The Joe Rogan Experience - #739 - Duncan Trussell & Christopher Ryan

Episode Date: December 22, 2015

Duncan Trussell is a stand-up comedian, and host of his own podcast "The Duncan Trussell Family Hour" available on Spotify. Christopher Ryan, Ph.D. is a psychologist, speaker, and author of New York Times best seller Sex At Dawn, and also host of his own podcast "Tangentially Speaking" available on Spotify.

How strong are these? Shouldn't have two, right? I definitely wouldn't have two of those. Okay. Dunkin' Trussell. It's 240 milligrams of caffeine. Yeah, fuck that. No, I can feel it rising inside of me. Yeah, baby. See, why you wanna ruin Star Wars? What? I was kidding. I'm not gonna do that, man. I heard a lot of people were saying that they heard it was crap and that it wasn't good.

But everybody I know that saw it said it was awesome. I loved it. You loved it. I went with people who didn't like it. It's like, what are you thinking, man? What did you think we were going to go see? It's called Star Wars. It's the most obvious kind of thing.

I don't know why people have expectations for Star Wars. What was the expectations? I guess people have expectations for Star Wars. What was the expectations? I guess they're looking for a plot. I guess they're looking for... No, you know what I mean. I guess they're looking for some kind of deep meaning or something like Quentin Tarantino or some Kubrick-esque thing.

But it's Star Wars. It's a space opera. It's like, go in there with no expectations, be happy for the colors. That's it, the beautiful colors. And then after that, if there's something out, it's things flying through space and lasers. It's a very confined genre. It's very confined.

You know it's not going to step outside of the box. It's not going to be weird sexually. It's not going to step outside of the box. It's not going to be weird sexually. It's not going to have some strange murder tension. There's not going to be any unrequited love. There's going to be just some normal space themes with Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. That's it.

It's mixed in with a lot of mystical stuff that you can connect to, which is beautiful. It's great. I had a great time. Have you ever heard Lucas talk about his friend, Joseph Campbell? Like, literally wrote Star Wars based on Joseph Campbell's steps of a hero's journey. It's fascinating. They were good friends.

Yeah, The Hero with a Thousand Faces is his classic book. Have you seen his interviews with Bill Moyers? Yes. The Power of Myth? That was fantastic. He's awesome. He was.. So Joseph Campbell used to go up and give a lecture at Lucas Ranch every year on mythology.

What's Lucas Ranch? Where George Lucas made Star Wars. Oh, George Lucas Ranch. Up in, I think it's Marin or Sonoma. And so he would go up when they were working on the original Star Wars and give a lecture to the crew, everybody, about mythology every year. And then when Campbell died, your friend and mine, Stanley Krippner, filled in for him.

Oh, wow. That's interesting. Wow. Stanley's amazing, too. What an interesting guy that was. I just saw him a week ago. Duncan happened to text me while I was talking with doing a podcast with Stanley or just finished.

And I said, oh, you got to meet my friend Duncan. He's really interesting. He's a comedian, but he's really into the spiritual stuff. And he just got back from seeing, hanging out with Ram Dass in Hawaii. And Stanley says, well, does he know that Ram Dass was a stand-up comedian for a time? I feel like he got him mixed up with Timothy Leary. Because I know Timothy Leary went on a tour doing like some kind of thing called stand-up. But I don't think Ram Dass did it

But I know Timothy Leary tried stand-up Well, he said he saw him in the village in a club Why not man he's probably on acid Richard Alpert He's probably thinking fuck it. Why not? Let me give it a shot. I mean, he's a good he's a great speaker I mean, he's pretty funny. Yeah, he said he's like a very humorous guy to talk to. He's super funny. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is, I've noticed that seems to be a quality in people who have a real spiritual practice. They're funny. They're always funny. They always have this real specific non bullshit style of humor. It's really hard to offend them. That's, you know, quite often, that's how I can tell if somebody's got a real practice is they're usually impossible to offend.

Like there isn't anything that you can say that's going to make them upset. But, you know, the alarm bells start going off in my mind when you get around people who you say something and you see, oh shit, I triggered the alarm system. I have offended this person, which is really curious to me. Like, how are you in tune with the universe and yet still something that a monkey descendant says out of the end of his feeding tube causes you to feel revolted? You're so vulnerable. If you're so tough, why are you such a pussy, essentially, psychically? Well, not like tough.

It's like the opposite of tough. No, yeah. But I agree. Like sophisticated. Like you know what's going on. The way they've described it, or I've heard it described, which is super cool, whenever Ram Dass talks about his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, is that there was nothing there. Like there's no obstruction. Like, everything was just sort of going through this person, you know,

as opposed to, like, me, I get on the phone with Bank of America, they've frozen my card because I went to Australia, and, like, I'm seething with rage, you know? Like, what the fuck? I'm in another fucking country. I have to check in with my fucking bank, you know like what the fuck i'm in another fucking country i have to check in with my fucking bank you know and and you know or whatever it is that like triggers you to freeze up some people they get to the point theoretically where that like convulsive seizure like freezing up doesn't happen i'll tell you i can get that in spurts i can get that in spurts from yoga and here's how i can prove it.

A guy fucking nailed me on the highway while he wasn't paying attention. Hit the brakes, skid. I watched him plow into my fucking car, my white Porsche, the expensive one. And it's a rare car, too. I'm like, fuck, I hope he didn't total the car. I got out, and the first thing I said was, are you okay? I go, I'm okay. We're cool.

And I literally wasn't upset at all. Yeah, that. I wasn't upset, but I've been doing yoga like four days a week and I was a little high, you know, probably still from the afternoon.

I think I was probably like at least under the influence of cannabis to the point where I was like a little bit more relaxed. But I just, I can only get there for like bursts. Like when you're busy with work and life and it can overwhelm

and you get mad at like someone doing a shitty job parking like come on fuckhead park your fucking car stupid you know like you're backing up again oh my god look at this retard you're backing up again and then i'll be like i'll catch myself like why yeah i'm not even talking to this guy this guy's in a car you know 100 feet from me me, and I'm openly mocking him out loud. Yeah, and corroding your insides as you do it. I heard Wim Hof talking about this, and maybe it was on your podcast. He was talking about being under the ice and his retinas froze, and he couldn't find the hole to get out. And whoever he was talking with asked him, like, so, you know know what was the panic like what were you know and he said well

you know when i'm in those situations or like when i got lost in a whiteout on mount everest in my shorts uh there's no stress because then it's all just like it takes you back to yourself to who you really are and i know in my in my core i am like like, you know, competent and confident. And so he was saying, like, it's been demonstrated that you can generate more stress hormones lying in your bed and just thinking about something stressful. Wow. Then what actually happens when you're in a moment of actual danger, you sort of shift into another gear. Like when that car hit you, that changed your whole world, right? It's like now you're framing it as, am I going to survive this?

Well, I knew I was going to survive because he wasn't going that fast. Oh, okay. But I was just thinking that my car was going to be totaled. And you're watching him in the rearview mirror? Yeah, I was stopped. And, you know, dude, some guy almost hit me today. On his phone, like with his phone literally on the steering wheel as he's texting and driving. It just went right into my lane.

It's constant. People are constantly doing it. They're just not paying attention. And if something happens, when the guy rear-ended me, the lane was closed for some reason, like construction. So everybody had gotten to that on-ramp on like Hollywood or the 101 in Highland, you know that exit? And it was shut down for whatever reason. So we were all stopped in a big line, and this dude just barely paid attention.

And then all of a sudden, shit! And I could see his face, like, gritting his teeth and pulling his face. I'm watching in my rear view, tensing up. Bang! My car stalls out, goes flying into another lane. That's where you don't want to be on a motorcycle. Oh, my God, yeah.

Oh, God. Oh, my God, yeah. That's so dangerous. If you get hit like a motorcycle. Oh, my God, yeah. Oh, God. Oh, my God, yeah. That's so dangerous. If you get hit like that on a motorcycle, you might be paralyzed. You might be dead easily, and you can't get off in time. And it's not your fault. That's the thing. I mean, I rode a bike for seven and a half years, and I always felt like I've got everything under control, but there's that.

There's those wild cards. Do you jump off? If you have the time, do you jump off and get the fuck out of the way? Well, I never. I wasn't like a competitive you know racer stop dead and you see a guy coming from behind you do you jump off or do you let it hit you what the fuck do you do i don't know but i'll tell you you're hyper aware of all the space around you on a bike so i'm always if i'm stopped and i know like on a highway situation, I'm always watching behind me. Yeah.

Because you feel you develop that vulnerable sense. Fuck that, man. Bikes are scary. Fuck that. Remember Bill Burr telling us what he was, I guess at the Ice House, he's like riding a motorcycle is like, imagine sitting on the hood of your car. Yeah. Driving that way. Fuck that.

It's like you look down at the road buzzing by you at 70 miles an hour, and it's like I could reach out my toe and just grind it off, you know. Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, but it's like a metaphor for so many other things in life, right? Do you really want to be – do you want to have the illusion of separation, or are you actually safer being intimate with the danger of what's going on so you're hyper vigilant because in a car you're looking at your phone you're fucking with the radio because you've got this sense that i'm in a room and everything's cool until you hit the tree

you know there's definitely that you can definitely get too detached and as things get more and more automated it's going to be weirder and weirder. Because now you can tell your car things. Like you've used that Hey Siri function. Yes. So you ask your car to text people, text people, tell it to send. Last time I was on your podcast, you and I did this whole thing. And I saw a bunch of people tweeted like, man, it fucked up my phone.

I shut it off. They're listening to the podcast in the car. I shut it off because I'm like, how hard is it for me to press the button? All I have to do is press the button and then I say it. You know, I don't have to say that, do the hey Siri thing. But my point being is they have the Teslas now that they're coming with, they have a new download that allows you to have your car automate itself. Like you set the directions and it navigates.

Yeah, I've seen that. It drives. Yeah. It fucking drives itself. So like then it's going to get real weird when we switch back and forth between that and then actual driving. Like the space out factor of people like when they have to drive again, they might not be used to it.

Yeah, it's the space between automation and like like, semi-automation and full automation that is going to be really dangerous. But, man, the dream is you leave your house, your car looks like a little living room, a little pod with a couch in it, coffee maker, TV, and you just sit on the couch, tell the car, take me to Vegas, and it just takes you there, and you just relax on the couch, tell the car, take me to Vegas. And it just takes you there. And you just relax and you sleep. You can look out the window.

The interstates are just going to look like houses. Yeah, but you miss you with your aviator sunglasses on, the wind blowing your hair. Yeah, driving gloves. How about driving shoes? Let's get crazy. Oh, yeah. With little nubs on them. She has driving shoes?

Yeah. That's so funny. We do. And you're shifting the gears. Let's say you have, like, an old Fiat or something cool. You look like you're a poet or something. Sure. I'm sure there are people back there.

Scarf over your shoulder. I'm sure there are carriage drivers who are like, imagine, but think of missing the lash as it slaps onto the horse's back. The smell of the farts yeah yeah i'm sure it's like everyone always like there's a nostalgia attached to antiquated technologies but it's like sure great but i'm gonna be sitting in my pleasure pod with vr goggles on as i get taken to florida we're off the sacred river flows. But you're missing the pleasure of the wooden wheel losing traction on the muddy roads. Exactly. The box, the non-aerodynamic box being dragged by horses starts to go sideways near the edge of the cliff.

And you're like, what an adventure. What a great time to be alive. Well, I don't even have to ride the horse. I can ride in a box behind the horse. Modern technology is awesome. And you'd be in that box with fine silk, like velour seating. Yeah. Everything would be like... Women with push-up bras. Yeah. Corsets. They all have corsets. Yeah. Lots of ruffles. Big flowy skirts. Fucking bandits. You had to try to bang a chick in one of those skirts. What a disaster. You can't even, you got to make a choice.

Either you don't see her vagina or you don't see her face. It's one or the other. It's one or the other. You can't have it both ways. It's like, if you push that thing up, she's gone. Where'd you go? I want to see you. I want to see you too.

I got to, hold on. Let me get to it. That's funny. You know Hasidic Jews have sex through a sheet with a hole cut in it? My friend John used to have a joke about it, that the women used to look at the clothesline and see who had the biggest hole. John Tobin. I like to think about that stuff, man.

Someone had to be the first person to be like, you know what? Let's put a big sheet over you and cut a hole right over your pussy so I don't see you anymore. Like, that didn't evolve, did it? You don't even touch. It's not just to not see you. Your bodies don't touch together. So someone invented that, though, right? There was a person who's like, I've got an idea.

Yeah. Let's start putting the women in blankets and fucking a hole. Right? It doesn't evolve, right, Chris? It's like there's one person who's incredibly crazy, I guess. Well, it may have evolved. It may have just been like a hanky over someone's face initially, and then it grew. You never know.

It may have started as a blindfold. But it implies a communication about it. Like, you have to tell your friends, like, well, you know, I put a handkerchief over her face last night. Maybe you guys should start doing that. Well, even crazier that it took off. It's not like one guy doing it. Like, Hasidic Jews, it's a huge population

of people in America. Like, in New York City, there's a very big community of Hasidic Jews. And they're all doing that with a blanket? I don't know if they all do it. And I think the women all shave their heads and wear wigs, too.

See, I see it as an expression No makeup either. No makeup and no talking. What the fuck? They have to shave their heads and wear a wig. I think, well, I think, think about it. And the Arabs make them cover their hair, right? Hair is erotic.

I think it's an expression of anti-eroticism, anti-pleasure, right? You're only fucking to have kids. There's no pleasure involved. So we're going to do as much as possible to remove everything that isn't purely functional. Right. How bizarre. Yeah. You know, the thing, you're talking about the Tesla thing.

The thing that's bizarre about that is in the fine print, it says it's in beta. You want your car, a self-driving car that's in beta? No thanks. It says that they're not responsible for any accidents. So you should always, you know, watch the road and be prepared to step in if something goes wrong. Like, well, thanks for nothing. Back in my computer-making days, I used to have friends that would get the latest builds

of software, of operating systems, rather. And so they would run beta versions of new Windows operating systems, and the shit was always crashing. But it was kind of half of the fun. Right. Half of the fun for those guys was saying, hey, man, I'm using Windows NT, you know, blah, blah, blah. And this is the new shit. And it's really only for servers.

So I have to have a workaround with certain drivers for video cards. Jesus. There's all this crazy shit they used to do. Remember those like when you got Windows, you had to get this giant pack of disks. Remember that? There was so many, man. Remember, it was like sometimes you'd get two of these tubes filled with those things. Remember you would start off with a floppy?

Yeah. You'd have to start off with a floppy. That was like your install disc? Your boot disc. Is that how it worked? Yeah, the floppy was like you'd stick that in, and then you'd have to stick CD-ROMs in. Like, what in the fuck?

My first exposure to computers was when I worked in real estate in New York in the Diamond District full of Hasidic Jews. That's how I noticed. Yeah, there you go. And the guy had a computer that was the size of a refrigerator, and one of my jobs was to back up the disks every week. And you'd pull out these drawers and put this, like, thing down and turn it and pull it out, and the disk was about that big. Wow. You're showing your hands like a large open that's right an album a large bigger than an album yeah like a large pizza a large pizza yeah and how many gigs was on that i don't know i think it was megabytes

oh my god that's hilarious this was like 86 or so that's so funny wow it's so funny like the amount of storage space that we have now it's kind of nuts and then also like that so much of it is in the cloud yeah like if you'd notice like on the new iphone software you're if you're you doesn't download all your songs it shows you all your songs but when you go to play them it streams them yeah i don't get that because i want the shit on my phone so if i'm not connected or i don't have to pay for the data, it's my fucking stuff. I got 128 gigs on my phone. Fill it with music.

I can't figure out how to do it. Well, you set it so that it's available offline and then you download all of them. You have to download all of them. It's super annoying. I did it in a hotel the other day. It's like now downloading 847 songs. And I was like, what the fuck? But when you're in a place that doesn't have cell phone service and you go to your music list.

I was trying to use it in the gym. There was no service. I was like, oh, you fuckers. It's not on my phone. Yeah. And I had to figure it out. That's that's the complaints back in the day. Yeah.

Wasn't your complaint back in the carriage and don't catch cholera as you're on your fucking slippery ride over the top of the mountain where you might wind up eating all your friends. Yeah, that's stuck up there. Crazy, man, that we are constantly surrounded by some cloud of invisible data that consists of all information that has ever been recorded. That's crazy. Did you hear about that guy that was, oh, he went to sea. He got shipwrecked at sea for like over a year with another guy. And he made it by like drinking rainwater and eating turtles and all kinds of crazy shit. But it's the nuttiest story. He's like on a raft for a fucking year. But his companion's family is now suing him because they say that he ate them. Yeah. He ate the other them. Yeah. He ate the other guy.

Right. I heard about that. Is this the Mexican guy? The two Mexican fishermen? Are they Mexican? I don't know. I don't know if they're Mexican. But just the thought behind it.

Jamie, see if you can find the story. Just the thought behind it. And being sued. That's what's funny. It's cannibalism. Yeah. It's not a criminal complaint. It's a civil suit.

I don't know what it is because I don't know if it's American. I don't know if they have a different legal system. I don't even know what it is. But I don't even know if they're suing or if they're trying to accuse him of it. Or murdering him or something. Or eating him. It's the eating that bothers him. But if he's dead, eat him. Well, that's what I say.

Eat me if I die. But what they say is that this guy. Good t-shirt, by the way. Was claiming that he kept the dude on the boat with him for company for six days, then threw him overboard. Yeah, he sued for $1 million for eating shit, man. But here's the thing, like, how do they prove that he ain't... How do you even accuse a guy?

I think he talked about it. He talked about eating him? Yeah, because he's Salvadorian, but they were in Mexico, and they got swept out. I've read about this one. So he talked about eating the guy. Yeah, so I think Salvadorian, but they were in Mexico, and they got swept out. I've read about this one. So he talked about eating the guy. Yeah, so I think that's how they— But in the story, it says that he just threw the guy overboard. It seems like you would want your family member to have given his life for somebody.

It kind of makes your family member a hero. Lots of cultures eat their dead—you know, when someone dies, they eat them. Yeah, and it's an honor. That is incredible. More than a year, let's see. See if he admitted, Jamie. See if anywhere he admitted. He paid this guy to accompany him on a short fishing trip off the coast of Mexico.

Wow. Yeah, and he wrote a book, so they want the money from the book. Yeah. That's what they're doing. Yeah. That's what they're doing. Yeah. That's what they're doing. You might be right. Or he might have ate that dude.

