Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2421 - Derek, More Plates More Dates
Uploaded: 2025-12-02T18:01:11.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2421 - Derek, More Plates More Dates' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2421 - Derek, More Plates More Dates' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-02. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2421 - Derek, More Plates More Dates

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Derek, tell me about your new drink.
Look at this here, red gummy fish.
I'm about to try it for the first time.
And this is a nootropic?
Yeah, so it's, I think on the first episode maybe that I did with you.
Ooh.
Robust, eh?
That's good.
Yeah.
Oh, that's delicious.
You mean robust?
You're saying it like it potentially is a negative thing.
Oh, both.
Flavor and-
I think it's great.
Oh, right on.
Red gummy fish.
It's fucking delicious.
I drink the shit out of this.
Oh, I'm glad you like it.
Oh, a lot of stuff in here.
What's in here?
So I think it was the first time I was on, you asked me about Gorilla Mind and
the nootropic
formula that I used before podcasts to get cognitively dialed.
And at the time, it was a capsule-based formula.
And it still is.
It still exists.
But taking what we could to suspend in a liquid format and getting it into
something,
something that's more like publicly and widely accepted and that they would
want to drink
on a regular basis and it's something you could use daily.
It's kind of what we did in this.
So we included essentially like a daily use version of the Gorilla Mind formula,
which
includes the tyrosine precursor for dopamine, as well as other neurotransmitters,
catecholamines
like adrenaline, noradrenaline.
Also, alpha-GPC, most bioavailable form of choline that crosses the blood-brain
barrier
and is pretty efficacious.
And also just a good choline source in general, which most people are deficient
in as a nutrient.
And I think completely unaware that it's actually important to be supplementing
with potentially.
Pretty hard to get an adequate amount of choline, but...
Where does it come from in food?
Liver is a good source.
Eggs.
And in general, it's just like the highly nutrition-dense foods that you would
get it from.
A lot of people aren't focusing on specifically either because of caloric
density or it's like
an animal-based like nose-to-tail thing or fill in the blank.
It's not impossible to do it.
A lot of people who focus on it could probably relatively easily, but it's
still one of the
things you have to focus on actually kind of like maneuvering into your diet
typically.
So in general, most people are at least maybe like 50% of the way that are at
best.
And that's even among people who I would say are relatively balanced diet
individuals, but...
Interesting.
So I'm sure you're familiar with cholinergics and their impact on, you know,
cognition and whatnot.
Caffeine, tried and true.
How much you got in here?
200 milligrams.
Nice.
Very difficult decision trying to come up with what is the amount you're going
to stick
with in perpetuity in this thing.
Everyone's addicted now.
It's a real issue with caffeine.
So it's like the fine line balance of not too much, something that is still,
you know, tolerable,
sustainable, going to be widely accepted and widely impactful on a beneficial
level, but not
overdoing it.
And 200 is kind of what we landed on.
And then urodine monophosphate, pretty unique ingredient.
I haven't seen anybody ever included in a drink, let alone even in supplements
typically.
So it's also something that operates via the cholinergic system, but in a
different way.
Mainly it's utility is kind of enhancing your sensitivity to stimulants.
So somebody who is otherwise desensitized from like heightened exposure to
things that either
desensitize them to caffeine or nicotine or things of this nature, even
something like
the ADHD medications, this can actually, at least the literature suggests
strongly that
it enhances dopamine neurotransmission potential.
So like almost restoring function and damaged dopamine producing neurons in the
brain.
So you can kind of get a heightened impact out of the same level of stimulant.
So a caffeine dose that might otherwise be, you're used to it now, you start to
feel it again
more than you used to without having to increase your caffeine intake.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
So it's a pretty cool ingredient.
And it seems to have some neuroprotective properties potentially as well.
And some interesting literature on like Alzheimer's and whatnot, but it's more
like fringe and
to be determined how impactful it is.
And then on top of that, we have L-thenine.
You're probably familiar with its effects stacked with caffeine, increases
alpha waves, good for
verbal fluency, as well as just general attention, concentration, but keeping
you a little bit
more balanced and mellow while you have the heightened stimulatory activity
from the caffeine
and the other kind of like dopaminergic compounds, and then also saffron
extract, which is a totally
unique inclusion, in my opinion, still don't really see it in nootropic
formulas, let alone
in drinks.
And it's something that in literature is shown to be as efficacious as
pharmaceutical SSRIs
without inducing the same erectile dysfunction, inducing effects of it, and
without causing the
same anhedonia inducing effects, which is kind of like the muting of like
pleasure in the
in the brain.
Saffron.
Yeah, super interesting ingredient.
It seems to be pretty impactful for depression, for anti-anxiety, and it also
operates through
a seemingly different mechanism, even though it's often stacked up against SSRIs
for its comparisons
and outperforms them or matches it with a relative lack of side effects.
It is something that operates through seemingly antioxidant activity, some dopaminergic,
some
serotonergic, and it's just a little bit more of a benign way to it.
To achieve what is a similar outcome, but with a seemingly lower, if not negligible,
to
non-existent side effect profile.
I'm not saying that's what our drink does.
I'm just saying that's what the literature on saffron says, and anyone can go
look that
up and reference it.
