The Joe Rogan Experience

#2418 - Chris Williamson

November 26, 2025

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  • The conversation critiques modern activism, arguing that attention-seeking, inflammatory actions (like dyeing the Venice Canals green) are counterproductive to genuinely changing minds, which requires understanding intellectual chasms. 
  • The discussion highlights the 'Cassandra complex'—being right but early—and contrasts figures like Copernicus (who waited) with Galileo (who was punished), suggesting that societal backlash can suppress necessary, albeit unpopular, truths. 
  • The speakers argue that many environmental movements, particularly those focused on carbon, are driven by perverse incentives, such as massive funding for non-profits and political campaigns, rather than purely objective concern for tangible pollution. 
  • The acceleration of online censorship, particularly since 2016, was allegedly driven by a mandate within major tech companies to prevent future political outcomes like Donald Trump's presidency. 
  • Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter is viewed as a pivotal event that potentially altered the trajectory of civilization by resisting a growing dystopian censorship complex involving intelligence agencies. 
  • The discussion highlights the controversy surrounding biological sex in women's sports, exemplified by the disqualification of a World's Strongest Woman winner, suggesting that fairness in competition is losing traction with certain segments of the public. 
  • Deeply ingrained incorrect techniques, whether in physical skills like martial arts or mental habits, are extremely difficult to correct under pressure because individuals revert to the learned, albeit flawed, mode. 
  • The speed of human thought (around 4,000 words per minute) vastly outpaces current input methods like typing, suggesting future interfaces like Neuralink will be necessary to capture full cognitive fidelity. 
  • Extreme success often correlates with an underlying psychological drive stemming from past unhappiness or trauma, leading to a trade-off where individuals sacrifice present happiness for external validation through achievement. 
  • The intense drive for elite success often originates from childhood trauma, loss, or unmet needs, serving as a powerful compensatory mechanism. 
  • People tend to commit the 'fundamental parental attribution error' by blaming parents for their shortcomings while claiming full authorship of their strengths, which can foster a victim mentality. 
  • The public craves authentic narratives of struggle and redemption, leading to intense scrutiny and backlash against perceived hypocrisy or unearned success, especially in the age of prefabricated online narratives. 

Segments

Training and Mental Health
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(00:00:14)
  • Key Takeaway: Physical training is primarily valued for its significant positive impact on mental health, offering a noticeable difference in one’s state of being.
  • Summary: Training provides a substantial benefit for mental health, creating a noticeable difference between the state of doing it versus not doing it. This mental benefit is considered the main reason for engaging in the activity. The difference in mental state is described as feeling like two totally different people.
Phone Usage and Digital Staring
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(00:00:54)
  • Key Takeaway: Staring at a phone for hours is analogous to a drug-induced state, and the removal of the physical device (phone) from the visual field highlights the unnatural nature of the behavior.
  • Summary: The act of staring at a phone without holding it, facilitated by props, is compared to a drug that makes people waste hours of their day. An artist’s work removing phones from images revealed how strange the posture of looking at a device appears without the device present. The digital world is becoming more real than the physical world for many users.
AR Glasses and Machine Integration
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(00:01:26)
  • Key Takeaway: Emerging AR glasses technology allows for cursor control via eye movement and finger gestures, signaling an impending integration of digital feeds directly into human perception.
  • Summary: Future AR glasses may display digital feeds, such as TikTok, in one eye while the user views the real world through the other. Prototypes allow users to manipulate cursors with their eyeballs and interact with digital objects using finger pinching and spreading gestures. While currently beta and not perfectly responsive, this technology points toward a deeper incorporation of machines into human experience.
Value of Attention and Time
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(00:03:11)
  • Key Takeaway: Time and attention are valuable resources that can be converted into skills and knowledge, contrasting sharply with the passive consumption of ‘stupid shit’ online.
  • Summary: A lack of appreciation for one’s time and attention is a failure to recognize a valuable resource. This resource can be converted into skills, information, and knowledge to change one’s life. The compelling nature of online content is attributed to its design by behavioral scientists working for profitable companies, making it an unfair fight against willpower.
Venice Canal Dyeing Protest
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(00:04:01)
  • Key Takeaway: Greta Thunberg’s act of dyeing the Venice Canals green to protest climate inaction resulted in minimal penalty (a small fine and short ban), which the speakers view as insufficient punishment for defacing a historic site.
