Joe Rogan Experience #1726 - Chuck Palahniuk

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. CPChuck Palahniuk0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. CPChuck Palahniuk0:06

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

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      Good to see you, man.

   5. CPChuck Palahniuk0:13

      Hey, welcome back.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      Welcome back to you, too.

   7. CPChuck Palahniuk0:16

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      Um, I was very excited to talk to you because it's been about three years, and during those three years, it seems like censorship issues and issues of what you can and can't say and what is and isn't acceptable, they seem to be ramping up. And you are, in my mind, one of the more interesting and dangerous writers out there, because you, you tap into these super-uncomfortable stories, and you're willing to explore areas in, in writing that I think a lot of people would avoid. When we talked about this the last time you were here, some of the more dangerous stories that you, uh, had workshopped and people have gotten upset at you for. (laughs) But I really wanted to talk to you because like, I wanted to know how this is affecting you, how this, uh, weird climate of, uh, hypersensitivity and, uh, purity tests is sort of affecting your writing.

   9. CPChuck Palahniuk1:21

      Uh, this is the dead air part.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:24

       (laughs) Scooch up to the mic.

   11. CPChuck Palahniuk1:26

       Okay. You know, and I- I- I don't wanna kind of shoot my wad with a big term, but have you ever heard of absurdist existentialism?

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:38

       No, I haven't.

   13. CPChuck Palahniuk1:38

       Okay.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:39

       I can piece the two words together.

   15. CPChuck Palahniuk1:40

       You know, I used to... When I look back at the books that I really loved growing up, I see that they are now under the big umbrella of the very small phenomenon called absurdist existentialism. Do you remember the book Geek Love?

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:55

       Yes.

   17. CPChuck Palahniuk1:55

       Geek Love. Could Katharine write Geek Love right now? And it's about a man and a woman who own a failing circus, and they decide the way to sa- save their circus is to have deformed babies. So, they take insecticides, they expose themselves to radiation, and they give birth to, ultimately, uh, a whole crew of severely deformed children, plus a whole crew of children that don't live, that are... In the circus culture, they're called "pickled punks," those kind of deformed babies in formaldehyde.

   18. JRJoe Rogan2:28

       Yeah.

   19. CPChuck Palahniuk2:28

       Uh, Katharine wrote that book. It was the first banner book under the new director at, at Knopf, Suni Mehta. It was one of the top-selling books of the 20th century. It was a huge success, and it really is absurdist existentialism. And the general idea is that life is so messed up, so unfixable, that we might as well go right to the crazy. And Vonnegut wrote it, Tom Robbins wrote it throughout the '70s, Still Life with A Woodpecker and Matches, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Uh, Nathanael West wrote it. Uh, uh, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote it in the '20s. These people who had survived the Spanish flu and survived the First World War, and that there is a kind of a tipping point in the culture where things seem so messed up and so unfixable that you just sort of tip into this absurdist existentialism, and there's a fantastic joy and freedom in that. And so my goal is always to- to try to write the kind of book I want to read, and I want to write Geek Love because I want to read Geek Love, uh, regardless of whether or not Katharine could write it, because I don't... Even if she wasn't dead, she got, could not write that book anymore.

   20. JRJoe Rogan3:50

       There, there's something about writing and, and reading that kind of stuff, where you really, you can never capture it in any other medium. And I think, in some ways, even audiobooks don't do justice to some of the darker ideas because you kind of want to piece them together in your own mind. And as you're reading it in silence, and the author's ideas are coming to life inside your head, you know, your own creativity and imagination are intertwined with the work of the artist to try to fill in the visuals of the work. It's, it's a place where that's the only way you can truly get the most out of those really twisted ideas.

   21. CPChuck Palahniuk4:41

       Well, and because, also, to be made literal enough to film or even to be said out loud kind of destroys that, that intimacy where it only occurs in your mind. It occurs in the kind of subvocalization and in the kind of sympathetic, uh, neural phenomenon that's happening when you read a verb. Uh, studies have shown that your body thinks that you are running. Your body thinks that you are doing what the verb is saying. And you lose that when you hear it out loud, and you lose it especially when it has to be made literal enough to be filmed. Another absurdist existentialist book, Confederacy of Dunces.

   22. JRJoe Rogan5:20

       Hmm.

   23. CPChuck Palahniuk5:21

       You know, John Goodman, God bless him, he has had that book optioned for decades, and that will never be a movie because it is filled with racist humor, it is filled with misogynistic humor, and it is filled with homophobic humor. It is completely an unfilmable book, but people adore Confederacy of Dunces, and it won the Pulitzer Prize, but it cannot be made literal enough to become a movie.

