#2521 - Aravind Srinivas
Aravind Srinivas, PhD, is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, creator of the AI-powered search and answer engine Perplexity.www.perplexity.ai
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[00:00] the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day good to see you too thanks for having me my pleasure [00:17] How many podcasts have you done? [00:19] I don't know. I don't know the count, but... [00:21] maybe tens [00:23] Well, when we were talking, we were talking in the lobby. I was like, this dude would be a good guest because we were talking about [00:28] ancient hindu scriptures where you were talking to me about something that sounds like a nuclear bomb yeah and i was like oh the brahmastra i need to know more about this yeah yeah [00:38] So, um...
[00:39] The Brahmastra is part of the Mahabharata. [00:42] You've talked about Mahabharata. [00:48] Hindu epics. [00:50] The other one is Ramayan. But Mahabharata is more interesting. It's more complicated. It's like a lot of different stories interleave together. [00:57] and um [00:59] The Brahmastra is the equivalent of the hydrogen bomb. [01:02] Thank you. [01:03] And how is it described? [01:04] It's described as a weapon of mass destruction. [01:08] gonna annihilate like [01:10] human population should not be used at any cost. [01:14] There's like a moral contract. Like, you clearly have to be like...
[01:17] violating so many things [01:20] at a deeply moral level to even like [01:22] wield it and it's not actually accessible to most warriors. [01:29] There's probably like two warriors in the world. [01:31] in that era... [01:33] who were allowed to use it. [01:36] And it has to be passed through special access, like a teacher has to pass it on to you, the secret. [01:42] to use it. [01:43] Almost like a new... Think about it as like the equivalent of the nuclear code, right? Yeah. And... [01:48] Arjuna had it this this this particular character in Mahabharata Arjuna and [01:53] He was allowed to use it.
And then this other person was this basically Arjuna had a teacher named Drona. [02:01] And... [02:02] Drona had a son named Ashwatthama. And Ashwatthama was always jealous of Arjuna. [02:09] Arjuna was not Drona's son but [02:11] He was his model disciple. [02:13] And so Drona passed on the secret of the Brahmastra to him. [02:16] And, um, um... [02:19] Drona's son also wanted it? [02:21] But because it was his son, he also passed on the secret to his son, even though the son wasn't as good as Arjuna. And during the war, Arjuna and Drona fought on the opposite sides.
[02:32] It's just circumstances. And his dad died, Ashwatthama's dad, the teacher died in the war. [02:41] And so the son got mad and like... [02:43] unleashed the Brahmastra [02:45] And Lord Krishna had to come and save him. [02:48] save the planet to not [02:50] not get that destruction force. How old is the Mahabharata? [02:56] Again, there's a lot of different opinions on this, so I don't actually know for sure. My understanding is it's at least 1,500 to 2,500 years old. [03:05] like like [03:06] thousand five hundred years ago is the minimum [03:09] 2,500 years ago is the maximum.
So it happened in some period in that 1,000-year time frame between that. [03:16] and um [03:17] So [03:17] There's still like, it's still unclear if like a lot of it is just like, you know, being... [03:23] and what actually happened was just a war between [03:27] Kinds. [03:29] There were two groups of people, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. [03:34] Each side thought they were fighting for... [03:36] their own rights and justice, but at the end of the day, you can... [03:41] crudely understand it as like... [03:43] essentially fight for the kingdom.
[03:45] Um, [03:46] Basically, they were like... [03:48] There was a previous generation [03:50] and two brothers, and both the brothers had a bunch of kids, and those kids were warring to get... [03:56] The next in line. [03:57] And, um, [03:58] That ended up being like a massive war and a bunch of other allies fought on each side. [04:03] And so many amazing weapons were used as part of the war. And a lot of these weapons are like... [04:10] extremely, like describe an extreme level of detail. [04:14] That is pretty incredible.
Like, there's a lot of detail around, like, targeted weapons. So you could precisely identify a target and just shoot at that. [04:24] And then... Does it explain, like, what the weapon is? Yeah, so... [04:28] There's one weapon called a Divyastra where you can just... [04:31] specifically target any particular person or group, [04:35] And it would just... [04:36] automatically direct itself and do it, almost like a semi-autonomous [04:40] weapon. And then Lord Krishna had this [04:43] Um... [04:44] a weapon called the Sudarshan Chakra. It's basically a discus. [04:47] And then you can just...
[04:48] release it and it will go and specifically identify somebody and [04:52] chop off their head and come back to your [04:53] Right? It self-directs itself. So what I was amazed by is how... [05:00] interesting it is in terms of [05:04] Um... [05:05] all the autonomy... [05:06] in the weapons, semi-autonomy or autonomy, where... [05:09] The weapons could just be directed at people or, like, directed at... [05:12] a group of soldiers, and it would just go and do its job and come back to the wielder. And there were so many different astras, Divyasra, Varunasra, Nagasra.
