The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #1726 - Chuck Palahniuk
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,062 words- 0:00 – 0:12
Intro
- CPChuck Palahniuk
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- NANarrator
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays)
- 0:12 – 5:51
Censorship, “absurdist existentialism,” and writing the unfilmable
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you, man.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Hey, welcome back.
- JRJoe Rogan
Welcome back to you, too.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Uh, this is the dead air part.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Scooch up to the mic.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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?
- JRJoe Rogan
No, I haven't.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
I can piece the two words together.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- 5:51 – 7:31
Canceled books, selective outrage, and what gets protected by popularity
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
The people that do like them, right?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
You know, I think that they, the books still have so much traction in the culture that they, they can't be canceled out. They w- they might be passed hand-to-hand, but they will always be in print.
- JRJoe Rogan
They've removed Tom Sawyer from some, some schools, and there was, uh, some talk about censoring it and, and changing the words because the N word's in it so much.
- 7:31 – 9:20
Chuck’s most-censored book and the Mr. Hands short story controversy
- CPChuck Palahniuk
You know, my book, uh, Make Something Up, uh, was w- the, the biggest censored book of 2016, and I think the only adult-censored book of 2016. But it's still read, it's still out there. Uh, just because a book is kinda removed from libraries, you know, doesn't end the book.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was so censored about it? I didn't read that.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Oh, dear God. Uh, it had, it had a ... Do you remember the story of Mr. Hand, the man's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yes. It had a very touching story-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... about the guy whose daughter ended up buying this horse over the internet at an, at an auction. And sh- he realized that she was only buying the horse because it had this sordid background and she t- intended to exploit this horse, you know, by having her friends take selfies with it. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, it was Mr. Hand's horse.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
It was Mr. Hand's horse.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
And, uh, and also, he was getting all these bids for tens of hundreds of millions of dollars from people around the world who also wanted Mr. Hand's horse-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... for their own purposes. And this is just one of 23 different stories that were all more or less, uh, each offensive in their own way. Done. It's not Roald Dahl.
- JRJoe Rogan
The Mr. Hand story was wild. Did you ever see the documentary about it?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Oh. I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Zoo?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
It's called Zoo.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
And, you know, a lot of people hate that documentary, but I have to like it because one of my best friend's brother-in-law made that documentary. So officially, I love that documentary.
- JRJoe Rogan
Officially?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Officially.
- JRJoe Rogan
It wasn't the best, but how do you make a documentary about something that you can't show? You know? It's like, they, they were in a weird position.
- 9:20 – 14:57
How to tell (or film) the unshowable: documentary structure and expanding themes
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Well, do you remember, uh, uh, Into the Wild, the cr- the fr-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... the first big Krakauer book? When you go through that book, it's really fascinating because you know that Krakauer only had so much material about Chris McCandless. It's just a few months out of the kid's life. And so, how does he deal with that material? So he starts in, kind of after the fact, establishing the bus, the death scene. And then he starts in a very linear deep flashback, taking Chris McCandless up to a certain point. And then he expands for several chapters saying Chris is not the first young guy at that age to sort of throw everything away and, and hit the road. And he profiles maybe a half dozen sort of famous guys who did the exact same thing and kind of disappeared in the culture. And so he expands the theme showing that historically, it's not a one-of, that, that young men have always taken these kind of pilgrimages to find themselves. And then just before Chris McCandless is, is killed, he depicts himself climbing that, that steep mountain in Alaska by himself at the age of 23 and almost dying. And so he illustrates the theme over and over both with McCandless in the present and with these historical figures doing the exact same thing, and then with himself explaining why this story is so compelling for him, because he did the same thing at that age and he didn't die, and then we show Chris dying. And so if you're gonna do the, the zoo story, you need to expand it beyond the story itself. You need to look for where it occurs and is sort of, uh, illustrated in other aspects of the culture both historically and in other parts of the world. You need to expand the theme beyond just what actually happened.
- JRJoe Rogan
How would y- how would you do that?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Oh my gosh, you know ...
- JRJoe Rogan
Talk about the culture of people that are zoophiliacs?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Exactly. You would go down that road. Uh, you'd probably pixelate a lot of faces.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
You'd also talk historically, you'd find some academic to talk about it. Yeah. It, just, it would've been very easy to do-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... but it would've taken a little more work.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Well, they, they had like recreations and that, didn't they? Like these actors or something.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
They did and they were always kind of soft focus and there were shadows on walls.
