Joe Rogan Experience #1388 - Louie Psihoyos

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   All right, here we…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:03

      All right, here we go. How are you?

   2. LPLouie Psihoyos0:04

      Good.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:04

      What's happening? Good to see you.

   4. LPLouie Psihoyos0:06

      Good to see you.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Hey, how'd you get involved with The Cove? What was the, the history behind that?

   6. LPLouie Psihoyos0:11

      I'm gonna give you the long version.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      Sure.

   8. LPLouie Psihoyos0:13

      Um, there's a, a good friend of mine, Jim Clark, the guy that started Netscape, Silicon Graphics, WebMD. I wanted to film... I was doing a story for Geographic back in 1995, I think it came out. Uh, it was on the information revolution and Jim Clark was sort of the, (sighs) y- you know, the Steve Jobs of my generation, right? And he, uh, h- he didn't wanna be photographed. He was just too busy. And then I started working for Fortune Magazine and he had built a boat, had the world's tallest mast I think at that point, and I was... went over to Amsterdam to film him. And, uh, we hit it off and, y- you know, he said, "Would you teach me how to be a, a good photographer?" And, you know, he'd made three companies from scratch b- worth over a billion dollars and I said, "Well, if you teach me how to be a billionaire, I'll teach you how to be a great photographer." (laughs) And, um, then we would travel all over the world taking pictures for about the next 10 years, and, uh, we did mostly underwater photography. He built the best underwater camera ever made by an order of magnitude. It was just a, a piece of work, 'cause Jim doesn't do anything half-ass, and every time we would go to a dive site and come back to it, he would see this shifting baseline where there's less fish, there's less coral. In fact, he, he took me to this place in Papua New Guinea, he said, "Louie, I'm gonna take you to the best place I've ever seen. It's in, in, in Papua New Guinea." We flew over there, all day to get there, a day and a half to sail. We'd dive on the GPS coordinates and it's rubble, it's completely gone. And this would happen, not all the time, but a lot. We don't know what the, you know, the insults were. It could have been dynamite fishing, could have been, uh, it, it could have been anything. Who knows what it was? But the... I think it was the third time that we were in the Galapagos, Jim turned to me and said something like, you know, "Somebody should do something about this." We saw a fisherman illegally f- fishing in a marine sanctuary. And sort of empowered by the success that he's had in business and seeing how he could change the world and his businesses, uh, I said, "How about you and I?" He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "We'll use your money and my eye and we'll make films." And the first... well, (laughs) then I, you know... So I'm jumping careers at this stage. I'm going from, uh, being a fairly successful, you know, s- still photographer, really busy, to, uh, a career where I had really no business doing it. I'd never really made a film before, not even, really, a short film. And, uh, and so I'm, you know, nervous, I'm feeling sort of full of myself like I'm gonna start this great career, and we're down in the Caribbean on a, on a boat and my kid starts... with Jim, on vacation with our families, and my kid starts playing on the beach with, uh, another kid. It happens to be Steven Spielberg's kid. So Steven comes over onto the boat to meet Jim and I. He, he made Jurassic Park using Jim's computers, you know, Silicon Graphics, and after I had Steven alone for a few seconds, I said, "Do you have any advice for a first-time filmmaker?"

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:06

      (laughs)

   10. LPLouie Psihoyos3:07

       And he s- he said, he said, "Yeah, never make a movie involving boats or animals."

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:12

       Oh, great. (laughs)

   12. LPLouie Psihoyos3:14

       And, you know, of course, the first film we did was The Cove, and-

   13. JRJoe Rogan3:16

       But at least these are...

   14. NANarrator3:18

       (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan3:18

       Y- you're not... You don't have actors and special effects and boats and animals. It's just a part of the story. It's not like you're... Like, with him, I think what he's meaning, like Jaws.

   16. LPLouie Psihoyos3:27

       E- exactly.

   17. JRJoe Rogan3:28

       Yeah.

