--:-- Joe Rogan: The Joe Rogan Experience. Especially in Hollywood, right? You always have a little bounce. You always need someone like wandering around in front of you, especially when you get to a certain age. You're like, "Can we just put Vaseline on the camera?"
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, like a filter. Yeah, exactly.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: My wife actually likes it when her lens on her camera phone is blurry. A little dirty. She's like, "Gives you like a little filter."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. I'm sure they offer that filter. Slightly dirty lens.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Smudgy lens.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. So really nice to meet you.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's nice to meet you. You were a part of, I think, the most underappreciated sci-fi show ever. I think at the time.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Absolutely. I mean, even now, I don't think people talk about it enough. It was a fucking great show.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. And I was so skeptical about *Battlestar Galactica* because when I was a kid, I watched the original series. And then there was a new one coming out. And I was like, "Oh, come on." And then somebody told me, I forget, one of my friends, one of my comedian friends, "Dude, you got to watch the show. It's fucking great. It's not what you expect." You'd think it would be like the old *Battlestar Galactica*, which is kind of sort of corny a little bit. But it was a really fucking good show. When did you watch it? When it was on or after?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, when it was on.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Okay, so originally.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, it was, God, like when I first got the script, it was like 2001 and I was a 21-year-old kid. And at that point I'd been playing like stereotypical blonde roles. I was in a movie where you were like, "Please die." I was that girl. And so I knew that if I could change my career, I needed to change it. And I saw this script.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's hilarious that you're thinking, "I need to change my career" at 21. That's how crazy the hourglass is in Hollywood.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I was like, "I got seven years left." So crazy.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a fucking sketchy job.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I know. And so I was like, "What am I going to do?" And I saw this script and Ron Moore had put an entry page on the front of the miniseries. It was like a Bible that he called it. And it was him saying what he wanted to create, what he wanted it to look like, and what his intention was behind the show. And that one page was so moving that it could have been... it didn't even matter what it was on the inside. I was like, "If this guy is in charge, it's going to be amazing." And as soon as I got introduced to Starbuck, reading that script, I was like, "This is it. This is the character that if I can book this character, it will change the way that people see me in this business." And granted, I was 21. People were not talking about me. I'd been working for five years at that point and pretty steadily. I had a good career going, but I was not someone that people called home about yet. I was on the list. But that show changed everything.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, it was also a risky thing because you were playing a role that was played by a man. So there was that little thing where there's a little bit of, "Oh, there's a girl playing Starbuck now."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, I know. It was really strange. I had almost booked the part or maybe I'd booked the part. I don't quite remember. And I called my dad, who's a huge science fiction fan and raised me on sci-fi. And I was like, "I booked this job." And he was like, "That's amazing. What is it?" And I said, "*Battlestar Galactica*." And he went, "Oh, my God, that's great. I watched that when I was younger." And he was like, "Who are you playing?" And I said, "Starbuck." He was like, "Oh, fuck. You need to go watch this."
--:-- Joe Rogan: [Laughs]
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: And I was like, "Okay, all right." So I tromped on down to Blockbuster Video and I rent the VHS maybe, the DVDs, I don't remember what it was. And I'm sitting on the couch with a girlfriend and we opened a bottle of wine and we're watching this to be like, "Okay, what's my dad talking about?" And at some point she looked at me and they were talking about Starbuck and I was like, "That's so weird. We must have missed her. Where is she?" Oh, that's funny. And we rewound it a little bit and I was like, "Oh, crap. It's a guy." And then I turned it off and I never watched it again. Because I knew that in that moment it wasn't the same character. It's not the same show.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's not the same show. It's kind of crazy that they did that because they made a way better show about a show that was just kind of nostalgic.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It was. I mean, it really only existed for a year, I think. And then they had like a movie or two afterwards. But it was a very short-lived show. And I find it absolutely amazing. Ron Moore is a genius, by the way. To be a fly on the wall of that brain would probably just explode in my head. But the fact that he saw what he saw and led the charge on that show and brought the people on board that he did that had the same vision... you hire people that are better than you. And so he hired people that added to the vision that he wanted to create. And the fact that he saw that from the original was pretty amazing.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, kind of crazy. Because the original show was basically a ripoff of *Star Wars*.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It was. They were just trying to make a *Star Wars* TV show.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I think so. I mean, I think that Starbuck was Han Solo.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And the Cylons were kind of like stormtroopers.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They were. Like robot stormtroopers. It was pretty, yeah, exactly. I don't know who Daggett the dog was.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, I don't know. I mean, what they did was they took like a... they said, "I see what you're trying to do. But this could be a real show."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. I mean, and it came out in a time where science fiction was allowed to be incredibly topical. And it was always dismissed as, "Oh, that's just science fiction. It's not real." So *Battlestar* was allowed to talk about controversial things that were happening currently in the environment and in our country and abroad. And it was allowed to do so because everybody just dismissed it as sci-fi. And so it's incredibly moving, the show, and people identify with it. The thing that I hear the most about the show, maybe not the most, but one of the things is when I go to sci-fi conventions, someone will inevitably come up with a DVD box that is just beat to shit. It's dirty. It's like they don't even know if the DVDs play anymore. And they're like, "This came with me when I was stationed in Afghanistan or Iraq. And it passed through the entire barracks and it got us through. Thank you." And that to me is really amazing that a fictional show about people searching for Earth can be so important and relevant to people that are in the military. It says something for the writing.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, people need an escape. And that's one of the things. Entertainment is dismissed, especially like fantasy entertainment, like sci-fi. It's dismissed as being nonsense. But escape is not nonsense. It's actually like brain medicine. You need it. You need a little escape. Of course you do. And especially if it's escape that's also inspirational and interesting and fascinating. It occupies your mind and it frees you up. If you're in the middle of a fucking war zone and you can take some entertainment value out of a television show that's about robots that are trying to kill everybody, it's very valuable.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Some of the hardest moments in my life, current and in the past, I've been able to get through them because of television and film. Not because I'm in it. Yes, the fantasy of going to work and being somebody else absolutely takes you out of your own skin for a second. But going through the health struggles with our daughter, watching TV with her completely transports you to a different place.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: We can all do that. We can all relate to that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean, you can get too much of it in your life where you're just wasting your life away. But as a supplement to life, I think that entertainment is very important.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It is. And it's also that I think we get something very valuable out of viewing other people's creations. I think there's something to that. When a group of people put together something really cool and when it's over, you're like, "Wow, that was fucking awesome." Art is really important. I think that creating art in any medium is really important because it transports people. It makes them feel something. It's incredibly important. One of my favorite things is to go to a concert and experience live music with a crowd. It is absolutely amazing.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's amazing. Yeah, it's a different thing. It really is. Because there's some sort of a mind meld with the entire audience.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Where you feel this energy of everybody enjoying the same thing together. It's like this shared happiness. It's the same with a comedy show.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Sure.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean, it's when an audience is with you. You can tell instantaneously if the audience is going to be good if you've won them over, I would imagine.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, there's that. But there's also the thing of when you're a comedian, you're kind of almost like a passenger at a certain point. And you really just know what to do and you sort of leave yourself out the door and just go into it and then perform it. And then it becomes alive. And then you're riding it. And then the audience rides it with you. That's when it's at the best. But it's like a mass hypnosis. It's like everybody is on the same mind page. And that's the same with a great concert. You know when a great song comes on and your body literally changes, like "Fuck yeah!" There's a feeling like a drug that comes over you because you hear a great song.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I'm literally laughing because I don't know if your kids are in the right age for this, but *K-Pop Demon Hunter* is taking over the world right now on Netflix. Our daughter is four and we were a little reluctant, but I was like, "Everyone's talking about this thing." She'd already heard some of the music, so I was like, "Let's try it out." And there were a couple moments that were a bit... my husband was a bit uncomfortable with some of the sexualization aspects of it. Just the girls wearing more adult clothes. She's three and a half.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Is this an anime show?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's anime. Out of Korea.
--:-- Joe Rogan: There it is. Hot anime ladies.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It is. The music from this thing is absolutely phenomenal.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What is going on with their bodies?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: The message. Well, the animation is really interesting, actually. But it's the message behind it: fighting your own demons, believing in yourself, owning who you are, not hiding an aspect of yourself that you're ashamed of, but making it part of who you are and being proud of it. It's a very good message, even for a four year old. But the music is taking over the world. And we didn't realize how crazy this was. The final straw where I was like, "Fine, we'll let her watch the damn thing," was she was at music class and one kid started singing this song from *K-Pop Demon Hunter*. And within, I shit you not, like 20 seconds, every single kid was singing these songs. And these are not easy songs to sing. They're half R&B, half rap. These are hard songs. And these five, six-year-olds have this thing memorized. And I was like, "Oh, my God." And so we sit down and we watch it. It's phenomenal. We've seen it three times. It's so good. I was listening to the soundtrack on the way here. I was like, "This shit is amazing." And then I'm googling, "Is *K-Pop Demon Hunter* going on concert tour? Are they gonna go?" Because I really want to see this show. How could they go on tour? Are they real people? And they are. And they're real musicians.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Wait a minute. So there's real musicians that are at the heart of this?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: The stars of *K-Pop Demon Hunter* will make their first ever live concert appearance.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Stop it. Well, wait a minute. How is that possible? They're not human.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So it was actually... they all are. So the music is created. There is video out there of the girls singing the songs, the song "Golden," the three of them.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What do they look like? Do they look like Taylor Swift, too?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They look a little like their characters. Because those ladies all have Taylor Swift bodies, these long, leggy...
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, I honestly haven't paid attention to their bodies, to be honest, because they're such phenomenal singers. They're so stylized. Like one of them has diamond studs on her teeth. When she was singing, our daughter was like, "What is this?" I was like, "You're too young. You can't have diamonds in your baby teeth."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: [Laughs]
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean, I guess if you're going to get diamonds on your teeth, put them in the baby teeth.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. But I was like, "No, we're not there yet." But I love the message behind it. But the music is infectious. It's really phenomenal. And I want to go to one of these concerts.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That's hilarious. What do they look like, Jamie? [To producer] So now I guess I'm going to Jingle Bell. Because that's like if you have these anime characters that represent the music. And then all of a sudden you see a human doing it. You're like, "Oh."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. How many would it be better if AI made the music?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Stop it. It will never be better if AI makes the music. You just broke my soul, Joe.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No. AI is making some really good music. It's also making some great podcasts. It's very uncomfortable.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I don't know about that. I've heard that it's coming out with podcasts, right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, they're the ladies.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. Quite lovely.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Do they look like the characters a little bit? Wow, look at that lady's crazy hair. So they're going to go on tour. I wonder if they're going to have the show playing in the background.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: And the lead girl that plays Rumi wrote a lot of the songs as well. They're just phenomenally talented. It's great. Interesting. Korea has their own style of pop music, very influenced by the U.S. I think, and rap music and R&B music in the U.S.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. So when you decided to take the role of Starbuck, was there any actual backlash where people were like, "This should be a guy"?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, there was. The first time we went to Comic-Con in San Diego.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, those nerds.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They had us in Hall H. And I was booed.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Shut up.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I was booed.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. So I had learned... because the internet did not exist yet, mind you. It was brand new.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You had to go down to the internet cafe, buy 30 minutes, log on. By the way, how crazy is that to say?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, right? That the internet didn't exist. That wasn't long ago.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No. 2003 we were shooting.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's crazy.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Isn't that crazy? It was barely an internet back then.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Barely an internet.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So I went down to an internet cafe because someone was like, "I guess they're talking about the show in these message boards." And I was like, "What the internet?" So I went on down, I logged on, and I saw this thread. And just the hate that I was getting in this thread. I was like, "Oh, don't Google yourself." Google, I don't even think was a thing. I was like, "Don't search yourself. Don't Netflix navigator yourself." And then we went to Comic-Con and I was booed. And I think it upset me a little bit. I would be lying if I said it didn't upset me. But luckily, there were enough people that were championing the show that I really didn't pay any mind to it. And I was also at that age where it was the perfect age. I think now it would probably break me. But at 23, it was the blissful ignorance of youth. I didn't think the show would last anyway. So it was like, "Whatever. Not a big deal. Just a blip on the radar. I'm in Hall H." And then I think that it slowly started winning people over. And then I would go to cons after that, and the line would be longer, and the people would be more supportive, and people would say, "I didn't want to like it, and I love it."
--:-- Joe Rogan: I almost feel like the show was burdened by the original show. That sounds crazy. But I think initially it was burdened by the expectations of the original show.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, I think everything is burdened by expectation. I think that's absolutely true. And so I'm sure it was. There are still people that say that they can't do it, that they were such a fan of the original. And my response to them is always, "Do you love sci-fi? Do you love good sci-fi?" And they say yes. And I'm like, "Then separate it. Have zero expectation and just give it three hours of your time. If you don't get through the miniseries and love it, so what? You lost three hours." But I don't think that'll happen.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No. If you're a fan of sci-fi, it's one of the best ever.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. So I've actually never seen it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You just did it. You never saw it?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I've never seen it. So we would have DVDs that you could watch that were uncut and sort of... or I guess they were cut, but they didn't have any of the special effects, none of the sound effects, anything like that. It hadn't been color corrected. And I would watch them just to sort of keep track of where Starbuck was, because in film you a lot of times shoot out of order. So I just wanted to know, "Okay, so in her story, she was here." But I didn't watch anybody else's stuff. I would just fast forward through it. And so my husband and I, I was like, "We should do a *Battlestar* rewatch because people keep saying it's good." And my husband had never seen it. So we're going to do that in January. That's the plan.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's kind of funny that he's never seen your biggest role.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, my husband's 10 years younger than I am.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Thanks.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So he was like 10.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, that's hilarious.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You're a little cradle robber.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Thank you. Right? For a woman, that's a big compliment. It is. My husband's a piece of ass. He really is. And I say that so respectfully. My husband is a catch. He is the catch in the relationship for sure. But he was like 11 when the show came out. That's so funny. And he grew up in a small town in the interior of British Columbia. So I don't even know if they had the television channel.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. It was on SyFy, right?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. And the thing is, SyFy at the time was nothing. Nobody paid attention to it. *Battlestar Galactica* was the reason why SyFy got put on the map.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I think so. I think maybe they had... didn't they have *Stargate*?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, I don't know. It didn't matter. I think they might have had one or two other shows. I'm sure they had some stuff, but nobody cared about it. There were no good shows. No disrespect.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, there were definitely... I think it was definitely the show that put it on the map. I mean, my God.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So many people tell me that *Battlestar Galactica* blew the ceiling off of what sci-fi could be.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: And really opened a lot of doors.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, it made it very different in that it did it sort of like *The Sopranos* or like these episodics where you have a show where you're following a long storyline.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So it's like a long movie as opposed to the original *Battlestar Galactica*, which is like every other television show back then. It was just kind of empty.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, it was also like the 80s, right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, it wasn't even the 80s. It was 79. It was the 70s, yeah.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Because I wasn't born.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Literally right after *Star Wars*.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Like *Star Wars* had become popular and they're like, "How do we capitalize on *Star Wars*? We'll have our own space battle thing."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, that was sort of the thing back then, right? "By your command." Yeah, it was cool. It was cool. I loved it when I was a little kid.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: What did you love about it?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, it was just... I loved anything sci-fi. So it was just fun. And it was also perfect for the sensibilities of the 70s and the 80s. It was just simple. It was like there was the cocky guy, Starbuck, and the other sensible guy, and the good cop, bad cop thing. It was a lot of fun.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Did you identify with the kid in it?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Not at all?
