Joe Rogan Experience #1724 - Jewel

Narrator 0:00 (drum music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. (rock music) Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music)

Joe Rogan 0:12 All right, we're up and running. Oh, you're a real professional. You're a one-year... one ear open, one ear on-

Jewel 0:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:18 ... type of person.

Jewel 0:19 That's funny. I did that accidentally.

Joe Rogan 0:21 You... Did you?

Jewel 0:22 I'm sure it's habit.

Joe Rogan 0:23 Yeah, I bet it is.

Jewel 0:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:24 A lot of people... Like, a lot of radio professionals will do that, don't they?

Jewel 0:26 Really?

Joe Rogan 0:27 They almost want, like, a little bit of ambient.

Jewel 0:29 Yeah, I like to hear the sound of the room still.

Joe Rogan 0:30 Yeah. The real noise.

Jewel 0:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:32 Who does that? Jim Norton does that. Yeah.

Jewel 0:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:35 It's odd, but I get it.

Jewel 0:37 I do it in the s- vocal booth.

Joe Rogan 0:39 Oh, that makes sense.

Jewel 0:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:40 Right. You want to s- hear the actual sound, not, like, the digitally enhanced and s- the coming through, uh, b- speakers. And you wanna hear your voice.

Jewel 0:50 Yeah. Everybody hears sound differently, and pitch particularly. I hear pitch as... It sounds like waves to me.

Joe Rogan 0:56 Waves?

Jewel 0:56 So, like, if I'm tuning my guitar, I hear wa, wa, wa, wa, or I'll hear wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa. It's like a little vibrato sort of. So when I'm... When you push sound through air, it's pushing air and it'll make those little waves. But if you have just this on, it takes all the air out of it.

Joe Rogan 1:13 Oh.

Jewel 1:13 And so I don't hear pitches well when I'm singing. And so I'll always have one earphone off so I can hear those little waves that I... 'Cause if I can match my wave to that, to the (laughs) wave I'm hearing, I know I'm in tune.

Joe Rogan 1:24 That makes the most sense for singers, right, as opposed to any other kind of musician because you're, you're modulating air.

Jewel 1:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:31 That's part of what you're doing.

Jewel 1:33 Yeah. It's all breath control. Singing is just about... It's... 'Cause it's basically like a garden hose. So all you have-

Joe Rogan 1:39 Mm.

Jewel 1:39 ... is, like, constriction, dilation. And then tone comes through where you're pushing your air, like where you're gonna put that, if you're gonna put it in your face mask, wide on your cheekbones, or narrow it to here.

Joe Rogan 1:50 Mm-hmm.

Jewel 1:51 And that's how you sing.

Joe Rogan 1:53 I would imagine the way you hear things is different too. Like, like, uh, I don't, uh... I'm not a... I love wine, but I can't tell you what it is, you know? But a sommelier can s- drink wine and sift it around and-

Jewel 2:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:08 ... they have this educated palate. I would imagine, like, sound to you is like, you have, like, a different depth of understanding of sound, particularly, like, vocal sound. Right? Do you feel that?

Jewel 2:21 Yeah, definitely. Like, you definitely cultivate your ear. But what I love about music is uneducated people can tell whether you're being sincere or authentic or not.

Joe Rogan 2:31 Mm.

Jewel 2:31 Like, it's kinda fascinating. But something does get communicated in a voice that tells you a lot about their heart and how they're feeling. And so much information gets communicated beyond pure tone that I've always found that so interesting about music.

Joe Rogan 2:44 Yeah, in regular conversation, that's true as well.

Jewel 2:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 2:47 Right? It's with everything, really.

Jewel 2:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:48 And some folks don't see that. And they're the ones who send money to televangelists.

Jewel 2:53 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:54 Right? (laughs)

Jewel 2:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:56 Right? (laughs)

Jewel 2:57 Exactly. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:57 Or c- cult members-

Jewel 2:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:58 ... they join a cult.

Jewel 3:00 Or those guys are probably great at, you know, tricking a lie detector test too. Like, they're just good at-

Joe Rogan 3:05 Yeah.

Jewel 3:05 ... presenting a really specific thing that a lot of people can't see through.

Joe Rogan 3:09 There's a place that I was gonna buy out here, um, for a comedy club. And I was in the middle of this process, and it wound up falling apart because there was, like, some environmental issue. But the place, t- it turned out, was owned at one point in time by a cult.

Jewel 3:23 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:24 And there's a documentary about the cult, and it's called Holy Hell, and it's on Amazon Prime. And I watched it, but I didn't watch it until I was in contract with the building. I was like, "Holy shit."

Jewel 3:35 Holy Hell.

Joe Rogan 3:36 Yeah, Holy Hell.

Jewel 3:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:36 It was so sad.

Jewel 3:39 Aw.

Joe Rogan 3:39 It was so sad. There's this crazy guy who built this theater that I was gonna buy just so he can dance in front of his followers. And these poor people, they started with him in West Hollywood, and then they made it out here to Austin, and they built this structure specifically so that he could perform in front of his followers. And this was the place I was gonna buy and convert to a comedy club. And I d- I hadn't watched the doc... I should've watched the documentary first. That was n-

Jewel 4:05 Did you buy it?

Joe Rogan 4:05 No. Uh, it, it... Wound up falling apart-

Jewel 4:07 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 4:07 ... 'cause there was an issue that I'm, I don't think I'm allowed to talk about. I think I have, I have an NDA.

Jewel 4:12 Mm.

Joe Rogan 4:12 But it wasn't good. There was an, uh, an issue that needed to be resolved. It's resolvable, but it wasn't resolved.

Jewel 4:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:18 Um, but the documentary, where, like, you see these people who are not good at seeing sincerity.

Jewel 4:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:26 And they, they don't know what's real and what's not real. And they wanted this alternative path of life that was just... You know, they had a community together. They grew their own food, and it was all about love. And, but ultimately, it was run by this crazy guy who, uh, fucked all of his followers, and the men followers, the women followers. I mean, th- I think he was fucking everybody.

Jewel 4:52 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:52 And he was... (laughs)

Jewel 4:53 Seems like the reason to have a cult.

Joe Rogan 4:54 (laughs)

Jewel 4:54 It's like some people learn to play lead guitar to do that.

Joe Rogan 4:57 Yeah.

Jewel 4:57 And other people have to become cult leaders. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:59 Or they do both, like David Koresh-

Jewel 5:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:01 ... the Waco guy. Didn't he do both?

Jewel 5:03 He d-... (laughs) He did both.

Joe Rogan 5:03 He had a little bit of music.

Jewel 5:04 Manson, both. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:06 (laughs) Yeah. There's a great Manson book, um, I don't know if you ever heard of it. It's called Chaos-

Jewel 5:11 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 5:11 ... by a guy named, uh, Tom O'Neill, who's been on the podcast before, explained it. He worked on this... It's a crazy story. And unfortunately, for people that have heard this before, I'm gonna just give-

Jewel 5:19 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:19 ... you, you all a little quick breakdown. This guy was writing an article... And he was my f-... my very good friend, Greg Fitzsimmons, he was his neighbor for 20 years. And this guy got an article, um, e- he got, uh, consignment to write this article. And in the process of writing this article about the Manson murders, he starts uncovering all this crazy shit about the real root of what had happened. And it turned out, 20 years later, what it was really all about was the CIA. And the CIA had been doing these mind control experiments with hippies and LSD, and they did a lot of it in prison, and had gone to prison to visit Charles Manson, had given him an acid in prison as a part of these studies-

Jewel 6:04 Prior to.

Joe Rogan 6:05 Yes.

Jewel 6:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:05 Prior to his release.

Jewel 6:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:07 And then during his whole rampage, like the whole Manson family, they were supplying them with acid, getting him out of jail-

Jewel 6:15 No way.

Joe Rogan 6:15 ... every time... Yes, yes, yes.

Jewel 6:16 Oh my God.

Joe Rogan 6:17 Getting him out of jail every time he's arrested. And they ran a clinic in San Francisco, the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, which my wife's mom went... My wife's mom was a hippie-

Jewel 6:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:27 ... in Haight-Ashbury in the-

Jewel 6:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:28 ... '70s, went there-

Jewel 6:29 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 6:29 ... in the '60s, went there for treatment. Like, she lived there and went there. And it was a front for the CIA.

Jewel 6:36 Holy shit.

Joe Rogan 6:36 They were, they were doing drug experiments on people.They also did a thing called Operation Climax, Midnight Climax. Operation Midnight Climax, they would take over brothels, and they would have two-way mirrors, and they would give the prostitutes drugs to give to the johns. So, these guys would come in to try to have sex, and they would give them a drink, and they would take a drink, and they would get LSD. And so, then, they would study them. So, they would inadvertently trip when they went to these places, and then, they'd be studied by the CIA. And they ran these for years.

Jewel 7:10 Holy shit.

Joe Rogan 7:12 Yeah.

Jewel 7:13 Oh, that makes me sad. There's this great book called Traumatic Narcissism that talks about the psychology that often leads to cult leaders.

Joe Rogan 7:21 Mm.

Jewel 7:21 It's a clinical book, but I found it really, really fascinating about the type of person that can- has that need, that drive to cause other people to submit-

Joe Rogan 7:31 Yeah.

Jewel 7:32 ... to help support their own image of themselves.

Joe Rogan 7:35 Well, the crazy thing is how prevalent it is throughout history, right? 'Cause it's- we're looking at it in terms of non-sanctioned versions of this, like the Holy Hell Guy or Manson. But the Catholic Church-

Jewel 7:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:48 ... or- or many different churches, like you're dealing with the same exact scenario. You're just doing it in a sanctioned form, where you have cardinals and bishops and the Pope, and it's all going down.

Jewel 7:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 7:57 But at the end of the day, when that person is running that parish, unless they are, like, as true to the word of Jesus as is humanly possible, to the point where they are selfless, and they really dedicate themselves to- Like, I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine today about that, where he was telling me about this guy who works with the homeless in Austin, that literally bought this chunk of land, built housing on it, has people come out there. He and his wife live with these people and works to rehabilitate them. Like, the guy literally does, like, the work of the Lord. Like, he's trying-

Jewel 8:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 8:35 ... to, like, help these people's lives.