   24. JRJoe Rogan5:51

       Yeah, there's, there's books that were made at a different time, where even today, people don't want you reading them anymore.... right? And that might be one of them. If that, if that ever gets under the spotlight and people start examining some of the, the things in that book, that might be one of those books where people just decide you shouldn't be reading that anymore.

   25. CPChuck Palahniuk6:11

       Well, uh, uh, I think there's kind of a political aspect too. I've seen some essays about why Mel Gibson can just get crazier and crazier-

   26. JRJoe Rogan6:21

       (laughs)

   27. CPChuck Palahniuk6:21

       ... and he's not canceled, and why Roseanne Barr gets crazy one night on Ambien and she's gone. And a lot of these essays, for the most part, say it's, it's because Mel Gibson is making people money and that people generally like Mel Gibson. They really like Mel Gibson and nobody really wants to cancel him. Where supposedly Roseanne Barr had offended so many people and she was so difficult, that people were really gunning for any opportunity to cancel her. And I think with Confederacy of Dunces, with these really beloved books, people like them too much to really put them under that kind of microscope.

   28. JRJoe Rogan6:59

       The people that do like them, right?

   29. CPChuck Palahniuk7:01

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan7:01

       It's w- with the w- my worry is that people that don't even know about them or haven't read them will get ahold of it.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Well, it is kind…

   1. CPChuck Palahniuk15:00

      this discount department store in the Northwest, they had this huge table of half-price things and they were all, uh... They had all sexy names and they were little aerosol sprays. They were rutting elk pheromones. And I just had to buy them, you know? It's like this... The ultimate stocking stuffer is like, who do I know that needs rutting elk pheromones? And they all have these kind of big type on the, on the packaging that says, "The elk will... The, the bulls will come running. Uh, th- they'll follow you. They'll follow you right to your gun. They'll walk right up to you if you wear this." And so the idea of all these hunters spraying themselves with rutting elk pheromone so they can attract these kind of horny elk is just so appealing.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:47

      Well, it is kind of fucked that when you hunt elk, primarily, especially when you hunt with a bow, you hunt them when they're fucking.

   3. CPChuck Palahniuk15:55

      I did not know that.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:56

      Yeah, you hunt 'em in the rut.

   5. CPChuck Palahniuk15:57

      Oh.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:58

      That's the whole idea. I, I elk hunt, so this is one of the thing... This is my main way I get meat, is I hunt. And I go bow hunting in the mountains.

   7. CPChuck Palahniuk16:09

      In, uh, Fight Club Three, the graphic novel that I launched last year, the year, the worst year ever to launch a, a novel, I needed a backstory for the female character in Fight Club. I wanted her to be an orphan. So in the backstory, Tyler, who is this... You know, Tyler Durden, the eternal character, he seduces Marla's mother, and he says, "I wanna do furry play." And he seduces her out into the woods and, uh... Uh, no, I got it backwards. Uh, he has her seduce Tyler's... Uh, Marla's father into doing furry play and so she's running through the woods naked and, uh, and Marla's father is dressed up as a, a cougar chasing her to ravish her. And then Tyler is in a blind with a bow and arrow, and he shoots Marla's father in the back and he dies while rutting with Marla's mother.

   8. JRJoe Rogan17:07

      (laughs)

   9. CPChuck Palahniuk17:07

      That's how her father dies. And then Tyler, who is the paramour, convinces Marla's mother to basically do the same scenario. And as they're running through the woods, Tyler is dressed up as a grizzly bear and Marla's mother is trying to be ravished. Uh, and then a real grizzly bear shows up, and that's how Marla's mother is killed.

   10. JRJoe Rogan17:30

       (laughs)

   11. CPChuck Palahniuk17:31

       I think that is the best backstory I've ever written for a character. But yeah, see, I'm so glad that you went there.

   12. JRJoe Rogan17:37

       Yeah, that's what it is. Um, the, the, the reason being is that that's when they congregate together in very specific areas and also when the males have their antlers in full display 'cause, uh, elk antlers are... I'm pretty sure this is true, they are the quickest growing bone in all of nature and they shed them every year. Did you see the antlers outside?

   13. CPChuck Palahniuk18:02

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JRJoe Rogan18:03

       Did you see them out there? Those are only like six months old.

   15. CPChuck Palahniuk18:07

       Wow.

   16. JRJoe Rogan18:08

       So they, they have their antlers shed in the spring and then as the summer rolls around, they regrow 'em. And then when the fall is there, they're, they, they lose their velvet, they scrape the velvet off and then they have bone. That's all bone.... and they shed them every year.

