Joe Rogan Experience #891 - Zach Leary

All right, man. We're live. Awesome. Thanks for having me, man. Thanks for being here.

Yeah, this is cool. This is cool. Any friend of Duncan, a friend of mine. Hey, likewise, likewise. It's cool. It's fun, dude.

Okay, so I have to ask the opening question. What the [ __ ] is it like being the son of Timothy Leary? The opening question, right? It has to be. It has to be. Okay, that's cool.

Um, yeah, man. You know, and you know that the answer to the question, kind of, it's, it's changed a lot over the course of time, obviously. You know, because when I was younger, when I was a kid, you know, really up until my mid-20s, even my late 20s, I would say, like, I didn't know how to answer that question. How could I? It's just all I knew was just life, you know? It's just my dad. It's just how I grew up, you know? He would take me to Little League, he'd make sure I did my homework, or didn't do my homework in my case, but whatever it was, you know what I mean? It just was life. I didn't have any objectivity to it. I didn't have any distance from it. I couldn't be removed from it, you know? I didn't know, like, that it was perhaps really strange, right?

And then, uh, you know, he, he died in '96. Uh, you know, I was 22. And then, kind of after that, then I sort of, you know, I got some distance from it. Then I was like, "Oh, [ __ ]." You know, things were a little different at home. You know, they were.

Well, your dad is probably like one of the most important, if not the most important people ever, in terms of the psychedelic revolution. He was, I mean, yeah, my relationship with him and my relationship, especially with his work, was, um, yeah, I mean, of course, the psychedelic part was a core pillar, and I understood that's what made him famous. But I considered him to be like, he was a futurist, really, you know? When you, during my formative years, I mean, the psychedelic thing was always there, but he was much more interested in, like, in technology and cyberculture and kind of like the progressive kind of technology arts and things like that. And, uh, you know, in the '80s, he called, uh, the, the PC the LSD of the '80s, you know? So he was kind of really shifting. And I kind of considered him, uh, somebody who just had, like, the innate ability to constantly reinvent himself. And of course, the psychedelics were, you know, were the core. I guess probably it was also probably a big part of how he could reinvent himself, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that, that's, that's true. I mean, well, and considering, I, you can relate with this, I think, too. And, you know, he didn't do his first psychedelic until he was 40. Wow. You were what, 30 or something? Yeah, right. Yeah. So it's a similar, like, you're well into your adult life, and you're, you're well-formed, you have an identity that's.

Jack Harrer's story too. Oh, is it? I didn't. Yeah, Jack Harrer was a Goldwater Republican, like, deep into his. I, I think he was getting divorced and met a, met a young G, and she turned him onto the weed, and all of a sudden he was like, "Hey, what the [ __ ] have I been missing?" Yeah. Still to this day, it's still the strongest weed I've ever had with Jack Harrer's train. Yeah. [ __ ] man, he was a cool guy, man. Bumped me out when he left. Yeah. And did good work.

So your dad probably would have had an amazing time with what's going on today in terms of virtual reality and the, the integration of cell phones into our life in an almost inescapable way.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny, like the VR thing. We were just, Jamie and I were just talking about it before we rolled tape. Um, you know, we were doing VR, like, yeah, you know, we were at the NASA Ames Research Center. People were like, Jaron Lanier and were like, really, uh, uh, you know, Jaron was kind of the Godfather of VR, and he was bringing kind of setups to our house in the early '90s. And like, really early, kind of almost 8-bit rudimentary VR, but it was there.

So what, like, what did that stuff look like? It kind of looked like, um, being inside of an Atari video game. So, real pixelated, pixelated, bit kind of clunky, block-like, but with full 3D dimensionality and stuff like that. He, it, Duncan's Oculus, the first one of the first versions that he had, which was kind of like that, real kind of real pixelated.

Was it similar to that? Very similar to that. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, Duncan and I, uh, we went on the show together, this thing called Gunter's Universe. It's a VR Chat Show. And, you know, this was recent. And, you know, it's still VR is still kind of in that, you know.

How does that work? Like, does someone have a, a VR headset on in another location, and then you guys both enter the same room? So you're in the room together? Yeah. Well, Duncan actually, we were in the same room together physically. We happened to be. But yeah, and then all of these people with different headsets on, and then everybody has a different avatar, and they're all in that room with you. They're all in in the room with us. Wow. Very cool. Very cool.

But like, in that one, um, I think the servers crashed. Too many people. Oh, how many people can it support? Uh, what we had, maybe like a thousand, I think. Oh, wow. But yeah, like to get beyond that, you need some. I mean, the avatars, you know, they're pretty involved. They're pretty, you know, they made me into this Hare Krishna monk or some [ __ ]. And Duncan was like this psychedelic clown. It was, it was pretty cool. But yeah, you know, my dad loved VR. We were, you know, he was, he'd love it. It'd be really cool. Yeah.

I've always thought about him and McKenna. McKenna, obviously, was a big futurist as well, and completely fascinated by, yeah, the, the, the possibilities and where technology was going. I would have loved to have seen those guys today, just take this all in and try to. Yeah. Amazing, right? Like Terence was writing about the connection between cocy and virtual reality, right? I mean, that's the subtext of not Food of the Gods, but of, um, Oneiroid Hallucinations? No, no, it wasn't that one. Um, I'm forgetting which one's, but it's called Mushrooms, Virtual Reality. And, you know, and he really saw the connection between. And, you know, there's no accident that the godfathers, the true visionaries of the Silicon Valley movement were kind of remnants from the '60s, you know?

Steve Jobs, Archaic Revival. Is that it? Archaic Revival. Yeah, that's right. Um, yeah, he also, Terence also had this idea that you would be able to recreate the DMT world in virtual reality, and you'd be able to experience what people see when they're on DMT without actually taking the drug. He believed that there was going to come a time when technology was so good, and the the images that you could create would be so elaborate, that you literally could create the DMT images. I kind of believe it. I'm kind of, I'm kind of leaning there right now myself, you know?

I mean, we kind of, uh, again, Duncan, you know, we kind of had this crackpot idea of taking a, uh, VR into the flotation tank, into the float tank, with this kind of in mind that by disassociating the body and kind of getting rid of, because, you know, what's the big DMT thing? It's a dissociative. You just leave Joe, you leave Zach, and you become, right, whatever. So by taking the VR mask, the headset, into the tank, maybe combining the two worlds, it could, I don't know. I'm still bullish on that. I think it could work. I think Terence is right. It sounds like it could be possible.

I know Crash from the Float Lab, excuse me, the Float Lab, Crash has this setup where he has developed this screen that has like the lowest amount of light that could be emitted to the point where you don't see the edges of the screen. So you literally, while you're in the tank, it's floating above your head. It's suspended above your head, and you see the image as if it's like, just the video, just floating in the sky. Oh, wow. And he believes that by separating your body from, uh, sensory input, like so you're not feeling your feet on the ground, you're not feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders, all that jazz, you're floating. He, he thinks you could take in data better. And so his idea was to show documentaries and, you know, instructionals and things along those lines, that you would learn quicker that way. Yeah.

Interesting, right? Because so much of your brain and like, your, the function of the cerebral cortex is to integrate the body. This, this movement, standing upright, you know, and the being muscular and moving around. And if you get rid of that, right, your brain kind of opens up and can take more in.

Well, the way I always describe it to people that they haven't used the tank, I was like, imagine if you were having a conversation, but next to you, people were screaming. If it was an important conversation, you'd want to get away from those people screaming because even though you think of it as a distraction, it's just input. It's just data that you have to consider, right? You know? Well, you also have to consider your butt on this chair, the room, the dimensions that you're calculating as you're moving your head around, social cues, language, all these different things are all being calculated, and they require resources, right? Well, when you are in that tank, there's none of that, and so your brain feels supercharged. It feels like you have all these resources have been opened up to you.

Yeah, and and I agree. And I think, you know, all of those resources, resources that you're speaking of, those are sort of the things that contribute to this idea of what we call the ego, you know? And the same thing with psychedelics, you know, they formulate the ego and our body and being separate. Oh my God, Joe, you're strong. I mean, you know, just all these kind of different things that create this image of who we think we are. Psychedelics, the tank, meditation, whatever method you want to pick, gets rid of that. Yeah. And purely gets into, you know, sand or something. Is.

Did you ever meet John Lilly? Oh, yeah. Spent a lot of time with John. Oh, wow. Yeah. I did a lot. Yeah. Did a lot of what I, a lot of good research with John. Research, air quotes, back in the day. Yeah, that guy, man. He's the, for people who don't know, we're talking about the guy who invented the sensory deprivation tank, and he was a pioneer in interspecies communication with dolphins. Yeah. Fascinating, fascinating guy. Fascinating guy.

And, you know, the last 20 years of his life, um, you know, the ketamine aspect was such a, a huge part of of what he was doing. And did he get too into it? The ketamine seems to be an addictive substance. Um, look, I love John. I did. I thought he was great. He was a good friend of my dad's, and and I certainly wouldn't, uh, say anything too negative about him. But yeah, he probably went over the line, man. Sweet Jesus.

Todd McCormack has a very funny story about. Do you know who Todd McCormack is? I don't know. Todd's one of the first guys to get arrested in California for medical marijuana. Where, um, he was arrested in like the early, the late '90s or early 2000s. And, um, he was one of the first people to find out that when and you are legally growing marijuana in California because of the law, the medical law, the federal government can still prosecute you. And when they prosecute you, you are in court, you are not allowed to even bring up the term medical marijuana because that's not a real term federally. So he had, yeah, was a railroad. He got railroaded and he went to jail.

Um, but anyway, point being, he was, uh, at John Lilly's. He actually still owns John Lilly's tank. Oh, wow. Yeah. And he was with John Lilly, and John Lilly, uh, invited him to get in the tank. And so Todd's about to go in the tank, and he says, "Do you want to do ketamine?" And and he's like, "I'm stepping into the tank." And he, he's like, uh, "Of course." You know, it's John Lilly, what am I gonna say? Right? So he hits him with a blast of intramuscular ketamine in his thigh. And then Todd starts freaking out. He's in the tank, and he's freaking out. So John gets in another tank next to him, blasts himself with ketamine, and goes and visits him.

What? Yeah. Go. Yeah, they found whatever, same [ __ ] dimension in the ketamine world. And it worked. Yes. It worked.

What does that mean? I don't know. Because I've never done ketamine. Do you have? Yeah, I've done it in the tank too. What? Okay. What is, what happens in there? Well, it's been a while since I've done it in the tank, and I'm not so sure I'd do it again. I don't feel the calling to do it again. Uh, but I'm glad I did it.

Um, God, man. Well, do you read that description of what Terence writes about ketamine? That it's, um, I'm not sure I'm going to get it exactly right, but ketamine is sort of like you're going inside of an office building, but it's stark and there's nothing in the office building. Something like that. Vacant. Yes.

Well, he believed, Terence believed that when you were experiencing like a, a heavy duty mushroom trip, you're not just experiencing your trip, but you're experiencing all the different people that have ever done mushrooms together tripping. Which is why a lot of people when they take psilocybin, particularly, they get a lot of Aztec and Mayan imagery, right? That's the Archaic Revival. What it is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, our, every single indigenous culture, you know, except for the Eskimos, because they couldn't grow [ __ ], but every single indigenous culture until very recently, psilocybin were a core part of their, of their methodology, of their tribal rituals, you know?

Yeah. The Inuit got [ __ ] huh? Just nothing up there, dude. You picked a bad spot. Picked a bad spot eating so much fish. But yeah, ketamine in the tank, though. I mean, it is, um, it's quite a journey. I, it's, you know, it's kind of like, how the best way I could explain it is if black, if you could see colors within blackness, if there are shades of black, if that makes any sense? Because it's pitch black in the tank, and your head is pitch black, but somehow you're getting sacred geometry and sort of kind of vision and kind of downloads that are in the color black, if that makes any sense at all.

Um, yeah, God. I mean, one of the, the great, uh, moments of my life, actually, was, uh, taking, I was took ketamine inside the tank. And, um, uh, this tank was right outside of my dad's kind of sliding glass window, uh, which went out into the lawn and his bedroom, uh, up in, up here in the, in the Hollywood Hills. And, you know, I went in, I took a little C. Ram Dass was visiting that day, visiting my dad. And, uh, it's the last time they ever saw each other. And he died just, my dad died just like a month afterwards. And I went inside the tank. The two of them were visiting right outside of the tank hatch, you know, how the hatch comes out. And they didn't know I was inside. And I was, I was lost in this khole, just completely [ __ ]. Just like, "Oh my God, what am I making to do?" And the only thing I knew how to do was like, "Get the [ __ ] out the khole." For people who don't know what we're talking about, is what people describe the ketamine experience when you're just really kind of stuck. Yeah. Stuck and like, kind of like code red, like eject, hit the eject button, you know? So I popped open the hatch, got out. And, you know, my dad and and Ram Dass are sitting as close as you and I right now are right now. And, you know, I'm self-referential enough to know, like, "Oh, wow, this is crazy. The two of them sitting here right now." I mean, I wasn't stupid. And you're naked, and you're tripping on K. Naked, tripping on ketamine. And everyone is completely silent, staring at each other. And Ram Dass just leans into me and goes, "Who are you now?" Whoa. And it was kind of like a defining moment on my life's journey. Changed my life, man. "Who are you now?" Yeah. And it's, it's kind of my mantra for for life now. But that, that was over 20 years ago now. Wow.

So did you feel like, was that the last time you did it in the tank? Uh, no. Oh, you're a glutton for punishment. Yeah. I, I did do it one other time after that. Yeah.

