Joe Rogan Experience #1464 - Duncan Trussell
Joe Rogan (host), Duncan Trussell (guest), Guest (brief interjection) (guest), Jamie Vernon (host), Jamie Vernon (host), Jamie Vernon (host), Jamie Vernon (host), Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Joe Rogan and Duncan Trussell, Joe Rogan Experience #1464 - Duncan Trussell explores psychedelic Cartoons, COVID Fears, CIA Plots, and Human Weirdness Joe Rogan and Duncan Trussell range widely from Duncan’s new animated Netflix show *The Midnight Gospel* and the craft of animation, to psychedelic experiences, consciousness, and how ideas emerge. They dig into COVID-19: personal anxiety, lockdown trade‑offs, economic fallout, and the ethics of government tracking and snitching during a pandemic. The conversation then veers into conspiratorial history—CIA LSD experiments, Charles Manson, MK-Ultra, remote viewing, and the role of intelligence agencies—while Joe argues they’re flawed but necessary. Throughout, they circle back to human nature: odd sexual fetishes, neighborly kindness, raising kids around profanity, and how people project their inner world onto others.
Psychedelic Cartoons, COVID Fears, CIA Plots, and Human Weirdness
Joe Rogan and Duncan Trussell range widely from Duncan’s new animated Netflix show *The Midnight Gospel* and the craft of animation, to psychedelic experiences, consciousness, and how ideas emerge. They dig into COVID-19: personal anxiety, lockdown trade‑offs, economic fallout, and the ethics of government tracking and snitching during a pandemic. The conversation then veers into conspiratorial history—CIA LSD experiments, Charles Manson, MK-Ultra, remote viewing, and the role of intelligence agencies—while Joe argues they’re flawed but necessary. Throughout, they circle back to human nature: odd sexual fetishes, neighborly kindness, raising kids around profanity, and how people project their inner world onto others.
Key Takeaways
Subscription platforms enable weirder, more authentic creative work.
Duncan’s *The Midnight Gospel*—a highly unconventional, podcast-based animated series—exists largely because Netflix’s subscription model can take bigger risks than traditional ad‑driven TV, allowing creators to fully lean into their own voice.
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Great creative work comes from radical simplification and collaboration.
Both men stress “trimming the fat” in comedy and storytelling: cutting beloved material to reveal the sharpest, clearest core. ...
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Psychedelic states may function like shared “places,” not just brain glitches.
They note how many people report strikingly similar DMT or mushroom visuals, and how artists like Alex Grey act as “cartographers” of these realms—suggesting psychedelics reveal consistent mental landscapes rather than purely random hallucinations.
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Pandemic policy is an excruciating trade‑off between lives and livelihoods.
They acknowledge the logic of initial lockdowns given unknowns, but emphasize the mounting costs: unemployment, mental illness, suicide risk, debt, and small‑business collapse, especially for people already economically fragile.
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Emergency powers and surveillance tools rarely shrink once granted.
Ideas like Bluetooth tracking, chips, or QR‑coded health passes may start as COVID safety measures, but Rogan warns such infrastructure will inevitably be repurposed—for law enforcement, political targeting, or social control—long after the virus fades.
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Intelligence agencies are both dangerous and indispensable.
While they discuss CIA abuses (MK-Ultra, LSD dosing, possible roles in Manson and assassinations), Rogan argues agencies like the CIA/FBI are still necessary to monitor terrorists, rogue states, and serious threats, and can’t be painted as monolithically evil.
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Personal resilience now includes basic preparedness and local connection.
This crisis reveals the value of simple practices: keeping fuel and some cash on hand, knowing basic first aid, learning to grow food, and building real relationships with neighbors, rather than assuming authorities will always “save” you.
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Notable Quotes
“Animation is like a temple. You see all these people focusing their life energy on bringing a thing to life.”
— Duncan Trussell
“Ideas are the alien. Ideas are the UFO. The muse.”
— Duncan Trussell
“You’re not one thing. There’s a bunch of living organisms inside your body that are 100% necessary for you keeping going.”
— Joe Rogan
“This is the only time we’ve ever been in a position where people can’t even go to work.”
— Joe Rogan
“When anything invites neighbors to divide instead of unite, that’s cancerous for society.”
— Duncan Trussell
Questions Answered in This Episode
Does *The Midnight Gospel* change how you think about what animation can do emotionally or philosophically?
Joe Rogan and Duncan Trussell range widely from Duncan’s new animated Netflix show *The Midnight Gospel* and the craft of animation, to psychedelic experiences, consciousness, and how ideas emerge. ...
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Where do you personally draw the line between necessary public‑health measures and unacceptable surveillance or control?
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Do you think psychedelic experiences tap into an external “realm,” or are they just complex brain states—with the same content shaped by culture?
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How should societies balance the clear historical abuses of agencies like the CIA against their role in preventing real-world threats?
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What specific changes—financial, social, or psychological—are you planning for your own life after seeing how fragile “normal” can be?
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Transcript Preview
It's hilarious that your biggest concern was getting stuff in your beard and me not telling you about it.
(laughs)
You've got a strange one going on, man, 'cause you're kind of, like, trimming the sides a little bit and then you're puffing out here-
Yeah.
... in sort of a bow tie fashion.
You're looking at the struggle between who I was and who I am.
(laughs)
Why am I doing this? It's the pandemic. I got, like, let the pandemic beard go all the way. And yet, there's still this sense of, like, (sighs) "We've got to keep civilization. I can't with... I get... "
Mm.
What's next? If it goes all the way up, you know, what's gonna start happening? I'm already gardening now. What's next, you know?
(laughs)
Where does it go? How d- how crazy can you go in a compound?
Now that you're a father, um, and this craziness went down, and your protection, protection instincts, protective instincts kick in, have you been thinking about moving elsewhere?
Yeah. I mean, yeah. I was thinking about that.
Like Asheville?
Before... Uh, yep. We've thought of Asheville.
Yeah. Asheville's nice.
We've thought Georgia, we've thought... You know, we, we, it's w- it's a constant consideration, especially when you have a kid. And aside from, like, apocalyptic prepper bullshit, there's j- uh, just a general feeling of, like, y- you know, I think if I w- were a little boy, I would wanna be in a place where there's creeks and a place I, I could run-
Yes.
... and, like, woods and forests and, like, stuff like that.
Yeah.
So there's that consideration too. God, I hope my wife isn't listening to this 'cause she's always like, "Maybe we should move somewhere in the country." And I'm like-
Mm.
... "We gotta stay in LA! We gotta stay here now, now especially!" It's like, well, do we? And like...
Well, Duncan, you now have a successful Netflix show.
Yeah.
Number two in the country on IMDb.
It... On Rotten Tomatoes.
Whatever it is.
Yeah. Well, I'm-
Same thing.
And I don't know what that means-
(laughs)
... necessarily, but yeah, yeah! It's true! I can't believe it, yeah.
Is, uh, is IMDb even TV shows? It's Internet Movie Database? Is it?
It's... I'm not sure what it is. I, I, it's like IMDb-
If you know about it.
... is odd, but yeah. They show-
You have a successful show.
I got s-
That's what's important.
Right now, it seems like people like it.
It is so weird, dude. Your show is so weird.
Yeah, man.
(laughs)
Yeah.
It's so Duncan. It's the most Duncan thing you've ever done.
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