#2517 - Taylor Sheridan

Summary

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The Joe Rogan Experience #2517 - Taylor Sheridan

Recorded June 23, 2026
Host: Joe Rogan
Guest: Taylor Sheridan (writer, director, rancher)
Notable Participant: Brett Weinstein

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Episode Overview

This episode features an expansive conversation between Joe Rogan and Taylor Sheridan, best known for creating “Yellowstone,” “1883,” and other major series. The discussion spans a fascinating variety of topics: horse genetics and ranch life, the systemic dysfunctions behind homelessness and non-profits, problems in American government and media, addiction and the opioid crisis, food health myths, spycraft, the evolution of civilization, and the inspiration for—and process behind—Sheridan’s new book, How to Not Die in Prison. The tone blends humor, skepticism, and insight, making it a compelling window into both men’s worldviews.

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Key Discussion Points & Timestamps

1. Ranch Life, Horses, and Unique Knowledge

[00:14 – 00:53]

• Sheridan explains the significance of his championship belt buckle, awarded for notable accomplishments in horse training.
• They compare niche expertise in horses to Rogan’s familiarity with combat sports.
• Discussion evolves into horse genetics—certain bloodlines (e.g., “Spooks Got A Wiz”) exhibit quirky, inherited behaviors like unpredictable panic attacks (Sheridan: “They see dead people, they see ghosts…check out…either you come with me or I’m gonna buck your ass off.” [01:25])

Notable Quote:

• Taylor Sheridan [01:25]: “There’s a stallion…I like him…all of a sudden, this thing’s going to fucking check out…no reason, it just decides it’s not safe here.”

2. Deaf Horses, Sensory Experience, and Focus

[02:12 – 03:33]

• Certain horse color patterns often indicate deafness, which can change how a horse perceives the world and stress.
• Rogan draws a parallel with Shane Van Boening, a deaf pool player who’s able to achieve superhuman focus (“…goes into this world…the zone…”) [03:33]
• Discussion links focus, autism, and ADHD as “superpowers” in creative or athletic domains.

Notable Quote:

• Joe Rogan [05:33]: “Anybody that’s good at anything is either ADHD or autistic.”

3. ADHD, Medication in Childhood, and Education Critique

[05:45 – 07:48]

• Sheridan and Rogan discuss their childhood experiences with ADHD and medication.
• Both criticize overmedication and the education system’s intent to breed compliance over creativity.
• Sheridan and guests agree on the public school system’s historic ties to industrial interests (Rockefellers, “to create workers”).

Notable Quote:

• Taylor Sheridan [06:49]: “Superpower—if you understand it, exactly, it’s a superpower.”
• Joe Rogan [07:19]: “You take kids that are so energetic and they have so much life and you just squeeze it out of them.”

4. Media, Propaganda, and International Influence

[12:02 – 14:37]

• Sheridan highlights how foreign powers (Russia, China, Qatar) back U.S. NGOs to fuel division.
• Rogan references Yuri Bezmenov’s 1984 warnings about engineered American division (“Push out any ideas of patriotism…all of it engineered…” [13:10]).
• Both critique non-profits as maintaining rather than solving problems, using L.A.’s homelessness as an example.

Notable Quote:

• Taylor Sheridan [14:31]: “Exacerbate the problem, make the problem worse, make it longer, make it bigger…we need more money.”

5. "Animal Cruelty" Laws and Real-World Fallout

[15:51 – 19:39]

• Discussion on Oregon’s upcoming vote for an “animal cruelty” law that would ban ranching, hunting, and fishing.
• Sheridan and Rogan mock the law’s naive unintended consequences (“What do you do with 91 million cattle?” [16:55]).
• The conversation satirizes urban detachment from rural realities.

Notable Quote:

• Taylor Sheridan [16:55]: “So lets outlaw ranching…there’s 91 million cattle…what do we do with them?”
• Joe Rogan [18:17]: “It'll probably pass.”
• Taylor Sheridan [18:39]: “He moved to Portland from Denver, from SoCal…because he wanted to meet another gay vegan.”

6. Food Science, “Milk” Myths, and Agriculture

[20:19 – 26:15]

• Detailed discussion of agricultural impact (bees killed for avocados and almonds; almond water use).
• Sheridan rails against calling plant juices “milk,” advocating for correct language (“almond tea, not milk!” [23:54]).
• Rogan shares experiences with oxalates and misleading health fads.

Notable Quote:

• Taylor Sheridan [23:54]: “I’m determined to call it almond juice because that’s what it fucking is.”
• Joe Rogan [26:15]: “All these people don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and they’re giving advice…”

7. U.S. Beef: Industrialization vs. Traditional Ranching

[26:37 – 32:10]

• Sheridan explains the modern beef supply chain, noting the inefficiency and limits of industrializing beef compared to farming.
• Describes how COVID increased opportunities for small ranchers with local processing facilities.

8. Hard Work, Cowboys, and the Yellowstone Ethos

[30:22 – 33:38]

• “Yellowstone”'s depiction of hard, romanticized ranch work has inspired viewers.
• Description of real cowboy life, size of Texas ranches, and required ranch management education.

Notable Quote:

• Joe Rogan [30:27]: “Really attracted to the idea of brutal hard work as being romantic.”
• Taylor Sheridan [31:02]: “It’s uniquely American…the amount of freedom that is…”

9. Sheridan's Writing Process and TV Production Efficiency

[32:42 – 35:12]

• Sheridan credits the streamlined efficiency of his team—promotes from within, avoids meetings, starts shooting much faster than industry norms.

Notable Quote:

• Taylor Sheridan [32:59]: “My crew…is the same crew I made Wind River with…We’ve promoted from within…everyone understands the way we do it…we don’t ever have meetings.”

10. Landman, Oil Dependency, and Cold Fusion Hope

[36:42 – 40:22]

• On the show “Landman” and its exploration of oil dependency: "We are so completely dependent upon petroleum…" (Sheridan [36:42]).
• Discussing nuclear energy and future possibilities for cold fusion; skepticism toward consumer-level nuclear power due to lack of public responsibility.

11. International Relations, Espionage, and Secret Tech

[40:54 – 47:37]

• Intriguing stories of recent US special forces operations (e.g., Venezuela), government “discombobulator” sound weapons (per Trump), and speculation on possible U.S. advanced technologies (“If this was 20 years ago, you'd be like, that's not a real thing” [44:16]).
• UAPs as possibly U.S. tech, not extraterrestrial.

12. Societal Change: Equity vs. Self-Determination

[47:37 – 52:49]

• Sheridan questions whether a push for collectivism and “equity” is truly compassionate or a dangerous path to authoritarianism (“You either have self-determination or…you have to surrender that.” [48:50]).
• Parallels drawn to historic authoritarian regimes (Leninism, Marxism, etc.).

13. Loss of Trust: News, Law, and Political Precedent

[55:52 – 62:17]

• The cyclic erosion of trust in government and media post-COVID: “I don’t know where to go to get honest news. Not the news. I know that I can’t turn on the fucking news because they've fucking been lying to us.” (Sheridan [57:39])
• Importance of term limits in politics and anger at “public servants” becoming super-wealthy.

Notable Quote:

• Sheridan [56:32]: “I think the most important legislation that we could pass right now is term limits.”

14. The COVID Origin Debate and Media Complicity

[62:17 – 66:20]

• Rogan and Sheridan roast the media’s downplaying of lab leak theories and the Fauci debate (“If you are in the news and you are saying that there’s still a long running controversy…shut your fucking dirty whore mouth.” – Rogan [69:34]).
• Parallels with Fauci’s role in the AIDS epidemic, per RFK Jr.

15. Homelessness, Non-Profits, Addiction & the Opioid Epidemic

[81:36 – 98:07]

• In-depth on the “homeless industrial complex” and how the problem is never solved because the grifters benefit (“They're performative entrepreneurs if you think about it. Come up with a problem, then pitch some version of Karen's solution…never solve the problem.” – Sheridan [98:07]).
• Broad and personal discussion of addiction, painkillers, the Sackler family's role, and new treatment successes with ibogaine.

16. Sheridan’s Book: “How to Not Die in Prison”

[156:00 – 164:14]

• Entertaining story of Sheridan’s co-authored book with Tom Nelson—a travel guide to surviving accidental incarceration.
• Sheridan’s charitable effort aided Nelson (an ex-con and personal trainer) via the book deal.

Notable Quote:

• Taylor Sheridan [162:36]: “It is a tour guide to prison. Walks you through day one…how to fucking make a shiv, how to do everything.”

17. Martial Arts & UFC 250 Recap

[165:47 – 169:55]

• Reflects on Justin Gaethje’s performance in UFC 250, grappling, and boxing prowess.

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On hard work and "Yellowstone":

  “That show…people that are proud to work hard and really get deep satisfaction out of that life…that really like, it resonates with people. Like there’s a better way than just bullshitting people.”
  – Joe Rogan [98:07]

• ADHD as superpower:

  “If you can find something you love, and focus on it…that’s the superpower.”
  – Joe Rogan [07:19]

• On government corruption:

  “How the fuck is Nancy Pelosi worth $400 million? How the fuck—well, I know how. She gets in on all these fucking IPOs.”
  – Taylor Sheridan [56:35]

• On fake solutions to systemic problems:

  “As soon as you solve the problem…and if you do somehow accidentally solve it, then go find another one.”
  – Taylor Sheridan [98:26]

• On the opioid crisis:

  “They generated billions and billions of dollars, killed a bunch of people, ruined countless lives…There’s real demons there.”
  – Joe Rogan [90:49]

• On ranching and the romance of the land:

  “There’s something about that life that’s so simplistic and romantic to people that it just really resonated with so many people they didn’t even know that they liked that.”
  – Joe Rogan [30:27]

• On authenticity in education and writing:

  “People in the 1800s…typically spent one to three hours at a stretch on letter writing…It was important, like, the guy was everything.”
  – Joe Rogan [131:28]

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Notable Timestamps

• 00:14: Start of ranching and horse genetics discussion
• 05:33: “Anybody that’s good at anything is either ADHD or autistic.”
• 14:31: On NGOs: “Exacerbate the problem…make it longer, make it bigger…”
• 16:55: Hypothetical fallout from outlawing ranching
• 23:54: “I’m determined to call it almond juice...”
• 31:02: "It's uniquely American..."
• 62:17: Jon Stewart clip on COVID origins
• 98:07: On the homeless industrial complex and labor dignity
• 162:36: How to Not Die in Prison—the book pitch
• 165:47: UFC 250 recap (Justin Gaethje)

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Final Reflections

The episode’s tapestry ties together personal stories, cultural critique, and deep dives into contemporary issues. Whether delving into the quirks of horses, the pitfalls of non-profit industry, governmental overreach, media bias, the opioid catastrophe, or the process behind hit TV dramas, Sheridan’s grounded but sharp perspective illuminates why his storytelling resonates with so many. His humor and authenticity match well with Rogan’s inquisitiveness and skepticism, making this a rewarding listen for fans of insightful, unfiltered long-form conversation.

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For anyone who missed it, this episode is an uncommonly entertaining—and often provocative—tour through the intersection of Americana, pop culture, systemic dysfunction, and resilience, punctuated by real-life inspiration and a healthy dose of dark humor.

Transcript

[Taylor Sheridan]

Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.

[Brett Weinstein]

The Joe Rogan experience.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[Brett Weinstein]

What's happening?

[Conversation Participant]

What's up buddy?

[Brett Weinstein]

That's a hell of a belt buckle. What is that? What is that? What's going on there?

[Taylor Sheridan]

So this one is for a horse I have called Maverick Buzz, the tower that won reserve at the Futurity.

[Brett Weinstein]

And they give you a bell buckle if you win about buckling money. That's a dope belt buckle.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Expensive belt buckle.

[Brett Weinstein]

So guys like you that understand horses, like if you saw someone with one of those, you would know exactly what that is right away.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh yeah. And the year, depending on the year, I'm going to know the horse.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like you fighter.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It's like you in fighters.

[Brett Weinstein]

I guess, I guess it's probably similar. Yeah, but that's.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh, that guy won the thing in 2012. He fought so and so. And this same with me.

[Brett Weinstein]

And it's always so interesting to me how these, there's these different sort of categories of interests that people have that, you know, one person might not know anything. I don't know anything about horses. But you're like balls deep. You know everything about. It's crazy. It's such an interesting like pool of knowledge. The people that are really into horses and they start explaining, oh, this is not as simple as oh, that's a horse. And that's a horse too. Like there's genetic lines and there's certain tendencies that certain horses actually pass on to their offspring.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh yeah, it's crazy stuff. There's a stallion and I really like him. I've got a number of horses by this stallion. His name's Spooks, got a wiz and, and they're just incredibly balanced, real feely, very, very quick footed, big stoppers. But they, they see dead people, they see ghosts. So like what, once every three months for no reason, this thing's going to fucking check out. And I mean check out. Just decide it's not safe here. We're going back to the barn. You can come with me or I'm going to buck your ass off or I'm going to flip over. No, he just loses his mind.

[Brett Weinstein]

Whoa.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And you never know when it's going to happen.

[Brett Weinstein]

And his children have this as well.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Whoa.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Just a little quirk and that's. But other than that, they're automatic.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's a big quirk. That's like if you have a Corvette and it decides to drive home.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, a little bit.

[Brett Weinstein]

Most of the time you could go to the store, we all deal with

[Taylor Sheridan]

it because they're worth it, I guess.

[Brett Weinstein]

But that seems so crazy. The horsey, do you really think it sees ghosts?

[Taylor Sheridan]

I don't know what he sees. Some kind of boogeyman there. A lot of them are deaf, so.

[Brett Weinstein]

Really?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. Why so? Well, there's a. There's a gene. Typically if you see a horse with a white face and the white goes above the eyes, typically that horse is deaf.

[Conversation Participant]

Wow.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And so they can't hear, but they can feel the vibrations. So, like, that could set one of those horses off.

[Brett Weinstein]

Just anything pounding on the ground that might be something chasing it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, I mean, they're prey animals.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right, right, right.

[Taylor Sheridan]

So, wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

The depth thing's crazy. I wonder if that has any sort of an advantage where they could sort of tune out distractions. You know, I would imagine if a

[Taylor Sheridan]

horse is at a rodeo, yes, 100%, because, you know, this crowds are screaming and yelling. It's not going to bother them now if they start stomping their feet. I was going to show this one horse of mine as I'm about to run in the pen and all these guys are cheering for this Italian rider and they're all beating on the side of the arena. Oh, and my horse checked the out.

[Brett Weinstein]

He checked the out like a whole herd of elephants.

[Conversation Participant]

Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

I can imagine how weird that is for the horse. Like it's being told to do something, but its instincts are like, no, we got to get the out of here. I can't hear anything. That's nuts. Yeah, the hearing thing. There's a famous pool player, his name is Shane van Boning. He's like one of the greatest pool players of all time, if not the greatest. And he's deaf and he has hearing aids and when he plays, he shuts him off. He just goes click and goes into this world, the zone just of balls and geometry and just doesn't miss. Just. He's a horrifying person to play. And because the fact that he's got that extra sense shut off, like the hearing, he can shut it off. It's not just that. I mean, he's also obsessive. He practiced practices 10 hours a day. I mean, he's an all time wizard. Like, he's won the u. S. Open, was the hardest tournament to win in all of pool. He's won it five times, which is just not. There's only one other guy in history, Earl Strickland, that's won it five times.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Everybody plays pool. Like everybody a little.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

But then the levels to the game. Like you start getting a professional pool player.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And they're playing a totally different game.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's a totally different. At just watching it, you realize like, oh my God, what am I doing? I'm hitting the ball way too hard. I don't know what I'm doing. My angles are awful up. Like this guy's playing that with English. I would just hit it straight.

[Taylor Sheridan]

You want to spin up, back, spin. It hits over here. Oh, yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's just, it's the control. The ball, it's just like they're part of the. The stick is the part of their body. The stick and the ball, they're all connected in space and time and they know where that ball's going within millimeters.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's nuts to watch. Like some of these guys, they'll hit a ball and it'll travel. It's a nine foot table. It'll travel all the away around the test, like a 12 foot distance. And it'll go in inch spot and you just go, me? It's crazy. And then if you do that and you're deaf too, like you don't even hear the cheers. You're just still in the zone.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Just hyper focused.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, just hyper focused. Autism probably helps too, if you have that.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

You know, a little.

[Conversation Participant]

Little.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, yeah, just a touch.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I got a little. I think.

[Brett Weinstein]

I think anybody's good at anything. Anybody's good at anything is either ADHD or autistic.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. They try to give me medicine for the adhd.

[Brett Weinstein]

Did they?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, I'm like, no.

[Brett Weinstein]

How old were you when they tried to give it to you?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh, when I. Well, they did give it to me when I was a kid. Really?

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

What'd they give you?

[Taylor Sheridan]

And then you're. Who knows? But whatever. You're a little bottomized. Right. And then. And so I stopped taking it just because I was. Now you're just like us, you know. And so my parents were like, it just let him run around my neighbor's kid.

[Brett Weinstein]

They gave it to him when I. When I lived in California. It was such a bummer. He was this wild little kid and they gave it to him and all of a sudden he was flat.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yep.

[Brett Weinstein]

And I was like, oh. And the lady was like, oh, he's on medication now because he's hyperactive. I'm like, oh my God, not my kid, not my place. I'm not saying nothing. I just go to work. You know, I was single back then and I was like 28 or 29. And I just, I was just so confused how you could do that. And I kept thinking, like, if somebody did that to me when I was a kid, for sure I would have been on drugs.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

If my parents knew about those options, they could shut me the up. If I had the wrong parent, my parents wouldn't have done it. If I had the wrong parents, 100. I had all the traits that would have allowed me to get on Ritalin or whatever.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Superpower, if you understand it exactly, it's a superpower.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. If you could find something you love.

[Taylor Sheridan]

People, people say, how in the world can you write a script? You write all these things. It's not that hard. Like, once I know what it is, I can sit. You could sit me in an airport, around a thousand people. I won't hear them. And I can sit there for 12

[Brett Weinstein]

hours straight because you love it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I just get. I just hyper focus.

