EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,303 words- 0:00 – 0:37
Intro
- NANarrator
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music)
- MEMichael Easter
Bro.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hello, Michael. Good to see you, buddy.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah, likewise, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
Last time I saw you, we were in, uh, Elk Camp in Utah.
- MEMichael Easter
We were indeed in Elk Camp. It was a good time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. So, um, uh, I was just pointing out to you about these discoveries they found at, uh, the Boneyard in Alaska. And, uh, my friend John Reeves, who's been on the podcast before, Jamie, I'm gonna send this to you. Um-
- NANarrator
Got it. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You got it already?
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So,
- 0:37 – 2:25
The Boneyard
- JRJoe Rogan
the most recent thing they found is evidence that looks like saw marks, uh, in, on these bones. It looks like they sawed these bones to get the marrow out. Now, a lot of these bones that they've dated are 10,000 plus years old. Uh, and the thing is this saw was really supposedly invented somewhere around 7,000 years ago.
- MEMichael Easter
I feel like we often, um, we often think that early humans weren't as advanced as they actually were.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
And every time we make a new discovery, it just pushes it back. It pushes it back.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
And you learn that people were way more interesting, had a lot more tools-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
... had a lot more skills than I think we think.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, this is really interesting. I mean, if they do date this, um, you know, some of the stuff they've dated is like 30,000 plus years old that they found out here. The Boneyard is an amazing place. I, I think it's the Boneyard Alaska is, uh, the ins- Instagram page.
- MEMichael Easter
Do you know where on the map it is in Alaska?
- JRJoe Rogan
I do not know.
- MEMichael Easter
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you know, Jamie?
- NANarrator
I sort of remember it's, it's in the middle of Alaska pretty much.
- MEMichael Easter
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, but this is amazing. I mean, there, there's some... He's also found some bones from some animals that supposedly didn't even live there.
- MEMichael Easter
Really?
- JRJoe Rogan
Some certain cats, ancient cats. The craziest thing is, it's a very small area. He, he's, he's excavating somewhere in the neighborhood of like six and a half acres. And there's another place that's like somewhere similar in size.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they're finding massive amounts of bones in these areas.
- MEMichael Easter
That's crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like wooly mammoth tusks and all this crazy stuff. But this is really interesting, because that seems to be really clear evidence of tools that were used to saw bone.
- NANarrator
There's another one too.
- JRJoe Rogan
Another one they found. Like look
- 2:25 – 10:53
Human Exploration
- JRJoe Rogan
at this.
- MEMichael Easter
And the clut- the cut is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Clean.
- MEMichael Easter
... so clean. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So it really does look like a saw that they sawed to get to the marrow.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is wild stuff. I don't, I, I don't know if anyone has ever found anything like this before. Um, but i- it's pretty extraordinary.
- MEMichael Easter
Changes how we think about-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
... how advanced we were.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, who knows? I mean, maybe they could find out that, uh, the saw marks are actually only a thousand years old and someone found these bones and tried to saw-
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... them a thousand year... I mean, I don't know, but-
- MEMichael Easter
Hu- humans are amazing, because we're such great explorers. That's something that I think makes us so unique among animals.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
Right? So homo sapiens comes out and we take over the world in a very short amount of time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
Right? Neanderthals lived 200,000 years. They basically made it into Europe. We get homo sapiens all of a sudden, they move into the Americas. We put freaking boats in the water and go to Australia.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MEMichael Easter
We take submarines down to the bottom of the ocean. We shoot off rockets into outer space. We are a species that never stops exploring. We want to know what is that?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
What's over there? I want to find out.
- JRJoe Rogan
Massive curiosity.
- MEMichael Easter
Massive curiosity. And it's, it's shaped us so much. Uh, so, um, my book, Scarcity Brain, which is coming out soon, it has a whole chapter on this and why exploration is so important to humans as a species, but also how it's changed. So if you think about how people explore today, we still explore in a sense, but it's mediated through the internet, right? So it's like we have this urge to find information-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
... that can enhance our life.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
In the past, you had to go there. You had to go talk to someone, you had to go up around the river bend, you had to go, okay, where is this greener grass? I'm gonna go find it on foot and it's gonna be, there's gonna be some amount of effort. Now when we have this sort of information itch, we scratch it through a screen. Which-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
... in, on one hand that's great because we can get information quickly. On the other hand, it's so easy to access and there's so little, uh, effort we have to do, I think sometimes we get overwhelmed by it, and it's a very different form of information we can get today.
- 10:53 – 19:07
Conspiracy
- JRJoe Rogan
satellite system where they're taking high resolution photos of the Earth like every few seconds, right? Isn't that what it is?
- NANarrator
A few. Yeah, a few people do that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- NANarrator
There's private companies that do that.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, uh, they think that's bullshit. That's all lies. But it's like, what do you have to, like, what are you getting out of that? Like, why would they do that? That's... I don't understand what they think the motivation is.
