Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1456 - Michael Shermer
Uploaded: 2020-04-09T19:00:07.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1456 - Michael Shermer' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-04-09. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1456 - Michael Shermer' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-04-09. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1456 - Michael Shermer

Okay, here we go. Three, two, one, boom, and we're live. Mr. Shermer, how are
you, sir?
I'm fine, thank you. I'm still breathing.
It's good to see you again. We were just saying before we got started that the
last time we saw
each other was we went to dinner about six weeks ago, and you're thinking that
that might be the
end of that kind of stuff.
That was my last time I've been in a restaurant, actually. Well, I think
restaurants, of course,
will reopen, but I think the kind of social distancing we're seeing now, it's
not going
to go all the way back to the way it used to be. I think we may quit shaking
hands and hugging to the
extent that we used to, although I don't think we'll ever go all the way to,
say, the Japanese
model of social distancing, but I think there'll be modifications like that.
The other thing I've
been thinking about is the change of remote, say, meetings and education. I
mean, I'm in
the studio here in Santa Barbara where I've been recording lectures for my Chapman
University
class, Skepticism 101, and I just upload them and share them with the students,
and then they
watch them, and then I send them a quiz. They take the quiz. They send them
back. Now, that's
not a complete replacement of a brick-and-mortar building with a small-class
seminar discussion,
say, but it does adequately replace a lot of traditional education that you don't
really
need to be in a classroom for.
Do you think that this is preparing us for the ultimate, where we embrace the
symbiotic
relationship that we have with computers and become one with the machine? I
mean, it seems
like we're becoming closer and closer to some sort of an electronic community.
It's weird.
Yeah, I think it was happening slowly already, and this is kind of a jump-starting
it. I mean,
already tech companies like Zoom are having to ramp up their game because the
systems are
crashing because pretty much everybody's doing Zoom meetings now, and then they
have to adjust
to Zoom bombing because, of course, there's people like that out there that
just want to screw
with you. And then I was also thinking about things like theaters. Why do we
need to go
to theaters anymore? I mean, I love watching a movie on a big screen, but the
screens we have
at home now, big television screens, super high def, why not just watch movies
at home?
Well, I don't think we're going to have much of a choice. I was reading an
article this morning
about AMC theaters. They might have to go under because of this.
Really?
Yeah, it's not good. I mean, you got to think these companies are accustomed to
having a certain
amount of money coming in every month, and they never, no one anticipated
anything like this,
where all businesses are just going to shut down. Gyms, I mean, how many gyms
are going to go under?
How many yoga studios? I mean, it's a strange and trying time for people who
have small businesses,
for sure. Yeah, one of my cycling buddies owns the La Cunada Theater Complex
and, of course,
rents out the space to different retailers, including the theater managers. And
anyway,
he was telling me that, you know, they normally pay $93,000 a month in rent,
but, you know,
they bring in like $7.5 million a year or something, so it all balances out.
But they just
told him, we're not going to make our rent this month, so he has to go to his
mortgage company,
you know, the bank, where he pays off his mortgage and says, I can't pay you
this month because these
guys can't pay me. And okay, so multiply that by, you know, $10 million or $100
million or something,
and that's kind of what we've been going through.
Yeah, and I don't really understand the economics of this stimulus package of
how they're going to be
able to distribute it and sort of balance people out. It seems like it's just a
small band-aid on a
very large wound.
Yeah, well, of course, the government can't just print money indefinitely. Then
we're going to get
huge inflation, and that could be catastrophic. You know, so this conversation
that people have
been wanting to have, but they get hammered every time they bring it up, I
think at some point we're
going to have to have in the next few weeks, is the economic trade-off and
costs to people's lives
compared to what we're doing with social isolation to save people's lives.
And at the moment, we're in the mode of, there's no dollar amount you can put
on a human life.
Therefore, total social isolation, no matter what it does to the economy, is
what we're going to do
now. Well, but at some point, you know, there's an economic calculation, like
how many people are
going to die, say, in the next year if we never open the economy? Of course, we
will, but, you know, at what
point do you do that? You know, the supply chain dries up, you can't get not
just toilet paper, but,
you know, food supplies start to dry up, and then you get social unrest, and,
you know, there's risks
there, too. And the idea of putting a dollar figure on a human life is repulsive
to most of us, I think,
intuitively in this context, but in fact, we do it all the time, you know, in
terms of like an automobile
company has to pay off the family of somebody who died in their car. Well,
there are people who do
those calculations, like what's the value of a human life? And the figure is,
well, the high-end figure
is about $10 million. And after 9-11, the families got paid off, I think it was
$250,000 a person
times the $3,000 something. And, you know, so it sounds so cold, like who does
those calculations?
Well, statisticians do that sort of thing, and attorneys and accountants work
on that, and judges
and juries have to face it. And, you know, that's kind of a normal part of
other aspects of life that
we're not used to thinking about. Most of us don't think about it. But, you
know, at some point, that's
the kind of calculation we're going to have to do for what we're in now.
