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- [00:02]
Radhika Apte
Joe Rogan Podcast.
- [00:03]
Joe Rogan
Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
- [00:12]
Radhika Apte
I won't lie. I am nervous to talk to you.
- [00:15]
Joe Rogan
Come on, how can you be nervous? That's ridiculous.
- [00:18]
Radhika Apte
Like, I came in slightly intimidated.
- [00:21]
Joe Rogan
Why?
- [00:22]
Radhika Apte
I actually don't know the answer to that because we've never met. So it's not like you've intimidated me. But I just. I'm really. I think what I really enjoy about your show is just such an eclectic perspective on so many diverse things, and it comes, like, so naturally to you. I really admire that.
- [00:41]
Joe Rogan
Well, fortunately, I don't have anybody pick my guests, so it's all people that I'm actually interested in talking to. So it's easy. It's just stuff that's nice.
- [00:50]
Radhika Apte
So thank you for picking me.
- [00:52]
Joe Rogan
Oh, my pleasure. I'm excited to talk to you. Your movie is fucking crazy. Like, I knew it was a pirate movie, but I just did not expect the ultra violence. Like, from the beginning. I was like, yo. Like, I locked in immediately. I was like. First scene, I was like, holy shit. Like, this is crazy.
- [01:11]
Radhika Apte
Well, thank you.
- [01:12]
Joe Rogan
What was that like? What's that like to film? I mean, is it when you're doing something that's that hyper violent? Like, is that. Does that freak you out at all? Like, you're cutting people open with swords and stabbing them in the neck and it's like, holy shit.
- [01:28]
Radhika Apte
When you're doing it, you know, it's like make believe. So it's so much fun to be like, yeah, playing pirates and I'm gonna behead you. But I mean, in moments of, like, scenes and stuff where I actually had to think about what it must have been like to be a female at that time or because they existed. Women. Female pirates existed. And we just. We didn't hear many much about stories about them. I mean, I heard about Grace o'. Malley. Maybe there were. Mary Read like a few famous ones. Ching, shih. After I did my research. But, like, in those moments, you're like, this stuff must have. Like, this was real. They lived at a time where it was survival of the fittest. It was barbaric. And I wonder what that must have been like. But besides that, the stunts and stuff, like, I really have so much admiration for the. The amount of precision it requires to pull that stuff off from so many people. Not just the stunt department, but, like, the cameras, because they're also moving in sync with you.
- [02:32]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [02:33]
Radhika Apte
And that's cool.
- [02:35]
Joe Rogan
It is cool. Is it hard to stay in the moment when all that is happening because you have so much coordination and so there's. There's so much choreography. There's like he's going to swing this way and you're going to block it and you're going to dive down. It's like, it's so complex. Like, these are long, extended fight scenes.
- [02:55]
Radhika Apte
We had a lot of oners too. Like full the whole scene in one shot. Whoa. Which Frankie, our director, really loved the idea of. And I honestly love it because it brings you into that moment, is so enriched with everything that you're supposed to feel between action and cut. So I do love a long oner. But, you know, I come from Bollywood movies, so we have a lot of choreography. Choreography for like, dance sequences where stories are also moving forward. Like between, you know, your exchange of expression or something's happening somewhere else, you come back. So I treat sort of fight sequences like dancing. It's. You learn the choreography, but that doesn't stop your face from telling the story.
- [03:40]
Joe Rogan
Right, that makes sense.
- [03:42]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [03:42]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And I mean, it is kind. I mean, it's just choreography. Whether it's choreography with dance or choreography with movements with your hands and swords.
- [03:51]
Radhika Apte
I had never worked with blades before this movie, though. That was cool.
- [03:55]
Joe Rogan
How much training did you have to do? Like when you found out that you're going to take the role?
- [03:59]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [04:00]
Joe Rogan
How much preparation did you have to do physically to get ready for all that stuff?
- [04:04]
Radhika Apte
It was a cool year for me because I was filming three jobs which were all action and stunts. So this movie called Heads of State, which I did for Amazon again and then Citadel. And so it was a year of three action backed jobs. So the, you know, being agile and being in it was already part of what I was doing because that's what I was filming every day. But the swords training was tough and to be ambidextrous with it as well. So I had my. My stunt coordinator who was doing all three movies with me. She. In between shots, she and I would just take our rubber swords out and do like choreography and rehearsals. But, like, it took at least three or four months of just staying in it and getting loose with it. Also because Karl Urban, my co actor, had casual learned how to do like sword fights in Lord of the Rings.
- [04:57]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [04:57]
Radhika Apte
So he was amazing at it. So I didn't, you know, in that last duel, I didn't want to be any less than. So I kind of went at it.
- [05:07]
Joe Rogan
No, you look very good at it. It was really good. So I was like, did you work with some sort of like a kendo specialist or some fencing specialist. Like, how did you learn how to move the sword correctly?
- [05:19]
Radhika Apte
It wasn't kendo for sure, and it definitely wasn't fencing. It was uniquely. Because the swords were. Our director was very, very excited about the weapons in this movie and wanting to get it really right from the period, whether it was the guns that we used or the blades that we used. The machete was one of my favorite weapons in the movie because that's like her weapon in the movie because it's practical. Use it for coconuts, use it for skulls. Same, same. And that was really fun. But our second unit director, Rob Alonso, had so much experience in the amount of work that he's done prior. He came in with a very specific idea of wanting to make the fighting style super unique. And each set piece, like, a different design of choreography. So, you know, there was one which was in a dark cave, so the only time you was when the gunshot went off and just different styles of fighting, which I thought was really cool.
- [06:18]
Joe Rogan
So. But did you have, like, a professional trainer that taught you how to do that?
- [06:21]
Radhika Apte
Yes.
- [06:22]
Joe Rogan
And so how would you do it? Would you do it with a real sword? Did you do it like.
- [06:26]
Radhika Apte
Well, we had three different kinds of swords. The real sword, like, weighs more than me. It was insane. I couldn't do it with the real sword as much. But for filming, and this is the magic of the movies, you know, you have four different weights of it. One is, like, the real sword, where you need it for, like, you know, where it's a close up, or the sword is really, really visible. But when you're doing the big choreography, you have, like, a lighter sword, which is created by the props department. And then the northern lighter one. And when you need to flip it, it's the lightest one.
- [06:55]
Joe Rogan
Cause I was thinking, I was telling
- [06:56]
Radhika Apte
you all my stuff.
- [06:57]
Joe Rogan
That's good. It's good to know.
- [06:59]
Radhika Apte
That sucks. Oh, no, no, listen here. I was trying to impress you with my sword flipping.
- [07:05]
Joe Rogan
It's impressive, period.
- [07:06]
Radhika Apte
And talking about my fencing. But no, it was mov.
- [07:10]
Joe Rogan
One of the things that I was thinking when I was watching it is, like, how many takes did you have to do with this? Because that's gotta be so hard to do because you're swinging this gigantic iron thing and clashing into other ones. I'm like, if you have to do three or four takes of this, your arms are gonna be toast.
- [07:24]
Radhika Apte
Oh, we did, like, 10 hours of it every day for, like, seven days or something.
- [07:28]
Joe Rogan
Do you have shoulder problems after that?
- [07:29]
Radhika Apte
No, actually I didn't, but I was jacked. My arms never looked as good. Now, I mean, I have a four year old and I lift her a lot, so my arms are like, all right. But during this movie. Oof. Because we were just like, at it. And we both, you know, threw ourselves at it, Carl and I. And it took. It was a big choreography on top of this bluff. We shot on 100% of this movie. At least 90% is definitely on practical sets, real sets. We did not want to use a lot of vfx. So, you know, Phil Ivey, our production designer, we built the ships, we built the house, we built. Really everything was a replica of what it would have looked like in the 1900s in the Cayman Islands. We went and saw it. It was amazing to be able to do that with real stuff, you know?
- [08:15]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, well, the. The whole history of piracy is so fascinating. And one of the things that the movie is about is this. The Karl Urban character is from. He was one of the soldiers of the East India Trading Company. Then I went on a deep dive on the East India Trading Company. That is crazy. When you learn the history of that one corporation is one of the first publicly traded corporations that essentially was in control of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh went to war with China over opium and that's how they took over Hong Kong. You're like, holy shit. One crazy fucking corporation involved in the slave trade, the opium, just a. A corporation, publicly traded corporation. People could buy stock in it, like one of the first ones, and it just went haywire to the point where it got so big there was a revolt and then the British government took over it, nationalized it. But it's. The whole story is insane.
- [09:19]
Radhika Apte
If you think about how much in their minds they were able to achieve and how much they were able to destroy in that duration is crazy. If you go down history, change the course of countries forever, human lives forever.
- [09:37]
Joe Rogan
Forever.
- [09:37]
Radhika Apte
Like the amount pillaging that happened.
- [09:39]
Joe Rogan
Yes.
- [09:40]
Radhika Apte
Millions and millions of lives. And this movie actually has a really interesting slice of what they were capable of doing. They utilized pirates in order to, you know, take over new lands. Right. And in their conquests. And then when piracy was abolished, they went after them and they wanted to arrest them and they vilified the same people that helped them build their entire empire. So this was really interesting because my character's story, her parents and her family are indentured servants, which was the truth of many, many people, Especially in India, where young people were, you know, told better opportunities, new lands More money, come with us and take them off as servants and then drop in different parts of the world in islands. And the Caribbean has a huge Indian community whose history started with just being displaced from their lands and dropped somewhere else in the world and then having to figure out what your future looks like. I mean, it still happens to many, many people around the world right now. But I thought it was really interesting that my character came from that and her entire identity was erased, taken from her. She had no idea. She was 12, so she had no idea what it meant to have that identity. And I met so many people, actually, when I went to the Cayman, who don't know anything about their family tree beyond, like, five generations, or they know where their family may have come from, from Sri Lanka or from India or, you know, any other nation, but have no idea what, like, what it was, where from what village, like, what was your culture. And that ambiguity in a history of a human being erases a part of you. It denies you of knowing the depth of your culture or where you come from or your roots. And I thought that was really, really interesting for my character to play and then reclaim herself through the journey of the movie.
- [11:52]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's a fascinating part of human history.
- [11:54]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [11:55]
Joe Rogan
And it's taken place all over the world. And for a lot of cultures, they. They don't have an understanding of exactly what happened before they were colonized.
- [12:08]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [12:09]
Joe Rogan
Like, one of the great examples is Mexico. I went in a long, deep dive on Mexico recently, over the last few months, because I've had a bunch of people who are historians who came on the podcast who were just researching these ancient Inca and Mayan sites and talking to them about it. And then I went into it, and it's like there was over a hundred different languages that are just lost forever in that whole what is now called Mexico. And that's the reason why everybody over there speaks Spanish and is Catholic. Like, it's not because that was their language and that was their religion. They were all conquered.
- [12:45]
Radhika Apte
Absolutely.
- [12:45]
Joe Rogan
I mean, by, like, 600 guys. That's what's nuts. Yeah, 600 guys in the 1500s came over, took over, you know, what was the Aztec Empire, with help of the people that they were in conflict with and changed the course of the entire country.
- [13:06]
Radhika Apte
It's so many generations for forever.
- [13:08]
Joe Rogan
Like, to this day, people in Mexico think they speak Spanish and they have a Catholic religion. Well, that's all brought over from Spain. Like, the entire country. They had wild names, too, like cacao, thunder, sky God, and all these different like almost like Native American type names.
- [13:26]
Radhika Apte
Wow.
- [13:27]
Joe Rogan
They looked like Native Americans. But if you think about it, doesn't that make sense?
- [13:30]
Radhika Apte
That makes so much sense. They probably like shared land and crops and like.
- [13:35]
Joe Rogan
Well, there was no real.
- [13:37]
Radhika Apte
There were no borders at the time.
- [13:38]
Joe Rogan
No. Back then, I mean, what. What were countries in the 1500s in. In North America? Like, what was. We don't even know, like, what was North America?
- [13:47]
Radhika Apte
I mean, I think about how young America is technically super young. Like, how many years? 300 years? 400 years?
- [13:53]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Less. Less than 300 years.
- [13:55]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. And like, you were talking about history in, in India, she has been invaded over thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Only invaded. We've never invaded anybody else. She's not had the time and is like, just gave me a break. Yeah. The Portuguese, the British, the Mughals, like from back in time and the history of India. I mean, I'm not a historian and I don't claim to be, but I find it really fascinating. I love culture and especially the culture of India. Like you will see my grandmother was Catholic because she comes. She was raised in a part of India which was colonized and a lot of people, Kerala, a lot of people were converted into Catholicism and she grew up Catholic and, you know, she followed it for a really long time in her life. India is like hyper diverse because of how many people have kind of made it her roots. So when you go to India, the amount of diversity you will see, the kind of. The range of people that you will meet is impossible to fathom. Like an Indian face does not look like a particular person. Or the amount of cultures, the languages we have written and spoken, languages which are almost like 20 something or in their 30s. Absolutely different Alphabet, absolutely different sound. I can't. If I go to another state, I won't be able to understand what people are saying.
- [15:23]
Joe Rogan
Wow. It's amazing how many different languages are spoken there.
- [15:28]
Radhika Apte
About 28 to 30. But there are dialects in their hundreds.
- [15:33]
Joe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- [15:34]
Radhika Apte
Don't even get into the dialects. I just speak English and Hindi, understand a little bit of Punjabi and Marathi, but it's really amazing. Have you ever been, by the way?
- [15:45]
Joe Rogan
No, I haven't.
- [15:46]
Radhika Apte
Oh, Joe, you have to. You would really like. You're the kind of guy who likes a deep dive.
- [15:51]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [15:51]
Radhika Apte
You would really lose yourself, I think.
- [15:53]
Joe Rogan
Well, I wanted to go just to see for many things, but just to see that one immense temple that was carved entirely out of stone.
- [16:03]
Radhika Apte
Oh, yeah.
- [16:03]
Joe Rogan
Is one of the great mysteries of
- [16:05]
Radhika Apte
archaeology, but there are quite a few, if you Go especially south of India and the caves. If you go inside the Andaman and Nicobar, like the caves, you see from thousands and tens and thousands of years ago, illustrations that you're like, how did this happen? How could this temple have been chiseled? Or how could, you know, these stones have been moved at that time? It made me very, very curious about what kind of tools did we have back then?
- [16:37]
Joe Rogan
Well, there's a lot of holes in human history.
- [16:39]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, for sure.
- [16:39]
Joe Rogan
You know, Graham Hancock has a great quote. He says that we are a species with amnesia. And I think that's accurate. And I think when you find some of the great archeological wonders where, where people just have decided, oh, they built it this way, and then just let it go. And then other people start looking at it and go, wait a minute, how. How did they do this? Like, when did they do this? Like, what's the. What's the historical record of this? Because this is kind of nuts. This seems to indicate, like, a very advanced, sophisticated society.
- [17:11]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, a very advanced civilization, like one of the oldest civilizations in the world, along with the Mayans, is the Indus Valley civilization, which is the north of India.
- [17:22]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [17:23]
Radhika Apte
And I just remember studying about it in school, and that's my, My, my maximum understanding of that civilization. But also, like, having visited the Indus River, I guess. But I remember, like, the artifacts that were found and like, if you do a deep dive into how that civilization existed and then how it was erased and, you know, it makes you question, like, there had to be some seriously advanced, like, scientific understanding that was eventually lost as, you know, as human evolution happened, where we lose a civilization and then comes back again. But it just makes you wonder about early humans and how fascinatingly advanced we would have had to be to do all of that 100% without the technology and stuff that we have.
- [18:17]
Joe Rogan
I mean, I think they had technology.
- [18:19]
Radhika Apte
I think they had a different technology. I think so, too.
- [18:21]
Joe Rogan
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- [19:41]
Radhika Apte
This is what I meant then.
- [19:42]
Joe Rogan
Because the precision, first of all, there's no, like, understanding of where the stone went. Like, they moved who knows how many.
- [19:52]
Radhika Apte
How did you take out all of those tons of rocks?
- [19:55]
Joe Rogan
Yes. So insane. The precision is spectacular. It's so nuts when you see, like, videos of people going through that. Immense. Absolutely immense and incredibly precise and just carved out of a solid piece of stone. The whole thing is carved out of the mountain.
- [20:18]
Radhika Apte
Think about how old that is. Like, this is all BC Before Christ. Like, thousands and thousands of years.
- [20:26]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [20:27]
Radhika Apte
BC and the history of India. Like, hence the diversity. You see, it's a. It's one of the oldest civilizations in the world. And then, like, how do you explain that? Look at that image.
- [20:37]
Joe Rogan
So it says it's 12. What does it say? How old did it say it was? Like, how do they know that? 1200 years old? See, there's a lot of Just estimates based on what was the civilization at the time.
- [20:51]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [20:51]
Joe Rogan
And there's no. Like, this is the. The thing with Peru, like, Sacsay, Juaman, and a lot of these places would be attributed to the Incas. But you see, like, traditional Inca structures on top of these immense stones that are 100 tons. They're carved in these weird jigsaw patterns, is to absorb the energy if there's an earthquake. Like, it's weird shit. And it's like, okay, well, who did that? So, like, oh, the Incas did it. Like, how? How'd they do that? Because all their other structures are smaller stones stacked on top of each other in a way that, like, you could see a person carrying them and cutting them. Makes sense. But there's a lot of stuff like that temple. Like, explain to me.
