The Joe Rogan Experience - #419 - Lorenzo Hagerty (Part 2)

Episode Date: November 19, 2013

Lorenzo Hagerty is a former attorney, corporate CEO, and US Naval officer. He currently hosts the popular podcast "The Psychedelic Salon".

Is it recording? Yes? Yeah, it's good. Okay, good, beautiful. Yeah, we always have these things where it hits three hours, and we're like, God damn it. We can't, you know. At least you don't have a 30- or 60-minute show

that you have to put your commercials in the middle and everything. By the way, I'll give a plug for LegalZoom. When I first came to California, it took me two days in a law library to get up to speed so I could write my will. And I was glad to see that there's still a discount with Rogan because that's my project this month is to redo my will. And, you know, I've known about LegalZoom for a long time. It's a really good group. That's another thing that I think the Internet sort of made a lot easier, finding out what your rights are, finding out how the law applies.

Lawyers mainly know how to use the library and have their secretaries type up all these things, you know, because they've got to go by. And so LegalZoom can take care of probably 95 percent of all your stuff. How did you go from being a lawyer to running a computer company? Well, I was practicing law in Houston. And we had primarily a business law. My partner and I owned a title insurance company, and it was in the heyday in Houston when the savings and loan thing was going on. But one day our main client came in, and he had a big construction company, and he wanted to sue one of his subcontractors. And I looked at all the things.

I said, well, Jim, you can file a lawsuit, but you're not going to win because he's in the right here. He says, oh, I know that. I just want to hurt him. So I said, give me just a minute. I walked around to the next office to my partner. I said, figure out what my share of this outfit is worth. I quit. I'm going home.

And that was when I just – it had been building up to that because I'd been doing stuff that, I didn't become a lawyer to hurt people and do stuff like that. And so I just walked away from it and I got involved in multi-level marketing. Wow. And what I found out is that if you say, hey, I'm a lawyer and I'm doing this, people just flock to you. I signed up lots of people. Because you're a lawyer? Well, they say, well, if a lawyer's doing it, it's got to be great. So is it like a pyramid scheme?

Pyramid company, yeah. We were selling do-it-yourself-at-home facelifts. What? What? It was before anybody knew about Aloe Vera, one of the first aloe companies. And it was really easy to sell. We'd do a meeting and a bunch of people would be there, and you'd paint half their face with this stuff and leave it on for like 30 minutes and take it off.

And it looked like their two-face. You know, one side's a little higher than the other. Sort of like putting, what's that, hemorrhoid medicine on your face or something. What's hemorrhoid medicine? Preparation H. What happens when you put that on your face? It just tightens you up. It tightens your skin up for an hour or two.

So when you put aloe vera on your face- Well, no, this was a whole bunch of- It actually did work. It did tighten up your skin and get rid of some wrinkles for the evening. Yeah, oh yeah, it worked. For the evening? For the evening, yeah. It wasn't permanent.

Wow. And we sold a whole variety of things. Well, I don't like actors do that before they make movies. Well, I don't think you can get this stuff anymore. You can't get aloe vera anymore? Well, you can get aloe vera, but this had some powders and stuff. It was a chemical thing. You mixed it all up.

What happened? Did it start fucking up people's faces? No. The company went out of business. You know, I know a lot about these multilevel companies. They all spring from a vitamin company, Neutralite, I think it was called. And that's where the DeVos and Van Andel started Amway. Nutrilite?

Yeah, I think Amway finally bought them or something like that. What's that big one? That's the big one with the leaves? Oh, that's, I'll think of it in a minute. Huge company. Yeah. Anyhow. Herbalife?

Herbalife. In fact, one of their first vice presidents came out of this company I was in, Ideal Incorporated. But there was Dare to Be Great and Coscot and one that the California Governor Campaign, that guy. Anyhow, I used to know a whole lot about this. And they all sprung from the same core of people at one time. They all knew each other. And I got involved in that for a while. And we were selling all kinds of things.

And then my partner and I started a jewelry company. And we kind of fell out. And I got involved in that for a while. And we were selling all kinds of things. And then my partner and I started a jewelry company. And we kind of fell out. And I was into computers. So I started a computer company. It was a pyramid company. And, you know, it was a lot of fun. But, you know, I finally lost the faith because for a while I really believed that you could do these things. You know, we had a woman who was a German refugee

that wound up making $20,000 a month and stuff like that. And so those things did happen, but they were so rare. Finally, you know, I was able to see the light. Well, it happened after I started taking MDMA. That's when I got out of the motivational business and everything. The motivational business. That's a slippery business. You know what's fascinating to me? People that have never been successful at business, but give motivational seminars on how to be successful at business. Yeah. After my computer company crashed, that's what I got into. That's a fascinating thing, isn't it? That people would, it's sort of like, you know, like there's comedy classes that are taught by extremely unfunny people.

I believe it. People that have never had a career as a comedian, but they decided to start teaching comedy, and then they started making more money teaching comedy than they ever did doing comedy itself. Yeah. It's like a lot of that. Back in Boston, there was a guy that was a terrible comedian who was teaching the local comedy class. And I was like, that doesn't make any, like, what the fuck is going on here? You couldn't get a real comedian to teach a comedy class.

They didn't want to have any part of it. And you'd be surprised how many motivational speakers are in great depression all the time. Really? We'd go back after the thing would be over. We'd get off stage. Oh, gee, my wife is leaving me, and I'm broke. And, you know, all these things. We had more problems than our audience combined, probably.

That's hilarious. But you had some good ideas. You just had to figure out how to use them yourself. They were all, you know all from 100 years ago. There's not much new in that field. Well, Anthony Robbins is another one, right? Tony Robbins, yeah. He's super successful at that.

But what else has he done? I mean, has he had a successful real business? You know, when he first came on the scene, I just started kicking myself because I said, gosh, I was doing that and I'm better than him. He's very handsome. He's a beautiful man. He has great teeth. Oh, yeah. Nice skin.

He has a lot more confidence than I have. Booming voice. Throws karate kicks. But, you know, eventually you kind of push yourself to the end. He started doing all the fire walking and stuff like that. Yeah, that's fire walking. My wife did it and did not get burned the first time. You could do it and not get burned too. Yeah, that's fire walking. Hey, my wife did it and did not get burned. Wow.

The first time. You could do it and not get burned too. Well, no. Why don't you walk quick? I could not do it. Really? Because I'm not going to walk on fire barefoot. Okay, but if you did, you'd be all right.

The whole idea is getting through it quickly. If I did, I know I'd get through all right because I wouldn't do it unless I was sure I was going to get through all right. You could think that you were going to be all right and not be all right. Well, that's what happened to her the second time. How far did she walk longer the second time? I think it was probably the same. Really? Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. I didn't know her then, so I probably shouldn't be talking about it. I get it symbolically, you know, but unless it's fuckery. Look, we all know fire burns. Why is fire not burning? Because I don't believe it's going to burn? Boy, I'm not sure about that. I think you might be playing games here.

Well, you know, the three laws of taking psychedelics are, number one, cars are real. Number two, fire burns. And number three, gravity is still a law. If you lifted those three things, you can't go wrong. That's like the Bill Hicks joke. Did you ever hear the Bill Hicks joke? Young man on acid, thought he could fly, jumped off the building. And he's like, if you thought he could fly, what did he take off from the

ground? You lost a moron. I remember that. It's so logical. It is logical. It's like, wait a minute, that guy was an asshole. Now, he was a Houston guy, right? Yes. See, I left Houston by then. When I was going to law school in Houston, the only celebrity I saw that wasn't a celebrity then was Glenn Campbell was singing for tips in this bar I used to go to.

But I used to hang out in Lightning Hopkins Bar. He was a black blues guy. And a couple of us would go down. In Houston? Yeah. Yeah. Where was that? Down the Fifth Ward somewhere the third war yeah and we'd have to go in a little group but we went regularly enough that we got known we're the only white kids in there you know and wow so uh one and and he'd

you know he'd rap with us and stuff and and i said hey i can play the spoons and he says yeah give the boy some spoons get up here and so I start playing the spoons while he's playing guitar, you know, and he stops and he says, you're in law school, right? And I said, yeah. He says, go back to law school. You'll never make it as a musician. What an asshole.

