, and I think that's ... that kinda hypocrisy is why we should be really careful about kind of idolizing anybody-
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
19. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... t- to that degree, kinda morally, and, and putting that burden on them.
6:53 – 10:43
Homophobia research, plethysmographs, and living authentically
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I mean, uh, I could only imagine, like, being an evangelist and being someone who, who preached about the word of God, but meanwhile, having this weird hooker thing. Like, uh, do you remember ... What was his name? Ted ... He r- ... Ugh. He ran a giant church in, I believe it was Colorado, and the entire time ... I used to have a bit about him. The entire time, he was smoking meth and having sex with gay prostitutes.
2. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  And all the while, he's going on about ... It's always the guys who go on about how awful gay people are that are secretly gay. It's so common.
4. GMGeoffrey Miller
  There's a little research on that. (sighs) I mean, it's not d- definitive, but it looks like a lot of-
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Ted Haggerty?
6. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Like-
7. GPGuest (unidentified, brief participant)
  Haggerty.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Don't ... Haggard?
9. GPGuest (unidentified, brief participant)
  Yeah. Yeah.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Haggard. Uh-
11. GMGeoffrey Miller
  'Cause a lot of people ... A lot of guys who are pretty, like, outspokenly homophobic-
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... and then, like, you put them in a, a sex research situation and see what actually rouses them.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
15. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Like, if you show them straight or gay porn, right? And you have a plethysmograph and you, you sense what-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  What ... A ze- ... What's the graph? What is it?
17. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Plethysmograph.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  What is that?
19. GMGeoffrey Miller
  It, it senses blood flow in the penis.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, boy. I need one of those.
21. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs)
22. JRJoe Rogan
  I need one of those. Just have it in the background of every podcast. P- when you come to do the podcast, you gotta put these electrodes on your penis.
23. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Mm-hmm.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  And then, we're just gonna talk about Japanese vomit porn and (laughs) tentacles.
25. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Well, the pletho- ... Plethysmographs don't lie, 'cause they do that-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Plethysmographs don't lie. (laughs)
27. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs)
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Not the heart. The heart lies, not those plethysmographs. (laughs)
29. GMGeoffrey Miller
  So yeah, the, the people who are often, you know, most hostile to something-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
10:43 – 15:07
Porn’s cultural taboo vs universal consumption—and how tech changed access
1. JRJoe Rogan
  We are so strange, um, as, as a race. Uh, and I, I, I have talked many times about how bizarre it is that we've become really comfortable with seeing people have sex, like on phones and in, you know, iPads and laptops. I mean, it is such a massive part of internet consumption-
2. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  ... but yet, so dirty and so forbidden. And if someone comes in the room, and you're watching-
4. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (slams table)
5. JRJoe Rogan
  ... you slam the laptop shut in, in, in disgust. I- t- total embarrassment.
6. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs)
7. JRJoe Rogan
  It's we- really weird.
8. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah. Well, (sighs) it's weird on so many levels. Like, I don't do research on whatever, the psychology of porn, but I know people who do. And the fact that you can study it and everyone watches it, but you can't even show clips at a scientific conference-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow.
10. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... of what people are watching is kind of bizarre. A second thing that's bizarre is if you'd ask people 70 years ago w- w- ... you know, in the '50s or whatever, "What do you think will happen if there's unlimited free online pornography that is every possible genre of humans of all sexes interacting with each other, in- including cartoon dragons and whatever?"
11. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
12. GMGeoffrey Miller
  They would go, "Civilization will have fallen." Like, it would be chaos. It, it ... That sounds post-apocalyptic. And, and yet, we're living in that era.... and people are still driving their kids to school.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  They seem fine.
14. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... and being, like, morally judgmental about politics and our ability to car- compartmentalize is kind of awe-inspiring, actually.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, it really is. Um, but it's also, uh, our ability to adjust to the times-
16. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  ... is kind of awe-inspiring too.
18. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, think about the different... Like, I've often talked about, uh, when I was in high school is wh- I was in high school in 1981. It was my freshman year in high school. And that was literally around the time the VH1 tape was introduced into modern America. What- what was the- what was the exact year VH1 tapes were invented? We got them in my house, I think, in '82. Like, maybe I was a sophomore, which is right when you're about the horniest.
20. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  And, uh, (laughs) that's- that's when porn made it into people's houses and you had to go through those beads in the video store-
22. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Mm-hmm.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to get to the porn section. And everybody was like, everybody had blinders on and nobody looked at anybody else, and it was just terrifying. And, you know, you saw your neighbor there.
24. GMGeoffrey Miller
  They'd be, like, rental- rental late fees, like, "Should I bring it back today? Oh, man."
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Just keep it.
26. GMGeoffrey Miller
  "It's late. I'll just keep it as a three bucks."
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Just keep it. Another three bucks.
28. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  If you just stole it, it cost 30.
30. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
15:07 – 20:04
Addiction, self-control, and industries optimizing for compulsion (games & beyond)
1. JRJoe Rogan
  But then there's the third option, which is the, sort of the Cosby-esque thing, is that the addiction, that there's- there's... And maybe I can ask you about this. Like, what is it about things, whether it is gambling or, you know, whatever, video games, there are things that people get obsessed with, and those things become almost a part of who they are? It- it takes over their minds so much. Like, if you had a pie chart of the human brain-
2. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  ... with some folks, there's a giant chunk that's just porn. It's, like, 40% of the brain, just porn.
4. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, what happens? What is- what is it about the mind that makes one obsessed, whether it's with gambling or whatever- whatever the vice, whatever the- the thing that makes you addicted?
6. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Well, I mean, one thi- one issue is people differ in their- their conscientiousness, right? Their degree of self-control and their ability to kind of resist temptations and keep their- their eyes on the target, like career, family, kids, you know, do the right stuff. Um, other people are like, "I just can't control myself in any domain of life," whatever it is. Video games, porn, um, doing my homework, whatever. But I think we also have to cut people some slack, because remember, you know, if you're a teenager and you're really into video games, um, Call of Duty, whatever it is, there are literally thousands of people designing that game to be as addictive as possible and beta testing it and refining it and- and, you know, doing the level design so it gives you just the right reinforcers at the right pace. And of course we're not gonna be very good at resisting that, because the power of capitalism and tech and- and innovation to kind of, um, exploit our brains is- is pretty awesome.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Am I being naive or are they just trying to be entertaining? I mean-
8. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  ... are they just trying to make an amazing game that's totally immersive and sucks you in, or are they really thinking, "Hey, this Geoffrey Miller guy, I wanna get him fucked up on Battlefield Earth"? No, that was the John Travolta movie, right? (laughs)
10. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah. That- that did not succeed.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay, okay. Let's just say Unreal Tournament.
12. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  "I wanna get him fucked up on Unreal Tournament and get him completely addicted to this."
14. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Uh, th- they're just maximizing sales and profit and, you know
15. GIGuest (single-word interjection)
  Yeah.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  But are they doing it consciously or are they just trying to make the best possible game that's so entertaining, and then it just, as a side effect, it becomes, uh, addictive?
17. GMGeoffrey Miller
  I think it's a s- well ... Okay, if you're running a video game company, the- the folks actually doing the programming, right? Character design, level design, whatever, they want it to be awesome. They want it to just be-
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
19. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... the best game ever that is just so fun to play. But the management knows, "We have to sell it. We have to make it compelling. We have to make people excited about the next version and- and, you know, the add-ons." So I think the- there's kind of like a-... a super ego and id issue going on, even within companies. Where the, the designers just want it to be cool.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
21. GMGeoffrey Miller
  And management just wants a viable commercial product.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  But doesn't that just come with something that's cool? I mean, I'm, I'm just playing devil's advocate here, 'cause I'm not exactly sure how... I'm friends with a few guys who, who make video games. Uh, CliffyB, who, uh, worked for Epic Games, who makes, uh ... He showed us Unreal, way back in the day, even before Jaime worked here. We got to see, uh, them making Unreal Tournament, like as it was being made. And, uh, I went to the id offices when they were working on Quake III, which were just these amazing games. And it seemed to me -- and again, I could be naive -- but it seemed to me that all they were doing was just trying to make awesome shit that they like.
23. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  And then, it became addictive just 'cause it was so good.
