Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #206 Chris Ryan

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

We got the wise man Dr. Chris Ryan on the show today and he brings the heat! He even shared a little about himself that you may not have heard before. As always I’m so grateful to get to share this conversation with y’all. Enjoy!   Connect with Chris: Website: chrisryanphd.com  Instagram: @thatchrisryan  Facebook: Christopher Ryan  Twitter: @ThatChrisRyan  Podcast: chrisryanphd.com/tangentiallyspeaking Spotify Apple    Chris’s Books: chrisryanphd.com/books  Sponsors:   Sovereignty Head to https://sovereignty.co/kyle/ to grab their flagship product PURPOSE+, my favorite CGN/ Nootropic on the planet. There is nothing like this product for energy and cognitive function! Use code “KKP” for 20% off. Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp for some Green Juice, it’s my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! Biohm Health Find out the Micro/Micobiome of your gut by going to guttesting.com/  and use code “KKP” for 20% off your test. Connect with Kyle:   Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com    Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Welcome back, everybody. Episode two this week. Like I said, we're going to be hammering them out. I think it's seven this month total. And what do we got? Most of them I've ever done was eight in a month. I don't know. Somebody might have to backtrack that. I know a couple years ago we were swinging hot, lots of travel, and I had like an eight month wait list for people. So I couldn't do that. So we started churning out two or three a week, but now we've reached the same problem, which is a great problem. And even though they're not all face-to-faces, I would really appreciate, and I definitely am still calling this in, Great Spirit Connect, Chris Ryan and I face-to-face so we can sit down face-to-face and have a three-hour banger. That would be phenomenal. Dr. Chris Ryan and I face to face so we can sit down face to face and have a three hour banger. That would be phenomenal. Dr. Chris Ryan has finally come on the podcast. And I say finally, because he's also a face to face guy and current circumstances, we're bending at the seams to our own rules. Totally worth it. I went on his podcast,

Tangentially Speaking, which I've been a huge fan of for years now. I met Kyle Tierman through Dr. Chris Ryan, hearing him on his podcast. And somebody introduced us on the gram. And Kyle Tierman is a dear brother and good friend. And Dr. Chris Ryan is somebody to put it mildly. I mean, grossest understatement of all time has changed my life forever due to the books that he's written. And there's very few people that I can say that about, maybe three or four.

And all for their own reasons. Paul Cech's on that list. Ram Dass is on that list. Chris Ryan's on that list. And I'm sure there's more, but Eckhart Tolle is on that list. Um, Chris Ryan viscerally has changed my life and, uh, you know, his, his work has changed my life. And we dive into his life because there's so much that I would just wanted to know more of. I'd hear little tidbits. Listen, I always listened to him on Rogan's, especially the ones with him and Duncan Trussell. Um, I've been a fan for a very long time. We got to

go on this hunting trip that Kyle Tierman organized a few years back. I got my first kill. It was on my birthday and Dr. Chris Ryan was on that. We had some very interesting conversations then, and this is a fantastic conversation now. And I think he tells some pretty cool stories that he hasn't really, he's been on so many podcasts. I mean, way more than I have hosted more, but also been a guest way more times than I have. So as a podcaster, I don't know how to put that. When I've been the guest on podcasts, it can be troublesome to not tell the same story over and over again, especially when it's like, tell us about life growing up or how did you get into plant medicine or any of these

things? It's hard not to regurgitate something. You don't want to have the quick bit like you do in fighting or for the news reporter, you see all these college football coaches like, well, we just got to come out in the second half and do it better. You know, I'm going to talk to these kids. They're ready. They're ready to go. We can't have that in podcasting. It's inauthentic.

No canned answers here from Chris Ryan. He delivers the juice, the sweet stuff. We'll link to his books in the show notes, which are fantastic. I cannot wait for anything he wants to write. Again, you've got to take my money right now. I'll pre-order it. Author of Sex at Dawn and author of Civilized to Death.

And I really didn't even understand his mentorship coming up. He dives into this and it's fantastic. I was just salivating listening to it. So yeah, I'm going to quit rambling. You can hear me fanboying right now. There's a reason for that. I truly, truly love you, Chris. Thank you for coming on the podcast and we'll do it again. There are many ways you can support this podcast. Check out our sponsors because they make the show

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the most out of everything you're doing every day in your life. So check it out. Guttesting.com is where you're going to go. You're going to use code KKP to save 20% off for all listeners. And without further ado, my man, Dr. Chris Ryan. All right, we're clapped in. Chris Ryan, thanks for joining us on the show, brother. Hey, always a pleasure. So we were just chatting.

You've been going around traveling, everybody that's been following you, seeing you in your van, but you've located a little space in Colorado. How long have you been out there? Since October. And I was here last spring as well. I bought some land here, uh, with the intention to sort of build a hippie compound of some sort and, uh, decided probably

a good idea to spend a winter and make sure because it's Colorado, it's 8,000 feet. Uh, you know, it's not the kind of thing you enter into lightly. So, um, yeah, my partner and I rented a house here and we've been here since October and it's awesome. Winter here is really nice. It's a, cause it's really sunny. It's a high desert. Um, so even like some days it'll be snowing and the sun's out and it's just like beautiful, you know, and there are all these deer and coyote wandering around and, uh, you know, the air's really clean and it's the, it's a dark sky, um, preserve, you know, so there's, it's, it's cut off from any city light. Oh, it's kind of like Sedona. So we go out at night. Yeah. Oh, it's kind of like Sedona? So you go out at night. Yeah.

Okay. It's a lot like Sedona. In fact, a lot of people think it's like this is the next Sedona, sort of undiscovered. And now you're blowing it up, unfortunately. I haven't said the name. That's true. That's true. But I say it on my podcast. I didn't say it for about a year. I was like, I don't want to say anything because I just wanted to sort of get the word out to my close circle of friends. Like, hey, if you guys want to get in, get in now. Because I felt like this place is going to blow up. Because I didn't know about COVID coming down the line.

Of course, that accelerated everything. But a lot of people are working remotely now. And I realize that they can get much better quality of life for a lot less money if they start looking at other options. And so I bought land here 18 months ago and it's so cheap, dude. I mean, it's like you can buy an acre on your visa card. It's like so cheap and it's doubled or tripled in a year and a half. Wow. So yeah, it's happening. Yeah. People are looking to get out. That's something I've thought of that's being, you know, I got out three and a half years ago, but like for everybody that's coming over to Texas now, we were talking about that

on, on your podcast, tangentially speaking, like the whole world opens up. If you can afford California or New York and you're like, oh wait, you're telling me I can work from home, like online. I don't need to physically be here anymore. Like California and New York are awesome places and California is really beautiful, but you go anywhere. You know, the whole Southwest is incredible. Colorado, I've never been other than flying through Denver, but obviously listening to you and seeing the photos, like it looks remarkable and completely different. Like it's got a lot of differences between the sand dunes and some of the

mountainous areas. And even you guys are in elevation around the sand. So like, you know, it just, it's like, why, why, why get fixated? I understand family and stuff like that. And you don't have to be that far if you're, if you're worried about visiting family and all that. But I just think of like the, the United States is a gorgeous land and there's so much of it that's untapped and not highly populated and not,

you know, frantic with people, you know, with their fucking boxes on and just going through life, trying to figure out little games within the game. Like you can be in nature and have a deep connection and, and really start to pull away from some of the nonsense rat race and still function in society. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Function on your own terms, right? Like be as engaged as you want to be rather than be sucked into it where you're just, being parasitized by social media and, and different forms of technology. And that's one of the reasons that the last, uh, I think five years, um, I've every summer I go off in the van and, uh, you know, I normally go up to the Northern Rockies, Idaho, Montana, Eastern Washington. normally go up to the the northern rockies idaho montana eastern washington uh one year i went up into canada up into the canadian rockies um but basically i just go back there every year and uh there are some areas that i found and some friends uh that i've met up there and check in on them and

then just go camp out by a river and look at the stars and sit by a fire every night. You know, I remember the first year I did it, my friend and I were like, we loaded up our laptops with movies and TV shows we wanted to see and like, let's catch up on all this stuff. And dude, we were out for four months and we didn't open that fucking thing one time. We didn't watch one movie, one TV show. You know, we're thinking, oh, we're going to be bored, like sitting by the fire night after night after night. Like, no, not at all. Like, you know, we had great conversations, really got to know each other.

