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#2211 – Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger is an investigative journalist and founder of Public, a Substack publication, founder and president of Environmental Progress, a research organization that incubates ideas, leaders, and movements, and the CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship and Free Speech at the University of Austin. He is the best-selling author of multiple books, including “Apocalypse Never” and “San Fransicko," and is a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment" and Green Book Award winner. www.public.news https://environmentalprogress.org/founder-president https://x.com/shellenberger Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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#2211 – Michael Shellenberger Podcast Episode Description

Michael Shellenberger is an investigative journalist and founder of Public, a Substack publication, founder and president of Environmental Progress, a research organization that incubates ideas, leaders, and movements, and the CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship and Free Speech at the University of Austin. He is the best-selling author of multiple books, including “Apocalypse Never” and “San Fransicko,” and is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and Green Book Award winner.

www.public.news

https://environmentalprogress.org/founder-president

https://x.com/shellenberger

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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#2211 – Michael Shellenberger Podcast Episode Summary

In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, several key topics are discussed, including the influence of technology, misinformation, and the evolving landscape of business and society. A significant portion of the conversation revolves around the potential for misinformation through whistleblowers and the strategic use of media to control narratives. The discussion suggests that intelligence agencies might use whistleblowers to spread disinformation, making it difficult to discern truth from falsehood.The episode also touches on the impact of AI on business, particularly in San Francisco. Chamath Palihapitiya is mentioned, suggesting that AI could lead to a rebirth in the city by empowering genuine talent over those who advance through virtue signaling. This reflects a broader theme of technology reshaping societal structures and power dynamics.

Vaccines and public health are another major topic, with discussions on how narratives around vaccines have shifted over time. The conversation critiques the changing justifications for vaccines and emphasizes the need for a more thoughtful approach to public health messaging.

The episode highlights the role of social media and independent journalism in disseminating information, suggesting that platforms like podcasts and Substack have become crucial for sharing diverse perspectives. This ties into a recurring theme of technology enabling greater access to information and challenging traditional media narratives.

Actionable insights include the importance of discipline and learning from various tools and philosophies, such as meditation, stoicism, and martial arts, to improve personal well-being. The episode encourages listeners to remain critical of information sources and to seek out diverse viewpoints to form a well-rounded understanding of complex issues. Overall, the episode underscores the transformative power of technology and the need for wisdom in navigating its influence.

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#2211 – Michael Shellenberger Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)

Speaker: Joe Rogan
00:01
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Mister Shellenberger, good to see you.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
00:13
Good to see you, man.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
00:14
How you been, man?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
00:16
Every day. Every day. Deep.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
00:18
Neck deep in the chaos of the world.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
00:21
I made it I made it to Brazil and back, so put it that way.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
00:23
What was that like?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
00:25
It was intense, man. I mean, it was, it’s still going on. We did Twitter files Brazil.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
00:31
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
00:33
And 3 days later, it was back in March. 3 days later, Elon just throws down and starts to attack this main supreme court justice who’s the guy that’s now banned x. So x is banned in Brazil. They’re in negotiations, but it was very exciting to be there because and the Brazilians were just relieved.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
00:52
They were ai everything that we thought was happening is proven by the tour files Brazil. And they were just very grateful to Elon. So it’s been this
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:01
Ai did the Twitter files I know about the Twitter files Meh. I don’t know about the Twitter files in Brazil.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:07
So they this is, like, one of the most extreme forms of censorship we’ve seen in democratic countries. India has been pretty bad too, but this but they were the worst of it was that they were Alright. Sucker up. Is it too okay.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:20
Yeah. It’s hard to bring it up
Speaker: 2
01:21
to you.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:21
How’s that? Ai. Better?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:22
Good to go.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:24
This is the most dramatic part is that they were the judge. This is a supreme court justice who’s basically the dictator of Brazil is had was demanding that particular journalists and politicians just be banned not only from x, but from every other social media platform, which is a tactic that we had seen in earlier censorship files.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:47
We had done something on something called the Ai Intelligence League, with Ai showing this it was an early military censorship operation, and they’d had a list of tactics, and one of them was to get people banned on every platform. So you’re basically, like, just deep personing people. It’s just destroying their career.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:08
You can’t make a career on as a journalist or a politician if you’re banned from every platform. So that was the one of the most dramatic parts all in secret. All and, you know, open investigations ongoing and basically nobody there’s no checks and balances. There’s no chance to argue with it. So that came out and Elon responded, like, 3 days later and was ai, yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:29
Brazil’s, like, the worst in the world and just starts attacking the supreme court justices ai Darth Vader and Voldemort and doing what Elon does. Fast forward to last month and they had a huge protest in Sao Paulo, one of the largest free speech protest in history, which was itself just amazing and inspiring because, you know, it’s a free speech has been something that we didn’t really think we had to fight for.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:54
So to see, like, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of Sai Paulo was amazing. I was there with the former president. He sort of sees me, brings me up. I’m up up on top of the stage. He’s, you know, just, you know, you know, yelling at the crowd.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:08
Everyone’s worked up. You know, he he kinda looks over at me and covers the mic. He’s like, it’s Schellenberger. Right? You know, he’s like, Michael Schellenberger’s up here.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:15
And the crowd’s just, you know, they knew ai the Twitter files. Afterwards, we go down and it’s just, you know, it’s just a lot of emotion and anger, but also hope. The Brazilian people are for me, it’s ai one of the most exciting cultures in the world because they’re so expressive. The president, like, while he’s speaking, he’s like, ai.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:35
You know, it’s a very, like, emotionally open culture. So now, I mean, the question for Elon, they’re having to to negotiate this is do you do you out of principle keep, you know, x banned in Brazil to defend the several dozen people that the government is requiring be banned permanently?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:53
But that means that 20,000,000 Brazilians are denied x as a platform or do you go along with what the government’s demanding and hope to fight for another day? And that’s what’s happening now.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
04:05
The the 12 people it’s 12 people?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
04:07
We we actually don’t know, but it probably under a100.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
04:11
And what are they being accused of that the government is saying is sai important that they need to be banned?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
04:19
Misinformation. You know, it particularly you can see every country in the world is particularly obsessed with COVID misinformation and election misinformation. Mhmm. So but to give you an example of how arbitrary and unjust it is, there’s one of the members of Congress who’s one of the most dynamic.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
04:36
He’s not actually in the party of Bolsonaro. That’s the the controversial former president. He’s in a different party. His name is Marcel Sana Hatten. And he was he got in he didn’t even know this until the tour ai Brazil came out, and then Elon did release because the House of Representatives, Jim Jordan, asked for these internal files from acts.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
04:56
He subpoenaed them. So we even learned more information from those files. They they showed that von Hatten had he was he was supposedly being deplatformed for election misinformation, but it turned out that the video he posted was posted the day after the elections and it had to do with labor issues, had nothing to do with elections.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
05:14
And that’s just really common. I mean, you just see it’s just arbitrary rule bryden guy. That’s why I say it’s a dictatorship.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
05:21
And has there been any debate or discussion? Like, sai anybody tried to hold them to the fire as to why these people are being banned and please prove that this is misinformation? Shah there been any sort of discussion? Huge.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
05:34
I mean, it’s maybe one of the biggest issues in Brazil. It’s the president of Brazil who probably hasn’t gotten enough criticism for it because he’s going along with it. He defended the censorship.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
05:46
This is Lula. Ai always heard that he was a great guy when Jair Bolsonaro was the president. The the the narrative was that Bolsonaro was a dictator, that he was a bad guy. But I know so many Brazilians, you know, from jiu jitsu. I know so many Brazilians, and they all love Bolsonaro. Ai was like, I am so confused about their politics over there.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
06:05
I don’t know what’s going on, but Lulu was supposed to be this guy that was for the people. And to hear that he is a part of this whole disinformation crackdown, alleged disinformation crackdown, is so disheartening.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
06:17
Well, ai. I mean, for meh, personally, the funny thing is I had this just coincidentally, I have this deep relationship with Brazil because I lived in Brazil in the in the early nineties. I was working I was actually working towards my PhD in the sai Amazon. I went to Rio and Sao Paulo.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
06:32
I interviewed Lula in 1994, sat across from him just like I’m sitting across from you right now.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
06:39
What ai your take on him?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
06:40
I I love I mean, at the time, I loved him. I mean, I was, you know, I was on the radical laugh for Right. You know, up until, you know, 5 minutes ago. And sai, up
Speaker: Joe Rogan
06:50
until the Kool Aid wore off. Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
06:53
I mean, even until the I mean, really, even up until the censorship part. I mean, when when you start censoring, you’re just ai not to digress, but it’s kinda like, you know, back in the nineties, we were anti war, pro free speech and pro and pro gay rights.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
07:05
Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
07:06
Now the left is is pro censorship, pro war, and engaged in horrible medical mistreatment of gay children in the name of trans medicine. Yeah. So it’s ai, literally, like, who changed here?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
07:18
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
07:19
You know, my values did stay the same, at least on those things. But, anyway, I mean, I sai across from ram and I just said, you know, everybody says that you’re gonna turn Brazil into Cuba. He does love Fidel Castro, but he said absolutely not. He does. He was just like, ai they’re bros. They’re no they’re bros.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
07:36
I mean but he did think
Speaker: Joe Rogan
07:37
that seems like a bit of a problem.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
07:38
The thing is that in Latin America, like like, everybody on the left, even some of the center left, they actually had a lot respect for Fidel.
Speaker: 2
07:47
I
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
07:48
know I know it’s amazing, but they really did.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
07:49
So crazy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
07:50
Yeah. He’s a very Fidel’s a very he was a very charismatic person. I actually met him too.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
07:57
Really?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
07:57
I met all these guys. I met Uber Chavez.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
07:59
Justin Trudeau’s dad?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
08:01
Oh, hell, yeah. Have you seen the photographs?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
08:03
It’s crazy. It is crazy. It really is crazy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
08:06
It’s I mean
Speaker: Joe Rogan
08:08
But he kinda looks like his dad too.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
08:11
I yeah. Maybe. I mean, for me, it’s like Ronan it’s like Ronan Farrow.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
08:15
Oh, Ronan Farrow, Frank Sinatra 1 is just insane. Yeah. That is not Woody Allen’s kid. No. Like, no if and
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
08:22
That one’s more dramatic than the
Speaker: Joe Rogan
08:23
2 one. That one’s crazy. I mean, that looks like Frank Sinatra. Mhmm. I mean, what are the odds? Unless, like, she loves Sinatra so meh, she, like, willed him into existence in her own child.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
08:35
Meh. Immaculate conception. Yeah. But anyway so Sai mean, I asked Lula directly. I said, and I actually wrote an article for a left wing magazine at the time. I said, are you gonna try to turn Brazil into Cuba and have censorship? And he said, absolutely not. Our socialism is gonna be democratic socialism.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
08:50
And that was my attraction to Brazil too was that I mean, here you I mean, into into the Workers’ Party and to Lula. I mean,
Speaker: Joe Rogan
08:57
he was super
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
08:57
he had all the stuff that you loved about the left, but he was gonna respect free speech. So I you know, basically, after the tour ai Brazil and the and the Workers’ Party, you know, and Lula just start defending censorship, then I started going after Lula too. And I’m ai, you lied to me and this is, you know
Speaker: Joe Rogan
09:16
What do you think changed? Acceptable?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
09:20
Wow. Great question. I mean, there’s a way in which it’s the same thing that changed for the left everywhere. I mean, this is the question we’re always asking, which is ai, how? Because, you know, if you read the histories, I’ve been, you know, I’m now by the way, I’m sai I’m we’re gonna spend 3 months in Austin every year now because I’m the CBR chair of of politics, censorship, and free speech at the University of Austin.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
09:40
Oh. I’m the 1st and only endowed chair there. So, so it’s exciting. So I’m here and Well, welcome. Thank you, man. I’m really yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
09:48
We just bought a little house and Nice. Yeah. Nice. So yeah. I mean, one of the because, of course, if you read the histories of free speech, particularly the last couple 100 years, it’s really the it’s really the right censoring the left.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
10:00
There’s a few exceptions, but I mean overwhelmingly all the way back to the original, you know, French parliament where they split, you know, the French con where they split people on left and right became a way to refer to liberals and conservatives. Conservatives were about protecting tradition, about propriety. Don’t say certain things. You know, that was like what conservatives were.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
10:19
And then if you go to the United States, like, the one of the most dramatic instances of censorship here is the early part of the 20th century with the Sedition Act, and that’s when the that’s when they were, you know, arresting socialist, incarcerating thousands of people.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
10:32
I mean, it’s a crazy period. And so that was the that’s basically the tradition. That’s why when we were, you know, in the nineties and up until recently, you know, free speech was some was part of the left tradition. So what happened? I mean, one of what what’s clear about the censorship that’s going on is it’s it’s it’s counter populist.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
10:50
So they’re going at Jair Bolsonaro, like Trump, is a populist candidate. So one thought experiment would be if Bernie Sanders had become president in 2016, would the deep state have sided with would they have sided with the right with the Republicans to censor a populist Democratic party?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
11:12
It’s an interesting question. I don’t know the answer to it. Clearly, I mean, I would say the ai. If you look at what the global elite, you know, the which is kind of a center left elite in Europe, Brazil, United States, Canada, It really wants to censor on COVID elections and ai, and they do the migration mass migration stuff around hate.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
11:35
So, like, if you criticize mass migration, it’s hate speech and you should be censored. So clearly, this is a reaction by the deep state against populism, which clearly threatens them, their ability to build a wage war when they sana wage war to to move people around. I mean, it’s huge. I mean, the mass migration that’s been occurring under Biden, of course, has been happening in Europe too.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
11:55
And everybody’s like, what is like, what’s going on? Like, why why is this happening?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
12:00
Why do you think it’s happening?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
12:02
Well, that’s a great question. I mean, obviously, the story that the traditional story had been that this is compassionate and, you know, it’s the right thing to do and sana bring people in. There’s so many I mean, the the Democrats and the Europeans, they went so far with it that it actually hurt has hurt them politically.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
12:18
Like, you know, Kamala may lose the elections because of just the mass migration. It was like the number one thing 30 minutes asked her about just now. You know, in Germany, the AFD, which is considered the far right party, far just means anti mass migration. So they they went really far.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
12:34
I mean, you know, I mean, I think there’s probably some truth to the idea that Democrats are bringing in folks to to increase Democratic voters. That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s something that, you know, John Judas and Ruby Teixeira wrote a whole book about called the emerging democratic majority where they talked about how latinos are gonna side with democrats.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
12:52
And then another part of me just wonders if it’s related is that there is a there was a concern that populism because, I mean, the the the danger the threat of populism is that it’s popular. Mhmm. You know? So the threat of populism is that the people actually govern rather than these deep state organizations that have constrained that, you know, pre Internet constrained what was acceptable.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
13:18
They they narrowed the so called Overton window. With populism, you get potentially, populations that say we don’t sana go to war in Ukraine. We don’t wanna support foreign wars. We we don’t wanna have mass mass migration. And for a variety of reasons, the these deep state organizations, by which Sai mean, you know, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, State Department arya absolutely freaked out about it as are the kind of global elite that end up supporting the NGOs pushing for that same agenda.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
13:49
George Soros, you know, Craig Newmark, Pierre Omidyar, the people that basically end up financing the NGOs that the US government then comes along and finances, which which ai the way is another thing that we keep discovering. Like, we’ll be in Brazil and we’ll be like, wow. These NGOs are doing the exact same thing in Brazil that they’re doing in Europe.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
14:08
Oh, and they happen to be funded by George Soros. They happen to have a fact checking groups that come along and fact check as a pretext for censorship. They do advertiser boycotts against the social media companies in order to control the social media companies. Obviously, there was this huge infiltration of Twitter.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
14:24
I mean, since I saw you last, we discovered what basically looks like a CIA effort to take over the content moderation at Twitter. It was former CIA people. Alathea Group, which basically was we we discovered these internal memos where they’re basically trying to come in and create a special new content content moderation, which is, of course, code for censorship.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
14:46
How did they frame that?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
14:49
They framed it, it’s so fascinating because, of course, we can see all the memos and we have it. So it’s not a theory. They were they were addressing they they basically were in the internal in the sale the sales pitches from this Alathea group. They were selling, the they were basically hyping the criticisms that Twitter was getting for not censoring enough.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
15:10
And then they were saying, well, we’re gonna bring all this intelligence experience and, you know, we’ve got these people that are really skilled at foreign languages. I mean, they were promising to bring in people that speak all these different languages. And there was some internal resistance within Twitter, but it basically was on track to happen and then and then Elon buys Twitter and it all What do you think would happen if he didn’t buy it?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
15:34
I mean I mean, honestly, I go I mean, I as long as you I’m careful. I don’t wanna engage in hyperbole, but I do feel like what we’re seeing is totalitarianism that this is It’s not tanks and torture chambers, at least not meh, but the this instinct, this this demand to control the entire information ai.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
15:55
Because, of course, it’s not the censorship is in service of actually propaganda. They wanna they both wanna they both wanna prevent certain information from getting out, and then they wanna promote certain information. Mhmm. And that Ai the this is I mean, when I just reread 1984 by George Orwell, and it’s ai, this is what he’s talking about.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
16:16
This is what he’s worried about.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
16:17
So do you think when social media first came along, they sort of underestimated the potential and they let it become what it is? And then once it got so huge, then they tried to infiltrate. Like, perhaps after 2016, then they tried to infiltrate and kind of realized it’s a little too late because there’s just too many people like yourself and substack people and podcasters.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
16:43
It’s just too much. Too many popular people on Twitter that have huge accounts that are on it all day long and monetizing it and acting as legitimate independent journalists without any sort of oversight.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
16:57
Yeah. 100%. In fact, not it’s not just that. They were using social media to support, I mean, CIA Intelligence Community Defense Department were using social media for for Arab Spring, you know, for the color revolutions in Eastern Europe. It was a weapon. It was part of what they call hybrid warfare, you know, getting people, you know, mobilizing people on the streets to do regime change to overthrow governments.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
17:20
I mean, if you can the holy grail for I mean, it’s like Sun Tzu. You know, the best way to win is by not having to fight, you know. Sai if you can not have to fire any bullets, if you don’t if you you know, CIA 1.0 after World War 2, you know, it’s a crude military overthrow of governments.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
17:37
Sai 2 point o regime change is you put a bunch of people on the street, peaceful protest, get the head of state to resign or call an early election and then overthrow the government that way. So social media was a tool of US government statecraft for whatever that period was when, you know, Arab Spring 2011 until 2016.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
17:57
And then, yeah, I think it was basically Brexit. Duterte in Philippines is another right wing populist that gets elected Ram. And even though Ai think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that Trump was not elected because of social media, he was elected because he defeated his opponents and his Republican opponents in the debates and then defeated Hillary in the election, mostly through conventional media.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
18:21
His use of social media and those other things clearly triggered a reaction from these deep state organizations. Ai like it. It’s funny. I just read this beautiful history of the printing press in Oxford history and the printing press at first, you know, 15th century, 1st 100 years, the catholic church is just ai, we love the printing press.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
18:44
You know, we’re just cranking out bibles and it’s going great. And then Martin Luther gets a hold of the printing press and Prince’s thesis, which are mostly attacking the church for corruption for selling indulgences as a way to, over, you know, pay for your sana, basically.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
19:00
And he condemns that. And he literally goes viral. I mean, when you read, like, that history, you’re ai it’s eerily similar to social media. I mean, can you I mean, it’s it’s amazing because well, I mean, long long story short, there’s, like, a long period of revolutions and wars and and the Protestant Reformation and then the Counter Reformation.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
19:19
And they’re ai the printing presses, they’re like hiding them in people’s houses. The church and the the government is trying to is arresting people for having printing presses. The printing presses go to Netherlands. You know, they’re sneaking the the printing president of the Netherlands. And so it’s ai, you can’t help but see it. You’re like, wow.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
19:34
It’s like VPNs. Because in Brazil, when they were ai, we’re gonna ban x, we’re like, get a VPN, you know, and VPN in. Mhmm. Still hard for people to post publicly because that would obviously show that they were on it. But still, it’s ai, you’re always and this is sort of an argument.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
19:48
This would be an argument for Elon to cut a deal to get x back up in Brazil. And I’m not saying that’s what he should do. I’m just saying one argument for it is that, you know, stay in the game. Don’t let them confiscate your printing press out of, you know, to make out of principle or pride because at some other point, you’re gonna be able to find a way to work around that censorship.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
20:08
Does Brazil have something similar to our first amendment?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
20:12
They have a line in their constitution that is extremely strong that there should be no censorship for social or political issues. The problem is that their constitution is so long, and it was created by so many people that there’s then all these other caveats. Like, you can’t engage in racism, you can’t engage in hate, you can’t there’s the Nazis are Sai party is banned in Brazil.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
20:39
So there’s all sorts of other things that I mean, the constitution is full of contradictions. It’s a huge problem. It made me the whole experience, by the way, because, you know, when you’re growing up and you go to and you grew up and you go to, you know, you go to, you know, elementary school and high school and the teachers are telling you the constitution of the United States is so special and you’re just ai, oh, come on, You know, like, whatever.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
20:59
But you realize when you get older and you re you realize the first amendment, it’s so radical because basically every other country in the world, certainly every other western country, the progression of free speech was you would ask the king for permission. He’s like, ai, king, can we criticize you for this? And he’d be like, oh, okay, we’ll allow you to do that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
21:19
But free speech was something gradually granted to the people here. As soon as they get the constitution done, Jefferson and other anti federalists, the people that were pretty skeptical about even wanting a country, were like, we need a first we need a bill of ai. And the first thing up there, it needs to be free speak, and it’s without qualifications.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
21:37
So the free I mean, the First Amendment doesn’t say it doesn’t say except for ai and defamation and imminent incitement of violence. Those things were built those things were supreme court rulings in the 250 years after the the constitution is ratified in 17/89. And so that’s why it’s so amazing is that, like, you just never I mean, I was this history I just read of of free speech is is so amazing because, like, you get all these battles over how much free speech to have.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
22:06
Is it just for the elites? Is it for the people? Then you get to the United States and it’s just it’s just a clear moment in history where the founders of this country were just ai, fuck it. Like, this is essential. Like, the speech comes before the government. The government you don’t have a government and then have free speech.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
22:25
We have free speech as an inalienable right from God or from our creator or just something that we’re saying that we have. And then you make a government based on speech. So this Orwellian idea that we hear, including, you know, tragically from Barack Obama and now his 2 secretaries of state, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates, they’re saying we have to have censorship to protect democracy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
22:51
It’s like the most Orwellian un Meh idea. It’s anathema.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
22:57
How is Bill Gates in this conversation at all? That’s what’s confusing. A non elected official who just owned a software company.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
23:08
My my colleagues don’t want me to talk about don’t be don’t don’t be conspiratorial about this. There’s other explanations
Speaker: Joe Rogan
23:13
We’ve already talked about George Soros. Uh-huh. The fact the FCC fast tracked him purchasing 200 different radio stations.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
23:21
I mean, that’s kinda run of the mill corruption. I mean, with with with Gates, you get into you get into Epstein. Right? So Yeah. I meh, so I’m not saying this is the reason, but Ai mean, it is like this is not a theory. The the the current CIA director, Bill Burns was at Epstein’s apartment multiple times. Bill Gates was there.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
23:43
I I believe well, last time I checked, nobody knows how many ai, actually, Bill Gates was with Jeffrey Epstein. He went out and did this, you know, really he did this PBS interview where he just looks guilty the whole time and is defensive talking about Epstein.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
23:57
Is that what that woman where she when he says, well, he’s dead now. He sai So, you know, be careful. Which is just the wildest thing to say.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
24:07
It’s weird that yeah. Like, you’re like, that’s what he was thinking. When she was like, why are you he’s he’s basically like, why are you going on and on about it? He’s dead. It’s like, well, we weren’t talking about him. We’re talking about you and your relationship with him.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
24:20
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
24:21
Sai, I mean, look. So obviously, there is there was a sex blackmail operate. I mean, I’m 90 ai percent on it. I think the Wall Street Journal reporters who did fantastic reporting on this are probably 99%. That was a sex blackmail operation.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
24:35
Mhmm.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
24:35
They were shooting film. There were one way mirrors. They were entrapping people. There’s there’s known connections to Mossad, and I just don’t believe that Mossad operates in the United States without CIA approval.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
24:49
