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Luke Grimes (2026) - Escaping the Velvet Prison of Hollywood · The Joe Rogan Recap

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap, and before we get going, please
• 0:03
  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
• 0:06
  our latest eisodes in your feed. OK, so now that we've got that
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  out of the way, right, I want you to imagine for a second that
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  you've like, achieved the absolute pinnacle of what modern
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  society tells us we should want. Yeah, the dream.
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  Exactly. The dream you have, the fame,
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  the money, ultimate comfort. You know, the whole Hollywood
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  success story. You are sitting right in the
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  center of the cultural machine and yet you wake up one day,
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  look around at this perfectly frictionless life, and you're
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  overriding biological instinct is to just run completely in the
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  opposite direction. It is a truly fascinating
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  paradox, honestly. I mean, we spent our entire
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  lives trying to eliminate physical struggle, right?
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  Just trying to get rid of discomfort, only to find out
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  that when we finally succeed, something essential to our
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  humanity actually begins to to atrophy.
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  Exactly. And you know, that is the
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  mission of today's Deep Dive. We are exploring this really
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  wild intersection of extreme creativity, intense physical
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  struggle, and the search for authentic living.
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  Yeah, it's it's a huge topic. It is, and we're drawing all of
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  this from this incredibly rich conversation between Joe Rogan
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  and actor and musician Luke Grimes.
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  We are going to look at why highly successful people are
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  just fleeing the comforts of Hollywood for the harsh,
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  freezing realities of Montana. Which is quite the pivot.
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  Totally, and we'll explore the evolutionary biology behind why
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  standing on a stage with a microphone is somehow like, more
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  terrifying to your DNA than stepping into an actual cage
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  fight. Yeah, that part is.
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  Wild and we'll also examine how ancient geological mysteries and
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  modern artificial intelligence are fundamentally changing our
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  relationship with reality. It really is a profound look at
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  what happens when the human animal is completely removed
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  from the wild, you know, and the extreme, sometimes painful
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  lengths we have to go to in order to get our edge back.
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  Yeah, by the end of this deep dive, you might just want to
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  trade your smartphone for a pair of hiking boots or a Jiu
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  Jitsuki. OK, let's unpack this, starting
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  with this concept of the Velvet Prison.
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  The Velvet prison, Yeah. Right, so this is the
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  environment of places like Hollywood or Las Vegas.
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  From the outside, it looks like absolute paradise.
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  Sure, it looks great. But comedians and actors, you
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  know, once they get on television and secure that
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  massive paycheck, they often start to temper their eggs.
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  They conform to this intense group think.
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  Yeah, they really do. So my question is why?
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  Why does the human brain default to this kind of absolute
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  conformity the moment comfort and money are finally achieved?
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  Like it's like a zoo enclosure where the animals are perfectly
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  fed but they just forget how to hunt.
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  That's a great analogy. To understand the why here, we
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  have to look at the psychological foundation of why
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  many people seek that massive spotlight in the 1st place.
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  OK, Rogan and Grimes pointed out something really interesting.
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  A large percentage of actors originally get into the craft
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  because, well, they didn't receive enough attention as
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  children. Wow.
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  So it's it's a deficit they're trying to fix.
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  Exactly. They are fundamentally trying to
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  fill a psychological void. So they leave their families,
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  they give up their hometowns, and they sacrifice every bit of
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  normalcy to chase this one singular, almost impossible
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  dream. Right.
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  And once they finally get it, I imagine they are just utterly
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  terrified to lose it. Terrified.
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  I mean, think about your own life or career for a second.
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  You know, get the big promotion, the salary bump, the corner
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  office. Suddenly you have a lot to lose.
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  Precisely that dream, once achieved, becomes their only
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  leverage in life. When you've sacrificed
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  everything for one goal, you become incredibly moldable by
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  the people holding the checks. You know, the producers, the
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  casting directors, network executives.
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  Because they can just take it all away.