  • Summary: The protest involved pouring green dye into the Venice Canals to call for pulling back carbon fuel use in Europe, an act deemed ugly and destructive to a gorgeous, ancient city. The perpetrators claimed the dye was environmentally safe, but the resulting penalty was only a 48-hour ban and a $170 fine. The speakers argue that such actions ruin the experience for thousands of visitors and residents.
Climate Change Rhetoric and Cassandra Complex
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(00:07:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Inflammatory rhetoric used by activists, intended to gain attention, often backfires by alienating the audience, illustrating the difficulty of convincing others when one feels they are Cassandra-like truth-tellers.
  • Summary: As people fail to listen to a serious issue, they tend to shout louder, but this escalation often turns people off rather than compelling conviction. The Cassandra complex describes being right but early, as seen with figures like Rachel Carson and Ignaz Semmelweis, who were initially mocked before their truths were accepted. Making people feel stupid or inconvenienced is an ineffective strategy for changing minds.
Climate Data and Perverse Incentives
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(00:10:33)
  • Key Takeaway: The real existential fear regarding climate is global cooling, as historical data shows natural cycles of glaciation, and current climate change predictions have been consistently inaccurate.
  • Summary: The historical climate record shows constant cycles of glaciation and warming, and the real danger is global cooling, which nearly caused the extinction of plant life due to low CO2 levels. Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth is cited as being entirely wrong about its catastrophic predictions, yet it scared the public. The focus on carbon is questioned because pollution (particulates, poisons in rivers) is more tangible, and increased carbon has correlated with more global greenery.
Toxic Compassion and Appearance vs. Reality
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(00:27:35)
  • Key Takeaway: Toxic compassion describes prioritizing the appearance of being good (virtue signaling) over the reality of doing good, often leading to policies that cause harm while maintaining a positive public image.
  • Summary: Elon Musk’s focus on the reality of doing good versus appearing good highlights this issue, where people will sacrifice real outcomes for social approval. This is evident when people proclaim body weight has no health impact to appear inclusive, or when male athletes are favored in sports to appear empathetic, even at the expense of female athletes. Social media exacerbates this by providing platforms for people to curate false appearances.
Existential Risk Ranking and Priorities
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(00:24:26)
  • Key Takeaway: Research by Toby Ord suggests that unaligned Artificial Intelligence (1 in 10 risk) and engineered pandemics (1 in 30 risk) pose significantly higher existential threats this century than climate change (1 in 1,000 risk).
  • Summary: Toby Ord’s research from The Precipice ranks various existential risks based on probability over the next century. Climate change is ranked at 1 in 1,000, while risks like engineered pandemics and unaligned AI are ranked much higher. The speakers argue that almost all global ‘worry budget’ is spent on climate change, diverting attention from these statistically more pressing threats.
UK Politics and Free Speech Erosion
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(00:46:57)
  • Key Takeaway: The UK is exhibiting concerning trends toward authoritarian control over speech, evidenced by high rates of depression, arrests for social media posts, and historical persecution of figures like Alan Turing.
  • Summary: The UK ranked as the second most depressed country globally in a recent report, despite facing fewer crises than countries ranked higher. The proposed Online Safety Bill is viewed as a mechanism to enforce self-censorship and prevent criticism of the government, mirroring historical patterns where the state persecuted individuals (like Turing and Oscar Wilde) for behavior deemed improper at the time before later apologizing.
Woke Era Censorship Origins
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(00:55:55)
  • Key Takeaway: Real censorship intensified around 2016, allegedly spurred by tech executives meeting with a mandate to prevent future political upsets.
  • Summary: The period around 2014 to 2016 is identified as the ramp-up for ‘woke’ influence, leading to heightened censorship efforts by major tech platforms. A specific meeting at one tech company reportedly established a mandate to control political outcomes, exemplified by preventing another Trump-like event. Controlling the narrative through information suppression or acceleration is presented as the method for enforcing this control.
Social Media Control and Free Speech
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(00:57:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Controlling the ‘king’ through platform dominance necessitates force or narrative manipulation, but one large platform should remain a ‘wild west’ for free expression.
  • Summary: The ability to choose political leaders via platform control is argued to require force or narrative manipulation if 50% of the population disagrees. The purchase of a social media platform, like Elon Musk’s acquisition, is seen as one way to gain control over discourse. A crucial counterpoint is the importance of having at least one massive platform where users can ‘go wild west’ and say whatever they want, utilizing tools like mute or ban functions for personal curation.
