Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Gloria and Daniele Bolelli

Episode Date: May 11, 2014

Daniele Bolelli brought his mom by to talk about her new book "Dakota Warrior- The Story Of James R. Weddel"   HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Hello, dear friends. It is I, Duncan Trussell. And you were listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, special Mother's Day edition.

This podcast is dedicated to all those sweet mommies out there who want nothing more than for you to be happy, healthy, and well-fed, and for you to wear a condom when you put it in that trunk, you bad, bad boy. I was standing by my window on one cold and cloudy day. When I saw that hers come rolling for to carry my mother away. Will the circle be unbroken? Flyin' by, Lord, flyin' by.

There is better all the way in the sky, Lord, in the sky. I said, too. That is Will the Circle Be Unbroken by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band from their album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? And here's a great clip about moms from the Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. Suppose you are a child, and your mother is still alive. Someone should help you to be aware of that,

to be mindful of that. You, you still have a mother. I breathe in, and I'm mindful. I'm aware that I still have a mother. My mother is still alive. So that brings happiness right away, because there are children who do not have a mother. Mommy, I know that you are still alive with me.

I'm aware that I have a mother with me. And my mother is available 24 hours to me. And that is mindfulness, mindfulness of mother. And every child who has a mother should be given that kind of teaching. That's Thich Nhat Hanh. He's got a lot of great books out there, including Pieces Every Step.

I'll have a link to that on the comments section of this podcast. OK, we're going to get going with Danielli Bollelli and his sweet darling mother. But first, some quick business. The Duckertrustle Family, our podcast, is brought to you by Harry's Shave Club. This is another great service that

allows you to stay in the sweet, pristine, cathedral-like peacefulness of your beautiful house and not venture out to the local drug store where some plague-ridden child infested by that new Saudi Arabian pox that makes your nipples explode, sneezes in your face, and sends you straight to a dinner appointment with a grim reaper.

It's all about staying home as much as you possibly can, friends. If you're going out, it should be peddling your bike to a local park or going to visit some hottie that you met on Tinder, not going to a drug store and waiting for the night manager to come out with his keys and unlock the 17-inch thick plexiglass case separating you from the razors.

It makes you feel like you're buying weapons from a Russian arms dealer. There shouldn't be a safe involved when you're buying razors. Harry's identified this problem, and they've set up a great service. They will ship to your house every couple of months, enough razors to keep you going so that you never, ever have to go through the experience of standing

under those soul-sucking deathlights and listening to the sneezes of people as they spread whatever awful virus or pestilence they've managed to contract. There's no point in making yourself sick. Go outside. Don't go to a drug store. Let Harry's deliver you their razors and shaving cream.

I don't promote anything on this podcast that I don't use. I had them send me some blades, and I tested it out. Not only did I test it out, but I tested it out on the day that I was doing my first appearance in front of a live studio audience. Never done that before. And so I was really, really nervous. And honestly, I almost didn't use their razor.

I almost used, I thought about going and getting some really expensive razor, and then I realized, well, if you do that, you're the most massive hypocrite that has ever existed. You've got it, this has got to be a trial by fire. So I tested the razors out before I went on TV, and not only did they work, they worked way better than any of the razors that I've bought at drug stores.

They're really, really good. You feel like you've gotten like a barber style straight razor clean shave. They're awesome, great razors, and they're super cheap. So go to harrys.com, enter the code word family hour, and you will get $5 off these razors. Sign up for two months. See if you like it.

It really does make a big difference when you're using fancy shaving cream and a fancy razor. If you really want to go nuts, then you could order Harry's razor blades, and then sit in a chair and have your girlfriend give you a shave, and pretend that you're in Game of Thrones. That would be hot. Harry's Shave Club, go to harrys.com,

put in the code word family hour, you will get $5 off these wonderful razors, which I highly recommend. Hare Krishna. We're also brought to you by amazon.com. If you want to buy anything from Amazon, please go through our portal located at dunkintrustle.com. It's a great way to support this podcast.

They give us a tiny little percentage of whatever you buy, and it doesn't cost you anything else. So in between Amazon and Harry's Shave Club, you really, really never have to go to a store again. We also have a shop that I'd love for you to visit located at dunkintrustle.com. We've got posters, stickers, t-shirts. I'm really excited because Ron Regi has been designing

the most amazing t-shirt design that I've ever seen. I'm really excited. We're gonna get those printed soon. So please go check out the shop and see what's in there. You never know, depending on when you listen to this. Sometimes stuff's there, sometimes it's not. I think right now we're a little sold out of everything, but we are about to replenish.

All right, oh crap, I almost forgot. May 24th, we are having the first live Los Angeles taping of this podcast. The guests are gonna be Dan Harmon, Emil Amos, and after, we're gonna have an after party. So please come, we're about to sell out. I think there's only maybe 30 tickets left. It might already be sold out.

I don't know, I haven't checked, but don't put it off. If you haven't bought tickets yet, go to dunkintrustle.com. There's a link for tickets there. Get your tickets. You can also go to the improv's website and buy tickets there. If for whatever reason we sell out and you miss

buying tickets, then you should come to the after party. I will announce the location of that real soon. All right, there we go. Happy Mother's Day. Let's get on with this podcast. Today we have two very special guests, Daniele Boleli and his mother, Gloria Mattione, who has written a book called Dakota Warrior,

the story of James R. Weddell. She is a journalist, a great writer, and clearly one of the greatest mothers on planet Earth to have produced such an amazing son like Daniele Boleli. If you haven't heard his episodes, definitely go back and listen to them. He's also the host of a fantastic podcast called The Drunken Taoist.

So, please, everybody, open your third eyes and send as much love energy as you possibly can in the direction of these two wonderful people, Daniele Boleli and Gloria Mattione. Come on, wrestler. Come on. I'm here with, how many times have you been on the show, Daniele?

I lost count. No, I suck at maths, so I may have been just two times and I already lost count, but no, it's probably a lot more, yeah. But you are here with a very, very special guest. Can you please introduce her? Yes, she's my alter ego.

It's me, it's the other. No, it's my sweet own mama. My sweet own mama, Miss Gloria Mattione. Here we are. Welcome. So how do you know your mom? Yeah, you know, it's strange. At some point, I...

When did you guys first meet? Yeah, exactly. That was the day after her 17th birthday. Wow. So... For a few hours. Otherwise, it would have been my 17th birthday. Wow. January 10th versus January 11th.

17. Wow, that's pretty young, huh? Pretty young, but I wanted him when I was really young. Actually, since I was 14, I wanted a kid. Wow. But I've been super wise, and I wait until I felt really mature.

When you were ready and your place in the world was established and, okay, all the way to 17, wow. No, not when my place in the world was established, because the purpose was exactly the opposite, to have a kid when I was not established and not like the regular, okay, now I go to college, then I get married, then I think about my career, and then I have a kid.