So what is it particularly about the khole? Like when you, when you go into what they call a khole? Like I've, I've heard it described by people who are like recreational users. I would, I wouldn't call them psychonauts. They're more like, you know, people go to raves and stuff. It's dark, man. It's dark. And I don't quite get it. Um, I don't get the, the ketamine in the public rave setting at all. Doesn't make sense to me. But, but, but, um, John loved it. Lilly, right? He did. Loved it. Ketamaniac. But why was that his thing? Like, what did, what was his rave about it? I mean, he just, oh God, I mean, well, to to understand that relationship is also to understand John a little bit, in the sense that, you know, I mean, he was the guy who said, you know, "My body is my laboratory." Right? You know, I mean, he was, you know, at one point, he gave himself a boob implant. You know, I mean, he was way out there.

And what did he use for the boob implant? I don't know. Like the ones that standard ones that women get. Yeah. Yeah. Like silicone or whatever. Did he give himself one? Only one? No, he had two. He had two. Really. So he was, you, there was some darkness involved there. And did he try to make them look like women's breasts? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If I recall. See, we can find a picture that. Yeah. See if we can.

Did, did he lose a bet? Or is it just like, "No, I wanted to have breast implants." I think it just was, "My body is my laboratory now." And sort of just that. I mean, at that time, I mean, now, what being gender fluid is such a, you know, we could talk about that, right? But I don't think that's really gender fluid. I, you know, that's one of the things about breast implants. It's like, at the end of the day, everyone knows what the [ __ ] that is. It's like, there's this, there's this weird sort of suspension of disbelief where we're looking at these water bags that are surgically stuffed under your skin, and we're just pretending this is like, these are sexual organs that are plump and and ripe on the vine. But it's not. It's, it's one of the weirder things about like being a tripper and deciding to do that. It's like, well, you're, you're violating a lot of like bizarre paradigms.

But I mean, he was also kind of but bending the paradigm and kind of bending the idea of like, you know, "You can be anything this time around. If I want, if I want to be half woman, I can be half woman. I can do that. I'm a doctor, and we're living in this golden age of being able to morph yourself into whatever the [ __ ] you can imagine kind of thing."

I wonder was early too with a lot of those guys that trip so much. It's like, I think, uh, at least for practical purposes, is we would all like to think that you would like to have a psychedelic experience and then come back down to earth and be able to, you know, make use of that in the real world. Like it can kind of benefit you in the real world. That's the idea, right? That's sort of the idea.

I mean, why should we impart those standards on anybody? I mean, you could do whatever you want. But I think some guys like Lilly is probably a prime example that people use as a, a point of reference, went so far. It's like, where's the baseline now? Like, there's no baseline for him anymore. He was just so out there. He was, he was.

And, yeah, I mean, I, I agree with you. And also, I mean, not to, um, you know, use you as like, uh, as a great model, but you're a great poster child for psychedelics, as my dad was, you know, is, you know, you well into your adult life, and it changed your consciousness, and you're able to apply it to your work, to what you do. And, you know, and it's become very fluid and very integrated. You don't hide it. You're, you're public about it. You can, you found a way to integrate it. I mean, that's the idea of spiritual practice, isn't it? It's about integration.

I think it's important to not hide it. And I think there's much more fear of repercussions than actual repercussions. You know, I think Terence McKenna had a, a great saying. He said, "Too many people are doing the man's work for the man." Right? He's like, "They don't really care if you're out doing mushrooms. It's not what they're trying to do. Is they're trying to stop large-scale sale and distribution of Schedule 1 drugs. They're not trying to stop some dude from doing mushrooms, right?" And look what we're seeing with microdosing right now in Silicon Valley. I mean, more and more people are kind of coming out of the closet. And, you know, supposedly, what the names that are kind of attached to the rumor mill of who's doing microdosing in Silicon Valley, it's huge. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's really, it's really insane. It's great. It is.

And I think as marijuana is now legal in the state, and it becomes legal in more and more states, and hopefully one day it'll be released from the Schedule 1, which is just so crazy that the DEA decided to. They mean, they got to the door this past summer. They did. And then they decided to pull away and just keep it at Schedule 1, which means there's no medical benefit, which is a lie.

Well, and that's especially [ __ ] and I'm kind of down on Obama for that. As much as I, parts of Obama, I really do admire, but that I think was an epic failure. And considering, you know, he just pardoned what, 100, 58 guys, most of them non-violent drug offenders. And the two are synonymous. You know, it's like, "Okay, you treated the symptom, man. That's great. I'm glad you released those guys from prison. And good for you. But treat the [ __ ] disease, man." Yeah. It's like, you got to treat. And now, as we're stepping into this, this dark age, I mean, I'm calling it a dark age. I mean, that's the Trump dark age. The Trump dark age, you know? It's not good for for these things.

Well, I don't know if it is or it isn't. But I, what the problem is, is that when you know something like, like if you and I know what's dangerous and what's not. Like meth, it's dangerous. Marijuana is not dangerous. So when, when you look at all the facts, and then you look at all the absolutely proven medical benefits, and then you see that they're denying the existence of these, okay, well, the people that are in control of locking people up and throwing them in jail, they're a bunch of liars because they're just ignoring the science. They're ignoring the research. And the research that's gone back to the 1970s that the Nixon administration paid for and then ignored. That's right. And now, I, I think the, the bar was even raised. Right? CBD is even, was gotten thrown into that really recently, which is just a really sneaky thing. Because CBD, much like hemp, has zero psychoactive properties. It's not doing anything to alter your consciousness in terms of getting you high. But it does amazing stuff for reducing inflammation for people that have arthritis. It's a, like a lifesaver.

So, you know, the only thing I could kind of in this thread is kind of think about and talk about is, okay, well, what is, you know, what's the reason behind this? I mean, if you kind of isolate big pharma and talk about that, and then, you know, I know the CBD industry, they're, you know, big pharma is the enemy, right? Yeah. But I also have to just kind of say that big pharma's main goal is to make money, you know, to create products that make money. It doesn't matter what the product is. If they told you that, you know, uh, plastic is going to alleviate cancer, you know, they would make a plastic pill. So what is, who is the enemy within this that is making things like CBD and Mar, like, is this just kind of left over from kind of baby boom paranoia, kind of narrow consciousness that we can't possibly allow these substances to to fix us, to help us? I mean, what is that? Because there's tremendous profit potential, so something isn't in alignment. I want to know where that, that profit can't be controlled. Like Viagra. Like it's hard, it's hard to make Viagra. If you and I wanted to go into the Viagra business, we would have to find out what the key ingredients are. We'd have to set up a plant and manufacturing. We wanted to go into the CBD business, we just have to grow some weed. Like, it's not hard at all. Okay? There's a big difference between extracting CBD, or especially medical marijuana, like you talked about, just THC, you know, like cooking it down to a candy form or a pill form. It's not hard at all, right? But I would like, GlaxoSmithKline, you can, you know, put a billion dollars into making the best CBD pill and putting it on the store of every Rite Aid, the shelf of every Rite Aid, and kind of get the propaganda out there about, you know, what it can do. Propaganda being a good thing, getting the marketing out there about all of its benefits. So what is stopping that? They just, well, they can't copyright it. They can't control it. It's not patentable. It's nature. It's, it would be like trying to patent oranges. Like, you really can't do it. It's not, it's not going to work. People are going to be able to grow oranges, right? And when it comes to CBD oil, anyone in this room can grow some marijuana and extract the CBD from it. It's, it's not incredibly difficult. It doesn't require massive resources like it would if you were going to make certain types of Alzheimer's medication that would be, or Parkinson's medication, I could say, that would be competing with the CBD oil. Those are very difficult to get. And if you can lock down the doctors and make sure that they only prescribe these pharmaceutical drugs that you guys can profit from, and you're the only ones that can make it, then you've got that business locked. I mean, there have been people that have done calculations about all of the different pharmaceutical drugs that would be useless or would be unnecessary, I should say, if marijuana was legal. And it's pretty staggering. It's a long list. It's a huge list. And the amount of profit that the people who make those pharmaceutical drugs would lose if marijuana became legal and people just started realizing, like, "Hey, you know, there's." And then there are other benefits. Like, there's no drugs that are like pharmaceutical drugs that also open you up, make you a nicer person, make you more friendly and communi, make me more contemplative of your existence, sort of give you a different perspective that's almost unattainable without those pharmaceuticals. It's not really, right? It's not. They don't have those additional benefits that the pot does. That's true. They don't. Which is often times why it's referred to as a war on consciousness.

Well, it is. It's got to be. I mean, that's absolutely what it is. Because it's not about drugs, because there's so many drugs that are legal. I mean, I mean, come on. We cannot say there's a war on drugs when we can go buy a bottle of whiskey at a prescription for oxycontin. It's insane. It's insane. Yeah. And in every restaurant, you could buy booze. Pretty much every restaurant. And, and I mean, look what the oxycontin epidemic has done to America. I mean, it's decimated it. It's created a whole generation of addicts. All of a sudden, you know, and it's, it's a dangerous drug. So it's a, it's got, it's a war on consciousness. Yeah. And it's really a war for profit, for controlling the ability to profit off of people altering their consciousness. Because people have been, like you said, other than people that live in frozen places where nothing grows, they've been trying to alter their consciousness forever. Okay.

But do you believe, uh, you, I don't know what your conspiracy level kind of meter is, but do you believe that, like, with all of this said, that there is still kind of a secret kind of conspiracy, government-sanctioned funnel that allows the illegal drug market to still flourish in some way in order to keep certain, you know, um, law enforcement, law enforcement in order, you know, maybe skimming off the top off of piles of cocaine that are coming from Bolivia, whatever the case may be? I mean, I don't know what a case study is, but, you know, I mean, there's still so many coming in. It's, it's certainly something to be considered. Were you, are you aware of that CIA drug plane that crashed? The the jet that had visited Guantanamo Bay a couple of times, and it crashed in Mexico with tons of cocaine on it? You never seen that? Jamie, see if you could pull that up. CIA plane crashes in Mexico with tons of cocaine. They overloaded their plane, and they had so much cocaine in it that they, uh, they had to, uh, refuel, and they tried to land in Mexico, and Mexico's like, "[ __ ] you. Here it is." CIA jet crashes with four tons of cocaine on board. Oh my God. I mean, what, what year is this? This is just last month? Huh? A couple months ago. September 16th. Oh, I missed that one. Well, this is a recent one, but it's happened a gang of times. Yeah. Okay. Here it is. Eight years ago. Saying eight years ago. Okay. Okay. It crashed in the middle of the jungle in Mexico's Yucatan, carrying four tons of cocaine. The event in the aftermath changed forever an official narrative of the War on Drugs that has for years been pushing the notion that there is no significant American involvement in the global drug trade and no American drug lords, right?

Okay. Well, you know that, do you know the Barry Seal story? Only a little bit. Yeah, Barry Seal, who used to fly drugs into Mena, Arkansas from South America. You'd go down to South America, fly drugs, and there's photos with him with all the CIA guys, and he'd be partying with Nora down in, um, Panama. Panama. And this guy was just bringing Coke into the United States. And then when he was scheduled to testify, they, uh, assassinated him in his car on the way to the court. Jesus Christ. He had, he had George Bush's number in his phone in his pocket. Oh my God. Yeah. As he was executed. So the whole thing is like, "Well, story's over, folks. Go back to sleep. Good night, everybody." You know.

Um, Johnny Carson. Um, the Rick Ross documentary. Yeah, I've had Rick on the podcast. You have? Yeah. Twice. What a story. Amazing story, man. I mean, that guy, drug kingpin in LA, selling drugs essentially to fund the war with the Contras and the Sandinistas, right? And they're funneling the product. Yeah. Amazing. He was, you know, making millions of dollars for the US government selling Coke. And, you know, Michael Ruppert, who was a good friend of mine, too, who, uh, killed himself a few years ago, who had also been on the podcast a couple of times. Michael, um, was the guy that exposed that. He was a Los Angeles, uh, detective. Oh, wow. And he was, uh, there's a very famous moment where Michael Ruppert is addressing the court, and he, he stands up in the middle of this all this stuff and and says and exposes this whole deal. He's like, "I have personally witnessed the CIA selling drugs in in in Central Los Angeles, in South Central Los Angeles." You ever seen that? God, I haven't seen that. No. See if you can find that, Jamie, because it's a [ __ ] crazy video to watch. Michael Ruppert exposes CIA selling drugs in court.

So why'd he kill himself? He was depressed. He had, you know, he had some pretty significant depression. Long time, uh, being on the the police force and all the the stuff that he had to deal with and trying to expose corruption. Listen to this, cuz Go full screen and crank up the volume. Has a former Los Angeles police narcotics detective that the agency has dealt drugs throughout this country for a long [Applause] time. This is, uh, allegations of CIA involvement in drug trafficking. This is on C-SPAN, and this is something completely unexpected. So when he stood up in front of these people and said that to the C. Pulled that up again so I can see the top of it. CIA Director John De. Right. Obviously, that is an answer for one of you. Now, can you please I refer all. Right now, can you please I refer direct. Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait a minute. Here. Wait a minute. If you don't like what's going on here, please leave now. No, no, no. Leave. No, no, no. Leave now because there are others who do want to hear what's going on in this room. Will you please take your seat? She's ineffective. Is there, is there another specific agency operations known as Adas, Pegasus, and Watchtower? I have Watchtower documents heavily redacted by the agency. I was personally exposed to CIA operations and recruited by CIA personnel who attempted to recruit me in the late '70s to become come involved in protecting agency drug operations in this country. I have been trying to get this out for 18 years, and I have the evidence. My question for you is very specific, sir. If, in the course of the IG's investigations and Fred Hitt's work, you come across evidence of severely criminal activity, let him speak. And it's classified, will you use that classification to hide the criminal activity, or will you tell the American people the truth? Yeah, it's pretty intense. Yeah. And he, you know, he went through a lot with this and with many other things, and just decided at one point in time he was suffering too much and took his own life. Oh, man. That's it's really intense.

