Joe Rogan Experience #2211 - Michael Shellenberger

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) Mr. Schellenberger, good to see you.

   3. MSMichael Shellenberger0:13

      Mr. Rogan, good to see you, man.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      How you been, man?

   5. MSMichael Shellenberger0:16

      (sighs) Every day, every day is so- (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      You've been neck deep, neck deep in the chaos of the world.

   7. MSMichael Shellenberger0:21

      I made it, I made it to Brazil and back, so put it that way.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:23

      What was that like?

   9. MSMichael Shellenberger0:25

      (inhales deeply) It was intense, man. I mean, it was, uh, it's still going on. Um, we did Twitter Files Brazil.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       Right.

   11. MSMichael Shellenberger0:32

       And three days later, that was back in March, three days later, Elon just throws down and starts to attack this main Supreme Court justice, who's the guy that's now banned X. So X is banned in Brazil, they're in negotiations, but it was very exciting to be there, because... And the Brazilians were just relieved. They were like, "Everything that we thought was happening is proven by the Twitter Files Brazil." And they were just very grateful to Elon. So it's been this-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       What, what did the Twitter Fires Br- I know about the Twitter Files America, I don't know about the Twitter Files in Brazil.

   13. MSMichael Shellenberger1:07

       So they, uh, this is like one of the most extreme forms of censorship we've seen in democratic countries. Um, India's been pretty bad too, but this, what they were, uh, the worst of it was that they were-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:19

       Pull that sucker up.

   15. MSMichael Shellenberger1:20

       Is it too... Okay.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:20

       Yeah, sorry, just bringing it up to you.

   17. MSMichael Shellenberger1:22

       How's that?

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:22

       Good, better? Good to go.

   19. MSMichael Shellenberger1:24

       This is, the most dramatic part is that they were, the judge, this is a Supreme Court justice who's basically the dictator of Brazil, is, had, was demanding that particular journalists and politicians just be banned, not only from X, but from every other social media platform, which is a tactic that we had seen in earlier censorship files. We had done something on something called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, uh, with Taibbi, showing this, and it was an early military censorship operation, and they'd had a list of tactics, and one of them was to get people banned on every platform. So you're basically like, just de-personing people, just destroying their career. You can't make a career o- as a journalist or a politician if you're banned from every platform. So that was the, one of the most dramatic parts, all in secret, all, um, you know, open investigations, ongoing, and basically nobody had... there was no checks and balances, there was no chance to argue with it, so that came out and Elon responded like three days later and was like, "Yeah, Brazil's like the worst in the world." And just starts attacking the Supreme Court justice as like Darth Vader and Voldemort and doing what Elon does. Fast-forward to last month and they had a huge protest in Sao Paolo, one of the largest free speech protests in history, which was itself just amazing and inspiring, because, you know, it's, uh, free speech has been something that we didn't really think we had to fight for. So to see like hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of Sao Paolo was amazing. I was there with the former president, he sort of sees me, brings me up, I'm up, up on top of the stage. He's, you know, just, you know, ba- you know, yelling at the crowd, everyone's worked up, you know, he kinda looks over at me and covers the mic and he's like, "It's Schellenberger, right?" You know, he's like, "Michael Schellenberger's up here." And the crowd's just, you know, they knew about the Twitter Files. Afterwards we go down and it's just, you know, it's just a lot of emotion and anger, but also hope. The Brazilian people are, for me it's like one of the most exciting cultures in the world because they're so expressive. The president, like while he's speaking, he's like crying, you know, it's a very like emotionally open culture. So now, I mean, the question for Elon, they're having to do negotiate this, is do you, do you out of principle keep, you know, X banned in Brazil to defend the several dozen people that the government is requiring be banned permanently, but that means that 20 million Brazilians are denied X as a platform, or do you go along with what the government's demanding and hope to fight for another day? And that's what's happening now.

   20. JRJoe Rogan4:05

       The, the 12 people, it's 12 people?

   21. MSMichael Shellenberger4:07

       We, we actually don't know, but it, probably under 100.

   22. JRJoe Rogan4:11

       And what are they being accused of that the government is saying is, uh, so important that they need to be banned?

   23. MSMichael Shellenberger4:19

       Misinformation. You know, uh, particularly, you can see every country in the world is particularly obsessed with COVID misinformation and election misinformation.

