Joe Rogan Experience #1655 - Sebastian Junger

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drum music plays) Joe Rogan podcast.…

   1. SJSebastian Junger0:00

      (drum music plays) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. SJSebastian Junger0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays)

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Good to see you, man. How are you?

   5. SJSebastian Junger0:16

      Uh, really good. Very good to see you too.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      Yeah, I see you're, uh, very prepared. Look at all these, uh-

   7. SJSebastian Junger0:21

      Yeah, look at all those notes on those notecards. Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:23

      Yeah. Serious stuff.

   9. SJSebastian Junger0:25

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       We were talking before. This, there's so much to, to talk about, but we were talking before and you were saying that, uh, over the last year you almost died because you had some crazy internal an-, uh, you had an aneurysm in your pancreas. Is that what you said it was?

   11. SJSebastian Junger0:40

       Yeah. I had an undiagnosed asymptomatic aneurysm, which is a sort of ballooning in the blood vessel, uh, in the artery, in my pancreatic artery. And out of the blue, it was a congenital thing. Like, I'd apparently developed during my whole life. It, um, it was just from a structural problem. And, uh, in one afternoon, one beautiful June afternoon last year, it burst. And, um, you know, I just felt this pain shoot through my stomach. I was like, "Damn, what is that?" And within a few minutes, I couldn't stand up and within about 10 minutes, I was starting to go blind. And my wife called the, the ambulance and, um, those guys got there and, and, um, you know, I was tanking really fast and the hospital was an hour away. And, uh, by a miracle, I don't even think the doctors understand it, but by a miracle I was still alive when I got to the hospital. I, I lost 90% of my blood into my abdomen. Um, and, um, I didn't know I was dying, but I was dying, and I was right in that sort of twilight zone. And, um, the, uh, a, a black pit opened up underneath me and I felt myself starting to get pulled down into it and I, I didn't wanna go. Like, it was cold and dark and black and bottomless, and I just knew, like, "Do not go down there." And I was getting pulled down into it. And right at that moment, my, my father who passed away in 2012, um, my father sort of appeared next to me and started trying to communicate, trying to communicate with me and comforting me. And, um, I, um, I sort of waved him away and the last thing I remember saying to the doctor, I was sort of losing consciousness, and the last thing I said to the doctor was, "You're losing me right now. You gotta hurry." He was trying to put a... He'd cut my neck open. He was trying to put a line into my neck to... You know, they pumped 10, 10 units of blood into me and that's what brought me back. It was really close. (exhales)

   12. JRJoe Rogan2:38

       Wow. Um, when you say you, you felt y- you were sinking into a pit? Like, did, were you seeing this? Were you visualizing it?

   13. SJSebastian Junger2:45

       I, I, yeah. I mean, you know, your perceptions are very weird 'cause I had, you know, very little oxygen in the brain. I'd, I had a hemoglobin count of 1.2. If you're a doctor, you know what that is. It's almost unheard of. And so I just felt this pit underneath me and it was pulling me into it and I didn't wanna go.

   14. JRJoe Rogan3:00

       And you can see a pit? Like, you, you sort of-

   15. SJSebastian Junger3:01

       Yeah, I mean, again, see/feel. Your perceptions are very weird when-

   16. JRJoe Rogan3:05

       Right.

   17. SJSebastian Junger3:05

       ... you're like that. And then my father also was sort of floating above me. He was a presence. Um, I don't know if seeing him is quite the word. I, it's another perception.

   18. JRJoe Rogan3:15

       Wow.

   19. SJSebastian Junger3:18

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan3:19

       So coming out of that, once you regained your health, you must have had an incredible newfound appreciation for all the people in your life and just everything.

   21. SJSebastian Junger3:29

       It was a long path. You know, I, I mean, I'm a really healthy guy. Later the doctor said, "You know, it was your..." You know, I was a marathon runner when I was young and, um, I don't drink. I'm, uh, I'm athletic and I use my body pretty vigorously. And he said, "That saved your life. Like, you didn't have a heart attack. Like, you, you, you owe your life to that." And-

   22. JRJoe Rogan3:48

       Oh. Wow.

