Joe Rogan Experience #1222 - Michael Shermer

1. 0:05 – 1:36

   Why is there something rather than nothing? Framing the limits of intuition

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:05

      And we're live. Hello, Michael Shermer. How are you, sir?

   2. MSMichael Shermer0:08

      Hello, Joe Rogan. I'm doing well, thank you. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:09

      Good to see you. Good to see- with your pile of your writing. Look what you got there.

   4. MSMichael Shermer0:12

      (laughs) Yeah, what-

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      You got Moral Arc, uh, Heavens on Earth. Look at you.

   6. MSMichael Shermer0:17

      This is-

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      Skeptic magazine.

   8. MSMichael Shermer0:18

      ... that's the latest issue, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" We- we like to tackle the little questions.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      Whoa. That's a deep one.

   10. MSMichael Shermer0:23

       You've dealt with this on the show.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       Yeah, too much. It's, uh, that's one that just p- uh, you know, when you're in traffic and going, "What is this?"

   12. MSMichael Shermer0:30

       When you have someone like Neil or, or uh, Sean Carroll-

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:34

       Yeah.

   14. MSMichael Shermer0:34

       ... or, or uh, Lawrence Krauss talking about this, it's like, whoa.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       Yeah.

   16. MSMichael Shermer0:37

       I mean, I'm not a physicist. I'm a social scientist, so for me, I, I come at it like, "What do you mean by this word nothing?" Because most of us have this idea of what it mean... Oh no, in physics, it means this other thing, like, okay. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       Yeah. Well, I think our limited understanding of what they're talking about, like, when I see those guys writing down on legal papers with all that scritchety scratchety crazy-looking-

   18. MSMichael Shermer0:57

       Right.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:57

       ... fake alien language-

   20. MSMichael Shermer0:59

       (laughs) Right.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:59

       ... mathematics, like, thank God you guys are out there. (laughs)

   22. MSMichael Shermer1:03

       (laughs) Well, I opened Heavens on Earth with, "Imagine yourself dead." And, you know, most people go, "Well, uh, you know, I, I see myself in the casket and my friends and family are around," and hopefully they're mourning. Uh, no, you wouldn't see anything, of course. You- you're dead. Uh, I mean, to imagine anything, you have to be conscious and alive, so you can't even picture being dead, so you can't picture not existing. And it would be the same thing, imagine there's no universe.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:26

       Yeah.

   24. MSMichael Shermer1:26

       Okay, I see blackness. No, there's no blackness. I mean, nothing would literally be, not just no light, but no-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:33

       No perception of darkness.

   26. MSMichael Shermer1:35

       ... n- nothing, not even nothing.

2. 1:36 – 2:36

   Spiritual certainty and modern hucksters: why confident afterlife claims persist

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:36

      I was (sighs) going through Instagram the other day and there was this one, uh, person who was, uh, talking about the purpose of life, and when you die what's going to happen? And, uh-

   2. MSMichael Shermer1:48

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:48

      ... I immediately just started laughing. I'm like, "You don't know."

   4. MSMichael Shermer1:51

      Right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:51

      How are you saying this? Like, "When you die, what happens?" And he was, like, one of them spiritual-type characters who's just kind of a huckster. There's a lot of spiritual hucksters out there these days.

   6. MSMichael Shermer2:02

      There are, yes. The, in the '90s, we debunked all those, the psychics talking to the dead. That was a, that, that hasn't been too popular in recent years, but that was a big thing.

   7. JRJoe Rogan2:10

      People caught onto that little earpiece thing?

   8. MSMichael Shermer2:12

      It, it... Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan2:12

      (laughs)

   10. MSMichael Shermer2:12

       The earpiece or just the cold reading.

   11. JRJoe Rogan2:14

       Yeah.

   12. MSMichael Shermer2:14

       Like, you know, I see a, a, a father figure.

   13. JRJoe Rogan2:17

       Mm-hmm.

   14. MSMichael Shermer2:18

       Is this a, you know, grandfather, father, uncle, friend of the family? You know, you can-

   15. JRJoe Rogan2:21

       Yeah.

   16. MSMichael Shermer2:21

       And, uh, he's saying something about, um, you know, it's okay for you to forgive yourself. Oh, okay.

   17. JRJoe Rogan2:28

       (laughs)

   18. MSMichael Shermer2:28

       How about, like, well, where was the will?

   19. JRJoe Rogan2:30

       Yeah.

   20. MSMichael Shermer2:31

       Uh, he hid his will somewhere. Where is that? 'Cause that's what we wanna know is, you know, that, that ring he had, where is that?

3. 2:36 – 4:02

   Astrology, the Barnum effect, and confirmation bias in everyday belief

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:36

      If you're just vague enough, I mean, like, uh, horoscopes. If you're just vague enough, people are like, "Oh my God, it's right all the time. It's always right." Like-

   2. MSMichael Shermer2:44

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:45

      ... that's not even a real horoscope. If you really wanna pay attention to actual astrology, that you, they have to know the date you were born, the time you were born.

   4. MSMichael Shermer2:55

      Right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:55

      It's not just the month of August.

   6. MSMichael Shermer2:56

      Right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan2:57

      You know, it's like they gotta nail it down.

   8. MSMichael Shermer2:58

      They wanna know morning or evening or, you know.

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:00

      Yeah. What do you think about all that stuff?

