In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, the boys are joined by Daniel Bolelli, author of the book "On the Warrior's Path" and "50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know About Religion," to talk about religion and martial arts. They also talk about the new Power Mac, the new MacBook Pro, and some other cool stuff. Joe also talks about his new book, "You're Being Lied To," which is a book about how to get rid of religion and learn how to be a better human being. This episode is sponsored by The Fleshlight, AlphaBrain, a cognitive enhancer, and Numood, a 5HTP supplement that has a time release that gives you the effects of 5-HTP and L-Tryptophan. We are also sponsored by Onnit, the makers of AlphaBrain. If you enter the code "ROGAN" at checkout, you will get 10% off the most popular sex toy for men, the $99.99 O-N-I-T product, the Fleshlight. And if you want to buy it in bulk and try it out, go to Onnit.com, go buy your own stuff in bulk, and I hope it works! and if you don't have the money or don't want to try it, go get it from Onnit... go to ONNIT.COM and get the 10% discount code ROGAN. . Joe Rogans Podcast is brought to you by the folks at Onnit dot com, the best online store in the entire world. and you get 15% off your first purchase. Enjoy! Enjoy & spread the word to your friends and family about this podcast! -Joe Rogan Podcast - Cheers, Brian and the boys! -J.R. xoxo - The Rogans' Podcast. -Jon & the Rogans. "The Rogans" -Jon and the Rogan Boys" - The Rogan Crew Jon and the Crew - Jon & the Crew at On The Pod, Mikey and the crew The Conspiracies - Jon Rogan's Podcast, Dan Bolell, Jake, Brian, and the Conspirators, Chris, and the rest of the Crew, Daniel, Dan, and Brian, the guys at Disinfo
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00:02:33.000That shit is like the noisiest thing in the whole entire world.
00:02:37.000It's like, that's supposed to be that top of the line thing, but there's 17 fans on there, and the thing just sounds like it's going to take off.
00:02:42.000Well, it's not meant for being in the room with sensitive mics and podcasts.
00:02:46.000It's meant for, you know, some serious work.
00:03:57.000I think they put out some of Graham Hancock's stuff too, didn't they?
00:03:59.000Yeah, that was kind of like the formula for this book too.
00:04:02.000Their whole idea was I submitted to them this giant book I've been working on, 400 pages long with footnotes, all this stuff about religion.
00:04:10.000And they were like, Yeah, that's sweet and old, but seriously, can you give us something quick and that funny, weird, that has an impact right away that people, as you put it, can read on the toilet and get on something intense but quick?
00:04:24.000It's very difficult for people to discipline themselves to read any serious piece of work on anything.
00:04:31.000When you're just simply stating the facts and documenting things, it's oftentimes a dry read, even though it's fascinating information.
00:04:39.000So they're really clever in their idea of just, you know, figuring out a way to get it.
00:04:44.000And then, you know, probably once people read this book, get familiar with your writing, get into you, then maybe they'll dive into, like, some of your more serious stuff, right?
00:04:52.000Yeah, even serious is a big word, because I had, even in the big book, I had one of the chapters about the existence of God begins with a woman having a screaming orgasm.
00:05:00.000So, I mean, it can only be so serious, you know?
00:05:32.000Milan, which, by the way, I want to apologize to your listeners, because I've been living here, believe it or not, I've been living here 20 years, and when I first moved here, I swear I was speaking almost decent English, but then somebody brought to my attention that many American women like my weird Italian accent.
00:08:53.000And I get the same feeling when I'm drinking coffee that I do when I smoke too much cigarettes, where it feels like my body is craving it, but I get a headache kind of from it.
00:10:04.000No, I'm fascinated by it because you see how much it means to people, how much their whole worldview, their life, their priorities, who they marry, who they want to hang out with.
00:10:14.000Everything depends on the kind of stuff they put in their head based on religion.
00:10:19.000It's amazing that it still works, isn't it?
00:10:22.0002011, it's very difficult to have pure objective thinking.
00:10:28.000But then again, the thing is, the stuff that drives all this is that people are scared of dying, and rightfully so, because we don't control jack shit, we don't know anything about anything really about how the universe works.
00:10:39.000A friend of ours just died, so we should say rest in peace to Patrice O'Neil.
