Joe Rogan Experience #1698 - Neill Blomkamp

1. 0:00 – 1:37

   Bob Lazar, Area S4, and the problem of wanting UFOs to be real

   1. NBNeill Blomkamp0:00

      (drumbeats) 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) Nice to meet you, man.

   4. NBNeill Blomkamp0:13

      Nice to meet you.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      It's a pleasure. I've enjoyed your movies immensely.

   6. NBNeill Blomkamp0:16

      Thank you.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      So, it's very cool to meet you in person.

   8. NBNeill Blomkamp0:18

      Yeah. Thank you for inviting me down. It's, uh, it's awesome to be here.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      Uh, it's awesome to have you. And we were talking, just before we started, about this T-shirt, which is a design ... It's Bob Lazar's sketch of what he allegedly saw-

   10. NBNeill Blomkamp0:31

       Yes.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       ... inside a hangar at Area S4.

   12. NBNeill Blomkamp0:34

       Yeah. So, and what I was asking you is whether you think what he is saying is in fact true or not. Do you believe what he is saying?

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       The problem is, I want to believe it.

   14. NBNeill Blomkamp0:47

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:47

       That's always a problem.

   16. NBNeill Blomkamp0:48

       It's causing a bias.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:49

       Yes. For sure.

   18. NBNeill Blomkamp0:50

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:50

       Whenever it c- anything comes with UFOs, I wanna believe far too much.

   20. NBNeill Blomkamp0:55

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:55

       Not, not far too much, 'cause I've had people on here where in the middle of talking to them, I'm like, "This sounds like horse shit."

   22. NBNeill Blomkamp1:03

       It's so strange, because I watched that whole interview, and I read a bunch of, I read a whole bunch of articles around Bob Lazar as well, and I want it to be true incredibly badly.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:14

       (laughs)

   24. NBNeill Blomkamp1:14

       (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:14

       It's so hard.

   26. NBNeill Blomkamp1:15

       I need it to be true. But-

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:16

       Yeah, right?

   28. NBNeill Blomkamp1:16

       But I also, um ... Some, if I have any rationality, some, some rational element of my brain is saying it is not possible.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:24

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   30. NBNeill Blomkamp1:25

       And, uh, which is, which is strange. I mean, you know, I don't know why I'm just not believing it, but I, I believe him, but I don't know if there is an aircraft from another galaxy in a hangar in the United States somewhere.

2. 1:37 – 6:05

   Human-made “UFOs,” anti-gravity lore, and Element 115 as a plot hinge

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:37

      It's not, see, it's not necessarily from another galaxy. The thing about all this stuff is, we're, we're assuming that we have, uh, an accurate understanding of what's currently possible-

   2. NBNeill Blomkamp1:53

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:53

      ... with technology.

   4. NBNeill Blomkamp1:55

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:56

      I, I don't necessarily know if that's correct. And it, it is possible that they were experimenting with some really wild shit and-

   6. NBNeill Blomkamp2:05

      So you think it could be human-made?

   7. JRJoe Rogan2:06

      It's k- it, like, it's, it's a physic- if it, if it, if it's real at all-

   8. NBNeill Blomkamp2:09

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan2:09

      If it's real at all, it's a physical thing, right?

   10. NBNeill Blomkamp2:12

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan2:12

       If it's real, and it is in a hangar, it's a physical thing, like ... Let's assume that they would tell this guy who, uh, has a questionable education background-

   12. NBNeill Blomkamp2:22

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JRJoe Rogan2:22

       Who, uh, obviously is brilliant and obviously has a, a, a deep understanding of propulsion systems and ... He strapped a, a rocket engine to the back of his Honda, I think.

   14. NBNeill Blomkamp2:34

       Yeah, to a Civic, yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan2:35

       Is it? Yeah, he's a wild dude.

   16. NBNeill Blomkamp2:36

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan2:36

       Clearly, a super, super intelligent guy. But, you know, doesn't have the best credentials in terms of, like, his education background, his accomplishments, published papers.

   18. NBNeill Blomkamp2:48

       Mm-hmm.

   19. JRJoe Rogan2:48

       Like, why, why would they pick him? Like, why would they pick him? Why would they pick him? Well, he thinks they picked him because they were running their, they were, they were just banging their heads off the wall, trying to figure out how to back engineer these things or what these things were. And they said, "Well, let's think outside the box, and let's get this genius guy who worked at Los Alamos Labs-"

   20. NBNeill Blomkamp3:08

       Let's get a different point, point of view. Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan3:09

       Yeah.

   22. NBNeill Blomkamp3:09

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan3:10

       He clearly a super, super intelligent guy. But maybe they fabricate this horse shit narrative to him.

