The Joe Rogan Experience - #2477 - Rick Perry & W. Bryan Hubbard

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

Rick Perry is the former Governor of Texas and former U.S. Secretary of Energy. W. Bryan Hubbard is the Chief Executive Officer of Americans for Ibogaine, a public policy education and advocacy organization working to medicalize ibogaine in the United States.www.americansforibogaine.org/joe Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. This video is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit https://BetterHelp.com/JRE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast, checking out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Gentlemen, great to see. Yeah, put them on, slap him on. What's happening? Good to see you, gentlemen again. Taking off.

One more time. Yeah, one more time. Yeah. So what is the latest? Give me the latest. Where are we at? What did you take it, Brian? You just kind of...

You are the... you're the most current on where we are, what's going on. Man, there has been a lot of stuff happened in the 15 months since we were here. I mean, like, stunning amount of stuff. So let's not waste any time. Tell them where we're at. All right. Well, the last time we came to visit with you, I believe, was on December the 27th of 2024.

We were just on the front end of having organized 30 committed Texans whose own families had had experiences related to trauma, addiction, alcoholism, and the wounds of war, who, after hearing a plan that was developed for the state of Kentucky to bring Ibegain to the American people as an FDA-approved medication and breakthrough treatment for addiction and trauma committed themselves to using their time, their talent, and their network to achieve what had never been done before. And that was to convince an individual state to undertake drug development to create a therapeutic medical breakthrough for public health crises within its borders that are representative of the national reality. After you released the interview with us on January 2nd, 2025, we pursued a five

and a half month blistering campaign to convince 188 blank slate Texas legislators to fund the single largest psychedelic research and medical development project in New York. history, that being the $50 million Texas Ivagate initiative. We had the assistance of some in-state allies, one of which was Texans for greater mental health led by a dear friend and brother of mine, Logan Davidson, who was my right hand, going to meet with legislators continuously when I set up shop at a hotel here in Halston and lived here just about part-time, wearing the shoe leather off, sweating, and making sure that everybody who needed to be introduced, educated and motivated to get behind this would do so.

At the end of this five and a half months, we secured the votes of yes of 181 out of 188 legislators between the Texas House of Representatives and State Senate. There was one individual who we had to persuade at the 11th hour to get behind this project. On May the 14th, 2025, just 36 hours before the Texas. budget was finalized, this bill that would create the first unified FDA drug development trial with Ibegaine and U.S. history was not funded. I woke up that morning and I believe very much in keeping your prayers in the closet as Jesus taught and not getting out there parading about it. But on that morning, I got a call and it was, hey, we're getting to the 11th hour. We don't have

money to secure this. It may not make it. We've done everything that we can. And I just, I literally got down on my hands and knees and said, God, please let this happen. And if it cannot happen, help me understand why. Three hours later, I got a telephone call asking if I could go and meet with the Texas House Speaker and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. I went at 4.30 in the afternoon on May the 14th and spent an hour with these two gentlemen going back and forth about what this project was, why it was so existentially necessary for Texas in the country. And on Friday morning, May the 16th at 10 a.m., we got a text message from Lieutenant Governor Patrick confirming

that he would approve and fully fund the Texas Ibegand Initiative. As we walk in here today, literally, just 10 minutes before we walked into your studio, I can confirm that the great state of Texas is going to, fully fund the Texas Ibegain initiative originally intended to be a public-private partnership, but now has decided on its own to commit a full $100 million to launch the development of Ibegain all the way through the FDA's drug development process for the benefit of the American people. To do so on its own without any drug development partner and to do it for the good of humanity. That's phenomenal. So what did you have to say to Dan Patrick to convince him of this?

And kudos to him for doing this. Well, I had some very wonderful advocates who preceded my meeting. Was he skeptical? Oh, he was completely disengaged from the process, highly skeptical as we learned through intermediaries. But we had two wonderful brothers on mission who happened to be twins, Marcus and Morgan LaTrell. I know Marcus very well. Marcus and Morgan Latrell reached out to the lieutenant governor. They spoke to him very movingly and personally about their own experience was with Ibegain,

what it had done not just to save their lives, but what it was doing to save the lives of war fighters who had come to the end of being able to live. And as they explained to him what it did for them and what it has done for their brothers and sisters in arms, who've returned to war to broken government systems that can do nothing, to cure what else them at their core, he was persuaded to have an open-minded conversation. And through that conversation on May the 14th, we essentially went through what science suggests are the powers of the most sophisticated molecule on the planet, to resolve physiological substance dependence and thereby create psychology within the human being,

whereby they believe they have ownership of themselves and their future, and that that future will be one to find by choice rather than compulsion. And the most powerful aspect of the Ibegain argument, not just for the lieutenant governor and house speaker, but for most of these legislators who voted yes, is the experience endorsed by many that Ibegain confirms without question the reality of our individual human divinity, and that is the greatest truth conveyed by this fabulous plant.

Well put, and I don't think it's just Ibegain that confirms that. I think you could say the same about many other psychedelic drugs that are unjustly maligned and treated as if they're an escape from reality. But in the interest of this being a standalone podcast where people don't know what Ibegain is and don't understand the efficacy of it and how unbelievably effective it is, especially treating addiction, could you please just go over that? Yes, sir. So Ibegain is an alkaloid that is derived from the Iboga shrub. The Iboga shrub originates in the central Congo Basin. Its native country is modern-day Gabon. It is the mother country of the Ibogas shrub which has been used for centuries in the spiritual and cultural traditions of the Buiti, a group of spiritualists who include the pygmies as well as the Bantu tribes. that lived there in Gabon. In the early 60s, it was discovered that Ibegain and Iboga had a significant interruption effect on opioid addiction. There was an individual who had been addicted to heroin for a number of years. They took Ibegain, and not only did they not experience any withdrawal when they stopped taking heroin, they stopped having any desire to use any drug whatsoever.

This touched off 60 years. of open-label field studies that are mountains high and decades-wide that firmly established that Ibegain has a unique and singular interruption capacity on physiological substance dependency, whether that's opioids, alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine, or tobacco. Recent evidence also suggests that it has a significant interruption effect on compulsive behaviors, anything that kind of impacts that brain's dopamine system and produces a rush. Particularly gambling. Yes, sir.

Now, in 2018, U.S. Special Forces, Special Operators started going to Mexico for treatment of symptoms of traumatic brain injury, expressed through treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Many of these veterans had gone through the VA system. They had been given an unbelievable amount of synthetic pharmacology that, in their end effect, essentially anesthetizes the soul and slowly euthanizes the body. And they were at the end. So as they were going to Mexico and would get Ibegayn treatment,

they came back with these just unbelievably, just powerful recovery results that seemed too good to be true. So there were some scientists at Stanford University that were funded by a philanthropist who wanted to understand what was going on. And so what we have come to learn through a Stanford research study on traumatic brain injury for vets is that Ibegain has remarkable neuroregenerative capacities on the brain that are unheard of in the annals of Western science. And while information is still very small in amount and preliminary, there are individuals who have had Ibegene treatment for not just traumatic brain injury, but for multiples of coronation. Lyme disease, Parkinson's disease, post-surgical complications related to the removal of brain tumor who endorse a restoration of functionality and an ability to live that are otherworldly.

And as we recognize that the opportunities to improve the human condition at scale are multi-lifetime and appearing, we believe that we have found one of those. and if we're going to do justice to the human species, it is incumbent upon us to take what appears to be a promising therapeutic improvement and deliver it with speed through the U.S. medical systems. And that's what Governor Perry and I have founded Americans for Ibegain to do, just that. Achieve the moonshot of our time, and that is to bring Ibegain medicine to the American people as quickly as possible. Well said. And thank you again, Governor Perry, because if it wasn't for your involvement in this, I think a lot of people would be far more skeptical. You know, you being a former distinguished governor of the state who is a Republican, generally speaking, most people think of Republicans being anti-psychedelics and that this whole thing is just a bunch of people trying to escape reality and poison their mind and, you know, tune out of society. and become losers. That's the general consensus of people that are just, for lack of a better term, ignorant of the effects of these substances. They don't understand it. But if it wasn't for you,

your open-mindedness, you're willing to, your willingness to engage in this and try to understand it and to speak to these veterans, I don't think people would be taken into seriously. Yeah. So thank you. Well, and thank you. As I've, I watched you over the last 15 months, seem like ever six weeks or so, you'd have a guest on here and you'd be talking about Hibagane in particular and what is the progress that we're making. What comes up so often? Yeah. Well, and it should. It should.

It should. Because this truly, I mean, this is not what I came into the world for. This is not what I came to politics for. This is what, you know, I got led to this through that relationship with Mark. Marcus, and in turn, Morgan LaTrell, and seeing those two boys literally, particularly Marcus, on the doorstep of committing suicide. When he came to live with us at the governor's mansion in 2007, we had met the year before, just by the grace of God.

And I told him, I said, if you're ever through Austin, come by and see me, knowing that, the chances of that would be pretty slim. He knocked on that guard door in May of 2007 and said, the governor said, the governor said, if I was ever through here, come by and see him. They called. I let him in for dinner. And my wife, who's a nurse, she recognized this young man who was really troubled, addicted to opioids, masking it with alcohol, really sick. And for the next two and a half years, he lived with us at the governor's residence. Wow. And that started this long journey, literally, with him and trying to find ways to healing.

We sent him to a host of different places, Carrick Brain Center in Dallas. We sent him to what's called now Axios, athletes' performance in those days, but a great rehab facility down in the panhandle of Florida. and they helped him conquer or helped him manage the opioid addiction. I will suggest to you until he was treated with ibogaine, which did clean that completely away from him some years later. But the point is he really struggled, and he has become like our son.

As a matter of fact, I talked to him this morning. And he said, be sure and tell Joe Howdy for me. He just thinks the world of you as well. I talked to his brother the day before. They understand how powerful this compound is from the standpoint of treating post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, addictions. I mean, this, and as I became convinced, one of the things that I will say that I've been, I've been open to change, just like criminal justice reform.

In the early 2000s, I was kind of like, locked their ass up, throw the key under the jail. You know, you break the law in the state of Texas. Here's how we treat you. And I had a district judge in Fort Worth, John Crusoe, a Democrat district judge, who I knew and had been friends with, he said, governor, we got a program here that allows these individuals who have broken the law.

