Lovett or Leave It - Leave the Mask, Take the Cannoli

Episode Date: May 15, 2021

Jenny Slate is back to break down the week's news, from Liz Cheney to Ellen DeGeneres. Jason Concepcion stops by for a quiz on conservative freak outs over fictional characters. And Dr. Rick Doblin joins to talk about his pioneering research into how MDMA can help people with PTSD and the future of psychedelic drugs in medicine and... lots of other places.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/lovettorleaveit. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Love It or Leave It, Vaxxed to the Future. Now the air is warm and rich with birds and rush, the bar is quieter and it feels less dangerous to meet outdoors Sure, 43% of Republicans say they won't take the vaccine And that makes it much harder to reach herd immunity And without that, it's so tough to picture any normalcy But I got my second shot two weeks ago So at least I'll have 5G We're going back to the future Back to the future Back to the future

Back to the future Back to the future Back to the future Alright, alright That incredible song was sent in by Charlie Foxtrot. I liked it a lot. It had an American Idiot vibe, I think. If you want to make a Facts of the Future theme song,

please send it to us at leaveitatcrooked.com, leaveitatcrooked.com. On the show this week, I talked to Dr. Rick Doblin, an expert in psychedelic research, to talk about mushrooms, MDMA, and health. Jason Concepcion stopped by to play a game about the outcry over changes to fictional characters. But first, she's a comedian, actress, writer, and returning champion. Please welcome Jenny Slate.

Jenny, it's so good to see you. Cool. Hi, John. It's so good to see you, too. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Let's get into it. What a week. On Monday, the FBI identified the group responsible for a ransomware attack that shut down a fuel pipeline that transports 2.5 million barrels of gasoline, heating oil, and jet fuel per day. A criminal gang of hackers called DarkSide, believed to operate from Eastern Europe, took responsibility. This was obviously a

shocking development. In America, the most common cause of stopped pipes is OxyContin. That tends to be, you know, because you see. Yeah, stop, it stops the pipes yeah yeah no i know i know i know i did know i heard that what can happen it's dark it's that's difficult you know yeah i agree i would also say as a selfish joke monster myself i was all geared up to make a joke about how i wish someone would stop my gas pipes. Right. So I would say excuse moi, I guess. You're going to go, you're going to, you're going to go the other way. I was saying, oh, we got to stop pipes problem. You're like, I got a pipes that I got pipes that need stopping. Yeah. I'm like, I wish a bunch of dorky people called that call themselves the dark side,

which is put a cork in it. And by it, I mean my cornhole. Come on. Let's talk politics. We're talking politics. By Wednesday, service had mostly been restored, though there may be lingering shortages after people in the Southeast rushed to fill up their tanks and some gas stations ran out of gas. Not one to miss an opportunity to be a lying repellent troll. Ted Cruz, the unacknowledged love child of Gozer the Gozerian and Walter Peck from Ghostbusters, tweeted about the attack, welcome to the Green New Deal. Well, can I also say,

first of all, Ted Cruz, you need to go to bed. It's been years that I've been saying it. But secondly, if he were to say it in the cadence of that guy from ghostbusters who has the weirdest cadence and he says what is the magic word right that's what you're talking about right you bet walter peck hey welcome to the green new deal like that and you'd be like it's not it's the green new deal it's like the emphasis is wrong That actor had such a worm renaissance in that era. He was in Die Hard. He's in The Pelican Brief. Totally.

He has a wonderful turn in The Pelican Brief. And he's Walter Peck. Love also that era where the villain was from the EPA. I know. I know. You know, the only other weird, like, we're like environmental, but we're bad or something thing, I think is from that movie, The Kingsmen, when for some reason it's like Samuel L. Jackson, who clearly is saying all of his lines on like an earwig and has no idea what the movie is about, is like making everybody kill themselves, but because he likes the environment. Is that? That movie had some third act problem. kill themselves but because he likes the environment is that that movie had some third act problem what do you mean like the very end of the movie where the the princess in jail is like

and now you do me into butt that's how the movie ends speaking of speaking of butts ted cruz is blaming the fallout from one cyber attack on a proposal the green new deal that a is not passed b would not have made this issue worse in any way, and C, would actually help by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels so that our economy is more resilient and less vulnerable to this kind of attack. But for Ted Cruz, the unacknowledged love child of Jack Torrance and the old woman in room 237 of the Overlook Hotel, reality is no longer a limiting factor in how huge an asshole he can be. The Green New Deal is now the Republican Babadook, a frightening, all-consuming metaphor for loss. So do you prefer thinking of Ted Cruz as the love child of Gozer the Gozerian and Walter Peck or Jack Torrance from The Shining and

the old dead lady in Room 237? You got to go with Gozer and Walter because they're not really that powerful. Like Gozer is, Walter just isn't. He's a nuisance and we're going to get rid of him. But Jack Torrance and that old lady who's all moldy and laughing, they're actually doing something

really powerful to me. And I can't let Ted Cruz have that in his heritage. Fair enough. Yeah. Fair enough. So Ted Cruz, the unacknowledged love child of the Grand High Witch and Bruno, the gluttonous boy in The Witches, was falsely blaming Democrats for an attack on the country. Republicans in the House at the same time were blaming Liz Cheney

for calling attention to an attack on the country that they actually did support and encourage. Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar. Do you prefer thinking of Ted Cruz as the love child of Bruno and Angelica Houston? No, I still really am with Gozer and Walter, man. I just, um, Angelica Houston. Well, she's as a witch. Yeah, but she's always still Angelica Houston. Like she's Virginia Adams, but she's Angelica. Not that I know her. Like, I mean, I'm saying her first name as if, but I don't.

You mean Angie? Oh, Ang. Oh. So, so House Republicans voted to remove Liz cheney from their leadership team over her refusal to go along with donald trump's election lies and congratulations to her more on message replacement a my pillow duct taped to a loaded gun oh no feathers seeing lots of feathers oh oh feathers feathers feathers just a few hours after ousting cheney house minority leader kevin mccarthy said this i don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election he's like a kid who reeks of weed going i don't think anybody

is smoking marijuana i've never even heard of marijuana. How do you even spell that? It's so crazy how letters are just shapes, you know? And then he's like, and sometimes you can like almost smell the sound of the letter. Do you know what I mean? And then it's like, okay, we know you did the dope. Hey, Kevin, we know you did the dope. We know it. Kev. Kev.

Kev. Okay, dog. We just want to talk to you, Kev. We know you're st dope. We know it. Kev. Kev. Kev. K-Dog. We just want to talk to you, Kev. We know you're stoned on dope, okay? On Wednesday, Ohio Governor Mike Twine announced a lottery program for people who have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, in which every Wednesday for five weeks, a name will be drawn to receive $1 million. in which every Wednesday for five weeks, a name will be drawn to receive $1 million. Meanwhile, anti-vaxxers will be holding a lottery of their own.

The winner gets placed on a ventilator. But you have to, you know, you have to act. You have to get involved. You won't always get the ventilator. Right. Because of the fact that we didn't have enough at a time, you know, sometimes. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's how that's going to shake out. Yeah. Some people get the money, but some will get a ventilator. We'll get one million dollars and also their health and other people will have a sort of a big bummer on their hands, either that they'll be on a ventilator or they'll have COVID and they won't be on a ventilator, which is a hard way to kind of go into the to the late spring, early summer. Yeah, no, it definitely puts it puts a damper on those summer plans, those beach plans, finally a chance to kind of relax things calm down a little bit. Yeah, it does suck, though, if you don't win the lottery, you'll have just gotten vaccinated for like no reason. You know? Yeah, that's true uh right i i mean i'm in it for the money is um is how i feel about it even though i don't i don't know that's why you got moderna pfizer johnson and johnson you got some you got some astros that you're just trying to

get more tickets i just got yeah i just uh i just got them all and um and then i asked my mom to get it so that i could get her tickets um yeah you even somehow managed to get that russian one it's weird which is really it's weird yeah that one makes you like techno music that's one of the side effects of that one makes you want to you know really jammed well you can't hear i'm bopping yeah yeah i'm bopping yeah hey for the people listening i'm bopping in other vaccination news new york city mayor and future Dancing with the Stars contestant who just makes the cut after Kim Guilfoyle backs out because an anchor slot opened up on Newsmax, talking about Bill de Blasio, ate a hamburger and french fries on television. I got vaccinated. You're saying I could get this?

