The Joe Rogan Experience - #1565 - Gary Laderman

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Gary Laderman is a professor of American religious history and cultures At Emory University. He teaches and writes about death and dying, religion and sexuality, and sacred drugs. His most recent book is Don't Think About Death: A Memoir on Mortality.

The Joe Rogan Experience. you do? Well, for work. Yeah, I teach at Emory University. So I'm a professor. I've been there for about 25 years. And I also write some books and teach a variety of classes. But you study, like what I've read of your study is some of it is on death and some of it is on drugs that is correct those are two very heavy subjects that may be the heaviest uh yeah well the other course i teach is religion and sexuality so i mean that that's another really heavy one yeah you look like a guy who would study both death and drugs. So it fits. Well, this is the pandemic hair. I mean, really, I'm usually a much more, you know, well, I'm not really. I never thought I was doing this, just doing the full buzz.

One of my students told me I should do it before I came in here. I'm telling you, man, once you do it, it's so freeing, not having to go to a barbershop or a hairdresser. Well, what's weird is i feel really free with all this hair yeah well again the hair fits the subjects that you studied um how did you get involved in what when you talk about drugs like you you studied all sorts of psychedelic drugs but also common drugs like caffeine, like we were talking about before. I was telling you before that I make some ridiculous French press coffee with far too much coffee in it.

And it's become a bit of a problem lately. Well, but it's probably keeping you healthy and keeping you going. I don't know if it is. I don't know. At the end of the day, I'm really tired. And I'm not usually really tired. And I think it's because I've been on speed all day. It can tire you out, that's for sure.

Yeah. But yeah, I mean, my interest in studying the connection between religion and drugs, I'm in a department of religion at Emory, really spans the spectrum. So I'm interested, yeah, for sure, in psychedelics, but also, as you're saying, in the more ordinary psychoactive drugs that bring order to our lives and allow us to tap into our true identity, maintain some semblance of stability in our lives. Things that religion often can do.

in our lives, things that religion often can do. The subject of religion and drugs, it's really fascinating to me, but it's something that I never even really considered until 10, 15 years ago. And I was introduced to Jack Herrer, and he was, do you know who he is? The cannabis advocate, recently deceased, not so recently anymore. The cannabis advocate, recently deceased. Not so recently anymore. Great guy, but was writing a book about the connection between psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, and religion and Christianity. And he had this amazing collection of artwork that connected ancient Christian artwork

with a lot of these dancing naked figures that look like they were in ecstasy shrouded by this translucent mushroom. Yeah, though that's not uncommon. There are a lot of theories out there that connect early Christianity, especially to different kinds of hallucinogenic psychedelic drugs of some form. But I think the connections are much more widespread. People have been using psychoactive substances for religious ritual, for religious experience, for forms of transcendence and journey in all kinds of different cultural settings and through history. What got you into this subject?

Well, I've been interested in the topic of drugs for a while, but I think what really led me to see this would be quite a fruitful topic to pursue in terms of research was I wrote a short little essay on LSD and religion. man tripping and talking about the ways in which when I had that experience in the late 70s and people more and more were you know enjoying psychedelics coming out of the decade of the 60s I started to to see that they would often use words like spiritual or mystical to describe their experiences and to talk about how their religious views are being reoriented. And I saw that in my own experience and wrote about that as a way to talk about what is probably the most significant shift in religion in America. And that's the rise of the nuns, those who don't affiliate with any religion, and who many who claim to be spiritual but not religious. And I want to tie that back to people's experiences with psychedelics.

There's a lot of people that are in the nuns that don't have any experience with psychedelics. There's a lot of people that are in the nuns that don't have any experience with psychedelics. They just seem to want to have a deeper meaning to life. And they'll say, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. And a lot of people get really annoyed when people talk like that. Yeah, well, it can be annoying. And also, you know, I think, as you say, it's very much becoming quite common for people to identify in that way. And that's also about a very strong kind of negative understanding of traditional religion, institutional religion, and so on.

Yeah. I feel like for a lot of these people that don't have psychedelic experiences that are spiritual, that sort of dismiss religion, I never want to tell people to do psychedelics, but I feel like if they did it, they would relax a little with this idea that they really have an understanding of what happens when you die i think they would really let that go most people would right you'd go well i didn't know this was real and this is around and this has been around for thousands of years psychedelics and then you have these experiences that are so profound and you're like okay maybe i'm just full of shit and I've been posing this whole time. Right.

Yeah. Right. Well, I think, again, it's not just you who have these views. What we're seeing is a lot of medical research around psychedelics also. We're pointing to the same thing, a decrease in fear of death. also we're pointing to the same thing, a decrease in fear of death. People's sense of compassion and love, you know, really can blossom. People's lives are transformed in a lot of these more controlled medical studies with, you know, with people who are taking psilocybin or MDMA. But the main focus of all that, of course, is the therapeutic benefits.

But, you know, as we're saying, it's all about spirituality and those therapeutic benefits can't be separated out from a kind of spiritual sense of that experience. It gives me a little bit of hope that in this time of great strife and struggle, and especially in terms of the way human beings are dealing with each because you know we're obviously in some strange transitional moment in history where uh our confidence and systems and government and and even education certainly news and media is eroding at an unprecedented rate but it's also at the same time all drugs are now legal in oregon right you know like these things are happening where people go you know what come on colorado's like mushrooms go ahead do mushrooms right and uh you know god bless texas they fucking need all that shit right

here and georgia too yeah all these places the whole world needs it well they need the option right you know because the the idea that human beings are somehow or another preventing other human beings from having non-lethal experiences that have proven to be incredibly transcendent and change people's lives for the better, just en masse. Like if you see the John Hopkins study, the people that one psilocybin experience, the majority of them listed as the most profound experience of their life. Right, right. And non-addictive. Yes.

I mean. And non-lethal. I mean, the LD50 is like what? You have to eat like two pounds of it or something crazy. Right, right. And we know that the stories of addiction and a lot of the dangers are so overblown. But I think, again, this is just a moment, as you're saying. Yeah.

That's why I feel I'm on to something. I think you are too. With this book that I'm writing, which is, you know, going to make the argument that drugs are really the sort of source of spiritual life in America. That's the future, as well as the past. I mean, again, you know, the influence of psychoactive substances in the Americas, you know, pre-Columbus was pervasive and just a part of everyday life. And as you say, we've, for whatever historical reasons and changes that have happened in our society, have lost touch with those resources of spiritual meaning and religious life.

And as you're saying, and I believe it too, we are in a moment when things are really transforming, and drugs will be, I think, quite important in terms of how we come out on the other side. I hate the word drugs. It's just a blanket word. It's so unfortunate that, you know, like heroin and opiates and meth is lumped in with psilocybin all under one blanket. Well, yeah, you're not alone. I mean, I'm intentional with drugs. I like to be provocative and try to confuse a lot of the categories that we use in thinking about some of these things that are so central in our lives and so potent, especially in

terms of our religious lives. So, yeah, there's entheogens, psychedelics, and, you know, obviously all different kinds of other kinds of, again, substances that we use that have an effect. And for me, that in some cases, in many cases, have religious meanings and connections. many cases have religious meanings and connections. Have you ever experimented with holotropic breathing or any of the non-psychedelic methods of achieving these certain states of consciousness? No. I mean, no, but I think they're important as well. People achieving a mystical state through non-psychedelic means is another avenue in thinking about the importance of those mystical states and how people get there. But also I would say, as you said, it's what are the results, what kind of transformations

are made in people's lives. And I think what we're seeing is whether it's a psychedelic-induced experience or non-psychedelic, there are lots of similarities. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people get there through near-death experience. There's a lot of people, well, this is another thing where the mind is capable of producing psychedelic compounds. And in near-death experiences although it's very difficult to measure right because you would actually have to

open up someone's brain while they're in the middle of a near-death experience which is probably not the healthiest thing for someone who almost died yeah but that's as far as we know that's the best way to measure it now but these people who experience these near-death moments have these incredible profound visions. And many people think that what's happening is some sort of endogenous dump of psychedelic chemicals. We know the brain is capable of making the most potent psychedelics in terms of what happens and how they do it. It's still a bit of a mystery they're trying to solve. But yeah, that connection is fascinating. Yeah. And, and, um, as I mentioned, or, um, you may

know, I teach a death and dying course as well. And so near death experiences are, are, are pretty much an important part of that class and the kinds of research and findings that are beginning to appear in terms of looking at those connections are fascinating and tie into this question of what is our relationship to death? How do we understand, you know, the reality of death in our lives and, you know, what are our thoughts about the afterlife or if there is one? what are our thoughts about the afterlife or if there is one that gets tied into a lot you know how people respond to this research you know how they are engaged with it and how they're compelled by it there's a lot of folks that apparently can reach like some pretty intense states of consciousness through yoga through different styles of yoga and different styles of breathing. But there's a really funny quote by Terence McKenna where the Buddha met this monk who said, I practiced the city of levitation for the last 20 years and I've achieved the ability

to walk on water. And the Buddha says, yeah, but the fairy's only a nickel. Yeah, right. You can really meditate alone in darkness forever, or you can just take mushrooms. You get there in an hour. Right. Well, I think for many of us, we take the quicker route.

But again, there are, like with the monk or people who meditate, all kinds of important, well, set and setting, thinking about what is the context in which this is taking place. And that's critical. Do you ever get pushback about the connection between psychedelics and religion? Has anybody ever challenged you on this or debated you on it? Oh, I mean, I teach. I mean, my students don't. Sometimes they challenge, but no. I mean, not directly, and I don't really give a shit.

I mean, I'm at that stage of my career. I'm convinced about, again, the sort of great research possibilities and thinking across the board about the connection between drugs and religion. Now, when you're teaching these classes, I'm assuming that for a lot of these kids, this is the first time you're exposing them to these ideas. Absolutely. Because yeah, they, many of them don't know what the study of religion is. Right. And well, we have a pretty nice, diverse mix of students in terms of their background, but most don't have a religion course other than something they've done. And they were in Catholic school or they studied, you know, the Bible in some form. But no, they've never seen anything like me.

It's funny because that's I mean, that's a heavy responsibility, I would imagine, too, because you're introducing to these kids this these ideas that have a really the potential for a very profound impact on the rest of their life. Yeah, and that's been something I've worried about my entire career. I actually care quite a bit about how these ideas are transmitted and received. And as we said, a lot of them are quite sensitive, the topics that I'm trying to teach. But it's an essential part, I think, of being a young adult and learning how to not just think for yourself, but to sort of reimagine the world and try to understand some of the forces that are at work in your life and what's going to be coming in terms of your future career. And I try to make religion relevant, you know, in those terms. But I also, as I like to say to them, you know, I mean, I wouldn't say this before I had tenure, but, you know, my goal, I tell them this straight out, is to confuse the hell out of them.

You know, what they think is religion is not the only game in town. And so I'm very upfront about this sort of being an intellectual exercise, you know. Why are students taking my death and dying class? Well, I don't want to know. I want it just to be purely academic for them to encounter different understandings of death, different death rituals, different cultures, and shake them up. But not necessarily, you know, kind of turn them away from what they've been taught. The end result may kind of reinforce their own sort of cultural background and outlook.

But for myself, I'm very gratified in the work that I do, if you could call it work. very gratified in the work that I do, if you could call it work. And, you know, I get a great response from students and, and I'm just, you know, really pleased that I'm able to be a part of that educational process because not to go on that. Yeah. I mean, cause my classes are often not like their other classes, which are, you know, political science or economics or biology. And, you know, I just want them to be able to reflect and think about some of these deep things that sooner or later, you know, are going to bite them in the butt. Yeah. I like how you describe it too, that it's not the only game in town. The way I try to describe it to people is like,'m not not a religious person but i'm not opposed to it and i probably was when i was younger but i think i was just arrogant

and i think that the best way to look at religion is it's not the whole thing you should but you shouldn't throw it out i think it's a piece yeah i think it's a piece of something that's a giant puzzle and the idea of throwing it out i don't think that's the way to do it. I think those people, and the problem obviously is translations. Translation is a giant issue when you're taking something from ancient Hebrew and you're translating it to Latin and to Greek and Aramaic and all these different languages. It's like a lot is probably lost in terms of the way they express.

