Skip to content
The Joe Rogan ExperienceThe Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan Experience #1795 - Antonio Garcia Martinez

Antonio García Martínez is a tech entrepreneur, writer, former Facebook product manager, and author of "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley."

Antonio García MartínezguestJoe Roganhost
Jun 27, 20242h 49mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:12

    Intro

    1. AM

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

    2. NA

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

  2. 0:12 – 4:35

    Antonio’s surprise Ukraine trip: why go see the war firsthand?

    1. JR

      Joe Rogan. So what's up, man? How are you?

    2. AM

      Thanks for having me, Joe. I'm very excited to be here.

    3. JR

      My pleasure. It's always interesting to meet somebody that you only know from their tweets.

    4. AM

      (laughs)

    5. JR

      You know, I only know you from your tweets, which I found very interesting, and then I started reading your book or listening to your book, or another person reads it, and, uh, I've seen some interviews with you, so I thought it'd be fun to have you in there.

    6. AM

      Cool. Thank you.

    7. JR

      Have a little chitchat.

    8. AM

      Great. Thanks for having me, Joe.

    9. JR

      (laughs) My pleasure. So you just got back from Ukraine?

    10. AM

      Y- I know. I'm, I'm totally throwing a wrench in the agenda.

    11. JR

      No, there was no agenda.

    12. AM

      We're supposed to talk about cancellation or whatever, but, yeah, I, for a bunch of reasons, I just up and went to Poland and Ukraine to see what was going on there.

    13. JR

      So this was just your own idea to just take a trip?

    14. AM

      N- not totally. One of the gigs I have, I, I have a gig at a, at a DC think tank, and one of my colleagues who's done like real in the field correspondent work before proposed a trip, and a bunch of people expressed interest, and I'm basically the only one who didn't wimp out and (laughs) and went with him. Uh-

    15. JR

      So it was just you and this one guy?

    16. AM

      And we had, you know, drivers and fixers and stuff, 'cause I, I don't speak any Slavic languages, and y- you basically need it to sort of navigate that world. A- and also, in a, in a wartime economy, regular transport doesn't work, so y- you need to get around somehow, and so w- we did have, we, we tended to have a driver usually.

    17. JR

      So what is that conversation like? So when someone says, "Hey, let's go to Ukraine"-

    18. AM

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      ... y- w- like, w- what was the goal? Was it just to see it firsthand? Was it to get... Is there any information that you can get when you're on the ground that would sort of g- clarify the situation for you?

    20. AM

      Yeah. I mean, we can get into this, but I think th- the view that you see of Ukraine from the United States I think is so blinded by both American domestic political, you know, priorities and the whole, the whole kaleidoscope that is the Twitter experience, I felt you have to go there to see the real thing. And, um, you know, it's, it's history with a capital H in the sort of, you know, Francis Fukuyama sense of, you know, th- this is, this is a real, this is a real invasion, th- the likes of which we haven't seen in Europe in, whatever, 70 plus years. And it's just something that... I've lived in Europe, I, I have an EU passport, so I, I feel a little bit European in, in that regard, so I think I engage with the story a little bit differently than maybe than Americans do, and so I felt I just had to go there and, and see it for myself.

    21. JR

      So when you went there, w- was this idea related at all to business, to your-

    22. AM

      Oh, no, no, no.

    23. JR

      So this was just for your own edification?

    24. AM

      W- well, I did... I, I, I am doing a story. So there's, um, there's a publication that I occasionally pitch stories to called Tablets, a Jewish magazine. Um, the Israelis are doing a bunch of stuff on the Polish border to get Jews out, and so there's, there's a whole Jewish angle to the story. And then also just for... So I have a Substack, which I should probably plug, I guess, The Pull Request. Um-

    25. JR

      What is it?

    26. AM

      The, The Pull Request.

    27. JR

      Pull? P-O-L-E?

    28. AM

      Yeah. P- PUL. I- it's, it's like a nerdy term.

    29. JR

      PUL?

    30. AM

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. PUL. A, a pull request is like when a coder is actually coding a piece of software. It's like they request that the main code base pull from them, and so it's like saying, "Hey, read my shit and, like, integrate it with your shit."

  3. 4:35 – 13:15

    Refugees on the Polish border: scale, demographics, and volunteer response

    1. JR

      So how m- uh, how many dames- days were you over there for?

    2. AM

      Uh, I was there about a week and a half. So I, I spent a lot of time on the Polish border, so, um, getting to the serious side of the story, which I, I... I know we're joking, sort of gallows humor, but it's a very serious story. There's a whole refugee situation going on. So about, uh, about 10 million Ukrainians, the UN has declared, are displaced, and that means either internally they've moved around Ukraine or externally they've left, and so a quarter of the country is basically a refugee at this point.

    3. JR

      Wow.

    4. AM

      I, I know. And it, it's, it's like, it's like-

    5. JR

      So how many people is that?

    6. AM

      ... day 25 or day 26 of the war.

    7. JR

      What i- what is the entire population?

