Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 480: MEET DELIC LIVE with Aubrey Marcus, Johnny Pemberton, and Vince Kadlubek

Episode Date: December 11, 2021

Aubrey Marcus, Johnny Pemberton, and Vince Kadlubek join Duncan LIVE for the first annual MEET DELIC psychedelic conference in Las Vegas. Aubrey Marcus is the founder of Onnit and the host of the Au...brey Marcus podcast. Johnny Pemberton co-hosts The Leather Rose with Duncan (now available everywhere!). And Vince Kadlubek is the founder of Meow Wolf, which creates immersive and interactive art installations! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Purple - Visit Purple.com/Duncan10 and use promo code DUNCAN10 for $200 Off any mattress order of $1500 or more! Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package.

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Starting point is 00:00:35 The holidays are upon us. I know a lot of you out there are engaged in some kind of ritual for my pagan friends out there. Maybe you're getting ready to celebrate the solstice for the Anvexians. I imagine at this point you've had, what is it now? Let's see what the date is. It's the 10th, so you've had 17 ritualized sexual ceremonies
Starting point is 00:01:04 with a grizzly bear. And if you're a Balnexian druid, then, of course, your nipples are probably at peak extension by the 10th, I think. I am not familiar with that. I dated one of those druids. And right around this time of the year, she would have stretched her nipples to approximately
Starting point is 00:01:27 the size of a nice-sized rope of spaghetti. Regardless, I hope that you're having a wonderful holiday season and that you are finding yourself immersed in all kinds of situations that are melting your heart and making you happy. I'm having that. I can't. I'm getting uncynical.
Starting point is 00:01:50 I could still be fucking cynical. I mean, it's easy to be cynical. That's why so many people are cynical, because it's easy. It's easy to deny. It's easy to talk to a Ghanarian horn rider and tell them, you know what, I don't think that there really is any kind of magic that comes from putting a ram's horn into your asshole during the Christmas season.
Starting point is 00:02:12 It's easy to say that, but you know what's not easy? Putting a ram's horn in your asshole to see if they're right, which I have done, and there is magic in the horn. And this is why I love this special Ghanarian horn carol. Let us put the cinnamon upon the spiral helix. Let us touch the gnomes back and drape him with his sheet. Let us exchange the sacred, gifting bowls.
Starting point is 00:02:44 And may everyone have horns in their holes. Ghanarius, we brought the sun to Earth. Twas from your nipples that the lizard king was birthed. And now we gather round the ceremonial fire. We blow our horns for peace. We blow our horns for love. But no matter what you believe in this holiday, I just hope that you're feeling great.
Starting point is 00:03:26 And thank you so much for listening to the DTFH. We got a great podcast for you here. This was recorded live in Las Vegas at a psychedelic conference called Meet Delic, which I think is going to be a yearly event. Here with us today are three legendary humans. We have Johnny Pemberton. We've got Aubrey Marcus.
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Starting point is 00:06:52 What a podcast we have for you with us here today. Well, it's obviously not today. This was recorded live, but we had the incredible Aubrey Marcus, who's the host of the Aubrey Marcus podcast and the founder of On It. We have the brilliant Johnny Pemberton, who is the co-host of The Leather Rose
Starting point is 00:07:12 and is an incredibly funny comedian. And we have one of the co-founders of Meow Wolf, Vince Cadlubeck, is here with us today. All the links you need to find these wonderful people will be at dunkitrussel.com. But now everybody, a live DTFH coming to you from the Meet Delix Psychedelic Festival in Las Vegas. Here we go.
Starting point is 00:07:36 ["Welcome to the Dunkin' Trussel Family Hour Podcast"] ["Welcome to the Dunkin' Trussel Family Hour Podcast"] It's the Dunkin' Trussel Family Hour Podcast. Welcome, this is the Dunkin' Trussel Family Hour Podcast. Let's get going. ["Welcome to the Dunkin' Trussel Family Hour Podcast"] We have some wonderful guests with us. I'm very excited about this guest.
Starting point is 00:08:17 You are sitting in the byproduct of this person's mind and the art collective that he's part of. Everybody please welcome to the DTFH, the co-founder, one of the co-founders of Meow Wolf, Vince Kotlobeck, everybody, round of applause. ["Welcome to the Dunkin' Trussel Family Hour Podcast"] Welcome, Vince. And you just saw him here on stage.
Starting point is 00:08:44 He's a hilarious comedian, one of my best friends. You might have heard him on the podcast if you listened to it. He is the co-founder of the Coalition for Moral Order, Johnny Pemberton, everybody. ["Welcome to the Dunkin' Trussel Family Hour Podcast"] And of course, he was just up here. I'm happy that he's one of my friends. He's a psychedelic leader, founder of Onnit,
Starting point is 00:09:09 philosopher, poet. I'm Remarkas, everybody! I'm Remarkas! ["Welcome to the Dunkin' Trussel Family Hour Podcast"] I got no beer? I just took your beer, actually. Johnny, what the fuck? We need one more beer.
Starting point is 00:09:29 Want to share it? That's all good. I think a beer's gonna arrive. I have faith. Beer? I think I just saw somebody run back. I know, I still eat. That's what I'm saying.
Starting point is 00:09:38 Faith. It's a cabinet. But it's better than you didn't have it, because if I asked for it, they wouldn't have run. I think they would have. Yeah, you could ask for anything they bring it up to. You could ask for a glass of ayahuasca to probably show up. Would you get a glass of ayahuasca for Aubrey, please?
Starting point is 00:09:51 Please, no. Okay, I'll go. I have a question for you, Aubrey, regarding ayahuasca. Did they put ice in it? No, you want that scalding, hot, thick mud. Really? That flaming, flaming cheeto ayahuasca. Dirt and fire.
Starting point is 00:10:13 That's what you want from it. Do you think in the future that that might change and people are like, why the fuck were we drinking it like that? You can make it taste way better. That's like asking, could you do Burning Man in a really beautiful place with a nice stream and like, nah, like it's got to be hard. You got to work for it, you got to get out there.
Starting point is 00:10:29 You got to feel the fucking burn. You got to feel it. So there's some BDSM to ayahuasca. I think there's some magic to that being in its raw state and also providing that barrier where it's... You even see people who've been drinking it for a long time. It just gets worse. Like you'll watch someone who's been on the ayahuasca
Starting point is 00:10:47 a thousand journeys, they'll go up and they'll drink it and they'll go, yeah. It like doesn't get better, you know, and I think that's important. I feel like they probably used to say this about rice just because they didn't know how to cook it. They were like, yeah, it fills up your stomach but it tastes like shit.
Starting point is 00:11:04 You know, it's dry, you got to chew it in your teeth but that's part of it. And then someone's like, boil it. Just boil it. We've got, y'all are so brilliant. I just, I thought we could start the conversation off and maybe it's the most obvious question of all time but it seems like a kickoff question.
