Joe Rogan Experience #2372 - Garry Nolan

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast.…

   1. GNGarry Nolan0:00

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

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      Gary, very nice to meet you, sir.

   3. GNGarry Nolan0:14

      Nice to meet you as well.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. Um, tell everybody what you do. Tell everybody what your official position is. You- you're a professor at the School of Medicine at Stanford. What- what do you do?

   5. GNGarry Nolan0:26

      So, my day job is in cancer research and cancer biology, mostly immunology and cancer. Much of what my laboratory does is not so much the biology of cancer, but developing instruments that create the data that allow us to analyze the complexities of how the immune system interfaces with tumors, and how tumors basically re-enable, uh, the immune system to help the cancer itself. So the problem's been we don't have the ability to collect enough data, or not until recently, to collect and understand what all of that means, so we've been kind of poking in the dark for decades. And so probably for the last 20 years, I've developed a number of instruments and turned them into companies that allow everybody to access a level of information they couldn't get before.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:17

      So, uh, ex- ex- explain that. The- the immune system allows the tumors? Ex- wh- wh- wh- wh-

   7. GNGarry Nolan1:25

      So what happens is that there's sort of a, there's a dance between the mutations that initiate a tumor and then, uh, sort of an evolution of how the tumor eventually learns how to trick the immune system to not recognize it. So we have all kinds-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:42

      Hmm.

   9. GNGarry Nolan1:42

      ... of inter- I mean, literally every day, uh, every person, you'll develop five cancer-like objects inside of your body, but the immune system, uh, and your body has a way of shutting it down very quickly. But with enough time and with enough variation, tumors will eventually evolve in a way that trick the immune system, not only to- to not recognize them, but in fact, to help them and feed them in a way, to create an inflammatory environment that actually then the tumor uses to propagate its own cell division and then metastasize.

   10. JRJoe Rogan2:15

       So it's a normal function of natural human biology to create tumors?

   11. GNGarry Nolan2:21

       It's not so much a normal function. It's a byproduct of what evolution is, that when the genes mutate when a cell divides, or if you go out and, you know, stand in the- in the sun, uh, too much for instance, you get skin cancers because you're getting ionizing radiation that's changing the DNA, making a mutation, and some of those random mutations will initiate a cancer. So for instance, I have, um, a mutation called MIDF E318K. It's, uh, a mutation that I was born with. It didn't- it wasn't in my family, and it causes both melanoma and kidney cancer, which I've had both. I've had a dozen, uh, melanomas alone. Um, you know, we didn't find that out until a couple of years ago, but I've been following it over the years and we basically figured out, okay, it's gonna have to be this. So we had my sequ- my genome sequenced. But there's... That's just one of hundreds of different kinds of mutations that can occur that are on a path towards creating a cancer. But the cancer can't survive if the immune system recognizes it. So eventually what happens is there's this detente that is reached between the immune system and the cancer, where the immune system basically ignores the cancer. So Jim Allison here in Houston, uh, won the Nobel Prize back in 2018, uh, for understanding one of these turn-off signals about the immune system u- that the cancers use to turn off the immune system, and that by showing he could block it, his wife, Pam Sharma, ran a bunch of clinical trials at MD Anderson that showed in fact that this could actually turn a 5% survival disease in melanoma to a 50% survival. And that then created the whole immunotherapy field that the world is, uh, taking advantage of today.

   12. JRJoe Rogan4:10

       Wow. So- so what is- what is cancer actually doing? Like how- how did it- uh, how do tumors develop this ability to trick the immune system? Is this so- something that other animals have?

   13. GNGarry Nolan4:23

       Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan4:24

       So it's a constant-

   15. GNGarry Nolan4:25

       It's a constant battle.

   16. JRJoe Rogan4:26

       ... battle.

   17. GNGarry Nolan4:26

       So- so- so for instance, there i- there are proteins on your cell surface. I won't get too immunologically deep about it. Uh, they're called, uh, major histocompatibility complex proteins. So for instance, if I were to try to just randomly do a- a tissue transplant from me to you, it's very likely that it would be rejected, and it's because of those MHC proteins that it's rejected. What's happening is that your cells are presenting your internal cell biology to the immune system, and it's saying, "Okay, you're- you're a friend, not a foe." So when cancer usually initiates, there are disruptions that happen and proteins are made incorrectly, et cetera. And so what these MHC proteins are doing in some cases is they're presenting the internal damage to the body and the body's saying, "Oh, there's something wrong with this cell. We better wipe it out. We kill it." These same proteins are what the immune system uses, for instance, to go after viruses. So when you get a virus infection inside of the cell, the body has a way of chopping those proteins up inside of the cell, presenting it via MHC, and then the immune system attacks it. So what, one of the first things that actually tumors do is they learn to turn off the MHC proteins inside of themselves.

