The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #1320 - Eric Weinstein
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,002 words- 0:00 – 2:52
Name pronunciation, roots, and old-school comedy as cultural memory
- JRJoe Rogan
... create, but without bullshit. It's very important when you recreate, you have no bullshit. So it's Eric Weinstein, not Weinstein.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, I think it was originally Weinstein.
- JRJoe Rogan
Weinstein?
- EWEric Weinstein
Shtein.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Weinstein. With-
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... German.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, but, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Ja.
- EWEric Weinstein
It was, uh, we, we came from a, uh, town between Odesa and Kiev called Uman, and that's where the fam- the, the Weinstein family came from.
- JRJoe Rogan
We talked about, uh, how many people mispronounce. The-
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... Weinstein instead of Weinstein.
- EWEric Weinstein
It's e- it's epidemic, and yet nobody ever says Albert Einstein.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes, that's-
- EWEric Weinstein
Do they?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EWEric Weinstein
Strange, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
That is a weird one. The Einstein is n- now, like, is there, is there a guy named Mike Ein- uh, like, "Oh, Mike Einstein." No, no, no. Einstein. Is there a guy like that?
- EWEric Weinstein
You, you, do you remember the old, uh, what was it, Blazing Saddles, with, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure, Mel Brooks.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, Mel Brooks and, uh, Harvey Korman's character-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EWEric Weinstein
... was Hedley Lamar, and everyone would call him Headie Lamar. And that was like the running joke in the picture.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Oh, that's right. I fucking loved Mel Brooks movies.
- EWEric Weinstein
Do you remember the Yiddish-speaking Indians? That, that had to be the best.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah, that's right. He had some great movies, man. Su- just fun fucking movies, man. Just silly, fun, outrageous movies.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, I mean, he was, he was transitional, right? I guess it was the Borscht Belt being updated for the modern era.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, into film. Yeah, but it was also, it was, you know, for the time, much more contemporary, but with that sort of Borscht Belt sort of shticky, sort of...
- EWEric Weinstein
Right, in the writer's room, I guess from Sid Caesar's Show of Shows, was this legendary factory before Saturday Night Live for all of these kind of crazy talents behind the scenes. I think he came out of that with Carl Reiner.
- 2:52 – 5:53
Life before the internet: texting overload, calling people, and engineered downtime
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, imagine kids today, the... Imagine trying to describe to kids today what it was like to grow up without the internet.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, or, or not being able to reach people. You have to make extensive plans.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EWEric Weinstein
And, you know, backup plans. Well, if you're not there at this time...
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you used to have to yell.
- EWEric Weinstein
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Open up your window and yell for your friends. (laughs) You'd, you'd... I remember when I first got an answering machine, I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. When I was in high school, my family got an answering machine, and I was like, "This is incredible." And you would, you would leave, like, stupid music, like, to let everybody know you were cool, like, you have some cool music. Like, "Hey, it's Joe. Not here right now, but if you leave a message, I'll get back to you, probably." (laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
(laughs) And then you got, like, old people who are s- I think, I think, uh, someone in my family still has one of these cutesy messages from, like, the late '80s.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, on their voicemail, but then who, who leaves voicemail? And the thing that gets, that marks me as an old person is I actually call people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm, but that's a... I like that. I've been doing that more lately.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I call a lot of people now. I just feel like it's just... it's better. The te- the texting thing, the problem is if I... it's, it's very interesting how we separated ourselves into this, uh, th- the, this e- electronic communication world, where I will, during the day, be in communication almost constantly with a stream of people. The only thing that stops it is a podcast. Pos- podcasts is my, my rest. For three hours, I'm not talking to anybody other than you. So all those texts that come through, like, at the end of the podcast, I'll go and look at my phone, there'll be 40 texts sometimes. Like, this is madness. If I had to make 40 phone calls, there'll be... it would be impossible to manage. It would be... I'd be... Calls would constantly be coming in. You'd never really be able to say anything. So we're, we're feeding into this weird loop where we just have these short form things.
- EWEric Weinstein
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, "Hey, dinner tomorrow?" "Sure, what time?" "How about 9:00?" "I can do 7:00." "Okay, let's do it." You know what I mean? It's like these weird little bursts of information.
- EWEric Weinstein
Did you ever see, uh... remember this program Californ- uh, what was it called? Uh, was it Californication? So-
- JRJoe Rogan
That television show with, uh, yeah, with the X-Files.
- EWEric Weinstein
David Duchovny.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EWEric Weinstein
Right. So there's this scene where he's having some really hot intergenerational sex, and this gal says, like, "LOL," and it kills him for-
- JRJoe Rogan
She said it out loud?