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  Right. You are terrified to rock the
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  boat, so you start consciously self policing your thoughts,
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  your jokes, your politics. You adopt whatever the dominant
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  group think of the industry is so you don't lose your spot.
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  You become locked in a prison, but because it's lined with
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  velvet and pays really well, you convince yourself you're free.
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  That is dark, but it makes so much sense and the contrast
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  drawn to this in the conversation is just incredibly
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  sharp. You have people like Luke Grimes
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  basically escaping this environment by moving to Montana
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  during the pandemic, like living in an Airstream trailer.
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  Yeah, quite a downgrade in square footage.
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  Seriously just finding quiet peace looking at a mountain
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  range and then compare that to how Las Vegas is described.
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  Rogan called it the death *. The Death Star, Yeah.
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  It's just this massive neon vacuum in the desert that's
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  engineered by psychologists and architects to seamlessly suck
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  money and energy out of people. But even that escaped to the
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  wild, you know, moving to Montana, it comes with its own
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  modern social friction. Right, the locals.
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  Exactly, Grimes noted the intense anti outsider sentiment
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  in places like Montana. Right now, locals are writing
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  things like go back in the dust on the dirt of California
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  license plates. That is so aggressive.
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  It is, but it highlights this primal territorial instinct.
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  People want to escape to the authentic wild, but the locals
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  already living there want to fiercely protect their dirt from
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  the perceived infection of that exact Hollywood or big city
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  mindset. Which brings up a massive
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  question. If effort money in this velvet
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  prison kill your creative edge, how do the truly great creators
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  force themselves to be brilliant?
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  Well, it turns out they do it by engineering intense, almost
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  unbearable pressure. Like Taylor Sheridan, right?
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  Yeah, creator of Yellowstone. Yes, perfect example.
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  His ambition is described as literally impossible.
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  The guy is writing 10 television shows single handedly while
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  directing at an elite level. 10 shows.
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  That's absurd. It is and what drives that
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  immense output. It wasn't a desire for more
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  velvet, you know? It was the memory of poverty.
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  Oh, wow. Yeah.
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  It was the sudden realization years ago of having a kid on the
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  way and having absolutely nothing in the bank.
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  That fear forced him to put his foot on the gas, and he simply
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  never let up. Wow, so he just he manufactured
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  a Crucible for himself. Exactly.
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  It's the intentional creation of a Crucible.
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  Crimes mirrors this in his own way too, by starting a country
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  music career at 40 years old. Right, an age when most people
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  are just settling into their routines.
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  Exactly, and he described his first live show in Billings, Mt
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  in front of like 1200 people. He literally blacked out from
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  the nerves. Blacked out.
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  Yeah, his hands and knees were violently shaking, but he
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  voluntarily threw himself into that fire anyway, just to find
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  out what he was capable of. And he also used what he called
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  the pressure cooker method for his album, right?
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  Instead of writing songs for months, endlessly tweaking
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  perfect little demos, he wrote 8 out of the 10 songs either the
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  night before or the actual day of recording.
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  Which is incredibly stressful. Super stressful.
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  Here's what gets really interesting though.
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  We often hear this compared to forging a sword, which is a big
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  cliche a. Little bit, yeah.
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  I prefer to think of the human brain like a massive corporate
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  bureaucracy. OK, I like that.
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  Normally a creative idea has to go through 20 departments of
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  self doubt, logic and revision before you let it out.
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  But the pressure cooker method is like pulling the fire alarm
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  in that building, right? Suddenly the red tape just
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  vanishes. You don't have time to second
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  guess users could get out of the building you just create.
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  But doesn't intense pressure sometimes just paralyze people
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  instead of producing diamonds? Well, what's fascinating here is
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  that there's actual hard neurology backing up why it
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  works for some. Really.
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  Yeah. What you're describing is the
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  induction of a flow state, specifically a phenomenon called
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  transient hypofrontality. Transient hypofrontality.
