Joe Rogan Experience #1504 - Alan Levinovitz

1. 0:01 – 1:53

   Pyrite cubes and the deceptiveness of “natural”

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:01

      Hello, Alan.

   2. ALAlan Levinovitz0:02

      Hello, Joe.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      Good to see you. Um, first of all, thank you for this. This, uh, piece of pyrite that's embedded into stone. And, um, we, we just started talking. I said, "Just don't say another word. Let's start talking about this on the podcast." Because this ... It kind of ... It's interesting. I started your book, which, um, I very rarely read books.

   4. ALAlan Levinovitz0:22

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      I mostly do audiobooks. Uh, but, uh, I was forced to read yours. But, uh, one of the things, uh, that I, I found interesting is the concept of what is natural. And I've, I've gone over this many times myself. I'm like, poison's natural. Like, everything's natural. Computers are natural, really, because they come from the ground. They're made by people. They're essentially like, you know, a human's version of, uh, anything, like, a bird would create, right?

   6. ALAlan Levinovitz0:46

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:46

      Birds create birds nests. Are those natural? But this pyrite, this is pyrite, right?

   8. ALAlan Levinovitz0:52

      Yup.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:52

      Which is fool's gold, right?

   10. ALAlan Levinovitz0:54

       Fool's gold.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:55

       But it's naturally in these cubes, in these, this, this square form, this perfect, these perfect angles, which you would never believe.

   12. ALAlan Levinovitz1:05

       I-

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:05

       You would think somebody left this shit there.

   14. ALAlan Levinovitz1:06

       I, I didn't believe it. It looks like, it looks like aliens left them.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:09

       Yeah.

   16. ALAlan Levinovitz1:09

       And they're even in, like, what that's called is it's in the matrix.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:13

       Oh, wow.

   18. ALAlan Levinovitz1:13

       So sometimes you can just get the cubes. They're just the cube, but they call the rock that it's in the matrix, which I think is-

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:19

       Dude, that-

   20. ALAlan Levinovitz1:19

       ... kind of a- kind of appropriate. (laughs)

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:21

       That is going to have a permanent spot on this desk with all this other craziness here.

   22. ALAlan Levinovitz1:24

       Cool.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:24

       Thank you so much. That was really cool. I did not know that it came like that. I found pyrite when I was a kid in rocks, you know, when they call it fool's gold. Oh, Jamie's gonna bring that up to you there. Um-

   24. ALAlan Levinovitz1:35

       Perfect.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:36

       Fool's gold, but it's, you, you know, it's usually like specks and flecks and stuff.

   26. ALAlan Levinovitz1:40

       There's another one called, I for- I forget, they're called, like, Illinois miner's dollars or something. This is another form that pyrite takes. Uh, I- I'm kind of obsessed with weird rocks. Um, but they look just like sand dollars, but they're gold.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:53

       Oh, wow.

2. 1:53 – 5:56

   From “everything is natural” to a spectrum—and rejecting nature-worship

   1. ALAlan Levinovitz1:53

      Like, they look like they're golden. And so these are, you know ... I think one of the things... I actually changed my mind over writing, uh, like, over the course of writing this book.

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:00

      Oh, there they are. Jamie, pull up some full size.

   3. ALAlan Levinovitz2:01

      Yeah. That's what I-

   4. JRJoe Rogan2:02

      That's crazy.

   5. ALAlan Levinovitz2:02

      They're incredible, right?

   6. JRJoe Rogan2:03

      What i- what causes it to take on these different completely unusual forms?

   7. ALAlan Levinovitz2:09

      So I tried, I tried to find out. There's, like, a local rock store where I live, and I asked the guy, and apparently, I don't understand how it works at all, but the way all crystals work is they have different kinds of structures, and the way those structures come together determines whether, you know, it makes like a quartz crystal or what shape it takes. Um, it's very, it's, it's very surreal.

   8. JRJoe Rogan2:28

      Yeah, it's very surreal.

   9. ALAlan Levinovitz2:28

      I think, honestly.

   10. JRJoe Rogan2:29

       This is very bizarre. I did not know until you gave this to me that that existed.

   11. ALAlan Levinovitz2:34

       Yeah, uh, yeah. The, and this is ... So like, for me, I went into this book, like you said, right, with this question of what's natural. There's some people, like, uh, often scientists, who will sort of scoff at the idea of naturalness, right? They're like-

   12. JRJoe Rogan2:46

       Mm-hmm.

   13. ALAlan Levinovitz2:46

       ... "Everything's natural, right? Humans are natural. We're animals. We made all this stuff. We made the microphones. We're all made out of space dust. Everything's natural. It's stupid to distinguish between natural and unnatural." And honestly, that's where I was when I started writing the book. I was like, "I'm gonna make ... I'm gonna show this is a stupid idea. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be Richard Dawkins-"

   14. JRJoe Rogan3:07

       (laughs)

   15. ALAlan Levinovitz3:07

       "... but for naturalness."

   16. JRJoe Rogan3:09

       Right.

   17. ALAlan Levinovitz3:10

       But, uh, I, I, I was wrong.

   18. JRJoe Rogan3:12

       (laughs)

   19. ALAlan Levinovitz3:12

       I don't know. Uh-

   20. JRJoe Rogan3:13

       What was, what shifted it for you?

   21. ALAlan Levinovitz3:15

       Well, so one of the things, like with that pyrite, right? People ask, "Is it natural?" That's the first thing they ask. "Does this occur naturally," right? And it's an important question because there's a difference, uh, like a sort of profound difference between knowing that that was just spewed up by the earth forces that are not human, right, versus humans sitting down and deciding to make a cube, right? It's like a diamond that-

   22. JRJoe Rogan3:39

       Hmm.

   23. ALAlan Levinovitz3:39

       ... that has been shaped by millions of years of natural forces. And what I realized is that it really does make sense to distinguish between naturalness and unnaturalness. You, you have to. Maybe it's a, it's a spectrum, obviously, right? So it's not an easy binary, but New York City is not as natural as Yellowstone.

   24. JRJoe Rogan3:55

       Right.

