Joe Rogan Experience #1537 - Lex Fridman

Lex Fridman 0:02 (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience. (rock music)

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Hello, Rex.

Lex Fridman 0:13 Hey, Joe.

Joe Rogan 0:14 Before we get started-

Lex Fridman 0:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:15 ... how about that Calder Wall guy that I just played for you? How crazy is it that he was 21 when he made that song?

Lex Fridman 0:21 Is he close to 21 right now?

Joe Rogan 0:22 He's 25 now.

Lex Fridman 0:23 Yeah. He sounds like Johnny c- like later Johnny Cash.

Joe Rogan 0:26 Like Johnny Cash when he did Hurt.

Lex Fridman 0:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:29 You know?

Lex Fridman 0:29 Some, like a pain.

Joe Rogan 0:30 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 0:31 A depth, a richness to his voice. So badass.

Joe Rogan 0:34 It's weird. Like how do you, how do you get that at 21?

Lex Fridman 0:38 I d- he (laughs) I went to see him at like 14. He probably developed early, probably went through some shit in his life.

Joe Rogan 0:46 Oh, he-

Lex Fridman 0:46 There's gotta be some whiskey in that story somewhere.

Joe Rogan 0:48 Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 0:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:50 He had to go through some real shit to have that, that voice and that, that just the m- just the, the sensibility, just the mindset of those songs. You know, that Kate McKinnon song, like Jesus Christ. You have to listen to the whole song. It's crazy. And it's-

Lex Fridman 1:06 It's ... Yeah, one of the things I hope like with your Spotify thing is that, uh, you'll be able to play songs when you-

Joe Rogan 1:13 We want to, but it's weird. It's like they, they've left open ... They're, they're trying to figure it out, right? All this stuff is basically there's a lot of work in progress. They're trying to figure it out.

Lex Fridman 1:23 Listen, my dream ... Here, Spotify, if you're listening, my dream as a, as a, as a little boy-

Joe Rogan 1:28 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:28 ... is to play Stevie Ray Vaughan or Jimi Hendrix on the Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 1:33 Oh, I would love that.

Lex Fridman 1:33 And not, not be like nervous about it being like taken down or something-

Joe Rogan 1:38 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:38 ... because, because I don't have the rights for, to cover the song or whatever.

Joe Rogan 1:43 I wonder how that works for the artist. Well, for someone like Stevie Ray Vaughan or Jimi Hendrix, they're both dead, so it would be the estate of the artist would ... Which oftentimes I believe probably makes it more slippery.

Lex Fridman 1:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:53 Because then you're dealing with people that, you know, kind of own it as, uh, a commodity rather than the actual artist itself.

Lex Fridman 2:00 But there's a difference between like the Beatles and then Stevie Ray Vaughan 'cause w- whoever owns Stevie Ray Vaughan you know is like a bad like mother f-er.

Joe Rogan 2:09 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 2:09 Like they ... (laughs) You know they're not gonna ... It's not like corporate.

Joe Rogan 2:12 You would hope so-

Lex Fridman 2:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:13 ... but you never know, man. I mean, he might have had a ex-wife who sold it or-

Lex Fridman 2:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:17 ... who, who, who knows? You know?

Lex Fridman 2:19 Anyway. Spotify, please make it happen.

Joe Rogan 2:21 I almost had the opportunity to drive Stevie Ray Vaughan once when I was driving limos.

Lex Fridman 2:24 Oh, wow.

Joe Rogan 2:25 Yeah, man, but he wouldn't take limos. He, he would always take a cab. So they'd have a limo and the limo would pick up everybody else, like all the other band members, all the other people that ... They would get in the limo and Stevie Ray Vaughan would get in a cab 'cause he's that motherfucker.

Lex Fridman 2:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:41 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 2:41 Just for the first time actually ... (laughs) Yeah, he is. He's real. He, he's a-

Joe Rogan 2:45 He was real.

Lex Fridman 2:45 ... he's a genuine human being. I, I just for the first time listened to like an interview with him. Like I've never heard Jimi Hendrix really talk or Stevie Ray Vaughan talk before this interview, and he was really drunk in the interview. And then, uh, I realized that there was a, there was a man behind the music.

Joe Rogan 3:03 Mm. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 3:03 There was a, there was some pain. There's some drinking and just, just, I don't know, demons that he was running from.

Joe Rogan 3:11 (sighs) I think there's like a, a, a disconnect that you almost have to have from the normal mind to create that kind of sound.

Lex Fridman 3:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:19 The- there's s- ... Like, like when you go to, um ... There's some, some Hendrix songs, like Voodoo Child is a great one, right? Uh, the, just the, the sound in that guitar is so ... He's so out there. He's so wild. You know, there's like a famous, uh, story where Eric Clapton first saw Stevie Ray Vaughan play and he was like, "What in the fuck am I doing?"

Lex Fridman 3:44 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:44 (laughs) Can you imagine (laughs) how good Eric Clapton is seeing, uh ... Did I say Stevie Ray Vaughan or J- Jimi Hendrix?

Lex Fridman 3:50 Jimi Hendrix.

Joe Rogan 3:50 I meant Jimi Hendrix. I meant Jimi Hendrix.

Lex Fridman 3:51 No, you said Jimi Hendrix.

Joe Rogan 3:52 Oh, did I? Okay.

Lex Fridman 3:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:53 But that, uh, Eric Clapton went and saw Jimi Hendrix play live and was ... You know, he was such a talent that everybody else was like, "What are we doing?" Like, "We ...

Lex Fridman 4:05 Yeah. The cool thing is, um, I mean, I don't know if you know, but they uh ... Eric Clapton is ... And Jimi Hendrix both play, um, a Fender Strat, so it's the same guitar.

Joe Rogan 4:13 Mm.

Lex Fridman 4:13 So I can imagine ... And then Eric Clapton has this like warm, smooth tone, and I could just imagine Eric Clapton singing like, "How the fuck did he get that sound-"

Joe Rogan 4:23 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 4:23 "... out of that thing? (laughs) How did you pull that off?"

Joe Rogan 4:26 Well, he ... Still Eric Clapton has some amazing-

Lex Fridman 4:29 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:29 ... fucking songs and amazing sound. I mean-

Lex Fridman 4:32 What's that-

Joe Rogan 4:32 ... Layla?

Lex Fridman 4:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:33 That song Layla?

Lex Fridman 4:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:34 Goddamn, is that a good song.

Lex Fridman 4:35 Yeah. Uh, both acoustic and electric. He has an acoustic ver-

Joe Rogan 4:39 Oh, really?

Lex Fridman 4:40 There was ... On ... MTV used to do this thing-

Joe Rogan 4:42 Unplugged?

Lex Fridman 4:42 Unplugged.

Joe Rogan 4:43 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 4:43 So he played like Tears in Heaven, which is a-

Joe Rogan 4:46 (smacks lips) Oh, wow.

Lex Fridman 4:46 ... heartbreaking when he, uh-

Joe Rogan 4:48 Lost his son, right?

Lex Fridman 4:49 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:49 That's ... His son fell off of a balcony.

Lex Fridman 4:52 Yeah. There's so much pain in that song.

Joe Rogan 4:54 Oof. (sniffs)

Lex Fridman 4:54 And then there's the badass songs, the one ... What, what is it? The ... Do, do, do. Whatever-

Joe Rogan 4:59 Cocaine.

Lex Fridman 4:59 (laughs) Cocaine.

Joe Rogan 5:00 (sings) Yeah, I mean, the thing about his music versus Hendrix is ... It was brilliant. I mean, he ... Eric Clapton is ... Uh, I, I shouldn't say was 'cause he's still alive, is a brilliant musician. Brilliant. But th- the sound falls in line, meaning it, it, it all seems brilliant and purposeful and uniform and the songs are amazing, but it falls in line. Whereas, you know ... (sings)

Lex Fridman 5:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:33 (sings) The shit that Hendrix would do (sings)

Lex Fridman 5:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:40 He was out there.

Lex Fridman 5:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:42 It was like this, th- this new thing, man. It was just ... He was gone, and he was fucking in his 20s.

Lex Fridman 5:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:48 He died, he was 27 years old, which is so crazy.

Lex Fridman 5:51 And technique-wise ... I mean, I know you don't play guitar, but technique-wise, he just didn't follow any conventions. He was just like ... He had this like thumb, he put it over the top-... and just, like, it was messy. And the way he played rhythm wasn't how anyone played rhythm. It wasn't, like, like, three chords. It was three chords, but every time he played those chords, they're always different. They, they always messed with it. He always, like, threw in a little chaos.

Joe Rogan 6:15 Mm.

Lex Fridman 6:15 And there are songs like Machine Gun. I don't-

Joe Rogan 6:16 Yes.

Lex Fridman 6:17 ... know that one?

Joe Rogan 6:17 Yes, I love that song.

Lex Fridman 6:19 (laughs) Just, like, where the ... (laughs) Where did that come from?

Joe Rogan 6:22 There's so many best songs there. Like, where ... Like, s- If Six Was Nine, like, that-

Lex Fridman 6:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:26 ... that song. Like, what is that? What is that? Like-

Lex Fridman 6:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:28 ... he just ... It's ... A lot of it is drugs. That's, that's the truth.

Lex Fridman 6:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:33 I mean, you know-

Lex Fridman 6:35 That's the sad truth.

Joe Rogan 6:36 K- Yes and no. I mean, it's, it's sad in that he's not here anymore.

Lex Fridman 6:44 W-

Joe Rogan 6:45 But it's not sad in that what he accomplished in his 27 years on this planet still, to this day, haunts guitarists.

Lex Fridman 6:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:56 Like, if you ask professional guitar ... There was a, a m- a million brilliant guitarists. I mean, there's so many, you know. Some people are big fans of Eddie Van Halen. I mean, I think, to this day, that Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of Voodoo Child is ... It's, it's ... You know, you always have to give the best credit to the original, which is Jimi. But Stevie Ray Vaughan's Voodoo Child is fucking amazing.

Lex Fridman 7:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:18 And it's him.

Lex Fridman 7:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:19 It's clearly him. Yeah, look at this. Playing it with his tongue.

Lex Fridman 7:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:23 I mean, I've to- said it mil- a million times, that that's ... I named this podcast ... I stole the name from Jimi Hendrix.

Lex Fridman 7:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:29 The Joe Rogan Experience came from The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Lex Fridman 7:32 Yeah, nothing, nothing like him.

Joe Rogan 7:34 I just always been a- like, o- oddly ch- attracted to him, you know. Uh, that's a weird word to use, but that's what it is, like, attracted to his music and attract- like, him ... There's something about him that just always resonated with me, you know, and, um, the old studio, I had the, the Hendrix mugshot up, and it's just-

Lex Fridman 7:51 Well, he also represents the '60s, like-

Joe Rogan 7:53 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 7:54 ... the ... And also this psychedelic-

Joe Rogan 7:56 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 7:57 ... thing, experience. Like, not, not in this, like, cheesy way, but, like, in a really f- out there way.