   17. CPChuck Palahniuk18:23

       So, are they bigger every year or are they-

   18. JRJoe Rogan18:25

       Yeah.

   19. CPChuck Palahniuk18:25

       ... the same size?

   20. JRJoe Rogan18:25

       Until they start going downhill.

   21. CPChuck Palahniuk18:27

       Okay.

   22. JRJoe Rogan18:27

       When they get older, when they hit, like, 13, 14 years old, then the antlers start sh- sh- shrinking and the, the tines grow smaller and it's usually because they're starting to die. But it's... That's a rare thing. Most of the time they die, they're killed by mountain lions or by other elk. They, they stab each other to death with those things and we find them dead all the time. Like, every year you find one dead. They just stab them through the, the lungs and they, they stab them while they're down. It's really crazy.

   23. CPChuck Palahniuk18:55

       There should be a law, okay? Uh, they should make a law against that.

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:59

       (laughs) About... Against elk murder?

   25. CPChuck Palahniuk19:00

       Yeah, against... Uh, that's... This is horrible.

   26. JRJoe Rogan19:02

       Well, that's how they breed, that's-

   27. CPChuck Palahniuk19:03

       Nature is horrible.

   28. JRJoe Rogan19:04

       It is, it is horrible. That's, that's the least horrible, because most of the time they get through it intact. Like, when you kill an elk, uh, one of the things that happens is you skin them and quarter them and when you skin them, you find p- puncture wounds all over their body from, from fights. So they... Generally speaking, they're superficial wounds. They're small wounds all over the place, but occasionally one will hit another elk with such force that one of the tines goes through the rib cage, and that's when they die.

   29. CPChuck Palahniuk19:34

       Hmm.

   30. JRJoe Rogan19:34

       But it's more rare 'cause... More rare than not. We find one dead every year, but they fight all the time. Like, they're establishing dominance, you know, almost every day and it's just very... like, m- you know, like, y- if there's a large herd of elk, maybe you'll find one a season. But the whole idea is you can find them better when they're congregating like this and the way you call them in is you either pretend that you're a female or you pretend that you're a male. So you either pretend that you're a male that wants to challenge them and steal their women or you pretend that you're a female and that you've left whatever male used to have control of you 'cause it's... U- generally speaking, like, there's one bull elk that is the, the, the herd bull, so the biggest, baddest bull on the mountain, and he'll have 20, 30 cows and he'll be trying to breed them all. And one of them occasionally will break loose and the bull will risk his life and leave the s- the circle of... leave the safety of numbers to go find the one that took off, to bring her back. And that's... I killed a bull like that in, um, this video that we did for Under Armor. That's the very specific way we killed it. We trailed the, the elk and we made noises like a female elk and this big herd bull thought one of his cows was left behind so he came back to try to get that cow and that's how we got him.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   So what happened? …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Gigantopithecus is established science. I mean, it's a, it's a real, uh, animal in the historical record of, of creatures that died off. But this creature, they found this in an apothecary shop in China, an anthropologist did. I think it was in the 1920s. And then he had the people from the shop take him to wherever they found it and they found multiple bones and teeth and jawbones. And then as they pieced these bones together, they realized they were dealing with, uh, a forgotten primate. And, uh, show, uh, that image of the guy standing next to a recreation of, uh, Gigantopithecus. It was in the orangutan family and it was a fucking enormous, you know, eight foot plus tall primate.

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk30:47

      So what happened?

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:48

      Died off. Just died off.

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk30:50

      Oh.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:50

      You know, like many other things, you know. But it lived alongside humans as recently as 100,000 years ago. And maybe more, maybe m- more recently. The thing is like, they have so many stories of a large, hairy primate. Like the, uh, Native Americans have like a hundred different names for them. And the thought is that these things probably lived a lot closer to modern times than 100,000 years ago, like maybe 20,000 years ago. Who knows?

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk31:19

      I don't buy that it just died off theory. Okay? There's always-

   7. JRJoe Rogan31:24

      Well, we probably murdered them, if that's what you wanna hear.

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk31:26

      I think the government...

   9. JRJoe Rogan31:29

      (laughs)

   10. CPChuck Palahniuk31:30

       Because things don't just die off anymore.

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:32

       Do you think the government killed Bigfoot?

   12. CPChuck Palahniuk31:34

       I, uh ... I don't think I can say that and still be on Twitter.

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:39

       (laughs)

   14. CPChuck Palahniuk31:40

       But that little thing that you're talking about? Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:42

       The Orang Pendek or the-

   16. CPChuck Palahniuk31:44

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:44

       ... Homo Floresiensis?