Ramasra is obviously the [05:23] ultimate [05:24] the hydrogen bomb equivalent? [05:26] And all of these are described in a lot of detail and who has access to it. And, of course, it's mythologized, so it's described as these arrows in the back of your shoulders. But you could understand it as somebody having just access to a lot of weapons. And then whoever was powerful would go capture and colonize and gain power. [05:48] And, um... [05:50] Essentially a fight between a group of cousins. That's the bottom line of that story. Now, if we think of history as this linear progression from caveman to us, and we hear about autonomous weapons that were written in the Mahabharata somewhere around 2,000 plus years ago, we go, well, mythology.
Yeah. But… [06:08] If not... [06:09] If there's been some sort of rise and fall of civilization, if there has been catastrophic, whatever it is, asteroid impacts, shifting of the poles, whatever it is, it's caused great disasters. You can imagine that these people are remembering a time where there was some sort of very advanced civilization. And this is what they're describing. [06:39] Evidence that they had some technology like the pyramids of Giza and stuff? Like how did you do that? There's some technology involved, right? Yeah. But we don't have evidence of the technology.
But if we did, if we knew for a fact, you would look at the Mahabharata and go, oh, this is history. They're just explaining it in a kind of crude contemporary way for the time. Arrows instead of semi-autonomous drones with exploding heads on them. Yeah. I mean that's what we have now. [07:10] Hydrogen bomb. Semi-autonomous and autonomous drones. I mean, they have... [07:15] They have autonomous fighter jets now. They don't need people anymore. We're in that area right now. So when you read about something like that from the Mahabharata, you go like, okay, what?
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Protect your future and finances with LifeLock. Visit com slash JRE and save up to 30% your first year. That's com slash JRE for 30% off. Terms apply. [09:36] Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that's always been my fascination with those epics and... [09:42] The level of detail with which they describe all these weapons [09:45] and who had access, [09:47] different levels of access. [09:49] the status required to have access, [09:52] and how it was used in the wars. [09:55] different formations of the soldiers. [09:58] they had all these crazy formation structures like [10:01] forming the army like a lotus, forming the army like a [10:06] you know there's something called a chakravya like a like [10:09] Literally, it has to have concentric circles.
[10:11] So you cannot actually get into the innermost circle without... [10:15] going through the outer circles, and then you can get killed by each of the flanks whenever you're trying to enter in. And the secret of how to actually break into these vijuhas, vijuhas means formations, [10:26] was only known to a few people. [10:28] And it's incredible. You could say, okay, somebody had to be extremely... [10:36] to have that sort of like... [10:38] visualizations and imaginations of describing a story like that and [10:42] And obviously, like, Tolkien has done an amazing job with a lot of the rings.
[10:46] and creating so much detail. At the same time, a lot of it actually coming through in real life in some form. [10:52] Again, [10:53] Not exactly the same weapons, but similar style weapons. [10:56] makes you wonder, [10:58] Was there actually something around then? And people have tried excavations in all these areas. There's like two main areas in the Mahabharata. Hasinapur was the name of the kingdom. [11:07] And people have done excavations around there and have found some artifacts that might date back to those years. But there are also some details that are described in the epics that don't quite align with it.
[11:19] For example, all the men, all the main warriors... [11:24] in that era were described as very tall, very big, [11:29] seven, eight feet, whatever. I don't even know exact numbers. [11:36] But – [11:37] studies by archaeologists also say that [11:41] People who lived in those years in those regions were probably not more than six feet tall. [11:46] So it's not clear exactly what happened. [11:49] what was correct, what was not correct. And, you know, we just have to keep probing more. But I find the idea fascinating to think of, like, what could have existed in sacred texts, [11:58] That was...
[11:59] only partially communicated to the next generation and having a lot of like reinterpretations. Another thing that is very interesting to think about is Vedic math. [12:08] So... [12:10] Basically, Vedic math is like a branch of mathematics that... [12:15] Some people in India are grown up learning. I read it myself too. And some people actually practice it. [12:21] just to be sharper at mental math for people, [12:24] doing their exams [12:25] like GMAT and things like that, GRE. [12:30] Um, [12:31] it has like a line in the Vedas that says, Oh, like one from the last digit, two from the first digit, whatever, you know, so many different ways of multiplying two different numbers, like 97 times 96.
Oh, like subtract the last two digits, put it in the right, multiply the first digits, put it in the left. That's the, that's the result. And, um, [12:48] Then you wonder like, oh wait, the Rig Veda is so old, it's the oldest sacred text out there. [12:55] How is it describing computation? [12:58] That feels... [13:00] Right. Very unreal. Like, did they actually know? [13:03] or understand advanced forms of computation, [13:06] Even back in those days... [13:08] And how old is Rig Veda? Um... [13:12] I don't exactly know how old it is.
Why don't we put that into perplexity? [13:16] Yeah, let's do that. Let's find out. Yeah. [13:20] Yeah, it is. [13:23] Technically the oldest sacred text out there. [13:27] And so what's interesting is I wonder – [13:32] How old the stories were by the time they were written down? [13:36] Like how much of it is relayed person to person, right? [13:40] For years and years, just like the Bible, before it's ever actually written down. Scholars usually date the composition of the Rig Veda to about 1500 to 1200 BCE. [13:51] So its oldest layer is roughly 3,200, 3,700 years old today.