You know, there's a – He looks like he did. He looks like he'd eat a dude. You know, I used to think – I think most people think some cultures were just cannibals for the hell of it. You know, like they were just especially evil, like the Aztecs or whatever. And then others just weren't. But, you know, if you think about it, it doesn't make sense. The Europeans killed just as many people as the Aztecs did. They were just as ruthless. They're burning them at the stake, you know. They even cook them, but they didn't eat them, right?

Right. So then I read this guy, Marvin Harris, this anthropologist who wrote a book called Cannibals and Kings. He went back and looked at societies that were cannibalistic and those that weren't, especially in the South Pacific, because some islands were, some islands weren't, whatever, and in Latin America. And what he determined was that the societies that were cannibalistic had a lack of protein. There were no animals that could be domesticated. And so when they killed people in battle, they ate them because they were protein hungry

or starved. But Europeans had plenty of domesticated animals, so they didn't need the protein because they had the goats and the pigs and whatever. But if you think about Mexico, there's nothing that they could domesticate except turkeys or dogs or animals that eat the same food as humans. So you need to domesticate an animal that doesn't eat what humans eat, so it's not competing, right? And there were not in North America, so that's why they were cannibals.

Wow. Wow. That's crazy. That's fascinating. It's also important to note that one of the key tenants of Catholicism involves a kind of metaphysical cannibalism, which is, you know, the communion. The body of Christ.

The body of Christ. And they call that conversion of the wafer into the flesh of Christ. They have a name. They think that when the priest is doing the ritual, it's turning it into the flesh of Jesus. Right. The trans... Transubstantiation is the name for it and that's

where you're shifting the wafer into the flesh of a god that you're eating that's totally real well it's totally real totally real you can taste it but they get the right stuff if it's kosher many of them do think that that it is real like it's it's god flesh which is actually a really old that's a very old tradition, which is you eat a god. You eat the sacrifice god to get its energy or something. Well, it had to have all originated within theogens. There's no doubt that at all. Immediately what I thought of is the Amanita Muscaria, where the psychoactive component stays active after it's metabolized.

So the piss of the shaman who's eaten Amanita muscaria will get you high as shit. Yeah. So they fed them piss. Apparently, Amanita muscaria is very hard to get right. I've never gotten high off of it. We tried it once. It didn't work. But then we tried psilocybin mushrooms with it,

and we had a fucking insane journey. So they might have worked together in sort of sort of synergistic way but apparently by itself it's really hard and they think that it might be like a geographical variant like and then also like seasonally and then genetically like you have to get the right stuff and the right stuff might not even exist in most places anymore right that's pretty interesting isn't it all the the lost pharmacology, the stuff that we'll never even know about, like... Soma.

Soma. Yeah. What is it? What is this stuff? You hear about this all the time. All of these old technologies that are just gone. And the Ellusian mysteries. I didn't realize this until recently. The Champs-Élysées, or however you pronounce it, in Paris, that's the Eleusinian mushrooms.

Oh, wow. That's what it translates as Eleusinian mushrooms. Champs, right? Champignones. Unquestionably, without a doubt, there were people that lived a long time ago that discovered psychedelic plants. Yes, for sure. They had to have. And all you have to just consider, I mean, this is the most rational way to look at it.

If you lived at that time and you had no science, you had some myths and fables and you had some rules to live by and you found those things, you would think that you had found God. You would definitely think. If you just ate, you don't have a scale, you're just eating these mushrooms that you find and you eat 10 grams of them good lord you're gonna meet god you like literally will be transported to god and everybody you know people will listen to this kind of shit and they'll go oh man that's so stupid you know you're just tripping you're just hallucinating you got to take this into consideration i know i've said it before but it is important to repeat

when you have an experience it doesn't matter if that experience is like you could put it on a scale or hit it with a stick it's a real experience right so you even though you're no one's saying that you're meeting god when you do mushrooms but what i am saying is it's the same thing as meeting god like the the experience is so profound that you you it would is so profound that it would be like doing that. It would be like having... When you do DMT, perfect example, it is like meeting the highest power around you. It's like meeting a God.

It's like meeting a sea of gods. It feels like it. There's a place where things can be both true and untrue, I think. And what you're talking about is that overlap for me. It's where, you know, like placebo effect. You say, well, it's just a sugar pill. Yeah, it's just a sugar pill, but it has demonstrable, measurable, repeatable effects on people.

Hypnosis is another one. Like, well, how the fuck does that work, right? Nobody's explained this. And I think when you're talking about seeing God, that is ultimately a subjective experience that happened or didn't. And if it did, then it did. And there's no one from outside who can say, oh, it's just bullshit or that's, you know, some sort of Richard Dawkins denial of the sacred because you experienced it. And so I'm sort of sympathetic. I mean, I trash religion as much as the next guy, but I'm sympathetic for the experience of someone who says, look, I go there, I have these rituals, I smell that stuff, I was raised

in this tradition, and I am transported to another world that makes my life better. I can't say that's not real, despite the bullshit of the Bible or whatever. No, I agree with you. You know what I think is problematic is the label, like even how I said it, like you'll meet God. Like that word is so loaded. Right. That's a big part of the problem.

A big part of the problem with just the idea of religious ideas. Like forget about the words that you're using whether you're using the word prayer or scripture or you know whatever the name you have for your deity those are just noises you're making and they correspond to like whatever the cultural context is of the hindu god or the christ God. But if you just think of the feeling of wanting to be a good Christian, right? The feeling of wanting to please God, not by blowing up abortion clinics or any of this, none of the wacky aspects of it that we sort of connect to it. We think about like radical fundamental religion on any side of the fence, right?

But the feeling that you're getting, like you're feeling, if you're all together in church and you really are praising his name, you really are praising the idea of this loving God that wants fellowship and wants camaraderie and brotherhood, like whatever that feeling is and whatever that thought is, take out all the words, Jesus Christ and praise Jesus and Buddha and Muhammad and Allah. Take out all those words. And what is the feeling? Right.

Like that feeling is the search for this positive source, like this thing that ultimately we can all eventually reach if we put aside all of our ridiculous monkey behavior and greed and jealousy and anger and lust and just get to us at our very best, you know? And it's almost like, it's like a guide to get you there. But we get tripped up on the words that are attached to the guide, like the word God or the word Muhammad or the word Allah or, you know. Krishna. Yeah, Krishna. Go down the line.

And the fucking parasites that latch on to this and, you know, start selling shit and, you know, making a power structure around it. Restoring it, changing it. Rules. Controlling people with it. controlling people with it. Duncan started off talking about how you can recognize someone, not just as a spiritually enlightened person, but as just a person you want to hang out with if they are really hard to offend, if they have a good sense of humor.

If they don't have a sense of humor, there's something wrong. But you think about the Old Testament God. He's the most easily offended motherfucker imaginable. You know, like the book of Job.able you know like the book of job have you ever read the book of job it's fucking amazing like job is this you know great guy does everything he's supposed to do everything's cool and the devil and god are hanging out one day and the devil's like that god the devil says like people don't really like you so much man you know you think everybody loves you and god's like of course people love me look at job he's perfect he does everything i tell him

and the devil's like yeah but he only does what you tell him because you've been good to him fuck with him a little bit and you'll see what happens so god being the fucked up asshole that he is apparently uh killed job's wife and kids but you know that's not a i mean it's not meant to be taken literally though i mean that's not a literal that, it's not meant to be taken literally though. I mean, that's not a literal That's a story of the fact that No matter Of course it's to be taken literally What kind of truck driver

This is how cocky Duncan is. Duncan is like Well, I think what Jesus really meant to say I think God wasn't so good with his words back then And since I've gone to college in Asheville, North Carolina... He's got a PhD, I hear.

I've been talking to God. God gave me a PhD. But no, I think that you run into trouble if you start looking at mythology as though that's really what it means. But look at the God that's being depicted there, whatever the story Like, it's actually... Okay, but look at the god that's being depicted there.

Whatever the story is. He's easily... He's jealous. He's capricious. He's cruel. Yeah. He's a fucking alcoholic father. But that's...

So if you look at the universe, like right now, at this moment, mothers are dying of cancer. Kids are getting exploded by bombs. All of... Dogs are attacking fucking old people in the park. Like, you know what I mean? So this is, the story of Job has always struck me more as a kind of like story of how, look, man, you can't understand the infinite. Like when I step on an ant, you know what I mean?

To me, it's like, well, I stepped on an ant today. You know what I mean? To me, it's like, well, I stepped on an ant today, but surrounded by that seems to very capriciously at random times, just destroy people and lives. And like, shit, man, I just heard about this family driving under an underpass and like a, like a concrete block fell out of a truck,

landed on the goddamn Range Rover, bam, entire family zapped out of this universe. And to me, Job was, that's the, that's what the story is, is like, bam, entire family zapped out of this universe. And to me, Job, that's what the story is, is like, how can someone be a servant of love, like what you were talking about? How can someone connect to this desire to give love and happiness and joy into the universe when at any second, guaranteed for any human being, there could be and there will be a tragedy more devastating than anything you could ever imagine. Because that's just the way the world works.

You're going to die. Your wife, your family, your friends. This is the reality we're in. And how in that kind of swirling vortex of chaos and violence, do you find a place where regardless of all of that, you will still be committed as much as you can to do that thing you did on the road when the fucking car hit you? Instead of getting out and fucking pummeling the guy because your adrenaline's flowing, you ask, hey, are you all right?

That's wild. I mean, to you, it might seem like not that big a deal, but if everyone on planet Earth started doing that, whoa, holy shit, it'd be a whole new. I think, I think, I mean, I agree with what you're saying, but I think there's an underlying assertion of the cruelty of the universe that I think is distorted. Okay. I think that, you know, I was watching this nature program a couple of weeks ago and there was a seal. I may have even talked with you about this last time I was on, but there was like a seal playing in the waves. And then you hear the like, do, do, do, do, do, do. And you see the shadow coming up and it's a great white and it hits the seal.

And then the guy, the narrator actually says, we slow this down to 140th of normal speed, right? And you see the teeth and the seals flopping around and there's blood everywhere. And meanwhile, the narrator's saying the struggle for survival is never over. And so I'm watching that. I'm thinking, well, but seals seem kind of happy to me, right? Like how come they're not more stressed out? Well, but seals seem kind of happy to me, right? Like, how come they're not more stressed out?

Because all the seals I've seen were lying on rocks and chilling and barking and having fun. So I looked up this seal. It was a harbor seal, I think. They live to be about 30. So let's say this one's in its prime. It's 25, okay? Its whole fucking life it's been lying on warm rocks and eating fresh fish. And then in half a second, it's dead. Okay?

And we're looking at that as evidence of the cruelty of nature? What's the ratio there? You know, what's the ratio of good days to bad days in that seal's life? It's pretty fucking good. True. And I read this amazing account of being pounced on by a lion. Who searched for Livingston in Africa? I remember Dr. Livingston, I presume.

Anyway, that guy, he got pounced on by a lion. And he talks about, he didn't describe it this way, but the endorphins that are released when you're dying, right? Especially in prey animals. He was completely detached, completely relaxed, watching this lion tossing him around. Well, they think there's an evolutionary advantage to both species, both the predator and the prey, in them having this endorphin release when they get got. Because when lions attack like antelopes or when big cats catch deer,

the deer kind of give in, man. They get jacked, they next get, but they don, the deer kind of give in, man. Right. They get jacked, they next get, but they don't, they kind of like fight a little and then they kind of give in. Right. But like bears, like those kind of animals, they don't really give in like that. So they don't, like if a cat and a mountain lion or a mountain lion rather than a bear go at it, like the bear isn't just going to give in to the mountain lion. Right.

If the mountain lion bites the bear in its neck neck the bear is going to try to turn and bite him back and they're going to tooth and claw it out they're not going to give i wonder if he would give in to a dinosaur oh that's a good point something where the power is overwhelming and you feel it like there's i ain't getting out of this i wonder if that what triggers the release that's a very good point that thing that you're talking about right there is the secret of happiness which is that release because if you really look at it man we are in the mouth of a super predator it's the entire universe and it's slowly killing us right now you're bumming me out why does that bum you out it's true it's like i mean it does sound like dire but on one level it sounds dire. But then the idea is like you have to accept the situation that you're in.

And it is true. We are like being like we're in the mouth of the most incredible, most powerful, most omnipresent thing ever. Earlier when you were talking about, you know, you smoke DMT, you have this experience of God. You see God, whatever it is. You see this incredible matrix of consciousness. Or when you're theoretically on ayahuasca, I haven't done it, or mushrooms. But the funny thing about it is, right now, minus the psychedelic, you are surrounded by an entire universe of which pieces of the universe are alive and aware of you and are talking to you. The psychedelic sort of just force feeds you that reality.

Exactly. Or it paints it. It puts a different coat of paint on top of it. So now it seems unique. It's novel again. It's novel again. another level of the same experience that's happening, which is that you are surrounded by a living, partially living universe that has as a tendency from time to time to produce life. This universe that we're in produces life and you're part of it and you're surrounded by an infinite ocean of that tendency. So that's very overwhelming, I think, think for people which is why they begin

to accept oh this is just completely normal this thing this and then that's when you take the psychedelic you're like holy shit I saw God it's like no you saw the exact same thing that you've been seeing it's only that you saw it in a different form for whatever reason people don't want to accept this stuff that's happening around us right now as God they don't accept it they don't accept that what this thing is around us is supernatural it's crazy to see this is when Joe was talking earlier about foragers finding these substances I was thinking this exactly what you're talking about because we we take the substances and

it's like a revelation right and the veil is pulled back what is the veil the veil is culture we live in a culture that is constantly trying to put out the fire of mystery in us it's constantly saying no life is about having this car this kind of house get a new air conditioner go to work don't don't be looking for mystery just go to work and punch the fucking clock all right go work in your mind or your cubicle or whatever it's trying constantly trying to get us to accept this bum fucking deal right whereas foragers they're surrounded by mystery every day every day everything's alive everything is full of spirit there's the spirit of the river the spirit of the clouds the spirit of the river, the spirit of the clouds, the spirit of the air, they're surrounded by spirits. So I wonder what their experience with psychedelics is like, because I don't think it has, I mean, I'm sure it heightens everything and is amazing

and obviously has sacred value, but I don't think it has that same revelatory aspect that it does for us. It might be a different, even deeper revelatory thing because they're not confined to the bullshit of buildings and streets and traffic lights and taxes and all these things that we hold in the forefront of our mind, our consciousness, that are really just retarded. We've created these things.

Most of the things that people come up with to occupy their mind during the day are things that we've come up with to occupy their mind during the day are things that we've come up with that we've discovered or become or created and be decided that they're significant like taxes or jobs or social status for breeding i think it's just i think it's gets back to duncan's point i think the whole thing is an edifice built to distract ourselves from our mortality. I think that's what civilization is. It certainly could be, or it could be a mechanism for us to continue to create technology and innovate. Because the best way to do that is to not have a good perspective, not realize that if, see, if our perspective is really good and we realize that we're these temporary beings who

just love each other and spend as much time together in camaraderie and in friendship as possible, we're not going to get shit done. We're all going to look at all the phones we have now and then go, we're good. We just keep using these phones and everyone's fine. We look at our TVs and that is a very big TV. We're good. My computer is super fast.

We're good. My internet seems fine. Let's just leave all this stuff alone and hang out. Right. That's you need the discontent to create the technology. So the question is, who's but but whose interest is all this in that? Because it's not in ours. Yeah, exactly. It's the super organism. Marshall McLuhan quote, Marshall McLuhan's or the sex organs of the machine. My favorite quote ever. And I think that one of the things we've done by lighting everything up also is we've gotten rid of the psychedelic Vision that is space you no longer see space

Like you have to if you go on a trip to the desert and you go out to the desert and like the high desert And you look up at night you like wow Yeah, you get that majestic vision of the cosmos we don't get it in la anymore it's gone right it's gone we we smoked it out we smoked it out with street lights and you got tomatoes that'll look good for a long time but have no fucking flavor yeah and roses that don't smell like roses they don't what do they smell like they smell like nothing because because they've got a breed that they that will last much longer looking good but it doesn't have the smell but you spray perfume on them bro that's what they do seriously

seriously that's what they spray rose perfume on roses i i went to dinner once this french chick made me dinner this beautiful wonderful french woman and uh but i didn't like anything she liked so it was a difficult relationship. You know, like, she likes sailing. She had this little sailboat. And for me, sailing is like skin cancer. Guaranteed skin cancer. Oh, because you're so pale?

Because I'm super pale. I'm out on the water, no shade. You know, we're waiting for wind. I'm dead. I'm dead. Anyway, so she made this dinner for me one night, and I went to her place, and everything was was beautiful and it was all set up with candles and, you know, nice silver air. And it was escargot. I don't fucking eat escargot, man.

I'm American. I don't eat snails. But I was going to go through it just because she went to all this trouble. 28, 29, something like that. She went to all this trouble. 28, 29, something like that. And so she has this big pot of escargot, all these shells in the sauce, tomato sauce, and she puts it on. So I pick up the first one and suck up the sauce, and there's no snail.

And I'm like, whew, lucked out. And then I pick up the next one, same thing. Again, no snail. And I'm looking at her across the table, and she's getting this weird look on her face. There were no snails. She'd bought the shells. They sell the snails separately. You have to put the snails back in the shells.

What? I don't know. Something about you spraying perfume on roses with no smell reminded me of that story. That is so ridiculous. Yeah. So she made a big pot of snail shells. So you guys just said snail shell soup. Tomato snail shell soup.

That's hard to say. Snail shell soup. Snail shell soup. Yeah, my mouth doesn't want to say that. Snail shell soup. Snail shell soup. Snail shell soup. Snail shell soup. Snail snail soup.

You're right. It is bizarre that they would separate them. Why would you take the snails out and make people put them back in? Maybe to clean them? Shipping, yeah. Yeah, maybe it's like a cleanliness issue. But then you would know that they weren't fresh. The whole idea is that you want to catch them.

They do something to them, though. That's something that I was, there's a guy online who is a wild game cook a famous wild game cook he's been on steve rinella's television show one of the things that he does is um he takes wild foods like mushrooms and stuff and he incorporates them like if he if he eats like a deer he cooks a deer meal he'll use like a lot of the local ingredients, like local plants and local mushrooms and things like that. And he did that with some snails, and he had to purge them. So I guess you do something where you take them and you leave them in water for a long period of time or something, like let them defecate and let them piss.

Oh, right. I think that might be— That makes sense. Yeah. You don't want to eat snail piss. No way. Snail shit. No way.

