EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 30,540 words- 0:00 – 2:11
Super Bowl as culture-war spectacle: ads, Pfizer, Taylor Swift, and conspiracy chatter
- NANarrator
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- BWBret Weinstein
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) Very funny text you sent me the other day. You said, "I hope we have something to talk about." (laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, you know, the, the fact is, the world's gotten kind of calm, so...
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
I was hoping, uh, I looked out the window of the hotel this morning, thinking the weather might help us. No, boring as can be.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's beautiful, birds chirping, while who knows what lies on the horizon. Um, I did not watch the Super Bowl, but I got a ton of messages from people that watched it that are like, "What the fuck is going on?" Like, the Super Bowl was a gigantic propaganda camp- campaign, and there's Pfizer ads and weird woke commercials, and...
- BWBret Weinstein
It was, it was bizarre. Uh, I did watch it, you know, I had nothing else to do and I probably wouldn't have watched it otherwise, but, but I did watch it and it was like some running inside joke. You had to know who these people were in order to even just be with the flow. I mean, obviously the game is what it is, but all of the stuff surrounding it was like, you're either embedded in this culture or it's kind of a head-scratcher.
- JRJoe Rogan
I did not see any of it, so I don't, I wasn't watching the Super Bowl last night. I was busy, so I don't know what happened.
- BWBret Weinstein
Uh, i- well, let's put it this way, I'm not a football aficionado by any stretch, but it was a pretty exciting game. I mean, it came down to the last seconds of overtime and, uh, you know, it was a hell of a comeback, so...
- JRJoe Rogan
There are a ton of conspiracies about the way it was officiated, and that, the, the fix was in with Travis Kelce being sponsored by Pfizer, and Taylor Swift, and Taylor Swift's music catalog being owned by some mega-corporation that has shady ties. (laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I have to say, I was watching it and I, you know, I didn't have a dog in the fight. I wasn't really rooting for either team. I was just trying to get the sense of, uh, you know, what, what the game was like, um, but I did find myself, in the end, rooting against Taylor Swift.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
And I...
- 2:11 – 6:01
Why establishment politics can’t meme: humor, ideology, and online joke mechanics
- JRJoe Rogan
This is, uh, the Biden thing that they posted.
- BWBret Weinstein
After his bedtime.
- JRJoe Rogan
"Just like we drew it up." And it's Biden with these, you know, red robot eyes. Why would they do that? Why, why, just why would they make that? Like, that, just that alone, like, what are you saying? Like, what are you doing? Like, imagine that's the president of the United States. Just, I want you to imagine Ronald Reagan if, if social media was alive, posting a photograph like that. Or Bill Clinton.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I mean, I do know what they're doing, right? This is, they, they have a very weak meme game, but they do have moments when they show some kind of spark in this regard, and I detest it. I think they have an obligation to be above this stuff and to not, uh, troll, but, you know, in a world where Trump is a political force, they're trying to, uh, you know, they're trying to build a, a game in the same arena, and they're, they're gonna get crushed, but, um, but that's why they did it, you know? And obviously, it's, it's the machine that did it. Biden had to do it.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's kind of amazing that the left can't meme.
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause they're really bad at it, because they're denying so many truths. Like, in order to adhere to the ideology, you have to be so rigid in what you accept as truth, and there's so many things that just don't jive with that, that you can't really meme well when you're doing that. Like, what memes are, is pointing things out li- th- and exaggerating them in a way where people kind of know that this is the case, and then you make a preposterous image and everybody laughs. But the left can't really do that, because a lot of those memes are very offensive and funny.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I, I think it has, it's actually a window into not really the left. I mean, as you know, I don't, I, I feel myself of the left, but I don't relate-
- JRJoe Rogan
As do I.
- BWBret Weinstein
... to these people at all.
- JRJoe Rogan
Or, nor do I.
- BWBret Weinstein
And-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, something weird happened and we got kicked out. (laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah, it got taken over by something diabolical.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
And you know, what you're pointing to, it's the same thing. It has no sense of humor, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
They laugh, but they have no sense of humor. They have no, no, uh, ability to juxtapose things so that you suddenly see something in the way, something, you know, a funny joke works. They can't meme because they're not really, you know, this is some corrupt cabal behind the scenes that arranges a set of, uh, you know, policies that aren't coherent together because they're about something that's never been discussed with us, and so it's not a natural for... You know, you can't really build a culture around it because it's incoherent to begin with.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
So, they just, they have no, they, they're bad at humor. Memes is a special kind of humor that has, you know, arisen online, and the rules of it... Actually, I wanted to talk to you about this. The rules of it are different from normal humor. I was trying to phrase something on Twitter today to make it funny and I was realizing the difference between a tweet and, you know, what I've seen you do in your club, right? Where in your club you can actually structure a joke that isn't funny until four lines in.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
Because your audience isn't going anywhere.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
On Twitter you need to keep them on board with the tweet so they don't scroll to the next one, right? So there has to be some juice in the beginning in order to get to the punchline, but the, you know. Anyway, I'd be curious what you think about w- what the different rules are for humor in the different contexts, but even just the structural differences is profound online.
- 6:01 – 7:56
Satire gets neutered: The Onion vs. Babylon Bee and the logic of censorship
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, one of the best examples of how the tide has changed is the Babylon Bee out-Onions The Onion. The Onion is essentially dormant.
- BWBret Weinstein
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
The Onion was like, the dominant force of satire, forever. And they were so good. They were so good.And then something happened where there's, like, places they can't go. It's like a runner being limited to, like, a certain amount of miles per hour, when that mi- the, the, the speed that you're limited to cannot compete with the best runners.
