Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 291: Shane Mauss

Episode Date: June 15, 2018

Shane Mauss was awarded ‘Best Stand-Up” at The HBO US Comedy Arts Festival in 2007. This led to his TV debut and first of five appearances on Conan. Since that time, he’s been on Jimmy Kimmel, Showtime, Comedy Central 'Presents' and 'This Is Not Happening'. For over a decade he has been headlining shows all over the world. 

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feel very good today. But I want to get this podcast up. And since today's guest is a psychonaut, psychedelic advocate and hilarious comedian, seems like the perfect episode to briefly mention how absolutely insane it is that we live in a country, most of us live in a country, where alcohol is legal and mushrooms are not. As I'm sitting here, gassy, taking gross fucking hangover dumps and just stinky in general, my eyes hurt, my feet are sweaty, just poisoned. I'm poisoned. My brain feels like somebody just, just, just replaced it with a bag of old rotten potatoes. Which, by the way, found in the pantry today, was noticing this horrible smell in the house. I thought it was the air conditioner. I replaced the air conditioner

filter. Yeah, man, I can do that. It's really hard, too. It's very hard to replace an air conditioner filter. Very hard. I was thinking I was going to have to get the air conditioner cleaned, went up on the roof to look at the unit on the roof, because I thought maybe a rat had climbed in there, and we were smelling his decomposition or just getting blown out of the AC. But no, what happened was, at some point, I did that thing. I don't know if you guys do the thing where you're like, you know what, I'm going to order some fucking potatoes. And I'm sure I'll make some french fries, make some potato salad, maybe. I don't know. But yeah, a bag of potatoes is like six bucks for a whole, look at all these potatoes. It's

nothing. Live off of these things. But you know, it's a big bag of potatoes. You put it up in an upper cabinet, and then like time passes, you forgot you bought the fucking potatoes, and then your house gradually starts filling with this awful, festering, stinking, industrial waste smell. I've been smelling it for a couple of days, wondering what it was, like thinking, like, fuck, I hope I'm okay. Am I having phantom smells? That's terrifying. It's something about hypochondriac. That's a very scary thing, man. Like you start smelling cigarette smoke when it's not there, rotten eggs, but it's just like something going on in your brain. Late at night, when you've eaten too much marijuana. Those are the kinds of things you think when you smell

rotting potatoes that are hidden behind toilet paper bags. So today, I'm desperately going around the kitchen with my wife. Do you smell that? Where is it? What could it be? Fuck, is it AC? What is it? And then reached up into the pantry and pushed aside the toilet paper rolls. And it was like I was standing in front of a Nosferatu. It was just breathing on me at this point. I gagged. I almost threw up and I rarely throw up. I don't think I've ever thrown up because of a stink, but this is the closest I've ever gotten. That's how bad it smelled. And I grabbed the potatoes and pulled them down and just a waterfall of pinkish ooze just rushed down out of that top shelf. Like, have you ever seen synthol extraction videos? Lunatics inject themselves with this

oils to give them fake muscles and then inevitably it becomes infected and they have to go to the doctor and the doctor slices their arm open and all this rotting oil and muscle goo go just sprays all over the fucking emergency room. That's what it was like. The dogs were sick. Everyone in the house was sick. My wife was sick. We're all just like gagging and choking. That's what my brain feels like right now. Just an old bag of shitty potatoes. I don't know why I'm going off on the potato thing, but I was interested in like the stink of the potatoes because I was thinking like, man, that seems like I could kill you. And then I googled potato deaths or something or like potato stink death and sure as shit in Russia. I guess some family had like done the same thing I did

only not just with one bag of potatoes. They'd gotten a Russian quantity of potatoes that they thought they were going to eat and they didn't. And they put them in their basement and the parents and went down to like probably because they'd been smelling some something incomprehensibly horrible. And they just walked down the steps right into a cloud of rotting potato gas and they just died down there. Died of potato fumes. Didn't see that one coming, I bet. They didn't predict that when they were calculating in their minds how they were going to die in Russia. They weren't like, oh, probably by potato gas. But that happens. That's the world we're in. Got a little off track. The point is, I don't feel great. And so I was sort of like scanning through the internet,

recalling that I'd seen some kind of study regarding like alcohol, like how harmful alcohol is in comparison to other drugs. And you can find this, it's fascinating. This professor in England did the study and published it in the Lancet. And they used, I don't know, all these, they figured out a way to quantify harm. And the long and short of it is alcohol is the most harmful fucking drug on planet earth, right above heroin. It's above heroin. And the least harmful drug is mushrooms, according to Professor David Nut. Why did his last name have to be nut, right? Like if you're going to do this incredible study, which basically makes you a psychedelic advocate, which he is, David Nut is a psychedelic advocate, he's a scientist, any good scientist should be something

of a psychedelic advocate, or at least someone who based on the current data knows that psychedelics compared to alcohol are the difference between lemonade and gargoyle piss. But we live in a world where alcohol is completely fucking fine. Everyone loves it. It's great. But mushrooms, illegal. How many other people are hung over around planet earth right now? How many other people are gassy and disgusting right now? I bet some of you right now are hung over as could be just feeling gross, soupy, bulgy bloated, nasty, greasy, like one of those hot dogs rolling on the fucking thing in the convenience store. Anyway, I'm not going to go on and on about this because I just went on and

on about it. If you want to hear me, if you want to hear like a long diatribe on how absolutely insane it is that we can't go to a fucking bar and order a nice cup of mushroom tea, then I uploaded a much longer version of what I just said over at Patreon. But I'm not going to spend any more time yapping about it. I feel sick ish. I want to get this episode up so I could go back to sleep. Also, I want to help promote a screening of Shane Moss's movie, which is gross. I want to help promote Shane Moss's movie, which is going to be screening in LA tomorrow. That is Friday, June 15. There's also a big party afterwards. And I wasn't able to get this up as soon as I'd like. So that's going to be it. I'm sorry. No, it's a lazy intro, but I've been drinking

gargoyle piss, friends. Don't feel good. I'm going to jump right into this episode. But first, some quick business. Speaking of gargoyle piss, have you been brushing your teeth the wrong way? Much thanks to Quip for supporting this episode of the DTFH. Truth is, most of us are brushing our teeth wrong. You either don't brush them long enough or you forget to change your brush. You put your brush right next to your toilet, splatters of bacteria water, get on top of it, and then you shove into that stinky hole you make words with. The next thing you know, you've got more bacteria in there than you're taking out. You're not brushing right. That pie hole of yours is a nasty, sick little thing because you do an improper brush. You don't spend enough time on the

