Joe Rogan Experience #2137 - Michelle Dowd

Joe Rogan 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Michelle Dowd 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) So thanks for coming in, Michelle.

Michelle Dowd 0:14 Thanks, Joe, for having me. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:15 My pleasure.

Michelle Dowd 0:16 I love your man cave.

Joe Rogan 0:17 Oh, thank you, thank you.

Michelle Dowd 0:18 (laughs) I really do. It's awesome.

Joe Rogan 0:20 Yeah. It's, uh, it's fun. Um, so when I heard your story, I was like, "This sounds completely insane."

Michelle Dowd 0:27 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:28 And, um, just to fill people in, just explain what happened.

Michelle Dowd 0:34 Well, uh, I was born into a cult, a high-control group that I didn't know to call a cult, because, you know, I was born there.

Joe Rogan 0:41 'Cause you were a child, yeah.

Michelle Dowd 0:42 That was my whole experience. My grandfather started in 1931, so my mother was also born into the cult in the 1940s. My dad-

Joe Rogan 0:51 Wow.

Michelle Dowd 0:51 ... was, um, let's just say he was 12 when he first met my grandfather, who would later become his father-in-law, and my grandfather became his father figure. So my mom was married off to this, uh, man who was a follower of her father, and I am the second child of their union.

Joe Rogan 1:12 Wow.

Michelle Dowd 1:13 And, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14 Where'd, where'd all this take place?

Michelle Dowd 1:16 So this took place, um, that he originally started it near LA in Pasadena, which most people know because of the Rose Parade and-

Joe Rogan 1:22 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 1:22 ... other things like that. Um, when he first started it, it started... My understanding is he was a Boy Scout leader, and he was an orphan. He had come from Oklahoma when he was a young man, and, uh, the Boy Scouts didn't allow him to have as much control as he wanted to have of the boys.

Joe Rogan 1:39 Oh, boy.

Michelle Dowd 1:40 So (laughs) yeah, which is a lot of control. So he left the Boy Scouts, and he took the boys with him, and some of the boys from his original troop in 1931 stayed with him past his death. One of the first boys took over after him in the late 1980s.

Joe Rogan 1:54 Wow.

Michelle Dowd 1:55 Or the early 1980s, actually. Yeah, so he was really good at getting followers.

Joe Rogan 2:01 What was his background? Like, what, what did he... What did he do before he did all this?

Michelle Dowd 2:06 Nothing. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:07 Nothing?

Michelle Dowd 2:08 He was complete... I don't think he graduated from high school. I don't know that for sure. He lied about everything, and he said he had a PhD from Stanford later when he... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:16 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 2:16 Yeah. "It wasn't until I got to college that none of this, this..."

Joe Rogan 2:19 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 2:19 I'm not even 100% sure he knew how to read, to be quite honest.

Joe Rogan 2:21 Really?

Michelle Dowd 2:22 Um, he came from a family where, uh, he was the only child that lived out of his particular mother, who was married to a man. It was a second marriage, and his first wife had died, and then, you know, he had a bunch of kids or whatever. So he had a bunch of half-siblings, but no full siblings, and apparently, now this could be lore too, they kind of excommunicated him. He compared himself to Joseph-

Joe Rogan 2:46 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 2:46 (laughs) You know, like of the multicolored-

Joe Rogan 2:48 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 2:49 ... uh, clothing and everything. So he was, like, put down a well, he liked to say, and, um, he escaped, and he came to LA, uh, in the height of, I don't know, the silent films, things like that. He said he was in silent films. There's no chance that is true.

Joe Rogan 3:02 Wow.

Michelle Dowd 3:02 But he said he was, and he got some sort of probably church education when he got here, and he declared to everyone he was the prophet of God. He was gonna live 500 years, and he was going to lead the army of God in the Second Coming.

Joe Rogan 3:16 Wow. And that's your grandpa?

Michelle Dowd 3:18 That's my grandpa. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:21 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 3:21 It clearly is. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:23 Oh, my God. (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 3:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:25 Wow.

Michelle Dowd 3:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:28 You can't pick your grandpa.

Michelle Dowd 3:29 No, you can't.

Joe Rogan 3:30 No.

Michelle Dowd 3:31 But it was a male organization for a very long time. It was all men, and it wasn't until-

Joe Rogan 3:35 All men?

Michelle Dowd 3:36 All men. It was all men. It was from 1931 to 1966, when my mom married my father. No one was allowed to get married there. They just-

Joe Rogan 3:43 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 3:44 And they were all presumably celibate, and it was just men.

Joe Rogan 3:47 Oh, my G- presumably.

Michelle Dowd 3:49 Yeah. Presumably, yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:50 It's like prison.

Michelle Dowd 3:51 (laughs) Yeah, very much. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:51 They're gay for the stay.

Michelle Dowd 3:53 Absolutely. So I was raised by a bunch of older men who had never been with a woman. Um, you can see-

Joe Rogan 4:00 Oh, my God.

Michelle Dowd 4:00 ... how well that ended, and, um, but he didn't want his daughter to be an old maid, and she was getting older. She was 24 by the time he married her off to my dad, and at that point, um, I think the women, like, his wife said, you know... It was s- their fourth child. They had three boys first, and so this was his first daughter, and he decided that since the world had not yet ended that maybe he should marry her off before she either became an old maid or maybe a loose woman. Who knows?

Joe Rogan 4:27 When did he think the world was gonna end?

Michelle Dowd 4:29 Well, he used to prophesy 1977.

Joe Rogan 4:31 Want some more fire for your cigar?

Michelle Dowd 4:32 Sure, I'd love some fire.

Joe Rogan 4:38 I'll keep this over here if you want. It's easy to use.

Michelle Dowd 4:40 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 4:41 Just push that thing down.

Michelle Dowd 4:41 Where I come from, this is a grave sin, by the way.

Joe Rogan 4:44 Oh, a woman smoking a cigar, or anyone?

Michelle Dowd 4:45 Anyone smoking a cigar.

Joe Rogan 4:46 Anyone?

Michelle Dowd 4:47 Especially Romans.

Joe Rogan 4:47 Are you allowed to drink coffee?

Michelle Dowd 4:48 Yes.

Joe Rogan 4:49 What, what was the rules?

Michelle Dowd 4:51 Um, well, coffee's interesting, because I don't know that they said out loud you could drink coffee, but I don't remember it being forbidden, that the body is the temple of God-

Joe Rogan 5:01 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 5:01 ... and that there's no marking your body with ink, no piercing your ear.

Joe Rogan 5:05 Whoops.

Michelle Dowd 5:05 I know.

Joe Rogan 5:06 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 5:06 I have a lot of ink myself. I wasn't sure if I should show it off.

Joe Rogan 5:09 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 5:09 Um, and-

Joe Rogan 5:10 No piercing of the ears.

Michelle Dowd 5:11 Right, no piercing of the ears.

Joe Rogan 5:12 What about makeup?

Michelle Dowd 5:12 No makeup when I was young.

Joe Rogan 5:14 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 5:14 They also unusually, uh, cut off women's hair, at least during the era that I was there. Now, there was an... Oh, it was-

Joe Rogan 5:20 Cut it off like a boy's hair?

Michelle Dowd 5:21 Yes, mm-hmm. My mom had the exact same haircut since she got married until she died, the exact same haircut.

Joe Rogan 5:27 Oh, wow.

Michelle Dowd 5:27 She died in 2022. (exhales) Yeah, so just a lot of the femininity was, um, considered a temptation to the boys, and since it was supposed to be... They thought it was better to, you know, burn in hell than to lust after a woman, and they quoted some stuff from Paul, you know, and the Apostles and the Epistles and, um, that basically you could get married as opposed to lust. And so, um, eventually in nine- in the 1960s, they allowed their first wedding.

Joe Rogan 5:56 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 5:57 Which is 35 years. Think about that, 35 years of celibacy, uh, but all, yeah, just a bunch of dudes.

Joe Rogan 6:03 Wow.

Michelle Dowd 6:04 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:05 It is just...... absolutely fascinating to me how some people develop these groups, and how they do it, and, like, what the characteristics of the leaders are.

Michelle Dowd 6:17 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:17 It's, it's, it's so weird. Um, there's a place out here called, um, the One World Theatre. And, uh, it used to be owned by a cult, uh, that there's a documentary on called Holy Hell. And, uh, this guy had started a cult in Los Angeles. He was a yoga teacher, but he was also a gay porn star and a hypnotist.

Michelle Dowd 6:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:40 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 6:40 (laughs) That's a nice combo.

Joe Rogan 6:41 It's a great combo for a documentary.

Michelle Dowd 6:43 ... ever, certainly.

Joe Rogan 6:44 The documentary's incredible.

Michelle Dowd 6:45 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 6:45 You watch the documentary like, "What the hell?"

Michelle Dowd 6:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:48 And, uh, he was running from the Cult Awareness Network, so he changed his name. His original name was Jaime Gomez. Um, he changed his name, I forget what it was. He had, like, two different names, so I think one was Michelle, and there was another one. So, and then he came out here to Austin because right after Waco, they were kinda cracking down on cults, and they were-

Michelle Dowd 7:09 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:09 ... trying to find, yeah.

Michelle Dowd 7:11 I can see why, uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 7:11 So they're like, "We gotta go." So the Cult Awareness Network was onto him because also family members were calling in, "Hey, we lost our children. They're with this guy, and he's crazy and, you know, they're g- got the people in the woods in LA." And so he moved out to Austin and, and had his followers build him this theater where he could dance in front of them.

Michelle Dowd 7:29 Wow.

Joe Rogan 7:30 Yeah, and so there's-

Michelle Dowd 7:31 Is he a good dancer?

Joe Rogan 7:31 It was like, he was a very handsome guy, and he was very charismatic and he was, like, ripped. He was a yoga instructor. He had a six-pack. He was a beautiful man.

Michelle Dowd 7:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:41 And, um, I think he, and he also was, like, kind of exotic-looking, so he had this, like, guru thing going on, you know, and then he was also a r- a hypnotist, so he's, like, really good at manipulating people's consciousness. And, uh-

Michelle Dowd 7:56 That might be a criteria for being a cult leader, by the way.

Joe Rogan 7:58 The charismatic?

Michelle Dowd 7:59 Um, maybe a form of hypnotist.

Joe Rogan 8:01 Yeah?

Michelle Dowd 8:01 Like you, you have to be able to manipulate consciousness.

Joe Rogan 8:05 Hmm.

Michelle Dowd 8:05 Because if you, if people, at least your top leaders have to be indoctrinated. If they are not, I mean, some people call it brainwashing, you can call it what you want, but y- you have to have people who worship you.

Joe Rogan 8:15 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 8:16 It doesn't work unless you do.

Joe Rogan 8:17 Of course. I think we have a very narrow idea of what hypnotism is because of the term. I think the term, you lock onto the term, like, "Oh, I wanna quit smoking. I'll go to a hypnotist." And they sit you, and they, the clock tick-tock-tick-tock.

