Joe Rogan Experience #1682 - Jesse Singal

Joe Rogan 0:00 (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) Hello, Jesse.

Jesse Singal 0:15 Hey, man. How's it going?

Joe Rogan 0:16 Nice to meet you. I've, I've read your tweets multiple times.

Jesse Singal 0:18 (laughs) I'm sorry to hear that.

Joe Rogan 0:21 (laughs) You're a tweeter, man. You're out there. You're out there-

Jesse Singal 0:23 I'm try ... I wanna-

Joe Rogan 0:24 ... wai- waiting through the swamp.

Jesse Singal 0:24 ... learn from you how to stay out of that shit. It's ... it destroys me.

Joe Rogan 0:27 It's not for everybody to stay off. Um, uh, just I think for some people, it's a very useful tool. You know, it's very useful for ... That's how I found about you. You know?

Jesse Singal 0:35 That's good.

Joe Rogan 0:35 I found out about you through Twitter, so-

Jesse Singal 0:37 Still worked.

Joe Rogan 0:37 ... it's, um, it's great for promotion, it's great for getting your ideas out there, but it's not great for rational, kind discourse between other, you know, compassionate human beings. There's very little of that going on there. It's a lot of like ... It's like being in a mental health institute that-

Jesse Singal 0:53 Well, I was gonna say, I think it ... I know people from real life who, I don't know for sure, but I think, like, being on Twitter is, is exacerbating their mental illness. I think that's how bad-

Joe Rogan 1:01 100%

Jesse Singal 1:01 ... it is, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02 And during the pandemic, that was highlighted.

Jesse Singal 1:04 Oh, my God. You have nothing else to do. You're just online in this cr- ... It's like a middle school cafeteria, but more sociopathic.

Joe Rogan 1:10 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 1:10 It's horrible.

Joe Rogan 1:11 Yeah, it's just ... It's so bad for people and y- you see them unraveling as the days go on, and you just wanna go like, "Go run. Leave your phone at home and go for a run."

Jesse Singal 1:20 Here's what I don't get about your ability to stay off is I, I have, you know, one a millionth, um, the notoriety of you. Some people hate me, but no, you know, I have trouble not checking in on (laughs) what people are saying about me, and that, that's what fucks you up.

Joe Rogan 1:35 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Singal 1:35 'Cause then you go down this spiral and you, you pretend that this, uh, angry 15-year-old in Ohio who's talking shit about you, that you can convince him you're a good guy.

Joe Rogan 1:44 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Singal 1:45 And that's, that's crazy 'cause he's not trying to have a conversation, but I find I can't, I can't stay away from those fights with the angry 15-year-old in Ohio.

Joe Rogan 1:51 Or angry 45-year-old in Manhattan.

Jesse Singal 1:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:53 It's really-

Jesse Singal 1:54 Maybe more often that way, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:55 It's just people, man. It's just-

Jesse Singal 1:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:57 It's a bad way for humans to communicate, and I think one of the things that happens on Twitter that's really kinda strange is that the bullied become the bullies.

Jesse Singal 2:07 Yep.

Joe Rogan 2:08 It's like you get a lot of people that had a, a really rough time in high school and, you know, socially, and now they found this circle of people that agree with them and they're all, uh, uh, for lack of better term, they have mental health problems because they're really ... The- there's no doubt they're filled with anxiety and chaos and they're on there all day long.

Jesse Singal 2:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:28 And they're just arguing and, and attacking people.

Jesse Singal 2:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:31 Like, there's some people that I follow and I don't follow them. What I do is I bookmark their page and I go back to it-

Jesse Singal 2:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:36 ... 'cause I just don't ... I don't wanna get into it, but it's o- ... Occasionally I'll go and see, like, okay, let, let, let, let's look at the science project.

Jesse Singal 2:45 Yep.

Joe Rogan 2:45 And I'll just see, oh, look at this. We have ten hours of tweeting today.

Jesse Singal 2:49 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:49 And it's ten hours of slinging mud and being shitty and, you know, and calling for people to be deplatformed and it's just ... It's a terrible way to live your life.

Jesse Singal 3:00 Well, and what's weird is during those ten hours, all they've received was approval for that behavior.

Joe Rogan 3:04 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Singal 3:05 So, like, it just ... It gives you a completely warped view of-

Joe Rogan 3:07 Until they don't. There's this one lady that I follow. She's a ... She's an academic and she's fucking loony, and, uh, they came for her.

Jesse Singal 3:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:15 And boy, when they came for her, it was wild watching her scramble-

Jesse Singal 3:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:19 ... and trying to placate and trying to calm them down and seeing that it didn't matter. You could look at the, like, the bulk of her, her tweets and what she does as a, a, you know, as a, a academic and she's not a bad person.

Jesse Singal 3:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:33 She's just loony. You know, she's just a loony progressive who thinks that the only way to make change in this world is to attack people and to, you know, vehemently dismiss anyone who disagrees with you as either a racist or a Nazi or alt-right or-

Jesse Singal 3:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:50 ... including people that are clearly none of those things.

Jesse Singal 3:53 Well, what I'm fascinated by is these communities where you constantly have to look over your shoulders 'cause if you say the wrong thing once, you're basically out of the community. And this isn't just on the left.

Joe Rogan 4:03 Ah.

Jesse Singal 4:03 This actually happened on the right with Trump, where people who didn't support Trump, it was like, "Bye."

Joe Rogan 4:06 Yeah. Ah, yeah.

Jesse Singal 4:06 It doesn't matter you've been a good Conservative 20 years. So there was a, um, a, a sort of socialist lefty writer in New York who, like, had done all- done a lot of good stuff. She wrote a Times piece about how she met Bari Weiss and how they got along, and she's like, "I thought I would hate Bari Weiss. I like Bari Weiss." And she was basically ousted just for refusing to say Bari Weiss was like-

Joe Rogan 4:28 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 4:28 ... you know, Hitler's daughter or something. It's like the, the standards ... So ... All right.

Joe Rogan 4:32 How is Bari Weiss ba- ... I mean, look, Bari Weiss and I have disagreed about things. She's a wonderful person. She's a sweetheart. She's very smart. She's interesting. She's a great writer.

Jesse Singal 4:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:42 I ... There's nothing wrong with her. She just ... People disagree about shit. Like her and I had a ... We have pretty significant disagreement about Tulsi Gabbard and, you know, so I, I love her to death. I think she's great. I just ... I don't understand why people wanna make demons out of just f- humans-

Jesse Singal 4:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:58 ... with normal human flaws.

Jesse Singal 4:59 Well, the thing to keep in mind ... I think a lotta people make the mistake of saying like, "Oh, it's just Twitter. Why do you talk about it so much? Why do you care?" But, like, every ... Basically every mainstream journalist and a significant proportion of, like, big name academics, they're on Twitter every day.

Joe Rogan 5:13 All day.

Jesse Singal 5:13 And they're looking around to see who responds to what and-

Joe Rogan 5:15 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 5:17 ... uh, any journalist right now who says that Twitter is not setting the terms of the agenda and what we cover and how we cover it, I, I think is, like, deluded or lying. It just so clearly is, yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:24 They're disingenuous. It's disingenuous. It's clearly affecting them. If they're on Twitter and they're paying attention to their atmentions, it's having an effect.

Jesse Singal 5:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:32 It just does. The thing about Bari that people have the hardest time with, I guess, is her pro-Israel stance, right? Is that what it is?

Jesse Singal 5:38 It's a combination of things. I think it's, it's partly that, but I, I think people get most mad ... Like, people got mad at me because I wrote stuff for, like, liberalish insti- uh, The Atlantic, New York Magazine that they really disagreed with. They're not gonna bother with people who write for The National Review 'cause, like, they're Conservatives, they're a different tribe. With Bari, there was this assumption that she's, like, in our house fucking shit up, even though she's not. She's by no means, like, a far right. She's like a centrist, heterodox, whatever.

Joe Rogan 6:07 She's just rational.

Jesse Singal 6:09 Yeah, I mean, and I- I have disagreements with her too, but it's just ... I've never understood the, uh ...... of all the people to focus that much anger on, um, I've never quite gotten it, to be honest.

Joe Rogan 6:19 Um, you were saying ... We were talking about this before, and then we agreed to stop talking about it until we got on the podcast ...

Jesse Singal 6:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:24 That there was a, there, I guess there's a clip going around from my podcast from years back.

Jesse Singal 6:28 Yes.

Joe Rogan 6:29 Where it was Charles Johnson on the podcast, where he was saying something about a gene. What, what, what is the clip, 'cause I haven't seen the clip?

Jesse Singal 6:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:36 I just, someone told me about it, but again, I don't pay attention to anything-

Jesse Singal 6:40 So people were recirculating-

Joe Rogan 6:41 ... that has to do with me.

Jesse Singal 6:41 ... a clip where, uh, Johnson was saying that- (laughs) And I know people are gonna take this clip out of context. He was saying, I'm not saying, that there's a gene called MAOA associated with aggression, and that Black people have more of it. And I saw this on my Twitter feed and I hit up a friend of mine, uh, a buddy. I met him once in real life in Helsinki. His name is Amir Sariaslan. He's like a genetics researcher, great follower, follow on Twitter. Um, he studies genetics. I was like, "What's this deal?" They call it the warrior gene. The idea is if you have this gene or some variant of it, you're more aggressive. And he basically explained, there's this interesting recent history of genetics where people thought there was like a gay gene and a liberal gene-

Joe Rogan 7:18 Hmm.

Jesse Singal 7:19 ... and a warrior gene. These are called, um, uh, candidate gene studies. Like, what happens if you have this gene versus not have this gene?

Joe Rogan 7:25 Hmm.

Jesse Singal 7:26 A- at the time Johnson made this claim, there had been this, like, pretty shitty media coverage about the idea o- of a warrior gene. And a guy na- Do you know that guy, John Horgan, the science writer?

Joe Rogan 7:37 No.

Jesse Singal 7:38 Very smart guy. He wrote a book on, um, sort of rational mysticism, like how to, how to-

Joe Rogan 7:42 Hmm.

Jesse Singal 7:42 ... understand mystical experiences in scientific light. Back when, uh, back in the day, maybe 10 years ago, he did a piece for Scientific American, people should look up. John Horgan on the warrior gene, basically debunking it. But what my boy Amir told me is that it's not just that, like, these studies are bad, the candidate gene studies. Genetics research has moved in a whole different direction. They do, uh, genome-wide association studies. They realize, like, for various reasons, these studies saying there's a, a, a gay gene, a liberal gene, a warrior gene, they didn't replicate, and they think genetics is much more complicated. So they've moved toward, like, examining entire regions of our genome and trying to understand it that way. So the short version is what Johnson was saying is just sort of wrong and a misunderstanding, and this entire area of genetics has, like, sort of been debunked. Like we don't really look for candidate genes anymore. We look for whole re- regions of the genome.

Joe Rogan 8:32 Were people looking for it back when he said it?

Jesse Singal 8:33 Yeah, yeah. He was responding to sort of, like, just bad pop science basically.

Joe Rogan 8:38 Bad pop science ...

Jesse Singal 8:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:39 ... from 2015.

Jesse Singal 8:40 From, I think, 2011, but yeah

Narrator 8:42 It was a good-

Joe Rogan 8:42 But when was the podcast I did with him?