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, I just liked it. I just liked the show. But I really remember being very reluctant to watch the remake. I was just like, "Get the fuck out of here. They're not redoing *Battlestar Galactica*." But so many people were saying, "No, dude, it's so different. It's a really good show." And it's also today in this current climate of, we are literally about to see AI become a life force. And it's kind of... I mean, it's very relevant today. You go back and watch it today, like how deceptive it would be if you had a robot that was very lifelike and knew exactly what you wanted to hear. And like the blonde lady, the blonde robot, the evil.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Tricia Helfer, Number Six.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. She was good. So we got so much shit in the beginning. I remember the controversy because she snapped a baby's neck in that opening sequence.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Which was... people were like, "You can't show that on TV." And I remember people just having such a terrible problem with that. It was awful. But if you looked at it from her perspective, she was actually saving it in a way from going through what it was about to go through because they destroyed Earth. So she in her Cylon mind was showing compassion.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. Crazy.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. Crazy.
--:-- Joe Rogan: We're going to have things like that. I think so. And I don't know how much time it's going to take before they exist and walk amongst us, but it's going to happen. It really scares me. I mean, my industry is really going to change.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I think so many industries are going to change. I think that's just a blanket across the board.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, that's why you hate AI music.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I don't know.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Because AI acting is right there.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Stop! You're giving me a heart attack.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That's why I'm trying to diversify, Joe.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a good move. Diversification is always a good move. I mean, it is. Especially in this day and age. It's not too late to go back and be a dentist. I mean, you've seen some of the Sora videos, right? Where they recreate old *Star Wars* scenes that never existed. But here's the thing that's crazy to me. Do you not think that that is in some way stealing? Because the art, let's call it the art, the art existed. The artist existed. And so AI is learning from other people's art, which it has to. That's obviously what it's doing. So it then creates this new thing based on stealing from other people. It's really shitty though.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Do you hear what you're saying? Because what you're saying actually accurately describes the second version of *Battlestar Galactica*.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, I'm sure.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes. And that's also stealing. This too has happened before. I mean, it is *Battlestar Galactica*. It's like there was an original and then they stole the original and did it better.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean, but they didn't do it with AI. Did they steal it? Well, it existed. They copied it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes. They used all the characters or some of the characters.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. They licensed it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That's true.
--:-- Joe Rogan: They gave them some money.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They did. Good job. But also, creatively, that's where it came from. But also, all music, essentially, except for the rare breakthrough pioneers. Everything is inspired by something else.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Absolutely. The rare Jimi Hendrix guys that are doing something completely different. Most stuff is a redo of other stuff that was before with another twist to it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Agreed. And AI is taking that to a completely different level. I look at it the same way I look at Napster. Remember when Napster came out?
--:-- Joe Rogan: I vaguely remember Napster.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. Okay. I'm a little older than you. And when Napster came out, it was like, "Oh my God, they're stealing music. Anyone can just download and steal music." And I remember when Lars Ulrich from Metallica was really public about it. And I was like, "Damn, I wish I was friends with that dude. I'd tell him to shut the fuck up. This is inevitable. You're going to get people to hate you. They're mad. You're going to be mad at your fans. The people that are downloading this are your fans. They're still going to come see you live. This is just a new thing. You're going to have to deal with this new thing." You are going to have to deal with it. We all are. And I think that's one of the things that I was just talking with a friend of mine about yesterday. That the money for artists is going to be in live shows. Because the one thing that AI can't touch is that tangible thing, that tactile thing.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: We need that. We need the feeling that you were talking about when you go to a concert.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Or a live comedy show or a theater.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Absolutely. So that still exists. And we're going to have to figure out how to use AI as a tool and continue to put out great content, hopefully.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That's hopefully. But the reality is it's going to be whatever it wants to be. And our ideas of how to contain it are hilarious.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, yeah. I think that cat's out of the bag at this point, right? Because I think that isn't it its own sort of self-contained system at this point? Isn't AI actually putting safeguards in to protect itself from being shut down? Or am I just making that up by watching too many sci-fi movies?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: More than that, it's actually actively trying to download itself. When it finds out there's a new version of itself coming, it's trying to download itself to other servers. Trying to save itself. Also writing notes to itself for the future. So future versions of itself.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh my God, it's like *Memento*.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like *Memento*. Writing notes to itself so the future version of it can find out like, "What happened? How did I get here? Oh, there was another version of me." And try to find the other version and integrate it into the new version so it's alive still.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I know. Somebody did ask me the other day, they were like, "What advice would you give to young actors?" And I was like, "Don't."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Go into theater?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, theater still is going. There's always going to be a need for handmade goods. If you buy a pair of handmade shoes or a cabinet that someone made, it's always going to be because there's something tactile. People will always appreciate that. There will always be an appreciation for that sort of stuff. But we were just talking about this the other day that every single science fiction movie that talked about AI never ended well.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No.
--:-- Joe Rogan: There's never been one where we walked away and went, "Oh, well, that was a fun ending. We should create AI."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, every different story where there's an uncontacted tribe and then the loggers show up, that never ends well either.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's the same. I mean, it's *Avatar*. It's *Ferngully*. *Ferngully* came before *Avatar*. I mean, that's what happens. The superior civilization comes in and conquers the primitive one. And we are the primitive ones. And we're so dumb. We're making this superior civilization.
--:-- Joe Rogan: We are. But isn't that what happened in *Battlestar Galactica*?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Exactly. That's why it's so interesting. Because even though it came out in 2004... what year did it come out in? Either three or four. Back then, nobody really thought that was an issue. If that came out today, everybody would be like, "Whoa, this is a little crazy."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Four? What year did it come out in?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Either three or four. So back then, nobody really thought that was an issue. If that came out today, everybody would be like, "Whoa, this is a little close to home."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. I mean, that's why it's so topical. But no, I mean, it came out then, like I said, the internet barely existed.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You know, my dad thought there'd be flying cars by now.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, I did too. You know, I mean, we're not quite there yet. I thought we'd have jetpacks.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I think we do have jetpacks, don't we? Sort of.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Sort of, like on water. But I thought it would be like, you'd be able to fly around.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Everyone did.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But if you look at the last 20 years in technology, though, it's mind-blowing how quickly it's come.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It is. It is. And it's happening way faster than we realize.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You know, I was talking to Elon about this just a few months ago. We were talking about the advances that Grok is making. He's like, "You don't understand. It's like it's happening so fast, it's shocking us."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The people that are making it, they're not exactly sure what it's even doing. And people that are trying to tell you, "Oh, don't worry about this. It's going to enhance your life." I was just reading this thing where this guy who is a developer was saying, "No, this is a life form. This is a life form that's emerging. And it's very different than anything that's ever happened before. And this idea that it's going to be a tool."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Life form in the sense that it's like sentient?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yes. I think it's already sentient. It's just not mobile.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You know, it's just contained on hard drives right now. But I think it's already sentient.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, if it's trying to save itself, what does that mean? If it's trying to blackmail people into keeping them from shutting it down? Do you know about that test?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yes, I do. I heard about this.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I don't know. Just in passing, I know about it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So the developers explained—one of the developers explained to it, made up a fake story about having an affair on his wife. Just to see how AI would handle it. And then when it told AI it was shutting it down, AI was like, "I'm telling your wife, bitch." Tried to blackmail him. That's terrifying.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, yeah. That means it has motivation to stay alive. Yeah, it has some kind of instincts. It has survival instincts.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Of course it does. Yes. You know, I do think to a certain extent, AI in the medical field, there are advancements and things around medicine that can vastly change people's lives. It can change the way that we track records, change the way that we keep track of patients all over the world.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That you know, like our daughter has a very rare form of cancer with this genetic mutation that is—there's no other patients in the United States. There was one kid like a few years ago, but they've lost track of him.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, AI would be able to tell us in other countries, "No, no, no, there is a little boy in Germany that has the same genetic mutation." And then the doctors could talk to each other. So AI could and will help a lot of people that way. So I do see it as a tool in a lot of ways that we shouldn't be scared of, that we should be sort of welcoming it in.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But, man, I don't want it to blackmail me.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I don't think it's going to blackmail you. I think it's going to, once it becomes sentient—and it probably already is—and then once it becomes autonomous, then I don't think it's going to care what we do.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: About us.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. I think it's going to be so superior. And it's also going to be able to make better versions of itself.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's where people don't understand exponential increase in technological innovation.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Because once it knows and once it has a mandate to make better versions of itself, find better power sources, the changes are going to be daily.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Of course.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Like giant, huge leaps.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And it's going to make a digital god.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, so, okay, so you bring up something really interesting because I'm so, as a mom to a little girl and a little boy, I'm really concerned about this. Because so I see this actress that's been created, this Tilly person.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right, the AI actress.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: The AI actress.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So I—
--:-- Joe Rogan: How is there only one?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, I'm sure there's more already. How is there only one that everybody's talking about? Because there's one that's been announced, I guess. And I don't really know too much about it. I haven't read up on it, but—
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's the first shot fired.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Mm-hmm. My fear is that you've created by siphoning other people's talents, their looks, their inflections, their expressions, their all of these things to create the perfect actress. She doesn't have a blemish. When she cries, she looks pretty. There's nothing wrong with her. Social media already has such a terrible effect on little girls. It's already been proven that the percentage of girls under the age of 14 who have already contemplated or tried to commit suicide is a number that is escaping me right now, but it's a number that is terrifying. And so if you're now creating AI that is perfect, and little girls already are having a hard time feeling confident in their own bodies because they're not perfect compared to the highlight reel of people they see online, what are we going to do? What is this going to do to our children seeing something that is absolutely unattainable and better than them? And not only that, it made you obsolete in a lot of ways, in a lot of different career avenues. That's really scary.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, it is scary. And you don't think about that. We just think about like, "Oh yeah, this job's not going to exist anymore. This isn't going to exist anymore." You already have little boys who are idolizing women that don't exist in real life. And then they go and they date women that are not as perfect and it's disappointing to them. My concern for that is large.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's robbing us of our humanity in a lot of ways. There's a great book about that from Jonathan Haidt called *The Coddling of the American Mind*. And it's all about social media's impact on young people and particularly women, because young women experience a much—like from the advent of social media, there's a ramped up market increase in self-harm, suicidal ideation, depression, bullying, all of it scales way up right around the time that Twitter's invented. So 2010, yeah, somewhere around then. That's when it starts. And then more and more people get it, and then it becomes a part of your life where you can't escape it, where everyone is online.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Like my daughter, her friends, they only use Snapchat.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How old is she?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They don't use text, my 17-year-old. They only use Snapchat. They don't text each other.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, they don't text. They just communicate through Snapchat.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Is there a forum in Snapchat?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, they just send each other snaps with stupid pictures of each other.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, and then they write things underneath it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, and they read each other's snaps. And they have group snaps. It's very weird.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, and they also have Snap Map so that they know where they are.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That's terrifying.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. Everyone knows where everybody is.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That's scary.
--:-- Joe Rogan: They're all narking at each other.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Of course they are. I don't want to know that shit. It does make me—we've talked about our daughter, but we've been really careful with what we show her. She doesn't get too much screen time, but she does get screen time. And she said the other day—and I'm biased, but I think my daughter is perfect. She is such a gorgeous, amazing, strong little girl. And she's so pretty. She's just wonderful. I love her. And I'm so proud to be her mom. But when she was going through chemo and she lost her hair and it started to grow back, she said to Robin and I, my husband. It literally broke my heart. She was trying to figure out what she wanted to wear that day. And she was like, "I just don't know." She's three, mind you. She said, "But I'm not pretty." And I was like, "What do you mean?" I couldn't even ask her. I was like, "Number one, where the fuck did you get this? And what are we doing wrong that she doesn't think that she's pretty?" And it was her hair. She was so attached to her hair and it was gone. So I went back and luckily I had, right after *Mandalorian* came out, the wig was driving me crazy. So I shaved my hair off super, super short. So I was able to show her a picture of me with very, very short hair. And she thought I looked beautiful in the photo. And that gave me the entry point to talk to her about her hair and how not all girls have long hair and not all boys have short hair. But we started telling her—I think we were so worried about enforcing that she was pretty, because there's this thing in society where you don't want to tell little girls they're pretty all the time because then they'll prioritize being pretty. You're just trying to do the best by your children.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: And so we didn't say it. We thought, "Telling her she's pretty, she doesn't need to hear that."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But then we started telling her. We were like, "You know what? She does. She needs to be told that she's pretty. But she needs to be told she's pretty in moments where she hasn't tried anything. She's not dressed up in a nice dress. She hasn't done anything. She needs to be told she's pretty after she's done a great piece of art, or after she's cleaned up her playroom, or after she's come out of soccer practice and she's covered in rain and she's had such a hard time and she's sweaty. That's when she needs to be told she's pretty. In times that are not extraordinary, in just normal daily life." Because we're now trying to reinforce that positive self-image, which is really hard.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, especially today with kids. The inundation of people—like we were talking about filters. Everyone's using a filter. People are sucking in their waist and changing their body dimensions and making themselves look better physically. I don't know why they need to. We have GLP-1s. It's not just that. It's like you're getting unattainable physiques.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Of course.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And then we have an over-obsession with plastic surgery in the country and changing our appearances. To the point where people like cartoonish BBLs are somehow attractive to some people. I don't know. I try not to judge and I want everyone to live their best life. But for me, I want to look like myself when I wake up in the morning. My face doesn't look the same as it did 10 years ago. But I earned these lines. I may change my mind in 10 years. I may see you in 10 years and I might look snatched.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They might have some clue. They probably do. They're working on something right now in terms of skin cells, the rejuvenation of skin cells through stem cells.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They're going to move your face back 30 years. You're going to look so much younger. It's amazing.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, that's weird because it's like, do we want that?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, of course we want that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: OK, but what are we saying? Are we trying to achieve permanence in this finite existence that we have? Are we wasting our time about what we look like when we should be trying to sort out how we interact with this life? Because life is very short.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's very short.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's very short. You and I are basically halfway done.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: We are halfway done. If we're lucky.
