Joe Rogan discusses Malaria, Zika, and Toxoplasma

Hello freak bitches. I just read this book about the making of the Panama Canal and they talk about, you know, when the French, you know, the French first tried to do it, they went in in the late 19th century and they, you know, you got to think technology in the late 19th century. They didn't have fucking electricity. They didn't have shit. They had giant machines and they were trying to bulldoze a canal through the most dense tropical jungle that you could get through. And they lost something like 20% of the people that went down there died of malaria and yellow fever, which are both mosquito-borne diseases. So they go down there and they fight it out for like 10 years. They keep sending people down. They keep dying, keep sending people down, keep dying. And even if you don't die, you're working 14 hour days in jungle heat with a fucking, with a little spade. And then all of a sudden they'd get a monster rain and everything you'd excavated, there'd be a mudslide. It would fill it right up again. They'd start all over. There were snakes. There was fucking mountain lions. And they just finally gave up. Finally France just went fuck this. They had bled hundreds of millions of dollars. And so then the US stepped in and they go, we can do it. So we came in and some guy had realized that mosquitoes were the problem. Nobody knew that malaria and yellow fever were mosquito-borne. For whatever reason, they just thought it was fucking popping out out of the dirt. They thought it was like fumes coming out of the dirt. And this guy's like, no, it's fucking mosquitoes. So he came in with a team of like 10 people and they just started educating people about how to get rid of mosquitoes, which is basically get rid of standing water. And so instead of having mud roads, they poured concrete. And instead of having open barrels that people would collect rainwater in, they would put sheets over them and fucking gone. That's it? That's all they had to do to stop the mosquitoes? All they had to do was no deaths from malaria and yellow fever after the first couple of years they started construction. That's incredible. So they just figured out a way to stop the mosquitoes from breeding without poison? Without poison. That's incredible. I would have thought they would just age an orange the fuck out of that place. Just standing water. Wow. Do you know malaria has killed half the people that have ever died ever? No shit. Wow. Wow. Half the people that have ever died ever in the history of the human race have died from malaria. And still unabated, no fucking cure. My friend Justin's got it three times. Really? Where does he live? Well, he goes to the Congo. He makes wells for the pygmies. Wow. Justin Ren. But if you catch it and you take the pill right away, you're fine. If you get the proper medication, you will be okay. But there's a bunch of different strains of malaria and some of them last a long time. And he's had one strain where he got it, he recovered from it, and then he got sick. And because he got sick, the malaria came back. So he got an unrelated illness without being around the mosquitoes, and his malaria came back and he had to figure it out that the malaria had made a relapse. So he's had it three times, two times from being bitten, one time from a relapse. So is malaria something that just stays with you for life? Think with some cases. And not necessarily for life, but it can recur over the course of a certain amount of years, and then your body eventually gets over it. But he was saying that one case of malaria, you can have it for as much as 30 years. Wow. The dying of it is about as painful as it gets. Your brain starts to fucking fry, you just go crazy. Your entire body feels like it's made of acid. It's brutal. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Fuck. And you think about third world, we're trying to do good in the world. Malaria is just number one, two, and three that we should be focusing on. Yeah, there was some work that they were doing, I want to say somewhere around California, someone was doing it, where they were trying to figure out a way to engineer a mosquito that does not get malaria. And they were going to release that mosquito. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard about this. Right. Is that what it was? Well, I think it happened with the Zika virus. Here it goes. Did malaria really kill half the people that ever lived? Get the facts. Did it? It's a myth. Oh, it is a myth. It's definitely probably one of the biggest throughout human history. But to actually know the actual fact, if it has killed that many people, it's probably not because it would have had to have killed an average of five and a half million per year. And for the last 30 or 40 years, it's only about two to three million. So that number... But that's the last 30 or 40 years. So it's at least 20%. Yeah. But they don't know. So where does it come from? Does any site support that? This site tries to debunk it. We have to be sure that they're not right. Because I feel like I read it from a science paper, which might not necessarily... Look, we had Rob Wolf the other day and he thought that a vomitorium was really some... People make mistakes. But it's killed fuck loads of people. There's a lot of those goddamn diseases that scare the shit out of you. Remember when the Ebola craze happened and everybody was panicking that Ebola had made its way to the United States? Right. Remember that one lady, she was a nurse, and she was in quarantine and they tried to keep her in quarantine. She's like, fuck you, I'm going shopping. I'm like, ooh. That's right. Remember that? Yeah. She's like, bitch, you're quarantined. She's like, I don't have it. I'm like, under wraps. They've got it here. It's down in Florida. And I think that they... I know they were trying to genetically modify mosquitoes for Zika. Yeah. Yeah. A friend of mine, his wife got pregnant. It wouldn't let her go anywhere. So they were supposed to go to Hawaii or maybe Mexico or something like that? They were like, fuck that. We're not taking any chances. We're going to stay right here while this kid's born. Fuck, yeah. Because it's incurable and your kid develops a tiny head. It's a really creepy fucking disease. And they don't even know what else happens because the kids that are born from it are only a few years old at this point. What a fucking crazy disease, man. So cruel. So horrible. There's a guy named Pito Hortes that I interviewed once. And he was talking to me about... It was from my sci-fi show that I did years back. And he was talking to me about jungle diseases, like people that have any sort of infestations, or parasites, and things like that in a jungle. And he said, it is 100% of the people that live there. They have them. 100% of the people that live there have something. 