Joe Rogan 8:05 For r- yeah, genuine.

Lex Fridman 8:06 Genuine, yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:07 Yeah, authentic. I-

Lex Fridman 8:08 I mean, is ... The f- the f- the fun tension ... 'Cause you're, you're a health guy. You talk about, like, how to be healthy, how to almost, like, have a balance, but then at the same time, you say that you celebrate the self-destruction that led to the genius of Jimi Hendrix.

Joe Rogan 8:26 It's not that I celebrate the self-destruction. The self-destruction is an u- an unfortunate aspect of that path. Right? And there's a lot of, uh, weirdness to Jimi Hendrix's death. I don't know if you know. Like, he had a, a, a gangster manager who apparently had him kidnapped just so that he could rescue him and convince Jimi that, you know, he was his savior. There's a, a book that was written on it where that, uh, accuses this manager of killing Jimi Hendrix and saying that, uh, they also threw his girlfriend off a roof when she did either jump off a roof or was thrown off a roof and died shortly afterwards 'cause she knew too much or whatever. Uh, who the fuck knows? It was one of, uh, Hendrix's bodyguards or someone who worked for the manager that wrote the story. But the thing about that path, the path of drugs and destruction, it's been, um ... It's been a path of many of my idols, whether it's, uh, Kinison or, uh, Richard Pryor, or even Hicks. You know, Hicks died from cancer, but a lot of that w- is probably attributable to him y- chain smoking and just a, a lot of drugs and stuff when he was younger, and just destroyed his life, and, and, and then it's also, like, pancreatic cancer is a g- a genetic thing as well. You never really know what's causing pancreatic cancer, but ...

Lex Fridman 9:47 Well, the ... Your conversation with Mike Tyson actually symbolizes this in a really interesting way for me, because here you have, like, one of the greatest fighters ever who somehow found inner peace through the whole, like, w-

Joe Rogan 10:02 Marijuana, yeah.

Lex Fridman 10:03 marijuana thing. But just the way he was behaving just was positivity and just this good vibes putting them out there. And yet, he now, for at least brief moment in his life, rediscovered the darkness.

Joe Rogan 10:15 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 10:16 Like, re- ... I was li- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:18 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 10:18 I was watching your podcast with him, and the moment when you said ... Like, you were, like, having another level chat. He just took you, like, a few levels up by saying, like, that, you know, when he thinks about hurting people, s- sometimes it's like-

Joe Rogan 10:32 It's orgasmic.

Lex Fridman 10:33 It's orgasmic.

Joe Rogan 10:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 10:34 And you- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:35 Heh.

Lex Fridman 10:35 You try to laugh it off, but there's, like, memes of ...

Joe Rogan 10:38 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 10:38 He's, he's like, "No, I'm serious." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:40 Well, I mean, I, I was laughing. I mean, I wasn't really trying to laugh it off. I was laughing at the, the madness of it.

Lex Fridman 10:46 What did that make you f- By the way, Donald Trump retweeted th- that clip of that. I don't know what to make-

Joe Rogan 10:50 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 10:51 ... the, the ... Politically, I don't know what the context of that ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:55 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 10:55 (laughs) But he retweeted Mike Tyson-

Joe Rogan 10:56 He-

Lex Fridman 10:56 ... saying it was, uh, erotic.

Joe Rogan 10:59 Trump's like an old comedian who just happens to be president. I mean-

Lex Fridman 11:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:03 Really. I mean, eh, the, the same kind of behavior that a comedian has. The timing, like his timing, like when ... With th- the thing about Hillary Clinton, "You'd be in jail."

Lex Fridman 11:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:12 Remember that?

Lex Fridman 11:13 No.

Joe Rogan 11:13 The timing of that when, when they were doing a debate, and she, she said something-

Lex Fridman 11:17 Oh, oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:17 ... about, uh, him being-

Lex Fridman 11:19 It's, it's painful to ... I, I went back and watched those debates. It's painful to watch. It makes me ... As somebody who wants to see, uh, truth and positivity win out in the world-

Joe Rogan 11:30 Mm.

Lex Fridman 11:31 ... it just pains me to think about the debates between Biden and Trump.

Joe Rogan 11:36 T- The ... I don't think they're gonna happen.

Lex Fridman 11:38 You don't think so?

Joe Rogan 11:39 No. I don't ... I don't ... I think ... I, I, I think, uh, the people in the Democratic Party are too wise. I think it's possible that Kamala Harris might debate Pence. I think that's probably ... And I, I think she'll do really well against Pence. Pence is a, a bit robotic and careful and, you know, and, and evangelical and, you know-

Lex Fridman 11:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:58 ... is super Christian. I think-

Lex Fridman 12:00 And she-

Joe Rogan 12:00 ... she'll, she'll probably do very well in those debates, you know, to especially ... Well, there's no audience. See, that's the thing, man.... tho- those debates, a lot of it was, like, getting them zingers in. (hands clapping)

12:10 Yeah. I think Trump needs an audience.

Narrator 12:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:12 Like a comedian, you said, he, he, I think he needs the-

12:15 It would certainly help.

12:16 ... crowd to work off, o- th- ruh- you know.

12:19 Did you just-

12:19 To work off of. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:20 Di- how do you say Donald Trump Junior's girlfriend's name? Kimberly... How do you say it?

Narrator 12:26 Like, Guilfoyle, I think. Or-

Joe Rogan 12:27 Is that Guilfoyle?

Narrator 12:28 I don't, I'm, I'm, I'm guessing. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 12:29 The way it's written is, like, why are we pretending that this is a, this is, like, the r- correct use of these letters? Because it's (laughs) -

12:36 (laughs)

12:36 ... you shouldn't put all those letters together like that. Like, fix that. Um, but there's a, a great video that someone put together, and I, I retweeted it, or reposted it, of her screaming this message to an empty room, and then there's a beaver on the top of a mountain.

12:55 (laughs) Yeah, yeah. I saw it.

12:57 Right (laughs) .

Narrator 13:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:00 Dude (laughs) , this is, this is the thing that happens.

13:06 The internet is amazing.

13:07 The internet's the best. It's undefeated.

13:08 (laughs)

13:09 There's a, there's a thing about doing stuff in, like, audiences, that, like, here it is (laughs) . Play this.

Narrator 13:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:15 Play this (laughs) 'cause it's so good.

Narrator 13:17 Your destiny. You are capable.

13:21 Oh, this isn't the right one.

13:22 You are-

Joe Rogan 13:22 Oh, it's still just re- eh, find it on my Instagram. It's on my Instagram.

Narrator 13:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:29 (laughs) Uh, uh, but it's so funny because it's like, they're, people are doing standup these days, um, on Zoom.

13:37 Yeah.

13:38 And it's bad. Like, really good comics look terrible doing standup to no audience.

13:43 No audience.

13:43 Yeah, it's just not how comedy's supposed to be. They're, let's, it's like, it, i- i- i- it's like, you know how you have a battery, and you're charging a battery. You have to put something on the... Here, play it real quick.

13:54 (laughs)

13:55 (laughs) 'Cause it's so good.

Narrator 13:56 Leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty and the American dream, the best is yet to come.

Joe Rogan 14:07 (laughs)

Narrator 14:07 Aah!

Joe Rogan 14:07 (laughs)

Narrator 14:12 (laughs)

14:13 Aah!

Joe Rogan 14:15 (laughs)

14:16 (laughs)

Narrator 14:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:16 There's something about a, a beaver screaming-

Narrator 14:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:20 ... at the top of his life (laughs) on the top of a mountain. Oh.

14:24 It's so perfect.

14:25 Yeah.

14:25 It's so perfect.

Narrator 14:26 (laughs) It's 2020 in a nutshell right there.

Joe Rogan 14:28 It's, but it's so perfect, that beaver by himself-

14:30 (laughs)

14:30 ... on the top of that mountain, just screaming. (laughs)

Narrator 14:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:37 Ah, ah.

14:39 (laughs)

14:39 But-

14:39 Timing is genius.

14:41 It's amazing. It's am- whoever made that, thank you. (clapping)

Narrator 14:44 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:45 (laughs)

14:45 Thank you, whoever you are. Um, but-

14:47 Ah.

14:47 ... you know, there's comics that are doing standup i- in these Zoom things, and it's like, you know how you charge a battery? You have to connect the positive, and then you have to connect the negative. You know, you have to... There's two cables that you have to connect the two of them together. If you only connect one, it doesn't work. Well, that's how it is with standup. You have to have an audience. It's one of those art forms that you, you need to have a, a reaction. The people have to be there. You feed off of them. You, you, you create comedy with them. And in a lot of ways, one of the things that s- that Trump does outside of these speeches and get everybody excited about things, he's doing standup. He tells jokes. He talks shit. He, he, he gets laughs. Like, they were saying, like, there was an interview with one of the, uh, one of the debates. "You've said terrible things about women. You've called women pigs. You've called them this." And then he goes, "Wait, wait, wait, only Rosie O'Donnell."

15:43 Yeah.

15:43 He says this, and the audience goes crazy and laughs.

15:45 Yeah.

15:45 They're told to not respond. They're told to not respond.

15:48 Yeah.

15:48 The audience are told not to laugh.

15:50 They can't help it.

15:51 N- they can't help it. He just nailed it. He fucking nailed it.

15:53 Yeah.

15:53 And it's like a comic.

15:55 Old comic.

15:56 And i- I don't know if he's the same guy as he was back then, just honestly, just being honest, the same way I would talk about a fighter. Like, s- Father Time wins-

16:06 Yeah.

16:07 ... every time.

16:07 If you listen to interviews with Donald Trump maybe from the '90s, he, um, is a different guy.

16:13 Yes.

16:13 He's, he's mu- yeah, like, sharper, I mean, less-

16:16 He was smoother.

16:17 ... I don't wanna be ageist, but-

16:18 Yes.

16:18 ... like, you're sh-

16:19 He's not ageist.

16:20 But-

16:20 It's just reality. I mean, no one gets better when they're 100. It's not like... The guy's 100, and all of a sudden, he runs faster. He talks better. He's re- he's reading more and writing more. He sees better. No, we're dying. We're all-

16:31 Yeah.

16:31 ... dying slowly. Okay? And I don't know what kinda pressure the, being the president is, but I can only imagine. It's almost unmanageable, and he's-

16:41 Yeah.

16:41 ... managed it better than anybody I've ever seen. But the reality is, it's still pressure. You're still, it's still... Father Time wears on you. The w- the w- the wa- the river beats down the rocks and smoothes them out. There's no way around it. It just, it is what it is. So whether or not he's still got that kinda timing, that's a, that's a real question. But if him and Biden get into a, a debate situation, and he hits Biden with a couple of zingers like that, I mean, I, I, I don't, um-

Joe Rogan 17:09 Well, so how do you think Biden might get out of the debates, or-

17:11 He's gonna, he's gonna have to get out of the debates. I mean, if they're smart, if I was a Democratic strategist-

17:16 (laughs)

17:16 ... there's no fucking way I would let him debate.