   25. ALAlan Levinovitz3:56

       And, and what I realized was I wasn't really against the idea of naturalness or even valuing nature, right? I mean, we'll talk ... Hopefully we'll talk about I went back country in Yellowstone. It was unbelievable. You know, I mean, everyone values naturalness in certain ways. It was worshiping nature that I had a problem with. This idea that the more natural something is, the better it is, or that what we need to do ... Like, if you wanna raise your kid, right, you gotta raise your kid naturally. You, like, you know, let him piss in the corner or, or like ... Elimination communication. Do you know about this?

   26. JRJoe Rogan4:25

       No.

   27. ALAlan Levinovitz4:26

       (laughs) I swear. So, uh, so I think, so some c- it's, some celebrity's been doing it. Like, Alicia Silverstone's, uh, did it with her son, Bear. And, uh-

   28. JRJoe Rogan4:35

       Isn't it funny that that automatically dismisses it?

   29. ALAlan Levinovitz4:37

       I ... (laughs) Oh, you mean the fact that his name is Bear?

   30. JRJoe Rogan4:39

       Yeah. No, no, no, just the fact that it's a celebrity thing.
3. 5:56 – 7:49

   When “natural” includes cruelty: slavery, disease, and moral confusion

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:56

      Well, human beings have done horrible things to their children from the beginning of time without anybody telling them to do it or not to do it. And I don't know if that's natural.But, yeah-

   2. ALAlan Levinovitz6:08

      Yea-

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:08

      ... I mean, if it occurs enough, it's kind of na- Like pedophilia occurs a lot. Is that natural?

   4. ALAlan Levinovitz6:15

      So, so there was a, there's a, there was... Yeah, I mean, you know if it-

   5. JRJoe Rogan6:18

      Right?

   6. ALAlan Levinovitz6:19

      Essent- essentially again, right, i- if natural is defined as whatever sort of emerges spontaneously out of forces that weren't willed by human beings-

   7. JRJoe Rogan6:27

      Yeah.

   8. ALAlan Levinovitz6:27

      ... which is what I think natural is, right?

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:28

      Right.

   10. ALAlan Levinovitz6:28

       So we say we have natural instincts. In other words, it's whatever we didn't will, it just comes out of us.

   11. JRJoe Rogan6:32

       Right.

   12. ALAlan Levinovitz6:33

       There's a, there's a woman who's an expert on captivity, so kidnapping, slavery, named Catherine Cameron. And I was interviewing her and she said, "You know, it is as natural as the nuclear family to have slaves." Right? So-

   13. JRJoe Rogan6:45

       Jesus.

   14. ALAlan Levinovitz6:45

       ... slavery is a thing that has been done forever and ever. I mean, imagine, right? So you're pre-agricultural. Your tribe, your group requires certain population. Can't get too high, can't get too low, and so kidnapping other people's children, it's often a common thing. Um-

   15. JRJoe Rogan7:03

       Yeah.

   16. ALAlan Levinovitz7:06

       ... so is that good? Well, clearly not, right? Or, you know, dying in childbirth. Um, the- these, these are all things that are natural but are obviously not good. And so I start- I started to see the way in which this word was being abused basically. People would use natural to describe whatever they favored-

   17. JRJoe Rogan7:22

       Mm.

   18. ALAlan Levinovitz7:22

       ... and unnatural to describe whatever they didn't like, right?

   19. JRJoe Rogan7:25

       Mm.

   20. ALAlan Levinovitz7:25

       People do it with sex. People do it with child-rearing. People do it with economic theories, right? You want a natural market with no interference, and that's how people would justify a free market. And you've got other people who are like, "Actually money is unnatural. You really want a barter system. That was what emerged naturally out of humans." And I'm sitting here looking at both these arguments. I'm like, "No, you want an economy that works."

   21. JRJoe Rogan7:47

       Right.

   22. ALAlan Levinovitz7:47

       It doesn't matter whether it's natural or not.

4. 7:49 – 10:53

   Farming, cities, and the technology balance problem

   1. JRJoe Rogan7:49

      Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, one of the things that I saw in your book, uh, was you were talking to Joel Salatin, who I love, and, um, he's a strange man, um, but a, a beautiful person. I re- I really l- love what he's doing with Polyface Farms, but he drinks the water that the cows drink out of so that he gets that in his biome, you know? He's, he's a real freak. But when you were talking about New York City and, uh, you know, would his method of farming work to feed a city as big as New York? He's like, "Do you need a city as big as New York?" Then I'm like, "Okay." (imitates brakes) Hit the brakes.

   2. ALAlan Levinovitz8:24

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:25

      'Cause n- now we're in the weeds-

   4. ALAlan Levinovitz8:26

      Yes.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:26

      ... 'cause I love New York. It's a fucking great place to visit. I don't wanna live there, but it's awesome. I mean, when you go to New York, if you, you're, if you're in a hotel that has like a 30th floor and you look out and you see the skitty- the city s- skyscape, you know, you see all the, the s- w- you know, the skyline, all the different beautiful buildings lit up at night, I mean that is an amazing, spectacular sight that I am very thankful exists. I love it there.

   6. ALAlan Levinovitz8:50

      Yeah. I'm grate- I'm grateful for all the... I mean, there's so many... It's, it's, it w- it's insane really to be right now... If someone's listening to this podcast, here we are, we've got microphones. We're beaming this conversation-

   7. JRJoe Rogan9:02

      Yeah.

   8. ALAlan Levinovitz9:02

      ... to, to millions of people and to think that, that simultaneously people would be thinking to themselves, "The criteria I'm gonna use to judge whether something is good or bad with a capital G or a capital B is how natural it is."