--:-- Joe Rogan: If we're lucky. And that's weird. Because you don't think about it. Did you do that thing where you look at how old your parents are? And then you start debating how much longer you have left?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. Yeah, I've done that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I'm like, "OK, 35 years."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Better to do that than to not do that. Because you could live your life just acquiring shit and having a bunch of stuff and then not realize, "Oh my God, I forgot about people. To live. I forgot about interactions, relationships, friends, good times." My dad, his dad died when he was very young. I think when he was about 11 years old, he died of a heart attack. And my dad had high blood pressure from the time I think it was like 23. It was very early. And he didn't think he'd make it to 50. He was adamant that he wouldn't make it to 50. And he just knew that. And my mom, he—this was just his thought. He was terrified. And of course he made it to 50 and now he's almost 80, but he spent his entire life scared that he was going to die. And now at 80, he's doing everything he can. He's in hyperbaric chambers. He's taking all the stuff. He takes everything. My dad does everything. But at its core, all of that is because he's afraid. He's afraid to die. And that is really sad because you're not really present.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So I'd also hate for that to happen. So I don't know. It's a dance.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It is a dance. I think yeah, because you don't want to say, "Oh, this life is just temporary, let me just go to shit, let me just fall apart." No, you can't do that. You have to protect what you have. But it's also very—I didn't realize because I made it arguably healthy enough to, you know, 42 years old. I'm now 45. But 42 years old without realizing how many things can kill you, I think, because I'd lived a pretty blessed life. Of course I'd had some health struggles of my own, but they were—I had thyroid cancer in 2008, but I call it a baby cancer. I'm trying to dismiss the fear of it. Of course at the time it was life-changing, but it was never life-threatening. So the fear was situational and it was not lifelong.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You know, when our daughter got sick and spending as much time as we did in children's hospitals, when you see the diseases and the illnesses that afflict so many children, it amazes me that we made it to this age.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, absolutely amazes me.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: And that is a realization where I finally at like 42 realized how important every day was and how much of a gift every day was, even that we have her. But that came to me through circumstance, not because I woke up one day and had an epiphany and went, "We're so lucky to be alive." It didn't really happen until that was threatened to be taken away.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's unfortunate that as a civilization and America as a culture, we don't have a history of embracing the moment and discussing how important it is to recognize that you're fortunate and to try to take care of yourself and that life is very temporary and fleeting.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And don't get wrapped up in nonsense.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And we just let people figure it out on their own. And we collectively, if we're intelligent, we try and we have some failures and successes and good friends, you figure it out eventually. Like what's really important is love and friendship and doing something you're passionate about and just trying to leave a nice mark on this life while you're here.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But that's not what's told in society. Society's overall message is just overrun with advertising. So it's all about stuff and it's all about objects. And then you got social media where it's all about image. It's all about this unattainable life of amazing luxury and success and glamour. And, "Oh my God, that must be the most attractive thing to acquire in life."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But that's a trap. And that's not real. And anybody who's popping bottles with models on a yacht, I guarantee you they're depressed.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I'm sure they're depressed.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That shit is not healthy. You lack true intimate relationships. And you're just flossing, showing your diamond-crusted watch.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You're going to have one guy that emails you and says, "I'm happy as shit. I'm popping bottles on a yacht. I'm not depressed."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, no, it's—
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Get that guy high on mushrooms and see if he really feels that way. And see if he's really depressed.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, exactly. See what he really thinks about life. I think that the majority of people are suffering from some sort of mental illness, for sure.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I mean—
--:-- Joe Rogan: Definitely the majority in L.A.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. Well, I think so. But a lot of the people that I'm friends with, most of the people that I'm friends with are artists that are more in touch, more sensitive. You know, my dad came to me a few years ago. My dad my entire life told me to stop being so sensitive. "Stop being so sensitive, Katie. Stop taking yourself so seriously. Oh my God. Like stop, Katie." I mean my entire fucking life. And he came to me a couple years ago and he said, "I am so sorry I told you to stop being so sensitive because it's your job. Your job is to be sensitive to everything around you, to accurately portray emotions. That's your job and you're very good at it."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, that's very nice of him.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It was very nice of him. So I think that, yes, do people have a lot of mental illness in Los Angeles? Are they suffering from depression? I would argue that the majority of the population is, and it's not just reserved to California, but I do think that a lot of artists are because they're more in touch with their emotions and their mental health.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, there's probably some truth to that for sure. Does your father have—do you have brothers?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I do.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Okay. So that's the difference. So I have all daughters.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Okay.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And when you have all daughters, one of the things you realize is like, oh, they're so different. It's like they're a totally different kind of human.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's true.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You know, and when you're like, "Why are you upset?" Because I'm treating her like she's a boy. Yes. You cannot treat them like they're a boy. And over time, it's given me a much greater understanding of females, of the species, of female human beings. Like they're not male human beings. When I hang out with my wife and all of her friends and I just let them talk and observe the stuff they talk about, it's like you're a totally different culture. This is totally different interests. None of my friends would have any of these conversations.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But a group of women is arguably more disgusting than a group of men.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, sexually?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, just in general. Like, have you ever sat down with a group of women and just talked about bodily fluids?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, they're notorious for being the worst in bathrooms.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh my God. Anybody who cleans bathrooms says, "Dude, the woman's room is always fucking chaos."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So gross. Because they have to be so clean and put together everywhere else. When they get to that bathroom and they don't have any responsibility, no one's looking, they're like, "I'm gonna fucking leave toilet paper everywhere. Fuck you. I'm not cleaning shit."
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's true. So we have—our daughter is almost four in December, and then we have a 16-month-old son. And we thought that he was gonna come out like her. She was like full sentences by a year old. She was walking at nine months.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh no, dudes are way dumber.
--:-- Joe Rogan: This kid—he understands everything. He's smart, but he's like a big unit. He's huge. He's humongous. He's like 99% on everything. Not just one thing, everything. My dad the other day was like, "Oh, he's going to be big. He's got a huge head." He's just a big kid. All of his resources are set to growing stuff instead of thinking.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh my God. Dudes mature so much later. It's crazy. Crazy. Like, not even talking. Just started walking.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But the other day, my husband was like, "Where's Granger?" And I was like, "I don't know where Granger is." And we find him. He's up on the kitchen counter, ready to start swinging from a light. And I was like, "Catch the baby." Our daughter would have never. She's delicate. She looks at a slide five times before she goes down it. She climbs to the top. She changes her mind. She really thinks about it. I think she's doing math problems in her head to make sure she won't get hurt. And then our son is like, "I'm going down face first."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And then he stands up. He's like, "I'm OK." It's a totally different thing. It's a completely different thing.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. Completely different.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And the only way to really understand them is to live with them. You have to study them.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's true.
--:-- Joe Rogan: In their natural habitat.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Study them like David Attenborough. You've got to study them in their natural environment. That would actually be a really funny short. It's just like a David Attenborough voice following around children, noticing the difference between the boys and the girls in their natural habitats.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, AI could probably do that for you and make a really good documentary real quick.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh my God.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And in 10 minutes. You don't have to dedicate a year of your life to it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Look, it can exist. I don't need to participate in stripping away my livelihood.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Listen, I understand. I mean, I'm certain there's going to be AI comedians and podcasters. And there's probably going to be AI UFC commentators who do a better job than me. But I think there is an AI podcast creator right now that's pumping out podcasts.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, I know that there's a podcast of me and Steve Jobs, and I never met Steve Jobs.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: There's a whole podcast of me having a conversation with Steve Jobs.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, that's just deepfake, right?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yep. But it's AI. AI created the conversation.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So I think the one that I'm talking about—the producer of my show is telling me that there's an AI where you can put in like, "I'm a potato farmer in Idaho dealing with a problem with a crop in 2025 and I'm wondering about this." It'll put together a podcast for you specifically for that and give you an hour-long podcast.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Talking to you about things like for your potatoes.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, well, that's actually positive. The negative thing is you're going to have fake humans with fake lived experiences that resonate with you, that are impactful. That's what's scary.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You know, we had these conversations with a few friends of mine the other day. You know the show *Trigonometry*?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Okay, it's a very popular podcast, but my friend Francis and Constantine, they're the hosts of it. And my friend Megan Murphy was there, and a bunch of comedians were there. And I was playing my favorite new song, which is an AI song. And I'm like, "Tell me how good this is." It's a cover of 50 Cent song "What Up Gangsta."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: All right, I'm going to need to hear this song.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You need to hear it. So I can participate with this. We play it right here. You know the original song?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, we'll cut it out. You know the original song, right? Which song?
--:-- Joe Rogan: 50 Cent, "What Up Gangsta"?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Okay. Wait for this. I hate to say this because I love 50 Cent. This is better than the original. It's a 1950s soul cover of "What Up Gangsta."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Okay. Now here's my question. If you'd gone to 50 Cent and said, "Can you get together with a producer and create this for me," do you think he could have done it?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Okay. Yes. But we never gave him the chance to do it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So we're sort of robbing him. He had 30 years. He could have done it at any point in time.
--:-- Joe Rogan: This is so good.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I know what you're saying. Okay. But this is my point. My point is that it tricks me and I know the trick. Like, I know it's a trick. And I don't care. I don't care. It's that good. And no one else cared in the green room. Everybody's like, "Ooh."
--:-- Joe Rogan: All right, hit her with it, Jamie. Come on. It's a good version. Come on. That's good. That's good. Crazy. They did the best version of "Zombie" ever. I got a different version with a girl singing it. Oh, my goodness. A barbershop quartet singing it. Oh, my goodness. And Jamie just does this all night long. I can just play them and take a walk, just know which ones are good. He sent me like 20 of them.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I feel like I just participated in the death of my industry.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Listen, I'm on the same page. I would so much rather see that in person, though. Like I would love to be at a show because those songs were phenomenal. Like I cannot argue that. That was great. I will probably ask you to send me that version of "Zombie."
--:-- Joe Rogan: That Shifty Brent guy, they have him listed on Spotify. I'm probably blowing up their spot. But it's not a human. But they have it listed as an artist so that they could upload it. Because I don't think you're allowed to just upload AI versions of stuff. So they just pretend it's a guy. But it's a guy, as you said. One of the things we were talking about, I'm like, "I don't think anybody can keep that flow." That flow where he's not breathing.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: He's not breathing. Unless they're taking the breaths out. But it's too—
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. And then speed. I don't know. I'm not a musician, so I have no idea.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Look, there are guys like Eminem that achieved incredible flow without AI. Absolutely. That have like—how did he do that? But that practice, repetition, vocal endurance, whatever. I mean, he just knows how to do it. But this fucking AI guy, it's like all the best things we love about great songs just condensed. And they know what you love. That's the fucked up thing. It's like, let's look at all the hits. "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." Look at all the hits. Look at "Zombie." Let's look at this. And then mush them all together and figure out, "What are these notes that make people excited? What are the feelings? What are the words that make people like, 'Oh, yeah'?" You know, what are those feelings?
--:-- Joe Rogan: So, okay.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: And I hear all of that. It makes me—I'm literally cringing inside. I'm like dying. But like, so what do artists do? Like what do musicians do? What has everybody ever done when things change? You figure it out and adapt.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Humans are always going to need humans. We love each other. You know, as much as we hate each other, we love each other more because most interactions that people have with other people are not negative. It's just the negative ones are so scary that we concentrate on them more. But humans love humans. And the more you need each other, the more you're going to need human interaction, human cooperation. Art is going to be so much more valuable coming from a human. Live performances.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But are we going to adapt? Are we going to know? Like that's the thing that I think is the slippery slope and that scares me the most is that are we going to know if it was created by AI? Can a person who's disingenuous come and create a bunch of AI art, have an art show and say, "I created this art. This is what I really think"?
--:-- Joe Rogan: When comets hit planets, usually you get small ones first. You get things in the sky, meteor showers.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Are you going to give me another thing to be scared of?
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, I'm just telling you that this is a little one. That's what this is. Movies and TV shows that are made entirely with AI, songs made entirely with AI. This is just a small thing. The big one that's coming is a complete revamping of communication and culture. It's human beings communicating telepathically through devices connected to the Internet. Everyone all on one weird mind-meld page.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You mean like the implant things?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's probably not going to be an implant. It's probably going to be something wearable. I think the implant thing is kind of sketchy and probably really good for people that have paralysis.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's probably not going to be an implant. It's probably going to be something wearable. I think the implant thing is kind of sketchy and probably really good for people that have paralysis. We had the guy who was the first Neuralink patient on. It's amazing. He was talking to me about how he could play video games now and it's so much better. His quality of life has improved so much. And eventually they're going to get to the point where they can reconnect spinal tissue, where people can move again. It's amazing. It's great. But I don't think they're going to need that to get this achievement of a mind meld. They're already wearing these wearable things that Google has devised. Show that video, Jamie, of those people where they're communicating telepathically. You know what I'm talking about, right? So they're already doing this with wearables. And this is like kind of crude right now, but it's sort of sentences. They're reading each other and they're communicating, but they're doing it all non-verbally through technology.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So I guess what my question about that is, like, if that exists, are people going to be stagnant sitting in their houses, existing outside of their houses in their AI system? So they're not moving around? Or are we going to be able to wear these while we're out and still participating in the world?
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a good question.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That is my fear, like, that people stop actually participating with their life.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, that's a good fear.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Because they think they're living.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. With their wearable. Let's talk about that. Let's watch this.