Starting point is 00:11:26 Each of you are artists and creatives and I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about ways that psychedelics have influenced you in your creative process. Vince? Yeah, I mean psychedelics, I mean obviously, you know, Meow Wolf the brand, Meow Wolf the movement, Meow Wolf the expression, the articulation
Starting point is 00:11:46 is so much part of a trajectory of like psychedelic pop, you know, and like, I'd say just as much as any substance, you know, has influenced maybe any one of the artists' work. There's so many points in storytelling and you know, various mediums that have influenced it that are also psychedelic pop, you know, like Willy Wonka in the chocolate factory
Starting point is 00:12:11 or, you know, Miyazaki or Super Mario Brothers or Alice in Wonderland, you know, as the site goes on and on or Disney. I mean, so I'd say like the sort of cultural thread of psychedelic pop is largely, you know, like what Meow Wolf is kind of pulling from, you know, as an artistic articulation. And you know, substance, you know,
Starting point is 00:12:36 it's not like, you know, we're a company so it's like hard to say, like, you know, there's like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of artists who took part of Omega Mart. So, you know, of course, like we work with people like Alex and Alison Gray or, you know, Andrew Jones or, and of course, like, you know, they're visionary artists who have pulled directly
Starting point is 00:12:53 from the psychedelic experience. They're brilliant work. But I'd say like more so just like as like, you know, as an artistic company, it's really been what definitely influenced by all of those pieces of pop culture that are based in that sort of psychedelic story. Cool.
Starting point is 00:13:12 Johnny? I think probably because I did, I was lucky enough to have a good friend who was growing mushrooms when I was like a sophomore in high school, he's growing one's basement. He was the smartest guy I've ever met. And we took them, I took them at a pretty young age, I think, for living in a small town in Minnesota.
Starting point is 00:13:32 And I think if I hadn't done that, I think, I don't know, I think something about psychedelics restructures your relationship to fear. And I think if you're a performer, that's really important because it makes you face something and it makes you not afraid of things that you would normally be afraid of, especially if you do them at a certain time
Starting point is 00:13:53 when you're developing, even though I look like I still probably am developing, but even back then, it was even more significant. But I think it probably changed the trajectory of my life significantly to the point where I don't know, even thinking about what it would be like if I hadn't had access to that, I think it would have been, I don't know, I would probably be doing commercial real estate
Starting point is 00:14:15 or something like that. You know what I mean? Something, nothing, it's okay. How dare you say commercial real estate? It's one of the most psychedelic professions, man. Well, yeah, because the space is real estate. It's constantly high, man, all the time, all day long. Well, I guess I'm gonna quit
Starting point is 00:14:32 and go back into commercial real estate. Let's get into, let's, why? Somebody just like, is there, are you a realtor? Oh, he was, see? What happened? Psychedelics. Okay, cool, we won't get into it. Aubrey, what about you?
Starting point is 00:14:49 I don't know who I would be at all without psychedelics. I mean, I was playing basketball, figuring shit out, I was 18, I did it 18, man. That's 22 years ago, and it's been a steady, constant drum beat through my entire fucking life. Who is Aubrey Marcus without psychedelics? Who the fuck knows the answer to that question? So every piece of art I've ever created,
Starting point is 00:15:10 everything I've offered has been subtly influenced by these medicines, right? Like, it's inexorable from my story. So what is the answer to that question? It's a riddle that I'll never know. And even now, poetry will come through where it'll come through in medicine and it'll just be a strand and all I'll have is that strand
Starting point is 00:15:29 and I'll be able to come back later after the journey and tug on that strand and it's connected to a whole bunch of balloons of words and verses, and I'll be able to pull it through where ideas, even the way that on it was structured, all of these things come as like little strands that come through the ether and then I can just pull them through my life.
Starting point is 00:15:45 So the answer to that is like, it's so vast and unfathomable what my life personally, and it's not a recommendation for everybody to do as much psychedelics as possible, but that's my story. It's like, this is helping me every single step of the way. I want to thank Squarespace for supporting this episode of the DTFH.
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Starting point is 00:19:27 We were talking about this last night. Because of this fucked up prohibition that we've all gone through, so many people to this day remain in what has been called the psychedelic closet. So there's people who will never, who don't feel comfortable saying like, oh yeah, I was, you know, this psychedelic or that psychedelic influenced the movie I was working on.
Starting point is 00:20:05 But we were talking last night about how much psychedelics have had an impact on the tech sector, how like the early innovators of the technology that has completely transformed society were like taking LSD all the time. Can you talk about that a little bit? It's openly part of the narrative. I mean, the job story, the Steve Jobs story,
Starting point is 00:20:26 is very much anchored to the usage of LSD early on in the creation of Apple computers. You know, and it's like, you know, I know Nolan Bushnell who created Atari and really launched the video game industry. It's like, all these folks were just like 20-somethings back in the 70s and 80s just exploring the unknown. And I think that's ultimately for an artist
Starting point is 00:20:54 or for an innovator, an inventor. It's like, you know, so often times we hear an artist say that we're just the vessel, that like the signal's coming through us. And like you said, you've talked about like, we're just the radio, we're not the signal itself, but you have to be able to use the antenna to be able to pick up the signal.
Starting point is 00:21:15 And I think when you're venturing into art or technology or innovation of any sort, you're trying to open yourself up to the unknown because that's where that signal comes from, is from the unknown. And we create these incredible apparatuses of noability that block the signal that's coming from the unknown.
Starting point is 00:21:41 And that apparatus of noability that we create is the identity. And the identity is all about who we have been and like the advent of technology or the vision of an incredible piece of art or viewing your career in a way that you're gonna manifest, all of that happens in the future. So when we anchor ourselves to these apparatuses
Starting point is 00:22:04 of identity that are created by past-based memory, we basically shut ourselves off from the opportunities, the possibilities of what lies ahead. And I think that that somewhere in there is where that relation is between cracking that identity, opening it up to the unknown, opening it up to the future,
Starting point is 00:22:27 allowing the signal to come in, no matter what industry you're in, art, technology, commercial real estate, it's all part of the same kind of same process. What can, maybe we can all talk about how to distinguish the signal coming in from like the bullshit you read in your journal after being high all night long.
Starting point is 00:22:50 Like, do you know what I mean? Because sometimes- There's a difference? Well, I don't know. No, there might not be. Because like, we went around Meow Wolf yesterday, holy shit, it is a psychedelic. And I don't think that a part of the psychedelic revolution
Starting point is 00:23:09 is we have to expand our definition of psychedelics past like ingesting chemicals and understand we can eat with our eyes and our ears. There's other ways to do it. Our assholes, you know? Like we can- Deep portal. Deep portal, yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:24 That's actually tattooed right on my teeth. With an arrow pointing. But for every single one of you, because you all have done crazy shit that has turned out great. But for every single one of you and me, there's this weird line that appears between you as you are now
Starting point is 00:23:49 and you following that intuition to make the thing. Like, you and a group of people made Meow Wolf. But if you like sat down with the wrong set of people, or even if you just were with yourself, you're like, I'm gonna create like, you know, it'll be like a fake supermarket. And there's gonna be deodorant sticks with labels on them with pictures of dolphins.
