Joe Rogan Experience #2198 - Bret Weinstein

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

Bret Weinstein 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Narrator 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) Good to see you, my friend.

Bret Weinstein 0:13 Oh, good to see you, man.

Joe Rogan 0:15 Strange times we're living in.

Bret Weinstein 0:17 Uh, the strangest and getting stranger.

Joe Rogan 0:19 Didn't some shit go down today? Didn't we steal the president of Venezuela's plane?

Narrator 0:23 Oh, I didn't hear about that.

Joe Rogan 0:24 Yeah, I think we just stole his plane.

Bret Weinstein 0:26 I didn't.

Joe Rogan 0:27 No, not us.

Bret Weinstein 0:28 Okay, good.

Joe Rogan 0:29 The United States. So-

Bret Weinstein 0:30 Oh, it's kind of the greater us.

Joe Rogan 0:32 So someone stole his plane.

Bret Weinstein 0:32 All right.

Joe Rogan 0:33 Which is kind of an act of war? What is that?

Bret Weinstein 0:37 Was he in it?

Joe Rogan 0:38 I don't think so, no. I think we just stole his plane.

Narrator 0:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:41 Crow-

Bret Weinstein 0:42 Just, like, for a joyride?

Joe Rogan 0:43 So what's the story? "U.S. seizes Venezuela (laughs) President Nicolás Maduro's airplane in the Dominican Republic." So we said, "Nope, we're stealing that." How does that work? Even if you don't get along with, like, a president of a country, how disrespectful is it to steal their plane?

Bret Weinstein 1:00 This, uh, uh, you're right, it's an act of war.

Joe Rogan 1:02 Like, i- i- imagine if Xi Jinping landed somewhere, and we're like, "We're gonna steal your fucking plane."

Bret Weinstein 1:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07 No chance. That's a bully move. That's a move you can only do to a country like Venezuela, right?

Bret Weinstein 1:14 Yes, well, I- I'm trying to remember exactly what the story was, but there was a point where Ecuador was acting very courageously with respect to Julian Assange. And there was a question about whether the president of Ecuador could fly Assange out so that he could be outside of the embassy and inside of Ecuador proper, and I believe the reasoning was they couldn't do it because they expected the plane to be forced down. Same, same issue.

Joe Rogan 1:39 Hmm. So this says, uh, Merrick Garland said that, "The Justice Department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies." What i- i- what business is that of ours, though? This is what I don't understand. Like, if it was purchased through a shell company, then it was purchased.

Bret Weinstein 2:04 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:04 Okay?

Bret Weinstein 2:04 And was there, was there a trial that established that this was ill-gotten gains?

Joe Rogan 2:09 It says, "Smuggled out of the United States. The plane was purchased from a company in Florida, the Justice Department said, and was illegally exported in April 2023 from the United States to Venezuela through the Caribbean." So are we not allowed to sell them planes? Is that what it is? Like, 'cause we have a problem with them? Would they say how much it cost, 13 million bucks?

Bret Weinstein 2:30 Yeah.

Narrator 2:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:31 Okay, so he's got this $13 million plane, a Dassault Falcon 900EX, it's since been used to fly almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela, Justice Department said. CNN reached out to the Venezuelan government. U.S. ... Hmm. It seems like, though, that's, like, that's, there's more to it than-

Bret Weinstein 2:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:52 ... that plane was, uh, illegal, you shouldn't have that plane. (laughs) "For years, officials have sought to disrupt the flow of billions of dollars to the regime. Homeland Security Investigations, the second-largest investigative agency in the federal government, has seized dozens of luxury vehicles, among other assets, headed to Venezuela." So there's a U.S. sanction. So there's a sanction, this is it. The plane was seized in violation of U.S. sanctions with Venezuela and other criminal matters that we're looking int- at regarding this aircraft. They didn't find a reason to keep it. Like they stole all those boats from all those Russian cats.

Bret Weinstein 3:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:29 Sorry, you're too rich and you know Putin-

Bret Weinstein 3:31 Right.

Joe Rogan 3:31 ... so give me your boat. (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 3:32 Well, that's the thing is there's, there's a hidden story for everything, and this is about-

Joe Rogan 3:36 Right.

Bret Weinstein 3:36 ... you know, incentivizing the world and we in the public don't get to know the real story.

Joe Rogan 3:40 Don't you think now, though, um, most people, I feel like gen- genuinely most people are aware there's more to the story? Every story. Everything in the news. Every time something comes up, people are like, "What's the whole story here?"

Bret Weinstein 3:56 Well, you know, I, I coined this term, the Cartesian crisis. And the Cartesian crisis basically means the point at which you can't really be certain of anything. And the problem is, yes, I do think people are catching onto the fact that they never know the real story, but the response to that is either that you start believing the bullshit that they tell you or that you just become cynical and stop believing anything. And neither of those are functional ways to exist.

Joe Rogan 4:23 And both those ways are good for the people that are running scams.

Bret Weinstein 4:26 Exactly. They're good for the people who want to maintain power, because-

Joe Rogan 4:29 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 4:29 ... it just keeps us back on our heels.

Joe Rogan 4:31 Yeah, because if you don't know what's true and what's not true, you're like, "Oh, geez," you know? And then you get cynical, "Oh, it's all bullshit. This whole system is rigged." Then you just go fishing.

Bret Weinstein 4:39 Right. And tha- and that's the thing people don't understand, is that at the point that you think you're striking a blow by checking out of their system, you're actually doing them a favor.

Joe Rogan 4:47 Right. It's actually beneficial to them, because then you have a smaller number of people that are voting. So essentially, in the 2020 elections, it was, uh, l- the largest ever, uh, win, right? The, the Democrats got 80-something million votes, which is, uh, so let's say, let's, even if it was 50/50, so somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 million people. How many people are women and chil- I mean, how many people with children? Women can vote, what am I saying?

Bret Weinstein 5:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:16 How many people or, uh, children are there?

Bret Weinstein 5:18 Oh, geez, I have no idea on the percentage.

Joe Rogan 5:19 Under 18. It's probably in the 30%. So that's a pretty high turnout.

Bret Weinstein 5:24 Yes, if that was even a turnout.

Joe Rogan 5:25 If it was real.

Bret Weinstein 5:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:26 Right.

Bret Weinstein 5:26 That's the problem, we have no idea.

Joe Rogan 5:27 Therein, that's the problem with the whole cynical game. 'Cause I'm not convinced. The, I, you know why I'm not convinced? 'Cause everybody wants me to be convinced. When, when they, like, yell at you if you ask a question, like, "Hey, what-" Uh, one of the things that I've always said, and everyone sort of agrees with this. I mean, literally everyone, even people that think that the, the election was 100% legitimate. Uh, the percentage of voter fraud is never zero, correct?

Bret Weinstein 5:52 Right.

Joe Rogan 5:52 And they're always like, "Yes."No one can say it's zero.

Bret Weinstein 5:55 Right.

Joe Rogan 5:55 It's not zero. There's a bunch of p- slippery people that get arrested on both sides of the aisle. Republicans and Democrats get ar- arrested for election fraud. It's a real crime. The idea that they commit all these other acts of fraud and deception, but when it comes to elections, Brett, that's a sacred institution-

Bret Weinstein 6:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:14 ... that we don't violate at any cost.

Bret Weinstein 6:16 Yep. Well, and- and the way they maintain that story is by ruthlessly punishing anybody who questions it, even though questioning it is the obvious thing to do.

Joe Rogan 6:23 Right.

Bret Weinstein 6:24 Because for one thing, elections used to be different, as you remember.

Joe Rogan 6:27 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 6:27 Right? First of all, you used to vote in person. And voting by mail was something you were very reluctant to do, because you knew that if your vote got counted, it was gonna be very late in the process. It wasn't really going to matter.

Joe Rogan 6:38 It was mostly for soldiers serving overseas.

Bret Weinstein 6:41 Right. Exactly. It was for people who just simply couldn't vote in person.

Joe Rogan 6:43 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 6:43 And it never really mattered except in very rare cases. The disappearance of that and the normalization of voting by mail, the normalization of voting across a period of time so that you're not all voting on the same day, and the absence of exit polls, right? When everybody's voting from home or wherever, you can't detect fraud by virtue of the fact that the count that came in from that precinct didn't match what the exit pollers registered.

Joe Rogan 7:13 Right.

Bret Weinstein 7:14 And so, you know, I don't think we are wrong to imagine that we have lost the ability to check whether an election is fair and that that's not an accident. That that o- that leaves the possibility open to cheat. And as you point out, they cheat in every other way. Are we supposed to believe that they won't do that because their patriotism is so deep? I don't see any patriotism to them at all.

Joe Rogan 7:37 Well, not only that, they've established this narrative that it's imperative that the Democrats win to save democracy.

Bret Weinstein 7:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 7:44 So, they've already made all of these, uh, statements that would, uh, it's more important for them to win than anything. More important than anything. More important than having primaries, more important than letting the people decide who their representative is, more important than having, uh, like, live actual conversations, interviews that aren't edited on CNN. Instead they have a 40-plus-minute one that's edited down to 18 minutes. Like, what? (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 8:15 Well, and we just went through this with them over COVID.

Joe Rogan 8:20 (smacks lips) Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 8:21 We know that when they think they're in the right, they feel entitled to lie about everything.

Joe Rogan 8:27 Everything.

Bret Weinstein 8:27 They feel entitled to coerce.

Joe Rogan 8:28 Right.

Bret Weinstein 8:29 And so, the idea that we're supposed to imagine that our elections are somehow different to them, I can't imagine how that would even work.

Joe Rogan 8:35 It doesn't make any sense. And it's, uh, it's one of those things, again, that you're- you're forced into agreeing with just out of fear because people get very aggressive with it, just like people were super aggressive about the vaccine. You know, I- I hate seeing people die because they made a poor choice. But there's something insane about how many people were like pro-vaccine advocates that were shaming people and angry at people, and now they're dead. And they're not dead because they ran their time and they got old and they died and, you know, it's unfortunate but it happens to all of us. Uh-uh. No, they're dead young. Like, a lot. A lot of people. Not one, not 20. We don't even know what the real numbers are because it's not something the mainstream media covers because they've all been vaccinated too and they're probably freaking the fuck out too.

Bret Weinstein 9:28 Yeah, it's a huge number of people. We can detect that statistically. It- the trouble is that it's hard in any individual case to know whether or not you're looking at something that would have happened anyway.

Joe Rogan 9:39 Right.

Bret Weinstein 9:39 Um, so, you remember John Ritter?

Joe Rogan 9:42 Yes.

Bret Weinstein 9:43 From Three's Company?

Joe Rogan 9:44 Sure.

Bret Weinstein 9:44 Died of a-

Joe Rogan 9:45 I worked with him.

Bret Weinstein 9:45 ... ruptured- Oh, you did?

Joe Rogan 9:47 Yeah, did an episode of news radio with him. Super nice guy.

Bret Weinstein 9:49 Good guy? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:50 Great guy.

Bret Weinstein 9:50 I got that impression. Um, anyway, he died of a ruptured aorta, if I remember correctly, long before there was COVID vaccines.