[Brett Weinstein]

But if somebody wants you to pay attention to the history of Pop Tarts or something, it's not going in there.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Physically can't do it.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it's not going in there. That's the superpower. The superpower is you could find something you love and focus on it. But the way our education system is designed is so ass backwards. You take kids that are so energetic and they have so much life and you just squeeze it out of them. Just sit still, stay put, listen to boring shit. And all day they're just fighting this desire to scream and just run out of the building, go do something fun.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Wasn't the like essentially what we call the modern public education system founded by, or really by the Rockefellers as a. As a means to create workers?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yep, yep, that's it. Compliant workers and soldiers conform. It's one of the reasons why they decided to start school so early for kids is the earlier you can start them, the more you can get them to do whatever you want them to do, and the more you can get them to pledge allegiance and get really excited about this, that or the other thing, including all the trans stuff that you see in school, all the pride stuff. And teachers are working with preschool kids and they're talking about sexuality and you're like, they're six. Like they don't know what you're talking. Like, why are you even talking to them about that? Because you can get them early and you can program those thoughts into their mind that this is a good cause. And it could be anything. It could be your religion, it could be your political ideology, it could be being a Christian, being a Muslim, whatever. If you get kids young enough, you can talk them into doing almost anything. That's why they have child suicide bombers. They don't try to get guys in their 40s with a family to strap a vest on. They try to get kids. This episode is brought to you by Create, the leading brand in Creatine. You love their gummies, but now they've all also launched Creatine plus Electrolytes Mix. Perfect for hot summer months. Creatine is proven to support gains in strength, lean muscle mass and aid recovery, but it also has cognitive benefits, more energy focus and neuroprotection. Plus, they're NSF certified for sport and third party tested for safety and potency. Visit Tricreate co Rogan or or use promo code rogan for 20% off and free shipping on your first subscription order this episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. When you hire a landscaper to create your perfect outdoor oasis, you want someone who cares. That's true for every role you hire for, and luckily it just got easier to find that thanks to ZipRecruiter. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com Rogan Longtime listeners, you might already know that ZipRecruiter uses uses powerful matching technology to find qualified candidates fast. But now they also have a new feature that shows you candidates who are interested in your role first. You can even hear why in their own words. Find candidates who really want your job on Zip Recruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com rogan that ZipRecruiter.com/rogan Meet your match at ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by the Farmer's Dog. Here's a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on average than dogs who are overweight. Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra processed kibble still the status quo for most dog owners? Healthy alternatives exist. And trust me, I know. I buy one. The Farmer's dog. I use it for both my dogs. They love it. They eat it up quick. It smells good to them. It smells good to me. It's human grade food. The Farmer's dog makes fresh food for dogs and my dogs love it. Their recipes are made with real meat and fresh vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients. They also portion out the meals to your dog's nutritional needs, which helps avoid overfeeding and makes weight management easier. And isn't getting more time with our four legged best friends something every dog owner wants the answer to that is yes, obviously. So try the farmer's dog today and get 50% off your first box of fresh healthy food. Plus get free shipping. Just go to the Farmer Dog.com Rogan this offer is for new customers only.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And you know what? What will really bake a couple of noodles is if you look at. Because all these things are funded, all these non profits and NGOs they're off of. But where's the money come from? And when you look at where the money comes from and you realize, oh, wait a minute. And it's been coming for 40, 50 years from these places. Qatar, for example, obviously Russia, China, all these are enemies. Donating money to all of these various groups to divide, to just eat away from the inside.

[Brett Weinstein]

Russia's been doing it since the 70s.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, 60s.

[Brett Weinstein]

60s. Yeah, that Yuri Besmanov. I'm sure you've seen that video. Anybody who hasn't, please watch it. It's Yuri Besmanov and it's in 1984. And this guy is essentially describing what America is going to look like eventually. And he's dead on, just dead on, dead on with the communism, the Marxism, the stuff in the universities just completely poisoned their mind. Push out any ideas of patriotism being a virtue. All the hate for America that you have, like all the division, all of it engineered and it's wild.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Just look at who it benefits. That's it. That's it. It's real simple. Yeah, just look and see who it benefits.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, it benefits a lot of people in this country as well, unfortunately. There's a lot of people that really love division and they can profit off of it and they can work an angle. You know, we're with you. This is a big part of the problem with the whole idea of nonprofits, because nonprofits in theory are awesome. It's a great thing that people are willing to donate their money. Like wealthy people who are doing well say, you know what? I think my money could be best suited helping out other people. It's beautiful. It's one of the most amazing notions about people when they can be charitable, when they don't have to be. They do it because they want to and they really want to help. Then you find out what's really going on and that the majority of the money is going to overhead and employees.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, think about this. If, if I create a nonprofit to go solve. Well, LA is a perfect example. We can look at the homeless situation that they have there and all of these NGOs that are getting all of this money and the problem's getting worse. It's not getting better. Right. It's getting worse. But if I form an NGO and that's my cause and I solve the problem, then what do I. What do I do with my ngo? Now I got no money now. There's no reason to give me money. So they don't create them to solve problems.

[Brett Weinstein]

Anything.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Exacerbate the problem, make the problem worse, make it longer, make it bigger. Look how big the problem is. We need more money.

[Brett Weinstein]

Some guy was doing a breakdown of the people that work in the homeless industry. Industry. I say in air quotes in California, because that's really what it is. They spent $24 billion on the homeless problem and no one can account for it. And they tried to get an accounting of it. They tried to do an audit of it, and Newsom vetoed it. Vetoed it. Like, why would you want to know? Let's stop all that nonsense and build this fucking train track to nowhere that's never going to get built.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, they have a mile of it. They have a mile of.

[Brett Weinstein]

That train only cost $100 billion. Relax. Things take time.

[Taylor Sheridan]

They have a fucking mile and they're. Well, we're trying to choose the path. How about right beside the i5? How about that? How about right next to the flat highway?

[Brett Weinstein]

Everything they do sucks.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

How about that stupid road over the highway to make sure the mountain lines are safe? Yeah, it's like over $100 million. Still not done.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And they have them, by the way. That's not a new concept. They have those throughout the West. Yeah, and they don't cost shit.

[Brett Weinstein]

Cost much money at all. They. They fix them quick. They do it quick.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It's just.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, they're done in a couple of months.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. Pour some cement, put some sod down, plant some fucking grass, and away you go.

[Brett Weinstein]

Away you go.

[Taylor Sheridan]

But there. But we're applying logic to a state that doesn't use that.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's. It is a. It's like. It is as goofy as it gets, and then you think it's as goofy as it gets, and then you hear that Portland just the. Okay, so this is going to be on the ballot in November. It got enough votes to be on the ballot. And this is some law that's under the guise of stop animal cruelty. Well, who doesn't want to stop animal cruelty? I certainly want to stop animal cruelty. Let's stop animal cruelty. So what does it mean? It means no hunting, no fishing, no ranching, no agriculture, no animals that get harmed in any way. No killing chickens for Kentucky Fried Chicken, nothing. No animals die.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And this is a city ordinance.

[Brett Weinstein]

Fucking vote. Oregon is voting on this in November. No fishing. No fishing. What are you saying? Are you high?

[Taylor Sheridan]

And. And no.

[Brett Weinstein]

So no hunting. No ranching. Ranching? You can't ranch. You're gonna kill a cow. What are you crazy? That's illegal in Oregon.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And here's. That's probably. Sounds like a good idea to one of those people. And then. But here's my question. All right, so let's do it. Let's just outlaw ranching. Let's just say fuck it. Well, there's 91 million cattle in the country. So what do we do with them?

[Brett Weinstein]

You just leave them alone. Let nature take its course.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, but. But there's. But they're not. But there's no. There's no nature to take its course.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's.

[Taylor Sheridan]

This is not 91 million head of fucking cattle. And I can promise you this. If you outlaw me feeding them and taking care of them, I'm not going to. Then they're. Then they're wandering the highway.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, and then the bulls are out.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

So you're gonna keep the bulls contained. No, the bulls are gonna kill people.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, and make more cattle.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, and make more cattle.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. So now we have 900 million cattle in three decades.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. And fuck all your fences. Bulls are gonna smash them. Bulls are gonna eat your grass. Bills are gonna. Bulls are gonna stomp your dog. Like, what are you talking about?

[Taylor Sheridan]

I can't wait.

[Brett Weinstein]

But it's not supposed to be logical. It's all just a vibe, man. It's like. And it's not even a well thought out one. But the problem is you don't have to be well thought out to get on the ballot. You just have to appeal to certain sensibilities. And then all sudden people are like, oh, that would be good. Let's stop animal cruelty. And they're probably on SSRIs anyway.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It'll probably pass.

[Brett Weinstein]

Nah, nah, I don't think it'll pass.

[Conversation Participant]

According to this New York Times article, it was a guy. One guy. One guy got 135, 000 signatures and got it passed to that level.

[Brett Weinstein]

I wonder how many of them are homeless people.

[Conversation Participant]

He moved to Portland from Denver, from Southern California, where I'm trying to figure

[Brett Weinstein]

out, do we have a photo of this dude? I want to see what this guy looks like.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Of course he's from Southern California.

[Brett Weinstein]

Of course he is. He's a vegan. Oh, that's weird. I would have never guessed.

[Conversation Participant]

Teacher.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, substitute teacher.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It keeps getting better.

[Conversation Participant]

I lost it.

[Brett Weinstein]

What else?

[Conversation Participant]

That's all it was saying. They didn't frame them very well.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, they shouldn't. It's a crazy idea.

[Conversation Participant]

There you go. Mickelson.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Conversation Participant]

Substitute teacher, vegan, and petitions organizer.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's to have a system where we're not killing or hurting animals anymore. I love how he said a system. What are you talking about? What does that mean? What's a system? You're talking about nature. What are you talking about? Like, they're going to kill each other. Stupid. Like, what the are you talking about? Is it somehow another less cruel than when mountain lion gets into a pen of sheep and tears him apart?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

He figured the chances of meeting another gay vegan were better in Portland.

[Taylor Sheridan]

He's probably not wrong.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it's probably a good bet.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Solid bet.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. He was sitting there going, midland, Texas. Portland, Oregon. Where am I? Yeah, you got to go to Portland.

[Brett Weinstein]

Go to Portland and take some medication. Just have a good time. There he is.

[Conversation Participant]

There we go.

[Brett Weinstein]

Hey, fella.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh, he's already gotten too much attention from us.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it's. There's a lot of silly people in the world. And, you know, like we were talking about with young people, if you get young people indoctrinated early enough to think these silly ideas make sense, which is one of the reasons why I love that Kevin Costner moment on your show when he had explained to that vegan lady. Oh, yeah, such a good moment.

[Taylor Sheridan]

How cute does it animal have to be before you care if it lives?

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And what the actual. Like, what life gets killed when you're just talking about farming? Just food.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Plowing a field.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, just plowing a field.

[Conversation Participant]

Or.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Or go. Or go build a road. Right. You want to destroy some organisms, Go build a road.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. If you're riding on those roads.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

You're in that system. And then there's the bees. Like, the amount of bees that die every year. So we could have avocados is bananas.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. Bring them in from Brazil by the billions.

[Brett Weinstein]

By the billion.

[Taylor Sheridan]

By the bee.

[Brett Weinstein]

And they die. Bees. And then on top of the. So it's avocados and almonds. Those are the two big ones, right?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, almonds. You know what's fascinating? And I'm gonna. We can look it up. Almonds. The amount. It's something like 19 gallons of water is what you have to give to get one almond.

[Brett Weinstein]

Is that real?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. Yeah, we can. Yeah, it's fucking bananas.

[Brett Weinstein]

My doctor told me almonds aren't even good for you.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, you know, it's.

[Brett Weinstein]

He said they're okay for you. He said, but you know, there's.

[Taylor Sheridan]

There was a time in the Mediterranean where they were, they were poisoned. They have strychnine in them and it's one of the first domesticated plants. And what people realize, whoever Homo sapiens or Neanderthals, whoever's wandering around, they're like, the squirrels are eating those poisonous nuts from that tree. Huh? They're okay from this one, not okay from that one. So they started cutting down and uprooting all the ones where the squirrels wouldn't eat.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, interesting.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. And so that's. So the almond originally.

[Brett Weinstein]

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[Taylor Sheridan]

intensive crop each nut, gallons of water per pound.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's so crazy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And then, oh my God, here's, here's my new, like, look. I'm a writer, right? So words matter to me. And when we, when we misuse them in our society, it just bothers me, right? So all these things that we're calling milk, like almond milk, right? And I, and I'm just determined to call it almond juice because that's what it fucking is. It's not even almond juice. It's not like we're extra.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's almond tea almost.

[Taylor Sheridan]

We're taking almonds, pulverizing them and brining them in water, essentially leeching out the flavor of the almond and then adding a bunch of to it and sugar and whatever.

[Brett Weinstein]

Adding a lot of sugar. My friend Duncan was like, dude, almond milk is good for you. I go, you're looking how much sugar is in there? And we were on the phone and he goes, holy. I go, yeah, man, that's why it tastes good. But my doctor told me I had oxalates in my diet in my, my blood test. He said, your oxalates are kind of high. Goes, are you eating almonds? And I said, yeah, I eat almonds all the time. He's like, yeah, cut back. He goes, that's where it's from.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Really?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Find out how much, how much oxalates are in almonds. I just listened to them. And also it's a lot of, like, a lot of that gluten free flour stuff. You buy a lot of that stuff. It's like almond flour a lot of the times.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Right?

[Brett Weinstein]

Almonds are a high oxalate food. Eating them can raise oxalate levels that circulate, get filtered by the kidneys, and appear in urine, which may increase kidney stone risk in susceptible people.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Almonds contain about 296 milligrams of oxalate per 100 grams, roughly 4 milligrams per nut. Putting them in the high oxalate category.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

He said, they're not bad if you just have them every now and then. He goes, but don't. Don't do it on a regular basis. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that has high oxalates. If people don't think about it, that can really fuck you up. Kale, for instance, like, I used to drink kale smoothies all the time until another doctor told me, you really should cook the kale. Cook it and then filter out whatever the water's in it. And I go, really? I go, why? He goes, oxalates. He goes, you want to cook the oxalates out of them?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Really?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. And that's apparently what causes a lot of kidney stones. With some folks, they drink a lot of those green smoothies, which I used to do every day. I used to take a bunch of kale, throw in a bunch of apples and some ginger and some garlic and blend it all up and drink. At the beginning of the day, I thought I was doing a good thing. And he was like, you're just blasting your system with oxalates.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I was like, oh, all right, some eggs, bro.

[Brett Weinstein]

He said, have bacon. Have some bacon. I'm like, bacon's better for you. Like that My journey of figuring out what to eat was a long one. It was a long one. And thank God I got this podcast because if I hadn't had all those conversations with people where I realized like, oh, so we're like. And now the food pyramid's completely flipped. Which is hilarious.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

But it's like, I've had enough conversations where I realized like, oh, all these people don't know what the they're talking about and they're giving advice. And it's weird. It's weird how much bad advice there is for food and for health and for fill in the blank. Almost everything in our society.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Food pyramid was created by Johnson and Johnson. Yeah. Or Kellogg's. Or Kellogg.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It's like, how do we get people to eat our in the morning and then again at lunch? And then. Well, the one thing that we can't control and they talk about the one thing that we do not have is this massive industrialized meat production because there's no economical way to do it. They'd do it if they could. Harris Ranch, which you've probably seen off i5 in California's the closest version of that. But what it is is a feed yard, right. Where you get them together and feed cattle for 90 to 150 days before you go send them off and slaughter them. Right. That's the closest thing there is to an industrialized beef industry because it's a very inefficient way. It's way better to farm, right. Is more efficient to farm than it is graze cattle. So you only want to graze cattle somewhere that you can't farm. At the end of the day, you want to graze. Cattle are great at taking protein from poor protein sources and metabolizing it. Right. So you graze them in real rocky terrain with native grasses that, that you can't farm, can't till it just can't. And it needs to be eaten by something or weeds will overtake it. Right. Because grasses. Grass grows better when it's being grazed. And so there's no way to industrialize that or centralize it. The most centralized it is is that the packing house, right. Where you've got four packing major packing houses that control 90 something percent of the beef industry. And that's starting to change. Covid was extremely helpful for the smaller farmer and rancher to sit there and get their product out, right. And find small. They start popping up. People have opened these USDA facilities that, that don't process 800 head of cattle an hour. They maybe do 50 or 50 a day. And now people can go there because they're a USDA facility. They can buy beef directly from them, buy it from the rancher. Right. And you can control where your food's coming from as opposed to what. What was happening where you'd get a bunch of. If you're going to go get a burger, you're eating some Australian killer bowl, right. For the most part, or some. Something from Brazil, or you're not eating something that you want to eat. Right. When you go to a nice steakhouse, the. The steaks there are. They're going to come from most likely Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Montana. There's. There's select areas where people are spending that kind of attention and time to raise that kind of quality of beef. Right. And it's being done by smaller ranchers and maybe a big ranch, but it's still operated by relatively few people. You know, four sixes is 300,000 acres, but there's 12 cowboys. Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

12 cowboys for 300,000 acres is nuts. How do they keep track of everything?

[Taylor Sheridan]

I mean, we break it down into pastures and then you have. And then the pastures fall under the terminology is this, let's say, oh, if you're in Guthrie, there's a. There's a camp and we. We call it south camp because it's in the south. And it's responsible for 50,000 acres, right. Which is broken down into multiple pastures that are between 7 and 10,000 acres. There's one big pasture in that. In that camp, it's like 14,000 acres. And so then you have north camp. You have what we call. Then we have camps around the town, little town of Guthrie. So you break it down into the responsibility of each cowboys somewhere between 35 and 50,000 acres. Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's a hell of a responsibility.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, that's a lot of work, man.

[Brett Weinstein]

You know what's really interesting about your shows, particularly Yellowstone, it got people like really attracted to the idea of brutal hard work as being romantic.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

You know, people like really identified with those guys on Yellowstone that were just like so dedicated to that ranch. So dedicated to busting their ass and working all day hard, fucking work. And then just hanging out together afterwards. And there's something about that life that's so simplistic and romantic to people that it just really resonated with so many people they didn't even know that they liked that.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, it's. It's uniquely American. Right. And, and the amount of freedom that is. So we move somebody out to south camp and we go okay, so here you are. There's your house at South Camp. See you in a week or so. Go figure out. Keep track of the cattle. And you give them a string of horses and they work their horses and they. And they ride that property. They know every inch of it. And you don't ever. You don't. We don't. We don't have weekly corporate meetings.

[Brett Weinstein]

How do they get supplies? Is like the house stocked in advance.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Go to town. You know, towns. Which is an endeavor. Right. Town's 90 miles away. So you go to town once a week. Right. Stock adventure, stock up, go back.

[Brett Weinstein]

Wow.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. But it's. It's.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's a crazy life.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And people. Incorrect. Not every. This isn't true of every cowboy. There's plenty of cowboys that typically, they grow up on that ranch, and that's the life that they know, and that's what they want to do. Right. But they still go off to college. Like, almost every one of my cowboys has a ranch management degree. Like, they went to school.