And when we weren't talking, just stare into the fire. It's hypnotic. It's fantastic. And, you know, when you do that enough, you start to realize that, oh yeah, all the, all the sort of flashing lights that we've got on our screens are just cheap replacements for looking into a fire. You know, that's our brain evolved looking into fires every night and the quality of the conversation that you have with people when you're sitting around a fire granted couple bottles of wine doesn't help hurt either you know but uh looking into that fire the sincerity and the like it's almost like taking

mdma or something there's just this like disinhibition that happens. And so, yeah, I love checking into that kind of, you know, primordial, those primordial sources of comfort every year. Yeah. You, I mean, I'm, I'm trying to make my way up there right now. I have a buddy who actually showed our buddy Kyle Tierman this, but it's a go-fast camper shell. And my buddy, Matt Vincent, he's been just, he always, he has the same truck, but he's outfitted it so that he can just toss a cooler in the back and hit the road and he can camp anywhere. And it's got the unfoldable tent on top. So they're actually building it right now in Bozeman. And I was thinking about taking my son, he'll be six up there on his first like long road trip.

It might be a brutal time in the truck, or it might be fucking awesome, just because it's going to be like two or three days to get there. We'll probably only camp for probably four or five nights, and two or three days to get back. So I'm guessing it'll be equal time on the land, equal time in the truck, unfortunately. But I've been thinking about that. And just the ability to access that's going to be really awesome. Like when you can make getting outdoors convenient, when you can make, you know, like hitting the road convenient, then it's just that much more

accessible. And I think that'll be really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've got a sprinter van that's like totally decked out. I got a refrigerator, freezer, solar panels on top, a couple of lithium iron phosphate batteries, you know, memory foam, full size mattress, you know, ventilation. It's awesome. I love it. And it's exactly what you say. It's like all I need to do basically takes me, you know, whatever, a couple hours to like load everything up. And I'm out for the summer and I got everything I need, you know. Yeah, I spent a lot of time when I was young. I don't know if you and I have ever talked about this, but I used to hitchhike a lot and backpacked around the world for years.

And that was my jam, you know, just sort of have everything I need in my backpack and be ready to go. And, you know, tent and water filter and, you know, whatever I had on my, my gear, I was kind of a gear junkie. And so now this is like a, you know, an old dude's version of that, you know, like instead of a backpack, I got a van instead of, you know, some, a little baggie of mushrooms. I've got like a cooler full of beers and wine, you know, it's like, it's a whole, it's the same thing, different version. Yeah. I've, I've listened to, I mean, I've listened to your podcast for a while. I've listened to you on Rog, I've listened to your podcast for a while. I've

listened to you on Rogan a ton of times. Um, we had a chance to really get to know each other on a hunting trip a couple of years ago that our buddy Tierman organized. I wanted to talk with you. I mean, anybody, everybody I have on, I want to get some idea of what life was like growing up. And, uh, you know, Tierman tells me stories. I've heard stories on Rogan, but talk about growing up, talk about backpacking around, spending your time in Europe and Spain specifically. Just break that down and then let's dive into plant medicines

because I really want to know how that opened the door because for me, that's reconnected me to nature in a way that no book could, no mentor could, no words could. And obviously, you write a book like Civilized to Death. It's clear you're thinking outside the box and understanding that we're maybe a little bit veering off course compared to where we were in the past.

And I want to touch on those things. Yeah. want to touch on those things. Yeah, I guess the place to begin is, you know, when I was a kid, we lived in Western Pennsylvania, a little north of Pittsburgh. And for some reason, it may have been the place, it may be just something innate in me, or it may have been the time, I don't know. but I got really passionate about Native American cultures. And, you know, I was born in 62. So let's say I'm 10, 11, it's the early to mid 70s. And there was kind of a vibe then there were American Indian movement, there were some rebellions taking place. I remember they were

in the news. They, you know, they took over Alcatraz. There was a really interesting sort of political rebellion and active theater that they took over this tiny little island. The American Indians did. It was like the last piece of America, you know, all the way to the West. And it really dramatized the abuse and persecution of the Native people here. And I don't remember exactly where, you know, if that triggered my interest or I was already interested. I was interested in martial arts. I watched this show Kung Fu every Thursday night at 10 PM after I came back from my Kung Fu

lessons. And, you know, a lot of that was also sort of looking at, you know, the old West, but from the perspective of the persecuted, not the sort of typical, you know, John Wayne cowboy, the Indians are, you know, evil and ignorant, and we're out here to bring civilization. So I very much grew up with a sense of like, wait a minute, what's going on here? I read a book called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee when I was very young. That's an amazing book. If people haven't read that or don't know what I'm talking about, it's by Dee Brown. Each chapter is kind of the story of the last years of a different tribe or group. And it's just heartbreaking and really illuminating as to what was happening. So basically, you know, my first real intellectual passion was who were the people who lived here before? How did they

integrate with the land? How did they think about life and death and society and spirit world and all these different things. And so from the time I was maybe 10 till 15 or so, all I cared about was Indians. That's all I read. That's all I did. I would go to school, come home, take off my clothes, put on my loincloth. I wore my loincloth slept naked because my kung fu teacher told me you should a man should always sleep naked you know so it was like i was into other cultures and i felt like the culture that i was being raised in had it all wrong like this sort of yahoo america we number one, the best ever. I just never bought that.

I always felt like something's wrong here. The way these people, the things they value, I just don't get it. So that was very deep in my early consciousness. And then we moved a few times. I went to three different high schools in three different states so I was always the new kid always kind of an outsider and so very much sort of doing

my own thing and then I went to college in upstate New York and the first I remember it was Halloween night, 1980. I was a freshman in college, you know, so it's two months into college. And this teaching assistant in one of my classes, she and I kind of hooked up a little bit.

And she said, hey, let's take mushrooms Halloween night. And I was like, I've never had mushrooms. I'd smoked a little weed, but I'd never, I didn't really know much about plant medicines or, or, you know, that whole sort of world. Um, and we took these mushrooms and I remember we went and hung out in the cemetery and the moon was full and I felt like this incredible sense of familiarity. Like this is where I came from. Like I know this place. I know this consciousness. Like this is real.

This is me. And that other stuff is an act or, or, you know, an approximation of reality. But where I am right now, this is reality. I just knew it. I felt it. Um, and so then, uh, I, I got really interested in, in spending more time in that place and understanding that place. And I think it integrated with what I was saying earlier about being a kid and kind of looking at society and saying, yeah, I don't get this. I see everybody's kind of wasting their time here. I don't understand these values and all that.

So then when I had that experience with the mushrooms, it was like, ah, yeah, it all clicked. It all fit. Like, yeah, that is bullshit. And now I'm starting to really see how and filling in some of the gaps. And so, yeah, at that point, I got very interested in mushrooms and LSD and they became an important part of my education for the next probably six or seven years. And I always tried to be very respectful because for me, they were never about partying and, you know, like just sort of altering consciousness for the hell of it. It always was very clear to me, like, this is serious stuff. This is, you know, like a lot of cultures refer to

Paiote as El Maestro, right? The teacher. And I always felt that, like, I'm in the presence of an intelligence that I really want to learn from. And so I, um, then I, I found a way to, to graduate on time, but skip a year of college, um, basically a loophole in the, the system, which, you know, I always kind of like find angles and I found this angle and I was like, Hey, I can skip my junior year and graduate on time. I went to the administration. They're like, no, of course you can't do that. And I was like, well, they're going to read this and this and this. And they're like, oh shit, he's right. So they immediately closed the loophole, but I was gone and I decided I was going to take that time. Um, and I wanted to see a frontier. I wanted to like go someplace where there were no people. And, um, so I decided to go to Alaska. This was 1983. And, um, I, uh, I, I decided I was going to hitchhike cause I didn't have any money.

