The Joe Rogan Experience

If you read Brother Sam, it's a fucking great book. Bill Kenneson wrote it. Really, if you're a fan of comedy, it's a really good book.

His brother wrote a book about it called Brother Sam as Brother Bill and that's one of the things he talks about like Sam was like this normal kid gets hit by a fucking car and then all of a sudden he's just wild man like wild demon, no control.

And he talked about how Sam got hit by a car when he was a little kid.

He was a normal kid and he gets this horrible head injury.

And then all of a sudden was fearless.

Like that happened to Roseanne and then happened to him.

Same exact story.

Yeah it's Lawrence Wright's book, okay, Going Clear. Yeah, the book is even more bizarre because he gets obviously like way more in the depth about how crazy L. Ron Hubbard was and what he essentially did and how he started this whole thing and he's he was self-analyzing he was trying to heal himself because he was fucking crazy right, and along the way got really into psychology and self-help books then was quoted saying if you want to make real money you start a religion.

Did you watch the HBO series on it, the documentary? Yeah, The Going Clear.

Unbelievable. That's the best documentary on it.

All these things are happening and now Alia is coming in and Alia was... I knew her, I mean, I'm friends with Kevin James from the King and Queen so I've known Alia for 20 plus years. And when I first met her, she was just like this hard ass, beautiful woman who's just like driven and like, she's a Scientologist.

Have you guys read Lawrence Wright's book about it? I don't think so. It's called Going Clear.

I was reading this book called Dead Doctors Don't Lie. It's by this guy Joel Wallach and it's all about mineral deficiencies and how many people have mineral deficiencies and how little doctors actually know about nutrition and how so many doctors are not only unhealthy but have at least back when he wrote this book have easy access to prescription medicine.

There was a book that I read many years ago called Dead Doctors Don't Lie

Dr Rick Strassman he's the guy that wrote that book DMT The Spirit Molecule

when he was doing that book, DMT, the spirit molecule.

Rick Strassman, of course, in the 90s, when he wrote DMT, The Spirit Molecule, he hypothesized that at the point of death DMT is released by the pineal and it kind of acts as the conduit by which the soul exits the body.

And I think that maybe The Book of Enoch, the Watchers, they descend down on Mount Hermon, right? That's the thing I'm talking about.

He listened to The Book of Enoch in the car. It's completely bananas. It's bonkers. And it could have been included in the Bible. That's what's done in some Bibles; it's in the Ethiopians. They should have kept it in our Bible too.

The Book of Enoch, which was one of the original biblical texts that wasn't included in the canon.

and then I read Black Elk.

One of the things that they talked about in Black Elk was the practice of the ghost dance, this idea that they were going to somehow or another bring back the old ways and it's a sad, sad story. When you hear them talk about it especially because it's coming from the words of Black Elk who was a guy that was there with the battle of Little Bighorn.

I'm this book on Black Elk.

In this book that I'm in the middle of, I'm actually towards the end of this Black Elk book; it details the invention of the automobile and how the world changes.

and the more books I read now I'm on Black Elk Speaks which is my favorite one so far because Black Elk Speaks is an actual man named Black Elk who's a Oglala Lakota medicine man who in the 1930s told his story

Dune.

Frank Herbert.

It's one of the best sci-fi books.

Dune.

Second one is better than the first and the first is great if you're like a Dune nerd, which I am.

I haven't watched Dune.

And then when they fired Gina Carano from the Mandarin, I was like, shut up.

So you were saying Dune is just like Star Wars, is really just a different version of Dune. And Dune is like the better version.

Supposedly, the guy that made Dune went and saw Star Wars and went home and made Dune.

Or I think that's what the story was. Maybe I'm wrong.

Well, Dune is based on a novel, right?

He saw the original Star Wars and then went home and wrote Dune about the same time.

Oh, there you go.

Interesting.

A 1965 novel upon which Dune is based also inspired the storytelling of Star Wars.

Ah, that makes sense.

Either way around.

The other way around.

Yeah.

I thought it was earlier too.

But I heard Dune, the new Dune 2 is the shit.

I keep hearing it from everybody that it's really good.

The Book of Isaiah as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Book of Isaiah.

Goddamn, that's a good book.

She has an audiobook, so I'll walk to your house and I'll hear you like, what the fuck? You know how crazy that book is?

Tom was Greg Fitzsimons' roommate in New York.

