Joe Rogan Experience #2465 - Michael Shellenberger

1. SPSpeaker0:00

   [upbeat music] Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

2. JRJoe Rogan0:04

   The Joe Rogan Experience.

3. SPSpeaker0:06

   Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. [upbeat music]

4. JRJoe Rogan0:12

   Good to see you, sir.

5. MSMichael Shellenberger0:13

   Thanks for having me back.

6. JRJoe Rogan0:14

   My pleasure.

7. MSMichael Shellenberger0:14

   Nice.

8. JRJoe Rogan0:14

   Always.

9. MSMichael Shellenberger0:15

   Yeah.

10. JRJoe Rogan0:15

    So much crazy shit going on in the world.

11. MSMichael Shellenberger0:19

    Yeah.

12. JRJoe Rogan0:19

    Even, and even before we scheduled this, like, uh, m- more crazy stuff has happened. The war broke out, all kinds of things.

13. MSMichael Shellenberger0:26

    Yeah. How are you, uh, how are you feeling about the President Trump?

14. JRJoe Rogan0:31

    That's an open-ended question.

15. MSMichael Shellenberger0:32

    [laughs]

16. JRJoe Rogan0:33

    Um-

17. MSMichael Shellenberger0:34

    Do you text with him and talk to him?

18. JRJoe Rogan0:35

    Occasionally. Yeah, occasionally he'll send me a text. I g- I get these, like, Truth Social posts of, uh, you know, things that he's saying. But this whole fucking Iran thing, man, like, did you see this coming?

19. MSMichael Shellenberger0:50

    No. [sighs] Definitely. I don't know. I mean, who did? Uh, I mean, when did he even decide? You know, their national security strategy they put out in November basically just said, "We've degraded their capacity. It's a win." There was no sense in which there would be additional action. I think it ushers in a new paradigm completely. The older post-war era is just over. Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, articulated at the World Economic Forum probably better than the Trump administration did, saying very clearly that older rules-based order is gone. You saw AOC try to sort of articulate it, but she sort of fell apart at the Munich Security Conference in F- in February. So this is an administration that is... I mean, and I don't even think they're thinking. I wrote a piece, and I decided not to publish it because I was sort of like, decapitation doesn't really work for regime change. But it's not clear that they're really out for regime change, or they're just asserting power, shaking up things. I mean, some of it's art of the deal, changing the person that we're negotiating with. That's Venezuela and Iran. Is it really gonna change those regimes? I don't, I don't think most people don't think so, but that, I'm not sure that that's what they're going for. They're just going for an assertion of American power in service of American interests, and then what happens in Iran, what happens in Venezuela, I don't think they care that much about. At least they're not behaving as though they do.

20. JRJoe Rogan2:09

    Well, the, none, neither thing made any sense to me. The Venezuela thing, uh, I mean, look, they wanted him out forever, and he d- he definitely stole the election to get in there in the first place, and he was a dictator, but at least that one was at least c- clean. They go in, kidnap him, get him out. This one's nuts, like, and what's happening in Tel Aviv. It's, it's hard to know what's real and what's not because there's a lot of, uh, fake video going around and a lot of weird posts on X, so it's, you know, when I do peek in, it's hard to know, and you have to listen to Grok, and then G- Grok's d- dismantling a lot of the, uh, fake videos.

21. MSMichael Shellenberger2:50

    Mm-hmm. What, what, what are the fake videos that you're thinking of in Tel Aviv?

22. JRJoe Rogan2:52

    There's just, like, fake, fake videos of, you know, a, like, an insane amount of bombs dropping down on the city.

23. MSMichael Shellenberger2:59

    Mm.

24. JRJoe Rogan2:59

    But it seems like there's a massive amount of destruction in Tel Aviv.

25. MSMichael Shellenberger3:03

    Yeah, I haven't checked in lately, but I'm assuming. Was that just today or?

26. JRJoe Rogan3:06

    Yesterday.

27. MSMichael Shellenberger3:07

    Yeah.

28. JRJoe Rogan3:08

    Yeah.

29. MSMichael Shellenberger3:09

    Um-

30. JRJoe Rogan3:10

    Yeah

Episode duration: 2:57:20