Um, but I'd heard that you could work in Alaska, get a summer gig up there. And so I hitchhiked from upstate New York. I took some buses and hitchhiked the rest of the way from upstate New York to Seattle. And then I got on one of those ferries that goes up along the coast, the inside passage, and you could just camp on the deck. I don't know if they still do that, but, uh, that was a fucking party or all these people just camped out on the deck and their sleeping bags. Uh, there was like, um, you know, like a roof over it with heaters. Um, cause it gets cold and I was probably 50 to a hundred people just camped out next to each other. Wow. Partying.

And you're just going up along this incredible scenery. Whales and dolphins and bears walking along on the beach there. And just awesome. Bald eagles flying over. And so I did that. had some adventures along the way, met some wild, this guy who was just lying there next to me and the woman next to him, the three of us kind of started hanging out

basically because he was hot for her. She was way out of my league. This guy was like in his 40s, I think. He was a fisherman from Oregon and a carpenter. Her name was Becca. His name was Ed. Becca was from Hawaii, and she had this big backpack. And she never opened her backpack.

Like three days we were on there together. She never opened her damn backpack. And one day we were like, Becca, what's up with you? You haven't changed your clothes. You haven't opened your backpack in three days. And she's like, yeah, okay. Can you guys keep a secret? And I'm like, yeah, of course.

It was full of weed that she was bringing from Hawaii. And she had a brother in Hawaii who grew weed. And she was taking it to another brother in Alaska where it was super, super expensive. So it was probably like $10,000 worth of weed in her backpack. She just never opened it. Oh man. Yeah. Anyway, it was a crazy experience, just the hitchhiking. And then we got to where the ferry ends and I hitchhiked up through the Yukon over into Alaska and ended up getting a job in a cannery, worked in the cannery, made a bunch of money. And then I did it again the next year. And that basically, like that just totally changed my life.

Like, you know, when I was in college, I was like, my path was, I was studying literature. And I really loved it. And I still do. I still love good writing. But the writing that I was interested in the most was stuff like Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Joseph Conrad, stuff that was about nature and about adventure and about going out and seeing the world. And I realized like, wait a minute, I, I want to be a teacher, uh, sharing these, these stories, but I haven't really had any of these stories. I haven't lived any of these stories.

Right. And so when I went to Alaska, I looked back and I was like, wait a minute, what am I doing? I'm training to be a hypocrite. I'm training to like, you know, stand up in front of a class and tell someone else's stories. That doesn't seem right. Yeah, I need to have. So I just had this epiphany. I remember exactly where I was and when and everything. And I was like 20 years old, I think, or maybe 19.

And I said, okay, wait a minute. I'm not going to go to graduate school. I'm not going to get married. I'm not going to make any binding decision until I'm 30. I'm going to just take the next 10 years of my life and make it know, wilderness area in my life. I'm just going to like take the next 10 years and do whatever the fuck I want and have adventures and just float around the world and meet all kinds of interesting people and just see what happens. And then when I'm 30, then I can make decisions. Then I can think about who I want to marry, if I'm going to get married or what kind of career I want to have or if I want to be a doctor or a pilot or whatever the fuck I want to do. I'll decide when I'm 30 and I'll be older than most people who are, you know, in school with me or whatever.

But it doesn't matter because I will have had 10 years of experience. And so that's what I'm going to do. And that's what I did. to do and uh that's what I did and uh yeah it worked out it was I'm really glad I did it that way did you go back for your PhD when you were after after 30 uh I did but way after 30 I went back uh yeah i think i was probably how old was i when i did that probably 36 or something when i started and uh you know maybe 39 when i finished wow yeah i can't imagine being in fucking school right now for three years like there's no way there's no i'm 39 right now i'm like right now. And I'm like, ah, no, no, thanks.

That'd be, that'd be a fucking grind. Yeah. Well, I mean, the way I did it, uh, I mean, it was a grind cause you know, I had a BA in literature and I decided I wanted to get a PhD in psychology. So, you know, I, I didn't have any like intro psychology classes or, you know, statistics or whatever, the sort of intro, the basic stuff you have to have. So I went to San Francisco and I enrolled in night school. I got a job at a nonprofit called Women in Community Service. That was an interesting time in my life.

It was me and like 50 women working in this thing. And I had to answer the phone, Women in Community Service. And the answer is, I was like, could I just say say wicks and they're like no no everyone answers the phone the same way i was like oh geez all right uh anyway i got this job and and i got a motorcycle and i enrolled in night school at a community college and did you know your sort of intro psych classes and all that shit. And so it's probably a year of prep before I even applied for grad school. And then I sort of, I did classes in three different schools in San Francisco, and I ended up in one Saybrook graduate school, which specializes in psychology. And even then, this was early 90s,

mid 90s, maybe. They had this program, was kind of like an Oxford Cambridge system where you were guided by a professor, but you did most of the work on your own. There was some class time, but they packed that all into like two weeks a year. So people could live away from San Francisco, fly to San Francisco for those intensive class times, and then go back home and do the work and check in with the professor who like, you know, make sure you're reading the right stuff. And so then I was like, I had been living in Spain before that. And my Spanish girlfriend and I moved to San Francisco together to do when I decided to do this. And her father was ill. And I was like, okay, wait a minute, we could go back to Spain and I could do this degree from Spain as long as I fly to San Francisco twice a year. So that's what I ended up doing. So it wasn't like I was sitting in class with a bunch of kids, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 10 a.m. I was doing my shit on my own. And luckily I also became friends with a professor there, Stanley Krippner, who is

sort of a big deal. He was, you know, he's published hundreds of scientific articles and 20 or 30 books. And like, he's a really interesting cat and he and I became friends and he really kind of took me under his wing and made sure that I kept, you know, moving forward because I'm not super disciplined. So this idea of just like, oh yeah, I'll go home and do all this work. Yeah, without him, I think I'd probably, I would have just spent all that student loan money and never got anything out of it. But we became friends. And then he and I traveled all over the world together while I was in grad school, you know, because he was always getting invited to come and speak at conferences. So he would just say, yeah, I can come, you know, but I'll need my assistant as well.

And so they'd be like, okay, we'll pay his ticket. And so he and I got India, Germany, Morocco, Venezuela, Argentina, France, and we went all over the world together. And so that was, you know, the substance of my education really was traveling with this really intelligent dude. And that also ties into the plant medicines because Stanley is very interested in altered states of consciousness. He hung out with Timothy Leary. In fact, he took LSD with Timothy Leary. You know, he knew Aldous Huxley. He went to Mexico in the early 60s and visited Maria Sabina shortly after she was featured in Life magazine in an article by Wasson, I think, you know, so he was there for the real early days of sort of the psychedelic revolution in the 60s. Like he was part of that.

He was the young buck hanging out with all these big shots, Ram Dass and all these guys, you know. And so Stanley's 85 now. So that kind of tells you you know where he was like he hung out he was like the the house the in-house psychologist for the grateful dead uh he he met um um what's his name uh the percussionist uh hart uh rick hart is with steve hart forget his name do you know the grateful dead you know i'm talking about no no well he's that he's one of the drummers i think they have two drummers um and stanley met him at a party in new york city because this guy said he wanted to be hypnotized because he thought he'd be a better drummer. And someone was like, well, that guy's a psychologist and he does hypnosis. And so then they became friends.