- EWEric Weinstein
She said it, uh, she says, "LOL," and he loses total interest. There- there's no amount of, of heat in the moment that can compensate for the fact that she's using, like, verbal emojis.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. Well, he needs to fucking get over that.
- EWEric Weinstein
(laughs) Depends on the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Depends on how hot she is. And it b- also, it depends on how you say it. If she's really funny and she's like, "LOL," you know, and she's, like, being silly.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like I said, like, you know who I learned that from? I learned that from Jim Norton. Jim Norton will always say, "LOL," like, he'll, he'll say something really ridiculous and then say, "LOL." (laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But he's just-
- EWEric Weinstein
Well-
- 5:53 – 10:47
Shabbat as a tech ‘off switch’: constraints that create freedom
- EWEric Weinstein
But, you know, in terms of this weird thing about islands of time, one of the things that we do is we have a Shabbat dinner, and every Friday, uh, no matter how atheist and militant people are against any kind of organized religion, they will leave us alone...... a, a, when, if we say we're going into Shabbat.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- EWEric Weinstein
And so there's this thing about, um, like people will pester me in all sorts of situations, but if I invoke something that is vaguely religious, even Sam Harris probably wouldn't call me during that period of time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- EWEric Weinstein
So I, I find that very interesting. Like could you, could you create a religion that was simply there to make sure that you had some time offline?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I know if I text Ben Shapiro, I'm not getting a text back on Saturday-
- EWEric Weinstein
Ever.
- JRJoe Rogan
... until it's dark.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) But at, when it's dark, he texts you back.
- EWEric Weinstein
No, as soon as there are three stars in the sky-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
... there's Ben on Twitter. He's like, "What'd I miss?"
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) That's so weird. It's so, it's so weird that people bo- I mean, in, on one hand, I think it's probably a really good idea to just take a break from all that electronic shit and just g- g- connect with humans in a, in a very old school type of way. I think it's probably very good for you.
- EWEric Weinstein
Or connect with yourself.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- EWEric Weinstein
I had this experience. I actually lived in Jerusalem, uh, for two years. And we landed, uh, in this orthodox-run hotel, and on Friday night everything shut down, you know, like they... textbook. And, uh, I then moved into a, a, a, an ultra-orthodox neighbor- uh, neighborhood, right on the, on the boundary of, um, a place where the secular and the orthodox met. And what was really f- fascinating to me is I started telling people, you know, you'd never think that, uh, it's great not to be able to find a restaurant or a nightclub, but it's amazing that it's, this is enforced downtime. And about a month in, somebody said, uh, "Oh, you're in the wrong place. Of course you can go out on Friday night. You just go to the, the Russian compound and, uh, everything's hopping and you can go dancing and drinking and all these things." After I knew that, I went dancing and drinking, and I was much less happy than believing that somehow Israel actually shut down on Friday nights.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- EWEric Weinstein
And so, very weirdly, I appreciated the constraint. As soon as I knew you could break the constraint, I was less happy, and I would never actually obey it anymore.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I think having a rigid rule, even though it seems con- it seems, like, counterintuitive, in that l- in that, like, it would provide you some freedom by having restrictions, but it does. It gives you s- some freedom, like, okay, like w- now we don't have to think about all these other things, so now we have the freedom to just be alone. Now we have the freedom to be relaxed. Now we have the freedom to just talk to human beings. You know, that, I think constraints, and, it's like, the, e- do you know who Jocko is, Jocko Willink?
- EWEric Weinstein
Totally.
- JRJoe Rogan
Everybody knows Jocko. Um, discipline equals freedom.
- EWEric Weinstein
Discipline equals freedom.
- JRJoe Rogan
It doesn't seem like that makes sense. Like, this motherfucker's up at 4:30 in the morning throwing heavy weights around, grunting, and a- acting like a savage, running, goes out to the beach and he earns the sunrise every morning. Goes out and takes photos, you know? Takes a photo of his fucking watch at 4:30, hits the gym like a savage, and then takes a photo sometimes of the sunrise, earning the sunrise. And, like, but you would think, God, it's like a prison to, like, force yourself into that. But no, no, he know, there's freedom in that, because he knows he doesn't have to make any decisions. At 4:30, he knows what he's gonna do.
- EWEric Weinstein
Knows what he's gonna do.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, just, you just go do it. And that way, I mean, you look at the guy, he's a fucking tank. Why is he a tank? 'Cause he's always up at 4:30 fucking throwing weights around. It just doesn't, he never stops. He never s- never takes, never takes self-indulgent time to lay in bed and beat off and pick his nose and, and then fucking check his text messages.