So I decided to reverse all of that so that I could have a kid and still play and have fun with him and grow up that way. Yeah, because these days, having a child when you're a teenager, it's considered to be one of the great horror stories of the world. When you hear about a pregnant teen, there's a whole show on MTV about pregnant teenagers,

and there's this apocalyptic sense about the whole thing. Like, your life is over if you have a kid when you're 17, but you're saying that's not the case at all. Not only, but in my opinion, a lot of people think that, even if they're not 17, meaning you have a child and your life is over. Yes. Or meaning adventure is over, fun is over,

and then it's all responsibilities, and be there for somebody who needs you and all of that. That way, I'm like, why should I? You have a kid if it is like that, right? If you leave the whole thing like that, you better not to have a kid. If instead you have a kid because you want to be with the kid and have fun and grow up together

and still have a lot of adventures and all of that, I don't think it matters if you are 17 or 30 or 40. It's all up to you, and for me, it was a problem of energy. I wanted to have a kid when I was still super young so that I had the energy to enjoy having fun and having adventures and all of that with the kid. Right. So I believe that if I was gonna be, you know,

I was gonna have a kid when I was much older, I wouldn't have the same energy. Probably true. So my opinion is all about energy, not age in terms of years. Right. It's a problem of energy. Said that is not like I would advise everybody

to have a kid when they are teenagers, you know? I'm not like propaganda for, you know, teenage pregnancy. But my idea is to... Quick, increase the teenage pregnancy. This is a public service announcement. So just to be clear, you're saying every teenager should have a baby now. Right now.

I mean, you're right though, there is a, you know, these days people look at a child as a kind of albatross hanging around your neck, just a wrecking ball right into the side of your life. There isn't a sense of passion. People aren't having kids. It's always an accident. I look at it like that.

I see it as, when I, the older I get, the more I think about having a child, the less that I want a child. When I was younger, I used to want one, but now I don't know. Yes, exactly. So that's my point. I mean, if you really wanna have it, have it, you know,

but not by accident at any age. At any age. You think that's bad. Sometimes I wonder if maybe that's the best way. Like the kid is just so into being in this dimension that it comes flying through you, whether you like it or not. There's something about that that I like.

But look what you've done. You've created this wonderful being, a beautiful human being who I love. And the guests on this podcast love so much. So it is a good thing to have kids sometimes. And we can't all be not having children. We can't all be marching into oblivion alone. You need a child.

Why not? And what was your job when you were a teen mom? How are you making money? I was totally independent, meaning I wanted to have a child, but also I wanted to be able to support my child. Not that, you know, that's the one at the other thing. I mean, you can have a child

when you are not completely an adult, you have to be responsible for. So it's not like you have a child and then your parents pay for that, right? That was not my idea anyhow. So what happened is I was still in high school. So I was going to work in the afternoon and I wasn't going to school all the time, of course,

after having him, but just to know to do my tests and all of that. And his father was working part-time for the other half of the day. So basically we were both working part-time, staying with him a lot. And that was it. How old was his father?

How old is your... His father was 23. His father was 23 when I was, yeah, 16. And what did your parents think about this? Well, they were not exactly thrilled, right? Right. No, they were completely against that, of course. And, you know, and then the thing is always like,

well, you know, you won't be able to do it. We will have to do everything for you. You know, we'll have to support you, the kid and everything. And they were like, no, you don't have to do any of that. So when they saw it was not happening, then they started to be completely okay with that. Wow, so you're 17 and you're completely independent. How?

What was your job? What did you do? I was doing a lot of odd jobs, you know, like first I was working in a record company, you know, musically translating interviews with musicians and things like that. Then I was working at the counter of a Photoshop, you know, just customer service.

And I was babysitting. I was doing a lot of odd jobs, you know, like you do part-time. And you, your dad's a philosopher too, correct? So clearly money was flowing like you would have been. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. You guys were loaded. No, no, absolutely. There was no money, but that was not, you know,

so important, you know? Yeah, well, right. I mean, that's, I guess that's part of being a philosopher. Are you a philosopher? No, no, I'm a writer, not a philosopher. What? Let me tell you a sad story about my childhood financial, please, video games.

Now, this is how said it got. There was a period of time when I was, I don't know, eight, nine, 10, something like that, where I didn't have the money to buy video games. But what I did have money was to buy the magazine, the reviewed video games. So I would buy the magazine, read about all the video games and imagine what it would be like

to play with those video games. Oh, my God. How tragic. Totally true, by the way. A milkingage, but it's totally true. Oh, my God. That's tragic. What, now you say you're not, you know,

sometimes people just, when do you become a philosopher? What is the point where you go from being not a philosopher to okay, now I am an official philosopher? You mean talking about him or his father, right? Anyone. Because I'm not. But what makes a philosopher a philosopher?

Who gets to say, oh yeah, I'm a philosopher now? Nobody does, they ask you for job descriptions at some point and you know, eventually you run out of shit to say and it works out like that. I think in Daniel's case, he came before everybody was asking what his father was doing and he was super embarrassed

because in school, of course, it was a little difficult to explain, yeah, my dad, you know, sometimes he writes, sometimes he talks and things like that. So at some point, somebody came up with this definition of a pop philosopher. Right. Okay, that's easy, that's quick, you know,

that's, because yeah, I remember going like, he, you know, he speaks a lot and he, and you're like, he speaks, that's a shot. But he's like, well, you know, it's like, I should have just said he was a drug dealer or something because he would have been easier, right? He would have been just like, it's a clear job title. It's a strange job.

And the money would have been better, but. What an odd, it really is a strange profession. What, how do you define it? What's the classic definition of a philosopher? I don't think any of us is into classic definition of anything. So he was just like, he became the thing of, what does he do?

He writes a lot, he writes books, he does this, writes for magazines, gives lectures, all of that. The closest you can think of, why not? A philosopher is a catch-all term, but the reality is none of us are thinking like, you know, my dad doesn't go around thinking, I am a philosopher or like, what the fuck? It's like, you're human and you're fun

and you try to figure out the way to make it pay. It's about it. So cool, it's sort of monetizing your ability to analyze the universe. But it's different from science, because science is dealing with matter and philosophy is dealing with grander ideas. It's just strange, I always wonder,

like when do you officially become that? So, you're a writer. And were you writing when you were 17? I was writing, yes, still then. Actually the first magazine I was writing on was this magazine called Gong in Italy, which was a totally musical alternative magazine, you know? So, very much, you know, when I was 17,

was like, you know, the 70s, you know? Like early 70s. Right. And so, yeah, it was fun, you know? I was writing about music and then basically I became a journalist by chance. I didn't really think about it. What I wanted to do was, you know,

I wanted to direct movies at the time. So, that's why I was also writing. But by chance, you know, I ended up to become a journalist and then to pursue it at some point, you know? Because, by the way, it was good money, you know, in that moment and it was something that I loved. So, it was like, whatever, you know?

What kind of journalism were you doing? I started to do magazine writing, you know? Yeah. For magazines, like monthly magazines, things like that. And then later on I started to do more, like also for newspapers, you know? Was it cinema first or what were you doing? In the beginning was cinema first.

Yeah, mainly about movies, you know, and all of that. Then when I moved to Los Angeles, meaning close to Hollywood, I decided no more of that, you know? Because I really didn't want to do that life. Why? Because, you know, I think because I had done it already for a long while,

going to festivals, you know, in Europe, to Cannes, to Berlin and all of that. So, I basically exhausted most of my curiosity and I also wanted to go back to enjoy going to the movies, not thinking about what I should say about it, you know? Which I don't like, you know, to be a critic is something given by definition that I really don't like. It's the same thing, like,

I could never call myself a philosopher. It doesn't matter what it means, you know? But I'm like, I don't want to... I don't want to give my opinions, like, you know, from a pedestal, I don't care about that. So, I didn't want to become a movie critic. So, at that point, I was like, okay, I'm close to Hollywood and I don't want to do that.