And, and, you know, I, I try not to be a cynic. I mean, I'm, you know, pretty open-minded, you know, and hopeful guy. But with what we're kind of moving in towards with the next administration, I just, you know, about the, what's going on in the Philippines with, you know, that drug, the crazy drug policy, and what Trump called him, you know, when he was as president-elect. Yeah, they, they spoke, and he, to congratulate him for winning, for killing people. Congratulations. Yeah. And I guess Trump said on the call like that he was, "Congratulations on this drug policy. It seems to be working." Oh my God. Yeah. They're just assassinating people. They're just killing people. He's, he's talked pretty openly about it. How he's just assassinating drug, killing, and addicts, users. They're just killing drug addicts. That is the, that's that. Something that happens when you have so many people in one area. I mean, the Philippines is thousands of islands, for people who don't know, and they're just jammed up with people. And I think when you have a lot of crime, and you have a lot of people, you tend to value those people less. And it just becomes, especially when you're a dictator. I mean, essentially, that guy's a dictator. Yes, he is. I mean, whether he's elected or not, what he's doing is barbaric. [ __ ] assassinating people. Value people less, just based on kind of economic, on class. It's a kind of a class struggle. A class struggle. And also just the sheer volume of them. They're, they're not as valuable, you know, if there's a, it's like Norway, or smaller population of people. I think you just value the people more. I don't know why I use Norway as an example. Yeah. But no, it's, it's a good. I mean, all the Scandinavian countries are good.

Did you see the house we live in? What is that? The documentary War on Drugs documentary? No, I, that maybe I did. Was that about five years ago? Yeah, about four years ago. Seen so many of those things, I can't remember them all anymore. So many of them now. Um, it's a really good one. And it basically, like, it comes up, the, the final hypothesis is that the War on Drugs, it's a class war. You know, originally we thought it was a race war, and that's still partially true, you know, that. And, um, what's the guy, um, who, uh, the first drugs are from the, uh, the '40s and '50s? I'm forgetting his name. Adon or whatever. But who, um, you know, it was he turned marijuana hysteria into a Mexican hysteria that they were bringing it. And this is in the '30s and '40s, and created Reefer Madness. Then heroin was kind of pushed into the ghetto. And Rick Ross. Harry Anslinger. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. And then crack brought into the ghetto and stuff. But meth sort of becomes the exception because meth is primarily a white trailer park, sort of trashy kind of thing. And no, how racist you, I know how racist that was. Politically incorrect. But, but, uh, it's true though. It's true. And, and, and so we kind of, we do have a class struggle. Even then, that's a class issue as well. I mean, it just happens to be Caucasians. Yeah. But, exact. Poor people who really get into the meth. Poor people. Disenfranchised. Disenfranchised. Unspoken. Unheard of. You know? No, I think there definitely, you could say that that the, the War on Drugs is a class war. It's all. But it's also like, where can they extract the money? Where can they get the money? Well, the DEA has to, they have to keep people employed, you know? And the way to keep people employed is justify their job. The way they justify their job is to continue making arrests and show that you need to make arrests. And so you have to have laws in place, which is why, you know, that prison guards will will lobby to make sure that marijuana stays illegal and other drugs are strictly enforced, that the policies are strictly enforced, just so they can continue keeping their jobs, right? Yeah. Absolutely.

But when we still, like, what, OB, during the Obama administration, he did the, he took the, um, crack cocaine versus powder cocaine, you know, the the discrepancies from what, 20 to 1, and he got it down to whatever it is, 8 to 1, or something. It's still ridiculous. It's still insane. It's still insane. It's the same drug. It's the same drug. But it's it's purely based on class and race, you know? Yeah. And, and that is just, I mean, that, I mean, clearly now, you know, as we've seen it, and as the rhetoric that's been going on the last year during the election cycle, it's a much bigger problem than we thought it was. I mean, I always knew we always knew that this was a problem based on race and class and stuff. But now, straight, you know, out in the table, all the chips on black. And, you know, everybody's, you know, one of the things that I feel that's troubling about this election is that a lot of racists, like my friend Alonzo Bodden had a great quote. He said, "Not all Trump supporters are racists, but all racists are Trump supporters." That's right. It's that's the, like the Bill Maher quoted by Republicans. What he say? Um, "Not all Republicans are racists, but all racists are Republicans." Oh, that's not true though. There's a lot of racist Democrats. That's a bad quote. But it's a terrible quote. I, I don't, I, I mean, I mean, maybe there was racists that voted for Hillary. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But it's true about. It's more fun than it is real, you know, as a quote. Yeah. But it's just, it seems like they're out in the public now. They're out in the open. I mean, I've seen so many videos of people that are Trump supporters that are using the fact that Trump's in office now to like, to to say a bunch of real, really disgusting racist [ __ ] to go crazy. Yeah. And they kind of got a hall pass. You know, that's what, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah. I mean, it was like, obviously, you know, I know people, as you do, who voted for Trump, sadly I do. But whatever. You know, and not all Trump supporters are uneducated, racist, sort of whatever. Yeah. Some people did it for economics. Some people did it for the economics thing. But the fact that they gave those other people a hall pass to act like that and just, uh, just wait. You know, troubling. Really troubling.

Well, it is. It's going to be interesting to see this Jeff Sessions guy. What he decides to do, cuz the Attorney General elect, that guy that's coming in. Is that what you say about him? Attorney General elect. Like a president, call him that. Yes, sir. So he's, uh, he's a staunch marijuana hater. He's, uh, he's a [ __ ] die-hard marijuana is for bad people kind of guy. Yeah. Just got to get that guy high. That's all we have to do. I mean, I know he's probably 80, but it's not too late. Just get him. Somebody get him. Just give him a little hit. Don't [ __ ] him up. Just give him a little. Yeah, man. Just a little. Just. I'm, I'm with you. And come on, dude. You'll be fine. Relax. Let's go sit in the grass. Look up. Look at the sky. Does it look different? Right? The clouds? You ever look at them that way? That's a thin layer of gas that separates us from infinity. What's your favorite music, man? Come on. Do you like Pink Floyd? Do you like Pink Floyd? What'd you grow up on? Put these headphones on, dude. You like The Beatles? I'm sure you like The Beatles, right? Everyone does. He might not. He might be one of those weird, um, John Ashcroft guys that's really into gospel music. Oh, yeah. You remember that John Ashcroft song, "Let the Eagles Soar"? Like she's never soared before. I think, uh, he was one of the scariest guys that ever attained any sort of office or had any sort of power. Dude, Ashcroft. You remember what, what state was he from? Missouri, maybe? I think it was from Missouri. I don't know. He lost the election for the governorship to a dead man. Man, did he? Yes. That's how much people didn't like him. That's a dead guy beat him. And then Bush's. Do you remember when he put General? He put coverings over the naked statues. Yes. He covered up the boobs in the in the Rotunda. You know, so disturbed by their nakedness. Well, we survived that barely. I mean, we went to a war that's still going on because of that [ __ ] and the other [ __ ] that are in that administration. I mean, that administration was a dark, dark moment of spare these, uh, the alleged weapons of mass destruction that never existed, you know, all of it. And now Trump is talking to Carl Rove again. Oh, not to Dick Cheney. He's talking Dick Cheney's [ __ ] putting on his Darth Vader mask. [Music] Again. Yeah. We should use this moment to say, rest in peace, Carrie Fisher. Yeah. That was a hard [ __ ] man. 60. She was only 60. I know. Did she have a drug problem? Did she have an alcohol problem? Not current. She used to. Was it? Was a pill thing? Pills and Coke and, but yeah, she was, uh, I think she was sober in AA, the best I understand. The problem is the damage those goddamn things that they do to your cardiovascular system. Oh my God. Yeah. She, so devastating. No, she lived hard. She lived hard and I think suffered a lot of, yeah, physical problems as a result. Sad. 60. Oh my God. And George Michael, 53. That was even sadder. But you got to think that he probably went out in a.

wave of dicks, just, just a tsunami of him. He probably was just exhausted from orgies. Know, somehow, I just feel like he squeezed in a lot of life in 53 years. I think, I think he did too, but I mean, no pun intended, or pun intended, exactly. Yeah, George. Yeah, but with guys like that, I, I, I often wonder, you know, with being a, a songwriter or like a hit maker, is it, is it better to have had, you know, one hit or a few hits and then completely fade away? Not that he faded away into obscurity. Maybe he's not a good example. Or to not have it at all? Because I think George did kind of carry with him that, like, he was no longer current sort of thing.

Yeah, that's that weird thing where someone's not famous anymore, they're kind of a joke. Whereas a, a regular person's not a joke. Like, here's an example. Like, do you remember when Gary Coleman was a security guard? Yeah, he had to get a job, and it was a real problem because Gary Coleman was just trying to do his job and just trying to get paid so he can eat. You know, he was just trying to feed himself, like all the rest of us. And people would come up to him and take pictures of him and mock him, and they would use him as a joke. But you don't use a regular security guard as a joke. Like, if you see a regular security guard, you're like, "What's up, man? How you doing?" "Yeah, I'm going to go this building right here." "See your ID." "Cool." Everything's fine. You don't say, "Ah, you're a [ __ ] security guard, look at you." Right? But because he used to be some greater, you know. Yeah, yeah. Poor Gary Coleman, when he was a security guard. Yeah, that's so troubling.

And it, it kind of really plays into the whole idea of, of fame and perversion in America, and the things that we hold dear, the things that are valuable to us, kind of the American, the just disillusion of American values. Which I think that's the rise of Trump, to me, it's a values thing. I had a guy give me a hard time once about not about Fear Factor being canceled, and he was a, um, a [ __ ] a clerk at CVS. He was working at CVS. He's like, "What happened to his show?" And I said, "It was canceled." He goes, "No more show, huh?" Like, like all attitude. I'm like, "Dude, shows go away. Yeah, they, they go on and then they get canceled." He was, he was like shitting on me, but he was like, he was being aggressive about it. It was like, so weird. I was like, "What a, just bizarre detachment from real. You're working at [ __ ] CVS, dude. Like, I'm not giving you a hard time about being a CVS guy, right? But if, if I was the guy from Fear Factor, and then I was a CVS guy, how bad would you [ __ ] on me then? Cuz I'm just coming in as a guy buying some cough drops." That's right. Like, what a weird thing that we have this, this need to, when someone attains a very high status and then falls off of that, what we think, you know, we think they're down, we want to attack. It's like an animal thing. But in, in your case, best thing ever happened to you.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think he knew. You know, he probably didn't know that I had a stand-up career, that I was doing the UFC, or anything. He was just like, "Oh, you're [ __ ] losing now, huh? What is your show?" Like, crazy accent, all aggressive. I was like, "All right, dude." Yeah. I like that. Is so it was like, but it was so blatant, it was confusing. I was like, "Am I being punked?"

Yeah, and, and, and the idea of like, uh, uh, you know, winning. Just that idea. You got to win, man. Like, win. That, that, whatever that means. That's the Trump thing. That's the Trump thing. That's really disturbing. Is that that winning thing. Got to win. Got to win. And not this lack of pity. I mean, he's [ __ ] 70, man. There ain't a lot of time left, bro. I mean, if you're super lucky, you got 20 summers left. If you're super lucky. If everything goes great. And he's not that healthy. I don't think he's fat. He's fat. His chin just has like a very sloping slab of skin that's loosely attached to his neck that goes down to his collar bone. He doesn't look like a healthy 70-year-old. Yeah, I don't think so either. Sylvester Stallone is older than him. That's a good pie piece of, uh, yeah, there you go. Put it in perspective. Or Sean Connery. Both of them, right? Yeah. They're both older than him. Yeah.

But that whole idea, it's just that destruction of sort of like the things that we have instilled as being an important, like, you got to have a winning temperament. "I'm going to make America win again." Why is that the most important sort of attribute for someone to attain to? What does that even mean, "win"? And it's so attached to like a financial thing, right? Like, what kind of value system is that? Like, there are other ways to quote unquote win. It doesn't have to be about money.

Well, the problem is, it becomes attractive. You know, when you see someone who has a slick back hair in a private jet, and he takes a photo with his expensive Gucci shoes on his private jet, and it's on his Instagram, and then he's, you know, that all stuff becomes very attractive, and then people aspire to that. And then, you know, you get that Gordon Gekko, "Greed is good" thing. Yeah, yeah. You're right. Greed is good. But also, like, that level of aspiration, first of all, it's pretty much not attainable. I mean, well, it's attainable. Yeah, but one, what, two private jets, right? I mean, that is some people can do it. 1% of the 1% of the 1%. I mean, that level. You know, like the people who are following the, the those people on Instagram, on Instagram who have, you know, Instagram. Okay, grandpa. Oh, you [ __ ] kids in the Instagram. On that, the series of tubes. It's a series of tubes, God damn it. Right? The Facebook. Um, but I mean, if you're trying, you know, you want to climb a mountain. You want to climb Everest. If you want to be the Gordon Gekko guy, you want a private jet and the slick back hair and the. But it never ends. It does never end. It never ends.

Well, that's what's weird. When you see the really, really, really rich guys who are still smashing and just every day trying to attain new. And we always assume they achieve enlightenment. There's like this idea that, like, "Well, he's got $50 billion, why doesn't he just retire?" They never [ __ ] retire. Do you read Steve Jobs' last words? Have you ever read that? No. What are you saying? You might want to bring that up, Jamie. It's really, really [ __ ] cool. It's like he's, it's, it's his last, whatever. I mean, maybe not the last word he said to his wife or something, but it's kind of his last cohesive thought was like, "Look, I'm, you know, many people in the world view me as completely successful, and I've achieved so much in business, but, you know, my personal life and everything that he was lacking." You know, so he was just kind of coming clean about the imbalance of it all. He was kind of coming clean about the, you know, the levels of discontent, and the path of the heart, and the path of the soul, the path of the spirit. Because he was essentially, you know, a spiritual guy, and, you know, was a meditator, as practitioner of Zen, and into, you know, Neem Karoli Baba, and all sorts of things. But he got just so wrapped up in this vicious sort of cycle of having to produce product, product, product. And, you know, Apple, essentially, in his words, he made it into, it was a product company, and that's how we defined it, you know, and not even an idea company. It was a product company. And then products are based on having to have the version of the product over and over and over again. And he just got wrapped up in it, kind of lost his soul.