A delicious fry? I meant that there's also a burger element to this. Jenny looks horrified. How dare you? How dare you? How dare you? Oh, oh, after everything. How dare you do that? I can't. Oh my gosh. Sometimes I have to turn the radio off because of dry mouth noises. They really bum me out. Okay okay and let me tell you something else there's a person in my life who i love a lot okay call her nancy my mother i love her sometimes she talks with her mouth full and i can hardly stay alive and for this man that's privilege you know what you know That's patriarchy right there.

It's like, oh, you're going to make us listen. It's not even about looking at it. It's actually how it sounds. It's really amazing, right? So this is ostensibly to promote the vaccination because you can, Shake Shack is saying you can get free fries if you get vaccinated. But that means that Bill de Blasio is taking three things we love, vaccines, Shake Shack, and free food, and he's making them so unappealing.

So bad. That was bad for Shake Shack. And like, what the hell? You don't have to see the person do the thing. Like, condoms are great. I don't need to watch everyone have sex with them. I definitely don't need to watch Bill de Blasio put one on to show me how it works. No.

Wow. That wasn't well thought out. That wasn't well thought out. That wasn't. No, it's good. It's very good. The other thing is, which I hope,

I hope those listening go check out the video. He eats French fries. Like he's never held one before. It's hard to explain, but he, he, he picks up two, he holds them in parallel and then inserts them both into his mouth.

But it's, it's a very strange gesture. And it reminded me of one time I went to a dinner and there was a famous actor there. Not a big deal. It happens all the time. And won't name the name. But in the conversation, as happens, there was a conversation about diet and exercise. Very fit, very healthy person who mentioned that it was their cheat day.

And then after dinner, he ordered an ice cream sundae. And I will remember it for the rest of my life because he said it with a kind of pride and novelty. Like he'd never said the words out loud before. Like, I'll have an ice cream sundae. I'll have an ice cream sundae. I'll have an ice cream sundae. Ice cream sundae. I think about it all the time. Like he could hardly say it because it was so fancy, special,

rather maybe a bit naughty and new. Yes. Sundae. Sundae. Like for me, the day of the week sundae that ends with D-A-Y and ice cream sund Sunday that ends in, I guess, A-E, they're homophones. They sound the same. But for him, it was Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Does he speak English as the first language that he learned?

Absolutely. This was the only phrase he struggled with. It was the only... We're like a country where like vampires are from or something like you know he was like like that or you know what i mean like no an accent no i want to be clear all right i'm not doing an accent all right don't come not i don't know it seemed like well it's really funny like my mom gosh why am i talking so much about my mom but um like when she would say swears she would say them in a british accent because they were like like she'd be like oh shit like well i guess maybe she was to enunciate them but she would always say like doritos like as if like it's so bad and so fancy that you would say you wouldn't say like

Dorito way that I say Dorito if you want a Dorito you have to finish your flashcards oh that's a flashcards well here's a question it's just a quick question about the fries just to go back are you saying that he put two fries together and then put them in his mouth like the way that you would put wood into a wood chipper, like the long way? He go the wide way. That's how Wally eats fries. No, this is not like the wide way. No, in fairness, no.

But here's what's important. Here's what you have to understand. And that if you were looking at it, it wasn't finger, fry, finger fry fry finger like he was pinching two fries together yeah okay and kind of holding them together and then putting the fries into his mouth either horizontally or vertically what i'm saying is he used his hand uh almost like the two fries were side by side between his fingers. It was finger, fry, finger twice. And so it was like there was one fry beneath his pointer, one fry beneath his middle finger, both held by his thumbs.

So it was like they were, and then he put both fries directly into his mouth like this. And I literally don't think I've ever seen a person do that before. Maybe he panicked because he was on camera, but it was a little weird. Panicked in that he forgot to hide how he eats fries? Well, have you ever seen the video of what is that like tiny animal that eats the rice ball? You know what I mean? And it like eats it really slowly.

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Whatever that is. Like that it takes it like eats it really slowly. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Whatever that is. Like that it takes it and eats it. Wow. The only thing sort of more bonkers than that is like I have a very clear memory of that documentary called Mitt about Mitt Romney. In which he's like in a hotel room and he's like, he's talking about all the stuff that's really bumming him out. It's been years.

And he has a plastic clamshell container of pasta and the top is clear and the bottom is black as they are. And he, as if this is normal and we're not watching him do something. Like it's like, it's like almost felt like I'm watching him do his grooming or something. He flipped it upside down and he ate it out of the upside down part on camera. And I just remember being like, sir, that's not, don't show us that. Don't show us that.

Thank you. Mitt. Mitt. 2013's Mitt. The human you. Mitt. Mitt. 2013's Mitt. The human side. Yeah. He goes sledding with his sons and they're like, what a rush.

Speaking of meat, the Texas House passed a bill to ban plant-based foods that use the word meat or beef on their labels. The socialist vegans from California are trying to trick red-blooded Texas into eating this delicious plant-based meat, and they're not going to allow it. These fuckers think they can get away with slowly iterating on less environmentally harmful and more humane products that can, in years to come, help reduce meat consumption while sidestepping the challenge of convincing tens of millions of people to change their habits and give up food they love by creating a delicious alternative to food from slaughtered animals?

Not on our watch. You better murder it. Not going to happen. Better murder it. You better murder it. I don't want these hippies clogging my gas line, if you know what I mean, right? To take it back to where we were yeah or hey and it's great to be back yeah not not only do they want the word meat removed

from the label texas legislators are demanding that the word impossible only apply to actually impossible foods, like a taco created by God so spicy God can't eat it. Oh, oh, Lord, why did you do it? Think about that. Wrap your head around that one. Puzzle over that. Do that. Wow. This is really, I mean, not a joke, but not what we should be spending our time on right now. No, I agree. Yeah. And you know what? One of them is better than the other.

I'll say that. One of them is better than the other. I never know which one it is. Never know. But one of them is better. And one of them actually just tastes like a hamburger. And I love it. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Fucking problem. Look, I've said it before. I'll say it again the future is perfect steaks the size of full pizza boxes coming out of a printer all right that's the future i want you to imagine a beautiful ribeye that's four inches thick and a yard by a yard just coming off a printer. That could be, that could happen.

Oh, that could happen. That's a beautiful thought. Just printing out that beef for me. Printing out that beef for you. Hi, and I'm printing out the beef. Dinners.

It's like, it's like back to the future part too. It's like, just say that fruit the beef. Dinner's, it's like, it's like Back to the Future Part 2. It's like. I just want to say that. Fruit. Yes. Coming down from the sky. The pizza goes into the hydrator.

Yeah, tiny pizza. Yeah. Yeah. We're not that far. You know that I did not know until adulthood. Like I'm saying not even like, not even 20s adulthood. Like I'm saying, not even like, not even 20s adulthood. I'm talking about, I did not know

until I was in my 30s that Michael J. Fox also plays his sister. What? Had no idea. I did not know. I did never, I didn't see it.

I didn't make the connection. I didn't notice that it was Michael J. Fox in drag. Did not notice. Had no idea. I thought it was another actor. What was it like when you finally realized?

It blew my fucking mind. It blew my mind. I was like, how have I seen this movie two dozen, three dozen times and just thought that that was an actor? Yeah. And why would you think that they would just place like a rando in there when everyone else is played by repeats? You know what I mean?