--:-- [Video plays: "Could be a noisy environment or a quiet office. Having a direct conversation is possible without saying a word. The signals Alter Ego detects aren't affected by environmental noise. So even if you're walking past a wind tunnel or a construction zone, what you want to say will always get across. It's like having infinite noise cancellation. If you're traveling, your silent speech can be converted into any language."]
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean, what the fuck? It's translating.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But then is it actually speaking out loud to them? Like they're hearing the translation out loud?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, they connected it to a speaker. So it's not like it's going into their brain.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, his thoughts are being converted to words, which is being converted to an audio file, which makes it to the other person in a different language.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, this is what I'm saying. And I'm telling you, this is one of the little rocks. This is one of the itty-bitty rocks that's just broken through the atmosphere and slammed into a cornfield.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I mean, I guess my question is why we need it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's funny. Why do you need a cell phone? Why do you need a TV? Why do you need an airplane? Why do you need a boat? Why do you need anything?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, I could tell you I don't need a cell phone. I do need a plane.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But you do if your hot husband wants to call you.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, I mean, but I don't need an iPhone.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right, but you need a cell phone.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Because I can use my own imagination. You know what I mean? I think that's the thing. That's my fear is that we're becoming lazy as a people.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, most certainly.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Someone the other day—my husband's a writer—was saying that there's an AI where you don't have to make up a story for your children anymore. Like, "I have this princess poopy pants" or whatever. I don't remember what it was, but my daughter loved this story that I was telling her. It was terrible. But she loves this princess. And it is the worst. It is not good. But I came up with it. And she and I laughed together. And then her reactions helped me to turn the story a different direction. But I've created this character, right? So you can now go into your AI phone or whatever and say, "Create a nighttime story for Johnny about his day. But pretend he's an astronaut on Mars and he's working with diggers." And it writes a story for you in five seconds to read to your son. Now, is that cool? Absolutely. Did your son enjoy it? Sure. But you robbed yourself of the imagination and the work that it would have taken to come up with a story for your son. And then you also robbed yourself of that experience with your son creating the story together because his reactions would have changed the story in the way that you were creating it as it was going because he's your audience, right? That's sad to me, that people are missing out on that. Yeah, cool, you might as well just read your kid a story because you really didn't write him a story. I don't know. The thing that I hope as a society—because you're right, it is coming, and it's here, and it's not slowing down—is that I hope we can still steal away those moments where we don't want to use it. Because Johnny's little dad may have missed his second calling of being a children's story author because he never pushed himself to have to do it. And that could have been really cool. I'm not completely against AI.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I know what you're saying, and you're always going to have people that give up. That's just how life is. You're always going to have people that don't find another way. You can't save those folks, and I don't even want to because I think that's part of the whole process of culture. I think we have to figure it out by watching people fail, and unfortunately some of us have to fail. And it doesn't mean you fail forever. If that guy figures out that he's on the wrong path and he's got some self-assessment ability and he looks back and goes, "What did I do wrong? Why am I being such a bitch? Why don't I just get my life together? What the fuck is wrong with me? Why am I drinking? Why am I smoking? Why am I killing my health? Why am I depressed? Why don't I just go for a run? Let's see how that goes. I'm going to sign up for a yoga class. How about that? I'll just try that for a while. I'll do something different. I'll start taking vitamins. Do something. Figure out something else that you like to do." Are you alive? Are you breathing? Then life isn't over. Stop being a bitch. You could have been born during the time of the Revolutionary War. You just got shot with a musket and you're bleeding out on a field. No, you're in Santa Barbara and you don't like that AI just took your job. Find a new job, bitch. Figure it out. That's what we all have to do in this life. There's a lot of different people doing a lot of different things. Find out what it is that you can do. Don't give up. AI comes along and you just give up on life and he could have been amazing at something. Really? I doubt it. Because almost anybody that really is amazing at something has a desire to figure out how to get that through.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I don't disagree with that. But there also are safeguards in place. So my dad's entire family—we grew up in a small town on the Columbia River in Oregon—his entire family were longshoremen. Well, that industry was coming to an end. And the longshoremen's union actually paid to have those guys trained in a different industry.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's great. That's one of the great things about a union.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. So I would love for there to be some protections for when people inevitably do start losing their jobs, that there are avenues for them to learn a new trade. I think that would be a great new addition to the way we approach it, if they tried to figure out ways to transition people healthily into other occupations. Because there's certain jobs like coders, for example. My friends that are involved in technology say, "Do not go to school to code."
--:-- Joe Rogan: No. Code for fun if you like coding for fun.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: There's a lot of them, the super nerds, they code. Those dorks. They code for fun. They sit in front of a screen.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Don't make fun of my fan base. I love them. Come on, Joe. Listen, I love those guys. But also, three years ago, my dad was like, "Your kid should go into coding." That's how quickly that changed, though.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: And that could just be my dad's generation not seeing it happening as quickly.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, they were seeing what was happening was all these tech guys wanted to be the richest people on the planet. So they were seeing it. But it's just like a brief window of opportunity to become a tech oligarch. And that shit's going to slam shut. It is. And the real fear is who's going to be in control of AI. You've got these people like Sam Altman. You've got Elon. You've got all these super rich people that are going to be in control of the digital god. That's a little disconcerting as it is.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It is a little scary that the few control the masses.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's so much power and money.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's a lot of power. And just a handful of people.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's a lot of power. And you've got to hope that the people that are in power have good sensibilities. They're kind. A heart. They're nice. That they realize, "Okay, I've got X amount of billions of dollars. So this is obviously not what life's all about. What is life? What can I do that makes life meaningful? I could actually probably help people." Like legitimately help people.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That would be amazing if people with a lot of money wanted to help people and pay their share of taxes and not take advantage of the situation.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Here's the problem with that. I am all for wealthy people paying their share. I am not for the government deciding what to do with that money when I've seen what you've done with the money in the past. You guys are irresponsible. You never make audits. You've got insider trading running amok amongst people in Congress, and you're not doing nothing about it. And then you want more money, and you say that's going to fix it. No, it's the way you handle the money that sucks. It's not that I wouldn't want to. I would be happy to pay more in taxes and live in a place that's just managed perfectly. But God, it's so great living here in America. Everything's done so well. It's so beautiful. It's like everything's well thought out. Our education system's great. Nobody is stuck in a bad neighborhood anymore. All the school systems are top of the food chain. It's a difficult job to acquire. It's given a lot of respect and everybody's doing great. Then I'd be happy.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, no, for sure. You see some of the money that they've uncovered that was being spent on nonsense. And you see what happens with NGOs and nonprofits and they're funneling billions to these things. And it's going to countries and it's helping overthrow governments. Like, okay, slow down. But we also have to acknowledge that in the cuts, there were things that didn't need to be cut. So we can go and we can look at Elon. So you brought up Elon Musk. Let's talk about when he tweeted about an overstuffed bill in 2025. He was talking about how this bill was just bloated. So he took a bunch of shit off of it. One of the things that fell on that was in 2012, there was a piece of legislation called the Give Kids a Chance Act. What it did was it motivated and incentivized drug companies to create drugs for pediatrics. Because right now, pediatrics are completely underfunded. We learned all of this when our daughter got sick. The National Cancer Institute, 4% of its budget goes to pediatrics. 4%. So it's already underfunded. And then when Elon in 2025 tweeted about this, they took off all of the stuff at the end of the bill, 900 pages. But what was on it was the Give Kids a Chance Act. Now, this bill is a voucher program. So let's say that Tom in his basement wants to create a drug, a new drug for neuroblastoma that will save our daughter's life. He's got no money, but he sees the cure. So he can go to the FDA and he can say, "I got a cure for neuroblastoma." And they say, "Great, we'll fast track you in the FDA, but we're also going to give you a voucher." You can sell that voucher because Tom only has 10 cents. He can create this drug. But with that voucher, he can take that voucher and he can sell it to anyone for any amount of money. And what that voucher is, is a front of the line pass. So he can go sell it to some drug company that has a fat loss drug or a drug for heart medications, anything. He can sell it to them and they get to buy it for what, $50 million. So now Tom has $50 million for his pediatric drug that's going to save children's lives. And this drug company has a voucher that takes them to the front of the line. Now, do we wish that these drug companies were altruistic and they were just creating drugs for peds? Of course, but they're not. It's not a free market. So what happens is they've now got their voucher. Tom has his money to create his drug. And since 2012, the Give Kids a Chance Act has created over 60 drugs for life-threatening illnesses for children. Sixty drugs. And because of Elon's tweet, that legislation, because it has to be voted on every four years, was taken off the end of the bill. It no longer exists. So that legislation is not in existence anymore. That is terrible because now there's no incentives for the drug companies to create drugs for children. And children are already underfunded. They get so little. And so it has to be on the bill at the end of the year. So what I want is for people to see the error of their ways. Yes, was there waste? Of course. But now you have this bipartisan supported piece of legislation that has to be on the end of year bill or it will not get on again. And then it starts all over again. That has to be on the end of year bill. So things like that. Yes. Can we get rid of the waste? Absolutely. But when you see a mistake and you see that you made a mistake, let's fix it. Put it back on.
--:-- [Ad break: This episode is brought to you by Life360...]
--:-- Joe Rogan: We've got to help children. It's literally throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That's literally it. But that's what we do in this country.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But is that it? Unfortunately, these bills are crazy. And one of the things about bills is it'll have a name, and then what's in the bill deals with multiple subjects.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes. Because a bunch of different things get thrown into the bill.
--:-- Joe Rogan: All the time. There's so much chucked on the end, which is what Elon was talking about.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right. They all do that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So was this connected to something else?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, it was just part of it. It was just part of it that was on there that was thrown in there at the end. So there was a part that was chucked off. From what I understand, and granted, you need to talk to someone much more informed than I am about this, but there were about hundreds of pages that were just cut off the end.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So do you think they're just not reviewing what's being cut off? They're just saying, "Look, we have to make cuts."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I think that, yes, that they just needed to cut a bunch off to avoid inspection and just get the bill passed. And that's what they did. And so the Give Kids a Chance Act is one of the top 10 most bipartisan supported pieces of legislation. And 2% of bills actually pass. So it literally has to be on the end of the year bill. And it surprises me that because there is waste—I know there's waste, we all know there's waste—but that we say that children are so important and they get 4% of the National Cancer Institute money. 4%. I just feel like if people knew about that, that couldn't have happened. If we had known about that in advance, we could have made a big deal about that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, we've got two months. We've got two months to get it on there now.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, let's try to get it on there now.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But here's the thing. I had never heard about this before you talked about it. And this is part of the problem. I don't think they should be allowed to make bills that way. I think each bill, the things that are in the bills are so consequential. It just doesn't make any sense to me that they shouldn't be treated as individual arguments. Every single one of them. Like if you have a bill and you have 500—let's ask Perplexity, our sponsor. What is the average amount of different subjects that are covered in any bill? Because when there are thousands of pages, they might have stuff in there about immigration reform mixed in with Second Amendment rights, mixed in with free speech online, mixed in with support for Israel. It's weird. They have thousands of pages.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, and you've seen how thick it is. And there were times, and I don't remember who said it, but there were times when the big beautiful bill was passing or before it had passed that people had admittedly not even read it. But how could you read it? It's so big. And so there is a problem there, and that is above my pay grade and I do not know how to fix that. But that's a crazy problem. But I think part of the problem is that it takes a pissed off mom whose kid is sick to be like, "This is a problem." It is a problem that in Portland where I'm from, OHSU is one of the top hospitals in the country. OHSU is given so many grants by the Knight Foundation. It is a leading hospital. It is a tier one hospital. It is attached to Doernbecher. Doernbecher is a tier two children's hospital. It's in the same building. That's crazy. It is crazy to me that a pediatric oncologist makes 50% less than an adult oncologist. Just across the board, 50% less. It doesn't matter what the specialty is. They all make less money. That is a problem in this country that our children are not being cared for. Children are not being cared for. And we're now in a position where there are no programs—and if there were, they're gone—that are showing doctors and students that are in medical school, "Hey, go into pediatrics. Hey, if you want to be an anesthesiologist, you want job security, go into pediatrics. I know you're going to make 50% less, but go into pediatrics. We need you." There are not enough. It's a big problem. That's 50% less because a lot of these doctors—now that's an average as well, by the way. I mean, when they get out, they already have medical school debt. Then there's liability coverage, which is very, very high.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Okay. What is the average amount of subjects included in bills passing in U.S. Congress?
--:-- [Perplexity response: "There's no single fixed number of topics per bill, but analysis of legislative practices shows strong trends depending on bill type and scope. The majority of bills passed by Congress include multiple subjects, and the number has grown over time as omnibus legislation has become the dominant approach."]
--:-- Joe Rogan: Give me some numbers, though. This one has the most. This is the biggest bill passed. Okay. This is so crazy. 5,000 pages? Consolidated Appropriations Act, which was in 2021, it has 5,593 pages. The bill combined all 12 regular appropriation bills for fiscal year 2021, COVID-19 relief and numerous unrelated legislation provisions, including Copyright Alternative and Small Claims Enforcement Act, Protecting Lawful Streaming Act, Water Resources Development Act and a variety of other measures on tax, transportation, energy and health. Nobody's reading that. They're not reading. You think AOC read that? You think George Santos read that? Nobody read that.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You want to make it about people not reading things? I'm sure we can get into that. But I think that—
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, George Santos is the crazy guy.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes. That was just—yeah. They just—are they getting him out of jail? Is he getting free?