   24. NBNeill Blomkamp3:18

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JRJoe Rogan3:18

       You know, "We found this in an archeological dig." But, but maybe what this is, is there's some understanding of propulsion systems or of, uh, some sort of-

   26. NBNeill Blomkamp3:28

       Anti-gravity?

   27. JRJoe Rogan3:29

       ... gravity.

   28. NBNeill Blomkamp3:30

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan3:30

       Yeah. Some gravity system that supposedly operates on this element, Element 115. Uh, the, the thing about his story that's fascinating to me is that it's never changed. It's remarkably consistent.

   30. NBNeill Blomkamp3:43

       Mm-hmm.
3. 6:05 – 8:25

   Future humans as “greys”: evolution, Neuralink, and nonverbal communication

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:05

      Well, if you-- if you follow all the lore on UFOs, these creatures all look like what eventually human beings are probably gonna look like.

   2. NBNeill Blomkamp6:15

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:15

      These tiny, little frail things with huge heads.

   4. NBNeill Blomkamp6:18

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan6:18

      Like, if you go from chimps to us, chimps are massively muscular. They have smaller brains. You know, they're, uh, hugely violent, covered with hair. And as human beings get more and more evolved, or as, uh, you know-

   6. NBNeill Blomkamp6:33

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan6:33

      ... Australopithecus and the Homo sapien and, and then what we are right now, we look at us and we're kind of like, you know, we're, we're sitting at desks all day. And we don't really if... Uh, we don't really need muscles. We have all these d- different methods of communication-

   8. NBNeill Blomkamp6:50

      And propelling ourselves-

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:50

      ... typing, yeah.

   10. NBNeill Blomkamp6:52

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan6:52

       We're moving around in cars that drive themselves. And if N- Elon Musk has his way, and they get that Neuralink thing, and they start drilling holes in your brain, we're not gonna need words to talk. This is what he said to me. He said, "We're... You're not gonna need to use words to communicate."

   12. NBNeill Blomkamp7:06

       Have you ever heard of the Hogan twins in British Columbia? They're joined, they're con- co-joined twins, um, and they, they, their, their brain is linked. There's a, there's a piece of, uh, one part of the stem, I think, is linked between them, and they can tell jokes to one another with no words, right?

   13. JRJoe Rogan7:25

       Whoa.

   14. NBNeill Blomkamp7:26

       Yeah. They can also see through one another's eyes.

   15. JRJoe Rogan7:29

       Whoa. (laughs)

   16. NBNeill Blomkamp7:29

       So, yeah, you should look into it. It's pretty-

   17. JRJoe Rogan7:32

       Wow.

   18. NBNeill Blomkamp7:32

       ... it's pretty amazing. I feel like, um, someone that, that you would be interested in, if you don't know him already, is the, is the Canadian science fiction author Peter Watts. Do you know... Have you heard of Peter Watts?

   19. JRJoe Rogan7:40

       No, I haven't heard of him.

   20. NBNeill Blomkamp7:41

       He's a hard sci-fi writer who, uh, I just... I love his stuff. I came across it recently. And he used to be a marine biologist. Um, so he's a, he's a, he was a scientist who got into writing science fiction novels, uh, and has an extreme understanding of evolutionary biology. He'd be very interesting to speculate on like what the human form would look like-

   21. JRJoe Rogan8:02

       Mm.

   22. NBNeill Blomkamp8:02

       ... you know, a few, a few hundred generations from now.

   23. JRJoe Rogan8:05

       I always felt like the aliens that you see in, like, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, these, that, that iconic shape, it's almost like we have an understanding of where we're going.

   24. NBNeill Blomkamp8:13

       Mm, like, oh-

   25. JRJoe Rogan8:13

       Some, some innate-

   26. NBNeill Blomkamp8:14

       ... yeah. ... like, sort of shedding hair, everything becomes cerebral.

   27. JRJoe Rogan8:17

       Yeah.

   28. NBNeill Blomkamp8:17

       There would obviously... Yeah, there would be a Neuralink, like, heavy, um, uh, sort of brain computer interface system, where everything would be, would be, you know, would-

   29. JRJoe Rogan8:25

       Yes.

4. 8:25 – 11:54

   Hive-mind consciousness and irreversible “ego dissolution” at scale

   1. NBNeill Blomkamp8:25

      ... would, would allow you to, to go somewhere else. One of the, one of the things that, that Peter Watts, um... I'm working with him on a sci-fi idea at the moment, and one of the things that he is into is this idea that he thinks that consciousness expands to the amount of neurons that are available to it. It's like a fluid thing that moves, right?

   2. JRJoe Rogan8:42

      Ah.