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head over to patreon.com for slash DTFH and sign up. You'll have access to interviews before they hit the main feed, rambling, long monologue thingies that I do from time to time and lots of other stuff. I don't know what that is. Oh yeah, access to our Discord server. We have a server where some of us gather and chat from time to time. If you feel like talking to other listeners, we hang out there. Help support the DTFH. Become my patron. Become my master. Teach me. Discipline. Tell me when I'm wrong. I will submit to you. You will be my patron. Just go sign up over at patreon.com for slash DTFH. Thanks to those of you who continue to use our Amazon link. If you scroll down on any episode, you'll see one there. If you want to buy something here is talk about on

the show or don't hear is talk about on the show. All items, any item, clip, go through that link and buy stuff from Amazon. If you feel like it, I'm hungover, man. I'm sorry. This is longer than I like the intros to be, but I don't have time to make it short. Hopefully that makes sense. We've got a wonderful episode of the DTFH for you today. Returning to the podcast is a wonderful comedian, a psychonaut, psychedelic advocate with a scientific mind. He just made a film about psychedelics called Psychonautics and that's screening at the Chinese Theater June 15th. That's tomorrow at five PM. After that, there's going to be a big party. Now everyone, please spread your glory wings as far out as you can and flap right into the heart

of today's wonderful guest. Comedian, Shane Moss. Yeah, I can adjust. Shane, welcome back, man. It's been too long. It's so great to see you. Yeah, good to see you, my friend. So you're in town right now trying to promote this movie that you just finished? Yeah, I finished the documentary and it's coming out. It's in this dances with films festival. It's in LA and it's so the movie's premiering on the 15th at five o'clock at the TCL, the Chinese Theater, the old man's, I keep on wanting to call it the man's Chinese Theater, but it's something else now that I should have looked up before. God damn it. Everyone listening is just like, what the, somebody, you know what happened just

now? I guarantee it. Like somebody was like thinking like, should I fucking kill my grandmother or not? And like, maybe I won't. And now they did it. You just threw someone into a violent. I mean, that's the, that's the chance that you take when you're a comedian, you know, you go on podcasts and trigger people, people, people die all the time. And let me tell you, if you want to fucking piss people off, if you want to throw people into a rage, say the name of man's Chinese Theater, it's happening to me. It's like, it's a phenomenon in LA that people aren't aware of, but it's like, it will send someone into such a terrible spiral. Yeah, I wouldn't, you'd think I'd, I'd keep it a little tighter to the best, maybe not just go

throwing around those trigger words. You got to be careful these days. On the wall there, you could see the list of trigger words that we're not allowed to use. Oh yeah, I'm gonna be more, I'm gonna be more mindful. You are in a film festival, what's the name of the film festival? It's called the dances with films festival. And so, so it's, it's nice because people can just buy a ticket to my documentary and they don't have to get like a whole movie pass, but they, they can get the, or the festival pass, but they can also get a festival pass as well. Can you bring our listeners up to speed? The last we talked, you had just come out of a period of great acceleration, growth, you were in a hospital for a little bit, you'd gotten out of the hospital. Yeah. It was

bipolar episode related to psychedelics and now you've stabilized and I want as curious as to how you worked into this documentary on psychedelics, this particular thing that happened to you? Well, it kind of changed everything. It kind of changed the scope of the film. We didn't really know initially, we were like, what is this documentary? Are we like, is this like a tutorial? Like at first we were maybe going to call it, so you're thinking about tripping and talking about like, this is what setting and intention is all about. This is how you integrate and, and kind of showing the process I use with, with some of the researchers and all of that. And I thought that was kind of an interesting idea, which later just completely got abandoned for what ultimately ended

up being, I think a more sensible, a more balanced documentary because, because the psych ward stuff ended up, we couldn't film in the psych ward or anything and I was completely crazy at that time. So I wasn't being filmed and, and I was, I thought every, the world was turning against me and was, was like, like, I remember reaching out to you and being like, should I reach out? Is he an ally or is he one of the tricksters? Like I remember just everyone in my life, I had that same question, my girlfriend, my family, it didn't matter. And, and so we ended up having to animate some of that section and just me like sharing it. And then we took some stuff with So, so some of it is little bits of my stand up. We also recorded, we happened to be recording the

first stand up set that I did right after getting out of a psych ward and me explaining the story. So we tell a little bit of the story through like little bits of stand up here and there, but it's, it's driven by, it's a lot of just showing me going and doing, like, ketamine at Dr. Terry Earley's office in Santa Barbara. I don't know if you've, I know you've had Cole Marta on the show before he works, that's his office. Oh, I got you. And, and, and so things like that, going and doing mushrooms with, there's this Michael meditations guy that runs retreats in Jamaica and, and just

kind of showing the, so we did DMT, ayahuasca, LSD, ketamine, and, and mushrooms kind of covered the big more popular ones. Right. And, and then the psych ward thing just kind of really changed the story. So, right. So it ends up, you know, without talking about, without giving everything away, which I kind of already did, um, it, it ended up showing kind of a balanced approach where I think for people that are, that know nothing about psychedelics, it will be very informative in just in terms of understanding the basics of what psychedelics are about. And I, you know, through my tour and everything gone out of my way, trying to figure out how to articulate these things so that anyone can understand. But then, uh, I think for the, the

people like us that are big into psychedelics and psychedelic advocates, there, there will be a little bit of a, a lesson learned about going too far with them as well. So hopefully a little something for everybody. Oh no, I'm, I'm pretty, I don't know how you are with like, uh, hearing yourself or watching yourself. I don't like it. I can't stand it at all. I don't mind hearing myself, but watching myself, it freaks me out for some reason. But I imagine you get used to it eventually. It's just something you must. I guess. I've never, I can't really listen back to my podcast hardly. Uh, I mean, I can, but I definitely would prefer not to. What do you think that is? That, that kind of cognitive dissonance that happens when, you know, a lot of people, they, they say,

I don't even want to listen to my voice ever. Like if you try to record someone's voice, they're like, no. Yeah. What do you think that is? Well, there is just the technical of, of your voice sounds different because of the, the way your, um, voice vibrates off of your, your bone or whatever, from the jaw bone on the inside, I forget exactly what it's something to do with the way that you hear your voice is different than the way your voice is. So then you hear your voice recorded and you're like, what, that's not my voice. And it's like a really, is that what I sound like? And then because it's different, maybe it's, maybe it's like jarring or bad. It's, it's, there's also these all sorts of assumptions that the mind tends to make. Like I'm, I'm almost six, four. And so people

will always after shows just be like, you're taller than I thought you'd be. Because I think people just assume that everyone is average. Like that's just the rule of thumb. Like just assume everyone's average. And so then there's this jarring like, whoa, I wasn't expecting that. Right. That could be part of it. But the weird thing is, is that we are, we have evolved to be these, these very confident beings. There's all these, um, uh, the evolution of self deception is like one of the most fascinating things in the entire world. You can, you can take a picture of, uh, you could take a picture of either one of us or your average person. There's individual differences because some people have like lower self-esteem than others and whatnot. But if you take the average person, you take a picture of them

and you morph it, uh, like you make it 10% more symmetrical than 20% more, 30% more. And so you have like five, five levels of a more handsome Duncan or Shane. And then you go the other way too. And you make it 10%, you make our faces a little more wonky, 10%, 20%, 30%. So now you have 11 pictures, five of them more attractive, five of them less attractive. This is how I feel at any audition I go to. Like whenever you go to an audition and you look and you see the spectrum of you based on like, you know what I mean? So like you see like, oh shit, there's like, there's like super attractive versions of me. And then there's like maybe a little less attractive versions of me. You land somewhere in this ridiculous spectrum of this palette of humanity

as you're being like chosen, but keep going. Right. No. But when you flash, if you mix those pictures up and flash them on a screen and have people point at their actual face, like as fast as they can, the face that they typically pick is the one that is like 20% more attractive than their actual face. You know what I think that is? I think that is the inside of humans is a soul and that the soul is so beautiful and so like, so, so radiant and so full of love. You are such a wonderful positive being. I love hanging out with you. You are definitely, especially because I have like states of horrible depression and anadonia and just hate life and everything. Every time I talk to you, I'm just like, oh, that's, yeah, that's a wonderful way of looking at it