   18. CPChuck Palahniuk31:45

       Ah ...

   19. JRJoe Rogan31:46

       Think they killed it off?

   20. CPChuck Palahniuk31:47

       I don't know because, uh, the Gates Foundation has been really active in that area, I heard.

   21. JRJoe Rogan31:56

       (laughs)

   22. CPChuck Palahniuk31:56

       Yeah. I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying that there are things we don't investigate for a reason.

   23. JRJoe Rogan32:04

       Hmm. I see what you're saying.

   24. CPChuck Palahniuk32:06

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan32:06

       Yeah, it could be. Maybe we tried vaccines on them, they used them to experiment.

   26. CPChuck Palahniuk32:13

       Could be.

   27. JRJoe Rogan32:15

       (laughs)

   28. CPChuck Palahniuk32:16

       But I'm not gonna go there. I'm not gonna go there.

   29. JRJoe Rogan32:18

       They, there have been sightings of those little people things within like, uh, the 20th century, in, uh, Vietnam. But who knows if it's true, if there was a small population of those things living deep in the jungle, little tiny people-like creatures.

   30. CPChuck Palahniuk32:34

       Well, and, and cross-culturally, uh, pretty much every civilization has got its little, little people stories.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   The heating pad story.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      enough because you told that story to tell her story about being, uh, in the Girl Scouts or the Brownies, the Brownies before the Girl Scouts.

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk45:09

      The heating pad story.

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:10

      The heating pad story-

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk45:10

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:10

      ... where she had put this vibrating heating pad on her vagina and had her friends do the same thing. And the mom came home, and she was only seven years old. She thought it was cool, like, "Look, I found this thing." And then the mom beat her with a wire that was plugged into the wall and called her a dirty whore-

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk45:28

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:28

      ... and she never orgasmed again.

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk45:30

      And she said, in summation, that if I could tell the story that I had just told that was so, so, uh, self-debasing and so humiliating, but also make it funny, then that would, that gave her proof that she could make her own story funny, and that maybe she could someday go back to her mother and say, "Remember that heating pad?" And that maybe, ultimately, she could have an orgasm, because until you can kinda reveal these things and, and resolve them, they run the rest of your life, and you're never gonna get beyond them.

   9. JRJoe Rogan46:07

      Yeah, especially when you don't see it coming, when you're just a child, and then you do something that you think is totally fine. And all of a sudden, you're getting the fuck beaten out of you, and you don't understand why.

   10. CPChuck Palahniuk46:21

       Yeah. (laughs)

   11. JRJoe Rogan46:21

       All you did was make a doll pretty. Like, what happened?

   12. CPChuck Palahniuk46:24

       Well, and it, it, it's, uh, it occurs in so many different ways. Uh, several years ago, I got a job house-sitting a farm that was, uh, famous for being haunted. It had all these paranormal studies. So as soon as the owners were gone, I invited a bunch of psychics out to do a, a seance. You know, I wanted to know.

   13. JRJoe Rogan46:43

       (laughs)

   14. CPChuck Palahniuk46:44

       And my father had been murdered about five years before that. And one of these psychic women that I'd never met before said, "There is a man standing with you. He's wearing a white T-shirt, and he, he's holding something wooden, and he is really, really sorry he did what he did." But he was, and a, a very, very young man at the time. He was only 23 or 24. "He's holding something wooden, and he's about to dismember you. Does that make any sense whatsoever?" (laughs) And I just kind of nodded my head, and I said, "I have no idea what you're talking about." But when I was maybe three or four years old, my mother had taken my siblings into town, and I was, you know, in our rural farm, and I put a, a, a fender washer around one of my fingers, and I couldn't get it off. And so I waited until the finger was swollen up and turning sort of purple-black, and I went to my father, and I said, "Can you help me with this washer thing?" And my father had said, "I can help you, but I want you to learn a lesson that you have to, there are consequences to everything you do, and I will help you with a washer if you accept the responsibility for your actions for the rest of your life." And he took me, and we had to wash the ax that we killed chickens with. We had this hatchet. And he took me, and we sharpened the hatchet, and we washed it really thoroughly so there were no germs on it, and then he had me kneel down by the chopping block and put my hand on the chopping block. And at the time, there was no drama, it was just complete clarity. My father was helping me to resolve the situation. And at the last moment, he missed my hand with the ax. The ax went into the chopping block, and then we went inside and used, uh, dish soap to take the washer off. And I knew that story would just make my mother insane, so I never told anybody my entire life that story. I never told my siblings. I never told anyone. And I had more or less forgotten that story until this woman I had never met said, "There is a man standing over you in a white T-shirt."... and he's holding something wooden, and he's really sorry, and it's something about dismemberment. But he was very young, and he handled it the way a very young father would. I, I was so shocked in that moment. Uh, and so sometimes the story isn't always a kind of, uh, it isn't always a kind of tragedy of the child being punished for s- doing something good. It's, it can come from so many different directions, and the point is to bring those stories forward. Because when you do, you create the opportunity for everyone else with a similar experience to voice something that they have suppressed for so long.