- BWBret Weinstein
W- I think it's actually a manifestation of some- of, of a larger pattern that you can see very clearly when it's about humor and satire, and you don't see it as clearly elsewhere. But when The Onion was funny, it was a political force, and so it had to be targeted by things that it would have opposed, right? By things that it would have mocked and, and revealed. And so the fact that it's been neutered makes perfect sense if you imagine whoever it is that was galled by being revealed by The Onion. It doesn't make sense if you imagine that The Onion is in some competitive environment where it's trying to win market share by being hilarious, right? Why would you take a hot property like The Onion and ruin it? Well, the question is, are you trying to accomplish something political by getting rid of, um, a, a powerful force, a force of ridicule? Or are you trying to compete economically? And we see this in lots of places. Why would social media platforms embrace censorship, right? Everybody wants to be in a social media en- environment that's lively. It doesn't want one that's heavily constrained.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
And yet, these would-be competitors are behaving, they're colluding, effectively, to shut out messages that lots of people want to hear.
- 7:56 – 9:42
From ‘misinformation’ to ‘mal-information’: Twitter Files and state pressure on platforms
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you think that that's because they're worried about government intervention and some sort of repercussions for not adhering to whatever guidelines the government wants you to do? I mean, this clearly seems to be the case when you look at, like, the Twitter Files. The Twitter Files, which has gotten almost no press in the mainstream media, or I should say the corporate-controlled media, but has been extensively covered by independent journalists, because it's so shocking. Because you're seeing the government actively campaign to get factual information removed from Twitter because it's inconvenient. And most of the social media campaigns, most of the social media programs, whether, whether it's, uh, the, the companies, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or... Most of them have complied to a certain extent. You know, at least limited the reach of certain things. Like, there was one that Tucker did famously on COVID, and, um, the, whatever government organization that was contacting them, I think it was the FBI, was trying to get them to take it down. And they wouldn't take it down, but they limited the reach substantially by, like, 50%. But they, they had ruled that they cannot take it down because it's factual. And so there's no... It's not like this was misinformation. So then it falls into this weird category that we've just recently heard. It's recently entered the zeitgeist, which is mal-information. Mal-information is factual information that could be used in a damaging way.
- BWBret Weinstein
I know. Heather and I have been screaming about this one since the day that memo emerged.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) It's wild.
- BWBret Weinstein
Like, what the hell? You're actually gonna put that on paper?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's wild.
- 9:42 – 24:32
Power over profit: money devaluation, financial fragility, and ‘The Great Taking’ thesis
- BWBret Weinstein
Right? But I think the answer to your question is, we, in the public, are under the misapprehension that the game is about money. And the reason that we're under that misapprehension is that traditionally, money has been a pretty good proxy for power. And what's happened is the game is still very much about power and control, but money doesn't mean what we thought it did. Money-
- JRJoe Rogan
In what way?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well A, I think we're being set up. That, you know, your ability to store wealth in money is dependent on rational policy, right? If somebody is gonna print money in order to get themself out of a crisis, then they're robbing you without ever gaining access to your bank account. So the value of what you've stored is under somebody else's control. Now, if you imagine that the power players understand this game, that they know that... The way I would put it is, is this, money has two values. One is as a means of exchange. Can you buy stuff with it? And money still works the way it always did from that perspective. The other is, can you store your wealth there? And at least with respect to dollars, it used to be the case that you could store your wealth in dollars. But the power players are aware that dollars aren't going to continue to mean what they have traditionally meant. And presumably, they have other strategies for storing wealth in ways that they're going to be able to recover it after whatever happens. Um, I would recommend people... I, I hope I have the title right. There's a book called The Great Taking written by a, uh, an elite Wall Street insider who reveals certain changes that have, um, been introduced into the law that most of us are unaware of. So for example, there's a change in which you think you own a stock in the way that people used to own stocks, but stocks used to actually have a physical manifestation. You had a sheet of paper that you would put in, in your safe. And what has happened is you now own a stock and you can cash out anytime you like the way you always could. But if the entity, the underlying entity goes bankrupt, then you don't actually own the stock. You actually own an IOU, which can be valueless.And we don't know this. In the public, we think we're trading stocks the way we always did. Um, but w- but what has happened is, something that had a physical manifestation, in which you could have a battle in a court about who owns this piece of paper, is now not about a pi- a piece of paper. It's about a right, and that right has a- an arcane structure that most of us are unaware of. So, the question is, at some point do things that you are- that you think you own, do rules get revealed to you that tells you that you don't actually own those things anymore, um, and that, you know, your f- your financial position is therefore not the one that you thought you were in?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. So, what do you think this strategy is about? Like, what do you- what do you think-
- BWBret Weinstein
Power-
- JRJoe Rogan
... power-
- BWBret Weinstein
... power and control.
- JRJoe Rogan
But do you think that this is- the- the devaluation of money, what is- what's the end purpose of the devaluation of money?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I th- uh, so let's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it central bank digital currency?