   23. SJSebastian Junger3:48

       But the next morning, you know, I didn't know that I'd almost died. I had no idea. I have two little girls. I have a four-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old, and they're the most precious things to me. I, I mean, I can't even describe it, obviously. And the fact that they almost lost their dad was just devastating. When the ICU nurse came in and said, "How are you doing, Mr. Junger? You're one lucky guy. You almost died yesterday." I had no idea. And then she came back an hour later and, um, and, and she said, "How are you doing?" And I said, "You know, physically, I'm..." And I was throwing up blood. I was, I'm not f- (laughs) I was not doing very well physically, but I said I was. I said, "But, you know, I'm really struggling with what you told me and, um, it's really terrifying. I didn't know." And I mean, I said, "I almost died in my own driveway in front of my family and I didn't even know?" Like, and I said, "I keep thinking about it. I can't stop." And she said the wisest things, one of the wisest things I've ever heard. She said, um, she said, "Stop thinking of that moment as scary and start thinking of it as sacred." And she didn't elaborate. She didn't need to. In the next five days in the ICU, I thought about that word sacred and what the experience was now giving me access to. And, you know, not to sound sort of, like, trite, but, um, life is a frigging miracle. And, you know, I'm not religious. I, you know, whatever. I, I don't think any of us, few of us, I certainly didn't, quite understand, um, what a miracle it is that we're alive, that we exist, that we draw breath, that we can think about ourselves, that we're here for even one day is a freaking miracle. And you can forget that because your life gets busy and all of a sudden, I feel like life was sort of returned to me, meaning that I understood how sacred it is.

   24. JRJoe Rogan5:40

       Mm-hmm.

   25. SJSebastian Junger5:40

       And, um, again, I'm an atheist. I don't mean sacred in a religious sense. I mean, in the sense that it's, has a profound value and you mustn't, mustn't, mustn't forget.

   26. JRJoe Rogan5:51

       It's so easy to lose sight of that when you're caught up in your bills or traffic or your bullshit and-

   27. SJSebastian Junger5:57

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan5:57

       There's so much, so much of life that is essential in, in, in order for you to just keep on existing in society, but not really important.

   29. SJSebastian Junger6:07

       ... yeah. And, you know, we're humans. We're... I mean, you know, we're wired to have, react to things. You know, someone pisses you off or you're- you're tired or whatever. It's not that we shouldn't have those reactions. Th- Those reactions also keep us alive.

   30. JRJoe Rogan6:17

       Right.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Parietal. Parietal, I think.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      Parietal eye?

   2. SJSebastian Junger15:01

      Parietal. Parietal, I think.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:02

      Parietal?

   4. SJSebastian Junger15:02

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:03

      Uh, both the pineal gland and the parietal eye are photosensitive.

   6. SJSebastian Junger15:07

      Photosensitive, wow.

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:07

      Yeah. It r- it ac-... Go there, which reptile has a third eye. Click that. Um, so there r- there literally are re- well, anyway, point is, this has always been thought of as the third eye. If you look at, you know, Eastern mysticism and whenever, uh, people are, are enlightened, they're depicted-

   8. SJSebastian Junger15:26

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:26

      ... they're depicted with that third eye.

   10. SJSebastian Junger15:28

       Right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan15:28

       And this organ, the Cottonwood Research Foundation was the first group that, uh, they actually discovered that, uh, for sure, the pineal gland does produce DMT in living rats. Because before, they knew that it was produced by the liver and the lungs, and there was a lot of anecdotal evidence that pointed to the pineal gland-

   12. SJSebastian Junger15:49

       Right.

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:49

       ... but they couldn't prove it because you'd have to actually cut into someone's head.

   14. SJSebastian Junger15:52

       Right.

   15. JRJoe Rogan15:52

       There was a lot of problems just based on the, you know, the structure of the brain, uh-

   16. SJSebastian Junger15:55

       Right.

   17. JRJoe Rogan15:55

       ... getting in there and, uh-

   18. SJSebastian Junger15:57

       (coughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan15:57

       But through, through this Cottonwood Research Foundation which w- was working on-

   20. SJSebastian Junger16:03

       Right.

   21. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       ... diff- different DMT studies. So they don't know why and they don't know what it is, but they think that this is also responsible for dreams.

   22. SJSebastian Junger16:11

       Right.

   23. JRJoe Rogan16:11

       They think it's responsible for some of the insane visuals and weird things you experience in dreams, but they also, the really spiritual, the, the, the people that are, like, willing to go way out on a limb-

   24. SJSebastian Junger16:23

       Right.

   25. JRJoe Rogan16:23

       ... think it's a chemical doorway to the afterlife.

   26. SJSebastian Junger16:28

       Well, let me tell you, um, I mean, that's, that's a pretty stunning thought, and we, we all, I mean, I'm not a mystic, but also, we all need to be humble about what we know and don't know. And we have no idea what there is after death.

   27. JRJoe Rogan16:40

       Yeah.

