The Joe Rogan Experience - #891 - Zach Leary

Episode Date: December 27, 2016

Zach Leary is a blogger/writer, a futurist, spiritualist, digital branding specialist and self proclaimed social theorist. He also is the host of the “It’s All Happening” podcast.

All right, man, we're live. Awesome. Thanks for having me, man. Thanks for being here. Yeah, this is cool. This is cool. Any friend of Duncan's, a friend of mine. Likewise.

Likewise. It's cool. It's fun. Dude, okay. So I have to ask the opening question. Okay. What the fuck is it like being the son of Timothy Leary? The opening question, right?

It has to be the opening question. It has to be. Okay, that's cool. Yeah, man, you know, and, you know, the answer to the question kind of, it's changed a lot over the course of time, obviously, you know, because when I was younger, when I was a kid, you know, really up until my mid-20s, even my late 20s, I would say, like, I didn't know how to answer that question. How could I? It's just all I knew. It's just life. It's just my dad.

It's just how I grew up. He would take me to Little League. He'd make sure I did my homework or didn't do my homework in my case. But whatever it was, you know what I mean? It just was life. I didn't have any objectivity to it. I didn't have any distance from it. I couldn't be removed from it.

I didn't know that it was perhaps really strange. And then, uh, you know, he, he died in 96, uh, you know, it was 22. And then kind of after that, then I sort of, you know, I got some distance from it. Then I was like, Oh shit. You know, things were a little different at home. You know, they were, well, your dad is probably like one of the most important, if not the most important people ever in terms of the psychedelic revolution. He was. I mean, yeah, my relationship with him and my relationship, especially with his work was, yeah, I mean, of course, the psychedelic part was a core pillar. And I understood that's what made him famous. But I considered him to be,

like, he was a futurist really, you know, when, you know, during my formative years, I mean, the psychedelic thing was always there, but he was much more interested in like, in technology and cyber culture and kind of like the progressive kind of technology arts and things like that. And, uh, you know, in the eighties he called, uh, the, the PC, the LSD of the eighties, you know, so he was kind of really shifting and I kind of considered him, uh, somebody who just had like the innate ability to constantly reinvent himself. And of course the psychedelics were, you know, were the core and I guess probably is also probably a big part of how he could reinvent himself. right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, that's true.

I mean, well, and considering, I mean, you can relate with this, I think, too. And, you know, he didn't do his first psychedelic until he was 40. Oh, wow. You were, what, 30 or something? Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it's a similar, like, you're well into your adult life and you're well-formed.

You have an identity. That's Jack Harrah's story, too. Oh, is it? I didn't know. life and you're well formed. You have an identity. That's Jack Harris story too. Oh, is it? Yeah. Jack Harris was a Goldwater Republican, like deep into his, uh, I can't, I think he was getting divorced and, uh, met a, met a young gal and she turned him onto the weed. And all of a sudden he was like, Hey, what the fuck have I been missing? Yeah. He's still, uh, to this day, it's still the strongest weed I've ever had. Jack Harris train? Yeah. I was like, fuck, man.

He was a cool guy, man. He was a cool guy. He bummed me out when he left. Yeah, and did good work. So your dad probably would have had an amazing time with what's going on today in terms of virtual reality and the integration of cell phones into our life in an almost inescapable way. Yeah. It's funny. The VR thing, Jamie and I were just talking about it before we rolled tape.

You know, we were doing VR, like, yeah, you know, we were at the NASA Ames Research Center. People were like Jaron Lanier and were like really, you know, Jaron Lanier was kind of the godfather of VR. And he was bringing kind of setups to our house in the early 90s. And like really early kind of almost 8-bit rudimentary VR. But it was there. So what did that stuff look like? It kind of looked like being inside of an Atari video game. So real pixelated.

Pixelated, 8-bit, kind of clunky block-like, but with full 3D dimensionality and stuff like that. Did you ever see Duncan's oculus the first yeah the first versions that he had which was kind of like that real kind of yeah yeah real pixelated was it similar to that very similar to that yeah and yeah Duncan and I uh we went on the show together a single gunter's universe's vr chat show and you know this was recent and you know it's still vr is still kind of in that you know how does that work like does someone have a vr headset on another location yes and then you

guys both enter the same room so you're in the room together yeah well dunk and i actually were in the same room together right physically physically we happen to be but yeah and then all of these people with different headsets on and then everybody has a different avatar and they're all in that room with you? They're all in the room with us. Very cool, very cool. But, like, in that one, I think the servers crashed. Too many people. Oh.

