Joe Rogan Experience #1682 - Jesse Singal

1. 0:00 – 3:53

   Twitter as a mental-health hazard (and a necessary promo tool)

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

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

   4. JSJesse Singal0:15

      Hey, man. How's it going?

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      Nice to meet you. I've, I've read your tweets multiple times.

   6. JSJesse Singal0:18

      (laughs) I'm sorry to hear that.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      (laughs) You're a tweeter, man. You're out there. You're out there-

   8. JSJesse Singal0:23

      I'm try ... I wanna-

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      ... wai- waiting through the swamp.

   10. JSJesse Singal0:24

       ... learn from you how to stay out of that shit. It's ... it destroys me.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:27

       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?

   12. JSJesse Singal0:35

       That's good.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:35

       I found out about you through Twitter, so-

   14. JSJesse Singal0:37

       Still worked.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       ... 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-

   16. JSJesse Singal0:53

       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-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       100%

   18. JSJesse Singal1:01

       ... it is, yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:02

       And during the pandemic, that was highlighted.

   20. JSJesse Singal1:04

       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.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:10

       (laughs)

   22. JSJesse Singal1:10

       It's horrible.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:11

       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."

   24. JSJesse Singal1:20

       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.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:35

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JSJesse Singal1:35

       '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.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:44

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JSJesse Singal1:45

       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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:51

       Or angry 45-year-old in Manhattan.

   30. JSJesse Singal1:53

       (laughs)
2. 3:53 – 6:19

   Purity tests, demon-making, and how Twitter sets the media agenda

   1. JSJesse Singal3:53

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan4:03

      Ah.

   3. JSJesse Singal4:03

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

   4. JRJoe Rogan4:06

      Yeah. Ah, yeah.

   5. JSJesse Singal4:06

      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-

   6. JRJoe Rogan4:28

      (laughs)

   7. JSJesse Singal4:28

      ... you know, Hitler's daughter or something. It's like the, the standards ... So ... All right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan4:32

      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.

   9. JSJesse Singal4:42

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan4:42

       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-

   11. JSJesse Singal4:57

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan4:58

       ... with normal human flaws.

   13. JSJesse Singal4:59

       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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan5:13

       All day.

   15. JSJesse Singal5:13

       And they're looking around to see who responds to what and-

   16. JRJoe Rogan5:15

       Yeah.

   17. JSJesse Singal5:17

       ... 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.

   18. JRJoe Rogan5:24

       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.

   19. JSJesse Singal5:31

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan5:32

       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?

   21. JSJesse Singal5:38

       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.

   22. JRJoe Rogan6:07

       She's just rational.

   23. JSJesse Singal6:09

       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.

3. 6:19 – 8:54

   Debunking the “warrior gene” clip: candidate genes, pop science, and replication

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:19

      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 ...

   2. JSJesse Singal6:24

      (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:24

      That there was a, there, I guess there's a clip going around from my podcast from years back.

   4. JSJesse Singal6:28

      Yes.

   5. JRJoe Rogan6:29

      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?

   6. JSJesse Singal6:36

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan6:36

      I just, someone told me about it, but again, I don't pay attention to anything-

   8. JSJesse Singal6:40

      So people were recirculating-

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:41

      ... that has to do with me.

   10. JSJesse Singal6:41

       ... 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-

   11. JRJoe Rogan7:18

       Hmm.

   12. JSJesse Singal7:19

       ... 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?

   13. JRJoe Rogan7:25

       Hmm.

   14. JSJesse Singal7:26

       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?

   15. JRJoe Rogan7:37

       No.

   16. JSJesse Singal7:38

       Very smart guy. He wrote a book on, um, sort of rational mysticism, like how to, how to-

   17. JRJoe Rogan7:42

       Hmm.

   18. JSJesse Singal7:42

       ... 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.

   19. JRJoe Rogan8:32

       Were people looking for it back when he said it?

   20. JSJesse Singal8:33

       Yeah, yeah. He was responding to sort of, like, just bad pop science basically.

   21. JRJoe Rogan8:38

       Bad pop science ...

   22. JSJesse Singal8:39

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan8:39

       ... from 2015.

