Joe Rogan Experience #1437 — Stephen Dubner Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Ready, young Jamie. And you were saying that you also have hearing, but you get it from rock and roll. to be oh yeah yeah so i figure if i can hold out a couple more years mine are gonna like bow's noise cancelers almost every day um i wear them a lot you know when i started uh as a So I've been shutting out the world for like 25 years now. thinking about noise pollution, right?

2:57 how different people receive and perceive noise, as you just said. so some people really need it and want it for some it's a burden Right, right, right. If someone screams in your ear unexpectedly and hurts your ear, that is a form of assault. also it's like you don't want to be looking at all the world's problems when you're about to get on the most stressful thing that a person does.

4:40 On a plane, one of two things gets, either I get some work done or I get some entertainment. It's not worse. the truth like i oftentimes take a heavy dose of edibles and then get on a plane in order to intentionally put yourself in a state that can be somewhat negative but also creativity i don't i No, because I think a rollercoaster is just fun, right?

6:20 And you start thinking about your life. Unpredictable. It's not like gets hurt that's the thing yeah it's not What if a super volcano blows up? Yeah, we were just talking about that with Adam, in fact. not as reliable as drugs then right and also physically demanding like i think it takes a Just not. The dope was a different So whatever Between if I drink

10:27 it's a nice thing about scotch so you can sip it kind of forever yeah if you're you know that stuff night for most people is actually in fact my doctor who's a researcher as well she said and um and statistics it's really good i love your podcast by the way i'm a big fan thank you Is bad for you And like you can achieve It relaxes you. So a lot of people have a hard time being with other people kind of in the way they want to.

13:32 and they say that there's something about what the brain and body do in concert with each other on a walk, No, the mystery is beautiful. You're just thinking like, I've got to get to this top of the hill. There's no time to be. Right. So I go on these hour walks with my dog. because you need time to process your thoughts, And again, I don't want to be judging.

17:10 There's got to be something because there's a shift in attention and there's a shift in focus that's dramatic. energy into thinking without that device and though you might think of it as a well i'm just real moment we think of it almost as like wasted i don't not even listening to anything no good For sure, for sure. got to consider the upsides too oh there's a lot of i mean even in the even in the environment

20:18 social media discourse is missing. Like people say, change your mind. It's a paradox though, because the way you just just said it like if you are in your tribe yes then even though it can be healthier for you and for Whoa. That makes sense. He didn't change at all. He declared that he would never again speak to his son, and he forbade everyone in his family from speaking to his son.

23:32 Yeah, I got a couple. No chance. He could tell us a story that might convince us that, you know what, this son of his did a terrible thing to the family. Everybody's got an emotional experience. this was a long time ago uh my father's father my father died when i was very young so i didn't thought that that was my father, his son. My dad's name was Solomon.

26:45 And it's complicated. real community sense that comes from meeting in Sunday with all those other, or whatever day it the huge decline in organized religion in america which i thought was a very good piece of criticism Sounds like a nice justification for one of them psychic houses. You drive by, those neon signs. in the early 90s business you're really tight with your dad no I don't even know him like it was it was it was a

30:25 doing it he understands he's a generous person he is he's a really really nice person and that's Daryl Davis is a gentleman who's been on this podcast before, and he is a musician by trade, like he goes well how you're the guy brings his KKK outfit So it's hard to describe him as dumb when he's way smarter than you. There's been, there's some pieces about it online,

33:05 he just didn't experience it. And then when he was a little boy, people were throwing things but when he came back when he was 10, I mean, my grandparents came over in the, I think they were in the the 20s or the 30s from italy is the east coast i always felt like people had their guard up a little bit more a little bit more So we grew up in the middle of nowhere.

36:14 Yeah. Like I like, I also like the environment of a, you know, of university campus. People can be very competitive. Also for war. I assume faster is denser. What are you talking about? The results are you can actually detect. I think it's because He goes We should say Fuck you. They live for being stacked on top of a building with strangers below them.

39:18 were that you know now anybody can do anything from everywhere so nobody's gonna have any reason physically, intellectually, et cetera, that is incredibly strong. When you're all laughing, there's a buzz that everybody gets. thought it was, they said it was such an amazing experience. And you have to sit there and go, dude, you're making me do this.