   18. JRJoe Rogan5:42

       Hmm.

   19. GNGarry Nolan5:42

       So the ability to show that I'm damaged is shut down. And so the immune system doesn't go on full alert for that. But then there are other mutations like divide when you're not supposed to. Uh, you know, avoid this kind of induced cell death called apoptosis, uh, and not others. And so it... Cancer doesn't just, like, start and then the next day you've got it. It's a progression of events. You have these precancerous lesions. You have, like, a benign tumor, which eventually becomes a metastatic tumor.Um, and, uh, and so the... But the immune system is key at every stage of the development because if you can reactivate the immune system in just the right way, then you can prevent the cancer from basically, uh, spreading or from metastasizing, or from killing you, essentially.

   20. JRJoe Rogan6:35

       Is there a potential for... Uh, w- given the understanding of this, is there a potential for using this for organ transplant patients-

   21. GNGarry Nolan6:43

       Oh, yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan6:44

       ... where it locally would stop recognizing this as a foreign-

   23. GNGarry Nolan6:49

       Uh, that's exactly what-

   24. JRJoe Rogan6:50

       ... organ?

   25. GNGarry Nolan6:50

       That's exactly what is done. In fact, you, um, when you get a tissue transplant or an organ transplant, you're suppressing the immune system. The problem with that suppression is that you then put yourself at risk-

   26. JRJoe Rogan7:03

       Right.

   27. GNGarry Nolan7:03

       ... of cancer. Because what you're doing is you're turning off the immune system's ability to r- to combat and go after a cancer the moment it forms. So most people who are under immune suppression are at risk both of, let's say, virus infections, bacterial infections, but also for their cancers.

   28. JRJoe Rogan7:21

       So would the, the potential be to turn that off locally? So you could turn that off to this- on the specific organ?

   29. GNGarry Nolan7:28

       Th- th- th- that would be a great thing to do if we could. Right now, the only things that we have are systemic.

   30. JRJoe Rogan7:35

       Right.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. GNGarry Nolan15:00

      choose that diagnostic to make sure that the person doesn't have the subclass before you give them the 60% drug.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:06

      Mm-hmm.

   3. GNGarry Nolan15:06

      Does that make sense?

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:07

      Yes. Yeah, it does. Um, the narrative has always been, uh, over the, you know, last few decades, stay out of the sun.

   5. GNGarry Nolan15:15

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:15

      But recently, people have started saying, "No, it's actually you need to become accustomed to the sun." And the real issue is people using sunscreen all the time and then going out and getting burned. Obviously, your situation is very different-

   7. GNGarry Nolan15:29

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:29

      ... 'cause you, you have a, a specific gene.

   9. GNGarry Nolan15:32

      And I'm Irish. (laughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:33

       Yeah. (laughs)

   11. GNGarry Nolan15:34

       So ... (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:34

       Well, that's, that's the problem, right?

   13. GNGarry Nolan15:36

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:36

       The genes of the people that lived in cloudy-ass places-

   15. GNGarry Nolan15:40

       Right. Exactly.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:40

       ... for hundreds of thousands of years.

   17. GNGarry Nolan15:42

       And my mother, when we were kids ... I mean, I'm 64 years old, so when I was a kid, you know, we'd go to the beach in Connecticut and they'd smother me in, in, you know, uh, um, coconut oil.

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:52

       Oh, yeah.

   19. GNGarry Nolan15:53

       Right?

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:53

       Yeah, baby oil-

   21. GNGarry Nolan15:54

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan15:54

       When I was a kid-

   23. GNGarry Nolan15:55

       Yeah. Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan15:55

       ... everybody had baby oil and everybody got barbecued.

   25. GNGarry Nolan15:57

       Yeah. Plus I worked in the, you know, in the fields as a kid for, you know, farm, farm labor.

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:02

       And that's not good.

   27. GNGarry Nolan16:03

       That wasn't good for people.