   24. JSJesse Singal8:40

       From, I think, 2011, but yeah

   25. NANarrator8:42

       It was a good-

   26. JRJoe Rogan8:42

       But when was the podcast I did with him?

   27. JSJesse Singal8:44

       The clip was 2015, yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan8:46

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

   29. JSJesse Singal8:49

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan8:49

       And then when I had him on, uh, like, there was things like that where I was like, "Wait, what?"
4. 8:54 – 13:55

   Who gets a microphone? Platforming, responsibility, and modern deplatforming

   1. JRJoe Rogan8:54

      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.

   2. JSJesse Singal9:08

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan9:08

      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."

   4. JSJesse Singal9:17

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan9:17

      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.

   6. JSJesse Singal9:40

      Right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan9:40

      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.

   8. JSJesse Singal9:57

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan9:58

      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.

   10. JSJesse Singal10:37

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan10:37

       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.

   12. JSJesse Singal11:10

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan11:10

       And he can't even communicate anymore.

   14. JSJesse Singal11:12

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan11:12

       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.

   16. JSJesse Singal11:21

       W-

   17. JRJoe Rogan11:21

       I just don't think ... You know, they just didn't want him to win again.

   18. JSJesse Singal11:24

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan11:25

       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.

   20. JSJesse Singal11:54

       Yup.

   21. JRJoe Rogan11:54

       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?

   22. JSJesse Singal12:11

       Yup.

   23. JRJoe Rogan12:11

       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-

   24. JSJesse Singal12:34

       Yep.

   25. JRJoe Rogan12:35

       ... 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.

   26. JSJesse Singal13:11

       Do you... I, I actually, I wanna press you on one thing.

   27. JRJoe Rogan13:14

       Please.

   28. JSJesse Singal13:14

       '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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan13:30

       Yeah.

   30. JSJesse Singal13:30

       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.
5. 13:55 – 34:20

   Alex Jones and the harm question: entertainment, misinformation, and guardrails

   1. JSJesse Singal13:55

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan14:02

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JSJesse Singal14:02

      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-

   4. JRJoe Rogan14:31

      When did he say that?

   5. JSJesse Singal14:32

      He did on your show.

   6. JRJoe Rogan14:33

      Whi- which one?

   7. JSJesse Singal14:34

      I think the 2019 one.

   8. EBEddie Bravo14:35

      It was the ni- I remem-

   9. JRJoe Rogan14:36

      9/11?

   10. EBEddie Bravo14:36

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

   11. JSJesse Singal14:40

       (laughs)

   12. EBEddie Bravo14:40

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

   13. JSJesse Singal14:43

       Yeah, yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan14:43

       Hmm.

   15. EBEddie Bravo14:44

       That's what he was talking about, but I'll try to-

   16. JSJesse Singal14:45

       But-

   17. EBEddie Bravo14:46

       I'll find the clip.

   18. JRJoe Rogan14:46

       Yeah. I d- let's see if we can find that.

   19. EBEddie Bravo14:48

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan14:48

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

   21. JSJesse Singal14:50

       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.

   22. EBEddie Bravo14:59

       I agree with that. Yeah.

   23. JSJesse Singal14:59

       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.

   24. JRJoe Rogan15:05

       I think he's just an entertainer. See, I, that's why I would-

   25. JSJesse Singal15:08

       You think he believes that stuff or...

   26. JRJoe Rogan15:08

       He believes a lot of it.

   27. JSJesse Singal15:09

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan15:10

       Yes. And he's right about many things and he's wrong about many things.

   29. JSJesse Singal15:13

       What percentage-

   30. JRJoe Rogan15:14

       That's the problem.
6. 34:20 – 36:58

   Why conspiracies thrive: real government misconduct as rocket fuel

   1. JRJoe Rogan34:20

      (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.

   2. JSJesse Singal34:33

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan34:33

      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.

   4. JSJesse Singal34:42

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan34:42

      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.

   6. JSJesse Singal35:08

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan35:08

      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.

   8. JSJesse Singal35:20

      I think, but I think that fuels conspiracy theorists is that the shit even just our government has done-

   9. JRJoe Rogan35:25

      Yeah.

