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Joe Rogan · 2024-05-14 · 1h 57m

Joe Rogan Experience #2150 - Greg Overton

Western artist Greg Overton joins Joe Rogan for a sprawling talk on Native American history, art, cosmic phenomena, and breaking free of the system.

Joe Rogan Experience #2150 - Greg Overton
The guest

Greg Overton — Fine artist known for large-scale Native American portrait paintings (Soul Catcher, Dreamer); former OSHA graphics designer and tattoo apprentice turned full-time Western painter.

The gist

Greg Overton recounts his path from a rebellious, art-obsessed kid into a professional Western fine artist celebrated for powerful Native American portraits. He and Joe Rogan rail against the indoctrination of school and office life, championing the freedom of a creative, tribe-centered existence. The conversation roams across Bigfoot and UFO skepticism, psychedelics as perception openers, and a long stretch of cosmic speculation about Dyson spheres, hypernovas, the Carrington event, time machines, and galaxies the James Webb telescope says shouldn't exist. They close on the depth of Native American history, citing Empire of the Summer Moon, Crazy Horse, Quanah Parker, the Creek warrior William Weatherford, and Sun Dance rituals. Overton plugs his upcoming gallery shows in Santa Fe and Jackson Hole.

Big reveals

  • Overton's massive painting Soul Catcher hangs in Joe Rogan's library, and Dreamer is another piece Rogan owns.
  • Before becoming a fine artist, Overton worked as a federal graphics designer for OSHA, editing gory accident photos to make them less bloody.
  • He apprenticed at Big Deluxe Tattoo in Salt Lake but got fired after a drunken Muay Thai high kick missed its target and knocked out his manager's teeth.
  • Overton describes a horse bolting and running a full mile across the desert with him hanging on by the saddle horn, refusing to jump off.
  • Overton reveals his mentor Michael Blake, who wrote Dances with Wolves, told him 'Don't be the next anything. Be the first Greg Overton.'
  • Overton does spiritual work and consults Oglala Lakota relatives of Crazy Horse, seeking 'permission' before painting the leader who refused to be photographed.
  • Taylor Sheridan is set to write and direct a film adaptation of Empire of the Summer Moon about Comanche leader Quanah Parker.

Things worth remembering

  • Bill Maher noted an article claiming a '300% rise in measles' in the US actually meant just 35 cases.
  • Marijuana was made illegal partly through William Randolph Hearst's newspaper campaign to protect his paper mills and DuPont's nylon patent from hemp competition.
  • The Carrington event of September 1-2, 1859 was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, causing sparks and fires in telegraph stations.
  • During the Carrington event the coronal mass ejection crossed roughly 90 million miles from sun to Earth in about 17.6 hours.
  • Galaxy JWST 7329, observed by the James Webb telescope, formed about 13 billion years ago, defying current dark-matter models of early galaxy formation.
  • Sitting Bull reportedly cut about a hundred pieces of flesh from his shoulders and back before the Battle of Little Big Horn to obtain a vision of soldiers falling into camp.
  • In the Sun Dance endurance ritual, participants are suspended by pierced chest skin for four days without food or water until the flesh tears free.
  • Creek warrior William Weatherford (Red Eagle) surrendered to Andrew Jackson, who was so impressed by his bravery he shared whiskey and ordered no one to harm him.
  • 'Sioux' was not the Lakota people's name for themselves; it derived from a word other tribes used meaning 'enemy.'
  • Astronomers first detecting gamma-ray bursts every few seconds worried they were witnessing wars in space before identifying them as hypernovas.

Recommended in this episode

Books, products and media the guest or host genuinely endorsed here — with the buy link.

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RecommendedBook

Empire of the Summer Moon

S. C. Gwynne (inferred)

“until people started writing these like Empire of the Summer Moon, some of these amazing books where you get a real understanding” — Joe Rogan 00:56:20
Find it on Amazon
RecommendedBook

Black Elk Speaks

John G. Neihardt (inferred)

“like Black Elk Speaks, like those kind of things. We you actually hear from the people that lived that life” — Joe Rogan 00:56:20
Find it on Amazon
RecommendedMedia

The Outlaw Josey Wales

Clint Eastwood (inferred)

“Clint Eastwood took it to another level. Like especially The Outlaw Josey Wales. That's a great movie. That's a great movie.” — Joe Rogan 00:56:52
Find it on Amazon
RecommendedMedia

1883

Taylor Sheridan (inferred)

“did you see 1883? Amazing right? Amazing. I mean So good and how the like the Lakotas how they put the feces on the arrows” — Joe Rogan 01:54:49
Find it on Amazon