    8. AM

      It's about 40 million, so we're talking about 10 million people that are refu-

    9. JR

      Holy shit.

    10. AM

      ... over three million of which have left Ukraine at the last count, th- which is a big number.

    11. JR

      Wow.

    12. AM

      And most of them are crossing the border with Poland, which is the country to the west of it, um, or Romania or Slovakia, some of the other countries, mostly Poland. And so the trip actually started... So I flew into Warsaw, and my first experience of like, this is not normal little Disneyland Europe, you go to the Warsaw train station, uh, which tends to be the terminus for a lot of the refugees that come across the border, and, you know, it's, it's basically a refugee camp. The, the upper floor of the train station, um, is taken over by families, and, you know, every family has like a blanket maybe half the size of this table.

    13. JR

      Wow.

    14. AM

      And, um, one of the interesting things about the Ukrainian refugee situation is that it's almost all, like, I'm talking like 80-90%, women and children. The Ukrainian government doesn't allow any male from the age of, I think, 18 to 60 to leave, and also many Ukrainian males are just volunteering. They don't wanna leave. They wanna fight for their country. And so whether you're in, you know, the Warsaw train station or whether you're standing, as I was standing many times, at the actual border watching them walk across, it's literally, you know, a mother in her 20s and 30s with like two or three kids in tow, maybe a cat in a carrier with like a little rolly bag, and that's it.Just a, just picture an unending stream of that walking across the border. They're walking because usually, they don't ... Well, some of them probably did walk to the border, the most desperate ones. They usually don't walk. They take some conveyance, either a train or bus. But getting those through the border is basically impossible, so they literally abandon however they got there and just walk across.

    15. JR

      How many people are there that are like you, that are observing and just witnessing?

    16. AM

      There's a, there's a good number of journalists. Um, particularly in the western part of Ukraine, which is relatively safe. You know, it wasn't like I was there with bullets flying around me or anything like that. Uh, you know, I was joking with friends like, "You know, I don't know that this is any more dangerous than walking across San Francisco's Tenderloin, to be honest, in the scheme of things."

    17. JR

      (laughs)

    18. AM

      So it wasn't like that dangerous, so. But there's a lot of journalists in, in the western part. There are, there are some journalists who are in the dangerous parts, in-

    19. JR

      Isn't Sean Penn there?

    20. AM

      I think he ... Yeah, I think he's been there this entire time, yeah.

    21. JR

      Wild.

    22. AM

      Yeah. But, but there's like teams from NPR, New York Times, CNN, who are doing like real war reporting, which I was not doing

    23. JR

      I, I know a journalist was killed recently. There was-

    24. AM

      More than one, yeah.

    25. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    26. AM

      There, there was, um, yeah. There was a guy who, um, I think a producer who worked for Fox News, and then there was a former New York Times journalist who was killed, and they were on the front line in Kiev, which is indeed very dangerous.

    27. JR

      And so when you were there, you didn't have a specific goal other than to just kind of get a visual and experience it and sort of see for yourself. What was surprising?

    28. AM

      I, it's, to be clear, I, I did have a goal. Um, as a, as a side thread, to me, I'm, I'm converting to Judaism, so there's a Jewish side to my life, um, and what the Israelis are doing ... So Ukraine has something like over 300,000 Jews, and then, you know, the plight of what the Jews are going on there I think was, was one specific intent. But you're right that broadly I didn't have a specific intent. What, what surprised me the most, two things I would say. Um, one is, again, the scale of it. Like it's, it's literally millions of people li- of leaving. And I think, again, coming from the US, Europe has reacted to this crisis in a unified, just like all-consuming way that I think obviously you don't see here, 'cause we're not next door to it. But if you, if you go to this ... Again, let me paint you a picture, and I've got a bunch of photos that I'll be posting on my Substack this week and next week. You go to a borders checks, checkpoint. The Polish police will only let you go so far, unless you're actually crossing, which I did eventually. You've got this constant stream of, again, mothers with their only bags and kids, and then you've got basically a, a refugee camp there (laughs) of everything from Polish Boy Scouts to, uh, Jose Andres, that Spanish chef who has all these-

    29. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    30. AM

      ... food programs. He has a major presence there. Every, every stop there was basically his world food kitchens, whatever it's called, serving up food. And then those who are ill get tended to, and then they have buses going to another larger refugee camp, and then there they try to find rides for them and sort of sort it out. And what's fascinating is that, you know, the Polish state has pretty good state capacities, a lot of firefighters, police, soldiers. Like there's a lot of ... But, but the actual care for refugees, like the food, the chocolate bar the kid gets, is mostly or almost exclusively volunteers and NGOs. And there isn't that much top-down organization. Like you go there and it's like, it's like every little NGO or every little tribe that has some refugees that are coming out. Like, for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses are there, so you walk across and there's somebody holding a sign that says jw.org. They're not proselytizing. I interviewed them. They're not proselytizing. They're just there for other Jehovah Witnesses that are coming across and-

  4. 13:15 – 1:08:06

    Living next to war: Lviv routines, sirens, and how ‘normal’ persists

    1. JR

      It's, it's so hard to wrap your head around when you're over here.