Because otherwise, you have to, you know, do that kind of life, like motion picture academy, you know, press, and that's not what I wanted. You know, I wanted to... For me, basically journalism is a mean to meet people I like and to go places I love, you know? I mean, maybe I don't know exactly. I want to learn more.

It's a fantastic opportunity to learn more about things that you care for without having to go to school, which I don't like, you know? Why? Why don't you like school? I did like school. I mean, I graduate and everything. Always, you know, doing things my way, exactly. Like, not really, I think I was always kind of, you know,

many ways kind of an outsider. So I wouldn't go to class or really since high school, you know, I would just study on my own and show up to do the test. Right. I don't know, I think the pace of school, all those rules, you know, and everything takes away the pleasure.

And they teach... I think that there's something that can happen to a person where they think, because they're not in an institution, they're learning is over. Like, they've stopped learning. That is a very horrible tragedy that's happened to the planet where people think, okay, college is done. Right, and that's it.

No more learning. I'm filled up. The cup is filled up with all information that I need. And then from now on, I'm just gonna read Louis Lamore Westerns, Watch Fox News, and then Die Eventually. And it's... No, I love learning exactly new skills and all of that,

and also I'm totally in favor of that. But I think, you know, by first-hand experience is a lot better. Like, if you wanna learn a language, you know, okay, another one I learned in Spanish, go to Mexico for two months, you know, go to a South American country. I'm sure you'll learn how to stay there, you know,

and do with that. Yeah, so you're somebody who, you've just thrown yourself into life. And... Oh, yeah. That's a good way of putting it. That's a good way to put it. Yes, and that thing you're talking about

where you find yourself in the mindset of being a reporter, it takes you out of life immediately. Exactly, exactly. That was my problem. I started to be conflicting with that almost immediately, like after a couple of years. So I decided, in fact, you know, I decided not to stay in the staff, you know,

of a magazine or newspaper, but just to contribute to freelance so that I could basically finance my own learning experience, my travel around the world, and then, you know, write about the stories of the people I was going to meet or, you know, travels I was doing.

So it was a great way to finance an adventurous life. Right. That's how, basically, I use it. But I was conflicting because there was no depth, meaning, you know, you meet the most fascinating person in the world. And what can you take out of this person in one hour interview?

I mean, you can if you're very good, but still, then you have to write, what, 500 words, maybe? Right. Or if it goes very, very well, it's 2,000 words and condensate, you know. Yes. All these person is in there. So it wasn't satisfying.

So I decided, okay, I'm gonna go around, use that, but meanwhile, I write my books. What do you think is the use of criticism and reviewers? Do you think that they serve a positive function at all? I was thinking about that exactly in these days because when I published this book, not this new book, whatever.

This is your new book, which is Dakota Warrior, The Story of James R. Weddle. And we'll talk about that, babe. Right. And yeah, this is my first self-publishing adventure because my other books were all published by, you know, regular publishers. And doing this made me think exactly also

about what you're talking about right now, about the role of reviewers. Because to tell you the truth, in this moment, I care much more about reviews by readers, you know, that now you can see on Amazon or on Goodreads or whatever. And everybody can say what they feel when they read the book. Right.

That interests me, is a great feedback. Yes. Because it's your readership. Yes. Honestly, and this, I know I shouldn't say that, but I think it's so, you know, to know what the Washington Post reviewer think about my book, I'm not so interested in.

Right. This is my personal opinion. I don't think that people in this moment follow that. Like, you know, it used to be different, you know, years and years ago, like 20 years ago, when there were no social media, no other forms, you know, if you wanted to go to a movie, maybe you would look at the reviews, right?

Yeah. The future reviews. Sure. Yeah. And now you don't, because what you do is, you go to see the trailer and eventually you see the comments there on YouTube or, you know, by other viewers. I think you should read the review after you see the movie.

Right. And the idea is that the reviewer is someone who understands story structure, it's somebody who understands, who's studied this stuff so long that they're going to point out things in the movie that you missed, symbols that you didn't see so that you get a deeper understanding. The idea isn't to keep you from wasting your time.

The idea was to make the experience bigger. Even if the movie fails, at least you're reading this after and you get a more precise reason why it failed. And now reviewing seems more like a kind of passive-aggressive power move by people who aren't very creative. It's exactly that, the problem. It's like you said, if it was like you said, it would be fantastic and useful.

But have you seen many reviews like that lately? No, I'll tell you, there is actually a vile form of review or people actually review podcasts. So you can read these people who are breaking down free-form conversations in a kind of pseudo-intellectual way, but it just generally falls flat. Like who's going to read a fucking review of a podcast? Like you listen to the podcast,

like to imagine either going into a review and who's pointing this stuff out? And quite often the reviewers these days, they don't even put their full names down. They're anonymous, they're cowards. Back in the day when people did reviews, Edgar Allan Poe being a great example, these beautiful wars would spring up

between various reviewers and authors, and it was beautiful, even though I think Edgar Allan Poe did use pseudonyms from time to time to hide his identity, but still you could tell in his writing style who it was, generally you could track him down. But I just think there's something so pathetic when you see somebody after they've written a review and they have like A Smith, is as you know,

put your name on your words. We're putting our name on our words, you put your name on your words, you coward. It's really annoying. And this is a problem exactly like on YouTube, it doesn't, you know, you can be anonymous, so those are the worst comments usually, because you see very bad stuff there.

At least, you know, exactly, at least in other places. I think like the way Amazon does that ask for your name and last name, you know, the same of your account is right. At least you have to say things that you're responsible for. Right, I wouldn't ever, I mean, I wouldn't wish being a reviewer on anybody, it just seems like the most horrible life that anyone could ever live to have to always be in that state.

I never did really that, you know, like when I was writing about movies and all of that, it was much more like, I always said the thing for, you know, I love meeting people, so my thing is more like profiling, you know, so I'm doing an interview to do a profile or, you know, things like that. Basically, I'm a storyteller,

so I like to tell the stories of other people, eventually, if I understand, if I grip them, you know, in the right way, but never reviewing, I could never review, you know. I like, one thing I like about the podcast form of interview is that you don't have to go back and write it down or give your opinion of what happened. The listener gets to decide who the person is

and I think something comes out of it and you get to be more in the moment of it, but are there any tricks in interviewing people that you've learned or what's your technique? I learned a lot because in the beginning, of course, you know, you go by the rules, what they teach you to do, you know, and then you realize that instead,

like I don't use a tape recorder since probably 10 years, maybe more, because it takes away a lot from spontaneity. You know, it's a machine in between you and the person. Yes. And the person who's gonna be interviewed is always worrying about, always looking at that, you know, and thinking about their words. Well, instead, if you do an interview,

my thing is if I can, I avoid to do an interview all in once, one hour sitting at the table, no? I try to see the person maybe a few times. Cool. In a situation, you know, maybe taking a ride in the car or doing things like that, so that you get the feeling, you know, maybe sometimes you don't say anything. And the other thing I try is to keep my questions

very, very small and almost stupid, you know, like, I mean, don't try to give an interpretation already. Don't try to lead on the answer. While in the beginning, in my opinion, when you don't know how to do it, you try to do that. Like you try to put already in your question, a lead for the person to answer that way. Still, let them be, you know, let them say whatever

and don't think about judging. Absolutely. I mean, I'm not saying that in a, because it could sound a little corny, right? Like the journalist is not judgmental, you know? No, it's not true, but I'm saying you might be, but you don't have to make it come out, you know, like, because you want in that moment

really to give the person the possibility to express themselves. Right. So you don't have to step into that, you know? It reminds me of, this is a, in Buddhism, they were talking about how when you're meditating, look at it as though you're someone sitting at the edge of a pond in a forest

and you're just watching, you know, these strange creatures will come out, but don't judge them and the judgment scares them away again. So it's almost like that. You're sort of trying to create this space where the deeper part of the person emerges and see the full picture of who they are. And you should probably do that,

not just when you're interviewing people. Hi. Yeah, it would be a good idea. Yeah. Maybe trying to listen really instead of just, you know, already leading the person to say something. But it's so terrifying to sometimes when you're around a person

and you secretly know what they're really like, you don't want that thing to come out, God. I think I've spent entire relationships trying to lead questions in the direction that I would hope they go, just to avoid the emergence of who the person really is. A lot of people do that. Yeah.

