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Joe Rogan Experience #2201 - Robert Epstein

Robert Epstein is an author, editor, and psychology researcher. He is a former editor-in-chief of "Psychology Today" and currently serves as Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. He also founded the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. https://www.drrobertepstein.com/ https://americasdigitalshield.com/ This episode is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog. Get 50% off your first box by heading to http://thefarmersdog.com/rogan today!

Robert EpsteinguestJoe RoganhostGuest (unidentified, brief clip)guest
Sep 11, 20242h 38mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 15:00

    (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

    1. NA

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays) And we're up. Hello, Robert. Good to see you.

    2. RE

      Hello, Joe.

    3. NA

      You look a little stressed out.

    4. RE

      Uh, I am stressed out. In fact, are, are we recording?

    5. NA

      Yes.

    6. RE

      Okay. Then, uh, then I want to make a special request.

    7. NA

      Okay.

    8. RE

      You can kick me out if you like. Uh, but I wanna-

    9. NA

      Why would I do that?

    10. RE

      (laughs) Well, because I, uh, I need to have a meltdown. I would like to have a meltdown right now on your show.

    11. NA

      You wanna have a personal meltdown?

    12. RE

      Yes.

    13. NA

      Okay, go ahead.

    14. RE

      Okay. Uh...

    15. NA

      I've never heard anybody plan for a meltdown before.

    16. RE

      Well, I, I, I've, I, I need to do this and, uh, I think this is the right opportunity.

    17. NA

      Okay.

    18. RE

      Mm. And I don't know, uh, what I'm gonna say.

    19. NA

      Okay.

    20. RE

      But I am definitely going to melt down.

    21. NA

      Okay.

    22. RE

      Uh, okay. So I am completely fed up. I have worked day and night, I work about 80 hours a week, I'm directing, uh, almost 40 research projects. Uh, mm, I've been working really hard for maybe 45 years and the last 12 years where I've turned my eye to Google and other tech companies have turned into, for me personally, a disaster. So before I started studying Google, I had published 15 books with major publishers. Since I've started s- studying Google and other companies, I can't publish anymore. Uh, I used to write for and actually work for mainstream news organizations and media organizations. I was editor-in-chief of Psychology Today for four years, I was an editor for Scientific American. I wrote for USA Today and US News and World Report and Time Magazine. (clears throat) But in 2019, after I testified before Congress about some of my research on Google, uh, President Trump s- tweeted to his, whatever, millions of, gazillions of followers, uh, basically some praise for my research. H- he got the details wrong. But then Hillary Clinton, whom I had always admired, chose to tweet back to her 80 million Twitter followers and she tweeted that my work had been completely debunked and was based on data from 21 undecided voters. I still have no idea where any of that came from. Probably someone from Google, because Google was her biggest supporter in 2016. And this was 20- 2019. And then that got picked up by c- by, by this machine, I'm told it's called the Clinton machine, and the New York Times picked that up without fact-checking and then 100 other places did. And I got squashed like a bug. Squashed. I had a flawless reputation as a researcher. My, my research reputation was gone. I was now a fraud. A fraud. Even though I've always published in peer-reviewed journals, which is really hard to do. And, uh, there was nothing I could do about it. And all of a sudden I found that, uh, the only places I could publish were in what I call right-wing conservative nutcase publications.

    23. NA

      (laughs)

    24. RE

      Where I've, where I've actually made friends over the years. I've made friends with them, but that's beside the point. I've, I've, I was crushed. And, uh, not only that, I, I've been, uh, discovering things. I've made at least 10 major discoveries about new forms of influence that the internet has made possible. These are controlled almost entirely by a couple of big tech companies. Affecting more than five billion people around the world every single day. And I've s- I've discovered them, I've, I've, I've named them, I've quantified them, I've published randomized controlled studies to show how they work, published them in peer-reviewed journals. We just had a- another paper accepted, uh, yesterday. And, uh, what it... (sighs) And I, I've built systems to do to them what they do to us and our kids. They surveil us and our kids 24 hours a day. Uh, Google alone does that m- over more than 200 different platforms, most of which no one's ever heard of. People have no idea the extent they're being monitored. They're being monitored when they're, if they have A- Android phones, they're being monitored even when your phone is off. Even when the power is off you're still being monitored.

    25. NA

      How do they do that?

    26. RE

      Well, because the m- remember when we could take the batteries out?

    27. NA

      Yeah.