Starting point is 00:24:19 And there'll be a tent with a tunnel you can go through into another room where there's slides that sometimes you can't go on because they're being decontaminated. And there's gonna be a story behind it. You know, I'm afraid that I wouldn't be so courageous. I'm afraid that if that idea started trickling into my mind, I'd be like, all right, time to slow down a little bit, man.
Starting point is 00:24:43 Yeah, from a commercial real estate perspective, that's a nightmare. He's right, though. I mean, like, from a commercial real estate perspective, it is a nightmare. And from like the mind of a financial institution that's funding it, it's a nightmare. And from the view of a general contractor
Starting point is 00:25:07 that's trying to build it, it's a nightmare. Or a project management team that's trying to run it, it's a nightmare. All of those different functions love knowing what this is gonna be, knowing what they're doing. Like money loves knowing, architecture loves knowing, commercial real estate loves knowing, everybody loves knowing it.
Starting point is 00:25:27 Creativity artists, those who venture into the imagination, don't really want to know. They want to continue to discover. And I think that that's what's really special about Meow Wolf is that like we've somehow been able to marry, you know, that pursuit of the unknown with all of these other pieces of infrastructure that are business related and like physical manifestation
Starting point is 00:25:54 related that want to know. And like bringing those things together. And like that's still the struggle. That's gonna be an ongoing struggle for us as a group, as a company, as a group of artists, is as we get bigger and as we do more of these things, like how do we continue to venture into the unknown? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:11 One of the things about the analogy of the radio and the signal is sometimes we don't realize how important it is to train the radio to be a master. Like this beautiful, the beautiful shit that comes when it has to come through a radio that has developed mastery and knows how to encode the language or art or philosophy or comedy or whatever it is, it won't come just in another way.
Starting point is 00:26:36 Like I can't download a comedic set or a beautiful painting, but I can sure as shit download a poem or a philosophical idea because I've honed that aspect of my radio. So it's an interesting thing where yes, it is the signal and absolutely it flows through you. But the more that you develop yourself in your own mastery, the more that that signal is going to make sense
Starting point is 00:26:55 and translate into meow wolf rather than just finger painting on your fucking bedroom wall, you know what I mean? Like it's important to recognize that we're meeting the signal with what we have and every step I take in my own advancement, I get a new cooler signal that I'm able to translate. And putting it, putting into check the part of the self that wants to control and like putting into check
Starting point is 00:27:20 the control that like wanting to know and wanting to control because you know, Terrence McKenna would talk about this a lot. Like there's, if you think about control, chaos and order or control and spontaneity or known and unknown, one of the two pieces of that balance wants more control and that's control controls the parasite because control wants more control.
Starting point is 00:27:47 That's the nature of control. So like as you are thinking about bringing the signal in, you also, especially when you have like a success and when you start to think like, oh wow, we created something, I created something awesome. You know, there's a part, it's the ego, the identity that wants to then take control of the process and it has the potential to forget
Starting point is 00:28:05 that it's still just receiving the signal. And usually you have to like check that part of yourself, your organization, your institution, your company, whatever, you need to check the control because that's the one that wants to take over. Is it ever a simple, you think is a, what's the saying, right drunk, edit sober? Like replace drunk with anything?
Starting point is 00:28:27 Right. Yeah, totally, like be open to the creative moment, disrupt thought, you know, disrupt, because like thought, the words that are in our head, the thought process, the voice that we hear, that we call ourself, that's part of the same apparatus of knowing that is the identity. And if you're trying to think of the good idea,
Starting point is 00:28:46 it's like never gonna happen. You have to disrupt that, you know, so like drunk or whatever other thing in order to get the signal in, right, totally. When you look at it later and you can look at the, I can tell you about your journal, like yeah, maybe it's not all perfect, but there's something in there that you can hone
Starting point is 00:29:03 in a different mind state, because you can look at it from like a, you can like attack it from different angles and different mind states are different angles, so you can cover everything. Sometimes it's good to look at something, I think look at it dead sober, because sometimes, I mean, you know,
Starting point is 00:29:19 it's not a psychedelic state, but in the antithesis of it, it kind of is in a way, because it's different than the thing it was created in. So if you're thinking of a different state than the thought was created in, that gives a new angle to the thought. And vice versa, look at the stuff you've created sober.
Starting point is 00:29:34 Oh yeah. Drunk, like really high, and be like, fuck, that was a dumb idea. Yes. You know, like both ways are important. Well, yeah, and it's a problem when those two sides of your personality never agree with each other.
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Starting point is 00:32:52 You too. And that was my first encounter with making a show. And I wanna talk about this a little bit, because it relates to this idea of becoming the signal and then getting that signal into the world. But I realized that there are so many layers in the material universe that are true barriers, not just the part where your mind is like,
Starting point is 00:33:23 I don't wanna make that, or that I don't think I could ever turn that into something good. But once you get to the point where like, okay, now I'm making something, there's so many bureaucratic crazy levels that you have to go through just to make anything. And you realize like art has to be translated
Starting point is 00:33:41 to these, to the insurance people. I can't even imagine the conversations you have with your insurance agents. Like, how do you even say? Like, no, the slide is, it's safe. It'll be fine. No, people here aren't getting high. What do you mean?
Starting point is 00:33:57 Why would anyone do that? But like, you know, we, when we were making the midnight gospel, we wanted to use a statue of the thinking man, you know, the guy with his head here, you know what I'm talking about? And so this is just one little piece of it. You send everything to Netflix,
Starting point is 00:34:18 and they're awesome, by the way, but we got a response back saying, if you want to use the thinking man, you will have to fly to Paris and meet with a council of artists who protect that statue from being used in the wrong ways. And I was like, fucking send me to Paris for this, for this meeting.
Starting point is 00:34:44 Like, it was like a dream to sit in a room with like a bunch of Parisian artists and be like, well, you know, the statue is going to come to life and it's going to be stopping on me in, I don't know. What do you think happened to make them set up that council? Somebody put it in there. Something really bad happened with that statue.
Starting point is 00:35:03 Yeah, someone like made like, I'm not going to do another butt joke. Damn it, I already burned my butt jokes for the night. But can you talk a little bit about like, I know you, you're running a business, you're running a business, you're a successful comic actor. Can you talk a little bit about that weird experience
Starting point is 00:35:21 of meeting the fucking reptile alien thing that you have to translate your epiphany to using like this language of contracts and the language of the earth? There's, you know, for me like, you know, back in 2017, after the House of Eternal Return opened in Santa Fe for us, like we were open for a year, successful,
Starting point is 00:35:49 and we knew that we had to, you know, grow and move into bigger projects and to other markets. So I started as a CEO at the time and I started searching for other locations and meeting with commercial real estate people and, you know, people who build buildings. And the one here in Vegas, Omega Mart was like the easiest one to communicate
Starting point is 00:36:11 just because Winston Fisher, who runs this entire area 15, went to Burning Man, was super inspired, life changed and met this guy, Michael Benneville, and they were just on a track, on a vision, to be able to create something that was unprecedented and unknown. And so that was an easy conversation,
Starting point is 00:36:31 but the conversation we had in Denver, which we just opened that project a month ago, that was like more of like a traditional, like talking to a big real estate developer who maybe didn't know what the hell I was talking about when I talked about Meow Wolf. But there was no substitution for like digging into a place of passion and spontaneity.