- MEMichael Easter
I think that some things are complicated in life, and I think that humans really like certainty.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
So we are a species who just craves certainty. There's actually some fun studies where people will choose to get shocked by an electric zap rather than wait to see if they're going to get zapped. Like, "Just get it over with 'cause I want to be certain about this thing." And so I think that, um, a lot of conspiracies, even though they seem complicated because, you know, there's the board with the strings going everywhere-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
... at the end of the day, they give, uh, certainty to something that is uncertain and is complicated, and that can co- sort of be relieving. You go, "Okay, well, this world being flat doesn't jive with my worldview. I think X, Y, Z. This doesn't make any damn sense." And then you can go, "Oh, well, what if it's flat?" And then there's like sort of this trail you can follow online where at the end it goes, bam, you got it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
You're good to go.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think people are always looking to find things out that they've been lied about. So I think they, they believe ... They don't trust their government. They believe, you know, various conspiracies, like the Gulf of Tonkin, ones that have turned out to be true.
- MEMichael Easter
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then they go, "Oh, okay. What else?"
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"What else?" And there's something very exciting about it. Also, a lot of the people that are really into it, for whatever reason, I wa- ... I mean, I don't want to, like, stereotype, but a lot of them are unsuccessful in other aspects of their life. They might be successful in one thing or something like that, but there's something about it that, like, leads them to want to be the one who uncovers this truth. And I think it's like a ... It plays on the mind. Like, we have this desire to go and find things. Like, that's part of the explorer gene-
- MEMichael Easter
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... or whatever it is, the explorer ... Whatever, whatever it is that makes us want to get in a boat and say, like, "Where's Hawaii?" You know? And like, how about those guys, the Polynesians? I mean, what a crazy trip. They, they went all the way out to the middle of the ocean. They found this volcano.
- MEMichael Easter
Dude, there used to be people who would, um ... I can't remember what tribe this is, but these tribes would get in a boat and go hundreds of miles. And it was all for the sake of meeting another tribe, and they would sort of exchange a couple goods that weren't really that meaningful-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
... um, which suggests it really was for the journey, right? They were doing this just to explore, to take on an adventure, to, uh, learn from it, and bring back this thing that was sort of meaningless in the grand scheme of things. But it was symbolic, very symbolic, that they had done this great journey. And I think this was in the Polynesian islands where this happened, like around the Philippines.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. Yeah. I mean, I guess there's also this longing to understand how people can live in different places. If you're used to living on a certain, like, tropical island, and then you find out about someone who lives in, like, the taiga forest in Siberia, like, how?
- MEMichael Easter
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, what are they doing? I mean, imagine before there was video, before there was the internet, and really before there were books, people would hear about these people that did these things. And then like, "Where are these people?" Like, "How are they living like this?" And this ... It was probably this overwhelming desire to see, 'cause you would live the way you lived, and you would say, "Well, this is how people live." And you'd be like, "No, no, no. People live so differently." Like, some of these explorers that went to these uncharted islands and found these people that were living essentially like, you know, Stone Age-like, no access to fire, and they're, they're living on this island. Like, like, "What?" Like, "What is going on over here? How is this real?"
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah, totally. And to ... With your question about th- that sometimes people who get really, really deep down those rabbit holes aren't successful, I think it provides an answer for why the person isn't successful, right? You can find a reason, like, "Oh, it's, it's them that's done this thing."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
"And this is why I have XYZ problem." And I think that ... And it also pulls on ... Like I said, I think w- we have a drive to search for information. So if you think about humans in the past, as we evolved, there was a handful of things you really needed to survive: food, possessions, tools, um, information. We crave status as well because if you could influence more people, you probably had a survival edge. And so I think when you start to apply that to today's world ... Because in the past, all those things were relatively scarce. They were hard to find. So if you sort of craved them and always, uh, looked for them, tried to grab them when you had the opportunity, you would have that survival advantage. But in today's world, all these things that we evolved to crave are, uh, abundant in many ways. And we don't necessarily have the governor telling us when we've had too much.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
So, take something like possessions. Even a couple hundred years ago, the average person probably had like 100 items maybe in their house. Now the average home has 10,000 items in it.
- 19:07 – 22:28
Slot Machines
- JRJoe Rogan
- MEMichael Easter
And everyone has that experience, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yep.
- MEMichael Easter
And so I live in Las Vegas, which happens to be a good town to think about, "Why the hell can't we moderate?" (laughs) Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MEMichael Easter
Now, when you live there, you see all kinds of wild stuff, right? But, to me, what's always been the strangest has been the slot machines. So you've spent time in Vegas.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
It's like, they're in the casinos, obviously, but they're in the gas stations, the grocery stores, the restaurants, the bars, and the airport. And they're not sitting empty.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
People are playing them around the clock.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
So I'm like, "What the hell is up with that?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Just plays into your dopamine.
- MEMichael Easter
W- Well, and it doesn't make sense-
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- MEMichael Easter
... because everyone knows the house always wins.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. It's not... Uh, i- it's like a m- a numbing thing.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They just sit there and press the buttons and press the buttons and press the buttons and hope they make money.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah. So I, I decide, "All right," like, "I'm gonna find out how a slot machine works. Why do people get hooked on slot machines? That's the question." And so I go into journalist mode and I start making calls. Now, the first group of people that I call turns out to be a dead end. So who I call are people who are effectively anti-gambling researchers. Okay? So these are researchers who have a very anti-gambling bent, and they tell me all sorts of sorta strange things. They're like, "Oh, it's 'cause casinos don't have clocks." They're like these myths we've all heard. "Casinos don't have clocks." Uh, "Slot machines only play in the key of C, which relaxes people and relaxes their wallet." Uh, "Casinos don't have any right angles, and right angles, uh, activate the rational part of your brain." And so, my, I go, "Okay." And then I go to an actual casino, and there's right angles everywhere (laughs) , right? The screens are right angles. Uh, no clocks, but guess who else doesn't have clocks? Like, most businesses, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
There's not clocks in Costco-
- JRJoe Rogan
Most restaurants.
