Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1616 - Jamie Metzl
Uploaded: 2021-03-09T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1616 - Jamie Metzl' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-03-09. Transcript available. Jamie Metzl is a futurist, author, and founder of OneShared.World.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1616 - Jamie Metzl' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-03-09. Transcript available. Jamie Metzl is a futurist, author, and founder of OneShared.World.

Joe Rogan Experience #1616 - Jamie Metzl

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
Okay, cool.
What's up, Jamie?
Good to see you, man.
Hey, Joe.
Nice to see you again.
Thanks for coming down here.
It's really my pleasure.
I'm bringing you chocolate with you again.
You know, I always bring the chocolate.
You got to be ready.
Yeah, you're a legitimate chocolate fiend.
I'm definitely a legitimate chocolate fiend.
How much do you eat a day?
How much chocolate do you eat a day?
You know, every single morning I have hot chocolate,
and it takes about 45 minutes of preparation time,
has about four different ingredients.
So I start that, and then I have some chocolate over the course.
45 minutes?
Yeah, a lot of it is simmering, so it's not really fully active,
but it's some active and some passive intervention.
So is this a preparation that you do?
Like, does it prepare you for the day?
Is it like a meditation thing?
You know, it's probably some kind of morning ritual,
but it's just, I don't know, it's very calming for me,
and by the time after this 45 minutes, it's like pudding.
I mean, it's like this thick, bubbling hot chocolate.
It just, it brings me joy.
I feel like everyone should start their day with joy.
Well, there's some, like, positive qualities,
and it's not just a good tasting thing, right?
Like, chocolate has some...
Well, yeah, dark chocolate especially has all kinds of very positive health
benefits.
I'm not saying that everyone should just eat chocolate bars all day,
and you're going to live forever.
But actually, the world, the woman who lived longest of everyone in recorded
history
ate two pounds of chocolate a week.
Jean Calment in France, so at least it could help.
Two pounds seems excessive.
It's a lot, but she lived to 122.
But chocolate's different in terms of, like, some chocolate is, like, really
sugar-based,
and some chocolate is more of, like, kind of...
I really like dark chocolate and peanut butter together.
You know...
Like a chocolate bar.
Yeah, or, like, a Reese's Pieces.
Yeah, so the dark chocolate is the healthier version of chocolate on average.
And so the darker, pure cacao, that's where the health benefits are.
But some people think there's, like, there's some psychoactive benefits to
chocolate, right?
To cacao as well, right?
Well, there is a little bit, yeah.
Well, so cacao has been used ceremonially for about 5,000 years,
so there definitely is a history of that.
And it has some...
I mean, it's not as psychoactive as some of the other stuff you talk about on
the show,
but it has a little bit of it.
Well, we did a podcast before the podcast while we're getting COVID tested out
there.
Yep.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Talking about our experience last time.
Yeah.
And so there's another thing that happens that I was reading about.
Some people like chocolate because it replaces, like, it gives them a feeling
of being loved.
Have you ever read that?
I haven't read that, but, I mean, maybe it's true.
I don't know whether there's something...
I doubt there's something that's chemical about chocolate,
but I think there's probably an association with chocolate and happiness and
everybody's...
Lots of people's grandmothers gave them little chocolates.
So I think that there's a little bit of that.
Maybe it's part of the chocolate.
Maybe it's part of our experience.
I think it's like a...
God, I wish I could remember it.
See if you can find this, like...
It's tryptophan.
Really?
That's what it is?
That's what this article says.
It's tryptophan, amino acid, small quantities of chocolate.
But it's...
Flavinits is the...
Yeah.
Phenylenophane or phoenix.
Yeah.
Does it have something to do with love?
What is what it says here?
Oh, this is...
Oh, this is fast acting.
Chocolate in the brain, signs behind chocolate.
But, okay, there we go.
Butterflies we feel in falling in love.
Yeah.
Wow.
All right.
Great.
Well, if the internet says it, it must be true.
Must be.
But that was the idea that I had read, that some people like chocolate, like
when they're
depressed, like when they're heartbroken, they're like chocolate, sort of a
replacement
for love.
Yeah.
I mean, I definitely, if you're feeling bad and you eat chocolate, you're
probably going
to feel better.
So maybe it is a replacement in a little way.
So you were a part of this open letter recently about COVID-19 where you want
to get to the
bottom of the origins of it.
And this is something we've talked about on the podcast before.
And a lot of people have been talking about it lately.
Now that Trump's out of office, it's sort of freed up the discussion.
Right.
For the longest time, discussing that in terms of it not being just some sort
of a random
mutation from bats and coronaviruses, that it may have been a lab leak, was so
taboo
because it was what Trump was pushing.
And it's so crazy that something which is science, it's a scientific discussion
and inquiry, that
it could be stunted by these political ideas when someone is so polarizing,
like Trump, that
people just completely want to reject very plausible and possible ideas just
because of him.
It's exactly right.
I was the lead drafter with a community of other people and lead scientists
around the world.
of this letter.
And since the beginning of last year, 2020, I had maybe the leading website in
the world
that was just stating what is the evidence about the origins of COVID-19,
particularly the evidence
for a lab leak.
And the evidence is actually really strong.