[Brett Weinstein]

Wow.

[Taylor Sheridan]

To study.

[Brett Weinstein]

What's a good school if you want to be a cowboy?

[Taylor Sheridan]

I mean, there's quite a few of them. Texas Tech, I mean, that's a phenomenal ranch management program. A bunch of the guys on the Sixes went there. TCU has a ranch management program, a good one. Texas A and M, you know, we have vets that live on the ranch. Obviously, we breed a ton of horses and so our vets. There's. Colorado State's an excellent veterinary school for large animal vets. Obviously, Texas A and M is a phenomenal school. Texas Tech as well. Those are.

[Brett Weinstein]

Dude, how the fuck do you pay attention to everything? You're running a gigantic ranch and you have about 48 TV shows. How the fuck do you do it? I don't understand it. Every time a new Taylor Sheridan show pops up, I say to my wife, I go, how the fuck is he doing this? Like, where does he have this time?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Part of it is, if you think about it. So my crew, my core crew is the same crew I made Wind river with, like, when we had no money. I remember one time, I'm on the top of a mountain with me and my first AD and my dp, Ben Richardson. And there's not a producer. We haven't seen anybody in a week. And I looked at. We're freezing our asses off at seven below zero in northern Utah. And I'm like, guys, you know, we could just fuck off to Hawaii and nobody would know for a while. We have their money and they don't know. They don't actually know where we are. They're just trusting that we're gonna make this movie, which we did. And it was incredibly difficult. But that's the same team that went over and did Yellowstone, which is then the same team that went up and did Mayor of Kingstown with me. And then 1883, 23, Lioness, Landman, all of them. And we've promoted from within. I've got PAs that are now first ads. I've got camera operators that are now directors. So we've promoted from within. So everyone understands the way we do it. And it's so frigging efficient. We don't ever have. And you know, because you've been in this industry forever, these people will have meetings upon meeting, upon meeting. They'll have a. They'll have a tone meeting where a whole bunch of people are going to sit around and try and talk about the tone of the script. What? Didn't you read the fucking thing? We have to have a meeting about it. How about we don't have a meeting about it? And then they'll have a. They'll have a. And this is also networks, they love this shit. So that they can have a reason for their existence, right? All these middle management people and they want to do a prop show and tell where someone's going to come show them all the props that we're going to use. Really? Well, we don't do that shit because I'm like, I need your permission to use which. Which Bic lighter I'm gonna use in this fucking scene. How about I just make the decision and how about we use the same Bic lighter in all these fucking shows and I don't ever have to pick a Bic lighter again. How about that? So we just streamlined it and made it to where it's so efficient. Typically a TV show will start up and they'll prep for 12 weeks before they start filming one. We do it in four.

[Brett Weinstein]

Wow. Well, that makes sense. It makes sense that it's streamlined because I've been on shows when they first start out and it's chaos and there's a lot of network involvement and there's a lot of. But then once it gets going, they go, oh, you guys know what you're doing? Yeah, leave me alone.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, yeah, we're there from the beginning now.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's beautiful.

[Taylor Sheridan]

We haven't missed. If you don't miss, right?

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, it's like you don't miss. Like you don't miss with the writing. You don't miss with the stuff storylines like you don't have any duds, man, which is incredible. This is incredible. It's an incredible accomplishment to have that many fucking shows and all of them be good and all of them be, you know, like, very addictive. You know, Landman is so addictive.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It's, it's that show. It's about something very serious. And then I can just throw at it. Yeah, let's just take a bunch of old people to a strip club.

[Brett Weinstein]

Billy Bob is awesome.

[Taylor Sheridan]

He's a genius.

[Brett Weinstein]

I love that guy. He's so good on that show. It's like it was made for him.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It was made for him.

[Brett Weinstein]

I mean, he's done so many things.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I went to Billy Bob before I, before I wrote a word and I told him, I said, if you don't do this, I'm not going to do it because I'm not going to chase my tail. He goes, well, what is it I said I want to do? I said, basically, I want to take your character from Bad Santa and put him in West Texas and run an old company. He goes, you want the guy from Bad Santa to run an old company? I said, that's what I want. He goes, that sounds awesome.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, well, it's educational too. I mean, a lot of people have no idea how the oil business works. And you watch that show, you go, jesus Christ, what a crazy job.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It's an insane job. And the other thing about it is we're so completely dependent upon petroleum in every single aspect of our lives, so completely dependent upon it. And we can debate how bad it is or isn't, or not debate it. The reality is we don't have an alternative. Like it does not exist. It simply doesn't exist. And we could sit there and say, well, when did this. No, you sit down with any climatologist and any engineer, they're going to tell you our best hope for a replacement of petroleum fuels is cold fusion. And we're 30, 40 years from it being something that we can rely upon and reduce little nuclear reactors like Itty Bittys, like, yeah, the size of this coffee pot.

[Brett Weinstein]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Identity theft costs more than you think. That's why Lifelock is backed by the million dollar protection package, which covers up to $3 million for the most comprehensive plan. So if your money is stolen due to identity theft, if you have personal expenses while resolving it, like paying for extra childcare or need coverage for lost wages because work also had to take a backseat Lifelock has your back. Plus there's if you need to pay fees for lawyers and experts to resolve your case, don't face the burden of identity theft alone. Protect your future and finances with LifeLock. Visit LifeLock.com jre and save up to 30% your first year. That's LifeLock.com jre for 30% off. Terms apply. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Okay, when it comes to sleep, I've got to have the right temperature dialed in. Depending on the time of year that might be ripping hot. I'm talking volcanic or igloo levels of iciness. The point is, I need the temperature to be just right so I can get deep sleep. The kind of sleep that drives real recovery. And luckily, eight Sleep is all about giving you the best sleep possible. Their new Pod 5 smart mattress cover is designed for deep sleep and personalized for you automatically regulating the temperature on each side of the bed in real time. Why? So you and your partner can consistently hit your ideal deep restorative sleep range and wake up feeling truly refreshed and recovered. Use my code [e-mail] rogan for up to $350 off the Pod 5 Ultra. The best part is that you get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't like it. But I got a feeling your body will love your investment in better sleep. That's code [e-mail] rogan that's what they're talking about. They're talking about like individual reactors that people have in their homes. Like, how long does it take before there's disasters? That sounds funny. Having a really good nuclear power plant for a city is an awesome idea. Having everyone have their own nuclear power plant sounds fucking crazy. You know how many assholes are going to cut into that thing?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, people still put fucking metal in microwaves, so I don't think we should be giving. I've done it. I'm like, well, how bad can it

[Brett Weinstein]

really be there people that leave their gas on so that someone can die in the house?

[Taylor Sheridan]

No, we, we don't.

[Brett Weinstein]

People are nuts. People are nuts. If you literally have consumer level nuclear power plants. Not with these monkeys. That's what. Not with the human beings that we are today. Our, our current form. We're not enlightened enough to have personal nuclear power plants in our house. Oh yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

So we're, we're, we're dependent upon it.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's why we're in Iran right now.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Also because of Israel. But I mean, we're, we're in Iran. I mean the whole thing about it is the oil, the Strait of Hormuz, it's like, I think it's 40 of the world's oil supply passes through there. Yeah, Christ.

[Taylor Sheridan]

No, that's. And, and, and I think also China, it's a big play against, it's a chess piece against China. That's what I think.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. All of it's fucking terrifying.

[Taylor Sheridan]

What? And I'm not saying we should have or we shouldn't have. I'm not commenting politically, but what those guys, those SF guys did in Venezuela was fucking gangster. It's crazy whether. I'm not saying they should or shouldn't, I'm just saying, right. The team was sent and then the team, I mean, can you imagine if I wrote it in a movie? People will go, that's fucking ridiculous, Taylor.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right.

[Taylor Sheridan]

We don't have to fly a bunch of SF dudes, drop them off on the roof of this high rise surrounded by the fucking Cuban special forces and they're going to kill all of them and then they're going to fucking snatch him and his wife, go back to the roof and just fucking fly away. That's what they did.

[Brett Weinstein]

And they're going to do it with sound. They're going to disable everyone with a sound weapon. Like what? Like there was. Do you remember when they first started talking about that Havana syndrome? Yeah, we're dismissing it. This is horseshit. This is.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, like.

[Brett Weinstein]

No, they're talking about people that are in Havana, that they've been targeted.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Something zapped them low level frequencies that made them nauseous.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. And I think that is a fraction of whatever they unleashed in Venezuela.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Who knows?

[Brett Weinstein]

The discombobulator. That's what it's called. Classified secret weapon system. President Donald Trump claimed U. S Forces used during the January 3rd operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. He stated that the weapon successfully disabled enemy equipment and air defenses, preventing them from firing back. So it's, it's both. It disables the people and it disables their weapon system.

[Conversation Participant]

What?

[Taylor Sheridan]

That's amazing.

[Brett Weinstein]

What the fuck are we doing? Official silence. When asked for specific technical or operational details about how the device functions, Trump famously told New York Post, I'm not allowed to talk about it. He says they press buttons. He claimed the defense forces press buttons and nothing worked. Disabling both Russian and Chinese made rockets and radar if weapon affected both mechanical equipment and personnel. He also referred to it at. He also referred to a sonic weapon being used against Maduro's Cuban security detail inside a heavily fortified fortress. Amen. I would love to see what that looks like. You know, I bet they have video too.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Sure.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

All wearing GoPros.

[Brett Weinstein]

I'd love to go into a skiff. Just show me the video. I won't say nothing. I want to see what it looks like. I just want to watch. What does it look like when somebody gets zapped by sound and gets fully disabled? Like, apparently they just fell to the ground in agony. They couldn't move.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And they just went in and shot everybody.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Some freaking SF snipers are just freaking on top of that, just raining down on them.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's crazy. Like, that guy thought he was safe. Crazy. And there's a famous video of him saying, come and get me.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh, yeah, bro. Yeah. Be careful. Don't. What? Bear, you poke.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Also, it's like we none of us know what the tip of the spear technology in weapon systems is available right now. We don't know. They don't tell us. They don't tell us. Obviously no one knew this discombobulator thing existed. This is science fiction. Yeah, right. If this was 20 years ago, you'd be like, that's not a real thing. But now you're like, oh, they used it. It's not. Not just a concept. They fucking used it. What else? What are they? What are they cooking out in the desert in the middle of Nevada? Who knows?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. And think about this. For that to be used, there's something four generations past that 100 that they're playing with now.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. A hundred percent. You know, this whole UAP world stuff, like when they start talking about UAPs, all of my alarms go off. All of them. It's like, I don't believe if you knew things, you would tell us. So I don't believe you're telling us the truth. I think they have some special access programs that they've been working on for decades and decades in some super high level that involves some sort of novel propulsion system and they have that stuff flying around in the sky. And I think that's what a lot of people are saying. That's what a lot of people are seeing. That doesn't discount the idea that there's something else out there, because I think there is, but I think there's a giant chunk of the shit that people are seeing that's ours.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, testing.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, testing. Doing stuff with it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

If there was an intelligent life form that had stumbled upon our barbaric asses, why would they not go, hey, guys, Fire up that fucking missile and take. We found this blue planet. We got to get rid of this thing.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, I think maybe every intelligent species that's tribal and territorial has to go through an adolescent period of their evolution. And if you look at human history, you know, I was reading about Vlad the Impaler last night. Jesus Christ, how many of the Ottoman Turks that got killed and his famous methods of putting people on posts and separating them down the line on the road so that as these poor guys are traveling to go and fight him, they just see the enemy stuck on skewers and in geometric patterns. And shitty would do them in like stars and stuff. Just. He was a vicious. And he's the. The motivation behind or the, you know, the inspiration behind Dracula. And I was reading about that guy. I'm like, people have always been awful. Yeah, they've always been awful. But they just like, as time goes on, they get a little less awful, a little less. Like we're a little less awful now than we were during Nazi Germany.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Not totally great, not collectively certain.

[Brett Weinstein]

We're still willing to do genocide. Some of us are. But it's less, less approved. It's less. More people are horrified at it. It's like human beings are getting a little bit better. It's not as quick as we'd like. I think if I was an alien life form, I would say, you have to wait this out. It's like if you have a kid, you got to let the kid fall down and stumble, stumble. You got to let him get hurt. You got to let things happen. You got to let him fuck up and figure it out himself. You got to figure this out, make it right. You fuck this up, you got to give him a chance to become better.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

I think as a civilization, I would think the same thing would apply. You have to give this civilization time to evolve and adapt and get past where it's at right now. And I don't think that you do that by intervening and like grabbing us by the hand and showing us the way. I think what you do is you hang back and make sure that we don't nuke each other and just sort of pay attention to all the different international ongoings and just let human beings slowly but surely evolve. That's what I would do if I was an intelligent life form, observing people.

[Taylor Sheridan]

The interesting thing that we're as a civilization facing now, and it's always happened in science capacity, when a society gets wealthy, really wealthy, then people start to question wealth and how can we be more equitable and it comes across like compassion, but it really comes down to a debate of what is more valuable to a society. Is self determination more valuable or is equity more valuable? And by equity, what I mean is everyone gets exactly the same shit. Everyone. So you take them off. We're not on a monetary society anymore. Now you're working for the collective. And you're hearing that word thrown around a lot. Right. These days. The problem with working for the collective is who decides who picks up the trash and who decides who gets to go represent your nation at the Olympics? Who gets to decide who gets to. Is someone gonna let me go make TV shows? Which, by the way, I wouldn't do for free. It's too hard. Right. So now I don't want to do it. Well, then you got to go do this. Well, I want to do that either. And that's the problem.

[Brett Weinstein]

And then they force you to do things.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And then how do they do that? With guns.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. So then, so, so the. You either have self determination or in your attempt to be collective, you have to surrender that. And then you're surrendering it to who? And, and now you have a dictatorship. No matter what the. You thought you had. Yeah, it always comes back to that. It always. You can, you can look at Marxism and Leninism and what Lenin was talking about, his hopes, whether they were his hopes or not. But it, it devolved into an authoritarian regime very, very quickly. And, and you know, communism, socialism, fascism, Nazism, they're all very, very similar. The differences are superficial. I think Ayn Rand said that they're just superficial variations between the exact same thing, which is the evil of the

[Brett Weinstein]

collective, the evil of collective. And human beings desire to control their people. Yeah, they love to. And anytime you give them a chance where they could feel righteous about controlling people, they jump at it.

[Conversation Participant]

It.

[Brett Weinstein]

And they can. They have an opportunity to classify people. There's good people and bad people. And the bad people, you could do whatever you want to them. They're the other. And that, that happens with every, every time groups get into power like that and tell you what you can and can't do. And you're seeing that being embraced shockingly more and more all over the world. People are embracing more government power and more government control. And it's really crazy. It's really crazy to see.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It's unique. I think that number one, I think in 30 years, when they look back, like we're still suffering from a society from COVID like still. And not so much from the disease itself, but from our faith in the institutions around us, whether it's government, whether it's the media, whether it's pharmaceutical companies and the, the way that it was manipulated to gain power for a political group and it was effective. And so when something's effective, then people just keep doing the same thing until it's no longer effective. Right. We did that in our military with the wind's hearts and minds, Right? So we. That was all. That all comes from Japan, right? We're going to win the hearts and minds of Japanese. Well, the Japanese surrendered like their emperor, who they looked at as a God. He told the people of Japan after we dropped two freaking nuclear bombs on them, hey, we are going to endure the unendurable. We are going to surrender. It's the only way that we can salvage our nation. So they willfully surrendered. And then our government goes, look how great this hearts and minds stuff's working. It's not working. It's not working at all. And then they tried it in Vietnam. Didn't work. Tried it everywhere else that we've had a conflict. We've tried it and it hasn't worked yet because what it was based on was flawed. Right? Because they, they chose to be subjugated at that time and, and making that choice kept them an independent nation. So our, our government, our. And it's so dangerous, what we're seeing. You can like Trump or not like Trump. It doesn't. People are going to like presidents and dislike presidents, but now, defying the rule of law because he happens to be the head of the federal government and openly defying the federal government, the repercussions of that are going to be, okay, fine, you can't stand this man. You think he's a terrible president and you're not going to follow his laws. But that's the new normal now. So when a president gets in that you do support, then the other side, because we've established this precedent, they're just not going to follow his laws either, right? And now we've eroded the rule of law, and then what happens?

[Brett Weinstein]

The slippery slope is very dangerous. I was saying that when the ICE raids were going on, because I was like, okay, I am not in favor of illegal criminals being in this country. However, we're setting a very alarming precedent where you have masked, militarized police with no ID that are running around the cities snatching people up like this. This could set a precedent that could be used by the left if they get into power for something different than this being, than just for ice. We've already Accepted the idea of militarized police on our streets and that people with seven weeks training, you're just sending them out to snatch up people. And a lot of American citizens are getting caught up in that trap too, unfortunately. And then they have to get released like that. That could be bad if the next party gets in. So if the Democrats get in next and they decide like, maybe there's a new Covid strain happens, some new pandemic happens, whatever the fuck is, and if

[Taylor Sheridan]

you don't get the vaccine, they're gonna arrest you. And then they start the same.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yes, we saw it in, I think it was Minnesota or whoever. They had the National Guard on the streets, but they had people enforcing lockdowns. And so they had people walking on the streets with fucking guns, yelling at people to get in your house over a cold like this. These kind of slippery slopes, you might think, no, we're just trying to get rid of the bad immigrants. I get it. I'm with you. I agree. However, the way they're doing it, doing it, I don't know. I'm not even saying there's another way or a better way. I'm just saying you want to get them out all at once. Yeah, that's the way to do it. You want to get them out quick. That's the way to do it. Because they got them in quick. You're right. They opened the fucking border. They helped people get in. But now that they're in, if you're going to get them out that way, you're setting a weird precedent. You're setting a precedent that could be used in other ways.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, that's the challenge is, okay, we need to enforce the law or don't have them. They've enacted no new laws. These are the same immigration laws that were on the books when Obama was president and Clinton was president. The same rules. It's the methodology. And you got to sit there and weigh the pros and cons about, okay, the pros of trying to eradicate this issue. You can't give it a deadline. Right. It's slippery.

[Brett Weinstein]

It is slippery.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And again, it's what's good for the goose is good for the gander. And these politicians right now who are doing all of us a tremendous disservice in Washington, I feel, are elected officials, because they're not thinking beyond this next election. And maybe they never have.

