Steve Hilton, the GOP nominee for Governor of California, talks to Joe Rogan.

Joe and Hilton are old friends, and this discussion goes on for 3 hours, so this should be a major boost for Hilton. I'll just jump in at the point where they are talking about the waste of money on nonprofits that deal with homelessness:

Steve Hilton: This woman runs a homeless nonprofit, 1.6 million dollar salary. Homeless nonprofit.... There's another one...  2.6 million a year....

Joe Rogan: And here's the most important thing. The homelessness only got worse. Like if in the private sector, imagine if you were a CEO of a company that was just losing insane amounts of money and never completing its tasks, never doing the thing that it set out to do....

Steve Hilton: The more I look at it, the more insane it is. And everyone just looks at it and no one's ever pointed this stuff out.... The government just makes everything so expensive in California. Everyone says, oh, it's so expensive. What are we going to do? We'd better give them more welfare benefits... we better have a billionaire wealth tax.... They don't have that mentality of cutting costs like every normal business.... And this is what happens, I think, when you've got this one party rule thing that's been going on for 16 years now. They've run everything. They don't care because they think they'll be in power forever and it just doesn't matter....

"What's the most disruptive thing that you could say in the most disruptive conversation that's ever been had?"

Joe Rogan asked Zach Bush, a doctor who has specialized in hospice care. It was Bush's idea that their conversation was going to be most disruptive conversation ever.

Bush states his truth succinctly —  "Everything is perfect" — and goes on at great and rather bizarre length: 

"Everything that's happening right now is actually a perfect manifestation of a maturation of a species. We don't actually have, you know, a poly crisis going on. We've got a hospice moment.

JD Vance on Joe Rogan.

I'm only an hour and a half into this, but it seems the 2 men are handling themselves well enough:

"These aren’t like some vague hallucinations, these are like three-dimensionally-rendered, highly-detailed figures inhabiting your exterior world."

"And they’re also interacting with objects in the real world — like crawling up chairs and tables or under doorways.... The little people are said to typically like teasing, playing with or harassing the person seeing them.... Everyone knows that this mushroom has this property and can make you see little people, but they’ll continue to eat it anyway, because they’re just not afraid of that effect."

Said University of Utah researcher Colin Domnauer, quoted in "New magic mushroom makes users see tiny ‘gnome’ people — scientists have no idea how it’s doing that" (NY Post).

The mushroom is L. asiatica.

Would you want to see little people running around everywhere?

I remember hearing Joe Rogan talk about this and speculate that the people are somehow really there....

"You know the thing is like is it teaching us something about the human brain or is it allowing you to see something that's actually there all the time?"

"We get to a point where we see the fence. The fence is there, but we can't see over the fence. But the closer we get to the fence, the more curious we are..."

"... about what's on the other side of the fence. And there are some people who just decide that they're too curious — like Hunter — and jump over the fence, right? I'm not doing that. But I'm approaching the fence, and I've lived a terrific life, and only — once again — only in America.... Although I really did admire his note, the 'no more fun' note. It should be a classic."

Says Joe Eszterhas, who is 81 years old now, in this great conversation with Joe Rogan. 

The classic note he's talking about is Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note. I've quoted it before: "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt."

Eszterhas wrote a lot of movies. Is any of them a classic? Here's a list. I haven't seen any of them. Not my sort of thing. Maybe you've seen "Basic Instinct." But anyway, he talks about a lot in that interview. There's a long section about his dinner with Jimi Hendrix, who was, we're told, "the nicest guy... very nice... just laid back."

"So, we were just talking about this wild crime spree that happened this weekend in Austin.... they stole cars and stole guns and switched cars and they shot at like 10 different locations...."

"They shot multiple people.... &ou were saying that the reason why they had a hard time catching them is because they had Flock cameras in Austin, but then they shut those cameras off for political reasons...."

Said Joe Rogan, inviting Mark Andreeson to talk about Flock, which applies AI to info from municipal cameras to find cars for the police. Andreeson is a big investor in Flock.

 

Andreeson: "It's used all over the country. It solves crimes every day. We get reports on carjackings with kids in the back seat and their lives get saved because they track them down. So a lot of towns and cities have this and they love it. In cities like Austin with the intense politics, they run into backlash on privacy and surveillance concerns. And so Austin had Flock and then turned it off. And as a consequence, they were not able to find these guys for several days. And then what happened — the late breaking news today is these guys drove into some adjacent town up against Austin and Flock was live in that town. And so Flock tagged them the minute they drove into that town and then they caught the guys. Subsequent to that, the mayor and your chief of police gave a press conference and said, 'We really need to rethink this,' because it's crazy to have the ability to solve crimes and stop crimes and not be able to use it...."

"Bitching about a season of TV that's not even written yet....gotta love the internet."

Says one comment in a Reddit thread about the HBO series "Rooster," after a line of dialogue in the first season finale episode that suggested a new narrative for one of the secondary characters.

