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That's just go there and check it out. The really nice m v m t, watches dot com forward, Slash Rogan, again, fifteen percent off with free shipping and free returns. Aha, that's it folks! We did it. We got through it, Scott, damn the sponsors right. I know you like dude. What are you doing? Try to get paid son? What this? episode of the podcast features, my good PAL Sam Harris and his friend Dan Harris and Dan Harris. There's, there's many Dan Harris is on the instagram. On the twitter, so you gotta to go the right one. But but I got us thing here at: why is it not show on that's weird? It's not showing on my thing there is Danby Harris is dance, twitter, handle and

user co, anchor of Nightline and weekend at good morning, America he's an author co founder and host of ten percent. Happier he's got a book and a nap at ten percent on ten and then the word percent on Twitter. Is the handle for that, but he basically has a meditation app he's a proponent of meditation and we talked about a lot of cool shit and Whenever SAM Harris is around you're going to have a fascinating conversation, I really enjoyed it and I really enjoy talking to Dan, just really straightforward, very intelligent Justin Guy. It was interesting to see him as SAM, and I were like sort of left free speculate. He had to kind of hang back a few times to maintain his journalistic integrity. Enjoyed it, though? So without any further Ado Buck said it try not to say that great podcast enjoy it

SAM Harris and Dan Harris, the Joe Rogan experience SAM Harris, ladies and gentlemen, at Harris and Harris Dan and SAM, no relation, obviously no relation brother from another mother kind of thing all sweet. We we work this out. We are deeply on related because your harrasses Harris is the jewish your family right. No, no! No! No! No! My Harris is the yes actually no you're right. My Harris is the jewish side of the family was changed at Ellis Island from allegedly from Addis, which doesn't sound jewish either, but, yes, write. Your horses summarizes the glam side of the family here funny peoples. People's names were changed at Ellis Island like Weather, like now. American enough yeah yeah, Schwarzenegger made it right, proudly yeah odd,

So anyway, These are common. You guys, thanks for Heaven is so weird time. You know I've been extra weird it out over the last couple of months, and I just got back from Mexico is on vacation. I didn't do shit for a week and not doing anything for a week. I really got a chance to sit down and think about stuff. And I'm more weirded out by life. Today, then, I think I have have been before so I'm have you want cuz. I want to story, because SAM has been telling me, and I looked into it, and it's please explain what happened to you like where you were and what happened here. So it was your talking about the panic attack yeah. It was two thousand and four. I was on a little show that we do ABC News call good morning. America, that's a big shots. A big show on a little show it's on a little show. And I was I was doing the job that I I was filling in as the news reader. That's the person who comes on at the top of each hour and read the headlines an and

I just freaked out. I just love, right now. As a couple seconds into it, and I I started to get really scared and it just If you've ever had a pet, have you ever had a panic you so it's like anxiety on steroids, so you start to work. But then your fight or flight instincts kick in so Your lungs seize up your palm. Sweating your mouth dries up. Your heart is racing. Your mind is racing. You just I couldn't breathe and therefore couldn't speak. So a couple sex into reading. What was supposed to be six stories right off of the teleprompter. I just I lost the capacity to speak and I had to kind of squeak out something about being a back to you back to the main actors, wow that sucked a good what caused it. I do yeah

Is some dumb behavior? My personal life is what caused it. I had spent a lot of time as a war reporter at ABC News. I was in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, West Bank, Gaza, sixty six trips to Iraq I had come home from a long run and I covered kind of pre invasion invasion and then insert see in one's kind of six month run, and I came home after that, and I got depressed and I don't actually know I was depressed, but I was having some obvious symptoms in hindsight I was having trouble getting out of bed felt like, low grade fever all the time, and then I did it's something really smart, which is, I started to self medicate, with cocaine and ecstasy and even though I wasn't doing it all the time I like to say it wasn't like that you know the ever see the Wolf of Wall Street. Yes with a pop and lose it that that wasn't me I

and I wasn't getting high on the air or anything like that. But you know it's getting. I was partying in my spare time. 'cause it made me feel better uh after I had a panic attack. I went to a doctor who is an expert in panic, and he started asking me a bunch of questions, try to figure out what what what had caused a panic attack and one of the questions was, do you do drugs. And I was like yeah. I do drugs and he leaned back in his chair and gave me a look that communicated following sentiment: ok, Asol, mystery solved. And he just pointed out that you know you raise the level of adrenaline in your brain artificially uh you you make it much more likely to have a panic and I eye at baseline, I'm a jittery little dude, so it doesn't doesn't take much to put me in that zone. We just offer me coffee and I said no because-

Rick. Is that even that will freak me out? Well, it's weird that ecstasy in cocaine was the combination, because x is something that they actually give to a lot of soldiers that have PTSD, and it's been quite a few tests on that yeah. I don't out I I actually think ecstasy was the problem, the coke. I think it was a coat yeah that makes sense so those are the two drugs. I was mostly doing how often we doing it. I would say you know would be months where I wasn't doing it at all, because I would I was off. I covered the two thousand and four angel campaign. I don't have alot of time to be snorting coke so but when I was home and around my friends, you know on a good on a busy week. You know two three times a week. Wow, that's a lot! Yeah that'll. Do you there's a? there's a comeback right now that cocaine is experiencing go away

I never done it- was there some sort of cocaine recession that had to bounce back from believe there was really. This is what this I'm talk. Talking totally ignorant. I've been out of the game for a long time, so yeah yeah yeah, I'm I'm kind of boring now, but it feels to me like it's. A perennial favorite yeah. I don't know I mean I feel like it went through a recession, maybe just my perception. I had a buddy mine when I was in high school and his cozen was a hooked on coke and I watched while we're in high school, we start selling it and he withered away. Last, like thirty, or something like that. Just his girlfriend, just hide in the attic they lived in an attic apartment. They were just hide out there watch tv and do Coke and sell coke to people, and I was like well fuck that good luck and whatever that drugs no and that these people, it's all of those almost like knowing someone who'd gotten bitten by a vampire ready, come something different was very strange. So my experience is seeing people do that led me to

yeah. I mean it certainly was not like that for me, but you know I it over the horizon. You can at it's incredibly addictive drugs, so I think you made the right call yeah. It seems a little. It's got a little too much gravity attached to it. Yeah I mean. You can get hooked and it will Can you down there other drugs? You can do I'm not recommending drugs, but that the weight my friend SAM might might but half brother SAM over there does. Let me get to it. Yeah there are other drugs drugs. You can do that have vastly lower addictive character character. What's the word I'm looking for here is characteristics yes, so how did you recover I so I wasn't actually doing it that law actually never done hard drugs into my early 30s. I came home from the war zones and that's what started it. Yeah yeah

right out by seeing too much. You know a you know, as it is actually a wasn't PTSD it was. I was addicted to the drug I was having I was not that I was traumatized was that I was enjoying it too much well come home in the world would seem gray and boring at yes. That was that was the problem. Did you watch hurt locker, I'm sure you did it yeah Did did did that resonate with you? Actually, it's been a while, since I watched it but apps. Absolutely I want to just be clear. The experience of a journalist is so different from the experience so much more mild than the experience of an unlisted man or woman show I don't wanna come Where are my experience to the hurt locker? I'm uh server on the side, and I- and I don't even want to compare my experience to more experienced war correspondents out there, I'm thinking of like Richard Engel on NBC session, Jungler, Absolute just actually sat down with him. The other day for he's got a new documentary coming out in my My experiences are much more.

Now than that, but certainly enough to really get a sense of how thrilling is there's an expression. Is nothing more thrilling than the bullet that misses you, and in my case, Luckily they'll miss that was not true for some of my friends but you so I had a real sense of mistakes, but it is exciting. It's so thrilling an idealistic level. I mean, I believe, in the importance of bearing witness to the what to the tip of the Spirit, to what we're doing, to what our military is doing in our name, so all of that is heady mix. So you knew people over there, journalists that got killed yeah, absolutely very good friend of mine. The guy who actually ultimately set me up with my wife, is a guy named Bob Woodruff. Who was the anchor of world news tonight on ABC News hero,

only been in the chair for about a month when he was on a trip to Iraq and he got hit literally got his head nearly blown off when he was in the back when he was in the top of an iraqi tank. Almost died is an abscess miracle is alive there. Pictures of them on the internet with basically half a head, traumatic brain injury, was brought back to life, is to this day walking miracle that he's alive and after he recovered he, then introduce me to the woman I married so he's Fran, and I saw cases like that lost friends, both iraqi friends and journalist friends, my the woman I was dating at the time when I, when I spend a lot of time in Iraq, she got hit by a tank shell. He was in in the the hotel Palestine, where all the journals for staying she was

on a balcony and or one of our colleagues in the balcony below where he got a direct hit and died heat she carried with but all in she basically got the reverberations and couldn't hear still can't hear. As far as I know who, when you're a journalist in your over in Iraq Afghanistan, you're in war and what your ex dancing is so far removed from the day to day life that most people experience. What what like trying to relate that to people. How difficult is it trying to 'cause? I think so. Many we have this almost drum Nick Television movie slash view of of war where they don't they don't ever experience it like. I would imagine, probably ninety nine percent of the people that are in this country will never experience it now and that's good yeah. No, it yeah it. I don't know that you can describe it.

In a way that will really give the full picture of its absurdities and and horrors and long stretches of board. Punctuated by terror, and also this other piece which is taboo to talk about, which is the pleasure and excitement that people get fighting wars and eight other. This is the fashion younger's thesis as well, and it's the camaraderie is the most intense camaraderie, I say ever experience, and so that's something they come back to civilian. Hyphen or missing it, and it's part of what's so difficult about coming back Why you see them is a lot of risk taking behavior among vets eat because you can enter that you're looking for another way to get that head of adrenaline for sure there is a mixed bag. There's a book and I'm I'm blanking on the name- is a great book written by am a much more experience war correspondent to me. He uses the phrase. War is a drug and that to me

sums it up. At least in my experience, I got hooked on the experience of being in these really elevated, situations heightens situations, cinematic dramatic situations and I will come home and I just I didn't know what to do to replace it, and so this synthetics of adrenaline that you can get from cocaine seem to do it for me. Obviously had tremendously negative consequences so I wouldn't recommend it. But I see why people do this so How did you? How did you bounce back? That was actually the question you asked me For that I somehow neglected to answer so the doctor, who pointed out that I was and idiot and doing drugs and it caused a panic attack. I agree he didn't think I needed to go to rehab 'cause. It was the was pretty short lived. It was I was in my early thirties when I started and still in my early thirties when I had a panic attack and so was only a couple years

he said just I want you to come, see me once or twice a week forever. Sir ever he said he said basically indefinitely still see it, but it's not not yet a good business model, but not that I mean it's been well north of that it's been about thirteen years. So I don't see him, often now, but for a long time. I saw him intensively so that you know it wasn't easy, it's not easy and I wouldn't have. I wouldn't call what I mean. There are people who have had drug addictions that are Lastly, more severe than mine, but it's it sucks to stop a habit that is giving you pleasure on. You know on pretty pretty prominent areas of your brain. Well, you are situation when you're talking about is a very, very, very extreme situation. Like being a journalist, a war correspondent going over there experiencing that intense.

Sort of adrenaline rush and then having your your issues with it, but it seems like there's is a tremendous amount of people today that are stimulating themselves. A adderall is a big one. I mean it's just. I know I've found out recently like four or five people that I didn't know that we're on Adderall. It seems like you just sort of start asking questions and you find out How many people I mean all these? My kid goes to school with. Bunch of other kids and you get to meet the parents and like half more on adderall it's very weird. Adderall is a form of amphetamine and it my god. It just is mind boggling how many people are doing this stuff, so we're dosing ourselves with all sorts of things. We can be stimulated stimulants, but it also can be benzos those you know yeah as cousins of valium. It can be Stopping gambling, it can be

Septa twitter. I think, Just speaking, we have a neuroscientist in the room so I'll. Let him say more about this and also guys more it serious practitioner of Buddhism than I am, but but you know it does speak to the picture of the human mind that were always on the hunt for the next little hit of dopamine, and now there lots of ways to get it well, it's also very bizarre that you can just do that I don't think there's ever been a time in history or you can just take a pill and you'll be elevated for five or six hours I mean, and that doctor will give you this pill and they encourage you to take it and then you'll find out that fifty percent of the people in your community and take it I've done stories about parents who steal it from the kids Caffeine, I caffeine, I mean I'm, you know I'm reaching for the coffee here poorly last night, but that is- and that's just as much of a drug is just not as it's not as potent drugs, drug methamphetamine or methamphetamine, or

adderall or anything else that that's a drug drug but Miss whole it this. This had civilization, consequences when humanity more or less switched from Alcohol in the morning to caffeine in the mornings- that's just the things- got a lot different used for hundreds of years, people drinking ale and wine in the morning before before coffee and tea became huge in Europe and and the colonialism. The the colonialism to a significant degree was coffee, tea, sugar and you know things our behavior changed. Some people were drinking ale and wine. Weren't wasn't all a big part of it. The reason why they drink it with food is because the water would get stagnant, yeah. Well, the that there's there's the issue with clean water to yeah yeah yeah, but when it just imagine consequences of you and everyone. You know get in the morning and just starting with beer or wine. I know

yeah that that's that's a that's a long day or very short, one yeah. So but yeah it's it's a minute, but that the fundamental point of the underlying neuroscience is that all of these drugs anything you're putting into body is modifying the behavior of your brain is only modifying the existing available. Neurochemistry of your brain. I mean these. These. Molecules either get your brain to read more of an existing neurotransmitter or they mimic an existing neurotransmitter binding to the same receptor site. We keep something in play longer than it would otherwise have been they they. They block the reuptake of neurotransmitters or neuromodulators. So it's not your. Is never getting your brain to do something your brain is incapable of doing right so and that's the most extreme thing like DMT or lsd in the brain,

the brain is still doing all of that, and so it stands The reason that there are potential other ways of getting the brain to do that, whether it's meditation or whether it's computer interface, ultimately to the brain and know the people are interested in in brain computer interface that not only allow is a quadriplegic to move a robotic arm or gets a a a Parkinson's patient to be able to move. But to the ultimate degree, I mean actually augmenting human function, that's or opening landscapes of mind, it was psychedelic and otherwise that have been explorer, I all all that is in principle possible because again we're just talking about electrochemical phenomenon happening in our heads, which are being which is,

they to be modulated. Now, when you were talking about being depressed and. I'm talking, bout, reuptake, inhibitors, uhm. I want to know what are your thoughts on the massive amount of people that are on SSR eyes. Now I mean it there's another thing that I know how many people I know that of our are on or have been on some sort of anti depressants, and it seems I mean to the blame to meet someone who's, never taken a more doesn't have personal experience with it um massively over prescribed. Yeah, well I mean, I would anything I say is with the cabbie this is I am not a neurologist? I don't have no okay, zero clinical experience and Certainly not my area, I'm not up on the the recent literature on the the efficacy of of antidepressants. But if there is clearly it is to it's like anything, there's a spectrum there. People who have been on and figure

mostly helped by antidepressants and there people who are on them, who shouldn't be on them who who are on them, who want to get off them and find it surprisingly difficult to get off them and and said it is just it's. These are the blunt instruments by by definition, because is it's anything. That's modulating. Serotonin in this case is Affect if everywhere, serotonin is effective and it's just it's. There's no magical property of of uh. Finding the neuromodulator, where, where only the symptoms you want to relieve are affected because these these these chemicals do a lot of things in a lot of places and even in your gut right. So it's not so that, hence the side effects you get with almost any medication and we would have to get it would be.