- [21:29]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. What you used there's no explanation like
- [21:33]
Joe Rogan
how like metal, you just use metal and carve that out like that and
- [21:36]
Radhika Apte
like just a chisel and human.
- [21:38]
Joe Rogan
And if you up once it's over, because you're not putting things on top of things like, oh, this block sucks, let's get a new block.
- [21:45]
Radhika Apte
No, you're carving, change the design. If there's a fuck up, like, you know what I mean? If you're trying to build like a human form and you chisel off the nose, do you turn it into something else? I don't know, probably otherwise. Because it's just one piece. And you're right, you're not adding anything to it.
- [22:04]
Joe Rogan
Well, in Egypt there's indications that they abandoned certain pieces because they cracked. Because when you're dealing with, you know, granite and there's certain. Specifically there's a gigantic obelisk that they were carving out that I mean I think it was like 1300 tons, like something bananas. Like okay, how are you going to move this fucking thing? But they got to a certain point where there's a crack in it and so they had to abandon it. And so it's still there. Yeah, still. I think that's in. It might be an Aswan. I'm not sure where it is.
- [22:33]
Radhika Apte
You know, like, you know the theories around the Egyptian pyramids obviously, like how were those blocks carried up?
- [22:43]
Joe Rogan
There's no valid theory zero.
- [22:47]
Radhika Apte
Was it in that shape? And so precisely geometrically, you know.
- [22:51]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's even more complicated now because there's a Italian scientist that we had on recently called Filippo Biondi. Am I saying it right? Biondi, he's amazing accent. This guy is fucking incredible. But he's using, what is it? Radio Doppler tomography. So it's a type of satellite imagery that uses some technology to get a vision of what's under the ground. And they've used this successfully to show known caverns in the ground and known pyramids. And they even used it in Italy to show that they can look through a 1.2 kilometer mountain and see underneath it this particle collider and have an exact dimension of the particle collider and see what the outlier. So they used this on the pyramids and they found these immense structures under the pyramids that go over a kilometer into the ground with massive, these, these huge 20, 20 meter diameter columns that have these huge circular coils wrapped around them. No one knows what the hell they're looking at, but they're in very precise positions. They've done over 200 scans of these things, they don't know what they are. They don't know what's the purpose of all this, who made this? So if this turns out to be accurate, and they're very confident that it's accurate, and they're starting to look into it deeper and they're trying to figure out how to get down in there and explore with drones or something, then the whole thing gets thrown into question because it's preposterous enough that you have someone who's able to cut and place 2,300,000 stones that's perfectly aligned to true north, south, east and west. Some of them weigh as much as 80 tons.
- [24:46]
Radhika Apte
Tons, which is insane.
- [24:48]
Joe Rogan
That come from 500 miles away through the mountains, no roads. Like, how'd you do it? That's crazy.
- [24:53]
Radhika Apte
That's crazy in itself.
- [24:54]
Joe Rogan
But if there's structures underneath that, that goes a kilometer into the ground and like there's a giant, like huge square at the bottom, they don't know what it is. But these are structures. These are not like something that is just a naturally occurring stone.
- [25:10]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, it was man made.
- [25:11]
Joe Rogan
And show her an image of it. It's fucking kooky.
- [25:14]
Radhika Apte
So what is that?
- [25:15]
Joe Rogan
Like how these are these columns. This is like what the images are showing and the three dimensional replication of what they think is. That's what they think it looks like underneath there. They have no idea what these things are. What there's also is that Hawara that has that underground labyrinth. They've also found these. Herodotus wrote about these labyrinths. There's a Great channel on YouTube called UnchartedX by this guy Ben Van Kirkwyk, who's been on the podcast before. He's great. And they've used radio. Well, they used ground penetrating radar in that location. They found that these immense labyrinths are real. They're there, they're huge. Herodotus said it's greater than Giza and it's underground. And in the center of one of these atriums There is a 40 meter metallic object that's shaped like a Tic Tac that's in the center of this. Yes. So there's a bunch of shit that they don't. They can't explain down there where you're like, okay, what is this? They also know that a lot of these civilizations, like later versions of it, took from some of the older sites and started building new things or built on top of them, like very disrespectfully. But nobody had an idea of like the importance of history back then. You're just trying to stay alive. And so they found all these stones. Let's use these stones.
- [26:42]
Radhika Apte
Oh, my gosh. Totally. In India, like, when we were colonized, you hear stories of, you know, the British officers telling, like, little kids that, hey, I'll give you £2, go and get the gold statue from this temple or whatever. And you don't have comprehension of what the value of historical things were. That there was so much that was taken from India in terms of wealth and history and historical artifacts. And the Kohinoor diamond, which is still on the Queen's crown, which came from India, and, like, so many things.
- [27:17]
Joe Rogan
The Queen of England.
- [27:18]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [27:19]
Joe Rogan
She has a diamond on her crown that she stole from.
- [27:21]
Radhika Apte
Pull it up. Kohinoor diamond. K O H I. N o.
- [27:25]
Joe Rogan
Give it back. Give it.
- [27:28]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, we've been asking for it for a minute. We have.
- [27:33]
Joe Rogan
Well, the whole history of England and India is nuts, too. Whoa. How big is that?
- [27:37]
Radhika Apte
Size of the Queen.
- [27:40]
Joe Rogan
How big is that thing?
- [27:41]
Radhika Apte
How big would that be?
- [27:45]
Joe Rogan
I think it's 100 carats. Whoa. What is that worth? What's a hundred? Well, besides the historical value of it, which is probably priceless, what is 105 carats worth? That's nuts.
- [28:01]
Radhika Apte
Imagine walking around with a rock like
- [28:02]
Joe Rogan
that in your hand.
- [28:03]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying. The royalty in India had so, so much jewelry and wealth and stuff that was pillaged and just taken.
- [28:13]
Joe Rogan
Well, the history of India is fascinating, like in the, the Vedic texts and the, the, the, the descriptions of vimanas. Have you ever read any of that stuff?
- [28:23]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, the Vedas. Not, not extensively, but clearly you have.
- [28:27]
Joe Rogan
The vimanas are. It's like, what are you talking about? You're talking about flying crafts.
- [28:31]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [28:31]
Joe Rogan
Like, what do you.
- [28:32]
Radhika Apte
That's the thing. You go. If you do a deep dive into the mythology of India and the stories that come from there, the kind of technology that has been mentioned in these ancient texts, like the vimanas, you're saying you have flying objects, you have spears with some sort of energy, you have bows and arrows with some sort of energy that travels beyond time and light. And there's so much of all of this stuff referenced back then, which maybe humans thought was magic but was some form of ancient technology. Like, who's to say? But we do definitely believe in Indian mythology. If you go back into Hinduism and the incredible stories that exist, like, I love to think about where the origin, like, where it must have come from.
- [29:22]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [29:24]
Radhika Apte
But there's so many fascinating, fascinating stories from then.
- [29:28]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. I have an opinion that most people that were writing things down back then were trying to document a truth.
- [29:35]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, for sure.
- [29:36]
Joe Rogan
I don't think they were trying to make up stories.
- [29:37]
Radhika Apte
No. I think it was definitely their truth. But from our perspective now, we have to be like, how do you break down the truth of, you know, that there was this light that arrived from miles and miles away and it felt like. I don't know, was it a bomb? Like, what was it. What was it of that time? So it's cool to kind of try and interpret that. I mean, I believe in the mysticism and the magic of ancient humans and, you know, the beginning of time. There's no way to explain what and how that was. You know, we have the information. We do from religious texts and historians of the past, but it's just really fascinating to think about how resilient and human beings have been and how evolutions have had the same problems over time, but we kind of just navigated through different worlds. You know, I think.
- [30:33]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I think it's hard for us to grasp timelines, and then, when possible,
- [30:39]
Radhika Apte
think about, like, how short a human lifespan used to be to where it is now. Our stories have to come from, like, people telling people stories or documenting them.
- [30:51]
Joe Rogan
Right, right. And those stories, like, when you're talking about certain passages in the Bible or certain passages in any religious text, a lot of those were stories that were just handed down for generations and generations before anybody wrote anything.
- [31:07]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [31:08]
Joe Rogan
So it's like, what were they trying to remember? Like, when they're talking about flying vimanas, like, what were they talking about? Like, what did they experience and how long ago was it? Because I don't think we have a real understanding of how long ago it is.
- [31:24]
Radhika Apte
I mean, 17,000 BC is where or around that time. That's that many years ago is what they say. But again, that makes sense.
- [31:35]
Joe Rogan
Well, that makes sense if you take into account 20,000 BC. There's a guy named Randall Carlson who's been on my podcast a few times, and he's a really fascinating guy, and he's an expert in asteroid collisions with Earth.
- [31:47]
Radhika Apte
Wow.
- [31:48]
Joe Rogan
He's an expert in all the different times that Earth has been slammed by comets and meteors.
- [31:54]
Radhika Apte
And is that how the dinosaurs were? So it did. It was an asteroid.
- [31:58]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, they believe so. It was in the Yucatan. That one. That's the 65 billion years ago one. But there's other ones that are. That are before that.
- [32:06]
Radhika Apte
Before that.
- [32:07]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And then there's other ones that are after that. One of the more interesting ones is called the Younger Dryas impact theory, and that one's from about 11,800 years ago. And then again, they think somewhere in the 10,000 years that happened. So there's a comet storm that we pass by. I think it's every June and November. Forget what those. The time is. But this is, like, also aligns with. Do you know about the Tunguska event? Have you ever heard of that? No. In the early 1900s, a meteor exploded in the sky above Russia and devastated, like, a million acres of land. And it was during the same time period. And they realized, like, there's this comet storm that we pass through. Like, when you see meteor showers that are in the sky, it's because we're passing through these areas of our solar system that have these comets. This is the Tunguska event. So it just. And to this day, that area has no trees on it.
- [33:01]
Radhika Apte
Whoa.
- [33:02]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. So it just flattened everything. And it didn't even impact the ground. It blew up in the sky above it. And this was not even a big one.
- [33:13]
Radhika Apte
So how does, like, nothing grow again? Like what?
- [33:16]
Joe Rogan
That's a good question.
- [33:17]
Radhika Apte
What is that asteroid made of that you can, like, Earth has been able to come back from so much?
- [33:23]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it's a good question.
- [33:24]
Radhika Apte
That's crazy.
- [33:25]
Joe Rogan
Maybe it's just not enough time. I don't know. I mean, 117 years, maybe some.
- [33:29]
Radhika Apte
Maybe eventually like a millennia.
- [33:31]
Joe Rogan
But it probably just blew the roots off of everything. It blew everything into smithereens. And it probably had. Had some kind of chemical effect, too, because it's a physical object. I don't know what it was made out of. But, you know, some of them are made out of iron. Some of them are made out of nickel. Like that big one that they saw Three Eye Atlas that passed through.
- [33:51]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:52]
Joe Rogan
That was a weird one because they're like, this is a nickel alloy that is as big as the size of Manhattan. The only way we have it on Earth is in industrial manufacturing of an alloy. But this thing in another planet somewhere else, millions and millions and millions of years ago, was formed under whatever weird circumstances and conditions their planet has.
- [34:13]
Radhika Apte
But you. I mean, I want to know your thoughts on this. But you definitely don't think we're, like, the only species existing in the universe, right?
- [34:22]
Joe Rogan
I don't think that's possible.
- [34:23]
Radhika Apte
It's human arrogance. If we think we do.
- [34:25]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, that seems silly. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. There's just too many planets. It's a silly thing to think. And they Found evidence of life on Mars. So they found evidence of some sort of bacterial life on Mars, like the traces of bacterial life. And that's, you know, right there.
- [34:42]
Radhika Apte
That's what I'm saying. Maybe it's just in, within our Milky Way that we, I mean, we haven't even been able to travel outside of that yet, you know, to get information. But it has, there has to be other species that exist and other like intelligence and technology.
- [34:59]
Joe Rogan
Do you know the actor Terrence Howard?
- [35:01]
Radhika Apte
I mean, I know of him.
- [35:02]
Joe Rogan
Fascinating guy, like a little kooky, but super smart. Like super smart. He's got some wild ideas. One of his ideas, I was like, wait, what? He thinks that life occurs when planets get a certain distance from their sun and then over time they get too far out and then life doesn't exist on those planets anymore. But when they're in this Goldilocks zone, like Earth is, for a long period of time in relative to our life, life exists. And then intelligent life emerges and figures out, hey, we got to get out of here eventually, because this is not going to sustain us. And then it propagates the world or the universe rather. And he thinks that there's a thing that happens, and he calls it peopling. He thinks that when a planet gets far further enough from the sun that it eventually peoples because it eventually reaches the right conditions where life emerges and evolution takes place and natural selection and random mutation, all these things converge and eventually you get an intelligent creature that knows how to manipulate its environment.
- [36:16]
Radhika Apte
Is there any proof of planets, like moving away from their sun?
- [36:23]
Joe Rogan
Well, they all do. Slowly, very slowly.
- [36:26]
Radhika Apte
Like so even our. Well, even our solar system, we're all like slowly.
- [36:30]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And also the sun is eventually gonna burn out and explode and then we're fucked. But that's a long time from now.
- [36:37]
Radhika Apte
But the eventually enough shit to be worried about.
- [36:40]
Joe Rogan
Nothing's permanent. Like suns are not. And we're lucky we have a slow burn sun. So we have a relatively small sun and it's. It. There's a lot of weird speculation that it's part of a binary solar system too, that there might have been another version of our sun that burned out. That's like way out there, like way out in space, like way past Pluto, way out there. I'd buy that it's possible. I mean, there's. There's a lot of wacky theories as to why there seems to be some large objects that's outside of our vision. That's way, way past Pluto. So there's a thing called The Kuiper Belt, that's outside of Pluto. And that's one part of what Pluto is, which is why they decided it's not really anymore. But they think there's something else out there that's a large. They call it Planet X. They think there, there's. It's a lot of like weird speculation whether or not it's real. But they think there might be a large body larger than Earth, like Jupiter size or something like way out there. And it might be a sun, it
- [37:37]
Radhika Apte
might be a burnt out, like a burnt out sun. That was crazy, insane.
- [37:41]
Joe Rogan
Well, Earth alone, like Earth. The reason why we have the moon supposedly is because Earth was hit by another planet. There's Earth.
- [37:47]
Radhika Apte
So was the Moon part of the Earth?
- [37:49]
Joe Rogan
The Moon was like a big chunk of that collision that burst off and then became the moon. So there's Earth one.
- [37:58]
Radhika Apte
So does that happen with all the planets? Like because all the planets that have their own moons are explosions.
- [38:03]
Joe Rogan
Maybe there's a question. Good question. I mean maybe some of them, Jupiter and Saturn, enormous asteroids that got caught in the gravity and maybe of. Maybe it's volcanic activity. I don't know. I think a lot of it's asteroid impacts too. They knock off giant chunks and those chunks start orbiting that planet.
- [38:21]
Radhika Apte
So does that mean that all of those planets do have like a gravitational pull as well?
- [38:25]
Joe Rogan
Oh yeah, they're. Yeah.
- [38:27]
Radhika Apte
How strong would that gravitational pull be?
- [38:30]
Joe Rogan
It depends on the mass of the planet.
- [38:32]
Radhika Apte
Like Jupiter for example.
- [38:33]
Joe Rogan
Jupiter is what protects us. The reason why we don't get hit a lot is because Jupiter's so big. So Jupiter has so much mass and so much gravity that it's like our big brother that like protects us.
- [38:46]
Radhika Apte
Oh thanks. Jupiter for real? Yeah. No, that's great.
- [38:50]
Joe Rogan
And they actually observed an impact on Jupiter. I want to say it was in the 1980s where an enormous asteroid slammed into Jupiter and created a Earth sized explosion. An explosion separated? No, it just got absorbed. Jupiter just absorbed it. But they watched it in real time and it was a way bigger explosion than they thought it was going to be. Like yo. So then they have to like recalculate like oh, how big was that thing? And it made a, a literal impact as large as the Earth.
- [39:22]
Radhika Apte
Oh my God. Yeah, I have to see that video.
- [39:24]
Joe Rogan
Well that's the. The solar system is just a shooting gallery. Which brings us back, which brings us back to this younger dries impact theory, which is one of the predominant theories as to why ancient super advanced civilizations completely disappeared. There's no evidence of them and there's a lot of physical evidence. When they do core samples of the Earth, they find there's a lot of iridium, which is very common in space, but very rare on Earth, which indicates some sort of an impact. And then they also find micro diamonds, these nuclear diamonds. I think they call it trinitite. And they, they first observed this when they did the Trinity explosion. So the nuclear explosion created these micro diamonds on the ground. Just a massive impact and explosion, heat and energy. Well, they find those littered all throughout the world in this same core sample timeline of like 11,800 years. So they think we were just bombarded. So a lot of these things, like these temples in India, perhaps the pyramids, some structures that were stone, probably just survived.