00:10:43.000He was a great guy and a great comedian, an awesome dude, an awesome thinker.
00:15:31.000Doing something against Anthony Openey because they were just so outrageous and their violent images that they put out to women was just uncalled for.
00:17:29.000An attempt that isn't funny, doesn't get any laughs, and is about raping the first black woman to ever become the Secretary of State of the United States.
00:19:53.000We don't want to have to avoid everything in the street.
00:19:56.000We don't want to have to worry about what radio station we turn on.
00:19:59.000And there is some really derogatory, violent You're going to get all your information, ma'am, is secondhand from someone making you aware that someone may have said something that you should be upset about.
00:21:10.000Yeah, because I mean, with religion, if you read even like early 1900s, people are thinking, okay, now with modernity, we're in a modern world, a more secular world, all the kind of more traditional superstitions are all going to phase out.
00:21:22.000I mean, it makes sense on the surface, but not really, because until you have the answers to the things that make people really freak out, dying, grief, what the hell, you know, because I mean, our life is so short, and we don't know jack shit about before or after.
00:21:36.000Until you give some people some answers, people are not comfortable having no answers.
00:21:40.000No matter how bullshit those answers are, they need them.
00:21:44.000It's almost like religion is some sort of an evolutionary device, like a bridge to take us from being monkeys to being enlightened beings.
00:21:53.000Like we need some horseshit to get us through this.
00:22:00.000No one ever wants to think of the concept of life being that it may be that you have lived this exact life before and you will live it over and over again until you get it right.
00:22:11.000And the idea that this could go on into infinity.
00:22:14.000And that might be what life really is.
00:22:17.000We don't think of it As being possible because it's too hard for our minds to wrap around and too alien to what we absolutely know to exist, like birth and death and having a certain amount of time here to get things done and seeing people die.
00:22:35.000The actual possibility is almost like it's too fucked up for us, so somebody had to invent religion in order to just patch up the road till we make it there.
00:22:45.000Yeah, because in reality we don't really control pretty much anything in life.
00:22:57.000I had a bit in one of my past albums about if you ever are starting to take your life seriously, just stand out and go outside and just look up at space and just really wrap your head up.
00:23:08.000I mean, everybody looks, oh, there's a star.
00:23:45.000I have a chapter in there that I had half of the fun of doing this book was coming up with the titles, because in a few words, you just throw out something outrageous and weird that gets things going.
00:23:55.000And let me see if I remember what this one exact was, because I had a blast with the origins of religion.
00:24:09.000This one I have a chapter entitled Mammoth Porn and the Caveman's Epop, The Origins of Religion.
00:24:16.000Because the very first evidence that archaeologists suggest this may be the beginning of religious behavior, they see these cave paintings left by cavemen where the main things that these guys were drawing were hunting scenes and animals having sex.
00:24:30.000The idea being these guys were doing these rituals because their life was on the line to ensure success in the hunt.
00:24:37.000And then, you know, animals are dead, so you need to make sure there are more for the next time around.
00:24:41.000So you're trying to send out the vibes so that the animals have sex, there's more of them, and so on.
00:24:46.000And what they would do, again, this is pure speculation because who the hell knows, but it's a fun speculation.
00:24:51.000Archaeologists suggest that they would have these rituals in front of this painting where they would mimic hunting and then they would mimic, you know, caveman and cavewoman having grindy, sweaty, dancing, semi-sex, kind of like modern hip-hop kind of thing.
00:25:06.000And that would be the beginning of religion because they are trying to influence the universe so that the animals have more sex and there's more of them to come along the next time.
00:25:16.000Could be total bullshit, because I mean, how do you know, really?
00:25:20.000An archaeologist basing it on three pieces of information left 15,000 years ago, but it sounds fun.
00:25:26.000And we should clarify that you actually know what you're talking about, unlike most of the time these discussions get brought up on this podcast.
00:27:52.000He gathers the loyalists, you know, the strict monotheistic people who are still on his side.
00:27:57.000He tells them, hey guys, you know, those are our friends, they are our neighbors, some of them are family, but they are worshipping other gods.
00:28:05.000We can't have that, so you know what to do.
00:28:07.000Get your weapons, let's go from one side to the camp of the other and kill them all.
00:28:12.000And so right after the Ten Commandments, you have a nice story of some 3,000 Jewish tribes who have been hacked to death by the monotheistic Jews against the polytheistic Jews.