In many respects, as a matter of luck, to find a pharmacological target that actually does just what you wanted to do, because it was is to say that those receptors are not elsewhere, they're going to produce side effects for you. So that's why a different kind of intervention, something like ultimately, some some at the electrical or magnetic or war machine based intervention who could be more targeted because then you're you're not just putting something in the blood stream that spreads everywhere. But by you machine base to mean something like electrodes that they put on the mind to or the surface of the head to stimulate areas of the brain, yeah, yeah and again the the. What we have now is also still pretty primitive and anything in you would have that would be. Super futuristic, wouldn't seem to require that you put something actually inside your head right

whether that's neurosurgery or uh, putting something into the bloodstream that somehow gets inside your head. What you know injectable so injectable instance Elon Musk, just mention mentioned something called in which he called neural lace, which is, I believe it from that came from a Sci, FI novel. I don't think it originates with him. I'm not a big science fiction reader, but he's got a an ounce investment in a company called Neuro Neural Link, which is looking looking at some advanced brain computer interface, based on the idea that you could get a with the with these new micro, but you can get an injectable mesh like like a wire mesh that integrates with the the brain or very likely just the cortex and This work has already been done in mice.

And the mice are have survived living with with this mash in their in their brains it's, not research, I'm close to it all in, and he just announced a couple weeks ago, but in principle. Yet you're talking about having we, whether it's a mesh or whether it's magneto electric particles, something that is on site around individual, neurons or assemblages of neurons, which can both read out an input wirelessly signal from those neurons, so just both you know putting your thoughts into the world by influencing effectors baltic arms or cursors on screens or whatever it is, and also in once in your mind, based on whatever inputs you want to put in there from the

one- is that still operations hack, you and yeah exactly well that they opened it opens. All of those concerns you know was the Russians, it's always the russian or Chinese or there's gambling. I think chinese people are responsible for a lot of the propaganda that makes us think about the Russian. Off on them, push it off on them. I'm paired to blame the Russians for a lot at this point. Blame all what a slippery slope, though, for humans becoming cyborgs, I mean we're already like some weird form of semi hot right now carrying our cell phones. Like it's a baby. You know, like you, leave I like. Oh my god, I forgot the baby I mean the very strange thing that we already have and there's not a whole lot of steps between that and Snapchat glasses. James got the snaps. I really know things now. I didn't know they existed other very strange they They have little cameras on them and now you gotta go ahead, throw on he knows how to use them. Google, glass just was total

still bored right, yeah. It didn't work so he's transmitting or he's making a video right now with that left side, yeah the left side, spinning yeah, that's with snapshot, do like fifteen seconds ten seconds. That's on the little counter is just flashing was like the last three seconds. You can hit it again, another twenty seconds. You can hold it and do like thirty seconds or something like yeah step? One knows is that spending just to alert the people you're. Looking at your record, I don't see it to so that its sun alert me to to. Let me know that my recording is done probably a little bit to let you know too, but that's probably the only notification. You know that I'm recording and is just post, not it doesn't post automatically, and now I have to look at to my phone and then post it from there. Okay the Google glass thing made people very uncomfortable mean I try to vary prototype. I have a a good friend of mine, who is a executive, a Google at the time and she got a hold of one of the really early ones that actually had to be tethered by a cord, and you know you talk to it and swipe it, and I played with it a couple of times and we used it once at a UFC weigh in

and put it on, and I broadcast from the way- and it's very very odd, but it makes people made people very uncomfortable, like you could see difference when they saw you with that thing. On all sudden there was all this apprehension there being recorded or transmitter, but how long how long do we have well we're still people? Well, how long before you ask that question that are sent of five mm. I I remember what it was like to be neurotic about the sound of your voice on a voicemail or or on a road that answering machine right, like re, recording the outgoing message and just being worried about your voice voice showing up in someone else's tape, yeah And now we were living in this. This panopticon surveillance society, where you just assume you're on camera, virtually every moment you're in public. Although it, I guess people don't think about it. All that much yeah. I think we are the

turns around privacy shift just because we get so much value from having the data. Ultimately, I guess, but it just seems also like there's just this in cable pull towards. Connection that we're going to have it's it just seem like. If you, just if you where we are now and sort of look at all the data points. Extrapolate doesn't look good, it's just so, but it's both is both bad and good. Yeah. If the fake news thing is horrible, but the ability to fact check in pick up your phone and find out. What's true, it has also never been better cycle it? We were both VON horrible in a way that we've never been an were empowered in a way that we've always been true about technological progress. Yeah, it just seems like there's a certain amount of time we have left before we give birth to some new thing.

We talk about just integrating ourselves biologically with with and and also some that's independent of us. Some artificial intelligence, independent well the way you want to look for some fear around that you got the right guy right, yeah. Why? What we talk about incest, those fears area, yeah, I mean in Josh's apps freak me out this morning, sent me some articles about the softer. Having trucks had already going in Australia that are as big as a seven hundred and sixty seven in there driving down road by themselves with cargo, probably nuclear waste or something you know tune down the road, but but people are so bad at driving that the robots just have to get reliably better than people and then you'll just feel nothing but relief. They probably are yet well yeah. I mean there I think they probably are far. As I know from what I hear from Tesla did that yeah the the axes

the man hours, they have a people using the auto pilot, the auto pilots, not at all perfect. Obviously, two people have died already from from using it badly, but still they they have something like and some millions of man hours. He of auto pilot assisted drive in, and I think that is has been safer than just pure ape. Did you see the video of the guy who fell asleep in traffic in San Francisco? He's literally How cold is cars driving on the highway it's just some guy on his way to work. Just passed out completely mouth open and people are filming him cars driving on the yeah and pi. Actually, probably the people filming him are doing the the the more dangerous. Thank you right, yeah, well, texting and driving drive me crazy, all right, it's the elected to be in an uber. Now you can look around. You can see how many people are text

yeah, including your driver, sometimes yeah yeah. That drives me crazy right. Here's a guy, oh yeah, that dudes out cold his car is creepy stop and go traffic, and he is completely alkyl owl. Well it x the autopilot works yeah. No, it does work I'm yet sing a driving scares is shared on me. That pokmon go thing, thank God that died off but stopped. I was driving on the highway and there was a woman to the left of us and I notice that she was being her face was illuminated by her cell phone. So I look over and she's playing pokmon as she's driving so I don't know how Pokemon works, but I guess you pick up things and as you're driving you can get stuff and so who is playing the game while she on barely paying attention to the road looking at her phone. This is the argument for for robot drivers, yeah

yeah and also it will open up the when you are ultimately being driven safely, buy a car that you trust more than you trust your self. Then just imagine the information, consumption, entertainment options that open up there, you'll watch movies, you'll, listen to podcasts, work done and it will become a space of more we're not going to miss having to pay attention to the road in a know idea, maybe there's some people want to drive recreationally for some reason, but it's it will just be. New space where you you. You won't believe that forty thousand people every year were dying because we couldn't figure out how to drive safely It's not a slippery slope like forty thousand, Well, that's a great thing that forty thousand people are not going to die, but the idea that you're going to people from driving a car going to live with these forty thousand people. That's not what I was going to say. I was going to say I mean pretty much all the things that people do and then

get down to. Why have people I mean ultimately that's the when I look at the event horizon of artificial intelligence. It's why? Why would we were so far we're not going to get our ship? by the time artificial intelligence is given birth to that that all goes to what we build. If we build artificial intelligence that is, independent of us and seems conscious and is more powerful than us. Well then we are, we have built a in the limit, we have essentially built a god that we now have to be in relationship to, and hopefully that's a works out well for us it's very easy to see how it might not. I think there scarier cases in that that we could build something that has God like power, but there's no reason I think it's conscious is just it's just. There is no more conscious than our our current computers,

which is to say that intelligence and consciousness may be separable phenomenon that you could intelligence can scale but consciousness need not come along for the ride, and that, for me, is the worst case scenario, because it we inherit all of the danger of of of this power more of this system being misaligned with our interests. We could build something that's got like in its power and yet uh we We can essentially be canceling the prospects of the evolution of consciousness because of this thing wipes out that you know that I think it's Nick Bostrom, the philosopher who wrote a great book on this entitled Super intelligence. I think, because this, the the Disneyland without children Emily. Basically, we could build this, this incredibly powerful, intelligent landscape that continues to refine itself and and the and its own powers.

And in who knows what ways my ways perhaps that are that are unimaginable to us and yet there the lights aren't on. You know, there's there's, nothing that it's like to be this machine or system of machines. There's. Probably nothing is like to be the internet right now. I think all that's going on on the internet yeah, I you know, I don't think the internet is conscious of any of it right now. The question is: could the internet become conscious of what it's thinking and I think there's no reason to think it? Couldn't it's just we we don't understand the the physical basis of consciousness at the real question is. Why would it do anything I mean if it doesn't have any of the biological motivations of people have to breed in the stay alive and to you know, fight or flight and to be nervous, and this desire the carry on our jeans, if you really did build the ultimate super computer, artificial intelligence that was beyond our capacity

city for reason and understanding when it just do nothing, because everything is pointless. Well, not know, because, but but we would do with a program it, it would do whatever we asked to to do initially right. We we a and things we program now have goals right. Thermostat is trying to regulate the temperature in the room and when get when it gets warm it kicks on the air and it when it gets too cold kicks on the heat that's a goal right, and so we would. We are. Everything we build. This automated has goals explicitly program into it and when you're talking about a true intelligent machine. It will have. It will discover goals. You have never programmed into it that are are intermediate to the goal that you have program. So if, if the goal This machine is to pick up all the trash in this room and you physically try to stop it.

Well, then it's going to try to get around you to pick up the rest of the trash in the room right. So it's you know. Priority Rt Trouver of the room right. I I actually don't have a But, if you, if you, put something in the way of the room. But it's going to get around the thing you have put in its way, so that it can get to the rest of the room so that's an intermediate goal and some these goals need never have been explicitly thought about or represented, which is to say programmed into it, and yet they are formed by the fact that the thing has a long term goal- and one of the one of the concerns is that we could build something. That has a long term goal that is built on its super powerful. That has a long term goal, which in principle is benign right. It's like it's the

something we want, and yet it could discover instrumental goals that are deeply hostile to what we want. I mean the thing doesn't have common sense right. We haven't figured out how to build common sense into the machine, so I mean the this just cartoon examples of this kind of thing, but like one example that you on used when he first was expressing fears about this is built a machine, the only goal of which was was to cancel. Spam right. No more! We want we want. We want no more spam, get rid of the spam. Well, it easy way to get rid of spam is just kill all the people right, now that's a crazy thing to think, but it's not unless you've built it lets you close the door to that intermediate goal There's no reason to think that a super powerful machine could inform such a goal. My question would be if this a powerful machine. Has the ability to create new super powerful machines wouldn't use the same mandate? Would it still try to follow the region?

programming, or would it realize that our original program is only in and to the success of the human race, and it might think the human race is ridiculous and preposterous, and why not just program something that it thinks is the ultimate intelligence, something beyond our capacity for reasoning, understanding now, and that thing I would wonder, in the absence of any sort of biological motivations in the absence with inducing of all the things that we do, I mean you break it down to what motivates people to get out of bed: What motivates people to do good, but not our sense of community, try to breed the social status. All these different things that motivate people to do things remove all of those and what Would it take and why well, I think I think you a build it in a way that is focused on

our well being and server. For instance, I had Stuart Russell on my podcast is a computer scientist at Berkeley, who, unlike many computer scientists, takes this problem really seriously and and a lot about it and it in his lab. I believe working on a way of thinking about the safe see, that is, that is open, ended and without without pretending have any of the right answers in the near term or likely to have them. So you want to build system that wants to know what you want right at each point like so that's tracking what humanity wants in terms of its goal and wants to stay aligned with whatever it is? We want,

wants to mop, wants to learn from what we seem to want based on our behavior, but So there could be some clarifying function where, where where we can get our I more aligned in dialogue with the super intelligent machine, but the the bottom line. Is it always wants to do it doesn't think it knows what we want. Continually wants to keep approximating better and better what we want and see the from my the most crucial thing. Is you always want the door to remain open to the state Wait, wait, wait! That's not what I wanted right, like you want to be in the presence of this God likes superpower that will always take direction from. You when you say wait, wait, wait, that's not going in the right direction and the to the fear we could build something that is, is

not amenable to being controlled in that way, is it not the case that computer scientists are start come around to the idea that there's real danger, there's dangerous. People in a I mean I was listening to you when you talk to Will Macaskill a few weeks ago, was saying saying you know it was. It was just a few years from starting to think about how to split the atom to actually having a bomb Why are they not coming around the idea that that these that technology can progress much faster than we think of yeah yeah? Well, it's a whole spectrum of the people who think that this is never going to happen, or it's so far away that thinking about it now is completely irrational. Two people who are super worried and and think that huge changes are imminent, and so it's it's just that the spectrum I'm the latter yeah as a as My concern is not even with the initial construction like the Chile, I my concern is with what the ai creates. If we give the

ability to improve upon itself and look at our irrational thoughts and how we programmed itself to support the human race, and then I go wild ones are I do that, like you, guys are ridiculous, hello. This is a new life form. This is a new. We we've given birth to some incredibly potent new thing that we think of it as artificial ballot mean. Is it really it's just a form of life? It's a form of life that we've created human beings have sort of in the the analogy always uses that were some sort of an electronic caterpillar giving birth to some spec, macular butterfly that were not even aware of what we're building our cocoon we're. Just doing it, I mean, there's a caterpillar fully. Which is what it's doing when it makes that cocoon, probably not but just dozen there's plenty of examples, In nature of something that's doing something, going through. Some metamorphosis. That's completely unconscious my war would be I guess it's not even really a worry it's more like looking at.

The possibility of the ai improving upon itself and making a far better version than we could create like almost instantaneously right Missouri. If you give the ability to be autonomous, you give it the you. The to to innovate and to to try to out. What's a better way around things and what's a better way to program things and then make its own version of what it is. It's going to be spectacular. I mean it really will be. Just I mean this. We just talking but really really would be a god mean talking about something that if we give it the ability to create, we give you the ability to think reason, rationalize and then build build, something better man band and by bill. You should be thinking more software than hardware right make it there. This obviously there's anything's possible anything that can be built with intelligence can be built with intelligence. So you could be talking about armies of raw bots and nanotechnology, and everything else. That's that that is the the staple of the Sci Fi Scare scenario, but

more likely and certainly faster, and ultimately, powerful you're talking about something that can re write its own code. Improve. I mean it's, it's it's the code that isn't it that is dictating the intelligent and so you're talking about something that could be for the longest time invisible just happening on the internet right you're, talking about code that could could be put into financial markets right, which could be built to be self modifying right and it's a then it's already out in the wild is not is not sequestered in some air gap computer in a lab, it's out there and it's changing it. Self. Now that would be a total. Responsible thing to do from a from a software designers point of view. I think at this point, but there's just no.

We're going to get to a place. Where is he a either? the province of one lab that gets there. First or will be open source but you're talking about software, us figuring out how to write better, better software, which becomes the basis of general. Until and then, where that gets put in what gets done with that. That's that's. The request Isn't it a real question of also the race to see who can come up with one? First, I mean once once the idea gets put out there like the idea of the nuclear bomb. I mean, obviously no one in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to make a nuclear bomb. What that story's especially sobering, because I may forget the the details- I think it was- I cut out- could have this backwards so that I think, was a

Rutherford. There are two famous physicists involved with the Rutherford who said we're never going to unlock the the I think, rather I gave a talk saying that we're never going to lock the energy that we now you to be in the Adam, and Leo szilard the next day produced the the the equations that unlocked it right, the next yeah xml and and in direct response to this announcement like okay, let's just that's, bullshit and again the next morning, woke up in and produce that the that produced the math that gave us that the atomic bomb So it's it can happen really fast and then, if you want to get those details, exactly right, listen to what's Stuart Russell said on my podcast well Oppenheimer in, like a really ironic twist wasn't a Buddhist.