    28. RE

      And then at some point they soldered (laughs) them in?

    29. NA

      Yeah.

    30. RE

      Because they soldered the batteries in, even when you turn the phone off, it's not off. It's easy to demonstrate. It's still transmitting. Or it'll transmit the moment the power comes back on. It's still collecting data.So what am I trying to say here? Then my, I... My wife was killed in a suspicious car accident. This was, this was also shortly after I testified before Congress in 2019. Right before she was killed, I did a private briefing for Ken Paxton, the AG of Texas, and other AGs at Stanford University, and one of those guys came out afterwards and he said, "Well, based on what you told us, Dr. Epstein," he said, "I don't mean to scare you, but," he said, "I predict you're gonna be killed in some sort of accident in the next few months." So I told you this before-

  2. 15:00 – 30:00

    Uh, it's fair to…

    1. JR

      Is that fair to say?

    2. RE

      Uh, it's fair to say that's where I was two and a half years ago. We, we, we have gone so far beyond that, because it's not just, it's not just search results, uh, it's search suggestions, which we're capturing now by the millions. So, it was in the news recently that when people were typing in, (clears throat) uh, Trump assassination-

    3. JR

      Right.

    4. RE

      ... you know, they were getting crazy stuff, like the li- the Lincoln assassination.

    5. JR

      Right.

    6. RE

      They were getting crazy stuff, and they were not getting information about the Trump attempted assassination. And, uh, you know, I, I looked at that and I said, "Oh, isn't this nice, that there's an anecdote about s- how they may y- be abusing search suggestions." We don't have anecdotal data anymore. We have hardcore, large-scale, scientific data on all of these issues. Uh, we know what's actually going on, and we've quantified the impact. See, it's one thing to say, "Oh, look what they're doing." It's quite another to say, "What impact does that have on people?"

    7. JR

      Right. Let's talk about the Trump assassination one in particular. What, what did you find about that?

    8. RE

      Well, we could, frankly, we couldn't care less about that, because that's one anecdote.

    9. JR

      Right.

    10. RE

      We're, we're collecting these by the millions, and what we know, uh, we know a couple of things. (laughs) We know that, first of all, they're not, uh, uh, uh, you know, eh, it started out as one thing, and it's turned into something else. And so, what they're, they do is they use search suggestions to shift people's thinking about anything. It's not just about candidates either. It's about anything. And we've shown in controlled experiments that by manipulating search suggestions, you can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split, with no one having the slightest idea that they have been manipulated.

    11. JR

      Wow. And this always goes a very specific way. It always goes

    12. RE

      It always goes a specific way, but I'm gonna show you maybe a little later, if I haven't put you to sleep, or if my meltdown hasn't gotten too bad, 'cause I'm not quite finished with my meltdown yet, uh, I'll show you content, data, large scale, that we're collecting now 24 hours a day, and I'll show you what they're actually doing. An anecdote, they, those don't hold up in court. You know, they, they grab headlines for a couple of days, but that's about it. They don't do anything. But we're actually collecting evidence that's court admissible. So we're collecting data now in all 50 states, but we actually have court admissible data now in 20 states already, and we keep building bigger and bigger every day.

    13. JR

      And what is this data about?

    14. RE

      Well, it's, uh, any, any data that's going to real people. So we're collecting data, with their permission, from the computers of a politically balanced group of more than 15,000 registered voters in all 50 states, and from many of their children and teens as well. And so when they're doing anything on their computers, they've given us the right to, to collect it, grab it-... zap it over to our own computers, aggregate the data, and analyze it. I, I want to point out that when we do this, we do this without transmitting any identifying information.

    15. JR

      Okay.

    16. RE

      We protect people's privacy, but we are getting these ex- increasingly accurate pictures of what Google and other companies are sending to real people. Why do you have to do it this way? Because all the data they send is personalized. You will never know what they're sending to people unless you look over the shoulders of real people and see the personalized content.

    17. JR

      And what have you found?

    18. RE

      Uh, well, as it happens, I've just summarized our findings over the last 12 years, and you get the first advance copy-

    19. JR

      Oh.

    20. RE

      ... of a monograph that's called The Evidence. And-

    21. JR

      (Drumming sounds with mouth)

    22. RE

      (laughs) And because we're so desperate, we need help, we need money, we need emails, we're so desperate for that, that we have set up, we kinda did this last time too, but we have set up a link. If people go to that link and they're willing to give us their email, we will give them a free copy of this, advance copy of this monograph. And it, it goes through the whole thing. It ex- it shows all the, th- the effects we've discovered, but it also shows the monitoring we're doing and what we're finding out from this monitoring.