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       The burning, the, that's the real, the damage to the skin-

   29. GNGarry Nolan16:06

       Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan16:06

       ... and then it manifests itself as cancer far later in life.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. GNGarry Nolan30:00

      longevity.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:01

      Mm-hmm.

   3. GNGarry Nolan30:01

      Well, if I look into the metabolism of what my cancer is, every single one of those is a, is a disaster for me.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:06

      It accelerates.

   5. GNGarry Nolan30:07

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:08

      Yeah.

   7. GNGarry Nolan30:08

      You know?

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:08

      Not good.

   9. GNGarry Nolan30:09

      Not good.

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:10

       (laughs)

   11. GNGarry Nolan30:12

       (laughs) So 'cause there's all these feedback mechanisms.

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:14

       Right.

   13. GNGarry Nolan30:15

       I mean, you know, people often say, you know, "Scientists are not religious." Um, uh, uh, th- there's nothing that inspires more, more awe in me than knowing the complexity of the cell.... and knowing the complexity of life-

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:29

       Right.

   15. GNGarry Nolan30:30

       ... and seeing all this feedback and mechanism and knowing that underneath that is a universe with particles, et cetera, that enabled something like us to exist. I just sit in awe of that.

   16. JRJoe Rogan30:42

       Oh, yeah, it's awe-inspiring for sure. I mean, anybody who doesn't think it is, is not paying attention or they're purposely being ignorant.

   17. GNGarry Nolan30:49

       Right. Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan30:51

       Yeah. We get a lot of that, though.

   19. GNGarry Nolan30:52

       Oh, yeah. Well, that's okay. You know, teachers are here to hopefully teach and not preach.

   20. JRJoe Rogan30:57

       Hopefully, yeah. Um, because of your specific type of cancer and your situation, like, do you have to, like, very closely monitor your diet?

   21. GNGarry Nolan31:08

       Um, I probably shouldn't eat as much meat as I do.

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:11

       Meat?

   23. GNGarry Nolan31:11

       Uh, yeah, um-

   24. JRJoe Rogan31:12

       Why meat?

   25. GNGarry Nolan31:13

       Well, because, you know, fats, and a lot of them... The fats, uh, dissolve, uh, a fair number of toxins. Um, you know, it's, it's not necessarily a good thing. I mean, that's been relatively well-shown that too much meat, as opposed to... I'm not advocating vegetarianism. I think there's a-

   26. JRJoe Rogan31:31

       Mm-hmm.

   27. GNGarry Nolan31:32

       ... there's a happy medium. I mean, we grew up in an environment where we had both. I mean, we're omnivores.

   28. JRJoe Rogan31:36

       Mm-hmm.

   29. GNGarry Nolan31:37

       Uh, and we succeeded, I think, because we're omnivores, uh, as a society, as a, you know, as a civilization. So, um, but, you know, charred meat, for instance-

   30. JRJoe Rogan31:47

       That's the issue, though, isn't it?
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   The commercial, the resistance…

   1. GNGarry Nolan45:00

      why don't we just give this to the community? Why don't we open source this?" We can use it for maybe specific targeted purposes, but we're basically gonna publish the whole thing on GitHub, uh, to let other people use it, 'cause we've seen other people make claims about stuff that they've already made, and it's like, "Mm, ours is better." So why don't we just put it on GitHub and let people learn from it?

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:20

      The commercial, the resistance to the commercialization, what was the initial argument?

   3. GNGarry Nolan45:25

      So, uh, th- back when I was a grad student in the, in the, uh, '80s, um, basic research, as opposed to translational research, um, was considered the height of intellectual desire, right? Basic research and, and we're not here to make money. We're here to discover things. And that's important, and nearly every major discovery and every major therapy in the world came from basic research. But then, you know, there were limits to how much money you could give to basic research, and then there was a desire at a certain point to say, "Hey, well, that's ... What ... Are you gonna do anything about this?"

   4. JRJoe Rogan46:04

      Mm.

