Joe Rogan is a comedian, UFC commentator, and the host of the Joe Rogan Experience.  Please check out our sponsors to get a discount and to support this podcast:
- Neuro: https://www.getneuro.com and use code LEX
- Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/lex
- Dollar Shave Club: https://dollarshaveclub.com/lex

EPISODE LINKS:
Joe's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joerogan
Joe's Twitter: http://twitter.com/joerogan
JRE (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk
JRE (Apple): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-joe-rogan-experience/id360084272
JRE (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQUP1qoWDoEbmsQxvdjxgQ

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:17 - JRE theme on guitar
1:54 - Fear of mortality
3:24 - Chaos of 2020 and beyond
7:08 - Are we going to be okay?
16:07 - Violence, competition, and Sober October
23:22 - Mike Tyson
24:25 - Managing obsession
26:49 - Jiu jitsu game
32:31 - Best martial art for self defense
36:06 - Second amendment
40:35 - Memorable JRE moments
46:08 - Ideas breed in brains of humans
52:44 - Advice for Lex
1:02:45 - Long-form conversation
1:09:05 - Meaning of life

CONNECT:
- Subscribe to this YouTube channel
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LexFridmanPage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman
- Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman
- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

The following is a conversation with Joe Rogan that we recorded after my recent appearance on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe has been an inspiration to me, and I thank to millions of people for just being somebody who puts love out there in the world and being genuinely curious about wild ideas from chimps and psychedelics to quantum mechanics and artificial intelligence.

Like many of you, I've been a fan of his podcast for over a decade and now somehow miraculously am humbled to be able to call him a friend.

If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 Stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman.

Today's sponsors are Neuro, 8 Sleep, Dollar Shave Club, and Olive Garden, home of the Unlimited Breadsticks and Brian Redband's favorite restaurant.

Check out the first 3 of the sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast.

I usually do full ad reads here and never ads in the middle, but this time, I'll just go straight to the conversation with a bit of guitar first.

I mean, it does pop into my head sometimes.

so if everything goes great, I have less than 50 years left.

You know, if everything goes great, like no car accidents, no injuries.

That's kind of a stoic thing to meditate on death.

There's a bunch of philosophers, Ernest Becker and Sheldon Solomon, they believe that death is at the core of everything.

So does that come into play in the way you see the world?

I think having a sense of urgency is very beneficial.

And understanding that your time is limited can aid you greatly.

I think knowing that this is a temporary time, that we have finite life spans, I think there's great power in that because it motivates you, it gets you going.

I think being an immortal, Living forever would be 1 of the most depressing things particularly if everybody else was dying around you and I think 1 of the things that makes life so interesting and fascinating is that it doesn't last You know that you you really get a brief amount of time here And really by the time you're just starting to kind of figure yourself out who you are and how not to screw things up So bad like times up

the rise over what about from your like from your daughter's perspective?

Do you think about the world we're in now and what kind of world you're going to leave them?

I do when I see these protests and riots and chaos and So much anger in the world today.

And then particularly today, I think because of the pandemic and the fact that so many folks are out of work and through no fault of their own and can't make ends meet, and just people feel so helpless and angry, It's a particularly divisive time.

And it just doesn't seem like the world of a year ago even.

And it's a small thing, like in terms of the possibilities of things that could happen to the world, like a pandemic, like the 1 we've experienced, it really just doubles the amount of deaths on a bad flu year.

So it's Relatively speaking is a small thing in comparison to super volcano eruptions, asteroid impact, a real horrific pandemic, 1 that really wipes out millions and millions of people.

It's stunning how fragile our society really is.

That something like this can come along, some unprecedented thing, unprecedented thing can come along and all of a sudden everybody's out of work for 6 months.

And then everybody's at each other's throats.

And then politically, everyone's at each other's throats.

And then with the advent of social media and the images that you can see, with the videos of police abuse And just racial tensions are at an all time high.

To a point where like if you asked me just 5 or 6 years ago, like, have racial problems in this country largely been alleviated?

I'd probably say, yeah, it's way better than it's ever been before.

Now you could argue it's no, it's way worse in just a small amount of time.

It's way worse than it's ever been during my lifetime.

While I'm aware of it, you know, obviously when I was a young boy in the 60s, they were still going through the civil rights movement, but now it just seems very fever pitched.