You know, they've made. Maybe, you know, got caught with an illegal substance or what have you. And rather than sending them to jail, sending them to the penitentiary where they become professional criminals, we give them a second chance. We put them in a rehab program. We put them in a treatment center. We put them in a boot camp. You know, give them these options rather than sending them to prison where they're going to become professional criminals. And the recidivism rate is going to continue on.

You know, I'm kind of like, nope, I'm tough on crime. That's what us Republicans do. But it really got me thinking. I mean, I am curious-minded about concepts and ideas. So that brought me to having conversations, and, you know, long story short, that single conversation led to Texas leading the nation with criminal justice reform Texas Public Policy Foundation that now Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, was operating in the mid to late 2000s. They came on board, saw this, supported it.

We passed it through a very Republican, very conservative legislature, and Texas led the nation in criminal justice reform. Saved us billions of dollars. We stopped building prisons. We stopped sending people to prison where they were becoming professional criminals. So that template, if you will, was what we took to Donald Trump in 2018. And he was just like me initially. I'm tough on crime. But he was open.

He was curious. Brooke Rollins, interestingly, had come up and was his domestic policy. advisor at that time, and she made the pitch, and he was open, and that conversation led to him being open to federal criminal justice reform. And today, there are people who, I mean, you know, you may have different ideas about President Trump and what have you. I know that's the case, but on this issue of criminal justice reform, this man was curious, he was open-minded, and he's made a real difference in people's lives following the Texas model. The reason I share that with you as a example, that's where I was on these compounds, these drugs, these psychedelics.

I mean, I grew up in the 60s, Timothy O'Leary, used an LSD, marijuana, any of that kind of stuff. I mean, it was anathema to me. absolutely and totally. I don't have anything to do with it. This is crazy stuff. You get in trouble. They'll throw you in jail. You'll jump off of buildings.

I mean, you, every story that you can imagine that people. And then think about from the 60s forward how, you know, I went into the Air Force. They, you know, we took drug test at least monthly. So the idea of being involved with a drug was just totally and absolutely not on my radar screen. These are bad things. And we're reinforced in the 80s with Mrs. Reagan. Just say no to drugs. Here's your brain on drugs.

I mean, we have been browbeat as a society for 60 years. And when you add to it what Nixon did, President Nixon did in the late 60s, early 70s, with his war on drugs, he hated hippies, he hated blacks, and one of the ways you could go after them was to go make these compounds Schedule 1, which he did. Schedule 1 says there is no medical purpose for it, and it is highly addictive. Ibegene fits neither of those. Ibegain is not an addictive compound by any sense of the imagination. It's also absolutely not a recreational compound. No, at all.

It's not something that someone's going to do at a party. We are proving without a doubt to the Texas legislature, to legislatures across this country in Mississippi, in Tennessee, in Arizona, West Virginia, that it does have a medical purpose, that there are some extraordinary things that can happen for their citizens who have PTSD, who have sexual trauma, who have addictions, I mean saving lives by the thousands of. hundreds of thousands I will suggest to you when this is approved across the country and we see it as a relatively easily studied and accessed by medical care compound. So that story of seeing these two young men who have given everything literally up to willing to give their lives and a lot of a lot of their friends did for our freedoms and our liberties in this country. And for us to say to them, oh, sorry, you can't have access to this because, you know, President Nixon said this was bad stuff back 60 years ago.

And it was taken off the shelf as a Schedule I drug put over here. And for 60 years, Americans have suffered through so many different eras. the late 90s when the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma comes along. And we literally, I think one of the most demonic things I've seen in my public life is this family who used oxycodin and sold it to America as this be-all to end all. And then our federal government in the mid-2000s, we didn't know how to deal with these young men who would be put in these horrible conditions and positions of being at war time after time after time, rotation after rotation, tempos that we'd never seen before. In the history of mankind, I'll suggest to you.

I mean, Joe, we were at war for 20 years. 20 years during that period of time. There are special operators that were deployed eight, nine, ten times. And then they come home and the government gives us. them a sack of opioids and that makes them feel crappy and they mask it with alcohol and we sit around and go, why did Bobby kill himself? Well, because the government failed and its great responsibility to take care of these young men and women, in my opinion. So we owe it to them. As a matter of fact, a dear friend of mine who just passed away within the last two days,

He had worked with me for, gosh, 30 years. And when he first saw that I was getting involved with this psychedelic drug, this ibogaine compound. And we were having a conversation. He said, you need to be really careful with that. You've got a great reputation. You spent 40 years building that reputation up. He said, you don't want to throw it away on some cockamamie idea here.

And I told him, I said, well, I don't think I'm doing that. I've studied this pretty intently. I've talked to a host of different people. And I said, so I'm comfortable about the science here that I'm seeing and what have you. And I think it's worth going forward with. I said, Ray, their lives are not worth more than my reputation. and that's what kind of continues to drive me. There are people that still kind of say, why are you doing this? Because I believe in it.

I mean, I believe it to the point, Joe, that I'm willing to risk my reputation. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. A lot of people hit stretches where money gets tight. And it's not just the bills. It's the constant pressure, the mental load, the second guessing of every decision. And honestly, one of the biggest difference

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foolish thinking. Me neither. I think it's people that don't understand the times. Yeah. This is a different world. We're living in a world

of information now and you can't go by these false narratives that were adopted in the 1970s. And we're winning. I mean, I'm telling you what Americans for Ibegain is done.

And, you know, we started out, I tell people I'd said, you talk about a small group of people. I think there were six of us. He's the CEO. I'm the chairman. We got Dr. Ruland, who's the secretary, Anne-Claher Stapleton, the communications person. And then Marcus and Melanie LaTrell,

Marcus's wife, are the other two members of our little board. And we were this small little group kind of going along and doing what we were doing. We were successful in the Texas legislature. and what have you. But it's exploded now. We have ambassadors, Americans for Ibegain ambassadors all over the United States now. People have seen what we've been able to do in Texas. Mississippi followed suit. They sent their governor a piece of legislation. I want you to talk about that. We're going to do the roll call here. Yeah, and just share with Joe and his audience just the great progress it's being made.

And quite frankly, we've out, I think about Michael Dell when he was selling computers out of the trunk of his car back in the late 80s and then his college dormitory, AFI kind of found itself like that just a few months ago. And I'm not trying to say that, you know, we're Dell computer today. But we are growing at such a leaps and bounds and, you know, and having the resources that we need to be able to put our people in various places. I mean, he's the travels all, you were in Cabo. I want you to tell him about the group that you met with, Cabo, and, I mean, just 200 of these extraordinary people down there. He travels all over the country. And, you know,

and we have to have the resources to be able to do that. And, you know, so I hope you're, the folks that are listening or, you know, go to Americans for Ibogaine. You know how to tell them how to do that and help this organization because this is what I'm going to do the rest of my life. I'm 76 years old, and this is what I hope the Lord gives me a lot of years to make a difference because I know for a fact that what we're doing today, what you're helping us with, is making a difference. And if we can get these clinical trials to the conclusion, and you know, thank you to the lieutenant governor and to the speaker for what they committed to today. I mean, to know that we're going to be able to go forward now with these clinical trials,

to show the world exactly what we know, but so that the naysayers out there, the skeptic, can look at that and go, you know what? You can get 85% of the people who are hooked on opioids clean in 72 hours. It's not an amazing thing. That's such a stunning thing to me. Dr. Gald Dolan, we were at South by Southwest. week and a half ago.

She was sitting on the stage. She's an MD PhD. Was at Johns Hopkins? She's over at Cal Berkeley now. And she gave a little primer, if you will, on the different psychedelics. There's a critical period that the mind opens up and you're able to go in and, if you will, the medicine treats the mind, I think, from my Aggie, you know, non-pharmaceutical, non-scientific mind here, but to go in and repair, reset the brain.

The technical word is neuroplasticity. But ketamine has a critical period. I think she said 48 to 72 hours. psilocybin has a critical period from 14 to 28 days. I think I'm pretty close on these. But Ibegain, the critical period, the time when that neuroplasticity is active, and the brain can be trained, healed, reset is from 90 to 120 days. And then with the addiction, opioids, which I happen to think is one of the most addictive substances that's out there. I mean, this is some horrible stuff.

You know, just very current event with Tiger Woods and Tiger's accident. You know, he had Oxycontin. And, you know, I'm not judging here, but I'm just kind of saying that may, when I was ran for president in 2011, I'd had major back surgery in July. I announced that I was running for president in August. I had six weeks to try to get over that major back surgery. and I had a terrible condition called a neurological hyperfusion in my right leg. I've never had a pain like that. It felt like a blow torch going down my right leg.

And they gave me oxycott. And I was taking that to cover up the pain. I was taking Ambien to go to sleep at night. And I was taking some stuff called ProVigil to get back up in the morning and be focused. I laugh about it now. I'm surprised I did as well as I did. that presidential effort in 2011. Hell, for getting that one thing, that third thing and that debate. I'm surprised I could remember any of them, knowing what I know now about oxycotton

and the incredibly nasty, addictive nature that it has. I mean, this stuff is just poison. And I began in 48 to 72 hours after one dose, one oral application of this compound, and that addiction is gone. Not only is that addiction gone, Joe, but Stanford has done functional MRIs on an addicted opioid. brain and then treatment with ibogaine and they have shown that brain from the the addicted look that those experts those postdocs look at this to a normal brain a normal brain scan in 72 hours if you were to go through the normal process of healing yourself of opioid addiction through an abstinence program, it would take you 18 months. And there are very few, I'm going to say single-digit people that are successful in being

able to do that. But think about that. We've got a compound here that has the ability to heal people of opioid addiction in 48 to 72 hours. And we're not doing everything that we can in our power to make that available. I mean, what the hell's wrong with us? How bad you got to hate people to not make that available? And with two doses, it's even more spectacular. 98%.

That is amazing. 98%. That is truly amazing. There's nothing even remotely like it with standard practice addiction therapy. Nothing. Nothing. You know, he mentioned the Americans for Ibegaine. We have ambassadors.