   9. JRJoe Rogan9:15

      Right. This is totally unnatural. (laughs)

   10. ALAlan Levinovitz9:17

       As, as unnatural, as unnatural as it gets. Meanwhile the coronavirus rate, which is, you know, natural of course, people will say, "Well, actually we wouldn't have been infected if only we lived more naturally." Right? So the problem is urban density or the problem is that you shouldn't be going into the jungle and getting things. But like this is... You know-

   11. JRJoe Rogan9:32

       There's actually an argument against that though. The, the, the virus itself, more evidence is coming out daily that it's been manipulated, that it most likely did come out of that lab. I had Bret Weinstein on the pro- podcast who's a biologist, and he was talking about all the, the various aspects of the virus that really don't exist naturally in, in, in, in this form without having evolved for a long period of time. The fact that it just emerged and made this leap from bats to the form that it is now in people, he's like, "It's far too contagious. It's far too prolific." It's, there's so many different... I, I'm, I'm gonna fuck it up if I talk about the technical details of it, but when he was describing it, he was saying, "More evidence points to the fact that it was actually something that had been manipulated by people than that it was a natural virus."

   12. ALAlan Levinovitz10:19

       So I, I mean I don't... I'm not a biologist. Uh-

   13. JRJoe Rogan10:21

       Nor am I.

   14. ALAlan Levinovitz10:22

       ... nor am I. (laughs) I have no idea, but I think what, I think what's weird or what I would wanna push back on... And this is a religious studies scholar, right?

   15. JRJoe Rogan10:28

       Mm-hmm.

   16. ALAlan Levinovitz10:28

       Because this is, this is where I came to all the naturals, natural stuff to begin with is if something's bad, I think people are immediately gonna think, "Oh, it makes sense that it was unnatural. It makes sense that this bad thing that's hurting us couldn't be natural." But, but the truth is some things that hurt us are natural.

   17. JRJoe Rogan10:49

       Cyanide.

   18. ALAlan Levinovitz10:50

       There you go.

   19. JRJoe Rogan10:51

       Yeah.

   20. ALAlan Levinovitz10:51

       Or, you know, again, I mean again-

   21. JRJoe Rogan10:52

       Lava.

   22. ALAlan Levinovitz10:52

       ... I keep going back (laughs) to childbirth.

5. 10:53 – 13:09

   Peru fieldwork: what ‘closer to nature’ looks like from the rainforest

   1. JRJoe Rogan10:53

      Yeah.

   2. ALAlan Levinovitz10:53

      But I mean I went to Peru. I gotta tell you this story. So I went to Peru be- for to research this book because I wanted to talk with like as close as I could get to pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers, right? And I can't get, you can't get too close, but there are, there are people called the Matsigenka, the Machiguenga, um, in the rainforest that I got to talk to. And I got to ask them about, you know, their relationship with technology and all that stuff. I'm never gonna forget, I go up to this, this guy and I ask him... They've just had solar lights installed like in the main sort of area of their village and I go up to this guy and I was like- "How do you feel about having these artificial lights installed?" And he... And, and I'm thinking to myself, "You know, it's this pollution, right? Isn't it better to just have, you know, the stars and the sky and the moon?" And he looks at me and he goes, he goes, "It's good. It... We can see at night now." (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan11:47

      (laughs)

   4. ALAlan Levinovitz11:47

      And he's just like, like he was talking to just a fucking idiot, you know?

   5. JRJoe Rogan11:50

      (laughs)

   6. ALAlan Levinovitz11:50

      Like, oh, of course I'm happy, right? Or this... And then there was this old lady. I was like... They, they'd had, you know, they had a, they had a pump like running water installed basically, clean water, right? So you could wash your dishes and, and your clothes. And I'm thinking, "Oh my God, this is ripping them away from the natural way of life." And I asked this lady, I'm like, "How do you feel about the water?" And she's like, "It's... We don't, we don't get...... bacterial inf- I mean, she didn't say bacterial infection, she was like, "We don't get sick anymore from the water that we're drinking from the river." I was like, "Oh." And she's just looking at me like, "Who?" Like, "Why, why is he asking me this?" Right? And meanwhile, I'm coming from this place where everyone wants to get closer to nature-

   7. JRJoe Rogan12:25

      Yeah.

   8. ALAlan Levinovitz12:25

      ... right? Because we have been alienated from it, and, and I'm asking from the perspective of someone who thinks it just must be paradise living so close to nature. And she's like, "No, we want the, we, we, (laughs) we wanna be able to wash our clothes and have the fucking lights on at night."

   9. JRJoe Rogan12:39

      Yeah. (laughs)

   10. ALAlan Levinovitz12:40

       You know? (laughs) And I was like, "Hmm." Right? There was a shaman, I'm talking to the shaman in the village, Don Alberto, right? And he's talking to me, he's like, "You know, it's true that technology is messing up the world. We've got climate change, we've got, you know, all these species are going extinct." And he goes on and on, right? It's, he's very close to nature, very, a very wise man. He's got a cell phone also, right?

   11. JRJoe Rogan12:59

       Mm-hmm.

   12. ALAlan Levinovitz12:59

       And I, and I'm like, "Well, so is technology bad?" And he's like, he's, he's like, "Yes. Well, yes. Yes and no."

   13. JRJoe Rogan13:06

       He's on Tinder.

   14. ALAlan Levinovitz13:07

       (laughs) Yeah, right?

   15. JRJoe Rogan13:08

       For sure.

   16. ALAlan Levinovitz13:08

       Yeah, that's what he's really doing.

   17. JRJoe Rogan13:09

       Yeah. (laughs)

6. 13:09 – 26:47

   After religion: ‘organic’ and ‘artificial’ as new purity labels

   1. ALAlan Levinovitz13:09

      He didn't tell me. But that's, and that's ... I, I want people, I just want people to understand that there just aren't any easy categories you can use to divide up the world into good and bad. And now that people, now that organized religion is sort of the sphere of authority shrinking, right? You don't go to your priest to find out what to eat, you don't go to your priest to find out how to cure your disease. Now that that authority is shrinking, I think people are looking to other similar kinds of authority, and so they're like, "Okay, I can't go to my priest, but if I'm walking through the store, what sort of criteria can I use to divide the world up easily into good and evil, clean and unclean?"

   2. JRJoe Rogan13:52

      Organic.

   3. ALAlan Levinovitz13:53

      Organic-

   4. JRJoe Rogan13:54

      Smell.

   5. ALAlan Levinovitz13:54

      ... and inorganic, right? Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan13:55

      Yeah.

   7. ALAlan Levinovitz13:55

      Artificial. And it's built into our language, Joe.

   8. JRJoe Rogan13:57

      Yeah.

