Joe Rogan Experience #1453 - Eric Weinstein

Joe Rogan 0:01 What's up, brother? How are you?

Eric Weinstein 0:02 Hey, Joe. How are you?

Joe Rogan 0:02 Good. You hanging in there?

Eric Weinstein 0:04 I have not been off of my property more or less in two weeks, so it's crazy to see another human being.

Joe Rogan 0:10 Yeah, I don't think this is healthy for us.

Eric Weinstein 0:11 I know.

Joe Rogan 0:12 This lockdown shit. Everybody's so weirded out. You wanna run into people walking dogs, like, they don't want the dogs to get close to each other, like, "Hi." Everyone's across the street, "Hi."

Eric Weinstein 0:22 And, and I'm a hugger, right?

Joe Rogan 0:23 Me too.

Eric Weinstein 0:23 And we're in California, so I'm a hugger in California, and all of my instincts are wrong.

Joe Rogan 0:27 Everything's all messed up. Everyone's confused. The... Here's the big question: how long does it take before we normalize and go back? Like, let's say the end of July, everyone announces, "We got this thing locked down. We have a viable treatment. It's no different than the flu. We get you this chloroquine with, uh, Z-Pak," or whatever the current treatment is.

Eric Weinstein 0:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:52 When do people start hugging again?

Eric Weinstein 0:53 What do you mean? It's not... It's gonna be crazy. Yeah, I mean, I think that the idea is we're all so starved for touch-

Joe Rogan 0:58 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 0:58 ... that, like, we're gonna have a, uh, a jubilee like you've never seen. People are gonna greet each other with tongues, and we're almost like just acquaintances.

Joe Rogan 1:05 Well, I don't think that's a good idea.

Eric Weinstein 1:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07 Uh, there's still colds and cooties and all that other stuff.

Eric Weinstein 1:09 I know, but I think-

Joe Rogan 1:10 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 1:10 ... I think everybody's losing their shit.

Joe Rogan 1:12 They definitely are. I've been talking to a lot of friends that are on the, um, extremely cautious side, let's say that. And, you know, they're not going anywhere, and they're wearing gloves and masks when they step outside their house to go do something in the backyard. And then they put the glove and mask down, and they spray it with Lysol when they come inside and... (breathes deeply)

Eric Weinstein 1:31 It's not healthy, and-

Joe Rogan 1:32 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:33 ... it is also healthy. I mean, the idea that we have not been tested in so long, it's good to remember also that this stuff is live and real, and it has always been live and real. And, you know, if it was possible to live without this stuff, that would be one thing, but the 75-year nap that we've been in since 1945 is itself the greatest threat to all of us.

Joe Rogan 1:56 Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:56 And, and, and our preparedness is just a wonderful indicator, um, where you actually get to see, this is the quality of your experts, this is the quality of your leadership, this is what they look like when put under stress.

Joe Rogan 2:08 That's true, right? That is a good... That's a good thing. And I'm impressed with the medical community. I'm impressed with the people that are recognizing that this is a huge problem. Not so impressed with the administration of a lot of these hospitals that haven't prepared in terms of, like, masks and ventilators and a lot of these other things. Not so impressed with politicians, but also, it just seems like everyone, like you said, was in this nap state and hadn't really been tested. And really, globally, no one had been tested since the pandemic of 1918 like this, right?

Eric Weinstein 2:44 '68, uh, which I had, I had the Hong Kong flu, and '57 were sort of the best parallels to this.

Joe Rogan 2:53 You got the Hong Kong flu in '68?

Eric Weinstein 2:54 I had the Hong Kong flu-

Joe Rogan 2:55 Oh.

Eric Weinstein 2:55 ... and was sick as a dog-

Joe Rogan 2:57 How old were you back then?

Eric Weinstein 2:57 ... in San Francisco. I was, like, three? Two? I mean-

Joe Rogan 3:01 (whistles)

Eric Weinstein 3:01 ... three, four, some... Me- I mean, I think it went from '68 to '70. Somebody kee-

Joe Rogan 3:04 Do you remember it?

Eric Weinstein 3:06 Oh, yeah. It... I was in San Francisco. My grandma had to come up from LA to care for me. Um, it was, it was bad.

Joe Rogan 3:14 Wow.

Eric Weinstein 3:14 It's, like, one of my earliest memories, yeah. And so '68 and '57, I think, are the best comparables to this go- before we go back to 1918. And almost nobody remembers these things. Like, it's very weird. It... M- many people had never heard of the Hong Kong flu when I started talking about the fact that I had had it.

Joe Rogan 3:33 Yeah, I vaguely remembered it until you just said it. And then I'm like, "Ooh."

Eric Weinstein 3:36 I'm slightly older than you, right?

Joe Rogan 3:38 Yeah, I'm 52.

Eric Weinstein 3:38 I'm 54.

Joe Rogan 3:39 Yeah. I don't remember the Hong Kong flu, but I do, you know what I mean? Like, I don't remember it personally.

Eric Weinstein 3:45 No, but you... But, but y- you as a health geek, um, are, are up on these sorts of things. And so you understand the ways in which, you know, for example, you can have a flu where the, I guess, the cytokine storm, you know, is your... The, the threat from your immunity, uh, uh, your immune system is, like, bigger than the virus itself.

Joe Rogan 4:02 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 4:02 There are all these various weird things that happen, but I, I think that this... The... Let- let's call it the big nap. The big nap is itself the greatest threat to us, and this is, this is bad, but it is also a shot across our bow. And, uh, you know, this was what was happening in my mind when I was on here talking about the twin nuclei problem of cell and atom. We didn't stop history. It's not like we're past atomic war, like we figured that out. We just, we just hit the pause button for a little while and we hit snooze.

Joe Rogan 4:30 Yeah, and the fear is also that nefarious players will take this opportunity to erode civil l- civil rights, to erode civil liberties, and then China to gain power in the US market, to gobble up a lot of stocks while everything is down and try to increase their stake in our economy and try to push, you, you know...

Eric Weinstein 4:52 China's got its hands lovingly around our throat because our elite have been moving into greater and greater states of China dependence.

Joe Rogan 5:00 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 5:01 Right? And so, I (laughs) think this is what the BDSM community refers to as breath play, and I don't like it. I do-

Joe Rogan 5:08 Breath play is, like, you kind of, like, half choke somebody?

Eric Weinstein 5:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:11 Is that what... How do you know that?

Eric Weinstein 5:12 What?

Joe Rogan 5:13 I don't like the fact that you know that.

Eric Weinstein 5:14 I went i-

Joe Rogan 5:14 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 5:14 ... I went to... I went to MIT.

Joe Rogan 5:16 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 5:16 At MIT is wildly into BDSM. Somebody asked, "Why- whye-

Joe Rogan 5:19 Are they really?

Eric Weinstein 5:19 ... why are geeks, uh, and, and aspies into BDSM?" (laughs) And somebody said, "Lots of rules."

Joe Rogan 5:25 What's an aspie? Asperger'sy?

Eric Weinstein 5:27 Uh, Asperger's people, right.

Joe Rogan 5:28 Mm-hmm. Lots of rules?

Eric Weinstein 5:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:29 They like that?

Eric Weinstein 5:29 They like... They love rules.

Joe Rogan 5:31 (laughs) Wow.

Eric Weinstein 5:31 It's their whole thing. Because to do all this stuff safely, you would have to have a huge hierarchy-

Joe Rogan 5:35 Right.

Eric Weinstein 5:35 ... uh, of rules. And my claim is, is that China is... They supply so much of our stuff. We've moved all of our-

Joe Rogan 5:44 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 5:45 ... uh, you know, manufacturing base into these crazy supply chains, and we are completely dependent on a strategic rival. And, you know, China is very careful, if you remember when they... When they hosted the Olympics, to have these amazingly impressive displays that are always friendly. But what they're really saying is, "We have our shit together, and you don't."... and our system was hackable, it was open. As lo- for example, if you have a, a company that has, um, a duty to its shareholders, that the directors of the company must do what is ever- whatever is in the best interest of the shareholders and everything else doesn't matter, then you can have a situation where a director has to move things to China because that is in the best interest of the shareholders, even if it's an, a- absolutely, uh, not in the best interest of the United States. This is what Ralph Gomory, who used to head the Sloan Foundation, once said at an address I was at at the National Academy of Sciences. He just said, "As a director, I am incentivized to do exactly the wrong thing for the United States of America, so I'm gonna put one hat on and tell you, as an American, we must not move all of this over to China, and then I'm gonna put my director's hat on and I'm gonna vote to move everything over to China-

Joe Rogan 6:59 Oh.

Eric Weinstein 6:59 ... because I have no choice." And so, you know, in essence, the smart, good people, all 11 of them, uh, were always fighting this thing about, you cannot become China dependent. And in a ... during the Big Nap, there was no way to make this argument convincingly. You couldn't say, "Look, we, we have a serious strategic problem by your continuing moves to bring China in as the solution to every equation we can't balance." And that, that is really the problem, is, is that there wasn't any ability to say, "We are way too dependent on a strategic rival." You saw this at the beginning of the pandemic. Everyone was afraid of what? I don't wanna be (laughs) appear xenophobic.

Joe Rogan 7:42 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 7:42 I don't wanna appear like Chicken Little.

Joe Rogan 7:43 Right.

Eric Weinstein 7:44 And so all of our friends, the nutcases, the marginal weirdos, the supposed grifters and gadflies, are the people who most got this one right and early. And all the respectable people, like Nancy Pelosi telling people, "Please go to Chinatown to celebrate the Chinese New Year," Bill de Blasio of New York saying, "Despite coronavirus, get out there. Let, you know, don't ... Lead your lives, don't, don't let this thing hold you back." These people need to resign. Nancy Pelosi should resign. It's one thing to say we don't have enough information about this. It's another thing to say, um, "Take the information that's coming in, disregard it, and get back in there and keep fueling the economy." This is exactly our leadership class, their problem. They think about this in short term economics. The, the long term implications of us all (laughs) sheltering in place, nobody can compute the consequences of it. Not one person in the world knows what happens when you run this experiment.

Joe Rogan 8:40 Yeah, it's a new thing, right? The Made in America argument was always like, sort of, uh, frivolous, almost xenophobic. Like, why do you want things made in America, what do you care? Do you not, do you not like people from other countries? Do you not wanna buy things from other countries? It was like this made of- Made in America thing was like, people disregarded it in a lot of ways. But when you realize that all of our medical supplies, li- like, so much of our electronics, so much of ... All the, the stuff that you need to kinda keep things exactly the way they are, it's cheaper to make it over there, because they will ... Like, w- what we saw with Foxconn, where they put nets around the building to keep people from jumping off. And e- the weirdest thing was people trying to argue that the suicide rate at Foxconn was essentially the same as the suicide rate in the general population.

Eric Weinstein 9:30 Well, I-

Joe Rogan 9:31 E- you, did you ever hear that argument?