Starting point is 00:36:56 Like, and spontaneity, if I was to talk to him in a scripted manner, if I was to talk to him in like a controlled and known way about Meow Wolf, it wouldn't work. I have to tap into a moment of spontaneity and passion and spirit and I need to reach into that unknown to be able to communicate to him why Meow Wolf is gonna work
Starting point is 00:37:16 and why we're gonna be able to pull this off and why it's important to bring to Denver. And so like that was my process, was kind of being like staying in that moment of spontaneity and spirit that the artwork comes from to begin with, that ether that the artwork comes from, in order to like get that energy
Starting point is 00:37:34 and hopefully inspire him. So I need him to think about building a $35 million, 100,000 square foot building. He's never gonna do it if it's about numbers or logistics. He's gonna do it because he's inspired. If he got inspired, he's like, fuck yeah, let's do it. And that's pretty much what happened. Yeah. Oh, that's cool.
Starting point is 00:37:55 I think the key thing is you have to be in conversations with the people who can make decisions, the people. Like you can run into the nameless, fake faceless bureaucracy that just has rules that are good for the general but not the specific. And if you're splashing up against that, you're in a bad spot. But if you can find the person,
Starting point is 00:38:16 the person that can transcend the rules, the person that can be the person that says, no, fuck these rules, not in this case, not in this instance, we're gonna do it a different way. The person can be inspired by exactly what he says. And your energy and your belief were all amazing belief detectors and passion detectors. And when someone taps into you,
Starting point is 00:38:33 like anybody who invests in anything, you know that you invest in people as much as you invest in ideas. You invest in that person. And when you can meet the person as your person and you know, you've just fucking know that you got this thing and they can detect that, that is where you need to arrive at.
Starting point is 00:38:52 But it is absolutely difficult when you run into not the person, but the rule book itself. And that's the dogma and all of this shit that you run into. So it's, I think about finding the person that can transcend the rule. You mean like just finding a good partner to work with? Or like for you, for, you know, in Netflix, right?
Starting point is 00:39:11 Like Netflix may have a policy, but then there's somebody in fucking Netflix that can break the policy. Somebody has the power. Like an interpreter almost. Someone who can like go between. Interpreter, but also to transcend to say these rules are in place for a particular reason.
Starting point is 00:39:26 But I have the authority to break it. And if I trust you, I will break it because I believe in this and we will recreate these rules in a different, in a different standard. You know, just so that I'm not, I don't sound like I'm bitching about Netflix because I'm not here. When we, when they bought like they're crazy
Starting point is 00:39:43 that they bought the idea from Midnight Gospel. They were, they were sitting at this table with all these like executives and they were looking at the art because Pendleton ward my creative partner. He had drawn this, he's amazing. He had drawn this like, they're these lantern headed creatures
Starting point is 00:40:01 in this animated series I made. And one of the executives was like, where did you, what is this? And I, and so I'm sitting there like, you know what? I'm gonna tell, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna tell the truth. I'm not gonna like turn, turn pretend that I'm not who I am. So I'm like, okay, well, I was a burning man and we're in a tent smoking DMT.
Starting point is 00:40:30 And I, I, I saw it. Like I saw this cow creature with a technological lantern head. And I looked away and look back and it had just moved a few inches forward. It felt really disappointed. Cause like, oh, you know, like McKenna's like, ah, you see these self-transforming machine elves.
Starting point is 00:40:53 And it's, and I'm like seeing a fucking cow with a lantern head. And then, and then in the Netflix, they were like, that's cool. There was no like, what the fuck? You drug a, get out of here. And, and you know, I think the reason that, that that happened is because of like all the work people
Starting point is 00:41:18 like you are doing, all the psychedelic advocates are doing is it's getting us to a place where we can be honest about like where some of our inspiration is coming from. And that being said, yeah. So it did, I think, you know, de-stigmatizing is one of those important things. And I have to just say this cause like when I interviewed Pendleton on my podcast, one of the first things I asked him
Starting point is 00:41:44 was like, so, you know, such a cheesy, like hacky question. So how, how were you when you made Adventure Time? And he got this sweet look cause everyone asked him that. And he's like, not high at all. Like I don't, like I just came. And I think that's an important thing with all my bullshit rambling up front. Like you can also just make stuff with your soul
Starting point is 00:42:09 and with your heart. You don't have to be high all the time. We shouldn't forget that either. But all that being said, and forgive me for making it go just a little dark here. Oh yeah. That force, that bureaucratic force, the thing that's writing the contracts and the rules
Starting point is 00:42:28 are like the gestalt of that thing. Is it Satan? Is it evil? Is it just implicitly fucking evil that somehow in the world, there is this thick barrier of contractual agreements between an epiphany and that epiphany making its way into the world?
Starting point is 00:42:51 Maybe it's great though, because you have that opposition. So much stuff. Anytime I've been a part of something where there's a lot of opposition to something part of the creative, the creative that came after that was always better. Sometimes it means like sliding a red herring in there.
Starting point is 00:43:08 So it's like, you put the bad thing that's really obvious so they see that and then you throw in the word. What's that word? It's nothing, just a nonsense word. And then it's gonna be more funny and better. I think a lot of times the opposition, I enjoy it. I like when someone's telling me I can't do something.
Starting point is 00:43:27 Anytime I see a sign on a light switch that says don't touch this switch, it's like I'm touching that fucking switch. And I feel like that's the same with creative stuff. If someone's telling you like, oh, you shouldn't do a crazy ass shopping mall and stuff like that. It's like, oh, I definitely wanna do it now.
Starting point is 00:43:42 Yeah, it's like part of the simulation programming basically says like, if we tell them not to do it, they'll try even harder to do it. And so like the rules are there, I think about it like oftentimes like a pump trolley between like control and spontaneity or the known and the unknown order and creativity or whatever. It's just like a pump trolley.
Starting point is 00:44:08 It's like one has to kind of flex their muscle in order to get the other one to react. And it's a pump trolley that like human consciousness has been on since the dawn of time or consciousness itself has been on since the dawn of time. You know, that is kind of like progressing us forward and keeping the like fire burning for those who are imaginative,
Starting point is 00:44:26 who wanna break the known reality, who wanna continue to reach into the unknown reality. Those rules and that order and all that bureaucratic allows like a pressure cooker allows it to then like express even louder and even greater. I think these are all, I agree. And I think they're all very positive takes on the force of resistance.
Starting point is 00:44:47 But, but, right. Have I told you about my encounter with Lucifer with the devil? No. All right. So. I encounter this, I'm in a deep psychedelic one-on-one journey with an ayahuasca shaman.