   5. GNGarry Nolan46:05

      "You know, are you gonna make any ... " So translational research became, uh, a push. So this guy, uh, at Stanford by the name of Paul Berg, uh, who won the Nobel Prize for, uh, gene the- for, um, recombinant DNA way back in the day, uh, and, uh, Paul came up with this concept bed to, you know, bench to bedside, meaning that we don't have to be either or. We can be part of an arc, uh, and Stanford wanted to be, uh, and enable within the medical school both the basic research, which we were great at, as well as bringing it directly to the patients as well, so to link clinicians and the desires of clinicians with the basic researchers. I mean, most scientists would be happy just to study anything. You know, just point me at something, and I'll be happy if I can get interested in it. So, uh, and we're no more happy than when somebody recognizes the value of what we do.

   6. JRJoe Rogan47:02

      Right.

   7. GNGarry Nolan47:02

      But basic research was sort of the height, and there was a push against anybody trying to commercialize. So when I started as an assistant professor ... So I started as a grad student. I went to MIT to work with this guy David Baltimore, um, who won the Nobel for, um, reverse transcriptase, and then I wanted to come straight back to Stanford because I already felt that it was a positive environment for commercialization. My bosses, my former bosses, mentors, Len and Lee Hersberg, had two of the biggest patents at Stanford. They had the fluorescence-activated cell sorter and then what are called humanized antibodies, which brought in hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to Stanford. Um, and they actually, they gave, personally, most of their own money away. They didn't ... They made, kept enough to survive, but then they gave most of the money away, and they ran their own lab o- off of a lot of that money. But, so I had learned from them about how to still do basic research but commercialize on the side, and so I wanted to bring that back. But the department that I came into, the Department of Pharmacology at the time, um, I was warned by many professors, uh, "Don't commercialize that." And I ignored them, and I went and started a company that went public on NASDAQ, and many of those same professors came back to me, you know, years later and sitting in my office asking me how to start a company.

   8. JRJoe Rogan48:21

      (laughs) Why did you ... Uh, was it just a courageous decision to ignore them? What did you ... Was it instinctual?

   9. GNGarry Nolan48:28

      It just was instinct- it was like, because I couldn't see the NIH funding what I wanted to do.

   10. JRJoe Rogan48:33

       Mm-hmm.

   11. GNGarry Nolan48:33

       So I had developed a way, this will sound scary, but I had developed a way to use retroviruses and make libraries of retroviruses to reverse the process of evolution in a way that rather than viruses hurting the cell, I set it up so that viruses would help the cell.

   12. JRJoe Rogan48:51

       Mm-hmm.Oh.

   13. GNGarry Nolan48:52

       And once they help the cell, I would figure out what they did. And so we sold hundreds of millions of dollars of targets that way using retroviral libraries, uh, to, um, basically find targets and use v- use th- use some of the benefits of viruses, but to our advantage.

   14. JRJoe Rogan49:15

       Just the concept of reversing evolution is fascinating, because it comes with, uh, there's so many ethical implications, but if you didn't have any of those-

   15. GNGarry Nolan49:25

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan49:26

       ... and you could do that large scale.

   17. GNGarry Nolan49:28

       Well, I had developed, in David's lab, along with this guy Warren Parr, um, a means, it's called the 293T retroviral producer system. It was a way to make large numbers of these viruses very quickly. It really followed on the work of this guy, Richard Mulligan, um, who'd also been a postdoc with, with David Baltimore, who developed, uh, what was called the 3T3 based retroviral production system and he developed it in Paul Berg's lab (laughs) at Stanford. Um, so there's a lot of sort of, uh, you know, um, interbreeding here. Uh, but the problem with that was it took three months. So I had brought with me a cell line called 293T that I introduced to the lab and said, "Hey, maybe we could use this to make viruses quickly." I won't go into the details of why, but we could do it in three days rather than three months. Uh, and so that now, I mean, tens of thousands of labs use that worldwide and it probably generates the most money for me, uh, every year over any of my other inventions. Just because S- Stanford, rather than patenting it, licenses it.

   18. JRJoe Rogan50:28

       Mm-hmm.

   19. GNGarry Nolan50:28

       And licenses are forever, whereas patents have a 17-year lifespan. So Stanford made a good choice there.

   20. JRJoe Rogan50:35

       So do you think it was just a bias, uh, academic bias? Like we shouldn't be focusing on money, we should be focusing on the work?

   21. GNGarry Nolan50:42

       Yes.

   22. JRJoe Rogan50:42

       And they missed the forest for the trees?

   23. GNGarry Nolan50:44

       Right. But then people, I mean, they eventually learned, you know?

   24. JRJoe Rogan50:47

       Right.