Jesse Singal 8:44 The clip was 2015, yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:46 He, uh, was one of those guys that I didn't know anything about until I had him on.

Jesse Singal 8:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:49 And then when I had him on, uh, like, there was things like that where I was like, "Wait, what?"

Jesse Singal 8:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:54 There was a whole group of people ba- And also, I should just say, when I was doing the podcast back then, I didn't sort of understand the impact that it had. I thought I was just having conversations with people, 'cause it wasn't nearly as popular back then.

Jesse Singal 9:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:08 So if I had s- a, a, you know, a podcast with someone whose opinions that I completely disagreed with, I'd have them on anyway. I'd just like, "See, let's see where this goes."

Jesse Singal 9:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:17 Just 'cause it'd maybe be interesting. May be a weird conversation to have a, a conversation with someone who's got a polar opposite view of life than I do. You know, it was a much smaller platform back then. And so I didn't think of it as a responsibility or a, like a ... I didn't think ... You know how there's a thought now that you, you shouldn't put people on. You're, you're elevating their platform.

Jesse Singal 9:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 9:40 Like this is the sort ... But I still kind of disagree with that because I think there's a real value in having people on that have different views than you. Even if you don't agree with them, there's a value in figuring out where they're wrong. There's a value in figuring out if maybe there's a hole in your logic, like whatever it is.

Jesse Singal 9:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:58 With him, there was a lot of those guys. I don't even know if that was like ... Was that pre-Milo or post-Milo I had? There was a bunch of these guys that had realized there was a movement online. And in a lot of ways, what's really interesting is, I'm very anti-censorship; however, there's no denying ... I shouldn't even say however. I'm very anti-censorship. I think it's a terrible way to behave. I think it's a terrible way to, uh, it's a terrible way to sort out the truth, to just silence people and remove people from platforms. And the idea that Twitter and Facebook and YouTube are just private companies and they can do whatever they want, I think it's bigger than that now.

Jesse Singal 10:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:37 I just re- I really do. I think this is, this is a, a legitimate modern day free speech issue, uh, to the point where y- there's a real argument to be made that if you're not on these platforms, you are ... you're, you're not just diminished. They've, they've silenced you in a way that changes the narrative. You, you, you don't get to see the other person's point of view. Even people that are incredibly polarizing like Trump, it's fucking amazing that they can just remove the 45th President of the United States from everything.

Jesse Singal 11:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:10 And he can't even communicate anymore.

Jesse Singal 11:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:12 You know? I mean, you could say it's because of the Capitol attack. You could say it's 'cause a lot of things, and I get your perspective, but I do not agree with silencing him.

Jesse Singal 11:21 W-

Joe Rogan 11:21 I just don't think ... You know, they just didn't want him to win again.

Jesse Singal 11:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:25 But my point was, back then all these alt-right guys were catching a lot of steam. They w- they had a lot of momentum on their side. Milo, who is a, a very charismatic, very articulate, humor- humorous guy. So he would d- do these interviews. The, uh, the right loved him. He would go on, you know, all these different talk shows and he would make fun of everything. And ev- even Bill Maher loved him.

Jesse Singal 11:54 Yup.

Joe Rogan 11:54 And it was interesting, right? And then there was a lot of these guys that came along that would, they would, uh, parrot alt-right talking points. And it's like, if you pay attention to online forums when they're left alone, like Reddit's a great example. They had to close down The Donald, right?

Jesse Singal 12:11 Yup.

Joe Rogan 12:11 Reddit decided this is just too nut. It's too nuts. It's too much. They just ... I don't, I don't agree with that either, but they stepped in because ...Shitposting is a real thing, right? And people love saying things they're not supposed to say and they love riling people up. Now, when you're a person, whether it's Charles Johnson or someone else, that finds this avenue where you can get a lot of attention-

Jesse Singal 12:34 Yep.

Joe Rogan 12:35 ... by stirring shit and saying things that maybe you don't even agree with, but saying things that are gonna rile up people on the left and get a bunch of shitposters and, uh, hardcore right wing people online to love you, people lean in towards that. And there was a lot of that going on. I think that's where Gavin McInnes went south, that's where Milo went south, a lot of these guys. And then once the wave of censorship came in and those guys started getting deplatformed, you see it really did have a massive impact on the culture because there was a movement, man. It was a big movement. And they essentially threw water on that movement.

Jesse Singal 13:11 Do you... I, I actually, I wanna press you on one thing.

Joe Rogan 13:14 Please.

Jesse Singal 13:14 'Cause my, my impulse as a journalist is to ask you questions. So I... Most of your critics, the shit they say about, like, who you platform, I find ridiculous 'cause, like, often you're platforming people who are already popular. And I'm with you in that, like, if, if someone is already a big figure, they're a big figure.

Joe Rogan 13:30 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 13:30 All the best we can do is interrogate their beliefs. A couple times where I'm more sympathetic to your critics, one was, like, Johnson, although then I th- I saw you go back and forth with him on Twitter about the, like, this black gene violence bullshit.

Joe Rogan 13:42 Did I?

Jesse Singal 13:43 Yeah. Briefly.

Joe Rogan 13:44 I don't remember.

Jesse Singal 13:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:44 I d- I didn't even know he was gonna... You know, obviously I didn't know anything about him.

Jesse Singal 13:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:48 I don't even know why I had him on. I think maybe he wrote one thing that I thought was humorous or something. I don't remember-

Jesse Singal 13:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:54 ... 'cause it was so long ago.

Jesse Singal 13:55 B- but to me there's a big difference between, like, um... You know, later on we're, we're surely gonna talk about, like, rapid-onset gender dysphoria.

Joe Rogan 14:02 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Singal 14:02 And, like, Abigail Shrier wrote a big bestselling book you can't deny that's part of the conversation. I think it's crazy people try, whether you agree with her or not, you can't shut that down. To me, that's, like, one subset of conversation where I'm like, you have to have those conversations. The one area where I sort of agree with your critics, um, (laughs) and I know you might not wanna talk about this guy, but, like, when you had Alex Jones on. And he's lo- there's this conspiracy theory about the governor of Virginia harvesting organs from fetuses. And it's really-

Joe Rogan 14:31 When did he say that?

Jesse Singal 14:32 He did on your show.

Joe Rogan 14:33 Whi- which one?

Jesse Singal 14:34 I think the 2019 one.

Eddie Bravo 14:35 It was the ni- I remem-

Joe Rogan 14:36 9/11?

Eddie Bravo 14:36 This is when E- when Eddie came in talking about that, that voice. He had that character voice.

Jesse Singal 14:40 (laughs)

Eddie Bravo 14:40 He's talking about, "How the little babies..." He was talking in a Southern voice. Remember that?

Jesse Singal 14:43 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:43 Hmm.

Eddie Bravo 14:44 That's what he was talking about, but I'll try to-

Jesse Singal 14:45 But-

Eddie Bravo 14:46 I'll find the clip.

Joe Rogan 14:46 Yeah. I d- let's see if we can find that.

Eddie Bravo 14:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:48 'Cause that is, uh... Again, with Alex, I never know what the fuck he's gonna say.

Jesse Singal 14:50 Right. Well, but that's what I'm saying. So, like, to me, the difference there is he, he's targeting, like, a human with bullshit in, like, an office building.

Eddie Bravo 14:59 I agree with that. Yeah.

Jesse Singal 14:59 And if, if... Y- your listeners mostly understand he's an entertainer, but if like 1% of them believe this is true, you could see that causing trouble.

Joe Rogan 15:05 I think he's just an entertainer. See, I, that's why I would-

Jesse Singal 15:08 You think he believes that stuff or...

Joe Rogan 15:08 He believes a lot of it.

Jesse Singal 15:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:10 Yes. And he's right about many things and he's wrong about many things.

Jesse Singal 15:13 What percentage-

Joe Rogan 15:14 That's the problem.

Jesse Singal 15:14 ... of his craziest-sounding beliefs do you think he himself believes it?

Joe Rogan 15:17 I th- well, the crazy-sounding ones... The problem with some of the crazy-sounding ones, they turn out to be true. 'Cause he was telling me about Epstein fucking a decade ago.

Jesse Singal 15:26 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:27 Let me tell you so- this is, this is nuts, man. Like a decade ago, he's like, "Well, what they do is they compromise all these elites. They take them, they bring them to this island, they have them fuck these underage girls and they film it." And I was like, "What?"

Jesse Singal 15:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:37 That, that is so crazy. They got an island? And then it turns out to be true.

Jesse Singal 15:40 Well, the island's true. We don't know-

Joe Rogan 15:42 And then not only... Listen, man. It's fucking true. Like, it's, there's a lot of evidence that it's true.

Jesse Singal 15:48 Gotcha.

Joe Rogan 15:48 There's a lot of testimony from a lot of different people. Whether or not they fucked them, they were there.

Jesse Singal 15:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:53 They... And whether or not they really have film of them fucking them, it is very bizarre that you have these high-level people in both science, celebrities, politicians, and they fly to this fucking island where this convicted pedophile has this weird spot where he takes people.

Jesse Singal 16:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:13 This is my point. Like, Alex told me about this a long time ago. And it sounded like Looney Tune talk.

Jesse Singal 16:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:19 You know, he was te- talking to me about human monkey chimeras that they were working on a long time ago. Sounds like loony shit. I, I, I saw it on the news. I mean, there was... There's a, a science paper published about human monk- See if you can find the, the chimeras, the human monkey chimeras.

Jesse Singal 16:37 (laughs)

Eddie Bravo 16:37 Nah.

Joe Rogan 16:37 That they worked it in, in embryos.

Jesse Singal 16:39 Joe and Jamie's looking for something. (laughs)

Eddie Bravo 16:39 Well, I'm looking at... I'm trying to l- watch Alex Jones's mouth.

Joe Rogan 16:42 Oh. Oh.

Eddie Bravo 16:42 I'm trying to read his lips on the other clip.

Joe Rogan 16:44 Oh, Jamie's editing in real time. But these, the, the, the human chimeras that they... You know, they said that they had only done it in, um, in, uh, embryonic form. Yeah. First monkey-human embryos reignite debate over hybrid animals. This is something that Alex-

Jesse Singal 16:59 You should interview-

Joe Rogan 16:59 He was telling me about-

Jesse Singal 17:00 You should interview one of the human monkey chimeras.

Joe Rogan 17:02 Ah, well, I don't think they actually are viable.

Jesse Singal 17:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:04 They don't bring them to life. But Alex was telling me about this years ago.

Jesse Singal 17:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:08 That, that they do these things for genetic experiments. It's completely unethical. It's terrible. No one, nobody would ever fund it, but they, they, they don't do it publicly and they let-

Jesse Singal 17:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:18 And then they, they tell you once they've already done all the research, then they come out with it. Like, he's... There's been a shit ton of these wacky things. He's one of those guys where he tells me things and I just go, "Huh." Okay, well, how do I do... So the last podcast that I did with him and Tim Dillon, I fact-checked everything.

Eddie Bravo 17:35 I found the part you're gonna play.

Joe Rogan 17:36 You found it? Okay, good. There we go.

Eddie Bravo 17:38 (laughs) Oh God, Jesus.

Joe Rogan 17:39 Here we go.