[13:57] Like, I... [13:58] If there really was, like... [14:00] Every ancient culture has a story of a flood. Everyone, they all have an apocalypse. And my birth had the same thing. [14:08] Mar Barat had the same thing where there was a big like... [14:12] Almost like a tsunami-like thing. I don't exactly know what it was called, but that was the collapse of... [14:18] Lord Krishna's kingdom, Dwaraka. [14:20] After the war, a lot of people died, but some people survived. [14:23] even those who survived got wiped out by a calamity or, or like some kind of like a, [14:29] fight among themselves and most of the people who participated in that era actually died [14:35] Here it is.
The primordial, how do you say it? Manu? [14:39] Yeah. Manu flood classic Hindu grape flood myth where the righteous king Manu is warned by a divine fish about an imminent deluge that will destroy humanity. [14:50] He builds a boat, loads it with his family. It's like knowing the ark. It's the same thing with seeds and animals. [14:58] Ties it to the horn of the god in fish form, which tows the boat to safety until the waters recede and the world is repopulated. They all have the same story. Yeah. That's what's really crazy.
There is a concept in – [15:13] Hindu philosophy called the Yugas. Mm-hmm [15:16] I'm reading a book about it right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [15:20] There's like different yugas and yugas are like thousands of years and... [15:23] The concept is that you guys keep cycling around. [15:26] And so we are in the Kali Yuga right now. [15:30] And before that was a Dwapar Yuga. That's when... [15:33] Most of Mahabharata happened, and before that, there was a Treta Yoga where the Ramayana happened. [15:37] And before that, there was another yuga. What is next after Kali Yuga?
No, there is nothing next after Kali Yuga. It goes back to the first one. I forget the name of the first yuga. Because the interpretation that I'm reading is that we're not in Kali Yuga anymore. And that Kali Yuga ended in the 1900s and Dwapar Yuga started then. No, no. We are in Kali Yuga right now. 100%. 100%. So why do people have different interpretations? Is that true? Yeah, there's like a guru interpretation. [16:07] this interpretation that Kali Yuga ended in the 1900s. Okay. And that we're in [16:13] Moving on.
[16:14] Interesting. Yeah. But I don't know who's right because it's an enormous cycle, right? The cycles of humanity. Yeah. Thousands of years. Yeah. Thousands of years. [16:22] So, yeah. So these are the four Yugas. Um... [16:26] And, um, [16:31] So why do people have different interpretations? Let me tell you the book I'm reading. Yeah. [16:38] Uh... See if this book is discredited, young Jamie. It is, um... [16:46] It's by a guy named David Steinowitz. [16:55] Stein... [16:56] Steinmetz, David Steinmetz. The book is called The Yugas. Interesting. Interesting. [17:01] Yeah, I mean...
[17:02] The problem is when someone's got their own interpretation or some guru's interpretation, it doesn't totally align. [17:09] It's hard to know who's right and who's wrong. [17:12] Keys to understanding our hidden past, emerging energy, age, and enlightened future. [17:19] Yeah. [17:20] So that will go back up to that again. So this is in the description. See what it says that. [17:25] where it says in 1894 an Indian sage gave us an explanation not only for our hidden past, but for the trends of today and for future enlightenment. So there's like one guy's interpretation that this guy is going off of.
I guess the difference might be that he thinks the yuga cycle is 24,000 years, whereas... [17:45] I think it's probably much longer than that. [17:47] Yeah. [17:49] Four yugas together is 4,320,000 years. You know what's really nutty? Yeah. One of the really nutty things is – [18:00] both in the ancient Sumerian texts and in some of the ancient Egyptian texts. There's depictions before the flood of people who reigned for thousands of years as kings. [18:14] And it's common. [18:15] And it's also – they're referenced multiple times in different scripts that are from different parts of what was Sumer at the time.
It's really weird because they take it as established history once it gets to a certain age, once they get into whatever the age is where they can verify that this person was the king for a certain period of time. But it's all in the same text as people that reign for 6,000 years. Yeah. [18:42] It's weird. And then one of them just wipes out the whole thing. Yeah. And... [18:47] I mean, this is also somewhat like... [18:49] tangentially related to... [18:52] Um... [18:53] The Fermi Paradox... [18:55] You know, like if you assume all these things are happening on Earth itself, that entire civilizations are getting wiped out.
[19:02] And we always wonder, you've explored this topic the most recently. [19:07] And... [19:08] Married Aliens. [19:09] Right. [19:11] There are different arguments that, like, okay, like... [19:14] The reason we haven't quite found that is because... [19:18] The great filter exists. [19:20] And there is like one entertaining theory that I like. [19:24] just for the sake of entertainment is... [19:26] So almost all civilizations end up advancing technologically a lot and either a calamity wipes them out or like they build some misaligned AGI and an AGI wipes them out. [19:37] and [19:38] And because of that, [19:40] they never actually end up being...
