Joseph James Rogan

I have a strange feeling that something similar is what the future holds for all of us. Every person will be a channel, and we'll be able to tune into each other's lives the way we tune into shows today. We'll eventually be able to actually experience all the sensations people are feeling as well. First just physically, then eventually the actual emotions and even the thought processes. I think about this shit all the time, and as the interconnectedness that we experience from technology continues to expand I feel like it's just a matter of time before something like this is a reality. Or maybe I'm just really high. Or both.

There's some things I'm happy about from my comedy career, and I'm really happy that I've been able to make people laugh and distract them from their day to day bullshit at a comedy show or because they enjoyed one of my CDs or TV specials, but I don't know how many people have actually had life changing thoughts because of it. The podcast on the other hand has spawned so many intense conversations with so many brilliant people that have shared so many amazing thoughts that it's actually enhanced people's lives. I never saw that coming. I can't count how many people have come up to me and told me that certain conversations have permanently altered the way they look at life for the better, and have inspired them to improve their lives.

To me, that's probably the biggest accomplishment. None of it was by design, all of it was pretty unexpected, and it's something I value and appreciate deeply. That fucking podcast has some sort of weird life of its own. Sometimes I feel like I have this weird responsibility to show up and feed it, and that's really all I do. I go in, and turn everything on and feed this thing that has its own objectives. It's certainly shaped my life in a pretty profound way as well. Having the privilege of sitting down and having 3 hour long uninterrupted conversations with hundreds of brilliant people is an awesome perspective enhancer.

Having a thief creeping around a comedy club is a stifling thing. It's a terrible feeling especially for young unknown comics that are terrified that this person is going to take from them and leave them with no recourse. It's also really frustrating when you find out that no one is willing to do anything about a thief as long as there's profit to be made.

I had never seen a plagiarist on that level before, in person on a regular basis. It was like having a creative vampire that haunted the hallways and we had to all band together to make sure none of us were turned into his victims. Instead of crosses and stakes we had code words we would shout out when he was in the room so that the comic onstage would stop doing material and would start just doing ad-lib crowd work until he left.

I never meant to "call him out" but when he challenged me that night to come up onstage and "say that shit to his face" I was more than happy to do so. It was something that had been building up at the comedy store for a long, long time, and after it was over it really did feel like we took down a monster.

I think in the long run it's better for him this way too. Karma is some real shit, and running around profiting off of stealing shit from people for that long has got to tax the shit out of your self esteem unless you're a serious sociopath.

I probably wouldn't tell me shit. I would probably say, "Good luck, bitch!" One of the most fascinating lessons I've absorbed about life is that the struggle is good. You can't know tomorrow, because if you did you would never go about trying to create it the same way. The uncertainty and doubt that fuck with our minds are the same forces that make accomplishments and achievements so fucking amazing when you pull them off. It's almost like life has to suck sometimes to appreciate what's cool.

My 20 year old self would have to figure out all this shit the hard way, just like I did. Just like I'm still doing today. If I could go forward in time to when I'm 90 I would probably give the me of today the same advice. "Good luck, bitch!"

The struggle is real, and there are many ways you can benefit from it.

Yeah, we almost did another one recently, but it was real last minute and the only time he had available I was out of town. We'll make it happen again hopefully. I think Neil is one of the most important cultural figures in regards to spreading the fascination of science that our civilization has ever known. It's an honor to call that guy a friend.

Elon Musk is a real visionary, and when he says shit like this I certainly don't take it lightly. I think that the inevitability of artificial intelligence reaching some sort of unimaginable level of awareness is something that a lot of people avoid thinking about. Even really intelligent people. It's almost like looking at death. It makes us uncomfortable so we just avoid it.

It could also be that we're just wrapped up in the standard bullshit of every day life so much that we're not giving the concept of artificial life and the potential problems that it can create the attention that it deserves. Almost like a test that we know we're going to have to study for, but beginning that studying is just too painful so we continually put it off.

If you sit alone and ponder it, charting out possible courses of progression from what they're working on now and imagine what the possibilities could hold 50, 100 or 1000 years from now I could easily imagine a scenario where artificial intelligence becomes the dominant "life" form on this planet. Scary shit for us.

I love "conspiracy theories." Always have. I'm not sure if the origins of that are from some deep seated distrust of authority, or just what little information I have that's provable of known fuckery that leads me to ponder how much we don't know. That said, I try to always have an open mind when it comes to almost everything, and I try to group my possibilities into camps of likely and unlikely based on the thinking of the brightest minds and their take on the subject.

When I do that with the moon landing clearly the brightest minds and the most trustworthy sources believe the landings actually happened. That said I not-so-secretly hold out hope that some stunning piece of evidence would emerge that throws the entire subject into chaos. Why? Because I'm a silly bitch and I get a rush out of dumb shit like that. That's why I watch bigfoot shows, and that's why if I'm anywhere near a graveyard at night and there's no one around I'll get out of my car and look for ghosts for a few minutes if I have the time. Like I said, I'm a self professed silly bitch.

If you asked me for an honest opinion, I would say that when you look at the evidence it's certainly most likely that we went to the moon. That said, that's not nearly the dumbest thing I've held out hope for. For a long time I was fascinated by these things called "roswell rods." There was this video about them detailing this fascinating new life form that could only be caught on video because they moved too fast for the human eye. I watched a few shows on this subject, and spent hours discussing it and even contemplated getting a video camera to see if I could find them in my neighborhood.