   18. LPLouie Psihoyos3:28

       You know, 'cause, you know, you have to match shots and-

   19. JRJoe Rogan3:30

       Special effects.

   20. LPLouie Psihoyos3:30

       ... and all that, but it has its own set of, you know, t- trying to keep a, the horizon level on a boat. You don't wanna give the audience seasickness and...

   21. JRJoe Rogan3:38

       Mm.

   22. LPLouie Psihoyos3:38

       But, um, you know, I would add to that, like, don't do a movie (laughs) where people wanna kill you 'cause when we did The Cove, it was, you know, it was, uh, exciting but dangerous work.

   23. JRJoe Rogan3:48

       Yes. Yeah. Um, look, that movie changed a lot of people's minds and opened up a lot of people's eyes to the, the horrors of the way dolphins are slaughtered and, uh, and w- you know, we were just talking about this before the podcast, I think they are as intell- intelligent as human beings. I just think the difference is they can't change their environment. They don't affect their environment the way we do. They don't build houses. They don't have cars. They don't send emails. So we don't appreciate what they are, but when we look at the complexity of their brains, the fact that their cerebral cortex is 40% larger than a human being's, they have this incredibly complex language that we don't even really totally understand. We can peck out-

   24. LPLouie Psihoyos4:32

       Don't understand any of it. (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan4:33

       Yeah, I mean, we can peck out patterns. I mean, the scientists have... I mean, you know, um, I'm sure you're aware of John Lilly's work.

   26. LPLouie Psihoyos4:40

       Sure.

   27. JRJoe Rogan4:40

       Uh, yeah, John Lilly, I mean, for years... I m- and did it in, like, really weird, unconventional ways. He tried to take acid and communicate with dolphins, and it's one of the reasons why he cre- he created the sensory deprivation tank. We h- we actually have one of those over here.

   28. LPLouie Psihoyos4:55

       Right.

   29. JRJoe Rogan4:55

       And Lilly, uh, forev- they were forever trying to figure out some way to figure out some method of communication where they were trying to get the dolphins to talk like people and we would try to make their noises and to no avail, you know.

   30. LPLouie Psihoyos5:10

       Yeah, I mean, they're obviously extremely complex p- you know, animals. If you, you know, judge 'em by our value, like people say, "Oh, they, you know, they didn't invent, you know, the car."
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Wow. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      then, so it wasn't like they could freeze it and store it. And, uh, they got down to these incredibly low levels until Teddy Roosevelt and a lot of other people that were conservation minded realized, like, what was happening here, and they put a stop to it all and then started, uh, enacting programs to reintroduce these animals to the, the areas where they're extirpated. And now you see historic levels of, uh, especially white-tailed deer. There's more white-tailed deer in America now than were when Columbus landed.

   2. LPLouie Psihoyos15:27

      Wow.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:28

      So, it's, uh... But there's, that's been succe- but it's also, that's a weird one too, because white-tailed deer are almost a farm animal, because there's so many of them that exist in Iowa and Kansas and around farmlands. Like, they literally exist in fields, and a lot of them live off of GMO crops. That's very strange. So, like, I have a buddy of mine, my friend, uh, Doug, Doug Duren, who has this, uh, huge, uh, piece of land in Wisconsin, and he's like, "The deer in my area are essentially eating these GMO corn." They're eating Monsanto corn. Like, this is so weird. Like, they... Yeah, they're wild, but they're also kind of farm animals. You know, because they, and they exist in record numbers because they've got so much food to eat.

   4. LPLouie Psihoyos16:15

      And no predators.

   5. JRJoe Rogan16:16

      Yeah, I mean, the only predators they have there, I mean, they, they have some wolves now, very few in some, some parts of the Driftless Area in Wisconsin. I think they have, they have some bears too, and coyotes, a lot of coyotes that will, uh, kill a lot of the fawns.

