Joe Rogan Experience #1577 - Terry Virts

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. TVTerry Virts0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. TVTerry Virts0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      (instrumental music) Terry.

   5. TVTerry Virts0:15

      Joe.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      (laughs) Thanks for doing this, man.

   7. TVTerry Virts0:17

      Hey, thanks for having me on. This is awesome.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      Um, you spent 200 days in space... in a row.

   9. TVTerry Virts0:25

      I did. Uh, uh, my first flight was two weeks, my second flight was 200 days. Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:29

       That's insane.

   11. TVTerry Virts0:30

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:30

       What does that feel like?

   13. TVTerry Virts0:32

       Um, the two weeks was not enough. I got back to Earth and I was like, "Man that was awesome, I need to go do this again." Uh, and after 200 days, it was awesome, but it was like, "All right I checked the box and, you know, I've done-"

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       Checked all the boxes.

   15. TVTerry Virts0:45

       "... everything." I was a shuttle pilot, you know, station commander. I did space walks. So I had a ch- I feel like I had a chance to do everything. I made a IMAX movie while I was up there. I feel like I had a chance to do, you know, everything I wanted to do.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:58

       When you did two weeks, is there a recovery period when you return after two weeks?

   17. TVTerry Virts1:02

       Yeah, for sure, but it's pretty quick. Like, when you land, I was super dizzy. And I felt like everything was heavy. U- I was the last guy out of the shuttle, 'cause I was a pilot, and, uh, they, they came in, "All right, time f- time to get out virtually." And I grabbed my helmet and I was like, "Be careful, this thing weighs 500 pounds."

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:18

       Wow.

   19. TVTerry Virts1:18

       Um, and that night I was just like, I wanted someone next to me. I didn't fall over, but I felt like I was going to. Um, but a- after a day or two I was fine. Uh, but after the long duration flight, it was like, that first day sucked. I could do everything. I could walk around and they make you do this torture where you have to get on your stomach and do, it was like burpees, you know, get up as fast as you can. They were trying to make you pass out from orthostatic intolerance. So I could do all that stuff, I just hated it. And then the second day was a little bit better. First day was like a couple of bottles of wine. (laughs) The second day was, like, a bottle of wine. The third day was, like, a glass or two. Um, and by a week later, they, they make you do this balance test where they put you in this big box, you can't see anything, and then they move the box. And you're like, "Whoa." And they have force sensors on your feet where, if your feet are doing this, you know, you have bad balance and if your feet go vroom and s- recover, you're good. So I did my balance test before flight and after flight. And after 200 days in space, a week later my balance score was better than it was before I launched, which I couldn't believe, but, um, I have to tell you that story just to say that, you know, the human body's amazing. It can adapt, uh, pretty quickly.

   20. JRJoe Rogan2:28

       That's great. So, w- what is the, like, from the time you land after 200 days and then when you're 100%, how, how much time is that?

   21. TVTerry Virts2:37

       So (sighs) they, there's some rule about driving cars, like they don't want you driving cars for a couple of weeks, and the doctor's gotta sign off before you drive.

   22. JRJoe Rogan2:45

       Oh wow.

   23. TVTerry Virts2:46

       But, like I said, after a week, I was, I had a better balance score and o- after a week I did 20 pull-ups at the gym.

   24. JRJoe Rogan2:52

       Really?

   25. TVTerry Virts2:53

       You know, I was not 100%, but I was, like, 90%.

   26. JRJoe Rogan2:56

       Now is this because of exercises that they-

   27. TVTerry Virts2:58

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan2:58

       ... prescribe while-

   29. TVTerry Virts2:58

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan2:58

       ... you're in space?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Jesus. …

   1. TVTerry Virts15:00

      watch your, launch your replacement crew until we know what the problem was. And so since you don't have a replacement crew, you guys are gonna stay longer." So we got kinda stuck in space, you know, and we didn't know how long we were gonna be there. And we were kinda getting low on supplies since that was the second cargo ship that had blown up.

   2. NANarrator15:16

      Jesus.

   3. TVTerry Virts15:16

      So, you know, and it was all about attitude. It was just like COVID. It was like all of a sudden, you're stuck and you're low on supplies. It was a similar... (laughs) Like, when COVID happened, I'm like, this is like when I was in space and we got stuck there.

   4. NANarrator15:27

      Do they have an emergency supply of food for you guys up there?

   5. TVTerry Virts15:31

      There w- there was enough, um, food that we were good. The NASA guy... There's a ground team that manages, you know. They wanna have margin on oxygen and water and food and everything.