COVID Narrative Suppression
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(00:58:01)
  • Key Takeaway: Legitimate scientific voices, such as those from Stanford and MIT, were suppressed during COVID times for contradicting the prevailing agenda pushed by figures like Fauci.
  • Summary: The conversation emphasizes the need for platforms resistant to intelligence agencies shutting down legitimate voices, citing examples from the COVID era. Experts like Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford and a researcher from MIT were allegedly censored for presenting information that did not align with the agenda promoted by Dr. Fauci. The trajectory of online speech appears to be moving toward more sanity, though the UK is considered a ’lost cause’ in this regard.
Malinformation Definition and Examples
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(01:01:14)
  • Key Takeaway: Malinformation is defined as factual information that might cause harm, such as stating children do not need COVID vaccines, which contrasts with misinformation and disinformation.
  • Summary: Malinformation is introduced as a third category alongside misinformation and disinformation, specifically referring to true facts that could potentially cause harm. An example provided is the statement that healthy children statistically do not need a COVID vaccine, which could cause harm by discouraging vaccination that protects vulnerable populations like grandmothers. Conversely, releasing true information that compromises national security or leads to conflict is also cited as a potential justification for suppressing malinformation.
Trans Athletes in Women’s Sports
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(01:02:45)
  • Key Takeaway: The disqualification of a biological male from the World’s Strongest Woman competition demonstrates that the public, especially women athletes, will reject the erosion of fair competition based on biological sex.
  • Summary: The recent stripping of a World’s Strongest Woman title from an athlete discovered to be biologically male highlights a binary issue where lying about sex leads to disqualification. The speaker argues that this issue will cause the loss of support from the political center, most women, and anyone who values fairness over affirming identity in competitive sports. The concept of ‘sandbagging’ is used to illustrate that some individuals will cheat to win, suggesting that some participation in women’s sports by biological males is motivated by a desire to dominate.
Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua Boxing Matchup
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(01:19:17)
  • Key Takeaway: Anthony Joshua presents a terrifying challenge to Jake Paul due to his Olympic gold medal background, immense size, and proven knockout power against elite heavyweights.
  • Summary: Anthony Joshua is characterized as an extremely dangerous heavyweight, evidenced by his past fights against top-tier boxers like Usyk and his knockout power demonstrated against Francis Ngannou. Joshua’s size (6'6", 252 lbs) and experience fighting world-class opponents contrast sharply with Jake Paul’s resume, which primarily features non-elite boxers or MMA fighters. The financial incentives, potentially $92 million each for the fight, suggest that Joshua is highly motivated to win decisively to protect his future heavyweight title trajectory.
Difficulty of Correcting Bad Technique
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(01:50:55)
  • Key Takeaway: Under pressure, individuals revert to deeply ingrained, incorrect techniques, making re-teaching essential but difficult.
  • Summary: It is very hard to correct a technique once it is learned incorrectly, as panic or pressure causes a shift back to the bad mode. This is seen in activities like pool, where inefficient arm positioning persists because changing it feels too alien. In martial arts, learning a sidekick incorrectly makes reverting to the proper form nearly impossible when pressured.
Hunter Thompson’s Typing Style
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(01:52:05)
  • Key Takeaway: Hunter Thompson famously typed with a slow, one-finger ‘poke and peck’ method despite having 30 years of experience.
  • Summary: The speaker notes his own proficiency in touch typing after 30 years, contrasting it with Hunter Thompson’s famously slow, one-finger typing style. Johnny Depp accurately mimicked this pecking style in the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The speaker humorously suggests Thompson’s slow typing might have been a performance enhancer, preventing him from typing out even crazier thoughts.
Brain Speed vs. Keyboards
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(01:53:08)
  • Key Takeaway: The brain’s thinking speed, comparable to an M134 machine gun’s rate of fire, highlights the inefficiency of current keyboard interfaces.
  • Summary: The human brain can think at approximately 4,000 words per minute, which is the same rate of fire as an M134 machine gun. Keyboards represent a significant loss of fidelity and speed when converting thought into words. This inefficiency suggests that future interfaces, like direct neural connections, will eventually render physical keyboards obsolete.
Telepathic Communication Demos
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(01:53:47)
  • Key Takeaway: A technology called Alter Ego allows for direct, silent communication between two headset-wearing individuals by detecting intended speech signals.