Jewel 8:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:37 But he's- th- he's really doing it. Like, they're like, "He's the real deal." Like, how many of those are there?

Jewel 8:43 It just takes so much personal self-reflection and work, and that saying of absolute power corrupts absolutely-

Joe Rogan 8:49 Yeah.

Jewel 8:50 ... it- it's really true. And not many people ... You know, where you start separating people from God and saying, "No, you can't talk to God. I can talk to God for you."

Joe Rogan 9:00 Yeah.

Jewel 9:00 Like, you just set yourself up in, obviously, a really powerful position that's gonna put everybody else at a disadvantage. And you have to be so morally intact to be able to handle that kind of power, and I don't know why you would want it anyway.

Joe Rogan 9:12 Yeah, you wouldn't want it if you were that morally intact.

Jewel 9:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:15 But it's like, that's the idea about presidents, right? Anybody who would want to be president-

Jewel 9:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 9:19 ... shouldn't be president. (laughs)

Jewel 9:21 It's true. It's so sad.

Joe Rogan 9:22 It is sad.

Jewel 9:23 The- it just doesn't pay good enough. You're not gonna get somebody to do the job.

Joe Rogan 9:27 Have you ever listened to, uh, Hardcore History, the- d- the podcast?

Jewel 9:30 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 9:31 The- there's a guy named Dan Carlin who's amazing, and he's, uh, he- he says he's not a historian, because, you know, he's not, like, technically accredited as a historian, but he really is a historian. He's just more of an amateur historian. But he's incredible at breaking down historical events. And he did this one about Martin Luther, and about how Martin Luther was the- you know, the beginning of Lutherism, Lutheranism. How do you say it? Lutheranism?

Narrator 9:59 Sure.

Joe Rogan 10:00 Sure? (laughs)

Jewel 10:02 (laughs) Sounds right.

Joe Rogan 10:03 I- in the, I guess the 1400s or 15-

Jewel 10:06 Lutheranism.

Joe Rogan 10:06 Yeah, I know. Exactly.

Jewel 10:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:08 Luth- he- anyway, what he did was translated the Bible into a phonetic language that i- is accessible to everyone.

Jewel 10:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:15 So, instead of it just being in Latin, where these folks who were, you know, religious had to go and have it given to them by the priests, instead, they were able to read it themselves. And they were also ... He- he did another thing that made him a heretic, where he said, "Uh, you- you should be able to interpret the Bible into your own, you know, thoughts. Like, you should be able to interpret God's word. You shouldn't allow anybody else to interpret it for you."

Jewel 10:44 This is what century? We're talking 1400s, did you just say?

Joe Rogan 10:46 I think it was- I think it was the 16th century. I think it was the 1500s, or maybe it was the 1400s. But it was, uh-

Jewel 10:54 Wow.

Joe Rogan 10:54 Yeah.

Jewel 10:54 I hadn't heard of them.

Joe Rogan 10:55 It's pretty interesting-

Jewel 10:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:57 ... because they tried to kill that motherfucker. (laughs)

Jewel 10:58 Oh, I don't doubt it. (laughs) I bet they got it done. I mean, is anybody in there right now? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:02 I don't know. (laughs) But they're like, "Hey, man."

Jewel 11:04 (laughs) "I'm cool."

Joe Rogan 11:04 "You're fucking up our gig." (laughs)

Jewel 11:05 Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:07 Because he came along and- and made the Bible accessible. What- what year was, um ...

Narrator 11:13 15-

Joe Rogan 11:13 1500s? Yeah.

Jewel 11:14 Wow, what a trip.

Narrator 11:15 It was 1507, yeah.

Jewel 11:16 I think what people don't realize, and not that ... I mean, I don't know if you know much of what happened with my mom and I. But, like, something I don't think people realize is, like, that lobster in the pot thing, of you put a lobster-

Joe Rogan 11:28 What happened with your mom and dad?

Jewel 11:28 Oh, God. It's like a whole thing. It took me a whole book to figure out even how to describe what happened with my mom. (laughs) But to give you, like, a starting point, when I was ... So, my mom left when I was eight. I- my dad took over raising us, and we lived on a homestead in Alaska.

Joe Rogan 11:42 I found out about that through watching that show.

Jewel 11:44 That's my dad.

Joe Rogan 11:45 I know.

Jewel 11:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:46 That's crazy. When I-

Jewel 11:47 Alaska: The Last Frontier.

Joe Rogan 11:48 When I watched that show, I was like, "Wow, these people are cool." They- and then someone goes, "You know, that's where Jewel came from."

Jewel 11:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:53 I was like, "Shut the fuck up."

Jewel 11:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:55 "No way."

Jewel 11:57 My little brother-

Joe Rogan 11:57 And then I looked at everybody there. I'm like, "Oh my God, they look like her."

Jewel 12:00 (laughs) It's true. The big nose, the cheekbones. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:06 (laughs)

Jewel 12:06 (laughs) They have nicer teeth, but what are you gonna do?

Joe Rogan 12:08 (laughs)

Jewel 12:09 (laughs) Um, yeah, my- it's funny, on that show, my little brother texted me, and he's like, "I'm about to sign a TV contract." And he doesn't have a TV, so I thought he was, like, at an electronic store trying to buy a TV, and that they were making him sign a contract or something. And I was like, "Why are you signing a contract to buy a television?" He's like, "No, like a reality TV show contract." And I was like, "Don't sign it."

Joe Rogan 12:30 (laughs)

Jewel 12:30 I'm like, "Tell- who are you talking to? What do you mean?" You know, I was trying to get the details through this text. And he's like, "I don't really know who's doing it. It might be Discovery." I'm like, "Discovery Network? Like, you're about to sign a contract." I was like, "Please have them call me." Nobody calls me. I'm like ...... trying to figure out what's going on, so I had CAA cold-called Discovery and just say, "Hey, if you're looking at the Kilcher family, we represent them." And then they called the... Discovery calls the producers and, like, how do a bunch of hillbillies in Alaska have CAA calling us, like, in two hours? They had no idea it was my family. Like, it was-

Joe Rogan 13:01 Wow.

Jewel 13:01 ... completely-

Joe Rogan 13:02 Just dumb luck.

Jewel 13:02 ... just discovered them on their own.

Joe Rogan 13:04 Wow.

Jewel 13:05 Yeah. Yeah, pretty funny.

Joe Rogan 13:07 It's a great show.

Jewel 13:08 Yeah, it's sweet.

Joe Rogan 13:09 I enjoyed it. I'd love the idea of living like that. I really do.

Jewel 13:13 When I was... When I came up and when I first got discovered, the press had no idea. They were like, "Jewel grew up on a hippie commune." I was like, "I did not grow up on a hippie commune." Like, that's not how... That's not what a homestead is. Or, "Jewel was raised on a ranch." And I'm like, "That's closer, but it's not what a homestead is." But they just couldn't understand and would, of course, really make fun of, like, I was raised with an outhouse and I grew up only eating what we killed or canned or harvested. But it was such a foreign thing, but it's been-

Joe Rogan 13:38 How would you describe-

Jewel 13:38 ... nice having this show out.

Joe Rogan 13:40 ... homestead?

Jewel 13:41 Homesteading is basically when the government gave you free land to settle a wild territory. So, my grandmother and grandfather were born in Switzerland, living in Germany. My grandfather was going to university, I think, in Geneva maybe, and he came up with this theory, 'cause he was taking a history class on the fall of civilizations, and he had this theory that if a population hits a certain critical mass that it collapses. And so he started looking at the population of Europe, and he felt like Europe was gonna collapse. This was in the late '20s, early '30s. And so he convinced all these people, philosophers, painters, just a big random group of people, that Europe was gonna fail. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:19 That sounds like what I'm trying to do about America. (laughs)

Jewel 14:22 You would've liked my granddad. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:24 I think he was right, he was just off by a hundred years. (laughs)

Jewel 14:27 No. I think he was right-

Joe Rogan 14:29 Yeah. (laughs)

Jewel 14:29 ... 'cause the World War II happened.

Joe Rogan 14:30 Yeah. Right?

Jewel 14:31 Anyway, he w- sent ahead to a s- as a scout to go to Alaska because they were giving away free land. It was still a territory, it wasn't a state yet. Took him two years. It's, like, a crazy story, hiking over Harding Glacial Icefield with a ladder on his back-

Joe Rogan 14:46 Whoa.

Jewel 14:46 ... and he'd lay the ladder across crevices in the ice and then walk across the ladder, you know?

Joe Rogan 14:51 Whoa.

Jewel 14:51 I have old, like, footage of him, um, on a raft of logs he made himself, standing up paddling with huge chunks of icebergs all around, like, uh, gnarly shit. Like, my granddad was really gnarly

Narrator 15:05 And he-

Joe Rogan 15:05 I mean, amazing. ... didn't grow up doing that.

Jewel 15:06 No. He was, like, raised in Switzerland, you know?

Joe Rogan 15:09 People-

Jewel 15:09 Like-

Joe Rogan 15:09 ... were just so hardcore-

Jewel 15:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:10 ... back then.

Jewel 15:10 And my granddad was, like... He was just hard, a n- hard guy. So, anyway, the war starts to break out. Like, Hitler starts to become an actual problem, and now nobody can get visas in this group except my grandmother, whose father had come to America during World War I and went back to Switzerland. So, anyway, she can get a visa. Nobody else can. So she decides to leave everybody, her boyfriend, her family, everybody, because she didn't wanna be in Europe while this war started gearing up. So, she got on the very last civilian ship that left right before the war. She shows up in Alaska and my granddad's like, "Where is everyone?" She's like, "Nobody could come. It's just me." And he's like, "Where's your boyfriend?" And she's like, "I broke up with him." And he's like, "Do you wanna get married?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:54 (laughs)

Jewel 15:55 (laughs) And, uh, her mother was a seamstress, really poor, but had given my grandmother all of her cash and just said, "This is so you don't ever have to rely on a man." Which is, to me, so sweet.