25. GMGeoffrey Miller
  I think that's most of it. Um, yeah, I mean, this summer, like, my girlfriend and I were each doing, working on our next book proposals. And we each got a little bit addicted to Age of Empires HD-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
27. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... which was like back in the day, 20 years ago. And it's really fun 'cause we learned a lot about each other just watching each other play. Like, we had such different strategies, and- in terms of like what you build, what you prioritize, how you deal with enemies. Like, it, it's an amazing kind of personality test-
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
29. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... in its own right. Um, and we each got a little bit addicted temporarily in a- in our own way. And I don't think that's an intention of the designers. It's just, if you make anything awesome, whether it's music, whether it's standup comedy-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Or sex.
20:04 – 36:08
Prestige TV, moral ambiguity, and why politics becomes tribal online
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I saw you quote ... Uh, you, you posted about Ozark after I posted about how amazing it is. I'm completely wrapped up in this second season. It's so incredible. But you were saying how they always make the kids bratty.
2. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  You don't have kids, do you?
4. GMGeoffrey Miller
  No, I have a daughter.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  You do?
6. GMGeoffrey Miller
  22, yeah.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, okay. I, I didn't think she was bratty at all. I think she kept it remarkably together for a teenager whose parents are murderers and drug dealers.
8. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs)
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Spoiler alert. (laughs) I thought it was ... I think she's-
10. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  ... she, I mean, she needs some time alone where they need to talk to her. I mean, you can't just let her go through life hanging out with some kid who lives in a trailer, smoking weed and stealing books. I mean, you gotta-
12. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah, it ... I, I kinda warmed up to it after like ... Uh, I'd watched the first couple episodes, and she seemed kind of bratty, the daughter, in, in-
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Really?
14. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... in that. And then, and then, I thought-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Your kid must be amazing. (laughs)
16. GMGeoffrey Miller
  My kid's awesome, and, and I don't know why all kids are like her. So, um ... But I think screenwriters get lazy about this stuff.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
18. GMGeoffrey Miller
  They think, well, if there's a family, you need marital conflict-
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
20. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... and you need parent-offspring conflict, and you need secrets and lies, and, and-
21. JRJoe Rogan
  But I think the way they're handling it is amazing because the kid doesn't have that kind of conflict. The kid has, like, in my opinion, a, a, a typical sort of, uh, relationship with his father, where he admires his father and his father's abilities. And, you know, and he seems to be ... It's- ... I just think that show's fucking great. It's just so well-read. Uh, written, rather. It's just so- it's so twisted and there's so much going on, so many different levels.
22. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  It's like I get anxiety. I start sweating. You know, I feel like I'm burying bodies. (laughs)
24. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs) Well, I love that you, you don't really know what's gonna happen.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
26. GMGeoffrey Miller
  And-
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Legitimately.
28. GMGeoffrey Miller
  It, it's ... You know, Game of Thrones, you had that thing where any character could die at any time.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
30. GMGeoffrey Miller
  And that's what- That was one of the major things that kept-
36:08 – 40:42
Cancel culture, social media anxiety, and the need for new norms
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, um, it's... I don't... (sighs) I mean, I- I- I have a- a rosy view of the future. I'm very optimistic, and I think that all the chaos that we're going through right now, politically and socially, in particular, this is... I feel like this is just an adolescent-... period of communication, that we are experiencing this, this open flood, like we've opened up the, the barriers for communication. Anybody can communicate now, and it's just ch- And it's gonna take a while before the discourse m- uh, levels out, and you've got a lot of loud noises on, on all sides. And there's a lot of people fighting for power, and fighting, fighting for virtue, fighting for, uh, you know, whatever social brownie points they get by pointing out their position being correct, and your position being foolish and silly, and this is the future, and this is done. And, and it's ... There's a ... There's this cruel aspect to it, which is interesting. Like, when... If someone missteps, and someone says something that they regret, and then they delete it, p- there's this cancel culture. "Get rid of them! Off with his head!" Because, uh, people realize the immediacy of all this, and they're terrified of it happening to them. So, it's like they're just throwing rocks at whoever might be the accused. It's fascinating to watch-
2. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  ... you know?
4. GMGeoffrey Miller