Michelle Dowd 8:31 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:31 But I think there's, like, states of m- mind-melding that happen with people, where you all get sort of locked into a state of consciousness.

Michelle Dowd 8:39 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 8:39 And I think it happens in riots. Um, I think-

Michelle Dowd 8:43 Definitely.

Joe Rogan 8:43 You know what I'm saying? Like, the madness of the crowds, there's, there's something real about that. If you've ever been in a chaotic public environment where, like, fights break out or something like that, there's a very strange feeling in the air that leads people to do things that they would never do before, people that would never pick up a shopping cart and throw it through a Starbucks window will do that now. It's like everybody just loses their fucking mind. And, um, it h- I think it happens in concerts when people are, like, jamming out together. You all get in the same, like, mind frequency. And I think a really good cult leader does that too. I think they get these people and they lock them into this way of thinking, and it, we're, you know, we don't wanna call it hypnotism, but I think there's a lot of states that are very similar to hypnotism in that something happens where you enter into an altered state of consciousness that's probably accessible somehow or another, but you don't know how to get there.

Michelle Dowd 9:38 Right.

Joe Rogan 9:38 But then this song brings you there or this person brings you there with their talk about the impending apocalypse and, "We're all locked in." You know, and it gives people, like, a sense of belonging and purpose, that you're locked into this frequency that everybody else in the room is locked into.

Michelle Dowd 9:55 It's very comforting.

Joe Rogan 9:56 Hmm.

Michelle Dowd 9:56 I mean, there are a lot of things about a cult that are very comforting.

Joe Rogan 9:58 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 9:59 Uh, two days-

Joe Rogan 10:00 I think that's a de- b- I'm sorry, but th- I think that's the positive benefit of religion.

Michelle Dowd 10:04 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 10:04 You know, it's like th- this, this thing comforts you, and even if, even if, like, it's, like, some of them's gotta be wrong. Some of them've gotta be wrong. All right, if you have 100 different ones and they're all different gods and different people, somebody's gotta be wrong. But the one common denominator that they share is that if you do believe in these things, it seems to aid you in life. People seem to be happier. They seem to have more of a sense of purpose. Th- they, they don't feel lost, you know? Like, some of the least happy people I know are atheists. And it's, I have a joke about it where I say-

Michelle Dowd 10:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:37 ... "You're really dumb for not believing in stupid shit," because if you believed in stupid shit- (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 10:42 You'd be happier. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:42 ... if you believed in dumb shit, you'd be happier. That would be a smarter move.

Michelle Dowd 10:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:46 'Cause it's kind of true. And I think that's what's so fascinating to me about these cults, is how they do it, how they lock people in. I mean, I've, I'm sure because of your experience, you've probably seen a few of these documentaries, right? You've probably seen-

Michelle Dowd 11:00 I definitely have.

Joe Rogan 11:00 There's-

Michelle Dowd 11:00 And, you know, when I watched the reenactment of the Waco one, which is not the documentary but the... Did you read, uh, watch the one that was... It came out maybe five years ago?

Joe Rogan 11:08 No, no.

Michelle Dowd 11:10 But they showed, you know, the children and, uh, how they didn't want to leave, you know? They, and it, and just how difficult. There was a child psychologist-

Joe Rogan 11:18 Ugh.

Michelle Dowd 11:18 ... who worked with them afterwards, and I was very interested in that because it takes a long time to undo, uh, the level of... I mean, it's one thing to have a faith, right? Like believing in-

Joe Rogan 11:28 Right.

Michelle Dowd 11:28 ... you can call it stupid shit, but whatever you believe in, it's one thing to have a faith, but to not have the ability to think for yourself and to be-

Joe Rogan 11:35 Right.

Michelle Dowd 11:35 ... that to be trained out of you. So I went to, um, lunch a couple days ago with someone I hadn't seen since I was three, and he, um, so a lot of, uh, fellow former Field members have come out of the woodwork since this is book came out.

Joe Rogan 11:46 We should tell everyone. Field is the name-

Michelle Dowd 11:48 Oh, yes.

Joe Rogan 11:48 ... of the group.

Michelle Dowd 11:49 Yes. We called ourselves The Field. And one of these former m- members, who I won't name, um, I hadn't seen, I didn't, I didn't recognize him at all. I just hadn't seen them since I was a little kid. But several of them have come out who knew my parents and, of course, knew my grandfather before I was born and then maybe knew me when I was a little, teeny girl, and they have lots of stories. Anyway, he was on one of these things we called The Trip with a capital T. And what we did on The Trip, I mean, there were different things in different years, but this one was in the early 1970s. And he was, um, you know, doing all the things you do on The Trip, but one thing they required, which my father required of us at home too, is to run every morning, first thing in the morning, which you can say there's some good things about this. But you slept together in tents and then you'd get up and you'd run and you'd have to beat your time.And my father used to time us as a kid, so like I had to beat my time every day, which is really hard to do of course (laughs) because at some point you're not gonna be able to beat your time, right? Like, you can't always get better. But at this point, um, he was 19 and he, um, was beating the time he set, and that time was i- in relation to the fastest runner. And so if the fastest guy was going really, you know, fast, you had to keep the same ratio of distance. So anyway, he didn't make his time. There were three guys who didn't make their time and they had to go through the SWAT machine. So my grandpa often made boys go through the SWAT machine. And the simple version, which was done at the actual location of the field, was you'd crawl through men's... uh, the other boys' or men's legs and every boy would spank you.

Joe Rogan 13:14 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 13:14 I know, I know. Um-

Joe Rogan 13:16 Oh my gosh.

Michelle Dowd 13:17 (laughs) I know. They're a little... (clears throat) Well, we won't even get into all the things you could think about that. But there was a different version that was only done when the boys were separated from their parents. And so when they would go on these trips... and my dad was their original driver. He started driving, um... by the time he was 18, he was driving all around the country taking my grandfather's boys. So again, my father was not his son, he was just some dude (laughs) who like, you know, joined to this cult. And my father would drive these boys around and he would time them when they ran and did all those things. And so in this particular case, um, they did SWAT machine where you have to hold onto a fence pole and you face the fence, and then all the guys come and they hit you. So they're not just spanking you, but they're hitting you. And so he was getting kidney punches and all this stuff, and he was saying he fell to his knees and he was, he was... he almost died. He was so bruised up. And, and he, um, he was... he did not want anyone to know this story. He hasn't spoken of it because he's so ashamed that potentially someone might think, "Why didn't you fight back?" And of course I said, "But you were trained not to... you trained that you deserved this." You know?

Joe Rogan 14:18 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 14:18 And, and then apparently, um, one of my uncles, you know, was really worried, wanted to take him to the hospital, but couldn't or didn't because they had no insurance. And, um, this young man, who's no longer a young man, um, said that, you know, he could never tell his parents. He... and he never, to this day, ever told his parents or anyone. He and his brother have never spoken of their time in the fields. Um, it, it is like this big taboo. He got out, uh, maybe a year later, but he was... I mean, that was only one of many, many, many stories he told me. But that one just really struck me to feel ashamed of that. You know, like I, I guess for many years, I too did not tell people where I came from because you feel like you must have done something, um, weak to be a follower. And that's just not true. I mean, if, if someone gets ahold of you as a child, they can program you to think almost anything, especially if they're good at it.

Joe Rogan 15:10 Yeah, unquestionably. I mean, that's why they have child suicide bombers.

Michelle Dowd 15:13 Yes. Yes.

Joe Rogan 15:15 Yeah. I mean, you, you can trick children and...

Michelle Dowd 15:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:19 It's, uh, it's understandable though that you would think somehow or another that other people would think that it's your fault. Or ignorant people would think, "Why didn't you know? Why didn't you leave?" You know, or people that-

Michelle Dowd 15:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:29 ... y- you know, never really thought about it. Never thought it through 'cause they, they haven't had to.

Michelle Dowd 15:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:33 You know?

Michelle Dowd 15:34 The friends I went out with who... I mean, I'm calling 'em friends now, but I ha- (laughs) I hadn't seen them since I was a little girl. Um, they were saying, "I would have... of course you would drink the Kool-Aid," when people use that expression. "I would've been first in line. Would've signed up for that." I mean, that's... we all would've... and I mean that, and I was... I was born there and indoctrinated, and I would've, uh, completely taken anything that my grandfather or my parents told me was gonna kill me. I would've, you know, I would've felt that that was gonna take me to heaven quicker and everyone I knew would've done that.

Joe Rogan 16:02 Wow.

Michelle Dowd 16:03 And the reason you don't hear about a lot of cults, by the way, is because they didn't end up in flames or mass suicide. Um, but that doesn't mean that they didn't prey on, um, you know, dozens, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of people depending on the cult.

Joe Rogan 16:18 I was talking to Marc Andreessen and he was explaining to me that there's still many, many active cults in California.

Michelle Dowd 16:24 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 16:25 And I was like, "What? Like right now? Like people know about 'em?" "Oh yeah, they're s- they're successful." Like there's some successful cults.

Michelle Dowd 16:32 Mm-hmm. Yeah. When I first went to-

Joe Rogan 16:33 Is The Field still around?

Michelle Dowd 16:35 The Field's still around. I've been told it is a completely different organization and I'm not gonna vouch one way or the other. Uh, they certainly don't have a charismatic leader like my grandfather once he died and his replacement was there and then once he died, um, I think it's become... it has not become secular. It's a very strong religious organization, but they don't have the control they used to. Because like when we were young, they, we didn't have Social Security number, there was no way to track things.

Joe Rogan 16:58 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 16:58 And now, you know (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 17:00 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 17:00 ... it's hard to get away with, um-

Joe Rogan 17:02 You have to pay taxes.

Michelle Dowd 17:03 Yes.

Joe Rogan 17:04 You have to own a phone.

Michelle Dowd 17:04 They do pay taxes. And there was a sexual abuse, you know, uh, case that was actually prosecuted. And I think after that, which I think was 2006, I think that they had to really clean up a lot of their practices.

Joe Rogan 17:15 When I'm hearing these stories about these boys and the abuse, I'm s- that's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking if there's a bunch of boys and no one's allowed to get married, that- that's not a good recipe.

Michelle Dowd 17:27 No, it's not. And the particular one that got prosecuted was, um, a young leader who was abusing 11 and 12-year-old boys-

Joe Rogan 17:33 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 17:33 ... sexually. Um, I say out loud, I said this to my mom, I said, "Mom, isn't it curious that no one's ever prosecuted anyone for what they did to girls?" And I was a sexual abuse victim there, and I... it was something I was so ashamed of for so long. And anyway, but there's other forms of abuse that go on. I mean, there's obviously physical abuse, but there's a lot of psychological abuse. There's a lot of ways that, uh, gets inside of you that you're worthless and that you can't trust yourself. And you can't even trust yourself with your own stories.

Joe Rogan 18:01 Hmm.

Michelle Dowd 18:02 And I have, um, a slightly younger brother who adores you, by the way. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:05 Tell him I said what's up. What's his name?

Michelle Dowd 18:08 His name's Michael.

Joe Rogan 18:09 What's up, Michael?