Joe Rogan 16:04 Wow.

Jewel 16:05 So, my grandmother had this huge wad of cash in her pocket, probably more than anybody in that area had, and she felt it in her pocket and then she looked at my granddad. But she really believed in his vision and she was like, "Sure, why not?" And they got married, and then they walked 200 miles across the wilderness to get to Homer, and-

Joe Rogan 16:23 They walked?

Jewel 16:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 16:24 How long did that take?

Jewel 16:25 There was no roads. There was no, like, horse and wagon trails. There wasn't shit.

Joe Rogan 16:28 Oh, fuck.

Jewel 16:28 You're just talking about wild land. And then-

Joe Rogan 16:32 In the 1920s?

Jewel 16:32 ... once they got... No, this is, like, what's... When did the war break out? We're-

Joe Rogan 16:36 '40-

Jewel 16:36 ... talking-

Joe Rogan 16:37 No, '30-

Jewel 16:38 ... no, '36? So, th- I'm terrible. Anyway, '30s, um, so it was right around then. So, they got to Homer. They knew they liked Homer, um, which is on this place called Kachemak Bay, and then they walked up and down there trying to find a place. They found a place, and then they just carved a living out of, like, legit raw wilderness. No grocery stores, no nothing, you know?

Joe Rogan 16:57 Wow.

Jewel 16:58 And it was just that. My dad's childhood photos look like the 1800s. It's a horse and wagon with wheel, uh, wooden wheels, and when the tides were out, they could take the wagon down to the beach and then they could go into where there was a town and they could get some basic supplies like flour, you know? But that's all they bought, was like maybe flour, salt, and sugar. And that's how my dad was raised. Like, my dad's-

Joe Rogan 17:18 How-

Jewel 17:18 ... childhood was gangster.

Joe Rogan 17:20 How did he know how to do everything?

Jewel 17:22 So, everybody in the group decided to learn a skill before they came, and so my grandfather learned how to build cabins. You know, other people were supposed to learn different things, but nobody came, and so they just figured it out.

Joe Rogan 17:35 Nobody came?

Jewel 17:37 No. It was just my granddad and my grandma.

Joe Rogan 17:38 So, all the plans that all these other people had, all the-

Jewel 17:41 They couldn't come because of the war. Nobody could get visas.

Joe Rogan 17:44 Wow.

Jewel 17:44 It was Dunsville, so it was just my granddad and my grandmother, and they had eight kids in the wilderness.

Joe Rogan 17:50 Whoa. (laughs)

Jewel 17:50 Yeah. I mean, you need some workforce, you know? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:53 I know, but then those kids, it's like, how do they find people? How do they f- find people to hang out with?

Jewel 17:59 My dad's childhood is gnar-... It was amazing. But Homer turned into a city, you know? It turned into a little town, so there was a school eventually. They were originally homeschooled, but eventually there was a town and... I mean, just amazing stories. Like, the stories from my dad's childhood were just gangster. I'll tell you one story.

Joe Rogan 18:17 Okay.

Jewel 18:17 This sounds really bad. I hope my dad won't mind this story. Now, mind you, my dad never told me this story for years and years, so this story didn't really register as an interesting story to my dad. But I found it really fascinating. So, getting cheese was really, really hard up there, and so somehow my grandma got a huge block of cheese. And there was no electricity, obviously, so it's out in an ice box, you know, in the back of the house in the shade. My grandfather was gone a lot. He was often exploring. He also became a senator, and so he was kind of into politics and was gone a lot. So, my grandmother was running that ranch with eight kids by herself with, you know, nothing.So, she goes out in the back. She'll go get the cheese, and the door is open, the cheese is gone. And she looks on the ground and there's a cat that's very fat at this point, with little crumbs of cheese everywhere. And so my grandmother takes the cat, chops its head off, cuts it open-

Joe Rogan 19:08 (laughs)

Jewel 19:08 ... grabs the cheese out, cooks the cat, and serves it with the cheese sauce.

Joe Rogan 19:11 (gasps)

Jewel 19:12 (laughs) And it wasn't, she wasn't... I mean, she was probably pissed at the cat, but that was just food. You know what I mean? It was just like-

Joe Rogan 19:20 Holy shit.

Jewel 19:21 That's... Yeah. It was a gangster childhood. Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:24 Holy shit. She ate the cat with cheese sauce.

Jewel 19:28 The kids did. Everybody did.

Joe Rogan 19:29 Mm-hmm. Whoa.

Jewel 19:29 Like, it was just, there wasn't a lot of food out there, you know? They'd have one chicken for 10 people. Like, it's just-

Joe Rogan 19:36 Wow.

Jewel 19:36 People don't realize what it's like to really live off the land. Like, you, you don't waste a thing. You know what I mean? You just don't.

Joe Rogan 19:42 I think-

Jewel 19:43 Like, I grew up, we'd butcher cattle. Like, we had a few cattle. We only hunted. Like, we only had what we raised, like vegetables and stuff. But we ate everything, you know? We gathered the blood and we made blood sausage, and we ate, we ate everything. It's just how it was.

Joe Rogan 19:55 Well, that's what you do when you need to actually make use of a full resource, because it's finite.

Jewel 20:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:01 We're accustomed to just being able to go to a store, and people are so disconnected from the idea where food comes from.

Jewel 20:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:08 Because one of the things that happened (smacks lips) during the pandemic when things started getting weird and food started missing from shelves, like I, I had a buddy of mine who sent me a photo of his, uh ... He was in, uh, North Carolina at the time. He sent me a photo of his store, and that there was nothing on the shelf in the meat section. He, and he just sends me a text, "Dude, I gotta learn how to hunt."

Jewel 20:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:28 And that thought process went through a lot of people's minds, they're like, "I'm just assuming that this supply chain is always gonna be in place."

Jewel 20:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:37 "And they're always gonna be delivering chickens and all this stuff is gonna be there for me to buy." But if it's not, it rewires our perception of what food is.

Jewel 20:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:46 It rewires our perception of what, what it means to survive.

Jewel 20:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:50 Like, what ... When you have to cook the cat.

Jewel 20:54 Yep.

Joe Rogan 20:55 What the fuck does a cat taste like?

Jewel 20:57 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:57 That's ... You know?

Jewel 20:58 Well, with enough cheese sauce. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:00 Oh. A cat with cheese sauce, Jesus.

Jewel 21:02 You know, you can only value what you have a relationship with, right? If you don't have a relationship with something, you can't value it.

Joe Rogan 21:08 Right.

Jewel 21:09 And so, I think that as we moved out of villages where we relied on nature, we had a strong relationship with nature. We valued it. We valued our food, it was sacred. It wasn't just hunting, hoo-ha-ha. It was like, "Holy shit, I need this animal."

Joe Rogan 21:22 Yeah.

Jewel 21:22 And it's a relationship.

Joe Rogan 21:24 Yeah.

Jewel 21:24 And relationships change you, right? So if you're in a relationship, you are required, you will, as a byproduct, evolve as a human, right? If you're in a relationship with a wife, you're gonna evolve because of that relationship. When you quit evolving, you quit having a relationship. You quit growing together. So I feel like when we went from a village and started to urbanize, we stopped having a relationship. In a lot of ways, I think it kind of caused us to be schizophrenic as a humanity. We went from this cohesive environment where there was a healer and food, and everything was in this really cohesive environment that we had a personal relationship with, and then all of a sudden, we no longer had a relationship with our food. Somebody else would bring it. Somebody else would bring the milk and someone would bring the vegetables, and it started being parceled in. And then you look at, like, uh, healthcare turned into this building over there, and they took care of our bodies. And then (laughs) mental healthcare didn't even come up 'til really recently.

Joe Rogan 22:16 Yeah.

Jewel 22:16 But we kinda caused ourselves to be schizophrenic and out of relationship, out of harmony with what makes us human, actually. And so, people don't know. I mean, the reason the planet, to me, is in the shape it's in is we just don't have a relationship with it. We have no idea where our food comes from. We have no idea the value of water. People don't even know how heavy water is when you're carrying it. I grew up carrying it, you know? And I grew up watering the garden with buckets that you bring up from the stream, and it's like, "Boy, you didn't waste a drop." And I was in a relationship with it. I value it. And that, to me, is one of the saddest things, is when you're saying people don't know where their food comes, you're saying they don't have a relationship with it anymore.

Joe Rogan 22:50 But they do have the, the ... There's like a, an advantage to being able to go to a doctor who can fix a broken leg. There's an advantage to someone, you know, running an MRI on you and finding out exactly what's wrong and not having any guesswork. So the ... There are advantages to modern medicine, there's advantages to technology, you know?

Jewel 23:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 23:10 You can share ideas instantaneously because of the internet. Like, there's good and bad, but I think what's happened is it's happened so quickly, and we've adapted to it so quickly, that our, our bodies are not designed for this. They didn't evolve-

Jewel 23:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 23:27 ... in this sort of a world. They didn't evolve for fluorescent lighting and cubicles and traffic and all the things, the woes of modern society, that ... Credit, debt, stress, all, all the things that we take for granted that are just a normal part of life. One of the reasons why we're so fucked up is because we're, we are literally a square peg that's been forced into a round hole. So our edges get sheared off, we get stuffed into this thing, we have all this open space 'cause we don't totally fit in.

Jewel 23:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 23:58 And now we're trying to navigate this world that we've created ourselves with no forethought.

Jewel 24:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:06 Like, it's just happened, right? The society that we've created, it's not like it was like, "This'll be the best for people, and when we take into account people's psychology and the needs and our human reward systems and all the different things that are in play because of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, this is probably the best way to make it smooth." No. That's not, not what happened. It just happened. And o- one of the things that is so weird about our, our society is that it's so technologically dependent. And that's the thing that evolves and changes the quickest-

Jewel 24:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:38 ... out of all the things around us. So, eh, we become dependent on it, we com- become attached to it. It evolves so quickly that it's constantly rapidly changing and forming, and our biology has no chance to keep up with it. And then you have all this crazy anxiety and all this weirdness and these dopamine rushes that people get from staring at screens all day.