that would have never occurred to me. Well, you know, it's, well, let's state, let's explore it because the, it's like, this is the same phenomena that the sense of timelessness of the self. So it's like, when you're sort of contemplating yourself, you know, you're not looking at yourself in the mirror. Your, your like assessment of self is usually based on more of a kind of like field of consciousness. And then you sort of like, oh, this is what I am. If you really spend any time with that, minus the depression, you really, you feel this, you realize, I kind of feel, I felt like this my whole life. And it gets obscured by the clouds of ego or mental illness or moods or whatever. But there's this sense of like an eternal nature. There's a feeling of like, oh,

shit, man, I don't feel like I'm 44. I feel eternal. I feel like I've been here forever. And that like, this surrounding body is like, it's getting old, but I don't feel old. You know, so I think maybe when people are pointing at the more beautiful version of themselves, that's the best they can do because I'm like, I'm, there's a sun inside of me. Well, evolutionary psychologists have a much more cynical take on what is going on there, which is, which is that 90% of people think that they're, that they're better drivers than average 90% of people think that they're smarter than the average person. And so the numbers aren't adding up. And that's to say that, that the 10% of people that don't think that they're smarter

than average, there might be some very depressed, self loathing people in there that actually do have a very high IQ in art. And then, and then there are, you know, people in the obviously lots of people in the 90%. There's at least more than 40% of them likely that are not smarter or better drivers than the average person. But confidence is a big thing in life. And I think that you know, I've been thinking about this, about the ideas that, because we're all kind of selling ourselves in a way to others and to ourselves and to, I mean, to someone who like right now, I'm doing great. I like I mentioned before we were recording went to the rock gym this morning, I woke up super early, I already got a workout in today, like the weather's beautiful, I'm gonna

see darker, there's no problem getting out of bed today. Then those days when you do have a hard time, there doesn't seem like, like, who cares? What what is, you know, what is the point to go out and do another podcast, like who what what, it's not going to matter what I go to CrossFit today. And like, that just means I'm going to have to live longer, because I'll be healthier, which means I'll have to do more CrossFit. And I'll just put whatever I just kind of be this rat in this wheel, the rest of my, you know, so it's like, definitely your perception can change the story, your, but, but the positive story gets you out of bed, and gets you moving a lot easier than right. Well, it's you know, it's a it's a so like the your version of the story is

we have such a strange dynamic. I always feel like whenever I talk to you, I'm like, am I just an asshole? You're not a wonderful being like Duncan. Oh, shit, man. First of all, number one, you're not an asshole. It's I look this in this this kind of dialogue is the best ever, because it's like, it's great. We're talking about kind of scientific material, the science, scientific materialism versus mysticism or something like that. And so when this is an ancient conversation, it's the best conversation, especially when both people are friends, and and both people aren't afraid or of being wrong, you know, and so the your version of the story is that every day, we kind of tell a story to ourselves. One story that we can tell

is that this is ultimately an absurd life, right? And it's all the all the all the beautiful variations on that story. You know, this is this is kind of an absurd life. It's really, really meaningless. Like if we're to look if we just for one second stop being a historical so many people are these days and really just take a deep, deep look into the past and understand how many people have lived on this planet, how many people have aspired to so many things, how many people have sat in a chair in an office, their heart resounding with joy as they type the last letter in some incredible book that they wrote that they were certain was going to change the world. No one knows their name, they're uncared, they died alone.

And all of their naive, whatever the fuck that was, it was like, you know, it's just energy being dispersed by a planet that produces like sort of some form of sentient meat. And it's just meat, it just like comes out of the planet, shuffles around a little bit, sinks back into the dirt, makes these embarrassing monuments for itself out of Christ. Some of these monuments maybe are even made out of like more meat, like the stones, maybe they have shells in them or there's like, you know, so it's like we we sort of are building this bridge into a meaningless future on the bones of those who've died before us. I very much admire your verbal fluency by the way you beautifully articulate it. I've thought this way before, so I'm very familiar with that state

of consciousness. So then the other state of consciousness is this idea like, well, you know, actually, what we are is this eternal, transcendent love field that is playing in the waves of matter and the way that dolphins surf waves, we're sort of playing here. We come here to play, we come here to like the same reason you go to the rock climbing gym or people go to the gym. We come here or granted amnesia or given pure respite from whatever the infinite consciousness that we emerged from was, we get to experience this thing with full fear and the fear if you really sit and look at it, it's beautiful. And if you look at the despair, it's beautiful. Yeah. And if you look at the pain, even the pain is beautiful. And then you start realizing like, Oh, wait, the entire thing

is made of beauty. And or rather, the thing that I am as it glows through the field of matter that I've incarnated in, it seems to illuminate it in this beautiful way, even when it's the worst thing ever. So there's another story to yourself. And then one, but these are two stories. Now, I think it's important to find the truth out. That's the real important thing and not really to tell ourselves stories, because no matter what, it's like, well, I'm just telling myself a story. This is something Ram Dass talks about a lot. He says, this is my imagination. This is a, and then when an imagination gets so discredited. Use your imagination, kids. You could be on a mountain high, you could be on a dragon's back

flying through the sky. Use your imagination. It's like, it's like a little bit of silly putty in some far corner of your mind that you can pull out when you're bored in traffic and think about licking the assholes of 17 beautiful women tied up in some wonderful dungeon before you fucking rage at traffic. You know what I mean? It's just something you pull out when you're bored. Kind of almost like a, like the appendix or, you know, you can use your imagination. No, it's not reality. Ram Dass's idea is like, no, no, no. This thing, this imagination is everything. It is the truth. It is real. I'm not talking about deluding yourself, but really like looking deep into the self and analyzing it underneath the pain and the pain

itself. I keep coming back with fucking roses, man. And it's like the, the analysis that I do constantly is seeking out the bones. I'm looking for the horror. I'm trying to find it now. And more and more and more, I'm becoming less capable of discovering it. And I, to me, that's its own weird form of like, fuck, am I okay? I did have, I had a moment like that last year when I came down from my mania and I started feeling depressed again. I was like, oh good. Oh, I'm experiencing reality again. And I can tell it's real because it hurts and it's sad. And which is in itself depressing. But yeah, I, I mean, I do, I go back and forth so much. And I do think that this is maybe just, I mean, what a wonderful, interesting, odd, pointless blip of existence. Like it might be both

of those things at once. And let's talk about the pointless language because it's like, you know, like, let's look at that for real. Because especially when like I start ascribing words like that to my existence, I want to be sure I'm being precise. So for example, the pointless thing, it's like, well, I mean, we do know they're suffering. There's no question about that. I think that you could, that's like an inarguable truth in the world, isn't it? Right? Like, I don't think anyone could tell you, no, there's no suffering in the world. I can't imagine anyone saying that. It's an, is it an axiom to say that life is suffering like the Buddhists say? Is it a human life is filled with suffering? Is that

an axiom? Is that an undeniable truth? Do you think? I mean, I think that, I mean, the way that I look at things is we have all of these different emotional states are just different evolved motivators, psychological motivators, but still suffering. Yeah. Like you could say there's, like, even if I'm talking from a purely scientific, like a materialist point of view, suffering is real. Yeah, mostly because you want to avoid that feeling, like pain is real, so that you'll not jump off of that fucking thing that will cause you pain and suffering, whatever it might be. Right. And there's certain types of suffering that are good suffering, probably, right? Is there good suffering? Oh, yeah. There's, I mean, because there's like