[19:43] visible to us [19:45] Or the other theories that like... [19:48] They're like... [19:49] Um... [19:50] We haven't quite built the Neumann probes to actually go find them. [19:53] and um [19:55] Both of them are plausible. [19:57] And, um... [19:58] You know, there's no clear way to like... [20:02] No. [20:04] Unless we actually like send out enough probes. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We've come a long way with mental health, but there's still work to be done. BetterHelp's 2026 state of stigma report surveyed 2,000 Americans revealed that 85% of Americans believe getting support is wise.
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And one of the things about this, the crazy ages that come from the Sumerian text and from the ancient, the hieroglyphs that depict the Zeptet, how do you say it? Zepteti? No. [21:34] How am I saying that? [21:35] What is that text, that ancient? Remember we talked about it with Zahi Hawass and he denied its existence? Yeah. [21:44] Zep Tepe? Is that it? Either way, you're dealing with these kings that reign for thousands and thousands of years. Well, you know, David Sinclair is in the middle of this research now that they're working on life extension drugs that are actionable.
[21:59] Yeah, that's it. Zeb Tepe. [22:01] I've heard of him. So these – but this is what's so weird. If they look at hieroglyphs, they get to a certain point and they're like, oh, Khufu. He was real. This guy was real. All these people were real. Yeah. Yeah. [22:12] But then they get back to these guys that reigned for thousands of years and they go, oh, that was just horseshit. Yeah. But why is it that all these people have these stories that align with this timeline that's pre-flood? [22:25] It's all like the same story.
Yeah. And then if you're talking about... [22:30] these ancient Hindu scriptures that are discussing [22:33] technology that seems remarkably similar to technology that we have today. Yeah. The Vimanos are flying cars, basically. [22:39] And probably we're going to have 100 years from now or whatever it is. Or we could have gone that way in the past. And it's very entertaining to think of like – [22:48] Let's say something happens to us, right? I don't want anything to happen to us, but let's say something happens to us, and would people really believe we were, like, launching reusable rockets...
[22:56] Right. [22:57] Or making FaceTime calls to people in Australia? Yeah. [23:01] Yeah, like even fundamental things like... [23:03] all we are doing today... [23:06] I think it's all incredible. There's a lot of things that [23:09] Could be just technological ideas or maybe people actually had it and the knowledge of it was lost. [23:15] And it's not been documented, it's not been passed along, and so we are skeptical if they ever had it. [23:19] And so we end up reinventing it in different forms again and again and again, and we keep cycling through this process.
Well, it also could be that this is the natural progression of human curiosity. The human curiosity and ingenuity always moves into these very particular ways, like what's the best way to defeat my enemies? If we're always going to be territorial primates, we're always going to want to defeat our enemies. We're always going to protect ourselves from being invaded. So we're going to make better – and just with technological innovation, it just goes down the same path. [23:49] Oh, we figure out nuclear bombs. Well, we figure out – well, we don't even have to use an actual plane.
We can use an autonomous drone and that delivers it. And then scale upwards and onwards and AI and then also life extension. So if these people were able to make the pyramids, like – there's a lot of – [24:09] speculation as to the timeline of the pyramids, but let's just say they really built it 2,500 BC. Let's just say back then. What the fuck were they using? [24:20] What did you do? How did you get these stones down from the mountains that were 500 miles away? How about this one? How about that one?
We were going to get to that for sure. No, thank you. It's good as any. How about these temples that they find in India that are carved entirely out of one piece of stone? [24:40] What did you do? [24:42] How did you do that? How long ago did this happen? How many of them were buried and then they had to uncover them and then figure out, what is this? Who made it? [24:52] There's no timeline. No one really knows. There's no evidence of tools that were capable of doing this kind of work back then.
And they're huge and beautiful and perfect. And they have like acoustic properties and the geometry is fucking fantastic. Yeah. It's nuts, man. It's not just that. All of these temples were actually just built... [25:15] uh... not just [25:16] They were specifically, the locations for them were picked out so that you get the right [25:22] seismic vibrations over there. [25:24] in terms of like [25:25] proximity to the ocean, the gravitational waves from the sun and the moon. People actually made that level of like, look at this man. [25:36] Imagine the undertaking.
[25:38] of carving that temple out of the side of a fucking giant piece of rock. [25:46] Yeah. You screw up one thing and it's over. [25:49] There's no simulations. You just have to build it. What did they have? This is the question. Imagine today if we had to do this. Look, it's possible. This is a possible endeavor. It can be done. But imagine what kind of technology we have to need to map it out, to make sure that it was all precise, that it all aligns. I mean, it's precise within like millimeters.
[26:14] From point to point, [26:16] And everything is done out of one piece of stone. [26:20] Like, what did they do? Was it chisels? Did you do that with chisels? That's crazy. How many times do you have to sharpen your fucking chisel? That's nuts. [26:29] Or do you have something completely different? Because some of the more intricate ones, see if you can find these. Some of the crazy ones, inside these temples, there's sculptures that are three-dimensional, and they're carved inside of the sculpture. So there's an outer area, and then there's all these openings, and then inside it's highly detailed.