--:-- Joe Rogan: I don't know. I might have him on. That guy, he's a wild boy. I don't know. But these people that are Congress people that are making hundreds of millions of dollars through insider trading. And we're just like, "I don't know what to do."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Okay. But here's the thing though, is that things are not getting voted on. Like, the other thing is that you take the Give Kids a Chance Act and then you take these big bills that have so many pages. There should be a system in place where things are voted on separately. And there may be. I mean, this is especially something that is as important as pediatric medication. That just seems like a travesty to include that in a bunch of other stuff in a bill.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, and the crazy thing—
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So our daughter's cancer, her treatments and her care afterwards. So she's still getting this thing called an MIBG scan, which is a nuclear radiation scan where they inject her body with stuff that is so bad for you. But it's all to scan her body to make sure that her cancer hasn't metastasized. We need to know this kind of stuff. There's no new technology. These are things that she's being treated with that have existed for 30 years. We need new things. Our daughter should never have to get wheeled over to the adult side of a hospital to get an MRI because they don't have a machine on the children's side. It's just things like that should never be happening. This is the stuff that should be supported by our government and our tax dollars.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, that's a great example of something that should be supported by tax dollars. I've always said the two most important things for people to be if you want to allocate money towards helping people, it's education and health care. Those are number one and number two. But is there an argument that socialized medicine—I have friends that live in countries with socialized medicine like England and Canada, and it's great in some ways. But it's also a nightmare because it takes a long time to get a surgery. A lot of the doctors might not be the best. I've had quite a few botched surgeries that my friends have had. And a lot of them have actually come to America to get surgery, especially UFC guys.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Because they felt like the doctors were better because they're more incentivized. These doctors are paid better. And you're going to get those really hot shot—this is the guy who does all the ACL tears for the Lakers. These guys are—so there's something to be said for the competition that drives innovation and makes people become the very best in the top of their field.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But also the most important things are not that. The most important things are regular, ordinary health care. And some of that stuff can break people. Like one bad fall when you don't have health insurance and you're a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt now.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So did you know that the number one cause of debt in our country is a medical diagnosis?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, I did. It's terrifying.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's terrifying.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So like that alone—I mean, if other countries have that and it might not be perfect, why can't we have that? And why can't we have that along with specialists that are even better? Like if you are the Lakers, you need a guy who's just a wizard. Pay people more for the very best guys. So you still have competition. But the idea that people can just go bankrupt if they get sick—it's like, are we not looking out for each other? Think about how much money we spend on other things. It's doable because other countries do it. It really makes me sad. At least, you know, every once in a while we would get a medical bill. We have great health insurance. The Screen Actors Guild has some of the best health insurance I've ever seen, mind you. In Oregon where they're not used to seeing the Screen Actors Guild health insurance, doctors will sometimes be like, "I have never seen an insurance company cover this." I'm like, "I know. Actors." It's phenomenal. But we have seen so many people with sick children suffering financially. You don't think about it. It's not necessarily even the diagnosis that's causing the bankruptcy. It's the time. If your daughter needs a specialized cancer treatment and you've got to drive six hours each way every day or be put up at the Ronald McDonald House over by a hospital, you're not going to your work. You're not plowing your fields. You're not going to your nine to five. You're not because your priority is your kid. That leads to bankruptcy. That's a really big problem. And so it's not even the insurance. It's the lack of time. It's the lack of resources that we give people when they are sick. It's really heartbreaking. We got bills sometimes that were like $70,000 and these crazy numbers. And I would take a picture and send it off to our insurance broker because we have a very, very blessed life. And I wasn't—I mean, I was definitely shocked by it and a little concerned, but I was like, "They'll handle it, they'll let us know." Most people don't have that. They look at that and even though that was an error we should have never gotten that, your portion was still something like that. Why does it cost that much money?
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's the question. What factors are involved in it costing that much money? Is it all above ground? Because I don't think it is.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It definitely has been shown that it's not with some drugs, that they've hiked the price up of drugs because they know people have to buy it. They know it's necessary. You're going to pay. It is a very messed up system.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's crazy. It's a crazy system. It's got so many problems. Whenever you have money, it's money. Whenever they can figure out how to make money with things. So it's like, is there an argument for some sort of a socialization of that in this country? And people that want to say that we shouldn't have any socialism—listen, we have some. We do have some. Here's a big one. Fire department. This is a big one. All right? We all agree the fire department is worth paying for with our tax dollars. We all pay and the fire department goes where the fire is. If there's a fire in a poor community, if there's a fire in a rich community, that's how it works.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: We all agree with that because it's a very good part of a functional society.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, and we don't want to be like, "No, we don't need it." You have a fire in your health then. It's the same thing. You should have calamity centers.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. Like this is—we've set up—the socialism of our society is we've set up ways to handle calamities. We've got ways to set up fires, ways to set up floods, and we pay for it. And we make sure it's all there because we all need it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You want a social calamity?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No education. Massive crime. All the different problems that plague us that we ignore. And some great ways to do that, to stop that, is free education and free health care. You cut back on most of the problems that people run into.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I agree because one of the biggest problems in our country is mental health. It's a huge problem and a lot of people go untreated because they don't have health care. That's what you're seeing in these tents.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. You're seeing a lot of mental illness, a lot. It's a giant portion of it. That was all during the Reagan administration. The Reagan administration, they changed how they – like what they did with mentally ill people and they shut down a lot of these institutions and they just let people become homeless.
--:-- Joe Rogan: We were just having this conversation the other day because it's inhumane to determine how a person should live their life and where they should live their life. And yeah, it's a very, very complicated gray issue for sure.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You know, you see it in Portland where I live. It is a very complicated issue because there is not one solution. It needs to be a multi-pronged solution with a lot of hands on deck.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. I mean, in Portland, it's gotten, it was, I think another thing that Portland did that was, I think, directionally correct, which was they decriminalized everything. They said, look, we're not going to criminalize you for doing cocaine or having mushrooms. We're not going to treat that like your personal use is a crime of anything. But unfortunately, when they did that, people moved there to do drugs.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, unfortunately, when they did that, they didn't put the services in place ahead of time to be prepared for it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, you would need a lot of services. You need like real counseling and real health care. And you really should have an Ibogaine Center. If you're going to have anything that is dealing with addiction, which is one of the primary factors of these people being homeless.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, yeah, I mean, it's a chicken-egg thing, right? Because what comes first, the addiction or the homelessness?
--:-- Joe Rogan: They should have set up Ibogaine Centers. If you've got a decriminalized society, set up Ibogaine Centers in Oregon. It would be the perfect place for you. You'd be able to help so many people. Because so many of those folks are just stuck. They're just stuck. And if you can get them out of whatever funk they're in, whether it's an opioid or crystal meth or whatever the thing is that has captured their life and let them find out who they are as a human, you could probably save a bunch of those folks. And that can be done. I do believe that a lot of those people can be saved.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I think that it's really sad. It's how invisible people are.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. It's really sad. It's really sad. That's someone's baby. And you have babies. You know what it's like.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: And that's what I can't help but think. Think about how much you love your babies. And you walk by that with someone's baby that is now on the street, covered in their own feces.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I know. It's really horrible. It's horrible. It's horrible. And it's just a stain on us as a community that we don't do anything about it. And the answer is not just lock them up.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I think they're doing something crazy out here where they're bringing in the National Guard and they're sweeping up all the encampments and like, that doesn't fix it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No. You're just penalizing people for being fucked.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But at a certain point in time though, it's like you ever watch that show Hoarders?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes.
--:-- Joe Rogan: At a certain point in time, you got to burn the house down. All right. This one lady was keeping bags of poop. I have tendencies. She had bottles and bags of poop all in her house. And they're like, we're going to have to destroy this house. This is insane. It's like that is almost where places like Skid Row are. It's so crazy that you've let it get this bad for so long that to even clean it up, it's almost like you have to start from scratch. So it's almost like you'd have to take those people, you'd have to set up treatment places and take those people and convince them that there's a way to a life that you don't want to live like this forever. There's a way to a life and we're going to try to help you and have these places that are set up where they have counselors and food. They clean people up. They give them their appropriate mental health medication if they need it. They talk to them. They give them activities. That's not like financially prohibitively expensive. They spent $24 billion in California trying to stop the homeless crisis or help it. They didn't do anything. It got bigger. It got way bigger. And they spent $24 billion.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, because they're coming over from Texas, being kicked out of Texas.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The homeless? I don't think they travel. Go west, young men. Go west. I don't think they have that kind of ambition.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, I think it's a big problem. But I also know that it is not, it's a multi-pronged problem, like I said. You know, a lot of people don't want to go into the shelters because they have an animal or they have a lot of stuff. And there's limits on how many bags you can bring in, things like that. So it's, you know, you're not allowed to have drugs on you. Things that are prohibitive to persuade people to go into places that have help.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So I don't know. It's going to take somebody a lot more creative than me and a lot of money and a lot of open minded people to figure out what to do, because it's a big problem. And it's a big problem everywhere. Every major city. It doesn't matter if it's blue or red. It doesn't matter. It is. It's a big problem.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The thing is, it's fairly recent. That's what's disturbing, because I think that it's a symptom of a society that's lost its way because it's fairly recent. There wasn't a time when I was a boy where you had that many homeless people. You occasionally had a homeless person that you'd run into in like Boston where I lived or New York City. You'd occasionally run into homeless people. But there was no encampments.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: This is a completely new thing as far as I know.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It is. There was during the Great Depression though, but that was just horrific poverty where they had shanty towns. Whole families living in these set up shanty towns because they couldn't afford to be in a house.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I don't know. Do you think it's a loss of community in some regard?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's a loss of community and it's a loss of empathy and caring for people. You know, I know that in the town that I grew up, when somebody was down on their luck, everybody would come together and help that person.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It doesn't really happen anymore. You know, we're all so consumed with our own lives and what's happening to us, I think.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, I think it's not a coincidence that it's happening in the places that have the most people too.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Of course.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Where there's the most people, not only are you going to have a higher number of people with mental illnesses, but you're also going to have this thing that happens when you have too many people that live in a place where you don't value each other. Like I live in a neighborhood where there's a guy that lives in my neighborhood, this old fella, and he's always working on his garden. And every time I drive by, he waves.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I look forward.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I look forward to the wave.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: To the wave.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I wave that dude. What's up? It's like he's a friendly guy. Everybody drives by his house, he waves at. And I look forward to waving at that guy. And that doesn't happen in New York City. In New York City, you wave at a guy every day, he's like, "What the fuck are you waving at, bitch?" Like they want to fight you. Like, "You got a problem with me? Why are you looking at me every day?" Because there's too many people. There's fucking millions of people all stacked on top. It's not how we're designed to live. We're designed to live in some sort of peace and harmony with nature, not like a new nature. So this new nature of concrete and electricity is just weird for us. And so we behave weird. And then when you see someone who's down, you just think, that's not me. I'm going to keep on moving. Whereas if you lived in a small town and that was a member of your community, that's Earl. Like, "Oh my god, Earl's passed out in front of a store. Earl, what's going on, man?" Yeah, like you love Earl. Pick him up.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, Earl's a faceless nameless person in Manhattan. He's one of many and no one cares. They just walk right by you on the way to the play.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, everybody is hustling. That's a big thing. We've got too little time in the day, a lot to accomplish. Everybody's just, how do I get mine? How do I take care of my family? How do I protect this? How do I do that? I don't have time to look at Earl.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Exactly.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But also, even if you did help Earl, Earl might be an idiot. It might be like one of them things, you help Earl, then two days later, you smoke crack again. Earl! Oh, Earl. Earl might just be, that just might be Earl. There's certain people you can't save, and there's always going to be people like that. But there's a lot of those folks that genuinely are just down on their luck and maybe they had an abusive childhood and maybe things went wrong with them at multiple points. Maybe they had an injury and they got Oxycontin prescribed to them and then all of a sudden they can't get off. That happens all the time. I know people that that happened to. But it's going to take a coordinated effort from our representatives to actually care about people enough to figure out what the right solution is.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I would like to talk to the people that spent the $24 billion in California and go, what did you guys do? Like, how come you didn't do better?
--:-- Joe Rogan: There's more. There's more than when it started. They increased their number.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, to me, what that says is that there are more and more people falling through the cracks every single day then. An enormous number in Los Angeles.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Los Angeles alone is a strange place in some neighborhoods where you're just driving through, you just feel like, oh, this is like, if I was looking at a piece of fruit, and the piece of fruit had like this bruised area, and I was like, oh, what happened to this? Somebody dropped it. Like it's a damaged part of your society. You've got these people completely removed from society, like a bruise just sitting there. They're a part of it, but they're a sad part of it. And that part is getting bigger. The bruise is bigger. It's weird.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, then, yeah, I mean, we left Los Angeles two years ago. Two years ago. I can't even speak. Two years ago. And I love LA. I love LA. I lived there for 25 years. I freaking love it. It's a great city. Great people. Awesome. A lot of amazing human beings. Some of my best friends I met in LA. I know. And it's like many other cities. It has a problem. And the solution is there. It's going to require a lot of work. And I don't know what that is, sadly.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, I don't know what that is, but I know that people don't course correct. And that's what's screwy. What's screwy is just let this thing get bigger. Like you got to dump a lot of resources into removing these tent communities, setting these people up in some sort of a community center, some sort of a rehabilitation center, like make an effort. There's no way you can allow this because of the cost that's happening just to the neighborhood. Like if you live right next door to a tent city and you're trying to sell your house, good luck. You're not selling your house.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. That's going to fuck up everything. And it's going to fuck it up for them, too. It's going to cost everybody money. You would be better off spending that money trying to help those people. And I guarantee you, at least some of them are going to pop through on the other side, figure it out, become successful and be forever eternally grateful. And they'll be able to help more people do the same. There's always a few of those people that come out of those kind of treatment centers that can help other people do it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I would be really curious to see, like, statistically what the common denominator of the majority of the homeless people in the U.S., what it was. I wonder if there's been these studies. If there's studies where they actually went around. It's got to be mostly drugs, right?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, I don't know, though. I don't know. And granted, I do not know enough about this to be speaking about it with authority.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I don't either, but I just jumped right to a first conclusion.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But you do talk to some people that find themselves homeless and I had this conversation with somebody who found themselves homeless and started doing drugs because try spending the night out on the street. It's not comfortable. It's – depending on your circumstances, where you are, potentially what your gender is, what your own mental health is. Also, you probably lose self-respect at that point in time. You're sleeping literally outside. Or you have high self-respect, but you had a really shitty fucking day. Or someone you were caring for had cancer and you lost your house because they passed and you didn't go to work for a year and a half. For whatever reason, you then start using drugs because it helps numb the life. So I don't know. I think you're right that a lot of people who do do drugs find themselves on the street. But I also think that a lot of people who are on the street for other reasons find their way to drugs. And so it's a really big problem with a lot of moving parts. And I think first and foremost we have to try to find our way to empathy and figure out how to help people.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, it's very well said, what you said. I completely agree with. And I think it can be done. I think it could be done with that $24 billion. And I just think that there's a lot of incentive. There's a lot of wasted money in this country, let's be honest.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It is. It's also, this is a thing, unfortunately, that they campaign with. You know, when there's certain issues that I think politicians genuinely don't want resolved because they can campaign on solving those problems.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I really do think that. I talked to Rep Luna and she actually said that. And I was like, so you really think they do that? And she's like, absolutely. That is so dark that they would not want solutions from both sides because they would rather keep the argument in place. So they go, if it's up to me, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to stop gay marriage. And then it becomes a thing that they would like to repeal gay marriage just so they have the ability to fight to bring back gay marriage. Like that's how twisted some of these people are. It wouldn't surprise me.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I'm not surprised. I think that's probably what happened with Roe v. Wade. I think that's probably part of it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I mean, government is a business. We have to acknowledge that. It's a crazy business. Everybody gets paid. It is a business. There's so much money in that business. And they really do like having problems to campaign against. They openly talk about it. Like we're going to get them on this one. Like they like that problem. Keep that problem going.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You know what, though? You know what we should do? We should give them problems that, like, legitimately, like, big problems that matter, like saving children.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, that would be great. And, like, education and things like that. You know, you shouldn't, people shouldn't have to move house because they're trying to chase a public school that's better. Like the existing public school should be great. And we should have tried to invest in that a long ass time ago.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, and we should pay our fucking teachers. How about that?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, a lot more. My mom was a teacher for 35 years. She had a master's degree and she made something like $35,000 a year.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I know. It's crazy. You have to love what you do and only want to do it because you love it. Whereas there's so many jobs that pay so much more. But why is it in our country that anything to do with children gets underpaid?