- MEMichael Easter
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
It's not normal to have clocks. And then for the, uh, the audio, the key of C, I call up a slot machine audio composer. Now, this is a real job you can have in Las Vegas, right? (laughs) And this guy goes, "Where the hell do you hear that?" He's like, "I use all keys." So I realize that the problem that I'm encountering is that I have called people who want us to stop gambling.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- MEMichael Easter
I need to call people who want us to start gambling. Right? I gotta follow the money on this. So long story short, I talk to a handful of people in town, and this leads me to, uh, this casino on the outside outskirts of Las Vegas. Now, it's brand new. It's cutting edge. But the catch is that it's not open to the public. So this place is basically a living, breathing casino, but it's used entirely for research on human behavior.
- JRJoe Rogan
What?
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah. So-
- 22:28 – 25:26
Scarcity Loop
- MEMichael Easter
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- MEMichael Easter
And they're basically looking at how everything that happens in a casino affects human behavior. So, uh, how does room design and the technology we're using in rooms affect behavior? How does betting with, say, an AI bot versus an actual human impact betting? Now, when I'm there, I meet with, to bring it back to slot machines, I meet with a guy who designs slot machines. So the reason that these things are so entrancing to people, it tracks back to this, uh, behavior loop that I call the scarcity loop. And this is a, basically a loop, looping behavior that, when people do it, they tend to get hooked on it very easy. So it's got three parts. It's got opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. So opportunity, you have an opportunity to get something of value. So in the case of a slot machine, it's money. Right? Uh, two, unpredictable rewards. You know you're gonna get the thing of value if you continue the behavior, but you don't know when, and you don't know how valuable it's going to be. So with a slot machine game, when those reels are spinning, you could win nothing. You could basically lose your money. You could win a couple dollars, or you could win a life-changing amount of money. There's a fantastic range of things that could happen. And then, three, uh, quick repeatability. You can immediately repeat the behavior. So with slot machines, the average player plays about 16 games a minute. And that's different from all other habits. Like most habits, you don't immediately repeat them. Now, the reason that people are so interested in this, companies, casinos, is because the, this sort of three-part system I just laid out, it can get people to repeat a lot of other behaviors too. So it's in social media. It's in sports gambling. Uh, it's in dating apps. Even companies, uh, like gig work economy companies are using it to get people to work longer hours. It's being leveraged by the financial industry in a lot of personal finance apps, and on and on and on. It's become... uh, it's been embedded in so many of the products...... even institutions that influence people's lives because it is so captivating to us. We tend to get hooked on this three-part system.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. And so when, when you're talking about, like, gig economy stuff, like, uh, you're talking about, like, Uber-
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... things, things along those lines?
- MEMichael Easter
Driving for Uber, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so how, how do they use that?
- MEMichael Easter
So things like, um, unpredictable rewards get put up in front of a driver to get them to drive into an area of town that Uber might want them to be in. There's also-
- JRJoe Rogan
Unpredictable rewards? What do y-
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah, so, like, you might get, um... Say, "Oh, if you drive here, like, your whatever will... You, you'll make X amount more money."
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- MEMichael Easter
Right, and it sort of pops up unpredictably.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, so they'll, they'll incentivize you?They, they, they offer you more money to go to a different part of town?
- 25:26 – 29:02
Social Media
- JRJoe Rogan
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah, or dropping in cues that's saying like, "Hey, this is where we are... You're gonna make more money today," type of thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- MEMichael Easter
Um, if you think about it in terms of something like social media, it's like the opportunity is to get, say, status or likes or whatever it is, right? And then, say, a person posts and then the rewards become totally unpredictable, right? You might get two likes, which is like, "Well, that wasn't great," or you might get hundreds of likes, which is like, "Oh my God, that's amazing." It's the same exact architecture as a slot machine. And then you check and recheck. You're repeating the behavior all day. And, um, this loop, the reason that we're so attracted to it, it goes back to evolution. So I talked to this, uh... Once I learned how this kind of loop pulls people in and it's really what slot machines lean on to get people to repeat the behavior, I call up a psychologist. He's this old school dude from the University of Kentucky who's been studying psychology since the late '60s. His name's Thomas Ziental. And, um, he described... He basically explained this likely goes back to evolution and finding food. So if you think about hunter-gatherers, the thing you have to do every day is find food. But it's a random... It's random whether you're gonna find the food or not. So you go to point A, you don't find any food. You go to point B, you don't find any food. You go to point C, no food. Point D, oh my God, it's a giant berry bush full of food. And that saves your life, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
So that search, that repeat searching really pushes us and grabs our attention because it used to help us survive in the past.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- MEMichael Easter
And there's even... I mean, if you wanna get down the rabbit hole in it, there's even, um, things like what are called near misses in slot machines, which is when you kind of almost win, right? You might get-
- JRJoe Rogan
Two lemons.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah, two lemons in a-
- JRJoe Rogan
And the other lemon just barely passes by.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- MEMichael Easter
Barely passes by, or losses disguised as wins. Do you know what those are?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-mm. No.