Michelle Dowd 18:10 Yeah. Um, he... I love him to death. And he was raised, you know... we were all raised collectively, but we were also raised separate from each other. And my biological siblings, we all had different experiences because they don't let you bond. They don't, they don't want... my, um, sister who's just a little bit younger, she and I, we loved each other deeply, but we weren't allowed to speak to each other sometimes for weeks or months at a time.

Joe Rogan 18:31 Oh my God.

Michelle Dowd 18:31 And they were just strongly against you forming what they would call allies. They didn't want friendships that could turn into anything that would be a little bit, hmm, tsk-... uh, probably culty, but no, uh, like anything that would form, um, a clique, they used to call it.

Joe Rogan 18:47 Right.

Michelle Dowd 18:47 But affection-

Joe Rogan 18:47 Any other groups where th- another person could be in control.

Michelle Dowd 18:51 Right. Or any-

Joe Rogan 18:51 Or they could discuss who's in control.

Michelle Dowd 18:53 Yes.

Joe Rogan 18:54 And why this person should be in or out.

Michelle Dowd 18:54 Or any loyalty to anyone else other than the primary leader.

Joe Rogan 18:58 Phew.

Michelle Dowd 18:59 There's a lot of ways that this, that you can indoctrinate people and make them police themselves.

Joe Rogan 19:04 Mmm. Oh, sure, that's what North Korea does.

Michelle Dowd 19:06 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:07 North Korea gets everybody to rat on everybody else.

Michelle Dowd 19:09 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:09 You know?

Michelle Dowd 19:09 That was huge where I come from.

Joe Rogan 19:11 Mmm.

Michelle Dowd 19:11 I have, um, (laughs) oh, I felt like it was a huge compliment, one of the former members came out of the woodworks after this and he said, "You know, I knew that you would never rat us out." And I was like, "Man, that's so great." But I mean, it was something we were all taught so, so, so deeply.

Joe Rogan 19:24 That, yeah, that you, you have to, no matter if this is your brother or your sister or your mom-

Michelle Dowd 19:31 Yes.

Joe Rogan 19:31 ... you have to tell on them.

Michelle Dowd 19:32 You have to. Because you're worse.

Joe Rogan 19:33 And that just means it keeps everybody scared all the time, everybody's t-

Michelle Dowd 19:35 You never trust anyone.

Joe Rogan 19:37 God, that's so, it's so insidious and yet also brilliant.

Michelle Dowd 19:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:42 Like, it's evil, it's evil. But it's ... How did he figure out how to do it? That's what's crazy. And how was he able to pull it off? That's what always so fascinating to me, that it's not like children. With children, it just makes 100% sense, you're raised there, you think this is reality, and you think that the world outside reality is all a bunch of evil demons or w- or whatever it is. But if you're an adult, like you're a grown adult, 34-year-old man, and you meet this dude at the auto repair shop and he hands you a pamphlet and the next thing you know, you're on a farm somewhere, like, how do those people ...

Michelle Dowd 20:17 So I can't vouch to that. I will say that the unusual thing about the field is you have to join as a child.

Joe Rogan 20:22 Oh.

Michelle Dowd 20:22 There are no adults who join. You, they-

Joe Rogan 20:24 Really?

Michelle Dowd 20:25 It's kind of like a pyramid scheme when you're, um, most people join when they're five or six, and they are indoctrinated, and then they play sports. Like, so for example, they play tackle football at age five, and so they teach everyone how to, you know, um, play game, but it's only the people who are really good at the game that they continue to court, I would say. Uh, you could call them groom, whatever. But it's, there's a lot more kids there than, um, will ever s- get into the inner circles. And it's a little like the mob or something, like I was born in the inner circle, but there are plenty of people who came out of that cult who honestly weren't harmed by it because they got out young.

Joe Rogan 21:02 Mmm.

Michelle Dowd 21:03 So as long as you get out by the age of 12, you're probably okay. Um, but they don't keep you unless you're really fully indoctrinated. And most of the people who stay really don't have a family to go back to, and they separate you from your family. And so they do more and more separation as you become a teenager. By the time you're 18, you're signing a commitment for life form.

Joe Rogan 21:19 Jesus. S-

Michelle Dowd 21:20 And I'm not saying that's happening now, but that was 100% happened, not during my, not just during my era, but all the decades prior to me.

Joe Rogan 21:27 So it's not just a cult, but it's like, it's got a, sort of a meritocracy built into it.

Michelle Dowd 21:32 (laughs) Yeah, but I think a lot of cults have that.

Joe Rogan 21:34 Really?

Michelle Dowd 21:35 I think so.

Joe Rogan 21:35 Yeah?

Michelle Dowd 21:36 Yeah. I mean, you have to have something to strive for.

Joe Rogan 21:37 S- But they kick people out that don't line up enough?

Michelle Dowd 21:40 Yeah, um, so cults in general kick people out. In fact, they want you to believe that staying is hard and that you have to work hard to stay. I think the misconception is-

Joe Rogan 21:50 Mmm.

Michelle Dowd 21:50 ... that they're trying to get you in. Sure, they're seducing you in some way, there's some sort of calling card, whether it's a pamphlet or something else, but once you're there-

Joe Rogan 21:57 Yoga class?

Michelle Dowd 21:57 Do I have what?

Joe Rogan 21:58 No, I said yoga class.

Michelle Dowd 21:59 Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:59 That's what that guy did.

Michelle Dowd 22:00 Exactly. Yeah. Dancing, you know. But whatever brings you in, but then after that, it's like you're the strong one, you're the special one for choosing to stay.

Joe Rogan 22:08 Mmm.

Michelle Dowd 22:09 In this particular cult, they always would say, "There's 20 of you in this room. 19 of you will fall away. There's only one of you who"-

Joe Rogan 22:15 Oh, boy.

Michelle Dowd 22:16 ... you know, "will make it into the army of God."

Joe Rogan 22:18 Geez. It's like the Navy SEALs of cults.

Michelle Dowd 22:21 It kind of is.

Joe Rogan 22:22 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 22:22 And there is a lot of physical... (laughs) Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:26 (laughs) They only want the best of the best.

Michelle Dowd 22:29 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:29 So if you're a child and you're in, uh, I mean, how ... First of all, how could anybody ever expect a child who gets indoctrinated into that to know the difference? If that's, if that's your reality and that's what you grow up with, how, how could you possibly know? What, I mean, what year are we talking about when you were like S- eight years old?

Michelle Dowd 22:50 Um, uh, that would've been the early eigh- uh, late '70s.

Joe Rogan 22:54 Yeah, so nobody knows what the hell's going on.

Michelle Dowd 22:57 Oh, absolutely not.

Joe Rogan 22:57 Even in the world.

Michelle Dowd 22:58 Exactly. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:59 It's, uh, the whole thing's a big foggy haze. There's no internet. The world's, we have like one-tenth of access to information that we do today.

Michelle Dowd 23:07 Oh, that's probably-

Joe Rogan 23:07 And yet, and, and you're also a child and you think that this is reality.

Michelle Dowd 23:10 And parents were used to their kids being gone all the time, and I think that that was-

Joe Rogan 23:14 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 23:14 ... not something unusual 'cause one thing I hear, uh, for kids who went there, people say, "Well, how did your parents allow that?" And I mean, parents like they sent them off to this sports place and then their kid got really into it, and then at some point, their kid became a teenager and didn't wanna come home anymore. And I mean, they're like, "Well, I don't think my kid's doing drugs or I don't think that they're like in prison, so it seems like they're doing pretty well." And-

Joe Rogan 23:32 But also seems like societally, there was a shift at some point in time where, uh, what was the year where more women entered the workforce and more women started getting jobs?

Michelle Dowd 23:46 So that happened in the '70s. I think 1973 might've been like one of those, I mean, obviously it was starting to happen in the '60s, but there was a lot of women at home in the '60s.

Joe Rogan 23:54 Mmm.

Michelle Dowd 23:55 Um, around 1973 to 1979, you had a huge exodus of women out of the home.

Joe Rogan 24:00 Hmm.

Michelle Dowd 24:02 The women I come from, I mean, uh, like, my grandmother, who had my father, who, um, joined to this cult, she was always a working woman, minimum wage working woman. She didn't have more than an eighth grade education. She worked 'cause her father, um, excuse me, her h-... my dad's father, her husband, had been, um, in World War II and got, you know, pretty severe PTSD or whatever, was an alcoholic, and beat her. And so, she ran away from him.

Joe Rogan 24:25 Oof.

Michelle Dowd 24:25 She just had one child, which was my father. She was living in a chicken coop near LA, just with this one son, and she was the first woman to get hired in a factory. But this was in the 1940s. So there were always women, of course, and lots of women of color who were working, but it wasn't the middle class women who were working. But the poor women were always working.

Joe Rogan 24:43 Right. Um, I'm just thinking, like, r- latchkey kids at that point, back then.

Michelle Dowd 24:48 '70s and even '80s.

Joe Rogan 24:49 Yeah, yeah, it was totally common.

Michelle Dowd 24:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:51 All my friends, we just got let out of the house when we were kids.

Michelle Dowd 24:54 Right.

Joe Rogan 24:54 Y- you just l- got on the bus, went to school, walked home from school, rode the bus, hung out with your friends. Nobody knew where you were.

Michelle Dowd 25:01 Right. So you could've been in a cult and your parents would've n- not necessarily known, right?

Joe Rogan 25:04 I think I would've told them.

Michelle Dowd 25:06 (laughs) Well, y-

Joe Rogan 25:06 (laughs) But I could've got sucked into one. That's the point. It's like everybody looks at themselves as who they are today. So if you're a 35-year-old man and you're listening to this today, you're like, "I, psh, I wouldn't get sucked into that," that, you can't say that 'cause you, you're not a five-year-old boy.

Michelle Dowd 25:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 25:22 If you're a five-year-old boy, you don't know what the fuck is going on. You're a child. By the time you're 18, you sorta get a, uh, especially if you're a little streetwise, like, "All right, some people are shady. I know what the fuck's going on. Listen to this guy. He's trying to rope me in." Um, I remember there was this Christian group when I was in college that was, uh, trying to indoctrinate people and they were, um, they w- they were, like, young, good-looking people. And, uh, there was this r- this beautiful Puerto Rican girl and, uh, she was always trying to get me to go to parties with her. And I was like, "Wow, did I hit the jackpot."

Michelle Dowd 25:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:58 Like, "Eventually, I'm gonna get a date with this girl." Like, "This is amazing." You know, I was probably 19, 20, I guess? 20, 21, maybe?

Michelle Dowd 26:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 26:06 And, um, one day, um, she invites me to go to this retreat on the weekend, like they have some, some crazy Christian retreat. And I'm like, "Oh my God, a retreat?" Like th- she's not telling me it's a Christian retreat. She's just telling me it's, like, this fun party and this whole thing. And I said, "I can't. I have plans this weekend." I go, "But if you guys ever do another one of those things, that sounds like fun." And so Monday morning, or whatever the day was, I'm in school and we're all in the cafeteria and it was the day that Trump's airplane, the, the landing gear failed to open. And so, uh, we all sit down at the, the lunch table and I had just seen it on the news and I said, "Did you see this thing on the news about the plane? It's crazy. Like, the landing gear didn't, didn't go out, and so the plane just, on the belly of the plane, skid across the runway, and there's all these crazy sparks." And I go, "But nobody died?" And they go, "Oh, praise God. Praise God." And I was like, "What?"