Yeah. Just, you just don't want that. You just don't want that. That is scary, isn't it? But then it's easier just not to be around them, right? If that's what it is, maybe it's easier just not to deal with them, right? All right, you shouldn't deal with them.

Doesn't everybody have a monster inside of them? To different degrees. Do you think there's more than one? Yeah. Isn't it just the way it is? Yeah, but why not? I'm totally for the freed monsters, you know, let them out. Let them out.

Because the sooner you let them out, the... It's much better. It's much better. And they lose power. I mean, if they're out, you know, there is not all this secrecy, you know, about exactly having something inside that you cannot let out and all of that.

So let them out. Let them out. But sometimes it's always... But you know, when you get into a situation with a person, whether it's a relationship, a friendship, when the thing comes out, isn't it usually always worse than what you thought? Like, you always think like,

I'm gonna be an open-minded, great person, but then the thing comes out and it's like, oh, fuck. I can't. I didn't expect that. Yeah, I can't forgive that. I could have forgiven anything but that. It's always the one thing you couldn't possibly forgive ever.

That's the big test. Anyway, I guess we're getting off track here. So this is your most recent book and I'm really interested in the Sue, or they're the ones who do the Sundance, or they don't, no, that's the, the Sue do the Sundance. Some people.

Sue and Lakota are the same. Sue and Lakota are the same people. So the Sue do the Sundance, which for the... Can you describe what that is? The Sundance? The Sundance, sure. The Sundance is, you know, it's a very ancient ceremony and what happened is the idea is you suffer,

you add to your prayers some suffering, physical suffering to give strength to your prayers. And it's done every summer since very ancient times. For a long time it was forbidden and persecuted by the government. So they were only hidden in the, after mid-70s instead, after the American Indian movement gave again some hope and some power, you know, to Indian people.

Then they started to impose the religion back. I'm saying religion, I should say spirituality because it's not exactly like an organized religion. But ceremonies are the big center, the big core of the Native American spirituality. So the Sundance is four days of fasting and four days. You cannot, you seven hours, right? Oh yeah, did I say this on the part?

No, no, yeah. I'm fasting right now. This is the first day in my entire life that I've gone without food for an entire day. It's so pathetic. I'm such a pathetic pig. Well, entire day has been six hours, everybody. There's 18 more to go before you can call it an entire day.

You know, I am starving. I've never been this hungry in my life. If I wasn't fasting and I'd just gone without eating, I'd be fine right now. But because I know that I can't eat today, oh my God. If you knew the hunger I'm experiencing right now, this is like level 50 hunger. I'm experiencing the same hunger

that people are experiencing in famished parts of the world after 20 days of going without food. That's where I'm at right now. I'm ready to eat one of you guys. I'm on the verge of cannibalizing you. So imagine if you were a Sundancer that you'd go without food and water. No water for four days.

Because that way, of course, it's also in some way, it also helps you to go in another state of consciousness, right? And experience. And the dancers are pierced on their chest and with some ropes hung to the tree in the center, which represent the sun, so the source of life. And they dance, they dance, they dance for four days.

And then the four days, they break free. So for four days, you have hooks in your chest. Some people do, some people break loose within minutes. That's a personal choice. It's up to you. You can break loose right away. You can stay there for four days. Or you can show off.

You can resist. Yeah, how long you decide to stay, it's your thing. So the idea is the sooner you rip away from that thing, the sooner you get to eat and get back to normal life. No, you finish the ceremony. So you still have to dance for the rest of the four days. You're just not hooked anymore. So for four days, you're hooked to a pole

and you're dancing. Yes. Now. Dancing in rounds, not that you dance 24 hours a day, not dancing in rounds. Every time that there is a new round, like the drummers come out, the singers, the people in the outer circle who support the dancers,

you know, and they dance for, let's say, an hour. And then there are periods of rest. Otherwise, they would fall down. Do they ever get tangled up in each other's cords? No, I haven't seen that. Never seen that. You've seen this? No, never.

Oh, yeah, Sundance, yes, sure. You've seen it? Yeah, Daniel. Yeah, I've been at, like, seven maybe, eight, bunch of times, yeah, through. You have the coolest parents. We used to go, Daniel and I used to go to Cheyenne River on the South Dakota, and it was one of the South Dakota

reservations. And so we would go every summer. We would drive from Los Angeles down there. How did you get excited? How do they let you in? Isn't this a sacred? It's a sacred ceremony. And yes, you have to know the people.

You know, you have to know the people who do, and you have to be respectful, basically. Actually, it was because of the gym story that some of the hookups came that way. Not really. It was because the people who. Yeah, it was because some people were supporting James, you know, being pen friends with him.

Who is, who is James? Can you talk about James at all? Sure, yeah, James Waddo, that is the protagonist of the story in the book, is a Youngton Sioux. So he's from the Youngton Reservation that is on the east side of South Dakota. And it's one of the seven bands, you know, of Lakota and Dakota. The difference is only Dakota is only in the pronunciation,

meaning it's the same thing that's saying Lakota. Yes. But East tribe pronounced instead of the L, the D. So a lot of words, you know, like Kola means friends, but for the Youngton is Koda. Got it. So anyhow, so James Waddo is, well, more than anything is a warrior, modern warrior.

He's always been a defender of his people and a leader. But when I met him, he was in a very miserable situation. Like he was in prison. He was charged with a crime he never committed. What crime? Maze lottery in first degree, I'm sorry, because what happened was to make a long story short, there was a big fight between Indians and non-Indians.

And the fight started because this gang of white people were beating up to Indian boys. Somebody sought to help them. And so he became, you know, like a gigantic fight between two factions. And what happened is during this fight, by accident, a white guy died because he was struck on the neck, probably the artery in the neck, which is, you know,

immediate, right? But it wasn't James to do that, no, not at all. But the promise they sought to blame him because he was exactly like a revolutionary, you know. So he was a troublemaker. Revolutionary how? What do you mean, he was an activist? He was an activist.

So he was fighting for Native American rights. Right, right. And so he was fighting. One of his fights, one of his main fights, was exactly to refuse the payment, the forced payment for the acquisition, the legal acquisition of the Black Hills, the Parasapa in English is Black Hills of South Dakota, which were left out

from the Treaty of 1868, the Fort Laramie Treaty. But the government, the American government, found a way to decide that instead the Black Hills were his property and forced the payment on the tribe, sending checks, individual checks. Wow. Because gold doesn't discover in the Black Hills. In the 1870s, they discovered gold.