So the prevailing theory is which what most people believe is that they brought these people there under this premise that you’re gonna be there with heads of state and industry and famous people and scientists, and this is gonna be an amazing place where exceptional people get together. And once you get there, you get a little loose. You start drinking a little and Mhmm. Perhaps taking in some party favors, and then there’s ladies.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
25:13
Yep. And they’re underage. Yeah. And they’re and then your next thing and you don’t know it, but that mirror on the wall Right. Someone’s filming you. And then you’re owned. Yeah. Ai, I mean, look, that’s that’s possible. I mean, I’m not
Speaker: Joe Rogan
25:29
Something’s going on in the fact that they haven’t been released. Right. Client list hasn’t been released.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
25:33
Well or and that Epstein was killed in Yeah. In jail. I mean, it’s
Speaker: Joe Rogan
25:37
Clearly murder.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
25:37
Suspicious thing. I mean Yeah. I mean, I don’t know anybody that thinks Whoopsies. It was suicide. Oh, I’ve
Speaker: Joe Rogan
25:42
heard people argue it. Yeah. They believe it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
25:45
Ai, I mean, look, that you know, that could explain it. I mean, look, I think I mean, I think Soros really believes this stuff. You know, I think Gates I mean, they’re these are people, like, when you get that powerful, you don’t stop wanting more power. You want more power.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
26:01
And so
Speaker: Joe Rogan
26:02
And there’s also you need to maintain power in order to protect yourself from all this stuff that we just talked
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
26:07
about. Right. Assuming there’s you have skeletons in the closet. I mean, we do know one of his affairs with a young Russian, I think, chess player Bridge. Bridge player. Mhmm. That’s not contested. That’s established. When he was going through his divorce, the, you know, Melinda, you know, like, you see the leaks to the New York Ai about Epstein occurred while she’s negotiating over the divorce.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
26:35
Right. So clearly shah knew something. You don’t necessarily need that. You don’t need Epstein to explain Gates. But, I mean, Gates, he just came out with a Netflix documentary.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
26:45
This wasn’t some, like, offhanded remark. He goes to the whole Netflix documentary talking about specifically at great length about why we need to have censorship apparatus in place. And he gave multiple reasons.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
26:58
And one of them is protect people trying to tell you not to take vaccines. Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
27:03
Protect people from people like you. Yeah. Ai, I’m
Speaker: Joe Rogan
27:06
not even telling people not to do anything. No. But p there’s people that are spreading, air quotes, misinformation about vaccines Right. Including real facts.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
27:16
Well, right. Those are the most dangerous ones. Ones.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
27:18
Well, that’s what the most bizarre is that he himself has changed his take on it, and and he did it sort of it seemed like to try to cover up the fact that he was promoting it for so long. And then, well, it didn’t work as we wanted, and COVID wasn’t as bad as we thought. And, you know, it didn’t really offer the protection that we you need in order to actually you know, it’s not a sterilizing virus.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
27:40
It doesn’t actually doesn’t actually kill the the virus. It doesn’t keep you from getting it. Right. So it does allow transmission. So he kind of admitted all those things.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
27:48
But, like, oh, we’ll do better next time was sort of the gist of it. Right. And this idea that you have to use you you can’t have people talking about inconvenient things that eventually turn out to be true seems crazy to not push back on. And the fact that he said that and there was no response whatsoever in mainstream media, there was no New York Times articles written about it, the Washington Post didn’t cover it and talk about how fucking insane it is to say something like that, especially after what we’ve been through.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
28:15
The gaslighting. Yeah. I mean, I just did a debate with, Bill Nye, in Florida. He’s the science guy. The science guy. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
28:23
How could you do a
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
28:24
debate against the science guy?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
28:25
Because I’m anti science, obviously. He must be.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
28:28
And, you know, I mean, I just pointed out that simple fact that the I just pointed out the vaccine didn’t obviously prevent infection or transmission. And the oh, you know, how can you say that? And whatever. And it’s ai, because it because everybody knows that reduced hospitalizations and reduced death, and I I agree with that. I mean, it’s I that’s fine.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
28:45
But the point isn’t I’m not arguing about the vaccine. I’m arguing that it didn’t do what they said it did, and nobody’s actually and then they just gaslight you as though that were the reason they were telling you to get the vaccine in the first place was to reduce hospitalization and death.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
28:59
No. They were telling you that it was gonna reduce infection and transmission.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
29:02
Well, everybody’s seen that Rachel Maddow clip. Right? But here’s the thing. If everybody took it, how do we even know if it reduced hospitalization and death? We don’t know. And when when we know that the fact that the the people that died of COVID, the vast majority of them have 4 plus comorbidities. Mhmm.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
29:18
And we know that some ungodly amount of the population was vaccinated. Was it, like, 80%, something like that?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
29:25
So you but you’re saying that we don’t
Speaker: Joe Rogan
29:27
know Oh, we know if it reduced the death.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
29:29
Well, because you could you could compare the vaccinated to the unvaccinated group. Right?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
29:34
Could you, though, if you have 80% of people that are vaccinated and the 20% that are unvaccinated, are they of a particular political leaning, and, what are the health metrics of that particular political leaning? Like, has anybody done some sort of an analysis on the people that did versus didn’t?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
29:53
Like, what were their health what was their state of their their physical health ram metabolic health before they made these decisions? Because ai, what you would look at, if you wanted to find out if it if it stopped transmission, or or, excuse me, hospitalization or death, you would wanna look at the overall body of human beings, and then we have a bunch of things that we do know.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
30:15
Right? Okay. So we know that the here’s a group of people that died. Well, what do they have in common? Well, the vast majority of them have comorbidities.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
30:23
The vast majority of them are either really old or obese or are very ill, very, very ill. So we have what was the the actual number of people that died of COVID? I Ai think 99.7 survived. Right?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
30:38
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
30:39
So it’s, point o three of the people that got is it something like that?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
30:43
Man, I’m not an expert.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
30:45
You also have to take into account, how many people were put on ventilators Mhmm. Who wound up dying, which we now know was a terrible idea. 80% of the people they put on ventilators died. We know, remdesivir had terrible health consequences. We know there’s a a bunch of things that people are connecting to the vaccine that no one is admitting, you know, and that it hospitals and especially employers are very reluctant to say that these mandated vaccinations cause these serious health consequences that we know are real, and then we have this mysterious uptick of all cause mortality that everyone wants to conveniently ignore, and no one wants to make some sort of correlation or causation.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
31:28
So do we really know that it it prevented death?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
31:34
That that is a good question. You do know what’s Joe, I’m not a I’m not a vac I’m not a COVID vaccine expert.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
31:38
But, I mean, even, like, saying that in in front of Bill Nye, the science guy, like, he’s saying it it prevented the hospitalization and ai. By what measurement? Like, how can someone so confidently say that when we know there’s so much wrong with the vaccine, when we know that it didn’t stop transmission, and then we found out it wasn’t even tested to stop transmission.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
31:58
That was all a lie.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
31:59
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
32:00
And the fact that they gave it to so many pregnant women with no tests on pregnant women. There’s so much about it where people want to say this one thing because they think it it it will keep them from getting in trouble. And that thing that keeps you from getting in trouble, the vaccine was good because it prevented hospitalizations and deaths. I’m, like, how have you shown that?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
32:17
Like, how do you show that?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
32:21
You know, I’m gonna go I’m gonna go back and look at it. I’ll tell ai. My I’m with I’m working with a new colleague who’s an who’s an amazing expert on the COVID stuff, but, yeah, it’s not my area. I mean, look. I think, obviously, they sold it to us as though it was the polio sana, and it was more like the
Speaker: Joe Rogan
32:37
Well, they sold it to
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
32:37
us as though it was more like the it was more like a flu vaccine.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
32:39
It was a magic cure. Right. It’s not even like the polio vaccine. Because if you look at polio have you ever seen the curve of when the polio vaccine actually comes in? No. Okay. I’ll send this to Jamie because it’s quite fascinating. Most people are under the impression that the polio vaccine stopped polio in its tracks, but the reality is polio cases have radically declined before the polio vaccine came along.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
33:04
It’s weird when you you you find I mean, that’s the problem with these goddamn rabbit holes. I’ll send this to you, Jamie. And this is a bunch of different vaccines that we associate with stopping particular diseases. And what probably actually happened was there was some sort of herd immunity and is also the advent of sanitation. Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
33:27
You know, people in inner cities are using outdoor outhouses. There’s stopping the use of DDT. There’s a bunch of different factors that seem to play in that. But look at where the polio vaccine comes along.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
33:38
Yeah. It’s amazing. Wow.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
33:39
Kind of crazy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
33:40
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
33:41
Kind of crazy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
33:42
Totally different than the story we’re told.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
33:44
Yeah. You know another crazy statistic about polio?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
33:47
What’s that?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
33:48
What percentage of polio do you think is asymptomatic?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
33:50
Meh, god. Great question. Oh, I I’m assuming high. Right? A lot?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
33:55
Take a guess. 50%? 99. Wow. ai 5 to 99 depending on who you ask. And the majority of polio cases today are vaccine derived polio. So there’s a particular strain of vaccine that causes people to get polio. And there’s a particular strain of polio rather that comes from that vaccine.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
34:14
So what’s your where are you at? What’s your bottom line on vaccines right now? Like, where do you
Speaker: Joe Rogan
34:17
I am not a vaccine expert. But I am a person that has been lied to for 4 years and so blatantly and so obviously, when you look at Fauci talking to Rand Paul and just lying openly about whether or not they funded gain of function research.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
34:32
Right. And the
Speaker: Joe Rogan
34:32
fact that he got away with all that. The fact that the White House tells you for the unvaccinated, you’re looking into winter of severe illness and death, just scaring the shit out of people. And it seems to me they were doing that to maximize profits because they wanted to keep selling these things, and a lot of people got extremely rich.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
34:51
Many billionaires were created because of the the pandemic, because of the COVID vaccine. It’s all very spooky to me because I think there’s a long history in this country of people doing things for money knowing that people are gonna suffer because of it. Well, it’s just sort of a human thing if you can get away with it.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
35:08
If it is illegal and you have the protection in place and you know that you’re gonna profit largely from this, you do it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
35:14
This is also it’s also in the United States, it’s worse because, I mean, Europe did not require the vaccine for in fact, I believe in
Speaker: Joe Rogan
35:19
They pulled out a lot quicker than we did too. I mean,
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
35:21
they did not require for children in particular. Right? Like, I I just interviewed, Tracy Hogue, and she was saying that she she speak a lot of time in Denmark. And Denmark sai, don’t give your kids the vaccine. And we sai, do. And clearly
Speaker: Joe Rogan
35:32
Well, that’s the difference between socialized medicine. Right?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
35:35
I mean, we’re seeing it on the on the on the trans medicine as well. The Europeans, because it’s ai socialized meh, when they when Europe when Britain says you should not give kids puberty blockers, they block they they end puberty blockers across all of Britain.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
35:50
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
35:50
They did it first in the NHS hospitals, which is the socialized medicine, and then they did it for the whole country.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
35:55
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
35:55
And the conservatives did it right before leaving office, and then labor comes in, they go, we’re upholding it.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
35:59
So what is the debate with Bill Nye, the science guy? What was his position?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
36:04
Well, in that case, it was just more ai they were I mean, it was, like, kind of a collective gaslighting where everybody has now I mean, I think it’s unconscious, by the way. I don’t think they’re deliberately doing it. So maybe Gasline is not fair.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
36:14
I agree.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
36:15
They go right from ai they just have forgotten. It’s ai it’s like retconning, you know, the the narrative. They just kinda go, no. No. It’s it’s about reducing hospitalizations and death. It’s like, but that’s not the way you sold it to us. Right. So can we just take a beat and acknowledge that you’ve changed your justification for the vaccine, which means that it’s motivated cognition.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
36:33
It’s not like you’re, like, reconsidering vaccines now that they because what you should do is go, okay. The vaccines didn’t do what they said they were gonna do. It didn’t stop infection or transmission. Now maybe there’s another reason we want them and we should consider it, but you should take a beat and pause before you just sort of rush ahead to being to justifying, vaccines for some other reason.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
36:52
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
36:53
And what was his position?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
36:56
Just I mean, it’s the most you know, Peter, it’s just the same as Peter Hotez and Mhmm. All of these guys. It’s very authoritarian. I mean, it’s very, like I mean, what he calls science is not act what what Fauci and Hotez and Bill Nye call science is not actually science because science is a process.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
37:13
The way they talk about it is more like A doctrine. Yeah. Exactly. Or a dictate and a dictatorship where it’s like science is done by scientists. Well, actually, science can be done by anybody. It’s like journalism. Like, you don’t, like, you don’t need a PhD to do science. Like, science is something that you do.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
37:29
It’s also not the same. I mean, you do some sometimes you have experiments on labs, but science in the world of ecological biology is just going out there and counting the number of gorillas or whales. So this you know, so they when they say science, they they really mean, like, obey me. Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
37:45
And and it’s people that are connected to institutions, all of them.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
37:49
Very powerful ones.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
37:49
Right. So you’re connected to, educational institutions. You’re connected to, these pharmaceutical industries, these various institutions that are funding media, so they have enormous influence and power over narratives.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
38:04
Yep.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
38:04
And then you have people like Bill Nye, who’s not even a scientist.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
38:07
No. I know he’s an engineer.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
38:08
Which is really wild. Right? Like Right. A guy who’s not a scientist is the science guy, and this is the guy that is, a spokesperson. I find spokespeople for science that are arrogant, very strange. It’s a very strange thing because science is a there’s a scientific meh, and that’s what science is.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
38:25
Science is applying the scientific method to in in data and and trying to find out the truth based on what we know. It’s not trust the experts No. Especially when the experts are severely compromised.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
38:37
It’s the opposite of that because meh, it comes out it’s science comes out of of Christianity. It comes out of the this desire to understand God’s creation, And then over time, the church gives more and more freedom to the scientists to study things that end up being quite inconvenient, like the earth revolves around the sun or there’s this, you know, there’s evolution or all these different things that scientists discover.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
38:59
It’s the opposite of doctrine. They’re discovering things that are counter doctrinaire. Right. So it’s becoming it’s I mean, this is where, you know, you get to this ai is basically people are trying to make it take the place of religion. They’re trying to turn it into an authority. And, of course, ai can’t do that because science is just supposed to tell you how things are.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
39:18
It’s not supposed to tell you what you should do. That’s the realm of ethics and politics.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
39:23
Didn’t the concept of it come to Descartes in a dream?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
39:26
Of of science? Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
39:28
I believe so.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
39:30
Definitely the idea
Speaker: Joe Rogan
39:30
See if you could find how he figured out where where he initially came up with the concept of ai, but it was understanding understanding nature through through measurement. Ai forget exactly how how he came up with it, but I’m 99% sure it came to him in a ram. Sai believe it was like an angel that brought him this information in a dream.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
39:53
I mean, all these early scientists including Newton
Speaker: Joe Rogan
39:56
is I don’t know if that’s right. Degre, a French philosopher mathematician, believed that he had 3 dreams in November 10, 16 ai that revealed the basis for the scientific method and his philosophical methods. He was possessed by a genius who revealed answers in a dazzling light. He went to bed exhausted and dreamed 3 dreams.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
40:13
He envisioned reforming all knowledge, understanding the nature of existence, and how to be certain of that knowledge. Descartes’ dreams are considered a philosopher’s dream and are considered to be authentic. His interpretations of the dreams are supported by biographical material, neuroscientific theory, and psychoanalytic theory.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
40:33
Descartes’ ram is also the subject of The World According to Mathematics, a series of essays that examines the influence of mathematics on society. The essays consider how mathematics sai be applied to civilization, how these applications could be beneficial, dangerous, or irrelevant.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
40:47
So it came to him in a dream, the idea of it initially. It’s very interesting, right, that human beings live for so long, before the scientific method came saloni, and now it has become this weird thing that’s been captured by people or so called experts, the spokespeople for the science, which is always dangerous when you have an enormous group of of intelligent people, which the United States is.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
41:12
The United States is 330,000,000 people. Some of them have degrees. Some of them are just brilliant people that have spent a lot of time studying things, and there’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of people. So when you have all these people debating things and you sana maintain control and push a narrative, that shit gets very messy.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
41:31
And the best way to handle that is to have certain people be the stern purveyors of the science. That’s it. When you criticize Anthony Fauci, you’re criticizing science.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
41:44
That’s right. When he said that? It’s incredible.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
41:46
That was a wild thing to say, but it’s so transparent because it shows how they really think that you are you are and it’s scolding. You are not supposed to it’s the same thing that happened when Martin Luther translated the Ai into phonetic languages because no one could speak Latin.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
42:01
No one had to read Latin. It was poor they’re poor people. But when he translated into German and all these different languages that people could read and said, hey. This is up to you to interpret what God sai. The church was like, hey, fuckface. You’re cutting in on our racket.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
42:15
Like, we need people that are the spokespersons for God. The what the the people shah are gonna tell you what God meant. You don’t get to decide what God meant. That fucking dude is dressed like a wizard. He gets to decide.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
42:28
So they you know, they’re wearing these crazy costumes that regular people don’t get to wear, which makes you think, well, who’s got the wacky costume and the fish head hat?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
42:35
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
42:36
He must know more than me, which is a weird play on authoritarianism. It’s it’s a weird it’s it’s a very strange thing that people accept when people have costumes on. Like, if cops were wearing, like, Sana T shirts and board shorts, he’d be like, hey. Fuck you, man. You’re just a regular dude.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
42:52
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
42:52
You know? But, like, you are going 55 in a 50, you know, and he’s wearing a uniform. Ai, ram. I’m getting in trouble with a uniformed person. This is real.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
43:03
They they’ve they’ve proven it. Like, they actually do studies where they if you put somebody in a white scientist code or ai doctor’s code or put a stethoscope on them, people trust them more.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
43:12
Sure.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
43:13
It’s just automatic. It’s incredible. It’s so deep. Do. Yeah. I mean, why not?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
43:17
They’re scientists. They’ve got a thestethoscope. They know how what my heartbeat per minute is.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
43:22
So the most unscientific thing is when people say things like the science is telling us to do this. No. No. No. No. Ai doesn’t tell us to do anything. Right. It’s describing reality. You can make predictions Right. Of what would happen if you do different things, but that’s not science telling us what to do.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
43:39
Science can’t do that. And so
Speaker: Joe Rogan
43:40
Especially when you stifle debate. Yeah. If you’re stifling debate, you’re stifling science. You are anti science if you are anti debating about science
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
43:49
That’s right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
43:49
Or the at least the data.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
43:51
It’s very similar to free speech in that same way. Yes. If you’re just defending the speech that you agree with, then you’re not actually defending free speech.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
43:58
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
43:58
The the test of whether or not you’re defending free speech, same as the test if you’re defending science, is that bring it on.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
44:05
Well, as soon as you’re as soon as you’re censoring people like Jay Bhattacharya and, you know, Peter McCullough and, you know, Robert Saloni, as soon as you’re doing that, like, okay, how is what do you these people are rock solid credentialed physicians. These these are ai Peter Peter McCullough has the most scientific papers published in his field in human history.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
44:30
Like, this is a legitimate scientist slash doctor, and he’s telling you. He’s telling you. He’s at the he’s using the actual methods that you’re telling people trust the science. He’s actually doing it, and he’s got a whole list of credentials to his name. He’s a very accomplished person in this field, and yet they’re censoring him because what he was saying was going against narratives
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
44:55
Of course. Which
Speaker: Joe Rogan
44:55
is you so you’re stifling debate
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
44:57
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
44:57
Which is everyone knows is the wrong way to do it. Even if he’s wrong, the correct thing to do is to get him publicly to talk to someone who’s right and have the world see how this person who is right is going to correct him on the errors of his analysis. And then we all learn. But instead, what do they do? They try to get him booted off of social media, which is very sketchy behavior. We don’t like that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
45:22
That’s like well, it’s what Francis Collins sai. We need to do a devastating takedown of these fringe epidemiologists referring to the Barrington declaration that Bhattacharya and the 2 other and and Martin and Cooldoff. Cooldoff and then, I can’t Sunitra Gupta from Oxford, I think is
Speaker: Joe Rogan
45:40
the 3rd.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
45:41
But yeah. I mean but but, I mean, even a more dramatic example is, like, you know, a lot of the people that did the early pioneering work showing that COVID escape from a lab were, like, anonymous people on the Internet, anonymous sleuths. Right. That is legitimate. I mean, the the idea like, credentialism credentialism is the enemy of science.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
45:59
The idea that you need to have some, some established credentials in part because the system reproduces its own ideology. Professors give they hire people and give tenure and give PhDs to people who agree with them. That’s how they feel like their legacy will continue. They don’t normally promote people, the younger generation, if they have radical disagreements for them. So they’re necessarily gonna come outside of the establishment.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
46:25
Right. It’s it’s sort of like every other institution where people wanna get ahead. You have to play the rules.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
46:31
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
46:31
You have to play the game ai the rules that’s established by the people that are controlling the game.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
46:35
Meh. It’s conformism.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
46:36
It’s just bizarre when that happens with science and Oh. Mathematics and with all these different things that we thought of as these hard ai. Like, what it’s information based, database.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
46:47
And it’s even more dangerous when it’s in the health and medical context. I’ll give you another example. I mean, American Academy of Pediatrics, my friend, Marty Makari, just came out with this amazing book called Blind Spot, Meh. Blind Spots, where he looks at American Academy of Pediatrics. Look at what they did.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
47:01
They recommended, letting babies sleep on their stomachs that resulted in the sudden infant death syndrome. Then babies, like, many babies died from that. Suffocated. Right? Suffocated.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
47:13
They recommended not giving children peanuts, and they created the peanut allergy epidemic. They, and now they’re now they’re recommending transgender medicine. In all three cases, there was never any science to support any of those positions. And it’s bizarre because I was I mean, when you read this book, you kinda look into it, you’re like, what was going on?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
47:36
Was there some special interest or whatever? It was just like ego and also it in it was a desire in many cases, ai to to have answers to problems that they should never have given answers to. Peanut allergies, for example, there were a few ai number of people that tiny number of kids who had peanut allergies, but they came to AAP and they said, what should we do about it?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
47:56
And AAP goes, well, it’s better just to be safe than sorry to to to recommend that parents don’t give their kids peanuts. They ended up creating the peanut allergy epidemic. They ended up making the and it’s incredible story because Do you
Speaker: Joe Rogan
48:09
know the other theory of why there’s so many peanut allergies and so many allergies in general? No. I don’t know if this is true. Obviously, I’m not an expert in any of these things that I’m talking about. But the theory is that when you’re vaccinating children and you’re using aluminum, which is so you have the inert virus, you have the dead virus, and you have this agitator.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
48:30
This thing that causes people to have this reaction and then they find the inert virus, they develop antibodies for it. That’s how vaccines work. Right. Aluminum causes severe allergic reactions and can cause you to become allergic to various things, including peanuts. This is I’m butchering this for sure, but Brett Weinstein has made this this argument. And, he believes that’s possibly why he has a severe wheat allergy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
48:58
Could be. I mean, in this case, they had a pretty good study comparing American kids to Israeli kids. And the Israeli kids had peanuts at young ages, and they didn’t have these allergies. Now Did
Speaker: Joe Rogan
49:06
they have the same vaccines?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
49:07
I don’t know. I
Speaker: Joe Rogan
49:08
don’t have to check. Yeah. But in the They were very vaccinated for COVID. I mean, it was interesting.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
49:13
Israelis were. Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
49:14
Yeah. I believe they mandated it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
49:16
I mean, what’s so amazing about that assuming that Marty’s account is correct, what’s incredible about that story is that you had so first of all, something like like over 14 years went by before they did a study showing that depriving the kids of peanuts at a young age was creating allergies. But every every there’s a whole field called immunology, and there’s all these immunologists who were watching this happen and they would know from their basic theory, which has been around for 1000 of years, that you would end up creating allergies Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
49:48
By not having that early exposure. So one of the crazy so you’re always ai I haven’t this is I like, another case of this is ai we’re we’re working on I’m working on the study of, like, the last Harvard president who came to power, Claudine Gay, who ended up leaving. She was not a great scholar. You you know. She was actually in trouble for plagiarism. That was that was why she ended up having to leave.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
50:09
But, you know, one of
Speaker: Joe Rogan
50:10
That was obviously after those hearings.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
50:12
It was after those hearings and then She said
Speaker: Joe Rogan
50:14
some crazy things about
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
50:15