And Joe, what you really help. us do on January 2nd of 25 was create a movement. Our organization is the custodian of that movement. We are a public policy and advocacy organization and Governor Perry mentions keeping me on the road. Wherever there are state leaders, citizens of conviction and influence, whether that is California, whether it's Massachusetts or whether it's Alabama, we exist to plant the seed of a scientific understanding of a public policy framework and of a spiritual understanding of the significance of what we have in our hands here, an opportunity to improve the human condition at scale. And while we have talked tightly about Ibegain's impact on substance dependency and upon the wounds of war,

our ambassadors reflect essentially the universal human condition and the way in which individuals who have tried every way to overcome the human condition, the way of the human condition, the way of various forms of trauma and debility find as the last step a redemptive restoration through Ibegain treatment. It is not for everybody. It should not be a first resort. It is an exceptionally powerful medication that comes with a series of side effects that are highly unpleasant, as you previously mentioned. One of the selling points ironically in the Texas legislature was to say, you know, if your idea of a good time is being in a state of semi-parallysis for 12 to 16 hours and throwing up continuously through the process, you're going to have a real good time.

And if there is the equivalent of being brought to the judgment throne of God on this side of life, it is an abigaine experience. That seemed to motivate a lot of support, especially for those who subscribe to puritanical notions of punishment for wrongdoing. That's not what I'm here to advocate, but certainly. It is not fun. But what we know is that, for instance, we have two fashion model twins whose father sexually abused them for a decade. And the results of that horrific experience that they shared produced all kinds of psychological maladies

that included an eaten disorder for one, persistent neuroses and the other, They tried every form of talk therapy. They tried every psychotherapy modality known to try to overcome that. And it was Ibogaine that restored their lives and their capacity to enjoy the life that God has given them. We have first responders who are emerging in numbers, one who is a firefighter from Oklahoma who was demoted because of decades of alcoholism. His life has been restored by Ibegain and he's back working full time. We have a gentleman who was a Charlottesville police officer who was hit in the face with a brick during the riots that occurred in Charlottesville. His life was restored by a single abigang treatment, and he has attained a level of functionality that he didn't think was possible, nor his doctors.

We have a gentleman who was a pilot who unfortunately did a bomb and run on a village and killed a number of innocent people. He learned about this, and this sent him in to aspire. as many warfighters who are exposed to moral injury do. Ibegain has restored this gentleman's life. We have a gentleman by the name of Robert Gowdry, a former NFL player, who exhibited all the signs of CTE in his post-retirement years. He was ready to kill himself so that he wouldn't harm his own family. It was Ibegain that restored his life.

There have been other NFL players who are as yet unnamed. some incidentally that have been in the paper who have gone for Ibegain treatment to address similar symptoms. Players in the NHL, players in other contact sports that include soccer and rugby and the United Kingdom, where there is an emerging cohort of professional athletes who have reached out to us to say, we want the United Kingdom for Ibrahimate. I would love to get you guys connected with the UFC. We would love to be connected to the U.S. Because that is obviously an issue with the first.

professional fighters. So Hughes, Matt Hughes, and Matt had, I met Matt through Marcus, gosh, in like 2008 or so, and we went out for a fight. And then subsequently, Matt had, I think, a car accident of which he really had a- He's hit by a train. Yeah, just an incredible traumatic brain injury. and I just want to have that conversation with him, and I'm sure you have great relationships with those. We know for a fact that cumulative impacts on the brain are what lead to CTE.

I mean, that's, I don't think that's even a question of, here's how it happens. These multiple concussions have cumulative effect on the brain, and at some point in time that CTE has a long-time effect. And this medicine has the ability to remove that trauma, to reset that brain, to heal that brain. I don't know how it works, Joe, but that's the reason these clinical trials are going to be so important as we're going forward. And I can't tell you, I'm ecstatic. that the lieutenant governor and the speaker today announced a hundred million dollars.

Their full Texas support behind these clinical trials, we're fixing to become the epicenter for a movement that literally can change the world. And I know that sounds kind of a little bit over the top. But if we have within our grasp here a compound that can heal our loved ones, who have an addiction, be it a substance addiction or be it a non-substic addiction. If we have the ability to heal people who have been traumatically impacted by concussions, if we have the ability to address PTSD in all the different forms that it comes, I mean, the hope that that can give to the society that we live in,

and I'm not talking about just the United States. You think about what's going on in Israel in Ukraine, in the Middle East today, and the trauma that people are facing. I mean, this truly can be an extraordinary gift to the world. And, you know, I, listen, I think it's really interesting. You ask a leading question about how did I come to this position of being able to be supportive? portable as I am. And when I think about my growing up, and I grew up in a very conservative Christian family. And I think one of the challenges we still have in our society is that the conservative Christian faith is like, stay away from my stuff. I mean, that's bad. Do not

under any circumstances. Don't be going there. It's demonic. And there's a book that's about to be published. I think is it about, I think the first week in April, so we're approaching it. There's an author by the name of Wendy Reese, R-E-S, and Wendy with an I, W-N-D-I-R-E-E-E-S. And she, not unlike the two twins, was second. sexually assaulted by her own father. It was a pastor of a church. Joe, I'm telling you, brother, I can't dream up in my worst nightmare, a more evil thing than a father that would sexually assault their. A preacher father.

Their daughter. And she dealt with it with Ibegain and has come to the conclusion that her great gift to give to the world out there is to run. write this book called A Christian's Guide to Psychedelics. Now, if you think that won't catch some people's attention when they're going through the bookstore and they'll go a Christian's guide to psychedelic, holy mackerel. But this is a book about her experience, but it's also a book that I would suggest that every believe in Christian, go pick it up and read it. Because it talks about chapter and verse and gives you story.

scripture about where God talks about these compounds, about these things that he's given the world. He means them for good. All of them for good. Are you aware of the scholars in Israel that are proposing that Moses seeing the burning bush was the acacia tree? Yeah, there's an acacia tree, the acacia tree, which is very common in the Middle East, is rich in dimethythotryptamine. And they believe that what they're trying to relay in this story was that Moses encountered God through the burning of this bush. So the burning of this bush releasing the psychedelic compound, dimethythotryptamine, allowed Moses to bring back the Ten Commandments. You know, thank you for mentioning that. I have been following scholarship around the use

and the recognition that there's a lot of psychedelic allegory in Holy Scripture, that I think is the favorite, where that burden bush reveals the great I am. And when Moses says, who are you? I am who I am. And the beauty about Ibegating and the other plant medicines are their capacity to reveal the I am that is within each of us and that I am is our eternal creator who absolutely has engineered

and place these plants on this earth so that we can be affirmed in what our true identity and ultimate destiny is and praise God for it. And then there's also the sacred mushroom in the cross, the John Marker-Alegro book, where he was one of the ordained ministers that was his task was to decode the Dead Sea Scrolls. And he wrote this book that details what he believes is the use of psychedelic drugs. in ancient Christianity. Hard for me to argue with. I mean, I just think our modern perception of it, which is very tainted by what happened

during the Nixon administration, where they were trying to squash the hippie movement, the anti-war movement, and the civil rights movement. And that's why they demonize these drugs and these compounds. And that's why they put them in this category of having no medicinal use, which is clearly not accurate. It doesn't mean that they should just be given to every one. and everyone should do them with no restrictions and no regulations. It just means we should understand that they have a long history of human use and have spectacular

results and all sorts of things that our society is suffering from greatly and to just pretend that that's not the case based on what happened in the 1970s is just insane. It doesn't make any sense. I would suggest that one of the greatest lessons learned by Americans who are age 50 and younger, those of us who I call the bicentennial children, is that the most morally depraved criminal in America today is power. And the power of the human hand, when it is wielded in its most abusive context, will always seek to deny any access to individual human divinity and the liberty and autonomy that is conferred upon each of us as children of God.

And insofar as we find ourselves at the precipice of what I believe is the emergence of a broad-based spiritual movement where all of us modernists within the empiricism of modern American society are able to see through the fog of all of our wealth and gadgetry and recognize. We are in the midst of profound spiritual famine in the United States. You, I know, and forgive me for reference innate, Remember back in the mid-80s where we saw all these horrific images of starvation and dissension, and fly-covered death from mass famine in Ethiopia and Sudan,

where millions of people starved to death because the malevolence of power forbade the delivery of any relief sent by the outside world. When we look at what's right in front of us in the United States today, there is no denying that we are in the midst of a terrible spiritual famine. And the malevolence of American power is feasting on our starvation. This is an emancipation movement for the mind, body, and soul of every human being in this country and across. the globe, who is lethally estranged from their own spirituality. The Abbegain mission is a mission to foment dramatic medical breakthroughs across a host of conditions that have no effective therapeutic answers. But above and beyond that, it is about the affirmation of the spiritual essence of life

that can unify us as a species in a way that is necessary if we're going to navigate these changes over the next 20 years. Governor Perry mentioned this wonderful invitation that I received to go to what was called the Earth One summit. Now, Joe, I come out a hillbilly holler, Virginia. And it's a... I do. I introduce him from time to time.

I said, look, this guy, he looks like and he sounds like a hillbilly from a hillbilly from eastern Kentucky in the Appalachian Mountains. And I said he is. But I said he's one of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life and one of the most extraordinary orators I've ever had in my life. So anyway, I want to, I love you, brother, but you are a hillbilly. I'm much more comfortable with that than all that other stuff you said. But, you know, when you come out of scratch nothing sometimes,

there are certain sophistications that you lack. And I'm no exception to that. So there was this Earth One summit. It was 200 thought leaders from across the world who came to basically discuss the future. And I was very honored to have received an invitation to come and attend the gathering to speak about what Governor Perry and I are working on through Americans for Ibegain. And they presented me with the honor of being the closing keynote speaker for the gathering. And as I listened over the course of four days, I heard individuals who included Kimball and Christiana Musk, and I've read interviews by Elon Musk speaking about the advent of AI and the capacity of AI to solve the central dilemma that we as humans have had since we emerged from the caves.