Do you think that there's another way to do this? There's been some talk of
isolating the people that
are high-risk, isolating the people with underlying conditions, people that are
elderly, things of that
nature. Do you think that that's a way that they can move forward?
Yeah, for sure. But again, people, you know, we have this egalitarian mode,
like that doesn't sound
right. Sounds like a death panel, you know. Some group of people, some group of
government agents
are going to tell us who's going to live and who's going to die. And that feels
like we're sliding
into conspiracy mongering. But in fact, that is what you have to do, is a kind
of a triage.
And, you know, South Korea has been pretty good about this, you know, testing
everybody. They
jumped on it right away. They did that track and trace. You know, they got it
right down to,
I think it was the 31st patient they found who had gone to two church services.
And then she was in
a car accident and taken to the hospital. And that's when it spread from there.
That one day,
I think it was in late February when that happened, and they just jumped all
over it. Total deaths in
South Korea, I think it was like just a couple hundred compared to most other
countries.
That's pretty impressive.
It is. And they've been, you know, super careful about isolating people and
targeting
the people that most need the tests and so on. And, you know, that's just the
kind of thing
I think we have to do.
What do you think about what's going on in Germany? Because Germany is very
fascinating,
right? It's, I mean, some of these European countries, particularly Italy, are
experiencing
this very high death rate. But Germany, I mean, they must have exemplary health
care. They must be
doing something right or be robust and healthy individuals. Is it a genetic
thing, you think?
Is it a health care thing? Because they have a very low death rate.
I think they have a high, tight culture, a very tight culture. That is when my
wife's from Cologne,
Germany. So I know this from personal experience, but also their studies.
Michelle Gelfand does these
studies on loose and tight cultures and that Germany is a very tight culture.
That is to say, very law and
order, law abiding. And, you know, when the German government says, all right,
this is what we're going to do,
people do it. And Americans are not that. We're much looser culture, more
freedom oriented. And if the government
says you can't go to the beach, like, well, to hell with it. I'm going to the
beach anyway. Germans don't do that.
And they do have a really good health care system and they jump right on it.
And I think that's one explanation.
You know, we've seen yesterday this rise in deaths of African Americans versus,
you know, white Americans
and having to do with income. But of course, money is just a proxy for
something else, which has to do
with the quality of the health care they get, the food that they eat, you know,
how much, how healthy
and exercise prone they are or not, you know, diabetes, obesity, these sorts of
things, you know,
down the line when you're attacked by a virus like that can have an effect on
your immune system and
therefore the response to the disease. So I think those are the kinds of cohorts
we're going to have
to target to save lives. And I think countries like South Korea and Germany
have been doing that pretty
well without pushback.
Yeah, I'm hoping my best hope out of this is that it's a wake up call for
people that don't take care of their bodies.
The people that get through this, like you, you dodge the bullet. Now let's
clean that diet up. Let's get you moving.
Let's start some exercise on a regular weekly basis, get some nutrients into
your system, eliminate all this sugar
and bullshit that people eat and, you know, and take care of your body and take
care of your immune system.
Let's pump everything back up to sustainable levels. And I mean, that very well
could be the difference
between people who contract this virus and survive versus people who contract
this virus and don't.
Absolutely. I mean, how, how could it not hurt to be healthy, fit and have a
good immune system?
Even if for some reason we can't find the exact connection to this particular
virus, just as a global thing,
even if you do all that and it turns out there's no connection to this
particular virus,
it's still a good thing to do. Yeah. You've been cycling, right? I know you're
a cycler.
And so you were actually riding your bike today, right? Yeah, this morning, uh,
actually this is
really funny. This kind of world we live and there's no more group rides of
course.
Right. And, uh, you know, most, and all the big tours, like the Tour de France
have been canceled.
So there I'm riding along this morning and I see up ahead of me, um, TJ van
Garderen,
who's the top American pro right now. And apparently he lives over in the kind
of, uh,
Santa Ynez Valley area. And here he is cycling along in Santa Barbara by
himself. So I'm chasing
along to see how long I can stay up with this guy. And of course he's much
younger and faster than me,
but all of a sudden he just stops and he picks something up from the ground. So
I pull up and,
and he holds up a $5 bill and he goes, look, I found five bucks. I'm like, man,
it's the little things in life that just kind of make your day. So he was happy
with the five bucks and
I got to say hi to the great TJ van Garderen. So that was awesome. I don't
follow professional
cycling, but I can understand your enthusiasm. If he's the top guy, that's
pretty cool.
Yeah, it was. So, um, yeah, so I think, you know, just working out every day. I
mean,
you mentioned every week, I think people need to work out every day and I find
the more you work out,
the, you know, you don't have to eat as much because your body becomes more
efficient at processing fuel.
So I have less desire to eat especially. Yeah. Not me, baby.
When I, when I work out, oh my God, I get so hungry. Yeah. I don't know. I've
been trying,
I've been doing that, uh, after you were promoting that, the daily fast, you
know, don't, don't e