   24. JRJoe Rogan4:27

       Mm-hmm.

   25. MSMichael Shellenberger4:28

       So, but to give you an example of how arbitrary and unjust it is, there's one of the members of Congress who's one of the most dynamic, he's not actually in the party of Bolsonaro, that's the, the controversial former president. He's in a different party, um, his name is Marcelo Van Hotan, and he was, he got in tr- he didn't even know this until the Twitter Files Brazil came out, and then Elon did release, because the House of Representatives, Jim Jordan asked for these internal files from X, he subpoenaed them, so we even learned more information from those files. They, they showed that Van Hoten had, he was, he was supposedly being deplatformed for election misinformation, but it turned out that the video he posted was posted the day after the elections and it had to do with labor issues, had nothing to do with elections. And that's just really common. I mean, you just see, it's just arbitrary rule by one guy. That's why I say it's a dictatorship.

   26. JRJoe Rogan5:21

       And has there been any debate or discussion? Like does anybody try to hold him to the fire as to why these people are being banned and please prove that this is misinformation? Has there been any sort of discussion?

   27. MSMichael Shellenberger5:34

       Oh, huge. I mean, it's p- maybe one of the biggest issues in Brazil. It's, the president of Brazil, who probably hasn't gotten enough criticism for it, because he's going along with it. He defended the censorship-

   28. JRJoe Rogan5:46

       This is Lula?

   29. MSMichael Shellenberger5:47

       This is Lula.

   30. JRJoe Rogan5:47

       I t- always heard that he was a great guy when Jair Bolsonaro was the president. The, the, the narrative was O- Bolsonaro's a dictator, that he was a bad guy. But I know so many Brazilians, you know, from jujitsu, I know so many Brazilians, and they all love Bolsonaro. I was like, "I am so confused about their politics over there. I don't know what's going on." But Lula was supposed to be this guy that was for the people-And to hear that he is a part of this whole disinformation crackdown, alleged disinformation crackdown, is so disheartening.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   What do you think…

   1. MSMichael Shellenberger15:00

      in the internal... In the sale- the sales pitches from this Alethea Group, they were selling, uh, the... They were basically hyping the criticisms that Twitter was getting for not censoring enough (laughs) . Um, and then they were saying, "Well, we're gonna bring all this intelligence experience and, you know, we've got these people that are really skilled at foreign languages." I mean, they were promising to bring in people that spoke all these different languages. And there was some internal resistance within Twitter, but it basically was on track to happen, and then- and then Elon buys Twitter, and it all, it all ends.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:32

      What do you think would have happened if he didn't buy it?

   3. MSMichael Shellenberger15:35

      I mean, I mean, honestly, I go... I mean, as long as you... I'm careful, I don't want to engage in hyperbole, but I do feel like what we're seeing is totalitarianism, that this is-

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:45

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MSMichael Shellenberger15:46

      It's not tanks and torture chambers, at least not yet. But the- this instinct, this d- this demand to control the entire information environment, because of course it's not... The censorship is in service of actually propaganda. They wanna... They both wanna, they both wanna prevent certain information from getting out, and then they want to promote certain information.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:08

      Mm-hmm.

   7. MSMichael Shellenberger16:09

      And that, I... The- this is... I mean, when... I just re-read 1984 by George Orwell, and it's like this is what he's talking about, this is what he's worried about.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:17

      So do you think when social media first came along, they sort of underestimated the potential and they let it become what it is, and then once it got so huge, then they tried to infiltrate? Like perhaps after 2016, then they tried to infiltrate and kind of realize it's a little too late, because there's just too many people like yourself and Substack people and podcasters. There's just too much, too many popular people on Twitter that have huge accounts that are on it all day long and monetizing it and acting as legitimate independent journalists without any sort of oversight?

   9. MSMichael Shellenberger16:57

      Yeah, hun- 100%. In fact, not... It's not just that. They were using social media to support, uh... I mean, CIA, intelligence community, Defense Department were using social media for co- for Arab Spring, you know, for the color revolutions in Eastern Europe. It was a weapon. It was part of what they call hybrid warfare. You know, getting people, you know, mobilizing people in the streets to do regime change to overthrow governments. I mean, if you can... The Holy Grail for... I mean, it's like Sun Tzu, you know, the best way to win is by not having to fight, you know.