   10. MSMichael Shermer3:02

       It, it's all bunk.

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:03

       Is it?

   12. MSMichael Shermer3:03

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan3:04

       Why has it been around so long?

   14. MSMichael Shermer3:06

       Uh, well, because the, uh, well, it's called the Barnum effect, where, you, uh, you know, PT Barnum, he'd just offer something for everybody. So if you make it general enough, you know, I, I sense you're an intelligent, uh, wise person that people really enjoy your company. And, and you like going to parties and being with other people, and yet you like the quiet solitude of a walk on the beach. You know, people are going, "Yep, that is so me."

   15. JRJoe Rogan3:27

       (laughs)

   16. MSMichael Shermer3:27

       (laughs) Well, I pretty much described every scenario you can have. You're alone, you're with people. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan3:32

       But it's one of those things where if you talk to someone who, uh, is an actual believer in astrology, like, they, they are so convinced. I got a friend of mine who's trying to tell me that he makes all of his decisions based on consulting with his astrologer.

   18. MSMichael Shermer3:48

       Mm-hmm. Well, Reagan, uh, well, Nancy Reagan did that-

   19. JRJoe Rogan3:50

       Yeah.

   20. MSMichael Shermer3:51

       ... for his travel after he was shot. She got real paranoid about that. Well, so part of the problem is these astrologers and psychics are themselves remembering their hits and forgetting their misses, the confirmation bias.

   21. JRJoe Rogan4:01

       Yeah.

4. 4:02 – 9:02

   Phone psychics as a business model: scripting, incentives, and legal gray zones

   1. MSMichael Shermer4:02

      So I knew a psychic, or a, a magician, uh, who was working the Psychic Friends Network, um, back in the '90s when it's hard, it's hard to make a living as a magician doing kids parties. They all wanna have their own Vegas show, but only a few people get that, so you gotta do something on the side. So this guy was doing Psychic Friends Network. And, uh, he told me all about it. They gave him a book, a three-ring binder, and you know, here's the kinds of things you should say. And, you know, people are calling for love, health, money, career questions. So you can spend 20, 30 minutes at $3.95 a minute just going through there. You know, I sense you're in a relationship right now, and one of you is more committed than the other. Tell me about that.

   2. JRJoe Rogan4:38

      Ah.

   3. MSMichael Shermer4:38

      10 minutes later, you know, they're still talking, and you're thinking about travel, you're not happy with your job, there's some financial stress in your life right now. And, uh, and then he told me about stuff like, uh, "Now go get a crystal and then a candle, and I want you to set it up here on your desk."

   4. JRJoe Rogan4:52

      Uh-huh.

   5. MSMichael Shermer4:53

      And this would go on and on for hours.

   6. JRJoe Rogan4:55

      And they charged by the hour, yeah?

   7. MSMichael Shermer4:56

      And they charged by the hour. So one of the problems that Psychic Friend Networks had was people were not paying their phone bills, because they, you know, come back, an $800 phone bill-

   8. JRJoe Rogan5:03

      Oh, right.

   9. MSMichael Shermer5:03

      ... or whatever, so they would just not pay it. So the phone companies cracked down on the Psychic Friends Network company going, "Hey, this is getting out of hand that people aren't paying their bills."

   10. JRJoe Rogan5:12

       Oh, that's-

   11. MSMichael Shermer5:12

       So they had to ratchet it back a little bit, and-

   12. JRJoe Rogan5:14

       Oh, that's right. They would do it through the phone. That's interesting. Yeah, they wouldn't get a credit card from you. They would just stay on the line with you.

   13. MSMichael Shermer5:20

       Right. So he told me that when he first started, he got, like, $0.60 on the minute, uh, uh, for the $3.95 out, uh, of that per minute. But then they, they r- bumped it up as he, uh, got more experienced and kept him on the line longer. They gave-

   14. JRJoe Rogan5:33

       (laughs)

   15. MSMichael Shermer5:33

       ... him bonuses, you know.

   16. JRJoe Rogan5:34

       Come on.

   17. MSMichael Shermer5:34

       Now you get a dollar per minute or whatever. Uh-

   18. JRJoe Rogan5:36

       How is that not illegal? I mean, he's not even a psychic. Shouldn't you have to, like, if you wanna-

   19. MSMichael Shermer5:40

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan5:40

       ... be a doctor, you have to go and you gotta, you know, go to medical school, you gotta get a degree? Shouldn't there-

   21. MSMichael Shermer5:45

       There's a, uh, interesting history there, because in New York City, for example, it was difficult to outlaw, like, the three-card monte guys on the sidewalk with the cardboard-

   22. JRJoe Rogan5:53

       Mm-hmm.

   23. MSMichael Shermer5:53

       ... because it's just kind of a game.

   24. JRJoe Rogan5:55

       Right.

   25. MSMichael Shermer5:56

       Uh, now, now, it would be illegal to sell fraudulent stocks or something like that, or sell a product that's advertised as a, a health product when it's not. But if, say, in that case, it's under food rather than drugs or, or say, no, health products, like vitamins are under different standards than say medical drugs. Um, a psychic is more like an entertainer.So this is for entertainment purposes only, so we can do whatever we want, as opposed to a medical doctor that's dispensing advice. So-

   26. JRJoe Rogan6:27

       I get that-

   27. MSMichael Shermer6:27

       ... therefore, it's not, um, yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan6:28

       ... medi- maybe doctor's a bad example. Maybe I should've said engineer. But, uh, the point is like, sh- if you're gonna work as a psychic...