- JRJoe Rogan
We should probably tell people what we're talking about. The, the, the Mr. Hand is a video about a guy getting fucked to death by a horse. It's not necessarily, uh ... The video that's available that you can watch, and we found it the other day and we watched it, is not the guy actually getting fucked to death by the horse. It is just him getting fucked by the horse. Apparently they don't have the video of him actually dying.... uh, or the one time that killed him. It punctured his organs or whatever it did internally that ruptured him, and they had to bring him to the emergency room. And then the, the police were called and they started questioning him like, "What's going on here?" And then they found out that... Well, the whole story was that it's legal in Washington State to have sex with, with animals.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
It's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Or it was.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
It was, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Because of this death, they changed the laws. But these people would meet online. I guess they had like a website that they would go to. And then they would, uh, say, you know, "Hey, uh, my buddy's got a farm. Let's party." And, uh, it was-
- CPChuck Palahniuk
It was- wasn't even his farm. He was the caretaker-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... of some wealthy people who had these horses.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
And the wealthy people had no idea that they were running a brothel.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
See, the thing about Into the Wild is, that's a story that many people can sort of relate to. You can kind of relate to this idea that society and (sighs) materialism, and there's... The, the, the road that everyone's on is fruitless and, and filled with angst and no one, no one wants to live like that, but they just do. They do because everyone has before them, but really, you're better off just being free and just going into the wild. Like, that, that appeals to so many people, the idea that the path that we're headed down with civilization is... It's not healthy, it's not natural, and ultimately it's gonna be our demise. So there's so many people that like th- the idea of going to the woods is really appealing. The idea of getting fucked to death by a horse-
- CPChuck Palahniuk
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... far more difficult sell. Like, you know, the... (laughs) To make it relatable...
- CPChuck Palahniuk
You know, and I don't think it's ever gonna be relatable relatable. Um, but yeah, at least in the short story that I wrote, uh, the, the, the main character makes the point or he explores the point that we find it funny because it was a white male, uh, engineer for like NASA or Boeing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. Something like that, yeah.
- 14:57 – 22:04
From elk pheromones to Fight Club backstory: nature, hunting, and dark humor mechanics
- CPChuck Palahniuk
It's, uh... The other day at Bi-Mart, which is kind of 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
I did not know that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you hunt 'em in the rut.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you see them out there? Those are only like six months old.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
So, are they bigger every year or are they-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... the same size?
- JRJoe Rogan
Until they start going downhill.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
There should be a law, okay? Uh, they should make a law against that.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) About... Against elk murder?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yeah, against... Uh, that's... This is horrible.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, that's how they breed, that's-
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Nature is horrible.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- 22:04 – 40:14
Bigfoot skepticism, cryptids, and the thin line between myth and evidence
- JRJoe Rogan
They, they have, like, a barking sound they make. They go bark and rooar. They make, like, a weird sound but it's, it's generally the, the male's bugle. They make a scre- Have you heard an elk bugle? Oh, Jamie, you gotta pull this up 'cause it's one of the wildest sounds in nature and, uh, it's one of my favorite things. Like, when you're... when you're hunting them and you're around them and you're hiding in the woods and you're sneaking up on them and you hear them bugle, your hairs stand up on the end because- (elk calling) they sound like demons in a fucking Hobbit movie. Listen to this.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
That sounds like... (elk calling) Do you remember in the '70s, that was sold as the Bigfoot noise?
- JRJoe Rogan
Was it?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yeah, that was the Bigfoot or the Sasquatch noise. (elk calling)
- JRJoe Rogan
I think there was a bunch of noises sold as a Sasquatch noise but, (elk calling) but if they tried to say that noise was a Sasquatch noise, any elk hunter would go, "Shut the fuck up." Th- uh, that... You can hear that every year. Like, you could find them. Bigfoot, you can't find. You can find that noise.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
It was the '70s, okay?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
We didn't have the internet.
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you ever heard the samurai sounds when he's speaking about a Sasquatch? It's m- one of the most ridiculous noises. There was these folks that were in the mountains of northern California and they claimed that they were surrounded by Sasquatch and these Sasquatch had a language and you hear the language and it, it, it's so preposterous and so stupid sounding. You know, some things they just... you just know, you know? Like, there's no if, ands or buts, this is bullshit and this is one of them. The samurai sounds. It sounds like they're Japanese. (wood knocking) So they're knocking on trees. They made recordings of this. It's so convenient that they had a recording device right when they were experiencing Sasquatch. But you also can hear when the men are talking and describing th- these sounds in the distance, (men yelling) you can tell they're full of shit. Like, you can tell (men yelling) they're bad actors, they're not... they're just... they're not experiencing what they're saying they're experiencing. They're pretending. You can tell when they're pretending. Let me hear some of this. (men yelling) This is a bad version of it, huh? (static)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Not 500,000 views.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
But tried.