Starting point is 00:45:02 We're doing heavy doses of psilocybin and cannabis at the same time and he's singing Icaros and he asked me if I wanna start meeting some of these archetypal forces and I meet the force of the Christ. And it was this emerald green column that just extended up forever. And it was this feeling that I could share any aspect,
Starting point is 00:45:21 any of the things that I was ashamed of, anything that I've ever done and it wouldn't flinch. It was just radical forgiveness and love all the way. And then it's like, would you like to meet Lucifer? And I was like, that sounds like a fucking terrible idea. But I was like, and he's like, all right, we're gonna call that energy in. And he said, they call it the fallen angel.
Starting point is 00:45:42 This is an angel who loves us so much that they're willing to hold the darkness and the polarity. And this is the aspect that you're talking about, like the necessity for the darkness to hold that polarity so that we have choice, so that we have something to strive for, so that we're not instantly enlightened, so that things aren't so easy that we can forge ourselves
Starting point is 00:46:00 like honing and sharpening the blade against this force of resistance. And so I encountered it and it was another column and it was a column of this swirling black smoke and it was confusing and it was really intense, but I approached it with this kind of reverence, like, oh, thank you for holding down this polarity. But then I started to get into it
Starting point is 00:46:20 and I got this strong message, but don't get it twisted. We're here to fuck you up. We're here to, I'm here to fuck you up. And like, that is my job. Like, I don't do it for play. I'm not like, here's just a little resistance so you can grow stronger. It's like, no, no, I take my job fucking seriously.
Starting point is 00:46:39 I'm here to fuck you up. And I think that is a force that's in the world. It's not here purely benevolently to help us as the opposite that we can hone our strength. It's here to fuck us up too. Aubrey, you should have tried to kill it. You know Jiu Jitsu. You should have sprung on the Lucifer,
Starting point is 00:46:59 like, oh, he really are you? Fuck you. Oh man. Resist this. Yeah, no, I do, I see, I do think that there is like, and I don't know why this is, I just love to get a little dark sometimes, but I do think part of what may be a mistake I make
Starting point is 00:47:17 is you try to make that force. You try to like put lipstick on it, be like, you just say your, it's like telling you like, you know, I, okay, once I found a death metal album and on the back of the album, the band had written, we made this album in the hopes that when you listen to it, it will encourage you to kill yourself.
Starting point is 00:47:43 That's like the back of the album. I'm like, I'm fucking buying this, this is amazing. But I think it's important to not forget that piece of it, which is like, whatever the, because the fucking thing, it's not just like it's like giving you impetus to work harder, like it's arresting people. Like right now it's putting people in jail.
Starting point is 00:48:09 It's the thing that's like at the airport, that when you're trying to fly with like weed mints and there's a fucking guy, it looks like he's out of the Pink Floyd, the wall cartoon, standing at the other side just looking at you like, please have drugs on you, please. It'll be the best part of my day to throw your stupid ass on the ground
Starting point is 00:48:30 and just fuck you up. I think we shouldn't forget that part of it, but that being said, if that part exists, what do y'all think is the best way to confront it in a way that produces lasting change and potentially a transformation in the future? No eye contact. And talk down to it and like sort of like a,
Starting point is 00:48:58 oh, how you did that, good, like that. Everyone hates that. If you talk to it like that- If you talk to it like that- The police is what you said. You want a handcuff? Okay, good, good, that's good. Go ahead, get him on, good, oh, good boy, great, good.
Starting point is 00:49:20 These forces, these forces are lost themselves. They're doing this in order to actually fulfill this mission. You have to be in the delusion of separation. You have to believe that you are entirely separate from the person in your handcuffing, the person that you are oppressing, the person that you're spewing your racism,
Starting point is 00:49:40 sexism, violence, whatever the fuck thing is, you have to be in the delusion of separation. So they don't realize, forgive them for they know not what they do, right? They're in the delusion, they're doing it, but they don't really know what they're doing. The force doesn't, it's lost itself. So that force is just lost itself.
Starting point is 00:50:00 So the way actually to deal with it is to help wake it up. And the way you wake up that thing is with truth, and truth is synonymous with love, because love is always true. It's like the truest force there is. So it's the love and truth that awakens that force of what the fuck did I just do? Like that 300 milligrams of MDMA
Starting point is 00:50:22 that's just fucking irresistible, and you're like, oh man, what the fuck did I do? You know, that moment, like you have that in those awakenings, but you can do that without the MDMA, you can do it with your love and like your forgiveness, your way in which you do that, that can help wake it up, because ultimately it's done in that delusion.
Starting point is 00:50:44 Yeah, I see what you're saying. I mean, yeah, I think if you look at what's happening in the world, it's easy to forget. Like 15 years ago, a conference like this, like there wouldn't be doctors here, there wouldn't be scientists, or it was completely prohibited. So there is massive change happening in the world right now,
Starting point is 00:51:11 which brings me out of the dark part to the next question idea I have for you guys. We talked about this a little bit last night. It's gonna seem like I'm being sarcastic. So a few weeks ago, I actually ended up in Vegas for EDC and I was sitting, and again, I'm sorry, because I know this sounds so terribly irresponsible. I'm sitting in front of the Game of Thrones slot machine,
Starting point is 00:51:39 doing like nasal ketamine spray. Like outside of when my children were born, or like when I met my wife, when I met Ramdas. I don't think I've ever felt that good. Like, hey, it's the most fucking mundane shit, but I'm sitting there on this disassociative in front of like a machine that people paid. God knows how much money to hack the human nervous system
Starting point is 00:52:16 to get us to keep putting like money into it, right? And I'm sitting there thinking like, what happens if I just let it seduce me? Like instead of resisting it, like completely surrendered to the machine. And it was fucking incredible. It like, the seat vibrates. It like, this weird pulsing music,
Starting point is 00:52:46 like we'll just randomly emerge out of it and disappear back into it. You start feeling a connection with some of the characters, you know, like Daenerys. Like I think I won $50 from Daenerys and I'm like talking to her like, thank you, Queen of the Dragons. She's rich.
Starting point is 00:53:07 But it created an epiphany for me, which is I realized like, oh, like the future of technology is not just going to be a future where we use virtual reality or technological systems by themselves, but once the prohibition is truly ended, there is going to be an inevitable pairing of psychedelics with the metaverse,
Starting point is 00:53:31 with virtual realities where artists are creating art not just with like materials like we have, but with chemicals so that there is a kind of experience that as of yet, I'm not even sure. Generally we're dosing ourselves when we go to see art if we decide to do that, but a dialed in psychedelic experience designed to pair with technology
Starting point is 00:53:56 in the way right now we like pair wine with cheese or whatever. So I wonder if y'all could maybe talk a little bit about your vision of the technological psychedelic future. Well, I'll start by saying then, I don't know if you guys are familiar with John Hopkins as a musician, but he's about to release an album
Starting point is 00:54:16 called Music for Psychedelic Therapy and I got early access to it and I've been taking ketamine and listening to this fucking album and it is sorcery at the highest level. And he's got, there's a great song with Ram Dass in it that he paired with East Forest at the end, sitting around the fire, just sound alone.