Have you ever read Russian to English? There's a lot of Russian people I follow on Twitter and I get a huge kick out, or excuse me, on Instagram, and I get a huge kick out of pressing the translate button. Oh, yeah. To try to break down the way they communicate. Now, when you're dealing with super ancient languages that we don't even use anymore, like ancient Hebrew, like who knows how accurate and what if the intent is clearly expressed through an English translation.

Right. Probably not. Well, a lot gets lost. Yeah. Or a lot gets invented. Also, it's just these ideas are have been passed down through thousands and thousands of years and i feel like if you could just not be too literal with it and just listen to what these people were saying what they were trying to get

across obviously there's some awful shit in the bible in particular and many religions in terms of condoning slavery treating women as second-class citizens there's a there's a lot that's probably just some cultural artifact of the time where they've embedded their own beliefs on how human beings should act with each other and then and then attributed that to god right right But if you can get past that and just not take it, you know, no pun intended, as gospel. Right. And just these people are trying to lay down their experiences and the lessons that they've learned in some sort of a way to live your life book.

Right. Right. some sort of a way to live your life book. Right, right. And yeah, I mean, I agree with you. From my point of view, too much literalism, you know, is really counterproductive, if not destructive, as societies change over time.

So, you know, the act of interpretation is very much obviously a part of the study of religion and looking at how religions change and transform. For me, I'll just, I'll say I'm so not interested in Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Islam. You know, the conventional containers of what we think are the world's religions are, you know, very problematic, to say the least. But my interest is more in the sort of intersections of religion and culture, where people might not recognize they're being religious, even though I would try to make the argument that they are. Like how so? Well, I mean, I've written a book called Sacred Matters that looks at these different kind of aren, possibilities for discovering your true self, a whole kind of value system that can be tied up.

That's interesting. Celebrity worship as a form of religion. Hijacking the human reward system. Because if we lived in a tribe of people, a small tribe, and there was one great leader, a battle-scarred leader who's seen it all and can give us the information, and he was the one talking, we would listen. That would be a person of great importance, and we'd all gather around and listen. But when you see Brad Pitt in a movie screen and his face is 30 feet high and there's music playing when he talks

and a team of writers have carefully constructed all of his words in this perfect sentence and it's just like, it's so moving and inspiring. And then we see him in real life, oh my God, it's really you. But meanwhile, he hasn't really done anything other than pretend. I mean, he's been a great entertainer,

but he's given us some wonderful distractions but it's not that he's led us through battle right it's not that he's he's figured out how to find the food in the water you know this is not what it is but in our our hijacked human reward system we treat him as though he is the great leader yeah or or even even someone like Oprah, I mean, who's more clearly in that sort of strange middle ground between celebrity and spiritual leader of some kind. So obviously it's going to vary depending on what celebrity you're talking about. But just in terms of projections, our imagination, where we invest our energies. Celebrity's big. But again, I'd like to talk about other things as well, whether we're talking about politics or consumer culture or things around medicine, that there are religious

qualities that don't have to do with the Bible or with Muhammad or something. Right. There's religious qualities in that there's these very rigid ideologies that are treated like religions that you have to follow. And there's also signs that people will hold up that they're complying and they're along with this ideology one of them that i talk about a lot is people taking photos with masks on on twitter for their their profile picture right like i know what you're doing right right we all know what you're doing yeah well i mean you know that's again messaging and thinking about you know what

it's bizarre values you know yeah it's it's bizarre when you see these patterns sort of repeated over and over again right well in social media too will be the future of religion and in terms of how it um transforms and sure moves forward is an important kind of site for religious activity and investments and um you know where we're really going to see the action what's happening on instagram twitter and so on yeah so when you say like religion that these things fall into sort of religious behaviors or religious ideas um you're not meaning like as handed down from a higher power you your meaning as in people fall in with the same sort of compliant behavior and patterns and... Not necessarily. I mean, it's not all just sort

of compliance and... Compliance one aspect. Right. Or conformity or something. It's just meaning making. It's how we try to live our lives in ways that can carry us on when we have to confront suffering and death and as well as, you know, issues around health. What are the sources that are available to people? And, you know, as I've said in my class many times, I think popular culture is much more of an important kind of teacher about religious ideas and values than, you know, the local preacher. How so? Because people pay more attention to it? Absolutely. And because they're more swayed by it, you know, because it has more of an impact and resonance. But it's a dangerous way to sway things coming

from someone who's involved in distributing popular culture because there's so little thought put into the actual impact of what it is and so much thought putting into just what pops. Yeah. What gets people to pay attention. Right. Well, and money talks and money is sacred. You know, what's more sacred in our society than making some money yeah and that's a drive you know again so there too we can talk about other religious qualities to capitalism well you know there have been a number of uh scholars who've written on that

topic and and made those connections so um again you know the action isn't taking place in the church it's taking place in you know music It's taking place in music festivals, Burning Man. Yeah. This is where, again, I'm not trying to kind of overgeneralize, but I think very much for especially younger people, but baby boomers as well, where do I get my spiritual juices? You know, there are churches now that are incorporating psilocybin into their rituals. I think one particular in Oregon.

See if you can find that. There's a church in Oregon that is doing, what am I, Oregon spokesperson today? Well, that's big news and big changes for sure. We're all going to be watching that. Well, the idea is that that's what it and big changes for sure. Yeah. And we're all gonna be watching that. Well, the idea is that that's what it used to be all about. If you go back to, it's a very controversial book, but John Marco Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross is all about consumption of psychedelic mushrooms and that he believes

that that was really what the Bible was about, was about hiding these stories from the Romans when they were captured. Yeah, lots of theories. Yeah. Even with Judaism, too, and Moses. There's just all kinds of ways people have tried to make the connection. Oh, yeah, there it is. Legally offering psilocybin mushroom therapy through ceremony.

Oh. Look. But look, there's – What is the name of this place sacred heart medicine dot us is that the name of the church no no yeah oregon state non-profit domestic you got to go non-profit if you want to sell mushrooms and not get locked up well Well, that's right. Donated all the charity, kids. Stay out of the pokey. Well, and there are weed churches, too, that are starting to crop up. So, you know, cannabis and religion also beyond, again, just the psychedelics.

Yeah. And that's just sort of the surface. My sense is there's a big underground. And I know there's one here in Austin because I did some research here. Oh, you did research? I did my research. Before the pandemic, I was able to get out and do some research around and talk to people who are running these kinds of psychedelic religious communities or sacred plants, different communities that are cropping up. Washington, D.C., right? They just also decriminalize psilocybin. And there too is a

thriving underground. So I think we're going to see that underground, these subcultures really begin to surface. And with the war on drugs now basically almost over um how are we gonna think about drugs how are we gonna respond to them the war on drugs almost over what a crazy war and drugs won well well yeah i mean i've been saying this a lot lately but like my whole life has been lived under the war on drugs yeah no I mean yeah how old is 58 yeah yeah so it's um I missed out yeah it's like all of a sudden this is good changing and like I would have been fascinating gonna be like to be around late 50s early 60s before everything was illegal when people were just freaking out.

After Hoffman had synthesized LSD and when basically all of the Schedule I compounds were free and legal, I mean, free to consume, you got to wonder. The only thing that was illegal was marijuana, which is kind of hilarious. Yeah, it boggles the mind. It's full of hypocrisy. But yeah, that was a crazy time. I don't know if you saw that great documentary, Wormwood. No, I didn't.

By Errol Morris. I've heard of it, though. Yeah. It's crazy about, again, the sort of 50s and psychedelics and LSD and the CIA and all that. Yeah. So that's a very rich part of the history that pre-Timothy Leary that, you know, Rock Hudson was on the psychiatrist's couch taking LSD and experimenting with that. And, you know, what was that doing? Again, the notion was miracle drug medicine.

This is going to help people with their depression and, you know, all of that and um and again what we don't know uh although we're beginning to see this more and more in some of this research is what are the religious implications in a person's life after they trip yeah um there's a great book that uh i've mentioned many times in this podcast because i had the guest on the author on rather um tom o'Neill wrote a book called Chaos, and it's about the Manson family. And he was writing a book on the Manson family. Excuse me. He was writing an article 20 years ago on the Manson family. Just supposed to be a real quick article, writing it.

And then in the middle of his research, writing the book, he started finding all these problems and weird inconsistencies and weird connections. He started finding all these problems and weird inconsistencies and weird connections. Twenty years later, he finishes this book, and it's all about the CIA and LSD. And that the Manson family, Charles Manson in particular, was involved with CIA experiments they did with LSD with prisoners. prisoners, and that they were most likely dosing him up when he was in jail and then giving him access to LSD and these psychological techniques that he used on the family when he was released. And then also all this evidence that every time they would arrest him, even though he

was on parole, they would let him go because the CIA was encouraging his use of LSD, his promoting it to the family, and they're committing crimes. And the whole idea was to discredit the anti-war movement and to disrupt the civil rights movement. There was a lot of shit involved with the CIA and LSD, and they were running a clinic, a free clinic in Haight-Ashbury for 50 years, until three months after this book was released. And then mysteriously, our work is done. Yeah, it's over. They closed it down.

Right. But there's amazing connections that Tom O'Neill makes in this book to Jolly West, who was in the CIA, who was a part of their Lsd uh program to jack ruby um i've heard some of this yeah oh my god it's it's amazing he's tom is great and his book is i can't recommend it enough no i'll check it out it's a mind blower yeah because as you get into the book you're like what the fuck because meticulously researched over 20 years. I mean, it was this man's life. Right.

And they succeeded, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Manson, that was the end of it. Or a lot of people kind of mark that as being. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they think of LSD as something that makes you go crazy and want to murder people and kill people.

And they changed the idea of what a hippie was. Right. Right? Right. Because of the psychological techniques that he learned when he was in jail and all the mind control experiments that he learned and the way they did it like he would pretend to take acid and he would give it acid to the family and then he would mind fuck them and then have them go out and

commit murder and tell them that they were freeing people and yeah well no no doubt I mean wild times yeah absolutely and there was a lot of interest yeah for sure and among the CIA for you know what the potential would be for LSD yeah he also went over the operation midnight climax which was a part of MK ultra do you know about that operation midnight climax they ran whorehouses. They ran brothels in San Francisco and I think a couple other cities. And they would have two-way mirrors and they would have the prostitutes dose up these Johns with LSD in their drinks and they had no idea.

And then they would have sex and they would watch them and observe them. And this went on for years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they're just giving people LSD. Like American citizens, yes, they will. Right, right, right. This is a law enforcement agency. I mean, really.

Bizarre. Well, you know, I mean, what don't we know? Yeah, exactly. What don't we know? Right. Well. Well, they only found this out sort of accidentally through research into these files that had been left behind and some Freedom of Information Act stuff. Right, right, right, right.

Well, that's how people are being able to get access to some of that information. But the problem is for so long people have had this idea as LSD equals lose your mind, go crazy jump off buildings right you know well and then that also gets um transferred over to cannabis and other drugs as the war on drugs really picks up with nixon and and it does um help to demonize yeah certain groups of people well the real sad thing too is in putting these things in Schedule 1, we've really missed out on research that would be very helpful for people that do have adverse reactions. There's a lot of people with adverse reactions to psilocybin, to cannabis, to LSD, and we don't know why.

Right. Right. Particularly people that have schizophrenic breaks while on cannabis. It's very common. Right. Not very common, but it might be like, you know, one out of a hundred or something crazy like that. Right.

Right. Right. It's not huge, but it's enough that we really should be concerned. And we don't know what the fuck's going on because they've kept people from doing research. Right. Right. Well, who knows if that is going to change yeah it's already starting to change quite dramatically and with the results that are coming out of some of these um experiments and research studies that are going on i think you know it's

convincing yeah and when you're helping you know war veterans with ptsd you know i mean i mean come on mdma seems to be particularly helpful for that, right? Well, that's right. And I know they're doing some of those studies at Emory, but in a lot of places. Again, this is what is being referred to as the mainstreaming of psychedelics. It's just, you know, they're going to be more and more

a part of our resources in terms of where to go. Yeah, a mild dose of MDMA for the whole world might fix everything. Just a real mild dose, where everybody together, three, two, one, go. We'd all just like, I'm sorry. Oh, man, let's love each other. What are we doing here? It would be amazing. I've only done it once, but it was incredibly profound.

