The Joe Rogan,

Rogan Experience

Train by day Joe Rogan Podcast

all day.

So what possessed you to write a book about getting hammered?

That's a really good question.

Like my colleagues are flabbergasted when they see the topic.

So my day job's early Chinese philosophy and I do comparative religion and then I'm writing this book on

alcohol.

It actually grows organically out of work I've done before. So my

specialty is early Chinese philosophy, my early work focused on this idea in early China

of what I translated as effortless action. The word is U Wei. It

literally means no doing or not trying, but it's a spontaneous, it's kind of like

being in the zone in sports. So it's a spontaneous it's kind of like being in the zone in sport so it's a state

where you lose a sense of yourself as an agent you feel like everything's just

happening you're not making any effort and yet everything works perfectly. You solve problems, people like you,

everything works out and the early Chinese thinkers want to get you into this state of Wueh.

But they have this problem that I call the paradox of Uway, which is how do you try not to try? You want to be spontaneous, you're not being

spontaneous, how do you get from A to B?

And all of, what I argue in my dissertation is that all of early Chinese philosophy is this series of attempts to solve the paradox.

And no one does it because it's a genuine paradox.

And so I revisit my first general audience book

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