On the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the comedian, actor, and UFC commentator spent the last month competing with his comic friends (Tom Segura, Ari Shaffir, and Bert Kreischer) in what they called Sober October. In addition to staying sober, each comedian wore a fitness tracker and acquired points for a specific heart rate. The highest score would win.
And in reflecting on the insane workouts they each put themselves through, Rogan, as usual, explored the evolutionary perspective through a substance-fueled rant:
“We have too much of a history as a species of constantly avoiding danger. And I think we live in a place that’s far too safe for our natural instincts. So we’re constantly looking for things to be bad or looking for things to be dangerous or confronting our own mortality and putting it on the back-burner and letting all that weirdness manifest itself in all sorts of other fears - fears about the government, fears about economics and fears about this. I think we’re dealing with this as human beings all the time, and I think there’s only a certain amount you can do.
And I think when you have rigorous exercise it puts in perspective what that certain amount actually is and what you can control as a person. You can just chill your body out and look at this whole thing for what it is. It is what it is. We’re gonna be fine or we’re not. And then it won’t matter.
But this whole thing that we do when we do this, we do this because our body has a need for exercise. It has a built-in need. It’s got an engine that needs to be pushed. And if you don’t push it, it starts fucking with you. It starts fucking you and asking you weird questions, like, “Who the fuck does that guy think he is?” Like it wants to start problems. It wants to get upset at things that don’t make sense to be upset at. It wants conflict. There is a part of you that wants conflict. Because it thinks that conflict is part of the programming. It’s because it’s been our way for millions of years.
So whatever the fuck we were then to whatever the fuck we are now, there’s been conflict along the way. People have been trying to eat us. Things have been trying to kill us. And this is the only time ever that there’s none of that. And I think the only time you can see things with perspective is when you blow out all the biological shit.”