Joe Rogan 9:59 Right.

Bret Weinstein 9:59 So, the point is if that had happened last year-

Joe Rogan 10:02 Right.

Bret Weinstein 10:03 ... we'd all be saying, "Come on."

Joe Rogan 10:04 Of course.

Bret Weinstein 10:04 "He's in Hollywood. He got vaxxed."

Joe Rogan 10:06 Right.

Bret Weinstein 10:06 "And now look at him."

Joe Rogan 10:07 Yep.

Bret Weinstein 10:07 So, it happens.

Joe Rogan 10:08 100%.

Bret Weinstein 10:09 Right? But the rate at which it's happening has changed radically.

Joe Rogan 10:13 Exactly.

Bret Weinstein 10:13 And the very people who say, "Oh, that's not the vaccine," are very uninterested in figuring out what it is. So, you know, let's put two and two together.

Joe Rogan 10:20 Well, they don't even want to consider the vaccine, which is so crazy. If you called it anything else, if it wasn't called the vaccine, if it wasn't for COVID, okay, let's- because COVID became so po- it became so politicized and it bec- it was like c- culturally so polarizing. Let's pretend it was for something else and there was some medication and the people that were taking that medication were dropping like flies. They would 100% make a correlation and they would make it publicly and it'd be in the news. Of course, it might not actually be in the news today because this is part of the problem with what we're dealing with with advertising and the media, is that there's so much revenue that comes from pharmaceutical drug companies that there's just a reality about them reluctant to print or- or put any stories on television that are negative. There's too much money involved.

Bret Weinstein 11:12 Right. There's too much money involved and it becomes impossible to override this narrative. The narrative takes on a reality of its own even though it is contradicted by the facts and we, you know, our- our scientific tools are s- they're tremendously powerful at discovering patterns like this. It's not difficult to do.

Joe Rogan 11:29 Right.

Bret Weinstein 11:29 And yet we deliberately avoid using them in the ways that they were, uh, intended.

Joe Rogan 11:34 Do you think in the future we'll- we'll look back on this and there'll be some sort of a- s- some sort of a shift in the way we discuss it? You know, there's a lot of things in history that during the time where they were happening I'm sure people were all- like the McCarthy era. You know? I'm sure people thought it was very important to root out these communists but they didn't exactly understand, like, "Hey, you're calling a lot of people communists that aren't even communists. You're going after people that just went to meetings to find out what's going on." The world didn't exactly understand what that even meant back then. There's...You know, we look back at it now, the Red Scare is like a, uh, a negative thing. It's a, a dangerous, sort of negative aspect of our history.

Bret Weinstein 12:15 Yeah. Although, y- you know, I'm sure you're having the same experience, where lots of stuff that you learned as a clear n- narrative, like, you know, the Red Scare took over people and it was like a witch hunt. And the answer is actually more nuanced than that. There was more truth to it than I was taught, right? The Rosenbergs really were guilty of passing secrets to the Russians.

Joe Rogan 12:39 Oh, yeah.

Bret Weinstein 12:40 Right?

Joe Rogan 12:40 There definitely was a lot of that.

Bret Weinstein 12:41 So, you know, i- it's a mixed story.

Joe Rogan 12:43 Right.

Bret Weinstein 12:44 Y- you asked the question, though, if in the future we're gonna have a different conversation about what's taking place. And I just want to put a little placeholder there. The answer kind of depends, if there is a future. And I worry a lot that not only are we headed into chaos, but that we are going to be denied the ability to have a proper historical account of the present, that we're never going to understand what these stories were doing, why they played out the way they did, w- you know, why people disappeared when they did, and that that's not healthy. You need to be able to create a record. It's never gonna be perfect, but you need to be able to create a record of what took place that has been exposed to some kind of analytical standard so that you can correct your course. If you don't know what happened, you can't improve on your thought process going forward, and that's extremely dangerous. It's like, you know, flying with a blindfold.

Joe Rogan 13:46 Mm. Yeah, that's a, a great way to put it. And, and I'm glad you did point out the fact that there were really things... The Red Scare is a weird example, because people would like to kind of dismiss the impact that communists, especially Russia, was having on our, our government. And there was pretty big impact. I mean, they did steal the plans for the nuclear bomb. There's a lot of shit that happened because of actual communist interference. But the, the narrative when I was in high school was that the Red Scare was bad.

Bret Weinstein 14:14 Right?

Joe Rogan 14:14 Right? It was like everybody went crazy and they're all looking for co- Which was true, too, but that's part of the problem when you don't know. Like back then, no internet, very little paper trail. It's really hard to find out who's talking to who unless you, like, g- get an actual listening device in the room and capture them talking.

Bret Weinstein 14:34 Yeah. We, we can't know. And I... You know, it's, it's important to get your comeuppance on these stories. You, you grow up comfortable that you understand what happened during the Red Scare-

Joe Rogan 14:45 Right.

Bret Weinstein 14:46 ... and then one day, you're doing a little reading and you discover the story just isn't the one you were taught. And, um, the more stories you dig into, the more frequently that happens.

Joe Rogan 14:57 Well, if you just get one good one, you're hooked. For me, it was the Kennedy assassination.

Bret Weinstein 15:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 15:02 One good book on the Kennedy assassination, I was like, "Goddammit, they killed the fucking president." It freaked me out forever. That was like the... I literally had a, a giant shift in how I viewed the world after reading that book. Because before that, I was never a questioner of whatever was in the news or whatever the narrative was that we were being told about anything.

Bret Weinstein 15:23 Well, but, I mean, I have exactly the same reaction to that story and I, I've been down that rabbit hole, and I think you're just ultimately left with a question. Something happened in 1963. That's before either of us were born. Right?

Joe Rogan 15:39 Right.

Bret Weinstein 15:42 That thing was either an anomaly that robbed the nation of a president and the nation continued to be a democratic republic in the aftermath of it, or that was interference with democracy and we don't know how to look at all of the seemingly democratic things that have happened since. How much of what has happened since are the people who took control with that assassination? How much is them continuing to maintain control with a certain amount of democracy, and how much was that a- an aberration that then returned us to our normal course? And, uh...

Joe Rogan 16:21 That's a good point. A certain amount of democracy.

Bret Weinstein 16:23 A certain amount. It's, there's clearly a certain amount.

Joe Rogan 16:26 Yeah. Well, which is one of the reasons why they're so terrified of Trump.

Bret Weinstein 16:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:30 Like, they... There's a certain amount of stealing they can do. If, if... Let's imagine, if there are... If it is dirty and you really can manipulate elections, how much can you manipulate it by? Can you manipulate it by 30%? You know?

Bret Weinstein 16:45 I-

Joe Rogan 16:45 'Cause we don't know. And as long as they can have you believing in the polls... This is what's really important, polls. "Kamala Harris is up by 3%."

Bret Weinstein 16:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:54 "Oh, she's up, she's winning." Like, who the fuck are you talking to? Who are you talking to?

Bret Weinstein 16:59 Right. And, and-

Joe Rogan 17:00 I'm... You're not talking to me.

Bret Weinstein 17:01 What narrative is it in which Kamala has done something that might have caused a surge in her popularity? Like, I didn't see it.

Joe Rogan 17:07 Well, some magic. It's like, um... You know, there's that theory, that concept about multiple dimensions and multiple universes that we all live-

Bret Weinstein 17:19 Oh, yeah. Multiverse. Sure.

Joe Rogan 17:19 Yeah. This, this possibility that there's infinite numbers of universes all around us all the time and we enter into a different timeline. We entered into a different timeline.

Bret Weinstein 17:29 Well-

Joe Rogan 17:30 Clearly.

Bret Weinstein 17:31 I mean-

Joe Rogan 17:31 Something happened.

Bret Weinstein 17:33 I, I think, I think the multiverse thing is nonsense. I think it's an accounting scheme for figuring out how to deal-

Joe Rogan 17:38 (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 17:38 ... with the fact that actually the universe is not deterministic, which people wrestle with because we don't exactly know why it isn't. But, um, but to your point about how much can they cheat, I call that factor, which none of us can put a number on, maybe they can.

Joe Rogan 17:54 Right.

Bret Weinstein 17:55 I call it the cheat factor, right? The cheat margin. And one of the things that I'm trying to convince people of is that it's not hopeless because they can cheat, but it means that you have to succeed...... at a level that exceeds their capacity to erase it.

Joe Rogan 18:12 Right. So, that's what we're talking about. So, we're talking about, like, maybe they can cheat by 10%.

Bret Weinstein 18:17 Right. And what we know, and I, I think, actually, we owe Trump a huge debt of gratitude for proving something that I couldn't have told you if it was true before he won the presidency, which is, is there still enough democracy left in the system for something to upend the plan?

Joe Rogan 18:38 Mm. Right.

Bret Weinstein 18:39 Right? Because he was clearly off narrative-

Joe Rogan 18:41 Right.

Bret Weinstein 18:41 ... and he did become president, so he, you know, he, he did something for us that I don't know anybody else who could've done it.

Joe Rogan 18:48 Yeah. It would take a person with that kind of personality, that could withstand that kind of abuse, 'cause he didn't freak out at all when they went after him. He's like, "Mm."

Bret Weinstein 18:57 Right.

Joe Rogan 18:57 Just brushed it off, like it was nothing. And no one's done that. All, he's also the only guy that's ever gone through four years and didn't age like he went through 30 years.

Bret Weinstein 19:06 That's true.

Joe Rogan 19:06 He, he aged normal.

Bret Weinstein 19:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:08 Like, he's used to it, he's used to pressure, you know? And Bush, he aged a ton. Obama aged a ton. Everybody aged a ton. Biden was already cooked before he got in, but, uh, he's har- but he aged a ton. I mean, Biden from 2019 to today is a different person.

Bret Weinstein 19:24 Yeah. And he was already visibly degraded-

Joe Rogan 19:26 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 19:26 ... but wow, was it a precipitous decline.

Joe Rogan 19:29 Big jump, big jump now.

Bret Weinstein 19:30 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:31 Trump was fine. (laughs) He's fine.

Bret Weinstein 19:32 Yeah, Trump physically, and actually-

Joe Rogan 19:34 (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 19:34 ... I think he sounds better. I think, you know, he drives me crazy sometimes when he talks, but I think he's getting better at it, and I-

Joe Rogan 19:43 I think he's trying to be a little bit more reasonable, you know, and try to appeal to more people because of that b- you know, that effort to be more reasonable. Like, he's, he's changed his mind about a lot of things. He's talking about legalizing marijuana. He's talking about all these different things that are, like, where, you know, you're gonna get a lot of different responses from, like, the hardcore Republicans are not gonna be for that. You know, any, any, uh, idea of abortion, the hardcore right wing are not interested at all. And any restrictions on abortion at all, you get your hardcore left wing. So, it's the, mostly it's the people in the middle. Abortion's a good one, right? Because most people are like, "No one should be able to tell you what you could do with your body," but also, aborting an eight-month-old fetus is kind of fucking insane.