No? He was a fan of of Hinduism technically and he was taught himself sanskrit. Apparently in months. One never knows how much this is exaggerated, but his what end his publicist will tell you that he taught himself Sanskrit in three months to read the bug Peter, which is the one of the texts of Hinduism, the quote the gave out as the first bomb was tested, I've become death. I am become death. Destroyer of worlds, yeah put the can you hear him saying it's even more creepy as you see the sort of remorse as have you seen it. You know why I also have the to see the photos get the phone. I mean every photo of Oppenheimer hooks Actually he just looks haunted yeah well. He was hanging out with weird to see him with his general was watching some. Mentor on the creation of the atom bomb and he was You know it's hang out with these generals as they're, probably Curtis, Lemay yeah, and you see the two

them together, and you like what a bizarre pairing like this one monkey Needs this other genius to make this bomb you can drop it on these people and the guy realizes that if he doesn't make it someone's going to make him the could be dropped on them. Yeah. Well that and that's That's the thing we are that we were genuinely in a race condition there, and we didn't know how close the nazis were. It turns out that they weren't, as close as we feared, but yeah imagine Hitler having gotten there. First right with the help of Heisenberg others play at Jamie here, the world would not be the same two people, some people cried most people were silent.

I remembered the line from the hindu scripture of the Bible. Read Gita Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty to impress him pics on his multi armed form, who says now. I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought that one way or another he does not look like a happy dude. What would have burden yeah, but it's actually, when you read the history of that effort the Manhattan project in the trinity test. It is super sobering because there was

We move forward in a context of real uncertainty about what was going to happen. I mean there were they in terms of the yield of the first bomb. There was a a range I think, of a a hundred fold, difference of opinion of what they were gonna get yes, this thing we and there were some people who still placed some possibility on. The prospect of igniting the atmosphere because canceling all of life right now they had spent a lot of time. To I mean they did something like do diligence where they were. Many of them were confident it wouldn't but that was not without beyond the realm of possibility for some of the people working on it, and so we have shown a propensity for taking.

Possibly existential risks to develop new technology because there's a reason to develop it and, in this case the destruct the truck to potential is so obvious because it's all destructive potential and we're we're building the biggest bombs we possibly can build, and it did so it it's just it's not difficult to think about the danger it's all day in right and these bombs you now getting in the hands of the wrong people. With AI, it's so seductive, because if you looked at it, looked at in the in one light, it's just all upside Nothing better than intelligence is nothing more intrinsically desirable than intelligence, so to get more of it is seems, an intrinsic good, and so it it takes extra step to say well wait a minute. This could in fact be the most interesting, we've ever done and you have to have to

to spend a lot of time, fighting that that Ideological battle with people who just think no. This is all upside. This is what could be what could go wrong? you're, just you're, just scaremongering, the it is in it. The fourth you've seen too many terminator movies is that even possible too many money, no not with the first. First is good for us very good president. Second Yeah there's one in there that I don't think I've seen all of their three uh. I don't know, I think it was. I think I lost touch after the second, I've. Seen two. I haven't seen any more than two I don't know I just I feel like it's because of the race, because the idea that there's a race to get to it seems like it's inevitable that someone actually does create and much like the atomic bomb it'll, probably launched, probably be launched without

true understanding of what its potential is. That's my fear, I'm terrified of it not all the time I set back. Sometimes I look at like the city of LOS Angeles, with the skyline, all the lights go off and like this is all new, like. This is only been here for a few hundred years like this. This there was nothing here. One thousand seven hundred there is nothing. This is nothing now look at it. It's all lit up and there's a gigantic grid from the sky, like what are we looking at three hundred years from now like? What are we looking at all these things were feverishly attempting to build and create yeah. Well, the Dependence on the net is sobering. Just just forget about all of these highfalutin fears of of row, just just We don't have a backup for the internet and the internet goes down what. Happens in the real world. A lot that is, that is very difficult to recover from you know, I'm just what happens to your money right. What is money when there is no

right, the origins just imagine just malicious code just destroying the record of money, they're getting into the banking system right. So it's like you, you have then, have to go look for the paperwork you may or may not have in your desk. To argue you have a certain amount of money because in all those bits got scrambled, and we need some all. This is like just there's so many aspects of this, but the fact that you can now credibly fake audio right, so someone can listen sample. You know five minutes of this podcast and then produce a converse. We've never had invoices exactly like our own and those edits. Will longer, be discernible. I discernible that basically there now and we're almost there with video right where you just have our mouths moving in the correct way. Well again, I go to snapchat these crazy snapchat filters. I don't know if you know about these, but my daughter pull up the

my daughter being Abraham Lincoln mean talking crazy. I mean it's really rudimentary right now, but my six year old loves it. She thinks it's hilarious and she constantly uses it all the time like she just like. Can I play with your phone and she grabs my phone and then she starts doing these little videos like somehow another little brains like sync up, immediately with the technology where, if I gave it to my mom's, but I don't even know what this is. What do I do that six year old could figure it out like that check this out four who is Clarence tragedy where is if I show If I showed this to my daughters, the just never hear from them again, it would again it probably the most the most captivating thing?

this is obviously black and white and she's being silly, and it's really obvious answer sake, but man how far I mean this is a look at your old girl thing in the world. Looks like you were here. Looking doing the voice, you can't, like you see how for her mouth, you can't discern where her ends, and Abraham Lincoln's face begins right, but here, but But someone said this about this technology. Talking about now. Is that someone you can fake and it's basically, what is the true Photoshop right, where you can't tell it. You have to be an expert to tell whether the person was really standing next to Donald Trump at the time, because they could just been put there, but rather with for expert use of Photoshop, but now talking about being able to produce content where you who are saying the thing that completely destroys your reputation, but it's pure, it's just fake news is just fiction and so we need. I mean I don't know what the fix for this is. You know. I've just speck in this is against

I know very little about, but I've really something like the block chain has to be a way of anchoring each piece of digital content. So there's like a chain of custody where you see actually where this came from in a way: that's not favorable, and so, if you did to take, you know your podcast an example. If someone is it producing a clip that ports to be from your podcast, where you are saying something insane it that the just has to be a clear fingerprint, digit Lee shows whether that came from you and Jamie or whether this would get you know came from some macedonian hacker who just decided to screw with you yeah, but there's not no, I know, but that clearly we need that. We need that yeah tomorrow, because the technology is here to produce totally fake content, which is I am worried about that. I'm also worried about the idea that someone

anywhere, is completely in charge and knows. What's going on, you know. I was point to you, member, that guy that went on stage with a bomb and pretended to be a a sign language translator at one that was the right this project will South Africa telling that I believe it was was it that sounds right, but I forget where it was but yeah I mean that was amazing, because it's just so few people read sign language that it was in and around and then delegating. I don't really yeah was it. I don't remember the the details, but I remember saying: hey this. Guy is three feet away from the president. He was three feet away for the president and he would I think they had vetted everyone out. So here's this guy. King and that guy is just completely making things up, He has no idea he has no idea how to do sign language and that you know that

it happened. There was another instance where a guy had gotten an elevator with the mall security guards have guns, with a gun loaded gun in an elevator with Obama. Nobody screened him, it's just people aren't early on the ball. You know, there's a bit. My last comedy special about the guy that broke into the White House, but there was a woman guarding the front door by herself and they had shut the alarm off because it kept going off so that if a cat just shut it off and then the a guy who's on the lawn who's supposed to be a had canines, so regarding lawn, he took his ear piece out to talk to his girlfriend on the cell phone. He had it back up walking because they back a backup left his locker, so All these steps in this guy just hit the perfect sweet spot where you The fence ran the whatever one hundred yards plus to get to the White House got to the door is unlocked got through. There was a girl by herself threw her to the ground and just ran through the White House and was in there for five hundred and ten minutes

he had a knife right lately had a knife, he was basically trying. He was basically a suicide by cop situation. 'cause they had caught him. This is it's really hilarious when people think that the government is watching out for you They weren't even watching this guy and listen to what this guy did. He got arrested, they pulled him over. I believe EVA was less than three months before that. With eight one hundred rounds of ammunition. He had two rifles, a shotgun and the uh, and a machete a map of Wawa, Washington with a fucking axe where the White House is when they let him go eight a they have. There has to be a crime there, but they weren't even watching that guy yeah, I, like the I I think that they're watching you but we're not built as species for perfect vigilance. That's so not perfect.

I mean that's so ridiculous in operating up about even the TSA right. You know we it's just we're just in and with l we're just not built for that, but to Warren Twitter can confound even the perfect visualism. It just look what happened at the Oscars. I mean that was you know their only job is to get those envelopes right. Two people with a lock briefcases and one guys tweeting and it produces the. Envelope? I mean it's just what happened was treating yeah yeah tweeting, a they they've. Amid this is this brutal, but he took a photo of. I forget what actress, but it clearly he was, I mean they have. He bent the photo, but be people recovered it yeah. He he took a shot of somebody, I don't know Charlize Theron or somebody who's walking, backstage and put it on his twitter feed and then that then the very next moment was the

when he had to hand over the right envelope He just handed over that the angle of the best bankers, whatever their only job, is to get this straight right and that a minute just safeguarding the envelopes. So, let's all adorable yeah by is some there's something I really enjoy about the folly of people that that's one of main things that I worry about with AI. That are the things we find cute about us being ridiculous. Like that or like this sign language guy or any of these things. But that's the thing computers are really good at me. Once computers get good at this sort of thing, yeah, but we're programming them right now, but we can We can program them to to fill in the gaps for There are a stupid idea, yet we we want we. What we want to do is automate repetitive, behavior and error, two hundred and ten that we know we're not good at right. So

the moment, you have a ts, a screening robot that that doesn't get distracted, meant the these machines. Don't get this good right: they don't they don't get hungry. They don't have to take a bathroom breaks. They don't they're, not looking at the person, is looking at them and and get the get getting captivated by some social glitch right. So that is all. If you have a mom screening robot, that's all it will do and it will better once it you know, whatever, whatever they visual signature of a bomb is when you're talking about for one in a bag. Once computers get better that then people they will be just they will be reliable in a way that people can never be and that we know that about ourselves. So that's we want to. We outsource. All of that stuff and driving is the perfect example. You know you, don't you don't have driving cars that are falling asleep or will reading billboard while driving eighty miles an hour and an, and so we want that and and the scary

The scary stuff is when it can change itself that that's the principle that would allow it to have escaped from our control, or we just we build something where we haven't anticipated the consequences and and the centers are wrong. The answer the incentives are, are not aligned to make us prudent in the development of that and what an arms race is the worst case for that, because we, the incentives, are to get to the end zone as quickly as you can, because the guy next to you is is doing the same, and you don't know how you don't know what he's ahead of you or behind you right right, and it's a winner, take all scenario, because the amount of wealth that will go

to the winner of this race. If things work, if, if this person doesn't doesn't of this group, doesn't destroy, the world is unimaginable. Ms, just just talking about a level of of can a windfall profits that we just haven't seen in any other domain. Well, perfect exam ' was the creation of the atomic bomb. I mean look at seventy years from the creation of the atomic bomb today, which is literally a blip in human history, just a tiny little blink of an eye. And then the United States emerges as the greatest superpower, the world's ever known, and that's going to be directly attributed to those bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mean that from there on that's, where everything takes off. When you look at human history, if you look at us from a thousand years from now, it's very likely that they look at that moment and they go. This is the Amer agents of the American Empire, but this is so much bigger than that, because the bombs, the power,

The bomb was just just the implicit threat that you might use them. If you get pissed off right, but you can't do anything with the bombs here. We're talking about the resource that does everything were talking about, intelligence were talking about were talking about the cancer. We're talking about the best virtual reality, entertainment we're talking about that. The everything everything that were a human being. It would be once you do. You're talking about general human intelligence and beyond you're talking about now having access to suddenly having access to the smartest people who have ever lived, who never sleep, who never get tired? Who never get distracted 'cause now machines and the smartest. Who have never lived right, people who or one thousand times smarter than those people and getting smarter every hour right and what are they going to do for you when they're your slaves right, because there

Talking about sure you can get the I have to feed these people right. It is working for you just about how powerful would use the be if you had ten one thousand of the smartest people in the world working for you full time. They don't have to be fed, they never get disgruntled, they don't need contracts and they just I to do whatever Joe Rogan wants to do and get done, and you just flip a switch and that's your company right That's some version of that's going to happen. The question is: is it going to happen in a way that where we get this massive, location in wealth inequality where all of a sudden someone's got a company and products the business model which obviates thirty. End of the american workforce in over the span of three months or you have some some political. And and economic and ethical context in which

We start sharing the wealth with everyone, and this is this again is the best case scenario. This is when we don't destroy ourselves, inadvertently bye, bye and something that's hostile to our interests, Daniel terrified yeah, no, this is this is what hang out with SAM to? I know, yeah, just listen, so I spot we get too high spot. We get a pitcher of margaritas. We watch this whole thing, but we're not going to make it any way. None of this room is going to live forever when I hang out with SAM, usually his wife's there. So it's like with the conversation is a little leopard elliptic yeah yeah. Well, she keeps me grounded she is actually awesome because she's there she's like just tooling on him, and he giggles and stuff, like that. It's like a completely different sound than the guy who's under it like being in on. Take her here and telling about how we're all going to die from AI yeah she's. She keeps me honest, but uhm the truth is it's not. I mean I'm, I'm cautiously what this is

there's no way to stop. I mean there's no, there's no brake to pull right. So it's like this is the inevitability. You were describing before yeah we're moving toward this thing, because intelligence is the best thing in the world. I'll is, the thing that allows us to solve every problem we have or don't know we have. We discovered what continually discovering new problem. And the question is: what are we going to do? There's some global pandemic arrives and the challenges. Do you fine? vaccine for this thing or not right. Only intelligence solves that problem. For us we either either have the data and we can interpret it. We have to get that we have to design, the experiments to get the data and it's so it's there. Question of us deciding well we've got we're going to stick with the intelligence. We've gotten. I mean we're just we're not going to do that. We can. We can, if there's People are working on it, it's exactly right, because it's just too much power, even if even if we did

I did that as a an american policy. You know what we were not going to that China and North Korea and Singapore in IRAN and Israel and all these other countries do it for us so find hot spot right above Denver big bucket of margaritas warm or the meditation that exist this helped. Well. That's definitely will help you While human beings are real thing. Yes, although I wonder if you know the getting enough, people meditating, might improve the quality of what for created in the AI community. Other words, if you have people who are a little bit more sane as a consequence of meditation than be the people designing these products that the rather these products, the right word this stuff, then somehow the stuff is better

I think it's especially relevant for the other side of that which is when you in the term. We clearly have a a an employment problem when, when they were there to jobs that will go away that are coming back, and this is a perennial problem. People need to find meaning in life, but but it we've always had with it- hasn't been such a pressing problem for thousands of years, because this, always been so much to do just to survive right now. What we're going to be in the ideal case we'll get to a place where there's much less. That has to be done, because we have machines that do it and we have. We have seen the wisdom of mitigating wealth inequality to some acceptable level wheresoever. So all all boats begin to rise with this tied to some degree I see, whether it's universal basic income or something. So we have some mechanism to spread the wealth around, but then there's the

question of what do you do with your life? Yeah yeah? So what do you think people will do that with that's the easiest one is up, but it's not so easy, because people what people are confused those people need to get their shit together. I mean that's, given someone free time but find a hobby man. I mean there's a lot of stuff to do. If you told me that I never had to work again, we just have to find things to do all day and all my food and everything will be taken. Care of that would be the easiest choice that if ever made in my life, I would just pursue thing We just learn how to speak a language. I learn how to play instrumented practice archery more. I do it's more. I don't that seems to me so Riddick. That seems to me that could be solved really enough. I feel the exact same way, but I think that the I'm not convinced I feel I could feel endless swaths of free time with uh number of things that I'm interested in including button to do meditation or just hanging out my two year old, however, I'm not sure that the vast

Majority of humans are like that. They just need guidance. That seems to be the easiest thing to solve the just. Let him know go, find something fun to do. Can start running up hills, Man Cohen, take up frisbee golf just did to do just to ship to do. Well, I think a lot of shit to do my concern. Is more and more it will it take the form of being merely entertained so just will plug into some VR last scene of Wally you know, I never saw the movie Wally. I never want to go. You should maybe pull it pull this up, but there in in Wally there, it's a dystopian future, where everybody's riding around in those little jazzy mobile all wheel chairs that people sit sit in Disneyland, yes and they're. Also, there they've got huge buckets of soda and like Turkey, legs and and draped it like kind of hooked. Over the back of the

yeah of their motorized vehicle is a monitor at the front which is entertaining them the just obese and stained and immobile or mobile, but not actually ambulatory. It's Disneyland! ward at what's happened in it in our lifetime that, with the smartphone has made it virtually impossible to be bored like a book, I'm used to be a thing like you have you have you be certain that the waiting room of a dog doctor right and if they have crap the magazines and then sitting there. So if you didn't know how to meditate, you had to confront this sense of I'm bored right now what you just got. One thing you discover when you learn how to meditate, as boredom is just an inability to pay attention to anything and you pay attention. Once you learn to pay attention to anything, even something seemingly boring as your breath. It suddenly becomes incredibly interesting, so focused attention is intrinsically pleasure.