   6. NANarrator15:41

      Yeah.

   7. TVTerry Virts15:42

      And they handled three failures back to back to back and used up all the margin, and they kept the full crew there.

   8. NANarrator15:50

      (exhales)

   9. TVTerry Virts15:50

      So they... But there was no more margin. Like, it was time to, for something to work, and it did th- thankfully, so.

   10. NANarrator15:56

       Oh, God. Imagine if it didn't, if three more back to back to back.

   11. TVTerry Virts15:58

       Yeah, if four would've happened, we would've probably had to start bringing guys back and, like, just leave a skeleton crew up there. But thankfully, that didn't happen. And the... Thanks to the guys in Houston, they... And Moscow and everywhere. They, they had managed the backup food that was, uh...

   12. NANarrator16:12

       What are you eating up there?

   13. TVTerry Virts16:14

       I- i- it wasn't bad. I actually liked it, you know. It's better than what I cook for (laughs) myself as a bachelor. Um-

   14. NANarrator16:20

       Really?

   15. TVTerry Virts16:21

       Yeah, I mean, it, it was pretty good. It's not... It's, it's like, uh, MREs that the military guys eat.

   16. NANarrator16:26

       Mm-hmm.

   17. TVTerry Virts16:26

       You know, the green bags of food? The NASA food is basically MREs. So you just rip it open and stick a spoon in and eat it. You can warm it up if you want, or you just eat it straight. There's dehydrated food in these plastic containers. It's like crunchy meat or vegetables or fruits or anything you can dehydrate. You stick it in the machine, dial in how many milliliters, push a button, and then it... 10 minutes later, it's food. Um...

   18. NANarrator16:51

       Wow.

   19. TVTerry Virts16:52

       The Russians have similar kind of s- It's a different system, but similar. And the Russian food was great. I loved it. Um-

   20. NANarrator16:57

       Is it better than the American food?

   21. TVTerry Virts16:59

       Well, it's different, which is important. Over 200 days, you don't wanna eat the same thing every day.

   22. NANarrator17:03

       Right.

   23. TVTerry Virts17:03

       So the Russians have great borscht. You know, their soup is awesome.

   24. NANarrator17:07

       Mm-hmm.

   25. TVTerry Virts17:07

       Mashed potatoes were great. Uh, and the fish was really good. We didn't have any fish, so they had these little, like, cat food cans of fish.

   26. NANarrator17:14

       Mm.

   27. TVTerry Virts17:14

       And the cosmonauts were, like, sick of them. Like, "Another day of cat food." But I loved 'em 'cause I was never getting fish, so. And there was a few things that we didn't like that they loved. So I, I started this bag of, like, uneaten food. So whatever we didn't like, we put in there. And about once a week, those guys, the Russians, would come down and raid our... They would eat everything that we didn't like, and we would go down there and eat.

   28. NANarrator17:34

       (laughs)

   29. TVTerry Virts17:34

       They'd have, like, boxes of these cans of fish, and I, we loved 'em, so...

   30. NANarrator17:38

       Do you speak Russian?
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   More grays. …

   1. TVTerry Virts30:00

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      More grays.

   3. TVTerry Virts30:00

      Seeing the planet, it's like, "Yeah, the, this thing's been around for a long time, and it's gonna be around for a long time, so you probably don't need to get as uptight about, you know, the day-to-day stress of life." And, um, it's, uh... It just kinda-... put things in perspective, like, don't get too excited about the Kardashians, or whatever the latest political tweet was, or whatever.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:21

      Yeah.

   5. TVTerry Virts30:22

      Um, like, you know, things are gonna go on for a long time, and so that, it helps put that in perspective in a big way.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:28

      It's interesting that, uh, an actual physical perspective change, just being, just l- being in a different place where you're looking down on it from a different vantage point.

   7. TVTerry Virts30:37

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:37

      All the astronauts seem to say that.

   9. TVTerry Virts30:39

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:39

       That it has this profound shift in how you think of Earth and how you think of humanity, in general.

   11. TVTerry Virts30:44

       Yeah. You know one of the interesting things? I've been traveling since I was a kid. I did some exchange, uh, programs in Finland and France, and in the Air Force I lived all around the world. And whenever I would go to France or Korea, or wherever, it was like, "All right, I'm in Korea." And then I'd get back to the States, I'm like, "All right, I'm back, back home in America," or whatever. And now when I travel, and I've been traveling a lot last couple years, I don't ever, I always feel like I'm home. Like, it was weird.

