Joe Rogan Experience #2465 - Michael Shellenberger

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Joe Rogan 0:12 Good to see you, sir.

Michael Shellenberger 0:13 Thanks for having me back.

Joe Rogan 0:14 My pleasure.

Michael Shellenberger 0:14 Nice.

Joe Rogan 0:14 Always.

Michael Shellenberger 0:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:15 So much crazy shit going on in the world.

Michael Shellenberger 0:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:19 Even, and even before we scheduled this, like, uh, m- more crazy stuff has happened. The war broke out, all kinds of things.

Michael Shellenberger 0:26 Yeah. How are you, uh, how are you feeling about the President Trump?

Joe Rogan 0:31 That's an open-ended question.

Michael Shellenberger 0:32 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 0:33 Um-

Michael Shellenberger 0:34 Do you text with him and talk to him?

Joe Rogan 0:35 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?

Michael Shellenberger 0:50 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.

Joe Rogan 2:09 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.

Michael Shellenberger 2:50 Mm-hmm. What, what, what are the fake videos that you're thinking of in Tel Aviv?

Joe Rogan 2:52 There's just, like, fake, fake videos of, you know, a, like, an insane amount of bombs dropping down on the city.

Michael Shellenberger 2:59 Mm.

Joe Rogan 2:59 But it seems like there's a massive amount of destruction in Tel Aviv.

Michael Shellenberger 3:03 Yeah, I haven't checked in lately, but I'm assuming. Was that just today or?

Joe Rogan 3:06 Yesterday.

Michael Shellenberger 3:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:08 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 3:09 Um-

Joe Rogan 3:10 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 3:10 ... I mean, I think the president is... There's been some dis- you know, Rubio said something about how, "Oh, we had to act 'cause we knew that Israel was gonna act anyway," and I think people interpreted... And then Netanyahu's in the White House a lot. This, I think this president has shown, f- whether you like him or not, you know, and there's certainly things that I'm unhappy about and have criticized, but I think Trump is in charge. Like, he's making these decisions. There's nobody behind him. There's nobody, there's nobody pulling. For all of that, you know, the Russians or whoever, some, you know, or these, now the Israelis, you know, it's just he's clearly... I mean, Elon gave him, you know, $250 million, and he still, you know, he didn't give him even the electric car credit, you know? [chuckles] Like, like, Trump is in charge, you know? Like, I think that's one of the big lessons from this, and I don't think that... I think that means that there's not a lot of, like, second order thinking here. Like, "Oh, what's the move after that?" He doesn't know. He's just acting. That's what's so wild about it, is that this older foreign policy establishment which, you know, was like, "Let the experts decide what the right foreign pol..." You know, all these think tanks, that's just gone now. It's just irrelevant in this presidency, and I don't think it'll come back. Like, if you get a Gavin Newsom or a President AOC-

Joe Rogan 4:15 What? [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 4:15 ... I don't-

Joe Rogan 4:16 President who?

Michael Shellenberger 4:17 [laughs] I don't think, yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:18 For real?

Michael Shellenberger 4:19 I mean, I think she... For a minute, before d- before Munich.

Joe Rogan 4:21 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 4:21 But I don't think it's gonna come back, and I think that that's what the prime minister of Canada realized. I think that's what the Europeans are starting to realize, is that this is a completely different world that we live in than the one we lived in just a couple of years ago.

Joe Rogan 4:32 Which just doesn't make any sense to me, unless we're acting on someone else's interests, like particularly Israel's interests. It does- just didn't make any sense to me. Like, if they had supposedly dismantled their chances of making the nuclear bomb, whether or not that's true or... I mean, it's so hard to know.

Michael Shellenberger 4:49 He was unsatisfied, and just like, he was like, "I'm not getting anywhere in these [chuckles] negotiations, and I'm gonna replace the person I'm negotiating with." It's, it's just, you know, sh- turn over the table, like, change things up. You're not getting anywhere. And you could crit- you could say he was too impatient. He sh- I mean, their view was the Democrats were too patient with Iran. They kept trying with Iran. Iran, they weren't giving them what they wanted. I'm not defending it. I'm just saying th- I think that's what explains it. They, they haven't done a very good job explaining it because I think that it just sounds, to some extent, like what it is, which is that it's, they're acting without... They're sort of like, "Well, does it result in regime change in Iran? We don't know. They might say that we want that or whatever," but that's not ultimately... They're not, they're not acting on the basis of achieving regime change.

Joe Rogan 5:33 Which just seems so insane based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on no more wars, end these stupid, senseless wars, and then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it.

Michael Shellenberger 5:49 Well, but he said he's against endless wars.

Joe Rogan 5:52 Well, they're all-

Michael Shellenberger 5:52 Running against endless wars

Joe Rogan 5:53 ... listen, man. They're all endless.

Michael Shellenberger 5:54 Well, if we ever-

Joe Rogan 5:55 Do, did you ever hear Rumsfeld talk about Iraq when it first happened?

Michael Shellenberger 5:58 Tell me.

Joe Rogan 5:59 They w- they were talking about, like, six weeks. Six weeks.

Michael Shellenberger 6:01 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:02 Six weeks.

Michael Shellenberger 6:04 Yeah, but they put, uh, that was ground force, and I know that they've not ruled that out. For me, that would be-

Joe Rogan 6:09 They have?

Michael Shellenberger 6:10 Um, they have not.

Joe Rogan 6:11 Oh, okay. Got it.

Michael Shellenberger 6:11 My understanding is that they have not. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:12 I thought you said in now.

Michael Shellenberger 6:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:14 Have now.

Michael Shellenberger 6:14 No. Um, but they don't seem eager to go into... I mean, my... I, I criticize the Venezuela, uh, action because I sort of was like, "How are you possibly gonna run Venezuela?" And then I think a little bit more time passed and I was like, "Oh, they're not, they're not gonna try to run Venezuela. Like, that's not what this is." Um, they wanted to get-

Joe Rogan 6:31 No, they just wanted to take over the oil.

Michael Shellenberger 6:33 Yeah, and, and even there, I mean, the oil, it's not significant at any global level. I don't... It's hard... I don't even think it's really about the oil. I don't think it's about the oil. I don't think it's about the oil in Iran either.

Joe Rogan 6:42 Well, the oil reserves are significant. It's just the, the type of oil and how to extract it is extremely difficult.

Michael Shellenberger 6:49 Oh, it's the worst, Joe. It's in the am- Like, the big, uh, big abundant reserves are in the Amazon, so you're talking about... What a nightmare. It's super far away. It's terrible. You had a guerrilla conflict. If you had a guerrilla conflict break out around those oil facilities, I mean, it's already more expensive 'cause you have to heat up that particular type of... It's, you know, it's really heavy oils. To heat it up to get it out of the ground, then you have to heat it to transport. It's a total nightmare. I just... I mean, and as a conservationist, I would say [laughs] that would be the last place I'd want to see us getting oil from. There's a lot of other places that have, have oil. We shouldn't be going into the Amazon.

Joe Rogan 7:22 So what, if anything, makes sense to you about this attack in Iran?

Michael Shellenberger 7:29 I don't know that it... I'm, I'm not, I'm not sure what I think of it. I mean, I don't, I don't like it. I don't like... I mean, the whole older system was that you had this international... US Security Council would have to agree. The Congress would have to agree. That's all gone now. I mean, it's just a totally different... This guy is just acting. You know, he says he's not getting where they want to get in the negotiations with the Iranians, so he says, "We have some leverage over you, and we're gonna use it." Similarly-

Joe Rogan 7:54 But clearly Israel wanted this for a long time.

Michael Shellenberger 7:56 Israel has its own motivations, I think.

Joe Rogan 7:58 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 7:58 But I don't think... I think it's not quite accurate to say that... I just don't think Tr- I think all the evidence shows that Trump is his own man, and he is the president, and, like, literally he couldn't even give bat- he couldn't even give Elon the battery subsidy that he wanted. You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 8:12 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 8:12 It's like-

Joe Rogan 8:12 I get that. But-

Michael Shellenberger 8:13 It's... I've never seen a poli- I mean, I've never seen a politician act that independently. That's... I mean, a pol- a president act that independently. So I'm skeptical of... I mean, I think that, I think that Rubio was sort of like, "Well, they were gonna attack, and so we had to..." You know, there's some of that, but I just think Trump's doing what he wants to do, and we should-

Joe Rogan 8:32 You really think it's that simple? Trump's doing what he wants to do, and that's it?

Michael Shellenberger 8:35 Yes. Yes. And-

Joe Rogan 8:35 You don't think people are influencing him? 'Cause there's a lot of war hawks around him, right? There's a lot of people that want this-

Michael Shellenberger 8:40 And yeah, Tucker was in there, right

Joe Rogan 8:41 ... and have for a long time.

Michael Shellenberger 8:42 I mean, Netanyahu's in there, but then Tucker was in there a bunch-

Joe Rogan 8:45 But do you think that-

Michael Shellenberger 8:45 ... making the case against it

Joe Rogan 8:46 ... Tucker has the kind of influence that Netanyahu has?

Michael Shellenberger 8:49 Well, I mean, I guess if you just base it on the outcome, then the answer is no. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 8:52 No. [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 8:54 Um, but that's what I'm saying, I just think... I think he listens to everybody, but I just don't think it's... Russians aren't behind him. Israelis... I mean, Trump is... Look what he's been through. I mean, he's, you know, he's got where he is. There's no way he's gonna... They don't have anything on him. That's, that's my opinion.

Joe Rogan 9:07 How do you know that?

Michael Shellenberger 9:08 I don't think they have anything on him.

Joe Rogan 9:09 But how do you know that?

Michael Shellenberger 9:09 He has to behave that way.

Joe Rogan 9:10 What if they could? What if-

Michael Shellenberger 9:11 Well, they could, but I'm not... We don't see any evidence for it.

Joe Rogan 9:13 Well, you wouldn't see any evidence until it broke out.

Michael Shellenberger 9:16 Sure.

Joe Rogan 9:16 Until they released it.

Michael Shellenberger 9:17 Yeah. And, and... Well, we'll get it... Well, I'm sure we'll get into Epstein, but I mean, I just think when you don't have evidence of something, then you can't assume that it's happening. Um, I haven't seen any evi- I've seen evidence that Trump is fully independent with... Particularly this case of Elon s- surprised me. I would've thought, at a minimum, you'd give your largest campaign contributor the one thing he wants. Um, I mean, DOGE was something he wanted too, but... And then I look at Iran, and I kinda go, you know, Trump has always wanted... I mean, Trump has been criti- he said he doesn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon for a really long time. I c- I don't know the exact date, but certainly-

Joe Rogan 9:51 Well, no one wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon other than Iran, right?

Michael Shellenberger 9:55 Yeah. Um, I think that the-

Joe Rogan 9:57 Or their allies

Michael Shellenberger 9:57 ... he was... He also... Put it this way. He was also critical of the Democrats' approach, which was the sort of the mainstream IAEA-approved approach because, of, of course, under international law, Iran has the right to a nuclear, uh, to nuclear energy and to nuclear facilities, including nuclear re- uh, nuclear, uh, sanfr- the centrifuges and the enrichment. Iran has the right to all that under international law, and so... And Trump doesn't agree with that, and he's not gonna let international law get in his way.

Joe Rogan 10:22 So y- when you say he has a right to it, you're talking just about nuclear power.

Michael Shellenberger 10:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:27 Right?

Michael Shellenberger 10:27 Right. But that includes enrichment, so, you know, we would-

Joe Rogan 10:30 To a certain point.

Michael Shellenberger 10:31 Right. Right, but they-

Joe Rogan 10:32 'Cause they've already surpassed that point, right?

Michael Shellenberger 10:34 Yeah, and I, I believe, I [laughs] ... You know, if I'm wrong, I'll correct it on X, but, uh, I don't think it specifies the level of enrichment is part of the issue, and then you've got these centrifuges, and so it's all been a cat and mouse game. I personally do not doubt for a minute that Iran wants nuclear weapons, and that's what's been going on. I think most people think that, but the Obama administration was like, "We can do s- you know, we can lift sanctions in exchange for controlling their nuclear program." Trump has not, for a very long time, agreed with that approach. I think he was criticizing it for many years before 2016, before he decided to run, but, um, definitely for the last 10 years.

Joe Rogan 11:06 Did you, um, read the thing today that came out that they're, they're discussing some sort of elite transmission that seems to be, uh, an activation of terror cells?

Michael Shellenberger 11:18 Iranians have?

Joe Rogan 11:19 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 11:19 I'm not s- no, but I'm not surprised.

Joe Rogan 11:21 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 11:22 Sounds bad. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 11:23 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 11:23 That's one of the things that obviously... That was the first thing I thought of was like, "Oh, great, are we gonna get a bunch of Iranian suicide bombers in the United States now?" It's obviously-

Joe Rogan 11:32 Well, I don't know if it's gonna be suicide bombers, but I would imagine it would be something a little bit more destructive than that.

Michael Shellenberger 11:38 Could be. Um, I don't know what they can get in. I mean, there's... Sean Ryan's been having folks on that say that-

Joe Rogan 11:44 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 11:44 ... people are getting in with, with heavy artillery. I just don't know the status of it. Um-

Joe Rogan 11:48 Well, the real problem is-

Michael Shellenberger 11:50 They can do a lo-

Joe Rogan 11:50 ... for four years, the border was wide open.

Michael Shellenberger 11:53 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:53 And definitely some people from the Middle East got through, and we have no idea, like, what is wai- I mean, I mean, I'm sure there's some intelligence agencies that have an understanding of what the threat is.

Michael Shellenberger 12:07 I hope so. I mean, I think we see that these terrorists are able to do an incredible amount of damage with pretty simple rifles. You know, and sometimes, uh, was it the French, uh, the, the club, the, um, that particular terrorist action, there were other people that were using bombs that, like, only killed one or two people, but the guys with the machine guns were able to gun down, like, dozens of people. So certainly it's ter- that's scary. I think w- none of us want-- I think that's where a lot of Americans, when it happened, the reason so many people were against it, I believe a majority is against it, is because you're like, "Great, what are we..." You know, f-first of all, is it gonna be another endless war? And second of all, are we gonna get a bunch of terrorist, um, actions here? I think if we did, I don't think support for the war goes up. I think it goes down.

Joe Rogan 12:46 Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's just such a fuck... It, it mean, the whole, the whole situation internationally has been so tense already with what's going on in Gaza, with what's going on in Ukraine. It's like, and to add this to the pile, it's like... I mean, it, it genuinely feels like there's a real possibility that we might be entering World War III.

Michael Shellenberger 13:15 How would that... What would that look like?

Joe Rogan 13:17 Psh, I don't know. I, well, I never expected Iran to start attacking. You know, they, they launched bombs into UAE, Dubai. I mean, where else? There's gonna be a couple other places.

Michael Shellenberger 13:29 I think they expected that, though, right?

Joe Rogan 13:30 Really?

Michael Shellenberger 13:30 I mean, it makes Iran look... Iran looks pretty isolated. I mean, I will say, you know, I was totally, obviously, [chuckles] maybe not obviously, but very much on the left and was opposed to all the stuff Reagan was doing. I remember-

Joe Rogan 13:40 Mm-hmm

Michael Shellenberger 13:40 ... even, even in the '80s. But it's like he really did... I'm not gonna say he was the maj- the only reason. There was obviously a bunch of weakening within. But I mean, he really did push back against communism. He challenged the entire foreign policy establishment on the basic view of just, um, you know, of just, of just kind of keeping it, you know, keeping the, keeping the communists where they were. And instead, Reagan really pushed back against it and said, "There's gotta be regime change." It was sort of almost at a moral... Certainly, there was a defense buildup, but a moral argument, and I think it had a big impact, um, and to bring down communism. So I'm... You know, the Iranian, it's, it's... I'm, I'm, obviously have very mixed feelings about it. The Iranian regime is just so evil and so awful that, you know, you're, you're, you're... Every time you see videos of people taking these courageous actions, you're like, "Somebody bring that regime down." On the other hand, that country is pretty... The fo- the people of that country are pretty radical, and the Shah in 1979, I just spent last night watching all the old, old "60 Minutes" from the '70s. They're amazing. But the, the Shah was really modernizing the country. There was a lot of wealth coming in. There was a lot of more inequality. There was also a lot more state repression, uh, from his intelligence services. Uh, but the country was, you know, full of radical Muslims who wanted, you know, that when all that instability, they wanted to revert back to, you know, a radical Islamicist regime, and that's still... Now, I've seen other estimates that say that, you know, the current regime is incredibly unpopular in Iran, but, you know, how that works out, it's really hard to say. But there is something... I, I caution my own... I, I talk back to my own anti-interventionist instincts when I think about Reagan just being like, "You know, we're not gonna do just containment strategy anymore. We're actually gonna talk back to communism because people deserve to be free." And, uh, now is everything better for... You know, is everything fine in Russia? Maybe not, but I mean, communism was just awful, you know, just a totally soul-killing, you know, crushing, you know, a giant lie. I mean, it's awful totalitarianism. So I think we have to kinda keep that in mind, and especially when you're in a moment of just such incredible chaos like we're in now. I tell my students, I'm like, "You get to live through one of the most interesting moments in history, certainly in the last 80 years," because the entire paradigm where the United States had these allies, and everything's gonna go through the Security Council, and we're gonna try to make it through the UN, and there's gotta get agreements and all this stuff, that's just gone. I mean, it's just, it's gone to the part where they don't even... Where you're kinda like, "How are you... What's gonna happen inside Iran?" They're like, "That's not our concern. We hope that there's a, an overthrow of the government, but they're, they're not, we're not, like, gonna necessarily commit to that."

Joe Rogan 16:09 Well, they're also calling on the people to rise up, which is... You know, I mean, look, look at what they did with the protesters. I mean, they killed thousands of people.

Michael Shellenberger 16:21 And look at Iran and Venezuela, they don't have internal... The, the opposition is not united. There's not a united opposition with a united figure. I mean, remember, it was so interesting watching '79 when these protests against the Shah were going on. They're, the, the left and the Islamicists made an alliance in Iran, something I'm very... It's something really interesting topic I st- only starting to explore right now, but they made an alliance. So they'd be holding up Ayat- you know, they'd be holding up the Ayatollah Khomeini pictures in the street. Like, they had their guy. And the left was like, "Look, we're just gonna, you know, go with this guy." I think he was making promises to the left around allowing, you know, more, you know, liberalism, and then they came in and just consolidated into this really hard-line Islamicist regime. But they had a guy. We don't have... They don't... You know, we don't have a guy in, in Venezuela. We don't have a guy in Iran. I don't know if there's anybody in Cuba really. You know, the... In the older regime under, like, the Biden, the open society people, the open society establishment, they had somebody for Venezuela, this Machado woman. But Trump gets up there, and he just goes, "Yeah, she doesn't have enough support, so she's not with us. Gone." You know? [chuckles] Like, they recognize that they don't have... There's nobody with a opposition, you know, street cred that can come into power, so I think they... And they know that. They're not, like, unaware of that. So I think some of the, like, "Oh, they should rise up," and whatever, it's a little half-hearted. I don't know that they believe that that's gonna happen. They're certainly not... They don't seem to be offering them, you know, material support.

Joe Rogan 17:42 Right. So it's just a symbolic gesture to talk about it.

Michael Shellenberger 17:47 Sounds like it. And I mean, I, in this kind of the, this beautiful collapse of communism, which occurred so peacefully with the Berlin Wall and the guard, eventually just sort of like it's just in the vibes.

Joe Rogan 17:57 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 17:57 And the guards are just like, "Yeah, we're not guarding this wall anymore, and it's just over," you know? And it was just over, and it was like a-

Joe Rogan 18:02 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 18:02 ... it was a kind of like a moral collapse. I'm not so sure that they're gonna get that in Iran. Doesn't seem like it.

Joe Rogan 18:08 It seems like they've been preparing for this for a long time.

Michael Shellenberger 18:11 The Iranians?

Joe Rogan 18:12 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 18:13 They're dug in, now it's the son, and he's just part of the-- he represents the, uh, the, obviously the IGRC, the, um, the, the security forces. I mean, it's their guy. I mean, it's what you would do. It's rally around the flag. It's classic what happens. And so... But, you know, never, you, you never know. I mean, these guys then might just negotiate more what the Trump administration wants, and I think the Trump administration is like, "We'll just keep killing your leaders until we get somebody in there that will make a deal with us." [chuckles] I think that's, I think that's how Trump thinks about it.

Joe Rogan 18:42 Really?

Michael Shellenberger 18:42 That's my, that's my best guess.

Joe Rogan 18:45 You're smiling. Do you think this is-

Michael Shellenberger 18:47 'Cause it's funny. Because it's funny because it's, it's so... Tr-Joe, it's just like you just look at all the think tanks and all the white papers and the State Department and the planning and whatever, and it's just like Trump's just... He's gonna listen to Tucker, he's gonna listen to Netanyahu [chuckles] and he's gonna decide what to do.

