Elon Musk Goes Buck Wild in Really, Really Long Talk on Joe Rogan’s Podcast

Elon Musk made his fourth appearance Tuesday on Joe Rogan’s podcast–and did not disappoint.

Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience, the Tesla CEO admitted he still wants to fight Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, joked about Hamas (“Hummus? Chickpeas? Maybe we should cut off chickpea exports”), and spoke in-depth about his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, now X, including a wild monologue on the woke “mind virus” and “zombie apocalypse” it threatens to usher in.

The pair were drinking a whiskey-colored liquid and smoking cigars during their conversation, and donned costumes for the podcast’s Halloween episode.

Musk, wearing a silk scarf around his neck and a long jacket, described himself as “half-dressed as the wizard of Australia”—while Rogan wore a Puerto Rico baseball jersey and blond wig.

During the nearly three-hour episode, Musk said his purchase of the social media platform was a “recipe for trouble,” but that he went through with it because he was worried it was “having a corrosive effect on civilization.”

As evidence of the apparent downward spiral Musk cited downtown San Francisco, adding “part of it is where it was located ... while I think San Francisco is a beautiful city, if you walk downtown in San Francisco, right near the X headquarters, it’s a zombie apocalypse. I mean it’s rough. It’s crazy. You can’t believe it until you go there.”

Though he didn’t use the word “woke” as he has in past discussions, Musk mused on the “mind virus” he claims is ending civilization.

“They say, ‘ Well what philosophy led to that outcome?’ And that philosophy was being piped to Earth,” Musk told Rogan.

“So, a philosophy that would be ordinarily quite niche and geographically constrained, so that the fallout area would be limited, whereas effectively given an information weapon, information technology weapon, to propagate what is essentially a mind virus to the rest of Earth and the outcome of that mind virus is very clear if you walk around the streets of downtown San Francisco, it is the end of civilization.”

In order for the virus to propagate, Musk added, “it must suppress opposing view points.”

Rogan and Musk described it as a “death cult” and blamed apparent “extinctionists for propagating the extinction of humanity and civilization.”

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Musk accused “old Twitter” of being “an arm of the government,” adding the public is still not well-versed on the degree to which Twitter was like a “state publication.”

He said the former company oppressed “any views that would be considered middle of the road... but certainly anything on the right, I’m not talking far-right, mildly-right, like Republicans were suppressed at ten times the rate of Democrats. That’s because old Twitter was fundamentally controlled by the far-left, completely controlled by the far-left.

“San Francisco Berkeley is a niche ideology, is there a place that’s more far left than San Francisco Berkeley? From their standpoint, everything is to the right... they naturally oppressed anything that didn’t agree with their views. That’s why I say it was an accidental far-left information weapon.

“Silicon Valley... they created an information weapon that was then harnessed by the far left,” Musk said. “Suddenly the far left are handed a megaphone to Earth, an incredibly powerful technology weapon.”

Musk said X has made a “shift to the right” because “everything is to the right if you’re far-left,” but said he thought the social media platform was now sat firmly in the center. He defended allowing terrorist organizations, including the Taliban, on the platform because X “should represent the collective conscious of humanity.”

It comes as The New York Times reports a surge of misinformation and hateful speech has proliferated on the site since Musk’s takeover, citing research conducted in part by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and a report from the European Commission.

The pair finished their almost three-hour chat over pizza while discussing the pitfalls of Instagram (“I think it can make you kind of depressed”) and whether the apparent cage fight with Zuckerberg is ever going to happen.

“I don’t need any time,” Musk said of his preparation. “I’m willing to do it anytime, anywhere, any place in the world,” Musk said. “Zuck pulled out, he used the pull-method... he accused me of not being serious. I said, ‘Listen, at the end of the day, I'll fight you any place, any where, under any rules.’”

“I don’t think he should fight me... I’m like 50 percent heavier than him.”

Musk’s history with the podcast dates back to 2018, when he appeared on the show and smoked marijuana with Rogan. He also appeared on the show in 2020 and 2021.

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