Somebody else says: "Wouldn’t be the first time a studio monitored fan reactions on Reddit and took them into consideration while working on future seasons."

What were the other times? Well, back in 2017, there was "Reddit users correctly guess ‘Westworld’ season 2 plot twist/Westworld creator Jonathan Nolan says he's had to re-write the script" (NME). Nolan said: "It’s annoying sometimes when people guess the twists and then blog about it, but the engagement is gratifying, on one level, because if someone guesses your twist, it means you’ve done an adequate job.... You can’t complain when people are that engaged. It’s very gratifying — but stop doing it, please."

Stop doing it? Ridiculous! If there's one thing people instinctively do with any new material that comes their way, it's try to predict the future. If we weren't designed to do that, we wouldn't be drawn into stories with plots in the first place. 

Here's a neuroscientist talking to Joe Rogan about her study of the capacity of the human mind to predict the future, which she seems to believe in:

"The Trump administration’s spotlight on testosterone and its increasing availability through online clinics come at a time when exaggerated, uncompromising, even aggressive masculinity is in vogue..."

"... in Hollywood and online in the so-called manosphere. Wildly popular figures like Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman have spoken about their own use of T.R.T., framing it as a medical treatment for aging. But many influencers go much further, amplifying the message that being 'low T' is synonymous with low status, weakness and sexual inadequacy — and often profiting off promotional links to T.R.T. clinics, or even starting their own. That message seems to be reaching younger men in particular. Clavicular, the 20-year-old streamer who popularized the 'looksmaxxing' subculture, which casts the relentless pursuit of physical attractiveness as the clearest route to social capital, has said that he started using testosterone at age 14 to achieve 'a more dimorphic look.'..."

From "Why So Many Men Are Obsessed With Testosterone/From the Trump administration to online influencers, the hormone is increasingly seen as the key to achieving a new male ideal" (NYT)(gift link).

"So, what I notice when you talk with people is you seem like a tough guy, but you're really sensitive."

"You're an incredible listener, obviously. You learn all these things and you're putting together—this is my impression—a kind of map of the world, a map of knowledge through all these different people's eyes. My question for you is: how do you see culture shifting? Because I think you're really sensitive to it, and you're kind of like one of these signal fish—you notice what's happening in the environment and you're going to guide the school of fish accordingly. Do you think the culture is shifting toward better use of these exceptional — or natural — capacities that we already have, or do you think we're shifting away from it and we're going to run away in fear?"

Says Julia Mossbridge, a cognitive neuroscientist, beginning her interview with Joe Rogan by asking him a question.

Rogan gives a good answer:

"They said garage bands are coming back with kids, which is kind of means nature is healing."

From a Joe Rogan conversation that starts here:

From the transcript, which blends the voices of the 4 interlocutors: "It's so sad that rock is dead.... We were talking about that. Yeah, it's all queefy now. When was the last time.... Where's the new rock bands? The new Zeppelin... It used to be the biggest part of music. Rolling Stones, AC/DC.... It used to be the biggest part of music was rock and roll. What the fuck? That's kind of crazy.... What happened to rock? What happened to rock? Who are the biggest? They said garage bands are coming back with kids, which kind of means nature is healing. Yeah, that's a good sign.Yeah, kids are tired of playing video games. Want something real. But the thing about that that doesn't make sense about rock music is everybody still loves it, right? Everybody still plays covers. Oasis is doing giant arenas all over the place. I took acid at that Oasis concert...."

And that last line changes the topic. Too bad! I wanted to hear more about the return of garage bands and why that's a sign of health, but then I understand the argument. I just wanted to spend more time on it and on Joe Rogan, it seems they take every opportunity to get back onto drugs. 

"I got a call from a number of people, including the great Joe Rogan, and he said we have to do something about this."

"And I looked into it. I called Bobby... And it was really uniform support. And I said, so why would we wait three or four years to get it done?... Let's get it done immediately. And that's what happened. This is probably has never been anything that happened so quickly. Everybody is so strongly in favor of this. It's for a lot of people, but it's for the military in particular...."

"I want to thank Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is fantastic.... And people love him. More importantly, your wife is here.... Real boss in the family. It's fantastic.... Joe Rogan — fantastic. We did an interview before the election. We had over 300 million people. And I said, oh, man, I hope Kamala doesn't do it and she didn't. He wanted her to do it and she didn't Some day, Joe's gonna explain why. I can tell you why. Because she didn't want to.... The executive order I'm signing... today.... directs the FDA to expedite their review of certain psychedelics already designated as breakthrough therapy drugs.... If these turn out to be as good as people are saying, it's gonna have a tremendous impact on this country and other countries too.... Usually with things like this, nothing ever happens, no matter how the research ends up. We're changing that...."

ADDED: Joe spoke:

🚨 WOW! Joe Rogan reveals President Trump IMMEDIATELY offered him FDA approval for a psychedelic treatment in a text chain

Because the data was SO CONVINCING and STUNNING

"I wanna tell everybody how this happened. I send President Trump some information."