Alex Jones 17:40 Type in governor of Virginia talks about post-birth abortion and watch-

Joe Rogan 17:45 Wha- how-

Alex Jones 17:45 ... the unedited three-minute video.

Joe Rogan 17:46 How do you call it abortion if it's already been born?

Alex Jones 17:49 Well, that's what Trump said. He said, he said a month ago when this first broke, he said... And see, the left is so compartmentalized. I'm not saying they're the left, but mainstream media, whatever. We're so censored now, they're making their move right now.

Joe Rogan 17:59 Who's they?

Alex Jones 18:01 The globalist technocracy, the mad scientists, the guys that are... want to learn the secrets of the universe, probably already have them.

Joe Rogan 18:07 So what you're saying... So what you're saying is a lot of this censorship, a lot of this is about-

Alex Jones 18:10 Joe, I will give one mil... I don't have 10 million. I will give before God and country to Jamie's, uh, uh, uh... I'm not kidding.

Eddie Bravo 18:19 We're right here.

Alex Jones 18:20 I will give $1 million to your charity of choice-No, no, listen to me. This is serious, Jamie. You need to come after the children.

Joe Rogan 18:28 Jamie's trying, Jamie's trying to get paid. (laughs)

Alex Jones 18:29 Uh, I will give you one million dollars-

Joe Rogan 18:30 What the fuck have I done? It's okay.

Alex Jones 18:31 ... if you can prove that I'm making up that the governor said we keep babies alive after they're born, we keep them comfortable, and then it turns out he has an organ harvesting thing and that's what they're doing. So they keep babies alive. Don't go to Snopes. Go to the governor-

Joe Rogan 18:45 Uh, I'll find something.

Alex Jones 18:46 Go to the governor of Virginia, and that's why they went ahead and burned him for the blackface, but they were using it to blackmail him. They already got that on him.

Joe Rogan 18:55 Stop. Pause, pause.

Alex Jones 18:55 They're already-

Joe Rogan 18:55 Pause, pause.

Jesse Singal 18:56 Let's listen.

Joe Rogan 18:56 Pause. Pause.

Jesse Singal 18:56 Th- th-

Joe Rogan 18:56 Now, is, what did, what did, what did he say? He was saying that they kept them comfortable after birth and that ... But did he actually say that? The governor actually say that? That's what I think ... I, I'm trying to find the part where he found that.

Jesse Singal 19:06 Yeah, so I, I-

Joe Rogan 19:06 I think there was a clip where he said something like that, for sure.

Jesse Singal 19:08 But it's a misunderstanding. The governor talked about this, like, crazy unlikely situation where a fetus is still alive, what would you do then? And he said, "We would keep it comfortable, and if the mother wanted to revive it, we would." He didn't say, "We're gonna kill it." And to jump from that, which was a very specific question, answer to a very specific question, to the state of governor is harvesting fetal organs-

Joe Rogan 19:28 Okay, let me ask you this.

Jesse Singal 19:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:29 If he's saying they keep it comfortable and if the mother wanted to revive it, they would, that is a ethical landmine, isn't it?

Jesse Singal 19:38 Well, of course it is.

Joe Rogan 19:38 Doesn't it? But if-

Jesse Singal 19:38 You're talking, you're talking about a fetus that's, like, barely... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:41 I understand. But if they do harvest organs from that fetus, is that real?

Jesse Singal 19:46 That part's ... No, that's ... As far as I can tell, that part is completely made up.

Joe Rogan 19:47 How can you?

Jesse Singal 19:49 Yeah, it ... I don't ... I think he ... I think a lot of what he does is he takes some little sliver of truth and he either, because he may get up or has an overactive imagination, that becomes a grand conspiracy theory-

Joe Rogan 20:00 Right.

Jesse Singal 20:00 ... where the state of Virginia ... Anyway, that-

Joe Rogan 20:03 But you, you would understand why just that statement alone would freak people the fuck out, that you ... if the, like, there's a choice that the mother can make to keep the baby alive.

Jesse Singal 20:13 Well, it's not a-

Joe Rogan 20:13 If she wanted it to be revived, right?

Jesse Singal 20:17 Yeah. No, it's a matter of, of-

Joe Rogan 20:18 Is that what he said? Is that his words? We, we shouldn't say this unless we know his actual words. And maybe he misspoke, right? I mean, a lot of these guys are old. They misspeak a lot and they're under pressure. You have to recognize that too. Like, look at Biden. I mean, we give Biden more free passes than any president in the history of presidents, and he's only been a president for seven months, and we give him all these free passes 'cause we know he misspeaks, because we know he's compromised. So let's, let's hear what it says.

Narrator 20:46 Other restrictions now in place, and she was pressed by a Republican delegate about whether her bill would permit an abortion even as a woman is essentially dilating, ready to give birth, and she answered that it would permit an abortion at that stage of labor. Do you support her measure? And, and explain her answer.

21:06 Yeah, and I ... You know, I wasn't there, uh, Julie, and I, I certainly can't speak for, uh, Delegate Tran, but, um, I will tell you, one, uh, first thing I would say, this is why decisions such as this should be made by providers, uh, physicians, uh, and, uh, the, uh, mothers, uh, and fathers that are, that are involved.

Alex Jones 21:27 He's usurping law. Jamie, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Start over. Back it up 10 seconds.

Narrator 21:29 Um, there are-

Alex Jones 21:29 Notice he's usurping law.

Joe Rogan 21:31 Okay.

Alex Jones 21:31 And their whole plan is bioethics. I'll explain in a minute.

Jesse Singal 21:33 Let's let him, let him, let him talk.

Alex Jones 21:34 I'm sorry, go ahead.

Jesse Singal 21:35 It's only two minutes.

Narrator 21:36 Uh, mothers and fathers that, that are involved. Um, there are ... You know, when we talk about third trimester, uh, abortions, these are done, uh, with the consent, uh, of, obviously, the, the mother, with the consent, uh, of the physicians, more than one physician, by the way. Um, and it's done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a, a, a fetus that's non-viable. So in this particular example, uh, if a mother's in labor, I can tell you exactly, uh, what would happen. Um, the infant would be delivered, uh, the infant would be kept comfortable, uh, the infant would be resuscitated if, if that's what the, uh, mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother. So, so I think this was really blown out of proportion. Uh, but again, we want the government not to be involved in these types of decisions. We want the decision to be made by, uh, the, the mothers and their providers. And, and this is why, Julie, the legislators, most of whom are men, by the way, shouldn't be telling a woman what she should and shouldn't be doing with her body.

22:41 And do you think multiple physicians should have to weigh in as is currently required? She's trying to lift that requirement.

22:47 Well, I think it's always good to get, uh, a second opinion and for, for at least two providers to be involved in that decision, because these decisions shouldn't be taken lightly.

22:56 Mm-hmm.

22:57 And so, you know, I would, I would certainly support more than one provider.

23:00 All right. Let's, uh-

Jesse Singal 23:01 Can I break in for a minute?

Narrator 23:02 Yeah, please.

Joe Rogan 23:02 Wow, that's a weird thing that she just kinda let him say.

Jesse Singal 23:04 This is a weird outlying situation where, where the abortion is in the context of a non-viable fetus. So it, it-

Joe Rogan 23:09 Well, that was different. Like, what, what he's saying is that deformities and non-viable fetuses or ... But the thing about deformities is, like, there's a lot of human beings with deformities. We have to decide whether or not it's okay if you give birth. Like, the, the, the way, the way he phrased it was a- was very concerning. Wasn't it to you?

Jesse Singal 23:29 No, because ... I think he phrased it poorly, but I think-

Joe Rogan 23:31 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Singal 23:32 ... he's talking about you would only have an abortion that late in the case of the, the fetus not being viable in the first place. And then he's, he, he did not answer the question well if he's talking about a weird situation where then the fetus was surviving outside the womb. And think about Jones' idea that this is part of a conspiracy to harvest baby organs, how far that is from what he's talking about.

Joe Rogan 23:53 Uh, no, listen, I, I completely agree with that.

Jesse Singal 23:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:55 I think what this is is it's an abortion rights discussion.

Jesse Singal 23:58 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:58 Yeah. And I think abortion is, um, it's one of those conversations that are ... that's ... it's an incredibly human conversation in that there's, there's clearly ... There's par- ... There's times when abortion disturbs almost everybody.

Jesse Singal 24:15 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:15 You know? Like-

Jesse Singal 24:16 That's what the polling shows.

Joe Rogan 24:17 Right.

Jesse Singal 24:17 Very few people are absolutists on it.

Joe Rogan 24:18 Yes. It's a very human thing.

Jesse Singal 24:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:20 Like, when you're talking about a bundle of cells in the very early stages, it seems-... like most people would support abortion. But when you get to third trimester, you get to what they're talking about with this is ... Basically, they're, she's ready to give birth, that's when people get super uncomfortable with it. And that's when you run into people that, um, take this whole discussion and turn it into what you're saying, which is like you're- you're making i- this loony conspiracy-

Jesse Singal 24:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:49 ... about harvesting organs. Yeah.

Jesse Singal 24:50 And I think, and I think if you're Alex Jones or if you're like an anti-abortion figure, like you want to pull a conversation that direction. You want people debating like basically babies being aborted, even though most abortions take place in different contexts.

Joe Rogan 25:01 But if you're a guy who's looking for i- le- See, the thing about Alex is, he's balls deep in this stuff all day long, like that's all he does. All he does is research government corruption, research false-flag events, research, uh, CIA operations in Nicaragua and-

Jesse Singal 25:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:20 ... Panama and all ... The, like, that's his day. So, he's paranoid already.

Jesse Singal 25:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:26 And then on top of it, he's getting real data in of real conspiracies.

Jesse Singal 25:31 What- what do you think the line is for like having someone like him or Johnson on, now that your show's like super big and you have a huge platform?

Joe Rogan 25:40 It's a different line.

Jesse Singal 25:41 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:42 It's a different line. And that's one of the reasons why the last time I had Alex on, I fact-checked everything he said.

Jesse Singal 25:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:47 We, I go, "Pause." I go, "Let's, le- I wanna research this."

Jesse Singal 25:50 Right.

Joe Rogan 25:50 But unfortunately, a lot of it was true. One-

Jesse Singal 25:53 But doesn't this-

Joe Rogan 25:53 One of them is the Associated Press report on, uh, children catching, um, polio from the polio vaccine that they were giving these kids in Africa. It was like this cover of, uh, A- And I was like, "That's not real." And then he brings out this article and you're reading this article about children getting vaccines in Africa and th- these vaccines giving them polio.

Jesse Singal 26:16 Yeah. Well, so, this-

Joe Rogan 26:17 You know what I'm saying? Like those kind of things, I wanna ... When he says those things, I wanna go, "Stop."

Jesse Singal 26:21 Right.

Joe Rogan 26:22 Is that, that can't be real.

Jesse Singal 26:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:23 And then it turns out to actually be real.

Jesse Singal 26:24 Well, so, so I wanna, I wanna talk about my book and this is a good segue 'cause like one of the main things I write about is how to know whether to trust experts. And so to me, with someone like Jones, the Sandy Hook thing is such a fuck up that from then on, I'm gonna be very skeptical-

Joe Rogan 26:39 100%.

