Joe Rogan's Lunch with Erich von Däniken

I had lunch with Eric Von Daniken last week. Oh my God. Yes. Very interesting. Cool. Very weird. He's the guy who wrote Chariots of the Gods. Oh, God. Yeah. In his 80s now. Staple book warehouse. And he was showing us slides. What's the real story there? I was wondering. Mostly nonsense, unfortunately. Was it really? Yeah. Mostly what it is is evidence of lost civilizations. Founded civilizations that were incredibly advanced. I follow the work of Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson and a few other people that are being proven actually correct more and more, almost on a daily basis by new discoveries that show that civilization predates what we initially thought. What they initially thought was that somewhere around the Great Pyramids, which is like 2500 BC, that was about as good as anybody got. You go back to like ancient Sumer, which is about 6000 years ago, and then that's basically it. What they're saying is that no, there was most likely a reset, a global reset of civilization due to a cataclysmic disaster. And there's a shit ton of evidence. There's massive evidence in the form of this nuclear glass that exists when there's asteroidal impacts. And also, there's a guy named Dr. Robert Schock, who's one of the first guys to propose this. He freaked me out on the podcast, he said there was a mass coronal ejection that most likely caused lightning storms, like a rainstorm, but lightning. Like that much lightning destroying the ground. And that the only people that survived were people that could get undercover, that could get into caves. Mass extinction of 60 plus percent of the large mammals in a very short window of time, almost instantaneously in North America. The end of the ice age, like 10,000 plus years ago, there was a mile high ice in most of North America. Most of North America covered in ice, then gone. And all these areas, all these points of interest point to this one moment in time that's somewhere between 10 and 12,000 years ago that some big event happened. And that most likely just crippled civilization, and then people had to rebuild. Whatever people were around and rebuilt. Because also they found just looking at DNA that all of humanity at one point got wiped out except for one village. There was only, everyone has descended from the same group of about 5,000 people that survived. Well there was a super volcano that erupted somewhere around 70,000 years ago that they think, this is predating this cataclysmic disaster 12,000 years ago, that they are pretty sure wiped human beings down to a few thousand folks. Wow. So you think all this culture and all? I want to say, where's that super volcano? There's a super volcano that knocked everybody down. We'll find it. Yeah. We got one under Yosemite, right? Well it's giant. Yellowstone is. So caldera. Yellowstone's going to get us all. Every six to eight hundred thousand years it blows. I think we're due, right? That's why I don't go camping. Don't go camping. Well that might not be the worst place to go. Go camping. Be over in a second. That way when it ends, it ends quick. You don't want to be living in New York. I'm just choking on a classic fume. Just a cloud of dust. That's the worst. Watching people eat homeless folks in the street. Yeah. There's no good place. You don't do that now in New York. Yeah. Well there's also things that fly through space and zip by. You know, they're constantly finding these things. Yeah. That's the thing, the Airfine Danica thing. I remember as a kid, my problem was that they kept showing these massive paintings that can only be seen from the sky. So therefore, they must have been drawn for aliens. And I kept going, no, if you believe God is looking down on you, you're going to draw big paintings for God to look at. Right. So you don't need that. Right. But now I'm more, the thing I've become obsessed with lately is the skepticism about UFOs. Yeah, that's why I wanted to talk to you about this because you told me that you've become obsessed with UFOs recently. Yeah. Oh yeah, completely. Believer? Yeah, totally. Really? I think the UFO phenomenon is real. I don't know what it is, but it's totally, it has to be real. Something's happened. Why is that? Because there's just way too much evidence that it is real. What evidence? Well, radar evidence that the F-16 locked on a UFO, that footage. And also just, like I know that a friend of ours, I don't know if she wants to say it, but her father was an air traffic controller. And he told her, they said, yeah, every air traffic controller has seen something. Yeah. And I had another friend whose father was in a commercial pilot and she said, yeah, my dad said, every single pilot has seen something. And they've all been told not to say anything about it. We have a couple of friends that say they were... Abducted. Yeah. Yeah, the abducted one is a little easier to wrap your head around because when you're sleeping, your brain is producing all sorts of endogenous psychedelic chemicals. Almost all of these experiences happen when you're sleeping. Almost all these experiences when these people are abducted, they're taken from their beds, which is when they're dreaming. Yeah. So there's some real clear, easy steps to follow. You want to follow Occam's razor and not get crazy with it. But it knocks those out, but it doesn't knock out Barney and Betty Hill and all the people that are abducted will fully conscious and that remember it without hypnotherapy. Like I'm not sure about the abduction phenomenon. But I don't know Barney and Betty Hill. I know the story, but I don't know