    2. AM

      That's right.

    3. JR

      Imagine going over there and then coming back here must seem even more surreal.

    4. AM

      It is. You know, it's, it's funny, humans are, can so adjust to things. So, in, so I spent a lot of time mostly in Lviv, which is a beautiful little town, western part of Ukraine. It used to be considered the safe city in Ukraine because it was relatively untouched by the war. The night after I left, actually the airport got hit with cruise missiles. (laughs)

    5. JR

      (exhales) .

    6. AM

      But, but before then, it was still a fairly open city. There'd be air raid sirens every night, people would tend to ignore them. Like, I got all freaked out the first time, it was, like, 3:00 in the morning and the hotel actually has a basement, and they actually have, like, little beanbag chairs and stuff in there for guests, like, to hang out in the basement as the air raid sirens go off. I did it the first time, then I'm like, second time, I'm like, "Eh, come on, what are the chances?" So I just went back to sleep. Um, and again, it, it sounds crazy, but y- you just get used to that. And then coming back, it's like, wow, everything... I came back to San Francisco and I went to a little hipster coffee shop and, you know, the little hipster conversations they're having next to me, it's like ... And, like, literally 24 or 48 hours before, it was like air raid sirens (laughs) it's like, "Whoa, this is weird." Especially, what, what is normal now seemed weird. (laughs)

    7. JR

      It is weird how humans can adjust, right?

    8. AM

      Yeah. Like, I, I didn't go, unfortunately, for the reasons I mentioned, but, like, I understand that in Kiev, which is much closer to the front lines and is much more in the shit, people have also settled into some sort of routine, right? Um, and it's funny, one of the first things I saw when I got to Lviv, and I was still a little freaked out, right? 'Cause I was, like, scared to go to Ukraine, like, w- 'cause once you cross that border again, it's like who knows what's gonna happen?

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AM

      I don't speak the language, different currency, transport is broken down. You're just, like, there with your little backpack (laughs) in the western edge of a war zone. I get there and there's, like, a couple making out on the street. I'm like, "Oh, look, normal human life continues." (laughs)

    11. JR

      (laughs)

    12. AM

      It's like, "Well, life finds a way."

    13. JR

      I think y- it was you that I read a quote about, you were talking about Sebastian Junger's book.

    14. AM

      Yeah, yeah.

    15. JR

      Tribe, yeah-

    16. AM

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      ... which I loved. It's an amazing book.

    18. AM

      It is.

    19. JR

      But you were talking about which conflict was it where the people-

    20. AM

      Sarajevo.

    21. JR

      ... Sarajevo.

    22. AM

      B- Bosnia.

    23. JR

      Right, yeah. Bosnia and Sarajevo, where they missed it.

    24. AM

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      'Cause, and, and I've talked to guys who've served overseas and they have similar stories, where there's something about coming back here, and Hurt Locker kind of has touched on that a little bit, it's, like, th- there's something about those experiences of heightened existence-

    26. AM

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      ... where every day is, like, legitimate life or death. And then you come back to the dull, gray drone of corporate life and traffic and, and they legitimately miss conflict zones.

    28. AM

      Yeah. It's like that scene in Hurt Locker when he goes to buy cereal and he just has a meltdown because he can't deal with-

    29. JR

      Yeah.

    30. AM

      ... what cereal to choose. I, I know it's weird. I, I'll, I'll paint you another scene. Uh, on Sunday, I was there, again, walking around. Life seems normal, but then it gets weird fast. Bunch of high school kids kinda horsing around, you know, Sunday, sunny, you're like, "What are they doing?" Just, like, a pile of dirt. They're filling up sandbags and piling up sandbags around these statues of lions. L- the lion is a symbol of the city. And so they were, like, singing patriotic songs, everyone's doom-scrolling Telegram to see the most recent news, like, "Oh, Czech Republic promises more aid, uh, in the war against the Russians or whatever." Everyone cheers, and then they go back to, like, filling sandbags and piling up around these statues. And it's like, man, it's kinda weird (laughs) to have high school kids who can't join, you can't volunteer, you have to be 18, and so instead they're doing other things, like filling sandbags, and it's just... yeah.

  5. 16:50 – 20:33

    What U.S. discourse misses: memes, misinformation, and Ukrainian resolve

    1. JR

      ... you know, 40 years ago or whatever it was. 30 years ago? So, it's, like, to, to watch this all happen on the news and then to be there live, what was different about the coverage that you're seeing on mainstream media in, in the United States-

    2. AM

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      ... versus being there live? Is there anything, any distortions that, like-

    4. AM

      Oh, yeah.

    5. JR

      ... clear distortions that we're being, that we're seeing here?