   3. NBNeill Blomkamp8:42

      And so if you, if you use the twins from, from Canada as an example, um, he... What he's saying is happening with them is the way that their brain is linked, it's... The, the data pipe isn't fat enough, right? It's more like dial-up rather than, than high, you know, broadband. So, if you were to inc- increase the volume of data, of information being sent between the two brains, what would happen at a certain point is the two versions of self would dissolve into one united self, and you would have one superorganism that would be the consciousness of both. And if you were to somehow remove that, if you were to limit the bandwidth again, those two souls would never return, because the way the neural system has been aligned at the point that you poured more, you allowed the, the consciousness to expand, it never reverts back. So, you can imagine a world where, like, Neuralink talks about, you know, fuse... If you fuse hundreds of brains together in some kind of hive mind, then everyone can think together. What may happen is you may actually get a situation where you create a superintelligence that is... that thinks of itself as I, and you are unable to undo that.

   4. JRJoe Rogan9:50

      Wow.

   5. NBNeill Blomkamp9:50

      It, it's sort of not clear exactly what would happen to each individual node of consciousness if you ever try to reverse it again.

   6. JRJoe Rogan9:56

      Whoa.

   7. NBNeill Blomkamp9:57

      You know?

   8. JRJoe Rogan9:59

      Wow.

   9. NBNeill Blomkamp10:01

      Yeah, so-

   10. JRJoe Rogan10:01

       That, that's... If, if Neuralink really can accomplish something like that, that could, like, legitimately-

   11. NBNeill Blomkamp10:07

       Well, I think, I think the sort of science fiction, um, version of thinking about the topic is that you create a hive mind of where you can imagine your brain interfacing with hundreds of other humans, and you can share ideas quicker than you can s- than you can speak, and-

   12. JRJoe Rogan10:21

       Yeah.

   13. NBNeill Blomkamp10:21

       ... things could be passed back and forth emotionally, things like that, right?

   14. JRJoe Rogan10:24

       Right.

   15. NBNeill Blomkamp10:24

       But pro- probably what may happen is... Maybe what happens is one form of consciousness spreads across all of them, and you end up with something that's thinking on levels that humans have never thought on before, and it's also not able to revert back to anything that is understandable.

   16. JRJoe Rogan10:41

       Because you'll be connected inexorably.

   17. NBNeill Blomkamp10:43

       You disappears. Yeah, the-

   18. JRJoe Rogan10:45

       Right.

   19. NBNeill Blomkamp10:45

       ... the sort of, the, sort of, like, ego death and the idea of one super thing.

   20. JRJoe Rogan10:49

       So if you... Oh, God. So if the entire human race connects to this thing-

   21. NBNeill Blomkamp10:57

       Yeah, I mean, it's-

   22. JRJoe Rogan10:57

       ... there's no more human race.

   23. NBNeill Blomkamp10:58

       It, there's no-

   24. JRJoe Rogan10:59

       It's now-

   25. NBNeill Blomkamp10:59

       There's no more individ- You, you could... I mean, hypothetically, it could be some sort of, like, neurally linked, you know, superorganism that would just never return to individual humans.

   26. JRJoe Rogan11:07

       Maybe that's how we all get along.

   27. NBNeill Blomkamp11:09

       Yeah, that would solve-

   28. JRJoe Rogan11:11

       (laughs)

   29. NBNeill Blomkamp11:11

       (laughs) That would solve... I mean, I, yeah, you know?

   30. JRJoe Rogan11:13

       It'd solve everything. (laughs)
5. 11:54 – 13:51

   Biological programming, sex, and the cost of ‘progress’ toward post-human life

   1. NBNeill Blomkamp11:54

      Well, I think art, I think everything humans do is, is as a result of, of taking a primordial brain, um, that is... 'Cause, I mean, we're all slaves to just biological programming.

   2. JRJoe Rogan12:05

      Yeah, right.

   3. NBNeill Blomkamp12:06

      That's all we really are. And then you're coupling a supercomputer to it. You're coupling the first self-aware...... logic and rationality supercomputer to a bunch of ancient biological needs-

   4. JRJoe Rogan12:18

      Yeah.

   5. NBNeill Blomkamp12:18

      ... and, and programs. And I think that tug of war yields everything, you know, that we, that we understand. Um, it, it yields creativity, it yields, um, territorial disputes, uh, e- you know-

   6. JRJoe Rogan12:31

      Yeah. Love, passion-

   7. NBNeill Blomkamp12:33

      ... bo- bond- bonding with partners, yeah, everything.

   8. JRJoe Rogan12:34

      Anxiety, fear-

   9. NBNeill Blomkamp12:35

      It's all-

   10. JRJoe Rogan12:35

       Yeah.