   15. JRJoe Rogan49:48

       How accurate was her depiction? Do you remember-

   16. CPChuck Palahniuk49:50

       It was-

   17. JRJoe Rogan49:50

       ... what your father was wearing?

   18. CPChuck Palahniuk49:52

       Uh, he always wore a white T-shirt. He was probably wearing Levi's. She said that he was really meticulous about his hair, and that was the age of Vitalis. And my father and Vitalis, he was just, you know, his hair always had to be perfect. She really hit it on a lot of different levels. And then she turned to a good friend of mine, and she said, "And there is a woman with you, and she is sprinkling, sprinkling you with tiny blue flowers. Does this make any sense whatsoever? She's standing over you, and she is just raining you with small blue flowers. Does that mean anything to you?" And my friend, Ina, started to sob at that point. She was uncontrollably sobbing, because no one knew this, no one in our peer group. But every year, Ina would secretly go to her mother's grave. Her mother died when Ina was a teenager, but every year she would go there on the anniversary of her mother's death, and she would sprinkle forget-me-not seeds on her mother's grave, and she had never told anyone she did that. And the idea that someone would somehow pick up on this image of s- tiny blue flowers being in turn sprinkled on Ina was really another one of those uncanny moments. And we can't put those together, we can't look for a pattern, and we can't sort of express them unless someone expresses them first.

   19. JRJoe Rogan51:22

       Is that the only experience you've ever had with psychics?

   20. CPChuck Palahniuk51:25

       That's the... You know, I've had two others, but they were really unpleasant because they were really unresolved. Um, uh, boy, when I was, uh, maybe 19, uh, I knew someone who did numerology, and I provided all these numbers, when were you, date and time of your birth, all these numbers. And weeks later, uh, I asked him what, what turned up, and he said, uh, "It is so unpleasant, it is so horrible, that in good conscience I, I can't tell you. You don't wanna know. You're too young to know, uh, what horribleness lies ahead of you, and I can't tell you." And that was the end of that, so great. And then one of the... Uh, more or less the night that I started writing Fight Club, I was invited to a, uh, New Year's Eve party, and there was a girl there, uh, doing tarot cards, and she did a reading. She laid all the cards out, and, uh, she looked at the cards and she seemed k- k- kind of stymied and she said, "I have never seen such bad cards in my life. I have never seen such horrible, horrible cards. I can't even tell you. You don't wanna know what these cards seem to indicate. Um, yeah, I don't want you to have to live with this knowledge, so I'm not gonna tell you what the cards predict." So those were my only two kind of psychic friends' experiences, and they were both so unpleasant that I've never really sought out those experiences.

   21. JRJoe Rogan53:00

       And how long ago were they... was, were these... uh, the numerology one and the card reading, how long ago was this?

   22. CPChuck Palahniuk53:07

       The numerology one would have been in like 1981, and the card reading would have been right, 1983, 1984, no, 1994 or 1993.

   23. JRJoe Rogan53:17

       But has there been anything in your life that was so horrific that they couldn't imagine telling you?

   24. CPChuck Palahniuk53:24

       You know, except for my father's murder, not really.

   25. JRJoe Rogan53:27

       Maybe that was it?

   26. CPChuck Palahniuk53:28

       Maybe that was it, but, boy, that, uh, that doesn't seem like it's big enough. I don't know.

   27. JRJoe Rogan53:35

       How was your father murdered?