   29. MSMichael Shermer6:36

       (laughs)

   30. JRJoe Rogan6:36

       ... like, uh, on a psychic network, if you have business of selling psychics-
5. 9:02 – 14:30

   Self-help vs. psychic performance: Tony Robbins, motivation bursts, and what “works” means

   1. MSMichael Shermer9:02

      ... somebody says, "Look, I'm just giving relationship advice," why is that illegal? If I say, like the Tony Robbins Netflix documentary, I Am Not Your Guru, which is basically I am your guru, he has that moment in this huge auditorium, there's like 3,000 people there, and he gets this woman up on stage. And she's got relationship problems. He says, "Do you have your phone?" She goes, "Yeah." "Take out your phone and call him right now." And she, he talks her through dumping this guy on stage o- on the phone and he's at work or something. He's like, "What?" (laughs) And then she hangs up and everybody's happy that she did this.

   2. JRJoe Rogan9:34

      Mm.

   3. MSMichael Shermer9:34

      Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I have no idea. It's like-

   4. JRJoe Rogan9:38

      That's great for show business, but what if, you know-

   5. MSMichael Shermer9:41

      So how the fuck-

   6. JRJoe Rogan9:42

      ... who the fuck... I mean, that seems crazy. Like how do you know what kind of relationship they really have? You might as well talk-

   7. MSMichael Shermer9:47

      Now somebody that-

   8. JRJoe Rogan9:47

      ... to both of them, right? Wouldn't you? Somebody-

   9. MSMichael Shermer9:48

      Somebody that... I- I brought this up at a- at an event recently, a party, and somebody said, "Oh, I know the backstory." His staff had been working the audience and they, they knew all about her and the relationship and it was about to go sour anyway.

   10. JRJoe Rogan10:01

       Mm.

   11. MSMichael Shermer10:02

       So we brought her up." It's like, "Oh, okay." So this is the thing with, you see the psychics on TV, there's a lot of stuff you don't see.

   12. JRJoe Rogan10:08

       Yeah.

   13. MSMichael Shermer10:08

       They work the audience. They know... People fill out, like at- at- at the psych- faith healers, they fill out prayer cards.

   14. JRJoe Rogan10:14

       Yeah.

   15. MSMichael Shermer10:14

       They put their name and address and their ailment and then, you know, the faith healers have a little earbud in there and- and they're listening to the person in the back reading, "Okay, here's the person. They have, you know, glaucoma or whatever." And you hear them calling this out. So, uh, so there's a lot of that that we don't see.

   16. JRJoe Rogan10:30

       But T- Anthony Robbins is not claiming any kind of psychic ability.

   17. MSMichael Shermer10:34

       No. (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan10:34

       He's just tr- he's just trying to provide positive paths for improving your life. And if you're in a bad relationship, that would be a positive path. Let's get out of that relationship and-

   19. MSMichael Shermer10:42

       Right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan10:42

       ... just like move forward with, with emotion and power and love.

   21. MSMichael Shermer10:47

       Right. Right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan10:47

       And he'd fucking probably throw a karate kick and get everybody pumped up and jump around, some little Bobby Brown headphones on.

   23. MSMichael Shermer10:54

       (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan10:54

       You know? (laughs) It's like... But he's, he's a showman too.

   25. MSMichael Shermer10:58

       Yeah, that's right.

   26. JRJoe Rogan10:59

       You know?

   27. MSMichael Shermer10:59

       So this, but, but my point is that the psychic could say the same thing. "Look, I'm just-"

   28. JRJoe Rogan11:02

       Yeah.

   29. MSMichael Shermer11:02

       "... dishing out..." You know, "I don't know if this is true."

   30. JRJoe Rogan11:04

       But he's not... I mean, it's w- it's weird to put him in that category, right? Because he's just trying to get people excited. He... I think he does some good. I really do 'cause he did me some good. When I was, uh, 21 years old, I used to listen to his... I think it was called Unlimited Power. I think that was the name of the book.
6. 14:30 – 23:33

   Small wins and social signals: Peterson, Jocko, and the ‘broken windows’ analogy

   1. MSMichael Shermer14:30

      Well, this is, you know, in Amy Alkon's book, uh, Unfuckology. It's great, but-

   2. JRJoe Rogan14:34

      Yeah.

   3. MSMichael Shermer14:34

      ... she calls these small wins, or whoever calls them small wins. Like, make your bed in the morning, or shave, or whatever.

   4. JRJoe Rogan14:40

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MSMichael Shermer14:40

      Or like Jocko's little, uh, Twitter post at 4:30 AM.

   6. JRJoe Rogan14:43

      Yes.

   7. MSMichael Shermer14:43

      Now, I'm never getting up at 4:30. But when I get up at 6:30-

   8. JRJoe Rogan14:46

      Y- You will occasionally, right?

   9. MSMichael Shermer14:47

      (laughs) Like, if I have to... Like, this morning for the morning ride that leaves at 7:00 AM, I get up at 5:30. So I'm not happy getting up at 5:30, but I think, "Okay, Jocko has been up an hour."

   10. JRJoe Rogan14:56

       He's already worked out.