- JRJoe Rogan
See if we can find where they start. (static) Here it goes.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Astrafeno?
- JRJoe Rogan
Here. Here. Yeah, that's right. (static)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Eh, ha. Eh, ha.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, right? (static) We would have to sit here and listen for 20 minutes to get some really good versions of it, but the, the sounds like... (gibberish) Like, it literally sounds like that, like sounds completely fake. And these folks are trying to pass this off as, uh, Sasquatch language.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
So what, what year?
- JRJoe Rogan
70s, right?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Okay. Okay. Yep. '71 ish.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Back when everybody couldn't get good acid anymore and they were just going off into the woods trying to find things. (laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yeah. You know, uh, there were so many things that... Legend of Boggy Creek made so much money-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... that I could see everybody wanting to get on board for that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, everybody wanted to believe after the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage, that, that-
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
That was the footage where it's like the dumbest, fakest looking footage of all time of this guy in a, a monkey suit that's just wandering through... That is a guy named Bob Hieronymus.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a real guy who put this monkey suit on and, you know, confessed and told everybody he did it. What's funny about the Patterson footage is like, it is, it is the footage that the people who believe in UFOs, or excuse me, Bigfoot, cling to the most. The Patterson footage is their Holy Grail. But the guy who made that footage was arrested for writing a bad check to pay for the very camera that he used to film this. Like he was a fucking con man and he hi... And he even told people that he was gonna go out there and film Bigfoot, and then went out there with this camera that he kind of stole and then filmed his buddy in a monkey suit. Like they, they tracked where he bought the suit, like the whole... It's like this... And there's video footage of side by side of Bob Hieronymus walking. Bob Hieronymus was this big cowboy fella, you know, and he, he had kind of like an awkward gait. And then you see there's... They did side by side footage of Bob Hieronymus walking next to the Bigfoot creature, the, in the suit walking, and it so clearly looks like a guy in a gorilla suit. Like so clearly. And when you see Bob walking, it so clearly looks like Bob in a gorilla suit 'cause he had... He was just a big fella just to... You know, like probably six foot three awkward looking cowboy guy.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
It's just... It's like you just killed Santa Claus.
- 40:14 – 53:35
Psychics, hidden stories, and why humiliation becomes powerful art
- JRJoe Rogan
Why do you like those, like deeply uncomfortable moments so much?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Because they're the same thing, uh, that laughter is that relief, that ongoing relief of tension. You're creating tension and you're resolving it very quickly, and you're allowing people to sort of build up a greater and greater tension because they're trusting you more, and you're getting in under their radar because you're gradually assuring them that you're never gonna take them too far. And then once they're completely on board, then you take them too far, and y- you completely break their hearts when they're deepest in the story. And then you offer a kind of pale, lame denouement at the end, some silly, sad, little bit of comfort like Whoopi Goldberg does at the end of that, uh, beach girl story.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is it about that feeling of discomfort that brings you joy, or what... that, that you enjoy giving to, to people that are reading your stuff? Is it just that you don't like the cliché sloppy endings that the w- where everything is gonna be fine and everything's great, and the world is different in literature than it is in real life? Like what is it about these moments, like these moments of darkness where you do break everybody's heart? Why do you enjoy them so much?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
I enjoy them because they prove I'm not the only one.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
I'm not the only one that's had these moments of complete humiliation-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... or complete powerlessness. Um, one story I've always loved is my best friend in college, hi- his father was this mining professor and this very super macho guy, and my best friend Franz was like the son that just wasn't turning out right. And in their household, they had a bunch of kids, girls and boys. And one day, Franz's dad had all of his, his beer-drinking football buds over to watch the Super Bowl, and Franz found this old doll that had been around the house for, for decades. It was called Sissy, and it barely had a hair left on its little doll head. And Franz sat there as maybe a five or six-year-old little boy, and he very carefully untangled Sissy's hair, and he back combed it, and he teased it, and he dressed it into a big bouffant, and even got one of his mother's brooches, and he put that brooch through the front of this beehive hairdo to hold it in place, very Marie Antoinette-And he was so proud that he had turned this really decrepit, ugly thing into something passably pretty. He had sort of redeemed it. And then he took it to his father in front of all of his father's friends in the Super Bowl, and he said, "Daddy, Daddy, look. I made Sissy pretty."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
And his father was so (laughs) humiliated that he beat Frans right there in front of their whole peer group. He, he just beat Frans. And the story is so painful, but everybody's had a pain like that. Everybody has done that, that thing out of innocence and expression that, for whatever reason, got you slammed, and nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about it because it's so painful and because everyone thinks they're the only one. And so if I can take some of those stories and bring them to light, it creates this opening for everyone to say, "Oh my God, (laughs) I once did this thing, and my parents reacted badly to it," or, "It destroyed my life, and I've never been the same." Uh, and when Frans told me that story, he was almost weeping, but he was laughing as he was telling the story because he had to keep laughing in order to keep telling the story, and that's what I'm always shooting for.