   11. NBNeill Blomkamp12:36

       ... it's, it's all a result of that. So, to take that away, I mean, you, you know, it's, it's, it's an un- understandable thing. I don't think we can comprehend it.

   12. JRJoe Rogan12:44

       Well, when you follow this line of thinking with the evolution of the alien form, one of the things is they have no genitals.

   13. NBNeill Blomkamp12:53

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JRJoe Rogan12:54

       The- the- the- the- they're formless, they have no muscles.

   15. NBNeill Blomkamp12:56

       Asexual, yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan12:56

       They're asexual. And, uh, you know, there's, they're-

   17. NBNeill Blomkamp13:00

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan13:01

       If you think about what we need, right? The biological needs to reproduce are responsible for so much negativity, but also so much positivity. So much chaos, so much entropy, so much momentum, so much-

   19. NBNeill Blomkamp13:13

       Yeah. It's, it's yin and yang. It's complete-

   20. JRJoe Rogan13:15

       Yeah.

   21. NBNeill Blomkamp13:15

       ... yin and yang.

   22. JRJoe Rogan13:15

       Yeah, yeah. And they may be, like maybe one day we go, "You know, we've realized that all this war and chaos and stealing and murder, what this is about is biological needs-"

   23. NBNeill Blomkamp13:27

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan13:27

       "... that, uh, we can bypass with technology and we could reproduce through some sort of genetic engineering instead of-"

   25. NBNeill Blomkamp13:34

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan13:34

       "... just intercourse."

   27. NBNeill Blomkamp13:35

       Yeah. I agree. I mean, e- the thing that's fascinating, though, is that you may end up with a culture that really is just, it's so alien that it might as well not be human, you know?

   28. JRJoe Rogan13:43

       Yeah.

   29. NBNeill Blomkamp13:43

       E- even if it's a step, if it's a step forward, which it probably would be.

   30. JRJoe Rogan13:47

       But is it a step forward? I mean...
6. 13:51 – 15:22

   Space billionaires, leaving Earth, and the great filter anxiety

   1. NBNeill Blomkamp13:51

      'Cause it's, I mean, that's what's so fascinating about any discussion, like, like the negativity around people building rockets, like Elon and, and-

   2. JRJoe Rogan13:58

      Yeah.

   3. NBNeill Blomkamp13:58

      ... Bezos going up into space. And like, you know, a lot being along the lines of Elysium in some ways.

   4. JRJoe Rogan14:04

      Yes.

   5. NBNeill Blomkamp14:04

      It's like, it's like, so are we not supposed to move forward at all? What, what, what is the... You know. So, if, if, if, if we can't agree on what the end goal is that we're striving for, then there's gonna be many disputes about the sort of road between here and there. So, I, I'm all for exploration and for us trying to better ourselves. And I think part of that is about leaving the planet. I'd rather put money into that than have it squandered in what clearly we seem to squander it on.

   6. JRJoe Rogan14:32

      Well, not only that. In the case of Bezos and Elon Musk, now we're d- you're dealing with private companies that are involved in this.

   7. NBNeill Blomkamp14:39

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JRJoe Rogan14:39

      Which is really fascinating.

   9. NBNeill Blomkamp14:41

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JRJoe Rogan14:41

       'Cause instead of it all being like NASA, and the argument was like, "Why is NASA spending all this money on this-"

   11. NBNeill Blomkamp14:46

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan14:46

       "... when we have people starving here on Earth?" Well, now you're-

   13. NBNeill Blomkamp14:49

       Yeah, it's not governmental, no.

   14. JRJoe Rogan14:50

       Right. Well, it is kind of, though, isn't it? Sort of subsidized? Like, doesn't SpaceX have a contract with NASA, believe they do, right?

   15. NBNeill Blomkamp14:56

       Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's definitely subsidized, but it's, it's less than a NASA budget-

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:00

       Right.

   17. NBNeill Blomkamp15:00

       ... of hundreds of billions of dollars.

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:02

       It's very, and it's a very different scenario.

   19. NBNeill Blomkamp15:03

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:04

       Where, you know, you have these super genius billionaire characters who are e- essentially living out a sci-fi movie.

   21. NBNeill Blomkamp15:10

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan15:11

       Right? They're living out Contact, right? It's really what they're doing. I mean-

   23. NBNeill Blomkamp15:15

       I wonder if they built two, like in Contact.

   24. JRJoe Rogan15:17

       (laughs) Right, they have a k- in case some-

   25. NBNeill Blomkamp15:19

       Yeah, it's a, it's a separate-

   26. JRJoe Rogan15:19

       ... religious nut blows one of them up, yeah.

