Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman: The Education System is Broken!

And I gotta call you out on something. So you talk about education systems sometimes. I've heard you say a little broken in high school and so on. I'm not really calling you out. I just want to talk about it because I think it's important. And as somebody who loves math, you talked about your own journey was school didn't give you passion and value. You can maybe talk to that. But for me, what I always... Maybe I'm sick in the head or something. But for me, math was exciting the way martial arts were exciting for you because it was really hard. I wanted to quit. And the idea of education I have that seems to be flawed nowadays a little bit is that we want to make education easier. That we want to make more accessible and so on. Accessible, of course, is great. But you kind of forget in that. And those are all good goals. You forget in that that it's supposed to be also hard. And teachers, just the way you're a wrestling coach, if you quit, you say, I can't do anymore. I have to... You come up with some kind of excuse. Your wrestling coach looks at you once and says, get your ass back on the mat. The same way I wish math teachers did. When people say, it's almost like cool now to say, it's not math sucks. Math's not for me. Or science sucks. As teachers, boring. I think there's room for some culture where it says, no, no, no, you're not. If you just put in the time and you struggle, then that opens up the universe to you. Like whether you become Neil deGrasse Tyson or the next Fields Medal winner in mathematics. I would not argue with you for one second. I would also say that one of the more beautiful things about human beings is that we vary so much. And that one person who is just obsessed with playing the trombone. And to me, I don't give a fuck about trombones. But that's okay. Like I can't be obsessed about everything. Some people love golf, and they just want to play it all day long. I've never played golf a day in my life, except miniature golf. And just fucking around. But that doesn't... It's not bad or good. And I think there's definitely some skills that you learn from mathematics that are hugely significant if you want to go into type of fields that you're involved in. For me, it's never been appealing. But it's not that it was just difficult. It's also that it just, for whatever reason, who I was at that time in that school with those teachers, having a life experience that I had, that was not what I was drawn to. What I was drawn to was literature. I was drawn to reading. I was drawn to stories. I was drawn to possibilities and creativity. I was drawn to all those things. You were an artist of it, too. Yeah. I used to want to be a comic book illustrator. That was a big thing when I was young. I was really into comic books. I was really into traditional comic books and also a lot of the horror comics from the 1970s, the black and white, like creepy and eerie. Did you ever see those things? Like creepy and eerie? Like black and white? Yeah. They were a comic book series that existed way back in the day. They were all horror. They were really cool illustrations and these wild stories. But it was comic books. But they were all black and white. That's creepy and eerie. Oh, that's the actual name. Yeah. Eerie and creepy were the names. That was from what year was that? It says September, but it doesn't say what year. I used to get these when I was a little kid, man. I was like eight, nine years old in the 70s. Good and evil. Yeah. They were my favorite. That's a cover of them. They would have covers that were done by Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, and just really cool shit. And I was fat. I loved those when I was little. I was always really into horror movies and really into like Bram... Look at this, werewolf one. That was one of my favorite ones. That was a crazy werewolf that was like all fours. Who's the hero usually? Superhero or a rosette? Everybody dies. That's the beautiful thing about it. Everybody gets fucked over. There's nobody... That was the thing that I really liked about them. Nobody made it out alive. There was no one guy who figured it out and rescued the woman and they rode off in the sunset. You'd turn the corner and there'd be a fucking pack of wolves with glowing eyes waiting to tear everybody apart. And that'd be the end of the book. I was just really into the illustrations. I found them fascinating. I loved those kind of horror movies and I loved those kinds of illustrations. So that's what I wanted to do when I was young. Yeah, I think the education system is probably... We talked about creativity. It's probably not as good at inspiring and feeding that creativity. Because I think math and wrestling can be taught systematically. I think creativity is something... Well, actually I know nothing about it. So I think it's harder to take somebody like you when you're young and say... And inspire you to pursue that fire or whatever is inside. Well, one of the best ways to inspire people is by giving them... Giving them these alternatives that are so uninteresting. Like saying, you're going to get a job selling washing machines. And you're like, fuck that. I'm going to figure out a way to not get a job selling washing machines. Like some of the best motivations that I've ever had have been terrible jobs. Because you have these terrible jobs and you go, okay, fuck that. I'm going to figure out a way to not do this. And whether you want to call it ADD or ADHD or whatever it is that makes kids squirm in class. I didn't squirm in every class. I didn't squirm in science class. I didn't squirm in interesting subjects. There's things that were interesting to me that I would be locked in and completely fascinated by. And there's things where I just couldn't wait to run out of that room. And I don't know what the reason is. But I do know that a lot of what we call our education system is engineered for a very specific result. And that result is you want to get a kid who can sit in class and learn so that they can sit in a job and perform. And that for whatever reason, that was just I mean, I didn't have the ideal childhood. Maybe if I did, I would be more inclined to lean that way. But I didn't want to do anything like that. Like I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of school. So I didn't ever have to listen to anybody like that again. And then just a few years later, I mean, you graduate from high school when you're 18. When I was 21, I was a standup comic. And I was like, I found it. This is it. I'm like, good. I found there's an actual job that nobody told me about where you could just make fun of shit. And people go out and they pay money to hear you create jokes and routines and bits.