And so they say, you remember that treaty that we signed with you? Yeah, fuck that. And now we're going to take it. So they sent checks. People would just get checks in the mailbox. How much were the checks for? It depends, because it goes how many members as the tribe,

meaning that all funds were divided between the tribes and then divided between the members and put in individual money accounts. So what happened is the strongest tribes, like the Lakota of Pine Ridge, they immediately recognized what it was for, called for the council, and refused to take the money. And instead, at James' Reservation,

this was back in, what was the year then? 17th, no, 80s. No, 80s. I think, or 17th. In 1980s, the Supreme Court decision is shortly after that. Yeah, or 17th. It's in the book. But anyhow, what happened is there was a council.

At the time, in that reservation, there was not even the casino, the Indian casino that came much later and gave jobs to the people and more wealth. So it was very poor, like many in the reservation. And when the money arrived, there was basically corrupt tribal government. And they decided that it was a good idea to try to force the people to get it.

So they didn't explain what the check was for. And in the beginning, so some people already cashed the check when they arrived, the council was called later. But in the end, this tribe decided by the vote to get the money. Yes. Only tribe. All the other tribe refused it.

All the other tribe, the money is still there. Nobody took it. Even as I told you, in very, very poor counties. Yes. And instead, in his tribe, they did, but he never did. So he always kept going with this battle because what happened is every time that the member of his tribe would turn 18, he would have the right

to take that money or not. So he was trying to convince at least the young ones to refuse it and to join the other tribes. But that's why he was considered a troublemaker. Did the government get the Black Hills? Yeah. They just took it. More 1870s.

You know the famous. Oh, but I'm saying in the 70s. 1870s. Oh, 1870s. What happens is afterwards, there's like 100 years, basically, of legal arguing over this, where the Lakota's higher lawyers, they try to press the case.

You guys broke the treaty. There's a appeal, counter-appeal. They go all the way to 1980. And that's when the Supreme Court say, sorry, that was really messed up what we did. We stole the land. Apologies. So it is some money to make up for it.

And that's where most of the Lakota tribes say, we don't want the money. We want the land back. And the Supreme Court say, well, touch it. You're not getting the land back. And some, in this case, they aren't on the take the money. And weren't the Black Hills a spiritual place for them? It was like Israel for them or something like that.

It was there a Mecca for them. Yeah, it's like the sacred land. It's Lakota's belief they came from the Black Hills, from the wind cave, this cave, and came to do it. The cave from which the wind blows. I've heard that before. It's really cool. It's very cool.

Yeah, it's one, you know, it's, of course, one explanation. They give themselves very poetic, very nice, you know, and they're totally convinced that that's the land where the ancestors came from. So it's sacred, you know, it's a sacred land. And they found gold in those hills. And then they're like, sorry, your cave from where the wind blows has also got gold blowing out of it.

Mother fuckers, it's ours. And then we snatched it. So what's there now? Costco is probably just a bunch of Costco's and. No, it's still, you know, the Black Hills are still very beautiful because a lot of that is forest land. So, you know, at least it's not built or exactly like residential.

There's private property, you know, there are people at their homes and stuff. But then there's also a lot of national forest and so on. That's the thing that's crazy. In the 1980s, a politician decided to sponsor a bill for the Lakota, where basically the whole thing was, look, we have knowledge that we stole their land.

We've already done that. So why don't we give them back not all of the Black Hills? Because we're not going to take away private property from American citizens. Just those parts of the Black Hills that are either fed, you know, national forest or state parks. They are in the hands of the government. We have already a knowledge we stole it,

so we can just give it back. That only that part alone. It was considered so controversial as a concept that was never even voted on the Senate. And the bill died in subcommittees and stuff. Because the idea was, if you start returning land to American Indian tribes on the basics that he was stolen. Can you imagine?

You might as well pack up your bags and get back to wherever you're accessors are from. Because the whole freaking continent still has it. You can't do it. It's not like only the Black Hills, you know. It's like a big, big, previous case, right? How did you guys get into this? I didn't realize that you were involved with this sort of thing.

Yeah. That's why we need to have more podcasts. I know. We never have brought it up. By the way, Daniel wrote the chapter about the Black Hills in that book. OK. But how did you guys, what drew you into this?

Well, I was already following a lot of, you know, native issues and things and topics since I was living in Italy. And then we came, we moved from Italy here to the US in 1992. And I had done a little bit of, you know, volunteer work for Amnesty International in Italy. So what happened was while we came here, we were contacted by a group of people who was already,

like, pen friend with James when he was in the prison. And they thought, they came to know that there was an Italian journalist and he had done some, you know, human rights work. And so they decided to contact me because in that moment he had been transferred from one prison to the other. And then the van that was transporting him had the accident.

So he was basically risking his life. But the prison authorities were not answering, you know, the requests from these people in Europe because they were in Europe who care, right? Worry as much as you want. What can you do? Yes. And so they basically lost contact with James

and they knew he was very hurt and they wanted to know more. So basically they contacted me for that reason, yeah. And then, you know, for a lot of different reasons, I decided that when they asked me, can we give him your address so you can get in touch directly, you know, and he can write you. So I said yes.

And then I decided to go see him when he explained about this case. And that was in 1993. And I was not a lawyer, as you know, right? Right. I basically didn't know anything about, particularly the American laws because they're different in Europe.

And I didn't have a clue basically about all of that but I decided that I wanted to help him. So the case was closed. All the appeals had been exhausted before. Also because he didn't have, you know, he just had an appointed attorney. So imagine, I got 80 years, 80 for a newsletter while at that time when I researched it,

like let's say California. Yes. Five, six years, you know, the average sentence. So of course there was a lot of racism, injustice and all of that. So when he gave me the transcripts of the trial, you know, and I read them, I decided I'm gonna help him. So he had to look for the loopholes, you know,

trying to find the only way was reopening the case in what they call a Bayes corpus, meaning if you discover new evidence. So I was trying going crazy to find a hook for new evidence and James was very, very good at that because he gave me a lot of leads of things that he had already tried by being inside the prison.

Of course limits your opportunities. Right. So we started that and reopened. And we hired in La Cota tourney, you know. You got it reopened. You. Yeah, we got it reopened. Wow, that is so crazy.

I had no idea, man. That is wild. So you came, this is like me going to Italy and finding someone in Italy who was just in the worst position ever. Right. And then going around, and then finding, I don't know, they're Indians in Italy?

It happened. All three of them. What happened in that case was like, the investigation was done in two years, right? I finished everything by 95. So we were ready. So we appeal, you know, and all of that. The legal proceedings went on for other eight years.

Wow. Meaning every step, there was some delays. They really wanted to keep him in prison. Yes. They didn't want to let him go. And then I will tell you also why they didn't want to let him go. So it took 10 years.

So he walked free on December 18, 2003, and the investigation started in May, 93. And he walked free because of you? He walked free because of me, because of him, because he did a great job, unbelievable. I never saw anybody doing this kind of, you know, research, like staying in prison, you know, particularly because James was, you know,

like when he wrote me the first time, which is also when he present himself in the book, because there is his voice and my voice, you know, it's like a dialogue, he had, you know, he had eight grade in school and he has always been on his reservation, you know, it was not like word travel or particularly educated, and all of that.