That's what you mean when you eat lobster, right? That whole line down the lobster and snail. Yeah, shrimp. Fucking gross. It's their poop line. Have we talked about

fecal transplant? Have you guys talked about that? We have, definitely. I haven't stopped talking about it. Since you had it. It's pretty bizarre. Yeah, yeah. I haven't stopped talking about it. Since you had it. It's pretty bizarre. The idea that microbes from another person's poop can actually help your body. Yeah, that's pretty wild, huh?

When being born vaginally, you get your mother's microbiome all over your skin and in your mouth and stuff from her vaginal secretions. So when kids are born C-section, they don't get that. They're much more likely to have asthma and all this stuff. Whoa. So what you got to do, even if you have a C-section, is smear pussy juice all over the kid's face, literally. I don't think you should say that, and we should probably edit that out. That's just what the doctor ordered.

There are new rules in this society, and you're not allowed to smear pussy juice on babies anymore. Would you start working for Subway, Chris Brown? At Harvard, that'll get you fired. I think it was Yale, but yeah. We were talking before the podcast started about the social justice warrior placemats that Harvard had given to children to take home with them. And I say children because if your parents are paying for your education, you're a fucking child. You're still a child.

I don't care if you're 18. I don't care if you can vote. I don't care if you can go to war. They sent these placemats home with these kids explaining how to talk to your parents if controversial issues come up, like if your parents exhibit xenophobia or sexism or transphobia. Right. And so they literally are giving them these placemats. Can we see them?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll pull it up. Harvard just apologized for it today. For the placemats? Yeah. Well, some intelligent people apparently got a hold of them. What the fuck are you doing? Are you teaching people how to be only liberal progressive thinkers, Like, think only the way you guys want them to think?

Are they allowed to have a nuanced opinion on subjects that are controversial? Like, there's some things you're not allowed to have a nuanced opinion about. You're not even allowed to debate it. And that was what happened at Yale when they were talking about offensive Halloween costumes. Here it is. The Yale Student Act and tips for talking to family members. Oh, my God. This is hilarious.

Listen mindfully before a formula. Breathe. A thoughtful response. Ask questions when people express strong opinions. Affirm. Clarify the difference between the good intentions and the impact. Speak. Speak from a place of mutual interest, sharing personal experiences and emotions.

Oh, my God. And they talk about black murders in the streets. Why don't they just listen to the officer? If they just had obeyed the law, this wouldn't have happened. Response. I mean, come on. Look at this. This is hilarious.

Do you think the response would be the same if it was a white person being pulled over? Like, look at what they're doing here this is they're teaching people how to talk to their parents about controversial social issues like islamophobia oh my god what does this say we shouldn't let anyone in the u.s from syria we can't guarantee that terrorists won't infiltrate there this is like the worst fucking christmas dinner ever this is such a horrible This is like the worst fucking Christmas dinner ever. This is such a horrible... This is not the Christmas dinner. This is the fucking O'Reilly factor. The U.S. has been accepting refugees

from the war-torn areas around the world for decades. Remember the wars in Central America? They were extremely violent, and the U.S. accepted refugees. All right, whatever. It's just boring. Look at this Yale student activism one. Why are the black students complaining? Shouldn't they be happy to be in college? Response. All right, whatever. It's just boring. Look at this Yale student activism one.

Why are the black students complaining? Shouldn't they be happy to be in college? Response. When I hear students expressing their experiences of racism on campus, I don't hear complaining. Instead, I hear young people uplifting a situation that I may not experience. You know what my dad starts doing at this point? When I'm reading this, my dad will start going, If you non-black. All right, all right, all right.

By the way, uplifting is not a fucking verb. Yeah. Yale. No. Could somebody tell these fancy boys? Son, you need to get a different drug dealer. It says Yale. But there's a Harvard place, Matt. It's about the Yale student protests. Son, you need to get a different drug dealer. It says Yale student mat. But it's about Yale. But there's a Harvard placemat.

It's about the Yale student protests. Oh, I see. But listen to this. If non-black students got the privilege, get the privilege of a safe environment, I believe that same privilege should be given to all students. Like, you just said nothing. That is a nonsense statement. Yeah.

You don't hear them complaining when they're complaining? Well, that's bizarre. If people are complaining, they're definitely complaining. And there's nothing— They might have a very good point. Exactly. There's nothing negative about complaining. They might have a very good point.

If you don't hear complaining, then you're not paying attention. I agree with the black murder section, though. That seems pretty logical, the response. Why don't you read it? Do you think the response would be the same if there was a white person being pulled over? In many incidents that result in the death of a black body in the street, these victims are not breaking the law and are unarmed with Tamir. This is all seems right on.

He was a 12 year old boy playing in the park. When the officers pull up, they gave no verbal commands and shot within two seconds of arriving at the scene. He was not breaking any laws. You know, this it's just because I just watched someone made a YouTube montage of cops shooting people. Oh, it's insane. You've seen that? Yeah.

It's crazy. And I was thinking, my Christ, man, if I was black and got pulled over by a cop, I'd be shitting myself. Oh, yeah. Because they just shoot. Not only that, you're dealing with someone who is encountering bad people all day. Most of the people that cops encounter all day are breaking the law. Most of the people, they're either pulling them over for going too fast, or they're doing something stupid,

or they're trying to steal something, or they're trying to rob somebody, or they're showing up at a scene after someone's done something fucked up. Yeah. So just think about the stress that a normal person's under, and multiply that times 100. You get paid, like, 40 grand a year.

People want to shoot at you. You're wearing a goddamn bulletproof vest, and you're going to someone's car, and it's a young black guy, and his rap music is loud. He's not even turning it down. You're like, goddamn, is today the day I get shot and killed? Right. Is today the day I die? And let's not forget that a lot of these dudes are coming back from wars.

A lot of them have PTSD, and they were trained where they were an occupying force. So they take that training and they apply it to joining the police force and the population is the enemy. Everyone is a potential suicide vest. I got in a conversation with my Uber driver, this black dude, and he was

like, talking about getting pulled over recently. And I told him, man, I haven't been pulled over in like, I't know nine years and he's like what really i'm white lol yeah they he gets pulled over all the time you know and and so like that's fucked up man like that's like that that to live in that kind of world where you realize that you just have to accept getting pulled over. And you have to accept the fact that there is like some chance if you make the wrong move or if the cop snaps because of, for whatever reason, you're dead. It happens all the time. There was that one where the cops pulled that guy over and there's a video of him the completely different interaction the cop described the guy

pulls his gun out something he just shoots the guy in his fucking car yeah no one's in trouble no one's scared no one's in danger terrible there's people just shouldn't be cops there's definitely people that shouldn't be cops i think most people how about that what about these cases where they like swat that right into someone's house in the middle of the night and shoot them in bed and then it's like, oh, wrong house. Or they shoot their dog. Shoot the dog. Oh, they love shooting the dogs.

Yeah. And taking the property. That's the other thing. This country, they're motivated. What's the word? Motivated. Motivated. Yeah, there's a word there.

Incentivized. Incentivized. To get into shit, you know, to get into trouble, to find trouble, because they get the house, they get the car. Well, do you know in 2015, cops took more property than burglars did? Wow. Yeah. I saw that.

What? Think about that. Wait a minute. Yeah. And that goes right into the local police department's budget. Yeah. It doesn't even go to Washington, you know? They bought margarita machines in North Carolina. Did you see that i didn't see that what the fuck when they

would pull people over and if you have money they just take it and just say well you have to figure out a way to prove to us that this money was made right legal the asset forfeitures surpass burglaries for the first time ever that's crazy and that's an important point you don't even have to be charged with the crime they can just, what are you doing walking around with $10,000 in cash? And if that's ours, you've got to prove. And also think about how much of this is related to drugs. So when you realize the asset forfeiture is actually happening for something that shouldn't be illegal anyway. Have you watched, it's called like Drunk Tank.

Have you seen this show? It's like, I don't know, it's a show where after someone gets pulled over for a DUI, they get thrown in the drunk tank have you seen this show where like it's like i don't know it shows it's a show where after someone gets pulled over for a dui they get thrown in the drunk tank and man there is to me nothing more vile than seeing a cop smugly like searching a person and pulling marijuana out of his pocket and being like well well well what do we have here? Marijuana. Look at this. That's going to be something that history is going to judge in the most intense way. Every single cop that's been on a reality show smugly taking someone's weed for them, putting handcuffs on them because they had weed for eternity. They're going to be looked back on in a really fucking awful way.

They're going to want to scrub the internet of that footage because they're enforcing a law that, I mean, we all know, I'm preaching the fucking choir here, but there's something so foul about it, that smugness, you know? It's so disgusting. For nothing. For nothing. For literally nothing. For literally nothing. Yeah. Well, not less than nothing.

Something they enjoy. It's not just for nothing. For literally nothing. Yeah. Well, not less than nothing. Something they enjoy. It's not just for nothing. It's more disgusting than that because it's positive. It's beneficial. It enhances their life. It makes food taste better. Right. Well, that gets us back to seeing God in a mushroom, right?

Yeah. Every culture that's ever had access to hallucinogens has seen them as the greatest gift of the gods. Right. The most sacred, the most beautiful gift they've been given in our country, in the United States. You go to prison for longer under minimum mandatory for having LSD. Yeah. Right. LSD. Then for second degree murder. Think about that. That's insane. So it's not only wasteful and weird and awkward. And to me, that ties into my argument that we live in a culture that sets out to deny mystery. This is where I differ from you.

I don't know if the culture sets out to deny it or if all these things are kind of in place and they all benefit each other and the overall result is that the culture denies its reality. I don't necessarily think there's any design involved. No, no. Well, see, this is a design versus evolution. I agree with you. I think it's a system that replicates itself and supports itself and spins out submechanisms that support the central mechanism.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think Henry Kissinger is behind it no I know you don't but I mean I don't think there's anyone that doesn't want us anyone that doesn't want us to be aware of our I just don't think the entire advertising industry doesn't want us to know the reality of what they're selling they're not even oh that's different yeah okay of what they're selling. Yeah, but they're not even, oh, that's different. Yeah, okay. There's something to that. I mean, there's a whole, you know, Edward Bernays, right? The great, the guy who founded advertising, essentially, and also worked for the CIA,

also came up with the we're defending freedom abroad justification for American military adventures. I mean, he was central, and he very clearly said, like, we need to create reality for people because if they are allowed to create their own reality, they won't buy stuff. They won't do what we need them to do. They won't vote for who we need them to vote for. So there's an elite that has to create reality for the masses. And it's logical. If you like, if we, if we got assigned to, and we were assholes and we got assigned to some massive group of people that we needed to control,

and we needed them to think that we were in charge, that was the first thing, you would have certain rules that they had to abide by. And the first rule would be, don't let them take psychedelics, man. Because if they start fucking tripping, they're going to realize we're just three dudes, just like them. And they're not going to listen to us anymore, which is why I think there is a five-year mandatory minimum when it comes to LSD. Because when you take LSD, the entire thing seems absolutely absurd, from money to the government to jobs.

It all seems like a ridiculous thing that everyone else seems to have accepted. It's like, yeah, this is just how you do shit right but question the people that are enforcing the laws are not the people that created those laws And the people that are enforcing the laws most Certainly have not experienced these things that's why we need to get cops trippin. Yeah, but it's you're right I agree Yeah I think that there's there's a certain momentum that these laws and that this propaganda has sort of set in motion. That's going to be really hard to slow down and stop. And we're starting to do that with pot.

The availability and the relaxation, the way people view pot in 2015 is way different than 2005. We're doing it with hallucinogens, too. I mean, there's approved research going on. There's a fantastic clinical application. The old guard has to die. Well, yeah. That's how it works. The people that started those laws, the fucking Joe Fridays, the Dragnet guys,

those guys are dead. So the people that started this whole the the sweeping psychedelic legislation act of uh 1970 i believe it was when they made everything schedule one nixon yeah they just were just trying to batten down the hatches we got to stop these fucking hippies like everything was crazy the response to the vietnam war everybody wanted to get out it was there was a like this culture explosion that was going on they They were trying to throw wet blankets on. That's right. They were trying to figure out how to do it.

But those people that did that, they're all dead. So these new sort of DEA people and drug enforcement officers, they're operating under this assumption that what they're doing is in some way good. Right. Because it's been in place for a long time, and this is just how it is. And look, there's a reason why heroin's illegal, son. There's a reason why cocaine's illegal, son. What, marijuana's going to rot your brain, son.

Do you do marijuana? Like, why are mushrooms illegal? Have you done mushrooms? If you've done mushrooms and you think they're illegal, something went wrong. Something went wrong. Either you tried to fight it and the trip took you sideways, or you didn't get enough of it, or you did it with assholes. Well, if you heard of the, there's a thing, you probably know there's a name for it. When somebody gets invested into a religion or a cult, you get into a cult, and after you've invested yourself for a certain amount of time,

when you get really sucked into the cult the just the fact that you've been in it for four or five ten fifteen years is enough to keep you in it even though you know it's complete bullshit so you stay in it only because like you've been you've invested too much energy like when they predict the apocalypse and then it doesn't happen yeah those people just like well that doesn't shake their believe it all stick to it because they've made their ego is completely committed to it imagine if like your entire life you had been enforcing legislation that was completely absurd, that wasn't based on anything in reality, that in fact for your entire life you were enforcing legislation

that was in some way dampening or pushing your society back, pushing back the evolution of your culture. And you have to come to terms with the fact that you did that. You are an agent of the state and you enforce laws that shouldn't have been there at all. Man, that's a fucking tough pill to swallow. The fact that you may have killed some people. There's people out there who have put bullets in people just for growing marijuana, something out of the ground. Or for being an Afghani adolescent. You know, I mean, think about all the soldier.

That's what the PTSD is all about. Right. They're coming back and they're like, what the fuck? I interviewed three vets on my show. I did sort of a, you know, a series of vet interviews. Tangentially speaking, available on iTunes. Thank you, Joe. And yeah, that's some of the stuff that comes up you know it's like you fucking shoot people because you're there and that's what you do and they moved and they had you know

whatever it's fucking you gotta come to terms with it you know they have to come to terms with it but you have to come to terms with it because it's cowardly to continue to fucking enforce a goddamn thing even though you know that it's no longer uh relevant there's no need to do it there never was a need to do it you just have to take the bitter pill and go through a few fucking days of feeling guilty you know and understand that that what you did was wrong what it's a real easy thing to say but the problem is until the laws get changed it's not going to seem real to people that are still caught up in the haze of culture. Right.

You know, because culture has kind of a haze. Like, you get sucked into it, and you're in it, and that's why people do different things in different places, and it seems normal to them. And then we see it. They're, what? They eat with sticks? Right. What are they, fucking crazy?

Right. Don't they know about spoons? It's like culture Becomes the norm it becomes what you accept and right now our culture accepts the fact you get locked up for drugs And you don't want your kids to be a druggie You don't want your kid to be a loser if you become they become potheads and become lazy We have these thoughts that were really all the seeds Were started in the 1930s with all those crazy reefer Madness movies. I mean, it's the same stuff. It's just gotten less and less ridiculous.

But no one, like, even to this day, if you talk about getting high, you talk about smoking pot, the vast majority of people look at it the same way as if you say, I got fucked up. We went and drank, and I got hammered. I was so blasted. But there's a very big difference in what it's doing to your body. Like one of them is closing off awareness.

One of them is opening up awareness. And we're putting them in the same category. And this is not a knock on alcohol. I'm a fan of alcohol. I enjoy it. But it's a completely different experience. But when you explain it to people, they'll look at you the same way.

Ah, you guys got stoned, huh? You fucking crazy kids. Meanwhile, you got stoned and might have realized exactly what was wrong in your relationship and you know and tried to fix your life and like wrote something down it's going to be like the new chart the new path of your destiny like more you got drunk and shit and your neighbors along because you thought it would be cute you know and fuck this cat it is cute put YouTube. We're talking. Was that cat fucking line a dig at me, man? No, man.

No, man. I'm not that guy. We promised we weren't going to talk about that. That thing you're talking about, man, that thing where you're like, well, well, well, guess you're high right now. That's deep North Korean level conditioning. That's what, it's no different than people in North Korea praying the deer leader. It's when you, you have been, if you, depending on how old you are, you have been in a war, the war on drugs.

It's a real war. It's a war where people have been killed and imprisoned. And as part of all wars, propaganda, you have to have propaganda and money. But you have been conditioned by some very intense brainwashing that was created by the CIA to try to control your mind. And so you have been infected with propaganda. If you think that drugs should be illegal, you are a victim of the drug war. And another, you know, another fucking casualty of the drug war truth, man. I was thinking like how much I lied to my mom. I was in high school, taking LSD, having these powerful, life-changing experiences, beautiful experiences where I was realizing

so much about society and myself and a lot of shit I didn't understand. And I would have loved to have talked to my mom about it, but I couldn't talk to my mom about it because if my mom found out I was doing fucking LSD, she would freak out. And parents, they go through their kids' drawers. They become agents of the state.

They're digging through their kids' drawers to try to find a substance that has been on the planet for a very long time, marijuana, or a substance like LSD that is profoundly beneficial to a person who takes it in the right way. And they've become agents of the state. And they're forcing this in their house, in the home, which should be a place of absolute truth and trust and acceptance and growth. It's been transformed into this kind of weird gulag. It's been turned into this bizarre prison place where the parents somehow have got to enforce these absolutely arbitrary laws. And that, we can't, I don't think that

anyone is ever going to be able to calculate how much damage that has done to society. That we have placed our teens into a position where they have to fucking lie to their parents about having the most profound experience Accessible via chemicals, but there's a lot of people that think that you shouldn't fuck with any entheogens any psychedelics while you're you have a young developing mind well, I'm not one of them I mean I Can't be I did it through all through high school, and I absolutely am so grateful to that. I'm so grateful for the information stream because I didn't have the Internet, man. And, like, you know, my encounter with what LSD was was through pure government propaganda.

Like, it was like finding books where it talks about Timothy Leary as an insane lunatic who lost his mind. an insane lunatic who lost his mind, that paints a picture of people who are advocates of the psychedelic experience as being some kind of evil, drug-addled lunatics, as opposed to being what they really are, which is rebels and heroes in a completely insane war that has destroyed countless lives. So I wasn't able to go on the internet and look this shit up and find out that indeed this experience that I'm having, which appears to be beneficial, is truly beneficial to a great many people. All I had was bullshit like,

you know, if you take five hits of acid, you're legally insane. That's what people used to say. Yeah, that's one that people always say. Or the old classic. I made sure to take five, so I'm covered. If I do something, I'm covered. I can verify it.