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Michael Shellenberger 20:04 I don't know if it's good. I mean, um, I just- we don't know yet. I mean, I think part of it is, is it gonna work? Part of you goes, "Is it moral?" And you're like, "Well, but does it, does it work to make-- have better outcomes?" I don't know. We're in a realm of absolute chaos right now, honestly.

Joe Rogan 20:17 We're also in a realm where AI is going to be powering autonomous weapons, if not already.

Michael Shellenberger 20:23 I mean, that, I mean, that is going on. That is so interesting, this thing with Anthropic and the DoD and what's happening there. That is really interesting.

Joe Rogan 20:31 So initially Anthropic was hesitant to allow them to use autonomous weapons, right?

Michael Shellenberger 20:36 I don't know the status of it, but you saw the OpenAI, the head of OpenAI Autonomous, uh, it was au- she was the head of autonomous weapons, I think. I'm not... Don't, don't get me exactly right. But she just quit like a couple of days ago. It was on X, and it was just like a huge story. So you have a bunch of... You have a s- you have, you have a, a rift in between... Now I'm, now I think, um, you know, Sam and Elon are both on board and wanna keep working with the DoD, but it looks like Anthropic broke and, you know, and then it, and then Hegseth was like, "Well, but then we're gonna punish you for this." [chuckles] Uh, that's very consistent with a kinda nationalist vision, which is that, which the Trump administration has, which is that your security strategy, your economic strategy, your border strategy, it's all a sing- your industrial strategy, it's all a single thing. Your trade strategy, it's all a single thing. And I think for Trump it's just you're either asserting power and dema- and using your leverage and demanding more, or you're engaged in managed decline. You're just giving up, you know? And I, part of me, I'm of mixed minds on it because on the one hand, I'm with the kind of... I kinda go, "Let's invest at home. We have all the, you know, we have skid row to clean up. You know, uh, we should be focused on that, not on trying to do regime change or bombing other countries or creating other problems." On the other hand, I think there's something right about defending the West. I mean, defending Western civilization, you know? Uh, defending our s- our institutions, our norms, our liberal values, and, and nobody's done that. And we just had a guy in power that was, that opened our borders, that kinda gave a blank check to Ukraine. It seems like at a minimum with Trump you have somebody that is taking responsibility in ways where Biden would be like, "Well, we're gonna do what the, you know, we're gonna work with our allies," and it was just all kind of... Like, it was like, it was all kinda gonna be decided in this, in this, you know, what Curtis Yarvin famously calls the cathedral. You know, just the, the, the single thing of the media and the think tanks and the academics and, and Trump was like, "It's not working, and the working class, uh, of this country elected me to, to show strength and to demand a better return on our investment in terms of protecting our allies for our people." So that part of it I think is really overdue and really necessary, an assertion of why the West is special, why we need to defend the West. Um, is bombing Iran and replacing the, you know, the Khomeini with his son is... Mashad, you know, is what's happening in Venezuela, is that the right approach to that? I don't know. But I think we were... The system was, was failing. I mean, the open society system, which is supposed to be this liberal, you know, uh, you know, system of tolerance, it became intolerant. It became totalitarian. It created a censorship-industrial complex. They, they weaponized the intelligence communities. We, you know, started getting ourselves into conflicts that we... that was not clear why we were in them, including Venezuel- I mean, sorry, including, um, Ukraine. I mean, with Ukraine it's like that war only continues because we continue to, to arm it. Like, if we stopped, if we just were like, "Let's just have the... Just, you know, just cut a deal wherever the border is right now," and you're just like, "That's where it's gonna stop," then you can... I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure what's preventing that from Trump. I think he's annoyed with Putin, but yeah, I mean, my view is, like, I don't see an interest in that war, um, continuing. I don't know how it's in the interest of the working, of working-class Americans or Americans, and I have the same questions about Iran and Venezuela and Cuba, but I think that is a totally different paradigm than the one that we had from 1945 to 2024.

Joe Rogan 24:07 But the, the idea of tolerance for, you know, with the last administration, that seems just to be a narrative. I, it, it seemed to be a political strategy of keeping the borders open to in- in- increase populations in blue states, raise the census, get more congressional seats, and then a path to citizenship where you'd have permanent voters. That's what it seems like. And then there's also a ton of Medicaid fraud that's wrapped up in that that we're now seeing.

Michael Shellenberger 24:34 Yeah, I think that's part of it. I mean, there were-- The Times did a piece on why Biden left the borders open, and it was a-

Joe Rogan 24:40 What was their...

Michael Shellenberger 24:41 It was a funny piece. Like, there was this... It, it was... You know, part of it, he's so out of it, right? Like, there were just... It was not clear, like, there wasn't clear there was, like, a meeting where he was like, "Yeah, we're gonna just do this thing." They kind of concluded that, uh, I think Cecilia Muñoz, who's one of the, um, more moderate advocates and was in the Obama administration, I think she said something like, "Biden just wanted to give the left... just felt like he wanted to give the left what they wanted," and that's what, you know, the Soros think tanks and the, you know, the prog- the very progressive immigration groups have been ad- you know, have been advocating. He did the same thing on climate, so it makes sense. I know Elon talks a lot about how, oh, it's about importing voters and whatnot. Maybe, um, but it's not even clear that that's a good- that's a strategy that's gonna work. You know-

Joe Rogan 25:23 Why not?

Michael Shellenberger 25:24 Well, because first of all, we don't know that Latinos... Like, why are like... Why do we assume Latinos are all gonna, you know, vote for Democrats?

Joe Rogan 25:31 Well, if you've got them all on Medicaid and Social Security.

Michael Shellenberger 25:36 The numbers there are... It's, it's actually more compli- Europe is definitely the case that you have higher rates of crime and higher rates of social services among migrants. Here are y- Latino migrants traditionally, you know, be, you know, really thrive. You know, they do much better than, than the mostly Muslim immigrants in Europe. Um, so I, you know, I'm skept- I mean, the other thing I... The other statistic that I learned, uh, from David Shore, who's, like, the, one of the top Democrat pollsters, when he was talking to Ezra Klein after the 2024 elections, he was like, "If all eligible voters had voted, Trump would've won by three percentage points rather than 1.5." So it's also... So I always think it's kind of funny 'cause the Republicans are always, like, trying to make it harder for people to vote, but under that calculation anyway, and maybe it's just Trump, maybe other Republicans won't go do it-

Joe Rogan 26:23 When you say harder for people to vote, y- what do you mean? You mean mail-in voting?

Michael Shellenberger 26:27 Just... Yeah, just the whole effort to-

Joe Rogan 26:28 Yeah, but that's... But the problem-

Michael Shellenberger 26:29 Yeah

Joe Rogan 26:29 ... is mail-in voting has always been a f- vector for fraud.

Michael Shellenberger 26:35 Uh, that's... It may be. I don't know how much of it there is. Um, I've seen different things on it.

Joe Rogan 26:39 That, that goes back, like, decades, people-

Michael Shellenberger 26:41 Yeah

Joe Rogan 26:41 ... have been talking about mail-in voting just being too open to fraud.

Michael Shellenberger 26:45 Well, but then the, but then... Maybe, but then the question is, does it really benefit [laughs] ... I mean, in other words, if David Shore is right, if everybody who could vote had voted, Trump would've won, like, basically by twice the margin.

Joe Rogan 26:57 Yeah. Well, I don't know if that's necessarily true, but when I see laws like what California has where you're not allowed to show ID, there's only... I mean, I've tried, tried to find some sort of charitable way where that would make sense other than you wanna open the door for fraud. There's nothing.

Michael Shellenberger 27:13 Well, no.

Joe Rogan 27:13 This, this narrative that they say, "Oh, poor people don't have, like..." You see Kamala Harris [laughs] . They don't-

Michael Shellenberger 27:18 People believe that dude

Joe Rogan 27:18 ... they don't have a Xerox machine, like-

Michael Shellenberger 27:20 No, but Dem- You ever see the thing, I think it was a guy, I don't know if he did it for free press, a guy was going around interviewing, um... Well, first he interviewed liberals at, like, I think UC Berkeley, and he was like, you know, "Do you think that you should have to have an ID to vote?" And they were like, "No, because Black people don't have IDs," and like-

Joe Rogan 27:34 That's just because-

Michael Shellenberger 27:35 And then he goes-

Joe Rogan 27:35 ... they're hearing that on NPR.

Michael Shellenberger 27:36 No, no, I know. Of course, but they believe that.

Joe Rogan 27:38 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 27:38 I mean, but then, uh, the interviewers that saw that, it's an incredible video 'cause then he goes to, like... I think he goes to Harlem or he goes to, like, a Black neighborhood in New York, and he was just ax- asking Black people, he's like, "Do you have an ID on you?" And it was like everybody was like, "Yeah. Like, what's the matter with you?"

Joe Rogan 27:51 Well, it's also we just got done with three years of you need an ID to prove that you have been vaccinated.

Michael Shellenberger 27:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:58 So you need to be able to have that to go to work, to get on a plane-

Michael Shellenberger 28:01 Right

Joe Rogan 28:01 ... to eat at a restaurant. It didn't make any sense.

Michael Shellenberger 28:04 It's-

Joe Rogan 28:04 It was so immediately contradicting what had just gone down, you know, months earlier. It's just stupid.

Michael Shellenberger 28:10 Well, yeah. That was about... That was because the left wanted to control people's behavior.

Joe Rogan 28:14 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 28:14 Um, and on voting they... The, the old... I, I know because I j- when I talk to my progressive friends about it, what, you know, and, and family and friends, it's, it's very much like, "No, we can't put barriers in the way of voting because that's what they did during Jim Crow." I mean, that's where it goes back to. It all goes back to that.

Joe Rogan 28:27 ID is not a barrier. It's just an insurance that you're a citizen while you're voting, and we know that there's fraud.

Michael Shellenberger 28:32 And then they say there's really not much f- they say there's very little fraud.

Joe Rogan 28:35 What is-

Michael Shellenberger 28:36 I'm just telling you what they say. I'm not saying I agree. I'm just saying what they say.

Joe Rogan 28:38 Who is they, though?

Michael Shellenberger 28:39 [laughs] Progressives.

Joe Rogan 28:39 Progressives?

Michael Shellenberger 28:40 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:40 Yeah, but do you believe that? That's horseshit. That's a horseshit-

Michael Shellenberger 28:42 I think they believe it. I'll put it that way.

Joe Rogan 28:44 Really?

Michael Shellenberger 28:44 Yes, I do.

Joe Rogan 28:45 I think they just say it because that's the thing that everybody says. I think it's a groupthink thing.

Michael Shellenberger 28:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:50 I mean, I think if you, uh, you sit down with any rational person and no one's watching, you know-

Michael Shellenberger 28:55 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 28:55 ... there's no cameras on them, and you ask them does that make any sense, no one would say it makes any sense. Most people in this country who are citizens have some form of ID or can get some form of ID.

Michael Shellenberger 29:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:05 And it's entirely reasonable to ask people to prove that you are who you are if you're voting for the president of the United States. That seems pretty reasonable.

Michael Shellenberger 29:14 I'm, I, I, I find it totally reasonable, and I support it. I'm just saying that if you make it-

Joe Rogan 29:19 So how could it-

Michael Shellenberger 29:19 I'm just saying you may... The Republicans may... it may result in outcomes that are not the predictable ones that they think they'll get, just because Trump was at least... And Trump is maybe, you know, a special case, but I mean, he was able to turn out reluctant voters. Like, he motivated people to vote.

Joe Rogan 29:34 Because people were fed up with what had gone on-

Michael Shellenberger 29:36 Yeah

Joe Rogan 29:36 ... in the last four years.

Michael Shellenberger 29:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:37 And I think the open border was the biggest one. I mean, it was one of the biggest ones, 'cause people just felt hopeless, like this is crazy. Like, what you're doing, you're letting in what's equivalent, at least, uh, if you're, if you're just being charitable, it's 10 million people.

Michael Shellenberger 29:55 It was, it was huge.

Joe Rogan 29:56 If you're just being conservative-

Michael Shellenberger 29:57 Right

Joe Rogan 29:57 ... it's 10 times Austin. You let 10 Austins in in four years of people who you have no idea who they are.

Michael Shellenberger 30:06 Yeah, and, and Americans were on board with closing the borders, and then when it came time to actually asking all the, getting those folks to leave that came in, the, all [laughs] the support disappeared, right? I mean-

Joe Rogan 30:16 Well, it's not asking them to leave. It's showing up at Home Depot and just rounding people up and raiding places and going to restaurants and pulling people out of their houses and... I think people got very uncomfortable with the idea of militarized police wearing masks on the street.

Michael Shellenberger 30:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:31 And then when you find out that these guys have only been trained for seven weeks-

Michael Shellenberger 30:34 Yeah

Joe Rogan 30:34 ... and there's, they get a, a $50,000 signing bonus, and then you find out that a giant percentage of them are Latino, which is kind of crazy. You know, like the two guys who shot that guy in Minnesota, they're both Latino

Michael Shellenberger 30:46 And the, yeah, I mean, that's what you get when you have completely untrained, unprepared people-

Joe Rogan 30:51 Well, that whole-

Michael Shellenberger 30:52 ... disasters like that

Joe Rogan 30:52 ... the whole Minnesota thing with Alex Peretti is a c- complete clusterfuck. I still not have, have not seen verification of whether or not the, the, the, the s- the narrative that makes sense is true, but the narrative that makes sense was that there was an accidental discharge of his gun as they were pulling it away from him.

Michael Shellenberger 31:10 Mm.

Joe Rogan 31:10 And then that led to them thinking that maybe he still had the gun on him, 'cause you're in the chaos of arresting someone.

Michael Shellenberger 31:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:16 Someone says he has a gun, a gun goes off, and then they shoot the guy.

Michael Shellenberger 31:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:20 Um-

Michael Shellenberger 31:21 I bet when you go... I bet when they do the proper evaluation of it, they're gonna find multiple mistakes-

Joe Rogan 31:26 I'm sure

Michael Shellenberger 31:27 ... by the law enforcement in that situation.

Joe Rogan 31:28 Um, well, that, and then there was the thing with the woman who got shot, where you have a guy who had almost been run over just a couple of weeks before-

Michael Shellenberger 31:36 Oh

Joe Rogan 31:36 ... had been dragged in his car. The guy who shot her-

Michael Shellenberger 31:39 Oh

Joe Rogan 31:39 ... had been dragged by another vehicle.

Michael Shellenberger 31:41 Oh, I didn't see that. That's fascinating.

Joe Rogan 31:42 I think he got dragged, like, 300 feet too.

Michael Shellenberger 31:44 Oh.

Joe Rogan 31:44 Something crazy.

Michael Shellenberger 31:45 Oh.

Joe Rogan 31:46 So when a car is coming at him, you could imagine this guy's got some PTSD from that, and-

Michael Shellenberger 31:52 He should not have been ser- he should not have been...

Joe Rogan 31:54 No.

Michael Shellenberger 31:55 And also, Alex Peretti-

Joe Rogan 31:56 He certainly shouldn't have said that-

Michael Shellenberger 31:57 Yeah

Joe Rogan 31:57 ... "fucking bitch," like, after he shoots her in the face, too. That's crazy too.

Michael Shellenberger 32:01 Unbelievable. Yeah, I mean, the reaction, the, just the heartlessness of the reaction to the killings-

Joe Rogan 32:06 Oh, it's horrible

Michael Shellenberger 32:06 ... was terrible, including by the administration. That's probably why Ka- Kristi Noem ended up having to go.

Joe Rogan 32:10 But then, on the other side, these protests are organized. They're organized, and they're paid for, which is also something to be ta- that people need to understand. These are not organic protests. It's not organic that it just happened to be taking place in the very same place where yous found hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud.

Michael Shellenberger 32:27 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 32:28 Right? This is a, one of the clearest, most obvious distractions you've ever seen, like, uh, i- in the public s- arena. Like, where you have these people who are being paid to protest. They, they give them money to go out there and protest. They give them signs. They're organizing it. They have signal groups. They're, uh, doxing all these different ICE workers. They find out what their license plate numbers are. They find out where they're staying. They go to their hotel. The cops, the local cops are being told to stand down. So you've got, like, this, this convergence of all these factors that lead to chaos. And-

Michael Shellenberger 33:05 Right

Joe Rogan 33:05 ... you know, Mike Pence was talking about it, and he was essentially saying it's a mathematical thing, in that if you have these things play out, you're going to have a certain amount... It was Mike Pence, right, that was saying that? There was a certain amount of people that are... Y- you're gonna have incidences. You're just playing it out over the numbers. Certain amount of these protests. You have organized protests. You have untrained ICE agents. You have a lot of chaos. You have support f- people screaming in the streets. Someone gets shot, boom, and then it moves the needle, and this is calculated.

Michael Shellenberger 33:37 Yes.

Joe Rogan 33:37 That, that they want this to happen. They want it to happen this way because then this kills all the support for people that, you know, were kind of on the fence whether or not ICE should be deporting all illegals, what... [clears throat] Excuse me. What they should... [clears throat] Excuse me. Whether they should just go after violent criminals, and, and then there's these weird narratives like, "Oh, only 14% are violent criminals that have been arrested." Okay, but 60% are criminals. 60% of the people plus were criminals. And, like, what, what, by what definition violent criminals? Like, what do you, like, what do you... L- is it okay if they just come in here and rip people off? Like, w- are you fine with that? It's just, like, the violent ones we need to get rid of? Like-

Michael Shellenberger 34:23 I, I think they didn't... Yeah, they did, they did a fairly poor job of it. Like, why were they focused on, on Minneapolis? I think most people don't understand how radical the left in Minneapolis is. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 34:33 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 34:33 'Cause you think of it as a Midwestern place, but it's actually got a long radical left tradition.

Joe Rogan 34:37 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 34:38 Um, and as you were saying, I mean, Alex Peretti, he should've been arrested several days before when he had a gun on him and got into an altercation with the police. They should've arrested him then, and then they could've... The judge could've done a lot of different things, but they could've taken away his gun. They could've put a restraining order on him, so that next time he showed up, and people would know to look for him, then he would've been, you know, kept out of the area.

Joe Rogan 34:57 Do you know the story about the gun that he was carrying?

Michael Shellenberger 35:00 No.

Joe Rogan 35:01 Okay. So he's carrying a gun called a SIG P320, which is notorious for accidental discharges.

Michael Shellenberger 35:07 Mm.

Joe Rogan 35:08 Not, not meaning... There's lawsuits all over the place. There's videos of cops in precincts bending over to pick something up, and the gun goes off in his holster. There's a, a ton of these. So I don't know if this is completely accurate, because this is obviously the fog of chaos of these type of altercations and situations, but there's a video that many people have reviewed, and it's their conclusion that if you watch the video, when one of the ICE officers removes his gun, even though he does not have his finger on the trigger, has his hand on the gun and his fingers on the slide, as he's moving off, it appears the gun goes off. Now, they've zoomed in on it and shown that it does look like the gun's going off, and it does correspond with the sound of a gunshot.

Michael Shellenberger 35:56 Okay.

Joe Rogan 35:56 It's, it's just hard to know.

Michael Shellenberger 35:57 There is a sound. You hear a gunshot in the video?

Joe Rogan 35:59 Yes, but I don't know if it's legitimate. It's hard to know.

Michael Shellenberger 36:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:02 But if, but if it was any other gun, like say if it was a Glock, I would say that doesn't make any sense. His finger's not on the trigger. It's not gonna go off. But that gun is notorious for going off. There's a guy online that he, he shows a video where he takes the gun, and he manipulates the slide, and it goes off.

Michael Shellenberger 36:19 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:20 And, and it goes off without nothing touching the trigger. No one, no one's pulling on it. It's just if you have... The other problem is people alter guns, okay? So the issue with the SIG was they f- they had, I, I believe up to 2017, they had a lighter trigger, and this lighter trigger, if the gun was dropped or if something happened to it, it was going off. And they determined it's-The gun does not have an internal safety like some other guns do.

Michael Shellenberger 36:50 Mm.

Joe Rogan 36:50 It's... I, I'm not an expert, so I don't know exactly what the trigger mechanism is, but my understanding is that the trigger mechanism is different than their other guns. Like they have another gun that's notoriously reliable, it's a SIG P365. You could drop that gun, it's not gonna go off.

Michael Shellenberger 37:05 Mm.

Joe Rogan 37:06 It's not known for accidental discharge. But the 320 is known, and there's tons of videos of people demonstrating this online. There's a video where they're on a range and a gun goes off in a guy's holster, and the range instructor says, "What the fuck just happened?" And this guy, he, he points to this g- you know, the, the gun that went off, and he said, "Is that a SIG?" And he goes, "Yeah." He goes, "Get that fucking thing off the range." So it's, it's that notorious.

Michael Shellenberger 37:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 37:34 This one particular model, and it just happened to be the one particular model that Alex Preddy was carrying, which is fucking crazy. [slams]

Michael Shellenberger 37:42 Well, his behavior was really reckless. I, I... and it's really hard for people to hold two ideas in their mind at the same time. Like ICE messed that up-

Joe Rogan 37:51 Right

Michael Shellenberger 37:51 ... I think clearly. And Alex Preddy, I mean, we see the earlier video, you know, where he kicks out the taillight of the ICE vehicle.