17:19 Yeah.

17:19 Like, listen, we're winning because it, the only reason why people are winning, the only reason is 'cause they want Trump out of office. You could've... If, if Pete Buttigieg was in the position that Biden was in, it would be, uh, uh, I mean, he would have a much stronger, like, there's so many, m- much sm- stronger response from people. Right? Young person, speaks well. If Tulsi Gabbard-

17:44 Oh.

17:44 ... was in that position, dude, she could be president. I know that the Democrats, for whatever fucking reason, didn't want her to be. But if she got into those, that position, when she was debating, if she was debating with Trump, and people saw her and saw her record-

17:57 Yeah.

17:57 ... saw the fact that she served overseas twice, saw the fact that she's been a congresswoman for six years, saw how well she speaks, how honest she is-

18:03 Yeah, and just the-

18:04 ... she-

18:04 ... integrity and the character that you can see in the way she carries herself.

18:07 100%.

18:07 See, the, one of the big problems is the Democratic nomination process happened before-

Lex Fridman 18:13 ... Coronavirus.

Joe Rogan 18:14 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 18:14 So, like, we were in kind of a lag. The economy was doing well, b- you know, things are going just regular. And so you kind of, the, the boring, generic candidate won out. What we need now is a great, like, inspiring leader.

Joe Rogan 18:27 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 18:27 Not somebody who is ... You know, Joe Biden's strategy currently is to just sit back and don't say anything and let T- Trump destroy himself. That's the whole-

Joe Rogan 18:36 Well, every time he says something, he jumbles his words up and he fucks things up and he forgets where he is, and it's like ... You know, he's had multiple brain surgeries. More than-

Lex Fridman 18:46 I didn't know that.

Joe Rogan 18:46 Yeah. Oh. I- uh, yeah, I can play you-

Lex Fridman 18:49 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:49 ... some shit. I mean, like, it's kinda crazy. Hey, Jamie, have I ever played you this one? I'm gonna, I'm gonna send this to you, Jamie. But (clears throat) the ... Look-

Lex Fridman 18:58 But the contrast with, like, Andrew Yang, I, I don't know if you listen to Andrew Yang these days, but he's f- ... Andrew's f- like, teeming with ideas-

Joe Rogan 19:06 Yes.

Lex Fridman 19:06 ... with energy, with excitement, with a passion of different ways and things w- we can do. Ev- you know, f- that's what we need now, is a, an inspiring, uh, leader that unites. You know, uh, Brett Weinstein is on his, uh, big, as he talked about on your podcast, like, uniting, having basically a center left and a center right candidate just uniting the nation.

Joe Rogan 19:28 (Sound effect) Yeah, I'm sending this to you right now, Jamie. Sorry.

Lex Fridman 19:32 Uh-oh.

Joe Rogan 19:32 (clears throat)

Lex Fridman 19:32 But yeah, so the-

Joe Rogan 19:34 I love Andrew Yang.

Lex Fridman 19:34 ... uniting the nation versus dividing.

Joe Rogan 19:36 I think he's a ... Andrew's a, a really interesting guy. Like, uh, he's, he's not w- the standard, you know, like, what y- what y- what do you, what you're looking for from, uh, a guy who's running for president. He's, uh, one of the biggest things he's known for is universal basic income. He's basically saying, "Hey, guys, look, automation is coming and there's gonna be a lot of people out of work." And how bright does he look now that we have seen that, not automation, but the pandemic took out so many of these jobs? And we did need universal basic income. It really was important. And that same sort of a situation could happen with, uh, with, with that next. I mean, from what we're dealing with now to what we could be dealing with, with another pandemic plus automation, you're gonna see a lot of people that are out of work. And it-

Lex Fridman 20:22 But-

Joe Rogan 20:22 It be- it ca- went from a place of people wanting economic prosperity to, "Hey, let's just make sure that people don't lose their houses, let's t- make sure that people can eat, let's make sure that people have a roof over their head." And that's, that's really where we were in the middle of the pandemic.

Lex Fridman 20:37 But the big thing, uh, wh- whether you agree on, like, automation, universal basic income or not, it doesn't matter. The point is, besides UBI, he's a source of a giant number of ideas. And he presents them in a way, not saying Republicans are wrong and Democrats are right, but saying, "Let's together figure out which of these ideas are right." He-

Joe Rogan 20:56 Yes.

Lex Fridman 20:56 He basically has an idea for everything. The, the purple belt jiu-jitsu for co-

Joe Rogan 21:00 Yes. Really.

Lex Fridman 21:00 Like, that i- that's, that's even more brilliant than UBI now in this divisive time of policing.

Joe Rogan 21:05 Yes. Right.

Lex Fridman 21:06 Have every cop get a purple belt. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:08 Yeah, at least a purple belt.

Lex Fridman 21:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:10 Yeah. From l- a legit Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor.

Lex Fridman 21:12 Maybe blue belt, second stripe, like-

Joe Rogan 21:15 (laughs) Yeah.

Lex Fridman 21:15 ... like, learn a triangle.

Joe Rogan 21:17 (clears throat) Yeah, well, know how to defend yourself. I mean, there's so many ridiculous videos I was watching where there's a, a, a, a, an account I follow on Instagram called Police Posts and it's basically a police-oriented, uh, Instagram page. You know, it's like, four cops, uh, educating cops and, and talking about situations. And they show a lot of, like, situations where cops, uh, overestimate their ability to, to handle things physically and they get fucked up. And one of them today was this guy gets rolled over and beaten up and just doesn't know what he's doing.

Lex Fridman 21:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:47 And, you know, and that wouldn't happen if it, you were talking about someone that's a purple belt.

Lex Fridman 21:51 I, I heard ... I don't know if this is true, but I heard in some places like New York, uh, rear naked chokes are-

Joe Rogan 21:58 They're illegal, yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 21:59 ... legal now.

Joe Rogan 22:01 (coughs)

Lex Fridman 22:01 Which is like-

Joe Rogan 22:02 Ridiculous.

Lex Fridman 22:02 ... which, whi- which we should expand the jiu-jitsu, uh, training to the people in government too, because-

Joe Rogan 22:08 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 22:08 ... it doesn't make any sense. It's one of the most safe ways to pacify somebody.

Joe Rogan 22:14 Well, I think a lot of it had to do with the Eric Garner situation, right? Where that guy got ... But the, the thing about the Eric Garner situation is they shoulda never fucked with that guy and they shoulda never, they shoulda never manhandled him in the first place. Forget about choking him, they should've left him alone.

Lex Fridman 22:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:29 All the guy was doing is hanging out in the corner selling loose cigarettes. Now, (clears throat) c- oh, I have a cough button. Hold on, let me try it. (coughs)

Lex Fridman 22:38 Did it work-

Joe Rogan 22:38 Better.

Lex Fridman 22:38 ... Jamie?

Joe Rogan 22:39 Yeah. Oh, the other mic's picked it up.

22:40 Sorry, but the other mic's picked it up.

Lex Fridman 22:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:42 But the thing is-

Lex Fridman 22:43 We should, we should press it, like, in unison, yeah. Here, I'll try it.

Joe Rogan 22:45 Uh, contrast this idea that they were going after this guy for loose cigarettes based on what happened after the George Floyd protests where people were smashing windows and stealing things out of stores and the cops were just standing there. Right?

Lex Fridman 22:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 22:59 Because shit got so crazy that they let people just loot and smash windows and steal things. Meanwhile, they killed a guy who was just selling loose cigarettes.

23:07 Yeah.

23:08 All he was doing is standing there. He pre- presented no threat. He was just trying to make a couple bucks selling cigarettes and they grabbed him, threw him to the ground, and were choking him. Um, I think that and public perception.

Lex Fridman 23:20 So what's the solution to that? How do you get tha- those cops out, those humans out?

Joe Rogan 23:25 I think you need way better training and you need a lot of training. And Jocko Willink talked about it and he had a great position. He thinks that they should be spending 20% of their time training. And this idea of defunding the cops, he goes, "No, you need more funding. You need more funding and more training, and you need to get rid of the ones that suck and you need a really stringent, uh, process of elimination." The same way they have in the SEALs, same way they have in the Rangers. You get rid of the people with weak character. And there's a, a lot of people with weak character that wind up being police officers. And those are the ones that you're seeing. But there's also a lot of people with strong character that do an amazing job and no one cares about that. You don't get a lot of those because what we're seeing is a m- mo- the videos that go viral are almost always bad. There's one really good video from the, uh, the beginning of the George Floyd protests where this one cop in Flint-... gets together and says to these, this group of people that's protesting, "We're with you. We will march with you. Like, we're not in opposition. We're in this community and, and, you know, and I'm, I'm here to, I'm here to be your friend. I'm here to help out, and that, that's what we're here doing as police officers." And they hug this guy, and they're all hugging each other, and then they walk together. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful ... I mean, it brings a tear to your eye. Um, that's, that's what we want, right? We want people that are police officers that are ... That, that have, like, strong character, someone who's, like, an exceptional human being. I think that's who you have to be to, to have that job.

Lex Fridman 24:46 And defunding the police is not a solution to that-

Joe Rogan 24:49 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:49 ... in any kind of way.

Joe Rogan 24:51 No.

Lex Fridman 24:51 I mean, this is what I think most people probably don't realize is, um, yeah, it takes an exceptional human being to, uh, to be a police officer in a sense that you have to be ... Especially in these times, you have to be patient because basically a large percentage of the population is at, at best skeptical, at, at worst hate you. And-

Joe Rogan 25:11 Especially now.

Lex Fridman 25:12 Es- yeah, especially now. And d- during all that, you have to still maintain calm. You have to, uh, establish control. You have to help people. You have to serve the community, all those things. It takes an exceptional man or woman to do that. That, and it's depressing to think because the exceptional humans in our society, who would want to join the police force now?

Joe Rogan 25:35 Well, I, (clears throat) I talked about this with Edward Snowden, um, recently. And one of the things that we said was that what, what really needs to be done is we need to do something at the root cause of it. What, like, why are there still these deeply impoverished communities in this country that haven't changed-

Lex Fridman 25:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:52 ... since the '60s? And there's been no work done to try to improve them, or whatever work has been done has been ineffective. They're still crime-ridden. They're still gang-ridden. They're, they're still filled with violence. Like, that's, that's why there's so much crime. There's so much crime because there's, there's so many communities that it's just, like, deeply entrenched in what they are, whether it's South Side of Chicago or parts of Detroit. I mean, to, if you wanna lower crime, you have to increase economic opportunity. You have to increase education. You have to make people feel like they're in a safer environment. You have to do something to, to make these neighborhoods better. Now, I'm a moron. I'm not the person to figure that out. I don't know how to, how you make a neighborhood better. But it, it's not impossible. And when you look at the amount of money that they spent on stimulus to try to, uh, help these businesses during the pandemic that were suffering, like, why couldn't they do the exact same thing in the past to these cities? Why couldn't they treat that like a pandemic, a pandemic of violence and crime that needs to be remedied?