I'm insane. I've lost my mind. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to talk from the 1940s from now on. Why, I'm insane, Duncan. I'm insane. Say, what do you mean by this beneficial experience? Well, it's sad.

It really is. beneficial experience. Well, it's sad, you know, it really is. And what's really sad about it is like other wars, the casualties, you know, we build walls with names on them in other wars. But in this particular war, so many people who were just farmers and alchemists are laying in their graves and nobody realizes that these were heroes. These were people who were in the face of insanity, making the decision that regardless of what the state was telling them to do, they were going to follow their hearts.

And a lot of them went to jail for it. A lot of them are in jail for it. They're political prisoners is what they are. That's the word. That's it. This is very strange how hard it is for us to break momentum of habit. And that's part of what's going on is there's a momentum of habit that looks at all these things as being negative. Well, and there's a governmental system that's supremely unresponsive to new ideas, right? Because of the way Congress is set up. But one

of the things that's changing that I think is what's happening in Colorado with the tax revenue. Yeah. And Oregon. Yeah. And Oregon. But Colorado has a longer history of it. Right now they've made more money for the first time ever from marijuana and taxes than they do alcohol. Right. And crime goes down. Yeah. Crime went down. Drunk driving went down.

Crime went down to record levels. Yeah. Drunk driving went down. Real estate went up 19%. Of course. Prescription overdoses down. Down. Because people are using marijuana for pain control.

And tourism up. Hot girls moving in. time all up oh this is there's negatives too hippies freaks a lot of lazy moving into a lot of people hippies attracted like metal files i slept in terence mckenna's bed the other night wow did you jerk off i felt it no no should have no beautiful bed. Where is Terrence McKenna's bed? Well, it's a bed he slept in often in Mill Valley. Oh, wow. Yeah.

That's awesome. I always wanted to buy his house on the big island, but it burnt down. It burnt down with like thousands of books. Yeah. Yeah. How the fuck does a house burn in Hawaii? I don't know, man. In a rainforest.

He lived in a rainforest in Hawaii. Yeah. It was a volcanic eruption. Yeah, it's called Girlfriend with Kerosene. Do you think that. He lived in a rain forest. Yeah. Volcanic eruption. Yeah, it's called girlfriend with kerosene. You left me, you fuck. Do you guys know I'm nominated for a porn award? Did I tell you that?

A porn award? Yeah, an AVN award. Wow, okay. Is that good? Yeah. Best non-sex scene in a movie. What movie was this? It's called Marriage 2.0.

And I'm up against Ron Jericho. Okay. Is that good? Yeah. Best non-sex scene in a movie. What movie was this? It's called Marriage 2.0. And I'm up against Ron Jeremy, Dick Chibbles. Yeah. Duncan has nothing to say, Duncan. What about your congratulations? Forgive me. That's amazing.

I hope you win. Yeah, me too. Well, I was going to ask if you guys would go to Vegas and accept it on my behalf. Send Red Band. He'll be there anyway. Get it for us. Yeah, those things just seem like too much sadness for a guy with daughters. Yeah.

The AVN Awards. Definitely. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's a party. Brian says it's all like cam girls now. That's like the majority of what it is. I think there is. I just read about this documentary about the shift in pornography,

the way that pornography, that industry is kind of disintegrating because of the Internet. It's all free. One of the many fucking disruptions. Internet is disrupting everything, man, isn't it? It is. From porn to taxi cabs to everything is getting reconfigured by it. It's so fascinating. It's unbelievable.

It's a very weird time. Not just taxi cabs. I told you rental cars, the skirt rental car company, they just drop your rental car off and then they pick it up later. Like they bring it to you. It's sort of like Uber for rental cars. If they could just get a sofa in there, we'd be in Duncan's future.

It will. You need a sofa. They'll have some sort of a pod. I always thought they should make cars with cameras, right? And so you actually sit backwards in the car and look at a screen that's projected of what's in front of you, and you drive backwards.

Because you think about it, if you're in a collision're you're good if you're driving backwards not really you're fucked if you're gonna get crushed you're gonna get crushed and it's not good to not know when you're impacting well you would know because as far as you're it's like a virtual it's as if you're looking out the windshield but you're actually shifted backwards, and it's cameras projecting on the back screen. Oh, it's hurting my brain thinking about that. You probably throw up constantly. Why am I going the wrong way? The sensation would be weird.

That's true. That's true. You have massive cars like this. I just feel like you wouldn't want to see the car coming at you, rear-ending you. Ah! I don't know. Yeah, you wouldn't, because it'd be closed.

Man, did you see the video of Elon Musk finally landing the rocket? We're ending you. Ah! I don't know. Yeah, you wouldn't, because it would be closed. Man, did you see the video of Elon Musk finally landing the rocket? Yeah, I didn't see it. That's fucking cool, man. That's great. Oh, yeah, it's badass. It's just like straight out of old 50s sci-fi. It's like exactly the same thing. He did it.

He landed a rocket. Yeah. And that guy, I heard that he is part of a, him and some other people have said that they're going to give a billion dollars to create a new artificial intelligence research center or something. Because they're terrified. Elon Musk and the guy in England, Stephen Hawking. I like how you went like, there's a guy. There's a weird shaky movement. That's the universal science. That guy that's fucked. Oh, like, there's a guy. There's a little weird shaking movement. That's the universal sign.

That guy that's fucked. Oh, yeah, he's fucked. Yeah, that guy. Yeah, they're terrified of him. Yeah, they're really. How do you feel about it? About artificial intelligence and the idea. Duncan sucked in his artificial intelligence right now.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. You are right to the phone. Sorry, sorry. Hey, you talk right now. Just mention it. I'm going to check my texts. That is exactly what I did. Hey, give me your thoughts on this.

I did that. I'm sorry. That's funny. That's 100% what I did. Joe's busted both of us. Like, my impression of a... Well, you can't help it, though. The fucking things are heroin.

They pull you. Yeah, they get you. You just want to check. Maybe the next tweet is going to be amazing. Someone's going to send me the coolest article ever. It'll change my life. I'm going to read it, and I'm just going to learn. But do you read articles?

I find I store them. I'm like a fucking squirrel in October, man. I got so many tabs open and so many things in Evernote to read later. I'll never read all this stuff. But I've got this acquisitive thing like oh that'll be interesting I'll save that that oh that'll go there and then and it's just a mess it's a massive I'm like a hoarder I'm an intellectual hoarder mess I try to practice mindfulness when I'm going through my phone so I kind of watch

myself as I'm doing it too because I know I'm addicted and I can see what I'm in is a really awful pattern and it's like you when you when you when you go through it and you analyze like what's happening you you see that it is a form of drug you see that you are getting like little hits off of it you are getting like weird little like moments of like strange information intoxication like you get these little like upticks like when you find a particularly like oh a fucking vice documentary on the liberation of the city in iraq whoa there's a cat eating a fucking man's leg holy shit uptick uptick uptick you're getting

these like weird little hits and it's kind of cool and it keeps you like stuck in a cycle but that pull you're talking about man there i i had this like uh awesome goth friend who was into like god i can't remember if it's that there's a differentiation between death metal and black metal and i was getting trouble for mixing them up but like he was like explaining to me about uh vlad vignes burzum. I always get in trouble. I get the whole story mixed up, but basically he was explaining how these guys are actually burning down churches,

and they were really hardcore, man. So he plays this Burzum, this death metal for me. He's like, listen. I was super stoned. He's like, listen, listen. I'm listening to it. He's like, do you feel the pull? It's like, shit, man, I do a little bit. I know what you're talking about. It's got a weird, dark little listening to it. He's like, do you feel the pull? It's like, shit, man, I do a little bit.

I know what you're talking about. It's got a weird, dark little gravity to it that if I allowed it to, I could see how I would start getting more and more and more into it. It's the same with these fucking phones, man. They have a true, weird, magnetic, subjective magnetism where you always feel. It's almost a physical feeling, man. Like you almost feel it's almost a physical feeling man like you almost feel it pulling your attention towards it they're like black holes for attention well it's interactive that's the big factor the big factor is it's interactive you click on things you can make

things happen you can open things look at pictures it's one of the things that people like about instagram you're you're clicking on it and you go oh look at that picture look at this picture oh i'm gonna comment and you're interacting yeah and that you go, oh, look at that picture. Look at this picture. Oh, I'm going to comment. And you're interacting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that interacting is like some bizarre introduction to a new type of society. These are the first steps. These social media steps, these are the first steps, this new type of integrated communication that we're experiencing.

Yeah. But like we were talking about with the city, the city separates us from the realization that we are just temporary beings collecting things needlessly because we're only going to be here for a short amount of time. But yet we spend all of our focus trying to accumulate the largest pile of shit before we die. That's sort of the same thing that's going on with phones. It's the same thing that's going on with everything. It's like it's slowly pulling us into its trance. thing that's going on with everything.

It's like it's solely pulling us into its trance. And the more we feed into it, the more we work hard, the more they'll make more of these, the more they'll make better ones of these, the more these things will deeper and deeper integrate themselves into your life until the point where they're symbiotic, until the point where that new Google contact lens, have you seen that shit? No. Google's coming out with a contact lens. I just knew it would happen. They've got a goddamn contact lens.

It's going to be Google Glass, the contact lens. No fucking way, man. It's going to be able to tell your blood sugar if you're a diabetic. Thank God. Oh, it's not projecting shit. Oh, no, no, no. It's doing everything. Oh, you can see shit on it?

Oh, it's going to do everything. It's going to do everything. So you can have, like, porn going in your left eye 24-7? Navigation in your right eye, porn in your left eye. Look into my eyes. That's the worst. I mean... Can people see it? Can people see, like, fucking see it can people see like are you watching people and i think it's just it's a matter of time and it's a matter of time before they create eyes

that are better than these eyes for sure these eyes that we have that i need reading glasses now to read things that are fine print i can't't, like, I can't read a book anymore. I have to have a pair of glasses. I'm reading a book about how to strengthen your eyes when I wear reading glasses, when I read the book. It's hilarious. And you know, the myopia is like out of control and they say it's because kids are indoors all the time. I think it probably has a lot to do with it. And look at the screens. There's a woman named Katie Bowman, Katie, Katie Bowman was on the show, and one of the ways she described it as a cast, she said if you're always looking at something that's the same. It was Katie Bowman, right? They brought this up?

Pretty sure. She was saying if you're always looking at a certain distance, a certain space, then that becomes like a cast. So if you put your arm in a cast and the muscle atrophies, but when you're outside like a normal person is, you're looking at things that are close. You're looking at things that are far away. And it doesn't distort your lens. When you're staring at a screen all the time, which I am all the time, either doing a podcast or going online or whatever, that fucks with your eyes. That's why people who would read all the time would get glasses. And people would correlate it like, oh, he fucked up his eyes from reading.

You would always say that. And then they would say, oh, that's bullshit his eyes from reading. Like, we would always say that. But then they would say, oh, that's bullshit. But no, it's not. It's not bullshit. If you read enough, you're looking at that space as right in front of you only. You're looking at something really close up, but it fucks with your eyes.

Right. Yeah, and also, masturbation makes you go blind. No. No, no, no. That's true, right? Not if you use your left hand. You just need balance. It's all about balance.

You need balance. But this thing you're talking about, aren't they finding out that there's actually something about the energy being radiated from the things at night? Like it fucks with your sleep cycle, too? Oh, yeah. The blue wavelengths. That's what it's called. So get F.lux, L-U-X. It's great.

In fact, I just interviewed a sleep scientist two days ago in San Francisco, a really interesting guy, does research at Stanford, Dan Pardee. And we were talking about that. It's the blue end of the wavelength, which is what you get from sunlight, affects the centers of your brain

that sort of tell you what time it is and your circadian rhythm and all that. So as you get toward evening, you want the light to glow more and more gold, yellow, and eliminate the blue. So this app just automatically filters your screen based upon where you are and what time it is. How bizarre. And it's good. It helps with the sleep.

Because if you're looking at blue light right before you go to bed your brain thinks you're in the midday you know that makes sense okay they have a new plane that they're doing they're creating this new plane they're going to make it out of carbon fiber and they're going to adjust the light in the plane to match the light in the area you're going so that your circadian rhythms don't get interrupted. No windows. Yeah. And apparently in doing this somehow or another, they're going to eliminate the type of jet lag that a lot of people suffer from.

Yeah. Because by the time you arrive, you're already calibrated. Yeah. I don't know how the fuck they're doing that. It doesn't make any sense to me. I've seen- 16 hour flights, you know. I've seen this, I heard about this new kind of light that they have that you can put in basements that somehow perfectly replicates sunlight so that it's, I don't know, it's amazing.

So you can grow weed? Well, no. I've heard of those, too. There's this thing, man. It's called hydroponics. Have you heard of it? I guess everybody's just growing tomatoes. You fucking go down Ventura Boulevard,

and there's like 15 different stores selling you indoor tomato growing supplies. Yeah. Fuck off. That's a lot of tomatoes. I remember when I used to just think that's what it was. Like, shit, yeah, there's a lot of indoor farmers. Yeah, another heirloom specialist.

Well, did you hear about the former FBI agents whose house got broken down? They broke down the door. The DEA agents, I think they shot their dog. I don't know. They love to shoot dogs. They have to. It's in the Constitution. Arrested them and then found out that they were just really growing tomatoes.

They literally were growing tomatoes. So these people were former agents. These guys were retired agents. They're trying to grow some vegetables, make a nice salad, and they got a fucking gun to their back. That's karma. There's some karma. There's some karma in that.

I guess so. Well, at least if not karma, there's a recognition of the system that you participated in for most of your adult life. There's your career. Here's what you did. You fed this machine, a machine that's looking for too much electricity

being used in your basement, which could be indicative of plant growth uh you have plant growth in your house well you fucker you're probably a criminal time to kick your door in with guns think about that god damn it we talk about this all the time but if you really let yourself accept the fact that right now at this moment, flying over neighborhoods are high-tech helicopters scanning their radiation from the houses to find out if inside they're growing plants that aren't accepted by the state. That's really weird, man.

That's why I'm leaving. I'm going back to Spain where they don't do that shit. They don't do that there? They don do that there no Portland either though dude you say Portland I don't have the resources go to Eugene they could definitely not do it it's nice yeah but you've seen the new radar that they have now what they can look deep in or x-ray they look deep into your house they can look into your house and see your silhouettes as they can watch people fuck. Wow. They could look through this screen and literally

see you inside your house, blinds drawn, banging your wife on the bed. But who wants to see two skeletons fucking? I do. I love it. Why not? I think it's just, I think it's like a I think you could see images. Like you could see the outside of the body as well. It's not just as simple as like you see

the skeleton only. Well eventually you'll see. I'm sure they'll figure out a way to interpolate whatever data they're gathering and turn it into something that isn't shadows. It's just a matter of time. And it's a matter of time. Any technology that is being controlled by the state because it's too expensive for normal people to obtain, eventually, more than likely, will become less and less expensive and everyone will have it so if right now there's some some insane technology that

people are using to look through walls and see shadows fuck then it's a what 10 15 years before it's gonna be something that you could just order or something that you can download on your super sophisticated Like drones for Christmas. Yeah. And now drones are. NYPD is using mobile X-ray vans to spy on unknown targets. Wow. A friend of mine used to work for the company who makes those. And what they were doing was they were scanning container ships coming in and out of the country or coming into the country so they could look for drugs without opening up the containers. Look what this says.

Wow. Stop right there for a second. New York City won't reveal how often cops bombard places, vehicles, or people with radiation, or if there are health risks for residents. They won't reveal it. They don't talk about it. The technology was used in Afghanistan before being loosed on U.S. streets. Oh, my God.

Each x-ray van cost an estimated $729,000. To $825,000. That's a big fucking difference. I will not talk about anything at all about this, New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told a journalist. Even though you paid for it. Wow. Yeah, how's that for a fuck you?

It falls into the range of security and counterterrorism activity that we engage in. Wow. He added they're not used to scan people for weapons. But you know what's hilarious? They've used the terrorist acts, like various terrorist acts all across the world to catch people for weapons. But you know what's hilarious? They've used the terrorist acts, like various terrorist acts all across the world to catch people selling

drugs. Because you can sell drugs as an act of terror. It falls under. They just passed some new Patriot Act. You know that, right? The new Patriot Act that was like quietly, secretly passed.

With the CISA package. Whatever the fuck it is yeah the one where like where where obama said i'm going to watch star wars and he apparently just signed this demonic thing and uh yeah it's scary well just i mean they there's a lot of leeway now for like what they can and can't spy on you for, what they decide to look into your life for. So let me, if we follow up what you were saying about how something controlled by the state gets miniaturized and cheaper and eventually becomes available to everyone, if we apply that same thing to weaponry,

I've been thinking about this for a long time, nukes are getting smaller and smaller. They've got suitcase nukes now. Thank God. Yeah. Much more convenient. It's so annoying to have to carry one in your truck. Why are they going to have a backpack nuke? Ies now. Thank God. Yeah. Much more convenient. It's so annoying to have to carry one in your truck. When are they going to have a backpack nuke?

I'm tired of suitcases. Exactly. Right. So are we going to come to the point where any terrorist group, so-called terrorist group, and I use that word in air quotes, can have access to these things? What's that going to mean to world politics? Are we going to come to a point

kind of like everyone in Switzerland has guns? You know, this philosophy, if everyone had guns, everyone would chill out and be nice to each other. Are we going to come to that point internationally where if people are aggrieved enough, they can really fuck up the game? And so then the tension will shift to not having people so aggrieved. Because right now we don't give a fuck, right? We'll go blow them up. If they're that pissed off, they're going to come for us, then we'll send drones and kill them all.

But if they could come for us with a speedboat and nukes, is that a game changer, or do you think the whole thing just shifts to another level and stays the same? We would have to address the root of the problem if it was that accessible. That's what I'm thinking. It's like the ultimate statement of an armed society is a polite society.

It's almost like the ultimate expression of that. Like a well-armed nuclear society is fucking super polite. Imagine knocking on your neighbor's door and telling him his dog's barking too loud when he's wearing a fucking nuke vest. He's like, what were you saying? My dog's making too much noise?

Fuck it, man. I want to take care of him. Do you want the dog? I'm going to hit this button. Let's just do this. I'm going to wipe out the whole block. No, man, what you're talking about, I did an interview up at...

It's a very good point. I did an interview at Singularity University, and he brought up this exact thing, which is that he was explaining it in terms of bioweapons that people are creating these, like, apparently are, like, fucking around with genes in their garages. And then he was saying, like, things like the ability to launch satellites and just about anything you can imagine.