   25. GNGarry Nolan50:47

       I mean, and it's, it, I, I wouldn't say that it's the, it's the way that people think anymore, um, but it, there's still a little bit of a b- I mean, you shouldn't walk into the lab thinking, "I'm here to make money."

   26. JRJoe Rogan50:59

       That's what they're worried about.

   27. GNGarry Nolan51:00

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan51:00

       Right?

   29. GNGarry Nolan51:01

       Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan51:01

       That's, they're worried about the bastardization of it all.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   That's because we live…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

   2. GNGarry Nolan1:00:00

      That's because we live in a scarcity society.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:02

      Right.

   4. GNGarry Nolan1:00:03

      And if AI enables a post-scarcity, maybe we have nothing to do but sit around and try out various new drugs.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:12

      Yeah.

   6. GNGarry Nolan1:00:13

      Uh, or enjoy-

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:13

      Well, this is where we get into socialism 'cause a lot of people think that one of the reasons why we're in a scarcity society is 'cause small groups of people have gathered up most of the resources-

   8. GNGarry Nolan1:00:20

      Right.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:21

      ... and are in constant control of them.

   10. GNGarry Nolan1:00:23

       Right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:23

       And especially when you deal with resources that are the earth's resources.

   12. GNGarry Nolan1:00:27

       Right.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:00:27

       Like, who are you-

   14. GNGarry Nolan1:00:28

       Right.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:00:28

       ... to be sucking the blood of the earth out and selling it for $100 a barrel?

   16. GNGarry Nolan1:00:32

       Right. Right. Don't get me started and-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:00:34

       Don't get me started either.

   18. GNGarry Nolan1:00:36

       Yeah. No, but I mean, uh, that, that, again, my optimism is that, you know, with enough push and pull, uh, AI will enable us to, uh-... move towards a post-scarcity environment.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:00:52

       I think so, too, and I think in doing so, it'll expose vampires. Because the resistance to-

   20. GNGarry Nolan1:00:58

       Yes.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:00:59

       ... exposing this is going to be fantastic.

   22. GNGarry Nolan1:01:01

       Right, right. Which is-

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:02

       And it's gonna be very interesting to watch, because, uh, th- they have no choice but to be transparent.

   24. GNGarry Nolan1:01:07

       And they have no choice but to start using AI. So you're gonna see-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:10

       Ugh. (laughs)

   26. GNGarry Nolan1:01:11

       ... AI is going to be inc- inculcating itself across society in various ways, where it becomes indispensable.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:17

       Mm-hmm.

   28. GNGarry Nolan1:01:18

       And then it will start to move up the food chain, where eventually even the CEO, who's probably, you know, the psychopath-in-chiefs-

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:25

       Right.

   30. GNGarry Nolan1:01:25

       ... uh, or CEOs. I mean, we know that the studies have shown that-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:21:04

   Right. …

   1. GNGarry Nolan1:15:00

      around and I said, "Oh, UFOs, that's kind of cool." Um, I'm, you know, I read nothing but sci-fi.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:05

      Right.

   3. GNGarry Nolan1:15:05

      I mean, I'm, you know, pathetically narrow-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:08

      (laughs)

   5. GNGarry Nolan1:15:08

      ... in that sense. Um, and so I followed, you know, I, I followed the usual kinds of things that you would see on the early days of YouTube. And I came across this thing called the Atacama mummy. Y- you probably know that little, that little mummy that was claimed to be, uh, an alien baby.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:24

      Is this the Peruvian one?

   7. GNGarry Nolan1:15:26

      Yes. It was ... no, it was ch- uh, Chilean. This was-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:15:28

      Oh, okay. So this is the original one?

   9. GNGarry Nolan1:15:30

      The original one.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:15:31

       Okay.

   11. GNGarry Nolan1:15:31

       Long ago. And so I reached out to the people who were claiming to represent the owner of the thing, and I said-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:15:36

       What year was this?

   13. GNGarry Nolan1:15:38

       2010, 2011. And I said, "Hey, I can tell you what it is. Why don't you ... you know, I can tell you if it's human or not if you would get me a piece of it's ... uh, you know, first of all, send me some X-rays of the thing." So I did ... the first thing I did with those X-rays was, it turned out that at Stanford we had th- the world's expert who wrote the book on pediatric bone disorders.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:16:00

       Mm.