[26:51] How'd you even reach in there? It just says they used chisels and hammers, and I don't think that's [26:55] possible. And careful geometric planning. That's going to be people trying to do that. They see it like this is how much work someone could do in like 12 hours with a hammer and they get nowhere, let alone. [27:08] like perfect and looking good yeah it's nuts man and there's a lot of evidence of stuff like that all over the world which is really weird you have the stuff in peru like saxo and huaman when you look at these stones and it looks like they're melted into place and they're 900 tons like what did you do yeah how did you even get it up there how'd you where'd they get it how'd you get it there how'd you align it perfectly built in only 18 years how do they know that yeah
[27:37] How do they know that? [27:38] Because it's attributed to one king? [27:40] Yeah. So King Christian I, 756 to 773 CE. [27:47] Maybe. [27:48] How do you know though? [27:50] Yeah, the archaeologists said they calculated it would take them 100 years to do it. [27:55] Yeah. [27:56] Yeah, I mean, this is where different historian accounts are all muddled up. Well, it's a real problem. History is a real problem. But yeah, it goes back to the thing you were saying, right? [28:06] you know, what is one thing that's common across all these different ages is human curiosity.
[28:13] I mean, that's something that, you know, I would love to get your take on this, but [28:17] I've been talking with this idea [28:19] called the Curiosity Premium [28:21] which is... [28:22] The most effective people, the most successful people have always been the most effective [28:26] curious people, the ones who have been good at asking the best questions, and they tend to do better in every aspect of their life. [28:33] And you're a good example of that. So that's why I would love to get your take on this. [28:38] And the reason I believe that is because...
[28:41] Long term, people who continuously ask questions... [28:45] tend to do better. [28:46] They make more money. [28:48] They have a higher quality of life. They're happy. They have more compounding relationships. People find them more interesting. And so they compound their relationships over time. And so naturally they end up... [28:59] succeeding, but [29:01] their spirit of inquiry, their [29:03] Intrinsic curiosity is... [29:05] doesn't actually stop once they succeed. It only [29:09] They just channelize it even more. [29:11] And so that's why it keeps compounding. And I would argue that, like, it's the only quality, it's only, like...
[29:16] quality that makes us really human. [29:19] In this world where we can seek a lot of information, get information way faster than ever before, [29:26] It feels like that's that one universal human quality that's existed... [29:30] since ancient time. [29:31] since the oldest text. In fact, in the RigVator, [29:35] you're explicitly encouraged to seek [29:38] Wisdom more than wealth. [29:40] And it's not just an idea specific to Hinduism. That specific idea exists in the Bible, exists in the Quran, exists in the Torah. [29:47] It's not that [29:48] seeking well is admonished by religious texts.
It's actually that [29:52] it's more important to seek wisdom [29:54] And, you know, like you can, why I said you're a good example of that is like, sure, you have [29:59] a very, very large podcast, but the way you're running it is like you're just curious about a lot of things and asking a lot of questions. [30:06] And I think that's that one quality that's very important. So, um, [30:11] And I feel like it's the oldest thing, it's the only thing that we've known since ancient time. [30:15] being curious? Well, I think it's stimulating to people and genuine curiosity is stimulating to other people.
When someone is genuinely curious about something, I become curious about it. I think it's contagious. And I think that it's also an authentic quality. And I think [30:33] There's something about really wanting to know something and being interested in something. And if you're curious, generally you're going to ask more questions about something so you have a deeper understanding of it. So if you're trying to do whatever you're trying to do, a sport, a game, you'll probably get better at it because you're more curious. Because instead of just assuming things, you'll ask more questions, you'll reexamine things.
It's one of the most important human qualities. And to me, it's one of the most attractive human qualities. [31:03] I'm always interested. I'm always like like tell me what you're curious about. I'll tell you what I'm curious about. Let's talk. You know, it's it's [31:10] And this podcast started out genuinely because of – well, it was a lot of just talking shit with friends. But it also led into – like one of my very first guests, actual guests, was Graham Hancock. And it's just because I was curious because I had read Fingerprints of the Gods and I'd seen him talk.
I'd seen speeches and I'm like, I want to know. Like what do you know? What do you think is going on? And – [31:33] He's another guy, incredibly curious and absolutely fascinated with his takes on ancient history. He has been talking about this subject a long time. And when he first wrote Fingerprints of the Gods, I think that came out in like, I want to say it was like 97 or 98 or something like that. And I remember reading it and so many of my friends, educated friends, like this is horse shit.
Why are you paying attention to this? [32:02] And more and more as time goes on, it's been proven that he's correct. The timelines shifted back. And from the publication of that book, the discovery of Gobekli Tepe and the surrounding area, like it's like, OK, now we realize, well, there was some crazy shit going on at the very least 11,000 years ago. So we pushed civilization back 5,000 years. So like and this is just what we found now. And we keep finding things, keep digging, keep looking. [32:32] underneath the pyramid with this radio tomography where they're looking under the pyramid that it seems that there's structures under the pyramid.