Jewel 25:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:00 And they can't help themselves, and screen addiction, and all this weirdness that's a part of modern life in 2021. It's, it's really just...... because we've invented some really cool shit-

Jewel 25:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:11 ... that has some purposes.

Jewel 25:13 Doesn't make us happier.

Joe Rogan 25:13 Right.

Jewel 25:14 Particularly. But it's like, we are the most advanced civilization in the history of humankind, but we're the unhappiest, you know? Suicide rates between 2006 and 2018 went up 70% across almost every demographic, and those were pre-COVID numbers.

Joe Rogan 25:27 That's because of Facebook.

Jewel 25:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:29 I blame that-

Jewel 25:29 I think it's all of it, you know?

Joe Rogan 25:31 ... Zuckerberg character. Yeah.

Jewel 25:31 I think it's, like, distraction. And I was raised around a lot of American Natives. I was adopted by these uncles when I was, like, 15. I moved out at 15, and these uncles, like, boy, they taught me a lot. It was really interesting because, like, my uncles taught me certain definitions of, like, power has a definition. An act of power is something that serves you and your community, and it becomes a circular action. And so, it has a momentum and becomes self-sustaining. Whereas, you know, in general, that was not, that's not, in modern day standards, considered an act of power. An act of power is just something that's self-serving, and you get as much as you can. But it becomes hierarchal, which cause it to implode. It just falls apart.

Joe Rogan 26:07 Mm.

Jewel 26:07 It implodes in on itself because it's not circular. And I really think that we just threw out... We were so eager to call traditional wisdom s- ... We were just calling Indians savages when they were actually healing complex things. And no, they didn't have a shot at chickenpox and all the crappy shit that we expose them to. But there's so much wisdom in that tradition and in many indigenous traditions that when you look at, like, how our technology has outpaced our philosophy, we really ... We're struggling as a humanity. We're depressed, we're distracted, and you can't keep yourself safe if you're not here, you know?

Joe Rogan 26:42 Yeah.

Jewel 26:42 So, the problem with distraction is it takes you ... It's like trying to keep a house safe from burglars by leaving your house to go find burglars.

Joe Rogan 26:49 (laughs)

Jewel 26:49 Anxiety is like that, you know what I mean? Like, the present moment means staying in your house.

Joe Rogan 26:55 Yeah.

Jewel 26:55 And it's not comfortable. It might not feel good in your skin, but that's the only way you're actually going to figure out how to advocate and make good decisions. And then that's not even just to mention, like, are you going to make decisions strictly from your head, or is your heart involved at all? We just don't live in a society that values heartful decisions. But I don't see how you have anything sustainable. And I love capitalism, I love, I love all of that. But you still have to make a decision from your heart if it's going to have sustainability, which to me is just if you're selfish, that's a great idea.

Joe Rogan 27:24 Yeah. No, i- it's great for everybody. But obviously, you seem to have worked through it, right?

Jewel 27:31 Through which?

Joe Rogan 27:31 Th- through you understand that there are these pitfalls, and you avoid them, and you recognize them, and you can speak so eloquently about all the things that are wrong with, uh, our modern society and the way we view stuff. So, it's not insurmountable. And technology exists, and that's how we found each other.

Jewel 27:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:47 Found each other through ...

Jewel 27:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:49 Yeah.

Jewel 27:49 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:49 That's, that's how ... I mean, it does work that way.

Jewel 27:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:52 Like, there's, there's not neces- ... It's not necessarily all bad.

Jewel 27:56 It's like saying guns are bad. Guns aren't bad.

Joe Rogan 27:58 Right.

Jewel 27:59 It's just an inanimate object, you know? It's people with guns (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 28:03 Can be bad.

Jewel 28:03 ... it's the person can be bad.

Joe Rogan 28:04 Bad people with guns are bad.

Jewel 28:05 Bad people with guns are bad.

Joe Rogan 28:07 Yeah.

Jewel 28:07 And what we have, like if ... To me, like, I like elegant solutions, so I love complex problems. And I like going, why, why do we have pollution and MeToo and gun violence and opioid addiction and higher suicide rates? And is there a common denominator? To me, there is a common denominator, and it comes down to mental health, for lack of a better word. But we're not doing well. And when we're ill, when we're emotionally ill, we'll leverage a vulnerable human, or we'll get addicted to porn, or we'll take painkillers, or I'll feel disconnected and I'll just trash my environment. But it's all side effects of the same cause. And bureaucracy, government, just society. We've lost, in a matter of a few short generations, what do we do with pain?

Joe Rogan 28:50 Mm.

Jewel 28:50 People don't know how to transmute pain. We're built for it, you know? Like, we are built to handle adversity. We're built to be resilient. But monoculture is the opposite of resilience. Resilience means having multiple skillsets to handle something, right? So, you have, like, 15 tools to try and get a job done, depending on what the job is. We've lost resiliency because we've lost a lot of emotional intelligence. And to me, that's where I focused all of my life's energy (laughs) , life energy, 'cause I knew when I moved out at 15 that I was really fucked. Like-

Joe Rogan 29:19 Yeah.

Jewel 29:19 ... I knew that the odds were against me, and I didn't want to be a statistic. And I looked at nature versus nurture, and I was like, "If I received bad nurture, am I done? Am I ever going to get to know my real nature?" And it was depressing at 15 to think your life's done, like, you're pre-programmed. And so my life's purpose was to try and re-nurture myself to get out my re- n- ... real nature and see if that was possible.

Joe Rogan 29:41 Well, you're also ... I mean, coming from a homestead, that uniquely qualifies you to have this diversity of skills, right? 'Cause, like, kind of, that's how everybody got by. That's the only way, right? I mean, if you're gonna build your own house and hunt your own food and grow your own vegetables and can them, and, like, there's a lot of things you have to learn how to do. You can't call someone to fix the plumbing.

Jewel 30:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:03 You can't call ... You don't even have plumbing, right?

Jewel 30:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:05 (coughs) Did you guys have a well?

Jewel 30:07 No, we had streams.

Joe Rogan 30:08 Just streams?

Jewel 30:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:09 You just went and gathered water?

Jewel 30:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:11 You didn't think of, like, hooking a pipe up to those things and bringing it to the house? (laughs)

Jewel 30:14 It was just everywhere. No, we never did.

Joe Rogan 30:16 (laughs)

Jewel 30:16 But when we got older, we had a hose that ran from a stream-

Joe Rogan 30:19 Oh.

Jewel 30:19 ... up through a hole in the sink.

Joe Rogan 30:20 Nice. Luxury.

Jewel 30:20 But then, like the worms in the spring (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 30:22 Oh, would get into this, the hole?

Jewel 30:24 (laughs) And so you'd, like ... They'd take my s- ... I mean, I was the only girl on an all-guy, like, ranch.

Joe Rogan 30:29 That had to be annoying.

Jewel 30:29 And so they would take my little pink pretty scarf and tie it around the hose to catch all the worms.

Joe Rogan 30:34 (laughs)

Jewel 30:34 I was like, "There goes my cute scarf." It was sad.

Joe Rogan 30:37 Did you guys ever get giardia or anything from the water?

Jewel 30:40 No, never.

Joe Rogan 30:41 That's, uh ... What is that? That's if ... There's gophers and stuff and things that get in-

Jewel 30:45 I think anything.

Joe Rogan 30:46 Yeah.

Jewel 30:46 But I, I think me and my family kind of grew an immunity. I do think you can kinda grow a tolerance-

Joe Rogan 30:52 Oh, yeah.

Jewel 30:52 ... to what's in the water around you.

Joe Rogan 30:54 Well, that's how folks, like, down in Mexico don't have the same problems with water-

Jewel 30:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:58 That, you know, when American tourists go down there and get Montezuma's revenge-

Jewel 31:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:02 ... how come they don't get it?

Jewel 31:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:03 Well, 'cause they have a different gut biome, right?

Jewel 31:05 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 31:07 Yeah.

Jewel 31:07 But r- but with ... I do think, like, with homesteading, it gave me a tremendous amount of advantages as far as, um-I was raised in an environment where it was like, "Figure it out."

Joe Rogan 31:16 Right.

Jewel 31:17 Like, "I know you don't know what you're doing, but you're gonna be expected to figure it out." So that's really good. And then I wasn't raised with a male-female system where the women do this job and the men do that job. I was raised where you just everybody does everything, and so I was expected to do all the work. And I know I wasn't as strong, but I know I was as smart or as capable, and I was still expected to find a way to do it.

Joe Rogan 31:38 Mm-hmm.

Jewel 31:39 Not to mention, like the eight kids that were originally born, my dad's siblings were six girls and two boys, so it was very female heavy, and the women tr- you know, logged, felled their own trees, skinned their own trees, built their own homes. Like, that's just how I was raised, which was a huge advantage. And I think it's why I was willing to move out at 15 when my dad wasn't nice. I was like, "I'll go on my own." When I was homeless, I was like, "I'll be by myself. I don't have to be by the other homeless kids." So I think that independent spirit helped me. But the type of resilience I'm actually talking about

Jewel 32:09 is more of, like an emotional toolkit, emotional resilience. And, you know, when I moved out at 15, I realized I had this genetic inheritance, but I also had an emotional one, and it was that emotional one that was causing systemic abuse, and it was getting handed generation to generation. My grandfather beat his kids.

Joe Rogan 32:26 Mm-hmm.

Jewel 32:27 He was also great, you know? Like, also a great person, but also beat his kids. And then my dad didn't want to be that way when he grew up. My dad's childhood was so traumatic that when he went to Vietnam, he was relaxed.

Joe Rogan 32:40 Oh, geez. (laughs)

Jewel 32:40 It was like the first time his nervous system was like, "Whew," like an exhale.

Joe Rogan 32:45 Oh, my God. That's crazy.