   15. GNGarry Nolan1:16:00

       And I brought it to him and I said, "What do you think this is?" And he said, "Hmm, well, I haven't really seen this before, but it could be this gene, this gene, this gene," et cetera. He said, "But here's ..." oh, there it is.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:16:11

       There it is.

   17. GNGarry Nolan1:16:12

       There it is. Um, yeah. And, um, and so yeah, it looks weird, doesn't it?

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:16:19

       Super.

   19. GNGarry Nolan1:16:19

       And so, um, e- and so the expert told me, "Okay, I need this view of an X-ray, this view, this view, this view." And so we got that and he came back and he said, "Okay, well, you know, we need to get some DNA sequencing," he said. I said, "Okay." So we got a piece of the bone from actually the rib, and the rib was important to use because that would be, I felt, an area that would be least likely to be contaminated by bacterial, you know, cont- you know, degradation. And so I got a little bit of bone marrow out and I did the sequencing. Uh, long story short, I had to bring in ... once I'd done that, there was a lot of DNA that didn't make sense, but it was, it's old DNA. It wasn't that old actually, but it was degraded. So I had to bring in experts at Stanford who knew how to fix th- the degradation. And then I had to bring in an expert in South American genetics, who also happened to be at Stanford. And then we brought in a team of students. And then I brought in Roche, uh, Diagnostics. I had sold a sequencing company to Roche, uh, about two, a few years earlier. So I brought in the team that actually knew how to help me assemble the genome. And then we published a paper which said it's human, uh, it was l- uh, a female, and here are some mutations that it might, that might explain what it looked like. They did have some mutations in, in gene. And then the UFO community hated me because I had disproven th- that as not being a baby, uh, not being an alien. But of course, that picture that you showed, I mean, it was worldwide news and literally the title of one of the things is Stanford Scientist Sequences Alien Baby.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:18:04

       Uh. (laughs)

   21. GNGarry Nolan1:18:05

       And so, (laughs) um, you know, and so, uh, but the paper stands the test of time. Nobody's disproven what it is that I showed, despite the fact that some people want to say that I was a CIA plant and I was paid off by the CIA, et cetera.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:18:20

       Uh, of course.

   23. GNGarry Nolan1:18:22

       But what, what that had done was, I- that I didn't realize, but I'd kind of hoped, was that it sent up a flag, um, to a scientific community that already existed that I wasn't aware of, of scientists who were deeply involved with the government in the analysis of UAP that I wasn't privy to. And so literally about a month after, uh, the, um, the j- the, uh, movie came out about that thing, uh-... I got a knock at my door, um, and it was representative of the CIA and an aerospace company, unannounced, and they said, "We wanna talk to you." (sniffs) And they wanted, um, my help with a number of, uh, military and diplomatic personnel who'd been, they claimed, harmed by things. Uh, they'd either heard stuff, et cetera and long story short, the majority of the 100 or so people that I had privy to their medical records ended up being the first of the Havana Syndrome patients.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:19:30

       Ah.

   25. GNGarry Nolan1:19:31

       Um, they'd heard things in their head, et cetera, but what they had done was they had shown me the data literally that day in my office. They brought out the MRIs, they brought out the X-rays and the damage in the brain, et cetera. It was clear. I mean, it wasn't... it was not just data. It was evidence that something had happened. Uh, it wasn't somebody's story. It was evidence, um, that was repeatable. Um, and so that took us about three or four years to figure out what they were and it was at about the time that actually the Havana events were occurring, that we realized that all the symptoms of what it is that we were seeing in this group of patients were matching what it was that the Havana Syndrome individuals had. So in a way, that was good, because that meant that those 90 or so patients who matched, we could hand over to the national security people and, you know, it became a real thing. And now there's like a DOD website that has anomalous health incidents where people can come forward and report the stuff that they've got, and here is the ways you can use the Veterans Administration to seek medical help. Whereas previously, they'd been shooed away as, "We don't wanna hear about this."

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:20:40

       What do they think it is?

   27. GNGarry Nolan1:20:42

       It's an energy weapon of some kind, a microwave or other energy ... or gamma energy weapon. And that sounds ... okay, that sounds crazy, except no one would admit or no one would deny that we have the capability to do it. It's basically if, if you take the front off your microwave and turn it on and put your face near it, you'll get burned. So this is just a way to direct the microwaves or sound waves-

Episode duration: 2:37:48