Oh, no, no. He did it in a funny way. He was actually right. I couldn't keep a beat, you know. Houston had two of the greatest comedians of all time come out of it. Sam Kinison and Bill Hicks. Oh, Kinison too.

Yeah, that's right. They had that whole Houston annex down back in then. They had like a real creative group of young up-and-coming comedians. And they, you know, they started this thing, the Houston Comedy Outlaws. And it was Hicks and Kinison and a bunch of other guys. Fascinating sort of a development. Yeah, I went to law school there in Houston. I taught sailing at Houston Yacht Club. That's sort of a development. Yeah, I went to law school there in Houston. I taught sailing

at Houston Yacht Club. That's how I got there. Well, because of Kinison, they all had like this unique style, this very aggressive in-your-face, thoughtful style of comedy. Breaking things down in a very logical way. But making good points, but also

being like really bold about it. I heard you and I think it was Mark Maron talking about Kennison. Boy, that really gave me a whole new... Maron has some amazing Kennison stories. When he was on this podcast, he was talking about doing coke with Kennison and how he was hearing voices for like a year. And he was a young kid then when he was with him. But can you imagine?

He did so much coke, he was hearing young kid then when he was with him but can you imagine he did so much coke he was hearing voices for a year whoa man holy break your brain Batman I was lucky I never liked coke I was lucky I never tried it the same woman that gave me MDMA for the first time

gave me my first lines of coke and I said oh this is awful man it's like being in a dentist's office. And she said, oh, yeah, it's always like that in the beginning. But after 10, 12 times, you'll get to like it. And I said, you know, I went through that with scotch. And it's cheap and legal. I'm not going to go through that again. Yeah, there's weird things like caviar. It's an acquired taste. Why would you acquire it? Why would you acquire something that costs $10,000 and tastes like shit? Yeah. And if you don't like it to begin with, why acquire it?

Yeah. Why acquire that? That seems really silly. Yeah. I never did the cocaine, but I've had a bunch of people near me that had problems with it. I always associate cocaine with a lot of negative things that I'd seen. But one of the biggest ones was I was driving with some friends. We were in Revere, Massachusetts, and there was this two-lane road that we were leaving this area. There was this famous place where you'd go to Kelly's Roast Beef, and everybody would go there and get clams. They had fried clams there. It's like a famous spot. People travel from far and wide to go to Kelly's.

So we were driving back from that and there's people behind us, people beside us in this car were doing coke. And there was a girl in the back seat and they had the light, the dome light on, and she was doing coke. And she looks over and sees us looking at her and she goes like this, fuck you. She's like, as they're driving by, just looks at me and like anger and craziness in her eyes fuck you and that's how i view coke yeah i view coke is like that lady look i was looking at her you're doing coke you have the dome light on and i'm looking at you and you're mad at me yeah i didn't do anything i didn't know i've had a few friends that got into it too far and it's it's it's devastating

yeah it's another thing it's another one of those things that your body connects to chemicals and become it becomes a massive part of your life for some really strange reason. I've only done meth twice. Oh, that's a weird thing to say. And the reason I would never do it again is because it's the one drug that could hook me. Wow. The first time I did, I didn't even know what it was. I was crewing for racing sailboats over in New Orleans at the Mardi Gras Regatta.

And the guy that owned the boat was from Houston, and I was in law school there. And he wanted me to drive his boat back. It was on a trailer, a Dragon. And I said, oh, I can't go back. You know, I'm sleepy. I haven't slept in two days. And he says, here, take this. He gave me this.

And I drove straight through from New Orleans to Houston. I was wired you know and it was about a year later I said hey I want one more of those things and he gave it to me and I thought you know I could get really hooked on this stuff but I never driver math what truck driver math yeah that's the real math right I don't know but I never came near it again after that I've had some people got in real trouble with that too, some friends. What is the comedown like? It's crash.

For me, it was just a total crash. Once I finally came down, I didn't go to class for a couple days. When you were taking pure MDMA, you had no crash at all? I didn't. Because nobody knew that you're supposed to, I think. But the other thing is I was working at the time, so maybe I was just so busy I didn't notice it. But I never had a come down crash when I was in Dallas. I had a big one.

I only did it once. The next day I had to perform. I had to do a stand-up set, and I went to a coffee shop in the morning, and I was reading a magazine I couldn't read. I was like, I couldn't read. I couldn't stay focused long enough to get through a sentence. I couldn't get through a paragraph. I couldn't get through a paragraph. I couldn't do it. I just didn't have it in there.

I was like, wow, I am stupid as fuck. I was like, what's going on with my brain? I didn't know about 5-HTP. I didn't know about supplementing afterwards to try to re-kickstart your brain's ability to produce serotonin and dopamine. But it didn't sit me well. I enjoyed the experience as far as what I got out of it, but I also thought this would be very dangerous because that reality of the loving, warm, ecstasy feeling

when you're locked into it is very appealing, and you could want to do that a lot. And then if you wanted to do that a lot, you would experience that more or enjoy it more than you would enjoy regular reality. And then it would, you know, it's sort of like a point of diminishing returns. Like you're not getting anything out of this. You build up a tolerance to it.

I did more MDMA than is, you know, sensible. And because I didn't know what I was doing. See, that was the problem back then. Nobody knew anything about it in Dallas, you know. And we were, oh, it's safe. Don't worry about it. And there was just no literature. There was no nothing. How did he get started? Well, I don't know if the story ever really got out, but this guy, he went by the name Thomas Crown, he was the, he was really

the mainstay, although there's a guy that, I'll think of his name in a minute, everybody thought was the number one guy in Dallas, but he was a good friend of Tim Leary. And he's out here in L.A. and Tim Leary says, here, try this. And that's when he found it. He said, oh, this is great. I'm going to take it back. And he lit up Dallas with this stuff. But I actually did a motivational speech on MDMA one time.

Whoa. About two hours after I'd taken it. So I was still pretty much up there. And they'd pay me to do a 30 minute keynote speech at this big corporate thing. And I was an hour into it when they finally caught me off the stage. I had people on their feet. It's one of the best talks I ever gave. Why they could, they cut you off? Well, I was only supposed to talk 30 minutes. And after an hour they said, you know, that's really enough. Wow. That's nobody. Nobody, there was only one person in the room that knew I was an MDMA.

It was one of the women there that, actually, she was one of my distributors. And what did she think? She couldn't believe I was going to go on, first of all. Wow. And I did a lot of stupid stuff. Yeah, well, that sounds like nobody really knew what the hell was going on with that stuff. You were just taking chances.

You were like human guinea pigs. Yeah. In that little interview I did, I told about the time that, well, I took a way excessive dose. What does that mean? What's way excessive? 1,500 milligrams. What's an average pill? 120 is what you should take.

What? 120, yeah. So you took 10 times? Yeah. And I still have these two 90-minute cassette tapes that I filled up talking that whole time. I've never had the courage to listen to them again. But from that time for another seven years, I tried MDMA about five years. Well, not long after, nothing happened.

Five years after, nothing happened. About seven years after, I finally got MDMA to work again. I only did it once a year after that. And I haven't done it now in, I guess, five, six, nothing happened. About seven years after, I finally got MDMA to work again. I only did it once a year after that. And I haven't done it now in, I guess, five, six, seven years. But it really fried my brain. Now, you know, Oprah put this bad news information out about the holes in the brain thing. And the night before, a couple days before that show aired, her producer was informed by MAPS that this is a, you know, totally bogus. It was a lie they put out there. There's no holes in the brain. It was a blood flow

MRI or something like that. And I, you know, maybe I would be a genius today if I hadn't done that. But it, you know, it didn't really fry my brain. Now, it was so stupid, I had a monster headache for three or four days, and MDMA did not work again for a long, long time, but it didn't kill me, and it didn't, I don't think, put holes in my brain. The holes in the brain thing was what everybody said. That was one of those rumors. Well, Oprah did that. You know, she had this MRI of this woman, and the woman knew that it wasn't a hole in her brain. You know, MAPS got a hold of it, and they really gave her all the information, what this is, it was about blood flow or something, but it was not a hole in her brain. And Oprah's producer knew that going in,

and she still let that hit the air. Sort of like the Benghazi thing, only it didn't get busted. That's so silly. Why? You know, why? Why? Why? But, you know, why? Why? Why? But, you know, I think they probably were trying to save people. They're probably trying to, like, scare people off from doing. And maybe in this day and age when you're dealing with something that's ultimately, you know, cut with a bunch of other shit. Yeah. No, I would never take something that I got at a rave or a party or something like that, that you just can't trust this stuff. And a lot of it's, you know, you don't know who's making it. And we at least, you know, had good sources, good supplies. We knew

who the chemist was, stuff like that. But today it's really not safe unless you're the chemist or friend of them. Unfortunately, you know, if all could be fixed in a way. But you don't need to. You've got pot. Yeah. Cannabis is really the miracle drug. You know, the plant does so much things for you. The hemp plant does. Cannabis is really a medicinal plant. It certainly is. But for PTSD, there's nothing like MDMA. No, MDMA.