And that's the dilemma of scarcity. So as I was there listening to folks speak about being on the edge of a time when we can automate the means of production and essentially create an unlimited amount of abundance for every person on this planet, I couldn't help but think about where we are right now as compared to where these individuals see us been in 20 years. you cannot create and deploy this kind of God-like technology, which has the capacity to produce unlimited abundance, potentially usher in the age of Aquarius, and drop it in to these Frankenstein monstrosity government systems

that we currently have that are enthroned upon the helplessness of powerless people, that perpetuate problems that they are supposed to solve, and that monetize sustained human misery. So long as government makes its buck over keeping its foot on the necks of the American people, we are looking at a future that much more resembles Mad Max than we are Star Trek. And if we are going to create the degree of social cohesion that is necessary to hold these systems accountable and to create a system that can treat, usher in that age of unlimited abundance to improve the human condition for all.

It begins with a spiritual reawakening that I began first and foremost, and the rest of the psychedelics concede and foment within American society. To that end. And then I'll be quiet for the next little bit. No, I go. Good, man. We love listening to you. There is a six-part docu-series that will come out next year called Psychedelics and.

and it is a series of interviews with a cross-section of leaders across the United States where they speak about their own quest for meaning and how psychedelics has helped them understand that we are more than just these material beings that get up and go to work every day and are a productive economic unit, go home and repeat, that there is a much higher sense of purpose that we are here to serve and that the plants themselves have the capacity to enlighten us at scale in a way that's absolutely necessary if we're going to make that age of abundance happen as those visionaries articulate and dream for. What I think is fascinating about the age that we're living in is that change comes very slowly,

but it comes much faster when you have the kind of access to information that people have today. And I don't think this conversation was possible 20 years ago. No, no way. And that's kind of amazing. No way. It's kind of amazing. And I don't think that there was a format for this conversation 20 years ago. This format has occurred because of the age of information, because of the internet, and because

there's no gatekeepers anymore, and because people have the choice to decide what they want to consume, what they want to listen to. And to be able to be a part of that, to me, is an incredible privilege. to be able to have you guys on and to have this conversation and to recognize that the reason why this is possible is because, for a lack of a better term, the world's waking up. Yes, same. It's just taking more time than we would like. Yeah. But the world is waking up.

And change happens. It just happens. People have to change their opinions. And that's very difficult because a lot of people identify with their opinion. their opinions become a part of their ideology. And it's just very difficult to get people to change their ideology. They identify with this. It is them.

And I've always tried to tell people the way I try to approach things, you are not your ideas. You are not your opinions. These are just thoughts. And if you identify with them, you are trapped in them. And you will be held hostage by them. You will try to defend them, even if they don't make sense. You will try to ignore evidence that points you in a direction that's contrary to what your current belief system is. Don't be your opinions.

Don't be your ideas. Just sit in them. Be consistent. Be honest. Have ethics and morals that you adhere to. But the ideas are just ideas. And if you're wrong, you should be proud to say wrong. It's a sign of growth.

It's a sign of intelligence. and it's a sign of you being an honest human being who cares about the truth, not about being right. Because there's too many people in this world that they don't really have conversations. They have ideological sparring matches where they're just involved in these little intellectual tugs of war where they're just trying to be right. And this is not the time for that. It's just... So my... my going from hard no on criminal justice reform to literally a leader on criminal justice reform in the mid-2000s.

My going from hard know on any psychedelic drugs that could be used in any way to now being what I've humorously referred to as the Johnny Appleseed of Ibogaine is to your point. You know, be open. Be willing to say you were wrong. I know my wife would like to hear me do that more often. But, hey, if you don't mind, I want to take a minute and talk about how far this movement has come. And Brian talked about Americans for Ibegaine and our ambassadors all across the country and the growth that we've seen in this.

And I want to give you one example of, to your point, that five years ago, if you had had an institution that had its own reputation dealing with brain health and brain science and those kind of things, they would have just kind of moved you off to the side and said, you know, no things. But the Center for Brain Health in Dallas, this is an extraordinary institution that's connected to the University of Texas, Dallas. Matter of fact, it's just next door to U.T. Southwestern, which is one of the great medical facilities in the world, U.T. Southwestern.

And Dr. Sandy Chapman heads up the Center for Brain Health. And they've done some great work. We went up and presented to her, I don't know, probably 60 to 90 days ago. And there was another organization. called forward forward intent forward intent just a beautiful young man and his wife Alex Duran and his wife

who have funded an effort and what they're doing with their resources they're sending I think 250 individuals down to Mexico to both I think a facility called transcend and to Ambio. And Ambio is that facility that I've been to. Brian's been to. Marcus and Morgan LaTrell have been to, I think probably 2,000 more fighters have been down to Ambio now. Vets underwrites them. And just as an aside, this has blown up so big. And I'm talking about the Ibogaine effort, the education of Ibogaine. People, you know, you know,

you know, there's some hope out there. And people are rushing to find where they can go to, you know, to treat the addiction that their loved one hands or deal with their PTSD and what have you. And Ambio is just covered up. And I'm sure, you know, the other facilities are as well down there. The organization vets, which is really where I came into this, I think Amber and Marcus Capone, they don't have any openings anymore. I mean, they are completely covered up. But, I mean, that's a good challenge. I'm glad we have that challenge.

But my point is, you've got an institution in Dallas, Texas, that just like the state is getting the signal, it's okay to be out there talking about this. It's okay to be a leader. It's okay to get out there and lead the charge. And I want to read to you what Dr. Chapman, because I ask her, I said, do you mind if I talk about what you all are doing? And she said, absolutely. And she said, Governor, great to talk with you yesterday. Here are some comments to guide you and how to discuss our existing collaboration. I'm excited to announce that we have begun a partnership with the Center for Brain Health, University of Texas at Dallas.

Americans for Ibegain and forward intent to create the largest research study of Ibegain to date focused on understanding its impact on the brain among the veteran community. Dr. Francesca Filby, an expert in cognitive and translational neuroscience, especially the use of neuroimaging to study brain behavior relationships, will lead the research. our mission together is to move beyond the question of, does Ibegain help, and instead answer the more practical questions veterans and clinicians need. Number one, who benefits and why? How long did the benefits last? Which aspects of daily life functioning, i.e., cognition, sleep, substance use, and overall well-being?

Improve or worsen following treatment? and how are these changes associated with brain alterations? The three-year study will follow those treated with Ibogaine over the course of 18 months, which will allow us to create the first understanding of the sustained impacts of Ibogaine on the brain across various treatment regimes. We'll be diving more into this topic on November the 19th at the Center for Brain Health's Brain Health presents speaker series, to share more. By bringing world-class scientific rigor to this space, we aren't just studying a substance. We're creating a foundation of knowledge that will expand safe, informed access

for those who need it most. That is what Americans for Ibegain is really all about. Making that type of penetration, having that type of success, seeing what Brian, and the other folks have created here in the state of Texas, I'm going to tell you something, brother, there is nothing that I've been involved with in my life that gives me more pleasure than to see what we're doing and knowing that there's a father out there, a mother out there,

whose child's going to be saved. You mentioned dogma. people are in particular in American society. There is a quest for identity. There is a quest for belonging. So much of what we see on social media and in broadcast media that is rage and anger and disaffection is tremendous loneliness and a tremendous lack of belonging to something

and a tremendous amount of trauma related to heaven, never having had anything that resembles unconditional affection within the context of a safe and stable familial relationship. That's at scale within the United States. And the degree to which dogma can thwart evolution is 100% right on. And I just use my own self as an example. I was a child of Reagan's America. I couldn't remember I was about five years old when he and President Carter had their first presidential debate in 1980.

President Reagan was like the mother goose to the goslin. He just imprinted on me. And whereas other young boys had pictures of Joe Montana and Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson all over their rooms, mine was wallpapered with Ronald Reagan. I was the president of the teenage Republicans in high school. I wrote him fan letters all the time. He actually replied to one, and I put it in a frame in my room.

It was written on my birthday. I was president of the college Republicans at George Mason University, and I mean I aim to be the king of conservative Republican conformity. That was my whole mission in life. And I used to joke that when people said, well, how did you get to this? And what do you think about the fact that you're talking about it and you're so zealous in your advocacy? I would kind of make a half statement and say, well, if 25-year-old me could come and see 50-year-old me, he would look and say, what in the world happened to you? And I would kind of yuck and yuck and laugh about it.

Well, here's the answer. If 25-year-old me could come back and look at 50-year-old me and say, what happened to you? 50-year-old me would look right back and say, you happened to me. You happened to me. Your youthful sense of certainty, your belief that you had it all figured out, your belief that you had no further greater evolution to achieve. Steve, sir, you and your insolence of youth, you happen to me. One of the things that I have so enjoyed learning about Governor Perry and as he and I have

built relationship, the first time I really started following him was when he ran for president in 2012, and I believe that had he not had that back surgery, we would not have had a second Obama term. He would have won that race, and I think he would have won it handily. It's been remarkable to listen to this gentleman who has been so firmly identified with the conservative wing of the Republican Party be so willing to be curious and to have that human value of curiosity and a willingness to hear and a willingness to know and a willingness to entertain that perhaps everything that he had been taught about this particular subject was not correct. curiosity is a prime human value and if you allow dogma to shut off your curiosity you have hobbled yourself and i think it was mohammed ali who said if if a 50 year old man thinks the exact same way as a 20 year old man as he did when he was 20 he's wasted 30 years of his life and that is that is dead on right

right yeah i could attest to that curiosity is my number one attribute That's the thing that's led me in life and everything I've ever done is just being open minded and curious. I'm very fortunate is that I didn't think I had things figured out when I was 20 at all. I was sure that I was a moron. I was good at one thing, kicking people. That's it. And then from then I realized that there's a lot to learn and that as much as I learned about martial hearts, I could apply that sort of open. mind discipline because you have to be open-minded to be good at martial arts because you have to be able to listen.

You can't think you already know. You cannot. You won't grow and you won't get better. You have to be listening to coaches. You have to be listening to instructors. You have to be listening to your teammates. You have to listen to everybody. If you don't listen, if you have, don't tell me, those people don't go anywhere.