Bret Weinstein 20:32 Yeah. I mean, and the, the funny thing, and I've been saying this forever, is that almost everybody agrees on the basics on abortion. We're supposed to not be able to even talk about it.

Joe Rogan 20:41 Right.

Bret Weinstein 20:41 But most people believe that abortion is negative, that if you've got a blastula, right, a clump of cells, doesn't yet have a nervous system, that you have the right to terminate that pregnancy, and that the farther you go through that pregnancy, the less right you have. And most people are incredibly queasy about it, I think as they should be, in the third trimester. And, you know, that's what we agree on. And so it's really the extremists on both sides,

Bret Weinstein 21:12 um, that w- we are up against. But to the question of what Trump is doing with an issue like this, I, I wanna make a couple points. One, I think there are two issues that are getting tangled. One, I think he's politically going to some places that are not traditionally Republican, because I don't even think, I think he's destroyed the Republican Party. I, I just don't see the same Republican Party I remember at all. I see a different thing, and it's flying-

Joe Rogan 21:41 It's the MAGA party.

Bret Weinstein 21:43 Yeah, it's a MAGA party. Right, exactly. And that's a very different thing, because I see MAGA as mostly the labor faction that was cut loose by the Democrats in the Clinton administration, and so they've now found a home under MAGA.

Joe Rogan 21:56 Interesting. Right. Like, 'cause blue-collar people were generally, um, union people, which were generally Democrats.

Bret Weinstein 22:03 Totally.

Joe Rogan 22:04 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 22:04 And then Clinton turned the Democratic Party into a second corporate party, so that those people-

Joe Rogan 22:09 Mm.

Bret Weinstein 22:09 ... who were homeless, and then Trump picked them up as MAGA, and they're now under the Republican banner. But it doesn't read like the Republican Party at all to me. And now it's picked up a, you know, a, a, I don't want to say technocratic, that's dismissive, but it's got this, this, uh, Silicon Valley component to it.

Joe Rogan 22:28 Yes, that's recent.

Bret Weinstein 22:29 Yep.

Joe Rogan 22:29 That's recent-

Bret Weinstein 22:29 As of the convention.

Joe Rogan 22:30 ... over the last year.

Bret Weinstein 22:31 Yep.

Joe Rogan 22:31 Yeah. It is interesting, right? Because we did, growing up, always associate unions and blue-collar people with voting Democrat, because Democrats were looking out for the middle class, looking out for people's best interests, supporting unions and fair wages, and funding schools, and all that kind of stuff, keeping neighborhoods safe. And Republicans were more like small government, "Fuck you, figure it out, I don't want to pay taxes."

Bret Weinstein 22:57 Yes.

Joe Rogan 22:57 (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 22:57 Stingy.

Joe Rogan 22:58 And they were the ones that were encouraging war.

Bret Weinstein 23:00 Yep.

Joe Rogan 23:01 Which is crazy today, that you have this massive 180-degree shift, and the Democrats are talking about how important it is that we keep funding Ukraine, and that, you know, we have some sort of an, whether you're pro-Hamas or pro-Palestine, I should say, or whether you're pro-Israel, there's involvement in that. No one is saying, neither, uh, th- th- no Democrats are saying, "We need to get the fuck out of there."

Bret Weinstein 23:26 Right.

Joe Rogan 23:26 They're saying, "We need to free Palestine." Oh, okay. How are you gonna do that? How are you gonna do that? What are you, what, how much is involved in that? Are you gonna bring in people? You gonna send people there? Like, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna kill people for this? What are we doing? The Democrats are, they're, you guys are looking for war, you're not looking for peaceful solutions? Like, this is kind of weird. This is interesting. You know, the, that, "We need to beat Russia." Are you out of your fucking mind?

Bret Weinstein 23:50 Right.

Joe Rogan 23:50 Are you serious?

Bret Weinstein 23:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 23:51 Do you know how big that place is? Do you know how much military force is behind Putin? Are you, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? Like, what if-

Bret Weinstein 23:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 23:59 ... he just decides to go nuclear, at any point in time? If he gets pressured to keep advancing further and further into Russia, and he's like, "I'll just end this right now. I'll just turn Kiev into a fucking sandbox." Boom.

Bret Weinstein 24:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:15 And then what do we do?

Bret Weinstein 24:16 No, it's, it's insane. And the hardest part, I'm sure you have these people in your life too, but, um, let's just take my parents for a second.

Joe Rogan 24:24 Okay.

Bret Weinstein 24:24 My parents are good people, lifelong Democrats. They live in LA surrounded by Hollywood types. They cannot seem to grasp the fact that the party that they believed in is now doing the inverse of everything they signed up for.

Joe Rogan 24:41 Exactly.

Bret Weinstein 24:42 Because the New York Times rephrases everything so it seems like the values are still there.

Joe Rogan 24:48 Right, which is wild.

Bret Weinstein 24:51 It's crazy. And if you're not a New York Times reader, it's, you can barely figure out what these people are talking about.

Joe Rogan 24:57 Did you see the article that I posted on my Instagram that's, uh, a title of a New York Times article for today?

Bret Weinstein 25:03 Which one?

Joe Rogan 25:05 Jamie, pull, pull this up. I want, I want Brett to see this so he knows this is real. This isn't the Babylon Bee.

Bret Weinstein 25:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:11 This is an actual New York Times article. You see it?

Narrator 25:17 Yeah, I had it in a weird spot. Let me go over to your Instagram.

Joe Rogan 25:21 This is so crazy. It's really hard to believe that someone would print this and the New York Times would say, "Yeah, we like it. Put it out there."

Bret Weinstein 25:29 Uh, I'm not quite sure what to expect.

Joe Rogan 25:31 Look at this.

Bret Weinstein 25:31 Oh, yeah. Of course.

Joe Rogan 25:32 "The Constitution is sacred. Is it also dangerous?"

Bret Weinstein 25:36 (laughs) Right.

Joe Rogan 25:38 "One of the biggest threats to America politics might be the country's founding document." What the fuck are you talking about?

Bret Weinstein 25:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:47 One of the biggest threats to America's politics might be one of the greatest documents that any country was ever founded on, if not the greatest ever?

Bret Weinstein 25:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:57 That could be a threat to America's politics. What politics are we talking about? Like, what... How could you possibly gaslight me enough to go along with you on this?

Bret Weinstein 26:08 Yeah, it, it's incredible. I mean, it's, on the one hand, completely predictable, right?

Joe Rogan 26:14 Right.

Bret Weinstein 26:14 Because there's obviously an authoritarian force there that just grinds its teeth at night over the Constitution and the fact that it prevents it from doing things that it just wants to do-

Joe Rogan 26:25 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 26:25 ... last week, you know? And so of course, they're like scratching their heads like, "Can we come up with an argument for why it might be time to get rid of that thing?" And of course, if you're a normal thinking person, this is complete insanity. But if you're a New York Times reader, I'm sure that fits with the kind of ethos that's been cultivated.

Joe Rogan 26:46 Well, this is why a person like Trump is so important to them, because if you don't have someone that is an imminent threat on the horizon in three months, it's very difficult to justify all this shit. So if you have Kamala Harris and she's competing against Ron DeSantis, if it's just Kamala Harris and Ron DeSantis and Trump doesn't exist. Maybe he died, maybe he died in the last few years, you know.

Bret Weinstein 27:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:14 What... How could you, you, you wouldn't be able to make that argument. You wouldn't... There, there's no imminent threat.

Bret Weinstein 27:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 27:20 Right? Let's say Mitt Romney. Let's say someone even more moderate as a Republican-

Bret Weinstein 27:24 Yep.

Joe Rogan 27:24 ... even more palatable. You can't make that, you can't make that argument that we don't need, we can't have a First Amendment because the First Amendment is getting in the way. The First Amendment is allowing people to say things that aren't true, misinformation and disinformation. And w- you know, we're, we're... Right here, we're September 2nd. Um, I think yesterday was the first day where Brazil banned Twitter.

Bret Weinstein 27:46 I know.

Joe Rogan 27:47 So X is illegal to have in Brazil as of today, as of yesterday. And not only is it illegal, but you go through it through a VPN and they will charge you $8,000 a day.

Bret Weinstein 28:00 I know. It's, it's incredible that we are watching this.

Joe Rogan 28:04 Insane.

Bret Weinstein 28:05 But I would remind you, they did pull this stuff when it was Mitt Romney, when it was George W. Bush, right? The rhetoric was still existential threat, right? And they always have particular versions of this, right?

Joe Rogan 28:20 Not, not as ramped up as this is though.

Bret Weinstein 28:21 Right. Oh, wait-

Joe Rogan 28:22 This is like Hitler, Hitler talk.

Bret Weinstein 28:23 No, I-

Joe Rogan 28:24 This isn't... They never talked about Mitt Romney like he was Hitler.

Bret Weinstein 28:26 I agree. And I, as I've been saying since the beginning of this electoral cycle, they fear Bobby Kennedy far more than they fear Trump because actually Trump gives them the only argument for their existence that is functional, right? They don't have an affirmative argument for why they should be in power, but being the alternative to Trump is, you know, that's a, that's a pitch.

Joe Rogan 28:48 Right.

Bret Weinstein 28:49 Um, so we are now somewhere pretty interesting in the sense that I think, you know, to the faithful, that argument still works. But to a larger and larger group of people, they're seeing right through it.

Joe Rogan 29:06 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 29:07 They're understanding we... First of all, we lived through four years of Trump, right?

Joe Rogan 29:10 Right.

Bret Weinstein 29:10 There were good aspects, there were bad aspects, but you know, (laughs) it, it was not distinguished as some moment of, you know, total failure of our system or something.

Joe Rogan 29:21 Right.

Bret Weinstein 29:21 You know? There were a lot of elements of it that were very positive.

Joe Rogan 29:24 Right. That's, that's a v- and... (laughs) That's where w- a, a fun meme is. There's a fun meme that someone made about how, uh, you're telling me that he's gonna do these things that he didn't when he was in office and you're telling me that you're gonna do these things that you didn't do and you're in office now.

Bret Weinstein 29:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 29:43 Like, what?

Bret Weinstein 29:45 And add to that, you're doing the things that you're accusing him of intending to do, right?

Joe Rogan 29:50 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 29:50 All this law fair stuff, that's frightening. They're weaponizing the courts.

Joe Rogan 29:55 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 29:55 And-

Joe Rogan 29:55 They're weaponizing the courts over what was a misdemeanor with, uh, that's already... If you look at the... Uh, like Bill Ackman had a, a post that he made on Twitter laying out the legality of this 34 count, um, uh, uh, thing that they convicted him of, that this is essentially an accounting error w- or deception...... that's a misdemeanor, that is past the statute of limitations.

Bret Weinstein 30:23 Not only that, but I don't think you have to really even squint at it to see that it's just simply unconstitutional to point the courts at particular people and not other people.

Joe Rogan 30:36 Right.

Bret Weinstein 30:37 Right? We have a constitutional right to equal protection under the law. And obviously, they are setting a different standard for Trump because they want to keep him tied up in court, maybe they want to lock him up and put him in prison. But whatever they're doing, is un-American. It is anti-American.