them. So I would have to know them because there's a lot of people that I've... I did a show for Sci-Fi called Joe Rogan Questions Everything. Yeah. I watched that show. That show cured me of a lot of my nonsense with conspiracies. Well, we used to talk about it. Yes. Yeah. That stuff all the time. Yeah, all the time. Yeah. Yeah, but I needed to actually study it. So for six months, that's basically all I did. I interviewed people and I... Bigfoot believers, UFO believers, all... And the one thing that they have in common is they all seem to be kind of lost and dependent upon this thing being real. Yeah. Instead of being objective, there's only one lady that I interviewed that saw Bigfoot that really seemed to be telling the truth. But I think she saw a bear. Yeah. I think bears walk on two feet all the time. They do it all the time. Yeah. It's video footage. You can find it all the time. And she was in the Pacific Northwest, which is incredibly dense woods. You see something, you glimpse it. Look, I was hunting once in Canada and Alberta and I thought I saw a wolf for like two seconds. It was a squirrel. Okay? Understand this. A very big squirrel? What is that? A squirrel? No, I just saw fur. I saw fur and I was... Because it's really dense woods. But you convinced? Because I was looking for fucking wolves. Because I was like... Because I know we did see one wolf across the road. It was either wolf or coyote. It was hard to tell because it was at dusk. It was very dark out. But when you're looking for something, you think everything is that thing you're looking for. Yeah. So for a second, I thought that fucking squirrel was a wolf. That's funny. Yeah. Well, expectation and perception are very linked. Yes. Yes. They found that 50% of everything you see is a product of memory? Yes. That when you observe something, they've done fMRIs and that most of the activity in the brain is in the memory centers, not in the visual centers. Interesting. Only about 50% of the activity is in the visual centers of the brain. That's crazy. The UFO thing is very... When I was a kid, I went and saw Carl Sagan speak at U of T at the University of Toronto and I was like, you know, 14. But he did an equation on the board of the possibility of alien life other than us in the universe. And it came to the smallest... I mean, he spent the whole time writing on this chalkboard. It was fascinating. He actually came up with a number at the end and it was such a small... He says there is something out there, but they are so far away that... Yeah. Well, that unless they can go faster than the speed of light, which he said was impossible at the time. Yeah. This is the 70s. Yeah. There is no way we've seen them. That's what he said. So if some other beings have conquered the speed of light thing, then maybe we could see them. Yeah. But that's a thing with... Let me say a problem with this skepticism in general is like the skeptics of the... 19th century were the ones who said germs don't exist. Right, because we can't see them. And people who said germs did exist were ridiculed and laughed out of the trade. Right? And... I agree with you completely just because you can't see it or it isn't happening. It doesn't mean it can't happen. And even since Sagan's day, there had been no exoplanets discovered then. We now know that there are literally trillions and trillions of earth-like planets. Yeah. Well, they just speculated us to exist. So the amounts of our solar system before. The real problem is that if some... There's a leap and a leap, a technological leap that opens the doors to massive innovation. Yeah. That once this happens, once this happens and then all this stuff sort of exponentially expands in terms of technological possibilities, all you would need is a few hundred years and you have an unrecognizable set of technology. Yeah, sure. You know, I mean... Well, you were talking about CERN. I mean, the whole antimatter idea that they're still trying to figure out. Yeah. That's an insane source of energy that we have never even experienced. Yeah. You know? With a grain of sand. Yeah. We can run a city. And it's that big. Yeah. And there's also a theory, there's a recent one that space time itself doesn't exist. So the speed of light barrier becomes moot because I guess it's the holographic quantum hologram theory, quantum holographic theory of the universe. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is that Michael Talbot's book? I can't remember. Holographic universe, is that who wrote that? Yeah, I think so. But the idea that the universe is basically just a geometry that when you look at it from a certain angle seems three-dimensional. Right. And it folds into itself so you could... And it's the wormhole thing, right? No, it's not even that. It's the idea that space time is an illusion and that it doesn't really exist. And that's why entanglement is possible. The idea that spooky action at a distance. Yes. Quantum, all quantum entanglement. Yeah. But the reason that these atoms on opposite ends of the universe can affect each other instantaneously... At the same moment. Is because they're not really at opposite ends of the universe. They're really right next to each other. It just seems like they're at opposite ends of the universe. Because our ability to perceive is basically based on what we have to do to stay alive on this planet. So our meager little chimp brains are trying to quantify all of these things that are around us all the time. So we put them into this sort of three-dimensional box of movement and distance and... And then the entire universe could be a compact thing that projects