   27. NBNeill Blomkamp15:21

       It's a separate launch site.

7. 15:22 – 35:52

   Tic Tac, Navy patents, and why UFO evidence feels simultaneously strong and weak

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:22

      Yeah. W- I, you know, I, I am so obsessed with this concept of, of life from somewhere else that, like, as I said before, with the Bob Lazar story, it's really hard, because I want it to b- I want it to be real. The thing that gets me more than anything is not just Bob Lazar, but people like Commander David Fravor, that had-

   2. NBNeill Blomkamp15:42

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:42

      ... that encounter with the Tic Tac-

   4. NANarrator15:44

      I think it's this. I think so.

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:44

      Yeah. Like, those guys-

   6. NBNeill Blomkamp15:46

      No, I, I agree with you. I mean, it's completely, completely inexplainable.

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:51

      Right.

   8. NBNeill Blomkamp15:51

      It, it's just, it just defies logic, so, I mean, the, I guess the next thing you could move to is it's built by humans, it's just super advanced.

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:59

      Right. And that-

   10. NBNeill Blomkamp15:59

       Which is the most plausible.

   11. JRJoe Rogan16:01

       The most plausible, because we know humans, and we know humans... There, there was some sort of technology that they were trying to get patents for. What, what was that thing that we, Jamie, the, the, it was, was it the CIA who had UFO technology that they were trying to patent?

   12. NBNeill Blomkamp16:18

       Hmm.

   13. JRJoe Rogan16:18

       There's some sort of gravitational... Here it is.

   14. NANarrator16:22

       I think it's this. I think-

   15. JRJoe Rogan16:22

       The Navy.

   16. NBNeill Blomkamp16:22

       I think so.

   17. JRJoe Rogan16:23

       What is behind the US Navy's UFO fusion energy patent? So, this, this thing was, we were, we were reading it going, "What the fuck does this mean?" And so, the idea behind it... Where are you going?

   18. NANarrator16:37

       Sorry, trying to find something that doesn't have a bunch of ads on it, but-

   19. JRJoe Rogan16:39

       Oh.

   20. NANarrator16:40

       ... they're not going away.

   21. JRJoe Rogan16:40

       Okay.

   22. NANarrator16:42

       And trying to dig-

   23. NBNeill Blomkamp16:43

       Yeah, but it's, I, I see where, I see where you're going.

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:44

       So, it was a fusion... Go back to that please, where you just were.

   25. NANarrator16:48

       Oh.

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:50

       So, here it says, uh, it's a fusion device and this thing is some sort of a... Where, where, where were you at before?

   27. NANarrator16:58

       This is exactly where I was, so I clicked on this to try to get better info-

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:02

       Oh, okay.

   29. NANarrator17:02

       ... as just the beginning of the article.

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:04

       Okay. It's a fusion reactor...
8. 35:52 – 50:14

   Films as social mirrors: South Africa, inequality, and the real-life seed of Elysium

   1. JRJoe Rogan35:52

      Well, when you make films like Elysium, you know, these dystopian films about potential futures, d- i- i- it's got to have, like, sort of sparked these thoughts in your mind, like-

   2. NBNeill Blomkamp36:02

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan36:02

      ... the, uh, h- how many of these possibilities could we encounter in our lifetime?

   4. NBNeill Blomkamp36:07

      Well, Elysium was ... I mean, Elysium and District 9 are both kind of cut from the same cloth in the sense that I, I do think a lot of that had to do with growing up in South Africa and just being affected by ... I'm, I'm very naturally interested in how societies seem to stratify and how wealth and equality ... You know, again, this is biological programming, right? Like, I think, I think that people hang on to resources that they have as much as they can, and so you end up with, you end up with, with billionaires, um, because it's, it's an understandable thing.

   5. JRJoe Rogan36:38

      Right.

   6. NBNeill Blomkamp36:38

      It's ... It makes total sense. You're just hoarding food in your cave to-

   7. JRJoe Rogan36:42

      Right.

   8. NBNeill Blomkamp36:42

      ... live through the winter, you know?

   9. JRJoe Rogan36:43

      Right, right.