But see, that would be used with a doctor who knows his supply and stuff like that. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with dancing. I've danced all night on it, too. It's really good. How dare you? Oh, it's wonderful. How old were you when you were dancing all night on MDMA? I was in my 60s.

You were just learning. Yeah, I'm just catching up. You know, you kids got ahead of me. Everybody, they're ahead of us. They're ahead of you. They're ahead of me. The kids of today, they're starting from the jump with all the information. They just need to be cautious.

Oh, for sure. You don't have to be crazy about these things. It's just so unfortunate when we have so many dangerous drugs that are labeled. They're prescription drugs. Their dosage is clearly marked. Right. We know about them. And yet there's these illegal ones that are just floating around out there. And they're in commerce.

They're in connection. There's money. Money is being exchanged back and forth. People are taking them. There's no way you can ever regulate that unless you make it legal. You can't. Yeah. It's legal and then you get some kind of a structure to take care of it.

But then again, the argument is like, oh, that's going to be legal. You're going to make meth legal too? Like, ooh. Start with cannabis. Yeah. And see what happens, you know, that. Are you down for legal trucker meth if trucker meth is legal? Well, yeah, because you could regulate it.

Yeah, but still people would be still. And you'd regulate it and say, you know, who needs it? Nobody. But still people would use it like crazy. They'd be way fucked up on it. Yeah. Like if they would go to the truck stop. You know, I really don't ever give much thought to those kind of things because, you know,

I'm not an activist in drug policy or stuff like that. And so, you know, mushrooms you can grow at home now. There's a new method to grow them in hydrogen peroxide so you don't have to worry about all this, you know, sanitation stuff. What? You grow mushrooms in hydrogen peroxide? Oh, there's a bunch of YouTube videos about it. It's been out about two years now.

Fucking YouTube. Yeah. 35 hours every second goes up there, something like that. At least, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's just amazing. It's a crazy time of the year. I'll tell you another thing not to try,

not that it's not dangerous, but you know, when I first moved to Florida, a little after that, several years after I moved there and I'd lost all my connections and stuff. So the word on the street was that nutmeg was very similar to MDMA and you could take some nutmeg. So I got one of those little McCormick tins of nutmeg, and I capped it all. And I took, not the big tin, but the- Capped it, meaning put them in capsules? Put them in capsules, yeah. And I took the whole thing at one time.

Oh, my God. I got real sweaty. Got a horrible headache. And today at Christmas time, I can't get near the eggnog if it's got nutmeg on it, because I'll throw up. That's hilarious. To this day, it'll freak you out? To this day, nutmeg will make me sick. But I have heard of people getting high from

nutmeg, so what's that about? That's what I heard too. Well, maybe you have to get the big tin, but the little tin won't do it. A big tin of nutmeg. A little tin will just get you sick, but a big tin will get you high. Well, I don't know. I would not try it myself because a little tin convinced me not to try it again.

Yeah, there were some guys on my message board that were experimenting with getting high on nutmeg. I've heard that. I just don't believe it. Is that on Arrowwood? Do they have trip reports on getting high on nutmeg? Maybe they do. I don't know. I know Earth and Fire are friends of mine, and it's a really... Arrowwood.org. That's the first place to

go if you're going to do a drug. Yeah. Arrowwood has horrible... And spend a lot more time there than you spend doing the drug. Yeah, Arrowid, Nutmeg, let's find out. They have some horrible stories about basalt sometimes. Yeah, when somebody asked me, well, what's this like? Should I try this? I said, go to Arrowid and read the bad trip reports. And if you can't handle a bad trip, then don't go.

But don't read the good trip reports. And if you can't handle a bad trip, then don't go. But don't read the good trip reports. Anybody can handle a good trip. Yeah. There is apparently, there's a page on Arrowwood. It's all about nutmeg. I love this. Arrowwood provides information about psychoactive drugs to educate, to reduce harms, and to support much-needed policy change.

Do you know that some of their big customers, or not customers, readers, are DEA agents, police agents? Of course. They have a whole separate section for law enforcement and for parents. See, they started out as just a little database for their friends, and now it's one of the most visited websites on the net. It's a huge site. So what, do DEA agents go there for education?

Well, to find out more about, you know, a new drug will hit the streets, and that's one of the first places they'll go to find out what it's about. That's interesting. I wonder if that's how they found out about basalts. I don't know. You know, they'd find out about it on the street, but to find out trip reports, you know, how do we know what these kids are on? What's it doing to them?

What do we do to them? Do we take them to hospital or put them in jail? Yeah, there's going to come a day when people look back at this day and age and go, God, they were so nutty. Like they just made a, well, we're just going to add oxygen to it and fucking sell it. You know, we take this. This is illegal to get you 30 years in jail for one ounce. This, however, is exactly the same effects plus this other weird thing that it does. And you can just buy it as bath salts.

They're going to go, why didn't they fix that? Why did they let that go on for years and years and years? Right. Crazy people. And polydrugging is a real problem with the young kids. Polydrugging. Putting a bunch of things together. Candy flipping.

Well, you know, some of them are safer than others, but a lot of the polydrugging is going on with prescription drugs now. And that's really fucking them up. Yeah, well, prescription drugs just with alcohol. That's a scary one. You know, in the original hearing for cannabis, when they were going to make it illegal in 37, the only medical testimony was from the AMA. And that was in favor of cannabis.

And they cut the guy off and threw him out of the hearing. Get out of here, you fucking cop. But the only medical testimony in scheduling it or taxing it at the time was in favor. Yeah, we're in some weird times still. I mean, it's amazing that 1937's work, you know, 1930, whatever it was, when they made cannabis legal, it was a 37. Yeah. To this day, it's still effective.

Yeah. A massive amount of money. A couple of generations, you know? They just had to just get grandpa and grandma. Just get them, and then they're going to tell their kids, and they're going to tell their kids, and everyone's going to be scared. Well, now there's a huge movement in geriatric medical marijuana. Really? And I know one geriatric doctor who is prescribing it for his patients.

I have some anecdotal evidence of older people in nursing homes and all that have had some marvelous things happen to them. So it's finally getting into grandpa and grandma doing cannabis. Wow. That's amazing. It's amazing. After all these years, people are finally starting to catch on. Yeah. I've turned on people in their 60s that, you know, were very anti-drug, but they are all of a sudden in all this pain, or they're going through cancer treatments or something. They can't keep their food down. And I say, hey, try this brownie.

And pretty soon they're going to the dispensary regularly. Especially if you've lived your life without it, and you thought this is all that's available. And then all of a sudden you have this new hobby. You're old. You can't move around much. Hey, you know, there's something I can do here. Reduces inflammation too. A lot of people that have like serious problems walking around, they take some pot and it just makes you all loosey-goosey.

There's a lot of folks that have experienced some pain relief, especially if it's high in CBDs, right? I use it for pain relief. And actually, when I'm in pain, I can't tell that I'm high when I smoke it. But the pain doesn't – I don't think it goes away except you just don't pay attention to it anymore. I don't know what the mechanism is. Thinking about UFOs. Have you ever had any experience that when you were on any sort of a psychedelic that you felt was like some sort of a paranormal experience, like a UFO experience or like being in contact with something or seeing something that you experienced where it felt like it was a real thing?

Yeah, several times, mainly on ayahuasca. But there was this one time that still is just crystal clear to me where there was this, we were sitting in darkness, you know, and it appeared like there was a black curtain in front of me with just a really bright light coming out from the bottom. And from back behind me, this female kind of entity is just very dark and shadowy. I said, what is that? And this, now this could be going on in my head. I admit that, but to me it was real. And this entity, she said, well, that's what you are really made of. That's your core. Do you want to see it? And she reaches down and starts to pull this up and it started getting so bright. I said, no, no, no. I got scared.