And that was, you know, 50 years ago or something. They've been buddies ever since. Damn, that's so cool. Mickey Hart. Mickey Hart. Yeah. Okay. And so when you guys were at these conferences, what was Krippner speaking about?

And did you guys, I mean, I'm sure you guys met tons of other amazing speakers too, getting backstage, getting to meet up, hang out with different people. Yeah. Well, Stanley's research has focused on parapsychology. So, you know, telepathy, dream states, psychoneuroimmunology, so how your mental state affects your physical state, right? Yeah, that kind of stuff. He's done, like, his best-known research is probably around things like telepathy and telekinesis and, you know, psychic phenomenon or paranormal phenomena. So a lot of what he was talking about was that kind of stuff. Like, you know, also world mythology. He's an expert in world mythology. I don't know if you know who Joseph Campbell is or was.

Oh, yeah. He wrote Hero with a Thousand Faces. So Stanley was friends with Joseph Campbell. And Joseph Campbell famously was invited to Lucas Ranch to talk to the people working on Star Wars about mythology because George Lucas wanted Star Wars to be sort of a modern retelling of ancient mythological narratives. So that was so interesting to them that they had Joseph Campbell come back every year and talk to the people at Lucas Ranch. And when Campbell died, Stanley went. That's how close they were. He sort of filled in for Joseph Campbell. But anyway, yeah, that's the kind of stuff. And then as I got further into grad school, Stanley started recommending me

as a speaker at the conferences. So a lot of my, um, you know, the first talks I gave on a stage were at conferences where I had gone with Stanley and, um, yeah. And also the first stuff I published, you know, he would like, we went to Brazil, I remember. And, um, he's a big shot in Brazil. I mean, it's like, you know, getting off the plane, there are like 30 people in the airport, like Stanley Grebner. Oh my God. Oh my God. And, uh, he, we, we went and talked to some native people, sort of asked them about some of their mythological structures, their origin stories and all this stuff and the spirit world and all that. And then we went back to the hotel and we had taken notes. And Stanley's like, okay, so you should write up these notes and we'll publish an article together.

And I was like, wow, really? Okay, okay. And I'm thinking this is going to take me like six months. I'm going to, this is a lot of work. And I got up in the morning and Stanley was sitting at the table and I said, whoa, you're already awake. He said, yeah, I've been up a couple hours and he hands me these papers. He says, take a look at this and see what you think. And he has already written the article. And I was, I read through it and, you know,

made a couple of comments, whatever. And he's like, yeah, I just thought, well, you know, you're asleep. I'll just, I'll just get to work on this. And then about three months later, the article was published in some scholarly journal. And my name came first. I was the first author. So it was by Christopher Ryan and Stanley Krivner. And I'm like, dude, dude, I didn't do anything. I just happened to be there. I carried your suitcase. So that's the kind of guy he was or is. And, um, so yeah, he's very sweet, sweet dude. And I

couldn't have asked for a better educational experience. And we also, that first trip in Brazil was the first time I did ayahuasca actually actually. I was with Stanley. Oh, wow. Yeah, at União de Vegetal. You know, there are two churches in Brazil that have legal permission to use the sacrament. And, yeah, so Stanley, he asked me, what do you want to, is there anything you'd really like to see in Brazil? And I said, yeah, I've heard about ayahuasca. Now, remember, this is like 93, maybe. me what do you want to is there anything you'd really like to see in brazil and i said yeah i've heard about ayahuasca now remember this is like 93 maybe this is before everyone was talking about ayahuasca way before yeah do you guys sit during the day in that because i know the other church

they do a day ceremony or is it at night? This one was in the early evening. We got to the place mid-afternoon, sort of had a light meal. And then, yeah, we probably maybe 6 or 7 p.m. it started. Yeah. Now, the other great thing about that situation was, you know, because he's very well known, Stanley could just sort of make anything happen. So whatever you want to do, he could figure it out. So, for example, one time he was coming, I was living in Barcelona and he was coming to visit and he said, you know, what should we do? And I said, my God, you know, I'd really like to check out some prehistoric cave art. And he's like, yeah, that sounds good. I know there's a lot around there. So a couple of weeks later he gets in touch and he says, okay, I had my assistant reach out to the French government and we have an invitation for the two of us to go to Lascaux. Lascaux is the fucking Sistine Chapel of

prehistoric cave art. It's like, you know, if you look up prehistoric cave art, Lascaux is the first thing that pops up, but it's been closed to the public since the 1960s because, you know, the vapor in our breath starts to degrade, changes the environment in the cave. So the French government shut it down and they built this replica. And that's where the tourists go and, you know, you see the replica. But because of Stanley, we had an invitation for the two of us to actually go into the cave and experience this. So he could pull strings that were amazing. That's incredible.

I mean, I got questions about the cave. Did you feel any differences being in the cave? I'm not saying that you got to compare the inauthentic versus the, or the authentic versus the replica, but did you feel difference like the harmonics of the cave were different or like maybe the residents, the energy of the cave, did it feel like anything? Because there's some, some school of thought around, you know, people entering some form of altered state to be able to paint theory and tropes and things like that. You look at Graham Hancock's work. And then another school of thought, I just had Freddie

Silva on the podcast is that the cave itself entered you into an altered state. So whether you spend enough time in darkness or you were fasting and combine that with time in the cave, that enhanced the altered state, similar to a traditional Native American vision quest, no food, no water for four days, you'd get into an altered state. I'm asking just, I'm wondering, was there a felt experience just setting foot there or were you just so excited it didn't fucking matter? Well, I mean, it was such an interesting experience that there's no way not to have had an altered consciousness you know just being aware that we were so privileged to be

able to go into this place first of all and um the process of going in was pretty intense you know we met with the guide outside of the cave and um they sort of like brushed our clothes to make sure there were no like spores or anything. And then we had to like stand in this little bucket of formaldehyde and, you know, cleanse the soles of our shoes. And so there was like definitely a process of, you know, sort of ritualistic cleansing in a way um nobody blew any sage smoke over us but you know that probably would have been pretty cool um and then you you know when you go in like holy fuck this is a really special place you know so there there's no way not to have consciousness change um but i think that the kinds of stuff that you're talking about would be much more intense, you know, because we went in, there were lights on,

the guides talking, there are like these platforms that you walk on. It's definitely a, a sort of a scientific site. You can see the instruments and the tools around that people are studying and, you know, um, so to go in there with the consciousness of the kind of people who were 30,000 years ago, making these paintings, that's a whole different ball game. And I feel like I got a little closer to that kind of consciousness. Other times I've been back, not to Lascaux, but I've been probably three or four times now to prehistoric cave art sites in northern Spain and southern France and the Pyrenees. I've been to, I don't know, maybe a dozen different sites at this point. And some of them are super low key. Like a buddy came to, I think two years ago, he and I went to Spain together and I wanted to, we went up to Astorias

where a lot of this stuff is. And we sort of went to four or five different sites in a day. And one of the sites I remember, it was like, nobody's there, man. There was like this one grad student, some anthropology grad student sitting in the booth by himself, you know, parking lot, maybe 12 parking spaces, nobody there, just us. And he's like, yeah, I'll take you guys in. Come on. And we walked down and he opens the gate and we walk in and, you know, there's this, it was one of the, you know, it wasn't super spectacular, so it doesn't get a lot of attention, but you go way back in this cave and there are the reindeer in charcoal. Some of them are ochre, so it's red. This is just charcoal, which is probably why it doesn't get a lot of attention.