Lex Fridman 26:54 Yeah, this whole ... The sad thing about, uh, the way the stimulus is being distributed, at least my worry is that it creates a greater gap in wealth, wealth disparity, the, uh, versus a lesser one. So, all the problems you're mentioning, it's only going to make them worse.

Joe Rogan 27:11 Mm.

Lex Fridman 27:11 So people who are not well off are gonna become worse.

Joe Rogan 27:15 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 27:15 Uh, the opportunity for jobs is gonna be lesser.

Joe Rogan 27:18 (clears throat)

Lex Fridman 27:19 The opportunities for people who are gonna lose their businesses, that means their dreams are broken, essentially. And the people who worked for the people who ran the businesses are gonna not have a job. And all of that creates a greater disparity, uh, within those communities, uh, greater desperation, and then desperation, I've been reading the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Joe Rogan 27:43 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 27:43 Great book, I recommend it highly. It talks about the '30s and the rise of Hitler in Germany. And the pain, both economic and psychological, turns into this, like, dark energy that can be, uh, w- combined with a charismatic leader to go into a direction of hatred versus love and progress. And that's terrifying. I don't think we have a competent charismatic leader that would do that, uh, in a positive or negative direction. But I do hope a leader arises that, that uses that energy of pain, um, that ... To-

Joe Rogan 28:25 In a positive way.

Lex Fridman 28:25 ... to do something good.

Joe Rogan 28:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:26 In a positive way.

Joe Rogan 28:27 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:27 And we need that. Like, I think, I think people don't realize how much pain there is being experienced right now. Like, most people in real pain don't have a podcast, don't have a voice.

Joe Rogan 28:38 Mm. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:39 And, like, they don't have a job. And everyone's kinda in this holding position. But the reality is, like, once the eco- economy opens up slowly and slowly, there's gonna be ... That, the, the remnants of the pain experience in this year is gonna be there. The people who have lost their savings, people who have lost their dreams, that materializes itself just like it did in Germany in, in bitterness and hatred. And that can create revolutions. That can create f- f-

Joe Rogan 29:10 (clears throat)

Lex Fridman 29:12 ... unstoppable destructive forces, especially when combined with an ideologue. That's terrifying to me. Uh, people should definitely study ... There, there's this kinda this discussion of Hitler recently, you know, that everyone says either Obama is Hitler or Trump is Hitler. It's kinda-

Joe Rogan 29:29 Who, who said Obama's Hitler?

Lex Fridman 29:31 Uh, when, well, when Obama was president. That was, uh-

Joe Rogan 29:33 Really?

Lex Fridman 29:34 Yeah. Uh, th- because, uh ... (laughs) I mean- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 29:38 What the fuck?

Lex Fridman 29:38 Uh, peop- this is what people do. I mean, uh, you know, the, using the military-industrial complex to control the population, that kind of idea.

Joe Rogan 29:46 (clears throat)

Lex Fridman 29:46 And, you know, that ... The thing is, you have to separate Hitler, the evil person that, uh, created the Holocaust, from the general evil charismatic leader that, uh, took the country into, uh, used nationalism to take the country into a dark place in the '30s. Those are two different stories. I don't think we're going to have ever something, hopefully, uh, any atrocity like the Holocaust. But it's possible that the pain that people feel will be taken ...... uh, we would be taken advantage of by a charismatic leader to, um, to take us, to take steps back, not- not forward. And that- that's a, that's a real worry. That's a real-

Joe Rogan 30:32 Yeah, I don't see that leader on the horizon, but I, the- the other problem is, even a positive leader, the way politics work in America, everyone is so accustomed to people chopping people down. So much so that one of the things that's weird about Kamala Harris being with Joe Biden is that, you know, she was- she was talking, like, terrible things about him during the primaries. I mean, when she was running against him in the primaries, she said horrible things about him and then when they brought it up on The Colbert Show, she was like, "It was a debate."

Lex Fridman 31:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:07 "It was a debate." Like, is that what a debate is? Like, by- by any means necessary, you'll distort your own views of a person in order to diminish that person so that you can succeed and they fail? Or, do you really mean that, and that's why you said it in the debate and you're willing to compromise whatever your ethics or you morals or whatever your perceptions of this person are because you want to be vice president? It's one or the other. Either one's not good, and I think it speaks to the, just the standard way that people debate and that people run for president in this country. It's about tearing the other people down. It's not about what you can do, what you want to do, what's your vision. It's about how bad that other person's going to do at the job, how bad that other person has done at the job, who- what a terrible person they are, what- what's- let's distort their character.

Lex Fridman 31:56 Yeah, so turning into a game, a rap battle. I mean, my worry is that we're going to get in, uh, 2024 or 2028, uh, Donald Trump Jr. versus, like, AOC. So you basically take, like, the most entertaining Instagram accounts or whatever-

Joe Rogan 32:14 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 32:14 ... and the most divisive ones, who's gonna have the best memes of tearing each other down? It'll become a reality show.

Joe Rogan 32:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:20 And of course the media would love that because it- it makes, uh, it- it, uh, it draws more eyes because we generally are drawn to controversy, to drama, and funny drama. Like this kind of shallow, derisive kind of conversation, basically trolls on both sides-

Joe Rogan 32:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:39 ... we're drawn to that, as opposed to the Andrew Yang type folks who are like, "Let's all get along-

Joe Rogan 32:44 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:45 ... and let's hear some ideas."

Joe Rogan 32:46 (coughs) That's why he's so refreshing, right?

Lex Fridman 32:48 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 32:49 And also, you know, he's an entrepreneur. He's a, it's a different kind of human being that is running to the race. He's not a career politician. He's a guy who genuinely thinks he can help.

Lex Fridman 33:00 Yeah. And young-

Joe Rogan 33:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 33:02 Young. There's something to that, just that fresh energy.

Joe Rogan 33:04 100%. Not compromised, too. Not compromised by that- that fucked up system. When you deal with someone like Joe- Joe Biden, who's a 50-year politician, like my God, like you're so- it's so entangled, you're so encrusted into that.

Lex Fridman 33:17 He probably doesn't even... He- he hasn't... He's almost unable to think original thoughts at this time because he's just been in the system for so long, he can't like sit back and Elon Musk style think from first principles, like-

Joe Rogan 33:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 33:33 ... "Okay, here's a new problem. What are the ways we've been doing it previously? It hasn't worked. How can we do it differently? Let's all cut the bullshit. Look, I know there's a bunch of like, uh, ties, lobbyists, money interests. Let's put all that aside. How do we... Like, what are we supposed to do? We're supposed to- we're supposed to represent the people. We're supposed to do something great for this country. How do we do that?" And- and fire, again this is a destructive, uh, creative destruction. Fire everybody who's has the entrenched old school assumptions that, uh, haven't worked. Fire everybody and hire new energy and-

Joe Rogan 34:15 Well, you'd have to revamp the system too. So it's, there's so much to do. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 34:20 Well this is the time to do it.

Joe Rogan 34:21 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:21 I mean, and there's a hunger for that.

Joe Rogan 34:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:23 I- I think there's a hunger for populists that wants to revamp the system.

Joe Rogan 34:27 Just a matter of whether or not they'd actually be able to do it. I mean, there's so many checks and balances in place to sort of prevent that from happening because they're- they're worried about someone doing it for the wrong reasons.

Lex Fridman 34:37 Well that- what- if- if there's a positive view on the, our current president, Donald Trump, is he showed that, uh, you don't have to follow the rules.

Joe Rogan 34:46 Right.

Lex Fridman 34:46 You don't have to follow the rules of the system. You can just fire everybody. The checks and balances, you should ignore them.

Joe Rogan 34:52 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:53 I mean that- that should be inspiring to positive leaders. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:58 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 34:58 To say, "You know what? I don't... Even if I'm young, even if I'm an AOC type character or whatever on- on the right," even Donald J. Trump, uh, Junior, sorry, Donald Trump. Is he also a J? I don't know.

Joe Rogan 35:10 Well he's Junior so he must be a J.

Lex Fridman 35:13 Okay. Is that how the... Okay.

Joe Rogan 35:15 Yeah, the way Junior works, you have to have the same middle name as well.

Lex Fridman 35:17 It has to be a perfect match, okay.

Joe Rogan 35:18 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:19 And-

Joe Rogan 35:19 I believe so. Isn't that correct?

35:20 I'm pretty sure, yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:21 Well, yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:23 So yeah, that- that should be inspiring to young leaders to say you could- you can revamp the whole system. That was one of the criticisms of Barack Obama is that he talked about change and he hasn't really changed much.

Joe Rogan 35:37 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:38 And I think it's possible to change.

Joe Rogan 35:41 I think there's something gross about Juniors.

Lex Fridman 35:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:45 Just the name. Junior. Like, can't you be your own fucking person?

Lex Fridman 35:49 The- the third, the fourth.

Joe Rogan 35:50 Yeah. Oh, God. Thurston Howell III.

Lex Fridman 35:52 It's like the queen. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:54 (laughs) Like from-

Lex Fridman 35:54 The kings.

Joe Rogan 35:54 ... Gilligan's Island. Yeah, it's weird. Like come on Dad, can't you come up with another fucking name, you unoriginal twat?

Lex Fridman 36:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:01 You know? How about giving me a different name?

Lex Fridman 36:03 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:04 I got to walk around with Junior?

Lex Fridman 36:06 Donald IV.

Joe Rogan 36:07 Lex Friedman Jr.

Lex Fridman 36:09 King... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:09 Just Little Lex.

Lex Fridman 36:10 Yeah. And have like multiples, like Lex the-

Joe Rogan 36:14 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:14 ... like the song.

Joe Rogan 36:14 And he has a Lex. It's a tradition.

Lex Fridman 36:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:17 How about George Foreman? You know he names all his kids George?

Lex Fridman 36:19 George.

Joe Rogan 36:20 All of them.

Lex Fridman 36:21 That's...

Joe Rogan 36:22 I think even his daughters.

Lex Fridman 36:24 Really?

Joe Rogan 36:25 It doesn't give a-

Lex Fridman 36:25 That can't be true. That cannot be true.

Joe Rogan 36:28 It's true.

Lex Fridman 36:28 And then you have, on the opposite side, Elon Musk who, who names his-

Joe Rogan 36:31 Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:31 ... kids, um-

Joe Rogan 36:32 Fucking Ajet.

