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Joe Rogan · 2025-02-04

Joe Rogan Experience #2267 - Dan Richards

Electrician-turned-YouTuber Dan Richards joins Joe Rogan for a freewheeling tour of pyramids, lost civilizations, and the egos that police archaeology.

Joe Rogan Experience #2267 - Dan Richards
The guest

Dan Richards: An electrician and host of the YouTube channel 'Dunking on' (DUNKING), where he applies a skeptical, trades-based lens to fringe archaeology, ancient mysteries, and pseudoscience claims.

What this episode covers

Rogan and Richards range across ancient-mystery territory: the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia, the engineering impossibilities of the Great Pyramid, the Baghdad battery, and Christopher Dunn's pyramid-as-power-plant theory. Richards repeatedly argues for testing claims and exhausting mundane explanations before reaching for lost high-technology, while staying open to a pre-12,000-year-old seafaring civilization wiped out by cataclysm. A long middle stretch becomes a critique of academic gatekeeping, the Graham Hancock vs. Flint Dibble debate, the Clovis-first controversy, and how ego and politics corrupt science. The pair also detour through Joe's account of why Kamala Harris never appeared on the show, COVID-era distrust of public-health authorities, and the massive pandemic wealth transfer. They close on Gobekli Tepe, the Antikythera mechanism, orichalcum, giants, and cocaine traces found in Egyptian mummies.

Recommended on this episode

BookRecommendedISBN verified

The Real Anthony Fauci

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“please go read”
“if you want to get into that at another time folks just please go read Bobby Kennedy's Book the real Anthony fouchi it's incredible”— Joe Rogan

Also referenced (named, not recommended)

BookReferencedISBN verified

Fingerprints of the Gods

Graham Hancock

“you like me um were one of the early readers of Fingerprints of the Gods and that sort of how you got into this whole subject right”— Joe Rogan
BookReferencedISBN verified

The Sign and the Seal

Graham Hancock

“because I'd read the sign in the seal and so I was already like Graham Hancock's pretty cool I I like the way he's coming at these things”— Dan Richards
ProductReferenced

iPhone SE

Apple

“is that the iPhone Mini is that what that is or is that the SE or something like that uh yeah the SE I think something like that”— Joe Rogan
ProductReferenced

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

Samsung

“I think the Samsung Galaxy s25 Ultra and the x24 ultra have the longest battery life in comparison to iPhone”— Joe Rogan
ProductReferenced

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

Samsung

“I have a um a Galaxy s24 Ultra and I have an iPhone I've never had one of them run out of batteries”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced

Mad Max

George Miller

“if you watch watch Mad Max they're not running around picking up bottle caps they're picking up the the stuff you can use”— Dan Richards
MediaReferenced

Doctor Who

BBC

“the the saluan hypothesis and saluan like this Doctor Who bad guy that was uh went into hibernation like before the dinosaurs died out”— Dan Richards
MediaReferenced

Lord of the Rings

Peter Jackson

“that looks like something from like Lord of the Rings that does not even look like a real creature”— Joe Rogan

Big reveals from this episode

  • Dan says the American Museum of Natural History allegedly dumped ancient bison bones in the East River, and divers later recovered them confirming it.
  • Both agree the Baghdad battery would actually conduct electricity if filled with a mild acid, calling it potentially a real ancient electroplating device.
  • Joe gives a detailed insider account claiming the Kamala Harris campaign never committed to his show and that a book about it printed falsehoods.
  • Plays a pre-COVID Kary Mullis clip blasting Anthony Fauci and arguing PCR should never be used to diagnose disease.
  • Claims COVID policy drove the biggest wealth transfer in US history, citing figures from roughly $3.9 trillion up to $50 trillion.
  • Recounts that archaeologist Tom Dillehay's life was threatened by a colleague who falsely told a Chilean newspaper his Monte Verde site was a CIA plant.
  • Dan lays out his thesis: a lost seafaring, astronomy-skilled civilization, not a high-tech one, explains worldwide megalithic similarities.
  • Discuss testing that reportedly confirmed cocaine in Egyptian mummies' bone, tissue and hair, ruling out external contamination.

Worth remembering

  • Max Planck's principle: science advances 'one funeral at a time,' quoted as evidence paradigms outlive their defenders.
  • The Great Pyramid is about 756 feet per side yet square to within only 2-3 inches of variation.
  • Joe describes a Congo antelope (the dyer/diver) that swims up to 100 yards underwater and eats fish after being trapped in rainforest.
  • Madagascar's aye-aye fills the woodpecker niche, illustrating how lemurs occupy nearly every major evolutionary role on the island.
  • The Antikythera mechanism, found in a 2nd-century-BC shipwreck, modeled star phases and weather predictions like an ancient analog computer.
  • Orichalcum ingots from a Sicilian shipwreck were analyzed as a brass-like alloy of roughly 75-80% copper and 15-20% zinc.
  • The 'hobbit' Homo floresiensis, a roughly three-foot tool-using human, was dismissed for years before being accepted.
  • Egyptians reportedly used a baboon-shaped water clock that drained water through a hole, tied to the baboon supposedly urinating 12 times a day.
  • The Clovis-first paradigm collapsed after Monte Verde and 22,000-year-old human footprints with seeds were found in New Mexico.
  • Island dwarfism and gigantism (dwarf elephants, giant lizards) are offered as natural reasons giant or tiny hominids could have existed.