And then huperazine A, probably the most impactful acetylcholinesterase inhibitor
that you can
include alongside like choline precursors.
So it inhibits the breakdown of acetylcholine as opposed to being the fuel,
like the precursor,
like choline, alpha-GPC, CDP choline.
These are things that provide the substrate to actually produce the acetylcholine,
preventing
the breakdown of it too, could otherwise get like a one-two punch where you get
the heightened
fuel substrate, but then also an inhibition of its breakdown.
So you have just like a heightened level of cognitive capacity through both
like the one-two punch.
How did you determine these like doses and what you were going to include and
not include?
So a lot of it derived from the original capsule-based formula.
So back in, I don't know, 2021, I had already been using this thing for daily
use, essentially.
And it was something that was determined based upon years of experience,
personal anecdotes,
but digging through hordes of clinical literature, ultimately.
There's a lot of these compounds that have clinical studies on them for
different applications.
You can kind of sift through what are the efficacious dosages, where are they
impactful,
or as a sustainable level, you could actually take this long-term without it
being negatively
impactful on, because sometimes if you overdo it in one area over time, it
might be problematic.
So trying to find the fine balance of where's a dose that moves the needle, but
isn't going
to kind of like push you in too far of a negative direction that it's unsustainable.
Because sometimes this stuff, it's like a hammer solution.
You might see an energy drink that's like 300, 350 caffeine, and it's like,
okay, you know.
You've essentially like singled out a lot of the customers who might otherwise
benefit
from it.
Even if there was other good stuff in the drink, it's like only stim junkies
can use it now.
You know?
So this is kind of like the fine balance of what I thought to be the most
sustainable version
of balancing, you know, dopamine input, serotonergic activity, getting some of
that, you know,
anti-anxiety support, and also getting a reasonable hit of caffeine.
And did you, so in pill form, so did you start out by using each individual
supplement and
then trying to use them in combination to see if there's a synergistic effect?
Like how did you do it over time?
I guess maybe that's a bit more interesting than digging through literature.
But when I was a university student, just like being a nerd, mixing stuff in my
kitchen like
a chemist, essentially, and just measuring raw powders back, you know, in the
day, what
we would do, or at least, you know, like biohackers and what have you, we'd buy
just like off of
different websites, raw bulk ingredients, and then you'd measure it with little
micro spoons
in these laboratory increments to try and get, okay, the microgram equivalent
of this, and
you'd make some disgusting shake with a concoction of different unflavored powders
and create
what is your ultimate kind of combination through trial and error, ultimately.
And were you like doing a diary, like today I feel great?
Yeah, I was just keeping a log, almost like, you know, working out, like how
did you respond
to fill in the blank, or...
And did you take into account like sleep, all these different factors, diet,
training?
As many variables at the time, obviously a bit more rudimentary and crude when
you're
like 21 years old and you're just trying to like get cognitively locked in to
study for
finals, but back then it was just, what is the most impactful things that I've
heard work?
And then also digging further into literature, looking on the limited forums
that existed back
then online, because it's a lot more of a, like a niche community back then.
It's not like this was widely discussed.
Uh, 20, 2009, 2008?
Oh, early days.
Yeah.
That's when I first started fucking around with them.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I first found out about Neuro One.
That was the first one I found out about.
Okay.
Did you ever try that one?
Neuro One.
It's Bill Romanowski's company.
Okay.
The football player.
Yeah, yeah.
So he developed it because he was having cognitive problems after, you know,
years and years of
playing football and so, uh, he came up with this formulation and, uh, I was
doing this radio
show, Alison, no name in San Francisco and no name's a dude.
I forget his name.
Unfortunately.
Ironically.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So long ago, but he, uh, was working out with Romanowski.
Romanowski was trying to get him in shape and he gave him this stuff.
He said, Hey, try it.
And it was, you know, I do morning radio when you're promoting, like I was
doing Cobb's
comedy club.
Whenever you're doing a comedy club, you'd show, this is back in the day when
radio meant
something, you'd show up in the morning and you do the morning drive and, uh,
they would
go, Oh, Joe Rogan's appearing at the comedy club this weekend.
Come see him.
And you'd be funny on the radio and have a good time with the people.
And he gave it to me.
And I was like, Hey man, this stuff feels like something's going on.
Like this is legit.
And that's what really got me.
And that's how we developed Alpha Brain.
We developed Alpha Brain after me trying out Neural One saying, is there, can
we optimize
this?
Is there another way to do this?
Is there, you know, other forms that we're missing?
And, but your formulation seems like very comprehensive and also fucking
delicious.
Yeah.
It's one of the difficult things too, is making it taste good while still being
able to suspend
the active ingredients because they could just fall out of suspension or myriad
of different
issues, carbonation problems, even exploding cans in transit that you're not
predicting
are going to react a certain way.
Even the black lids, dude, like it's stuff you don't even think of, but
absorbing heat.
It's like, Oh, it's gonna be more prone to blowing up now because of that.
Oh, because of a black lid.
Did you want a black lid just for aesthetics?
Yeah.
At the time it was like, this looks cool.
Yeah, exactly.
And so what are you sweetening this stu