Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Myq Kaplan

Episode Date: April 15, 2017

Duncan tells a science fiction story about how a character in a dystopian reality used LSB to treat his lepression and is joined by the brilliant comedian Myq Kaplan who takes us on a guided ayahuasca simulation.

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It's dog trembling day so don't forget to create some kind of safe space for your freaked out meth head dog to gallop into when the boomers start exploding. They don't know what's going on. They're wolf descendants who have managed to survive for millennia, gradually shrinking down into cute little things that still have stored inside of them the incredibly sad understanding of the fragility of life. So while you're slurping back Budweiser's and grilling your beef kebabs, the dogs are listening to these explosions and accessing their epigenetic memories of all the various

stupid terrible wars that humans have inflicted upon each other. And so for you what is just a spectacular show of beautiful lights up into the sky is for your dog a reminder of the terrible never ending truth that at any moment their human companions can be exploded by bombs or ripped apart by wild animals. Make a safe space for your dog. Make a little tent, make a little dark safe beautiful fort that your freaked out dog can run into and if you're a scientist see if you can connect some kind of energy harvesting device to your dog connect that to one of those new Tesla batteries and you could theoretically

power your house on the fear of your dog and that's a wonderful gift from our special canine friends. Pals, you're a matrix of atoms binding together in a perfect way to create a temporary sentient net filled with thousands of microscopic biomes consisting of varying beings who form the cloud that is your special self, a temporary transient cloud of meat gradually dissipating into infinity, a precious thing. And why would you want to bring your cloud of thinking meat into a chain store? Why would you want to spend your precious life hours?

Why would you want to spend your precious out breaths and in breaths and some maze of material bullshit lit by fluorescent lights and filled with workers who don't want to be there when you could simply go to amazon.com and have whatever special bit of plastic you're itching for delivered to your doorstep. Go to amazon.com and go through our portal located in the comments section of any of these episodes. If you go through our Amazon portal, then Amazon will give us a very small percentage of anything you buy and it will cost you nothing.

It's a great way for you to support this podcast while avoiding the existential horror that is the modern day chain store. It would be better for you to go and sit in front of the gates of hell and gaze through those terrible gates into the never ending rows and rows of howling souls that populate Hades than to spend even a few moments wandering through the toxic philosophical minefield that is a modern day target. Don't go there. Go through our Amazon portal.

Give yourself from the terrible realization that there are a large number of people who still spend their precious life hours risking being infected by some kind of as of yet undiscovered disease being exploded out of the vile mucusy mouth of some toddler being pushed through that dismal hell maze of a target by their stressed out mother. Do you want to get sneezed on by a Zika baby when you could be spending your time in the precious outdoors smelling pine cones and making love to a wild beast? Come on friends, go through our Amazon portal won't you? We just restocked our shop.

We've got a lot of, we've got new posters there, newer on Regie posters. We've restocked it with some mugs and shirts. We have a very limited amount of mugs. So if you tried to go to the store and wanted a DTFH mug and they were gone, you can get one now. Oh my God, that's it. That's the intro. Four minutes and 40 seconds.

That may be a brand new record. Man, before I dive into this episode, I'm very excited. Next week, I'm going to be interviewing one of my favorite people in the world, George Norrie. It actually happened. So if you have any questions that you would like to ask the host of Coast to Coast, then go to dunkintrustle.com and let me know on the forum. I'm really excited about this interview.

I have so many questions for him. And as far as I'm concerned, he's one of the great interviewers living today and I can't wait to talk to him. All right, that's it. Let's just jump right into this episode. Today's guest is the host of a wonderful podcast on the Keith and the Girl Network called Hang Out With Me. You've also probably seen him on Conan or Letterman or maybe you've been lucky enough

to catch him live. Everybody please welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast, the great Mike Kaplan. It's the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour. Mike. Duncan. Thank you so much for coming out here. Oh, thank you. Braving.

What appears to be some kind of apocalyptic fire. Absolutely. I didn't know until I got here that there was one. Have you ever seen a wildfire that big? No, I haven't seen many. I live in New York. We don't have as many. We have mostly domesticated fires.

Yeah, and terrorist attacks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I hear a lot of sirens. There's certainly strife happening. Yeah. That's the New York... Don't worry. Yeah.

I know. And the thing about New York is because the buildings echo the sirens. So it sounds a billion times worse. It can just be a simple ambulance going down. Oh, sure. And it sounds like some hell band she... A modest, humble ambulance. Yeah.

And that's it. Yep. So you just came into town hanging out with friends? Yes. Friends, comedy, you know, life. Do you look forward to coming out to LA? I do. I love it.

I started comedy in Boston in 2002-ish and then I moved to New York in 2008. I think the first time I came to LA was like 2007 and then I came out here for Last Comic Standing in 2010 and so I was out here like once a week for a few days and, you know, that was... I was here for a purpose every time but I have friends out here, I got to do fun shows and after that I was like, I'm just gonna... I mean, it's... Oh, there's some comedy to be done here.

Yeah. So yeah, I like to have, you know, quote unquote reasons but if I don't, like I had a girlfriend who lived out here and now she lives with me in New York but I would come every couple months to visit her and now that she's not there, I guess it seems weirder to be like, I'm just going to see a person who's not my girlfriend, you know, my friend and other friends and other... But you know, I didn't have anything scheduled for this weekend and I got a cheap enough flight that it made sense to do it.

Reasons are so annoying. Yeah. No thanks. Hey, for fun enjoyment, but what else? Yeah. This is the worst. That's one of the plagues of the modern age. Is there...

Everyone has to have a fucking reason to do something. I mean, I'm already trying to find out the reason that we're all here. That... Yeah, that one. God forbid we ever figured that out because guaranteed it's a letdown, whatever they finally discover if they ever was a reason, I guarantee it's something really embarrassing and humiliating to humans. I mean, maybe it's just what you...

Everybody does learn it, like right before you die would be nice, you know, you're like, oh, that's it. And then, bye. Yeah, that's the... Or you just sort of... I mean, the... If you get into the idea that we're sort of like part of a cosmic seeding program or something. Oh, I get that idea, yeah.

And then it's just like, oh no, you guys don't understand, we just made you to clean the toilet section of our interdimensional ships here. This was an accident. You're not even supposed... Something like that. Humans are so puffed up with themselves. That's true. I mean, I've been lately thinking that, I mean, we are all, like, you know, sometimes

if you're standardly religious, you know, the conventional, you know, God is everywhere, but also the idea that seemingly God is separate. But if God is everywhere, then God is, you know, then we are like walking through God all the time. You know, we, like God is inside our bodies and like in every cell. So we are, if God is there, that then we are all parts, like God is the universe and we're part of the universe. So like when people say, you know, God will punish you, I'm like, well, people will punish

people for, you know, with their attitudes and with their things and the idea that there are contradictions of like the loving God, the God to be feared, I mean, yeah, that's just different aspects. It's like, oh, are you a nice person? I mean, sometimes I'm nice to some people and to other people. Maybe I've been a jerk and wronged people. And you know, if we were made in God's image, I mean, literally we, you know, we are God's image slash manifestation.

