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Sal Vulcano (2025) - Comedy, Fitness and Anecdotes · The Joe Rogan Recap

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Hey there.
• 0:02
  Today we're diving deep into, well, a really sprawling
• 0:06
  conversation. That's putting it mildly.
• 0:09
  Yeah, it went everywhere. Personal fitness, what it's like
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  touring as a comic. Some pretty stark stuff about
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  corruption and sports. Judging and then, you know, the
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  really deep end stuff. CIA art conspiracies
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  manifestation, ghostly encounters.
• 0:25
  Exactly, it's the latest sit down Joe had with Sal Volcano.
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  Sal's back promoting his tour. Which sounds massive, by the
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  way. Huge.
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  And he kicked things off, noting like a whole year had passed
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  since he was last on and he's got another kid now.
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  That really set the stage. It did.
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  That seemed to be the catalyst for a lot of what they discussed
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  early on, this whole fatherhood angle.
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  Right. That's the perfect spot to jump
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  in. Let's call it the mortality
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  motivation. Sal's 48, turning 49 in
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  November, OK. And he just flat out said having
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  kids made him realize, quote, I have to be here as long as
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  possible. That hits different, doesn't it?
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  That realization. Totally.
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  And for him, it wasn't just a thought.
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  It it actually triggered this big health overhaul.
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  He got a trainer, did all the blood work scans, yes.
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  Taking it seriously, it's like his whole personal risk
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  assessment, just like flipped overnight.
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  Which is kind of the polar opposite of Joe Rogan's
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  approach, right? Which is just glorious,
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  committed gluttony. Yeah, Joe fully admitted.
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  He's like a £300 man. You know the huge steak, loads
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  of sides, appetizers. So he looks pregnant leaving
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  dinner. I believe it.
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  Me too, but he balances it or claims to with just tons of
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  exercise. Jiu jitsu is the main thing.
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  Right. And intermittent fasting, Yes,
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  Well, it's a system. It is.
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  He also threw in that detail about eating whole eggs from his
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  own chickens. He was big on the yolks being
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  the healthy part. Good to know.
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  But for Sal, the fitness journey is just starting.
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  He said he's only like 4 weeks in three times a week at the
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  gym. Yeah, slow start and Joe's
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  advice there was really solid. For anyone listening who's
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  thinking about starting, what is it again?
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  Basically, start with body weight stuff.
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  Don't push yourself to fail failure right away.
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  Build the habit slowly. Otherwise you just flame out.
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  Makes sense, Don't want to get injured week 1.
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  What? And that injury part turned out
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  to be more relevant than Sally even knew.
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  His blood work came back with something pretty specific.
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  Oh yeah. What a high susceptibility to
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  soft tissue injury like ligament stuff.
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  Wait, seriously? His blood test basically said
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  dude, take it easy. Kind of.
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  It's fascinating because the sources actually connect this to
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  research on the elastin gene. Elastin like elastic.
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  Exactly. It's the protein that lets
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  tissues like ligaments snap back after stretching.
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  Apparently there's a known genetic marker, a variant in
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  that gene that can mean weaker ligaments.
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  So when Sal's test flagged this, it might genuinely be like a
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  biological warning sign for him. It's a strong possibility, yeah.
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  Makes that advice about starting slow even more critical for him
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  specifically. Avoid those sprains and strains.
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  OK, so Speaking of enduring pain, let's shift from fitness
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  pain to the professional grind. Sal's tour schedule is nuts.
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  Seriously intense. He's booked solid from now, 2024
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  through 2026. Yep.
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  And he's wrapping season 12 of his show.
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  Yeah, and he has a new baby. Wow.
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  How does anyone even do that? He said the key, the absolute
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  necessity, is touring with friends, buddies.
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  If you go solo, he said, the depression sets in super fast.
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  But with friends, it's like, quote a vacation you get to work
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  at. Makes the isolation manageable.
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  That makes total sense. The road can be brutal mentally.
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  Yeah, that endurance theme, it kind of connects to maybe the
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  funniest story he told the 04 MVP.
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  Oh man, that story was gold. His JV grammar school basketball
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  team, right? Yeah, they were legendarily bad.
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  Lost their first game 44 to nothing, 44 zip.
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  And the other team's parents chanting 44 zips it and running
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  onto the court. Insane behavior just rubbing it
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  in. Totally.
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  Over the top and the punchline is even though the team went
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  Owen for that season, Sal was the MVP.
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  Having scored Ray, what was it, 16 points?
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  16 points total across 14 games. He still has the trophy.