Starting point is 00:54:36 And this is a technology that's been used with psychedelics from the beginning of time, Icaros, right? Like the songs of the ayahuasca shamans, that's one technology, but then you start to stack these things. All right, I'm listening to this album from John Hopkins,
Starting point is 00:54:51 which is the fucking perfect music for ketamine. I'm telling y'all, like it comes out. You haven't played Game of Thrones slots on ketamine. Oh, with the theme song comes out, forget it, you punk. I'm with you, man, I'm with you. But that idea of the bright medicine, all right, then you do it in the pitch dark in the absolute black,
Starting point is 00:55:11 where you don't need to wear a mind fold and the sound system is dope and then you're there in the pitch black and then you have someone, you know, doing body work on you at the same time. And then you pair it with them. And then these things, which are low tech, low tech starts to stack
Starting point is 00:55:27 and it starts to get more and more fucking, absolutely mind blowing. And this is like the low tech stuff. And then they're gonna have haptic sound beds where you're feeling it moving from your toes to your head. Like this is a cool world we're about to come into. Yes, absolutely. Johnny, I just wanna get a cochlear implant.
Starting point is 00:55:47 At some point, you know, I think that like, I mean, I'm joking, but I'm also not. I think like, a cochlear implant, it's what they, it's a company that makes, it can help deaf people hear again with technology. But for, right, I can hear fine, but imagine if I could hear stuff. Hear stuff I've never heard before.
Starting point is 00:56:08 You know, we talk about like colors, like you can describe red, but what if there was a color you, like three of us could describe to you were like, oh, you've seen the color, and you're like, I haven't seen that color. It's like, oh, you can't see it. You don't have the technology to see that color.
Starting point is 00:56:24 Cause it exists in a different realm. So I think that's gonna happen with sound at some point. Cause everything's doubling back in terms of, I'm kind of pessimistic when it comes to music, just cause I've been involved in that so long, but I kind of feel like everything I hear that's new sounds like something I've heard that was older. It sounds like it's being recycled.
Starting point is 00:56:45 And there's like a effect where, you know when you have like a ball bouncing back with like a paddle and you move the paddle, it starts to go faster and faster. It's like the refresh rate for trends in music is coming, it's happening faster and faster. It's like a hat on a hat. And at some point there'll be a technological breakthrough
Starting point is 00:57:03 that allows you to hear something you've never heard before. And when you pair that with something psyched up, I think that would be like a transcendent experience that we've never, it would change music. But it has to, it has to be a technological advance paired with psychedelic thing. I think. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:57:22 No, yeah. I would like for that to be a transcendent. This fucking prohibition, it's fucked everything up, man. It's like, we're like, we're behind, we're lagging. I think it's part of what's happening. Not all of what's fucked up in the world right now. Part of what's fucked up in the world is these, I don't know who they are, these insane psychopaths,
Starting point is 00:57:39 but a tourniquet on the conduit through which the divine pours into the material universe and put a lot of people in jail. They put these people who would be like, just think of the chemists that are in jail right now. That if not for this stupid prohibition could be designing modular synths that didn't just make music,
Starting point is 00:57:57 but like misted nice doses of ketamine in your face at random times. But no, we don't have that. We gotta dose ourselves and I sneak around and it's fucked up. It really is, it's fucked up. But Vince, do you have anything to say? Well, I pivot a little bit from your question
Starting point is 00:58:16 and from the OWL's perspective, we're really excited about creating experiences for folks that trigger altered state or trigger expansion of consciousness or trigger the psychedelic experience, but without substance. And the importance of, so when we opened the House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe,
Starting point is 00:58:40 we thought we would get burners. We thought we'd get ravers. We thought we'd get artists. We thought we'd get a bunch of weirdo families, but we didn't realize that soccer moms and dads would be driving from Kansas to Santa Fe to show their kids. They probably didn't vote for the president
Starting point is 00:58:55 that we all voted for and they probably don't believe in the things that we believe in, but they're still lining up to go to Meow Wolf. And to me, that's so incredibly powerful. If we can package an experience that expands consciousness, shifts or shakes up the identity,
Starting point is 00:59:14 loosens up the known, opens people up to possibility into the unknown. And it can be done for kids and for people of all ages and backgrounds. And it can be done for people of all sorts of religious beliefs and dogmas that they might carry. And they're all walking into sort of this Trojan horse of art
Starting point is 00:59:35 in order to trigger that feeling of possibility. That's kind of like where we're really excited. And of course, people are gonna do what they wanna do. They're gonna like, they're gonna take substances, they're gonna do stuff and go into Meow Wolf and that's gonna be people's choices. But I think from our perspective,
Starting point is 00:59:53 it's all the people who are not taking substances. It's all the people who would refuse to take substances, get them in the building and see how it might impact that. I gotta just say real quick, that was what was one of the really remarkable aspects of what happened last night, which is I was sober and,
Starting point is 01:00:16 but when I left, I had the same experience that you get when you take off VR goggles. Like a weird like re-entry into default reality. And that is fascinating. And I think that is one of the important things you're doing is it's like, look, yeah, maybe getting super high and going in there
Starting point is 01:00:37 is actually kind of like, I don't wanna say a waste, but it's like, you obviously don't need that. And it's like, what do you think that wobbly thing is when you shift from like the reality you created in Omega Mart to the reality of Vegas? So there's a couple of things, I've thought about this a lot
Starting point is 01:00:56 and there's a couple of things that I think's happening for people at Meow Wolf. And we get like a lot of feedback on Google reviews and Meow Wolf and personal emails from people being like, Meow Wolf changed my life. It transformed my life. And when we started getting that feedback, I was like, what the fuck is going on at Meow Wolf
Starting point is 01:01:13 that's making this, that's like life changing? How is this transformational for folks? And so I think what's happening, there's a couple of things. One is we present a sense of reality, like the grocery store or the house in Santa Fe. And we present this reality and then we break it. It's like an accessible unknown.
Starting point is 01:01:32 We create a reality, something normal, something that somebody feels familiar with. And then we give people an opportunity to break that. And I oftentimes talk about like the refrigerator in Santa Fe where you can open the refrigerator in this house and you can go through this tunnel and you go into the pure imaginative artwork. And at that moment of the refrigerator,
Starting point is 01:01:53 it's like somebody opens the fridge and this thing happens for folks where like if the fridge can be more than what the fridge is supposed to be, then maybe the world can be more than what the world is supposed to be. And if the world can be more than what the world is supposed to be, then maybe I can be more
Starting point is 01:02:07 than what I'm supposed to be. And so it's kind of this moment where you like, yeah, you like, you take what is or what has been and then you subvert it just a little bit to allow them to subvert themselves. And then that kind of creates an opening for like possibility for them to interact with people in a different way than they have before
Starting point is 01:02:31 to think about their future in a different way or whatever. So that's like one of the aspects. And then another thing that I've thought about is like when you're inside of a meadow wolf or VR for that matter, like your brain is constantly asking like, what is that? What is that?
Starting point is 01:02:43 What is that? Like when you put people in an unknown environment, exploration and discovery is possible. Exploration and discovery is not possible within known environments. Exploration and discovery is possible within unknown environments. So psychedelics are a way to go into an unknown environment
Starting point is 01:03:00 and to explore and discover, but art also does an incredible job of creating unknown environments. And through that exploration and discovery, the brain is going like, what's that? What's that? What's that? What's that?