But the next day I couldn't read. You were pretty fogged out or something. I was so dumb. And then I had to go on stage and I was terrible. I did stand up the next night and I just couldn't get it together. My brain was so worn out. Right. I was going to ask you.

I think I saw that your tour was called sacred clown yeah so i'm you know sacred is uh my i like to kind of go after that but as i like that title and so i was curious how you came up with that or what it's a lakota term of a yoka is a sacred clown okay the lakotas had a term for a very important part of their culture, which was someone who mocks all the things that are deemed sacred and important and sort of finds holes in all of these dogmatic ideas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's, I mean, again, that's what religion can do. Yeah, I would have called it. Or certain kinds of notions of the sacred can really, that's, I mean, again, that's what religion can do. Yeah, I would have called it. Or certain kinds of notions of the sacred can really, you know, help you to see what's really going on in the world.

I would have called it Heyoka, but it seems like that would have caused more problems than... Well. First of all, people are like, what the fuck does that mean? And then second of all, people are like, you're culturally appropriating. You have to be careful. Do you? Do you really? I'm not sure you do well i'm not sure i think you're better off yeah i mean it certainly yeah in terms of um it's more avoiding yeah yeah but but i get you yeah so that's what i'm going to call it once i could tour again right i'm sorry and it'll be even more important now

after the pandemic you really need to make fun of shit. Absolutely. Because people are more on edge. And then also, unfortunately or fortunately, people have embedded themselves so deeply into social media that they believe that this really bizarre way of communicating, chambers and these uh really non-empathetic ways of expressing your disdain or anger or hate or disagreement with people that this is common and standard it's the most non-psychedelic thing right the way people communicate on twitter is like a bunch of mental patients throwing shit at each other yeah i understand yeah. And you've gotten off. Of Twitter? Of social media? Well, I'm on Twitter, but I don't use it.

Right, right, right. I'll read other people's stuff sometimes just to go, what is going on? But if someone's trying to get my attention, good luck. Good luck, right. I don't read anything about me. Yeah. But I don't read anything about me in general. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Because Instagram is basically just a giant distraction for me. Right. I just find it fun to stare at things. A lot of good images and things. Yeah. Because Instagram is basically just a giant distraction for me. Right. I just find it fun to stare at things. A lot of good images and things. But I agree. I think the social media is one of the more powerful forces in the changes that we are seeing. Yeah. And the political divisions clearly are kind of one of the consequences of how embedded these platforms have become in our lives.

It's almost like it's all been – I mean it hasn't all been planned out. But it's almost like it has been in order to really deteriorate our confidence and all these structures and systems. If you thought about what would be the perfect way to deteriorate it well you have a guy who's clearly unqualified for the job who is uh famous for just kind of being an asshole on television firing people and being like a a bombastic sort of uh you know braggadocious rich guy with his name on giant buildings and you're fired fuck you and grab him by the pussy and then you have that be that guy be the president yeah and then have everybody like we gotta get him out of here he's the problem he's the problem and then i think they're gonna realize once he is out no no he's

not the problem he's he's just a problem right the problem is human beings right and the problem is the political system is just deeply embedded with corruption. And you're going to realize that with this next guy who's supposed to be your savior. It's not going to work out. Well, to bring it back to your earlier point, I think we all could use some MDMA. Yes, everybody. Everybody should microdose on mushrooms for sure. Okay, well, look where we're going. I think we're heading in that direction.

I think we are too. I believe in the young people. Yeah, I, look where we're going. I think we're heading in that direction. I think we are too. I believe in the young people. Yeah, I do too. I do too. Well, that's why this podcast works, because I think you can't have the systems that are in place that are bullshitting people, and then they're out on the streets talking to their friends and communicating in a totally different way than they're seeing in the media and they're like what what this doesn't represent Me right. This is not how I think and feel and my experiences With life and with particularly if they've had any psychedelic experiences those these aren't represented, right? Why aren't they represented when I know they're so common and I know they're so profound

I know they've meant so much to me and my friends. Why why don't why don't I see this? Right, so then they find things like this on the internet and they go, okay, I'm not crazy. Right. There's other people out there. So, right. And the other side of that would be the notion that we really have lost any sense of powerful authority structures. Yeah. powerful authority structures, you know, sort of cultural authorities that really can unite people or kind of help people understand the importance of common cause of some kind.

And, you know, that's, again, partly to bring it back to religion has to do with the conflicts around the church and Christianity, especially in American politics. That is being diminished. I like to write about sort of the dechristianization, you know, as the dominant sort of religious structure begins to erode and you begin to see again spiritual but not religious and other kinds of um challenges um that are coming from different communities or different kinds of spiritual experiences to you know um the the authority structures that are in society you know that is a part of the the context of all of this, where a lot of these battles are going on and people don't know where to turn or, you know, wondering where am I represented in all this? And it's not coming from religion or the church and political leaders, Republicans or

Democrats. So it all becomes self-focused, you know, we're all just about self-promotion and self-identity becomes the main force in our lives, I think, for too many people. Yeah, and hence the celebrity and then the chasing celebrity. Yeah. Right? This becomes the ultimate level of this stupid game we're all playing. Right. Well, again, for me, as someone who studies this, I try not to be judgmental. But I see, again, it's a religious system.

There's a religious culture at work. And it's just as interesting and legitimate, in my mind, as Christianity. I don't... I wish there was a structure that was in place that mimicked the positive aspects of church that didn't contain the dogmatic religious ideas that a lot of people find problematic. You know, like I think there's something great about the whole community aspect of church. something great about the whole community aspect of church. You know, my friends that do go to church, I have a lot of friends that are Christian, that are really good people. They're really good people, like admirable people. And I think one of the things that's very admirable about their pursuit of Christianity is this community reinforcing aspect of it.

Right. They get there together with the members of the community. Everybody's real friendly. They know that they're going to sit there and they're going to submit to this experience. And they're going to read the passages. And they're going to hear the sermon. And they're all going to be together. They're going to dress nice, they're going to behave well, and they're going to feel good about the

people that they live near and they're surrounded by. And I think we're missing that. There's so many people that I'm friends with that live in cities that don't know the person who lives in the apartment next door to them. They've been there for 10 years, and they don't know anybody in their building. I have a buddy of mine who's telling me he lives in a building with a thousand people he doesn't know any of them that's crazy well that's such a weird modern humans yeah it's a weird way for humans to live and i think people feel particularly lost when they don't have a real sense of community and i can say as a stand-up comedian one of the things that we all have in common, particularly folks that were working out at the comedy store, was that there was a family aspect to it. There was a real community there.

And we were very supportive of each other and embracing, physically embracing. People see people, they go, hey, what's up? Everybody hugs. see people that they go hey what's up everybody hugs and so for a lot of these comics who are single who live alone maybe don't know their neighbors like that was the place where they could go to that was church yeah right that's what i i mean i think that's beautiful yeah and right on because you could see in that community of comedians something sacred yeah something religious that's meaningful and that um that is profound in some ways. And as we said, the community aspect, but also helping people in terms of their own understanding, self-understanding. And that's people turn to different kinds of communities.

And that's part of the modern world, too, that community feeling. And that's part of the modern world, too, that community feeling. The sort of collective togetherness can be found in a number of different settings. And certainly the church and the congregation is one, but rock concerts or the comedy clubs. Grateful Dead. Grateful Dead. I mean, the Grateful Dead's whole thing was acid, right? Well, it was music and acid.

We're going to turn to that next week. Oh, are you? Oh, yeah. We end the course with psychedelics and creativity. Oh, fish too, right? Yeah. That's their deal too, right? It's like a lot of people drop acid and listen to that sort of jam music.

Well, community. Yes, certainly. Meaningful, yeah. Yeah. My friends who have gone to a lot of dead shows say you don't even really know the dead until you listen to them on acid. Right, right, right. Like it's music designed for acid.

Yeah, well, that's something you can find in other musical acts as well, that connection. I mean, that's the thing about dimethyltryptamine and the Icarus. Have you ever listened to South American Icarus? When you hear those songs on psychedelics, the images dance to those songs. I've heard that. They work together like a hand in a glove perfectly. It's amazing.

Yeah. Well, I like that hand in a glove perfectly. It's amazing. Yeah. Well, I like that connection between music and drugs and religion. So you can also look at the peyote church and listen to some of the music that comes from those ceremonies. Yeah. Very much a central part of the experience and how people absorb, receive it, and make sense of it. I think we're way too comfortable with music. We think of it as like no big deal. Exactly. And that's what I do in my, all my classes, I bring in music. So in the death class, at the beginning of the semester, I tell students, I want you to be listening, you know,

just in terms of the music that you listen to day to day, if you can identify the theme of death. And, of course, when they hear that at first, they think I'm nuts and way, you know, out of my mind. And they soon realize it's everywhere. And so, I mean, I know that aspect of my classes can really be powerful because, again, we take music for granted, but it's so central to our lives. And, again, I think it can have more of an impact than just, oh, isn't this fun to listen to? Yeah. It can shape our consciousness and our communities. And so I do that in the sex sexuality class i'm doing it in

the drugs class um and it's great for students to to be able to see that as data what do you open up with what song do you open up with when you for which one for death oyster cult yeah fear the reaper okay we're the same yeah they love it even though they've never heard of it. They've never heard of Blue Oyster Cult? These fucking kids. Yeah, the kids today. How do you not hear of that song? I mean, again, their parents may have listened to it.

Sometimes I get that. But, oh, man, there's just a lot of things that can be played across different genres. So it's not just rock. across different genres. So it's not just rock. There's a few recordings that are still available of the Lakotas doing the ghost dance. Yeah. Yeah. Have you played that?

Yeah, I teach American religious history, and they're too. Music is the main thread where we learn about religious communities. That is one of the saddest songs in the history of the world because that that's these people that really are at the end i mean there's very few genocides there's i mean there's a few right but there's very few where there's almost nothing left of people that existed in thriving numbers 300 years ago. But in Native American communities, it's common.

It's like the most common. They're all gone in terms of the way they used to live versus now. And that ghost dance was them trying to conjure up the spirit of the past and reignite their culture and bring back the old ways and get rid of the white settlers and get rid of the armies and get rid of all the people that had destroyed their way of life and disease and all the things that had happened to them literally over the course of their life from, you know, there's people that were born in 1850 that were 50 years old at the turn of the 20th century that were like, what the fuck happened? When they were born, they lived on the plains and life was as it had been for hundreds,

if not thousands of years. And then all of a sudden it was gone. And so this ghost dance was this attempt at reigniting their old culture. It's so eerie and sad and it's so rare to have an actual recording of something that was an attempt to stop genocide. Right. Right. And from that period, too, is really valuable to have. Again, it's beyond data it's like you know you this is about our memory and as you said it's very evocative yeah um when people listen to it and um it does become an important remnant of that

of that movement and that experience but um yeah, the music and those ceremonies are incredible. Do you play that for your classes? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, in the book I use, there's a whole chapter on the ghost dance. Oh, all right. You know, James Mooney and really trying to dig into, yeah, some of the historical forces that led to this as a potential revitalization form of religious revival. That ends tragically, you know, as you say,

it's something that disconnects people from their past in ways that are difficult to maintain and to keep whole. And people are still suffering from the momentum of that disconnection today. In 2020, there's massive amounts of strife and huge problems in Native American reservations because of that. Still today, absolutely. It's crazy. And still, you know, as has been the case in Native American history. Incredible signs of resilience, of innovation, of, you know, new forms of community that have really.

They're getting back at us with the casinos. Well. That's what we're doing. I've heard that before. It's not us. I should say clearly. I'm a child of immigrants. Well, I mean, you know, this is another development that's kind of ironic in some ways.

No, it is. It is. It's bizarre that they're getting wealthy off of this weird vice. Well, another addiction. Yeah, another addiction. Is gambling a drug? Is it, do you think? Yeah. We had a great class on addiction have you ever been around gambling addicts like real gambling no i mean i've been around a bunch of them well it's a drug it's a drug that's what i'm wondering you know oh my god something's going on in the brain

too that's going to be you know where you're going to be seeing some some kinds of activities that you know will lead people to continue on in the behavior. Yeah, it's for sure a pattern that people fall into. Like my grandmother was addicted to playing the numbers. I remember she was always losing, and she was always saying, oh, I was supposed to bet this one, and I bet that one. That was the whole deal with my grandmother, Italian grandmother in New Jersey. And the numbers were obviously this mob- run, weird lottery thing for the neighborhood.

