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Joe Rogan Experience #2198 - Bret Weinstein

Dr. Bret Weinstein is an evolutionary biologist, podcaster, and author. He co-wrote "A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life" with his wife, Dr. Heather Heying, who is also a biologist. They both host the podcast "The DarkHorse Podcast." www.bretweinstein.net Rescue the Republic is a non-ideological, post-partisan gathering of the The Unity Movement where we will declare our commitment to defend the West and the values that form the foundation of a free and open society. http://www.jointheresistance.org/ https://www.bretweinstein.net/

Joe RoganhostBret Weinsteinguest
Sep 4, 20243h 15mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:0015:00

    (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

    1. JR

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. BW

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. NA

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

    4. BW

      Oh, good to see you, man.

    5. JR

      Strange times we're living in.

    6. BW

      Uh, the strangest and getting stranger.

    7. JR

      Didn't some shit go down today? Didn't we steal the president of Venezuela's plane?

    8. NA

      Oh, I didn't hear about that.

    9. JR

      Yeah, I think we just stole his plane.

    10. BW

      I didn't.

    11. JR

      No, not us.

    12. BW

      Okay, good.

    13. JR

      The United States. So-

    14. BW

      Oh, it's kind of the greater us.

    15. JR

      So someone stole his plane.

    16. BW

      All right.

    17. JR

      Which is kind of an act of war? What is that?

    18. BW

      Was he in it?

    19. JR

      I don't think so, no. I think we just stole his plane.

    20. NA

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      Crow-

    22. BW

      Just, like, for a joyride?

    23. JR

      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?

    24. BW

      This, uh, uh, you're right, it's an act of war.

    25. JR

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

    26. BW

      Yeah.

    27. JR

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

    28. BW

      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.

    29. JR

      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.

    30. BW

      Right.

  2. 15:0030:00

    Mm-hmm. …

    1. JR

      For me, it was the Kennedy assassination.

    2. BW

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      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.

    4. BW

      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?

    5. JR

      Right.

    6. BW

      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...

    7. JR

      That's a good point. A certain amount of democracy.

    8. BW

      A certain amount. It's, there's clearly a certain amount.

    9. JR

      Yeah. Well, which is one of the reasons why they're so terrified of Trump.

    10. BW

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      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?

    12. BW

      I-

    13. JR

      '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%."

    14. BW

      (laughs)

    15. JR

      "Oh, she's up, she's winning." Like, who the fuck are you talking to? Who are you talking to?

    16. BW

      Right. And, and-

    17. JR

      I'm... You're not talking to me.

    18. BW

      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.

    19. JR

      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-

    20. BW

      Oh, yeah. Multiverse. Sure.

    21. JR

      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.

    22. BW

      Well-

    23. JR

      Clearly.

    24. BW

      I mean-

    25. JR

      Something happened.

    26. BW

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

    27. JR

      (laughs)

    28. BW

      ... 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.

    29. JR

      Right.

    30. BW

      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.

  3. 30:0045:00

    Not only that, but…

    1. JR

      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.

    2. BW

      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.

    3. JR

      Right.

    4. BW

      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.

    5. JR

      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.

    6. BW

      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.

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. BW

      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.

    9. JR

      Why do you think the multiverse is bullshit?

    10. BW

      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.

    11. JR

      Okay.

    12. BW

      We have a principle that tells us, more or less, what is true, called parsimony, right?

    13. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    14. BW

      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.

    15. JR

      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.

    16. BW

      It's almost incomprehensible.

    17. JR

      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.

    18. BW

      Well, n- no. It-

    19. JR

      No?

    20. BW

      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-

    21. JR

      Impossible.

    22. BW

      It's literally impossible.

    23. JR

      Yeah. We, we just look at it as a number.

    24. BW

      Right.

    25. JR

      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.

    26. BW

      Right. Okay.

    27. JR

      And then there's Sir Roger Penrose who thinks it's like a constant cycle.