Michelle Dowd 27:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:08 Like, "What's going on here?"

Michelle Dowd 27:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:09 This super hot Puerto Rican girl-

Michelle Dowd 27:11 So funny.

Joe Rogan 27:11 ... is like, "Oh, praise God." And they were all, "Praise God. Praise God." And then I'm like, "Oh," and then it just immediately clicked, "You dummy."

Michelle Dowd 27:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:20 "They were trying to get you to go to their church thing. You thought she liked you." And then they started talking to me more about God and then w- I was like, "Oh, I gotta go. I got a class. I gotta get outta here."

Michelle Dowd 27:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:30 I went, "Fuck."

Michelle Dowd 27:31 So you didn't get that date?

Joe Rogan 27:31 No. No, I avoided them.

Michelle Dowd 27:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:33 They were in my Italian class and, uh, they were learning how to speak Italian and I, I avoided them. I was like, "I can't. I can't b- I just can't. I can't be involved in this." Because they were all glossy. They were all, like, they were all believers. Not-

Michelle Dowd 27:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:47 This is not saying that God's not real. This is not b- saying that Christianity's not true. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, you could've got those people with Scientology. You could've got those people with Mormonism. You could've got those people with the Moonies. Whatever. They were just looking for a thing that they could attach themselves to and then formulate their identity based around this thing. And for them, it was Christianity. And it was this, like, youthful form of Christianity where they're trying to get young people. They're making it, like, retreats. "We're gonna have... We're gonna party." And they were all socially odd. They were all real awkward people. It was really, it was very interesting though to me. Uh, the person who's always curious about human beings. So I was like, "This is wild." Like, "I'm hanging around..."

Michelle Dowd 28:30 Well, I think in high control groups, they do tend to, obviously, cater to the young.

Joe Rogan 28:34 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 28:34 I mean, they, they're, they're soliciting the young. And I wanna be clear too, I'm not anti-religion. I think high control groups/cults are a whole different experience. And yes, they use religion, but they don't teach you to have faith and to trust yourself in your faith. They teach you to follow someone else's faith.

Joe Rogan 28:50 I used to have a joke about, what's the difference between a cult and a religion?

Michelle Dowd 28:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:53 Where a cult is created by one guy and he knows it's bullshit. In a religion, that guy's dead.

Michelle Dowd 29:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:01 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 29:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 29:03 And all the other people, all the other people that this fucking dude, 2,000 years ago, convinced... But some religions are really beneficial and they might, in fact, be based on some kind of true story. I think it's a game of telephone. That's what I think. I think-

Michelle Dowd 29:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:19 ... if you tell me a story and I tell Jaime the story and then Jaime tells someone out in the lobby a story, by the time it gets to me all the way again, it's gonna be screwed up, right?

Michelle Dowd 29:27 Sure.

Joe Rogan 29:28 Now imagine this over thousands of years of just oral tradition and then writing in lost languages.

Michelle Dowd 29:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:36 Like ancient Hebrew. They wrote 'em in Aramaic on animal skins, some of these stories, like the Dead Sea Scrolls. And then they eventually translate them to Latin and to Greek and to Roman and to English and to German, like ugh.... what? (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 29:51 Lost in translation.

Joe Rogan 29:52 Also-

Michelle Dowd 29:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 29:53 ... like, what did they know? Like, how much did they know? They, they had some ideas of, like, the formation of the universe. "The beginning, there was light." Sounds a lot like The Big Bang.

Michelle Dowd 30:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:03 Sounds a lot like ... If you tell The Big Bang to your kids and your kids would tell it to their kids, and you're gonna do this for 1000 years. At the end of it, you're gonna get some real ... People are gross.

Michelle Dowd 30:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:14 They always like to, like, twist things around and make things-

Michelle Dowd 30:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:17 You know, they add their own little spice to a story.

Michelle Dowd 30:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:20 Like, have you ever had a friend that tells a story, like, "Hey, bro, that didn't happen that way."

Michelle Dowd 30:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:24 Like, "You didn't say that."

Michelle Dowd 30:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:26 "You fucking ran for cover."

Michelle Dowd 30:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:27 Like, everybody's got their own version of a story. Well, that-

Michelle Dowd 30:29 Yeah, we all embellish.

Joe Rogan 30:31 Th- th- if you could-

Michelle Dowd 30:31 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:31 Oral traditions, 100% for sure, you're gonna have a lot of that, especially when you have high control groups, like your grandfather. Your grandfather just-

Michelle Dowd 30:40 And you think about the translations, too. Like, we ... Even when the monks were translating all that and, like, or s- um, s- like, they were scribes.

Joe Rogan 30:46 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 30:47 And they were inscribing it.

Joe Rogan 30:48 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 30:48 Like, all of that, too. There was an agenda on a lot of that.

Joe Rogan 30:51 100%.

Michelle Dowd 30:51 And so ... Yeah. And then, when you- we read the King James Version of the Bible, I mean, you know, the king pr- pronounced it to be so. And so, any- anything that was left out, I mean, there was a lot left out, right, in what was canonized.

Joe Rogan 31:04 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 31:04 Because it was perhaps dangerous to the particular regime that he was running. And so, not to say-

Joe Rogan 31:10 Yeah, imagine you get to decide.

Michelle Dowd 31:12 ... that that's not true. Yes, I know. You get to decide.

Joe Rogan 31:13 You get to decide what God meant.

Michelle Dowd 31:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:15 I think God didn't mean any of that.

Michelle Dowd 31:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:16 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 31:18 Right?

Joe Rogan 31:18 Take that stuff out.

Michelle Dowd 31:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:21 Um, uh, my que- my problem is never with religion. My problem is purely with human nature and what we know about humans. If there was a way that you got religion through some sort of non-human source, like, if you achieved your experience through a non-human source, I would go, "Okay, well, maybe there's a place that you can go and you could actually go meet God." There's, like, a portal you walk through and you meet God. But as soon as you're doing ... You're letting people tell you a story, people are full of shit.

Michelle Dowd 31:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:52 They're just generally-

Michelle Dowd 31:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:53 Generally, at least a certain percentage are full of shit. And the people that wanna control people have a much higher likelihood of being full of shit. 'Cause to really do that correctly, like, if you wanna be a president, like, you gotta lie. You gotta lie. It's, like, really important. So, the, the people that are, like, good at that job are generally full of shit. And so, then you have a problem with the interpretation of the past, right? I mean, you're, you're seeing that right now in universities. Like, people are trying to reinterpret certain events because of the way people feel about sociopolitical issues today. So, they're trying to re- reinterpret history, take down statues. There's a lot of, like, craziness that's going on today. Well, that's like a microcosm of the ancient history of human beings. It's, it's not that God's not real. It's that people are full of shit. And so, there's some- a lot of wisdom in a lot of these ancient religious texts in particular, which is really fascinating. Like, how much did they know about the human experience? How much did they know about how you need to live your life in order to be harmonious with the universe? How do you, how do you, like, how do you accentuate positive experiences? How do you leave the world a little bit better than it was before you got here? And that's-

Michelle Dowd 33:07 Have you, have you read the whole Bible-

Joe Rogan 33:09 ... universal.

Michelle Dowd 33:09 ... by the way?

Joe Rogan 33:09 I did when I was a kid.

Michelle Dowd 33:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:11 I actually had Bible class in Florida.

Michelle Dowd 33:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:14 When I moved from (laughs) -

Michelle Dowd 33:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:16 When I moved from, uh, San Francisco to Florida, I was 11 years old and it was a complete polar opposite experience of the country. I lived in San Francisco with two parents who were hippies in Haight-Ashbury. So, we were in the middle of, like, we lived near Lombard Street. We were in the middle of, like, the hippie anti-war revolution of the 1960s. And then I moved to Gainesville, Florida. My stepdad was going to, uh, w- he, he was becoming an arch- he was a computer programmer, and then he switched careers and became an architect. And so, he was going to, uh, University of Florida at Gainesville. And so, we were th- so now, all of a sudden, I'm around alligators, there's fucking alligators everywhere.

Michelle Dowd 34:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:02 (laughs) It was like, "What are you g- Are you people retarded? Why do you have giant monsters everywhere? This is so ridiculous." So, we had alligators, um, super weird swampy weather, and religion.

Michelle Dowd 34:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:14 Religion was in the schools. Like, in public school, you had Bible class. And they also paddled you.

Michelle Dowd 34:21 Oh.

Joe Rogan 34:21 It was the first time I'd, I'd ever been hit by, uh, a teacher.

Michelle Dowd 34:24 In Florida?

Joe Rogan 34:24 They, they ... I got in this fistfight with this kid and they whacked us with a paddle. Um, but-

Michelle Dowd 34:29 Can I ask you a alligator question real quick?

Joe Rogan 34:30 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 34:30 So, when you were in Florida in the 1970s, were you there in the late 1970s?

Joe Rogan 34:34 It was, let me see. So, I was, in '67, I was born. So I, in '73, I was in San Francisco. So '75, '76.

Michelle Dowd 34:45 Okay. Did you know-

Joe Rogan 34:46 '77?

Michelle Dowd 34:46 ... of someone who's name was Ross Allen in Florida, in the swamps?

Joe Rogan 34:49 I have no idea. I was 11.

Michelle Dowd 34:51 Well, he was older. Like, he would've ... He, he was in-

Joe Rogan 34:53 What is the name-

Michelle Dowd 34:53 ... an alligator ... Yeah. He's an alligator wrestler. He had an alligator-

Joe Rogan 34:56 Oh, God.

Michelle Dowd 34:57 ... like, farm and-

Joe Rogan 34:58 Alligator wrestlers? (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 34:59 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:59 What the fuck?

Michelle Dowd 34:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:00 What's the lifespan of those fellas?

Michelle Dowd 35:02 (laughs) Well, I don't know when, I don't know when he died, but, um, yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:06 That doesn't seem like that would work out so well.

Michelle Dowd 35:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:10 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 35:10 Well, they probably defanged him, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 35:11 They psh- ... Even that, they're just gonna break your arms off.

Michelle Dowd 35:14 Speaking of which, I need more fire.

Joe Rogan 35:15 Oh, sorry. Yeah, just grab that sucker right there.

Michelle Dowd 35:17 Okay.

Joe Rogan 35:18 And pull the top back, flip it around-

Michelle Dowd 35:19 Okay.

Joe Rogan 35:19 ... the other side.

Michelle Dowd 35:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:20 Like this, this way.

Michelle Dowd 35:21 This way?

Joe Rogan 35:22 This way.

Michelle Dowd 35:22 Okay.

Joe Rogan 35:22 This way. The other way.

Michelle Dowd 35:23 This way?