   9. ALAlan Levinovitz13:57

      Like artifish. Or, or, artifish. Artifish might be a thing someday. Uh, artificial, right, is, is linked to artifice, which is deception. Right?

   10. JRJoe Rogan14:06

       Mm.

   11. ALAlan Levinovitz14:07

       So you've got manipulated, which really just means humans got ahold of it and changed it (laughs) with their hands, also means something bad, so really built into our language, we have this idea that natural means good, artificial, manipulated, that's bad.

   12. JRJoe Rogan14:26

       I think maybe it's because we have this insane power to manipulate things. And we, we all collectively use the power to manipulate things that was created by scientists that have a far greater understanding of what the implications and, like, what the process of this manipulation is, and we just come along and use their technology. And that's, I think that's, that's a problem with so much of what people do. Like, we've, we've earned this power just by virtue of being alive and being able to trade in goods and services for whatever that, they've created, and then we don't think about the consequences of utilizing this stuff. Like, what is, there's gotta be, there's some sort of a balance, right? There's a balance between ... Like, if you want to have a fireplace in your house, that's wonderful. Fireplaces are great. It's a nice smell, right? You w- you walk in the house, you smell the fireplace. If you're walking down the street and someone's got their fireplace on, it smells good. But if the whole fucking place is on fire, it's terrible. You're filled with smoke, you can't breathe. It's like, there's a balance. And clearly when you see polluted cities, clearly when you see polluted rivers and we're destroying the environment, there's a, a lack of balance. We've utilized this power that we have to manipulate our environment, but we've done it completely irresponsibly or we've done it without the abou- without the awareness of the consequences of eight million people doing the exact same thing.

   13. ALAlan Levinovitz15:56

       Yeah, well, that, I mean, the scale you can do stuff on with-

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:59

       Yeah.

   15. ALAlan Levinovitz15:59

       ... tech- technology's really increa- I mean, it's, it's made us incredibly powerful, right? There's Stewart Brand, the guy who started The Whole Earth Catalog, you know, said basically we've become like gods, so we have to be able to wield this power responsibly. I think it's easy to see that and say, "Well, then the evil is in the form of the power itself." Right? Obviously then if we've got a nuclear bomb or we've got, you know, if we're polluting the world, then the problem is with, with the technology itself, so you locate the evil in that technology. Whereas, you know, what you're saying, I mean, take, take burning wood, which is a great example. You know, we've got a lot of people on Earth now. We have them because kids aren't fucking dying all the time, right? I mean, the, so there's, there's some, there are some things that I discovered while I was reading this. For example, have you seen that cartoon, um, where there's two cavemen in a room. It's a New Yorker cartoon, and they're talking to ... Or they're not in a room. They're cavemen. They're in a cave. Sorry. (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:51

       In a cave. (laughs)

   17. ALAlan Levinovitz16:51

       So they're in a cave and they're talking to each other and one of them's like, "You know, we eat organic, we exercise all the time, and, like, nobody's living past the age of 35. What's going on?" (laughs) Right?

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:00

       (laughs)

   19. ALAlan Levinovitz17:00

       So there's, there's this, that's, and that's the people that are like, "Nature's bullshit" take, right?

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:03

       Yeah.

   21. ALAlan Levinovitz17:03

       They're like ... But it, but actually it turns out that that cartoon is bullshit, so people didn't just die at age 35. That was average lifespan because tons of kids were dying between the age of zero and five. Truth is, if you made it past five, then you had a pretty good shot at, like, 60 or 70, um, so, so it wasn't so bad in the state of nature. At the same time, there's another vision of what's happening to us now. Have you seen that evolution, there's like an evolution cartoon where it starts with, I don't know, like, Paleolithic man or a chimpanzee or something, and then it gets to, like, a big strong hunter with a spear? And then technology comes in and they hunch over at the end and they get obese and they've got, like, a Coke in one hand, and there's this idea, like, well, technology is now ... We were perfect when we were natural, and then technology has made us worse. And for me, it's what you were saying. It's a balance, right?

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:56

       Yeah.

   23. ALAlan Levinovitz17:56

       There are ways in which technology ... Like, my dad, my dad is, is 91. The ... I talk to, you know, I talk to anthropologists, and, like, despite what you might, you know, m- what you might think, th- there aren't a lot of 91-year-old hunter-gatherers.They're just not out there.

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:12

       No.

   25. ALAlan Levinovitz18:12

       So I'm like really grateful that my dad, (laughs) you know, a super healthy 91-year-old. That is, that's crazy. That's an incredible thing we've done. I'm glad that kids aren't dying all the time. And Dad ... You know, I'm glad that mothers aren't dying in childbirth. That's, those are incredible things, like New York City, right? At the same time, it's, we're destroying the world.

   26. JRJoe Rogan18:29

       Right.

   27. ALAlan Levinovitz18:30

       So we gotta, we gotta work out these problems without using simple binaries to figure out what's good and what's bad. It's better to have solar power than billions of humans burning wood.

   28. JRJoe Rogan18:42

       Right.

   29. ALAlan Levinovitz18:43

       But solar power's, obviously, to me at least, less natural than lighting a piece of wood on, a piece of wood on fire.

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:47

       Solar power doesn't bother me at all.
7. 26:47 – 35:18

   Processed food → processed information: the ‘stomach share’ of attention

   1. ALAlan Levinovitz26:47

      So if you think about, if you think about how processed food was, was created, basically... And, and I mean modern ultra-processed food, because these terms are all really slippery, right? Just like the term natural.

   2. JRJoe Rogan26:58

      Yeah.

   3. ALAlan Levinovitz26:58

      So this is on a spectrum, right? The history of cooking is a history of processing food, right? You like to cook, I like to cook. That's processing food. Dessert is a kind of food that's been made to be highly palatable. You know, so it's not about processing being intrinsically evil, but with ultra-processed foods what you've got is you've got a bunch of companies that are like, "All right, what can we exploit about human appetites to make foods as compulsively eatable as possible?" Right? It's terrifying. You've got, I think Coca-Cola, I think it was, said something like, "We have to conquer stomach share." This is a term they use.