But it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I started playing pool, that I was around real hardcore gambling addicts that would bet on raindrops running down a window. They would bet on anything and everything and their life revolved on getting like on getting bets and winning and losing it was it was their whole there was their juice for their life right was all gambling right the life source or some something but also destructive in its way uh it

was overbearing but it's hard to say it was destructive. Well, it was definitely destructive in terms of their financial stability They're always broke but boy there they were engaged and they would call it action That's what they would call it like trying to get some action Like it was all about this thrill of possibly winning and possibly losing Right and you could say that people are doing that when they're playing the stock market They're just doing a nice slow version of it. Or if you're gambling on sports, you're certainly participating in it. Right. And there are a lot of different kinds of addictions that people have. I mean, talking about religion, I mean, about drugs. Well, I think religion

may be an addiction too in some ways. I think so, yeah. For some people, yeah. You just, again, life force, life juice is what you got to keep giving yourself if you're going to make it. But yeah, I mean, it's curious to think about what are the addictions in our society. Right. You know, too much shopping or too much sex or drugs are the obvious one. But we really stretch out that term to mean, you know, and apply to all kinds of different or social media.

Well, I think that's a brand new addiction, right? That's, and that was in that Netflix documentary recently. Yes. Yes. Tristan Harris was actually here a couple of weeks ago and we talked about it

and it's, um, I mean, it's, couple weeks ago and we talked about it and it's um i mean it's i'm hoping that people recognize that that is not much different than all those other ones whether it's gambling or masturbation or whatever it is that you're addicted to it's the same kind of patterns right it's just this one is particularly compelling because it's with you all the time right you know it's like gambling you have to have someone to gamble with someone has you have to go to the casino or there has to

be some way that you could like that goddamn phone is with you 24 7 no doubt yeah well it becomes all consuming as you say and yeah then yeah that can lead to all kinds of um you know ruin we're finding a pattern in all this right it's it's in humans like humans have weird sort of pitfalls that we slip into we have weird weird behavior patterns that we can fall prey to absolutely i mean i think that's probably part of just uh the makeup of what it means to be human. Yeah. As we can get sidetracked and get so consumed by something that you lose sight of the rest of reality in some way. And yeah, I mean, I see that in the things that I study, for sure. People obsessed about death or sexuality or drugs.

Or anything. Or anything at all. Yeah. But how, you know how we think about gambling and how that connects to sort of larger social issues and psychological kind of mental issues is important to make sure you're not just kind of compartmentalizing the behavior. Yeah. As part of a larger context and pattern that, that, that are worth studying, worth looking at. How much, how much of a benefit is there in explaining to people the way we fall into these patterns as much as there

is exploring the patterns themselves? Like we, we have these weird sort of um vulnerabilities that are built into our system because we're there's benefits to getting obsessed with certain things because those certain things can lead you to success as a hunter-gatherer as a fisherman and something it's going to help feed your family if your brain can completely lock on to this tenacious way of succeeding at something. If you're a hunter-gatherer and your feet hurt and you're like, well, I give up. I can't do this. Obviously, hunting's not for me.

You're going to starve to death. Your children are going to cry. It's going to be horrible. So there's this built-in thing, but that could be hijacked by roulette, which is so weird. That thing of, come on, I got to get this, I got to win, I got to go, that could be hijacked by games. It could be hijacked by many things that we find ourselves obsessed with. Right. Hijacked or also motivated by other kinds of inner dynamics as well. I mean, whether you want to talk about Freud or some other primal instincts that are at work that, depending on the individual and the particular social setting they're in, you know, family background can lead to these, you know, all or nothing pursuits.

But psychedelics sort of illuminates that for you. Psychedelics are one of the only things that I've ever found that goes, hey, stupid, look at what you're doing. Look what that is. Look what the cause of this is. And you're like, oh, yeah. Like, why didn't I notice that? Why didn't I see that?

Well, you don't see it until the psychedelics sort of turn the light on for you. Yeah, right. And when it does, it's often the case that you don't need to go back. Right. You know, it's like, or at least I've read that people, you know, it's not addictive, but also, you know, once, twice, you know, you get it. You certainly don't need to do it every day.

Right. I mean, if you want to have, like, I think people feel like a little refresher course every year or so. It's not a bad thing to just sort of get like, oh, yeah, well, yeah. Oh, that's right. I almost forgot. Right. Recalibration kind of, yeah, resetting the system. The way I've described really profound psychedelic experiences is like pressing control, alt, delete for your brain.

And for people who don't know what that means, if you only use a mac that's uh how you reboot a windows computer when it crashes control alt delete your computer reboots and you have a fresh desktop with one folder and that folder is just labeled my old bullshit yeah and then you have a choice the choice is do i open up my old bullshit start going through try to figure out life again through my old memories? Or do I try to form a new view and resist my old bullshit, resist opening it up? And that's where it gets tricky. Sure. Because your ego will try to convince you, like, listen, man, have one cigarette. It's not bad.

You know, fucking relax, buddy. Right. You know, let's go play some bets. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm like, hey, fucking relax, buddy. Right. You know, let's go play some bets. Yes. Nothing wrong with that. I'm like, hey, come on, man. Let's go do this. Let's go do that.

And the next thing you know, you fall right back into the traps that you were avoiding. Right. Well, the ego can be tricky in that way and leading you astray or making you think it's real. Or making you feel comfortable with these old patterns that you familiar with even if those old patterns are failure, right? Like a lot of people like fall off diets fall off the wagon with drinking they do it because they're comfortable with the feeling of failure And this the uncertainty of the unknown of the future with these new patterns that you're trying to establish It's very confusing. It's very scary. No doubt and It's religious yeah

is that how you would describe it yeah i mean in a way yeah the the for lack of a better term yeah and what it does you know and just that that whole metaphor is like being born again or something like that and the shamanic journey, you know, you're not the same. You come back and you've got something to teach, you know, and that's, it's not just, I would say not necessarily just for the consumer. Yeah. The psychedelic or whatever the substance is, but it's, it's also, you know, about connections, I think, and sharing the knowledge.

Yeah. Getting it out there. What are you teaching in your sexuality classes that's different than what people would normally expect? Well, one thing I try to do is be as cross-cultural as I can be. So we look at sexuality and Hinduism in terms of Chinese religions, in terms of African religions. So I try to really, for these students, expand their minds as much as possible to see the varieties of ways in which people understand their sexuality. And so, no, that's where I start the class. How long have you been teaching this for? This class?

Yeah, in sexuality. It's another one that's post-tenure, but it's probably been about seven or eight years. How much, this is a really important question. As a professor, what is it like pre-tenure and post-tenure? Because it seems to be a night and day difference in terms of freedom. Right. I overplay that a bit. But everyone does.

It's not you. Everyone. I guess. I overplay that a bit. But everyone does. It's not you. Everyone. I guess.

Yeah, it's a strange whole organization, you know, and logic, the higher education. I'm opposed to tenure. I think it's bullshit. Yeah. Absolutely. But do you think it protects intellectual freedom in any way? I mean, I think there was a time in which we might make that argument. But, you know, I don't know. Who else has tenure?

What other professions? That's a good question. It's insane. It's like not the real world. So you think it's in some ways not good because then almost like the intellectual version of being born wealthy, like you have no worries, and so you almost become spoiled intellectually. Well, yes, absolutely.

I mean, you know, there are arguments that after some faculty get tenure, they shut down or they really aren't doing as much research anymore and there isn't that drive. Right. I mean, it's a whole tiered system. So you move, you get tenure when you move from assistant to associate professor. And then, you know, what you want to get to is full professor. Right. And again, that's sort of just a different place in the hierarchy. Yeah.

But again, it's all the papers you write books you publish i mean yeah my humanities it's getting a couple books out there um but but yeah i mean i i can't uh deny that i felt uh much freer after i got, uh, after I, uh, got tenure to, uh, explore, um, topics that I would be more hesitant to explore. Like which, which topics in particular? Drugs. Drugs. For sure. Drugs. Um, as again, as a, as a, as a research area, full, full force, you know, going to go into it again because there's a legitimate purpose to, scholarly study of the connections between religion and drugs. Luckily, I'm not the only one who is pursuing this, but I believe there are a lot of interesting connections that haven't been made, especially in contemporary American society. The other drug that I'm particularly interested in and seems to get a lot of response is I also

include pharmaceuticals and prescription psychoactive drugs as a part of the drugs and religion connection. And so looking at the pharmaceutical industry and pills as sort of religious objects and structures and cultures. Really? How so? Well. Like anti-anxiety medication? Right. Yeah. I mean, that is just a kind of, you know, it's ritualized. So you put it, you know, you've got to make sure, you know, you take it and take it when you're supposed to take it.

You put faith in this little magic pill that is effective and can bring you to a better place. It has importance in terms of community and who you are connected with, how the drug allows you to have certain kinds of community. So a lot of this is obviously kind of a message you see the messages in in pharmaceutical commercials which are for me dripping with kind of religious sentiments and sensibilities you can be saved you know where are you saved you well you're saved with a pill So this is a subject in particular that like pre-tenure would be you'd have to be walking on eggshells. Again, drugs more generally, I would be – yeah, I would not be necessarily going there. But, you know, I mean I'm not sure. Do other professors share your perspective on tenure that's kind of nonsense?

Or bullshit I should say. I would say, yeah, there are some. Most must enjoy it, though. I think most people would like to keep it and think it serves some function in terms of, as you're saying, sort of legitimacy of academic freedom. Some people are internally motivated. Some people are motivated just by whatever drives them, whatever intellectual curiosity, their goals, whatever it is. It has nothing to do with financial stability or job stability. But not most.

Most people, if you give them 100% job security, they're going to get fat. Yeah. I'm afraid I would agree. Absolutely. It's weird. And you're right. Some people are just motivated. They want to succeed and pursue their interests sort of no matter what.

And there are certainly a number of scholars who are like that. Sure. Who make their way to the top. The path is what interests them. Right, right. The destination is not real. Right. Exactly.

I think that's exactly right. And, you know, but as I sort of joked earlier, I joke that I, I joke that this is called work and I don't feel I really work. I have a great, great job. I love what I do. Well, you nailed it, right? You figured out what actually interests you. And for some people, what you do would be work, but not for you. Well, right, exactly.

Again, I'm very fortunate, especially being at Emory. So it's a different kind of professional life that I've been really fortunate. And it wasn't planned. You know, I was a fuck up. And as I write about in this new book, you know, Don't Think About Death, which is a memoir on mortality. I was directionless and just fucking around at high school and getting high and taking all kinds of drugs. How dare you? Yeah, can you believe that? In the San Fernando Valley. That's weird. You were doing that in the San Fernando Valley? No one does that there.

Nobody, no. You must have been a rebel. Yeah, right. Talk about conformity, but oh my God. What part of the valley did you live in? Van Nuys. Oh, okay. Our old studio was in Woodland Hills.

Right. And one of your guys grew up in the Valley, so I got to talk to him. It was fun. I used to work out in Van Nuys. It's where the Benny the Jet's Jet Center was. Oh, yeah. Right, right. You know where that was?

Funny, yeah. World famous kickboxing gym. Oh, yeah. One of the first places I came to when I came to California. Couldn't wait to go to the Jet Center. you had heard about it oh my god it was legendary benny arquitas like a legendary kickboxer uh in the early days of kickboxing and he came out of los angeles yeah it's so funny how many people come out of san fernando valley or connected i mean but yeah that's i guess not that funny well a lot of people out there yeah well but in any case i

was uh i was on a different path and luckily came around yeah for sure so what what led you out of the fog of adolescent craziness and fuck uppery uh a woman ah a beautiful story yeah no my my current wife yeah liz really really helped to bring me into another direction. Although, you know, not, I wouldn't say only her. But, you know, it was just all of a sudden I started really liking to learn. Really? You know, I went, I dropped out of college a couple times. I went, I dropped out of college a couple times and meeting her, settling down, all of a sudden thinking more critically and more kind of more deeply and taking classes more seriously.