   10. JRJoe Rogan17:27

       Right.

   11. MSMichael Shellenberger17:27

       And so if you can not have to fire any bullets, if you don't... If you... You know, CIA 1.0 after World War II, you know, it's a crude military overthrow of governments. CIA 2.0 regime change is, put a bunch of people in the street, peaceful protest, get the head of state to resign or call an early election, and then overthrow the government that way. So social media was a tool of US government statecraft for whatever that period was when... You know, Arab Spring 2011 until 2016. And then, yeah, I think it was basically Brexit, Duterte in Philippines is another right-wing populist that gets elected, Trump. And even though I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that Trump was not elected because of social media. He was elected because he defeated his opponents in the... his Republican opponents in the debates and then defeated Hillary in the election, mostly through conventional media.... the, his use of social media and those other things clearly triggered a reaction from these deep state organizations. And I like it, and it's funny, I just read this beautiful history of the printing press in Oxford History, and the printing press, at first, you know, 15th century, first 100 years, the Catholic Church is just like, "We love the printing press. You know, we're just cranking out Bibles and it's going great." And then Martin Luther gets ahold of the printing press and prints his theses, which are mostly attacking the church for corruption, for selling indulgences as a way to, uh, over- you know, pay for your sins, basically, and he condemns that. And he literally goes viral. I mean, when you read, like, that history, you're like, it's eerily similar to social media.

   12. JRJoe Rogan19:09

       Mm-hmm.

   13. MSMichael Shellenberger19:09

       I mean, can you, I mean, it's am- it's amazing because... Well, I mean, long- long story short, there's like a long period (laughs) of revolutions and wars and, and the Protestant R- Reformation and then the Counter-Reformation, and they're like, the printing presses, they're like hiding them in people's houses, the church and the, the government is trying to, is arresting people for having printing presses. The printing presses-

   14. JRJoe Rogan19:27

       Wow.

   15. MSMichael Shellenberger19:27

       ... go to Netherlands, you know, they're sneaking the- the printing press into the Netherlands. And so it's like, you can't help but see, and you're like, "Wow, it's like VPNs."

   16. JRJoe Rogan19:35

       Yeah.

   17. MSMichael Shellenberger19:35

       'Cause in Brazil when they were like, "We're gonna ban X," we're like, "Get a VPN," you know, and VPN in.

   18. JRJoe Rogan19:40

       Mm-hmm.

   19. MSMichael Shellenberger19:41

       Still hard for people to post publicly-

   20. JRJoe Rogan19:42

       Right.

   21. MSMichael Shellenberger19:42

       ... 'cause th- that would obviously show that they were on it, but still, it's like, you're always... And this is sort of an argument, this would be an argument for Elon to cut a deal to get X back up in Brazil, and I'm not saying that's what he should do, I'm just saying one argument for it is that, you know, stay in the game, don't let them confiscate your printing press out of, you know, to make, out of principle or pride, because at some other point, you're gonna be able to find a way to work around that censorship.

   22. JRJoe Rogan20:08

       Does Brazil have something similar to our First Amendment?

   23. MSMichael Shellenberger20:12

       They have a line in their constitution that is extremely strong, that there should be no censorship for social or political issues. The problem is that (laughs) their constitution is so long and it was created by so many people that there's then all these other caveats, like you can't engage in racism, you can't engage in hate, you can't... There's even, the Nazis are, N- Nazi Party's banned in Brazil, so there's all sorts of other things that... I mean, the, the constitution's full of contradictions. It's a huge problem. It made me... The whole experience, by the way, 'cause you know, when you're growing up and you go to, and you grow up and you go to, you know, you go to, you know, elementary school and high school and the teachers are telling you, "The Constitution of the United States is so special," and you're just like, "Oh, come on," you know, like whatever. But you realize when you get older and you re- you realize the First Amendment, it's so radical, because e- basically every other country in the world, certainly every other western country, the progression of free speech was, you would ask the king for permission. You's like, "Oh king, can we criticize you for this?" And he'd be like, "Oh, okay, we'll allow you to do that." But it, free speech was something gradually granted to the people. Here, as soon as they get the Constitution done, Jefferson and other Anti-Federalists, the people that were pretty skeptical about even wanting a country, were like, "We need a first, we need a Bill of Rights, and the first thing up there needs to be free speech, and it's without qualifications." So the free s- I mean, the First Amendment doesn't say, it doesn't say except for liable and defamation and imminent-

   24. JRJoe Rogan21:44

       Right, right.