Because that's a great question. That woman was acting, right? That's what you thought. Well, what I thought was I, you know, it is a departure because usually Michael J. Fox goes up or down generations, but not across. Right. You know, like like why isn lily tomlin playing the daughter what like i didn't know i didn't like it's not like michael j fox doesn't also play his own

mother lily tomlin plays the mother so why is he playing the sister yeah of the kid he's playing his own daughter yeah but michael j fox doesn't play it doesn't actually logically it should be lily tomlin actually now that i think about it. Lily Tomlin should repeat as the daughter? I don't know. I'm not super sold. And I'm also getting jammed up because I'm thinking of how weird it is in Back to the Future 3

when Michael J. Fox is married to his mother in the past. He's the dad and she's the mom. Oh, my God. And so that's always really weird to me because it's like what what happened in glover you guys just gave up like well i think what i think what happened to kristen cover is he tried to kick david letterman and they're like we're not putting him in the third oh yes i didn't there's some crisping crisping glover had a media tour that did not go well for him and i don't know what happened but he's not in the third. But you're right. I never even

thought about that. He should be playing Lily Tomlin's husband in that movie. Yeah. It's weird that Michael J. Fox plays the relative from the past and then Michael J. Fox is Clint Eastwood. Of course. And they're like Mr. Eastwood because they have an old-fashioned accent.

I guess they're in some way Irish? Yeah, they're like Irish or Scottish. Cool. Cool. Anyway, I never knew. Mid-show correction. Leah Thompson not Lily Tomlin. Leah Thompson not Lily Tomlin. Speaking of

I don't know. Ellen DeGeneres? Speaking of Ellen DeGeneres, she announced she will end her talk show after next year saying, as great as this show is and as fun as it is, it's just not a challenge anymore. Ellen continued, my staff starts crying the second I look at them. Sometimes

they're already crying when I walk through the door. It just feels like I'm going through the motions. She just needs, she can't, there's nothing to feed off of. She needs to make them cry. They can't be crying already when she gets there. Right't there's nothing to feed off of she needs to make them cry they can't be crying already when she gets there right what's the fun of that what's the challenge there's no sport in it there's no sport in it yeah that's like it's like jurassic park like she wants to hunt yeah you know they're just goats being lowered in the whole staff all of her pas all of her pas every day they just get lowered They're like, they're standing around and like, they're like, what, what the door to her dressing room is,

is like, is like busted down. Oh my God, she's out here. She's out here. You know what I mean? No, I know what you mean. Yeah, I know. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Speaking of PAs, I did get in a fight on the street with a couple of PAs from the Curb Your Enthusiasm production this week. That did happen. What happened? Why did it do that? So here's what happened. My parents were in town, the Lovetts, I will say, before this meal took place. I had like two confrontations in the span of hours. One of them did involve my father because he read something on the Internet about Israel. And then he said something to me about it being anti-Semitic.

And that turned into a whole conversation that culminated in my mother taking her headphones uh headphones out because she was watching netflix on her ipad i think she's watching a drama about a small town doctor oh she loves dramas about small town doctors and she just takes out her headphones out and she goes are you done arguing about israel so that we can go to dinner and then she just put them back in then she put them back in uh but then we went to dinner and it was a Mexican restaurant. I dropped my parents off with actually Ronan. And I said, you just go get the table and I'll drive to park. And I go and I park.

And as I'm parking, I realized that I've just passed by some kind of production. Don't know what it is. I park. I start walking toward the restaurant. And then a PA, somebody on the production, just stops me and says, hey, can you hold off and not cross for a second? We're about to shoot. I said, Sure. Love to support the industry in Los Angeles. Big believer. A lot of jobs. Yeah, huge art, art, art. Yeah, at this point, didn't even know what the production was. And so they're about to shoot and I sort of wait, no big deal. And then I look and I see Larry David standing there. And I thought,

oh, that's fun. This is a Curb Your Enthusiasm shoot. I got lots of friends that love Curb Your Enthusiasm. And while I've lived in LA a long time, I'm not jaded. I'm excited. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to take a quick pic on my phone, send it to my friends. I'm not looking to tweet. I'm not looking to make a kerfuffle out of it. And so without even thinking, I take out my phone, I just sort of grab a picture. And then somebody on the production just yells, no photos allowed. And I was sort of like caught off guard. I looked around.

I was like, I'm on a public street. I'm on a public street in Los Angeles. And then I was like, what do you mean no photos allowed? And then she was like, well, we don't want people spoiling the season. I was like, oh, I totally understand that. But you can't tell people it's not allowed. Like, I'm on a public street. I'm only standing here because you asked me to.

And she said, well, it's no photos or something like that. And then another production person starts saying no photos at me. Something like that. I'm going to get into details later. I was like, what do you mean? You can't tell me not to take a picture. I'm on a public street. Picture, picture, picture.

And then they were like, well, keep moving then. You got across. Well, I said, I'm like, I'm only standing here because you told me to. I don't care about this. I wasn't coming here to take pictures. I'm not the paparazzi. Why are you yelling at me? I'm allowed to take pictures of public street.

I'm only here because you asked me to. And I'm staying here to be nice. Now two people are walking me across the street. And everybody's looking. And I think I got one more picture as I kept moving. And then I got to my parents and I sat down and I was so amped that I ate an entire bowl of chips. I just inhaled it. I was like, I can't believe the way they talked. I wasn't even trying to do anything. I didn't come here to have a fight. I don't care

about this. I'm a paparazzi to chip, chip, chip. And then I tweeted the picture and I felt much better. Yeah. Yeah. You know, okay. Here's two questions. One, that's why you ate the chips. Did you take a picture of yourself because you are actually Larry David? Because that is a full on experience. Was it just a lot of selfies? was it just a lot of selfies that's that's the thing that was so going about it because like i was absolutely in a curb episode standing up for the principle of being allowed to take pictures on a public street yeah while larry david was standing there shooting the episode was the irony wasn't lost on me if that's your question yeah yeah i'm reframing your question as was the irony lost on you it was not uh but it was very tense look i i don't think there are any heroes in the story because i did yell something like like i think i yelled so i can't remember but i did as they as like two people were walking me away from the set yeah i did yell something

like i don't care about pictures i don't't give a shit. And that's when everybody, that's what everybody stared at me. I don't care about pictures. Oh, that's something like that. Something like that. I mean, I'm sure they have some version of the audio picked up because again, it was pretty intimate and a lot of people turned, a lot of people turned. So anyway, lot of people turned a lot of people turned so anyway that was um hollywood you know good man hollywood beau obama the obama family's first dog at the white house has died i can't go into that joke no i can't go right into that is that um true yeah it's true it's true i'm gonna let's just i'll make the joke and we could decide to keep it or not you'll decide you'll decide how you feel about it okay uh also this week and some sad news.

Bo Obama, the Obama family's first dog at the White House, died. Major Biden is currently being held on one million dollars bond. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can't I can't I can't do it, man. I can't do it, man. I can't stomach it. It's too sad. Oh, God. Oh, God.

Oh, Jesus. I'm so sorry. I don't like that one. In other. Oh, wait, we have to worry about that still. News. Fission reactions are increasing again at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, said Craig Mazin, cracking his knuckles, getting to work on Chernobyl season two.

Series had a lot of buzz. HBO was pretty excited to get that reactor going again. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, God. Oh, no. I mean, is the right reaction. Oh, no. Sure. I mean, is the right reaction. Oh, no. Sure. Yeah. Oh, God.

Oh, I'm just speechless. I just want one thing to stop. Can we get one thing to stop? We just get one thing. Stop. One thing to stop. And like, you know what? Yeah.