Someone commissioned the plagiarism to go after her because of that. But what’s amazing when you look at it, you know, Chris Ruffo surfaced this glossary, this DEI glossary, diversity, equity, inclusion glossary that was all these words that you were supposed to use and basically woke language you’re supposed to use.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
50:33
And she was she was the DEI going around and making the professors and the faculty all use this language. I mean, it’s Orwellian. Mhmm. How is it that, like, these power you’re a Harvard professor. You’re, like, this accomplished person. You’ve achieved a lot.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
50:49
I mean, maybe you’re, you know, maybe you’re actually part of the problem in some ways, but how is it that you would just some faculty member gives you a list of a a glossary and you just go, oh, okay. I’m gonna use your words. It’s ai something’s going on in these institutions where people are bullied into things that they know are wrong, you know.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
51:08
And so it’s it’s a failure. It’s not just an intellectual failure. It’s like a failure of courage as well sai that you just end up going along. Sai don’t wanna be the guy that is accused of being a racist. I don’t wanna be the person accused of of causing childhood peanut allergies even though that’s
Speaker: Joe Rogan
51:23
the thing. Out on tenure.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
51:24
You don’t wanna miss out on tenure. There’s all these things going for you, but it’s it’s classic Emperor’s New Clothes. Right. We’re, like, kinda everybody in the room ram, like, this glossary is racist and insane, or telling parents not to give kids peanuts is insane because Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
51:38
We’ve never had more allergies since we started banning this. How did it go on so long? I think that’s one of the things that, you know, that that is one of the remedies, I think, of the of of the Internet age and having these alternative media. That is a remedy to basically have people calling bullshit on it from outside those institutions. Because, Ai I mean, this is American Academy of Pediatrics.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
51:58
If you’re just an ordinary new parent and you’re, you know oh, the other one, by the way, is infant formula meh seed based AAP recommended seed based infant formulas, which were terrible for kids. And of course, we know that breast milk is superior for all these reasons and that the antibodies and creating the immune system response.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
52:17
Ai, I mean, here you have the major organization recommending how to take care of kids with not one but 4 separate health scandals that it helped to create. Why should that organization even exist anymore? Right. You know, and that’s just ai literally one of the institutions.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
52:33
But if you ai just go down, you know, Harvard, New York Times, you know, American Medical Association and, you know, how about COVID? I mean, most Americans agree now that COVID was invented in a lab in China, escaped from the lab. So you have another case where the the the these institutions are actually creating the problems they claim to be solving.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
52:57
You sound anti science to me. I don’t like If
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
52:59
that’s what it is, sign me up. I mean, this is actually the subject. Ai you last time I was here, you asked me if if we’re what the new book was, and this is what it is. Pathocracy is the new book. Why elites subvert civilization? And that’s the big question is, how is it ai that the institutions and then we’re taking this concept of iatrogenesis where the classic example is you go to the hospital for some ailment and you end up getting an infection and die.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
53:22
That’s considered that when the health care system creates sickness, taking that and looking at a whole bunch of other institutions, ai, you know, when the news media demand censorship and create propaganda, the FBI creating crimes and entrapments potentially, you know you know, with with informants and others, you know, how is why what’s happening in these institutions that they end up creating the problems that they’re trying to solve or that they’re claiming to solve?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
53:50
It’s the crazy thing is it seems to be an emergent behavior pattern. When people get into power when when people have power, they always go the in this very particular direction of control. Yeah. And this was what the founding fathers of the constitution, the people that founded this country when they were laying it out, they were trying to prevent that from taking place.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
54:10
And they had this very elaborate plan
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
54:13
Mhmm.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
54:13
To sort of subvert normal human behavior, to stop it from taking root in this country and to make this a a better experiment in self self government than what they’d experienced under dictatorships. And people always want to get it back to where they’re comfortable, which is being a dictator.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
54:34
Yeah. I mean, absolute I mean, it’s such a brilliant system and, I mean, there’s this famous I can’t remember if it if it was Jefferson or somebody who one of the founding fathers ai was like, we need a revolution every, you know, 50 years or something. That’s clearly, we’re overripe for massive reform.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
54:50
And we in 1975, we had the church committee hearings, which is where we found out about the CIA assassinations and MK Ultra and the the, you know, the poisons and all the stuff that the CIA was doing. We’re clearly over overdue for it. I mean, it’s been 50 years. Can you
Speaker: Joe Rogan
55:04
imagine what they’re doing now?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
55:06
Oh. We see some of it.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
55:08
Well, this, the guy who tried to shoot Trump, the guy who they shot on the roof, like, what was what was the deal with that?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
55:14
And why haven’t we why do we not where’s the information? Where’s the press conference? I mean, where’s his emails? Where’s the Yeah. Where’s his social media posts?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
55:22
His his apartment was professionally scrubbed.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
55:26
Unbelievable.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
55:27
Yeah. His home was professionally scrubbed. They didn’t even find silverware in it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
55:34
Ai how about this the second guy Yeah. The second guy that was recruiting people to go fight in Ukraine?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
55:38
Well, he sounds like a full on loon. You know? And I think when you’re if I was an intelligence agent, and I was trying to do this kind of stuff, I would find people already out of their fucking minds. Right. I’d reach out to them.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
55:51
I was gonna say being a loon doesn’t seem to be disqualifying to be recruited into into intelligence court. Well,
Speaker: Joe Rogan
55:57
it seems to be a very valuable asset. You know, like, that’s what Lee Harvey Oswald was. He was a fucking loon, and they probably recruited him and knew all along that he was the guy they were gonna pin it on. Right. And this kid is probably a very similar case, the kid that shot Trump.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
56:13
And when you find out that this kid was in a Blackwater commercial just 2 years before like, what? Like, who’s he in contact? If they’re like, what? Was it Blackwater or BlackRock? Oh, BlackRock. Sorry. BlackRock.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
56:27
Yeah. Just protecting you for no future lawsuits.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
56:29
I just fucked those 2 up. It’s a BlackRock commercial. I’ve said it right and wrong both, ai, many tyler.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
56:36
Times. No. I mean, I it’s it’s amazing these things. I mean or even the remember the the trans shooter? We didn’t get her diary.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
56:41
Well, it’s it was very ai. It was rough. Like, some of it has leaked, and Ai I guess it was probably people trying to discourage hate against trans people. But the reality is the majority of the last few school shooters have been trans. This is also something that’s conveniently left out of the discussion, and that’s not even the real problem. It’s not like trans people are violent.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
57:04
The real problem is psychiatric drugs, and that’s the thing that no one wants to make a connection with. How many of these mass shooters are on psychiatric drugs? And the the answer is the majority of them.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
57:16
Well, they say that, but, of course, I did, I reported on the guy that attacked, Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband without humor. Right. And, I mean, he first of all, I reported out that, you know, you go to his house and he was homeless and he was an he was a drug addict and he had mental illness.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
57:31
And you go to his home in Berkeley and there’s a Black Lives Matter sign and a rainbow flag and all that.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
57:35
Mhmm.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
57:36
But the media all reported it that he was a right wing Trump supporter. Like, that was so they were very I
Speaker: Joe Rogan
57:41
didn’t hear that at all. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Really?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
57:44
That’s huge. That’s hilarious.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
57:45
Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
57:46
But but in that case, they didn’t they didn’t hesitate to release that that information that he had been posting about QAnon and criticizing the Democrats and whatnot. So it’s clearly ideologically selective of who’s which which assailant’s info political information gets released.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
58:02
Well and then, unfortunately, there was a bunch of conspiracy theories that he was his lover and he was in the house and but if you see the guy while he’s talking to the cops and holding the hammer and Paul Pelosi is trying to hold on to the hammer, the whole thing is mad. Like, why is Paul Pelosi still have a drink in his hand?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
58:17
Like, dude, you’re in a mortal struggle with a man who has a fucking hammer in his hand, and you’re you’re holding the hammer with one hand because you wanna keep your drink.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
58:24
I couldn’t figure out why the cops didn’t just go grab the hammer in that moment. They sat there and waited.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
58:28
I don’t think they knew exactly what was going on.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
58:30
You know? It was very weird looking.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
58:31
It was very strange.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
58:32
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
58:33
It didn’t seem like Paul Pelosi was he wasn’t screaming or in danger. He seemed very calm. He’s probably trying to slow this guy down and relax him and calm him down ai the the cops were arriving and just didn’t ever feel like he was gonna get hit in the head with a hammer, which is what wound up happening.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
58:51
It’s the video is so disturbing, but if you look at the man in the video, he’s clearly out of his fucking mind.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
58:57
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
58:57
You know, there’s something wrong with that guy. Like, he could tell right away. Like, here it is. Oh, it’s
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
59:02
so disturbing.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
59:03
It’s so strange.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
59:04
Ai isn’t it why but I don’t ai understand why the cops don’t rush in at that point.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
59:08
Right. Why is Paul holding on to his drink while this guy’s got a fucking hammer in his hand? Yeah. The guy’s got 2 hands on it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
59:15
I don’t maybe maybe it’s maybe there’s not as much time that goes by his head. That’s what like, that seems like they’re struggling. The cops should have rushed in
Speaker: Joe Rogan
59:20
that. Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
59:20
Right? That’s awful. Oh, my God. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
59:24
Oh, my God. This is so horrible. That video is so horrible. When you hear him snoring and, also, he’s an 80 year old man. Okay? For an 80 year old man to get knocked unconscious in the head with a hammer like that, he’s not gonna ever be the same again.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
59:36
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
59:36
You know, that is that that’s bad for a 20 year old person to get hit in the head with a hammer.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
59:40
It’s awful.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
59:41
To for an old guy like that to get KO’d like that with a fucking hammer where he’s snoring in the cut I
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
59:47
mean I think the pro both sides, both left and ai, often attribute political motivations to mentally ill people who if you go through, like, if you go through that guy’s, David de Popp, I think it was his name. If you go through if you go through with the stuff that he was posting, it’s just a mix of crazy left ai stuff.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:00:05
He was clearly mentally ill. Yeah. Yeah. And but clearly mentally ill, by the way. People, they will adopt whatever ideology is is the most persuasive. Like, they don’t really they’re not objectively thinking about things. He’s out of his fucking mind.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:00:19
Well, we don’t blame John Hinckley junior. We don’t blame, Jodie Foster for for John Hinckley Junior’s assassination of Reagan. Right. Of course. You don’t go, if it weren’t for Jodie Foster Right. You know,
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:00:29
he was a Jodie Foster fan.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:00:31
Yeah. That’s why. It’s on her.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:00:32
Yeah. Nobody says that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:00:33
Yeah. Right. So
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:00:34
He’s a crazy person.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:00:36
I mean, look, we’re in this I mean, look, we’re in a mental I mean, we’ve been in a our country is just in a bad way in terms of mental health. Right? We’re just not taking care of it. I mean, no no country Ai mean, we have we have we have a lot of guns and then you have no proper psychiatric or mental health care system, which is crazy because now you have telehealth and, you know, you you we should have a bunch of ways to deal with it, but it’s just not who we are, I guess.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:00:59
Well, it’s also it’s very difficult to get people to seek treatment. Yeah. And, you know, and then also the treatment, especially in terms of things like SSRIs, they have to try a bunch of things on you. It’s not as simple. Everybody has a different level of mental illness. Right? And so there there’s also different causes of this mental illness and there’s different medications at work. Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:01:18
And they don’t really know until they try it
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:01:20
on you.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:01:21
And then then we find out now that the entire theory that it’s based on, which is that there is some sort of chemical imbalance, is incorrect. It’s not true. So then, okay, well, we have to take this holistic view of the body and the mind and the health of the individual based on lifestyle and choices and community and friends and all these different things that we don’t wanna take into consideration.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:01:45
Instead, they’re just giving people pills. And they give people pills, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it causes a dissociation effect. These the dissociatives, these weird drugs that people take where they don’t even exactly know what the fuck they’re doing while they’re doing it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:02:02
Well, in some I mean, I think also I mean, yeah, for a 100%. And, you know, we also unlike Europe and whatever, we don’t we don’t allow, we don’t coerce, we don’t mandate antipsychotics to people with schizophrenia or those kinds of treatments. We’re much more libertarian than that. Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:02:18
You know, I mean, I want this guy, particularly the Pelosi guy, I actually my I I can’t prove it, but my theory would be that he that there may not have been an ai mental illness. He had a rough life. He did a huge quantity of drugs. You know, it’s just a set of people as we’ve known from LSD over the decades.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:02:34
There’s some people that take LSD. We’re now seeing it with merit with the high potency meh. They never come back. That triggers psychosis. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:02:41
Yeah. And it’s probably they already have a propensity for it. The the thought is that I forget what percentage of the population. I think it’s 1% as a tendency towards schizophrenia or will eventually become schizophrenic, and then you take that 1%. That’s a lot of people, man.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:02:55
Oh, for sure.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:02:55
1 out of a 100, you take 1 out of a 100, you give them a giant dose of edible meh, and they’re gone.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:03:02
Well, this is the this is, Arya Andreessen, who you add on, was was making this point about Ayahuasca, which is very fashionable among the elite set. And I think the point that that resonates with me is, you know, when I was working in San Francisco after the summer of love ai sana when all the every shows up in San in San Francisco and they’re tripping out on acid, The privileged kids, the educated elite, they go back to Yale and Harvard at the end of the summer.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:03:28
But the working class kids, the kids that were not as educated, you know, lower middle class, they hung around in San Francisco and got addicted to speed and heroin, and that was the early beginnings of the homelessness crisis.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:03:39
Was this after the sweeping, psychedelics acts of 1970, which made everything schedule 1?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:03:45
No. This this is back in the Summer of Love, which is 1967.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:03:48
So in 6 even in 67, they were doing speed?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:03:51
Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:03:51
So it was just
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:03:52
Remember, speak so shah really starts with the beats, you know, the, the, the yeah. That’s the beats. Right? The beat nicks. The beat nicks. Beat nicks. Of the early sixties. They’re all Kerouac writes his book on speed.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:04:03
Right. That’s probably part of it too. Right? Like, I mean, it was ubiquitously used during the the Nazis. The Nazis were too.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:04:10
So he was around for a long time.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:04:11
The problem with speed is it works. Oh. It really works. Like, people take it and the people I’ve never fucked around with any of it, but the people that I know that have tried Adderall, they tell you, like, you feel like you could do anything and you you get things done. And that’s attractive to everybody, whether you’re a hippie or a capitalist or anybody.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:04:28
You just feel more empowered. Until you don’t. Until you don’t. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:04:31
Yeah. Especially when it stops working well and you keep taking more and more of it, and the next thing you know, you’re out of your mind. You’re losing your teeth.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:04:37
Right. Yeah. But it is a it’s an important point because, yeah, people take these drugs for a reason. They can be performance enhancing, And there’s a certain group of people I mean, you know, Carl Hart, you know, there’s people that write drug use for grown ups. There’s people he’s a Columbia University professor. Mhmm. You know, there’s people that have a very high internal self control that are able to do these drugs.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:04:55
But then Is that
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:04:56
the real problem? Is that we don’t develop human beings with a level of self control and a level of discipline and we don’t encourage discipline. We don’t encourage and I I don’t mean ai disciplining a person, I mean self discipline. We don’t encourage this concept that to be able to force yourself into doing difficult things. You empower yourself and then strengthen.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:05:18
You strengthen your mind and your resolve and your your spirit. And you can and if you genuinely gravitate towards positive results, positive results in your social life, positive results in business, positive results in artistic endeavors, if you genuinely gravitate towards those things, like, that is probably gonna keep you on the right path in life.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:05:40
And that we should really look at things in that way. Like, there should be guidelines, like, what are you trying to do with your life? Like, why do you feel bad? Like, what is, what is wrong with your body? What what are you eating? How are you sleeping?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:05:53
What kind of people you’re surrounded with? What happened to you when you’re a child? Did someone beat you? Did you get sexually molested? Like, what what is where what demons are haunting you? And what, in fact, can be done to help you?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:06:06
And even I mean, I would even leave off a lot. I mean, you do some of that, but, I mean, I just we have this beautiful philosophy called stoicism. Mhmm. You know, it’s amazing. It actually was we now understand now that it was part it became part of Christianity for that’s ai.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:06:18
Because Christianity the correction to Judaism, of course, that’s all about compassion and care. But when you lose the stoicism part of Christianity, it all just becomes compassion. The whole society gets started around compassion. That’s where you get victimhood ideology.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:06:32
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:06:32
You should absolutely should be teaching because, of course, I mean, the problem with the focus on the trauma, you know, is, like, they you start to everybody suddenly has trauma and you can sort of become obsessed with it as opposed to, like, no. The whole point of becoming a full human being is overcoming adversity. It’s going through that that process.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:06:50
Stoicism is a is a philosophy that gets you there, but it’s been absolutely denigrated. You know, like, when I when I was It’s
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:06:57
very right wing ish.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:06:58
It’s considered right wing. Of course, it’s the most emancipatory. It’s the most liberating philosophy because it says it’s all about your mentality. It’s all about what you do when you get up in the morning. It’s your mentality. It’s your behaviors. It’s up to you. Yeah. It’s not up to the government.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:07:12
And if you read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, it’s very progressive. Not only is it very progressive, it’s very compassionate and kind and considerate. Like, one of the things that he talks about is forgiveness. It’s a very important quality that he believes that, you know, he works on.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:07:28
He it’s for everybody. Yeah. It’s it’s not he’s not saying you know, there’s other people like Nietzsche, which would say, hey, most people can’t, you know, do cope with the serious but they’re saying everybody has this internal potential. It’s a completely liberal it’s what leads the human potential movement, the self help movement.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:07:42
You get to, like you know, I was looking at, you know, 1964, they passed the Civil Rights Act. Within a few months, Lyndon Johnson goes and gives us famous Harvard, I’m sorry, Howard University speech where it’s ai Sai was just shocking how quickly it occurs where it’s just basically about all the problems of the black community and how we still owe this debt to the black community and how the black community has been victimized.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:08:03
The like, like, here’s this moment where you should be you could be ai, hey. Look. We’ve just leveled the playing field. We’ve got the Civil Rights Act. It’s gonna end racial aggression. That’s all behind us. Now it’s up to us as individuals.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:08:15
Instead, they come out and they go, now we’ve gotta go and and we pity you and take care of you. It’s really toxic discourse. It’s it’s it’s awful and it then has just it’s just expanded to everybody, including children, where, like, the part of the over involved mothering of children is to treat children as though they’re victims.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:08:38
Right. Forever.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:08:40
It’s it’s it’s it’s actually and you see how it really helps the medical the the medicalization of everything. We much of what we’re with the with the trans medicine is pathologizing and medicalizing puberty. Right. We with the same thing with pregnancy. Pregnancy often is ai.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:08:56
It’s treated as something’s wrong with you and, you know, we know the c sections now or we think it doesn’t also undermines the immunity that you get from a vaginal birth. So there’s also But
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:09:06
it is important sometimes. Right?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:09:08
Sometimes in emergencies, but it’s a classic thing where it’s
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:09:10
just over Women with small hips.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:09:12
And it’s just it’s just overdone
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:09:14
now. Ai.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:09:15
It’s done I mean, often you get professional women. They’re like, I’m scheduling my my c section.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:09:18
Right. Right. Because they don’t wanna also blow out the hoo
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:09:22
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:09:22
I mean The reason why I brought up trauma before us, I think that’s one of the legitimate uses of psychedelics that I think there it’s it’s pretty provable that there’s positive outcomes. Mhmm. Particularly, MDMN, MDMA, for soldiers. This is what MAPS had been working on. Mhmm.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:09:39
And when you ask people in the service of their country to go overseas
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:09:41
and kill
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:09:41
people and become a a part of a war and get shot at and see their friends ai. Those people are gonna come back with unimaginable strain on their psyche. Unimaginable. And the one thing universally that these people have sought help with that has has helped them has been psychedelics.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:10:08
And it’s huge in the special operations community, discussions of not just Ayahuasca, but Ibogaine in particular, which is absolutely non addictive. I mean and and apparently, I don’t have experience with it, but apparently, an unbelievably brutal introspective experience where you see your entire life and it sort of laid out why your behavior patterns exist in the way they exist.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:10:30
Mhmm. And ai, they combine the Ibogaine experience with another psychedelic, whether it’s psilocybin or, ai Meh, DMT or there’s there’s a bunch of different ones that they ai. And they all of it has to be done in other countries. A lot of them, it’s done in Mexico because it’s illegal in the United States.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:10:46
But I have personally talked to people. Ai have Sean Ryan on the podcast the other day. He a personal experience of how it changed his life. I know multiple soldiers where it’s changed their life and this is illegal. And this is something that we should be looking at every single tool available to help people.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:11:03
Stoicism, absolutely. But soldiers are the most stoic motherfuckers. Those Navy SEALs, they’re the most stoic fucking get shit done people you’re ever gonna run into in your life. And if they’re still struggling, maybe these things are tools. I agree with you that both, marijuana and, real psychedelics, hard psychedelics ai LSD, I think there’s certain people that shouldn’t do anything.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:11:27
And I think the only way we find that out is we run real studies and real do real tests and really try to understand what get some real science behind the mechanism ai these things and what is wrong with these people that are freaking out and what is what is the cause of these psychotic breaks?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:11:42
What is the cause of schizophrenia? Like, especially when someone doesn’t have it and then develops it. So some there’s some biological mechanism. There’s something taking place in the body that all the wires get crossed, and now this person thinks they’re getting Satan’s talking to them. So what is that?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:11:58
Well, and some of it might be age related. I mean, maybe you maybe you don’t wanna
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:12:02
Not necessarily with these ai dose high dose drug experiences. If people, you know, do acid and then they become schizophrenic, like, what is that? Some people do acid and they figure out the the double helix strand of the DNA, and they they have incredible visions ai Francis Crick.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:12:17
Other people, they do it, and they’re like, what the fuck? Like, now they’re gone. You know? The guy from Pink Floyd, gone.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:12:23
Mhmm.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:12:24
There’s multiple everybody knew somebody when I was a kid growing up who did too many drugs and never came back. I know multiple people that have had schizophrenic breaks from marijuana. Yeah. I mean, I
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:12:37
like, I I’m I’m very open to it. I just I worry that we’ve we have a quick fix society still. Absolutely. And so, you know, it’s like you have PTSD. You had trauma from from, say, fighting a foreign war. You were abused as a child or you were raped as a woman. And I think those that you can get some insights, spiritual insight, existential insight to confront your demons, But you’re still gonna have to get up every day and confront those demons.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:12:59
That’s true. But I think it’s a tool in the toolbox. And I think to demonize that tool because some people have a bad effect on it. It’s like to demonize all the things that people enjoy that you could consider legal ai, like gambling. I do not think you should outlaw gambling, but I think some people should not fucking gamble.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:13:17
I, you know, I grew up, well, in my twenties, my early twenties, in a pool hall. And, you know, I I played pool, like, 8 hours a day. Played competitively and I was around a lot of gamblers, a lot of gamblers. And it is a disease like anything. It’s a disease like heroin.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:13:34
It’s a disease like alcoholism. Like, these motherfuckers can’t stop. Those people shouldn’t gamble. Right? Like, they are gambling addicts, and there’s some people that should not do marijuana, and there’s some people that should not drink.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:13:47
There’s some people that there’s a lot of things that they shouldn’t do. They shouldn’t they don’t have whatever it is that allows you to pick up a glass of whiskey, have a drink, and then the next day, boy, oh, I feel like shit. I’m going to the gym. And then you don’t drink again for a month. You know? Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:14:02
There’s there’s some people that realize, like, there’s certain vices that you can do in moderation, and they’re fine. Couple glasses of wine at dinner and everyone’s laughing and having a great ai. Nothing wrong with that. But there’s certainly some people that cannot handle that, and I think we need to give those if you want a better, stronger society, we need to develop tools for all people to follow that will give you a better life including people that have issues with alcohol and gambling and sex and, you know, fill in the blanks, drugs and whatever whatever it is that you’re interested in and that you’re you’re addicted to rather.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:14:38
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:14:38
And I think there’s a bunch of tools that can be used if used correctly. Just like I used to say, like, you could you could take a hammer. You could build a house with a hammer or you could hit yourself in the face if you’re fucking crazy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:14:51
Hit Paul Pelosi.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:14:52
Or hit Paul Pelosi. It doesn’t mean that we should get rid of hammers. Right. It’s like some people have used psychedelic drugs and had incredible insight and has completely changed their lives and now they’re better for it. And then there’s some people that we can point to that lost their way and they’re gone now and we might not ever give get it back.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:15:08