And I learned that very early on. It's very fortunate that I found that path. because I've applied that to virtually everything that I've ever done in life. Instead of having this belief that I think figured out, I've certainly been more sure than I should have been at many times in my life, but always willing to stop and go, maybe I'm wrong. And if it wasn't for this podcast, it would have never gotten to where it is

because I've fortunately been able to talk to brilliant people. And, you know, I grew up in, I lived in California for 26 years before that. I, you know, I lived in Boston and New York. I thought of people, the southern accent in particular, right? Then this is a standard thing that a lot of people on the coasts have. You hear people talk with a southern accent. You think they're dumb. And it's a terrible stereotype that actually came.

out because of hookworm parasites. I'm sure you're aware of that story. I'm not. You're not. Educate me. The stereotype of the lazy, dull-minded southerner came out of the fact that a large percentage of people in the South had contracted hookworms. From walking around barefoot and hookworm parasites will rob you of your intellectual capacity.

They greatly diminish your. ability to think and exhaust you. You get slower and, you know, in quotes, lazier, but you're really just infected with the parasite. And it's an enormous percentage of the population in the 1900s where we're infected with hookworm and in the South in particular. Hot climates. And this is where this stereotype came from. When someone like you speaks with such insane recall, like your recalls banana. Like your recall of dates and names and times and I have a pretty good recall. It's nothing like yours.

It's extraordinary. And I love when I meet someone who's brilliant who still has a southern accent because it's like, Like I said. Yeah. Forget on your stereotypes. Let them all go, baby, because they're not real. It's not real. None of that is real.

Individuals vary wildly. And, you know, I've met brilliant people from coastal cities. and I've met fucking morons that talk like, you know, a person that you would assume would be a highly educated, intelligent person, but they're closed-minded and foolish in their ways. And having had this ability to have all these different conversations with different people, it's just like every time I have another conversation just expands my understanding just a little more and a little more and a little more and a little more. And I love it. And it's all out of curiosity. And I'm very happy that I've been able to make that curiosity infectious. My favorite cities, and I know we're getting off the beaten path here a little bit.

I love to get off the beaten path. That's my favorite thing to do. My favorite cities in America are those that you can go to and not feel like you're in the country. Miami is fabulous. It's a wild place. You should have a passport to go to Miami. It is fabulous. And I remember the first time I went to New York City.

time when I was about five years old. The only thing I could remember was the Empire State Building and some dude with purple hair sticking his tongue out at me. The next time was in 2019. And I'd always had kind of that stereotypical Southerners attitude, a bunch of, you know, haughty, rude, mean-acting, Yankee people living in an obnoxious locale that would just be hell on earth to have to endure. So I had the opportunity to go and spend a day there. and rolled into Grand Central Station on the railway from, I think it was New Haven, Connecticut. And just to watch the dimensions of the architecture as we rolled into the city. Crazy.

The expansion of scale of this place. How old being? Well, let's see. I was about to turn 44. I think I could hear the Beverly Hillbillies music playing in my head when I was going down through there. So we get off a Grand Central Station. and I mean I walked all through that. I walked from Grand Central Station all the way down to the tip of where the World Trade Center was.

It was New York City is a monumental human accomplishment. When you can have the entire world within 300 square miles and it is a living affirmation of everything the United States is supposed to be, as the last best hope of humankind on earth, just to be in that place. Anytime I've gone back since, I mean the minute that I go to get the Uber at LaGuardia Airport and I see that skyline, I mean, my heart just starts racing, racing, racing.

I would have never thought that I would just fall in love with New York City. But it is fabulous. San Francisco is the same way. There are so many wonderful places in the United States where you wouldn't think that somebody necessarily who signed it, like me would endorse. But one of the best things that I have done is stop watching television news. The last time I watched television news was after the first Obama press conference in January

of 2009, and I cut it off. Wow. Aside from presidential debates and election returns, I've never turned it back on. I shouldn't tell this. The number of times I've left my front door wide open, the garage door open. in my neighborhood and nothing has happened is remarkable. This country, in terms of her people, is as much like it was back in 1950 as it has ever been. The complexion is a little different. We've got a lot more diversity now than we've ever had. But once you take that blinder of mass media

mayhem and all this fabricated division that is purposely put out there to keep us divided, To keep us tuning in. To tuning in and segregate it. Once you take yourself out of it and you just start having a conversation, next time someone gets into an Uber with someone who doesn't have English as a secret language, strike up a conversation. Ask him, how did you come to the United States? What brought you here?

And your heart is going to feel with just the unbelievable amount of pride and love to hear those accents from the Middle East and from Africa speak about this country in ways that take us right back to 1776. It's a fabulous place, and I'm able to say so much of this because of what the plans have helped clarify by way of that universal human divinity that we all share, that this country is the cradle to protect and to honor, which is what makes this mission so incredible. incredibly important. And I do want to know, oh, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Please. There's two people that I left off of our ambassador program that I think are really showstoppers that want to mention.

One is a gentleman by the name of Rear Admiral Jim Hancock. This gentleman received amalgame treatment for his wounds of war. He was the Navy Medical Corps chief and was the medical officer for the United States Marine Corps. One of our other ambassadors is a gentleman by the name of General Glenn Kleeck. Curtis. He served in both Gulf Wars. He served in Afghanistan. His most recent stint of service was as the command in general for the Louisiana National Guard. And he is one of our prime spokespeople for legislation that's penned in Louisiana right now to join Texas as a partner in this I've a game trial. That's fantastic. Please say what you were going to because I'm curious. I don't even remember. Hey, well, I remember what I wanted to talk about. Please. So, and I want to get us back on

on the track that we were talking about. You know, Brian's done a great job to discuss the spiritual aspect of the medicine and what I mean. That's incredibly important. Don't get me wrong on that at all. But what brought me personally to the medicine, obviously my relationship with Marcus and Morgan and what have you. And then as I've studied it, I'm like, if you're really going to be a legitimate spokesperson for this, if you're going to put your reputation out there, you need to be treated. You need to go through the treatment. And I'm going to get to you at the end of this conversation, but I want to set this up if I may. And in 2023, if my memory serves me, correct, this is the same time that Nolan Williams was heading up the 30 veteran study that Stanford was going to oversee, kind of the early days, if you will, of some clinical trial type effort to have the data, to have the background,

some early day efforts to start educating the public about that is how I do this. They had 30 vets. I think they were between the ages of like 22 and 4.4. They all had moderate to severe PTSD. They were, some of them, addicted to alcohol. You know, they were pretty classic veteran population that had some real challenges. They were sent, well, to Stanford, and they did baseline functional MRI. eyes. And then they were sent down to Ambio, just south of Tijuana, where they were given the

treatment. And then that last, I think about a four-day treatment protocol, you go down, you work your way in. Tuesday, you get in preparation. Tuesday evening, you get the compound. Wednesday is a recovery day. Thursday, there's a 5-M-E-O-D-M-T treatment, and then you go home. They went back to Stanford after five days after the treatment and had follow-up MRIs. I think they had an MRI at 30 days and then a functional MRI at six months. So there was a good piece of data there to look at. just stunningly good results. And the results, I think there was 87% of them who, now, better than two years later,

but that have zero PTSD. The addictions were at that level of reduction that we talked about in the high 80 percentiles. I mean, we've seen all of this data before. This is nothing new. But the reason I share that with you is that I basically went down and followed the same protocol. I wasn't part of the clinical trial, and I only wanted to be treated with Ibogaine. I did not want to take the 5MEODMT. So what I was looking at, and I was interested in this from the brain regenerative side of it.

I had about as bucolic a life as you've ever had. I never had anybody mistreat me of anything that you could even. get close to call in traumatic effect. I had no trauma in my life. I grew up on a dry land, cotton farm, you know, 60 miles from Abilene, Texas, 16 miles from closest place that had a post office in a part of Texas that there's just a lovely, wonderful, loving place. My mom and dad loved me, and I knew it. And, you know, my scoutmaster and my principal and my superintendent of my Sunday school class, who, by the way, were all the same person. And he drove the bus and was a football coach, but I had a as non-traumatic growing up period as you can imagine. So I was

concussed, severely concussed three times, twice in athletic events, and I'm talking about knocked out completely for over one minute. And those are severe concussions. Two times athletic events one time unloading horses, knocked completely out. So what I know now is that as I got to pilot training and I started noticing that I was having trouble sleeping and that this thing that I understood later in life was anxiety had crept into my life. So I had, I'm going to put it in the mild category, anxiety, and insomnia. I went into a very odd line of work in politics to have those two kind of things. And I masked them rather well. Most people didn't know I had that. My wife did. But other than that, even my senior staff in my offices through the year, Agriculture Commissioner, Lieutenant Governor, Governor,

They did not know that I had this challenge of, you know, maybe sleeping three and a half, four hours a night, being anxious at times to the point of being never dysfunctional. From my perspective, probably some people out there in the political world said, hell, Perry, you were dysfunctional the whole damn time. What are you talking about? Anyway, beside the point. I had the treatment. I had the brain scan going in. I had the brain scan a week later, and I had the brain scan at six months. The first brain scan, they said, look, your brain looks pretty good for a 73-year-old guy.

He said, you know, you're actually in pretty good shape. You don't have a lot of atrophy. You got some mild atrophy, but your brain looks pretty good. The week after scan showed a 27% increase in the prefrontal cortex of my brain. That's where your focus, your concentration, your emotions reside. At a 27% increase in that prefrontal cortex activity. My six-month scan, I have a dear friend who's a neurosurgeon from my Tyler, Dr. Charlie Gordon, who is a 40-plus-year neurosurgeon, spine expert, looked at lots of

brain scans. A respectful skeptic of this, when I told him I was going to be treated with this compound called Ibogaine, this psychoactive compound, he was recoiled a little bit. He was like, you need to be really careful with that. He has now gone from being respectful, skeptic, to looking at the data from the clinical trial that was done at Stanford, talking to a fairly good number of the veterans that went through that trial, talking to Dr. Williams, talking to other specialists at Stanford, and he has gone from respectful skeptic to a full-on believer in this. medicine. I mean, an absolute supporter that this medicine does what it says it does. It heals people of addictions. It heals from PTSD. This medicine does what it does. And we're driving back from the

airport that day after the six-month scan. He had looked at it as it came off of the machine. and he said, Governor, I'm not going to blow smoke up your dress. Your atrophy is gone. He said, I have no idea why this has happened, but he said the difference between your initial baseline scan and six months later, clearly the atrophy in your brain is gone. He said, your brain looks like a 40-year-old. Now, the reason I share that story with you is because, number one, that's partly what drives me about this, is that there is a regenerative aspect of this medicine that we don't really understand yet. And if it does what we think it's going to do, and that's the reason these clinical trials are just so stunningly important.

