#2201 - Robert Epstein

Joe Rogan (0:01)

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Robert Epstein (0:45)

Joe Rogan Podcast, checking in. The Joe Rogan Experience.

SPEAKER_3 (0:49)

Showing my day, Joe Rogan Podcast, my night, all day.

Joe Rogan (0:55)

And we're up.

SPEAKER_3 (0:56)

Hello, Robert.

Joe Rogan (0:57)

Good to see you.

Robert Epstein (0:58)

Hello, Joe.

Joe Rogan (0:58)

You look a little stressed out.

Robert Epstein (1:02)

I am stressed out. In fact, are we recording?

Joe Rogan (1:04)

Yes.

Robert Epstein (1:04)

Okay. Then I want to make a special request.

Joe Rogan (1:10)

Okay.

Robert Epstein (1:11)

You can kick me out if you like.

Joe Rogan (1:14)

Why would I do that?

Robert Epstein (1:17)

Because I need to have a meltdown. I would like to have a meltdown right now on your show.

Joe Rogan (1:30)

You want to have a personal meltdown?

Robert Epstein (1:31)

Yes.

Joe Rogan (1:32)

Okay, go ahead.

Robert Epstein (1:35)

Okay.

Joe Rogan (1:39)

I've never heard anybody plan for a meltdown before.

Robert Epstein (1:41)

Well, I need to do this and I think this is the right opportunity.

Joe Rogan (1:47)

Okay.

Robert Epstein (1:48)

And I don't know what I'm going to say.

Joe Rogan (1:50)

Okay.

Robert Epstein (1:51)

But I am definitely going to meltdown. Okay. Okay. So, I am completely fed up.

I have worked day and night. I work about 80 hours a week. I'm directing almost 40 research projects.

I've been working really hard for maybe 45 years. And the last 12 years where I've turned my eye to Google and other tech companies have turned into, for me personally, a disaster. So, before I started studying Google, I had published 15 books with major publishers. Since I've started studying Google and other companies, I can't publish anymore. I used to write for and actually work for mainstream news organizations and media organizations. I was editor-in-chief of Psychology Today for four years. I was an editor for Scientific American. I wrote for USA Today and US News and World Report and Time Magazine. But in 2019, after I testified before Congress about some of my research on Google, President Trump tweeted to his whatever, millions of gazillions of followers, basically some praise for my research. He got the details wrong. But then Hillary Clinton, whom I had always admired, chose to tweet back to her 80 million Twitter followers. She tweeted that my work had been completely debunked, and was based on data from 21 undecided voters. I still have no idea where any of that came from. Probably someone from Google, because Google was her biggest supporter in 2016, and this was 2019 And then that got picked up by this machine. I'm told it's called the Clinton Machine, and the New York Times picked that up without fact-checking, and then a hundred other places did, and I got squashed like a bug, squashed. I had a flawless reputation as a researcher. My research reputation was gone. I was now a fraud, a fraud. Even though I've always published in peer-reviewed journals, which is really hard to do, and there was nothing I could do about it. All of a sudden, I found that the only places I could publish were in what I call right-wing conservative nutcase publications, where I've actually made friends over the years. I've made friends with them, but that's beside the point. I was crushed, and not only that, I've been discovering things. I've made at least 10 major discoveries about new forms of influence that the Internet has made possible. These are controlled almost entirely by a couple of big tech companies, affecting more than five billion people around the world every single day. And I've discovered them, I've named them, I've quantified them, I've published randomized controlled studies to show how they work, published them in peer-reviewed journals. We just had another paper accepted yesterday.

And I've built systems to do to them what they do to us and our kids. They surveil us and our kids 24 hours a day. Google alone does that over more than 200 different platforms, most of which no one's ever heard of. People have no idea the extent they're being monitored. They're being monitored when they're, if they have Android phones, they're being monitored even when your phone is off. Even when the power is off, you're still being monitored.