Jewel 32:46 Yeah. That's gnarly. And so then my dad, you know, leaves Vietnam, marries my mom, has three kids, and my mom leaves, and all of a sudden, he's just trauma triggering. Nobody knows what that... We didn't know those words, you know? So he starts drinking to try and help that, and he ends up repeating the cycle. Much less than his dad, mind you, but started getting hit at that age. And so that's why when I moved out at 15, I just knew, like statistically, I'm gonna end up in an abusive relationship, on drugs, drinking, some version of all of that, and I didn't want to be. Like I- to me, like the only counterculture thing to do, the only truly rebellious thing I could do was like, "How do I get happy? And if happiness isn't taught in my home, is it a learnable skill? Is it a teachable skill?" And that was the im- impetus for everything, still-

Joe Rogan 33:32 Wh-

Jewel 33:32 ... to this day.

Joe Rogan 33:33 ... where do you think you had this, this insight to, to break this mold? Where did- where do you think the y- how do you think you had the wisdom? Like, where do you think it came from? Do you think it came, like part of it might have come from what's required of you when you're living on a homestead, that you had to develop this sort of y- y- you had to overcome adversity, you had to develop character, you had to do things that were very difficult and know that you're capable of doing those things? Like, what was it that allowed you to have the kind of confidence that most 15-year-olds are n- they're just gonna tolerate whatever bullshit their environment throws at them because it also provides warmth and a roof over their head?

Jewel 34:14 I think part of it was, you know, that I was raised on a homestead and I was raised around really strong people, male and female, that I was willing... But to me, it was kind of logical, too. It's like I can either live in a cabin with an a-hole, or I can just go live in a cabin. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:30 (laughs)

Jewel 34:30 It was like, that just seemed a lot nicer to me-

Joe Rogan 34:33 Right.

Jewel 34:33 ... and I'd been working since I was young, and I just- I hate being unhappy. I know everybody does, but I really hate it. I really dislike it, and I hated being hit, and I hated being yelled at. And so I was willing to pay the price and figure out how to pay rent, and figure out how to get jobs so that I didn't have to be around that.

Joe Rogan 34:51 Were you allowed to work at 15?

Jewel 34:53 Y- I mean, it's a small town, so you find stuff to do. I was giving horse rides to tourists for a cowboy in town, and I was cleaning buildings, you know? I'd make money that way. But I think also, like I- I was lucky I had a teacher that exposed me to, like Greek philosophy.

Joe Rogan 35:08 Hmm.

Jewel 35:08 And that's how I knew the idea of nature versus nurture.

Joe Rogan 35:10 Oh.

Jewel 35:11 And that idea got me thinking, like, "Wait a minute. What is my nurture?"

Joe Rogan 35:14 (laughs)

Jewel 35:15 (laughs) And then I was like, "Wait a minute. It's horrible." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:18 (laughs)

Jewel 35:18 And then it sounds stupid, but we had this bunny named Caramel, and Caramel was raised in the chicken coop because it was the only safe place, 'cause bunnies in Alaska don't do very well. And it thought it was a chicken, like it would peck at its food. And it kind of waddled funny. It didn't, like do a normal hop, but it kind of waddled like a chicken, and it would lay on the nests and hatch eggs for the hens.

Joe Rogan 35:44 (laughs)

Jewel 35:44 And it was so cute growing up until I moved out, because then I was like, "What if I'm a bunny that thinks it's a chicken? And how will I ever know what I am if what I was raised around is what I think I am?" And that fucked with me. Like, that thought just- I had this- I- it p- like it, it really did my head in for a little while, and I was like, "I have to find a way to know what my nature is irrelative of the systems that I've been given around me." And so how do you start to distinguish between self and other? And that kind of stuff just turned me on. I thought that was really interesting, and I liked that kind of thing.

Joe Rogan 36:19 So did you get these ideas from specific books? Like what w- were you, were you reading something? Did you have a mentor? Did you have people that you looked to to have conversations about life?

Jewel 36:29 No, there was none of that around. It wasn't like that.

Joe Rogan 36:32 Nothing?

Jewel 36:32 Not to say reading the Symposium or, you know, The Allegory of the Caves or something isn't mind-altering, 'cause it is, you know, and that kind of stuff I think really helped me think in different terms, but I learned about, like the dialectic, right? Socraterian- Socrate- is that how you say it? Anyway, the dialectic.

Joe Rogan 36:48 Yeah.

Jewel 36:48 Two people have a conversation, a third thing gets known. That was really cool to me. It was empowering to me, and I think it was-

Joe Rogan 36:54 Yeah.

Jewel 36:54 ... in eighth grade or something. And then I realized if I asked myself a question, I could often hear an answer. So I could have a dialectic with myself.

Joe Rogan 37:01 All right.

Jewel 37:02 I could sit and get quiet and ask myself a question, and it's like, "I kind of know an answer," or I'd feel like I knew a direction. And then I think between that, which was starting to culturvate- cultivate, like an inner awareness, I call it your greater sense of intelligence. You know, there's your brain, which can only know what you're programmed to know, but then there's like this other thing you can tap into, and I think a lot of artists-... that's what we do. We're supposed to tap into something a little bit outside of our brain, a little outside of, you know, I call it, I don't know what else to call it, my greater sense of intelligence. And when I did that, I noticed patterns I didn't realize I noticed. So if I sat and wrote while I was doing that, I was kind of just going inward, I would see patterns, and I could ask myself questions like, "Why does my dad hit me?" And I would see an answer that I didn't know I knew before, and that was really interesting. Um, and I found it fascinating, and it made me love it. And then the other thing was nat- watching nature. I really think nature taught me how to be a human. I was raised around such big, beautiful nature that, you know, if I'd sit on the bluff and watch the tide go in and out, I was really sad this one day, and the tide takes a long time to go out there and a long time to come back in. And for some reason, it just hit me, like, nothing's permanent. Nothing. So I'm sitting here really depressed, thinking the rest of my life is gonna be depressing, but I'm not so special that I'm the only thing in all over the universe that will not change. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:25 Yeah.

Jewel 38:25 So all I had to do was sit it out, and that one thing changed my life. It kept me from killing myself multiple times because I just knew all I had to do was wait for the tide to come back in. And I would just sit there, and I'd rock 'cause I was having panic attacks. Once I moved out, by 16, I was having, like, bad panic attacks, and I would just sit there and be like, "The tide, the tide's just out." But it has to change 'cause nothing's permanent, and that helped me. So lots of things, watching nature. I could name so many things that I learned from nature.

Joe Rogan 38:54 It's, it's so easy for us to get stuck in us and not take into account the grand scale of everything that's around us, and I think it's one of the reasons why people that live on beachfront areas are more relaxed 'cause I think you look at the ocean, you go, "I'm not shit."

Jewel 39:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 39:15 Like, wha- whatever my problems are, it's like the, the, uh, in the face of the magnitude of water-

Jewel 39:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 39:21 ... in the face of a mountain, in the face of nature, in the face of the stars, there's nothing more humbling than looking up at the Milky Way and just trying to imagine that this goes on forever and that there's hundreds of billions of these, the same kind of galaxies that are out there.

Jewel 39:39 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 39:39 You c- you can't imagine, but then you're worried about your electrical bill or whatever-

Jewel 39:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:43 ... whatever it is that's fucking with you. You're worried about your relationship, and but in the moment, those things seem like everything. They seem like the only thing.

Jewel 39:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:52 But over time, they seem silly. Like, relationships, right? Like, I remember my girlfriend broke up with me when I was 18, and I thought my life was over. I can't, couldn't believe it. "How can I go on?" This, uh, this kinda pain is inst- unstoppable. Like, this is, uh, unsustainable. You can't imagine living your life with this heartbreak. And then, like a month later, I was like, "Who gives a fuck? Wow, thank God I didn't, like, marry her or something or-"

Jewel 40:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:19 "... have children with her or something." But in the moment, it's so hard to see.

Jewel 40:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:25 So hard to see outside of it, and then it's probably y- I mean, all of that is probably these human reward systems that are designed to keep us alive. You know, the, the ego, and the, the, the jealousy, and all these different things that are in place, they probably served some sort of evolutionary purpose at some point in time, but they're not serving us a purpose in our lives.

Jewel 40:49 Not without intention.

Joe Rogan 40:50 Yeah.

Jewel 40:50 You know? It's like when I was homeless, you know, I never drank, I never did drugs, so I was like, "I have to avoid that if I'm gonna figure my life out." But when I was homeless, I was stealing a lot, like a lot. It started with food, and then it just turned into anything, and so I got-

Joe Rogan 41:03 So you were just doing it for a rush?

Jewel 41:05 I think it was like a coping mechanism.

Joe Rogan 41:07 (laughs)

Jewel 41:07 It made me feel in control.

Joe Rogan 41:08 Mm-hmm.

Jewel 41:08 It also made me feel like I was taking care of myself. It was really nurturing, and it was also just a great distraction, you know? It's an intense thing to engage in that makes you not think about what you're scared about.

Joe Rogan 41:17 Oh.