- JRJoe Rogan
Those are the moments, like tho- those kinda stories are the ones that hit people the hardest because you know that the child has no idea that what they're doing is going to be uncomfortable for anybody. Like, they have real pride in it. Like, uh, here is a parallel is the story that you told before, uh, I guess three years ago when you were talking about the writing workshop that you had done where, uh, you were talking about someone else's story about how they were jacking off in a jacuzzi and their anus got prolapsed. And this woman at the writing workshop felt comfortable 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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
The heating pad story.
- JRJoe Rogan
The heating pad story-
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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-
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and she never orgasmed again.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
All you did was make a doll pretty. Like, what happened?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
How accurate was her depiction? Do you remember-
- CPChuck Palahniuk
It was-
- JRJoe Rogan
... what your father was wearing?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that the only experience you've ever had with psychics?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- 53:35 – 1:01:03
Chuck’s father’s murder and the comfort (and danger) of finding patterns
- JRJoe Rogan
How was your father murdered?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus Christ.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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...
- JRJoe Rogan
That prevented him from getting there in time, where he probably would've been able to escape before the ex-boyfriend arrived.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Or was... I don't know. There's so many odd, bizarre coincidences and synchronicities. You know, you could sort of... You would have to really, um, dismiss a lot of things in order to make this not something, uh, significant.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not fate, or not some reoccurring theme woven into time.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
And in a way that, you know, understanding all these different aspects of it, i- it provides a comfort that it doesn't seem like this random thing. It seems like something that my father's... Uh, some aspect of my father's life that was coming full circle, uh, and was finally being completed. And maybe I am clutching at straws and I'm just a kind of person looking for significance, which is what we all are, um, but I'll take comfort where I can find it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did he ever explain to you why his father was looking to kill him and looking to kill his mother?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and just paying attention and reading a lot on brain trauma. You know, bring it back to the Roseanne Barr story.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Mm-hmm.
- 1:01:03 – 1:25:57
Brain trauma, creativity, and the violent “switch” that changed Chuck’s writing
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... or having their breakthrough after being struck in the head.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm. I think they come out with less fear.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Hm.
- JRJoe Rogan
'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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Hm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sam Kinison, same story.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Uh, just a tiny tangent before we go right back there. But are you aware of the histoplasmosis culture?
- JRJoe Rogan
Histoplasmosis? I'm aware of toxoplasmosis.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Toxoplasmosis.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, Toxo-
- CPChuck Palahniuk
The, the fighter-
- JRJoe Rogan
Parasite, yeah.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Right. Fighters going to Mexico to get it?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
You haven't heard? Ah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I didn't know they go to get it, really.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
Yeah. Apparently you can go to, uh... There's been this, uh, uh, program where you can go down to Mexico and be exposed to toxoplasmosis because they're finding people who carry the parasite, uh-... are much more reckless-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- CPChuck Palahniuk
... and aggressive, and-
- 1:25:57 – 1:37:49
Pandemic projects: building a stone “castle,” gym camaraderie, and training philosophy
- JRJoe Rogan
What kind of exercise has been... What suits you best?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
You know, I always thought it was lifting weights. And then last year with the lockdown and the gyms closed, I went to a stone yard and I ordered six dump trucks of granite and I built a castle.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- CPChuck Palahniuk
I had this promontory of land. I owned a, an island property surrounded by national park. I don't have any neighbors for a mile and a half in any direction. But I had this r- promontory that looked into a, uh, fantastically beautiful gorge, and I always thought I wanted to build a kind of ruin right there. And I just set out and I built a castle. I built one room with tall peaked windows.
Episode duration: 2:44:31
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