He said that what he said, and I think he may have, I mean I don't know, he didn't say he was exaggerating, but he said we're looking at, if technology continues to accelerate as it is, we're looking at a point in human history where anybody, if they wanted to, could destroy the entire planet or cause massive damage. And so you think to yourself, all right, well, let's imagine that that was the case and somehow, by some miracle, every government of the world suddenly figured out a way to address everybody's personal issues. There was still going to be one or two, more likely a thousand people who are like, no,

that's cool, man, but I think I'm going to detonate this nuclear bomb that I've created in my 3D printer from fucking who knows how. I mean, it's a big question mark or something even worse than that. So this thing, what you're talking about, I think, is that awful race Terrence McKenna talks about that we're in, which is that here we have this race between absolute destruction and some kind of via technology that doesn't even exist yet, and some kind of utopian awakening. I know this kind of stuff probably makes you want to punch me, but I'm not really- It makes me want to hug you and kiss you.

Because it's ridiculous. But these are these two races that are happening right now. One of them is, without question, technology is going to get to the point where every single human has access to some kind of device more powerful than any other human in the past ever had access to. other human in the past ever had access to and the question is is that gonna happen before some other form of technology emerges that makes us all unifying to one organism or some beautiful thing happens I mean it's a pretty terrifying it's a terrifying relay race man it really is it's a tear

it's not really it's a terrifying race and um but isn't that kind of always the case like we need some sort of a problem to overcome it we need competition we need a yin and yang we need a dark and a light we need the you know we need a tide we need like a cycle and it's almost like we need this resistance of like us building towards this this technological singularity almost it's going gonna be in your fucking iPhone, and everyone's gonna have the ability, and we're like, well, we have to fix humanity in order to have this happen.

The only way that we're gonna survive is we fix humanity. And so, you know what I've been thinking? And this is something, I've never talked to an economist about this, but in my own stupid head, I think we're gonna run into a bottleneck with technology. And I think one of the big bottlenecks is technology is all about access to information, right? Technology, like as far as what's going on, it's like your ability to do things, whether it's to project images on screens or to download things faster or to number crunch

or the various different things that technology can do. But the way we're using it today, a big factor is the ability to exchange information and the access to information and the access to each other. And it seems like it's getting closer and closer and closer, right? Access is getting quicker. Yes. There's more information. It's easier to get to.

The boundaries between people are getting smaller and smaller. What's the bottleneck? The bottleneck is going to be money. And money is ones and zeros. That's what money is. If ultimately all information becomes available to all people at all times, that's ultimate enlightenment, right? Instantaneous information constantly available to everyone. Well, isn't money information now?

Because money is not sacks of gold. You're not talking about, you know, I've got 15 bushels of gold how many you got I win you know no we're talking about some weird ones and zeros and plastic that makes these ones and zeros transfer your magnetic strip you slide on the machine you punch in your numbers like this not real anymore yeah it's information and in in transferring our money to information the bottlene bottleneck is going to be money. We're going to come to this ultimate point where we realize, look, we can't protect money anymore. You can't say this is Duncan's money, this is Chris's money because it's going to be just money.

Right. It's going to be just money. And, I mean, maybe there'll be some sort of a merit-based use system where you can have access to money or use money. We'll have to figure out some sort of a way around it, but it'll have to be some sort of like ethical thing that we all agree on. If I'm looking at it correctly and I'm looking at all of these trends that lead to quicker and quicker access to information, more and more availability of that information, access to information becoming universal, What's the money?

Money is information. It's ones and zeros. That's all it is. Well, how are you going to stop it if that's the trend? If the trend ultimately becomes instantaneous, constant access to all information for everybody, no secrets, none exist anymore. They don't exist. I can read your email. You can read mine.

We're all communicating with each other. That's it. There's no more secrets. How does money fit in there unless we go back to fucking collecting clamshells and putting them on strings and this is uh this is my look how many knots i have on my string that's what i mean that's what it used to we have silver coins and shit what are we gonna do but but i would question the premise that money ever was real you seem to be saying that we're reaching a point where it will no longer be real like like bushels of gold.

That's just symbolic, too. I don't think money ever was anything more than agreement between people that we're all going to pretend this is real. It's true, right? Because locally, your money is different than someone in Greece. I mean, you go with your money there. There's some exchange. You have to make an agreement. Do you accept my money?

Well, I accept your money, but it's not really worth a dollar. How much is it worth over here? 75 cents. God damn it. But last month it was $1.25. Well, times have changed. We don't like your money as much anymore. And they make deals. Yeah.

Our central bank, who's staffed by people we don't know. I mean, there's a lot of mystery at the heart of that. We used to be able to go to Canada, and it was awesome. We'd do Montreal, and you'd get like $1. fifty for a dollar right something like that yeah and it was amazing like food would be cheaper everything would be cheaper like oh your money goes a long way in Canada and then it shifted and then the Canadians would come to America because the money would go a long way here their money was worth more than ours have you ever heard of Grant Morrison yeah do you know Grant you should have him on the show man he's a genius refresh my memory. Grant Morrison, he writes a bunch of incredible comic books.

One of them I'm super into right now are graphic novels called The Invisibles. But he's really smart. There's a Grant Morrison lecture. He was at a disinfo gathering, and he gives this really cool lecture or talk and one of the things he said is that the super elite they have gone back to a barter economy because money doesn't mean anything to you if you have billions and billions and billions of dollars so the normal way to get someone to do something is to say okay I'll give X dollars for you to do this thing but if you've got infinite money and someone asks you to do

something to give you more money to add to your infinite pool of money it's not an incentive anymore you're not incentivized by money so it's more like what can you do for me what it's like a it's a it goes back to some kind of weird maybe you're going to barter power maybe you're going to barter some access or something like that but money is irrelevant to the super elite money only means something to people who are in the lower and middle class. Once you have an infinite amount of the shit, it's completely and absolutely irrelevant, which is what you're saying. Everything then theoretically would have to go back to some weird barter economy where

the- Right, but we're never going to reach a point of ultimate resources where everyone has the same access to things that the super elite does because there's just not enough stuff. everyone has the same access to things that the super elite does because there's just not enough stuff well this is where you get into like this is where you get into the idea of experience generation you know like if we get to like google this thing you're talking about google contact lenses it's not going to stop at the eye right like technology is doing the thing to us that the fucking face suckers on aliens do it started off far away it was our phones it was our computers then it like uh it was on our desks it was a nice safe distance then it got into our

pockets it tried to climb onto our face with the google glasses but nobody liked that but now it's getting into our eyes and it's not going to stop at our eyes technology is going to merge with our consciousness and when it merges with our consciousness. The theory would be that it could somehow create experiences that were indistinguishable from reality which means that Really? What's the difference? There is no more you can't like, you know, we're already using bionic parts on people right sure hips Yeah, yeah all sorts of stuff. My wife has ocular implants. She has lenses surgically implanted in her eyes. Yeah, this is, I mean, this is not new stuff.

They're doing artificial knees. They're doing artificial hips. I mean, how long is it going to be before someone comes along and says, listen, Duncan, you have two choices. You can either wear glasses, you have 2400 vision, and you know we have glasses for you, and that's fine if you enjoy it. Or there's a really simple procedure.

It takes five minutes. We replace your eyeball with an artificial eyeball. You don't feel any pain. But you'll have to put up with ads every 60 seconds. Okay, well, I'll opt out. You can click that ad. You can click the ad. You just reach up.

You touch the X in space. You blink. What's the name of that thought experiment about the ship? Somebody's ship. You know the one where it's like the idea is like a sailor is sailing across the ocean, and the mast, he needs to replace the mast. And so he replaces the mast, and then he replaces, I can't remember his name. And it's a different ship. It's a different ship. By the time he gets there, it's all new parts, but it's still his ship

So it's like with technology. It's the same thing like what if we keep replacing ours. There it is the ship of Theseus. That's it. Yeah So yeah, the idea is like when is when do we when when what is humanity or when do we stop being? Well, that's the whole idea about downloading consciousness, right? Figuring out a way to put consciousness into a computer. And how do you know when you've done it? How do you know what consciousness is? Is consciousness inexorably attached to your physical being? Or is consciousness something that's out there that your consciousness is riding around this meat wagon?

Is that what's going on? We don't, there's no agreement on that. Also, we need to define what we mean by human. Because I would argue that we've already left human experience and we're already well into something else. What would you call it that we're into? I equate it to, you might know this, that every locust starts off as a grasshopper. And what happens is there's this particular, the best example is in North Africa. It's this species of grasshopper that when the density, the population density gets tight, sufficiently tight,

there's a trigger point and different genes are triggered and activated in the body. They're pre-existing genes. So it's the same DNA, but it changes the shape of the head, changes the legs, changes the coloration and changes the behavior. And that's when they become locusts and swarm. And so I think that humans are like the grasshopper locusts. And I think that with agriculture, we became locusts and started swarming and we're well into swarm behavior at this point and so for the sake of argument I would say human the way I would define it is hunter

gatherer which is 95 plus percent of our time on the planet that's human behavior and what we are now is shifted into this other you could say artificial you could just say emergent uh behavior pattern that conflicts with our grasshopperness right and that we're suffering from that's what this latest book is about and so you know i would say we're no longer human it's like we're a bunch of poodles talking about when we stop being wolves, you know? I'll tell you this. If I was a fucking locust and there was a grasshopper that's like, you're not a grasshopper anymore, I'd be like, awesome! Because I can fly. I'm flying. I've evolved.

This is our major disagreement here is you want to be a grasshopper. I'm cool being a locust. But it's an interesting thing, right? Well, what I think he's saying is there's more inherent biological happiness into remaining a grasshopper or remaining a human. Right. That's why the things that resonate most deeply with us are the things that reflect that pre-agricultural life. You hunting, for example. You're not having trouble focusing your mind when you're hunting.

You don't think about anything Dude. You're not having trouble focusing your mind when you're hunting. It just comes to you. You don't think about anything else. Yeah. You're tapping in. Have you ever caught a nice fish? Yes. You've gone fishing before. Yes, I have.

You know that feeling when you catch a nice fish? There's like a feeling. Yeah. There's a primal reaction. I'm saying a nice fish because it's easier for people to accept because it's a cold-blooded animal. There's something about saying, there's something about when you get a nice deer in your sights and you're ready to end its life. People are like, no!

Right when I'm about to eat a bear, no! But you say a fish, they go, oh, you caught a fish? They eat other fish. Yeah. Whatever, it's just for whatever reason, people don't care if you catch a fish. They don't give a fuck. We differentiate.

We have more value in warm-blooded animals than we put in fish, for whatever fucking reason. Well, because fish can't scream. I mean, I think if— What is—Mitch Hedberg's got that great joke, like, Thank God the fish can't scream, because the ocean would be the scariest place, because you'd just be hearing screaming. Fish jacking each other.

That's true. That's right. But there is something about their expressionlessness that makes some people, I think. They don't take care of their young. That's a big one. Like this woman said that to me. One of the reasons why she eats fish, she doesn't eat chicken or any of their animals. I go, why?

She goes, well, fish don't take care of their young. I was like, damn, that's gangster. She drew the line in the sand. And they eat each other. They do. Well, they're cannibals. Yeah. Like almost exclusively.

I mean, almost universally. Like trout, one of the best ways to catch trout is with little baby trout lures. They look like a trout. Large mouth bass, little large mouth bass lures. Occasionally you catch them with those. They don't give a fuck. They're just here to eat. Whatever they can eat, they're done.

But it's innately, inherently meaningful is what I'm saying, right? And the reason it's inherently meaningful is because that's the animal that we evolved to be. Yeah. And now we live in this society that's distracting us from that, trying to sell it back in little pieces. Maybe you can afford a hunting weekend in Utah at this ranch. And what the hell was the point? Well, the point is we've lost something. Losing the changing humans.

Oh, humanity. When do we stop being human? Yeah, I think we already have. And I think that's the major fucking ailment of our time is that we're too far. It's a part of it. And I certainly think there's a series of reward systems in our bodies that are not getting checked off like they used to. Like rewards, like fear, overcoming fear, difficulty, physical exertion, all these different things that people did. And then the thing of seeing the fish, catching the fish.

There's this visceral genetic response to getting a fish. Like you got it. Now you're going to eat. And your friends are going to eat. Yes. When you pull a big fish out, you're like, ah. There's this weird feeling where everybody, you get a little charge. Like we had a successful gathering.

You got something. Right. And now we can eat. And that's built in. It's built into your system. And it doesn't exist when you go to the supermarket and you pick up that salmon steak that's already in saran wrap. And it's already got the little styrofoam bottom. You don't feel a damn thing.

You don't feel anything. But you get the same amount of nutrients. It's very strange what we've done We've done we've completely removed all the natural elements while needing those natural elements at the same time So we've removed any connection that we have to like we're eating this Chris has brought this amazing ham. What is this stuff called again? Hamon Habugo? It's delicious and explain it because it's a really cool way they make it. Right. It's made from pigs that are the same race of pigs that the Romans brought to Spain originally 2,000 years ago.

It's called pata negra, which means black foot. And this is – so in Spanish ham, there are different gradations, and this is the highest gradation. And all they do is eat acorns they live out in these big open fields beautiful i've driven through there in extra madura on my motorcycle and then they're cured it's not cooked at all it's not smoked it's cured with salt lots of salt and then hung up in certain temperature and how long is it good for how long does it sit for forever yeah and you can buy these, I mean, I would love to bring you one, but I don't think they let them in the country,

but you buy the whole leg. Whoa, like a whole ham that's cured. Yeah. And in most Spanish houses, they'll have a ham and it'll be there. And so they've got this holder and you have a long knife and you slice it really thin. So it just doesn't go bad at all? No, because it's cured. That's incredible that you could have a whole ham leg sitting out. All the way inside, yeah. That's crazy. So you put a towel over it or something so that flies don't get on it, and that's it, you know? Wow.

And it can be there. And it's a traditional thing around Christmas to, you know, give a gift of a ham. And it'll last, you know, five, six months or whatever until they're done eating it. That's crazy. Yeah. So my point being that this meat is in front of us. It's delicious. It's from an animal that wasn't even alive on this continent.

Someone killed it in Spain, did all this stuff to it. You brought it over here. We're eating it. We have zero connection to any of those activities. Yeah. We don't have, we're just eating it. It's delicious. We're loving it.

But it's all. But not as much as if we'd raised the pig and been involved in the process you know i cooked a ham i smoked a ham um i haven't done one for about six months but the last one i did was an animal that i shot and i smoked it in my you know i brined it for six days and then i smoked it was like this big project that i did and yeah it was a way different sort of a feeling when you're eating it. It's like I have a leg. I have a pig leg of a full ham on the bone. It's about that big.

It's sitting in my freezer that I'm eventually going to brine sometime soon. And I'll stick that sucker in this. It's like water with garlic and salt and brown sugar. And it sits in there for about six days. And then I smoke it at like 250 degrees for hours and hours until it's just this juicy, delicious, 140 degrees in the center so you know all the parasites, potential parasites are dead. God, so good.

I got a big green egg, and I got to say, man, there's nothing. There's some weird piece that comes over you. What's a green egg? It's a really cool grill, man, and it's a fire grill. So you've got to, you know, it's not a gas grill. So you have to adjust the, there's like all these wonderful dials you have to adjust to get the heat right. But, yeah, man, like when you're sitting over an open fire cooking, it feels good. I mean, I know what you mean, and it's like, it's like this thing,

like, oh shit, I miss this feeling. Like this feels, this feels as good as when I like jump into a swimming pool or something. It's like elemental. Or like a nutrient your body needs that you're not getting and then you eat it and your body's going, please, thank you. Give me more. Well, there's also this like, there's moments that people throughout history have had success hunting and then eaten that meal over a campfire. And when you do that, that is the most rewarding of all fires. Like, I've eaten meat that we shot, like, hours before from a deer on a campfire in the middle of Montana, and it was one of the greatest nights of my life. I mean, it was amazing. Me and Brian Callahan and Steve Rinella and my friend Ryan Callahan, a bunch of other friends, were on this show.

And when we were sitting around this fire, we're eating, I was like, I can't remember a more enjoyable meal. Because there's fire and there's an animal that was just killed. And we're cooking it and preparing it together. There's all this camaraderie. There's this successful hunt aspect of it. And then there's this primal satisfaction that you get from watching meat cook over fire. And feeling the warmth of the, I don't know how cold it was, but there's a sense of

accomplishment. Like we're comfortable because we're smart. You know, there's some, I love sleeping in a tent when it's raining and you're like, wow, like arm's length for me is miserable, cold drizzle. And I am warm. I got my candle lantern. I got my doobies i'm like completely happy here i love the sense of accomplishment that's another great feeling the feeling of rain when you're safe inside you're sleeping in a van even you know just the

sound so i think i think this is the key to human happiness that that we're ignoring that our society takes all these things that were free and daily reality for our ancestors takes them away and sells back cheap copies along with antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds right i think that that's a summation of where we are do you think that it's possible that we like you said are no longer human and we're becoming this other thing this is a drawn-out process and we're just caught up in the wake of it yeah we're domestic we're in the process of being domesticated yeah yeah yeah i mean that's why i think when you look at like the extreme progressive left movement that are just like so so focused on like using the correct gender pronouns do not offend don't use this like we were talking about with this

Harvard placemat that they're handing back this is like an uber domestic domestication thing I mean it's almost like domestication well you look at the American male I mean talk about getting your balls snipped, man. In the last 15 years, it's become offensive to even be a man. It's become offensive to express a happiness with masculinity. Right. Like to be a bro. To be a straight man.

You can't be a bro. There's even a term for it. I think if you look at what the real problem is, it seems to be that people have mistaken language with intention. Yeah. And so that so that's where the problem is. It's that it's the words, you know, certain words. I mean, I've been I've had it happen on Twitter where you get I think I did a podcast with Aubrey and he said the female perspective. a podcast with Aubrey and he said the female perspective and so someone on Twitter gets

into an argument with me over how that you shouldn't say female perspective because that's, and I was saying, well look, I know about the female perspective because I see from it a lot because inside of me I've got like a lot of, I have a feminine side of me so I know what that

is. It's the, you know, Carl Jung was talking about the anima and the animus the that there's a masculine and a feminine inside of everybody that they're just in you not me bro i know you're free of it you're free of it but but speak for yourself bro but it's that it's that uh when when people get caught up in the symbol versus what the symbol is representing and and completely ignore the fact like think of how many different forms of fuck there are like the term fuck or how many different forms of the word shit there are and all of them are

intention-based you know like that you could say if I say there's so many ways I could say fuck you to you like I'm going fuck you man or I could be like hey fuck you man yeah and it's two different fuck yous. Or you could do something awesome and I'd go, dude, fuck you. Yeah, exactly. Like that works too, right? Exactly. Or like, man, I'm going to fuck you, Joe. But the point is there's like every single one of these has behind it an energy that has been encapsulated into the sound.