- MEMichael Easter
So that's when, uh, let's say you bet $1 and you, quote-unquote, "win" 50 cents. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- MEMichael Easter
Right? So you don't lose everything, but you win 50 cents. Now, we tend to re- react to that as if we're winning when they-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- MEMichael Easter
... when they study, uh, gamblers. And that's also embedded in the search for food, right? You might... Let's say you're hunting, you're like, "Oh, we got a big kill on our hands." And then you whiff and the animal's on its way. It's like, "Damn, that is a... That's a..." Right? "That's the near miss."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
Um, or you come upon a berry bush and let's say it took you... You burned 500 calories looking for this thing and it only contains 200 calories worth of food.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
And so all of these sort of evolutionary parts of this system that we used to fall into as we evolved are now in slot machines and, in turn, now being used by a lot of big tech companies and different industries, so.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they just trick the human reward system?
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah, yeah. It mimics these sort of ancient pathways, more or less.
- JRJoe Rogan
And gambling is... To me, is one of the most peculiar ones, because, um, it's so overwhelming for people that are hooked on gambling. It's such a mental health issue. It's such a, an addiction. And when you see people that are just, like, chasing it and they just can't stop, it's like... I always wonder, like, what pathway is being hijacked? Like, what, what is it about human beings that want to risk, like, literally all of their money on a roll of the dice or on a spin of the roulette wheel or on a hand of cards? Like,
- 29:02 – 31:52
Pigeon Gambling
- JRJoe Rogan
what is that?
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah. This is a good question. Now, this, this Ziental guy that I told you about, he does a lot of research on pigeons. So he can basically turn a pigeon into a degenerate gambler in, like, two minutes, okay?
- JRJoe Rogan
A pigeon?
- MEMichael Easter
A pigeon, dude. He'll give them... Yeah. (laughs) I said the same thing-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) That sounds cruel.
- MEMichael Easter
I said the same thing when I was talking to him.
- JRJoe Rogan
Isn't life hard enough as a pigeon?
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah. He, uh... So he'll, he'll get pigeons who... You know, they live in these cages. And he'll give them the option to play a game where they... Every other peck, they get, say, 15 units of food. So peck, no food. Peck, 15 units of food. But then they have an option to play a second game, and this second game is very much a gambling game in that they get food about every fifth peck, but it's random, right? So you could go peck, peck, food, peck, peck. The next one could be food, peck, peck, peck, peck, right? So it's just kind of like a slot machine.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
And they get more food playing the gambling game. They get 20 units. If you do the math, it makes a lot more sense to play the game where you get every other, right? Every other peck is getting you food. It adds up to a lot more food. But what he finds is that the pigeons consistently play the slot machine game. 97% of pigeons will choose that game.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, but they're not risking anything.
- MEMichael Easter
They're not risking anything, right? But it's still-
- JRJoe Rogan
So how is that gambling?
- MEMichael Easter
They're still putting in the effort to have to play the game.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but that seems obvious. Th- Like, the, the rewards are greater, so they know that if they just keep pecking, it doesn't hurt to peck, they're going to get a bigger supply of food.
- MEMichael Easter
They don't get a bigger supply, though, because they'll get 15 every other peck-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
... versus 20 every fifth peck.So if you put in 100 pecks, you're gonna get more food playing the one where it's you get food every other time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, but it's still not gambling 'cause the pigeon just sees a larger pile of food with the more pecks, so it just wants the larger pile of food, so he just keeps going. It's not like they're risking all their food.
- MEMichael Easter
Right. Right. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
So I don't think it's a gambling thing.
- MEMichael Easter
Well, the larger, the larger pile of food comes from the predictable rewards.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Right. If you do every other, right?
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah, every other-
- JRJoe Rogan
But-
- MEMichael Easter
... is how you would get the biggest pile of food.
- JRJoe Rogan
But you don't get the biggest pile in one jump, one dump, right? The one where it's every five, that's a larger quantity of food.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah. So you'd get 20.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. See, that's not gambling.
- MEMichael Easter
Why is it not gambling?
- 31:52 – 35:06
Optimal Foraging Theory
- JRJoe Rogan
- MEMichael Easter
So here's what I'll tell you. He would argue and a lot of biologists would, they would say, you know, there's this theory called the optimal foraging theory. It says that animals will expend the least amount of energy to get the most amount of food. All right? So over time, they're expending a lot less energy to get more food. And so here's where it gets interesting though is that to sort of bring it back to why do people fall into this, why would someone bet their entire fortune on a roulette wheel or whatever, is that when he will put pigeons in a sort of wild environment... So where he keeps them is in these pigeon cages where they kinda live alone. It's, you know, it's a basic cage. When he puts them in a cage that mimics the wild, so it's this giant cage that has like roosts, it's got cliffs, it's got other pigeons, it's very much like they would have to live in the wild, and then he throws them back to choose a game, they start choosing the optimal game.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Interesting.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah. And so, and you see that in many animals where they do these sorts of studies. Rats, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, that's the cocaine rat thing, right?
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
Just like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. The, for people who don't know that study, um, well, they call it Rat Park. So they did a study where they put rats in this very sterile environment, laboratory environment, bright lights, uh, no toys, no nothing, and they gave them the option of water or water with cocaine, and they always took the water with cocaine. They just kept taking the water with cocaine. But then when they put them in Rat Park, which is a much larger thing with a lot of toys and things to do and a lot of places to run around, they didn't do that. They just drank the water.