00:30:31.000And the people that live, they're going to have to have some story for how they lived.
00:30:35.000And, you know, a couple generations in, when everybody's still living like a monkey...
00:30:39.000You know, running around collecting fruit and trying to get their goats to fuck so they can kill them and eat them, you know, and just wondering how they got, like, we seem really intelligent.
00:30:47.000Like, how did we get to this shitty point?
00:30:49.000Like, how come none of you fucks have figured out tools or clothing or houses or anything yet?
00:30:54.000Well, a long time ago, Noah was the only person, and we are the children of Noah.
00:30:59.000They don't even take into account that, you know, how many people were with Noah?
00:32:05.000So picture playing operator for maybe 50 years, and then you record all the answers, and then 200 years later somebody come around and look at the answer and decide which ones are true and which ones are not, and that's the word of God for you.
00:32:23.000And then people will fight to the death over those beliefs.
00:32:27.000A little comma put here or there that changed the meaning.
00:32:30.000That's, I need to cut off your bolts and burn the stake over it.
00:32:35.000Well, how about the fact that, you know, like, even the shit that was written down, when they wrote it down in ancient Hebrew, ancient Hebrew is a very bizarre language, and it doesn't have, they don't have numbers.
00:34:16.000The New Testament was written by a fucking murderer.
00:34:19.000And even that is bullshit because they only say that about the Old Testament when the Old Testament is so obviously over the top nuts that it's embarrassing.
00:34:27.000But then anytime it says something that they want that's not in the New Testament, it's like, hey, it's in the Bible.
00:34:32.000But I'm like, no, wait, that's the book you just told me that it doesn't count.
00:34:35.000No, but when it says something I like, then it counts.
00:34:40.000How do you deal with that when people are teaching it and when you're trying to study theology?
00:34:53.000How many people who are actually studying theology are religious and how many of them get to a point where they become agnostic?
00:35:54.000Wanting some kind of absolute answer where there is none, it just shows that you are so damn fearful that you just want to ignore any evidence in order to decide, I need some certainty.
00:36:05.000It's also a very weird characteristic that people have to need closure and to need a side to be on, even though there's no answer yet.
00:36:29.000Look, it's bizarre enough that you're a person.
00:36:32.000It's bizarre enough that you use your eyeballs to judge distance.
00:36:35.000You have these fucking organs inside your skull that measure light and distance, and they figure out exactly, precisely how far away you are from things.
00:36:45.000And that allows you to get in metal boxes with rubber wheels.
00:36:48.000That's just as bizarre as coming back as a baby in the 50s.
00:36:55.000I mean, it's so damn weird that it's beyond anything I can understand.
00:36:59.000And precisely because I respect it and I'm in awe of it, trying to make it all fit in my little box of how everything is supposed to work is bullshit.
00:37:07.000The best quote I ever heard of it from JDS Haldane who said, not only is the universe queerer than you suppose, it's queerer than you can suppose.
00:38:34.000It's just this super passionate, erotic love poem between a man and a woman.
00:38:39.000A woman who enjoys sex as well is also from her point of view, which is completely unheard of in the rest of the Bible.
00:38:44.000And it's just this celebration of sex, essentially.
00:38:47.000And it's just like, always like, how the hell did this end up in there, you know?
00:38:51.000And my theory is that one of the guys who are copying all the scriptures got drunk one night and took the wrong scroll and got his homemade porn there and put it in there by mistake.
00:39:34.000He believes that the entire works of the Christian religion were originally mushroom.
00:39:41.000It was about mushroom eating and psychedelic drugs and Ritual sex and about a fertility rituals and making sure that they they kept breeding and that you know women kept having babies.
00:40:00.000He tracks down the word mushroom or the word Jesus rather to an ancient Sumerian word.
00:40:08.000The roots of it being an ancient Sumerian word that means a mushroom covered in God's semen.
00:40:14.000and that the idea he believes and this is me he's making a big reach that I don't think unless you have some sort of serious education in language history could totally even grasp the argument but what he's saying is that what they used to call mushrooms It was like God would come on the earth when it would rain.
00:40:35.000And then mushrooms would grow out of that.