   11. MSMichael Shermer14:57

       (laughs) He's already done working out. Okay. I can't really complain. Come on, Schermer, get going. That, that, that kind of little thing, this is Jordan's, uh, Jordan Peterson's point, you know?

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:05

       Yes.

   13. MSMichael Shermer15:05

       The, you know, the, of the, you know, make, get your life in order. What is he talking about? Just stand up straight, make your bed, or-

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:12

       Mm-hmm.

   15. MSMichael Shermer15:12

       ... you know, clean your room. You know, what's he talking about? He's talking about these little wins. Like, if you can do that, then the next thing that's a little harder comes a little easier and so on.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:20

       Well, it's also those things that are in the background. If you know that your, your life is a mess, your car is filled with fast food wrappers, your, you know, your, your, you've got that, uh, thing that you haven't taken care of in the back of your head, that, that will, th- that, that's gonna disrupt. It's gonna be flowing in your thoughts for the most part.

   17. MSMichael Shermer15:38

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:38

       It'll be a distraction.

   19. MSMichael Shermer15:40

       Right. So those little things apparently do matter. There's a theory of crime called the broken windows theory that, uh, is favored by criminologists to explain the decline, the crime decline in the '90s. What happened? In New York City, they started cleaning up the graffiti. They started catching the, uh, turnstile jumpers. They started cleaning up the streets. They started, you know, boarding up windows so there's no broken windows, or replacing the windows. The theory is that if the- there's a signal in society that no one's paying attention, there is no law and order here, there are no rules or norms, do whatever the fuck you want, that you're gonna get more crime. If you send the signal through little things like, "We're not gonna allow graffiti on this wall anymore, and no more turnstile jumpers in the subways," and so on. And, uh, so when, when that happened, then there was a trickle-down effect, and then crime declined. So that's the, the most popular theory for that. And I think there's something to that.

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:34

       Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And what they did with New York City is really kind of fantastic. If you, if you go back to when I was a kid and I traveled to New York City the first time and I saw Times Square, I guess I was probably, like, 18 or 19. I was like, "Look at this fucking crazy place."

   21. MSMichael Shermer16:49

       (laughs) Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:49

       Like, "This is madness." And, you know, you see it in movies, and it's just always this horrific scene. It's always peep shows, and hookers-

   23. MSMichael Shermer16:57

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:58

       ... and pimps, and thugs, and drug dealers. And you go there now and it's like a mall threw up.

   25. MSMichael Shermer17:03

       (laughs)

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:04

       You know? It's, it's like a giant neon M- Mall of America.

   27. MSMichael Shermer17:09

       (laughs) Right.

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:09

       Like, Times Square. If you took a person, if you grabbed a guy from, like, 1988 and you put him in a time machine and said, "Hey, man, I'm gonna bring you 30 years in the future, and you're gonna see New York City the way it looks then." Like, what do you expect? Like, "Oh my God, it's gonna be like, like Blade Runner. People are gonna be shooting people and selling body parts." And no, you get there and it's like Guy Fieri's restaurant and-

   29. MSMichael Shermer17:31

       (laughs) Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:31

       ... huge, gigantic LCD screens. And then there, there's some people that would long for the old days, the dirty, seediness that-
7. 23:33 – 28:50

   Cities, scale, and culture: pace-of-life effects and tight vs. loose norms

   1. JRJoe Rogan23:33

      Yeah, but it's, it's, I think that, um, human beings, when they're living in these gigantic communities, whether it's Los Angeles or New York or something like that, there's just a certain amount of... People become less valuable, you know, there's just too many of them.

   2. MSMichael Shermer23:51

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan23:51

      And you, you, you lose that sort of appreciation for people.

   4. MSMichael Shermer23:54

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan23:54

      And there's, like, a tension around, like, you, you don't mind if a few people drop off. Like, it's no big...

   6. MSMichael Shermer24:00

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan24:00

      You know what I mean?

   8. MSMichael Shermer24:00

      Yeah, there's a balance in size. My wife's from, uh, Cologne, Germany, which is about, uh, one million people, and that's, that's about as big as you wanna get. It's a big enough city there's lots of action, you can do all sorts of things. Uh, but it's not, you know, six million or 10 million which is just, like LA, it's just too many.

   9. JRJoe Rogan24:16

      Have you ever seen that study that they did where they set up a camera on one end of the street and a camera on the other e- end of the street, and they timed people walking through. And in those, in the, the, the footage of those people walking through, they were able to determine by how fast these people walked...... they got an average, uh, which was really accurate, of how many people lived in the city.

   10. MSMichael Shermer24:39

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Scale. Uh-

   11. JRJoe Rogan24:41

       Yes.

   12. MSMichael Shermer24:42

       Yeah. There's that book that physicist, uh, West, Geoff G-E-O-F-F West, I think is his name, wrote that book. And, uh, and the bigger the city, the more efficient and faster things become, like-

   13. JRJoe Rogan24:52

       Yeah.

   14. MSMichael Shermer24:53

       Like even-

   15. JRJoe Rogan24:53

       Including v- dialogue, the way people communicate.

   16. MSMichael Shermer24:55

       They talk a little faster.

   17. JRJoe Rogan24:56

       Syllables per minute.

   18. MSMichael Shermer24:56

       They walk a little faster.

   19. JRJoe Rogan24:58

       Yeah.