I mean, Howard Stern talked about it famously. He took acid and he was really fucked up for a long period of time where, you know, he really thought he was going crazy. And I think in that case, it’s very dangerous. There’s also there’s a dosing thing. When you’re taking something that’s made in some fucking hippie’s bathtub while he’s listening to the Grateful Dead, like, what are the odds that you know exactly what the dose is?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:15:29
Like, what are the odds that this is pure? What like, especially if you’re doing a drug today. Because if you’re doing a drug today, you’re rolling the dice on whether or not you’re gonna die of a fentanyl overdose. Even if you’re taking something that you would think would be completely ai, like,
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:15:44
you know Cocaine that people are doing ai
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:15:45
Oh, cocaine.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:15:46
That’s a
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:15:46
big one. That’s a big one. But there’s other stuff that people are taking like ai. They’re taking molly and it’s not really molly. It’s it’s laced with Fentanyl and they die. They’re taking street drugs ai antianxiety medication that shah are forged drugs that are actually laced with Fentanyl, and they’re dying from that kind of stuff.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:16:04
There’s people that, you know, maybe they developed an addiction to benzos, and then their doctor says, look, I’m cutting you off, and then they fucking find it on the streets, and they die from Fentanyl overdoses. So I think there’s tools that could be used. I I think this panacea, this idea that it’s a one shah fits all, you go do Ayahuasca and now you’re a better person, I don’t believe that.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:16:25
I think there’s a lot of work to be done. I think there’s a lot of work to be done, and I think there’s a process as we are growing as human beings. You start off as a child where you don’t get to pick your parents, and they bring with them a bunch of baggage because they were raised by people in the 19 forties, and they didn’t know what the fuck they were doing.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:16:44
And they were raised by people who literally came over on boats from Europe to escape tyranny and chaos, and they came over to America to do the most desperate wage work you could possibly get. Dock workers, steel workers, factory workers, they they would do anything. They were desperate. They would take any jobs.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:17:02
They would work on, you know, railroads and whatever the fuck they could because they just wanted to be able to eat. Right? And they raised your grandparents. And then your grandparents raised your parents, and then you’re here going, okay. What are we doing? And there’s some tools. Stoicism is a great tool. It’s a great tool.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:17:17
Discipline is a great tool. I think we are blessed in this time that you can hear a lot of speeches from brilliant people. There’s a lot of great brilliant people that have talked about various ways that they’ve overcome their problems on YouTube and on, you know, podcasts, and and you can learn a lot.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:17:36
And some of them use different tools. Some of them use the tools of meditation and yoga. Some of them use the tools of, fasting, and some of them use stoicism. Some of them use martial arts. Some of them used there’s a lot of different things that people do to make themselves a better sana.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:17:52
And I think to discount 1, like sai, because there’s a bunch of people that abuse it and get fucked up from it, I think it’s foolish because the profound effects that these things have should not be minimalized. They shouldn’t they shouldn’t be dismissed because they’re illegal.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:18:09
They shouldn’t be dismissed because of ignorance, and they certainly shouldn’t be dismissed by people who have not experienced them and have not had those profound changes that take place in their perspective on ai, because there’s a lot of people, a lot. And I think it’s probably been the going on through the course of human history. It’s probably what caused us to consider democracy in the first place.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:18:30
I mean, the the whole have you ever read, the Wow. Have you ever read the, Ai Meh Rescue book, The Immortality Key?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:18:39
No. I haven’t actually. I haven’t read it. No. I don’t see it’s in there. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:18:42
That’s what it’s all about. It’s all about the Eleusinian Mysteries and what these people would do. They were they were taking drug laced wine and they were coming up with concepts of democracy sana they were trying to figure out society in a more equitable and even a peaceful way.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:18:55
And there were, you know, the philosophies that they were coming up with to this day. People read their stuff, and it’s profound. And these people were all doing drugs.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:19:05
Yeah. We we can’t seem to Ai mean, you know, we do freedom really well here in the United States. We can’t seem to find the balance between that and proper care for people. I mean, the Netherlands has potency limits on marijuana. Mhmm. We don’t. You know?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:19:21
But the thing about potency limits, it’s they don’t have a dose limit. Right? So even if it’s potency. So let’s sai, like, let’s get crazy and say ai, because that ai% sai, like, high THC. Apparently, we looked it up the other day. If, like like, crazy THC that really fucks people up can get as high as 39%. They don’t even go that high there. Dutch government goes to 15%. Okay.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:19:40
So here’s my point. Three hits versus 1. Okay? So if you have 30% THC and, you take one hit oh my god. I’m so high.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:19:50
If you have 15% THC, you take 2 hits. But if you’re a crazy person, you take 30 bong hits of 15% t h THC, you’re gonna get fucked up. You’re gonna get fucked up. No matter what, no one’s controlling the amount of pot you smoke.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:20:03
Totally.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:20:03
Snoop Dogg smokes pot all day long. When you hang out with that dude, that dude sat there, he rolled, like, 8 blunts. In the course of a 3 hour conversation. He just kept rolling blunts. He had a a disco machine. The guy’s awesome. But, I mean, whatever tolerance he has is preposterous, and it’s not that guy who you know, he’s in grad school, and he does some bong hits from his friends and has a schizophrenic break and thinks that the government has, put a a recording apparatus in his pencils.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:20:30
You know? Like, people lose their fucking way, and it’s not everybody. And I think we’ve we have to figure out, like, what is causing it, not eliminate it for the vast majority of people who don’t have that effect.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:20:42
Well, we’re just really bad at it. I mean, like I mean, I think the bigger thing is, you know, you go to Europe and it’s like younger people will drink alcohol in moderation.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:20:49
Right. But isn’t that because it’s always been legal? And I think this is the problem with the United States in our demonizing of certain drugs. Like, we celebrate certain drug look. I own a bar. You know? I’m not opposed to alcohol, but alcohol is one of the most destructive drugs that we have available.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:21:05
But meh, used socially responsible, it makes conversations more lively. It’s a social lubricant. Everybody has a great ai. You know, if as long as you do it moderately or the right way. But it it has consequences.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:21:17
We we don’t do we don’t do moderate in the United States.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:21:20
But the but the thing is some people can moderately drink.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:21:22
Right?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:21:22
We all agree agree to that. Right? You’re not an alcoholic.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:21:26
I quit I I quit drinking because I had a problem. When did you quit? 2018. Oh, wow. September 21st.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:21:32
It’s a good time to quit right before the shit hit the fan. I drink, you know
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:21:37
I don’t advocate I don’t advocate prohibition of alcohol, but I would I would advocate constraining sales and just putting some limits on. I mean, the potency point that is well taken.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:21:46
Constraining how? Because isn’t this ai constraining constraining free speech? If you’re a grown adult, you wanna drink yourself to death. Do you so if you go over a man’s house and he has a wine cellar, should he be arrested? No.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:21:57
No. No.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:21:57
Why does he have so much wine?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:21:59
No. No. He’s with all
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:22:00
that wine? If you drink all that wine, you could kill everybody in the neighborhood.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:22:02
No. But, I mean, I think, you know, for example, we’ve restricted it to liquor stores out of supermarkets. We’ve had, Donutsville on Sunday.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:22:10
But that’s only hard liquor. Ai liquor.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:22:13
You can go
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:22:14
to a yes. You can go to a supermarket and buy beer and wine.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:22:16
When I was in high school, there was a there’s at 18, you could drink 3.2 beer. Ah, well, I remember that. You could drink a higher potency beer. So, again, your point
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:22:25
is How old are you? 53. I’m 57. When I was a kid, they changed the age from 18 to 21 before I hit 18. I was like, fuck.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:22:34
Yeah. But they didn’t stop you from drinking.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:22:37
Maybe that was local. Is that local? Is that Massachusetts only? No. It didn’t stop me from drinking. Come on. And nobody every every kid gets together in parties and they all figure out a way to drink. But my point is, if alcohol if prohibition had succeeded, okay, in in the 19 twenties and we had illegal alcohol in the United States, no one would know how to drink.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:22:58
It would no one. It would be just and you would know never know what the fuck is in the drinking. You’d be still buying drinks. People would still buy drinks. There’d be jails filled with people who sold and bought alcohol.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:23:09
And there’d be a bunch of people that died because they got poison drinking Because they got drugs from they got their alcohol from the cartel.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:23:17
But, so, Joe, how far do you go then? I mean, do you sell meth and Fentanyl sai 711?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:23:21
But this is where it’s sai this is where it gets to be a really interesting question. Right? Because ai not? Like, you shouldn’t buy it, but why why should it be that only criminals sell it if we absolutely know that there’s a market for it?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:23:35
Well, because of
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:23:36
Should we allow people if you listen to doctor Carl Hart, who to me is the most brilliant person that I’ve ever met that does heroin all the time. I don’t know if he does it all the time, but he says it’s wonderful. You know? He’s he’s done it before. And you ai you also have to take into account that he was a straight laced clinician. He was not, a drug user.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:23:56
He was the guy that was studying the effects of these things and realized that there’s a bunch of gaslighting as to what their actual effects of the pure versions of these things are. And that this concept that they are unbelievably addictive and you can’t stop yourself, he thinks is false. He’s smarter and more educated about that subject than I am.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:24:14
Well, I I mean but look, the more available it is, the more people use Mhmm. The more people use, the more addiction you get.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:24:21
But can you see that the same concept can be used to the same narrative can be used to control free speech?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:24:28
Well, free speech
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:24:29
Can you see it?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:24:30
Well, in the sense that there is limits to free speech. We don’t allow free speech for immediate incitement to violence, fraud, defamation. We have a high bar for defamation. So it is But could you see
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:24:41
how you could say the problem in our society is that a bunch of people are saying things that are incorrect, and the only way to stop that is to censor them? The problem in society is that some people are drinking too much. The way to stop that is to moderate their drinking and control them.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:24:55
The problem with people that are addicted to drugs is we need to make drugs illegal sai no one can become addicted to drugs. But that that it doesn’t work that way because humans don’t work that way, and humans don’t like other humans telling them what to do. If it was just you, me, and Jamie on an ai, and then I decide that coconuts are illegal, and I’m gonna put you in a cage that I created out of bamboo if you if you drink coconut milk because I think coconut’s bad for you.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:25:18
And everybody else is saying, dude, I fucking love coconut. This guy’s an asshole. Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Right? Like, because I’m a grown adult and I’m telling another grown adult to stop doing something. Yeah. That’s how I feel about almost everything that doesn’t hurt other people.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:25:30
I know, but we’re looking at a 112,000 deaths from illicit drugs last year
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:25:35
as opposed to 20 ai opioid overdoses. Yeah. 75,000 deaths from that. Accidentally. Yeah. Because because drugs are illegal.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:25:43
Well, no. It’s not because drugs are illegal. It’s because they became more available.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:25:47
Right. But we don’t have But because those drugs look, it all started with the Sackler family. Right? It all started with oxycodone and all that stuff. But the reality is that there’s a bunch of people that are addicted to these drugs, and the way they’re getting them is by getting drugs that are tainted with Fentanyl, and that’s a primary cause for the people that are overdosing.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:26:04
Did you say, like, 70 plus percent?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:26:06
ai% is Fentanyl.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:26:07
So That’s because of the illegal drug market. No. If listen, it is. Because if just those opiates, pure opiates were available, you could make an argument that those 75% would still be alive if they died from fentanyl overdose.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:26:21
No. They would they would also be dying of opioid overdose.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:26:25
Are you sure?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:26:26
Well, I mean, look. Here here let me give you an example.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:26:28
But there’s a reason why they specify fentanyl because it’s so much more deadly.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:26:33
But Europe but, Joe, Europe does not have this drug death epidemic. Well, they also don’t have an opioid crisis because they didn’t they didn’t prescribe it the way we epidemic.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:26:36
Well, they also don’t have an opioid crisis because they didn’t they didn’t prescribe it the way we did.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:26:40
Well, right. So they made opioids too meh. They opioids were too available, then heroin was too available, and now fentanyl’s too available. But it wasn’t available under The solution is not to make it more available.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:26:49
But it wasn’t available under it was available under false pretenses. First of all, they lied about it being addictive. Of course. And there’s a lot of documentation of this. Not only did they lie, they testified about it. So they knew it was addictive. And then there was also never an opioid that was prescribed as an everyday thing because pain is something that you shouldn’t have to live with.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:27:09
That’s that’s what the when I when I asked the Dutch, why don’t you have an opioid epidemic? They didn’t say because we don’t have greedy pharmaceutical companies. They said because the doctor when you go to the doctor, the doctor doesn’t sai, you have some pain, and this is the Dutch are famous for this.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:27:23
You have some pain? Yeah. You’ll have some pain. Take some Advil if you want, but you’re still gonna have pain because you just had back surgery or whatever. So some of it is the culture of entitlement.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:27:32
But it’s also they don’t have a financial incentive to push this medication because they have socialized medicine.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:27:37
100%.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:27:38
This is part of the problem that we have in this country, and we accept all sorts of socialized things, Ai, the fire department, that’s that’s basically a socialist idea. We’re all gonna contribute. It’s all equal. The fire people work for everybody, and they put out fires because we all need firemen. Right? And sort of with public schools.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:27:56
It’s very similar. But when it comes to medicine, we’re very wary about that. Mhmm. But the problem is then people profit off of how much they can sell you. And when you have some monsters ai the Sackler family and what the fuck they did, that’s how you create this opioid crisis. Let’s imagine that wasn’t the case.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:28:13
So let’s imagine this sweeping act in 1970 does not take place, and all of these psychedelics, whether it’s psilocybin, including marijuana, which is made illegal because of prohibition. Prohibition went off, and then they started you know, they went after marijuana. That was a new thing.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:28:28
And, you know, William Randolph Hearst and Harry Anslinger, it’s a long story, but it was really more about hemp as a commodity than it was actually about the drug. That’s why they even called it marijuana. Marijuana was a a a name for a saloni name ram wild Mexican tobacco. Didn’t have anything to do with cannabis.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:28:44
So when they passed that, they made everything illegal, all these things illegal. And so then when the government comes along and takes this incredibly dangerous and addictive substance ai oxycodone and says, let’s sai, you guys wanna sell it, we’ll ai we’ll make sure the guys that are deciding whether or not you could sell it meh a cushy job in the pharmaceutical drug companies.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:29:11
Afterwards, we’ll hook you up if you hook us up and then if that’s what created the opioid crisis, not opioids being illegal.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:29:20
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:29:21
Or not not being legal rather. Well, becoming unavailable.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:29:23
But they became more available.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:29:25
But but they became You’re describing
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:29:27
ways they became more available.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:29:28
But it was just heroin. If it was just heroin. No one was doing heroin when I was a kid.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:29:33
Well, they they weren’t doing as much.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:29:35
Very rarely. But if No. But but now everyone knows someone who knows someone who’s died of oxycodone or OxyContin Yeah. Or at least is addicted to it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:29:43
But sai the problem is you’re so in other words, you want these drugs to be less available, not more available.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:29:49
But who’s to decide? That’s the problem.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:29:51
And when you decide society.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:29:53
But when you decide well, certainly for people of a certain age, we all agree to that. Like, you shouldn’t be able to do that when you’re, you know, 16 years old. It’s crazy. But if you’re a 35 year old man, who’s to tell you that you shouldn’t be able to try heroin?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:30:05
I mean, you have to make a decision as a society because I mean, look. So Carl is right that most people that do opioids or heroin don’t become addicted. The people that do become addicted, most of them are able to quit on their own. So only a small percentage of people become so addicted that they die from it. But that’s a 100 but that’s a 112,000 deaths a year.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:30:25
So are we gonna just condemn the most vulnerable people? In other words, the 112,000 people that died of drugs and drug poisonings and drug overdoses last year arya, by definition, the most vulnerable to those drugs. Are we just gonna sacrifice a 112,000 people from drugs so Carl Hart can get high on heroin? I don’t think that’s For me, that’s not a good calculation.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:30:44
The argument. That’s not a fair calculation. I don’t
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:30:46
think that’s the argument.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:30:47
But then how would then what’s the alternative?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:30:48
Well, first of all, we’ve already established that 75% of those people are dying because it’s illegal. Because it’s no. Because it’s fentanyl.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:30:56
Well but heroin’s illegal too, Joe.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:30:58
Right. But they’re not taking heroin. If they think they’re taking heroin and they’re getting fentanyl, they’re getting poisoned because it’s illegal.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:31:04
Yeah. But the number here, what Ai sai too is it’s a little bit more complicated and that that it was 20,000 deaths in the year 2000, 112,000 deaths last year. It was going up before fentanyl. So, yes, it’s hard to overdose
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:31:17
on heroin alone. For sure kills people. Let’s let’s be clear about that. I’m ai saying it’s harmless, but it’s not heroin. It’s different. Right? The the the curve goes up when they start prescribing it. The curve goes up when they start giving people prescription pills and tyler telling them they need it after an accident.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:31:32
If you just had heroin available, do you think without recommendation people would gravitate towards heroin? People generally learn. This is one of the reasons why you learn from other people’s failures. Like, there’s not a lot of people that are crack advocates because crack didn’t really work out good for fucking anybody. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:31:48
But No one’s out there tyler telling people to take crack. But if the government came out with some sort of or not the government. A pharmaceutical drug company came around and the FDA approved it, and it was some sort of a medication that gave you the exact same effects as crack, but they told you this is a great drug for people to overcome timidity.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:32:05
Timidity is a real problem in our culture.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:32:07
They were gonna compete with China. Pathologize timidity. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:32:09
I’m not kidding. I’m not kidding. Like, you could do that because that’s essentially what they did with pain, and that’s how they snuck in heroin. But it wasn’t heroin. It was synthetic. Ai using that synthetic heroin and using it so ubiquitously and prescribing it is what caused that epidemic.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:32:22
You trick people into getting addicted by telling people it wasn’t addictive and then telling people they need it because of pain. And then, of course, your whole body’s in agony because it’s addicted to this stuff, and when you get off of it or you try to get off of it, you’re in terrible, terrible pain.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:32:37
So the the key is just stay on it. That’s the trick. So if we didn’t have that happen, and in 1970, they didn’t pass this act that told people that things like Ibogaine that cure people of addictions, actually, we rewire the mind in some substantial way that stops all those addictive pathways and and stops people from wanting to engage in these self destructive behaviors because it makes you so aware of why you’re doing it in the first place.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:33:04
We made all of those illegal at the same time. Yeah. If that hadn’t been done, we would have a much greater if they hadn’t been done and if all of these compounds had been pursued under the the name of real ai, and we we actually studied them openly. And yet the brightest and most brilliant minds running tests and studies and trying to figure out what’s going on and what’s good and what’s not good and what’s the right way to take it, what’s the wrong way to take it, you wouldn’t have the influence of the cartel because you wouldn’t have this insane I mean, who knows what the actual numbers are, but it’s 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars that are being earned south of our border by these ruthless, murderous gangs who control the drug trade because it’s illegal in the country that has the most demand for it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:33:47
Yeah. Although, let me let me respond to Ai gonna I’m gonna respond to the that last part. But, meh, Obama comes in and he restricts opioid prescriptions around 20 I think it was, like, 2009, 2010. Right. So so people are now going into Fentanyl directly or ram marijuana or marijuana. That’s They’re going direct.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:34:07
In. Yeah. They they fucked everybody because they got them addicted, then they pulled the rug out from under.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:34:11
Ai, I mean, I’m not denying any of, like yeah. I mean, ultimately, kids meh be raised right. You need more self control. You need more delayed gratification, a 100%. I also support marijuana decriminalization. I mean, drugs have 2 dimensions. Right? There’s one dimension which is the inherent toxicity of the drug and the other dimension is how you use it. Marijuana, nobody’s ever overdosed from it, nobody ever ai.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:34:32
You do get ai, but, I mean, really, compared to other drugs, marijuana is is fairly low toxicity. Alcohol, you know, actually, when you read the the history of alcohol prohibition, it did actually have health benefits. Alcohol prohibition because people drank less. But I agree. I agree.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:34:46
I mean, I think alcohol, like, I think it should be legal. I like I like the Dutch model. I like the restrictions because I think it does it doesn’t prevent people from getting it, but it just it is constantly saying, hey, be careful with this. Right. But meth, heroin, fentanyl, I think absolutely illegal. Do what they do in Holland. I mean, they they chase people down. They chase cocaine.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:35:10
Do they is there no cocaine in Holland? Of course, there’s cocaine there. Is there heroin? Sure. But they chase it, makes it more expensive because it’s less available.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:35:18
Now you get to you get to kinda go, well, okay. So then you get to we have a real world case, which is marijuana. We’ve legalized marijuana in California and many other states. The the criminal element controlling the marijuana growth and industry in in California is larger and more more violent and more dangerous than it was before we decriminalized it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:35:39
Do you
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:35:40
know why, though?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:35:41
Well, I mean, I think it’s mostly because the market for black the the black market for marijuana is still much larger than the market for legal. In other words, you can buy marijuana for much cheaper, you know, informally through your dealer on the street than you can if you go into the store.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:35:55
And some of that’s Ai will grant you that it’s because the California you can imagine when California decides to make marijuana legal, it it’s gonna add a huge amount of tax and it goes and ai sai set of costs so that legal marijuana is just much more expensive.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:36:08
That’s part of the issue.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:36:09
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:36:09
But the the issue is a little bit deeper. My friend John Norris wrote a book about this. It’s called Bryden War. And the what happened was he was a game warden. So he was a guy that would check fishing licenses and stuff like that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:36:19
In California? In California. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:36:21
And they found out that cartels were growing in national forests. Yes. So because they made marijuana legal, growing it illegally was just a misdemeanor. So because of that, 90% of all the marijuana that’s grown to all the places where it’s illegal, all the states that it’s illegal, comes out of California.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:36:38
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:36:38
And it it is made by the cartel. So it’s the same sort of a situation. There even though it’s legal in California, it’s, there’s an illegal market and this is the safest place to grow it because it’s just become a misdemeanor. And we are also a very unique country, and we have these wide swaths of land that are public that people could just go out on and just go go for a walk in the woods.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:37:01
There’s no restriction. It’s ours. It’s yours. And so they go out there, and they set up shah, and they use unbelievably toxic poison, pesticides and herbicides, and that shit gets in your illegal marijuana. It’s the same thing. It’s because it’s illegal that is causing all the violence. It’s not necessarily because it’s being taxed and because there’s a black market.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:37:22
The black market is because it’s illegal in other states. It’s not because people don’t wanna pay taxes on weed. Weed is so cheap.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:37:30
Not the not the legal weed.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:37:32
Yes. It is. It’s so cheap. It’s so cheap.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:37:34
It’s more expensive than the illegal weed, though.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:37:37
For sure, but it’s still so cheap. Yeah. In terms of the efficacy, what if you think about how much it cost to go drinking. Like, you go to a bar with your friends. It’s ai at the end of the night, you’re buying rounds for people. It’s 100 of dollars. Right? 100 of dollars of weed will put you on Pluto. Right. You will be on fucking Pluto. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:37:54
If you go to one of those places in LA that has, like, a store where they’re they’re just ai an Apple store, you go and buy weed. For $5, you could be fucked up for a week.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:38:03
Oh, no. I get
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:38:04
it. Compared
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:38:04
to alcohol.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:38:05
It’s cheap. It’s cheap in terms of its effect. Even if you’re paying 39% taxes, which they were I think they were doing in Colorado with which is the first state to make it legally, like, fine. It’s still cheap. It’s not that expensive. I don’t think it’s driving the black market to undercut people. I think that’s bullshit.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:38:22
I think what’s going on is the black market exists because it’s illegal in other states, and you develop these enormous criminal organizations, and they infiltrate legal stores in California. And they do a lot of shady shit in California too, but they exist because it’s illegal.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:38:36
So you think if if marijuana were legal and across the whole United States, there would be no black market?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:38:41
There would be, but it won’t be a powerful unit like the cartel in Mexico. Like, the cartel in Mexico is like a a government. It’s like an enormous ai government of people that are profiting off of drugs because drugs are illegal in the United States. If everything was legal here and you could grow it yourself.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:39:01
Marijuana may I’m with you on marijuana, not cocaine, not heroin, not fentanyl.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:39:05
With marijuana. Let’s just start off with marijuana. Yeah. Marijuana was legal in this country, and you could grow it yourself. It’s so cheap to grow. It’s literally a weed. Right? It grows like it’s easy. It wouldn’t be hard for people. Like, a guy on the block grows it and and sells it.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:39:20