I don't know why. And some of my friends said, I can't believe you didn't let her pick it up. But it was like a message like, you are this bright, shining spirit behind this thing. To me, that was a real entity encounter of some kind. So you think that that was like an interdimensional thing that you were communicating with? It could have been, or it could have been a figment of my imagination. You know, I not tried to distinguish between it because the emotional impact of what went on and what I was thinking and saying and afraid to look at my own core was kind of

fascinating, you know? Well, it's also what is the source of the imagination? And why is the imagination so obviously affected by different chemicals? And where does the imagination come from? Exactly. Well, the imagination is clearly affected by cannabis, clearly also affected by caffeine, clearly also affected by alcohol, definitely affected by psilocybin, definitely affected by many, many, many other things. Airplane glue will do it. You have ideas that are different than the ideas that you have

if you're in a baseline sober consciousness. And the real question then becomes, what exactly is imagination? Is imagination just a series of chemicals interacting with neurons, interacting with thoughts and ideas and learned experiences? Because out of the imagination

comes everything that everyone ever used on earth. The thing that wasn't here already, anything we made, whether it's a phone or a television set or a curtain, that all came out of the imagination. So the imagination isn't just some thing where you think things up and they, well, you know, maybe I just imagined it. Nothing happens without imagination. Exactly. The imagination is the source of every single creation. It's a weird thing when you look at it that way. When you don't look at it as something like, oh, you're just imagining things that aren't really there. Well, you're also imagining the wheel. You're also imagining internet connections. You're

also imagining airplanes. Yeah. Somebody had to imagine all of those. All of that. Without that, there's nothing. Without the human imagination, the world would look radically different. It would be 100% natural and we'd be animals. The imagination is the one step that takes us from animal into animal that changes its environment radically and starts to transcend itself, starts to symbiotically attach itself to its own creations, which coincidentally came out of the imagination. The imagination created technology that, like the glasses you're wearing or the watch I'm wearing or any of the things we're talking through, these microphones, all of that is technology created through the imagination. Right. Shoes are really tech, you know?

So when you see something and you say, well, maybe it was my imagination, I'm not exactly sure what that means. thing and you say, well, maybe it was my imagination. I'm not exactly sure what that means. See, I don't really care whether it's my imagination or some other multidimensional entity. What I focus on, what am I learning? What am I feeling, first of all? What's my emotional state? And then what am I going to take away from this? What am I going to learn? And recently, a podcast I put out, McKenna says something to the effect of, what makes us think that the entire cosmos can be understood using the neural network of a primate? He says, we're here to observe and appreciate.

And I like that. Rather than try to figure out black or dark matter and all that, that's great. I'm glad people are working on it. But I'm not going to worry about it too much. I'm going to appreciate and look at the wonder of the world. Yeah. Look at nature. It's just amazing what's going on.

Just look at all the different varieties of insects. Oh. They're just freaky, weird, alien creatures that we just take for granted because they've always been here. Yeah. Wasps. Spiders. Spiders. We couldn't live without spiders, you know.

Or bees. Or bees, yeah. And that's going to be a problem. It certainly is. And there's a lot of theories about that. But one of the more fascinating ones to me is that they are absolutely convinced that whether or not they can survive it or not, cell phone signals are damaging bees. It's fucking with the way they communicate with each other. And people. High powered lines and cell phone towers. You don't want to live near any of those. Yeah. Well, I think that high-powered lines, has there been a direct correlation ever established between them and sicknesses? Between some high-powered lines. Like a type?

The real super high-frequency power lines, yeah, there have been. In fact, I know somebody who died of cancer quite young who lived under those for a long time. Now, that was anecdotal, but I think there have been some studies now showing, because people in certain neighborhoods have sued and things like that. I've been around them before where you feel them. Yeah, you can feel that. It's a weird feel. You hear the mmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. You're standing next to it. And you can kind of feel a buzz around you. Well, you just realize, like, this is enough energy to kill everyone you've ever met ever instantly. And it's just shooting through these wire lines. Well, we don't know what we're doing to ourselves with all these electronic signals. You know, you can't get away from it.

There's Wi-Fi everywhere now. There's cell phones. There's TV. There's radio. Think of the information that's just in this room that we can't see. Right. But with the right equipment, we can tune into. Well, that's where it's going to be really weird when that equipment is actually inside your brain itself.

Yeah. That's going to be very, very, very, very strange. It's getting there, too, I think. So close. Yeah. You know, they gave the person the first ticket for wearing Google Glass while driving. I saw that, you know. Fascinating.

And I think that was a valid issue of a ticket, too. I don't want people driving and looking at Google at the same time or the net. I don't like people talking on their cell phone unless they have hands-free. My question is, how can they prove that it's active? Because if you just have that thing on your eyes, it's not— I don't think you can. I think they'll beat that ticket, but I think it sends a message. Yeah, that cops don't like technology.

Well, they like the technology they have. It's also the other message is they like writing tickets. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They want to write as many as they can, and they have to fill quotas. Filling quotas is one of the most disgusting things anybody ever got away with, the idea that there has to be a certain amount of crimes that are committed in a month. What if everybody agreed to only go the speed limit for like a year?

What would happen? Would the police officers just explode? I mean, what would they do if we all agreed? That would be an interesting project in some small town if you could get everybody to do it. If nobody has any money that's coming in from speeding tickets, what do they do? Because they rely on it. They rely on it for a source of income. There's a couple little towns on the way to Burning Man. That's most of their income is speeding tickets. But do they do? Because they rely on it. They rely on it for a source of income. There's a couple of little towns on the way to Burning Man. That's most of their income is

speeding tickets. But isn't that insane? I mean, look, it's one thing if you want to ticket someone because you want to give them an incentive to slow down to make people safer. That's one thing. But as soon as you start developing, like you have a standard amount of money you have to make every month from people, you're just saying that people never improve. You're just saying that people will never get better at following the law, never get better at being safer. And just the fact that you bank on that, you have a quota, that's disgusting. There were known speed traps in Texas, you know, that you wouldn't go through this town because it was 15 miles an hour and 16 to get you a ticket. Connecticut's horrible because Connecticut, between Connecticut and Boston, there's a lot of stretches where it's

55 fucking miles an hour. And not 56. And there's nothing there. It's just straight line. And you just want to gun it. You want to get to New York. Yeah. But between New York and Boston, it's like three and a half hours at 55 miles an hour.

We're just going, Jesus Christ. Take the train, yeah. Everywhere you look, some asshole disguises a tree, pointing radar at you. So stupid. And now when Jamie put up a picture just a moment ago, but now in Colorado, they're developing this new technology to tell if someone's smoking pot and not. Look at these things. Tell if someone's smoking pot enough inside of a building for the smell to leak outside. So they've developed this instrument that measures the amount of cannabis smell in the

air on the street, and they're going to start to give people tickets for these things. That'll help vaporize your sales. Well, this is in Colorado. We made pot legal. This is so fucking stupid. Those are the 40% that didn't vote for it. It may be that, or it may just be the fact that people are just fucking out of control and there's just weeds blowing everywhere like tumbleweed. You know, like the smell of weeds just wafting through entire communities and people are catching contact ties and they've had enough.

Well, you know, it used to be you'd put your pot in coffee and the dogs couldn't smell it for the coffee. Now they've trained the dogs to look for the coffee as well. I don't know if this is true, but a friend of mine told me that, oh, what he's been doing is buying bear piss and wolf piss and sprinkling it around his tires and in his trunk because he says when a drug dog smells it, they go crazy. They forget about drugs totally, and they want to go attack a bear. Well, so what do the cops do? I don't know.

This probably is made up, but it's a great story. I wouldn't think it would be made up. I mean, dogs instinctively freak out and they smell wolves, right? Yeah, yeah. And so it beats coffee. Yeah, that seems to make sense. That's, hmm, I wonder if they can get in trouble for, like, pasting wolf piss on your tires. How do they prove that?

I don't know. They have a wolf piss nose thing, too. They put it on. Bring in the wolf piss on your tires. How do they prove that? I don't know. They have a wolf piss nose thing, too. They put it on. Bring in the wolf piss dogs. They have a wolf piss detecting device, just like they have a cannabis smell detecting device. But there's some scents that a dog can't resist. Do you know the one scent that supposedly universally applies to all animals?