   20. MSMichael Shermer24:58

       And he, he had a s- uh, a formula showing how many restaurants per 100,000 or gas stations per 100,000 you'll get as you scale up. You don't need as many restaurants and, and gas stations as populations increase 'cause there's more efficiency in the flow of traffic and people, uh, throughout the city, whereas smaller towns are less efficient. That, that was the theory. It's-

   21. JRJoe Rogan25:20

       But it's just fascinating that human beings adjust because of all of these other human beings around them. They change the way they walk. They walk faster. They talk faster. Is this it right here?

   22. MSMichael Shermer25:31

       Yeah, Scale.

   23. JRJoe Rogan25:31

       Scale.

   24. MSMichael Shermer25:32

       Universal Laws-

   25. JRJoe Rogan25:32

       And I can't ... Jeffrey's ... Oh.

   26. MSMichael Shermer25:33

       ... of Life, Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies.

   27. JRJoe Rogan25:36

       Yeah.

   28. GFGuest (unidentified, likely in-studio friend/producer)25:36

       Listening to it right now, actually. On my-

   29. JRJoe Rogan25:37

       Are you really?

   30. GFGuest (unidentified, likely in-studio friend/producer)25:38

       Yeah, like, coincidentally.
8. 28:50 – 33:39

   Germany’s historical memory, cult sensitivity, and church-tax systems

   1. MSMichael Shermer28:50

      I know, right? Well, same thing in, you know, Ger- Germans, you know, here after World War I and World War II, oh, these are bellicose people. The- they're this is their national character. Now they're the nicest people in the world. They don't wanna fight anybody.

   2. JRJoe Rogan29:01

      Yeah. That is interesting, right?

   3. MSMichael Shermer29:01

      That's one generation, okay?

   4. JRJoe Rogan29:03

      Right. Right.

   5. MSMichael Shermer29:03

      And if ... And more than that, I mean, they have massive war guilt and-

   6. JRJoe Rogan29:07

      Mm.

   7. MSMichael Shermer29:07

      ... and Holocaust guilt. Uh, yeah. I mean, they are all raised in, in, in, in taking tons of classes in school about what happened, why we're never gonna do this again. Here's what we did to the Je- ... You know, they're still paying Israel reparations for that. Um, there are these little stumbling stones, um, that are, um, these sort of brass, uh, square cubes in, in, uh, all over, uh, Germany of the name and year that the person was murdered. These are all Jews.

   8. JRJoe Rogan29:34

      Wow.

   9. MSMichael Shermer29:34

      In front of the house where they used to live.

   10. JRJoe Rogan29:37

       Wow.

   11. MSMichael Shermer29:37

       They're all over the place. Yeah. I have a picture of them in the moral arch here. I'll show you. It's, it's really dramatic. It's ... And when you ... And you s- You literally stumble across them. I mean, they're just there in the street. Um, you might ... If you Google stumbling stones, you can see them. They're better in color.

   12. JRJoe Rogan29:52

       Another interesting thing about Germany is they won't let Scientology in.

   13. MSMichael Shermer29:55

       No.

   14. JRJoe Rogan29:55

       They're, they're very sensitive about cults-

   15. MSMichael Shermer29:58

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan29:58

       ... and cult behavior.

   17. MSMichael Shermer29:59

       That's right. Well, there's another reason for that, and that is ... I can't find the picture now. Um, in Germany, most people don't know this, there's a religious text-

   18. JRJoe Rogan30:07

       There it is. Jamie's got it right there.

   19. MSMichael Shermer30:08

       A religion. Yeah. There they go.

   20. JRJoe Rogan30:09

       Oh. So that's what they look ... So they're actually above ground?

   21. MSMichael Shermer30:12

       Yeah. So you're just walking along and, and you look down and then-

   22. JRJoe Rogan30:14

       Oh, some of them, those are not ... They're- they're not like that, right? They're not-

   23. MSMichael Shermer30:17

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan30:17

       ... like little bricks on the ground?

   25. MSMichael Shermer30:18

       Yeah. They're like that. You just walk on them.

   26. JRJoe Rogan30:20

       Oh, so they're in the ground.

   27. MSMichael Shermer30:20

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan30:21

       Yeah.

   29. MSMichael Shermer30:21

       They're in the ground.

   30. JRJoe Rogan30:21

       All right.
9. 33:39 – 40:47

   Scientology, tax exemption, and internet-era scrutiny of religions

   1. JRJoe Rogan33:39

      It's amazing that it's still here. I mean, especially when you deal with something like Scientology, when you know the guy who wrote it.

   2. MSMichael Shermer33:45

      (laughs) Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan33:46

      Like it's- this is not some ancient text that was handed down-

   4. MSMichael Shermer33:49

      Buried in the mists of time, yeah. (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan33:51

      ... from up on high. Yeah. This is- you know the guy, and the guy was a terrible writer.

   6. MSMichael Shermer33:55

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan33:55

      I mean, he was a terrible science fiction author. He just wrote... Every fucking thing he wrote was a first draft, just (imitates static) just boom, gone. I mean, it's just the most nonsensical nonsense writing, and yet they don't have to pay taxes 'cause it's considered a legitimate religion.

   8. MSMichael Shermer34:11

      Harl- Harlan Ellison, the great science fiction writer who died this year, uh, told me the story of what, uh, the famous story where L. Ron Hubbard allegedly said, you know, "I'm gonna go start a religion."