And if it was just legal to do that instead of the government getting involved, then you’d have no black market drugs. It should just be a plant like a fucking tomato where you could grow tomatoes and sell tomatoes, and you can go to the farmer’s market. Look at my tomatoes.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:39:34
It should be like that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:39:36
It’s is is, I mean, I think that’s where it’s headed. I mean, my understanding is that that’s where Florida is headed. Is that where Texas is? Where’s Texas?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:39:42
Texas, it’s illegal, but it’s decriminalized in the city of Austin. And then, the So you just hope attorney general Meh Paxton apparently doesn’t like that, and he wants that to stop. I think most of the people that, want marijuana to be legal don’t necessarily use it and don’t necessarily really understand what it does.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:39:59
And there’s this idea that it makes you lazy, which is my favorite. Like, I know some of the most motivated people ever, and they smoke weed all the time. I think it makes you more compassionate. I think it makes you more creative, more considerate. It makes you think about things in a different light.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:40:14
Carl Sagan was a famous cannabis user, and he has a very famous quote about cannabis, about there’s states of mind that are achievable on cannabis that he doesn’t think are achievable any other way. He ai an inveterate cannabis user. So was Terence McKenna.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:40:28
And what’s your view of age limits then?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:40:30
I think it should be just like alcohol.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:40:32
21?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:40:33
Yeah. And I think you’re you’re it would be smart for parents to explain to kids that there are some drugs that are really fucking dangerous. And don’t just say all drugs are bad. Just let them know. And if you have a history of mental illness in your family, which many people do, a mental illness seems to be something that’s inherited, that some people have a tendency towards certain mental states.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:40:55
There’s a lot of arguments about that. I’m I’m not the one to say yes or no, but maybe you should not do these things if your family has a tendency towards schizophrenia, if you’ve had your own mental struggles, if you’ve had moments where I know people that have had schizophrenic breaks where they’ve come back.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:41:09
I have a couple of friends that, like, had real problems and now they’re normal again and not with medication. They just sorted it out and they figured it out.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:41:16
Oh, for sure.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:41:17
And they came back.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:41:18
So I mean, we’re dealing with the I mean, I think it’s always so important to remember that you’re when you’re where the people that have the worst problems are definitely a small ai, but the question is how many people are we willing to sacrifice? Meh many
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:41:29
people do we sacrifice every year because
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:41:31
of alcohol? How many people do
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:41:32
we sacrifice every year because of sugar? Do you know that heart disease is one of the biggest killers of human beings in this country? And how much heart disease is preventable because of lifestyle and diet? A large percentage. So should we sai, why is cake legal? Because you can handle cake, Ai?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:41:46
That doesn’t make any sense. Michael, we’ve lost 5,000,000 people this year because of cake. And you’re saying that cake should be legal because you like cake? That’s crazy. So you can get all fucked up on cake?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:41:58
These poor little ai trying
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:42:00
to move around.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:42:00
Care about these diabetic kids?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:42:02
No. I mean, you can make the argument for anything. I would just say You
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:42:04
can’t make the argument.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:42:05
Well, I would say
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:42:06
Freedom is the most important thing.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:42:08
Yeah. But okay. But what about Fentanyl then? So you’re gonna wanna sell
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:42:11
Fentanyl? Essentially poison. Fentanyl the LD50 of Fentanyl is so small, you could barely see it. You know that. Right? You ever seen what the a lethal dose of Fentanyl looks like in comparison to a penny?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:42:21
Yeah. I mean, I’ve interviewed many, many people smoking Fentanyl on the streets.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:42:25
Unbelievably terrifying. Yeah. So that is a poison, and that is something that was invented to try to make a more potent opioid.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:42:33
I ai I don’t think that’s meh drug for people in hospitals. I mean, it’s a miracle drug as a as a pain med. I mean, for women giving birth, for back surgery
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:42:41
Is a meh.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:42:42
Fentanyl is a
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:42:42
miracle. No. But it but it’s an opioid. Right?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:42:45
So Oh, yeah. No. I mean, my I saw my my meh mother was given Fentanyl for her back surgery. It was wonderful.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:42:50
Sure. But why wouldn’t, morphine work? Why wouldn’t something
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:42:54
Well, okay. So here’s another so this is so I, But something that we
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:42:58
know that people can tolerate.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:42:59
Right. Well, in Nuuk, in Vancouver, they had this experiment where they said we’re gonna go give, ai hydromorphone, which is an opioid as a harm reduction to people that use fentanyl and heroin, and it’s been a total nightmare because it gets diverted and people will sell it in order to buy fentanyl.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:43:19
Kids end up with it. I mean, I think you have to remember every time you add drugs to to the drug supply, you add you you increase supplies.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:43:27
You just said the same thing. That’s alcohol. Okay? Kids buy alcohol from a cousin who’s willing to buy it for you because alcohol is legal.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:43:35
Kids can get alcohol. But it Sai it’s the same thing, but it’s crime. Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:43:39
What you what you’re talking about is crime. So you’re talking about preventing crime. Right? Because that’s all it is. It’s illegal to do with Well,
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:43:45
and preventing it. We also wanna prevent addiction.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:43:47
Right. But it’s illegal to do that with morphine. There’s laws already to prevent you from doing that if you wanna follow the law. So it’s not in it’s it’s people that are willing to break the law and do this. If there’s a reasonable law that gets put forth in terms of age of use Yeah. Age of discretion.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:44:03
And it prompt honestly, I mean, it’s no one’s gonna buy it, but it probably should be 25. Right? Especially for males. Right? That’s when the frontal lobe fully forms and, you know, your decision making is all fucked up.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:44:14
And if you’re hitting the bong every day while your brain is forming and, this frontal lobe is under development, of course, it’s gonna have an effect on it. It’s gonna have an effect on if if you’re on Prozac. It’s gonna have effect on if you’re drinking every day.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:44:27
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:44:28
There’s a lot of substances in this country that, can do you wrong, and food is one of them. And I don’t think that we should be telling people what they can and can’t do. I think we should be explaining what you should and shouldn’t do. Ai I think that’s the best way to handle this.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:44:42
With food, I would say the tobacco model is wonderful. I mean, we did an amazing job with reducing tobacco use in the United States just through I mean, there was some reduction in availability, reduction in advertising, and then moralizing against it. The culture changed. It’s not cool anymore to smoke cigarettes, at least.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:44:57
Well, it’s a revealing of the actual statistics and the fact that it’s it does cause cancer
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:45:03
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:45:03
And that it is addictive. All things that they tried to fight against, it was really money that kept it. Yeah. There wasn’t a giant problem like this, you know, back in, like, the 1800.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:45:14
Well, and don’t allow open air drug dealing. Right. Right? And Chase I mean, Holland, there’s a small group of people that actually the government actually they they give heroin to. It’s, like, somewhere between 50 and 100 people. It’s not very many. And then they’re chasing dealers. They don’t allow open air drug dealing. They’re arrest they’re they’re stopping cocaine from coming in.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:45:31
Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:45:32
I think that, yeah. Look, it’s a nuanced problem, which is why we’re spending so much
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:45:35
time on that. Problem, but I think I think we have to be very careful about limiting people’s freedom. And I I think there’s a bunch of choices that people make that are very bad that you should be able to make. I don’t think you should make them. I don’t think you should, you know, bet your fucking house on a roulette roll.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:45:51
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:45:51
But you can do that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:45:53
It’s you know, it’s funny. The other thing that we’re gonna come to in the book is we’re looking at assisted suicides.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:45:58
Yeah. Oh meh god. Canada is fucking insane.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:46:00
Well, right. So so in other words, should you be free to commit suicide? I think you should. That’s different from having a government program Right. To assist it because you would say, well, the you you it always starts to think that we’re not gonna promote it, but in fact, the people that are involved in assisting suicide are basically selling it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:46:18
There’s this amazing BBC clip of this woman, this doctor that’s been assisting people with their ai, and she’s it’s it’s impossible to listen to her and not feel like she’s promoting it.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:46:29
Ai she benefits from it,
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:46:30
which is
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:46:31
nuts. Yeah. It’s nuts to have people benefit financially from people deciding to kill themselves.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:46:37
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:46:37
They’re telling people that have long COVID, hey, I’m not gonna go on in. Yeah. Oh, you got PTSD? Come on in. I mean, what are the
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:46:44
That’s the the number
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:46:45
of people that they helped kill themselves last year are fucking terrifying. I think it’s, like, 13,000 people.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:46:51
Yeah. We looked at the I I I don’t know the exact number, but we looked it up recently, and it’s been increasing significantly. And it’s also yeah. The one of the changes, as you mentioned, was it’s now from, people that have, Life ending illnesses. Yeah. Life ending illnesses to people with psychiatric disorders. Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:47:07
Or people with just depression, simple depression.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:47:09
Or there was a Ai just read a case of a ai. I didn’t check to see if it’s true, but I’m assuming a young woman who, was sexually assaulted and depressed. And, I think it was in the Netherlands. And Yeah. This is ai as well? Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:47:22
This is I mean, it’s a funny it’s a funny country, Netherlands, because on the one hand, they also did the gender they did the gender medicine there. They did the they did the drug decriminalization, but they’re also very strict. So they’ve they’ve achieved a balance in the Netherlands Ai don’t think we’re gonna be able to do here.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:47:37
But they
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:47:38
have a giant problem with, like, Moroccan crime gangs and and drug sales and gun sales. And there’s a lot of
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:47:44
I mean, compared to who? Ai to San Francisco and Oakland or
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:47:48
I don’t know. Like, I’m I’m not the guy, but Yeah. My friend who is from Holland told me it’s a giant you know, Holland has a, a giant history of kickboxing. Some of the greatest kickboxers of all time came from Holland. Ai, the legends. The legends. Amazing country.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:48:03
Amazing country. And they’re tall. Right? So
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:48:05
Yeah. Well, some of them are those the the best one ever was small.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:48:08
Okay. A
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:48:08
guy named Ramon Deckers. But he was so ferocious. He went over to Thailand and fucked everybody up and he became a legend. Like, it’s it’s a crazy country in that regard. But it’s a it’s not a very big country, but the people are very big and robust and they’re they’re, like, you know, manly men.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:48:23
And they’re very blunt Mhmm. And they’re very direct. They cut to the point. Yeah. They’re, they’re some of my favorite people in the world because I think they do they are able to meh that balance between freedom and care Mhmm. And between I mean, but they’re also raising their kids different. They’re not coddling in the way that we coddle our kids.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:48:40
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:48:41
The social media epidemic that we’re I mean, we just every we just do everything else.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:48:44
Epidemic over there?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:48:45
It’s they do, but it’s just not as bad, just like you would expect.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:48:49
Yeah. Yeah. Ai don’t I don’t know what the solution to all of these things that are very complex, and I I see your perspective. I really do. But I think, unfortunately, you could purse you could apply that perspective to almost everything that people do that’s dangerous and tell people they can’t make these choices anymore because we’re gonna lose people.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:49:08
And, I think, well, you really wanna be honest about that one. The biggest one is food, And no one wants to tell people you can’t eat cookies. But the the reality is that we’ll fucking kill
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:49:20
you.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:49:20
And, you know, what should we do about that? What should we do? Should we educate people and tell people about the benefits of healthy diets and exercise? Yes. Yes. Yes. I think we should do that with all the above. I think we should do that with all the above. Yeah. I think we should do that with marijuana.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:49:34
I think we should do that with psilocybin. I think we should also take into account the people ai these veterans, like Shah Ryan that I sai telling you that have had these experiences from psychedelics that have changed their life in a huge way. And for these people that sort of dismiss that and pooh pooh that and say, oh, Carl Hart just wants to get fucked up. I don’t think that’s really fair.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:49:53
And I think you have to apply the same ideas of freedom where you where you have it with speech to especially behavior like drug use where it’s not affecting anyone but yourself. And we already have laws that you’re not allowed to drive intoxicated. And if someone does something and commits a crime while they’re intoxicated, that’s also illegal.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:50:13
But we have laws that prevent bad behavior. And that bad behave those laws, it’s already criminalized. So I think the real problem is not these things. The the real problem is, like, all things that people get to try out. There’s a lot of people that are gonna fuck up with everything.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:50:32
I and I would feel better. I mean, I I don’t think Carl I read his book and I interviewed him. I don’t think he’s honest about the trade offs. I think he sells it as though it’s just an injustice that we don’t have legalized drugs and then dismisses this very well established reality that greater drug availability results in more addiction.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:50:51
Yeah. I
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:50:51
don’t think you could Ai I don’t think you could shuck off the trade offs. Ai like you can’t shuck off the alcohol deaths. I think there’s something like 90,000 people every year die from alcohol.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:51:00
Yeah. But not in the
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:51:01
only difference is well, yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:51:02
But the difference is, like, when you die on Fentanyl, you smoke it and you’re dead. Right. Right. They’re counting as those alcohol deaths. It’s over it’s a longer Yeah. People that are dying and they’re
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:51:11
not gonna be spending a
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:51:12
lot of time.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:51:12
Drinks and you’re definitely not gonna ai, most likely. Yeah. But I think, what Carl Hart is kinda saying from his own perspective is that he had a very different opinion of what they did and the dangers of them before he started researching them. And then once he became a clinical researcher, then he ai, like, oh, this is not and then he started experimenting with them.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:51:32
I mean, literally, he’s ai I mean, he’s he’s literally a world expert in drugs. Right. And so I mean, he’s just an again, it’s ai after the summer of love, the kids that are ai high I mean, he’s a PhD. He’s at Columbia. He’s one of the best universities in the world. He’s obviously somebody that has a huge amount of self discipline and be able to delay gratification.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:51:50
And, I mean, in his book, he talks about actually becoming addicted to opioids and and having to kick and going through withdrawals. I mean, that’s a very disciplined person. He has something to live for. They’re the one of the most amazing groups. There’s 2 famous studies, the Vietnam veterans who were addicted to heroin that come back to the United States. They weren’t around heroin anymore. They went on with their lives.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:52:11
They kicked their heroin and they were fine. The other group is doctors. Doctors who become addicted, you know, because, of course, there’s it’s available. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:52:19
Big problem.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:52:20
Yeah. But their, their recidivism rate or their, their relapse rate is extremely low. Why? Because They’re fucking smart. Well, they’re they’re smart and they’re just one and if they don’t quit, they’re gonna lose their medical license. Right. And they’re gonna stop making Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:52:35
You know, mid 6 figures every year. But they’re also expensive on the booze.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:52:39
If you’re a doctor,
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:52:40
that’s a
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:52:40
a very difficult process to become a doctor. Like, almost every doctor you meet is an exceptional person in some way.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:52:46
Yeah. In San Francisco, I told the story about these I have these 2 addicts telling the story about how they recovered. 1 of them was white. 1 of them is black. The black guy, Jabari, is arrested multiple times from in from, you know, when he starts his criminal career and as a teenager all the way into his forties, and they keep letting them off because they’re because they’re because they’re racist, actually, and they’re saying, oh, you know, you’re a victim and whatever.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:53:10
Basically, is getting to a place of in just very serious addiction, finally gets arrested in a way so that he can get into recovery. The white guy gets arrested once and because they’re not lenient on him, he ends up getting into recovery right away. So I think that I think back to I think if we can find some common ground, it would be that you would enforce some basic laws.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:53:34
So that if you’re out there on the streets dealing drugs or you’re sleeping in a tent on the sidewalk after you’ve been told multiple times or the EMT has to come out and revive you 12 20 times from your fennel. I mean, how many times do just vatsal even if you don’t care about the guy, how many times do taxpayers wanna pay to to send the fire trucks out?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:53:55
I mean, it’s like ai often a fire truck and an ambulance go out Right. To revive a dude who who often has already been revived. I mean, the one one time I saw was with the Times of London reporter. Ai overdoses in front of us. They meh him Narcan.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:54:07
The fire truck still has to come. The ambulance still has to come. I mean, how many 1,000 of dollars of of staff time and Right. Meh time is that to revive that ai? Instead, you know, arrest him, you know, or get him in the system.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:54:21
And then if you do it again, then you gotta choose between rehab and jail. I think that’s how you end up dealing with it. So Carl Hart yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna send the police into arresting Carl Hart.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:54:32
But you were saying that he downplays the negatives.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:54:34
Yeah. Dismisses the negatives. I mean, if you go the route that he’s recommending, which is that all of these drugs be legally available, you’re gonna increase use. You’re gonna increase availability. You’re gonna increase addiction.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:54:46
Yeah. We’ve had this conversation a bunch of times about would do you just pull the Band Aid off and allow that to take place? And so if you don’t, you keep empowering the cartel. So your your vision is to keep pumping money, 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars every year into the cartel.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:55:00
There’s no no other way. You’re not gonna stop. There’s no magic wand that you have that’s gonna stop addiction. There’s no magic wand that you’re gonna have that’s gonna stop the market for illegal drugs in the United States.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:55:09
But I think we can reduce it. I think we can reduce
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:55:12
it significantly.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:55:13
Ai, first of all, shut down the open air drug markets. Don’t have this thing of repeated, if you if you overdose and the system has to come out to to to to, reverse the overdose, next time they come out, it should be a choice of jail or rehab. Like, that’s it. You gotta go to rehab or you go to jail. That was the system we had. And California is about to reform the law that changed that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:55:39
You know, we had prop 47, which made shoplifting up to $950 legal, they or decriminalizers, Ai should say. Same thing with 3 grams of hard drugs. Californians are gonna vote in November to reverse that. Proposition 36, you know, it’s Do you
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:55:55
think they’re gonna vote for that?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:55:56
Yeah. It’s way ahead. Yeah. It’s over well over 50% to
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:56:00
be nice that they make stealing illegal again.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:56:02
Exactly. Recriminalize ai?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:56:04
How many tyler but then you’re gonna have to rehire cops, and you’re gonna have to refund the police?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:56:10
Well, yeah. I mean, you definitely need more police. I mean, sana honestly, it was just we had drug courts. It was imperfect. But you’d go to the courts and you’d be ai, look. You need to get into rehab and you’re just trying you’re gonna have some amount of relapse, but this thing of 12, 20 times
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:56:24
of relapse is saying ai, like in Seattle, incentivizing people, paying people. It happens in San Francisco too, apparently. Just paying people to stay on the streets Yes. Giving them money, giving them food. All I have to do is sleep in that tent. Okay. Fine. People are just shitting on the streets. No one’s cleaning it up.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:56:39
And when Xi Jinping came to town, everything was hosed down. Everybody was moved out. They put fences up where people couldn’t camp there anymore. It was wild.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:56:49
Ai bad.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:56:50
And Gavin Newsom’s response that when your friends come over, you clean your house up. Like, why about just clean your house, you fucking psycho, when you’re a hoarder? Like, San Francisco is ai a hoarder’s house, but way worse. It’s ai the the the idea behind it of, it being compassionate ai, like, there should have been a course correction when you realize the results of that. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:57:09
Like, there’s nothing compassionate about letting people shoot up in the streets and have your your your whole block filled with needles and and human poop. And that the whole thing is nonsense. Like, this is this is not good for anybody. It’s bad for the health of the people that are doing it and certainly the health of the people that are encountering it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:57:28
He’s a he’s a he’s opposed to this ballot initiative. Of course, he is. You know, I mean, it’s insane. He’s, like, the worst
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:57:31
Of course, he is.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:57:31
You ai? I mean, it’s insane. He’s ai the worst he’s the worst he’s both a terrible, terrible politician and he’s a terrible bureaucrat. His latest thing on homelessness is he’s like, well, this time I’m gonna give out the ai to the counties and they’re gonna give me a plan.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:57:45
It’s like you’ve been doing that for, you know, your entire time as governor and lieutenant governor.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:57:50
I’m sure you’ve seen the list of the people that work on the homeless in California and the salaries they get.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:57:55
Oh, yeah. Of course. That’s that’s what we mean by pathocracy. Yeah. It’s a sick bureaucracy that creates sickness. Yeah. I’m not saying it’s deliberate. It’s unconscious, but it’s it’s Munkausen syndrome by proxy. It’s creating making your child or making your community sick so that you can treat them.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:58:13
And there’s very few countries that have figured a way out of that once that already takes place.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
01:58:18
It’s very hard once you lose the norms. You know, once you I just this is an amazing book called Weird about Western industrialized educated ai. And they just talk about these these core values of, you know, working hard, delaying gratification, you know, stable relationships, education. And religion. And religion.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:58:40
Ai think that’s the one that people don’t wanna say, especially people that fancy themselves intelligent. I think a big part of our problem is we have lost all sense of religious virtue and values as a as a culture, and we’ve rejected them under the guise of you being too intelligent for religion.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:58:58
Yep. And the results of that is, like, if you just look at the results in terms of the way people feel about life. If you really do believe in God, you will feel about life like that it is a gift and is a miracle, and you will live a more righteous and just life. It will benefit you. It actually will.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:59:16
And I don’t know if it’s true, but I know that if you believe it’s true, and Jordan talks about this, but he whether or not he won’t say whether or not he believes in God, but if you act as if God is real Right. You’ll have a much better life. That’s a fact. And people know that.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:59:30
They know when you meh, like, a really good Christian person who does charitable things and is wonderful, lovely person who actually lives by the Bible, not a hypocrite, you’re, like, wow, what a cool guy. Like, I really love that guy. He’s awesome. Like, because it’s a great value.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
01:59:44
It’s a great it’s a great virtuous way to live your life and we’ve rejected that because we’re too smart for it. And in the absence, in the void of this this thing that I think we all need, you fill it with this new religion, whether it’s wokeism or what whatever it is, fill in the ai, other climate, whatever it is.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:00:02
You find a thing. I think that happened during COVID. I think it became a religion for a lot of people.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:00:07
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s funny. My my so on both free speech and homelessness, my best allies are Christians. They literally just have shown up. They’ve there’s all these people that are secular that are ai, yeah, we’re with you, but they don’t actually do the work ai the Salvation Army.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:00:19
When I did a Fentanyl protest in in Los Angeles, the Salvation Army shows up and they’re effective on the free speech issues in Europe. There’s a group called Alliance Defending Freedom. They show up. They’re so reliable. My best supporter of our nonprofit for years is just a Christian. He just gives us support.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:00:35
He’s like, Ai trust you. Go do it. I mean, when I look at my grandfather who was a farmer in Indiana, lived to a 101. After he died, I interviewed his neighbors and I was like, what? Like, why why does and they were like, oh, yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:00:46
The neighbor over there is 98 and that neighbor’s ai. And I was like, why does everybody live so long around here? And they just go, ai living. And I was like, well, what’s right living? And they were like, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, you know, ate right. I mean, they ate great food, obviously.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:01:03
They’re on the farm. But also is he had no choices to make. I mean, there was the there’s this really interesting book by, Leah Greenfield that argues that the increase of mental illness in Western countries over the last of a 100 years is just this incredible pressure on the individual to make all these choices.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:01:22
You know, like, my grandfather was like, there weren’t that many young women to choose from to marry. He didn’t choose his religion. I mean, it’s, like, absurd. Right. Like, we choose we tell our kids. Can you imagine you can believe whatever you sana become Jewish, you can become Jewish. I sana be a dad. Dad. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:01:38
Yeah. Yeah. And then you go, I wanna be change my gender. I mean, the levels of choices that people have, it’s it’s overwhelming as opposed to, like, he basically didn’t choose any of the major things in his life. He didn’t choose any of them. He didn’t choose his occupation. He barely chose his I mean, he didn’t have that many women to choose ram.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:01:54
Certainly didn’t choose his religion. Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:01:56
But are we arguing that that’s a good thing?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:01:58
Well, no. I mean, because, of course, you and I would hate that. We would we’re we’re libertarian. Libertarian. Like, we want we love our choices. I mean, because you were saying it’s not just that there’s 2 things that are going on. 1st, people just the church didn’t explain the world very well. Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:02:12
Suddenly, you have these scientists that are like, well, actually, the Earth revolves around the sun, guys. And and, you know, we it looks like and then there’s a story of evolution, which may not be correct, but, nonetheless, the scientists had a much better story of reality than the church did.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:02:26
And then the other thing is that just as you get wealthier, you just have more money, there’s more choices, there’s more things to do, and you’re sort of, like, why am I gonna go along with what some priest tells
