Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2394 - Palmer Luckey
Uploaded: 2025-10-16T17:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2394 - Palmer Luckey' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2394 - Palmer Luckey' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-16. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2394 - Palmer Luckey

I haven't done the ball, but I have done those knee chairs.
Okay.
They're a little annoying.
What about standing desks?
No.
You a standing desk fan?
No.
Yeah.
When I use them, I usually have lower back gets kind of sore just standing
there.
I feel like some part of you should be relaxed.
And if you're standing, you're going to want to lean on something to have a
conversation
especially.
Because I know some people do podcasts standing up, like a standing up table.
I'm like, okay.
That's crazy.
I have a buddy of mine who's doing, have you ever seen the float tanks where
you float
in the saltwater?
Yeah, we have one here.
Oh, no way.
Yeah.
So I know someone who is building a rig with a waterproof keyboard, waterproof
mouse, and
a VR headset so that they can have a float computing rig.
And they want to just, they want to just, they want to, they want to program
while they're
floating in space.
Wow.
And he hasn't, he hasn't gotten all the way there yet.
The hardest part has actually been the mouse.
There's lots of waterproof keyboards for various industrial applications.
Like, you know, so you don't get metal shavings in them.
Sure.
But mice, it's actually, it's actually harder.
But that makes sense because there's a, well, it's a laser now.
It used to be an actual ball.
That would have been really hard.
In the old days.
Yeah.
The optic, at this point, I don't think it's that hard.
I think he's been, he's been screwing around with just taking a normal one and
then wrapping
it in, in, in saran wrap.
But, you know, that's kind of splash proof, but not, not immersion proof.
Is he actually underwater with the setup?
Yeah.
So, because if you're taking your hands up out of the water, you know, one, it's
uncomfortable.
So he's floating like this and the keyboard.
Underwater.
Yeah, exactly.
So you're, you're floating at neutral position, basically.
And just to code, he wants to code like that?
He wants to code.
He must be a super weirdo.
I, I, I want to do it for VR gaming.
I think that'd be really interesting.
It's kind of, if you can't, if you can't simulate the experience of your body
being in
the game, at least to forget that your body exists and have the only thing you're
viewing
be, you know, your, your vision and the, and the sound, I feel like would be
very interesting
experience.
So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm begging off an hour in it for, from, from him when he
gets it done.
But I, I'm looking forward to that.
I would let you use ours to try it out, but we just had a problem with one of
our pumps
broke.
So it's.
Oh, that's a bummer.
Yeah.
It flooded everything with salt water.
It's, it's weird.
There, it's a weird experience.
Have you done it?
I have actually never done it.
I'm so fascinated by it.
And I've actually booked a session at some of those like float tank companies
several times.
And then every single time my schedule has intervened and it turns out that I've
not been able
to do it.
You should get one for your place.
Maybe I should.
Yeah.
I should probably try it first.
Right?
You'll like it.
It's just so good.
I should have it.
Yeah.
You'll love it.
Yeah.
It's very relaxing too.
You're just fucking around with it in your head.
You're like, I don't know what to do with this.
You're in there.
You have zero distractions.
It's like your mind has more computational power that's available.
Because even though you don't think about it, like right now we're in these
chairs.
Yep.
Your butt's touching the chair.
Your feet are on the floor.
Your hands on the table.
Your clothes are on your body.
Yep.
There's all these different things that your body is recognizing as input.
Sure.
But when you take those away, it's like if you're having a conversation, there's
a bunch
of people right beside you with a jack hammer.
You're like, this is too distracting.
Yep.
Let's go over here.
And you go to where in the park, it's nice and peaceful.
Now you can have a conversation.
It's so much easier.
Well, you don't realize that like regular everyday life, just establishing the
distance between
the walls and thinking about all the data, all that stuff is your brain is
computing
this.
Yep.
In the silence of the float tank, there's none of that.
And you don't feel the water because it's the same temperature as your skin.
That's right.
And it's all salt laden, so it's isotonic.
Yes.
Exactly.
You feel like you're flying.
That's so cool.
It's really cool.
I've done a lot of reading on it, and I'm super interested in the science of it,
but
I've never actually managed to get into a float tank, which is really
embarrassing.
I mean, you'd think that a billionaire would have the resources to get into a
bucket of
salt water.
Yeah.
You should have somebody make you one.
Oh, that'd be interesting.
Have someone build you one at your place.
Oh, that'd be cool.
You want metal.
You want metal?
Mine looks like a giant meat locker.
That's what it looks like.
But the guy who made it for me was like a mad genius.
He died, unfortunately.
He was a mad genius who also didn't believe in medicine.
Did he die of hepatitis?
I don't know.
I think he died of hepatitis.
Well, you'll have to show it to me so that I can check it out.
It's dope.
Yeah.
But it would definitely be, at some point in time, the best way to disconnect
from your
natural environment.
If they do come up with some sort of haptic feedback, or whether it's some sort
of a neural
interface that completely changes the environment around.
You drop into it.
Yep.
That would be the perfect environment to do it in salt water.
Yep.
That was always my dream.
My first company was Oculus, and so that was my dream was to just fully feel
like you were
inside of the video game.
Completely forget about the real world.
How old were you when you started working there?
So, I started building virtual reality headset prototypes when I was 14 or 15.
