#804 - Sam Harris

Joe Rogan (0:02)

The infamous Jamie Double Finger Gun.

And we're live. How are you, sir? Good to see you, man.

Sam Harris (0:07)

What's cracking?

Joe Rogan (0:08)

Looking healthy, looking fresh, looking refreshed.

Sam Harris (0:10)

Glad to hear it. Well, I stopped eating meat since I last saw you.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

I heard about that. I want to talk to you about that.

Sam Harris (0:16)

Yeah, and I don't know that it's correlating with health. Every time I worry about this out loud, I get hate mail from vegans and vegetarians who say, stop putting your bullshit on us.

Joe Rogan (0:28)

They don't like when you associate any negative consequences whatsoever with only eating vegetables because it's essentially a cult.

It's a wonderful cult of people that want to take care of animals and be nice to animals, but they're very tribal, very tribal, very cult-like. If you say anything that's negative against vegans, they gang up. I go to forums and I read the things they say. They organize like little troll attacks and they make YouTube videos. It's kind of hilarious from a psychological standpoint.

Sam Harris (0:59)

Obviously, I don't want it to become a new religion or my one religion, but there is a moral high ground to the position that I find very attractive because I felt like a hypocrite as a meat eater. I don't think this necessarily extends to someone like you who hunts and feels okay about hunting, and I don't have an argument against hunting the way I do against factory farming or more or less any of the way we get meat, the environmental implications of it.

It's very captivating as a position, and once you go far enough into the inquiry, you feel like an asshole not being sensitive to these concerns and just ignoring how you're getting your food three times a day. But for me, I'm sure there's individual variation, and I'm not the smartest vegetarian in the world in terms of how I prepare my food and how attentive I am to it, so the onus is somewhat on me. But I'm not totally sure it's the healthiest thing for me.

So you said you look healthy. I feel like my health is somewhat withering under this. It's been about nine months.

Joe Rogan (2:18)

Withering.

Are you getting your blood checked? Are you doing B12 supplementation? That's essential. B12 is essential. D3 is essential as well. Most people are just not going to get enough from the sun.

And are you monitoring your intake of fatty acids and things along those lines?

Sam Harris (2:37)

Not really. Beyond the supplementation, I'm just trying to get the food in.

Joe Rogan (2:42)

It's all good stuff, but it's really important.

There's one of the things that people rage against, unfortunately. It's the stigma and it's fats.

It's dietary cholesterol. Dietary cholesterol and saturated fats, which are critical for hormone production. It's one of the reasons why people, when they get on an all-vegetable diet, if they're not really careful with coconut oil, you gotta eat a lot of coconut oil.

I'm a big fan of avocados. I eat a lot of avocados, a lot of avocado oil. A lot of coconut oil as well, though. Almond butter, nuts, things on those lines. You really need to get those essential fats.

Sam Harris (3:16)

Well, actually, I'm not vegan. I would like to be vegan, but I'm still eating dairy.

Joe Rogan (3:21)

Well, how could you say you would like to be? No one's holding you down. God damn it, Sam, you need to have some milk.

Sam Harris (3:27)

No, I think I would screw it up. Again, I'm going to reap the whirlwind from the vegans.

Joe Rogan (3:34)

But I should have brought you some eggs.

Sam Harris (3:36)

Yeah, no, but I eat eggs. You know, I eat eggs and I eat dairy, but you can only eat so many eggs and so much dairy.

Joe Rogan (3:42)

I eat a lot of eggs.

Eggs are very good for you, too. There's another thing, dietary cholesterol. People are always concerned with dietary cholesterol. Well, that was a big myth for the longest time. As a matter of fact, dietary cholesterol barely moves the needle on blood lipids. A lot of when people have cholesterol issues, it's sedentary lifestyle, there's genetics, there's all sorts of other variables, but people with healthy lifestyles, it doesn't seem to be that dietary cholesterol is bad for you, and also, it's essential for testosterone production.

Sam Harris (4:15)

Yeah, yeah, so no, I get a ton of, or not a ton, but I'm not trying to avoid saturated fat. Right. So I get a fair amount of cholesterol.