It's not so colorful, whatever, but it's awesome. This was like 22,000 years old, 22,000 years. And in this case, there's no platforms. We just walk in with this dude and we're standing right where those people stood when they made these things. And there's no protective barrier. There's just us, just the three of us. And he was cool, this guy. And I remember he said, you want me to turn off the lights? I was like, fuck yeah, dude. And so he turned off the lights and we just stood there in this absolute silence, absolute darkness. Like, oh man, that is something, you know, it's just like, holy shit. And then you imagine those people coming in there with little, you know, fat lanterns or whatever they were using

for light and the way the light would flicker on the walls. And it seems like the animals are moving. And I mean, it's a whole different consciousness. So, yeah, I agree with people who say that the space itself would have a consciousness altering effect for sure. Yeah, I remember another place called Nio in southern france um you walk in and there's like this long tunnel and i think i've read someone talking about this is like a birth canal right like you're sort of being unborn you're like going up this long tunnel and along the tunnel when we first went in there was some like graffiti like some shithead was like you know joey 1987 or something and i was like how could you do that you fucking douchebag and then we went in a little further and it was like uh you know pierre 1742 it was like oh and then we went a little further and it was like, you know, Jose,

you know, 12, 24 and like, Oh, this is getting crazy. Like it's, you know, graffiti that's a thousand years old is really interesting, you know? And then we got all the way in and there was a chamber and that's where the, you know, the, the art was, Yeah, fascinating. Really interesting stuff. That sounds incredible. So this thing actually came out on the other side. Did it go fully dark? Was it like a tunnel where you had an entrance on one end that was like

entering the cave? And then if you walked far enough, you'd come out the other side? Am I thinking of that correctly? No, no. Okay. So, so it had,

it had an ending to it. Okay. Yeah. You just go in, in, in, I mean, this one was probably,

I don't know, maybe half a mile from the entrance to the area where the art was. Wow. So you were going deep, deep into the earth. Yeah, fascinating. Others are, you know, just like an overhang where you can like, even there's some sunlight. There's one that's really interesting.

I don't know if it's called Las Monedas. There's one in Spain, I remember, that's just so wild because that's one of the ones with the handprints on the wall. And you're basically standing three feet from the wall. So you're standing as far as they were when they put their hands up on that wall and blew ochre so you get the negative image because the ochre hits the wall and sticks all around their hand. And that's really touching because you're like, it's just so immediate. You know, you're standing there.

This is 20, 25,000 years ago. A person stood where you are. They put their hand right up there and blew this ochre. And you can see like one of the like women's hands, she had a broken, her little pinky finger was broken. And so you could like see that hand repeated in different parts of the wall. And then like down low, their little children's hand prints, you know, it's just so like i've never experienced anything that connects you with through time in that way you know that's one thing i really liked about living in europe is this feeling of like being embedded in a large historical context.

You know, like one of my favorite bars I used to go hang out in Barcelona, one of the walls of the bar was blocks of stone in the Roman wall. So this wall was built in like, you know, I don't know, two, 200 AD or something like that. And I'm sitting there leaning against it with my beer in my hand, you know, it's like, like, it's just awesome to be embedded in time in that way. Um, cause honestly, I think it made me less, um, concerned with my own mortality to have that kind of feeling of the endlessness of made me feel less, you know, less concerned with mortality. I don't, I don't really know how to explain it, but it has that effect.

Yeah, I think I get that. We were on a, when I was fighting, we did tours like Goodwill tours for the military. And we were out in Europe on like a big ass tour bus that had taken everyone, you know, current from Toby Keith back to the Rolling Stones. And so it was like, oh, we're hot shit. You know, like I'm this mid, mid-level fighter in the UFC and I'm riding on the same tour bus that the Stones did. But we had this really cool German bus driver and we were going all over the different, different camps. And the volcano went off, I think, in Sweden. You remember that?

Oh, Iceland? Somewhere around there. Yeah, it could have been Iceland, but it grounded all the air. There was no air travel. So we couldn't get around. And they were like, well, if we're going to be here, we might as well make our way to the US embassy in Paris. I was like, oh, cool.

I've never been to Paris. But we stopped off in the southern Netherlands. And they were like, oh, cool. I've never been to Paris, but we stopped off in like the Southern Netherlands. And they were like, we're not going through Amsterdam. We had, I mean, if I'm crazy, I mean, I was with Chris Levin and a bunch of dudes that are, they far exceed my level of craziness. And so they're like, no, no Netherlands, no matter what, or no Amsterdam, no matter what. And, and we're in the South of Netherlands. And I, and I talked to Mike and I was like, our, our tour bus driver, I'm like, Hey, we got to get in town to go to one of these cafes. You know, a couple of my buddies had never had cannabis before. And I'm like, we're going to fucking do it. Let's do it here. You know? And, um, he was like, Oh, Oh, I couldn't

tell you that I might lose my job. You know, it's very, very important. I don't lose my job. And I was like, all right, you know, I don't want to put you in a bad spot. So we get off the bus and I'm the last guy to leave the bus and he hands me this napkin. And he's like, if you like, you know, you hand this to the taxi,

he might find something for you. And I was like, oh shit. All right, buddy. All right. And so it was the coordinates. And, you know, we handed it to a taxi later on and he brought us into town and it was all old school cobblestone. I think of things like that, like I'm barefoot a lot of the time, like a standard hippie or new age biohacker, whatever.

I'm just barefoot a lot. But one of the things I love is I have to pay attention. I can't just haphazardly walk around, especially when I'm on grass. Cause we got mesquite and all sorts of shit. And you step on one of those and it's like, oh, okay. I should pay attention. Right. So it's just ingrained in me to pay attention and to feel the ground that I'm on. But I was walking around the cobblestone, like every step, same kind of feel, you know, where you're just like, oh shit.

Like I'm drawn to the ground. The structures, you know, are thousands of years old and well, at least a thousand years old and just incredible. Like the architecture is a whole different feel. Like we have nothing in the States that's even close to that old. And especially growing up on the West coast, you know, where it was like, oh, you got to go to the East coast. And it's like, no jack off. That's not that old either. You know, it's not even, it's not even close, but there was that feel kind of connecting me through time and almost like a piece around it. I didn't quite connect it to mortality, you know, not in the same way that like plant medicines is done for me where it's like, Hey, there's a part of you that that's going to go on past your body.

Like I've had that felt sense repeated, even when I'm arguing with it, it's like, no, no, no, you're not your body. Um, whether that's true or not, uh, I don't know. It remains to be seen. We get to find that out for ourselves, but you know, that, that feeling, I had that feeling, you know, being connected through time it's, and it's, what's beautiful about whether it's the plant medicines or being in Europe or, or, being in Europe, and I imagine Egypt and places like that, it's a felt sense. It's not like this intellectual aha. It's like a really visceral feeling that resonates through the entire body. And those experiences that I've had have been, it feels more real, you know, to, to your point and like that,

that reality originally with mushrooms, there was a remembering of that reality and it felt more real than this reality. And that, that to me is, is the, there's something so beautiful about that that can't really be explained. You know, it's like, you got to walk the walk and go through the fire pit and then you get to fucking experience the sweetness of that because it's a fully felt experience, not just an intellectual one. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, and I think, you know, intelligence is a wonderful thing, but it also separates us, distances us from immediate experience in a way. That's, you know, it's a double-edged sword. I was just listening to this guy the other day, David Abrams.

He wrote a book called The Spell of the Sensuous. I was listening to a podcast where he reads an essay that he wrote and it's so fascinating he basically says he talks about how people uh sort of uh people without written language uh have a much more immediate sense of their experience than we do and and in a sense that the world speaks to them right like they have an animistic understanding of the world that everything has spirit and they're in constant dialogue with the environment, you know, and you and I have experienced that, you much more than me, but in hunting, right? Like you're more attuned to your environment. You're smelling the air. You're conscious of whether you're

walking upwind or downwind. You're very conscious of how you place your feet and how much noise you're making. And you're sort of trying to get into the consciousness of the animals that you're stalking and all that kind of stuff. That's daily life. That's just constant consciousness for those people. And what Abrams was talking about was the fact that we develop the alphabet, and the alphabet is a form of magic. And we take it so casually, we don't realize how powerful it is. But we get up in the morning, you go into the kitchen, you pick up the newspaper, you look at a bunch of marks on a paper and you start hearing voices. You start seeing things, you know, happening at the White House or in Iraq, or, you know, you hear voices talking to you and it's all coming from these marks on paper or on a screen. And that's magical.