How many people can it support? We had maybe, like, 1,000, I think. Oh, wow. But, yeah, like, to get beyond that, you need some pretty, I mean, the avatars, you know, they're pretty involved. They're pretty, you know, they made me into this Hare Krishna monkishna monk or some shit and duncan was like this psychedelic clown it was it was pretty cool but yeah you know my dad loved fjord and we were you know he was he was right he'd love it it'd be really cool yeah i've always thought about him and mckenna mckenna obviously was a big

futurist as well and completely fascinated by the possibilities and where technology was going. I would have loved to seen those guys today just take this all in and try to. Yeah. Amazing. Right. Like Terrence was writing about the connection between psilocybin and virtual reality. Right.

I mean, that's the subtext of not food of the gods, but of one of the hallucinations. No, no, it wasn't that one. I'm forgetting which one's what it True hallucinations? No, no, it wasn't that one. I'm forgetting which ones, but it's called Mushrooms, Virtual Reality, and he really saw the connection between, and there's no accident that the godfathers, the true visionaries of the Silicon Valley movement were kind of remnants from the 60s. Yeah.

Steve Jobs. Arcade Revival, is that it Steve Jobs. Arcade Revival. Is that it, Jamie? Arcade Revival. Yeah. That's it? Yeah. Yeah.

That's right. Yeah. He also, Terrence also had this idea that you would be able to recreate the DMT world in virtual reality and you'd be able to experience what people see when they're on DMT without actually taking the drug. Yeah. He believed that there was going to come a time when technology was so good and the images that you could create would be so elaborate that you literally could create the DMT images. I kind of believe it.

I'm kind of leaning there right now myself. I mean, we kind of, again, Duncan, we kind of had this crackpot idea of taking a vr into the floatation tank into the float tank with this kind of in mind that by disassociating the body and kind of getting rid of like because you know what's the big dmt thing is it's a disassociative you just leave joe you leave zach and you become right whatever so by taking the vr mask and a headset into the tank maybe combining the two worlds, it could. I don't know. I'm still bullish on that.

I think it could work. I think Terrence is right. It sounds like it could be possible. I know Crash from the Float Lab. Excuse me, the Float Lab. Crash has this setup where he has developed this screen that has like the lowest amount of light that could be emitted to the point where you don't see the edges of the screen. So you literally, while you're in the tank, it's floating above your head. It's suspended above your head.

And you see the image as if it's like just the video just floating in the sky. Oh, wow. And he believes that by separating your body from sensory input, like so you're not feeling your feet on the ground, you're not feeling the weight of the world and your shoulders, all that. So you're not feeling your feet on the ground. You're not feeling the weight of the world and your shoulders, all that jazz. You're floating. He thinks you could take in data better. And so his idea was to show documentaries and instructionals and things along those

lines and that you would learn quicker that way. Yeah, interesting, right? Because so much of your brain and the function of the cerebral cortex is to integrate the body, this movement, standing upright, you know, and being muscular and moving around. And if you get rid of that, right, your brain kind of opens up and can take more in. Well, the way I always describe it to people that haven't used the tank, I was like, imagine if you were having a conversation, but next to you people were screaming.

If it was an important conversation, you'd want to get away from those people screaming because even though you think of it as a distraction, it's just input. It's just data that you have to consider. You also have to consider your butt on this chair, the room, the dimensions that you're calculating as you're moving your head around, social cues, language, all these different things are all being calculated and they require resources. Right. Well, when you are in that tank, there's none of that.

And so your brain feels supercharged. It feels like you have all these resources have been opened up to you. Yeah, and I agree. And I think, you know, all of those resources that you're speaking of, those are sort of the things that contribute to this idea of what we call the ego. You know, and the same thing with psychedelics. You know, they formulate the ego and our body and being separate. Oh, my God, Joe, you're strong. I mean, you know, it's all these kind of different things that create this image of who we think we are.

Psychedelics, the tank, meditation, whatever method you want to pick, gets rid of that. Yeah. And purely gets into, you know, soul land or something else. Did you ever meet John Lilly? Oh, yeah. Spent a long time with John. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Did a lot of what? A lot a long time with John. Oh, wow. Yeah. Did a lot of what? I did a lot of good research with John. Research, air quotes. Back in the day. Yeah, that guy, man. He's the, for people who don't know, we're talking about the guy who invented the sensory deprivation tank, and he was a pioneer in interspecies communication with dolphins. Yeah.

Fascinating, fascinating guy. Fascinating guy. communication with dolphins yeah fascinating fascinating guy fascinating guy and you know the last 20 years of his life um you know the ketamine aspect was such a huge part of what he was doing and did he get too into it the ketamine seems to be an addictive yeah substance um look i mean i love john i did i thought it was great he was a good friend of my dad's, and I certainly wouldn't say anything too negative about him. But, yeah, one toke over the line, man. Sweet Jesus. Todd McCormick has a very funny story about him. Do you know who Todd McCormick is?