Jesse Singal 26:40 ... of anything he says. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:40 Yeah, 100%.

Jesse Singal 26:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:41 And he admits it was a fuck up.

Jesse Singal 26:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:43 He was in a very bad place in his life. He's drinking heavily and, you know, I think he was going crazy. And only brought himself back and he's had mental health issues. He also had like a significant head injury when he was a kid. He was ... He ... In a fight-

Jesse Singal 26:57 From people like beating the shit out of him, right?

Joe Rogan 26:58 Someone beat him up and slammed him on his head on the concrete. And like significant head injury, like he's- he's been fucked up from that since high school.

Jesse Singal 27:07 Did you see, listen to like Jon Ronson's reporting on his childhood?

Joe Rogan 27:10 I did, but Jon Ronson said th- like that he got all his teeth knocked out and like Alex is like, "No, I'll- I'll show you an X-ray. I never got my teeth knocked out."

Jesse Singal 27:17 Gotcha, okay.

Joe Rogan 27:17 They're all his teeth.

Jesse Singal 27:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:18 So there's some of that that's not true. Also, Ronson was with him in Bohemian Grove. Like, Ro- Ronson like ... They set that up. Like in the early, it was like la- late '90s, early 2000s.

Jesse Singal 27:27 Well, they were friends, they were friends, right?

Joe Rogan 27:28 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 27:29 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:29 Yeah. Look, Alex is a polarizing figure, but the people that know him, like, uh, like how I know him, they think he's an entertaining, fun guy to be around who knows a lot of crazy shit. The problem is, he's so polarizing that saying that opens you up to so much criticism that everybody immediately wants to push back.

Jesse Singal 27:50 Well, y- Well, okay. So if the question to me, would I want to go drinking with Alex Jones? The answer would be absolutely. If the question was-

Joe Rogan 27:57 I could set that up.

Jesse Singal 27:58 (laughs) Please do. I mean, I'm in Austin. I- I- I- I struggle with this platforming stuff. He's one of the few people where I would have some qualms about it, just 'cause like-

Joe Rogan 28:07 He needs, he needs someone with him. It's what I told him.

Jesse Singal 28:09 He needs guar- he needs guardrails, basically.

Joe Rogan 28:10 Exactly.

Jesse Singal 28:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:11 He needs someone like me.

Jesse Singal 28:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:12 He needs ... I'm not gonna do it, Alex. No. But he needs someone who's like, "Hold on. Let's see if that's true." And if you r- if- if you just leave him on his show and he's ranting and raving and he's there all day and he's drinking two bottles of li- of, uh, tequila, it's gonna be a wild-ass crazy show-

Jesse Singal 28:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:27 ... and he's not even gonna remember half the shit he said. But if you can reign him in, he has a lot of fucking information about false-flag events, a lot of information about like some ... Like, he- people think he's a right-wing guy. He- it ... When I met him, he got arrested for, uh, going after George W. Bush and saying he was, uh, he- he was, uh, perpetrating cr- crimes against humanity.

Jesse Singal 28:48 Well, he's sort of like anti-establishment. He's not left or right. I mean, I- I'm not sure.

Joe Rogan 28:51 Exactly, in- in many ways. I mean, he has some right-wing views, but he has a lot of left-wing views, particularly on, on gay people, on racial issues, on things along those lines. He's very open-minded.

Jesse Singal 29:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:02 He's a weird guy in that way. Like you- people character- characterize him incorrectly.

Jesse Singal 29:08 Can-

Joe Rogan 29:08 But I see what you're saying.

Jesse Singal 29:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:10 And the Sandy Hook thing, obviously, it's indefensible. But he, even he thinks it's indefensible.

Jesse Singal 29:15 Yeah. But b-

Joe Rogan 29:16 What do you do when someone does something like that? To- do you dismiss him forever? It's like one of those things.

Jesse Singal 29:21 Yeah. It's tricky. Um-

Joe Rogan 29:23 The thing is like he's ... You know, people worry about people influencing folks. And for most people that see Alex on like The Andrew Schulz Show or- or Michael Malice's show, they just think he's a really entertaining, crazy guy to listen to and they enjoy it. They really enjoy listening to him. For most intelligent people, he's not gonna persuade them one way or the other, other than maybe get them to look into things.

Jesse Singal 29:50 That, uh-

Joe Rogan 29:51 Maybe get them to read into things.

Jesse Singal 29:52 But that's my issue. I don't ... When he's ranting about the moon landing or, uh, chemicals turning frogs gay or whatever.

Joe Rogan 29:58 Interdimensional child molesters, what about that one?

Jesse Singal 30:00 I'm very scared of them.

Joe Rogan 30:01 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 30:02 We need to, we need to protect our children.

Joe Rogan 30:03 The frogs turning gay, he- he basically is-

Jesse Singal 30:06 It's like a kernel of truth. They're-

Joe Rogan 30:07 He's joking around about it.

Jesse Singal 30:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:08 But there are pesticides that fuck with the gender of amphibians.

Jesse Singal 30:13 Yeah, yeah. That-

Joe Rogan 30:14 And they, and they do-

Jesse Singal 30:15 It's the kernel of truth.

Joe Rogan 30:16 Exactly.

Jesse Singal 30:16 And then he, yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:16 It's phthalates.

Jesse Singal 30:17 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:17 I mean, it's something that, um, Dr. Shanna Swan wrote about. What is the name of that book again? Sorry, we keep forgetting-

Jesse Singal 30:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:24 ... the name of the book.

Jesse Singal 30:24 We'll throw that in the show notes.

Joe Rogan 30:24 But it's a fantastic book.... about, eh, the, the way it's affecting human beings. A radical drop in testosterone levels, an, um, a, a radical increase in, um, miscarriages. This countdown, Dr. Shanna H. Swan, How Our Modern World is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Impairing the Future of the Human Race. This is a terrifying conversation that I had with her. I don't know if you listened to that one.

Jesse Singal 30:51 No.

Joe Rogan 30:51 But it's really good. And it's just ... She's a scientist-

Jesse Singal 30:54 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:54 ... and it's all just about phthalates and pesticides and the effect they have on human reproductive systems, but also on frogs.

Jesse Singal 31:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:00 Like, they ... Like, pesticides really do have a, a radical impact on, on, um, on frogs and amphibians.

Jesse Singal 31:06 Yeah. Could we, uh, could we talk about my book for a minute? 'Cause I think there's some-

Joe Rogan 31:09 We can talk about anything you want.

Jesse Singal 31:10 Sweet. Actually, I brought you guys both copies.

Joe Rogan 31:11 Did you bring a book?

Jesse Singal 31:13 (laughs) I brought a book.

Joe Rogan 31:13 But do you, do you see what I'm saying? Like, thes- this Alex Jones conversation is probably one of the biggest ones that I have with people, where they're like, "Why?" Like, "Why do you have that guy on?" Well, first of all, I've been friends with that guy for 20 years.

Jesse Singal 31:26 Well, but does-

Joe Rogan 31:27 Like, I've known him forever.

Jesse Singal 31:27 But doesn't that ... Isn't there a risk that that ... There's a risk of bias there, if you're being honest.

Joe Rogan 31:31 Yes.

Jesse Singal 31:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:32 For sure.

Jesse Singal 31:32 So it's harder for you to let him go because he's a-

Joe Rogan 31:33 For sure.

Jesse Singal 31:34 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 31:34 Yeah, for sure. I'm telling you, you're gonna drink with him. How, how many days are you in town for?

Jesse Singal 31:38 I'm here till Thursday.

Joe Rogan 31:39 Oh. What are you doing tomorrow night?

Jesse Singal 31:42 Uh ... (laughs) During the day, I'm going tubing with my girlfriend and her, uh, parents.

Joe Rogan 31:46 Okay.

Jesse Singal 31:46 So at night-

Joe Rogan 31:47 We'll talk.

Jesse Singal 31:47 ... I can then take them and meet Alex Jones.

Joe Rogan 31:48 We'll, we'll make something happen.

Jesse Singal 31:49 Could Alex Jones meet us on the river, tubing?

Joe Rogan 31:52 Alex Jones has shit to do.

Jesse Singal 31:53 Okay.

Joe Rogan 31:53 He's gotta uncover Illuminati theories.

Jesse Singal 31:55 (laughs) Interdimensional child molesters.

Joe Rogan 31:57 Yeah, interdimensional.

Jesse Singal 31:58 I, I think I, I think I disagree with you on this, but it's one of those things where I wanna make sure my own-

Joe Rogan 32:03 But what do you disagree with? What do you think?

Jesse Singal 32:06 I think he's one of the few people where I would only ... I am in favor of platforming almost everyone.

Joe Rogan 32:12 Platforming is a fucked up conver-

Jesse Singal 32:13 No, no, no, it's very-

Joe Rogan 32:14 It's a, it's a weird-

Jesse Singal 32:15 ... most ... And 99% of the time, I agree with you. But it's, you're in a unique situation 'cause you have so many listeners and 1% of your listeners is fucking 30,000 people.

Joe Rogan 32:23 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Singal 32:23 And if they now think the governor of Virginia is harvesting baby organs, that, that ... (laughs) I'm using "causing harm," which is what people say about my work-

Joe Rogan 32:30 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 32:30 ... it causes harm. I think it's a tricky conversation.

Joe Rogan 32:32 It is a tricky conversation. That, that particular clip is a real problem.

Jesse Singal 32:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:38 Because it's, um, you know ... To, to make the concl- to draw the conclusion that he drew ... My conclusion that I drew from that is like, "Jesus Christ, that is such a weird area of discussion." Like, whether or not you should revive a fetus-

Jesse Singal 32:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:54 ... once it's, o- once it's been born. And to decide to revive or not revive based on whether or not it's ma- de- deformed or whatever the issue is that it has physically, whatever ailment or-

Jesse Singal 33:06 It's like a, it's like a ... I took, like, in college a course on, like, um, bioethics.

Joe Rogan 33:10 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Singal 33:10 And that, that shit is really heavy.

Joe Rogan 33:12 Really heavy.

Jesse Singal 33:12 And doctors have to make really difficult decisions.

Joe Rogan 33:13 Yes.

Jesse Singal 33:14 So, yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:15 I think the real problem was him having that conversation on the radio and probably, uh, like, unprepared. He probably didn't know that that was gonna be one of the things he talked about.

Jesse Singal 33:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:25 And the way he discussed it ... You know, if you ... I think it's ... An issue like that is something that you really should sit down and write out your actual thoughts and think about those, solidify them.

Jesse Singal 33:35 Well, so I, I felt a little bad for Jamie because I was trying to imagine if I had fact check him in real time.

Joe Rogan 33:40 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 33:41 You know, and that's sort of what I do for a living, is I fact checked stuff. That would be really hard. It would take two hours to fully trace that rumor and what's true-

Joe Rogan 33:47 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 33:47 ... and what's false. It's just not ... It maybe is not a good ... For sort of a, a straight to tape basically live show.

Joe Rogan 33:53 Not only that, we're drunk.

Jesse Singal 33:54 That's ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:55 And high.

Jesse Singal 33:56 Yes.

Joe Rogan 33:56 And Eddie Bravo's on there, who believes i- in some wacky shit that even Alex doesn't believe in, you know? Those-

Jesse Singal 34:02 Oh, so he's even more out there than Alex?