    6. AM

      Yeah. Uh ... And it's funny, coming back at, like, it really pisses me off (laughs) , I told myself I wouldn't get angry on your show about it, 'cause a, a lot of the Twitter rhetoric around the supposed bio-weapons labs or, you know, the Ghost of Kiev, or some of the early memes that happened in the war that were proven to be, you know, like many online memes, not true or exaggerated or whatever-

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. AM

      ... or, like, w- you know, what, what would have Trump done or not done or how does Hunter Biden's laptop play into all this? And it, I know those are terribly important signifiers in the American political conversation. They're completely meaningless (laughs) on the ground in Ukraine.

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AM

      Nobody cares about bio-weapons labs, no one cares about ... People get obsessed about what the State Department did or didn't do in the revolution that happened in 2000, early on in Ukraine, and again (sighs) , I think one of the luxuries that we have here in the United States and, you know, and, and it is a luxury and it's, and it's good in some sense that we have it, is the, is that we take the outside world and we project it onto our own, like, domestic political neuroses, right? And we d- and we almost think that the outside world is downstream of our domestic political process. And that's, that's just not true. I mean, it's, it's true in some cases, right? And certainly the US has impact on the world overseas, but it, it's just not the case that a lot of the Twitter rhetoric you see is, is remotely meaningful. Um, that, that's at a high level. Another thing I think it missed is, like, the level ... Like, the surprise that met everybody, and, like, I, I'll admit, I d- I knew very little t- to nothing about Ukraine before this. It's just not a region of the world that I know much about, I don't speak a Slavic language. I speak other languages and have been to other parts of the world, so to me, it was very novel to go there. And I have to say, I went there with a, a good helping of ignorance. But one thing I, once I got there, I realized, man-... the Ukrainians are super nationalistic. I, they v- they see this as their national project, right? This is ... this, to them, is like a nationhood birthing moment. Like, they are committed to remaining free of, of Russia. And I ... I, I'm not a military guy, I'm not gonna make predictions about the war, but I just don't see how the Russians can hold such a country. Um, it, it's huge, by the way. It's like the size of Texas. And east to west, it's longer, 'cause it's kind of a flat country. So it, it's a big country. I don't think the Russians came with enough guys to sort- to actually control most of this country, and I think most of the country ... It's funny, I was talking to a hacker dude, like a nerd dude who is, like, denial of service attacking a lot of Russian websites and trying to knock 'em down. There's a whole cyber war going on, right? You know, and he's just, like, this nerdy kid who's, like, on the an- the Anonymous chat channels-

    11. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    12. AM

      ... and, like, doing all this stuff. And he's telling me this whole nerdy walkthrough of how he does it, and at the end, he just looks at me with a steely glance and goes, "We will win." M- my fixer, my translator in Lviv, who, um, young gal, you know, university student studying computer science, li- like a college student, right? Very carefree, very charming, very positive. She would end her conversations the same way. "We will win," right?

    13. JR

      (laughs) .

    14. AM

      There's, there's a level of commitment there that I think the rest of the world, certainly Putin, has, uh, underestimated, in terms of the Ukrainians.

    15. JR

      So do you think that he thought he was just gonna go in there and it was gonna be like Crimea?

    16. AM

      Apparently.

    17. JR

      They would sort of roll in everybody would sort of give up, and they would control the state?

    18. AM

      That seems to be the case, that it was supposed to be a decapitation exercise in which ... You know, Kiev isn't that far from the border. I mean, it's-

    19. JR

      Right.

    20. AM

      ... it's a few tens of kilometers. They would just roll in, take out the current government, kill Zelenskyy or whatever, sideline him, and that would be the end of it. And that is absolutely not what's happening.

  6. 20:33 – 26:35

    Battlefield realities and escalation fears: supply lines, mud season, and chemical/nuclear risk

    1. JR

      When you see the trucks rolling in very obviously on these roads, and then you see these guys with missile launchers standing on the sides of the road shooting at the trucks, you're like, "Who planned this?" This is a terrible pla- It's like, did you think that they were just gonna see the trucks and go, "Well, we don't want any part of this. Let's just get outta here"?

    2. AM

      Right. (laughs)

    3. JR

      It seems like a crazy plan. Like, if, if you were expecting any sort of resistance, that seems like suicide. Just drive on a very obvious, straight path, where there's things to hide behind, where people are hiding behind it-

    4. AM

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      ... launching missiles at, uh, uh, uh, armed carriers.

    6. AM

      I mean, that seems to be the current Ukrainian strategy. Um, you don't see a lot of counteroffensives. They're not taking back cities, 'cause that would require a lot of armor that they don't have. But you see a lot of bloodletting and of basically hitting their supply lines behind the front lines, in exactly the way that you're saying. You've got a bunch of trucks coming with fuel and food, and they just annihilate the entire column, they just take out the entire column.

    7. JR

      I had, um, Mike Baker on, who is a former CIA operative, the other day, and he was trying to lay out what he knows about it from a foreign policy perspective, from his years of service. And he was ... Uh, uh, uh, the way he was laying it out was not pretty, when he was talking about the, the possibilities and the options, like how it could possibly play out. W- what do they think on the ground? Like, do they have an idea of what, what could happen or how it could happen?