   4. JRJoe Rogan27:30

      What?

   5. ALAlan Levinovitz27:31

      Yeah. So, like, there's a-

   6. JRJoe Rogan27:32

      (laughs)

   7. ALAlan Levinovitz27:32

      Yeah. So if you think, right, you have 100... Think of the stomach, right? Like, okay, so we got 100% of the stomach. Like, how can Coca-Cola fill the maximum amount of stomach share in, in the humans of the world?

   8. JRJoe Rogan27:44

      Wow, what a bizarre way of looking at people.

   9. ALAlan Levinovitz27:47

      It's, it's terrifying, right? And so then... And they did it, 'cause you've, they've got the smartest people, you know. They've got great chemists and biologists working (laughs) , you know, day and night to figure out how to conquer stomach share.

   10. JRJoe Rogan27:57

       And they started with cocaine, which is even more weird. (laughs)

   11. ALAlan Levinovitz28:00

       Did you know it's still-

   12. JRJoe Rogan28:01

       Yeah.

   13. ALAlan Levinovitz28:01

       ...im- Okay. (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan28:02

       Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

   15. ALAlan Levinovitz28:03

       I was like, I couldn't believe... I discovered that when I was... I was like, "Wait, there's a plant in New Jersey that's getting like..." (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan28:07

       Yeah. Yup, yeah, and they, it's the number one supplier of medical cocaine.

   17. ALAlan Levinovitz28:10

       (laughs) That's so crazy.

   18. JRJoe Rogan28:11

       It's Coca-Cola. We should tell people. Just tell people the, what the, what we're talking about for people don't know.

   19. ALAlan Levinovitz28:16

       Yeah, well, so, so Coca-Cola back in the day was made with, with, with cocaine for the, for the cocaine kick. John Pemberton, the guy who, the guy who came up with Coca-Cola had cocaine in it. And to this day-

   20. JRJoe Rogan28:29

       (laughs)

   21. ALAlan Levinovitz28:29

       ... there is a plant that's been grandfathered in, I guess, legally, I don't know how it works, that is still importing enormous amounts of cocaine, processing it so that it's no longer has an effect on you in the way that cocaine would, and putting it in Coca-Cola.

   22. JRJoe Rogan28:45

       Yeah, the flavor of Coca-Cola is apparently a big part of the reason why... Like Pepsi, u- unfortunately Pepsi don't taste as good as Coke.

   23. ALAlan Levinovitz28:54

       (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan28:54

       You just don't.

   25. ALAlan Levinovitz28:54

       'Cause the- there's no cocaine in it. (laughs)

   26. JRJoe Rogan28:55

       Yeah, well, it's the flavonoids.

   27. ALAlan Levinovitz28:57

       (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan28:57

       It's just, there's some, uh, I think that's the right word, there's some flavor that the coca leaf has. I've never had, um, chewed coca leaf, but people who I've talked to that have had it said it's an amazing way to get energy.

   29. ALAlan Levinovitz29:11

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan29:11

       It's like a cup of coffee.
8. 35:18 – 44:25

   Outrage addiction, road rage dynamics, and coping strategies

   1. ALAlan Levinovitz35:18

      Yeah. It's... I- I... And- and there's ways we can- we can stop it. I really think we can stop it by focusing on problems with the system and problems with ourselves, right? It's both of us 'cause we're the ones manufacturing it and we're the ones consuming it, so we can do things about it and it ranges from... You know, I mean, I don't... Like I don't have (laughs) ... I don't- I still don't have a smartphone.

   2. JRJoe Rogan35:41

      You don't?

   3. ALAlan Levinovitz35:41

      Um, no.

   4. JRJoe Rogan35:41

      You're a flip phone guy?

   5. ALAlan Levinovitz35:42

      (laughs) I have a flip phone.

   6. JRJoe Rogan35:43

      Wow.

   7. ALAlan Levinovitz35:44

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan35:44

      On purpose?

   9. ALAlan Levinovitz35:45

      Yeah. Um, I mean, in part. Not because-

   10. JRJoe Rogan35:47

       But you tweet a lot.

   11. ALAlan Levinovitz35:48

       I do. So when I-

   12. JRJoe Rogan35:49

       That's not good.

   13. ALAlan Levinovitz35:50

       Well ...

   14. JRJoe Rogan35:50

       (laughs)

   15. ALAlan Levinovitz35:51

       It is. I know it's compulsive. I think the reason I don't have it is because if I had a smartphone, man, it'd be all over. I'd be on it-

   16. JRJoe Rogan35:56

       Yeah.

   17. ALAlan Levinovitz35:56

       ... all the time. Um, I mean, when I'm at home, 'cause I- s- you know, 'cause I work from home sometimes, my wife has... My wife has a smartphone. Um, and so I'll always be like using her phone. She's like-

   18. JRJoe Rogan36:04

       Oh, no.

   19. ALAlan Levinovitz36:04

       ... "What are you doing? Like if you don't have a phone, you can't just go use my phone." Right? And then I'm installing things on my computer like Freedom, which is this app that blocks you from... I mean, it's literally like, you know, with food, right? People have those locks-

   20. JRJoe Rogan36:15

       Yes.

   21. ALAlan Levinovitz36:15

       ... that only open. So I have an app that like locks me out of these sites.

   22. JRJoe Rogan36:18

       I have a- a folder on my desktop, um, or on my, uh, I guess, yeah, my desktop of my phone, um, that says junkie. And, uh, that's-

   23. ALAlan Levinovitz36:28

       Just a reminder.

   24. JRJoe Rogan36:29

       ... all of my, uh, Instagram and Twitter-

   25. ALAlan Levinovitz36:32

       (laughs)

   26. JRJoe Rogan36:32

       ... and all that stuff. I was gonna show it to you, but...

   27. ALAlan Levinovitz36:34

       It's important. That's-

   28. JRJoe Rogan36:35

       Yeah.