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  Right when you impose extreme artificial time constraints,
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  like having a studio full of expensive musicians waiting on
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  the clock for you to write a song, right now your brain
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  actually down regulates the prefrontal cortex.
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  Meaning what exactly? That's the part of the brain
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  responsible for your inner critic, your sense of time,
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  yourself doubt. It literally shuts down because
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  your brain detects an immediate survival demand.
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  Wow, so you literally can't overthink it?
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  Exactly. It forces pure, unfiltered
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  creation because the bureaucracy, as you called it,
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  has been temporarily disabled. That ties directly into Steven
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  Pressfield's concept in his book The War of Art.
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  They brought that up on the show.
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  Yes, a great book. It's this idea that creativity
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  isn't actually yours. Like you don't own it.
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  Your only job is to show up every single day, put your ego
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  aside and respect the muse. And if you show up to the
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  pressure cooker, the ideas just sort of arrive from the ether.
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  And we have to contrast that discipline sober approach with
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  the romanticized trope of the tortured artist.
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  Right, the classic trope. We constantly hear about figures
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  like Hunter S Thompson or Stephen King, who famously used
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  intense substance abuse to connect with that muse.
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  Right Thompson and his crazy daily routine of cocaine and
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  Chivas Regal. Yeah, and King has admitted he
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  barely even remembers writing the novel Cujo because he was on
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  such a massive Bender. That is terrifying.
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  It is, but the ultimate conclusion drawn from those
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  examples is that the drugs are a biological shortcut.
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  They artificially quiet that prefrontal cortex we were just
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  talking about. But at a cost.
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  A. Huge cost in the process.
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  They chronically down regulate your dopamine receptors.
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  The drugs eventually cook the brain and destroy the very
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  connection to the art they were meant to enhance.
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  So discipline and voluntary sober pressure are really the
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  only sustainable paths. Absolutely.
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  Which takes us perfectly from the mental Crucible of the
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  studio right into the evolutionary pressure of the
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  sage. Rogan mentioned something I find
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  absolutely wild. What's that?
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  He noted that he actually felt more nervous before doing stand
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  up comedy than he did before stepping into an actual martial
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  arts fight. It sounds crazy, right?
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  It does. How does that make any logical
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  sense? Like in a fight, a trained
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  killer is going to punch you in the face, but you're more scared
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  of holding a microphone. Logically, it doesn't make
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  sense. Biologically, though, it makes
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  perfect. Sense OK, explain that.
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  Comedian Whitney Cummings has a brilliant theory regarding stage
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  fright that connects right to our evolutionary biology.
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  If you look at ancient tribal societies, groups of maybe 50 to
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  100 people, right, standing alone and speaking in front of
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  the entire group wasn't a theater performance.
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  It usually meant you had violated A norm and were on
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  trial. Oh wow.
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  Yeah, if the group didn't like what you had to say, you were
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  going to be exiled, which in the ancient world meant a guaranteed
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  death by starvation or predators.
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  Holy cow. So when you walk onto a stage
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  today, your lizard brain doesn't know you're at a comedy club.
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  No, it literally thinks you were on trial for your life.
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  That is mind blowing, Yeah, and it completely explains why
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  bombing on stage is described as so deeply traumatic.
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  Yeah, it hurts. They compared a comic bombing to
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  going through a devastating bad breakup at 17 years old.
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  Yeah, your body genuinely thinks your life is completely over.
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  But you have to go through those agonizing losses to build
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  emotional resiliency, you know? Right, you have to teach your
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  nervous system that you will in fact, survive the rejection.
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  Exactly. And that concept of hacking your
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  nervous system through voluntary stress leads perfectly into the
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  mastery of martial arts. Like Anthony Bourdain.
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  Yes, he didn't start training Brazilian jujitsu until he was
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  58 years old. Just so late to start something
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  that intense. It really is.
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  Here was a guy known globally for his culinary indulgences,
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  eating, drinking, smoking. But he completely transformed
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  his Physiology. He got shredded.