You've seen that stuff? [32:40] I haven't seen that. I had the scientist that's involved in it. He's an Italian guy, Filippo Biondi, and he came on the podcast. Wonderful accent. Almost as good as yours. It was amazing. But he's describing the use of this stuff and that they've used it successfully on known areas in pyramids and other structures. And they can – in fact, there is a – in Italy, there is a particle collider that is underneath a mountain. [33:10] Using this technology, which is satellite-based technology, they get an accurate description of this particle collider.
[33:18] I think it's 1200. [33:20] meters underground like how how far is that thing underground [33:25] We'll find out. But it's like deep under stone and they find that they can get an accurate like they can actually give you the dimensions of this particle collider. They have like an image of it. And this same technology is showing that there's these columns underneath the pyramid in various places that are 20 meters wide and they have coils around them. [33:55] It goes almost a kilometer into the ground. There's like this enormous like bottom of it and it seems like it's something that's constructed.
And so they're like, okay, well – [34:05] The pyramid is crazy. It's crazy enough. But if there's something underneath it that's a man made or someone made it, that's a kilometer deep into the ground. Like, what the fuck are we even talking about? Like, who made this? What what did they have? 1.2 kilometers into the mountain. [34:28] That's nuts. It's a half a fucking mile plus into the mountain. [34:33] And this thing can see through all that and get this accurate depiction of this particle collider. And it's showing with multiple scans, not just one, multiple scans and different technology, the same exact images.
[34:46] The same exact structures underneath this wall. [34:49] fucking immense 2,300,000 stone structure that almost perfectly aligns to true north, south, east and west. Like what? What was going on? [35:00] Don't tell me police. Don't tell me copper tools. Like, what the fuck was going on? [35:05] Something crazy. [35:07] And I have a feeling our simplistic explanation of it is just doing no one any justice. It's doing no service to history. It's doing no service to our understanding. They've got to be a little bit more open in the fact that they are perplexed and not just perplexed by stuff like this.
This is a 3D print of an actual vase that exists in Egypt that they found that is they found in tombs of the old kingdom. This thing was somehow or another. It's made with diorite. [35:37] incredibly hard stone and made to like a thousandth of a human hair in its... [35:43] Yeah, like crazy dimensions, like the way the precision of it. And it wasn't turned on a lathe because it has handles. Yeah. So you look at the handles on the side. Well, you can't carve those. And those are perfect, too.
Like the alignment of everything. And it's like you just look at it. Oh, it's a vase. No big deal. But no, it's kind of fucking crazy. Like, how did they cut that out? [36:06] There's also these – there's all these core marks in some of the stones that they find in Egypt, and they've analyzed the amount of revolutions per minute that you would have to go through to be able to cut through something and leave these lines. And it defies explanation. Like what is this? This is crazy. This is not sand and copper and just rubbing things.
No, this is some insane technology that we don't understand. [36:36] some of these stones. I was like, what the fuck is this? How did you scoop rock? [36:41] It looks like ice cream. They just went, roop. What are they doing? [36:46] There are so many questions. What tools did they even have to do all these things? They had copper. I mean there is some evidence that they had some iron. And then I think Tutankhamen had a dagger that was actually made from meteorite, which is interesting. You know, like when they could find meteorites and make things out of them, it was very valuable obviously.
[37:06] The... [37:07] Just the sheer volume of work that they did there – [37:12] It's – like you look at the temple in Man. You look at the three major pyramids. You look at all the different temples and all the construction. And the older you go, the deeper into the sand they go, the more complex these things are, which is even weirder. So it seems like civilization after civilization just – there was probably a rise and fall with their technology as well. [37:36] This episode is brought to you by Dodge.
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[38:14] And it's comfortable. [38:15] It's nice to drive. [38:17] Another cool thing, you don't have to choose between control and performance. You've got all-wheel drive when you want the grip, but you can switch it to rear-wheel mode and just have fun with it. Totally get why people are so excited about this car. I loved it. Check out the new Dodge Charger Scat Pack. Learn more at com. Dodge is a registered trademark of FCA US LLC. This episode is brought to you by Visible. It's officially summer, folks, and boy, what a summer we are having.
[38:47] where you just want to enjoy every moment and keep up with the action. Your best companion this summer, Visible Wireless. Visible gives you unlimited 5G data and unlimited hotspot powered by Verizon for just $25 a month. So you can make this the summer of fun and savings. Visible is more than just a wireless plan. It's unlimited wireless designed to always keep you connected with no contract to tie you down. [39:17] I think it's just incredible that none of this knowledge was properly documented ever. [39:39] And it's a whole, like, line of work to just go understand, like...
[39:44] How do you even rebuild these things, leave alone how did they build it? Well, think about what we're doing, right? So all of our knowledge is essentially stored on hard drives and paper. [39:53] Those are the two things that are going to deteriorate the quickest. [39:58] Maybe we should take a dump of the internet and... Put it on a rock. Go preserve it somewhere so that even if our civilization is... [40:07] wiped out and all the data centers are gone or whatever. Whoever comes next can go figure it out.