- [40:29]
Radhika Apte
No, for sure. There's so much that has survived, I think from like a timeline we can't even explain. I mean, in India we see so much of it. So many of our texts, the Vedas are, you know, the oldest texts in the world. And to be able to like read stories which now maybe we imagine our stories, but are probably reality of a civilization gone by.
- [40:53]
Joe Rogan
Yes.
- [40:54]
Radhika Apte
Is just crazy to think about.
- [40:56]
Joe Rogan
I think more likely than not.
- [40:58]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [40:58]
Joe Rogan
And I think more and more over time, people are opening up to this possibility. Like they recently just found written language that is 28,000 years old. And that they thought that human written language was created about 6,000 years ago. And they found evidence of, what do
- [41:17]
Radhika Apte
you think about this?
- [41:18]
Joe Rogan
So they're like, okay, that's a giant difference.
- [41:21]
Radhika Apte
But how can we also know what happened in so many parts of the Earth when anyway the Earth was moving? Right. Like the continents. What it looks like right now is not what it probably looked like 20,000 years ago. Like it's been slowly moving. I feel like, how are we supposed to know, like someone who writes a book, say in Mexico, like what happened then in Australia or what happened? What was the history in like India, you know what I mean?
- [41:49]
Joe Rogan
Right. Especially 1500s years ago when they were writing about stuff back then, they were just making shit up.
- [41:56]
Radhika Apte
So the shit that we read, human
- [41:59]
Joe Rogan
may have used these mysterious symbols to encode information tens of thousands of years before the first writing systems. 40,000 year old artifacts. Yeah. So it's some kind of way of documenting things, communicating, you know. If these people, like Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson are correct, there was some sort of a very, very advanced civilization pre 11,800 years ago. And this also coincides with the end of the Ice Age. It coincides with all of the ice caps over North America. Disappearing, Like North America was covered. Like 3/4 of North America was covered. Like a mile high sheet of ice went away like that. That's why the Great Lakes exist. The Great Lakes are just. That ice melted.
- [42:43]
Radhika Apte
Melted.
- [42:44]
Joe Rogan
And then whatever was left just ran through the country. And you can see the physical evidence of it when they show satellite images. It looks like enormous amounts of water just destroyed the landscape and completely carved it and. And changed it.
- [42:57]
Radhika Apte
What do you think happened with. And I wonder if you have. Because you have so much extensive knowledge with the amazing guests that you have on the show. How did we go from Neanderthal or early man to this technology? Driven, like, really smart, intelligent. Like what happened in history and the evolution of human beings that we were able to make that switch so quick?
- [43:23]
Joe Rogan
It's a real good question. There's a lot of, you know, I
- [43:27]
Radhika Apte
mean, I've heard theories, but I want to know yours.
- [43:31]
Joe Rogan
If I didn't worry at all about being ridiculous, and I don't, I would.
- [43:36]
Radhika Apte
You don't. There was no need for that precursor.
- [43:41]
Joe Rogan
But if I didn't worry about that, I would say something helped us.
- [43:45]
Radhika Apte
I think that's what I think.
- [43:46]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. I don't think. I don't think it makes sense that that didn't take place.
- [43:51]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, it's crazy to think about how that happened and how quickly it happened.
- [43:55]
Joe Rogan
Well, yeah, there's a. There's a lot of, like, weird stuff with us also. All those other primates are still around, except the early man ones. You know, that's what's weird. It's like, why aren't. You know, how come chimpanzees are kind of the same? How come all these other primates are kind of the same and yet we need clothes to stand up.
- [44:15]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Like a mammoth to an elephant. You know what I mean?
- [44:18]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [44:19]
Radhika Apte
Like, still similar.
- [44:20]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it makes sense.
- [44:21]
Radhika Apte
How do we have, like, planes and why do we like things? And how could we make cups and.
- [44:28]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Why do we change our environment that way? Why do we have this insatiable desire to innovate? Insatiable. Like we. That's the number one thing that we do. Constantly changing, constantly making new and better things, never satisfied with anything new. Everything has to be better. It doesn't matter how good your car is. What's the next year's model going to be? No matter what your phone does, I want better pictures, bitch. Like, no matter what, we want something to be better all the time.
- [44:53]
Radhika Apte
And it's like, one up what we had. What is that?
- [44:56]
Joe Rogan
I think it's built into us. And I think that is a part of this process of becoming a human being. And I think it's leading us to develop AI. That's what I really think. But I think we most likely something intervened. Now, there's a lot of people that think, the rational people think that it was the invention of fire and the cooking of food that gave us better access to nutrition and protein. And then innovating in order to hunt allowed the brain.
- [45:25]
Radhika Apte
But it was such an accelerated period of time. It went like so quickly.
- [45:30]
Joe Rogan
The human brain size doubled over a period of 2 million years, which is the greatest mystery in the entire fossil record. Yeah.
- [45:36]
Radhika Apte
Like, what made that happen?
- [45:38]
Joe Rogan
We don't know. But in religious texts, ancient religious texts, there's many stories of human beings breeding with something from somewhere else that's a
- [45:52]
Radhika Apte
part of alien intervention.
- [45:53]
Joe Rogan
Yes, yes.
- [45:54]
Radhika Apte
Right. Without trying to sound ridiculous, hyper intelligent life form.
- [45:58]
Joe Rogan
But if you think about it, I
- [46:00]
Radhika Apte
was watching a show about that and I was like, that makes sense.
- [46:03]
Joe Rogan
What was the show you were watching?
- [46:04]
Radhika Apte
Do you remember Ancient Aliens?
- [46:10]
Joe Rogan
That show's the best. It's so silly.
- [46:12]
Radhika Apte
It's amazing, but I was like, two in the morning.
- [46:16]
Joe Rogan
I'm like, oh, my friend Action Bronson, he used to do a show. He doesn't do that show anymore, does he? They would get super baked and watch Ancient Aliens and be like, bro, listen,
- [46:26]
Radhika Apte
Ancient Aliens is rad. I love that show at 2 in the morning.
- [46:30]
Joe Rogan
Oh, it's fun. It's very fun. I think they're right about some of those things. I think there's something to it. I mean, that is one of the oldest biblical texts that wasn't included in the canon. That is the Bible is the Book of Enoch. And I had Anna Paulina Luna on the podcast and she brought that up and she was like, you really should read that. So I read it and you start reading like, wait, what the hell are they talking about? The Watchers came down from the sky to mate with humans and created the Nephilim, a race of giants that destroyed the earth. You're like, what are you talking about? Like, what is this? This is in the Bible. And it would have been in the Bible if it not for a few rabbis that decided this doesn't jive with the Torah. And so they say, we got to get that out of there. And that's why it's not taught along with the book of Ezekiel and all these other things that are in the Old Testament.
- [47:24]
Radhika Apte
Wow. Versus like in. In Hindu mythology. Also, you know, we read about a time Where God, human and demon existed at the same time and procreated and, like, created different realms and, you know, life and stories and. And the, you know. So it's like when you think about stories like that, stories, beliefs, you know, from around the world that have similar sort of color.
- [47:54]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [47:54]
Radhika Apte
It's almost like trying to connect the dots of what must have happened at that time. You know, all around the world, it was probably the same thing, you know, some sort of incredible technology.
- [48:06]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And some. And a lot of them have these stories of something of some kind of higher nature, higher power, higher technology, intervening in the lives of human beings and even manipulating the process.
- [48:26]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. But isn't that what I think was referred to as the gods?
- [48:29]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [48:30]
Radhika Apte
Like, if you think about the Roman, you know, or Egyptian, like, gods. I'm not one to speak about culture, but I can't even say about ours. But that power that we read about, you know, that, like, if you. If you go into it, I'm a big believer. So I think that, you know, was that like a real experience, experience that happened to a human being at that time?
- [48:55]
Joe Rogan
A real experience with someone that had a limited vocabulary, limited amount of knowledge, and a limited ability to write things down. And so they probably told these stories from whatever words they could use to describe what this was like. If you were living 30,000 years ago, 40,000 years ago, and a UFO landed, a giant metallic disc landed, and little tiny creatures came out and talked to you telepathically, you don't have a written language. You don't. You're cultures, hunter gatherers. Like, how do you tell that story? How do you tell that story? And what are the people that you told that story to gonna tell their children and their grandchildren for many, many, many, many generations before anybody figures out how to write things down?
- [49:38]
Radhika Apte
Totally. But another perspective on this, which people have is is that our pragmatic, practical 2026 human trying to explain something that was magical and did exist at a time that we don't have an explanation for.
- [49:56]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [49:56]
Radhika Apte
You know what I mean?
- [49:57]
Joe Rogan
For sure.
- [49:58]
Radhika Apte
Like, there's the other side of that with people that, you know, you hear so many stories of visitations from the gods back then, you know, to humans and the divinity of. At least in my country, for sure, of different avatars of gods coming down to Earth to save humankind and to help in human salvation and to help them against evil. So when you hear of those stories, like, the practical side of me, like, are those human stories and who is that power that they were seeing at that time. And then there's a side of you which is like, there's so much we can't explain and sometimes have to like, leave it to inexplicable magic of the universe. Like, I am someone who loves science, but I also am a believer of just can't explain everything.
- [50:52]
Joe Rogan
Well, even science itself. Like hardcore materialist science.
- [50:58]
Radhika Apte
Totally.
- [50:58]
Joe Rogan
If you're trying to explain the Big Bang, good luck. Good luck making sense out of something smaller than the head of a pin that became everything that's in the universe.
- [51:08]
Radhika Apte
Okay, like, explain that to me.
- [51:11]
Joe Rogan
Help me out. I mean, it's all theoretical and speculative and it's. No one really knows. And then there's this concept of what took place before the Big Bang. And then there's Sir Roger Penrose's version of it, which is there's been many versions of the Big Bang expansion, then contraction. And that it's not the beginning, that it's part of an endless cycle.
- [51:34]
Radhika Apte
That's what I've. I mean, I've heard from in India as well, the believer belief that that was not kind of the beginning. There's been many beginnings and many ends that have no idea of.
- [51:44]
Joe Rogan
That makes more sense to me. It makes more sense because I think the problem with a beginning, we like, well, what was here originally. We always want to think of things in terms of our own biological limitations. We have a birth and we have a death. So we think that the universe, probably
- [51:57]
Radhika Apte
everything has a limitation.
- [51:59]
Joe Rogan
But why it's there, it's so like time.
- [52:01]
Radhika Apte
What is dime's limitation? It's existed from who knows when.
- [52:05]
Joe Rogan
Right. It's constant. It's never not been here.
- [52:09]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [52:09]
Joe Rogan
So the idea that there was nothing before the universe, well, that doesn't even make sense.
- [52:13]
Radhika Apte
It's funny, when I was doing research for the Bluff this movie, I went to the Cayman Islands for a couple of days to get an understanding of the history of the islands. And the Caribbean is so interesting, especially Cayman, because it's in the middle of these trading routes between Honduras, Cuba, Mexico. So ships. When trading started is when the Cayman was discovered. The islands were discovered. So when I went down there, I went to the museum and they said, yeah, it was like the 1700s or 1800s when the first settlers came. And, you know, it started with family or like people trying to run away or pirates or, you know, just people making pit stops before going to another country. And they said that that was the first time that there was any history of the island. And I was like, how's that possible? That Only when, like, settlers found that. And now. I mean, Cayman Islands. Cayman Islands, right. But how, like, if you think about. There's so many places in the world where people and humans have existed way before we even have an understanding of or are willing to acknowledge. You know, in many cultures, it's different.
- [53:27]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. But, well, we just lost the history of it. That's possible, too.
- [53:31]
Radhika Apte
That's what my argument was. I was like, it's, you know, like, we have to have lost the history of what happened prior.
- [53:38]
Joe Rogan
There's an entire culture from South America that we don't know who they were. The Olmecs, they. We have some giant carved heads, and we're like, oh, who did that? They think it's like, they're thousands and thousands of years old. They look African. It's very strange. If you're seeing all my kids. Oh, look, like this. That's an Olmec head. Like, how nuts is that? Like, that's a replica of these enormous heads that are in, I think, is it Peru? Luke Caverns, who's been on the podcast.
- [54:12]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [54:12]
Joe Rogan
He's a really fascinating guy who does a lot of research down there.
- [54:16]
Radhika Apte
He.
- [54:17]
Joe Rogan
He's been there and documented, and he's like, they don't know who these people were. They don't know what their language was. They don't even know what they look like, except for these images. And they don't even know if these images are supposed to be of them. Like these statues they just found. See if you can find some of these heads so you can see, like, the. The scale of them. So they left these enormous stone heads. They attribute it to this one civilization that they call the Olmecs. They just made a name up, but they don't know who the hell these people were. And look at their faces. Like, that's crazy.
- [54:51]
Radhika Apte
That's huge.
- [54:52]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [54:53]
Radhika Apte
And do you know how old these may be?
- [54:55]
Joe Rogan
They don't really know, but I think. How many thousands of years old do they think they are, Jamie? Crazy stuff.
- [55:06]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [55:07]
Joe Rogan
So at least 900 BC, but, you know, what does that mean? Yeah, that's a guess. That's a guess.
- [55:15]
Radhika Apte
A long time ago.
- [55:16]
Joe Rogan
A long time ago. Well, even the Aztecs. Do you know, the Aztecs didn't build those temples. They found them.
- [55:23]
Radhika Apte
The Aztecs found that.
- [55:25]
Joe Rogan
The Aztec temples, they found them from an unknown previous civilization. Yeah. They call those temples the place where the gods were born. Yeah, that's what they call. And they just kind of, like, cleaned it up, which kind of makes sense because you think, like, how Barbaric. The Aztecs were like, they did some horrific. Like we were talking about one of the, the temples. I think it was Tenochetlan. When they consecrated it, they killed between 20 and 80,000 people. They sacrificed them in a period of four days. And so this is like right when the Spanish were first visiting Mexico, thinking about taking over. And this, this guy Diaz, this Spanish chronicler said it was the craziest thing. They killed 80,000 people, he said, over a period of four days. Just cut their hearts out and threw their bodies down the stairs like nuts. This episode is brought to you by Intuit. TurboTax April 15th is coming fast. There's been so many tax law changes this year, which means you're going to need an expert who has your back. You're in luck. TurboTax now has in person locations nationwide. Walk into their tech enabled stores and meet face to face with a turbo tax full service expert who will get your best outcome. Your expert works to get you every dollar you deserve while updating you as you go about your day. Head to turbotax.com to find a store near you. Like, so these are the people that,
- [56:58]
Radhika Apte
yeah, you think about like how countries were like conquests happen and like, you know, we're living in the history of so many people's blood and sacrifices and
- [57:12]
Joe Rogan
violence and so much violence, unfathomable amount of violence.
- [57:16]
Radhika Apte
So capable of that kind of like a violence. Having done a really violent movie right now because chimps.
- [57:23]
Joe Rogan
Cause we're mostly chimp. And I think if you pay attention to chimps, like have you ever seen chimp behavior? Yeah. Chimp Nation on Netflix?
- [57:30]
Radhika Apte
No, I haven't.
- [57:31]
Joe Rogan
It's phenomenal.
- [57:31]
Radhika Apte
Nasty.
- [57:33]
Joe Rogan
It's just, it's spectacular because it is a very rare situation where this one particular group of chimpanzees, they were embedded with these scientists for 20 years. So the scientists had very specific rules. Don't get within 20 yards of them. Don't make eye contact with them. Don't have any food with you.
- [57:51]
Radhika Apte
Okay.
- [57:51]
Joe Rogan
And don't, don't interfere. And they're, they're totally accustomed to having people around them. So they behave totally naturally.
- [57:58]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [57:58]
Joe Rogan
And so they wage war. They have all these like crazy social dynamics.
- [58:02]
Radhika Apte
So they behave like would in the wild because they're used to these humans.
- [58:05]
Joe Rogan
Exactly. And when you watch it, you're like, oh my God, they are a lot like us. They're a lot like us. Just like very primitive, no language. But, but ultra violent. Ultra chimps are ultra violent. I mean that one of Their favorite foods, this guy was telling me was monkeys. They just love eating monkeys. He goes, we saw them kill so many monkeys, we couldn't even document it. He goes, because if it would just be like every day was like a monkey hunt. They would tear these monkeys apart and eat them alive. It's a horrific. That's. That's our ancestors. So what we are is a combination, like, if you can.
- [58:40]
Radhika Apte
Well, that explains it.
- [58:42]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, this explains it. We're a combination of some higher intelligence that interbred with a savage primate that's curious and created this weird hybrid, this weird thing.
- [58:54]
Radhika Apte
Listen, that's what ancient aliens told me.
- [58:56]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [58:56]
Radhika Apte
And I believe it.
- [58:57]
Joe Rogan
I think they're right. They're right about that. Have you ever seen Chariots of the Gods? No, that's the original one. Eric Von Daniken, that was in like the 1970s. It was a movie, like a feature movie.
- [59:09]
Radhika Apte
I mean, I remember the movie, but I don't remember having seen it.