- EWEric Weinstein
He's probably listening to this right now and thinking-
- JRJoe Rogan
Maybe-
- EWEric Weinstein
... "Yeah, I do a little bit of that."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) I don't think he does.
- 10:47 – 13:21
Aging, identity shifts, and the body’s chemical governance
- EWEric Weinstein
I don't know. I mean, I think, I think we all, we have so many days of our lives that we build this pattern that this is going to go on forever, and there is some first moment, I, I think I r- recall it, w- where the phrase popped into my head, "I can see my death from here."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- EWEric Weinstein
And it has to do, you know, there's like this weird thing when you hit 40, you start to be able to have analytic thoughts that are uninterrupted by sex.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah. D- I don't know. When I, when I turned 40, I found that, um, s- some aspect of, uh, thinking too much about sexuality definitely decreased.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- EWEric Weinstein
And then you start to realize, like, y- your, when your testosterone starts to go down, you don't feel your, you don't feel like yourself.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you become a different thing.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, when your chemical composition changes, the way your body feels changes, the way you interface with the world changes.
- EWEric Weinstein
Like I wasn't f- I wasn't feeling all that great yesterday, and I was sort of, uh, clowning around with the person, uh, behind the bar at Starbucks, and she said, "Oh, why are you down?" I said, "I don't know. Just tell me something nice about my hair." You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
And she says, she looks at me and she says, "Oh, oh, it's, I love salt and pepper." And I thought-
- JRJoe Rogan
Damn.
- EWEric Weinstein
... "Oh, really?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Worst.
- EWEric Weinstein
Is that what-
- JRJoe Rogan
But you're barely salt and pepper. I can barely see any salt in there.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, she's bare- she's talking about the salt.
- JRJoe Rogan
She's bull- bullshitting you.
- EWEric Weinstein
No, she just didn't want me flirting with her, so she just-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- EWEric Weinstein
... shut me down by saying-
- JRJoe Rogan
By saying you're old.
- EWEric Weinstein
... "You want me to talk about your hair? Okay."
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- EWEric Weinstein
"You crossed the threshold. Here it comes."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Say, m-
- EWEric Weinstein
Which is, that's all right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, as soon as someone says, "Say something nice," like, that could get ugly for a girl.
- 13:21 – 17:07
Surfing’s innovation curve: foils, safety tech, and big-wave escalation
- JRJoe Rogan
It's really good, though. But it does give you a little phlegm, a little (clears throat) , a little bit of that 'cause it's got all sorts of MCT oil and all sorts of great stuff in there. Laird Hamilton's a real freak. Really interesting guy.
- EWEric Weinstein
What a pioneer.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Just, like, just talking to him and hanging out with him and sa- seeing how his brain works, like ...
- EWEric Weinstein
Oh, you got to do that? Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I had him on the podcast. Yeah. It was really, really fun.
- EWEric Weinstein
So did you ... What does he ... Okay, this is something I'm totally curious about. I don't surf, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- EWEric Weinstein
... because surfing is, in my estimation, going through some kind of a renaissance right now, I'm super keen to understand what the series of innovations are, given that lots of other things aren't innovating at anything l- like the surfing innovation rate.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, the big one is that new type of surfboard. What the hell is that called? It's like a sail?
- EWEric Weinstein
It's a foil?
- JRJoe Rogan
Foil. Yeah, a foil. That thing is amazing. And it doesn't ... It's, it's so weird-looking. If you look at it, you're like, "What are you standing on?" Like, "Why is it elevated? What is that?"
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, it's, it's the magic carpet of the sea, let's be honest.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. (laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
That's what it is. And I'm obsessed. I was asking you before-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EWEric Weinstein
... um, there's this guy, Kai Lenny, who, for me, is just redefining surfing by taking these monster waves and he's turning them into his private little skate park and doing tricks off the top of skyscraper waves.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
And I'm just thinking, "Do you even know what you're doing or where you are?" And he's like, h- he keeps saying this one phrase, which is, "I'm just scratching ... What blows my mind is I'm just scratching the surface." He knows that he's making that discontinu- continuous jump, and if you, if you think about sport from the perspective of when did things just change, like, almost overnight, you know, Bob Beaman ar- arguably is one of the great moments in all of sporting history, and it happens in the long jump just because you have an incremental sport that suddenly, you know, somebody jumps a foot more than anyone's ever jumped before, something like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- EWEric Weinstein
So it's really interesting when somebody changes the game.