And that energy is all that matters to me. And the fact that everyone has been caught up in the sound itself and forgotten the fact that the energy behind it is all that matters, that's where things are getting fucked up. Exactly what we were talking about earlier when we were talking about religion. Right, exactly. And drugs, right? We're talking about why people are addicted to drugs.

We're not talking about the emptiness of their lives that leads them into those heroin and prescription drugs and all that. Also terrorism. We're talking about bombs going off and people getting killed. We're not talking about why someone's life is so empty that you put on a suicide vest in the first place. We're looking at the surface of things, and we're not interested in what's going on behind. I was watching Fox News the other day, and there was some woman who was on, and she was doing one of those open letter to the president things. And she was doing it all Fox News-y, and she was saying, this country was founded on Judeo-Christian values. And she was going to this thing about responding, and Obama's response to the terror attacks in Paris.

Not sufficiently burrowish. Exactly. Not sufficiently aggressive or didn't make her feel comfortable that he's on top of it. Your job is to keep me safe. But it's just really an opportunity for her to step up and proclaim her ideology to be the greatest ideology and this other ideology that's killing people right these representatives of this ideology that there's the enemy of this united states of america which was founded by my cult right that's it man that's interesting yeah because you you realize that like that what's that there is a kind of war that's raging around this planet. But it's like a war against people who are, for whatever reason, intent on expressing anger into the world, intent on expressing power over other people into the world.

And people who are thinking, I think there might be another way. Maybe there was a way that we could readapt or maybe evolve to fit into the society. Or maybe there's a whole new way where we don't have to try to constantly punch back at a person who has punched us. That's the war. It's just a war between when you get fucking hit on the interstate, when your nice car gets hit because some asshole isn't paying attention, do you get out and scream at him or do you ask him if he's okay? And there's a whole group of people who think, no, you fucked that motherfucker up. You teach him a lesson.

Let him understand that if he's not paying a fucking attention, he's going to get fucked up. You become the hand of God in the world, bringing vengeance as much as you can. Or the other version of it is you try to overcome that desire and you become a servant of some concept, which is the most important thing. Even if we've lost everything, man, even if we become locusts and it's all gone. And the more you talk about it, man, the more I do know what you mean. Earlier, I was like, ah, I'm a locust, but I do hear what you're saying. I think it's very sweet and actually kind of tragic and sad.

But if this is the case, then we still have to figure out a way to, like, even now, as much as possible, put out into the world love. And it doesn't matter what language we're using. If love is behind it, I think that's the highest thing, by the way. I think that's all that matters is, like, that meal was good because you were with people you loved. If you were sitting after that hunt with a bunch of people that you disliked or assholes, I bet it wouldn't have been as delicious of a meal. Yeah, but here's the problem with that

thought. It wouldn't have been as good. We had several meals behind the campfire where we didn't kill anything. It wasn't as good. And also, you're in a love supporting environment there. You're working together. You're in nature. You're around a fire. And you're in a love you're in a love supporting environment that you're working together You're in nature. Yeah, you're around a fire and you're successful at something It's difficult all those things even if they were assholes

You'd probably find more common ground with them there than you would sitting around a conference table. Yeah. Yeah, well definitely There's also a separation from society, complete total separation. When you're up there, there's no cell phone signal. You don't hear anything. It's complete silence. It's a very strange feeling of almost a lonely detachment because you realize you are not just off the grid. The grid is nowhere to be seen. And you need each other.

Yeah, you need each other. Yeah. You got a raft. See, I think that's where we come from. We come from this place where we need each other and where where the first thing you think you know like hunter gatherers they uh they share arrows and so like i'm yeah they typically share arrows so i make arrows a certain way you make them another way whatever but then we all give them to each other they're constantly flowing so you might be on a hunt where you shot the elk you that arrow that you shot is in the elk but i made it and it's a way of obscuring who gets credit for the kill oh that's cool and and

you find this universally among foragers whether it's in the inuit or in papua new guinea they do these they have these mechanisms to make sure that the sharing happens, not only of the meat, but of the reputational aspect. That's interesting. Everybody's cool. There are all these mechanisms built in to keep anybody from getting too big for their britches. Until the cannibals move in. And then they start killing people and eating them because there's no protein, because their arrows sucked and they couldn't get any elk.

Yeah, it's a problem. The cannibals will move in. Those motherfuckers. You got to be ready. I love that idea. Here's the good news about the locusts. They do switch back to grasshoppers. Oh, you can be a grasshopper again.

The swarm stops. Yeah, eventually. And then you can't fly anymore, you fuck. And locusts are cannibalistic and grasshoppers aren't. Wow. To tie it into the whole cannibalism thing. They eat each other? Yeah.

That's why they swarm, because if you slow down, the one behind you will eat They eat each other? Yeah. That's why they swarm, because if you slow down, the one behind you will eat you. Oh, my God. That's what we are. It's like working at Amazon. Well, that's what it's like working in New York City. Working at Amazon is supposed to be crazy, right? Yeah, and those warehouses.

They all run around. Especially this time of year. They have a timer. I think it was a Radiolab podcast. It was one of the podcasts that I listened to that talked to an ex-employee at Amazon about what kind of stress it is to work. Say if you order something, say if you order an LED flashlight, and it shows up on their, they have a little pad, like a tablet device, and it has a timer. And it's like you have to go find this, and have to grab it and you have like 30 seconds so you're like literally running looking for this flashlight and you have to get it

to the the sorting and put it in the box and get the label crazy they have this one terrible game show exactly what there was a show like that when i was a kid we had to run the money maze or something like that i remember that you had to fill your card up with the most expensive things or something. Well, no, this is a different one. This is where you got, like, couples. And you got the wives up on a platform and the two husbands down. And there's a maze, like, where the wall is seven feet high. And the women can see where the money is.

And they're yelling to their husbands like rats. Like, no, go left. No, no. I said left. And the husbands are scurrying around in the maze and whoever gets to the money pot first wins it's a good divorce generating game show like so many of them what do you think man you think it's hopeless this you like when you talk about it and you talk about it and then i think about it it's like so it fills you this is a kind of like weird nostalgia like you think my god this there's a type of life that is clearly still

accessible to people but maybe not accessible to everyone as a whole do you have any idea of like how you would reorganize or restructure I mean what I say in the book is is like, well, there's no way we're going back. That's over. Right. Because there's seven billion. They're going to be 10 billion in 100 years. There's no way there's not enough land or animals or whatever. So we're going to live in an artificial environment. But, you know, you're going to live in a zoo. Do you want to live in the Calcutta Zoo or the San Diego Zoo? Right? I mean, come on. The San Diego Zoo, it's built with an understanding of the natural environment of the animals that are enclosed there. So I want to live in a natural environment that's got my interests in mind. And in order to do that, you have to understand what kind of animal Homo sapiens is,

which means you have to cut through a lot of the bullshit propaganda that you've been hearing your whole life, this Hobbesian bullshit about how prehistoric people all died in their 30s and it was a struggle for survival and predators lurked in every shadow and it was this terrible, you know, dangerous world. You actually look at the anthropological data, hunter-gatherers are chilled out, happy, relaxed people who are not dealing with the sorts of chronic stress we are. And you hear all these bullshit arguments that wouldn't last a second if they weren't propping up the civilizational edifice, like that everyone died in their 30s in Hunter Gathers. That's absolutely untrue. But I just heard the dean of the Medical School of Columbia University say it in an NPR interview. It's

everywhere. Not the worst thing to happen to you, die young. Well, there's certainly some benefits to modern medicine, 100%. Yeah, for sure. But there's also some negative consequences of our overly complicated society. There's no doubt about it. I mean, the levels of depression that people experience and the levels of discontent with their existence.

You know, we were talking yesterday about people wanting to take a chance to go do something. They want to like do something outside of what they're doing for a job. Like maybe they have, maybe they like making pottery or whatever it is, but they just don't have the time. Maybe they want to be a tattooist. They just don't have the time to dedicate, to jump into it. And then along the way, you get saddled up with debt and maybe a family that you have an obligation to feed and then you're stuck in your trap. That trap, that feeling of discontent with one's own daily existence, your day by day life is more commonplace than not. It's way more common.

And it's essential, as we were saying, to keep you running on the wheel. You got to believe the Rolex is going to make you happy. The car's going to, then the next thing is going to do it. And that's a pernicious lie that we've heard so many times. We come to believe it's an aspect of reality itself. And it isn't. Right. And that's, you know, if you look at the hunter-gatherer data, what you see is these people who, I mean, you were talking about it earlier, how we need something to, like, a challenge to take us to the next level.

For them, the challenge is like, oh, we're going to go hunting, you know, and it'll feel great and we'll eat. And if we don't eat, then we'll eat tomorrow. Well, that's why those subsistence shows, have you ever watched those A&E shows and Discovery Channel shows? Those shows are extremely popular today. Right. Because people are sort of recognizing that, like, wow, these people seem happy, and all they have is, like, five dogs. They live in Alaska, and they just take their sled out, and they chop down a fucking tree to build a house with. Like, these people are, like, living on the—they're scooping salmon out of the river.

It's the immediacy. Yeah. That's the thing, the immediacy. Just to play devil's advocate here, isn't this a different version of what you're talking about the modern human thinks if i have this thing a car or whatever the thing is a nicer job a better whatever i'll be happy uh what you're saying is if i have an immediacy if i'm more connected to nature if i move to alaska if i become a hunter i'll be happy but both of these things have within them the idea that I need some other thing to be happy. Whereas what I keep hearing and what I subscribe to is that to be happy, you have to be in the present moment, wherever you are, whatever marriage you don't like, with a bunch of kids that you don't like, instead of fleeing from that by planning some fantasy of becoming a tattooist or a potter,

the real way out is to allow yourself to be fully in the experience of what's happening right now. And that, that thing itself, just doing that, and maybe that is what happens when you're in nature, is you're more in the present moment. Yeah, and maybe that is what happens when you're in nature, is you're more in the present moment. Yeah, but that makes way more sense when you're in nature. Because if you're working in an insurance company and you're just going over clients' claims day in and day out, it's super hard to be in a joyful moment. It's super hard to be there when you really want to get out of there and make music. You have songs and ideas in your head, you want to put them to wax, but your fucking kids need formula. Well, it's not joy.

The thing is, it's like the idea is, sure, for sure. But this is where you're at right now. That's it. That's where you are. You're not at a situation where you're going to start a band, and you're not in a situation where you're going to become a potter right now. Could be in the future. But the trick is that even though you're not in the fucking anorondacks hunting and you're not fishing, even though you're wherever you're at right now, get into that place.

Let yourself feel. And it's not about happiness. It's certainly not about joy or bliss or anything like that. You're not feeling joy and bliss. You're feeling a kind of claustrophobic horror at the concept that what the situation you're in right now is going to continue forever. And so your mind is fabricated an escape route, which is this thing or that thing, whatever it may be. But the true situation is that until you train yourself to be in the present moment, it doesn't matter where you are. You're dead. You're not alive. It doesn't matter. You have to train yourself to get in the present moment, it doesn't matter where you are. You're dead.

You're not alive. It doesn't matter. You have to train yourself to get in the moment. Then once you're in the moment, then start making the moves. Okay, now you say in the moment. Like how do you address that? Like when you're thinking about you being in the moment, like your own personal experience,

what do you do to try to achieve that sort of centered feeling? Well, it's the practice of mindfulness so it's the idea of you know what it's i will notice from time to time when i'm lucky that i've been carried away by my thoughts like that fucking thing you were saying about laying in bed you can generate more stress chemicals. I'll recognize like, holy shit, I've been in a vortex of thinking for the last two days. I've been caught in this like endless recurring series of worries or scenarios or whatever it may be, or things I need to do or things I just did. And suddenly I realized I haven't been here at all, at all.

I've just been caught up in what's called in your head. You're caught up in the thought pattern. And so the practice is, and this is something like, you know, Jack Kornfield talks about how the guy who taught him meditation, Ajun Cha, was saying to him that one of his students was saying, I'm too busy to meditate. I'm too busy to meditate. I don't have time to do that. And his response was, are you too busy to breathe? Are you too busy to breathe?

You can breathe, right? That's all you need to do. All you need is your breath. And no matter where you are, what you're doing, where you're at, you can begin to put your attention away from the incredible array of worries that you have, incredible array of fantasies that you have, incredible array of, if this had happened, I'd be happier, or if I could do this, I'll be a better person, and just bring it to your breath, in and out, in through the nose, out through the nose, and then it's not going to stop these fucking thoughts, but instead of you being controlled by them and caught up in them, I mean, talk about

looking at your fucking cell phone. Get rid of cell phones. People are still looking at cell phones. It's just their various worries and things that they're constantly ruminating over. It's another form of the cell phone. You're fixating on these endless recurring worries. So you bring it to the breath. The worries emerge. The happiness, to the breath, the worries emerge,

the happiness, whatever it is, is there, but it's not you. You're not identifying with it anymore. You're not identifying with the specific emotional state, the specific intellectual state, the specific thing anymore. You're just observing and watching. And that thing, that consciousness, the more you become that, the more you will find yourself experiencing what you were talking about. These rare moments of peace, these moments of like, whoa, holy shit, regardless of what's happening around me, I'm still centered, untouched, unfreaked out, unanxious. I'm just watching. So that's the concept. And it's a very hopeful concept because some people do not have access to the kind of zoo you're talking about. Prisoners, for example, people who are incarcerated right now, they don't get to get

out of that system. So they have to find a way in the midst of all of that negative phenomena to allow themselves to experience the same kind of peace or tranquility that you are experiencing with your friends in front of that campfire. And that is why the concept of cultivation is so important in Buddhism, which is the idea that these experiences, which in various, many different world religions say at their root what is so wonderful about them is love. That feeling of love, which is also compared to the feeling of coming home, being at home, finding your home, coming back home. It's all the same because the feeling of what is the feeling of being at home? It's a feeling of being at what did you call it?

A situation of acceptance and love. It's that feeling of being at, what did you call it, a situation of acceptance and love? It's that feeling of being truly safe. Not safe because of the government, but safe because you're surrounded by people who love you, and you're loving them, and you know that you could be taken care of. The concept is that feeling can be cultivated, and that cultivation starts with some form of the practice of mindfulness, or whatever you want to call it. I think what you're saying actually isn't in conflict at all with the other point, you know, because the mindfulness being here in the moment, I think if you're like, if you've got a shitty job in a cubicle and you're trying to distract yourself from it, you're listening to podcasts

all day while you shuffle paperwork or whatever, right? And you're not really being in the moment. It is advantageous to be in the moment if it allows you to see that the moment is fucking killing you. Yes, exactly. And then you make a realistic, you're not going to be a hunter-gatherer, but you make a realistic plan to change your life. Yeah, that's it, man. It can be abused right i mean if you're in prison that's a different deal you're going to be there for 10 years you're not

going to like don't try to escape is my advice but if you're but if it's just a dead-end job i mean i got this great email a couple days ago from someone who i had these guys on who uh live in camper vans several like one guy uh one, funny guy, he worked in a tiger sanctuary in Thailand teaching baby tigers not to eat people, essentially. He was like the guinea pig who would go in and play with the baby tigers to teach them, like, don't eat people, people are cool. Anyway, he flew to Chile, bought a VW camper van, and drove from Chile to Alaska in this camper van.

Whoa. And just picked up people along the way and, you know, had all these adventures. Four years, I think he said. Wow. Four years of driving? Yeah, yeah. I mean, off and on, you know. It would break down.

I think he swapped out the engine five times or something, because VW vans are not known for reliability. Anyway, so somebody who listened to this series of podcasts I did with people who live in their vans, some guy's like, yeah, I quit my job. My wife and I bought a van. We've been in it six months, and it's fucking awesome. It's like he completely changed his life, and he's thrilled. I love to hear shit like that.

If you live in a shitty situation like that long enough with a job you hate and bills that don't make any sense and for stuff that you don't even want or enjoy anymore, then that idea of getting in that camper and just driving across the country seems amazing. It seems like freedom. And it's doable. It's doable if you're willing to give up a lot of the bullshit, you know. That's right. Yeah, that's the thing, man.

My friend Steve Maxwell, he doesn't even have a camper. He just lives in hotels. He has a bag for all of his belongings. He's a personal trainer. He's like world renowned. He puts on these camps and seminars and stuff like that. And him and his girlfriend, they travel all over the world, constant travel. That's all they do. They stay from hotel to hotel and he trains people everywhere. And he used to have a big gym and he used to have a house. And then he went from the big gym and house, he got divorced. He got like a camper van, like you sleep in it.

Got sick of that, sold that fucking thing. Said, you know what? I'm just going to get everything down to a 10-gallon bag. He's got a 10-gallon bag with all his worldly possessions and that's it. Yeah. Digital nomads. You know about them? It's a growing, thriving world of young people who have jobs where they do stuff on the Internet, right?

They're either coding or editing or whatever, something you can do through the computer. So if you're making money through the computer, why are you living in L.A. where you're paying two grand, three grand? So they move to places like Bangkok, Ecuador. There's like hot spots around the world where there are thousands of these people living out of backpacks. They live in guest houses and they work in cafes or wherever they get Wi-Fi. And that's what they're doing. And it's a funny thing because they're ahead of the laws, right? So tax laws don't know what to do with these people because you're not stable anywhere.

And the laws are all set up where you pay tax where you are. Well, I'm three months in Bangkok. Then I'm off to Chile. Then I'm off here. Like, well, who do I pay tax to? Well, then we'll take it to the next level. What if you switch everything to digital currency? Right.

You're finding more and more people are accepting Bitcoin and other forms of digital currency. So they start using that to pay for their rent, pay for their food, pay for their drinks, pay for their travel. There's no record of anything. Now, what the fuck? And then they live in Thailand sometimes. Sometimes they don't. Yeah, isn't that wild, man? And so it should be.

The idea of you being constrained to a patch of dirt and you have to have a piece of paper to show the other people in the other patch of dirt so I can cross over. Can I enter into your kingdom? Depends. Did you at one point in time drive your carriage under the influence of wine?