   29. ALAlan Levinovitz36:35

       That kind of thing is... So we need... I think we all need to collectively take steps in that way, but also we need to realize, and- and this is really important, right? It's not just about natural/unnatural. It's not just about technology. We've had this kind of junk food information-... around forever. And this is where I think for me as a, as a scholar of religious studies, right? If you look at myths and folktales and fairy tales, and if you look at the structure of religions, there are ways to tell stories to get people heightened. There are ways to tell stories to make people feel belonging. There are ways to tell stories to demonize people, right? These tropes have been a li- you know, they've been around forever, right? What do you do? You create a, a villain. You tell a story about redemption. You tell a story about a fall. You tell a story in which the people who are hearing the story, just by hearing it, become heroes. Right? These are, these are things that have been around for a long time. In the same way that if you go back 2,000 years, if you were super rich and had access to lots of delicious salty, sugary, fatty food, you could get fat. It was just a lot harder back then. And in the same way, now we facilitated the manufacture of this kind of, these, these junk narratives that in small doses I think are fine. But if it's all we're consuming, it's a, it's a disaster. And we're gonna end up I think with some kind of, with some problems that are analogous to the health problems that we're seeing because of what we eat, except they're gonna be problems in our soul. Right? I mean-

   30. JRJoe Rogan38:08

       We're gonna get mental diabetes.
9. 44:25 – 48:51

   Viral shaming and the pleasure of moral punishment

   1. JRJoe Rogan44:25

      Well, it's, um, it's terrifying when you s- you see... Like here's an example, and I don't think this person was correct, but it was weird watching this. There was a girl who, uh, was on TikTok, and she was talking about Black Lives Matter, and she said basically, "If you say to me, 'All lives matter,'" she goes, "I'm going to stab you. And while you're bleeding out-"

   2. ALAlan Levinovitz44:49

      I remember I saw this.

   3. JRJoe Rogan44:49

      You see this?

   4. ALAlan Levinovitz44:49

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan44:50

      "While you're bleeding out, I'm gonna show you my paper cut. And I'm gonna go, 'Look, you know, I'm cut too.'" You know? She goes, "That's the difference between all lives matter, ev-" You know, like, she was just screaming and yelling, "I'm gonna fucking stab you." But it's just a bad analogy from a person who's trying very hard to virtue signal. Cut to next video, she was crying that people had found the video, and they were attacking her, and then she got fired. And she got fired from this job that she really loved. And there was, in the comments of this, there was all these laughing emojis with the laughing with the tears coming out, where people were taking pleasure out of the fact this person made this misstep. She's a young... She looked like she was in her 20s. She made this, y- you know, she thought she was like putting something out in the world to stand up for people that are being maligned and mistreated and, you know, and, and wronged by society and that there's a, there should be a balance and to understand the balance. And she made a terrible analogy. It just d- It wasn't good. But the fact that people were taking pleasure in the fact that this person got fired from it was very disturbing.

   6. ALAlan Levinovitz45:58

      Why do we... I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking, like, wh- why do I, why have I seen this? Why have you seen this? Like you knew-

   7. JRJoe Rogan46:04

      Yeah.

   8. ALAlan Levinovitz46:04

      You're basically, it's like, why did we consume that?

   9. JRJoe Rogan46:06

      I didn't know what it was until I started watching it.

   10. ALAlan Levinovitz46:07

       Why did that get part of my, my soul share, right?

   11. JRJoe Rogan46:09

       Yeah.

   12. ALAlan Levinovitz46:09

       Of their stomach share. Like, why is that video even a part of my brain? It should not be in there. There's no reason for it. It could be, there's a million better things that could occupy that slot.

   13. JRJoe Rogan46:23

       But there's a fascination the same way there's a fascination of people jumping off buildings into a pool and missing and hitting the concrete.

   14. ALAlan Levinovitz46:28

       Right. Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:29

       You know? I mean, I've seen a lot of those.

   16. ALAlan Levinovitz46:31

       (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan46:31

       There's something, just something about missteps because you know it could be you. Look, I'm a moron. If I was on a roof with one of my good friends and I had a couple of beers in me and they're like, "Do you wanna make the jump?" I'm like, "Fuck, should we?" Like especially if I was 18, I probably would have jumped. You know? Like there's a lot of people that do... If I was her and I was 18, I probably would have made a s- a similar dumb video.

   18. ALAlan Levinovitz46:51

       I- if the thing is though, it's inter- Okay, so with the, with the, with the swimming pool, right?

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:54

       Mm-hmm.

   20. ALAlan Levinovitz46:54

       This is, it's one thing, actually think it's one thing to mock someone for just doing some stupid shit. It's another thing when the, when the background, and this again gets back to this idea of ultra-processed information. When the background, w- when what makes it so exciting is not that they're stupid or they did something or that could have been you, but that they're evil, right? Ah, I get to watch evil.

   21. JRJoe Rogan47:17

       Right.

   22. ALAlan Levinovitz47:17

       And I'm just good, I'm good just because I'm feeling that this person's evil.

   23. JRJoe Rogan47:22

       Right. Right.

   24. ALAlan Levinovitz47:22

       And that part, it's very different from, I, I mean, it's very different from, what was it, like America's Funniest Home Videos, right? Like that's not-

   25. JRJoe Rogan47:28

       (laughs)

   26. ALAlan Levinovitz47:28

       That was not a show where you were like-

   27. JRJoe Rogan47:30

       Right.

   28. ALAlan Levinovitz47:30

       ... tuning in to find out who the evil people were, right?

   29. JRJoe Rogan47:33

       Right.

   30. ALAlan Levinovitz47:33

       And then being like, "Look at those people. If we j- Like, they deserve what they got." That would be crazy. It's so-
10. 48:51 – 1:04:04

    Woke vs. anti-woke: mirror-image demonization and ‘nutpicking’ extremes

    1. ALAlan Levinovitz48:51

       Although, you know, it's funny. I, so I've seen, you know, there's a, and you know about this. Like you've had some people like this on your show. Like there's a, there's-... like, the tendency again to divide the world up in the same way as natural and unnatural, right? Now another dichotomy that's emerged is, like, woke people.

    2. JRJoe Rogan49:06

       Mm-hmm.

    3. ALAlan Levinovitz49:07

       And then anti-woke people.

    4. JRJoe Rogan49:09

       Right.