Joe Rogan 35:24 No, the other way. Oh, it's upside down.

Michelle Dowd 35:25 Oh.

Joe Rogan 35:25 Now see, this ... There you go.

Michelle Dowd 35:27 All right.

Joe Rogan 35:27 Now see the top?

Michelle Dowd 35:28 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 35:28 Pull it, sucker back like that, right there.

Michelle Dowd 35:30 All right.

Joe Rogan 35:30 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 35:30 And it's gonna make fire?

Joe Rogan 35:31 And then just pull it down.

Michelle Dowd 35:32 Pull it down. Oh, no. I cannot believe how bad I am at that.

Joe Rogan 35:35 Is it open? No, it's not open. You gotta-

Michelle Dowd 35:36 You have to-

Joe Rogan 35:36 ... you gotta open the top. Flip that top. No, no, no. Look, see this?

Michelle Dowd 35:39 (laughs) Oh, with my hand.

Joe Rogan 35:40 Lookit. Oh my God.

Michelle Dowd 35:41 I know. Oh, there you go.

Joe Rogan 35:42 There you go. You got it.

Michelle Dowd 35:43 Thank you. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:43 You got it. You got it. Okay.

Michelle Dowd 35:43 See, I feel like I came here to learn this.

Joe Rogan 35:45 Perfect.

Michelle Dowd 35:46 Mm-hmm. Thank you.

Joe Rogan 35:47 Yeah, it's a little weird because it's all black and so it kinda blends in, especially if you're-

Michelle Dowd 35:51 It does.

Joe Rogan 35:51 ... like us and your eyes are probably going.

Michelle Dowd 35:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:54 As time goes on.

Michelle Dowd 35:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 35:57 Like, I d-

Michelle Dowd 35:57 And now I can do it myself.

Joe Rogan 35:59 There's not a chance in hell I could ever do one of those clasps on a-

Michelle Dowd 36:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:04 Like a bracelet. Those little tiny bracelets, like them little clasps. Like, if my wife tries to get me to do one of those, I'm like, "I don't even know what I'm seeing."

Michelle Dowd 36:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:11 I have no idea what that is. I see blur. I see golden blur.

Michelle Dowd 36:15 Mm.

Joe Rogan 36:16 I don't know what the fuck that is. Um, what were we just talking about?

Michelle Dowd 36:19 Well, you were talking about learning the Bible in school.

Joe Rogan 36:22 Oh, yeah.

Michelle Dowd 36:22 But so one of the things that a lot of people who have read the Bible, or they have read a portion of the Bible is-

Joe Rogan 36:28 I definitely don't think I read the whole thing.

Michelle Dowd 36:29 Well, yeah, that's the thing is not very many people do, and that's why I asked. Because a lot of it is, is (claps hands) kinda tedious history, and there's a lot of he begats, and there's a whole line, you know, of Christ, all the ancestors, and the o- the whole delineation of all that. And, um, where I come from, e- we were encouraged to read, like, a verse of the Bible, but they would always tell you what it meant.

Joe Rogan 36:49 Right.

Michelle Dowd 36:49 And so I kind of went against... I used this little penlight, and, like, did it, like, late at night. But I read the whole thing cover to cover when I was eight. And if you read, like, every single book in order, you start to find that there's a lot of really beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, you know, places in the Bible, but there's a lot of stuff that's really violent.

Joe Rogan 37:07 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 37:07 And then there's a lot of stuff that contradicts itself, and it's because it was written in different time periods, by different authors, in different languages, and it also has historical context. And so generally there's a lot of stuff that people leave out when they teach the Bible, because it's really hard to explain.

Joe Rogan 37:22 Like what stuff?

Michelle Dowd 37:22 (smacks lips) Well, there's, um... For example, (laughs) I mean, this one's taught a little bit, but David, King David-

Joe Rogan 37:28 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 37:28 I'm sure you've heard of him, like as of David and Goliath.

Joe Rogan 37:30 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 37:30 But then he became a powerful king, and he saw this woman who... This woman is often talked about, Bathsheba. He sees her bathing on a roof. And where we came from, we were taught, like, she shouldn't have been bathing on the roof. Now, I don't-

Joe Rogan 37:42 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 37:44 (laughs) Right?

Joe Rogan 37:45 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 37:45 Anyway, he, (laughs) he demands that she come to him, and he-... She is the wife of a soldier of his named Uriah, a top soldier. And he commands her to lie with him, and she becomes pregnant. And then King David, who is the same guy who had the slingshot of David and Goliath-

Joe Rogan 38:01 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 38:02 ... decides that he's got to figure out how to get her husband back so that her husband can go sleep with her. And her husband won't do it, because he's loyal to the army. And he's, he comes back, but he sleeps, like, at the, the floor of the castle, you know, trying to-

Joe Rogan 38:14 Wait a minute. He's trying to get the husband to go back with the wife 'cause-

Michelle Dowd 38:16 So that she... The pregnancy will seem like it's his.

Joe Rogan 38:19 Oh, boy.

Michelle Dowd 38:20 Yeah. So he-

Joe Rogan 38:21 In the Bible?

Michelle Dowd 38:21 In the Bible.

Joe Rogan 38:23 Dirty David.

Michelle Dowd 38:24 Yeah, exactly. And it doesn't even end there. So Uriah won't do it, 'cause Uriah is loyal to David.

Joe Rogan 38:29 Oh, boy.

Michelle Dowd 38:29 And so then David sends him to the front lines to have him be killed.

Joe Rogan 38:34 Oh, boy.

Michelle Dowd 38:34 So that he can marry his wife and get away with that child's not being, um-

Joe Rogan 38:39 Illegitimate.

Michelle Dowd 38:39 ... a bastard chi- illegitimate. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:41 Oh, boy.

Michelle Dowd 38:42 And then God kills the child because, you know, needs to make the point that David was... And think about poor Bathsheba. (laughs) I mean, she's just been, like, rung around. Her husband gets killed, all these things, her kid dies because God is punishing David and-

Joe Rogan 38:54 And her husband got killed because he was loyal to the guy who got her pregnant.

Michelle Dowd 38:57 Absolutely. That's not a story a lot of people hear.

Joe Rogan 39:01 G- oh my God.

Michelle Dowd 39:02 But you can fact-check that one if you'd like.

Joe Rogan 39:03 Oh, no, I believe you.

Michelle Dowd 39:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:05 I'm good at that. I'm good at just like, "Yeah, now go argue it." (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 39:08 So- I mean, there's something I, I talk a little bit about in the, in the book Forager, which I encourage everyone to read. But in that book, I talk about has a kid that I looked up this whole long, you know, he begat, he begat, and there's only four times that it mentions a woman who a child came out of. Like, it's all the male line. But occasionally it'll say, "So-and-so, you know, Boaz through Ruth," or, "David's the father through Bathsheba." So Bathsheba ended up having a child who became Solomon, who we know, um... A lot of people know at least, uh, being, um, the wisest man who ever lived, and he wrote Ecclesiastes, and-

Joe Rogan 39:39 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 39:40 Yeah. And so there's four women who are named. And as a child, that was really interesting to me, and I would ask, you know, "Why are these four women in the line of Christ?" And no one would tell me. And so I started doing the research about that, and one was a prostitute, one, um... Oh, here's a story you don't hear a lot. Wanna hear another Bible story?

Joe Rogan 39:56 Sure.

Michelle Dowd 39:56 Mm-hmm. There was a woman named Tamar, and she had been married to, uh, one of three sons. I think there was three. And, uh, her husband died before giving her a child. So as was the custom and the time and perhaps the law, she married the brother of her dead husband. And that man would not give her a child because he didn't want to have a child in his brother's name. And so they're allowed to have more than one wife, but this woman was not allowed to have a child. So he does something they call onanism. So he, like, spilled his seed on the ground instead of inside of her so that she couldn't have a baby. And so God gets really mad, because Onan will not impregnate her, and so Onan gets killed too. And so then her father-in-law decides not to marry her off to the youngest brother, because two of the brothers are already dead, right? And then he doesn't want to lose his only son. So he just banishes her, and she has nothing, because what does a woman have at that time if she doesn't have a husband or a child? She has no ability to make a living in the world. And so this man is, um... The father-in-law, is really unkind to her in a way that she decides she needs to take something into her own hands. And so she dresses up like a prostitute and goes to the side (laughs) of the road, and as he's traveling on the road, she puts herself in front of him and, and g- offers her services, and he sleeps with her, and he does not have payment on him for some reason. And so he gives her his staff, which is, um, a token of his word or something. So at least he's paying his prostitute. And, uh, she gets pregnant from this, and he orders her, when he finds out she's pregnant, to be stoned to death, you know, to be killed and executed-

Joe Rogan 41:30 Oh my God.

Michelle Dowd 41:30 ... because, you know, she's not allowed to have a baby outside of wedlock. And she said, "Okay, but let me just return this staff to you (laughs) that, um, I got from the father of the baby." (smacks lips) And so then he ends up protecting her, and she gets to have the child, and that child is in the line of Christ.

Joe Rogan 41:46 Whoa.

Michelle Dowd 41:47 Yeah. So really interesting things. I don't know what you're supposed to learn from that story. Um, when I was a kid reading this, I would ask, and of course no one (laughs) really wanted to tell me. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:56 Same.

Michelle Dowd 41:56 Because she was rewarded for that. That's the interesting thing.

Joe Rogan 41:59 It's g- th- the stories are crazy.... it, it just... If you're being honest, and if you believe in God, but you also know that people are full of shit, you have to put all this stuff through a filter. You just have to.

Michelle Dowd 42:13 True.

Joe Rogan 42:13 And it doesn't mean that there's no God.

Michelle Dowd 42:15 (laughs) Of course.

Joe Rogan 42:17 It doesn't mean that. It just- it means there's probably something in these stories, but we have to be real careful with what that something is. If you're-

Michelle Dowd 42:25 Well, and I don't profess to know. I don't- I don't know why.

Joe Rogan 42:28 They condone slavery.

Michelle Dowd 42:29 Sure.

Joe Rogan 42:29 The Bible condones slavery.

Michelle Dowd 42:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:30 Like, flat out. It's in there all the time (laughs) . It's like... (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 42:34 Yes.

Joe Rogan 42:35 Women are essentially second-class citizens. And you know what I found out recently?

Michelle Dowd 42:39 Uh...

Joe Rogan 42:39 That there was a woman before Eve.

Michelle Dowd 42:42 Depending on who you ask (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 42:45 Yeah. So what-

Michelle Dowd 42:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:46 ... what was that one?

Michelle Dowd 42:47 Well, that's not in the 66 books of the Bible that most people are taught in the Protestant tradition, or the 69 or whatever in the Catholic tradition. Um, that's part of the Apocrypha. So, they are- these are books of the Bible that didn't make it into, you know, Christianity as such that we-

Joe Rogan 43:02 The editor's cut (laughs) .

Michelle Dowd 43:03 ... call it today. Yeah, it was an editor's cut, exactly.

Joe Rogan 43:05 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 43:05 So, that's not considered the word of God, what you're reading. That is considered... Or what you heard.