- BWBret Weinstein
That is a mechanism for the ultimate purpose, which is power and control. And, uh, I should point out that in the way I think about things, I take that as an assumption. I'm not arguing that as a conclusion, although I do think you can discover that that is the pattern by looking at all of the evidence about what the- the rent-seeking elites care about and don't care about. But I would say it is a comparatively safe assumption, that it is about control and power, because it's always been about that. In fact, evolutionarily, that's really why creatures look the way they do, right? E- even, you know, if you take a human being, for example, you're composed of something like 30 trillion cells of 200 different kinds. All of those cells contain the same information, but they all agree to act differently, because it's in their interest to not go rogue, right? They could all independently try to reproduce, like single-celled organisms, but if they agree to collaborate, they surrender a lot of capability to reproduce, you know? 30 trillion cells can produce a lot of offspring cells. What they get is an increased amount of control over their environment. So that's what evolution is doing by organizing things in the way it is. Its purpose is to put your genes as far into the future as it can lodge them, but power and control is- is the game, the evolutionary game that is being played. And humans play it differently and, you know, we go from being a highly adaptable, somewhat technological creature. You know, our Stone Age ancestors were technological in the sense that they could flint- flintknapp a weapon, um, or a tool, but not highly technological. But nonetheless, the game has persisted as we have become organized into larger and larger social entities and to societies, and it hasn't fundamentally changed now. So, what these elites are doing is they are attempting to gain control, to consolidate it, and to arrange to protect it into a future which they see as increasingly chaotic and dangerous. As the people of Earth become aware that they have no plan for the future, that most of us have nothing meaningful to do with our lives, that w- even the systems that feed us and sustain us energetically are built on rickety premises, they know that there's a reckoning coming, and so they're preparing for it. And, you know, what you saw at the Super Bowl, or didn't see but might have, is the distraction, right? The stuff that we are fed so that we'll think about things that other than our long-term prospects in light of, uh, elites who, frankly, don't give a shit about us.
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you seen what happened in, uh, Europe with the farmers?
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs) I've been watching that, yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. It seems like they, at least temporarily, have won.
- BWBret Weinstein
Th- they have won, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Let's explain what we're talking about.
- BWBret Weinstein
All right. Well, may- maybe you should explain what you've seen. I've watched massive protests of farmers who are increasingly, um, angry and organized about regulations that make, um, farming increasingly difficult, unproductive, and unprofitable.
- JRJoe Rogan
If I was a conspiratorially-minded person, what I would say is what they're trying to do is take over these farms, and the best way to do that is to enact legislation and rules that limit their b- profitable... Well, first of all, farms are always very difficult to run. They're very difficult to maintain profitability. They're- th- they're- they struggle. And it's a terrible shame that the people that provide us the thing that we need to survive, ultimately food, that we've done something to these people to make it more difficult for them to do it while it's already insanely difficult. It requires incredible hours, i- in- incredibly difficult, highly stressful. There's so many moving pieces just to provide food for all these people, and they started enacting legislation to limit the amount of fertilizer they're allowed to use, to limit the amount of animals they have. I know in Ireland, they- they proposed something where they want to kill a certain amount of, uh, the cows, because they're saying that the cows produce methane. It's fucking insane. It's not scientific. It's not something voted on. It's not something agreed upon by scientists, biologists, certainly not, uh, debated.... a- when you're talking about regenerative farming practices, like, people that have provided significant options for farming the way ... Like, whatever the issues that they have, where they can actually sequester carbon in the soil and make these farms carbon-neutral. It's been demonstrated. It's not theory. It's been done in America. Polyface Farms, uh, White Oaks Pastures are two great examples of that, but there's many regenerative farms. Can be done. And for whatever reason, they have decided to enact these harsh limitations on these farmers' abilities to provide food for people. Cynically, when I look at something like that, I'm like, "I think what they would do is do that, cripple the farmers' ability to make money, the farms go under, they take over, they control the food supply."
- BWBret Weinstein
Right. And you s- y- I hear you, uh, working overtime not to see what's in front of you. And I, I agree. We all have-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I'm just being fair.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? I'm, I'm just m- making it as ... I'm, I'm trying to steel man it as much as possible.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right. But if you take the, if you take the objective of the game as profit, it's not exactly clear what the end game is. If you take the objective of the game as p- a, as power and control-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
... then it's pretty clear.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the best way to control the food supply.
- BWBret Weinstein
I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
You just put the farmers outta business.
- BWBret Weinstein
Who's gonna challenge you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 24:32 – 1:28:27
Elites, chaos, and the ‘jester problem’: why rulers can’t hear the truth
- BWBret Weinstein
it is they are doing, I do not believe that they understand the world nearly as well as they think they do.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you think that's just because they're removed? I mean, if you're, uh, you're one of the billionaires that's involved in the World Economic Forum, how much contact do you have with regular people? What, what is your, what are your perceptions of regular human beings? And if you've been living like that for a long time... I liken it to, like, celebrities, who just d- have no concept of how other people think or behave or feel, because they've been famous and wealthy for so long, and adored for so long. They don't understand the plight of the average human being.
- BWBret Weinstein
They don't understand, and they don't care, because they don't see themselves as headed back that direction.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
It's a rare elite that, even if they came from humble beginnings, it's a rare elite that maintains that mindset in any significant way. Because it becomes an obstacle, you know, it becomes a limiter of what strategies you can deploy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, and encourages empathy, which is bad for business. (laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
It's... (laughs) Very well said, Joe. Um, but the problem is, they also... The elites, especially ones who have, to some degree or other, arranged their ascent, right? They've done something that makes them feel like they must be very well-informed, they must be very clever, right? There's some component of, of their power that is the result of some moment of cleverness in their past, or maybe more than one. But it makes it difficult for them to remember how much of what they accomplished actually had nothing to do with them. It had to do with systems built by other people that they know nothing about. And the tendency for them to see the part of the puzzle that they're comfortable with, right? Maybe it's the strategy of power and control. But to not appreciate the parts of the puzzle that nobody's expert at, right? You're, they're dealing with complex systems, layered upon each other. The ability to disrupt that stuff in a way that it stops functioning, such that even the elites who make this happen are not going to like the world that they're going to create. They may not even be able to live in it, right? That's the, the biggest concern I have, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
If, if I thought that they were diabolical but knew what they were doing, then my sense is, well, all right, we're in for a bad hundred years. And that's terrible, but that's not extinction. Right? I think we're actually headed for extinction because I think these people have no idea what they're playing with. They do not understand what needs to be preserved in order to keep the world functional enough for them to live in.