Joe Rogan 30:54 And dangerous. And very dangerous, because you've set a precedent now. Now, let's imagine, like, we've gone through shifts in this country where we leaned heavily left, like during the Carter administration was run by a serious lefty. You know? And then, what if now it was run by a hardcore right-winger? What if there's some sort of an attack on American soil and it ramps up patriotism, and people get real angry and, and right ... The, you know, just like the left has moved so far left that if you're not in favor of hormone blockers for kids, somehow you're transphobic and you're a bigot. Like, somehow or another, if you're not in favor of that, you're a bigot. What if it gets so right that if you're not in favor of, you know, uh, stops and frisks all over the country to, for everyone, then somehow or another you're, uh, anti-safety of the nation. And if you're, uh, not in favor of no-knock raids on people's homes with no warrants, that somehow or another you're a danger to our democracy. Like, it can go really creepy far right, just like it's really creepy far left, and then they're utilizing the courts. If they fill the courts up with a bunch of hardcore Republicans, now you're utilizing the courts against people in a way that you would find very offensive, because you've made it a, you've set a precedent.

Bret Weinstein 32:13 Right. And, and I think actually we are already living this nightmare in one way, because what they did was loaded powers into the executive branch that were never supposed to be there. They created emperor-like discretion and they gave those powers to the President, I think believing that they would never be in the hands of anybody that wasn't on their team. Right? And I'm not talking red or blue.

Joe Rogan 32:38 Right.

Bret Weinstein 32:38 I'm talking about inside versus outside. And one of the reasons that I think the reaction to Trump is what it was, is that he was taking over an office that had been given all of these exotic tools that he could, in principle, use against anybody. These are tools that are absolutely a violation of our Constitution, and yet they exist there. And so the need to prevent him from having access to those things was existential, in their mind. And so anyway, the point is, they created tools they never expected to be in the hands of someone else, and that is the situation, that's the scenario you're describing here as well.

Joe Rogan 33:16 Why do you think the multiverse is bullshit?

Bret Weinstein 33:19 I just don't think it makes any sense, because, um, if you take the multiverse literally ... So let, let, let me back up a second.

Joe Rogan 33:29 Okay.

Bret Weinstein 33:29 We have a principle that tells us, more or less, what is true, called parsimony, right?

Joe Rogan 33:37 Mm-hmm.

Bret Weinstein 33:37 We take the simplest explanation that accounts for what we observe, and we imagine it's true. And there's a little imperfection in there, but if you had all the information, it would, it would work, I think perfectly. And then there's a flaw in how we apply it. The multiverse is analytically very simple. Right? It's just one move. Oh, there are an infinite number of universes. I- every moment there are an infinite number of things that could happen, and a universe is created for each one. That's very simple. I just said it in one sentence. On the other hand, at the practical level, it couldn't possibly be more wasteful and absurd. Right? And the idea that, uh, you know, there's gonna be a different, there's gonna be two universes, you're gonna double the universe because I just moved my glasses, and we need one universe in which I didn't and one universe in which I did, and then each of those universes is gonna pler- proliferate out from each moment, this does not make any sense. So I think what it is, is this is just part of the process of discovery. If you imagine an infinite number of proliferating universes from each branching point, right? That accounts, that allows us to understand, we could describe it that way and it allows us to understand the universe as we observe it. Now, the question is, what's really going on that allows that to take place without the proliferation of universes? That's why I think it's wrong. It's, it's, it's the intermediate, it's the immature analytical point at which we have noticed that something is going on, we know we need to explain it, and we haven't yet stood in the right place to explain it in a way that's actually efficient. So what we're doing is we're explaining it in a way that if you typed it out, it's, uh, it's one tweet.

Joe Rogan 35:27 But isn't existence itself insane? The universe itself is insane. Its subatomic particles are insane, going all the way out to solar nurseries. There are ... It's all insane. The whole thing's insane. It's insane in scope, it's insane in size, it's insane in its complexity.

Bret Weinstein 35:47 It's almost incomprehensible.

Joe Rogan 35:48 Almost incomprehensible. So why would it be more incomprehensible if it was, there was infinite variety and infinite numbers of them? It would just be a different level of crazy that we weren't aware of.

Bret Weinstein 36:02 Well, n- no. It-

Joe Rogan 36:04 No?

Bret Weinstein 36:05 I mean, I don't think so, because it's not a different level. If... Let's just agree that the universe, the size of it, is impossible to actually comprehend. I think it's-

Joe Rogan 36:15 Impossible.

Bret Weinstein 36:16 It's literally impossible.

Joe Rogan 36:16 Yeah. We, we just look at it as a number.

Bret Weinstein 36:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:19 It's a small number, actually. You look at it, oh, like what's the most recent, the James Webb Telescope, the most recent advanced versions of it, they're talking about 22 billion-plus years for The Big Bang. They're looking at that now because of the, um-... the, 'cause of the structure of some galaxies that shouldn't exist, shouldn't exist in the time period of which th- it, what they would have to w- be formed in a certain amount of years. And so, there, there's stor- there's s- it's- it's very contentious, but there's some of these people studying the results that s- seem to believe it's very, quite possible that you- you might want to push that date back, for whatever the big bang is.

Bret Weinstein 36:55 Right. Okay.

Joe Rogan 36:57 And then there's Sir Roger Penrose who thinks it's like a constant cycle.

Bret Weinstein 37:00 Right. I- I- I'm- I'm open to all these ideas-

Joe Rogan 37:03 Right.

Bret Weinstein 37:03 ... except ones like the multiverse-

Joe Rogan 37:05 (laughs) Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 37:05 ... because y- let's put it this way-

Joe Rogan 37:07 Okay.

Bret Weinstein 37:08 ... you haven't solved a problem by invoking the multiverse. What you've done is you've caused a problem that is like the original problem that you had raised to the infinity.

Joe Rogan 37:21 Right.

Bret Weinstein 37:22 And so my feeling is any time you've made the problem, the philosophical problem you had that we all admit is really, really difficult infinitely worse, you probably made a wrong move.

Joe Rogan 37:34 I don't know about that. I don't, I don't think that's necessarily true, because just because we haven't solved the problem of this immense thing that's impossible to grasp, it doesn't mean it can't be way bigger than we even imagine in a- a- a concept that's impossible to grasp. And there's got to be some reason why so many people are entertaining this multiverse theory.

Bret Weinstein 38:00 It's not... Well, that's just because-

Joe Rogan 38:03 'Cause it's fun?

Bret Weinstein 38:03 ... we're not very, we're, 'cause we're descendants of chimp-like ancestors and-

Joe Rogan 38:06 (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 38:06 ... we have limited tools to bring to bear to this sort of thing.

Joe Rogan 38:09 And it's exciting.

Bret Weinstein 38:09 Right, it's exciting. It's a good way to think of it. As, if you think of it as a temporary stand-in for whatever the answer is that's gonna dawn us, on us-

Joe Rogan 38:16 Right.

Bret Weinstein 38:16 ... at some point, it's fine. It's- it's a good, it's a good thought problem, but imagining that it's real, you know, you said, you know, maybe the problem is infinitely bigger than we thought. It's not infinitely bigger. It's the rate of growth of the problem, is every instant needs multiple universes for the most-

Joe Rogan 38:39 Mm-hmm.

Bret Weinstein 38:39 ... trivial of-

Joe Rogan 38:40 Yep.

Bret Weinstein 38:41 ... modifications? Uh, I'm sorry. That just does not sound like nature to me.

Joe Rogan 38:46 I think it sounds like the universe, though. I don't think the universe necessarily sounds like nature. Nature is what we see here, but what we see everywhere is so bizarre. Like black holes are so bizarre. Supernovas, they're so fucking bizarre. The fact that there's a- a- a giant black hole in the center of every galaxy that's one-half of 1% of the mass of the galaxy and it might be another universe inside of that thing?

Bret Weinstein 39:07 But see, I actually think that one... I mean, I was waiting for that discovery for my whole life.

Joe Rogan 39:12 (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 39:12 And when I finally heard, it was like, "Okay, now I understand why you've got this huge swirling thing. You've got this giant gravitational mass in the center that you can't see."

Joe Rogan 39:21 Right.

Bret Weinstein 39:21 Now it makes sense. So-

Joe Rogan 39:22 Right.

Bret Weinstein 39:22 ... that was like a simplifying discovery.

Joe Rogan 39:25 Well, the i- existence of the black hole, but the concept of a black hole being essentially a portal into another universe where there's hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one with a black hole in the center of them, you go through each one of those, you have hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one with a black hole in the center of it, and you just keep doing that forever and ever and ever. Isn't that kind of the multiverse?

Bret Weinstein 39:45 Well, let's put it this way. I... I mean, A, we're a little bit safe here because, by definition, there's no way of peering into those things.

Joe Rogan 39:53 Right.

Bret Weinstein 39:54 Um-

Joe Rogan 39:54 For now.

Bret Weinstein 39:55 I think forever, but-

Joe Rogan 39:56 You think AI can't like get a grasp on this in a better way?

Bret Weinstein 39:59 Well, it might be able to-

Joe Rogan 40:00 Quantum computing 1,000 years from now might have a-

Bret Weinstein 40:02 Right. Uh, the- the problem is that there's a physical reason you can't. For the same reason the light can't get out, there's no way to peer in.

Joe Rogan 40:08 Right.

Bret Weinstein 40:08 So am I cool with the idea that maybe there's an equilibrium that, you know, a black hole or things, once they're pulled in over that threshold, they never emerge again and that maybe they emerge somewhere else? Yeah, I could imagine parallel things that are entangled in this way. That does not sound inherently like an insane cheat to me, because what we have is a mystery staring us in the face in every one of those, uh, ultra massive black holes.

Joe Rogan 40:39 Mm.

Bret Weinstein 40:39 What the hell is it?

Joe Rogan 40:40 Right. Um, what about a future in which we develop some sort of propulsion system and attach it to a drone that's not, it's not i- based on fuel, it's based on some sort of gravity thing and allows you to traverse immense distances very quickly? And then we could actually get that fucker way out there, take some video, and bring it back.

Bret Weinstein 41:05 Well, you're gonna void the warranty, I'm pretty sure.

Joe Rogan 41:08 Well, it's okay. It's all funded by the government.

Bret Weinstein 41:10 Oh, right. Okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:11 We have infinite money. We just print checks.

Bret Weinstein 41:12 Oh, we'll just tax-

Joe Rogan 41:13 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 41:13 ... people and-

Joe Rogan 41:14 And we'll blame the UFOs.

Bret Weinstein 41:15 Yeah. Um-

Joe Rogan 41:16 Which is what I think they're doing, by the way.

Bret Weinstein 41:19 Using the UFO story?

Joe Rogan 41:20 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 41:20 Oh, yeah. I think-

Joe Rogan 41:21 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 41:21 ... so too.

Joe Rogan 41:21 Yeah, I think, I think both things are true. I think we have been visited, and I think it only makes sense th- uh, I think there is life out there because it doesn't make sense there isn't. And I think I would visit if I got a thousand years more advanced than we are and we found out about some planet that's 2,000 light years away that actually is making nuclear bombs. Fuck yeah, I'd visit.