   9. JRJoe Rogan34:19

      Yeah.

   10. MSMichael Shermer34:20

       He said it was... It's real. It's a true story. They were... But- but it was, uh, just a bunch of science fiction writers sitting around like this chatting and complaining about how poorly paid they are. They have to crank out by the word, you know?

   11. JRJoe Rogan34:31

       Yeah.

   12. MSMichael Shermer34:31

       A penny a word kind of thing. And somebody said, "You know, we should just start a religion and make shit up like that." And- and L. Ron Hubbard goes, "Yeah, you know, that's a good idea. I think- I think I might do that." And then he went out and wrote Dianetics, and that became the founding document of Scientology.

   13. JRJoe Rogan34:45

       Did you watch the, um, the- the HBO series on it, the- the documentary right there?

   14. MSMichael Shermer34:50

       The- yeah, the, uh, Going Clear?

   15. JRJoe Rogan34:51

       Yeah.

   16. MSMichael Shermer34:51

       Unbelievable. That's the best documentary on it, and of course I've seen all Leah's-

   17. JRJoe Rogan34:55

       Mm-hmm.

   18. MSMichael Shermer34:55

       ... uh, shows. She's got, uh, big guts to- to go after that.

   19. JRJoe Rogan34:59

       She does.

   20. MSMichael Shermer34:59

       I don't know if she's got good lawyers or A&E has good lawyers or whatever. Her- maybe they've stopped suing people. I don't know.

   21. JRJoe Rogan35:05

       I think the climate has shifted, and I think people are more... Well, first of all, for the longest time, all we thought of when you thought about Scientology, you thought about positive thinking and John Travolta and Tom Cruise.

   22. MSMichael Shermer35:17

       Right.

   23. JRJoe Rogan35:17

       And they- they're all super positive, you know, and they're getting things done and there's auditing and they're really taking care of their mind and, you know, and thinking clearly and eliminating all the negative influences. But then once, um... There was a bunch of factors, I think, but once the internet opened up these- the- the doctrines, and you got a chance to read it, and people got a chance to mock it, and then, you know, South Park did that whole series on it, where they- this is what they actually believe.

   24. MSMichael Shermer35:43

       (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan35:43

       And you see, like- you see... When South Park did that, everybody was like, "Holy shit. Wait a minute. Is that real?" And then people started Googling it and then looking into it, and then it started to unravel slowly but surely. People started leaving the church. Lawrence Wright wrote the book. All these things are happening, and now Leah is coming in. And Leah was, you know... I knew her, but I mean, I'm friends with Kevin James from The King and Queen.

   26. MSMichael Shermer36:04

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JRJoe Rogan36:04

       So I- I've known Leah for 20-plus years, and when I first met her, she was just, like, this hard-ass, beautiful woman who's just, like, driven and, like- like, "She's a Scientologist." I'm like, "Ugh, just get the fuck out of our way." You know? It was like that she's just, like, super active and just getting things done and just being productive. I mean, that's what you thought about when you thought about Scientology. But now what you think about it is, like, nonsense and it's just foolishness. And- and once Going Clear aired and you got to see, uh, L. Ron Hubbard and listen to him talk, and you- you see the captain's outfit he had on with the medals-

   28. MSMichael Shermer36:42

       (laughs) So awful.

   29. JRJoe Rogan36:42

       ... that he gave himself. You're like, "What i-"

   30. MSMichael Shermer36:45

       Who would buy this stuff, right?
10. 40:47 – 54:12

    Afterlife uncertainty, identity puzzles, and the ‘boring heaven’ problem

    1. JRJoe Rogan40:47

       Yeah. All of it's wacky, 100%. I mean, it's like we were talking about earlier, when you die, what's going to happen is you don't know. You don't know. And the- the reality is, look, maybe there is an afterlife. Maybe when we stop living, something happens and our essential energy goes into another dimension. It's possible, but you don't know. Look, b- being alive is so titanically bizarre.

    2. MSMichael Shermer41:13

       (laughs) Yeah.

    3. JRJoe Rogan41:13

       Just being a human being looking through eyeballs at each other across from this wooden table that was cut down from living organisms that turn into hard sur- surfaces.

    4. MSMichael Shermer41:24

       (laughs)

    5. JRJoe Rogan41:24

       And you sand them and saw them and then you put it in a building and it's got electricities rolling through the walls, and if you stuck a fork in there, you'd die.

    6. MSMichael Shermer41:32

       (laughs)

    7. JRJoe Rogan41:32

       All of it is crazy. The fact that we're on a planet. I mean, the- the fact that the universe is at least, uh, as far as we can tell infinite. All that stuff is crazy. The idea that your essential energy doesn't transfer into some other state, why not?

    8. MSMichael Shermer41:47

       Yeah.

    9. JRJoe Rogan41:47

       Like, the whole thing's crazy. But you don't know.

    10. MSMichael Shermer41:50

        That's right. No one knows.

    11. JRJoe Rogan41:51

        The thing is you don't know. And until you kn- whenever you say something that you're not sure of and you say, "This is what's going to happen." But you don't really know, you're a huckster.

    12. MSMichael Shermer42:00

        That's right. Yep. Absolutely. No one knows.

    13. JRJoe Rogan42:02

        No one knows.