So I moved from usually I was sitting in the back of the room to, you know, the front as I became a junior and senior in college. So it was essentially just a natural course of progression. You just became naturally more interested in things, naturally more curious, naturally more dedicated to learning. Absolutely. But for some strange reason, I was back then very interested in death. So that was the subject as I was doing my undergraduate work, you know. Why death? Well, that's the memoir. I have no idea, but I'll say the memoir starts with me as a young kid, maybe eight or nine. And, you know, waking up in the middle of the night with all

this commotion in our house, the small San Fernando Valley house, three bedrooms and one bath. And then looking down the hallway and seeing, you know, what seemed to be like 50 firemen, but there couldn't have been 50 firemen, so I'm sure there were only a few, who were rushing into our bathroom where my grandfather was. And when he was going into the bath, he had a heart attack and died. And I kind of witnessed that, and they took him out of the bathroom, and that was that. But what's really vivid as a memory associated with this was after the death, the family rabbi came to our house. And I just remember very vividly being in the backyard with him. And he asked me, do you know what the meaning of death is?

It's like an eight or nine. I'm like, I have no idea. And, you know, he must have said some things, but the thing that really stood out and is the title of the book is him saying, don't think about death. Just think about the living and trying to help your father cope with his grief. their cope with his grief. And, you know, I mean, when people ask, you know, when did you start? How did you get onto the topic of death? This early memory seems to stand out. And I utterly failed in the rabbi's advice. And I think at that point, really started thinking a lot about death. Well, I don't know if the rabbi's advice was so good. Well. I don't think anybody should ever tell you don't think about anything. Absolutely.

I mean. Don't think about blank. It's the elephant in the room. Yeah. Don't think about the elephant. I just don't think it's ever good advice. Well, I've come around. Yeah.

Yeah. And again, I had a lovely rabbi, you know, and a lovely experience in the temple, even though after my bar mitzvah, I never looked back. How old were you when your grandfather died? I was about eight or so. Yeah, well, that's something you would say to an eight-year-old. But again, it's just, it's not how people, how people's brains work. Well, and it's not, you know, being fair to the reality we're all going to have to face. Right, for sure.

Death is just integrated and a part of life. And I think thinking about it and trying to figure it out is valuable. I think ultimately we've been given a bunch of crude tools to deal with an insanely complex issue. This finite life form that we find ourselves inhabiting. Our consciousness is trapped in this finite thing. And we've been given these very crude tools for navigating and for coping and for just the way we interact with each other about these very complex subjects. We get very simplistic, very just empty phrases that don't provide any real comfort.

Right. And that are, in some sense, traditions. They're handed down sort of as part of the lore on how you're supposed to deal with death. But for me, and what was clear as I was studying more and more in terms of what you were saying, is that that is what religion is all about. I think religion is very much a response to death. And religious life is sort of required if you're going to be human to deal with death. Now, what are the sources that give you the right tools?

Again, traditional religion has been the primary resource, you know, for people. And that's fading. And now people have all kinds of ideas about death and what happens after death and again, don't necessarily follow the so-called or traditional authorities who want to teach us about death. I had Richard Dawkins on the podcast once. There was a real weird moment where we were talking about death.

And he was saying that he thinks that when it's over, there's nothing. And then he sort of like semi-aggressively said, like, you don't think that? Like, what do you think? I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, I don't know, but I know that I've tripped balls and you haven't. You're the one who's scared of doing acid you've already had strokes and stuff buddy when are you going to dive into the pool

and I think he's brilliant and I've loved a lot of his takes on religion and I think in many ways he's been aggressive because of the pushback of his perspective as an atheist but I think that I think people that have had profound psychedelic experiences ways he's been aggressive because of the pushback of his perspective as an atheist. But I think that... I think people that have had profound psychedelic experiences are not that... They're not that confident because you didn't know that that could exist until you had it. And then once you've had it, you're like, well, I don't know what this is all about.

I think anybody who says, I know what this is all about i think anybody who says i know what this is all about when you die it's blank it's dark and that's it you shut off and it's over i'm like maybe right or maybe you come with me and i'll take you to a place and we're gonna do some stuff and you're gonna meet all kinds of gods right and it doesn't last that long. Like you got a couple hours? Yeah. Like we could change everything for you in a couple hours. Yeah. Right. It'll completely disrupt and challenge all of your assumptions that you hold so strongly to.

Evaporate them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's what gets me in trouble more than anything. But why does that get you in trouble? Well, I mean, when we talk about atheism, because I take this approach, again, much more to be provocative that there are no atheists. We're all religious. Really?

If you're willing to entertain my very broad understanding of religion and religious life, then I would say, yeah. Okay. So that's a very broad, because we're not talking about, when you're talking about religion in terms of like taking Xanax, you're not talking about a higher power, really. You're not talking about faith in a grand creator that has had some master plan for every single living thing

and they're all interconnected and the entire universe is all part of his master project. That's... Well, I don't think you need the creator to be religious. Right. Or some divine power don't think you need the creator to be religious right or some divine power i mean what do you need you need some access to transcendence you need some um way of understanding your own self and identity um you need to have a system of values that will guide you in through your life. Yeah. Um, a way of being, you need to have community in some form.

Um, so, you know, I'm, um, I'm more anthropological than theological is one, one way you might put it. So if you're talking about religion and Native American cultures where, you know, and no doubt, no, and there's no word for religion in any of those languages. So when you think about, well, what's religion pre-Columbian, you know, Native cultures? Well, it's what they do with the crops, you know, it's how they set up their sort of ritual ceremonies. It is their relationship to the weather. It's all kinds of things where it's not necessarily a higher power, but it is about seeing that there's more than just materialism. Yeah.

Or something like that. Is the problem the word because the word religion like we have like a very narrow definition for it it fits into our our society and our culture like religion oh yeah i know what that is that's that's you're a buddhist you're a muslim you're christian you're uh yeah that's a religion dude you got to take my class oh maybe you should come i want to zoom can i zoom you in can i zoom in for a guest lecture that would be so what am i that's religion dude you gotta take my class oh I don't have the time I don't have the time I wanna zoom can I zoom you in

can I zoom you in for a guest lecture that would be so cool what am I gonna say well come in on the psychedelics we do it this week but yeah no I mean

again I just I think that the word sucks yeah you know the religion as I like to say is an invention

it's a word that we have invented to label a lot of different kinds of behaviors. It's a very clunky word in a lot of ways. Absolutely. It's just like you say, oh, he's religious. Like, oh, got it. Right. Yeah. All of a sudden you think you know the person.

There was a guy that we've made fun of a bunch on the show who was a pastor to a lot of famous people. He was like the hip, young pastor. Who just got busted? Yeah, he just got busted. All right. Banging some chick. Yeah. And we made fun of him because I'm like, look, there's no way this guy's religious.

This is what I was saying. Because he was wearing these shorts that showed what I called his dick root. Like he wears these shorts that showed what i called his dick root like he wears these shorts that go way low which you just don't wear your shorts like that unless you want someone to think about your penis right like that's that's why you wear your shorts like that or maybe in the 70s it would be but i mean there's no reason to okay guys who wear their shorts that low right they're they're they're being overtly sexual to people that they don't even necessarily know. You're trying to – and you want everyone to look at your chiseled body.

There's a reason why monks dress in these very modest clothes that cover everything. They don't even want to think about their body. And that is a part of the religion of both celebrity and social media. Right. That this guy has got these traditional Christian ideas fused in with the religion of celebrity, in with the religion of social media. And then you're seeing that it doesn't really work. Because what's the reward for those behaviors those behaviors the reward is he wants to fuck like that guy wants people to that's that guy wants people to lust after him and uh it it wound up sabotaging him ultimately absolutely um i think yeah it's a it's now a morality story of some kind yes sale yes you know this is a kind of um celebrity fame yeah

kind of pursuing the trap goes wrong it's a trap because if you achieve like what do you what if you're you're lusting after this uh this attention and this sexual praise and you want people to lust after you you also want them to think of you as being someone who is more enlightened than everyone else, which is why you're willing to stand in front of them and give these emotional, profound sermons in the first place that resonates with all these lost young people. Right. Well, right. Well, right. And historically, there's a lot of overlap between sort of celebrity and religious preaching.

People like Billy Sunday or others that the religious leader becomes a celebrity and those lines get blurred. It all becomes entertainment. For celebrities, there's a need for that because they feel very lost and disconnected because they've achieved the thing that they've always desired and they still feel lost. Like everyone looks at certain celebrities and go, oh my God, you've made it.

Your life must be heaven. And they're depressed and all fucked up and we don't have any sympathy for them. There's no one who's going to be sympathetic to Justin Bieber with fucking $300 million in the bank and having sex with anybody who wants to. Like, fuck you for being depressed, you little piece of shit. You've been famous your whole life. But for him, it's probably very confusing because, first of all, particularly like the really young people who became famous while they were young. I had Miley Cyrus on, who I think is incredibly talented.

Brilliant. Brilliantly talented. Her voice is fantastic. I mean, so soulful. But she got famous when she was 12. I have a 12-year-old man. I can't even imagine. I can't imagine being the boss and filling arenas when you're 12.

It's madness. And no one survives it. I mean, maybe a few have gotten through it and they're sane, but most of them don't. And that's where celebrity preachers come in, where someone can harness your celebrity and it boosts them up, and they can also provide you maybe even a, maybe if it's disingenuous, but some sort of a structure that makes you feel like there's more that you can cling to something that's going to make sense of this all and that something is Jesus or Muhammad or whatever it is, whatever it is that you, you cling

to, whatever structure that you cling to, Buddha, whatever it is. Right. And they can, and that can be exploited, especially in those situations, I think, because of what you were saying, the sort of a gap or absence of, you know, oh God, I got here. Yep. And you know, is this all there is? I think with the children in particular, because it's not, oh God, I got there. It's I've never been normal. And it's, you know, is this all there is? I think with the children in particular, because it's not,

Oh God, I got there. It's, I've never been normal. Yeah. Well, that especially it's like having cement, but you've never added water.

Right. Like it's never, there's something missing. Yeah. Well, you didn't grow up. Right. And many of them don't,

they don't survive. You don't survive. And, and, you know, obviously drugs can be uh one way to it's the most common way to to deal yeah you know try to try to deal yeah i'm i'm well aware of a lot of people uh in in the whole hollywood show business world that grew up famous and almost

none of them survive yeah yeah rob low did though rob low got famous really young he's super normal he might be like one of the only ones i've ever met and i've hung out with him right and i've hung out also more importantly with him and his son who's also really normal really well adjusted but he also got clean and sober right early on right right right yeah so yeah i mean he made it he made made it. But there's very few. He's also very beautiful. Yeah. It's probably easy to be Rob Lowe, right?

I imagine. And he's got to be what? He's 40, 30? No, he's older than that. You believe he's older than me. I'm 53. I believe Rob's 55. Yeah.

Okay, well. Anyway. There you go. He's one of the few that got famous very young and has navigated it through with grace. But I think the ones that are children that grow up child stars, the ones on the Mickey Mouse show and that kind of shit. Yeah. Good luck. No.

I mean, that's brutal. So they find these celebrity preachers. This is often what happens. Yeah. They find gurus. They find celebrity preachers. Right. Right. Yeah. They find gurus, they find celebrity preachers. Right, right. Yeah. Someone who tries to make sense of things.

Who do we look for to put our faith in? And that's there too is a pretty common universal aspect of human life. We all got to have something to believe in. Those poor gurus, they fall into the trap too because now they can leech off the success of these famous people and become famous themselves. Right. And maybe they haven't really immunized themselves, inoculated themselves to the power of celebrity. Sure. It's a very intoxicating drug.