Bret Weinstein 41:42 Of course.

Joe Rogan 41:42 Of course you'd visit.

Bret Weinstein 41:43 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:43 100%. So, of course they would visit, and of course they would want to protect us from the overwhelming shock to our culture that would ind- undoubtably be f- thrust upon us if we were c- if we were confronted with a city-sized spaceship that's hovering over Detroit, just- just hovering over there. It would send the world into a massive panic.

Bret Weinstein 42:09 Uh-

Joe Rogan 42:09 No one would know what to do.

Bret Weinstein 42:11 ... I'm-

Joe Rogan 42:11 So I would hide.

Bret Weinstein 42:12 ... not sure about this.

Joe Rogan 42:13 Really?

Bret Weinstein 42:13 So I- I wanna, I wanna just adjust a couple things you said.

Joe Rogan 42:16 Okay, please do.

Bret Weinstein 42:16 Uh, so my perspective, you're absolutely right. It would be... There's every reason to think there's lots of life in the universe.

Joe Rogan 42:22 Right.

Bret Weinstein 42:24 And that life that attains a certain level of cognition will inevitably create technologies that break boundaries that it can't biologically break, so it'll, you know, traverse some, uh, distance across space. But the real question is-... how many islands of life, what's the closest one, how traversable is the cosmos, right? It may not be traversable at all at those scales, or it may be much more traversable than we know, and then it doesn't take very many islands of life to have somebody visit us. But as to your last point, I actually... Well, first of all, everybody, every thinking person I know is pretty troubled by the present. And, you know, a, a hostile alien force would freak everybody out. But I, A, can't see a reason why aliens would be hostile. Doesn't make sense to me that-

Joe Rogan 43:28 They don't have to be hostile.

Bret Weinstein 43:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:29 Just, just being there-

Bret Weinstein 43:30 Right. But then-

Joe Rogan 43:31 ... yeah.

Bret Weinstein 43:31 ... if they were just there, first of all, we've been training for this. Right? We all spend a lot of time on sci-fi stories of-

Joe Rogan 43:38 Sure.

Bret Weinstein 43:38 ... aliens and all that stuff.

Joe Rogan 43:41 Right.

Bret Weinstein 43:42 So I think, actually, we wouldn't be impressed enough, because we've seen really impressive stuff on screens again and again and again, if you actually heard that this stuff was going on, if the ship showed up in the sky and you could see it with your binoculars, I think the question is, well, are they friendly? And what do they have to say? Right?

Joe Rogan 44:07 Right.

Bret Weinstein 44:07 I honestly don't think... You know, I don't... It'd be hard... If I heard about it, I would think that's gotta be good news, because we're-

Joe Rogan 44:16 Right. But to anyone in power, this would be a gigantic threat, to anyone trying to pass off some sort of narrative that this is the, the, the, we're in the lead in terms of, like, the moral high ground of the world, and that we're, you know, we're the wisest, we're the best, we're gonna make decisions for everybody. That would throw a monkey wrench completely into the gears of that. There would be-

Bret Weinstein 44:37 Oh, totally.

Joe Rogan 44:37 So they would lose all control.

Bret Weinstein 44:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:39 They would lose all authority, they would lose all respect.

Bret Weinstein 44:41 But why are the aliens abiding by their plan?

Joe Rogan 44:44 'Cause I don't think they are. I don't, I don't... That's not what I'm saying. I think that would freak them out, and they're not doing that. Right? I think if they are real and they do observe us, they probably observe us in a, in a way where there's a limited amount of detection. And I think there's probably, if I was going to acclimate a culture to the idea that they're not alone, I would do it slowly. That way, you could have the same ultimate effect eventually, and maybe, maybe help them along their evolution as well, along their cultural evolution, to, like, slowly introduce this concept that they're not alone, and then do it over decades, which is exactly what's been happening.

Bret Weinstein 45:28 Yes.

Joe Rogan 45:28 And, and the acceptance of it has changed from... When I was a kid, you talk about UFOs, you're a fucking kook. 100%.

Bret Weinstein 45:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:34 Straight up kook. And then the Bob Lazar story came around, and everybody was like, "Wait, wait a minute. Is that guy telling the truth?" And that was, like, '89. But still seemed like bullshit, and then there was a bunch of questions about his, uh, education background, ah, bullshit artist. But then, over time, more people have seen enough things, like Commander David Fravor, and more people have seen things that, like, have no explanation whatsoever. And you start hearing stories from high level people about retrieved vehicles and this and that. It's more and more and more and more and more normal people talking about it, and more and more professors at Stanford and The New York Times in 2017 prints a story on respected, um, Air Force pilots are coming out and talking about it. It's a different world.

Bret Weinstein 46:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:19 And it's a different world just over a few decades.

Bret Weinstein 46:21 Yeah, it's a different world, but I still haven't seen anything that isn't best explained as psyop bullshit.

Joe Rogan 46:27 Right. I haven't either. But, uh, but also, I haven't seen anything. Right?

Bret Weinstein 46:31 Right.

Joe Rogan 46:32 I mean, uh, uh, uh, these are unique experiences, and the problem with unique experiences is everyone has to just sort of trust you. Unless you have some kind of evidence, everyone has to trust you. Even if it's a whole town, it's a unique experience in the town, uh, mass hypnosis, bunch of bullshit artists that are taking advantage of it for tourism. Like Varginha in Brazil. The entire town saw this thing. So how, you know, I'm not sure if it's all bullshit. I think there's some bullshit mixed in with some real stuff. That's what I think. This is my conclusion over time. Because if you go back to, like, the Kenneth Arnold sightings in the 1950s, we didn't have anything that moved like that. Nobody did. There's no way anybody had anything in the 1950s that could s- shoot across the sky, soundless, make no noise, skip like flying saucers is what, the way they described it. Uh, there was, uh, I think there was nine of them together. Like, there was noth-... We didn't have anything like that. So maybe occasionally we're visited. Maybe occasionally they show themselves. And maybe they have been here. Tucker thinks they've been here all along. He thinks they're a part of this world that we live in. They just, they, they hide from us, and maybe they live in the ocean.

Bret Weinstein 47:45 Yeah. I mean, you know, you, you know what my stock in trade is and my feeling is. I'm perfectly open to the possibility that there are alien intelligences in the universe. I'm perfectly open to the possibility that they would stop by. Um, but I'm gonna need something like evidence that isn't better explained by terrestrial bullshit, because frankly, the terrestrial bullshit is guaranteed.

Joe Rogan 48:12 Right. If they had some sort of a drone that used gravity and could zip across the sky like m- um, you know, 10X light speed, they wouldn't tell you about it. (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 48:22 (laughs) Yeah, but I don't even think it's... I don't... Uh, look, I think the fact, and I think we may have talked about this before, but the fact that these things are doing stuff that's beyond any terrestrial craft that we know of and they're silent, that's because they're not craft. They're projections of some kind. And so they're visually very compelling, but they do not disturb the atoms that they're passing through because they're not, they don't displace anything.

Joe Rogan 48:50 So you think the radar...... when they use radar and they find these things, what do you think that is?

Bret Weinstein 48:56 Oh, man, I think that's people putting blips on other people's radar, and it's not the only place in history that that shows up, right?

Joe Rogan 49:04 So, you could force a blip onto someone's radar?

Bret Weinstein 49:06 Sure.

Joe Rogan 49:06 You could hack their radar?

Bret Weinstein 49:07 And heck, if you had a, you know-

Joe Rogan 49:09 How would you do that?

Bret Weinstein 49:11 Uh, well, these radars are all computerized.

Joe Rogan 49:14 Well, let's talk about the David Fravor one, right? Because, uh, this is 2004, so it kind of limits our ability in terms of... you know, you have high technology, you have extremely powerful computers, y- you have a lot of stuff going on. But we, we certainly don't have what we have 20 years later. Right?

Bret Weinstein 49:31 Yep.

Joe Rogan 49:31 We all agree to that. Now, they have multiple different, uh, mediums, multiple different types of evidence. They have visual ha- uh, eyewitness testimony in more than one jet sees this thing, more than one pilot sees this thing, they all have the same story. This thing zips across the sky. They have the radar that shows that this thing went from 50,000 feet above sea level to 50 in a second.

Bret Weinstein 49:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:57 They have this thing moving at speeds on video, where you see it move on video, that would turn anybody inside it into Jell-O.

Bret Weinstein 50:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:04 So, it's... whatever the fuck this is, it's doing something that we didn't think human beings could do.

Bret Weinstein 50:09 That's possible, yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:09 Right. So, you have three different ways of verifying that there is something there. You have the radar, you have video, you have eyewitness testimony. You have this thing flying to the CAT point where they were ini- initially supposed to, when they were doing their training mission, they were supposed to meet.

Bret Weinstein 50:24 Yep.

Joe Rogan 50:25 There's a lot of weird shit with that.

Bret Weinstein 50:26 Yep. But...

Joe Rogan 50:28 So, you think t- they could fake that?

Bret Weinstein 50:31 Yeah. I mean, I, I do think you could fake it, because you just have multiple attack vectors.

Joe Rogan 50:38 So-

Bret Weinstein 50:38 Right? You've got-

Joe Rogan 50:38 ... how would you fake, um, a visual sighting from trained fighter jet pilots over the ocean?

Bret Weinstein 50:48 A projection.

Joe Rogan 50:49 A projection?

Bret Weinstein 50:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:50 And where would the projector be then?

Bret Weinstein 50:52 I don't know. Could, could be, could be coming from space? Could be from an aircraft that's flying too high to see? I don't know. But-

Joe Rogan 51:00 And how would you do that? What technology would enable you to make something loo-... I mean, they even had a disturbance of the ocean floor. Or of the o- ocean surface, rather.

Bret Weinstein 51:11 So, I'm not an expert in these technologies. I'm not claiming that I could do it. But what I'm saying is, A, you have a huge amount of classified technology. Just imagine for a second how useful it would be to be able to convince your enemy that you had aircraft in its airspace, that they were able to-

Joe Rogan 51:34 Mm-hmm. Sure.

Bret Weinstein 51:34 ... exceed limits, whatever. So, do you think we've worked on the ability to fool an enemy into believing that we have capacities that we don't have?

Joe Rogan 51:42 Of course.

Bret Weinstein 51:43 Right.

Joe Rogan 51:43 Yeah, of course.

Bret Weinstein 51:43 So, given that those programs are essentially certain to exist, do you think anybody's ever gonna have the idea that actually, in this case, it would be useful if some, you know, unassailable authorities were to have undeniable experiences that suggest X, Y, or Z?

Joe Rogan 52:02 Hmm.

Bret Weinstein 52:03 Somebody's gonna come up with that idea.

Joe Rogan 52:04 So, this would explain why these things are able to stay stationary in 120 knot winds, because they're not affected by physical reality?

Bret Weinstein 52:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:15 They're, they're just images?