   28. CPChuck Palahniuk53:36

       Um, Dad, uh, Dad was murdered in May of 1999. He had answered a personals ad, um, for a, uh, uh, a woman who was looking for, uh, you know, a boyfriend, and, uh, the ad was headlined Kismet. Uh, I believe that's the Arab word for fate. And Dad, uh, met with her. Her name was Rita, she was a lawyer. Um, she had worked in the prison system in the Midwest, and Dad was really, really taken with her. She was really bright and really smart, and she had an ex-husband who had sexually abused her daughter from a different marriage, and they were pressing charges against this ex-husband and he was gonna go to prison. And she had met him while he was in prison and she was doing legal work and she had helped him get out of prison. So she helped him get out of prison, she'd married him, he had abused her daughter, she divorced him, she was prosecuting him to send him back to prison, then she met my father. And this ex-husband had said that if he ever caught her with another man, he would kill them both. So my father was going to pick her up and she was gonna stay at his house in the mountains until the time of the trial.And as he was going to pick her up, he was going down this, this mountain road on his property, and a giant boulder broke free and it rolled down the hillside and it blocked the road. He couldn't get out. So he spent the day with this, uh, uh, lever, uh, forcing this boulder off the road. And then he took a couple extra hours and he made a sign that said "Kismet Rock" so that he could label this boulder as a kind of landmark for when he brought her back to s- sequester her. And as... He'd cleaned the house incredibly. The house was just neat as a pin and stocked with all this food. And, you know, he really planned to have this fantastically sort of idyllic time sequestered with his new girlfriend. And he labeled the rock to surprise her, and then he, he went to pick her up. And when he went to pick her up, the ex-husband showed up and he shot my father. And my father and the woman, uh, took refuge in her house and the man set fire to the house. And the house eventually collapsed, and the coroner says that they were both dead before the fire got to them. Uh, and the coroner says that because of the angle of the shot, my father probably took about 20 minutes to die because the bullet ruptured his diaphragm, so with every breath he would've been, um, accumulating air below, between the lung and the diaphragm, and so every breath would've been more and more shallow because his lungs would've been more and more constricted by this air, uh, above the diaphragm, but that eventually he'd suffocate it. Um, and all of this sounds horrible and tragic, but it forms this fantastic pattern in my father's life because my father, when he was very small, he lived in northern Idaho with his, th- this enormous U- Ukrainian family. And his father went, uh, kind o' crazy one day. This is all public record. I've talked about this a lot. But his father took a rifle and walked around the house and tried to kill him, my father, and, and ultimately killed my father's... Well, killed his wife, my father's mother, and then killed himself. But my father's earliest memories are of hiding underneath a bed as his father walked around the house in logging boots with a rifle, calling his name, trying to get him to come out so that he could be killed.

   29. JRJoe Rogan57:47

       Jesus Christ.

   30. CPChuck Palahniuk57:50

       And so my father spent his entire life sort of looking for his mother, because as his father was trying to kill him, he was trying to find his mother, who at that point had been killed. And so my father really had this kind of serial pattern with women. He was always looking, in a way, for the woman, the woman. And ultimately, he was shot by the man with a gun in the way that he would've been shot when he was four years old. And one of the uncanny things is that their bodies were only preserved because a bed on the second floor of this structure, as it was burning, the bed fell over their bodies and insulated their bodies, and my father had escaped his father by hiding under- underneath a bed when he was a small child. And the fact that the, the, the, the Lonely Hearts ad was h- was headlined "Kismet" and the fact that this boulder rolled down in front of my father's car just as he was leaving...
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   You know, half the…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:01

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk1:00:01

      You know, half the family says we're Polish and half the family says you're, we are Ukrainian, because from... We're from Galicia, a contested area between the two countries. And half the family says that Grandpa Nick, uh, was a great guy until he went to work in the shipyards in World War II and he was struck in the head by a block and tackle, and after that, Grandpa Nick was crazy. And half the family says that he was always crazy, that he was always narcissistic and violent and, uh, and not a, not a good person.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:36

      Narcissistic and violent is pretty common, but narcissistic and violent with a head injury, I think it's probably both. If I had a guess, knowing what I know about head injuries, I have a lot of experience with people that have had head injuries and because of my... all the work that I've done with the UFC and-

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk1:00:55

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:56

      ... and just paying attention and reading a lot on brain trauma. You know, bring it back to the Roseanne Barr story.

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk1:01:02

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:01:03

      You know, that's what made Roseanne Barr. She was hit by a car when she was 15.Roseanne Barr was sent flying through the air. She was driving, or she was walking across the street when she was 15 years old on the way to school, and a woman had the sun in her face in the windshield that she couldn't see and hit Roseanne Barr. Roseanne Barr was a straight A student, uh, was a, a whiz at math, and then spent the next nine months in a mental health institute afterwards. She couldn't count anymore and, uh, literally was knocked crazy. So when Roseanne Barr's, uh, thing happened and she got canceled, I went out of my way to reach out to her. First of all, because, uh, as a comic, I think she's one of the most important comedians in history. Like, 'cause, uh, like, if I look at the top great comics, I think she's in the top 20. She's... People forget, but during her time when she was on top, Roseanne Barr was a monster. She was so funny. She was such a good standup. And on her show, the original Roseanne show, she was so good. It was such an important cultural milestone, that show. That show was created by brain trauma. Something about brain trauma leaves people impulsive, uh, and it makes them wild. They're reckless, a lot of times more prone to violence. And these, these, uh, these actions are directly created to CTE, which is, uh, chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk1:02:32

      I am so glad you went down that road. And who, who am I... Who is it that I can't think about? The guy who did the vision studies of, uh, that ultimately became motion pictures. Uh, Muybridge. There's so much anecdotal evidence about people with traumatic brain injuries have... Becoming geniuses-

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:02:52

      Mm.