Joe Rogan 34:03 Oh, he gets out there. He gets out ... I'm e-

Jesse Singal 34:05 I'm trying to think what's more out there than interdimensional-

Joe Rogan 34:07 Flat Earth?

Jesse Singal 34:07 ... child molesters.

Joe Rogan 34:08 Flat Earth?

Jesse Singal 34:10 I'm trying to think which of those two. Interdimensional child molesters, Flat Earth. Which is more likely to be true? It's tough.

Joe Rogan 34:15 Uh, yeah. I don't know how interdimensional-

Jesse Singal 34:20 How you measure that.

Joe Rogan 34:20 (sighs) Yeah. They're, they're both right up there. The ... He's, he's informed me of some real things, though. One of them where I didn't know about the widespread use of agent provocateurs throughout history. I really wasn't aware of that.

Jesse Singal 34:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:33 I wasn't aware of that. The government has an actual strategy that they use to break up peaceful protests by bringing in people who's caused violence.

Jesse Singal 34:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:42 And it's happened forever, and they used it for the World Trade Organization in ni- was it '99? Whatever it was. And Alex detailed that in depth, and he showed, through news reports, he, he showed through stories in the news, and he showed through video clips how these masked people came in and took this peaceful protest, and they just started randomly breaking windows and tipping over mailboxes and doing all this crazy shit, and how they were ultimately let go.

Jesse Singal 35:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:08 And now they're all wearing government-issued boots, and the cops never arrested them, or they, they, they were ... They allowed them to hide out in a building together, and then they, they all made some sort of a negotiation and released them.

Jesse Singal 35:20 I think, but I think that fuels conspiracy theorists is that the shit even just our government has done-

Joe Rogan 35:25 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 35:25 ... over the years has been so weird that I don't blame people. Like, I mean, not-

Joe Rogan 35:28 Not even weird.

Jesse Singal 35:29 ... the secret bombing of Cambodia.

Joe Rogan 35:31 Yes.

Jesse Singal 35:31 I mean, that's like-

Joe Rogan 35:31 Yes.

Jesse Singal 35:32 ... uh, superhero villain shit.

Joe Rogan 35:33 Well, how about the Gulf of Tonkin incident?

Jesse Singal 35:34 Yeah, yeah. All that shit.

Joe Rogan 35:34 That got us into Vietnam.

Jesse Singal 35:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:36 How about Operation Northwoods? Signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and vetoed by k- by Kennedy.

Jesse Singal 35:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:40 They were gonna blow up a fucking jet liner and blame it on Cuba. They were gonna have a drone jet liner, say it was filled with people. You know, this is ... What was this, '61 or something like that? And then they were gonna, they were gonna use Cuban friendlies, armed Cuban friendlies, to attack Guantanamo Bay.

Jesse Singal 35:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:57 And they were gonna use this as, uh, impetus to go to war with Cuba. It's crazy shit, and that was ... That's real. I mean, this is all available through the Freedom of Information Act. You can read the Operation Northwoods documents. This is a plan they had. I mean, this was gonna cost American lives because they wanted to gather some sort of motivation from the, from the American people.

Jesse Singal 36:16 Consensus.

Joe Rogan 36:17 They wanted to get the American people involved to the point where they were, uh, willing to go to war with Cuba.

Jesse Singal 36:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:22 It's crazy when you think that that is actually ...... our government in 1961, or where- wha- whenever it was, '62, whenever it was. It was before Kennedy got killed, and he got killed in '63, right? So whatever happened from then, like, those people weren't prosecuted. They didn't, they weren't brought in front of Congress and, like, explain yourself.

Jesse Singal 36:44 There's no account- there's often no accountability.

Joe Rogan 36:45 Yeah. So, my position on that kinda shit is if that's how it was then, what is the difference between then and now? Well, everything evolves. They get better at things, they get more sophisticated.

Jesse Singal 36:56 Yeah. Um, all right. I got-

Joe Rogan 36:58 You got a book in there?

Jesse Singal 36:59 ... one of these for you.

Joe Rogan 37:00 Heard you got a book.

Jesse Singal 37:01 Yeah. It's so weird that-

Joe Rogan 37:02 Jessie, did you write a book?

Jesse Singal 37:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:03 The Quick Fix?

Jesse Singal 37:04 It's a very douchey thing to do, but I care- this is for Jamie-

Joe Rogan 37:06 Th- this is-

Jesse Singal 37:07 If you want a copy.

Joe Rogan 37:07 This is your book about psychological things, right? Like-

Jesse Singal 37:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:10 ... explain your book.

Jesse Singal 37:11 Yeah. It's, uh, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Social Ills. That's a good sign that I had to look at the book to remember what it's called.

Joe Rogan 37:18 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 37:19 Uh, I was a science editor at New York Magazine. I wrote about psychology basically. Uh, and every day we get press releases from Harvard, from Yale, from University of Pennsylvania that psychologists are figuring out amazing stuff about how to fix the world. How to fix racism, how to fix the educational system, and a lot of these when I looked into them more, there's, like, nothing there. There's no actual result there. And people spend, um, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars on these ideas that don't really do anything. Have you ever taken the, um, you know, the implicit association test, what that is?

Joe Rogan 37:52 No.

Jesse Singal 37:52 All right. Do you know implicit bias?

Joe Rogan 37:54 Yes.

Jesse Singal 37:54 Okay. So this is a test, you sit at a computer, it tells you how unconsciously racist you are. So anyone listening to this who's done a diversity training recently at work has probably heard of the implicit association test. Since 1998, leading psychologists are like, "This test will measure your unconscious racism, racism you're not even aware of, and this leaks into the real world that makes you do racist stuff." And we end up spending millions of dollars on it, every school embraces it, every company embraces it, except whoops, there's nothing there. It doesn't actually measure anything. So I'm really interested in those instances where, like, the most im- and maybe this is, uh, why I should drink with Alex Jones, where the most important experts in the world tell us shit and it's just, it's not true.

Joe Rogan 38:35 Mm.

Jesse Singal 38:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:37 Um, how much has to do w- when the- the spreading of this kind of information, how much of it has to do with clickbait?

Jesse Singal 38:45 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:45 One of the things that's disturbed me over the last decade or so is that journalism, even journalism at its highest levels, without naming any names, but, like, fabled institutions are resorting to clickbait. You know, my friend Kurt Metzger said something about the New York Times once, he said, "It's like a fat girl's Tumblr blog now." And I'm like, that is such a fucked up thing to say. But what he was saying was that there's stories that are written in there that are, they're not what you associate with the New York Times-

Jesse Singal 39:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:18 ... of old. I still read the New York Times, I still love it.

Jesse Singal 39:20 Me too. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:21 I think it's great. I mean, uh, I think people are always looking for flaws in any, uh, any institution, right? Especially a- a- a fabled one in times of chaos like we are today.

Jesse Singal 39:31 Part of us wants to see them collapse.

Joe Rogan 39:33 Exactly.

Jesse Singal 39:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:33 Part... Yeah, people do, but I still think they're the best. And I think it's, um, there's something about having, uh, a reputation to uphold that does force people to the higher standards. But those standards are different. It's- it's very difficult to find unbiased, objective news with a clean headline today because people aren't buying the newspaper like they were.

Jesse Singal 40:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:00 It's mostly clicking things online. And, you know, there's a lot of these that have, they rely on subscription services. You know, they rely on someone coming along and, uh, saying, "You know what? I value your journalism so much, I'm gonna give you some money." And then you have to justify the articles, like, y- y- you know, there's ads on these articles in a lot of times, and you gotta get people to click on them. So you have maybe a title to that article that's not totally accurate or bends the truth a little bit, or it's inflammatory-

Jesse Singal 40:29 Well, and everyone gets more desperate 'cause they-

Joe Rogan 40:30 Yes.

Jesse Singal 40:30 ... just need to keep feeding the beast.

Joe Rogan 40:32 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 40:32 So I think the key difference is, like, I would imagine, you know, I never got to be a science writer- writer or editor in 1990, but back then journalism was healthy.

Joe Rogan 40:41 Yes.

Jesse Singal 40:41 And I bet you could be a writer, you know, you publi- it's still hard work, but-

Joe Rogan 40:44 Right.

Jesse Singal 40:44 ... you publish three articles a week, four articles a week. When I was editing Science of Us, that was the sort of behavioral science site at New York Magazine. I forget what it was, I think we had to publish, like, 15 to 20 things a week. So when Harvard-

Joe Rogan 40:58 That's a lot.

Jesse Singal 40:58 Yeah, dude. When Harvard sends you a press release, they're like, "We have this amazing new study." We're like, "Great, write it up." We don't call the researcher-

Joe Rogan 41:04 Right.

Jesse Singal 41:04 ... we don't read it closely. Oftentimes we read the press release, but not the study itself.

Joe Rogan 41:08 Mm.

Jesse Singal 41:08 And it- it's sort of like, um, uh, the press releases often, th- they don't quite lie, but they leave out a lot of details. And- and... So 2010 was sort of the peak when the stuff in my book in psychology, like, the worst psychology was being published. 2010 was also when things got really, really clickbaity, I think.

Joe Rogan 41:27 Why was, wha- what happened in 2010 that, like, the worst psychology got published?

Jesse Singal 41:31 This is where it gets complicated, but, like, certain areas of research. So one of them is called social priming, and that's the idea that if I, like, if I flash an American flag before your eyes for 300 milliseconds, you'll get way more patriotic. And-

Joe Rogan 41:43 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 41:44 ... it sounds like voodoo magic, but for a while people really believed these results. And the reason they believe them is 'cause, like, there's all these ways you can fuck up statistically, and you publish stuff that appears to be true, but isn't false. So, let's say I asked you off the bat, uh, take the top psychology journals around, what percentage of the findings in them would you say could be replicated later on if you run it back?

Joe Rogan 42:08 Oh, I have no idea.

Jesse Singal 42:09 It's about a 50%. There's a coin flip-

Joe Rogan 42:11 Really?

Jesse Singal 42:11 ... chance that anything you read in the top psychology journals, some people think it's higher, some think it's lower, w-

Joe Rogan 42:17 Do you, have you ever read the stuff that Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian put out?

Jesse Singal 42:22 I've read some of their stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:23 Yeah. Where they, they published f- these sort of-

Jesse Singal 42:26 Oh, SoCal Squared.

Joe Rogan 42:27 ... satirical-

Jesse Singal 42:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:28 ... uh, w- th- satirical scientific papers that, uh, actually got accepted.

Jesse Singal 42:32 The dog rape, dog rape.

Joe Rogan 42:34 Yeah. The-

Jesse Singal 42:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:35 Yeah. Well-... was (laughs) it had the most crave- see if you can find the, the title of their, their dog, 'cause it wasn't j- it was, it had to do with homosexuality and, but it w- but meanwhile, they were getting, like, lauded for these things. They were getting applauded for, uh, like, fat body building.

Jesse Singal 42:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:54 Like, there's a l- a lot of s- where they were joking around about how bad academia has gotten.

Jesse Singal 42:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:59 And they made these farcical papers and some of them won awards.

Jesse Singal 43:04 A lot of the problems they are concerned with, it's not just sort of like the wacky, whatever, Marxist geography, it's like some of the top psychology papers in the country.