00:40:47.000You have religions around the world where anything from peyote to ayahuasca to a lot of psychedelic substances, amenita muscaria, the mushroom itself, a bunch of things that have been central to people's religion because they open up all these worlds and so on.
00:41:00.000And probably the origins of a lot of the stories and a lot of the experiences.
00:41:04.000Yeah, no wonder you start seeing weird gods flying around.
00:41:07.000Especially back when it was hard to get food.
00:41:56.000What kind of fishing line do you have that you're making 42,000 years ago that you can pull a fucking thousand pound tuna out of hundreds of feet of water and you got a hook and some meat?
00:42:13.000We might have to rewire or rewrite the whole...
00:42:17.000I have a very strong feeling that over the next few years there's going to be more and more evidence like this that makes people want to push back the origins.
00:42:28.000This new structure that they found in Turkey is another one where they're thinking they're going to have to push back the origins of civilization because it's at least 12,000 years old and it's these huge sculpted stone columns and They have all these animals that are drawn on it that don't even exist in Turkey.
00:42:46.000So these animals weren't even supposed to be in the fossil record from back then.
00:42:51.000So the belief is, what they're trying to say now is that this was made by hunter and gatherers.
00:42:57.000And a lot of people are going, come on, man.
00:43:11.000Is there a bunch of stuff we haven't found yet?
00:43:13.000And if there is and we do find it, eventually there's going to be a point in time where they're going to have to say, I think we've been around longer than we think.
00:43:22.000That's why we are rewriting history all the time because, I mean, that's why, you know, you read history books and you have, like, the last 50 years is this thick and then the first 20,000 years is like, okay, we were here for a while and then 50 years ago this happened and it's like, okay, because we don't know much.
00:43:38.000We look so much different than anything else here.
00:43:42.000We're some kind of an ape, but god damn we look different than the rest of the apes.
00:44:26.000So, this Marco Allegro guy met a lot of controversy when he was trying to propose that religion might have had its roots in psychedelic experiences.
00:44:37.000Why do you think people are so reluctant to take in that possibility?
00:44:43.000Any kind of psychedelic experience is very individual.
00:44:45.000You know, it's hard to build that church on it in a sense that it's hard to have a dogma because it changes so much from one experience to the next, from one person to the next.
00:44:58.000Direct experience doesn't reassure them because they have to base it on their own feelings, on their own instinct, on their own, and it's too scary for people.
00:45:04.000You know, you hear people talk so much shit about how we like freedom.
00:45:11.000They like the idea of being free, but they run to their chains anytime they can because they need something to keep them safe, to make them feel like, you're okay, little boy.
00:45:27.000Martial arts, how long it took for people super attached to this is how we do things, this is the truth of combat, when in martial arts you can try it.
00:45:37.000It's not like a religion where there's not as much direct evidence.
00:45:40.000You can try it and still people would stick their head in the sand and not want to see it that some shit just didn't work.
00:45:45.000Well, it's fascinating that it's one of the most fundamental forms of competition.
00:47:37.000Well, it's very strange to me when guys switch religions.
00:47:40.000Like, you know, like a dude will convert and become, you know, a Jew or, you know, convert and become something else or a Christian or a Catholic.
00:49:46.000I think one of the things I tell them is that, hey man, I'm not telling you anything about any single one religion, because within any religion there's so much variation that they disagree just about everything among Christians, among Muslims.
00:49:59.000I'm just making a general point about where a certain belief has led to.
00:50:30.000And that's where I think the Italian accent come in.
00:50:32.000I don't think they understood a thing I said.
00:50:34.000But it sounded cool, and so they were.
00:50:36.000Well, you're a smooth talker, and you obviously are well-educated, so the words come out nice, and you're basically talking about the Bible, and their little brains lock up.
00:50:50.000I mean, I'm afraid that's the majority of people.
00:50:52.000Yeah, and I think a lot of people don't want to believe that it's a biological issue.
00:50:58.000A lot of people want to believe that it's an education issue or an environmental issue or a cultural issue.
00:51:03.000And it may be, but it also might be biological.
00:51:08.000Look, there's people that are born and they're seven feet tall.
00:51:11.000There's people that are born and they have giant dicks.
00:51:14.000There's a great variation of human beings.
00:51:17.000When I just see this giant wave of sloth, you see a giant percentage of people in this country, I don't know if it's 20%, I don't know what the number is, we just look at them like, my God, you're barely thinking.