- JRJoe Rogan
How is that conversation not taking place? That's what doesn't make sense to me.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it coming from a place where they never feel like they're ever going to go back to poverty, or to any sort of chaotic world that could, that we could envision if everything falls apart? They think they'll be protected ultimately because of resources, influence, power.
- BWBret Weinstein
Think about it this way. Let's say that you're really good at the game of power and control. And you manage to take what would ordinarily be a profit-making entity, uh, uh, a social media platform, and you get it to sign up for rules of censorship that are bad for business but good for keeping dangerous ideas from spreading. Well, then you're also likely to utilize that mechanism to shut down the very discussions that you need to hear. So, uh, if you think about the question, you know, and, um, I, I don't know how accurate it is that, that monarchs had court jesters. I don't know how regular that was, whether it was an exception. But if you think about the position of a monarch, who needs to know what's actually going on, but nobody around them is going to tell them, because-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
... it's too dangerous to tell the king that the people think he's an asshole.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right? So you empower a jester, maybe you put a ridiculous hat on him, and he speaks in a weird way so that anything he says is dismissible. But the point is, that guy is actually in a position to tell you what you need to know. Right? He can make jokes that are funny in the street that you're not gonna hear 'cause you're the king.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right? So, these new power elites, they don't have a mechanism that overcomes the control that keeps people from telling them exactly what they need to know. You know? Look, if, if you're one of these people, you're going to screw up the world that you cannot escape. And nobody can tell you that because you've managed to create a very pleasant world of people who tell you what you want to hear. So, that's the danger you're putting us in, and we're mad about it for two reasons. We're mad about it 'cause you're plotting against our ability to guide our own ship. That's natural, and you expect that part. But we're also mad at you because you're screwing up the world, and it's not yours to destroy. You're not gonna leave a planet for my children. You're okay with that, I get it. But you're not gonna leave a planet for your children either. So wake the fuck up.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think they think their children will be protected. And I think they... Just m-... You know, it's, it's the old phrase, "Rules for thee but not for me." A- we see that with, like, the World Economic Forum serving beef short rib. You know? It's like, what, what do you really believe, and why are you saying what you're saying? And do you think that because you're so protected now, because you go from limousine to private jet to major hotel surrounded by armed security back and forth, your interaction with a person who's, like, trying to deal with their bills, trying to deal with their bullshit, trying to deal with, you know, mortgage payments, and whether or not they can afford to pay their taxes, and that kind of shit. You're completely removed from any financial strife. I mean, once you get into that caddy-... You're n-... I mean, I'm nowhere near those people, and I don't worry about it, so they must not worry about it.They can't. They, they can't ever think that it's going to be an issue, because it's not an issue. It's just like human beings have this inability to recognize anything that they don't immediately interact with. Everything else becomes abstract. Like, even the whole climate emergency. It's a great thing to talk about. It's a great talking point for people that need something to wave a flag for, and scream and protest, and block the highway for. It's a great m- mechanism in that regard. But are you really worried about it every day? I'm not worried about it every day. Every day I wake up, I'm like, "It's pretty much just like yesterday." It's not that much different.
- BWBret Weinstein
No, I'm, I'm worried about it less and less, in fact.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm worried about it less and less as well. And also, because the way China's, uh, uh, uh, taking it on, which is not at all. China's building power plants left and right. They've got 100 coal plants being built right now, plus. More than 100, right? What was it, Jamie?
- NANarrator
Uh, I think so.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think it was, like, close to 200. They're, they're not l- ... And they are the number one, them and India. They're the people that are dumping shit into the air. You gonna ... Killing cows isn't gonna put one half of 1% of a fucking dent in the amount of greenhouse gases that get emitted. It's not a lot.
- BWBret Weinstein
No, it ... Let's put it this way. I think we have to have one caution, which is just because they're using it to manipulate us doesn't mean that there's not some underlying truth there. But if I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BWBret Weinstein
... look at-
- JRJoe Rogan
Good point.
- BWBret Weinstein
... you know, where the water line was when I was a kid versus now, it hasn't budged. That alerts me to something. I do think I've seen a little bit of glacial retreat in places that I knew, but it's not a lot.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, also, isn't that ano- ... Um, regardless of whether or not people are polluting the world, and I think they 100% are, and I'm 100% on board. Look, if you go to Los Angeles from the 1960s and 1970s and look at the air, and then you look at the emission standards that were enacted, catalytic converters, the way they changed how cars work, it is much better now.
- 31:21 – 50:08
Climate, pollution, and the ‘good regulation’ distinction—plus EV mineral ethics
- BWBret Weinstein
No, I'm, I'm worried about it less and less, in fact.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm worried about it less and less as well. And also, because the way China's, uh, uh, uh, taking it on, which is not at all. China's building power plants left and right. They've got 100 coal plants being built right now, plus. More than 100, right? What was it, Jamie?
- NANarrator
Uh, I think so.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think it was, like, close to 200. They're, they're not l- ... And they are the number one, them and India. They're the people that are dumping shit into the air. You gonna ... Killing cows isn't gonna put one half of 1% of a fucking dent in the amount of greenhouse gases that get emitted. It's not a lot.
- BWBret Weinstein
No, it ... Let's put it this way. I think we have to have one caution, which is just because they're using it to manipulate us doesn't mean that there's not some underlying truth there. But if I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BWBret Weinstein
... look at-
- JRJoe Rogan
Good point.