Isn't it interesting that like, Bill, uh, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were like the two competitors that we always thought of? And Bill Gates was thought to be the business guy, who's the cold hard. And he was, he was in a lot of ways, sure, back in the day. But if you look at him in his older years, he became very charitable, involved in a bunch of humanitarian efforts, and does a lot of amazing work, and is using his substantial wealth for a lot of good, and doesn't work anymore. He's just, he's done with all that. He's all just doing humanitarian work and helping people, which is kind of beautiful. And he became, you know, this different guy as he got older. He became wiser, and became much more involved in doing good and trying to help. Yes, and trying to use that immense amount of money that he acquired by being a ruthless sort of business gangster, but doing it for good, which is kind of really fascinating that he decided, "Hey, I'm going to step back here. I'm going to step back and think about what I'm doing and what what's really important to me in this last stage of life." Yeah.

And that's, you know, that's Karma Yoga. That's what Karma Yoga is. You know, about the, uh, you know, what a sadhu, the path of the sadhu in India, like traditionally, the path of the sadhu, um, you know, kind of historically and traditionally, it's, um, you know, the sadhu grows up, is born in India, and is raised into education, and then to become a householder. Householder meaning getting married and has kids, um, works, has a career, provides for the kids. And then in the last third of his life, becomes a sadhu. Drops all of it. Walks away. Kids are grown up, out of the house. Kind of leaves his wife, which is kind of a bummer for her. Bummer for her. But in, kind of a concept, maybe she was annoying. Maybe she wanted to keep purses and [ __ ] and he's like, "No, we have to meditate." "No, I'm shopping online." But then he takes off and he becomes a wandering mendicant in India. And that's the path of the sadhu. It's kind of broken into different phases. I don't know if that's the right way to do it either. Oh, I don't know. But it's fascinating. It's an interesting, it's an interesting way of, of, of looking at it that, okay, you've achieved a lot, you've accumulated a lot, and now I can go be of service.

Well, being of service is always a great idea. Um, wasn't the sadhus really into hash? Right? Isn't that the big thing? How many chillums you can smoke? It depends what, what lineage you belong to. I've sat with with some of them in the Naga Babas and at the Kumbh Melas out with them. It's wild, man. It is amazing how when people discuss religion, if they discuss Hinduism or, uh, the Sikhs, or any, any of the various strains of, of religions that are inexorably connected to psychedelics. Those psychedelics are rarely discussed. You know, I mean, if you go and you read like, The Vimanas, or read, um, any of the ancient Hindu texts, there's so many references to Soma, and so many references to what is obviously some sort of a psychoactive substance, you know. But when people talk about like Hinduism, and that, that hardly ever comes up. You talk about yogis and sadhus, it hardly ever comes up in the modern sort of take on it. Because there have been, uh, there's kind of a revival of within Hinduism of kind of an orthodox version of it, which is, you know, intoxicant-free. And that's sort of, that's kind of a modern revival within the Hindu tradition, you know. So they've kind of pushed that aside. But yeah, I mean, you know, what bong is the, it's the, it's like a, the powdery pot thing that you just kind of, you know, you swallow some of it. Yeah.

How does that, what is that stuff made with? It's, um, you take like the leaves and you grind up the leaves into like a fine powder. Then there's some kind of cooking process. And then, but within just the leaves, like the shake, all the scraps is enough. And you can extract the THC in some kind of cooking process, and you make it into a fine powder and just throw it down. Throw it down. And yeah, and it gets you pretty, pretty toasty. Yeah, yeah. Well, I know that they're also into the crystals, and they take the crystals and mash them up and sort of make like kind of a, a hash out of, uh, the, the, the scrape from the THC crystals. Uh, what's that, what is that called? I know what you're talking about. Yeah, we both know. Some sort of a mushy, sort of waxy type jazz. They take that. Yeah.

But I mean, again, back to our, the original, you know, thread of our conversation, it's like, every tradition has some kind of sacred, mind-altering sacrament. Vedic texts. Yeah. All these different. I mean, they had, look, I mean, they had to be. They, they obviously were aware of these substances. If they found these substances, there was no science back then. There was no real understanding of what's going on in the world. No real understanding of your body. But there was these, this access to this stuff. "Hey, man, you see those things that are growing on that cow [ __ ]? If you take that, you will meet God." Right? And then people did it, and did meet God. They're like, "Holy [ __ ], you're telling the truth." Like, there is, like, everybody wants. If you think about religions, if you think about the stories that people tell of the wise men and their, you know, they experience the burning bush, and God gives them the Ten Commandments, and all these different things that happen. They're all like these sort of beautiful stories. But your everyday life experience is so flat and [ __ ] boring. And then you do take these things, you go, "Well, this is just going to be just like everything else, just flat and boring and [ __ ]." And you take, take those mushrooms that you pluck off that cow [ __ ] and all of a sudden, it's exposed to you in some grand way. And then your whole life becomes about worshiping that. I mean, that's McKenna always argued that, um, all the ancient cattle worshipping, um, religions and cattle worshipping civilizations, like Chultul, and all these really old, old cultures, that that's what it was all about. That these people had found out that cows grow mushrooms on their [ __ ] and that they, they weren't able to differentiate between the, they thought it was coming out of the cow's body, that the cow would [ __ ] it out, and they didn't understand spores. So they thought it was inside the cow, and it would grow in the shed, and that was your, your portal to God. Wow. Wow.

You rarely hear that discussed. I mean, you always hear it discussed in terms of like an agricultural resource, that that's why they worship the cows, you know? That just makes me think, it goes back to that, you know, and I'm someone of a very spiritual person and have a practice and all that kind of stuff. But like, that just brings up the question to me, is like, did we invent God as a result of those experiences? Kind of like, this is a good Chris Ryan thing, if he was here, you know, kind of like in the hunter-gatherer kind of tribal, you know, when we were just starting, starting to learn to depict our experiences and talk about our experiences and creating like an oral history, and sort of like the first kind of existential dilemmas. And which many say came from, you know, psychedelic awareness from back in those days. So is that what led to the creation of God? And, you know, and to me, it doesn't make a difference being a believer of God. I, I don't really care if it's real or myth or not. It just, it works for me. But it does bank, it almost doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if it benefits you to believe in it. It benefits you.

People ask me that all the time, like, "Oh my God, you actually believe in flying monkeys and a blue guy playing a flute in the fields?" I've seen flying monkeys. Those people don't know [ __ ]. Those people talking [ __ ]. I've seen jokers giving me the finger. They're spinning in geometric patterns that were infinite. I've seen a lot of [ __ ] that's way more ridiculous than a guy with a harp. And not only have you seen it, and have I seen it, but I can tell everybody listening, hard to see it too. Yeah, they could see. You can see it if you have the courage and the substances. You can see it. Yes, you can. And it works on everybody. Except, I think DMT apparently doesn't work on everybody. There's like one out of a thousand where it like literally doesn't do [ __ ]. Jamie, Jamie doesn't get high off of edibles. This [ __ ] freak over here. You give Jamie like a super powerful edible, it barely does a goddamn thing to him. Yeah, it took like 1,200 milligrams before a concert and drove home two hours later. Jesus, man. Jesus. Because the edibles today, in my, he's a freak. He's a goddamn alien working the controls over there. I mean, for the first time in my life, I feel like kind of finally like an old hippie. Like, "Oh my God, the edibles when I was a kid, not like that today, man." No, that shit's insane. These [ __ ] things. This is a Jambo spray. I took 10 hits of this before, maybe 12, I forget, for a Sam Harris podcast. I was, I was like, I was skiing downhill. Hill. Yeah, straight with. I wasn't crashing, but I was figuring out how to barely stay up. The entire conversation, I'm like, "What in the [ __ ] have I done?" Like, I was so high. It was probably as high as I've ever been in my life.

Was that the last Sam Harris podcast? Long. Sam is a perfect guy to be that baked with, 'cause all you have to do is just wind him up and say something, and he's so eloquent that he can just continue to go on these amazing. As long as you can just keep up with what he's saying. So you have like good questions. He is, but I, and I, it's all respect to Sam, and I do think he is smarter than me in terms of IQ, but I do think he uses that intelligence to kind of, kind of shuck and drive a little bit. Shuck and drive? How so? Well, I'm not like, I mean, he's so smart and so articulate and obviously brilliant, um, and I have mad respect for him, but I just don't think he's right about what. Well, let's take Islam, for example. I mean, there's just so many things, but I mean, um, Islam and is sort of like the, the right to sort of like prepare for violence, um, and kind of self-defense. I, I don't really agree with that philosophy. Um, and I just, I don't agree with it because I think if you, it just invites the consciousness into your head to where you are going to have to use it. You know, that's interesting. Like, like the idea that self-defense and preparing for something sets up the stage to make something happen. Different than say, getting in the in the octagon and the MMA stuff. And, you know, well, that's more a competition. But you think like maybe a guy walks around with like a gun and a knife and protests. I think it invites the consciousness into, into, into the atmosphere, and it creates the energetic cycle of having to use that. And then Sam kind of throws out those statistics that, well, it's about the same odds as having a car crash as as you are going to experience some kind of act of violence in your life where you will need to learn how to, I don't know, do something, self-defend yourself. And I just, I don't, maybe you can throw out that math to me, and I think it depends on on certain socioeconomic conditions, but I just don't think that's true. I just don't want that consciousness in my life, and I don't think we should. We need to dissolve that consciousness.

Well, I certainly think you're free to not have those thoughts in your head and to choose to take the path of love and acceptance and just passivity and move through this life. But the reality of human beings is like, I've been unfortunately watching some videos online. I watched this video today of a guy kicking some lady down the stairs for no reason. He was behind her, and they're looking for him. They're trying to find him in the UK. They've got photos of him. But he just, she was walking in front of him, don't go on the stairs, and he walked up behind her and just, just a random person kicked her down this flight of stairs, and she's horribly injured. And, uh, I, I've seen a bunch of those. And things do happen. You can run into the people. Yes, they do. They do. Have you, you know, Steven Pinker's Angels? Right? You know, we are. Yes, those things happen. And look around the world today, and flip on the news, and it's highly disturbing. But we are living in the most peaceful time, amazing, of our, of our existence. You know, if you were a, a 30-year-old man in the year 1500, your most, the the highest cause of death was not disease or infection. It was an act of violence. Right? You were going to be raping and pillaging, and you just had to defend your food supply for crying out loud. And we have come to some kind of understanding, some kind of collective consciousness that has morphed itself together in the form of cooperation. We have to share. And there's so many of us now, and it's getting more of us. The pie, it's getting smaller. We have to cooperate.

I agree with you. But what do you do with those guys that kick women down flights of stairs like that? Um, you, I mean, I guess there is some sort of form of, um, you, you know, I guess punishment. And we do have a, we live in a society where law and order is maybe a necessary evil. And I, I, you know, and I'm sure there's some kind of like incarceration. But ultimately, you know, you got to love them. You got to have compassion for them. And you've got to just teach them with compassion that their action was wrong. "Don't kick the lady down the stairs, man. Here's why you shouldn't do that. And I love you, and it's going to be okay." People right now are up in arms, they want to kick your ass. Cool. There's a bunch of people right now in Nebraska. They like [ __ ] hippie [ __ ] Tim L, [ __ ] L's kid. That's [ __ ] kick his ass. Kick his ass. C-bass. But, you know, and on a, on a different, you know, it's a beautiful thought. It is. There is, there's some people that you can run into, though, unfortunately. You're better off. It's like that expression about having a gun. You're better off having it and not needing it, than needing it and not having it. Yeah.

I don't agree. So I get it. I get it. And I, I understand the argument, you know, about that guy who was, was it in, um, I think it was in Minnesota. He was running around stabbing people, and then some guy who was a concealed carry permit holder, uh, pulled out his gun, shot the guy, and killed him. And it was, uh, one of those things that people point to, like, "Hey, this guy was a competition shooter, concealed carry permit, and he saved people's lives because this guy was killing a bunch of people." Yeah, but those case studies compared to the case studies that go wrong. I don't know what they are. I don't have the metrics, but I bet they're what, 10 to one, 20 to one? Sure. Because it's, it's way easier to get a gun. Just to just to go and get a gun. Than it is to become a competitive shooter. Like, who, what that guy was, was the rarest of the rare. Someone's not just competent with a firearm, but an expert level. Here he is, man, who shot Crossroads Mall terrorist is USPSA competitor, three-gun shooter. Yeah. So this guy is just a badass gun carrier. And that's fine. But that is the rarest. Except, I'm positive of it, right? But it is real, right? Sure. So can it, can it happen? So he was right. So his thought was, "One day, if I am carrying a gun, I'll be able to save people's lives." That's, that's, that's fine. And I, and protect myself. Okay, I get that. But the hundreds of others that go along that are just somehow, there's, there's so many loopholes in the system of crazy people who get guns and go to Sandy Hook. And it's, it's, it's, well, that's a terrible example. It's just, it's not worth it. Or illegally acquired guns. That's a gun that was acquired by a person who was mentally ill, and his parents didn't protect the guns. Yeah, that's that's a different story. But yeah, you're right. You know, I just think that the, the risk versus reward, it's just, it's just far too unbalanced.

Well, it's definitely, the ability to just shoot someone and kill someone by pulling that little tiny muscle on your finger is kind of crazy. I mean, it's the, the, the amount of power that you have in doing so. It's, it's a glitch in the Matrix. I mean, I hate using Matrix analogies, but it is, it's a glitch in the Matrix, man. And it just, it plays into kind of every fallacy of the human condition, you know? And it's, it's like, why, how did we let that happen? How did we make it so easy to take someone else's life?