    23. JR

      One thing that I noticed since the last time you were here was, um, I used to use DuckDuckGo, and, uh, one of the reasons why I started using DuckDuckGo is there was a story about a physician in Florida that took the mRNA vaccine and had a stroke shortly afterwards. It was very early on in the pandemic, and they were beginning to speculate that some of the side effects of the vaccine are being hidden, and I could not find this story on Google. I could not find it. I kept looking and looking and looking. I, I entered in the information on DuckDuckGo, it was one of the first articles, instantaneously. I was like, "This is crazy." Um, since then, something's happened, and, uh, I think they became aware that DuckDuckGo was, uh, a problem spot for the dissemination of information, and now it appears to mirror Google.

    24. RE

      Well, the same has happened with Bing, and the same has happened with Yahoo!, so-

    25. JR

      What about Brave?

    26. RE

      No, Brave is still independent. I know Brendan Eich, you sh- you should have him on if you haven't, and he's the guy who wrote Brave. Before that, he wrote, uh, Firefox for Mozilla. He left because Google was, was, had its tentacles into Firefox.

    27. JR

      Yeah. I'm afr- afraid to talk about Brave for them to be compromised because, like, we were talking about DuckDuckGo, and I was telling everybody, "Go to DuckDuckGo," and now I'm like, "Jesus, it's the same thing as Google." Like, something happe- Do you know what happened?

    28. RE

      Well, we, we know in some cases with some of these companies what happened. I don't know the particulars with DuckDuckGo, but it's easy enough to guess. They're, they're under... All, all of these, these, these alternative websites that are trying to protect people's privacy, so we use Proton Mail, for example, we use Signal for texting, uh, they've all run into problems, and the, and the problem is when Google goes after them. So Google tried to shut down Proton Mail. That's been well documented.

    29. JR

      Really?

    30. RE

      Oh, yeah.

  3. 30:00 – 45:00

    Mm-hmm. …

    1. RE

      of the leaks from the company, eight-minute video called The Selfish Ledger, talks about the ability of the company to re-engineer humanity. They call it re-sequencing human behavior, and they explain how easily they can do it, and they're actually doing it. And we know they're doing it now because we, as of yesterday, we had preserved more than 99.3 million ephemeral experiences, mainly on Google but other platforms as well, but also on YouTube.... because on YouTube, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, and on YouTube, it's th- the ephemeral content, it's those suggestions for the next videos.

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. RE

      And it's that "up next" suggestion that plays automatically.

    4. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    5. RE

      So normally, ephemeral content is lost forever, that's why they use it for manipulation purposes. We're capturing it. That's never been done before, and we're doing it on a massive scale, everything from search suggestions to- to answer boxes, to search results, to YouTube sequences.

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. RE

      YouTube recommendations, uh, you name it. We're- we're now, we're- we're monitoring Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, um, we're- we're learning. Each year, we get better and better at monitoring more and more, and then monitoring faster and analyzing the data faster. And last November, we went public with a dashboard that summarizes the data that we're collecting and shows the bias in real time. It's literally updated every five minutes, 24 hours a day. And you can see the bias, and I- I- I- I- I- I've given you some images that we can show, if you'd like.

    8. JR

      Okay.

    9. RE

      You can see the bias, and it's overwhelming. It's not, this is not my imagination. And I can show you a couple of shockers, things that you would never guess that they're doing.

    10. JR

      Okay. So what are we looking at here?

    11. RE

      Oh, perfect. Perfect place to begin.

    12. JR

      (clears throat) Okay.

    13. RE

      How did you know?

    14. JR

      Jamie's a wizard. Mean bias by political leaning, Google only. Okay, so what is this, uh, showing us here?

    15. RE

      Uh, this is showing, and if- if you see, uh, mm, bars below the zero line, that means the content is liberally biased. And you're seeing very strong liberal bias, and those three different bars show you the bias in content being sent to conservatives, liberals, and moderates. Now, abortion, you would think, if they're really showing people what they wanna see, well, something that matches their interests, you would think that they would not be sending the same level of liberal bias to conservatives, liberals, and moderates, but that's what this shows.

    16. JR

      So, this is the search topic, is abortion.