   6. LPLouie Psihoyos16:30

      I lived in Boulder, Colorado for a while and we had a, a lot of bears and mountain lions come through our, our, our yard because we were right at the base of the foothills of the, the Rockies. And a neighbor... I woke up one morning and the neighbor was, like, looking at his, his minivan, and there's a big dent in the side. And he's trying to figure out, like, how'd it get a dent because it was parked here all night. And he found a, an antler in the bushes.

   7. JRJoe Rogan16:53

      Oh.

   8. LPLouie Psihoyos16:53

      And he thought, "Well, what the hell? How did, how did..." And then the question is, how does a deer run into it? And then in the paper the next day, there was a picture of a mountain lion at a house down the block sitting on a hot tub cover, this is in the winter, holding a deer with one, you know, in his mouth with one antler. (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan17:08

      Oh, so it attacked it and slammed it into... Oh, Jesus Christ. I lost a dog in Boulder to a mountain lion.

   10. LPLouie Psihoyos17:14

       Wow.

   11. JRJoe Rogan17:15

       Yeah. I had a little dog who's part, uh, American Eskimo and par- part Pomeranian. A mountain lion got it.

   12. LPLouie Psihoyos17:22

       Oh, the mountain lion, I think, got our cat.

   13. JRJoe Rogan17:24

       Yeah, they get everything up there, man. If it's not them, it's a fox.

   14. LPLouie Psihoyos17:27

       (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan17:27

       You know, there's a lot of foxes up there to get things, but God, it's beautiful.

   16. LPLouie Psihoyos17:30

       Yeah. Boulder's gorgeous.

   17. JRJoe Rogan17:31

       Boulder's incredible, incredible place. And you'll be driving down the road and you see... It's weird, like, the deer in Boulder know that they're safe. So, like, we were, we were, uh, looking at this house in, in Boulder and we opened up the door to the backyard, and there was this enormous deer just standing there staring at us. And my wife thought it was fake. I go, "No, that's a real deer." She's like, "What?" And then it just turns its head and starts moving around because it wasn't even remotely freaked out that there were people a, a stone's throw away from it.

   18. LPLouie Psihoyos17:58

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan17:58

       They're just so used to being around people.It's weird.

   20. LPLouie Psihoyos18:01

       Yeah. The neighbor, uh ... I remember a neighbor w- was planting rose bushes on the front of their property and, you know, all proud. And then I remember (laughs) I was driving home, like, later on that day, and there's all these deer coming, they're just snipping the tops of the roses (laughs) Oh, they love it. ... just going like a salad bar.

   21. JRJoe Rogan18:14

       Yeah. Ma- many a people have turned on deer-

   22. LPLouie Psihoyos18:16

       (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan18:16

       ... because of the loss of their gardens, the roses especially. They love roses.

   24. LPLouie Psihoyos18:21

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan18:21

       Yeah, it's, um, a d- is there anybody that has ever come up with any sort of a plan to do what they did for wild animals in North America? Because it b- well, I see, you can't regulate it the way you can wild animals 'cause in wild animals, if they have a particular area, you could make it so people can't go in that area. But the ocean is so enormous. Like, how ... Ha- has anybody come up with some sort of a, a re-population plan?

   26. LPLouie Psihoyos18:46

       Sure, sure. There's a, uh, E. O. Wilson, I'm on the board of, uh, the advisory board of his, his group. It's called the, th- you know, the half- The Half-Life Project. Um, you know who E. O. Wilson is?

   27. JRJoe Rogan18:57

       No.

   28. LPLouie Psihoyos18:57

       Okay. E. O. Wilson is a Harvard professor, um, that has two Pulitzers for his work on, in biology. He's a, um ... Wrote the book on biodiversity. He's considered the father of modern, um, biodiversity. He's about, um, gettin' right around 90 years old now. But, uh, looking at ... Uh, he, he would do things like g- go to an island and then pretty much exterminate everything on it and then try to figure out, well, w- w- you know, "At what rate do the animals come back and what's, what's sustainable?" And he's figured out that to save 85% of the, th- the, uh, the wild animals on the planet, you have to put aside half of it for them. You know, that's what it's called.

