#1059 - Brian Redban

Brian Redban (0:03)

This is static, I'm hearing just in the headphones.

Joe Rogan (0:06)

You're hearing something?

Brian Redban (0:07)

Yeah, but it's gone now, I think.

Joe Rogan (0:10)

Live?

And we're live, and we're live, for happy motherfucking new year. Remember when we used to think that the world was going to end? Well, I used to think that the world was going to end.

Brian Redban (0:22)

You even had the license plate.

Joe Rogan (0:24)

I did. I had a 2012 license plate.

I was convinced. I was like, those Mayans, man, they knew it.

Brian Redban (0:30)

I thought it was real, for sure. The computer thing.

Remember the Y2K?

Joe Rogan (0:35)

Yeah, I thought that too.

I stayed home for Y2K. Paranoid.

Brian Redban (0:39)

I was too.

Joe Rogan (0:40)

Clock rolled over.

Brian Redban (0:41)

Planes falling from the sky.

Joe Rogan (0:43)

Yeah, everybody's worried about the whole grid shutting down, right? And they wouldn't be able to get it up for months. And people would run out of food. I was listening to Art Bell a lot back then.

Oh, cheers. Cheers. Happy new year.

Brian Redban (0:55)

Happy new year, Jenna. Eight years of episodes.

Joe Rogan (0:58)

Eight years of episodes, 2018

2018 doesn't sound like a real number. It's one of those numbers you say it and you go, yeah, I guess, I guess you're right.

Like 2018, that's like way too close to 2020, which is like space. That's like the future. It's like a movie, you know, like Alien. Like when you watch the first Alien, one was Sigourney Weaver from the late 70s, it was like 1979 What do you think the timeline was supposed to be?

Brian Redban (1:31)

It's probably 2001, you know? Because there's like a lot of movies, like I think Blade Runner was something like 2017 or something like that.

Joe Rogan (1:40)

I wanna say, I don't remember, but I wanna say Blade Runner was like 2030 or something like that.

There was all the flying cars and shit, remember? Weren't there? Flying cars or am I thinking of Fifth Element?

Brian Redban (1:52)

No, no, there was flying cars because I remember the cars going through like the cool billboards and stuff and...

Joe Rogan (1:56)

I confused my sci-fi movies a lot, like old ones.

Jamie Vernon (2:01)

Blade Runner is 2019

Joe Rogan (2:03)

2019? Oh my God, that's insane. That's a year from now.

That's, wow, that's weird.

Brian Redban (2:11)

That shows how slow it actually is, technology. It thinks, you think it's fast.

Joe Rogan (2:16)

It shows how bad movie writers are at guessing. I don't think it shows anything else.

Brian Redban (2:20)

Right.

Joe Rogan (2:21)

So I think the guy who's been the best at predicting shit was like, wasn't HG. Wells really good?

I feel like HG. Wells, the science fiction author from, I think he was from the 1800s.

Jamie Vernon (2:35)

HG. Wells.

Joe Rogan (2:36)

But I think he predicted a lot of shit.

Jamie Vernon (2:38)

Yeah, there's a couple articles about all the stuff he predicted.

Joe Rogan (2:40)

Oh really?

The many futuristic predictions of HG. Wells that came true. All right, let's see what we got here. What did he do?

Brian Redban (2:50)

Born 150 years ago.

Joe Rogan (2:52)

Phones, email and television.

Brian Redban (2:54)

What?

Joe Rogan (2:55)

Is that real? In Men Like Gods in 1923, Wells invites readers to a futuristic utopia that's essentially earth after thousands of years of progress. In this alternate reality, people communicate exclusively with wireless systems that employ a kind of co-mingling of voicemail and email-like properties. Holy shit! For in utopia, except by previous arrangement, people do not talk together on the telephone, he writes. A message is sent to the station of the district in which the recipient is known to be, and there it waits until he chooses to tap his accumulated messages.

And any that one wishes to repeat can be repeated. Then he talks back to the senders and dispatches any other messages he wishes. The transmission is wireless. How?

How, what?

Brian Redban (3:56)

I'd like to know if he did drugs back then, like if he was doing mushrooms and...

Joe Rogan (4:00)

Yeah, man, I wanna know. He also imagined forms of true entertainment. It says, in When the Sleeper Wakes from 1899, the protagonist rouses from two centuries of slumber to a dystopian London in which citizens used wondrous forms of technology like the audio book, airplane, and television, yet suffer systematic oppression and social injustice. What in the fuck, man?

What the fuck, HG. Wells? Lasers, dude, how is he so good?