It brings in deer, brings in elk, brings in moose. Beaver piss. Really? Yeah, beaver smell or beaver estrogen, whatever it is, beaver scent. I know a lot of young men that go after beavers. Exactly. Which is interesting, that term beaver, because they don't look like... Look, if your woman's vagina looks like a beaver, take her to a doctor. There's something wrong. It's not supposed to look like that. So if you're calling it a beaver, why are you calling it a beaver? Because somebody else did before you.

Right. Well, the other idea is that it was created back when they were really hairy. I mean, we don't know about that today. Before the internet. Before porn. Before internet porn, yeah. Yeah, porn and the internet. I think porn got women to trim it down a little bit, and the internet came along, and it was just fire through bushes.

The pubes just all vanished. just fire through bushes. The pubes just all vanished. But apparently the scent from the glands of beavers is the best sexual attractant for other animals. Go figure. Yeah, I don't know what that's about. Who thought that the beavers were the studs of the animal world? They're certainly a weird fucking animal.

I mean, if you see one in real life, and you see their crazy houses that they build next to the lakes with these giant stacks of woods. I lived in a little lake in Florida, and you take a canoe and paddle out there, and there was a big beaver dam there. You could watch them, and they were busy as beavers. Busy as beavers. And there were otters around there.

And people eat them. Apparently, people eat them. Apparently, they don't taste bad. I don't know. I guess when people are starving to death. You know, I watch a lot of those Alaska shows where people live in Alaska and eat whatever they can get a hold of. A lot of people eat beaver up there. They eat beaver tails. They cook the beaver tail.

That sounds like it would be pretty tough. Seal. They eat a lot of seal. Marinate it. Yeah. Seal and beaver and, you know, got to eat what you got to eat. Yeah. Whatever the hell you can get a hold of up there.

Probably if you didn't know what it was, you'd say, hey, this is kind of interesting meat. Well, they just can't be picky. They just need a source of calories and protein. A little protein, yeah. Yeah, and that's right there. Take it. You know, and apparently seal oil is very important for them because it's very high in calories and the cold that you deal with. Apparently that's one of the best, the worst losses of calorics or of calories

is your body burning off calories to keep itself warm. It's like one of the best ways, they say, to lose weight is to actually to walk around with like less jacket or less coats than you would feel comfortable with because your body, in order to keep warm, is actually burning off energy. Oh, that's interesting. Are you going to go hunting in Alaska? No, I'm going in Wisconsin.

I'm going actually this weekend. Oh, wow. Yeah. What are you going after? I would go in Alaska too, though. What are you going after? Deer. Ah. Yeah, there's a guy who's got a farm

that's overrun with deer, and he brings in people to hunt them to manage them every year because the reality is, as you said, especially in wisconsin a lot of them are going to die by predators a lot of them are going to get hit by cars a lot of them are going to freeze to death and you in order to keep the herd healthy and manage them you gotta you gotta thin it and you've got to be the wolf and i want to i want to try to live this entire year i want to i want to pick a time like after the first of the year and try to live the entire year. I want to pick a time, like after the first of the year, and try to live the entire year

on game meat. I think it's possible. I think it's possible. I think if you're going to be a meat eater, to know the exact source of your meat, I think it's probably the best, the most ethical and sort of sane way to do it. The disconnect between us and our food, whether, like, I love growing food in a garden and then cooking and eating the vegetables that you grow. I mean, I think it's a beautiful thing.

It's an interesting connection that you have between where your food actually comes from. I have chickens now, and I get fresh eggs from the chickens. And I'm trying to get closer and closer to my food, if that makes any sense. Well, we eat mainly organic, or almost all organic, but mainly vegetables. We eat chicken maybe twice a month, and we have a friend that slaughters his pig once a year,

and we know how it's grown and raised and everything. But mainly vegetarians, but all of our food, most of it comes within 25 to 40 miles of our house. That's great. We belong to one of those CSAs, Community Supported Agriculture. And I do most of the cooking. And so it's really fun. You get this box each week and then you got to figure out what you're going to do with stuff. That's really cool. It's a lot of fun. I would love that. I've talked to my friends about that. Everyone's so goddamn busy, we never get anything done. But the idea of getting together, everybody buying in on a plot of land and then hiring

someone to run that plot of land and produce food for this group of people. Like say get 20 people together and say, well, this is our grocery bill for the year. If we can manage a plot of land and buy a plot of land together, everybody pay for one twentieth of it or whatever and then hire someone to take care of everything and hire a few people. There's got to be some CSAs up here. There must be. I don't know about that. There's several of them in San Diego County and we've belonged to this one for hire a few people. There's got to be some CSAs up here. There must be. I don't know about that. There's several of them in San Diego County, and we've belonged to this one for quite a few years now.

And they supply most of the local organic stores. And so what we're getting are the tomatoes that are heirloom. They're not perfect. We're getting food from a farm like it would come, and not everything's the same size and shape and all like that. It's real food. It's real food. It's picked that day or maybe the afternoon before.

And it's real good, fresh food. But that way, we don't have to get our own group together. Now, we've gotten a bunch of people involved in this, and some people don't like pomegranates or persimmons or whatever comes sometimes in the basket. And so we swap around with each other and stuff. And so we usually eat everything, so I get all the throwawaysaways from everything my idea had a bit of doomsday to it my idea right like if the shit hits the fan well you're into survival stuff and you know you read all that too and when i was younger i was into that too but now that i'm you know my dad my brother and my mentor all died at 63 so i'm eight years past my expiration date. So you feel like it's all free time? Sure.

I'm just, I exercise, I eat well, but you know, I it's, it's, uh, I'm not stressed about that. I see the Google kids are, are working on longevity, uh, things now. And, and I just commented to a friend yesterday. I said, you ever noticed that all of this longevity work is done by people in their thirties and forties, but by the time you're in your seventies or eighties, you say, oh no, I don't really need that. I've had a lot of fun. I want to have a little and 40s, but by the time you're 70s or 80s, you say, oh, no, I don't really need that. I've had a lot of fun. I want to have a little bit more fun, but, you know, if you gave me, you said,

here's a pill, it'll give you another 100 years, I'd have to think long and hard about that. Really? Yeah, oh, yeah. Because you would worry about deterioration or because you're not having fun? Well, because there's a lot of pain in watching your friends go through

what they're going to have to go through. Everybody's going to go through love affairs that are broken and tragedies and stuff like that. I just don't want to watch any more of that. Wow. Love affairs. That's the big one that pushes you over the edge. No, I'm thinking of my grandkids now. Oh, their heart's broken and everything.

Oh, that's funny. We were talking about the radio lab thing earlier, about the guy who went through this horrible circumcision process of becoming a runner, wouldn't want his son to go through it. Yeah. You don't want your kids to go through heartbreak. Right. My children have already gone through heartbreak.

Now it's my grandkids. It's important. I told this one of my grandchildren. I said, you know, if I'm not around when some young man breaks your heart, I will come back and haunt him. Why? And she remembers that. Well, the guy, why is it his fault? He doesn't want to be around her anymore. Well, see, I have five grandchildren, four are girls.

If it wasn't for that, I'd have a little problem with women. But I have a new sensitivity to women. Well, I have a very good sensitivity to women too, and I have three daughters. But my point is that a lot of heartbreak comes from the fact that people just decide they don't want to be with you anymore and it doesn't work out right. And people think that when someone leaves them, that they're taking something away from them. They feel this deep sense of loss and they're connected to the idea. Part of growing as a person is realizing you're going to be okay. And here's where MDMA would be really

cool if it was legal. Because when you and your partner get to the point, say, you know, if it's bad for one person, it's going to be bad for both of them, even if you're not talking about it. So if you sat down, got together one evening, just the two of you, did MDMA and talked it out. Now, I know from personal experience that, you know, my marriage, my previous marriage was really getting rocky when I found MDMA. and we stayed together another six, seven years. Is that good? Yeah, it really worked out good. Yeah. Cause it died after that. Well, the kids were growing with a lot of things happened after that, but, but it did extend our marriage and extended it in a really good way. Oh, that's good. And we were married 21 years and we're good friends now.

It was a rocky period for a while, but we've, you know, worked ourselves through that to where, you know, we both respect each other and we realized that it was not a one-way street. But, you know, I think that MDMA would be great for couples therapy of people when they hit that seven-year mark or whatever it is, you know. Yeah. Well, I think there's a lot of things that people hold in and they repress in relationships and don't communicate about.