   25. MSMichael Shellenberger21:44

       ... incitement of violence, those things were built, those things were Supreme Court rulings in the 200 and 50 years after the, the Constitution's ratified in 1789. And so that's why it's so amazing is that, like, you just never s- I mean, I was, this history I just read of, of free speech is, is so amazing 'cause like you g- all this battles over how much free speech to have, is it just for the elites, is it for the people? Then you get to the United States and it's just cl- it's just a clear moment in history where the founders of this country were just like, "Fuck it," like, "This is essential," like the speech comes before the government. The government, you don't have a government and then have free speech. We have free speech as an inalienable right from God or from our creator or just something that we're saying that we have, and then you make a government based on speech. So this Orwellian idea that we hear, including, you know, tragically from Barack Obama and now his two Secretaries of State, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, and Bill Gates, they're saying, "We have to have censorship to protect democracy." It's like the most Orwellian, un-American idea. It's anathema.

   26. JRJoe Rogan22:57

       How is Bill Gates in this conversation at all? That's what's confusing, a non-elected official who just owned a software company.

   27. MSMichael Shellenberger23:08

       My, my colleagues don't want me to talk about, but don't be, don't, don't be conspiratorial about this. There's other explanations (laughs) for it.

   28. JRJoe Rogan23:14

       It's conspiratorial. Well, we've already talked about George Soros.

   29. MSMichael Shellenberger23:15

       (laughs)

   30. JRJoe Rogan23:16

       And the fact the FCC f- fast-tracked him purchasing 200 different radio stations.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Right. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Because ideally, what you would look at if you wanted to find out if it, if it stopped transmission, uh, or, or, excuse me, hospitalization or death, you would wanna look at the overall body of human beings, and then we have a bunch of things that we do know. Right? Okay. So we know that...... the, here's a group of people that died. Well, what do they have in common? Well, the vast majority of them have comorbidities. The vast majority of them are either really old or obese or are very ill, very, very ill. So we have... What was the, the actual number of people that died of COVID? I, I think 99.7 survived, right?

   2. MSMichael Shellenberger30:38

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:39

      So it's, uh, 0.03 of the people that got CO- is it something like that?

   4. MSMichael Shellenberger30:43

      Man, I have none and an expert on COVID. (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:44

      You have to take into account... You also have to take into account, uh, how many people were put on ventilators-

   6. MSMichael Shellenberger30:48

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:49

      ... who wound up dying, uh, which we now know was a terrible idea. 80% of the people they put on venere- ventilators died. We know, uh, remdesivir had terrible health consequences.

   8. MSMichael Shellenberger30:58

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:58

      We know there's a bu- a bunch of things that people are connecting to the vaccine that no one is admitting, you know, and that it... Co- hospitals and especially employers are very reluctant to say that these mandated vaccinations caused these serious health consequences that we know are real. And then we have this mysterious uptick of all-cause mortality that everyone wants to conveniently ignore, and no one wants to make some sort of a correlation or causation. So do we really know that it, it prevented death?

   10. MSMichael Shellenberger31:34

       That, that is a good question.

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:35

       You're dealing with so much-

   12. MSMichael Shellenberger31:36

       Honestly, Joe, I'm not a, I'm not a vac-

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:37

       Right.

   14. MSMichael Shellenberger31:37

       I'm not a COVID vaccine expert.

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:38

       But I mean, even, like, saying that in front of Bill Nye the Science Guy, like he's saying it, it prevented hospitalization and death, by what measurement? Like, how can someone so confidently say that when we know there's so much wrong with the vaccine, when we know that it didn't stop transmission? And then we found out it wasn't even tested to stop transmission. That was all a lie.

   16. MSMichael Shellenberger31:59

       Right.

   17. JRJoe Rogan32:00

       And the fact that they gave it to so many pregnant women with no tests on pregnant women. There's so much about it where people want to say this one thing 'cause they think it, it will keep them from getting in trouble. And that thing that keeps you from getting in trouble, "The vaccine was good because it prevented hospitalizations and deaths." I'm like, "How have you shown that?" Like, how do you show that?