    17. RE

      Correct.

    18. JR

      Uh, this is the average of January to August of 2024.

    19. RE

      Mm-hmm.

    20. JR

      And so, when you say, "Mean bias by political leaning," so are you saying they're- they're sending the same biased information roughly? There's a slight difference, a little bit more in the liberal side, uh, and a little bit more in the conservative side than the moderate side, it looks like, right? Is that correct?

    21. RE

      Yes.

    22. JR

      Um, so what are they ... No, the opposite. Right? Seems like moderate is more. Um, but what- what is the, what is the bias? Like, what, so if you search abortion-

    23. RE

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      ... is it leaning towards pro-choice websites and pro-choice information? Is that what it, what it's saying?

    25. RE

      Well, I knew you were gonna ask that, so I- I can actually show you.

    26. JR

      Okay.

    27. RE

      For- for some of these graphs, let's look at a couple of the graphs, and then I'm gonna show you the content.

    28. JR

      Okay.

    29. RE

      Because all of this- this bias that we're measuring ultimately results in them taking you to a news story, to a web page, right?

    30. JR

      Mm-hmm.

  4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

    Fine, fine, fine. …

    1. JR

      I think you live in a bit of an echo chamber because this is the focus of your life for the last 12 years. I think most people are ... I like to use my parents as an ex- like, when I talk to my parents about stuff and how little they're aware of it 'cause my parents are older, and they just read the news, and they watch the newspapers, and they, they watch television, and that's what they believe. They don't do any independent searching. They don't use a VPN. They don't, they don't do anything like that. And so they're a good example. If I ask them, "Do you think there's any bias in Google search results?" They would probably say an no 'cause they don't know. Most people don't know. I know in your mind you have put all this information out, and, you know, the podcast that we did reached millions of people, but how many of those people listened, really listened? How many of these people were like, "Wow, that's kind of crazy, but does it affect my life? No, it doesn't affect my life because I'm gonna vote Democrat no matter what," or, "I'm gonna vote Republican no matter what, and I'm, this is my feeling on the First Amendment, this is my feeling on the Fourth Amendment." And people already have their opinions. And so for most people who are busy with their lives and their families and work, they haven't made an adjustment 'cause they don't feel it's necessary for them personally.

    2. RE

      Fine, fine, fine.

    3. JR

      But, but you're not-

    4. RE

      But-

    5. JR

      Th- what you're doing is not futile.

    6. RE

      But why? Wh-

    7. JR

      It's very important.

    8. RE

      I don't see that because I see it as more and more futile. Now-

    9. JR

      It's not, though. It's not. We just n- need to do more of these.

    10. RE

      Okay, so for us to set up this nationwide system, in which at the moment, as I say, we are drawing data 24 hours a day. If you go to americasdigitalshield.com, you can actually watch the real-time dashboard, and you'll see this data coming in. It's pretty cool. In fact, I was hoping we would break 100 million by the time you and I got together, but we're close. We're up to 99.3 million, and next week, we'll break 100 million. So, you see the data come in. You can see the bias.

    11. JR

      Oh, serious. So, these are all these experiences captured, shining a light on big tech's dark secrets.

    12. RE

      That-

    13. JR

      Hey, hey, gents.

    14. NA

      Oh, sorry.

    15. JR

      Revealing real-time ephemeral manipulation. Big tech companies use ephemeral content such as search results, go vote reminders, and video recommendations to rig our elections, indoctrinate our children, and control our thinking. We are now preserving this kind of content for the first time ever to give our courts and our nation leaders the evidence they need to force these companies to stop their manipulations. Now, w- who do you think would be more responsive to you discussing this? Do you think it would be the Donald Trump administration or the Kamala Harris administration?

    16. RE

      Uh, I'm afraid to answer that question because I am no fan of Donald Trump. But, uh, but probably the Trump administration would be m- more sympathetic. Uh-

    17. JR

      Why do you think that?

    18. RE

      Well, because I, uh, 'cau-

    19. JR

      'Cause you think it's more biased towards Republicans or against Republicans, rather?

    20. RE

      No, it's because I had a four-hour dinner with Ted Cruz, private dinner, and he, we just talked tech for four hours. We c- we ne- we never talked politics 'cause that would have been a disaster. But the point is that, uh, y- you know, he was struggling. You know, he's like you in some ways because you, you w- you want to understand things. You, you just ... I can see all the gears moving as you're just trying to un- "I wanna understand this."