- MEMichael Easter
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that, but that makes sense. It's like they're fucking living in hell.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And the, the cocaine water is the only thing that gives them any good feeling, and so they just keep going back to that good feeling. But when you give them a normal natural environment where they can just exist... I wonder if that's the case with people that live like say a subsistence lifestyle. You know, if they have access to something like heroin or cocaine, I wonder if they would just i- ignore it because they get this sort of very natural environment that is sort of programmed into our lives, programmed into our DNA. Like people that live a subsis- subsistence lifestyle are (phone ringing) unusually healthy. I'm sure you've seen, uh, have you seen Werner Herzog's documentary, Happy People?
- MEMichael Easter
I don't think I've seen that one, no.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's great.
- MEMichael Easter
I'll have to watch it.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's Happy People: Life in the Taiga, and it's, uh, about these trappers, um, who live, uh, in Siberia, and there's very low instances of mental health issues, very low instances of, uh, you know, all, all sorts of problems and that society just has. They're ubiquitous. Uh, in their world, these people are very happy and they get by. They just get by. I mean, they have snowmobiles and dogs and they hunt and they trap and they fish and they just get by, and they work every day. The, uh, and you have to work. The only way to live is to eat, and the only way to eat is to work, and so everybody does everything that they can and they're all happy.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's
- 35:06 – 37:46
Optimal Stimulation Theory
- JRJoe Rogan
very weird.
- MEMichael Easter
So that, that was this guy's theory is he said there's ano- there's another, um, theory, I think it's called the optimal stimulation theory, basically says that humans and animals need a certain level of stimulation in their life or else they start seeking it from other things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MEMichael Easter
So if you think about the context of how humans came up, I mean, it was very stimu- sort of like the people you talk about on the taiga, right? They have you gotta work all day. You're outside a lot. You're doing, um, tasks that involve your mind and your body. Like it's this full on effort to survive. You're also in sort of closer knit communities, all these different things. And today, we don't have that quite as much. And so his theory is that when you don't have enough stimulation in your life or meaning from other places, humans tend to start to look for it in other ways. We gamble. We spend a lot of time on the internet. We buy a lot of stuff. All right? So we start searching for it somewhere else-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
... and those ways can often be counterproductive in the long run when you overdo them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Totally makes sense. And also, you, you know, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about this yesterday. We were talking about how complex the human mind is and how complex life and society is, but yet there's no real management book. Like there's no real, there's no document that shows you this is the optimal way to exist and these are the pitfalls of existing other ways, that, you know, you have these human reward systems built in and they can be hijacked by these various things and this is the way the human body and the human mind...... exist optimally. And for whatever reason, there's no real structure that people can follow that's universally agreed upon. You know, like if you, like, say if you're a mechanic, right? And you're working on an engine, like it's, it's, there's very clear documents that show you, like these are the pistons, this is the spark plug, this is the carburetor. If it's not clean, it'll do this. This is the problem with the gas line. And you have to fit it this way and that way. And so you do it all right, and then boom, it starts up and it works. And you can fix things that way, and you can build things that way. We don't really have that for the most complex thing that we're aware of, which is human existence.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah. Totally. That's because it is so complex.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's so complex.
- 37:46 – 40:35
Technology
- JRJoe Rogan
- MEMichael Easter
It's, and technology also changes very fast.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
So technology is probably, um, it's great in many ways. It's a result of progress, right? It's kept us, uh, led us to live longer. (laughs) Allowed me to fly from Vegas to Austin in two hours instead of, you know, getting the old wagon train out and being like, "Yeah, I'll see you in, like, six months, Joe."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Yeah, right? How about, how long would that be by wagon train?
- MEMichael Easter
Oh, man. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's pretty crazy.
- MEMichael Easter
But, I don't think we've necessarily kept up with it. I mean, our hardware doesn't change that fast-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
... and our software, you know? And so I think a lot of the problems that we see today are often a result of us living, uh, as almost sort of ancient creatures in a very new, modern, changing world, and trying to navigate that.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what scares me about this what, uh, seemingly inevitable connection with humans and technology, is that I think what we're going to do is integrate with technology to avoid all the problems that we have existing in this modern world with this ancient hardware.
- MEMichael Easter
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that we're gonna adjust our hardware. And that the s- it seems to me that this is inevitable. It seems to me this is just where we're going, and that all humans are gonna be some sort of cyborg type thing, that we're... And also, with the invention of AI, and, you know, I'm sure you're paying attention to all this ChatGPT stuff, and that, and, and deepfakes. There's, God, there's so many deepfakes. People keep sending me commercials that I've never done for, you know, penis enhancements, and you know, all these different things. Wi- wild commercials that-
- MEMichael Easter
Insane stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's my voice.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's my lips moving, and it shows me talking about how great these products are. And then, I don't, never even heard of them.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And this is just the tip of the iceberg, where we're just starting to be able to fake things like that, where on a consumer model, like someone can just buy the software and put it together, and you know, and now AI can make literal films. So I mean, at one point in time, right now there's kind of like the uncanny valley in some ways, where you can kind of see the difference between what's real and what's not real. You can kind of like, eh, it looks fake.
- MEMichael Easter
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
How long before like... UFO footage is a great example. Um, Jeremy Corbell, who's like the premier UFO researcher with George Knapp, you know, every now and then, I'll find something online and I'll send it to him. He's like, "Oh, that's bullshit, dude." Like this, this is what they did, and you can see it, this is how and this is why.