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:02:36
me to do? Well, especially when you’re the literal translations. Right? When people literally translate ancient religious texts, things get weird.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:02:45
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:02:45
You know, you’re you’re dealing with the story told down by oral tradition for a 1000 years. Somebody writes it on animal skins. They eventually, you know, it’s too it gets weird.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:02:55
Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:02:56
It’s weird. So but to dismiss all the ideas behind it, I think, is foolish.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:03:01
I mean, the Europeans somehow I mean, the Dutch, for example, they’re very secular. I mean, these Europe these Western European societies, they’re far less belief in God than in the United States. And yet somehow, you know, they keep raising their kids to be more disciplined than we’re raising our kids. They don’t have as they have, you know The cultural philosophy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:03:18
There’s there’s ai an inner I I do think it’s a stoicism in the sense that it’s it’s, you know, it’s like when I would my my parents it’s funny because Jonathan, you know, Jonathan Ai at one point, he was asked, I think, by, I can’t remember who. Someone asked him, like, who’s better parents, left wingers or right wingers? And he was like, right wingers. Yeah. Even though he’s a pretty liberal ai.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:03:37
I mean, my parents who are very my mom and dad are very left, but they raised meh more conservative. And the way they would do it is they’d be ai, you know, be like, oh, well, that’s not fair. And they’d be like, well, life’s not fair. Right. That’s like a conservative view. Life is not fair. Right. And then you’d be ai, well, why don’t you can you will you give me some food?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:03:55
They would teach you they would teach us how to, like, push a chair next to the kitchen counter to climb up and get your make your own food. They had a philosophy that was if the kid can do it, the kid should do it as opposed to now it’s ai I think there’s just these over involved parents that are like, oh, I wanna I wanna take care of you, and so the kids end up getting coddled.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:04:13
Somehow, for whatever reason, in Europe, those core values of self reliance You know, it gets when you when I interviewed, like, the progressive homeless service providers in the United States, they were in San Francisco and other places, they would say things like, oh, that’s the whole ai your bootstraps philosophy, which is just so oppressive.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:04:34
It’s ai, no. Actually, it’s completely liberating to be told that you have the power to do these things. Mhmm. I mean, that’s basically what Anthony Tony Robbins is telling people all the time. Right? Is that you have the inner resources, the inner power. Sure.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:04:48
So that’s gotta be I don’t know how we restore it. I mean, there’s the the fear, of course, is that once that stuff’s gone, it’s gone.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:04:56
Well, the fear is that once you tell the person that it’s not their fault, their their whole life is because somebody else did them wrong. Absolutely. Or that there’s some injustice in the system. Yeah. Some systematic oppression that’s keeping them from succeeding. But the reality also is that some people are born in terrible circumstances and,
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:05:13
you
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:05:13
know, and then there’s no beginning finish. There’s no starting line that’s the same.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:05:18
But this thing where this thing where, like, you know, after the George Floyd where it’s ai the Obamas are and and affluent, you know, black families are are saying, oh, yeah. I’m worried about my kids. What are you telling your kids that they’re ai that they’re gonna be victims of the ai, that police are all racist?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:05:36
I mean, these messages are constantly being told to people that the system that that basically the broader society is essentially unfair as opposed to telling them that really the playing field is more level than it’s ever been.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:05:49
And the crazy thing is up until about 2012, that’s what we thought. You know, people
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:05:54
I blame Obama.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:05:55
People that don’t, a lot of people do, but, you know, because there’s a source of a a a political incentive
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:06:01
Yes.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:06:01
To communicate that way and, you know, to promote this idea that it’s everybody’s fault and, you know, everybody goes, then you get white guilt involved, like, it’s not my fault. I’m a I’m an ai. And then they jump in and next, you know, people are looking for racism everywhere, ai racist Columbus. It’s weird.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:06:18
It’s weird how it shifted because when I was a kid, racism was bad, period. No one cared. It just it got to this weird point somewhere around 2012 where it was everywhere in society and you had to encounter unconscious bias and unconscious racism training in the workplace. So then you get these grifters who their only job is to tell you that everything is racist, and the their only job is to berate you and scare you into you have to give in to whatever their demands are in terms of the numbers of employees that have to be x, y, or z, and they develop these, like, very rigid rules that you have no.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:06:58
They’re in control. No. They’re they’re controlling what you’re allowed to say, the way you’re allowed to discuss things. If someone says anything about a person that is of a particular group, that becomes either homophobic or transphobic or racist, or you’re not taking into account all these other factors that led that person Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:07:14
To be you know, it’s
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:07:16
not equitable.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:07:16
There’s all this nonsense talk that’s used by grifters.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:07:21
Ai, because cult.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:07:24
But it didn’t exist. This is what people need to understand. That was all dismissed when I was a kid. By 2 2012, by around that time, that was not a thing. In 2,001, that was not a thing. This thing calling race there was always racism. There’s always people that were saying there was racism in the workplace, and and I’m sure it’s true because some people suck.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:07:45
But it wasn’t this overall message that society is inherently racist.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:07:50
I mean, think about how Obama was raised by his white mom, you know, by a single mom, you know, and his grandparents were there. She didn’t teach him that he was a victim, that he was helpless against society.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:08:01
Well, he literally became the president of the United States, the most difficult job to get on Earth. I
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:08:05
mean, she so I mean I mean What is the
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:08:07
greatest success American success story you can imagine?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:08:09
I mean, here here he’s, like, reelected in 2012. Like, this stuff is starting, you know, Black Lives Matter starts in I think it’s, like was it 2015 or is it 2013? I can’t remember. But he sees all that stuff happening. There’s literally nobody on the planet more capable of of pushing back against all that bad wokeism than Barack Obama.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:08:29
Barack Hussein Obama is so well positioned to do it. He doesn’t do it. You know? I mean and I think part of it is that it works for Democrats.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:08:39
Yes. It works. That’s That is the problem.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:08:41
It works politically for them. Yeah. And that but that’s a but that’s actually a tragedy, especially for young black men in this country to be teaching this this idea ai he does once in a ai, he’ll say something about it. But, I mean, the whole Black Lives Matter movement, which was, you know, just a tragedy, you know, where you’re you’re the the grotesque exaggeration of police killings of unarmed black meh, he was in a position to push back against vatsal, and they didn’t do it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:09:10
And he hasn’t done it since he left office. So that’s why I say I blame him just because of what he hasn’t done.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:09:15
Because there have been grotesque uses of police brutality on black people, and we all know it. Sure. The problem is if you say that it’s not as big of a problem, we have very specific instances where it was a problem. So it’s ai, I don’t think But the problem decline
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:09:30
I mean, we looked at FBI data from the seventies. The problem is bad cops. It ai, but it declined to it declined so much from the seventies until now.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:09:38
Sure. But it doesn’t mean that it’s not still a giant issue if you’re a black man and you encounter cops and you’re ai.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:09:43
I mean, it’s under it’s on it’s about 1 or 2 dozen a year.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:09:47
That’s still a lot of people that had died that didn’t have to die if the police weren’t incompetent or if they weren’t racist or if they weren’t fucked up on PTSD because a lot of
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:09:56
them are. But if you yeah. But if you calculate the number of the the increase of the number of black people killed because the police pulled back in reaction to Black Lives Matter, what we call the Ferguson effect
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:10:09
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:10:10
Where you’re out there demonizing and
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:10:12
Yeah. That’s not the correct response.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:10:13
No. And sai the cops pull back, and so you get more black deaths. I mean, it’s You
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:10:18
get cops that are terrified to police. Yeah. Yeah. You get cops that are demonized. You get terrible morale. You get a lot of just really bad things. And then you get a wake up call a few years later where people are ai, we need to refund the police. And that’s what happened in Minnesota, and it’s happened in a lot of places where people are up in arms.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:10:34
Like, our communities are more fucked up now than they’ve ever been before. This didn’t help anybody, and you didn’t even fill the void. It’s not like you you defunded the police but figured out some new strategy that’s more effective and implemented that. No. He just created this bizarre environment where you allow people to steal.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:10:52
If you you make a law that makes allow people to steal up to $950 worth of shit, they’re just gonna steal $950 worth of shit Yeah. Every chance they meh. And then you’re gonna see all these businesses closing down like in San Francisco. You know, Chamath was on the podcast recently, and he thinks that San Francisco is gonna experience a rebirth because of AI.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:11:11
And his perspective is that the the super nerds are, like, more in charge of San Francisco now. And so these sort of mid level grifters who are into virtue signaling, which is, like, how you got ahead in a lot of these businesses where you’re not really exceptional as a person, but you fit a good quota and you’re kind of a DEI hire, next thing you know, the CEO of a big company.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:11:32
And it’s nuts and it happens. And he said that’s not gonna happen anymore. He’s like Ai is gonna essentially revitalize that area because there’s gonna be so much money. And the people that are gonna be running it are gonna be the actual geniuses again.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:11:44
Well and he and I mean but, also, he and David Sacks, I mean, they’ve had such a powerful impact just in talking back to that culture. Yes. I mean, their podcast is so dominant now in business that I think it’s just made it’s just giving courage. So does Marc Andreessen. Yes.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:11:58
They’ve given courage to people to just not put up with it. Sai much of
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:12:01
the brilliant, brilliant people who are finally expressing themselves, and I think that’s so huge. And Marc and Chamath and all all these folks that are doing that now, it’s courageous because if you step out of line, for with the ideology with the ideal ideology supports, you get attacked.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:12:18
Oh, yeah. It’s not fun.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:12:19
Well, there was I think there was an earlier generation of tech leaders who went along with the political correctness. And so now you get Andreessen and Saloni and Of course, Mums. Ai. And Elon.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:12:28
He’s the biggest one.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:12:29
Yeah. I mean, he’s He’s the biggest pushback ever. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:12:32
Well, the biggest pushback ever is he spends $44,000,000,000 to purchase Twitter, and then we find out all the stuff that’s going on. And It’s incredible. The fact that it still go the the the Brazil thing is unresolved. And so the only way it’s gonna be resolved is if they get rid of those 12 people?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:12:47
Oh, well yeah. Wow. We’re circling back.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:12:49
Yeah. Let’s circle back.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:12:50
Well, I mean yeah. I mean well, so one one important observation about this so first of all, Elon was very strong on Brazil. I think that there’s a way in which he’s gonna probably have to cut a deal to get x back in Brazil. We don’t talk at all about Zuckerberg and Google. You know, we all these pressures on Saloni.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:13:09
Looking at Are they giving in
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:13:11
to the requirements?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:13:12
Yeah. They gave in right away.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:13:13
I mean, that’s the that’s the problem. People off of Facebook? All those people that you’re talking about?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:13:18
I mean, I can’t I can’t prove it, but I assume that that’s the case. Yeah. They went along with it. I mean, only Elon stood up against it. Sai, I mean, Facebook has just engaged in a huge amount more censorship. You know, they the the fact checkers, they they outsource their brain to these fact checkers who are then funded by all these bad actors.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:13:36
I think the thing about the Brazil that shows is, you know, they froze Starlink’s bank accounts, and they they seized its assets. So, you know, based people point out, you know, Elon’s incredibly powerful richest man in the world. I mean, Starlink is this incredible innovation. I’ve seen you talk about it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:13:51
But at the end of the day, it actually makes him somewhat vulnerable because then they can just you know, it’s not just about x. Like, the if you if the Brazilian government can come in and seize Starlink assets in a country where Starlink is absolutely essential because of the Amazon, you know, it allows for this incredible connectivity.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:14:08
So it really I for me, it’s just you still need a free speech movement. Like, you need Yeah. To to re inculcate. And I think the other thing that I’ve realized, in the in the last year and a half of doing the Twitter files and other other censorship files is that because I used to think that my support for free speech that our support for free speech was sort of, like, natural or something, but I realized, like, it was taught to me.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:14:31
Like, I remember my father teaching me about Skoggy and telling me that the ACLU had defended the right of Nazis to march through a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors. And I remember being horrified by it as a very, you know, woke kid and being ai, that’s very insensitive. Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:14:46
And my dad kinda being like, well, yeah, but here’s why we do it that way. Right. And it was, because actually, censorship would then be used against other people. And he would also make this point, and I had I was making this yesterday to to my future students at University of Austin, is that you wanna know who the Nazis are.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:15:03
Yeah. You actually wanna know who the Nazis are arya you wanna argue with the Nazis. Right. You you this idea that we’re there’s a fantasy. People sai, oh, well, if we had if Germany had, like, censored the Nazis, then they wouldn’t have come to power. They did censor the Nazis.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:15:16
Like, they had imposed a censorship regime before the Nazis came to power. They were they were they were censoring them. They came to power, reinforced that system. So much better to defeat these bad ideas Yeah. In the realm of free speech.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:15:29
But I do think there’s a whole younger generation that never got indoctrinated into the religion of free speech in the ways that we as Meh Xers did.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:15:37
Well, I think they’re learning it more now because it’s being discussed now because it’s under threat. And I think people need to understand the ramifications of giving the government control. They they they’re not truthful. There’s no instances where you could look back and say, well, the government never lies about this.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:15:53
There’s not one thing, whether it’s health care, whether it’s, international relations, whether it’s, their political opponents, whatever it is. Things get distorted. There’s lies that get told. That’s just how it goes.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:16:07
It’s an incredible it’s an incredible sort of master tool for so many different things. I mean, it’s you know, I mean, half of it is just calling it censorship. These guys are so good with language. They talk about how I’m just doing counter disinformation. Ai, who could possibly defend disinformation and disinformation? I’m doing counter disinformation.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:16:25
And the problem is, like, who gets to decide? And are there ramifications? Let’s say if you’re one of those people that said the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation and you signed off on that, what what are the ramifications? What’s the result of that? Is there do do people still call on you for suggestions and questions?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:16:42
Like, people that were involved in Russiagate with Trump that promoted that ai. How come they still get to talk on CNN?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:16:48
Unbelievable.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:16:48
The the whole thing is very bizarre. It’s ai, if you really are against misinformation, you have to stop it everywhere you see it, including from yourself. So if your own organization is a purveyor of misinformation and you’re acutely aware of it and you hide it and you dismiss it and you gaslight everybody, and then you say we have to stop misinformation ai.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:17:08
Well, what about yourself? How about start with you? You have to clean up your own fucking yard before you come to us.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:17:14
Well, look, I mean, it’s like, I fight I’m a journalist. I’m investigating what is the truth about a lot of different topics. Right. I’m fighting misinformation, but I’m doing it through free speech.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:17:22
You’re but you’re actually doing it. You’re not. What they’re doing is pretending.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:17:26
Well, right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:17:27
Pretending. It’s not really misinformation. It’s inconvenient information. My favorite one was malinformation. Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:17:34
Oh, well, you should explain what that is.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:17:35
Malinformation is information that is true but could be harmful.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:17:39
That’s amazing.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:17:40
Which is so nuts. And that was they they could apply that to vaccine hesitancy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:17:47
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:17:48
Right? So you could tell truthful stories about vaccine injuries. They would attribute that to they would put that in the category of this is gonna contribute to vaccine hesitancy. So they would put it okay. We’ll put the label of malinformation on that one. We could silence that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:18:02
Well, this was and that was in the Facebook files Yeah. Where the the Facebook’s tops, researchers says to the White House, they go, hey. Our research shows that if you censor true stories of vaccine side effects, shocking as it sounds, people will become more suspicious of the vaccine. Yeah. So it’s actually yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:18:21
It’s it’s they do contradict themselves in that sense. I think the other you know, the hunter buying a laptop story, we talk about it a ton. But what was so important about it is that the disinformation campaign comes before the censorship. They go out and they say and ai this is it’ll be a segue to our conversation about UFOs. They get you know, FBI gets the laptop in December 2019.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:18:43
They know it’s Hunter Biden’s laptop. They know it’s not Russian disinformation. Aspen Institute, which is funded by the US government and very close to the intelligence community, then goes and brainwashes journalists and the social media companies into into preparing that there could be a hack and leak coming around Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:19:03
And, of course, Mark Zuckerberg made history here with you when he told you that the FBI had come to him in the summer of 2020 warning of a hacking leak operation. So they do that, and then they come out. And then when the when the laptop comes out, they demand that it be censored.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:19:17
But the the key thing there is that there was an organized disinformation effort around that laptop by people that were fed that by the FBI. This is why I’m so confident now in saying that both the FBI and the CIA interfered in the 2020 election because they ran this disinformation campaign ai censorship was one part of it, but it was actually the part that came after the disinformation.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:19:39
And it probably would have had a significant effect on the income of the outcome of the election.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:19:43
I mean, I personally I voted for Biden, by the way. And and when I saw that story, I was like I was like, there’s clearly something wrong with it. It looks like it’s, you know, it’s a hacking leak. It looks like I mean, I genuinely believe that. Now would I have voted for Trump? Otherwise, I don’t know.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:19:58
But we already had found out that the Steele dossier was bullshit. So it makes sense that that would be bullshit too. There was a precedent.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:20:04
Well, also, was the they were also the hacking leak was remember also about the Hillary,
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:20:08
Emails.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:20:08
The Hillary emails, the John Podesta Yeah. Emails, the DNC emails. So it may they it fit a it fit a particular framework, but what’s important is that the FBI knew that it was legitimate the
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:20:20
entire time. Sai that’s misinformation.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:20:22
If you
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:20:22
say that it’s not true, that’s misinformation. Meh. You gotta stop that. Stop that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:20:26
Disinformation because they knew it was not true. Right?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:20:29
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:20:29
The other one and then the Ai, remember, Gina Haspel was director of the CIA for Trump. She was part of it because she approved the letter from the 51 former CIA, directors and leaders that said that it had all the earmarks of a Russian information operation. She approved that letter within hours. All she had to do all I mean, look.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:20:53
I mean, assuming she didn’t know, all she had to do was to call the FBI. Right. You know, she all she had to do was I mean, look
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:21:01
They had a very clear they had a clear agenda.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:21:04
Very clear. I mean, it’s such an Joe, it’s such an unprecedented thing when you talk to Martin Gurry, who’s a former CIA guy. You talk to, you know, people that, you know, that really love the CIA, that really believe in it. They were ai, that is insanely unprecedented for these because, you know, the classic statement is nobody ever leaves the intelligence community.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:21:23
So to have former intelligence people doing that is just absolutely I mean, that’s just unacceptable.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:21:28
It’s wild. It’s really ai. And it we’ve never had that happen before, which is why it’s so scary that Yes. Nothing happened because of it. There’s no repercussions.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:21:37
I mean, people should go to prison for that.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:21:39
Talk to me about aliens. What’s going on?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:21:42
Do you know anything? Okay. Let me segue. I sana segue on that because here’s the craziest thing. That Aspen Institute Hunter Biden disinformation operation was run by 2 people, Vivian Schiller and Gerrit Graf. Vivian Schiller is this just wild you know, she was New York Times, NPR, Twitter executive, high level executive, now runs Aspen’s Digital Initiative.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:22:07
Gerrit Ram is this, you know, acclaimed nonfiction book writer. They did the Hunter Biden disinformation campaign where they they ram and brainwash these journalists and the social media platforms in advance of the release of the Hunter Biden story. Well, guess who wrote the big book, Dismissing UFOs, earlier this year? Guess guess who guess who came out of that book? Garrett Graff. Oh.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:22:33
So what is going on with Aspen? And Aspen is just, like, one of their their I think it’s their biggest or one of their biggest, supporters is the US government. So
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:22:44
Also, now
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:22:44
it’s got really interesting. What’s this is very, very suspicious. You should invite him on your show and ask him some questions. Why did he decide to do a book about UFOs? What was you know? So here you have people that I feel very confident saying were part of an FBI run disinformation and censorship initiative on her ai his laptop.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:23:04
Then turning around, they then did an interview. He she shah then interviews him at, like, Aspen Institute, you know, classic YouTube. So I saw it on YouTube. She’s interviewing him. There’s this moment. It’s so crazy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:23:14
She goes they sai, there’s something ai they both kinda go, well, you know, the reason we this is just UFOs are obviously a conspiracy theory is because, you know, the government can’t, you know, the government is incompetent and can’t get away with this kind of thing. Well, that is that is madness because, of course, the US government is actually very good at keeping secrets.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:23:37
You know, from the making of the atomic bomb until today, there are a lot of secrets that the US government is actually quite capable of holding, and nobody knows that better than Vivian Schiller and Gerrit Ram of the Aspen Institute who ran the Hunter Biden operation. So what they’re doing is they’re deliberately, it’s it’s a ai I mean, I just use a ai or whatever you call it because a lot of people are experienced of ordinary, normie experiences of government is going to the DMV.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:24:05
Right? So you go, wow, the DMV. Yeah. That’s the government. The people that are working at the CIA and the FBI, those high levels are best intel they’re ai some of the smartest people in the world.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:24:16
I mean, these are people that they’re recruiting them out of the Ivy Leagues. The idea that they’re that these agencies are incompetent, and I’m not saying that they’re always competent, but these are some of the premier spies that have ever existed. And the idea that somehow the US government, you know, can’t carry out these operations or keep a secret, that’s obviously wrong.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:24:32
And then we have these ai all these whistleblowers coming forward. So that’s that’s the prelude to What
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:24:37
is your thought on it? Sai what do you think there so if it’s a ai and what I don’t I’m not aware of what the book is and what their premise is, but, essentially, the premise is that UFOs are bullshit?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:24:50
The it’s a it’s a very it’s a very sophisticated book. So, I mean, it’s worth you know, I encourage you all to read it in part to understand, like, how is the US what’s the most sophisticated take by the US government? The less sophisticated, treatment was by Sean Kirkpatrick, who was the recently departed head of the defense department’s all, All SAP? No. Arrow. Okay.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:25:13
That’s the, all domain anomaly resolution office that was created by the senate that came out with this very dismissive report about UFOs. And then he left. The head of Arrow left and has now just been ridiculing and attacking all the UFO whistle blowers, including, you know, David Grush and Luis El Sana and all these folks.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:25:34
But the book is so, basically, this is a book of a history of UFOs, and it’s just it basically just goes through every single major case and shows you why it’s just not it’s not a UFO. I mean, basically, it’s showing or why it’s a
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:25:48
natural phenomenon. Doing what Project Blue Book did.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:25:51
It’s it’s it’s absolutely an extension of it’s really, and then remember ai 1953, the CIA created something called the Robertson Panel. And the Robertson Panel comes out and says the US government should just focus on debunking UFO cases and and including ridiculing people, which is a very cruel treatment of people because it’s such a devastating socially so devastating to be ridiculed.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:26:14
Sure. And then you get the Condon report, the Condon committee, which is the University of Colorado ai, 1968. Same thing, dismisses this, suggests it’s all kooks. The Garrett Graff’s UFO book is more sophisticated. It’s actually a little bit more gentle in the sense that it’s it’s dismissing all these things.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:26:34
It’s also, it’s also talking about, like, these meh be natural phenomena, ai be plasmas or ball lightning, you know, and then they kinda go through the psychological explanation. But the whole book is aimed at just absolutely, dismissing the phenomena. I mean, that’s the whole purpose ai I
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:26:50
think some of the phenomena should be dismissed. I think that’s one thing that we really need to accept when we try to develop an objective sense of what’s really going on, that ball lightning is real. Ai sure. Plasma is real. There’s a lot lot of real natural phenomenon. Ball lightning is bizarre.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:27:08
And if you ever see ball lightning and you imagine you’re a person alone in the forest and you saw ball lightning, you would 100% shit your pants. You’d be like, oh meh god. There’s a fucking alien here, and they’re gonna get me and they’re gonna take me like Travis Walton.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:27:22
Ai also think there’s something going on with the government. I believe that they have and this is a pure guess based on no evidence at all. I think they probably have some super sophisticated propulsion program that’s based on something that is, an entirely new set of physics.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:27:40
It’s probably based on some sort of gravity propulsion, some there’s long been, speculation that, eventually, there’ll be an ability to create something that does not rely on conventional propulsion. There’s long been some sort of an understanding of a manipulation of gravity.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:27:58
In fact, there was a there was a arya, like, some science journal from, like, 1957 that was talking about the new wave of gravity devices. They’re gonna start coming. It’s gonna be gravity planes, and we’re not gonna use propulsion anymore. The people have always wondered if we’re we’re eventually gonna crack that.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:28:18