    8. AM

      I wouldn't claim to know what the Russians are thinking. I'll say this, though-

    9. JR

      No, I mean the Ukrainians.

    10. AM

      Oh. Um-

    11. JR

      How do they think it's gonna play out? Do they, do they think there's gonna come a point in time where there's enough losses, where Russia has to decide to either escalate to a nuclear option or leave?

    12. AM

      I think the Ukrainian on the street just thinks that they're gonna hold out forever and that the entire nation is unified and they're just not gonna give in. I think that's what the thought is.

    13. JR

      (sighs)

    14. AM

      And, and by the way (laughs) , who came up with the genius idea, the whole Ukrainian mud thing, by the way, having traipsed around western Ukraine, is real. It's-

    15. JR

      What is that?

    16. AM

      Um, there's actually a, a Russian name for it that I won't try to pronounce it 'cause I'll mispronounce it, but there's actually a Russian name for mud season in Ukraine, because it's a very fertile place. Like, it produces an enormous amount of, of wheat and other crops. And, um, it's just very muddy. And so when you have the winter thaw, right, the ground is this, like, completely consuming mud that if you step in it, you're sucked in to your ankle. And if you s- You might wonder, like, why are the Russians on the road? It seems, like, totally dangerous. Because they'll get stuck in the mud otherwise (laughs) , right? Just all these-

    17. JR

      Oh, Jesus.

    18. AM

      Yeah, yeah. There's all these videos of, like, a column of, like, four T-72s, you know, up to their tank tracks in mud, and they just can't get 'em out, 'cause the mud is that thick.

    19. JR

      Holy shit.

    20. AM

      And it's gonna be mud season for, for months now, right? Un- up until summer, until it dries out. It's a very gray ... Like, at night, it gets super fucking cold, but then it heats up during the day, and the mud just turns into ooze. And so you can't get off the road, right?

    21. JR

      So what the fuck are the Russians gonna do?

    22. AM

      I don't know.

    23. JR

      I read, uh, an article that was saying that they need at least a minimum of 500,000 people if they really wanted to occupy Ukraine.

    24. AM

      Right.

    25. JR

      So they would have to take 500,000 people outta Russia and move them to Ukraine to start running things, and you'd have to run everything. You gotta run the utilities, you have to run the government, you have to run everything.

    26. AM

      And that's more than 2X what they currently are. I, I think their original strike force was only, like, 200,000 soldiers, so they, they'd need a lot more people. I think what they're probably gonna do, a- and again, I'm not a military guy, but they're clearly trying to consolidate in the east and join some of their thrusts on s- some of the, what they already control, between Crimea and, uh, the Donbas, wh- wh- which has had a separatist movement for a long time. They're obviously trying to coalesce that, and I think they're less obsessed with taking Kiev, in which they've made no progress. That's ... I stare at the map every day now for weeks, and that's, that seems to be what's going on.

    27. JR

      (sighs)

    28. AM

      But like you said, there's always the, the odd chance they use either chemical or nuclear weapons. I think Biden yesterday publicly said that the Russians are considering chemical weapons. I mean, that could be a, a propaganda ploy or whatever, but it's in the air. Um, and yeah, that would-

    29. JR

      You get a sense, there's a, a strange sense that the government is about to throw our administration under the bus. Uh, I get this weird sense that, like, as more things come out and, you know, m- more ridiculous Kamala Harris videos where she's saying things that make no sense-

    30. AM

      (laughs) .

  7. 26:35 – 40:33

    U.S. politics and the ‘new right’: contrarianism, Putin sympathy, and tribal reflexes

    1. AM

      So I'm, I'm doing a piece for, for her based on a Twitter thread that's coming out tomorrow. Um, one thing I've, I've... I don't know how much politics you wanna talk about, Joe. But, um, one thing I've been, um, disappointed by is that in, in the right in the United States, right, much, uh, much like the left, right, historically, really thinks the US can do no, no good overseas and at the same time to the US is responsible for everything that happens overseas.

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. AM

      And so the thought that... And, and, you know, it could be, like, metaphorical or literal PTSD about the more recent wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. But, um, the thought that, you know, the US shouldn't get involved at all and literally can have no positive impact on affairs on the ground in Ukraine I find to be very, very disappointing and disheartening. It's weird that the right wing is the one that's turning kind of anti-US. Um...

    4. JR

      Why do you think that is?

    5. AM

      Well, I mean, I think, I think some of them, like the new right, and I, I don't-

    6. JR

      What is, what is the new right?

    7. AM

      Well, I hate naming names because I hate getting into these flame wars. Um, but the new right is like... I don't know, are you familiar with the National Conservatives or the, or the NatCon conference, people like, um, Sohrab Ahmari?

    8. JR

      No.