[Brett Weinstein]

They never have.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Right. But they were better at hiding it. Maybe.

[Brett Weinstein]

I think there was no Internet, but.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, true.

[Brett Weinstein]

I think that's what it is. There was no Social media.

[Taylor Sheridan]

But I think we've reached a point. As they, as they, as politicians talk about eliminating the electoral college, they talk about eliminating the filibuster, eliminate packing courts, all these things, because their side's not in power. And so we're just going to take the structure of the government and totally rework it to benefit us temporarily, but then those same benefits that you have now will be used against you. They will 100% be used against you. I think the most important legislation that we could pass right now is term limits. I think, I think 12 years tops in Congress, and I think probably 12 years in the Senate, two six year terms in the Senate.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's more than enough time. That's a lot of fucking time.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That's enough. We don't need anyone else. I mean, I don't know how it's become. How the fuck is Nancy Pelosi worth $400 million? How the fuck. Well, I know how. Yeah, she gets in on all these fucking IPOs.

[Brett Weinstein]

Exactly right.

[Taylor Sheridan]

She's gonna pass the legislation that allows Visa to go public, and then she's gonna get a big chunk of it. And then when she's confronted about it, look a reporter dead in the eye and fucking lie to him. I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't do that.

[Brett Weinstein]

No consequences.

[Taylor Sheridan]

We know you did it. We could look at how much stock you own.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Liar.

[Brett Weinstein]

They all do it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

People are calling out Rokhan on Twitter today.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Rich. Everyone's getting rich.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

They get paid 175 grand a year. And they're all millionaires.

[Brett Weinstein]

Super millionaires. They're all like. Like she's intensely wealthy. That's. That's a. That's a. Almost a half a billion dollars. That's nuts. As a public servant, that's nuts.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, it's. It's insanity.

[Brett Weinstein]

And it's, you know, that's what we're used to. We're just, we. We just. We know it's bad and we just accept it. And people are busy and they have families and mortgages and shit to deal with. And so they complained and they keep on trucking.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, I mean, I have. As we discussed, I have other jobs. I don't have a pile of time to dedicate to. Gets tough for me to talk politics because I don't have hours in my day to sift through what's real and not real on Instagram or social. Whatever. I'm not on that shit. But I can't. Hard to form an opinion because, man, I Don't know. And I don't know where to go to get honest news. Not the news. I know that I can't turn on the fucking news because they've fucking been lying to us. They stopped being. I don't know if they were ever impartial, but I know that. I remember there was a guy, I was a kid, he was running for president. His name was Jack Kemp.

[Brett Weinstein]

I remember Jack Kemp.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And I want to say it was Dan Rather. It may not have been. It may have been some other newscaster. And there's a debate amongst all these different potential candidates for president. And as he's introducing all of these various politicians, he's saying so and so Harvard graduate and law professor from here and this former senator and this and that and the other and this person here. And they get to Jack Kemp and he goes, backup quarterback and born again Christian Jack Kemp. I'm like, wow, you just sunk that dude. Everyone else, you gave what their jobs were and talked about their accomplishments and this you just said he didn't start at quarterback and he's. You call that his religion dude? And that's the first time I ever remember. I'm like, I know your opinion. I'm not supposed to know your opinion. You're supposed to be, you're supposed to be giving me news. Right. You're supposed to be giving me honest, unbiased information so I can make a decision. And you're making a decision for me or trying to.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And they've gotten so as news became Entertainment. I mean, CNN's the worst thing that ever happened to news because it's 24 hours. And now all of a sudden there's not 24 hours worth of news all the time, right? There is during a war. Right. You can show us news, you know, war footage the whole time and talk about the war and why war and why no war. But. But when there's not, you gotta make some shit up or push an opinion. And that's where we've gotten with news now. Now it's news is piss em off and scare the shit out of them. Yeah, that's how we keep them watching.

[Brett Weinstein]

And that's the business model it is now. And it's also piss him off and scare the shit out of them. But ignore certain things that your sponsors wouldn't like you to talk about.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

This is why, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, in her final act as Director of National Intelligence, as she's leaving, she had that. She gave that press conference about Fauci and she talked about how he lied in front of Congress and that he absolutely used American tax funds to fund gain of function research through Eco Health alliance and through the Wuhan Lab and Wuhan, China. And you know, no one's covering it. This episode is brought to you by Visible. How many of you are currently listening to this podcast on your phone? If you are chronically online, like most of us are these days, your wireless network should be too. With Visible, you get unlimited 5G and unlimited hotspot, all powered by Verizon's 5G network. The perks of big wireless for half the cost. Visible isn't just a wireless plan. It's unlimited wireless designed to keep you connected and no contract holding you back. Switch [e-mail] plan start at just 25amonth or get our premium Visible Plus Pro plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code Rogan. An exclusive offer for podcast listeners.

[Taylor Sheridan]

No. And by the way, didn't we all know that already?

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, we knew it, but my parents didn't. You know, people that just, like, just read the newspapers and watch tv, they don't know.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I've never seen anything as flagrantly obvious as Covid coming from the Wuhan lab, studying Covid. Right, Right. I've never. You've got fucking news anchors keeping a straight face, saying it came from the wet market.

[Brett Weinstein]

Did you ever see Jon Stewart's bid on it that he did on the Colbert show?

[Taylor Sheridan]

No.

[Brett Weinstein]

You never saw it?

[Conversation Participant]

No.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, we need to play it. Let's play it. Because it's so funny. Because Colbert tries to stop him from doing it and push back. And John, he's a great comic. He just gets up from his chair and gets louder and just plows through it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Really?

[Brett Weinstein]

Over. Colbert's, like, trying to block his bit. He's like. It's like. It's a funny bit and he's getting in the way. I'd like to see if you have information on that. I'd like to see it. And he just keeps going. He keeps plowing away. It's very funny. And it's in the middle of it. Right. He was a. This was a courageous step because he was doing this. When calling it out and saying that it came from a lab in Wuhan, China, was somehow or another conflated with racism. Remember that?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

If you said it came from Wuhan, China, from a lab, you're racist.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like, how did you pull that off? Like, how did. It's like no one's saying anything. It's racist. It's from fucking China. And it seems like Eco Health alliance funded it. And it seems like we funded Eco Health Alliance.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's a lot of fucking paperwork.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And by the way, there's studies on the fucking disease that they've been doing that are posted on the CDC website. They're posted on the fucking. My favorite was when you catch all this about ivermectin. And literally when that happened, I went, I want to look that up. But look up ivermectin and studies with ivermectin. And a study pops up on the CDC website while people are telling us to not take that shit. And it talks about the efficacy of ivermectin and antiviral properties, specifically COVID 19.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

So it's on the government website that the drug works while they're telling everyone to not take it.

[Brett Weinstein]

And they're mocking me for taking a horse dewormer. Watch this. This is great. This is great. Now you stop. Because he still wants to put out that establishment position. I'd like to see any evidence, if you've got any evidence. Yeah, well, wild times in the news. Because I think from then on that sort of sent a shockwave through the majority of the population where just whatever trust they had in the news just got severely eroded.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And if we don't have good news, if we don't have trust in the news, then we're kind of adrift. And then you get locked into conspiracy theories and eco chambers online and you can get trapped in them, too. And that's not good either.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. Then there's nowhere to go get information.

[Brett Weinstein]

Has anybody in NBC, cbs, cnn, have any of those people picked up on that Tulsi Gabbard speech about Fauci and had any sort of a reaction to it? I'd like to know that because from what I was reading online, none of them had. But this was as of yesterday. I don't know whether or not that's changed. I don't know if, like, they were preparing an article and they wanted to make sure that they got all their ducks in a ro.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I would think pretty much anytime the head of an institute is begging for a pardon when he hasn't been charged with any crime is pretty good indicator. You might want to look and see if there's been a crime committed.

[Brett Weinstein]

Was he begging for a pardon? I mean, he.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, Fauci. Fauci was like. He had attorneys. This is in part of that deal. He had attorneys reaching out to Biden's camp the last Day when he got the pardon the very last day.

[Brett Weinstein]

Geez, it's just a preemptive pardon is nuts. Especially when. When Rand Paul's questioning him and he's talking to him about. Specifically about what. What defines gain of function research. And by all account, by every definition, it's gain of function research. And Fauci's still saying, you do not know what you are talking about. With all due respect.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Even though he's a doctor. Yeah, Grandpa's a fucking doctor.

[Brett Weinstein]

He's an actual doctor.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And then they say, well, you're an eye doctor. Well, that's my specialty. But before I became an eye doctor, I became a general doctor, which means I studied all the same shit that Fauci studied. You gotta go through medical school before you go pick a specialty. So four years of studying the entire body before you specialize in whatever you're gonna specialize in.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, it's also then if you read RFK jr's book, the Real Anthony Fauci, you find out he ran this exact same play during the AIDS pandemic. It was the exact same playbook. That's what the Dallas Buyers Club is about. The Dallas buyers club. That McConaughey movie about AIDS. The fucking villain is Anthony Fauci. He's the guy that's stopping them from getting alternative medications. That's the guy that wanted everybody to take azt. You know why? Because AZT had already been approved. They had already used it as a cancer medication. It was a chemotherapy medication that they stopped using because it was too deadly. It was killing people quicker than cancer was killing them. So the first medication they gave people when they had an immune system that was compromised was a chemotherapy medication that was killing people. And they were giving it to people that were asymptomatic. They were giving it to people that tested HIV positive. And then you know about the PCR testing. So the PTR test. Kerry Mullis, the guy who invented PCR testing, said publicly about Fauci, he does not know what the fuck he's talking about. I don't think he said, but he does not know what he's talking about. And that it's not supposed to be used to detect a disease in a person's body. And that if you ramp up the cycles long enough, just like they did with COVID where we got some, by some estimations, 80% false positives because of the PCR method, because they were ramping them up so high. And so they cut it back quite significantly. And that reduced the amount of false positives they had. But there's a lot of people that got tested as HIV positive that probably weren't. And they put those fucking people on AZT and AZT kills you.

[Conversation Participant]

Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, nuts. Most mainstream outlets are treating it as a serious but unproven political bombshell. They're reporting that Gabbard alleges what Gabbard alleges, stressing the documents are disputed and under review and highlighting how polarized the reaction is. Mainstream print, Jerusalem Post, Money Control, Newsweek summarize her accusations, emphasized that Covet's origins remain unresolved. And note that the claims about Fauci sparking Covid or lying under oath are heavily contested, not yet legally validated. Many stories frame this as reigniting a long running fight over lab leak versus natural origin. List. That fight is over, kids. That fight's over. This. If you're saying, if you are in the news and you are saying that there's still a long running controversy as to whether it's a lab leak or natural origin, shut your fucking dirty whore mouth. Because it's not. There's. The fight's over. It's a fucking lab leak. They say the new documents will need independent scrutiny from Congress, investigators and scientists before any firm conclusions can be drawn. Okay, right leaning media highlight her file dump as vindication for critics, focus on the COVID up narrative and give prominent space to Republicans like Rand Paul. Why does it? More centrist or mainstream outlets present it as a straighter news tone, often pairing Gabbards and GOP's quotes with Foushee's past denials. And nothing. There is so far no judicial finding a perjury or criminal conduct.

[Taylor Sheridan]

What I've never understood is how this became a left or right issue.

[Brett Weinstein]

Stupid.

[Taylor Sheridan]

When Fauci, who's a career bureaucrat right through. I mean, when all this started, there was a Republican president. Yep, Right? And then he served that Republican president. He served the Democratic president before that and before that and then he served a Republican. I mean, he's been there for fucking 50 years. Yeah, it's been there for this dude. It's not political. It shouldn't be political. There shouldn't be a right left side to this.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Hey, a career bureaucrat fucking lied to us.

[Brett Weinstein]

He used the exact same language when he was talking about AZT as a medication for HIV that he used for the COVID vaccine. The reason why it's the only medication is because it is both safe and effective. The guy's a monster. Yeah, like he's one of those guys, like throughout History where you're gonna look back over time and you go, holy shit, this one guy's lies, this one guy's aspirations, this one guy's career fucked so many people over.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. And I don't understand why Democrats would want to fall on that sword with.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's no reason to align because people are stupid. And they just decide that because a Republican's a president, and anything the Republicans are pushing has to be. And that stupid fucking division. It's so silly. It's so silly. It really is. Because the same people during Trump's presidency were openly saying, are you gonna trust a vaccine that's created under Trump? They were all saying it. Kamala Harris said it. A bunch of Joy Reid said it. They all said it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And then they bet their entire political livelihoods on it.

[Brett Weinstein]

We deserve better. We really do. Or we don't. Maybe we don't. We think they're good. We're so silly. Such a silly group of human beings.

[Conversation Participant]

We are.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That's wild.

[Brett Weinstein]

Not all of us, though. You know, I think less of us now. I think it's. It's gonna be way harder to divide people the way they divided everybody in 2020. It'll be way harder now. I think most people are just not buying it. And as long as people wake up to this left versus right nonsense is really just a big fucking hustle to keep you fighting with each other.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh, for sure.

[Brett Weinstein]

Most of it. Even the ICE stuff that we were talking about. Hey, folks, do you think it's a coincidence that the biggest fucking ICE protests were all going on in the same place where they found all that fraudia? That these organized massive protests were all occurring in the same place where that Nick Shirley cat found fucking billions of dollars in fraud?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Shocker. Kind of crazy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Didn't they pass. Didn't California pass a law, a Nick Shirley law, to prevent that. That, specifically that guy from fucking poking around in California?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yes, yes. I mean, they've even referred to it as the Nick Shirley law. The idea is to keep people from investigating fraud, which is outlandish. That is outrageous. That is a craz thing to emphasize. And the thing is, well, these people are showing up at daycares and looking in. Right. They shouldn't. You're right. 100 and people, random people from the Internet should not be showing up at daycares with cameras. I agree. However, when there's no one in that daycare for years and years and years, and they can prove that millions of dollars are being earned by that daycare and there's no one in there. It gets a little weird.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Isn't there a.

[Brett Weinstein]

Isn't there fully passed into law? Not yet.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Isn't there a video of that kid, like walking up to one of these and these dudes get out and like drive off in their Bentleys?

[Brett Weinstein]

I don't know if those are real. There's a bunch of fake videos that were made by people afterwards that were just capitalizing on people wanting to click on something like that. And so they were just engagement farming by pretending like the guy would show up and they'd go, what? What are you talking about?

[Conversation Participant]

I don't.

[Brett Weinstein]

I have no idea what is bad acting. And they get in a Rolls Royce,

[Taylor Sheridan]

like, it's just bullshit.

[Brett Weinstein]

It seemed like bullshit to me. I mean, I'm sure a bunch of those guys made a bunch of money. And I'm sure there is a lot of fraud. Just like they're admitting it, Minnesota is admitting it. They knew it was going on forever, you know, and then how about the fact that there's certain politicians that voted against this idea? So one of those ladies that was killed, like, there was a lady and her husband that were murdered in Minnesota, and she was one of the few people that voted against providing Medicare for illegals. They were trying to pass some bill involving Medicare and illegals, and she was one of the ones that voted against it and she was killed. The guy who killed her said that Tim Waltz sent him to kill the them. Now, I don't know if he's full of. He easily could be. He's a crazy person. He's a murderer. He showed up at their house with a mask on and shot them dead and shot a couple other people too. It's like he's, you know, obviously he's cracked out, but kind of weird, Kind of weird that the lady who wants to vote against this obvious fraud, this money that's being somehow another funneled around through Medicare. Like one of the things that Elon said when he was on the podcast is that Medicaid and Medicare fraud is one of the biggest fucking problems. And he was looking into a doge. He goes, I almost don't want to talk about it because I don't want to get killed. He goes, it's that bad. And this was before all this Nick Shirley shit. And now you're seeing it and you're like, oh, now I get it. These hospices that they have these fake hospices in California and then these. All the Somali daycare centers and all the different things, like these people are just autism the autism diagnosis went through the fucking roof because now they can have these autism centers. So they just diagnose their kids as autistic and then they're raking in all this money for treatment. It's crazy how much fraud there is.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Hundreds of billions.

[Brett Weinstein]

Hundreds of billions of dollars. And just what a shocker that that's the place where the big ice protest broke out.

[Taylor Sheridan]

People forget that.

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[Taylor Sheridan]

visit zebfound Lilly.com When Obama was president, he made a big public statement about going after government fraud. They were aware of it then. I mean they've been aware of it for it's always taken place but on the scale and he tried and he caught resistance to the point that he wasn't able to do his version of a Doge, which was his intention. He gave a big public speech about it and tried to look into it. And if you're stealing hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds of Billions of dollars. What wouldn't you do to protect that?

[Brett Weinstein]

Exactly. And that was Elon's point. And also that money for sure makes its way into Democratic coffers and probably Republican too. And whoever the fuck is going to

[Taylor Sheridan]

be, whoever's enabling the fraud, who's ever

[Brett Weinstein]

going to help out out. Whoever wants a piece of this pie is a juicy ass pie. It's a hundred billion dollar pie.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Come get something that'll almost bill you. A rail system in California. You can get a mile of track

[Brett Weinstein]

or a second Cougar bridge car salesman.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Have you had that guy on?

[Brett Weinstein]

No, he wants to be on. He talks a lot of about me. At first he was saying Joe Rogan's not a fan of me, but I'm a big fan of him. He was like saying all this.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Doesn't he have his own podcast? Yeah, because that city, that state is running so well. The governor doesn't need to.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's so smooth. If you ask him, he'll tell you. He'll tell you how awesome this is.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh, he'll give you stats. Statistically, people are moving there in record numbers.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, that's not true. It's not true. It's the, all the stats, the positive stats, they were already going on before he was the governor. California's an awesome place. The fucking weather's perfect. San Francisco has always been an incredible tech hub of geniuses. There's always been a bunch of super wizards up there that are creating some of the best technology in the world. And that has nothing to do with him, has zero to do with him and all these problems that their inept government has caused. Because that's the real problem with him as a governor. It's a real problem with Karen Bass as a mayor. It's a real problem with whatever the fuck happened to San Francisco. It's bad government. It's not upholding the rule of the law, not keeping people safe, being empathetic to people that are shooting up on the street over people that are trying to walk their fucking kids to school. Yeah, like what you're doing is bad for society. It's bad.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And it seems to me that for the most part, for the most part, if you are the mayor of a city, and when I was writing Yellowstone, the governor of Montana at the time, who was a Democrat, I called him and asked him, I said, hey guys, talk to you about what it's like to be a governor? What did you think it would be and what did it turn out to be? And what he said was, Steve Bullock is his name. He said, well, I thought I was going to make all these changes and do this and shepherd this. And I learned that I am the CEO of a state and that my job as the CEO of the state is take care of the people who live in the state state, the employees of the state, attract business here, attract tourism here and try to make the state make more money and make lives better. That's my job. Infrastructure and city management and people management and tourism. That's my job. And to a even more acutely, to a mayor, you're really the president of a city, you're the CEO of the city and your job is keep the lights on one, pick up the trash, put out the fires, deal with the sewage, keep it safe, like that's it. There's no social anything secondarily possibly, but run the schools, like run the city. And you have in a lot of these big urban areas where they're so agenda driven and they're pushing a social agenda and they're not running the cities, they're not running them at all. And so they're running into the ground. And it's tragic to see because San Francisco, like you said, it's a beautiful city, L.A. used to be a fabulous place where you could go and make your dreams come true.

