Joe Rogan | The Government's Experiments with Psychics w/Annie Jacobsen

Yeah, I think fate and circumstance are giant. Fortune is giant. There's no question about it. Some children get shot in drive-bys. You know, that's just horrible, horrible luck and unfortunate circumstance. There's a lot of it is fortune and fate. How about people getting lost? Right? I'll tell you. Lost, how so? So the book that I told you I wrote on the psychics, phenomenon. Wouldn't you believe about that? Again, I'm neutral, right? I'm not. You're not? Tell me. I want to hear what you believe. I think there's a lot of people that are full of shit. Absolutely, my God. I think it's almost all people that are talking about being psychic are full of shit. But I do think that there is a strange connection that we have with each other that's intangible. And I think that some people have better connections than others. Just like some people are more intelligent. Like we were talking before the podcast about Elon Musk. And it's painfully aware when you talk to him what a chimp you are. He's so fucking smart and his brain is it just it's built different. Just like some people have defective hearts. Some people have a heart like Lance Armstrong. It's incredible huge and anomaly. Some people have giant hands. He has a big heart, literally? Yes, he has literally. And they don't know whether or not that's from training or steroids and EPO or whether or not something was born with. They really don't know. But yeah, as an unusually sized heart, usually large. But what was my point? Fate, circumstance, getting lost. Oh, psychics. Psychics. That's what it is. I don't I think that most of the people that can tell you the future are full of shit. Most of the people that are I think people get feelings. I think sometimes you think about someone they call you and I don't know what that is. I don't know if that's just complete fortune. Like how many times you thinking about a person when they don't call you. That's the argument against it. But how many times you thinking about that person they don't call you but they're thinking about you as well. How many I mean how how often is that with star-crossed lovers they find each other years later and they tell each other they've been thinking about each other all the time. They can't believe it. That's that's and when you get that text from someone, maybe that's just someone prone to action. But maybe there is some sort of a connection some sort of quantum entanglement between you and someone you spent time with or shared energy with it's possible. It's possible. But the problem is you have these mediums and psychics and those people are just assholes and I have a friend his name is Banachek and he runs a Las Vegas mentalist show where he shows you how he does these tricks but he'll tell you absolutely these are he's been on the podcast a brilliant brilliant man. But he'll tell you these are tricks. I'm showing you how I do this this. I mean I'm going to tell you this trick. I'm not going to give you the how I do it but I'm going to tell you while I'm doing it. This is a trick but he's pulling all this information out of people about their past their childhood. He's guessing people's ages. He's guessing where they grew up. I mean and it's it's all little sneaky shit. You know, it's the way they do it's it's a skill as much as anything. And so when you see these people that are channelers or you know psychics that are telling you about someone in your past that's trying to contact you. They're con artists almost exclusively. I mean maybe there's like one lady in Tibet that has a broken gene and she could tune into the next dimension and pull some extract some information from it. But in my experience the vast majority of those people that I've talked to that claim to have psychic ability were also at least partially full of shit. They had weird ego problems that were glaring that they didn't notice. You know like I could see it that this is a gross way to behave and they don't see it their interpersonal relationships the way they communicate with people was like an agent like a fake Hollywood person or something. There's something bullshitty about them and people who lie a lot. I think if you lie a lot it's very difficult for you to tell what a lie is. Oh that's interesting. Yeah, I think you lose your connection. I think when you when you bullshit I think you also bullshit yourself. I don't think these psychics are a hundred percent honest even with themselves. I don't think this like I'm gonna fuck this lady over. She thinks she's gonna talk to her husband. I'm gonna tell her some nonsense. Take her money. I think some of them actually believe they're getting information. You know my grandmother used to believe that. My grandmother was she was a very eccentric lady and old Sicilian lady and she would tell you about the like old Italian ladies all like want to play the lottery. They all have numbers there and she was playing the numbers wasn't even the lottery. It was like the organized crime numbers racket and she would always say I was gonna pick this number and I just add up the last minute. I changed the number wouldn't you know it the first one came in and she was so mad but it was always that that I had a dream of this and I had a vision of that and it was all visions and dreams and psychics but everything worked out horribly for her. It always did like if like you were really psychic you would have better instincts like this is just this. Inclination that people have that there's something special about their perceptions and that they're psychic and it's always is really wacky people that believe their psychics in my my experience which I mean it's your I think you're talking also about that what some scientists would call the self-fulfilling prophecy you know that if you believe this things happen manifest themselves and you can convince yourself that you believe this but for me I'm super interested in. People who really believe in psychics right like that's what and the military for example and you know the most. Talked to Ed Danes you talked to those guys the remote viewing guys. I talked to a lot of the scientists who taught the remote viewing and I talked to a number of remote viewers in for the book but the most interesting of all was the astronaut Ed Mitchell. Right and he was so so I'm interested in like the psychology behind what are you looking for in that and I saw that I was doing some research in an archive and I came across a photo of. What turned out to be Ed Mitchell on the moon reading