    9. AM

      Patrick Deneen? Oh. Um, you know, you should have one of them on your show one of these days (laughs) . I'm sure they'd be happy to come on. Um, the new right, I think, is various things. It's, it's deeply conservative, typically Christian, right? They're super anti-woke, right, 'cause woke is, like, what the whole battle's about. Um, and I... They had a conference last year, the National Conservative Conference, that I went to. People like Rod Dreher speak there, a- again, Sohrab Ahmari, et cetera. They look to a traditionalist mode of thought, and they feel that, um, much of modern wokeness, CRT, the pronouns, gender, all that stuff they think is just, you know, dangerous degeneracy, and we need to abandon it. And, uh, and some of them, and I... I don't wanna speak for them or pretend to speak for them. But some of them seem to have at least sympathies for Putin's Russia, right, and the fact that he seems to... He's anti-woke in some sense that he stands against much of what they dislike about the liberal West.

    10. JR

      Well, it's far, far past anti-woke. He's anti-gay, right? I mean, it's not, it's not-

    11. AM

      Right.

    12. JR

      ... just anti-woke. It's like there's a... What, what they're doing over in Russia is very different.

    13. AM

      Yeah, right. And, and the weird thing is, even if you are... I'm not, like, a traditionalist conservative, although I do have an interest in religion. Even if you, if you did support that, like, Russia isn't that, right? Their, their church attendance rate is lower than ours. Their birth rate is even lower than ours. Like, all the ills of modernity in terms of, like, society falling apart and not having kids and all that stuff that the trads are obsessed with, Russia suffers from that as much if not more than the West, right? So, to what degree is Putin's Russia some sort of counterweight to the West? I, I don't see it.

    14. JR

      Right.

    15. AM

      I, I think it's a LARP. And it reminds me of, um... I went to Berkeley grad school, right? And again, I was not exactly your typical Berkeley hippie lefty, right? (laughs) And a lot of... My parents are Cuban exiles who fled Cuba.

    16. JR

      That's all you need to hear.

    17. AM

      (laughs)

    18. JR

      As soon as you talk to people that have fled Cuba, those are the most Republican fucking people-

    19. AM

      Yes, yes.

    20. JR

      ... and most patriotic people in America.

    21. AM

      That's right. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I would, you know, I was definitely that when I, when I was there, even now to a certain degree. You know, and they go on about Cuban healthcare and this and that. And they're living in Berkeley in some, like, hillside home that's worth a million dollars-

    22. JR

      Right.

    23. AM

      ... and eating in an Alice Waters (laughs) restaurant. It's like, "Bro, plane to Havana is right there, buddy. If you wanna go live in Cuba, like, off you go."

    24. JR

      Yeah.

    25. AM

      And I would say the same for those who lionize, you know, Putin's Russia. Like, "Bro, plane to Moscow is right there." Um, but of course, they're not talking about the reality of it. It, it's a symbol, it's a signifier in a domestic... You know, it's like all these Hollywood stars that threatened to move to Canada but never did-

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. AM

      ... after Trump got elected. It's like-

    28. JR

      It's a romantic narrative.

    29. AM

      It's, it's a romantic narrative that's just, it's kind of fake. And normally I'd be like, who cares? But again, if you realize the level of human catastrophe that's going on in Ukraine, in my opinion, polluting the discourse around that, in a country that, that could impact that, um... I'm disappointed by it.

    30. JR

      Well, there's a thing that happens with the right and with the left where they look at whatever position that the opposite is taking-

  8. 40:33 – 55:19

    Why humans seek conflict: Junger, Fukuyama, Schmitt—and a turn toward religion

    1. JR

      I'm in the middle of re-reading, uh, Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, and there's a part of that about, um, conflicts in the South and honor cultures.

    2. AM

      Yep.

    3. JR

      There's a part about these people that came over from Europe and from the UK that were herders.

    4. AM

      Yeah, yeah.

    5. JR

      And they're these, these herding families and tribes who, uh, established these communities in Appalachia and all, all, all these, uh, sort of mountain areas, who murdered each other at a scale that's so ... One ... (paper rustles) He was talking about there's this one area where there was no more than 15,000 people, they recorded 1,000 homicides.

    6. AM

      (laughs) Oh man.

    7. JR

      I'm like, "This is wild shit." And how this mother was saying to this son, uh, who was involved in this family feud with this other family, they had been murdering each other back and forth. He was screaming in agony and she said, "Shut up and die like a man like your brother did."

    8. AM

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      And so the guy closes his mouth and just winds up bleeding out and dying in silence, because his mother was screaming at him, 'cause she wasn't ... She was so accustomed to people dying from gunshots that her own son dying in front of her-

    10. AM

      Right.

    11. JR

      ... the real problem was him being a bitch.

    12. AM

      Right.

    13. JR

      Which is fucking wild.

    14. AM

      Right.

    15. JR

      And Sebastian E- Uh, I mean, what, what Sebastian Junger talks about in Tribes, in, in, in, in these people that develop these intense bonds with people that they're in conflict with, you know? That these, these states of humanity that occasionally exist when people are in extreme situations where life and death is a daily experience.

    16. AM

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      It changes everything.

    18. AM

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      It changes the fabric of reality.