Jewel 41:18 And so I sat down, and I was like, it actually, I was, I was trying to steal a dress. I was in this dressing room, and I had this dress, and I was shoving it down my pants. (laughs) And I saw my reflection in the mirror, and I looked like a statistic. You know, so like that noble thing I set out on three years earlier to not be a statistic, sc- came screeching to a halt, and I see my reflection in the mirror. And I'm shoving this dress down my pants, and I'm a homeless kid stealing, and I'm gonna end up in jail or dead. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks, and-

Joe Rogan 41:51 (coughs)

Jewel 41:51 ... I just remember thinking... I thought a lot of things. It was, like, one of the most, like, transformative moments in my life. The first thing I remembered was this quote that was attributed to Buddha that said, "Happiness doesn't depend on who you are or what you have. It depends on what you think." And I didn't have anything left, and so I was just, like, I have to double down on figuring out this what am I thinking thing. But the other thing, I mean, it just led to so many, like, insights. It was like s- I don't even know where to begin because it's like so many things start coming to my head, but I couldn't tell what I was thinking because I had so much anxiety. And I was just disassociating a lot. I was getting agoraphobic at that time, and so I decided, like, your hands are the servants of your thought. If you wanna know what you're thinking, watch what your hands are doing 'cause it's, like, thought cooled down into action 'cause your hands are just obeying thoughts, right? So I decided for two weeks I would just write down everything that my hands did-

Joe Rogan 42:42 (laughs)

Jewel 42:42 ... and it was just some dumb life plan, but I literally did it. Like, and I couldn't stop stealing right away, you know? So I'd write down when I stole, write down when I washed my hands, or if I wouldn't shake somebody's hand. Whatever the hell it is, I wrote what my hands did for two weeks. I don't know what I was looking for. You know, at the end of the two weeks, I look at my little journal, and it's, looks like a bunch of weird shit. I'm like, "Well, I quit believing in myself." But the much more interesting thing is is my panic attacks went away in that two weeks, and I didn't even realize it until I sat down. And what I stumbled on was presence, right? I stumbled on being so absorbed in the moment that I couldn't fixate on things that I was afraid of.And this idea of, like, fear is this thief that takes your past, it projects it into a future that hasn't happened, and it robs me of the only chance I have to be safe, which was my main concern, was safety, which was right now. And if I couldn't even show up right now to advocate for myself or to make a good decision, I was fucked and no wonder I'm anxious. That should make you anxious. You know, that's a bad idea to leave your house to go (laughs) look for burglars. And so, that was sort of what started to really create... It was an incredibly, like, fertile period in my life of a lot of insights. And the reason I was going there was because when you talk about, like, the biological reason for, like, "Why do we have jealousy? Why do we have these things? There must be some kind of evolutionary purpose," I was looking at that with addiction because addiction was huge in my family. I was now addicted to shoplifting. And I just sort of was like, "There must be a reason our brains are capable of addiction," right? I don't think, like, God's looking down going, "Ha ha, mistake," or whatever.

Joe Rogan 44:20 Right.

Jewel 44:20 So why can we get addicted? And maybe it's just that you can get addicted. It just can be, like, to good things or bad things, and that really comes down to your intention and how purposeful you can be. And a lot of us are so hurt and have so much pain that we're not conscious enough of... And that we can actually be intentional and get ourselves off sort of the merry-go-round of our programming, and set ourselves on a new course, and that was my goal. I w- wanted to get off of my programming and into, "How do I take this car off of autopilot and how do I start taking this car where I want to go?" My car being me.

Joe Rogan 44:56 Yeah.

Jewel 44:56 And so with addiction, I realized there was, like... It looked like a triangle to me, but it was a before, a during, and an after, and I could tell that the before was clearly before I wanted to steal, the during was when I was stealing, and the after was after (laughs) . And so I started to get really curious about what's happening during each of those three phases, which takes a lot of awareness, right? I had to learn how to get pretty present to even notice those three things. So what I realized was, like, I would get scared, I would react by stealing, and I felt a reward. I felt powerful, I felt calm, I felt in control, which was great (laughs) when you feel scared and out of control in your life. And so I realized I couldn't affect the first part. Being homeless was just really triggering and really scary, but I could control, I could affect the middle, right? Where I was stealing, and to replace it with a behavior. So I started to replace it with writing 'cause I was writing a lot in my journal. And it felt awful. Like, I just literally had to force myself. Um, but again, it takes cultivation. Um, like, sometimes I wouldn't even wake up till after I stole, you know? And then sometimes I'd kind of wake up while I was stealing, but I didn't want to quit (laughs) . And then sometimes I'd notice the urge to steal, but I really wanted to steal and I would anyway.

Joe Rogan 46:08 Mm-hmm.

Jewel 46:08 And then finally, like after months, I started to notice I want to steal and I'm gonna make myself write. So, you know, anybody listening, I just don't want to think this was, like, overnight aha. Like, it took months for me to get to this point. And then writing just sucked. It felt sucky. It didn't feel exciting or fun (laughs) . I was miserable. It made me realize how miserable I was. Like, it didn't feel really rewarding. And then that got me onto this really cool thing of noticing our body only has two states. Like, we only have two basic states of being, dilated and contracted, and that's it. And every single thought, feeling, or action is gonna lead you to one of those two states. And so I started to keep track. Every time I noticed I was tight con-... You know, I'd notice from my body language. Like, I was sitting like this. I rock a lot when I get anxious. I kind of don't breathe as much. So if I could notice that, I'd write it down. I'd get out my little notebook and I'd go to my contracted section (laughs) and I had three sections in there, thinking, feeling, doing. And I would just write down, "What was I just thinking, feeling, or doing?" And I wouldn't... I would just write it down and I'd go on with my day.

Joe Rogan 47:09 And this is all... Did you learn how to do this from anyone? Did you figure this out on your own, how to write these things out and that? Like, to, to develop these categories?

Jewel 47:17 Mm-mm. No. It was just, like, my curiosity. Like, I wanted out. I didn't want to die homeless.

Joe Rogan 47:22 Yeah.

Jewel 47:23 I just wanted out. I wanted to do better. And so that was just my motivation, and I would just get really curious and go inside myself to try and go, "What the hell is going on? Why am I doing this? Why is my behavior like this?" And so when I was relaxed, I would notice and then I'd write down thinking, feeling, doing, and then I looked at it after, like, two months and it was a really easy pattern to see. The things that dilated me were joy, observation, gratitude, curiosity. Um, the actions were, uh, helping other people, like volunteering, um, reading, sleeping, exercising, being outside. On my contracted side, it was certain thought cycles definitely got me. Like, "I don't know what I'm doing." That thing could just... That one sentence (laughs) for some reason would do my head in 'cause I didn't know what I was doing (laughs) and it was so scary. I was so scared because I was in so many bad situations. Um, but jealousy, greed, fear, um, worry, not sleeping, not connecting to humans, not exercising. So then one day... So my panic attacks were still really a big problem and I started to get to where I could feel a panic attack coming on, and I was like, "Wait a minute. Your body can't be in two states at one time." Like, it just can't. You can only be in one at a time. And so I was like, "I wonder if I could hack my way out of a contracted state by forcing myself to participate in something off of my list that dilated me." And so I looked at gratitude and I was like, "I'm gonna try that one." And so, like, my anxiety's building up, I'm doing my rocking thing where I'm about to head into (laughs) my panic attack and I'm like, "What am I gonna be grateful for?" And I'm homeless and I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself that day, and I can't think of anything. And so one of the best, like, hacks to get present is curiosity and observation, 'cause you, you can't, like, observe this and not be really present 'cause you have to be present to observe it. So I...... used that to look around me, and I saw the sunlight filtering through this palm tree, and it was... made this, like, lacy pattern on me. And it reminded me of being a kid in Alaska, laying in the meadows and watching the tree, you know, through the leaves. And I don't know why, but it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks that, like, I was alive, and I was here, and I hadn't killed myself. And I was so grateful. (laughs) And the gratitude of that, which was so unexpected, but it just erupted and moved me to tears that, like, what an act of defiance to not have killed myself and to have been there and just trying to figure it out. And I was suddenly grateful for myself, which was weird 'cause, you know, I had a lot of self-loathing and all kinds of things at the time. And the next thing I knew, a half hour had passed, and I didn't have a panic attack, you know? And that, to me, was like, "Eureka!" Like, "I'm figuring it out." Like, "I'm gonna figure this out. I'm gonna turn my life around," you know?

Joe Rogan 50:15 Wow. So this, the desire to kill yourself, was this just from the sheer pain of the anxiety and the, the depression and just the hating the position that you're in in life, that you just can't take it, you just want out?

Jewel 50:33 Yeah, that permanence, you know? I, I guarantee you, like, whatever had me sitting on the bluff that day watching the tide saved my life. Because whenever the idea of, "This is too painful. Life is too long to go on this way. It's just too painful to feel this way for 60 years," that thought will get you to kill yourself. But because I saw that tide, I was like, "I just have to..." I'd call it buckling myself in. I would just have to sit there and wait it out, and breathe and wait it out. And then plans helped me, like, you know, if you want a different outcome, you have to do something different. So I was very action-oriented, 'cause having a philosophy doesn't change your life. Actions change your life. And so that's why I was very into, like, if I got an idea, I tried to figure out how to make it practicable, like an actionable step, a behavioral step, and then I could see a result. And if the result wasn't good, I would have to go back to the drawing board and do something different. But if you want tomorrow to be different, you have to do something different today. And then you have to take notes on it, and you have to see if it works. And if it doesn't work, you have to try something different. And then you just have to not give up, and you have to keep doing it.

Joe Rogan 51:42 But what's so impressive are the... is that you developed this structure, and you figured these, these steps out on your own, like even the step of having communication with yourself to try to come up with a different result, to sit down and think about the different states that you're in and what are these acts or what are the, the different activities that lead you, the different thought processes that lead you to the good states, the bad states. Like, what is it? And that you were, you were looking at it like you were a scientist studying yourself.

Jewel 52:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:14 Yeah. That's amazing. It's pretty incredible that you were a kid and you were that insightful. But I guess that's the thing about horrible situations. Like, horrible situations will force a person to find some kind of a solution that they didn't think was available before. Some... They'll find a way, or not.

Jewel 52:37 Or not.

Joe Rogan 52:37 Or not.

Jewel 52:37 Yeah, you'll dig deeper-

Joe Rogan 52:38 There's a lot of or nots.

Jewel 52:39 ... or you'll-

Joe Rogan 52:39 Yeah.

Jewel 52:40 ... fold up.

Joe Rogan 52:40 Yeah. And-

Jewel 52:41 One of those two things are gonna happen.

Joe Rogan 52:43 But that's... (sighs) like, I don't wanna say this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Like, you don't get to make a you without that, which is so fucked. It's like, you're a really interesting person. Like, how do you get to be a really interesting person? You gotta have a fucked-up life.