    28. BW

      Right. I- I- I'm- I'm open to all these ideas-

    29. JR

      Right.

    30. BW

      ... except ones like the multiverse-

  4. 45:001:00:00

    Yes. …

    1. JR

      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.

    2. BW

      Yes.

    3. JR

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

    4. BW

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      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.

    6. BW

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      And it's a different world just over a few decades.

    8. BW

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

    9. JR

      Right. I haven't either. But, uh, but also, I haven't seen anything. Right?

    10. BW

      Right.

    11. JR

      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.

    12. BW

      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.

    13. JR

      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)

    14. BW

      (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.

    15. JR

      So you think the radar...... when they use radar and they find these things, what do you think that is?

    16. BW

      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?

    17. JR

      So, you could force a blip onto someone's radar?

    18. BW

      Sure.

    19. JR

      You could hack their radar?

    20. BW

      And heck, if you had a, you know-

    21. JR

      How would you do that?

    22. BW

      Uh, well, these radars are all computerized.

    23. JR

      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?

    24. BW

      Yep.

    25. JR

      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.

    26. BW

      Mm-hmm.

    27. JR

      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.

    28. BW

      Yeah.

    29. JR

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

    30. BW

      That's possible, yeah.

  5. 1:00:001:15:00

    Right. …

    1. BW

      if, if, if it were possible to-

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. BW

      ... traverse vast empty spaces and go to places that were known to have life, I'd be all about that. So, yeah.

    4. JR

      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.

    5. BW

      Right. They like to get into trouble-

    6. JR

      Yeah.

    7. BW

      ... wince themselves out and then-

    8. JR

      Wild people.

    9. BW

      Yeah. Okay.

    10. JR

      They got winches on their spaceships.

    11. BW

      Exactly. (laughs)

    12. JR

      (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-

    13. BW

      Oh, yeah.

    14. JR

      ... 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.

    15. BW

      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-

    16. JR

      Yeah, but you can go to the Amazon. That's the thing. Humans live in the Amazon.

    17. BW

      True.

    18. JR

      Humans don't live on Mars. It's way simpler to send-

    19. BW

      Oh.

    20. JR

      ... a robot to Mars.

    21. BW

      Why would we go to Mars?

    22. JR

      Yeah.

    23. BW

      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-

    24. JR

      Definitely. I agree.

    25. BW

      ... I think we're, I think we're not close enough, but ...

    26. JR

      Right.

    27. BW

      Um.

    28. JR

      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.

    29. BW

      Yep.

    30. JR

      Yeah.

  6. 1:15:001:20:46

    Well, I don't, I…

    1. JR

      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.

    2. BW

      Well, I don't, I will resist portraying it as a cold, because I do think that ain't where we are.

    3. JR

      It's not a cold to you, right?

    4. BW

      Well-

    5. JR

      When you got it, it was rough.

    6. BW

      I got something that was pretty rough. Um, but let's put that aside for a second.

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. BW

      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.

    9. JR

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

    10. BW

      Uh, I heard about it. I didn't see it.

    11. JR

      (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.

    12. BW

      Right.

    13. JR

      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?

    14. BW

      Well, I mean-

    15. JR

      Or vaccine injuries.

    16. BW

      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.

    17. JR

      Which vaccine injuries?

    18. BW

      COVID.

    19. JR

      But which ones? Which specific vaccine injuries?

    20. BW

      You mean what are the symptoms?

    21. JR

      Yeah. Yeah, what things? Like-

    22. BW

      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.

    23. JR

      Pierre, by Pierre, you're talking about Dr. Pierre Kory?

    24. BW

      Yep.

    25. JR

      Um, who, did he lose his license or something?

    26. BW

      Yeah, I believe so, or it's in the process. But they are punishing him for, uh-

    27. JR

      For talking about a beneficial medicine-

    28. BW

      They are-

    29. JR

      ... that happens to not be patentable.

    30. BW

      Punishing him for doing his job.

Episode duration: 3:15:26

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