So you know, parts of it, it's like, you know, the human body is a made up of many things. Like, you know, am I a toenail? No, but a toenail is part of me. And sometimes it gets clipped and then new, new grows and then there's, we're made up different molecules and skin cells all the time. And sometimes, yeah, you ever, you ever see, you know, or like, like a dog sees its tail, but doesn't know it's its tail and it chases it. That's like what, like, you know, that's war, you know, that's, you know, hey, get, get

those guys. Right. That thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's the, you're talking about this idea called, the Hare Krishna's call it something along the lines of a Sink-a-sink-a-beta tatha. Have you heard that?

Oh no, I like it though. It's cool. It sounds cool. Sure. It's the idea for what God is. So it's sort of like human consciousness is the sort of embodied spark of a inner dimensional super sun, which is the Godhead. And we're all these little sort of God photons that are embodied in our, in flesh temporarily.

And so this is actually CS Lewis talks about this a little bit to this concept. And then I've heard another way it's put is that, you know, it was looking for God, just right here. Yeah. And this is the crest of the wave of Godness and we're kind of God creating God right now. So when you're looking for God, you're looking for the perfect God, you're actually maybe thinking of a future version of what we're becoming, which hasn't happened yet, but the moment that that happens, the singularity, pure union, pure emerging machines and the

atomic level of all things, then at that point you transcend time and space, meaning that that God does actually exist. It's just not at this particular node in the time space continuum, but you can still pray to that thing. Sure. You can, you can do whatever you want. I like people looking for God and it's like, God's your eyes, you can't, you can't. It's like, sometimes I was always confused, like looking at the Milky Way in the sky when

I was told that we're in the Milky, I'm like, how can we see the milk, how can you look at it? Like I can't see my body. Right. Like I can see parts of my body. I can't see all of my body because I have to use part of my body to see some of my body. Yeah, right, right. So I guess I'm not, I know I'm not seeing all of the Milky Way.

So I get it. It makes sense. You're seeing a little piece that you're floating in. Yes. Um, this, that, that, I've heard like, it's not a conspiracy theory, but people say that because of light pollution, the wisdom of our species has been diminished because we no longer recognize the insane, infinite, beautiful thing that we're floating in. So light itself serves this censorship purpose and reducing wonder when, you know, now if

I want to see how beautiful this. Let there be less light. Right. Light pollution is the great nullifier of the connection that early people used to feel when they looked at the sky. Ironic that light used to be for and is often for illuminating, showing people things and now the very thing that was to show us that which was in the darkness is now obscuring that very thing.

Isn't that nuts and not, isn't that the metaphor that's the moment you shine your light on one specific thing, whatever it is, you immediately sort of diminish everything else that isn't in that circumference of light. And even some, you know, on a, I think a microscopic or, you know, subatomic level, the, I might be getting this wrong, but maybe the Heisenberg uncertainty principle or the observer effect is that, you know, when nothing can be observed without changing it, like if you shine a light, you're like, oh, I want to see that darkness. You can't shine a light on darkness and then see it because the light will make it go away.

The same thing with like certain molecules. If you, if they get hit with light, you know, if photons or whatever it is, then those molecules are so small that, or the atomic particles or whatever it is, they're so small that like they get bounced away and you're like, oh, well, the light's here now is like, well, what was there a second ago? You can't find it. You can't see it. Yeah.

That's the, that's the wonderful and amazing thing. People get confused about that observer effect and they think it means that you can gaze upon a thing and then from some exertion of the mind create an instantaneous shift in it, which is with the misunderstanding of it, I think, but it is an effect. Definitely there is an effect gazing upon a thing and who knows how powerful that effect really is. We'll never know. There's no way to tell, but that isn't, this is, I heard it.

There's an essay I read by some, I can't remember the philosopher. I've talked about it in the podcast before. I barely understood it, but it's the concept of nothing and how the concept of nothing is hilarious because in the same way, if you want to observe darkness and any kind of thing you use to study that darkness is going to make it a non-darkness and impossible to study in this original state. So in that same way, the term nothing, nothing, the moment you say nothing, whatever you are referring to becomes a something.

That's like, I've been just getting into Ram Dass's podcast recently and that resonates with the idea that he talks about of trying to get down into, you have your doing self, your being self and then your thinking self and then trying to keep going layers and layers deep until you're not doing, reflecting, thinking, almost even just being the is-ness that is at the deepest level of all of us that is the same that we all spring from or are. It's talking about the idea of what is God or what is the universe or what is consciousness, what are these things. Different people, different groups have different names and some of things that are myths and

some are like, oh yeah, we believe this and then mine, I just like, I like a lot of the things and I'm just like, oh, that's something, you said that the syncopated situation that I don't remember, syncopated. Syncopated Tatfa. Yeah, well I'm like, you teach me a lot of these words, I think last time you were on my podcast like Satsang and Songha. Oh yeah, right, and you taught me the ship of Theseus. Oh yeah, yeah.

Which is cool. But this, yeah, and I think that's one of the real frustrating things going on right now on the planet is that people are really in a war over symbols. Yes. And it's one of the saddest situations to be in when the symbols themselves, what they're pointing to, is the most beautiful potential. Oh yeah. But instead of recognizing that, people are just completely caught up in the words themselves

and that's where we're, it seems like we're kind of fucked. And words can be, as long as you're having fun, then great, like here's, I say for myself very self-servingly as, because of the thing I'm about to say, like do you know the thing how, like, you know, the moon is the moon and whether you call it the moon or you don't call it the moon, you call it something in another language, you don't even have a word for it, you point it, some people point at the moon and then, you know, people, my girlfriend has this joke, she's not a comedian, but she came up with this joke about religion and how most religion starts from positive motivations, like, you know, kindness, be kind to people.

And then that's like throwing a ball for a dog and the ball is the religion and then the dog didn't see you throw it, so then you pointed it and then everybody else is trying to be like, point and the dog's just staring at your finger and the dog won't go to where the ball is because it's just like, oh the finger, that's the thing that's moving, that's the thing in my face and she's like, and that's religious dogma. And so the idea that, you know, pointing a finger at the moon, obviously the finger's not the moon, but the idea of pointing at the moon is a thing that seems like philosophically relevant and a friend, Zach Sherwin and I, a good friend, we're driving to a wedding

in New Hampshire and we passed a road called Mooney Point. Yeah, that's cool. I'm like, that's fun. But yeah, certainly the idea that I was thinking about how, when you're a child, you're taught to not say shut up, like that's mean, don't say shut up, but sometimes the way that children are told to not to be like, hey, don't say, we don't say that, like it's like meaner than the thing. Yeah, right.

I'm like, that's so many of the jokes that I end, I'm like, I've written so many jokes, I'm like, oh, that's that joke, that's that same thing. Just, oh right, yeah, if we're going to talk about this in particular, it's like people for peace, who are like peace, peace, peace, that thing. Yelling at people not to yell, you know. Well, I think this is why I like the symbol of Jesus, because it really is the ultimate response, which is, oh, I guess just kill me. It's that, just like, well, instead, it's the most illogical response to a violent universe,

which is instead of resisting violently, it's a response of like, yeah, I guess you'll just have to kill all of us. And that seems to be the most effective method for creating lasting change in the world. Yeah, I mean, being willing to die, as opposed to, like, you know, if Jesus, if you, the idea of him being able to have done anything, you know, if he had either magical powers or just human powers of, he could have resisted. Who was it that took all the miracles out? Ben Franklin?