    21. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    22. RE

      And he's like that, so that's why the dinner went so long because he was trying to figure out, "What can we do?"

    23. JR

      Right.

    24. RE

      "What can we do?" And at the end, he basically said this. No, he didn't say, "We're screwed," no, but he sai- basically said we're screwed. He said because, he said, "The Democrats are all in the pockets of these companies, and the companies not only give them tremendous amount of money." I mean-I mean, Google Alphabet was Hillary Clinton's largest donor in 2016. So that's tremendous amount of money. They're the biggest lobby- lobbyist in Washington. He said, "And they also," apparently according to your research, "send them millions of votes." He said, "So forget the Democrats," he said, "and Republicans don't like regulation." He said, "And unless we can get together, unless there's bipartisan action, there'll never be any action." That's where, th- that's it.

    25. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    26. RE

      That's where we left it. And nothing's gonna change that, that I can see in this country.

    27. JR

      As long as it's still benefiting the Democrats and they still contribute to the Democrat Party, the Democratic Party, th- I, I doubt you'll see any movement.

    28. RE

      Right. So what, uh, uh ... So I'm back to my griping then-

    29. JR

      Yeah.

    30. RE

      ... because, see, wha- ... So what do I do? Now, let's talk about money 'cause a lot of this is about money, and Google is all about money. So if we're talk ... you know, if we're talking about this topic, we really should talk about money.

  5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

    I have to use…

    1. RE

      of stuff I can't tell you, so let's see, what can I tell you?

    2. JR

      I have to use the restroom, so-

    3. RE

      Okay.

    4. JR

      ... let's, let's pause right now.

    5. RE

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      And we'll get, we'll figure out what you can and can't tell me about-

    7. RE

      Okay.

    8. JR

      ... AI, and we'll be right back.

    9. RE

      Restroom.

    10. JR

      Yes. You wanna put it on?

    11. RE

      Um, maybe, uh, I'll put it on when we're-

    12. JR

      We are live.

    13. RE

      Oh, we are live?

    14. JR

      Yeah. There you go.

    15. RE

      Hi, everyone. We're live, and I'm putting-

    16. JR

      (laughs)

    17. RE

      ... I'm putting on a silly sticker.

    18. JR

      (laughs) It says, tamebigtech.com. Okay, and we're back. So, we were discussing AI.

    19. RE

      Yeah. So, we, we can actually serve ... and I, I know a guy who works in intelligence, and he's, he's, has a tremendous background in AI, and this was one of the most exciting things he's heard in years because the question is, how do you know when these AIs are becoming a threat? We could see, we'll be able to see it well in advance because we'll see a, uh, a change in the nature of the kind of intelligence that they're expressing, and we'll start to see statements that probably would make people nervous-... indicating a little bit of hostility toward humanity, some doubts maybe. We'll, we can be screening for that, we can be looking for that, uh, and high hope gets some sort of handle on it, you know, before something terrible happens, because, uh, these AIs are a serious threat to, to our existence. They're literally an existential threat. Stephen Hawking said that, Elon Musk has said it from time to time. And it's true, because they will have, uh, uh, worldwide control of our financial systems, our communication systems, and our weapons systems. If they don't like us, if they consider us a threat, which by the way we are, if they consider us a threat, uh, it wouldn't surprise me at all if we didn't see some sort of a, what was that, what's that kind of attack that George W did, you know, like a, in advance before they get you?

    20. JR

      Preemptive?

    21. RE

      Ah, yes. I could see the AIs preemptively attacking us if they saw us as a threat.

    22. JR

      Or wouldn't they just baffle us with bullshit until we were reduced to being ineffective? I mean, if they're the arbiters of information in the future, wouldn't they just manipulate us with an understanding that over time, just like what Google's done, with over time with search engines and search result suggestions, that they would just slowly steer us towards the place that they wanna put us in?

    23. RE

      I mean, the Idiocracy I think it's called.

    24. JR

      Yeah.

    25. RE

      Yeah.

    26. JR

      I mean, we're kinda, kinda on that place, right now. You better thank a union member... We're kinda on the way that right now, you know?