So what do you, if say, if I make Zack Snyder the president of the United States, does the, does Zack Snyder say, "No more military"? Does Zack Snyder say, "Police officers can't have guns"? We all need love. Everybody gets their guns taken away. Like, what do you, how do you deal with everything? Yeah, I mean, I mean, and it's not something that you can just, yeah, it's not something that you can just do overnight. I'm not, I'm not, you know, naive enough or, you know, stoned enough or meditate enough to think that that is. Maybe we should get high. Maybe rethink it about in a different way. And there, and there are already 300 million guns in America. I think there's more. I think there are more guns in America than there are human beings. And here's what's crazy. It's not like we're like, "Well, we're good." No, we're [ __ ] making guns like crazy. People are, as we're sitting here, they chunk, [ __ ], chunk, [ __ ], chunk. Machines are turning out guns. But yes, if Zack becomes president, I know it's highly unpopular and people will get pissed at me, but we stop the sale of all. And unless you have very specific kind of UK style hunting exceptions. Do you eat meat? I do. You do? I do. I, I didn't for a while, but I do again. Why did you start again? Um, I got sick. Um, not from not eating meat. I just, um, I, I got this terrible flu, and it was just really, really sick, and just like, you know, not a cold. I mean, it was like, ah, terrible flu. And all I could think about was I wanted a turkey sandwich.

Going to make feel turkeys? Huh? I was like, "[ __ ] it," and I had a turkey sandwich, and and I felt better. And I never went back. Wow. Eat everything. Burgers, everything. The whole deal. Yeah. I kind of do. Do you eat factory-farmed food? I really, really, really, really try not to. But you do. I do. I mean, I can't say that I don't. But I don't. I mean, in the most dire emergency, like if you're super hungry, if I'm super hungry, you know what I do? S-like you're dying. You know what I do is, um, and I have to. It's kind of a, a loose in the airport. I [ __ ] up in the airport. Airport. Yeah. I'm in the airport, and I'm just like, I'm, whatever. I always get to the airport way too early because I just, I like being in the airport early. I like to be in that, it's like a neutral zone between there and here, and just, I love it. I love hanging out at the airport. And I get there, I'm hungry, and I'm just, I give in. I'm like, "[ __ ] man." That I used to [ __ ] up at the airport all the time with blueberry muffins and chocolate croissants. That was my [ __ ]. Yeah. I'm a sucker for the Egg McMuffin. Those are good. Sadly, those are good. They taste good. It's not the worst thing in the world for you, quite honestly. For the, the ham, definitely factory farm. Yeah. It's not the worst thing in the world for you. But McDonald's is. Yeah. Is the devil. But what am I going to do? Well, it's, I, I do the best I can. I really. Yeah. It's a weird world.

Well, a lot of vegans would disagree with that. They would say, "Well, you're definitely not doing the best you can if you're out there eating Egg McMuffins." That's true. That's not the best you can. That's true. Fair, fair enough. Oh God, no. Me, vegans, and I argue a lot. Do they? Do you? Yeah, I argue with vegans a lot on the, on the social media. Um, well, yeah, and, and it's weird because you're kind of philosophically, I'm on their side. I'm, I'm with you philosophically, but not in practice. I, I just, it doesn't feel, I'm not quite ready for that. And I have to admit, I'm just not. You know, I am where I am. But what I argue with them about is, um, and it's a, it's a constant social media argument, is that we are omnivores. We are. Yeah, we definitely are omnivores. We eat what's around us. Yeah, we always have. There's a way that you can eat cruelty-free meat. But there's not a way, there's not a way where you could have cruelty-free mass consumption. The, the real problem is cities like, no, you know, you unless you have a co-op where you guys are growing. What was the second part? Sorry, I didn't, I didn't understand. It's not, you can eat cruelty-free, but you can't, what, in a mass consumption like environment? Like 7 million people living in Manhattan? Like, good luck getting cruelty-free meat to all seven million people. Cowspiracy, inside that area. Yeah, you know, it's just, you have to bring it. I mean, what we've done over the last 150 years is move completely away from agriculture in, in these cities, and and drive things in in trucks. Have you ever seen some of the old models of what they were, the way when they were planning cities like in the early 1800s, when they were designing New York and a couple other cities, they had set up areas for agriculture, areas for, you know, livestock, and they had them in cities. And so they, they didn't have this notion that we have now that everything would be driven in in trucks. Because they didn't have trucks. So when they had trucks, you know, when they had cities in the 1700s and and later, there there was no way to get all that food to millions and millions of people. So they literally had to grow stuff in cities, which is a way better way to do it. Yeah. And, you know, Michael Pollan, if you read any of his stuff, you know, yeah, yeah. Um, he's just, he's great. Um, he's also getting into psychedelics now, which is pretty cool. Just recently. Yeah, yeah. He's doing some really interesting. Who, a wonderful person. Popped him into the Matrix? I don't know. But I'm in, I'm in touch with him and going to do a podcast with him. We'll figure it out. But, um, yeah, I mean, his whole kind of, you know, in the omnivore dilemma, some of those other books, like the, the biggest problem with our food supply is that we have lost our connection to how food got there. Up until 100, 100, maybe 12, at the turn of the century, the 19th and 20th Century, everybody had a relationship with their food. They knew, you went to the produce person. It didn't come from a shelf in a box, right? You know, you had, you knew where it was sourced, and you, it was kind. And if you ate meat, you kind of, you saw the bloodiness, and you just saw, like, even if you didn't kill it and slaughter it and butcher it, you, you knew, you know, it wasn't this pre-packaged thing that just comes from magic, the bacon fairy, you know? Right. And that, that's our problem. Right. Food comes from a shelf. Nobody understands. I think there's a giant disconnect with. And it's, it's so many people. The problem is like, it used to be that a few people were disconnected, and most people were connected. And now it's completely turned on its head. And when you have 20 million people in Los Angeles, and what percentage of the 20 million people in Los Angeles are acquire their own food from either growing plants or hunting their food? Almost none. Like 0.111, whatever. Kind of crazy. When you consider that it's an essential part of being a person is consuming food. But there's, there's also this beautiful feeling that you get. And and this is vegans have this feeling as well, when you grow your own food, and you grow like food in a garden, and you pick your salad, and you cut up your cucumbers, like this all came from the ground right out there. But there was a really interesting article that was written by a vegan, um, that was essentially saying there are no vegetarians. And that the only way is like, it is actually impossible to be a vegetarian. Not not meaning that it's impossible for you to live and eat vegetables, but those vegetables need dead animals in order to be alive. And that animals are consumed by plants, and that is what fertilizer is all about. And whether or not it's, I thought fertilizer was just the poop. No, no, no. There's a lot of it is actually decaying matter. And in order to be healthy, in particular, like what we're doing, most of you know about Fritz Haber. Do you know what the Haber process is? I don't know. In, uh, during World War I, there was this German scientist named Fritz Haber, and he came up with the Haber process of extracting nitrogen from the air. Most people think of the air as being oxygen, right? Air is 78% I think nitrogen, right? And you can extract that nitrogen from the air and use it as fertilizer. And so because of Fritz Haber, they have been able to extract this nitrogen and use it to fertilize plants. Because before they used like emulsified fish, and, you know, and fish was like a big one, like dead fish and fish bones and things along those lines. Because that is when it decays and breaks down, that is the food for these plants. Okay.

So with a vegan, would the vegans oppose this? In the sense that like, I don't think they're opposing it. They're not. Okay. No, it's just, I think it's just what he wrote. He, the guy who wrote it was a vegan, but essentially he was saying that there's this massive cycle of life. And even pointed to Michael Pollan's work, um, because Pollan has written, um, about the emerging science of sentient plant life. And that he believes that what's going on with plants is very similar to what's going on with like, maybe our understanding of a lot of different things. It's like, as our, uh, understanding expands, we have to sort of reclassify what we think those things are. Like, for the longest time, they thought that fish couldn't feel pain, right? And that was, "Oh, don't worry about it, fish can't feel pain." And now they're saying, "Well, we're pretty sure they can." Yeah, yeah. We, we have a different understanding of what pain is to them. It might be a different sensation, but there's very clearly some, uh, alarms that are going off. There's very clearly some sort of a reaction. That same can be pointed out for plants. Like plants, not only do they have a reaction, but plants, when you play the sound of caterpillars chewing leaves, certain plants, like the acacia tree, um, has the ability when it hears leaves being chewed, it changes the taste of the leaves. It extracts some sort of a chemical, wow. And that, uh, that chemical, um, does something to the taste of plants that makes them so inedible that some animals have starved to death because upwind, there were animals that were chewing plants. That sound came downwind through either smell or some, some sort of a communication thing that's going on with the mycelium and with the, the the root structure, and the plants downwind had changed their taste, and the animals wouldn't eat them anymore, and they were starving. Wow.

That's far out, man. That just kind of makes me think, like, what's going to be the next sort of like, vegan movement? Maybe some kind of Ayahuasca ceremony in the middle of like a, of a garden or like an agricultural thing where we're just, we're listening for the, and trying to make, you know, it's, we peace because we have to make peace with that everything needs everything else in order to to make it. That's, I think it's a, like a suffering and, uh, a respect thing, right? And then, then you also have to consider, if plants are sentient life forms, how [ __ ] up is it to have these gigantic large-scale agriculture setups where you, you are completely unnaturally changing the landscape in order to grow corn, or in order to grow lettuce or strawberries? Like, that is not normal. Like, it's not normal to have 7,000 acres of corn, right? Like, and just corn all in a neat row that you could see from space. And it's, and it's destroying the soil too. Yeah, it's completely destroying the soil.

But like with this idea of like having, you said respect and and pain, kind of getting into that idea, like do you think, um, and I'm, my opinion is results may vary, and I'm not so sure, but if everybody had the data and saw the data about factory farming, for instance, that they would change and thus act accordingly and not eat that [ __ ] anymore? Definitely not everybody. Some people don't give a [ __ ]. I, I think some people just don't give a [ __ ]. And those Gordon Gekko type dudes, the slick back hair, that are like, "[ __ ] it, I'm here to win. Give me that burger." CHP, CHP, chump. CHP, CHP.

Well, I've thought about myself. I mean, I've seen every one of those movies. I've read every book, you know, and I, I'll have an Egg McMuffin from time to time, and I'm like, "What is wrong with me?" Like, is there something on my sociopath? Just easy to do. 'Cause it's easy to do. If, if somebody said, "Oh, you're hungry? Why don't you shoot that pig in the head and, uh, cut off a leg and throw it on the smoker?" Well, then you would have a real issue. Be like, "I don't want to do that." Oh, okay. Well, why don't you pull those beets out of the ground? Well, if you put on these headphones, you can hear the beet scream for their parents like a [ __ ]. Oh, [ __ ]. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. But I think there's just something about plausible deniability that's kind of hardwired into us in all aspects of our life, not just food, but war and politics and what money and greed and oil and everything that's what it takes to get oil to this damn country and everything that goes on to fill up our car, you know what I mean?

Oh my God. Plausible deniability is definitely a way to look at it. The extreme ability to detach ourselves from the consequences of our actions, you know, because it's convenient in the moment. That's right. Yeah. And convenient in the moment to just buy that quarter pounder with cheese, not think about it that it's a ground animal burger, you know? That's right. Yeah. And I, you know, and you know, it's only going to cost me two bucks. Yeah. And you get it like that, which is kind of crazy. I mean, right? It really is amazing if it wasn't connected to such horrific crimes against nature. It's amazing. Oh, it's amazing that you could just go. So I mean, what a incredible system they've developed. And and outside of food, just what, you know, the, the economic factors for how convenience equals pleasure equals like an economic value that is usually low. How that has all sort of worked together to kind of create this, this system that we're living in now. And we have this again, this plausible deniability kind of hardwired thing to ignore it. Like Walmart's a great example. I mean, you know, the, the sort of this disenfranchised middle of the country, you know, and they did lose their jobs, and that area of the country is decimated. But they all shop up at Walmart. And that's the, that's part of what the problem, part of what the problem is. But it's cheap, it's convenient. You're still going. And it's like, well, what's it going to be? You know, pick a horse. Hard.

What's interesting is that this is all really recent, right? I mean, this is all from the Industrial Revolution on. This is all this last couple of hundred years of of civilization where we've sort of entered into this wage existence, you know, where people are living this way and buying this horrible [ __ ] factory-produced food. And even more, um, recent that I mean, yes, it's all can be traced back to post-industrial revolution stuff, but even just like the massive hyper-consumerism that's only like really taken off since the mid-90s. Yeah, yeah. There's a cool little movie out called The Minimalists. I mean, after a while, I, I kind of, uh, you know, I got it and I didn't finish the whole thing, but the first hour is fascinating. It's about these guys, they wrote a book called The Minimalists, and about, um, you know, they were all kind of corporate ladder, kind of American successful guys, and just consuming, consuming, buying [ __ ], and buying [ __ ], and buying [ __ ]. Then all of a sudden, they just kind of had the kind of big, kind of cliché awakening, like, "Oh my God, maybe I don't need all this [ __ ]." But the data that they present from what's happened in the mid-90s on, sort of as a result of of the internet boom with instant gratification, one-click shopping, and disassociation of just the accumulation of stuff. And we live in, um, you know, we live even bigger houses now than we've ever lived, square footage wise. They've never been so big before. And yet, um, you know, they've put all these heat maps on, uh, they did the study where they put heat maps on these homes to see where people were living in the homes, hanging out. And like the average family in like their huge kind of McMansion or something only uses like 40% of the house. Yeah, that makes sense. And also has a self-storage unit to go with it somewhere else, you know? It's just this this endless kind of relationship we have with it.