    5. ALAlan Levinovitz49:09

       And so the anti-woke people, and I'm, I'm generalizing here, but they look at the woke people, and they're like, "Look at these woke people." The woke people divide the world up into good and evil, right? The woke people are like, "Oh, look at all those unwoke sinners. We're woke, we're good. The unwoke are evil." But the anti-woke people are doing the same thing. They're like, "Look at those woke people tearing everybody down. Those are the bad people. And if we just get rid of all the woke people-"

    6. JRJoe Rogan49:39

       (laughs)

    7. ALAlan Levinovitz49:39

       "... then everything will go back to the paradise of free thinking and rationality-"

    8. JRJoe Rogan49:43

       Yes.

    9. ALAlan Levinovitz49:43

       "... where we could all speak our minds." And I'm looking at these people and I'm like, "Do you not understand th- the paradox?" Especially 'cause these people are often, like, fairly smart, like, philosophically minded people, and they're like, "I hate people that create, uh, demons and try to cast them out of society. We need to get rid of those people."

    10. JRJoe Rogan49:59

        Hmm.

    11. ALAlan Levinovitz49:59

        "And cast them out of society. And once we have that, we'll go back to paradise." And I'm like, "No, there is no paradise." It's complicated, right? Like, even with the social media, it's terrific that laypeople who didn't have power once can hold powerful people accountable. It is a good thing that we get videos of cops doing bad stuff that before would've been hidden, right?

    12. JRJoe Rogan50:23

        Yes.

    13. ALAlan Levinovitz50:23

        So again, it's, it's more complicated. Like, I like that.

    14. JRJoe Rogan50:27

        Yes.

    15. ALAlan Levinovitz50:27

        I'm happy about that and I'm happy about the way in which our technology has empowered people to find communities, right? Also just, like, loners, like, people that had weird hobbies, people that felt alone in their small town, now you can go-

    16. JRJoe Rogan50:38

        And get, get out news.

    17. ALAlan Levinovitz50:39

        Yeah.

    18. JRJoe Rogan50:39

        I mean, es- especially if you're dealing in a place where, you know, the reporters can't get to, people on the ground can get information out to people.

    19. ALAlan Levinovitz50:46

        Exactly.

    20. JRJoe Rogan50:46

        There's a lot of positive benefits to social media, don't get me wrong.

    21. ALAlan Levinovitz50:49

        Right.

    22. JRJoe Rogan50:50

        I, I really... If used correctly, I think it's very valuable, but I just think the, the power of it is very intoxicating to people and much like processed food, which is where I think you, you had that great analogy, I think it's just very... It's very dangerous to become completely... Like, if you're eating processed Twinkies nine hours a day, you're gonna be sick. Well, if you're on Twitter nine hours a day arguing with people, you're gonna be sick.

    23. ALAlan Levinovitz51:13

        Yep, you are.

    24. JRJoe Rogan51:14

        You really are. And I know people that have had real problems where, you know, they- they get tremendous anxiety, they're sweating, and they're in- involved in these back and forths with people all day and they can't sleep.

    25. ALAlan Levinovitz51:25

        Yeah, there's that... Well, there's that, there's the classic cartoon, right, where it says, uh, like, "Honey, I can't come to bed. Someone's wrong on the internet." (laughs)

    26. JRJoe Rogan51:31

        (laughs)

    27. ALAlan Levinovitz51:31

        Right? (laughs) And I was just like, "That's perfect." I've had that, right?

    28. JRJoe Rogan51:34

        Yeah.

    29. ALAlan Levinovitz51:34

        I'm like, my wife's like n- like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Uh, hold on one second, like, if I just tweet one more time, this person's gonna have a, you know, conversion experience." (laughs)

    30. JRJoe Rogan51:41

        I think what you're... When... With- with wokeness, um, and th- this is, uh, something that James Lindsay had pointed out and, uh, Douglas Murray has a, a great book about it in- in m- in a lot of the areas that we're talking about, um, what's going on is a religion. I mean, it really is. I- it's got all of the elements of a religion. You can get cast out. You, you can get attacked for noncompliance. Uh, it demands this very rigid ideology that you can't stray from and it keeps getting more and more rigid as time goes on. Things that were acceptable just a few years ago can now get you... You can get canceled, you can get fired, you can lose your job. I mean, we're getting to this real... Like, you can lose your job and be attacked for saying all lives matter, which seems insane just at a, at a... In... Just in terms of... I mean, it's understandable that people... What... Where- where people are going from that this is like, no, you're- you're in deniance, you're in d- denial of this movement, but just the term all lives matter should be universally acceptable, but it's not anymore.
11. 1:04:04 – 1:07:09

    Evolutionary adaptedness, reading as ‘unnatural,’ and the case for uncertainty

    1. ALAlan Levinovitz1:04:04

       But, so but here's the thing, right? Again, and this goes back to my changing my mind, is that there is some way in which you can use what's natural as a kind of criteria, um, that there, there's actually this idea called the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, the EEA. And what this says is basically, you know, there's a vague time, uh, that, that sort of determines how humans evolved, right? So there are certain things that humans have evolved for, and they evolve for those things in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. And so then when we depart from that environment, when we put vending machines in places, or when we give people books to read, one hypothesis you can have is that maybe that will have negative consequences for us because we're not adapted for it, right? So that, that's a fine hypothesis-generating heuristic, right? But what people do instead is they decide beforehand that it's necessarily bad. If it wasn't in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, if God ... you know, if it, if it wasn't there in the Garden of Eden, then it must be bad.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:05:04

       Right.

    3. ALAlan Levinovitz1:05:05

       Um, and that's, and that's ... So, so it's not, it's not necessarily bad to say, "Well, hey, is this, is this thing ... is it natural?" Like, is it, is it something that we are evolved to deal with? But that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, if it's not natural, that it's bad. It just means maybe that we need a way to deal with it. I mean, a good example is reading, reading things. I don't know ... You don't have glasses on. I don't know if you have contact lenses. Um, but-

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:05:28

       No, but I need glasses to read. (laughs)

    5. ALAlan Levinovitz1:05:30

       (laughs) Yeah. So, like, reading is not natural.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:05:32

       Right. Yeah, good point.