- MEMichael Easter
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And like, oh, okay. But there's a lot of that. There's a lot of fake stuff. And it's hard to, it's hard to know. It's hard to know what's real and what's fake. And we kind of can tell now, but will we in 20 years? I bet no.
- MEMichael Easter
No, and it, it could be five years.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
It might not. I'm, I'm being very generous.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm sure, I'm sure it's five months. I mean,
- 40:35 – 43:28
Adopting Technology
- JRJoe Rogan
it's weird.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah, and I think we naturally gravitate to the technology, right? Everyone adopts it, and then it just is, it's just a part of life.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
It's just a part of life.
- MEMichael Easter
You just sort of fall into it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
And oftentimes, you get punished if you're not using the technology, even though it might be bad for you in the long run.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
So think about something like trying to keep, uh, say a teenager off of social media. We know that's probably not a great place for them to hang out a ton.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
And yet, if they're not on it, their life suffers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
Right? Because they get o- uh, they're not as dialed in socially. And for teenagers, being social is very important due to how their brain is changing at the time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
But even think about work, especially with how work, the nature of work has changed after COVID with more people working from home. If you don't want to be stuck on email all day, it's like, I totally get that. But now if you decide, well, I'm not gonna check my email during these times because it drives me insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now you're negligent.
- MEMichael Easter
Now you're a negligent employee, so you effectively have to adopt the technology to live in the system, and then the system starts to sort of govern your actions.
- JRJoe Rogan
I read an article about a woman who was fired, and she met all of her productivity goals. She was working remotely. But the company detected that she hadn't clicked enough on her computer. She hadn't hit enough keystrokes, she hadn't moved her mouse enough, and I think there was also an issue with the amount of time she spent in front of the computer, that it wasn't enough. Meanwhile, she met all of her goals. So like how many people are just in front of an office where they're not checking in a, a cubicle, just bullshitting, probably listening to this podcast right now? (laughs)
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah. Enjoy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Enjoy. And- and you know, they're okay. They're okay because they are in front of that computer, and as long as they move their cursor around and do things, and- and I mean, they could be listening to this podcast on, uh, on their AirPods while they're also fucking around and doing all these other things. As long as they spend enough... And they might not be as productive, but they are doing the thing that the algorithm wants them to do.
- MEMichael Easter
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
This lady got fired.
- MEMichael Easter
It's crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
But she, like maybe she doesn't need to work as much to meet the productivity goals that you set for her, but she's a good employee.
- MEMichael Easter
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
If you set a prod- productivity goal for an employee, say, "Hey, we need to get, you know, X amount of units of work done by Friday," and she does it-... didn't she do her job? Like, if she can do her job in 31 hours and the average person needs 44, isn't she a better employee?
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah, she's more productive.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, she's better, right? (laughs) Like-
- MEMichael Easter
(laughs)
- 43:28 – 46:15
Numbers
- JRJoe Rogan
people.
- MEMichael Easter
Well, the numbers are really interesting, 'cause they're not really that old, you know? Numbers are maybe 10,000 years old. There's still tribes in the Amazon, there's a tribe called the Piraha who, they still don't have numbers. They can discriminate between one, two, and three. You go above that, and it's either small, medium, or large. And that's probably how humans thought of quantities for most of time.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, if they catch a bunch of fish, they can't say how many fish they ca- uh, l- they have 30 people in their village?
- NANarrator
This is a story, I just read through the article. There's a little bit of both, (clears throat) both sides on this story.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, she's Australian. They have wild rules over there.
- NANarrator
Uh, they had complaints about her missing stuff and doing work, and then she was saying, "This is all bullshit," and they had evidence of her doing misconduct, in their words.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- NANarrator
So, it's a both sides story.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, mkay.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Mkay.
- MEMichael Easter
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, there you go. That makes more sense. So, um... Plus, she's very pretty in that picture. Maybe she's, like, trying to be an influencer.
- MEMichael Easter
(laughs) Yeah, maybe they factored that in.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know. Maybe.
- MEMichael Easter
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? It seems like she's using a filter. That's another weird thing, right? Filters? Peop- like, how many people are just using filters, where I see pictures of, like, uh, a friend of mine with his wife, and the wife is using a filter, and I, I know my friend doesn't look like that.
- MEMichael Easter
(laughs) Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? But he's with her, and she's got the filter on. I'm like, "Hey, bro, did you go back in time?" (laughs)
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"What the fuck happened? You look like you're 15 years younger."
- MEMichael Easter
"Uh, d- did you just get back from Hawaii? You're exceedingly tan in that photo, man."
- JRJoe Rogan
"You look fantastic."
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"What are you doing? Tell me about your diet."
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah, so it can kind of bend reality. And to, to get back to numbers, is that once we invent numbers, it starts to really change, uh, how humans behave.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
Especially with measurement, because that provides an element of, sort of certainty. So, in the case of that employee, it's like someone, somewhere with a clipboard goes, "Well, a good employee has 20 clicks per hour," and then they just go down the thing and go, "Oh, well this person had 19. We gotta can her." So, we're measuring by a random number instead of saying, "Did this person do the job we want the way that we want them to? What is the outcome of the task we're trying to do?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
And focusing on the actual goal, which is to make money for a company. I don't know.
