Joe Rogan Experience #2278 - Chase Hughes

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music)

   3. CHChase Hughes0:14

      Hey, man.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Good to see you.

   5. CHChase Hughes0:16

      Man.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      We're debuting these, uh, mugs. My friend, uh, Turkey Merc on Instagram sent me these Cheshire cat mugs. Isn't that badass?

   7. CHChase Hughes0:22

      Yeah. That's really good.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      Thought it'd be good for you, 'cause we're, you know, we're talking about mind fucks. Cheshire cat's a little bit of a mind fuck. (laughs)

   9. CHChase Hughes0:29

      In the simulation.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       Yeah, for sure. So, uh, you were just telling me that you had a brain disease.

   11. CHChase Hughes0:38

       Okay.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:39

       And you... What did you do to fix it?

   13. CHChase Hughes0:42

       So, I, uh-

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       What was it, first of all?

   15. CHChase Hughes0:45

       Uh, it's temporally epilepsy with mesial temporal sclerosis.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:50

       When did you develop this?

   17. CHChase Hughes0:51

       We don't know, but, uh, I started having seizures, like, a few years ago. And everybody in my family knows I'm a neuroscientist. I say with a lowercase N, not a PhD neuroscientist, but, uh ...

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:03

       But you studied neuroscience?

   19. CHChase Hughes1:04

       Yeah. I, I post-grad at Harvard and, and Duke. But, uh, they assumed, you know, Chase has studied all this stuff. He's gonna know if he's having seizures. But these seizures come with amnesia. So, I didn't remember that I was having any of 'em. And this is, like, three years ago. I had retired from the military and then started having these seizures. So, then I, I found a neurologist, the, the drug that they gave me, the number one side effect was seizures. Of the, from this pharmaceutical company. So, I, I kind of looked around and I found this guy's a functional medicine guy, and he got me on, uh, methylene blue to start off. And I know Mel Gibson was on here talking about it.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:49

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CHChase Hughes1:49

       And that instantly stopped everything. And, uh, some other stuff.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:55

       That stuff so- it was a fabric dye, right?

   23. CHChase Hughes1:57

       Yeah, in 1890.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:59

       How weird.

   25. CHChase Hughes2:00

       And it-

   26. JRJoe Rogan2:01

       Who the fuck drank it first? (laughs)

   27. CHChase Hughes2:04

       (laughs) Who's that guy?

   28. JRJoe Rogan2:05

       So, going, "Oh, they make blue jeans out of that?" Huh.

   29. CHChase Hughes2:08

       Yeah, let me-

   30. JRJoe Rogan2:08

       What would it taste like?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. CHChase Hughes15:00

      what I mean? They just kind of captivated the person they-

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:02

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CHChase Hughes15:02

      ... were talking to in this little bubble.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:03

      Yeah.

   5. CHChase Hughes15:03

      They were all about you. They're really interested in you.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:06

      Right. I heard Tom Cruise is awesome at that.

   7. CHChase Hughes15:09

      Oh, yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:10

      I heard when you talk to him, you're like the only person in the room.

   9. CHChase Hughes15:12

      Yeah. And it's just that, that stare.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:14

       Yeah.

   11. CHChase Hughes15:14

       "Tell me more. Tell me more."

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:16

       (laughs)

   13. CHChase Hughes15:17

       "Tell me about your mom." And you get that ... They all had that quality to them, but one of the things that all of them had, the one trait that I think all of those guys had, was they could get you to deviate off of your baseline really quick. And so, if you're ... If they can get you to curse, that's step one. They get you to say something that's a little bit out of, outside of a social norm, they would all do that as step one.

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:43

       Hm.

   15. CHChase Hughes15:45

       Every single time.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:46

       Huh. So, what, what ... Like, in the cults, how would they do that? What would they try to get you to deviate from? What would they try to get you to do?

   17. CHChase Hughes15:55

       So, in the ... Their goal was to get you to agree to join the cult. So, if I can get you to do something that's outside of your norm, so I use something called elicitation. So, instead of me asking questions ... Let's say we get into the back of an Uber and I wanna ask the Uber driver to complain about his job.

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:12

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CHChase Hughes16:13

       Instead of using questions, which are weird, right? So, like, I'm like, "Hey, do you like your job?"

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:17

       Right. That's weird.

   21. CHChase Hughes16:18

       It's, yeah, weird. It's like saying, "Hey, how much do you guys make?" Um, you say, "Hey, I just read this article the other day that said Uber drivers are the, are the most highest respected people out there and they love their job. They have the highest job satisfaction rating. That's incredible." And they turn ... The guy turns around, they're like, "What?"