Lex Fridman 36:33 ... random letters of the alphabet. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:36 (laughs) Yeah. He named his kid after Ajet and all kinds of other weird shit.

Narrator 36:40 Uh, not all. He's named a few daughters other things, apparently.

Joe Rogan 36:44 Oh, George has?

Narrator 36:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:45 Well, he's got a lot of kids, right?

Narrator 36:46 But there's also ... There's a Georgetta and a- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:49 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:49 (laughs) Uh, yeah, that's, that's a weird move.

Joe Rogan 36:53 Ms. Pat had something on her Instagram about NFL players yesterday, about, uh, like seven NFL players have fathered 52 children from 48.

Narrator 37:03 No, there was one guy who had like 26 kids a couple years ago or something like that.

Joe Rogan 37:07 (laughs) That's so crazy. Teach that man about condoms.

Lex Fridman 37:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:12 Good Lord, sir.

Lex Fridman 37:14 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:16 That, that ... There's no way you're taking care of all those kids.

Narrator 37:18 For ... This one has 14.

Joe Rogan 37:20 Someone has 14 kids?

Narrator 37:21 He has 350 grand or so a month, uh, a year to support eight of them. He has to pay, and like-

Joe Rogan 37:28 Only eight of them?

Narrator 37:29 Well, I mean, it's just-

Joe Rogan 37:30 What about the other ones?

Narrator 37:31 Hey, they all got different deals, I guess.

Joe Rogan 37:32 Oh, boy.

Lex Fridman 37:35 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:35 Whew. It's too easy to make people, you know?

Lex Fridman 37:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:38 The problem is it's pleasurable and it's you're ... We're all, like, super drawn to it 'cause it's part of our DNA to be sexually attracted to whoever, and that's how you make people. It's crazy. It's like, like hunger making people.

Lex Fridman 37:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:51 You know? Uh, it's or ... Because people used to die so easily 'cause we don't run fast and w- you know, we're basically like water balloons.

Lex Fridman 38:01 And die at birth, uh, like close to-

Joe Rogan 38:03 I don't know.

Lex Fridman 38:03 ... at a, at young age often because, uh, just, m- uh, medicine advanced so much that we're able to save kids.

Joe Rogan 38:09 Sure.

Lex Fridman 38:10 Just with nutrition, infections-

Joe Rogan 38:11 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:11 ... all that kinda stuff.

Joe Rogan 38:12 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:13 I don't ... I can't ... I haven't looked into this carefully, but, uh-

Joe Rogan 38:16 Okay.

Lex Fridman 38:16 ... there's, uh, there seems to be a lot of debate about whether to worry about overpopulation or not. Like, I've, I've posted, um, these, like, projections of the, the population of when we're gonna reach, uh, 10, uh, trillion, uh, people, billion people. Uh, and there's a lotta debate of whether that is ... like we should be worried about it or not. The ... On the one side, the natural carrying capacity of Earth, people say that we have way more resources than we need. It's not to worry about. It's nothing to worry about.

Joe Rogan 38:48 But it's about how those resources are allocated, right?

Lex Fridman 38:50 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:50 It's like some places are very resource-poor, but they have high populations. And that's, that's a, a gigantic problem.

Lex Fridman 38:56 And most of the population growth in the 21st century will be in Africa, like if-

Joe Rogan 39:01 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 39:01 ... you look at the models. And Africa will have, I believe, more people than the rest of the world by, like, the end of the century if the-

Joe Rogan 39:09 Wow.

Lex Fridman 39:09 ... population continues. Like this, the ... If you talk about large families, they're happening in Africa.

Joe Rogan 39:15 The thing about Africa, though, is it actually can fit most-

Lex Fridman 39:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:19 ... of the world-

Lex Fridman 39:20 It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 39:20 ... in it when you realize-

Lex Fridman 39:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:20 ... how big Africa is. I had no idea until we started doing this podcast and Jamie pulled up this image of, like, Europe and Asia and the United States and all these other countries stuffed into the continent of Africa. It's only then you realize how big Africa actually is. So it kinda makes sense.

Lex Fridman 39:38 Yeah, space-wise, but-

Joe Rogan 39:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:39 Yeah, but also resource-wise, they're ... I mean, um, there's a lotta people suffering in Africa. That's something that we kee- keep a blind eye to, but there's real suffering, poverty.

Joe Rogan 39:50 It's interesting that some animals have mating seasons, you know? Like deer have mating seasons. They go into the rut in the fall and then the, the, the does are in estrus and they give out this scent and the bucks go crazy and they're chasing 'em all around, but they only do it once a year.

Lex Fridman 40:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:08 And then in the spring, they give birth to the, the new fawns. And this is like ... It's really common in the wild for animals to have a season.

Lex Fridman 40:16 Do chimps do m-

Joe Rogan 40:17 No. No, no, no. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 40:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:20 Not our people.

Lex Fridman 40:22 I wonder if there's-

Joe Rogan 40:22 No.

Lex Fridman 40:22 I wonder if there's ups and downs, like ... So, so humans have, like, a mating season around, like, Christmas, the holidays, and then it, it goes down in the, in the January month?

Joe Rogan 40:30 I think it's only game animals, meaning animals that are prey. And I think predators just go buckwild. I think predators breed whenever the fuck they want to, you know? I don't know if that's true though. I mean, I don't know, like, if, uh, like lions and tigers for instance. I know I had a bit that I used to do about tigers 'cause I, I watched this Discovery Channel show where they said when the female tiger is in season, the male can mate with her as many times as 52 in a day.

Lex Fridman 40:59 Wow.

Joe Rogan 41:00 Yeah, so they just get-

Lex Fridman 41:01 Wow.

Joe Rogan 41:01 ... after it. But I don't know how long that lasts, like when-

Lex Fridman 41:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:05 ... they're in heat. Like-

Lex Fridman 41:06 Uh, Jamie, could you look up the, uh, the mating, uh, seasons for lions, please?

Joe Rogan 41:11 Yes, please. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 41:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:12 Here it goes. "In captivity, lions often breed every year, but in the wild they usually breed no more than once in two years. Females are receptive to mating for three or four days within a widely variable reproductive cycle. During this time, a pair generally mates every 20 to 30 minutes with up to 50 copulations for 24 hours." Whoa. That's a lotta fucking-

Lex Fridman 41:37 I, I f- ... That sounds weirdly like my life actually.

Joe Rogan 41:39 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 41:40 (laughs) Once in two years, it's good.

Joe Rogan 41:44 Uh, well, maybe you're a predator, sir.

Lex Fridman 41:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:45 Yeah, w- ... But it, it's interesting the wildly ... The, the, the pr- reproductive cycles. It's like it's not predictable like a, like a, like a prey animal, you know? But I would also, uh, think that nature probably, over the course of millions of years, balances that out with overpopulation.

Lex Fridman 42:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:01 Like they realize, like, hey, if there's too many lions, like what-

Lex Fridman 42:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:05 ... what eats lions? Very few things eat lions.

Lex Fridman 42:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:08 Right? There's occasionally a hyena will get one with a broken leg and they'll take it out. But the reality is, m- mostly it's lions doing the eating. So, like, you can't have too many of them.

Lex Fridman 42:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:16 Uh, but, like, deer and things like that, well, fuck, man. They, they, they make babies and then they can, like, literally-... overwhelm a, a resource area if there's no predators, so you have to have predators. So, there's like some sort of a balance, like, uh, m- nature sort of figured out the best way to keep the animals healthy is to only have them breed once a year.

Lex Fridman 42:39 Yeah, it's amazing how evolution finds a niche, a balance for all kinds of animals.

Joe Rogan 42:42 I think you mean God. But that's okay.

Lex Fridman 42:45 Yeah, G- God, yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:45 I'll let you get away with that.

Lex Fridman 42:46 God and Jesus, yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:47 We're in t- don't you know we're in Texas, bro?

Lex Fridman 42:49 Yeah. (laughs) Uh, guns, God, and America.

Joe Rogan 42:53 Yeah. I, it-

Lex Fridman 42:53 Whiskey, scotch.

Joe Rogan 42:55 It is amazing. It, I mean, natural selection and just evolution in general is, is-

Lex Fridman 43:00 It-

Joe Rogan 43:00 ... so fascinating.

Lex Fridman 43:01 You know what's amazing is, um, I talked to, uh, Sara Seager. There's this whole group of people that look for life. They, I don't know if you know what exoplanets are.

Joe Rogan 43:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 43:09 Like ex- they look for life out there, you know, some people think that there's, uh, Jupiter, m- uh, uh, moon of Jupiter, uh, Europa-

Joe Rogan 43:18 Yep. Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 43:18 ... has, has, has wi- uh, I mean, it's, uh, fascinating to think that there's life currently or at least recently on Mars, you know, that, and it's fascinating to think what the evolutionary process on those planets has resulted in.

Joe Rogan 43:32 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 43:32 'Cause, and when we show up, I talked to somebody, I forget who. Oh, I think a biologist. The, the, the colleague, faculty outta MIT. Uh, he mentioned that, 'cause my worry would be if we encounter life on another planet, it, uh, they would, it would be destructive to us humans, like, or we to them. One or the other.

Joe Rogan 43:52 Mm.

Lex Fridman 43:53 Like, because it's a t- entire, I mean, they, they can, uh, like, I th- you know, with this virus we're experiencing now, my natural thought, I don't know what I'm talking about with biology, but my natural thought would be like, when you touch that life, it might, uh, th- basically be a parasite, take advantage of you somehow.

Joe Rogan 44:09 Sure.

Lex Fridman 44:10 But he said that likely it would be, there's a certain kind of distance that happens if there f- if it's far enough away in terms of the kind of energy it uses, the, the kind of environment it's adapted to, that it basically won't even notice humans. Like, it'll, it won't know how to take advantage of the resources we provide.

Joe Rogan 44:29 Mm.

Lex Fridman 44:30 So, like, that- that's a hopeful message that we basically could study it safely, uh, without it

Joe Rogan 44:34 (clicks tongue) But isn't that just like-

Lex Fridman 44:35 strong.

Joe Rogan 44:35 ... purely speculative? 'Cause if it's in the Goldilocks zone and you have something-

Lex Fridman 44:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:39 ... that is also carbon-based biological life that is a se- similar temperature range that it exists in, it easily could eat us.

Lex Fridman 44:47 Yeah, depen- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:49 You know?

Lex Fridman 44:50 Yeah, from, from inside, or we eat it.

Joe Rogan 44:51 Like Pandorum on, in, uh, Avatar, that, that planet. That, I, I felt, I felt, always felt like that movie was so interesting because it's close, right? It's close. Whatever it is, is like not Earth, but it's close, and the things that live there are not, they're not human, but they're close. Like, you could kinda see that. It's good enough. It's close enough, like the animals and all the weird creatures in the jungle in, in the Avatar movie.