- 46:15 – 51:31
Twitter
- MEMichael Easter
Uh, Twitter is a good example of how putting numbers on things can change our behavior and why we do what we do. So, uh, here's the example, is that... And I, uh, learned about this from a guy whose name is Thi Nguyen, so it's T-H-I N-G-U-Y-E-N. He's a philosopher at the University of Utah. When you start to measure, uh, Twitter via likes and retweets and that sorts of things, that changes what, how you use Twitter.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
So, Twitter is now the, the, uh, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is, uh, supposed to be billed as a place for discussion, right? And so, then you ask yourself, "Okay, well, what are the goals of a discussion?" And the answer is like, "Well, there's, like, a fucking lot of goals, right-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
... "behind a c- discussion." It could be to empathize. It could be to understand someone. It could be to push back on them. Like, there's all these things that can come out of a discussion-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
... all these possible goals. But when you start to put, uh, numbers behind that in the form of likes, of retweets, of whatever it is, people start to tweet in a way that scores likes and retweets, and that is a different goal-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
... than is discussion.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
It's often at odds with that. So, like, what does well on Twitter? It's calling someone a dickhead. It's trying to dunk on someone. It's trying to say something outlandish or maybe-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
... bend something in a way that incites outrage.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
And that totally changes the point of a discussion.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
And, um, this guy noticed it in m- in himself because he... So, he's a philosopher, so his job is basically to think all day. And he goes, "You know, the first time I had a tweet go viral, it was like, oh my god, that was awesome." And then he found himself, when he would have these sort of philosophical thoughts, instead of going into this really deep zone that he'd usually have to go into to understand it, he started finding himself going, "How can I put this into, like, a 140-character tweet that'll really do well?" Right? And that changes-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MEMichael Easter
... that changes how he thinks-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MEMichael Easter
... and what he does. And you see this... I mean, this isn't just in social media. This is in so many different systems where we put numbers behind something, it starts to change people's goal in a way that changes their behavior. But the goal of scoring numbers is often different from the original goal of-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- MEMichael Easter
... things, of the behavior.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, this, uh, discussion actually came up in the hunting world recently. (clears throat) 'Cause I was having a conversation with a friend of mine. There's two, uh, goals (clears throat) in, um... What, one of, one of the things that people want when they hunt is they want to get a mature animal, um, for a bunch of reasons. One reason is that the mature animal... Say if you get (clears throat) , excuse me, if you get, like, a seven-year-old mule deer, that is a deer that has spread its genes-
- MEMichael Easter
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that it's done its job in the- the reproductive system, it's passed on its DNA, and this is an old, mature deer. Also, it's more of a challenge because this is a wiser deer. This is a deer that has probably experienced hunters before, most certainly has experienced mountain lions and bears and other predators. And so, the goal is, ethically and morally, that's the animal that you should choose to try to hunt. Now, there's numbers that are involved now. So with deer, it's the size of the antler and the magic number is 200. If you can get a 200-inch mule deer, that is a very, very rare deer. That is a deer that has lived for a long time, it has superior genetics, it has this very big wi- ... Have you ever seen a 200-inch mule deer on the hoof?
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah. They're giant.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're giant. And it's so impressive. Um, so this guy had shot a mule deer, this beautiful, mature mule deer, but it scored 194. It didn't score 200. And he was like, "Well, it's just a deer. Just another buck." And my friend was furious. He's like, "This is a bastardization of everything that hunting is supposed to stand for." Like, hunting is supposed to stand for this is an ethical way to acquire your food, this is the best wild protein that you can get, it's the healthiest for you, it's also an important thing to manage the population numbers of these animals so that they don't get overpopulated which leads to the spread of diseases like CWD and chronic wasting and all- all these different things that people attribute to overpopulation of, uh, and car accidents. All these different things. And- but the number thing got in people's heads.
- MEMichael Easter
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And this guy was very happy with his deer until he found out it was 194 and not 200. 'Cause it's like, it's impossible to tell when you're looking through binoculars.
- 51:31 – 1:17:52
The Wine Advocate
- MEMichael Easter
- JRJoe Rogan
It's weird.
- MEMichael Easter
Right? So he- his goal, because we put the number on that, is simply just to get 200 or over.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MEMichael Easter
And to your point where you just talked about, you know, why do we hunt, there's all these really complex but m- far more valuable and meaningful reasons that we go out and to hunt. But if you get captured by this number, that changes your experience in a way that is probably not a- a good thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
I mean, you saw this in the wine world when, uh, Robert Parker started The Wine Advocate. I think this was in the early '80s or '70s. So this guy is, uh, Robert Parker is this guy from Maryland, kind of grew up in the backwoods, he's just a normal dude. He likes wine, but he thinks, "Oh, all this snobby language around wine, like, it's keeping people who would otherwise enjoy it from- from drinking it." So it's a good intent. And so what he decides is, "I'm gonna start- I'm gonna start a magazine, I'm gonna start giving wines a score-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- MEMichael Easter
"... from 50 to 100." So when he starts this, the magazine takes off because now the average consumer can know, "Well, this is an 80, this is a 90. The 90's better. I'm buying that." Now, here's the thing though, is that it is Parker who's testing the wines and he's also having to test them alone, not with food. Now, one of the main reasons you drink wine is to drink it with food because it changes as you drink it. Right? Um, but his scoring system, if a wine scores really well, those bottles fly off the shelf. Whereas the ones who don't get quite as good of a store- uh, score, they collect dust. So what the wine industry does is they go, "Okay, well, if we want to sell a lot of wine, we gotta produce bottles that get a good score from Robert Parker." So they change how they make wines to suit his palate. Now, if you don't have Robert Parker's palate, if you don't like what he li- likes, like, this is meaningless to you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- MEMichael Easter
Right? And so they-
- JRJoe Rogan
So it's one person?