So I watched Hoarders the other night. Oh my. And there was some dude bought two houses next to his house 'cause he had so much [ __ ] my. And he had to move the [ __ ] to other houses. I was like, it was [ __ ] crazy. Hoarders is gnarly. Oh, but this is a weird hoarder because it was a guy who had some money. Yeah, he bought two houses. Yeah, it wasn't like a hoarder like some poor person that was going to yard sales and buying used clothes and then putting them in bags in their house and stacking them up to the ceiling with newspapers and stuff. This was a guy who had these collectibles, and he was a neurosurgeon, which is really, really interesting. Yeah, he lives in Vegas, and he wanted to be known for his collection. He had crazy stuff like he had, uh, a scale.

model of one of the challengers, uh, or one of the space shuttles, rather. He had, um, one of the test lunar modules, uh, that, uh, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong apparently had used in testing and in, in preparation for the Apollo missions. And he had a bunch of crazy [ __ ] all over his house. But he had three houses filled with this stuff. The courtyards and all around his pool was stacked up with [ __ ].

Oh man, that's so insane. It's just, you know, escapism. This need to sort of like pacify our existence here. I just, you know, as we kind of evolve and kind of grow into the future, it just seems like so few people can truly be comfortable in their own skin and just be and be present and be comfortable and content. Content. Like we're constantly inventing new ways to escape, to disassociate, to take, get out of the moment. What do you think that is? What do you think is so compelling to us about the constant accumulation of material possessions and this whole "greed is good" sort of mentality and moving up the corporate ladder without any sort of appreciation or acceptance in the fact that we're these finite life forms clinging to a spinning orb, hurling through infinity? All those inevitable and inescapable realities. I mean, we, we, we look at them every day. We look up. I mean, that is undeniable that you are looking up as you leave your house and get to your car. You have infinity above your head. You do, and you don't look at it. I mean, what, what's going on with us?

I think, um, you were born this, this thing that we've kind of created, this construct that we call society. We're automatically born into a bad hand, and I think it's, it's completely bogus. You're dealt a bad hand at birth. It doesn't even matter if you're born into privilege. I mean, sure, that's great if you're born into privilege versus the slums of Mumbai, that's definitely better. Yeah, that's definitely better. I mean, of course, I'm not going to, if you're balling in Beverly Hills, I'm not, it's way better than Liberia. Yeah, I mean, or Syria. Got a B convertible, dude, you're doing way better than someone in Syria with no feet. Mmm, no, no question. But like, you know, you're dealt this bad hand of like, you know, being alive is hard, right? You know, you, you're, you're born. You're going to go into this building from ages, what, when do you go to school? Ages four, is that about right? Some people go to preschool at four, kindergarten is five, first grade six. From four to eighteen, you're going to go into this big cement building to be taught these certain subjects in this certain order. Then you're going to leave that cement building, go to another one that's even more expensive, and then you're going to leave that and you're going to get some kind of employment thing, which exists pretty much from nine to five for most people, unless you're fortunate or clever enough to kind of exist outside of that framework and create your own reality. But most people are going to work some kind of structured life. And I just, I think it's hard. I think it's just hard to be alive.

It definitely is. Well, it's not harder than it's ever been. It's easier than it's ever been, right? I mean, it's, it's more safe than it's ever, ever been. Safer. More access to information than ever before. Yes. But, you know, why I think it is, in some aspects, it's harder because, um, well, I, yeah, I don't know if, if that's true because back in olden times, you did have to, uh, you know, kind of compete against each other for survival. But I think it could be argued that it's harder because this constant sort of, you know, onslaught of media and comparing ourselves to each other and to feel insecure if you don't look like that, if you don't look like this, if you don't have that, something's wrong with you. If you can't afford to buy that, you're not doing well. You're [ __ ] up, man. If you can't afford to buy that, or if you don't look like that. Oh my God, I'm sorry, nobody's ever going to want to [ __ ] you. That's really sad. No one's going to want to [ __ ] you if you don't have the stuff. That's awful. You have to have all the stuff. You got to have all the stuff. And it's a terrible thing to, to say to teach our children, you know.

Well, so I think it's hard to be alive. It is, in a sense. It's very tricky. And it's also, I think we are being raised by babies. We, I really do think that.

What do you mean? Well, I have children, and I kind of, I kind of get it now in a sense that before I had children, I used to think of people as being sort of static. Obviously, I was younger, and when you, especially when you're real young, when you're like twenty or something like that, you don't really take into consideration that the people around you used to be your age. You kind of know it in an abstract sort of a sense. But once you actually have a baby, and then like five years later, the baby's talking to you and you're having conversations, you're like, "Oh, you're [ __ ] learning [ __ ] now." And then ten years later, the baby's in high school, and you're like, "Oh, Jesus Christ, you're almost a man." And then, well, you realize that, oh, we are all babies who had babies, and you raise those babies, and then they become adults and have babies of their own. But no, there are no grown-ups. It's [ __ ]. It doesn't exist. Like when you're a kid and you're sad, you go, "Oh, one day I'm going to be a grownup and all this is going to make sense." But it never, that day never comes. You, you get older, but you're a baby still. You're just an old baby. You're an old baby with a car and [ __ ] credit card debt. And then you have a baby, and then that baby grows up. Well, I'm smarter than my dad. He's a [ __ ] idiot. And he's like, "You know that dad, my dad didn't know [ __ ]. He didn't even have the internet." That's so funny.

And, you know, I think that's a, and I'm not the first to say it, but that's such a, a huge thing with Trump. He, he acts like a seven-year-old. Yeah. It's like, what does a seven-year-old do? Like, you get your mug, Rogan, you know, you write your name all over [ __ ] everything. That's so true. That's so true. He puts his [ __ ] name on everything. He's probably got it on his socks and his underwear on the band. It probably says Trump. Oh my God. Right. My Trump underwear. Have you ever stayed at a Trump Hotel? Yes. Yeah. I, I did in New York. And you know that, um, the, the toilet paper, um, like the little sticker they put on it, that's in Trump insignia on the damn toilet paper. Right. But it is called the Trump Hotel. I mean, if you go to the Renaissance, it says Renaissance. But I, it's, it's much more ironic though with the Trump thing, because it's a guy's name who's alive and now happens to be president. Well, and, and he says it's about, it's a symbol of quality around the world, or whatever that you see that. But Trump card, Trump card. But I think it's [ __ ]. I think he's just a seven-year-old who likes to write his name on all this [ __ ].

Well, the evidence in is and how he tweets to people, you know, and he gets mad and tweets about [ __ ] and responds to people and argues with people. I mean, you tweet on him? No, no. I don't tweet. I hardly tweet anybody. You don't get into that [ __ ]? I def, I don't want, I definitely don't get into like those kind of tweet battles. The internet. But I just think as I've gotten older and had some good experiences and bad experiences online, yeah, I've realized that you can, like you were talking about, like you go out and you seek bad things. If you have this in your mind that you're going to go out and you're going to be attacked, so I'm going to wear a gun, I'm going to have a knife, and I'm going to wear a bulletproof vest and all these different things. Yep. You can also seek negative interaction online. You can go look for it. When you find it, you could react to it, and that begets more of it. And I think that you're far better off just choosing the people that you interact with in actual real life. And then when I look at things online, I'm just observing. I, I very rarely interact. If I do, it's very friendly. And I, I, I limit myself almost entirely to friendly interactions. Cool. And anything that's negative, I just, you stay away. It's not worth it. There's nothing to be gained. If you, if you, if you get an insult war with somebody and you make them feel bad, like, do you, what do you get out of that? Unless it's funny. What do you get out of that? Unless it's tongue in cheek and everybody's having a good time. Yeah.

Well, and, and also, you know, what you can do in 140 characters is absolutely ridiculous. It's insane. You can't get into a meaningful, thoughtful debate in 140 characters. No, but people seek it out. They, they seek these debates out. And they ask you like, what they think are hard-hitting questions. Like, go [ __ ] yourself. Not get involved in this 140 character thing. It's like, it's silly. Just, I, the reason I, I asked because, um, you know, Duncan's starting to kind of tweet it, tweet at Trump a little bit. And I just, does he? What does he say? Just kind of wacky [ __ ] like tweets at him. I'm going to be the, the minister of, you know, whatever you got. Know, we got, we got to find some of them. They're, they're kind of funny. But because I think Trump sometimes, he does read his, his tweet. Reads his tweet. He reads his tweets. He reads his tweets. Yeah, he gets in there. I guarantee he gets in there. You ever see the, the debate that he had back and forth with John Stewart? Oh, yeah. Of course. I mean, that was [ __ ] hilarious. And John Stewart has put it into his act now. So funny. He tweets him at 1:30 in the morning. Little John Stewart is a [ __ ] and would be hopeless in a debate with me. Like, can you imagine that? He actually did that. This is the guy that's the president now. God. So, so great. Yeah.

But I mean, it says so much about the personality of someone. And I'm, I, I don't get in Twitter wars because I, I don't really tweet all that much. But I get in Facebook wars. Do you Facebook? I do. And I'm just, uh, horribly impulsive about it. Horribly impulsive. To a false. Like, what kind of stuff do you get invol? You were saying you have issues with vegans? Is that where you get into it? Yeah, I mean, there's, there's some vegan stuff. I mean, a lot of politics stuff. I mean, over the election cycle. And, and I'm, um, you know, a little quick on the trigger to like, because, you know, with online, so and social media, it's just, you push a button and like, you know, calling people morons and stuff. All that just far too quickly before taking a breath, stepping back and go, "Maybe I shouldn't call you a [ __ ]. That's probably not the best debate tactic."

Well, there's no benefit in it. You don't, even if you make them feel bad that they [ __ ] and you get your rocks off in some way. And I've done it. I absolutely have done it in the past. But I don't, I try very hard not to engage in that kind of thinking anymore because I don't think all it does. It also, when you get into conflicts with people, negative conflicts create these, uh, centers of attention. And those conflicts become these centers of attention. And ultimately, nothing happens in them. They just sort of distract you like a little vortex of [ __ ]. And I think, and as I've gotten older and started analyzing my own life and and happiness and productivity and when I'm my most creative is when I'm not engaging in any of that. Like the least I am involved in the negativity and conflicts and debates and going back and forth and trying to make people feel bad and all that stupid [ __ ] that people get wrapped up in. You [ __ ] idiot. You know, all that kind of stupid stuff. The more the least I do that, the more it frees up my resources and it frees up my mind. And I don't have this, like, I think anytime you get in conflict with someone, it creates like this negative center, this like, like this, this vortex, this like weird area in your mind, in your consciousness where that conflict exists. It's on a shelf, just stinking up the joint. And I think the least amount of those that you have in your consciousness, in your library of of memories, the better off you are.

Yeah, I tend to, I tend to agree with that. And I tend to feel that like, you know, especially, and it's for somebody of kind of my cloth, it's hyper hypocritical to, you know, attack somebody online, you know, over their political beliefs, for sure. Um, you know, being a spiritual person. But, um, you know, at the same time, like especially now, within the last year, this is a highly charged debate cycle. And I was, you know, convinced that, you know, how, how poss, how could a cognitively kind of adept human being justify voting for Donald Trump? Like, it just didn't make sense to me. How could one vote justify voting for Hillary either? Oh, I can make that. Can you? Absolutely. Don't you think that there's a lot of issues involved with Hillary Clinton? First of all, Hillary said in the WikiLeaks, um, documents that she was against marijuana legalization, legalization in every sense of the word. I, I'm, I'm not, you know, foundation. I mean, there's a lot of things you could bring up, right? I'm not a, a Clinton flag-waving kind of guy. But, you know, comparing the two, you know, and, and like, however you look, like, so to me, Hillary Clinton was just status quo, right? But isn't the status quo [ __ ] up? But the status quo is better than negative, right? This is going to be negative progress. And this is negative. How certain are you that it's going to be negative progress? Absolutely certain. I mean, the Supreme Court alone. I mean, you know, Ginsburg made the fatal flaw of not retiring sooner. So, I mean, she's what, 180 years old? So there's, dare, there's already one vacancy right there. What if she's on her viance, man? She's not going to make it. And, you know, so Trump, in one term, could presumably have three appointees, right? And that is negative progress. But, you know, that he was a Democrat for almost all his. I know, but he's not now, man. I mean, look, Steve Bannon, and the, the CEO of Exxon, the CEO of Carl Jr., um, Ben Carson, and being the HUD guy. What is? I mean, it's, it's just, it's absolute insanity. Yeah. Why didn't he make Ben Carson the Attorney General? Or rather, the, uh, the Surgeon General? Surgeon General. I mean, why wouldn't he have him involved in something medical? I mean, he's very talented neuros. Because he was the African-American guy who grew up in the projects, man. So he should run HUD. Oh, how odd. That was the argument. Oh, okay. Yeah, that was. It seems like he knows more about medicine, right? F's a doctor. You would think. He's a [ __ ] medical expert, right? And he's actually good at that. Yeah, he's [ __ ] amazing at it. I mean, he's like one of the top neurosurgeons in the world, right? So he grew up from the projects, African-American guy, grew up out of there, so he must know about Housing and Urban Development. So it's just, it's just complete insanity to me. And it is taking two, three steps backwards. The only silver lining that you can weave from it, and it is, you know, it's a good thing to weave, is that there is kind of a collective, uh, consolidation of solidarity, kind of like, "Hey, you know, we need to rise up, get our [ __ ] together, figure out how to articulate the opposite vision and perhaps defeat this later on down the line." And that's cool. People are waking up. And there's great conversations happening.

Well, I think there's an ebb and flow that always exists in cultures, you know. There's a push left and a push right. And we try this for eight years, and then we go that way for eight years. And some of it's productive, and some of it, it's very negative. But even the negative, ultimately, it, it fosters resistance. And that resistance is often times positive. And that, even in resistance, there's a lot of understanding the consequences of negativity that maybe wasn't really appreciated while you had like a progressive Democrat in office. But then there's, you know, there's things that Obama did that people are incredibly upset with in terms of whistleblowing, you know, like whistleblowers were supposed to be like cherished, and he was going to help. I mean, that was a part of the hope and change website when he was running for president. Yes, it was. And then, of course, he's been one of the worst people in terms of freedom of press, in terms of, uh, whistleblowers. He's been one of the worst administrations ever. Guantanamo never closed. Drones. Yeah. Drone kill. Drone wars. Yeah. All this stuff. There's, there's absolutely no, there's, there's no doubt about it. Um, but, you know, with sort of, you know, the ebb and flows of progress versus no progress, you know, and in, in this instance, in this context, it's just how many people are going to get hurt as a result of it? That's like, that's what I don't like. That's why it's not working.