Joe Rogan 37:57 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 37:57 And he's... I mean, he's got a gun in the waistband of his, of his jacket.

Joe Rogan 38:00 Mm.

Michael Shellenberger 38:00 It's hidden by the jacket. He gets into this altercation with the police. I mean, I had to... But when I posted about it, and I didn't say this, but one of... a lot of the responses were suicide by cop. People were like, "Suicide by cop." I mean, and I'm not making that claim, but I mean, it... his behavior was... I mean, the, the recklessness of the gun choice mirrors the recklessness of his behavior in those instances. And I heard people being like, "Oh, well, he... you know, he was just defending that poor woman." There was a police officer engaged in an arrest of a person, and Alex Preddy intervened in that. I mean, I think you can mess around about it, but-

Joe Rogan 38:31 Well, it was, it was a little... I don't know if it was an arrest. The police officer shoved this woman.

Michael Shellenberger 38:37 Yeah, he put... He was in an altercation with somebody.

Joe Rogan 38:39 Yes.

Michael Shellenberger 38:40 You don't go... People... In other words, people go, "Oh, you gotta put yourself in the..." What do you think you're... Like who do... what do you think is going on here? Like-

Joe Rogan 38:45 But the w-

Michael Shellenberger 38:45 ... that he should put himself in between that? No.

Joe Rogan 38:47 The way the, the, the ICE officer... It wasn't a police officer, right? It's an ICE officer. Do you call them police? The way the ICE officer reacted to the woman d- did- that bothered me. Like he ju- he just shoved this lady. Like f- like stepped forward and fully shoved her. That's when Alex Preddy gets involved.

Michael Shellenberger 39:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:05 And then pepper spray comes out, and then-

Michael Shellenberger 39:08 And Alex Preddy should have absolutely filmed that. Should have filmed the whole thing. That, that's exactly what he should have done.

Joe Rogan 39:12 Well, other people were filming it. It was clear.

Michael Shellenberger 39:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:14 There's cameras all over the place.

Michael Shellenberger 39:15 So but, but don't... I mean-

Joe Rogan 39:16 I mean, multiple angles.

Michael Shellenberger 39:17 Yeah, so but it's like, um, I just don't think that's appropriate behavior [laughs]

Joe Rogan 39:23 But I-

Michael Shellenberger 39:23 To go and get-

Joe Rogan 39:24 That's fair

Michael Shellenberger 39:24 ... that's not, that's not the tradition of like... I mean, I think there's a non-violent left wing tradition that's actually quite beautiful and spiritual, and it's-

Joe Rogan 39:31 I agree

Michael Shellenberger 39:31 ... Thoreau and Gandhi and King. That's not what was going on in-

Joe Rogan 39:36 No

Michael Shellenberger 39:36 ... Minneapolis.

Joe Rogan 39:37 Well, that's not-

Michael Shellenberger 39:37 That's not at all what's going on

Joe Rogan 39:38 ... this is a part of the problem with these things being organized, right? Organized, paid protests, and also people being radicalized by narratives. Then of course, very different than what was going on with the, the civil rights movement, you have social media, so people are l- like radically pushed in one direction or another, and it's not clear whether or not that's organic. It's not clear, is this the voice of the people, or is this bot farms that are pushing things in one direction or another? Is, is it... I mean, there's, I... there's a lot of people that I, I, I cautiously watch their, their posts on, on X, where I know that they're AI. I know it's AI. I can just tell by the way they write-

Michael Shellenberger 40:20 Oh, it's awful now. There's so much AI slop on X right now.

Joe Rogan 40:22 It's weird.

Michael Shellenberger 40:22 It's bad. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:24 It's weird because it does muddy the water, and it does fuck with discourse, but it also radicalizes people one way or the... radicalizes people towards the right, radicalizes people towards the left. It's not good, and I think this guy, whatever his mental health struggles were, they, they, they appeared to exist. It s- it seems like he was a troubled guy already. So a thing comes along-

Michael Shellenberger 40:47 Right

Joe Rogan 40:47 ... that defines them, a cause that they're going to stand up for and fight for 'cause their life's probably a fucking mess, and their mind is probably a mess, and they look at this, they look at it like it's this black and white binary situation.

Michael Shellenberger 41:01 For sure.

Joe Rogan 41:01 Good guys and bad guys, and let's fuck all these fascists, and he's kicking tail lights and, you know, getting involved in pushing matches with ICE agents. It's like that's crazy. Like all that stuff can- should and can get you arrested.

Michael Shellenberger 41:16 Yeah, I mean, I think on the organized issue, remember like the civil rights movement was really well organized-

Joe Rogan 41:21 Right

Michael Shellenberger 41:21 ... and in terms, it was like actually-

Joe Rogan 41:22 But people weren't being paid for it. It wasn't being-

Michael Shellenberger 41:24 Yeah, no

Joe Rogan 41:24 ... promoted on social media. It wasn't people's job.

Michael Shellenberger 41:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:27 There are people in America right now that are unemployed that are paid protesters for a living.

Michael Shellenberger 41:32 Oh, I mean, that's the entire, like, left-wing NGO sector is basically that.

Joe Rogan 41:37 Right, right.

Michael Shellenberger 41:37 Yeah, I mean, that's like the... We saw it with... I see it at the level of San Fransicko and for homelessness.

Joe Rogan 41:40 Yes.

Michael Shellenberger 41:40 They just go and you work at a NG- a, a government-funded or Soros-funded NGO, and then you do all that civil disobedience stuff on your free time and... But I was... I just think, I think that you're, you were right, you were right when you were saying like, 'cause y- I think it's the problem is not the organization, the problem is that the organization in Minneapolis had a goal of causing exactly what occurred.

Joe Rogan 42:01 Yes.

Michael Shellenberger 42:01 The, the or- the organization around the civil rights movement was to desegregate soda counters. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 42:05 Yes.

Michael Shellenberger 42:06 You know?

Joe Rogan 42:06 Yes.

Michael Shellenberger 42:06 And so, um, one of them was about actually... I mean, the other thing is that broad p- pull back a little bit further, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement was about affirming our liberal democratic Western civilization. Black people wanted to be a part of it.

Joe Rogan 42:20 Yes.

Michael Shellenberger 42:20 This stuff where you're like, "We wanna, you know, open the border and defund the police," and basically start attacking all of these institutions of liberal democratic civilization, that's different. That's a radicalized left, um-

Joe Rogan 42:34 It's what Gad Saad-

Michael Shellenberger 42:35 ... that's fundamentally different

Joe Rogan 42:36 ... clearly, he, he defines it best as suicidal empathy

Michael Shellenberger 42:39 I don't agree with Gad on that.

Joe Rogan 42:41 No? You don't think it's suicidal empathy? What do you think it is?

Michael Shellenberger 42:43 I don't think it's either suicidal or empathic. Because empathy is, empathy is like-

Joe Rogan 42:48 Well, he-

Michael Shellenberger 42:48 ... fundamentally-

Joe Rogan 42:49 ... he applies that to a lot of progressive ideas, not just the immigration thing. I don't think he'd necessarily ... Yeah, I think it was actually long before the immigration thing that he was talking about at suicidal empathy, the idea being that you need the rule of law to, to have a, a safe and peaceful society.

Michael Shellenberger 43:04 Yes, that part's true.

Joe Rogan 43:05 You do. You do.

Michael Shellenberger 43:06 That part's true.

Joe Rogan 43:06 Yeah, you need, you need no violence, you need no crime, and when you're taking criminals and just releasing them from jail, and you have no cash bail, and you're doing all these things, if you wanna put on the fucking tinfoil hat, you would do that because you want chaos, because you want chaos so you can have more rules and tighten down on people-

Michael Shellenberger 43:25 Mm

Joe Rogan 43:25 ... and have more control over the civ- the civilization.

Michael Shellenberger 43:28 Yeah, I mean, I think in that, I mean, I think, like, it's not empathic to allow more violent crime. Like, I don't think that's empathy towards victims. So I don't think ... I wouldn't call it empathy. And not only that, but, like, when you look at, like, the, these, who these folks are, and I spent a lot of time looking at them and was one of them [laughs] um, they hate Western civilization. They hate the United States of America. They hate capitalism. Like, it's-

Joe Rogan 43:52 Right

Michael Shellenberger 43:52 ... it's an anti-civilization thing that's motivating it, and that's not to say that, like, MSNBC watchers don't feel, "Oh, m- I feel bad for that person," but I mean, I always ... You know, it's like, like the people I hear complaining about ICE, they don't know any illegal immigrants. They've never talked to them other than maybe their server or the ... You know? But they don't even really talk to their gardeners or their, or their, you know, their, their maids. Like, th- it's like the idea that they ... Empathy implies a deep understanding of someone's situation, and so I think it's a misdescription of empathy. I think in some ways it's more quite the opposite of that, that they're actually not showing empathy for all the people that are hurt by their policies, whether it's open borders, or enabling addiction, or euthanizing poor and mentally ill people in Canada [laughs] , um, or transing kids. I don't think that those things are empathic. And the person that's doing s- doing them I don't think is suicidal. If anything, they're actually quite full of themselves, um, and quite arrogant about what they're doing. I mean, I use the word pathological altruism in San Fransicko, and I say it's close to Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Maybe it is Munchausen syndrome by proxy. But I don't think it's ... I, I worry about, I worry about affirming ... 'Cause I think that's how progressives go. They go, "Oh, well, if we, if the homeless are, are worse off, that's just because we care so much." I just don't think that's the case.

Joe Rogan 45:13 Well, that's ... The homeless thing is nuts because the homeless thing is just a scam, and we know that basically because of California. Like, California, what, what's happened with the whole homeless budget is so insane in that they vetoed audits of these budgets. There's been $24 billion-

Michael Shellenberger 45:32 Oh, yeah

Joe Rogan 45:32 ... spent. No one knows where it went. There's no accountability. And then the homeless situation increases.

Michael Shellenberger 45:39 Well, that's why. I mean, remember, it's like-

Joe Rogan 45:41 Right

Michael Shellenberger 45:41 ... I, it's funny, like I, my students just did a pap- We have something ... We've been working on it too, like the Canadian euthanasia program.

Joe Rogan 45:47 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 45:47 And it's like every year the numbers just keep going up and up, and it remind me of when you interview homeless, you know, service providers in San Francisco, they'll be like, "Yeah, no, we're doing an amazing job. Every year we serve more and more [laughs] people." It's like, right, you have in a, you have all the, you have the wrong incentives. You're trying to ... You're, you have an incentive to serve to ... You have incentive to create homelessness, and that's what they've done.

Joe Rogan 46:07 Well, if you get more money if you have more homeless, your incentive is-

Michael Shellenberger 46:10 Yes

Joe Rogan 46:10 ... now not to eliminate homelessness because that's your job.

Michael Shellenberger 46:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 46:14 I mean-

Michael Shellenberger 46:14 That's how you make all your money

Joe Rogan 46:14 ... when I first was alerted to that I, I was like, "I can't believe this is real." Like, when you find out the amount of money that's involved in homelessness, like that they spent $24 billion. You say, "Okay, where did that go? Where ..." And then there's no accountability? Okay. There's no fraud? You're saying there's no fraud? Zero?

Michael Shellenberger 46:35 Well, I wish there was fraud. I mean, somebody was sort of like, can we expose ... You know, like Nick Shirley exposed the daycare's not doing anything in Mine- like Minnesota. I was like, I wish the homeless service providers weren't doing anything. [laughs] They were ho- if they were stealing the money, then there'd be a lot less homelessness.

Joe Rogan 46:49 Well, what do you ... So you think they're actually s- using the money to create-

Michael Shellenberger 46:53 Oh, yeah

Joe Rogan 46:54 ... homelessness?

Michael Shellenberger 46:54 Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, think about like, so San Francisco was like a, between 100 and $120,000 a year per homeless person. Think San Fr- I think LA at a bargain of something more like 25,000. That's, that's just San Francisco. That doesn't count the 24, uh, billion that California gave. So that money's going to, you know, single-resident occupancy hotel owners. It's going to nonprofit service providers who are just bringing food and, you know, alcohol and drug paraphernalia to make it easier for people to do drugs, and overdose, and live in tents on the street. That's ... You're just ... It, it's very expensive to kill that many people that way. That's what San Francisco has proven.

Joe Rogan 47:34 Right, but it's really about the amount of people where that's their industry.

Michael Shellenberger 47:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:39 Like, that it, there is an industry in taking care of the homeless situation and addressing the homeless situation. And, you know, Kolyan Noir, when he was on the podcast, he was explaining to me that he went to San Francisco, and he was like, "Why is it so bad up here? Do they need money?" He's like, "No, no, no." This guy, who was a lawyer, was explaining it to him. He, he's a lawyer as well. Was explaining it to him like, "No, no, these people are getting money to deal with the homeless situation, and some of them are making quarter billion dollars a year and, and more," which is just nuts. And then it's not getting better, it's only getting worse, and yet they ste- they still keep getting that money. So it's like there's zero incentive to make it better. There's an, only an incentive to make it worse. And then when you have no accountability, so there's no auditing of the money, $24 billion is a lot of fucking money. So where ... Who's getting greased up? Where's that money going?

Michael Shellenberger 48:29 Mostly it's into the t- it's into the temporary, what they call, they call it permanent ... It's a propaganda word. Propagan- It's, uh, permanent supportive housing. It's neither permanent nor supportive. It's often warehousing addicts where they die. I mean, we know that they die at very high levels in those little, it's those little crummy, you know, single-resident occupancy rooms.

Joe Rogan 48:47 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 48:47 They bought a lot of motels that were, you know, low in- low income, you know, low, you know, cheap motels, converting them, having s- but they don't really ... There's no ... I mean, all that money should've gone into a centralized addiction and psychiatric care system. You know, Cal Psych is what it should've been, and instead it's just, um, it's just kind of ... Yeah, it's justBasically incentivizing people to live on the streets and use hard drugs and die in overdose.

Joe Rogan 49:13 Well, it's just so crazy. I mean, if you wanted to make it better, you'd incentivize them and pay them based on the amount of people that are no longer homeless.

Michael Shellenberger 49:19 Right. But they don't do that.

Joe Rogan 49:20 But then the problem with that is, well, you're eventually gonna fix it all, and then your business is gonna go away.

Michael Shellenberger 49:25 Right. And that's all happening... I think it's, I think it's all happening unconsciously. Like there's no room... There's no like, you know, secret room where they're rubbing their hands and being like, "Oh, we're gonna make a lot of money this way." It's just, um, you know, when you interview them, it's a very basic view. You know, it's just these people are victims. They're victims of white supremacy and capitalism, and, and to victims, everything should be given and nothing required.

Joe Rogan 49:48 Well, I think that's a nice narrative. But I think once you start getting monthly paychecks from, from the homeless industrial complex, I think your incentive is to keep this party going.

Michael Shellenberger 49:59 Well, sure. But they-

Joe Rogan 50:00 That's your job

Michael Shellenberger 50:01 ... they, but they think it's good. I mean, they, they go, "This shows how, how good we're doing that we got a bigger budget this year," and-

Joe Rogan 50:06 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 50:06 ... that's how they, that's how they rationalize it. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:10 Ugh. I mean, it's a sign of a very sick society, l- hence the title of your book, San Fransicko, Sicko, which is a great title. I mean, it's a sick place. I... And it was one of my favorite cities. It, it was an amazing city. I mean, I-

Michael Shellenberger 50:25 Well, California's an-

Joe Rogan 50:25 ... I filmed my Netflix special there in 2016. So in just the amount of time, in 10 years, it's completely fallen apart. When I was there in 2016, it was great. With the... I mean, there was always a lot of homeless people there, but you have that in any liberal city, but it was never an epidemic. It was never like tents everywhere and shit on the streets. That wasn't the case. It was just, you know, it was a liberal city, a progressive liberal city, but it was cool. There was a lot of outdoor music. It was fun. It was a great place to go to restaurants, and people walked around. It was a, a great city filled with intelligent, interesting, open-minded people. Man, I lived there when I was a little kid. I was there during the Vietnam War. From age 7 to 11, I, I lived in San Francisco.

Michael Shellenberger 51:10 It's a little bit better now.

Joe Rogan 51:11 Is it?

Michael Shellenberger 51:11 They have a new mayor. Yeah, a little bit. Um, I mean, I wanna acknowledge... I can't lie about it. It's a little bit better, I agree. Um, I interview a lot of people still about what's going on. It's still there. Like you see what-

Joe Rogan 51:23 Well, didn't you know what happened with the mayor?

Michael Shellenberger 51:24 With his security guard? [laughs]

Joe Rogan 51:25 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 51:25 Got pulled down, yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:26 First of all, security guard-

Michael Shellenberger 51:26 That's still going on. For sure

Joe Rogan 51:28 ... needs to learn some fucking jujitsu. The way he let that guy-

Michael Shellenberger 51:31 It was wild

Joe Rogan 51:31 ... grab him, he didn't, he didn't pummel, he didn't do anything. It looked like he had no understanding of what to do when that guy grabbed his body. Like-

Michael Shellenberger 51:38 That was wild

Joe Rogan 51:39 ... how is he a security guard? That's crazy. How, how can you be a security for the mayor if you literally don't know what to do in a clinch?

Michael Shellenberger 51:45 I thought he looked like he didn't really see the guy as a threat or something. Like maybe he thought he was just a crazy homeless guy or something.

Joe Rogan 51:50 Even if I didn't see a guy as a threat, if a guy grabs me like that, I'm not gonna let him-

Michael Shellenberger 51:56 It's wild

Joe Rogan 51:57 ... get that position on me. That's crazy.

Michael Shellenberger 51:58 Yeah, and he cut the back... It probably cut his back of his head and his head backed off to the wing.

Joe Rogan 52:00 Like banged him on the ground.

Michael Shellenberger 52:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:01 He body slammed him-

Michael Shellenberger 52:02 Yeah

Joe Rogan 52:02 ... onto the fucking concrete, and then the-

Michael Shellenberger 52:04 Kind of a metaphor for the whole situation

Joe Rogan 52:05 ... the mayor just walks away. Da, da, da, da, da.

Michael Shellenberger 52:07 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 52:07 And he walked away like it was nothing. Like he walked away, not... He didn't run.

Michael Shellenberger 52:11 Did you see, though? 'Cause I saw that video, and I couldn't tell if the mayor actually saw what was happening.

Joe Rogan 52:15 100%.

Michael Shellenberger 52:15 He seemed like he was going... He was looking that way, and this guy was to his left or-

Joe Rogan 52:17 No, he was, he was here when they started l- physically, uh, well, struggling with each other. And then when they're struggling with each other, he walks off, and then the guy gets body slammed.

Michael Shellenberger 52:27 It was the weirdest video to watch. Yeah, both-

Joe Rogan 52:29 Well, it's sick. It is sick

Michael Shellenberger 52:29 ... 'cause they both seem so nonchalant.

Joe Rogan 52:31 It's sick.

Michael Shellenberger 52:31 They both seem... Yeah. As a metaphor for the city.

Speaker 52:33 Well, this is, this is a different angle. The mayor actually-

Michael Shellenberger 52:34 Oh

Speaker 52:35 ... is running off to get help.

Michael Shellenberger 52:36 Oh, he is, okay.

Joe Rogan 52:36 Running off?

Speaker 52:37 Yeah. Let me, let me, uh, refresh this real quick.

Joe Rogan 52:39 One second, yeah.

Speaker 52:40 Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

Joe Rogan 52:40 Show me from the beginning.

Speaker 52:43 So there's the mayor right there.

Joe Rogan 52:44 Okay.

Speaker 52:45 He pushes this guy here in a second. The mayor sort of... As soon as he gets to the sidewalk-

Michael Shellenberger 52:50 He's watching this altercation

Speaker 52:50 ... he takes off.

Joe Rogan 52:51 So why are, why are they hanging out with this guy in the first place?

Speaker 52:54 That looks like they're in Camden right there.

Joe Rogan 52:55 Oh, so the security guard-

Michael Shellenberger 52:56 Oh, I see

Joe Rogan 52:57 ... started it, and he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.

Speaker 53:00 And there's the mayor right here.

Joe Rogan 53:01 Okay. Oh, look at his, like, shady technique.

Michael Shellenberger 53:03 Oh, this is much better. Much better video.

Joe Rogan 53:05 And the other guy's a lot stronger than him, so the mayor, he's-

Speaker 53:09 So he walks off. Hold on, he takes-

Joe Rogan 53:10 He-

Speaker 53:10 He starts running right.

Michael Shellenberger 53:11 He seems relaxed.

Joe Rogan 53:12 Okay. Okay, he did start walking slowly and then starts w- But that-

Speaker 53:18 Is the mayor gonna get help?

Joe Rogan 53:19 That guy started it all. He pushed that guy. If you're a security guy, the last thing you wanna do when there's one of you and two of those other guys is deal with the situation that way, where you push a guy.

Michael Shellenberger 53:32 I'm al- I have to say, as soon as you said, I'm always surprised when I see them do... Like that was the same thing that happened with the Preddy. We were just talking about it.