   10. CPChuck Palahniuk1:02:52

       ... or having their breakthrough after being struck in the head.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:02:56

       Mm.

   12. CPChuck Palahniuk1:02:56

       And Muybridge was a guy who had failed at everything. He sold china, he sold encyclopedias. He was a kind of 19th, late 19th century failure. He failed at everything, and then he was going across the country in a stagecoach. The stagecoach tumbled, Muybridge was in a coma, and when he came to, he was Muybridge. He was brilliant. He was the man who more or less invented motion pictures. He was a hero. He was kind of the Tesla of his time, and he was nothing before that stagecoach in- incident. And there's so much anecdotal evidence that shows that when people have been struck in the head, they come out as a kind of savant or really bright in some way.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:03:43

       Mm. I think they come out with less fear.

   14. CPChuck Palahniuk1:03:47

       Hm.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:03:48

       'Cause they, they come out more impulsive. That's, that's one of the, um, more significant and reoccurring themes when it comes to traumatic brain injuries. People are impulsive, and I think impulsive people are more likely to take chances, and I think that ability to take chances sometimes pays dividends. Like you can... You'll, you'll, you could, you could become more successful because you're more willing to take risks. You're not afraid. Paralysis by analysis is what haunts so many people.

   16. CPChuck Palahniuk1:04:21

       Hm.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:04:21

       Because they just constantly think about, "Well, what if I do that? Well, what if it fails or what if it this, what if it that?" Whereas wild people are just like, "Fuck it, let's do it. Let's try it. Let's see, let's go." And those people tend to take more chances, and I think if you take more chances, you're more likely to have more breakthroughs and more successes. And to be less insecure would be a pr- pretty positive factor if you consider someone who's doing something risky like with Roseanne, standup comedy.

   18. CPChuck Palahniuk1:04:54

       Mm.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:04:54

       Sam Kinison, same story.

   20. CPChuck Palahniuk1:04:56

       Oh.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:04:56

       Was hit by a car when he was five years old. His brother wrote about it. His brother, his brother Bill, uh, wrote about it and, um, he wrote a book called Brother Sam or My Brother Sam, and it was about Kinison, how there's, like, Kinison 1 and Kinison 2. When, when Sam was a boy, he was a normal kid, everything was fine. Then he was hit by a car when he was five years old, I think he was five, and then became a fucking wild man. Just once he was hit by a car, you just couldn't contain him. He was crazy. He was like... When he was a preacher, he was the wildest, most irreverent preacher. He was, uh, he had just violent tendencies. There was a sign at The Comedy Store that, for whatever fucking stupid reason they fixed, but it was a sign in the back parking lot where there's a bullet hole in it, where Sam had pulled out a revolver. Uh, I think it was because he was in some sort of a dispute with one of the other comics and decided to shoot this sign. And we would always go by that sign and touch the bullet hole. Like, "This is where fucking Sam Kinison shot..." Like how crazy do you have to be to bring a gun to The Comedy Store and just shoot a sign? And you're, you're a performer there, not just a performer, but the most celebrated performer there at the time. You know, this is in the '80s when he was... I mean, there was a period of time, I think from like 1986 to 1988 where Sam Kinison was the greatest comic that ever lived. He was, it was... He couldn't sustain it 'cause he was doing so much coke-

   22. CPChuck Palahniuk1:06:23

       Mm-hmm.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:06:24

       ... and he was partying, and he wasn't really writing 'cause he was just into being a celebrity and just having a lot of sex and doing a lot of drugs. But that wild, chaotic, irreverent, risk-taking behavior is probably directly connected to him getting hit by a car.

   24. CPChuck Palahniuk1:06:42

       Uh, just a tiny tangent before we go right back there. But are you aware of the histoplasmosis culture?

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:06:49

       Histoplasmosis? I'm aware of toxoplasmosis.

   26. CPChuck Palahniuk1:06:51

       Toxoplasmosis.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:06:52

       Yeah, Toxo-

   28. CPChuck Palahniuk1:06:53

       The, the fighter-

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:06:54

       Parasite, yeah.