Joe Rogan 43:14 Right.

Jesse Singal 43:14 And I, I ... It's tricky 'cause like I want people to trust experts, I want people to trust science, but a lot of scientists themselves don't know what they're doing.

Joe Rogan 43:21 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 43:21 It makes it complicated.

Joe Rogan 43:23 The, a lot of scientists don't know what they're doing? How so?

Jesse Singal 43:26 So, um, it's hard to, to explain this without getting into, into some statistics. I'm not good at statistics, but basically people realize that like the tests, the statistical tests people do to decide if something is significant, meaning like we're pretty sure, uh, Joe Rogan comes out with a pill to cure the common cold. We give 50 people that pill, we give 50 people a placebo. The people who take the pill do better, the cold goes away. At a certain threshold you're like, "This is a real result, this isn't just random statistical noise." And it turns out there's lots of ways to fool yourself into thinking the pill works when it doesn't. Uh, and that's basically what psychologists realized and that led them to understand that like m- arguably most of what they publish is just, is garbage basically.

Joe Rogan 44:08 Do you, do you know what a nocebo is?

Jesse Singal 44:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:11 Yeah. That's one of my favorite stories was a guy who was involved in a test, uh, where they were doing a study where they, uh, gave him, um ... They gave, you know, uh, one group, uh, an SSRI, SSRI, and, uh, the other group they gave a placebo. This guy, for whatever reason, took a shit load of pills and ran out of the hospital with an elevated pulse, high blood pressure, holding this pill bottle freaking out thinking he's dying, um, telling them that he fucked up and he took the whole bottle of pills and he's gonna die. Um, they contact the physician. The physician comes down and informs him that he was a part of the control group (laughs) and he had taken-

Jesse Singal 44:52 I love it. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:52 ... a placebo. Within minutes his heart rate drops down to normal, his blood pressure drops to normal, and he's fine. So this guy who was convinced he was gonna die had just completely done into, to himself. He had decided that he had taken some sort of m- fucking poison or something, you know, some horrible medication and, and far exceeding the dose he were supposed to take.

Jesse Singal 45:13 I remember being 19 and smoking weed with my roommate out of like a, a Gatorade bottle that you poke a hole in-

Joe Rogan 45:19 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Singal 45:19 ... and I'd be like, "Oh man, I'm so fucked up." Like, you, you have no idea. You ... We're so influenced by what we think substances are gonna do to us, it has like a profound effect on us.

Joe Rogan 45:28 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 45:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:28 But that probably did get you high.

Jesse Singal 45:30 This was very (sighs) sort of schwaggy Massachusetts weed, and I didn't really know how to smoke it.

Joe Rogan 45:34 It's still got THC in it if it's f-

Jesse Singal 45:36 This was pretty weak I think.

Joe Rogan 45:37 Yeah, but if you were a kid? How old were you?

Jesse Singal 45:40 I was like 18 or 19.

Joe Rogan 45:41 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 45:41 Maybe I was high.

Joe Rogan 45:42 I'm sure you were high. Like, l- l- w- weed, even schwaggy T- THC weak weed from Massachusetts will still get you fucked up.

Jesse Singal 45:51 There was another point I, I got a little too high and I fled the dorm room.

Joe Rogan 45:55 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 45:55 And my roommate called me and I was convinced he was (laughs) sitting with the police trying to lure me back there to arrest me for, uh, for smoking weed.

Joe Rogan 46:02 Sounds like decent weed.

Jesse Singal 46:03 Yeah, maybe it was actually.

Joe Rogan 46:05 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 46:05 (laughs) I shouldn't have denigrated the, uh, schwaggy Massachusetts weed.

Joe Rogan 46:08 Listen, I've had some schwaggy Pennsylvania weed and it freaked me out. Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performatory at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon. That's the paper.

Jesse Singal 46:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:18 Yeah. I mean, they, they published this in Gender, Place, and Cultural: A Journal of Feminist Geography. And i- Helen Wilson, and it got applauded.

Jesse Singal 46:31 Yeah, it won an award, right?

Joe Rogan 46:32 Yeah, I mean they were saying, "This is amazing scholarship. This is incredible work." But it just goes to show you academia's in a weird place, man. It's, it's in this weird ... It's always been in a weird place, but it's in an exceptionally weird place today with the climate of our culture, because these people, a lot of them that are teaching these courses, a lot of them th- that are professors, they went from being a student and living in this world to then getting a job at the university to becoming a professor.

Jesse Singal 47:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:02 So they've never been out there in the regular world outside of this insulated bubble of academia.

Jesse Singal 47:10 The same thing is happening in journalism because (coughs) especially as like more and more of us come from, um, upper middle class, like good college settings, we all have the same beliefs. We're all not really tolerant of people with different beliefs and it's turning journalism into a shit show actually.

Joe Rogan 47:25 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 47:26 Uh, it's really depressing 'cause like what's the point of being a journalist or an academic if you're not gonna be open-minded and actually interrogate the world a little bit?

Joe Rogan 47:32 It's just so important to have objective unbiased versions of the truth.

Jesse Singal 47:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:38 That's wh- And to not have that, you know, in a, in a reliable source, I mean, like I said, I think the New York Times is the best. Wa- I think Washington Post is excellent too. There's, there's a lot of good newspapers still that I think do the best job that we currently have available.

Jesse Singal 47:53 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:54 But I would like something that's bulletproof.

Jesse Singal 47:56 Well-

Joe Rogan 47:56 I would like something that doesn't have any opinion pieces that are preposterous.

Jesse Singal 48:00 It's hard to get that. And it's-

Joe Rogan 48:02 It's hard.

Jesse Singal 48:02 I, I often get emails from people that are like, "You know, I don't trust the Times anymore. What should I do?" It's like, no, you shou- you should mostly trust the Times. You should realize-

Joe Rogan 48:08 Yes.

Jesse Singal 48:08 ... that like they're a human institution. I don't think if we went back in time and, to 1970 the Times would be bulletproof then. They published garbage then too.

Joe Rogan 48:16 I think-

Jesse Singal 48:16 I do think it's getting worse.

Joe Rogan 48:17 Yeah, I think so.

Jesse Singal 48:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:18 Well, I think the worst is television. Television news is, is the most ...

Jesse Singal 48:23 It's unwatchable.

Joe Rogan 48:24 It's the most nutty, and that's why p- things like, um, you know, uh, what is, what is Crystal and Saagar's new show called?

Narrator 48:34 Uh, Breaking Points?

Joe Rogan 48:35 Breaking Points. F-... you know, they used to be rising on the-

Jesse Singal 48:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:38 ... you know, the hill. That show is so good because they don't have to listen to anybody. They're not a part of some giant system, you know, and now that they're doing their own independent show, they're even more so. And they have opinions and they don't necessarily agree with each other, but they're not beholden to any institution and they're not, they're not vetted, they're not, they're not... There's no, there's no filter that they have to go through, some corporate filter when they discuss these important issues.

Jesse Singal 49:03 Well, so a little more than a year ago, I started the, the podcast I sort of do for a living now, Blocked and Reported, with Katie Herzog. Your listeners should all harass her on Twitter.

Joe Rogan 49:11 Harass her?

Jesse Singal 49:11 Yeah, yeah. Just Katie Herzog. Well, it seems like we get along, but she's like, she's mean to me on the show a lot.

Joe Rogan 49:16 Oh, okay.

Jesse Singal 49:16 So you should go after, uh, her comeuppance. Um, I noticed that 'cause she worked at a place called The Stranger in Seattle. I worked for New York Magazine. I left under good terms just to write the book but, like, once we got in our own bubble and we realized that, like, no one who mattered could get pissed off at us and we didn't have to answer to editors, I don't know, it just made the conversation much more free-flowing. We could, like, talk about what-

Joe Rogan 49:38 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 49:38 ... we wanna talk about. It, it's, it's the biggest difference in the world when you're not looking over your shoulder. Or it's not just the bosses who are the problem, it's like, is your 25-year-old colleague gonna be very, you know, sensitive about what you said and report you to-

Joe Rogan 49:51 Then go to human resources.

Jesse Singal 49:52 ... HR. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:52 Yeah, yeah.

Jesse Singal 49:52 Which is- I think... Have you t- uh, had Jonathan Haidt on before?

Joe Rogan 49:56 Yes.

Jesse Singal 49:56 Yeah. I got... In 2015, I got lunch with him and we talked about our agreements, our disagreements. I thought he was overreacting to the crazy college shit. I was like, "These are crazy college kids. They'll get to the real world, they'll have to hold down a job. The craziness will go away." And-

Joe Rogan 50:11 When did you apologize to him?

Jesse Singal 50:13 Uh, last year on Twitter. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:16 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 50:16 I did. (laughs) Had a ready-made answer for that.

Joe Rogan 50:17 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 50:18 Uh, I did- if, if he didn't see it, Jon, I apologize. Um, I th- uh, we disagree on this or that, but it's absolutely the case that in journalism, that shit has like infiltrated some news rooms.

Joe Rogan 50:29 Yes.

Jesse Singal 50:29 And it, it makes it very hard to do journalism.

Joe Rogan 50:32 Well, it's also infiltrated corporations in a massively disingenuous way.

Jesse Singal 50:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:36 Because they've recognized the wind is blowing in that direction, so they'll put up a rainbow flag or they'll, they'll-

Jesse Singal 50:42 Wait, are you saying Halliburton isn't committed to social justice?

Joe Rogan 50:46 You said that.

Jesse Singal 50:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:47 I didn't say that. (laughs)

Jesse Singal 50:48 I don't know who your sponsors are, I shouldn't say that.

Joe Rogan 50:51 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 50:51 Are you saying the, uh-

Joe Rogan 50:53 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 50:53 ... Kill Cliff CBD energy drink isn't, uh, pro-LGBT?

Joe Rogan 50:56 Well, they actually are homo-

Jesse Singal 50:57 Okay.

Joe Rogan 50:58 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 50:58 It tastes... It's very pineapple, I like it.

Joe Rogan 50:59 That's mine. That's my, my flavor.

Jesse Singal 51:00 This is yours?

Joe Rogan 51:01 Yeah, it's got my face on it. Look.

Jesse Singal 51:02 I didn't even notice that. Oh, shit, there you are.

Joe Rogan 51:04 Look, that's me, bro. It's a jalapeno, uh, pineapple.

Jesse Singal 51:06 Is this you on an acid trip with Al- with Alex Jones?

Joe Rogan 51:09 Uh, I don't think Alex does acid. He doesn't need to.

Jesse Singal 51:11 There's no way. Alex doesn't do acid.

Joe Rogan 51:13 I mean, he probably has.

Jesse Singal 51:14 His brain just produces it? He gets high. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:19 You're gonna like him. You're gonna not like, then be like-

Jesse Singal 51:21 Are we really gonna meet?

Joe Rogan 51:21 Oh, yeah.

Jesse Singal 51:22 I don't... All right.

Joe Rogan 51:22 Oh, yeah.

Jesse Singal 51:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:25 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 51:25 This is fucking gonna be a disaster.

Joe Rogan 51:27 No, I'm... That's my, my, my, one of my goals is to get people to understand why I like him. I think people have seen him on other shows and they get it now. But again, you're right. The Sandy Hook thing is just, like, freaks people the fuck out.