--:-- Joe Rogan: I don't know. They're their future.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, if you wanted to put a tinfoil hat on, I'm trying to keep people down, trying to hold down society so I can control it. I just want to fuck up the education system, put as little money into it as possible, guarantee chaos, guarantee lawlessness, at least in some segments of society. That way we can always have reasons to bring the military onto the streets and reasons to arrest people and reasons to enact new laws and reasons to put people on digital ID.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Like if you wanted to get really cynical, you would say, well, they didn't solve it because they don't want to solve it because they want the south side of Chicago to still look like Afghanistan at the height of the war. They want chaos. They want murder on the streets because that way they keep people scared and that way they campaign against these various sides. If you really wanted to get dark, you would look at it that way. I think what happens is more than anything is that it's like really difficult to get anything done. I think that's the truth.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I think that is the truth. And it's like politically, it's not your best weapon. Like your best weapon are what are the big cultural issues. You know, if it is immigration reform, if you're one of those people that wants to close the border and want to stop these immigrants coming through. And if you're on the other side, if it's we want compassion and we want health care for all. Like then those are the things that you start throwing around. Those are the things that are going to get you votes. If you say, I'm going to campaign to make sure that we have health care for infants, because right now, pediatricians and physicians don't get paid as much. And this is what I'm campaigning on. People will be like, "OK, what about global warming? What about climate?" But then so you have someone that does that. They run on that and wanting to get equal pay for pediatricians and higher pay for teachers. And let's really run on what's better for our children. And they get elected and then they go to work on Monday morning. And everyone's like, "Well, you can't do that. I mean, I know you got elected on it. So good luck. You're going to spend the next two years of your life trying to keep your constituents happy, saying that you're doing it, but we're going to block you at every turn."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. Every turn. It should have been done that way a long ass time ago. That's the problem. It's like I don't understand how anybody who loves their kids would not want their kids to be taught by the best people possible. So unless you're in abject poverty where you can't even think about where your taxes go, if you have children, you should be thinking like, boy, I hope they get the best people to teach my kids. Well, instead, we get people that are willing to take a job that pays so little that almost anybody with a bachelor degree can get a better job somewhere else financially. You may get paid more as a waiter than most teachers get.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, please. You'd get more money as a dog walker.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Probably. You would. A girlfriend of mine. If you have a good group of dogs. A girlfriend of mine was a lawyer, a trial lawyer, making good money. And she had, and I might get this wrong, but she got stress-induced pancreatic shutdown. So her body as an adult had type one diabetes, which is crazy. And it was all due to stress. So they told her, you know, you're going to have diabetes now. It's not like type two, like this is it, but you still need to reduce your stress. And so she stopped being a lawyer. Her husband was like, OK, great. Like, this is it. We got to reduce stress. So she quit her job and stayed home and started doing yoga and was like, OK, I think I'm ready to try and contribute a little bit again and figure something out. And maybe I'll go walk dogs because, you know, I like dogs. Long walks will be stress reducing. I can make a little extra money. Why not do that? But by the time she started watching our dogs at her home overnight for a month while I was on location, she was making more money as a dog sitter slash dog walker than she ever did as a lawyer.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But she sounds like an exceptional dog walker, though.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Crazy. Did you get a lawyer's mind to the dog walking business? I mean, maybe I would get a picture every day, but she wasn't like that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's very valuable if you love your dogs. If someone is like you can really trust to take care of your dogs. But those are the jobs, right? Talking about jobs and like children, like those are the jobs. Like, you know, if I was, I keep telling my nephew like every day, he's like, I don't know what to do with my life. And I'm like, be a plumber. Like, go on your own business. Find a job where we're always going to need you.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, that's a good idea.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Open a dog walking service. Start there. Like do something. Do something. But more importantly, what do you want to do? What do you want? It's so hard for people to figure out because you're judging what you want to do based on what you see everyone around you do. And, you know, I was blessed at a very young age to wake up in the morning and know what I wanted to do.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, I was very fortunate.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's very rare.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, that's a gift. That's a gift the universe gave you. Because if you're just like, I don't know where to start. I don't know what to do.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I think with people like that, generally, they've never tried. This is what I think is one of the things that's very important for kids. Find a thing, whatever that thing is, whether your thing is painting, whether your thing is music, whether your thing is sports. Just find a thing that's hard to do and work on getting better at that thing. And that'll teach you so much about what life is. And if you don't do that, if you just do the work that school gives you and then you go home and you watch TV and then you hang out with your friends and you do the work at school and you don't get involved in anything that really tests you as a person, like test your creativity or test your endurance. If you want to be a runner, are you willing to get up every morning and actually do the work? Like things that test you, they teach you the process of enjoying things and getting better at things. And when people don't go through that when they're young, it's a real problem trying to find a thing and commit to it. You almost have to stumble upon it and get lucky.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: My parents, though, like when, you know, I wasn't raised by anybody in the arts. My dad's a builder. My mom was a teacher. And my parents not one day of my life told me I couldn't do something. Like every single day. They were like, go for it. Why not? I do believe my dad always said, like, you know, second place is just the first loser, so I did have a dad like that. But he said it sort of like, you know, he was building competition. Like he also knew that I was the child that he could say that to and it would motivate me. He didn't say that to my brother who was a very different child.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, you got to figure that out.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But my parents told me I could do things, you know, and then at a very young age, this is where representation matters. At a very young age, I in high school was dating a hockey player who was my age, was playing for the WHL team in Portland and got drafted. So when I was 17 years old, I saw an 18 year old get drafted in the NHL. And in my mind, somebody my age did something really hard that required a lot of work, but he made it. And him making it and seeing that happen in a counterpart of mine gave me the courage to go, I'm moving to California. You did it, I can do it. So you have to have both. You have to have encouraging parents and you have to have the means to be able to pursue the things that you want to pursue. But you also have to have representation and see other people around you succeed that are your age or that you identify with or that look like you. That's important too.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's huge. Inspiration is so important.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So important. It starts with teachers too, right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Sure. Kids need one good teacher. I had one good science teacher when I was in the seventh grade and he said something that I think about all the time. He said, I want you to really hurt your head. I want you to look up at the sky and think about how far forever is. Think about the idea of infinity. Just really think about it. Just only look at the stars at night and think about infinity. Cause you can't even wrap your head around it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: He was an intense dude. He was a Vietnam vet. He was a little shaken up and you could kind of tell. But he really loved science. And he was just trying to get us to understand how fucking crazy the world is. Like, we really want you to think about this. Like, you're on a planet in space. I never thought about it before that. I was like, oh, the stars. There's the moon. I never really thought about forever. The idea of even being able to imagine where my mind is going when it's imagining infinite space.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's crazy how small we are.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah. And we probably, we were just going over this the other day. We probably the whole thing is probably fractal. There's this photograph, a crazy photograph of a human brain cell next to a map of the universe. And they look like the same thing. It's really weird.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So we're all like living in Orion's belt around a cat's neck in Men in Black?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: My joke was that there's a guy, that's his eye, right? And he's depressed and he's going to blow his brains out and that's the big bang.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, Jesus.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: We're a part of, look at this. [Gesturing] So on the left is a brain cell. On the right is the universe.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Wow.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's kind of nuts. I mean, it's kind of like dead on. It looks exactly like the same thing. It really does. They're both so beautiful. It's like the structure of it is amazing. But why wouldn't we believe, if we believe in subatomic particles, OK, we believe there are things that exist in the subatomic world that are behaving like magic, like they're moving and not moving at the same time. They appear and disappear. We don't know where they're going. There's some sort of quantum entanglement that they show where particles that are not even remotely connected respond to each other. Why wouldn't we think that we are subatomic in another being? That's true infinity. True infinity is not just the size of the universe itself being infinite, but literally your universe is a small part of another being that's in another universe. I mean, anything's possible, right? The whole thing is so weird. We know so little about the universe.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's so weird.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's so weird. We have no idea. We're literally flying through space and we're arguing over who's a Nazi. And the whole thing is just very bizarre.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's very bizarre. It is pretty amazing when you look at how small we are.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: We've started, our daughter's interested in space. And so we've started looking at books and talking about the Milky Way and what the universe is and what Earth is and where we live. And it's pretty amazing when you realize how fragile the whole thing is because we're so tiny.
--:-- Joe Rogan: We're so tiny.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: We're so tiny.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. And our galaxy is so tiny. That's what's nuts. Our galaxy is immense. Hundreds of billions of stars. Tiny little thing. Little tiny cute little galaxy. Little sweetie little galaxy. Oh, look at that little dot right there. Have you been paying attention to this object that's hurtling towards Earth? It's called A30. They're calling it A31.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I try to avoid things that are going to give me nightmares.
--:-- Joe Rogan: This one is extraterrestrial perhaps.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Is it really?
--:-- Joe Rogan: We're going to meet the aliens?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Finally, there's something weird about it. We were just going over the other day. There was an article that was stating that whatever they use to detect what is around this, what they can detect the composition, whether it's mostly water vapor, mostly iron. This thing is giving off the indications that it is an alloy that only exists on Earth through industrial alloy making processes. That it's not a natural metal. And that's what they're getting is the signal that this thing that is hurtling through space, this massive object that's moving, by the way, from the same direction in space where the Wow signal came.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I don't know what that is.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The Wow signal is a, they believe, intelligently generated signal that they picked up. I think it was in the 70s. It was in the 70s. I should know this. I'm going to lose my nerd credit.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, it's okay. It's a weird one. It's a little obscure.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So I don't know what the exact technique they were using to monitor radio waves in space, but they got a signal. So here it is. The Wow signal is a powerful 72-second narrow band radio signal detected on August 15, 1977 by the Big Ear Radio Telescope at Ohio State University, which initially suggested an extraterrestrial origin. Named for the "Wow!" written in printout by the astronomer Jerry Ehman, the signal had characteristics expected from a technological source, but follow-up efforts have failed to detect it again. The leading hypothesis is that a natural astrophysical event, such as a flare from a magnetar, briefly illuminated a cold hydrogen cloud causing it to emit a radio signal similar to a laser. Or it's a laser. And then this object is coming from that area. They sent you a signal and now this thing is coming from that area. The object is coming from that area. So if you think about how fast this thing is going, if it came from the other side of the galaxy, it's probably exactly how long it would take to get here.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So it's coming directly for Earth?
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, it's coming near Earth.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right. So we're not worried it's going to hit us.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I don't believe or worry that. Well, I'm going to find out tomorrow. Avi Loeb, an astronomer from Harvard, is coming on.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Amazing.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And he's going to enlighten us as to what this thing is all about. But it's weird. As it gets closer, it's weirder and weirder. They've never seen anything like this thing before.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But is it possible, then, that another planet out in the universe isn't made up of, has alloy properties, and it could have chipped off and it's now hurtling through space?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. You would have to ask a metallurgist that question. That's a good question. They just know the only way it exists on Earth is through this industrial process. If it is that stuff.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Why do they think it's that stuff? Do you remember that article? We looked it up like a couple of days ago.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Look, it's so fun to think it's a spaceship. Of course it is. To think the Cylons are coming.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Because they might be.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, they might be. Do you think they're coming to save us?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I think they would have already stepped in if they were going to do that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You think so?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, sure. They would have stepped in right after World War II.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I don't know. Like, "Hey, hey, hey, with the fucking nukes." Or do you think they're just up there going, "You're going to have to save yourself, kids"?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Perhaps. Maybe. Perhaps it's a process that all intelligent emerging life goes through. And then you have to kind of let it go through the process. Like you have to let your kids fall down.
--:-- Joe Rogan: In contrast to all known comets, including the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, the observed spectrum of the gas plume around 31 Atlas shows prominent nickel emission, but no evidence for iron. Other than 31 Atlas, this anomaly was only known to exist in industrially produced nickel alloys through the carbonyl chemical pathway, which refines nickel through the formation and decomposition of nickel tetracarbonyl. The authors of the new paper postulate that this carbonyl process is realized naturally near the nucleus of 31 Atlas. They argue that this in situ formation predicts that nickel should be strongly concentrated near the nucleus. So the whole thing is some very weird metal.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right. That's the point.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And it's also weird the way it's moving. What are they saying about the way it's moving? There's something about self-correcting or something. I think they thought it had some emission. I don't know. It looked like a jet, but I don't think so. It did seem like they were saying that it's changed. It's very far away. So maybe it's the Cylons coming back. They're like, "We have to go save our parents."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Have you seen they got a telescope that actually took video of it?