But boredom is the state of of come scattered attention. Looking for something that's worth paying attention to, and yet now with technology you're never going to be bored again and I've got. I have at least ten years worth of reading on my phone right, so it's like if I'm standing in line, but I'm constantly pulling this. Out as a bath? Well, it's a. I is potentially a bad thing because you for images to take this example of of you know one interesting insight. You get when you learn to meditate, it's incredibly powerful to cut through the illusion of boredom mean to realize boredom is is not is not something you can become interested in the feeling of boredom in the moment you do it bites its own tail and disappears, and it's just like like it's

there is no such thing as boredom when you're paying close attention to your experience, I think the bad thing about the hyper stimulation that we get through our phone and and all of technology is that we have lost the ability to just sit back and for lack of a less cliche term be and were you we were just constantly stimulated, and that means we have trouble paying attention when we're holding our kids and our lap and reading him or her a book or we find ourselves without our technology. For a moment there was a recent study that asked people Would you rather be alone with your thoughts or get electric shocks and a lot of people took the electric max- and I think that is a fundamental problem in terms of not being able to get in touch with the raw, an kind of power. Although obvious fact that you're alive and and that you exist right but

don't you think those people are idiots, I mean you don't want to lecture shock, you don't want. I won't take a lecture. Shocking, not gonna, take an electric shock, a good is it we were talking about his children is the do not check but James on the ball. I don't want those classes either you, but you know I'm saying he doesn't use the glasses. He just explores it because it's fascinating but but you know what I'm talking about. I mean we're not talking about rational people were talking bout, lowest common denominator, people that were taken electric shot. You would take an electric shock to just do. This is a study of it's not just picking idiots who are they asking and how how they phrasing the question, but it also doesn't have to be conscious. So, for instance, we willingly grant our attention to things which retrospectively we can judge, produce more less, nothing but pain for I was like. Well, I mean the I american I'm continually thinking about this. Re thinking about this with respect to social media like so when I like what comes to

fact, on my mind of looking at my twitter at mentions, I wondered that when you were asking people what kind of questions is it yeah, we should ask what what was on this podcast. Yes, sometimes is incredibly useful, but I was thinking I wouldn't do it. Thank you. So, five to the Green frog area, but I met had both kinds of experience. I I've I've had people send me articles that I would have never found otherwise you're fascinating super useful and it's just a it's like this is the perfect use of this technology and then again, then I and then I get this river of green frogs and and weirdness, but the so, but that to the previous point I pay attention to something for long stretches of time, rather than doing something I know is good for me with my attention. I kind of spin the roulette wheel with with twitter, and rather often there's just this kind of toxic undercurrent of

of mental activity that it produces in Maine that mean make me feel any doesn't equip me to do anything better in my life doesn't make me feel any better about myself or other people, and if, if it has any net effect, it's it's? Basically, does and Isles dials that I can just of dimly conceive of in my mind and turn all a little bit tored the negative. I feel worse about myself a little bit worse about my career. A little bit worse about people will go a little bit worse about the future. Little bit about the fact that I would just was doing this when I could have been playing with my kid or or writing or thinking productive thoughts, meditating or doing anything that I told you that you still do this you, I yeah. I still, I don't know, Stan Jagger Twitter compulsion, yeah, you argue with people yeah. I found that fascinating, not likely I go. If I go for I go for weeks without arguing that well, but also you argue with people you podcast well yeah, but that right that

that's different. I don't know, but I mean it's just on the podcast. You also be talking about people you're, arguing with on Twitter or so the arguing is a of your what I get trolled a lot yeah twitter yeah, I get troll I mean you have guests, you have gas, come on your podcast and savage, on the podcast and then troll me endlessly on twitter and yeah Abby Martin was. She was just trust me. She said you know she she hates me, but she- I don't know you. I haven't noticed her trolling me, but no you, if you're, not in a room with her you everybody would calm down. She just had 'cause, there's people that have radical misconceptions of who you yeah, I'm sure you heard the Josh Steps, Patton Oswalt thing I don't, don't don't listen to it. Ok, ok, who went off the rails off the rails, like hang out like Hannibal style. Are you thinking of the anti can lower? Yes, I okay, I'm sorry yeah, I'm so sorry, that's good! So so how do I connect an airprint,

Martin very reasonable, as is indeed for the most most of the time, so this is kind of crazy, discovered this very late. I did so I kept seeing this guy didn't know who he was. I kept seeing him in my Twitter feed Andy Kindler and again learn. Then I realized wait a minute. He is actually, he seems to be making some established he seems to be friends. With people who I really respect, who, No, like you know, like I mean Sarah Silverman, who I but I don't know personally and we've we've. You know, communicate all about on twitter but psych. I I'm just nothing but pure fan of of Serra. Jim Gaffigan, another big comics. So I totally respect I don't know how close he is with these people, but he basically He has endless enerji for vilifying me as a racist and as a big. It right he's just he's a madman and I disc so I did a search of his twitter feed and he's got hundreds and hundreds of tweets. Where he's he's going after me in the most retail way, Sir Francis, like I, I I tweeted out

anyone recommend five hundred seat halls in all these cities, and I think your friend Duncan Trussell, yours, okay, so Duncan wrote back, saying: oh yeah dm I've got a great place in Boston or something and then Andy Killer, jumped into that thread talking to Dunkin saying: don't help Duncan he's a bigot right so like he's like this, is the and just got endless energy for this, and then I looked at, you know what he was doing and he had been doing it for years- and I wasn't aware of it just to you just to me and Bill Maher Hasco more, but then you've got another guy on his podcast Uhm Hunter That's her head on once, okay, so he was on here and I actually had to go back and watch what he said here, because I've been given so much of this on twitter- and I mean is incredibly common people are tweeting at me saying. Why won't you debate hunter? Is it? Is it Matt's, right yeah. Why don't you mass! I went back and looked at what he said here. You know half of it.

We didn't make any sense, but his attacks on on Twitter are the most juvenile. It's like the idea that he thinks this is a way he's going to establish a conversation with me by sending me two and then sending me four hundred, which say you're scared to debate me right, it's credit mean, I think crazy behavior I don't know very, very, very smart guy, but taking a terrible, socially retarded approach to stablishing debate and I've contacted Brian Callen about this and Bryan Callen contacted Hunter about. This is like what the fuck you doing. And continues to do. It is that crazy behavior. He said he wouldn't do it anymore and then he did it more every time. I look, I see him somewhere in there, but then there's this guy MIKE Cernovich, who who's actually has a x on the real world, I mean the bank sort of h it. He said twitter troll

again, one of these other guys who's challenged me to debate him, and you know I mean there's no, there's absolutely no possibility profitable need to spend less time on Twitter, yeah, listen, but sort of it's just was just on sixty minutes and he's like he's in the world and he's affecting people's perception of your psyche. Oh yeah well alright? Yes, so they could come back. It's not yeah! It's not it's! Not the ninth set of ten. Looking just makes me think. Uh, I miss an illusion because if you met most of these people, if you if they came up to a conference or in a you know a book signing or so you know it after a gig of yours, and and you thought you had more information about them? You saw all of you know all crazy. All of the crazy coming out. You would say I don't have to there's no reason to pay attention to what this guy is saying, whereas on twitter, every thing is, has the same stature so, whether it's you know Washington, Post columnist, who's tweeting at me, or some

some guy like Hunter who I had no idea who he is, but he's telling me I've got something wrong everything. Same stature and you just there's. No signal to noise sense of what you know. Well. First of all, you fuckedup 'cause. You talked about them both candy man five times and now you got a problem. He talked about him now. This is this the first time I've ever mention the amount, but I'm going to talk to you for that. I I I'm I'm I'm bringing it to you because you what you want, but you create it was it was his. It was his podcast with you. They kick this whole thing. I didn't think that Hunter was gonna. Do that, and I know for a fact, the hunters actually a fan of yours. I think one hundred trying to get a great way of showing it. I don't think it's a smart way. I think what what he's trying to do, and he when I was trying to hold the the fire and get some sort of a logical definition? of what you do Wrong

you really didn't have anything but his wife, but he thinks he does and he, but did he when I talk to him about it? No, no that s and half of what he said about Dawkins in me was totally wrong. And what he said about the relevant biology was wrong and he's just he's not. He doesn't have his shit together, but he thinks he does and there's this, there's a there's, a level of of air and and civility and just kind of a lack of charity in interacting with other people's views, which is now kind of and re branded on the internet as just Justamere can can do chutzpah right and it's like it's. It's given us Trump right, so you've got a trump. Is the ultimate example he's, like the cartoon version of you know a person who doesn't know anything relevant to the enterprise. Doesn't show any aptitude

our civilly engaging with diff is opinion, and this thing gets be no amplified to the to the of greatest prominence now in human history. Everyone's on social media or many people on social media are playing the same game. Ann You know, Mr Images, another another, just malignant exam people of this, where you have someone who's got a fairly large following it's, not as big as yours, but it's you it's. It's very engaged following this whole trump phenomenon has has only that they that, if a small percentage of of one's audience can have like a hundred times the energy of the rest of your life I, whenever I went against trumpet on my podcaster and is to still the case the the level of of pain it causes in CA in the the sort of the feedback. Space is completely out of proportion to the numbers of people who

or who are you know on that side of the argument and it's so it's incredibly energy, but it's just this weird style of self promotion where he all you do is that you brag about yourself, you say you're, the best you're and and you you're you're someone who has abs. Lee no basis to back up those claims and yet an audience thrills to that level of of arrogance and an empty boast, its its prince bizarre, but what the there's, a big issue I think online, where people find like minded people and then We developed these communities where they just support each other and they they just have these these gigantic groups people may not even necessarily gigantic but groups of people that find any subject like for me. You know what it is flat earth right,

I get trolled by people all day, the claim I'm a sell out because I don't believe the earth is flat. This is real, but but don't you think, there's a there's a. I think this You know it you're describing is both has really serious negative consequences, but also has some beauty on the same but by the same token, you've got parents all over the world have got children with rare disease, but they can connect on the internet and bond over that and share tips and casual itself, so sure. So it is. It's actually they're both outgrowths of the same kind of phenomenon, but he can be a. We see the the even really difficult consequences of this in our politics right now, it's better! It's better! I think we're talking about two different things. You think so I'm talking about confirmation bias, I'm talking about a bunch of people to get together and say. Obviously, I'm woke in the earth is flat and pay attention as an archaeology of all. Yes, it but they're different things: the groups of people that will far

and you know, communities where maybe your child has autism and there's some sort of an issue that can be made with diet and parents have had. You know some success with that, and they could, you know, give you some enlightening and for nation and you can communicate with each other and that's nice. It's beautiful name, some of the hashtags that people use that they've. They find search through it's great, but you know that these little communities that bond that did not those Those ideas that there's no confirmation bias in those ideas, but there's confirmation bias in the idea that Trump is the man. His confirmation bias in the idea that the earth is flat. You know and if you just huddle in those little communities and just bark the same noises that everybody else barks there's sort of sense of community. In that too,

I know people love that feeling of being a part of a team, even as the stupid team of green frogs, and you don't have a lot of it. You don't have to listen other people's views and now you get deeply deeply entrance. I think we're seeing we're seeing this all through our politics and media right now. Well, you also see when you go to those people's pages, which I do often I don't engage with people in a negative way online. Very often, very, very rarely do not look at your ad mentions. Are you I do a little better. You know what man I just like to just go on about my day, yeah I've. I've found that the negative consequences that you're discussing I'm I or I I mean I I rare I mean it's rare- then I go down the rabbit hole I go for days without looking at that mentions. I mean it's more that if I publish something, if I ask, for I want to see the feedback. It's not necessarily useful, there's anything wrong, I mean just as your friend I mean. I feel like there's nothing wrong with that. Look at my app mentions, but you which in a very different space I you're not pushing

commercial stuff out there. Definitely not. Definitely not so I agree. I stay now this man, I'm sorry I was just more worried about you again. Your psyche like right now, since the eyes feel like you need to a little bit of a middle ground. Here I stay off line after you have sees for the most part. That's when I get the most crazy. So if there's any sort of a controversial decision, but I think sizing you or something you said, or they get freaking mad at my commentary, they'll just disagree with who I thought one or and then there's fucking vicious about I'm just like just yell just yelling your own. Do you want to see any of that? There's too many people you're dealing with millions and millions of people in who knows how many of them are rational. When you're dealing with it, you know, there's a a bit that I had one of my specials, where I was talking about the number of people that are stupid in the world like if you get a room full of one hundred people, the idea that one person is in a complete fucking idiot

course you're being very charitable being in one. But if you do that, we're talking about three hundred million people in the states, plus that's three million idiots. So if you have three one million fucking idiots and all your ad mentions. If you look at your ad mentions- and three million comments are saying, sucking moron and they just Many people, the numbers. Are there not manageable, the as human beings, we interact with their online or not manageable, so any I am anything gets negative or insulting, and I just check out this next next. Next, I don't pay attention because you can't, but if I up and I know I fuckedup, I think one of the most important things that I do is I admit that I thought yeah and I about it, and I apologize- and I say, look I'm human mistake, sorry and then step away, chaos and sue in the comments about other people. Call you a shill in or whatever, let all that happen, but don't let it in

like when you're leading in hand, and then you still want to, and you have to bring up. You know Hunter and all these other people and that's the that's the you get eleven a two. No, no, no, I mean no and that perhaps they gave a false impression of of how, under my skin, this has gotten just the fact he talked about it all those too much. Well, no, but I I think it's of huge consequence. I think it's given us trop this Where is that this? This way at the for the for the fact that this style of communication is attractive to so many people. The fact that you can the bluff and bluster and empty EAST and lies with it being caught in lies without consequence right. The fact that people never admit mistakes. I mean the the the the idea of what you just described to you. You do and which I do you know you make a make you want to hear about it, you want to correct it as quickly as possible, right that is TIM. This is what we're seeing now in this space made. When has Trump admitted a mistake, but is

the difference being that neither you nor I have any desire to control anything like I don't, want to be the leader of anything. Well, no, but you want effective good ideas to win sure you want the truth to win. You want the truth to propagate, want facts to propagate. You want to be able to correct errors, whether your own or others, especially when they're consequential, and I I think that we need a. We need, a common ethic where a has real consequences me with. So many people try trying to figure out. What's the antidote to fake news well so one antidote is to can't line has to be devastating for Yorker ear right, like it hit police. Likely journalistically academically as a pub intellectual mean to be caught in a whopping lie without will choir at minimum

I'm serious atonement and historically it has been a little and it is. We have reasons and many years we have slipped those rails of just to to a degree that I've never thought possible. We're going light, speed right into the woods yeah yeah. I mean we're talking about. People have figured out how to just to use, disk S, T s extra fuel, I mean it's like it's like. You know the the the the Bush it whatever that the the nitrous oxide boost in those hacky cars right like we can use this stuff right and the getting the way you behave when you get caught just which is to say just go your I'll just read down to your credibility in your area among your tribes, right think of this guy so powerful. He he he he he sold fully doesn't give a shit. What people think that he can be catch him in a lie. Watch just watch how he out out of it, but that's

So what what what im? But when I was bringing up these guys like service, I mean this. This is actually I'd match. I trolled sir I'd, I decided to troll sort of it one day and I thought I thought it was hilarious and I it was just nothing but fun so with that with that it was only talk about that but but the thing that bothers me is that this has real political consequences, and I you know, do you think of as a bullet? This is a time period where we're in this sort of adolescent stage of communication online, where you can and get away with, saying things that are dishonest and that there might be some sort of a way to mitigate that in the future. There might be some. I don't think we should. Act like dishonesty and bluff and bluster to use a phrase used before is started some out new to the human repertoire. I get that the acceptance of it seems to be the I think, we're in a period where that is true and I think it is aided in May and abetted by technology and the social network. I agree with your diagnosis on many levels, but I you know is having it interesting.