00:51:38.000They might have shit genes and a poor database to draw from genetically.
00:51:44.000No one in their genes and ancestry has ever been any different than them.
00:51:49.000And they've gotten this far, so there's no need to adapt.
00:51:52.000Yeah, so it's like, you know, you come across a wild pig, or you come across a pig that's in a pen, and they're completely different animals.
00:52:18.000I got upset because a couple people accused me of stealing the idea for that bit that I had for my special, the bit about dumb people outbreeding smart people.
00:53:18.000It's like the reason why people in their car can give you the fuck you when they wouldn't do that if they were just in the street a few feet from you.
00:53:25.000But in a car right next to you, because there's a window and because there's a door and a window and a door and some space in between that, they're like, fuck you, you fucking bitch.
00:57:14.000Do you have like a workout you do or meditation or yoga or anything?
00:57:19.000I think honestly, right now I've been burning the candle on both hands so I don't know that I have to answer to that because I don't think I've been doing a good job at it.
00:57:27.000I think I've been handling things but I'm feeling lately my body kind of giving me signals like, hey man, you're going over the edge.
00:57:39.000Workout has always been my thing but then again when you don't have the physical time anymore so I need to find the times to do it and so that's kind of what I'm working on being able to just train again and do all this stuff because I mean with martial arts I've been doing it 20 years it's been like one of the things that you do day in and day out forever and suddenly you don't do that anymore you're like oh shit your body goes through withdrawal you feel weird so it's key to do it because it doesn't matter how busy you get it's key to your health in a way Yeah,
00:58:08.000I remember I tore a ligament in my leg.
00:58:10.000It was the first, like, real serious injury that took me out for months and months.
00:58:14.000I tore a knee ligament, and I had to get it reconstructed.
00:58:16.000And then I didn't work out for a long time.
00:58:19.000And it was the first time in my life that I hadn't done that.
00:58:48.000It makes you want to take care of it because you realize that it's communicating with you.
00:58:52.000It's communicating with you through movement, through your desire and intent to do something and its actual ability to perform what your desire and intent is.
00:59:00.000And you get this relationship with your body.
00:59:16.000You communicate with your body through things.
00:59:19.000Through sex, through martial arts, through dance.
00:59:22.000You communicate when you require your body to move in very specific ways.
00:59:28.000There's a consciousness to that that's very uniquely its own.
00:59:33.000The consciousness of the full focus and concentration of someone utilizing their body.
00:59:39.000Because I really do believe that that is an element of the whole and that you have to, in order to be optimally healthy, you have to have the whole together.
00:59:48.000You have to have the mind must be healthy, the consciousness must be healthy, the body must be healthy.
00:59:53.000Yeah, and I went through a long period.
00:59:55.000It was like six months, you know, rehabbing my knee after the surgery and everything like that, where I still couldn't kick a bag, I couldn't box, I couldn't run.
01:00:13.000I started out originally watching the Kung Fu TV series too many times, I think.
01:00:18.000So I was just like, I want to go on a mountain with Master Yoda showing me how to fly in the air.
01:00:24.000So I started out with a lot of Chinese martial arts, and then I progressively moved to more self-defense oriented things.
01:00:31.000Kind of the opposite of what most people do.
01:00:33.000We start out with very aggressive and then they mellow out.
01:00:36.000I started out all, it's all about Zen and poetry and things.
01:00:39.000And now I'm just like, shut up, let's just wrestle, you know.
01:00:43.000Just all about combat sports and submission grappling, MMA, that kind of thing.
01:00:48.000Well, I think, you know, there's definitely a mindset to the Eastern martial arts that is being lost in the transition to combat sports, you know, to look at combat sports.
01:01:01.000There's something to be gained from that mindset.
01:01:04.000What people don't understand is that, like, the ancient Japanese martial arts masters, you know, the reason why they practiced Zen thinking wasn't because It's just, you know, a thing they did that, you know, really doesn't need to be replicated today.
01:01:21.000No, what they were doing was, in order to have a way, in order to have a way of thinking of life, they were disciplining the mind to behave on very specific frequencies and to have control over itself.
01:01:32.000And that in your discipline and in your honor and your code, you have control over your emotions, you have control over your body better.