Wow. I really shouldn't have watched that. I think I watched that while I was pregnant. Wow. Could that have been? You wouldn't know. I mean, I wouldn't that. I think I watched that while I was pregnant. Wow. Could that have been? You wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. I don't know exactly when. I don't remember the air date or your pregnancy dates, and I don't know when they align. Let me tell you, John, my pregnancy began at your first week of back in the closet. So is that what it's called? closet so is that what it's called are you said are you telling yes are you telling me that that you i'm just trying to understand are you suggesting something was playing while

no during conception just before weirdly so but um but that like i remember being like i'm pregnant and then listening to your podcast and And it was like week one. Cool. I'm glad I'm part of that memory. Like I could always gauge my pregnancy by what week you guys were on. I'm not kidding. That's cool. Yeah.

In other good news, in good news, here's some good news. Okay. On Thursday, the CDC announced that fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks in most situations, indoors and outdoors. Wow. We have all longed for this moment when we can get back to some sense of normalcy. Based on the continuing downward trajectory of cases, the scientific data on the performance of our vaccines and our understanding of how the virus spreads, that moment has come for those who are fully vaccinated.

It's pretty great. I was really, I was like moving. Like, you know what? It's where the moment has come. There are exceptions. People need to know there are exceptions for healthcare settings, public transportation, but it's exciting. The mask is going to be hopefully, hopefully something we start to put aside because of the vaccinations. That's exciting. Wow. The mask is going to be hopefully, hopefully, something we start to put aside because of the vaccinations. That's cool. It's really cool. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

Like going to the supermarket and not wearing a mask. That also means that people are going to now see me be like, cilantro, cilantro, cilantro. And mumble to myself. I'm going to have to remember how to smile at strangers as opposed to what my mouth is doing now, which is kind of permanent. Is that what it was like under there? Just a little scalp.

I think I really furthered my kind of like happy eye crinkles by making sure that like everybody knew that I was smiling under my mask by like really, really, really smiling hard. Yeah. Like, um, like when, uh, like, like Andy circus is doing, uh, doing one of his, um, performances in the dots. In the dots. Yeah.

You know, when he's in the face dots and he's got to really ham it up to become a gorilla or something. That's what we've been doing in the mask. Kind of like becoming Navi, you know? Yeah. Oh, major Navi vibes. I mean, the way I was with the mask, smiling under it, doing it sometimes, you know, sometimes you see someone and you make eye contact. You just do a little like, like a tight, like a nice, like a smile, you know, just like rather than like staring blankly or looking away, just a little like, you know, here we are. That kind of thing. I was like, that's what I do when I see people.

I give them a little smile. But it just never read. And that was so sad to me. And it also made me realize that, no joke, I do wave at my dog a lot without saying like hi or anything. And she probably doesn't know what that is either. You know, so a lot that I've been getting wrong. Yeah, we all learned a lot in the past year about ourselves, about how to communicate with dogs,

how to communicate with other people. Sure. I'm trying to smile with my eyes. I'm just going to try to... Is that it? I'm trying not to smile with my mouth. Smile with my eyes. No.

Can't do it. It looks more like you're like, oh, goo-goo-ga-ga. Oh, I'm sorry. You don't notice it, but Jessica Rabbit, just Jessica Rabbit just walked behind you. I was going to say like, yeah, it's not like, it's not like, oh, got like that, but it's more like, wow. Wow. Wow.

Look at that big pile of marshmallows. You know, like, like just something like soft and candy like and the good news is now we can eat those soft marshmallows or the coyote can eat that roadrunner roadrunner yeah without their mask without their masks thank you so much to jenny slate for joining us and And we come back. I quiz Crooked's own Jason Concepcion about the uproar, the furor over changes to fictional characters. Hey, don't go anywhere.

There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. Earlier this year, Warner Brothers and DC announced that author Ta-Nehisi Coates had been tapped to write the next Superman feature. Wow. With recent speculation that this could be the first film in the franchise to feature a black Superman, which Zack Snyder recently stated was long overdue. Somehow, in a world where Archie is hot, the Prince of Persia is Jake Gyllenhaal,

and Scarlett Johansson can play literally any role, this change to the race of an alien is for some unacceptable. We are joined to play a game by the host of Take Line and All Caps NBA, Crooked's own returning champion. Let's go. Jason Concepcion. Jason. Hello. Now, when you first heard there was a possibility that Superman might be black, how angry did you get uh how much mayhem did you cause

the rage uh cannot be described in words it was barely controllable by this mortal coil um i exploded i blacked out for a number of days uh and just talking about it right now i can feel it welling up inside me once again okay Okay, let's bring it back. I don't want to lose you. I'm going to try. I don't want to lose you on a 1980s Hulk style hitchhiking across America, stopping petty crimes. Yeah. So now it's time for a game called Cannon Fodder.

Here's how it works, Jason. Okay. I'm going to play a clip of the complaint about some change to a superhero some oh i love it some criticism of a fictional character and you're gonna have to tell us who the character is that they are so worried about okay okay are you ready i'm ready first question glenn beck had this to say when this new character was introduced to audiences in an already established world. And this one is half Hispanic and half black. Do I care if he's half Hispanic, all Hispanic? No. Half black, half... I don't care.

I really don't care. The audio quality was extremely poor, which is exactly how I want to hear Glenn Beck, to be honest with you. Just as a quick aside, shouts to everyone who was bamboozled by Glenn Beck at the beginning of the Trump administration, who thought that all of a sudden Glenn Beck was good. Shouts to you. Hopefully you've learned. It sounds to me like he was talking about Miles Morales. You got it. Okay. You got it. The introduction of Miles Morales as Spider-Man.

Yes. Shout out to people that fell for Glenn Beck. Shout out to people that fell for glenn beck shout out to people that fell for jd vance uh ongoing ongoing continuing to fall everybody yeah uh i i have not been able to click on the film where gl Close is in the is in the Moo Moo. I can't do it. I just can't do it. I can't do it. I see the it just pops up in my streaming opportunities and I just can't do it. I know. Sorry.

I'm the exact same. It's very very difficult for me to look at that and say I'm gonna press play. It's a similar difficult for me to look at that and say i have i'm gonna i'm gonna press play it's a similar reaction for different reasons it's also how i feel when a very kind of like morose still from the new season of hadman's tale pops up and it's like i don't know i kind of can i can i watch something where i don't know like i the good guys win like relatively quickly. I know. It's the amount of punishment that that show doles out is just, you know, I tapped out season two and I just had to because it had me in a four finger chokehold and I had to get out of it. Yeah.

My safe word was Pelican Brief, which is also available. Pelican Brief. Great film. Fantastic film. The Pelican Brief. Question number two. I can't wait. Great film. Fantastic film. The Pelican Brief. Question number two. I can't wait.

Jordan Peterson. Oh, my favorite. Had this concern over a Disney movie breaking with what he considers the norm. The only thing I can say is that I left the film with a strong sense that it was produced for ideological reasons and it was produced as a sort of anti-sleeping beauty and I felt that was entirely

inappropriate because it wasn't a genuine artistic attempt it was an ideological statement I actually really liked Moana I hope I'm pronouncing that properly I thought it was that I like that you know that little girl in the movie allied herself with this very very powerful but rather uncivilized masculine force and I thought they got the archetypal balance in that film really quite nicely so i like moana quite a bit sir this is a starbucks tough tough compliment for the good people behind moana who definitely like get off my side we don't want you on our we don't want your number in our Metacritic numbers. I just need to hear Jordan singing, let's get down to business. Let's get down to business.

And that little strange bleat of his. What movie? I'm going to guess Frozen. You got it. You got it. I don't even know what he's talking. Like, I saw Frozen. I didn't even like what he's talking. Like, I saw Frozen. I didn't even, like.