    14. MSMichael Shermer42:03

        And that's the conclusion of Heavens on Earth. I don't know and you don't either. I- I saw a bumper sticker that said, uh, Militant Agnostic, I don't know and you don't either. (laughs)

    15. JRJoe Rogan42:10

        (laughs)

    16. MSMichael Shermer42:11

        Uh, so, I mean, we have to... Okay, so here's my bottom line on this. Yeah, I don't know, you don't, no one knows for sure. I'm happy to wake up in some great place and there's, uh, well, my friends.

    17. JRJoe Rogan42:20

        It'll be awesome.

    18. MSMichael Shermer42:21

        Uh-

    19. JRJoe Rogan42:21

        Unless-

    20. MSMichael Shermer42:22

        Unless it's-

    21. JRJoe Rogan42:22

        ... God was mad that you didn't follow the rules that he laid out.

    22. MSMichael Shermer42:24

        Well, that- that- that's right. Christopher Hitchens called the Christian h- heaven celestial North Korea.

    23. JRJoe Rogan42:29

        (laughs)

    24. MSMichael Shermer42:29

        It's like, here's this dictator that knows everything you do and controls-

    25. JRJoe Rogan42:33

        Oh...

    26. MSMichael Shermer42:33

        ... everything forever.

    27. JRJoe Rogan42:34

        That's hilarious.... yes. (laughs)

    28. MSMichael Shermer42:35

        Yeah. (laughs)

    29. JRJoe Rogan42:36

        Celestial North Korea.

    30. MSMichael Shermer42:37

        (laughs)
11. 54:12 – 1:01:16

    Information overload, memes, and politics: shrinking attention spans in the internet age

    1. JRJoe Rogan54:12

       It's so good. It's one of the best things ever in terms of like br- there's so many people that are paying attention and so many people that are funny that aren't comedians, per se. They just might work in an office somewhere and they've got a little bit of free time, and they'll make a hilarious meme about something and then-

    2. GFGuest (unidentified, likely in-studio friend/producer)54:28

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan54:28

       ... everybody runs with it and things just get mocked mercilessly.

    4. MSMichael Shermer54:31

       Remember the vi- the video of the guy, he was having an interview and his kid started walking in behind him? And he's trying to talk about foreign relations in Poland or something?

    5. JRJoe Rogan54:39

       Mm-hmm.

    6. MSMichael Shermer54:39

       And the little kid is back here and then somebody... The wife rushes in and so on.

    7. JRJoe Rogan54:42

       Yeah.

    8. MSMichael Shermer54:43

       Anyway, there's a bunch of funny spoof videos on that where it says some woman is sitting there talking about nuclear strategy or whatever and then the kid comes in, and she's ironing the shirt and then she defuses a bomb and then she cleans up, uh, the socks or whatever (laughs) . It's really funny.

    9. JRJoe Rogan54:58

       Yeah, there's... It's just... We, we were always... All of our information was distributed to us through these very controlled networks, whether it's CBS or NBC or ABC. And everything was very cut and dry and very professional in the way people talked and the way information was presented. But now it's just...... it's open and lu- Like, as soon as I find out about something, something happened in the world, I Google it-

    10. MSMichael Shermer55:25

        Right.

    11. JRJoe Rogan55:25

        ... I go, "What is it? What happened? What happened?" I Google it, and then I'll go to Twitter. And then when I go to Twitter, it's all pictures and memes and, and it's the dude with the question marks. "You know that guy is like..." You know, there, there's, like, so many memes that people will throw up when anything crazy happens in the world. It becomes so interesting to hear the news and hear commentary on the news from this just gigantic mass of humans, and it's what's most funny or most interesting or most succinct or poignant that rises to the top.

    12. MSMichael Shermer55:55

        Yep. Yeah, there's endless content to entertain. Uh, also just, uh, high-quality-

    13. JRJoe Rogan56:01

        Yeah.

    14. MSMichael Shermer56:01

        ... uh, content. I mean, I'm a content producer, I write and so on, but I am a huge consumer. I go... Most of the people I follow on Twitter post articles. Most of them I wanna read.

    15. JRJoe Rogan56:11

        Yeah.

    16. MSMichael Shermer56:11

        And so in the course of a couple hours, my little window pop-ups, you know, just spread across the top of the screen. I wanna read all of these articles and I plow through as many as I can. They're pretty much, like The Atlantic or Vanity Fair, Time, whatever, they're, they're pretty high-quality, well-written articles. The problem is as a content producer myself is that the sh- the half-life of these articles is so short. You know, like when I, uh, post one of my Scientific American columns, it, you know, I put a lot of work into it, and then, you know, like, a couple hours later, maybe a day later, gone. No one's talking about it. Done.

    17. JRJoe Rogan56:44

        Mm-hmm.

    18. MSMichael Shermer56:45

        I'm like-

    19. JRJoe Rogan56:45

        Yeah.

    20. MSMichael Shermer56:45

        ... "Well, I put a lot of work into that." (laughs)

    21. JRJoe Rogan56:47

        Yeah. Uh, but effective.

    22. MSMichael Shermer56:49

        Taking me out of the equation, like the New York Times did that huge, uh, New York Times Sunday magazine article on Trump's business going all the way back to the '70s.

    23. JRJoe Rogan56:58

        Right, right.