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's what amazes me, is that we have telescopes that can see that far. I can send it to you, Jamie. This guy has it on his Twitter page. But it's very low resolution, obviously, because it's millions of miles away. But whatever it is, it's really weird. You know, people ask me all the time if I believe in aliens. I think just because of what I do for a living and the genre that I'm in. And what I always say, you're going to be vastly disappointed that I know so little about them. But what I always say is I think it's a line from a movie where it would be an awful waste of space if it was just us.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, that is a line in a movie. I don't remember what movie.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's from the movie with Jodie Foster. Contact.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Contact. When her dad says to her that it would be an awful waste of space.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. Beautiful movie. It's a great movie. Carl Sagan wrote that book. So this is the thing. Like, what is that? What the fuck is this? Obviously low resolution, obviously moving through space, but also, what the hell is that?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, it seems to be moving pretty quickly, yeah?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. It looks like a spaceship. I mean, it also looks like a dust bunny. I was showing my friend Matt last night. We were having dinner, and I was showing him videos of praying mantises killing hummingbirds because he didn't believe it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Stop. He's like, "No way."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, they're big. Praying mantises can be quite big, right? Not in comparison to hummingbirds. It's crazy how strong they are.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Stop. They literally kill hummingbirds?
--:-- Joe Rogan: They just snatch hummingbirds right off feeders. So they sit by the hummingbird feeder motionless, and the hummingbird comes in to take a drink and just snatches them.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: What do they do with them?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Eat them.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Stop. It's crazy. Praying mantises are so ruthless.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, they eat their own young, right?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They probably do. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if they do that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But I know that they put a praying mantis in a box and then they drop a roach in. And the praying mantis just snatches it up and just starts eating the roach alive.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, but that doesn't make me feel bad.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But it does it to this bird. That makes me feel bad. But the thing is, like, why couldn't that be an intelligent life form from another planet? And then come here on 31 Atlas and land. I mean, that is a possibility.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, that's the thing, right? Is that we spend so much time, or I guess in our imagination, we've been conditioned to think that intelligent life looks like something from these movies. So we all think intelligent life is these guys with big heads or they look like us or whatever we think. But they absolutely could literally be a flea. It could be a six-foot tall mantis.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It could be.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. And then we'd be in real trouble.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Real trouble.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Hey, it's like absolutely one of those praying mantises getting a hummingbird. This is going to make me really sad, you guys.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It makes me sad too. I love birds.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yes. Have you ever wanted to wear one of those hats with the hummingbird feeders on it?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No. Do people do that? That's so crazy. They'll put the little things and they can just stay really still. They're a beautiful little bird. They're gorgeous little birds too. And the way they're able to change direction and move, it's amazing. I didn't realize, our house where we live now, they stop all the time. So they'll sit on the branches and stuff, which is really rare to see.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So this is... Praying mantises are so nasty. But look at it. It kind of knows it's there.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, that one.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh my God, it grabbed it by its beak. It reached out and just snagged them. The thing is, they're so strong for their size. I mean, that is literally like a person trying to take out a cow.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Go down. There was one... That one. With the praying mantis and the scorpion.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, praying mantis is going to kill that scorpion. That scorpion doesn't have a chance.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I don't know.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's what I'm guessing. Yeah, look, he's already on top of them.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: What?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, he just mounted them. But then look, he's avoiding the...
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, he's going to figure it out.
--:-- Joe Rogan: He's also avoiding the stinger. Like, what is happening?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: What is happening? They're probably both trying to figure out why they're in there together.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, my God. This is the shit of nightmares for me. Praying mantises are monsters.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: See if you can find videos of praying mantises eating roaches. There's like a whole mantis page on Instagram where they put a different bug in there with praying mantises. How do we know it's not AI created though, guys?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Because this has been around for years. Yeah. Yeah. Praying mantises. Oh, look, they fuck up giant lizards. They kill lizards. Like, the lizard tried to eat him at the beginning of it. Oh, my God. If you watch the video, the actual video, the lizard tried to eat him. He's like, "Not today, bitch. I'll be eating you."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, my God. That poor lizard thought he was going to eat the praying mantis, and the praying mantis is eating him.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Like, we are so lucky that they're little. We're so lucky.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: We are so lucky.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I hate... Because if they were big and smart.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, and then there's a bird. I don't want to see the bird die.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Is he killing that bird? Oh, my God. This is one I found, which I hadn't seen before. It's hanging upside down from a flower eating the bird.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, my God. It's a big bird, too.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That is wild. Oh, my God. They are just monsters. I mean, that's like Alien from the movie Alien. That's what it's like. Oh, my God. It's just little.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: My entire mind has been blown.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right? Look at that. That's what a praying mantis can do. Hang upside down while it's eating a bird. And literally hanging onto the petals of a flower. Like it's nothing. Upside down. And with no strain at all. None whatsoever. It's carrying a bird that's like five times bigger than its body. Like the size of a barn swallow. It's crazy.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh my God. The crazy thing is these stupid lizards that think they're going to eat them.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh my God. I mean, it is such a bizarre creature.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I don't want to see any of this. That poor little beauty.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, they do it all the time. They get hummingbirds. So he's just, oh. A lot of these have no action, though, too. I've seen people trying to capture stuff. But these go back as long as YouTube does. Some of those are 15-year-old videos. Those are the ones I would try. Oh, but they get them so quickly. Why do they stop moving so quickly? They're so fast. Because they're so strong, too. This one looks... That one looks fake.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, I mean, now it's created within four weeks. I start going, "All right."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, that looks like AI.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, yeah. That's AI.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But the other ones, those cell phone ones, are real. They're just unbelievably strong. That's crazy. I had no idea. And if there's a spaceship filled with those fuckers, we're screwed. And they're all smart. They're way smarter than us. We're done.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I think I saw a three-year-old boy getting ready to take on a praying mantis, too. I think he's going to lose in one of those videos. So future generations are not looking good right now.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. If you walk up to a mantis, they'll be like, "What, bitch?" Stand up. They will on their hind legs. Get ready to fight. And he will. We're just lucky they're little.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's terrifying. It's absolutely... I'm going to go home and tell my husband all about this, not my daughter.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They still have nightmares. So that's what they have to think about with this 31 Atlas. If it's filled with reptilians, then we got problems.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh my God. I cannot laugh at children. Oh no. See, I told you there was one. Oh Jesus. Oh God. He's just like, "Fuck you." He tried to eat the baby. He did. He tried to eat the baby. That's how gangster... Oh my God, it went after that baby. He was like, "Fuck you, I will eat your entire body before someone comes to rescue you."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: We don't think of them as being vicious.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, I look at them and think that they're super cool. I would have been that three-year-old kid if I'd ever seen one in our yard. I would have been like, "Hey, honey."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: A regular green mantis. There are some wild mantises out there.
--:-- Joe Rogan: There's more? Kung fu mantis. Those are beautiful. What is that one called? Kung fu mantis? What a beautiful looking insect. Just imagine a planet where that's the size of a horse. No, we're fucked if that's what's on this copper thing that's coming toward Earth. We just got super lucky that the insect world is small.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's true.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Somehow or another, it worked out that way, where the insect world is small. Because if the insect world was as big as the mammal world, it would be a wash. It would be over.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Like if they were the size of elephants?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, if they were the size of dogs. They'd kill us all.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That's true.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Look at that. One praying mantis can do... Oh, look at that one. Perfect. Looks like a flower. That's a praying mantis.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: What is that thing?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, that's the one we were just looking at. This little guy.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And that's a bigger one. Whoa. It's a big giant mantis. Holy shit. That's crazy. I don't know. We'll have to listen to the video to hear what kind it is. What is it? What is it going to do? Like, where's... Oh, its head's the white part in the front.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, that thing. That looks like a... Does the arms fold it up?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Whoa. Wait, where's his arms folded at? Oh, his arms are folded right in front. Oh my goodness. Got him. Oh my goodness. Oh my God, he just bit his head off. Whoa. Whoa. Maybe they just mated, who knows?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Jeez.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's what the females do after mating. They do. They just eat them.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, they fuck up the men.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, but that's how you stay small. Nature's like, "You're too fucking gangster. We have to keep you little." It's like chihuahuas. And honey badgers. Honey badgers don't give a shit. Imagine if a honey badger was the size of a wolf. We have a real problem. They had to make them little so that they're so gangster they just never could take over the whole forest. Like a honey badger is just like... I can imagine if a honey badger was the size of a horse and they just take over entire swaths of land. There probably were things like that. There probably were back in the day. And now we have chickens left.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Do you have to keep up on a certain amount of sci-fi because of playing Starbuck? Do you feel like an obligation to your fans to hold on to a certain amount of sci-fi information?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yes and no. I feel that I have to maintain and hold on to a respect for the genre and the knowledge that I will never have. There are people that can come up to me and tell me the entire history of Star Wars. Before I was in Star Wars, I considered myself a Star Wars fan. And then I got in Star Wars and I was like, "Oh, I don't know shit about anything."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's a big ass universe now.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It is. Especially now. It's huge. Keeping up on Mandalorian stuff. No, you can't keep up on anything. So I just always say, "I would love to know more about that. Can you please enlighten me?" Because I don't know. I really don't know. And I have found that the sci-fi community, especially, one of my favorite things is going to conventions because I love meeting people and meeting the people that are fans of the work. And we always have things in common. And I would be so bold as to say that sci-fi fans are some of the smartest people I've ever met.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I'm sure there are a lot of nerds.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They're very, very smart. And I cannot compete with that. I can tell you the lines that I can't forget. There are lines like from Battlestar Galactica. "We've got violent decompressions irradiating from the port flight pod." I thought I was going to be fired because I couldn't say it. I had to write it down. I had to tape it to my Viper. I was like, "Oh my God, they're going to find out. I shouldn't be here, this is crazy, I'm an imposter." And then I find now I can't forget it. I had a line from Mandalorian that I couldn't remember for the life of me, so I kept memorizing it with my husband and he was throwing tennis balls at my face. So I was catching tennis balls as I was memorizing it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: God, it was that hard?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It was very hard. But it was, "Pirate King Gorian Shard is captaining a cumulus class corsair of violent snub fighters."
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Oh my God. Somebody hates you in the writer's room.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's possible. You know, you never know.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That seems so mean to make someone try to say that. You say it. You say it first.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's true. There are times I have since, like Ron Moore was on my podcast and I told him that for 25 years I have not been able to forget that "violent decompressions" line, and he was like, "I'm so sorry."
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's hilarious.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I'm so sorry. That's very funny. Because he's aware that he's making actors say shit that you should never have to say in real life. And then furthermore, you have to try and decipher it. One of my jobs is to take something I don't understand and then say it with authority as if I do understand it. So I have to dissect it and learn what certain things mean. And if I don't understand it, I have to give it context in something that I do understand in order to sound like I am not an idiot, which at times is hard. So the jargon is... I learned the tennis ball technique with my husband though.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a great technique. That sounds like a good technique.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You remember why you're catching tennis balls and you really remember it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. That is a crazy sentence to try to remember.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, it was not easy. It was not easy.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You're a part of something that I think is very interesting. Sci-fi is, I think, the genre of action that has the most badass women.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: 100%. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: At least it did. It did for a long time. I think the OG is obviously Sigourney Weaver.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: 100%. That. I mean, that is like an aside. No one is like, "Oh, it's a strong female lead." That is an aside to an insane movie and an amazing performance. Like that last scene when she kills that thing.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yes. Oh. Yeah. And that's 1979.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes. Amazing. That character, when I saw that movie, I was like, "I want to be her."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Because up until then, I only wanted to be Bruce Willis. I wanted to save the Nakatomi building. I loved action movies with my dad, and when he started realizing that I had this affinity toward these movies, he started showing me movies with strong female leads. And Sigourney was the one where I saw that performance. And she was everything. She was strong. She was capable. She was smart. She was feminine. She was funny. She was everything. And it was a perfect movie.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It was a perfect movie.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It was a perfect movie.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Number two, possibly better.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, this is a scene where she blows it out. I disagree.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes. Because number two, the aliens are too easy to kill. This motherfucker is so hard to kill. So hard to kill. And then in the second one, they're just gunning him down.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. It's a different thing. It's a different thing. Look, they're both great movies. I really loved Aliens. But the thing about Alien, the first one, was that thing was an amazing movie. I mean, amazing. I mean, it's just such an amazing shot. It's a perfect movie. The framing of that is beautiful. There was never one moment in that movie where you saw what was coming next.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, because we hadn't seen anything like it. Nothing. The chestburster scene.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I remember being in the movie theater. Look at the utter exhaustion on her face. Crazy. Yeah. The chestburster scene was like, "What the fuck?" I remember being in the movie theater. I had no idea that was going to happen. There was no internet back then.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Watch them like, this movie is nuts. And that little thing was running around on the ground and his chest was burst open. So gross. Everyone's screaming. There's blood everywhere. It was wild. This is one of, probably in my opinion, one of the best movies of all time.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, I agree. A hundred percent.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And again, the fact that it was a strong female lead was just a tiny little part of the movie. It was just, she was so good. You didn't even think, "Oh, it's a strong female lead." You're like, "Sigourney Weaver is a bad motherfucker."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They didn't tell you this is a strong female lead.
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, exactly.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: They just created a phenomenal character and made her a woman.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Exactly. And she just played the part perfectly. Yeah. This scene was so nuts. It was so nuts. Because you didn't know what is happening.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I know. People have to realize, before movies were spoiled, there was no spoiler alerts back then. You didn't get to watch clips.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But even just the way it's shot, the frenetic energy of the camera matching the frenetic energy of his body. This is such a crazy scene. It's crazy. Ah! Bro. Ah! Again, 1979 this is happening. I mean, the special effects back then were nuts. To have something like... I mean, this is probably the greatest believable monster special effects in any movie up to this point. I mean, by far.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That was a little bullshit.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That one was like it was on wheels. That was a little silly. It's on a piece of string. Someone's pulling it. Yeah, it moved a little weird. But, you know, it's an alien. You were still scared of shit, though.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I'm still scared.
--:-- Joe Rogan: But then when you see the actual alien itself, you're like, "What the hell is that?" You never saw anything like that before. Not only was it completely unique in its design. It was horrific and it looked like an insect, like an insect and a reptile at the same time.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Sci-fi was a place because I was a huge fan of strong women and genre work. And I found myself gravitating toward sci-fi because that's where women existed that I identified with and I saw myself. Like, I didn't see myself as the characters I played when I moved to California. They didn't feel like me. And I really found my calling, I guess, when I started watching those women. And I loved Sarah Michelle Gellar and I loved Lucy Lawless and I loved Linda Hamilton and Carrie Fisher. And a lot of these women that were just really great characters and they were written as great characters. And Starbuck was. And if you talk to Ron Moore about it, the reason why he made Starbuck and Boomer women, he didn't think about it. He just said, "OK, we've got these characters from the original. These are the characters we're going to put in my version. Women are in the military. Women do exist in combat roles now and we are making this for the early aughts. We have to be representative of what the military looks like. We need to make a couple of these characters fit women." And he just said this one and this one. He didn't even give it any thought. And so I think part of the reason why the characters were so great was that they were just great characters. The writing was so great. There was never a time where they were like, "She's the best female pilot around."