- JRJoe Rogan
It is. And, and when you find out that there's stuff that you can do in other sports, like skate sports, like different crazy flips and stuff, and someone figures out how to do that on a wave, the consequences are so fucking grave if you make a mistake and you're on a 80-foot wave and that bitch comes slamming down on you.
- EWEric Weinstein
But part of the innovation is safety, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. Right. Those-
- EWEric Weinstein
Like, with these vests.
- JRJoe Rogan
Inflatable vests, yeah.
- EWEric Weinstein
And with these water tr- w- water safety courses for big wave surfers. Um, I think that what's fascinating is, y- you think the innovation is in the tricks maybe, but maybe the innovation is actually in, hey, you can afford a two-wave hold-down in a way you couldn't before.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- EWEric Weinstein
Or y- you're gonna survive all sorts of things that might've been fatal.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, right. So you have this open area to innovate. Yeah. That makes ... I mean, surfing's fascinating to me. I don't do it, I haven't done it, but I went snorkeling when I was in Hawaii last, uh, couple weeks ago.
- EWEric Weinstein
Oh.
- 17:07 – 26:32
Apex predators and ethics: orcas, dolphins, captivity, and marine ecology
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, I, I'm very interested in situations that change with sharks. Like Reunion, for example, in the Indian Ocean off of Madagascar used to be a surfing hotspot, and they had a bull shark problem where the bull sharks just sort of learned how to eat humans or attack humans.
- JRJoe Rogan
T- great.
- EWEric Weinstein
But the great thing is we have got some weird thing going on with the true apex predator of the seas, which is the orca. We have one recorded bite in the wild ever. Now how does this make any sense? Like, great whites are not apex predators because orcas will just take them out.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EWEric Weinstein
And I had this poll on Twitter the other day, which is, uh, orcas: um, best species ever was n- number one, then the other possibility was the dicks of the deep because they're such assholes.
- JRJoe Rogan
I didn't know that there was a recorded bite of anyone in the wild. I thought it was all in captivity.
- EWEric Weinstein
(laughs) No, there's a sur- there was a surfer who got a bite.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, but, you know, on the other hand, how are you gonna make contact if you're an orca? You don't have opposable thumbs. It might be, for all I know. I mean, look, any-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it has to be a joke 'cause otherwise the, the guy would be dead. I mean, if an orca wanted to kill you and you're in the water, that's like if you let, uh, an ant go.
- EWEric Weinstein
Okay, but why have orcas never attacked us? There's so many recorded instances of swimmers, paddle boarders, surfers running into orcas.Some weird thing is going on, and we have t- we have to work this out, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, let's try.
- EWEric Weinstein
Because we've got-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, y- first of all, what assholes are we that we have those goddamn things in captivity? And a big fucking shout-out to Canada, because Canada mostly, probably through the noise that my friend, Phil Demers, has created in trying to get Marineland shut down, Canada has banned all orca and all dolphin captivity.
- EWEric Weinstein
Captivity.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's amazing, and I hope the United States does it as well. I hope it, I hope it goes worldwide. It's- I think it's- I think it's slavery, I really do. I think it's a different kind of slavery.
- EWEric Weinstein
They're, they're almost us. They're like a cross between us and wolves in, in the ocean.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, they have- they just don't have the ability to manipulate their environment, but they have a cerebral cortex, a dolphin does, that's 40% larger than a human being's. That's- what is going on there? Like, the cerebral cortex, y- there's thinking happening there, like, really complex, high-level thinking.
- EWEric Weinstein
Really c- well, am I right that they have menopause? Like, they're the only s- th- essentially-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm?
- EWEric Weinstein
... the only other species with menopause.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- EWEric Weinstein
And you're only gonna get menopause, likely, if females are contributing, uh, some sort of, like, intellectual labor past their reproductive, uh, horizon. Right? It's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wha- how is that? Because- well, I thought menopause was just a shift in the hormonal balance of the female-
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, what is the purpose, uh, evolutionarily of continuing life beyond, um, the ability to reproduce?
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a good point, because that doesn't- that's not the case in mammals, and mammals, deer in particular, can breed deep into their old, old age.
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, y- y- if you have a resource that's limiting-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EWEric Weinstein
... you'd, you'd be better off, uh, for- in terms of systems of selective pressures, of shifting something that is continuing past that point. You know, this is the old point about, I think it was Henry Ford who used to go to the, uh, the dump to see what broke down on the cars and what was still working.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- 26:32 – 29:16
Elephant seals, invasive wildlife, and the Hearst Castle zebra surprise
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, you know, we, we went down to, uh, uh, Hearst Castle and there's this elephant seal colony there. And my family decided that this is the worst species ever of mammal.