Well, it turns out that these stupid fucking things were just bugs filmed with cameras that couldn't quite keep up with the movement of the bugs so it would create this weird video artifact that made them look like tubular flying squids. They cracked the mystery on the show "Monster Quest."

That might have actually been the only positive thing that ever came out of that monster quest show. Other than that, ever episode was them pretending they might have found a monster only to disappoint the fuck out of you in the end. Really it was a hilarious premise, because there should be absolutely no suspense in those shows in this day and age, because if they had actually found some real monster we would have heard about it online way before the episode ever aired.

I don't anymore, but I definitely did when I was young. I recognized that as a bit of a mental trap and considered it a weakness so I flushed it out of my psyche. I think a lot of how we move around in this life is based on habit, and not having a well thought out philosophy for dealing with common traps the mind and ego can set for you. I realized a long time ago that instead of being jealous you can be inspired and appreciative. It carries more energy to you, with none of the mental weight that comes from knowing that you're being a weak bitch. When you're jealous, especially of someone else's art or creations you automatically put up these selfish walls that reinforce your stupid ideas. It's hard to pull those walls down and look at what you're hiding. Look at your own weakness and realize that the jealousy came from knowing that you're intimidated by someone else's work, and that when you compare it to your own, you fall short.

That can be an awesome motivating force that can improve your life if you choose to be inspired and not jealous. One (being jealous) has no benefit whatsoever, the other is an incredible resource for creating momentum and improvement. The choice seems like it would be easy, but for whatever fucked up reason our primitive monkey brains gravitate towards jealousy first. Fortunately with the proper attention and focus we can re-wire those shitty, useless thoughts and use the same events to inspire us to grow and improve.

Don't hate, appreciate.

I think for anyone that's had a full-blown psychedelic experience it's very difficult to say that anything is impossible. I don't believe 3 thousand year old books about Jewish zombies that heal the sick and walk on water, but some of the things I've seen in DMT trips are FAR more unlikely than that, and those experiences are only 3 hits and 30 seconds away at all times.

I think the "truth" might be far more complex and bizarre than we can ever wrap our limited imaginations around. There is a theory that inside every galaxy there's a black hole, and inside every black hole there's an entirely different universe filled with other galaxies, each having a black hole in the center, and in each black hole there is another universe with an infinite number of new galaxies, each with a black hole in the center that will lead you to another universe... and it goes on and on with no end ever.

It's also possible that what we think of as a "universe" might actually just be some sort of atomic structure in a much larger object, like a cell in another human, and that human lives in another universe with black holes leading to other universes, etc, etc, etc...

Who the fuck knows. I think to come out and say "THERE IS NO GOD" is just as ridiculous as saying "I AM GOD." It's all silly.
There are only questions, and for every answer a new group of impossible questions arise.
The clearer our picture of the universe becomes the more bizarre and impossibly complex it reveals itself to be.

I think "who the fuck knows" is the proper stance for all of us.

I think the best thing we can do to change the world is to inspire young people. The more people realize that the key to happiness in life is to surround yourself with good friends, to be a good friend, to challenge yourself in honest ways, to not take short cuts but rather to rise to the challenge and grow from the struggle. To not be jealous of each other's success but rather be inspired by it. The more we realize that the key to happiness doesn't lay in numbers in a bank account but in the way we make others feel and the way they make us feel. The values of true community.

Although these values are massively important and resonate with every honest person when they're discussing "meaning" and "happiness" in life, they're not taught in school. We learn the building blocks of mathematics, the fundamentals of language, the facts of history - but we never learn how to manage our minds. We never learn how to live by a code and to surround yourself with like-minded people and to inspire and encourage each other.

Occasionally we're fed clumsy, abstract shit like "think positive!" but no one ever gives us a clear path of what the fuck that means. No one ever tells you that all the success in the world will leave you a miserable wreck of a person if you stab your brothers and sisters in the back in your attempt to reach victory. No one ever tells you that all the money in the world ain't worth shit if no one gives a fuck about you and you have no friends.

The quicker we all realize that we've been taught how to live life by people that were operating on the momentum of an ignorant past the quicker we can move to a global ethic of community that doesn't value invented borders or the monopolization of natural resources, but rather the goal of a happier more loving humanity.

People can still make money and still find success while doing it all ethically. We live in a time where we're seeing corporations acting as remorseless, profit seeking monsters with each human part required to keep it moving feeling free of guilt because of the diffusion of responsibility that comes with being a single piece in a huge machine. Too many people have the attitude that this is the only way to do big business. That's a pile of weak bullshit, and this generation may be one of the first generations that has the information available to make that distinction and stop that flawed model from being acceptable.

The more people require the highest level of friendship and love of themselves the more other people will be inspired by them. If that sounds like some hippy, utopian bullshit... it's because it is. It also might be the only way people are ever really going to change. One person inspiring another, each commiting to upholding a higher standard until it becomes the norm.

Humanity has changed drastically over the past few thousand years. It used to be when people you didn't know showed up in town they were there to rape and murder. Now, they're tourists and they're welcomed with open arms as a valuable part of the global economy. One day I believe that if we don't blow ourselves up, or poison ourselves with polution, or get wiped out by a super-bug or an asteroid impact we'll slowly come to the understanding that we really are just one species, and that the only way to truly be happy is if everyone around you is happy as well.