   30. CPChuck Palahniuk1:06:54

       Right. Fighters going to Mexico to get it?
6. 1:15:00 – 1:26:42

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      like a danger or an anger or, or just a, a little bit of recklessness from it. For every one story like that, I know so many stories of people who are just gone. And I've known guys from the beginning of their career, where I've met them when they were like 21, 22 years old. Maybe I've called their fights, and maybe I've seen them in, in, in gyms training with them. And then I see them when they're 34-

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk1:15:21

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:15:22

      ... 35, and they're fucked. They're fucked. I can see it in their face. I can see the, the weirdness in their gait. They lose, uh, some of their coordination. And you can see it w- the way they even move around in training. They take shorter steps. They, they look like they're less stable. They just have ... Their, their, their brain's ability to communicate with the body has been beaten out. It's, it's confused. The reflexes are gone. It's just ... It's all just from getting hit in the head.

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk1:15:51

      (smacks lips) So, this is basically a "Kids, don't try this at home"-

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:15:54

      Don't try this at home.

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk1:15:55

      ... try this at home" one. Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:15:55

      I ... Uh, but ... You know, I would let my kids fight before I'd let my kids play football. 'Cause I think football, there's something about that (smacks fists) running into each other that's the-

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk1:16:05

      Mm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:16:05

      ... worst. Like, I think you can learn how to fight, and learn how to fight really well and avoid most of that shit. I think I got brain damage, for sure. I don't know how much.

   10. CPChuck Palahniuk1:16:16

       Mm.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:16:16

       Like, I think you probably got brain damage from that day.

   12. CPChuck Palahniuk1:16:19

       (smacks lips) Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:16:19

       If you got your jaw broken, you got hit pretty hard.

   14. CPChuck Palahniuk1:16:22

       You know, a- and I ... There ... I'm not sure whether it's germane, but my father was a boxer.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:16:28

       Mm.

   16. CPChuck Palahniuk1:16:28

       He was a champion boxer in the Navy. And I knew, when my parents' marriage was over the day we came home from school and all my father's boxing trophies were in the trash. He'd thrown 'em all away. So, yeah, it was just part of the equation.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:16:44

       Yeah. Well, there's a lot of people that got hit in the head that didn't know that it was ... it carries lifelong consequences. Too many people, like, thought of it as being frivolous. Like, they would spar in the gym, and they would spar essentially like a fight. Like, a lot of the sparring that we did when we were kids, it wasn't really sparring. It was fighting. You were fighting. Like, you would just go full blast all the time. People got knocked out in the gym all the time. And then they would be back in the gym a few days later sparring again, which is, like, literally the worst thing you could ever do when you have, like, significant head trauma. But, you know, there's also people that get hit in the head and they learn Spanish. All of a sudden, they can play the piano. It's like ... It's ... The brain is fucking weird, man. The b- the brain ... Like, there's just ... The chemistry of the brain is weird, right? Like, how everyone's vary so, so greatly. But the fact that you could have a knock to it, and then all of a sudden, you develop new talents.

   18. CPChuck Palahniuk1:17:34

       Well, and also, there's the aspect of comfort because there's that whole Temple Grandin group of people who find comfort in slamming their heads against things. You know, uh-

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:17:44

       Huh?

   20. CPChuck Palahniuk1:17:44

       ... severely autistic children.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:17:46

       Oh, okay.

   22. CPChuck Palahniuk1:17:46

       Uh, uh, they slam their head against the wall because there's a kind of comforting chemical thing that happens in doing so.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:17:53

       Oh, really? I didn't know that. I just thought it was, like, a tic or something. Like, when they're slamming their head against the wall, there's comfort in the, the impact?

   24. CPChuck Palahniuk1:18:01

       Yeah, I understood that it, it was ... it was a, a comforting behavior.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:18:05

       (snaps fingers) Hmm. I don't know, man. That is so interesting about your ... that one incidence, you were ... when you were assaulted. I wo- I wonder if that's it, man. It's like a m- a mini sort of Kinison situation or a Roseanne Barr situation.

   26. CPChuck Palahniuk1:18:21

       And the only way people can make these patterns, can identify these patterns, is if people come forward with these anecdotes.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:18:29

       Yeah.

   28. CPChuck Palahniuk1:18:30

       And, you know, anecdotes, uh, uh, ultimately will lead to something empirical, but they're a beginning.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:18:37

       Yeah, they're a beginning. There's enough of them out there that I think we get a map of the territory. There's, there's something there for sure.

   30. CPChuck Palahniuk1:18:44

       And a lot of times, people have forgotten these incidents. They think that they don't ... Uh, they're just one of. That they, they didn't change anything. But then later, when they ... they can identify them according to a major life change.

Episode duration: 2:44:31