That's amazing. It's really strange. But as that magic has grown stronger and more central to our lives, the other voices that our ancestors were listening to, they go silent, right? We stop hearing the voices of the animals and the wind and the clouds and the rivers and all that. And yeah, it's a really interesting perspective that I had never thought of before, but I felt it, you know, experientially, you know, as a kid, I was, and I think we all sort of feel this, right? Like the world is magic. I can remember looking at colors and feeling like that shade of purple has some wild power, you know? The first time, like I had crayons, there were certain crayons that were like, well, this is powerful. This one's got some mojo, you know, but then you see

that color a million times in your life and it, the magic fades out of it. Right. And which must be one of the things, you know, with you and, and bear, it must be really cool to see somebody who's immersed in that magic. It must, I imagine it awakens things in you that you forgot about, you know, like how you felt when you were his age. That's- Absolutely, yeah. It's a beautiful experience.

On color, like big time. Yeah, his favorite color for the longest time has been rainbow. And it's so funny because, you know, we tell people and they're like, they're like, no, no, no. Rainbow is like a whole bunch of colors. You got to pick one. Like rainbow is all the colors. You got to pick one. And he's like, it's rainbow. What do you mean? I'm not, it's not any one of those it's rainbow. And he's fucking steadfast in it. And it's like,

it's like how brilliant he's not, he's not going to subscribe to some bullshit rule that we all say like, no, no, no, no, no. That's you can't say all of them. You have to pick one. It's like, no, no, the whole fucking thing. It's the whole gamut, the full spectrum. Right. And it's like, that's, that's like one prime example of how kids think and him in particular, you know, that's not like, I'm not going to fit into your fucking box and, and tell it the way you want me to say it. I'm going to, this is what I, this is my favorite. This is the one that I love. This is the one I'm attracted to. Dude, that's genius. You know, like people, I get people, you know, listen to my podcast, you know, hey, Uncle Chris always asking me for advice, life advice, you know, whatever.

And one of the main things that I try to tell people is question the premise, right? You're asked a question in a way, the question is formed and framed in a way that eliminates many possible answers. And if you just accept the question as it's asked, your room to maneuver is already very limited. So always question the premise. And that's what he's doing, right? What's your favorite color? No, I don't accept that question. My favorite colors? All of them.

That's beautiful. I was thinking about what you were talking about with the writing. And there's been a couple of books that have come out with the same title, Word Magic. I haven't cracked open one. I've looked at a couple of books that have come out with the same title, Word Magic. I haven't cracked open one. I've looked at a couple of pages. But I was thinking about that, Word Magic. And this other book that I did read cover to cover, it's fantastic, by Dorothy Bryant. It's called The Kin of Otta Are Waiting for You.

Have you heard of it? Yeah, I have heard of it. I don't think I've read it, but somebody's talked to me about it yeah that's an interesting title yeah sticks in the memory yeah so this i mean it's a utopian novel and this guy who's you know run-of-the-mill asshole in everyday modern culture gets in a car accident and then wakes up on this island and it's a you know like an amalgamation of indigenous people who have all different skin colors, but they have these basic frameworks of how their society works. And all they say, if something is right on,

it's negdeo. And if it's not, if it's against the way or the path, then it's donagdeo. So when he wants to start writing, because he wants to be able to bring back their teachings and their wisdom, he starts trying to write this all down. And every one of them, all the elders are like Donagdeo. The writing ruins the essence of what it is they're teaching. It ruins the story. And the stories that have been handed down generation to generation are meant to unfold differently each time. They're not meant to be told in exactly the same way. And a lot of that comes thinking about your mentor and the old professor. The art is in the storytelling and it's not meant to have so much structure. And

they gain so much from their dreams that they're actually learning where to plant the seeds each season, learning when to come out of their winter fast based on the dream state. So the only thing that's super important to them is in the very beginning of the morning, they pair up and tell their dreams to one another first thing in the morning and the dreams inform them on how to live. And it's, it's a pretty, it's pretty cool to think about that, but I'm seeing some parallels with that book because in any of these, whether we're looking at what's going wrong in the earth right now, and then potentially if we look through a utopian lens, if that's so far off, how do we bridge the gap to that thing? And maybe it is speaking less, feeling more, maybe it is, uh, you know, writing less. And it's funny saying that to such a fantastic author as yourself,

but I wonder about things like that, you know, like, yeah, I do too, dude. I mean, that's why I've only written two books, you know, it, it's like, I'm living and I'm happy with the books that I've written. And, you know, I'm happy that people find value in them. But there's definitely a conflict between living and writing about living, you know, or I'm much more. That's why I love doing this podcast. And I started the podcast, I don't know if it was eight or nine years ago. I didn't even know what a podcast was. And Duncan Trussell was like, dude, you gotta do a podcast.

And I was like, I don't know what a podcast is, man. I don't know anything about recording equipment or audio, you know? And he's like, nah, it's easy. Come on, just do it. And anyway, I just posted episode 475. And, um, you know, one of the reasons that, that I really enjoy it and keep doing it is that it's speaking. It's not writing. It's not, you know, writing is so solitary and so kind of artificial in a way because, you know, you're polishing and polishing and polishing and second thoughts and third thoughts and like, do I really want to say it that way? Or is there a better way to say this? And how does that connect to that? And I like it so much more when I sit down, you know, with a beer and a couple of notes

of a general sense of what I want to talk about and then just riff. And, you know, it's like, I don't know, it's the difference between playing in a orchestra, something that's been practiced a million times versus like jamming with some friends, you know, with some instruments by the fire and passing some weed around. It's like a totally different experience for me. And it just feels more organic. I'm kind of thinking about, you know, maybe I've got another couple of books in me, but I'm thinking one of them might be fiction. I want to try to write a story because I feel like I'm kind of tired of writing the, you know, smart aleck, you know, everybody's wrong about this except me kind of book, you know, I've done two of those. All you clowns have it wrong. Yeah. Let me tell you how it really is.

So yeah, I feel like telling a story. I'm even, I'm even thinking like maybe an erotic novel set in prehistory. So kind of like Sex at Dawn, but as a story rather than a scientific book. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. She takes on, she takes on all comers. Yeah. They even, they actually had that in the, in the kin of Otter, the kin of Otter waiting for you. They're doing a delivery. They do a delivery and spoiler alert. If somebody wants to check this book out, it's, it's quite awesome. But, uh, one of the girls is doing, is delivering her baby and they're in their sacred space. And the guy who's been transported there can't figure out why she has three men next to her. And, and so they explained, well, none of them know if they're the dad or not. So they're all the dad. And I was like, Oh shit, sex at dawn. There it is. It was fucking rad. Yeah. It was,

it was totally, totally made you be thinking you. Yeah. I think a lot of authors get to a point where they want to write fiction. I know Ben Greenfield's done in, I know a lot of authors get to a point where they want to write fiction. I know Ben Greenfield's done it. I know a lot of people who write like, and he's, you know, I don't want to say he's not creative in his writing. He's very practical though on the deliverable side of biohacks and fitness and diet, nutrition, and it's from all the legends that he's learned from. And he's, you know, just written a fucking Bible based on that. And then now getting into the more esoteric stuff like that. But I know a lot of people get into that who write nonfiction, want to eventually write the novel. So that makes sense. That

resonates with like a similar path and probably allows you more freedom than you're used to in terms of like, you know, having to gather data and all these different points that you're trying to make and just say, I'm going to fucking let it rip. Here we go. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, it's, as you were saying earlier, it's an, it's another way to convey information, right? Like, you know, scientific books are important. You've got your sources, you got your argument, you got structure, you got, I mean, that's a really good way to convey information. But another good way to convey information is to just tell a story and, you know, sort of, you know, especially at this point in my life where, you know, I did that research. I've spent 20 years studying how hunter-gatherers live and all the archaeological and primatological, all that evidence.