What is he talking about? What is he talking about? Is it about sisters? They're just kind of. When you say, like, ideological statement and you're talking about Frozen, my dude, you need to fucking relax. It's like pro-ice. I know. What are you talking about i would actually i would

actually really like to get to call josh gad and just be like josh tell me what is what do you think the ideology of frozen is right pro snowman i guess right is it is it a materialist worldview what is it what is it at the center of frozen? What are they trying to tell us? What is Elsa trying to promote here? I don't know. Third question. The people at Fox and Friends were outraged when this character had some changes in a teaser for a movie that would end up never getting released. The new Sony Pictures version of *** will look like this without the iconic *** and the smoking pipe.

Are they wussifying ***? Of course they're wussifying of course there was nothing is scarier to a modern liberal than tobacco if we're driving around giving the morning after pill to fourth graders that would be totally fine who is it who is it that that they thought we would be cool with this character driving around giving people the morning after pill get the tobacco away from me there is nothing in this world that i am more afraid of on a daily basis than tobacco as a modern liberal pipe smoking character I'll give you a hint. I'll give you a hint. Okay. The character first appeared in a 1929 comic strip. Oh, Jesus. Okay.

Popeye? You got it. Wow. You got it. Crushing it. Crushing it. They're mad about an unreleased Popeye film. Fox and Friends.

Unbelievable. Yeah. Listen, not a great film from our guy Robert Altman. Put him in movie jail for quite a number of years. Yeah, and also was a part of the kind of rough auspices for Robin Williams' film career. That's right. Before his renaissance. R.I.P.

R.I.P., of course. That's right. R.I.P. Goes without saying. And R.I.P. for Popeye, if God forbid the modern liberals get their filthy paws on that corncob pipe of his i my fundamental issue as a liberal with popeye is that his muscles are in the wrong part of his arm it doesn't ever make sense they're not how do you what yeah how do you work just that out they're not supposed to be they're here how does that a lot of grip is a lot of this you got one of those um get it how do you even i

don't know i don't know how you get how do you work this you would you work just this you would think that would just i think it's grabbing right so it's a lot of a lot of like rolling of towels i don't know he had these great forums he drinks the spinach and all of a sudden he's got these monster forum. Wow. Wow. For those listening at home, Popeye is here. He is. He's here.

Oh, Johnny. And that cursed Robert Altman Popeye also has Shelley Duvall. Wonderful Shelley Duvall performance. Wonderful Shelley Duvall, but she was very much still clearly in her post-shining emotional turmoil. So it's a very deep and emotionally fraught olive oil. It really is.

Very breathy. Oh! Oh! A lot of that. And I just think it was wrong that Robert Altman had Stanley Kubrick hiding in various places on the set of that was unnecessary to jump out that was unnecessary they were getting

shelly is a pro you don't need to go to that level you know to make her uh believe that the octopus the giant octopus was real she was she it's called acting you don't need to terrify her that way it's called acting shame on you robert and stanley her that way. It's called acting. Shame on you, Robert and Stanley. R.I.P. both of you. So Lawrence Olivier. Lawrence Olivier. I don't use the British. I don't recognize royalty.

Lawrence Olivier. No sir in my house. Is making this movie Marathon Man. And in Marathon Man, Dustin Hoffman plays a character who is being tortured and he's been up all night. It's a great movie, though. Hard to watch. It's a hard watch but there's a scene where uh dustin hoffman's supposed to have been up all night and so he stayed up all night right and and lawrence olivia got wind of this and said

what do you mean you stayed up all night it's called acting my boy yeah i think i've no you don't stay up all night. That movie, if you describe that, oh, it's just this hit 70s movie about a crazy Nazi dentist. A crazy Nazi dentist on the run and a Lower East Side hipster whose brother was in the CIA, right? Is that good?

I would also say, let me just also say this about Dustin Hoffman, that particular movie. I want to say that movie was like 1975, 1974. He was hanging out a lot at Studio 54 at the time. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it wasn't for the role that he stayed up. I think he backmapped that excuse into the situation. I'm not sure that it was for the role. I think that he had an opportunity to stay up all night and have it be submit the receipts.

Yeah, he could submit the receipts from Studio 54. Final question. Ben Shapiro had this to say while discussing the announcement of a writer for a movie. It's a private company, but they are wrecking a piece of intellectual property that was designed to be pro-America by handing it to a person who really does not like the foundational ideals of this country. Well, John, first of all, fantastic to be here to have me on to talk about this. Thank you also for putting the step step stool next to the chair so i could get up into it and speak into the microphone i just the the audacity of the two of us talking about some being short well come on why yeah but here's the thing ben cares about it and you know

he does so that's what's great about it god i i'm not sure could i get it could i get a hint it could be anything with Ben. It may be pro-American, but it's not Captain America. Pro-American, but it's not Captain America. Is it Sam Wilson? It's Superman. It was part of the backlash to the Ta-Nehisi Coates Superman. I see.

But you went three for four, and you got some tough ones. I feel good about it. You got some tough ones. Yeah, I feel really good about it. I will always remember that there was a Ben Shapiro clip where he talked about how the idea of a female James Bond was horrible because it meant men couldn't fantasize about being James Bond anymore.

And it's just sort of like, I mean, you're not really supposed to say, I can't see the world through the eyes of a woman. You're just not supposed to just come out and say it. Here's what's terrible about a female James Bond. And I'm going to lay it out for you in a way that liberals can understand. And they may have a problem hearing this uh because they can't listen they can't listen when a real man speaks uh but i'm going to speak now about uh 007 and and the dire threat to american masculinity should uh 007 be cast as a female i just also it just the voice

just keeps getting higher and higher and faster until it just becomes a kind of evil simon just an evil it's just it's like what if yeah it was just sort of what if simon uh went to harvard and joined the young conservatives that's what happens and it's just really but really it's like are you conservative or are you just mad that alvin was more popular come on ben what's going on here come on ben come on come on. What's going on here? Come on, Ben. Come on. Come on. Anytime, anywhere, Ben. Come on.

I will measure my height against yours and we'll see who's taller. Let's go. Any time of day. Preferably in the morning when my skeleton has not yet compressed. We'd like to do the measuring in the morning. That's right.

It's not anytime. It's a morning. Any morning. Be a man, Ben. We could be in the morning or after jason has spent some time in one of those chairs that goes all the way that kind of like swilts back yes and preferably a full moon also so that the gravity of the moon can pull on the top of my head i'll take any little bit that i can but it will be barefoot ben so be there be square let's go Jason Concepcion thank you so much thank you for having me

this was great you've won the game you've won the game let's go you defeated all of your enemies I love it JD Vance, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson get out of here Fox and Friends gone

I don't want to hear you guys anymore. Get out. How about they let it go? That's right. Oh, the places they'll go. That's right. That's Moana. Now I'm on Moana. Song by Lin-Manuel Miranda. That's right. And you can tell it has his signature syncopation. I will be honest with you. Jordan Peterson saying that he much prefers Moana will haunt me for the rest of my days. Well, it makes me think we have to. I'm sorry to say this, but it forces us to ask some difficult questions about Moana. It really does.

It really does. Thank you so much, Jason. When we come back, I talk to Dr. Rick Doblin about psychedelics, health care, and, you know, not health care. You know? Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back. He is a leader in the psychedelic renaissance. At the helm of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a hub for psychedelic education community and research maps just published the results of the first phase three trial for a psychedelic-assisted therapy. Please welcome Dr. Rick Doblin.

Dr. Doblin, thanks for being here. My pleasure. Now, I want to read the opening of a New York Times piece from this week. It said, it's been a long, strange trip in the four decades since Rick Doblin, a pioneering psychedelics researcher, dropped his first hit of acid in college and decided to dedicate his life to the healing powers of mind-altering compounds. Are you the best case scenario for somebody who tries drugs in college and makes it their whole personality? Well, I've never been jailed, and I've never gone gone crazy and I've got a PhD from Harvard. And I did have a funny moment the very first date with my wife where we're out in a date in 1983 for lunch.