Jewel 52:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:59 (laughs) It's, it's, it's unfortunately true. You know, I don't know anybody that's interesting that had it easy.

Jewel 53:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:06 I mean, I know a lot of nice people-

Jewel 53:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:08 ... that had it easy. They're lovely. They're wonderful.

Jewel 53:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:11 But they're not... You know, like, there's something about the emotional depth of your music and your lyrics that probably wouldn't be possible if you grew up in the suburbs with a happy mom and a happy dad and... I mean, I don't wanna say wouldn't be possible, 'cause everybody's got their own trials and tribulations in life, and just the, uh, just the existential angst of being a living finite organism-

Jewel 53:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:37 ... um, uh, spinning around on a planet, hurling through infinity. All those things fuck with you. But I don't think they fuck with you as much as being a 15-year-old homeless kid in Alaska, you know? I think that's... with an abusive family. That's a, that's a whopper. That's a heavy load to carry, and either it breaks your back or you develop some fucking intense quads, you know?

Jewel 53:57 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:57 (laughs)

Jewel 53:57 It's true.

Joe Rogan 53:58 As you carry, you're carrying around a...

Jewel 54:00 I wasn't homeless in, in Homer, by the way. I had a cabin, and I paid rent.

Joe Rogan 54:04 Oh.

Jewel 54:04 You know, and I had jobs up there.

Joe Rogan 54:05 Where were you homeless?

Jewel 54:06 In San Diego.

Joe Rogan 54:07 Oh.

Jewel 54:07 It was later. It was when I was 18.

Joe Rogan 54:08 Oh.

Jewel 54:08 I wouldn't have sex with the boss, and he wouldn't give me my paycheck, and...

Joe Rogan 54:11 Oh, boy.

Jewel 54:13 So I was like, "Fine."

Joe Rogan 54:14 That's... The story got worse. (laughs)

Jewel 54:16 (laughs) It's the story of my life. Wait till we keep going. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:19 Oh, let's keep going. Why not? Look, here's the thing.

Jewel 54:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:22 The, the, the thing that is very valuable about these conversations is that most people have been in a moment of darkness and despair in their life, and when they see someone like you, who's loved and successful, and they go, "Well, how? How did she get out? How did she do it?" And that, these conversations, like this, these descriptions, this... your own personal experiences that you're relaying in this very honest way is fuel for people. It's v- so valuable. For someone right now that's in a bad place, and I guarantee you, there's probably a lot of people listening to this right now, that this is resonating with them, and they're... They get something out of this that's not available through any other source. You can, you can get things... You, you can get information from books, and you can get... (sighs) you can get inspired by film and art, but to hear a person, an actual person that you know has actually made it through the fire and come out on the other end and has some wisdom, and it's like, "Hey, here's a map of the territory."

Jewel 55:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:31 ... this, this is what I went through, and your, your traveling through the woods might be different than mine, but I'm telling you, if you can get... There's a clearing outside of this. You can get there.

Jewel 55:42 Yeah. It's true. Like, what I, what I was so interested in is, like, you know, for a kid like me, there wasn't a safety net, right? I didn't have the family safety net, I didn't have money. I didn't have access to therapists, and I didn't want to think, again, that my life was over because I was in that situation. Like, does that mean there didn't get to be happiness for me 'cause I just wasn't born in the right situation? And that's what... you know, one of the things that really inspired me to keep going, and then once I, you know, got discovered, I wanted to see if this was teachable to other people. Because I was very concerned about the people that, again, didn't have those safety nets, didn't have access to therapy. And God forbid, what if therapy doesn't work for you, you know?

Joe Rogan 56:25 Right.

Jewel 56:25 Like, what if you go to your therapist and you just don't feel better and your life doesn't change? Those people often want to really kill themselves because they think, "It must be me." Like, "The expert can't fix me. I must be truly broken," which is not the right takeaway. It's just the wrong therapist. It's just the wrong thing, or it's not practicable enough. And so I started taking these exercises and really thinking about them of like, "All right. What exactly did I do?" Like, "How did I make these really practicable? And then can I teach them to other people?" And so I formed a youth foundation about 18 years ago with a friend, and we just give these types... We have these types of conversations with them, and, you know, you go, "Look, you have this pain, but this pain can get transmuted and transformed into rocket fuel for an incredible life if you don't tank with anger and bitterness and go down that road." You have to transmute it, and it is like... It's medicine. It's poison. It's being bitten by the snake and having to transmute it and turn it into medicine. And being able to teach kids how to do it without therapists... And I'm not anti-therapists at all. It's just that I think we should be taught skills to be able to do this for ourselves.

Joe Rogan 57:28 Yeah.

Jewel 57:28 It is in us, you know, and these kids are gonna find their own unique ways to f- do it for themselves, and it works. You know, like our, our s- we take complex P- PTSD, self-harming, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, and these kids turn around in radical fashion and they're happy. And you can see what it looks like on the other side of suicide ideation, you know.

Joe Rogan 57:49 What is the name of this organization?

Jewel 57:50 It's called Inspiring Children.

Joe Rogan 57:51 And d- is there a website?

Jewel 57:53 Yeah. InspiringChildren.something.

Joe Rogan 57:55 .org, probably?

Jewel 57:56 Probably (laughs) . Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:57 Probably. So take me through this process. So you're, you're 15. You're living in Alaska. How do you get to San Diego?

Jewel 58:04 When I was cleaning buildings in Homer, Alaska, uh, for rent, a dance teacher came from out of state and he was doing a two-week dance workshop, and I wanted to take it. And so I asked him if I cleaned his studio, in exchange, would he let me take a dance class. Turns out I was a really crappy dancer (laughs) , but he found out I sang. I was gigging in town with my dad, um, and so he came to see me sing. And he was a teacher at a fine arts boarding school in Michigan called Interlochen. And he was like, "You're really talented. You should apply to this boarding school." I was like... So he helped me get an application and I filled it out, and I got a $5,000 scholarship, but I still needed to ra- raise 10 grand in very little time, like a month. And three women in Alaska, they were like, "You can do this." Like, "You can do a fundraiser." I'm like, "What's a fundraiser?" And they're like... So they kind of... They're like, "Can you do anything to raise money?" I was like, "I can sing," because I'd been singing with my dad since I was five, and then in bars since I was eight, but I only sang backup. I sang harmony. I didn't sing my s- own songs, certainly. And so I loved Cole Porter. I loved Cole Port- 'cause there was a gay man in me dying to get out, apparently.

Joe Rogan 59:13 (laughs)

Jewel 59:13 And (laughs) I loved the entire Cole Porter songbook. And so a local piano player, like, learned the piano parts, and so I sang these Cole Porter songs in the h- the town. And I... My aunts taught me, you know, how to make flyers and how to pass them out, and then how to go to businesses and ask for donations, and then how to auction them off during the show. And so these three women just, like, really hooked me up, and I earned $10,000 that night. The whole town basically, like, came together to set me off-

Joe Rogan 59:43 Wow.

Jewel 59:43 ... which was really neat. And so off I go to school. I, um... I'm a feral animal at this point. Like, I'm not very housebroke, you know? Like (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 59:53 (laughs)

Jewel 59:53 ... I'm not a real cultivated... (laughs) I was scrappy, for sure. So I had enough money to get a plane ticket to Detroit, but I had to hitchhike from Detroit up to Traverse City, which is so dumb, but that's what I did. I don't know how far it is, but Traverse City, where the school is, is pretty far in the upper peninsula in Michigan. So I show up and I, um, am walking through, like, the main street of the campus and I'm looking around and, um, people are, like, pointing at me, and I don't know why they're pointing at me. And then a teacher rushes out to get me and she goes, "You need to go to the dean's office." And I'm like, "What have they..." I mean, I haven't even figured out what dorm I'm in or anything, and so I go into the dean's office. He goes, "Where are you from?" And I was like, "Homer, Alaska." He's like, "Why do you have a knife on your belt?" (laughs) I was like, "What?" And I looked down and, like, I had a really large skinning knife on my belt, but that was really normal where I'm from. It wasn't, like, an aggressive thing (laughs) . So I almost got expelled my very first day because I showed up with a skinning knife.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 You didn't know that you shouldn't have a skinning knife with you everywhere?

Jewel 1:00:59 (laughs) I didn't know that.

Joe Rogan 1:01:00 Did you keep it with you for self-defense or did you keep it with you to skin things?

Jewel 1:01:04 Well, it was a habit. Like, you always had a knife in Alaska. Always had a knife. I mean, it's just... I mean, if you guys-

Joe Rogan 1:01:10 Right.

Jewel 1:01:10 ... carry knives, you just get used to having a knife on you. It's handy.

Joe Rogan 1:01:14 Yeah.

Jewel 1:01:14 And then, yeah, hitchhiking. I hitchhiked a lot 'cause, like, when I first moved out, I was hitchhiking into town, so it was good to have a knife on you.

Joe Rogan 1:01:20 Yeah.

Jewel 1:01:20 For sure. So it was both, but I didn't think it was, like, some aggressive, horrible thing or that it would get me expelled my first second on campus (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 1:01:28 Did they understand when you said you were from Alaska?

Jewel 1:01:30 He did. Yeah. He... And I... I... Oh, and I was innoc- You know, like, I had a... I mean, I clearly wasn't trying to be a b-I was-

Joe Rogan 1:01:35 Right.

Jewel 1:01:35 ... it was... I was an easy read. Um, and so he was just like, "Give me your knife." He, like, shook his head.

Joe Rogan 1:01:40 (laughs)

Jewel 1:01:40 He was like, "Oh my God."

Joe Rogan 1:01:41 (laughs)

Jewel 1:01:41 He's like, "Where are your parents?" I'm like, "About that." (laughs) Like...

Joe Rogan 1:01:44 Yeah.

Jewel 1:01:45 "I'm here on my own." And he goes, "Do you have money for books?" I was like, "What do you mean? I'm at school." Like-

Joe Rogan 1:01:51 Right. You give me the books.