   28. SJSebastian Junger16:40

       And w- uh, I mean, we might not even be able to ca- be capable of understanding it with the brains that we have, you know? So maybe that's why we keep bumping into the unknowable because it's just unknowable to us. At any rate, let me tell you that two nights before I almost died, I, um... You know, I'd had a pain in my abdomen for a year that I ignored, and, um-

   29. JRJoe Rogan17:02

       How bad was the pain?

   30. SJSebastian Junger17:03

       Um, you know, it was... I could tolerate it, which to me meant, "Okay, well, if you can bear it, then it's not gonna kill you." You know what I mean?
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Hmm. …

   1. SJSebastian Junger30:00

      but just to sort of mention it, like, real leadership, real leadership is someone who is willing to sort of put, put their, put themselves last, you know? And you can see it in the military. Like I would, I was watching this one officer, Lieutenant Piosa, and we were in a very bad situation, and he stood up in this situation where it's hard to imagine doing that, and he stood up because he needed to know where everyone was on the side of the mountain. And we were about to get absolutely hammered. And, um, and, uh, s- a sergeant said, "Sir, please sit down. You ... It's, it's our job to get shot at, and it's your job to stay alive and, and direct this shit show." Right? And that's real leadership.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:41

      Hmm.

   3. SJSebastian Junger30:42

      Um, there was a, um, um, a leader during the I- Easter Rising in Ireland that I write about, and the, the, the head of the whole Easter Rising in Dublin, the whole, the head of the whole thing, I mean, the General Petraeus of the Irish rebels, um, would go out into gunfire in the street to figure out where to put the positions and the guns and the sandbags and everything with bullets smacking all around him. He was ahead of the whole damn thing. And his like aides were like, "Sir, please take cover. We need you." And he would- you know, wouldn't do it. That's, that's real leadership. And that, and, and that can be a military leader, it can be a, a comedian who's beloved by people. Like if you, if you make yourself one of everyone else, then you're really, really a leader.

   4. JRJoe Rogan31:22

      ... make yourself one of everyone else.

   5. SJSebastian Junger31:26

      Like, when you use your position of power to protect yourself, to insulate yourself from things that everyone else is going through, you're actually not a leader. You're an opportunist.

   6. JRJoe Rogan31:34

      Mm, that's interesting. So how would you guide one to do that? How would you guide one to, to be a leader in that situation?

   7. SJSebastian Junger31:44

      You know, I think there are people that have that in them and people that don't, and I think, um, there are people who want leadership positions because it gives them opportunity. Um, I think there are people that are, um, cowards that wind up-

   8. JRJoe Rogan31:58

      Yeah.

   9. SJSebastian Junger31:58

      ... in leadership positions, you know, and then... and they're not, then they're not gonna do that. They're gonna protect themselves, and that... You know, in Western society, we, there, we, we have huge margins between where we are and survival, right?

   10. JRJoe Rogan32:09

       Yeah.

   11. SJSebastian Junger32:09

       Huge margins. So we can have bad leadership-

   12. JRJoe Rogan32:12

       S-

   13. SJSebastian Junger32:12

       ... that's sort of, like, opportunistic and self-serving, and it doesn't matter. We're gonna muddle along okay. But the Easter Rising couldn't afford to do that. Um, and so when someone like Robin Williams comes along and does not privilege himself in a comedy club and just is like everyone else, I'm like, I, I really tip my hat to that.

   14. JRJoe Rogan32:28

       Yeah.

   15. SJSebastian Junger32:28

       Like, that, that's real grace and dignity.

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:31

       Yeah, I, I do as well. And this way you're describing leadership, like, I think this is what everybody wishes we could recognize in our political leaders. Like, we wish there was a, a shining example, and I think if there was one in the past election, it was Tulsi Gabbard because you're talking about a woman-

   17. SJSebastian Junger32:49

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:49

       ... who had served overseas twice in, in-

   19. SJSebastian Junger32:52

       Right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan32:52

       ... medical units-

   21. SJSebastian Junger32:53

       Right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan32:54

       ... had literally worked with people who'd been shot and blown up-

   23. SJSebastian Junger32:57

       Right.

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:58

       ... and had served as a congresswoman for six years, or I guess eight years at the end. So she really was an example of that, but other than that, you saw just a lot of more of the same, and it was really frustrating-

   25. SJSebastian Junger33:10

       Right.

   26. JRJoe Rogan33:10

       ... for people be- so they had to pick a horse, and they had to pick a horse that they weren't exactly excited about.

   27. SJSebastian Junger33:16

       Right, right.

