#1504 - Alan Levinovitz

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Hello, Alan.

Alan Levinovitz (0:02)

Hello, Joe.

Joe Rogan (0:02)

Good to see you. First of all, thank you for this.

This piece of pyrite that's embedded into stone.

And we just started talking, I said, just don't say another word. Let's start talking about this on the podcast. Because this, it kind of, it's interesting. I started your book, which I very rarely read books. I mostly do audiobooks, but I was forced to read yours. But one of the things that I found interesting is the concept of what is natural. And I've gone over this many times myself. I'm like, poison's natural, like everything's natural. Computers are natural, really, because they come from the ground, they're made by people. They're essentially like, you know, a human's version of anything like a bird would create, right? Birds create bird's nests, are those natural? But this pyrite, this is pyrite, right?

Which is fool's gold, right?

Alan Levinovitz (0:54)

Fool's gold.

Joe Rogan (0:55)

But it's naturally in these cubes, in this square form, these perfect angles, which you would never believe. You would think somebody left this shit there.

Alan Levinovitz (1:06)

I didn't believe it. It looks like aliens left them.

Joe Rogan (1:09)

Yeah.

Alan Levinovitz (1:09)

And they're even in, like what that's called, is it's in the matrix.

Joe Rogan (1:13)

Oh wow.

Alan Levinovitz (1:13)

So sometimes you can just get the cubes, they're just the cube, but they call the rock that it's in the matrix, which I think is kind of appropriate.

Joe Rogan (1:20)

That is going to have a permanent spot on this desk with all this other craziness here. Thank you so much, that was really cool. I did not know that it came like that. I found pyrite when I was a kid in rocks, when they call it fool's gold. Jamie's gonna bring that up to you there.

Fool's gold, but it's usually like specks and flecks and stuff.

Alan Levinovitz (1:40)

There's another one called, I forget they're called Illinois Miner's Dollars or something. This is another form that pyrite takes.

I'm kind of obsessed with weird rocks, but they look just like sand dollars, but they're gold. Oh wow. They look like they're golden. And so these are, I think one of the things, I actually changed my mind over the course of writing this book.

Joe Rogan (2:00)

Oh there they are, Jamie Pullups.

Alan Levinovitz (2:01)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (2:01)

That's crazy.

Alan Levinovitz (2:02)

They're incredible, right?

Joe Rogan (2:04)

What causes it to take on these different, completely unusual forms?

Alan Levinovitz (2:09)

So I tried to find out, there's like a local rock store where I live and I asked the guy, and apparently I don't understand how it works at all, but the way all crystals work is they have different kinds of structures and the way those structures come together determines whether it makes like a quartz crystal or what shape it takes.

It's very, it's very surreal, I think, honestly. Yeah, it's very surreal.

Joe Rogan (2:29)

This is very bizarre. I did not know until you gave this to me that that existed.

Alan Levinovitz (2:34)

Yeah, and this is, so like, for me, I went into this book, like you said, right, with this question of what's natural. There's some people, like, often scientists, who will sort of scoff at the idea of naturalness, right? They're like, everything's natural, right? Humans are natural, we're animals, we made all this stuff, we made the microphones, we're all made out of space dust, everything's natural, it's stupid to distinguish between natural and unnatural.

And honestly, that's where I was when I started writing the book. I was like, I'm gonna show this as a stupid idea. I'm gonna be Richard Dawkins, but for naturalness.

Joe Rogan (3:08)

Right.

Alan Levinovitz (3:10)

But I was wrong. I don't know.

Joe Rogan (3:13)

What shifted it for you?

Alan Levinovitz (3:14)

Well, so one of the things, like with that pirate, right?

People ask, is it natural? That's the first thing they ask, does this occur naturally, right? And it's an important question, because there's a difference, like a sort of profound difference between knowing that that was just spewed up by the Earth, forces that are not human, right?

Versus humans sitting down and deciding to make a cube, right, it's like a diamond that has been shaped by millions of years of natural forces. And what I realized is that it really does make sense to distinguish between naturalness and unnaturalness. You have to, maybe it's a spectrum, obviously, right? So it's not an easy binary, but New York City is not as natural as Yellowstone.