   29. JRJoe Rogan19:37

       Half of the planet?

   30. LPLouie Psihoyos19:38

       Half the planet. Yeah. And it-
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Jesus Christ, though. That's…

   1. LPLouie Psihoyos30:00

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Jesus Christ, though. That's insane.

   3. LPLouie Psihoyos30:03

      Well, there's a lot of things like that going on right now.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:05

      But it seems like someone, someone should be held accountable for that. Like, whatever it co- cost-... benefit that they've decided is worth polluting the ocean by pumping sewage into it?

   5. LPLouie Psihoyos30:17

      Well, you know, that's a good question. When we did ... And now that I recall, this is, like, five years ago. We tried to get a, an interview with the key people down there. But try to ... Like, if you, if you're gonna talk to somebody about this, nobody wants to go on record to talk about it because it's, it, it's really bad for tourism. It's ... An- and it's not good for their political record.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:33

      Is there a video of it? Can we show video?

   7. LPLouie Psihoyos30:35

      Oh, yeah. Uh, w- w- looking-

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:37

      You got something?

   9. LPLouie Psihoyos30:37

      Well, the s-

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:37

       Jamie's got something here. Uh, I n- I need to see this.

   11. LPLouie Psihoyos30:39

       Uh, Raci- it's in Racing Extinction. Uh, the- the second film I did.

   12. NANarrator30:44

       This was making sure this was in Florida. This is a pop- up on the beach.

   13. JRJoe Rogan30:45

       Oh, look at this.

   14. LPLouie Psihoyos30:47

       Oh, yeah. Look.

   15. NANarrator30:47

       Look at that.

   16. LPLouie Psihoyos30:48

       Uh, there we go.

   17. JRJoe Rogan30:49

       Ugh. That's so disgusting.

   18. NANarrator30:51

       Four months ago, maybe, maybe. Close to.

   19. JRJoe Rogan30:53

       Wow. It is just a, a gigantic pipe pumping green shit into the ocean. Why is it green, by the way?

   20. NANarrator31:03

       Well-

   21. LPLouie Psihoyos31:03

       That's a, a good question.

   22. NANarrator31:04

       ... it's the ...

   23. LPLouie Psihoyos31:05

       It could, it could be the color under the water too.

   24. NANarrator31:06

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan31:06

       But you said it was green when you saw it as well, right?

   26. LPLouie Psihoyos31:08

       Yeah. Well ... Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan31:10

       You know?

   28. LPLouie Psihoyos31:10

       Yeah. Well, both ... Every- every-

   29. NANarrator31:11

       (laughs)

   30. JRJoe Rogan31:11

       That's treated. That's ... It's treated.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   (laughs) …

   1. LPLouie Psihoyos45:00

      per fish.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:01

      (laughs)

   3. LPLouie Psihoyos45:01

      You know, 'cause there's so few of them actually come through and then, you know-

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:04

      Right.

   5. LPLouie Psihoyos45:04

      ... they get back. But, uh-

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:07

      What is this, Jamie?

   7. NANarrator45:08

      This is Pattern Radio. So this is a AI... I'll reset the website, but it says that you can explore yourself to find humpback whale songs and make your own discoveries. So this is a-

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:21

      Use AI to explore thousands of hours of humpback whale songs and make your own discoveries.

   9. NANarrator45:27

      Just-

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:27

       So they'll play some of it?

   11. NANarrator45:28

       Yeah, there's a lot to dig through here, but it's a really cool-looking site, if anybody wants to go check it out. (whale calling)

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:45

       What's that heavy-duty pattern over to the left, Jamie?

   13. NANarrator45:48

       This thing?

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:49

       No, to the left.

   15. NANarrator45:50

       Oh, here?