Bret Weinstein 52:16 H- have you... I mean, I know you have. There are incredibly good magicians-

Joe Rogan 52:22 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 52:23 ... right, who will do stuff in front of you that, you know, you don't walk out of there thinking the laws of physics have been broken. Because you understand that mag- magic is a genre where you walk in and you agree to suspend your disbelief enough to look through your eyes and register something as if it's violated a law of physics. But we all know it's magic, right?

Joe Rogan 52:42 David Blaine.

Bret Weinstein 52:42 Right, exactly. An illusion.

Joe Rogan 52:45 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 52:45 Now, imagine that you had teams working on illusions who were gonna do so in a context that you would have no concept that that's what had happened, because you're so used to trusting what your eyes perceive, what your ears hear, all of those things. So, all I'm saying is, the evidence that these things exist always hovers in the realm where a ruthless whatever could have faked it. Right? Whether that has to do with an MKUltra intervention, where somebody's been given drugs they don't know they've been given, and they've been shown things that they are more open to, because they were in a state in which they were in induced openness. That's a possibility. Or a mixture of things. You see something, you've been brought into a state of openness, you accept it more than you think you have, because you don't know that anybody tinkered with your wiring. I just am waiting to see a piece of evidence that really makes me go, "Huh, I don't think we could have done that."

Joe Rogan 53:56 Have you seen any of Gary Nolan's stuff on the metallurgy, on the, the different samples that they've collected from these supposed downed crafts that defy all our understanding of how to create alloys, and-

Bret Weinstein 54:09 So-

Joe Rogan 54:09 ... how expensive it would be to craft these things?

Bret Weinstein 54:11 Let me ask you a question. You've got alloys that are beyond known human technology-

Joe Rogan 54:17 Mm-hmm.

Bret Weinstein 54:18 ... and you've got discussion of alloys that are beyond human technology.

Joe Rogan 54:22 Mm-hmm.

Bret Weinstein 54:23 Which is it?

Joe Rogan 54:24 Well, certainly discussions.

Bret Weinstein 54:26 That's the problem.

Joe Rogan 54:27 Right. I mean, I don't know, uh, who... See if you can find anything on Gary Nolan's samples. So, Diana Pasulko, who had been on the podcast before, she, she had done some excavating of these areas where they pur- purport that these things had crashed, and they could still find pieces. Which, uh, made me a little skeptical. As soon as I see you could still find... you didn't pick 'em all up? Like-

Bret Weinstein 54:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:52 ... why wouldn't they send someone out there-

Bret Weinstein 54:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 54:53 ... to pick everything up? Why would you-

Bret Weinstein 54:55 You would, you would sift.

Joe Rogan 54:56 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 54:56 You, you would take truckloads and you would sift.

Joe Rogan 54:58 100%. You would get every single scrap of that stuff.

Bret Weinstein 55:01 Yep.

Joe Rogan 55:01 But if I wanted someone to believe that a craft was there, I'd leave a bunch of bullshit out in the field, I'd blindfold them like they did, I'd take them out to this spot, "This is the spot."... fuck around. Oh, look, you found a piece.

Bret Weinstein 55:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:12 Like, how do you not know where all the fucking pieces are? If this thing (laughs) crashed 30 years ago, why didn't you go over this place with a fine-toothed comb? People do that for arrowheads.

Bret Weinstein 55:21 Yep.

Joe Rogan 55:22 Why would you not do that for alien craft m- metal?

Bret Weinstein 55:25 Of course you would.

Joe Rogan 55:26 Yeah. Also, there's the other problem. It's like, why are these things crashing?

Bret Weinstein 55:30 Right. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 55:31 'Cause they're so fucking good, they can get here from another dimension. They, they're, they're-

Bret Weinstein 55:33 They're, they're partying, they got here-

Joe Rogan 55:35 (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 55:35 ... and they just, th- they don't know their ...

Joe Rogan 55:38 They get ahold of some fucking Jack Daniels, next thing you know-

Bret Weinstein 55:41 There you go.

Joe Rogan 55:41 ... they're, they're crashed in the sand.

Bret Weinstein 55:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:43 They're having a good time in America. It's also, that's a big problem too, a lot of these sightings are in America. They're, like, the, if you-

Bret Weinstein 55:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:49 ... have a look at the chart, there are sightings overseas for sure. They, they happen all over the world.

Bret Weinstein 55:53 Look, we-

Joe Rogan 55:54 U- Undoubtedly. But they have it a lot more here.

Bret Weinstein 55:56 We have an alien problem across many different dimensions. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:02 (laughs) Yeah, we do. We go, we have multiple alien problems.

Bret Weinstein 56:05 Yeah. We have multi- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:10 That's another thing that they're gaslighting people on, the idea that they would let people come over here so they would vote. Of course they would. That's a great way to, like, get vo- voters. So, these are these pieces that Garry Nolan claims to have had. And what does it say about these pieces?

Bret Weinstein 56:23 I mean, this is, I, well, I could only find it in a video. I was trying to find pictures of it somewhere else.

Joe Rogan 56:26 "US Explosion..." Okay. So, this is from-

Bret Weinstein 56:29 It's a box.

Joe Rogan 56:30 ... uh, how do you say that? Ubatuba? Ubatuba, Brazil. So, this is a different ... It might be a different pronunciation in Portuguese. But this is a, uh, different crash than the Varginha one, so there's been multiple sightings and things happen in Brazil apparently. Brazil also has a little bit of an alien problem.

Bret Weinstein 56:46 Oh, yeah. Little, little one.

Joe Rogan 56:48 But the Varginha one i- is wild. That's the most wild one.

Bret Weinstein 56:51 Yeah, but those, those, um, fragments there-

Joe Rogan 56:54 Mm-hmm.

Bret Weinstein 56:55 ... appeared, from where I'm sitting, to look like they were made of pixels.

Joe Rogan 57:00 Let me see that again. That could just be a low-resolution photograph.

Bret Weinstein 57:03 No, no, it's, I'm kidding with you. I'm just saying, we're looking at that thing as if we know that it's a fragment of metal, and we're being told that it has properties that are unfamiliar. But what we have, the evidence you and I have, is pixels.

Joe Rogan 57:17 Right. Sure. We're not there. We don't get to see these things. Also, even if you gave it to me, what-

Bret Weinstein 57:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 57:23 ... but w- how's that gonna help me? I, I have no idea what you're-

Bret Weinstein 57:26 Yeah, you're not gonna know.

Joe Rogan 57:26 Yeah, I don't know what that is.

Bret Weinstein 57:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:27 I don't even ... Even if you gave me the microscopes to look at it, I'm like, "What am I seeing?"

Bret Weinstein 57:30 Right.

Joe Rogan 57:31 I'm seeing layers? Is that what this is? Like-

Bret Weinstein 57:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 57:33 ... how'd they do this?

Bret Weinstein 57:34 Right. So, that's why, look, you know, I want a team of honest biologists to look at some space biology.

Joe Rogan 57:42 Mm-hmm.

Bret Weinstein 57:42 That would settle this immediately.

Joe Rogan 57:44 Yeah, immediately.

Bret Weinstein 57:45 Immediately.

Joe Rogan 57:46 Yeah. Like, if there really is a body.

Bret Weinstein 57:50 Just one.

Joe Rogan 57:50 Like, when everyone says there's a frozen body somewhere.

Bret Weinstein 57:53 Just one.

Joe Rogan 57:54 (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 57:55 (laughs) That's all it take. We can settle this tomorrow.

Joe Rogan 57:57 Let some people in. Okay, here it is. "Alleged extraterrestrial metal from the bottom of a wedge-shaped craft in the late 1940s, made of 26 alternating layers, one to four microns dark bismuth and 100 to 200 microns silver-magnesium-zinc alloy. Each of six pieces received from US Army source were formed with a curvature that tapered."

Bret Weinstein 58:20 Wow. That is incredibly compelling metallurgical narrative.

Joe Rogan 58:28 If it's true.

Bret Weinstein 58:28 Transmitted by pixels.

Joe Rogan 58:30 Right. That's the problem. And, and-

Bret Weinstein 58:32 Yeah, that's the problem.

Joe Rogan 58:32 ... it's also the late 1940s. How many of these fucking things crashed?

Bret Weinstein 58:37 Oh, it was happening all the time.

Joe Rogan 58:38 That's the weird thing, right? Like, uh, uh ... Think of how many Corvettes there are.

Bret Weinstein 58:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:43 You don't find a whole lot of them, like, on the side of the road, crashed.

Bret Weinstein 58:46 Yeah. It's not a common thing. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:49 (laughs) Nobody's finding Corvettes in the, in the, in the d- desert. "Look, I found a Corvette."

Bret Weinstein 58:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:54 There's so many Corvettes. There's millions of them. (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 58:57 Right, and yet-

Joe Rogan 58:58 (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 58:58 ... and yet most of them make it from A to B.

Joe Rogan 59:00 But these fucking UFOs-

Bret Weinstein 59:02 Oh, man.

Joe Rogan 59:02 ... they're, they're so smart, they come here from other planets and they just, "Ah!"

Bret Weinstein 59:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:06 Boom. I wanna-

Bret Weinstein 59:06 Well, maybe we're not on their map, and so they're like ...

Joe Rogan 59:09 Or maybe the only people that are the only, uh, intelligent life outside of this planet that's willing to do it, they're like Australian outback people. They're like those, those wild dudes who, uh, go overlanding in the m-

Bret Weinstein 59:22 Mm.

Joe Rogan 59:23 You ever s- You know, Australia has a-

Bret Weinstein 59:24 Sure.

Joe Rogan 59:24 ... a big overlanding culture-

Bret Weinstein 59:26 Yes.

Joe Rogan 59:26 ... where they build up these vehicles and they, they take them off into the bush and they, they, they live off of them. My friend Adam Greentree does that. These people are wild. Uh, Australians are wild folk. So, maybe they're like the Australians of space.

Bret Weinstein 59:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:39 And they just take-

Bret Weinstein 59:40 Overlanding, and it doesn't always work out.

Joe Rogan 59:42 They just ... Overlanding.

Bret Weinstein 59:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:43 They're these nuts that, like, the, you know, there's people that go out in the desert for 30 days, and they have enough food and water, and they have a solar thing on the top of their, their rig. And that's what charges their cellphone, and they have, you know, jerrycans of petrol so they can keep going, and ...

Bret Weinstein 59:57 Well, I, I kinda dig this. Look-

Joe Rogan 59:59 Yeah, it's fun.

Bret Weinstein 59:59 ... if, if, if it were possible to-

Joe Rogan 1:00:02 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:00:02 ... traverse vast empty spaces and go to places that were known to have life, I'd be all about that. So, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:08 But it would only be the real hardcore adventurers that would take that chance. And maybe those people are nuts. Maybe those alien people are nuts just like the human people are nuts that do that kind of stuff.

Bret Weinstein 1:00:17 Right. They like to get into trouble-

Joe Rogan 1:00:19 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 1:00:19 ... wince themselves out and then-

Joe Rogan 1:00:20 Wild people.

Bret Weinstein 1:00:21 Yeah. Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:00:21 They got winches on their spaceships.