    20. AM

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      And when it doesn't h- When we don't have that, for whatever reason, and this is the grossest part about humans, there's a certain section of society that seeks conflict in the most preposterous ways.

    22. AM

      Right.

    23. JR

      And as our societies become softer and softer, we get angry and upset about some of the dumbest things possible, whether it's pronouns or whethe- what- whatever it is that's the, the current, you know, outrage du jour. There's, uh, we're, we're fucking weird. Like, human beings are very weird that we almost exist at our best state when we are in some sort of life or death scenario.

    24. AM

      Yeah, I don't know if you've read, uh, Fukuyama's book End of History, which is very mischaracterized generally. But he has a final chapter in which he has a quote that I think about, that more or less expresses what you're saying, which is, you know, "Humans will struggle for the sake of struggle." And if, um, you know, democracy and liberalism won in the previous generation, then they'll fight against democracy and against liberalism, if nothing else, for the sake of struggle. Because they, they refuse to live in a world in which heroism of some form is impossible. Right? And that was ... People mischaracterized that book, 'cause he, they thought he predicted some sort of liberal democratic utopia. He didn't at all. In fact, he warned that we would tend to revert-

    25. JR

      Yeah.

    26. AM

      ... to, to non-liberal and non-democratic ways of being just to recapture that feeling. And I, I, I do think that there's something about liberal ... And, and I mean, like, little L liberalism, not, like, the left of the political spectrum, to be clear. I think there's something about liberalism that needs an illiberal antagonist to keep it in check.

    27. JR

      Yeah.

    28. AM

      Right? It's only when you're fighting against some outside illiberal force that in some sense you can maintain the discipline that it takes. And without that, it tends to degenerate into fights over pronouns or whatever.

    29. JR

      Before Ukraine happened, you know, I was talking with a friend of mine about some preposterous woke shit.

    30. AM

      (laughs)

  9. 55:19 – 58:31

    Silicon Valley as a religion: ‘hustle porn,’ self-actualization, and corporate meaning

    1. JR

      I think there's a default setting that people have to adhere to some sort of orthodoxy.

    2. AM

      Yeah, of course.

    3. JR

      And I think that's one of the reasons why when you look at highly educated, uh, like tech people, for example. That's a great example. Um, I think there's a reason why they've adhered so strongly to this, like, sort of hardcore version of progressive thinking, l- which you would call woke.

    4. AM

      Right.

    5. JR

      Right? It, it's permeated these atheist communities. And I don't think that's, uh, that's not a mistake. I mean, that's, that seems very clear that human beings have this default setting to follow-

    6. AM

      Oh, yeah.

    7. JR

      ... the, this scaffolding of morals and ethics and behavior, and it doesn't necessarily have to make sense. Like the elevator thing doesn't make sense. Well, well, neither does a lot of the shit that people on the left adhere to, like the, the fucking transgender swimmer thing. That doesn't make sense. Like, there's reasons why we have males versus females competing. But there's this line that people will draw, like, "That's a woman." And they'll just say that flat out, hardcore. They, they start distinction, th- they start making these distinctions that are based on this rigid ideology rather than based on facts and reality. But they'll say it, and they'll say it from a position where, you know, "Hey, I'm an atheist." You know, "I'm, I'm fact-based. I believe in trusting the science, except for some things." And the, it's really like a religion.

    8. AM

      I, I think you're picking up on ... That's exactly right. I mean, I think s- I, I've been in Silicon Valley for over a decade now. It's saturated with religion, actually.

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. AM

      And, you know, they'll laugh at you trying to keep kosher or whatever, and then they'll go on for six fucking hours about their weird little keto diet (laughs) or whatever that they're following religiously.

    11. JR

      Mm. Yeah.

    12. AM

      Um, you know, it's funny. I, I interviewed a, a Berkeley professor, sociologist, named Carolyn Chen, who wrote a book called Work Pray Code, that's kind of a sociological take on this. And she mentions how so many people come to startup life and are formerly religious but then adopt this new religion. And it's very much one of self-actualization, a lot of sort of, you know, white person Buddhism layered on top of it.

    13. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    14. AM

      You know, a lot of, um, LinkedIn posting about hustle porn, about you getting more productive. And it, there's-

    15. JR

      (laughs)

    16. AM

      There's deep religiosity there. And, and-

    17. JR

      Hustle porn is such a good term.

    18. AM

      Hustle porn. I know, I, and it, yeah, I hate it-

    19. JR

      It's what it is.

    20. AM

      I know, I know.

    21. JR

      It is hustle porn.

    22. AM

      It's hustle porn.

    23. JR

      God, there's so much of that. There's so much of that on Instagram. It's kinda cute.

    24. AM

      On Twitter now too. It sucks. I just-

    25. JR

      Really? Is it all-

    26. AM

      If you, if you overpost hustle porn, I just mute you. Yeah.

    27. JR

      (laughs)

    28. AM

      I'm just done with it.