Joe Rogan 53:39 Well, don't, don't you think this guy's probably armed too?

Michael Shellenberger 53:42 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 53:42 I mean, but also he shouldn't have pushed that guy that way. I mean, the whole thing is fucking stupid.

Michael Shellenberger 53:49 Look at the c- look at the chaos. There's somebody else just running around, another homeless person or something. Um-

Joe Rogan 53:54 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 53:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:55 The other guy's probably talking shit. I bet that guy's funny.

Michael Shellenberger 53:57 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 53:57 I bet he's saying some funny-

Michael Shellenberger 53:58 The guy with the big coat on? [laughs]

Joe Rogan 54:01 I mean, I don't, uh... For the life of me, none of it makes sense.

Michael Shellenberger 54:06 That's about right.

Joe Rogan 54:07 None of it makes sense. The, the, the mayor walking off casually and then eventually running. It doesn't make sense that the security guy just walked up to the, those guys and pushed them when your detail is to take care of the mayor. He should be escorting him around that and getting him away from any potential trouble. Like, the brazenness of just walking up and pushing that guy when you don't know how to fight at all. It's very clear when you watch the way they grappled with each other, he doesn't know what he's doing. This episode is brought to you by Intuit TurboTax. April 15th is coming fast. There's been so many tax law changes this year, which means you're going to need an expert who has your back. You're in luck. TurboTax now has in-person locations nationwide. Walk into their tech-enabled stores and meet face-to-face with a TurboTax full-service expert who will get your best outcome. Your expert works to get you every dollar you deserve while updating you as you go about your day. Head to turbotax.com to find a store near you.

Michael Shellenberger 55:10 Seems like we're having a lot of security problems in our society right now.

Joe Rogan 55:14 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 55:14 It's wild, right?I can't believe the pushing. I mean, that's the same in the Pretty thing. Like, why- pushing, is that like a, is that like an important law enforcement technique? I mean, what is that exactly?

Joe Rogan 55:23 Well, he- not only that, he pushed a small woman. The, the ICE guy just completely just-

Michael Shellenberger 55:29 Right

Joe Rogan 55:29 ... full on shoves this small woman.

Michael Shellenberger 55:31 Which means he was emotionally out of control first, right?

Joe Rogan 55:33 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 55:33 Like, it means that he was angry.

Joe Rogan 55:35 He was angry.

Michael Shellenberger 55:36 These guys are-

Joe Rogan 55:37 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 55:37 ... these, these guys are not like-

Joe Rogan 55:37 Right

Michael Shellenberger 55:37 ... Special Forces guys.

Joe Rogan 55:38 No.

Michael Shellenberger 55:38 They're not well-trained.

Joe Rogan 55:39 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 55:40 These guys are ... This is seven weeks.

Joe Rogan 55:42 Discipline. No. Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 55:42 Seven weeks, and a lot of them are financially incentivized.

Joe Rogan 55:44 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 55:44 'Cause, like, if you can get $50,000, so like if you're in debt, and then you could take this job on, I don't ... When they get the $50,000, how long do they have to stay on the job for to, to, to have that money, to have that signing bonus? Or is it one of those things where you get the $50,000 as a signing bonus, but you pay it like a record deal type deal where you d- it's not really your money, you have to make it up later?

Joe Rogan 56:08 I imagine, yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 56:08 But still, if you can get $50,000, there's a lot of people that'll take that job.

Joe Rogan 56:13 Yeah. I, they're just, um ... Yeah, though it was just a bunch of bad, bad choices made-

Michael Shellenberger 56:19 Yeah. Both

Joe Rogan 56:19 ... by the Trump administration on that one.

Speaker 56:20 Someone's, uh, Reddit comment's saying they have no personal experience, but they've heard that it's 50K over four years-

Joe Rogan 56:27 Mm-hmm

Speaker 56:27 ... if you're in good standing at the end of those four years.

Michael Shellenberger 56:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 56:30 Oh, so you only get it after four years.

Speaker 56:32 But that might not ... It's-

Joe Rogan 56:33 Right.

Speaker 56:33 Right. That's not-

Joe Rogan 56:33 But for some people that have no job opportunities-

Michael Shellenberger 56:36 Oh, yeah

Joe Rogan 56:37 ... and no- nothing on the horizon, that $50,000 looks like, look, it's an extra 25K a year or a, an extra, you know, t- 25K, um, for, for four years? For 50 for four years?

Speaker 56:49 Another person says that's incorrect. It's broken in 10 payments, once at 90 days, then once every year for four more years.

Joe Rogan 56:54 Hmm.

Michael Shellenberger 56:54 Anyway.

Joe Rogan 56:55 Oh, it's broken out.

Speaker 56:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:55 But either way-

Michael Shellenberger 56:56 Yeah

Joe Rogan 56:56 ... it's $50,000 that you would not have been able to make-

Michael Shellenberger 56:59 Yeah

Joe Rogan 56:59 ... ordinarily.

Michael Shellenberger 57:00 I mean, we had police shortages before 2020.

Joe Rogan 57:03 Mm.

Michael Shellenberger 57:03 We had a bunch of police shortages after that, mostly by police officers who were just ... felt mistreated by the society-

Joe Rogan 57:09 Of course

Michael Shellenberger 57:09 ... and by their local mayors who said that they were evil.

Joe Rogan 57:12 Well, didn't a lot of cops resign when-

Michael Shellenberger 57:14 A lot of-

Joe Rogan 57:14 ... Adam Ghani got elected?

Michael Shellenberger 57:15 Oh, I'm sure. And then a COVID dro- and then they ... and a bunch of police officers were driven out during COVID, so there was-

Joe Rogan 57:20 Right

Michael Shellenberger 57:20 ... already our p- our security forces have been, you know ... And they were just ... People underestimate how important it is to feel, like, important in your job and-

Joe Rogan 57:31 Yes

Michael Shellenberger 57:31 ... and respected. And it's not just about the money, 'cause they would be offering more money, but I think a lot of people are like, "Well, no, I don't want to be in a job where people are, like, spitting at me or throwing urine and feces."

Joe Rogan 57:38 Well, not just that.

Michael Shellenberger 57:39 It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 57:40 A job where your life is on the line.

Michael Shellenberger 57:41 Yeah. Your, your life is already on the line-

Joe Rogan 57:43 Yes

Michael Shellenberger 57:43 ... and then you're mistreated by the wider society, which actually creates additional risks, you know, as this chaos in Minneapolis shows. So yeah, it's just, um, people wanna believe that they're doing something that is appreciated by the community, and so when the community [laughs] decides that they're against policing, your civilization's pretty far gone.

Joe Rogan 58:00 Right, but there's a difference between policing and this ICE thing. The ICE thing is a different thing, right? They're looking at it differently. It's not like you're watching a violent altercation take place, the police show up, and people are spitting on them. Like, you're trying to break up a violent crime. This is different.

Michael Shellenberger 58:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:14 They're looking at it like the, in the progressive narrative is like, no one's illegal on stolen land, and we need to have open borders, and illegals, or, or immigrants rather, are the foundation of this country, and you hear all that, those narratives.

Michael Shellenberger 58:29 The president and those, the president and the administration, they wanted to pick a fight, obviously, with this left-wing, with activists in this left-wing city. They thought it would redound to their benefit to show how crazy the left was, and it backfired on them.

Joe Rogan 58:40 Well, I think they wanted to do something about the amount of illegal fraud that was just recently exposed in Minneapolis.

Michael Shellenberger 58:47 But that w- I don't know that that's ... But you wouldn't do it with ICE raids, though. I mean-

Joe Rogan 58:51 Well, it's illegal immigrants. If you have illegal immigrants that are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, and you know at least some of them are illegal, it's, it seems rational that you would send ICE in to find out who's illegal and who's not and put a stop to some of it. And there's also this nationwide focus on this one place-

Michael Shellenberger 59:09 Yeah

Joe Rogan 59:09 ... because of the Nick Shirley videos.

Michael Shellenberger 59:11 Yeah. Yeah, though I think that the motiva- my understanding i- um, is that the motivation was to, uh, motivate people that are here illegally to self-deport.

Joe Rogan 59:21 Mm-hmm.

Michael Shellenberger 59:21 And so that that's the, the main part of the strategy is this show of force. 'Cause of course it's, they wanted the publicity. They wanted people to be scared and self-deport. They claim that, you know, one point I think three million people self-deported or 1.4-

Joe Rogan 59:34 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 59:34 ... and then another 400,000 or 600,000 deported through the normal channels, and apparently they're just limited in how many people they can actually deport through the normal channels, but they can get ... People can self-deport. They can just go.

Joe Rogan 59:44 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 59:45 And because of course there's this thing called E-Verify where you just have the employers have to prove that everybody you're employing is here legally, and they don't wanna do that. Trump administration doesn't wanna do that because they'll upset, in particular, like the agricultural lobby-

Joe Rogan 59:57 Yeah. Construction

Michael Shellenberger 59:58 ... but others who depend, construction, who depend on. So it's a, it's a funny ... It, it's not great. I don't know. I'm not saying that there's, that I have the perfect, you know, answer to the other one, but obviously, like, politically the president doesn't feel like they can do E-Verify and maintain support from the business community for his political agenda. So you end up, but you end up with a kind of underclass that's here illegally, but that's protected because they're working in a sector that the president and the administration wants to protect, but then you're also self-deporting people. I, I'm not sure exactly how they're thinking about it, but that appears to be, uh, what the, the, the heart of their goal is, is, is really self-deportation.

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 Well, this was always, you know what a lot of people on the left back in the day would say that illegal immigrants was, this was a, like a Koch brothers thing. This was like a right-wing thing, that they wanted this for, for exactly what you just described.

Michael Shellenberger 1:00:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:52 And that this is not a left-wing progressive idea, and that what it would do is would lower the wages for the lower class and the middle class of this country, and it would be bad for the citizens. And so you don't want unchecked illegal immigration. Unchecked illegal immigration would just be for the right, because they're the ones who own these massive corporations that are profiting off of illegal labor. They don't have to pay them benefits. They don't have to pay them healthcare, any of the things that are, you know, that cost money.

Michael Shellenberger 1:01:19 Yeah, I mean the, on the, the left was always balancing a sort of open society. You know, they wanted ... The Soros Foundation always wanted to have a free movement of people to ... That was sort of their view of why, in part why the Holocaust occurred, is that you couldn't move pe- you know, or, you know, or at least the persecutions, you couldn't move people as easily. But then you had the working class, you know, who were negatively affected by bringing in migrants, who would push down wages, and unions, who were a big part of the Democratic Party. So the Democrats were sort of divided on it for a while, but they managed it, and Hillary and Obama would sort of ... If you look at when they were competing in, in 2008, they were very carefully ... Like, there was a whole thing around, like, driver's licenses, whether she would give them or not, and Obama accused Hillary of, of kind of playing both sides of it. You know, typical thing. But they also both spoke out strongly against, uh, mass migration. Fast-forward 10 year ... You know, fast-forward much more than that. What is that? 16 years into, in today, and now you've got a much more working class Republican Party who's unified around, uh, keeping the borders closed and, and restricting the supply of low-income, unskilled workers. Because I mean, it's just obvi- I mean, it f- it was really weird to watch people that are always defending supply and demand and economics and economic policy then say, "Oh, no, but having open borders and having all these working class people come in, um, is gonna have no impact on wages," when obviously it would. And I think that's now, that's also now gone. I think that's another thing that's just Trump has just changed. I don't think you're gonna see Democrats going back to advocating that kind of mass migration again.

Joe Rogan 1:02:49 Right. But you could see a world where they would push back against what has happened, what, what they would say the barbaric nature of some of these ICE raids, and then saying from ... There's a filtered wa- ice water-

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:02 No

Joe Rogan 1:03:02 ... in that too, if you'd like. But you don't have to not have your bottle. We don't care.

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:06 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:03:07 You can have your bottle.

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:07 Oh, I think it is in the shot. No, I ...

Joe Rogan 1:03:09 No, it doesn't matter.

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:09 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:03:09 We don't care. It doesn't matter. Um, but you could see how they could go back to a much looser border policy and-

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:18 I think it'd be-

Joe Rogan 1:03:18 ... get back to what they're... 'Cause it wasn't-

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:20 I think they won't. I think they won't.

Joe Rogan 1:03:21 Really?

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:21 I think the closed border ... I mean, I think that that sweet spot of public opinion is, like, people really wanna clo- I think it was just really, um-

Joe Rogan 1:03:28 But I don't think public opinion supported an open border even on-

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:31 No

Joe Rogan 1:03:32 ... the left-

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:32 No

Joe Rogan 1:03:33 ... during those last four years, but yet they-

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:34 No

Joe Rogan 1:03:34 ... did it anyway.

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:35 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:03:35 And they were moving people to blue states. They were moving people to swing states. They were flying people in, busing people. They were doing it on purpose.

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:43 Isn't that b- isn't that also, though, because the blue state governors were more welcoming of them?

Joe Rogan 1:03:47 There's a little bit of that, but there was also the idea that you're going to juice up the congressional seats 'cause you're gonna change the census.

Michael Shellenberger 1:03:54 Maybe, although California lost seats, right? Or lost a seat.

Joe Rogan 1:03:56 Well, because California's done such a fucking terrible job of governing-

Michael Shellenberger 1:04:00 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:04:00 ... their state. It's so ... It, that place is so crazy. Like, every time there's some new law that they're trying to push through, some new bill, and I'm like, "Do they just want everyone to leave?" Like-

Michael Shellenberger 1:04:10 Well, they drove the billionaires out, right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:12 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:04:12 I mean, I know they drove out David Sachs, came to Austin. I think Mark Zuckerberg-

Joe Rogan 1:04:16 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:04:16 ... moved to Florida.

Joe Rogan 1:04:16 Yep.

Michael Shellenberger 1:04:17 I heard rumors that Steven Spielberg, I don't know if that's ... I don't wanna spread disinformation. [laughs] I don't wanna spread misinformation, but I heard he was leaving. But yeah, it's called the-

Joe Rogan 1:04:25 Well, the, the thing that drives me the most nuts is when these progressive talking heads saying, "They don't wanna pay their fair share." W- with the amount of waste and fraud, why would you? You don't think there should be some accountability to how much fucking waste and fraud that has been clearly demonstrated? Like, you ... The, the solution is just give more money? Oh, and they can do it because they have it. So what? You just give more money and now it's $30 billion goes to homeless with no accountability? Like, what are you, what are you saying? Like, where do you think this money's gonna go where it's actually gonna af- help people and affect things in a positive way? There's been no indication that that's the case, that the real problem is they just haven't had enough money from the billionaires. That's fucking ludicrous. That idea is lud- it's such a lazy, intellectually lazy way of framing this whole discussion. That saying, "Oh, they don't wanna pay their fair share." Fuck you.

Michael Shellenberger 1:05:19 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:05:19 That's not what's going on here.

Michael Shellenberger 1:05:20 It's-

Joe Rogan 1:05:21 What's going on here, you have a completely incompetent government that's absolutely corrupt, and they want more money.

Michael Shellenberger 1:05:27 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:27 Gas is, like, $8 a gallon almost now.

Michael Shellenberger 1:05:30 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:05:30 That's bananas.

Michael Shellenberger 1:05:32 They were gonna shut down ... I mean, the refiners are being shut down. And, and that, that, that initiative, the billionaire's tax, is an SEIU initiative, so meaning it's the union that covers healthcare workers, like nurses. They're very radical, very radical left, and the money is to provide Medicaid for undocumented immigrants.

Joe Rogan 1:05:51 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:05:51 Like, that's what they want it for, right? So, like, that's the whole thing. And, and-

Joe Rogan 1:05:54 Oh

Michael Shellenberger 1:05:54 ... so you literally get the ... This is, like-

Joe Rogan 1:05:56 Oh

Michael Shellenberger 1:05:57 ... this is what people worry about democracy. You get all the ... It's very democratic, but you get these powerful unions, and they're able to change the laws like that. I mean, it's called the Curley Effect because there was a Boston mayor named Curley-

Joe Rogan 1:06:08 Mm-hmm

Michael Shellenberger 1:06:09 ... who made everything so bad for his political opponents that they left, but the consequence was that he ended up gaining more power. So it, all of ... When everybody moves to, you know, when all the, like, moderate Democrats move to Austin or Miami or Denver or wherever, uh, California just ends up locked in more to a progressive agenda. That's the problem.

Joe Rogan 1:06:27 I, well, I think the idea is that it's so good there that most people are just gonna tolerate whatever new bullshit they throw your way.

Michael Shellenberger 1:06:36 100%. And also, I mean, it seems like the tech community is now backing the San Jose mayor who's running, who's a very ... He's Democrat, very moderate. I ... You know, he's, but he's been critical of Gavin.

Joe Rogan 1:06:46 Running for governor?

Michael Shellenberger 1:06:46 Yeah, Matt Mahan. So keep your eyes on him. I mean, he's not, um, a w- he's not, like, maybe the most exciting guy, but he's definitely running as a moderate. I think he's-

Joe Rogan 1:06:56 That might be good

Michael Shellenberger 1:06:57 ... getting some money. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:58 [laughs] Seems like exciting people are-

Michael Shellenberger 1:06:59 No

Joe Rogan 1:06:59 ... a fucking problem.

Michael Shellenberger 1:07:00 I know. They want ... He might be enough to ... I don't know. It's hard to say, but, uh, it does look like ... 'Cause I mean, the, look, there's plenty of ... The, the tech community only woke up politically in 2024. That's how long it took. And it really took things getting so bad where they were telling Marc Andreessen, as he said to you on your show, that they were shutting off whole parts of AI. The Biden administration was openly threatening AI and this huge new ... And you know-

Joe Rogan 1:07:23 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:07:24 ... there's concerns. I'm not saying that there's not. But I think the ... I think at some point the tech community, which had beenYou know, either leaning Democrat, you know, for a long time since the Obama era, you know, or wanted to stay out of politics 'cause they just wanted to focus on their machines and they [laughs] and their investments. They don't really wanna be involved in politics. But they woke up in 2024, and so hopefully... 'Cause it's not... I mean, when you see what Soros has done, and you really appreciate the power that one billionaire can have, you kinda go, "Why is there nothing like that, you know, on the other side? Why is it so dominated by Soros?" And so I hope that that's starting to happen, but yeah, when you start to chase out the billionaires, and the billionaires just give up on California, then it's gotta be whoever's remaining to, to try to, you know, put the money behind the guy that can get some change there.

Joe Rogan 1:08:08 Yeah. That's... I mean, I don't see a pathway where California anytime soon turns around. I don't see how it could. I feel like it's... The momentum has shifted so far in a terrible direction, and the solutions are always tax more, take more money from people. And you see of this c- completely corrupt, irresponsible, fraud-ridden, wasteful government that wants more of your money, and the solution is, "If we take more money, we're gonna make things better," which is just insanity.

Michael Shellenberger 1:08:43 I mean, things that can't go on don't. [laughs] So I mean, you could see it, right? I mean, Matt... If, say, Matt Mahan or somebody more moderate gets in to be governor, Rick Caruso runs for LA mayor again. I mean, honestly, like, if somebody can't defeat Karen Bass after she let Los Angeles burn away, which is now, we now know for a fact was just totally preventable, absolutely preventable. I was saying at the time, but now we know. Sh- they tried to rewrite the report, but it's clear it was totally preventable.

Joe Rogan 1:09:11 How'd they try to rewrite the r- report?

Michael Shellenberger 1:09:12 Well, the report, you know, said, "Here's all the things that the fire department should've done that didn't happen." And ultimately, you know, the mayor is the one that chooses the fire chief and fires the, the fire chief. And the mayor was war- they were warned, and she goes to, flies to Ghana for this little junket, presidential inauguration, palling around when she should've been in LA with a com- at a command, uh, headquarters, and, you know... And if she wasn't, then Gavin should've been. You know, Schwarzenegger, towards the end, end of his administration, they would just mobilize planes full of water, you know, huge, these, those huge cargo planes full of water, before there were fires just to start to circulate, just to get ready to put stuff out. This idea that L- there was this idea promoted that it was inevitable that the fires, that, oh, eventually it's just... No. Like, it's absurd. Like, of course you can protect it with adequate fire... People, "Oh, the pipes weren't big enough." No. Like, maintain your reservoirs. C- have water in them. Even the one that it was, like, was, like, not repaired yet, which should've been repaired, they could've kept, uh, they could've air gapped the pipes so that it didn't contaminate the water supply, but left it for firefighting. They didn't do that. They didn't station the engines where they needed to station them. Nobody was on... You know, it's like they're not taking responsibility. Like, they-

Joe Rogan 1:10:22 Right

Michael Shellenberger 1:10:22 ... they weren't taking responsibility for it. So y- anyway, to the point being, get a new governor, you get a better mayor of LA. You've got a guy in San Francisco now who I think has, still has a lot of potential. [laughs] I mean, this latest video, uh, you know, showing the chaos there. But you, with that, I think-

Joe Rogan 1:10:36 Well, that's not-

Michael Shellenberger 1:10:36 ... you could fix things

Joe Rogan 1:10:37 ... him, though.