And I think a lot of that is because of the pandemic and is because of all the heightened, just tension.

Cause you know, people have road rage, not just because they're in the car and no 1 can get to them, but also because you're at a heightened state because you're driving fast, and you know you're driving fast, you know you have to make split second movements.

And so anybody doing something, you're like, what the?

People go crazy because they're already at an 8 because they're in the car and they're moving very quickly.

That's what it feels like with today, with the pandemic.

So anything that comes along, it's like, light it all on fire, burn it down.

That's part of what I think is part of the reason for a lot of the looting and the riots and all the chaos It's not just the people out of work, but it's also that everyone feels so tense Already and everyone feels so helpless and it's like, you know doing something like that makes people it just it gives people a whole new motivation for chaos, a whole new motivation for doing destructive things that I've never experienced in my life.

And your better days, when you see a positive future, what do you think is the way out of this chaos of 2020?

How do we get there and what does that look like?

And I wouldn't have said I don't know a year ago.

A year ago, I would have said we're gonna be okay.

As much as people hate Trump, the economy's doing great.

Today, I don't think there's a clear solution politically, Because I think if Trump wins, people are going to be furious.

And I think if Biden wins, people are going to be furious.

Particularly like if things get more woke.

You know, if people continue to enforce this forced compliance and make people behave a certain way and act a certain way, which seems to be a part of what this whole woke thing is.

Is the most disturbing for me is that I see what's going on.

I see there's a lot of losers that have hopped on this and they shove it in people's faces and it doesn't have to make sense.

Like there was a Black Lives Matter protest that stopped this woman At a restaurant they were surrounding her outside a restaurant.

They were forcing her to raise her fist and compliance There's a woman who's marched for Black Lives multiple times But Black Lives Matter multiple times And the people all around her doing this were all white.

My friend, Coach T, he's a wrestling coach, is also on a podcast, my friend Brian Moses.

His take on it is that black, and he's a black guy, He says, Black Lives Matter is a white cult.

And I'm like, when you see that picture, it's hard to argue that he's got a point.

I mean, it's clearly not all about that, but there's a lot of people that have jumped on board that are very much like cult members.

Because the thing about Black Lives Matter or any movement is you can't control who joins.

So you don't go, okay, how do you feel about this?

Like the man who shot the Trump supporter in Portland, you know, that guy who murdered the Trump supporter, then the cop shot him.

That guy was walking around with his hand on his gun looking for Trump supporters.

Just want, I mean, he's a known violent guy who was walking around looking for Trump supporters found 1 and shot 1.

That has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter.

He's a white guy, he shot another white guy.

And that kind of madness is disturbing to see it ramp up so quickly.

I mean, there's been riots in Portland every night, oh, excuse me, demonstrations for 101 days now.

101 days in a row of them lighting things on fire, breaking into federal buildings.

So I don't know what the solution is, and I don't know what it looks like in 5 years.

So 2025, to answer your question, like, it could be anything.

We could also be looking at an invasion from another country.

We could be looking at a war, like a real hot war.

To put a little bit of responsibility on you, like for me, I've listened to you since the Red Band Olive Garden Days, that's the very beginning.

And there was something in the way you communicated about the world, maybe there was others, but you were the 1 I was aware of, is you were open-minded and loving towards the world, especially as the podcast developed.

Like you just demonstrated and lived this kind of just kindness, or maybe even like lack of jealousy in your own little profession of comedy.

It was clear that you didn't succumb to the weaker aspects of human nature and thereby inspire people like me, who I was naturally, probably especially in the 20s, early 20s, kind of jealous of the success of others.

And you're really the primary person that taught me to truly celebrate the success of others.

And so by way of question, you kind of have a role in this, of making a better 2025.

Is there something you think you can do on this podcast with the words, the way you talk, the things you discuss that could create a better

I think if anything, I could help in leading by example, but That's only going to help the people that are listening.

I don't know what else I can do in terms of make the world a better place other than express my hopes and wishes for that And just try to be as nice as I can to people as often as I can.

But I also think that I've fallen into this weird category, particularly with the Spotify deal.

So you go from being a regular person to a famous rich guy that's out of touch.

You know, and that's a real issue whenever you're talking about the economy, about just real life problems.

kind of hurts my heart to hear people say about Elon Musk.