    7. ALAlan Levinovitz1:05:33

       That's just not a natural thing, and there's, there's a bad result, right-

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:05:35

       Yeah.

    9. ALAlan Levinovitz1:05:35

       ... which is that we have worse vision-

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:05:36

        Yeah.

    11. ALAlan Levinovitz1:05:36

        ... because we're squinting at things. But we fixed it. We came up with glasses, and we're good. Now ... So that's it. So that's great. Now we get reading, which is awesome, you know, (laughs) and, like, looking at small things all the time. And we fixed it with glasses, so that's terrific. Now, if the result had been that, like, our eyeballs melted, and we couldn't figure out how to solve that problem-

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:05:55

        Reading would be bad.

    13. ALAlan Levinovitz1:05:56

        ... reading would be bad.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:05:57

        Right. Knowledge would be bad. It'd be the devil's work-

    15. ALAlan Levinovitz1:05:59

        (laughs)

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:05:59

        ... because it kills your eyeballs 'cause God doesn't want you to know anything-

    17. ALAlan Levinovitz1:06:02

        'Cause God ... Right.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:06:02

        ... more than what he put in your head.

    19. ALAlan Levinovitz1:06:03

        And that's exactly what people would say though.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:06:05

        Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    21. ALAlan Levinovitz1:06:05

        They'd be like, "If reading melted your eyeballs ..." People would be like, "Well, of course it does. It's unnatural."

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:06:11

        Well, th- wasn't that the argument that they used during the time of Martin Luther to keep people from reading his phonetic interpretation of the Bible?

    23. ALAlan Levinovitz1:06:19

        The anti-reading thing goes back to Socrates, which actually sounds a little bit like some of the stuff you were saying about dialogue where he says, "If you have ..." eh, and I'm paraphrasing, not my area of expertise. Um, "If you have the written word, this is gonna be a disaster because one of the things that happens with the written word is it can't respond to the interlocutor."

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:06:38

        Mm.

    25. ALAlan Levinovitz1:06:38

        This is what he says. So when you write things down instead of saying them, people are gonna take that and interpret it for themselves. It's gonna be terrible, you know. Of course, there's this paradox 'cause you're reading it. (laughs)

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:06:47

        But it's good, and it, and it can be bad. I mean, that's really what it is.

    27. ALAlan Levinovitz1:06:51

        That's-

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:06:51

        But it is, it, it is also incredibly valuable to, for just for storing information, just for distributing information. It's unprecedented. It's changed the world. But it also can be bad-

    29. ALAlan Levinovitz1:07:04

        It-

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:07:04

        ... because it-
12. 1:07:09 – 1:16:11

    Changing your mind, ego, and a wallet-sized reminder of moral blindness

    1. ALAlan Levinovitz1:07:09

       Right. That's exactly it, and that's ... You know, I think that-I, I think the reflexiveness of wanting... So, I'm sort of... I think I'm slowly turning into an evangelical agnostic. I think this is what I am. I... Because, like, I... The, the, the baseline, the baseline should be uncertainty, I think.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:07:26

       Yeah.

    3. ALAlan Levinovitz1:07:26

       I think the world is an uncertain and mysterious place, and that's a wonderful thing, right?

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:07:30

       I couldn't agree more.

    5. ALAlan Levinovitz1:07:31

       Wonder- wonder is a word that actually has built into it both loving the world, right? Like, this is wonderful. But it also means you don't know. I wonder, right?

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:07:39

       Yeah.

    7. ALAlan Levinovitz1:07:39

       There's a way in which wonder is tied to doubt and uncertainty. And that, I wish that were our default position. Global uncertainty. "I don't know what's going on. This is a mysterious place. I wanna figure it out." And then local certainties, right? You have a decision you need to make at a given time and you're like, "You know what? Given what I know, looks like the right thing to do here, or the right thing to believe here, is this." But that certainty shouldn't be the default. It should be-

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:08:06

       Yes.

    9. ALAlan Levinovitz1:08:06

       ... local certainty, global uncertainty.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:08:07

        Well, there's things you're certain of and there's things that you aren't certain of, and it's very important to be clear on the difference between those and not attach yourself to whether or not you're, you're correct or incorrect. Because human beings with, with language and with dialogue, we, we're playing a game. Like, if you and I were in dispute about something, and even if you were correct, if my ego got involved, I would wanna be correct. So, I would try to manipulate my version of reality in order to trounce you. A- and people do that.

    11. ALAlan Levinovitz1:08:40

        Absolutely.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:08:41

        It's a horrible thing to do and I... It's, it's a message that I try to get out as much as possible. You are not your ideas and you cannot be married to them. You have t-... If you're wrong, if something's... You're like, "Oh, I thought it was this," I am very quick to say that. And it's, uh, it's something that I've developed. It's something that I have, uh, I've, I've worked very hard to cultivate, to not be attached to any idea that I have or that I espouse. And then if I'm incorrect, to say very, uh, very quickly, as soon as I find out, "I'm incorrect about this. Let me correct this."

    13. ALAlan Levinovitz1:09:14

        And how... It's, it's so messed up that with politicians, for example, people accuse a politician of flip-flopping.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:09:19

        Yeah.

    15. ALAlan Levinovitz1:09:19

        As if it's... It's like, no. You don't wanna lock... Actually, if there's someone who has the, sort of, wherewithal to change their mind-

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:09:26

        Yeah.

    17. ALAlan Levinovitz1:09:26

        ... why would we shame them for saying, "Whoa. You know, it's-"

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:09:29

        Well, it's obvious, because-

    19. ALAlan Levinovitz1:09:30

        "... I, uh, I was wrong."

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:09:30

        ... politics are a game. It's a game of victory. I mean, it's a... It's not just a game, it's a game with time periods, right? You have, you have til November. You have X amount of weeks. You have... Your primaries are coming up. These, these... It's... It really is a game so there's very little room for nuance. You have a time period. I mean, buzzers up-

    21. ALAlan Levinovitz1:09:50

        Right.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:09:50

        ... you missed the three-point. Y- the game's over. And it doesn't matter who's right or who's wrong, it's about winning.

Episode duration: 3:21:02