And she said it wasn't really a date in her mind. It was in my mind. But she just said offhand, I would never, ever want a longterm relationship with you because you've done so much lsd your chromosomes are destroyed and we would have deformed babies and you know we'd have a giraffe or something and and i was like well let me defend my sperm that was our that was our first i said that is baloney all that stuff so i don't know that i'm the best case, but I think I'm a good case. Can you, first also, I just want to say, look, I didn't know what to expect, but you're in a printed shirt. You're in a very comfortable chair. This is the vibe that I, it's a great vibe. It's the vibe that I wanted. So now look. Well, you know what I actually do, speaking of being ready to go is that we have

a policy kind of at maps that um before we send documents into the fda i get high and i edit them with our staff and it actually is good for me marijuana and editing go together great uh that's interesting so i want to start by hearing about your research. Can you talk just a little bit, broad strokes, what is the work you've been doing looking at cyclosybin, at MDMA, and what it can do to actually help people in need? Jokes aside. Actually, we've done a lot of work with MDMA, with LSD,

a bit of work with ibogaine and marijuana. We haven't done work with psilocybin. That's other groups. 1985 is when the DEA criminalized MDMA, and I'd been involved trying to keep it legal at that time. We had a lawsuit against the DEA, and we won the lawsuit. The DEA administrative law judge said it should be Schedule III, meaning it should be illegal for recreational use but legal for medical use. And the DEA rejected the recommendation and criminalized everything and tried to shut down the research. So 86, 35 years ago is when I started MAPS as a nonprofit psychedelic and marijuana pharmaceutical

company. So the research that we're doing, there's two sort of different kinds of research. One is more academic research where you're trying to figure out how things work, mechanism of action it's called sometimes. The other is where you're trying to prove safety and efficacy in order to get approval for marketing a drug for prescription on a prescription basis. So the research that we've been doing ever since 1986 has been aimed at drug development to make MDMA into a medicine to prove safety and efficacy. Now, it took us till 1992 to get the first permission. We had five protocols rejected that we were submitting on behalf of various other people. Then we were able to do a phase one dose response

safety study, and that took us through the 1990s. And then in 1999, we started work with PTSD. So MDMA is terrific for post-traumatic stress disorder. It's in many ways like if you were to design a drug to treat PTSD, MDMA is it. And so it took us from 1999, 2000 to 2016 to complete what's called phase two research. So that's small pilot studies. The goal of it is to figure out how to design phase three. So you're figuring out what's your treatment method, what are your doses, what are your patient populations, who do you include, who do you not include, what are your measures, all this kind of stuff.

So it took us 30 years from 1986 to November 29th, 2016, to negotiate with FDA to get permission to go to phase three. So the research that we're doing now is called phase three. It's the final stage of research. We have to do two phase three studies, each with 100 persons in them, in order to prove safety and efficacy. And if we can do that, then we anticipate FDA approval by the first part of 2023, so around two years from now. And the research that just came out was the first phase three study, and it was outstanding success. What are the results of the study show? The treatment that we describe is therapy, but the MDMA makes the therapy better. So I just didn't want to leave the impression that MDMA does this all on its own. You just pop a pill

and all of a sudden you get better. That's not the way it is. You can pop MDMA does this all on its own. You just pop a pill and all of a sudden you get better. That's not the way it is. You can pop MDMA and people can get worse. If they don't feel safe, if difficult emotions come up, difficult memories. So what we proved is that therapy without MDMA, and this is 42 hours of therapy. So it's a lot of therapy and it's a two-person therapy team, which is unusual. Usually we have a male-female, but not always. And there's three eight-hour sessions, day-long sessions, one month apart.

And you either get MDMA or you get a placebo. And you get these three day-long eight-hour sessions. Many of the sites have overnight stays. The patients sleep in the treatment center. And we have 12 90-minute non-drug psychotherapy sessions, usually like once a week, three before the first MDMA session or the placebo session for preparation, building what's called the therapeutic alliance. And then we have three sessions for integration after each MDMA or placebo session. And then two months after the last experimental session is when what's

called the final outcome measure, and that's where we get data to compare the two groups. So what we've shown is that therapy without any MDMA is actually pretty good for severe chronic PTSD. We include people that have previously attempted suicide. So we've taken the hardest cases. A lot of PTSD studies exclude them. And what we showed is that people who had on average 14 years of PTSD, one third had more than 20 years of PTSD. But we showed that 32% no longer had PTSD two months after the last session in the group that just got therapy without MDMA. So that's really pretty good. But we showed when you add MDMA, all of a sudden two thirds no longer have PTSD. It's pretty incredible. I mean, you're describing this process taking place now over decades.

Yeah, yeah. Research can be slow. How much of this is because the drug is illegal? Like how much does that slow you down? At this point, not that much. But DEA, which has to approve the Schedule I licenses for the doctors, they've been notoriously slow in approving research with Schedule I drugs. And so about seven or eight years ago, Congress passed a law that said that DEA must reschedule in 90 days. If FDA says it's a medicine, DEA has only 90 days. We have now a senior DEA retired official that's working for us as a consultant to try to get the DEA moving faster when it comes to giving the

Schedule I licenses for the researchers. The reason this guy is helping us, it's tremendous, is because his son went into the military, went to Iraq, and has PTSD, and is using marijuana, and found marijuana to be helpful for his PTSD. And that changed his father's attitudes about why he was spending all his time trying to bust people with marijuana and cocaine and other things. So the fact that it's Schedule 1, in the very beginning, from 85 when it was criminalized. For six years, no protocols were approved. They were all rejected. All of our MDMA protocols were rejected. That's all because it's an illegal drug in Schedule 1. We've also had challenges fundraising. So

that's been another reason why it's taken us so long because we're working only with donations. But now that we're 35 years into this, the whole landscape has changed. There's all these for-profit psychedelic companies. In 35 years, we've raised $110 million in donations, which is really pretty amazing. And we've raised $44 million in the last two years. But the for-profit companies have raised over a billion dollars. So we've been slowed down, I would say more from financial reasons than because it's a controlled substance now. But earlier in the days, we were completely blocked because it was a controlled substance. MAPS doesn't advocate for, tell me

this is wrong, for research or legalization for drugs like heroin or cocaine you're focused on. Well, I would say that's a bit wrong um in the sense that do you know carl hart have you heard of carl hart um oh he's a neuroscientist african-american he's written a bunch of books and he's now i'm embarrassed okay well he's um talked about how he thinks that he's found heroin to be productive for him so what i've told him just the other day and we're inviting him to participate in this process to become a board of director at MAPS. So what our view is, our goal is mass mental health. We need millions or hundreds of millions of people to be more open, more spiritualized, less coming from fear and trauma. That's the goal.

And the two main strategies on the one hand are drug development, meaning making these drugs into medicines. And we've seen with medical marijuana that that changed people's attitudes towards marijuana legalization. So one approach is drug development for people with clinical diagnosis. The other equal move for us is drug policy reform to move to what we're calling licensed legalization. And that should be for all drugs. And what I told Carl was that the more dangerous the drug, the more important it is that it be legal. And the reason is because when it's illegal, first off, people are getting impure drugs. And we see that now with fentanyl. All the people that are dying with fentanyl put into heroin and other things. So illegal drugs, you have quality control problems. And a lot of times

people die from overdoses. When people have problems with drug use, let's say heroin or cocaine, they're more reluctant to seek help because they're worried about the criminal justice. My father was a pediatrician. He's no longer alive, but he worked on one of the first studies with crack babies in Chicago. And he and his partners did the pediatric evaluations of these kids. And he was telling me, first off, there is no such thing as the crack baby phenomenon. It's about poverty. It's about malnutrition. It's not about the crack cocaine. There is fetal alcohol syndrome, but there is no such thing as crack baby syndrome. And what he said is that these women who are pregnant, who are addicted to cocaine or were nursing, that they were scared to get treatment for fear that they'd

go to jail or have their babies taken away. So the more dangerous the drug, the more we need to have open door for people that need treatment. And we need honest drug education. We need pure drugs so that people are not dying from overdoses. And we need treatment on demand, which will be paid for by tax money. So our position, we're focused on psychedelics and marijuana, but our view is that heroin, cocaine, psychedelics should be legal, but licensed legalization means something different. So alcohol, I don't think is regulated wisely. And the best example is somebody buys a bunch of alcohol, gets drunk, gets in their car, gets pulled over by the police, gets a DUI, and they lose their driver's license. But they can still go to a liquor store, buy more alcohol, get back in their car, and kill people while they're drunk. So we should make it harder for them to buy the alcohol.