Well, I mean, then you've got to always assume that even if they found a hard drive, that they would, like, how long would it take for them to back engineer what we did and figure out what these ones and zeros actually mean? Yeah. [40:27] Which is one of the most bizarre and fantastic accomplishments of modern civilization. Yeah. This is a terabyte. Yeah. Which is nuts. Yeah. I don't know what your first computer had. [40:42] I don't remember. [40:43] Definitely not even a gigabyte, probably. No. Yeah. Like a few hundred megabytes was your hard drive.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember when they first came out with gigabytes, I was like, this is nuts. Yeah. You remember when Gmail launched and gave everybody free email storage, unlimited email storage, and... [41:01] the bottom sliding bar would just keep increasing in terms of the total allowed size. Yeah. And that was nuts to me. [41:07] Yeah. Yeah. And I think, yeah, we take it for granted that we have, like, infinite RAM and infinite hard disk, and nobody has to worry about, like, you know, back in those days, you worry about, like, [41:18] Taking too many photos on your phone.
Right. [41:20] Right, and then you have to go delete all the old ones that are bad ones. Yeah, you'd run out of storage on your phone. Yeah, and then you'd have to buy an external hard drive to keep storing things. Yeah, I remember those days. You'd keep transferring stuff from your phone to the hard disk. [41:32] I remember the old Android phones, you could get an SD card. Yeah. You could slip one of those in there and you could store images on that so you could save space. Yeah. And all that stuff is so vulnerable.
Yeah. It's so vulnerable. And, again, if a completely alien society had to come down and find our hard drives and they went a totally different path of technology, they'd have to back engineer, reverse engineer everything that we did, try to figure out, you know, what are we using? [42:02] What operating system? How does the operating system work? Is it Unix? Is it Linux? What is it? How do they do it? It would be a nightmare. They would need an advanced AI to figure it all out for them. Right. [42:14] Yeah.
Yeah. And so that's just if the hard drive survive. [42:19] Right. So if there's some massive flood, cataclysm, whatever. [42:23] Some horrific thing that damages all of our electronics, which is totally possible. Just some solar flare, some intense... Or just another lab leak. [42:34] Right? Yeah. Just time. A lab leak in time. Yeah. [42:39] Yeah. [42:40] It's nuts. And it... [42:42] We could go back to zero real quick. [42:45] And we would basically be like preppers and hunter-gatherers. It would be hard to reverse engineer everything again. [42:49] It would be almost impossible, which is why I'm really fascinated by the flood, the post-flood timeline, because if these people like Graham Hancock and a lot of these other folks that have speculated that there was probably a very advanced civilization that went in a completely different direction many thousands of years ago.
[43:08] if you look at like the emergence of like Sumer and [43:13] Mesopotamia and that area, which a lot of people attribute to be the earliest known civilization, that's around 5,000 plus, 6,000 years ago, right? [43:23] Yeah, roughly. So the flood's like 11,000 years ago. [43:27] Plus, so you're looking at like 5,000 years of what? [43:32] It's not even that long in the grand scheme of things. No, not to the earth, but for people. Yeah. Pretty fucking long. Exactly. Like think of how long it took us to get our shit together.
Yeah. It took thousands and thousands and thousands of years of people probably being monsters. Just being the worst... [43:48] of the worst. And that's probably the only way they survived. There's probably a lot of cannibalism. There's a lot of murder. There's a lot of like horrific shit going on for 5000 years until people slowly but surely figured out agriculture again. Yeah, started building walls. Everybody relaxed a little. Got some solid weapons to keep people away so you can work on math. And then next thing you know, civilization emerges again. And it goes right, you know, goes right back onto the cycle.
And then you start reading in the Rig Veda. [44:18] about stuff that happened thousands of years, you go, what the fuck is this? Like, what happened? Yeah. And that's my belief. Yeah. I think there was something going on on Earth many, many, many thousands of years before established beginnings of history that was very bizarre and probably technology that went in a completely different direction than what we're doing now with combustion engines and circuits and all the different things that we use. [44:48] knowledge exactly [44:49] which is totally possible. And it's amazing.
Like it's amazing to think of like what if we could [44:54] Rediscover all of that again. Yes. Well, I would love to be able to. I would love to just have a. If I could choose one window in time to go back to see what it would look like, I would 100 percent. [45:07] pick ancient Egypt while they're building. The pyramids. Yeah, come on. [45:11] Show me what the fuck was going on. There's this... Just put me in a big hamster wheel. There's a big plastic bubble where no one could see me.
Just... [45:19] Let me violate space and time and exist there for just a few minutes. Just let me look. [45:24] I think that would be the most insane thing. [45:27] that you can see about humans and humans' history. [45:30] I just want to know what they knew, what they had, what they used. Just looking at this thing Petra's same time period, at least attributed to. [45:38] 7,000 roughly BC. Jesus. And they, you know... [45:44] How would you do that? Right. How? [45:46] The details of all those carvings is insane. Insane.