[Brett Weinstein]

San Francisco was awesome. Ten years ago, just ten years ago, I filmed my special triggered in the Fillmore in San Francisco in 2016. It was great, no problems. It wasn't homeless people everywhere. It was normal. It was normal San Francisco. Go to a cool restaurant, people are cool. Always been like a smart city, interesting architecture. Always been a great city. I lived there from the time I was 7 to 11.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. I loved San Francisco. It's unrecognizable now. 10 years, that's it. 10 years of asinine government. And also this homeless thing, when you realize that it's an industry, I mean, the homelessness is valuable. Having homeless people on the streets is valuable because you can get more money to deal with this obvious homeless problem. The more obvious the problem is, the more money they're going to throw on it. They don't have to fix it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, there's no intention to fix it.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right.

[Taylor Sheridan]

They're giving out free needles here.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Get high here. And I was just somewhere where my first experience seeing the homeless in this magnitude and the one thing that's evident instantly is they're all so completely strung out on drugs. Like this fentanyl thing is no fucking joke. Like the zombies leaning against every corner. And to me it's cruel, right?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Like if someone's to that point and you want to help them, don't give them a fucking iPhone and some more needles. How about you pick them up off the street and you take them somewhere and go, look, there's a curfew here and you ain't doing no drugs.

[Conversation Participant]

Right.

[Taylor Sheridan]

We're going to clean you out. And some aren't going to want that. They're going to want to go back on the street and do drugs. And the addiction and the consequences of drugs that are that I had surgery that put me on fentanyl, neck surgery and they put me on fentanyl signal. There's high, then there's that. And that was done by an anesthesiologist. I wasn't self medicating on a parking lot. Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

What'd you get done to your neck?

[Taylor Sheridan]

C67 fusion. No, no, no, no, no. I had the dissectomy disc. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Just cut some of it down.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's okay now.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

How long ago did you get that done?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Is that maybe three years ago?

[Brett Weinstein]

I wish I.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Two years.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Three years ago.

[Brett Weinstein]

If that ever happens again. Don't do that.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That don't.

[Brett Weinstein]

No.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, it'll happen.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I'm sure it will. There's other ways. There's a way. Yeah, there's. PRP can help it. Regenerachine helped mine. I had a pretty bad bulging disc in my neck. What's regenerating regene is they used to have to go to Germany to do it. I know Peyton Manning went there, Kobe Bryant went there and Dana White actually flew to Germany to get it done. It is, it's like an advanced form of platelet rich plasma where they take your blood, they. There's a process to it. Pull it up, Jamie, because I can't remember what the process is, but they spin it in a centrifuge for like 10 hours and then you come back the next day and they inject it and it makes this very potent anti inflammatory and they inject it around wherever the injury is to the disc and it provides like within weeks amazing relief. And for me it completely cured it. I had a point where my fingers were going numb.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, I. That's what.

[Brett Weinstein]

What German. Go back up. Back to work. Yeah. So German physician, Dr. Peter Welling, the treatment focused on blocking a specific inflammatory protein, interleukin 1. So they take the blood out, they draw your blood and then the blood is heated to body temperature to trigger the production of a natural anti inflammatory protein called IL.1RA. And then they spin in a centrifuge huge separating out the protein rich serum. The serum is then injected directly into the painful joint or tissue. Dude is remarkable for me, for knee injuries, I did it a bunch of times. I used to do it at they. They moved it. You used to have to go to Germany and then Santa Monica. They opened up an office. It's lifestyle medicine. That's what it's called.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

And then that's where I had it done and used you. It's incredible. Like it. I had it done my entire back. Like there's a picture of me on the, on Instagram with a bunch of these tubes in my. That's me right there. A bunch of those tubes. My hairy ass back. And it was incredible. I mean it really fixed so many problems that I had. It's really great for, specifically for back injuries, knee injuries, stuff like that. There's a lot of good biological options. There's also decompression is very important. I have a harness that I attach to a pull up bar and it straps under my chin and I just like let my weight drop down and decompress my weight on my neck. I do that every day. And then I also have this thing called a dex 3. It's a dex 2 or dex 3. You, you hang forward. It's like Teeter makes it. You know that company that makes those decompression tables. But this one's even better because you just hinge from the hip.

[Conversation Participant]

Hip.

[Brett Weinstein]

So you're not supporting it at all with your legs. And it's just your back. It just goes like pop, pop, pop. Like you could feel it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

One of those.

[Brett Weinstein]

I'll show it to you. We have one out here. We have two of them out here actually. Right out. Yeah. In the gym. It's. They're. They're the. I have one at home. I don't. I, I will not, not have one. I have to have one. It's so good for just decompressing your back. But you need to decompress the neck too. Anytime you're doing anything, if you're deadlifting or squat, obviously you're lifting a lot of heavy weights. If anytime you're lifting weight, you got to think of all that, all that pressure's on your back, all that squashing down and you got to do something to stretch it out, stretch it back out. But there's ways to heal it now without taking away the disc. So the problem is every time they cut away a piece of your disc,

[Taylor Sheridan]

you got less Disc.

[Brett Weinstein]

You got less disc? Yeah. So the good news is there's some treatments that they're doing now where they're actually injecting some sort of a hydrogel. I've heard about this into the disc itself. So I asked Brigham from ways to. Well about that and they're looking into it and they're trying to. Apparently this is not being done widely yet. This is like this, just experimental, but they. They think they're going to be able to do that. There's also some places like cpi, Cellular Performance Institute down in Tijuana. They've successfully been injecting stem cells into people's discs and it causes a disc to regenerate tissue and get thicker and healthier year.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Really?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Shane Dorian, my friend, he's a pro surfer and big wave surfer and bow hunter. He. He went down there and he said it was remarkable. He said within a couple of months, like a 30 to 40% increase in range of motion. Really decrease in pain. Yeah. You could feel it. It's kind of an annoying process because once you do it, you can't really do for like six weeks. Like, once you. I think it's six weeks.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, that's what. Same with the surgery. You're not doing for six weeks after that.

[Brett Weinstein]

But you can't lift weights. You could walk, walk. You could walk. You know, it's all. It's the whole thing's like, let everything take. Like, let it take. Let it heal up. Don't do anything stupid. Don't re. Injure it, don't aggravate it. Like, give it a chance to actually do its magic.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, I'll look into that for sure.

[Brett Weinstein]

But any neck injury or back injury, there's such a. Anytime your back goes out, you're like. Everything you do is like, ah, it's so hard to do anything. It's like you realize like how nice it is to be healthy when.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

You know, whenever you get hurt.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. No, back pain.

[Conversation Participant]

That's.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That's what killed my stepfather.

[Brett Weinstein]

Back pain.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Did you just get on pills? Yeah, yeah. And I have a friend in the family that did that.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. He was in. I remember one time we were fishing up in Wyoming and. And he just, he was like, I can't do it. Back hurts too bad. And he went in and had a surgery and that made it worse. Which is, yeah, people a real, real risk when you start messing around with the spine. Right. And so. Yeah. And then it was, you know, those are serious pain. Now we're talking oxy. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Now you're in just.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Now you're on a clock.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And you can only do that for so long.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Now you're on a clock.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oxies are terrifying. They're so terrifying. So terrifying how. How readily they were handing them out too. Forever.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Do you ever see Painkiller? That. The Peter Berg thing that he did for Netflix?

[Taylor Sheridan]

No, I didn't.

[Brett Weinstein]

Great, man. So Matthew Broderick plays such a great creep. Oh, he played the Sackler brother. The Sackler?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Really?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. The head of the family that started this whole opiate problem that we have in this country. It's terrifying because it's all real. And those people never even went to jail.

[Conversation Participant]

Jail.

[Brett Weinstein]

Who knows how many people are dead because of them?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

They generated billions and billions of dollars, killed a bunch of people, ruined countless lives. How many lives? People that were connected. Your dad gets hooked on that, it ruins your relationship with your. Your family.

[Taylor Sheridan]

You.

[Brett Weinstein]

You wind up being all up because you grew up with a dad who was strung out on pills.

[Taylor Sheridan]

No. Generation.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Generational damage.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, God. Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And these guys put their feet on up.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. They go to a nice country club and have the lobster.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Suckers. There's so many of them in this world. There's like. That's genuinely evil.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's real demons there. That's a real demon. Like, people want to think demons live in hell and, you know, that's. That's kind of may. May or may not be real. Well, no, they're on Earth. There's demons.

[Taylor Sheridan]

They're right here.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. And they justify it. They figure out a way to justify it. And they're around a bunch of other people who justify it too. And they can just immediately dismiss any pain or suffering because they got a huge amount of profit from it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. Yep. Those are the.

[Brett Weinstein]

Those are the fuckers. Yeah.

[Conversation Participant]

They're out there.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And it doesn't take many of them to create, like, real carnage. I mean, think about that. Think about the opiate issue in this. And it's still going. It was the gateway to fentanyl.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right.

[Taylor Sheridan]

If you think about it.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. It was the gateway to fentanyl. And it was. It was also. It's like they were doing those pain. Pain management centers down in Florida where they just. All they prescribed was pills, so you would go. And, like, I'm in pain. They're like, oh, Taylor, we've got the solution. It's right next door. And you go right next door to their pharmacy and all their pharmacy has, like. They don't have Ben Gay over there. They don't have toothbrushes.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oxy.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, we got oxy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Here you go, buddy.

[Brett Weinstein]

This is the solution.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Fucked.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yep. Yep. That's the real drug trade.

[Conversation Participant]

Mm. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right? Yeah. I mean, the cartel is basically getting the scraps. They're making trillions of dollars off scraps.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, think about this. Did you even know what fentanyl was 15 years ago? I never heard of it.

[Brett Weinstein]

No. I don't even remember when we first heard about it, but when we first heard about it on a podcast, we were talking about it, and we found the amount. That's lethal. And they showed it next to a penny, and you're like, what? That can kill you? And people are taking that and they're mixing that in cocaine. Holy fuck.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And they are bent over zombies on the side of the road.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, Philadelphia's bad, too. There's a bunch of cities that are just real bad with it, and it doesn't have to be that way. And what's interesting is this ibogaine initiative that Rick Perry and Brian Hubbard are pushing in Texas and that I went to the White House to get Trump to be involved in. And they're trying to make this so that it's. You have a right to use, or right, I think they call it, right to use. A right to try for people that are addicted, and they're trying to make it more readily available and accessible to veterans. That's the thing that could help all these people.

[Taylor Sheridan]

What is it now?

[Brett Weinstein]

Ibogaine. You don't know what that is?

[Taylor Sheridan]

No.

[Brett Weinstein]

Ibogaine is a. It comes from the aboga tree in Africa, and it is this very potent psychedelic that has no recreational use at all. It's not fun. Nobody likes it. It's not like you trip, you see zombies and fucking hang out with the aliens. You go into this very dark experience for, like, 24 hours where it, like, replays your life to you in a very uncomfortable way. And also somehow or another rewires addiction in your brain. And for a large percentage of people, just one dose is good enough to get them off of everything, whatever they're on, whether it's alcohol, gambling, coke, whatever the it is. But for two doses, when they do it twice, it's significantly better. And it doesn't just do that. Rick Perry, who was the Republican former governor of Texas, was staunchly anti drugs. He's said this is. His main focus in life now, is to promote this. This is his goal in life because he did it, and he had an. An incredible reaction to it. And he knows so many Veterans who have done it. It's incredible for ptsd, somehow or another, it has neuroregenerative properties where he went there and they said, he went to his doctor before and you know, doctor did a whole scan of his body and he said, look, you've got a certain amount of age related brain atrophy. It's like, it's fine, but, you know, it's normal that you're 73 years old or 74 years old. So he goes and does the ibogaine, sees his doctor a short time afterwards, and the doctor says it's 25% less atrophy than when you got the last scan. And he explains to him the whole ibogaine thing. He goes back six months later, it's all gone. He has no brain atrophy anymore, which is bananas. So it's regenerating brain tissue, it's making his brain work better.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And it's just, well, the pharmaceutical companies aren't gonna let that shit out.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, they didn't like it. They didn't like that. I bypassed them and went straight to Trump and told them about them. But Trump was very open to it. He said, what are you looking for? Are you looking for FDA approval? Like, let's do it. Like, that's literally what he said. And then a week later, we were at the White House and he was signing it. So it's incredible. But if so many veterans have had to go over to mostly Mexico, but Costa Rica, there's a bunch of different places that they go where they can have these ibogaine retreats. And these guys have had incredible results. Marcus Luttrell, he had an incredible result from it. He had a real problem drinking. You know, obviously he's the guy Lone Survivor, the movies based on his experiences over in Afghanistan. So this guy, you know, he's, he's done it, he's gotten over it because of that. Like, there's a long, Sean Ryan, long list of guys who have had this experience and it completely changed them.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

Dakota Meyer did it. So many of these guys did it. And because of their. Their stories, because all these veterans, then it like kind of opened up the idea to a lot more right wing people that would maybe be like, more hesitant to accept something like this. Then on top of it, no recreational use. Like, no one's like, boy, I can't wait to do that again. Everybody's like, holy shit, this sucked. I had diarrhea, I threw up. I fel. Felt I was horrified for 12 hours. Apparently. Just takes you through every aspect of Your life like review like a movie. All the times you've ever hurt people, you see it from their perspective, like. Yeah, it's like very. It's a very dark experience for a lot of people, especially a lot of people that have up a lot of their life, you know.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. But if those people had access to abgain, all these homeless people that you see strung out out, if instead of just giving them needles in an iPhone and like profiting off of it, if somehow or another these can figure out a way to profit off of these centers, we could bring people in and give them ibogaine retreats. Maybe that would be a nice little exit strategy for all these grifters that have been profiting off of the homeless industrial complex for so long.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, well, you know, they're not trying to solve problems.

[Brett Weinstein]

No, no. They're trying to make money.

[Conversation Participant]

Money.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's what I was saying earlier when we're talking about charities. That's the saddest thing that I've come to the realization that most non profits are scams. Like most of them. Most of them. And this guy was like reading off like the average amount that these people that are in charge of the homeless program in LA are making.

[Conversation Participant]

It's.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's extraordinary amount of money. It's a great living. They're not doing it because it's like, like some sort of a very charitable thing that they really want to save the world and help people. No, they're making tons of money.

[Taylor Sheridan]

They're performative entrepreneurs if you think about it. Come up with a problem, then go pitch some version of Karen's solution to a government and take the fucking money and never solve the problem. Because as soon as you solve the problem and if you do somehow accidentally solve it, then go find another one.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons why shows like Yellowstone in particular, that show like people that are proud to work hard and really get like deep satisfaction out of that life. And there's something about that that really like it resonates with people. Like there's a better way than just bullshitting people. There's a better way than fraud and nonsense and all the this political horseshit that's pumped down your throat every day. No. How about a fucking. Just a sleeping bag and the stars. How about that? Just lying there with your horse tied to a tree. Isn't that really what everybody wants? Isn't, doesn't really everyone to cook their dinner over a fire and laugh with all their friends? Because that's what they really want.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That's, that's just really something simple, something

[Brett Weinstein]

real, something that that's like there's. It's not that simple because it's hard to do all that. But there's something about it that's pure. It's pure. There's no if, ands or buts.

[Taylor Sheridan]

You spend a lot of time outside, right. And, and the entire thing's an endeavor. Right. If you go on, you go bow hunting, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna practice, prepare before you go. Then you're gonna hike your ass in somewhere. You have to set up a camp. And all of these are tasks before you've even gone to do the thing you went there to do, which is going to be another task. But the completion of them is the reward. Yeah. And the fact that you're doing it yourself, everything done yourself, I think that's. And that's why people are so attracted to the life. That's why I've got, you know, third generation cowboys that went and got a degree in ranch management to come back and make, you know, $3,000 a month and couldn't be happier.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's wild, isn't it? It's really wild when you think about it. It's wild what people actually gravitate towards because they say that. Have you ever seen that Werner Herzog documentary, Happy People?

[Taylor Sheridan]

No.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's called Happy People Life in the Taiga. And it's all about these trappers that live on the Taiga river in Siberia. And all these people do is trap and hunt and fish. They don't have any other way to make a living. That's all they do. And they're so fucking happy. And they're all laughing together and drinking together and hanging out with their dogs. And their dogs are. Or sled dogs. And so they're on, they're on snowmobiles and the dogs are chasing behind them and the dogs hunt with them. And these fucking people have like zero mental illness. And when they're talking to them, they're talking in Russian, so it's all translated. But what they're talking about, like the way they talk, it's like that this is how you're supposed to live. This is real life. And they're all happy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

There's a guy, I'm going to get his name wrong. It's like premature, something like that. And he. In the 60s, Dick Premican, Primican. That's it.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah. The guy lived in Alaska.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, yeah. Went up said bucket.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Went up into the Way into the wild and built by hand a cabin and lived there and documented it. Brought a little suit break, camera, whatever, filmed the whole thing and filmed himself. I mean he. He lived for 35 years. He was 80 something years old when he finally was too old to. To get through another winter when he came down and he just built this cabin and just lived, hunted, fished, grew potatoes. Had to build. Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

Brenneke Pronicky. That's how you say his name. P, R O E. If you haven't.

[Taylor Sheridan]

If you haven't watched that documentary, it is fascinating.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's amazing. Yeah. Look at the different. What is it? Oh, this is.

[Conversation Participant]

Just talking about it.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, but why they show this 20, 23, this guy when he documented all of it, you know, it's so attractive. There's something about the way he's living and he's by himself, which is also wild. Like, how do you not get lonely?

[Taylor Sheridan]

No, there's that.

[Brett Weinstein]

I mean, I'd lose my marbles. I need people.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

I need to talk to somebody. I don't think I'd be like and that. But. But it's so attractive.