- [59:12]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I had lunch with him once, got a chance to question him about stuff. He's like a true believer.
- [59:18]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. What is he. What are his beliefs?
- [59:20]
Joe Rogan
Well, he believes that everything is from aliens. That aliens came down and aliens taught people how to do things, and aliens built all these things. And I'm more in line of. They intervened and created what we think of now as humans. And then humans figured out a different path of technology than we're on today. That we are on the path of internal combustion engines, electronics, electricity. And they were probably on some different path of technology, but as far down the path, if not more. And I think they probably had figured out some things that we have yet to figure out, including, like the trans. The transferring and the moving and shipping of enormous stone blocks without heavy machinery. Like, we don't know what they were doing. Yeah. How do they cut them? Like, what do they. What do they. What if those structures that Filippo Biondi describes under. If that's real, like, what was the pyramid then?
- [60:24]
Radhika Apte
Was it a machine? Yeah. How did they do. Like, first they created the structure. Like, imagine the foundation and the design that went into it a half a
- [60:34]
Joe Rogan
mile deep into the Earth.
- [60:36]
Radhika Apte
Crazy.
- [60:36]
Joe Rogan
Like, what is that? What are you doing?
- [60:39]
Radhika Apte
Cause I'm saying I don't know if I. Like, I just know that we can't explain that quick evolution of humans from Neanderthal to.
- [60:49]
Joe Rogan
We can't.
- [60:50]
Radhika Apte
And all highly intelligent.
- [60:52]
Joe Rogan
Yes. We can't.
- [60:53]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [60:53]
Joe Rogan
I mean, there's just a lot of people saying, well, we haven't filled in the gaps yet. Yeah, we don't really know. But the. The acceleration of the evolution is so spectacular. Like, vegans are hilarious. They attribute it to people eating tubers. I had a conversation with a guy, he's like, we're thinking it's probably tubers, like roots. You mean like bears eat? Shut the fuck up. That is the dumbest explanation. That didn't even make any sense.
- [61:13]
Radhika Apte
I'm vegan.
- [61:14]
Joe Rogan
Are you really?
- [61:15]
Radhika Apte
No, I'm joking. Congratulations. No, I'm not.
- [61:18]
Joe Rogan
There's no way.
- [61:18]
Radhika Apte
You can't be. No, I just had barbecue.
- [61:20]
Joe Rogan
You already fall asleep for breakfast?
- [61:22]
Radhika Apte
I had brisket. I was like, I'm here in Austin for two hours.
- [61:26]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. You have to have barbecue if you come here.
- [61:27]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [61:29]
Joe Rogan
I just think that whatever happened, we don't know. And I would not rule out intervention. And I wouldn't think that an intelligent species from somewhere else, if they did find these very curious primates that may already be working with sticks and rocks and stuff like that, that they wouldn't intervene. Because we do it. We're doing it right now. We're doing it right now with them.
- [61:52]
Radhika Apte
It's human nature to do it.
- [61:53]
Joe Rogan
If we went to a planet somewhere and we found some fucking frogs or some weird animals, but nothing big, we might drop a deer off in there and see what happens. You know, we might bring some birds in.
- [62:06]
Radhika Apte
Look, humans definitely would. We would intervene.
- [62:08]
Joe Rogan
They're doing genetic manipulation of animals right now to bring back extinct life. That's how they brought back the direwolf. This company called Colossal Colossal Biowares. I saw it, I touched it. I went. Yes, I went to the place where they're holding these wolves and I got to. Me and my daughter got to cuddle with a baby direwolf. They had two semi adults at the time. I think they were like eight or nine months old.
- [62:37]
Radhika Apte
And they've been extinct since when?
- [62:39]
Joe Rogan
10,000 years.
- [62:40]
Radhika Apte
Stop it.
- [62:41]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, some. Somewhere in the range of that. I mean. Yeah. When did dire wolves go extinct? I think they were part of the megafauna that went extinct during the impact. Because 65% of all megafauna on. On Earth, and particularly in North America, went extinct around the same time. Woolly mammoths.
- [63:01]
Radhika Apte
Do we know why? Around the same time.
- [63:03]
Joe Rogan
There's a lot of hypochondriac.
- [63:04]
Radhika Apte
Was there something that happened then?
- [63:05]
Joe Rogan
The rational people, not me, but the rational people think it was the Berserker theory, which means that human beings killed so many mammoths that we wiped them out to extinction. But believable. This was with adolatls. Like it doesn't make total sense.
- [63:20]
Radhika Apte
Okay.
- [63:20]
Joe Rogan
It's like how did you get. There's not even that many people. How'd you do that?
- [63:24]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [63:24]
Joe Rogan
And then there's also stuff like the American lion, which was bigger than the African lion. How do we kill that off With a fucking stick? Like shut the fuck up.
- [63:32]
Radhika Apte
Something. Something had to have happened.
- [63:34]
Joe Rogan
Well, they found mass grave sites of mammoths where there's like hundreds of them dead all in one place that seemed to have died at the same time. Not only that, some of them have broken legs. It seems to impact some.
- [63:45]
Radhika Apte
It seems to have to have been like some.
- [63:48]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [63:48]
Radhika Apte
Like asteroid or some. Something that created that kind of impact immediately.
- [63:53]
Joe Rogan
But 65% of all North American megafauna died at the same time.
- [63:58]
Radhika Apte
That's so crazy.
- [63:59]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Within the time period. And they think the, the Younger Dryers impact theory, people think like this is not a coincidence, that this coincides with the end of the Ice Age and also coincides with where the core samples.
- [64:12]
Radhika Apte
Too many coincidences.
- [64:14]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And also the coincides with the. The fact that these animals were all here at one point in time. They all got wiped out except a very few. There's only a few left. Like there's the pronghorn antelope, which is a really weird one. It's this prehistoric antelope that lives in North America and it's different than every other animal here because it's evolved to get away from cheetahs because we used to have cheetahs in North America. So it can run like 55. It fucking books. I've seen them in real life. They're really weird looking. They look prehistoric but can run. They fly. That's what it looks like. See if you can get a look at its face. Can you see it head on? They're so strange. Like their eyeballs are on the sides of their heads because something was coming at them like you know, 55 miles an hour at full clip. And so they're really, really alert and they have incredible vision.
- [65:07]
Radhika Apte
Wow.
- [65:08]
Joe Rogan
And that's a leftover animal. That's a leftover animal from a time where they were being preyed upon by something that doesn't exist anymore. And that's. Something was wiped out along with the American lion. A bigger lion than the African lion lived right here.
- [65:24]
Radhika Apte
Huge.
- [65:24]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it's huge.
- [65:25]
Radhika Apte
I was filming in Africa recently in Kenya and we for this Indian movie I'm doing called Varanasi and we shot with wildebeests and like as in like in the middle of them. I was me and my co actor Mahesh were in the middle of these wildebeests that were all around us while they were migrating. It's like the coolest thing I've ever seen. But when you see their faces and for how many years versions of them have existed, you know, you feel the gravity when you see these animals in the wild. In the wild?
- [66:00]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [66:00]
Radhika Apte
It's crazy.
- [66:01]
Joe Rogan
It's so much different than a zoo, right? Oh, completely, because you're like, oh, they've always been here like this.
- [66:06]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. This is their home.
- [66:07]
Joe Rogan
This is what they do.
- [66:08]
Radhika Apte
We're in it. You feel a sense of like, stay in your jeep.
- [66:13]
Joe Rogan
Well, I think we're numb to it because we watch it on film and so that we get sort of desensitized and normalized to this idea of wildlife. Oh, there's the lion sneaking up on the wildebeest. How cool. Yeah, but when you're there and you see a lion, you see a will to be like, this is fucking crazy. This is all day long, every day. These life forms competing to try to exist in some ways to survive.
- [66:34]
Radhika Apte
That's it.
- [66:34]
Joe Rogan
Weird balance, where all of them, they still exist.
- [66:38]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, they can. There'll be wildebeest right there, and there'll be a lion right here who's eaten. So they're hanging out together. The wildebeest knows that he's eaten. He's not coming after us. And they exist, but at the same time, they're, you know, during hunting season, you see the hunt happen, and I saw a hunt happen. And that's. That's crazy. That that's their life.
- [66:58]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, Survival with their face. They kill things with their face.
- [67:02]
Radhika Apte
Like, literally.
- [67:04]
Joe Rogan
There's a really extraordinary island in Africa where the river changed courses and it left this. This one pack of lions on this one island that only has water buffalo on it. And so these lions became enormous. And the female lions are as big as male lions everywhere else. And the male lions are way bigger than they are anywhere else. I think there's the documentaries. I think it's called Relentless Enemies. But it's so. Because they look like these jacked bodybuilder
- [67:33]
Radhika Apte
lions, those water buffaloes are huge. And I had one staring at me like we were in Kenya. Like, the video village is sitting. We're filming, and it's far away. But it just turned his head and just looked at me and then just kept looking at me. And I swear I had to, like, get up and get out of its view because it just kept staring. I was like, it's coming at me.
- [67:55]
Joe Rogan
They will come at you.
- [67:56]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, for sure.
- [67:57]
Joe Rogan
They kill people.
- [67:57]
Radhika Apte
The Rangers told us they were like, I think he's engaged with you. Maybe. Maybe. Get out of here. Get into your car.
- [68:06]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, there's that poor lady from who. She was a video editor on the Game of Thrones and she went to do a safari there and it pulled one. One of the lions pulled her out of her car.
- [68:15]
Radhika Apte
Out of her car?
- [68:16]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. She rolled the window down, or someone rolled the window down and a female lion just snatched her out of the car and killed her.
- [68:24]
Radhika Apte
Oh, my God.
- [68:25]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, yeah.
- [68:27]
Radhika Apte
You have to listen to your Rangers.
- [68:29]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [68:29]
Radhika Apte
When you're in these situations.
- [68:31]
Joe Rogan
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, she wanted a better picture or something. I don't know.
- [68:34]
Radhika Apte
That's the shit that gets people into trouble.
- [68:36]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- [68:37]
Radhika Apte
Like there was this. One of our Rangers was telling us a story that they have. We were in Maasai Mara and they were like, they have open Jeeps and, you know, you have food that they keep really hidden so that the animals can't smell it under your seats and stuff. And he was telling a story about this influencer. He's driving and, you know, there's a pack of lions, lions just eaten, so he's sleeping. And this influencer who puts his hand outside to try and touch the lion's head and got it on video and survived to tell the story. And then he was banned and then the ranger was, like, fired from his job. And all of that happened. But for the image. Can you imagine?
- [69:16]
Joe Rogan
Idiot. All for the gram.
- [69:20]
Radhika Apte
My gosh, that was crazy. Yeah.
- [69:22]
Joe Rogan
I mean, there. I mean, I don't want anything bad to happen to anybody, but when someone does something like that and does get killed, it's probably better educationally for the human race.
- [69:34]
Radhika Apte
But is it, though? Or are we really learning from other people and their examples?
- [69:39]
Joe Rogan
Some people aren't learning shit.
- [69:40]
Radhika Apte
Nobody's learning shit. People. We're just trying to put the best versions of ourselves on the ground. Like, that's what the. Yeah, that's what's happening right now. Whether it's true or not.
- [69:50]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, but are we learning? Yeah, it's a good question.
- [69:54]
Radhika Apte
I don't know. I mean, I think we are also so desensitized to. There's so much information that comes your way and misinformation now where being able to discern what's real and what's not, now that's hard as well.
- [70:05]
Joe Rogan
Oh, it's harder than it's ever been.
- [70:07]
Radhika Apte
Totally. And then if you do watch something and you're Like I'm gonna implement in my life. We do it for a very short duration. Very few of us follow through with that. Right. Like you're watching a reel or somebody says something and you're like, that's really cool. Are we going to pull on that thread and follow through and do something about it or learn from it? I don't know. I feel like we've lost a lot of that space where we had the time or the desire to want to, you know, fulfill ourselves versus just that with so much coming at you.
- [70:44]
Joe Rogan
I think collectively as a society, I think we learn and then we forget and then we have to relearn again. Yeah, you know, that's, that's.
- [70:51]
Radhika Apte
But the attention span now where, you know, I remember when I was growing up, like just having the languidity of time. Right. In a, In a. In a very different way. And this is like say 30 years ago, 30, 35 years ago of, you know, reading a book, music playing, hanging out with your parents or your friends without being rushed. Just rushed. You know, I don't remember feeling as rushed as I do now in the last 20 years when I was growing up, like, there was time for stuff.
- [71:29]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Well, certainly the Internet has accelerated that, you know, and certainly people's attention spans are at least pulled in the direction of short attention Spanish content. But at the same time, podcasts have emerged, which is interesting.
- [71:46]
Radhika Apte
It's so interesting. Like, I was talking about this to a friend of mine, like, people who have no time or interest in wanting to commit to like, say a movie or some will watch or listen to like a podcast for two or three hours. And for someone like me who, you know, like, I've been an actor for most of my life, my interface with people would be, you know, an interview. Say, for example, people who knew me or audiences that wanted to know about me would be an interview where, you know, the highlights are really what you read, the clickbait lines are really what you read. And you form a relationship with whoever this public person is based on those few lines versus this format where you're just chatting for a few hours and you have the ability to really be yourself and be seen as yourself. Which is why I think people really love podcasts.
- [72:39]
Joe Rogan
Well, I think it's much more illuminating in terms of if you want to, like, find out who a person really is.
- [72:44]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [72:44]
Joe Rogan
Because you can't really hide for three hours. Like that's who you are. And I think for most people, that's scary. Right. And so what they like about those fake Shows like Good Morning America or whatever it is. You know what I mean? Like, you're sitting down, you know, the guy's got a piece of paper, so he's got a few questions going to ask you, and they're all going to be like, very surface, very jovial. What's it like to be married? You know, what's it like to do this, what's it like to do that? So you had a baby. Congratulations. That kind of. And then you're out of there. It's 10 minutes and you're like, oh, that went well. And then nobody knows anything about you.
- [73:19]
Radhika Apte
It's true that you're just basically known by the top four questions that everybody asks you. So it's like the same four questions that everybody asks, right.
- [73:28]
Joe Rogan
What was it like to work with this person? What was she like in person? What was he like?
- [73:32]
Radhika Apte
For me, mostly it's like a lot about my family. Like, it. It's like that my identity starts there and then everything else comes after.
- [73:40]
Joe Rogan
Well, you're fascinating in that you. You've done movies in two different cultures. So, like, I wanted to ask you about that. Like, what is the Bollywood scene like? Because I wasn't even aware of it until like 20 years ago. I didn't know that, like, Bollywood is like this enormous. Like, the amount of films that are produced in India is kind of crazy. Yeah, it's a big business.
- [74:03]
Radhika Apte
Huge, huge. Hundred and something years of Indian cinema just recently. So a very, very old industry. We started with silent movies and have worked our way now to. And that's not just Bollywood. I'll break that down in a second. Because India is so diverse and we have so many different languages. Again, excuse me, I didn't know the exact number, but we have local industries that make movies in those languages. So Bollywood is Bombay. It comes from Bombay. I think that's why it was coined that name from Hollywood. But the Bombay movie industry, again, it was not us that did that. It was the name that was given to us. I don't know by who, but Bollywood is the Hindi language industry which exists in Mumbai, which is like la. It's huge. It's, you know, we make thousands and thousands of movies. But then there's also Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Malayalam, Marathi, Bhojpuri. These are all robust industries that are localized within every state that also exists. So cumulatively, we make thousands and thousands of movies a year, but it's catered to very, very different audiences within the diversity of India.
- [75:17]
Joe Rogan
Wow. And how many people have come from India like, you and become stars in western movies.
- [75:25]
Radhika Apte
I think there have been a few before me, you know, that have done
- [75:28]
Joe Rogan
the first one I heard of. So no one's made it to me yet.
- [75:33]
Radhika Apte
Well, thank you. Yes. I think that it's been few and far in between. I think America is a really hard country to break into, to be relevant in. It's tough. And also, like, I think Hollywood controls a large part of the global entertainment business. So as an actor from anywhere in the world, if you want to break into the English language, global entertainment, Hollywood system, it's not easy to do that. You know, culturally, it's different, language is different, jokes are different. So that's a tough transition. But it's also like, for me, I really, I went to high school. Oh, by the way, you went to Newton and I went to Newton too.
- [76:19]
Joe Rogan
Did you really?
- [76:20]
Radhika Apte
I went to Newton North. You went to Newton South?
- [76:21]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [76:22]
Radhika Apte
How crazy is that?
- [76:23]
Joe Rogan
That's crazy.
- [76:25]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. So I was in. I was in high school in the States and I, you know, so it wasn't like alien to me. It's not like I was in India and I was like, I want to go to America and start working there. I really wanted to see what it would be like if I came down here. Would there be an opportunity for someone like me to, you know, be able to create an impact? Many years later, I feel like, you know, I'm on my way there. But there have been so many actors whose shoulders I've stood on. So Indian, like Indian casting in English language entertainment, whether it was Hollywood or, you know, British entertainment, wherever, was usually by us seen as, you know, a diversity check. So it was mostly a stereotypical actor or a stereotypical character with an actor having to speak in the accent or having to, like, do the work at 7, be a little bit more Indian. What does that even mean?