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:36

       Uh, so you bullshitted them. (laughs)

   23. CHChase Hughes16:37

       Right. So just ... That's called, uh, triggering a need to correct the record. It's one of the methods.

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:43

       Oh.

   25. CHChase Hughes16:44

       But I very quickly get your brain to associate a mental script of friend mode, 'cause he doesn't talk about that with other riders. He, he bitches about his job to his, his friends.

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:56

       Right.

   27. CHChase Hughes16:56

       So, I'm getting your brain to start shifting into this ... I'm behaving as if I'm with a friend.

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:01

       Right.

   29. CHChase Hughes17:02

       So, I start getting that behavior out of a person very quickly. So, we're just activating a script in that person's mind that goes from, "I'm with a client," to, "I'm with a friend."

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:11

       Hm.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   And, uh, I think…

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

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   2. CHChase Hughes31:09

      And, uh, I think for people that are asking questions, what are the... Which may be the type of people that are joining these cults. They're, they're questioning things in their life.

   3. JRJoe Rogan31:16

      Yeah.

   4. CHChase Hughes31:16

      Our brains are naturally attracted to certainty and authority. And there's, we can talk about man- Authority is what we really probably should talk about. But we're attracted to that and our brains, the mammalian part of our brain, will simply follow somebody that is easily followed.

   5. JRJoe Rogan31:33

      Mm.

   6. CHChase Hughes31:34

      Like, what is the, the clearest signal? It's not the smartest person in the room, not the best idea. What's the clearest signal that's pointing in a direction that I can follow? And our brains will just default to, once we trust that authority figure, we're automatically gonna assign good traits to them, we're gonna think that they're a good person, we're a good person, because we're aligning with this person just because they were followable.

   7. JRJoe Rogan31:57

      Okay.

   8. CHChase Hughes31:58

      So it's a clear message.

   9. JRJoe Rogan31:59

      And so these guys who were recruiting people for cults, were they open with you about this stuff or did you kind of like figure it out by talking to them?

   10. CHChase Hughes32:08

       I signed a ridiculous non-disclosure agreement with each one of them individually. The main-

   11. JRJoe Rogan32:14

       (laughs) The cults have NDAs?

   12. CHChase Hughes32:16

       No, no, no. The, the, the main-

   13. JRJoe Rogan32:17

       The individuals did?

   14. CHChase Hughes32:18

       ... the main organization did not know I was there.

   15. JRJoe Rogan32:20

       Oh. Oh, I see, I see.

   16. CHChase Hughes32:21

       And it was mostly, they would go around the mall. It, they spent time around these shopping mall areas-

   17. JRJoe Rogan32:26

       The mall?

   18. CHChase Hughes32:26

       ... and talk to people. Yeah. And it was like, it was all kind of very basic at the beginning. So cults' indoctrination is a longer process. It's not like, "Hey, let me talk to you for five minutes," and you're like, "Yeah, yeah, I'll join your cult and we'll worship aliens and stuff together." It's, it's a long process where like the deviation escalation continues to increase over time. And it's the exact same way if you're, if you're programming some Manchurian candidate or if you're a hypnotist and you're seeing a client, you want to get them to deviate from their normal behaviors, right? To fix-

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:56

       Right.

   20. CHChase Hughes32:56

       ... fix their behavior.

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:57

       Right.

   22. CHChase Hughes32:58

       So it's not all bad. So we can use those same, a lot of those same techniques to help somebody instead of hurt them. That's what I started discovering over the years, and I've studied like how to access every loophole in the human brain, and the fastest way to do that is through novelty and authority, number one. And, uh, there's nothing faster, uh, in the human brain that, where that'll give you that kind of access.

   23. JRJoe Rogan33:23

       Novelty and authority. Like, give me some examples of that.

   24. CHChase Hughes33:26

       So let's say, uh, you and I are living 10,000 years ago, 15,000 years ago. The average tribe of people was like 150, 120. And let's say your job and my job was to go and collect fish in a bag, and fish, and then kind of bring it back to the tribe at the end of the day. And every day we went to the same spot, and it's a great spot. We walked by this bush, this big ass bush, and one day we're going back and talking about the fish we got, and you hear a stick snap behind that bush that we haven't heard before. So it's an, it's an unexpected deviation from your mental script of what's gonna happen. Does this make sense so far?

   25. JRJoe Rogan34:03

       Okay.

   26. CHChase Hughes34:05

       So we're walking by the bush, the stick snaps. Now, what's generated in that moment is a tremendous amount of focus. Like there could be a threat, it could be a rabbit that we can eat, right? So a threat or a value is what our, how our brain responds to something new and something unexpected. Is it a threat? Is it valuable, socially or otherwise valuable? So the stick breaks. We're not thinking about our kids. We're not thinking about how many fish are in the bag. We're only thinking about this novel new thing that interrupted my brain's script of what I thought was gonna happen.