Eric Weinstein 9:33 Yeah, but-

Joe Rogan 9:33 Like, what, what the fuck are you talking about? That's where they work. There's nets around where they work, 'cause so many people where they work jump off the building to end their life, 'cause their life sucks that bad, that they kill themselves at work. Do you know how rare it is to kill yourself at work? Probably pretty fucking rare. You know how common it is, where ha- you have to put nets around the building? They're like, "Look, we're getting really tired of people going to the roof and jumping off, 'cause it's the easiest way to kill yourself." They're gonna get more creative.

Eric Weinstein 9:59 Yeah. Uh, the problem is, we are all hooked up to this need for cheap products-

Joe Rogan 10:05 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 10:06 ... profits, when we can't figure out how to innovate enough to actually create the juice in our own system, and therefore, we have to rationa- you were gonna say?

Joe Rogan 10:13 No, I was just gonna say, I mean, also, we've gotten into this idea of every year, we have to have a newer, better piece of electronics. Like, if you had to go the rest of your life with an iPhone 11, how much would you suffer?

Eric Weinstein 10:24 Um, not that much, although I would say that many of us are not that excited about the next phone. Tha- that, that itself is an antiquated thing.

Joe Rogan 10:33 Right, but what I'm saying is like, wh- why can't they make it so that you can just fix this?

Eric Weinstein 10:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:39 You know what I mean? Like, who the fuck fixes their phone? You don't fix your phone. You bring it in, they're like, "Oh, you can get a new one."

Eric Weinstein 10:44 Oh, you're going back to like, Depression Era thinking.

Joe Rogan 10:46 Well, not Depression Era thinking. It's like, wh- why can't things be sustainable?

Eric Weinstein 10:52 No, no. I, I ... The planned obsolescence and the need to constantly-

Joe Rogan 10:55 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 10:55 ... update so that you n- y- you're never ... It's a tricky problem. If you need growth to power your system, then in a weird way, it makes sense not to build the optimal phone-

Joe Rogan 11:08 Right.

Eric Weinstein 11:09 ... because if you were to build the optimal phone and then people stopped renewing everything-

Joe Rogan 11:13 Your system's fucked.

Eric Weinstein 11:13 ... then your system weirdly breaks down. So it makes sense at the level of the phone that you wouldn't want to do that, but weirdly, in aggregate, if you can't start innovate, if you can't figure out how to restart innovation in a big way, now you're stuck with either having to li- learn to live in steady state, which none of us ... We, n- Americans have no program for living in steady state. We, we need growth. That was the whole point of the embedded growth obligation idea, that it's suffused throughout every institution. Every pension plan assumes growth, right?

Joe Rogan 11:41 Right.

Eric Weinstein 11:43 All right. So now we have this problem where we don't have the growth and we need the growth, and then in a weird way, the planned obsolescence is like fake growth. It means that we're gonna rebuy our phones e- as if they were n- now highly innovative. So there's like a weird way in which we've become dependent on nonsense.

Joe Rogan 12:03 Yeah. Dependent on nonsense is a great way to put it. And this is really highlighting that for a lot of people. When people are home and they're with their families and they're not traveling, especially people like me and my peers, like a lot of my comedian friends who travel constantly, we're like, "It's kinda nice to be home."... you know, everyone's sort of re-looking at this like, "What if-" Is this life that we've sort of, uh, accepted as this is the way things are, is this really the way things should be? Or is this just, we just got caught in a pattern and we're operating on momentum?

Eric Weinstein 12:36 If the comedian, if our, if our comedian force becomes non-dysfunctional, we are screwed.

Joe Rogan 12:42 Well, that's not gonna happen.

Eric Weinstein 12:43 Okay, phew. That was a close call.

Joe Rogan 12:44 That would, that would require so many psychedelic trips and- (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 12:46 'Cause there's almost... (laughs) There's almost no group that is as, as far away from normal as comedians.

Joe Rogan 12:52 I know. That's why I get along with them so well.

Eric Weinstein 12:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:55 It's so hard for me to hang out with regular folk, you know, that's, that would be rough. Like, if I had to live in a community of regular people that just work every day.

Eric Weinstein 13:03 What if you had, like, a community of only comedians, what would that look like?

Joe Rogan 13:06 Oh, that'd be fun.

Eric Weinstein 13:07 Really?

Joe Rogan 13:08 Yeah, yeah. It would be fun. We have that. That's The Comedy Store.

Eric Weinstein 13:10 Oh, The Comedy Store in... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:11 Yeah. If The Comedy Store was just locked down on like a 500 acre piece of property and there's a bunch of houses on there-

Eric Weinstein 13:16 We could only do jokes for each other.

Joe Rogan 13:18 ... we would just entertain each other. We would just entertain each other. Well, half the fun of comedians is just us hanging out. We would just get together and laugh.

Eric Weinstein 13:25 Well, by the way, I should just say, one of the great, uh, things about moving back to LA, uh, has been your invitations to come hang with the comedians at The Store. What a great scene. I mean, you made this point to me, uh, about a renaissance. And then I think I sent you David Byrne's, um, book about music, the chapter on-

Joe Rogan 13:45 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 13:46 ... CBGB.

Joe Rogan 13:46 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 13:47 And it's almost an exact map of what CBGB did as the Harvard of punk, uh, to The Comedy Store's Oxford of comedy.

Joe Rogan 13:56 Yeah. Yeah, you- you- you've been to the back bar.

Eric Weinstein 13:59 The... Oh.

Joe Rogan 14:00 (laughs) That's the Holy Grail.

Eric Weinstein 14:02 It's the best. (laughs) It's-

Joe Rogan 14:03 That's the spot.

Eric Weinstein 14:03 You- you got me hammered-

Joe Rogan 14:05 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 14:05 ... uh, two times ago, and I was just, I stumbled out of that thinking that was the best time and I couldn't remember anything.

Joe Rogan 14:11 Well, you know what it's great too, even when non-comedians like yourself and, you know, Melissa and Matt and, you know, some of their friends and all these other people come there and they're around these people, they act freer. They're laughing louder, they're making, you know, more off-color jokes and everyone's just laughing-

Eric Weinstein 14:31 Oh.

Joe Rogan 14:32 ... having fun. I mean, that's-

Eric Weinstein 14:33 Melissa's the worst, you have to be very careful. I mean-

Joe Rogan 14:35 Oh, she's hilarious.

Eric Weinstein 14:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:36 She's very funny.

Eric Weinstein 14:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:37 Melissa Chen, by the way. Shout-out. Shout-out to Melissa. Um-

Eric Weinstein 14:40 By the way, what great stuff she's doing on masks.

Joe Rogan 14:43 Yeah. Explain that.

Eric Weinstein 14:45 Um, well, uh, sh- she's just, she just takes it on herself to ask the question, "Why don't, why don't our doctors and nurses have masks?" And so she's running around trying to figure out, uh, how to connect donors, flights, product. She... Wh- whatever she's doing, she's- she's heroically like taking a ton of this on her shoulders and not, um... I- I- I'm hesitating because I don't even know what I'm allowed to say.

Joe Rogan 15:15 Right. Yeah, we don't have to talk anymore then.

Eric Weinstein 15:17 Yeah, you should, you should-

Joe Rogan 15:17 She's a, uh, she's a very interesting person. I'm really glad you introduced me to her. She's fascinating. This, like, this is, uh, a great time to see what people are actually made out of, you know?

Eric Weinstein 15:28 Yeah, who's, who's heroic? The heroic impulse.

Joe Rogan 15:30 Sure. And- and who can keep their shit together when things go sideways, when things get Western, as it were.

Eric Weinstein 15:37 Well, let me ask you a question.

Joe Rogan 15:38 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 15:38 Of all of the presidential candidates that were in the race, like, everybody who's dropped out in... As well, which of them would you want in a COVID situation?

Joe Rogan 15:47 Tulsi.

Eric Weinstein 15:48 Tulsi. That's... By the way, that was my answer as well.

Joe Rogan 15:51 Instantly.

Eric Weinstein 15:52 I don't... I didn't want her f- foreign policy, that's one of the reasons I wasn't like gung-ho on Tulsi. Uh, didn't like some of the stuff about, um, in India there's some issues about Modi and- and I don't wanna get into that. But if you ask like, who would you want to, like, who has that kind of locked down military, "We have to make sense, the bullshit needs to leave the room," the odd thing is it's a millennial female of color that I would immediately want to subordinate to.

Joe Rogan 16:22 Well, she's, um-

Eric Weinstein 16:24 'Cause she would also be no bullshit.

Joe Rogan 16:25 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 16:25 She- she had the strength to call out all of the nonsense. She would... I- I'm positive she would just say, "This is unacceptable. What are we doing? This is emergency times, we- we gotta suspend these issues. We have to get these things to our, uh, doctors, nurses, emergency technicians." I mean, look, I- I should say that I'm trying to be like smiley and positive, but I am just burning with rage. I cannot believe-

Joe Rogan 16:48 That- that things weren't set up correctly?

Eric Weinstein 16:51 Th- the scale of the screw-up and trying to even understand a government that I cannot trust as far as I can throw it, to- to- to feel contempt for the Surgeon General of the United States, to say that the World Health Organization is a danger to world health, to say that the CDC is lying. I hate being in a position where I believe these things.

Joe Rogan 17:15 Yeah. Um, but about Tulsi, uh, she's- she's a person of real character, you know. I don't see her like I see a lot of these people that are running for president. I see them wearing masks, you know. I mean, I don't even need to name names but they- they're- they're doing their best impression of a politician like a shitty comedian will do their best impression of Dave Attell, you know. That's the- the best example that someone gave me of, uh, like the- the comparison. There's- there's- there's a style of communicating that a lot of them have adopted to try to appear. And you can tell that they're coached, they're trying to appear presidential. She's just, that's who she is, man. I've hung out with her off camera, on camera. I've seen her, just the way she communicates with people. Now, I don't know her down to the bone, but what I see, I'm very impressed with and she's developed her character over two tours of duty overseas. I mean-

Eric Weinstein 18:13 Again, who- who volunteers, who takes this-

Joe Rogan 18:15 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 18:15 ... stuff on? This is the weird thing because I, you know, really, before COVID, I was in this Bernie Yang Tulsi mindset which is just, what is the fur ball that I can shove down the throat of the DNC to make the party fall apart under that Hillary Clinton overhang?

Joe Rogan 18:34 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 18:36 The weird thing is in an actual pandemic...... I am almost positive that she has the stuff.

Joe Rogan 18:44 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 18:45 It may not be her year.

Joe Rogan 18:46 Right. She's only 38.

Eric Weinstein 18:48 She's only 38.

Joe Rogan 18:49 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 18:49 But-

Joe Rogan 18:49 It might not be her year.

Eric Weinstein 18:50 But-

Joe Rogan 18:50 But she'll get there.

Eric Weinstein 18:51 But, but how interesting that, like, (laughs) w- when the shit hits the fan, the person with the highest number of intersectional points, maybe, uh, is actually the person th- that you want to lead on merit.

Joe Rogan 19:05 Right. But they don't want her, which is even more hilarious.

Eric Weinstein 19:07 Well, the- ah, it's ridiculous.

Joe Rogan 19:08 They don't want her because she can't be bought and sold.

Eric Weinstein 19:10 Well-

Joe Rogan 19:10 I mean, that's ... It's really simple.