    29. JR

      Hustle porn is such a weird thing to do. But I guess sometimes I do it here. I guess, uh, sometimes, I, I, I talk about, like, motivation and, like, what, what's necessary to achieve success. But, uh, I think I do it based on my personal experiences and what I've learned that I think that you could tell people. I think there's a lot of hustle porn that's just like people saying things 'cause they think that it's gonna resonate with folks and it's gonna get them a lot of likes and it's gonna- You know, like, they haven't really done anything. There's a lot of, "I haven't done anything, but I'm gonna show you how to do things, people."

    30. AM

      Right.

  10. 58:31 – 1:12:18

    How the Joe Rogan Experience got huge: authenticity, skill, and “dumb luck”

    1. AM

      Joe, can I ask you a question?

    2. JR

      Yes, please.

    3. AM

      I'm curious. People who have done very well in their field ... I asked this question to Marc Andreessen about the web, the guy who basically invented the browser and the web as we know it. Um, so I'll ask you the same question. Did you think this, The Joe Rogan Experience, would get as big as, as, as it, as it has?

    4. JR

      No fucking chance. I still don't believe it. It doesn't make any sense.

    5. AM

      'Cause you, you have like over 10 million downloads, which ... And I, I'd love to address this if you wanna talk about your show and stuff too. But that, that's more down- That's, that's greater viewership than all the big network shows put together, right? Like, it's, you have an enormous audience, Joe. So, uh, it ... But you, you never thought that would happen when you started this?

    6. JR

      I've done nothing to try to promote this show.

    7. AM

      (laughs)

    8. JR

      I mean, really. I've never gone on another show and said, "Please, please watch my show."

    9. AM

      Right.

    10. JR

      I've never taken ads out anywhere. I've never done anything. We've existed, like Jamie and I have existed in this strange vacuum while this show has sort of propagated and it's spread its way through the world. And it, we haven't done anything different. And I haven't done anything different in terms of the way I do it other than get better at it, get better at communicating, get better at listening, get better at, you know, researching topics and asking questions. And, you know, I think generally it's a skill. I think it doesn't seem like it's a skill because it's something that everybody does. We all have conversations. But there's a skill to having conversations that are pleasing to the ear, and that it's similar to a lot of other art forms, that once you start sort of unpeeling it, you get a better sense of what it is. And over the many, many, many hours that I've done this, I've gotten better at it. But I don't understand. We've had this conversation too recently. Why the fuck hasn't anybody else done it like this? That doesn't make any sense to me. Like, what I'm doing is not that crazy. Like, why is it so popular? I don't, I really don't know. I genuinely don't know. And I, it's shocking to me. Like, when, back in the day when we first started, when it first started getting big, I remember, um, me and, um, I think it was Brian Redband, he goes, "Do you know how many downloads that last episode got?"

    11. AM

      (laughs)

    12. JR

      And I'm like, "How many?" And he's like, "It was two million." And there was, like, this pause in the room. I go, "What?" I go, "Two million? What the fuck?" And we were laughing-

    13. AM

      (laughs)

    14. JR

      ... 'cause we were basically at the time, especially the early days, we would, uh, fill his volcano bag up with pot vapor. You know what a volcano is?

    15. AM

      (laughs)

    16. JR

      Do you know what a volcano is?

    17. AM

      (laughs) No.

    18. JR

      A volcano is this machine- Jamie, show him a volcano. A vul- a volcano's a machine for people who think joints are too mild. And it's this preposterous machine-

    19. AM

      (laughs)

    20. JR

      ... that fills up this giant plastic bag with THC mist. And then you pop it off the machine and you have this-

    21. AM

      Oh, I've done that before, like the big plastic bag that you just like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

    22. JR

      Yes. It's a gray plastic bag.

    23. AM

      Yeah, yeah, I've done that. I've done that.

    24. JR

      It's like that's it right there.

    25. AM

      Got it.

    26. JR

      And then you suck all the fucking THC vapor-

    27. AM

      (laughs)

    28. JR

      ... out of that plastic bag. We would just be obliterated. I'd be in the middle of a conversation, forget exactly what I was talking about. I di- didn't r- had no idea what we were talking about.

    29. AM

      That was my experience with that too. I, I got stung out of my mind when I did that.

    30. JR

      That, that was what we were doing. And then, you know, started having conversations with different people. Like, I had Graham Hancock on and I was like, "This is great." Me and Duncan were talking to Graham Hancock. I'm like, "Wow, this is amazing." I can't believe, you know, I'm meeting him and we're talking about ancient civilizations and all of his research and... And then, once it became more popular, people started seeking it out in terms of like, "I'd like to be a guest." Like, "Okay." You know? But it was totally organic, like the whole thing happened organ-... Like, there's no way I would have ever said, "I know one day this is gonna be something that, like, Fox News supports and CNN hates and the, the fucking, the world talks about the, the nonsense ramblings of a comedian/cage fighting commentator. Like, this is gonna be a real, real fucking cog in the wheel." Like, what? No. Never. Not a fucking chance. Never thought about it.

Episode duration: 2:49:17

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode Y1M7XlYySnM

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

iOSAndroidClaudeChrome