"The minister of loneliness" | Sarah Kay
Host Elise Hugh introduces poet Sarah Kay, who performs a spoken word piece about loneliness, connection, and curiosity. Kay begins with a real statistic about suicide and COVID-19 in Japan and the creation of a government role called the "minister of loneliness." She then imagines, in poetic detail, what such a minister might do to reweave social bonds, from buddy systems and intergenerational contact to shared art, hotlines, and his own shy crush that keeps listeners engaged with life.
#2412 - Adam Carolla
Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla reconnect after several years and discuss aging, time perception, and the uniquely human ability to change. They explore insecurity, the value of coaching and criticism, the importance of developing real skills, and how many people drift through life without a passion or craft. The conversation ranges through sports, construction, Malibu fires and Los Angeles regulation, climate and COVID responses, media dishonesty, over-sterilized modern life, curiosity, motivation, and advice for younger people to take risks before they are weighed down by obligations.
#2411 - Gavin de Becker
Joe Rogan talks with criminologist Gavin about historical and modern government operations, pharmaceutical industry behavior, and public health policy. They discuss CIA covert programs like Project Gladio, patterns of propaganda and information control, and parallels between the AIDS crisis and the COVID-19 response. Gavin argues that citizens must adopt deep skepticism toward government, media, and pharmaceutical narratives, using examples from vaccine policy, Agent Orange, baby powder litigation, population control documents, and the war in Ukraine.
Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel
Guy Raz interviews Tom Hale, founder and CEO of Backroads, about how he turned a spontaneous idea into one of the largest active travel companies in the world. Hale describes leaving an unfulfilling environmental planning job, bootstrapping bike trips through U.S. national parks and later internationally, and building a logistics- and people-intensive business without outside capital. He also explains how Backroads survived major shocks like 9/11, the Great Recession, and COVID-19 while expanding beyond bike tours into hiking and multi-adventure travel.
#2408 - Bret Weinstein
Joe Rogan describes an unusually vivid dream involving humanoid beings and uses it as a springboard to ask Brett about what dreams are and how lucid dreaming works. They then move into an extended discussion of artificial intelligence as an emergent, biology-like phenomenon, its potential to manipulate humans, and its interaction with social media, sexuality, education, and governance. The conversation also covers intelligence agencies, systemic corruption, pedophilia and blackmail, COVID-19 policy and vaccines, pharmaceutical incentives, wealth, socialism versus markets, academic resistance to paradigm shifts, and whether there is a viable path from the current crisis to a healthier societal structure.
650. The Doctor Won't See You Now
Stephen Dubner examines the growing shortage of physicians in the United States, exploring both demand-side pressures like an aging population and supply-side constraints in medical education and training. Former CDC director and infectious disease physician Rochelle Walensky outlines workforce data, training bottlenecks, burnout, debt, and rural access problems, while economic historian Karen Clay explains how the early 20th-century Flexner Report raised medical standards but also sharply reduced the number of medical schools and doctors, with complex long-term consequences. Throughout, practicing and former physicians describe how bureaucracy, insurance rules, changing public attitudes, and alternative career options are reshaping the medical profession.
647. China Is Run by Engineers. America Is Run by Lawyers.
Host Stephen Dubner speaks with analyst and author Dan Wong about his framework for understanding the U.S. and China as, respectively, a "lawyerly society" and an "engineering state." Wong explains how China's engineer-dominated leadership prioritizes rapid infrastructure building, technological capacity, and even social engineering, while the U.S. legal culture emphasizes procedure, litigation, and blocking harmful as well as beneficial projects. Drawing on his years living in China, his family's history, and his book "Breakneck," Wong discusses zero-COVID, the one-child policy, manufacturing and process knowledge, China's global ambitions, and what each country could learn from the other.