Eric Weinstein 19:12 But I think that, you know, we, we need to revisit some stuff, which ... All of this, um, anger and, um (laughs) , ferocity that we were using to stand up to, uh, social engineering invading the mainstream conversation, I believe that COVID proves that it is deadly.

Joe Rogan 19:32 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 19:34 That if your top concern is not appearing xenophobic, people will die because you are functionally incompetent.

Joe Rogan 19:40 Right.

Eric Weinstein 19:40 You've just lost 40 IQ points for nothing.

Joe Rogan 19:43 Well, that was the initial response to Trump's d- idea of s- shutting down flights from China. People were furious, and they were calling it racist.

Eric Weinstein 19:52 Well, th- the idea that you can put a negative sign in front of Donald Trump and form an opinion that if he's stupid, then whatever the reverse of what he does is smart-

Joe Rogan 20:00 Right.

Eric Weinstein 20:00 ... is itself moronic.

Joe Rogan 20:02 It's dangerous.

Eric Weinstein 20:02 It's, it's, it's completely irresponsible. And here's the weird thing, I said this to you on the phone the other day when we were talking. The weird thing, Joe, is, is that we are the actual adults in the room. Tulsi, you, me (laughs) , so, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 20:17 That's a huge problem, if you're-

Eric Weinstein 20:18 Well, that's-

Joe Rogan 20:18 ... lumping me in with-

Eric Weinstein 20:19 Well, that's what I'm trying to say. But y- y- ... But this is the problem which I, I think I get this actually better than you, which is, you have a beautiful life, and you recognize that part of it comes with humility of not thinking too much of yourself, being self-deprecating, all these things, and I think that those are all to your credit. It is also time to lead, and if you believe that you having to break out of whatever mindset you're in could be the difference between, you know, saving physicians' lives and nurses' lives, you'd do it. You would do it.

Joe Rogan 20:51 For sure.

Eric Weinstein 20:51 Y- for sure. Okay, well, this thing is the flagship of, um, pirate radio. I mean, this is Samizdat for the world. And the concept of Samizdat, that, that you would have truth that would circulate underground in the Soviet Union, that would not be ... Like, you were seldom rebroadcast inside of, like, MSNBC or CNN, except when they're, like, going after you.

Joe Rogan 21:15 Well, th- what's weird is Fox News rebroadcasts me all the time.

Eric Weinstein 21:19 Well, because Fox ... There are two sort of dominant narratives. Fox News is the flagship inside the right-of-center, uh, gated institutional narrative, and then you have all the other organs, like MSNBC, CNN, NPR, um, BuzzFeed, y- you know, whate- whatever these things are, in the left-of-center, gated institutional narrative. Very often, Fox will pick up on things that we do if they stick it in the eye of the left.

Joe Rogan 21:47 Yes. Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

Eric Weinstein 21:47 And, and so the point is, is that they selectively amplify us.

Joe Rogan 21:51 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 21:51 And that process of selective amplification is, itself, dangerous. Lot ... Like, I get in- invited f- more frequently by Fox and People, and I turn them down, because the narrative inside of, like, The New York Times is, "Well, he's, he's part of that right-wing thing."

Joe Rogan 22:10 Frequent Fox News contributor-

Eric Weinstein 22:12 You ... They're-

Joe Rogan 22:12 ... Eric Weinstein-

Eric Weinstein 22:13 Oh, that's the adjec- adjective, occupation, name.

Joe Rogan 22:16 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 22:16 Frequent, adjective.

Joe Rogan 22:18 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 22:18 Fox News contributor, my occupation.

Joe Rogan 22:20 (laughs) Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 22:22 Uh, and, and then my name. That game, um ... Like, if NPR would call and put me on, I would go on Fox, but the, the, their very clever game is to make it sound like, "Oh, well, you're choosing to go." No. You guys are choosing to ignore a lot of what's changing the culture.

Joe Rogan 22:40 Mmm.

Eric Weinstein 22:41 And they're, therefore, the only people who are willing to ask us on and rebroadcast us are the people who are angry at the NPRs, CNNs, uh, MSNBCs.

Joe Rogan 22:50 Well, I think they realize the limitations of their medium. I really do. I think that CNB- CNBC and, uh, MSNBC and CBS and NBC and ABC, they all realize that they're in this really weird situation where they have to do these seven-minute segments interrupted by commercials. They, they have a restriction. They can only air at 8- you know, whatever time of night the show is supposed to be scheduled. And, you know, they rely on these internet clips to sort of carry the show. I mean, the, the YouTube clips are probably far more popular than anything that they ever release that's on the air.

Eric Weinstein 23:24 What?

Joe Rogan 23:24 That, that ... I mean, that ... Their distribution thing is fucked.

Eric Weinstein 23:28 It's very, it's very bizarre, and it was very interesting watching Bill Maher, uh, sit down here. He was like, "I guess this is it, the man cave."

Joe Rogan 23:37 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 23:37 And you're like, "Yeah, good to see you, Bill." He's like, "I'm here to grovel and ask whether you'll come on my show."

Joe Rogan 23:43 No, he was trying to force me on his show.

Eric Weinstein 23:44 I know.

Joe Rogan 23:45 So this was very little g- groveling. He's not a groveler.

Eric Weinstein 23:47 No. But he's a ...

Joe Rogan 23:48 He's a, he's a strong armer. (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 23:49 Well, what he is, is he's caught in ... He's caught between two tectonic plates.

Joe Rogan 23:52 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 23:53 He is the closest thing we have inside of the beast, in some sense, to what we're doing, maybe?

Joe Rogan 23:59 Yeah. He's a comic.

Eric Weinstein 24:01 He is a comic, but he's also ... Y- you know, he, he's a guy with real courage.

Joe Rogan 24:07 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 24:07 And he's in a very tough ... I think he's in, weirdly, the toughest spot of us all.

Joe Rogan 24:12 Well, he's a guy who's on the left, also, who thinks that a lot of the th- the stuff, as d- as I do and as you do as well, a lot of the stuff that's perpetrated by the people on the left is not just dangerous, but it's, it's ... It empowers the right. It empowers Trump supporters.

Eric Weinstein 24:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:29 It gets people on the fence to give up and, and jump right, and, and get welcomed.

Eric Weinstein 24:34 Yeah, I've, I've stopped being nice to these people.

Joe Rogan 24:37 You can't be.

Eric Weinstein 24:38 No, it's just, it, it, it-

Joe Rogan 24:39 Too much buffoonery.

Eric Weinstein 24:40 Well, it's ... And it, and it's like, it's, it's psychotically dangerous to watch people s- continue the buffoonery in life-and-death situations.

Joe Rogan 24:48 Yeah.Yeah. No, I agree. And, uh, Bill's there on- on the- the right side.

Eric Weinstein 24:53 Are you gonna do a show? Have you done a show?

Joe Rogan 24:54 I'll do it eventually, I'm sure.

Eric Weinstein 24:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:56 The only options that he gave me, I already had gigs booked.

Eric Weinstein 24:59 I see. I, I think that it's really important to use, um ... I mean, I don't know him at all, but to the extent that that was a beachhead to connect these two universes, uh, the ... My model of this is that we've got this traditional legacy world, and we've got this sort of internet world that hovers above it. And in general, the insulating layer between them is astounding at this late date. The number of things that happen on the internet net that don't really have any echo inside of the mainstream-

Joe Rogan 25:29 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 25:29 ... is astounding in 2020. And then you get these arcs that happen between the two. So for example, the famous Sam Harris interaction with Ben Affleck on Bill Maher's show-

Joe Rogan 25:38 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 25:39 ... was an arcing between these two universes.

Joe Rogan 25:40 Well, it was also a guy on steroids that was roid raging at a guy who actually knows what he's talking about.

Eric Weinstein 25:46 (laughs) It was ... I mean, it w- it- it was-

Joe Rogan 25:46 That's what was going on.

Eric Weinstein 25:47 ... pretty much-

Joe Rogan 25:47 I mean, he was preparing for Batman.

Eric Weinstein 25:48 Okay.

Joe Rogan 25:48 We did the math on that.

Eric Weinstein 25:49 All right, but then-

Joe Rogan 25:50 That's why he was so angry.

Eric Weinstein 25:51 But then Cathy Newman and Jordan Peterson was another arcing where Cathy was playing the role of Ben Affleck, Jordan Peterson-

Joe Rogan 25:57 Not really, no. She w- what she was doing w- w- she was trying to get away with this same strategy that she has lazily employed-

Eric Weinstein 26:06 In a gen- exactly.

Joe Rogan 26:06 ... before, this sort of general b- b- uh, boxing and categorizing of someone's opinions that don't really m- represent their, represent their actual opinions.

Eric Weinstein 26:16 So what you're-

Joe Rogan 26:16 So what you're trying to say-

Eric Weinstein 26:17 So what you're saying to me, Joe, is that I have absolutely no point-

Joe Rogan 26:19 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 26:19 ... and I'm a worthless human being who should never visit your show, is that what you're saying, Joe?

Joe Rogan 26:23 What you're trying to say-

Eric Weinstein 26:24 So what, what I, what I am trying to say is that, uh-

Joe Rogan 26:27 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 26:27 ... in a generalized sense, she was just doing that same old, same old-

Joe Rogan 26:30 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 26:30 ... thing with, with a person who is not participating. I, I, I sort of liken the ... Go ahead.

Joe Rogan 26:35 And it's, uh, it's also that these people that they would victimize by putting them into these narratives, right, that ... and they're, and they're accustomed to using these patterns, these people traditionally did not have any other way to respond.

Eric Weinstein 26:49 Right.

Joe Rogan 26:49 There was no internet clips that were released.

Eric Weinstein 26:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:51 There was-

Eric Weinstein 26:51 You could write a letter to the editor.

Joe Rogan 26:53 Well, yeah, right.

Eric Weinstein 26:54 On page 27.

Joe Rogan 26:54 Right. Yeah, and maybe they would print a retraction, you know-

Eric Weinstein 26:57 (laughs) In a little box.

Joe Rogan 26:57 ... and no one, no one would pay attention to it. I mean, that, this is standard, standard behavior-

Eric Weinstein 27:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 27:02 ... for some newspapers and some journalists, right? Uh, the, the unscrupulous ones, unfortunately. But this, this model doesn't work anymore 'cause anyone can go on YouTube and instantly say, "My time on the Cathy N- Newman show."

Eric Weinstein 27:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:15 "This is what went wrong, this is why she did this, and this is what they told me in the green room, and this is what blah, blah, blah, blah." And then y- you lay it out.

Eric Weinstein 27:22 Sort of.

Joe Rogan 27:22 Sort of.