   10. NBNeill Blomkamp36:44

       And keep your family safe. So, but, but, uh, Elysium really ... I- i- if, if District 9 was the, was the sort of racial part of growing up in South Africa and just being very aware of the environment that I was in, then Elysium is the kind of wealth discrepancy part of it. You know, where, where South Africa and Brazil and India would be, would be in first place when it comes to that. And you just see very ... You see imagery that's extremely striking, um, in that country that leaves an indelible mark on you, I think. Actually, you know, the inspiration for Elysium entire ... And the, the, the whole thing actually for me was I was shooting commercials in, um ... It was, I was up ... It was 2005 and I was, I was ... I had started directing commercials and I was doing a commercial for Nike. And I was in, uh, San Diego and the line producer that I was working with really wanted to go to Tijuana. And, and I was like sick. I didn't wanna go and he's like, "We gotta get in the car and we gotta go to Tijuana like now. We gotta go down there and get a, get a beer or something." And I was like, "I really don't wanna do this." And he's like, "Let's just go. It'll be fine." So I, uh, I went ... We went through the, the border into Mexico as the sun was going down and we got there and got onto ... You know, we were on some street corner and I ... we bought beers and then we were walking around in Tijuana with the beers and these federales saw us doing it, and we got arrested like kind of, uh, qu- relatively violently where we were, you know ... It was a shakedown for money, obviously, but it was like we, we got cuffed and thrown in the back of a police car. And then they started driving out of Tijuana in the darkness and, um, and the producer that I was with kept putting like hundred dollar bills through the grated thing to the, to the front seats. And then once there was enough money that had gone through, they just kinda opened the doors and let us out. And we had to walk back to where the car was. And the-

   11. JRJoe Rogan38:29

       How far was the walk?

   12. NBNeill Blomkamp38:30

       I don't remember how long we were walking for. It was ... It felt long. It felt like f- 40 or f- like an hour maybe, 40 minutes, somewhere in there. But the thing that was crazy about it was, was I could see US Blackhawks flying the border with like lights on them and, and floodlights on the f- far ... on the US side. And we were walking through basically favelas with dogs barking and like ... They had dropped us in places that like tourists from the US would never go. So we were walking in basically what felt like a South African shantytown in Mexico, uh, with feral animals and just like this ... But to see this country that, you know, is ... was, was this- the sort of global hyper power that everyone from Mexico was moving into, um, w- was trying to get into, uh, was i- incredibly striking. Like it was just crazy. I mean, it is crazy if you think about that, that level of poverty up against-

   13. JRJoe Rogan39:28

       Right.

   14. NBNeill Blomkamp39:28

       ... the US border and then ... And I think Elysium really was, was ... Th- the sort of subconscious part of it was South Africa but the conscious part was that. I, I, uh, in that moment I was like I really wanna find a way to turn that experience into, into visuals that represent these two worlds that live on one another's doorstep like this.

   15. JRJoe Rogan39:50

       So you were ... As you were walking by, you could see the planes that were flying over the US side?

   16. NBNeill Blomkamp39:56

       Not the planes. It was border patrol. They were Blackhawks. They were f-

   17. JRJoe Rogan39:58

       Right. Oh, helicopters.

   18. NBNeill Blomkamp39:59

       They were ... Yeah. They were flying the border.

   19. JRJoe Rogan40:02

       Yeah.

   20. NBNeill Blomkamp40:02

       And, um, and just floodlights. There were floodlights like along the, along the fence, along the perimeter. Like I guess they'd driven us kind of like, you know, east of, of where we were. It was weird. It was, it was, it was very impactful though. Like it had a huge effect on me.

   21. JRJoe Rogan40:16

       And you get to imagine these people living in this environment looking l- literally visually seeing this place-

   22. NBNeill Blomkamp40:23

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan40:23

       ... where the world is completely different right there.

   24. NBNeill Blomkamp40:25

       Yeah, yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan40:25

       And trying to figure out how to

   26. NBNeill Blomkamp40:26

       ... and where there's opportunity.

   27. JRJoe Rogan40:28

       Yeah.

   28. NBNeill Blomkamp40:28

       And, and, um, and a way out of poverty. And South Africa has something similar happening, it's just that the difference is it's all happening within one country. Right?

   29. JRJoe Rogan40:37

       Hm.

   30. NBNeill Blomkamp40:37

       And so that leads to gated communities and, you know, the rich getting richer and sort of separating, and the poor again- getting poorer. And, uh, I mean, it's a phenomenon that's seen across the whole world. Um, but, but in South Africa it's right there because, uh, it's the way that the, the society, you know, is set up. And it ... And, and I ... obviously in America you'll see that same sort of wealth stratification begin to happen more and more. Uh, but at the moment being on either side of the border you can, you can see it.
9. 50:14 – 59:07

   Life in arid British Columbia: wilderness, bears, and predator reality checks

   1. JRJoe Rogan50:14

      Do you? Oh, that's right. You were saying that you live in an area of Vancou- or the outside of Vancouver in that area where there's actual rattlesnakes.

   2. NBNeill Blomkamp50:22

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan50:22

      It's like a desert area.