[Taylor Sheridan]

But then. But the notion of that kind of self reliance.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. No, there's something about it that's like deeply ingrained in our DNA. It's not just that. It's like. It's a healthy interaction with the wild world. There he is. Look at that Guy made all that himself. That's what's crazy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

The whole, the whole. I mean, he made his own tools. He made. It was. It's really wild. I think he was a. Wasn't he a lumberman or something like that?

[Taylor Sheridan]

I can't remember if he was.

[Brett Weinstein]

Look at.

[Conversation Participant]

Pretty.

[Brett Weinstein]

That is. My God. This is right in front of his house. You just build a house out there. Alaska's amazing, man. I mean the winners can suck a dick, but the. Just the actual being there in the place and the people are, are. They're clearly like extraordinary people. Like when you go just even hanging out in a bar in Anchorage, like, you guys are different. They're like more reliable, you know, no matter where sturdier people.

[Taylor Sheridan]

No matter where you live in Alaska, you're gonna have to be tough.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

You have to be. And they were laughing about some guy who got stomped to death by a moose because he was throwing snowballs at it in town. Like, okay, like that's something you guys have to think about. You. You might get stomped to death in front of the ATM machine.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Or maybe. Maybe don't throw a snowball At a thousand pound animal.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Well you can catch a cow with their calves and she'll stomp no matter what. So it's a book. Preicky says he turned his back on a tedious. On tedious 50 hour work weeks and moved to Alaska to do a thing to completion. He built the cabin when he was 51 and lived there for more than 30 years.

[Conversation Participant]

Wow. Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

Where is that area? The Twin Lakes in Lake Clark National Park.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I don't know.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's another guy that lives up there that lives near the Arctic Circle. Vice guy to travel did a piece on him years ago. It's same kind of deal. He lives in a cabin and he's been up in that cabin since the 1970s. He didn't. He never saw 9 11. He saw a photograph of it years later. He's just been up there in the woods. All he does is he hunts caribou and he has them all like hanging up like frozen because it's frozen outside. Like that's as outside as his cooler. And while they're there, grizzly tries to steal a stash and he has to shoot the grizzly. It's like, it's crazy really.

[Taylor Sheridan]

What's that called?

[Brett Weinstein]

It's called Vice Guy to travel and it's Hein. Moe's Arctic Adventure is the video series. And what's interesting, this is like the early days of Vice when Vice was really cool and they get this nerd with glasses probably from like Williamsburg who flies out to Alaska to hang out with this guy and the guy. They said like these journalists were like hardcore. These young kids were. They knew they were doing something kind of crazy and they would go to war zones. Like that's how Tim Pool started out. These guys would go to the war zones and get shot at. They had bulletproof vests on and they'd be doing investigate like real investigative reporting. And so this guy did just really went up there and hung out with this dude in Alaska for like a week. And was talking to him, was like what's, what's so great about this? And he's a very intelligent guy. He's not a. The guy who's this, this guy. Hindmo. See if you can find that. Did you find it?

[Conversation Participant]

I was looking around. There's a. I mean they're still posting stuff. They've. There's the last Alaskan. Excuse me, Last Alaskans.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, he's still posting stuff.

[Conversation Participant]

They have a YouTube channel.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh wow.

[Conversation Participant]

Hi Mo and Edna.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh wow. He looks older now.

[Conversation Participant]

They're just talking about Podcasts here a second ago.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, interesting. They're talking about podcasts, our podcast. Oh. Because we talked about them.

[Conversation Participant]

I mean, just as I saw. As you were. Your picture popped up.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, that's it. That's me talking about him. Yeah. See if you could find the Vice guide to travel, because that's where I found out about him. So this guy's. He's like one of the last people that's allowed to live up there. He has like a notice posted on his. His cabin because he's grandfathered in. I don't think you could build a cabin up there anymore. That's not. This is afterwards. 15 years ago might be it, but I think it's called Hindmo's Arctic Adventure. Yeah. Arctic Refuge. That's the article.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Conversation Participant]

The Vice website isn't really one of the most well kept things on the Internet these days.

[Brett Weinstein]

Put in Arctic Adventure.

[Conversation Participant]

I'm guessing that the article was the first thing and then they went and followed up to make a video and. And that's what this is.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. I don't know if. Yeah, maybe that's it.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah. See, it says it presents Himo's Arctic Refuge. Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's probably it.

[Conversation Participant]

They could have just changed the name on YouTube.

[Brett Weinstein]

I think they did. Or maybe I remember it wrong. Either way, this guy's premise is that this is really how you should live. This is how people. Yeah, that's the guy. So you see this looking nerdy cat is hanging out. He looks so out of place. Yep, this is it. And he's got this caribou that he shot and they're hanging frozen. And he just saws off a piece and throws the frozen steaks onto the grill, cooks it over wood. And this is how this guy lives. And that's all he eats. He's just eating caribou and salmon. And he lives up there all year round, man. And it's. I mean, he's just. Just very happy. And that this is the weird part about it, is how happy people who live like this are, because I think that's in our brain. That's how we're designed to exist with nature. We're designed to be hunter gatherers. You know, we still have the same DNA as people that live tens of thousands of years ago.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And, you know, cities started what, maybe 10,000 years ago in some form, right?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, depending on who you ask. You know, I think we're a little wrong with that too. I think they're starting to change their perspective of when the actual civilization emerged because of stuff Like Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, they found these immense structures that are 11, 800 years old that were buried. That this guy who was like, I think it was a sheep herder in the 90s found it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Really?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I found like a stone that was like, like sticking out of the ground. Weird. And he kicked it with his boots, like knocking some dirt off. And then he brought in some archaeologists and then they discovered this massive complex. These like huge circles of giant stone columns with 3D animals carved in them. And they carbon dated the ground and it was intentionally covered up somewhere around 11, 000 plus years ago.

[Taylor Sheridan]

So they're like, really?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. So like, what the is this? Like they didn't even know like what the civilization was. Like, what. Why did they build this? What's the purpose of it?

[Conversation Participant]

It.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's lots a lot of people that debate whether or not what's depicted on is a calendar. Is it a marking of an event? Does it show the flood? Like, what. What is this? It's. It's weird stuff, man. Like really weird stuff. And I think there's more of that than you'd like to. That makes people comfortable. And archaeologists are very hesitant to accept it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

But, well, that whole, that whole deal, right, like your relevance being upon you've discovered this thing when they found the Clovis point. So then we're dating everything off of that and anyone finding anything else is going to render that guy's discovery less important. And at one point we thought there was this logical evolution of man from Homo erectus into Homo sapiens. And now we know that there were at least four, maybe five species of humanoid living at the same time. At least five.

[Brett Weinstein]

Not only that, it's like really difficult to make a fossil. Most people are going to die and their bones are going to be gone within a hundred years.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, it's just what we've been able to find. And we're basing an entire science upon incredibly incomplete discoveries.

[Brett Weinstein]

We're basing entire science on a very limited number that can even possibly exist. Like, I think if you take into account how many dinosaur bones they found and then how many dinosaurs existed and for how many hundreds of millions of years dinosaurs existed and you realize like, oh, like most shit doesn't make a fossil. So we don't even know how many different dinosaurs that we've. I mean, they just discovered a new one recently. This is. We don't even know how many existed that we never found fossilized.

[Taylor Sheridan]

If you, if they didn't run through some lava pit or Tar pit or something. How would you know?

[Brett Weinstein]

And every so often some new form of ancient human pops up and we're like, oh well what's this one? What the fuck is this one? There's weird ones. They're all over the place. There's a fucking ton of them. The Denisovans. There's the. The one in. I believe it was in China. The big headed people. They're quite a bit larger.

[Conversation Participant]

These are in Texas.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, that's Glimmer Dinosaur Valley State Park. Wow.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That's Glen Rose, Texas.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's crazy. How crazy is that? Look at those footprints. That's so nuts. That is so nuts. That dinosaur left those how long ago? 113 million year old dinosaur tracks. What the man. And you know, we're just lucky.

[Taylor Sheridan]

So what is he? What you. That thing? And how much did it fucking way to imprint into that? Which is now granite, right. But at the time it's probably some mixture of mud and ash from a volcano that came together.

[Conversation Participant]

Right?

[Brett Weinstein]

Probably some version of that.

[Conversation Participant]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

I wonder what the animal was. Do they know which dinosaur it was? Picture of one here.

[Conversation Participant]

I don't know if it's. I'll just guess. That's the one they assumed is there.

[Brett Weinstein]

God, those footprints are so dope. That's so wild. I wonder who the first guy who found that was.

[Conversation Participant]

Says it was discovered after a drought. So it would have been.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, that's even cooler. So it was underneath the water the whole time. And then they're like, holy. The river dried up completely in most locations. Line for more tracks to be uncovered here in the park. Wow, that's sick. That's the animal believed to be.

[Conversation Participant]

I don't know. Yeah, they wouldn't know for sure.

[Brett Weinstein]

Belonged to two types of dinos including Acro Canthosaurus.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah, I think. I don't think they found any fossils or anything to be for the record.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's even just crazier, right? All you find is the feet. Think about how many died there. Think about how many just got eaten by other animals and out. And I mean most stuff that lives, I mean you know as well as anybody you very rarely find skeletons in the woods. Woods.

[Taylor Sheridan]

No. The mice are going to eat them.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Something's going to eat most of what you find in the woods. Within a couple of years everything's gone. But like when's the last time, like if you're a hunter, good luck finding a dead mountain lion. They must die. They must die. I don't know anybody that's found a dead one.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I'VE never found one. I've never seen one.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's thousands of them. They die. Where are they? Nature takes care of everything. And that's what would happen to most fossils. Yeah, that's why most fossils don't happen. I mean, when people die, they don't get fossil.

[Conversation Participant]

Fossil says 1908. A local schoolboy found some of these.

[Brett Weinstein]

Wow, look at the size of those next to that. Dude, that's crazy.

[Conversation Participant]

Imagine you ran home and tried to tell your parents they wouldn't even know what dinosaurs really were. I bet. Back then how would they have known?

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, there's a lot of people today that don't even think dinosaurs are real, which is hilarious. There's so many, so many knuckleheads online. But I mean, we don't, we have a very limited amount of information that we're basing our, the entire history of Earth on planet.

[Conversation Participant]

What do you describe that as? A 1910

[Brett Weinstein]

three toed giant

[Conversation Participant]

lizard? I don't even know. I don't.

[Brett Weinstein]

How would you even be sure that that was a footprint?

[Conversation Participant]

Come look at this. Then you gotta go tell everybody else in the town to come follow you out there to find it, right?

[Brett Weinstein]

In 1910, did they even have drawings of dinosaurs?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, I would think they would have found some of the bones, I'm sure.

[Brett Weinstein]

I think we figured that out, right? I think we talked about that. Didn't they first start finding them in the 1800s? Isn't that what it was? But yeah, it's not. I mean, if you think about how many different things died and just were absorbed by the Earth, just gets eaten shit out, swallowed up, just destroyed by time and erosion and never became fossils. We're basing the entire history of the planet on a limited amount of information. And that information, it never gets younger, it always gets older the more stuff they found. Like they found a modern version of human beings that pushes the timeline of humans back another three or four hundred thousand years, and that keeps happening.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, they thought that people crossed the bering land bridge 12,000, 14,000 years ago, and now they've pushed that back 10,000 thousand years.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, they found the, those footprints in White Sands, New Mexico. And those are 22, 000 years old.

[Conversation Participant]

It took a giant flood to come, wash away layers of sediment, that, that's why it's so muddy around it, I guess.

[Brett Weinstein]

Wow.

[Conversation Participant]

And then they started digging.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's cool. That is so cool. And this is in 1952. They did that?

[Conversation Participant]

No, no, no. 1908, 908. The pictures are from 1952.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, okay.

[Conversation Participant]

They must have just kept. Maybe it flooded again 50 years later. Floods do happen here fast.

[Brett Weinstein]

When did they first figure out dinosaurs? Like, what was the first year a dinosaur bone was discovered on your ranch? Do you find, like, a lot of, like, arrowheads and, like, Native American stuff?

[Taylor Sheridan]

The one I grew up on? Everywhere?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Every time I didn't run, you'd find these points.

[Brett Weinstein]

That enthralls me. It's so fascinating. You pick up some arrow. I found one in Nevada while I was on a mule deer hunt. I was in the high desert. We found this little tiny thing. I looked down, I go, oh, my God, it's a fucking arrowhead. And you just think, some dude, who knows how many hundreds of years ago shot thousand deer.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Thousands.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

We found a bunch. And my mother took them to Fort Worth to the museum, and they dated them and some of them. And they could look at them and they know various styles, right. And they go, oh, this was made by. This is 2200 years old. This is 4000 years old. This is when they started doing this.

[Brett Weinstein]

We have one here. I got one here somewhere. It's a big one, too.

[Conversation Participant]

1677 was when the first scientifically recorded dinosaur bone was described. Although it says they been digging. People have been digging them up for thousands of years, but they didn't know

[Brett Weinstein]

what the fuck it was.

[Conversation Participant]

This one says he even thought it belonged to a giant human.

[Brett Weinstein]

This is one from.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Look at that.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

A friend of mine got that off of his ranch. Remy Warren told me that's probably one they use for fishing because it was so big.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Interesting.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I thought so too. I was like, that's interesting because I guess when you're dealing with old bows that didn't have a whole lot of power, they. You really wouldn't want a big, wide cut because you wouldn't get enough penetration to get through the rib cage unless you're really close.

[Taylor Sheridan]

This would be more on a spear.

[Brett Weinstein]

No, it would be on an arrow. It would just be something that you shot at a fish because it's easier to penetrate than, like, say, a buffalo.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Where they would use a smaller head. They're just trying to get penetration.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That's fascinating.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's just an amazing thing you're finding. Just this piece of ancient history where people had no Internet, no books, no nothing. Just flint napping and using tendons. Yeah. And then trying to practice with those bows. Figuring how to do it while you're on horseback, too. It's crazy. So where you grew up the, on the ranch you grew up, you'd find them all the time.

[Taylor Sheridan]

All the time.

[Brett Weinstein]

What was the oldest shit you found,

[Taylor Sheridan]

Man, I, I, I can't remember, but, but I remember it being thousands of years old, a few thousand years old. But we had, we had a, like, my mother had this wicker basket that was like this big, and, and it was full of arrowheads. Yeah.

[Conversation Participant]

Wow.

[Taylor Sheridan]

You'd find them just toss them in there.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's crazy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Just makes you think, like, how long did people live on that land? How many hundreds, thousands of years do people live on that land?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, yeah. And, and, or pass through or have battles or who fucking knows?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Or, or when you find them, like we found them, I mean, every single time it rained, there was this stock tank behind our house. And you maybe, maybe it's half mile up to the stock tank, we walk that road, and you could find four or five. So was that a trading depot? Was that some place where people went to trade? And then I always think, like, how do you lose that many? As hard as they must be to make? You'd think once you've shot that arrow, you're gonna go look for the arrow.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Because you spent hours making this.

[Brett Weinstein]

They must have shot so many for so long. They might. I mean, they're probably shooting him every day. They probably had somebody back at camp making them every day.

[Taylor Sheridan]

There's probably some guy that, that's his skill.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Maybe that maybe when people got older, they couldn't, Couldn't hunt, couldn't run.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right.

[Taylor Sheridan]

You know, maybe they sat back and.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right. Yeah. And that guy makes the arrows and maybe somebody else makes the bows and this guy's going out and shooting the deer and bringing them back. When you're doing a show like 1823, how much research did you have to do to try to get that right? Because that was, in my opinion, one of the best theatrical things that, that I ever watched. Movie or television show that I feel like nailed. What it must have been like to try to travel across the country, to be a civilized person living in the city, try to make your way across the country and just experience the wild shit those people. People saw.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Well, there's a few things, so a lot of research. But interestingly, I had. My family had come. One side of my family had come from Kentucky to Texas in the 1840s and whatever great great grandmother journaled.

[Brett Weinstein]

Wow.

[Taylor Sheridan]

So I had the journal.

[Brett Weinstein]

Holy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And, and then I started finding other journals. There was, you know, some were published and reading about just how fucking dangerous it was. If you think about it, rivers were the most terrifying thing, crossing rivers, because no one swam, no one could swim. And most of the. Most of the people who came into either the port of New Orleans or Galveston, they were European, they were German, a lot of Germans. There were a lot of Central Europeans that came and they were promised free land. Right. There would be travel agencies that they would arrange the entire trip with before they've even left Germany or Croatia or wherever they were. And so by the time that they landed in Galveston, they would meet up with their group, and the group would, you know, they have chipped in all this amount of money and they've got guides, and they would have already arranged for mules or horses and wagons, and off they go.

[Brett Weinstein]

And they had no idea.

[Taylor Sheridan]

A lot of them had never fucking ridden a horse in their life, much less fired a gun, much less. They're in a completely foreign area. Like, they don't. And when they landed in Texas, most of them heading to Oregon because that area was the most similar to where they were from in Central Europe. And then, you know, for whatever reason, they didn't. Some didn't get that far. Some maybe never got past Waco or Fort Worth or wherever. And then off they went. And the dangers were from, obviously, rivers and sun exposure, disease. Obviously. There were issues with bandits and the Native American tribes, depending on the time of year that the era. Right. By the 80s, that was largely not an issue, 1880s. But bandits sure were a real issue because there's no rule of law.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Right. And we can look at. There's plenty of bad people doing awful shit today, and we got all sorts of laws now. Imagine if those people had the wherewithal to go to a place to where there's no laws, no law and no

[Brett Weinstein]

enforcement, no help, no nothing. You're on your own.

[Taylor Sheridan]

You're on your fucking own.

[Brett Weinstein]

And there was a bunch of people that had been living like that for decades, just fucking people up, waiting for you. Just waiting for you. Waiting for you. Here they come. Let's get them.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And that was what their thing was.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. No. So river crossings were incredibly dangerous. And then trying to. If you didn't have an experienced guide, you're fucked. Truly fucked. Because you could. You pick the wrong way and run out of water. Go wander around in the circle. You get up there on the Great Plains to where it's flat and there's. And you don't know how to read the sun. You don't know where you're going. People go out There and make giant circles.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I was reading something about that the other day. That people tend to who for whatever reason, always walk in a counterclockwise direction when they get lost. And that even if they're left footed or right handed or left handed, it doesn't seem to matter. Humans, when they walk, if they get lost, like in the woods, they walk in circles. And they almost always walk in a counterclockwise direction. And so this article was explaining that if you find yourself lost and you think you're running into the same places, most likely you should veer towards the right because you're. You're most likely looping towards the left. For whatever reason. People tend to do that. What if there's like a scientific explanation? Put that in perplexity. See why people move in a counterclockwise perplexity. Doesn't know shit. Doesn't have any woodsmanship.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I never understood getting lost in the wilderness. I didn't understand it really. I can understand not knowing where you are, but you know. But I never understood getting lost.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, you must have learned how to use a compass early.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. Or the sun. Yeah, right. If the sun comes up in the morning and you're facing it right, then behind you is west, to your left is north, to your right is south.