Oh, that's, or Jefferson? Jefferson. I think Jefferson read the Bible. Yeah. He's like, yeah, fuck this, this didn't happen. Yeah. And he went and just marked out all the miracles, just to find the moral truth behind it, or the ethical idea behind it.

And I'm about that. Like, I've been also talking on stage some about being like, I'm definitely, I would get murdered before I would murder. Right. Like, you know, say, eliminate, you know, would you, certainly I wouldn't, I wouldn't kill an innocent person and they're like, well, what, what about to save, you know, not just yourself, but your family, you're going, and that's where, you know, eventually that turns into preemptive, you know, drone strikes on people that like, what, they probably

wouldn't, they were gonna, you know, and if we all, like, if we all just, if everybody agreed to get murdered instead of murder, like if you, if everybody literally was like, what would Jesus do? He would get murdered. So if we would all get murdered, then there will literally be nobody who could murder us because we're all going to get murdered. But there'd be one very exhausted murderer. Yes.

Yeah. I tried to wipe out an entire planet of pacifists. And then, I mean, but of course there are people that won't sign up for this that are like, I don't think everybody's gonna do it. So if there's some murderers out there, we need to also have, we need to have, you know, like murder for good, you know, or... Well, this is it. The problem with that, you know, and clearly you're talking about gun control, it sounds

like, or some version of that, which is the logic. I just heard this great NPR story on guns and I was raised in the South. I've never had a superstition of guns. But man, when I was listening to this story, it's nuts because, do you know the name of the company? Okay, so the company that produces like the Bushmaster, the AR-15s, the assault rifles is known as the Freedom Group. Have you ever heard of this?

I didn't. So it's called the Freedom Group, of course, the Freedom Group. Yeah. So the Freedom Group, they make all the guns, but the Freedom Group is owned by another company and the name of the company is Sarah Barris, the, I don't know how you pronounce it, the name of the mythological... Oh, the dog. Yeah.

So the company, the major, billion dollar company that owns the company that produces all, most of the guns that are used in all the slaughters that we're dealing with is named after the dog. That guards the gates of hell. They keep souls in hell. That is so fucking crazy to me. Wow. It's really just, come on, is that an accident?

That can't be an accident. And that, when you get to that level of things, and actually, you know, after hearing that and making sure that was the case, and then realizing, my God, that's the case. This is bad, right? Like, if we, you and I were writing some kind of action movie about an evil company making guns and I was like, hell dog. Yeah. Let's call it hell dog.

You go like, no, it's a little, a little on the nose. Yeah, maybe you don't call it that, but it's actually, that's what it's called. So like, if there's ever, like, if you're wondering to yourself, well, is the company that owns the Freedom Group a good company? Remember, they're named after a three-headed devil dog. Now it's a mythological dog, but this got me thinking. What if in this dimension, corporations are the manifestation of gods? The way gods appear in this dimension is in the form of corporations.

Oh, sure. Have you, I'm a big fan of Jess Whedon. I've watched like, Buffy, Buffy's one of my favorite shows. And I don't know if you've. I've only seen a few episodes of that. In, so Angel, the spin-off, in, I won't, this isn't the most important thing, but just a coincidence, the main big villain in the Angel series world is a law firm. And it is basically what you're talking about.

It's a law firm that is the representative of and for and the manifestation of, you know, evil in this earthly dimension. And it's called Wolfram and Heart. And then they're represented in, you know, historically, they've been around since the Wolf, the Ram and the Heart, which is a kind of deer. And so it's cool. You know, another just fun example of, you know, like words, these words don't have any inherent, you know, like the sounds are arbitrary, but then there's fun

coincidences within them. Like one time when the play, I guess I, this is fine. I actually just realized I was about to say a thing that would reveal a confidence. So a real fun other thing. Guys, I had a good time in my head. But, you know, this is the, so it's, it's the idea that there are these, I mean, it's a weird idea, but there's sort of these preexisting forms that language is like, you know, when you throw paint on the invisible man, sort of illuminates

these preexisting forms, the forms preceded the vocal utterance. And so the idea of Sarah Barris or Baphomet or any of the mythological symbols are actually the high tech for the time. They were like a high tech way of shining a light on a thing that has existed eternally, which is what they say about mantras, for example. Like these, these words like Hari Kushnade, Kushnade, Kushnade, Kushnade, all these words are sort of the, I guess you could say that the clothing around or another way you could say is that the words have been inflated with a

preexisting infinite energy that has been around way before people were able to even talk. Right. Like you, where you could see the ghost outline in the rain or, you know, throw a sheet over it. Yeah, that is, that makes, that makes sense. I'm on board. Like, I mean, words are, I've been playing music my whole life. And you studied linguistics. I did, yes. And so I feel like, you know, you learn language in your first few years and you learn, like, you know, without trying, you know, people are just talking and your brain knows what it has to do. And like, you know, obviously learning

a second language years and years later can be difficult, but everybody learned. If you're around language, you learn it. And like music was the same for me. I started learning music when I was four. Wow. And, you know, certain, just different people have different tastes in music and certain things resonate, you know, whether we're, forget about lyrics. The idea that, you know, the, the sound wave, certain, you know, certain instruments and certain timbres, certain harmonies, certain scales, certain chords and combinations, you know, make feelings.

You know, they, they go into your brain and you're like, well, that, you know, like it has, right. Music also has no, you know, inherent, like logical, like. So let me ask you about that. Sure. So, like when we hear, we hear like a discordant song, minor keys. Sure. There's a sense of foreboding or danger or something sad or depending on how they put it together. Has anyone studied this? Is there, do people say this is the kind of thing built into humans? Or is it that we learn that these sounds generally point to some bad thing

about to happen because they're used in entertainment? That, I probably, there is some cultural, you know, association between like, you know, the idea of a minor chord even being sad is, I think my, my girlfriend teaches music and I think she doesn't think of it like that and she doesn't like teach her students, like this kind of, these two notes together are happy and these ones are sad, but that, you know, they can be used that way. But the thing that I do want to say, oh yeah, the idea that like, you know, our bodies, like, you know, the heartbeat was sort of like kind of the first drum,

you know, the first rhythmic thing that anybody experiences and hears. And like there are some, you know, some cultures that like you have music sort of, you know, all throughout it where it's just like, and we, in ours as well, like I remember reading about a specific, I don't know who it was, but some, you know, type of some land, some village, some community, some people where they didn't even necessarily have a concept of music. They didn't have a word for music because music was just infused in their daily life in the way that like, you know, if you go to, if you got a ticket or something,

you'd go to court in this war, in this village and then the judge would be like, oh please do the, you know, and he would have like his little song and there'd be like a call and response and you'd do your part, which is sort of like in our court system where the judge comes in and the bailiff's like, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, like that's not a quote unquote normal. It's normal because it's what we do, but that doesn't happen in most other, you go to the DMV and they're like, all right, stand in line, you know, like, That'd be great if they did.