01:01:41.000You have control over your psyche better because you have an ethic, because you have a code.
01:02:16.000It's like the scariest thing in the world.
01:02:17.000This guy has been training forever to knock your head off.
01:02:20.000So I walked up and the days before, the time when I step on the mat, I feel like everything in my body is shutting down.
01:02:28.000I'm about to die kind of feeling, you know.
01:02:30.000Everything freezes and And so I can see how the whole Zen thing is not about having some strange mystical thought, it's about how do you deal with the fact that this is what you're gonna do, and you do it without too much attachment, because attachment will breed fear, fear will shut you down, and then you'll get killed.
01:03:20.000You're a smart person to think that way.
01:03:22.000Your body thinks it's going to fight, you know, and your body doesn't want to do it.
01:03:25.000So it starts, you know, just essentially trying to pull you out of it.
01:03:29.000But at the same time, it's like the most instructive thing in the world because it teaches you to get rid of attachments.
01:03:35.000Because, you know, you live with attachment of fears and all these things about you hope that the universe is not gonna do this and that to you.
01:03:42.000And the reality is, in combat, like in life, you don't control jack shit.
01:03:46.000You do the best you can and then it's out of your hands and you need to be able to live through it despite the obvious fear that kicks in from self-preservation.
01:03:55.000And so it's like, hey man, maybe you die in a second.
01:05:51.000In my opinion, the best example of technique over power that this guy, Minotaro, this 230 pound guy was ever to beat this 350 plus pound monster of a man who didn't even look real.
01:06:19.000You know, a guy who became a master of jiu-jitsu and then became a great striker to add on to it and was just willing to fight anybody.
01:06:28.000And I think it started way back in the day because, I mean, when he was, I forget, 10, 11, whatever, when he had a car accident and he was in a hospital for a year where they tell him you'll never walk again.
01:06:38.000Maybe you'll walk, but maybe definitely no sports.
01:06:41.000And the guy goes on to become an MMA champion.
01:06:43.000It's like, let's say something about the guy's personality.
01:06:46.000I remember when he was at the top of his game, man, when he was triangling everybody, and you just saw jiu-jitsu on a level that you had never seen before.
01:06:54.000All of a sudden, this badass heavyweight who was tough as fuck, who had a wicked guard, a wicked jiu-jitsu game, was hitting...
01:07:02.000Anaconda chokes on dudes and fucking strangle him from his back.
01:07:06.000And you're like, whoa, this dude is on another level.
01:07:09.000That was, to me, a real victory for technique in mixed martial arts.
01:07:15.000In my opinion, Minotauro embodies this era where people learn, whoa, that's possible too.
01:07:21.000We were not seeing guys on the highest levels submitting guys the way Minotauro was.
01:09:37.000And that last one when he got knocked out and Vanderlei caught him with two punches and literally sent him flying through the air as he skid unconscious on his back.
01:10:27.000He was involved in so many Fight of the Year candidates, you know?
01:10:30.000I mean, even when he was broken up, when was that, like a year ago or two years ago, when he had the fight with Galezig, I think he was, where he put the guy in the kneebar and the guy hit him like 50 straight times, no protection, and the guy stayed with it so he could get the kneebar and win the fight.
01:10:55.000Sakuraba has these gigantic cauliflower ears.
01:10:59.000And for people who don't know what that means, when you wrestle a lot or you get hit in the ear a lot, when it breaks up the tissue, it fills up with fluid and blood and then it hardens.
01:11:08.000It becomes almost like cartilage, like really thick stuff.
01:12:45.000You know, there's something funny about Japanese culture because they are so by the book in so many ways, but when the guys go off the model, they really go off.
01:12:54.000Yeah, they get mohawks and tattoo their whole body.
01:14:05.000They were trying to really mean and trying to keep him in the fold by giving him, you know, we'll make you abbot of this monastery and stuff.
01:16:19.000And the wife is starting to get into yoga and the dude is experimenting with a bunch of different things and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on in the world.
01:16:27.000But it's weird to watch someone come out of it.
01:16:29.000It's weird to watch someone go, you know what?
01:17:41.000I haven't seen it, but the reason why I know this is because a friend was trying to...
01:17:46.000Explain to me how intelligent octopuses are, that they can take food and put it in a jar, and the octopus will unscrew the jar and get at the food.