Jesse Singal 51:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:40 It's... And rightly so.

Jesse Singal 51:42 Yep.

Joe Rogan 51:42 He, um, you know, he's in that weird position because of something like that. It's like, how do you bounce back from that, if you ever do? You know what... Like, this, the cancel culture of today is, uh, such a, a, it's such a beat up term.

Jesse Singal 51:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:57 You know, and it's so, it's, it... I don't even like saying it.

Jesse Singal 52:00 Me neither.

Joe Rogan 52:01 Yeah. 'Cause-

Jesse Singal 52:01 We need a better term.

Joe Rogan 52:02 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 52:02 But then that term would get corrupted. It's like-

Joe Rogan 52:04 It's, yeah, it's for sure been corrupted, you know, as has woke, uh, as has, uh, you know, many, many terms. And it's, um... What we have now is a bunch of people who have this ability to gather up crowds to go after people and try to hurt people's feelings.

Jesse Singal 52:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:24 And it's really that old adage that hurt people hurt people. It really is that.

Jesse Singal 52:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:29 'Cause most of these people, like I said, I, I, I study multiple people. I literally have a file where I follow people that I think are the most unhinged. And I don't have any personal relationship with them. I, I don't have any beef with them, I don't even have interactions with them. I just watch them, just like, like a rabid dog-

Jesse Singal 52:48 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:48 ... just barking at all the other dogs in the dog park.

Jesse Singal 52:50 I like the idea of you sitting at your laptop and you're like, you're like-

Joe Rogan 52:52 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 52:52 ... "Oh, that's going in the file."

Joe Rogan 52:53 The thing is, like, some of 'em are brilliant people in their chosen field, you know? They're, they're actually successful at the thing that they do but they're just mentally unwell. And then, they... I mean, when I say mentally unwell, what I mean is, they're, they're not emotionally balanced. They're not comfortable, happy people. And I think we should encourage compassion and we should encourage decency and kindness to people, and they're not doing that. They think they're on the right side, so because they think they're on the right side, it justifies being a really shitty person.

Jesse Singal 53:25 So, I, I was the one who brought up the connection to mental health and I do think there's some mentally ill people who get... You know, Twitter makes it worse. I-

Joe Rogan 53:32 For sure.

Jesse Singal 53:32 But I think that's like sort of... I'm worried that's, like, too easy now 'cause, um... I don't know if you remember this. You might have talked about this on the show. There was a moment last year when all the public health researchers were like, "Those far-right protestors getting together to protest masks and lockdown, that's so dangerous. You can't get together. There's a, there's a pandemic." Then the next week, George Floyd happened and then there's BLM protests-

Joe Rogan 53:54 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Singal 53:54 ... and like, "You can do BLM protests."

Joe Rogan 53:55 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 53:55 So it's like the same people flipping it. That kind of behavior, that's not mental illness. That's just like you, you want the positive approval. You wanna stay in the good graces-

Joe Rogan 54:03 Right.

Jesse Singal 54:03 ... of your tribe. So I think it's a little bit of both.

Joe Rogan 54:05 Well, there's... Again, we're going back to confirmation bias and this is a conversation that I was having with a friend of mine who was pro the George Floyd protests and, uh, and I said, "Listen, I'm 100% pro people protesting." I go, "If they're just protesting. As soon as it gets violent and the chaos and... That, that bothers me." But it is kinda crazy that all of a sudden we're okay with people screaming shoulder to shoulder with each other.

Jesse Singal 54:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:32 Like, the whole idea is that this stuff is airborne.

Jesse Singal 54:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:34 And, you know, his take on it was like, "There's no, uh, significant evidence that proves that it's spreading." I go, "That is horse shit, man." I go, "If you look at the- the- the fucking jumps, there's a big jump in infections post ... If like ... There's like 10 days after these protests."

Jesse Singal 54:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:51 There's always a big jump. I go, "It doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to protest. It means we should have a real discussion about-"

Jesse Singal 54:57 Yeah, that's all you want is a discussion.

Joe Rogan 54:58 Yes.

Jesse Singal 54:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:59 About freedom and about what you should and shouldn't be able to do, and then what- what exactly we're doing with these protests.

Jesse Singal 55:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:06 You know?

Jesse Singal 55:07 I do think like the combined effect of just like the lockdowns on- on everyone's mental health-

Joe Rogan 55:13 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 55:13 I just think we're gonna see that for a long time.

Joe Rogan 55:15 Oh, yeah.

Jesse Singal 55:15 That destroyed everybody.

Joe Rogan 55:16 Well, it shifted our country in a very bad way, I think. I re- I really do think it did, and I think there's a lot of people that were already unbalanced and- and kinda mentally unwell, and that pushed them over the edge. And we gotta figure out how to bring people back, and (exhales) I don't know how to do that. I mean, I've ... uh, I remember a- a time where it didn't seem-

Jesse Singal 55:38 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 55:38 ... like there was this gigantic gap between, uh, people in the left and people in the right, and even people in the center. Like, there's people that are angry if you're a centrist.

Jesse Singal 55:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:47 It's- it's just a different state of mind. It's like if you're not on my side, you're on the wrong side now. It's not ... Uh, I- it's ... I always thought that because of the internet, we're gonna get more access to information, so we're gonna have more access to the truth and people are gonna be able to debate things and find out exactly what's up.

Jesse Singal 56:03 That's what people ... The- the '90s, the tech bros, they were like, they wrote these utopian essays about like the end of ignorance or whatever. It turned out the opposite happened.

Joe Rogan 56:10 We do ... Well, I don't think it's the opposite, because I think a lot of people do have that approach. There's a lot of people.

Jesse Singal 56:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:16 But for most people, they don't have the time. Most people are tired.

Jesse Singal 56:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:21 They work all day. They're usually not that healthy. They don't eat well. And they're tired. And then, they have either a family or they have friends. Maybe they have a- a husband or a wife, children, mortgage problems, neighbors, this, that, plumbing, fucking electrical, there's a power failure, there's a lot of shit.

Jesse Singal 56:42 Interdimensional child molesters.

Joe Rogan 56:43 All those things.

Jesse Singal 56:44 Sure thing.

Joe Rogan 56:44 There's a lot of shit that people have to deal with. They don't have the time to like d- develop a very nuanced, objective, uh, uh, purely- p- p- purely honest view of what they're looking at. So, they find these conglomerations of people that have adopted these predetermined patterns of behavior and these, uh, these opinions, this conglomeration of opinions, and they just adopt those. And then, they repeat the things that they think they need to say in order to be in the good graces of that group.

Jesse Singal 57:16 Do you know the concept of the, uh, the exhausted majority?

Joe Rogan 57:20 No.

Jesse Singal 57:20 It's ... I love it. I forget who ... It's either this political scientist in Arizona or these polling guys. People can Google it. The idea is like 20% of us are screaming at one another on Twitter, Facebook, whatever. Most of the country is just exhausted and hates talking about politics because things have gotten so heated. They don't wanna say the wrong thing on Facebook. So, it's- it's sort of like the sort of controversial concept of like the silent majority, but I think there is a silent majority of people who want nothing to do with the present political discourse. And to me, that sort of explains how like people like me from Brooklyn were all Liz Warren or Bernie Sanders, and I- I was sort of divided between the two. And then, Joe Biden just runs away with it, 'cause most people are not online.

Joe Rogan 58:00 But Liz Warren stuff ... Liz Warren d- didn't drive you nuts, the Native American stuff?

Jesse Singal 58:06 No, I just think all politicians are flawed one way or another, and I get

Eddie Bravo 58:08 ... but that's such a heavy lie.

Jesse Singal 58:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:11 The fact she got ... She got into Harvard with that, right?

Jesse Singal 58:14 I think it helped her get in, yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:15 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 58:15 I didn't ... I didn't view it as disqualifying.

Joe Rogan 58:16 She wrote Native American as her ethnicity.

Jesse Singal 58:19 Yeah. It's not good.

Joe Rogan 58:20 You know, I'm- I'm 200 times more African than she is Native American?

Jesse Singal 58:24 (laughs) How African are you?

Joe Rogan 58:25 1.6%.

Jesse Singal 58:26 Oh, you did the, uh, the test?

Joe Rogan 58:28 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 58:28 Yeah. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 58:29 That's pretty crazy.

Jesse Singal 58:31 I didn't ... I- I di-

Joe Rogan 58:31 Imagine me putting African under my, uh ... like a job application.

Jesse Singal 58:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:37 What ... Well, actually, what number is she? Like, let's make sure that's correct. How ... What percentage, um, Native American is she? It's something crazy low.

Jesse Singal 58:50 Maybe I should view that as disqualifying. I just ... I liked a lot of the other stuff she did, but, um-

Joe Rogan 58:54 There's some of her professors from college have said some pretty wild shit about her, about how, uh, unbridled her ambition was.

Jesse Singal 59:02 Oh, really?

Joe Rogan 59:02 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 59:03 Interesting. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:04 One of her professors, a- a woman, I forget the- the thing, but she just didn't have nice things to say about her. But I mean, that's the kind of people that get into politics. Those are the kind of people that-

Jesse Singal 59:12 That's what I'm saying. Like, what- what person who can get that close to being president hasn't done some shit that is bad? Although I guess Bernie didn't really have any skeletons.

Joe Rogan 59:22 That's the thing I always say about the guy.

Jesse Singal 59:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:24 It's like you- you'll go back ... I mean, you can disagree with him, but he's been remarkably consistent. What do you got there?

Eddie Bravo 59:31 Trying to find the- the DNA analysis.

Joe Rogan 59:34 (laughs)

Jesse Singal 59:35 (laughs)

Eddie Bravo 59:35 So, in the article I was looking through from NPR, uh, the Cherokee Association says that the DNA test doesn't matter.

Joe Rogan 59:43 Well, they want you to be accepted in the tribe. Like, you have to ... That's a different thing. Like, you could have the- the tiniest fraction of DNA, but they're not gonna accept you as one of theirs. But that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about how much Native American she actually has in her genetics. Whether or not the Cherokee Association accepts her is kind of a different argument.

Eddie Bravo 1:00:04 The DNA analysis found the vast majority ... Uh, it- it ... this doesn't say. It just says, "The vast majority of her lineage is European ancestry." It doesn't say how much the thing is.

Joe Rogan 1:00:13 But there was ... I know for sure they did release the numbers.

Eddie Bravo 1:00:16 Yeah, this- it doesn't have the numbers. It just says, uh, "Rice-"

Joe Rogan 1:00:18 What- what you-

Eddie Bravo 1:00:18 "... results are strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor in the individual's pedigree, likely in the range of 6 to 10 generations ago."

Joe Rogan 1:00:29 Um, there was, uh, an actual paper that got published-

Eddie Bravo 1:00:33 I- I clicked that link.

Joe Rogan 1:00:34 ... or, uh, an article.

Eddie Bravo 1:00:34 It's not, uh ... It's not active.

Joe Rogan 1:00:36 So I don't know if that's the one.

Eddie Bravo 1:00:37 I know, but that's on her website that says it would be the PDF of the report.

Joe Rogan 1:00:41 It's not active?

Eddie Bravo 1:00:41 It's not active yet.