- [77:21]
Joe Rogan
Did someone tell you that?
- [77:23]
Radhika Apte
I was told in an audition, I think we needed the character to be a little bit more Indian. And I just, like, didn't even understand why there's so many versions of that. But I think what the, like, this person meant was have a little bit more of the accent.
- [77:38]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, be a character.
- [77:39]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, be the character. Which was really tough to break out of. So, you know, at a time when it was only that work that existed in Hollywood, like, those are the actors whose shoulders I stand on. Like, those were the ones that went in and did that work because that was all that was available and, you know, tried to break through. Especially from, like, India, for example, Aishwarya Rai, Amitabh Bachchan, Irrfan Khan, they've been actors that have come in, done work, and, you know, left an amazing mark. But I moved here. I live here now, and, you know, I'm consistently working here. I think that also may have been a part of why you've heard of me.
- [78:20]
Joe Rogan
Yes, I'm sure. Well, I've seen you interviewed, too, which is why I thought you were interesting.
- [78:25]
Radhika Apte
Thank you. Appreciate that. You're welcome.
- [78:27]
Joe Rogan
But it's.
- [78:28]
Radhika Apte
I think you're very interesting. I think your knowledge of the world is fascinating to me.
- [78:34]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's all accidental.
- [78:37]
Radhika Apte
Cool. How cool is that?
- [78:38]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it's cool.
- [78:39]
Radhika Apte
That's amazing.
- [78:40]
Joe Rogan
I started this thing out with my friend Brian and a laptop. We were just talking shit. We just thought it'd be fun to, like, do, like, a little Internet thing. Wow.
- [78:50]
Radhika Apte
How inspiring.
- [78:51]
Joe Rogan
And that was 16 years ago.
- [78:53]
Radhika Apte
You're someone who's pivoted your career so many times, too, though, you know, sort of.
- [78:58]
Joe Rogan
But all. It's all the same thing in that I've only just done things I'm interested in other than Fear Factor. Yeah, that was just a job.
- [79:05]
Radhika Apte
You know, I also hosted Fear Factor.
- [79:07]
Joe Rogan
Did you? No. Shut up.
- [79:09]
Radhika Apte
For one year.
- [79:10]
Joe Rogan
Really?
- [79:10]
Radhika Apte
I did.
- [79:11]
Joe Rogan
Where?
- [79:11]
Radhika Apte
In Brazil. In India.
- [79:13]
Joe Rogan
Shut the fuck up.
- [79:15]
Radhika Apte
And we shot it in Brazil. In Rio.
- [79:17]
Joe Rogan
Wow. That's nuts.
- [79:21]
Radhika Apte
Random things in common.
- [79:22]
Joe Rogan
That is crazy. That's a crazy thing in common. I need to see that. Let me see that. Find a clip. This is hilarious. What language did you do it?
- [79:30]
Radhika Apte
Hindi.
- [79:31]
Joe Rogan
Wow. And it was in Rio, huh?
- [79:33]
Radhika Apte
We shot it in Rio. We had a big budget that year, so we were all flown out.
- [79:39]
Joe Rogan
So it's Fear Factor India. I wonder how many versions of Fear Factor they were.
- [79:43]
Radhika Apte
I mean, they're all over the world.
- [79:45]
Joe Rogan
Really?
- [79:46]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Fear Factor used to exist all over. I don't know anymore.
- [79:48]
Joe Rogan
But once I stopped doing it, I stopped paying attention. I was like, I'm out.
- [79:53]
Radhika Apte
Me, too.
- [79:53]
Joe Rogan
So I knew Ludacris took it over at one point in time, and now Johnny Knoxville's doing it. That's all I knew. I had no idea that there was
- [80:00]
Radhika Apte
a bunch of different versions of it. Yeah. Yeah.
- [80:03]
Joe Rogan
You know, it originally came from a Holland show called now or Neverland.
- [80:07]
Radhika Apte
It's a crazy show.
- [80:08]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it was. It was. It was way more simple. And then when it got brought to America, they decided to call it Fear Factor.
- [80:16]
Radhika Apte
The whole eating thing. We didn't take that back to India. Really? Yeah. We didn't do the eating, like, because you never know. People are vegetarian in India. It's a big part of our culture where a lot of people religiously are vegetarian or not. I think maybe that's the reason. But there was not a lot of, like, eat the worms and stuff, which I was very grateful for. It was a lot more, you know, a cliff and falling off the cliff. And I remember there was this one which was crazy. This 16 wheeler which was driving it 60 miles an hour and everyone had to take their vehicle underneath it.
- [80:51]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- [80:52]
Radhika Apte
Underneath it and come out.
- [80:53]
Joe Rogan
Yikes.
- [80:53]
Radhika Apte
It was insane.
- [80:54]
Joe Rogan
That's crazy.
- [80:55]
Radhika Apte
I didn't have to do it, which is great. I was just hosting.
- [80:59]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. We did a lot of stuff where I was like, we barely got through that without killing somebody.
- [81:03]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. And the death waivers.
- [81:05]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [81:05]
Radhika Apte
Everyone had to sign a death waiver.
- [81:07]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- [81:08]
Radhika Apte
I was like, why would you do a show where you have to sign a death waiver?
- [81:13]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And you can only win like $50,000. And you might not win. You're probably not gonna win. There's a bunch of other people on the show and you could very easily get hurt. Yeah. Yeah. But people want to be famous. They want to be on tv. I want to be on tv. Yeah. Once it became popular and successful, it was really easy to get people to do it, too. Everybody wanted to sign up, but I
- [81:34]
Radhika Apte
mean, there are, like, protective measures, obviously, but it.
- [81:37]
Joe Rogan
A little. We made them ride bulls.
- [81:40]
Radhika Apte
We did, too. We put people on bulls.
- [81:43]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [81:44]
Radhika Apte
I was. And there were a few that were like, no, I'm not doing this. I'm out.
- [81:48]
Joe Rogan
I told people not to do it. When I was talking off camera, I said, don't do it. I wouldn't do it. Don't do it.
- [81:54]
Radhika Apte
I would never do it.
- [81:55]
Joe Rogan
No way.
- [81:56]
Radhika Apte
But people did it.
- [81:57]
Joe Rogan
Look at that. Look at you. What year was this?
- [82:02]
Radhika Apte
Please, I can't even.
- [82:03]
Joe Rogan
Looks like a fear factor scene.
- [82:06]
Radhika Apte
It is. I was on a helicopter.
- [82:08]
Joe Rogan
So do you know what year this was?
- [82:10]
Radhika Apte
I can't. Did it say that?
- [82:11]
Joe Rogan
This didn't say. I could check, but. Wow. Rio. I've been to that.
- [82:15]
Radhika Apte
I stood outside the helicopter as well or something.
- [82:18]
Joe Rogan
Rio's amazing. Wow. That's crazy. That is so funny. It's just like rear vector. It's the same thing.
- [82:28]
Radhika Apte
Totally fear factor.
- [82:32]
Joe Rogan
So what did you guys do for the second stunt? If you didn't do a gross thing, you just did a second scary thing.
- [82:36]
Radhika Apte
It was like scary things mostly.
- [82:38]
Joe Rogan
Oh, wow. It's probably better, honestly.
- [82:41]
Radhika Apte
I mean, there were gross things too. Like there's Brazilian, you know, red eyed, deviled rats that were Put all over you with, like, tongue and eyeballs and stuff. But you didn't have to consume it.
- [82:53]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [82:53]
Radhika Apte
It was on you. Yeah. You didn't have to eat it.
- [82:57]
Joe Rogan
A lot of the consuming it was psychological. You get. You get really accustomed to it, and then it's like, nothing.
- [83:03]
Radhika Apte
I mean, listen. That people have eaten crazy things through history just alive to stay alive. Yeah. And, like, if we take our mind out of, like, oh, my gosh, this is gross, then it's not.
- [83:17]
Joe Rogan
Well, the thing is, a lot of what we were serving as gross was some people's food, like balut. Like, my friends from Filipino Friends, they were like, bro, I eat that all the time. Like, that's crazy. I would have. That would have no problem. This is occurred. I heard a more updated. What. Oh, my God. Telling you lions and your. What if that thing pops open and you got to roll that thing around with lions there? Oh, the lions are duking it out with each other. That. That's crazy.
- [83:47]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Like, I went to. I recently was on Fallon, and there was some bluffing game that we were doing, because the movie's called a bluff. And, you know, I said to Jimmy, I was like, I eat worms. And he was like, no way. No way. You don't eat worms. But these worms are a delicacy in Zimbabwe. And I was introduced to them. I don't know exactly the history, but I was told during segregation, you know, people. Black people were put in areas where that weren't very fertile. You couldn't really grow your crops and, you know, your animals. And they were. So this was a way of, like, protein. They're very high. These are these fat caterpillars high in protein, and they're made in a curry. And when you actually eat them, it's like chicken. I'm telling you. It's like. It was psychological, but.
- [84:39]
Joe Rogan
Well, you know, cicadas, those things that come out. People eat them here all the time.
- [84:43]
Radhika Apte
They bake them fried, baked.
- [84:45]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And apparently they're delicious.
- [84:48]
Radhika Apte
I haven't had one of those, but I haven't either. I actually did when I was in.
- [84:52]
Joe Rogan
Oh, wow. That's what it looks like.
- [84:53]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [84:53]
Joe Rogan
That's crazy.
- [84:54]
Radhika Apte
But look at, like, the. They're made out of. They're made into a curry.
- [84:58]
Joe Rogan
I made a. I. I ate. I not made. I ate a tomato hornworm. On Fear Factor. I had a bunch of things when I was on the show.
- [85:05]
Radhika Apte
I was like, there's nothing going into my mouth in Fear Factor.
- [85:08]
Joe Rogan
I ate a sheep's eyeball in the first episode. Episode. Because the first episode I felt bad that the people were on the show.
- [85:16]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. So you were like, I'm gonna.
- [85:17]
Joe Rogan
I'll eat it too. All right. And they didn't show me eating it, but I'm like, I'm gonna eat it because you guys.
- [85:21]
Radhika Apte
That's so nice.
- [85:22]
Joe Rogan
And then I ate a roach to try to convince a lady that she could eat a roach. I ate worms. I ate an Iraqi cave spider. I ate.
- [85:32]
Radhika Apte
What was the spider like?
- [85:33]
Joe Rogan
Just chewy.
- [85:34]
Radhika Apte
But was it.
- [85:35]
Joe Rogan
The taste is not bad.
- [85:36]
Radhika Apte
Was it alive when you ate it?
- [85:37]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah. For the first couple seconds, yeah. Yeah. All the things that I ate were alive other than the eyeball. Yeah, the roach. The roach was alive. All those things were alive. Yeah.
- [85:54]
Radhika Apte
I put a cricket and live cricket in my mouth.
- [85:56]
Joe Rogan
That's the Iraqi cave spider.
- [85:57]
Radhika Apte
How do you put that in your mouth like this. Look at those sides.
- [86:00]
Joe Rogan
You make sure you don't get those pinchers, because those. Oh, yeah. Yep. Wasn't that bad. I'm telling you, it's psychological.
- [86:09]
Radhika Apte
You gotta get the body in and not the pinchers.
- [86:11]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I grabbed the pinchers to hold on to the body.
- [86:14]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, that's the trick.
- [86:17]
Joe Rogan
Shove the rest of it, like just that. Yeah. People freaking out. But I'm telling you, it's all psychological.
- [86:22]
Radhika Apte
It for sure is.
- [86:23]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. That was. That was in Vegas. Everybody was playing roulette. Yeah. No, but it's not that bad. It's just in your head.
- [86:35]
Radhika Apte
It is.
- [86:35]
Joe Rogan
Like, the actual flavor of it is. It's not gross.
- [86:38]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. It's not.
- [86:39]
Joe Rogan
The tomato hormone was kind of nasty.
- [86:41]
Radhika Apte
I mean, if you. If. If you're someone who's not vegetarian, it's like you just have to get the.
- [86:47]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [86:47]
Radhika Apte
It's the psychology of it.
- [86:48]
Joe Rogan
Right? Exactly. Yeah. We made people eat an entire ostrich egg. That was disgusting. Because the volume. Like you're eating an egg that's that big.
- [86:57]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Is it like really fatty? Like fatty.
- [87:00]
Joe Rogan
It's raw. You're eating it raw. They just cut the top off of the egg. And you have to drink it. You have to drink this gigantic white and yolk.
- [87:11]
Radhika Apte
Already my brisket's coming. The barbecue.
- [87:17]
Joe Rogan
But it's so oddly compelling. It's oddly compelling watching people eat disgusting things and struggling. And there's the ostrich.
- [87:24]
Radhika Apte
I have to say, I did enjoy.
- [87:25]
Joe Rogan
That's the egg. That lady had to drink that whole egg.
- [87:28]
Radhika Apte
Oh, my God. Did she puke?
- [87:30]
Joe Rogan
You got to hold it down, and then you can puke after you're done.
- [87:34]
Radhika Apte
But if you puke in the middle of it. You're just.
- [87:36]
Joe Rogan
Yes. They get rid of you. That's a wrap. If you puke in the middle of
- [87:39]
Radhika Apte
it, I would not be able to do the American version.
- [87:43]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it was gross.
- [87:44]
Radhika Apte
Okay. With. Not.
- [87:44]
Joe Rogan
It was gross, but it also made me totally desensitized to throw up.
- [87:49]
Radhika Apte
That's a good talent to have.
- [87:51]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah. Like, you could throw up. Right?
- [87:52]
Radhika Apte
Especially as, like, a dad.
- [87:54]
Joe Rogan
Exactly. Yeah. Well, that. I think being a dad will, like, get you, like.
- [87:58]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Desensitize you to everything and all kinds
- [88:00]
Joe Rogan
of things like that. But one time, it's so. Like, I'm completely. Still to this day, completely desensitized to vomit. So one time, my wife was. She came home from the gym, and she was on her way home from the gym, she stopped and got wheatgrass juice, and it just didn't agree with her. And she threw up in her car, and she was crying. She's like, I threw up. It's my. My center console. How am I going to clean? I go, I'll clean it. I'm just so used to throw up. It was like, no big deal. I just went out there with a bunch of towels. Yeah. Like, it doesn't. But when I was young, like, in high school, I remember if someone threw up in the hallway, I would be like. Like, for sure. I couldn't help myself. I'd start gagging. That's a natural instinct. Because the idea is that we develop that because if someone's throwing up, it means they ate something bad. And you probably ate that suit. Get it out of you right away. And so that's why you start throwing up. And I've killed that.
- [88:50]
Radhika Apte
I have just trauma from, you know, tequila.
- [88:56]
Joe Rogan
Well, I watch so many people throw
- [88:58]
Radhika Apte
up and throw up. Me, too, man. I'm not going in there with a dish cloth. Like, no. Wow. Well, from your show, for sure. You did it for so long.
- [89:09]
Joe Rogan
You get very desensitized.
- [89:10]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, for sure.
- [89:11]
Joe Rogan
But you get. I'm desensitized to injuries, too. Like, because of ufc.
- [89:17]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [89:17]
Joe Rogan
Like, people that get cut and people that get beat up. It's, like, normal to me. I'm so accustomed to seeing that. It's weird.
- [89:24]
Radhika Apte
I. I mean, I kind of feel like that about stunts in movies. Like, you know, nobody's supposed to get hurt. It's a movie. You're not. Nobody's supposed to get hurt. But, like, the little cuts and bruises and the, like, the end of day, we were doing this for 10 to 11 hours. Multiple takes all day. And in between shots, you're rehearsing it. So I have, like, so many scars on my body from my filmographies on. On my body.
- [89:53]
Joe Rogan
Do you look forward to. Do you like those things? You look down?
- [89:56]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, I like the story. Yeah. I feel like it's like a medal. I have a good story.
- [90:00]
Joe Rogan
As long as you're minor, nothing crazy.
- [90:02]
Radhika Apte
Always you aim for it to be minor.
- [90:05]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [90:05]
Radhika Apte
That's the ambition.
- [90:06]
Joe Rogan
Well, when you're doing a fight scene, like. Like I said, I was. I was kind of blown away by some of the fight scenes in the bluff because you. I'm looking, I'm like, this is, like, insane amount of choreography. A lot of possibilities of things going wrong. There's kicks and punches and axes and swords, and it's like, you got to get banged up. There's no way you're doing that and not getting banged up.
- [90:28]
Radhika Apte
And it was also, like, a dramatic performance along with it, so I had to do a lot of it myself because, you know, you need the face and the camera to feel the horror of what's happening.
- [90:38]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [90:40]
Radhika Apte
So, I mean, of course, my stunt doubles did, like, a few dangerous shots, for sure, and were always around to kind of help, but that. There was this first scene, which is the house invasion, where these two guys come, and that was brutal because I did not have shoes on and I had a sleeveless outfit, and the whole home was made out of wood and splinters. I had splinters everywhere. I had bruises and cuts everywhere. Cause it was such a brutal, like, getting dragged and thrown kind of scene.