   16. JRJoe Rogan45:50

       Yeah. Whoa!

   17. LPLouie Psihoyos46:04

       I mean-

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:06

       What about those long bars right next to it?

   19. NANarrator46:10

       Here?

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:11

       Yeah. No, the... Over to the right. No, no, the long ones.

   21. LPLouie Psihoyos46:15

       Left?

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:15

       The long ones.

   23. LPLouie Psihoyos46:16

       Left, left?

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:17

       Like, just to the right of that image.

   25. NANarrator46:19

       This thing?

   26. LPLouie Psihoyos46:19

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan46:19

       Yeah. Wow.

   28. LPLouie Psihoyos46:26

       If you s- if that was coming out of space, you'd be like, "What the hell?" (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan46:29

       Yeah. We would be like, "We have to go immediately." I've often said that about Bigfoot. That we... Everyone care... You can shut it off. People are so interested in finding Bigfoot, but if you found Bigfoot, what would it be? It would be basically a big chimpanzee or something, right? Another big primate. We already know about primates, they're amazing. We know about them now. But if you found... If an orca wasn't real and someone said, "Hey, there's this thing. It's as, as smart as people, maybe smarter. It lives in the ocean, but it breathes air and it swims around in these incredible pods and they're, they're, they have really tight communities. They communicate with each other with this language that we have had our, our best linguists try to decipher. We have no idea what the fuck they're saying." You know, you'd be like, "What kind of animal is that?" It would be a, a crazy mythical creature, you know, like The Creature from the Black Lagoon or the, you know, Loch Ness Monster or something. It would be like some incredible thing. If you ever found one, people would be freaking out. But we get so used to things being real and I think we're just used to them. And unfortunately because of things like, you know, Free Willy and, you know, and, and going to see SeaWorld shows where they're doing flips for fish and everybody's clapping, people have got it in their head that this is just a thing, it's a normal thing. But what they are is like one of the most fantastic creatures that the world has ever known. In all of the billions of years of life on this planet, there's two things that are mind-blowers in terms of, like, their intelligence. One of them is us, the other one is them. The... All the marine mammals, whether it's whales, dolphin... I mean, whales are amazing because of their size but... Whales, dolphins and, and, and, and orcas, and obviously orcas are cousins of whales, but they're... Those things are... They're, they're, they're some of the most spectacular creatures that the, the, the, that the biodiversity of the Earth has ever created.

   30. LPLouie Psihoyos48:23

       ... I, I agree. I mean, you know, when you're watching a dolphin show, you're wat- watching a spectacle of dominance. You-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:11:06

   Yeah, like, climate change…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      very, very close to some of these fires, you know, we, we've been evacuated a few times, and when it's hitting and the sky is, like, just gray with smoke and the hills are on fire, it's a very strange, strange feeling.

   2. LPLouie Psihoyos1:00:12

      Yeah, like, climate change is real, and it's happening in, like, now, and it's close.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:16

      It's about as real as it can ever get. I mean, it... the people who are in denial of it at this point, I mean, how much longer can you hold this opinion, and what's... what is keeping you... what is keeping you on this "it's a hoax" tra- track?

   4. LPLouie Psihoyos1:00:32

      You know, I travel all over the world. We're the only country that doesn't get it, you know? The... we, we might have the illusion that it's half the world that doesn't get it, but we're... I mean, ev- over in Europe and Asia, they all understand it. It's not, not a mystery over there. It's only here. And I think, you know, it's self-interest, greed.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:51

      Yeah.