  • Summary: The demonstration involved two people communicating questions and answers without speaking, hearing the response directly in their heads. The Alter Ego signals are unaffected by environmental noise, offering ‘infinite noise cancellation.’ This technology suggests a future where direct brain-to-brain communication is possible, potentially without the need for the other person to wear a headset.
Mountain Lion Encounter Story
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(01:57:22)
  • Key Takeaway: A runner survived a close mountain lion encounter by standing tall and yelling, realizing the cat was trying to scare him, not kill him.
  • Summary: A friend’s brother was stalked by a mountain lion at night, initially mistaking it for a coyote. The animal’s intimidating display of throwing its arms up indicated a desire to scare him off, unlike a predator actively trying to kill. Running or backing away excites the predator’s prey drive, emphasizing the importance of standing tall and making noise to establish oneself as a threat.
Ineffectiveness of Bear Spray
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(02:01:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Bear spray is not always effective against determined bears, as evidenced by a recent incident where two cans failed to deter an attacking grizzly.
  • Summary: Carrying a pistol is advised in bear country because deterrents like bear spray can fail against aggressive animals. In a recent case in British Columbia, a teacher unloaded two cans of bear spray into a bear’s eyes, but the animal was completely unfazed. Bear spray is intended as a deterrent, but some animals, like grizzlies, may simply run through it.
Adrenaline and Memory Distortion
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(02:03:34)
  • Key Takeaway: Extreme, high-adrenaline survival situations can severely warp or erase memory recall, making accurate recollection difficult.
  • Summary: The primal, savage moments during life-or-death events cause adrenaline dumps that warp memory formation. This is illustrated by a case where a sexual assault victim mistakenly identified a TV psychologist as her attacker because his face was imprinted on her memory during the assault. The kicker was that the psychologist was on TV discussing the unreliability of eyewitness testimony.
Hypnosis and Suggestibility
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(02:06:15)
  • Key Takeaway: Hypnosis is a powerful backdoor into the human psyche, with susceptibility varying based on factors like dopamine processing speed and personality traits.
  • Summary: Dr. David Spiegel notes that some individuals are far more susceptible to hypnosis than others. Faster dopamine processing and certain personality traits, like agreeableness, correlate with higher suggestibility. Astonishingly, a single hypnosis session can lead to a 25% lifetime success rate for smoking cessation interventions.
Flow State Duality and Recording Sets
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(02:12:05)
  • Key Takeaway: Achieving a flow state, while optimal for performance, often results in a lack of conscious memory of the event, necessitating recording.
  • Summary: When in a flow state, performers are ’empty’ and not piloting the experience, leading to a duality where they perform at their best but cannot fully recall the details later. Comedians must record their sets because brilliant, spontaneous material created in this state can be lost forever if not captured. This highlights the need to record performances to retrieve valuable insights generated while operating outside of conscious self-monitoring.
Hollowness of Peak Success
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(02:14:16)
  • Key Takeaway: Reaching the pinnacle of external success, like winning a major championship, often provides only fleeting euphoria rather than deep, lasting fulfillment.
  • Summary: Golfer Scotty Scheffler described that the euphoric feeling of winning a major tournament lasts only a few minutes before life immediately reverts to the next task, questioning the ultimate point of the pursuit. This suggests that people often sacrifice present happiness for success, only to find the destination unfulfilling. True greatness often requires a ‘madness’ or intense, obsessive drive that prevents enjoying simple, present pleasures.
Dave Chappelle’s Balance of Success
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(02:26:50)
  • Key Takeaway: Dave Chappelle exemplifies a balance of ultra-success and genuine happiness by prioritizing the craft of comedy over financial metrics.
  • Summary: Chappelle walked away from a massive contract to maintain creative control, spending years focusing purely on honing his stand-up craft in small venues. His process involves filming every set to extract and expand upon successful material, indicating his primary motivation is the art itself, not external validation or rankings. This dedication to the process, rather than the outcome, appears to be the source of his sustained happiness alongside success.
Shame of Simple Pleasures
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(02:33:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Society often instills a shame regarding simple pleasures, treating them as ‘counterfeit currency’ compared to large, transactional achievements.
  • Summary: People tend to be poor accountants of their own joy, only accepting ‘deposits’ when the transaction is large (e.g., marriage, major sales). Taking pleasure in small incidents, like seeing a cute dog, can feel like a reflection of a small life, but these small pleasures offer immediate gratification. Delaying gratification indefinitely to chase massive goals risks missing out on almost all of the journey’s joy.