- JRJoe Rogan
Elephant seals?
- EWEric Weinstein
Oh, man, they're horrible. Like, first of all, in terms of sexual dynamics, you know, one beach master, he's got a couple lieutenants who are trying to take over his role, and the, the lieutenant seemingly can have sex with one or two of the females. Like, not too much, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Just enough to keep him happy.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, or, yeah, right. And then th- the beach masters have to fight each other and there are all these dead babies all over the beach because the giant bulls, uh, just trample them on their way to fights.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ugh.
- EWEric Weinstein
Right? And so then y- then you have, like, the females, if they lose the pup, they've gotta get rid of their milk, so they steal somebody else's baby. So, the whole thing-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
... if you, if you transpose, like, human, if you anthropomorphize, you just think, like, "These people are horrible. This is a crack house on the beach."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
And there's no way, how do we get some great whites in and remove these mammals immediately? They're making the family look bad.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, maybe we could get the orcas to start eating them.
- EWEric Weinstein
That's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EWEric Weinstein
Because orcas are ... we have a deal.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, and it's a big animal, so it's a good meal. Look at those dead babies. That is so fucked up.
- NANarrator
I don't know if they're all dead, but they might be. I don't ...
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, and they are lazy. They are not an industrious s- m- m- I mean, they are when they're in the sea, but when they're just on land ...
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, they're just laying there?
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, they're not dead. They're just chilling. Wow.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, they're chilling.
- JRJoe Rogan
Look how many of them there are.
- NANarrator
That's a lot, that's a fucking lot of them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, you've seen when orcas do beach themselves to get those things, right? It's wild.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's wild.
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, and the, they, th- it's right on the edge, they hydro, they hydroplane onto-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. And then they waddle back in. Look how, like, scratched up they are from the ground and everything. It's a weird looking animal too. Uh, what a s-
- EWEric Weinstein
(laughs)
- 29:16 – 35:28
Hemp, propaganda, and the economics of prohibition
- JRJoe Rogan
He, well, that, he's, he's one of the main reasons why marijuana became illegal.
- EWEric Weinstein
Was he smoking too much?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's all conspiracy theory and conjecture, but the story is, the traditional s- told by stoners with some education story is that William Randolph Hearst, along with Harry Anslinger, conspired to make marijuana illegal when DuPont came up with a chemical composition for nylon and when-
- EWEric Weinstein
Ah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was a combination of t- several factors. And the decorticator was invented. Decorticator was a way that they could effectively process hemp fiber without the use of slavery.
- EWEric Weinstein
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
See, the reason why they switched over from hemp clothing and hemp sails and canvas, canvas which is, actually comes from the word cannabis, all canvas was made from hemp.
- EWEric Weinstein
Really?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- EWEric Weinstein
Oh, okay, I didn't know that.
- JRJoe Rogan
All that stuff is made from hemp. It's far superior to, uh, cotton, far superior in terms of, uh, strength, in terms of the, its durability. It's-
- EWEric Weinstein
Better than jute?
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know what jute is.
- EWEric Weinstein
Jute is what burlap bags, like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- EWEric Weinstein
Jute is what built-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's way better than that stuff.
- EWEric Weinstein
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, hemp is a alien plant. It's, hemp, if you had a piece of hemp-
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... like the stalk of hemp and you cut it into boards, like this table-
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that, it would be as hard as this oak, but as light as balsa wood. It's incredibly strange. I, um-... I've seen these, like, the actual stalk of a hemp tree when it gets really big.
- EWEric Weinstein
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you'll have it thick around, like, like a man's shoulder, right? But it weighs like nothing. It's really strange. It's a strange, strange plant. Not like any other plant.
- EWEric Weinstein
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
It has all the essential amino acids. It contains protein. You can cook with the oil. The oil can sustain you. It's got essential fatty acids in the oil.
- EWEric Weinstein
No wonder we have to ban it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, it's a, uh, fucking amazing, amazing plant.
- EWEric Weinstein
All right.