And then sometimes a psychedelic journey together can open those ideas up and you start talking about things and you find out that there's been a misunderstanding all along or that it could have been a lack of communication, that you could have worked things out much better, much easier a long time ago, or that you're both feeling the same way, that you both want to move on. You just don't know how to do it. You know, I've had one experience where I went on for months, something was building up, and finally, you know, I got it out,

and she said, huh, that's no big deal. And it's something that had been a big deal to me for a long time. And it turned out if I'd just been talking about it, I would have had a month of bliss instead of hell, you know. So communication is the key, and there are some things that help you communicate. POD helps you communicate. Yeah, and don't you think that those things and those heartaches, that's part of what makes you a person. It's information.

You have to get that information. It's feedback. Now, I wouldn't want to not have any of my heartbreaks and stuff like that. You just don't want to see your grandchildren. I just don't want to see it happen to somebody else. I understand and I agree to a certain extent, but I think it's very important that everybody goes through a certain amount of it just to understand what it's about.

You don't have a choice. You're going to go through it anyway. Look, I've had friends that have gone through it where I know they became better people because of it. I have a friend who went through a devastating breakup and now he laughs about the idea of being stuck with that woman. Back then he thought there was idea of being stuck with that woman. You know, back then he thought there was no way he could live without her. And I was like,

it doesn't matter what happens to you, how big the tragedy is that after some enough time passes, eventually that becomes one of your funniest stories. Oh, I doubt it. Oh no. Jesus Christ. Some of these things, your kid was eaten by a wolf. Oh no. You know, that's what are you talking about? That's that's I'm thinking about fucking saw your family die in a plane crash? Okay, I'm thinking things happened to me. Oh, fucking Christ. But, you know, if you think about some things that happened, seemed to be a tragedy at the time, and usually they're not between people,

you know, car breaks. I'm just talking about, like, breakups. I'm talking about, like, getting fired. I'm talking about things that are not really devastating. Getting fired is a good thing. I've had that happen. Sometimes. That can turn into a good thing. I've had that happen. Sometimes. That can turn into a good thing.

It can be a changing experience. And change, I think, oftentimes opens up the door for good. You know, change opens up the door for good because it gives you a newfound focus. If you survive it, you're going to be stronger. Yeah, every time I've, like, had something happen to me where I had to rethink things, that's always been a good thing. Oh, yeah.

And when you get fired, you go, all right, what are we doing here? And all of a sudden you get this new motivation. And I realize,, that's always been a good thing. Oh, yeah. And when you get fired, you're like, all right, what are we doing here? And you all of a sudden get this new motivation. And I realized objectively this would be a good thing for my grandkids when it happens to them. I just don't want to go through it with them. That's the part about being a grandpa. I mean, isn't that what they always say, that the strictest parents were always like the most lenient grandparents? I wasn't a strict parent. Well, even more so then. You're even more lenient. Yeah. The idea, especially when you're an older person and you've experienced so much pain and hardship, and you see the innocence of children. It's how beautiful it is.

They don't know any racism yet. They don't know any homophobia yet. They don't know any blind, unobjective hate. They don't know the disillusion of government. They don't know all this. They don't know any of this yet they don't know like you know rebound you know the the the rebellion against taxing and it's like all the different aspects of society that you know bring people to this hysterical freak out point where

you like this fucking thing is I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore I love that yeah they don't love that. Yeah, they don't have that. No. They have, you know, you stepped on my toe. They have, that's my toy. But relatively speaking, these are big problems for them, too. Sure. I mean, all the little kid problems that we just have to learn how to work our way through. My three-year-old has a way bigger problem with my five-year-old taking one of her toys than I have with anything in life.

My five-year year old takes her toy and she's like, that's mine. She screams, tears are flying out of her face. That never happens to me. So for her, that's a devastating apocalypse. A huge apocalypse of toys. It really is. It's relative, relatively speaking. And you have to address it that way. You have to sort of respect the fact that they actually are freaking out. And although it doesn't seem normal to you, you're a grown adult. But for a three-year-old, this is a fucking real tough moment. You've got to acknowledge that this is a real serious thing for them. You've got to treat them like adults.

My parents didn't. Shut up. That's how I grew up. Shut up. Shut your mouth. I'll break both your legs. That's the type of shit I heard. I was really lucky. I grew up like in an Ozzie and Harriet family. It was school. It was my problem. I couldn't have asked for better parents. That's amazing. Look how you turned out, ecstasy dealer in Dallas. A drug dealer. Sends him to college and he deals drugs. Hosting a drug podcast. The guy's crazy. What is this book that you wrote, The Spirit of the Internet? I wrote that in 2000, actually. It's one of the first books that compares the Internet to a psychedelic drug.

Speculations on the Evolution of Global Consciousness. Wow, look at you, you fresh-faced little young man. Yeah, that's a long time ago. 2000, when you wrote this? That's in 2000, yeah. 13 years ago. Isn't that amazing that that was 13 years ago? That was the last non-fiction I wrote.

I've got a fiction book up now that's the first of a quartet I'm writing, but I went to fiction because it's so much more fun. Do you remember, so did Graham Hancock, do you remember when people thought that the world was going to end in 2000?

Oh, yeah. Y2K. That was a big deal, man. See, I got involved in Y2K in about 1995 because we set aside millions of dollars to fix all those problems. And most of the software industry did. I mean, there was a huge thing, and the press only picked up in the last nine months or something. And we'd already spent millions of dollars and years and years of work. There's specialized companies working on it.

And so I really didn't think anything bad was going to happen. I wouldn't want to be somewhere on an airplane right then because there were going to be a few glitches. Well, I didn't think the airplane would crash. I thought I could get stranded somewhere and they couldn't get my reservations. Oh, right. I wasn't worried about the plane itself. That was a fear, though, like air traffic controllers, that their computer systems were going to go down. There was a potential for that, but it was nothing like the press made it.

What the fuck did they do for air traffic controllers before they were computers? Eyeball, I guess. Radio and eyeball. Like in the 1960s. How did they describe how, I guess it was like coming in at 30,000 feet, 25 degrees north latitude. I guess they talked them down. I don't know. I'm a commercial pilot, by the way.

Are you really? But it's restricted to hot air balloons. You're a commercial hot air balloon pilot? A commercial pilot, and it says restricted to lighter-than-air aircraft. Lighter-than-air aircraft. That's fascinating. I don't have a balloon anymore, but I used to fly balloons, yeah. Whoa, that's got to be spooky.

Oh, they're great fun. What is that like when you're having a basket near space? It's just awesome because, now it gets loud when you burn, but then when you're not burning, you're just floating, it's quiet, and you can hear the sound, you know, there's no obstruction, so you can hear people talking on the ground, and in Dallas, there was

this one track that we would take on Sunday morning because there was a woman who would lay out in her backyard by the lake naked, yeah, and so we would come in. We'd burn, and then we'd come up high so that we'd coast down in low and come over the lake. And then we'd say, good morning. And she'd jump, you know. How rude.

Yeah. You could hear everything. In Texas, of course, you'd fly over on Sunday morning. You'd see pickup trucks with people passed out in the back of them and stuff. Wow. We'd yell at them. How dangerous is it though? It seems like it's

pretty dangerous. The reason I quit is because I wasn't paying close enough attention. I almost hit a power line and it scared me so much. I was flying people for money and stuff

at the time. Oh my God. I got wrapped up in the conversation these guys were having. That's my problem. I'm paying attention to them more than the flying

and they didn't know we had a close call. I knew we had a close call. How close? Not that close. Close enough. I was coming down and I didn't burn soon enough. And so it takes a while to get your momentum back up. And, you know, I cleared it by 50 feet.