100%. I went 100%. Does that mean they're living with it or they're suffering from it? They're living with it. I mean, they might be suffering from it. But one of them was this cat parasite, toxoplasma. Have you ever heard of that? Oh, yeah. Pregnant women are... Yeah. It's super dangerous for women to handle cat shit because of it. You shouldn't touch a litter box. Or eat any vegetables in France because they don't... My wife went to France when she was pregnant and they said that she couldn't eat cheese because they don't pasteurize it out correctly in France. Well, it makes sense. They like that raw, stinky fucking cheese down there. They love that stuff. They love it. But it's a weird one because it makes the rat... When a rat eats it, or a rat gets it in its body, a rat becomes sexually attracted to the smell of cat urine to the point where their dick gets hard and their balls swell up and they go to find the cat and the cat kills them. And then the cat relays it to people. And one of the things it does with people is it makes them reckless. So there's a guy named Dr. Robert Sapolsky out of Stanford who's done extensive research on toxoplasma. He's a fucking fascinating guy. He's got some awesome speeches where he talks about it online. But one of the things they found when he was working in the ER is a direct correlation between toxoplasma and motorcycle accidents. Like a lot of these people... Really? ...that would come in and they would have motorcycle accidents. They would test them and they would find out they tested positive for toxo. 50 million people in America tested positive for toxoplasma. Really? Yup. And it affects the way you think. It affects your judgment and makes you more impulsive. It makes you more aggressive. And it might even affect women. It might make women more promiscuous or at least make them more sexually submissive. They don't know. I mean, this is just complete total speculation. They think it might be one of the reasons why some South American countries are very macho and the women are very sexy. So why do women with cats always live alone? I don't think it's the same. Those cats never leave the house. So if you don't have a cat, you can't catch this? No, you can catch it. You can catch it from the meat of a cow that eats the cat shit in its grass. There's a bunch of different ways. Currently, there's probably 50 million people in the country that have this. Currently in America, there's 50 million people plus that are infected with this cat parasite called toxoplasma. Should you get tested for it? No, I probably have it for sure. I'm scared. I don't want to get tested. Because you have cats, right? Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely... Joey Diaz has 150,000 fucking cats. He's for sure got it. All those crazy cat ladies, I guarantee they have it. It's a really common thing. I think in France at one point, there was something like 30% of the population had toxo. Yeah. Yeah, it's real. Well, we made of... When you would have feral cats. Is that a bacteria then? It's a parasite. It's some sort of a parasite that actually gets its way into your brain. Because that's the crazy thing is what... I forget what percentage of your body weight is bacteria, but it's... Nuts. ...staggering. Nuts, off the chart. It's like 15% of your body weight is bacteria. Yeah, we're all ecosystems. Can you look that up? See how full of shit I am? I mean, first of all, find out how many people in America have toxoplasma before we find that out. Approximately 30 million. 30 million. That's the number on... See if... Write 50 million. See if I... How would I remember that wrong? Oh. Write 50 million people in America have toxoplasma. 20 of them died. Oh my God. I don't think it kills you. On motorcycles. Unless you wreck motorcycles. Right. But Sapolsky was... He was studying its effects on people and trying to figure out... They don't really know what it does to people. There's just this correlation between motorcycle accidents. Right. And it's another thing that says that up to 60 million people could have it. So... Up to 60 million people. Just in America. Just in America. In other countries, like in some South American countries, it's very high. And it might have been just something that people have been living with forever. There's some sort of a weird connection that we have to these organisms. And in this one, it rewires the sexual reward system of rodents. Changes the reward system. It makes their dick hard for cat piss so that they go near the cat so they get killed so they can transmit it to people. Because cats hang around with people. Wow. And it's just something that's the chain of events. Yeah. Fucking A, man. Jesus. Look at that. One to three percent of the body's mass in a 200 pound adult is two to six pounds of bacteria but also play a vital role in human health. Wow. Human body contains trillions of microorganisms, outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1. Damn. What? So, three percent of the body's mass. But they outnumber human cells just because of the size. Because they're small size, however, the microorganisms make up only one to three percent of the body's mass. It doesn't make up as much of the mass but you are outnumbered. Human cells are outnumbered 10 to 1. That's like if there's every one rat for every person on a ship and there's 10 people. Think of that. I mean, that's a fucking infested rat filled ship. Well, some of the bacteria is good. Some of it is. Yeah, but I'm just saying you're mostly rats. Yeah. If you're like, what is that, a ship of people? Well, there's some people on it. Yeah. Right. It's mostly rats. I mean, it's mostly rats. It's a fucking rat ship. Yeah. That's what we are. I mean, if you had 100 people and 1,000 rats on a ship, would you say that's a ship full of people or a ship full of rats? I'd say it's a ship full of rats and a bunch of poor fuckers trying to get some sleep. Yeah, we're just bags of bacteria. We're bags of bacteria. And we don't understand a lot of it. No. It's so fucking small and mysterious.