Starting point is 01:03:12 How is that made? What if I go over there? What if I climb up there? What if I go through that door? So it's like constantly staying in meadow for two hours, then go out into reality, you know, normalcy and your brain's still there. So now you're like looking at a tree
Starting point is 01:03:24 and you're like, what's that? What's that tree? What's that thing over there? What's that highway? It's like the world has now kind of opened up to exploration and discovery, again, curiosity, in a way that I think is like core to being a spirited, joyful human, you know?
Starting point is 01:03:39 Kids grow up in an unknown environment and they're always exploring and discovering and therefore they're like always in this place of like joy and midlife crisis has happened because you've basically shut yourself off from the unknown. Oh, you know. And it's also hedonic tolerance, right? Like we get used to the pleasures of our normal life,
Starting point is 01:04:04 our animal like default reality. So hedonic tolerance sets in and then nothing really gives us that joy anymore and nothing gives us that sense of awe. And so whatever that thing is, getting in contact with awe, wow. Like that thing is worth it. It's fucking worth it.
Starting point is 01:04:23 Whatever pathway up the mountain so you can get the vantage point and the vista where you go, whoa. Like find it, you know? Whatever way that is for you. Like that thing is important. That's awesome. The pathway to awe.
Starting point is 01:04:37 Yeah, man. Like, yeah, hell yeah. My cousin died from hedonic tolerance. Fucked up, just like, that was it. Yeah. Did you come up with a term hedonic tolerance? No, I heard Jason Silva who's actually speaking, I think virtually here.
Starting point is 01:04:55 I heard him use that word, but it really stuck with me because these same things, if you allow yourself, you can get used to them. It's the same with the relationship. I was polyamorous for a long time and it was hacking novelty to bring me into the world. And I was like, oh, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about.
Starting point is 01:05:14 Hacking novelty to bring me into the present moment and the present moment of that new partner made this thing so enrapturous, but I was using just the novelty of the situation to do it. But now in my monogamous sacred union with my wife, we're actually saying like, all right, how do we hack novelty into our hyper object of our relationship, which is so deep and so vast,
Starting point is 01:05:38 but you have to use like a little bit of effort, a little bit of technology, some tantric practices, some things to make those experiences just as novel as that new experience with that new person so that you're encountering each other again with awe. Because I don't believe that you have to give up on that shit. Like you don't, you don't. Whether you use medicines or whether you use, you know,
Starting point is 01:06:00 sex magic or tantra or whatever the breath work or whatever the thing is, like don't fucking give up on the magic of life. Don't ever give up. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. It's derived from our obsession with memory.
Starting point is 01:06:17 And like the memory technology is actually the same technology that is imagination technology. So like the brain or the mental image or whatever, you know, that creates memory is also the same technology that creates future facing imaginative vision. But humans are obsessed with memory. And we've had to be like the revolution, we've needed to be obsessed with memory in order to survive.
Starting point is 01:06:39 Like we need to, that's the way that we experience times. That's how we learn. That's how we learn where the, you know, where the snakes are, where the tigers are, where the next, you know, meal's going to come from. But we're getting to a point where like we're externalizing so many pieces of infrastructure that keep us safe that we don't need to use memory for.
Starting point is 01:06:57 If you didn't think about like the idea of getting lost, like we used to get lost. Yes. Like in the 90s, people like took a wrong turn and would get lost. Yes. And they didn't have a phone to call anyone. Right.
Starting point is 01:07:12 And they could die. Right. Like by just simply getting lost. And like we don't need, and so you needed to remember so much, but we're starting to like create this massive platform known as the internet to be able to externalize a lot of things that used to be, that the technology used to, you know, was created for.
Starting point is 01:07:31 And so now there's like this opportunity to use the same technology to be future facing beings, to use it for imagination. And that's where awe is. It's like, if you're with your partner, your, you know, your wife, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, like, and you're, and you're just experiencing them as a memory,
Starting point is 01:07:49 then you're going to lose the awe. If you experience them as a possibility, then the odds there, if they're a future based person, you know, and that's like, that's what I'm really excited about with all of this that we're talking about. And with Meow Wolf, and with like, what the internet's unlocking is like, humans can actually become future based beings,
Starting point is 01:08:10 like fully, you know, which is like pure imagination, dream is destiny, like, we're going, we're getting there, you know? Yeah, yeah, I love that. You could get so, it's such a crusty way that you can get in this life. And it's so sad, where you don't get lost anymore. Getting lost is, it's like something
Starting point is 01:08:31 that's gone extinct. I think we still do it though. Sometimes I will still try to do that if I can, like I try to like, I mean, it's kind of the opposite of what you're saying, but I think sometimes it feels really good to purposely disengage from technology and you have access to, just to force yourself
Starting point is 01:08:49 to kind of lean on that old thing. And it feels really, for me, it feels great. Like, it feels great to like, go to the grocery store without your phone, and have to talk to someone, like, hey, do you know what this is? I'm trying to find this thing. Everyone else just like, looks it up, you look it up,
Starting point is 01:09:05 you look it up. I get sick of just looking it up, as I want to just talk to someone, strange. But I mean, there's gotta be some integration there. So that's like, I think there's the small micro doses of getting lost, and then there's the macro doses of getting lost. And the macro dose of getting lost is when I spent
Starting point is 01:09:25 that week in the absolute darkness, silence all by myself, like pitch black in the darkness retreat. Like, that is an entirely new reality. And then around day three, the endogenous DMT kicks in, so you have this psychedelic darkness experience where you haven't seen anything with your eyes, talked to another person, heard any music, nothing.
Starting point is 01:09:46 You've just traded your reality for something else entirely. And like, that technology is badass. Yeah, that sounds fucking terrifying. It's terrifying. I can't imagine that. I didn't even heard of that. It's like, I have a documentary coming out in like a week. Well, I don't know when this podcast will go out,
Starting point is 01:10:05 but November 17th, it's called Awaken the Darkness. It's about my time in the darkness. All I had was a recorder that I hoped would work, because I couldn't see if it was working or not. But it did, fortunately. So I got some like, recorded, and just incredibly raw stuff, vision states would come in,
Starting point is 01:10:19 but you're in a whole new fucking world for a while, and then you come out of that world, and I saw that sun for the first time as like at the end of day six, and I'm open my eyes, and I just start weeping because I realized that I've looked at the beautiful world my whole life and forgotten how magical and how much it's so incredibly stunning to look out at a sunset.
Starting point is 01:10:45 And I've just taken it for fucking granted. And all of a sudden I had no sight for six days, and there I was. And it was like the ugliest, deepest, most soul-wrenching cry of my life, just to recognize how we have so much available that we take for granted. So doing something like that, that's like a hard reset,
Starting point is 01:11:03 or a micro dose of that frequently, like that shit's important. Well, isn't, first of all, we gotta figure out a way to do that that doesn't involve going in a fucking cave, because I'm not doing that. So I need another way. Aubrey has invited me to things. Is that like, I don't think so, Aubrey.