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  Yeah, he was in great shape. And he started training daily
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  all over the world, even dropping into random gritty gyms
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  in foreign countries just to get humbled by regular people.
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  Why do that though? Because it provided a complete
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  endorphin and ego reset that his glamorous television life just
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  couldn't offer. So what does this all mean?
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  Like, it's the ultimate reality check, but the psychological
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  flipping of that physical combat is what really dictates the
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  result, right? Oh.
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  Absolutely. Look at how legendary boxing
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  trainer Cus D'amato handled a 13 year old Mike Tyson.
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  The Amato used actual hypnosis on Tyson.
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  He did. He would tell him you don't
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  exist, only the task exists. Right.
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  And the mechanism of that hypnosis is critical.
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  D'amato was essentially giving Tyson a psychological tool to
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  completely bypass the amygdala, the brain's fear center.
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  Just totally turning off the. Field.
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  Yeah, by convincing the teenager that his identity didn't exist
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  in the ring, there was no ego left to be afraid of getting
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  knocked out, he became a hyper focused biomechanical machine.
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  Speaking of biomechanical machines, let's talk about Vasil
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  Lomachenko. Oh yeah, the matrix.
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  Exactly. He developed this legendary,
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  seemingly impossible matrix style boxing footwork.
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  He constantly cuts angles that just baffle his opponents.
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  But how did he get it? This is my favorite part.
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  His father literally pulled him out of boxing gyms as a kid and
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  forced him to do traditional Ukrainian dance for two years.
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  It sounds absurd until you look at the mechanics of it.
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  Dance completely recalibrates a person's spatial awareness,
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  footwork and rhythm, but it does so without the fight or flight
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  stress of incoming punches. So he's learning how to move
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  without being terrified. Exactly.
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  Lomachenko mastered the absolute control of his body weight and
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  balance in a joyous, creative environment.
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  When he brought that, a biomechanical mastery back to
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  the boxing ring, his opponents couldn't read his rhythm because
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  he wasn't moving like a fighter, he was moving like a dancer.
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  So, bringing this back to you, the listener, how does this help
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  you deal with a stressful morning commute?
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  An angry e-mail from your boss, or like endless social media
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  drama. If you view something like Jiu
• 13:49
  jitsu as high level physical chess where the stakes are your
• 13:53
  own simulated survival, it changes everything.
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  It completely recalibrates your baseline for what constitutes a
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  crisis. Fighting in a controlled
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  environment is essentially a mutual agreement.
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  It's a primal contract of I kill you, you kill me, and tapping
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  out is literally saying thank you for not breaking my arm or
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  choking me unconscious. When you voluntarily engage in
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  something that physically and psychologically logically
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  demanding the artificial stress of modern life, the velvet
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  prison of your office, the social media arguments, it all
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  starts to feel incredibly easy, almost silly by comparison.
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  You have manually reset your fight or flight response.
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  Which naturally takes us right out of the padded gym and into
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  the absolute wild. We have to talk about the primal
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  reality of hunting, specifically elk hunting in the mountains.
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  This is a whole different level of stress.
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  It really is. This isn't just taking a nice
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  hike with a rifle. They detail the insane
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  preparation for this. We're talking about doing Tabata
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  sprints on an airtime bike. Yeah, that sounded brutal.
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  For those who don't know, Tabata is High intensity interval
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  training. 20 seconds of maximum lung burning effort followed by
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  10 seconds of rest. It spikes your heart rate to
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  like 180 beats per minute. And why do that?
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  To prepare for hunting. Because it perfectly simulates
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  the massive blinding adrenaline dump you experience when a
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  massive animal steps out in front of you.
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  You have to train yourself to control your breathing and make
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  a precise decision while in a state of physiological panic.
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  And that panic is warranted, especially during the elk rut.
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  The mating season. Right.
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  The male elk are essentially in a state of testosterone
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  OverDrive, fighting each other for dominance, and the sound a
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  male elk makes the bugle is deeply unsettling.