a piece of paper okay it's this extraordinary image cuz you're like wait a minute he's on the moon and he's reading a document what is that document I found out the document was a map of the moon. Okay Mitchell got lost on the moon and literally pulled map out of like okay got I mean he's trying to get to a certain crater and they had a very limited amount of time there is right there right okay there is wow I mean think about that's like the most advanced technology of the time. Why don't I go with the camera tell him where to go. I was taking a picture like hey bro this way left look at let's just follow our footprints were the only ones walking what are you stupid turn around look at the ground see those things that's where you walked let's go that way Jesus Christ I'd be so mad at him like bro you pull out a map who wrote that map who's who's no one's even been here come on man. They had little maps folded up in their in their pockets in case they got lost they were on the way to this crater and in that crater they were gonna find allegedly rocks that were gonna solve the mystery of the moon's creation the origin story like all this pressure. They couldn't find it the heart rates up the guys a Houston like you gotta turn back your heart rates going crazy and think about it Mitchell tells me I went to interview him at his house when I think it was his last interview before he died and he said there we had gotten two hundred and forty thousand miles. To only to get lost they missed the crater by like you know nine hundred feet or something really so you never got to the crew never got to it he was devastated and on the way back from the moon he has this what he told me was a psychic change right he. Is his consciousness flipped and he became convinced that psychic powers were real and that is really the beginning of his for a I mean Mitchell became a huge proponent of. Psychic warfare of you know the the idea behind what you're talking about what we spoke of as being sort of charlatanism and he dedicated the rest of his life to it. Well he was really cute. He had some wacky beliefs about aliens as well and I think that we're definitely in contact with aliens and. And that comes from like he was so vilified by the scientists and by the astronauts by the kind of military men because this was just he told me the story of when they were in quarantine after they came back from the moon right. He and shepherd were sitting there you know eating breakfast waiting and shepherd the stories a story broke that Mitchell had done some ESP experiments on the way back from the moon. And shepherd said to him like look at this nonsense the newspapers will do anything to sell make a buck and Mitchell said I did that I actually did that what experiments he was doing ESP experiments on the way back from the moon. He had a psychic in Chicago a Swedish psychic that he was sending messages to like she hot it was an old Swedish man right I don't think named all right. But I hear a Swedish side yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah my psychic can we take my clothes off yeah no I'll introduce you to Olaf okay okay I saw the movie frozen I didn't see that one Olaf's the little snowman oh you got younger kids yeah I missed that one minor older anyway sorry so Ed Mitchell was talking to this hot chick in the hot old man in and the story broke because the Swedish psychic could not resist. Telling you know leaking to the press that he had done these experiments what experiments were there well psychics train on these little cards called zener cards right so like. You have us different symbols on them and you know one one person that's how they decide whether or not they're being psychic like there would be a veil between us and I would say. What are you seeing right and you would call it out so it's like a control system and Mitchell had these items with him on the way to the moon and did these experiments to try to see whether you could. Have a psychic connection with someone back on earth I mean he that was you know. Did it work well no and he took notes he showed me the notes it was so wild to be at his house in Florida and he pulls out this old spiral notebook with like water stains on it that actually went to the moon. I was like wow this is really something else I mean it was one of those moments in time where you're just like. I don't know there was a feel there was a feeling of sadness around all of it with Ed Mitchell sitting there in his. You know his chair and talking to me about what it was like to be an Apollo astronaut on the walls and with a lot of these sources with like incredible amounts of awards on the walls but what does that mean after time passes. So his experiments didn't work but he still believed in psychic powers yes I mean and that's and he okay so what we were saying he was ridiculed you know and he had such a tough time with it and so. The people who propped him up and the people who gave him a lot of encouragement had sort of more radical ideas as he grew older and I think they. You know conspiracy theorists who really kind of used him because he was an Apollo astronaut and so he was so much more famous than any of them would ever be and they really took advantage of him I think. So you think they manipulated him with information and tried to get him more and more enthusiastic about their. I mean it's speculation on my part but you kind of go where the love is right he was an older guy too I seen some interviews with him as he was getting older and older and he seemed to be having some difficulties like thinking about things clearly. And people take advantage of that. Yeah he was really obsessed with extraterrestrial life was really interesting because didn't he claim that he had seen something while he was up in space. I think people helped him make that claim that was my understanding of it of reporting and I stayed away from some of the crazier. Speculative things about him because what I was really interested in when I was writing that book was how his authority and power allowed the program to get funding right so much of this is it's like who's funding this stuff and why. And it really does come down to authority which is always which is always a narrative that I find fascinating right how do people. Get the authority to say go on these programs or you know we should do that I mean the question you asked of like how does who's in charge right. And in all of this what I learned more than anything is that the office of the president has a lot more power than I think any of us are aware.