Yeah, it's an interesting statement But I think if you just continue being you and he continue being him people People I think people are just voicing their worry that you become some rich guy.

I think they're just finding, the way he describes it, an attack vector.

I think they just, they can dismiss you by just saying, oh, you're just a that.

Right, but there, I mean, there's truth to that.

If you're not careful, you can become out of touch.

Like, why haven't you become out of touch?

Like, as a human off the podcast, you don't act like a, like you talk to somebody like me.

You don't talk like a famous person, or You don't act rich.

You have too, but I've talked to especially kind

of group of people that are like Nobel Prize winners, let's say.

They sometimes have an air to them that's of arrogance.

Well, you got to know what that is, right?

Like that air of arrogance comes from drinking your own Kool-Aid.

You start believing that somehow or another, just because you're getting praise from all these people that you really are something different.

Usually it exemplifies, there's something there where there's a lack of struggle, you know, and I think struggle is Probably 1 of the most important balancing tools that a person can have.

And for me, I struggle mentally and I struggle physically.

I struggle mentally in that I, like we were talking about on the podcast we did previously, you and I on my podcast said, I'm not a fan of my work.

So anytime anybody says something bad about me, I'm like, listen, I said way worse about myself.

I'm ruthlessly introspective, and I will continue to be that way because that's the only way you could be good as a comedian.

You can't just think you're awesome and just go out.

You have to be like picking apart everything you do.

But there's a balance to that too, because you have to have enough confidence to go out there and perform.

I know what I'm doing, but I know what I'm doing because I put in all that work.

And 1 of the reasons why I put in all that work is I don't like the end result most of the time, so I need to work at it all the time.

And then there's physical struggle, which I think balances everything out.

Without physical struggle, I always make the analogy that the body is in a lot of ways like a battery, where if you have extra charge, it's like it leaks out of the top and it becomes unmanageable and messy.

If I have too much energy, if I'm not exerting myself in a violent way, like an explosive way, like wearing myself out.

I don't like the way I interface with the world.

But when I work out hard, and I put in a brutal training session, everything's fine.

Well, the first time I talked to you, Jerry, you were doing October.

Sober October, and there's something in your eyes, like I think you've talked about that you, you exercise the demons out essentially.

So you exercise to get whatever the parts of you that you don't like out.

There was a dark, there's a darkness in you there.

Like the competitiveness and the focus of that person.

That was a scary time in a lot of ways, that Sober October thing.

Because my friends, we were all talking shit, right?

Because we were competing against each other in these fitness challenges and You had 1 point, like you got a certain amount of points for each minute that you went at 80% of your max heart rate.

So I did 7 hours on an elliptical machine watching the bathhouse scene from John Wick, where he murders all those people in the bathhouse.

I went crazy, but I went crazy in a weird way where it brought me back to my fighting days.

It was like the same, that person came out again.

It was like, well, I didn't even know he was in there.

It's like, they're like an assassin, like a killer.

Is it echoes of like what Mike Tyson talked about, essentially like the-

Oh yeah, There's a lot of violence in me for sure.

I don't know if it's genetic or learned or it's because during my formative years from the time I was 15 till I was 22, all I did was fight.

so you, your mom and dad broke up early on.

I'm sure it's connected to him also because he was violent and it made me feel very scared to be around him.

But I also think it's connected in who he was as a human is transferred into my DNA.

You know, I think there's a certain amount of, I mean, to be prejudiced against myself, I look like a violent person.

You know, if I didn't know me, just even the way I'm built, not even just the working out part, just the size of my hands and like there's the width of my shoulders, like there's most likely a lot of violence in my history, in my past, in my ancestry.

And I think we minimize that with people.

So much of your behavior, like when I see my daughter, I have 1 daughter that's obsessive in terms of like she wants to get really good at things, like she'll practice things all day long and it's 100% my personality.

Like She's me in female form, but without the anger as much and without the fear, like she has loving household and everything like that.

But she has this intense obsession with doing things and doing things really well and getting better.

What's the point we have to tell her stop?

Like, stop doing hand springs in the house.

And I think there's a lot of behavior and personality, and a lot of these things are passed down through genetics.

We don't know how much of who you are genetically is learned behavior, you know, nature or nurture.

We don't know if it's learned behavior or whether or not it's something that's intrinsically a part of you because of who your parents were.

I think there's certainly some genetic violence in me.

figured out, is basically your life is a productive exploration of how to channel that.