Like you got to understand how to avoid it. Right. And avoid the pitfalls of it. It's not easy. Yeah. to understand how to how to avoid it right and avoid the pitfalls of it it's not easy yeah well again that's that's the life that everyone wants i mean that's that that's part of the pressure i assume um for a lot of people is just you know the the american public the global audience is uh can be transfixed on on on you and also you know want what you have but i think we could really learn from those those preachers those preachers that only go after the like really like not not only

go after but uh attract celebrities like there's something to that weird sort of parasitic genre of you know of preacher right no i agree i think um it's ripe for study i'm not sure there's been any kinds of they should well i'm certainly i mean maybe you should write a book we've seen well i'm sticking with drugs man for now i don't want to go well celebrity's a drug intoxication yeah this is yeah sort of what we're after in some form celebrity i think there's a drug and there there's several drugs that are mixed together in sort of form celebrity i think there's a drug and so there there's several drugs that are mixed together in sort of a concoction there's a drug of celebrity which uh you know for sure is a drug and then there's also a drug at being the person who has the answers

definitely and there's something that people do when they convince other people that they have the answers that it elevates their mood and their perspective there's like some weird guru drug yeah so there's the guru drug and then there's a celebrity drug we're identifying a whole nexus of drug and with that guy it was the sex drug because he's a beautiful man he's a handsome tall ripped shredded preacher guy right right there's a lot of drugs going on there well and i wonder how extensive it all was extensive well in terms of his you know whatever kinds of activities he was engaged in that got him in all this trouble and i think with people like this is where it's i'm gonna give a simplistic perspective. I think he could have benefited from real drugs.

So I think a person who's involved in those three weird drugs, they really could have benefited from psychedelics. Because psychedelics would have let you say, hey, hey, hey, hey. Do you see what you're doing? Because I see what you're doing. The psychedelics would have said, I know what you're doing. You're pretending. You're pretending to be profound. You're pretending to You're pretending. You're pretending to be profound.

You're pretending to be pious. You're pretending to be enlightened. You're pretending to be above it all, but you're not. You're just one of us. And that can be pretty destabilizing for someone like that, but also transformative. That's where there's real benefit in those destabilizing. I think so too.

Well, I tell people I like getting paranoid from pot. It's one of my favorite parts. Because when it's over, I feel good. It's like a near-death experience that you always survive. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. You're okay. But also there's a lesson in it.

That fear comes with a lesson. And that insecurity comes with a lesson and that insecurity comes with a lesson. And I think part of the lesson is appreciate the moment of life. Appreciate life. Appreciate this. And when you're all fucked up on pot and you're like, oh, everything's crazy. Like when it's over, you can like, you relax and you can appreciate things in a different way. Right.

You relax and you can appreciate things in a different way. Right. Well, and that's having that new awareness can be rejuvenating. It's also a hypersensitivity, right? Yeah. You mean an appreciation for how things are or a sense of security of some kind. The paranoia itself is a hypersensitivity of the reality of your finite existence. Back to death. Yeah. Because that's, that's really, we, we were living life like it. I mean, this is right.

Here's another religion, right? The religion of materialism. Yes. It's the most ridiculous one. And this is like the Bible telling you not to worship false idols. Part of that is this worship of a thing, of an object, of things that you're trying to acquire that are difficult to acquire, but then once you get them, you just want to acquire the next one. Right. Well, that's the beauty of consumerism.

Right. There's no object where you're like, i just get this one purse i'm gonna be all settled in it's gonna be i'm gonna feel so good i'm gonna be calm and normal right nope need more yeah well yeah i'm uh you know there too as a scholar not judgmental you know materialism is a religion and it's you know it's got's got some heft and validity in terms of how people orient themselves in the world. But again, isn't it sort of hijacking the same sort of human reward systems in that it's difficult to acquire? Like, say, if you want a Mercedes, like a new Mercedes coupe, they're hard to get. You got to have a lot of money to get one of them AMG Mercedes coupes.

Those are beautiful and engineered, and they come from Germany, and they sound great. God, you have to have a lot of money to get that. It's hard. You see one drive down the street, that guy got one. Where'd he get it? Right, right. How did he get that?

I want to be like that. I want to be that guy. He's a baller. It's going to make my life better. He's got a gold watch too. I'm on a gold watch. Why are we striving after all these things? I mean, that's where you can get philosophical.

And that's highlighted by social media as well, right? Because people will pose in front of their beautiful Mercedes with their gold watch. Like, look at me. Look at me balling out of control over here. Don't you wish you were like me yeah you know they have yeah projection yeah it's all image and it's really responsible for a lot of depression too exactly yeah no absolutely that's what that's what they're finding you know in terms of how people more engaged and immersed in their social

media just lose themselves. Especially young kids. They think they're going to be able to find themselves or at least kind of attempt to project a certain image of the self that they would like to be. And just living by that, I think, is debilitating in terms of a person's sense of ego confidence who they are you know in real life do you think that there's a religion or not not a religion but um a framework or a structure that maybe someone could develop in order to successfully, like classes in the pitfalls of all of these things that we're talking about,

materialism, social media, that there's maybe a religion that can be developed to deal with the modern time. The modern times pitfalls of the problems and trials and tribulations that we're dealing with today, They're not worse than famine. I mean, I'm in the middle of, how do you say his name? Noah Yuval Harari. How do you say his name? You know the guy who wrote Sapiens?

Yuval Noah Harari. Homo Deus is this book that I'm in the middle of now. And it's stunning he starts the book off with all of these examples of famine plague and famine where the the vast majority of cultures have experienced one of those two things plague or famine or both plague and famine throughout history and it's talking about how many decades they went on where people starved to death one of those two things, plague or famine, or both plague and famine, throughout history. And it's talking about how many decades they went on where people starved to death, and how many times in history people lost 30% of the population, 20% of the population to starvation. I mean, it's madness, the things that people had to deal with today.

So in terms of what we have to, our trials and tribulations, our biology survives far easier today. But maybe our consciousness is just as vulnerable now as it's ever been before, if not more. But the problems aren't as big, but we think they are because they're the only problems we know. Right, right. Yeah, and consciousness is just trying to, you know,

understand its surrounding in some way. And the surroundings are pretty complex. You know, it's not just a matter of food for survival or something. Or a shelter. They're weird problems. Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, what we think are real problems, but are inconveniences or some difficulties,

and obviously lots of serious problems but i mean i think you know um we don't have the tools the intellectual religious spiritual mental tools and in terms of dealing with all of all of these so-called problems that surround us you You know what? Yeah. Go, please. Well, I was just thinking, but, you know, we're in the middle of this pandemic and whatever,

we're getting close to 300,000 dead. And that has the feel, I mean, you know, of some kind of mass death event as well. And how that will affect our consciousness as the deaths continue will be interesting. Have more people died from cigarettes during this pandemic than have died from COVID? That I don't know. Well, don't like a half million people die every year from cigarettes? And aren't we at about eight

months in? We're about eight months in. Yeah. So wouldn't that mean we're probably neck and neck with cigarettes well i mean there are a lot of different causes of death you know you can point to this this seems to be again above a of a different kind of order for certainly because it's non-voluntary right right it's not of your own decision to smoke something that has been clearly labeled a carcinogen right and it's mysterious. We're not sure what the virus is or how it's going. But again,

in terms of going off what you were saying, I'm just sort of wondering how consciousness, how our collective consciousness is going to be dealing with our ideas about death and sort of questions around

social responses in the face of this kind of event. Yeah, well, this is an issue that we haven't overcome before. It's a new thing. It's novel. One of the weird things about people is it doesn't help to tell people that, weird things about people is they it doesn't help to tell people that well compared to other times and other generations we have it easy because as hard as you have it today the worst that happens to you today is still the worst that happens to you and that's all that we understand right we don't really understand like i'm telling people about famine like when i was explaining the harari book no one does that's not going no one is going oh my god now i get it now

i'm gonna not think about social media and i'm gonna be happy that i can just go to in and out and get a burger they're not gonna think that way no one that's not that has worked on zero people from me saying that to these people hearing it no one right has had a light bulb go off like of course there's no famine now i feel much better right thank you no it doesn't work that way right it doesn't work people only understand what's the worst thing to happen to them right that's why spoiled people scream and yell over nothing like oh my god you're so spoiled but we're looking at the wrong way that's just the worst thing that's ever happened to them right you know and that's what

the only thing they know and yes how do you break people out of that very insular understanding of the difficulties of life in the 21st century yeah you know what it's like when kids are young and they think it's the end of the world like one of of my daughters is 10, the other one's 12. The 12-year-old ate a couple of pieces of the 10-year-old's Halloween candy. And oh my God, was there chaos in my house yesterday. Oh boy, yeah. Chaos and screaming. My 10-year-old, she doesn't take any bullshit.

She gets mad and she starts screaming. I'm like, Jesus Christ, it's candy. It's just candy. And it takes a while and i don't think they really ever understand how good they have it it's it's hard for people if that's the worst thing that's happening yeah they think it's the worst thing they think it's like a real bad thing right the perspective is so difficult to achieve like to achieve like and like to lift above and look at it from yeah yeah exactly and a parent isn't necessarily going to help barely i mean maybe in the long run that can

that can turn out but yeah i mean it's talk to them and then let them blow off steam but that's no well look that's kids yeah right and and as i was you know, when they start transitioning into adulthood, you know, that's when things really come to the fore and start thinking about who they are and how they are. Yeah. And, you know, the difficulties get greater and weirder. And then with time, those seem minuscule. Like I remember when I was 18, my girlfriend broke up with me. I thought it was the end of the world. I couldn't believe it.

Oh, my God. I've never been so sad, so depressed. You know, and then like a couple years later, I'm like, thank God. She's so crazy. Like what was I thinking? Like I was in the middle of this terrible relationship and I didn't even understand it. Right. Well, and it sort of goes back to something you said earlier about, you know, how we don't

know how to deal with our own struggles or difficulties. Yes. You know, we just don't know how to go to the other side. Right. And even then, you know, it's where do you turn for community or for sort of buffering of support. And, and that's, I think, hard for, I think, especially a lot of younger people.

Yes. And people coming of age into adulthood. Well, that's why I try to preach the religion of physical struggle because I think the one thing that's helped me through all sorts of things is to make my physical workouts so much more difficult than anything else I'll have to deal with in my life. Okay.

So it's so hard to do and so fucking exhausting, and I don't want to do it. And then when it's over, other things are just like, whatever. Because I make my own bullshit is basically what I do. Right. In order to not get spoiled by life. And I think there's a real lesson to learn in there, and I've learned it from other people. It's not like something I figured out on my own, but I've

pieced it together in a way that works for me. And I think that whether it's yoga or even mental things, whether it's playing chess or meditation or something, it's more difficult than regular difficulties. Right. Right. I was going to follow up. You said, you know, talk about the religion of exercising and working out. And for me, I would say my religion is learning, you know, and knowledge and just trying, you know, to intellectually kind of absorb as much as I can. And that's not like working out. But it is. It's more on the mental stuff that you're talking about where it's even the darkest of times.

I've got to sort of go back to the books and try to learn as much as i can on on whatever topic we're talking about but again it's a it's you're doing something difficult and i think like there's uh there was a study they did on chess players and they were trying to figure out why chess players lose so much weight during these big tournaments and they realize that they're burning thousands and thousands of calories a day playing chess at a very high level right and like these guys would lose tremendous amount of weight yeah i think i wonder how that works yeah a crazy number of calories i forget what the exact number was um maybe jamie could find the study but they were trying to figure out what was happening to these chess players and then they realized like oh

when they're playing at this incredible high-level world championship caliber, their brains are flying. Here, 6,000 calories. Robert Sapolsky, who's brilliant. So you're just sitting there. But you're not. Your brain is firing up at a million fucking RPMs. Robert Sapolsky, who I love, who studies stress and primates at Stanford, says a chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories a day while playing in a tournament. Three times what an average person consumes in a day.

That's amazing. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. But it makes sense. Right? When the brain is going. Oh, my God.

When you're thinking. Yeah. When you're so focused. Well, they're playing at multiple levels. They're playing several different games, right? Because they're not just playing what's in front of them. They're playing, if I do this, he does that. But if I do this, he does this.

If I do that, this happens. And then that happens. Then this happens. Or that happens. If that happens, this happens. So their brain is going. And there are calories in yeah and how the body is functioning well that's a weird thing about um doing podcasts

is like sometimes at the end of the day i'm fucking exhausted i'm like i haven't done anything i've just been sitting talking so goddamn easy look what's wrong with me there's coal miners out there busting their ass working really hard that's that's what i always remind myself to yeah sitting teaching or reading a book and working but i think these intellectual pursuits yeah i think there's more struggle than we think yeah i mean i'm not gonna argue has to be otherwise everybody would do it uh i think there are lots of factors in terms of why people go on um into graduate school and continue in the life of learning yeah but it's it's a it's a weird um feeling like that i've joked but also been serious that that's my religion you know what religion are you well learning you know that's where i get my religious meaning is it feels like um teaching sexuality

over the last 10 years would have gotten increasingly more minefield like definitely definitely i mean a lot of topics have i would say um over the last 10 years. Sexuality for sure, but I do, I mean, I get off getting into the topic and especially in this kind of, with this kind of purpose, you know, how can I how can I blow students' minds around the topic? And I'm, you know, you have to be fully aware of the various sensitivities that might be out there with students. And I'm... How do you address those, though? I mean, it's just, you know, I'm going to be covering some very touchy topics.