Conversation with a guy that you introduced me to Joseph Goldstein, who is uh uh eminent meditation teachers become my meditation teacher old friend Samson. He was set. We're talking about the current political situation, use the phrase that I like when I was asked him what he thought about it. He said I'm kind of sliding to geological time, and I think that actually make some sets not to say that what is the mean, meaning that is viewing it from a or I'm widening the lens. To look at the broad scope, of human history? To see that you know overtime time we've got these ups and downs, he's gay to the top of the mountain near Denver with a big bucket of margarita. That's exactly right! That's exactly right slot in their slotting in just look down with binoculars watch the bombs go off how to get water out the ground get solar, our generator and make good margaritas yeah I mean it's

Doesn't seem to me that this is sustainable. It feels like This is just going to be some spectacular moment in history where people were Rowrah Nixon and now they look back on my Nixon, was a fucking liar and a buffoon I mean, but take this. This is the point. I've before I don't think it's original with many other people have made it. But my claim is that If Trump were one slash as bad, he would appear much worse because, like everything he does now, is appearing against a background. So many lies and so much craziness that you can bear even wait, its value yeah, I mean just so I just visible one things. I I find useful about twitter because I've I follow some very interesting people and so that an apple bomb, the the Washington Post columnist. It was just awesome on twitter everyone to follow her. She just keeps half trump with with her own points and and other stuff that she finds, and she just pointed out that

Did anyone notice that Trump Trump threat and a war with N Korea. Two days ago, it was in the financial Times and yet no one can talk about it, because no one believes him right like it's like it's like. We have a president whose speech has now become hum so denuded of truth value, right, perceived truth value that he can say you know if China doesn't handle N Korea we're going to and no one even feels like they have to ask a follow up question on that topic because it just everyone assumes as an empty bluff. I mean, I just imagined it just step back into the previous presidency. If Obama had said if- China doesn't handle North Korea. We will write that would be top of the fold. Is all we're talking about today right. This is just

comes out of a blizzard of of inanity and craziness that that that that that you know he's he's he's going after Meryl Streep is his line about Obama, wire tapping him now, he's he's, threatening war with North Korea and nobody knows what to talk about so it's like the The consequence of this is we have a president who Not only can he not be trusted to tell the truth he can be did to lie whenever he thinks it suits his purpose. And now so, the state of mind that everyone, including the press in listening to him, is just to take, the potentially the most serious things in the world not seriously and the the serious things in the world, like you know, creepy or what he thinks of her acting in that become that dominates a whole new cycle. It's very upside down? It seems to me to be quite new, as opposed to lies or perennial, but

I feel like we're in a very different space now, with with the consequences of, misinformation and we certainly are. Do you think that they're connected to what we're talking about before we said the people would rather be electrocuted tend to be alone, with their thoughts that we have gotten to This weird place with our society with our civilization, where we've made. Things so easy and may. People so soft, so dependent upon technology We've slotted out these paths, these predetermined patterns of behavior to people for people to follow where they can just sort of into a philosophy whether it's uh right wing one or a left wing one with very little room for personal thought at all. Very little room for objective reasoning, who sort of made it easy. We baby them. I do think that it's imperative, if you want to be a good citizen, to have a varied media diet, you not going to have a clear view of the world. If all

you're reading it well he's already learned to e r eat more than your time right. You know, I think you mean nothing, gets a New York Times or bright part, but I think you need to read many things and follow many different sorts of people on Twitter, not just because you want to troll them, because you actually want to listen to what they have to say and take its seriously with the New York Times really up with a really fuckedup is where they say that they're going to after the election there, going to rededicate themselves to reporting the truth and read like what. Why did you say that, like I wish I was there, I wish I was in the office. Why it just sends the wrong message. We weren't into true yeah right right. Well, it says: they're, biased, yeah, they've, locked up, I mean like what what happened I treat as they were, but as CNN you're right that you're wrong is it the the enemy is, is yeah was so grotesque in this case that it was impossible to not have been. Test seemed an abdication of responsibility, and I feel it myself, like people

I say against Trump from a Trump person sounds like mere partisan bias. There's I mean I've got zero no connection to the Democratic Party or two I mean it's like: there's no partisan bias and everything one hundred percent of what I want to say about Trump. Does not apply to some other Republican who, who is just a stands for things that I don't mean a policies I might not like It's completely completely unique circumstance and uh yeah, so I mean yeah. It's true that you want to read the New York Times for the longest time it was. It was reading like just the entire thing, had become the the opinion page on that the Huffington posters around it yeah, I just feel like at this stage of our our society? There's real consequences to the infant?

tile ization, if that's actually a word of human beings in our culture, we've made it very easy to just go to work and just get home watch television and just not pay attention to anything and not read anything and not really think and then be manipulated, mean I think it's it's incredibly easy to manipulate people, especially people that are aware that they don't have a varied media diet, people that are aware that they don't have a real sense of the way there seems daunting to try to in the consideration like what what involved in foreign policy. What is involved in dealing with Russia? What you, what is involved? How do you negotiate with North Korea? It's too much put in the hands of the strong man. I think this is true on both sides of the spectrum, though, because we've got folks uh who slot into just a media diet where they're just hearing things on the left and they're not they're, not curious a or

I guess just did not curious about enough to hear things from a different perspective and less it's just, right wing political comes on right, a beat him up, so I I I I really do think and I think it put places an increase this is going to be self serving argument, but I do think it it a place is increasing, Sun media outlets, like the one for which I work too. Will at really vigilant about being seen as fair arbiters or effect yeah. I mean, I think the consequences have never been greater for that. That's the reason that so many people on the right, so many trump supporters, fear feel there right is because it has been proven that the media was biased. That they did get it all wrong. They were absolutely wrong when it came to who was going to win. I mean how often in post had some ridiculous thing, where

was the night of the election. They said that Hillary had like a ninety eight percent, chance of winning or something crazy like that. Was it yeah? There were some polls that were bad, but the the poll like that I xmm with because I I I sent out a tweet which said, like your bye, bye, Donald or something like that. You know if you know about the other day, but I it when I did that and that wasn't a prediction in the the the polls that I was going by the most people going by that point. It was it was like eighty twenty you know, or at best seventy five, twenty five that she was going to win. Now. That's not I mean we've you roll dice for a few minutes. You realized twenty percent. Chance comes up a lot right, so I guess that's not infinitesimal odds plus Florida yet, but so, but well, you should to tell a story about what it was like to anchor the broadcast yeah? So I was anchoring the ABC News, digital coverage, that night and you know they they give you the exit polling, we're not supposed to report it publicly, but the egg,

pulling that we were seeing before we went on the air late in the day really made, it seem like it's going to be a Clinton landslide. You know you have all these folks who say: look at the crest fallen faces of the journalists, because they're so upset that Trump one. Certainly, that was not the case for the folks on my set. It was that it was that we didn't see it coming. Weren't prepared for it thing that we're seeing in terms of the math made it look like this was in victory, a shoe in it was just about just tying a ribbon around it. So in the night, became long. It was just confusion about what was going on. How do they get it so wrong? You know it. Yeah. I think it actually goes back to what SAM was saying before that Think when you see numbers like seventy percent odds, that Clinton is going eighty percent Isaac Clinton's Clinton going to win that that she's definitely going to win, but there's room there for Trump to lot of room, yeah lot of room there. Twenty percent comes up all the time. It's russian roulette, yeah, yeah, mister bills.

It's russian roulette. Those are bad odds, you're not going to take that, and I put one bullet single bullet in this file cabinets in it. Yeah now that deer hunter. It's really good. I do it's gonna get shot it. I don't think so. It's not so much about blaming the polls as it was blaming the overall tenor of the coverage which may it seemed like Clinton was inevitable, yeah yeah, just was. It was so shocking that say that's ahead. I think that we can and should take yeah. We definitely you know, I think we we weren't, giving the twenty or thirty percent chance a serious enough look what is your thought? As being someone who covers these things, what is your about the electoral college. Do you think that that's an antiquated idea and then it's kind of a stab lish back when you really needed representative 'cause. Otherwise you have to get on the fucking horse and ride.

The Washington it would take six months. I can see it. Do you to make very powerful arguments that it's a deeply problematic institution. I can see those that I can see the power of those arguments for sure there are people who are you to make similar arguments about the United States Senate yeah. There was a piece that ran in the New York Times uh in their Sunday. We can review not long after election, making the case that the angriest people in America actually should be those who live on the coast, because it's taxation without representation that we that the people live in the coaster paying more in taxes, but they have less representation actually in Washington, again decide that it's not research that I've done, but it's an interesting idea. Have you ever seen anybody present any sort of a logical argument that there really shouldn't be a president anymore, that the id of having one alpha champ run. This whole thing will seems pretty

hey just not sure that he runs the whole thing? Please tell a lot of info. He has an enormous amount of influence, but but we're seeing down- I have seen right now the limits of presidential he couldn't get the health care bill that they that didn't even make it wasn't even close to what he promised on the in some ways, wasn't even close to what he promised on the campaign trail. In other words, he couldn't get the bill that he wanted and then he could get that past right now he's looking at having to watch his party employee, the nuclear, in order to get his Supreme Court nominee a seated. So I I don't know. Did I think that they're, the founders designed in many ways are really ingenious system and we put a lot of attention on the because it's one person who get who's in our tv screens or our phones all the time, but

not sure how much power is vested in that person know when it comes to foreign policy, it's a different kettle of fish. Well in after the EPA has been sort of hobbled. I mean what they done with the environmental protection agency standards, especially when it regards to emissions he's rolled back emission standards. I mean there's any thing that we should be concerned about it's the air that we breathe and we are moving in a direction. We are clearly moving in a direction to get away from things like coal and he's going the opposite way, not only that, but What I've heard is that that's not even going to be effective because most places, have moved away from cold to the point where restarting coal production is it's not even going to recharge the economy in the way that would make it a viable option in the first place. The issue of climate change is just

I'll say as a member of the media, an area where I feel I'm just speaking for myself really one of our biggest failures, and I don't think history is going to judge us kindly and I get up I'll put the put the blame on myself. It's become it's a hard story to get people just that interested in, especially for television, because it's a lot of sort of graph in science and you there's only so many pictures of polar bears you can show, and so I I anguish about that because I do think it's it's. There isn't a debate. Climate change is real, almost certainly caused by humans I don't think we, and for too long we fell for that in the media, where we presented it as a debate when it wasn't now. I think we're past that but I still don't think we're covering it enough in as robustly as we should well climate change.

I think, is very it's a sort of almost abstract to people, it's very difficult for them to rap their head around, especially when they look at the ice core samples and there's plenty of stuff line where you could sort of convince you. There's always been this all the temperature on the earth and in many ways that is true, but pollution is another thing I think I think actually I just walked in so I might have missed what you said there, but I think that's a crucial shift. The emphasis because there is no argument about air pollution. Consequences, its own desirability mail. You don't want particulates in your lungs that that you don't need to have their and the idea that week the image Seaview could completely justify a green icon, I on that basis alone. Maybe it just imagine if we had no pollution. From the exhaust of all the cars out there, and there was no coal fired power plants with

had solar and wind and- and you know, safe nuclear technology powering the grid. It'll be fantastic from just a purer meet forget what the hell just I mean the obviously, cancer is lung cancer and an cardiovascular disease is a huge issue there, but just aesthetically, it's so desirable. I mean there's no argument against it and that's why I feel like people don't make that connection very much. Because climate change is slow moving. You know when could be way out in the future before but pollution isn't I don't know I know, but pollution is a much less controversial than climate Well, that's why this coal thing so disturbing yeah. Igniting this production of coal. Yeah, it's unbelievable. It's ridiculous. I mean I guess I have questions about whether it's even going to happen. In other words, you can roll it back, but the

full industry? There are many many. There are many factors to their decision. Making about, for example, will if they go and do the mining is is what they mind mine going to actually even be consumed. So right you know, and I I think that, even though they're doing some pretty radical make is pretty radical noises at the EPA, I'm not sure how far Pruitt can can make some of this stuff, given the existing body of law case law that has four and around Obama's decisions. So I think that you know it's a catchy gets pretty it more complicated the closer you look at it from what I can tell, and I won't claim to have studied it too too closely but it seems to get more complicated. The more you look at it. The headlines may be scarier. I guess is my point. Well, it's pretty clear those emission standards rolling commission standard, sends a very clear message that it's ok to pollute the air. I mean we we were moving in a direction of going towards electric cars going towards cars.

Will the environment less. I mean even cars that you gas. You know for a Porsche Porsche. Has a nine hundred and eleven turbo and the stand? Words of emissions are so strong. What they've developed is a car that you drive it through la the exam it comes out, is cleaner than the air. It sucks in hum imagine that so you driving through it's an air filter. Yeah literally, is bad air filter, but it can be done very expensive here, filming it can be done. I mean that's mean and we can move further. Further away me. Obviously, the problem with that is it's taking in polluted air you know that's the issue in the first place, so it's not clean, you don't want to breathe the exhaustive, a Porche, but what they've done is managed to make something so efficient that it actually does emit clean air coming out of it or cleaner than the polluted air. That is sucking in now, if these protection agency standards keep getting rolled back mean we're going to go back to

I mean I don't know how far the rolling it back but look. What you said is is so clear. There's no there's nothing good about polluting the air I mean it's, what we need to breathe and there's options, the idea that business should take precedent over the actual environment that we need, need to sustain ourselves. So, let's not forget, there are real human beings in coal country who have generations of done have spent generations working in this industry, take great pride in it, and we've got to think about what we do, but it's only. The numbers here are surprising and also a little reported. It's only seventy five thousand coal jobs were talking about in the country and there's something like five hundred thousand clean. Jobs. Just in California alone I mean the numbers are completely out of one. No, I I think I think the the clean tech to industry offers an enormous amount of promise, but seventy five thousand families is not nothing and when

and give the money right. I don't want to find out it only wanna work. This goes to the question of meaning and yeah yeah. That's what I'm gonna do is what works get with the precipice forgetting to is every one virtually everyone is going to be in the position of these coal miners want what RON were to we were talking about and that this that's a good thing. That's the thing that said that that that's that you know why and they figure out that they just want to learn new languages and spend more time with their kids and play frisbee and an have fun We need a new ethic that and politics that decouples a person- claim on existence from doing If it'll work that someone will pay you for it, because a lot of that work is going well, could I mean we could view it as an opportunity, and it is actually something that it does dovetail with this hobby horse that you and I have been on for awhile, about about kind of about the power of meta patient and what it can do

the human mind in the way you view the world in your role in it for sure well thoughts on universal basic income because bring bring it back to that with this rise of the machines. If we do have things automated, I mean some ridiculous number of people make their living driving cars and driving trucks knowing that when those jobs are gone. I think it's millions of people right yeah. I know it and it's at the of his name in the states. It's the most common job for white men. I think I think something like like Nine million white men are driving trucks and cars, and the problem with that is most people like fun white men. What I meant by this is this is from base yeah. No, it's These. I think so basically they're real is to worry that it's not a perfect solution because you do want you want to.