41:58 you guys really looked like you were having fun up there. Like weren't i wasn't you had so much uh energy emotional pain you experience when someone's bombing. The thing I always wondered about comics is why they don't cheat more. I think if you did pipe in laughter, first of all. they you have to figure out the language of it and And when you're up there, if you're just doing fake laughs in the background to juice it up, you're not going to know how to get real ones.

44:59 We certainly do have some bits that you know work. The way I always like to describe it, it's like you have no weapons like you're going in a fight but everything's made what you need to do is you need to say, Really? And they literally hire people Do you end up lowering your own standard the other night we worked together and he was fucking amazing i mean like the one of the best

47:58 Like, he's doing all the thinking. You know what I mean? Like, they just let him say. It seems like he's a comic. People trust him. He's like a comic doing scat. He's like that you know it's like yeah i'm telling you that's implemented but i love what he represents is a man who wants to do good for people that don't have much. and you can call it democratic socialism but it's an idea the idea is like helping people

51:46 Without a doubt, the most entertaining president that's ever lived. Before Donald Trump, she would have never uttered those words. To say nobody liked him or nobody liked him winning right now? And if you don't like that notion, what can be done about it? people have those kind of skills and nobody thought of it as a skill they thought of a politician

54:14 on a popularity. But it's the system we've got. But I mean, let's say that you're not happy with the way it is. And the strongest voices on the left, the loudest voices, and the most extreme oftentimes are the worst representations. Fuck. They kind of divide and conquer the market, and they've built an industry that is incredibly So what does it say that you've got a duopoly?

57:09 New York State had legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade. And it happens to all of us, though. let me ask you a slightly different question or it's actually a totally different question um as i'm sure you It doesn't come with, when you're in this condition, seek out these remedies. Yeah. police and fuck the this and then you get in these communities of people that think the same way and

1:00:17 list you just gave is basically my list too right i try that's what I try to do pretty much. And they all sound attractive. But short-term, it's like, I don't want to do it right now. So if you could pick one thing, let's say I'm a person- Exercise. get antsy you got to get up and move cognitively it's a big i find what do you do with let's say Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:02:04 I was getting like four and five. And was like oh you lying bitch so it made me it made me All right. You're plenty productive, plainly. right and then it becomes very easy to see that as the main goal at the expense of loved ones other people i'm looking for uh i'd like to Okay, widgets. starts to shift and you're willing that's not necessarily true there's a lot of people that

1:05:55 be the objective purveyors of knowledge these are the people that are talking to you about this But the fact is, is that, like we said before, if you're in the tribe, if you're for one thing, you've got to be in for everything. drone attacks very differently than they treated when obama was doing it they seemed to like let We're playing whoever, Ravens.

1:08:25 again so I'm totally in favor of that that you could make this format There was this story I read about some rabbi in Europe 100, 200, 300 years ago, something, He said, they said, you know, just come outside and watch it once and we think you'll see So, you know, different ways of looking at the world. hey no so this is the universal symbol for yes right but here's the one that also gets me the

1:11:10 I find the rest of the sports to be boring. each other down choke each other and and to lose is horrible and to win is glorious and Yeah. fight in front of the crowd that's going to see manny pacquiao versus floyd mayweather they don't It's the same thing with MMA. see MMA like that? Or would you rather see it more like the team sports where you're at least guaranteed you're on a salary right so nfl if you're the 53rd guy on the roster

1:14:49 comes along if you say look i'm going to offer you fight conor mcgregor for x amount of money And the reason why it didn't occur was because there's multiple promoters. And if we get someone, we can sign it. he's a wild man so theoretically like if you're looking at a supply and demand it seems that that i don't know if you know but there's multiple organizations that actually are doing that there's

1:17:26 gear. And do the athletes get a share? from sponsors than they do from the fight itself, yeah so is the UFC responsible like who who's responsible for that and it turns out it's the for negotiations so forgive my ignorance but getting back to just the actual fighting uh specifically to knock you unconscious or to break your liver all right there's techniques that you're doing that are trying to fuck a guy's knee up i understand that but is it that you need

1:20:16 that he had to wait six months before he was fully recovered. Well, initially they do it for self-improvement. fight so then you take an amateur fight and then you go you know what i think i can do this for a living and then But let's say it's you. Which would you choose and why? Well, first of all, why would I only have two choices? So there was no choice.