It's all circumstantial evidence, but we don't have any evidence of the other
hypotheses of where
COVID-19 comes from, like this series of jumps through different animals in the
wild.
And so I, for a long time, more than a year, have been saying, hey, we need to
look really
seriously at this.
Not because we know, or certainly I don't know for sure that's where COVID-19
comes from,
but in my view, it's the most likely hypothesis worthy of a full investigation.
And so there was a World Health Organization organized an independent advisory
committee,
and they went on a study mission to China in earlier this year, 2021.
And then they came out with a, they had a press event in Wuhan, which was a
joint press event
between this committee and their Chinese government counterparts.
And in that press event, what they said was, we don't support investigating the
possibility
of a lab leak any further, but we should investigate what seems like a much
less likely hypothesis
that COVID started with frozen foods being shipped to Wuhan.
And so we already had a community of scientists and others who'd been meeting
virtually for a
while trying to say, to really say, where does this come from?
What's the evidence?
We had academic presentations, challenging the data, trying to figure out where
are the gaps.
And we looked at that and we said, that can't be right.
And we decided we needed to put out an open letter, which we recently released,
and it was covered in newspapers all around the world.
And the letter made kind of key points.
One is that this is a terrible pandemic.
We have to understand where it came from.
Two, that this current investigation is not the kind of full investigation that's
needed.
And three, here's what a full investigation looks like, and we call on
governments to do it.
But your point that it's been taboo for the year is exactly right.
And it's just crazy because it seems this is a really, in my view, likely
possibility.
I can't say for sure.
We should be investigating all hypotheses, not saying we can't even look at
something that really
could be the real story here.
And it's also really unfortunate that a lot of people are not trusting anything
that the World Health Organization says anymore.
Because the World Health Organization, I'm sure you saw the spokesperson for
the World Health Organization
speaking with a reporter, and he wouldn't even mention the name Taiwan.
Did you see that?
Yeah, I know.
So it's, I did see that.
And he logs off and then comes back on.
And then she asks him again about Taiwan's response to COVID-19.
And he says, well, China's done an amazing job.
And let's just change subjects.
And like the woman keeps getting back to Taiwan.
And he won't recognize Taiwan because China doesn't recognize Taiwan.
And China has some sort of strange, I don't know what it is, but there's some
sort of political
influence on the World Health Organization.
Yeah.
So there's a lot there.
So first, full disclosure, I'm a member of the World Health Organization
International Advisory
Committee.
You were until this podcast.
What's that?
I said you were.
Exactly.
Exactly.
They're going to cut you off.
Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing.
And so I'm actually a real supporter of the World Health Organization.
But there's a big problem.
And that problem is being realized, and we're seeing it through the course of
this pandemic.
So first, in the earliest days of the pandemic, why was it that World Health
Organization inspectors
weren't able to go to Wuhan?
And the reason was the Chinese government wouldn't give them visas, and there
was nothing the WHO
could do.
Why was it that the WHO was just essentially, unfortunately, parroting the
reporting from
the Chinese government in the earliest days?
And part of that, at least, is because they don't even have the authority to
have their own
surveillance network.
Why is it, referencing your point about Taiwan, that Taiwan has all kinds of
expertise in treating
and responding to terrible outbreaks like this, which is why they've only had
nine COVID deaths in
Taiwan since the very beginning?
And why is it that the WHO is in this weird position?
It's in part because the WHO is created by these member states that have a lot
of influence.
And it's terrible.
And we're all suffering because Taiwan didn't have a full voice.
On December 31st, 2019, Taiwan declared a national emergency on COVID.
That was way before we did.
I wish Taiwan had had a bigger voice.
So WHO is in a really, really difficult position because on one hand, we're
asking them to investigate
and call out a member state.
On the other hand, their governing body essentially is made up of member states,
including China.
Yeah, it's just so strange to see scientific inquiry and analysis pushed and
manipulated by politics.
Well, that's the whole story here.
I mean, that's unfortunately the story of COVID is that.
I mean, it was politics that made it so that you could have this outbreak.
And we can talk more about where the outbreak started.
But wherever it started, whether it was a lab leak or something else, if you
had had a fully
functioning system, if it hadn't been Chinese politics and the national
instinct or the natural
instinct hadn't been to cover up, to silence the whistleblowers, to lie
essentially to the
World Health Organization and the international community, it could well have
been possible to
suppress COVID in the first few weeks and we wouldn't be having any of this.
So and then it was politics that made China, again, whatever the origin, carry
out this massive
cover up over the course of the last year where they destroyed samples,
eliminated or removed
databases, imprisoned journalists, Chinese journalists asking tough questions
and put a universal
gag order on their scientists, making it impossible for them to speak about any
of this stuff.
That's pretty incredible that that's not really well known.
Yeah.
I mean, so for me, it's been more than a year and I have it on my Jamie Metzl
website and
I've been trying to tell everybody not to point fingers, but to say like, we
have a real problem
here unless we can just be really honest about what's the problem that we're
facing.
How are we possibly going to address it?
Now, what is the circumstantial evidence?
Sorry.
So let me start from the beginning of this.
So we know we have a long history of these pathogenic outbreaks and they tend
to happen
in more tropical parts of China and Southeast Asia and just 