   4. NBNeill Blomkamp50:23

      Yeah, it's the end of the, of the high desert coming out of Washington State into Canada. So it's, it's called the Okanagan Valley, and, um, there's a lot of wine that's grown there. But it's, it's an unusual microclimate for Canada.

   5. JRJoe Rogan50:36

      How'd you wind up there?

   6. NBNeill Blomkamp50:38

      Just looking for some more arid. Like I really, I hate rain. I hated living in Vancouver.

   7. JRJoe Rogan50:42

      Really?

   8. NBNeill Blomkamp50:42

      Oh, I can't stand rain.

   9. JRJoe Rogan50:44

      (laughs)

   10. NBNeill Blomkamp50:44

       Yeah, like, I mean, I'm into like thunder showers and cool rain.

   11. JRJoe Rogan50:47

       Right.

   12. NBNeill Blomkamp50:47

       I'm not into like stupid rain, which is-

   13. JRJoe Rogan50:49

       Like constant Seattle rain?

   14. NBNeill Blomkamp50:51

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan50:51

       Yeah.

   16. NBNeill Blomkamp50:51

       I mean, yeah, Seattle would be like Vancouver light.

   17. JRJoe Rogan50:54

       Righ- oh, that's true. The, Vancouver's even worse, right? Yeah.

   18. NBNeill Blomkamp50:57

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan50:57

       Yeah.

   20. NBNeill Blomkamp50:57

       So I just, I just couldn't do that anymore. So without leaving Canada, I was like, 'cause I mean America would be an option, but is there anywhere more arid in Canada? And then I discovered this, this region, which it just has less precipitation. And the, I like how arid it is. So, and then it, it made me, you know-

   21. JRJoe Rogan51:14

       Wow, that's fucking pretty.

   22. NBNeill Blomkamp51:16

       Yeah. That's Naramata. That's where I live, so...

   23. JRJoe Rogan51:18

       Oh my God. That's beautiful. You live there?

   24. NBNeill Blomkamp51:20

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan51:21

       Wow.

   26. NBNeill Blomkamp51:22

       Although right now it's covered in, uh, wildfire smoke.

   27. JRJoe Rogan51:25

       Oh, that's right.

   28. NBNeill Blomkamp51:26

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan51:26

       Um, w- does Vancouver have the same sort of association with suicide and depression the way like Portland and Seattle do?

   30. NBNeill Blomkamp51:36

       You know, that's a really interesting question. I wanna get to the bottom of that. 'Cause people have said that before. There's also something to do with serial killers apparently as well that's tied to the weather like that, or the climate, I should say.
10. 59:07 – 1:12:44

    Making ‘Demonic’ during COVID: volumetric capture and tech-driven horror

    1. JRJoe Rogan59:07

       Yeah. The wild is a crazy place to be. D- does that inspire... Like, when you see wild predators and things like that, does that inspire...

    2. NBNeill Blomkamp59:17

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan59:17

       Like, you, you write a lot of... Like, the, the new film-

    4. NBNeill Blomkamp59:21

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JRJoe Rogan59:21

       ... is horrific.

    6. NBNeill Blomkamp59:22

       Well, the, the new film was shot out there. I mean, the main, the main... You know, it was during COVID, it was like we could either not, not work while everything was paused or make something. And so I kind of wan-... I always wanted to shoot a, a low budget horror film. And so I, I kind of looked at all of the elements that I had available and, um, got, got the same team that did our experimental stuff for Oats Studios on YouTube together to make basically like a bigger version of what we were making for, for our experimental stuff. And shot it in the same region. We used all of the stuff that we had access to and... Yeah. So it did inspire that. It inspired... It, it was inspired by the fact that I was living out there.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:03

       Yeah, 'cause a bear is kinda like a demon.

    8. NBNeill Blomkamp1:00:07

       Mm-hmm.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:07

       Like, if a bear's chasing you in the woods-

    10. NBNeill Blomkamp1:00:09

        Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:10

        I mean, that's a...

    12. NBNeill Blomkamp1:00:11

        I mean, if you could create the same sense of fear, that would be good-

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:00:14

        Yeah.

    14. NBNeill Blomkamp1:00:14

        ... if there was a way to, you know, to capture that. But yeah, no, the, that film was a, it was a, uh, uh, Demonic was incredibly unique in how it came about. It was like all of these different disparate elements that, that I sort of put into a blender to try to make something that felt, that felt scary.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:00:32

        And when... There was something I read about the sound. Like, you, you did something different with the sound in this film that was revolutionary or very unique.

    16. NBNeill Blomkamp1:00:42

        No, not sound. I mean, we did, we did really weird imagery. We did volumetric capture as imagery, which is unusual.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:00:48

        Oh, okay. So volumetric cap... That's, maybe I'm s- thinking that that was sound.