"With one dose of… pic.twitter.com/dnqYVf96hN

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 18, 2026

"[A]s Vice President JD Vance took a podium in Pakistan and said no deal had been reached had been reached to end the war in Iran... President Trump... was surrounded by people, but Mr. Trump was somehow an isolated figure...."

"People mostly circulated around him, checking in with updates and then leaving again. For the most part, Mr. Trump sat and impassively watched blood and saliva sprayed out from the fighters beating each other silly in front of him...."

Writes Katie Rogers, "Trump Was Watching a U.F.C. Fight in Miami While Iran Talks Collapsed On his way to Florida, President Trump said it did not matter to him if a deal with Iran was reached or not: 'We win, regardless,' he said" (NYT).

Blood and saliva — I've got tags for both of those.

Trump was "surrounded." People "circulated around him." When you're a star, you can't grab what orbits around you:

"I want you to imagine a guy today, if R. Crumb never existed, but he emerged as R. Crumb today and put that work out. He would 100% be labeled in the Andrew Tate camp, right?"

 

Duncan Trussell had sent Joe Rogan an R. Crumb drawing, and it sets Joe off:

"Well, today, Artemis, they're supposedly flying around the moon. So these are the first people that have gone into deep space since 1972, since the Apollo missions...."

"That's today, that's happening, right? Nobody knows it. That's what's nuts.... And they're going around the moon and coming back to earth. No one's done that since 1972. And it's happening today. No one cares. That's kind of weird, right?... It's very weird that we've become dull to like fascinating things...."

Said Joe Rogan, at 02:05:34, of his new podcast (with Theo Von).

Rogan wants us to marvel at the works of man. Meanwhile, Von is looking for a mystical relationship to nature itself:

"Sometimes if you lay there and look at the stars and stuff, it feels like, bro, and this is real shit I'm saying right now to me... it feels like they're looking back at you a little bit....

Sculpting the head of Joe Rogan for a New Yorker illustration.

Video after the jump.

And here's the article with the finished illustration — a photograph of the sculpted head in a fantasy landscape — "Listening to Joe Rogan/How a gift for shooting the shit turned into an online empire—and a political force."

"I had not spent a lot of my life hanging out with Republicans, and what I imagined they were talking about was exactly the opposite."

"Now I'm in an administration surrounded by immensely talented people who are immensely idealistic. I always imagined Republicans would get together thinking about how to screw the poor and reduce taxes on the rich, but they're actually narrowly focused on how do we solve these big problems and make our country work. The level of idealism that I see at every level in the White House and in my agency is inspiring. And then the level of capability—the competence of the people I'm surrounded with...."

And a bit earlier in the conversation:

"There's ideas where I'll start it off and it's just like this ain't going anywhere... and then I'll find a whole other angle.... like what if I was a woman..."

"... and I was watching this and I'm looking at this fucking meathead on stage and I'm like okay, like, I got to figure out a way to get them to understand that just cuz I look like this doesn't mean I'm a bad guy. Like like let me like work this into your head first and then explain it from my perspective.... It's an automatic assumption.... it's an untold prejudice that, like, men with muscles in particular are assholes... a mean person...."

Joe Rogan, explaining his comedy-writing methodology and reflecting on life in this gendered world.

 

Elsewhere in the conversation — at  15:12 — describes a confrontation with 2 women: "I was at a Starbucks the other day and two lesbians walked in. They saw me and they left.... They said, 'We can't, we can't do this.' And they looked in my face and they said, 'We can't do this,' and they left."

"You know, if you're if you're a 70-year-old billionaire, you can't walk into a bar... and meet an 18-year-old.... I'm presuming these things are facilitated at private parties..."

"... and it needs to, you know, for a lot of these guys, it has to be discreet. You know, they've got wives, they've got reputations, and you know, there's an aspect of this that plays out at every institution. I worked at a New York law firm and... there's ways that you can make partner — at least this was kind of the vibe that I felt. Some people make partner because they're really good technically.... There are some people who move up because of nepotism.... There are some people... who brought in one client... a really big rainmaker. And there are some people who move up because they open doors to partners while they're associates. They introduce them to someone. They host events. They've got tickets to exclusive things. And the partners just like being around that person because they get access to that person in a currency that they can't get on their own. And that includes hosting cool exotic parties, having attractive women."

Rand Paul on the Joe Rogan podcast.

Transcript here, at Podscribe.

"Nobody got angry. You were angry at people that didn't want to get vaccinated and you didn't get angry at the person who used science..."

"... to create a horrible disease that was completely avoidable. And that killed who knows how many people. That didn't make you mad."

Said Joe Rogan, on his recent podcast with Adam Carolla.

Carolla: "Where's the anger over finding out that it was made in China at a lab... and then where's the anger over being forced or being vaxxed or all this misinformation being used?... I realized they don't want to say anything 'cause they're ashamed