And if you aren't able to deal with that, you shouldn't be in the class. Like what seems to be the most touchy? Or what's an example of a particularly touchy subject um well in the death for for sure the death class would be suicide you know that's just one that i've have really tiptoed around um until recently tiptoed also tiptoe because i don't want to talk about suicide it's uh really yeah it's kind of weird but i've had this, um, aversion to having that really be a topic in my class until, until recently. And that's, um, I think

that had a lot to, you know, to do with a feeling of, um, I'm not, uh, fully, um, prepared or trained to deal with students who were really struggling with suicide. And I would feel that would open that up. But I've changed in the last couple of years. It's like, you know, there are too many suicides. The numbers have gone up. And, you know, I mean, I think it's an important topic. That's one thing that's ramped up in a huge way during this pandemic. I just read that.

Yeah, it's terrifying. Yeah, and it's an underreported. Suicide. I have a buddy that was talkingported. Suicide. Yeah. I have a buddy that was talking to a sheriff in L.A. and he was saying that they used to get one suicide a week and now they're often dealing with five a day. That's crazy.

It's crazy. I mean, that's something. And it's not something that people point to as being a side effect of the pandemic. I mean, they maybe give it a cursory right sort of they talk about it very very rarely but it's i think it's a huge issue right right despair and also this feeling that a lot of people have there's no way out of this i think that's getting you know financially yeah losing their businesses, losing their homes, losing their,

their ability to feed themselves. Yeah. No, I mean, this is unprecedented for so many people where they find the strength, you know, to carry on and deal with it is not so easy. So how did you prepare differently for a subject that you've had such a difficulty in, in describing and, and, and teaching before it was suicide? What do you mean? Did you, when you decided to start talking about it, how much time did you spend sitting down by yourself thinking, okay, how do I do this? Quite a bit of time, I think, with that topic and really trying to, again, I want to position myself so I'm not the school counselor and I'm not the rabbi or the preacher and I'm not the parent.

So it's carving out this intellectual space of what is the history of suicide? What are the kind of motivating factors and forces and patterns of suicide and so on. And then I really try to bring in popular culture, you know, songs that express ideas about suicide or thinking about suicides of celebrities. So, you know, I try to find a way to put those pieces together in a way that's intellectually stimulating, that doesn't just kind of work on the psychological level, if you can think about that as a distinction. The psychological level. There's so many different reasons. Right. Yeah. I mean, silly as it sounds, I mean, my goal is to sort of depersonalize. I try to keep personal

experiences and feelings out of the class. That doesn't sound silly at all. No, it's, it's hard to do, obviously. Um, and, and, and it's, they do creep in and find expression, but still it's with these topics, that's, that's the game plan. Yeah. Um, how long have you been doing the suicide discussions? Well, it's really past few years as I've seen these. And as I've heard from students who, I mean, this is really a key reason. It's just the number of students who came into my office telling me about someone they knew who committed suicide. I mean, it was just, again, like three or four years ago when I would have more and more students just talking about it. And again, the death class opens up that space where they can feel they can come in and want to talk about it. Were you worried about not doing it justice? Were you worried about pushback?

What was the fear of not discussing this previously that there were students who might be suicidal and then you might somehow or another trigger it wow well i mean again it may be an overblown fear but it's a responsible fear i mean i think you're being very responsible thinking that way it's just you know for so long i just i knew it was the topic i intentionally kind went, I want to kind of go there. But as I said, it's changed just because the dynamics have changed with, I think, young people and suicide. Yeah. How has that evolved over the few years that you've been teaching it?

I think I've grown more comfortable with it, mostly as an important element of the class. And I can see students being willing to engage in the topic, I think, in ways that I imagine would not have been similar earlier. I like to go after the taboo topics where I know kind of students are already considering and reflecting on them even though they don't have an outlet for really intellectual kind of consideration, really removing themselves from whatever they, you know, personally think about suicide or homosexuality or whatever, and allow them to kind of, again, learn history, learn about different cultures.

And I try to provoke them as much as I can to get them to really think outside the box, but also to sort of dig in to their own abilities to figure some things out. When you're teaching a subject like that, the first day, when you've been thinking about doing it for so long but not wanting to trigger people, the first day you did it, that had to be a very unique kind of class for you. Well, it was.

I mean, I think just the hesitancy from before and then bringing it up. This class has 200 to 300 students, so it's not like me and 12 people. You know, it's a very, part of that setting forces me to kind of think about what, oops, let's make, okay, forces me to think about delivery, you know, because it's not going to be so interactive. And so that, you know, when I's not going to be so interactive. And, and, and so that,

you know, when I really went in to the class with that topic, I felt, um, like I was able to really convey, um, the points I wanted to get across and get them to, um, which is the most important thing, even in a class that size is to feel like they could chill and kind of relax and talk about the topic without feeling, you know, pressures from anyone or feeling anything's taboo and can't be said. Do you get questions from students during your lectures on this? Well, generally, yeah. I mean... You to? Yeah, absolutely. What's a common question that they have when it comes to suicide? I don't know. There aren't a lot of common questions. I think students have asked a variety of different things that often have to do with

what does Christianity say about suicide? What does, you know, what did the religion say about suicide? I guess what I'm getting at is, do they turn to you for help? No. What can I do? What should someone do if someone knows a friend who's suicidal? I give them the resources where people who are trained can really help them with those kinds of more practical, intimate concerns. I play the role up of a professor who doesn't want to get personal, doesn't want to hear about personal experience, whether it's about drugs or grieving or you know sexual experiences yeah the sexual experience one you were saying also that

you have to be very sensitive to uh the feelings of the people in your class your students like how do you like what what are the particularly um difficult subjects to explore when it comes to well like sexuality and popular culture and music where you know all kinds of graphic um languages used like that wap song yeah do you teach that no i haven't you should teach that well maybe i'm teaching this class in the fall play that song and teach it hey Hey, I try to go there. But again, some students are like, you know, going to be, that's insulting or this is terrible. You know, I mean, again, it's data. It's not a frame.

But it's data. Data. You know, if you want to take the study of religion seriously, you're going to be encountering things that make you uncomfortable. Yes. You're going to be encountering things that make you uncomfortable. Yes. And if you're going to discuss sexuality, if you're particularly prudish or you have a very difficult time discussing the way various people go about it. Right.

Or the varieties, whether we're talking about polygamy or orgies or whatever. It's out there and all kinds of things. Well, there's, other than religion, that's probably the most charged subject that you could discuss with people today. Absolutely. People have some really steadfast ideas about what's right and what's wrong. And when it comes to sexuality, it seems like at least one place where we're gaining or we're showing some evolution or showing progress is with the acceptance of homosexuality.

Homosexuality seems to be way less taboo now than any other time in my life. People are becoming much more comfortable with it. Like people are becoming much more comfortable with it. There's like universally in this country at least, there's very little resistance to gay marriage, very little resistance to gay unions or gay rights. That's all changed. Yeah, it's all changed.

When I was a kid, it was, I mean, you were a kid the same time I was a kid. But when we were young, I remember I lived in San Francisco from the time I was seven until I was 11. So I was around a lot of gay people and my next door neighbors. My aunt used to get naked. They would smoke pot and they would play the bongos with this gay couple that lived next door. It was hilarious. I was just around it. It was normal.

And then we moved from there to Gainesville, Florida which is really like the universe throwing me a curveball and I had this friend and his dad was really mad that gay people

were getting married and he threw the newspaper down on the table and was like I can't fucking believe this and I was like what is he so upset about I don't understand it

and he was mad that gay people were going to be allowed to get married. Yeah. And I remember thinking, wow, what a dummy. And I was 11. I was like,

here's this grown man, 30 years old, freaking out about some stupid shit. Right. Like, I didn't understand. It didn't make sense to me. Like,

it was normal to me. But I think those people are really rare now. People like him, they're, they're much more rare than they were when I was alive. Absolutely. Yeah. No, there's been a big, huge sea change in attitudes.

Yeah. And that's, you know, led to a lot of conflict and aspects of the culture wars. But still, I would agree, you know, absolutely. Most people have come around on that. Do you discuss that kind of stuff? Like the evolution of our ideas about sexuality? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I, I try to as a part of it, but for me, sexuality is, you know, it's not just sex, it's gender and family and reproduction and religion. So it's a,

it's a broad gender. It's a broad category. Absolutely. But in America, especially when you start, when you move outside of, you know, the traditional man and woman having sex in the missionary position. You go to death. You go to hell. For reproduction. As soon as you move outside of that. You're going to hell. Going straight to hell. That's right. So, you know, that is the dominant ideal as, you know, as gone by the wayside.

I mean, it is certainly the ideal for many, but sexuality in America today is fast and furious. Right. But if you think that that's the ideal, then you're a freak all of a sudden. Right. Well, I mean, surely that's part of, yeah, these shifts in attitudes. That's what's interesting to me. Who's the authority to tell us what is right or wrong. For sure. And then also the hypocrites. Like there's so many people that we have looked at as these religious leaders. And it turns out, oh, these guys are freaks.

They're perverted. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I've read, I don't know where the study is, but, you know, viewing pornography is kind of, you know, the highest in the Bible. Oh, yeah. So, again, it's like. Makes sense.

Well. Well, if you know. What's, you know, again, that discrepancy is like, well, what's really sacred to you? Right. You know, Jesus on sunday or you know what you're doing or gangbang yeah right i mean whatever porn job you're going to yeah so you know people like to project and say who they are and they have other yes they like to project yeah that's a good way of putting it they do do like to, they like to pretend, make believe. Um, do you discuss the type of pornography that people view and how that has sort of changed?

Um, well, I mean, I write about pornography in that book, sacred matters. I have a chapter on sexuality and I write about, um, deep throat.

Um, and you just swallow. Yeah. Sound effects. Sound effects. And I write about Deep Throat. Did you just swallow? Yeah. Sound effects. Sound effects in this show. Am I really going to say that? Deep Throat. Oh, yeah.

Linda Loveless and Harry Reams and their story is, again, a morality tale. We want to talk about sexuality. We're going to talk about religion. Didn't Harry Reams become a politician afterwards? Well, as I remember, he became a realtor. He might have. Oh, that's right. Reams realtor or something.

And became very successful as a realtor, right? Yeah, in Los Angeles, right? Yeah. Well, you know, so I mean, I obviously want to include, you have to include that, you know. Non-reproductive forms of pleasure and sexual activity is not disconnected from religious pursuits. Deep Throat was a movie that played in movie theaters

for people that don't know. And people went to see that movie and they waited in line like couples would go, dressed normal, not wearing raincoats, like regular people in fact Johnny Carson was in line waiting to see Deep Throat and they interviewed him and talked to him about it because it was it was a movie that was a movie it was it wasn't just a stag film and the whole idea was that back then pornography in terms of like that's what they would call them stag films they'd be these films they would play because people didn't have access

to uh a movie projector for the most part it's a very rare thing to have in your home so for people like to play those things they'd have to get together with a bunch of guys at a party like when a guy was about to get married look at this that's what you're gonna do we're gonna watch people fuck right and those films if you've ever seen them they're really weird like the films from the beginning of the 20th century yeah very strange no the history of pornography is fascinating and there's uh i remember watching this thing on deep throat and then i just remember very clearly johnny carson getting interviewed talking about... I think I remember that.

Yeah. Do you know what I'm talking about, Jamie? I typed in Johnny Carson, and I found an article that says Ed McMahon, his sidekick, was such a fan of the movie, he showed up with six friends and a case of beer. That's not fake news. That's real news, I am sure. I'm sure that's true.