Yeah. In 7000 BC, what are the tools? [45:55] What the hell were you using? How did you make a temple out of the side of a fucking mountain? Look at the size of it, man. [46:03] the size of those columns, [46:05] It would be hard to do anything like this even today. [46:08] It would be incredibly difficult, insanely time-consuming. [46:12] Yeah, the Kaleasa Temple, by the way, I don't have it up right now, but it's 1650 or so. [46:20] Someone sent a thousand people to try to destroy it, and after three years of doing nothing, they stopped.
[46:24] They barely made a dent on a couple of statues. [46:27] Yeah, a lot of times when invasions happen in India, like... They tried really hard to fuck it up and couldn't. Oh, wow. That's crazy. [46:35] That's very robust. [46:40] That's a great way to describe it. It's just... [46:43] There's so much of that stuff that's so interesting because it's – [46:48] So undeniable. It's so undeniable in its scale, so undeniable in its complexity and the planning and the understanding that you had to have a deep knowledge of geometry, of measurement.
You had to have accurate – Materials. Yes. Everything. Sturdiness, like – [47:09] Resist calamities, earthquakes, floods. What tools are you using? Yeah. How are you doing this? Yeah. [47:17] How are you coordinating all these people? Getting them to do stuff? [47:21] I mean, sure, conditions must have been very harsher. Like, I'm sure people didn't really have a choice but to do these things because... [47:27] back in those days, like, the only way you could... [47:30] take care of your food and clothing and shelter is like [47:33] You commit yourself as a laborer to the state, to the kingdom.
But you could also ask, like, what gave them the... [47:41] initiative or drive to go do these things. Yeah. Well, that description is perhaps of a later time. We don't even really know what civilization was like when these were constructed. [47:51] The real problem is the material science. [47:56] The real problem is like you – there's a lot of things that you have to have to make those things. It's not as simple as a sculpture like Michelangelo making a sculpture out of something that's like fairly easy to carve into as far as stone goes.
Now, this is – the scale is – it's so undeniable. [48:15] They're like something, something, some piece of our understanding is missing. Yeah. [48:21] Yeah. [48:22] I mean it [48:23] like looking at all this like everyone should just be like a lot more humble right like [48:28] We don't actually know that much. What we know is so little. Same thing as what Socrates said. What we know is very, very little. [48:38] And the only thing we should all strive to be is just be curious. [48:42] I think there's a lot of tendency for people to like think like, Oh, like, [48:46] We have all this advanced technology.
We're so amazing. Like... [48:49] Look at us. And it's like, wait, hold on. Like... [48:52] you don't even understand what happened thousands of years ago. And there's so much out there to just go and explore and learn and like, [48:59] get better at understanding more. What is this place? [49:03] Yeah, this is unreal. [49:04] This is called the Elora Caves, Timeless Wonder Carved in Stone. I think it's all kind of the same area. Yeah, it's the same Elora... [49:13] Caved in the Shiva temple that you saw Look at that [49:17] My God.
Look at this stuff. It's insane. [49:22] And again... [49:23] There's no steel back then. It's actually really symmetrical. Yeah. [49:27] It's not even like... [49:29] can you go back to the first one with the symmetrical top yeah [49:34] Look at the symmetry at the top. [49:37] That's nuts. It looks like that mall and... [49:39] uh... [49:41] New York they made where the world transformed. [49:44] Yeah, but way more robust. [49:47] I mean – [49:49] How? [49:50] What were you the – this is the thing. It's like the material science aspect of it.
Yeah. It's like you don't have the ability to do – look at that top one. Go to that top one again, the one that you just had, Jamie. [50:03] Yeah, that one. [50:04] Look at that's crazy, man. [50:07] I mean... [50:08] I am just blown away when I see stuff like that. My mind just starts racing. [50:13] And I just think, how did you do this? Who... [50:17] Who was involved? How was it planned? How was it so symmetrical? What were the tools? What were the tools? [50:23] Like, what were the tools, man?
Yeah. If you don't have steel, you don't have... [50:27] What are you using? [50:29] How'd you do that? Most of it is done with stone, clearly, right? I guess. I guess. I doubt it. [50:37] I bet they had something else. I bet they had something else that over time eroded just like metal would today. I mean, if you left a shovel outside today. [50:48] And you came back to that same spot 500 years from now. There's nothing. [50:52] That shovel's gone, right? Yeah. And you've got to assume that these many thousand-year-old temples that were carved out of a fucking mountain, whatever tools they used probably got absorbed by the earth.
And the only thing that's remaining – Yeah. That's giving me a weird thought. Like when they make a big building downtown, though, they only bring the crane in for a temporary period of time. [51:12] And there's only so many cranes on the planet currently, too. Right. [51:16] True. You take it, you move it, you go take it to the next spot. Yep. Yep. [51:20] Yeah, true. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, especially something like this. Like if they had heavy equipment and machinery and whatever the fuck they were using, they probably moved it and then moved it out and then it probably rotted away.
And now it's gone. If there was machinery, if there wasn't, like there must have been something else, some other kind of like some technology that we haven't even imagined. [51:41] Yeah.
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