Joe Rogan 43:10 Mm.

Michelle Dowd 43:10 It's like word on the street.

Joe Rogan 43:11 Word on the street.

Michelle Dowd 43:12 Yeah, which-

Joe Rogan 43:12 Heard on the internet, but yeah (laughs) .

Michelle Dowd 43:14 (laughs) Okay. That's a street these days.

Joe Rogan 43:16 Yeah, it is.

Michelle Dowd 43:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:17 It's- it's the best street.

Michelle Dowd 43:18 Yeah, which is not to say it's not true. I- I-

Joe Rogan 43:20 Right.

Michelle Dowd 43:20 I don't know the truth. So, I'm a yoga teacher among other things, and one thing that I say all the time when I'm teaching, which is really common thing as a yoga teacher to say is, "Whatever I am giving you right now is, um, a suggestion." So, listen to your body, do what's great for you. If this doesn't feel right to you (laughs) , please don't do it. Um, and then you offer modifications, et cetera. And what high-control religion does... And I'm not saying all religion, I'm saying the culture religion, doesn't give you the option of listening to your body or opting out of anything.

Joe Rogan 43:48 Mm.

Michelle Dowd 43:48 This is the interpretation of the word of God.

Joe Rogan 43:51 Mm.

Michelle Dowd 43:51 And the one thing I will say is I don't know why Tamar did what she did or why Onan did what he did. You know, I- I don't know whether or not (laughs) the stories were transcribed accurately or not. Even if they were, like I... That is a different culture, right? And it was- I'm not- I wasn't there.

Joe Rogan 44:05 We don't even know if O.J. did it.

Michelle Dowd 44:07 (laughs) Right, so how are you gonna know what happened to David and Bathsheba and-

Joe Rogan 44:11 I mean, we're pretty sure he did it (laughs) .

Michelle Dowd 44:14 (laughs) Well...

Joe Rogan 44:14 But I was just reading some story-

Michelle Dowd 44:16 He's gotten off.

Joe Rogan 44:16 ... that O.J. hired thugs to mur-... There was another thing. There was some thing that he said that he hired thugs to kill his wife and Ron Goldman. So, this is really recent is my point, and there's a bunch of versions of it.

Michelle Dowd 44:28 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:28 And it depends on who gets into power-

Michelle Dowd 44:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:30 ... whatever version gets propagated.

Michelle Dowd 44:32 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:32 Like, if you- if there was no internet and no independent journalism and they never had to account for the fact that Iraq never really had weapons of mass destruction. W- if the people in charge... If we're living in 1963, how long does it take before people figure out that Iraq didn't have those weapons? How long? Do we ever find out?

Michelle Dowd 44:53 I don't know. I was gonna say you might not ever find out.

Joe Rogan 44:55 You might not ever find out. It took forever-

Michelle Dowd 44:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:57 ... just to figure out that the Gulf of Tonkin was a false flag that got us into Vietnam.

Michelle Dowd 45:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 45:01 I mean, it took decades for that to come out. And now that's widely accepted. So, our own history is sketchy as fuck (laughs) .

Michelle Dowd 45:10 Indeed.

Joe Rogan 45:11 Our own history. Our real, absolute history is sketchy as fuck.

Michelle Dowd 45:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:16 And that's why conspiracy theories are so fun.

Michelle Dowd 45:18 Oh, yeah, of course. And- and in a sense, a cult is just a whole conspiracy theory. I mean, they- but they control the narrative.

Joe Rogan 45:24 Right.

Michelle Dowd 45:24 Completely control the narrative, and no one's allowed to question it. And if they do, they're excommunicated. And one of the ways you know something is a cult is th- they will always tell you that anyone who left... It's different than outsiders. I mean, outsiders are people who maybe had- never had access to the truth. But people who are quitters, they literally call them quitters where I come from.

Joe Rogan 45:42 (laughs) Quitters.

Michelle Dowd 45:43 Quitters.

Joe Rogan 45:43 It's a good name.

Michelle Dowd 45:44 Yeah (laughs) . I know, it really is.

Joe Rogan 45:45 Nobody likes quitters.

Michelle Dowd 45:46 Right, right. And so quitters were just, anything they said was of the devil. And so you were not allowed to talk to anyone who left. And that's really common in cults, to-

Joe Rogan 45:54 You couldn't even talk to them.

Michelle Dowd 45:55 No, no.

Joe Rogan 45:55 That's- that's a Scientology thing, too, I believe, right?

Michelle Dowd 45:58 Yeah, I think it's really common in any high-control group I'm sure.

Joe Rogan 46:01 Hmm.

Michelle Dowd 46:01 Yeah, because you can't... You really do need to control the narrative, and you can't let other stories get in there.

Joe Rogan 46:07 Yeah. Wow. Goddamn. It's so interesting how these patterns reoccur all over the world. You know, there's a guy in Australia that says he's Jesus.

Michelle Dowd 46:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:20 And, uh, he runs this whole cult in Australia, and he has this woman who he says is Mary. But the problem is there was another woman who was Mary before.

Michelle Dowd 46:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:28 And it didn't work out with the original Mary, so he... (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 46:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:32 So, he tells this new lady, "I was wrong about that other lady. You're Mary." And so...

Michelle Dowd 46:38 Do you know-

Joe Rogan 46:38 (sighs) .

Michelle Dowd 46:38 ... that they say that the translation for Mary actually was woman?

Joe Rogan 46:42 Oh, wow.

Michelle Dowd 46:42 And so th- the word possibly just means... I mean, you think about it, there's so many Marys in the Bible.

Joe Rogan 46:46 Right.

Michelle Dowd 46:46 Like, when people talk about Mary Magdalene or Mary, mother of Jesus-

Joe Rogan 46:49 Right.

Michelle Dowd 46:49 ... or, you know, that it, um, perhaps is just the translation for woman.

Joe Rogan 46:54 Jesus as a historical figure is controversial. The- there's people that say that there's absolute evidence for Jesus, but then there's people that say... Do you know, like, how much historical record we have on people that lived thousands of years before Jesus? You know, there's- there's people that, uh, lived... That they- they know what they said, they know where they ate, they know where they went. They know so much about them. But the Jesus one is kind of... L- there's people that say, yes, there's historical, uh, documents that show he existed, and then there's a bunch of documentaries that you can watch that are like, "Boy, the- the evidence is kinda sketchy." It seems to be a thought, uh, like a reoccurring thing in many religions. It seems to be like Hercules, right? It seems to be... There's a bunch of these that are like real similar to that, like the child of a god-

Michelle Dowd 47:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 47:44 ... you know, that comes down to fix everything.

Michelle Dowd 47:47 There's a lot of traditions where you have a virgin birth.

Joe Rogan 47:50 Mm, yeah.

Michelle Dowd 47:50 That is true. And I am certainly not here to tell anybody what is true or not true, but the Gospels that are written about Jesus were written after, right? Not during. And that was, you know, common. I mean, Socrates never wrote anything down.

Joe Rogan 48:02 Right.

Michelle Dowd 48:02 He told the stories to Plato and...

Joe Rogan 48:03 And how long after his death?

Michelle Dowd 48:05 Well, I think the first one... Now I feel like I- I am not, um...... a story in here, but I think the first one was, like, 100 years. And so you have Apostle Paul who wrote, but he only saw Jesus after. Like, he was on the road to Damascus, and so he saw Jesus after Jesus had been crucified and risen, so what he saw was a ghost of Jesus. But the other, you know, gospels were not written by anyone who had seen Jesus in that way, even though (sighs) they were the versions, like, of when you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, these were the versions that they were told. So, I don't know, maybe 100 years.

Joe Rogan 48:40 Yeah, so this is where belief hits for people that are listening to this right now, 'cause there's going to be a certain percentage of people right now that have their hackles up because someone might be insinuating that maybe all this Jesus stuff is not legit. And that's not what anybody's saying. What we're saying is these stories were written down 100 years after he was alive, and people are full of shit.

Michelle Dowd 49:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:10 That's it. It doesn't mean that he didn't exist, 'cause if someone did exi-... Like, i- if, if the early emergence of humans in the, in the world, let's imagine what they mean by this story. If the early emergence of humans in this world were put down here to figure it out on their own like a bunch of l- lockkey kids, like latchkey kids from the 1970s, "Figure it out on your own. I'm gonna give you w- ways to live your life, tell everybody, but I'm hands off. I'm hands off. I'm an afterlife type of guy. I want you... I'm not gonna come down and explain it again, pop outta the clouds and freak everybody out. I did that once."

Michelle Dowd 49:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:53 "I did it once. I'm done. You guys killed me. So I'm just saying, live your life this way." If that was a real thing, what... I mean, what would be any different than the Bible? What would be any different about the... if a, a real event like that actually happened where the f-... the, the Son of God came down and explained to mankind what they're doing wrong and lived this amazing life and taught so many people and they spread his wisdom and they spread his, his information, it wouldn't be any different than the Bible because you're still... Even if it, even if it was, like, very clear what he was saying and, and very clear what he had done and the impact and how they all knew he was the Son of God, by the time 100 years go by of people talking about it, who the fuck knows?

Michelle Dowd 50:40 (sighs)

Joe Rogan 50:40 Who knows?

Michelle Dowd 50:42 Yeah, but you know what Jesus did really well? So Jesus didn't write anything down, right? Like, he was a storyteller. Jesus told a lot of parables, and those are easier to remember. So if you listen to, like, his Sermon on the Mount or, you know, these various things, it's possible that some of these stories, which they can be interpreted more than one way, but, like, you know, to say that, um... Have you heard the expression casting pearls to swine?

Joe Rogan 51:05 Yes.

Michelle Dowd 51:06 Okay, great.

Joe Rogan 51:06 What does that mean?

Michelle Dowd 51:07 Well, in the story of the prodigal son, um, there was this... And Jesus tells this story, right? So there's these two brothers, and one brother stays and does everything that his father wants him to do, and the other brother says, "Give me..." You know, the son, he says, the younger son says, "Give me my inheritance now. I don't wanna wait 'til you're dead. Just give me my inheritance now. I wanna go ha- experience life." And the father gives his younger son his inheritance, and this young man who is raised well goes out and hires prostitutes, does all the things, right, and just... and lives this loose life. And he finds that he runs outta money, and he is in a pen of pigs and he is willing to eat what even the pigs won't eat, like the leftovers. And he is face down in the mud in the, in... according to the story, in the pig pen and says, "Even if I was a servant for my father, I'd be treated better than this." And so he goes back, et cetera. And his older brother is really upset because the father brings the son back and treats him... You know, he's just so grateful his son's returning to him. And his brother says, you know... or an expression like, um, "You're casting pearls to swine." I mean, like, my brother is a pig. My brother is, like, you know, from the pig pen, and you're giving him something that he doesn't deserve. And that whole story, I mean, you can interpret it any way you want, but this idea that you tell stories like this and someone could say God is willing to take you back, and perhaps even better, if you have experienced life and that just being obedient isn't the only way to live a life.