  I mean, we're gonna need a whole new set of social norms where people just calm the fuck down about this stuff.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
6. GMGeoffrey Miller
  And I think it's kind of analogous. Like, one of my favorite books about kind of social history is called, uh, The Bourgeois Virtues by Deirdre McCloskey, an economic historian. She points out when you switch from, like, the Middle Ages where everyone's a peasant, to this urbanized commercial culture where people are mostly, um, traders, and they have little shops and whatever, they needed to learn how to interact with strangers to provide value for money. And they needed a whole new set of virtues that had to do with reliability, and thinking, "What am I making? Or what goods or services am I providing that actually are useful?" And it took, you know, a couple generations for people to enter that kind of capitalist mode of, "What can I do that's helpful to others, that can support my family?" And I think now we have a cultural shift, where we realize, given social media, how do we cope with the fact that everybody virtue signals, everybody sometimes says things that are, that are mean and stupid, and everyone's fallible, and anything you say will be on a permanent record basically? Um, how do we cope with that? You know, we're, we're used to a sort of public culture where everything is very polished and edited and curated. And, and that time is gone.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
8. GMGeoffrey Miller
  So we need a new set of kind of social and moral norms that cut each other a lot more slack, I think.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. I would agree with you, and I would, I would say that the inclination towards kindness and communication and understanding should be rewarded, and that we, we, we need to reward that and ... I don't wanna say ostracize people that are inclined to go towards this cancel culture idea. But we need to let people be aware of it. You know, we were talking before the podcast that, uh, I have, like, all these emails that I can't catch up on 'cause I was gone. I was in the mountains for six days with no cellphone service at all. I felt better when I was there. I just did. I feel like there's a certain amount of anxiety that comes with being connected to all these people all the time, and constantly checking your mentions, and constantly looking at Google News to find out what chaos is coming our way. And, uh, it's just ... I, I just don't think that that's healthy, and I, I don't think ... I think I do my very best to mitigate the negative effects of it, but my very best is not good. (laughs) I just don't think I'm doing a great job. Because when it's taken away from me, and I've had this happen twice over the last few months. Um, I was in Lanai, the small island off of Hawaii, one of the Hawaiian islands, and I broke my phone, and it took a few days for them to send me a new one. And I was like, "God, why do I feel so good?" (laughs) "I feel so present, and I feel so healthy." And then this, this past week the same thing. No cellphone service for all these days, and so I just felt better.
40:42 – 45:39
Burning Man as emergent subculture: logistics, politics, and signaling
1. GMGeoffrey Miller
  I think there's a funny thing even that happened with Burning Man culture, where, like, when it got started in the early '90s it was, "Let's all come together and have this excitement of interacting more." And now, since Burning Man's one of the few places where you don't get cellphone service, and you can't really be online, it's like, "Oh man, this is such a relief, because we literally can't stay connected." And the community we're in is only 70,000 people-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
3. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... instead of 330 million or whatever.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Which is almost Boulder.
5. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  That's almost Boulder, Colorado. I think Boulder's a little bit over 100, so 70,000 is ... That's a fucking big city (laughs) of freaks.
7. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs) It's a big city, but it feels intimate compared to Twitter.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Ooh.
9. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Right?
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I, I, I'm fascinated by Burning Man. I can't go because hippies will drive me crazy, and there's too much dust.
11. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  But I love the idea and I'm a- fully support. If there was, like, a fund that you could write a check, like, to support Burning Man, (laughs) I would support it as a project, as an idea. I don't necessarily wanna go there until they got it really polished and worked out, but I think what ... The idea behind it is fascinating. So people saying, "I don't like this. I don't like where this is going. I think there's a lot of people that would like to do something different. Let's just try it out for a week. Let's just ... Everybody let's agree. We'll get together through these days, and let's, let's just fucking dance, and we'll have glow sticks, and wear pasties, and get fucking crazy and do ecstasy." And a lot of people are like, "Fuck yeah, let's do it!" And then this thing happens, and this thing is only a few years old. I mean, it really is what? A decade and a half? How many years have they been doing it?
13. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Uh ...
14. JRJoe Rogan
  ... the '90s.
15. GMGeoffrey Miller
  The first, the first Burning Man was, like, the late '80s-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, was it really?
17. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... but it was just, like, a couple dozen people.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh.
19. GMGeoffrey Miller