Eric Weinstein 27:23 Now, h- here's ... I mean, let's play with it, ma- maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 27:27 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 27:27 Um, my take on it is that the great thing about ... Ugh. We have, we have an ability to do almost anything we want on YouTube so long as we don't get shut down. Let's say that. However, you also have this concern that as long as this world remains gated, um, if, for example, you have a closed world of people who are pretending to have conversations amongst themselves discussing the issues and then you have the institution say, "We're only going to deal with the authoritative sources," then the problem is, is that if you have a state of pretend, you know, LARPing or kayfabe, whatever you wanna call it-

Joe Rogan 28:06 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 28:06 ... that's taking place inside the gated institutional narrative, the institutions are gonna predicate their actions on the official nonsense. And whatever we do on YouTube, as long as there is an insulating layer, unless we can actually lob something into the wall, uh, you know, over the walls of the citadel-

Joe Rogan 28:23 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 28:23 ... they will continue to actually act as if we'd never said anything, we never pointed it out. It's like you're at this kid's magic show which the, the musici- the magician is completely incompetent and the lights are on and you can see all the wires and trapdoors-

Joe Rogan 28:36 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 28:36 ... and the magic show continues to go on. And so you may m- make the point, "Well, everybody can see that it's bullshit." But as long as the institutions agree to pretend that they believe the bullshit, we have a real problem that the internet didn't, didn't solve that. It's like you get to c-

Joe Rogan 28:51 The internet might not have solved it. Sorry to interrupt you.

Eric Weinstein 28:53 No, no. You keep-

Joe Rogan 28:53 But I think what it has done is severely erode the foundation of it to the point where the trust in it is just ... There's no real mainstream anymore. Like, this idea that the mainstream news is the mainstream, well, how is that real if YouTube videos get more views? Like, if, if y- if you make a YouTube video and it gets five million views but then something goes on MSNBC and it gets 500,000 views-

Eric Weinstein 29:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:21 ... what's mainstream?

Eric Weinstein 29:22 Well-

Joe Rogan 29:22 What is mainstream now? What we're, we're talking about is instead of mainstream media-

Eric Weinstein 29:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:26 ... I think the term traditional media is the best way, the same way the term, you know-

Eric Weinstein 29:31 I like legacy, but keep going.

Joe Rogan 29:32 Legacy's good.

Eric Weinstein 29:33 Okay.

Joe Rogan 29:34 Well, look, f- f- for the longest time, people had to use Morse code, right? And then they figured out phones and those-

Eric Weinstein 29:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:40 ... Morse code guys were fucked. Right? What, what did you do? What d- w- you know, and then phones were attached to cords.

Eric Weinstein 29:46 Yeah, but I'm saying that there's still a phone-

Joe Rogan 29:47 You had to be there. There was no, no. There is. There's still phone.

Eric Weinstein 29:50 No, no, but there's still a function, um, unfortunately, to the ... So, I love the point that you're making, I'm just trying to figure out how to play with it. Let's assume that there is no mainstream left. What we're really talking about is legacy institutional media.

Joe Rogan 30:05 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 30:05 And the great danger is that assume that the mainstream completely exits the building and it's only, you know, 10,000 people trading bullshit amongst themselves but they also control all the institutions. So, like, you, the world, gets to keep reality.

Joe Rogan 30:21 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 30:22 And we, the institutions, agree to traffic in bullshit, you can make lots of jokes at our expense, but we are also going to be figuring out whether we're gonna stock masks or what our farming policy is or, um, how the US military should be deployed and where, uh, we should send troops to protect oil fields and all these kind of things. And th- that's what's concerning me is, is that a lot of us are settling for being right and having them look like idiots. And their point is, "Okay, fine. We'll continue on. We'll look like idiots, but we also still control the levers."

Joe Rogan 30:52 So f-... with legacy media, your, your assertion is that legacy media has a much more impactful presence in terms of foreign policy, in terms of dealing with, uh, pandemic, the response, like things along those lines? Like-

Eric Weinstein 31:08 So let's play with it and see where it goes.

Joe Rogan 31:09 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 31:10 If you think about Wikipedia, Wikipedia might have a rule that says, "We allow ... We, we don't do original s- research, so please link to authoritative sources." And you say, "Okay, great. What are authoritative sources?"

Joe Rogan 31:22 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 31:23 So now the authoritative source is the CDC or the WHO or the surgeon general or the New York Times or CNN or MSNBC. Like i- if you have this c-

Joe Rogan 31:33 But is MSNBC ... Like with ... If someone just goes on, on the air and talks about something-

Eric Weinstein 31:37 Well, let's have a listen. See, I, I-

Joe Rogan 31:39 ... is that an authoritative source? Or is it-

Eric Weinstein 31:40 You're-

Joe Rogan 31:40 Wouldn't it be like an expert in health, like someone who's gone over peer-reviewed studies, someone who is well-educated in-

Eric Weinstein 31:49 Who's the surgeon, who's the surgeon general right now?

Joe Rogan 31:50 I don't know.

Eric Weinstein 31:50 Or CDC? Is that Redfield?

Joe Rogan 31:53 I don't know.

Eric Weinstein 31:53 I'm sure he's a competent physician. I also think that there's a whole thing about pretending that masks don't work. "Masks don't work in the general population. Please don't buy them. Our healthcare people need them."

Joe Rogan 32:05 Is that what they're saying?

Eric Weinstein 32:06 Well, that's what they've been saying, right? And so the, the issue is that you have some piece of nonsense. So the, the, the orig-

Joe Rogan 32:13 That is a piece of nonsense because California's now changing their recommendation and saying, "If you're going out in public, you should wear a mask."

Eric Weinstein 32:17 It's not just nonsense, it's deadly nonsense. It's deadly physician-killing nonsense. I mean, I'm trying ... Smiles, everyone.

Joe Rogan 32:27 Smile.

Eric Weinstein 32:28 (laughs) Um, yeah. I mean, what we have is a, is a situation in which we knew that the mask and personal protective equipment supplies are wildly off, to say nothing of ventilators and ICU beds. And now, what do we do about it? So we have rules like, "Please don't bring masks to work because it scares the patients," or, um, "Please don't, uh, wear homemade masks, um, because th- they might actually be more, uh, germ-filled (laughs) or virus-filled." So you're back-propagating s- what you wish to be true to get the action that you're looking for. What we have is a prisoner's dilemma, where if everybody runs and buys up masks, who ... Like, the people we need to be protected most are the heroes who are actually dealing with, you know, multiple COVID patients and taking huge amounts of viral load. So there's no question in my mind that those, those are the people that, as a society, if you would level with us ... Like, there is a speech to give, which would go like this. Um, you know, "My fellow Americans, uh, as Readiness Czar, I am forced to tender my resignation effective Friday this week. Uh, I have failed to heed many of the warnings in our academic literature. Because our s- reserves are severely depleted, it is imperative that we not suffer further loss of life, and therefore, I am, uh, forced to make a, an unusual request. Having failed you, I'm asking everyone who stockpiled masks for personal use to think about doing something sacrificial for the good of us all. Our heroes are currently exposed to the coronavirus and taking huge amounts of viral load, and I'm asking you to donate any unused masks that you have, uh, to this population, as we are desperately trying to replenish our stocks. Please continue to shelter in place and recognize that the benefit to you is minor and the benefit to us all is major. And this will be following your heroic impulse to bring us back together as a nation. Thank you."

Joe Rogan 34:30 First of all, is there a Readiness Czar?

Eric Weinstein 34:31 No.

Joe Rogan 34:32 Okay. Second of all, no one's gonna say that. They're, they're never gonna admit-

Eric Weinstein 34:35 Then, then-

Joe Rogan 34:36 They're, they're gonna say, "We are adjusting-"

Eric Weinstein 34:38 Then tell them. I don't care.

Joe Rogan 34:39 ... "our ... We're adjusting our-"

Eric Weinstein 34:40 Then fire them.

Joe Rogan 34:40 ... "recommendations based on the new"-

Eric Weinstein 34:41 Then revolt. No, Joe. I am, I'm gonna be completely unreasonable.

Joe Rogan 34:45 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 34:45 I know I have this mode where I just-

Joe Rogan 34:47 I get it.

Eric Weinstein 34:47 I- I become completely unreasonable.

Joe Rogan 34:48 Go ahead.

Eric Weinstein 34:49 This is ... I- if that's where we are, then it's time to revolt.

Joe Rogan 34:52 (laughs) Revolt how?

Eric Weinstein 34:53 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 34:54 Well, w- we need people that-

Eric Weinstein 34:55 Civil dis- civil, civil disobedience. Like, to, to put our healthcare people ... I mean, I have not been off my property for weeks. The reason I'm here, in part, is, um, to do what little I can, and it's very little, to support the people who we, who are our literal heroes, our life and death, putting theirsel- themselves in harm's way. The idea of har- hospital administrators abusing our physicians and nurses makes me apoplectic with rage. The fact that these people are told that they can't talk to the press, and they write to me, and their, their family and their children write to me. My mother was asked to do this. My uncle works in a prison. He's not allowed to wear a mask. He's not allowed to bring a mask. I sent a mask. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Joe Rogan 35:38 Yeah. There's a lot of those stories.

Eric Weinstein 35:39 Okay.

Joe Rogan 35:40 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 35:41 What the hell is wrong? It is time for these people to resign, and it is time for us to remember that we have the ability to turn over our own government. This is ... We are so unprepared as a nation, and we have been sold out for so long by our self-appointed leadership class, who nobody wants, that we either remember who we are and how this game is played ... I mean, this is like ... This is a prewar footing. And w- this can easily lead to war. The transmission mechanism is you have everybody stay indoors because you're worried about deaths of accountability, which is, you know ... I don't think they're worried about the number of deaths. I think they're worried about deaths that result from triage and that w- would result in career-ending action.

Joe Rogan 36:28 Yeah. This is what you were saying on the phone. You, you think that's really what's bothering them?

Eric Weinstein 36:33 Yes, and then ... But if we all have to stay home while they replenish our supplies, then the economy goes into recession. Recession can become depression. Depressions lead to armed conflict, and ar- armed conflict leads to war. That would be a transmission mechanism from these stupid masks to st- something that nobody can handle. In my ... It ... Here, here's the thing. We're coming up on Passover.And we Jews have a tradition that I wish everybody had, which is that we read one stupid story every goddamn year, just to drill it into your head to make sure it's always fresh. And this is when it's time to leave, when it's time to change, don't wait for the bread to rise. This is what I say to every Jewish person, like are ... you're sitting around waiting for the bread to rise, because they all know the story, which is, you eat the goddamn matzo because the people who waited for the bread to rise are no longer with us, and their descendants are no longer with us. And it is time to revolt. The- this leadership class is unworkable. The reason that you and I both came to the word Tulsi instantly, I don't think you took much deliberation, is because Tulsi would know what to do.

Joe Rogan 37:39 Well, she's also the least encumbered.

Eric Weinstein 37:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:43 She's the least burdened by-

Eric Weinstein 37:45 Yeah, e- everybody's-

Joe Rogan 37:46 ... the, the ties to the system.

Eric Weinstein 37:46 Everybody in the system hates her.

Joe Rogan 37:48 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 37:48 You know, and the whole point is-

Joe Rogan 37:49 It's kind of hilarious.

Eric Weinstein 37:49 ... she would put heads on pikes.

Joe Rogan 37:51 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 37:51 This is the moment for heads on pikes.

Joe Rogan 37:53 (sighs)

Eric Weinstein 37:55 And, and, and it's important, it's not a vengeance thing. The, the importance is what is the cost to you killing people by failing to heed the academic literature if, if a supply was, was, um, depleted and you didn't replenish it? What is the cost to you?