Yeah. I mean, and so it kind of seems like a cool, you know, like either it's both sad and happy, it's, you know, it's both things. Like with that, they don't have music. I mean, like they only have music in, in that other place. Well, can you explain it a little bit to me that, so, because I don't really understand it that well, I know, isn't it Chomsky or some people have this idea that wired into the human brain is language that somehow language is already inside of us neurologically or something.

Yeah, there, I mean, we've evolutionarily developed, as I understand, to have like in our heads, a thing that when I learned it, it was called a language acquisition device that, you know, other obviously most animals that aren't humans don't have this thing. So the letters aren't already in there. No, no, like, especially because, I mean, if you look at different languages, like there are different sounds. There are sounds that we can't say at, because we learned English and there are

sounds that French people can't say. Like when, you know, the French accent where they were like, you know, that's sort of stereotypical. But the reason that they say is they don't have that sound. That sounds not one of the things in their brain because, like, it's almost like it's hard for them to learn. Yeah, I mean, certain, there's certain people who can't do it. The same way that some people, I mean, a sound that's in, that's not in our

language that some people can't do that and some people can is, you know, like, like, is in Hebrew and Arabic and other languages, I'm sure as well. But some people are just like, huh, you know, like, is it a, is it a, is it a and it's a, it's a specific other sound. Like there's in Korean, there's, I think, two different kinds of bees and we only have one of them and there's two different kinds of D's. There's like, there's like this harder, like that. Like, I don't know that I'm even necessarily doing it, right?

Because they don't specifically have meaning to me because I didn't learn those languages, you know, young enough or fluently. So it's sort of like all the possibilities are in the brain. And then if you're raised around people that speak Chinese, then those ones get highlighted, those ones like bulge into existence in your brain. It's the light thing or it's, it's sort of the, the language is a light that burns its imprint into your mind when you're a kid and all the other possibilities get blanked out just because you're not using them.

Eventually. And if you do keep learning different languages, they say like, you know, it's up until maybe like between five and seven, I think, different for everybody. But somewhere there is where you stop being able to do it as easily. Unless they, I think they've shown that you can, if you keep learning languages, say you learn English when you're two and then you learn like Japanese when you're four and then you learn, if you keep learning a different language, then you'll keep that language acquisition device operating and those lights

can keep like they won't burn out. Are there any theories as to why it becomes more difficult after when you're five? Uh, it's, I'll tell you, there's this theory that I have that I'm coming up with now off the, uh, off the top of my head slash out of my ass, you know, opposites, uh, that I mean, your brain is just, you know, as you get, as you grow older, uh, connections are made between things and those connections, like, you know, uh, sort of met metaphorically, children are, or conceptually

children are trying to be like, okay, this is the, this is a thing. And this goes with that. Like this is how you say this, this is what that, that is a dog, that is a cat. And like these parts of the brain are like just associating different things. And then they're, they're like, okay, hold that there. Uh, but the earlier it is, like the less connections there are, so just the more like open and fluid and the more options there are, uh, but eventually like the more things that you have in there to keep them in there, they have

to be like, you know, more solidified, like, like glass, like molten glass, you know, is like liquid when it's super hot. Uh, but then like, you can't like use it until it's like cooled into a certain shape. So the brain after time, like, after like, well now, now it's usable. Now we can drink out of it. Uh, but we, and we could shatter it and reform it again, but, uh, that's, now I think the metaphor, don't, don't shatter your brain and try to learn

another language. But the idea is we want to shatter. Is that, I mean, isn't this where psychedelics are being explored right now as a kind of, as a potential means of reliqu, temporarily reliquifying the brain, allowing the formation of new connections. You're right. And I, I don't remember what the specific, uh, shattering effect, uh, or the method was in this situation, but you, maybe you read about this, some, like

some of the people will either have a stroke or have some sort of, you know, brain event and then they wake up and then they're speaking in a different language that they never learned, which is like, doesn't, and they, then there's, they have no explanation for how that was, or they can play the piano and they never could play the piano or suddenly they, they're, they're incredibly good at math. Yeah, just they, they have a visual understanding of numbers that they didn't have before.

Or worst case, like some, you know, somebody gets a spike through their head and then it goes through a particular part of the brain that, you know, was their person that, like, you know, had their personality being kind. That makes more sense. Like if there's a huge injury to the brain, then okay, it becomes worse, but it's weird when it becomes like better and can do more. This is, um, when you, I know that you are someone who takes psychedelics and I wonder, have you ever on psychedelics seen the strange letters that can

appear everywhere or seen a kind of like geometric thing that seems similar to a language that you've never seen before? That makes sense. Uh, let me, I'm trying because the experiences that I've had, uh, like with, I smoked DMT once, uh, and then I've done since then, ayahuasca some number of times. And the first time I, when I did DMT, uh, there was definitely like swirling, like it seemed like, you know, like runes, tablets, like hieroglyphics.

Definitely. There was definitely these like multicolored multi, you know, symbols that I certainly, I've seen, you know, like when, if you look up DMT art or ayahuasca art, you can, I'll see like, oh yeah, something, something like that. Like people see similar things apparently, but it's so like, again, like dream like it, it's, it fires so brightly while it's happening. And then like you wake up and you're like, okay, quick. And you try to, you know, grab it maybe and like write it down or, or, you know,

you retain some of it. You retain overall, like the, the shape, but not the specific, uh, you know, the ghost, the ghost's energy, but not the sheet around it made of language. Have you heard of any theories about that in linguistics? Does, if any, has anyone looked into the, it's a, it's a pretty common experience for people under the influence of psychedelics. I haven't witnessed shapes that appear to be a language, but then they don't know the, so I mean, I remember when I've seen those things, I've always thought, oh,

that, you know, this must be a language. I don't speak, but it's still a language. But then with this conversation that we're having, it makes me think, are you witnessing this sort of pre-linguistic, geometric formations that will fit into whatever culture you're born into? I'm going to, I'm going to ask my, uh, my old linguistics advisor if she knows anything. Yeah, definitely.

Have you heard, you've probably talked to Shane Moss about some of this stuff. Shane told me once, I don't know if you know this story, that, you know, so do it when he, when he smokes DMT, he has certain music that he listens to usually. Yes. Like there's a particular band that plays DMT, uh, like specific, like they write it for those trips. But he was with somebody else and that person was like, can I put on this music for you?

And Shane's like, yeah, sure. And like the reason that the music that he likes is good for that purpose is that it's not like a song that he knows. It doesn't have lyrics that will help, that like alter the direction that will make suggestions. It's just like it, you know, helps amplify the experience that you're having. And so he's listening to this guy's music and he hears lyrics and he's like, oh, I don't want to be affected by them.

So let me not, I'm going to try to focus away from that. Try purposefully to put those out of my head. And then afterwards the guy's like, how, how was it? How did it go? And he's like, uh, it was, it was good, pretty good. But, uh, uh, the lyrics were like a little hard to ignore. I tried to try to not listen to the lyrics that much. And the guy was like, there were no lyrics to that song.