- BWBret Weinstein
... you know, where the water line was when I was a kid versus now, it hasn't budged. That alerts me to something. I do think I've seen a little bit of glacial retreat in places that I knew, but it's not a lot.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, also, isn't that ano- ... Um, regardless of whether or not people are polluting the world, and I think they 100% are, and I'm 100% on board. Look, if you go to Los Angeles from the 1960s and 1970s and look at the air, and then you look at the emission standards that were enacted, catalytic converters, the way they changed how cars work, it is much better now.
- BWBret Weinstein
So much better.
- JRJoe Rogan
Substantially better. Clear indication that these regulations that were smart and intentional, they worked. They did something good. It's better. It still sucks, you know, but, but if you go to Mexico City, you realize there is a giant difference. I took photos when I flew into Mexico City for the UFC, and you c- ... It looks like there's a fire. It was like there's a fire on the ground. Like, there's so much smoke, and it's just an everyday part of their life. If they had the same regulations that they enacted in Los Angeles, that would lead to cleaner air and better health outcomes for pretty much all of their citizens. We all, we, we both agree to that.
- BWBret Weinstein
100%. I mean, in fact, when I travel to places like this and I think, "Oh, wouldn't it be cool to live here?" I always think, "Yup, and, you know, how much does your life expectancy go down because of the amount of pollutant you're breathing every day?" So yeah, good regulations are-
- JRJoe Rogan
Critical.
- BWBret Weinstein
Critical. And in fact, we, we just moved, uh, recently from-
- JRJoe Rogan
Don't tell anybody where you live.
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs) I'm not gonna tell them where I live, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
... I did move from Oregon to Washington. And Oregon and Washington deal very differently.
- JRJoe Rogan
You moved from the frying pan right into the fire, sir. (laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
R-
- JRJoe Rogan
You're a glutton for punishment.
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
What's wrong with you?
- BWBret Weinstein
I, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
You need to get you a gun, bring you out to here to God's country.
- BWBret Weinstein
Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Get yourself a ranch, Brett Weinstein.
- BWBret Weinstein
R- we've, we've got guns.
- JRJoe Rogan
Get yourself a well.
- 50:08 – 55:19
Legacy media collapse and the ‘zero is special’ game theory of free speech platforms
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I... Listen, I s- uh, regardless of how nonsensical some of the stuff that they print is, I still have faith in journalists. I think we're going through a very weird trend right now where they're not behaving like journalists, they're behaving like propagandists. And I think that the business is imploding because of that and the rise of independent journalists. And I know there was a, an attempt at a correction at CNN. There was an attempt at it. But they had so many fucking holes in that ship, that just to try to patch them up a little, you're, you're not gonna get people's trust in that way, and I don't think it was effective. So, it wasn't effective in terms of the amount of people that were watching, and there's no dynamic personalities that people appreciate and respect and really, really trust that are on the air. It's simply talking heads that you're familiar with. But I think that ultimately, they're going to have to either adjust or die. E- either one of them is okay, because if they die, then you have independent journalists that do have the respect and the admiration of people because they put their neck out there, and they've said things that are controversial and, and difficult. And they've made these points from a, a well-articulated place of an actual understanding of the issues and not ideological. So, when you're seeing something like The New York Times tweet th- uh, post things that are clearly ideological... Rolling Stone's lost the plot. Roll- r- I mean, just what are they doing? Th- they're just... They're pr- propaganda and nonsense. That shit that they did during the pandemic about the people dying from ivermectin while gunshot wounds... How many people are getting shot? What the fuck are you talking about? You've got a line of gunshot wounds? Is that what you're showing me? And then you're showing me a photograph which is a stock photo of a completely different time of the year where people are wearing winter jackets, you fuckheads. Like, this is crazy. You're talking about... What was it? Oklahoma that we're saying?
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Oklahoma in the summer and people are wearing parkas? Like, fuck you. How are you real? How are you real? How are you real, uh, while the Dark Horse podcast exists?
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
How are you real? It's 'cause people, they're, they're not quite ready to jump ship yet, but they're fucking close. And so you see in The New York Times and the LA Times, just fired a shitload of people, Sports Illustrated. There's all these organizations that are just fucked now, because the media, c- corporate media... I t- uh, you don't want to call it mainstream anymore 'cause it's not as big. It's really not. The real mainstream is online. And corporate media is fucking imploding. But the people that want those jobs, the people that go to school, the people that really grow up respecting and appreciating and admiring actual journalists, the people that uncovered Watergate, the people that report about the n- the, the pipeline being blown up and who's actually doing it. You know, when, when you get real... L- like kids that are growing up right now that are listening to this, people that are in college right now that recognize the true value of journalism, they're gonna get out into the world, and some of them are gonna make it, and they're gonna show the way. And it's the only way for those businesses to survive. You can't survive as a propagandist while X exists. You cannot, because you're gonna be exposed. You might work for the boomers, but guess what? They're gonna die.
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They don't have much time left, especially if they take your fucking medical advice.
- BWBret Weinstein
Uh, e- exactly. So, uh, let me introduce a concept here that we talk about on Dark Horse regularly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BWBret Weinstein
Which is, zero is a special number. And this is about a little piece of game theory that the rent-seeking elites did not understand. Um, the idea is, if you have control, if you have censorship control over all of the social media platforms, then the world looks a particular way because certain stories that should be discussed can't be discussed. If a single platform escapes that control, then it becomes the platform that everybody wants to be on because nobody wants to be treated like a child. We all want to be in the places where we can discuss whatever needs to be discussed. So, by buying Twitter and keeping it afloat through the initial attacks, Musk created an environment where we are now much freer than we were to speak even just two or three years ago.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it seems to have alleviated pressure.