   28. JRJoe Rogan33:16

       A- and, and that's, that's what led us-

   29. SJSebastian Junger33:18

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan33:18

       ... to what we have in the White House currently. It's not... It's, like, this fake excitement about this-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   It's just ideologically driven.…

   1. SJSebastian Junger45:00

      really puzzling. Like, are you sure you wanna do that?

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:03

      It's just ideologically driven.

   3. SJSebastian Junger45:05

      Yeah. Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:05

      It's not driven by science.

   5. SJSebastian Junger45:06

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:06

      It's not driven by logic. It's certainly not driven by compassion for biological-

   7. SJSebastian Junger45:10

      Right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:10

      ... women. It's, it's driven by what you would call the, uh, uh, oppression spectrum.

   9. SJSebastian Junger45:17

      Right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:17

       Right? Like, who's at the highest end-

   11. SJSebastian Junger45:20

       Right.

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:20

       ... of the oppression spectrum?

   13. SJSebastian Junger45:21

       Right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:21

       Trans people.

   15. SJSebastian Junger45:22

       Right.

   16. JRJoe Rogan45:22

       Maybe, uh, b- interracial trans people would, like, or maybe Black trans people would trump that.

   17. SJSebastian Junger45:28

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan45:28

       Like, what, what is the-

   19. SJSebastian Junger45:29

       Right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan45:29

       ... the top m- perceived most oppressed? Everyone else has to sort of capitulate. Everyone else has to sort of, like, figure out a way to comply-

   21. SJSebastian Junger45:38

       Right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan45:38

       ... with whatever rules are gonna benefit them. Biological women are clearly not going to benefit from trans girls competing in girls' sports.

   23. SJSebastian Junger45:46

       Right.

   24. JRJoe Rogan45:46

       They're just not.

   25. SJSebastian Junger45:47

       Right.

   26. JRJoe Rogan45:47

       It's not good for them. And if you think it is good for them, then I, I get how you would want it to be inclusive and you would want everyone to just feel-

   27. SJSebastian Junger45:58

       Right.

   28. JRJoe Rogan45:58

       ... fully accepted, but we have to look at sports as a different thing. There's a reason why boys don't compete against girls.

   29. SJSebastian Junger46:04

       Right, right. You know, uh, one, one thing that helps, um, for me when I think about any kind of conflict or disagreement is to start out assuming that the other person or the other group that s- p- appears to be proposing something outrageous, just start with the assumption they're trying to achieve something good, and they're doing it through means that you don't think will work.

   30. JRJoe Rogan46:26

       Right.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:12:46

   Right. …

   1. SJSebastian Junger1:00:00

      dominated by a single s- alpha individual.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:03

      Right.

   3. SJSebastian Junger1:00:03

      Um, because a coalition can always take them down. And that- that- and that makes society livable, right? We're not in this sort of like-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:09

      Yes.

   5. SJSebastian Junger1:00:09

      ... horrible hierarchy, uh, where the- where the- the- where the biggest person gets to decide everything.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:14

      Yes. Yes. It's, um ... but it- what we're talking about, I mean, there's- there's just- I just hate absolutes when it comes to fighting.

   7. SJSebastian Junger1:00:23

      Right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:23

      'Cause the variables are so extreme and there's so many things that come into play.

   9. SJSebastian Junger1:00:26

      Yeah. Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:26

       And so many styles-

   11. SJSebastian Junger1:00:27

       Right.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:28

       ... of how to c- I mean, there's- there's a- a big man that will beat a better, smaller man in one way, and then a better, smaller man who has a different skill set-

   13. SJSebastian Junger1:00:38

       Right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:38

       ... will beat that big man in a different scenario.

   15. SJSebastian Junger1:00:41

       Yeah, yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:00:42

       And then the way they interact will change. If they fight 10 times-

   17. SJSebastian Junger1:00:46

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:00:47

       ... one guy might win six.

   19. SJSebastian Junger1:00:49

       Right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:00:49

       You know, and then the other guy might w- win four. And you can't predict. You have no idea.

   21. SJSebastian Junger1:00:53

       Right. Well, they- you know, someone at ESPN crunched all the numbers and said-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:00:56

       Mm-hmm.

   23. SJSebastian Junger1:00:56

       ... that- that size wins about half the time.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:00:58

       But when they say that, like how much size are they talking about? Because of the fact that we're talking about weight classes.

   25. SJSebastian Junger1:01:03

       Right.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:03

       That's why I'm confused. Unless they study only the heavyweight division-

   27. SJSebastian Junger1:01:06

       Right.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:06

       ... which has the largest disparity in weight.

   29. SJSebastian Junger1:01:08

       Right. That might- it might have been that. I didn't ask him specifically.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:01:10

       Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 2:54:43