Joe Rogan Experience #2023 - Brian Keating

(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. (drumbeats)

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Thank you very much for coming, man. And, um, thank you for bringing all this cool stuff. What is this, uh, old-timey telescope?

(laughs) All right.

Is that one of the ones the sailors used to use?

(laughs) That's, that's my spyglass. Yeah.

Ah.

This is exactly a spyglass. This thing is actually one of the most important inventions ever made, and it really is the reason I'm probably sitting here with you. Uh, it's, it's the actual tool, not this one, but-

Right.

... the telescope was really the machine that changed the world the most. And what's so cool about it, it, it acted like a lever that moved the earth from being the center of the universe back in Galileo's time.

What year did they invent it?

The telescope was invented around the early 1600s, and there's a popular misconception that Galileo invented it, but he, he didn't. He actually perfected it. So he took it from, like, you know, zero to one, basically. He took the, this spyglass, which was really never ... It's, it's amazing. People were using eyeglasses for many years, and nobody ever thought to go take one lens, take another lens, and go like this.

Mm-hmm.

No one had ever done that. There was a guy, van Leeuwenhoek, and, um, and, uh, this guy Hans Lippershey, they had been making glass, and they were experts at making glass in the Netherlands. But Galileo heard about that, and the original devices that they were making could magnify things two or three times at most. But Galileo realized, "Hey, I can improve this, and then do, you know, what mankind has always dreamt of doing, use it to make money and (laughs) use it for military purposes." Because with a telescope, you could see a ship in the Venetian lagoon a day or two out before it would come on shore and you could see it from the ground.

Hmm.

So the distance back then was stealth technology. This took away the stealth. It'd be like turning off the B-2's, you know, ability to have stealth. So he improved it so much, it was just inarguable this would change the world.

So when was the eyeglass invented?

Eyeglass was invented ... You know, it's kinda, it's kinda cool. The eyeglass was invented in, um, probably the late 1500s, these lenses.

Wow.

Glass used to be total crap. It would be like looking through a piece of ice today. These lenses are super clear and super clean, you know, modern lenses. This isn't a great telescope, but it's illustrative, and we can use it to do things. But what's so interesting to me, just like a quirk of history, is when, um, when these lenses were invented, before then, you didn't ... I, I don't know what your vision is, but mine's about 20/20. It's getting worse with (laughs) as I get older, obviously.