Michael Shellenberger 1:10:37 Yeah, it's not his fault.

Joe Rogan 1:10:38 His, his, you know, the criticism of him is he walked away too casually.

Michael Shellenberger 1:10:42 Yeah. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:10:42 That's it.

Michael Shellenberger 1:10:43 Yeah, no big deal.

Joe Rogan 1:10:43 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:10:44 Yeah, so I mean, I think there is a, there is a way for California to come out, and my view is, like, look, you've got... The, it's, it's on the tech billionaires. They, they, you know, and I know some of them have left, and obviously they don't need... But the, uh, the, there's still a lot of billionaire rich guys in California that are perfectly capable of financing an alternative effort. The vote... You know, remember, 75% of San Francisco voters want to arrest people using fentanyl in public. They, they want to arrest them. Okay, that sounds so, that's so taboo and progressive. That's 75% of San Francisco voters. So the voters are not, they're not the radical left. Um, some ways they're radicalized in their hatred of Trump and the Trump derangement syndrome, but I mean, everyone like Caruso and Mahan and anybody else there will all just be able to say they hate Trump like everybody else. But-

Joe Rogan 1:11:30 Well, I think they've seen the consequences of these policies.

Michael Shellenberger 1:11:33 Oh, yeah. There's, people are s- people are really... There's, it's not like anything has changed that significantly. They will... In fact, when I interview people in San Francisco, they're a little reluctant to admit that it's gotten better because I think they don't want to take any pressure off the politicians.

Joe Rogan 1:11:46 Mm.

Michael Shellenberger 1:11:47 So I mean, I do think it's, it's rescuable. Um, but it's hard.

Joe Rogan 1:11:51 When you say it's gotten better, like, how so?

Michael Shellenberger 1:11:53 Mostly the encampments are being broken up. Now you see a little... You see more of that sort of thing that we just saw in the video where there's, like, I call them, like, a little more of, like, a nest. You know, there's just a little homeless-

Joe Rogan 1:12:04 So it's not an entire block

Michael Shellenberger 1:12:04 ... big encampments. Like, yeah, the whole block.

Joe Rogan 1:12:06 Not like Skid Row.

Michael Shellenberger 1:12:07 That's in Oakland.

Joe Rogan 1:12:08 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:12:08 That's in Skid Row.

Joe Rogan 1:12:09 Oh, Oakland's nuts.

Michael Shellenberger 1:12:10 Oakland is... Oakland might not be savable. Um, they had a chance to save themselves, and they ended up voting for the wrong person for mayor, and it's just as bad as ever. So but I think s- if you get San Francisco, LA, and a new governor in place, uh, I think you've got the makings to save it. But-

Joe Rogan 1:12:26 Have you ever seen this video? This guy does this description of what's going on in Oakland, and then drives across the county line into the next place, and it's immediately all done, and you just see what the difference between two different forms of government and how it works.

Michael Shellenberger 1:12:40 I, I didn't see that one, but I saw the one between Venice and Santa Monica.

Joe Rogan 1:12:43 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:12:43 I was there when the Venice and Santa Monica. It was similar, like, you're like, "Why are there tents... Why aren't there any tents there?" It's like, that's Santa Monica. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:12:49 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:12:50 Uh, it's different.

Joe Rogan 1:12:50 Well, there's still some, some in Santa Monica.

Michael Shellenberger 1:12:53 Santa, Santa Monica got bad too. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:53 But they cleaned it up a little bit better.

Michael Shellenberger 1:12:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:56 But Venice is bananas. It's just... But Venice is nothing compared to Skid Row. Skid Row is 50 blocks.

Michael Shellenberger 1:13:02 Venice is okay now. Venice-

Joe Rogan 1:13:03 Is it?

Michael Shellenberger 1:13:03 ... is okay now. Yeah, they cleaned that up pretty quickly, and then they, and then the voters fired their city council member who represented them, who was total crazy, radical, Chesa Boudin level radical, and replaced him with a more moderate person. So but yeah, it's-

Joe Rogan 1:13:17 So, like, when you go to the beach, it's not chaos anymore?

Michael Shellenberger 1:13:19 No. It, I mean, I'm not gonna... There's always... It's... But I mean, remember before, it was just, it was tents everywhere. I mean, it was-

Joe Rogan 1:13:26 Right

Michael Shellenberger 1:13:26 ... chaos.

Joe Rogan 1:13:26 Everywhere. Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:13:27 And they were dug in, you know.

Joe Rogan 1:13:28 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:13:28 It was, like, crazy. So no, that's gone. Um, but Skid Row, it's bad as ever.

Joe Rogan 1:13:33 Skid Row is 50 blocks. 50 blocks is so crazy. 50 blocks of tents and homeless people. When we first heard that, I was like, "That's gotta be wrong. It's probably five blocks."No, it's five zero, 50 blocks. That's an enormous amount of land that's completely covered by homeless encampments.

Michael Shellenberger 1:13:51 There's like a whole genre of like, of like influencers when they first visit Skid Row, 'cause everyone hears about it, and then [chuckles] you see like their, their tweets are just like, they're just like all, "I couldn't believe..." Like, I think it's like maybe Ben Shapiro or... There's various conservative influencers who have gone to Skid Row and they're like, "I had no idea."

Joe Rogan 1:14:07 There was a comic-

Michael Shellenberger 1:14:07 You have no idea until you see it.

Joe Rogan 1:14:09 There was a comic from the Comedy Store that filmed something. He went like undercover and st- he had, like in his past, he had some... I don't, I don't, I don't think, I think currently he was sober when he did this. But he decided to go there and film and stay in one of these encampments just to show what it was like. And this was like 2006-ish. Six-ish, somewhere around there, and it was fucking nuts, even back then. And, you know, we talked about the story of how Skid Row with the whole Jerome Hotel and how it all, it, it started. Skid Row was the place where they would take all the homeless people and all the people that were problematic, and they would move them there and keep them there. And the idea was that you just keep them out of Beverly Hills, keep them away from Hollywood. We're doing movies, and we've got famous people walking around. We can't have homeless people.

Michael Shellenberger 1:14:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:59 So just snatch them up, take them downtown, and contain them. So they had them contained in this area, and they called it Skid Row. And then it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Michael Shellenberger 1:15:09 It's not that different from the Tenderloin in the sense that those are places where those single-resident o- Those are the places where the really cheap hotels were.

Joe Rogan 1:15:15 Mm-hmm.

Michael Shellenberger 1:15:15 They were like often for like work- you know, for like working people that were in town temporarily, like temporary hotels. Some of them would just be cages. There were no walls. Like, you would just get your own little... That was how primitive they were. And then it b- just evolved over time, and then they became, all of them became subsidized for, for the homeless. But yeah, it's, um... I don't think... I think California... I think it's important... I think with Trump, and again, like him or hate him or disagree or whatever, you see the potential of this country in particular to make a big change. And I think that it's ultimately resulted from a unleashing of, you know, social media made it all possible. It allowed for people to get, you know, accurate information for the first time in a different paradigm. So I, I, I, I don't wanna lose hope on the Golden State.

Joe Rogan 1:15:58 Hmm. But you lost hope on Oakland.

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:01 Yeah. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:16:03 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:04 Yeah, but maybe I never had hope for Oakland, so...

Joe Rogan 1:16:06 Well, at one point in time Oakland was great.

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:09 Yeah, I mean, Jerry Brown actually brought it up a bit, you know. Got it more development there, but yeah, it's all about governance.

Joe Rogan 1:16:15 Yeah, it is. Um, I guess.

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:19 Hey, can I use the bathroom?

Joe Rogan 1:16:20 Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure.

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:21 Sorry.

Joe Rogan 1:16:21 We'll pause. We'll be right back, folks.

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:23 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:16:23 I just, uh, sent Jamie something funny that someone just sent me about San Francisco. There's this guy, uh, I think he calls himself the gay Republican. [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:33 The gay Republican?

Joe Rogan 1:16:35 The pro- There's a lot of those, actually. Um, but which is, shouldn't shock people.

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:40 They're closeted-

Joe Rogan 1:16:41 It's just-

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:41 ... about the Republican part now. That's the thing.

Joe Rogan 1:16:43 Well, it depends on how wealthy they are. I mean, some of them-

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:45 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:16:45 ... are pretty, you know, Peter Thiel, pretty open about it.

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:48 He wa- he was... Yeah, about his Republicanism.

Joe Rogan 1:16:50 Watch this.

Michael Shellenberger 1:16:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:51 San Fran Transit. We refuse to release crime surveillance videos because it will make people racist. Releasing videos would create a racial bias in the riders against minorities on the trains. Why would it do that, San Fran Transit? Why would it, why would it create a bias? Is there, is there a reoccurring theme among the people committing crimes?

1:17:11 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:17:14 But you could say that about European crime statistics as well.

Joe Rogan 1:17:16 Yes.

Michael Shellenberger 1:17:16 That's also why the, the-

Joe Rogan 1:17:17 Yes

Michael Shellenberger 1:17:17 ... the Germans actually, uh, in particular, but I think other European countries did not wanna release.

Joe Rogan 1:17:22 Right. And-

Michael Shellenberger 1:17:23 Um, but they, they, they did get them out. They have come out now, so...

Joe Rogan 1:17:26 And the UK.

Michael Shellenberger 1:17:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:28 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:17:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:29 Um, so let's move on to happier subjects.

Michael Shellenberger 1:17:32 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:17:32 Shall we? So what do you think about all this, uh, UAP talk? It's one thing that Trump has said that he's gonna release whatever files that they might have on UAPs, um, alien, terrestrial beings, all this jazz. Uh, I talked to Jesse Michaels about it. He is highly skeptical, and he said the people that are involved are all old guard and, you know, they're just, it's just gonna be a bunch of horseshit.

Michael Shellenberger 1:18:02 Maybe. I mean, just first of all, look, I mean, I think whatever you think about the phenomenon, this is amazing. I mean, the president just said he's gonna release all these things. So I mean, after decades of saying, "We're not interested in this. We're not c- we're not following this. Uh, we're shutting down Blue Book. You know, there's nothing there." Uh, they're like, he's s- he's saying... So I mean, that right there is, is I think amazing. And I thought the whole thing was amazing. Like, Obama comes out and he goes, "Well, there's definitely aliens. Oh, but they're not under Area 51." Unless they're hiding it from presidents, which is like a well-established conspiracy theory, so to have Obama-

Joe Rogan 1:18:33 Right

Michael Shellenberger 1:18:33 ... even say that. And then Trump comes up and he goes, he goes, "Obama revealed classified information," with a little grin on his face 'cause he's, a little r- rivalry with Obama. "I might help him out by declassifying it." And then a few hours later, he did. I mean, I... What can't you like about that? I mean, I think that-

Joe Rogan 1:18:50 Well, uh, it's theater. That's what you can't like about it.

Michael Shellenberger 1:18:53 It's, it's theater, but I mean, we just had-

Joe Rogan 1:18:54 Until something really-

Michael Shellenberger 1:18:55 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:18:55 ... comes out, this is just another distraction-

Michael Shellenberger 1:18:58 Oh

Joe Rogan 1:18:58 ... to keep us from thinking about all the other things that are going on.

Michael Shellenberger 1:19:01 But you can't be so... I mean, we should get into Epstein files too-

Joe Rogan 1:19:04 Yes

Michael Shellenberger 1:19:04 ... 'cause I do think I have a different view of Epstein now. But, um, look, I just think we've been asking for more transparency like we had in this very brief period in the mid-'70s with the Church committee hearings.

Joe Rogan 1:19:14 Uh-huh.

Michael Shellenberger 1:19:14 It really took a whole Watergate. It took something big. It's been over 50 years. We got a lot of Epstein files. Yes, there's some missing, but we got JFK files, Amelia Earhart files, and now we're gonna get some UFO files. Is it gonna be everything? Of course not. Like, there's just no way. Um, you know, but I don't think like... I think we should hold b- we should be ex- happy that, like, there is an acknowledgment that there's a lot of government files, and that there's some commitment to release them. Because I do think, like, it's easier to get new Epstein files released after you have some Epstein files released than if you have none. And I feel the same way about UFOs.

Joe Rogan 1:19:49 Okay.So it's easier to get more UFO files-

Michael Shellenberger 1:19:53 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:19:54 ... released, but like release the, the-- like did you-

Michael Shellenberger 1:19:57 What do we want?

Joe Rogan 1:19:57 Did you-

Michael Shellenberger 1:19:57 Well, I think one of it is like what do we want? And I've been, uh, you know, I respect John Greenewald a lot. He runs something called theblackvault.com where he has been FOIA-ing, he's been issuing, you know, Freedom of Information Act requests on UAP, but also a ton of other issues since the mid-'90s. So when he was like 15 years old, he became obsessed with doing, uh, FOIA requests. And he has identified a number of documents that we know exist with redactions. One of them is the UAP Task Force, which has a line that just says, "Potential explanations," you know, the first explanation is redacted, it's blacked out. The second one is, you know, some sort of natural phenomenon. Number three is blacked out, is redacted. Un-redact those.

Joe Rogan 1:20:37 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:20:37 I mean, come on, guys, you can't tell me, "Well, we have to protect our sensor data." Come on, guys. I mean, like that's not sensor data. Uh, tell us what the potential explanations are, are. On terms of the sensor data, John also made a great point. Do you remember when the, the Pentagon released the video of the Russian jet, uh, dumping fuel on a, on one of our drones? Uh, there's like a famous video-

Joe Rogan 1:20:58 No

Michael Shellenberger 1:20:58 ... where like it shows-

Joe Rogan 1:20:59 I don't remember that

Michael Shellenberger 1:20:59 ... a hostile act by the Russians dumping fuel on our drone.

Joe Rogan 1:21:02 When was this?

Michael Shellenberger 1:21:03 Just recently. I mean, must've been within the last year or so. So like they're not-- we do see, they do release, uh, you know, warfare. Various, various times they do release things, and you can kind of go, "Okay, that means that we have..." I don't think-- What I'm saying is the main excuse has been not to reveal our methods, uh, for, for getting, you know, this is-- We're just talking about UAP here, getting, uh, you know, photographs and video. We know that a huge amount of it exists. They haven't even released the, the full, you know, gimbal and, uh, GOFAST videos. There's a whole bunch more video left.

Joe Rogan 1:21:36 Really?

Michael Shellenberger 1:21:37 So just re- Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:21:37 So the, the video that came out, th- those were whistleblower leaks, right?

Michael Shellenberger 1:21:41 Eventually, they released them formally, though.

Joe Rogan 1:21:43 Mm-hmm.

Michael Shellenberger 1:21:43 The Pentagon did. So there's much more of that. So-

Joe Rogan 1:21:47 And the, the, p- particularly, sorry to interrupt you.

Michael Shellenberger 1:21:49 That's okay.

Joe Rogan 1:21:49 But the, the, was it the gimbal or the GOFAST where there was many more crafts?

Michael Shellenberger 1:21:54 I believe that there was... So there's three videos, right? It's gimbal, GOFAST, and then, uh, what was the one where it mo- the Tic Tac video, it moves-

Joe Rogan 1:22:03 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:22:03 ... out of the frame.

Joe Rogan 1:22:04 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:22:04 My understanding is that there's significantly more video for all of those. And then I also, my understanding is also there's just a lot of other videos, [laughs] um, particularly from th- those two incidents certainly have. There's so much more sensor data from... Because we know those incidents had a lot more going on, right-

Joe Rogan 1:22:19 Right

Michael Shellenberger 1:22:19 ... than just was filmed by those videos. So I think that now there is, I was gonna say, the UAP community. There isn't really an organized one, although Jesse's doing an amazing job of organizing it. Um, we should be really specific and say, you know, "Here's what we want." I did a piece with John Greenewald. Um, Representative Nancy Mace wrote an open letter to, uh, the intelligence and military community saying, "Here's a set of documents that we want released." So I think the good news is we're like, "Look, the president has said he wants this. We've identified a bunch of documents, identified a bunch of videos and film." Yeah, I mean, are they gonna withhold stuff? Are they gonna mislead? Probably, but that's been the story for 80 years.

Joe Rogan 1:22:57 Yeah, you saw "The Age of Disclosure," right?

Michael Shellenberger 1:22:59 Yes, of course.

Joe Rogan 1:23:00 Okay. So I think they make a really good point in Age of Disclosure that if they did release things, the real problem is misappropriation of funds, lying to Congress, and the fact that some of these... Y- you would assume that the way these things are being handled, if they do have crafts, if they are, if there is some sort of a back engineering program, that back en- engineering program is going to be held by a military contractor. So, so whatever the contractor is, whether it's, you know, f- Rocketdyne or who- whoever has it, right? You would imagine that the other competing groups would be very pissed off that they didn't have access to this thing, and they, they could sue. The misappropriation of funds, lying to Congress, people could go to jail. Also, most likely fraud. There's, there's gotta be tons of fraud. If there's so much money that's being, like, shuffled away into these black ops projects, if there's no oversight, then who knows where the money's going, right?

Michael Shellenberger 1:24:02 Sure.

Joe Rogan 1:24:03 And so there's a problem there. If you open up the books and, and people go, "Well, where, why, why was there a $100 million check written here? Where, where's the 2.3 billion that's missing here?" And, you know.

Michael Shellenberger 1:24:13 I'm, yeah, I have doubts now. I mean, I have to say, I didn't finish watching it, but, you know, Jesse just dropped a video with him and Eric Weinstein and Eric Davis.

Joe Rogan 1:24:20 Who's this? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:24:22 Uh, uh, Eric Davis.

Joe Rogan 1:24:23 Jesse, yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:24:24 Yeah, so Jesse, Eric.

Joe Rogan 1:24:25 I haven't seen that yet.

Michael Shellenberger 1:24:25 Yeah, uh, I found it really, it really made me question whether there's any there there. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:24:32 What does Eric Davis do?

Michael Shellenberger 1:24:34 Eric Davis, you know who he is. He's got the bushy beard, and he's in Age of Disclosure, and, um, is part of the whole p- you know, Bigelow, you know, that whole AAWSAP, AATIP.

Joe Rogan 1:24:45 Mm-hmm.

Michael Shellenberger 1:24:45 He was a, I, I don't remember his exact... He was a sci- he's a scientist.

Joe Rogan 1:24:49 Okay.

Michael Shellenberger 1:24:49 But he was sort of talking about like, 'cause I think Eric Weinstein was asking these really hard questions like, "Okay, well, like, how many people are in this, you know, reverse engineering program, and what is it?" And I just found his answers to be very thin. So I'm-

Joe Rogan 1:25:02 I haven't seen it yet, so I can't comment-

Michael Shellenberger 1:25:03 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:25:04 ... on that, but-

Michael Shellenberger 1:25:05 I know, I know-

Joe Rogan 1:25:06 Eric is, is both skeptical and open-minded at the same time.

Michael Shellenberger 1:25:10 There is a, like, yeah, I just... I definitely think there's a lot more than they've revealed. I think my skepticism on the reverse engineering stuff, I mean, obviously there's crash retrieval 'cause they're just retrieving, it could be foreign or they're retrieving something. The reverse engineering, I mean, if it's advanced tech, nuclear just took so m- I mean, I'm just familiar with the history of nuclear, just took so much effort to create nuclear energy, and you'd have these huge, it was a huge enterprise, thousands of people. If they're not d- I mean, that's why I kind of go... And I mean, a whole other form of propulsion, I mean, it's just really, it would require so many th- so, such a big bureaucracy. That's where I'm a little skeptical that that exists, 'cause I don't know how you maintain a cover-up that long, but I could be wrong. I mean, as, uh, um-You know, as people have pointed out, they've maintained secrecy of a lot of things for a really long time, so it's not inconceivable, but-

Joe Rogan 1:26:05 Well, especially when you're dealing with government contractors and military contractors. They've, they've done a-- I mean, they, they have a long history of keeping a tight lip when it comes to all sorts of top secret projects that they're working on.

Michael Shellenberger 1:26:18 I mean, it's weird because, like, if you look at the UAP Task Force, which was created by people that had it-- You know, it was like comes out of they have AAWSAP and then AATIP and then UAP Task Force, and then they create AARO, which is much more like what Blue Book was.

Joe Rogan 1:26:30 Mm-hmm.

Michael Shellenberger 1:26:30 Which is their whole point is to debunk and dismiss. I think that's the whole point. It's, it's to-- just to say, "We looked into it and there's nothing there." So then they-- And they cherry-pick the cases. Like, they don't actually deal with the, with the stuff that they can't explain.

Joe Rogan 1:26:43 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 1:26:43 That's what AARO's point is. But the UAP Task Force was people that seemed genuinely interested in it, and they have potential explanations in three separate things. That means that they didn't know themselves. And so I would think that if you-

Joe Rogan 1:26:55 Mm.

Michael Shellenberger 1:26:55 If there was some reverse engineering program, then you would have a better idea than just three potential explanations.

Joe Rogan 1:27:02 But that's assuming they actually got access.

Michael Shellenberger 1:27:04 The UAP Task Force people?