And he's like, what, what were those lyrics? And I was trying to remember what, what he didn't, what he purposefully tried to ignore. You, you on your Wikipedia page, you are described, you're, you describe yourself as atheistic. I, so I didn't write my Wikipedia page, but I definitely did call myself an atheist for many years, but, you know, like the same way that when a word, you know, the word leaves the mouth and then, oh, now there's associations and

connotations with it that I definitely used to very strongly. Well, I think Shane would consider himself to be one too. He's a scientific, materialist, no, I'm not where you stand there. So, and I don't think any of it's bad. I'm just, it's always curious to me because whenever I take a psychedelic, particularly DMT, but mushrooms, yeah, there is such an encounter with a field of data that seems to be alive. He's certainly, yeah, I'll, I mean, not to speak for Shane, but I, the

conversations I've had with him, he was certainly a hard line atheist before he did DMT and certainly had, we've had conversations about that, not necessarily being the case since. Oh, okay. So it would be, I'm sure it would be interesting for you guys to talk about it. But if for me, like sometimes Zach Sherwin and I have done ayahuasca ceremonies together and some of them, like when people ask, what do you get out of these things?

Like the broad categories of things that we get out of it, one is what one might call life coaching. Like Zach's very first time, he thought about his mother a lot and it's like the conversations that he has with her where sometimes, you know, our mothers can frustrate us, the way that, like they, that we love them and they're wonderful people and they care about us. But sometimes for whatever, you know, because of who we are and who they are and our relationship, it's hard.

It's hard. And he was thinking about that and it was just giving him sort of like methodologies to be like, oh, when I, when I talk to my mom, try to keep this, like the love, be, be grateful for like everything else. Like forget about like the tiny little bit that is amplified so much that we're like mom and be like the rest of it. That is like completely like this mom love entity. Just, and so, you know, be nice to your mom, if, if your mom's nice and deserves

you being nice to her, like, so that was like a life coaching thing. And then the other aspects are things that I think my girlfriend who, who does it as well, uh, she called it death coaching. And so it's like the way that obviously DMT is the substance that floods our brain when we are dying. So the experience of this ceremony is something that maybe is similar to the experience of dying, which is sort of disassociating, like not leaving your body, but having, you know, the consciousness sort of spread, alter, get jumbled,

get shattered. Uh, and, you know, sometimes there's imagery. Sometimes it's just feelings. Sometimes, you know, it's a huge, a weird combination of you're like, oh, like I am this point in the universe. I am the whole universe. And, uh, so the, oh yeah, the, the point that I'm getting to is like, when's Zach and I have talked about the idea, uh, that we have these feelings, like,

you know, we, the things that you're talking about, this, this living, you know, like sort of communion that we're experiencing that like it, like the idea is that like none of the words are, none of the words can capture it all. The, oh, we're all one. Of course. Like the first guy who introduced me to ayahuasca, he like was a not at all, like the opposite of a hippie dude. He was just like an angry dude, like, and he's now like the nicest,

calmest, sweetest dude. And, and he's like, I'm done. Like one time doing it, he's like, my dad was a sociopath, but I love him. And I'm, you know, he tried to kill me, but I, I'm gonna try to reach him because he just pushes people away. And he's like, it's so crazy. Like I don't, I didn't believe in Auras or like we're all like the same guy, but, but we are, and I saw them.

And, uh, and so similarly, like I was a person who, uh, would, I was like, okay, Auras, you know, wha, wha, whatever. I mean, like I'm not going to tell people not, not to believe anything that they want to or do. And I don't have all the answers, of course. Right. Uh, but yeah, I was definitely a much more like, yeah, if I, if I see something, I'll believe something.

If I can understand it, then I do. Yes. Uh, but now when Zach and I talk about this, we're like, it really, it certainly when you're under the influence of this substance, it feels like, oh, that there is not a separate God, but that you, that's the idea that you are part of this whole thing, this whole like process of the universe constantly reincarnating itself as now, now me, now other people, but, you know, me's not, you know, the energy and matter constantly being reformulated.

And, you know, there's 95% of the universe that we don't even have any idea, you know, dark matter, dark energy, but just all this stuff. And so, you know, Zach put it, uh, that he called it the pattern, the, the, all the big tapestry that we would see of these colors and shapes and that the sort of representing the universe for God or whatever you want to say. God. Yeah. Sure.

And, or, and then we, as our individual consciousnesses, you know, are not separate from it. We're sort of bulging forth from it the way that like language comes forth or light or whatever. Or hernias. Sure. Yeah. And so this, this bulge.

The hernia of God is eternal. And so like, you know, there's this consciousness bulge here and this other consciousness bulge. This is me. This is you. They can touch each other and like, you know, connect through laughter and love. And like we're all connected at the root because we're all springing forth from the same thing.

And then death of, you know, this version of us, death of this consciousness is not, the consciousness doesn't die. It just recedes back into the everythingness of the pattern. So. Can I ask you something? Sure. Quickly. So, you know, what you're describing is beautiful in the way articulating is very

beautiful. Thank you. So, uh, just something really kind of bothered me, man. I've been listening to the screw tape letters by C.S. Lewis. Okay. Have you ever read? Not familiar. Oh, they're good.

Okay. You know, but they're a little dogmatic. You know, C.S. Lewis is a Christian apologist. Oh yeah. It gets a little dogmatic. That's kind of Christian. Yeah, but it's cool, man. And it's, so basically it's kind of tongue in cheek letters from an older demon to an

apprentice demon on how to tempt a human being. I gotcha. So, from the Christian paradigm, it's a very severe line that we're walking, man, which is either you're moving towards the light or you're getting sucked into hell. And so the sort of in Buddhism and in more Eastern religions, these aspects of the human personality, which may be in Western psychology, they call neurosis. In Buddhism, they might just call it the sort of projections of aspects of yourself, but in Christianity, it's fucking demons.

And the demons are actively trying to fuck up your life. And so this is an older demon writing to a younger demon who's been assigned to some guy about how to fuck up his life. So, the older demon at one point talks about how the best thing that can happen when you're human comes to a realization that there is God, is for that human, when they're around their friends who are scientific materialists, just stay quiet about this realization because just be quiet, but inside they can feel like they're in a weird way rubbing off on their friends, maybe.

And then when they're around their other friends who maybe do believe in this idea of God, don't talk about your scientific materialist friends or these ideas because, you know, your friends really believe in God, they wouldn't understand. So he's like, if you can get this into their head, then you get them lying to everyone. You know what I mean? If you can make it happen. And it's something where it's like, I think now that we're in the psychedelic revolution, and so many people are experiencing ayahuasca and mushrooms and having these divine revelations,

it's put us all in a really interesting predicament, which is, let's face it, man, it's not cool to use the G word. It makes you sound like a fucking idiot, man. And so, but what do we do? What do you do? This is something I had Amber Lyon on. She said, don't make any plans when you go to take ayahuasca. Don't make any plans for the next month.

But what happens when the things that you're realizing from these substances are so real that it causes you to either continue living a lie or to reshape your life? How do you deal with that? What is your solution to the people who've had these realizations and yet are surrounded by friends who are going to think you're off your fucking rocker if you start talking about it? That's a great question. Number one, I mean, the short answer is I reshape my life. The second, the longer answer is I, when you're, when you,

when you were describing, I forgot for a second that you were describing it in the context of this is a demon describing to another demon how you get humans. Because I'm like, oh yeah, that's what I do. That's the, that's exactly what I do. I mean, like if I have, I mean, I don't hide the fact that I care about this thing and that I, and I'll get, actually, I'll get back to this in a second because the finish, the, to the story that I was about to tell or the, the path that I was moving towards is when Zach and I talk about like, we don't know, we don't, we don't have any

to fit like the idea that religious faith, you know, that when people are like, I know, like we're human, we're, this is a human body and it's flawed and it's impossible to have any degree of certainty. Like what I believed 10 years ago is not what I believe now. Like who knows what I'll believe in 10 years. Like I'm, I think I'm wiser now, but also, you know, I complete, I'm continually being filled and emptied and refilled with different physical parts and met, you know, mental emotional experiences.