But damn, he was so good. He's unbelievable. Like when he was in prison, he researched, you know, on low cases, on low cases and fine thing, and was helping others to reopen their cases. Wow, what an amazing person. Very, very, very. So this is, wow, this is really cool.

I didn't have any idea. That's an amazing thing to think that you spent so much time helping someone like this get out. How's he doing now? Yeah, the problem is he was doing great, but that's the reason why that book has been fast tracked. He had a weird accident, car accident on October, and he died.

So on October 26, you know, it was night and he came out of his daughter's house, he was driving, he didn't have a belt on, and probably a deer crosses pant or something like that, because he went right into the ditch and was, you know, of course not having a seat belt, was out of the window and rolling and broke his neck. So he passed away in October.

In fact, that's the reason why, as I told you, I had published a smaller part of the book in Italy at the time to use the book to raise funds to pay for the tourney. And he did, you know, he sold a thousand of copies and all of that. And then I never published it in America because there were sinks in there

that could have compromised, you know, the legal battle. Right. But then, you know, it was always in the back of my mind, yeah, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it. And then we were talking with James about doing a bigger book and all of that. And then when he passed away, I was like, I need to do it right now.

And that's why I self-published. I didn't wanna wait for the times of the publishing industry. And it was done right away. The story of his death was a trip because he had been saying for quite a while, for a few weeks, maybe months, he was saying, you know, spirits told me, say your goodbyes,

cause it's time, you know. He was what, late fifties, something like that? He was 57. Yeah. So, you know, not an old guy, he wasn't like in terror. Like there was no real reason to think, yeah, you're gonna die anytime soon. But he was like, yep, my time is up.

So, you know, say my goodbyes and all of that. And that particular day, like the day before, he told his daughter, this is how I want everything to go, da, da, da, all of that. And he's like, it's kind of like he knew. So there was an element in it that when, you know, when I heard about it, somebody told me that, da, da, da, and years before he would have been devastating.

At this point, it made sense. There was an element of it like he was ready. You know, it was part of where it seemed like it didn't come as a surprise in a way. It didn't come to me at least as a terrible sad thing. I mean, of course I'm sad, you know, I like the guy. I always wanna see, you know, there's an element that of course is sad because you don't get to see him.

But there's an element where he like, okay, I see the logic because he brought up the logic. Again, you know, the word logic when people are talking about spirits may not seem what most people would think of. But to me, it made sense. You know, based on what he was saying, it made sense. He had 10 years of freedom.

He had some very good things happen during that time. He got a chance to experience life again. He had a lot of some crappy things happen. But you know, he had his, and by that point, he was like, my time is up, ready to check out. I just think it's stunning that we live in a country where this kind of stuff happens all the time. Not only does it happen all the time,

but no one knows about it. People don't realize that this just happened. This isn't something that happened a while ago. This person was imprisoned recently and he was imprisoned because he was fighting back against sacred land being ripped away from his people for gold. Yes, and he still did 18 years.

18 years gone. That's the price that you pay. Between, you know, the years basically went to prison when he was 30 and he came out when he was 48. It's so inspiring. And you're inspiring too, you know, because it's, you know, there's, in a person's life, there's so much more that you can be doing

to help the world than what you're probably doing. There's so much more. But for some reason, there's people who decide, we're not gonna take these checks. And there's people who decide, I'm gonna leave Italy to go help an activist Native American who's unfairly imprisoned. And then there's people like me who are like,

I'm gonna go to Best Buy, pick up a copy of Titanfall, the new Xbox One video game, and play video games for the next five days straight. And maybe then you can fast bet because you can be so taken in there. But what is this? What is, why are there people like you who decide to act and people like me who don't act?

What is the thing that triggered you to throw yourself into something like this and free somebody from prison? What inspired you? Yeah, I always said this kind of soft spot for injustice, you know, like anyhow, you know, yeah, definitely. I might have the nurse complex also, you know. She's also trying to give you the non-new age version

because the real story sound to like, cinema or something in two new ages. This is the podcast for the new people. What is the real story? Let's get to the real story. Tell the truth. Surprise, surprise. We did it in the book.

It's in the book. I went public with that, but in the book. No, anyhow, either you tell it or I'll tell it. You tell it. Someone tell it. Okay. Well, basically she started having this. It's like, it sounds like the stereotypical,

every other movie that involved American Indians has a story like this. So it's like, come on, man, really? It's like, yeah, except she started having these dreams of some Indian guy looking in a certain way, in prison, with a collar around his neck in pain and feeling like I'm supposed to help this guy, right? And she started looking at some of,

doing some research she found like the biggest story out there, like the story of Leonardo Peltier, this American Indian political activist, very famous, very diss. She said, you know, it's, it makes sense. I like to help this guy, but he was also, he's like, yeah, this is not the guy. You know, I doesn't look the same.

Doesn't. That's not it. And a few months later is when this organization in Italy told her, hey, you know, can you help us out with this guy? And she was like, okay, I can take a look at what's up and so on. And then they sent her a picture.

Oh no, Jim sent the picture and she was like, shit. Okay, yeah, I'm coming to visit you because it's, because it was the same. That must have been an eerie, eerie moment. It was an eerie moment even because I dream about him with a collar in October 92. Yes. And instead, actually he had a accident in December 92.

So when I dream about him, he had no collar on because his neck was fine. Oh, you meant like he had a medical collar on. Yeah, yeah, sorry, like a neck brace. Neck brace, neck brace, more than a collar. Yes. Yeah, we're, sorry, literally translating from Italian into English in a way

that doesn't make sense. Yeah, I'm translating what you're saying though like kinky as an M stuff, like hot man, some Native American dude with a collar. No, no, no, no, neck brace, sorry. Neck brace, neck brace. So anyhow, this neck brace wasn't there. When I dream about him with the neck brace,

no neck brace on, it was miserable. He was in Marion federal prison, you know, not a nice place to be and he was hurt. So, you know, I mean, sure, but he didn't have any car accident yet and he didn't break his neck and he had no neck brace on. So when they contacted me, that was in March and then he sent me this picture

because at that point it was his situation. I was like, whoa, you know, that's him. Cause you don't seem new, you just don't seem like a new age person to me. You seem like a skeptic and you seem like you, something like if I, maybe this didn't happen to you and someone told you that it happened to them, you might not buy it.

Right, right. I had, the only thing is I had already then a lot of respect for dreams because I have a very intense dreaming life and it always helped me. My dreams always helped me. Do you keep a dream journal? Not since a long, long time, but I did in the beginning

when I learned, you know, to remember the dreams because not all of us remember. Right, it's hard. It's very hard. Do you have tricks for remembering your dreams? Oh yeah, in the beginning you do all the stuff. Maybe you drink more water before going to bed so that at some point you will wake up to go to pee

and at that point when you wake up, it's in the phase of REM phase. So when you wake up, you do remember your dream. So you keep, you know, like a journal or something close and you just, you know, write down quickly without even maybe waking up completely what it is and then you go back to bed, you know? And that really helps.

And you, you know, those Western ideas that dreams are just a kind of garbled, I mean, like maybe it's like a hard drive defragmenting itself. It's just your bio computer sort of balancing out things, but you have experienced- I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so.

I don't think it's only that. What do you think it is? I think there are a lot of, you know, behind when you are in a dreaming state, you can perceive a lot more, you know? You can perceive also things that are part of what we call the collective unconscious, you know? So you pick up not only stuff that is in your past

or, you know, in your experience, but something that is around, you know? And how you can pick it up and what it means. And I'm not so much about deciphering dreams, you know? Like I don't care about analyzing dreams. Yes. I care about understanding them, which is different, you know, like what kind of message is giving you, you know?