Joe Rogan 1:27:05 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:27:07 Yeah, I mean, at some point-

Joe Rogan 1:27:07 Because opening-- If they open themselves up for-- If they do have access, then you open up those questions, misappropriation of funds, lying to Congress, military contractors having access to these vehicles. I, I would imagine that's too messy.

Michael Shellenberger 1:27:21 They get very mumbly. They get very mumbly at that point.

Joe Rogan 1:27:24 Yeah?

Michael Shellenberger 1:27:24 I find. When you start kind of like, "Well, what is it and how many?" These people kind of-- It's a lot of like, "Uh, you know." I mean, that's how I-- that's how-- that was my interpretation of this.

Joe Rogan 1:27:32 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:27:33 I think that it's, um, I'm much more with Jacques Vallée's view of the phenomenon, and I think that it, um, that they don't know what it is. I think they have a lot more, uh, pho-photos and videos showing, just demonstrating this incredible phenomenon, but I'm not sure that they know what it is, and I'm pretty skeptical that they have a secret reverse engineering program, just because I don't, I don't see how they, how they would've carried it out for this long. 'Cause Jesse's theory, of course, is that it would date back to the seven-- to the '50s.

Joe Rogan 1:28:01 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:28:01 And it just... [sighs] There's just too many possibilities for too many deathbed confessions from people to reveal this knowledge, so I'm-

Joe Rogan 1:28:09 But don't you think you would keep a, a really close watch on anyone who had any access to any of these things? And, and that would be very threatening to them, like Bob Lazar.

Michael Shellenberger 1:28:21 Yeah. I mean, I don't know. You believe Bob Lazar.

Joe Rogan 1:28:24 I do.

Michael Shellenberger 1:28:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:28:25 I don't know what he was working on and whether or not it was ours or something else or what.

Michael Shellenberger 1:28:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:28:30 But I don't think he's a liar. He's had the same story forever.

Michael Shellenberger 1:28:34 Well, then we should go demand the documents. I mean, that would be something where we just need to be like, "Look, these are the documents that we want, and it's on this, this place, these years."

Joe Rogan 1:28:44 Well, one of the things that Bob said is he thinks some of the documents that he was shown were horseshit, and he thinks it's on purpose. He thinks they're-- that, that those fake documents, that the fake narratives are a hook, so that if somebody does spill the beans, they know exactly who would, who was doing it.

Michael Shellenberger 1:29:01 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:29:01 Because they could point to, like, maybe if you're involved in, you know, X program, they give you some bullshit narrative on top of the real truth, right? They'll make up some stuff.

Michael Shellenberger 1:29:12 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:29:12 That way, if you really-- "Well, the government told me X." And you go, "Oh, okay. He learned it from this."

Michael Shellenberger 1:29:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:29:18 "He's a part of this program."

Michael Shellenberger 1:29:19 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:29:19 Now, we've narrowed it down to two hundred and fifty employees. Let's start scouring these people-

Michael Shellenberger 1:29:23 It's counterintelligence

Joe Rogan 1:29:24 ... and bring them in for questions.

Michael Shellenberger 1:29:25 Yeah, counterintelligence. Yeah, I mean, it seems like the-- So you know the MJ-12 documents.

Joe Rogan 1:29:28 Yes.

Michael Shellenberger 1:29:29 There's one of them that is this incredible document. I mean, just if it's a forgery, and most people, I think, think it's a forgery or it's a hoax or whatever. It's so well done. It's the manual on extraterrestrial crash retrieval, um, with different morphologies. You ever seen this?

Joe Rogan 1:29:43 No.

Michael Shellenberger 1:29:43 Have you even seen it? It's an amazing document. Like, I spent-

Joe Rogan 1:29:45 Do you think it's fake?

Michael Shellenberger 1:29:45 Went down, like, a long rabbit hole. Look, m- I would say most ufologists think it's fake, so it's not even me. I-- What's incredible about it, they show like, you know, like the old books and the, from the library, they'd show who checked it out. They had all these names.

Joe Rogan 1:29:58 Mm-hmm.

Michael Shellenberger 1:29:58 It's an inc- So then you kind of go, like, the only people, really. I mean, it seemed like the level of sophistication to create this would've been the government, and so then you're sort of like, "Well, why would they have done that?" One of the answers is it was just, this, they call it passage material to build and detect counterintelligence activities. And I'll tell you another one that I can't quite figure out. But I mean, if you want, I mean, so there's a lot of effort to-- and why that narrat- I mean, like another thing I was t- people say is they'll go, "Well, they're using the UAP stuff as cover for secret weapons programs." And you're like, "Well, why would that work as cover?" And they go, "Well, because then, then it's a way to distract attention." I was like, "But why would that distract attention? Wouldn't that attract attention?" You go, don't-- If you, as opposed to, like, within the military, you're like, "Look, we don't-- This is, this is secret research. You know, that's really important to national security. We don't want you to pay attention."

Joe Rogan 1:30:46 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 1:30:46 Instead, they're like, "Oh, no, this is UFO crash retrieval, so don't pay attention to it." That seems like you're, a recipe for creating more interest in UFOs.

Joe Rogan 1:30:55 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:30:56 So there's a lot of things that the government has done where you're like, it's almost like assuming that is, by the way, the-- We know that, like, we know that the government, the US Air Force did, you know, in the early '80s, make this guy, Paul Bennewitz, go crazy, who was seeing things over Kirtland Air Base, and then this guy, Richard Doty, you know, was a-

Joe Rogan 1:31:13 How'd they make him go crazy?

Michael Shellenberger 1:31:14 They would be feeding him all this information, convincing him of an alien attack, and he basically ended up going crazy from it. It's this, uh, amazing story told by this, uh, by this book, Mirage Men.

Joe Rogan 1:31:24 Mm.

Michael Shellenberger 1:31:24 Also a documentary. And you look and you kind of go, and they go, "Well, it was to cover up a secret weapons program at Kirtland Air Base." And it's like, it's like I, I'm not, I'm not even disbelieving it, but it's like that's just such a-- Like, why would that be the best way to do that? And why would you be so sure that that wouldn't attract interest from people rather than-

Joe Rogan 1:31:43 Mm

Michael Shellenberger 1:31:43 ... distract it? So there's a bunch of things that don't make sense, and so even if it is all, you know, which is the skeptic view, you know, is that it's some combination of government disinformation, sci-fi, you know, dreams, hypnosis, hypnagogic states, um, and then, and then kind of the power of belief. You know, I just reviewed this new book on Barney and Betty Hill, where the author thinks that it was, that, that really was a combination of her d-It was the stress of being an interracial couple, her nightmares, and then hypnosis where they then confabulate this whole story. That's the basic skeptic view is that it was sort of... But, but the government's involved in it, and that's always strange 'cause you're like, "Why would the government be participating?"

Joe Rogan 1:32:27 The government's involved in the Betty and Barney Hill story?

Michael Shellenberger 1:32:29 No, no, in the, in the UFO, in creating-

Joe Rogan 1:32:32 Right

Michael Shellenberger 1:32:32 ... in this, in these UF- Assuming that they did the MJ 12 or somebody did the MJ 12, but certainly in the case of-

Joe Rogan 1:32:37 Right. Why would they have-

Michael Shellenberger 1:32:38 ... of Kirtland Air Base

Joe Rogan 1:32:38 ... any organizations? Why would they have anything, right? Why, why would they have-

Michael Shellenberger 1:32:42 Why would you be, why would you be doing th- Like, the thing with, like, the Paul Doty and the Paul Bennewitz, or the Richard Doty and Paul Bennewitz is like, why, why was that the be- I mean, it's just, why was that the best way? Like, somebody is, observes strange activity over Kirtland Air Base and they discover this. Why was that the right approach? I don't, I don't follow it. And you had AJ Gentile on-

Joe Rogan 1:33:04 Mm-hmm

Michael Shellenberger 1:33:04 ... who did the stuff on crop circles. We saw, they saw military disinformation around those activities in Britain. So you see a lot of, um-

Joe Rogan 1:33:13 The crop circle thing's weird.

Michael Shellenberger 1:33:14 Really weird, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:33:15 'Cause you wanna just write it off. I mean, I wanted to write it off. I'm like, "Oh, there's guys with boards. They're making designs." But then you see some of the designs and how the, the, the wheat is actually woven and how they have these exploded nodes. They're almost like they're microwaved, and they've examined these things, and it seems like there's some energy that's created these things. And also the, the sheer size and scale of some of these things with no footprints leading into them or out of them, and just the geometric precision of some of them, the- it's really weird. Like, there's, uh, of course, it's eyewitness accounts. It's hard to know if they're being accurate. But people who've flown over areas where there's nothing there, flown back two hours later and there's these football field size M- Mandelbrot sets.

Michael Shellenberger 1:34:04 The, that was the Julia set over, uh, next to Stonehenge, was the one that the guy flew over and there was nothing there-

Joe Rogan 1:34:09 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:34:09 ... and then like a couple of hours later there was the Julia set, which is a spectacular-

Joe Rogan 1:34:14 Yeah, it's incredible

Michael Shellenberger 1:34:15 ... fractal.

Joe Rogan 1:34:15 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 1:34:16 I'll tell you, it's even weirder-

Joe Rogan 1:34:17 With incredible precision.

Michael Shellenberger 1:34:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:34:18 That's what's really, as much precision as you can get by folding over wheat. But-

Michael Shellenberger 1:34:21 Right

Joe Rogan 1:34:22 ... when you look at it, like, from above and it, you know, you don't get to the, the m- the micro, you, you, you're looking at these things that, like, they really do scale in a fractal way, and it's very fucking strange and difficult to reproduce. You would imagine something like that would take a long fucking time to plot out and plan. It would take multiple people. You'd have to measure and remeasure. You'd have to have some, some sort of tools and instruments not just to fold over the, the wheat, but if you're gonna interweave the wheat, like, what is your method of doing that? And how are you doing it where, you know, this one is one dimension, and then y- the next one is precisely three-fifths of that dimension, the next one is slightly... You know, and, and, and they're fractal.

Michael Shellenberger 1:35:08 Well, it gets really even weirder than that. So you know how I just, I just described this case of, of, of this Air Force counterintelligence guy driving this guy, Paul Bennewitz, crazy at Kirtland Air Force.

Joe Rogan 1:35:16 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:35:16 That book is written by Mark Pilkington. Mark Pilkington is one of two guys that claim to have created all the crop circles. The other guy is a guy named John Lundberg.

Joe Rogan 1:35:27 Oh, right, right, right.

Michael Shellenberger 1:35:28 AJ, in his video about the crop circles, accuses John Lundberg, again, the cir- who's the, they call it the Circle Makers. They have a website they keep updated.

Joe Rogan 1:35:38 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:35:38 He accuses him of being a British intelligence agent, AJ does, or at least he strongly implies it.

Joe Rogan 1:35:44 Mm.

Michael Shellenberger 1:35:44 Um, and, and part of that is because there was a bunch of weird stuff on the website about MI5 and the CIA, and then Lundberg went to a school. This is all very circumstantial, so I'm not defending it. I'm just saying what AJ said. Then Lundberg went to a school that shares a courtyard with, uh, with an M- with MI- with an MI5 campus or an MI5 training area. I asked Mark. I have, like, a three, I have, like, three hours of interviews with Mark, um, who I'm really interested-- he's a really interesting person. I asked him directly if they had any connection to military intelligence. He said absolutely not. Um, it's hard to-

Joe Rogan 1:36:15 Which is what you would say. [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:36:17 Well, of course you're allowed to say it if you are, but I'm not making any accusations. But yeah, I mean, he claimed that they made all of them and, you know, there's some of them. Have you ever seen the massive-- There was one that was absolutely massive.

Joe Rogan 1:36:28 Yeah. Pull some of them up, Jamie, so we can get some-

Michael Shellenberger 1:36:30 There's the Julia set, but there's another fr- there's another one that's-

Joe Rogan 1:36:32 Pull up the Julia set

Michael Shellenberger 1:36:33 ... so, it's so big. It's really hard to see, but he said that he wasn't at that one.

Joe Rogan 1:36:36 Yeah. Like-

Michael Shellenberger 1:36:37 That's the famous, that's the Julia set. It's gorgeous. Well, the big one right there is in the middle. That one's just-

Joe Rogan 1:36:40 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:36:41 ... uh, just crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:36:41 I mean, these are enormous.

Michael Shellenberger 1:36:44 Yeah, they're enormous.

Joe Rogan 1:36:44 Go, go full screen on that. It's, they're so big and, I mean, the amount of precision involved in them is kind of spectacular.

Michael Shellenberger 1:36:55 Now, Mark denies that they have exploded nodes, and he denies that they're interwoven.

Joe Rogan 1:37:01 Well-

Michael Shellenberger 1:37:01 AJ says that they are definitely interwoven and have exploded nodes, and there was an, even an article in Science Magazine which, you know, argues that they were made by humans, but that they, they point out the, um, the exploded nodes. So yeah, maybe that's it or-

Joe Rogan 1:37:15 What's weird, too, is there's like, how did you do this? Where, how did, wh- what's the, where's the evidence of people trampling through this with equipment? N- it's all missing. Like, it's strange. And then also, no one's caught doing them.

Michael Shellenberger 1:37:31 How about the pi-

Joe Rogan 1:37:32 They just appear.

Michael Shellenberger 1:37:32 Oh, here's the other one. I asked Mark about this, and he didn't know about it, but do you know the pi one?

Joe Rogan 1:37:36 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:37:37 It was apparently-

Joe Rogan 1:37:38 Shaped like a nine

Michael Shellenberger 1:37:38 ... I'm pretty sure it's the first time that it was a visual explanation of pi. That's my understanding of it. Now, maybe s- I, maybe there's someone. I haven't seen anything earlier than that, but that's, like, on its own is really amazing that that was the first time that they had created a visual representation of, of pi.

Joe Rogan 1:37:55 Yeah. That's it.

Michael Shellenberger 1:37:55 Um, and complete with like the... Yeah, that's it. It's like, um, there's a, there's another, uh, image that will show how it is pi. Probably that one right there. Yeah. Um, and so that's a extremely sophisticated- [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:38:09 Extremely

Michael Shellenberger 1:38:10 ... crop circle. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:38:10 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 1:38:11 Um-

Joe Rogan 1:38:11 I mean, ima- imagine the type of intelligence that you'd have to possess to pull this off.And then not let anybody know that you did it, and it's just for funsies. Just for funsies-

Michael Shellenberger 1:38:25 It's-

Joe Rogan 1:38:25 ... in a field.

Michael Shellenberger 1:38:26 Yeah. It's, um... And then, you know, these MIT researchers went out, that's also part of it, and they tried to do it, and it just wasn't, it wasn't nearly as good.

Joe Rogan 1:38:34 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:38:34 So-

Joe Rogan 1:38:34 What is this article, sorry?

Speaker 1:38:35 I'm gonna look while you guys are talking.

Joe Rogan 1:38:36 Okay.

Michael Shellenberger 1:38:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:38:37 It is very fucking weird.

Michael Shellenberger 1:38:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:38:39 It's very weird and it... But the whole UFO thing is very weird. It... You know, the Jacques Vallée books are very interesting, and I've read three of his books so far. And, um, I, I, I've had him on a couple of times, and the last time I had him on, I, I wr- really went on a deep dive and I read two of his books right before he came on. And w- one of the more interesting things is the really old stories, like the stories from the 1700s, the 1800s, where they lack the context of spaceships, the idea behind it, like none of that stuff exists. But yet you get almost, at least y- you could say, "Oh, I could understand how they would be describing it this way," but it's kind of the same thing that other people have been describing. Like the, the Zimbabwe story, a lot of these other stories, it's kind of the same story over and over and over again. Which makes you go, "Okay, well what... Does it have to be from outer space, or is it possible that there is something here that is, like, far older than us that has somehow or another removed itself from our view?"

Michael Shellenberger 1:39:50 Or is it social contagion and people... I mean, I'm always struck by it's always like the aliens always are like, "Oh, protect your environment-

Joe Rogan 1:39:58 Mm-hmm

Michael Shellenberger 1:39:58 ... and avoid nuclear war." It's like, "Oh, thanks. Like we didn't know we needed to do those until you guys showed up." It makes more sense as like, you could see it as a... I mean, I got very into, I haven't interviewed her yet, but I'm about to. There's a, there's an anthropologist at Stanford named Tanya Luhrmann, and she's done this incredible work on religions where she, um... Like anthropol- like good anthropologists and also this guy, Bowman, like they, they're agnostic on whether or not, like, those beings are real. Like, they're just like, "We're really interested in, like, the culture and the psychology and the experience of it." But she had this... She, [laughs] she was like, did her field work with magicians and witches in England. You know, like mo- you know, like modern witches and... Not magicians like magic tricks, but like the old, uh, uh... Who's the famous, uh, magician? Ga- uh, not Gandalf.

Joe Rogan 1:40:44 Houdini?

Michael Shellenberger 1:40:44 No, no, the, uh, British one. Uh, Mer- Merlin, right?

Joe Rogan 1:40:47 Oh.

Michael Shellenberger 1:40:48 Um, but like old style, right? Like, but they were like... So she didn't really believe in it, but she would-- they were like, "You have to practice witchcraft in order to do this." And she had, like, multiple anomalous experiences. One of them that she woke up and there was five druids in her room beckoning to her. And people were like, "Is it a dream?" And she's like, "No, I'm not, it's not a dream." She had another instance where they were trying to, like, conjure energies to, like, turn off, to like, sh- uh, turn, shut down her watch, and she felt a huge energy surge through her and shut off her watch. And her point is that she thinks that the practice... She's think- she, we put too much focus on the beliefs, but she says, like, the practices themselves, I don't know if she would say conjure. I also interviewed Diana Pasulka on it. They would say more like reveal these different realities. So they're much more... It's a very interesting set of work because they're not, they're not trying to answer the question of whether the druids were really in her room or not. Um, I mean, the watch thing, you know, apparently definitely happened, but, um-

Joe Rogan 1:41:46 Apparently definitely is a weird way to put it. [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:41:49 Apparently to her-

Joe Rogan 1:41:51 Right

Michael Shellenberger 1:41:51 ... definitely. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:41:52 I know. But you know what I'm saying? It's like, uh, show me, man. Um, the conjuring thing is strange because that's a reoccurring theme. That you go outside and you have, like, uh, these experiences where you say, "I'm not afraid. Come s- show, show yourself to me." And given enough time with enough intention, apparently things will appear in the sky.

Michael Shellenberger 1:42:14 My favorite one is the, the Black guy talking about Yahweh, who, where the, the local ABC newscaster goes out, and it's gonna be one of those, "Ha ha, this guy thinks that he can conjure UFOs." And they go out with him and he conjures an orb. Did you ever see that one?

Joe Rogan 1:42:27 No.

Michael Shellenberger 1:42:27 That's, like, an incredible... That's, like, one of my favorite-

Joe Rogan 1:42:30 Where, where is that?

Michael Shellenberger 1:42:30 ... of those videos. And the newscaster's like, uh... He call- Literally they see him calling his... I think it's, like, an NBC affiliate or an ABC affiliate somewhere. Jamie can probably find it. Um, but if it's, uh... He literally calls his boss. The newscaster's like, "Well, uh, the story's turned out a little differently than I thought." Um, it's, like, one of my favorites. I'm sure you could say, "Oh, it's a balloon," or whatever, but it, like, comes in and out. I mean, it's really... And it comes right as he's calling it.

Joe Rogan 1:42:54 That's the weird thing is I've talked to multiple people that have actually done this.

Michael Shellenberger 1:42:59 Oh, people, it's-

Joe Rogan 1:42:59 That have gone out-

Michael Shellenberger 1:43:00 ... people say it a lot

Joe Rogan 1:43:00 ... with these, you know, air quotes, experts. And they, you go out to some deserted area and you call these things.

Michael Shellenberger 1:43:09 Conjure them. There's a second guy, white guy, that also does it, and Reuters did a whole story on him, 'cause apparently there was a whole bunch of people around that they saw it. And of course Jake Barber, who's this former, you know, uh, contractor, helicopter pilot contractor for Special Forces, announced that he was gonna go and, uh, conjure UFOs and bring one down.

Speaker 1:43:30 They're here. They're just sitting right up there.

Michael Shellenberger 1:43:32 We met up with Prophet Yahweh, Seer of Yahweh, at Doolittle Park off Lake Mead. We picked the day, we picked the time, and we picked the location. Everyone's gonna think you're absolutely nuts.

Speaker 1:43:43 Well, I thought I was absolutely nuts.

Michael Shellenberger 1:43:45 Until he says he saw UFOs. Over the years, 1,500 of them. Can we make it, uh, 1,501 today? What do you think?

Speaker 1:43:54 I'll try it.

Michael Shellenberger 1:43:55 He says the voice in his head told him to go public now. So we took him up on his offer and we scanned the skies. Nothing but a few clouds. When the prophet started praying for a sighting, I wasn't exactly convinced.

Speaker 1:44:06 I pray, oh Yahweh, that you send a sighting so that they know that I am not mentally ill. I am not a false prophet-

Joe Rogan 1:44:14 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:44:14 [laughs]

Speaker 1:44:14 ... like those who seek to kill me say I am.