Anna. The things you want to incentivize by seether need to just understand the consequences of of any system you put in place, but there's just no question that in the viewed as an opportunity? This is this is the greatest opportunity in human history we're talking about canceling the need for dangerous, boring, repetitive work and freeing up humanity to do interesting, creative, fun things now. How could that be bad? Well, Give us a little time and I'll show you how we can make it bad, but it and it'll it'll be bad if it leads to just extract very wealth inequality that we have it. We don't have. Political or ethical will to to fix, and because, if we have a culture of people, you think I don't want any handouts. Not surely don't want my neighbor to get in and out, so I don't want to pay any taxes so that he get he can be a.

The bomb. If that's the, if we have this, You know hangover from from Calvinism. You know that makes it impossible to talk creatively and reasonably about what has changed yeah they could be a very painful bottleneck. We have to pass through until we get to something that is. That is much better. Or a hell of a lot worse, depending on where the technology goes, I think, at a certain point, the the wealth, inequality will be Bob easily unsustainable me. You can't have people trillionaires walking around living in com pounds it with razor wire and moving everywhere with by you by private jet, and then you know massive LE

of unemployment in a society like ours made a certain point where the richest people will realize that enough is enough. We have to spread this wealth because Otherwise, people are just going to show up at our compounds with their AR fifteens or their pitchforks, and You know that the society will will will not sustain it. Can't you keep that the has to be some level of wealth inequality that is unsustainable, that people people will not tolerate, You begin to look more and more like a banana republic until you hum a banana republic. But now we're talking about you know the or the developed world, where all the wealth is so redistribution is the endgame and that's it, but that's a toxic concept for half of the country right now, where the idea

the welfare state in India, perpetuating that and when you spreading across the board yeah, but these so yeah whatever the solution is for coal mining, we should not be hostage for the coal miners. We should not be hostage to the idea that, they need jobs so that whatever job they were doing and and are still qualified to do, that job has to continue to exist. Just no matter what no matter? What the Mental consequences, no matter what the health consequences, no matter, well, how it closes the door to good things that we want. We don't that with any that we didn't do that with you know the people who were making buggy, whips or or anything savory, yeah or yeah. I mean it's just There's no, certain point. We move on and we make progress and we don't let that progress get rolled back and when you're talking about developing tech

the that produces energy that doesn't have any of these negative effects you, whether it's global climate change or just pollution. And, of course we have to move in that direction, and the other thing that's that's crazy. Is that we're not talking honestly about how the dirty is subsidized and you have the oil people say well, so is all subsidized right? This is the you know. The is just this: a government handout. That's given us the solar industry. Well, one That's not even that you have to produce an argument. Why that's a bad thing with this is something we should want the government to do. The government needs to incentivize new. Industries, that the market can't incentivize eyes now, if their industries that are just intrinsically good and and are going to lead to the betterment of humanity but carbon,

and is massively subsidized. We we don't have I mean if, if we actually had the the the coal producers, and the and the petroleum producers pay for the consequences of of carbon and pollution. It would be, it would be much more expensive than it is right. So it's already subsidized. So we should we we need. We need a carbon tax. Clearly we need to the tax code incentivize. What we want to send what is a ton of industries in this country that you could make that argument for the corn industries, one yeah and subsidizing the corn industry. When you find out the corn and corn syrup is responsible for just huge epidemic obesity in this country and the amount of corn syrup. That's in foods, if you as a if, as a polluter, had to pay the the consequences of your all the way down the line right right, you had a common, state everyone who got

emphysema or lung cancer, because of that you were putting into the air your industry. It would be less profitable right. It might not be profitable at all and that's and we don't have. We haven't priced all of that in to to any of these things, weather but then the the chemical industry, or What is your industry? I mean we're, we're we're addicted to the use of these fossil fuels. A same over addicted to the some people are addicted to the use of cigarettes when the health consequences of those things are there they're almost peril on a lot of ways yeah well and amazingly, as you have the same, the I think you you turn me on this documentary was at merchants of doubt. Yeah, I see the same ph dis. You got like ten guys who move from into you know just toxic industry to toxic industry defending whether it's big tobacco or the fire retardant, I'm in the document, you are that's right. I interviewed a guy named Fred singer. Who was one of these people

and he's a climate change denier and there's just some. It's been awhile, but it was. There are some key moments where I was like listening listing for him all the major scientific organizations. That say the climate, which is real and that humans are major contributors to it, and he basically just refused to accept it Well those those shows where you have the three heads you and then the two experts and the all over each other and wherever it will be right back and you go to commercial. Yes, things will solve anything cool as those are those weird moments where people are yelling at each other and you can't figure out who's right or who's wrong. I'm not a big fan of that personally, and I think that it is especially if the failure to do that with climate change, because it it created the doubt it create, I doubt- and I think that was a very successful- it was very successful strategy, but but that's intent intention with what

We just said about the New York Times, because if you, if you take a position as a journalist, if you say okay, actually one side of this conversation is full of shit. Then you seem like you're, not an honest world of information. I think is different to take this position. I don't I don't the it's not controversial for me to sit here and say: if you smoke cigarettes that science strongly suggest, you have a higher odds of lung cancer same the thing with climate change, but it became politicized, so I don't feel hot. I don't you'll notice. I've stepped out of some of the discussions that you have been take place, because it's not my roles journals to come down on one side or another, but with climate change I feel absolutely comfortable saying this is the the the the vast majority of scientists believe this is real and a big big problem So I don't know what what you're talking about with the New York times- and I don't really I'm not going to step out and take a view on it. But what you? What I believe

with the times, is that they were Pro Clinton, an anti trump that's different from having a position on climate change. Well, it's not war! No because because they have a position on clay, just just take the lands. As climate change, you have one candidate who's, denying the reality of change or who's just claiming that they it might be my maturing debt Chinese, it trump, no, because it would because When Trump says climate change is a chinese hoax. You have to call him? Yes yeah, he said it's a Chinese. Yes, go to China, yeah and see those people that are walking around with gas masks run. Breed Asian okay, but that's I mean that's, that's the pollution, alright, which I think is actually much stronger because it and it does just you- can't, go to Beijing in. Say this is how we want there to be right, but and I think I think something like twelve. I think something like twenty five percent of the air pollution in Cali,

cornea on some days is coming from China. There's some amazing I could have that slightly wrong. Jamie could check that out, but please do there's some there's some extraordinary amount of air put air pollution that we get from China. That's saying I did not know that yet The way across the ocean yeah there's no wall, build that wall, but no, but at a certain point I mean there's, some there's some level of dishonesty and misinformation, is so egregious that if you're a journalist commit at all commit did to be unbiased or disinterested broker of information and a conversation you set up a conversation between you know the Spicer's of the world or or the Kellyanne Conway's who have their alternative facts.

And someone who's honestly talking about whatever it is climate change it it's very easy. You know you can't split that baby, but I don't think you have to create mock unnecessary debates around climate change. What I do think is that with the Trump administration that it is imperative for that. Journalists call out when things are said that aren't true, but that I don't think it's constructive for mainstream journalistic organizations to have an openly hostile, Anti trump attitude, pro. Somebody else attitude, because then you lead that just leads to further polarize but when you call them out, don't need, but you call him out on all the times that he said things were just absolutely not true. That feels like your anti trump. Yes, there is no question. There's no and I think that's an issue we're dealing with tonight, but I think this is a time of real.

Soul searching in my industry, because I'm I firmly believe there is a very powerful place in a functioning democracy for a press for for media that people generally view as fair. Well, it's also. It really highlights the responsibility of getting accurate and unbiased information to people, because there's not a lot of sources of that left me when you look Fox NEWS and sometimes you'll get CNN. Sometimes look at MSNBC boy, Much of this is editorialized. How much of this is opinion? You know you need unbiased facts. And you almost need it not delivered by people. You know the problem is when when people are delivering the news like I, when you talk you know there Caden Ivy League University. In their speed on that they're they speak a certain way. They act a certain way. You almost can assume that these an election

so people these well read: people are going to sort of lean, twords, one way or another. I think that there there is that issue, I I would argue and again I know this is self serving, but I still believe it that the three broadcast networks have actually fair quite well in what is a incredibly difficult environment right. So you don't count. Fox is a broadcast network. It fox news, is a cable network Fox, but they don't have like Fox broadcast- does not have a news, do right away, NBC, CBS and NBC so does broadcast, meaning traditional old school signal on the air that nobody uses anymore. Nobody uses them, but now we're heard of them within the industry as the three broadcast networks are the eighties. It is well some people, you know they put up their rabbit ears and get signal far. Does that cord cutters, extreme cord cutters, JB got was only boxes, were I get like thirty channels and its way better and it works. There's no lagging there's no bus

So you do that and then you get like Netflix for tv shows that I have sling. But when I watch a basketball game like this, the NCA basketball tournament last night, and we through the air at work old school work. Interesting. What other number nine ole collection too? Well, that was that was have you heard of it on a an evening. News broadcast has like five million. Now it's around eight or nine in a yeah So this is a really big number. Is it up? I don't you know, I don't follow all of the ticks. Uh when it comes to the number. So I can't answer that accurately, but people have been predicting the demise of network news for decades now everything. I've been at ABC News for seventeen years. I've been reading, obituaries all throughout that time. Eight million a night on each of the networks is still out. That is uh, you take number, especially in an age of complete. You know

of micro information of niche broadcast. And the internet, it's all that here, the numbers right there NBC so ABC's in the lead, ABC's, the total viewers so an ABC and NBC, and this is just one week march, 27th right around eight and then CBS is good, a six point. So it's a lot of people. It skews super. Although okay, let us look at democratic, absolutely suit, is skews very, very old. Well, it's all people, that's the majority of people over fifty four or under twenty five, but I don't think that, The case is that what it will look. As hundred when I get twenty five to fifty four, a b c. As one point, six million has been Close eight million total viewers, NBC seven hundred and eighty seven point: eight million total viewers, one point, seven million twenty five to fifty four and then CBS six point: four million total one point: three million twenty five to fifty four, it's funny like after fifty four fa q, but in the four hundred and twenty five thank you

concentrate on this one. It is what advertisers want. It's funny the vitality. Leaving now, based on the ads coming the ads the ads you run, it's like you know for catheters and and anti. He gets a laboratory right on the morning because in the morning, shows were also it's more. It's closer to four five million for ABC and NBC in a little less for CBS, the percentage of that audience that falls within the demo as we call it. Twenty five to fifty four is higher, and so the ads are kind of different. But I guess my point is that you still have a really significant number of people. If you take the things and evenings on these broadcast networks, getting their news from these places, which just gets back to the polarization, polarized media atmosphere. You were talking about before. I think in this atmosphere the adding the network's, be seen to a certain extent, to the extent possible, as above the fray actually is important for democracy.

How many is Alex Jones, get what is als junk? Yes, I think forty million a week, but they include like website, hits and their big number. So it's a skewed number. I've spent some time Youtube: yeah, yeah yeah. I know him very well. I've had one podcast and went down to US how long and therefore we spent the day at hanging around his operation. This was an, I would say in two thousand and nine feels awhile ago before the mod the third pretty big back then, but not what it is now one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine Alex Jones, and I put on George Bush senior and junior masks, and we smoke pot out of a long and then danced around the white, not the White House, the Capitol building in Texas. A stand up. Video that I did yeah. I've been friends with that guy, since ninety nine wow, yeah. I listened. I listened to your recent podcast with him, which was just under

Jill child molesters inner infiltrating our airwaves. He went deep, we got him high and drunk and he It's amazing! He went as deep as he's ever gone before. Do you find that he is different when he's not being recorded, uh yeah sort of there is there? Is this screaming and yelling. That's me and him that's him singing by the way malaysian friends with his band at the Al God, no, that he made up these lyrics song is all him. I believe he might of ad it to give us give volume on this.

That was the name of my my dvd's belly of the beast crazy, I mean he's, definitely different when he's not being recorded, but he's that guy, you know as a it's sincere. He believes all the stuff. He believes a lot of it. I mean whether it's correct or not that's different. Whether or not he believes it. I was struck. You we had I spent full day with them, and then we had dinner with them afterwards and were not recorded, and I was struck by the difference in demeanor off camera. Not the record, yeah, there's! Definitely that I mean, I think the gentleman leave it. I I don't know right. I I'm not going to. I can't I'm not and he's a showman for sure. What's really disturbing is when he gets stuff right. You know

like the World Trade Organization's a perfect example. He was one of the ones that highlighted the use of our agent provocateurs. Now what agency who, who hires these people, but what they do is they take something WTO, which is a big embarrassment, the people protesting rbtl and they hire people to turn peaceful protest into a violent protest. These people come in, they wear ski masks, they break windows and they like is fire do whatever they do, that makes it violent, and then they have the apps come in an break it up 'cause. Now it's no longer a peaceful protest, and so it got to the point where people trying to show up for work. They had wt no pins on the to line read what they had created: a no protest zone and they were in his own footage on the who's. There were telling people have to take the pin off. You can't go, this area, where you work with the WTO pin on your backpack or on your jacket, I mean that's crazy,

and he highlighted that and made in that use of agent Provoca tour's has been documented. This is a real thing and it's a real tactic that and what agency, what faction of the military would fashion the government hires these people to do that, I don't know, but it is a real thing and not know about that until Alex highlighted it on one of his one of his videos. It's been proven. It's been proven that it's real and so that alone is disturbing when you stop and think about all the different things that he's inform people that turned out were real, like operation Northwoods, when the Freedom of Information ACT came out with the operation Northwoods Document, where the joint the staff and sign this, and this is like they were really trying to implement. They were going to arm cuban friendlies and have them attack. One time Bay, they're gonna blow up a drone. Jetliner they're gonna blame it on the Cubans. Never try to use this as impetus to get us to go to war with Cuba yeah. But how do you feel about the things that he's talking about that are well?

a monster. Let's talk about that at first I mean there are things that are true: that's why it's really squirrelly but gets really like when, when you find out that there have been things like the Gulf of Tonkin Incident like all, this is many things that have happened where there have been false flags the government has conspired to lie to the american people, and people have died because of it. I think. Well, I don't a lot about Gulf of Tonkin although I know more about it than than those other examples. I think there are definitely There are cases where is in a no interpretation to say that the government lied to take even something that's closer to hand like we have weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to go into Iraq right now. It's one thing to say that People knowingly lied about that Bush and Cheney knowingly lied to the american people about that or they were misled. By people who are knowingly lying or just,

got it wrong? Yeah like it was just, it was totally plausible to everyone who was informed that he, add WMD program and they misinterpreted whatever evidence, they thought they had and they were just wrong now. So that's a spectrum I'm You know which one of those is true. I think it's probably probably the last is much closer to the truth and that explains many of these instances, but the What's so, corrosive about exam bowls of line is that and we may have one case now, this just emerging in the news that I don't know if the you may, maybe they they the store has been clarified while we've been talking, but this like this seems that Susan Rice came out at When she said she knew nothing about the unmasking of Trump Associates in in that this recent surveillance and now it seems that she is