1:23:08 knew that I could get good at it. that's a type of person running and base jumping, that's trounced in training all the time everyone's getting humbled all the time but you you're seen in football that it's not recreatable in an mma ring because you don't have momentum you're there's going to be a risk and they got to know when to get out and sometimes they don't and

1:25:45 Very similar. In that boxing? Very similar. But then there's a guy like Floyd Mayweather who doesn't get hit at all. time yeah because it scares us. fueled by CTE, which is obviously a legitimate thing. So where do you lie on that? it totally. Yeah, I mean, you're running around on a field in full clip. Oh, what are you talking about? since Earnhardt died back in whatever that was, 2000.

1:29:12 This is after his dad is gone, right? crazy collisions and go sent through the air and they wind up in the hospital all fucked up the impact just the impact even if you're in a cage just your brain rattling You're right. But then there's another guy. Both these guys happen to play for the Ravens, which happens to be the team i hate most but i've gotten to be friendly with

1:31:37 And it just really makes me think about you're right. line is a lot of things that used to be not repugnant slavery fine the whole world if you on paper right like if you had to bring every time you go to the supermarket you have to bring a Yeah. You can't get to them. Like eight, ten years ago. And I just like the competition. Plastic bags, should it be that hard to take it home, use it maybe once or twice again,

1:34:58 It's true. and you see the pollution, it was insane. No. That's crazy. I took photos of it and put it on Instagram. I am hoping that technology catches up to our pollution. So, the irony is you clean up the air and you allow more heating. If you're on the right, you're supposed to say it's exaggerated. And if it's on the left, it's, how dare you? The thing that astonishes me that Democrats haven't done is talk about it in a language that every republican every conservative every hunter fisher would

1:38:21 said no no i don't want to patent i don't want to own this patent he could have become a billionaire right you know this was this is was this is the way we've have thought in to solve problems. Yeah. giving people i haven't read this in a long time so i can't i can't speak to it but uh but even We did. have another whole challenge which is the moral challenge but but there's a way of thinking about

1:41:13 I could make an argument in either case. Yeah. Yeah. but roughly same time era, Well, Oh, please, let me play this for you. He knew the world would not be the same. A little ahead of his time. Pretty incredible. So Oppenheimer is kind of a patron saint for having the brains to do something almost unimaginable and having the ethics and I know. well, after Three Mile Island and then later Chernobyl,

1:46:10 often has a lot of costs and life is complicated but i think the more that we can measure and weigh I appreciate the opportunity to change my mind. shitty design of like fukushima where they can't shut it off Like, wait a minute, nuclear is clean? Right. No, that's interesting. ocean you're like what are you doing here this sounds like the way you know crisper you know

1:49:13 But I think there was something recently where they discovered some bacteria that was eating radiation. Right? Especially with things they've been doing forever like eating meat people are terrified of someone coming along and legislating that they can't Right. Yeah. Very nice lady. and you're fucking, I gotta kill these fucking kittens. There's a thing where we decide that an animal is not as valuable.

1:52:18 that i'm putting things on there should be wildlife i'm moving it i'm getting getting Yeah. Nice. and different vegetables and stuff It doesn't have to be in the middle of this urban sprawl. roaches do gross people out more they carry diseases yeah but don't others not as is it because they're herbivores they're they're not involved in those tight-knit groups where they

1:55:37 No. Scratts? are so gross yeah would you eat a rat yeah Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Have you? Especially if I was hungry. You're eating, you're still eating mostly meat? Yeah. No fruit, no veg. of the insulin and the sugar and the body processing it it's amazing it's just steadier i mean for people that are your your gut biome sort of dictates what you're what's what happens

1:58:11 Yeah. I haven't eaten anything since. And you're going to eat again today? Does it get boring? is the way I feel, the energy level, and mental clarity. Because your body creates its own glucose through glucogenesis where it breaks down the protein and creates glucose. Are they significant enough to either take supplements or to worry about? because mostly you're using like if you eat eggs and meat, you're breaking it down.

2:00:44 Let's put it all together. That's why all that stuff is very, very unreliable. Yeah, it's all like how much vegetables do you eat how many instances of colon cancer let's coral it was that's why all that stuff is very very very reliable yeah it's very weird so Has there ever been a population that's been studied at least quasi-scientifically they suffer is the introduction of alcohol and tobacco and you know cigarettes yeah yeah and

2:02:29 Especially if we're going to be having a little bit more socialized medicine, right? not very good at regulating honestly because we kind It's a nootropic. that's probably not so well made. You look at prohibition. for their business their business being and adam curry laid it out brilliantly it's it's shocking are still legal you're talking about something that kills 500,000 people every year in this country alone.