That's the reason what the Center for Brain Health and what we're going to do. what they're going to be doing and the data they're going to be collecting. I'm convinced of what this data is going to show. But for all of those individuals out there who don't have substance abuse problems, who weren't traumatized as a child, but who have been concussed. And we know that that damage is out there and that the cumulative side, Robert Gallery, that great professional football player who had. really bad CTE, and he will tell you today this medicine saved his life.

My question for you, Joe Rogan, is how many times you think you've been concussed in life? I don't know. I have no idea. Dozens. Yeah, I'd have to go back and think about times most of it was from sparring or a few from fights. But if we think about that if there is this cumulative effect, are you, how old are you now? 58. Would Joe Rogan be willing to say, you know what?

I've seen enough. I believe that this medicine does what you say it will do. And for a person like me, that it could be incredibly helpful to my – my long-term plan of living a long and healthy and engaged life that Joe Rogan would go and be treated with Ibogaine. Yeah, I would definitely. I would definitely do it. I'm very fascinated by it. I mean, I've never heard anybody say, I wish I didn't do it. He mentioned his brain scans post-treatment. A couple of weeks ago, while I was at that one-earth gathering, I met a lady who I would call Lonnie. and she had just returned from a navigating treatment in November of 25.

She relayed an early life of just ungodly physical abuse by her father, who was addicted to Oxycontin. You know, we began this conversation about the realities of the opioid epidemic in America. While death is the most terminal outcome is measured down about 700,000 Americans, there is a much broader web of hardcore travesty that exists, each of those death outcomes. And Lonnie experienced that. She had multiple concussions from her own father.

Like many individuals who experienced trauma of this nature, she developed her own drug addiction. She was in and out of jail. She was homeless at a different point in time. She managed to get recovered. She had a separate traumatic brain injury that was fairly severe in 2018. And then she was diagnosed with what I believe is called young onset Parkinson's, Parkinson's diagnosis that is pre-age 50. Her Parkinson's had progressed

to the point to where she could not write because of the tremulousness in her hands. So when I saw her two weeks ago and she introduced herself, she had all of the appearance and affect of a perfectly healthy human being. It was only after we sat down and she explained what her experience had been and where she was at now that the Ibegain disclosure was made. Her hand was just as calm as mine, and she said that it had been essentially three months and that she had been able to resume a normal life and then her mind felt restored.

Now, based on the responses we got after our first interview with you, I want to be very careful here. This is truly the edge of science, and there is much unknown about the very, variety of Parkinson's that this can treat. There's some suggestion that it is better for those who have a genetic predisposition for the disease that it is for those who contract Parkinson's as the result of environmental exposure. Ibengain does not appear to have any impact on Parkinson's developed as a result of exposure to environmental toxin. The stage of the disease at which you catch it

also appears to make a big difference. The earlier, the better. It has also, been asserted that I began to snuck cure Parkinson's. What it does is slows disease progression and creates for some a broad window of opportunity for the restoration of function that can dramatically improve the quality of life. Now I'm just given a number of qualifiers about its impact and efficacy on one individual, but think about what we just said here. This is a woman who was diagnosed with young onsets Parkinson's. She had lost the ability to write because of the tremulousness in her hands. She's four months out from a treatment and she's been able to resume her full normal life with a complete restoration of function. If we could get a COVID vaccine out

in nine months, there is no reason why, with the focused effort of Texas and the other states we'll discuss here momentarily, that we cannot achieve the moonshot of our time within three years or less, and that is the completion of an Ibegain medication that can be fully integrated into the U.S. health care system and made just as universally available as every ineffective opioid-based treatment that we currently deploy through the medical system at a cost of $700,000 per patient, sponsored by Indivior, which is one of the chief pharmaceutical developers of everything thing that we have that fails 75% of the time. Yeah, I mean, if we could do it, it would be pretty extraordinary.

And if it is done, I really do believe that it would have a complete changing of society. When people have no hope and there's nothing, and then all of a sudden there's something that comes along that you do it once and it's an 85% effective rate, and you do it twice and it's in the high 90s. I mean, change. How many people? are out there struggling with something, whether it's alcoholism, whether it's obesity, whether it's, you know, that's another thing.

Like there's people that are calming themselves with food, right? And it's masking. That's probably a sugar addiction, don't you think? I mean, from the standpoint of... It is, but for a lot of people, it's there's something else. You know, for some people, it's sexual abuse and they're younger and they eat. It's... Interesting.

It's an addiction. And it's not just... a physical addiction. It's a psychological addiction. I brought up gambling because I know a lot of people that are addicted to gambling. Pornography. Yeah, pornography. Yeah, pornography. Sure. There's a lot of things. The non-session models we mentioned are ones who had developed those eaten disorders, one of which was a compulsive eater as a result of that childhood sexual abuse. And Abigane was the treatment of last resort, not the first option. And their own recovery story, which can be found on the Americans for Abigain website, is truly extraordinary. And speaking of extraordinary, when we came in here to push Texas, our belief was and still is,

and is now playing out at scale, that if Texas did this, it would be joined by a number of other states who are no longer willing to sit and wait on an inefficient, often incompetent, and also incompetently corrupt federal bureaucracy, that will not move in response to the genuine needs of the American people at the pace that it needs to. There are a variety of well-intentioned reformers within the current administration, Secretary Kennedy, Secretary Collins, and others, who have voiced their support for the advancement of plant medicine as breakthrough treatments primarily for U.S. warfighters,

but also for other members of our society for whom these medications could help. We believe that these individuals are stymied by two realities. The first reality is the Byzantine complexity of the federal bureaucracy, the degree to which it has been compromised by the institutional capture of much of its functioning by companies that make money on keeping problems alive. We think they're probably also stymied by perhaps some other political cross-currents within the administration that view psychedelics with skepticism, and that are therefore willing to be indiscriminate in their resistance to the advancement of any of them,

when in fact the advancement of this one is of existential critical importance as a breakthrough treatment for millions of Americans who need it now. And so to that end, Americans for Ibegain following the Texas success convened a gathering of 200 people in Aspen, Colorado in November of last year. These individuals were invited, appointed and elected state officials from 22 individual states and aligned citizens of influence who would be willing, as the Texans were here, to get behind efforts in state legislatures to create a partnership with Texas that, by end result, will form the unstoppable external force through the states that can crash through the federal wall

using not just their resources, but their political influence to execute one, unified FDA drug development trial and to force the federal government to be responsive to everything that is required to ensure it is successful. So as we sit here today, we have been working with elected officials in Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, South Dakota, and California, California, each of whom have legislators who are willing to introduce and to pursue bills to join their states into Texas as this trial. Governor Perry and I spoke to the American Legislative Exchange Council as keynote speakers on December 5th of last year. This is an umbrella think tank organization for center-right, mostly Republican legislatures from across the country.

In its entire existence, Alec has taken two positions when it comes on the war on drugs. more prison, more penalties, more penalties, more prison, more penalties. Add if an atom. After we spoke about the necessity of Ibegain's medical integration into the United States and the capacity of the states to force this reality into being, Alec issued a formal position statement as well as model legislation endorsing what we call the American Ibegain initiative to bring the states all together to make this happen with one unified voice.

And so now, as we sit here with you today, in the state of Tennessee, there are two bills, one each in the state house and the state Senate that are making its way through that legislature to join Texas. Before we walked in here this morning, the Tennessee Senate Finance Committee voted 11 to nothing to move Tennessee's bill forward

to the full state Senate for consideration and what will, I believe, be passage. And I would like to give a shout-out to a special sister by the name of Ricky Harris, who has led that Tennessee campaign. Right now, there are two bills in the Missouri legislature, House Bill 2817 and Senate Bill 1581, which are receiving good, considerate, deliberative thought by legislators there, but frankly need a little motivation. So if you're in Missouri and you want to see Ibegain medicine for your family member, for your community, for your state,

you call into the Missouri legislature and say move the Ibegain bill forward to join Missouri with Texas. Oklahoma. The Oklahoma House of Representatives has passed its Ibegain bill. It is now pending in its Senate. In Louisiana, Senate Bill 43 has been introduced to join that state to Texas, and in what I can only describe, as full circle justice. The Kentucky Senate passed Senate Bill 77 by a margin of 35 to 2 to join Kentucky where this all began with Texas as a state partner in this Ibegain drug development trial. It is now sitting in the Kentucky House of Representatives. So you, if you are at home, please call the Kentucky House of Representatives and ask them to pass the Kentucky Abilagane initiatives so the state will not be left out. Now, here are some just unbelievable words that are going to come out my mouth.

The state of West Virginia, their House of Delegates by a vote of 96 to nothing, and their state senate unanimously passed their Ibegain bill to join Texas, and it has now been sent to their governor for signature. And the one that is the most poignant and moving, for all the obvious reasons, the state of Mississippi, the crucible for the triumph of uniquely American hope over horror. And of the leadership of Representative Sam Creekmore, its state House of Representatives passed by a margin of 111 to 1, and its state Senate passed by a margin of 51 to 1.

The Mississippi Ibegan Initiative, which will tie the state of Mississippi with a $5 million appropriation from its opioid fund to Texas to develop the most powerful psychedelic on the planet as a breakthrough treatment for trauma and addiction for the people of Mississippi. That's incredible. It is going to be signed, actually has been legally signed by Governor Reeves, Governor Tate Reeves. And Governor Perry and I have asked for a special signing ceremony with Representative Creekmore, his legislative leaders there, to stand in Jackson, Mississippi, and see that sign into law as a matter of ceremonial formality. What a wonderfully redemptive opportunity that we have here to Shepard.

and we hope and pray that our organization can be sufficiently resourced and sufficiently engaged over the next three years so that we can see this process to conclusion. I'll mention a couple of others since we're talking about the capacity to make this a broad-based humanitarian mission that improves the human condition. Just Friday, before traveling down here on Sunday, I received a letter from the government of Gabon, naming Americans for Abigate as its official partner for the advancement. of Iboga medicine globally. Gabon has 2.3 million people.

It's got 100,000 square miles of territory that's the modern Garden of Eden. I had the opportunity to take a trip there from, and I mean trip is in the geographic sense, not the psychot. Not the Iboga trip, though. I hope that that will be on the agenda and the ceremonial way sometime within the next year.