Not me, sir, but I was in the car with- Close enough! Denied entry into my kingdom of Canada. If you're in a car with someone and they're drunk and you're sober and you get pulled over, you're going to get a DUI. What? Yes. If that person's drunk and you're an adult and you're sober and that person's drunk driving you can get a DUI too What no shit?

You can get in trouble for allowing someone to drive a car I don't know what exact for pull find out what exactly the law is and how the fuck would you know really similar? It's extremely similar if you are I believe in might be a state-to-state basis or I might just made it up But I'm pretty sure it's true. If you are drunk and you are up. I hope he made it up. I really hope he made it up. If you are drunk and you have a passenger in your car, that passenger, I think, can get arrested as well. Wow.

Even if they don't have a driver's license? If they're an adult, I think they can get arrested as well. If they don't have a driver's license at all, that's a good point. That's interesting. Because then it's like, well, officer, I took the wheel, but you're driving without a license. Like, well... But, you know, my point being, they won't let you in Canada if you have a DUI.

They'll go, fuck off. Get out of here. They turn you around. They want no douchebags. They won't let you in Canada if you have a violent assault on your arrest record. I almost got kicked out of... I almost got not let into Canada. For what? For having stolen a Snickers bar in Alaska in 1982. Oh, my God.

Yeah. I went to prison. I think I told that story. Yeah, you did. Yeah. That's hilarious. But I was told, like, when I did four days, you know, and then I went before the magistrate, and he said, if you don't get arrested again in a year, this will go off your record and all that.

So ever since, when i've been asked if i've ever been convicted of a crime i always said no because i figured it's not on my record i don't want to confuse everybody and you know whatever and but the first time we went into canada uh at bc you know he asked all these questions and we went and sat down and he called me up you know like no just you not not my wife and And he's like, is there anything you want to tell me about 1982? And I said, 1982? I don't know. I was in college.

I don't know. He said, arrest and conviction, Fairbanks, Alaska. I'm like, are you kidding me? And I told him I ate a Snickers bar in a fucking grocery store, and it turned into this thing. But they told me it wasn't on my record. And he said, well, Canada gets your FBI records so so if you're ever so like there's a federal level where that shit doesn't go away you know it's even more deep because Eddie Bravo got arrested and never even went to jail and it shows

up every time he goes into Canada he got arrested because he worked for a check cashing company and so he used to drive around with large sums of cash on I mean he got pulled over by the cops cops pulled him over and he said officer I want to let you know that I have a loaded handgun in the car Here's my license to have it they go please step out of the car They handcuff them they check everything make sure it's all kosher everything checks out. They let him go but that Incident is on his record. So when he goes into Canada, they pull him aside every time. I got stuck with him once.

Now I fucking, if we go to Canada together, I let that dude get ahead of me. Like, dude, I'll fucking meet you outside. Because he gets dragged into that room. Then they start asking you questions too. And I'm like, dude. At least they're Canadian. Yeah. They're coming the other way.

Here's where it gets stupid. Here it is. If you can't offer a convincing defense as to why you weren't driving, you may also be arrested and charged with reckless endangerment. Wow. Your arresting officer will argue that you put yourself, the driver, and members of the public in danger by allowing your friend to drive drunk. Their case may be bolstered by the presence of other passengers in the vehicle.

Wow. Yep. You'll need to in the vehicle. Wow. Yep. You'll need to prove the paragraph before that said you need to prove that you're not currently licensed to drive, don't know how to drive, or have a medical restriction that prevents you from driving. Crazy. Yeah, see? So I'm kind of right.

So you're better off being shit-faced. So if you're shit-faced and your friend's driving, then you're okay. Yeah. If you're shit-faced and your friend's driving, like, I wouldn't fucking drive. I'm drunk, man. I'm so drunk, I didn't even know he was drunk. So if you get pulled over and you're not drunk, hit that bottle before the cop comes up to the car. I guess so.

Just splash whiskey all over your face and fall asleep. That's hilarious. If you're hammered, you're okay. He should play sleepy. Or just say, I took acid more than five times. I'm legally insane. I couldn't drive. Dude, the real scary thing about what you're talking about, as far as getting into other countries,

because it's shit on your record, this is something that when I interviewed Aaron Frank at Singularity University, they try to think about what are the implications of these technologies. So, you know, the recent terrorist attack where they shot up the people, that couple shot up the people. And apparently, even though I think this got disproven.

San Bernardino. San Bernardino. They were talking about how one of them was a professed jihadist on their Facebook page. Right. And they're saying, well, we don't check social, whatever they've posted on Facebook. We don't do that. And, you know, a lot of news stations are saying,

a lot of people are saying, what the fuck? That's crazy. You should check that. You should definitely check that. So at Singularity University, they were saying, what happens if the society changes so much

that shit that you've posted online and admitted to doing becomes illegal. What happens then when all of that stuff is infinitely accessible by all future governments? What happens when if like, who knows? You know, this is the scary thing to me. Well, that happened, right? With McCarthy and the right communist shift. And that's the terrifying thing. And I don't want to put negative energy out there. I think we're all beings of love and ultimately everything's going to be okay. conflict, and you look at the fact that there is a benefit to some awful thing happening in the United States on a big scale. There's a monetary benefit to a great many people

living in the United States, weapons manufacturers, legislators, people who just get off on controlling other people. And you realize that it not only benefits them, but there also is a huge incentive for people in other parts of the world to create that event, knowing that all it takes is one catastrophic event. One catastrophic event. We're like, what, one dirty bomb away, one new September 11th away from experiencing one of the greatest diminutions of personal liberty that has ever happened in this country and the people who would there's a lot of people who would like that to happen and they're not just terrorists there's people who would like that to happen who run prisons there are people who would like that to happen who like who want world war that to happen who want World War III to happen because they sell weapons. And that, to me, is fucking scary to think.

And if something like that did happen, and we enter into some new Orwellian awfulness, then all your shit that you've posted, every single one of your podcasts show you're going first, man. I'm moving to Canada. What? I'm moving to Canada. Oh? I'm moving to Canada. Oh, it doesn't matter. You can't get into Canada. You can't get into fucking Canada with the stuff you posted on your Facebook page.

They won't let me in? Well, no. I mean, we're talking about coming by a boat. Or they won't let you out. What's that? I think you got to get out now. That's why I'm going next week. Maybe Australia.

Safe. Nowhere is safe. Australia seems like a good move. Australia is awesome. Melbourne. Yeah, Australia is nice. Melbourne is amazing. Although Sydney is pretty nice, too. No, Melbourne's

got some seriously strict drug laws, man. I was at the... New South Wales. I was in Australia at the... No, actually, I was in New Zealand, not Australia. Sorry. I think Australia has strict drug laws, too. They do. New South Wales does. They'll bring

sniffer dogs around, you know, out in public just to try to find weed on people. Well, you're fucked then. You can't even wash the weed out of your hair. Out of your beard. That's not enough. Dogs are going to smell it. They're like, they're baying a cat.

Cat's up a tree. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, again, I think we're there. I mean, you keep phrasing things in terms of like, what if we're on the verge of and I keep thinking, dude, we've been there for a long time. I mean, Eisenhower's, you know, his parting speech, the military industrial complex is, you know, he was warning that we Angeles is a result of World War II, right? Raytheon and Boeing, they're all on the West Coast because they were pumping out those airplanes and ships to go beat the Japs, and then they're looking for something to do.

Well, they've got to keep us on a war footing forever. I just consulted my Harvard placemat, and you shouldn't say Japs. Oh, did I say Japs? I thought I said nips. I'm sorry. Jesus fucking Christ. Oh, oh my god that's even worse you're cultural appropriation you're culturally appropriating their word you just don't know nippon that always gets me that we make up names for countries we don't like the name they use what do you guys call yourself nippon yeah we don't like it we're gonna change it Japan Japan please we just decide

you know there's a bunch of them like that right there's quite a few countries like isn't Greece the Greeks don't they don't call themselves Greece right

what do they call themselves it's Greek to me I don't know Turkey do they call themselves Turkey I don't know there's a few countries

like that I don't remember where they are and does the word they use mean Turkey I don't know you? I don't know. There's a few countries like that. I don't remember what they are. And does the word they use mean turkey? I don't know. You know? I don't think so. I don't know.

Yeah. It's weird that it's the same as that bird. If it wasn't for Thanksgiving, would anybody give a fuck about turkey? No, I don't think so. Besides people who hunt turkey? No. Nobody likes to eat turkey. I mean, it's good, but it's not the best.

It's not that great. Chicken is better than turkey. I mean, it's good, but it's not the best. It's not that great. A chicken is better than turkey. Can we agree? Yeah, there's no Kentucky Fried Turkey. Yeah, there's no turkey stores. There's chicken stores everywhere. There's Popeye's Chicken.

There's Kentucky Fried Chicken. There's probably Church's Chicken. Turkey King. Chick-fil-A. You know Edward Bernays? There's no Chick-fil-A. You know Bacon for Breakfast is completely an invention of this advertising guy? Really? Yeah, he was hired by the company.

I forget the name of the company, but they're still around in some form, that hired him to sell more pork. And so he came up with this idea, like bacon and eggs, what's for breakfast? You've got to integrate it into the cultural tradition. Breakfast meat. And ever since then, it's been considered breakfast meat, and boom. Meanwhile, it's awesome. So congratulations, sir.

He was also behind the fluoridation of the water supply. Wow. Hired by Alcoa because they had all this byproduct of making aluminum, which is this fluoride. And they wanted to, like, what are we going to do with all this stuff? You know, we've got to find a way to sell it. Who can we sell it to? And he figured out, like, oh, we can, you know, it's good for dental. It'll save everyone and get the government to buy it.

That's so funny we accept that, man. Because, like, if someone comes over to your house and you're like, do you want some water? And they're like, yeah. And you're like, do you want me to add some fluoride to it? You're going to be like, fuck you. But, yeah, it is a chemical that kills you, so yeah. Yeah, go ahead and put it. Could you put a little fluoride in here?

Fluoride can kill you. Yeah, for sure. It doesn't take a whole lot. Yeah. Like how much kills you? Like a couple teaspoons full? I don't know. I have no idea.

But you die with white teeth. But is that real? What's going on with dental hygiene versus, I mean, is it fluoride in the water that makes a difference or being conscious of dental hygiene that's made the difference in tooth decay in people? Well, I mean, talking to me, I'm always going to take it back to foragers. Foragers have amazing teeth. They're all ground down for meat and roots and shit, though. Well, some, if there's sand in the diet.

Weston Smith. What is this? What are you putting this on? Oh, this is Bernays. Sand in the diet. Weston Smith. What is this? What are you putting this on? Oh, this is Bernays. Yeah. It said that he did the bacon for breakfast, and he is also responsible for fluoride in the water. And Dixie Cups.

That's what he just said, right? Yeah. It was for Dixie Cups. Wow. See, Jamie is just like showing that I'm not full of shit. I love it, Jamie. Scared people into thinking that they were drinking out of unsanitary. What?

What? Look at this. that they were drinking out of unsanitary... What? What? Look at this. His campaign for Dixie Cups scared people into thinking the glasses they were drinking out of were unsanitary and could be replaced by disposable cups. Wow.

Did you read this before you put it up? That's insane. Oh, yeah. And it was the Beech Nut Packing Company that hired him for the pork. Oh, my God. What a cunt this guy was. He's amazing. But the bacon, he got right.

Oh, he got everything right, man. He's dead on with the bacon. Bacon's amazing. But the bacon, he got right. Oh, he got everything right, man. He's dead on with the bacon. Bacon's awesome. He also was behind the Virginia Slims thing. Like, how can we use feminism to get women to buy cigarettes? It's a feminist cigarette. You've come a long way, baby. I bet that guy got laid like crazy.

I bet he was just a fucking maestro. And he was Freud's nephew. Oh, my goodness. So he had the benefit of psychological examination under his uncle. And he's proud of himself. He doesn't seem slightly ashamed of it. He just died like 10 years ago. No, but there's interviews with him where he's like, yeah, he did all this shit.

He's really happy. His success ratio was amazing, right? He hit everyone out of the park over and over. If that's what you're trying to do and no one tells you it's evil, you know what's really fucked up is those goddamn drug commercials. Those drug commercials where people are happy and they're walking hand in hand in meadows and then they start talking about explosive bloody diarrhea. But they always do it in that voice that I think we're being trained to ignore.

There's that voice at the end of the thing. Side effects may include whatever. Just ignore what I'm saying and watch the pretty picture. Watch the pretty picture. Ask your doctor about this bullshit. They should have to show you

those side effects while they're doing it. Oh, this is hilarious. I don't know if you've seen this. I tweeted this the other day. Australia came up with this thing called the stoner sloth

and it's so stupid that people, it's backfiring and causing people to smoke pot. Also also stoner sloth if you go to stoner sloth.com it's an actual weed website so what's what's funny about it is is uh that it actually brought all this business to uh because if you go to stoner sloth.com.au i don't know the exact. Yeah, there it is.

Stoner's Sloth. Yeah. If you go to stonersloth. Whatever their website is,.au. Yeah, there you go. And they only sell Indica. Yeah, there it is. You're worse on weed, stoner's sloth.

So that's AU. Now take the AU off. I haven't tried it. I might embarrass myself here. But an article I read, they said it goes to a weed website. I guess not. Maybe somebody bought it. Yeah.

Who knows? The government shut it down. The government's stoner sloth social network? They have a stoner sloth social network? What, do they think it's going to turn to the next Facebook? Oh, that's social. I don't know. They think it's going to turn to the next Facebook? But yeah, this is like a big embarrassment.

Let's play it because it's fucking so stupid. It's so stupid. It's awesome. I haven't seen it. It's so dumb. But it's like that fucking thing. Here's the thing about the talking dog commercial that we all enjoyed back in the day. Yeah.

Those were made by a partnership for a drug-free America. And the fucked up part about a partnership for a drug- free America is they are funded by alcohol and tobacco companies and Pharmaceutical companies and my joke was that's like hookers doing commercials against strippers, right? And it really is like them doing commercials pot. It's insane like they're not against drugs Just to just our drugs that they don't sell yeah Yeah. Here. Delilah.

Hands down, Delilah. It's a sloth that's in class. You're worse on weed, stoner sloth. But little did the creators know. Oh, I see. That stonersloth.com. There it is. Wow, somebody put it down.

It's also the name of an online cannabis product retailer. It's not up anymore, though. That's what's weird. I wonder if their website got crushed. Yeah, maybe. Stoner Sloth. Yeah. Well, this is something that Australia's doing because they're kind of behind the times

when it comes to marijuana propaganda. They're still buying into some shit that we thought of 15, 20 years ago. New South Wales government ads. This is so stupid. Australia would be perfect if it had weed. But that's the thing about the world. There's no perfect place. You go to the most amazing jungle island habitat and, you know, well, you're going to hang out with these fucking people.

Right. You know? Australia, though, other than that, other than their stance on weed, Melbourne's one of my favorite places I've ever been. Yeah. Remind me a lot of San Francisco. Yeah.

The sort of cafe vibe and progressive, interesting people. Very smart people. You guys should do the, I went down there to do this thing called the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. You guys would both fit right into the vibe. It's really cool. It's like Ted. I think we might have talked about it.

It's like Ted, but without the sort of brand protection paranoia. Yeah. That's a great way to put it, too. Brand protection. They're just like, you know, just say something crazy and provocative and we just want people to walk out of here talking about whatever you say and that's great bring that shit to la and we're in because we're not getting on a fucking plane flying across the ocean to sound provocative in your country where they do it for weed still but they do it in the sydney opera house that's

pretty cool okay yeah I played there. That's an awesome spot. Sydney's awesome, too. I like Sydney as well. I like both. I like Sydney. I like... Melbourne was interesting

because the food was fucking sensational. Oh, yeah. A lot of the Asian market food. It's great. Yeah. Yeah.

Did you go up to the Barrier Reef and do all that business? I didn't either. I was only up there for a few days for the fights. I had a couple shows. Oh, you were there just recently for the Rousey thing. It's amazing how wrecked your brain gets when you come back.

Just wrecked. For days. I would work out, and I'd just be like, where I'd normally be able to do like 10 reps or something, I'd get to like six, and I'd be like, fuck, I got three more seven fuck two more i just couldn't do it i almost couldn't do the same physical things that i used to do i mean i could get to it but like if i was going to do 10 reps i'd probably get to like nine

or eight but the but getting to it would be way harder yeah but i was amazed i couldn't believe it man and everyone's like you're gonna be fucked up for about a week from that. It's true. It really does wreck you. It does something weird to you. You feel like your battery is broken. Well, this guy, Dan, who does all the sleep research, this is his area. He's looking into why that fucks you up so bad.

Can you change melatonin using different medications and, using different medications and, you know, different techniques. He works with seals and stuff. He's like a hardcore guy. And apparently there are all these techniques that you can do, changing your sleep cycle before you go and, you know, time so you wake up at a different time and all that. It just seems like too much trouble to me. You know what they say, too?

This is very bizarre. It's way harder to go from Australia to the United States than it is to go from the United States to Australia. Right. Like, apparently that doesn't fuck up your circadian rhythms as much. Yeah, going east is harder. We're just so weird because we want to think of ourselves as being, like, very simple. Very simple, very autonomous little beings that I just need my food, my vitamins, and I'm normal. No, you're, like, tied in to the cycles of the earth itself, the light and dark.

The literal rising and setting of the sun has a direct effect on the rhythm of your body. Your biological operating system falters when you throw that, and it has to readjust and set things back. Think about women who are menstruating with the phases of the moon every month. I mean, that's really intense. Wow. My favorite one is when a bunch of chicks live together and they start smelling each other's pussies and their bodies don't even realize it, but they get these coinciding menstrual cycles.

Yeah. Right. How strange is that? And if that's happening, what other stuff is happening that we don't know about? Like how much are humans harmonizing with each other in other ways that we aren't even aware of? Well, my favorite example of that is this guy, Bruce Vedekind in Switzerland, who did research that's become known as the sweaty t-shirt study. I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast before.

So he wanted to understand why women's sense of smell is so much stronger than men's women can smell about seven times more than men really yeah which is seven times if you come home with you know smelling funny you're not going to get away with it wow that sucks for them man oh you mean coming home smelling funny like smelling like pussy yeah exactly yeah yeah don't think you're gonna get away with that anyway, so he wanted to understand why is this? And his hypothesis was that women are picking up information about men's immune system from their pheromones, from the way they smell. Because you'll hear women often will say like, he's a cool guy. He's got a good job. He's funny, whatever. But the smell's not right. It's a deal breaker. The smell, they'll say the smell. The smell. And

it's not that he smells bad. It's just the smell's not right. That'll be a deal breaker the smell they'll say the smell and it's not that he smells bad it's just the smell's not right that'll be a deal breaker for a lot of women you never hear a dude say that right yeah but you do people do smell better like some people just smell good like smell them they just just want to squeeze them they smell good you know and i'm not talking about like perfumes or anything just body i kind of find a little bit offensive i've always felt like perfume's a little offensive like i want to know what's going on here. Why are you tricking me? Because it's masking. Yeah, you're tricking me with your fucking smoke bomb thrown down.