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  It doesn't sound like a normal animal at all.
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  No, it sounds like a screeching metallic demon in the woods.
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  Hearing that while you are freezing in a tree, stand in the
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  pitch plaque taps into a very ancient human fear of the dark.
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  And that auditory terror is absolutely nothing compared to
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  the reality of apex predators. Yeah, they discussed the sheer
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  awe of grizzly bears. Yeah, the size of those things.
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  Specifically, a 1600 LB grizzly taken in Alaska with paw pause,
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  the literal size of a human torso.
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  It's crucial to understand the psychology of a grizzly bear
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  versus a black bear here. A black bear is often skittish.
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  Right, they run away. Yeah, they are essentially giant
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  raccoons that might look at you with curiosity or fear.
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  A grizzly bear operates on a totally different software.
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  How so? When a grizzly locks eyes with
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  you, it is evaluating you purely as calories.
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  It is looking at you as prey, being in their environment,
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  smelling them, seeing their tracks.
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  It puts you squarely back on the middle of the food chain.
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  It is the ultimate antidote to human arrogance.
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  Truly. But it's not just the animals
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  currently in the woods that humble us.
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  It's the geological record of how fragile our dominance
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  actually is. The conversation dove into
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  ancient history, specifically Gigantopithecus.
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  Yes, this is fascinating. This was a real ancient primate
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  that stood 8 to 10 feet tall, weighed hundreds of pounds and
• 16:57
  walked on 2 legs. Massive creatures.
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  It's widely considered the most likely biological origin for the
• 17:02
  global Bigfoot legends that permeate indigenous cultures.
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  Do ancient mysteries like this remind us of how incredibly
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  small we are? This raises an important
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  question about human hubris, honestly.
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  And if an 8 foot primate doesn't humble you, the Younger Dryas
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  impact theory it certainly will. Oh yeah, the comet.
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  Right, this is the mounting geological evidence that around
• 17:21
  11,800 years ago a massive comet hit the North American ice
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  sheet. Just completely reset
• 17:27
  everything. The impact would have caused
• 17:29
  instantaneous continent wide flooding and a nuclear winter
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  effect, instantly wiping out the North American megafauna, giant
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  ground sloths, dire wolves and lions significantly larger than
• 17:40
  modern African lions. Which completely challenges the
• 17:43
  old textbook theory that early humans simply haunted all these
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  massive beasts to extinction with like little stone tip
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  Spears. Exactly.
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  The comet theory presents a much more catastrophic, humbling
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  reality. We sit in our climate control
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  departments ordering food from apps and genuinely think we are
• 18:00
  the undisputed masters of the universe.
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  We really do. But when you are surrounded by
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  massive mountains, predators that view you as food, and the
• 18:07
  actual geological evidence of global instantaneous cataclysms,
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  it centers the human ego. It reminds you that violent,
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  unpredictable nature is the actual baseline reality of this
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  planet, and our concrete cities are just a very fragile,
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  temporary novelty. And that observation leads us
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  perfectly to the ultimate fragile novelty we are dealing
• 18:28
  with today, the artificial future.
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  AI. Yeah, we're talking about
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  smartphones and algorithms as the bridge to crazy.
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  You stare at this little glowing rectangle in your hand, and the
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  algorithm is designed to convince into you that the
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  entire world is terrible, falling apart and violently
• 18:46
  hostile. It thrives on that negativity.
• 18:48
  But the moment you actually put the phone down, step outside and
• 18:52
  talk to your neighbor, you realize that 99% of real
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  physical life is actually quite pleasant.
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  It is a deliberate, mathematically engineered
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  distortion of reality, and that distortion is exactly what
• 19:03
  artificial intelligence is currently learning.
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  From That's a scary. Thought it is, AI is scraping
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  all of his toxic polarized data. We feed it online.