    24. MSMichael Shermer56:59

        They, they spent, like, a year working on this, like 10 journalists. This would have been a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece. This would have done in anybody else but Trump, right? I mean, they had his old, you know, business contracts and lawsuits and, you know, all the shady stuff going on and, and this got huge media attention for about a day and a half, and by Tue- you know, Sunday morning. By Tuesday, no one's talking about this anymore. It's like, these guys spent a year working on this. I mean, what did it take to get that lawsuit paperwork from the courthouse to, you know? And they had hundreds of things like that and it's, like, gone. Like, whoa.

    25. JRJoe Rogan57:32

        Well, Trump in particular, there's so many scandals that I think we've all become numb.

    26. MSMichael Shermer57:38

        Yeah, there is that too, yeah.

    27. JRJoe Rogan57:39

        There's so many that you just, you get numb to it and it doesn't, doesn't affect you. You're just like, "Oh."

    28. MSMichael Shermer57:45

        Right.

    29. JRJoe Rogan57:45

        Like, that's what it is.

    30. MSMichael Shermer57:46

        "Oh, he paid off the, he paid off a woman? Whatever."
12. 1:01:16 – 1:24:29

    Campus polarization and grievance-studies hoaxes: truth vs. social justice incentives

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:01:16

       Yeah. It, it seems like that, I mean, um, reading Jonathan Haidt's book, uh, the, there's the two books that, uh, I, I've been reading recently. Uh, one of them we discussed on the podcast we did on Monday, but the other one is The Coddling of the-

    2. MSMichael Shermer1:01:30

       American Mind.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:01:31

       ... American Mind.

    4. MSMichael Shermer1:01:31

       Yeah, it's good book, yeah.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:01:31

       I'm into that now and it's, it's fantastic. And he goes, he covers this quite a bit.

    6. MSMichael Shermer1:01:36

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:01:37

       Yeah.

    8. MSMichael Shermer1:01:37

       You have, uh, you know, Jonathan's onto something good there with the Heterodox Academy.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:01:42

       Mm-hmm.

    10. MSMichael Shermer1:01:42

        Which I'm a member. I'm a professor at Chapman University and so I was the first member there. And our university's pretty centrist. Uh, we don't get a lot of these protests and microaggressions and safe space stuff. It's, it's pretty quiet. And Jonathan's point is that it's more of a sort of East Coast/West Coast public university thing, or maybe Harvard, that kind of thing. Middle of the country, you don't see as much of that. Um, but the, you know, the polarization thing has gotten worse. You can see the, the polls since, like, 1990 to 2018 of, uh, you know, you ask people, "How, how evil are the Democrats or Republicans?" And-

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:02:17

        Yeah.

    12. MSMichael Shermer1:02:17

        ... you know, it used to be, you know, tiny little differences and then they, you know, they diverge like that now. Where the other side is not just wrong but they're immoral, they are evil.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:02:26

        Yes. Yeah.

    14. MSMichael Shermer1:02:26

        I do th- I, I do think, uh, talk radio and television feeds into that, you know, if you just... Or now social media-

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:02:32

        Mm-hmm.

    16. MSMichael Shermer1:02:33

        ... uh, in, in the bubble there, so. But on the other hand, the, again, the Heterodox Academy, uh, has, like, 2,000 members now. Professors that said, "Yep, I'm gonna stand up against this censorship, uh, on college campuses." You, you were talking to Jonathan about, uh, Pete Boghossian. You had Pete on and I've known Pete for, uh, many years before the hoax papers, and I think they've had it in for him, uh, long before the hoax papers, right?

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:02:59

        Well, let's explain that to people, so this could be standalone. Um, Pete Boghossian, uh, James Lindsay, and what is the woman's name?

    18. MSMichael Shermer1:03:04

        Helen Pluckrose.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:03:05

        And, uh, she wasn't on the podcast so I didn't get to meet her, but they, um, she's in England, I believe. Right? Um, they published a bunch of preposterous papers. Like, really ridiculous, uh, like on, uh, you know, uh, homo... What is it? The dog park one?

    20. MSMichael Shermer1:03:21

        Yeah, dog park-

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:03:21

        Rape culture-

    22. MSMichael Shermer1:03:22

        Yeah, rape culture.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:03:22

        ... and dog park.

    24. MSMichael Shermer1:03:24

        And, and the, and the retranslation of a chapter from Mein Kampf for placing fem, uh, it was males with Jews.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:03:31

        Yes.

    26. MSMichael Shermer1:03:31

        So yeah, you know, eliminate the males. That kind of thing.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:03:33

        Yeah.

    28. MSMichael Shermer1:03:33

        So they did one before that, actually. Pete, uh, and James Lindsay did one two years ago on the, the, uh, conceptual penis, it was called. And that the penis is a concept, it's not a, it's not a real thing, you know? It's just... Anyway, it's a hilarious paper. And the same month that came out, it was published in a kind of a third-tier feminist studies journal, so they got criticized. Like, "Eh, that's not one of the big ones, so you didn't really-"

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:03:58

        Right.

    30. MSMichael Shermer1:03:58

        "... hoax anything." But the same week that came out, there was another paper published on feminist glaciology, and I thought, "Oh, someone beat Pete to the hoax. Oh my God, this is totally..." And I read it and I thought, "This is utter bullshit."

Episode duration: 2:48:54