And if they did crack that, I think their problem is, I think a lot of these things are drones, and I think the problem is ai life can’t survive those speeds. I think those things are moving at these insane rates of speed because there’s nothing alive that’s piloting them. And so that’s why humans can survive and that’s why, you know, no humans can survive that kind of g force, so there’s no one in those things.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:28:43
There’s probably alien species that also visit us. I don’t think that’s outside the realm of possibility either. I think all those things are happening. I think that one has been documented clearly throughout human history. That there there’s been these experiences, and you’ve gotta chalk some of them up to bullshit, lies, hysteria.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:29:04
There’s a lot of but there’s too many that are too similar. And, I’m in the middle of, Jacques Vallee’s book. Have you read any of his stuff?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:29:13
I’ve read almost all of it.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:29:14
I’m in the middle of, it’s called Meh. That’s what it is. Uh-huh. And, That’s
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:29:19
the the the there’s a there’s a 3 trinity of books.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:29:22
Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, I didn’t know that when I picked this one up. But Meh is, one of the things that he does in the book is he has, eyewitness accounts of, UFO events throughout history, like Mhmm. Going back into the 1700.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:29:37
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:29:37
And they’re, like, uniform. Yes. It’s fascinating. And he also makes this argument that there’s a cultural context as to what people see and that a lot of these people that live in Ireland, they see, you know, leprechauns and elves and Fairies. Fairies. Yeah. And and that it’s quite possible this is not from another planet, that this is some sort of extra dimensional experience, that these things come from somewhere that’s here but not here, and that this is why they’ve existed forever, and this is why there’s no evidence of them.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:30:10
And they just they they come and go as they please, and they’re probably a completely different type of thing than what we are, this bizarre carbon based life form that we are. They’re they’re probably some parallel evolution that took place somewhere else that’s probably gone on a 1000000 years past where we are, Or that’s just guessing, you know, who knows what it is?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:30:31
But there’s something else to it. There’s some sort of a spiritual element to it. It’s it’s not as simple as a metal ship comes from another place and lands here, but I also think the metal ship coming from another place might be real too. If you just take into account the sheer vastness of the universe and the unbelievable possibilities of the variety of life, you would think there’s gotta be intelligent life.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:30:55
And if if we do have some sort of super sophisticated drone technology that doesn’t rely on conventional propulsion systems, which there’s evidence of. Okay. If you look at the Go Fast video, if you look at the FLIR video and David Fravor’s experiences with the TikTok where they got video of that thing, they got radar of that thing.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:31:13
So we know something can move that way that fast. Something can. You would think that if if that’s here and it is real and there’s video footage of it, so we know that a real phenomena took place. So that means someone, it either whether it’s here or whether it’s someone where else can figure that out. So now we know that could be done.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:31:34
So if that could be done today in 2,020 4, and back then it was 2004, which encountered that. Who knows if it’s, you know, hours or from another planet or whatever the fuck it is. It was a thing that existed that an intelligent creature had created. It just makes sense that the sky is littered with that, probably littered.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:31:53
There’s probably millions and millions and millions of planets that have intelligent life on them, and a bunch of them probably are capable of inter interstellar travel. And a probable probably a bunch of them aren’t even biological anymore. They’re probably some sort of super sophisticated AI that ran amok and took over.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:32:12
A lot of possibilities there. A lot
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:32:14
of an infinite number of possibilities. But when the government wants to dismiss all of them as being explainable and nonsense, and it’s the same people that dismissed the 100 By Ai Laptop story. Yeah. You should get nervous.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:32:25
Yeah. Well, that’s I mean, I’m I don’t know what they are, and I’m and I’m agnostic in some ways. Well, let me
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:32:34
Yeah?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:32:36
Well, meh. I have actually.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:32:38
What did you say?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:32:41
I mean, I don’t know what they were, but I’ve seen things I can’t explain. What
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:32:44
did you say?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:32:46
So I saw so there’s twice I’ve seen things. I saw one time I saw, 3 lights that were I thought they were stars, and then they and then the one on the they were all just ai they looked almost like Ai belt, like 3 stars. And then the the one on the far left, just broke away from the other 2 and then did and it was weird.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:33:10
Ai this is gonna sound really weird and so I don’t know.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:33:12
Not just express it. That’s good.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:33:13
It just it really, like, literally, it it it felt like it was pulling my left ai, The left like, I was looking at them and it felt like, you know, how, like, like, it’s almost ai you’re being cross eyed, but it felt like it was literally pulling my left eye. And then it just did a set of, squiggles like that. And then a cloud bank came over and covered it up. You know, I don’t know what it was.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:33:33
I know drones. Didn’t look like a drone. There was no noise. But did you see a shape
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:33:39
of this thing? Or is it Ai.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:33:40
They were just they were just ai they were just white lights. I can Ai can tell how high up they
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:33:45
were? Mhmm.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:33:46
And then the other one I saw was actually in a suburb of of of Houston or was it Dallas? And I was running at night, and there were these 2 guys there, 2 black ai, young ai. They just got another car and they were they were then I had seen these orange orbs and then they were filming them with their cameras.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:34:10
And, I went over them and I was like, what what are those? And they’re like, we all know. I mean, they looked a little bit ai at first, you thought they were Chinese lanterns, but there was no paper bag, you know, that the lanterns are no, like there’s nothing there. So they looked like and they also ai look like there’s some translucent thing around them and they just they looked I couldn’t also tell how big they were.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:34:29
Couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. I went and ran around the neighborhood trying to figure out where they’re coming from to see if maybe somebody was sending off
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:34:36
How fast were they moving?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:34:38
Shockingly slow. Like, they were sort
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:34:40
of Floating. They were kind of Balloon.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:34:41
They felt like they were floating. So I’m not saying again, I don’t know what
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:34:46
happened with them. Ai watched
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:34:48
them until they stopped coming for, like I mean, I just watched them. They just kinda would appear out of nowhere and then they would they would like, it was in this residential neighborhood and then they just
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:34:58
Drift off?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:34:58
And they would float over. I we watched them at one point float all over over downtown.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:35:02
So it’s probably ai a Tyler balloon or something
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:05
with an LRT
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:35:06
ai sai of it?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:08
I mean, it was just they were they were also blurry and orange. I mean, I looked up orange color.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:35:12
A lot of cloud cover too?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:13
I photo I actually photographed. I have a bunch of videos of them.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:35:16
Let me see.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:17
Alright. Well
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:35:17
Send it to Jamie. Okay.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:18
Ai We’re
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:35:19
gonna analyze it. We’ll tell you what it is.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:21
Alright. But I also wanna tell you the thing we just did. Alright.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:35:24
Okay. Let’s see. Ai need those videos.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:26
Alright. Okay. So it’s gonna we’re gonna do we have to have
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:35:29
to pause for me? We’ll pause
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:30
real quick.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:35:30
Alright. Alright. We’ll pause.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:32
Alright. And I also have the ones that the guy so the guys there, we exchanged phone numbers and stuff,
Speaker: 2
02:35:36
and they texted meh. Since we’re paused, I have an update on your story that’s been published already.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:40
Oh, what is it?
Speaker: 2
02:35:41
People found out on Google there were some mentions of that back, they think, when Grush brought it up in 2023. And since that was made public on Twitter, it seems that Google has removed those searches.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:52
What? Yeah. This is for the
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:35:54
the We’re keeping this in.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:35:55
Ai was gonna bring it up when we came out. This is immaculate conception. Shah.
Speaker: 2
02:35:58
There’s the screenshot someone took of, a spike. Wow.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:36:02
I guess it doesn’t say the exact date. I was trying to find it and ai to recreate it too. And then, like, an hour later, the spike’s gone. Oh, that’s crazy. I did did but did but did Grush mention immaculate conception? I don’t know. It says,
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:36:15
Okay. The term immaculate conception is rarely searched on Google. Of course, searches for, searches for it skyrocketed today, and this is because of UAPs. So what did Grush say?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:36:26
Immaculate Conception is the name of the secret UAP Pentagon program that Ai I revealed
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:36:32
to you. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Shah more? Of course, searches for it skyrocketed, but there was one other time it was displayed in a large blip, June 2023. Just as modern UAP crash retrieval story broke, David Grush went public and hearings were planned.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:36:48
Woah. But
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:36:50
Sai they removed that ai. So they pretend it doesn’t exist anymore?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:36:53
I don’t know. It says it says 0 there, so it’s hard to say. It could have been a, you know, Google trend blip that people are trying to make something and Right. Weird. Out of, but it is a weird, you know, it’s weird. Let’s just sai.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:37:05
It is weird that it it just jumped up one day and then stopped. But also, people have ai a fucking very quick news cycle. How’s it going over there?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:37:15
Me? Oh, finding the I’m trying to find the videos.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:37:19
How long ago was this?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:37:21
It was, last year, and it must have been so here’s the other here’s the other weird thing is that I it it was the same day that I published the story about UAPs. Oh. So
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:37:33
You ever wonder like that? Maybe they’re fucking with you and they find out where you are arya they send some drones over to this place. Get them to start talking.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:37:40
I mean, I I felt better because there were there were 2 other guys there. You know, and I have their info. And, so yeah. I don’t it’s just,
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:37:50
Of course. Who knows what it is? But at least it’s not behaving like something out of this world.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:37:54
Yeah. It’s not
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:37:55
like the Phoenix lights where you got something that’s a mile long flying over Phoenix sana no one can figure out what it is. Right. There’s just a there’s enough of these that make me think there’s something going on. I I don’t think it’s all bullshit. I think some of it is ours, but I think a bunch of it’s probably not ours.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:38:12
But so first of all, if they are ours and they’re anti gravity,
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:38:16
that’s just insane. Insane.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:38:19
And and the part of me that’s skeptical of it is because I know a lot about nuclear energy and nuclear power, and it took a huge amount of effort to build the bombs. Mhmm. Huge huge amount of effort, huge number of people. So the idea that anti gravity was then sort of ai, oh, yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:38:34
We just did that in, like, a couple of years or something. That strikes me as really improbable.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:38:40
Yeah. Very improbable in a couple of years. But if they’re doing it over decades and they’re doing it with retrieved crashes, which seems to be a part of the narrative Yeah. You know, Diana Posalka and Gary Nolan, you’re where there were. Of course. They they call them the crash ai donations.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:38:56
That’s very interesting. It gets weird.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:38:59
It gets weird because, there’s a bunch of inventions they attribute to crashed retrievals where they back engineered stuff. You know, I would imagine that if I was a super sophisticated society from another planet and I saw these struggling apes, I would, give them some hints.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:39:18
Yeah. How do I send these to you?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:39:20
You can, airdrop them to Jamie’s Oh, okay. MacBook.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:39:23
Okay.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:39:26
Sai him in there?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:39:29
No. Ai airdrop. Okay. So there’s no people Oh, there you are. Jamie’s MacBook.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:39:35
Bam.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:39:40
They don’t I mean, they don’t look like much. You know, they’re just ai Right. Orange dots, but, but it’s weird. It’s weird. And ai I’m and I’m j I wanna stress because Ai my critics always use this to try to describe me. I don’t know what I don’t know what it is. I just don’t know what
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:39:55
it is. And and anybody says they do know what it is, I get very suspicious. Yeah. If they they they say Ai have all the information, ai, how could you? Yeah. How could you? How do you absolutely know what it is? This whole thing is real weird. It’s real weird. When fighter pilots recognize things that are behaving in a way that they’ve never seen before, that’s real fucking weird. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:40:14
When you’ve got these guys like, you know, Grush is the best example, but there was another pilot, there’s another jet that was with him. There’s multiple witnesses that saw this thing physically. You know, whatever these things, Brian Graves, when when they see these things, like, what what are these?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:40:30
What are they what’s the explanation? Right. It’s it’s gotta be somebody’s if it’s a real thing. If it’s ours, holy shit. Like, what are they doing?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:40:38
And if it’s not ours, holy shit. Right. Is this another nation? And if it’s not another nation, then holy shit. Are we getting visited by interdimensional beings or from something from another planet? Like, what’s your take?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:40:52
Well Do you
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:40:52
have a guess?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:40:53
Well, here’s what I mean, what I was what I am what I wrote today and what I feel confident to say Just
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:40:59
keep those glasses on. It makes you look smarter.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:41:01
I’ll take all the help I can get.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:41:03
Doesn’t it? Makes you
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:41:04
look smarter. I mean, what I so what today today’s piece is about a new whistleblower who has come forward and has written a report, and this is somebody that is either in government or is a government contractor. I’ve interviewed this person multiple times in person. I’ve checked their credentials. They are who they say they are.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:41:25
They have written a report and provided it to members of congress. And in that report, they claim that there is a that the Pentagon is illegally withholding information from congress about a secret UAP ram. And that secret UAP program is considered a parent program of other of other programs, but it’s called Immaculate Constellation.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:41:48
I was told by a I was I had it confirmed by a second source that this is the name. I also was told that if we revealed the name that we would probably fall get under surveillance, by simply revealing the name. I went to the Pentagon with a story on Friday. Today is Tuesday. They told me on Friday they couldn’t get it to meh. They couldn’t give me a response.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:42:14
By the end of Ai, they asked if I could wait until Monday. I said, sure. They said Monday morning, we’ll get your response. No response. They said, hopefully, later today. Nothing later today. Then they said, how about tomorrow morning? Finally, that’s today. So we gave them 4 full days.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:42:31
I found the Pentagon’s response odd because their response? Because they well, first of all, because they said they were gonna respond and they didn’t. And So they never respond? They never responded. I emailed the spokesperson and said, if you, you know, if you give me a response, I’ll publish it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:42:46
But, I mean, it could have been like, no. We don’t have a program like that. Right. There’s no such thing.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:42:51
Sai that they don’t have a program like that, then they’re lying. If they have a program like that
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:42:55
If they have a program like that.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:42:56
Sai they don’t have a program like that, should they have to answer you? Ai, why
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:43:01
don’t you have a program like that, then I don’t know what the harm is from saying that they don’t have a program like that. Remember, Arrow with its this is the the blue book, you know, 3 point o or whatever it is. They said they looked, and they’re ai, we looked, and there’s no secret UAP program.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:43:17
If I wanted to spread misinformation or disinformation, if I was an intelligence agent, I think I would get someone to be a whistleblower. I would sanction whistleblowers. I would I would tell them go on podcasts, go on radio shows, go on television, and discuss all these different disclosures. And you can’t tell them everything.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:43:39
The top secret stuff, you know, some some stuff you gotta keep secret. Boy, I wish I could tell you, but there’s more I can’t tell you. There’s a lot going on. And that’s a really good way, I would think, if I was in control of a narrative that I I wanted to be continuously slippery.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:43:55
Like, this is a very slippery conversation. Like, they you never get to the end of it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:44:00
And what would be the motivation?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:44:01
Because there’s some sort of a program that that exists that they want to ai, and the best way to hide it is to, continually bring up and then debunk these fake programs
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:44:15
Uh-huh.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:44:15
For crash sites, for dealing with aliens. You I would I would make a bunch of things that are absolutely provably untrue that could eventually be proved as untrue, attribute them to these people, and then have everything else that gets said about the subject get reduced to nonsense, because that’s essentially what it does.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:44:32
If you start talking about UFOs and UAP bro, you’re a cuckoo. You’re a cuckoo. Until you show me some hard evidence, I’ve got bills. I got a family. I don’t have time for this. And the people that do get really wrapped up in it are kinda kooky.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:44:44
And the best way to keep that kookiness going is to give them a little bit of taste. Give them a taste. Throw them a little breadcrumb trail. I think there’s a thing we found.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:44:51
Oh, so you’re saying you would do that disinformation if there were if you were covering up UAPs. If I
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:44:57
was covering up UAPs Yeah. I would have all these people go out and be whistleblowers. Because the more they do it, the more it looks ridiculous. And the more everyone’s ai disclosure is imminent and it never comes. No. It’s ai Lucy and the football with Charlie Brown. You never get a
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:45:11
I don’t think it’s in there. Football. But here’s what I would I would say if it’s so first of all, if the government is running a disinformation campaign on UAPs Right. Against the American people Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:45:21
That’s bad. That seems like
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:45:25
That’s serious business.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:45:26
And it seems like
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:45:28
If they are doing that, then I would wanna know.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:45:30
It seems like they’re doing that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:45:31
Well, I’m I’m comfortable saying Ai, like, 90, ai% that the government is hiding information.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:45:38
Okay.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:45:39
So And the reason I’m I’m reason I’m so confident on that is because Donald Trump said so multiple times that they’re hiding information. When I cite him in the article
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:45:48
They probably told him that, And also, they lied to him about a bunch of stuff.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:45:52
Oh, sure.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:45:52
Didn’t even tell him about Chinese drones because they were worried he was gonna shoot him down.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:45:55
So they told him something that he says has not been made public to the American people. So so if that’s, so my view is look. If you think it’s it’s either a secret weapons program, that it’s a government disinformation program, that it’s just mis sightings, then I want the government I wanna they they they have an obligation to tell us.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:46:15
Yes. Article the first article of the constitution is congressional oversight of the is congressional oversight of the executive branch. That is why we are a democracy. If you have an executive branch that is even covert operations, secret weapons ram, all must be shared. It doesn’t have to be the whole congress.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:46:32
They have the gang of 8, you know, which is the heads of the military intelligence committees, plus the ranking member, plus the, the speaker and the and the senate have the senate in the in the ai leagues. Those 8 people have to be told. Well, they’re not being told what this is.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:46:49
It’s no. I’m not denying that it’s absolutely illegal. But I’m saying that if it is illegal and has been done this way for so long, the odds of you untangling that are very they’re gonna fight against that with tooth and nail because that’s gonna put a lot of people in jail.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:47:05
It’s gonna get a lot of people fired. A lot of people are gonna lose their careers. If they ai to congress, if they misappropriated funds, there’s a lot of weird stuff that gets attached to that. And so I think there is some sort whether it’s the government, whoever’s doing it, there’s some sort of sophisticated disinformation tech can campaign that’s essentially tied to everything.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:47:25
There’s a disinformation campaign that’s ai that’s tied to medicine. There’s a disinformation campaign tied to fluoride in the water. There’s a disinformation campaign that’s tied to almost everything. The idea that there wouldn’t be for UFOs is kind of crazy. Of course, there is.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:47:40
And I think
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:47:40
But if there is, that’s really but a disinformation illegal. It’s illegal.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:47:44
Yeah. Sure. It’s bad. I know. I agree with you. Ai agree with you. I agree with you 100%. Yeah. I have a feeling there’s a lot going on, and I think they have infantilized us for so long that to to give up the reins of that is the same thing that people like, with why they don’t sana give up the reins of free speech.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:48:04
They’re in control of the power. If you if you really do have knowledge that we are not alone and you’re hiding that from the American people, you’ve well, you’ve already made a terrible choice, and you’ve been probably making this choice for decades. Why would you change that now, and what are the repercussions? Are any of them positive? It doesn’t seem like they are for your career.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:48:23
I think the best way forward if you’re just one of those people that wants to protect their career, which most of them are, right, which is what the whole Hunter Biden laptop thing was about, people protecting their career. Ram get into office and everybody here gets ai, so they protect their career with lies. This is just what people do.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:48:40
So if if the if if you’re asking them to disclose stuff that they’ve been hiding for so long, good fucking luck. Good luck. And if you wanted to create a misinformation campaign or you wanted to confuse the waters even more, I’d have a bunch of fake whistle blowers. I’d I’d get agents to say a bunch of crazy shit about biological entities and mind control and shah down nuclear power plants.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:49:07
I’d I’d have them say all kinds of crazy shit that’s provably untrue. Okay. Here’s the little red lights.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:49:13
Yeah. Let’s Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:49:14
Is this just a photograph?
Speaker: 2
02:49:15
I think it’s a lantern.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:49:17
It’s a video? Let’s see.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:49:18
Yeah. Maybe it’s a lantern, but, Oh, wow. It does have It didn’t have the like a paper.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:49:26
Yo. That’s moving pretty quick. Woah. That’s weird looking.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:49:30
It didn’t have any, like, paper.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:49:33
The problem is you need a Samsung phone because you’d have better Zoom.
Speaker: 2
02:49:36
I had a friend just send me a similar video from Ohio where this his mom took it, thought it was some orbs flying over, and it looked honestly weirder than this. Saloni he found out a couple hours later it was a memorial service. There’s a bunch of lanterns that got left up
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:49:47
in the
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:49:47
Yeah. Yeah. Sai mean, it could be.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:49:49
I’m not saying it’s not bad.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:49:50
It’s hard to look at it because you’ve got it zoomed in. It because you’re not I’m not getting a perspective of how quickly it’s actually moving. It does look weird, but it also looks like how it would look like it was fire in one of those well, that’s moving.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:02
Very
Speaker: 2
02:50:02
strange. I just say it looks like it’s the
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:04
fire and maybe wind blowing the Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:50:06
It could be. Was it a windy day?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:07
No. It was not windy at all.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:50:12
That’s fucking weird. It was weird. It’s definitely weird. But it’s not moving
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:16
Yeah. Supernaturally. I don’t again, I I all I’m saying is that it’s unidentified. Drunk aliens.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:50:21
They look hammered. They’re like they’re not even driving straight.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:23
I mean, also, they it was they didn’t look big. Ai, I mean, I’m not suggesting there was anybody in there.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:50:28
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:28
And it wasn’t like an it wasn’t an orb, like
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:50:31
Ai story seems more interesting. Yeah. The stars moving seems more interesting. Yeah. I’ve never seen shit. I convinced myself I saw something when I was gonna
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:39
say, but I’m pretty
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:50:40
sure it was a jet.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:40
Did you get this or not? This is
Speaker: 2
02:50:41
the one from my friend that sent
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:42
me, but, like,
Speaker: 2
02:50:43
look, there’s, like, 2 or 3 things that come together here and that they’re starting to fly together. Oh. That looks more like aliens to me, but
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:49
they found out it was, like, it was lanterns. Uh-huh.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:50:51
It’s probably lanterns. That’s probably what you saw.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:50:54
Yeah. I don’t But I mean, did you get the last one?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:50:57
That’s the whole beautiful thing about, like, real, investigations. You could find out stuff that’s nonsense and ball lightning is one of my favorite ones. I’ve seen actual videos of ball lightning. Have you ever seen it?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:51:09
No. I don’t think I have.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:51:11
Shah Jamie, this is obviously a lantern. Show us, videos of ball lightning.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:51:15
I was looking for one earlier. The one that’s moving. Clearly a CGI that I didn’t sana get confused in there.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:51:20
So one of them staying still and the other one’s moving weird.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:51:22
It could
Speaker: 2
02:51:22
be the moon.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:51:23
I don’t know. What is that other one?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:51:24
I actually that’s weird. I don’t even remember that. Sai
Speaker: 2
02:51:28
I’ll just,
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:51:29
See, it’s okay. See if you could find video of ball lightning. Ball lightning is wild, man. If you didn’t know what that is, if you didn’t know that this is ai tectonic plates shifting against each other and they release energy and you see this stuff ai the air, it’s so crazy looking.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:51:43
And it it doesn’t look
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:51:45
Does it look like this Look, it’s just one
Speaker: 2
02:51:47
of those. Which one is the real
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:51:48
case of it. I’ll be honest with you.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:51:50
That’s ball lightning. Uh-huh. This isn’t a lightning storm, but there’s a really cool one of, this canyon where ball lightning just, comes out of the ground, this canyon.