Bret Weinstein 1:00:22 Exactly. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:25 (laughs) Well, you gotta also think, here's, here's another problem with the idea of them being biological. Um, we ... It's far more effective to send things that are non-biological into space, like what we're doing on Mars. We, we don't have a base on Mars, allegedly. But there's a lot of nutty people that believe we do. But, um, they do certainly have some robots that are on Mars-

Bret Weinstein 1:00:45 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:45 ... that's gathering data, and they're doing it right now. And so they don't have to worry about radiation, all the things that kill people, make people sad. If we lose one of those rovers, who gives a fuck? Make another rover. Ship it out there. Fly it. Nobody cares. If you lose 50 people, if you take 50 people and they die on your Mars trip, you're gonna have ... Congress is gonna be meeting about it, "What are we doing? Why are we killing people? Let's not do that." And so, as time goes on and as technology improves and as ...... sentient artificial intelligence becomes a better option for sending some intelligent robot to gather data, why would, why would anybody go through space as a, a living creature? It seems stupid.

Bret Weinstein 1:01:27 Yeah. I mean, I agree. On the other hand, I, I probably ... You know, why, why do I want to go to the Amazon, right? I can, I can see-

Joe Rogan 1:01:37 Yeah, but you can go to the Amazon. That's the thing. Humans live in the Amazon.

Bret Weinstein 1:01:40 True.

Joe Rogan 1:01:40 Humans don't live on Mars. It's way simpler to send-

Bret Weinstein 1:01:43 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:01:43 ... a robot to Mars.

Bret Weinstein 1:01:44 Why would we go to Mars?

Joe Rogan 1:01:45 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 1:01:46 Yeah. There is a good reason to go to Mars, and the good reason to go to Mars is we're in jeopardy here, and I don't think Mars is in any way a long-term plan for survival of people. But there are processes unfolding here in our solar system that put us in jeopardy potentially here on Earth, and having just at least an outpost of people, uh, somewhere else would not be a bad hedge against that. So I think-

Joe Rogan 1:02:20 Definitely. I agree.

Bret Weinstein 1:02:21 ... I think we're, I think we're not close enough, but ...

Joe Rogan 1:02:23 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:02:24 Um.

Joe Rogan 1:02:25 But it's, it's definitely a potential reality, and if it was possible, it would be a good move if you wanted to hedge your bets.

Bret Weinstein 1:02:31 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:02:32 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 1:02:32 And we should hedge our bets because-

Joe Rogan 1:02:33 Which is Elon's position on this.

Bret Weinstein 1:02:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:35 You know, that we're in danger of the human race going extinct from a variety of different things, not even our own fault. It could be a l- a bunch of different things, asteroid impacts, super volcanoes. A lot, a lot of stuff can happen right here that kills us all.

Bret Weinstein 1:02:49 Space weather.

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 Oh, yeah. Fucking some supernova too close. Sorry. Everything's cooked.

Bret Weinstein 1:02:55 Micronova, which is actually a viable hypothesis. Apparently, this is something that can happen. It doesn't necessarily destroy the star. You can have a burst of radiation that radically alters things down here.

Joe Rogan 1:03:06 Oh, fun.

Bret Weinstein 1:03:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:07 And maybe that's what happened to Mars, which is also part of the problem, because Mars at one time had an atmosphere. Mars at one time had liquid water. We don't really know what happened.

Bret Weinstein 1:03:16 Yeah. No, agreed. Uh, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:03:17 Mars was probably a little closer to the sun at one point in time in the past.

Bret Weinstein 1:03:22 It turns out that our solar system is dynamic and dangerous in a way that we don't really know because our study is too ... It has exi- has happened in a period of calm.

Joe Rogan 1:03:35 Mm-hmm. And it, we're really looking at a very brief amount of time that we can measure in terms of a human experience. It's so brief in terms of what we know about what human beings have experienced, and then we have to go back to, like, core samples. We have to go back to, oh, it appears that there was Earth One, and Earth One was hit by another planet. That's how we get the moon. And then the moon. The moon's crazy.

Bret Weinstein 1:03:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:59 It, it ... What a crazy thing that this thing stabilizes us. It's in the exact same b- right position, the exact right size to make sure that we can exist as we exist right now.

Bret Weinstein 1:04:11 I know.

Joe Rogan 1:04:11 It seems like somebody put it there.

Bret Weinstein 1:04:12 It's a beautiful thing.

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 It's a beautiful thing, but it's, it's kind of kooky. It's almost like someone put it there.

Bret Weinstein 1:04:19 It's very convenient.

Joe Rogan 1:04:20 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 1:04:20 Yeah. I mean, and of course there's an anthropic principle in play here as well because the question is, are we here because we do have a moon to play the exact right role? You know, this-

Joe Rogan 1:04:31 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:04:31 ... planet has a lot, a lot going for it, and one way to think about that is, wow, that can't be, that's no accident. Or no, we're here to talk about it because those accidents happened to line up here.

Joe Rogan 1:04:41 Right. Or yeah, it's odd, but that's also why there's not life everywhere.

Bret Weinstein 1:04:45 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 And this does happen, and when it does happen, then you get some life.

Bret Weinstein 1:04:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:49 But until it happens and the, the variety of temperature changes over the course of the seasons is just too vast for w- what we understand as biological life to survive, but then, or at least intelligent.

Bret Weinstein 1:05:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:01 See, it's not just biological. It has to be intelligent. It has to be able to manipulate its environment. It has to be able to record the previous thoughts and history, develop language. And it's really help- stuff to do- tough to do that if you're in an environment and you've adapted to an environment that can vary by 300 degrees.

Bret Weinstein 1:05:18 Right. No, you're exactly right, that the number of things that have to stack up before you get to the point that you're pondering why you're here is-

Joe Rogan 1:05:26 (laughs) Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 1:05:26 ... is many.

Joe Rogan 1:05:26 You have to have food.

Bret Weinstein 1:05:28 Right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:28 You have to have food and you have to have your feet up and going, "Why are we here?" (laughs) It's-

Bret Weinstein 1:05:30 Yeah, and you have to not be going routinely extinct because-

Joe Rogan 1:05:33 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:05:33 ... things suddenly go haywire.

Joe Rogan 1:05:35 Exactly. This is why this kind of thought emerges once people sort of settle down.

Bret Weinstein 1:05:39 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:05:40 And get some food, start herding some cattle, and go-

Bret Weinstein 1:05:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:43 ... "Hey, stars are kind of crazy."

Bret Weinstein 1:05:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:45 (laughs)

Bret Weinstein 1:05:45 "You ever looked up?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:46 (laughs) Instead, everybody's just looking in the bushes for what's going to kill them. "What's gonna eat me?"

Bret Weinstein 1:05:51 You know, it's funny. I've spent a lot of time watching animals. They don't look at the sky.

Joe Rogan 1:05:56 Oh, that's interesting.

Bret Weinstein 1:05:58 It is interesting.

Joe Rogan 1:05:59 That is very interesting. That's very interesting.

Bret Weinstein 1:06:01 Yeah, I mean, and you know, I get it. It's not productive-

Joe Rogan 1:06:05 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:06:05 ... until you get pretty deep into thinking about, you know-

Joe Rogan 1:06:09 Mm.

Bret Weinstein 1:06:10 ... abstract things as a way of-

Joe Rogan 1:06:11 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 1:06:11 ... finding what you're not doing right. But-

Joe Rogan 1:06:13 Well, we look outward and we look inward, which is really, like, next level, right? Like, we look, look at microscopes and go, "What is going on here?" Like-

Bret Weinstein 1:06:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:06:20 "We're all filled with bacteria."

Bret Weinstein 1:06:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:21 "This is, this whole thing's nuts. Like, we're not even an individual."

Bret Weinstein 1:06:24 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:25 "We're an ecosystem. We're individual ecosystems." And the healthier your ecosystem is, the healthier you are as an individual because you're not really an individual.

Bret Weinstein 1:06:34 Wow, if we lear- So this, this is something Heather and I talk about frequently, is that we have more or less an epidemic of people who are maybe smart, but they don't know the difference between a complex system and a complicated one. And so they take their complicated system thinking into complex systems.

Joe Rogan 1:06:54 What is the difference?

Bret Weinstein 1:06:55 Whether it's predictable.

Joe Rogan 1:06:57 Mm-hmm.

Bret Weinstein 1:06:57 So for example, your computer or your phone, you know, it's beyond your comprehension or my comprehension, but it is well understood how it works. There's nothing mysterious about the outputs, right? It's a, it's a, it's a system that all of the, the functionality of it is, is well understood. Um, but a biological creature isn't anything like this. And so when you intervene, you know, when they give you a drug and they think they know what it's going to do-They're intervening in a system in which things are connected in ways that they've n- not yet discovered, and they can't anticipate the cascading effects. So, you know, we keep getting upended by the sense of like, you know, "Oh, this thing is wrong with you. Here's a biochemical intervention that will adjust one parameter and put you back into health." No, almost never true, right? It is occasionally true if somebody is quite sick that you can push them back in the direction of homeostasis. You can rescue them. But the idea of improving health with an intervention is almost always the wrong approach, right? You should be restoring the environment in which the body knows how to take care of itself because it is a complex system. Given the right inputs, given the right parameters, it has all of the processes necessary to keep it functioning. But if you think you're going to improve it by intervening, you're almost certain to do harm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:23 Hmm. But what about medication for people that have, like, type 1 diabetes?

Bret Weinstein 1:08:27 Right. But the question is, why do you have type 1 diabetes?

Joe Rogan 1:08:30 But it's a genetic thing.

Bret Weinstein 1:08:31 Yeah. But i- is it a- a- you think our ancestors were walking around with type 1 diabetes?

Joe Rogan 1:08:36 They might have and just died off.

Bret Weinstein 1:08:38 Well, but then you would have a very low rate of that gene. So our ancestors-

Joe Rogan 1:08:41 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:08:42 So the question is-

Joe Rogan 1:08:42 So then there's an environmental reason for type 1 diabetes?

Bret Weinstein 1:08:46 I think there is a massive disruption in all of the environments that we pass through in life that is causing a mismatch between what we are b- we are basically perpetual fishes out of water, and that process is making us unhealthy in every single regard. Heather and I call this hyper-novelty. And in fact, it's not even that we're just out of our environment in which we can be healthy, but the rate of change is so high that even to the extent that we are highly adaptable, we can't adapt fast enough to, uh, to keep up.

Joe Rogan 1:09:24 Mm-hmm.

Bret Weinstein 1:09:25 It's, it's a, it's a pathology. And the flip side of this is if you did recognize exactly where you started that you are actually a system that is complex beyond even the sense that you're an organism. I mean, you're, you're, you're multiple organisms at multiple different levels. Every single cell in your body is being fueled by mitochondria that started out at a different place on the evolutionary tree and got taken inside of cells to become powerhouses. That's a symbiosis. So you are a symbiosis, uh, you know, in each of w- of your cells.

Joe Rogan 1:09:59 And even crazier, your psychology, your mentality affects your physical health.

Bret Weinstein 1:10:06 Profoundly.