   27. JRJoe Rogan34:36

       Okay.

   28. CHChase Hughes34:37

       You with me so far?

   29. JRJoe Rogan34:37

       Yeah.

   30. CHChase Hughes34:38

       So in our life, when we see something that's unexpected, something that we... I guess we're, we're not expecting. So we're driving a car, blue lights in your rear view mirror is tremendous amount of novelty, threat, value, right? So our brain says, "This is how I tie my shoes. This is how I go to work. This is how I run the cash register at Starbucks," whatever it is. We develop these apps in our head. And when something interrupts one of those programs, our brain automatically says, "This is different. This is not expected. I need all of my focus down on this one thing."
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Is it? …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      a little harder to drink out of. Here you go.

   2. CHChase Hughes45:01

      Is it?

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:01

      Yeah.

   4. CHChase Hughes45:01

      I'll switch. I don't want to dirty that one up.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:03

      No, don't worry about it. Um, so they, they, they have to have all those ducks in a row. If they don't, people are going to sense it. They're going to know. Even if they exhibit all the behavior characteristics of someone who's confident, there's going to be something off, 'cause we-

   6. CHChase Hughes45:20

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:21

      ... have some way, some ancient way of un... of detecting bullshit in ourselves.

   8. CHChase Hughes45:28

      Yeah, we get those gut feelings.

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:29

      Yeah. We know when something's off, someone's a little full of it-

   10. CHChase Hughes45:33

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:33

       ... someone's faking it.

   12. CHChase Hughes45:34

       Yeah. And now, I mean, we've all had that experience, like s-

   13. JRJoe Rogan45:36

       Yes.

   14. CHChase Hughes45:36

       ... everything looked right on the surface.

   15. JRJoe Rogan45:38

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CHChase Hughes45:38

       Anybody who was watching it from a distance probably was like, "Wow, that guy's really confident." But in your gut you're like, "Something's off. Something wasn't right."

   17. JRJoe Rogan45:44

       Well, particularly if you have all those bases covered. If you have all those bases covered, I think it makes it far easier to see in other people when they don't.

   18. CHChase Hughes45:56

       Yeah. Because, I mean, if you have confidence, that means I'm living in front of my eyes.

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:00

       Right.

   20. CHChase Hughes46:01

       I'm not just stuck back here the whole time.

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:02

       So, if you're gonna teach people how to be confident, essentially, you have to teach them how to get their shit together.

   22. CHChase Hughes46:09

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:09

       Unequivocally. Like-

   24. CHChase Hughes46:11

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan46:11

       ... undoubtably, you know, undebatably. Like you have to, you have to have your shit together, clearly.

   26. CHChase Hughes46:19

       Yes. Absolutely.

   27. JRJoe Rogan46:19

       Otherwise, you're not gonna really be confident. You're always... It's always the back of your head, it's always going to be fucking with you.

   28. CHChase Hughes46:24

       Yeah. And there's five areas of your life that I've identified. These are not... This is not some self-help program or anything, but there's five areas of your life that create gut feelings in other people and that's your environment, how you handle all of these things, your environment, your time, your appearance, your social skills, and your financial life. Like, if I've got unpaid bills, I've got creditors knocking on my door all the time, and then I go out and try to look like I've got my shit together, I'm gonna send those signals that something's not right.

   29. JRJoe Rogan46:51

       To people that are aware, not to people that are willing to join cults.

   30. CHChase Hughes46:55

       Right.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   No. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      O'Neill book?

   2. CHChase Hughes1:00:00

      No.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:01

      It's about the Manson family, how they did it with the Manson family. It's, uh, essentially, I mean, he, he lays out a very compelling, uh, case for the CIA not only training Manson, but supplying him with LSD and then getting him out of jail every time he got caught.

   4. CHChase Hughes1:00:18

      Wow.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:18

      And that it was done to change the perception of the antiwar movement. Like, the hippies were peace, love, and psychedelic music, and, you know, people were dropping out of society. And instead, the narrative now became, "No, they are murderers and psychopaths, and they're gonna kill beautiful actresses and people in Hollywood."

   6. CHChase Hughes1:00:39

      So, they thought he would be like the vaccine for Timothy Leary and, and all those people.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:43

      Yes. Yeah, yeah, it's a good way to put it. Yeah, that, um, they took this guy who was a con man and had sort of a, a proclivity towards, you know, influencing people and being char- charismatic and ... You ever heard his music?