Joe Rogan 1:00:41 She ... They pulled it. (laughs) ... she pulled it off the website.

Jesse Singal 1:00:44 Can you imagine you're running for president and you have to post your DNA online (laughs) about how Native American you are?

Joe Rogan 1:00:48 No, it's because she got a job-

Jesse Singal 1:00:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:50 ... that was a very lucrative job by saying that she's Native American.

Jesse Singal 1:00:54 Yup.

Joe Rogan 1:00:54 And she didn't say a f- small fraction. She said she's Native American. In her defense, um, I have a friend who thought he was Native American, and that was always his family thing, and then they did a test on him and found out he had zero.

Eddie Bravo 1:01:07 Here's the best number I've found, 1/124th, or 1,024th.

Joe Rogan 1:01:12 Yeah.

Eddie Bravo 1:01:13 A- as low as that.

Joe Rogan 1:01:14 Yeah.

Eddie Bravo 1:01:15 So-

Joe Rogan 1:01:16 So, what percentage is that? What is one out of 1,024th?

Eddie Bravo 1:01:19 Like 10, 30%.

Joe Rogan 1:01:19 What's that?

Eddie Bravo 1:01:20 Point one, I think.

Joe Rogan 1:01:23 Point one. Yeah.

Eddie Bravo 1:01:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:27 So, am I really 200 times more? Or it might be more though.

Eddie Bravo 1:01:31 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:32 It might be more, right? One- I'm 1.6.

Jesse Singal 1:01:35 Joe, we're- we're all-

Joe Rogan 1:01:36 I'm almost two out of a hundred.

Eddie Bravo 1:01:37 (laughs) I mean, it's-

Jesse Singal 1:01:37 We're all African, if you go back far enough.

Joe Rogan 1:01:39 You're right. Yes.

Eddie Bravo 1:01:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:41 Well, that's the dumbest thing about all of it, right? Like, the only reason why people are... Like I had this conversation with a friend of mine who was explaining to me, um, uh, d- different, uh, eyes. Like, he said ... They were, they were, we were talking about that guy who, uh, decided he was Korean.

Jesse Singal 1:01:58 (laughs) No, he, he tr- he didn't decide, he transitioned to Korean.

Joe Rogan 1:02:01 Yes.

Jesse Singal 1:02:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:02 Well, he made a decision.

Jesse Singal 1:02:03 Right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:04 I mean ... (laughs) But this is the thing, where a long time ago, this was how we looked at people that transitioned to different genders.

Jesse Singal 1:02:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:12 Now we accept that. But when it comes to race, we're like, "Cut the shit." No, that's where we draw the line. For now.

Jesse Singal 1:02:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:19 In 2021, you can't just become Korean. But this guy decided to become Korean.

Jesse Singal 1:02:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:25 And my friend was talking to me about this and he was saying it's kinda crazy that this guy got his eyes done to look more Korean, where Koreans get their eyes done to look more European at a really frightening rate. Like it's one of the most popular, uh, plastic surgeries, um, in, in all of Korea is to get your eyes done.

Jesse Singal 1:02:47 It seems like every culture has some like exotic other ... Like in India, they have like skin whitening cream.

Joe Rogan 1:02:52 Yes.

Jesse Singal 1:02:52 Like everyone wants to be a little bit different.

Joe Rogan 1:02:54 Yes. You see Sammy Sosa now?

Jesse Singal 1:02:55 (laughs) No.

Joe Rogan 1:02:56 Bro, Sammy Sosa is pale like a ghost.

Jesse Singal 1:02:58 Really?

Joe Rogan 1:02:58 It's nuts.

Jesse Singal 1:02:59 That's so weird.

Joe Rogan 1:02:59 Sammy Sosa decided that he wanted to be whiter and he started whitening his skin.

Jesse Singal 1:03:04 (laughs) That's so sad, man.

Joe Rogan 1:03:05 I- it's like a bleach. When I was in Thailand, they, they, um, have billboards for skin whitening creams, and I was like, "This is nuts, man."

Jesse Singal 1:03:11 That's depressing.

Joe Rogan 1:03:12 It is depressing, because the people look beautiful. And it also fucks with your ability to stay outside.

Jesse Singal 1:03:18 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:18 Like, there, there's a reason why these folks have s- so much melanin in their skin. They have this beautiful climate and your, your body's protecting itself from the sun.

Jesse Singal 1:03:27 You know who ... I was just thinking about what you said about like the, uh, everything being ultra-polarized, no one could get along. The guy, to me, that did the best job of bridging that stuff, um, and I listened to your interview with him when I was prepping for this, was, was Anthony Bourdain.

Joe Rogan 1:03:39 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 1:03:39 'Cause he could go to like fucking ... He went to these cultures that had ... They really did have views we would view as horrible, about women or gay people or whatever, and he intentionally didn't focus on that. He focused on food, and like-

Joe Rogan 1:03:50 Yeah.

Jesse Singal 1:03:51 ... where you live, and, and ... I don't know, like his ... I obviously didn't know him at all, but his death really hit me hard, 'cause I just think that's really hard to do and we need way more people like that, and we don't have any.

Joe Rogan 1:04:01 Yeah. Yeah, he hit ... That one hit me hard. That was, that was one of the roughest ones.

Jesse Singal 1:04:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:06 I didn't know he was that depressed. I had no idea. You know, I knew that he was a complicated guy, but, uh, I actually got a, uh, text message from my friend Maynard, uh, the lead singer of Tool, who's a ... He's a jujitsu practitioner. And Bourdain's a jujitsu practitioner too, and the, the two of 'em, you know ... It was ... I thought it was really cool that they, they both got into jujitsu and they're finding all this benefit from it, emotionally and physically. And Bourdain got into it like in his late 50s and all the sudden he got ripped and like ... 'Cause he's, he's got ... He had, excuse me, he had addictive personalities.

Jesse Singal 1:04:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:42 It was terrible when he was doing heroin but amazing for jujitsu, 'cause all the sudden like this guy's like super dedicated and he's training every day. And so Maynard was like, "I think I wanna have a celebrity jujitsu match with Anthony Bourdain. Do you think you could hook that up?" I go, "Oh, I'll ask him, man."

Jesse Singal 1:04:56 Oh, man.

Joe Rogan 1:04:56 Just joking around. And then I get this phone call or this text message in ... when I was in Chicago, from Maynard saying, "I guess we won't be having that celebrity jujitsu match."

Jesse Singal 1:05:06 That's how you found out?

Joe Rogan 1:05:06 That's how I found out.

Jesse Singal 1:05:07 Jesus Christ.

Joe Rogan 1:05:07 I woke up in the morning and I looked at my phone and I was like, "What does that mean? Fuck." And then I Google Anthony Bourdain and I'm like, "Oh my God."

Jesse Singal 1:05:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:17 That was ... It, it just ... He, he ... That was one of the ones where you just go, "Goddammit, I wish I was there."

Jesse Singal 1:05:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:24 I wish I was there with him. I would say, "Listen, this will pass, man. You're, you are loved. You are a beloved person."

Jesse Singal 1:05:32 Well, and that ... I mean, that's the thing a lot of people don't realize about suicide, 'cause I've read a little bit about this, is it's, it's a much more impulsive thing than people often realize. And it is that question of like if someone can be ... That's why suicide hotlines are so important. Can you talk someone off that emotional cliff-

Joe Rogan 1:05:46 Yes.

Jesse Singal 1:05:46 ... in the moment?

Joe Rogan 1:05:46 Yes.

Jesse Singal 1:05:46 'Cause if you can ...

Joe Rogan 1:05:48 Yeah, you could probably turn them around and stop a lot of pain.

Jesse Singal 1:05:51 It's so fucking sad.

Joe Rogan 1:05:52 It's so fucking sad.

Jesse Singal 1:05:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:53 And, and for him, he had so much to offer. His perspective was so unique and so passionate. And I just feel real fortunate to have met him and, and known him and h- got to hang out with him a bunch of times. It was, uh ... It's just, um ... It's just when someone ... At least he left behind a lot.

Jesse Singal 1:06:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:13 He left behind a lot of his work. He left behind a lot of his writing. His writing was brilliant and his show was brilliant and ...

Jesse Singal 1:06:20 You never ... Like when you're just a normal person watching a celebrity, you, you can never tell like how much of it is an act. In his case, he was at the very least, like he really convincingly just seemed like he was a ... Just a great guy. Like I- I couldn't imagine anyone disliking him based on at least the personality of the show.

Joe Rogan 1:06:38 I like that. (laughs) People could definitely dislike him. He was polarop- ... He didn't ... If he didn't like you, he talked a lot of shit.

Jesse Singal 1:06:43 Oh, did he?

Joe Rogan 1:06:43 Yeah, he talked a lot of shit about like-... the Dave Matthews Band, shit like that.

Jesse Singal 1:06:47 (laughs) Really?

Joe Rogan 1:06:48 'Cause he was just humorous. He was a comic, basically.

Jesse Singal 1:06:50 Well, yeah. But that-

Joe Rogan 1:06:51 'Cause he wasn't a comic, but he was. You know, like we talked about, like, he started doing these, um, live performances where he would go in front of a whole theater.

Jesse Singal 1:06:59 He was just getting into that when he was on your show, right? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:01 Yes, yes. And he loved it. And we talked a lot about, like, how to do it and how, how often you should turn over material. And you know, you know, how, what the approach is. And he would come to see comedy a lot, like, uh, he came to a bunch of my shows and we talked about... This is a bummer, man.

Jesse Singal 1:07:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:21 It's just, he was so unique. I wanted to see him get older and just, I wanted to see his perspective. But that motherfucker partied hard, dude. Hard.

Jesse Singal 1:07:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:31 I mean, I partied with him a few times, but the hardest I ever partied with him, we were in Montana and we were for a show, we went pheasant hunting.

Jesse Singal 1:07:38 I saw that. You guys went, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:40 Yeah. And then afterwards he cooked for us, which was amazing. We cooked pheasant and, uh, I think they had grouse and we had some steaks. And, and then we sat by the fire and drank whiskey and smoked weed, and we got barbecued. And that guy just keep- he just kept going.

Jesse Singal 1:07:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:56 He just kept going. I'm like, "How can one possibly drink anymore? Like, we're so fucked up." And he, he's like, "Who's got the bottle?"

Jesse Singal 1:08:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:03 I was like, "Fucking let's go." Like-

Jesse Singal 1:08:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:05 ... he was just going and just couldn't stop hitting the pipe and smoking more weed and, you know, and drinking more alcohol. And we were under the stars. It was pretty wild. It was fun.

Jesse Singal 1:08:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:15 But I just got to see, like, some people... You know, he, he had, like, a real issue with heroin and never became sober. He just sort of transitioned it into booze and partying that way.

Jesse Singal 1:08:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:29 But, but man, when you talk food with that guy, when you talk culture with that guy and just, he had a passion for the... I mean, it was l- literally, like, the dream job for him. Like, th- that, that gig, whether it was No Reservations or whether it was, uh, the new, what was the new show called? Parts Unknown?

Jesse Singal 1:08:48 Parts Unknown, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:49 W- he, he just had this love of exploring the way people get together. Like, when you'd sit with him and watch him, like, talk to people while they're eating and talk about food, the fucking guy would just light up. He loved it.