Hamilton’s Success and Drive
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(02:43:30)
  • Key Takeaway: The success of unconventional artistic works like Hamilton demonstrates that artistic merit can transcend historical accuracy or casting norms.
  • Summary: The musical Hamilton is cited as a gigantic success despite its preposterous premise of using modern language for historical figures and casting Black actors as white historical figures. This success suggests that compelling storytelling and execution can overcome perceived logical inconsistencies. The speakers then pivot to question the source of intense drive in successful people.
Source of Elite Drive
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(02:43:53)
  • Key Takeaway: The ‘demon thing’ or intense drive for greatness in top performers is overwhelmingly correlated with an unhappy childhood marked by loss or trauma.
  • Summary: The drive to be the best rarely comes from a privileged background; it is usually fueled by a lack of something needed in youth, leading to a compensatory need to prove one’s worth. Mike Tyson is presented as a prime example, whose hellish early life fueled his drive to become the scariest heavyweight boxer. This drive manifests as a need to show the world one is special and worth something.
Attribution Error and Self-Blame
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(02:45:51)
  • Key Takeaway: People often commit the ‘fundamental parental attribution error’ by attributing only their shortcomings to their parents while claiming sole authorship of their strengths.
  • Summary: This error is an asymmetry in judgment, similar to the fundamental attribution error in traffic, where one’s own negative actions are situational, but others’ are character flaws. Attributing all shortcomings to parental failings (like anxious attachment) while ignoring how those same experiences might have driven strengths (like hypervigilance) is cautioned against. True agency requires acknowledging that both strengths and shortcomings stem from either parental influence or personal agency, not just blaming the past for the negative traits.
Success Versus Happiness Dance
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(02:47:47)
  • Key Takeaway: The core human challenge is the dance between achieving success and achieving happiness, as many successful people die unhappy due to sacrificing one for the other.
  • Summary: Success, especially when difficult to attain, can sometimes prove to be empty or hard to sustain once achieved, often attracting critics (‘haters’). This dynamic is particularly brutal for young famous individuals who lack the constitution to handle constant attack. The discussion highlights that difficulty does not equate to worthiness, and many pursue difficult goals only to find the outcome unsatisfying.
Talent, Pressure, and Louis Capaldi
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(02:49:23)
  • Key Takeaway: Extreme performance pressure can manifest physically, temporarily stripping talented individuals of their ability to perform their calling, as seen with singer Louis Capaldi’s Tourette’s flare-up.
  • Summary: The documentary on Scottish singer Louis Capaldi illustrates how the pressure of expectation for a difficult second album caused his latent Tourette’s syndrome to severely impede his ability to sing on stage. This demonstrates a unique hell where talent exists, but the psychological weight prevents its execution. Capaldi’s subsequent recovery through mindfulness and therapy offers a powerful narrative of redemption that audiences deeply root for.
Authenticity and Earned Success
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(02:52:59)
  • Key Takeaway: Audiences strongly reject unearned success, such as corporate creations or nepotism, because they crave authenticity and see themselves reflected in narratives of struggle and redemption.
  • Summary: The desire to see someone fall and climb back is rooted in the audience wanting to see a piece of their own potential for redemption reflected in the successful person. Conversely, anything that feels ‘faked’ or handed to someone, like industry plants or silver-spoon narratives, is met with intense scrutiny and hatred. The internet thrives on exposing hypocrisy because it contrasts sharply with the craved authenticity.
AI Threat to Earned Craft
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(02:56:15)
  • Key Takeaway: AI threatens established creative fields by allowing users to bypass the long, difficult, and necessary foundational ‘grind’ required to master a craft like music or comedy.
  • Summary: Musicians view AI as a threat because it allows people to skip the years of boring, hard practice required to become proficient on an instrument, feeling like ’technology-enabled nepotism.’ Similarly, comedy requires thousands of spots (around 150 episodes for a podcast) to earn the right to be taken seriously. If AI bypasses this investment, it devalues the tangible, earned experience that underpins genuine artistic output.
LifeLock Holiday Ad Read
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(02:59:51)
  • Key Takeaway: Identity theft risks increase during the holiday season, and LifeLock offers monitoring and guaranteed restoration services backed by a Million-dollar Protection Package.
  • Summary: Identity thieves target personal information during the holiday gift-buying season when people are distracted. LifeLock monitors data points constantly and provides U.S.-based specialists to fix identity theft issues if they occur. Listeners can receive up to 40% off their first year by using the promo code JRE.