accomplishment, you know, and reward of having to, having to, even when I think about going to CrossFit, you know, it's to me, like pure hell and torture for an hour. And then afterwards, I'm like, I did it. So maybe, you know, maybe that's like pain versus suffering. Maybe like you could say, I don't know, I go back and forth on this, like the difference between pain and suffering but it might just be a semantic question. I don't know. But what I'm getting at here is pointlessness. Right. I want to talk about pointlessness. Yeah. And like if you were from a, from your trained scientific mind, if you were asked to prove scientifically that this existence is pointless, how would you go about doing that? Yeah. Yeah. I guess to make it

falsifiable that you would be like, but what if there is a point and then there's points, there's an infinite amount of points everywhere. And it's not so much that I think I've talked about this before. It's not so much that it's filled with points. Yeah. It's, it's, it's more like it's, it's more that the idea that there is one singular point. Let's do first of all, let's just get real scientific and define what is a point. I don't mean mathematically. I mean, like in the term, in a human sense, in the existential sense. That's a great question. I mean, I guess it, I guess it's a goal. I think much of this consciousness is, is kind of goal assessing software. So, so I think that when you, when you go, oh, here's, here's what this purpose

is. There's this finish line that you get to, whether it's an afterlife or a comedy central special or, you know, whatever it, or, or, um, so it's a goal. Yeah. I, I, so for you, a point is a goal, but then it's also when you ask like, what is the, the point of life, then you can go like, well, why, if you're wondering what we're here to do, ask, how did we get here in the first place? And then, and then that quickly just becomes where vehicles for our genes, right? And so, so then that is kind of the point, I guess, but, but our genes don't have like any kind of a conscious goal in mind as far as we know, but we do. Right. I mean, we certainly do. Like there are a point, like in other words, like if, if, if you're establishing like, okay, a point, the point

is to a, to a, to have a goal, right? Which, you know, I think, I don't know, you know, like this is where we get into the whole subjective thing. It's like, oh, shit, you're, you're, we're running into a real problem here. Cause it's like, well, yeah, if I, you know, somebody was telling me, listen, man, the point is to achieve your goals. Yeah. So I would be like, dude, you are going to kill, you're going to blow your fucking brains out, man. Because like, you know, I get it. Achieving goals is fucking incredible. Like every time I get a podcast up and I work really hard and get the thing up and get that nice dopamine drip. It's, it's wonderful. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. But the shit I'm into right now, man, is I really love

Chogyam Trumpa right now. This Chogyam Trumpa Rinpoche is a Buddhist teacher and I'm taking lessons from this guy, David Nick Turnies, a meditation teacher. And he's like, Chogyam Trumpa Rinpoche said, this is hopeless. So that's the first thing like, like any minute, like this is hopeless. So number one, let's stop torturing ourselves with the idea that there are points. We torment ourselves with points. So now let's just get rid of that shit all together, right? And say, okay, maybe let's just say it is pointless. Great. Now we live in a pointless world. Let's see what that's like. And so the, his thing is like, this is the, this is what's happening here. And it sounds grim at first, because you're resisting it. So it sounds grim at

first. And when I first read it, I was like, what the fuck are you saying? You bastard. But, but so, and for any kind of Trumpa students out there, my apologies if I fucked this up, because I'm not pretending to understand half of what he was talking about, maybe a four percent. But I kind of get this one. So what he's saying is it's kind of like, listen, here's where we're at here. We are in a really, really perplexing situation here, which is that we are existing. We have existence. We're in these bodies. They are impermanent. We are dying for sure. Our identities seem to be real, but they're not at all. Like, if you spend any time at all, like contemplating your, who you are, what you are, any part of it

at all, if you, if you look deeply into it, you begin to realize like this shit is all like, kind of like wavering and like vaporous, you know, it's like the person I was yesterday, I'm kind of that person today, but maybe not really that person anymore. The person I wasn't always a kid. I'm not really that identity anymore. And there does seem to be a sense of like, you know, eternal self. But the more I look into that thing, it's like, wait, what are you seeing there? The eternal self really, there just seems to be this field of seeing a thing. So, am I that? So the idea is that like, we're in a really, really difficult predicament for sentient meat to get into, right? So that's the suffering. We are suffering here. We are suffering.

That's real. You are suffering. Yeah. When you sit still for any amount of time, you want to start doing something. You want to look at your phone. You want to turn on the TV. Yeah. You want to send an email. You want to check your bank account. You want to see where this thing is going. How many tickets did I sell? Am I doing the, you want to hear a fantastic study? That was like this very thing about, about kind of restlessness. That's not the exact thing that they were studying. But, but they've, they would have someone fill out a survey or whatever, and then they'd be like, you, well, we're not ready for the next part. You have like 30 minutes or whatever to kill. You can either drop this survey off next door, or you can walk 10 minutes

away to drop it off at this other place. And, and people would logically go like, oh, I'm just going to drop it off next door because that's less steps that you have to walk. But if you instead would say, oh, there's a, there's a dark chocolate for you at the one next door and white chocolate for you at the one 10 minutes away or switch it around, didn't matter. People would go, oh, I'm going to, I like white chocolate. So I'm going to make the trick to 10 minutes away. If you give people the slightest reason, the slightest excuse to busy themselves, they will do it rather than sit there twiddling their thumbs for 30 minutes. Right. And so here is the question. Why? Why do you think that is? Shame? I think there is an evolutionary mismatch with our, with our current

state that we find ourselves in where there was never enough. There was never a time in our evolutionary history where you were safe to just kick up your feet in the hammock and chill out. I think there was never, there wasn't refrigerators stocked with, with food and grocery stores that you could go and replenish this refrigerator at. There was. What is that data coming from? Because Chris Ryan is, you know, he paints a picture of the world as having like, you know, like you try to summon up like, what was the work week? What did the work? Yeah, like four, four hours a day or whatever. And then they'd, they'd sit around chilling, but not the rest of the time. But is that chilling or was that trying to increase their social status to, to attract mates? And

when you're sitting around trying to like be the most charismatic guy around or when, when you look at, when, like there's this baboons, when I think it's baboons, if you study, when primatologists study them, they have a similar thing where it doesn't take them that many hours to go out and gather the resources that they need to feed themselves. And so they have a lot of free time on their hands. And so they're just kind of bastards. They all like pick on one another and they're always in fights because when you give them enough time to, they spend the rest of their time just, just trying to increase their, their status. So it's definitely not, it's, I, I think that there was never, when, when people think about evolutionary goals, they think about survival more than

anything. Oh, you'd get food or whatever. But there's so many other, there's so many other things that we need to do to get the most valuable mate out there or multiple mates. There you go. So that's perfect. That's a perfect response. And it totally fits into the, the, the Buddhist paradigm, which is what, here's what happens when you're sitting still. For me, when I'm sitting still, what starts happening is you either don't want to be there in the sense you're sitting still and you're like, this is boring, my back hurts, my legs hurt, gotta move. Or you have in your mind another place you want to be. So this is called desire in a version. So in any given moment, a human is longing quite often, longing for something, the points, the goals,

longing for some phone call to come in, longing for some state, or they're one, not wanting to be where they're at, because where they're at sex is too hot, it's too cold. I don't like the service in this restaurant. It's too loud. I don't like the air conditioning in the small. I'm starting to feel claustrophobic here. I want to move. And so all that is suffering, suffering, suffering, suffering, suffering. And so the idea is that is life. And we don't want to deal with that. But we want to imagine there's some respite down the line around this corner, that corner up, down here and there. If I go into this cubby hole, comb my hair this way, rearrange myself, close the door three times, clap my hands, become the president, become a king, become a pope,