Joe Rogan 1:44:17 Oh, people are trying to kill him?

Speaker 1:44:19 Oh, brother, look at it. There it is

Michael Shellenberger 1:44:21 You can barely see it, a white speck. Then another sighting

Speaker 1:44:26 There it is. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it

Michael Shellenberger 1:44:28 Photojournalist Jonathan Hawkins locks in on it. Let's take a closer look here. It's an orange sphere that appeared out of nowhere. I call the boss with an unexpected change in my story. I'm tell- I can see it clear as day. In fact, it's bright

Speaker 1:44:42 I can't believe this

Michael Shellenberger 1:44:43 It's, it's moving pretty fast

Speaker 1:44:45 It's going to Nellis Air Force Base. It wants to be seen

Michael Shellenberger 1:44:48 We called Nellis to see what these things might be. Guess what? They didn't call us back. But this thing started coming back toward us

Speaker 1:44:55 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:44:55 It's coming toward us now, I think

Speaker 1:44:58 What?

Michael Shellenberger 1:44:58 See, it's coming up toward us

Speaker 1:45:01 Whoa, man! Oh, hallelujah

Joe Rogan 1:45:06 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:45:06 Then, a few seconds later, it disappeared

Speaker 1:45:09 It's going back up in space

Michael Shellenberger 1:45:11 Prophet Yahweh isn't concerned. He says it'll be back

Joe Rogan 1:45:16 I would take this more seriously if that guy didn't have your reporter voice

Speaker 1:45:19 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:45:19 It's amazing. No, this is, this is part of the charm of it

Joe Rogan 1:45:22 [sighs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:45:23 I think it's-- um, I love it because I don't, I don't think you can-- I don't think it's gonna convince any skeptics, but it's like one of the few things in our, in our world where it inspires a set of, like, wonder and a set of awe. And, you know, for those of us that struggle with our faith, um, it's inspiring because it is sort of a spiritual... Like, I mean, he, he calls himself Yahweh, right?

Joe Rogan 1:45:43 Right

Michael Shellenberger 1:45:43 So there's like, there's didn't-- it wasn't about, like, gray aliens or whatever.

Joe Rogan 1:45:47 Right

Michael Shellenberger 1:45:47 It was just something else. And that's what I mean about, like, why more Vallee, his work explains all of this much better, um, and-- th- than the sort of the extraterrestrial hypothesis did, and he's had that since '68.

Joe Rogan 1:45:59 Well, I think what he does best is not explain it.

Michael Shellenberger 1:46:02 Yeah. He doesn't-

Joe Rogan 1:46:03 You know what I mean?

Michael Shellenberger 1:46:03 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:46:03 It's like there really isn't an explanation, but here's what we know.

Michael Shellenberger 1:46:07 He calls it a control system, though.

Joe Rogan 1:46:09 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:46:09 Which is sort of like-- I asked Diana, I was like, "Is that, how is that different from God?" Um, because he's sort of a control system that is-- his, his view is that there's a control system that's evolving human consciousness, and it will manifest different things or, and that, in re- in relation with humans over time. And so he looks at the, you know, the apparition, the Maria, um, or Saint Mary apparitions in Spain and the airships of the late 19th century where people saw these things that looked like the Zeppelins even though they hadn't been invented yet. All of these things he says his view is they're sort of being sort of produced in some relationship as well with our culture. That's Vallee's argument, and that sounds a lot like God in some ways when you say control system.

Joe Rogan 1:46:52 Right. What does that mean? Like, is it a, a higher life form that is monitoring us? Like, the- that's the, the, the secular version of religion for a lot of these people that are really interested in aliens, like, that there's some advanced being that's making sure we don't fuck everything up completely.

Michael Shellenberger 1:47:09 Uh, certainly for me, that's my interest. I mean, I, um, like, again, this anthropologist, uh, Luhrmann, you know, she says-- you know, William James is this famous Harvard psychologist who wrote a book about the varieties of the religious experience in 1902, and he says everybody wants to kind of be like, "Is it real or not real? Is, like, this world just what we see?" And he says, "I think there's something more." There's not... So this, this very, you know, skeptic or debunker thing which is like, "Oh, no, it's just gotta be a b- that thing's gotta be a bird," or it's a bl- And it's like, well, but it really... You haven't ex- just calling it that. And as they point out, it's like they showed up when they wanted to. I mean, it's a pretty amazing-- If it's just a coincidence, it's a really amazing one. And so I think for me it's like, because I am a Christian, and it is hard to believe in an, in an all-powerful and all-good God because He obviously allowed the Holocaust to occur and allows terrible things to occur. But I love that, that segment, and there's-- I love-- There's another one I love right now. It's, like, a British woman in the '50s doing an interview about seeing a, what she calls a Mexican hat UFO over her house.

Joe Rogan 1:48:10 Mm.

Michael Shellenberger 1:48:11 And the kids saw it, and she-- and everybody in the village made fun of her, and they ridiculed her, and she's like, "But it's, you know, but it's-- I saw it, and it was real." And it was like, it's like those are like our, those are spiritual, uh, experiences, I think. Um, so I don't know that, like, I want the files released from the government.

Joe Rogan 1:48:29 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:48:29 I'm also skeptical that it's gonna tell us what it is because I think at some level we're not supposed to get more, much more information about what it is. I think it's-

Joe Rogan 1:48:38 We're not ready

Michael Shellenberger 1:48:38 ... something else is going on. Or maybe it's having a positive effect. I think it's, I think, uh, one of the-- Sometimes people get really mad at UFO believers. Like, skeptics get really, like, angry, like, "How do they... Well, they're so..." You know, whatever, they get so mad. And I'm always like, but, like, how often do you see them causing real harm or problems? I mean, we had one cult where they, you know, like, a few people killed themselves. But for the most part-

Joe Rogan 1:48:59 They cut their balls off first.

Michael Shellenberger 1:49:00 Yeah. Great.

Joe Rogan 1:49:01 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 1:49:01 So, you know, UFO-- Like, for the most part, UFO, people that are interested in UFOs, um, are dreamy seekers, spiritual, um, and I think it's, um, I, I, I think it's wrong to-- I think it's lovely and, and wonderful, and it reminds us of, you know, that we're small. On the one hand, we're humble about our knowledge, and there's just-- surrounded by mystery. I mean, your, so much of your career and this, this platform has been to allow us to talk about things that are unexplained and that, or where the explanations don't really seem to explain it. There's something more [chuckles] as-

Joe Rogan 1:49:33 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:49:33 ... as, as William James would say. There's something more, and I think that the denial of anything more, this idea that, "Oh, we know everything, and we know where the..." We don't know anything.

Joe Rogan 1:49:41 That's hubris.

Michael Shellenberger 1:49:41 It's just crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:49:42 But that, th- those people are silly. They're more silly than the believers because th- this, this idea that, like, look, if there is a-- if you have a completely novel experience, like, say, if you are Commander David Fravor and you encounter this Tic Tac-shaped object that's hovering over something that appears to be a ship that's under the water, this thing takes off at a absolutely preposterous speed that is documented both in radar and visually-

Michael Shellenberger 1:50:12 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:50:12 ... and on camera, right? So they've got video of this thing moving. They say that it went from above 50,000 feet above sea level to sea level in less than a second, which would require more energy than the entire United States produces in a year in order to get a, an object to move that quicklyAnd it does that with no heat signature. Okay, if this is all true, just that alone. Now imagine you have this completely novel experience. And because y- I haven't had it, and you haven't had it, and Jamie hasn't had it, well, it's very simple and easy to dismiss it. But if this happened, what do you, what, what do you expect the person to do? What do you expect a decorated pilot in the, in the Navy, a guy who has a rock solid record, who is... There's nothing about him that screams that he's a kook or he's mentally ill, and when you talk to him, he's incredibly meticulous, very intelligent, very disciplined. What-

Michael Shellenberger 1:51:15 Well, uh, his, uh, his, his face, it, it looks like he had a spiritual experience.

Joe Rogan 1:51:20 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:51:20 He has a smile on his face. I went to the-- When I was in Delhi, I went to the Jain temple, and I went to the Hindu temple, and I'm not Jain, I'm not Hindu. Um, but I had a look on my face that reminded me [chuckles] that sort of, that sort of, that sort of like that starry-eyed-

Joe Rogan 1:51:34 Right

Michael Shellenberger 1:51:35 ... the look in your face where you've experienced the wonder and the awe of being alive, and we're on this planet, and we don't-

Joe Rogan 1:51:41 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:51:41 ... really understand it all, but it's beautiful and it's okay. And I think that that's the spiritual-- I mean, that's where it's like he's been touched by, uh, I don't, you know, I'm not imposing this, but he's sort of touched by God in some way, or been touched by something.

Joe Rogan 1:51:54 Something.

Michael Shellenberger 1:51:54 And it's, and it's not-

Joe Rogan 1:51:55 Something extraordinary.

Michael Shellenberger 1:51:56 Yeah. And the thing-- Look, I think the other thing, you read that environment, and you're like, that thing showed dominance in that-

Joe Rogan 1:52:01 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:52:01 ... environment. So on the one hand, it showed itself to be-

Joe Rogan 1:52:04 Technological dominance.

Michael Shellenberger 1:52:04 You call it technological.

Joe Rogan 1:52:05 What-whatever.

Michael Shellenberger 1:52:06 Volé might call it-

Joe Rogan 1:52:06 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 1:52:06 ... spiritual dominance.

Joe Rogan 1:52:07 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 1:52:07 You know? So but that's for me, what's, what's special about it, and I think it's not gonna go away, and I don't think we're gonna get to the answer. I don't think, I don't think the government-- How could the government... You know, I don't think they'd know, and I don't-- I mean, even if they, even if there was some contact, I don't know if that would really tell you all the answers.

Joe Rogan 1:52:26 Well, what I could imagine is that they have acquired both eyewitness, video, radar, all, all the various sensors' data, and they've done this with multiple instances of these things, and they are trying to assess what this is, and they have a long-standing study of these things that would-

Michael Shellenberger 1:52:53 Yes

Joe Rogan 1:52:53 ... both be disturbing and confusing to a lot of people and disruptive to society. I'm sure you're well-

Michael Shellenberger 1:53:00 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:53:00 ... aware of Hal Puthoff and what happened-

Michael Shellenberger 1:53:02 Oh, sure

Joe Rogan 1:53:02 ... with him during the Bush administration, where they brought him in, and they essentially told Hal Puthoff. Now, this is assuming Hal's telling the truth, and I have no reason to think he's lying. They brought him in, and a bunch of other scientists and, and a bunch of other thinkers and said, "I want you to create a chart. On one side, list the positive aspects of disclosure. On the other side, what are the negative ram-ramifications of disclosure? Government, religion, the finances, uh, all, all the different things that could happen in the world." And the negatives outweighed the positives. They decided not to disclose. But the premise that he was brought in with this was saying, "We have acquired physical crafts that are not of this world. We have biological entities that are not of this world, and we are a part of some sort of a back engineering program. We wanna release this information. What would happen if we did?" And their conclusion was, uh, chaos.

Michael Shellenberger 1:54:02 Trump, Trump didn't seem to go through that checklist to, and come up with the same answer, did he? [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:54:05 I don't think he got that memo.

Michael Shellenberger 1:54:07 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:54:08 But, uh, also I do think that it's-

Michael Shellenberger 1:54:09 I think he doesn't-- I think he, I think he ignores the memos from experts in general, so.

Joe Rogan 1:54:12 Right. If he was in office, and that was the case, and they came to him and, you know, and someone like Tucker or someone that's influential to him could sit down with him and talk to him, and he thought it would gain their favor, he might just release it.

Michael Shellenberger 1:54:23 I mean, it's wild 'cause on the one hand, it looked like it was spontaneous, but on the other hand, L- you know, Lara Trump, who's, like, someone that's, like, a trusted family member who's, like, really competent. Like, they sent her in to, like, take over the RNC and fix it-

Joe Rogan 1:54:34 Mm-hmm

Michael Shellenberger 1:54:34 ... and fire all the people and get their, get their loyalists in there. She was out there talking, saying that, you know, "Oh, the Trump is..." I was hearing a lot of noise, but it wasn't from people that I trusted, so I didn't report anything on it. But I was hearing a lot of noise too that the Trump administration was considering doing something, but you didn't know. I didn't know if it was circular reporting. But I thought the Lara Trump thing was interesting because I don't think-- I don't see her as sort of a-- She's not just speculating or bullshitting, you know. She's a trusted, you know, kind of-

Joe Rogan 1:55:00 Right

Michael Shellenberger 1:55:02 ... a trusted source for that. So she said that, and then Obama was asked about it, and then Trump made that announcement. So I don't know what they have planned. You know, we were pushing on the intelligence community privately to release the stuff, and it was going nowhere, so.

Joe Rogan 1:55:13 The Obama thing was nuts because the guy didn't have any follow-up questions.

Michael Shellenberger 1:55:16 That was r- that was part of what was really weird about it. Also, they put it in a speed round. Like [laughs] -

Joe Rogan 1:55:21 Uh

Michael Shellenberger 1:55:21 ... like, it's like, why would you put it in a speed round?

Joe Rogan 1:55:23 Which is probably why he didn't have follow-up questions, if you think about it that way.

Michael Shellenberger 1:55:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:55:27 But, I mean, uh, that's a, just a massive dropping of the ball.

Michael Shellenberger 1:55:30 Well, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:55:30 The guy says aliens are real. How do you know? How do you know is the next question, right? It's right there. How do you know aliens are real?

Michael Shellenberger 1:55:36 Well, yesterday, the day after, then he said, "Oh, I just meant theoretically and there's life in the universe and stuff."

Joe Rogan 1:55:40 Well, why don't you ask that so you s- you catch him on the spot instead of when it becomes this big viral moment-

Michael Shellenberger 1:55:46 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:55:46 ... and everybody's talking about it.

Michael Shellenberger 1:55:47 Well, he-

Joe Rogan 1:55:47 And then he comes up with a rational explanation for why he said that.

Michael Shellenberger 1:55:50 Yeah. I mean, and, and, and he told-- Obama told one of the late-night hosts, I can't remember if it was Kimmel or Colbert or somebody, but he said they said something like, "Tell us what you know." And he said, like, you know, "I can't tell you. There's things I can't tell you." So I mean, he obviously knows more than he said.

Joe Rogan 1:56:05 Right. Otherwise, he would say there's nothing.

Michael Shellenberger 1:56:06 And then Trump said that he knows more. It was very interesting, you know? It was very-

Joe Rogan 1:56:10 Yeah. I talked to Trump about it.

Michael Shellenberger 1:56:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:56:12 He won't, he won't tell you shit. He goes, "There's a lot of things."

Michael Shellenberger 1:56:14 He kind of, he moved around.

Joe Rogan 1:56:14 "I know some things."

Michael Shellenberger 1:56:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:56:16 "There's a lot of... It's very crazy."

Michael Shellenberger 1:56:19 But, you know, he-

Joe Rogan 1:56:19 "But he won't tell you anything"

Michael Shellenberger 1:56:20 ... they said they weren't gonna release the Epstein files, and that came out, so I just kinda go.

Joe Rogan 1:56:23 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 1:56:24 Now, I have a bit different-- I don't know if you wanna get into it, but I have a slightly-

Joe Rogan 1:56:26 Sure

Michael Shellenberger 1:56:26 ... different view of Epstein than, than I think I did, so.

Joe Rogan 1:56:29 Well, before we get into that-

Michael Shellenberger 1:56:31 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:56:31 ... you know Tucker's... thoughts on this whole UFO, UAP thing, he thinks they're like angels and, and demons from the Bible, and he thinks that they're, they've always been here. And, you know, I'm, I'm sure you're aware of, like, the Book of Enoch. The Book of Enoch, which was one of the original biblical texts that wasn't included in the canon, but just because of a few rabbis decided it didn't jive with the Torah. And they found the Book of Enoch, along with the Book of Isaiah, as a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And, uh, when, when you find out that there was a biblical text that, uh, that was contemporary to books that did make it into the Old Testament, and that they talk about the watchers who come from above and, and mate with humans and create this race of-

Michael Shellenberger 1:57:21 Nephilim

Joe Rogan 1:57:22 ... giant, giants called-

Michael Shellenberger 1:57:22 Oh

Joe Rogan 1:57:22 ... the Nephilim, who destroy everything and consume everything, and you're like, "What the fuck is this?" Like, what is this? And, and just stop and imagine if those rabbis hadn't discl- like, if that hadn't been excluded. Like, Wesley Huff is great talking about this stuff. He's a real historian when it comes to, you know, really understanding the, the history of these biblical texts and, you know, and he's absolutely fascinated by it. And he's like-

Michael Shellenberger 1:57:47 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:57:47 ... "Yeah, it is kinda crazy that they just decided to not put that in the Bible." Imagine if they did, and part of when you're going to church, and they, and they're going over the Old Testament like, "Okay, this week we're gonna go over the Book of Enoch, and we're gonna figure out who the watchers are." Like, what do you... What is that? Like, what is that story? The crazy thing that Wes Huff told me was that the Book of Isaiah that they found in the Dead Sea Scroll predates the oldest version of the Book of Isaiah by more than 1,000 years.

Michael Shellenberger 1:58:20 Whoa.

Joe Rogan 1:58:21 When they found it, they found out that there was a Book of Isaiah that is 1,000 years older than the one they thought was the oldest one, and it is verbatim. It's verbatim from the one that's 1,000 years later.

Michael Shellenberger 1:58:34 Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:58:34 Which is kind of crazy.

Michael Shellenberger 1:58:35 Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:58:36 But then it's also in the same fucking caves as the Book of Enoch. It's all the, it's all-

Michael Shellenberger 1:58:42 Mm

Joe Rogan 1:58:42 ... together there in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Michael Shellenberger 1:58:43 Amazing. I mean, we've had this... We've, we've been fed this story that sort of all of these religions and myths from the past are all just false.

Joe Rogan 1:58:53 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 1:58:53 They're all just hallucinations.

Joe Rogan 1:58:54 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 1:58:55 They're all just lies.

Joe Rogan 1:58:57 I don't believe that.

Michael Shellenberger 1:58:57 It's just really, uh... It's really arrogant, actually. Like, it's like, well, no, now, like, we've been around for... You know, humans have been around for, like, millions of years, but the last 150 years is like we really figured it all out.

Joe Rogan 1:59:06 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 1:59:06 And we figured out that all human knowledge before, you know, whatever, some recent time period is, is nonsense. Yeah, I think that's, um, quite arrogant.

Joe Rogan 1:59:16 It's very arrogant-

Michael Shellenberger 1:59:16 Wow

Joe Rogan 1:59:17 ... but I al- Look, I'm a believer that history is far older than we think it is. I'm-- And I think the more time goes on, the more that gets revealed. So when you're talking about something that's 4,000 or 5,000 years old, I think really you're talking about a retelling of a far older story. And I think there's... It's very difficult when you're dealing with people that don't have an understanding of science. The written language is fairly new. It's an oral tradition for generations before it's ever written down. So my question with all this is always like, what were they trying to talk about? What were they trying to say? What was the original experience that someone documented in story, and then that story was relayed over and over and over again, generation after generation, until it's eventually written down, and then they study it and take it literally? And then also translating it from Aramaic, which is the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Hebrew, all these different languages, to Latin and Greek and eng- eventually English. Like, but what's the original story? Like, what are, what are they trying to document? What is this important knowledge that they wanna share, and how screwed up would that get over the generations and generations of talking about it, but what ultimate truth is in there? Like, I'm, I'm absolutely fascinated by the story of Jesus Christ because if you wanted to come up with a way that people would live that would absolutely be far more beneficial than g- just going on natural instincts and tribal behavior and... You would, you would follow Jesus' teachings. Like, there's n- I can't find a flaw in the way he tells you to live life. There's a lot of religions that involve t- you know, torturing non-believers and, and, and, and raping infidels and d- being able to do terrible things to the people that don't believe your religion. There's none of that in Christianity. It's all forgiveness. It's all treating your brother as, and your, your, your, your, your neighbor as if they're you. Like, it's, it's a beautiful way to live life.

Michael Shellenberger 2:01:29 Are you Christian?

Joe Rogan 2:01:30 Well, I go to church.

Michael Shellenberger 2:01:31 Oh.

Joe Rogan 2:01:31 And I, I have been for quite a while.

Michael Shellenberger 2:01:33 Okay, so-

Joe Rogan 2:01:33 I've d- I've been doing it for the last three or four years.

Michael Shellenberger 2:01:35 But that's not really an answer to the question.

Joe Rogan 2:01:36 Well, 'cause I don't know. I, I, I think it's very interesting, and I do believe that if you follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, you will live a better life. I really do believe that. And one of the things I talk about is, like, the people that I go to church with are the most fucking polite people I've ever met in my life. They're so kind and so nice, and everybody lets you out of the parking lot. Everybody's like, "You go, you go."