The lack of perspective that I think we have collectively as a culture. The lack of, I mean, what you were talking about about these people living their lives solely intent on acquiring material possessions and status and all the nonsense that goes with it. How much of that can be attributed to the relative lack of exposure to psychedelics collectively that we have? If, if you looked at, if you looked at the entire 300 million, you know, how they do that red map and you see how many people are Republicans and how many people are Democrats, and it looks like, uh, looks like the whole country. It looks like one of the Avatar people got hit by a train. That's what it looks like, right? They got splattered. But when you, when you look at that, if you had a similar map in terms of like, how many people have had what I would consider a breakthrough psychedelic experience? I know some people that have done mushrooms and they did a little bit and they felt good and no big deal. And I, I had done quite a few things before my first real DMT trip. And the first real, real DMT trip was like, "Okay, everything else is [ __ ]. Like this. Awesome. This is so awesome and so mind-blowing." And just knowing that that's a, a real place that anyone can get to relatively easy. Not only that, this is not a precious material. This is a material that exists in thousands of different plants all over you, everywhere you go. Like every drive down the street, you'll find a [ __ ] hundred different kinds of plants that have DMT in it.

Well, so the DMT experience to me was a, I would say like, I'm really like two different people. I'm the pre-DMT person and the post-DMT person. I'm like, I mean, I'm real similar. I talk the same, but the, the person, the experiences, they're so vastly different that the, I was exposed to a whole new infinite area of the spectrum that I didn't know existed before. I, I existed in this very small area. I thought there was like birth and death and love and sex and beer and, you know, [ __ ] movies and what all the other things you enjoyed, right? I didn't even know that was real. How many people out there are like that? I mean, is there a million of us? I mean, is there even, is there even two million? I mean, how many people out of the 300, whatever million people in this country have had breakthrough psychedelic experiences? How many people did they say did LSD in the 60s? It's a good question. That changed the culture. Yeah. I, I don't know what the number is. But I mean, too bad your dad's not around. He probably tell us. He probably tell us. Yeah, he was probably responsible for 40 or 50%. Right. But what was the number? It was. Yeah. And this is, to me, this is a fascinating case study for us to look at. Is, you know, in the 60s, you know, millions and millions and millions of people did some kind of psychedelic, right? And if they didn't do a psychedelic, at least they, you know, smoked grass and put on Sergeant Pepper's, at the very least. And, yeah, great things were born out of that. I mean, an argument could be made that if the 60s didn't happen and flourish and become what it became, that you and I wouldn't be sitting here right now being able to talk about what we're talking about. I think that's a very good argument. I think, yeah, right. But here we are, 2016, and Donald Trump is elected president. So last time we had a global kind of consciousness shift that was massive, and you know, really shook us all up. You know, I don't know. Not enough happened. So it's like, what's it going to take next time? Okay, so let's, let's get, you know, let's just say, let's get 10% of the country to turn on. And for me, I kind of, I'm a little bit more elastic with it. And I think that can also be, you know, meditation, sure. Or or flotation. Flotation. Tense. Yeah. I'm not so holotropic breathing, whatever. And the method isn't as important to me anymore. But like, like get 10 to 20% of the people to do that. Six, three, six million people, whatever it is. You know, then, and, you know, what is it going to change? How are we going to integrate? And we were talking about this a couple hours ago. It's like the integration part. And I think perhaps that's what we lost in the 60s. We were so hung up on the veil getting pierced. And you, my dad's one of his best quotes is, um, "In order to understand the 60s, you must understand the 50s." What a change. I mean, the 50s were just, you know, very lock and step, white picket fence, 2.5 children, car, you know, suit tie, hair short. Like there was no variation. And we burst that bubble. But, you know, the integration level, it just wasn't, wasn't media enough. You know, we still, we elected Richard Nixon in 1968. I mean, granted, Robert Kennedy was shot, but still, you know. And here we are, 50 years later, and, and look what we're doing. So, you know, it is great to turn on. And I love people turning on. And I think it's fantastic. And it's a great thing to talk about, like you are. And it's, you know, you have a huge megaphone in getting people to do that. But what are they going to do different? That's what I'm more concerned with.

They're going to consider their life in a different way. And I think that, in many people, maybe, maybe not in all of us, but in many people, that changes the direction of the path that you're on. It changes the way you communicate with people. Changes your understanding of each other and your understanding of the connections that we have with each other. Yes. Um, and I think there's a giant chunk of people that are what you would call, uh, influencers in this country, whether it's, um, politicians or, you know, CEOs of large corporations, podcasters. Well, I mean, I was going to say people that haven't had this experience. Okay. Yeah. These, these influencers that live and there's a very flat plane of existence of acquiring material possessions, getting your dick sucked, doing a line of coke, driving in your limo, all the different [ __ ] that a lot of people like look forward to that, like ultimately might not really be important. Yeah. Or important. It might feel important in the moment, you know, in this ego gratification sort of a way. But without that ego-obliterating experience to put it all into perspective, you might not understand that that state of mind is even achievable. Like the undeniable ego-shattering experience of like a severe mushroom trip or a DMT trip or, you know, anything along those lines is so beneficial in that it gives you that momentary break from the ego and from this the momentum of the the race that you might not really want to be in. You know, I mean, there's a lot of people that are doing things they [ __ ] hate all day long just in order to acquire [ __ ] that they don't really need.

Yeah, man. And that's what I was, like, the point I was trying to make earlier is like, this hand that you're dealt is bunk because you're, like, so many people are trapped in that thing of like, doing something they hate. But do they have to be? Like, sounds like, think they, they have to be. That's what I'm talking about. They think they have to be. But no, they don't. They can break free. They can pierce the veil. They can go on a DMT trip or get in a flotation tank and break free. And you have, even by quitting some [ __ ] shitty job and doing something you love. Okay. But why don't more people do that? Because they're scared? Is that what? Is it fear? People, 100%. Yeah. People are afraid of change. They're afraid of the unknown. They're afraid of uncertainty. They're afraid of failure, for sure. If you offer them some really convenient, stupid job that is absolutely going to stay there for them, or, "Hey man, take a chance, open a pottery studio." "Oh, I might go broke." People are terrified of failure. Yeah. I, I, I mean, I think you're right. But I also think there's a level of that that's also kind of like graduate school in the sense that maybe a lot of people are just addicted to being pacified. That like, you know, "Hey, I get my three hours of television at night and I'm get my, you know, and just they're, they're even considering that notion of what you're talking about beyond the realm." "Well, you know, that experience, just keep me plugged in. I'm cool." You know that expression, "The comfort zone is beautiful, but nothing grows there." Oh, I didn't know that. It's a, it's a great, you know, it's nice to be comfortable. It's beautiful. Oh, relax. But you don't get better at anything. You don't get better at life. You don't, you don't grow. And we're scared of uncertainty, you know? We want to survive. We don't want to starve to death. We don't want to be a failure. We don't want to be that guy that, you know, used to be on TV and now he's a security guard. You know, that all those things that, like the fear of not being successful is so stifling. God, it so is.

I just, when you say that, it just immediately just triggered my, you know, my own life and all the failures I've had, all the fuckups, falling flat on my face, you know, many, many, many times. But like the getting back up, it's like, that's where the work is. That's where the, that's where the awakening is. I mean, it wasn't like, "Hey, everything's just going perfectly and, oh, wow, isn't this, this is all my life is just rolling out on a red carpet." Then I turned on or something happened and I, you know, touched the face of enlightenment. No, it's because I fell in the dirt. And you take those risks and [ __ ] happens. And you, and you, the grist for the mill, as Rumi would say. And, you know, you have that grist for the mill that makes it so much juicier. And falling flat on your face, it's essential. And I think you can apply that same sort of thinking to our entire civilization. And I think right now, we might have skinned our knees, we might have fallen on our face, we might have gone face down in the mud and like, "Ah, [ __ ]." And I think we got to get up and realize that [ __ ] it up. You know, and we'll see how bad we [ __ ] it up. And who knows? Because one of the things about having an outsider in this, what I think is an impossibly corrupt, unfixable foundation filled with [ __ ], which is what I think our, our society's built on, whether it's special interest groups or corporate greed or lobbyists or all the chaos, private prisons and [ __ ], the war on drugs, all the chaos that I think any rational person that's not connected to it in any sort of a way where you're making profit off it would agree, like, this is an insane way for an enlightened society to behave and act. It's broken, right? Unfixable. Just, just [ __ ] right. That the awareness of that is more and more exposed today online and in conversations. And people are more aware of that than any other time in human history. But I feel like we're like a giant battleship that it takes a lot to turn that [ __ ]. It takes a lot of, a lot of thinking and action. It takes a long time for that thing to actually spin around. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And the first, you know, the first step in that is like the acknowledgement that, "Hey, we skinned our knees," or maybe "fell flat face down into the mud," or something. And is the acknowledgement that that is the case, that's the scenario we're in. And which is why I'm always so frustrated in that, like, you know, the general narrative or the general rhetoric, especially in politics, is, you know, the wrong conversation's always being had. Nobody's talking about the right [ __ ]. We're treating the symptom. We never treat the disease. We're just treating the flu, you know, blowing our nose constantly and never, ever acknowledging the disease. You know, Bernie, Bernie Sanders touched on acknowledging the disease. He was the first guy, what, really in a long time to make it that far and acknowledge the disease. We are at risk of becoming an oligarchy. It's the top 1% that is ruling the country. The first guy ever, right? I mean, if you really stop and think about it, like, who got that close to the Democratic nomination? Yeah, other than McGovern. Yeah. But I mean, I think in, you know, old, older, older times, you know, in the 19th century, there was kind of, you know, hints that, you know, this, this could happen. And kind of people, um, insinuating that, "Hey, the Industrial Revolution and Carnegies and the Mellons and the Rockefellers, like, watch out, this could get dangerous." Uh, Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex. And he was, um, that was a creepy speech, right? A creepy speech, but fascinating at the same time. But yeah, so Bernie took it. He did talk about the disease, which was fantastic. So it is out there that, you know, that we have these fundamental problems. Until you fix the fundamental problem, nothing else is going to get better. Which is essentially taking the money out of the game. Yeah. Right. That's why I do think it's fixable. I disagree with you in that. That I do think the machine is is fixable. How's it fixable? Take the money out. That's unfixable. No, it's not. The whole thing runs on money. How are you going to take the money out? Have you read, um, Republic Lost, the Lawrence Lessig book? No. You got to read it, man. Fascinating fact, or watch his 20-minute TED talk. You can get the whole book in that too. What's his solution? Get rid of lobbyists. Yeah, man. That's easier said than done. I know. I know. I know. Someone like Trump is actually working to do that, whereas someone like Hillary is not. Like, he's already put in a bunch of regulations to make sure that people cannot become lobbyists within a certain amount of time after leaving office. After leaving office. But he also has like the, you know, the president-elect office is crawling at the same time. It's crawling with lobbyists. Yeah. Who knows? You know, I mean, I'm not a Trump supporter, but I'm not a, I'm, I'm not convinced that having this complete outsider who's also a guy who's been feeding this machine with money and making these massive political contributions, so he understands the system and how it works. I'm, I'm not, not completely, I'm not completely denying the possibility that he might present some good. I, I just think he's the wrong guy for the job. I do believe in the outsider thing. I love that. That's great. That's a great part of him. Just Bernie would have been fascinating. Yeah, Bernie would have been fascinating. He would have cost me a shitload of money, but I would have been willing to take that chance. I would have loved to see it. I'd love to see what the [ __ ] would happen because that guy doesn't give a [ __ ]. But, and he's not, you can't buy him, man. You can't buy him, man. You got, you got to watch this, this Lawrence Lessig talk. It's a few years old now, but it really just, it, it kind of rips apart and everything out on the whiteboard and into like a keynote presentation about even the, you know, the most well-intentioned politicians who are great, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington kind of [ __ ], just great people who go in there with the best of intentions. You know, at some point, you know, then they end up spending 25% of their time inside of the phone bank, the Democrat, the DNC phone bank, begging people for money. And, you know, they do that. And it's across the street from the Capitol, so it's not too far. And, and it just, and it escalates. And it's a snowball just going more and more and more. And then it just becomes, even the best in. But if you take money out of politics, then you have only people with money who get into politics because they have so much money, they don't need anybody else's money. Hence, Donald Trump. Yeah. But I mean, if you did it like, uh, you know, first of all, if you did it like the UK does it and shorten the election season, you know, first, we got that's a great first step. You know, you can't make it 18 months. It's insane. And the amount of money. It's great team sport. It's going on forever. We get a root, root, rah, rah. They got debates and season. Yeah, man, great television. People wear their red and their [ __ ] blue and Make America Great Again hats. Or, but the amount of money that it takes to play that. I know, right? What was he making per day from those hats? Off Make America Great. I bet millions. No, he was making some like 80 grand a day or something from the hats. Something stupid. It's so bad. There's those stupid looking hats too. They're not, it's not even a good design. It's like somebody made it at the mall. You know, those little chains. What do you want to say? Bobby loves Jessie. All right. Bobby loves Jessie. Make America Great Again red hat, white letters. I'm the man. I'm the [ __ ] man. I got the hat on the [ __ ] man. I don't even know what that means. Yeah, he doesn't know what it means either. Jesus Christ.