I don't. Todd's one of the first guys to get arrested in California for medical marijuana, where he was arrested in the late 90s or early 2000s. And he was one of the first people to find out that when you are legally growing marijuana in California because of the law, the medical law, the federal government can still prosecute you. And when they prosecute you, you are in court. You are not allowed to even bring up the term medical marijuana because that's not a real term federally. So he had, yeah, it was a railroad. He got railroaded and he went to jail.

But anyway, point being, he was at John Lilly's. He actually still owns John Lilly's tank. Oh, wow. Yeah, and he was with John Lilly, and John Lilly invited him to get in the tank. And so Todd's about to go in the tank, and he says, do you want to do ketamine? And he's like, I'm stepping into the tank. And he's like, of course. It's John Lilly.

What am I going to say? So he hits him with a blast of intramuscular ketamine in his thigh, and then Todd starts freaking out. He's in the tank, and he's freaking out. So John gets in another tank next to him, blasts himself with ketamineamine and goes and visits him. What? Yeah.

Whoa. Yeah. They've found whatever same fucking dimension in the ketamine world. And it worked? Yes. It worked. What does that mean? I don't know.

Because I've never done ketamine. Okay. Have you? Yeah. I've done it in the tank too. Okay. What happens in there? Well, it's been a while since I've done it in the tank, and I'm not so sure I'd do it again.

I don't feel like I'm going to do it again. But I'm glad I did it. God, man. Well, you read that description of what Terrence writes about ketamine, that it's, I'm not sure I'm going to get it exactly right, but ketamine is sort of like you're going inside of an office building, but it's stark and there's nothing in the office building. Yeah. Something like that. It's vacant. Yeah.

Yes. Well, he believed, Terrence believed that when you were experiencing like a heavy duty mushroom trip, you're not just experiencing your trip, but you're experiencing all the different people that have ever done mushrooms together tripping. That's right. Which is why a lot of people, when they take psilocybin particularly, they get a lot of Aztec and Mayan imagery. That's the archaic rapine? Yeah. That's what it is? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, every single indigenous culture, except for the Eskimos because they couldn't grow shit, but every single indigenous culture until very recently, secularics were a core part of their methodology, of their tribal rituals. Yeah, the Inuits got fucked, huh? There's nothing up there, dude.

You picked a bad spot. You picked a bad spot eating so much fish. Yeah, Ketamine in the Tank, though, I mean, it's quite a journey. It's, you know, it's kind of like how, the best way I could explain it is if black, if you could see colors within blackness, if there were shades of black, if that makes any sense. Like, because it's pitch black in the tank. Right. the tank right and your head is pitch black but somehow you're getting sacred geometry and sort of

kind of visions and kind of downloads that are in the color black if that makes any sense at all um yeah i thank god i mean one of the the great uh moments of my life actually was um take i was getting took ketamine inside the tank and, um, uh, this tank was right outside of my dad's kind of sliding glass window, um, uh, which went out into the lawn in his bedroom, uh, up in, up here in the, in the Hollywood Hills. And, um, you know, I went in and took a little ketamine. Ram Dass was visiting that day, visiting my dad. And, uh, the last time they ever saw each other. And he died just, my dad died just like a month afterwards.

And I went inside the tank. The two of them were visiting right outside of the tank hatch. You know how the hatch comes out. And they didn't know I was inside. And I was lost in this K-hole. Just completely fucked. Just like, oh my God, what am I going to do? And the only thing I knew how to do was like you know get the fuck out the k-hole for people who don't know what we're

talking about is what people describe the ketamine experience when you're just really kind of stuck yeah and stuck in like it's kind of like code red like eject hit the eject button you know so i popped open the hatch got out and you know my dad and ram Dass are sitting as close as you and I right now are right now and you know I'm self-referential enough to know like oh wow this is crazy the two of them sitting here right now I mean I wasn't stupid and you're naked and you're tripping on ketamine tripping on ketamine and everyone is just completely silent staring at each other and Ram Dass just leans into me and goes who are you now whoa and it was kind of like a defining moment on my life journey my life man

who are you now yeah and it's kind of my mantra for life now but that was over 20 years ago now Wow so did you feel like was that the last time you did it in the tank? No. Oh, you're glutton for punishment. Yeah, I did do it one other time after that, yeah. So what is it particularly about the K-hole, like when you go into what they call a K-hole? Like I've heard it described by people who are like recreational users. I wouldn't call them psychonauts. They're more you know people go to raves and stuff it's dark man it's dark i don't quite get it um i don't get the the ketamine in

the public rave setting at all it doesn't make sense to me but but um john loved it lily right he did loved it ketomaniac but why was that his thing like what did what was his raves about it i mean he just, oh God. I mean, well, to understand that relationship is also to understand John a little bit in the sense that, you know, I mean, he was the guy who said, you know, my body is my laboratory. Right. You know, I mean, he was, you know, at one point he gave himself a boob implant. You know, I mean, he was way out there. What did he use for the boob implant?