And then also, not roommate, excuse me, neighbor. Who's his neighbor in New York.

And then also, his neighbor in Venice, California.

Yeah, fantastic book that shows you what they were trying to do to demonize these, these hippies.

It's been around years when you look at like, um, you know Marcus Aurelius Meditations or stoic philosophy and they're talking about...

You could read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and literally learn how to live a better life.

It's even if it's you know everything in life it's so true about like being like "The Alchemist" like I even see it with Laird it's like he went out into the world he's done all this stuff and there's certain things we're doing in projects right back onto Kauai.

The Alchemist I have been on page 12 for like a year and a half, you know Sit down on a plane And just read The Alchemist at the top of the page and I'm out

It was brought up as a contentious subject for being racist or applauded for proving the measurable difference in IQ between certain races.

He appeared to have a political orientation which is that he didn't want money spent in certain ways and he wanted it spent in others. There there was an in political interpretation of why he wanted that which was maybe he's a closet racist. Then there was facts that will tend to empower people who are actually racist.

If you say Nigerians are particular who are incredibly industrious and some of the more successful immigrant groups that come over to America. Yeah also happen to be black. If you wanted to look at Nigerians right in terms of like if you wanted to if you if you if all if you if you wanted to look at them particularly as a group be very difficult to be racist, you'd have to say well these are superior. A lot of superior intellects come from Nigeria. They also trot out the Asian one right that eight like this one of the weird things that people like to show that they're not racist right like look it shows Asians are of a superior IQ. I I I puzzle on that one. That one's puzzling.

and The Bell Curve had just recently come out and you know the one yeah very controversial exactly so he jumped on that

Well, I'm a giant fan of your work man, particularly Outliers. I really love that book. It's very illuminating and sort of peels away the mystery of talent.

I was listening to this Malcolm Gladwell book on tape. It's called Outliers.

And this movie, or this book, rather, the Malcolm Gladwell book, was all about extraordinary performances.

So, this new book, what inspired it? What got you to, I mean, you've kind of explored consciousness a little bit with your psychedelic book, yeah. How to Change Your Mind.

The other was, I had an experience in my garden in Connecticut ... I decided it would be interesting to find out. And I consulted a couple people, scientists, and said, what do you do with an insight like that? And they said, well, you tested against other ways of knowing, including scientific ways of knowing. And that led me down this really interesting path, exploring plant intelligence and plant consciousness.

Michael Pollan is a very respected journalist. Like, what is he talking about? He's running a book about psychedelics called Change Your Mind.

Richard Dawkins addressed that point in his book The God Delusion, noting that he is a de facto atheist.

But one of the things that I really enjoyed about The God Delusion is that you kind of outlined every single possible argument against atheism and then had a counter to it in advance.

the first PDF download of the Arabic edition of The God Delusion was downloaded 13 million times Arabic edition 13 million times.

Pinker makes this point in Enlightenment Now, if you start off with Jesus died for our sins, that's the most important value to me. You're not gonna get agreement or roomful of UN diversity.

He's also got a newer book, Enlightenment Now, which argues that the world is getting better despite what we think.

And you mentioned Pinker. Yeah. And that's everything I will say is redundant to Pinker. I mean that better angels of our nature is one of I think the most subversive books of our time.

The thing that blew my mind about pinker in that book better angels ... blew my mind is there's this line ... that has been obsessing me.

I think Pinker's got the best answer to this question, which is basically, what structures do you need to put in place to make the world a safer and less violent place? That's his book, Better Angels of Our Nature.

I sat down and tried to read Ezekiel a couple months ago. I couldn't wade through it.

The book of Ezekiel, the book of Ezekiel goes in depth about some sort of a UFO encounter that Ezekiel experiences. Right. Where it's a wheel within a wheel and a cloud with fire flashing forth continually in the midst of a cloud as it were gleaming metal. Right. And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures and the creatures darted to and fro like the appearance of a flash of lightning.

I thought it was a line of the movie, but it's not; my wife googled it and we discovered it was from The Shining.

The Shining. ... The shark in Jaws is a total of about four minutes ... The Shining ... it's a classic horror story that still scares people today.

the guy who wrote Sex at Dawn was explaining it to me is that there's up you you pat like what is ...

I did the audiobook of civilized today which I really enjoyed that process I'm thinking I might do a 10th anniversary director's cut audiobook of Sex at Dawn.

did you do the audio version no who did