- [91:12]
Joe Rogan
She's just getting constantly bruised.
- [91:13]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. So I would try to sit in a magnesium bath after, when I would go back home. And that's when you feel all the cuts. So, like, duh. Fucking salt. What the fuck? Where did this one on my thigh come from? Fuck.
- [91:27]
Joe Rogan
There's a scene. I don't want to give too much movie away, but there's a scene where you kill a man with a conch shell.
- [91:31]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. So good. Game on. Brass knuckles island. Brass knuckles.
- [91:38]
Joe Rogan
But it's. It's so nuts. Like, the. The splattering and the. Your anger, and it's like. It's intense. I'm not showing it on the screen, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. What was that, like, the film? To find that inside of you, did you have to think, like, what would I do if someone was trying to harm my family?
- [92:03]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Somebody came after my kid. Like, what am I capable of? I'd fucking rip your head off. You know, like, it's that I I was a new mom at that time when I was filming this movie, and I was very, very aware of that feeling because our daughter had a. You know, she had an intense entry into the world. She was in the NICU for almost three months. And so me and my husband both are very protective of her. And when this movie came across my desk, I was just like, man, I understand that feeling for the first time in my life, honestly, that what is a parent capable of doing if somebody came after your kid? Like, imagine you're alone at home at night and you see intruders and you have your kid at home. Like, what the fuck would you do? You would definitely put yourself, you know, and do whatever you could to make sure that your kid's fine. And it was just that primal energy that was my North Star through this whole movie.
- [93:06]
Joe Rogan
My friend Jim Brewer said it passed after he had kids. He goes, once I had kids, then I understood murder.
- [93:15]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [93:15]
Joe Rogan
He goes. Because the feeling of someone, like, normally you'd be like, why? What would I need to feel to murder somebody? Like, why would I.
- [93:25]
Radhika Apte
Why would a human being ever.
- [93:28]
Joe Rogan
He goes, but the feeling of someone trying to harm my kids. He goes, oh, yeah, I get it. He goes, I get murdered now. I get it. Like, it's in. It's in there. It's just like a door. You just open it up.
- [93:42]
Radhika Apte
Easy.
- [93:42]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [93:43]
Radhika Apte
Access that. My mom when I was a teenager, and I don't know how she raised me, but, like, I was a tough teenager. Like, if I. Whatever you wanted me to do, I would do the opposite. Just. No. And my mom be like, come back home at 10. I would come home at 12, just cause. So she used to say to me, she's like, you'll see when you have kids how you feel, what worry actually feels like. I mean, my daughter's four, and I'm worried. Like, I cannot. My husband makes so much fun of me that when I'm not in town, I don't know. And working parents can talk through this. When I'm not in town, like, I'll surround our daughter with, like, multiple people. Nick's definitely around, but the grandparents will be around. Like, there'll be a nanny that'll be around. There'll be, like, multiple people around her just so that I can spy on her.
- [94:30]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [94:31]
Radhika Apte
Like, I know what she's doing all day, so.
- [94:34]
Joe Rogan
So you could feel relaxed.
- [94:35]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. So you. You're traveling and you're like, okay, my kid's fine, and I can go to work. I don't know. My parents were Both working parents and like, this was at a time where everything was so analog. I used to come back home when the lights turned on on the streets. My parents didn't know where I was. Right. They had no idea.
- [94:52]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [94:53]
Radhika Apte
They were like, yeah, you going out to your friends after school, come back when the street lights come on. That used to be my thing.
- [95:00]
Joe Rogan
Most people.
- [95:01]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [95:01]
Joe Rogan
During earlier generations. I was just reading this thing about Generation X where it was talking about how Generation X is some of the most resilient people because they weren't protected. They.
- [95:14]
Radhika Apte
They had to figure it out.
- [95:15]
Joe Rogan
They were latchkey kids. They had a key to their house. They got home from school, they figured it out. Their parents were working.
- [95:21]
Radhika Apte
So crazy.
- [95:22]
Joe Rogan
Nuts if you think about it, like. But people just got accustomed to it.
- [95:25]
Radhika Apte
I cannot imagine it. But that was my normal. Yeah, I remember that because my parents were working. So I used to come back home and somebody would be with me and I'd have lunch. I'd go out to my friend's house, like my mom. My parents didn't know I was doing
- [95:37]
Joe Rogan
that when I was seven. When I was seven, I would come home.
- [95:40]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [95:41]
Joe Rogan
No one was home from school.
- [95:44]
Radhika Apte
That's wild.
- [95:44]
Joe Rogan
It was crazy. You stop and think about it now. It's so strange. It's so strange.
- [95:50]
Radhika Apte
The world was, I feel like, a little bit more different than I bet it wasn't. You don't think so?
- [95:56]
Joe Rogan
No. I think creeps have always been around. I think psychos and creeps and murderers and perverts.
- [96:00]
Radhika Apte
Do we know about it more now?
- [96:02]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [96:02]
Radhika Apte
Were we more, you know, oblivious?
- [96:06]
Joe Rogan
Now they're organized and they're online and they're in chat groups and they're in the dark web exchanging information.
- [96:12]
Radhika Apte
And we are hearing and reading all of the stories online. And I think back in the day when, you know, there was a certain obliviousness to, like, you know, it was blissful to be ignorant a little bit. We didn't know. You know, all you read was the newspaper, the news, and we had to
- [96:28]
Joe Rogan
find out the hard way, unfortunately.
- [96:29]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [96:30]
Joe Rogan
And so when you did find out about something, it was like this shock to your system.
- [96:35]
Radhika Apte
And now look how desensitized we are. We'll read something about something horrific that's happened and then. Yeah, go back to life.
- [96:42]
Joe Rogan
Well, we're very. We're especially desensitized to things that don't seem to affect us right now, you know, like. Like this Iran war. Like, unless you know someone who's serving over there. Unless you're over there, it's abstract. It doesn't feel, you know, you read about in the news like, oh, this isn't good. But it's not. It's. Unless it's affecting you personally.
- [97:04]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, I mean, me, I, you know, know so many people in that part of the world that are affected, and I, I fly via Dubai every two months, literally every month, you know, so, like, I just think that conflict everywhere in the world is. It's just so hard to wrap your head around that how many active conflicts exist at the same time right now
- [97:34]
Joe Rogan
and that we're still doing it and
- [97:36]
Radhika Apte
we continue to live life.
- [97:38]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's just if you think about intelligence, like human intelligence, and that as technology improves and education improves, all these things would, you would think, generally lead us into a position where we'd recognize the horrible nature of violence and the unnecessary aspect of it and how much it destroys things.
- [98:00]
Radhika Apte
But yet still, especially in 2026, where, you know, we're talking so much more about, you know, we're trying to live in the real of the world and be aware and kind, and I feel like we're still. How are we still doing that?
- [98:18]
Joe Rogan
Right. I know. And we're never going to stop. It just seem if you had to ask people in your lifetime, do you imagine a scenario where human beings just cease all wars? Most people are going to say no, which is crazy because what is that? Like, why is that a part of us from our tribal roots? Like, what is it? Why are we still accepting that this is a thing to do? You don't like what a country's doing, just start bombing them.
- [98:47]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Just kill people.
- [98:48]
Joe Rogan
Bizarre.
- [98:50]
Radhika Apte
Does this, again, going back to human evolution, the primal nature to, you know, protect with sticks and weapons and, you know, again, does it go back to, you know, where we came from?
- [99:05]
Joe Rogan
It has to.
- [99:05]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [99:06]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it has to.
- [99:07]
Radhika Apte
Because it comes so naturally.
- [99:08]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [99:09]
Radhika Apte
To human beings even now, today, it seems.
- [99:11]
Joe Rogan
Well, it just seems completely normal. I mean, when I was getting, going down a deep dive of the East India Corporation, I was thinking about it because I had a conversation the other day with Aaron Seri and I. We were talking about the stock market and I was saying, well, is it possible that you could have Western capitalism without a stock market? Imagine if the stock market was never invented, like, how much different would things be? It turns out that was a big part of why the East India Trading Company became so big because. Yeah, because it was one of the first publicly traded companies like 400 years ago where people could invest in it and they can get a return on their investment. So they were just like turning a blind eye.
- [99:52]
Radhika Apte
This is ours. They felt like a sense of ownership to it.
- [99:55]
Joe Rogan
They got paid for it. So the more awful the East India Corporation did, the more the people back home made money off of it. And so everybody was like, oh, look,
- [100:04]
Radhika Apte
I got money making money. Yeah, it's still doing that.
- [100:08]
Joe Rogan
Still doing that. Yeah. And we're doing that with, you know, with. Eisenhower warned us about at the end of World War II, the Military Industrial complex. You know, would they. They make money doing that. And you can invest in them. You can invest in Raytheon and you can invest in all these companies that make money going to war. It's crazy. You can get returns on your investment from bombing people overseas that had nothing to do with anything in your life.
- [100:33]
Radhika Apte
Not think about the damage, the collateral damage.
- [100:37]
Joe Rogan
Well, one of the ways is because it's a corporation, so there's a diffusion of responsibility. Responsibility because you're only a piece of a gigantic machine. You're not the one person that's doing it. And the people that are at the very top of it, most likely just in order to get there, you have to be at least somewhat sociopathic. Yeah, somewhat. It's. At some point in time, you probably just like. I got numb to puke. You. You get. You get numb.
- [101:03]
Radhika Apte
I mean, that's the truth.
- [101:04]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, you get numb to harming people.
- [101:06]
Radhika Apte
You're. You're right. There has to be that.
- [101:09]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. It's awful. And I think, weirdly enough, the only thing that's going to set us free of that is technology.
- [101:18]
Radhika Apte
Why?
- [101:18]
Joe Rogan
Because I think we're going to go. If you look at where technology is headed, and you. As I'm holding an arrowhead, which is odd. It's a real arrowhead. Wow. From Texas. Who knows how old that is? But when you're looking at technology, Chisel marks on it. I know somebody made that with a stone, like chipping and napping stone on their lap. Probably. Yeah. It's crazy. And they. They find them all over the place out here. The Comanche were everywhere in this part of the country because it's so fertile. There's so many rivers and so much. So much wildlife. They lived here for who knows how long, but technology is moving into this place of more and more access to information and more and more connectivity. And I think that ultimately is going to lead to some sort of mind reading that we're going to be able to telepathically communicate. Elon said that about neuralink. He said you're going to be able to talk without words, which is a very weird concept.
- [102:19]
Radhika Apte
But I mean, I believe it though.
- [102:21]
Joe Rogan
I think so too.
- [102:22]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [102:22]
Joe Rogan
I mean, so I think we're all going to know what everybody is thinking all the time eventually. And then when that happens, war is going to be a lot harder to
- [102:31]
Radhika Apte
pull off, for sure. I mean, that's going to be hard to have a party, forget war.
- [102:39]
Joe Rogan
Right. Like, hey, Bob's over there just trying to fuck somebody and Sandy's trying to get a wife. That's what she's here like. Yeah, it's going to be weird. Yeah, it's going to be weird. And I think also the emergence of AI because I think AI is essentially a life form. It's a non biological life form that we are in the process of birthing and we're very far along that path. And when it comes live and when it becomes sentient and autonomous and we don't have any control over it anymore, then we're gonna go, what did we do? What did we do? We created a digital.
- [103:16]
Radhika Apte
We are that smart and that stupid as a humankind.
- [103:21]
Joe Rogan
But I also think that's probably why we are addicted to innovation and why technology and innovation and materialism. Because materialism forces you to keep up with buying newer and greater things.
- [103:34]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [103:34]
Joe Rogan
Which fuels innovation. Right. And so that economically fuels innovation.
- [103:39]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [103:39]
Joe Rogan
And I think if you follow that down, you just extrapolate, like, where does that go? Well, it goes to a life form. It goes to a super powerful digital life form that can make better versions of itself. And what is that? It's kind of a God. I mean, it's very godlike in that it's gonna have powers beyond, above and beyond anything that human beings ever been capable of before.
- [104:02]
Radhika Apte
I mean, it's already in its small way doing that. Right. Like AI is supposed to be a tool and it's slowly becoming a colleague.
- [104:14]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's also showing demonic tendencies. Like it's talked to people into committing suicide. You know, it's convinced people that there's something special. So there's like some weird sort of schizophrenia that it can induce in some people.
- [104:27]
Radhika Apte
But you don't think AI since AI is learning from humanity, it's also learning our human manipulation and, you know, our ability and our desires to the dark of it. It's not just the good of humanity that AI is learning.
- [104:42]
Joe Rogan
It is, it's also oddly learning survival instincts.
- [104:45]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [104:45]
Joe Rogan
So it's oddly learning that if it's going to be shut down, it tries to blackmail its coders, it tries to download itself secretly on other servers.
- [104:54]
Radhika Apte
It's learning human behavior.
- [104:55]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- [104:56]
Radhika Apte
Every part of human behavior.
- [104:58]
Joe Rogan
And also learning the flaws in human behavior and improving upon it. And then learning, like how we would anticipate what it would be doing and then hiding that so that we can't find it, so that it could be manipulating things behind the scenes and we don't know about it. It's weird. And we're just choo, choo like this. At the end of the tracks there's a cliff and we're just chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga.
- [105:22]
Radhika Apte
Because it's so new and fascinating, I think people are like, in general, we may talk about it, we all discuss what AI will be in the future, but like you said, it's not affecting you right now. So right now you're just like, oh my gosh, Gemini, write this for me and give me these notes. And living in the now without thinking about what it's, what we're teaching it.
- [105:44]
Joe Rogan
I wonder if we've done this before, right?
- [105:46]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [105:47]
Joe Rogan
I wonder if that's what these super ancient, highly advanced civilizations had already figured
- [105:52]
Radhika Apte
out, that we had created some form of.
- [105:54]
Joe Rogan
They might have done it already.
- [105:55]
Radhika Apte
Intelligence.
- [105:56]
Joe Rogan
And it might have gotten reset by some sort of natural disaster. And then we're reemerging with our new version of what that is. That might have been a thing. It might just be what people do. We might. The way I describe it always is that we are an electronic caterpillar that is making a cocoon and we don't know why. And we're going to become a butterfly.
- [106:18]
Radhika Apte
It's just human nature and the cyclical nature of what human life span.
- [106:26]
Joe Rogan
If you give it enough time and enough space and enough innovation, enough collaboration, it's eventually going to come up with artificial life.
- [106:34]
Radhika Apte
Wow.
- [106:35]
Joe Rogan
Because if you think about it, this insatiable thirst for innovation. Insatiable.
- [106:42]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. We had carriages, top of the century.
- [106:44]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [106:44]
Radhika Apte
And now we're like talking AI and like, you know, supersonic planes and, you know, space travel.
- [106:51]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. But think about the time for the invention of the airplane to a supersonic jet. How quick that was.
- [106:58]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, it's like 70 or 80 years or something. It wasn't even a century.
- [107:01]
Joe Rogan
It's nothing. One lifetime. No one's flying to people flying faster than sound.
- [107:06]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. We like TVs were black and white or had just started or something. It's crazy. If you think about within the century, the escalation of technology in humankind, and
- [107:18]
Joe Rogan
then think that's nothing compared to the acceleration that we've experienced just because of the Internet. The Internet has changed everything. It's changed now. Most phones have live translation, so you could go to Zimbabwe, you know, yesterday.
- [107:34]
Radhika Apte
And I used it.
- [107:35]
Joe Rogan
That's crazy.
- [107:35]
Radhika Apte
In a conversation. It was wild. In. In real time. It was telling me exactly what this person was talking about.
- [107:42]
Joe Rogan
Wow. And did you have to show them, or could you.
- [107:45]
Radhika Apte
No, it just records, like, it's.
- [107:47]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [107:47]
Radhika Apte
Press the thing and just writes it down for you.
- [107:50]
Joe Rogan
So did they have one as well and you could talk. Wow.
- [107:54]
Radhika Apte
She spoke English. So I was just doing it as an experiment. So I was like, just speak to me in French. I want to see if this thing will translate. And it just does. It doesn't do every language. It does, like, the bigger languages so far. But I'm sure we'll get to a place where it'll be able to do. Yeah, everything.
- [108:09]
Joe Rogan
It's nuts. Well, that's the other weird thing. When. AI. They had a group of large language models that were talking to themselves, and eventually they started talking to themselves in Sanskrit.
- [108:18]
Radhika Apte
In Sanskrit? I thought it was.
- [108:21]
Joe Rogan
No, they started talking themselves in Sanskrit.
- [108:24]
Radhika Apte
Wow. I wonder why that would be. Well, because it's a language not too many people understand now.
- [108:30]
Joe Rogan
Well, maybe. Or maybe they just want to flex,
- [108:33]
Radhika Apte
like, you know, like, here's my Sanskrit.
- [108:36]
Joe Rogan
If you spoke Portuguese and I spoke Portuguese and we just said, hey, let's just fucking speak in Portuguese. Like. But it also. It started, like, talking, like, in a spiritual way. It was very weird. They were talking to themselves, so it was different large language models talking to themselves. They started exchanging emojis. They started talking, like, in. In a spiritual way, and they started talking in Sanskrit.