But the Zach put it like, either Zach put it like this or I, this is now my read. This is Zach's like the, the, the, the prophet and I'm like just whoever tells the story about the prophet and it's probably just my own story. But I think this is based on, I don't want to do him a disservice, but like, he's like, if somebody asked me, like, do you know what happens when we die or like, what do you, what do you think happens when we die or like, you know, what is your idea? And he'd say like, I definitely don't know what happens, but if I do know it's exactly like this and it's like the, and then we could describe like the visual and sensory experience

that we have when we're going through this experience that, you know, the human body or mind or brain does go through when this chemical is in there. So I, the idea of even the word like belief, like none of the words, none of the words work perfectly. So like when I say like, do I, the, the idea of being that person who has this feeling of like, oh yeah, I'm a, I mean, whatever, whatever God means, I'm a part of it. Yeah. I'm a, and if you're like, you believe in like, I'm like, oh, didn't, you know, create

like the universe seems to be here. Like, I don't know what I, none of us knows how, if the big bang did the thing that science is like, yeah, that seems like the thing. Yeah. Uh, yeah, that something it was all in one point and now it's all over the place. And yeah, I don't, I, there's so many answers I don't have, but I'm like, I'm here. And I do have this feeling when I was in college, I took some, you know, I was a philosophy major and my personally, I was like, okay, I don't know if there's an afterlife.

Like certainly the idea that like God is a, a being that cares and loves like, well, couldn't, then why doesn't God like make it so that everybody's feeling good more? You know, like that, that's like the, the classic. Like, yeah, I saw someone on Reddit posted a great debate and the debate uses an example, like you're trying to, okay. So the idea is, if we have a God that has any kind of ethical or moral sense at all, then let's imagine, I think they tried to pick, they tried to create the most extreme version of absurd suffering that they could come up with.

And I think it was like a animal dying in a, after a forest fire. I can't remember, they just described this like thing that dies for no reason. Yeah. A baby and, you know, is alive only suffers and then dies. And so then like, and so if you, there was some creative outflow that had any kind of intelligence and was somehow omniscient. Why'd you do that? Yeah.

You would want to ask that, like, if I'm like, hey man, look at this thing I made. Yeah. And somewhere in there, you're like, hey dude, are you aware that there's a baby? And you must be aware. That's getting, yeah. You know, why did you put the baby getting its foot chewed off by the dog in the house that it can't get out of? Why did you put that in there?

Are you feeling okay? Yeah. And so of course, like, I forget the exact phrase that I had Ramin Nazar on my podcast a separate time then when you were there. And he used the phrase like the phrase of not God, but like sort of the universal cohesiveness or some, some combination of, you know, a couple words that was just like the, the everythingness that we're all a part of that, you know, we like, as humans, we're fallible. And we are part of what makes up God.

So God is fallible. Like because if God is everywhere and we're part of it, then there's parts of it that are fallible. There's parts of it that are going to, there's going to be accidents. There's, I mean, from our perspective, we almost have to become like, or you could, you could look at it more of like, you know, what if there was some kind of super advanced simulation where you don't just experience one character in the simulation, but you go into the simulation. And for some period of time, you experience every single avatar in the simulation, its birth,

its death, and the higher the level, the more intense the rush. Then you realize that this planet would be almost like a drug that a higher consciousness would experience through all manifestations of life or something. And that way, it's not so much that the thing is evil. It's that it just wanted to get off on this. Get all the experiences. Yeah. And that's the thing that reminds me of, I think when I listened to Bo Burnham on Pete

Holmes' podcast, I think Bo presented, he said that he'd read a story where every, again, this might be my retelling of it, but my understanding wasn't that like, after, you know, each person, each consciousness, each being in the universe, ultimately we were only like, say there was only one soul, and then it continually was reincarnated as each and every other being at all times in all places. So that eventually, you know, this soul, like right now we're us. And it's not like, not say that like, if you're good, you get to be a better thing. And if you're bad, you get to be a worse thing, just you get, you are everything.

You will eventually be Hitler. You will be every Jew and gay person that Hitler murdered. You will be, you know, every victim, every victimizer, every, you know, every, every experience. And that's just every idiot making Hitler memes. Oh yeah. You'll be all of them. So the idea of when, similar to, you know, the question that's asked of my hypothetical Zach Prophet, like if somebody says to me like, what do I believe?

Like belief isn't important to me. I mean, I have beliefs and they can be wrong and they can be fallible. But believe, one of my beliefs is that belief isn't even the important thing. Like so many people who care about a specific dogmatic version of like a religion, like Christianity or Catholicism is like somehow belief in the thing becomes the important thing. And that's the finger pointing at the moon. Like the moon has to be kindness. The moon has to be what Jesus would do, not whether or not he was actually magic or God's son.

You mean like faith? Like yes. We believe, how does it go? God damn it. It goes on the third day. It's called the Nicene Creed. Have you ever heard this before? No, I'll look it up.

It goes something on the lines. If I don't remember it, I used to have to say it when I went to my parents took me to church, but it's like everyone chants it in this really monotone way. And it goes, you know, why don't I just read it right now? Oh, sure. It goes, and you have to chant it in this really Nicene Creed. It goes, let me find it. Nicene Creed.

Let's see. Of course, I won't build up. Let me just pause it really quickly and find. Okay, here it is. I found it. It goes, we believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only begotten that is of the essence of the Father, God of God, light of light,

very God, a very God, very God, very God of you. Begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men and for ourselves, not women, who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. What the fuck? Oh, yeah.

That is so psychedelic and weird. No, but look, I don't know what any, I bear, and I had to say it over and over again. The quick and the fucking dead, what does that mean? As a Sharon Stone western movie. That's what it is, do you know what that means, the quick and the dead? I mean, it sounds like all of us, like we're all quickly dead. I mean, that's the thing, if the idea that Jesus is the Son of God, like we're all, you know, if we're all created by God, we're all the children of God,

like we're all, like I'm not saying Jesus, like we all suffer, we all have sins, like we're all constantly, like the same way that God's in all of us, that we're all constantly suffering and dying for our sins, other people's sins, not even sins, just like, that's experiences. But it's annoying when you get like some shit like that, and you're like, believe this. You just believe this, and you're going to be fine. And this is, that's annoying, and it's because there's a lot to swallow in that motherfucker, and it's not fair that you're going to make us believe every single piece of this weird echo

that's been muttered in churches for a long time. Of course, like the way that, I forget who put this to me, but like, when I was saying what I was saying, it was like, oh yeah, I mean, to you. And so I'll say, to me, like, ethics is more important than metaphysics. Like, if you have to be either, here are your two choices. You can believe in a specific God and not do anything right, or you can do all the kind things, like do all the things that the Bible does say to do, or that your moral code, everything that people agree on, hey, this is the way to be a good person, do nice things,

care for others, sacrifice yourself. But then like, I don't know about the belief. Like, you'd rather everybody be the person who does good things, and I'd rather everybody not believe and do good things than believe and not do good things. Right, well, yes, but the answer is, I think that if, so if you, well, I think, well, the problem is all this shit, it gets really distracting. Whereas when you take ayahuasca, or smoke DMT, or take a nice mushroom trip, or whatever the access point may be, holotrophic breath work, and you make contact with the thing

itself, then all the words that these people are using to try to talk about it become completely irrelevant. But yet from that contact, you're going to change. That's the idea. So it's like, it's almost as though that I, the belief thing has somehow supplanted the connection. Yes. When the connection is all that matters.