And not the meaning. The meaning of dreams is something I'm not interested in. Tell you the truth. Yeah. It's like the reviews. It's like the critics for movies, right? Instead, the message is a totally different thing. It says something comes to you, you know,

like if you dream of an animal or something, you know? There are symbols. Symbols are very powerful. So dreaming symbols, in my opinion, are super, super powerful. So that's why I like to understand what's going on. I mean, it's a, and plus, I mean, it's a fantastic theater. It's a private theater that you have, you know?

So it's, I love imagination. I love, you know, to everything that comes from there. I listen, do you know who Terrence McKenna is? Of course. There's a great Terrence McKenna lecture that I heard him give. And he talked about how, you know, at any given moment, half the planet, approximately half the planet, is experiencing the most intense psychedelic mind state.

That we have, which is dreaming. We're just so used to it that it seems completely normal. But if there was no dreaming and suddenly you, someone gave you a drug that you drank, that gave you just one dream, you'd come out of it, thinking you'd had a very intense spiritual vision. We have that possibility. You know, it's right there.

You don't need anything, not even substance. And it's great. I think it's like a vacation for the mind, because exactly, like you don't have to control everything in your dreams. And if you let go, it's really a refreshing experience. If you let go, what do you mean? Exactly, like not trying to be controlling you in the dreams.

Right. You know, like just to let them, it's like exactly, like when we say about the monsters, let them come out. Yeah. Same thing with the dreams. Don't try to direct them. Just let them, you know, come out and just watch them. Exactly like in meditation, same thing we were saying before.

Watch the dream, you know, just if you can register, meaning, you know, at least you remember. And then if you don't understand immediately, go back to that, you know, sometimes. And maybe at some point, you get it. Have you had any other prophetic or telepathic dreams like this? So you're guided by your dreams.

Yes. Yes. Definitely. I use my dreaming, yeah, usually to know things, you know, to see different, more intuitive aspects of life, intuitive solutions instead of rational solutions to things. Yeah, because if you had had this dream about a Native American in a collar,

and you'd approached it from the side of your head, and you'd come to the collar. We got you, now you'll see collar all the time. The Lakota, listen, the Sundance that you guys are talking about, I've seen that at certain clubs before. I've seen people do that. But you have, if you had looked at that from, if you had been purely rational, and you looked at it

from any, depending on what school of psychology, let's just say a Freudian perspective, you wouldn't have thought, I'm getting a vision here to try to, you know, come in contact with someone you would have just thought, well, that must represent my, maybe that represents my id, or maybe that represents something. Where there's somebody in the dreams like, god damn it, no, try to help me.

Yeah, right. Exactly, that is all self-referring. But this is the danger of rationalism, I think. This is, it seems like it's definitely useful in a lot of ways, because otherwise, right now, we might be smelling incinerated witch flesh from somewhere down the way, as people burned a witch, or ripped someone apart for sorcery.

But it's also in a lot of ways, it feels as though we have put a tourniquet around a massive part of who we are, and are missing out on a lot of powerful information. That's exactly the point, you know, that's why I never been particularly rational. I mean, I use rationality for some stuff, right? But not for everything, not with my dreaming.

I'm not interested in, you know, analyze them rationally. I'm not saying that is a mistake to do that for everybody, but I'm not interested. But some people, they just do it, they haven't thought about why they're being rational. They're being rational because it's fashionable, because they want to be fashionable. They haven't even thought it out.

They just have decided they've seen a certain, they've seen, I don't know, they've seen a Richard Dawkins lecture, maybe they've read some Feynman or something, they've read some hardcore physics stuff, or who knows what it is, but they've subscribed to the idea that science is the sum total of all human knowledge, and anything that isn't within that realm is delusion.

Chris Ryan just sent me this, you know, Chris Ryan? Chris Ryan just sent me this, somebody has put together a Venn diagram of bullshit, basically, and within this Venn diagram, they've just put everything that they think must not be real. They've included within an Ayurveda, they have an acupuncture, just pretty much anything that isn't provable, so I guess this person

has done massive amounts of research, and he just knows that all of these things can't be real. And anything outside of that, I guess, is real, which leaves you with pretty much nothing, really. And to me, I think things like that are so dangerous for a person to subscribe to. Absolutely, I agree, and by the way, he limits you so much that then,

in some way there is, you know, I think your body and your mind react to that, you know, violently, because if you take away that part, you know, that is exactly our wild imagination that needs to have an outlet, so it's great that we have a dreaming life that we don't have to analyze step by step, or be a shame of, or, you know, because of course,

you know, when you dream, a lot of stuff comes up, you know? So it's great because you don't have any censorship on that. So I'm like, this is great, why should we try to put it back into tracks? And the thing about that mentality that you're referring to, Duncan, is ultimately engaging in that hyper-rationalism, hyper-scientific approach,

is actually neither very rational or very scientific. If you're honest with yourself, truly being a rational and scientific, you have to take into account that the evidence we have about just about anything is very limited. But there's so much that we don't know how it works, if it, you know, what really is out there. So to me, a truly scientific approach

would be to, based on the evidence you have available, and keep your mind extremely open about everything else that you don't have right in front of you, because you don't have all the evidence, you know? You're just like trying to determine an outcome when you don't have all the pieces already in front of you. In some cases you can, some, in many you can't. And instead, trying to decide,

and no, what's in front of me right now, the three pieces of evidence I have in front of me are it. This is the beginning and the end of all knowledge, and I'm gonna make all decisions based on this. That's not really either rational or scientific. It's a perversion of what rational and scientific should be. It's a defense mechanism. It's a defense mechanism to normalize, you know?

Like, I don't know, I think every child, at least I remember that, you know? When I was a child, before, I think I was about four, before, for sure, before I went to what here is called kindergarten, so basically school, because when I went to school, I remember I had to shut off this, because otherwise the other kids would find me a diverse,

you know? But I was seeing the energy around people. I was seeing a field of energy. And it didn't disturb me, you know? I found it beautiful and it was fantastic. But then, of course, when I started to say that, you know, and people would look at me weird, or, you know, they try to tell me,

yeah, this is all fantasy or things like that. All of a sudden, because you're a kid and you have defense mechanism, you're like, I better not say that no more. I better not see that no more. So it becomes, exactly, you are exercising censorship, basically, on your perception. And so you don't realize it,

but what you're doing is you are killing your ability to perceive a wider field of things. Right. Yes, it's like any other muscle, it atrophies, and then eventually all that's left is these dreams that we have. It's the one place where it can still function. But in the modern world,

you just have to look at everything in this very rational, logical way, and everyone acts like, yeah, this is totally normal. Everything's totally normal, but it's not normal. In fact, nothing is normal when you consider what's happening to us right now. It's the least normal thing. It's not like when we turn our telescopes into the sky,

we see planets burgeoning with other life, and it's just everywhere. We act like this is completely normal because there's all of these humans running around this planet, but where else is it happening? Right. Look at all the planets around the sun,

these dead, blasted planets, or just look at the sun. The point is I could go on and on in some kind of hippie rant about how wild everything is, man. But there is something that clearly has happened to human beings, which is that we have cut ourselves off from this. It's like we cut out the magic part,

which was so important. If you think about tribal people in ancient times, magic was daily life, and this was very important. That's why the ceremonies are for that reason, not because I don't think it's totally different. In my opinion, it's like you have to come out with a magical dimension of life all the time because it makes things better, much better.