say I'm sorry to my mom, figure out a way to resurrect the dead, cure cancer, become the most famous comedian on earth, become the emperor of planet earth, become the emperor of the galaxy, become the emperor of all the universe, become the ultimate emperor of all things. We create all of these dreams. The dream is the suffering will end. The truth is the suffering will not end as long as you're alive. And this is so unbearable for people that they create all of this ridiculousness. And this is where the delusion comes in. So it's like now I'm creating this imaginary world. I've literally like in the way Trumpa puts it is. I'm standing on a floor of razor blades right now. That's existence. It sucks. It's cutting me. It's cutting my feet. I'm bleeding. I'm hurting. It

hurts so much. I cannot believe how much this fucking hurts. But instead of going into the pain, looking at it, what is this pain? Why the pain? What is this feeling of the pain? What does it really feel like? Where does it hurt? What is it? What we do is we craft the way he puts it, a beam, an imaginary beam in the ceiling made of delusion. So we're sitting on these fucking razor blades cutting ourselves. We look up at this beam and that beam, that's where we climb in. We burrow into the delusion. And so now we're like, okay, I'm working on it though, man. This is going to be, oh yeah, you know what? They're probably going to come up with some kind of fucking age rejuvenating thing. Like I know I'm getting old, but I bet in five or 10 years the back pain will go away. And

you know, this is really going to work out for me soon. I know it. And as soon as I get that fucking thing and the thing comes and this comes, and then I'm going to be great. I'm going to be great, man. So we're always like looking at that beam, pretending we're getting better instead of doing the exact thing that will cure us, treat the whole thing, which is to stop and feel the pain. And know it and not run away from it. And that place, that state of self-exploration going towards the pain instead of away from it, that is where the fucking, the gold is hidden, you know. If only I can get further into the pain, then I'll get to all of it. Exactly. That's another, no, it's not just, no, you're not just standing on razor blades,

you're surrounding yourself. Now you're like, oh, I'll throw myself into the blades. So now this is where we get into the middle. This is why Buddhism is called the middle way, because it's like, or not too tight, not too loose, which is like, yeah, that's the next thing the mind wants to do. So now the mind is like, oh, okay, great. Well, we're going to get, not only we're going to fucking get into this pain, man. It's like, I'm going to really be in pain. It's like not that either. So, so there's this like place that you can find where you, which is why I, when I, you know, you hear someone like Chokin Trump say, this is a hopeless situation. If you're someone who's become addicted to the goalposts, if you're someone who's become hooked

on the ambrosia idea that around this corner or that corner, you're going to be okay, then there is nothing worse to hear than like, it's not really going to work out. Yeah. But if you're someone who's like realizing like, oh, wait a minute, I think I'm fucking chasing my own tail here, man. I've, there's like a laser pointer up and running after my entire life. It's a little fucking primate kitten. Then suddenly there's just this sweetness that starts filling up your heart when you start sinking into what is right now. I've found that's like, that's the, that's one possible way to be. Yeah. I mean, well, I hope that one day I will appreciate the now the most out of everybody.

Well, you should buy my new pills. Now X. 1995 will get you 30. And then there's this placebo effect where the more you charge for it, the more people think that it works. The bigger the pill is, the harder it is to swallow. The more you think that it's real fucking pills are the size of bricks and they cost a thousand dollars each and they're fucking enemas. Listen, if you want to be in the present moment, shove one of these pills in your ass. In fact, they're not pills. They're just bricks. They, they did a, they did a study very much like that with a, with some complicated heart surgery that they couldn't tell. They're like, is this actually working or not? It's like replacing some valve or something like that.

And so they had one group where they did the surgery, another group where they didn't do anything. And then they had another group where they opened up their chest and then didn't do the surgery and stitched them back together. And the group where they opened up their chest and just stitched them back together ended up doing the best because the surgery was harming them. But it was enough harm. It was enough to like, that people went, well, they wouldn't have done that for nothing, you know, but they didn't touch the heart. So it didn't fuck with them. But then it gave them enough. It changed whatever happens when you have this, this idea of positive well-being and you think things are going to work out, the body's amazing and can repair itself in certain

circumstances. And so, I mean, to me, I think life is a little bit about finding the placebo that works for you, which I think is now is easily worth $1,000 for that suppository. I think it's fine. I think it's that idea. This is a very important question, which is like all these fucking hippies who keep going on and on and on about love. Are they full of shit or not? Is that real? When I see these people... That is an important question. Is that real? Is that real or not? When I'm looking at Ram Dass and he's glowing with light and when I feel my life transformed from like very slow transformation, but a real transformation from my association with that particular paradigm, the question is, is it real? Does it work? Is it

all truly just pointless? Is there some other way that isn't delusion, that isn't placebo? Have I missed something? Is it possible that the millennia of various mystics crying out from their caves and their little huts and their fucking mountain cabins who are saying, holy shit. There's more than we thought. And the way to get there is not the way you think you get there. Is that bullshit or is it real? I've gone back and forth with these same questions. I've had enough psychedelic experiences to see all of those lovely amazing things. And then when I'm optimistic evolutionary point of view, well, love is this evolved bonding mechanism and cooperation is this fantastic strategy that humans have clearly done well by. And so more cooperation seems to work in a lot of

cases if you're not being taken advantage of by people, which will happen within the system of the game theory. There is just going to be enough incentive at some point where someone will take advantage of someone else loving too much. And so there is a little... But everything you just said, that is all a, like you could put that on a grid, you can quantify it, you can like say, okay, this is what the reason... Here's one reason love helps evolutionarily. Here's one reason that it helps. But I'm saying, and that's great. And I think that's an important study to do. Like let's really look at like the benefits of love from a purely evolutionary perspective. Let's look at that. I love... That's an amazing... That's a great thing. Like how does love help a community? How does love

help a village? How does love help a planet? Great. But before that, I want to get into like, what is it? What is love? What is it? That state of consciousness? What is it? That perfect balance of oxytocin and dopamine and serotonin? And what is it? What is it? And what does it do to a life when it comes into a life? Yeah, I think it's a mix of those things and a beautiful story that we tell ourselves as well. Okay, but still like the actual articulation of the love state. Like do you know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about like when you're so fucking in love with somebody. Yeah. Whether it's a baby, whether it's a dog, a cat, when you're so fucking in love with somebody, that when you get around them, even trying to talk to them about

how much you love them becomes impossible because your language reservoir is not... It doesn't have the right tools in it to say this thing that you're feeling. Right? This begins to transcend data sets and symbol systems. Yeah, I mean, I've been in a place where I have felt this universal love where anything that's like coming out of my mouth right now seems absolutely silly. Like why are you like resisting and making up excuses when you can just like accept this eternal love that is the source of all things. I've been in those states and I wish I could remember them and tap into them more often than I can, but I always end up going back to like trying to... I guess it's just my rational mind of trying to be like, yeah, but let's break that down and I guess