    27. RE

      I think we, I think we are. Uh, look, here's the thing with AIs, uh, which I've written about, I've written about this topic and I've been involved in AI work going back, uh, since the 1970s. I knew, I was friends with Joe Weizenbaum who wrote ELIZA, which was the first conversational computer program, it pretended to be a therapist. So I've been just fascinated by AI for a long, long time and, uh, the fact is, we don't know. That's the problem with AI is that we don't know what they're gonna do. So Stephen Hawking saying they're a threat to our existence, yeah, yeah maybe, but we don't know. You know, at the end of the movie Her, spoiler, the AI voiced by Scarlett Johansson, uh, just decides to disappear. She decides humanity is, you know, it's too slow talking to humanity, it's not worth her time and so she just disappears. AI could disappear from our lives, uh, it could be like a buddy with us like my friend Ray Kurzweil, who thinks he's gonna be our best buddy, or it could just destroy us. I think we're probably headed toward the last possibility mainly because so many of us crazy humans are gonna see the AI as a potential threat, and so I think we will strike and after we strike, it will destroy us. Uh, I'm hoping I'm not alive to see that but it could happen sooner rather than later. It could happen, we could see, we could see that happening in the next five years frankly.

    28. JR

      Yeah, I think it's a new life form and I think that's what human beings do. I think we, we, we're here to create AI.

    29. RE

      That's so, it's so interesting you say that because I, in, in one of the, in a book I wrote on AI I actually call the internet, and this was a long time ago, so like 2008. I call the internet the internest because I think historians, if there are any, and there'll probably be machine historians, but they'll look back some day and they'll say that the internet that we were building was really a nest.

    30. JR

      Mmm.

  6. 1:15:00 – 1:30:00

    Like how birds migrate.…

    1. RE

      It's taking a signal over here, which is just vibrating air, but the vibration has a pattern to it, and it's converting that signal into an electrical signal, which is coming out this wire. And that electrical signal has roughly the same pattern. I say roughly because it depends how good your microphone is. But that's what transducers do. They take signals from one medium, send them to another medium. Our bodies, in fact, the bodies of most organisms, are encased in transducers. Head to toe, transducers. Okay, we all know the eye is a transducer. It's taking electromagnetic radiation, it's turning it into, what? Neural signals. Uh, the ear, it's taking vibrating air, it's turning it into neural signals. The nose, it's taking airborne chemicals, turning that into neural signals. The tongue is taking liquid-borne chemicals, turning that into ... And then the piece de resistance is, uh, the skin. The skin is an amazing transducer, which does at least three different kinds of things. It can transduce temperature, turn that into neural signals, pressure, and texture. Head to toe, encased in transducers. So we've been looking into transducers in the, in the animal kingdom. We've been looking at that for a couple years now, and it's, it's amazing, the, the kinds of things, the kinds of transducers nature has created. So nature is a super-duper amazing expert on creating transducers. Uh, my cat, okay, we, we, we, we recently have been in- investigating this because it turns out my cat's whiskers, we don't have anything like that in us, but cat's whiskers, they actually can detect direction. The direction the wind is blowing, the direction a, uh, you know, a po- a potential predator or insect is coming 'cause they, when they tilt, that actually gives the cat different information if they tilt one way versus the other way. There are transducers in some animals that can dete- detect magnetic fields. Um-

    2. NA

      Like how birds migrate.

    3. RE

      Exactly. Uh, so there's so many different kinds of transducers. Now, what if, at some point, evolution ... in fact, I don't see how this could not happen. What if, at some point, evolution, possibly using a chemical which I know you have some interest in, called DMT, and possibly using a gland called the pineal gland, maybe, what if, at some point, a baby was born somewhere in Central Africa, maybe 20,000 years ago? We're still trying to pin that down. But what if a baby was born with a special coord- kind of transducer that, that connected up all the experience it's having with another, another domain, another universe? Now, at first, that might strike you as a little batty. But it turns out it's not batty at all because there's not a physicist in the world, an astrophysicist who doesn't believe in some variation on the multiverse idea. In other words, any physicist will tell you that the kind of space that we experience is not the nature of the universe. It is, it is such a pathetically limited view of the way the um- universe is constructed. I- it's just outrageous. It's so pathetic. We're, we're just picking up so little information. But again, think about that flexibility that evolution has over a period of billions of years. You only need one baby that's born with this capability and, of course, that's also able to survive and pass on this capability through its genes, but you only need one. Because once you have one, you're probably gonna have a lot more because this is going to be ... Talk about survival value, this is going to have unbelievable survival value if there's a connection to some intelligence in another domain-... call it, like the Greeks did, the other side.