I mean, even if you do normal things, but if you can put a little magic into that, it's great. It just so, I mean, if nothing else, it's so sensual. If you've decided that you don't believe in rituals, ceremony, magic, religion, then it's basically like saying that you're never gonna go see a movie again. It's just cutting yourself off from this beautiful thing. What do you have to lose?

You know, from time to time, I love to create a little ritual, burn candles, incense, find some kind of like scripture to read, pray, put myself in a magical state, and it's always so fulfilling. And I don't care if it's a delusion that I'm inducing on myself. It doesn't matter to me because I know that if nothing else, it's just beautiful.

It feels good. Right, it feels good, which is the measure of that. My opinion. Yeah, and I think that it's just such a bizarre form of hubris to come popping into this dimension. You pick whatever information streams that seem the most accepted by the most rational, seeming people,

and then because of that, you're like, well, that's it. That's just how everything, I'm not gonna pray. Why would I pray? I'm not gonna pray, that's ridiculous. But it's like prayer, humans have been praying for hours. So long to suddenly just decide in this one tiny little tip of society that's poking out of history that no, prayer is bullshit.

No, in fact, in my opinion, it's exactly like you said, the part that I'm interested in is the magic part. So prayer is a ritual. It's a personal ritual, in my opinion. So I don't care, I don't go to church. I don't, I think the last time I set my foot in church was when I was nine years old, after that, never. But, and I don't care about saying,

I believe in this or I believe in that, but the problem is if I feel good doing a ritual and praying, and praying is a very personal way for me to do that, you know, it's not, I don't need to be in a place where other people praying, I don't need to be in a church. I can pray, you know, just standing in front of the beach, you know, in front of the ocean.

And that's, for me, is a great meditation prayer, whatever. Well, you know, that's a funny thing. I, one of the best lessons I ever got from prayer about praying was on one of these late night televangelist shows, and I was like, I love to watch those when I'm hot. Let me get stoned and watch televangels, it's so fun. Oh, that's a short thing, yeah.

It's so entertaining. And I remember this guy, he's saying like, when you pray to Jesus, pray like you are right now. Say exactly how you feel right now to Jesus, just how you feel, what you think right now. I'm like, all right, I'm gonna give it a shot. I'm stoned. So I'm like praying.

I'm like, Jesus, I'm stoned. I honestly think this is ridiculous. I don't know about this prayer, but you know, I am praying to you right now. So whatever it is out there, just, you know, can you help me in some way? I don't know exactly what happened. I remember it felt good.

And then I realized like, oh, this is cool. Instead of like, you know, these flowery prayers that you go to the wrong kind of church, and it's like, oh great Lord, noble king of all humanity. You know, that kind of weird, holy of holies and highest of highest, so greatest of, like you're talking to a king or something. That's ridiculous.

What the idea is, like you could just like say, look, I don't know, maybe this entire universe is a blindfold wrapped around me, and I can't see past it, but I have a feeling that there's something outside, you know? Or maybe like, you know, the idea of baby sitting with someone who's on a very powerful psychedelic, you know, maybe, you know, maybe we're just so high right now

on this human neurology that we can't see the babysitter who's sitting with us in the chair. Someone's there to get us water, to bring us a hot cloth to put on our head, to rub our feet, or to tell us like, hey, it's cool, man, you're just super high right now. But we have to say first, we have to talk to that person first.

That's what prayer could be. Just trying to pray beyond the, to talk beyond the blindfold of existence. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, my idea is, I don't know, I think I am kind of a pantheistic, you know, kind of person. So my idea is, you know, there is a kind of a beautiful order in nature,

at least there was, right, if you don't alter it. So that's why I like, I believe there is a kind of a higher power that I don't need to define as God, you know? But something that makes sense in the universe. And so when I pray, I basically tune into that. It's like tapping to the source, right? Yes.

It's exactly that, you know, it's like, okay, there is a source and if I tap there, I feel good. So if I feel good, that's fine. Yeah, and you could stop there. I mean, I don't need to explain it to myself, you know? I just feel good and that's fine. But let's face the facts. It doesn't just stop feeling good.

When you communicate with that source, you will experience direct effects in your life, generally. Oh yeah, yeah. That's the thing that we're all afraid to say because everyone wants to like, kowtow to whoever it is out there is listening already. And it's like all these fucking new age hippie crystal gazing shitheads.

You know, we're always forced to put everything in this kind of post-modern way, like, well, it makes you feel good. But it's like, no, not only does it make you feel good, it will create massive transformation in your life. Yes, absolutely. You know, and I, yeah, there is an ex, I will say, and I've said it before,

there is an external intelligence out there that you can communicate with and that will directly affect your life in the most amazing and profound ways. I believe so. In fact, when I was telling you, in my opinion, even dreaming is like, it's kind of almost like a vocabulary

to communicate with this energy, with this intelligence, with this source. Yes. Exactly. When you are in a dreaming state, meaning there is no, you know, direction of the mind, you are more open. So you receive things,

which is the best way to communicate with this source. It's not trying to tell your story, you know. It's just trying to perceive. Right. Right, right, right. Yeah, just open yourself up as much as you can to it. That's all. Just open yourself up.

That's my idea. It's not like I have a lot to say if I'm praying, you know. And usually I don't say anything. I don't know. My prayers have no words, basically, you know. But I'm just staying in a situation where I can feel things. And then at some point I feel something very different,

you know, the normal daily evidence. Yes. And so I know it's working, you know. That's it, yeah. I know it's working when it's something I don't expect. Right. So far outside my expectation and so different from the... Because that's the other funny thing about this.

We all think we already know what it is. And your mind, that's the function of the mind. It's just like, yes, I've got it all worked out. I know what it's gonna be like when I contact God. You have a plan. Yeah, I didn't know exactly what God's like. I know what it'll feel like when I contact God. I know what saints are like, and mystics are like,

and holy people are like. And I know what it's gonna be like when I fall in love. And I know that's just your mind. Yes, completely. The beauty is it surprises you. Oh, absolutely. The beauty is exactly the surprise. Yeah.

Wow, how wonderful. Thank you so much. This is great. Thank you. I'm excited to read this book. This is called Dakota Warrior, the story of James R. Weddell. Where can people find this book?

Amazon. On Amazon. Oh, it's on Amazon, great. If you digit Dakota Warrior on amazon.com, there is in both print format and Kindle format. Okay, cool. Well, I'm gonna have links to this up on my website. Are you on Twitter?

Thank you. I'm not on Twitter, only Facebook, it's enough. Can you believe I used to have long hair? That's Daniela. What? I'm positive that this book is going to be an amazing read, but just for the picture in the front of this book of Daniela Volelli as super happy,

he's got, wow, you've got Willie Nelson. Is that a, what is that, a ponytail? What's coming? It's a ponytail. He's running loose, it's just on one side. Oh, bandana and loose hair? Yeah, yeah. It's probably turned to one side.

Oh, I see. Daniela's hair was down to his butt. Wow, how cool. Man, there's a lot about you, I don't know, man. I gotta have you back on this podcast. We'll dig deeper. It's very nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

I'm gonna have links to the book up on the website. Guys, definitely pick up a copy of this book, and awesome, thank you very much.