How to figure out how to get that monkey to sit down and calm down.

There's another person in there, like there's a calm, rational, kind, friendly person who just wants to laugh and have fun.

And then there's that dude who comes out when I did Sober October.

That guy just wants to get up in the morning and go.

It's like, it's, I mean, when I was competing it was necessary, but it makes me remember.

I didn't really remember what I used to be like until that.

It's like when I'm working out 7 hours a day and just so obsessed and all I was thinking about was winning, that's all I was thinking about.

Like if they were working out 5 hours a day, I wanted them to know that I was gonna work out an extra 3 hours and I was gonna get up early and I was gonna text them all, hey, pussies, I'm up already, take pictures, send selfies.

Oh, I kept telling them, you're all gonna die.

You try to keep up with me, you're gonna die.

This is the scary thing when I interacted with Goggins and what I saw in you during that time is like this guy, like this is why I've been avoiding David Goggins recently.

It's like, cause he wants to meet, he wants to do the talk on this podcast, but he also wants to run an ultra marathon with me.

And I felt like this is a person, if I spend any time in this realm, if I spend any time with a Joe Rogan of that Sobra October, like I might have to die to get out.

Yeah, there's a competitive aspect that's super unhealthy.

I mean, you saw the video that we watched earlier today of Goggins draining his knee.

That would stop me from running ever again because I would think in my head, okay, I'm gonna ruin my cartilage, I'm gonna need a knee replacement.

I would start thinking, I would go down that line, but he is perpetually in this push it mindset, what he calls the dog in him.

That dog is in him all day long and he feeds that dog, you know, and that's, that's who he is.

That's 1 of the reasons why he's so inspirational and he's fuel for millions and millions of people.

I mean, he really is, he motivates people in a way that is so powerful, but it can be very destructive.

I just, I know now, especially after the Sober October thing, that that thing's still in me.

You know, I didn't know, so I really haven't done anything physically competitive, Except 1 time I was supposed to fight Wesley Snipes.

Kickboxing in the morning, Jiu Jitsu at night.

I was just going and going and going and going.

And I was just thinking just all day long.

But it fucks with all the other aspects of your life.

It fucks with your friendships, it fucks with your, it fucks with my comedy, it fucks with everything.

Because that mindset is not a mindset of an artist.

That's why it's so interesting to see Mike Tyson make the switch.

It's clear that whatever that is, however that fight goes, he made a, there's a switch of a different, he stepped into a different dimension.

Roy Jones Jr is coming on my podcast soon.

And you know, Roy's going to be on before the fight.

I'm, I'm so curious to see how it goes down, but genuinely concerned.

Cause Mike Tyson is a heavyweight and Roy Jones at his best was 168 pounds.

has that room in his house, mental house of where Mike Tyson goes.

He opens up the door, there's a whole empire in his head and he's in that firmly.

You know, when he got out of the weed and started training again, like you could see it in him.

And by the way, physically, in person, he looks spectacular.

Have you ever considered competing in Jiu Jitsu?

When we were playing video games at the studio, I had to quit because I was playing 5 hours a day, like out of nowhere.

All of a sudden I was playing 5 hours a day.

I was ending podcasts early and jumping on the video games and playing, I get obsessed with things and I have to recognize what that is and these competitive things, like competitive, especially like really exciting competitive things like video games, they're very dangerous for me.

The ultimate competitive video game is like jujitsu.

And if I was young, I most certainly would have done it.

If I didn't have like a very clear career path, it was something that I enjoyed.

My concern would be that I would become a professional jujitsu fighter when I was young.

And then I would not have the energy to do standup and do all the other things that I wound up doing as a career.

And I knew, and I also had my own school in Revere, I knew I couldn't do it right and also be doing stand-up comedy.

I knew I couldn't do both of those things.

You have to be cognizant of that obsessive force within you to make sure.

Yes, I'd have to know how to manage my mental illness.

And I think that mental illness, again, my formative years from 15 till I was, you know, 21-ish,

Those years were spent constantly obsessed with martial arts.

The only time I would not train is if I was either injured or if I was exhausted, if I needed a day off, but I was obsessed.

See all Lex Fridman transcripts on Youtube

Joe Rogan: Fear, Love, Chaos, and the Joe Rogan Experience | Lex Fridman Podcast #127