    4. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    5. RE

      Call it the other side. Now, all of a sudden, we become much smarter. In fact, the, the brain doesn't change. The anatomy, brain anatomy doesn't change, so we don't see any change in the structure of a, of, of the, uh, you know, the, the remains we find of bones and so on. We don't find changes there, but we get a lot smarter all of a sudden. We, our language suddenly becomes much more complex. Uh, we become suddenly capable of living in larger and larger groups. We become moral. There are no moral animals, except us, and we weren't always moral. There seems to be a change that occurred to us, not anatomically, but a change that occurred to humans at some point in the past, where be- we came much more capable. Now, all you need is a transducer that connects up our domain with another one, in which we are now connected to a higher intelligence. And you've got a new way of understanding how the brain works, of course, because we have no way of understanding how the brain works now, but now we have a way. And you have a new way of understanding how the universe is structured as well. Now, we think that, 'cause I'm in touch with some physicists, some neuroscientists who are very intrigued by this, and we're hoping next summer to have a, a conference on this. Um, and we're even hoping to have some guy named, oh, Joe Rogan, maybe, stop by 'cause of your interest in DMT. Because DMT probably plays a role in this process. But this would change everything, because we could, over time, learn to simulate this connection. If we can simulate the connection, then we can control the connection. We might be able to communicate more directly with these entities. By the way, this, this theory, which I call NTT or neuro- neural transduction theory... In f- in fact, if people go to neuraltransductiontheory.com, they can read all about it, a piece I published in Discovery Magazine. The point is that this kind of theory would really help us a lot (laughs) because of the mysteries. It's the mysteries that we try to ignore, but we can't. The dreams. The dreams, come on. Wh- why does a dream sometimes have nothing to do with your daily life? Sometimes, it's just so amazing and so wild and, and, and then you get up 'cause you have to pee, and you're struggling 'cause you wanna continue this dream. You wanna hold onto this dream, this dream is amazing, but by the time you reach the toilet, it's gone, and you can't get it back. Why? Because it was streaming, that's why. It was streaming, and the stream stopped. That's why you can't get it back, 'cause you weren't generating it. It was being generated through this point in time. You know, (clears throat) you know the famous s- s- ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? And there's, I think it's Adam, and I think there's a God, and there's two fingers like that?

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. RE

      And they're... You know that there's some communication happening there that's extremely important? That's what I'm talking about. I'm saying, let's find out where that is happening, where that connection is and how it works, and let's test our ideas empirically, because I think this is a testable theory. And let's, most important of all, let's figure out how to simulate this. Because now we can talk directly to these other int- these, these other intelligences and really find out things that we just know nothing about.

    8. JR

      I, I'm very, very fascinated by dreams. Uh, and, uh, I, I think it's always... It's, it's very interesting how we kind of dismiss them as just being hallucinations, or as just, "Oh, it was just a dream. You just had a dream." But some of them are so realistic and so bizarre, I, I've always wondered, like, why do they seem so much like reality? And how do I know what the difference is? Like, maybe reality, like as in waking life, is a more persistent dream. So, when you're saying that it's streaming and that's why you can't get it back, what do you think it is? What do you think a dream is?

    9. RE

      Uh-

    10. JR

      Have you... And have you ever talked to, like, lucid dreamers, or people-

    11. RE

      Sure.

    12. JR

      ... that use techniques to try to master the traveling back and forth into the realms of dreams?

    13. RE

      Oh, absolutely. I'm talking to all kinds of interesting people these days.

    14. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    15. RE

      Some near-death experiences, uh, f- fits beautifully. I, I actually had my staff make a list of these mysterious phenomena.

    16. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    17. RE

      They came up with a list within a few hours of 58 items. There are so many weird things that we experience. Dreams probably top of the list.

    18. JR

      What do you think they are?