itself like a hologram onto a screen. I love these kind of conversations because I'm clearly too stupid to really understand what we're saying. And I don't understand anything I just said. And I don't understand you two, so how stupid does that make me? Well, we don't understand each other. So we're all the same. This is perfect. Yeah. And that's why I think it would be interesting to do a good document or something about ufology. Because one thing is the assumption that they're extraterrestrial is an assumption. But the thing that intrigues me is the power of ridicule to silence. Even the most intelligent people in our community from examining something, like the ridicule kept doctors from accepting germs. Sure. Because they didn't want to be ridiculed by their peers. And even now, you've got people that will, like Michael Shermer, will cling to the most absurd explanations for phenomena like the F-16 radar footage. What was Michael Shermer's take on that? I can't even remember it. It was pretty... It really went to great lengths that entailed having to basically diminish any respect you had for any of the people who reported on the events. Mm. It had to go into character assassination in order to eliminate it. Yeah. Well, that's the best way to kill an idea. He's a professional skeptic, and I like Michael a lot. And he's been on the podcast many times. But I actually had him debate Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock about these ancient civilizations. It wasn't very good for him. Like there were some clunky moments. Because skeptics are believers. Well, the problem is they're believing in... They believe in skepticism. The problem is being a skeptic itself. It's a stupid way to look at the world. It's a chat. You're actually sure about something. Yeah, I mean, you should be objective. Right. Don't be skeptical. Right. Being skeptical is like, I don't know. I know for sure that that's not true. But it serves a massive purpose for people that really don't understand things, and he can explain it to you with actual science. As long as the actual science is being used, and it's not character assassination, it's not mockery, it's not... There's certain people that are just debunkers. They can call themselves skeptics, but they're not looking at things like, oh, maybe that is effective. Maybe that is healthy. Maybe that is interesting. No, they don't look at it that way. They're looking at it. They're trying to pick it apart. And that's fine if you can pick it apart. But if you cannot, you have to be objective about the fact that, oh, well, this is a very interesting phenomenon, and this is what we know about science, and this is what we know about this thing. And right now, we have a weird conundrum. Did Chariots of the Gods win? Did he... Eric Von Daniken. Was he a believer? 100%. He's all in. Still is. Still is. I asked him, the first thing I asked him, I said, what is the... Can I pause? Yeah. Desperately have to go pee. No, go, go, go, go. And what I asked him was, what is the most compelling piece of evidence? Does the... And he pointed to this Mayan stone plaque that's in Palenque. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's... Is it in the book? Yeah, it's a god, one of their former kings that is lying on his back, and it looks like he's moving some... Jamie, see if you can find that thing. It's this really cool carving that they found that looks like there's a guy who is in a seat and it looks like there's fire behind his back. And you could say... It's a ship, like he's a ship. You could say that he's manipulating controls on a ship and he's shooting a rocket into the heaven. I would like to see what the mainstream version of that is, because also it could just be art. Yeah, imagination. Yeah, it could be that they knew about certain things being propelled by fire. There it is. Yeah, that's it. So, if you see this, I mean, that's a big ass stretch to say that guy's in a spaceship. I don't know what the fuck that is. He's sitting down... That's like an altar, kind of, to me. He could, yeah, but it does look like he's looking through an eyepiece, right? That's true. But what does that mean? Is it a telescope? Maybe he's just got a telescope. Maybe it's just an astronomer. Yeah, it is possible. I don't think they had telescopes. I don't think a telescope was even invented till then. No, did they even have glass at that point? Oh, I don't know. Well, I don't know if the Mayans did. Wow. But that was his number one piece of evidence. I was like, that's kind of silly. I mean, we were kids in the 70s, you know, Bigfoot, you know, and Chariot to the Gods and everything was so new. Hey, look at this image. Look at the bottom of it. Even the part where the flame's supposed to be coming out from below him. Which flame? Yeah, where's the flame? I'm sorry, what's the flame? The flame's the shit at the very, very bottom. But I mean, I'm not even sure I buy that. If you were going to draw fire, you'd do a really shitty job if that's your fire. That doesn't really look like fire to me. No. It looks like an ornate seat or something. Right. If that's fire, like what is all the stuff around him? What's all that stuff? That looks kind of mechanical though, right? It looks like there's bolts. It does. Did they have a fire god? Maybe they drew the fire god. It looks like a monkey kind of face. With titties. Monkey's got some titties. Oh, now I get it. Is that his teeth? It's the first Hooters. They're like arms actually. Right. It could be arms. But that's the point. It's so open to interpretation. There's so much that you could see if you're looking to see.