2:06:06 Yeah. Were you a smoker ever? Oh, I've had it. You don't just get high. synapses, like he misses that. named anton otto fisher who was a painter and an illustrator. He then got married, lived in New York, and had a kid who was, So they went there. Like the drug is good. I wrote in my first book, my family memoir about the Jewish Catholic family, I wrote in there, not that I was a smoker,

2:09:50 And then we started to price out the insurance, and he said, you know, what do you do? lungs are fully recovered they also say so so this message I would say is really serious for anybody. Does vaping replace the feeling? Because they don't know all the chemicals and all the damage, potential damage that vaping may or certainly much better than smoking yeah because they don't know all the

2:11:31 You live in a finite life. right why don't you sleep more you know there's there's so many variables are you a guy who rock not in this country but no no no even in scandinavia it's not free it's free to the yes one of the scariest right how about so many things we should just all sit inside with helmets Well, that's possible. But then you're also probably hanging out with lunatics like you who are riding, you

2:13:51 So if someone does yoga three days a week, are we supposed to make them pay less? I've moved them one or two degrees to the right. it's really hard for people to accept, they're hearing david goggins and cameron and Cameron Haynes and fill in the blank. Just one. the world there's a lot of variance but there's one trend that's pretty strong which is uh suicide

2:16:57 situation or you live somewhere where the government is repressive whatever you can always Yeah. that they're inadequate or the judging themselves against girls that are you know supermodels that So there were a lot of theories. are a little bit more complicated than ice cream and polio but it's hard to tease out effects I'm in agreement with you. because of the digital revolution, he was able to build a community that is unbelievably good

2:21:17 and this is the best way to succeed is to connect yourself to the network to uptick your bandwidth it'd be interesting if if i was functional right if worked, I don't want to be a prisoner to my shell. Right. then on top of that they have the things like what elon musk wants to do with that uh neural link that many of them and if i know that there are 300 years worth yeah i wonder well that's all scale

2:24:15 I think what we're used to is 100 years if you're lucky. You used to work yourself pretty much and then you die. As though there's some quorum of they who all agree on everything. you love them, hug them, enhance the sense of community that you share with your friends and of stuff i have a real supportive group of friends and if you don't you long for that and i think that's a big thing like become that person reach out and try to try to start that i can't

2:27:10 getting fired losing a game loss those feelings where things didn't work out your way that's event i've always thought that they were good because i'm like a scaredy cat in some ways Can't fucking believe it. because the future is always dog shit. What steps do I make? And they work together. Come on, man. But having conversations with your brothers and sisters, sometimes they're the only people

2:30:04 Right. And the more things you can experience with people, Right. you know like one of my friends will say something terrible Of being able to joke around like that There's actually like a currency You're in the business like you nerf humor there's a real problem with that because it's fun it's fun when people talk on a fireplace. it's madness and chaos and ultraviolence.

2:32:59 And it's this drama. it overcomes that i think we should be really careful even with bad pieces of art of shielding Okay. i have yeah from the 1920s and 30s whatever it was bluto was a fucking rapist all he was trying Yeah. We shouldn't pretend. I saw that with the Rolling Stones. And I think whitewashing it, I think pretending that it didn't exist, eliminating it from the historical record of who we were in 1980 or who we were in 1930

2:36:43 one would care you have them up everywhere. where you make it, like, you're deciding record of our evolution is a good way to look i like that lens of looking at it. There's also the idea of how the line where the main character is constantly fighting off people that back then lived a hard hard life and that was what they didn't want some bullshit ass

2:39:06 No, well, it's way more complicated than that. It might make them angry you know it might lead to then I'm going to go with it. And the fact is thinking for yourself and ferreting out the it took a lot of effort a lot of time to make it and so the fact is is that that's what i do for And we're basically going to interview a bunch of scientists and academics and philosophers.

2:42:30 like what you were talking about before where there's so many ideas that like it's so much people who are willing and able to have ideas that are prima facie unpopular. Like my co-author, progress very much unless there's a guy like steve jobs or a copernicus or whatever you know discredited. He ended up getting thrown in debtor's prison. It's a a class it's like a horrible story but then at the end

2:45:08 look at all the artists who were like not at all popular in their time. I'm just happy that you're out there and that your podcast really does explore Just Freakonomics. Thank you so much