Speaker: 2
02:52:00
It’s ai, I think this one on the I think that’s fake, but I’m not sure. Like, that looks like CGI effects.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:52:06
That looks super fake. That looks like a ghost. Yeah. That might be a ghost.
Speaker: 2
02:52:10
If it is CGI, it’s pretty good.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:52:12
But Is that CGI?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:52:13
I don’t know what that is. Ai looks like I mean, if it is, it could be lightning because it does If that’s ball lightning, that’s wild. The other one would be to look at the
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:52:21
The thing is
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:52:22
look at the Chinese lanterns and see how they compare to the the orange.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:52:26
Whatever it is, like, ball lightning is a real thing and it’s really weird. And, it it moves around and you if you didn’t know any better, you’d think it’s an alien. But that doesn’t discount, like, Ezekiel’s take of a wheel within a wheel and all the the crazy shit from the Bhagavad Gita. Here’s here’s a lantern.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:52:42
Oh, little pretty lantern.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:52:44
That’s what I just sent. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:52:45
It’s a lantern, bro.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:52:47
It didn’t look like it, but it could you could be right. I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:52:51
Who knows? It might be some kind of That looked weird. Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:52:53
Remember when
Speaker: 2
02:52:54
you had a cloud?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:52:55
But it
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:52:55
But it’s also clouds. And it’s he’s super zoomed in.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:52:59
Yeah. So I mean, this this this whistleblower says that, the other part of the story is the description of the database, and they say that there is this very large database of high quality videos, still photos, and also, other sensory data that that has that has captured atmospheric effects of UAPs.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:53:25
They you know, Christopher Mellon had said that that the Pentagon has much better quality, video evidence than has been released.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:53:34
Makes me wanna get a job in the Pentagon.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:53:37
Show me. This person says that that that there’s a lot of it. Yeah. And they describe one case of an f 22, which is an amazing fighter jet, being escorted by a set of UAP Orbs out of its target mission area. Another case of, a UAP, decline from very high up in the atmosphere and coming right over an aircraft carrier that the entire crew saw.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:54:07
So some incidents that have not been reported. Mhmm. It’s a the report is in the hands of members of congress, and this is a critical time because, again, if you are a skeptic, if you’re a debunker, whatever, you should not want the government spreading disinformation on this.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:54:25
If you wanna get to the bottom of it, we should get to the bottom of it. We need congress
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:54:28
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:54:29
To hold hearings. And then the other the other pitch I’d make on this issue is that these people that I’m interviewing, if they’re first of all, if they’re actors, they’re incredible because they are genuinely terrified when I talk to them. They’re genuinely scared. You know, most actors aren’t very good actors, So I’m always like, these guys are the greatest actors I’ve ever meh, these people.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:54:51
So they need better whistleblower protections. And if you interview congressional staffers, members of congress, they will acknowledge that whistleblowers do not have proper protections whether for UAPs or anything else.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:55:02
What do you what is your take on this? What do you think is going on with the UAPs?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:55:08
I I genuinely I’m genuinely
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:55:10
more videos?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:55:11
I was just gonna keep sending them the
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:55:12
I’ve got enough of the lanterns.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:55:14
Ai. Enough of the lanterns.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:55:16
But you see what’s going on here? You wanna believe that’s not lanterns. So you wanna keep showing us better videos.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:55:22
I’m genuinely agnostic ai
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:55:23
the sense that sending videos.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:55:24
Well, Ai I’m just being thorough, dude.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:55:30
I’m convinced. I’m putting all my money on lanterns.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:55:33
On the orange orbs.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:55:34
But what so what do you think this UAP ram, what do you think they’re actually studying? Like, what is that?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:55:41
I don’t know. I don’t know. All I all Ram all I’m really confident saying because in other words, I’m I’m very much an incrementalist in the sense that, like, I like my stories to move the ball forward. This has been it’s been over a year since I’ve done a story on this, and I was always, like, I am not gonna I’m not somebody that wants to just Sai mean, on some things, I’ll write sai similar story like free speech or whatever.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:55:58
But on this issue, I’m like, I’m not gonna write a new story unless I really have something. Right. I’m very confident that the government is not revealing all that it knows and that Arrow, the organization that the congress created to reveal what the government knows did not reveal what it knows and that really it was engaged.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:56:17
Because, look, it’s one thing to be ai, hey, we didn’t find anything. It’s all good. But then for the guy that was running that program to come out and actively disparage people in the ways that they’re doing, that’s character assassination. Mhmm. That’s that’s the that’s the ridicule strategy. I object to that because I don’t think that that’s conscionable.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:56:37
I I think you can be like, look, that person misinformed it or whatever. You thought that the orange orbs were something that they weren’t or whatever. But to go out there and, like, actively disparage people, that really I think it’s very concerning.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:56:47
It is concerning, and it also makes you very suspicious. Yeah. So
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:56:50
why why why would you why why the need to be such a dick about it? Is this Still in different pictures? No. No. It goes now. The the distant like, it’s a it’s it’s a strategy of of of counter it’s a strategy of of character assassination, and I think it’s not something that our government should be engaged in.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:57:09
No. I I agree with you. But it also makes me wonder what’s the motivation and what you you must have formed some sort of a a personal opinion on what’s going on or at least you have an inclination towards what’s going on.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:57:22
I mean, I think that if you read through the histories sai, I mean, I just need the the problem is that there’s so many possibilities of what’s going on. Ai I said, I’m a little skeptical that we’ve mastered anti gravity because that would just be so game changing and I think it would just take a huge amount of effort.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:57:41
On the other hand, I have interviewed people that are not comfortable coming forward yet that that say that we have and and claim direct evidence of that. Mhmm. And it’s just not I can’t unfortunately say much more about it. And these are folks that want stronger whistleblower protections to be able to come forward.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:58:01
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:58:01
But I find it I find it hard to believe just because of my knowledge of nuclear that that we’ve we’ve got those capabilities. I also, you know, like, what’s amazing is, like, the most for me, one of the most amazing parts of this is when you just go to the newspaper archives and you’re reading stories from the forties and the fifties and sixties seventies and you’re seeing and that’s part of the reason I ram also with you.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:58:19
I’m skeptical that we are getting any closer because there’s a way in which, like, you read New York Times Magazine stories from the 19 sixties seventies that actually treat the subject not with ridicule, but treated seriously. Right. And they actually were reporting on government, you know, programs and whatnot.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:58:36
Well, Project Blue Book was essentially designed to ridicule the people that thought they saw something. J. Allen Honeck, when he left Project Blue Book, became a UFO proponent. Yeah. That’s all you need to know. Ai he and
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:58:47
he That’s which is very convincing.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:58:49
Yeah. Well, absolutely convinced that it’s all real. Yeah. And and it explained how he was told to label everything as swamp gas and Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:58:57
Which, by the way, if you watch that original press conference this where he says it could be swamp gas, which I think it was a Michigan sighting, the whole room just goes, they’re like they the whole Right. The whole room is so convinced that it’s not swamp gas that they’re like it’s like journalists. They’re like all they’re all they ridicule the idea that it’s swamp gas.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:59:14
So there’s definitely moments in history where you have elites, you know, media elites, government elites, and others who are ai, this is a real phenomenon Ai meh, to take seriously. I think we’re in that moment again now. Congress needs to do more. We need to have those protections for whistleblowers. They need to pass this disclosure legislation.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
02:59:29
And anybody who, in my view, who anybody that’s ai a a debunker or a skeptic or whoever who says that we shouldn’t pass legislation to disclose what the government knows, for meh, that person is acting in bad faith. Because if you’re really sure that there’s nothing there, then you should be first in line to demand disclosure.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
02:59:46
Do you think there’s a genuine fear in giving people this information and having a collapse of society if it turns out to be true. If a genuine if we there was a full disclosure and all this, top secret, video that has been hidden that’s really high resolution, all that stuff gets released, and the government says this is what we know.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:00:07
But I’m sorry sorry we’re keeping this from ram, but if we, you know
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:00:10
But what would it show? Immunity I mean so the thing is
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:00:12
know what it is.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:00:13
I mean, in other words, like, let’s say what
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:00:14
it shows, but maybe they know what it shows.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:00:16
Let’s say let’s take a most let’s take a very let’s say that there’s extraterrestrials. Right. And the government knows about it. And let’s say maybe there was already in contact. And then the government comes out and goes, hey. We’ve we’ve been in contact with extraterrestrials. Mhmm.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:00:28
Ai, what do they sai? They go the extraterrestrials told us that there is no God and that they were just they had they created all these religions, then the question is ai would we believe them? I mean, in other words, like, if you’re, like, a truly if you’re
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:00:44
Who’s saying that?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:00:45
I’m not saying anybody is.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:00:46
But who’s saying that the extraterrestrial sai there’s no God? No.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:00:49
I’m saying that if if you go through the scenario that goes, oh, societies will collapse because people will it’ll counter I mean, that’s the story. Right?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:00:55
Well, I think the society collapses because we’re faced with an intelligent being that’s been able to visit us for ages whenever it wants, and we weren’t aware of it. And we the illusion that anyone of human race is in control of this Earth and can lead us from some sort of a position of knowledge and strength in the face of this overwhelming force from another planet, that would that would be a collapse of rules and of of society, the like, that we have never seen before.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:01:27
But why?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:01:27
Because no one would listen to anyone anymore because there would all of a sudden be a new daddy in town, and people would wanna figure out what the new daddy wants them to do.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:01:34
It depends because, I mean, I think that you have a scenario where it goes, again, we’re just we’re just completely
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:01:40
Stop talking mass hysteria, fear. No.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:01:42
You just kinda none of I mean, if the government’s like, ai, we’ve been in contact with them decades, and here’s what they want. You know, they just sana you know, they want an Earth bryden, and they want some of our, you know, you know, whatever. I mean, I think if they were ai, they’re actually, the abductions are all real, and we signed a deal to trade technology for abductions, that could be problematic.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:02:01
Ai you
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:02:01
think that’s real? I don’t That’s I’ve read that before.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:02:04
Sai mean, that’s that’s part of the lore. Right? It’s part of the lore.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:02:07
Who’s making deals with aliens? I think much more likely be they do whatever the fuck they wanna do, and we’re terrified of them. That’s what I think would meh more likely. Like, are you gonna make a deal with, like, baboons? Are you gonna go to the the fucking baboon tribe and go, listen, you fucking dummies? I’m gonna make a deal with you. No. You’re gonna do whatever you want.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:02:27
You’re gonna abduct them and perform studies on them. That’s what we do.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:02:30
No. We but we well, we we also we’ve we’ve well, but we’ve we’ve gone through I mean, it happened I I included as how we’ve protected gorillas in my book, Apocalypse Never. And, like, we actually
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:02:39
I saw a gorilla in a zoo just a few years ago. He did not look protected. He looked like he was in a gorilla prison for no fucking reason.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:02:45
So, Joe, you’ve got to go see gorillas in Central Africa in
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:02:49
Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:02:49
Live. It’s it’s incredible. Sure. It’s an incredible experience. But in
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:02:52
other words protect that.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:02:53
But a huge amount I mean, people have I mean, Dian Fossey, I mean, people have fought to protect gorillas in their native habitat. The gorillas know we’re there.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:03:01
Right.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:03:02
They actually you have to, But
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:03:03
the reality is some gorillas get abducted, and they get put into zoos. Yes. That’s the reality. It’s bad. Sai as some humans get abducted and they get brought on the spaceship.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:03:12
Well, we don’t know that. We don’t know that. Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:03:13
I think probably. Have you ever listened to Betty and Barney Hill talk about it?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:03:17
That that case, I I just read a debunking of that case and Sai
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:03:22
Debunking?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:03:22
Yeah. And I found it, You found it? Well, there it is. Okay. Finally.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:03:27
Pentagon goes on record. So following Michael’s story, the DOD has now meh, the Department of Defense has no record bryden or historical of any type of SAP called immaculate constellation.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:03:38
Shah was that so hard? Why did that take 4 days?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:03:42
That came from Sue how do you say your name?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:03:44
Sue Goff, I guess.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:03:45
Sue Goff. There’s a lot to digest. I doubt the DOD would ever likely confirm UAP’s existence. I am trying to confirm whether any type of SAP also refers to USAP
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:03:55
It should. Or bring you more info. USAP is just an unacknowledged special access program. So
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:04:02
they say it’s bullshit.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:04:02
I think I’m gonna well, I mean, I would expect that.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:04:05
But to I know. But this is my whole point. To keep everybody fucking clueless and guessing and keep all the ai going on, wouldn’t you release a bunch of shit that’s not necessarily true? I would. If I was really running a secret government UFO retrieval program and we were in contact with extraterrestrials, I would release a bunch of nonsense all the time that makes it look stupid.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:04:27
Oh, I see.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:04:27
Just like they did with Project Blue Book.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:04:29
You’re saying if there are if there if there is truly extraterrestrials, then the government would do disinformation on the interstral. I think that that’s interesting. That makes sense. I mean, like because they always go people always go, well, it’s just a secret weapons ram, and so they’re just they’re just trying to create the aliens around it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:04:47
But we had a we had a Manhattan Project.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:04:49
Also, how can you say that?
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:04:51
You don’t know. Well, nobody knows anything.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:04:53
Sai it might be a secret weapons program. Yeah. Maybe. But it might be we get visited by fucking aliens from outer speak, because space is goddamn huge and life is here. So we know intelligent life exists in our solar system, which is one of 100 of billions of solar systems just in this galaxy saloni, and there’s 100 of billions of galaxies in the known universe.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:05:14
The odds that this is it are fucking dumb. This is a that’s a dumb thought. So are we visited, and does the government know? This is the question. And if they did know and they’ve been protecting us all these years, because especially back before they had any con any control of, when when they had all control rather of any narrative, whether it’s newspaper, television, the government had complete and total control.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:05:35
I mean and the the the real argument is after Kennedy was assassinated assassinated, they’ve had control over everything, including the presidency. Right? So you you can say whatever you want. Why would you tell people? Ai would you tell people that UFOs can complicate your life? Just say it’s bullshit.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:05:50
Hire a guy to tell everybody it’s bullshit, and then a few people know about it. And those few people are the privileged few, and it feels kinda cool to have some inside information. And every now and then, you get a little whistleblower, and that guy’s a kook. Bob Lazar. Come on. Bob Lazar is a loser.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:06:06
That guy, he he he would you really think we’d have him work on our oh. Right. He’s on the list of the employees at, Los Alamos Labs. That’s a fucking bullshit. So he knows the inside of Los Alamos Labs by heart. He can walk you around. He knows the security guards. They’d know him by name.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:06:21
They remember him. He can tell you where the stations are. He tells you exactly how these things move. And then the go fast video, you see the fucking thing turning sideways and moving exactly how he described it. So if that’s real, if that guy really was working on the retrieval program, and that was in 1980 7, 86, what? How long has this been going on?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:06:45
And and and if it has been going on for a long time, why would they tell us now? I don’t think they would. I think there’s a long if it’s real if it’s a real phenomenon that the highest levels of the government are aware of, I think it’s been kept under wraps for so long. It’s almost impossible to it’s like person coming out of the closet. Like, that you you’re 58 years old. I don’t wanna do it. I don’t wanna do it.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:07:06
You know, it’s like it’s been so long you’ve been lying. It would cause so many problems if you came out and told the truth. And I think it’s very difficult for people that have been lying to 100 of millions of people about one of the biggest questions that humans have ever shah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:07:22
Are we saloni, and what is this all about? And they’ve had the answers for all this time telling us now, too hard.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:07:29
Well right. I mean, meh, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s CIA director, when he was asked why they didn’t release all the JFK files, he said because some of the people involved are still alive. So that that is potentially a plausible reason if we assume Mike Pompeo was telling the truth about why they didn’t really sell the JFK files.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:07:45
Well, especially all these people that have been lying to Congress and misallocating funds and are a part of these programs Right. That are hidden programs. You could go to jail for that. You could lose your career if they blame 1 person or blame a group of people and they ai, well, it’s Mike’s idea.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:08:00
Right.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:08:00
And then Mike’s in trouble. Mike gets brought in front of Congress and, like, you’re
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:08:04
you’re real deep shit. Then they should ai, by the way, then they should do blanket amnesty. I agree. Would be one way to solve that problem. I think someone should do
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:08:11
that whether it’s Kamala or Trump. Yeah. Whoever gets in there, give them blanket amnesty, and let’s let’s fucking tell people what’s going on.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:08:18
Yeah.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:08:18
Because either it’s bullshit or it’s real. Both of them are crazy.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:08:22
The fact is we
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:08:22
have been lying about UFOs forever.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:08:24
And this thing was you know, you mentioned the Vatsal Zar case, and I don’t know if it’s true or not. But I think the ad hominems, like, when you see them using ad hominem character assassination, you’re like, well, wait a second. Plenty of dirtbags, are right about things. Sure.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:08:38
Many of them worked in the FBI and CIA and the military. Certainly, plenty of people like, in other words, everybody that worked on secret weapons programs was ai a boy scout.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:08:48
Excuse me.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:08:48
You know? Yeah. So so the idea so the the the character assassination and the hominem for me is a bit of a tell Yes. That there’s something there’s some other agenda going on than just being like, no. There’s no information or Almost all of it. Sense. And we know it we know it’s so effective because it’s because all the other thing it does is scares everybody else off. Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:09:08
Sai you end up only the few people that are willing to do this are people that are more confident, they’ve got a career, they’re not worried, like, I’m I’m
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:09:16
Or they’re just, you know, people just freaking compelled. Yeah. Rush’s position is that he just felt compelled to tell the truth because this is too deep and too powerful to be in the hands of these people. It shouldn’t be that way. And that’s People should know.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:09:28
Look. And that’s why the whistleblower came forward is because David Rush’s courage.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:09:32
I don’t think we’re alone. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think we’re alone.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:09:36
Well, I don’t think we’re alone in the universe. I think the only question is are we alone on Earth?
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:09:39
Oh, ai alone here? I don’t think I would allow us to be alone. I think I’d keep a close look on us, fucking crazy assholes.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:09:46
They’re very if we’re not alone, then the phenomenon is just so elusive. It
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:09:53
Or The
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:09:53
other thing Ai would say is
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:09:54
advanced and doesn’t want us to be aware completely of its presence, and it’s monitoring these psychotic monkeys who have this, like, propensity to be constantly intoxicated, who are also in control of thermonuclear weapons and are enforcing miss magical lines they drew in the dirt.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:10:11
If we’re not here’s the other thing I’ll ai. If we’re not alone, then the reason that we don’t know what they are is because of them and not strictly because of the US government.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:10:22
I think
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:10:22
both. Because if they were if they if they if we’re not saloni, then and they are doing all these things, then they’re certainly more than capable of of making themselves known.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:10:33
Well, I think one way to ensure that you don’t have to kill all the people is to go to the people that have the biggest weapons and sai, we’re here. Stop fucking around. Leave us saloni, and let them do whatever they wanna do. But then
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:10:46
what are they doing? I mean, that’s the thing That’s if they are if we’re if we’re
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:10:49
us, probably observing us, just like we observe uncontacted tribes. We observe gorillas. We observe
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:10:55
well, we observed but the other thing, like, we observe remember the the it’s interesting because the study of of the study of gorillas
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:11:03
Mhmm.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:11:03
Was always part of actually protecting gorillas. Sure.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:11:07
Well, maybe they’re protecting us. From what? Ourselves.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:11:11
War nuclear war. That’s one theory.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:11:13
Well, the reason why my club, the rooms are named Fat Meh and Little Boy, is because those bombs that they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that started a whole wave of UFO sightings.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:11:23
It did.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:11:23
And I think that’s probably why. I mean, if just logically, if I was from another planet and I saw, oh, we’ve just detected a nuclear bomb went off in on on whatever they call our planet, Like, let’s go see what they’re up to and go check-in on them. They probably visit in frequently just like scientists when they’re going looking for sloths. They visit in frequently. They come I mean, we ai think of what we do.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:11:47
They tag them? Sure. I had a woman out here yesterday that works with wolves.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:11:52
This is her birth.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:11:52
Beautiful. Yeah. Diane Boyd, woman among wolves. Her her entire life has been tagging wolves, releasing them, studying their behavior, finding out where they go, and, of course, they would do that with us. We do that with wolves. Of course, they would do that with us. We do that with butterflies. We we study everything.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:12:07
Humans are interested in other things and acquiring information. We’re curious. If you’re gonna be the type of thing that can figure out how to get here from another planet, you’re gonna be really fucking curious. The the curiosity that is required to allow you to figure out interstellar travel is pretty bananas. You gotta be super fucking curious, and I think they probably are.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:12:30
Ai think they’re probably aware that there’s an adolescent period that every intelligent species goes through when it has the power to blow itself up and it doesn’t have the wisdom to not do it. Because there’s clear examples right now every day all over the world of people killing people, blowing people up.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:12:49
You could see it in the news every day with what’s going on in the Middle East, what’s going on in Ukraine. It’s really clear that we have the power, but we don’t have the wisdom. And so there’s probably an evolutionary period where this intelligent animal adapts and learns from its mistakes and eventually gets past these base primate instincts of greed and envy and lust and anger and and retribution and retaliation gets past this territorial instinct and recognizes that we are truly all connected, but it takes a long time biologically.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:13:22
Ai I think the thing that helps it along is technology. And I think there’s this furious battle of trying to claim ground and control technology’s influence on people because we know it’s an overwhelming influence and we know that the technology that has allowed people to have truth, maybe for the first time in human history where anyone like yourself can go on a podcast like this, an independent journalist, and you can reach millions and millions of people.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:13:49
That’s never happened before and that’s changing things. AI will change things further, and then sentient AI will change things in impossible ways that we can’t even imagine. There’s not a science fiction author around that’s ai now got an accurate idea of what a 100 years from now looks like. It’s all 100% guesswork.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:14:12
If you lived in 1500, 1600 wasn’t that much fucking difference. Everybody’s got a musket. Everybody’s on a boat. Basically, the same shit. The the difference between 2024 and 21, 2020 21, 2024 is gonna be bananas. It’s gonna be impossible to imagine.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:14:29
What a time to be alive, man.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:14:30
It’s an awesome time to be alive.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:14:32
It’s amazing. It’s a golden age of journalism too. I mean, it’s a great time to be in journalism.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:14:36
It’s it’s a great time for real journalism because you’re confronted with so much bullshit and propaganda, and that people reject that bullshit and propaganda, and they’re turning towards real journalists. So thank you.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:14:46
Thank you, Joe.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:14:46
Thank you for being here.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:14:48
Thank you
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:14:48
for everything you do. You’re you are a a a real source of light in this confusing time that we live in. And I appreciate your courage, and I appreciate your writing and and all the work that you put out.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:14:58
I appreciate you. I appreciate you opening up the conversation in the ways you have. Honestly, there is no way that we could the whole society could be having this conversation about UAPs if it weren’t for you. True story. True story.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:15:10
There’s plenty of other podcasts. We’ll still be
Speaker: 2
03:15:11
talking about it, but thank you.
Speaker: Joe Rogan
03:15:12
Appreciate it.
Speaker: Michael Shellenberger
03:15:13
Alright. Bye, everybody. Thanks, Julian ai.

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