- 35:28 – 40:49
Cannabis as psychedelic tool: edibles, 11-hydroxy metabolite, and float tanks
- EWEric Weinstein
I had a, I had a dinner, um, at our house a while ago where we took some of the most, um, knowledgeable people on psychedelics and related substances to just have a discussion about what is the state of Schedule I pharmacology. And we asked a question: Of the, um, interesting substances, what are the three that you find were most informative in terms of self-revelation, uh, changing your understanding for the better, et cetera? I was astounded that of the people who seemed to be very knowledgeable about, uh, mind-altering substances, almost everyone put, uh, cannabis in the top three.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why? Because it's so-
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, I would've ... I thought it'd be sort of commonplace.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EWEric Weinstein
You know? I wouldn't have guessed. You know, somebody would say 5-MeO-DMT, somebody else would say ketamine, somebody else would say, um, you know, LSD or DMT or ayahuasca. Um, but the common thread throughout all of these people, who were ... many of them were researchers, um, was that they felt that cannabis was a miraculous substance.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it certainly i- Well, the- the- the deal is it has two different forms, right? It has a smokable form, which, you know, you can get really fucking high, or it has the edible form, which is like-
- EWEric Weinstein
Can't you also-
- JRJoe Rogan
... a psychedelic.
- EWEric Weinstein
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but it's like a psychedelic.
- EWEric Weinstein
I see.
- JRJoe Rogan
Very much so. It actually is more psychoac- There's- there's something called an 11-hydroxy metabolite that on- it's only present when you eat it.
- EWEric Weinstein
I see.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's processed by the liver. There's something called a one-pass. And when it goes through the liver, it produces this 11-hydroxy metabolite that's somewhere between four and five times more psychoactive than THC. And it's responsible for people thinking that they got dosed. Like, a lot of times when people eat edibles, they go like, "Oh my God, this isn't pot. Something's in there." Well, it's just the 11-hydroxy metabolite. That's what it is. It's-
- EWEric Weinstein
I didn't know about it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's way different. It's way different. Like, that's why it's confusing to people. Like, "Oh, I can't fuck with edibles." It's a different drug. It's a different drug, because 11-hydroxy metabolite is not present in psychoactive form when you smoke it. So when you eat it, that's when you get that really fucking weird body high and interdimensional relationship. You-
- EWEric Weinstein
Is it better? Worse? Is it more interesting?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, for the tank, it's bueno. It's the best for the z- isolation tank.
- EWEric Weinstein
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's my favorite. My favorite is a- a good stiff dose-
- EWEric Weinstein
Of an edible.
- JRJoe Rogan
... of an edible, and then, you know, wait about 45 minutes and then get it in the tank. So it goes 45 minutes. It's like, the way I describe it is, like, with certain psychedelic drugs, and I do consider edible marijuana psychedelic, especially when you get into the 100 milligram, 200 milligram doses, it's very psychedelic. And especially in the tank, because in the tank, when in the absence of any visual stimulation, your- when your eyes are closed, you have these wild, almost like neon visuals. Like I start- you start seeing these strange dancing cartoons and, like, weird, weird shit that you don't-
- EWEric Weinstein
Unrelated to other substances?
- JRJoe Rogan
You can get similar situations on other psychedelics, especially in the tank. The t- the tank is a really unique way to experience anything. Even- even normal psych- like, the- the- the normal state, the normal state of consciousness that you have without any drugs at all-
- EWEric Weinstein
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... inside the tank, it transforms, right? Because in the absence of any sensory input and you don't have anything coming your way, you don't feel your skin, your brain starts really getting free and loose. And you start ... You ... It gets very confusing as to what's reality and what's not. What are the boundaries of- of- of vision and interpretation and just creativity. Like, wha- how much of this is your imagination?
- EWEric Weinstein
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
How much of this is not? When you- when you add any sort of psychedelic to that tank experience, everything gets ramped up. It's like, you know, it's like, you know, you add some drugs, when you mix them with other drugs, they become, like, way more potent. That's what happens in the tank. The tank in- in and of itself is some kind of a drug, or it produces some kind of profound drug-like effects. Like if-
- EWEric Weinstein
Can it be banned?
- JRJoe Rogan
The tank?
- 40:49 – 45:06
Living in abstractions: identity experiments, reinvention, and audience captivity
- EWEric Weinstein
No, I really think in- in many ways I've left this planet.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah. I think that there's a way in which I've checked out.
- JRJoe Rogan
How so?
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, um ... I think that, um, when you get deep enough into your own mind and you start dealing with abstractions and you find that the real world... I wasn't planning on going here, but we can try.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- EWEric Weinstein
Um, when you find that the real world, uh, is often a kind of noisy, um, place to think, and that you actually prefer really powerful abstractions, and then you check in with the real world to say, "Does that abstraction actually govern the world that I'm in?" You start to prefer, um, living in the abstractions.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's interesting. Like, do you feel the same way about, like, a crowded nightclub? Like, if you go to a bar, do you- do you find that that stimulates thinking?