- BWBret Weinstein
That's my point. Once you have one entity that succeeds in stabilizing itself outside of the control, every other social media platform has to follow or die. Right? Because-
- JRJoe Rogan
But do they? I mean, what is-
- BWBret Weinstein
They, they are. They, they, they are and they will. I mean, it's possible that they will find some way to, to de-fang X. There's still a lot of bad architecture inside of X. Um, but if X remains freer, then it forces the hand of everybody else who wishes to compete because nobody wants to be, you know, playing mini golf when there's real golf.
- JRJoe Rogan
Can you expand on the, the structure of it, the architecture that you think is...
- 55:19 – 1:06:16
Inside X/Twitter’s ‘architecture’: trending anomalies, account manipulation, and Musk blocking Bret
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, let's just say-Um, I, I will use in my defense, uh, I met with Elon and he talked to me about something that I think he's also talked to ... he's talked publicly about, which is the fact that before he owned X, he could detect that the behavior with respect to his own account was not organic.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
That there was lots of structure inside that decided what to elevate and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
... uh, what to suppress. I feel this in my account. I've in fact seen very strange stuff up until last week. It's very hard to convey that to anybody, because they don't know how good you are at sorting actual shenanigans from just feeling like a tweet should have done better than it did.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
And, you know, it was just luck of the draw. But, um, I think it is possible to demonst- let, let me just tell you about one example.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BWBret Weinstein
Um, I was tweeting about, what, what even ... Oh, it was about, um ... After my interview, I had two recent interviews with Tucker Carlson. Um, the second one was about the border crisis, and it contained some really explosive stuff. And, um, it was not trending, which is weird for a Tucker interview, especially one that got as many views as it did. And there has been some, uh ... I used to be able to do something I would call climbing a trend. If there was a trend on Twitter, I could very often tweet about it, and then my tweet would climb up the trend. And that became impossible. It was like forbidden somehow in the architecture of Twitter. In the aftermath of this Tucker interview, um, I expected to see that interview and my participation in it trend, because so many people saw it. It was like six million views in two days. So that, it was obviously something that was being seen and discussed. And it didn't start trending, and then a weird thing happened. My name trended, but it was only my first name, and it trended under the category Sports. And if you went to the tweets in the trend, they were actually about the Tucker interview. So the Bret-
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right. So what it turned out, somebody posted under me, they said, "Oh, it was Bret Favre," who's ... That's why it says Bret-
- JRJoe Rogan
Favre.
- BWBret Weinstein
Favre. Ha.
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Communist. What's wrong with me?
- BWBret Weinstein
Wow, I'm not gonna live that down, am I?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
But, uh, Favre.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's a legend. You gotta get his name right.
- BWBret Weinstein
Uh, he is. I, I am going to from now on.
- JRJoe Rogan
What'd you say, Jamie?
- NANarrator
That's gonna be a meme.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs) All right. Uh, well, I'll take my lumps on that. But nonetheless-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a, it's a odd spelling, in your defense. If you don't, you know?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, yeah. So here's what happened. B-R-E-T trended.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
The category was Sports. It wasn't Bret Weinstein trending-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
... and when you went to the tweets, they weren't about sports or Bret Favre.
- 1:06:16 – 1:12:29
Bots, troll farms, and discourse poisoning: how fake extremes distort public reality
- JRJoe Rogan
or Gab or these sites that are committed to free speech, and some of them have been kind of fucked and take all... And I think that, that's, that's something that people need to take into consideration too. When you, you hear about a right wing platform that gets infiltrated by racists and Nazis and I'm sure that's true too. I'm sure there are some. But I would imagine, and I would like you to consider, that we know that government interference in social media discourse, whether it is our government or whether it's foreign governments that want us to stay at each other's throats, is a real thing.
- BWBret Weinstein
(sighs)
- JRJoe Rogan
And one of the ways they would do that is to make any sort of ... any kind of di- anytime there's a discussion, have the most problematic take on it elevated and have massive amounts of people that are saying egregious, horrible things over and over again. And to me, my reaction when I see that is I stop using that platform. And that's me. That's someone who's really aware of this game and knows how it's g- I don't go to those other platforms. I just, "Get the fuck out of here." They're too, it's too nuts. Some of them-And then some of them, I go, "Okay." Like on, on X, like when some, some hot take comes out, I love to go into the accounts and see what the most ridiculous people, like what they're saying, and then go to their page. And it's usually like a name with a bunch of numbers, and they have like 43 followers, and then you look at their tweets, and it's all either responding to these social issues in this very egregious way, or retweeting preposterous things, and retweeting gaslighting things. You know, retweeting things that just like, you just go, "Who the fuck thinks like this?" Well, it's, they're not real people, man. These are agents of chaos, and they're injected into social media. If you have beer, and it's a really good beer, and you inject 20% piss into that beer, people are gonna drink that beer and go, "What the fuck is wrong with this beer?" It's not the beer. It's what's being injected into the beer. You're not allowing the real citizens to have an honest take on how everybody else thinks. Because the way we figure out what's right, w- no one exactly knows that their take is 100% the only way to look at things. You gotta be able to interact with people. That's why discourse is so important, and that's the most fascinating aspect about the free internet, is to be able to see the actual opinions of real people that think very differently than you. And some of them you might think are ridiculous, and some of them might change your mind. You might listen to what their take is on something and go, "I never considered that. I have to, maybe, maybe I am looking at things ideologically. Maybe I do have a pre- a preconceived notion of what's right and what's wrong, and it's not based on facts. It's not, I'm not being objective." And that's the only way to find that out. But when you're dealing with swarms of people, whether it's Russian troll farms, or Chinese, or American, and they're jumping into the fray and fucking up all the