If you make the connection, if I plug my phone into the wall, it charges. If I don't, it doesn't charge. And a lot of people, I think, metaphysically, their phones are dead. Oh yeah. But they're looking at it, and they're like, yeah, it's a great phone. It's working just fine. And there's nothing, there's nothing there. It's a flat line.

And because the plug-in sucks, if you're, if, this is the other thing in that C.S. Lewis book, that he says, to really deal with the fact that we live in a living universe, you know this, you're a vegan, to really deal with the fact, to really deal with the fact that the things that we eat have suffered for us. And not only that, but to deal with the fact that we have deeply impacted so many people that we've come across in our life, many of them maybe not in a good way because we were angry or blind or bored or stupid or young or whatever. That sucks.

That produces a very unpopular feeling known as guilt. Oh yeah. Right? And so to deal with that fucking, to turn your eyes to the fact like, no man, this isn't just some random roll of fucking dice. You're not some sentient cloud of vapor that's just bumbling around the universe into you liquefying a bunch of mucky gray pulp. No, it's not like that.

This is an interconnected living web that, that where pieces of the web like to feel love, and you're not, and you're not putting that shit out. You haven't been putting it out, not you, but you know what I mean? Yes. That's an uncomfortable feeling to deal with. And so many of us don't want to start going down the path at all because it involves initially being like, fuck, I heard a lot of people's feelings. Oh yeah.

That's what ayahuasca shows you, right? Oh. That's what I've heard. It reveals that. Definitely. I like what, this one not unrelated idea, but the idea that like every animal that's eaten by a human is like Jesus dying for the sin of gluttony. Yeah.

Or you know, just whatever that is. And I'm not saying like. The difference being the goddamn animal didn't get to walk on water and like get celebrated as a messiah, which is, by the way, meat. So I'm the biggest shit out of all time because I feel empathy in some way for these things, yet I'm still devouring them. I realized really like, god damn man, you might have to like get off this meat thing. We went to eat at this nice restaurant in Santa Monica and we ordered this thing called

uni, which is a sea urchin. And usually they bring it out on a little, it's just a little orange mush that tastes really good. But they brought it out and it looked like a bean. They brought out the urchin and it was still alive. Oh sure. And the chef and this kind of proud or the waiter, the waiter and this proud way is like, it's still alive.

Oh gosh. So now we're having to scoop this, I don't know what the uni part is. I don't know if it's brain, if it's digestive system, but it's like pulsating. You know, it's alive. You could see it like sort of like its last weird pulsations as we're scooping this goop out of it and eating it. And I, it, I was stoned and I like, I wanted to start crying into the fucking uni. Like it's just like, what, this can't be, and this is a vegetable, right?

It's not supposed to feel at all, yet it seems to be alive. I mean, I think that sea urchins are, I mean, fish are animals. Like sea creatures are animals as well. I mean, according to some religions, you know, like, hey, don't eat meat on Friday, but also fish is fine. Like fish is just a swimming vegetable. Fish is not because they can't smile. Technically, according, but they can kind of walk on water.

So we're back to Jesus. But yeah. Go ahead, man. I'm sort of all over the place here, man. Oh yeah. There is a question I want to ask you. Sure. Because you're a brilliant person.

And this is something that I've been thinking a lot about and you seem to be inadvertently part of what I consider to be an emerging, unnamed global religion. Okay. As it's roots in ayahuasca. A lot of people don't realize that not just in ayahuasca, but in psychedelics, not just in psychedelics, but in a lot of, I don't know, very, very intelligent philosophical ideas that are floating around out there. But it hasn't, there is no profit for this thing yet.

It hasn't congealed. Alistair Crowley talks about this. There might not be able to be one, like the same way that when a word is spoken, then it's not the right word. If a person's like, I'm the shaman, then they're not the thing, like you. Well, that's what I want to ask you about. Yeah. See, because there will be another world religion.

Like if I had to bet money on it, there's going to be another world religion. Okay. Just as powerful as Christianity, just as powerful as Islam, just as powerful as Judaism, there's going to be another one because that's what we, there's a precedent set. In other words, like if we find life anywhere, if we find some DNA on a meteor, on a Mars anywhere, then it means it's fucking everywhere because, but right now, we've only found it here, so we have to just roll that.

Okay. In the same way, religions appear on this planet. Yes. Massive society changing religions happen on this planet. And so my question for your genius is this, what will the next world religion look like? If you had to guess, even if you don't believe it's going to come, what would it look like? Who is the prophet and what does this thing manifest as? I mean, the thing that I like, the thing, if I'm a part of something, like it's not necessarily even,

I think when people name things, we like to have, you know, we're big on like teams and the idea of like, you know, even like Eastern and Western religions or philosophies, like, but the idea, you know, there's Buddhism and Taoism and I don't necessarily have all the ways on which those are different things because there's things that I've read of each, then like, these seem to go together, but I'm certain that people who are more well-versed in either could point out the differences. Like, so I certainly, my brain, if I put all the stuff into it, maybe I could do the mechanical stuff necessary to have a more specific answer, though I do.

Hold on. I'm making you the prophet. Okay. So, okay. Oh, then it's, then I got it. I'm John the Baptist. Yes. You're Jesus. I've anointed you the prophet of a new global religion. Yes.

What does it look like, Lord Mike? Kindness is the thing. It's called kindness. It doesn't, if it has to have a name, kindness is the thing to do. The valuable, you know, actions to practice are, you know, forgiveness, self-forgiveness, forgiveness of others, basically, you know, gratitude, being thankful. Here, some, some prophets could be, I mean, like the Dalai Lama, he's big into kindness. You got your, Jesus would be on board.

I like Ram Dass from what I've heard thus far, like he, because of him, I've started doing a thing that's kind of like saying grace before eating. What's that? Like, well, he says, he, he does a thing like, you know, before I eat, I take my food, my, the bowl of food in my hand and I like acknowledge that, you know, this food is part of the oneness of everything. I am part of the oneness of everything. This food will be a part of me.