   10. JSJesse Singal35:25

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

   11. JRJoe Rogan35:28

       Not even weird.

   12. JSJesse Singal35:29

       ... the secret bombing of Cambodia.

   13. JRJoe Rogan35:31

       Yes.

   14. JSJesse Singal35:31

       I mean, that's like-

   15. JRJoe Rogan35:31

       Yes.

   16. JSJesse Singal35:32

       ... uh, superhero villain shit.

   17. JRJoe Rogan35:33

       Well, how about the Gulf of Tonkin incident?

   18. JSJesse Singal35:34

       Yeah, yeah. All that shit.

   19. JRJoe Rogan35:34

       That got us into Vietnam.

   20. JSJesse Singal35:36

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan35:36

       How about Operation Northwoods? Signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and vetoed by k- by Kennedy.

   22. JSJesse Singal35:40

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan35:40

       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.

   24. JSJesse Singal35:57

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan35:57

       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.

   26. JSJesse Singal36:16

       Consensus.

   27. JRJoe Rogan36:17

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

   28. JSJesse Singal36:22

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan36:22

       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.

   30. JSJesse Singal36:44

       There's no account- there's often no accountability.
7. 36:58 – 38:37

   ‘The Quick Fix’: fad psychology, implicit bias tests, and wasted billions

   1. JRJoe Rogan36:58

      You got a book in there?

   2. JSJesse Singal36:59

      ... one of these for you.

   3. JRJoe Rogan37:00

      Heard you got a book.

   4. JSJesse Singal37:01

      Yeah. It's so weird that-

   5. JRJoe Rogan37:02

      Jessie, did you write a book?

   6. JSJesse Singal37:03

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan37:03

      The Quick Fix?

   8. JSJesse Singal37:04

      It's a very douchey thing to do, but I care- this is for Jamie-

   9. JRJoe Rogan37:06

      Th- this is-

   10. JSJesse Singal37:07

       If you want a copy.

   11. JRJoe Rogan37:07

       This is your book about psychological things, right? Like-

   12. JSJesse Singal37:10

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan37:10

       ... explain your book.

   14. JSJesse Singal37:11

       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.

   15. JRJoe Rogan37:18

       (laughs)

   16. JSJesse Singal37:19

       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?

   17. JRJoe Rogan37:52

       No.

   18. JSJesse Singal37:52

       All right. Do you know implicit bias?

   19. JRJoe Rogan37:54

       Yes.

   20. JSJesse Singal37:54

       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.

   21. JRJoe Rogan38:35

       Mm.

   22. JSJesse Singal38:35

       Yeah.

8. 38:37 – 46:08

   Clickbait science journalism and the replication crisis in psychology

   1. JRJoe Rogan38:37

      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?

   2. JSJesse Singal38:45

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan38:45

      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-

   4. JSJesse Singal39:18

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan39:18

      ... of old. I still read the New York Times, I still love it.

   6. JSJesse Singal39:20

      Me too. Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan39:21

      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.

   8. JSJesse Singal39:31

      Part of us wants to see them collapse.

   9. JRJoe Rogan39:33

      Exactly.

   10. JSJesse Singal39:33

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan39:33

       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.

   12. JSJesse Singal40:00

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan40:00

       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-

   14. JSJesse Singal40:29

       Well, and everyone gets more desperate 'cause they-

   15. JRJoe Rogan40:30

       Yes.

   16. JSJesse Singal40:30

       ... just need to keep feeding the beast.

   17. JRJoe Rogan40:32

       Yeah.

   18. JSJesse Singal40:32

       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.

   19. JRJoe Rogan40:41

       Yes.

   20. JSJesse Singal40:41

       And I bet you could be a writer, you know, you publi- it's still hard work, but-

   21. JRJoe Rogan40:44

       Right.

   22. JSJesse Singal40:44

       ... 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-

   23. JRJoe Rogan40:58

       That's a lot.

   24. JSJesse Singal40:58

       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-

   25. JRJoe Rogan41:04

       Right.