Joe Rogan 52:37 Hmm.

Michelle Dowd 52:37 Maybe that's the... I don't know what the real interpretation is, right? But, like, when you read a story like that or you hear the story, Jesus didn't write it down, but if he told that story, then now people come to that and they think, "What does that mean? Does that mean when I find myself in a pig pen that I can repent and go back?" What does it mean?

Joe Rogan 52:55 Isn't it funny that Jesus is a storyteller?

Michelle Dowd 52:58 Yeah, I love that.

Joe Rogan 52:58 'Cause a storyteller is a person who stands in front of people and commands attention.

Michelle Dowd 53:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:03 And we know how that goes.

Michelle Dowd 53:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:05 Right?

Michelle Dowd 53:05 Yeah. Well, you're a storyteller.

Joe Rogan 53:07 Who... Well, sort of.

Michelle Dowd 53:08 You don't think you're a storyteller?

Joe Rogan 53:09 Um, I talk shit on stage, so it's just jokes, and-

Michelle Dowd 53:13 But those are stories.

Joe Rogan 53:15 Some of them are stories, yeah. Some of them are just making fun of things. Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 53:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:21 It's different than someone who, like, tells you stories and imparts wisdom. Like, if someone's standing in front of a group of people imparting wisdom, that's a very bizarre relationship. It's a, a very, uh, slippery position for the person that, uh, has the podium. Very slippery, 'cause you could start believing all this nonsense. You could start believing that you're different than everybody else. You could start believing that you are, uh, the Son of God, even if you're not... I'm not even talking about Jesus. I'm talking about someone today. Someone today. Even today, in this day and age with the internet, if you, you started doing something like that and you're schizophrenic, you could believe it.

Michelle Dowd 53:57 Lots of people, lots of people-

Joe Rogan 53:59 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 53:59 ... believe they're the son of God right now.

Joe Rogan 54:00 Yeah, 100%. Legit. And then lots of people believe that other people are demons. (inhales deeply) There's a lot of, like, real funky beliefs that people hold onto. And if someone...... like I said, if someone was a charismatic leader and they pretended to be the son of God, versus someone who was actually the son of God, 100 years later it's gonna be very difficult to parse out what's what.

Michelle Dowd 54:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 54:23 Which is a problem.

Michelle Dowd 54:24 If there actually a difference.

Joe Rogan 54:24 Which is a real problem. If you wanna, like, put all your eggs in one basket, you gotta pick a religion. Like, boy, if you're agnostic, like, which one of you guys is right? (laughs) Like, is there some... Are the Hindus right? Maybe. Are the Buddhas right? I don't know.

Michelle Dowd 54:37 You know, some people would say that the Buddha and Jesus have an awful lot in common.

Joe Rogan 54:41 Sure.

Michelle Dowd 54:41 And if there is a right, that, um, a lot of those beliefs are gonna overlap.

Joe Rogan 54:45 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 54:46 And it is ... Right, to live a good life is to treat other people the way that you would wanna be treated.

Joe Rogan 54:51 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 54:51 Or to, you know-

Joe Rogan 54:52 Try to be nice.

Michelle Dowd 54:52 ... and to love your neighbor.

Joe Rogan 54:53 Love your neighbor, yeah.

Michelle Dowd 54:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:55 Yeah, I think, um, there's universal truth in all that stuff. I think the, the source of it is fascinating, like what, what are the universal truths? But we always, uh, we, we have to look at things through a filter of reality. In the filter of reality, we know human beings are full of shit. So you have to put that in there, you have to put that with everything. You can't just say they wouldn't lie about religion. Stop. That's nonsense. It doesn't mean that God's not real. It doesn't mean that Jesus didn't exist, 'cause may- Uh, look, maybe Jesus is the ultimate e- e- L- It's like this is the last word and then we're gonna let you guys figure it out on your own. And maybe, if God exists, okay, let's just as a thought experiment. If God exists, why would God engineer an animal to be at the top of the food chain that is so filled with greed and wants so much power that it's willing to take over enormous swaths of land with giant machines and murder anybody who gets in their way, and it's all justified in the name of nationalism? Why would God universally impart that kind of sensibility on a, on a species? Why would God tolerate it? Why would God tolerate crime and murder and all the horrible things that we see today? Why would God want any of this stuff to go on? If God is so all powerful that he created the universe, is this just a first draft? Have you, did you, like, try, like say, like why don't you-

Michelle Dowd 56:26 The idea is free will, right?

Joe Rogan 56:27 Right.

Michelle Dowd 56:27 I mean, that's the answer to it is that in the garden, when Adam and Eve didn't know the difference and then they partake of-

Joe Rogan 56:33 Right.

Michelle Dowd 56:34 ... the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that, like, by the choice to do that brought sin into the world. And once there's sin into the world, then humans always have the choice to follow the light or follow the darkness. I mean, that's the party line, right? Like that it is human choice.

Joe Rogan 56:48 Right. My point was that m- th- maybe God's ultimate plan is to make things as fucked up as possible so that it forces people to figure it out. It forces an evolution of consciousness. It forces us to go to the light. It forces us, 'cause it's the only way we survive. Like that could, it could be like a test, like the entire human species, the entire civilization, the whole thing is just some gigantic test to see if you get it right.

Michelle Dowd 57:18 Did you ever read A Wrinkle in Time when you were a kid?

Joe Rogan 57:20 Whose book is that?

Michelle Dowd 57:21 Madeleine L'Engel.

Joe Rogan 57:22 I've heard of it. I don't think I read it.

Michelle Dowd 57:24 Okay. Well, it was, I don't know if it was taught in schools, but kids read it for year ... I don't know when it came out, in the '70s probably. But she says in an interview later that she thinks that in the end that God is waiting for every single person to choose to believe and to choose to follow.

Joe Rogan 57:42 Mm.

Michelle Dowd 57:42 And that the light, uh, so in A Wrinkle in Time is the story, there's science in it and a lot of things, but that when you see the light and you're drawn to the light, that you might be tempted by the darkness, but when you really know what light is, that you'll always choose that. And so that at the end of the day that we're all gonna see the light.

Joe Rogan 58:00 But even if you don't believe in religion, if you know, like, good experiences and bad experiences in your, in your life, and when you're happy with yourself and when you're upset with yourself in your life, you generally know, like, there's a direction that you really wanna be moving in. And the more life experience you have, the more stupid things you do, the more you learn. And so the more you get a better database to draw from to understand what each an individual choice means and the, the greater sp- the, the greater picture of your, your existence. And as you go further and further, you go, if you're living a harmonious life, you go almost naturally towards that direction, trying to be nicer to people, love your neighbor, uh, have more peace in the world, don't be murdering people. You know, and that's generally like how most religions want you to believe. It's like the, the origin of it is God, there's some sort of a guidebook for being a human. That's the origin of it, it seems like, that they were just trying to, like, you can't just let people be feral, you gotta give them some guidelines, you gotta... And one of the best ways is to someone's watching all the time.

Michelle Dowd 59:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:07 This dude in the sky.

Michelle Dowd 59:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 59:09 But maybe he really is. Maybe there really is something that watches everything. I- it- it might not be watching, but it might be, like, integrated into the entire existence of the, the whole thing. It's-

Michelle Dowd 59:19 Maybe that's what The Prodigal Son is about.

Joe Rogan 59:21 Yeah, maybe.

Michelle Dowd 59:22 You know, he goes and has all these experiences, find himself, like, making every mistake possible, and then sees the light and goes back to his father.

Joe Rogan 59:28 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 59:29 And goes back to the kingdom of righteousness.

Joe Rogan 59:30 Yeah. There's wisdom in all these things. And there's these-

Michelle Dowd 59:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:33 ... people that lived and were writing things down on animal skins while they're engaging in wars with spears, you know, like just fucking wild ass times. And they were trying to sort it all out. Have you read, uh, Meditations, Marcus Aurelius?

Michelle Dowd 59:46 Yes.

Joe Rogan 59:46 Isn't that wild stuff?

Michelle Dowd 59:48 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:48 That's, it's wild how brilliant this guy was 2,000 years ago. Like his understanding of how to live a life-

Michelle Dowd 59:57 Right.

Joe Rogan 59:57 It's so valuable. And his concept of forgiveness. Like forgiveness, he's a fucking Roman. I mean, this dude is like this b- badass soldier and he's, he's like, "It's very important to forgive everybody. Forgive even forgive your enemies."

Michelle Dowd 1:00:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:14 Like he had this incredible wisdom about legist- like maintaining...... your objective perspective of the world. It was really interesting. So, we know people were smart as shit back then.

Michelle Dowd 1:00:29 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:31 And if you go back 2,000 years before him, when people start writing all this stuff down.

Michelle Dowd 1:00:36 Well, people had a, a lot stronger, uh, ability to concentrate, obviously-

Joe Rogan 1:00:41 Right, they weren't distracted.

Michelle Dowd 1:00:42 ... before they, right?

Joe Rogan 1:00:42 No TikTok.

Michelle Dowd 1:00:43 But even before... (laughs) Right. But even before things were written, people really had a command over language and oral traditions-

Joe Rogan 1:00:49 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 1:00:50 ... and their memory. They had to remember. Like, you think about, you know, where, where to find whatever it is when you're a forager, where to find the hunt, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:00:57 Right.

Michelle Dowd 1:00:57 That all of these traditions had to be passed down for humans to stay alive. I mean, we're really fragile creatures.

Joe Rogan 1:01:01 Right.

Michelle Dowd 1:01:02 And to think that when, before there was anything (laughs) except for spheres, you know, like, how did, how did humans stay alive? They stayed alive because they could remember, they could remember what could kill them.

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 Yeah. Just like we used to be able to remember phone numbers.

Michelle Dowd 1:01:15 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:15 You remember?

Michelle Dowd 1:01:16 Yeah. Even back then. I know.

Joe Rogan 1:01:17 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 1:01:17 I s-

Joe Rogan 1:01:17 I had so many phone numbers in my head.

Michelle Dowd 1:01:19 (laughs) I still remember the phone number of the field.

Joe Rogan 1:01:21 I... Wow.

Michelle Dowd 1:01:22 I do, I do, because, you know, it was the one place, right?

Joe Rogan 1:01:25 Wow.

Michelle Dowd 1:01:26 That, that was my home.

Joe Rogan 1:01:27 Wow.

Michelle Dowd 1:01:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:28 That's wild.

Michelle Dowd 1:01:29 Yeah. My mom was a, a survival trainer. Uh, she trained people to survive, and she trained us to survive, and one of the big things was surviving the apocalypse. But some of the survival techniques are actually really valuable. And that's the thing about forgiveness or anything else, like, uh, you know, even if somebody is telling you something that is in their own best interest doesn't mean it's not true, right?

Joe Rogan 1:01:50 Right.

Michelle Dowd 1:01:51 And that there's so many truths in anything. Um, and so learning to survive, like, literally off the land or in the desert or things like that was a really harsh training that I had as a kid, but it taught me to look around everywhere-

Joe Rogan 1:02:03 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 1:02:03 ... that I've been ever since and to pay attention. And, I mean, that's a gift. And I think about that when I think about forgiveness too. Like, part of forgiving people is because on some level they taught you a lesson.