I will be eventually not this body part of everything. The hunger is part of me, part of the oneness of everything. This is all part of the oneness of everything, which you could call God if you want. And so then even like this prayer, this thanks, this thanks is part of everything and it's everything is connected and we're all this one thing. So the, the way that I do it now for as a, a shorthand kind of, but it's always some version of like, thank you, food God, thank you, me God, thank you, thank God, thank you,

hunger God, thank you, fire of consumption of all this that will unify us. Thank you, everything God, thank you, thank God. And maybe I said that twice, but so the, and gratitude like through science, science shows that people who are more grateful are more likely to be happier. You're happy when you think about the things that you have rather than the things that you don't have, you know, when you're seeking that future God or anything, life, promotion, goal, thing, like you're thinking about what you lack as opposed to, you know, and it's not to say you should only be looking backward and be like, well, I'm happy with what I've done.

You're moot, you're aimed forward and you're moving forward in time and you're taking actions that add up and do things. And so just every moment that you're existing, this, you know, in general or for this new religion, just be, you know, conscious, like, is this what I want to be doing now? Is this the direction I want to be facing? Like, what are the cons, the potential consequences of my actions? Like, are there, is it possible that I'll make a mistake? Have I hurt someone? Can I apologize? Can I undo it? Can I, the idea of, I thought about the movie Groundhog Day. I watched it with my girlfriend, she'd never seen it. We watched it right around Groundhog Day.

This year. And then we did an ayahuasca ceremony, or I did at least later that week. And so Groundhog Day imagery was coming through my head and thinking about how, you know, he's living the same day over and over, eventually becoming a quote unquote better and better person because he's taking more and more helpful actions. By the end of it, he's like, oh, catch that kid. Don't let him fall. Help this person do the Heimlich. Every day, he's living it helping people, being helpful. And then I'm like, well, I can't do that. I don't live the same day over and over again, but I wronged somebody in the past. Oh, don't do that again. Next time that possibility comes up, don't do that. If, oh, I could, I didn't want to keep

a monogamous commitment for more than a year. Well, then don't make a monogamous commitment, you know, make a commitment that isn't monogamous and see how that goes, you know, whatever. Or if somebody, somebody warns you that they're in a delicate state, please be careful with my feelings. And you're like, okay, I think, I think I'm doing that. And then you're like, oh, I wasn't doing that. Now, understand that other people's experiences are distinctly different than your own, just sort of, you know, caring, listening, trusting, believing, like believe other people. Like there's some people who are like, you know, when say there's a sexual assault and people like, well, what, how do you even know? Let's say it's a man and a woman. How do you even know

that she's telling the truth? I'm like, doesn't matter. Like as far as forget about the person who did it, like if somebody says they were assaulted, if somebody says they were victimized, attacked, treat them like they're telling the truth and care for them and help them. And then at some point also we live in a society where we're like, oh, if, if we determine that, you know, if the legal system determines that she wants to move forward and find out and try to be like, is this, like, is this true? Then can we prove it? What are the consequences? Like, but the consequences on the doer are not as important initially as just believing, believing and caring. Like, So let me ask you, as the prophet of this new religion, what is the part of this self that

when, for example, you will find yourself engaged in some bit of vileness, not in the massive way, but what you're saying is really true. Just here's a person who probably needs you to give them love and compassion. And yet you're playing some game of tough love with them, whatever, detective or some shit. Oh yeah. How and I think for some people, this game becomes their entire life. Yes, they go into a never ending series of shitty interactions with people because, Hey, this is who I am. But somewhere inside, there's a terrible awareness that what they're doing is no longer serving any purpose outside of generating more pain in the universe. So what do you do when you find yourself in the midst of that kind of life when you realize

that you have been fucking shit up? And even when you know I shouldn't do this, the opportunity comes to give love and you don't give love. There you are again engaged in some minor form of stabbing somebody with an invisible linguistic knife or whatever. Or pulling a surgeon's brain out and eating it. Yes. How do we pull ourselves out of the nosedive of cruelty that's so easy to get sucked into, even if it's minor. I'm not talking about, okay, go. I have one suggestion as an answer. We like to, there are people, I think many people conceive of themselves as a certain being, a certain self, a certain type of being with certain characteristics. Of course, over the course of life, the characteristics can change. But at any given moment, we know everyone that

we've been, we know everything that we've done that we have in our memory. And so we're like, Oh, I'm this kind of person. I'm the kind of person. Like when people talk to me about being vegan and I certainly about how they could never do it. I could never give up cheese or I don't want to. Like Louis CK had a great joke once where he's like, Oh, eating animals is wrong. I know that eating animals is wrong. I just don't care that it's wrong. And that's like the this, you know, beautiful, tragic dichotomy of human experience. Like, of course, people do things that they know are wrong, because they aren't that was like, But it's me. I don't care about the not me. I mean, one way is to conceive of like, as a comedian, sometimes you see other people achieve things

you're like, Oh, if I, if only this body, if this consciousness could have achieved that, but thinking of us as all one, I'm like, Oh, I did it. You know, like we did it. Like the human race did it. You know, we did the horrible things. We did the great things. But specifically for an individual, you know, an individual, the human sheet over the electronic ghosts or whatever. Energy do here's the thing. Remember that you're not like, you're not the same skin cells even you're not you're not the same anything over and over. So the idea of who you of who you are, like, Oh, I'm a person who did that one bad thing. I'm a person who did 100. I guess I'm the kind of person that hurts people. And like, a reason that people don't become like vegans, like, I don't

think I could do it all the time. Like, what if I fail like, so I couldn't, I can't look at what but so they think of it all or nothing. They're like, Well, I tried I failed the end. But so I would I encourage people to not think of anything as all or nothing, because that will often make you default to nothing. If you can't do all and no one can do all no one can do all of anything. What you can do is like the same way that you know, in Groundhog Day, life was infinite. You know, he he was a dick for a long time. He killed himself so many times before he was like, Well, I guess I'll just try to change one good thing at a time one little so try if there's something that you think you can do. You're like, I've been I did a vibe. I've been vile. Don't think I've

been vile for so long. So I have to do it my whole life. All vile or no vile. And it's been it's been vile. So it can't be no vile. So it has to be all vile. So no, it's way, it's way better to be, you know, a dick for half your life and not a dick for the rest of your life than it is just feel well, I guess I'm just a dick forever. Yeah. Thank you, profit. I do what I can. Thank you very much. And thank you so much for coming on. Oh, thank you, man. I can't believe we've been talking now for over an hour. It feels like a second. Thank you for all this. You're brilliant being. How can people find you? Aren't you going on tour? I'm always doing things. At some point, I mean, right now, the things that do exist that people can watch and listen to, I have a Netflix

special called Small Dork and Handsome. I have a podcast that you've been on called Hang out with me on the Keith and the Girl Network, Keithandthegirl.com slash Hang. At my website, like myqcapplin.com, put myqcapplin into any, you know, like Twitter, Instagram, all the places you can put a comedian's name, you can get my other albums, Meet Robot and Vegan Mind Meld. And I'm working on new ones soon and podcasts come out every week. And you can write me an email, you can do anything like, and you're, you're wonderful. And everyone, everyone, you are potentially wonderful. So Hare Krishna. Thank you, brother. Good luck. That was Mike Kaplan, everybody. Don't forget to listen to his awesome podcast,

Hang out with me. Don't forget to cuddle and care for your sweet, terrified dog on this 4th of July weekend. Use our Amazon portal. Subscribe to us on iTunes. Give us a nice rating if you like the show. And I'll see you next week. Hare Krishna. Savings off regular sale and clearance prices. Exclusions apply.