Joe Rogan 38:11 Well, there's lessons in how other countries have, have viewed this, and how they chose to act, particularly South Korea, right? South Korea acted quicker.

Eric Weinstein 38:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:20 Um, smaller population than us, but a much more impact of the virus. They shut things down very quickly.

Eric Weinstein 38:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:27 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 38:27 Singapore?

Joe Rogan 38:29 I don't know how Singapore did.

Eric Weinstein 38:29 Very, very aggressive.

Joe Rogan 38:30 Same thing?

Eric Weinstein 38:31 Uh, I think that they, you know, they used surveillance and tracking, and, you know, making sure that they visited anybody who was known. I mean, they had a different system, and, and, and as people who, like you and me, who love our civil liberties, I believe that in part Singapore's draconian society lives off of things that only we can do due to our freedom.

Joe Rogan 38:52 Mm.

Eric Weinstein 38:52 So, you have to realize that freedom is itself an export, and one of the great dangers is, is that China has been exporting the benefits of freedom from the United States into an authoritarian system so that they get the benefits of both worlds. They get the benefits of our middle finger, which I think is the secret of American innovation, and they get the benefits of authoritarianism where they can do things that we can't, because they can order people to do the unconscionable.

Joe Rogan 39:17 Mm.

Eric Weinstein 39:18 So, my feeling is I'm on team civil liberties, and team civil liberties has to be somewhat nationalistic, more militaristic, more command and control. Like, who would you take orders from? So, in a lot of fields, I'd take orders from you. You're the big dog in this space, you know, and to the extent that you wanted to coordinate something, I would use my channel. I would subordinate to you, and I would want sometimes people to subordinate to me if I h- if I was taking a lead on something important. When we have this fear of leadership, because we're all so individualistic that we never wanna take an order ... Like, whenever I'm training a new assistant or something, one of my always best practices is, uh, "Can I get you coffee?" You know, it's very important to show that the ability to ask, to serve somebody else and the ability to lead are tied. You have to be a follower to be a leader and a leader to be a follower.

Joe Rogan 40:14 Mm.

Eric Weinstein 40:14 You can't ... You shouldn't be one or the other. We need right now a more war, we need more of a war footing. We need a war president. We need, we need war senators. We need people of this mentality because the nap is coming to an end, and I do think Nancy Pelosi needs to resign and Bill de Blasio needs to resign. I think that this administration, uh, you know, made some good moves and fumbled the ball, and I believe that past administrations made some good moves and fumbled the ball. And the, the, the imperative is to stop back propagating what you want to have, what you want us to do, like defeat a prisoner's dilemma, and come up with a lie that would cause us to act selfishly rationally. Like, if you tell me that a mask is actually more dangerous in my hands because it becomes germ-filled, then the idea is like, "Oh, okay, so I guess I won't use the mask." Well, yeah, because you lied to me and the idea is that that's what you're trying to do. You're figure- you're trying to say, "What would need to be true to get you to do what I want?"

Joe Rogan 41:17 I don't understand what you're saying about these masks. What are you saying?

Eric Weinstein 41:19 So, if I say, for example, um, let's imagine that I don't wanna put seat belts in cars.

Joe Rogan 41:25 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 41:25 And I say, "You know, Joe, a seat belt could trap you. Should your car go into the water off of a bridge, you could in fact die from the seat belt because you'd become entangled and would not be able to save yourself."

Joe Rogan 41:35 Right, but the problem with that, uh, analogy is y- seat belts actually do save lives.

Eric Weinstein 41:38 On balance.

Joe Rogan 41:39 But is it, is it possible that they're just acting poorly with this mask thing, but that masks actually can contain a lot of viruses and they can hold on to viruses.

Eric Weinstein 41:49 Seat belts can kill you, but do you believe ... That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to say that as a related right problem, let's talk about everybody who gets sick and dies from contaminated masks, everybody who gets sick and dies from a feel- a false feeling of safety. Let's just go through a huge list of every bad thing.

Joe Rogan 42:04 Okay, I see what you're saying. I see the analogy.

Eric Weinstein 42:05 Okay? And now, the idea is think about all the lives saved because of masks, both in terms of transmission, which I don't cough on you, I cough into the mask-

Joe Rogan 42:12 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 42:13 ... or in terms of I don't breathe in either aerosolized or droplets, whatever, blah, blah, blah, and now the, the two are real, but you're focusing on, like, the seat belt deaths of entanglement-

Joe Rogan 42:25 Right.

Eric Weinstein 42:25 ... because you actually have a, uh, a covert agenda. And like, and you're gonna-

Joe Rogan 42:30 What do you think their covert agenda is?

Eric Weinstein 42:32 Oh, I don't know exactly, but if you, if I had to speculate, I'd go like, go like this. One, we're terrified of triage deaths, deaths that occurred simply because we didn't have enough resources that were mandated to be stockpiled or talked about in literature. That's one thing they're worried about.

Joe Rogan 42:46 'Cause there's liability.

Eric Weinstein 42:47 Then there's liability, which is, "Oh, we were following the surgeon general's recommendation at the time." Now, if somebody suddenly found, you know, like, all the masks in the world, I think that the surgeon general would suddenly say, "The science has become conclusive."

Joe Rogan 43:02 Mm. Because n- there would no longer be a worry about liability, you would just get those masks to the people.

Eric Weinstein 43:08 Ye- You'd get the masks to the people who need them, and then you'd stop transmission, you'd slow transitions, uh, transmissions, by-

Joe Rogan 43:13 Don't you think there's also a lot of just figuring it out as they go along?

Eric Weinstein 43:17 No. Look, look, I'm tired of this.

Joe Rogan 43:18 You don't think that's a lot of what's going on with that, no?

Eric Weinstein 43:19 There is figuring this out as it goes along. As regards to the masks, I believe that everybody knows that masks save lives, on balance. They know that the people who need them most, um, have very weird rules. Um, there's this whole thing about the states versus the federal government. There's this issue about price gouging and price mechanisms. Uh, there are all sorts of things stopping the mask problem from being sorted out, a- a- in it- one of which is the number of masks that are produced in China, and the fact that we may have sent masks and personal protective equipment to China. So, there's a huge issue of accountability and responsibility, and that we're back propagating our response, how much are we quarantining and how much are we locking down, what are we saying about, um, about what the- why the physicians are being (laughs) told not to wear masks when they're seeing patients. I mean, I'm, I'm talking about deadly nonsense, deadly structural nonsense. And if people like you and me don't call this out using, like, these crazy channels that we have, then the, then the narrative just stands. And so partially what we're doing is a parallel sense-making operation to the standard media, which is I- Twitter said, "We will now be removing Tweets if you contradict official authoritative health sources." So that's just what I did.

Joe Rogan 44:46 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 44:46 Surgeon General's lying, CDC's lying, WHO is lying. Come at me.

Joe Rogan 44:51 Do you, do you think they're lying?

Eric Weinstein 44:52 Yes.

Joe Rogan 44:53 Well, why do you think they're lying? Like, give me a specific example of why you feel like they're lying.

Eric Weinstein 44:58 Um, well, f- for example, you saw this interaction with the, uh, was it Hong Kong TV asking about-

Joe Rogan 45:04 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 45:04 ... the WHO about Taiwan.

Joe Rogan 45:05 Taiwan. Yeah, that was insane. Well, explain that, because it's fucking insane. It, it was insane to watch. First of all, he pretended, the, the head of the WHO pretended he didn't hear them, and then he, he had them say it again-

Eric Weinstein 45:19 So first of all, he moves like ...

Joe Rogan 45:20 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 45:20 You c- you can see his hand-

Joe Rogan 45:22 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 45:22 ... like go to cut off the connection.

Joe Rogan 45:24 And he hung up.

Eric Weinstein 45:24 He says, "I couldn't hear." He says, "Oh, I'll repeat the question." He's like, "No, let's go onto the next one."

Joe Rogan 45:29 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 45:29 Well, why would he wanna go onto the next one if he didn't hear it? Come on.

Joe Rogan 45:31 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 45:31 I don't even have ... H- here's the point. We are so afraid-

Joe Rogan 45:34 But e- explain what he did to people that don't know, because people are listening here and they're a little confused.

Eric Weinstein 45:38 He was asked about the Taiwanese response-

Joe Rogan 45:40 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 45:40 ... to the COVID epidemic, and he didn't wanna say Taiwan, because China claims that Taiwan is part of China.

Joe Rogan 45:50 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 45:50 And because China exercises so much influence over the WHO, he wanted to say some very general thing, which is like, "I think all provinces of China have been doing an excellent job."

Joe Rogan 46:00 Yeah, that's exactly what he said, yeah.

Eric Weinstein 46:00 Meaning a different country, Taiwan, um, because there's a dispute. And so what do you think China's most interested in? China, P- the People's Republic of China, Communist China, Communist Chinese want no recognition of their existing something called Taiwan.

Joe Rogan 46:21 And why does the World Health Organization give into that?

Eric Weinstein 46:26 Well, how do, how do different nations get control of things? Um, you know, we have influence at the UN, and we've caused the UN to do things that are America-centric. Um, you know, other countries have influence and, and you, you do this by being on particular committees, rotating directorships, who pays, uh, the cost. I, I don't know how, uh, the WHO seems to be so enmeshed with China, and I, I don't want to opine about these things because I wanna keep my voice-

Joe Rogan 46:56 Right, but it-

Eric Weinstein 46:57 ... cl-

Joe Rogan 46:57 ... it spoke volumes to watch that guy do that, do that little dance-

Eric Weinstein 47:01 Okay, to me-

Joe Rogan 47:01 ... trying to avoid saying Taiwan.

Eric Weinstein 47:02 My entire life looks like that interview, to ... I'm, I hate to say it this way, but my relationship with authority, and my big critique is that this is the generic expectation across almost all institutions now. They are all serving bizarre goals because growth is what gave us our independence, and when we became less innovative and we, or the innovation dried up and we couldn't grow our way into new things, the number of people who could use their middle finger effectively and say, "I'm steering this, this organization to do the right thing, and this is my bet and I, we're gonna go forward," those people as a class were removed. If you think about like, what do you do with Churchill when there isn't a World War II to win? It's very uncomfortable, like what, would he open a dry cleaner? We don't know. You have, you have special people who really only shine when there's an emergency. There's a guy, um, named Jayaprakash Narayan in India who's very important, and he was one of the sort of founding fath- fathers of modern India. And after Indi- Indian independence was achieved, lots of the people who had been founding fathers went to the next phase where they became like, they enriched themselves or they did standard political things to, to gain power in the system. He was the one guy who sort of stayed true to the revolutionary spirit, and bizarrely when Indira Gandhi created a state of emergency, um, which was a disaster in India, the people said, "Well, who can we turn to in a dark time?" And od- oddly, um, I guess Prakash means light, so there was this phrase like, "In the darkness, there is one light. Jayaprakash, Jayaprakash, Jayaprakash." They turned to the one guy who'd become the patron saint of lost causes because he never broke faith with the revolutionary spirit. And he's get- he gets called up once, but he's incredibly important because everybody knows in a dark time who they can trust, right?... that's a very important parallel to where we are now. Who are the break glass in case of emergency people?