I've already sort of frame it in a different way and give it life, I think would be, I don't know, I'm more drawn to that at this point. If I do more books, that might be the way I do it. We'll see. I don't know. I might just get old and die. Who knows? You might just live the rest of your life rather than write about it. I've had that connection around the connection you're making on writing. I've had around social media. It's one of the reasons that jumped off Instagram a year and a half ago before all the, you know, social dilemma and all the shit started coming out, you know, and censorship, the fucking, the ridiculous amount

of censorship that's going on. Like before any of that, it just felt like a level of inauthenticity. If I was going to show parts of my life, it was going to require me taking up part of my life to then convey the part that I want to show. And also, you know, when you're talking about writing and you rewrite or the editor comes in and says, nah, word it this way, you know, and you're like, eh, that's not the way I'd word it. And you have this back and forth. And I don't know if that was your experience, but certainly I remember Aubrey talking to me about that with his book. And that's kind of the framework that my mind, this bandwidth in my head would wrap around. How is this going to be delivered? You know, and, and is this going to be what the fans want to see?

Is this going to get me more followers? Is this going to please people? How much blowback am I going to get for announcing a X, Y, and Z regarding my relationship? Who's going to step in? Is my Nana going to see this? Like any of that shit. And so much of that was just taking up fucking space in my everyday consciousness. It was like, fuck all this. So I threw the baby out with the bath water. And then now it's like, all right, I found a happy medium with a joint account going on there, you know, once every three weeks, whenever I feel like it, it's a little different, but yeah, I see those parallels. Yeah. Yeah.

And I mean, I said, you and I talked about this a little bit when you were on my podcast recently, you know, and I, I meant this when I said to you that I admire your, your integrity and your care about that, that you're in this world of, you know, people who are very public about their private lives. And I think that you are very conscious of how easy it is to become performative. And, you know, in attempting to be publicly authentic, your authenticity then becomes a show and then it loses authenticity. It's like, it's almost like the act of,

of being public about something that is deeply private, it's like impossible to do it. It's like searching for darkness with a flashlight or something. The act of what you're doing removes the thing you're trying to do in some weird way. And I feel like you're very aware of that. And I feel like you're very aware of that. And, you know, and I admire that. It's, and I think I'm more sensitive to it than most people because I'm kind of in the same situation in a lot of ways. You know, when Sex at Dawn came out, one of the things that Kisilda and I talked about was how are we going to deal with people who want to know about our relationship? Because that's going to be a natural question that's going to come up in interviews. And Kisilda was you know, I will not, and I don't want you to ever talk about

our relationship publicly. We need to have a hard boundary there. And, um, you know, and, and I'm glad we did because it's really hard to negotiate that, you know, that sort of space where you're trying to be respectful and discreet, but also not hiding or lying or, you know, being ashamed of something you have no reason to be ashamed of, you know? So there's that kind of like, I remember one of the first interviews I gave when Sex of Dawn came out was with Dan Savage on his podcast, I think. And he said, so, Chris, I've got to ask you, are you and Casilda in an open relationship? And I had anticipated that question, and I gave him my prepared answer, which was, I said, Dan, all I can tell you is that our relationship is informed by our research. And he cracked up and he was like, that's perfect, man.

That's going to be my answer from now on. My relationship with Terry is informed by Chris and Casilda's research. Yeah, it's awesome. I don't know if I mentioned it on your podcast, but it's something I've often talked about because people, you know, when they meet me or whatever, they'll be like, Hey, you know, you used to talk about your y'all's relationship so much more. Why'd that stop? You know? And I'm like, well, I think of a, a line of polarity that is my brother, Aubrey Marcus and Dr. Chris Ryan. And they're the ends of the spectrum on one side, Chris Ryan won't tell you a goddamn thing about what he does behind closed doors. And on the other end of the spectrum, you're going to know that no moment Aubrey gets

married, the moment he breaks up the moment anything happens, you know, and I leaned more, you know, in that Aubrey spectrum prior to the birth of our daughter. And then now, you know, right when Tosh got pregnant, I was like, oh, I got to protect my kids. You know, like I can be a loud mouth all I want and talk, but I can't volunteer them into that. You know, I just think about like putting myself in their shoes. Psychedelics does that very well. You know, like walk a mile, like now walk a hundred miles in their shoes. But, um, you know, thinking about going to school and then hearing some other version of myself on the playground as, you know, a little asshole I was in school walking up and being like, yeah, I heard your mom's with three dudes and blah, blah, you know, it's like, oh, no, no, no, no. I don't want to put them through that. So that just seems like fucking feeding, feeding the trolls too much. But, um, you know, I have no

regrets about what we've talked about in the past because so many, and I'm sure you've had this, you know, a hundred X, what I've experienced, but so many people have come up to me and been like, dude, thank you for giving us permission because we have kids. And I hadn't heard many people talk about doing this with kids and now we do. And my life has changed for the better. And because of my honesty, I don't talk to these members of my family anymore. I've cut those ties, but that's opened up doors with other members of my family. And you get cut those ties and, but that's opened up doors with other memories, members of my family. And it's, you know, you get to see the intricacies and obviously people are a bit more candid face to face than online, but it's been really cool to see how that's, that's helped people. And it's, it never was an intention. Like it's my shit. When I talked about it, it's non fucking prescriptive. Like don't do what I do. Don't, don't take 30 grams

of mushrooms. Don't do any of it. You know, they're not recommendations. It's just like, this is what I'm doing. And this is how it's changed my life in the ways that it has, you know? And I think that's important, important to rehash as well. But yeah, it's been, it's been a hell of a ride. I mean, to say sex at dawn has influenced our lives is, would it be one of the greatest understatements I could possibly state, you know,

I mean, a massive, massive influence, uh, and trajectory for our growth, you know, in the biggest way. So thank you for that, brother. Oh, yeah. I'm just glad there are people like you out there on the other end, you know, when, when we were writing that we had no idea if it would be published, much less if it would touch people, you know. And so it's just been, I mean, it's like living a dream, you know, to just have this idea and say, fuck it, I'm going to write it and be married to a woman who said, yeah, I'll go work every day. You stay home and work on this book. Because at the time, I was teaching English. I was doing translations, all that stuff. And she's like, dude, this book's going to change the world.

Trust me. I'll pay the bills. You work on this book. You do this. And I didn't believe her. But I felt, and like I said before, I'm not a very disciplined guy, so I never would have written it if she hadn't done that. And, you know, so she gets up at six o'clock in the morning and goes off to run a mental institution, which is what she was doing. And I'm like, am I, you know, what kind

of person am I? Am I going to sit here and pretend I worked all day or am I going to fucking work? And, you know, so I had to work. She put me in a spot where I really didn't have a choice and I wrote it and this is never going to get nothing's ever gonna happen with this but at least i i will have written it and uh you know i i didn't let her down you know i didn't deceive her and then you know someone noticed it and we got a publisher and then i mean i't, have I ever told you the story of how Dan Savage got this book? And you know, there's this crazy. No, like, okay. So we got, I mean, we had a pretty good deal.