   18. MSMichael Shellenberger32:20

       Uh, h- you know, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go back and look at it. I'll tell you- (laughs) My coll- I'm with, I'm working-

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:25

       I know.

   20. MSMichael Shellenberger32:25

       ... with a new colleague who's an amaz- who's an amazing expert on the COVID stuff. But yeah, it's not my area. I mean, look, I think obviously they sold it to us as though it was the polio vaccine.

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:35

       W-

   22. MSMichael Shellenberger32:36

       And it was more like the-

   23. JRJoe Rogan32:37

       Well, they sold it to us, but-

   24. MSMichael Shellenberger32:37

       ... at best, it was more like the fl- it was more like a flu vaccine.

   25. JRJoe Rogan32:39

       It was a magic cure.

   26. MSMichael Shellenberger32:41

       Right.

   27. JRJoe Rogan32:41

       It's n- not even like the polio vaccine. 'Cause if you look at polio, have you ever seen the curve of when the polio vaccine actually comes in?

   28. MSMichael Shellenberger32:49

       No.

   29. JRJoe Rogan32:49

       Okay. I'll send this to Jamie because it's quite fascinating. Most people are under the impression that the polio vaccine stopped polio in its tracks. But the reality is polio cases have radically declined before the polio vaccine came along. It's weird when you, you, you find... I mean, that's the problem with these goddamn rabbit holes. I'll send this to you, Jamie. And this is, uh, a bunch of different vaccines that we associate with stopping particular diseases. And what probably actually happened was there was some sort of herd immunity-

   30. MSMichael Shellenberger33:23

       Mm-hmm.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   (laughs) What is- …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      the correct thing to do is to get him, publicly, to talk to someone who is right and have the world see how this person who is right is going to correct him on the errors of his analysis. And then, we all learn. But instead, what do they do? They try to get him booted off of social media, which is very sketchy behavior.

   2. MSMichael Shellenberger45:20

      (laughs) What is-

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:20

      We don't like that.

   4. MSMichael Shellenberger45:22

      Red flag.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:22

      And it's like on t-

   6. MSMichael Shellenberger45:22

      Well, this is what Francis Collins said, "We need to do a devastating takedown of these fringe epidemiologists," referring to the Barrington declaration-

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:31

      Yeah.

   8. MSMichael Shellenberger45:31

      ... that Bhattacharya and the two other ... and, um, and, um, the two oth-

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:35

      Martin Colloff.

   10. MSMichael Shellenberger45:35

       Colloff, and then, uh, um, uh, I can't remember. Sunetra Gupta from Oxford, I think, is the third.

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:41

       Mm-hmm.

   12. MSMichael Shellenberger45:41

       But yeah, I mean, but, uh, but, I mean, even a more dramatic example is like, you know, that a lot of the people that did the early pioneering work showing that COVID escaped from a lab were, like, anonymous people on the internet, anonymous sleuths.

   13. JRJoe Rogan45:52

       Right.

   14. MSMichael Shellenberger45:53

       That is legitimate. I mean, the, the idea ... Like, credentialism, credentialism is the enemy of science, the idea that you need to have some of- some established credentials, in part because the system reproduces its own ideology. Professors give t- they hire people and give tenure and give PhDs to people who agree with them. That's how they feel like their legacy will continue. They don't normally promote people, uh, the younger generation, if they have radical disagreements with them. So, they're necessarily gonna come outside of the establishment.

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:25

       Right. It's, it's, uh, sort of like every other institution where people wanna get ahead. You have to play the rules.

   16. MSMichael Shellenberger46:31

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan46:31

       You have to play the game by the rules that's established by the people that are controlling the game.

   18. MSMichael Shellenberger46:35

       Yeah, it's conformism.

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:36

       It's just bizarre when that happens with science and-

   20. MSMichael Shellenberger46:39

       Oh.

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:39

       ... mathematics and with all these different things that we thought of as these, uh, hard sciences. Like, with, it's, uh, b- information-based, data-based.

   22. MSMichael Shellenberger46:48

       And it's even more dangerous when it's in the med- health and medical context.

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:50

       Sure.