[Brett Weinstein]

Some people have zero experience in the woods, though. People tend to loop often counterclockwise when lost because small errors in our internal sense of straight ahead accumulate. And humans also have a subtle left turn counterclockwise bias whose exact cause is still unclear. Isn't that weird? Wow, that's so weird. In lab and field experiments, blindfolded people tend to walk straight without landmarks, almost always end up curving into large loops Instead of moving in a straight line. People told rather to walk straight without landmarks. Wow. This happens because without internal clues. Oh, external clues like the sun, distant objects or visible path, small random errors in balance and body feedback build up until the path bends enough to close into a circle.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's got to be so disheartening. You've been walking for days and then you pass the same dead tree and you're like, oh my God, we walked in a circle. Pedestrians everywhere exhibit a counterclockwise bias. Wired to walk counterclockwise during COVID scientists studying social distancing, noticing people seem to prefer moving counterclockwise. That's so weird. Tendency is fundamentally individual rather than a collective. What does that mean? So every individual does it, I guess, rather than a group of people just following the leader. Pretty wild. So when people get lost. Some. But some. Some people have just zero experience being in the woods at all. And they just don't know where to go. Where are we? And they just. They just freak out, and then they panic because they think, what's out there? Oh, my God, I want to die.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And you realize that once you're out there that nature doesn't give a. If you make it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

No. It doesn't care at all.

[Conversation Participant]

No.

[Brett Weinstein]

As it's heartless, completely oblivious to your desire to stay alive. It's not interested in what you want to do at all.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Nope. Nope. Not at all. It's ambivalent.

[Brett Weinstein]

But that's also part of the beauty of it.

[Conversation Participant]

Right?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

When you're out there, especially if you take yourself seriously.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

You're out there, you're like, oh, I ain't.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It'll. It'll test you.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. When you're writing a thing, like 1823, like, you're doing all this research and you read the diaries from your. You said your great grandmother, like, great great grandmother. Did you. Did you ever think, like, putting some of those letters online so other people can read them?

[Taylor Sheridan]

No. There's plenty of. There's any number of published books of very similar journals.

[Brett Weinstein]

I know. But it'd be kind of dope for people to read about your great great grandmother.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And nothing happened. Right. Like, we had freaking. Whatever weird shit they had for dinner that night. And, you know, so. And so was rude, and it was this. And we, you know, we stopped in this beautiful valley, and it was hard to get across the river, and I was scared and, you know. But no attacks? No, it was pretty uneventful.

[Brett Weinstein]

They got lucky. It's just. It's interesting just as a window into time.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Time. Yes. You know, well, what's interesting, really, is how well written the journal was.

[Conversation Participant]

Right.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Because everyone was very educated.

[Brett Weinstein]

Was better educated.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yes. Yeah.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, that's. That's weird, right? When you read, like, Civil War letters and you're like, why are these guys so smart?

[Taylor Sheridan]

I have letters from my grandfather who died in World War II. Love Letters from him to his. To my grandmother, years of them, because, you know, he. They listed in 1941 and. And then went off and became a he. They flew a. I guess it was the B.19. Flew a bomber and. Yeah. And wrote all these letters to her. Yeah. And I have all those. And they're just magnificent. Just the way that people would just be so eloquent in a letter to, you know, your wife.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. My beloved. They would write things like that. Yeah, it is weird. Like the deterioration of our ability to express ourselves. The common person's ability to express themselves. Like, you wouldn't have expected that back then. I bet if you could tell people about the future, go, oh, you're going to have the answer to any question on your phone. You have a small device in your pocket. It also acts as a flashlight. You're going to be able to pick that thing up and ask it anything you want. And instantaneously it's going to give you a result. Must be brilliant. No, no.

[Taylor Sheridan]

They're half retarded because they didn't learn anything. Right, right. You can ask a machine, the machine's done all the learning. You just get an answer that you didn't earn.

[Conversation Participant]

Right?

[Brett Weinstein]

That's the word, earn. Yeah, yeah. Just like equity. The problem with equity is he didn't earn it. The problem with having the same results as everybody else when you don't put the same effort. People in the 1800s often spent blocks of time, typically one to three hours at a stretch on letter writing and heavy correspondence could easily spend several hours most days. Wow. Most people treated correspondence as a regular daily or weekly task mask, similar to a modern email block, accepting that it would be take a significant chunk of their time.

[Conversation Participant]

Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

I mean, how important was the mailman back then?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Everything.

[Brett Weinstein]

The guy was everything.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Everything.

[Brett Weinstein]

Some dude on a horse with a bag of letters. Nuts for a quarter. I mean, how much did they charge? A quarter was a lot of money back then. Probably was less than that.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, probably half a penny or something. If they had a. Well, they did have a half penny.

[Brett Weinstein]

How much do you enjoy writing that kind of a show versus writing a show like Lioness or like Landman. Like, what is your. Do you have a favorite or do you like all of them?

[Taylor Sheridan]

No, I can't say I have a. I have a favorite necessarily. You know the fun thing about Lioness, which is sort of. I can't say it's ripped from the headlines because I don't. I've tried to be. I've tried to guess what's going to happen politically and then fictionalize that and the fact that I've managed to be. Right. Pretty wild. I thought surely in season two when I. When I. When I said that the cartels had been listed as terrorist organizations, I'm like, this, this could be my 18 month cancel vacation coming. And then it fucking happened. And then it came out and you know, the show came out within weeks of that and. And I looked. I looked really like a soothsayer so that it's a lot of fun because it's so political. And it's not. It doesn't choose a political side. It just looks at the. The tradecraft of espionage and how it intermingles with our military. And it's just fascinating shit to me. Just fascinating.

[Brett Weinstein]

But there's so many different things that you have to be aware of to write the shit that you write, you know, like is the Harrison Ford one, 1923. That one is fascinating too, because you got the guy who goes off to Africa and, you know, and he comes back and you got all these people that are trying to steal land. So it's not totally lawless, but it's on the border of lawlessness.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, you're watching. You know, Montana in the 20s was fascinating. It was a fascinating place because you've got the 20th century, the industrial revolution in full swing, and you have washing machines and refrigerators and telephones and electricity. And then you still. You're still traveling by horseback. Yeah. So very, very interesting. And so. So that. That's a really fun thing to explore.

[Brett Weinstein]

That one dude who was the evil rich guy on that show. Oh, yeah, he killed it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Tim Dalton.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, my God. That's right. Tim Dalton, who was Bond at one point.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Crazy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yes. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

My God. Does he play a good creep?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Twisted.

[Brett Weinstein]

So good.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

I forgot that it was Tim Dalton. That's how good it was.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, my wife watched that and looked at me like, how'd you think that up, dude? Like, I got the side eye for. There's a couple of scenes where she's like, bro, what are you thinking?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, there's a couple scenes I wondered myself. Yeah, I was like, this is rough.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Like, I was like, that's evil.

[Brett Weinstein]

Some of the S M stuff is like, she's pretty twisted, but there's people like that in the world 100. Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. I had to. Reese. I'll tell you what. My. My computer. I just assume that the CIA and FBI have like, a whole team, because the shit I look up when I'm researching how to make a bomb. S M practice, CIA, hot regions in the Middle east, and it's all at once, right?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's no way they're not looking at your phone.

[Taylor Sheridan]

They're looking at it going, taylor's writing something new. Look at this.

[Brett Weinstein]

I think anybody that has any influence, they probably look at your. No matter what anyway. Which is also dark. Like, we don't even know how much actual real spying on people is occurring. We're Just guessing.

[Taylor Sheridan]

No, we don't have any idea. I think within the world of tradecraft, a tremendous amount. Oh yeah, I think within the world of. I mean, within that world.

[Brett Weinstein]

I think how, when you're writing that, how difficult is it to really keep your finger on the pulse of what's actually going on with espionage and like what tools they actually have available? Are you making some up?

[Taylor Sheridan]

No, I mean, most of the. I mean, I'm sure there is some extremely high tech tradecraft going on, right? For sure. Tracking devices and various things, satellite imagery, facial recognition, all of these things. But a lot of it's also very low tech by its. By design because it's harder to. It's harder to trace. Right. And it's a lot of leverage and manipulation. You're either bribing someone with money or blackmailing them. And that's typically those. Those are the two tools that, that are being used the most in tradecraft and in the spy game. Right. That's really. It's leverage, leveraging individuals. And they're all doing it, everybody, right. Every single. And then if you look at some of the. And again, I'm not getting on any completely apolitical, but from a tradecraft standpoint, what the Mossad was able to do with all those fucking cell phones and pagers and shit like you want to talk about, play the long game, like build this dummy company, sell all these, get all these devices to all of these people who are your enemy and start setting them off. Years later, detonate. Insanity.

[Brett Weinstein]

I mean, it's genius.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It really is insanity.

[Brett Weinstein]

Not endorsing it, but just saying no, but if you. The actual act of doing it to

[Taylor Sheridan]

look incredible, the patience and the planning and the risks and, and that. That they were able to execute, that is, is shocking.

[Brett Weinstein]

When you saw that in the news, did you think if I wrote that, no one buys.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Dude, I do that all the time with the news. The Maduro rate. If I had written that, right, no one would know.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right. They'd be like, that's too simple. Out of here. That's not how it goes down.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Even the bin Laden raid, a helicopter crashed.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fact that they were able to. And I know it wasn't as smooth as it was led on to be, but the fact that no one died, not an American in invading the Venezuelan military base in the middle of Caracas, it's fucking insane.

[Brett Weinstein]

It seems like it went pretty smooth. You think it went less smooth than they're saying?

[Taylor Sheridan]

I'm sure that there's elements of like I'm sure. Right. I don't know how any. The one thing I've learned with all my research into the military is any of these operations. There's, there's a, there's actually a lot in the upcoming Lioness where someone says, did it go smooth? And the guy says, well, smooth as these things go. Right. Because just by the very nature, you start sticking a bunch of people in helicopters with guns and shit's gonna happen. Right. But the fact that there were no casualties, that no one was killed, no American was killed is incredible.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it is incredible. It's pretty groundbreaking. Like, this is a new benchmark for what could be possible in terms of an invasion, at least of a third world country. It's just shocking the difference in the technology that the United States possessed versus them. Well, and whether or not they were even available. That's no new rather that that stuff was available.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. War is going to change very, very quickly with drones. AI and drones are going to alter the landscape of war. We're gonna, we're getting real close to some Terminator.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And I'm not saying that like it's a good thing. No, it's a, it's, it's a very, very. You talk about adolescence of, of us as a, as a species. We're seeing an adolescence in the teenage years of new. A new type of warfare. And, and when it grows up, it is going to be a beast. A beast. And I just think about it, you can, you can, you know, now they've got drones that are the size of airplanes that can have a payload that is devastating Right. Beyond just simply a Predator drone that's got a couple of Hellfire missiles or whatever it may have. And someone sitting in a Conex in the desert in Nevada can fly that thing halfway around the world or don't have anyone fly it, pre programmed it and the thing flies itself. And that's. You give, give the drone a mission and send the drone off to do the mission. And it's fully automated. Yeah, that's some terrifying.

[Brett Weinstein]

I bet a lot. That's a lot of what this UAP is too. I bet it's experimenting with that type of technology with some sort of a novel propulsion system. Because they were working on novel propulsion systems way back in the 50s and the 60s. They were working on anti gravity in the 60s.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I don't think we're, I don't think we're there.

[Brett Weinstein]

I don't know.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I don't think we're there.

[Brett Weinstein]

I don't know. I don't know where we're at.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I don't either.

[Brett Weinstein]

I don't know where we're at. But I'm not convinced. I'm not convinced that they haven't done something. In fact, Eric Weinstein makes some really interesting connections between. There's a college in upstate New York, a university in upstate New York that has a very overqualified physics department and it's connected to a hedge fund that does bigger than Bernie Madoff type numbers. And he's like, the whole thing stinks to high heaven. And he goes, and I have a feeling that there's some sort of an undisclosed or a top secret above, you know, top secret access program that's going on.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh, I can promise you there's something. Yeah, I've always thought a possible solution to petroleum as far as transportation goes, and I wonder why they've never tried it is, is using magnetic force, right. If you have, you take a positive and negative charge, they're going to come together. But if you take a positive and Positive or negative, negative, they're going to. I'm no fucking scientist, but you know it's going to repel, right. We've taken magnets and they push each other away. Well, how can, how can we not use that? If you had a vehicle and the base of it is essentially a positive charge or a negative whatever it takes to make the magnets repel and then your road base was essentially the similarly charged metal, wouldn't that, wouldn't that make it submission?

[Brett Weinstein]

Wouldn't you have to redo all the roads to make something like that real

[Taylor Sheridan]

or put it in the road?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, maybe. I mean, it certainly could be a potential source of transportation for the future. But I think the things that they're doing now probably relates to some sort of anti gravity propulsion system. And then there was that. You know, I'm sure you're aware of this, all those scientists that went missing or wound up being murdered.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, dude.

[Brett Weinstein]

How sketchy is that? Oh, it's a coincidence.

[Taylor Sheridan]

From Los Alamos all up there at the nuclear.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, coincidence, yeah, yeah. Who knows? I mean, who knows what the those people are working on and whether or not they made breakthroughs and they don't want other people to know or whether or not they want to stop the breakthrough because they're aligned with whatever the conventional propulsion systems are and they don't want to lose money. This thing makes them obsolete. They get set back to science for a few years.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Or is it tradecraft? Is it, is it Russian or Chinese or.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yep. Yeah. Oh, sure. And that's the other thing that Weinstein was saying is, like, it's really shocking how little these incredibly important scientists are protected.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

They just driving their Volvo to the university and working on top secret.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And no one's making sure they don't get whacked by China.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. Yeah. I'd be curious. And when they look into that, what was it, 11 of them. Them in a year?

[Brett Weinstein]

15 over a course of a few years. And some of them people are not. They're going out. This could be coincidence. But there's a few of them where it's like, okay, these people, like, this lady was specifically working on spacecraft metallurgy. This guy was specifically working on cold fusion. This guy was specifically like. There's a bunch of them where you go, okay, something's weird. Something's weird here.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, enough to the fact that the government's looking into it. They're like, okay, there might be something here. So Justice Department's investigating it. They're trying to figure out what the connection is and what could have happened. But it's, you know, it's hard after the fact to try to figure out who did something, especially if somebody got hired from another country. Like, they're not going to tell you. Like, how are you going to know you didn't catch him? Did you not catch him when they killed the guy? Okay, well, you're probably.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's 15.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And they're all from that area, aren't they? Los Alamos around?

[Brett Weinstein]

I don't know. I'm not sure. I think that's part of the problem. It's like there's. Whenever you have a thing like this where people start looking for connections, they can make some connections that aren't necessarily valid. And so let's say if there's 15. Let's say 10 of them. 10 of them are bullshit.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

That means five aren't bullshit. If, you know, if that's true. That's a lot. It's five super fucking brilliant people that got whacked.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. And it's. It's interesting that you'd have that many in this specific field in this period of time.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And. And they're not. You know, I would think of a scientist as being pretty fucking healthy. Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

I don't know about that.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I think a lot of them are

[Brett Weinstein]

just in their own head, you know, and they're probably not even paying attention to their body.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Did they all disappear?

[Brett Weinstein]

Different people died from different things. And one of. One of the weirder ones was this one lady who was. I think she's the metallurgy lady where she was hiking with her friend and they were just hiking together and the friend turned around to talk to her and she was gone. And she was just behind her like 30 seconds before they couldn't find her. They brought in cadaver dogs, they brought in search parties, never found her. And I think they might have found her body recently. See, they found. I think there was a report a few days ago that they might have found her body.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I'd be looking real close at the friend.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's just me as a guy who writes scripts.

[Taylor Sheridan]

So me and Joe went for a hike. I turned around, that fucker's gone.

[Brett Weinstein]

Hey. I don't know why. I looked everywhere, I swear. I had just talked to him 30 seconds ago and he's just not there. No sign of struggle. It's weird. Yeah, yeah. Like a husband and wife go hiking and the lady falls off the cliff. They're like, hey, buddy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

What the fuck happened? You guys arguing? Can I see your text messages?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the one that just fell off the boat?

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, what happened there?

[Taylor Sheridan]

I don't want to say it wrong, but I think she. I think it was out in the Bahamas. I read about it. She.

[Brett Weinstein]

Was it a cruise ship one?

[Taylor Sheridan]

No, no, it was him and his lady and they're out on a sailboat or something and.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, she think the things go off the side.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, he had to. Yeah, something. Something weird. They're not buying it.

[Brett Weinstein]

It goes all the way back to the Natalie Wood story. You ever look into that one?

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh yeah, that's right. Her and walking and Robert Wagner on that.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, And Robert Wagner and her had a big fight apparently and then she just. Just whoops.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yep.

[Conversation Participant]

Not the same person as the metallurgy.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, which one is this lady? But she was one of the scientists. Correct? I believe she was one of the missing scientists.

[Conversation Participant]

She was definitely missing for a year.

[Brett Weinstein]

Which one was she?

[Conversation Participant]

I mean, I don't know what is. I don't know which ones are.

[Brett Weinstein]

What was her specialty?

[Conversation Participant]

She's a missing lab worker.

[Brett Weinstein]

Does it say what she worked on? No, no. Administrative assistant. Yeah, I remember this lady. Yeah,

[Conversation Participant]

the other one was. Her name is Reza.

[Brett Weinstein]

And the Reza one, that lady, she was the one that has the. So she served as the director of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and she was in the materials processing Group. She separated specialized in burn resistant high strength metal alloys and rocket propulsion metals. It wasn't she one that had like a. Some weird videos what she had made. Anyway, the whole thing's creepy as wild.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And she was hiking in the Angeles National Forest.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Outside of Pasadena.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That could actually. Actually be a mountain lion.