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  Sure, AI can rapidly generate a perfectly tuned country song in
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  10 seconds based on a text prompt, but it has zero real
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  world context. It can't experience the joy of,
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  as Grimes highlighted, shooting targets in the backyard with a
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  70 year old Montana neighbor who casually survives hitting a deer
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  on his motorcycle. That specific kind of human
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  grit. Exactly.
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  AI only knows the digital data, it fundamentally cannot know the
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  dirt. There was this hilarious but
• 19:39
  honestly deeply profound theory thrown out there that the band
• 19:43
  Nickelback was essentially the first AI music.
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  That was so funny. Meaning their music was
• 19:49
  engineered in a studio to be perfectly down the middle,
• 19:52
  perfectly catchy, perfectly tuned to hit every demographic.
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  But to many people, it felt like it lacked A genuine, messy,
• 20:00
  unpredictable human core. Yeah, it felt a bit
• 20:03
  manufactured. But let me genuinely challenge
• 20:05
  that premise for a second, right?
• 20:07
  What if AI eventually does replicate that human soul
• 20:10
  perfectly? If an AI generates a song and
• 20:13
  the chord progression and lyrics are so perfectly calculated that
• 20:16
  it makes you physically weep in your car, does the biological
• 20:19
  origin of that art still matter? If we connect this to the bigger
• 20:22
  picture of everything we've discussed today, the answer is a
• 20:25
  resounding yes, Really. Why?
• 20:27
  Because art isn't just about the final audiophile or the
• 20:30
  aesthetic painting on the wall. Art is fundamentally about the
• 20:32
  struggle. AI lacks the struggle it didn't
• 20:36
  experience, the bad breakup, the paralyzing stage fright, or the
• 20:39
  pressure cooker studio session. We value a painting or a song
• 20:44
  not just because it sounds or looks pretty, but because we
• 20:47
  inherently know another human being bled, sweat and face their
• 20:51
  own inner demons to bring it into existence.
• 20:54
  So it's about connection. Exactly.
• 20:56
  The true value of art is in the shared human friction.
• 20:59
  That is a perfect way to bring this entire journey together.
• 21:02
  Look at the ground we've covered in this deep dive.
• 21:04
  We covered a lot. We did.
• 21:06
  We started with the creeping danger of the Velvet prison, how
• 21:09
  luxury and comfort make us moldable, fearful, and weak.
• 21:13
  We looked at how elite creators actively force themselves to
• 21:16
  bypass their brains bureaucracy and find the muse through
• 21:19
  intense engineered pressure. We explored the evolutionary
• 21:23
  terror of the stage, the neurological reset of martial
• 21:26
  arts, and the deeply humbling primal reality of apex predators
• 21:30
  and comet impacts. It all ties back to the same
• 21:33
  concept. It does, and the core,
• 21:35
  undeniable lesson running through all of this is clearly
• 21:40
  voluntarily choosing to do something incredibly difficult,
• 21:44
  whether it's writing an album in a single day, stepping onto a
• 21:47
  jiu jitsu mat, or freezing in the mountains makes the
• 21:50
  artificial modern stresses of the rest of your life much, much
• 21:54
  easier to handle. It is entirely about preserving
• 21:57
  our evolutionary edge in a world that is desperate to dull it.
• 22:01
  And I'll leave you with this final thought to Mull over
• 22:03
  today. Let's hear it.
• 22:04
  What if our modern obsession with creating completely
• 22:07
  frictionless lives, smart homes that anticipate our needs, AI
• 22:12
  assistance, doing our writing, instant grocery delivery to our
• 22:15
  doors is absolutely starving our brains of the exact evolutionary
• 22:18
  friction we need to feel fulfilled and human?
• 22:21
  Are we actively designing our own velvet prisons right in our
• 22:24
  living rooms? Man, zoo enclosure with high
• 22:26
  speed Internet and food delivery is still a zoo enclosure.
• 22:29
  Thank you for taking this deep dive with us.
• 22:31
  Put the phone down, go find something genuinely difficult to
• 22:33
  do today and stay curious. Catch you next time.