Joe Rogan FREAKED OUT by Spanish Flu Fact

Because the people that get involved in it, part of the reason why they get involved in it is for virtue signaling. Totally. And I've been asked, like, you know, as I've been promoting the book by a lot of people, like, what have you done in your life to change? And it's like, well, I'm flying a little bit less, flying really makes me feel guilty. But otherwise, I basically haven't changed anything, because I do think that politics and policy are the most important impact you can have. And I'm like spreading the word, whether I eat like a couple fewer hamburgers a year, it just doesn't really matter that much. But the idea that you would ask a newcomer to the movement to demonstrate their commitment by making themselves the most optimally committed that they possibly could be, that's just going to alienate so many people. And this is obviously an issue where we need more people engaged in a more direct, profound way. So I think for me, it's like, anyone who wants to care about climate, who wants to vote about climate, like, come on. And I think that, you know, Hollywood can be really important here. I mean, since I've been out here, I've been, I have a couple meetings about shows and stuff. And I do think that we've had really corny storytelling about climate change. And that there are actually opportunities for like, really incredible new kinds of storytelling. I mean, in the book, I read about this story that happened a couple years ago where anthrax that was, had killed a reindeer in Russia in the early 20th century, the reindeer was frozen in permafrost for the entire 20th century. permafrost melted, the reindeer thawed, the anthrax was released and killed at least one boy and a number of other reindeer in Russia. And that is true. So in the ice, in the Arctic ice, we know of rock as like a record of geological history. Ice is also record of geological history. So they're like the bubonic plague is trapped in ice. The Spanish flu in from 1918 that killed hundreds of millions of people is trapped in ice. There are diseases trapped in the Arctic ice from before humans were around, which means that humans immune system have no experience with them. There's so many horror movies you can make about this subject. Holy shit. I didn't even think of that. I didn't know that the Spanish flu is trapped in ice. Yeah. I mean, and there have been instances where like, in lab conditions anyway, they've revived bacteria that are millions of years old. One Russian doctor literally injected a bacteria that he had revived from like 35,000 years ago, it had been frozen for 35,000 years, he brought it back to life and injected it into himself. Why would he do that? Just to see what that's a fucking Marvel comic book. That's how you become like the red skull or some shit. Yeah. Well, that's what I mean about this. This story is so big. It's like the world that we live in in the next couple of decades will be completely transformed. Like we will be reading about diseases coming out of the Arctic ice. We will be reading about tropical diseases arriving in Copenhagen, because now mosquitoes are there because the temperature allows them to live there in a way that they never lived before. We will be reading about climate conflict. We'll be reading about, you know, I mean, all this shit, it's everywhere. Air pollution increases the rates of autism and ADHD. It changes the development of babies in utero. It's all encompassing. Wow. The disease and the ice thing is really freaking me out. I never even considered that. Yeah. But that is something to think about along with the methane and carbon is going to be emitted into the atmosphere as it melts. Well, let me tell you the story. So, so there was there, this, the species of antelope called a Sayuga antelope, they, they're mostly in Siberia. They're kind of dwarf antelopes and they've been around for millions of years. And all of a sudden in 2016 or 2015, they literally all died. It's called a mega death. The entire species died. They're extinct. They're now extinct. Jesus. And that happened because a bacteria that had been living inside their guts was changed by temperature conditions. It was an unusually hot, unusually humid summer. And this bacteria that had been living inside them, presumably for millions of years, comfortably as a kind of peaceful cooperator became a killer and killed the entire species. Now we have inside us countless bacteria and viruses. Scientists believe millions in every human. So our guts are full of bacteria that do our digestion for us. They monitor our moods. There, there, you know, there are some scientists who think it's really misleading to even think of the human as a unitary animal rather than a kind of composite creature with system. Yeah. And most of those bacteria and viruses are not going to be dramatically transformed by a degree or two degrees of warming, but there are so many of them. The chances that one could, it's hard to dismiss that. And whether that would mean we'd all immediately go extinct, probably not. But what if that means suddenly schizophrenia increases by 15% because schizophrenia is related to a bacterial infection called toxoplasma, I think it's bacteria, toxoplasma gondii. Well, that's that cat parasite. Yeah, exactly. Schizophrenia is related to that? Yeah. Really? Yeah. It like triples your chances of getting schizophrenia. Wow. Yeah. And our bodies are so complex, such intricate ecosystems, like you say, that if one little thing gets disturbed, it could have really catastrophic impacts on us. And that's true of the planet as a whole. I think that's one of the big lessons of my book is that this is such a delicate system. It's been stable for all of human history and now it's not stable. What that means for how we live, we don't know yet, but the changes will be significant, will be profound. But it's also true of the individual. Our bodies will be living differently in a world that's two degrees warmer than they are today. We can't really predict what those impacts will be, but they could be quite dramatic. And they could be things that we can't even imagine today because there are, by some counts, millions of bacteria inside us that we haven't even identified yet. Jesus Christ, you're freaking me out, David. God damn it. It's a crazy world out there. Well, not just crazy, but it seems like when you're talking about things like this, when you're talking about climate change affecting our actual gut parasites or gut biome, and that this literally could change the way human beings behave. I mean, these are all things that I've never heard discussed. And it just, it's really terrifying. It really is. I mean, and part of the problem is people hear and they're like, oh, relax, everything's fine. This is this constant thing that we do, where if it's not affecting us currently right now in the moment, there's not a fire in front of us, we don't worry about it. It's a weird compartmentalization thing that human beings do. Yeah. And you think that evolution would have trained us differently. You think that evolution would have trained us over time to have at least some long-term capacity. And I guess we do have some long-term planning capacity, but it's, we choose to think in really short-term ways.