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, it depends. I mean, if I'm in a stimulating conversation, I'm very present.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- EWEric Weinstein
If I'm in an unstimulating conversation, I have to make my own fun.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EWEric Weinstein
And so I will start to sort of play. I mean, you know, at times I'll just make up a story and see how it flies, um, you know, if I don't think I'm hurting anybody. And sometimes I'll sort of experiment with people. I think we'll all do it.
- JRJoe Rogan
You experiment with people?
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like you, like, say something to someone to see if they bite?
- EWEric Weinstein
Well, you know, it's like ... Let's- let's imagine, for example, that you were gonna move to Austin.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- EWEric Weinstein
Are you gonna just be the same old you? You're not gonna take the opportunity to perhaps reinvent yourself? So, for example, um, you know, i- if I suddenly change ... if I start wearing glasses, uh, and I wear, like, a really fashion-forward pair of spectacles-
- JRJoe Rogan
You should wear aviators with yellow lenses like Hunter S. Thompson.
- EWEric Weinstein
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I would like that. I would like that with you, with your crazy hair.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... you with some yellow aviators and don't even address it.
- EWEric Weinstein
Don't even-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wear them in public.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wear them indoors.
- EWEric Weinstein
And we, but if I do any sort of alteration, like maybe, maybe, I, I've never seen my, what I look like with a bald head. So if I were to-
- JRJoe Rogan
Change it up a bitch.
- 45:06 – 1:06:33
The IDW, online pressure, and possible astroturf manipulation
- EWEric Weinstein
No, but it, it, it's more interesting. For example, um, there's been a ton of pressure, we can get to this in a second, to, for me to address the question of the IDW. Is it still alive? Is it in trouble? What's going on?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, the International Dork Web?
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that what it is?
- EWEric Weinstein
The Intentional-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
... Dirt Web, uh, Dirtbag Web. The, um... L- let's come back to that. When Cher did this, uh, remake of I Got You, Babe with Beavis and Butthead-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
... she took this, remember, 'cause she had this duet with Sonny Bono, and then she got into a bad thing with Sonny, and so she said, "I'm gonna re-record the song, and I'm just gonna torch it." Right? Now, the problem is, somebody had that as their wedding song. Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
With Beavis and Butthead?
- EWEric Weinstein
No, no, no. With Sonny.
- JRJoe Rogan
The other one?
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh. Okay.
- EWEric Weinstein
Or I mean, somebody probably did it with Beavis and Butthead, but they-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, guarantee you some-
- EWEric Weinstein
... they're so punk they don't care.
- JRJoe Rogan
... people from Florida use that one.
- EWEric Weinstein
Okay, right. That's (laughs) -
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EWEric Weinstein
... Florida man uses... Um, the problem when you change things is that other people wed themselves to where you were.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- EWEric Weinstein
And so when you pull up and you say, "Yeah, I don't think that. That's just wrong. I was confused. Man, I was going through a dark time, and I probably was saying stuff I shouldn't," if you do that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EWEric Weinstein
... then anybody who sort of invested in that version of you and inc- integrated that into their lives is now angry. They're upset.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- EWEric Weinstein
"Wait a minute, you pulled the rug out from under me." And so-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EWEric Weinstein
... you know, in part with what Bowie and Madonna did is they said, "Look, these are stages. And if you like that stage, that stage is yours, but I'm not staying there." And I think that that's sort of the more responsible way of doing it is, is that you're allowed your evolution, but you have to let people know, um, "I'm gonna do something totally different from time to time."
- JRJoe Rogan
Or just-
- 1:06:33 – 1:11:53
Kanye, medication, and the uneasy boundary between creativity and ‘unhealth’
- EWEric Weinstein
Hey, what happened, uh... What do we know about the Kanye situation, where he was gonna talk about mental health?
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs) I don't know, man.
- EWEric Weinstein
I was kind of excited about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
I, you know, if he wants to, he can do it. I'm not...
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, don't-
- JRJoe Rogan
He's, he's, uh-
- EWEric Weinstein
He's his own thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
He is a brilliant artist, but oftentimes, a brilliant artist is not... This is not the best format for them to just talk. Like, sometimes it's better for them to express themselves through their work, you know?
- EWEric Weinstein
Maybe, although I found... You know, I, I spent two days with him, and I, I found-... that when he's in a relaxed, um, frame-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EWEric Weinstein
... his flow state is just, it's beautiful.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I enjoyed talking to him. I talked to him on the phone, I really enjoyed our conversation. We had a nice conversation. He's, I think he's a very good dude.
- EWEric Weinstein
Very sensitive human being.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, very cool guy. But this is not a relaxed environment. You know, this right here, everybody knows how many people are listening. It's just, it fucks people's head up.