Joe Rogan 1:10:07 Profoundly. So the way you think about things, the joy you have in your life, the happiness that you encounter, has a- an enormous effect on your biology.

Bret Weinstein 1:10:17 100%. Yes, if you-

Joe Rogan 1:10:19 Which is just madness.

Bret Weinstein 1:10:20 If you are-

Joe Rogan 1:10:20 So the reductionist view of just give him a shot of this and a pill of that, like, well, there's a lot more going on here.

Bret Weinstein 1:10:27 Right. No, uh, our whole medical, uh, standpoint is fundamentally flawed. And I'm, I'm really hoping that we will take the lesson of COVID seriously and we will recognize, in my opinion, allopathic medicine, standard Western medicine, is living on a- the gains of a tiny number of sub-fields, right? The fact that a surgeon can put you back together after a car accident, that's something that we all know we want there for us if we need it, right? That surgeon's capacity to do that is, A, predicated on the abili- uh, the ability of the body to repair itself, right? A surgeon can cut you open and go, you know, take out your spleen. But that surgeon is depending on the fact that your body knows how to heal the damage, right? You can't go up to a car and, you know, slice it open and pull out the alternator and-

Joe Rogan 1:11:34 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:11:34 ... put in another one and have the car healed.

Joe Rogan 1:11:35 Staple it back together again. Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:11:36 Right. It doesn't work like that. So anyway, there are a few things in medicine that are transcendently awesome, like the ability of a surgeon to fix you and the ability of an emergency room physician to stabilize you where your body is, you know, spiraling out of control. But those things result in a sense of the godlike powers of medicine. And most of the time, medicine is in danger of hurting you. If it's not of the mindset that we should be minimizing intervention, we should be figuring out what the root cause of the pathology is. If we have to intervene, we have t- it should be a temporary intervention that pushes you back to the place where your body knows what to do, and then we should take our hands off, which is, of course, not profitable.

Joe Rogan 1:12:23 Right. The problem is we want you to be hooked on a medication because then we can prescribe that to everybody, and then you have the Sackler family.

Bret Weinstein 1:12:31 Right. Y- the, the fact is this process, health, is far too important to be managed by market forces left to their own devices.

Joe Rogan 1:12:43 Mm-hmm. That's a good point. And the problem is right now it is, and so we have to figure out how to regain control of that.

Bret Weinstein 1:12:52 100%.

Joe Rogan 1:12:53 Yeah.

Bret Weinstein 1:12:53 And so I'm hoping that medicine having just gotten its comeuppance during COVID where, you know, almost every doctor ended up poisoning their patients with advice that turned out to be, uh, you know-

Joe Rogan 1:13:05 And themselves.

Bret Weinstein 1:13:06 And themselves, absolutely.

Joe Rogan 1:13:07 Yeah, which is more important 'cause those doctors believed it. They, they thought that it was true. I, I was just talking to a doctor recently that regretted taking it, and they, they really believed-

Bret Weinstein 1:13:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:18 They believed, they believed. They were telling people what to do, and now they're injured and, you know?

Bret Weinstein 1:13:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:23 And then they have this practice where they told people, "This is what you should do," and then a bunch of people did it, and they got all fucked up. And now they're in this situation where it's not just that they got fucked up, but, like, how much time they have left.... like, how many of these people are going to drop dead over the next five, 10 years?

Bret Weinstein 1:13:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:40 'Cause it's not just one, it's not just two. There's probably gonna be a bunch. There's a bunch of people out there with, like, real myocarditis. There's a bunch of people out there that have blood clots. The, the D-dimer t- there was this doctor on Twitter the other day who was talking about how it's very rare that he uses an D-dimer test on unvaccinated patients and finds blood clots. But he finds a ton of them on vaccinated patients.

Bret Weinstein 1:14:03 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:14:03 And some of them are micro blood clots, some of them are, some of them are significant. But that they find quite a few.

Bret Weinstein 1:14:09 Yeah. There was a paper recently, uh, I haven't delved deeply into it, but that just says, you know, that the spike protein, which is obviously produced by the shots, is interacting with fibrin, which is a clot-producing protein. Um, so it's not surprising that it's having these cascading effects. But okay, so you had all these doctors who gave terrible advice to patients. They assured them not only that this was the right thing to do, but that it was safe, which they should have known better, because it couldn't possibly have been. And there's no, there's no course taught in medical school about, you know, repentance. How do these people repent for what they did so that they learn the lesson and it can't happen again? And the fact is, the whole system is rigged around pharma, and they can't.

Joe Rogan 1:14:58 There's so many people out there that are still all in. I've fo- I've found some lady in my timeline, uh, I don't follow her, but she was talking about how disturbing it is to her that children are not being vaccinated and that COVID is, uh, killing kids, and the reports that she has of child death. And she was talking about how she wears a, a mask everywhere. And then there's all these people in the comments that are commenting on that, "I only go to places where I know there's gonna be minimal amounts of people. I always wear a mask." And they were all like, uh, uh, r- it was some weird echo chamber where they were all terrified still of what is now like a cold.

Bret Weinstein 1:15:41 Well, I don't, I will resist portraying it as a cold, because I do think that ain't where we are.

Joe Rogan 1:15:47 It's not a cold to you, right?

Bret Weinstein 1:15:48 Well-

Joe Rogan 1:15:48 When you got it, it was rough.

Bret Weinstein 1:15:50 I got something that was pretty rough. Um, but let's put that aside for a second.

Joe Rogan 1:15:55 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:15:55 Let's say that this is not a very severe disease. And by the way, I will just tell you, uh, at the risk of, uh, opening old controversies, it took me a long time to understand that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, they have broad applicability across RNA viruses, and many of the things that make us sick are RNA viruses. Right? So, there is a strong argument to be made that in a world where we are now being exposed to all of these RNA viruses, that acting quickly and taking those things is a reasonable thing to do. Now, hydroxychloroquine may have more toxicity than ivermectin. In fact, it does. But ivermectin has such a low toxicity that from the point of view of not doing the damage to the body that comes from being sick with these pathological agents, simply being reflexive about taking the stuff quickly is sensible. And of course, if what I just said is correct, you would expect pharma to look anywhere but there, 'cause they can't patent the stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:17:01 Right. Did you see, um, Chris Cuomo on Patrick Bet-David's show admit that he's taking ivermectin now?

Bret Weinstein 1:17:09 Uh, I heard about it. I didn't see it.

Joe Rogan 1:17:11 (laughs) He admitted it. He admitted his doctor has him on ivermectin for long COVID and he kept dis- distinguishing the difference between long COVID and vaccine injuries. Like, 'cause he said, had some sort of a vaccine injury, then he was talking about how ivermectin's not good for COVID but it's good for long COVID. And I'm like, "What is long COVID?" Long COVID's not even a thing. Like stop saying that. Like, you, you're fucked up because either of COVID, or you're fucked up because of the vaccine. One of those two things happened where you got damaged. Calling it long COVID is weird, because that's like saying you're still sick from COVID. That's not really what happened. O- okay, if you get pneumonia and you get lung damage, you don't l- h- don't have long, long pneumonia.

Bret Weinstein 1:17:50 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:17:50 You just have n- you had damage to your lungs. It's not long COVID. So you're either taking ivermectin because your doctor said ... Like, what benefit would ivermectin have on long COVID? Like, what does, what does that mean?

Bret Weinstein 1:18:04 Well, I mean-

Joe Rogan 1:18:05 Or vaccine injuries.

Bret Weinstein 1:18:06 It has a benefit for vaccine injuries. We can just say that empirically. The people who have become successful at treating these things tell us this.

Joe Rogan 1:18:14 Which vaccine injuries?

Bret Weinstein 1:18:15 COVID.

Joe Rogan 1:18:16 But which ones? Which specific vaccine injuries?

Bret Weinstein 1:18:19 You mean what are the symptoms?

Joe Rogan 1:18:20 Yeah. Yeah, what things? Like-

Bret Weinstein 1:18:22 Things like brain fog, fatigue, neuropathy, these things. And I, I actually have several friends who report that they were suffering badly. I sent them to Pierre, he treated them. Ivermectin was core to the treatment. And, uh, they report, I don't want to say miraculous, but spectacular recovery.

Joe Rogan 1:18:43 Pierre, by Pierre, you're talking about Dr. Pierre Kory?

Bret Weinstein 1:18:45 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:18:45 Um, who, did he lose his license or something?

Bret Weinstein 1:18:49 Yeah, I believe so, or it's in the process. But they are punishing him for, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:18:53 For talking about a beneficial medicine-

Bret Weinstein 1:18:56 They are-

Joe Rogan 1:18:56 ... that happens to not be patentable.

Bret Weinstein 1:18:58 Punishing him for doing his job.

Joe Rogan 1:19:00 Wild.

Bret Weinstein 1:19:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:19:01 That's wild.

Bret Weinstein 1:19:02 It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:19:03 That's crazy.

Bret Weinstein 1:19:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:19:04 That's-

Bret Weinstein 1:19:05 It's diabolical, really.

Joe Rogan 1:19:06 It is diabolical. Um, so what would be the mechanism as to which ivermectin would help these people?

Bret Weinstein 1:19:12 I don't know. It has a number of different mechanisms. It's certainly an anti-inflammatory. You know, there's only so far that explanation will take you. But, uh, but it ... I don't know. I can't answer that question.

Joe Rogan 1:19:26 Understand.

Bret Weinstein 1:19:26 But I can say i- it really doesn't much matter. If you're sick and it makes you-

Joe Rogan 1:19:30 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:19:30 ... better, that's what you want.

Joe Rogan 1:19:31 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:19:32 And, you know, w- our understanding of how many medicines work is crude.

Joe Rogan 1:19:34 But isn't it bizarre when people that have been vaccinated not once but multiple times and had side effects from the vaccine, that they'll report openly?... will talk about it and say it's long COVID-

Bret Weinstein 1:19:47 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:19:47 ... while they're still suffering. It's almost like they alleviate themselves from any of the responsibility of making a terrible choice.

Bret Weinstein 1:19:54 I think they're also being fed this story.

Joe Rogan 1:19:56 Right.

Bret Weinstein 1:19:57 Um, and we've seen that in multiple places. So for example, you, you remember these long debates about, well, okay, yes, the mRNA shots do cause a certain amount of myocarditis, but not nearly as much as COVID?

Joe Rogan 1:20:08 And it goes away quick.

Bret Weinstein 1:20:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:20:10 That was the other thing they kept saying.

Bret Weinstein 1:20:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:20:11 It's temporary.

Bret Weinstein 1:20:12 Yeah. Which is nonsense, and it turns out now that the myocarditis appears to have been vaccine-induced myocarditis that was being ... Just like everything else happened with COVID. They, it was a, uh, I don't want to say an accounting error. It was cynical. They shoved things into the wrong category.

Joe Rogan 1:20:31 Right. And they also pushed out a narrative that you get more myocarditis from the vacs- from the virus, rather, than you do from the vaccine.

Bret Weinstein 1:20:39 Right, and apparently you don't get it from the virus.

Joe Rogan 1:20:41 Yeah, well, what you do is get, you get high troponin levels, right? And, um, Aseem