01:17:55.000And that a guy was missing some of his tropical fish, and he had a couple of fish tanks, and one of them was right next to, you know, the octopus was right next to this one with, like, this is a really expensive fish.
01:18:05.000This fucking octopus was climbing out, climbing up into the next tank, lifting the fucking lid up and getting inside and eating the fish, and then climbing back to his place.
01:19:52.000But it was on the ocean floor that they had these imprints, these fossilized imprints of what looked like massive suction cups of a huge tentacle.
01:20:01.000And by that, they're making this pretty reasonable hypothesis, you know, and the bones of the whale being all fucked up, and then these giant suction cups that like, oh, there probably was this real monster that lived...
01:26:18.000I have a chapter entitled Peace-Drinking Draghi Priests Created Hinduism.
01:26:24.000Because one of the theories that Wasson has about that is that he believes he was Amanita Muscaria this summer.
01:26:30.000And the way he figured it out, he went through a bunch of these books referring to some, and he was saying, you know, they keep talking about a plant, but they don't talk about leaves, they don't talk about, you know, they refer to stem, they refer to some weird crap, right?
01:26:42.000And then, so he was thinking, he was starting to go in the mushroom direction, and then he finds out this piece of literature from somewhere else, where some shaman in Siberia, I think, was talking about how they...
01:26:55.000And he had read about this triple filter that they're using for SOMA, where they do a couple of things to do it, and then there's a human filter.
01:27:02.000And he was like, what the hell is a human filter?
01:27:04.000He found out that if you take Amanita Muscaria, you get the high, but you also get really nauseous and weirded out.
01:27:22.000Well, I know that people drink their own piss when they're tripping, when they're taking aminidia or when they're taking stropharia cubensis.
01:27:29.000They'll drink their own urine and they blast off, apparently.
01:28:48.000But it's an interesting, it's a fun theory, if nothing else.
01:28:52.000Amanita muscaria is a very strange mushroom because they believe it's not only variable genetically, but it's variable by location, seasonally, and that some of them might not even be psychoactive.
01:30:03.000And it has a mycorrhizal relationship with certain coniferous trees so that it grows only under those trees just like packages under your fucking Christmas tree.
01:30:16.000And people would gather them and the way to dry them out was they would put them on the fucking trees, on the branches of the trees, so the sun would get them and it would dry them out.
01:30:25.000It's like that's the ornaments on the trees.
01:30:31.000And it's been argued that, you know, someone told me that Coca-Cola was the first one to actually make a red and white Santa Claus and that he was a different color before then.
01:30:46.000What really matters is the fucking presence under the tree, the relationship that it has with the tree, the reason why we have Christmas trees and they're always fucking pine trees, man.
01:30:55.000I mean, the whole thing, it's like, wow, the relationship's so close.
01:31:27.000I would say there's evidence that there's a relationship.
01:31:30.000And there's a bunch of people that have studied this.
01:31:33.000There's a guy, Andrew Rudiger and Jan Ervin.
01:31:37.000They've done a lot of study on this stuff.
01:31:39.000And the great Jack Herrer was actually writing a book about this before he died.
01:31:44.000The relationship with Christianity and mushrooms as well.
01:31:48.000He had all these really cool ancient paintings of people who were naked, dancing in ecstasy under the very clear, transparent silhouette of the shape of a mushroom.
01:32:02.000If you ever look at the really old pictures of halos, that's fascinating too.
01:32:09.000The new halos are like a frisbee or like a hula hoop floating around the back of your head, but the old halos were literally on the underside of a mushroom cap.
01:34:58.000No, I think all the people, all the ones who believe that there's only one right way that has been revealed by God to them, and so they are super hardcore dogmatic.
01:35:08.000And mostly, I mean, you're talking about Muslim fundamentalists, today in particular Muslim fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists throughout much of history.
01:35:45.000What about the idea that the most dogmatic and the most restrictive religions are really the religions that have come from the areas that have the oldest civilizations?
01:36:02.000which is where Iraq is and you know really famously is a part of the world that is still in the Dark Ages right in a lot of ways yeah you know the the battles between the Sunnis and the Shiites and they just the Kurds and all the shit that happened with Saddam Hussein and right and you go back to that area I mean you say well you know this this area literally was Sumerr the This is Babylon.