Joe Rogan 49:13 Yeah. When you, when you watch the people that are talking in these presidential addresses, there's none of those. I don't see any break glass. I mean, this Fauci guy, uh, is obviously a- an expert in diseases, and he's a doctor, and he's trying to do his best to lay out the ground rules of what we need to do and what this looks like over the next couple of months. But, um ...

Eric Weinstein 49:33 But it's like Jocko willing, you know? Like, Jocko is not telling you, "Don't worry, you don't have to change your routine. You can get up at 9:30. Just do a little bit, just a little bit." Right? It's like, "Discipline equals freedom. I'm up at 4:30. What are you doing in bed? It's time for discipline."

Joe Rogan 49:51 Well, because he's a military guy, and military people don't have any room for bullshit. They don't have any room for fluff.

Eric Weinstein 49:58 Some military people do. No, not true.

Joe Rogan 50:00 Right. But people like SEALs, they don't have any room for fluff-

Eric Weinstein 50:02 Well, if they-

Joe Rogan 50:03 ... because you have to be able to perform.

Eric Weinstein 50:05 Well, okay, so then in that situation-

Joe Rogan 50:06 So fuck your feelings. Get up at 4:30. That's, that's how they feel.

Eric Weinstein 50:11 That's what I'm trying to say.

Joe Rogan 50:12 But those, those, "You can just do a little bit," and that's great, that's great.

Eric Weinstein 50:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:17 You guys are enforcing mediocrity. Congratulations.

Eric Weinstein 50:19 Well, but that's ... And that's what I'm trying to get at, which is-

Joe Rogan 50:21 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 50:21 ... we, we have a situation where we know ... If you have two trainers and one of them is doing the, "Don't worry," and the other one is like, "I'm not gonna lie to you. You're gonna be sore. You're gonna be miserable. This isn't gonna be fun." Which do you choose? Some people will go with the former.

Joe Rogan 50:35 Yeah. They like to stay fat. There's a lot of that out there.

Eric Weinstein 50:39 Okay.

Joe Rogan 50:40 Mediocrity is a v- a very comforting thing.

Eric Weinstein 50:43 I hear you.

Joe Rogan 50:43 Yeah. It's ... Fucking look, it's hard. It's hard to be that 4:30 in the morning guy.

Eric Weinstein 50:48 Well-

Joe Rogan 50:48 There's some days that alarm goes off, he's gotta be like, "Fuck this, man."

Eric Weinstein 50:51 Well, you know that Jocko doesn't live that 24/7. He-

Joe Rogan 50:54 Yes, he does.

Eric Weinstein 50:55 No. He may live it, he may live it, uh, 18/6, but he lives it 20-

Joe Rogan 50:59 When he goes to sleep?

Eric Weinstein 51:00 You remember that thing he did about the cake? "I was at a birthday party. There was a delicious piece of cake in front of me."

Joe Rogan 51:06 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 51:06 "I struggled."

Joe Rogan 51:07 I'll eat the cake.

Eric Weinstein 51:07 "Eventually I succumbed, I succumbed to temptation." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:10 Yeah, but I'm telling you, man, that doesn't even mean anything. That goes through that fucking blast furnace of a body he has.

Eric Weinstein 51:14 Oh, I'm just tell- I-

Joe Rogan 51:15 But I'm saying, the, the-

Eric Weinstein 51:16 Nobody's 24/7 on this stuff, Joe.

Joe Rogan 51:18 But that is a fake weakness.

Eric Weinstein 51:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:20 He'll give into, to appear-

Eric Weinstein 51:21 Oh, you said a performative weakness.

Joe Rogan 51:23 Yes, he's appearing-

Eric Weinstein 51:23 He just wants to appear mortal like the rest of us.

Joe Rogan 51:24 He's appearing to, to make you sort of commiserate with him. He's appearing that, uh, "Oh, I have some failings too. I ate cake." Yeah. What he doesn't tell you is he, he probably went down to his fucking dungeon basement-

Eric Weinstein 51:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:36 ... after he ate cake and did squats for an hour. Look-

Eric Weinstein 51:40 I believe that.

Joe Rogan 51:41 There's, there's people that are really that guy.

Eric Weinstein 51:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:43 And he's one of those, those people. He's really that guy. He's that guy all the time. I ve- I've spent a lot of time with Jocko.

Eric Weinstein 51:48 Okay.

Joe Rogan 51:49 He's that guy. But that's because he's a Navy SEAL commander.

Eric Weinstein 51:53 But then I want ... I want, but then I, I want one of those people right now.

Joe Rogan 51:55 Those guys are important.

Eric Weinstein 51:56 Right now.

Joe Rogan 51:56 Yeah. Those guys are important.

Eric Weinstein 51:58 And we have to clean out these o- this class of people that put up with each other. It's like, the reason they put up with each other and they don't, like, indict each other or sue each other-

Joe Rogan 52:05 They're rich and each other.

Eric Weinstein 52:05 ... or report each other is, is that they're all the same.

Joe Rogan 52:08 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 52:08 They're ... And, and, and that was the key skill for between 35 and 50 years, which is knowing what not to say to upset the institutional applecart.

Joe Rogan 52:19 Well, that is politics, and that's one of the things that disgusts people about it. That's one of the things that ... One of the reasons why Donald Trump actually got into office-

Eric Weinstein 52:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:28 ... is people looked at him as an antidote. I mean, that's the whole-

Eric Weinstein 52:30 That's right.

Joe Rogan 52:31 ... clean up the swamp, drain the swamp. That's him.

Eric Weinstein 52:34 That, well-

Joe Rogan 52:34 That's what they thought. They thought this was a solution.

Eric Weinstein 52:36 He might be, he might bring in his own swamp, but he was against their swamp.

Joe Rogan 52:39 Exactly.

Eric Weinstein 52:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:40 Exactly. And then Bernie Sanders has his own kind of swamp. He's got a different kind of swamp. You know, everyone's got their own swamp. It's like, what, what is your particular pattern that you would like to push? You know, what has got you to the dance?

Eric Weinstein 52:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:56 You know?

Eric Weinstein 52:57 Sorry, I'm laughing, but Bari Weiss was sitting here and she's just like cat, "So Joe, who do you think you'll vote for?"

Joe Rogan 53:02 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 53:02 And then he's like, "Is it Bernie Sanders?" (laughs) And then you called me up, you're like, "Eric, what did I just do?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:07 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 53:08 "Is it Joe..." I think you might have just swung the election.

Joe Rogan 53:11 Well, the wrong way. Or the right way. Who, it's ... The whole thing ... Look, Joe Biden being the main guy is the only reason why they went after Bernie Sanders and went after me.

Eric Weinstein 53:19 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:19 I mean, the, the whole idea was just to reinforce the idea that Bernie Sanders is making poor choices by connecting him to someone who says fucked up things when he's trying to be funny.

Eric Weinstein 53:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:28 You know? And, and you put it in print with some quotations behind it, and like, "Wow, this guy's awful." You know, everything out of context is awful, and what they're trying to do-

Eric Weinstein 53:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:37 ... without a doubt is the same thing we're talking about, the guy who's willing to dance with them, which is Joe Biden, the guy who's the p- the professional politician, which they don't give a fuck if he can barely talk. They don't give a fuck if he forgets what he's saying halfway into conversations.

Eric Weinstein 53:52 Well, but this is the whole thing about the gated institutional narrative.

Joe Rogan 53:54 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 53:54 They ju- ... The key issue, and I learned this when I, I used to do immigration stuff in Washington during the '90s. I learned this concept of steady hands. This is, like, one of the most terrifying phrases ever. So I told you, I think at some point, that in New York whenever, um, people are deciding to do a bad thing to screw people over, they always use the phrase, uh, "It's a beautiful thing," meaning that you can extract money from people who have no s- no say in the matter.

Joe Rogan 54:18 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 54:18 Uh, in Washington ...

Joe Rogan 54:19 This is financial circles you're talking about?

Eric Weinstein 54:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah. New, New York finance. Um, so when- whenever you hear the phrase, "It's a beautiful thing," it means, uh, s- somebody is being raped financially.

Joe Rogan 54:27 Oh, right.

Eric Weinstein 54:27 Yeah. Um, in Washington, the phrase that I learned to fear is steady hands. He's a pair of steady hands. That means you can count on him to do the wrong thing in an emergency to keep everybody on the inside okay.

Joe Rogan 54:41 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 54:41 And there's, like, a separate system for promoting the people who do the wrong thing and making sure ... Because everybody inside is super dependent on somebody burning all of their credibility in public. Steady hands.

Joe Rogan 54:54 Ugh. Yeah, I mean, that's the main hope of this free information society, that all of these disgusting-... practices, these legacy practices-

Eric Weinstein 55:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:08 ... get exposed.

Eric Weinstein 55:09 Well, here's the weird thing. When Amy Klobuchar dropped out, who was, like, a baby boomer born in the, I wanna say '61, something like that, everyone remaining was born in the 1940s. Elizabeth Warren was the youngest. Then you had, like, Mike Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump.

Joe Rogan 55:30 Mm.

Eric Weinstein 55:30 So everyone was, like, born between '41 and '49. Now, all of those people would be the oldest president, all of them, the oldest president at inauguration. Like, we've lost our mind. This is normal to us. This isn't really commented upon that you would have five for five septuagenarians vying for the presidency of the United States.

Joe Rogan 55:56 It's pretty crazy.

Eric Weinstein 55:58 Uh, it- we- we-

Joe Rogan 55:58 I mean, just the, I mean, the, the evidence is the clearest with Joe Biden, right?

Eric Weinstein 56:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:03 Because he's showing actual real deterioration. But we've seen deterioration from Trump, particularly, uh, earlier, um, in, in the first, uh, year or two of his term, there's some spectacular videos of him falling apart where he can- couldn't enunciate words. He couldn't-

Eric Weinstein 56:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 56:20 ... he couldn't say words correctly while he's speaking to the country. It's just... His tongue was, like, swollen in his throat. It was very strange, right? But people think of that as maybe a substance issue, like he goes up and he goes down, and sometimes he catches it on the wrong part of the wave, and that's when he's in front of the camera, and he, you know, he struggles through it, but he literally can't pronounce words. But then he'll bounce back and he'll be fine. Joe Biden's not bouncing back. You know, whether he has an aversion to the same sort of supplements that Donald's using, I don't know. I don't know what's going on, but-

Eric Weinstein 56:53 Yes, he- he- he has these epi- he- he's inconsistent. Sometimes he seems fine-

Joe Rogan 56:57 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 56:57 ... and then sometimes he seems like he's completely lost. And, you know, I learned about this, it was very uncomfortable for me. I was watching Stefan Molyneux and, uh, Mike Cernovich going on and on about Hillary's health.

Joe Rogan 57:11 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 57:11 And I was just thinking, "These guys are actually weirdly making sense on this topic." And, uh, I've never really interacted with Stefan Molyneux at all, and he sort of scares me, and I don't really want him in my life. But didn't mean that he wasn't right, and he wasn't being courageous in saying it. And then when Donna Brazile, I think, came out later and said, "Yeah, there were real concerns about Hillary's health all along," right?