   24. MSMichael Shellenberger46:50

       I'll give you another example. I mean, American Academy of Pediatrics, my friend, Marty Makary, just came out with this amazing book called Blind Spot, uh, yeah, Blind Spots, um, where he looks at American Academy of Pediatrics, look at what they did. They recommended, uh, letting babies sleep on their stomachs. That resulted in the sudden infant death syndrome. And babies, like, many babies died from that.

   25. JRJoe Rogan47:12

       Suffocated, right?

   26. MSMichael Shellenberger47:12

       Suffocated. They recommended not giving children peanuts, and they created the peanut allergy epidemic. They, um, and now, they're, now they're recommending transgender medicine. In all three cases, there was never any science to support any of those positions. And it's bizarre 'cause I was, I mean, when you read his book or you kinda look into it, you're like, "What was going on? Was there some special interest?" Or whatever. It was just, like, ego, and also, it, and it was a desire, in many cases, it was a desire to, to have answers to problems that they should never have given answers to. Peanut allergies, for example, there were a few, uh, tiny number of people that, tiny number of kids who had peanut allergies. Um, but they came to AAP, and they said, "What should we do about it?" And the AAP goes, "Well, it's better just to be safe than sorry to, to, to recommend that parents don't give their kids peanuts." They ended up creating the peanut allergy epidemic. They ended up making the b- and, uh, it's an incredible story because-

   27. JRJoe Rogan48:09

       Do you know the other theory of why there's so many peanut allergies?

   28. MSMichael Shellenberger48:12

       What's that?

   29. JRJoe Rogan48:12

       And so, allergies in general?

   30. MSMichael Shellenberger48:13

       No.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:14:02

   He was, he was…

   1. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:00

      If you go through, if you're going through the stuff that he was posting, it's just a mix of crazy left/right stuff.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:05

      He was, he was clearly mentally ill.

   3. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:07

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:07

      Yeah.

   5. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:08

      Um-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:08

      And, but clearly mentally ill, by the way, people, they will adopt whatever ideology is-

   7. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:14

      Oh, yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:14

      ... is the most persuasive. Like, they don't really, they're not objectively thinking about things. He's out of his fucking mind.

   9. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:20

      Well, we don't blame John Hinckley Jr., we don't blame, uh, um, Jodie Foster for, for John Hinckley Jr.'s assassination of Reagan.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:27

       Right, of course.

   11. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:27

       You know, go, if it weren't for Jodie Foster-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:29

       Right.

   13. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:29

       ... you know?

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:30

       He was a Jodie Foster fan.

   15. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:31

       Yeah. (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:00:31

       That's why.

   17. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:32

       It's on her.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:00:32

       Yeah, nobody says that.

   19. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:33

       Yeah, right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:00:34

       So, he's a crazy person. Yeah.

   21. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:36

       I mean, look, we're in this, I mean, look, we're in a mental, I mean, we've been in a, our country is just in a bad way, in terms of mental health, right? We're just not taking care of it. I mean, no, no country in the-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:00:45

       Yeah.

   23. MSMichael Shellenberger1:00:45

       I mean, we have, people, we, we have a lot of guns, and then you have no proper psychiatric or mental health care system.... which is crazy because now you have telehealth and, you know, you- you- we should have a bunch of ways to deal with it, but it's just not who we are, I guess. (laughs) As a society.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:00:59

       Well, it's also, it's very difficult to get people to seek treatment.

   25. MSMichael Shellenberger1:01:03

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:03

       And, you know, and then also the treatment, especially in terms of things like SSRIs, they have to try a bunch of things on you. They- it's not as simple. Everybody has a different level of mental illness, right? And so, the- there's also different causes of this mental illness and there's different medications at work.

   27. MSMichael Shellenberger1:01:18

       Right.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:18

       And they don't really know until they try it on you. And then, then we find out, now, that the entire theory that it's based on, which is that there is, uh, some sort of chemical imbalance, is incorrect. It's not true. So then, okay, well, we have to take this holistic view of the body and the mind and the health of the individual based on lifestyle and choices and community and friends and all these different things-

   29. MSMichael Shellenberger1:01:43

       For sure.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:01:43

       ... that we don't want to take into consideration. Instead, they're just giving people pills. And they give people pills and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes, it causes a dissociation effect. These- the dissociatives, these weird drugs that people take where they don't even exactly know what the fuck they're doing while they're doing it.

Episode duration: 3:15:29