#2037 - Alex Berenson

SPEAKER_2 (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Alex Berenson (0:14)

It's a pleasure.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

How are you feeling out there, you truth warrior?

Alex Berenson (0:17)

Well, I keep waiting to be done with this shit. Yeah. Be done with COVID.

Joe Rogan (0:25)

Nice to be done, right?

Alex Berenson (0:26)

They will not let it go.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

Yeah, it's strange.

It's strange now, because it's also strange what bothers me. And I try to emphasize this as much as possible, and I even had to do this recently with some close family friends. You've got to take care of your health. You have to take vitamins. You have to eat right. You have to. If you don't do that, your body doesn't function well. That includes your immune system, includes everything.

Includes inflammation. It causes a host of diseases in your body. You've got to take care of yourself.

That should be the most important message that everyone's putting out, not just podcasters, but the government, health officials. Everyone should be saying that. You should really supplement with vitamins. You should really get your nutrient levels checked, if you can.

Alex Berenson (1:12)

Even if you can't do those things, you can eat decently.

Joe Rogan (1:15)

You can eat decently.

Alex Berenson (1:16)

You can try to exercise moderately. Look, I know a lot of people have complicated lives.

They have work. They don't have much time.

Joe Rogan (1:24)

I get it.

Alex Berenson (1:26)

But even if you can work out a half hour a day, three days a week, and not eat too much, you're in much better shape.

Joe Rogan (1:33)

Yeah. There's been some studies done recently that something really crazy, like 20 minutes of exercise twice a week, improves your overall all-cause mortality score.

Alex Berenson (1:44)

Yes.

Joe Rogan (1:46)

Just a little bit, moderate stuff, nothing crazy. Do some push-ups and sit-ups and some jumping jacks, and you're good to go. Just you have to do something that gets your body moving, or it doesn't think that it has to, and it atrophies. It's just an unfortunate aspect of our biology, that we are not like other animals.

Other animals get stronger too as they exercise, but we've all seen animals that are super muscular, they don't do anything. It's just that they're different, and they only live 13 years.

Alex Berenson (2:16)

Yes.

Joe Rogan (2:17)

The whole thing is different.

Alex Berenson (2:18)

Yes.

Joe Rogan (2:18)

With us, we're this long-term species, with intelligence and ego and justifications and all sorts of weird ways that we will procrastinate and justify bad behavior and unhealthy choices, and it's just a constant battle just being a human being.

No one wins that battle. You just win battles.

Alex Berenson (2:41)

Yes.

Joe Rogan (2:41)

Win like daily battles. No one wins the war.

Alex Berenson (2:44)

Everyone dies in the end.

Joe Rogan (2:45)

Everyone dies in the end.

Alex Berenson (2:48)

But I wrote about this on The Substack, we were just talking before we started about when I didn't see you, but when you were in Vegas in July and I was in Vegas in July for I was playing poker, that gambling is, and I like to gamble. I don't have a moral problem with it, but gambling destroys people too. Overeating destroys people. Gambling destroys people.

Joe Rogan (3:08)

Gambling destroys people.

Alex Berenson (3:09)

Drugs destroy people. As human beings, we've set up all these modern things to take advantage of our dopamine, and we're not really built for it.

Joe Rogan (3:18)

We're not, and we're certainly not built for phones.

You know, so many people are getting destroyed by social media. Like, their lives have become wrapped up in arguing with people, and I just think that's super unhealthy.

Alex Berenson (3:28)

Yes.

Joe Rogan (3:29)

There's some aspect of it that's very beneficial and positive. I think you get a lot of information that you wouldn't have gotten. I think you get to see people's perspectives that occasionally are very inspiring and very unique and interesting. I love listening or reading things from other people that I think have very good perspectives and interesting perspectives.

It's a rare opportunity to talk to people that you wouldn't be able to run into. If we lived in the 1970s, you'd have to cultivate these interesting people in the physical person, which is probably better for you, right? But not available for most people.

Alex Berenson (4:03)

That's right.

Joe Rogan (4:05)

And we tend to imitate our atmospheres.

And you see that in thought bubbles, and I think that's another problem that we have with social media. And there's these thought bubbles, and people just, you know, you sort of gravitate towards them, you stay in them. And if you're busy, you just sort of get affirmation from that thought bubble, and you never think outside the box.