I can't. I'm trying to find out where's the real you in there. Right. Like, no one's ever smelled a woman, like a healthy woman, and go, man, I wish you'd fucking spray some roses on this bitch. Right. You know? Well, France in the old days.

Well, that's a different thing, right? You're dealing with personal hygiene issues. But today, when you're dealing with people that take regular showers, bathe, they don't stink. Sorry, just to finish the story, check this out, because this is important knowledge for people to have. So he got a bunch of guys who were deficient in one part of their immune response, and then a bunch of women who were also deficient in one part. The immune response, it's called immune histocompatibility index. And let's say it has five elements.

So they would find a bunch of guys who were low in one or two or number three or number four or whatever, and women who had the same different deficiencies. or number three or number four, whatever, and women who had the same different deficiencies. My hypothesis was that a woman who's low in factor three won't be attracted to men who are low in factor three. They'll be attracted to men who are high in factor three because then the babies will be healthy, right? So he gets these guys to wear T-shirts for three days and nights with no deodorant, no showers, no soap, nothing, and puts the T-shirts in plastic bags. Then he has the women smell the bags and mark on a piece of paper how attractive they thought the men were,

based only on the smell of the T-shirts, right? And he found that with 80% of the women, they chose as he predicted, that they chose the men high in the thing that they were low in, and they avoided the men who were low in the thing that they were low in. But in about 20%, they seemed to be choosing randomly. So he went back and looked at the women again and found that those 20% were on birth control pills. So the birth control pill short-circuits that response.

So think of how many couples have gotten together when she's on the pill, So think of how many couples have gotten together when she's on the pill and they both like Louis C.K. Joe's looking into the distance. Was she on the pill when I met her? I talked about this at an interview in San Francisco on the PBS station down there. And as I'm talking, the guy's going, making the gesture like, that happened to me. But be quiet. Don't say it. And after the interview, he's like, dude, that's exactly.

My wife went off the pill and she was done with me. She didn't want me sleeping in the same bed. She didn't want me in the same house. Spooky. A lot of marriages are falling apart because they got together when the woman couldn't smell his compatibility. And it's not his fault. Holy shit. Yeah, isn't that heavy?

That's a mind blower. Holy shit. Yeah, isn't that heavy? That's a mind blower. And it's one of these things, like Duncan was saying, where we ignore these natural reflexes to our detriment. You know, we pretend we're not animals. Fuck that. Of course we're animals.

Well, just the coinciding menstrual cycles alone, obviously, there's some crazy shit going on. But that is like another level crazy shit. I didn't even think about all the factors that would lead to you being out of whack if your body's constantly thinking it's pregnant and that's what that's what the pill does right it tricks your body into thinking don't get pregnant you're already pregnant and that's why a lot of women have much less libido when they're on the pill oh you're already pregnant why some girls it's really bad i did it a girl and off the pill she was so fucking horny But then she got on the pill and it was like it just stopped and then she got off the pill again

She's like we got to figure out something else cuz I don't even like sex when I'm on the pill She's like I'm totally disinterested But off the pill she was crazy horny. It was it was like a switch went off It took like two days. She started taking the pills and then it just Just shut down. She would be dry. It was like, it was crazy. And then off the pill, she's a freak. It's nuts.

That concept though, that there's this like data field, like a chemical data field surrounding everybody. Makes sense. That you can tune into and understand aspects of like deep aspects to to know a person's some specific deficiency in their immune system just from your nose, that's crazy. And that kind of stuff lends credence to the idea of telepathy or clairvoyance or people who can read other people really well. Maybe they're just somehow better at detecting whatever chemical field is around the person

and can decode it in a certain way. And what are we doing with like people? We have a whole culture of women that are taking pills that trick their body into not being able to recognize the clues of incompatibility. Yeah. Think about how many kids are born with health deficiencies because of this, because people low in, you know, number three and get together. And these kids have. Wow. Yeah, there's all sorts of, you know, we were talking earlier about smearing vaginal fluid on a newborn baby who's born through C-section.

Again, we're pretending we're not animals. We're pretending there's not, you know, huge benefit in being contaminated with life, you know, that we're these sterile creatures that exist separate from our shit and our piss. It's one of the things you realize from grappling and jujitsu, when you guys start getting really into it, that you have to keep a healthy biome. You have to keep healthy skin floor. It's critical. Like one of the first things they tell you when you start training is you should start taking supplements

like acidophilus, something probiotic, because you want to keep your skin flora healthy, and you want to not use antibiotic soap. Like a lot of times when people get infections, one of the problems is they've created a barren wasteland on the surface of their skin. So infections take hold, and then you treat those infections with more antibiotics, and you kill off all the natural healthy, like acidophilus in particular is supposed to be aggressive towards certain types of infections. So that like if you keep a healthy skin flora, you're less likely to get things like ringworm

or things along those lines. Well, this is also what they're talking about. There's a new kind of antibiotic resistant. Yeah. What is that? Can you explain that? Because I keep reading about it. It sounds terrifying.

Well, it's, you know, the pathogens are constantly mutating, right, in response to whatever antibiotics have been developed. And we've come to the end of this particular line of antibiotics. So there's no more variations on this molecule, right? They keep tweaking it, tweaking it, and they've tweaked it every way, every which way possible, and this pathogen has mutated once again,

as we knew it would, and there's nothing. There's, like, nothing. There's no response. So if you get this infection, you're dead. You're fucked. It puts us back to the, what, 14? It puts us way back.

It puts us back to where if a cat scratched you, you got to get your arm amputated. We had, you know, Rhonda Patrick. Have your arm amputated. We had Rhonda Patrick. Have you ever listened to her, Dr. Rhonda Patrick? Yeah, I think I have, yeah. She had a pretty significant MRSA infection, a staph infection that just wouldn't go away. And you know how she fixed it? With topical use of ground garlic and grapeseed extract.

She's like the ground garlic apparently has this radical effect on MRSA. And another thing that supposedly helps too is cannabis oil. Yeah. Cannabis oil is supposed to be really good at fighting off staph infections. You know what else is good? I mean, I don't know about staph, but... Pussy. Pussy juice. Seawater. Seawater. Seawater's good.

My wife irrigated wounds with seawater a lot in Mozambique, and pissing on your feet keeps the athlete's foot away. Yeah, yeah. Isn't that weird? Yeah, we were taught that in wrestling. Uric acid. In wrestling, if you've got athlete's foot, you piss on your feet.

Yeah, or just piss on your feet every morning, especially that first piss is really because it's full of uric acid accumulated overnight. Just piss on your feet every morning in the shower, and you just don't get athlete's foot. Well, that's why people drink their piss. They would drink their first piss of the morning because it supposedly has all their vitamins and nutrients in it.

It's a very bizarre practice. Yeah, I don't know about that one. That's the right response. I've done it. I've drank my piss a few times to experiment. Did it help? I don't know. Probably not.

I'm probably better off with a multivitamin. It seems to me if you were meant to drink your piss, then you wouldn't piss. Your body would just send it right back in. Right. Yeah, but why are your balls on the outside? To keep them. Some people can kick them. No, it's to keep them cool.

I know. Oh, okay. You know what I'm saying? There's some flaws in the system. That's the wrong metaphor for me, man. I don't think pissing's a flaw. Well, it is if, you know, otherwise you would go, you would dehydrate. I mean, like if you never dehydrate, if your body would never express water in that way,

like you take water in, you keep a healthy level, and it's like oil in your car. Like, you know, your level's there. You're good. But no, we're like constantly getting rid of it. But I guess it actually cycles through your body and it takes impurities out. Exactly. There's a lot of other things going on when you drink a lot of water. That's why one of the things that happens to people when they're dehydrated, they get kidney stones.

You get crystallized things in your body and, you know, you have to piss those out of your dick hole. I had a kidney stone. Were you dehydrated? I don't think so does beer count um well it's diuretic yeah no i i don't know right alcohol's diuretic right yeah yeah but they say it dehydrates you alcohol ultimately yeah you know but here's an interesting fact did you know that all animals piss the same amount of time all of them it's this bizarre fractal thing yeah Jimmy can confirm whether the same sorry Jamie Jamie Jimmy calm young Jamie young Jamie yeah

apparently it's like the size of the bladder and the volume of the urethra is it's like a fractal thing when it could be a mouse or an elephant so a full piss takes the same amount of time for an elephant as it does for a mouse. Whoa. Wow. Well, you ever seen an elephant piss? It's like, Jesus Christ. I've never seen it.

It's a waterfall. It's insane. You ain't drinking that. It's insane. Yeah. Most mammals take 21 seconds to take a puff. So it's the same with humans? Not if you're drinking beer.

Well, but it's the size of your bladder, right? So it doesn't matter what's in it. Yeah, but if you fully hold your piss in for like a long time, and you finally get to a bathroom, and you're like, uh, I've definitely pissed longer than 20 seconds. That was really nice of them to include an image of a beagle pissing

in case you wondered what it looked like. It's probably the least offensive penis that they could find. Exactly. Like one that doesn't represent the patriarchy. A beagle. You couldn't get like a pit bull dick. And they got racehorse in there.

Did you see that? Well, pee for about as long as a rhino or racehorse because people say, I piss like a rhino. I got to piss like a racehorse. But I think they're just talking volume. You ever seen a racehorse piss? Good Lord. Yeah.

The volume is just stunning. And it comes fast. Oh, yeah. Yeah. volume is just stunning it comes fast oh yeah yeah it's just high pressure yeah it's like wow so i'll tell you what this kidney stone made me think there is a god and he loves me or she because it was a horrible thing you guys haven't had a kidney stone right yeah it's just like so i wake up i think i told this story on a live podcast i did with you in San Francisco. I don't remember. A long time ago. Yeah, I remember thinking, why am I telling this story? But so I woke up excruciating abdominal pain.

Casilda, my wife, who's a doctor, thought I had a gas-like bubble in my intestine. So she had me upside down on the sofa with a funnel stuck in my ass, and she was pouring olive oil. Holla. I like how they party at Chris Ryan's house. She's pouring extra virgin olive oil up my ass. Oh, Jesus Christ. And I remember lying there upside down.

That's what I remember thinking, like, honeymoon's over, we're into marriage now. This is marriage. But, because she's, like, she's a doctor. She's completely, like, the body's the body. She doesn't give a shit. But anyway, it turns out it was a kidney stone. Long story. It had already gone into the tube between my kidney and my bladder.

And so that's what the pain is, that it's sort of scraping its way down the tube. But it didn't block the flow. So I wasn't having the kidney infection, which people sometimes get. That's really dangerous. Would they do that and they operate on you? Well, what they wanted to do is they send sound waves in from the back and the front, and they calibrate it so that the waves meet right where the stone is. Now, when you say the back and the front, you mean your dick hole and your butt hole?

No, no, it's in your abdomen. It's going from your kidney in this little tube down to your bladder. Well, how do they get that sound in there? So they do an X-ray and find exactly where it is, right? And then they have like sonogram machines, right, that are sending vibrations in. And they meet at the point where the stone is and they'll break it into sand and then you can piss it out. What? Yeah, it's great.

What? But unfortunately, mine had already passed through the tube into my bladder by the time they got around to it. So they're like, well, if it's in the bladder, we can't do it. We're going to have to go in through your dick, through your pee hole with like needle nose pliers. They go up and grab this thing and then pull it out through your dick. You're awake? You're awake when this happens? Yeah.

And I asked and I had the meeting with the anesthesiologist and I'm like, can you just put me under for this? Like, I do not want to be awake when something's going on. No, I want to look in your eyes. I want to see the soul scream behind your retina. Man up, boy. So I was, like, not into this, right? And I'm on the waiting list. And it's like any day they're going to call me, and I'm going to to go in and they're going to, like, put this thing up my dick.

And meanwhile, it was New Year's Eve. Casilda and I wake up in the morning, New Year's Day morning. We have sex. I go downstairs to the bathroom and I'm pissing in the bathroom sink because we have this Asian toilet, squat toilet. So if I piss in that, standing up, it splashes all over. So the deal is I piss in the sink and rinse it and it's fine. You never notice. You never notice.

Okay. So I'm pissing down the side of the sink and bloop, out comes the stone. Painless. How big is it? It's like half, I don't know, is that a centimeter? Something like, you know, about the size of your fingertip. It's a real rock. It was like a snowflake.

It was a wafer. Thick. Thicker than a snowflake, but like a wafer. It just popped out. And somehow it had gotten into the tube, and the orgasm, the ejaculation, pushed it right up to the end of my dick. And then when I pissed, it just popped out.

It was no pain at all. It was masked by the orgasm. So it lubed it up. It lubed it up and it, you know, filled my head with endorphins or whatever when I was having the orgasm. So I didn't feel the pain. I felt like a slight burn, but like, yeah, whatever. It was fantastic.

So that's my kidney stone story. So I do, but I think I'm being looked over. Cassie took it to the hospital and had it analyzed. What did they say? Well, I guess they can, by looking at the chemical composition, they can tell what causes it, if it's a chronic thing or if it's dehydration or whatever. What if it was from another planet, bro? Exactly. That'd be amazing.

It was moon rock. You're pissing out an alien. How'd a moon rock get in there? Tiny little writing on it. Well, when Duncan and I were doing that silly... Help me, I'm stuck in here. When Duncan and I were doing that silly show, the Joe Rogan Questions Everything show,

we ran into these people that do think that they have implants in their body that aliens have in them. And they'll find some bizarre imperfection in their skin and they'll swear that wasn't there before and that there's something in there. And one of them was insanely hot. And we got Duncan to talk to her,

and Duncan's like, yeah, I mean, probably. I mean, most likely, yeah. I mean, totally makes sense. No. I was being a good journalist. How dare you? If it was a bald, fat man in his 60s, Duncan would have went, like, wait a minute.

Why do you think that that's an alien implant? Why would you just think it's a scratch? I resent this. I missed that episode. No, you're questioning my journalistic integrity. Well, you were amazing when you talked to the underground bunker guy who was going to start a cult. Now that was intense, man.

That was intense. I'll never forget driving around underneath that mountain with that guy. It was pretty nuts, man. The guy has an underground mountain base, like ready for the apocalypse. Renting RV spaces. In New Mexico or something? Where was that? I can't remember, man.

I just know it was out in the middle of nowhere. Renting RVs. So you can rent a space. Like a parking. You park your RV. You park your RV. You take your camper van. But they had this, like underneath this mountain, he'd set up example homes that you could live in in this paradise.

And he kept saying how, like, there's going to be a wine bar. That's one thing he kept saying. Everyone you know is dead. But there's a wine bar. But what was weird is that you got out of him that he was going to kind of be the king. That's right. Yeah, he was. he was going to be the king. That's right. Yeah, he was. He was going to be in charge, man.

And he had set up an RV with a little bit of AstroTurf in front of it and some playground equipment. So that's what the future looked like under there. It's like your kids would be able to play in the darkness of this massive cavern. And he kept saying how they were about to have like an airtight door put in and yeah really really spooky there's a lot of different places like that there's a lot of caverns that people are planning on living in and they'll call it progress this guy dig it out or was it always it was The military had used it. The military dug it out. They were using it as some kind of storage facility

and so he bought it from them and then converted it to this like theoretically dystopian future place that you go to to save yourself when the bombs go off. Sounds like an alien movie. They just didn't tell them that they had stored

alien artifacts in that Same location and while they're there that's cool It comes alive and like we have movement in the corridor what right? It's nothing in the corridor, but us we've double-checked and triple-checked. Well, we just found this manuscript and we're not sure Yeah, man That's it sounds like that movie room to me. Did you guys see that? Which one was that? Room.

It's about this woman who's kidnapped by this dude who locks her in a room and rapes her. And it's this terrible thing. But she has a kid. And the kid doesn't know there's a world outside. And so she wants the kid to be happy. So she tells him all these stories and all the stuff and the kid grows up in this garage basically thinking like that's the whole world and you think about it that's applicable to i mean talk about a metaphor you know we're told what reality is

we're told what to believe and yeah it's the matrix it's all these things the matrix gnosticism it's the idea that what we are in right now is actually a an interdimensional prison and we've been trapped by these super advanced beings that have kept us here called the dark archons and that they like uh they like power and authority and so um anybody so basically this idea i think it's called discordianism but the idea is that because we are in an interdimensional prison where we've been, had reality, like where we've like had this consensus reality given to us by people like Bernays, Chef Bernays, who whipped up this reality tunnel that we're all existing in. Because we are in this situation, anyone enforcing the reality tunnel is a servant of the dark archons. So anybody who's trying to uphold this bullshit reality that we've all gotten trapped in,

they're actually a form of Satanists. And so as a religion, any time that you do anything to break a ridiculous rule, anytime you do anything to break a mundane law, anytime you do anything to subvert the authority of someone getting off on their power, you are actually taking part in a kind of holy war and subverting this very ancient and terrible prison that all humanity is trapped in, where people parade around as though they have some kind of right to authority kings being the classic case people used to they somehow convince people that they were gods on earth clearly just human beings the ultimate liars you're not a god you're a human who's convinced us that you have some kind of power and so anytime you do anything to subvert those people whether it's some fucking asshole who's wearing a crown and has convinced you that he's a divine being sent here, or whether it's some son of a bitch in one of those reality shows who's going through your pockets for

weed, anytime you do anything to even disrupt that system a little bit, you're doing a holy act in the great war against the interdimensional prison keepers who are keeping us trapped here. Look up Discordianism. It's awesome. And on that note, that's three hours in. Oh, yeah. Awesome.

We'll end it right there. That's nice. I was going to say, I can hear that rant already on YouTube. It's already there. People have already... Oh, no. With animation and fucking dark overlords. Ladies and gentlemen, that's it.

What are we calling this? Shrimp parade? Shrimp parade. It's over. It's over, folks. Thank you,, that's it. What are we calling this? Shrimp raid? Shrimp raid. It's over, folks. Thank you, everybody. Much love. See you soon. Bye-bye.

Bye. Oh, that was great. I got him. I was... I got him. I got him. Ready to score.