   8. CHChase Hughes1:00:57

      No, I didn't know he did music.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:59

      Yeah, I mean, he's- he actually recorded with, uh, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. And, um, I think Brian Wilson and him, there was like a real problem because his career didn't take off, and like he threatened him. It cam- it became very, like very problematic, his relationship with Brian Wilson. But he g- there's a song, so you can find the song (laughs) if you listen to it a little bit. The Manson... Can we play this? Does someone own this? How's that work?

   10. GUGuest1:01:26

       Well, that was some- something I've hadn't, we hadn't talked... Guns N' Roses covered one of his songs. Did you know that?

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:01:30

       Oh yeah, yeah. We talked about that, I think we did.

   12. GUGuest1:01:32

       Oh, did we?

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:01:32

       Yeah. Yeah, um, but he recorded some songs. And, you know, they're not that bad.

   14. GUGuest1:01:40

       Time for living.

   15. CHChase Hughes1:01:44

       Is that him singing?

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:45

       Yeah.

   17. GUGuest1:01:45

       Time keeps on flying. Think you're loving baby and all you do is crying. Can't you see...

   18. CHChase Hughes1:01:56

       That's not bad.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:57

       It's not bad.

   20. CHChase Hughes1:01:58

       Yeah, it's decent.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:59

       It's not bad. It- it's like, it's an okay shitty song from the '60s.

   22. CHChase Hughes1:02:03

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:02:03

       You know? It's not something you want to put on your Spotify playlist, but it's, uh, it's not bad.

   24. CHChase Hughes1:02:08

       It's better than a third of guys that play at the bar or something.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:02:11

       Yeah.

   26. CHChase Hughes1:02:12

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:02:12

       Yeah, it's better than a third of the guys on 6th Street in Austin, Texas. (laughs)

   28. CHChase Hughes1:02:16

       (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:02:18

       It's not bad. I mean, he was a charismatic person, right? And that's what you need to run a cult, and that's what you need to be a good rock star.

   30. CHChase Hughes1:02:25

       And a lot of psychedelics.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:17:02

   Will you then let…

   1. CHChase Hughes1:15:00

      goal as a doctor, psychiatrist, coach, whatever, is to raise that person's suggestibility so that my suggestions can change their life.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:07

      Will you then let them be aware of what you did and how you did it and what the pathway is?

   3. CHChase Hughes1:15:14

      Uh, if it's- if I'm helping someone?

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:15

      Yeah.

   5. CHChase Hughes1:15:16

      Absolutely. Yeah. So-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:18

      That's gotta be a mind fuck for them.

   7. CHChase Hughes1:15:20

      You know Roy Jones?

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:15:21

      Jr.?

   9. CHChase Hughes1:15:21

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:15:21

       The boxer?

   11. CHChase Hughes1:15:22

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:15:22

       Of course. Yeah.

   13. CHChase Hughes1:15:22

       He's a friend of mine.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:15:23

       Oh.

   15. CHChase Hughes1:15:24

       And-

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:15:24

       I love that dude.

   17. CHChase Hughes1:15:25

       Yeah. Me too. Um, and man, he's been through a rough year. I don't know if you've heard or anything.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:15:31

       No.

   19. CHChase Hughes1:15:31

       He's been through a lot this year.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:15:32

       What- what happened?

   21. CHChase Hughes1:15:33

       He lost his son.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:15:34

       Oh, I didn't know that at all.

   23. CHChase Hughes1:15:35

       Yeah, I think it was- yeah, I think he was 21. Um-

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:15:37

       Oh, that's terrible.

   25. CHChase Hughes1:15:39

       But Roy called me one day. I went down there to train Roy at Roy's house, and he calls me one day and he's like, "Hey man, can you do this split personality thing on a fighter?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah." And as I'm t- telling him yeah, I was like, "I've never done this." I- I didn't know if I could, but I was like, "Yeah. I'll- I'll get it done." He's like, "I've got this guy going into a fight, uh, in two days. It's in Vegas. Can you fly out and- and do the- do your work on this guy?" So, I essentially give him an alter ego, but it's not like created through massive trauma or anything like that. It's kind of a fabricated- we use a little bit of like, um, a little bit of simulated trauma to make this thing happen, the dissociation part where I kinda separate from myself. And this guy had like the best fight of his life and this alter- alter ego, you can ask Roy, uh, I told him not to get gassed out, to where you're not gonna get gassed out, uh, or run out of air. Like you're gonna always feel like you're satiated. Even if you're not, you're gonna stay up and keep going. And the second is you're not gonna feel any pain, and you're gonna be pure aggression and strategy and all this. Roy gave me this list of stuff. So this guy, this young fighter, he's like 28, I programmed him. It took me for- 48 hours total, um, not with him, but like two days, over the course of two days I programmed him. And then he goes up a- what's the thing where the- they take a picture looking at each other, whatever that's called?

Episode duration: 2:54:21