Lex Fridman 45:18 But the thing is, most likely, life would be not close-

Joe Rogan 45:22 Right, most likely.

Lex Fridman 45:23 ... on other planets. It'd be ... That's the, with, uh, I, I, I told you about, um, uh, David Fravor, who I, uh-

Joe Rogan 45:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:30 ... uh, talked to recently. By the way, thank you for ... I renamed, um, my podcast to just my name.

Joe Rogan 45:37 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:37 Lex Fridman. Uh, when I heard you tell that to Joey, uh, Joey Diaz.

Joe Rogan 45:40 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:41 Sadly, people should go listen to Joey's last ... He did a, he recorded his last Church of What's Happening Now episode.

Joe Rogan 45:48 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:48 So, you suggested to him that he should do some new thing totally and just name it after himself, and I was like, "Why the fuck am I have some silly name like Artificial Intelligence? Just, just name it, like, The Joe Rogan Experience."

Joe Rogan 46:01 (laughs) Yeah.

Lex Fridman 46:01 Just, I, I named Lex Fridman Podcast.

Joe Rogan 46:03 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 46:03 So, anyway, I talked to David for four hours, um ... Yeah. Why'd I bring that up? Because I-

Joe Rogan 46:08 David Fravor, you were talking-

Lex Fridman 46:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:10 Let, let's, let's explain who David Fravor was.

Lex Fridman 46:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:12 He's a, uh, um, fighter jet pilot for the navy, and, uh, he discovered a UFO off the coast of San Diego that, when they tracked it, went from 60,000 feet to one feet in a second or less. They don't know how fast it went because it's, you know, the blip of a radar. But the thing traveled in an, an insane way that defies all of our understanding of propulsion, all of our understanding of physics. And this thing also actively was blocking their tracking systems, which is an act of war. If it, you know, with the Soviet Union or China was doing that, that's technically an act of war. So, this thing was doing something that showed that it, it was intelligently aware of the fact that they are using tracking devices to try to lock in on it, and it behaved and moved in a way that defies all of our understandings of propulsion systems. It didn't give off any heat signature, and, uh, the people from the navy that he was communicating with saying, "Yeah, we see these every now and again. We don't know what the fuck they are."

Lex Fridman 47:16 So, the, the thing I was gonna say, there's a lot of interesting things to say about this, but, so, j- just this im- I just remembered that it felt like, from that entire experience, that because it didn't have a Chinese or a Russian flag on it, whatever he saw, is we tend to, just the entire system, is doesn't want to acknowledge it. Like, you, you just, you don't know what to do with it, so they actually, most of, uh, like, when you return back to the ship, and there's a bunch of pilots that, uh, put, you know, that saw it, there's, there's a lot of people that witnessed it and then there's also the video. You know, the majority of the people didn't know what to do with it. They just went on with their day like nothing happened. Uh, you know, they kind of made fun of each other, whatever-

Joe Rogan 47:58 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 47:58 ... for, you know, uh, f- "Yeah, y- yeah, sure, bro. You saw aliens." But, like, they didn't, they didn't know how to comprehend it. That, that's what I meant, like, if we encounter life from elsewhere in the universe, we think we would be, uh, as a population, excited, but it feels like, just like with bo- Bigfoot, we want, we're excited by the mystery when they're like, when they're just outta reach.

Joe Rogan 48:24 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 48:24 But when they're like am- among us (laughs) , they're, just, there's so many mysteries and incredible things among us that-... we just kinda take them for granted.

Joe Rogan 48:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 48:34 And we j- we don't even, um... Or ignore them, actually. Even worse, we ignore them.

Joe Rogan 48:38 We get used to things.

Lex Fridman 48:39 And that, that was the weird thing. The, the biggest mystery to me about, uh, what David Fravor saw and a lot... And then also with the, the other videos in 2014? Something like that. The Go Fast.

Joe Rogan 48:52 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 48:53 It's like, it wasn't a bigger deal than I thought it would be. Like-

Joe Rogan 48:58 Well, the big deal was when the Pentagon came out and said that they have recovered some vehicles that are not of this world.

Lex Fridman 49:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:07 Now, they didn't expand on that. There hasn't been more conversation about that. But my... This is, uh, purely speculation. My speculation is they are slowly spoonfeeding us information to allow people to be more comfortable with the inevitable arrival of something. And if they believe that something's coming, they don't want it to happen all at once. You see what happens just with, with the pandemic. You see what happens with, uh, George Floyd. You see what happens with... A- anytime there's a big shock to our system and there's chaos in the streets, it's unmanageable. And if the UFOs came in the middle of something like that, like Jesus Christ. Like, who the fuck knows what would go down? If I was someone who was in a position of power, I would say, "Listen, this information's gonna get out. It's inevitable. So, why don't we let people know now? Just give them, just in words, say, 'We have recovered crafts that are not of this world.' Say something crazy like that. Let- print it in the New York Times, get it out there, and then slowly drip out more information. When they see these videos, they'll get more and more accustomed to it." And then eventually it'd be like masks. Like, you walk down the street, everybody has a mask on. You don't even think about it.

Lex Fridman 50:16 Yeah, but... Okay, so let me-

Joe Rogan 50:19 You know what I'm saying?

Lex Fridman 50:20 T- yeah. I, I totally... And this is such a fascinating question. If the government is in possession of an alien spacecraft, what is the right way to, uh, release that information? To me-

Joe Rogan 50:32 The real problem is if it, if it's more potent than any weapon that any, th- than any civilization has currently on this planet. So, if the United States is in control of this vehicle that is more potent and can do things that... Like, if you really do have something that can go from 60,000 feet to one foot in under a second, that... I mean, that's, that defies all of our understandings of speed, right? I mean, that's so fast. If you could do that an-

Lex Fridman 51:00 Well, uh, there's arguments, I guess, 'cause it could be human-created technology too that's just 15, 20, 30 years out, like the stealth bomber was developed, uh, secretly. So, what defies... It's our perception of its movement capabilities-

Joe Rogan 51:15 Right.

Lex Fridman 51:15 ... is what defies. But there could be some tricks on perception that... I mean, that's the whole point with a stealth bomber is it's difficult to detect.

Joe Rogan 51:22 Sure.

Lex Fridman 51:23 And so there could be same kind of tricks on perception, that you could just be playing, uh, different kinds of, uh, amazing secret human-created technology that, uh, is able to deceive the human eye.

Joe Rogan 51:35 That's a good point. I mean, but the, the thing about it is they tracked it. It wasn't just that it was, uh, the human eye that saw this and it's deceptive. But also like the stealth bomber, you know? The way it's designed, it, it, it blocks radar. Or it, uh, radar doesn't catch onto it.

Lex Fridman 51:49 But-

Joe Rogan 51:49 I think it is possible that some human-created technology that's so far advanced from anything that we're currently, uh, w- that we, that we currently understand, like in terms of like mainstream propulsion experts and, and fighter pilots like David Fravor and military people. It is possible that some civilization, one of the, one of the big civilizations on this planet, whether it's China or Russia, has come up with something that's, uh, above and beyond what everybody knows. But it's not likely.

Lex Fridman 52:24 But-

Joe Rogan 52:24 It's not likely that they've made that much of a leap.

Lex Fridman 52:26 And your sense on the other side, if it's alien technology... See, I'm more optimistic. To me, as a scientist and engineer, and actually David Fravor says, says this too. In this time of pandemic, in this time of like just, just hard negative news everywhere, there would be nothing more inspiring than the government in an inspiring like Neil deGrasse Tyson way, coming out and saying, "We have..." Not releasing the videos like they did, which is... I don't know if you know, but they just put the videos on a website. Like, there's not, there's nothing. It's just videos. There's just like... With like some boring documents that describe like nothing. They're not inspiring. We're not talking about like Neil deGrasse Tyson or like Carl Sagan Cosmos style. Like, a beautiful, inspiring... What is more inspiring than an alien spacecraft? Look, here's a, there's a fascinating mystery here.

Joe Rogan 53:19 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 53:19 There's nothing more inspiring to us humans than that there is life out there, intelligent life out there.

Joe Rogan 53:25 But how would you handle it? Like, let, let's imagine. Let's imagine you are the leader of the United States. And you find out, or the, you know, whatever, the head of the Navy military intelligence program. Whatever, whoever you are, you're a person that's in a position where you realize that this thing is from another world, and you have this responsibility to try to somehow or another publicize this.

Lex Fridman 53:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:49 Like, how-

Lex Fridman 53:49 I, I would, I would exac- I would, I would approach it 100% from the perspective of science. Here's a mystery. So, forget weapon. Like you're, you mentioned there's this in- inclination to think like, "How can I figure out a way to use this as a weapon to d- destroy Russia or China?" As, as opposed to seeing it like, like going to Mars, colonizing Mars, or going to the moon originally. There is some competitive element, but mostly it's a human pursuit of understanding, and human pursuit of overcoming our limited knowledge to sort of unlock mysteries of this universe. From a physics perspective, from an engineering perspective, I would release all the information I have. And, uh, release it in a way that gets the Neil deGrasse Tyson-... folks in the loop. So, it's- it's almost like an inspiring effort for us as a humanity to understand what the hell this thing is, versus, "Let's keep it secret and see if we can use it as a weapon."

Joe Rogan 54:55 Well, I appreciate that you think that way because you're a scientist, and you- you're thinking about it in a very positive way to try to expand our education and our understanding of this- this thing, and maybe we could, you know, use it for good. But you gotta realize that anything that surpasses any and all technologies that we currently enjoy, in terms of fighter pilots and jets and military superiority, if there's something that- that just g- is above and beyond all... If everybody has a Model T and you have a Ferrari, or better yet, you have a Tesla, you have a Model S, and everybody's got a Model T, you- you are... This is... And you're in a race. Like, you have something that is so far above and beyond what everybody else has, it's not really a fair race. It's a joke. You'll dominate. If that ra- If you were in a... You have a Model T and the other person has a Tesla, and you're racing, and the winner gets to decide who has all the food, who gets all the women, who- who lives in the nice house, like, you're gonna win every fucking time, right? Now, if you have a UFO, if you have a- a spaceship that comes from another planet where they're a million years more advanced than us, they've had a million years of evolution and technological evolution dealing with elements that are common on their planet that- that- that have to be created in a- a particle collider here, and they only exist for a brief amount of time, if they have something like that that's powered by something that we can't even imagine, and you figure out how to use that here on Earth, you'll have technical superiority, technological superiority over every other civilization-

Lex Fridman 56:27 But, but here's the thing-

Joe Rogan 56:27 ... every other country.

Lex Fridman 56:29 ... in that technological superiority... It's so funny, us chimps are, like, still talking about our village. We want our village-

Joe Rogan 56:36 Yes. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 56:36 ... to be better than the next village. When there's an alien civilization-

Joe Rogan 56:40 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 56:40 ... that's a million years more advanced-

Joe Rogan 56:43 Right.