- MEMichael Easter
One person. And then you started to see, I mean, his, uh, industry and empire grew, you start to see a lot of other, um, wine rating places pop up that mimic it. But it's the same with, um, it's the same with a- any review.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MEMichael Easter
Right? If you put a number on it, it's kind of this arbitrary thing that someone has to make up and it's often done in a vacuum and it's very, very subjective, but we pretend like it's objective and then we behave like it means something, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I have a very good friend who's a wine connoisseur, like a real wine connoisseur. Like, he has this big wine cellar in his home, you go in it, it's filled with all this crazy wine and he knows everything about wine. He can tell you what the good years were and where the vineyards were and where the things come out of, and he had a birthday. And so he invites me to this, uh, wine pairing dinner on his birthday. And it was great. The food was great, the wine was great, but the- it was so bizarre. 'Cause they bring these flights of wine and then everyone tests the wine and people are recording themselves doing this. They have little tape recorders. And they're talking about the tannins and the oaky this and the that and- and then someone opens it up, "I think- I think this one's corked. This one's corked." And they're testing, "Yes, I believe this one's corked." And I'm like, "This one's my favorite. I don't even understand what's going on here." And there was this one guy that was there that was being heralded as this big wine expert and they would refer to him. Well, cut to years later, that guy gets arrested and he winds up doing 10 years in jail for making fake wine. And there's a documentary on it.
- MEMichael Easter
Whoa.
- JRJoe Rogan
And the documentary is called Sour Grapes.... and it, it's amazing documentary. It's-
- MEMichael Easter
I haven't seen... I've seen it pop up. Now I've gotta watch it.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's very, very interesting because it plays on this very strange thing that people have to want the rarest, most unique thi- and what this guy did was, he started... Well, he started buying wine. That was the first thing he did. He would go to these auctions, and you know, I don't know if you've ever seen any of those wine auctions, but they're super bizarre. Like people are spending ungodly amounts of wine, uh, uh, of money on wine. Like ancient bottles and v- very rare bottles. And so this guy's buying all this wine. So he is established as this connoisseur. Then what he's doing is he's going to his home and he's aging these labels and he's creating labels and he starts auctioning off... And I think... Is it Sotheby's or Christie's? Someone's involved in this auction that kind of should know that this is bullshit. Like they haven't checked. And so one man from one vineyard who's this very famous family vineyard sees bottles of his company's wine for sale, and he says, "We never made a Magnum that year. We never made that bottle of wine. Like that is not real." And that, you know, was going for insane amounts of money. And so then they start doing an investigation and they find out that this guy has made and sold thousands of bottles of fake old wine, including to the Koch brothers, and this is where he got fucked. This is where he didn't... He sold the Koch brothers like millions of dollars worth of wine, and these guys are just super ballers with an unlimited amount of money, and they were buying like Lincoln's bottle of wine, like Thomas Jefferson's bottle. Like that kind of crazy shit.
- MEMichael Easter
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And people are saying, "Nope, that's not even his handwriting. That's not... This is not real." So he, these guys were... They got duped. And so then they open the investigation and they find this guy's house and they find the bottles of wine. He was buying old bottles and re-corking them and like making the labels dirty and doing all this different shit, and... But it's so interesting because one of the guys in the film is like, uh, "This was a bottle that he sold me was the li- legit." Because the guy was selling legit wine too. He's like, "This one's legit." And they're drinking it like you can tell. And this other guy comes on. "Can I... Let me try that," and he's like, "This is garbage. This wine is garbage. This is fake. It doesn't have the complexity, it doesn't have the, the, the robustness, it doesn't have the..." And, and these other guys who are like also supposedly experts, they're like, um, like, "What, what are you guys tasting? What is going on here? Like what is this weird thing that you're chasing that the difference is so subtle?" It's not even the difference between Coke and Pepsi. You know, it's so subtle, but yet it's a difference between a bottle of wine that's worth 50 bucks, 100 bucks, and 40,000, and no one knows.
- MEMichael Easter
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
No one can tell. And this guy had apparently, according to my friend, such a palate that he could experiment by taking these various much more inexpensive wines, combining them in very specific ratios, and recreate something that was very similar. And as long as you got it in this bottle, and as long as you looked at it and was like, "Oh, is it Beaune Chablis from '74," and you, you thought you were getting the real shit. And so then there's the placebo effect, right?
- MEMichael Easter
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're, you're tasting it and you're imagining it that this rich robust wine that very few people can appreciate, and then you're all appreciating this wine. And meanwhile this guy's laughing his ass off because he made it in his fucking Century City, uh, house. I mean, he's like, "It's fucking nuts."
- MEMichael Easter
He's got it in the bathtub.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I mean, literally. See if you can get some clips out of that.
- MEMichael Easter
And there, there was actually a, a study and it was conducted I think at a university in France that has a good wine department. The researchers, they got a bottle that, you know, was scored really high and a bottle that was scored low, and they got this group of students. And without them knowing, they switched the labels, right? So they... (laughs) So the bad bottle has the nice label on it and vice versa.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
Episode duration: 2:49:50
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