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:11

       Oh, wow.

   13. TVTerry Virts31:12

       One, one time I landed in the Middle East, and I remember thinking, I'm, it, I didn't think anything, and that really struck me, 'cause it used to always be such a big deal wherever I landed. I kind of feel like I'm home no matter where I'm at, which is-

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:23

       Wow.

   15. TVTerry Virts31:23

       ... interesting. Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:24

       And that's from the space travel.

   17. TVTerry Virts31:26

       I, I, it is, yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:27

       Wow.

   19. TVTerry Virts31:28

       Yeah. It, I, it wasn't conscious. I didn't, like, expect it or whatever. I just realized that, "Hey, I don't ever, I don't ever feel like I'm not at home." And my, my crewmate Samantha said something really profound. She said, um, like, "You see Earth, and you can tell it's going around the sun. Like, you can actually see the motion sometimes if you're watching stars and stuff. And it's like we're on this spaceship together, so we oughta be crewmates and not just passengers."

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:54

       Yeah.

   21. TVTerry Virts31:55

       Like, we all oughta kind of take care of the planet and oursel- each other and stuff.

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:59

       Do you find that most of the, or many of the astronauts sh- share this similar perspective shift? That once you go up, you do realize the f- how weird it is?

   23. TVTerry Virts32:10

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:10

       That there, there are these tribal differences between us?

   25. TVTerry Virts32:12

       (laughs) Yeah. Y- you're like, "What the hell are we doing?" I, I got a story about that, but to be honest, (laughs) we're probably not the best, um, communicators of emotion, you know, like, you know, we're not necessarily all touchy-feely people. But some of my close friends, when we talk about this, there's a ver- there's a very similar perspective of, "You know, we're all here on the, on the planet together." I was on my first flight on the shuttle, and it was the fifth, I remember it was f- the fifth night there. And when I looked out, we were going over the Mediterranean at night, and you could see, there's this like U-shape where there's Egypt and the Nile, there's Israel and Syria and Lebanon are right there, and there's Turkey and Greece. And it's this little area. And Israel is this little thing that's surrounded by Jordan and Leban-, you know, they're all, like, right there. And I remember thinking, like, "Guys, what's the problem, man? You're, you're, you're literally living together on a postage stamp on this big planet."

   26. JRJoe Rogan33:04

       Yeah.

   27. TVTerry Virts33:04

       And it wasn't anything about Israel or the Middle East specifically. It was more like, "Why, why can we not get along-"

   28. JRJoe Rogan33:09

       Just humans.

   29. TVTerry Virts33:10

       "... 'cause we're all down here?" Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan33:11

       And the crazy thing is, if you ask most people, their, their position is al- there'll never be peace in the Middle East.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Does it point to…

   1. TVTerry Virts45:00

      infinitely more complicated than a bottle of water. So in my... I came out of my space flight thinking, from... Not religiously, but from a scientific point of view, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Like, the universe is just too... The physics behind the weak magnetic, y- magnetic, electromagnetic force, and the weak nuclear force, and the- how our bodies are d- made, it just points to design. So I- You'd think there would be aliens, but I think if there are, somebody had to have something to do with somehow getting them started.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:29

      Does it point to design in, like, the idea of intelligent design? Or does it point to a way that the universe is structured that encourages complexity and constant change?

   3. TVTerry Virts45:45

      Right.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:45

      And that these things adapt and change and shift, and you have all these biological forces that are competing? Like, if you think about life on Earth (clears throat) , you have all these various biological forces that are competing for dominance, right? There's animals that are eating animals-

   5. TVTerry Virts46:02

      Right.

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:02

      ... animals that are taking over resources. And then, you've got this one animal that figures out how to manipulate matter and how to manipulate environments and how to use its opposing thumbs and use its brain, and the brain grows larger.

   7. TVTerry Virts46:14

      Right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:14

      And you see, like, this process, that this... But this process all has to do with trying to adapt, trying to innovate, and competing with all these other forces. It seems like problems and, and, and, and difficulties present themselves, and these organisms either make their way through these problems and come out on the other end adapted to them and better, or they don't.

   9. TVTerry Virts46:39

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:39

       And th- this is, this is the weirdness of life, right? And this is why 90% of all species that have ever existed are gone.

   11. TVTerry Virts46:46

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JRJoe Rogan46:46

       And I think it's more than 90, right?