I mean, whatever. We got $40,000 advance from our publisher, which is for a first book is fine. It's great. Whatever. But they're not going to invest a lot of money in publicizing it, right? They're not, they're, they're going to put it out there and see what happens. That's it. That's their investment. Um, and I thought like, man, if Dan Savage could see this book, he would love it because he's been talking for years about

how, you know, being attracted to people outside of your primary partnership is not a sign of a bad relationship. It's just the way we are. And he doesn't understand the science behind it, but he understands this truth. And he's been saying this for a long time. And if I could get this book into his hands, it would be like, you know, it basically be providing him the scientific support for this opinion that he's had for years that I'm sure he's gotten a lot of shit for, but he just knows in his gut is true. Right. But Dan Savage has millions of readers. You know, he's impossible to contact. He gets thousands of emails every day. There's just no way I'm going to get in touch with this guy. Um, but anyway, he, I, I sent a copy of the

book, uh, to this newspaper where he worked in Seattle, uh, addressed to him. And what happened was that about a month after I sent, this was a pre-publication copy, what's it called? The galleys. About a month after I sent it, I get a text message from a phone number in Seattle, two words. It says, reading, loving. I'm like, who the fuck is that? Reading, loving. What are they reading? What are they loving? What's going on here? And then a week later, I get an email from Dan Savage saying, dude, your book is amazing. I want to do everything I can to get people to know about this book. I'm going to have you on my podcast. You're going to guest host my column one week. My entire weekly thing is going to be about this book. And you guys tell your publisher to print up a lot more copies because I've got a million

listeners and readers, and I'm going to tell them about this book, and I'm going to tell them to buy it. And I'm going to do everything I can for you. And he did. And that's what lit the fire. And then the fire spread. And now it's in 20-some languages. And the rest is in, you know, 20 some languages and, you know,

the rest is history, right? But the way that happened was I sent this book to him and he threw it on a pile with all the other books that he gets, all these packages, all this stuff was just piled up in the corner of his office. And one day the fire marshal comes in and says, dude, you got to clean up this, this pile. It's blocking the emergency exit for everybody needs to run out. If this place catches on fire. So you got to deal with this pile of shit here. So he's like, all right. And he starts like opening things and looking at it and throwing them in there. He doesn't have time to read up. You know, You know, I get people sending me books all the time. They want blurbs. They want advice.

They can't imagine the quantity of stuff that goes to him, right? So anyway, he opens the package with my book in it. The book slips out of the package, lands on the floor on its spine and open like how often does a book land open right and he reaches down to pick it up and he reads whatever is on that page and it made him laugh and he's like what the fuck is this this funny. And he puts it on the table to take home that night. And he takes it home, starts reading it, stays up all night reading it. Like, this is amazing. This is exactly what I've wanted. And that's when he texted me reading Loving that night. It all happened because the book fell on its spine and opened up and whatever page it touched him it it

you know triggered him that's how it happened there was no plan it was pure fucking luck he told me that story a year later when i was staying at his house damn yeah yeah synchronicities beyond beyond explanation isn't that crazy that That is so cool. Yeah. That is so cool. And who knows? If that hadn't happened, you know, maybe nobody would have heard of it. I don't know. There's no way to know.

Yeah, there's no way now. Yeah. For sure. That's insane. That's such a fucking cool story. So, I mean picture in my mind that the research you had to do for Sex at Dawn likely painted a picture of what life was like prior to modern civilization in a way that you were always attracted to from your attraction to Native Americans. That seems like an easy deliverable to then, all right, let's dive into Civilized to death you know is that was was that the the massive information you had to gather for sex at dawn and the the the thirst for more of that knowledge that you had already had

from a young age the reason that spawned civilized to death yeah yeah basically what in sex at dawn you know as i did the research for that of you know, sexuality is tied in with everything else, right? It's tied in with family and how is power used and economics, you know, like are people sharing resources? Are they sharing parental responsibilities? You know, how does leadership function and what are people eating and, you know, what's their health like? And so all, you know, as you research, you know, evolutionary time, you, you, you sort of see all these different aspects of life and sex at dawn is largely focused on sexuality. But, you know, when I was writing the book, I thought, I want to talk a little bit about politics and economics and these other aspects of life.

So we sort of added a section in the middle of the book where we said, like, okay, we're going to step away from sex for a few chapters and just talk about these other aspects of life because life is so integrated and you can't just isolate this one aspect of life. Right. Um, and so, uh, when the book came out, a lot of the feedback I got from people was like, Hey, this is awesome. I really enjoyed this. Um, but I'd love to know more about these other things you wrote about, about politics and health and, you know, economics and these other aspects of life. Like that, that was really interesting. And I was thinking like people, I was kind of like wrapping the pill in the, in the meat for the dog, you know, I was trying to slip, slip that information in, but actually people were like, no, give me more of that. You know, the sex stuff is great. I get it, but I'd like to know more about this other stuff. So, um, there, it was sort of a

natural, uh, sequel in a way to just take that stuff and expand that, you know, like, let's talk more about parenting and politics and, and those things. You know, I didn't really want to do that book right away. I had, when I met with agents and talked about what the sort of natural next book would be, I had some other ideas that would be much easier follow-ups to Sex at Dawn, and they involve sexuality. And I remember the agent that I eventually signed with said to me, like, look, Chris, you're at an interesting career point here. You can write another book about sex, and you'll be the sex guy. And you can write as many books

about sex as you want, and you'll always be able to get a deal with a publisher, and you can make a living doing that. Or you can write another big idea book that's not about sex, and then you'll be a big idea guy. And that will give you much more latitude in the future for you can write about whatever you want. And yeah, so he convinced me that that was the way to go. And, you know, it's a lot more work. Those other books would have been a lot easier. But he was right. It was interesting.

Although at this point now I'm thinking it's hard for me to get motivated to write about something that doesn't involve sex. Uh, just because like, you know, sex is so to, you know, someone said, uh, I don't know if it was Freud or someone else who said, uh, everything in life is about sex except sex, which is about everything. And like that speaks to me, you know, like when I'm thinking or writing about sexuality, it's not, it's not just about pleasure getting off. It's about, it's sort of, it resonates with all different parts of life.

And so it's, it's sort of provides its own energy for me when I'm, when I'm doing research or writing, it's just like fascinating. And like literally, you know, I said to someone recently, I was interviewing a woman who wrote a memoir about sex and I said to her, it's called Want Me, Tracy Clark Flory. It's a really good book about her sexual awakening. I said to her, like, I can tell that you and I are similar in that you find sex to be super interesting and you find interesting things to be very erotic. Like I get turned on by ideas and, uh, you know, and I think that's sort of, so I don't know. That's why I was saying earlier, like if I write more, it'll probably have some connection to sexuality just because it's less work, you know, it's more fun.

But you do get turned on by big ideas. I mean, I'm just wondering, like, is there, having had the trajectory you've had and, I mean, you wrote Sex at Dawn, I know you've been working on it for a while prior to its release, but this came out long before COVID hit. So you see like, it's almost prophetic in some ways um i'm wondering like has the current state of the world and the trajectory you've been on led you to any new ideas or things that you want to give birth to in the writing world outside of a novel or would that would that be something that you could include within the novel you know these these new ideas and things you want to break out to the to the collective consciousness. Yeah.

There is another nonfiction book that's on the back burner that I've been thinking about for a while. And it's, yeah, I want to be careful not to talk about it too much because with Civilized to Death, I felt like I talked about it so much that, uh, I kind of painted myself into a corner, you know? Um, and it took some of the fire out of it, I think for me. Um, but yeah, I've, I've got, uh, sort of a weird counterintuitive book about, um, health that I might, I might write. Um, but it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's like a book about health from someone who's not particularly healthy. Probably, uh, it's a book about health from someone who never works out and, you know, eats whatever he wants. And yeah, yeah.

It's called Zero Steps to Optimal Health. I like it. I want to read it for sure. Well, brother, we're hitting our 90. And unfortunately, I know these conversations could go easily for three hours, but with with the internet I'm going to, I'm going to respect the fact that we have other stuff to do. And also that I'm going to thank the internet gods for not fucking ruining my podcast with you as I've had done recently.

Where could people, where could people find you online? I'll link to everything in the show notes. I've got everything on my website, thatchrisryan.com. Easy peasy. I love you, brother. We'll do it again. Thank you. Always fun to talk to you, man. Thank you.