So the idea for a licensed legalization is you get a license to do drugs. We can do that with credit cards now. We know instantaneous processing, all this kind of stuff. And so if you misbehave while you're under the influence of a drug, you don't get punished for your state of consciousness. That's a fundamental violation of our human rights. You get punished for your behavior. And if your behavior is problematic, you could lose your license for a while. You would have to go to more education, but that's the idea. I guess the distinction to my mind is around the addictiveness of the drug that mushrooms, marijuana, psychedelics, put them over here. Drugs like alcohol, opiates, cocaine, they sap your free will. Ultimately, they become incredibly addictive. They became things people lose control of and then therefore

belong in a different category. That's true for a small percentage of people. You know, most people that drink alcohol are not alcoholics. So the question is, how do you address those problems? So first off, I think you're making a little bit of a logical mistake in the sense that it's not good drugs or bad drugs. It's the relationship we have with the drug that really matters. You know, the best example for that, one of the good examples is thalidomide. You know, thalidomide was the drug prescribed for morning sickness, and it caused terrible birth defects. And the only FDA official that ever got the Presidential Medal of Honor was this woman, Frances Kelsey, who blocked thalidomide from coming into the United States.

Now, thalidomide is a medicine. It's useful for certain kinds of cancer, for leprosy, but there's all sorts of protections on how it's used. So the quintessential bad drug, thalidomide, is now actually a good drug in certain circumstances. So yes, some drugs have a high abuse potential. Some drugs have a medium. Some have a low abuse potential. Some are not abuse potential. But how do we address that? And the core view that I have is that the drug war is not the proper way to try to control drug abuse. And in fact, the drug war has never been about drug abuse. It's always been about persecuting minorities. You know, it began in the late 1800s against opium, against the Chinese laborers who were building the railroads.

Then it was alcohol. We tried prohibiting alcohol. It didn't work in prohibition. Enormous crime. Lots of people die fromiting alcohol. It didn't work in prohibition. Enormous crime. Lots of people die from poison alcohol. Shortly after that was changed, now we've got marijuana against Mexicans, against African-Americans. The laws against the psychedelics were about the hippies and the counterculture. So it's not about drug abuse. You showed them. We have showed them. But no, I of course agree with that. I am against the war on drugs. I'm against prosecuting people for using drugs. I'm against all of that. But let's say we are not criminalizing this behavior.

We're not locking people up for using these substances. At the same time, opiates, regardless of what the punishment is, it seems pretty clear that freely accessible opiates is dangerous. And not to be stopped by throwing people in jail. But let's recognize like this is a substance that many people once exposed to become like insorcial. They are not able to free themselves of it. And therefore, for the good of society, they should not have access to it. Not true. OK, so let me talk about some studies that have taken place in New York and Vancouver, elsewhere, the Netherlands, Switzerland, called heroin maintenance studies. So what they've shown is that people that are addicted to opiates,

if you give them opiates, if you give them pure heroin, they can manage their lives. They can hold jobs. The heroin maintenance is a better strategy than criminalization. Like one of the psychedelics, Ibogaine, which is a drug from Western Africa, it's terrific for helping people get over opiate addictions. We have now a study that we've given a little bit of money to. It's in Spain by a group called Ice Years. And it's Ibogaine to help people withdraw from methadone. That's an opiate substitution drug. So we see for people that are addicted, we give them methadone. But methadone is addictive too. And it's very hard to get off of methadone, but we find that they can live productive lives. The problem, like these are, these are managed. We are managing a problem. The problem though,

was born of trying these drugs. I don't think so. I think so that the pro so there was a study that we've worked on. We supplied the MDMA, we trained the therapist. It was in England, it was MDMA for alcohol use disorder. And the results were great. But what they showed is that a lot of those people who were alcoholics actually were running away from trauma. And if you help them process the trauma, they will have a different relationship with alcohol. And so I think that that would be a preferable approach. I just think that using the criminal justice system and prohibiting this, it's also a myth that most people that use these drugs have problems. There is a substantial number and it's the percentage different for each drugs and different

drugs have different properties. What I'm trying to get at is that like, OK, we do away with the war on drugs. I am for that unequivocally against criminalizing substance abuse, unequivocally. But I worry, but I do worry that, yes, there are people who can function and live while taking opiates, while there are functional cocaine users, even functional cocaine addicts.

But there are certain substances that are really just too powerful for too many people. And even though I believe they should not be illegal, it is still good policy to keep them out of people's hands if they don't need them. I don't think so. I don't think so. So Carl Hart has talked about that annual surveys, 80% of opiate users use only a few times a year and not regularly. So I think what we need to do is be sympathetic with the people that are getting into problems. And we need to be offering them as much help as possible. So again, the licensed legalization, if you take opiates, and you get into your car, and you're, you know, not seen clearly, and you crash your car, yes, like alcohol, yeah, we should make it harder to

get it. But I think we need to be honest education, people, a lot of pure drugs, so many people are dying from impure opiates mixed with fentanyl. If opiates were legal, we would have opium. We would have all these other forms. When you make it illegal, they call it the iron law of prohibition. You get smaller and smaller quantities that are more and more potent. Now we've got that with fentanyl. It's easier to smuggle.

It's easier to sell. So that the whole criminal justice system, trying to prevent people to get these drugs, I think we need to do the opposite. We need to say we want to help people who have problems with drugs and de-stigmatized. And there's a lot of new ways. And I think there'll be a range of milder opiates, you know, coca tea rather than cocaine. People talk about this as psychedelic exceptionalism. There are people that have difficult relationships with molly or ecstasy, MDMA. You know, they use it every weekend. So it's not to say that MDMA is completely without these kind of problems, but it's self-limiting. It's not as bad. People don't get addicted to LSD or psilocybin. It's not a

reliable escape. But, you know, for now, what we're trying to do, what we have not seen is the people in our studies who we have given MDMA to in a therapeutic setting after the study is over saying, oh, I'm craving this MDMA. Let me go out and get some more. Because several people in our studies have said, I don't know why they call this ecstasy because it's painful to work through your traumas. But the MDMA makes it so you can do it instead of running away from it. So it's painful to work through your traumas. But the MDMA makes it so you can do it instead of running away from it. So it's healing. It's like grieving.

It's like crying after you lose someone. It's cleansing even though it's painful. They call it ecstasy because most people don't take it during difficult therapy sessions. Before I let you go, thank you for the time. Psychedelics, I just wanted to hear, I'm just curious, thank you for the time. Psychedelics, I just wanted to hear, I'm just curious, like, on top of the medical benefits,

obviously there's like positive feelings people have when they take them, but there's also these experiences people have, enlightening experiences, eye-opening experiences. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the science of that aspect of what psychedelics do? And also, let me say that that's another reason for legalization, because there's a lot of people that have personal growth experiences. They find meaning, like vision quests. What am I going to do with their life? Or, you know, one of the best uses of MDMA is for couples therapy.