But, you know, I should have cleared it by 500 feet or something like that. And I was coming in for a landing, I guess. Anyhow, it scared the hell out of me. And I said, you know i should have cleared it by 500 feet or something like and i was coming in for a landing i guess anyhow it scared the hell out of me and i said you know that's it how many people have died hitting power lines oh that's mainly what's happening to people in balloons you know not not not all that many compared to the number of people flying you know it's safer than regular aircraft now are you harnessed in when you're up there oh no oh jesus no i used to sit on the edge of the basket you know and burn and burn. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, fucking A, man. What if a crazy rebel wind came along

and knocked you off? Well, you wouldn't have launched. If it's over 10 miles an hour, you wouldn't launch because you'd have a lot of trouble. That looks so spooky. I'm just curling my toes just sitting there looking at that video. We'd go to these air shows where they'd bring in, you know, biplanes and stuff like that. And for the balloons, they would put up a pole in the middle of the airfield with keys to a Cadillac

or something on it. And you had to go five miles away, anywhere in the radius of five miles away and launch. And whoever could grab the keys got the balloon. Wow. What if they collide into each other? Well, you'd kind of bounce off if you're at the same altitude at least. But it rules the road, so you're not supposed to do that. But nobody in any of the things I ever flew in ever got the keys. But you'd have a beanbag, too, so you'd throw that. Whoever got closest would win money or something like that. Wow. It's great fun.

My ex-wife took me on a balloon ride for my 40th birthday. And on the way back, I said, well, how much do these things cost? How do you get started? And the next morning, I was taking lessons. I had a lot of money then. How much does it cost to get a balloon? A balloon is about $35,000. It was back when I bought it. Yeah. And how do you fold that bitch up once you're done flying? Oh, they pack into a basket that's, uh, no, maybe a third of the size of this table.

Wow. And, and, but then you have your basket too. So you have a trailer behind your car. And do you have a parachute up there or anything in case the shit hits the fan? Oh, no. Nothing? Nah. Dude. I had one guy want to pay me to take him up in a parachute,

and he wanted to jump out, but I didn't want to do it because once the guy jumps out, you get so much lighter, and if you shoot up too fast, you'll collapse the envelope. Oh, no. That doesn't happen very often, but they're really safe. They're really safe. They're a lot of fun. Wow.

That sounds scary. How do you lower yourself? Do you have to lower it naturally? Well, there's a hole in the top, and you have a line that goes through it, a rope. You pull it and bleed air out of the top and let it go. Then when you're actually landing, the top is held in by Velcro. And so, except for the little flap that's open, when you're just ready to land, you rip that, it's called pull the top out.

You pull the top out and then it'll deflate and land down. Sometimes your landings are a little rough. You know, I've had landings where I dragged for 50 or 100 yards, where I bounced up and all. You know, that conditions sometimes make it tough. And in North Texas at the time, you had to be really, you know, you're allowed to land anywhere when you're landing.

You know, the FAA lets you because if you're out of fuel. And there was this one farm up in North Texas, up by Cisco, I think it was. And whenever the balloons would come in landing, you could see dust coming on these gravel roads from two directions. One would be this farmer with his pickup and his shotgun, and the other would be the sheriff to come to protect you because the farmer hated you landing on their lawn. You know, when ballooning started in France, they would carry a bottle of champagne to give to the farmer when they landed as, hey, thank you for letting us land here. Here's the champagne. When ballooning started in the United States, the balloonists never gave it to the landowner. They drank it themselves. Champagne and propane, breakfast

of balloonists. How rude. That's why they ruined the whole thing. Look at this crazy. That looks like Albuquerque, yeah. There's one in Colorado, too, in Colorado Springs that we went to. Yeah, the woman that taught me to balloon moved to Colorado Springs to fly. Yeah, we went there to see it, but there was bad weather, so they never launched. Yeah. moved to Colorado Springs to fly. Yeah, we went there to see it, but there was bad weather, so they never launched. See, you've got to do it at sunrise and sunset, a couple hours after sunrise and a couple hours before sunset. That's the only time the air is stable enough. Have you ever met anybody that was up in a balloon and saw a UFO?

No. No, I mean, it's too early in the day. Plus, you're looking at other things. How convenient. What most people like to do on their first balloon ride is pick leaves from the top of a tree. Wow. For some reason, that's a big thrill. So we'd go over and skim the trees and they could pick leaves.

Wow. That's weird. Great fun. It's weird that we figured out how to float around in the sky. Yeah. It's just a matter of time before we figure out how to do it with suits. Well, some jet packs are coming around pretty good now. Yeah. You know, it's just a matter of time before we figure out how to do it with suits. Well, you know, some jetpacks are coming around pretty good now. Yeah.

Well, they've got guys that have those wingsuits that jump off cliffs. Oh, yeah. Those are awesome. Those guys are nuts. Oh, I can hardly watch those videos sometimes. It's so hard for me to watch. There's one where a guy crashes. It's really hard to watch.

Yeah, that one I haven't seen. But it's just a matter of time before they figure out something with a wing. That technology is going to grow, I think. Everything's going to grow. If they have a jetpack now, and they do. I watched one when I was in Denver.

My friend Willie has a KLPJ. The radio station had a guy come in that's a that had a jetpack guy come in, and he launched a jetpack in the parking lot and flew through the air for like 10 seconds. You can only do it for like 10 seconds. And it was like within X amount of years, we're going to be able to do five minutes, and then X amount of years after that, they think they're going to figure out some sort of power source

that's going to be able to make it a viable mode of transportation. But it was very complicated as far as, like, the controlling. Oh, it's got to be, yeah. The yaw and what is it called? There's, like, two. Pitch. Pitch and yaw. Yeah, apparently it's, like, it's not a simple thing to figure out how to do it right.

We didn't have to learn that to get a license for balloons because, you know, it's just up and down. What did they have to learn? Weather, clouds. for balloons because, you know, it's just up and down. What do they have to learn? Weather, clouds. You have to learn about procedures with the FAA because you have to call the FAA in the morning and get a weather report and all,

and you tell them where you're going to launch so they know some balloons are going to be in the area. How much different is that than a blimp? Can you target a blimp? I've never been in a blimp. Could you pilot one with your license? Oh, no. No. It's lighter than air.

Well, maybe. I don't know anybody crazy enough to let me do it, but I guess that would be legal. It's lighter than aircraft, no. No. It's lighter than air. Well, maybe. I don't know anybody crazy enough to let me do it, but I guess that would be legal. It's lighter than aircraft, yeah. Do you have to renew that license, or is that once you get it, you got it? That's the crazy thing. You don't ever have to renew it, but you have to have a check flight every year, I think, with somebody else who's a commercial pilot. So all you have to do is get a friend to go up and take a ride with you, and you're current again. I'm not current.

What was that one you just put up, Jamie? Lady Gaga in a dress that flies. Lady Gaga, the actual Lady Gaga? Yeah, it's like remote-controlled. Oh, so is it Lady Gaga, or is it a toy? It's Lady Gaga. So Lady Gaga is in a jet pack. Okay, here she is.

She's got a helmet on. Let me see this. Elizabeth, you're showing us after it's over. So she climbs into this fucking thing and flies around? I didn't think jetpacks could be annoying.

I thought I was wrong. Look, there's Lady Gaga in a jetpack. Humans, we ruin everything. This is so stupid. She's connected by wires. Shut this off. This is a fucking charade.

It's not even really a jetpack. She's all wired up and everything like that. It's more like a little helicopter. Yeah, that's horseshit. That's what that is. It's wired. But, you know, there have been guys going to stadiums, football stadiums in those jetpacks. Yeah, well, there's that one guy that landed.

He was in the middle of a boxing match. Evander Holyfield was fighting Riddick Bowe. And the guy landed. he had like a parachute connected to fans, and he called himself like the fan man. I know what you mean. Remember that? And he landed, and it delayed the fight

for like a half an hour while they had to arrest this guy. Yeah. And bring in police, and they beat the guy up and everything like that. And then it sort of changed the atmosphere of the fight because there was a big break in the middle of the fight. Right, right. Everybody cooled off and then had to go at it again.

But that was... I used to walk on the bluffs down by Del Mar, which are up maybe 30 feet or something. And one day, a guy came by in one of those. He was a parachute, had a big fan on the back, and he was at eye level with me. And he says, you know, hello, hello. And he's moving very slowly. Yeah, this is the video. Riddick Bowen and Evander Holyfield are fighting.

And look, they stop, and they're like, what the hell? And they're looking, and boom, the guy lands ringside in the crowd. They should have turned Holyfield on to him. Well, they're in the middle of a fight. He has other big, more important things to do. They just beat the shit out of this guy, though. I can see why. I think that guy's probably still in jail.