    18. NBNeill Blomkamp1:00:52

        No, it's, it's, it's the imagery of the VR sequences, when she goes into her mother's mind.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:00:57

        Oh.

    20. NBNeill Blomkamp1:00:57

        So the way, the way that that was captured was just very... It's an unusual process to be used in that way in a film. So like there's, there's a process in computer graphics called photogrammetry, where if you take 100 photos of like an object like this, hundreds of different angles, and you give it to a computer, it can extrapolate a three-dimensional object, kinda like a CAD file.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:17

        Mm-hmm.

    22. NBNeill Blomkamp1:01:18

        And but the cool thing with photogrammetry is it also brings all of the, the image data with it as well. So you'd get the different colors and the surfaces and stuff. Um, so volumetric capture is the idea of doing that 24 times a second. So if you were to capture an actress 24 times a second, she would be fully three-dimensional in the way that this is. So it's like 3D video.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:41

        Mm.

    24. NBNeill Blomkamp1:01:42

        And then, um, and then once you have, you know, the performances from the actors, you can put them in, in synthetic, computer-generated environments, and then begin to light them and, and select your cameras.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:54

        So that's what the sequence when she's lying there and she goes into her mother's mind.

    26. NBNeill Blomkamp1:01:58

        Yeah.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:59

        That's, uh, that's how you did that.

    28. NBNeill Blomkamp1:02:01

        Exactly, yeah. That, that was, I mean, that was part of the reverse engineering of how the movie came about, was, oh, ev- if everything is paused for now, and, uh, we, you know, let's use this time to make something else, um, what are the things I wanna do? And one of the ideas was I wanna use volumetric capture at some point. It's not clear how to use that in a movie, but I wanna use it somehow. And then another idea was this idea of the Vatican kind of buying up corporations with all of the capital that they have, and, and playing on the, the, the trope of exorcist priests, you know, but acting a slightly more 21st century way. And I sort of combined those two, and that, that was the basis for what, what the movie became.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:02:39

        It's a trippy concept, and it's one that has existed forever, the idea of demonic possession.

    30. NBNeill Blomkamp1:02:45

        Yeah.
11. 1:12:44 – 1:24:45

    VR, Unreal Engine, and the path from games to The Matrix (and back)

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:12:44

       That's, to me, the future of, uh, uh, just of entertainment in general.

    2. NBNeill Blomkamp1:12:50

       Oh, totally.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:12:50

       Like, my kids would come to, uh, the studio in LA, and they would literally have a race to see who could get to the Oculus first.

    4. NBNeill Blomkamp1:12:58

       Yeah.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:12:58

       'Cause they just wanted to play the, the VR games, like, constantly.

    6. NBNeill Blomkamp1:13:02

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:13:02

       And they'd be, like, walking the plank, screaming and, like-

    8. NBNeill Blomkamp1:13:04

       Yeah.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:13:04

       ... walking around and, and playing the, you know, the one with the drums where you're slicing the, the boxes apart. It's, this is it?

    10. NANarrator1:13:11

        This guy's, actually, I think he's using an Oculus, it looks like, but it's hooked up-

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:13:14

        Hmm.

    12. NANarrator1:13:14

        ... to his PC, so.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:13:16

        And this is the, uh-

    14. NANarrator1:13:18

        But, yeah.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:13:18

        ... this is the game.

    16. NBNeill Blomkamp1:13:19

        Yeah.

    17. NANarrator1:13:20

        And there's, like, a specific DLC that's, like, uh-

    18. NBNeill Blomkamp1:13:23

        Yeah, I know, I know the artist that make, that made this game. I, uh, I was really blown away by it.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:13:28

        Oh, wow.

    20. NBNeill Blomkamp1:13:28

        'Cause you know what they did, is while they captured, they captured the tone and the atmosphere of Ridley's film really well. They used audio samples, I think, that were real, and, um, Fox opened up, like, the whole sort of archive of, of imagery and sound and stuff, so they had access to all of that, so it feels very authentic.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:13:47

        They, um, you know, they've had so many Alien films now. It's so crazy, right? They w- they even did... They got so silly. They went, like, Aliens versus Predator.

    22. NBNeill Blomkamp1:13:55

        Yeah, they shouldn't have done that.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:13:56

        No, they shouldn't have.

    24. NBNeill Blomkamp1:13:56

        Yeah.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:13:56

        But, but they did. (laughs)

    26. NBNeill Blomkamp1:13:57

        Yeah.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:13:58

        But they still a-

    28. NBNeill Blomkamp1:13:58

        Predator's also awesome.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:14:00

        Yeah, by itself.

    30. NBNeill Blomkamp1:14:01

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:49:35