It's great for relationships. That's not a disease, but it sometimes feels like that. But it's, you know, it's really good for a lot of things that aren't diseases. So the science of it is, I'd say a big part of It's not a disease if a lawyer can cure it. All right, go, sorry, go on. So I think the key part is called neuroplasticity. So what that means is that we have now seen from animal studies with MDMA, also some studies with psilocybin, that these drugs promote new neural connections. Not so much the birth of new neurons, although that can in some circumstances take place, but new connections between existing neurons. And so those are in new kind of areas of the brain, like pro-social areas of the brain for MDMA.

So that people, in MDMA, there were studies in MICE that published in Nature that talked about a critical reward, social reward learning period. So when you're young, you learn things a lot better. We know that little kids learn languages easier than older kids. So MDMA returns the brain to a plastic state where you can experience things in a different way and reroute how you think of traumas or even how you think about what you're going to do with your life. So that the science of it is that we're able to mold our brains. For the classic psychedelics, there's what's called the default mode network, which is default means like what you your resting state, you fall into it. It's the sense of self. We've got this sense of this network in the brain that's more or less equivalent, you could say, to your ego or to your sense of self. And under the influence of the classic psychedelics,

that network in your brain is weakened, that there's less activity in that. So you don't see the world so much from the perspective of I as the center of the universe. That kind of dissolves and you feel part of something much bigger. And that can be interpreted in spiritual ways. They call it the transcendence of time and space, the sense of something deeply felt, a sense of something sacred, a sense of unity, a connection. And we know from quantum physics and others that there's ways that you look at the universe where it's all connected. So you get a sense from that. So I'd say it's equivalent to the Copernican revolution, where people thought that the earth was the center of the universe. And then we find that's not the case. We think that we're the

center of the universe. And under the influence of psychedelics, the classic ones, you shift your perspective. And that changes your attitudes towards death. It changes your attitudes towards life. In good circumstances supported by therapists, you can understand how we're all connected and you're less prejudiced. You're less willing to support environmental destruction. You're more active in changing the world. You're not just waiting for later. So I think how people who don't have a diagnosis get better the science behind it is in part the weakening of this default mode network and you see a bigger picture interesting the idea here is we're not trying to give you a drug that you need to take for the rest of your life and if you stop taking it your problems come back we're trying to have deep work with psychotherapy enhanced by the drug to make people independent of drugs and then to teach them how to

process trauma on their own afterwards. Or there's just so many people that are not sure what do they want to do with their lives? What is their purpose? And it's anxiety provoking to ask those questions. But when you take MDMA, it reduces activity in the amygdala, the fear processing part of the brain, increases activity in the prefrontal cortex where we think logically, increases connectivity between the hippocampus and the amygdala where we put memories into long-term storage, so that you can address anxiety-provoking questions, whether it's for a clinical diagnosis or not,

and you can think peacefully, you're filled with self-love, oxytocin is released, it's the hormone of nursing mothers of love and connection. So that for all of the people who are not diagnosed, but the healthy people, there's good scientific explanations for why these experiences can be profound. But again, I just want to emphasize it's not the drug. Tim Leary actually coined the idea of set and setting. That it's what you bring to it, your internal set, but it's where you do it as well, whether you feel safe, whether you're supported. And that will help with the outcomes. Dr. Rick Doblin, thank you so much.

So good to talk to you. And, well, yeah, this is exciting. This is exciting. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is exciting. It's conditions. And I think we've got bipartisan support from our funders, from politicians. The backlash that happened in the 60s, I don't think is going to happen again now. Yeah, I don't think so either. I think that the conservatives were right when they said that medical drug use was a backdoor towards changing people's perceptions. They actually were right about that

because it has shown that people are willing to see marijuana and other drugs without the stigma. So, I mean, they were right to be concerned. The hippies are going to win. Well, but I'll just say the difference is that we're not portraying ourselves as counterculture anymore. We're mainstreaming. We're becoming part of it.

That was what it was like for me when I went to the Kennedy School at Harvard and got my master's and PhD from there. I was like, hey, maybe I'm not a counterculture drug-using criminal anymore. Look, you're not counterculture if you're backed by VCs. All right. That's just the bottom line. You're not? Yeah, if you can't, it doesn't work that way. If Peter Thiel's involved, not for you, but if Peter Thiel's involved, you're out of the counterculture. Dr. Rick Doblin, thank you so much. When we come back, we'll end on a high note. And we're back because we all need it this week. Here it is, the high note. Hey, love it. My high note this week is this past Thursday, I was bitten twice by a baby rattlesnake, once on each foot.

My high note is that my neighbors were amazing. One neighbor swooped in, was here within five minutes, had me at the hospital, at the ER, in 25 minutes. And the ER happened to have the antivenom for rattlesnake bites. My other neighbor, who we passed on the way out, I live in a canyon in the Bay Area, both of them, husband and wife, came up to the house, found the snake, killed it, sent me a picture, and we were able to confirm with the toxicologist without the lab results, yes, this is a baby rattlesnake, and yes, we need to give you the antivenom right away. After a night in the ER and the rest of the night and most of the rest of the day in the ICU, I am home. I've got blue ink on my feet around where the spots were, but

swelling resolved, other symptoms resolved, and I'm going to be okay. I am feeling good about the world and grateful to be out here on the studio deck listening to your episode. So thank you so much for everything you do. And thank you so much to all the folks out there in the world developing antivenom. Let's step it up. Let's make sure every hospital has it. Thanks. Hi, Lovett. This is Allie from South Dakota.

And I am calling my high note. It's been a really long year. I gave birth to a son March 1st, 2020, and my sister left her piece of shit husband shortly thereafter. And so it's been a long year of both of us struggling with me with two small children and she with an older daughter and a very difficult divorce. But we're on the other side. We're both fully vaccinated. And she just bought her first house last week all on her own. She's a freaking rock star, and I am so proud of her for all that she's done this last year.

It's been a long one, but your show has kept me going, and I am so thankful for all the laughs, and they've definitely helped me through. So, thank you. Hi, Lovett. This is Alex from Asheville. I'm actually calling on my way to my high notes. This is the first time since before the pandemic started that myself, my brother, my sister, and my mom can all get together, spend time together. We've all been kind of doing somewhat public service in this time. My brother works for AmeriCorps. My sister is a reform advocate and writer in New Orleans.

My sister is a reform advocate and writer in New Orleans, and then I'm working at a restaurant that brings attention to the historic black roots of the Asheville area that have become completely gentrified. So it's nice to be able to take a break and have a moment to ourselves and actually just have a little bit of spoilers, and especially it's Mother's Day. So we've got to show Mom that she's done a great job of raising some pretty okay human beings. Thanks for everything you do. You make the drive back and forth a lot easier every week. And keep doing it. Thanks, Mom. Hi, Lovett.

It's Jenny from Oakland. My high note for the week is that I finally get to be back in the classroom with my students, who are beginning English language learners from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. And I was able to sign them up for their first vaccine. Even after they were super hesitant, I was able to use the tools and information I learned from your show to help educate them about the benefits of the vaccine. And I'm super excited to be back in my classroom and helping my students get shots. All right. Have a great week. Thanks to everybody who called in with those high notes.

If you want to leave us a message about something that gave you hope, you can call us at 213-262-4427. Thank you to Jenny Slate, Jason Concepcion, Dr. Rick Doblin, and everybody who called in. There are 542 days until the 2022 midterm elections. Have a great weekend, everybody. Love It or Leave It is a Crooked Media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett, Ryan Woodruff, and Lee Eisenberg. Jocelyn Kaufman, Poulavi Gunalan, and Peter Miller are our writers.

Our associate producer is Brian Semel. Bill Lance is our editor, and Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure. Thanks to our designers, Jesse McClain and Jamie Skeel, for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast. And to our digital producers, Nar Melkonian, Milo Kim, Mia Kelman, and Matt DeGroot

for filming and editing video each week so you can.