We traveled there from January 6th to January 20th, And if someone would have said when you go to Gabon, you're going to have one of the most down-home experiences you've ever had in my life. It would have blown my mind. But it was a fabulous journey, one in which they were jubilant about our ability to demonstrate that what they call the sacred wood. In fact, it's one of the most scientifically advanced substances that has perhaps ever been discovered. And we're honored that the government would choose us as their partner to move this forward. on Monday, after a conference call with Chief Gary Batten, I can confirm that the Choctaw Nation will seek to join Texas in the expansion of this Ibegain drug development trial

onto their sovereign territory as the third largest Native American tribe in the country. On April the 7th, I will be traveling to Durant, Oklahoma, for what is being called the Interstate. tribal council meeting of what they describe as the five civilized tribes. That's their name, not mine. This is a gathering of the leadership of the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Cherokee,

the Mosquee, and the Seminole. We expect a passage of a resolution that I will be there to lobby for, where the five civilized tribes will declare their solidarity with Americans for Ibegain for the integration of this divine emancipator,

into the U.S. health care system as expeditiously as possible and make all of their resources available to explore the extent of which we can operationalize Ibegain medicine as quickly as possible. And it's my hope and aspiration that we will see all of Native America join this effort before the end of this year. Can I stop you there? Would that make it so that they would be able to immediately establish retreats there? So similar to the way they have casinos? Because they don't have the same sort of regulations that some states do? Tribal sovereignty is an area of the law with which I am not familiar. I would not be able to speak to the degree to which they could autonomously open a clinic.

The most immediate issue would be related to the creation of a supply chain because you have traveled through interstate commerce in the U.S. states which are theoretically restricted. However, there is one spectacular opportunity not just to expedite the creation, of Ibegain Treatment Access for Native America, but for all of America. And this gets into federal right to try legislation, authored by former U.S. Senator Kirsten Sennema and signed by the president during his first administration in 2018. What federal right to try legislation or the law provides is that once any medication makes its way through phase one safety testing within the FDA's process,

than anyone with a life-threatening condition for which that medication is being developed can request treatment with that medication and obtain it from a willing prescriber. What does that mean? That means that as soon as Texas or as soon as one of the native tribes effectively completes a phase one safety study under the language of the law, anyone who has a life-threatening condition for which this medication is being developed, first and foremost, opioid dependency, can go and request and get the treatment. We have one complication.

Presently, the Drug Enforcement Administration, in keeping with the practice of many government agencies that use their arbitrary authority to interpret law has asserted that federal right to try does not apply to Schedule 1 substances. This means that based on not the language of the law, but on DEA's interpretation, preference of that law, once I began clears through phase one, it would be disqualified for access under federal right to try because the DEA says, that if Schedule I substances were intended to be included, they would have been specifically listed in the legislation.

When Kirsten Sintima, the author of the bill, explained to them that the language is unambiguous, and it says, any medication, their response was insolence and a refusal to honor what the statute actually says, which is one of these numerous examples of the use of fictitious legal realities to do violence to legitimate reality. The DEA needs to be told to relent on its misinterpretation and extrajudicial interpretation of federal right to try

to interpret it as written so that once any phase one study on Ibegain is completed, delivery can be effectuated through the medical system immediately. And I might add one of the challenges that I've seen over my 40 years of being involved in government is that bureaucrats, the easiest and the safest answer for a bureaucrat is no. And I think that's part of what we're running into in D.C. with the DEA. One of the issues that I certainly hope and pray, and as we go through the summer and as we see what's happened in Texas and Mississippi in these other states, that we'll have the opportunity to sit down with President Trump and to just share with him what we're doing, what we're seeing

across the country, and that we could potentially have a conversation about the rescheduling of Ibogaine from one to three, two or three. You know, just you get it out of that Schedule 1, which there's no reason in the world. You talked about this many times, Joe, that Ibegain is on Schedule 1. it does have medical purposes. I mean, it's very clear it does. And secondly, it is not addictive. So the idea on its face that Ibegain is shown as this Schedule 1 compound is just a fallacy.

Well, the Schedule 1, the Sweeping Schedule 1 Act of 1970 is just nuts. They just threw a bunch of stuff in there. Many of the things that aren't even psychoactive. A question, the abogatory, can it be grown in the United States? theoretically, it could be... Is it climate dependent? It's climate dependent. It's soil dependent.

It is considered an entourage plant whereby it absorbs essentially the essence, not just of the soil around it, but of the other botanicals. One of the things we learned in Gabon is that much like we have great varieties in California for all the different kinds of wine that they produce, there are different varieties of the Iboga shrub. How it grows in the north of the country is very different than how it grows in the south. In terms of the amount of compound that's in it or the type of compound that's in it? The potency, the strength, the nature of its effect on the person, the way that it kind of facilitates the spiritual journey. There's some of it that will kind of have a dark angle.

There's some of it that has more of a light angle. We are just really scratching the surface of knowledge as to all the ways in which it can vary based on how it grows naturally. One of the most fascinating things that we learned there, and this is going to give you chills. We visited a five hectare, they use the metric system, we visited a five hectare Eboga plantation right in the center of Lieberville that is run by one of their former prime ministers. It's an experimental form to kind of understand how it grows, the optimal ways in which to grow it, and what different outcomes are. So as we were walking along, we came to these two small bushes.

It takes for it about 10 years to come to maturation. We come along this pathway, and they were two shrubs identical, growing just a couple of feet apart from each other. And they pointed those out and said, now what does that look like to you? And I said, well, those are eboga shrubs. And they smiled and they said, well, it would appear so because they are identical. They said, but in nature, when you find an eboga shrub, you're going to have to be very careful to determine which one's which because in nature it looks like they grow in pairs. One is the real deal. The other is its poison imposter.

Oh. And they grow together. And they look identical? They look identical. How do you differentiate? It's not until they get fully grown into their 10th year. One bears fruit, which is the real deal, and the other does not. Wow.

Now, how does that do you for the physical communication of a mystical spiritual reality? So it takes 10 years for it to come to fruition to the point where it could be useful? No. Though you could use it before then, but you don't know whether you're getting the real deal you're just killing yourself? When you see them grow in pairs, that's correct. So there's one group of people who know how to differentiate. One of the things that we learned is that there is a healthy underground international market for the bark.

Just like we use vitamin B complex or we use valerian root to help us go to sleep, people in Gabon will use the Iboga bark for mental acuity and just like drinking a cup of coffee. I mean, to get the psychoactive effect, you have to eat like five big, huge heaping plates of this stuff over the course of time. It's so bitter it will burn your mouth. I mean, it's an Olympian ordeal. Yes, sir. It's an Olympian ordeal to consume the amount of bark that's necessary to get that mystical effect. And you're sicker in a dog the whole time you're doing it.

But apparently piracy in the country for the shrub is fairly prominent. And they explained that what poachers, will do is that they will take the poison imposter and basically like the street supply where you put pollutants in with cocaine or whatever here they put that imposter bark in with the real because you cannot visually differentiate the umbongo pigmy who we had the privilege of meeting who hosted us for an overnight ceremony of blessed and protection that was just phenomenal they apparently can just taste the bark even when it's mixed together and they can tell if it's adulterated with the imposter. Wow.

But to know that... So like Somaliers of Ibrahimian. Yes. That's a great way to put it. An Ivigain Somalier. Might have to go over and get tutored. Yeah, I wonder what that process is like. Boy.

Well, it seems to me that with the incredible effectiveness of this compound and it being adopted by all these states, it almost seems inevitable that change is coming. Well, here's what we need to make change happen. We need the DEA to get on board. Well, we need the DEA to get on board, but we need one man to get on board. And that man is the president of the United States. We're here to recognize America in her 250th year. 25 of those 250, now 10% of time has been spent at war.

And there are conditions unique to war that only this medication can responsibly address in a way that nothing else can. If there is an opportunity to improve the human condition at scale, particularly for those who are even right now being marched in to go in fact yet another war, taken executive action that would direct Ibegain to be moved to Schedule 2, that the provisions of the Halt-Fentan Act be applied to the Texas multistate Ibegain drug development trial, that the DEA be directed to interpret federal right to try so as to not exclude Schedule 1 medications that are in drug development, and that it be appropriately interpreted so that any medication that makes it through phase one can be accessed by a person with a life-threatening condition and then directing that federal scientific research agencies,

whether they be within health and human services or the Pentagon, come alongside the states in direct partnership to fund and foster the accelerated pharmacological development of Ibigan so that this medication can make its way all the way through the FDA's process, with their supportive guidance within three years or less. It is the moonshot of our time. And if there's a humanitarian legacy to be left for the ages by a president who very much wishes to have a legacy that is well reflected upon by posterity,

this is one of the most monumental opportunities he has to help folks at scale in a way that no president perhaps has before. has before. We're at an inflection point in history, not just for this country, but globally. Well, I certainly hope that this message reaches the president, and I will try to make sure that it does. Thank you, sir. I mean, I think in terms of the amount of people that it can help and the crisis that our country is enduring with opiate addiction, with PTSD, with all sorts of trauma, with CTE, from sports, from car accidents, and what have you. I mean, this is, I mean, it's astonishing that this is even a struggle.

When you consider the effectiveness of this, it's astonishing that we have to plead and that you have to put in so much work. And kudos to you for doing that. And kudos to Dan Patrick for this recent adoption of it here in Texas. And I mean, I just can only hope that momentum is on the side that's correct. and that this is implemented through the entire country and that people wake up and realize, like, we can help people. And everyone at this point in time, because of the opioid crisis, everyone is touched by this.

Everyone has a family member. Everyone knows someone. A friend, a neighbor. Everyone knows someone who's been hit by this. I have friends that have no problems with anything else, and they had an injury and got hooked on opiates and had a terrible time kicking it. It, opioids are, I'll use the word demonic. I just, I don't know any other way to, it's a good word.

It's a good word. It robs people of their life. And to have seen, you know, back in Kentucky where this all started, in my opinion, in your work there, and to have the success that we're seeing now in Kentucky, and having it blocked historically when you were there at the opioid. abatement commission and the current governor being a part of that blockade, if you will, former employee of the Sackler family. And today to have the opportunity, you know, for the Kentucky people of Kentucky to finally get the opportunity to make right what they got so tragically impacted by back in the late.