conversations, you're like, "Hoo, what's really going on here? What is really going on?" And I think most people don't know what's really going on. I was, I was, the reason why I got to this recently, it was some article, I forget what the article was about, but it was some social take. But then, I saw that they were posting tweets in the article, which is a new thing that lazy journalists will do. (laughs) And this was the take online of this. And so I go, "Okay, that's the take online. Let me go to that person, see if it's a real person." Nope, not a real person. "Let me go to this other tweet." Nope, not a real person. I mean, it might be a real person, but my instincts are that the fucking name and three numbers behind it and the way they're tweeting about stuff, bullshit. Bullshit. This is, so did they do that? How did they not do that before they posted those tweets? They don't give a fuck. They're just getting clicks. They just wanna see the people arguing about things, and they wanna see the support for whatever preposterous notion they're trying to push out, whether it's, uh, trans athletes, or, you know, people being able to use women's rooms with penises, all of that stuff. When you see the takes on it, and you go like, "How much of this is real humans? And how much of it is actually affecting real humans to their, their whole barometer, their idea of like what's okay and what's not okay shifts?" And the way I've described it, and it, I, I had heard someone talk about this one in terms of, I think it was Tony Robbins actually, talk about it in terms of beneficial behavior, that if you are on a certain path, there's two boats on a certain path, and one of them deviates slightly in a, in a better direction, over time, the distance is great from where you would be to where you are now, because you've done the right things. Well, that's also true if you like get people to believe nonsense, and you get to be- people to believe like weird social things, and you get to be- people to believe that if you are not willing to have sex with a biological male who identifies as a woman, somehow or another, you're a Nazi. Mm-hmm. And as that gets further and fur- then we find ourselves in these, like, "How did I get here?" Like, "How are we here?" And well, a lot of it is just discourse. And if you can control discourse, and if you can manipulate discourse, which is clearly being done, you could change what's acceptable. Well, I, I f- on the one hand, I think it's even worse than you're portraying it. And on the other hand, I find a kind of hope in this. And the way it's worse is, if you think about who we're up against, and what properties they control, they presumably have the intelligence services on their side. They've banked all of our communications, and I mean, if you give me their cards, I know how to win, right? You know who suspects whom of what, you know who resents, uh, whom, you know how to seed, uh, anger and disrespect. It's not hard to take a group of people and get them to tangle themselves if you have that kind of information. And they just simply do. And they don't even have to
- 1:12:29 – 1:18:13
COVID reality disputes: ‘no pathogen’ factions, isolation claims, and how causality gets messy
- JRJoe Rogan
collect it in r- real time. They just have to bank it so that they can go back and figure out what the map of these things is, and they can tangle us. And I think they're doing it. And I think we are seeing, I know that in the, um, in the COVID dissident community, there's all kinds of infighting, uh, that's going on, that- About what? (laughs) Well, there's a faction that has emerged, for example, that is convinced that there was no novel pathogen circulating during the COVID pandemic. Do you, now, do you think those people are real? Some of them are. I know some of them. Right. Do you th- so these people think that it was just all bullshit, and that all those people getting sick was what, the flu? Well, (laughs) there's a second faction that says it wasn't SARS-CoV-2, it was flu. (clicks tongue) Okay. Right? Now, let's just say, I think the people who say that there is n- there was no novel pathogen, they actually have a point that they're failing to make, which they should be making.
- BWBret Weinstein
The point is, the propaganda was so effective, it was so industrial strength, that a pathogen was not required.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right? Much of this could have been accomplished with no pathogen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
Now, that doesn't mean there wasn't a pathogen, and I think there was, 'cause I think I've had it. Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
And, and my sense that I have had that pathogen is based on observations of the pattern with my family. So, let's just take the question of, well, was this flu, and are you leaping to the conclusion that flu was something special because people had put the idea of SARS-CoV-2 in your mind? I don't think so, and here's why I don't think so. I've had flu maybe three or four times in my life. I've had something three times in the last four years, something severe and flu-like. I had it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it still severe?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
The, the most recent versions have been severe for you?
- BWBret Weinstein
Let's put it this way, severe as in debilitating.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- BWBret Weinstein
Now, I treated it aggressively. I got over it quickly. But, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But the results, the impact initially?
- BWBret Weinstein
The impact was profound, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- BWBret Weinstein
It was, it was flu or worse severity. Now, am I saying that was SARS-CoV-2? How would I know? How would I know?
- JRJoe Rogan
You didn't get tested the last two times?
- BWBret Weinstein
The last time I got tested, it did not test positive for COVID, but it was out of season. So, the basic pattern is this. I believe the pathogens exist.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
I believe that I have contracted a pathogen three times in four years. Does it have to be one pathogen? No, I'm open to the possibility it was a couple different things. But mostly, we're talking about not in the traditional season for flu.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you get tested for RSV?
- BWBret Weinstein
Um, I didn't, but I did talk to Pierre Kory about it, and there was no reason to think it was gonna be RSV. Um, so anyway, my point is, I don't believe there was no pathogen, because I believe that something that followed the pattern of a pathogen is in the world.
- JRJoe Rogan
Also, the pathogen is clearly documented.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I agree with you, it's clearly documented, but it's not that the people who are arguing there's no pathogen don't have responses. And so, you know, we saw a lot of shenanigans with thr- uh, cycle thresholds on PCR. So, there are ways-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BWBret Weinstein
... to create the impression of a pandemic that did not require there to be an actual pathogen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it was also one of the rare times where being asymptomatic didn't, you, you were still considered sick.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah, and that was likely, uh, nonsense, or largely nonsense.