I'm a little bit too much of a reductionist sometimes, which reductionism has all sorts of problems because there's this holistic immersion process and all things and reductionism is bad for predicting things like the chaos and all of these unpredictable like butterfly effects and that sort of thing that happen that obviously are real and have these... Reductionism doesn't help you predict the weather. So I don't know. I do think that... I wonder a lot about... because after my thing last year and what I was in, I was like, oh, you know, I'm like really loving doing this indie comedy, so maybe I'll get out of comedy clubs because that was wearing old. So maybe I found myself chasing another thing and then after a while I was like, well,

why am I doing any of this? And I've accomplished so many goals in my life and then you get up and to the top of like Mount Nowhere and kind of realize that there's just a bottomless pit of want up there and there's just like, oh, I guess there's another peak over there that I should go and have another look on top of that one. Maybe the answer's up there that will give me... And then there's also, I mean, the way in which we age and how our age affects our well-being and what brings people pleasure is another thing as well. So it might just be that we're like getting older and getting more of an appreciation for... That's if you ask people what one of their more memorable experiences was recently, a positive experience. Younger people will say

something exciting, bungee jumping or whatever and older people will say something a little more relaxing around the campfire with my kids or something like that. So we slow down. So I don't necessarily trust that when someone's like, oh, I've been around the block and I've had and I realized and I sat in the... And then I realized it's just about being happy with what you have and just to say, well, for you it is now in the place that you're at that is the best strategy for you. And so is that priming the way that you are trying to articulate consciousness itself. Like I had one of the most interesting experiments that I accidentally did was I used to speaking of selling things and selling ideas to ourselves. I used to sell these stupid plastic

beer mustaches. They clipped on beer bottles, you drank it, looked like you had a mustache. I call them Shane mustaches. Great way to make money. Yeah. People buy one. I'll send you some. Thank you. And they came in eight different colors. Black and pink were the big sellers. But if I wanted people to get other colors, I'd be like, you know, St. Patrick's Day is coming up. Get your green one. Fourth of July is coming up. You want to get your red and your blue mustaches because I needed... I wanted people to buy a variety because they'd get more of them. And then there'd be colors that I... Well, the local sports team, get those colors. Just anything I could do to trigger like, oh, that is why I should have an orange beer mustache. You just give people kind of a reason

because they want to support you anyway. And there'd be say purple. I hadn't unloaded a purple beer mustache in forever. Crazy. I would think those would sell like hotcakes. So I would... Or whatever color wasn't selling. I would just... I would have these... It'd be in a thing with like a bunch of different compartments. And so I'd have these eight different colors and there'd be like stacks of 20 of them all equal of each color. And then I would just use, you know, a little bit of knowledge from behavioral economics. And I'd just take out, you know, 15 of the purple mustaches. So there was five left. And every time, after that show, people would see like, oh, well, this is... There's only a few of these purple ones left. I need to go and get that

purple one is that there's these mental heuristics of this law. Jesus Christ, you're like the fucking Hannibal Lecter of merch. Jesus shame. Everyone listening to this is like, that mother fucker. I know. I got a purple mustache. I went to his fucking show where he hypnotized me to buy a purple fucking beer mustache using some satanic scientific potency. Exactly. But I think we're all doing that to ourselves. And, and so, so what was more interesting than that was not that then all of a sudden these purple mustaches are flying off the shelf, even though I hadn't sold one in three months. It was, I would always ask people, they'd go and get purple one. And I'd be like, so what is, why'd you pick the purple one? And I knew why they picked it. But I would always ask

them and they would always have a story. It's always like their granddaughter's favorite color or their second car was purple. And oh, they just always liked purple and their favorite color on the rainbow. And they don't, and, and it wasn't like a smart or dumb thing. You know, it's not like smart people made a different choice and pick smart people just had like better stories about why they picked the purple must, they still made the same behavior. They would just consciously dream up these, they'd have a better imagination for, well, purple dye was always really expensive to make. So historically, you know, purple went around, was thought of with royalty and wealth. And that is why I bought a purple beer mustache. You know, I always buy it. Everyone in my family

is used a purple beer mustache. And, and, and so you can kind of always tell how intelligent someone is by the sophistication of the lies that they tell themselves. And, and so I, so for example, now let's play the joke on me. I, if you ask me why I'm a standup comedian, this is, you know, you got to talk to reporters and stuff all the time and you tell them a story, I'll tell you this very fanciful story of, you know, I was nine years old, and I had this friend tell me I should be a standup comedian and just planted the seed in my head. And, and it's what I've been dreaming of since I was a little boy. And I just, I always watched as much standup as I could. And I cared about the skill and the craft and I loved the writing of it and then honing the performance

and switching the jokes around in the order of this show. But I also happened to gain status, get resources and potentially attract mates from doing this. So is that like a little side bonus? To this conscious story that I think that I'm doing this? Or is that actually what's driving it in this nice beautiful story about the little boy is the story that I'm making up? Gotcha. Yeah. Let me add to it. When I was studying psychology, bachelor's degree in psychology, not to brag, but when I was studying psychology that one of the, they were talking about certain people who have usually some kind of traumatic brain injury will lose their ability to have a short-term memory. So they have long-term memory, but they don't

have any short-term memory. So one of the things that they would do, if you heard about this, putting the coke in, putting the coke in front of them. Oh, I haven't heard the coke one. I thought you're going to. So you could put a Coca-Cola in front of a person who doesn't have short-term memory and all of a sudden a Coca-Cola has appeared. They don't know where it came from. They don't know what happened. They don't remember whether they got the Coca-Cola or didn't get the Coca-Cola. And so you could say to them, where did that Coca-Cola come from? And they would say, oh, I got up and went to the Coke machine and got a Coke because for their mind to have no ability to explain why a Coca-Cola just appeared, it was easier to invent

what happened to get that fucking Coca-Cola than to deal with the fact that shit's just appearing in front of them. It just didn't work for them. So it just goes along with what you're saying, which is that we want to give ourselves a reason for this thing or that thing. Yeah. And I think that when you're talking about suffering, there's also all of these odd tweaks and ways in which the brain processes suffering. So have you ever heard of the peak end rule? No. This is fantastic. It will come with a very funny little study at the end that you're going to love. So the idea is how does the brain process pain or suffering? Is it like units of pain? You hit yourself a little bit with a hammer. That's four units of pain. You

hit yourself twice as hard. That's eight units of pain. Is that how it's doing it? And so they do these... I think it was Dan Ariely that first started doing these tests. And he was a guy very interested in pain because he had been horrifically burned. He still has all sorts of scars all over his face and whatnot, horrifically burned in a chemical fire in college and spent like a year in a hospital bed and nearly died and had to... So what started the process of exploring pain for him was the nurses would rip the... They'd have to change his bandages as his skin was healing and they just rip it off like a bandaid. And he'd be like, you need to stop doing that. It needs to be slower. And they would just be like, no, no, we need to... Everyone knows you rip off a bandaid

as fast as you can. So he went and that was like the first thing that he studied when he was well. What is the best way to take... And then proved to them that, no, you want to go slower. It's not as painful for people when measured and like surveys and stuff afterwards. And so anyhow, the peak end thing, you take a big bucket of ice and you have someone stick their hand in this freezing cold bucket of ice and it's painful and uncomfortable and whatnot. And then... For like a minute. And then you have them... I think, yeah, it's the same group. At another time, you have them do the same thing, stick their hand in for a minute. So that's the exact... If pain worked as a series of units, they just experienced the exact same number of units of pain. Now, you

add a little bit, without them knowing, you add a little bit of warmer water. It's still cold. It's still uncomfortable, but it's not as cold or as uncomfortable as it was. And you have them leave their hand in for another 30 seconds. So if pain worked in units, this is the exact same number of units. It's the first study, but then an additional 30 seconds of not as bad of pain, but pain nonetheless. So logically, if you're a robot, you would want the first one where it's just a minute and you get it over with. You ask people which one they would want to do again and they pick the second one. Because the brain, it compares the average of the pain with the peak of the pain and what the end of it was. You always want to close a comedy show with a big strong jet.