Starting point is 01:11:19 Can you bring beer? You can't bring beer to the fucking cave, Johnny. Just a couple cases for the week. No, he's gonna sit there, darkness, drinking, Miller life. The bugle was a ketamine in there. Real what?
Starting point is 01:11:30 You could take a little ketamine there. Oh, so you're in a cave like blowing rails of ketamine. It's potential. Can you imagine, like, you just wanted to go spelunking and you run into Aubrey, like, where is it? Where's the ketamine? Yeah. Oh, no.
Starting point is 01:11:46 But don't, don't, we have to, we have to get to the questions a second, but don't y'all think, and I thought, I love that you're saying that getting lost, because I thought, oh fuck, getting lost is going to become increasingly rare, if not a complete, an experience
Starting point is 01:12:00 that you have to, like, force on yourself, which is really fucked up when you consider, like, the way that is actually affecting human reproduction, like, the way that so much of, like, people meeting each other and starting families happened because they were lost, and they met someone, and then, like, whole generations of humans
Starting point is 01:12:18 are spring from that experience. Now the algorithm is pairing us together, which is completely fucked up, but do you, do you think that the reality of it is, like, part of the reason the wonder has left so many people, or the reason you can find yourself in that crusty, awful place where you're like,
Starting point is 01:12:39 oh yeah, fucking, fuck the Grateful Dead, fuck this shit, I hate the Grateful Dead, and flowers, so what, it was green, big deal. All this green, fuck the green, I've been there before, you're like, okay, photosynthesis, fuck you, forest. But don't you think part of the problem is that we are lost right now,
Starting point is 01:13:03 but we think we're not, like, the reality is we're fucking lost. We don't know what we're doing, not just as individuals, but as a species, and, like, the very worst of us are the ones parading around, like, I know where we're at. I know where we're at.
Starting point is 01:13:20 I know what this is. Check it out, no, here's what it is. You don't know what it is, take my course, it's online, use officer. So don't you think that's the situation, we're fucking lost. We're lost right now, inexorably, even if you discover some temporary fleeting thing
Starting point is 01:13:42 that you can cling to, you know, we're like, okay, I've got it now. I'm sure you all have done that. I do it, like, every few weeks, where I'm like, well, I'll talk to my meditation teacher and be like, you know, I think I've had a glimpse of realization. And he'll be like, keep meditating, keep meditating.
Starting point is 01:13:58 It's so frustrating, but don't you all think we are lost? Like, is there a way to, what is... Have we ever not been, though? Yeah, I know how long it has been. What's that? I feel like I've always felt like that, maybe just, like you're saying, just very temporarily, but I always feel like, oh, man, I don't know.
Starting point is 01:14:18 I just don't know. I mean, as an entire species, like since the beginning of time, like have we ever not been in that state of loss? Are we more in that state of loss now than we ever have been, or? I think so, honestly. I think what's happened is,
Starting point is 01:14:33 is that we're manifestations of the past. Like, this is what you're talking about. We're manifestations of the past. Like, I had a great podcast with the guy, Matthias DeSteff, who I was talking about. He remembers his past, like, it's crazy, but he's talking about how we are all literally just the product of the past.
Starting point is 01:14:52 So he's Argentinian, and he's like, I speak with my hands, right? I don't even choose to speak with my hands. I do it because it's in my family, and it's what's come up. And this is a trivial little micro thing, but we do so much based upon all of the past habits that have accumulated, and we think we're making a choice.
Starting point is 01:15:10 We ain't choosing shit. We're just running off past programs and past habits and things that have come up and arisen. And so breaking those patterns with awe, with the encounter with the numinous, with beauty, with love, with the capital L, with all of these things, breaking that is like how we wake up, we're like, whoa, fuck.
Starting point is 01:15:29 Like psychedelics to me are not, they're not being un-so, but it's like a hyper sobriety. It's like where we're finally not lost for a moment. We're like, we see things in a different way. And I think that's really the state that we're in. It's whether we're in the past as past manifestations or we actually get to go into the present. And I think that we're less present now
Starting point is 01:15:52 than we have been because of technology, because of our culture, but when you're out there in the wild in nature, like presence is just, you're interacting with presence all the time. And so I don't know if we aren't more lost than we were. I think maybe this is a generality, it's the aggregate, but I'm thinking that presence is where we actually are aware and we're actually choosing and we actually
Starting point is 01:16:16 can make decisions and we were not lost and then living in the past, that's where we're in the labyrinth of delusion. You know why I think we're more lost now? Cause we think we're not lost. And like it's the most horrific thing when you're like, I don't know if you ever got lost in the woods with me, but if you get lost in the woods with me and you're fucked
Starting point is 01:16:37 cause like I will act like I know where I'm going. I've done that to friends just cause I'm like, I don't want them to freak out, but I'm totally lost. Like once I used to work at a summer camp in, like I was acting like I'd listened when they were doing this compass course and like we're in the woods with these kids and I was supposed to use the compass
Starting point is 01:17:00 to find this place that we're going to. So I had to like pretend that I knew where we were going and there was like a 11 year old who was a boy scout. Thank God he was like in the group. And I just did the thing like, good job. I was just testing you guys to make sure you knew. But my point is, I think the problem is like there are species things we figured it out.
Starting point is 01:17:24 We think, you know, you get around people and they're so certain of what the universe is. And it's generally like a very materialistic kind of place where, you know, you bring up, oh, well, you know, I had this experience where I don't know how to, I communicated with, for lack of a better word, I'm just going to say alien,
Starting point is 01:17:44 but that sounds like it's extraterrestrial, probably extratemporal, you know, and it was like saying, you know, I really shouldn't be so like caught up in my own life because then it was kind of curious about why I decided to be a human. Because why would you do that? It's so fucking heavy and you die and all that.
Starting point is 01:18:02 You say that to the wrong person and they're like, what are you fucking talking about? There's no aliens. There's just this and, you know, there's penicillin and airplanes. And you just gotta find the right Facebook group. That's the key. Oh yeah, that's all.
Starting point is 01:18:20 Yeah, that's all. You're just posting in the wrong group. Yeah, okay, great. I gotta find the lost Facebook group. But yeah, I think that, I love what you're saying. And all of you are so brilliant. I think it's a wonderful way to wrap things up with an invitation for everyone here.
Starting point is 01:18:37 Get fucking lost. Throw your phone away. You're wandering. And I also just want to say like, the denigration of pleasure is an issue. Like we think that it has to be hard and you have to work for it and it's better this way or not this way.
Starting point is 01:18:54 And if it's just for pleasure, it's not the work. Fuck that. Like what are we here for ultimately? We're here to live a life of joy and bliss and happiness and love. And sometimes it's gonna be fucking hard, but sometimes when it's not, like ride that bitch till it stops.
Starting point is 01:19:08 Yeah. Aubrey Markies, everybody. Thank you. A big thank you to Vince, Aubrey and Johnny for appearing on the show. And thank you to our wonderful sponsors. And most importantly, thank you for listening. I'll see you soon.
Starting point is 01:19:31 Until then, Hare Krishna. Everywhere to go, JCPenney.

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