   13. TVTerry Virts46:48

       Yeah, they couldn't, they couldn't adapt. (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:50

       But we, in our minds, we instantly like to go to the simplest possible explanation, the simplest possible explanation being that there's some sort of a creator.

   15. TVTerry Virts47:00

       Yeah. Well, I don't think... So, I'm just... I wanna talk science, not religion.

   16. JRJoe Rogan47:05

       Mm-hmm.

   17. TVTerry Virts47:05

       I'm a Christian, but I, I don't wanna talk religion. But just... I don't know how it happened. It's not as simplistic as somebody just went poof and everything happened. Obviously, there's... You know, things evolve, and there's science behind it, which is the fun part of s- living, is learning how stuff works-

   18. JRJoe Rogan47:22

       Right.

   19. TVTerry Virts47:22

       ... and learning the science behind it. Um, but there... Like, just at the end of the day, s- I think somebody had to set things in motion with a, with a point of view. I made a short-

   20. JRJoe Rogan47:31

       But here's the question.

   21. TVTerry Virts47:31

       Yeah?

   22. JRJoe Rogan47:32

       Who set them in motion?

   23. TVTerry Virts47:34

       Right. Ultimately, there had to have been somebody that... Before the big bang, right? Um, I wrote a, I, I did a short film this year called Cosmic Perspective. I wanna turn it into a series. And I talk about how in the beginning of time, there were perfect imperfections. So, when the big bang happened, if it was, like, perfectly uniform, the universe would just be this giant balloon, right?

   24. JRJoe Rogan47:54

       Right.

   25. TVTerry Virts47:54

       But it w- The way... It wasn't mass at the time. It was just energy. The way it was, like, started was a little bit imperfect. And that's why you have stars and galaxies and galaxy clusters and everything. So... And if it was a little bit off, the whole universe wouldn't exist, right? So it's, it just... Things point to that. Or- Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan48:14

       What is your perspective on the big bang? Do you... Th- th- there's a lot of people's...... views vary depending upon, like, what-what the most recent theories are and-

   27. TVTerry Virts48:23

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan48:24

       But some people believe that the universe started with the big bang and some people believe that it's always existed and there's... it's a continuing cycle of big bangs, endless expansion, and then ultimately contraction, and then it starts all over again.

   29. TVTerry Virts48:40

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan48:40

       And that there's infinite numbers of big bangs that are occurring through multiverses-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:10:18

   First there was light.…

   1. TVTerry Virts1:00:00

      First there was light.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:01

      Yeah.

   3. TVTerry Virts1:00:01

      God said, "Let there be light," and there's... The Big Bang was light. I mean, it was actually what physicists, it took them thousands of years to figure out that that's what happened first.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:09

      It would be so fascinating to sit down... if there was a way where you could do like Google Translate on people who lived 5,000 years ago.

   5. TVTerry Virts1:00:17

      Yes.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:17

      If you had a time machine, sit down with the very people who were trying to figure out how to write this stuff down.

   7. TVTerry Virts1:00:22

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:22

      And that this is important information to pass on-

   9. TVTerry Virts1:00:25

      Right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:25

       ... to other people. Like, how do you know this? Where are you getting this from?

   11. TVTerry Virts1:00:28

       Right.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:28

       ... like, too much of it is applicable.

   13. TVTerry Virts1:00:31

       Right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:31

       Like they knew too much about human- They, th- obviously there's a lot of shit in there that's clearly been put in there by men.

   15. TVTerry Virts1:00:38

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:00:38

       Things, condoning slavery-

   17. TVTerry Virts1:00:40

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:00:40

       ... treating women like second-class citizens. But there's, there's so much weirdn- there's so much knowledge in there. There's so much, they had so much of an understanding of human nature-

   19. TVTerry Virts1:00:51

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:00:52

       ... and how, how to get along peacefully with each other, and what are the, what are the principles of harmony?

   21. TVTerry Virts1:00:57

       Right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:00:58

       Like, what are the, what are the rules that you can have to have a society function in a, in a, in a beautiful way?

   23. TVTerry Virts1:01:05

       Well, do unto others as you would have them-

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:07

       Yeah.

   25. TVTerry Virts1:01:07

       ... do unto you.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:08

       Yeah.

   27. TVTerry Virts1:01:09

       That's pretty good wisdom.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:10

       Right, for people-

   29. TVTerry Virts1:01:11

       Tr-

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:01:11

       ... w- with literally tooth and claw 5,000 years ago.

Episode duration: 2:52:55