Joe Rogan 57:35 Well, she was fainting.

Eric Weinstein 57:37 Yes.

Joe Rogan 57:37 Whenever you lose consciousness, that's a bad sign.

Eric Weinstein 57:39 Well, we don't e- we don't know what it was that she was doing. But what I'm trying to get at would be that we are dependent on these people that we are told are trolls as the free people. And I remember Orwell talking about the proletariat, where the proletariat was weirdly free, and the central, uh, people were the ones who, who had no freedom. And I saw this also in the fall of the Soviet Union. I had, uh, family in Moscow and Kiev and in Chernivtsi that we discovered right at the end of the Soviet Union, and I went over there to visit. And I remember preparing for that visit. I called up these people in Chernivtsi right near Moldova in the extreme west of the Ukraine, and I said, you know, "Здравствуйте," like, "Hello?" And I hear the voice on the other end of the phone, it was like the time when long distance phone calls were still romantic, and I hear, "Шалом алейхем!" And I'm realizing that these are young people who are still speaking Yiddish. They don't give a shit about anything, because they're not important. They're not in Moscow, they're not in Saint Petersburg. They're on the periphery. And there's a measure of freedom that comes from just not being central and not...

Joe Rogan 58:48 Right, you can communicate freely.

Eric Weinstein 58:49 And you can think freely, and so-

Joe Rogan 58:50 Is anyone in legacy medi- media talking openly on any of these shows about Biden's deterioration? Is that-

Eric Weinstein 58:57 I don't know. You know, Tucker Carlson is another person to watch who is freer. He's free of Fox. He, he's able to go against Fox.

Joe Rogan 59:06 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 59:06 I- I'm, I'm looking at Greg Gutfeld. I don't know what Greg has been saying. But there are a small number of interesting people who are still housed inside of the, of the belly of the beast. And I don't know if you hear m- heard my theory about the rebel end of corporate and the corporate end of rebel.

Joe Rogan 59:22 No.

Eric Weinstein 59:23 So you and I, I think, would be sort of... Well, at least I'm wearing a jacket. I would be the corporate end of rebel.

Joe Rogan 59:29 Okay. What am I?

Eric Weinstein 59:31 Yeah. You might be the rebel end of rebel.

Joe Rogan 59:33 Interesting.

Eric Weinstein 59:33 I don't know. You're s- you're faking being the re- rebel end of... You're, you're pretty s-

Joe Rogan 59:37 Fake-

Eric Weinstein 59:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:39 What am I faking?

Eric Weinstein 59:40 What? Well, look, I'll-

Joe Rogan 59:41 I'm faking being the rebel end of rebel?

Eric Weinstein 59:42 Those tattoos obviously wash off and you put- you just apply them every day.

Joe Rogan 59:45 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 59:45 But the corp- the rebel end of corporate would be like Bari Weiss.

Joe Rogan 59:49 Okay. Yes.

Eric Weinstein 59:50 Right? So she's, she's in the belly of the beast, but she's pushing the edge. Bill Maher would, would, would straddle corporate end of rebel, rebel end of corporate. Unclear.

Joe Rogan 59:59 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:00 Right? And so there is an important partnership across this. If you think about, um... You remember the film Inglourious Basterds? Did you like that one?

Joe Rogan 1:00:08 Sure. Loved it.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:09 Okay. Lieutenant Aldo Ray is this interface between regular army and the psychotic Jews who will kill Nazis given any opportunity. And you need people who interface between, like, the bad boys and the regular units.

Joe Rogan 1:00:24 Hm.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:25 And these are incredibly important, um, what is the plural of nexus? Nexi? I don't know. Uh, w- we got into trouble the first time with, uh, octopus.

Joe Rogan 1:00:36 Octopi.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:36 I- no, it's actually-

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 It's not octopuses?

Eric Weinstein 1:00:38 The, the, the recommended one is octopodes, spelled, spelled octopodes.

Joe Rogan 1:00:42 Really?

Eric Weinstein 1:00:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:44 Whoa. But I've seen octopi and-

Eric Weinstein 1:00:45 Yeah. Well, people, people use oc- they, they use, uh, octopuses, octopi.

Joe Rogan 1:00:51 There it is. Plural form of nexus is nexuses or nexus.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:56 Okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 Oh, boy.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:57 Jamie with the win.

Joe Rogan 1:00:59 How-

Eric Weinstein 1:00:59 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 1:00:59 ... how weird that it's either or, that it could just be nexus, the plural form of nexus is... Well, that makes sense, I guess.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:06 So these nexus-

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 ... ness.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:08 Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 Sounds good, like deer. (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 1:01:09 ... or in cr- (laughs) God.

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 Fish.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:11 I gotta get used to it. Uh, are incredibly important and we have to keep them up. And I'm worried about the, um, corpora- the rebel end of corporate, because these corporations are starting to realize that th- their need for kayfabe is just far exceeding, um-

Joe Rogan 1:01:30 Kayfabe?

Eric Weinstein 1:01:30 Kayfabe. Kayfabe is carnival-speak for the word "fake." And when catch wrestling devolved into professional wrestling, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:01:39 You know about all that?

Narrator 1:01:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:43 That's very interesting.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:45 That's, that's a weird one, that's obscure. The catch wrestling-

Eric Weinstein 1:01:48 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:01:48 ... carnival wrestling.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:50 Actually, Jamie, could you bring up the word kayfabe and Weinstein?

Joe Rogan 1:01:54 Can you name any people that were involved in catch wrestling, the real catch wrestling? How far do you go with this?

Eric Weinstein 1:01:59 Well, there, there-

Joe Rogan 1:01:59 You know who Farmer Burns was?

Eric Weinstein 1:02:01 Farmer Burns?

Joe Rogan 1:02:01 Farmer Burns.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:02 No.

Joe Rogan 1:02:03 Famous catch wrestling guy, used to do, uh, a hangman's drop. His neck was so strong, he could tie a noose around it and drop six feet and hang there.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:12 So when, um ...

Joe Rogan 1:02:15 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 1:02:15 By the way, if you wanna read a great book on, uh, professional wrestling, I would highly recommend the book Ringside.

Joe Rogan 1:02:20 Oh.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:21 Um, which talks about the evolution. And so what I call k- kayfabrication-

Joe Rogan 1:02:25 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:25 ... is the transition of something that is, usually has twin attributes, is very dangerous and very boring. Um, so old-style wrestling was incredibly dangerous and people would, you know, be crippled from a bout. So as a result, they would often just like circle each other and not really engage. And like, war is like this.

Joe Rogan 1:02:45 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:46 Mostly war is extremely boring, and then, you know, obviously it can be quite deadly. So in order to routinize these things, we create kayfabe, which is the system of stratified lies that professional wrestling is undergirded by.

Joe Rogan 1:03:02 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:03 So you, you know what a w- do you know what a worked shoot is?

Joe Rogan 1:03:05 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:06 Okay. What's a worked shoot?

Joe Rogan 1:03:07 Well, a shoot is an actual fight, and a worked shoot, like a work is a fake fight.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:03:14 So like, if two guys were pretending to fight, and there was, there's actually, there was an issue, I should ... So just to lay this all out, in Japan, there, uh, there's an extreme admiration for professional wrestling. And professional wrestlers would get into mixed martial arts, and they would get into mixed martial arts with varying levels of actual commitment. So some of them would get into mixed martial arts and have fake fights.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:41 Is this like Pride, or ...

Joe Rogan 1:03:42 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:42 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:03:43 Exactly, Pride. And some of ... Pride actually was founded by Rickson Gracie, who was as legit as a, uh, man has ever lived, and Takada, who was a famous professional wrestler. And Rickson fucked up Takada in a real fight. He only would have real fights.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:59 Who was the Gracie Killer who came out of Japan?

Joe Rogan 1:04:01 That's Sakuraba.

Eric Weinstein 1:04:02 Oh, sorry about that.

Joe Rogan 1:04:03 Yeah. Sakuraba, he ... Well, he's a phenomenal catch wrestler, by the way.

Eric Weinstein 1:04:07 All right, I don't wanna, I don't wanna blow you off course.

Joe Rogan 1:04:09 His, his ... He came from, uh, I believe Karl Gotch and Billy Costello, and I think that's the name of the, the gentleman. There was a bunch of people who taught him, uh, catch wrestling. So his style was submission-oriented catch wrestling.

Eric Weinstein 1:04:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:04:26 He had, he had like, both. Like, he, you know, he was involved in professional wrestling as well, but he was a legit fighter. Anyway, the point was, there was a weird blurring of the lines and there were some fights like, Mark Coleman had a fight with Takada where it was really clear that Mark Coleman got paid to take a dive, 'cause Mark Coleman should've smashed that dude. And he gets caught in this heel hook and he doesn't tap, and he's gonna tap, and then he winds up tapping, and everybody's like, "Whoa!" And he, he ta- ... But everyone watching that knows fighting was like, "Get the fuck out of here. What is happening here? Oh my God, it's a fake fight."

Eric Weinstein 1:05:01 And it could've been a contender.

Joe Rogan 1:05:02 So there was fake fights mixed in with real fights.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:05 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:05 And it was pretty common, pretty common in Pride.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:07 Well, this, and this is what happened in the transition in the early 20th century between catch wrestling and professional wrestling-

Joe Rogan 1:05:13 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:13 ... is that you st- you start doping reality with fakeness, and the, the thing I was asking about, about the worked shoot, it has to do with the layering of nonsense and reality.

Joe Rogan 1:05:24 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:24 So the idea is that you have something which is ostensibly fake, then you have a breaking of kayfabe, ostensibly, which is the shoot on top of the expected work. But a worked shoot is tertiary, in that the shoot is, in self, fake.

Joe Rogan 1:05:40 Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:40 Uh, and so a worked shoot is a tertiary deception.

Joe Rogan 1:05:44 It's a fake fight that appears real.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:46 It's a fake real fight that appears to break out of a fake thing that is pretending to ... Now maybe it's quaternary. You, you, the brain can't go much beyond four levels of lies. Right? And so you had the, a famous storyline, I can't remember who it was, where a wrestler was apparently supposedly having an affair with another wrestler's wife, and that was the storyline. Um, so the people who write the- these things are called bookers. So the bookers had come up with this storyline, and then the affair became real-

Joe Rogan 1:06:19 (gasps)

Eric Weinstein 1:06:19 ... because the brain couldn't sort of manage all of the deception. Sometimes you get the-

Joe Rogan 1:06:23 So the, the two people actually got together?

Eric Weinstein 1:06:25 Go ahead ... Right. And-

Joe Rogan 1:06:27 Because they were supposed to hang out and pretend-

Eric Weinstein 1:06:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:06:30 ... and they're like, "Let's just do this shit."

Eric Weinstein 1:06:32 Right. And so, you know, oddly, um, I was fascinated by what the moment where Vince McMahon declared, I think to the New Jersey Sporting Commission, uh, he made this unbeliev- it was like one of the great moments in the 20th century, I think. Uh, he realized that he was gonna be taxed into oblivion, and so he had a choice. Should he get, should he pay this tax or do something really bold? And he went in front of them and he said, "You realize that everything we do is fake." Now that could have completely toppled the wrestling world, the admission that there was no reality to this was a potential death blow.So, he said, "This is all staged. All the fights are kn- the, the, the winners are known in advance. You can't tax us because we aren't actually a sport and you don't have any jurisdiction over us."