Lex Fridman 56:43 ... that would, c- can easily destroy us if it wanted to.

Joe Rogan 56:46 Right.

Lex Fridman 56:46 And, or actually understands the nature of existence in this universe on levels that are like, we- we- we chimps talk about, like, meditation and- and finding inner peace. Like, it understands on- on such a deeper level, like, the nature of consciousness, the nature of intelligence, the meaning of life. All that weird stuff that we're so obsessed with-

Joe Rogan 57:08 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 57:08 ... it understands on another level. And here we are thinking about what the Russians are doing, uh, versus, like, understanding that mystery. I think in the face of that mystery, of something that's far more intelligent than us, I think we can't... It's a ridiculous notion to think we're anything but, uh, one human village. And in terms of weapons, like, 'cause you said, like, get all the girls or whatever, that... I think the weapons thing is the key thing.

Joe Rogan 57:38 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 57:38 And we- we're, we already, at least the major nations, have all the weapons we need to destroy each other. It's like we don't need extra weapons. I... Well, I mean, it feels like... (sighs) It feels like, uh, y- y- y- your hypothesis would be, like, if an alien technology was here and we'd figure it out, we'd be able to have something that, um, destroys other chimp villages an order of magnitude more efficiently than nu- nuclear weapons, thereby having an asymmetrical, sort of from a game theory perspective, uh, power over other nations. And we can tell China what to do, we can tell Russia what to do. That's- that's the perspective from which they're thinking. I just, I just-

Joe Rogan 58:24 I'm not even saying that they're thinking that way. I'm thinking, uh, a human would think that if they had control of this vehicle. I'm not saying that the aliens would think this way. I'm thinking also that we are constantly innovating. When- when you- when you talk to, uh, people that are designing jets and planes and fighter pilots and they're talking about new systems that they've created and- and new, you know, new- new weapons. They don't just sit back and say, "We have enough weapons to destroy Russia and China and the rest of the world combined, so we're just gonna stop." The- This is not how human beings innovate. Human beings are in this constant state of wanting the newest, greatest innovations. We want to improve upon every single existing invention until we hit some sort of singularity point, or whatever the fuck we're striving for as a culture. And that would be that propulsion system. If they- you- you- if you do really have something that can go from 60,000 feet to one feet in less than a second, you're dealing with something that we don't understand. We- we- we can't do that right now. And if we c- and if you could figure out how to do that and propel people that quickly, it would be a game changer. Now, how much of a game changer? What does that mean? Well, we- we're in this weird place where we kind of agree to not use our best weapons, right? Like, when there's a s- there's a face-off between the United States jets and a Russian jet and they- they come close to each other, like over China or something like that, it's weird because we're not shooting at each other, but we're real close. And even the missiles that we have, they're not nuclear. Like, we're w- but we're involved in a- in a skirmish with another country, but it do- we don't use all our weapons. Like, if we approached war the way people approached war in, you know, the- the Middle Ages, w- we would just nuke the fuck out of everybody that talks shit, right?

Lex Fridman 1:00:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:21 Anybody, anybody... What- what did China just say? Wouldn't they just, like, fucking launch those missiles?

Lex Fridman 1:00:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:25 Fuck those people.

Lex Fridman 1:00:26 Instead of Twitter-

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:00:27 ... it'd be nukes. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:28 Exactly. So, we're already in this place where we don't use our best stuff. We're already... So, if we had something th- that made us fly better and fly faster, the real question is, yeah, how much would that change the world? I don't know, I don't know how much it would. If we got in control of some UFO and were able to get to China quicker, would... How much of a difference would that make?... in terms of, like, the way they responded to our military. We're in this position now where there's multiple countries ha- that have the ability to destroy other countries. There's, uh, Y- Iran has some sort of a nuclear program. Pakistan has a nuclear program. Uh, India has a nuclear program. You know, of course, the United States, Russia, China. There's many countries that have the ability to fucking wipe out huge numbers of the population (snaps fingers) like that. Just launch. Just one crazy, psychotic leader who just decides to just, "Listen, we're gonna fucking make our mark here. Everybody together on one, two, three, go." Boom. (imitates explosion)

Lex Fridman 1:01:33 Look, that's, uh, that's, I mean, that's-

Joe Rogan 1:01:34 Terrifying.

Lex Fridman 1:01:34 ... such a difficult, it's, you talked to Snowden, it's such a difficult ethical question. Like, if I actually had that information, I tend to lean a little bit on the side of, it's the duty of every American to leak that information, to take it and make it public. But I, I understand that takes a huge risk of destroying the world because, uh, evil people can get their hands on that information. That's the que- that's the Bob Lazar question, right?

Joe Rogan 1:01:59 Well, wasn't that Oppenheimer's dilemma? I mean, when Oppen- Oppenheimer, who was a, you know, a very peaceful man, created the most destructive, or helped create the most destructive invention the world's ever known. It's a conundrum, right? Like, but doing so, did he prevent a lot of other death because Germany would have gotten it or Japan would have gotten it, and they would have used it on Europe. They would have used it on the United States. Is that possible? That's, uh, that's the argument, right? That there's a race going on, that people understand that splitting the atom, and is- is possible, that nuclear weapons are feasible, and whoever gets them first is gonna have a massive advantage. We got them first and therefore, you know, we became the preeminent superpower. But what if we didn't? What if Oppenheimer was a dummy? You know, what if there was a bunch of knuckleheads working for the United States and the Russians and the Germans and the Japanese were all working together and they came up with something far better? Obviously, the Russians were against the, uh, the Germans at, in that war, but I mean, eh, eh, eh, fit together any superpowers at the time. If they got together with their scientists and they figured out a nuclear bomb first and just dropped it on San Francisco, what, how much would the world be different now?

Lex Fridman 1:03:13 Yeah, I mean, and- and Russia, I mean, Stalin is a complicated figure.

Joe Rogan 1:03:17 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:03:17 So he was on the side of the United States at the time.

Joe Rogan 1:03:20 But evil as fuck.

Lex Fridman 1:03:22 But evil, um, evil.

Joe Rogan 1:03:24 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:03:24 And if he had nuclear weapons, it's a whole nother discussion.

Joe Rogan 1:03:27 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:03:28 (sighs) And, uh, it's- it's actually quite surprising to me that we got out of the 20th century a- alive. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:36 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:03:36 So from a perspective of, of Oppenheimer, you know, I think he probably wondered if we're going to destroy ourselves within the next decade no matter what happens. When you have w- when you have weapons that can destroy all of civilization, especially now with hydrogen bombs-

Joe Rogan 1:03:53 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:03:54 ... it's, um, it's complicated to talk about anything like alien technology because-

Joe Rogan 1:03:58 Yeah. Well, I think that's probably, I mean, if I was an alien and I was paying attention to earth, that's probably why I would visit.

Lex Fridman 1:04:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:08 I'd be like, these chimps are in this weird stage of evolution where they're still chimps, they're still behaving like territorial apes, but now they have nuclear technology. They have this very crude version of the, literally the power of the sun.

Lex Fridman 1:04:26 Well, that's what ... Okay, so here's another hypothesis. They saw these destructive weapons and so they actually, uh, in Roswell, uh, plant- or whatever it is-

Joe Rogan 1:04:34 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:04:35 ... planted a piece of technology that we should figure out there'll be an infinitely powerful generator of love versus destruction.

Joe Rogan 1:04:43 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:04:43 So they're like, "Okay, these chimps are not going down the wrong path. Let us plant some stuff where they figure out, like, how to be enlightened."

Joe Rogan 1:04:50 Mushrooms.

Lex Fridman 1:04:51 Yeah, mushrooms. That's what they were. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:52 That's what they did.

Lex Fridman 1:04:53 I mean- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:54 They probably tried that.

Lex Fridman 1:04:55 (laughs) 'Cause they kinda, it's where, you know, f- from their perspective, the chimps are like a nice video game, like, they're ... Or like a Chia pet where you watch them, like, grow.

Joe Rogan 1:05:04 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:05:04 And they- they probably ... I mean, that's what we would do if we encounter maybe, um, like, an ant- ant colony a- and we saw that the ant colony's destroying itself. You know, us, from a scientific perspective, we'd wanna them to, uh, not become extinct, so probably interfere in some way to try to prevent the ant colony from destroying itself. That's-

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 Probably.

Lex Fridman 1:05:29 So that, you know, for- as a curiosity, as a cosmic cur- it feels like earth is a cosmic curiosity. From a perspective of an intelligent (laughs) alien species, like, that's really interesting what's going on there. Let's- let's see what's happening.

Joe Rogan 1:05:43 A friend of mine told me this story that he saw two, um, m- mounds of fire ants.

Lex Fridman 1:05:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:49 And, uh, that he did this experiment where he took a bucket and he scooped up ants from one fire ant colony and scooped up ants from the other and then dumped them on the opposite colonies and watched them fight to the death.

Lex Fridman 1:06:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:07 And I was like, "Fuck, really?" He goes, "Yeah, they instantaneously knew that those ants were from the wrong colony and they just went to war."

Lex Fridman 1:06:16 And there's a, I don't know if you've ... There's a few good books on ants. They have, like, a collective intelligence.

Joe Rogan 1:06:21 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:06:22 'Cause we tend to think of individual ants.

Joe Rogan 1:06:24 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:06:24 But somehow as an organism toge- they, together in the thousands of ants, millions of ants, there's somehow a collective emergence that, uh, a collective intelligence that emerges. Like, there's this whole, um, field of, uh, computer science called ant colony optimization. Like, if we just simulate nature-inspired optimization algorithms, they somehow figure out how to do stuff in a- in an emergent way.Don't really understand it. We don't have mathematics to deal with, like, when you have a bunch of s- a wh- when you have a bunch of distributed, uh, organisms (laughs) doing, doing s- dumb stuff, just looking at their neighbors, when you look at the system as a whole, intelligent stuff emerges.

Joe Rogan 1:07:09 Mm.

Lex Fridman 1:07:09 That's, that, um, there, there is a, I don't, do you know who Stephen Wolfram is-

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 No.

Lex Fridman 1:07:14 ... by any chance? Uh, well you know who Eric Weinstein is.

Joe Rogan 1:07:17 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:18 So there, uh, Eric Weinstein is, uh, out of the million intelligent thing he does, he's also a mathematical physicist, so he has, like a, that theory of e- everything that, uh, you've talked to him about, or he blew your mind with-

Joe Rogan 1:07:31 Mm.

Lex Fridman 1:07:31 ... geometric unity.

Joe Rogan 1:07:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:33 There's another guy, really brilliant guy, Stephen Wolfram, he's a physicist. He created, uh, Wolfram Alpha that like, everybody uses, uh, in high school for, uh, to do their homework in calculus.

Joe Rogan 1:07:45 There it is.