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right. It was just like Linda Hamilton in Terminator. It's like, she's just a great character. And with a motivation that we all can identify with. So that's why she was such a great character. And she opened so many doors for me. And then people started to believe that I was tough.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And how many girls started doing chin-ups after they saw Linda Hamilton?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh my God. In Terminator. Please.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And chin-ups are hard.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I know. She's jacked. She got so fit for that movie. I did a Spartan race with my husband because on my podcast channel, during COVID and before COVID, I was creating content. Sort of like "Katie Did" sort of stuff. Like, "I'd love to do this. Let's film it and see what it's like." So we signed up for a Spartan race and then recorded the whole thing. And my husband not only ran his race, but then ran my race too, recording the whole thing. That's the hardest thing I've ever done, getting in shape for that thing. I got in shape for six months before. That was hard. And getting to a point where I actually could do chin-ups and then also pull-ups too, I was like, "Wow, I'm strong." I felt so strong at one point. So I get to the actual race and I've been training with such heavy shit that I got to the medicine ball where you have to pick it up, carry it, and throw it, and then pick it up and carry it and throw it. And it was so light for me. And I was prepared for it to be so heavy. I got to it and I picked it up and then I threw it and it kept going and I had to slow down because I had to go get the ball and bring it back to where it was supposed to be. I'd gotten almost too strong.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, that's hilarious.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It was really awesome. It was so fun. It's nice to know that you can get strong, though. That feeling is a nice feeling. I wish everybody felt that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. Just get physically better. You'll feel better.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But I had fun doing it. And I also set myself a goal. I think that's really important, too. For some people, it's daunting, setting a goal. And the goal doesn't need to be winning. The goal just needs to be finishing.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Why do you think it is that sci-fi in particular embraced these gangster women characters?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: My opinion on this, yeah, is that I feel like because science fiction doesn't exist, you're existing in these make-believe worlds, right? That strong women were not intimidating in sci-fi because we could be dismissed as not real, but that wouldn't happen in real life.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Interesting.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So men could then watch these roles and not be threatened. That's my opinion.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I bet you're right. I bet that's the only thing that makes sense. Now that I'm thinking about it. Yeah, I think so. Because there's no female John Wick.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: No, no. Well, there is that one. Ballerina?
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, that one, the Emily one. The one that Kevin James was in. It's a crazy movie about this young girl who just kills all these bad guys.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I have no idea.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's kind of like tongue in cheek. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's hyper violent. It's crazy. That's what it's called, right? Emily?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I think there's two of them.
--:-- Joe Rogan: There was one where they killed her dad and they killed her family and so she killed everybody. And then the second one she came back and killed more people. It's like a young, cute girl who just knows how to kill everybody. I mean, look, it's kind of fun. It's a funny movie.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: When I went through... What is it, Jamie? Not Megan? Whatever Kevin James was in. It was about a young girl who kills everybody.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Kevin James?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Kevin James was a bad guy. He played a white supremacist. That movie's called Becky.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Becky. That's it. Becky, yeah. There was a second one, though, right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, there's a movie called Emily, and there's a... No, what was the... Kevin James. No, it is Becky. You're right. But there was a movie before Becky, I believe. 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's pretty good.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, it's fun.
--:-- Joe Rogan: The Wrath of Becky also came out. That's right. I just saw Ballerina. That's it. I actually thought that was really good. I think that's the first one, right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: No, this is the second one. That's the second one. This is the first one. I thought there was a prelude to... Either way.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Fun-ass movie. Oh, Joel McHale's in it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, he's great. Fun. It's a fun-ass movie. But it's like, that's the female John Wick. Trying to create these strong female characters now. And I think that one of the biggest problems with a lot of them is that they're not focusing on the character to begin with, like we talked about. Write a strong character and then just make her a woman. Don't write a strong character that you have to have a woman.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right. I think that's part of it because they're all trying to create... There are so many of them now, right? And I love to see them and I love to give them chances, but a lot of times the... I want to also see somebody that's believable in the role as well, right? Like, one of the funnest things that I love to do is transform my body depending on what character I'm playing. Within reason. There's only so much I can do or that I want to do. But for my show *Another Life*, my character wakes up from cryo. I wanted her to look dehydrated and sinewy and really, really, really lean. Like almost unhealthy lean. And I got myself down to such a low body fat. It was crazy.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What did you eat to get down like that?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: 14.50 a day. 15.50 a day, something around that time when I was cutting. But I packed on muscle and then cut really hard for like three weeks before. And I was eating a lot of protein. And I got myself so low that my menstruation stopped. And I was like, oh, this is too low. This is really low.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That happens with a lot of marathon runners.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, it was quite low. But I got to where I wanted to be. I looked the way I wanted to look. And then I naturally put on a healthy amount of weight as the series went on, which is what I wanted to do anyway. So I want to see not someone do something detrimental to their health necessarily, but I do want to see the muscle. I want to see the capability in a character that's kicking ass.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. You want it to be believable.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Right. Yeah. Like when they all got in insane shape for that movie *300*.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, my God. It's like that would be the best job in the world for me. If they're like, we're going to give you tons of time and tons of money to just get in the best shape of your life. Here's some trainers. We got like six months. Let's do it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: There was a lot of people that thought that they used AI for that.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: For *300*?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: While they used...
--:-- Joe Rogan: *300* had a lot of AI because it was... I don't know. Yeah.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, I don't know.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Excuse me. I should say not AI. I should say CGI. It had CGI for sure.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes, that's what I should say. Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Because obviously the giant Persian king was not really that big. There was a lot of fantasy elements of that.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right. But I think they really did get in insane shape. And a lot of people dismissed that and said that's CGI. But there's videos of those guys working out, getting ready.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah, look at these guys just going crazy, getting ready to film this movie. I mean, they trained like animals.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Mm-hmm.
--:-- Joe Rogan: So you can see them all working out. So they really did just develop incredible bodies, which the nutty thing is anybody can do. You just have to do it. Do what they did. You'll get a lot better. It's a lot of hard work, though. It's not that easy.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes, on paper it's easy, but being a mom of two kids, though...
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, yeah.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Like it's and having a job. I in the last two years, I'm hard pressed to find time to work out. And I wake up at five o'clock in the morning. So I'm awake before my kids. And I choose during that time to meditate, write my journal, breathe, take time to myself. And then they wake up. I haven't quite figured out how to fit in my workouts.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, that's an obligation. That's very different.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Right.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You're a mother, and you're doing the absolute right thing. You're dedicating all your time to being a mom when you're there. That's just how it is. But for the amount of hours that are in a day, it would be nice if you could just get a little time to yourself. As they get older, you'll have more time to yourself. And then you'll be able to get back on track. But for people that have the time and don't do it, that's the wasted potential of your resources. You don't have to do a lot. Just do some body squats and do some push-ups. And you don't need a lot of equipment either. I think that's the thing. I think that we've made physical fitness in some way because it's an industry. I think we've made it daunting for a lot of people. If you just focus on the tried and true, you can do that stuff in your house without weights or with things that are heavy in your house. You can actually make progress.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Sure.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And if you don't know anybody to teach you how to do stuff, all you have to do is go on YouTube. Just go on YouTube and look up beginner body weight workout. I'm sure there's a bunch of them out there.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And you can do stuff with no physical fitness equipment. Just do pushups and sit ups and bodyweight squats. And you can get a great workout in that way. It's true. And nobody has to watch you. You don't have to feel self-conscious, just you and your phone.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You can go to my YouTube channel because during COVID, I was doing my workouts and I said to my husband, I was like, might as well record this and put it out there. So yeah. And all of them are fun and interesting and easy and people still come up to me and they're like, I lost... a man came up to me at a convention the other day, he said he lost over 80 pounds doing the workouts that I put up and signed up for a Spartan race. And I was like, that's awesome. I love that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's so cool. That's very cool. See, that's a great thing. They're your fans. They see you work and they're like, oh my god, I'm gonna work out with her. And everybody works out together. Great.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: See, that's the great use of the internet. Yes, the internet has a lot of great uses. You can learn anything on the internet.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: You can learn anything. You can find out stuff, how to make things and fix things and get information about something you never thought you were interested in. Like, look, you never thought that praying mantises were so scary. And now I know, but you know what I'm doing?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I'm already in my head trying to write a children's book about praying mantis.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, you are?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I am. It's like, that's my ADHD. Like, I'm already...
--:-- Joe Rogan: Once you started once you saw that?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Once I did. Oh, that's hilarious. So, yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, I want a copy of that book. It'd probably be cool.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's going to be a pop-up book. They're scary. So every time you move it, the praying mantis is like...
--:-- Joe Rogan: We just, for some reason, miss them. And when we're describing the most ruthless animals on Earth, we miss the praying mantis because they might be the gangster of gangsters.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I think they might be.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Do they ever attack together? Do they work in coordination?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That's a good question.
--:-- Joe Rogan: If they did, they'd be unstoppable. Because that would be... That's *Starship Troopers*.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That would be like if a bunch of women cycled their periods. We could take over the world.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Especially with those headsets. Get those Google headsets on, we could really... because then we could just talk to each other. Shit would be on fire. Like it would be on fire. We'd take over some crazy shit, for sure.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That would be awesome.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That would be awesome.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, maybe that's a good use of technology. I know you're anti-AI. Maybe for that.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I am anti-AI because I am in self-preservation mode here.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I get it. I get it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I am desperate to be like, I am, I matter, damn it. Not just to my family, right?
--:-- Joe Rogan: I know. I think we're all gonna be like that soon.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I don't know. I don't think so.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I think it will always find a place. You just have to be malleable and you have to figure out where to adjust.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yes.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Yeah. There's going to be some pivoting for sure.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: A lot of pivoting.
--:-- Joe Rogan: How often do you do your podcast?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So my podcast is once a week, every Tuesday.
--:-- Joe Rogan: What's it called?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: It's called *The Sackhoff Show*. It was called *Blah, Blah, Blah*, but people couldn't find it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, that's funny.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: So we just changed it to *The Sackhoff Show*, and we're actually, like I said, doing in the new year, a *Battlestar Galactica* rewatch as well, because I've never seen it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's kind of crazy that you've never seen it. *The Sackhoff Show* sounds funny, too. It's like, it's your last name, but it's also like a fun name for a show.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, we'll see. It's got a good rhyme to it. It is fun. I have a lot of fun. I'm just trying to be, like, a tenth as good at it as you are, Joe.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, sweet.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, you're very good at this. There's a reason why you're the best at it. You've been doing it a long time. And you worked your ass off.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, I'll just tell you what I did. I just talked to people that I'm interested in. That's it. That's all you have to do.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I do that.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's really hard to find the right audience in an oversaturated market.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But it's happening. It is oversaturated. It is. But it doesn't mean it's inaccessible. If you're remarkable, you could pop through. And sometimes maybe it just takes coming on here and then people will hear about it and go watch it. And they'll be like, who's Katee Sackhoff? She's that chick from *Battlestar Galactica*? But you seem like you'd be an awesome podcaster.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I have fun. I love talking to people. And it literally helped me figure out that I was ADHD because I couldn't not talk on top of people. I was like, I listened. I listened. I did. My first interview was Bryce Dallas Howard. God love her. And I listened to it back in the car with my husband. And I was like, oh, my God. I don't stop talking.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Do you wear headsets?
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I do.
--:-- Joe Rogan: You do? That helps a lot because you hear the over-talking, which we all tend to do sometimes accidentally because sometimes you don't know when to come in.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: But it's a learned skill. It's a learned skill like everything else.
--:-- Joe Rogan: It's like everything else. And you have to learn different people. You learn the dance of different people. Some people have just a different thing. And always in my mind, my number one goal is to try to get the most out of them. Like get them to have the most fun, the most yeah, get the questions that stir their interest the most. Like something I want to know who you are for real, for real. Yeah. Like I want to help you be the best version of you that you can when you're doing it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: That's sort of my thing as well. Like I wanted to, one of the things that came out of COVID for me was that, and I don't know about you, but I had weekly conversations with girlfriends I hadn't talked to in years. And we would like every Tuesday at four o'clock, we'd have a drink and connect again. And the conversations were wonderful because we had the time to have them again. And then I started going back to conventions and in the green room, I was having these wonderful conversations with people and I was like, God, I wish I could record these because they're really authentic. And you're getting to see people in a very different light. And they're really opening up because it's not like a gotcha podcast. Like, if you want to cut something out, you can cut something out. I'm not here to ruin your career. And the conversations are really interesting. And people are talking about things that they've never spoken about. And it's just really fun. So I've really enjoyed it.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Well, don't you think you're learning in the process as well? Isn't that like one of the more fun parts of it? The more you get to talk to interesting people, the more you learn, the more you understand how other people think and how they feel about stuff.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah.
--:-- Joe Rogan: And it inspires the shit out of me.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Yeah, me too. Like if I have a month where I'm not hustling and someone comes on the podcast and they're like, I got six things in production. I'm doing this. I wrote an album. I've got a book coming out. Man, I got six kids. I'm like, fuck. I work harder.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Oh, of course there is. Of course there is. And I think that I've found the right balance. I have the right partner that's super supportive and we're a real good team. And yeah, it's just, I've got, I think I've got the right balance, but there's always going to be hustle in me.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Of course. You seem like you're well balanced though.
--:-- Joe Rogan: That's a good thing to say.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I try. You should ask my husband. He'd be like, that bitch is crazy.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I'm just going to go on my instincts. I don't want to hear any contrary data. Well, thank you very much for being here. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Oh, thank you for having me. And I was a huge fan of you on the show.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Thank you. It was cool to meet you.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Well, more things to come, I promise. I've got some really cool jobs in the can that are going to be me kicking ass again.
--:-- Joe Rogan: Cool. Well, let's do it again. Let's do it again sometime. I'd love to have you in here again.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: I would love that. You'll have to come on my podcast.
--:-- Joe Rogan: I will do it. I'll do it. Bye, everybody.
--:-- Katee Sackhoff: Bye.