   26. JSJesse Singal41:04

       ... we don't read it closely. Oftentimes we read the press release, but not the study itself.

   27. JRJoe Rogan41:08

       Mm.

   28. JSJesse Singal41:08

       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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan41:27

       Why was, wha- what happened in 2010 that, like, the worst psychology got published?

   30. JSJesse Singal41:31

       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-
9. 46:08 – 53:25

   Academia and newsroom groupthink: hoax papers, HR fear, and ‘unsafe’ rhetoric

   1. JRJoe Rogan46:08

      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.

   2. JSJesse Singal46:17

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan46:18

      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.

   4. JSJesse Singal46:31

      Yeah, it won an award, right?

   5. JRJoe Rogan46:32

      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.

   6. JSJesse Singal47:02

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan47:02

      So they've never been out there in the regular world outside of this insulated bubble of academia.

   8. JSJesse Singal47:10

      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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan47:25

      Yeah.

   10. JSJesse Singal47:26

       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?

   11. JRJoe Rogan47:32

       It's just so important to have objective unbiased versions of the truth.

   12. JSJesse Singal47:37

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan47:38

       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.

   14. JSJesse Singal47:53

       Yeah, yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan47:54

       But I would like something that's bulletproof.

   16. JSJesse Singal47:56

       Well-

   17. JRJoe Rogan47:56

       I would like something that doesn't have any opinion pieces that are preposterous.

   18. JSJesse Singal48:00

       It's hard to get that. And it's-

   19. JRJoe Rogan48:02

       It's hard.

   20. JSJesse Singal48:02

       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-

   21. JRJoe Rogan48:08

       Yes.

   22. JSJesse Singal48:08

       ... 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.

   23. JRJoe Rogan48:16

       I think-

   24. JSJesse Singal48:16

       I do think it's getting worse.

   25. JRJoe Rogan48:17

       Yeah, I think so.

   26. JSJesse Singal48:18

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan48:18

       Well, I think the worst is television. Television news is, is the most ...

   28. JSJesse Singal48:23

       It's unwatchable.

   29. JRJoe Rogan48:24

       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?

   30. NANarrator48:34

       Uh, Breaking Points?
10. 53:25 – 1:19:23

    Pandemic-era polarization and the ‘exhausted majority’

    1. JSJesse Singal53:25

       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-

    2. JRJoe Rogan53:32

       For sure.

    3. JSJesse Singal53:32

       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-

    4. JRJoe Rogan53:54

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JSJesse Singal53:54

       ... and like, "You can do BLM protests."

    6. JRJoe Rogan53:55

       Yeah.

    7. JSJesse Singal53:55

       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-

    8. JRJoe Rogan54:03

       Right.

    9. JSJesse Singal54:03

       ... of your tribe. So I think it's a little bit of both.

    10. JRJoe Rogan54:05

        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.

    11. JSJesse Singal54:31

        Yeah.

    12. JRJoe Rogan54:32

        Like, the whole idea is that this stuff is airborne.

    13. JSJesse Singal54:33

        Yeah.

    14. JRJoe Rogan54:34

        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."

    15. JSJesse Singal54:51

        Yeah.

    16. JRJoe Rogan54:51

        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-"

    17. JSJesse Singal54:57

        Yeah, that's all you want is a discussion.

    18. JRJoe Rogan54:58

        Yes.

    19. JSJesse Singal54:59

        Yeah.

    20. JRJoe Rogan54:59

        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.

    21. JSJesse Singal55:05

        Yeah.

    22. JRJoe Rogan55:06

        You know?

    23. JSJesse Singal55:07

        I do think like the combined effect of just like the lockdowns on- on everyone's mental health-

    24. JRJoe Rogan55:13

        Yeah.

    25. JSJesse Singal55:13

        I just think we're gonna see that for a long time.

    26. JRJoe Rogan55:15

        Oh, yeah.

    27. JSJesse Singal55:15

        That destroyed everybody.

    28. JRJoe Rogan55:16

        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-

    29. JSJesse Singal55:38

        (coughs)

    30. JRJoe Rogan55:38

        ... 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.

Episode duration: 3:03:18