She actually asked to have certain names on mast and so like this. Is this being seized, and again just in the last few hours as is an example of a lie right which see seems very sinister, but is, though, it equalizes the two sides here right, let's, let's say worst case scenario: Susan Rice lied about having some knowledge of this investigation. That doesn't it says something, bad about Susan Rice. It says something mean she has to deal with the consequences of that lie, but it does exonerate all of the line that Trump has done about everything under the sun right. So the so d applies here is the the moment. The moment. Miss even true even honest, airs the moment that above the news organization like yours or the New York Times commits, honest error that gets pointed to from those who want to treat

the mainstream news media is just fake news as see everything's. The same like like like, like that, you know better than then somebody who just manufacturing fake news on a laptop in his basement. So it's like a it's and flip side of that is when Alex Jones get something right. It seems to seems to make him look like a a a dig. By journalistic enterprise analogous to the New York Times or to ABC News and neither Things are true. I mean there are small lies and then there are huge lies. There are honest steaks, be committed by Lee reputable organizations that are really trying to get the for their facts straight and then there are malicious. It's just malicious, malicious propaganda outlets that are not at all trying to get their facts straight and trying to engineer everyone's produce lady and and ignorance into something that is just purely a matter of of tribal sentiment. You know and

so we lose our ability to distinguish these different projects when we say look fake news it the both sides. Do it or here's a lie here is Susan Rice is one lie that she told in the last ten years, maybe and got caught for, and we have a president who is every time he picks up. His approach is a micro or picks up his twitter. She had other problems because she had gone on. I believe, on the Sunday morning, talk shows after Benghazi, with some yeah. Talking points yes, yeah Susan look like she's itching to get caught. I mean whether this is a case of yeah. Now I think your point it's very, very important, because I think that when you have, if you have inside that lies all the time. It's imperative that the other side not lie at all yeah a line and they look. Everybody does that's why it's it's tense time for people in my line of work, because we were so much scrutiny,

Then we get it wrong. We really, you know we take a lot. He but when we get it wrong, I I think we're pretty quick to say we got it wrong. Here's, the actual, here's, the truth. No, the Donald Trump Junior said that certain of it should get a Pulitzer, exposing Susan Rice, really yeah right, yeah, best at that. That's why that's why this tries mill crazy, because it is not certain of is the fact that this, This is blend into the world wide Gilliam downturn of each thing. You just need to write him right back in it's I miss you. So we're learning from the kittens were only now discovering the consequences of this. Let's come back in five years, so if yeah we're talking about, I think that makes any sense. Well, it's but it's all very blurry- it really is very blurry. 'cause, we've never had a situation like this, where we have a president that people just don't trust to be honest if someone lied about anything in the past I mean if Donald Trump got caught having his day,

sucked in the White House. My on film, you know, look. I look. I made a mistake. He hit me with her, but nothing be nothing photoshopped. Big news is: do you just again just slightly to use Joseph Goldstein's phrase before about leading into geological time and just looking at that the broader scope of history, you know, we've had really We had periods of time where we had a media event. The muckrakers. You know where that you can be. Media outlets were didn't even pretend at times to the to not have an agenda, what times were those and there leave parts of our republic, we had uh was a Teddy Roosevelt called the journalists mukri. Is where they basically, he was saying that their job was to rake muck, to be working in in filth. And the media and american politics have been filled with instances.

American media in american politics have been filled with instances over our short history of untruths and agendas and then we have times of relative stability and then sometimes we slide back into more tumultuous times. I think maybe the pollyanna here, but I think that we, the republic, will survive given that we will add that it doesn't inexorably lead to a time where truth doesn't matter. Well, it seems to open up the door for a viable alternative seems to open up. Or for someone who comes along, who is in many ways bulletproof is a very it's open a door. I now anyone talking president somebody to run profit. Yes, I just don't think anybody.

Proof he came in semi with the exception of Joe Rogan? Well it definitely not both you don't have to be bulletproof. I mean this guy's got nothing but bullet holes in him, rice present Joe, was saying, as it opens the door to somebody who's on a strong, a strong, viable alternative like someone who is at all the time, and I think the door is open to anyone who who couldn't be present at this point, there's no one that steps forward right now I mean, is it doesn't? If you think they're waiting, I mean like who, first of all what you will see a resident there's. Never that has there ever been open atheists. They want to tell her twitter page yeah, yeah, yeah, good luck, they would hire. No, I mean, I think, they're if you're going to use a conventional political calc Well, then yeah, then an atheist to a history of psychedelic drug use. Having edge positions that alienate being massive constituencies that all of that's a deal breaker, but I could you would never have predict

did, that someone this scandalous and inept and dishonest and provably. So at every I mean he can't heal little we can't get through an hour of the day without something that would in a scandal in some previous age of the earth coming out of his his mouth. It's just it's, I think, yeah. I think what I think. There's no predicting who could be present in the future. Me it's it's weird. It's you need. Well, you need wealth and you need charisma on some level you need. You need to be able to get a tribe behind you I don't think you need any of what people thought you needed even a year ago. Well, what he's done? by circumventing the whole system and babying independently wealthy is really kind of Even that was a sham. I mean that was amazing. Is that he is like. I don't know how much money he

actually put into his campaign, but it's just not nearly what you would have what you He really only had to pretend to be that wealthy and It was incredible. What happened but, like I said, is what he achieved with very little campaign funds to hand and it's you know. I mean you incredible. It's like him or not. You have to give him credit, for an unbelievable victory that very few people saw coming. It's a popularity contest. Isn't that part of the is it mean yeah? You made a popular person, president of a popularity contest. That's what it is he will. He was running as somebody who wasn't a regular, so me also that you would, let's put in context, yeah we're, and we was coming after eight years of a democratic president who was controversial in many ways and it's always harder for somebody of the same ready to run so there are a lot of dynamics larger. Personal dynamics that were working in his favor yeah, it's just, but when we just get back to the argument about like are we

an apocalyptic times or whatever. I guess yeah. I don't know anything I, but my I think, is just as a country we've. Teen times of much worse division we had civil war. It's telling I have to go back there for a for a compelling sample. I I think this is in the 60s yeah people in the street, with the weather underground. We had them, you know we will. It was pretty tomorrow we had, we had him El Kay and are, if K assassinated, know that those righted time yeah, I mean I. What I'm worried about now is I I think, he's truly unique and I think I think the the way or becoming unmoored from kind of ordinary truth, testing in politics. I think unique. I mean the fact that we have a president who seem because there's a whole feedback mechanism, maybe trump seems to

some of his information from Infowars and from is like in for those on all the time. I don't think he pays a price for for his for his own freedom, his, but his popularity rating is, not high. Yet what, though, he's he's paying some price? But if the question is, is it going to be enough and what happens it within the next terrorist attack right? Is that so that the real fear is that If we have a rice, dog fire kind of moment right, you know in neared by him or not. I mean I'm not so paranoid. I think he's going to do it, but I just inevitable. It's inevitable something that's going to we've had it with had what it was in eighty days, a hundred days, whatever it's been of his presidency were basically Nothing has happened and it's been pure chaos right and the Work of governments not getting done. The government is barely even staffed, and this has been a period of nothing really has happened.

But imagine a nine hundred and eleven size event or something really goes off. The rails with North Korea yeah or China or Russia. It will be so I mean the pressure one. The pressure to normalize him as commander in chief will be much greater than it is now an already everyone's feeling that pressure, but to it that the the a hit hit. The ability to Clamp down on civil liberties and just use the power of the presidency in a way that it would be very difficult for uh. Our society to recover from, I think it's just I mean I think it's it's a scary moment, and I'm I mean I I so people who are drawing analogies between, him, and you know the the thirties and in Germany

I met the. I think those analogies are misleading in ways but again you just don't know how strange things could get if will with a negative stimulus to the system. What we know is. We have someone in charge. Who is a? full ignant Lee selfish, con men right? I think that is an objective fact. That's not a partisan, thing to say he is an that's his obvious about him as his hair and to have that much power in the and of somebody who is that who's who's ethical compass is that. Unreliable or reliably bad? In my view- and I I wouldn't say this of pants who scares me for other reasons- I mean he's a theocratic- I wouldn't say this of of of my Most Republicans who I might disagree with, but there's just something

that much power in the hands of somebody who is so disconnected from facts and and reasonable concern for the well being of of the rest of humanity in the future. And it's just it's it's incredibles, incredible and I don't think we've ever had a president who you look at and say that about so clearly, not even Nixon in Nixon. It was you know, people in other ways, but Nick Nixon, was giving us the Clean AIR Act right in the mix and had some point of contact which terrestrial reality, which wasn't just about for how to how to burnish his his Merry grander. You know so yeah I mean I I I I think we're one huge news story away from finding out how bad a president he could be, and I think I think that's you think

He could surprise he has surprise even the people who are very pessimistic all he could also rise to the occasion It may look e l, volley of interactive guide for noise man and I'm gonna see that well, and it also like to know how I would be the first to give him or the system credit. For that I mean it's like like? It's, not that if he starts something good like, let's say, a massive infrastructure project right? That includes building out good things, not coal jobs, but you know if you know fixing bridge clean infrastructure right. He starts doing that. That. I I have no would be fantastic right and it's possible. He could start doing that for his own. His motives, wouldn't even matter ultimately as long as he was doing the right things but his motives are so rely Chamblee self involved. That

Give me what we need is a system we need to. Someone needs to be able to play him and me this kind of narcissistic I can feel well enough to get him to do the things that would be good for the world but just don't see it? It's just there's just too much chaos in the system for that to be a rely, well like you, they try to keep him away from social media. Yeah yeah! Well, that's working out! I mean that's uh big things. Don't they they try to pull him away from it yeah. But that's been Possible that no one can do it. Yeah yeah, it's a member of that crazy conference that he had like just a few weeks into being. President unbelievable. I had. I got text messages from friends to Republicans and like what the what the ' You know there it's an interesting, it's an interesting sort of Roar shack test, because there are millions of Americans watch that press conference and found it delightfully thought

thought that he was killed pounding on the on the liberal media. You read a transcript and we we read when you read a transcript of what actually comes out of his mouth. It's. It is amazing. I mean it is the the the poverty of the passages in terms of information- and I it's just the fact- that we have a president who speaks like this is I could never have foreseen that in our lifetime. This was going to happen. It's just it's unimaginable to me uh I think, a lot of people. There are just a few indisputable leaders signed. It were five. Ninety nine, yes are into yeah. Did you see Bill Maher's thing about Anthony Weiner? They think said Anthony we, running. We need our own crazy man. They have besides his obvious, addictions to sexting with people was very powerful politician and uh. A good speaker and

he had. A lot of very good quality was going after bankers, the same as the Eliot Spitzer right now it sure, did a lot of good things. He was going after the bankers he was going after corruption and yeah what he said, but that that's an exam no that's a there's, a flag planted. That shows us how are we have gone from the normal? I mean Eliot, Spitzer Distr. Lloyd himself with one instance of hypocrisy right right. Well, it's pretty bad trump, level bad. I mean this is no this, like I don't know, I mean that we don't have well. The pharmacy was a. He was a law in this way I mean he was. He was with a prostitute. Well, that's a stupid law. The real problem was that he does well yeah. He was going after going after Us Johns and price only after John. I know that was a real process, the hypocrisy, what yeah their progress. He wasn't that he did something illegal where you paid someone for sex that that law seems to me to be so archaic and so ridiculous, the

pay someone massage you can't pay someone to touch your genitals. It seems ridiculous, but I I guess the the other piece you have to put in play there is that there there are the some percentage of people working in the sex trade who are not doing it voluntarily our coworkers to one another yeah and that's a horror, show and as a part of the problem with that, is that it's illegal I mean it's it, that's the Your argument is that you want our. As that there is a there. Is that argument, and and no I agree with you that that it consenting adults should be able to do what they want to do, but but the crucial variable. There is consent, yes agreed agreed. Yes, I just think that's uh one is going to have to be dynamic, they're going to have to be they're going, have to engage people in a way,

The that I mean they're, they're gonna, have to deal with his attacks skins or maybe what's people will be thirsting for after after four years is as actually blend yeah right. Maybe right yeah. I would do land right now that would be fantastic, Blandat landed, actually super religious would be the My enthusiasm happy for TED Cruz in that, but my enthusiasm for impeachment, that I'm happy with pence right so like? If I could find the impeachment button, I would not hesitate to press it and pence. Given his religious commitments, know a few short years ago would have been among my worst nightmares. I mean I would be talking about the rise of christian right and the danger of theocracy and I his but he's a psychologically he's seen. Is like a normal predictable. Solid American compared to what we have. You know it's just.

Is it the other question like Trump's age, a seventy year old man, people don't really live that much past. Seventy usually people that are overweight and people don't exercise all to healthy, please use yeah, and I I can't I mean what yeah my can't believe I mean that's a huge amount of energy and his credit yeah. I mean that that's an amazing thing to be able to do. How do you think is the most punishing thing in the world? I can't even imagine what is a little is having a good time. Actually it dead a dead end in, in that Press conference were talking with seventy seven. I think it was seventy seven minute press conference here, He was a blast yeah. He gets what he gets really energize yeah I mean that's a it's got to be the most punishing beat down ever. If you're in are not designed for it, and I can't imagine how tired hi everybody amping. I mean you and you get exhausted for thirty minutes. Looking at your at mention exactly yeah, it's a now you

you have to be wired differently, but he clearly is. Is. He's wired that way and it work for him, but you someone who's willing to submit to the punishment of running- and that's that's a rare person or it's not and the problem- is that kind of selects or things that you don't actually want in want and in a president, or I wouldn't think you would want admit it selects for kind of narcissism and a sense that that it really has to be you, it doesn't it doesn't select for the Ok in a normal intellectual space. You you're constantly aware of where the ways in which you are not the best guy or gal I'll be doing the thing right like you want to defer to experts and and trump is only. I can fix it right and that worked, and so you need there's there's something of that that creeps into the the headspace of most politicians,

seems an so scientific, humility and uh, just a kind of a sense of the limit. Of any one person's expertise. It is not necessarily the right, piece of software to have running at when it comes time to to run for president, now. I'm gonna switch gears a little bit the side. It's not totally related, but it is in somewhat ins and someone's head space. I'm talking about mind sets and talking about. Thank you. We brought this up, but not really haven't delved into it. Much at all about minute. And about how much it's affected you and how it got you back on track, and I know that you're a big proponent of it, and I I am as well, although I think I'd probably do it differently than you guys do. But I'd love to hear about how you do it. I used and isolate Thank no really like entry deprivation, yeah yeah I'd done, and I do a lot of yoga. Those are those are two big ones for me. No, I think I

those alone have straightened out my brain in a great way yoga in particular yoga, because it's some it's not yoga forces you to do it. You know like if you're either doing it or you're not doing it, there's no room for, traction. You know you're essentially forced to deal with what these poses our review, and I think that in doing so and having the singular focus of trying to maintain your balance and stretch and extend and do all these different things. While you do then concentrating almost entirely on your brass, which is a big factor in yoga at its has remarkable rain scrubbing attributes yeah, I would say and I don't know much before I say this. Let me just ask What are you doing in the isolation tank like what we're you in your mind, blowing What do you use it for a bunch of different in a bunch of different ways? I don't as is much as I should honestly, but I

concentrate on. Sometimes I go in there with a an idea like go, concentrate on material like that, I'm working on or maybe jujitsu techniques and I'm having problems with or uh, some other things and dealing with you know any any sort of issues that I have. Sometimes I do that sometimes it just go in there and chill out and relax and breathe in concentrate there's a lot of fish cool things that happen inside the tank um there's is the magnesium, that's in the water, because it's Epsom salts, it's really good for you physically, it's very good for the muscles, loosens you up and relaxes you and that it's a lot of stress in that film. Elimination of stress allows the brain to function with just less pressure and allows you to relax more and put things in perspective better and also it gives you this environment, that's not available anywhere else on the planet. This weightless floating, disconnected from your body environment when you're you don't hear you don't see anything. You don't feel anything. You feel like you're weightless, you of this sum sensation of flying because

totally weightless weightless in the dark. You open your eyes, you don't see anything. You close your eyes exactly the same. The water is the same temperatures, your skin, so you don't feel the water and you floating this I don't share. This is going to go down. I actually don't have any questions about the benefits of being an isolation tank, even though, too much about it, and I also am a. I think yoga is great, although I don't do much of it myself. I will. I think, though, that there may actually be a difference between those two activities and meditation. This is a kind of this is a highfalutin term metacognition serve knowing what you know, or knowing that you're thinking that happens in the kind of mindfulness meditation of which SAM and I are proponents proponents that I think, is a different thing uh where you're, seeing and I'll try to put this in English when you're Taking the way we do. You're, seeing how crazy you are you're, saying, you're, fucking nuts, and that at

it has a real value is systematic collision with the asshole in your head has a real value 'cause, when the asshole offers you up a shady suggestion in the rest of your life, which is basically it's job, like all yeah, you should eat the 17th cookie or say the thing that's going to ruin the next forty eight hours, your marriage or whatever you're better able to resist it. So what like? What do you do? So I mean the basics: of mindfulness meditation artists, it most people close their eyes. You bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath. Just the about your breath. You just feeling the rod data of the physical sensations and then the third step is the big E. As soon as you try to do this. Your mind is going to go bonkers, you're going to start thinking about you know. What's for lunch, do I need a haircut where do gerbils wild whatever blah blah blah you're just going to notice I'm on my mind, going crazy right now. That noticing is the key moment is in fact the victory. It's easy.