Lex Fridman 1:07:47 It's, uh, you can ask it a bunch of questions like, uh, "How much does Joe Rogan weigh?" or something like th- Like it has these, I don't know, I don't know if it can, I don't know if it knows about Joe Rogan, but it might and it'd be interesting.

Narrator 1:07:58 I'll ask, let's see.

Lex Fridman 1:07:59 Ah, see.

Joe Rogan 1:07:59 What'd he ask?

Lex Fridman 1:07:59 Anyways, it has like this huge knowledge base, uh, yeah, maybe it doesn't know individual people.

Joe Rogan 1:08:07 What does it say?

Narrator 1:08:08 Pretty close, but no. I mean-

Joe Rogan 1:08:10 What does it say?

Narrator 1:08:11 It just has like Google information.

Joe Rogan 1:08:13 Oh, it's just goes to Google.

Lex Fridman 1:08:13 But it, it's able to integrate it really well, so like it can do math on this information. That's a really important thing.

Joe Rogan 1:08:18 Hm.

Lex Fridman 1:08:19 So it can do like, you know, it can calculate, uh, the, the, you know, the average population of Austin, 'cause it has the information of number of people, the number of like area, uh, all that. Whatever. It's a really useful tool. But he also came out with this Wolfram Physics Project recently, where he describes, it's another theory of everything. Do you know what a theory of everything is?

Joe Rogan 1:08:39 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:08:39 It's a, it's s- it's a unification of all the different laws of physics so that with one theory you can describe everything that's happening around us. And m- the reason I bring that up 'cause we're talking about ants, Stephen Wolfram's idea, he has this like of inf- like he has this model of the universe that's this what's called a hypergraph. It's this, uh, really simple system that grows with a single rule, like it expands. It starts from just a, a couple of points that are connected with a line, and then it grows with a single, simple rule. Just like ants interact really simply, this system grows, and his theory is that it can grow into create our entire universe. Like from it, it doesn't have a concept of space or time like we perceive it, the four-dimensional, the three-dimensional space and the, and the fourth dimension of time, but all of that emerges within the system. We chimps are one in 10 to the 120 part of that, that incredible infrastructure that grows, and he like mathematically describes the way this thing grows. And that's, we don't currently have good mathematics for modeling the way such systems grow. There's something called cellular automata where it's this really, uh, called Game of Life. Unfortunately, um, John Conway that created the Game of Life from, uh, died recently from COVID. It, it describes this very simple system where from simple rules you can, uh, have incredible complexity. And it's a really cool idea that our universe started from like basically like one ant (laughs) and then, uh, or actually two ants, and then th- their interaction creates a system that's so incredibly complex even though the underlying rules are simple. That's, we don't understand why the hell that happens. We humans es- from a scientific perspective, we know how to describe like a single system, the way an object moves. We don't have a math or even um, a science of describing how trillions of objects move when they interact simply with each other. We don't know how to do that, but that's what seems to happen. When you look at, we know how to, uh, you know, psychology can describe the behavior of a single human. What we don't have a science of is to describe what happens when a billion humans interact.

Joe Rogan 1:11:03 Mm.

Lex Fridman 1:11:04 I don't know if that kind of makes sense but like the, the, it's called a complexity, uh, study of complexity.

Joe Rogan 1:11:10 What is this, Jamie?

Narrator 1:11:11 This is, uh, sort of, this is what hypergraph-

Lex Fridman 1:11:13 Yeah.

Narrator 1:11:14 ... he's, he ju-

Lex Fridman 1:11:15 S-

Narrator 1:11:15 ... started, uh, explanations of all this sort of stuff.

Lex Fridman 1:11:17 So if you-

Narrator 1:11:18 Just visuals of it.

Lex Fridman 1:11:19 So if you look at any of those, if you zoom in on any of those graphs, I mean, uh, when the previous page, the, uh, in, in, the was, the previous one was really good. So if you zoom in on any of those, below you see all these beautiful little graphy things. Below it there is like two boxes and, and that describes a rule of if you see a pattern on the left, uh, expanded to the pattern on the right, and the entirety... So his hypothesis is one of these rules created the universe, where this little rule of if you see a pattern on the left create a pattern on the right, it creates these incredibly rich graphs from which emerge this, the, he's modeling all of quantum mechanics, so general relativity. So theory of everything needs to unify the physics of the big, which is, uh, general relativity, special relativity, uh, and then the physics of the really small, which is quantum mechanics. And he within those graphs is able to, uh, find the emergence of these theories. First the emergence of space and time, then the, I mean, eh- everything you need to describe for quantum field theory, all that kinda stuff. It's, it's trippy.

Joe Rogan 1:12:27 Go back to those images.

Narrator 1:12:28 Mm-hmm. That was a bunch of like really cool ones. Um...

Joe Rogan 1:12:31 Mm. Is that him right there?

Lex Fridman 1:12:34 Nope.

Joe Rogan 1:12:34 Who's that guy?

Narrator 1:12:35 Uh, surprised it's a teacher.

Joe Rogan 1:12:37 Just a guy. Those, uh, those images that you showed in that graph, like you know what that reminds me of? Do you remember the movie Arrival?

Lex Fridman 1:12:43 Yeah. He was, uh, Wolfr- oh, okay. He was the designer of the language for the-

Joe Rogan 1:12:47 Ah, well that makes sense. (laughs)

Narrator 1:12:50 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:12:50 So he, he was tasked such a cool task as a physicist.

Joe Rogan 1:12:53 Oh my god.

Lex Fridman 1:12:54 It's like, can you design a method by which the aliens might be communicating with us?

Joe Rogan 1:12:59 Gotta mean that it looks like it.

1:13:01 ... and, or similar too.

Lex Fridman 1:13:02 But there was a math behind it. So the, the, the, the language he developed, there was a mathematical richness to the, the language, him and his son.

Joe Rogan 1:13:11 You know, the, when, when you, you get this far down the intellectual rabbit hole, when you go the, I mean, the, to the... Like, how many people actually understand this to the point where they can, they could read it, describe it accurately?

Lex Fridman 1:13:25 Uh, the, this is interesting. That's the, that's the problem with the theory of everything, is very few physicists really understand, like, the, the, the details involved. We're talking about-

Joe Rogan 1:13:34 You have to be...

Lex Fridman 1:13:35 It's, it's the same as the order of magnitude of professional comedians, I would say. Like, uh, it's, like, thousands, maybe, maybe less than a thousand.

Joe Rogan 1:13:41 On the whole planet?

Lex Fridman 1:13:42 On the whole planet.

Joe Rogan 1:13:43 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:13:43 But the cool thing about the Wolfram thing is, uh, set physics aside. It's just the, uh, uh, the, the part that a lot of people can understand. And I highly recommend, like, curious undergrads, and really you don't need to know how to program. You, they understand how those beautiful things and the language in the, uh, uh, the movie Arrival can grow from simple rules. You can play with it. Like, it's, uh, it's one of the most beautiful... In terms of maybe take some mushrooms and, and, like, if you wanna see s- a beautiful concept is have a system that's really simple, like a, a few dots, like a tic-tac-toe board. And have rules that apply to that board that are really simple, one simple rule, and, like, the beautiful patterns that emerge.

Joe Rogan 1:14:29 Uh, g- like give me a r- a example of a rule like that.

Lex Fridman 1:14:32 So the rule for the game of life, uh, is for, like, something like a tic-tac-toe board is a cell that's white is, uh, dead. A cell that's black is alive, let's say. And when three of the cell's neighbors are also alive, then you live on. Otherwise, you die. Meaning you, you flip, you know.

Joe Rogan 1:14:57 Okay.

Lex Fridman 1:14:57 So you, whe- when you have three neighbors... I, I might be getting the exact rule wrong for the game of life, but when you, when you only... Each cell only looks at its neighbors. And when a certain number of neighbors is alive, I think it's three, then you continue being black, you continue being alive.

Joe Rogan 1:15:14 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:15:14 Otherwise, you die. It's a live die. And all... You're just a single cell sitting there, and you live and die based on your neighbors.

Joe Rogan 1:15:20 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:15:20 Okay, this is dumb. I mean, it's very simple. You think, what can be, uh, created from that? And you can create everything in the known universe from that. So, like, people have created computers from that, from a, a Turing machine. Like, the patterns that emerge, you can create all these kinds of fractals. You think, like, it would create some kind of repeatable regular pattern or something like that. It would be something dumb, but it can create these, like, like, the, the, it, it... Uh, one, one really important thing is the cell just knows about itself. It doesn't move. It just knows about itself. But when you zoom out and you look at the result from the system, it looks like there's objects running around. Like, the individual cells aren't running around, but it looks like the objects are running around. You can have messengers. You can have what are called spaceships, which are these mechanisms that use the cells and, and move around. Like, if you have any gifs or videos of it, like, there's stuff that moves. And it seems like it's intelligent objects that communicate with each other and all of that emerges. And you can see it... Like, if you just think about it a little bit, like, you have to remind yourself that... See, like, this animation right there, it looks like there's a moving object. Like, it looks... So I think these are called glider guns or something like that, where they shoot off objects of different kinds. And like, you think... But the individual cell knows nothing about anything except itself and its nearest neighbors. And as a result, you can nevertheless have arbitrary complexity, objects of arbitrary size that move around, that live and die, like, that, uh, c- li- like I said, uh, do any kind of computation in the world. It makes you realize that it's possible that this universe is just some simple dumb rules on a scale of 10 to the 120. Like, an ant colony just, that just scaled, uh, like, an insanely, to an arbitrary degree. And then we're just the re- we're like these clueless apes there, just the result of that. We're not able to perceive at all the, uh, the, you know, much, much smaller level, the simplicity that's happening. To us, all of this seems... Like, it, it all does... It seems complicated to us. Like, this table seems like it's wood, you know. We don't perceive the atoms. We don't perceive the quantum mechanics. We don't perceive whether it's string theory or something like Wolfram is saying. Like, these objects that are interacting at a microscop- fo- far smaller than a microscopic level, but it might be that there are really simple rules that just create all of this. It seems complicated to us, but the... It's something that's, I think, is nice to appreciate for people from all walks of life, how much complexity be created from simplicity, from simple rules, how much richness, beauty just could be created from simple rules.

Joe Rogan 1:18:21 Isn't it also really interesting that everything tends to move towards greater and greater complexity?

Lex Fridman 1:18:28 Well, n- uh, so this is, I think, really important, and it's surprising. In general, the second law of ther- thermodynamics says that everything becomes more cha- chaotic. So it's not complex, it becomes more boring, the heat death of the universe, that, uh, everything moves apart, everything becomes random.

Joe Rogan 1:18:48 Eventually.

Lex Fridman 1:18:48 Eventually. But the thing is that there's pockets of complexity, and, uh, that these pockets keep getting created of some interesting stuff.