[Brett Weinstein]

It could be, you know, or it could be a lady who's working on top secret rocket propulsion medals and like, this lady's a problem.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Wasn't there some. Some town. I want to say it's Arcadia in California. They. The. The. The mayor of that city. Yeah, yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Arcadia.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

She was a Chinese spy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I would have to think, if you're. If. How many people have you recruited, that you finally go, well, fuck it, let's try and get the mayor of Arcadia. We got everybody else.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

They probably, like, worked her into position to run as mayor, you know, I

[Taylor Sheridan]

mean, and then with the hopes of. She was relatively young. Right. Maybe you go run for a state rep and then you run for congress,

[Brett Weinstein]

Be the fucking president.

[Taylor Sheridan]

There was. There was a thing in the 70s called abscape. Damn. Do you remember this?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Where there were all of these politicians, a few congressmen, some state reps, and they were all like, Russian spies or at least on the take. Right, right. All of them Soviet, so. Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

Did you ever see that show the Americans? I didn't either, but I heard it was great. It was all about sleeper cell, Russian family that was pretending to be normal.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. That's fascinating.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, that's real. They did that. That they really had Russian agents pretending to be American citizens.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh, I wouldn't say head. I would say have.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, yeah, no, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. And Chinese. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

[Taylor Sheridan]

A hundred percent. Yeah. No, plenty of them.

[Brett Weinstein]

100.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, how many Israeli agents are in Hezbollah, are in Hamas? Like probably.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Or in the irgc?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, probably. They probably got a bunch of those guys in there.

[Taylor Sheridan]

100.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Wild.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It's tradecraft, man. That's a whole other thing.

[Brett Weinstein]

How hard is it to write about that stuff and, like, get it right, to get it accurate?

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I mean, you. I don't know, you. You speculate a lot and you look at. At the past, right? Because there's been enough. It's funny because when they get caught. Never. It's never that big a deal. Like, they're always some. It doesn't. For whatever reason, the news doesn't. There's. We could pull it up. There's been any number of Chinese scientists over here, and they were stealing this, and they're doing this. It happens all the time.

[Brett Weinstein]

See, the ones that got caught trying to bring in bio, they're Trying to bring in. What were they trying to bring in? Diseases or something. Something.

[Conversation Participant]

I was looking. There's another one in Vegas recently, but it's like they have these bio labs that are like being run out of like an apartment or something.

[Brett Weinstein]

CCP linked bio labs in American soil Exposes major bio security gaps. Policymakers must act to improve oversight and biological research activity. Wasn't there a guy that got busted that was an Israeli agent and he got released and he took up, I

[Conversation Participant]

think was in Vegas?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Conversation Participant]

Pull that up.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's the one. In Vegas, Yeah. So this guy, he had all these fucking diseases in his garage.

[Conversation Participant]

1200 samples.

[Brett Weinstein]

Conclusion the it's conclusion of the FBI lab that the community could not be harmed by what was contained in that lab. What? Finding possible biological laboratory in a garage. Inside investigators found refrigerators with vials containing unknown liquids. Police said in the immediate aftermath the home is also operated as an unlicensed short term rental. What is this fucking guy doing? Why? So the question. Go, scroll up. Up. Yeah. So the question is why does somebody have this materials in a private residence? It's not a doctor, not a lab, not a licensed medical facility of any sort. And then homeboy got released.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah, but check out the names on some of the vials.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh boy. They located pathogen labeled containers with labels such as dengue fever, HIV and malaria along with a thousand mice or. According to a federal report, federal government never tested the items and the CDC only made its determination based on the labeling. What? What the fuck? So in that case, Chinese citizen David, he faces federal charges for allegedly manufacturing and distributing misbranded medical devices.

[Conversation Participant]

He does not face charges.

[Brett Weinstein]

He does not face charges connected to the Las Vegas raid. And a trial in California was scheduled for April. What the. Just a bunch of vials of HIV and AIDS and dengue fever and malaria. No worries.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Jesus.

[Brett Weinstein]

Normal. So what was the Israeli guy, the guy who owned the lab? There was a like an Israeli guy who they caught who owned and then they released him and he went back to Israel and everybody's like, hey, what?

[Conversation Participant]

It's the same case. I think it says, Feds drop case against man arrested in Las Vegas Biolab investigation.

[Brett Weinstein]

What's his name?

[Conversation Participant]

Ori Solomon.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, Ori, what were you doing? Ori, Ori, why do you have the hiv? Ori? There he is. Feds drop case against man arrested in Las Vegas Biolab investigation. Yeah, I mean, why investigate? Let it go guys, no big deal.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah, he's only charged with illegal possession of a firearm in Nevada.

[Brett Weinstein]

His immigration status precluded him from owning or possessing a gun. Well, listen, if he doesn't have a gun, how the is he gonna defend all his malaria? People try to steal malaria, bro. Gotta be careful. Oh boy.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah, this doesn't seems like someone made that go.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's too much fucking shit in the world to pay attention to. And too much of it is so disheartening. The more you look into it, the more like, is it all fucked? Is the whole world fucked? Like what is going on?

[Taylor Sheridan]

And, and my guess is because there are so many different two things, right? There's so many different. There's no secrets with the Internet and social media and phones. Shit's getting out, but it's also getting out at such a volume that none of it seems to have an impact.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right, Right.

[Taylor Sheridan]

So much. Think about that in the 1990s, right? They're talking about that on Nightline and this and that and Meet the Press and Chinese Spy, that's an Israeli, you know.

[Brett Weinstein]

Uh huh.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That's news. But now it's just another.

[Brett Weinstein]

The news cycles of flood. It's like you, you, you drop a rose petal in the river while floods going by. Like it's gone.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's here, it's gone.

[Taylor Sheridan]

And it's a sensory overload. And, and, and people are tuning it all out.

[Brett Weinstein]

They're tuning it all out also because nothing ever gets done. Nothing happens. And the more people like that get released, the more people, ah, they throw their hands in there. They'd rather just watch sports.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, yeah. Just forget about it. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Wow.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I can't believe Simon Schuster didn't send you my book.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, well, I don't know what happened, but I'll listen to it on audio tape. I'm glad you did the audio tape though.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, that's important. Yeah. Pull up the. You're gonna fucking love it. It's oddly entertaining and informative.

[Brett Weinstein]

How did you have the time to write a book? You're writing 150 different TV shows.

[Taylor Sheridan]

So, so you know what it is? Do you know anything about it?

[Brett Weinstein]

No.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Pull it up. I just want to. I'm going to try and I don't want to tell you what it's called. I just want you to see the title.

[Brett Weinstein]

How to Not Die in Prison.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I told you, you don't like it. So here's the. So, so here's the deal. So when I lived in la, there was a gym on Beverly Boulevard, right? At like Beverly and Sweetser and everybody called it Buns on Beverly because they had all the, the treadmills Kind of right up there and all the girls are there and if you get stuck in traffic, you're staring at all their asses. That was my gym, so me and a buddy of mine shared an apartment together and we'd jog down there, work out every day. And there was this dude that showed up and started working out in there. And this dude was jacked, but different than, like the West Hollywood fit. Like, this was yoked and had all these crazy tattoos on him. And we became kind of, like, friendly and ended up kind of becoming friends. And his name's Tom Nelson. And one day I'm like, so what have you been doing? He goes, well, you know, I'm just starting personal training. I'm going to start personal training here. I was working over at the Vitamin Shop. Guy's like, in his 40s. Vitamin shop in your 40s? That's kind of weird. And I said, yeah. Have you always lived in California? I was like, well, I've been here 19 years. 20 years. Yeah.

[Conversation Participant]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I said, where are you from? Somewhere in the Southeast. I said, you always live in la? He goes, well, no, I just got to la. See, I've been in prison. I said, oh, how long? 17 years. I said, oh. And I didn't ask anything else. Right. He does become a personal trainer. And I'd see him over one day, we have lunch and we're bullshitting. And then I'm like, what? What? Tell me the deal. He's like, oh, I was a criminal, dude. Like a criminal. Like a real criminal. Like, biggest drug dealer in, in Hollywood and armed robbery and ran over a DEA agent. Like, I was a criminal. But now, you know, when I was in, I, I, I discovered, you know, fitness. I started working out and I'm like, when I get out, I'm gonna, you know, he got himself in good shape. I'm gonna start. This is my passion. I'm gonna do this. So he was a trainer there for a while and then he opened his own personal training gym. And I would go work out over there and hang out with him. He's a cool fucking dude. And it became the biggest private training gym, independent in Hollywood. So I go off and I start writing and I'm shooting Yellowstone and he reaches out and he goes, hey, I wrote a, a movie about my life. I'm gonna send it to you. So he sends it to me and I read it and it's actually pretty good, but it's sort of a fun 90s kind of. They don't make movies like this anymore. It's like, it's the rock, but we're celebrating the, you know, the guy, the criminal. But it was, but it was good. I said, hey, I'll pass it on to some producers and. But nothing ever happened with it. Anyway, so Covid happens, I'm stuck up on this ranch in Montana and I call him and I say, Tom, where do you get your gym equipment from? Because I need to build a gym. Because we can't go to a gym, I can't leave the ranch. Covid restrictions. The whole fucking cast is stuck on that ranch. And, and he said, they shut my gym down, dude. So I mean, I'll sell you anything you want. So I, I sent a flatbed trailer to LA and picked up a pile of jib equipment from him and didn't hear from him again. He calls me maybe 18 months ago, two years, and I, and I answer and he's like, hey man, I'm in a bad way. I'm like, what's the deal? He goes, he's a single father. I got a five year old kid, I got colon cancer. I'm dying and I don't, I'm, I'm tapped out, dude. I'm a 60 year old fella and I can't get a job. I can't do anything. Is there any work on your movies or, or anything that I could do? And I said, well, first, colon cancer. How bad? Like what stage? What's this? He goes, I don't know. They saw it on an X ray and diagnosed me. And I said, well, let's deal with that shit first. So I fly him to Texas where I know people and I get him in and he sees a doctor and fortunately the mass wasn't cancer. So they help him out, do the surgery, get that done. And then I say, well, I mean, I get you a job in a movie, but it doesn't pay very good, the hours are shit, and you've got a five year old daughter. I mean, you know, to just be a production assistant or something is not going to pay enough to off. It's not a great, that's not a plan, right? Because you think you could like just spot me for a few months while I try and figure out. And I said, I have a hundred percent failure rate of loaning money to friends. Like it doesn't work, right? I'm not a bank and buying you 90 days ain't gonna happen. Help. So, but let me think, let me think of something. And so it doesn't take me very long and I'm Thinking, here's a guy who spent 17 years in prison, and you know what I've never read? I've never read a How to not fucking Die, a travel guide to prison. So I call him back and I go, I got it.

[Conversation Participant]

It.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Tom, we're going to write a book about my life, kinda. We're gonna write a travel guide to prison for the accidental inmate, right? Somebody who fucks up and they end up. And they don't know how to navigate this place. He goes, a travel guide. I said, I'm gonna send you. So I bought a bunch of Lonely Planet travel guide to Thailand and Mexico. And I said, look at these, right? It breaks it down. It tells you an overview of the country, then it gives you a glossary of the terms. They teach you the language, they talk about the food, they talk about where you stay. They talk about navigating the country. We're going to do that for prison. And he goes, I'm in. I said, great. I'm going to write all the intros. I'll build the structure and walk you through it. And you're going to. So it's literally a travel guide to prison. And it walks you through day one. How to navigate the yard, being processed in the food, the commissary, the gang, the diseases, prison riots, how to get a job in there, how to fucking make a shiv, how to do everything. It's a. It is a tour guide to prison.

[Brett Weinstein]

How many pages?

[Taylor Sheridan]

A couple hundred.

[Brett Weinstein]

It sounds awesome.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It's the crazy.

[Brett Weinstein]

I hope I never need it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

No.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, most people read it, hope they never need it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I'm gonna guess 99% of the people who do read it, the one thing it'll do is tell you you don't ever want to fucking go there. There, that's for sure, Right? And typically, if someone's going there, I even say in the intro, I'm like, if you're. If you're buying this book because you're going to prison, finish the book before you get to prison. Do not bring this book with you to prison or you'll die on day one. So leave the book at home. But, yeah, so. So then we did. I took the. We. We wrote three chapters of it. I took it out and Simon Schuster read it, flipped. And me and Tom got a book deal.

[Brett Weinstein]

So that's awesome.

[Taylor Sheridan]

So he, you know, he. He was able to sit with me and we wrote it and he was able to take care of his kid.

[Brett Weinstein]

And that's very cool.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, good.

[Brett Weinstein]

Good for you, man, for doing that. That's really awesome that you did that.

[Conversation Participant]

Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

I know you're busy as shit, like you having another project on your plate. Not. Not fun, probably. That's awesome.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That one was a lot of fun. Right?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. But not fun to take something else on. I mean, I'm sure you.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, but it was. It was. It was a very entertaining diversion from, you know, from my other. You know, I can. About my other job. Right. About something on Landman or whatever. And then, you know, I'm gonna sit down and. Oh, we're writing about smallpox today. Okay. There's. There's some perspective. It's not. It's not quite so bad that Billy Bob is an hour late to work, which he's never an hour late to work. But. But you get my point.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. It's a sobering thing. That's a broken system. You want to talk about a broken fucking system?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. The prison system is Alabama Solution on. You know the guy who did that documentary on Alabama prison system? It's fucking heartbreaking, man. Heartbreaking.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I used to be roommates with the guy that edited all of those Locked Up Up. He would go and film those Locked Up. Remember those?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Go to Folsom and Corcoran and all these prisons. Just. Dude, it's tell. Rough and. And not designed to rehabilitate. Right.

[Conversation Participant]

At all.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It all. It's an institution that guarantees you're a criminal when you come out. That's what you'll be if you weren't a criminal when you went in, which you clearly committed a crime and got convicted, but you're going to be a criminal when you come out. Like the people, the guys like Tom, who. I mean, there's an 80 something percent recidivism rate in the U.S. so for a guy to get out of prison and not go back to prison, the odds are fucking 4 to 1 against you. Like, it's at least.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it's probably higher than that, right?

[Taylor Sheridan]

I think it's 80 something. 80 something percent. 86. 80. Yeah. But yeah, it's brutal. It's brutal.

[Brett Weinstein]

Well, I'm glad you wrote it.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

I'll read it, I promise.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Listen.

[Brett Weinstein]

Listen to it. I'll listen to it in the sauna.

[Taylor Sheridan]

There you go.

[Brett Weinstein]

Thanks for everything, man. Thanks for all the awesome shows. It's been great watching them, dude.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Thanks for watching.

[Brett Weinstein]

You're the man. Appreciate you. Appreciate the guy.

[Taylor Sheridan]

We have time to talk about one more thing?

[Brett Weinstein]

Sure.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That UFC 250.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, man. Yeah.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Justin Gaethje, dude.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I just had him on.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. I know, I know.

[Brett Weinstein]

Incredible.

[Taylor Sheridan]

I saw him. Remember when I bumped into you at that fight in Vegas? That's the first time I'd seen him live. And I go to a bunch of prize fights. I love boxing, and I'm watching that guy. If he had decided to be a professional boxer, he would. His striking is. Is that level, like that dude, he went to work on that guy.

[Brett Weinstein]

Now he's a man. I'm glad he's a MMA fighter because he started out as an All American wrestler in Division 1. He's like, very. He's a just a great athlete all across the board. And just his particular style of aggression is so well suited for mma.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Oh, yeah. It's just shocking that he's that good a striker and he was a wrestler.

[Brett Weinstein]

I know he's. He's just a wild look across the board, but for him to pull that off the way he did at the White House was nuts. I mean, he's. Some books had him at 6 to 1, underdog. And Ilia Tapora is so good. Yeah, he's so good. And he had him in sick trouble in that second round. Let's say I watched it again yesterday. Second round was brutal. I mean, Ilya was just destroying his liver.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, yeah. Almost put him down.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. But even in the second round, Justin, he still bloodied Ilya up. His face was busted up like he was getting the most damage to Ilya's face. And that was a giant factor in the fight because I don't know what the accuracy of these reports are, but what's being reported is that he had two broken orbital bones and a broken nose. So both his eyes were broken and his nose was broken. And Justin was here a couple days later. He looked great. It's just nuts. It's just like he's very deceptively good at rolling with shots. And, you know, he's adorable as hell and just very clever. Very clever in how he sets things up and where he finds openings. And one of the things he kept getting off is this. He does it like he does a collar tie into an uppercut, and he got that off multiple shots. Shots. He did that with Fazeev, too. He's really good with that move. He's a beast, man. I'm just so happy for him to win. I'm, you know, I'm a Giant Iliad Toporia fan as well, and I think he'll be back better than ever. And I think sometimes a loss is like one of the most important things a fighter can ever have because they realize, like, you can be beat and you need to know that you're a human. You need to know that you can't just throw caution to the wind sometimes and just engage in these wild scraps. Sometimes you have to be a little bit more tactical, and sometimes you got to realize, like, you can't take everybody out and. And that's the case with Justin. They couldn't take him out and he almost did in the second round. Got real close, real close. But you know that.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That freaking Justin, he. He can time that transfer of power to right at the end of the punch and just his hands are so heavy.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, everybody says that too. Everybody who, who he's fought. I said he's one of the hardest guys that, that's ever hit them, including Khabib, who's, you know, one of the all time greats. Said Justin hit him harder than anybody.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah, he's a animal. Yeah, it was impressive.

[Brett Weinstein]

And the fight was like to be there at the White House while that was going on and to have Justin so happy, like there's something about a guy winning who's an underdog that is just so inspiring.

[Taylor Sheridan]

He didn't look like an underdog that night.

[Brett Weinstein]

No, he did not. After the second round, he did, didn't, especially the third. Once the third rolled around, he dropped him and then he. He got ahead and arm and snatched him down to the ground. I was like, holy, man. He's. He's dominating him. This is crazy. Yeah, it was wild. Wild to watch.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It was wild.

[Brett Weinstein]

It was awesome, though.

[Taylor Sheridan]

It was fantastic.

[Brett Weinstein]

Should have been there live, man.

[Taylor Sheridan]

That would have been a good one.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, it was crazy. It was crazy to be there live. It just felt surreal. I mean, they had a fly over.

[Taylor Sheridan]

They all together, eight jets come shooting over, bro.

[Brett Weinstein]

They were like, separated by like that far from each other. I don't know how the. Those guys do that. It was incredible.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Incredible.

[Brett Weinstein]

Incredible.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah. That was awesome.

[Brett Weinstein]

Thanks, brother. Once again, the book is called how to Not Die in Prison.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And available now. Audiobook everything.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Yep.

[Conversation Participant]

Thank you.

[Taylor Sheridan]

Awesome, buddy.

[Conversation Participant]

Thank you.

[Brett Weinstein]

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