90s and the 2000s. I just, I mean, it gives me great hope, not just for this country, but for the side of righteousness that this happens in a big and a powerful way. Here, here. He mentions the Kentucky experience. Before we rolled out the Abigate Initiative there and I ran the opioid, stood up the opioid commission, I thought our first job was to go and to hear from the people of the state. You know, we were getting a billion dollars in settlement funds. This money was coming to us because thousands of their family members had died. So recognizing that confidence in government is at an all-time low, I thought it was important to go out and say, hey, here's who we are, here's the job we've been given, here's the resource

we have, tell us what need you have in your community that we can look to fund. This is something that needs to be accessible to grassroots organizations. It needs to be accountable to you as people, and we need to make sure we're transparent with how we use this money, but our first job is to listen. Well, over the course of 20 town halls across the state Tuesday evenings from 6 p.m. until we wrapped up, what began as a 15-minute technocratic presentation of what this state commission does turned into these mass catharsis events were hundreds of people. Thousands over the course of those 20 town halls poured out. the depths of their grief right at our feet. And after they did, the sum total of their response to us

was, we don't think that you have the competence or the integrity to do anything that's going to make a meaningful difference in this life, in our lives. And we don't expect one cent of this money is going to make the least bit of difference for us. At one of these town halls, I heard about a young woman by the name of Tamara. And the woman who told Tamara's story was a volunteer at a clinic for the survivors of child sexual abuse. This particular clinic made sure that children received appropriate medical treatment, that they received proper therapeutic counseling, and that they were placed in family circumstances

where they could perhaps have a chance to have a decent life. So this volunteer told about meeting a young woman by the name of Tamara when Tamara was 10 years old had been horrifically sexually abused by a family member. Tamer had to have a series of reconstructive surgeries because of how awful it was. And she said that she worked with Tamara for about two or three years and that she went to her adopted family and she hadn't been heard from since and that she assumed that that was despite how awful her circumstances were when she came through the door, that she managed to get well and go on and have a relative functional and happy life, as happy as one can to be a survivor of those circumstances.

This same woman said that about 10 years later, she was volunteering at the Perry County Kentucky Detention Center in the county seat of hazard, and that she was offering mindfulness and yoga classes to inmates there, just as a volunteer. And she said she went in one evening to teach her class. And that she saw this young woman sitting in the corner off to herself, kind of withdrawn. She didn't want to come participate in any of the yoga exercises or anything, and that she was looking at her. And she said, you know, even though she was an adult,

she looked kind of like what this young woman appeared, Tamara, when she was 10 years old. She said, so I walked up to her and knelt down beside her, and I said, Is your name Tamara? And she said that young woman looked up at her and recognized. and I asked bright and she said, yes, how'd you know? She said, I'm a volunteer who worked with you when you came to our clinic when you were 10. What are you doing in here? And Tamaray explained that because of the surgeries that she had performed to be reconstructed,

they had given her opioids. And that what began to treat her physical pain, she continued to rely upon to treat her tremendous spiritual, an emotional pain. And she had gotten busted by an oxy on the street by a deputy with the Perry County Sheriff's Department and put in jail. Now you think about what I just said about

how this young woman's life got started off. And the response of power to her was a prison. This is why what we're doing is so necessary. And Governor Perry mentions one other reality that's important. Some of your viewers may have seen a Politico article published on Sunday about a presidential aspirant by the name of Andy Beshear, who is the current Kentucky governor. Andy Beshear was the Attorney General of Kentucky before he was governor. He is the son of his father, Steve Beshear, who was governor for eight years between 2007 and 2015. Andy's greatest accomplishment is being his father's son because he has never accomplished anything outside of his father's lap.

The legislature in Kentucky has been controlled by Republican supermajorities over the entirety of his term, and everything for which he claims credit actually belongs to them by way of accomplishment. There are a few things for which he can claim credit. One is shutting down the state of Kentucky harder than Gavin Newsom shut down the state of California, which resulted in the educational hobbling of an entire generation of Kentucky children who were already well behind national average standards on both reading and math, You could go to a liquor store or a strip club for months in Kentucky before you could send your child to a public school. Andy Beshear is responsible for that.

He shut down the state's entire economy. He had an antiquated unemployment benefit system that he instructed the director of to make sure that his contributors and his family members were placed into the front of the line, while regular everyday people at home got a busy signal for months on end and had no financial lifeline while his family and friends got valet treatment. When this was discovered, he scapegoated the director of the unemployment system for following his own instructions a guy by the name of Muncie McNamara, and Mr. McNamara took his own life. But the most egregious reality about Andy Beshear,

and his father pertains to the fact that they were both law partners at the law firm that represented Purdue Pharma against the people of Kentucky and the litigation over OxyContin while they were law partners there. Andy Beshear and his daddy drew law partner paychecks of Purdue Farmer client bills while they were there. And the people of Kentucky should have received a billion dollars, but instead received a measly $24 million payout from Purdue Pharma because Andy and his daddy's law firm malpracticed that case. The public record will establish that as part of the Purdue Pharma settlement, 17 million documents were destroyed. The case was put under seal, and as a condition of the settlement, their law firm was allowed to cure their malpractice of the case,

resulted in a $24 million settlement within days of Andy Beshear becoming the Attorney General. That's right, the Attorney General. I said I've been a Republican all my life, and I have. My family's been Republican going back to the Civil War. I don't care if it's Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, that Illinois's governor, Governor Pritzker. Any national Democrat who needs my... time, my effort, whatever I can offer by way of volunteer resources to make sure that Andy Beshear never sniffs the sewer grade of the White House, they've got it.

In this Politico article, Andy talks about in much the same way as other performative public piety purveyors that his life is guided by the Golden Rule and the Good Samaritan. He likes to wear his Sunday school and deacon affiliations on his sleeve as so many other performative public piety figures do. If he were actually going to preach the part of the Bible that he has lived, he would talk more about Judas and the 40 pieces of silver than he would any golden rule and a good Samaritan. And I just want to make sure that the people of home and the people of America know who this man is as the national media takes up, Kentucky media's grotesque narrative about his decency and tries to lie him into the White House. Thank you for letting me say that. It's been a long time coming. I understand.

Anything else before we wrap this up? I think we covered it all. I think we had it good. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Really big supporter of this effort. Well, I think it's just incredible. I mean, I can't believe it's happening. You know, I'd always kind of given up hope that people would wake up to the powerful potential that a lot of these compounds have to change people's lives. Yeah. Well, I'm sure there were some teachers of mine back in the 1950s that the idea that that little bar-headed kid that is, you know, obviously not paying a lot of attention could somehow another end up being the governor or the,

great state of Texas. And there's probably a long list of those, as a matter of fact. And I'm sure there's some people over the course of the last 15 years, as I matriculated up through the political process, has said, you know, the idea that this guy is going to be standing up putting his reputation on the line for something like psychedelics is that that ain't going to happen. But it goes back to your point about. Be curious, be courageous, and make a difference. All right. And you're doing it, Joe Rogan.

Thank you, man. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, too, Brian. Thank you. And you might have I share one last thing. Sure. And because it is the 250th anniversary of the country, this comes from the heart.

You know, the bicentennial children have had the blessing of being the grandchildren of that greatest generation that overcame the Great Depression, defeated Naziism. killed Jim Crow, and crushed totalitarian communism. That greatest generation lived, lived, suffered, bled, and died to leave us the shining city on the hill. Over the past 50 years, the bicentennial children, or those who are known as Generation X, have experienced the mass extinction of family and community. We are the first generational cohort of mass refugees

from obliterated biological families who had to seek and build new families of choice based on the salvation bond of unconditional affection, rejected only the superficial, socialized separatisms of the skin suits into which we have been born. Over the past 30 years, we have watched truth, justice, and the American way be overrun by institutional deceit,

white-collar criminality in the thieving tyrant's will, an odious alignment of official depravity which has produced, the opioid epidemic, the gravest engineered humanitarian catastrophe to play out within our borders since the end of the 19th century in an epidemic which has disfigured this country. The 2008 financial crisis, which forcibly dispossessed millions of us from the American dream, including 52% of African-American homeowners

and sent us the bill for the cost of our dispossession, a bill that everyone under the age of 40 continues to pay through their lack of economic mobility. And finally and most deplorably, 25 years of unremittant warfare, which has taken exponentially more service member lives here at home by suicide than have been lost at battlefields abroad. Over the last 10 years,

1.5 million Americans have died from drug overdose, alcohol-related disease, and suicide, a figure that exceeds the total number of war casualties going all the way back to 1776. We've got 102 counties with life expectancies less than that of North Korea. 18% of respondents to a recent Pew Research Center poll said that they believe the federal government has the capacity to do the right thing. a figure that hasn't been above 30% since 2007. 80% of respondents to an October 2025 Wall Street Journal poll have said that the American dream is dead. Power has answered these unconscionable realities with a maelstrom of bureaucratic absurdity, impudent incompetence, and predatory corruption, all with the blessing of the law which has used its power to bind torture. and kill the truth.

In the decades prior to July 14, 1789, the French government had ruthlessly imposed its burdens, abusively imposed its costs, and ravenously consumed the future of its people. The arrogance of the aristocracy ultimately answered to the desperate determination of the peasantry and its guillotine blade.

We are here to pursue one of the greatest humanitarian missions ever undertaken to serve and exalt the primacy of the human soul. As we sit here right now, there are millions of Americans who have no sense of greater purpose or of even why they are alive, who mourn to see the sunrise when it comes up and through their windows. And what they need to know is that they are indeed divine. There's only one thing that is known to produce iron, and that's the supernova of a star. The iron in our blood originated in a supernova eons ago. Every human being has stardust running through their blood. And the movement that Governor Perry and I are leading is one that aims to recognize the reality

of that human divinity. We are desperate and we are determined and we will crawl the last mile to deliver good tidings unto the meek to bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.

Glory, glory, hallelujah. The truth is marching on. And thank you, sir, for letting us proclaim it right here. on your platform, the Walter Cronkite of our age. That was a beautiful way to end it. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen.

Bye, everybody.