01:36:27.000This is where, you know, literally the first religions were created, as far as we know.
01:36:33.000And when you think about that, like the people that are still there, They're much more influenced by the deep, deep past than people that have spread out to all parts of the world as travelers, especially Americans.
01:36:46.000That's the last example of a new continent that we know that just over the last few hundred years has been established.
01:36:54.000Yeah, I'm kind of scared of anything that comes out of the desert.
01:37:43.000I mean, religion come out from beautiful mountains and rivers and shit.
01:37:47.000I'm sure it's going to do something to its ideology where they are, maybe, not always, but more likely than not, they're going to have a more mellow view of life.
01:37:55.000Well, there's only one really mellow religion, right?
01:38:02.000I can disagree with some stuff in Buddhism, but it's pleasant disagreement.
01:38:07.000And they are not, at least for the most part, as hardcore trying to shove it down your throat, so it's a little more relaxed to have a dialogue.
01:39:02.000No one in that really is believing, at least I don't think they are, believing the stories of Scientology the same way that people are believing the ridiculous stories.
01:39:10.000I mean, especially when it's written by a science fiction author.
01:39:13.000I know, but because we know more shit today.
01:39:14.000You know, it's like you can make some great claims about some distant past where nobody knows shit, then you can spin a story that nobody can disprove today.
01:39:23.000In three seconds, people find out all about you when you're like, hey, isn't your prophet the guy who was like ranting some child porn the other day?
01:39:31.000And he's like, what are you talking about?
01:39:32.000So it's a little harder to get away with stuff.
01:39:35.000Do you remember the Ted Haggard documentary they did for HBO? And one of the things he goes to look for a job.
01:39:42.000And after he gets out, he goes, I think I'll be okay unless they Google me.
01:41:36.000A bunch of the Western world were saying, yeah, sure, the violence is bad, the Muslim reaction, but really is this terrible and offensive what these people are doing.
01:41:45.000And I'm just like, are you kidding me?
01:41:47.000You know, you're giving in to book burners and arguing that people want to squash freedom of opinion that's in the name of respecting religion.
01:41:56.000Yeah, if you want to go to war, if the United States wants to go to war, you should go to war with anybody that wants to kill a lady who suggests that you should have a draw Muhammad Monday.
01:42:15.000Those are the people who you can't bounce that far back from where they are.
01:42:20.000They need to die and come back and live life again and try to learn from this life's experiences because you're not going to bounce back from being a guy who's willing to cut the heart out of a woman who wants to have a draw Muhammad Monday.
01:42:33.000That guy's never going to be a productive member of society.
01:42:36.000He's not like, oh, I don't tip well at the restaurant.
01:43:38.000I think it was my attitude over the last few months, where I was like, I've been through enough shit, that's kind of my feeling toward the universe.
01:43:45.000One end I'm protective of the only good thing there is, and then the other end I'm like, fuck you all.
01:43:51.000Is your go-to karaoke song by R.E.M. by chance?
01:46:41.000We also have a show Friday every week usually for Death Squad where I take all the other people like Sam Tripoli, Jason Tebow, Tom Segura and all those guys and I give them their own separate show too.
01:46:52.000Solid shows if you're around and you want to check those out.
01:46:55.000Even if you don't know the guys' names, I guarantee you if they're on these shows, they're solid.
01:47:02.000So this weekend's the UFC. Oh, who else we got?
01:47:06.000Doug Stanhope will be joining us on Thursday.
01:47:10.000Thursday, Doug Stanhope is going to join us.
01:47:12.000He's got a show Wednesday and Thursday.
01:47:15.000Wednesday is at the Irvine Improv and Thursday is at the Brea Improv.
01:47:21.000So, we're going to bring him down here on Thursday, do a podcast with Doug, get piss-eyed drunk, and then take him out to the Improv in Brea that night.
01:47:30.000So, if you're looking to see him, go to the Irvine Improv's website.
01:48:10.000It's the only way on iTunes to subscribe to it because it's the only way you can get the Ice House Chronicles, which I think is one of the best podcasts out there.
01:48:17.000It's all of us hanging out pre-shows and after shows, and you get some hilarious shit out of it.
01:48:23.000Everybody's getting amped up for the show, and there's a lot of shit talking, and it's always fun when you've got like ten comics in a room together.