Well, I don't know. I mean, America's never been greater in terms of like, safer, more access to medicine, more access to information, more access to education. Never been better in that way. But like, uh, you know, are the R, our education rankings, you know, it's sort of in the world, in the world where we're used to place, you know, the, your typical high school graduate, graduate in the year like 1960, you know, it's like went to college and, and ranked number one in global math, science, you know, that's cuz the rest of the world was in the Stone Age and we were, uh, we were the only civilization. I think I think we were, we had just started civilization back then and no one knew about it yet. And they all caught on. And we got fat off Twinkies and the, and [ __ ] Walmart poisoned us. And then there's some [ __ ] from fracking that definitely got into the wall. Just, I don't know, man. I think turn everyone on. I'm, I'm fine with that too. I'm a pessimist in some, in some forms, but I'm an optimist in others. And, uh, what I'm optimistic about is that people care. And that this, this world that we live in, that this is a, you know, like when everybody was crying after Trump got elected, and part of me was like, "Well, this is so preposterous. Like, why are these people crying?" But the, the other part of me was like, "That is when things get done is when you have this outpouring of emotion." And then people, you know, you, like remember when those people were marching down Wilshire and it was just [ __ ] huge line of people, like hundreds of thousands of people that shut down Wilshire. And these people filming it with drones from overhead. I was like, "Wow, that's a crazy response to this guy winning the presidency." And the people were like, "Hoping the electors, you know, the Electoral College people wouldn't elect him." And they were, they would act on it. Well, [ __ ] you, it's not going to happen. Like, you, you're playing a game. He won the game. Yeah. And you can't, you can't take it away from him after he won the game. Like, he didn't cheat. He won the game. So this is the game. And this is how the game works. Russia. Listen, this is the game. This is how the game works. Now you got to figure out why is this game in place? Why do you have this [ __ ] goofy game? Why do you have this representative government? Why, why, why do we continue this? You know, and if we can slowly move that battleship towards a more rational place. Yeah, you're right. And it does come from a consciousness shift. That's the first step. Always comes from a consciousness shift.

I think pot. I think legal pot is the [ __ ] real gateway. I really do. I really do. Because I think it calms people down. It makes people nicer. And I think just that alone, it's like the opposite of what alcohol does. That's true. It definitely does not increase aggression. For confidence? It doesn't increase confidence at all. It's the opposite for me. It makes me. That's why I don't smoke it. More vulnerable. You don't smoke it? I don't like it. I don't like it. Something changed in me. Um, you know, I did when I was, when I was a teenager, like loved it, man. You know, I'm a Deadhead, and that was my life. But, you know, I take it now and it's just paranoia, massive. And also the confidence thing, it does not bring out my best. It makes me feel like if I, we smoked and we did this podcast, you'd be freaking out. "Ming on, what do I have to say to Rogan? Ah, I sound like an idiot. Duncan told me it would be like that." So it just, it just, it does not bring up my best.

So how long ago is this switch? When did it happen to you? Oh, quite a while. Like, I mean, I'm 43, you know, you know, more than 15 years ago. So that's when you stopped smoking? 15 years ago. Um, no, I stopped yesterday. Yeah, I'm still freaking out because of yesterday's pot. Yeah, yeah. About, about that. Yeah. So, um, what do you do anything these days? Not sort of Psy? Um, not really, no. I don't. But, um, yeah, I keep a place in in my heart for the psychedelic experience should it arise again. Um, you know, in between English muffins, in between eating muffins, you know, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm open to that. And should the opportunity arise, I'm, I'm down for it. Um, I mean, with the psychedelic thing, I just, um, yeah, I mean, I am open to it. I just, I kind of did kind of hit the Alan Watts wall in a way. Like, you know, the Alan Watts thing about him, uh, you know, "I got the phone call and then I learned to hang up the phone." What is the Alan Watts thing? How's that work? The quote goes something like, um, "I got the phone call and then I kind of learned to hang up the phone." I didn't need to stay on the phone with relating to psych. Oh, I see. I see. So he got the message. He needs to continually get the message over and over and over and over again. McKenna, I think was in that boat too before his death. They were saying he talked a lot about it, but he really wasn't doing anything anymore. Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that. A lot of pot though. Did smoke a lot of pot? Because I always remember Terrence, you know, the thing drug people have is repeatability. You know, it's that. Well, it's true. But I mean, after 5,000 [ __ ] mushroom trips, I mean, Jesus Christ. I mean, I've done acid what, 200 times or something? You could probably be like legally insane. I don't think. I think like there's a certain amount of acid trips you do where they used to classify you as being legally insane. Well, yeah, I mean, maybe. Do you get some money from the government, bro? You could hook it up. How much? Probably 50 bucks. I don't know. But if you, if you just ran around saying that I broke my brain and I'm disabled, I bet you could juke the system. I used to. That's really funny. You know, I had them. It reminds me. I used to have, um, a pretty serious hard drug problem too, which I. Hard drugs? Yeah, which I've gotten, you know, which ones? Heroin and crack. And. Oh, damn, dude. Gotten through it. The needle or the sm, snorting, smoking? Smoking. The no needles. Needles. Yeah, stayed away from that. But, you know, made it through. And I'm good. Damn. How'd you get on that? How'd I get on it? Yeah. Um, oh, pain. You had some injuries or something? No, pain. Emotional pain. Pain. Yeah. Emotional suffering, pain. Lost, aimless wandering the world, aimless, not knowing what to do. And that was the escape was the heroin. Somebody introduced me to it about that period in time. And, uh, and it just was like, "Oh, wow, you know, heroin has the great ability of, um, and it's really seductive and really [ __ ] up of making you think that your life is okay when you're in the gutter." Wow. It has that sort of that sheen that it just kind of, the bubble it puts over you. You can be literally living in an alleyway high on heroin thinking you got it going on. Wow. Yeah, it's really weird and perverse like that. And at that time in my life, yeah, I mean, my dad just died. Um, and, you know, when he died, what with it, what went with it was kind of my life up until I was 22, up until that point, like my life was in that bubble. You know, he was larger than life, he was famous, you know, girls came with that, work came with that, a scene came with that, friends came with that. And when he died, that just, it went poof. Girls want to bang you because you were. Oh, of course. Timothy Leary's son. Of course. Yeah. Really? Hey, I mean, nice. Yeah. It worked out for a while. Sweet. Yeah. Did you put on like a guru attitude like, "Just, oh God, relax, I've got it all going on, ladies"? Dude, at that time, that stage in my life, no. Was that, was that a disaster? [ __ ]. I try to do that now though, on occasion. Oh, but no, I had a good story, man. This was really funny. Like you were talking about, uh, soliciting the government for money for being an acid casualty, which is a good idea. But I was really high on crack once, um, and just kind of on a bender, just losing my mind on crack. And I thought in the middle of the night, it'd be a really good idea to join the CIA. And that they would want me, me specifically, being like Tim Leary's kid, they'd want me because I'd have access to [ __ ] that they want access to, right? Like.

I can be an inside. I was a mole, and I was high on crack, and I downloaded the I. I filled out the form. God, you got that deep. I got that deep. I spent hours on it. It's really long, complicated. The, the whole cestin. Join the CIA. Print it out, sent it in the mail. You sent it in the mail, you're in the CIA. You're there with Anderson Cooper. You work for CNN. Well, yeah, you're in there. And never heard back. But it was never heard back. Never, never. Said they started laughing. They just laughed and threw it in the garbage. Sure, but it was really funny and kind of a great, delusional, high-end drugs moment.

Wow. So what did you think that you were going to do, like as a CIA operative? What were you going to do? We're going to fix it from the inside with crack? Yeah, something like that. Wow. Something crazy, you know, just that's what a crackhead does. At the time, how did you get off the crack and the heroin? Um, yeah, just recovery. Did you go the, oh, you went 12-step? Yeah. A or Narcotics Anonymous kind of stuff? Yeah, worked for me. How does now, is that one of those things you have to continually visit? Do you have to constantly have meetings and stuff?

Um, well, you know, I am kind of a, you know, I'm kind of know, in a way, as a card-carrying member, as it were. I'm kind of not the best card-carrying member of it, and I break from tradition a little bit. And that, like, I don't know, I'm not a zealot. Sure, maybe. Um, yeah, maybe you do, but for me, I just happen to like it. I just enjoy it, whether or not I have to go and, oh my God, I'm going to die if I don't, and I'm going to end up back in the gutter if I don't. I don't know. I believe there's a little hysteria with that, and that's that's kind of like the party line, um, which sometimes bothers me a great. That bothers a lot of people. Yeah, sort of disempowerment. It's disempowerment. I don't believe that to any with any tradition or anything like, oh my God, if you leave us, the shit's going to hit the fan, man. I mean, you stop and think about a lot of destructive things you did when you were younger that you don't do now. Like, well, I don't need a 12-step program to tell me not to do stupid shit. Yeah, I just, I just know it's stupid shit, and so I don't do it anymore. But the idea that you could potentially fall into that is what they hold over your head, right? Yeah, but it's not that simple, like, oh my God, I know heroin is going to kill me, so I'm just, I'm just going to stop doing it. It's, it's not that rational, sadly. Wish it was that rational.

What's the difference? What's the disconnect? The disconnect is that in order to, uh, you know, and Bill Wilson was really a groundbreaking dude. Well, he was also an acid head, which is really kind of crazy. Bill Wilson being the guy who founded Alcoholics Anonymous, did acid? What, five times? I think. Yeah. Well, and he also thought that acid could be a viable treatment method for people that are alcoholics. Great. It's completely ignored today, and his thoughts and ideas about that, completely ignored by people in recovery because they think, no, no, no, no, you, you don't get clean by taking something else. They, they hate it. And I, before him, you know, that this sort of got popular before the documentaries came out and all that about exposing Bill Wilson, I used to just blow, you know, AA members' minds with that. It's like, did you not? He did. And he had correspondence with, with my dad when he was at Harvard. I'm sure he did. Yeah, they had some really interesting. These letters are fantastic. Um, and, um, yeah, he called it the great ego sublimator and thought it could be, um, the solution for alcoholism. And he did not change his sobriety date, you know, which is highly controversial. Sobriety date? His sobriety date, like when he said he got sober, you know, he still, when he died, he said he had whatever, 48 years sober, but he was still doing acid. Well, he had stopped doing acid, but, you know, typically, you know, in the, in AA world, if you do acid, that's it. You start over. You start day one. Start day one. He didn't. He looked at acid as being completely different than an intoxicant, alcohol. It was a neuros psychotropic therapeutic agent, is how you referred to it. Well, I think that is what it is. And I think this blanket statement, you know, drugs. Yeah, that word drugs. It's just like, it's, it applies to too many things that do too many different things. That's right. It's like food. Do you know food's bad for you? What? No, no, food's not bad for you. Well, this food's bad for you. Oh, yeah, okay. It is. But like the salad's good for you. Like that's food too. And that's the problem with drugs. Drugs, the word drugs, applies to things that are highly beneficial. That's right. It's just, you know, in, in AA land, I get why they need to tow that that company line. But isn't it? I do get it because then again, it's disempowering in a way, isn't it? Because it's, you're treating everybody as if you are the weakest possible example. Look, man, I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with you at all, but I'm just saying, I get it because it does work, right? That's all I can say about it. I don't disagree. I'm, I'm kind of wishy-washy about it, but it works to have a hard line. I have seen people's lives who you just, you know, the, the doldrums, the, you know, the disin, I mean, left for dead, get their lives saved and have really great, productive, amazing lives today. And it's a really beautiful, cool thing to see.

Well, there's also, I think we, we have to come to the to the realization that everyone's different biologically. Yes. That that's why that that's the point. Everybody's wired differently. There is no one size fits all thing. And and now what seeing with ibogaine treatment that, you know, maps us to, oh my God, so so cool, really, really promising. And so, you know, I just encourage everybody to find their own Dharma, find their own path, and kind of make what works for you, you know, there's no prescribed method for spiritual awakening or or life saving or life-changing. You know, you just have to, you know, balance it correctly. Listen to your heart.

What is your life like? Like, what do you, what do you do with your time? What do you, what do you do for money? Uh, well, I do a few things. My life is kind of split into two things. You know, I, I have my podcast. Right. What is that called again? It's All Happening. It's All Happening. Yeah. Um, so I do that. Um, I'm actually starting another podcast. Um, I'm going to be hosting the MAPS podcast. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. So MAPS are starting, and I'm going to be helping them get it off the ground and host it and start that. Um, so, you know, I kind of do that. I, I can speak, you know, at festivals and kind of teach, you know, some spiritual stuff and kind of do that, right? Um, been working on a book. But the other half of my life, um, kind of before I had my own little spiritual awakening, I was a technology consultant, a branding consultant, and worked in digital marketing and at a lot of ad agencies and stuff and led kind of a 9-to-5 corporate life, which I've ditched. But, um, I still keep some clients as kind of a day job sort of thing, which is kind of fun. So that's interesting. So like, what, what, what does that entail? Like, as far as anything that is, if, you know, a brand or an entity or a film or a music client, anybody wants to come to me and sort of define their internet strategy, how they want to behave online, you know, whether that's just something as mundane as having a new website to coming up with a complete communication message about how they want to market their their thing. So I kind of do that too. So I, I divide my time sort of 50/50 between my stuff and then other people's stuff.

And when does this MAPS podcast launch? January. Oh, that's cool. So you, you, by just by having that name attached to it, you'll be able to get some pretty amazing guests. Yeah, man. We'd love you to do it. Of course. I'll do it. I'm in. Let's do it. Sign it up. Yeah. Set it up. Pass, pass it on. So yeah, 2017, folks. Shit's going down. So yeah, I keep busy, man. I keep busy. Beautiful. Yeah. All right, man. Well, let people know, um, what's your Twitter handle? Is it just Zack Lry? Zack Lry, or go to my website, ZackLry.com. And the podcast is called It's All Happening. Is it available on iTunes, podcast stuff? Yeah. Well, thanks, man. Thanks for coming in. Fun time. Appreciate it. Appreciate it very much. Zack Lry, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, everybody. We'll be back tomorrow with the great Greg Fitz Simmons, also known as Grapefruit Simmons. See you. [Music]