Joe Rogan 1:02:13 Well, even in cults, they can give you valuable skills.

Michelle Dowd 1:02:15 Sure. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:17 (laughs) I mean, if someone could teach you survival techniques, how to survive the a-... I mean, if you're really worried about the apocalypse, you need to learn how to survive the apocalypse.

Michelle Dowd 1:02:24 Sure. So, you know, they do it for good intentions.

Joe Rogan 1:02:27 Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 1:02:28 And some of it pays off a little bit.

Joe Rogan 1:02:30 Well, though... Do you remember the one in Los Angeles that had billboards up and with a very specific date?

Michelle Dowd 1:02:37 Oh. What was the date?

Joe Rogan 1:02:39 I don't remember, but I remember there was this Thai restaurant I used to go to on Ventura, this great Thai spot, and right above it was this (laughs) fucking billboard that was... It, it was giving you a s- very specific date, like, "Repent. The end is here, and, like, it's gonna be this time." I'm like, "Is this... It's, like, the, the most brilliant album release."

Michelle Dowd 1:03:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:00 Like, the... You know what I'm saying? Like, some rock band has figured out a way to, like, make something go viral before the internet. I guess the internet was around then. It was, um, not that long ago. I wanna say, like, maybe eight years ago, 10 years ago.

Michelle Dowd 1:03:15 Was it? Wow, that's pretty recent.

Joe Rogan 1:03:17 Here it is. Tw- 2011.

Michelle Dowd 1:03:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:19 Judgment Day, May 21st, 2011. Cry Mighty Unto God, Monday through Friday live open forum on familyradio.com.

Michelle Dowd 1:03:29 And what happened on May 11?

Joe Rogan 1:03:30 So yeah, that was only 13 years ago.

Michelle Dowd 1:03:32 Do we know? Jamie, what happened on May 11th?

Joe Rogan 1:03:33 No- nothing.

Michelle Dowd 1:03:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:34 Fucking zero. (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 1:03:36 Oh. Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:03:36 Those people were out of their mind.

Michelle Dowd 1:03:38 Like, Y2K was a little like that too.

Joe Rogan 1:03:40 Well, also December 21st, 2012, that was the end of the Mayan calendar.

Michelle Dowd 1:03:44 Oh, right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:44 My bum- my license plate used to be December, uh, 2012, DEC12, whatever it was. But that was the end of the long count of the Mayan calendar, and all the kooks thought that was the end of the world. So we, we actually did an End of the World show in V-, in, uh, Los Angeles-

Michelle Dowd 1:04:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:01 ... with, uh, my friends from Honey Honey band, my friend Suzanne, uh, Joey Diaz, Doug Stanhope. It was wild.

Michelle Dowd 1:04:07 And what did you do?

Joe Rogan 1:04:07 Nothing happened.

Michelle Dowd 1:04:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:08 Nobody died.

Michelle Dowd 1:04:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:10 We had a good time. We had a good time, and the world keeps going. But there, there's, um, you know, it's just a long calendar. It's a very bizarre ancient calendar that they don't really fully understand. So, to say that was the end of the world seems a little silly.

Michelle Dowd 1:04:23 Well, you know, when, um, they give these dates, like when my grandfather gave the date of 1977, they can also say anytime it doesn't happen that the calendars are wrong.

Joe Rogan 1:04:32 Ah.

Michelle Dowd 1:04:33 So, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:33 How convenient. Do they have a good calendar?

Michelle Dowd 1:04:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:36 Can I see that calendar?

Michelle Dowd 1:04:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:38 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 1:04:38 Well, you know. (laughs) But the point is, like, oh, well, you know, with the Star of Bethlehem and all this, like, maybe that was redated because Herod didn't want us to know, like, when the-

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 1:04:46 ... Jesus was really born because he was killing all the babies, and he didn't really know the date of Jesus' birth. That's why he was killing, you know, all the young boys as opposed to just that one and et cetera, et cetera, so...

Joe Rogan 1:04:56 Back to the lady who was around with Eve.

Michelle Dowd 1:04:59 Li-

Joe Rogan 1:04:59 Who was that lady?

Michelle Dowd 1:05:00 I assume you're talking about Lilith.

Joe Rogan 1:05:01 Yeah. (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 1:05:01 But that's not in the tradition that I read. (laughs) So...

Joe Rogan 1:05:03 (laughs) S- but Lilith was supposedly... I didn't even know Lilith existed till, like, two years ago, I think.

Michelle Dowd 1:05:09 Oh, wow.

Joe Rogan 1:05:09 I was like, "What? Who, who's-"

Michelle Dowd 1:05:11 Had that changed your life in some way?

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 "Who the fuck is Lilith?"

Michelle Dowd 1:05:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:13 Yes.

Michelle Dowd 1:05:14 Has... Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:05:14 It was an eye-opener.

Michelle Dowd 1:05:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:16 (laughs) I questioned everything after that.

Michelle Dowd 1:05:18 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:05:19 Um, the... What is the Lilith story exactly?

Michelle Dowd 1:05:22 So, again, I was not raised on the Lilith story-

Joe Rogan 1:05:24 Right, right, right.

Michelle Dowd 1:05:24 ... at all. Um, I don't know. Jamie, do you know the Lilith story?

Joe Rogan 1:05:28 No, uh, uh... So the Lilith story-

Michelle Dowd 1:05:28 I've heard some, but I feel like I misquoted.

Joe Rogan 1:05:31 So the Lilith story, they decided, was BS, so they left it out of the big book.

Michelle Dowd 1:05:35 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 1:05:35 It's been interpreted as particular... As Satan or... Oh, Satan.

Michelle Dowd 1:05:40 Well, sure, because-

Joe Rogan 1:05:41 Or Dame Satan. Of course. She's a lady. She made me do terrible things.

Michelle Dowd 1:05:44 Yeah. Well, Eve did that too.

Joe Rogan 1:05:45 The, the original Hebrew word from which the name Lilith is taken is in the Biblical Hebrew, the Book of Isaiah, though Lilith herself is not mentioned in any biblical text. In late antiquity and m-... How do you say that word? Mandaean? How do you say that word? Do you know? Manda-ean? Mandaean and Jewish sources from 500 AD onward, Lilith appears in hist- historal, historalus, historalus incantations incorporating a short mythic story in various concepts and localities that give partial descriptions of her. She's mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, uh, Niddah, Shabbat, Bhagavata, and the conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan-... as Adam's first wife, and in the Zohar Leviticus 19A as a hot, fiery female who first cohabitated with man. Wow. Many rabbinic authorities, including, boy, here's another word, Maimonides- Maimonides and Menachem Mary reject the existence of Lilith. Interesting. So Lilith is controversial.

Michelle Dowd 1:06:56 Very controversial.

Joe Rogan 1:06:57 Like all hot ladies. (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 1:06:59 (laughs) Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:07:01 But the fact that she was the first?

Michelle Dowd 1:07:03 Yeah. I mean, again, that's not the tradition that, uh, most Christians are taught, and it's considered part of their apocrypha, so-

Joe Rogan 1:07:11 Hmm.

Michelle Dowd 1:07:12 I mean, I don't have any idea what the truth is, but she has been vilified even more than Eve. Although if you think about it, Eve's pretty vilified too. I mean, she caused the downfall-

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 She's the reason why we're all here.

Michelle Dowd 1:07:22 ... of humankind. That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:23 Yeah. It's, uh... I mean, what were the, what's the root of that story? That's the real question. Like, what was that, what was the original thing they were trying to convey?

Michelle Dowd 1:07:33 (smacks lips) I will not just-

Joe Rogan 1:07:34 With original humans.

Michelle Dowd 1:07:35 ... take a stab on that. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:35 Yeah. It's... But at least Christianity has, like, an origin story, you know? An origin story for everything, for the, the, the, the universe, for people. And when you didn't have science and you didn't have any understanding of cosmology, you, you need something. We need something. W- we're i- th- uh, thousands of years just staring up at the stars. Anybody know what the fuck's going on up there? I know.

Michelle Dowd 1:08:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:02 (laughs)

Michelle Dowd 1:08:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:02 There's, uh, Thor. He lives up there, and then there's Zeus, he's running shit. Yeah.

Michelle Dowd 1:08:07 Yeah. Well, looking at the stars is storytelling too.

Joe Rogan 1:08:11 Mm-hmm.

Michelle Dowd 1:08:11 Yeah. In the beginning, there was the word.

Joe Rogan 1:08:14 Well, I think that's one of the things that's really screwed up human beings, and, uh, I don't think in any small way, is light pollution. I think, uh, our inability to see that we are in this celestial, majestic cosmos, this thing. It's not just black with a few bright lights. The whole thing is lit up and it's the most magnificent thing you could ever see, but we sacrifice it almost for everyone that lives in cities. If you, if you live in cities and don't go anywhere and see it, you sacrifice a humbling spiritual experience of just staring at the stars, and I think it, it's... I think it's, uh, spiritual poisoning. It's like, um, just like if you have vitamin deficiencies. I think you have a spiritual deficiency, just a natural, universal, spiritual deficiency from not seeing the stars. I think it puts our, puts our, our place in the universe in perspective like nothing else can, 'cause it's there. It's real. It's not a concept. It's not something that you have to use a microscope or a telescope to see. It's right in front of you, and it's absolutely spectacular. On a clear night in the mountains where there's no light pollution and you see the stars, you're just like, "Wow."

Michelle Dowd 1:09:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:40 "Is that up there every night?"

Michelle Dowd 1:09:42 Did you... You used to go to Joshua Tree when you lived around LA?

Joe Rogan 1:09:45 No, I didn't.

Michelle Dowd 1:09:46 Oh. So Joshua Tree is still so magical for that reason because there's no lights.

Joe Rogan 1:09:50 Mmm. I've heard. I've heard it's incredible out there.

Michelle Dowd 1:09:52 Yeah, it's not too far where, from where I am, and, and when I feel that I need to (laughs) commune with something greater than myself, you just go there and you just lay down and look at the stars.

Joe Rogan 1:10:00 Light pollution is spiritual poisoning.

Michelle Dowd 1:10:02 Agreed.

Joe Rogan 1:10:03 It really is. And it's, it's a big factor, I think, in how lost we are, a- and how d- d- it's... You're, we're not, like, consistently humbled every night.

Michelle Dowd 1:10:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:14 By the majesty of the stars. If we were consistently humbled every night, I think we'd be, generally be, like, you could s- tone people down a little bit.

Michelle Dowd 1:10:22 Hmm. There's something, um, really healing about looking at the stars, and there's also the ability to literally not be lost if you know how to read the stars, right?

Joe Rogan 1:10:30 Right.

Michelle Dowd 1:10:30 So that is something I was trained by my uncle who was, you know, somewhat of an astronomer. But to look at the stars and to always know where you are, and if you know how to read the stars, you can never be lost.

Joe Rogan 1:10:40 Mmm, so you could, like, navigate with