I'm surprised they didn't just reschedule the fight. That's not really fair to do that, is it? Well, I think people wanted a conclusion. Yeah. It was all going on right there. And all the money there. Yeah. And all the money on pay-per-view as well.

Poor fighters, though. Yeah, you know what? They should have just started it up immediately. Shouldn't have waited a half an hour. Yeah. Just to give it a little five-minute break. Cut the cords. Just let's do this.

But I think it was quite a break while they arrested this dummy. Geez. Needy bitch. That's it. That's an example

of a needy bitch. They should have those fights indoors. Yeah. I think they probably mostly do. Yeah. I mean,

you very rarely hear about fights outdoor. I know they do a few occasionally outside in Vegas. Yeah, there was a big one way back in, what was it, in Africa or something. I know they do a few occasionally outside in Vegas. There was a big one way back in Africa

or something. I can't remember. They do Muay Thai ones. They do Muay Thai ones in Vegas outside. Well, it doesn't get quite as loud. But it's also the environment is different.

You're dealing with outside. It can rain. It can get weird. I went to a King of the Cage used to have these fights outside. I went to a couple of them. They used to have them in an Indian casino in California back when mixed martial arts was illegal in California. So they would hold them in this outside casino.

And one time, it started raining. It was pouring rain out. And so they decided to let the fights continue in the pouring rain. So these people are fighting, and they're slipping, and they're trying to throw kicks, and they're falling on their ass, and people are climbing on top, and they're soaking wet. It was like the craziest. And they released it as a DVD.

I think it's called King of the Cage Wet and Wild, but it's a really insane series of fights where people are trying to fight in a torrential rainstorm. People are just so nutty. Did you ever hear of an old, long time ago wrestler named Gorgeous George? Yes. Sure. I saw Gorgeous George wrestle.

My dad took me to see him in the Elgin High School gymnasium, and the big deal, he had long hair. Well, it was maybe almost down to his shoulders, but not quite. But at that time, it was huge. And when he'd come out in the ring in the beginning, his hair would be up. And he'd take bobby pins out of his hair and throw them out to the audience. I was so disappointed I didn't catch one. That's so funny.

Gorgeous George. Gorgeous George. It's another thing that people would come if they came here for another planet. They'd be like, what the fuck is going on there? Those guys are not really hitting each other. Like, why are you watching that? Because it's fun. We ought to find out who's going to win.

Who's the champion of the world? Right. Like, what? This week. Yeah. We're strange. We're strange. Floating around in balloons, pretending to hit each other.

What a nutty race. Listen, man, this has been a lot of fun. It's been great fun. Very enjoyable. I think four hours is enough. I'm really glad to get to meet you. I don't think you realize

what you're doing, but you're filling in a role here for a lot of young people that, you know, you don't know how smart you are. Maybe you do, but you're extremely well-read.

You know so much. You're talking to Graham Hancock about stuff. I read the headlines, and you know all these terms about the skull and stuff like that. But what you're doing is you're taking a really high-level intellectual product to the masses and to especially young people that maybe hadn't had the advantage to go to college or something, and they find out, hey, they're as smart as anybody that went to college. And you're really doing a really good service with these podcasts.

Well, thank you, but I'm not trying. And I'm extremely uneducated. That's why it's working. That's why it's working. I'm extremely uneducated, but interested. No, but you're very well read. Well, I read a lot of things, but, you know, I mean, what is education if not reading? But as far as, like, formal education.

And also as far as, like, I don't, you know, I just like what I like. I'm interested in certain things. And I find that there's a lot of things out there that are fascinating that people just aren't paying attention to. And I think what I see and what we talk about on the podcast is really reflected by what I see on Twitter and what I see on the Internet, what I see when I go to the various websites that I visit for information. I see just a massive new upsurge in curiosity. Right. I think the people are way more curious than they ever have been before

just by virtue of the fact they're getting more information than they've ever gotten before. And they can get it. It's not being held back. So I think what this podcast is, we came along in the right place at the right time and it was the right type of person in me that kind of can bridge a few different worlds together. That's what you're bridging quite a few different worlds and that's really important in the potheads exactly on the bridge between the meatheads and the potheads we're not all that different you know might look different but there's there's

prejudice against people who you know engage in martial arts and exercise just like this prejudice against people who smoke pot and some of its justified and some of its not yeah there's assholes in every group you know absolutely it's so easy to define people because of that you know and i think that uh conversations like this and podcasts and it kind of gives everybody a better sense yeah you know we're getting into people's heads because you're right in their ears you know they got the earphones on they're listening it's theater of the mind. It's the old voice in the back of the mind that you hear.

I've heard so many of your podcasts that I feel like I've known you all my life. I feel like I've known you a long time too, man. I've listened to you on many a road trip. Give the introductions to all these different, very psychedelic talks. How many episodes do you have? Last night I did 378. Wow.

You are on episode 419. you almost got on 420 yeah oh you know what we were gonna do a special 420 episode but now i'm like well that's so stupid i'm so tired of that whole 420 thing it's just like come on what is this a number the podcast or the pot i mean we and I'm kind of hypocritical because we always, like, make a big deal of each 100 that we hit. But 420 just seems stupid. It seems like a tired thing. Like, 420, dude. Like, come on, stop. I'm thinking about for 400 what I've been working on.

It's not too far along yet. But I've cut out little sound bites of McKenna, you know, 30 to 60-second sound bites. And I have about 100 of them from 100 different talks he gave. And I'm going to try to string them together in a cut up and try to make it a single cohesive type thing. Hasn't been working too well yet, but it's worth a try. I think that's one of the cool things that you do do that's kind of scary and dangerous and sacrilegious. You edit McKenna's speeches. I get a lot of grief.

People are fucking freaking out. Why'd you cut out the stuff about the stone tape theory? Well, because it's the 80th time he said it. You edit McKenna speeches. I get a lot of grief. People are fucking freaking out. Why'd you cut out the stuff about the stone tape theory? Well, because it's the 80th time he said it. Yeah, we've heard it. I'm not a historian. My job is to get the... I'm a carnival barker. All of the masters, copies are going to Arrowwood of all the masters

and then the real master tapes and all are going to go back to Finn McKenna. Beautiful. That's awesome. They're out there now. They're out there. You can get a hold of them. Yeah, I've got about another 100 McKenna talks nobody's heard yet, including me. Yeah, including me. Oh, my God.

Wow. So I'm good for another year or so. And plus we're doing the Plank and Norte talks at Burning Man. That gets me another 30 or 40 every year. Wow. You change your name because of Burning Man? Yeah. That's ridiculous.

That's when you know you get too high when you change your name. My friend Aubrey did that. He used to be Chris, and then he became Aubrey after a psychedelic trip. I'd been working up to it, and my sister-in-law who died had called me Lorenzo all the time. So it was a family name. And then at Burning Man, this damn parrot climbs up on my arm, and I said, What's that parrot's name? He says, Lorenzo.

I said, Oh, that's my name, too. And that was the day I changed it. Wow, that's hilarious. It was really hard for my wife and family, but they finally got there. Oh, so the Twitter is psychedeliclozo, L-O-Z-O. So follow on Twitter, and the podcast is The Psychedelic Salon. It is available for free. It's on iTunes.

Can people donate it if they want to? Yeah, that's how it's kept alive. How do they donate? I've got a donate button on the... psychedelicsalon.us has a donate button. .us?.us? .us, yeah. ComNetOrg or us. Okay, beautiful.

And it all goes to the same place. And then I'm going to put a Bitcoin thing up there too. Beautiful. And they can go to lzoHaggerty.com and it has links to a little 15-minute video of my life and then the MDMA story in Dallas is there and all the links are LorenzoHaggerty.com. Outstanding.

And the book, The Spirit of the Internet, is back when he was Lawrence. So that's Lawrence Haggerty. I'm looking for Lorenzo. It's not out there. The Spirit of the Internet by Lawrence Haggerty. And Genesis Generation is my novel that's just out. Beautiful.

All on Kindle. Thank you, sir. It's been a lot of fun. I appreciate it, Mike. It's been an honor to be here. It's cool. It's an honor for me as well. It's really cool that we can do this.

And I think both of our audiences cross a lot, and so I'm glad they both got to hear it. Absolutely. And like I said, I think that's how I heard about you in the first place. I'm pretty sure. I've got a lot of people in my audience say the first time they heard about me was from you. So what goes around comes around. Indeed it does. Thank you.