Jewel 1:01:52 ... "You give me the books." And he was like, he shook his head again, and I just remember him looking at me like, "Who is this kid?" And he's like, "Do you have food?" I was like, "I'm at a boarding school." Like, I thought they'd have food.

Joe Rogan 1:02:04 Yeah.

Jewel 1:02:05 But apparently, you had to pay for it, and I just didn't know that. And so now I was, like, in this position where I didn't have money for books, I didn't have money for food, and I was like, "Do you have a job, like, that you could give me?" And he goes, "Let me get back to you," and so he gave me a job, like, as a model for the art class, fully clothed, you know, like, in a leotard, but it's n- wasn't my ideal job, like, wearing a leotard. Like, I didn't like my belly. I didn't like what was all happening down here, so I was like... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:28 (laughs)

Jewel 1:02:29 I wasn't too thrilled with, like, standing in front of a class seeing, like-

Joe Rogan 1:02:34 Right.

Jewel 1:02:34 ... my little belly, like, made into sculptures. It was such a bummer. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:40 (laughs)

Jewel 1:02:41 That is what I did. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:42 Wow. And so, you're 18 at this time? How old are you then?

Jewel 1:02:47 16.

Joe Rogan 1:02:48 16. You're 16.

Jewel 1:02:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:49 So, and then you go from there... First of all, uh, before that, I wanna back up. Your dad sang and he brought you with him to bars? What-

Jewel 1:02:59 Yes. So my mom and dad had a show at the Captain Cook in Anchorage, Alaska. Um, they did shows for dinner tourists, and it was, like, an Alaskan show. There was, like, a lot of footage of my family that was homesteading, and my dad wrote original songs. And me and my two brothers would get up and be part of the act. I yodeled. So I started yodeling with him-

Joe Rogan 1:03:18 You yodeled? (laughs)

Jewel 1:03:18 Yep. Since I was little. And then when my mom left, my dad and I became a duet, and it just turned into bars. So I was bar singing from a really young age, and like, you know, I would have guys put dimes in my hand and they would fold my fingers around (laughs) the dime, and they'd go, "Call me when you're 16. You're gonna be great to fuck when you're older."

Joe Rogan 1:03:37 Oh, Jesus.

Jewel 1:03:38 And so you just... I just learned-

Joe Rogan 1:03:40 They said that to when you were eight?

Jewel 1:03:41 Yeah. Nine. Nine, 10. Right in there.

Joe Rogan 1:03:43 Oh, at least they waited till you were nine.

Jewel 1:03:44 Yeah. (laughs) It was nice.

Joe Rogan 1:03:47 (laughs) What the fuck?

Jewel 1:03:47 It was awful. You know, like, I'd have-

Joe Rogan 1:03:48 Ugh.

Jewel 1:03:48 I'd come out of a bathroom, and I remember this guy, like, measuring my esophagus. It was really aggressive and a little scary. Like, he, I mean, he did it lightly, but it was a scary thing, right? And he looked at me and he measured his fingers, like the distance between his fingers, "Have you been cheating on me?" I'm still not sure what that means. Maybe it's like a blowjob joke? Like, I don't quite know, but I just knew it was sexual and it was aggressive and, like, it was scary. You know, it was just-

Joe Rogan 1:04:14 Oh.

Jewel 1:04:14 So that's just what I was raised around, but I learned so much too. Like, I learned everybody was in pain. Like, everybody was in pain.

Joe Rogan 1:04:23 You learned this from bars?

Jewel 1:04:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:25 That's the thing about being a child and being exposed to bars, right? You get to see adults in this, like, very exposed and vulnerable way.

Jewel 1:04:34 You do.

Joe Rogan 1:04:34 Wh- you see them drunk.

Jewel 1:04:35 Yep. Yeah. They can't hide it.

Joe Rogan 1:04:38 Yeah.

Jewel 1:04:39 And so I just realized everybody's trying to deal with pain by, like, drugs or drinking or sex or rage. You know, you just-

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 Yeah.

Jewel 1:04:47 It's s- so much raw life you're watching. And so I was just like n- and I knew I was in pain, 'cause that's like right after the divorce and my dad just started drinking. And I was like, "Note to self," like...

Joe Rogan 1:04:57 So your dad didn't drink at all before the divorce?

Jewel 1:04:58 Mm-mm. They were Mormon.

Joe Rogan 1:05:00 Whoa.

Jewel 1:05:00 And I, like, I had an idyllic little Mormon childhood pre-eight years old.

Joe Rogan 1:05:04 How did the Mormons get to them?

Jewel 1:05:06 Oh, Mormons are everywhere. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:09 (laughs)

Jewel 1:05:09 That's the great thing about missionaries.

Joe Rogan 1:05:10 They're right up to the wagon.

Jewel 1:05:10 Like, religious is like... It knows how to do it. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:13 Yeah.

Jewel 1:05:13 Yeah. Um, I mean, there was every little religion there. There was, like, you know, a little church.

Joe Rogan 1:05:18 Yeah.

Jewel 1:05:18 Homer was like church bar, church bar, church bar. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:21 Wow.

Jewel 1:05:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:23 And so your... it seems like your dad has always had this sort of showbiz thing. Like, if he wanted to do... if he was doing that show up there-

Jewel 1:05:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:34 ... where he was doing, like, an Alaska show for dinner theater, and then moving to bars. Like, he always had this desire for an exorbitant amount of attention.

Jewel 1:05:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:45 Right?

Jewel 1:05:46 My grandmother had been an aspiring opera singer and poetess in Europe.

Joe Rogan 1:05:50 Ah.

Jewel 1:05:50 And that was, like, her dream. But she gave up that dream to come to America and have kids in a free country. But she taught all of her kids to sing-

Joe Rogan 1:05:58 Mm-hmm.

Jewel 1:05:59 ... and to draw and sculpt. And my aunts and uncles and all of my cousins, I have a wildly talented family.

Joe Rogan 1:06:05 Mm-hmm.

Jewel 1:06:05 They're all just very charismatic. They're great storytellers. And you didn't have a TV, right, up there, so they were just writing songs to entertain themselves. And it wasn't 'cause they thought they'd be famous. It was just, it was entertainment. They didn't have a radio. And so they would draw and they'd paint, and they, they... My whole family is really talented. My dad definitely was the one that seemed like he would pick up where his mom left off and maybe carry on that torch. He definitely had dreams of going to Nashville and making records. He actually did, when I was young, make a record in Nashville and he'd sell that at the shows in Anchorage. Um, but then when my mom left, it was like he gave up those dreams of trying to be known on a bigger scale. And we just made a living bar singing. That was the family living, was that.

Joe Rogan 1:06:48 Wow.

Jewel 1:06:49 Yeah. And we did, like, five-hour sets, you know, in bars. And I was like... I just had to promise myself that I would try to handle my pain as it came. Like, like, that's when I promised I would never drink or do drugs. It was just like I had to find a way to handle the pain that I was in so I didn't end up on that road.

Joe Rogan 1:07:06 Mm-hmm.

Jewel 1:07:06 Because it was like there was this kernel of pain and these people just kept burying it with, like, alcohol and drugs and whatever.

Joe Rogan 1:07:13 Mm-hmm.

Jewel 1:07:13 And it turned into this mountain, and they either would kill themselves or just die. But they never just... All they had to do was deal with this first pain.

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 Mm-hmm.

Jewel 1:07:20 You know what I mean? And so that just seemed illogical to me. A- and I know it's hard, like when your pain adds up. Like, mine got aggregate. But I just still kept trying to find a way to deal with it as it was, which for me was writing.

Joe Rogan 1:07:31 You know what's fascinating, is that most people don't figure it out. That's what's fascinating. It's like when you're on the outside, you're a small child, and you're looking at this and you're going, "Oh, I see what's happening here. These people are all in pain and they're covering this pain up with substance abuse and gambling or whatever it is."... but how many people figure it out? It's so small. The number's so tiny. Like, if you looked at all the people that have, uh, various addictions and various, like, self-destructive patterns of behavior in their life, how many of them come out of it on the other end, uh, for the better? It's pro- probably 10% or something. You know, it's most people, they go down a d- unless they have some really good help, or they figure it out because they hit rock bottom and they come to an epiphany. S- most people don't. No-

Jewel 1:08:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:24 I mean, I hate to be, like, the percentage guy. I don't know what the r- I don't know if 10%'s logical or fair. But it's a number, and I've, I've met a lot of people that have addiction problems and, uh, very few of them ever come out on the other end. It's, it's fascinating because it is the ultimate puzzle for your life to solve. Like, most people, uh, who, you know, if you're, if you're a healthy person and you're in a job, you p- as long as things don't, don't go terribly wrong with your health, in terms of, like, your physical health, you move forward and you kind of progress and you eventually get to a better place. You go to school, you get a degree, you get a graduate degree, and hopefully you get a job. But there's this progression that takes place that's tangible and it's trackable. But not when people have addictions. It's like that puzzle seems to be insurmountable because it's a puzzle that involves your emotions.

Jewel 1:09:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:09:18 It involves, and it, it involves whatever it means to, uh, whatever your identity is, whatever it is that, that's keeping you in this, this prison of your own control. And that, it's, it's amazing how few people get out of that one.

Jewel 1:09:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:37 It might be our biggest problem as humans.

Jewel 1:09:39 It is. But to me, again, it comes down to, somewhere along the line, we forgot, as a species, what to do with pain. We forgot how to transmute pain into something that's useful and becomes nourishing. And, you know, like, one of the things ... It'll be in my next book. It's not in my last one. But this idea of, like, when you tolerate the intolerable, you become ill. You become emotionally ill. And so if you're raised in an abusive environment and you're tolerating something that's intolerable, abuse-

Joe Rogan 1:10:07 Yeah.

Jewel 1:10:08 ... you start to become emotionally ill, right? You become neurotic or you become, maybe let's call it an eating disorder. Or you be, start to become emotionally ill if you keep having to ingest poison.

Joe Rogan 1:10:21 Yeah.

Jewel 1:10:21 So I'll just call the intolerable a poison. It's an emotional