Because this is when most people think they failed that the kiddo I can't meditate 'cause. I can't clear my mind. This is the the biggest misconception about meditation. You do not need to clear your mind, that's impossible unless you're, enlightened or dead, the whole goal is just notice when you become distracted and start again, you return your attention to your breath and you just do that a million times and every time you catch. Yourself wondering and go back to your breath some bicep curl your brain. It changes your brain and that overtime creates the kind of metacognition I was discussing before where you see that your Homosapien Sapien, another word zero. That's how were classified as a species with the one who thinks and knows he or she thinks and that just that, knowing that you have this voice in your head, as SAM likes to joke. He feels like when he thinks about the voice in his head. He feels, like he's, been hijacked by the most boring person I've just says the same shit over and over

a joke that I all the time yeah. That is enormously powerful, because then and you are not held hostage by this voice. Similar thing happens in the tank. I do do a form of meditation, a tank, sometimes when I go in there with without an idea like if I'm not working on material or anything else where I just can't, no, my breath in through the nose out through the mouth, and I just literally concentrate on the breath and the same thing happen. That's meditation when we yeah it is a disease. It's it's not similar to exact same thing. The difference is in the tank after for a while. After about twenty minutes or so that breaks loose to psychedelic states, wow never combine the tank Psychedelics altered states, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah trip what, LSD or mushrooms mushrooms, but the big one is edible pot edible pod to be a strong as anything in there got a eat enough where I'm convinced I'm going to die and then I climb in there every time I do it

don't do that again because I get out terrified. What's your motivation when you're eating the pot and climbing into the tax? Let's see what happens? Okay, yeah just be scared, be terrified yeah because nothing ever happens. You never die, but God damn you convinced that the universe is imploding around you that it, so it usually has the character of fear being, major part of it was so. It's also not embracing the fear, not letting the fear run, rampant and just sort of relaxing and giving into the vulnerability you're the finite nature of your existence, an just breathing and concentrating and letting letting the dance take. Place 'cause some there's some sort of a weird that one of things that there's a big, misconception about when it comes to edible pot. Is it edible pods like smoking pot, it's entirely different process, physiologically

your liver time course is very different to him. You can stay stone for three days. Yeah you could you could suck up and eat too many brownies and you'll be gone for a long time that sounds miserable, it is, but it's not because you get something out of it when it's over the processes, excruciating, but when you come out of it, you just feel so happy feel so happy it's over? It's like that. Joke about the dude is banging his head up against the wall, and somebody says why you doing that. He says because it feels so good when I stopped in a way, but there's no physical, damaged banging your head up against the wall, you're going to hurt yourself. This is true: uh yeah, I don't know, I think there seems like there might be easier ways, you get the same wisdom, but maybe, but I think, there's also created city that gets inspired by the edible pot, something called eleven hydroxy metabolite that your body produces it's it's so different than most people when they eat pot, they think they've been dosed, like,

anybody who smoke pot before and then you give him a brownie. They think, oh, my God, there's something in that and they're convinced, because reality itself just seems like just dissolves and especially inside the tank, there's something about the tank environment that uses in the absence of any external stimuli, your brain becomes sort of supercharged, because what you're trying do when you're just sitting down and concentrating and relaxing as you trying to focus on your thoughts but you're. Aware of your body, you still wear of your elbows, touching his desk, your but touching the chair. There's all these different factors that it that there's stimuli that's coming into your your your senses, whereas in the tank there's none of that virtually it's almost completely eliminated. There's some, but you can you. Can you can phase that stuff out like you could still feel the water a little bit. If you think about it, you could still sometimes you

open the wall and you have to like center yourself and have to look relax again and make sure you're not moving, so that you don't touch things which can kind of dissolve the experience. Their experiences meditation, where you have that same three lose your sense of the body, but that usually comes with more concentration. More. You have to be very concentrated on I feel like you would have that experience and it would be more intense. If you did the exact same thing that you do outside the tank in the tank, I don't think you need any psychedelics in that. I know it's one thing I well people when they ask me, should I get high before I do it and like no just? Do it just do it if you decide after a while, if you done it three or four times you like, I wonder what it's like. If I just take a little bit of a hit a pot and see where it takes me, there's nothing wrong. That's going to hurt you if you're a type of person, George, marijuana or whatever, but did the tank alone by

itself just the absence of sensory input. Your brain goes to a very, very different place and as long as you can relax as long as you don't think too much about the fact that you're in the tank just concentrate entirely thoughts entirely on your breath and again all those crazy like where do hamsters live like all that shit let all that stuff run wild through your mouth, but I feel like in the tank at least that gets to a certain spot and it stops existing and then the psychedelic state takes over yeah. Well, it depends on what the goal is. I think there can be many different goals of, meditation or quasi spiritual practice and they're, not they're distinct. So I mean the. Under the bullseye for Maine is no not suffering unnecessarily right, so And so what one thing that mindfulness gives you is, so it's it's compatible with every experi

You can have in this there's nothing in your experience that isn't an appropriate object of meditation. You just most people start with the breath because it's just a very convenient thing to start with but once want to know how to do this particular practice. You're. Just your goal is to just be clearly aware of whatever your experience in each moment, so it's uh questions arise. Thoughts, arise, sounds, come in your Attention is wide open to whatever your is so it's not like so nothing in principle, is a distraction I mean they could be meditating right next to a construction site and the sound of the hammers is just as good an object of meditation as the breath or They also this not that everything is included, but the the The superpower you're after which you actually can acquire through this practice is

is to realize that virtually all of your of your psychological suffering, actually arguably virtually all of your your physical suffering. I mean they were the difference between physical pain and suffering, which of those two are not quite the same thing Is a matter of being lost in thought? It's a matter of thinking without knowing that you're thinking and what and what mindfulness as in really any technique of meditation, but ultimately should do is teach you to, make the spell of being lost in thought and to know. There's a thought. As I thought, I mean the huge differences until you learn how to meditate or do something like meditation, you're, just helplessly thinking every month, feel like you're having a conversation with yourself you're having content, whether it's should image, steak or linguistic, pour forth into con.

News every moment, and so incessantly that you don't even notice it's just white noise, and not only does it completely color your experience moments so like if you're, if they're angry thoughts, you're angry, if they're depressed thought, you're depressed or sad you're sad, so you become your thoughts, but you also feel if you feel identified, you feel that you are the thinker of your thoughts. You feel like a self and it's a completely structured by this flow of of mentation every moment, and it produces every Can you do? It produces all of your intentions and your goals and your actions, and he said this about me and now, I'm going to say that it was just like it is everything coming out of. You is born of of this the same process and meditation is a way of recognizing. That just an estimate. What you are subjectively is a this prior condition of just awareness.

In which everything is showing up sound sensations and thoughts and thoughts can become just other objects of consciousness and uh. So I'm going to take even a very basic example of the difference between pain. Suffering you can feel very strong physical pain. I unpleasant pain and. Just be aware of it in that, like the sense that it's unbearable is really always untrue, because you in that moment, you've already born it right to the feeling that something's is unbearable is really the fear of. How to experience it in the next moment in the future, because you're always like, if if someone drives a nail into your knee right, you might well. That sounds like it's unbearable, but the moment. You are feeling it your bearing it right. It's like it's, it's the it. What you're, what you're what you're thinking about is the last moment and the next

and then you think about how much I know when am I going to get some relief and you know, what's the cure and how badly is my knee injured and you know like you're, worried about the which are continuously and you're not noticing the intensity of thought. That is, that is amplified the the the the negative negativity of the experience in that moment, and we all know that you can have super intense. Sensation, which is either either pleasant, unpleasant, depending on that on the conceptual frame you've put around it. So, for instance, if you had it's massive. Sense of soreness in your shoulder that you would We have very differently if it was a result of you deadlifting more than you ever had in your life, and you were proud of it right b.

Public cancer and you're waiting for your. You know that the biopsy results and- and you know, you're worried about yeah. This is the thing that things gonna kill you or you're getting Ralph to you know they, like some, deep tissue massage and it hurts like hell, but you, actually only understand the source of the pain that you know it's going to be gone the moment the guy pulls his elbow back right, so it could be the same sensation, each one of those, but the conceptual frame you have around it totally dictates the level of psychological suffering and or the can dictate. The total absence of psychological suffering. Now we were talking before the podcast started about your apps talking about the amount of different meditation exercises on the apps, like what kind of different meditation ask exercises. Are there if you're, email just concentrating on mindfulness and breathing

as it turns out. You can iterate off of that basic exercise in some like infinity. Essentially because you talk about not only of I don't want to get too ahead of myself but Basically, the the basic instructions are that we listed before you're feeling breath coming in and then, when you get lost, you start again, but then can add on to that. So one big thing to add is something called mental, noting so you're breathing in and out your feeling, your breath and then get get distracted by huge wave of anger. Generally speaking, you get hit by a wave of anger. We just in but the anger we become angry, there's no buffer between the stimulus and our response to it, but there's this little technique can do it just making a little mental note of that anger and that kind of objectifies the thing it's a little bit like put

using the picture in picture button on your remote control. With the story that's taking up, the whole frame could be seen with some. Perspective, so that's just one example of the little techniques that you can add onto the basic exercise and you can go for a long time. So as we were, passing SAM's 'bout. To start his meditation app, which is going to be called Whatsapp waking waking up- and I have mine, which is called ten percent happier sam- is to be doing all the teaching on his app and on my Since I'm not a teacher. We we have experts coming in like Joseph Goldstein who's again the friend of kind of both SAM and I and you each teacher- has their own emphasis. And you then start talking about applied meditation. So how do I use it when How do I use in my everyday life?

how do I use it? If really, what I want to do right now is to control my eating so meditation. For example, we have, of course, on the app that talks about using it to not overeat by the way I'm terrible at this, but you can use your ability, mindfulness, your ability to know what's happening in your head in any given moment without getting carried away by it. To not overeat. No, So I'm having this urge right now to eat, as I did last night, an entire bag of malted chocolate. In my hotel room, but I don't I can ride that urge and not do the thing that I know is stupid. So, anyway, that's just a little taste of how you can take meditation and bring it in kind of numerous directions. Do you guys feel competitive both of apps? No, he wasn't even now mine's not out yet. No, I I feel, let's not yet not yet, and his comes out completely. Cannibalize is mine and thing yeah. How happy as for me, I actually sent out to you like negative five

one hundred percent. What's ten percent of zero? Exactly no, I actually think I'm of the view you know now that I've been in this meditation apt is this for a little while, I'm kind of I don't think it's uber, I don't think the business model. Is that there's just one: huge app that everybody uses and maybe there's some distant, you know second I actually think it's more a little bit more like fast food. I think it's going to be a bunch of big. Players, and you may switch back and forth I think it's just one need a nap, no no you don't, but I mean the thing: that's useful! An it's really useful at any level of expertise in in meditation at least this kind of meditation is having someone guide. You It's like a mindfulness alarm. That's constantly going off are going off at periodically over the course of ten. Answer twenty minutes or, however long you're sitting and because

Interaction is just continually the problem either meditating or you're distracted. You you're that either aware of what's happening at that moment or you're lost in thought, and that's true. Throughout your life, I mean you're either. Here I'm saying right now or you're thinking about something else, and you don't know it right, where your either reading the book intending to read or your mind, is wandering you're going to read that paragraph again, so this this failure to concentrate this failure to be able to focus on what you're intending to focus on. Is it just this, this universal problem of human consciousness, and so meditation trains that and the other benefits follow, but the having a voice in your head, reminding you that you're, even attempting to be meditating, is very powerful even if you are even if it's your own voice in even when I'm record listening to a meditation that I recorded just

They voice. Remember reminding me that I'm that I'm supposed to be meditating, it works like any other voice and it's it's so it's it's just it's a feedback system that you can't really provide yourself, although you, obviously you can met in the you, can meditate without an app and most people. Do I I've spent very little time, meditating with apps. I just think they're they're very useful, but you just you know both of us started meditate. You start imitating well before I did, but we both started Pre Vaps mourn around uh, so you can read, you can read a book, read a good book and learn how to meditate out of the book image. It basically remember the basic instructions and do it but it really is useful to have an app, especially for some people, because of one of the biggest problems in meditation. Is this persistent fear that you're not doing it right and so to have a voice? You trust in your

just giving you reminding you of the basic instructions which are so simple but very easy to forget. It can be very useful. I like the idea of it being like bicep curls for Yeah, I mean you see, you see it in the brain scans. And now SAM will correct me where I run afoul of scientific accuracy here, but this, this, this simple act of sitting trying trying to on one thing at a time and then, when you get distracted, knowing you're, distracted and returning to your breath is changing your brain. When you do that, you're boosting the muscles, the obviously must slams using it as a light, loosely you're, boosting your focus muscle and, in many cases whether there was a study in two thousand and ten, I think was done at Harvard that took

I would never meditated before and they scan their brains and then they had them do eight weeks of I think one slash two hour day meditation. The end of the week They scan their brains again. What they found was in the area of the brain, associated with self awareness? The gray matter group and in the area of the brain associated with stress the gray matter. Shrink that to me is pretty compelling. That is beautiful. Yeah John, which did three hours wow wow flew by yes, it did. Yes, Thank you. My pleasure is fun fun, as always: yeah yeah, alright, everybody, that's it go, do something else by thanks everybody for tuning into the podcast and Thank you to our sponsors. Thanks to Caveman coffee go to coffee c, o dot com use. The code word Rogan ten percent off any other awesome coffee thanks to movement Watch is go to m.

M, watches, dot com forward, Slash Rogan today and you'll get fifteen percent off with free shipping and free returns on any of their sweet. Thanks to on it go. Oh and it used use the code, Word Rogan and save ten percent off any and all supplements thing. It's Charlotte's web hemp oil extract extract oil, go to. CW hemp dot and save ten percent with the promo code, Joe Rogan, seventeen back tomorrow with Dan Flores, I guarantee Dan Flores. These are kind of out of order. I did the ads for the Greg Fitzsimmons one before the sound, that's what even do know Greg was after so when you hear this The SAM Harris Dan Harris one came first Greg. Fitzsimmons came next after that tomorrow, which b episode List episode, nine hundred and forty two Jesus Christ, nine hundred and eleven was just yesterday was going to one thousand before you know it.

Um. Tomorrow's Dan Flores and Dan Flores is the author of Coyote America book that I've been raving about and also a book called the CAN Serengeti, which I'm really fascinated talking about the history of wildlife in native America, you know back in, I guess the Pleistocene will talk to him. It should be really interesting until then see you soon, alright Bob