- EWEric Weinstein
Uh, uh, really? 'Cause the illusion that I have is just you and me talking, and then I come out of here and people are like, "What did you say?"
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Well, you and I are friends.
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So that illusion is, uh, more maintained. W- when you don't know me and you come in and, I mean, I would have to be friends with him. But that's one of the things, h- he wanted me to come to his church, you know, he's got, he's running a cult, essentially. Everybody's wearing white, they're all dancing, doing religious stuff.
- EWEric Weinstein
I'd do that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. (sighs) Oh, I'm busy, man. Sunday's-
- EWEric Weinstein
So you're busy. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... Sunday's are family time.
- EWEric Weinstein
Sundays, Sundays are family t- well-
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm not into... I just, I get it, I, I think it's beautiful.
- EWEric Weinstein
You know-
- JRJoe Rogan
But I'm not.
- EWEric Weinstein
He and I were walking down the road and, you know, there was this Crip alert.
- JRJoe Rogan
Crips?
- NANarrator
Which is like the cr-
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah, the Crips from Long Beach said, you know, "Kanye, you better stay in Calabasas." And it was like a little bit of a tense situation. So we're walking along the road, and like, people were hanging out of the windows of their car, you know, like, "Kanye!" And I think it was just like posi- you know, like-
- 1:11:53 – 1:22:00
Launching ‘The Portal’: why humans crave exits to deeper reality
- EWEric Weinstein
W- Well, um, maybe, maybe this is a good segue, I hadn't thought about it this way, but, um, so, uh, can we use this format to, uh, announce that I am in fact starting the podcast? I've recorded a couple-
- JRJoe Rogan
Boom.
- EWEric Weinstein
... episodes already, uh, that are in the can and it is, it is called The Portal.
- JRJoe Rogan
The Portal?
- EWEric Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- EWEric Weinstein
So The Portal is, um, refers to this (hands tap) , this very interesting, uh, thing that I, I thought everyone was aware of, but very often people wouldn't react to it. When I was a kid, I read all of these stories that I thought were known to be the same story, but different versions of it, and I called it The Portal Story, and it was always the same, somebody is trapped in a humdrum existence in an ordinary world until some sort of magical portal, accidentally or on purpose, enters their life, and either they go through a wardrobe, they go through a rabbit hole, looking glass, Platform 9 3/4, um-... or, you know, Dorothy famously, uh, was used to introduce Technicolor, where she... The first part of the film, she's in Kansas and it's in sort of grayscale black and white.
- NANarrator
Oh, that's right.
- EWEric Weinstein
And then she lands in Oz and they open the door and it's Technicolor. And there's this transitional scene, um, where you see Technicolor for the first time.
- NANarrator
Was that the first time ever in a movie?
- EWEric Weinstein
I believe so. And so-
- NANarrator
Wow.
- EWEric Weinstein
... and so the question is, um, where's the portal? Like, why do we tell the same story over and over and over again with different protagonists, but it's always the same formula? It's somebody is trapped in an ordinary world, they're sort of... They're around normies. They find the portal, and the portal becomes the call to adventure. And they spend time in the alternate universe, and then somehow they're able to live. Very often they return. Uh, if you remember The Phantom Tollbooth, Milo gets this present of a car and a tollbooth, and he goes through the tollbooth and he-
- NANarrator
What is that from?
- EWEric Weinstein
Uh, let me see. Norton Jester was the author and Jules Feiffer was, did the illustrations. It was just this brilliant book, uh-
- NANarrator
I vaguely remember this.
- EWEric Weinstein
... where there's, like, the Land of Letters and the Land of Numbers, so it's arts and sciences.
- NANarrator
Oh.
- EWEric Weinstein
And, you know, like there's a... There's a person who starts from his head and grows down until his feet reach the ground, and there's a numbers mine. And he has to rescue the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason in order to restore order between the two kingdoms of, you know, like left and right hemisphere.
- NANarrator
Hm.
- EWEric Weinstein
It's some incredibly, uh, exciting story, and the idea is that after he goes and does all of these... Right, there's an island called Conclusions, and when you make an assumption, you leap to conclusions. So you suddenly jump. I mean, it's, it's all very clever wordplay and stuff.
- NANarrator
Hm.
- EWEric Weinstein
At the end of the adventure, the tollbooth disappears because it has to go to the next kid who needs it, you know? And so my question was always, "Why, why on earth would we tell the same story over and over and over and over and over again?" It has the same format and it's always a different context. And I came to believe that the story is actually this unkept promise for most people, that in their adult lives, they don't find these portals. So for example, have you ever been to Barcelona, Spain?
Episode duration: 3:28:11
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