The guest
Mike Baker: Former CIA covert operations officer turned security/intelligence commentator. He hosts the 'President's Daily Brief' podcast and is a dual US-UK citizen.
What this episode covers
Mike Baker opens by recounting a charity camel trek that recreated Lawrence of Arabia's 1917 desert journey to raise money for the UK Special Forces benevolent fund. The conversation then ranges across the politics of the moment: DOGE, government waste and fraud, USAID, the price of eggs, and Social Security data myths. Baker brings an intelligence-insider's pragmatism to discussions of US foreign policy, the Israel-Hamas war, Gaza's future, Ukraine peace talks, and the Iranian regime. The back half covers deep fakes and AI voice cloning, wolf reintroduction in the American West, and the looming release of the JFK, MLK, and UFO files, with Baker repeatedly tempering expectations of a smoking gun.
Recommended on this episode
BookRecommended
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
Tom O'Neill
“read chaos by Tom O'Neal ladies and gentlemen”
“the MK Ultra version is the best version that's Siran Siran Charles Manson everything yeah I say it again but read chaos by Tom O'Neal ladies and gentlemen”— Joe Rogan
MediaRecommended
Fall of Civilizations
Paul Cooper
“an amazing podcast I'd love to recommend to everybody”
“I'm actually listening to an amazing podcast I'd love to recommend to everybody because Elon recommended it on X and I've been listening to it it's great fall of civilizations podcast”— Mike Baker
MediaRecommended
True Romance
Tony Scott
“that is a great movie”
“that movie's good yeah that movie is good that is a great movie”— Joe Rogan
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
MediaReferenced
The Secret History of the Mongols
unknown
“they realized this was the history of jenas Khan and the Khan Empire it's the secret history of the Mongols it's amazing this document”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
Mulan
Walt Disney Pictures
“everything I know about Khan I learned from uh Mulan”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
South Park
Trey Parker and Matt Stone
“I saw this on South Park it was the the human caterpillar episode”— Joe Rogan
ProductReferenced
Land Rover
Land Rover
“Land Rover did a wonderful job of helping to sponsor this so they provided vehicles that the support team used”— Mike Baker
ProductReferenced
Ford Mustang
Ford
“he had a bag full of cash to go buy himself a Mustang which he used to drive around the South”— Mike Baker
MediaReferenced
Netflix
Netflix
“remember Netflix started by mailing you you used to get a CD in the or a DVD in the mail”— Joe Rogan
Big reveals from this episode
- Baker tore rib-cage and oblique muscles in a bad camel dismount and had to tap out of the trek about 25% in.
- Discussion of DOGE finding $4.7 trillion in untraceable Treasury payments where the linking 'TAS' field was left blank.
- Baker says the Israeli cabinet is fully on board with Trump's idea of the US 'owning' Gaza, largely as a disruptive negotiating gambit.
- Baker names the Iranian regime, not Hamas, as the real instigator of regional chaos and says most Arab states would not mourn its fall.
- A 2017 whistleblower clip alleging refugees were coached to claim disabilities to qualify for lifelong Social Security and fast-tracked to passports.
- Baker explains US-Russia Ukraine peace talks began in Riyadh without Ukrainian or European representation at the table.
- News that the FBI surfaced ~2,400 previously unknown JFK-related documents during a records-digitization effort.
- Joe ties the JFK/MK-Ultra threads to Sirhan Sirhan and Charles Manson and tells listeners to read 'Chaos' by Tom O'Neill.
Worth remembering
- Lawrence of Arabia's 1917 trek covered about 1,100 km of supposedly impassable desert to rout the Turks at Aqaba.
- 'Genghis' is a mistranslation of 'Chinggis' Khan, mangled by European languages that lacked the original sounds.
- Nearly all the uranium for the Manhattan Project came from the Belgian-run Congo.
- The Democratic Republic of Congo holds roughly 60% of the world's cobalt, fueling ongoing conflict over EV-battery minerals.
- Mad cow / Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease spread because cattle were fed ground-up cattle and sheep brain tissue.
- Heir Michael Rockefeller went missing in 1961 and is widely believed to have been killed and eaten by a New Guinea tribe.
- The '150-year-old' Social Security recipients are a COBOL data artifact: missing dates default to 1875, not real people.
- Colorado reintroduced wolves taken from Oregon herds that were already accustomed to killing livestock.
- New Jersey has more black bears per capita than any other US state.
More from Joe Rogan
All 6342 recommended