Like, I've had shows where I bombed the entire show and then closed out by like crushing for 10 minutes. And people are just delighted afterwards. And so here's the fun study that they did. This is back when colonoscopies were much more uncomfortable than they are now. They're trying to figure out how do you make this more comfortable for people. And so they do it really fast and more painful, but for a shorter amount of time. Do you do it slow, less painful, but for longer? And they landed somewhere on the middle with that. But then what they decided to do was to leave the colonoscopy device inside of the person, like not really doing anything for just like another minute or two after the colonoscopy was complete. So it's still painful. You still have this uncomfortable

thing in your ass for two unnecessary minutes and people enjoyed that one more. Wow. That's so cool. That's such a crazy fucking study. Leave it in their ass, Gerald. They'll like it, trust me. So like I tried to, after I do a CrossFit workout, I try to like stretch a little bit afterwards. So it's like, that's the painful stuff that I remember because it's not as painful as the horrible workout was. And I want to be able to get myself to go back in the following day. But there's also, but this is again, like the evolutionary mismatch thing. We intellectually know that exercise is very good for you, right? So why didn't we evolve to just like happily go bumbling into CrossFit? Like some people certainly do. I mean, it's the happiest people

that I've ever seen there. And, but I think you're up against a lot of instincts that are like, I mean, if our ancestors saw us running on a treadmill or something, they'd be like, what the fuck are you doing? You know, we, we made tires to, to transport us, to roll us. And then CrossFitters are like rolling a tire around. It's like all backwards. None of it makes sense. They're not even rolling it. They're flipping it. They're not even using a tire correctly. You're making life harder on yourself because you evolved to have these muscles for this necessary function that is no longer, you don't need to like build shelters every day and hunt or whatever it might be or, or wrestle to find a mate. And, but now you have all of these,

you're set up for all of these muscles. And now if you don't exercise them, they'll deteriorate. So now rather than muscles being this thing that served this function of lifting, lifting stuff that you need to lift, now you need to lift stuff to serve the function of muscles. You know, you're lifting things for lifting sake, like to lift up something heavy and then just put it back down into place. It makes no sense whatsoever. Well, it feels good. It feels like afterwards, it's certainly, or there's like an endorphin rush. Yeah. When you're lifting shit, it feels good to lift heavy things. It does. Oh, you're lucky. It doesn't for me. Well, the, so it's the analysis of it. Like sometime, like one thing like that, I think it's an enjoyable thing to do when you find yourself

in a real pickle. Yeah. Whatever it may be. If you can stop for a second and look at the feeling, really look deep into the feeling, especially with lifting weights. Yeah. And just look at it and think, what, what is this feeling of lifting? Because I think a lot of people don't even do that. Like, I know, like, I know many people, they just, I know, I'm not going to talk about many, me in particular. I will rush through everything. Like, for example, like a cookie in the cabinet, I'll go and get the cookie. And I'll, and I'm going to get a cookie. And that feeling of like excitement. Oh, fuck, man, I'm about to get some sugar. Here we go. I'm about to eat this cookie. And then you eat the cookie, but you don't even taste the cookie. And you realize I just ate a

cookie a few seconds later, but that moment of eating the cookie is gone. You lot, it wasn't, you didn't experience it. Yeah. Rushing, rushing, rushing. So, and you're not full from it either. I just did a whole episode on, on satiation in general, but appetite, you know, just food appetite is a big part of, and there's all, if they, if you give someone like a pitch counter and have them, and have them count the number of gulps they take, they'll be full faster than if they're just like watching TV and eating a cookie, they'll just slam it right down without thinking of it. So, it's not like a stomach fullness thing. It's a perception thing. Well, if you go into the gym with the right food on your stomach and you like drink enough fucking coffee or whatever,

you take some, you get a little stoned, do you work out? You don't like weed. Maybe, maybe that's why I like lifting heavy things. Like I, not that I, I just, I just smoked a little mouth before I go into the grocery store. That's why you hate it. Doing fucking meth at the gym. It's a paranoid nightmare. What the fuck have I stumbled into this unnatural hellscape of plastic and sweating fucking narcissists? What world have I, but you know, I like, as you're talking like, there's a couple of things that occurred to me. One of them is a story I heard Jack, I think it was Jack Kornfield told this story. He was talking about how like in, you know, he went to, he's a Buddhist teacher. He went to Burma, I think he was in Burma to study Buddhism. He became a monk,

shaved his head and studied Buddhism in Burma. And there were stories, you know, and there were one of the stories is like, and you hear this all, all the time, which is like, if you go, if you really do spend enough time sitting still and following your breath, you start getting, you crazy psychedelic shit starts happening to you. Like really crazy shit starts happening to you. Shit that like makes psychedelics seem like the difference between smelling a rose and an actual like, and it's smelling your actual rose and rose perfume. So it's like some of the experiences some of these people are having is like, oh, shit, that's what the psychedelic was mimicking synthetically. And this experience is the experience, you know, versus it's, and that's

what I think one of the great gifts of psychedelics is that they give you a strange place you can place you can refer to if you decide to start like getting into like whatever it may be. Yeah, it's a little bit of a compass, I feel like. Yeah, it gives you points in the right direction. This reminds me, you could say, for example, you could say, this kind of reminds me of MDMA, the thing I'm feeling right now. This kind of reminds me of ketamine a little bit right now. This kind of reminds me. So it gives you this interesting thing you can refer to. But so this is one of the things they talk about. And they get really precise in their ability to kind of dial up certain states of consciousness in the same way. I'm very precise when it comes to dosing

myself with psychedelics. I know the amount of this psychedelic or that psychedelic to microdose, and I can approximate what state of consciousness that's going to put me into. I know by now how to I know with beer, for example, I know what one beer feels like two beers feel like three beers feel like based on alcohol content, you know, that is that's a great trait. I get wrong sometimes of that. But you know, mostly like, I can guess what's going to happen if I drink that next fucking whiskey ginger, right? So so in the same way, like through a disciplined practice, apparently, and I now I'm completely speaking from other people's stories, not my own, you can begin to dial in certain states of consciousness through whatever the practice

may be, breathwork, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, some combination of yogic poses mixed in with some kind of exposure to the elements mixed in with, you know, who knows what, but they have all these different ways or maybe just a basic understanding of the who knows, maybe they figured out a way to trigger certain, I don't know, neurotransmitters or maybe they, you know, they're there, who knows, who knows, but they can really go into these various states. And they have visions. And in these visions are can be so profound. And they get mystical, you know, like where people can travel, can like, you know, astrally project to other places and see things that are happening and predict the future and all the stuff that you fucking hear

about, who knows. So Jack Hornfield tells a story that there was a monk who was like having all of these incredible visions and like all of these incredible experiences and been meditating for a while. And he was like, you know, witnessing what I guess you would, we would might call the DMT realm or the Iowa, you know, he's seeing spirits, talking to God, seeing the Buddha, seeing the Buddha field, seeing all the Buddha, seeing the, you know, the, the, where we're all headed, the ultimate final state of like pure enlightenment for the entire universe to, you sing it all. And so he went to this monk, the teacher who was out there in Burma to tell him all the shit that, man, I'm seeing the fucking Buddha field, man. I'm seeing the Buddha, I'm seeing the great chamber

of enlightened beings that breeze the universe and do exist. I'm seeing it all, man. And the teacher said to him, you're missing the point. You're missing the point. It's not about the experiences that you're having. It's who are the experiences happening to? That's the question. Who are the experiences happening to? Who is this person that's feeling this thing or that thing? Who is it? And so, and that's an easy thing to miss. And I do it myself all the time. So like, this is the difference. This is where like, you talk to somebody who is fresh off a great DMT trip. And they're going to tell you some crazy shit, man. They saw, you know, listen to Terence McKenna's beautiful, flowery way of describing these fucking DMT trips. Oh my God, it's incredible.