  And then it just, it gradually grew, and it, it really became a pretty solidified subculture by probably the late '90s.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  And no leadership.
21. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Well, there is kind of behind the-
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Guidance.
23. GMGeoffrey Miller
  There's behind-the-scenes leadership, of course. And I mean, that's another fascinating thing, is depending on the, the political lenses that you wear when you go there, it's either, like, a libertarian paradise or it's a communist paradise.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
25. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Or it's spontaneous self-organization of some sort. Um, but there, there certainly are people who are kinda coordinating it. It's just they're not-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, there's tickets now.
27. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  You have to get tickets. (laughs)
29. GMGeoffrey Miller
  There's ... It's hard to get. It's hard to get tickets.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  That's fucking hilarious.
45:39 – 49:50
Mormons, far-sighted cultures, and sci‑fi futures
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Mormons are the nicest cult of all time. They're, they are some of the nicest folks. I know, uh, if I had to say, if, like, there's one religion, were I to say, like, what are, what are the, what are your expectations of friendliness and niceness? Like, where, where's, where's the highest expectation? For me, it's Mormons.
2. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Mm-hmm.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  That's one religion. Like, I think it's nonsense. I think Joseph Smith was a little con man in 1820 when he found golden tablets that contained the lost work of Jesus, and only he could read 'em 'cause he had a magic rock, and all that crazy shit. It is absolutely ridiculous. But the end result is a bunch of really nice folks. Like, they have a wonderful community. They're really nice to each other. Once they got rid of all that polygamy shit, you know, once they got rid of the 90 wives and, you know, dressing up like a pilgrim, they, they became, like, a really nice community of people. They're, like, generally really friendly.
4. GMGeoffrey Miller
  So my granddad, who was a, a business school professor, um, back in the '40s he moved his, his little family to Salt Lake City, and they lived there for a while. And he was really inspired by the kind of family values. And I think that's one reason he sort of went on to have 12 kids of his own.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh.
6. GMGeoffrey Miller
  And not that he turned Mormon, but he thought, "They're onto something in terms of how seriously they take, um, the future, both on Earth and, and in the afterlife, they believe in."
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, in the afterlife, don't they get a planet of their own when they die?
8. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Right. Uh, well, this is something I loved about the TV series The Expanse. I don't know if you've seen it.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  I keep hearing about it, and I haven't gotten into it yet. It's just too many damn shows that are awesome to watch these days. But as soon as I'm done with Ozark, I'm gonna jump in.
10. GMGeoffrey Miller
  What I loved about it is it's set maybe a couple hundred years in the future. And so, we've colonized Mars and the asteroid belt, and there's one group of people who are building the first ship to colonize a distant star system. And who's doing it? The Mormons.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Of course.
12. GMGeoffrey Miller
  And I thought, of course, of course it's gonna be a religion that has a far-sighted approach, and that's kind of pro-natalist, and that's all about family values, and, and, like, increasing their numbers, and, and ... Yeah, of course it's gonna be them. Not, what, so- uh, uh, social justice warriors putting together a starship?
13. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) Yeah. Did you ever see the, um, um, the Osmond Family photograph from one of their albums, their early albums, where they all got their own planet? 'Cause they think that when you die, you get your own planet. And so, the album was based on that concept. And, like, if you, you open up the album, it's like, "Oh, here's f- Planet Donny." Lookit.
14. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  He's got her own little asteroid belt. (laughs)
16. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah, they're, they're totally locked and loaded to do the, uh, the interstellar colonization.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  It's strange, though. I mean, it's stra- It's strange the blinders that people go on, that people put on, and that they would put those blinders on. Like ...... it's almost like, if you just can go, "Hey, look, let's just all admit Joseph Smith was full of shit. But we got a good thing going on here, folks. We're all real nice to each other, and there seems to be some real positive energy involved in believing in this higher power and this greater good and this overwhelming sense of community that we all have."
18. GMGeoffrey Miller
  And they have a sense of humor about it.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
20. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Like, the way they reacted to the South Park guys doing Book of Mormon-
21. JRJoe Rogan
  It's fantastic.
22. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... was like, fair enough. Pretty hilarious.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  They took out a full-page ad-
24. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  ... in the playbook. I mean, that, tha- th- and that is a brutal musical, in terms of, like, the way they're depicted. Buffoons, believing in nonsense, trying to recruit these indigenous people. It's kind of ... I mean, it's ruthless and hilarious at the same time. And they're like, "Wonderful."
26. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs)
27. JRJoe Rogan
  "If you wanna find out more about being a Mormon, here."
28. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Mm-hmm.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  "Come, come to our website and come check it out. Thank you."
30. GMGeoffrey Miller
  I, I think having that, that humility and that sense of humor about what you're doing, I wish we saw more of that in, like, academia, 'cause there's a lot of fields that are very bad and, and don't do good work, but that are terribly, terribly serious about it.
49:50 – 58:48
Academia vs ideology: gender studies, fat acceptance, and harm reduction taboos
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Like what?
2. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Gender studies or-
3. JRJoe Rogan
  (gasps) How dare you.
4. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... social psychology.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Gender studies.
6. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Or-
7. JRJoe Rogan
  I, I posted something on Instagram yesterday. Um, I was at a bookstore and there was a feminist baby, uh, book. It says Feminist Baby Finds Her Voice, and it's a baby screaming into a bullhorn. Look at this picture. Baby screaming into a bullhorn. And, and I said that the lines between parody and reality have never been blurrier. And some people laughed, but a lot of people called me a piece of shit. And (laughs) I ... This is one of the rare times I dove into the comments just to take a little look-see into the gates of hell.
8. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (clears throat)
9. JRJoe Rogan
  But, uh, look, that's fucking parody, folks. Why is the baby screaming into a bullhorn? What voice does she have? D- What, what oppression is she rallying against at three months old? Is she screaming about the patriarchy when she can't even fucking talk yet? And h- here's more parody. Why is she fat and ugly? What kind of baby is that? That baby looks like a thumb. She doesn't even have a chin. This is chaos. It's not even a real baby.
10. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs)
11. JRJoe Rogan
  It's like an M&M with legs. It's crazy. Look, she's got fucked-up hair, and they've already gendered her. They put a, a bow on her, which is really fucked up to do to a baby. You've decided that she's a girl? How dare you, you piece of shit. You transphobic asshole.
12. GMGeoffrey Miller
  And the rouge is, is a little bit over-applied there.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. She's got whore makeup on.
14. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs)
15. JRJoe Rogan
  She's dressed up like a fuck-clown already, as a baby. Fucked-up hair.
16. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Child abuse.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Big nutty eyes. It's crazy. Finds her voice. She found her voice. Fantastic. She can't talk yet.
18. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs)
19. JRJoe Rogan
  That's a baby. What, we should all listen to the baby? Give the baby a bullhorn. Let's all gather round. "I got poop."
20. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs)
21. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) What is the baby ... (laughs) What is the baby saying? "She finds her voice." Look, it's parody. Even if the ... The book is wonderful. I don't know that it's not. Maybe it's a great book. Maybe it's fun. Maybe it's a silly book. That's parody. That ... Fuck, that would be a goddamn character on South Park, a baby feminist with a bow that screams at the top of her lungs. What is this? Free the nipple? Hmm. Oh, like, right now, I'm hungry.
22. GMGeoffrey Miller
  I get it.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  I get it. Yeah.
24. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Oh, is that from the book?
25. JRJoe Rogan
  That's from the book, I guess.
26. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Okay.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Feminist Baby. Maybe it's a great book.
28. GMGeoffrey Miller
  I think it's satire. But, uh, but-
29. JRJoe Rogan
  I don't think so.
30. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... here, I mean, here's the thing, like, if you're in a field where-
58:48 – 1:06:34
Funding and censorship in science: sex research constraints and public misunderstanding
1. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Well, here's the problem, who gives you the research funding to look into this?
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Ah.
3. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Right?
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay.
5. GMGeoffrey Miller
  National Institute of Alcohol and Alcoholism or National Institute of Drug Abuse. If you do a grant proposal that says, "Here's an alternative that might work," they will shut it down 'cause the federal government does not ... Th- those agencies don't want the blowback of some senator saying, "How dare you fund this research that says this is a valid alternative."
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
7. GMGeoffrey Miller
  So everyone who works in these areas is kind of locked into a system of- of grant funding that's subject to kind of, um, political censorship-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
9. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... by the funding agencies.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Do you remember those, uh, talking dog commercials of about 10 years ago, where there was a girl, she comes home from school and the dog's like, "Lindsey, I really wish you wouldn't smoke pot. You're not the same when you do and I miss my friend." And the girl's sitting there stoned out of her mind, her dog's talking to her, dog runs away. It turns out that the organization that funded those commercials was funded by tobacco, alcohol, and pharmaceutical companies.
11. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Like they're drug dealers who are against drugs. It's literally like hookers doing a commercial against strippers. That's literally what it's like. And we just accepted this and it- it was all over television, it was everywhere you look. It became parody. I mean, it became preposterous. It was like, this is your brain on drugs, you remember the eggs?
13. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Mm-hmm.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  And everybody's like, "I'm hungry." I mean, a mi- million comedians had jokes on that. (laughs)
15. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  You've given me the munchies, man. This is, uh, just insanity that this is allowed to take place, is that drugs that kill enormous numbers of people are allowed to demonize drugs that kill no one any-... ever in the history of use. If you looked at that rationally, if you were something from some other planet that was studying the human race, and y- you saw the way we program people and the way we spend enormous sums of money to project a certain idea and get it into people's heads through these very influential short memorable videos, you'd be like, "This is a culture and a civilization, a c- uh, uh, an organ- an organism that is mad."
17. GMGeoffrey Miller
  (laughs)
18. JRJoe Rogan
  "This is madness."
19. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah, I, I often ask, like, myself, w- how is this gonna look in 50 or 100 years to whatever my, my great-grandkids or future people who stumble upon my books or this podcast or whatever? And I think i- if this would make zero sense and would be totally embarrassing, both, um, intellectually and ethically, then don't take it seriously. Uh, in this particular issue, I think it's really important for citizens to understand how much of science is constrained by what can be funded by the federal government, and that we are not actually supported to do certain kinds of research that might be really helpful to people. It's the same thing with sex research, right? It is virtually impossible to get federal funding to do any kind of sex research in America these days. So what do you do? You write a grant to do something else, and then you kind of do the sex research on the side using, like, some of the resources. Um, I don't do this, but everybody I know who does sex research does it.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Is it because they're concerned that the image of funding sex research versus funding w- whether it's obesity or hunger or, you know, p- poverty, whatever it is, like, th- these are... there's not enough resources to go around. Why would you spend any money studying this? You must be a pervert.
21. GMGeoffrey Miller
  It's partly that, but it's, it's partly, you know, the individuals in Washington who administer these grants don't want the political flack if some politician discovers, "Oh, you're, you're doing funding on, on, like, how women can have more orgasms. Outrageous."
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
23. GMGeoffrey Miller
  And it's like, that sounds like one of the most cost-effective ways to increase human happiness-
24. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
25. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... I've ever heard of, right? Um-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Right, but people are embarrassed of orgasms.
27. GMGeoffrey Miller
  People are embarrassed about it and...
28. JRJoe Rogan
  They're embarrassed of all sex.
29. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah. Um, marital therapy research, you can do. Like, if you wanna research, how do you make a monogamous relationship less full of stress and argument, y- you can get some money to do that. But even there, l- like, the kind of suggestions you could make are quite restricted, um, in terms of what, what kind of therapy you're allowed to, to research or talk about. So, uh, yeah, I wish citizens understood this, because their tax dollars are not being allocated in the best way to, to deliver the benefits in their real lives to their families and their relationships th- that they, that they could do.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  So to bring it all back to obesity, what, what I would like, and I bet I could say the same about you, is w- we'd like to take some of these sort of influential videos that we've seen done that demonize innocuous drugs, like marijuana, and put those on sugar, put those on how p- uh, pe- people are addicted to sugar. People are addicted to so many things that are causing obesity, so many things that are causing us to have this epidemic of... you know, I mean, if you go to Disneyland, it's one of the saddest things in the world to see how many people are on scooters 'cause they've eaten themselves out of their ability to be mobile on their own. They're just overflowing off the, off the side of these scooters. It's, it's very depressing. And then you see them, what they eat. They're drinking slushies and, you know, eating fucking nonsense. And this, this is a r- a- and, and again, it's another addiction and then the availability of it is so... I mean, imagine if you were a heroin addict and everywhere you went has heroin. That's what it's like to be a sugar addict. If you're a sugar addict, every store you go into is filled with your drug. Every 7-Eleven, right when you go to pay for your gas or whatever you're doing, it's filled with your drug right there in front of you. Your drug's everywhere.
1:06:34 – 1:21:00
Lab-grown meat, moral disgust, and the leap to robot brothels
1. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah. Um, but I, I'm kind of excited about new developments, like clean meat-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
3. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... lab-grown meat.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  I am too, 'cause I think-
5. GMGeoffrey Miller
  I think, like, ethically, that'll be awesome.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  I wanna see what kind of monsters they make outta that.
7. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Yeah.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  It's gonna be strange to see, like, headless meat slabs-... if no central nervous system, just grow- and, and trying to figure out how, how do they get it to have like a muscle consistency, like a filet mignon or something? I mean, you gotta realize, an animal, like different cuts of meat have a different texture to them because there's different muscle density, 'cause the animals use their body.
9. GMGeoffrey Miller
  I think you have to electrically stimulate the muscle tissue.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh.
11. GMGeoffrey Miller
  So it kinda has to twitch and, and allow-
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... a little ... It's weird.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  You'd have to.
15. GMGeoffrey Miller
  But ... And people go, "Oh, God, that's-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  But would it have nerves then?
17. GMGeoffrey Miller
  That's disgusting."
18. JRJoe Rogan
  People would make the argument then that it could feel somehow or another in some neighboring dimension. (laughs)
19. GMGeoffrey Miller
  It'll have like fake, fake nerves.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  (gasps) (laughs)
21. GMGeoffrey Miller
  But, I mean, what I'm excited about is you could potentially have meat that's not just from like the top three species, you know-
22. JRJoe Rogan
  You could eat meat from people?
23. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... cows, pigs, and chicken.
24. GPGuest (unidentified, brief participant)
  Yeah.
25. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Well, you could-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  You want to eat people, Jeffrey? Is that what you're saying?
27. GMGeoffrey Miller
  S- So, well, one of my edgier tweets was like-
28. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
29. GMGeoffrey Miller
  ... celebrities will start selling-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Pieces of themselves.
1:21:00 – 1:30:15
Deepfakes, synthetic media, and a future where digital evidence is untrustworthy
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, have you seen the porn where they do face swaps? That's, that's getting really good. They're really good at that now.
2. GMGeoffrey Miller
  This is another social revolution we're gonna have to brace for, is an era when you can do a credible porn fake of any celebrity or any citizen.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
4. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Just based on, like, sampling their Facebook photos or...
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Do you know who Kyle Dunnigan is?
6. GMGeoffrey Miller
  Mm-mm.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Hilarious standup comedian who has the funniest Instagram page of all time, and his Instagram page is about 80% of him doing face swap videos of the Kardashians and President Trump and Kanye West. (laughs) And they're just so fucking ridiculous because you know that they're fake, 'cause it's real obvious that they're fake, but it's essentially like a new art form. If you think of, like, sketch comedy and... Here, play one for 'em. See what we got here. I haven't seen this one.
8. GPGuest (unidentified, brief participant)
  Big drama. Yeah, big drama.
9. GVGuest (brief comedic bit / third voice)
  What'd I do now?
10. GPGuest (unidentified, brief participant)
  When I was at your tiny white house, I put a recorder in the chair. Yeah. Yeah, she recorded you. Yeah. Yeah.
11. GVGuest (brief comedic bit / third voice)
  Holy shit, another tape?
12. GPGuest (unidentified, brief participant)
  Yeah. Yeah, so bad. So bad. So bad. Yeah.
13. GVGuest (brief comedic bit / third voice)
  (laughs)
14. GPGuest (unidentified, brief participant)
  Where's the bathroom?
15. GVGuest (brief comedic bit / third voice)
  Right down the hall, sweetheart. Oh my God, she's got the weirdest ass, but also sort of terrific. So terrific. I'm gonna go smell her chair.
16. GPGuest (unidentified, brief participant)
  Ew. You're rough. Whoa.
17. GVGuest (brief comedic bit / third voice)
  Getting some information here.
18. GPGuest (unidentified, brief participant)
  (laughs)
19. GVGuest (brief comedic bit / third voice)
  Okay, she had a bowel movement about an hour and a half ago. Not so terrific, but natural, totally natural.

Episode duration: 3:02:24

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Cosby sentencing, statute limits, and media-driven “diagnoses”

Hypocrisy, moral idolization, and the thrill of transgression

Homophobia research, plethysmographs, and living authentically

Porn’s cultural taboo vs universal consumption—and how tech changed access

Addiction, self-control, and industries optimizing for compulsion (games & beyond)

Prestige TV, moral ambiguity, and why politics becomes tribal online

Cancel culture, social media anxiety, and the need for new norms

Burning Man as emergent subculture: logistics, politics, and signaling

Mormons, far-sighted cultures, and sci‑fi futures

Academia vs ideology: gender studies, fat acceptance, and harm reduction taboos

Funding and censorship in science: sex research constraints and public misunderstanding

Lab-grown meat, moral disgust, and the leap to robot brothels

Deepfakes, synthetic media, and a future where digital evidence is untrustworthy

Get more out of YouTube videos.