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  A testament to just showing up, surviving, showing up, putting
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  in the work. Yeah, even if the results are
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  objectively terrible. Which led Joe into talking about
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  why he prefers martial arts. Right, the individual sports
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  thing. He values that direct link.
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  You put in the work, you get the result.
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  Win or lose, it's on you. No team mates to blame, no bad
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  calls. Or at least that's the ideal.
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  But that's the catch, isn't it? The bad calls, Subjective human
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  judgement. That's where bias just tanks
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  everything. Exactly.
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  Joe went deep on how corrupt subjective judging can be,
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  especially in something like the UFC.
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  A bad decision isn't just annoying, it can ruin a career.
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  Also. He gave the example of a newer
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  fighter on a contract. If they lose because of bad
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  judging, they often lose their win bonus.
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  OK. And that bonus can be like
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  $15,000. 15 grand wow that's that's a make or break money for
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  someone starting out. Rent coaches everything.
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  Precisely. That's the real world cost of a
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  judge having a bad night, or worse, being biased.
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  It's not just UFC either, right? You brought up that famous
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  boxing example. Oh yeah, the Roy Jones junior
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  fight 1988 Olympics in Korea Jones clearly dominated, but the
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  judges gave the win to the Korean fighter in.
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  Korea. Shocker, right?
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  The bias was so blatant, apparently years later the
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  Korean fighter actually gave Jones the gold medal, basically
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  admitting he didn't really win. That's crazy.
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  Shows how deep that stuff runs and how long it lasts.
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  Yeah, the damage is permanent when the system itself feels
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  rigged. OK, let's shift gears from like
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  external unfairness to internal weirdness.
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  Reality itself. Sal had this amazing story about
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  manifestation. The sailing story, yeah, that
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  was. Cool.
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  So he's suddenly gets this intense desire out of nowhere to
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  learn how to sail. 4 days later. Four days he's at his daughter's
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  music class, meets another dad, and guess what?
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  The guy teaches sailing. Wild coincidence?
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  Maybe not entirely coincidence. They talked about that theory,
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  right? Consciousness interacting with
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  reality. Yeah, the things might not be
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  purely random, but Joe also added that important warning,
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  right? Don't go full secret with it.
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  You can't just sit on the couch and wish for 1,000,000 bucks.
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  You still got to, you know, engage with the world, do the
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  work. Definitely.
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  But Speaking of weird interactions, Sal's other story
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  was genuinely terrifying. The hand thing.
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  Oh man, yeah, that was unsettling.
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  He's totally awake in bed. Locked into his C pap setup
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  right His cocoon, he called it. Right the C pap.
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  For anyone who doesn't know, it's continuous positive airway
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  pressure mask machine. Helps breathing but can feel
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  really confining. Exactly.
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  So he's in this thing, door locked, hand dangling out from
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  the covers, and he feels this tightening pressure on it like
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  someone's squeezing. His first thought is intruder,
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  but then like why squeeze his hand?
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  Makes no sense. Yeah, weird MO for a burglar.
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  The pressure gets painful and just as he's about to freak out
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  and fight, it releases. Gone.
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  Whoa. And Joe suggested what?
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  Aliens. Sleep paralysis.
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  Pretty much, but Sal was insistent he was wide awake.
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  100% whatever it was. Localized, physical, and
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  terrifying. That feeling of an unseen
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  presence, it kind of leads into the history of the Comedy Store
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  they talked about. That place is supposedly loaded
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  with dark energy. Oh yeah, the source material
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  backs that up heavily. It used to be Secreto's
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  nightclub, right? Mob ties?
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  Bugsy Seagull. Deep mob ties.
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  The stories are grim, like henchman supposedly used the
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  basement for torturing killings and illegal abortions happened
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  there too. Apparently at least one woman
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  died. Jeez.
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  No wonder people report weird stuff.
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  That famous story about the comedian Carl Lowe.
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  Yeah, being dragged off the stage while asleep by his ankle,
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  pulled across the floor by nothing, then a door slam.
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  Gives you chills. It's like the building itself
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  has memories, violent ones. Feels like localized reality
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  warping almost the past bleeding through.
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  But OK, let's jump from local darkness to global manipulation.
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  The CIA art weapon theory. OK, this is where my brain
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  started to melt a little bit. This theory is out there.
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  It really is. The idea is the CIA during the
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  Cold War secretly bankrolled and pushed modern abstract art like
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  Jackson Pollock de Kooning, that kind of stuff.
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  Why on earth would they do that? Geopolitics.
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  The thinking was OK. Soviet artists are forced to
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  make that stiff state approved classical art.
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  Right Socialist realism. Exactly.