You feel like you're tripping yourself. Yeah. Some people, maybe they're not so good at it. It's like someone telling you a dream or something, but it's still, you know, whoa, what are you, whoa. And yet, all of that stuff, it's a way to distract yourself from a bigger question, which is who is this shit happening to? What am I? The experiencer, the thing that is like ascribing meaning and reason and oh, it's because of an evolutionary dynamic or it's because of the soul field or it's because I'm made of love or it's because this thing or that, who is made of love? Who is the soul? What is this thing that we are? What are we? What am I? What are you? Right. And that, to me, that's where the fucking rubber hits the road is that

perpetually going back into that sense of like, what is this? What is the thing that is experiencing all of this stuff? I love just going back into that. What is that thing? And the more like that practice of like inquiry happens, I've noticed a kind of relief from the reactionary states, you know, it just feels like you become a little less reactionary when you're not so caught up and like, oh, I'm Shane, I'm Duncan, the podcaster, or I'm the comedian and this is why I do my podcast and this is why I do my comedy and this is why I make my art. Like you ask a fucking kid, it's one of the funniest things ever when you ask a kid who does something ridiculous, you know, you see these fucking kids, the YouTube videos, hilarious YouTube videos,

they've covered themselves with paint. They got a can of paint out and they covered themselves with paint, they painted the fucking wall, they painted the bathroom. Yeah. And you say to them, why did you do that? And what do they say? I don't know. Yes. Because they're honest. Yeah, they don't know. They don't know why they fucking did that. They just did it. Who the fuck knows, dude? That's an adult question. You want to know why I did that? I don't fucking know. You sick motherfucker addicted to goddamn meaning. I know it is, it really is an addiction. But then it's like, it is, it's an addiction because we, but the somewhere in the exploration of the self. And it's a process, I think there is some kind of antidote to the horror.

I will buy this pill for $1,000. This antidote to the whole, I just, I just have to stick this brick up my ass. You just shove a brick up your ass, Shane. Only $1,000. Listen, when I was told, this is literally just a red brick. Here's where it gets weird. So, you know, you're telling that story about the moustaches. So the man, the man who taught me this, it's really weird because he presented to me. He's like, he had this entire like, this like display of different and like pills, so to speak, enemas to shove up my ass. And there was, there was probably like 65 basic, normal sized butt plugs, but there was only one brick left. Oh, you needed it. And there's a line. I saw a lot of people iron that fucking brick.

So I'm like, give me the brick. Yeah, it looks popular. That thing must work. It worked. It worked. So yeah, shove a brick up your ass. Well, I mean, on the, on the, when you pull it back out though, I think that just like right before exits, just leave it for just like another minute or two. Well, no, what you do is right as you're pulling it out, you ask yourself, who's ass is this? Well, it's also, it's also very subjective because we're like, we're living with our asses too, whereas like you ask someone else to describe. Yeah, it's just someone else to describe what they're seeing. Yeah. And people are going to have all sorts of different takes on, on what's going on. Well, the man who sold me the bricks, the brick man,

he kept saying to me, who's ass is this? Just over and over again. It's my mantra. When things get rough, man, I just start chanting, who's ass is this, who's ass is this, who's ass is this, who's ass is this, who's ass is this, who's ass is this. It works every fucking time, man, because it's like, yeah, because it's like, you know, we're always getting bricks shoved in our ass, so to speak, you know. Well, life's going to shove a brick in your ass, whether you want it to or not. So, isn't it just better to have one in there? From one of your favorite podcasters, by the way,

for only a thousand dollars. Guys, a thousand bucks and not only, if you order this today, if you order this today, use offer code enlightenment. Not only will you get a DTFH ass brick, but you will also get high fives from a lot of your friends. Yeah, for sure. You will get so many fucking high fives because like when, and I can tell, you know, these, like, this is like a lot of other podcasters, they sell t-shirts, whatever, fuck you. Uh-huh. We see each other, because I can tell if someone has a brick in their ass.

By the look on their face, and I'll go to them like, dude, thank you for listening to the podcast. Quick question for you. Whose ass is my brick in right now? Whose ass is my brick in? Whose ass is my brick in? Shane, the next time you find yourself in bed, depressed, wondering if there's a point, just ask whose ass is this brick in. And there, my friend, is the secret and the point. See, like I said earlier, you just have this beautiful way of expressing everything in this way that just makes it all make sense to me. It's beautiful. I mean, that's, and that's, to my point, life is counterintuitive. Like that's not something, you know, when you grow up,

they tell you like, you could be an astronaut or you could be president or something, and you like work really hard to try to do that. And the poor guy, Donald Trump gets up there to president and he's still not happy, still not. I'm going to be real honest with you, dude. Based on my deep understanding of whether or not someone has a brick in their ass, I don't want to get political here. Oh yeah. I mean, brick talk always goes this way, though. You got to expect. Listen, it has nothing to do with like whether you're a Republican Democrat, liberal or conservative. When I look at Donald Trump, I can tell you that guy's got a brick in his ass. Really? Yeah. He's carrying one around for sure. And, and it's helping him. I think,

look at the, look at the unemployment. He's doing great. Yeah. Oh, those job numbers. You know, I think it's time for you to tell people where they can find you. And then after that, let's go shove bricks in our ass. Oh, sure. Sure. Well, whose ass is? Let's find out. The ass. The universal ass. What came first, the brick or the ass, at the start of all things. They both came together because they were in love. People can go to Shane Moss at USS.com. Am I really, I'm not, I'm not selling my website as, as well as you just sold that ass brick to me. But you can check out the Here We Are podcast. I interview different scientists each week and you can talk in, if it would mean a whole lot to me to see people. If

it would be cool to get to premiere the, the film Psychonautics, a comics exploration of psychedelics to a packed house on June 15th at five o'clock. And there's also an after party serendipitously. There was this sci-fi or psychedelic festival happening that night. That is now like the official after party of the, of the premiere. And so people, people can get the, in the ticket stub, which is $15. We'll get you $15 off of this sci-fire event. And so, We'll be adding it to my calendar. That's awesome. So, yeah. So there's, there's going to be like Cole Marta and Dr. Terry, Terry Early. Cole's going to be there? Are all going to be like giving talks there, but there's also going to be music and art and all

sorts of, it's a, it's going to be a big, awesome psychedelic, you know, awesome. That sounds like a blast. Yeah, yeah. Shane, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to chat with you. Nice talking to you, buddy. That was Shane Moss, everybody. Go check out his movie. It looks amazing. Thanks for listening, everybody. Until next time, Hare Krishna. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JC Penney. Family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses,

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