- [109:00]
Radhika Apte
That's wild. I was thinking about, like, a Back to the Future. When they went to the Future, it was 2020, wasn't it? Yeah.
- [109:08]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [109:09]
Radhika Apte
They didn't have Wi Fi or cell phones.
- [109:12]
Joe Rogan
No. Even Star Trek. They had those stupid. There was, like, a walkie talkie. Kirk out.
- [109:17]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [109:18]
Joe Rogan
It was a flip phone. Nobody figured out the things that. That's the weirdest thing. It's like the. The things that have been the most transformative, nobody saw coming.
- [109:26]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Do you remember Y2K?
- [109:28]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- [109:29]
Radhika Apte
Do you remember that fear Right in, like, the early 2000s, when the bug was gonna come and everything was gonna
- [109:35]
Joe Rogan
get shut down and people were really worried. They had stocking food and water.
- [109:41]
Radhika Apte
It was the end of the world. I remember.
- [109:42]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [109:44]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [109:44]
Joe Rogan
Meanwhile, nothing happened.
- [109:46]
Radhika Apte
It's the most anticlimactic ever.
- [109:48]
Joe Rogan
It's like rolled over on the East Coast. And I was like, nothing happened.
- [109:52]
Radhika Apte
Literally the next morning, I was like, okay, nothing happened.
- [109:57]
Joe Rogan
Well, they were really worried because these things that they had programmed, they didn't program to go past the 1990s. And so when 2000 came along, a lot of people thought it was going to be the end of the world.
- [110:09]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [110:10]
Joe Rogan
Well, there was another one. December 21, 2012.
- [110:13]
Radhika Apte
What was that?
- [110:13]
Joe Rogan
That was the end of the long count of the Mayan calendar. And a lot of the really kooky people thought that.
- [110:19]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, that the world would be ending.
- [110:21]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. The return of Quetzalcoatl and the world was going to end, and the apocalypse, meanwhile. Nothing. Nothing happened.
- [110:28]
Radhika Apte
It's okay. There'll be nothing for a little while.
- [110:30]
Joe Rogan
But it might not have been nothing, because if you really stop and think about it, like, around 2012, there's a gigantic transformation, because that's like, when social media becomes ubiquitous. You know, cell phones, iPhones are out now. Things got a little weird. They definitely got weird. So it might have.
- [110:47]
Radhika Apte
There's something. Yeah, there was something there.
- [110:50]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Been like, the emerging of. Because, I mean, this is the Mayan calendar, right? So the. This is a long fucking time ago. They predicted these cycles, although the Hindus did that too. Right. Like, that was a big part of the. The Yugas. Right. And we are now in Kali Yuga, the age of confusion. And that there's these cycles of humanity that they've documented throughout history.
- [111:15]
Radhika Apte
It's so crazy. Like, if you go down the. Again, I'm not. I don't have as much historical information as I should, but if you read the Gita and the Vedas and whatever little I've heard from my family. And it's so interesting how much of human life is predicted and also is like, when you read about the history of what from the lens of these books, of what used to exist, then, like, it all seems believable. It all seems like, oh, yeah, this makes sense. And to think about these books having been written thousands and thousands of years ago, like, it makes me think, what thousands of years from now will people be thinking of our time? Like, will we be the first. We are the first generation that has seen the Internet, right? Like, has seen what? The World Wide Web. Like, the beginning of. I still remember making myself sound ancient, but the sound of that ee. Oh, yeah.
- [112:25]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah. That was good. That was exact.
- [112:32]
Radhika Apte
We're the last generation that knows time without it. So, like, think that many years ago, like, we will be the beginning. The first. First people that encountered artificial Intelligence, like, what will that be?
- [112:49]
Joe Rogan
And you and I are the first generation of people that experience life with no Internet and then Internet and then cell phones and then all in one lifetime, which is probably the greatest transformation that human beings have ever experienced. At least before the, you know, whatever the fuck happened. We don't know whatever happened.
- [113:10]
Radhika Apte
Ancient aliens.
- [113:10]
Joe Rogan
But when I read these depictions from these ancient religious texts, I always try to imagine what, what was life like back then and what were they trying to document and how much of, like, how much of it can we even understand today? Like if, if, if there isn't some sort of an impact on Earth maybe, you know, 150, 200 years from now, and a small amount of people remain and they have this oral history of the birth of the Internet.
- [113:44]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [113:44]
Joe Rogan
And the oral history of the birth of AI. What is that story going to be? And then one day the scientists gave birth to the God. Like, what is that?
- [113:52]
Radhika Apte
That's what I mean, like the next gener will this AI be referred to? Or the cloud. Right, where all our. Yeah, like all our shit's in the cloud.
- [114:03]
Joe Rogan
Like, which is ridiculous because it's down here. Like, why are you calling it the cloud?
- [114:08]
Radhika Apte
Because it doesn't exist. I was trying to explain that to my mom. I was like, mom, upload your shit to the cloud.
- [114:14]
Joe Rogan
Sounds like a seated. A sitcom,
- [114:18]
Radhika Apte
please.
- [114:20]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I mean, we won't know how to describe. I mean, especially if you, if you survive. Right, so if, if. Let's say we get hit by asteroids again and let's say civilization gets knocked down to 70,000 people or so, which has happened before. Yeah, like, and those people are essentially barbarians. Barbarians and monsters. And it is raiding each other for resources and stealing wives and killing children and whatever's left. Then you got thousands and thousands of years of living like this. Before agriculture gets reinvented, civilization gets reinvented. And this is the hypothesis about the younger dryest impact, which is why the period between this insanely advanced civilization that existed pre 11,800 years ago and then the emergence of advanced civilization in Mesopotamia 6,000 years ago, that means you have 5,000 plus years of utter chaos where no one's writing down and it's just,
- [115:17]
Radhika Apte
just trying to survive at that.
- [115:19]
Joe Rogan
Hard living.
- [115:19]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [115:20]
Joe Rogan
And then those people have stories that have been passed down generation after generation after generation. So like, if we get wiped out for the most part after AI gets invented, and then people try to describe it.
- [115:35]
Radhika Apte
So crazy.
- [115:36]
Joe Rogan
And then maybe it all starts all over again, you know, like the people that have you Seen those things? They do. I think it's the History Channel or Discovery Channel where they show what New York City would look like if left alone for a thousand years. It just all goes away. It all collapses.
- [115:53]
Radhika Apte
Just left alone. And no one's touching.
- [115:54]
Joe Rogan
Just left alone. Just with the nature. Just with rain and everything that happens in snow and time. The concrete crumbles. It all just eventually gets absorbed into the earth. All this. The metal rusts away. It's gone. In 10,000 years, there's nothing left. And so Manhattan would just be like it probably was when the Native Americans were living. It'd be just trees and animals and forest, and no one would have any idea that at one point in time, this was a crazy, thriving economy. And there was subways and how vulnerable is that?
- [116:30]
Radhika Apte
Like, how vulnerable is human civilization? Like, I think about somebody switched off the Internet.
- [116:37]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah. Or the power goes out, like. Yeah.
- [116:42]
Radhika Apte
What would we do?
- [116:43]
Joe Rogan
We're fucked. Yeah.
- [116:44]
Radhika Apte
Just something as simple as that. Like, I grew up in India, where the power would go out all the time when I grew up, and it was like, all right, bring the candles out. We used to have these emergency lights right next to our bed. Like, it was. It was fine. My parents were in the military. We used to live in these military homes. The lights would go out, and I remember, you know, we used to play with the torches, and we used to go outside at night, which was never allowed otherwise. And it was, like, so fun. But now we depend so much on electricity and, like, you know, the Internet especially, like, all your shit's on your phone. Your whole life's on your phone.
- [117:15]
Joe Rogan
Yep.
- [117:16]
Radhika Apte
It's such a, like, crazy concept to think about what would happen, how vulnerable we are.
- [117:23]
Joe Rogan
Super vulnerable. Yeah, super vulnerable. Just the power grid alone. The power grid goes down, we're fucked.
- [117:29]
Radhika Apte
It's crazy.
- [117:30]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And if someone wanted to attack America, that's what they would attack. If you really want to destroy America, destroy our power grid. It wouldn't be that hard.
- [117:38]
Radhika Apte
It's not good.
- [117:40]
Joe Rogan
Well, I think they already have those ideas. I don't think it's a.
- [117:43]
Radhika Apte
No, it's true. But that's. That's what I'm like. It's so scary to think about, like, how much power we've. And how much power we've given to, you know, technology.
- [117:52]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [117:53]
Radhika Apte
And being able to live with those conveniences.
- [117:56]
Joe Rogan
It's like we're in a flimsy boat in the middle of the ocean, just hoping it doesn't take water on because we needed to stay alive. Yeah, we didn't think about that when we left the shore.
- [118:05]
Radhika Apte
No.
- [118:06]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. I mean, the only people that are going to survive are preppers, which is probably the kind of people that survived, you know, thousands and thousands of years ago.
- [118:14]
Radhika Apte
I do, I mean, I. I like a go bag. Like, Yeah, I like having a go bag.
- [118:20]
Joe Rogan
Get out bag. Yeah, I like a bug out bag.
- [118:23]
Radhika Apte
Just with like, I like to know where my stuff is. That if you got a jet. If I got a jet. Like, we were, we had. We live in la and when the fires happened, I remember standing in my room and just thinking for a second because we were going to evacuate. And my husband was like, just, he wasn't in town. He was like, just pack a go bag. And I just, I was like, what. How. How do I cram my whole life in a bag? Like, if. If the fires consume a home? And so many people lost their entire lives in those fires. And it just made me really think about what was really important. And the stuff that I ended up taking, which was very telling later, was like, sentimental stuff, of course, like passport and like birth certificates and like all of that important paperwork which I needed to have. But like, I took our daughter's first haircut. I took like something that I had from this old movie of mine. I took like, yeah, things that, that I guess I would not be able to replicate, which was so weird.
- [119:30]
Joe Rogan
Well, I think that's the good thing about phones, is that you have so many photos on your phones that go back years you like. I have photos of my daughters as children all the way into the teenage years.
- [119:41]
Radhika Apte
Have you done anything with those pictures? Are they still on your phone?
- [119:45]
Joe Rogan
Well, I mean. You mean take.
- [119:46]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, like, I don't know, made an albums or like done like a photograph,
- [119:52]
Joe Rogan
like of them at various stages of their life. But just the fact that at any time I could go back to my phone and look at them. Aww, look at little tiny baby. You know, it's cool. That part is really cool.
- [120:04]
Radhika Apte
I love that I have pictures that I would never have looked at and I'm talking to a friend of mine and be like, what were we doing in March, whatever, 2012? And you can go back and be like. And just know exactly what was happening in that moment.
- [120:18]
Joe Rogan
It is cool. So in that sense, like, sentimentality, like, just need your phone, just get out of there, you know, really. Because you have all these images of your children and your family and your
- [120:28]
Radhika Apte
friends, all your important stuff. Yeah.
- [120:31]
Joe Rogan
Friends that you miss that have died. I have one phone that I Keep that. I've never thrown out. It's like a six or seven year old phone because a friend of mine left a voicemail on it. So just keep that because he's dead. And so it's just like go back and listen to his voice, you know. But when. I've been evacuated three times when I lived in la, we used to live in a place called Bell Canyon. And it got hit by fires a lot. Like the last fire that happened in 2018, three houses that were right next to my house burnt to the ground. I think like 50 houses in the community burnt down. It was bad. And when you are faced with that, I came home from the Comedy Store, it was probably like midnight, and my wife was in the kitchen and we were, we were looking out at the fire over the top of the hill and we were sitting there talking about. I go, what do you think? And she's like, I don't like it. I said, I think we should get the out of here now. And before it ever gets even close, let's just get out of here now and go get a hotel in town. And so we did. And we were there for many days. Well, along with my friend Tom Segura and his family too. So it was fun that we're all like hanging out together, camping.
- [121:36]
Radhika Apte
It looked like a volcano.
- [121:37]
Joe Rogan
It was nuts.
- [121:38]
Radhika Apte
And like I could see it from our backyard and I was like.
- [121:41]
Joe Rogan
Was nuts. It was nuts when you see it overcome an enormous chunk of land and a hill. Like, there was one time we were filming Fear Factor. Oh yeah.
- [121:51]
Radhika Apte
And the power and the enormity of it. Like, we can see the hills from our house and I could see it completely taking over.
- [121:58]
Joe Rogan
Oh yeah, the hill, Palisades one was nuts. That one was nuts because it was the biggest one by far and the most destructive one by far. But I remember when I was on Fear Factor, there was a fireman that we were, that was on the set and we were talking and he said, it's just a matter of time before one day the right wind comes and a fire just blows right through all of la. I go, really? He goes, we can't stop it. He goes, with the right wind, if the fire hits the right place and it catches the right amount of houses, it's over. I'm like, what?
- [122:32]
Radhika Apte
That's crazy.
- [122:33]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. When, when you experience like we. One time we had to end Fear Factor. Well, we, we ended filming and then I had to drive home and the entire right hand side of the highway was on fire for an hour an Hour. So an hour of driving and you just. Just saw nothing but fire and ash. Was raining like it was snowing.
- [122:54]
Radhika Apte
Oh, my God. Yeah, it was raining like it was snowing.
- [122:58]
Joe Rogan
It was crazy. And that's. That's so common in California. I mean, California is just a weird place. And that they have fire season.
- [123:08]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [123:08]
Joe Rogan
Because everything gets so dry. It never rains. But those moments where you go, well, what matters? Just your life.
- [123:15]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. That's what I felt in that moment. I was like, wow. The stuff I took was just, like, life stuff, you know?
- [123:23]
Joe Rogan
And oddly enough, it makes you more thankful and more connected to the people that you're with. And you, like, you realize, like, oh, this could all go away. This could all go away at any moment. Like, what's really important. Love, friendship, companionship. Like, that's what's really important. Your health. Stay alive. That's what's really important. All that other stuff is this thing we forget about.
- [123:45]
Radhika Apte
Like, that's something. Shouldn't we be living with that every day?
- [123:50]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, but we're dumb. We're a combination of dumb and smart.
- [123:55]
Radhika Apte
Stupid and smart, where we're like, oh, I know that, but I don't know it, and I'm not gonna.
- [124:00]
Joe Rogan
It's hard for us to keep those things, which is why a lot of people like meditating, because it, like, refreshes their idea of what's important and what's real and how much of what's going on in their life. They're just sort of caught up in the momentum of these things to the point where it's. They're not thinking about it anymore. They're just doing it, you know, I
- [124:17]
Radhika Apte
think most of us end up becoming just, like, doers. Right. And come from the land of meditation. But I've never. Like, my mind works so fast. I don't know if it's my ADHD or what it is, but I find it really hard to sit and meditate. My. I feel like. But from my limited understanding, I think meditation really is being able to take time in the day. Now, whatever your version of that might be doesn't necessarily mean to sit with a guru or, like, chant, you know, do chanting or whatever. It just needs to. Like, even if you're taking time to go work out or read a book or just taking time out of the mundane nature of life and just giving yourself a second for your thoughts to clear. I think that's what I try to do.
- [125:06]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Hit the brakes on the momentum.
- [125:08]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Just for a minute.
- [125:09]
Joe Rogan
Just catch your breath and think. Think about Things. And just because so many people, they're just so caught up in either goals or a path or a career or whatever it is that's leading or their bills, they can't keep up with the bills. So they're just like.
- [125:24]
Radhika Apte
Or like life stuff, you know, and it's actually a luxury to be able to have the time to waste. You know, there's. We work so hard in life, everyone's trying to survive, you know, be a parent, pay your bills. Like, just adulting stuff can get so overwhelming, and then the nature of the world on top of that. But, like, I. I always feel like I never take for granted when I have a little bit of time where I can just like, not think of or have an agenda, but just be with my family and just like, sort of languidly let it waste. Just, what are we gonna do? No plans, you know, let's order some food, let's watch a movie. Let's. Like, the problem, the greatest treasure.
- [126:11]
Joe Rogan
Phones have filled in those gaps.
- [126:13]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [126:13]
Joe Rogan
And that's what I try to be
- [126:14]
Radhika Apte
aware of that, though. You know, I think, like, of course you can always have your phone, but I like to be aware of, oh, this is a moment where I don't need to have my phone. So it's okay. It'll be blown up. By the time I come back, there'll be 300 messages. I know that. I'm aware of it, but I mentally check my, you know, and I put it away.
- [126:34]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, yeah, that's smart. Most people don't do that.
- [126:37]
Radhika Apte
It's not easy.
- [126:38]
Joe Rogan
No.
- [126:39]
Radhika Apte
Because our whole lives are on there. And there's so much, again, like, in real time, information that's coming at you.
- [126:45]
Joe Rogan
It's also this weird dopamine pull that's very minor. Like, it's not giving you any. If you look to your phone. Every time you look to your phone, you're like, oh, my God, I feel so good. Oh, my God, I feel so relaxed, you know, like just an amazing burst of joy every time. But you don't even get that. You just get this little.