Joe Rogan 1:07:18 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:19 And then, it turned out nobody cared, right? And so th- the interesting thing is that they use- used to have this concept of a smark. A mark is somebody who doesn't know they're being conned. A smart mark, or smark, is somebody who knows that they're being conned and still continues to play. So, in some sense, it was the bet that you could take all the marks and turn them into smarks and the business empire would continue and you wouldn't have to pay the tax. So, I was hanging out, um, as one does with Hulk Hogan, and I was trying to check whether or not this was true, and he said to me, uh, "Eric, you realize who came up with that strategy? Me." So, I was like, "What?" So, he says, "Yeah, I was the one who said that we, we should, uh-"

Joe Rogan 1:08:01 Did you believe him?

Eric Weinstein 1:08:02 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:08:03 It's hard to tell.

Eric Weinstein 1:08:04 Well, that's the whole point about kayfabe.

Joe Rogan 1:08:05 That's the... yeah. That's where it gets weird. Did you ever see the interview where John Stossel is accusing a professional wrestler of it being fake, so he decides to smack him in the head and ask him if that was fake?

Eric Weinstein 1:08:15 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:08:15 It's really horrific 'cause he dropped h- he ruptured his eardrum. I mean, z- this is an enormous man. I forget the guy. Th- the g- it ruined the guy's career-

Eric Weinstein 1:08:23 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:08:23 ... the guy who was the wrestler. But he, he hits him with an open hand. I mean, this is a, an enormous guy-

Eric Weinstein 1:08:29 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:08:29 ... full blast, hits him on the head with this, this open hand and drops him. He goes, "Was that fake? Was that fake? Get up, pussy." And he goes, "Is that fake?" And he hits him again and drops him again. "Was that fake?"

Eric Weinstein 1:08:39 Well, okay, let's talk about this. I don't think professional wrestling is fake.

Joe Rogan 1:08:45 What the fuck are you saying?

Eric Weinstein 1:08:47 Well ...

Joe Rogan 1:08:47 I know what you're saying.

Eric Weinstein 1:08:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:48 Yeah, I mean, there-

Eric Weinstein 1:08:49 These guys-

Joe Rogan 1:08:50 ... here it is. This is it. This is the guy. Well, play it so we can hear what he's sayin'. I don't think they have it, sorry. Oh, okay. We'll get, we'll get into trouble here with YouTube. But he hits him in the side of the head and then he hits him again. It's Dr. D, I think. Dr. Death or something.

Eric Weinstein 1:09:04 So-

Joe Rogan 1:09:04 That fucked him up, right? Is that him right there? Is that the guy now? Jesus Christ, time is a cruel bitch. Is that the same guy? Might be. Is that him? Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Legendary wrestler, bounty hunter and author of Don't Call Me Fake, Dr. David Schultz-

Eric Weinstein 1:09:24 Yeah, th-

Joe Rogan 1:09:24 ... goes into detail about the-

Eric Weinstein 1:09:25 Professional wrestling.

Joe Rogan 1:09:26 ... infamous 2020 incident where he slapped John Stossel. Look, he's got a t-shirt on it, about it and everything. Jesus Christ, it's his whole life now.

Eric Weinstein 1:09:33 Yeah, well, it, th- that's his, that's his moment.

Joe Rogan 1:09:35 Wow.

Eric Weinstein 1:09:36 It's not fake. I-

Joe Rogan 1:09:37 No.

Eric Weinstein 1:09:37 I mean, th-

Joe Rogan 1:09:38 It's orchestrated.

Eric Weinstein 1:09:38 It's ... Th- the results are known in advance. The death rate of those guys is like nothing else. Y- you'd have to look to, like, wingsuit flyers to see people who die at the level that professional wrestlers do. The, the, the, the punishment that they take. And, weirdly, the skill level. I ... Hulk Hogan put me in a headlock.

Joe Rogan 1:09:58 Why did you let him do that? Did you ever see what he did to Richard Belzer?

Eric Weinstein 1:10:02 Elo- ... I'm sorry, I know that he's said and done bad things, but there is so much love that comes pouring out of Hulk Hogan, and-

Joe Rogan 1:10:09 I agree, brother.

Eric Weinstein 1:10:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:11 No, he's-

Eric Weinstein 1:10:11 Anyway ...

Joe Rogan 1:10:12 He's a great guy, but he put Belzer to sleep on his television show, and Belzer fell and bounced his head off the ground.

Eric Weinstein 1:10:17 Hulk, Hulk had me in a headlock.

Joe Rogan 1:10:19 Why did you allow that?

Eric Weinstein 1:10:19 And I know that if that guy had so much as sneezed, my head would've just popped off of my trunk.

Joe Rogan 1:10:26 Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:10:26 I mean ... th-

Joe Rogan 1:10:27 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:10:27 That guy's a beast.

Joe Rogan 1:10:28 He's a huge man.

Eric Weinstein 1:10:29 He's a huge man.

Joe Rogan 1:10:30 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:10:30 Um-

Joe Rogan 1:10:31 You know he's lost, like, four inches of height because of all his back surgeries.

Eric Weinstein 1:10:34 Yeah. Is that true?

Joe Rogan 1:10:35 He, he was even ... Yeah. I, I first met him, like, way, way, way back in the day. Uh, I ran into him ... I didn't meet him, meet him, I just ran into him on the street in Beverly Hills, and I was like, "Holy fuck." And then I interviewed him for Spike TV back in the day when Spike TV was, uh ... they were doing professional wrestling on Spike TV and they wanted to ... me to interview him while I was doing the UFC. So, I interviewed him and we had a fun time together. But he was considerably smaller. It was really interesting. It's like, that was just ... oh, there, there's Belzer. So, you put Belzer in what we would call, like, a power guillotine. And look, Belzer's out cold right here. Re- uh, wa- watch the left arm. There it is, out cold. So, watch, he just drops him. That could've killed him. That part right there where he falls and he bangs his head off the ground, like ... well, he just dropped him like he was on a padded mat or something like that. You really should never do that to someone. But they don't worry about their self because they put themselves into so much danger.

Eric Weinstein 1:11:30 This is the thing.

Joe Rogan 1:11:31 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:11:31 I mean, th- these guys are the punishment kings of the world.

Joe Rogan 1:11:34 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:11:35 And they're extremophiles in that sense. Now, what, what my belief is, is that we are ... it's real in the sense that the injuries, the death rate-

Joe Rogan 1:11:46 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 1:11:46 ... the skill levels, and most of those guys could really fight. They may not be UFC-level fighters, but they c- ... a lot of them come out of, you know, wrestling backgrounds-

Joe Rogan 1:11:57 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 1:11:57 ... in, like, legitimate-

Joe Rogan 1:11:58 A lot of very, very tough guys.

Eric Weinstein 1:11:59 So, in ... I think ... what was it? In 2013 or '11, uh, Jon Brockman asked the question, "What's the scientific theory that nobody knows that would make the biggest impact, uh, in, in people's cognitive toolkit?" And I'd just been allowed to answer this question along with, like, actual legitimate people, and so I was kinda, like, being very protective. And my wife said, "You know, you could give a lot of answers to that question, but that's not the one you wanna give. Uh, do kayfabe." Like, I had this theory that kayfabe was the most important psychological theory that nobody really appreciated. That in some sense, professional wrestling is lightyears ahead in understanding how the human mind actually works because of the issues of that deception. And so I wrote up kayfabe, which is gonna determine wars and presidential elections, and then sure enough, Donald Trump comes directly out of WWE. Like, he really understands. If you look at that fight with Vince McMahon.

Joe Rogan 1:12:54 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:12:55 Um, Donald Trump intuits professional wrestling, and it is a superpower.

Joe Rogan 1:13:00 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 1:13:03 Jamie, can I ask you to bring up Weinstein and kayfabe and see if-

Joe Rogan 1:13:07 Uh ... 2011, "What scientific con- concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?" Eric Weinstein, "Kayfabe."

Eric Weinstein 1:13:15 So, I thought I was gonna be thrown out.... and in turn, and in fact, that turned out to be a very prophetic, prophetic essay.

Joe Rogan 1:13:21 Well, for sure, once Trump got into office. I mean, th- that is an excellent point of what he does, is that there's a part of his appeal is that he's speaking in a, he's, he's like, he's hitting a certain frequency that provides comfort and it narrows the boundaries of what's possible and puts things into some very digestible form that morons love.

Eric Weinstein 1:13:48 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:49 You know what I'm talking about? And I'm not saying that all people that are Trump supporters are morons, there's people that support him economically, but there's a lot of people that are morons that like him because he's talking in this frequency. He's, he's, he's ... There's a narrow band, he's not gonna say anything crazy that's like self-deprecating or introspective, or he's not gonna prepare you for the great beyond or, you know, i- include you in his concerns for the demise of civilization and western values. He's not ... That's not in him.

Eric Weinstein 1:14:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:14:23 Right? He's got a bandwidth. He's got a very narrow band, and inside that band, he's the king, ratings are tremendous, tremendous, everyone's doing a great job, we're doing a great job. He says these things that ke- they reinforce this sort of pro-wrestling sort of vibration.

Eric Weinstein 1:14:40 Somewhat. I, I have to admit that I don't meet many morons at all.

Joe Rogan 1:14:47 You should come to the Comic Store more often.

Eric Weinstein 1:14:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:50 (laughs) When it's back up! Ooh, I'll bring you around some morons.

Eric Weinstein 1:14:53 No!

Joe Rogan 1:14:54 Sure.

Eric Weinstein 1:14:54 Joe, you don't even believe that.

Joe Rogan 1:14:56 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:14:56 I think that, in general, people, when they are given no choice at all, express themselves moronically. Um ...

Joe Rogan 1:15:03 When they're given no choice at all, how so?

Eric Weinstein 1:15:04 Yeah. I want a choice of an actual president that's viable. I don't have one.

Joe Rogan 1:15:08 Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:15:09 So then you're gonna ask me, "Well, which, which of the non-viable people do you like best?"

Joe Rogan 1:15:12 Well, this is the, this is the real i- issue with the Democratic Party. They've essentially made us all morons-

Eric Weinstein 1:15:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:18 ... with this Joe Biden thing.

Eric Weinstein 1:15:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:15:20 They really have. They've made us all morons.

Eric Weinstein 1:15:23 Can you imagine ... Who do we need ... I mean, ca- who ... I never-

Joe Rogan 1:15:26 I never vote for that guy.

Eric Weinstein 1:15:27 I can't vote for him.

Joe Rogan 1:15:28 I can't vote for him.

Eric Weinstein 1:15:29 I can't vote for Trump.

Joe Rogan 1:15:30 There, I would, I'd rather vote for Trump than him. I, I don't think he could handle anything. I mean, you're relying entirely on his cabinet. Like if you wanna talk about a, an individual leader that can communicate, he can't do that.