I'm sure that's true. Frank Sinatra was one of the early audience members, along with Vice President Spiro Agnew, Warren Beatty, Truman Capote, Shirley MacLaine, Nora Ephron, I don't know who that is, Bob Woodward, wow, Woodward and Bernstein, and Sammy Davis Jr., who grew so enamored of Linda Lovelace that within the year, he and his wife would be having group sex with her and her husband holy shit sammy i did mention sammy got crazy sammy was very wow it was the was the longest 62 minutes that millions of people would ever sit through in retrospect the most inspired decision damiano i guess the person who made it made was to rename the movie

deep throat nothing else could possibly explain its success wow what was the person who made it, made was to rename the movie Deep Throat. Nothing else could possibly explain its success. Wow, what was the original name for it? Oh, gosh, wow. Lovelace was interviewed by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Wow. Further stoking the interest of socialite students, swingers, and the curious. See, that's what's interesting. It's like people didn't think of pornography

as being something that was awful that you should hide. Right. It seems to me that it's discussed far less now that it's much more accessible. It's like people almost don't want to talk about it in terms of like average day-to-day conversation. Yeah. Right. Because it's so pervasive.

It's everywhere. Yeah. Well, it's not just pervasive. It's also, it's too accessible. Yes. You don't, it's still, you could just is everywhere. Yeah, it's- well, it's not just pervasive. It's also- it's too accessible. Yes. You don't- it's- it's still- you could just- Yeah. Yeah.

It's not taboo like it once was. Right. It's weird. It's- it's- and I've done research. And one of the things I've noticed is there's a lot of stepmother porn lately. That's basically all you get. What is that about? I don't know, man.

But if you go to YouPorn, porn like a lot of it's stepmom stuff okay it's like my hot stepmom you know dad's out of town that kind of stuff weird well i will say i hope my colleague doesn't mind me calling her out but uh at university don't say her name okay university california santa barbara um in the film studies department they have a class on pornography or they did about stepmoms well not that i don't know if that topic made it in Santa Barbara. In the film studies department, they have a class on pornography. Or they did. About stepmoms? I don't know if that topic made it in, but as a genre of film,

you can teach about it. Listen, it should be a genre of study because it is a part of human life. It's a weird part of human life that is not very discussed. And people get super nervous. Well, and people love it.

I mean, billions of dollars. Not really anymore. I don't think they make much money anymore. It's weird. I don't know the economics. But in terms of the impact, though, or in terms of the prevalence of it it's incredibly prevalent i think there's something bananas like right 20 plus percent of all internet traffic is pornography which is insanity it's an insane it's insanely high number right yet the amount it's discussed in polite company

is like less than one percent right it's very very rarely discussed if not dismissed as a joke right right and there's something that in itself speaks volumes yes that's the weird part about it here it goes 35 of all internet downloads are related to pornography how can i mean that is amazing is that the highest percentage of any topic, I wonder? I don't know. It must be. It must be. Listen, this is what's hilarious. About 200,000 Americans are classified as porn addicts.

There we go. There's probably another 100 million that are full of shit. Right. That's right. 200,000. Get the fuck out of here. That's such a low number. This is a very low number also. 37 pornographic videos are created in the...

Every day. Every minute or hour, probably. They've never been to the San Fernando Valley. Where you grew up. That's right. Yeah. That was the center of it all. Well, they passed some sort of wacky rule a few years back where they had to wear condoms in the porn.

In California. Yeah. And then people are like, well, we're moving out of California. And they started doing it other places. Nobody wants to watch people being safe. Fuck out of here being safe. I want you to have sex with your stepmom. I don't want you to do anything safe.

I want the dad to be pulling into the driveway when you climax that's that's what everybody wants they want naughtiness yes but that's um it's weird that when it's so prevalent it's also so rarely discussed and just as a topic of a class like that would be a very interesting thing to discuss just in terms of human nature and psychology sure and history yeah i'm thinking about that yeah um yeah the other thing if we're really going to be talking about this the other understudy topic that's starting to get more study is the orgasm right and thinking about mystical experiences or certain kinds of um egodissolving aspects of human life. It's in there, and I teach about that as well, you know, in both the death class and the sexuality class, right?

Do you discuss tantric? Well, some. My training is in American religious history, but in these courses, I do try to very superficially, you know, talk about different religious cultures and certainly tantric yeah that's a weird one when it comes to the orgasm right because they're like trying to internally orgasm yes is that real well i don't know i have no idea seems like but some guru shit to me yeah well, well, and even in American history, there have been interesting attempts at different kinds of sexual cultures,

you know, the Oneida community. Oh, yeah. John Humphrey Noyes, you know, didn't want anyone to orgasm. You know, you want to hold it in, but you have sex with whoever you want. No marriage. That never lasts. Those guys all fall apart. The community did fall apart. How about this-

The community did fall apart. This sex cult, the Nex- How do you say it? NXIVM? Yes. I have not been following it. I haven't either. I haven't either, but I keep making a mental note to eventually-

There's a documentary apparently. There's a documentary series or something on it. A Hulu thing or something. But it's apparently pretty fascinating. Yeah. Because it involved like legitimate celebrities. Right. Like people on television shows and stuff.

Getting branded or something. Yeah, you're right. It's like a documentary show on stars. Stars. Four or five episodes. Yeah. That's a weird one, right? Right.

Well, I mean, most sex cults are. I mean, most sex cults are that kind of focus on sex as a part of religious trust and religious ritual. What is the law against that? How are they arresting people? What do the people do? Do you know, Jamie? People are going to jail for this, the sex cult, right? The thing that sticks out in my head

is I know people are getting branded. Right. I know that was like the next thing. There's also another show called The Vow that has some,

I think it's the same topic that's on HBO. Okay. I don't know if that's direct documentary or like a. I'd like to find out what they're going to jail for.

I'll look it up. Because people are going to jail. Yeah, well, that's right. Right. Right, right. I wonder what they did where they said, all right, this is where you cross the line.

Right. You can't just... Did you see Wild Wild Country? Is that the documentary? That's the documentary on the people that lived in Oregon. Going back to Oregon again. Right, right. Fucking crazy Oregon.

Sex trafficking. We're all going to Oregon. Sex trafficking. Conspiracy. Conspiracy to commit forced labor. Forced labor. Who knows what, you know. It sounds like they didn't have good enough release forms.

Yeah, well, I'll see about putting it on the syllabus. Yeah, I'm interested. Some things, yeah, you don't need to go. But wild, wild country. Whoops, almost fell. Donkey ass. Got it. Bottle. this bottle does not want to stay up um wild wild country is the documentary on uh osho yeah that uh the guru that the uh indian guy that had the cult up in right with the girl shilo poisoned a bunch of people right that is an amazing netflix documentary

yeah yeah i've seen some of it oh my god yeah but it's one that i always hear about and you know again it's a really well done but also revealing what is now we're seeing a fairly common story it's so funny because my friend todd saw the first episode and uh he's like it looks like so much fun like at the beginning it looks so great and he's Like at the beginning, it looks so great. And he's right. In the beginning, it did look so great. But it combined both these things we're talking about,

combined sexuality and religion. It's like their religion was of love and of peacefulness and sex and harmony. And it all went terribly wrong, like they always do. Like they often do. Always. What cult has nailed it? What cult has never gone wrong, figured out all the traps and pitfalls, and made it to the finish line?

None. Zero. Well, I think that I would agree with that statement as a general statement. Yeah. It seems weird, though, that someone can't do it right. Yeah. Well, I think that's maybe built into religion. You know, it's just no way to perfect it.

Well, at least religion has figured out a way to achieve tax-exempt status and a long, illustrious history of success. Right. Yeah. Well, that's the beauty of the country. Yeah. Freedom of religion. Yeah.

Supposedly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But once you get to a point where you're doing the wild, wild country type stuff. Right. It's not. Yeah.

It's no longer. Yeah. So. Do you discuss those kind of things in your classes? Sex cults? Some, you know, that are a part of the longer history. So it was Mormonism, you know, as an early cult, you know, kind of marginalized community had a very different understanding of sexuality and marriage. Well, it was started by a wacky 14-year-old.

It was completely full of shit i won't exactly characterize him that way he was a little con man anyway so so yeah you know i try to cover a lot of bases on the varieties of ways that sexuality gets you know bound up in religious life yeah mormonism is particularly unusual, right? In that their interest in polygamy led them to leave the country. Yeah, at the time. Yeah. They were heading west.

Well, they're still there. No, in Mexico. Oh, that, yeah. Yeah. The continuing that, yes. Well, that's, you know, that whole Mitt Romney's family story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're all down there still. Yeah. Mitt's, you know, that whole Mitt Romney's family story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're all down there still.

Yeah. Mitt Romney's dad was actually born in Mexico. That's why he couldn't be president of the United States. Mitt Romney's dad could not be president of the United States because he was born in Mexico. Right, right, right. Yeah, they lived in this compound. This is the compound, the same kind of compound that was originally in the news because they had been attacked by the cartel and women and children had been murdered.

Okay, yes. I remember that. Those were, I mean, they're not really expats because they've been there so many generations that they're now Mexican citizens, but they're living in these compounds, these fortified compounds in Mexico. And they originally went there so that they could practice polygamy.

Yeah. Right. When it was outlawed here, of course. Well, not only that, when there was no difference really between living in the United States and Mexico, you know, 1812, the difference between the United States and Mexico was not that big a deal. Well, right. Just take your horse, you go over there.

Right. Yeah. And you bring your eight wives. Right. Yeah, exactly. There's a way out and a way in. We'll talk about a subject that's filled with pitfalls. Like that subject's probably particularly different. The subject of polygamy is a particularly touchy one. And almost always

is a lot of wives. Very rarely is one woman who gets the pleasure of 10 husbands right right right there are some uh you know i think examples of that but yeah the polygamy well i mean polygamy is for you know um husbands with multiple wives right have you ever heard of the other way well no i mean not in polygamy but there i believe there's another term i bet there's a few gals that could pull that off. Like Jennifer Lopez. Yeah, I imagine. But yeah, I mean, so it's part of the story and it is a little bit. Here it is.

Polyandry, the form of polygamy in which a woman takes two or more husbands at the same time. For example, fraternal polyandry is practiced among the Tibetans in Nepal, parts of China, and parts of northern India in which two or more brothers are married to the same wife, with the wife having equal sexual access to them. Interesting.

So. Five places where women have more than one husband. There you go. All right. There you go. So, I mean, yeah. Mm-hmm. Look at that photo, though.

Go to that photo. Look. The woman's looking straight ahead like, mm-hmm, and both guys looking off to the side like, yeah. Mm-hmm. Look at that photo, though. Go to that photo. Look. The woman's looking straight ahead like, mm-hmm. And both guys looking off to the side like, shit. Right. I can't believe they're taking my picture here. But she's got her hand on both of their knees. She's like, I own these two motherfuckers.

Right. But they're all looking off in the distance like, whew, whew. Oh, OK. So there's one lady with four husbands. Hey. Hey, hey. Look at that. That lady's balling out of control. Where is she? She's dead. That's an old-ass husbands. Hey. Hey, hey. Look at that. That lady's balling out of control.

Where is she? She's dead. That's an old ass picture. That's a picture from the 1800s. Look at that picture. That was like one of them, those standstill. You know?

One of those pictures. Look at that. Whoa. What is that? That's like from some Norman Rockwell shit. Yesterladies. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No pun intended.esterladies. Okay, yeah.

Yeah. No pun intended. Google goes deep. Uh-oh. Anyway. Listen, man, I've really enjoyed talking to you. It's a fascinating series of subjects

we brought up here. Loved it. So you're in the middle of writing a book right now. Yes. What is the book? It's on religion and drugs. Do you have a title for it?

Not yet. No? I'm playing around with some things. But if people want to read your past work, what can they read? Well, they can read any of the books. They can go to my website, garyladerman.com, and you'll see the books. One I mentioned a couple times called Sacred Matters. And then this new book is on death and it's called um as i said

don't think about death a memoir on mortality um you can look me up there'll be other things um that i've written that are on the web but do you have social media yeah what do you have well i'm uh play around on facebook and twitter and um do you have an instagram instagram yeah okay what is it at g people. Gary Laderman. And same as Twitter. Gary Laderman. Yes. Twitter as well.

Okay. All right. Facebook. And, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm around.

Well, thank you, Gary. I really, I really enjoyed talking to you, man. Thank you so much, Joe.

It was really fun. Yeah. I had a great time. I appreciate it. Beautiful. All right. Thanks. Bye everybody.

Bye. Thank you.