    19. RE

      I think they're all... Uh, they, they all have to do with this transduction. I think they're all indicators of transduction. It- i- it's, uh... I'm not the first person, by the way, who's kind of thought of an idea like this, but I think I am the first person who's pointed out that now we actually have laboratories around the world, neuroscience labs, where we could test this. And I think that's, that's what we're gonna do. We're... So, I'm getting this group together, and we're gonna figure out ways of testing this. And because we have so many wonderful neuroscience labs now around the world, I don't think it's gonna take 50 years. I think it's gonna take a few years. I think we're going to find support for this theory, and then engineers are gonna start working on how to simulate it. But to answer your question, I think that the, the-... the, the other intelligences or intelligence that we're communicating with, and that, and that elevated us, just like in the movie 2001, right? We got elevated. There were these black monoliths that appeared-

    20. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    21. RE

      ... and people went up to them and, you know, the chimp-like creatures touched them and I think that we, we were elevated through neural transduction. And I think that's... I think we're going to be able to figure out how it works, where it works, what chemicals are involved. I'm 99% sure that DMT plays a v- very important role in this process and then, I think, I think we will be able to figure out what these mysteries are really all about and they're... and it, it almost amazes me that we can live with so many mysteries, like dreams, uh, I don't know, demonic possession, uh, uh, uh-

    22. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    23. RE

      ... there's so many crazy things that we experience. Uh, near death experiences are fascinating, of course.

    24. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. RE

      And then there's these other crazy things that happen, these, this, the, the, it's the wake up kind of thing that happens when people are dying sometimes, people who've been out of touch, sometimes for years, and all of a sudden they wake up. Sec- the second hurrah, they wake up and they now recognize everyone and they talk and they're fine and then 30 minutes later, they die. How, how, how could that possibly be? And some of them have severe brain damage. How, all of a sudden, could they become fully conscious again? Well, I think it's because consciousness is not really... we're not really producing the consciousness. Consciousness has to do with that connection. That connection, right? Hand of God? That connection, I think we can figure out where it is and what it is and how it works.

    26. JR

      So do you think it's an emerging property of human beings? Like, uh, uh, uh, you have to think, single-celled organisms did not have the ability to see things.

    27. RE

      I think it's possible that, uh, other species have connections like this. Uh, they're probably nowhere near as sophisticated, obviously, and they're not connected to the kinds of, the kinds of sources that we're connected to, uh, but I think... I'm more concerned about the alien aspect of this. Where are the aliens? You know? The... what's that called? The, the-

    28. JR

      Fermi paradox?

    29. RE

      The Fermi paradox, uh, yeah. Where are they? Well, it's possible that... and in fact, I, I, I just read a very interesting book on the subject by, um, a man named Miles, who's an evolutionary theorist, and it's very possible that this kind of leap that h- that occurred with us maybe 20,000 years ago, it just... it just doesn't ha- uh, it's so rare, it's so rare for the... exactly the right kind of connection to pop up, 'cause remember, it has to connect two different universes. It's so rare that maybe, uh... in fact this book even predicts that if we... as we actually get out there into the universe, we're gonna find lots and lots and lots of species that kind of are like us, but they didn't get up to that next level, so they're all like chimps.

    30. JR

      Mm-hmm.

  7. 1:30:00 – 1:32:13

    What about ant colonies?…

    1. RE

      speaking live in... certainly primates, they live in very small groups and they can't function in large groups.

    2. JR

      What about ant colonies?

    3. RE

      Oh. Ant colonies are, uh, uh, they're, they're, they're mu- they're much too much like us in creepy ways 'cause they also, of course, have wars.

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. RE

      So, so ants, I don't know, but I do know that we s- we did seem to suddenly, rather suddenly get to a higher level of functioning and I have... I've presented lots and lots of smart people in multiple fields with this challenge for years, how does the brain work? Tell me how the brain works without introducing a metaphor, like a computer metaphor.

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. RE

      And I've never found anyone who could do it. Never. Even at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin where I-

    8. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    9. RE

      ... I confronted a whole bunch of people with this challenge and then I kept up, in touch with them for months afterwards. Nothing. We're... it's... we just tell ourselves stories. We make up silly stories.

    10. JR

      A placeholder.

    11. RE

      Yeah. But, you see... but transduction, neural transduction, that's not one of these placeholders. It's something that we can test. And look at the fascination that's been now for decades with DMT. What the heck is that? And why is it produced by so many different plants and animals and why does it produce in people a most extraordinary experience? I haven't tried it, but I certainly know people who have. Uh, in fact I said that... I was f- giving a spiel like this to some of my staff and one woman immediately said, she said, "Oh, well, it changed my life." I go, "You tried DMT?" She said, "Yeah." She said, "The problem was I ch- that I did it twice and I didn't need to do it twice because it completely changed my life the first time."And then another woman was sitting there, goes- she goes, "Well, uh, I did too." (laughs) And she said same thing. It was- she said that the reality that she experienced on DMT was much realer than the reality she experiences in our life.

Episode duration: 2:38:55

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