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  So the CIA sees Abstract Expressionism, which,
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  ironically, most Americans at the time, including President
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  Truman, apparently hated. They see it as proof of American
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  intellectual freedom. Like, look how free our artists
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  are. They could just splash paint
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  around. You guys can't do that.
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  So they weaponized confusing art as like a cultural counter move.
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  Essentially, yeah. Promoting it, funding
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  exhibitions overseas, turning it into a valuable commodity.
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  It was basically a psychological operation.
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  Using paintings to say our system is freer and therefore
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  better. Wow.
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  That's that's the next level. Manipulation of true makes you
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  question what else is being subtly curated for us.
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  Absolutely. Which brings us maybe the last
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  segment, danger zones, things we don't fully grasp
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  technologically or environmentally.
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  Sal's scuba story was rough, yeah.
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  Cayman Islands, He mentioned claustrophobia being a big
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  thing. Those heavy weights they strap
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  on you to? Get you down.
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  He talked about fighting that drowning sensation and his
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  instructor was swimming like 20 feet ahead.
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  That sounds not good. Wildly unsafe.
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  Yeah. Yeah, you need your instructor
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  close. Plus he touched on the Benz
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  risk. Nitrogen bubbles in your blood
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  if you come up too fast. Diving's no joke.
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  No kidding. And then there was the the home
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  defense story. Machete.
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  Yes. Sal Amazon primed A machete
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  while his wife was away for protection.
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  Seems reasonable enough, maybe a little extreme but OK.
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  But then he had this weird snag. Right.
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  It wasn't about whether he could use it in self-defense, it was
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  about the aftermath. Exactly.
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  He realized if he actually used it on someone in the house, he'd
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  have to sell the place, because who wants to buy a house where
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  someone got chopped up, as he put it?
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  Which led to that truly surprising fact about disclosure
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  laws for deaths in homes. I had no idea it's only what 3
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  states that require telling a buyer if someone died there?
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  Yeah, Alaska, California, South Dakota.
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  And even then, it's often only for a short time, like three
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  years in California, maybe only 12 months in South Dakota.
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  So in most places you could buy a house with a super violent
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  history and have absolutely no clue.
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  None whatsoever. It really underlines how much
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  can be hidden even in something as solid as a house.
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  Wow. OK, shifting slightly, Joe
• 10:43
  brought up a cool technical fact about archery.
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  Oh yeah, the Aerospeed modern compound bows.
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  Those arrows are moving. Up to 232 mph, or 340 feet per
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  second, that's flying. Seriously fast, which requires
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  insane precision and practice to be accurate even at, say, 45
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  yards. That idea of technical
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  superiority, and it ties right into the last big topic, drones.
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  Right. Joe mentioned seeing some weird
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  drone activity near his place recently, stuff that made him
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  buy survival gear. And he thinks China is just
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  light years ahead in drone tech. That's his take, yeah.
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  Yeah, he pointed to those incredible synchronized drone
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  shows they do over there. Oh yeah, I've seen those.
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  Like the giant dragon made of lights.
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  Exactly. He sees that as just undeniable
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  proof of their engineering skill, their sophistication with
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  swarm tech. And he contrasts that with what
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  U.S. military maybe testing stuff near him.
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  That was his suspicion that maybe our own forces are running
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  covert drone OPS to like, pressure test the system, see
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  how people react to things that look like UFOs.
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  So whether it's China's drones or ours, the point is there's
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  advanced tech flying around and we, the public are mostly in the
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  dark. Pretty much just reinforces that
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  theme of curated reality, what we're allowed to see versus
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  what's actually happening. OK, so wrapping this all up,
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  where does this leave you, the listener?
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  We went through this huge range of conflicts.
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  Yeah, the internal stuff like fighting aging in your own body,
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  the external stuff like rig judging.
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  The weird boundary stuff like manifestation or ghosts, and
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  then the potential global deception like that CIA art
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  theory. It feels like the big through
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  line is just how much we don't know, or how much is maybe
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  deliberately hidden. I think that's the core take
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  away. We seem to exist in this this
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  highly managed environment. So if reality is just this
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  strange dance between our consciousness and the physical
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  world, and you have powerful institutions, whether it's
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  judging panels or maybe even intelligence agencies actively
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  manipulating what we perceive, you know, rigging results,
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  controlling narratives about history, maybe hiding drone
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  tech. How much of the information you
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  rely on every single day is actually just an elaborate
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  psychological operation, something designed purely to
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  control your focus? You really have to ask yourself,
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  which reality are you choosing to live in?
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  The one you try to manifest yourself or the one they curate
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  for you?