Michael Shellenberger 2:02:01 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 2:02:01 It's like the one pla- Like, it works, you know what I'm saying? Like if, if people-

Michael Shellenberger 2:02:04 Yeah

Joe Rogan 2:02:04 ... are trying to find an idea, does that mean I believe people came back from the dead? Does that mean I believe Moses parted the Red Sea? Eh, not really. No, it seems like that's most likely a story where people are telling it generation after generation after generation, but there's probably something happening. There's probably some truth to it. Then when ta- you take into account some of the stories from the Old Testament, like the Book of Ezekiel, which I'm absolutely fascinated by. Book of Ezekiel and his account of the wheel within a wheel and the, the, the fire flashing forth continually and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal. Like, what the, what the hell is that? Like, what is that? Like, what are these stories? And in the midst of the, the, the, this gleaming metal, there's the, the, the likeness of four living creatures. Like, okay. They darted to and fro like the appearance of a flash of lightning. Okay, what is that? Like, what are theyWhat were they trying to say, and what was the original experience that people documented that was so important?

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:05 And it might've been a lot more similar to these UFO experiences-

Joe Rogan 2:03:08 That's the point

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:09 ... that, that we've been seeing. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:03:09 And I think this is what one of-

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:10 Yeah

Joe Rogan 2:03:10 ... the things that Tucker goes back to.

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:12 The, the Christian story is so beautiful and so important. You know Rene Girard's view of, of Christianity as really stopping the cycle of scapegoating. You know, scapegoating where, and I'm seeing it right now as part of the reason we've been pushing back against the moral panic on Epstein, is that you scapegoat the thing, you know, traditionally it literally was a goat, but you scapegoat the person or whatever-

Joe Rogan 2:03:35 Wait a minute, originally it was a goat?

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:36 It really was a goat. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:03:37 What [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:38 It was a goat. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:03:39 Really? How does it-

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:39 Yeah, it would carry the sins of the community.

Joe Rogan 2:03:42 Oh, you'd sacrifice the goat-

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:43 And you would-

Joe Rogan 2:03:43 ... and everybody'd be free?

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:43 Yeah, I think you would send it away to die or something.

Joe Rogan 2:03:45 Oh.

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:46 But over time it became people.

Joe Rogan 2:03:47 That's what a scapegoat was?

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:48 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:03:49 Oh.

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:03:50 Interesting.

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:51 Yeah. And then-

Joe Rogan 2:03:52 Somebody's a goat.

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:53 But generally-

Joe Rogan 2:03:54 Goats were the devil. Goats are everything

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:56 Yeah. Oh, I-

Joe Rogan 2:03:56 Go- goats get a bad rap.

Michael Shellenberger 2:03:57 Goats are in your lobby, aren't they? Or [laughs] those-

Joe Rogan 2:03:59 Lizards

Michael Shellenberger 2:04:00 ... those are elk. No. In your lobby.

Joe Rogan 2:04:01 Oh, those are elk. Okay. [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 2:04:01 No, there's a big difference. Yeah, but I mean, so Christianity puts an end to that. It says, uh, stop scapegoating. I mean, they scapegoated Jesus, really. I mean, you kind of go... They, you scapegoat... The c- the way, the purpose of the scapegoating was to, was for this, the community to unite the community and, and scapegoat to, to put all of its sins on one thing and then kill it or get rid of it.

Joe Rogan 2:04:23 Mm.

Michael Shellenberger 2:04:23 And that was the way the community would restore unity. Christianity said, "No. We're not gonna do it that way. Uh, that, that's, that's immoral." And so, you know, he with the, you know, without sin should be the first to cast a stone. Jesus wasn't saying that prostitution was good or anything. He was saying that we should not be scapegoating. You know, you've got sins too, so don't scapegoat this person.

Joe Rogan 2:04:45 Mm.

Michael Shellenberger 2:04:46 That's a really radical moment in human history, and it really is what allowed humans to spread. It creates a universal... I mean, Christianity is the first universal, it's a really universal religion. Maybe it's not the only. Um, but it's a universal religion. It says everybody, you know, is a child of God, and it's, and it's evangelical and it wants other people to become Christian. That's very, that's different from other, other religions where I'm like, "This is my god. I've got my own god here."

Joe Rogan 2:05:09 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 2:05:09 "And we're the best, and you suck," and-

Joe Rogan 2:05:11 And they make it very difficult to join.

Michael Shellenberger 2:05:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:05:13 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 2:05:13 And it's not to say that Christians, you know, obviously there was, you know, fighting the Muslims and there's some interesting, uh, revisionism there, but it's a beautiful religion. It's a-

Joe Rogan 2:05:22 There's terrible things-

Michael Shellenberger 2:05:23 ... compassionate religion

Joe Rogan 2:05:23 ... that have been done under the guise-

Michael Shellenberger 2:05:25 Oh, sure

Joe Rogan 2:05:25 ... of Christianity.

Michael Shellenberger 2:05:26 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:05:26 But if you listen to the teachings of Jesus Christ, they're not following his teachings.

Michael Shellenberger 2:05:31 No.

Joe Rogan 2:05:31 So it's like, that's just human behavior that they have tagged on to Christianity. So when people say, "Christianity is responsible for horrible atrocities," I say, "No." I say, "Humans are." Because if you, if it was actually Christianity, you would be following the teachings of Christ, and there would be none of those things.

Michael Shellenberger 2:05:49 I mean, antisemitism is not Christian.

Joe Rogan 2:05:52 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 2:05:52 So-

Joe Rogan 2:05:53 Right

Michael Shellenberger 2:05:53 ... uh, true Christianity is not that, so I- I think it's lovely, and I, I hope there's a re- revival of some of it. I'm not sure there is.

Joe Rogan 2:06:01 I think there is more now than before. There's a lot of young people that are getting into, in- into Christianity. That-

Michael Shellenberger 2:06:07 I think it's good to... I think it's also, I mean, it's interesting with the U- we were talking about the UFO thing. It's an awareness that there's a higher power. So one can sort of say, look, the UFO thing, it's not the same as Christianity or whatever, but this awareness that, like, we're not, like there's something else going on. There's something more, there's something higher than us, and that we should be humble in front of, in the face of this just gigantic mystery. I think that puts us in a better mentality.

Joe Rogan 2:06:30 It certainly does. And if, if anything, i- if he's not the Son of God, if this was an actual historical figure, what an insanely wise human being who didn't have these thoughts that are inherent to all of us of vengeance and lust and greed. He's ha- has none of these?

Michael Shellenberger 2:06:49 So radical also-

Joe Rogan 2:06:50 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 2:06:50 ... um, you've heard it said before that you should, you know, love your friends and, and hate your enemies. I say to you, you know, you should love your enemies. I mean, that's just-

Joe Rogan 2:06:58 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 2:06:58 ... it's like the hardest. I'm not there. I think very few people are there. Uh, but it's certainly the right aspiration, isn't it?

Joe Rogan 2:07:07 Yes. Yeah, it's the right aspiration. And Tucker thinks that this whole UFO thing is somehow connected to the spiritual realm, and that we're, we're-

Michael Shellenberger 2:07:17 Well, 'cause we, we've been told for so long that there is no spiritual realm.

Joe Rogan 2:07:21 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 2:07:21 That spiritual realm is just a mental illness.

Joe Rogan 2:07:23 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 2:07:23 You know, it's like [laughs] how he's like the Yahweh thing, he's like-

Joe Rogan 2:07:26 But the problem with the people that tell you that are all mentally ill.

Michael Shellenberger 2:07:28 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 2:07:28 They're all very unhappy. Like, like atheists, like secular, like hardcore atheists are some of the most unhappy, depressed people I know. I don't see, like, incredibly happy, unless they do a lot of mushrooms, and those people tend to not be atheists anymore. That's the one weird thing. People that have had, like, intense breakthrough psychedelic experiences, one of the first things they go, "Maybe, maybe there is a God. Like, maybe, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, because if I just experienced that, and that's a real thing that you could have while alive on Earth, where you are confronted with divine wisdom and love in some weird, strange form." You know, when there's a lot of people that believe that that's the source of a lot of religious experiences, and instead of alienating and making those things illegal, we should study them and make them a part of the religious experience, because it's probably what they were originally.

Michael Shellenberger 2:08:21 Well, that's right, and so now that people are having spiritual experiences with UFOs, it's wonderful, and they should talk about them and kindle them. Um, I think the thing about psychedelics that's so interesting is that, um, at least my experience with them, was that you, uh, become d- you don't become so attached to your ideas and your beliefs.

Joe Rogan 2:08:38 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 2:08:39 And so, um, which is a big problem in our society, is people that get too attached to their, their egos-

Joe Rogan 2:08:44 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 2:08:44 ... get attached to their beliefs as opposed to like, "Oh, I thought that." I mean, I've made, I'm, I'm, I've made my whole career out of being wrong about things and then correcting them. Um, but I think it, it's hard because you do... It's really-

Joe Rogan 2:08:55 It's a great quality.

Michael Shellenberger 2:08:56 It's, oh, thank you. It's a very, but it's still, I hate it. I hate being wrong.

Joe Rogan 2:09:00 [laughs]

Michael Shellenberger 2:09:00 Um, it's totally natural to hate it. Um, but I do think, like, having a practice that makes you go, you are not your-... ex- your beliefs.

Joe Rogan 2:09:08 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 2:09:08 There's something there. You have an existence separate from-

Joe Rogan 2:09:11 Right

Michael Shellenberger 2:09:12 ... the things that you wrote on your blog or you wrote on X, and just don't be so attached to them. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 2:09:16 Right, don't make them your identity.

Michael Shellenberger 2:09:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:09:18 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 2:09:18 Um, and that, uh, it's, it's, it's actually there's something really quite i- i- there's an awful part of when you feel like you got wrote something wrong, but then there's another part where you're like, "Oh, it feels good to get it right," and you feel clean.

Joe Rogan 2:09:29 Yes.

Michael Shellenberger 2:09:29 And that- that's like, uh, th- that's what sh- that's what we should be going for. But it does require, for me, being humble about my limitations before some higher power is a really important place to begin. 'Cause if you think there's no higher power or that... I think the other one is, like, souls. We don't talk about souls enough. Um, a, a new friend of mine at the university was talking about how important it is to really to care for your soul and to care about other people's souls. That's one of the things that Christianity is so good at, that you have something divine inside of you connected to something divine outside of you, and that your behaviors affect its treatment and it... You know, when you tell people that you're just, you know, a meat suit, and you're just worm food, and your life doesn't matter, and that it's all just, you know, random and pointless, that's a terrible story. It's, uh, it makes people feel terrible.

Joe Rogan 2:10:19 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 2:10:19 Um, but when you kind of go, "No, you..." There was one of the most beautiful, the... I loved all the Charlie Kirk videos that went out after his death 'cause there were so many ones where he had these beautiful moments, but he's talking to these women that are doing the OnlyFans. Did you see that one?

Joe Rogan 2:10:29 No.

Michael Shellenberger 2:10:30 And they're describing-- They're trying to shock him and saying just really kind of crude things about their sexuality and how it, like, the sex they have, it doesn't matter to them and, and he was like, "I just don't believe that. I think you have a soul. I think God has a purpose for you." What a much lovelier way to engage somebody. And it wasn't a... You didn't feel like he was morally condemning them.

Joe Rogan 2:10:51 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 2:10:51 He was actually saying, "God loves you," and so for me, Christianity brings... If that is the part of Christianity that I think is so special. But it is hard. I mean, one of the things that this anthropologist that I'm really into is talking about, she says it's, it's h- the more the God, the more different the God is from humans, the harder it is to believe in them. And so people like Christians in particular, she would talk about they're, even evangelical ones are always complaining about not believing enough and not having enough faith 'cause it is so hard, 'cause you have the Holocaust problem, the problem of evil.

Joe Rogan 2:11:21 Right.

Michael Shellenberger 2:11:21 Why, if the God is all-powerful and all good, is he allowing the Holocaust?

Joe Rogan 2:11:24 Why'd he allow Hiroshima?

Michael Shellenberger 2:11:25 Why, you know-

Joe Rogan 2:11:25 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 2:11:25 ... these terrible things?

Joe Rogan 2:11:26 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 2:11:27 Um, and part of the answer for Christians has been, well, because he wants us to exercise free will and to, to be in touch with our better sides and, and to realize our potential as, as moral, uh, moral humans and moral souls and, and that's a, that's a pretty good answer. Um, but it is... I, I find my- I was glad to hear that, her say that people struggle with it because I-

Joe Rogan 2:11:47 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 2:11:47 ... certainly do as well.

Joe Rogan 2:11:48 Well, I, I mean, I think everyone struggles with it. I'm just, I'm really fascinated by it. I'm, I'm fascinated by it because when I go to church and I listen to them talk about v- v- various passages in the Bible, my mindset is always like, "What was the real experience?" Like, what are we missing out of these tales? What are we missing out of these recounting of these experiences? What, what happened? I don't think it was nothing. I really don't.

Michael Shellenberger 2:12:18 No, I mean-

Joe Rogan 2:12:18 I think there's something-

Michael Shellenberger 2:12:19 Yeah

Joe Rogan 2:12:19 ... real to it, and, and it, again, it works. That's the-

Michael Shellenberger 2:12:23 Mm

Joe Rogan 2:12:24 ... the, that's the main one for me. It's like, you wanna live a better life? Like, if you live as a Christian, you'll have a better life. You'll have a more love-filled, more wonderful life. That's real, and that this idea that, "Oh, it's fairy tales," i- is it? I- if it's a method for life that gives you a more rich and loving and peaceful life, isn't that better for everybody? Isn't that a, a real thing? That's a real thing. It's n- there's no way you can know whether or not any of the stories in the Bible happened exactly as described. We can't know. So you have to have this leap of faith to-

Michael Shellenberger 2:13:01 Yes

Joe Rogan 2:13:02 ... you know, and it gets weird, like Jesus comes back on a white horse. Like, hey, slow down, you know? Like Revelations. Book of Revelations is weird. But it's ta- like, what's really weird is some of these people that think that, um, what's going on in Iran is to light the, the fire to, uh, bring, to have Jesus return, to light the signal fire. Like, did you hear those recountings-

Michael Shellenberger 2:13:24 Oh, sure

Joe Rogan 2:13:24 ... by that, uh, these non-commissioned officers that went into these briefings, combat briefings?

Michael Shellenberger 2:13:29 Oh, no.

Joe Rogan 2:13:30 You didn't hear that? Okay.

Michael Shellenberger 2:13:31 Ugh.

Joe Rogan 2:13:32 Here's one of them, 'cause I saved it.

Michael Shellenberger 2:13:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:13:33 'Cause it's so kooky that I, I read it and I was like, "Wait, what the fuck did they say?" [laughs] When... 'Cause it's, it's so crazy that-

Michael Shellenberger 2:13:40 I tend to be anti-apo- uh, my, my knee jerk is anti-apocalyptic 'cause I don't see apocalyptic movements, uh, doing a lot of good in the world, so [laughs] -

Joe Rogan 2:13:49 Yeah

Michael Shellenberger 2:13:50 ... um-

Joe Rogan 2:13:50 That's probably better off.

Michael Shellenberger 2:13:51 Most of the... I think a lot of Christians have ignored the Book of Revelations. Um, I, yeah, I think focusing too heavily on that particular book is, probably leads to bad outcomes. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 2:14:01 Okay, so this was the story that I read. This was in, uh, Yahoo. I can... I'll send this to you, Jeremy, so you can get this, uh, so we can put this up on the board. Did you find the thing? Okay. "He urged us to tell our troops that this was all part of God's..." Now, this is a guy who goes to, this is a combat readiness w- briefing. "Urged us to tell our troops this was all part of God's plan, and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelations referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. Uh, he said that President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth."

Michael Shellenberger 2:14:38 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 2:14:39 And they said that the guy was saying this had a giant smile on his face, which made it all the weirder. Like, like, see if you could find that in there. Does it say that?

Michael Shellenberger 2:14:48 No.

Joe Rogan 2:14:49 No? It's not in that particular article? Oh, this is m- just military.com.

Michael Shellenberger 2:14:50 Someone complained. Something someone complained about, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:14:52 Oh, yeah, a bunch of people complained.

Michael Shellenberger 2:14:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:14:53 There's actually, like, a lawsuit.

Michael Shellenberger 2:14:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:14:56 A religious freedom law.

Michael Shellenberger 2:14:57 'Cause you risk, you risk, like, the whole self-fulfilling prophecy with that one. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 2:15:00 Well, it's all just like-

Michael Shellenberger 2:15:01 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 2:15:01 ... what are you talking about?

Michael Shellenberger 2:15:01 Wait a second. What are you doing? [laughs] What, what machines, what, what weapons do you control? Uh...

Joe Rogan 2:15:05 D- yeah, there's a lot of fucking religious coupsSo it's not just-- And also, that is not how Jesus Christ would handle it. "Let's go bomb Iran, that's how Jesus is gonna come back." Like, do you think He would tell you that's the right way to do it? Like, how did you interpret the text?

Michael Shellenberger 2:15:17 No, it doesn't sound very Jesus-y. Yeah. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 2:15:19 Right. Jesus-y.

Michael Shellenberger 2:15:20 It doesn't sound very Jesus-y. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 2:15:20 Like, how did you interpret that in the text? Okay, uh, before we-- So we're, we're deep into this show, so the Epstein stuff.

Michael Shellenberger 2:15:27 All right.

Joe Rogan 2:15:27 So what is your take on this?

Michael Shellenberger 2:15:29 All right. Well, so I, um-

Joe Rogan 2:15:30 You've changed your position?

Michael Shellenberger 2:15:31 Yeah, I've changed. I think, I spent a bunch of time with the files. Um, I will say I think I did do a piece where I do think that the shrimp is a code word for g- for young women, um, I'm pretty sure about that.

Joe Rogan 2:15:44 What do you think pizza's a code word for?

Michael Shellenberger 2:15:45 Well, that was... Okay, so then I did a-- I did-- I had, I had wrote this article about code words in the Epstein files, and I did the shrimps, and then I had some stuff about pizza and grape juice in there, about grape soda, and my co-author, Alex, was like, "Dude, you can't go, you can't go full pizzagate." [laughs] You know, like, "You gotta, you gotta do like..." So we kept it out, and then the Times mentioned the pizza thing, so I wrote something on X about it, but I ended up taking it down because I was like, I don't really know. This one-- I mean, what we- what weirded me out the pizza one was where his urologist was like, "Take your erection dysfunction pills, and then we'll go out and get pizza and grape soda." And I was like, that is creepy, you know, as hell. Uh.

Joe Rogan 2:16:25 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 2:16:25 So, but I c- I don't... The shrimp one, I'm like 95% that means young women, 'cause you just see how they talk about it, and I think I proved it in my piece. There's other ones, like people are like the jerky is like cannibalism and whatever.

Joe Rogan 2:16:38 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 2:16:38 It's like, well, it didn't help that the, the restaurant owner was like, the restaurant's name was like Cannonball-

Joe Rogan 2:16:43 Cannonball

Michael Shellenberger 2:16:43 ... or something.

Joe Rogan 2:16:43 Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger 2:16:44 Yeah. Uh, but, um, I'm skeptical that that's what that was, so. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 2:16:48 Well, you would be skeptical unless you were part of some of these fucking bizarre Satanic rituals, and then you would go, "Oh my God, it's real." Like there are-- Look, people have sacrificed people, right? Can we agree to that in, in, in human history?

Michael Shellenberger 2:17:01 In history. Yeah, history, of course, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:17:02 And there have been Satanic rituals throughout history. Can we agree to that?

Michael Shellenberger 2:17:06 Sure.

Joe Rogan 2:17:06 Okay. So there has been cannibalism in history. We agree to that?

Michael Shellenberger 2:17:11 Oh.

Joe Rogan 2:17:11 Okay.

Michael Shellenberger 2:17:11 Unfortunately, a lot, actually. There was a lot, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:17:14 Why wouldn't we think they're talking about that? We don't want to believe it, right? Is that what it is?

Michael Shellenberger 2:17:19 No, I don't-

Joe Rogan 2:17:19 We don't want to believe that these people, these multimillionaires and billionaires that go to this island and engage in all this crazy shit aren't doing something like child sacrifice or cannibalism.

Michael Shellenberger 2:17:32 Well, let's start with the, let's start with the thing that I think a lot of us thought it was, which is that it was an intelligence community sex blackmail operation. That's what made it, for me, a story. I mean, a creepy guy doing creepy things, there's just, that's, we call that a dog bites man story. You know? What makes it a man bites dog story is like, is that you kind of go, wow, it's like Mossad and CIA running a honeypot. I mean, that's the premise of Ridley Webb's two-volume book, One Nation Under Blackmail. Um, but when you look at it, like we don't see that. We see, we see one case where Epstein emails himself something that sounds like it's in the voice of the Bill Gates science advisor, Boris Karshik, I believe is the name, and in it they talk about, oh, you know, it's the famous email where he says, "Oh, you know, I got STDs." Or it, it says, "You got STDs from Russian hookers or from Russian women, and then you tried to slip antibiotics or you wanted me to slip antibiotics in Melinda's drink." And Melinda like, they asked her about it. It was awful. Um, it doesn't like... That's not-- It's weird what that is. So first of all, it's not even clear what that is.

Joe Rogan 2:18:39 Well, hold on a