   6. LPLouie Psihoyos1:00:51

      You know? I think people are...You know, (sighs) the-

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:54

      There's also a right-wing ideology. There's, there's something that happens, you know, there's certain, uh, opinions that people adopt. They adopt this conglomeration of opinions if you are, uh, in the right or if you're in the left, and one of them in the right is to deny the impact of certain environmental factors and climate change and things along those lines. And it's, uh, it's just, it- it's like, uh, to join this group, you have to subscribe to a certain platform or a certain d- system of ideas, and that's one of 'em. One of 'em is that climate change is no big deal. It's just a hoax. Or, uh, people are making out... Like, I mean, I mean, I see it on Twitter all the time where someone will point something out, like, "Yeah, how's that climate change working out for you?" But just because, like, it's really cold in some place one day. Like, no, you don't, you don't... I don't think you understand what this is. Like, that's actually part of it, like, have it being extraordinarily cold in one... The whole thing's in chaos. Like, all the systems are out of whack.

   8. LPLouie Psihoyos1:01:55

      Yeah, no, whole ecosystems. Well, I mean, e- like, I went out to the beach this morning, and it probably looked the way it did 50,000 years ago out there.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:02:02

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LPLouie Psihoyos1:02:03

       But you go under the water, it's a whole different story.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:02:05

       Yeah. Well, a couple degrees warmer fucks everything up.

   12. LPLouie Psihoyos1:02:09

       Yeah, that's all we need.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:02:10

       That's really hard for us to understand, 'cause some days it's 76 and the other days it's 52, and the next day it's 80. It seems normal for us, this, this variability, but you don't look at the overall mean. If you look at the overall mean, you see that rise in just a couple degrees of temperature could change everything.

   14. LPLouie Psihoyos1:02:27

       Yeah, so I mean, uh, uh, this is what keeps me up at night. It's like, you know, if, if you know this is going on, what do you do about it?

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:02:34

       Yeah.

   16. LPLouie Psihoyos1:02:34

       So that, you know, you can look at yourself when you're on your deathbed and say, "I, I did everything I could to make a difference."

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:02:43

       Well, the fish one's a huge one, right? And the ocean, the pollution of the ocean is a huge one, because it seems like it's nobody's, right? It seems like it's everybody's, but it's nobody's. Whereas, like, the land, if someone is doing something on the l-... Could you imagine that Florida, if they were just pumping that shit into West Palm Beach, if there was just a big tube that goes into the sky and it just sprays all over West Palm Beach, people would be like, "What the fuck is this?"

   18. LPLouie Psihoyos1:03:08

       (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:03:08

       And then they would have, they would have to act. They'd have to say, "You can't do that." But 'cause it's getting pumped into the ocean, it seems like it's okay.

   20. LPLouie Psihoyos1:03:16

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:03:16

       "It's not ours. It's just the ocean. Well, it's unfortunately... We gotta do... I gotta go to work, man. I don't have time for this. Uh, like, I'm behind on my car payments. I'm doing overtime tonight." You know, most people are concerned with so many different things that they don't have time to think about the, the massive overfishing and pollution of the ocean.

   22. LPLouie Psihoyos1:03:34

       Well, you know, and that's, that's the trick, you know, like, like, as a filmmaker, how do you make a story like that so that people actually wanna see it, so they don't feel like it's medicine, they don't feel like, "Okay, I gotta go watch this 'cause it's-"

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:03:44

       Right, medicine, that's a good way of putting it.

   24. LPLouie Psihoyos1:03:46

       Yeah. And, you know, The, The Cove, for instance, I mean, that was, uh, it feels like a thriller. It doesn't feel like a-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:03:52

       Right.

   26. LPLouie Psihoyos1:03:52

       ... a lecture on, you know, what we're doing to dolphins. It's sort of a, uh, s- set up like a mystery. The first line of the film is me saying, "I just wanna say we tried to do this story legally." Still can't go back to Japan, but, you know, the-

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:04:04

       Really? What happens if you go back?

   28. LPLouie Psihoyos1:04:05

       Um, won't come back out. Um-

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:04:07

       They'll arrest you?

   30. LPLouie Psihoyos1:04:08

       I, I'm told that there's, uh, arrest warrants out for me, uh, conspiracy to-

Episode duration: 2:10:37