- 1:18:13 – 1:47:35
AIDS parallels: Duesberg, AZT, Kary Mullis’ Fauci critique, and captured narratives
- BWBret Weinstein
Right? And y- you remember in that book that there is an exploration of what happened with HIV.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
Now, the portrayal in that book, which I must say is, I think, shockingly compelling, is that HIV exists, but it is not explanatory of acquired immune deficiency syndrome as we think it is. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
And this is Peter Duesberg's assertion too, who was, uh, demonized heavily during the AIDS crisis.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
He's a professor of biology, University of California, Berkeley.
- BWBret Weinstein
So, we're dealing with a question w- There are those who believe that pathogens don't exist, that viruses don't exist. I think these people are completely nuts. Okay? We know viruses exist. For one thing, you know, there are certain viruses you can see. Right? Like, a bacteriophage is something that you can actually see with an electron microscope. So, viruses definitely exist. Whether they are responsible for this, that, or the other syndrome is something that, uh, we can get wrong.
- JRJoe Rogan
Can I stop you there?
- BWBret Weinstein
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, if you can see viruses in an electron microscope, you cannot see COVID in an electron microscope?
- BWBret Weinstein
Um, you can see something. Right? You can see a particle with structure. Um, but, uh, there are ... So, again, we're in an area that is not my area of expertise. You've got-... couple different kinds of electron micrographs. You've got, uh, scanning and transmission, and then you have various tricks to increase the ability of them to see into ranges that are actually beyond the ability of electrons to reveal them directly. And (inhales deeply) anyway, it is a highly technical realm, and it's not, it's not something I can, I can explain. Um, but we can see something, but the fact, you know, if you, if you say, "This person has a syndrome," right? And then you go looking for a particle, and that particle is present reliably, right? You have to then figure out if that particle is absent from people who don't have the symptoms, and if it's not absent, which it sometimes won't be, you have to figure out what it means, right? So there's a postulate about establishing the connection between a virus and a disease that is, um, seemingly logical. In other words, people who have the particle present ought to show symptoms of the disease, and people who have symptoms of the disease ought to have the particle in those ... Uh, so that postulate, Koch's postulate, does not actually work, and the reason it doesn't work is because you have ... Let's take, um, let's take the case of AIDS, for example. (smacks lips) AIDS involves a inability of people to fend off various pathogens that they, they would otherwise be able to fend off. You can say, well, that's the result of HIV. The problem is that the inability to fend off some set of pathogens may be the result of the disruption of a subclass of cells, CD4 cells, let's say. So if CD4 cells are attacked by HIV, and that disrupts the ability of a patient to fend off a particular disease, then anything that disrupts the formation of CD4 cells will produce the same pathology. So according to this postulate, which is too narrow, you can falsify the idea that HIV is causing AIDS, because there are patients who have AIDS who don't have HIV, right? So that's, that's the problem. You need, uh, a, a richer toolkit in order to be able to establish a causal relationship, and in the case of HIV, um, what the argument is that it is effectively a minor fellow traveler, right? That whatever it is that is causing AIDS actually does, is accompanied by HIV, but that HIV isn't actually inducing that syndrome, right? So AIDS is a syndrome, which just means a collection, uh, of symptoms that occur together. But the nature of biology is that you have pathways. Anything that disrupts a particular pathway will create all the same symptoms downstream, and so in any case, that, um, (sighs) that complexity makes it very difficult to establish with certainty that X particle creates Y disease, because-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's also ignoring a very important factor in AIDS, which is party drugs.
- BWBret Weinstein
That is the c- the competing hypothesis, and for those who think that this is a preposterous, um, allegation, you should look at this evidence. The evidence is surprisingly compelling, and you know, i- i- if your mind resists that, realize that Luc Montagnier, who got a Nobel Prize for the discovery of HIV, later in life became convinced that the thing for whatch- which he got the Nobel Prize was not nearly as important as he, he had imagined. He believed that HIV was not the causal element. So, um, I, to me that's very powerful, somebody as smart as Luc Montagnier looked at the evidence and said he had gotten it wrong, where that actually decreased his own historical importance.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then we have to take into consideration the initial treatment, which was AZT.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right, AZT.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now AZT kills people dead.
- BWBret Weinstein
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they stopped using it as chemotherapy medication because it was killing people quicker than cancer, and chemotherapy medication has never been, never been prescribed to people that you constantly stay on it. That's just not something they do. You go on it for very short periods of time because it's very damaging, but it kills the cancer, and then your body recovers and survives. With AZT, with AIDS, it was killing people, so now you have people dying from AIDS, and you have this medication which Fauci in the 1980s was famously, uh, quoted as saying, "Is the only reason why we use only one medication is 'cause it's the only medication that's been proven to be both safe and effective."
- BWBret Weinstein
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, where have you heard that before?
- BWBret Weinstein
Right. It was a total, it was, COVID was a rerun of the AIDS chapter with AZT.
- JRJoe Rogan
But the AIDS chapter seems even more terrifying, because if the initial treatment was AZT, and we know AZT kills people, you're taking someone who has a compromised immune system, and your response to that was, "Give them something that's going to kill them quicker, and then say there's a giant crisis." (claps hands once) And this is what Duesberg was demonized for.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah. Uh, I, I agree, and I, you know, for many years, uh, I resisted the interpretation. Um, I was more familiar with Kary Mullis' objections. Uh, Kary Mullis was the inventor of PCR technology who died tragically, and some would say strangely, at the very beginning of the COVID crisis.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why strangely?
- BWBret Weinstein
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Just because of the timing?
- BWBret Weinstein
Have you ever seen this piece of video where he-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BWBret Weinstein
... talks about Anthony Fauci?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
Episode duration: 3:26:55
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Transcript of episode A78LaTBt3Ss