And then I built the first prototype of what I call the Oculus Rift at 16, and
then I formally
turned it into a company when I was 18, launched the product when I was 19, and
then sold the
company a few years later to Facebook for a few billion dollars.
So, it was kind of a crazy arc for me.
Wow.
That was like, that was, I was putting myself through school.
Did you work with Carmack?
Yeah.
So, well, Carmack was, so John Carmack was one of my heroes growing up.
Love that dude.
And it was one of these crazy things where the universe kind of brought us
together.
I was working on my VR technology, and nobody was paying attention to VR back
then.
It was kind of a crazy person thing.
Nobody was paying attention to what I was doing, but I was posting about it on
this internet
forum.
And then John Carmack started posting on that same forum asking for help
modifying his own
Sony head-mounted display that he had bought to reduce the latency.
And so I gave him a bunch of input on why he couldn't do it, why it was an
impossible project,
because I had been trying to do the same thing.
And then he ended up seeing the work I was doing on the Oculus Rift, and he
said, "Hey,
Palmer, can I buy one of these from you?"
I said, "Well, I'm not really selling these yet, but I'd be happy to lend it to
you for free."
And so I sent it to him.
He ended up writing a review and posting it on his blog and said it was the
best VR experience
the world has ever seen.
He introduced me to Sony.
They tried to hire me to run their VR research and development lab.
I turned them down.
They doubled the offer.
I turned that down.
And then so John was kind of the guy who got me like really, he's kind of the
first guy
who got any public attention for me, where everyone was like, oh, John Carmack
says this
is important, then this must be important.
And then if you could believe it, two years later, after I started Oculus and
started selling
these, he actually left id Software and became the CTO of Oculus.
Yes.
Then I had the incredible opportunity to work with one of my childhood heroes
as my CTO.
That was so cool.
What year was that?
That was 2012.
Okay.
Because he came on the podcast, I think 2016, and he brought one.
Yeah.
So yeah, he joined in 2013.
So I think it was June of 2013.
So about a year after I started Oculus is when he joined as CTO.
Hmm.
Well, he showed us and he was doing whatever the one is where I guess you have
drumsticks.
Is that what you have?
And you're whacking stuff as it comes out of the sky.
He showed us that and like what a workout it is.
Well, probably with Beat Saber.
Yes.
Beat Saber, that's it.
He's a huge Beat Saber fan.
He was going nuts and he was doing it really fast.
I was like, this is nuts.
Oh no.
It's actually, it's like, it is good fitness.
Yeah.
It is good coordination training.
Yeah.
It really, like Beat Saber was great because it really busted this myth that VR
was this
like, you know, totally inactive, be a fat, lazy slob thing.
Right.
VR gaming, at least as it exists today, takes a lot more caloric expenditure
than any other
type of gaming.
For sure.
And like even more than like other motion games.
Like remember Wii bowling and Wii sports.
Like that's like one movement every once in a while.
Like Beat Saber is a full body workout.
What's really impressive is the boxing games.
The boxing games are a really good workout.
Did you play, I think one of them was Creed by a company called Servios.
I don't remember what the name was.
We had a couple different ones at the old studio in LA and I'd work out with it.
I'd put it on and, you know, you do a round with these virtual boxers and you
really get
a workout in.
Your feet hurt.
Like, you're like, wow, I'm utilizing a lot of movement here.
Yep.
You know, the company that did a few of those boxing games, it's this LA studio
called Servios
and the two co-founders that were actually guys who worked with me in the army
research
lab that I worked in before starting Oculus.
So it's one of those teeny tiny worlds.
There were so few of us that really believed in VR in those days.
Is there a VR that like a professional boxer could use?
Like, could you get VR to the point where you could program it with AI?
So you could take like the movement of like a Sugar Ray Leonard or something
like that
and actually program it into the machine?
So I'd go first.
It's not just something you could do.
It's being done.
There are boxers who are using this technology.
Really?
So like, I know Logan Paul and Jake Paul and have talked with them a lot about
using virtual
reality and how they're using it to do combat training.
They're doing that?
That's right.
Wow.
Well, my thought was that you could actually emulate an opponent.
So like, say if you were supposed to fight Canelo Alvarez.
Yeah.
We have this database of all Canelo Alvarez's performances.
Yep.
And training footage.
So you could calculate what his normal exchanges are.
What his opening moves are.
How he sets the hook up off the jab.
He feints the right hand.
You're giving me crazy deja vu.
Let me show you the text message that I was just doing with Logan Paul last
night.
I said, it's time to have robots fighting people.
My dream is that you can have robots perfectly tuned to match your own current
physical capability
and progressively ramp up against yourself over time or against the greats.
Like we were talking through, this was less VR.
Well, are you even following some of the robot fighting league stuff?
Yes.
So that's controlled by VR.
You put on a VR headset.
Right.
You put on a motion capture suit.
You tele-operate a robot.
One of the things I've been talking with Logan about is the idea of having
where you have
one tele-operated robot versus an actual human.
Uh-huh.
But then what we were talking about is this idea of having the robot learn from,
like you're
saying, learning from footage of not just the greats, but even yourself.
So that it can be basically, you can fight against your style, your exact level
of strength.
And then of course you want to fight against the greats and see just how far
you have to
go and just get the shit kicked out of you.
The