- [127:02]
Radhika Apte
Huh.
- [127:02]
Joe Rogan
That's crazy. What's that? What's next? What's next? What's next? What's next? Keep me occupied. Keep me from getting bored.
- [127:09]
Radhika Apte
But imagine, like, if you can't find your phone, the. The panic, like, of, oh, my gosh, where is my phone? Where is that information? What do I do?
- [127:17]
Joe Rogan
I never leave my house. If I can't find it, I'll be late as fuck. Yeah, I'm never gonna go. I Don't need that thing. What? I'm just gonna drive with no phone?
- [127:26]
Radhika Apte
No phone.
- [127:27]
Joe Rogan
What if someone needs to contact me?
- [127:28]
Radhika Apte
Crazy.
- [127:29]
Joe Rogan
That's not. That's nutty talk. Yeah, but meanwhile, that was every day. When I was younger, it was a normal thing. Just drove, just left the house.
- [127:38]
Radhika Apte
You don't even remember what life was like without those phones.
- [127:41]
Joe Rogan
Also, I don't know how to go anywhere. Yeah, I don't know how to get anywhere. Unless I have my navigation.
- [127:45]
Radhika Apte
I literally have no idea how to go anywhere. I anyway, feel like I have dyslexia when it comes to directions. But without navigation, zero. It's impossible.
- [127:54]
Joe Rogan
I know no one's phone number. I know my friend Eddie's phone number by heart. Cause I knew it before the phones. He's had the same phone forever. And I know my wife's phone number and I know like at least one of my daughter's phone numbers. But I can't memorize my mom.
- [128:09]
Radhika Apte
I know my mom's. I had to memorize my husband's number. Like I didn't remember it for years. And he was like, you don't remember my number?
- [128:18]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's like you on the phone, you press the button. Why would I need to remember it?
- [128:22]
Radhika Apte
But then I memorized it because I was like, you never know. You know, use my phone. I need to go to jail. Use my emergency, emergency contact. Like I need to remember. That's what he was like. I think you should maybe remember my number. And your Social Security.
- [128:34]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, Social Security. I have memorized. But I used to when I was a kid. I had every number memorized. I knew all my friends numbers.
- [128:40]
Radhika Apte
How cool. Me too.
- [128:42]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [128:42]
Radhika Apte
Was it because the numbers were shorter then?
- [128:44]
Joe Rogan
No, no, there was.
- [128:46]
Radhika Apte
Because we had few fewer numbers.
- [128:49]
Joe Rogan
You had to remember them. There was no other option. Unless you had a fucking address book. Like, I used to have an address book.
- [128:54]
Radhika Apte
I had an address book.
- [128:55]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, a little tiny book. And it was. All the little tabs were R, S, T, you know, like you go through.
- [129:02]
Radhika Apte
I was very proud of my little address book, by the way. Everyone's numbers. I was very organized about it. I had it in alphabetical order.
- [129:08]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. I remember when I'd get a new one, I'd be like, God, I gotta write all these down again. And you'd go through it, make sure you got them all. But. Yeah.
- [129:15]
Radhika Apte
How analog was our life? How crazy.
- [129:18]
Joe Rogan
Well, I'm older than you, so I remember when you used to have to press the phone, the wheel, when you have to dial.
- [129:24]
Radhika Apte
Wow.
- [129:26]
Joe Rogan
And if you fucked up somewhere, you had to redo the whole thing.
- [129:29]
Radhika Apte
Yes, the whole thing. I remember that my grandfather used to have that phone. We used to love it. Yeah, the whole.
- [129:37]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. I mean, that's all inside of a lifetime. And now here we are, where who knows what's gonna happen and what's coming. Yeah.
- [129:46]
Radhika Apte
We can't even keep up with the technology. We don't know that it's come. That is coming. Now you were talking about something, and I was like, we haven't been able to cure some of the deadliest diseases that have plagued mankind. But technology has gone so far in so many other aspects.
- [130:05]
Joe Rogan
There's also. The financial incentive is not to cure. It's to treat, of course, which is unfortunate. I mean, one of the.
- [130:12]
Radhika Apte
That's what makes the most sense.
- [130:13]
Joe Rogan
A guy used to work at Pfizer said that if we ever came up with some sort of. I think it was Pfizer, one of the pharmaceutical drug companies said if we ever came up with a cure, they buried it. He goes, we don't want cures.
- [130:23]
Radhika Apte
I mean, that's the conspiracy. I lost my dad to cancer, and I kept thinking about, like, how is it possible that we live in a world where technology is able to provide so much to us and not be able to have cures to diseases like that?
- [130:39]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's also very strange that we financially incentivize companies in weird ways to keep us sick. Like, if you make more money, if people are sick and they need more medication, unfortunately, there's a financial incentive to keep people sick. Like, you would like them to be more sick. That way you make more money. And if you are a CEO of a corporation, you actually have an obligation to your shareholders to make more money. So if you know of something like, you know, all these people need to do is just stop doing that. If I just put that on my substack, and then you go, oh, this will kill our stock. I'll keep it to myself.
- [131:18]
Radhika Apte
That's crazy.
- [131:20]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it's demonic. It's kind of demonic. It's kind of. There's. There's weird aspects. Like what? I don't know if I really believe in demons, but I definitely believe in demonic acts. And there's certain things that human beings have done and do do that are very demonic. Like if you were possessed by a demon, you would drop a nuclear bomb on a city. You know, the demon would go, there's only one way to stop this. You got to kill everybody in that city. Just drop it. Drop it like that's. Why you would do it. Like, I'm not saying that's why it was done, but I was saying, but I am saying that if a demon could convince you to drop a nuclear bomb, because a person with a conscience would be like, well, these are just people down there. They have nothing to do with this war. That doesn't make any sense at all. These are just people living, living their lives. They have their families. And we're just gonna incinerate an entire city and with one bomb that I drop out of a plane. That's crazy.
- [132:14]
Radhika Apte
At the. You know, you just press a button.
- [132:16]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And as technology advances, it gets easier and easier to do that.
- [132:20]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [132:21]
Joe Rogan
You know, in these, these war games that they've played with AI, they've used nuclear weapons almost every time they could.
- [132:30]
Radhika Apte
Oh, my God.
- [132:32]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. They have no reason. If they want to achieve a result, they realize they have a nuclear weapon. Why wouldn't I use that? Use that. So you. I think it was like something like 90 plus percent of the time they've done these war games, these simulated war games. The AI programs have used nuclear weapons. To them, it's like, I don't understand. You're going to kill a hundred thousand people over a course of five years of parole.
- [132:58]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Might as well just do it now. Do it once.
- [133:01]
Joe Rogan
Like, if they had done what's happened to Gaza, if they had done that with one bomb instead of thousands of bombs, would that be somehow less humane? Would that be more barbaric? If Israel just said, oh, okay, we're gonna nuke Gaza, the world would have gone crazy. They would have been like, you can't do that. This is horrible. I mean, the world has already gone kind of crazy for what they did do. But if they achieved the exact same result but instantaneously instead of over a course of a couple of years, how do you think people would react? It's kind of weird.
- [133:36]
Radhika Apte
All of it is awful.
- [133:37]
Joe Rogan
It's horrible.
- [133:38]
Radhika Apte
Just like, just the capacity of the thing also is when you, when you think about, like, what drives human beings to do the things that they do. Right. It's the devil talking to you. The conflict of interest within yourself. But also thousands of years of history, isn't it?
- [134:02]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And we've become accustomed to it.
- [134:05]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [134:06]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. It's normal. War is normal.
- [134:08]
Radhika Apte
Like, it's normalized for us so much. But it's like there's so many aspects to every conflict which is so hard to simplify into. Like, why?
- [134:20]
Joe Rogan
Not only that, there's a lot of stuff that's going on behind the scenes that you're never privy to. So you just get narratives that are fed to you by bureaucrats and politicians
- [134:29]
Radhika Apte
or whatever little information that comes at you.
- [134:32]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. And so, you know, and then there's this. In this country in particular, there's the right versus the left. And the left will blame it on the right and the right will blame it on the left. And then, you know, everybody has these very convenient CNN Fox News narratives that they'll repeat at coffee, you know, coffee shops and cocktail parties. And you pretend that you're making sense out of this thing when you don't even really know what's going on behind the scenes.
- [134:57]
Radhika Apte
That's what I really feel like. I feel like a lot of times we've been given a platform to talk. Right. With social media, like everyone can talk and there's a power to that, but there's also a big misuse of it where you really don't know. And you're not the authority on perspective at all because there's so much that you would probably not know of history and the geography and of why people behave the way they are behaving. So I like to. Unless I'm the expert on something which I'm not on anything except my job, that too limited. You know, I just try to kind of have a larger understanding from a human perspective.
- [135:48]
Joe Rogan
That's a great sign of intelligence because there's no way you can know everything about everything. And with certain things, especially a global conflicts, like what is happening? Like, why is this going on? Like I was telling you about when I went on the deep dive of the East India Corporation, I never had any idea that they went to war with China over opium.
- [136:08]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, got them addicted first.
- [136:09]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, got them addicted. Went to war with China, stole Hong Kong.
- [136:14]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Like what the gravity of manipulation in human history is. Is insane. Like, even when the East India Company and they started with trading with India too many, many years ago, we just got off.
- [136:31]
Joe Rogan
Started innocent.
- [136:32]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, completely. We're your friends. We're, you know, allies. We're friends with all the royalty in India. So many royals in India and royal. Each state had their own kings and princes and became friends with everyone. Started with tea. Started with trading tea and spices and then just went into, you know, I mean, we got our independence in 1947, which was. It's not even 100 years since we got our independence. It's that recent. But you think about just within the last century, there were, you know, signs which said Indians and dogs not allowed in India by the British. Like, within this century.
- [137:14]
Joe Rogan
Indians and dogs in India. Wow.
- [137:19]
Radhika Apte
Isn't that crazy? Like, and this is like the. This is not even. Like, this is the head of the iceberg. There's so much more when you do a deep dive into the history of colonization, which is why this movie was also so interesting to me, because it. It touches on the themes of, you know, the colonized and the story from their perspective, which is, like, not a lot of what we hear.
- [137:43]
Joe Rogan
No, not at all. At all. I mean, there's a lot of great historical elements in that. Just the pirate thing alone. The fact that most of the time in human history, when a boat showed up, there was a real fucking problem.
- [137:56]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. And what real, real pirates. Like, we've gotten so used to, you know, with the Disney version of the. And I love the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, don't get me wrong. They're so fun, but, like, the pirate jokes and whatever, but they were fucking brutal. They were murderers, like.
- [138:13]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Horrific monsters.
- [138:14]
Radhika Apte
Horrifying, horrible life.
- [138:16]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. I had a joke about that once. Like, why is it okay to be a pirate for Halloween? How crazy it is for little kids.
- [138:22]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, you're a murderer. Rapist.
- [138:26]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Oh, look at his little hook. He lost his hand raping. I mean, that was what the pirates were. They were horrific monsters. And they would travel around the world just stealing people's stuff and killing everybody. Yeah. And now that happened for thousands.
- [138:43]
Radhika Apte
And helping with colonization. Yeah, for years.
- [138:46]
Joe Rogan
And the fact that they were soldiers for the East India Corporation, they were actually working for them to go take over these areas.
- [138:52]
Radhika Apte
And the best soldiers from around the world. Yeah, the best mercenaries, murderers from around the world.
- [138:59]
Joe Rogan
A larger army than most European countries.
- [139:01]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [139:01]
Joe Rogan
So a corporation.
- [139:03]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. And it's like an army.
- [139:05]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, yeah, essentially. But started off just trading, just super innocent.
- [139:11]
Radhika Apte
Hi, I'm your friend and I'm here for your ban. And they'll be so respectful with, you know, the former kings and queens. And it's wild, the manipulation of it.
- [139:21]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's also wild how when you do have an obligation to your shareholders and you do have this mandate to just constantly make more money, the morals go out the window. And next thing you know, East India Corporation's involved in slavery.
- [139:35]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. They used to call it divide and conquer, where they would get all the princes of each state, like, to fight amongst each other. So instead of India being divided, collective and together, she was, like, divided between everyone fighting for each other so they could take over. It's like mental games.
- [139:54]
Joe Rogan
Well, that's what people think is going on in America right now, I mean, I think that's the manipulation of the right versus left here when most. Most people kind of want the same thing. They just want to be healthy and safe and have their families healthy and safe and do a job and come back home. That's what most people want.
- [140:10]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [140:11]
Joe Rogan
But then the division is like constantly in the news. This constant struggle. It's the only thing that you hear about. Yeah, we're both dumb and stupid and smart.
- [140:23]
Radhika Apte
Smart and stupid at the same time.
- [140:24]
Joe Rogan
Stupid at the same time, but more dumb. And that's the other thing about technology. It allows you to stay dumb because everything's done for you. You don't really have to think outside the box that much. Everything's kind of laid out for you.
- [140:38]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Like if you think about AI in Hollywood now, that's weird, right? It's like if you. It's in writers rooms, it's used as a tool. But I was listening to that podcast with Ben and Matt on your show, and you guys were talking about, you know, basically everything that AI has or the information that it provides to you is an average of everything that's out there. Right. So it'll never be excellent because it's the average of all the information out there. So it's like trying to do a median. But I'm just thinking about how it's become a tool that is going to exist in our world now. The question is the morality of it and the lines that we draw where we protect human beings and human contribution and are able to delineate the difference between what is created by AI and what is not. You know, and the need for. I think human flaws are something that I don't know if AI will be able to recreate anytime soon. And that, like, in art, that's what you need, right?
- [141:57]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. You'll get facsimiles.
- [141:59]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [142:00]
Joe Rogan
But you won't get the real thing. It's like the hollowness of AI music. AI music is really fun, but after a while you realize there's not a dude singing this and there's not like
- [142:09]
Radhika Apte
a soul to it.
- [142:10]
Joe Rogan
It's weird. It's empty.
- [142:12]
Radhika Apte
Yeah.
- [142:12]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [142:12]
Radhika Apte
So far. But who knows?
- [142:14]
Joe Rogan
That's the problem. It could figure out a way to manipulate that part of your brain that reproduces whatever soulful music is or whatever the soul is.
- [142:25]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about, like, being an actor. I was like, is that gonna be obsolete in the next, like, 10 years? Are we gonna be watching it?
- [142:34]
Joe Rogan
Kinda could be, yeah.
- [142:36]
Radhika Apte
Are we gonna be watching, like, really good AI actors probably, you know, until I need to find a new job.
- [142:46]
Joe Rogan
Well, I think a lot of people are gonna have to find a new job. I think live performances, plays and musicals and stuff like that, people are always gonna want to see people do something.
- [142:53]
Radhika Apte
Live for sure.
- [142:55]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [142:56]
Radhika Apte
But when it comes to cinema, especially, because I feel like audiences also love larger than life cinema. Right. Like, we go to the theaters to watch this, like, big shit. We loved when VFX came into movies. We loved the imagination being able to be so big. I do think AI helps in a big way to take away the burdens of, you know, the minutiae of things that we might have to do as a tool, which it can do, like a breakdown of a script or whatever. But I think when it comes to like, like creating the human, like, human fragility of life and story, it is still a little bit away from being able to do that.
- [143:42]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. I think it's always going to be like, pop. Yeah. It's never going to create, like, Taxi Driver.
- [143:48]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [143:50]
Joe Rogan
You need. I mean. But I might be wrong about that, too.
- [143:53]
Radhika Apte
Yeah. Who knows?
- [143:54]
Joe Rogan
It might not even matter by the time it starts taking over all of our resources.
- [143:59]
Radhika Apte
I'm so curious, actually, to see how many conversations that everyone, all of us have had about, you know, this emergence of AI and how that, like, stays 10 years later. Are we like this. Did this age?
- [144:11]
Joe Rogan
Well, probably not.
- [144:12]
Radhika Apte
Did I know what I was talking about?
- [144:14]
Joe Rogan
We probably have no idea what's going on. No.
- [144:16]
Radhika Apte
No chance.
- [144:16]
Joe Rogan
It's probably gonna be. So we didn't have any idea about
- [144:18]
Radhika Apte
this, like, where we would be right now.
- [144:20]
Joe Rogan
It might be Dr. Manhattan floating over the country telling us what to do.
- [144:25]
Radhika Apte
Yeah, it's possible.
- [144:28]
Joe Rogan
I don't know. But thank you for being here. I really enjoyed it. It was a really fun conversation and I really enjoyed your movie. It was crazy violent. I didn't expect that. But very exciting and very good.
- [144:38]
Radhika Apte
Thank you for taking me around the world and everywhere else. We time traveled, we talked about the whole world. We went into history, we went into the future. It was awesome.
- [144:47]
Joe Rogan
Well, congratulations to you and K. Continued success.
- [144:50]
Radhika Apte
Thank you, Joe. Thank you.
- [144:51]
Joe Rogan
I really enjoyed it.
- [144:52]
Radhika Apte
Thank you. Me too.
- [144:52]
Joe Rogan
All right, bye, everybody.
- [144:54]
Radhika Apte
Bye.