I don't know. Like the ones that standard ones that women get? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like silicone or whatever. Did he use for the boob implant? I don't know. Like the ones, the standard ones that women get? Yeah, yeah, yeah, like silicone or whatever. Did he give himself one, only one? No, he had two. Oh, really? So he was, you know, there was some darkness involved there. Did he try to make them look like women's breasts?

Yeah. Yeah? Yeah, if I recall. See if we can find a picture of that. Yeah, see if we can find. Did he lose a bet? Or is it just like... No, I just...

Wanted to have breast implants. I think it just was... My body is my laboratory now. It's sort of just the... I mean, at that time, I mean, now what? Being gender fluid is such a... You know, we could talk about that.

Right, but I don't think that's really gender fluid. You know, that's one of the things about breast implants. It's like, at the end of the day, everyone knows what the fuck that is. There's this weird sort of suspension of disbelief where we're looking at these water bags that are surgically stuffed under your skin. And we're just pretending this is like these are sexual organs that are plump and ripe on the vine. But it's not.

It's one of the weirder things about like being a tripper and deciding to do that it's like while you're you're violating a lot of like bizarre paradigms yeah but i mean he was also kind of but bending the paradigm and kind of bending the idea of like you know you can be anything this time around if i want if i want to be a half woman i can be a half woman i can do that i'm a. And we're living in this golden age of being able to morph yourself into whatever the fuck you can imagine kind of thing. Yeah, I wonder. And that was early, too. With a lot of those guys that trip so much, it's like, I think, at least for practical purposes, we would all like to think that you would like to have a psychedelic experience and then come back down to Earth

and be able to, you know, make use of that in the real world. It can kind of benefit you in the real world. That's the idea, right? That's sort of the idea. I think so. Why should we impart those standards on anybody? You can do whatever you want. But I think some guys, like Lily is probably a prime example

that people use as a point of reference, went so far, it's like, where's the baseline now? Like, there's no baseline for him anymore. He was just so out there. He was. He was, yeah. And, yeah, I mean, I agree with you. And also, I mean, not to, you know, use you as a great model, but you're a great poster child for psychedelics, as my dad was.

You know, you're well into your adult life, and it changed your consciousness, and you're able to apply it to your work, to what you do, and it's become very fluid and very integrated. You don't hide it. You're public about it. You found a way to integrate it. I mean, that's the idea of spiritual practice, isn't it? It's about integration. I think it's important to not hide it. And I think there's much more fear of repercussions

than actual repercussions. You know, I think Terrence McKenna had a great saying. He said, too many people are doing the man's work for the man. And he's like, they don't really care if you're out doing mushrooms. That's not what they're trying to do is they're trying to stop large scale sales and distribution of Schedule 1 drugs. They're not trying to stop some dude from doing mushrooms. Right. And look what we're seeing with microdosing right now in Silicon Valley. I mean, more and more people are kind of coming out of a closet. And, you know, supposedly what the names that are kind of attached to the rumor mill of who's doing microdosing in Silicon Valley. It's huge.

Yeah. I mean, it's really insane. It's great. It is. Yeah. And I think as marijuana is now legal in the state and it becomes legal in more and more states and hopefully one day it'll be released from the Schedule 1, which is just so crazy that the DEA decided to, they mean they got to the door this past summer. They did. And then they decided to pull away and just keep it at Schedule 1.

I know. Which means there's no medical benefit, which is a lie. Well, and that's especially fucked. And I'm kind of down on Obama for that as much as I parts of Obama I really do admire. But that I think was an epic failure and considering you know he just pardoned what 158 guys most of them non-violent drug offenders and the two are synonymous you know it's like okay you treated the symptom man that's great i'm glad you released those guys from prison and good for you but treat the fucking disease man

yeah it's like you got to treat and now as we we're stepping into this dark age, I mean, I'm calling it a dark age. I mean, that's. The Trump dark age? The Trump dark age. You know, it's not good for these things. Well, I don't know if it is or it isn't. But the problem is that when you know something, like if you and I know what's dangerous and what's not. Like meth is dangerous.

Dangerous. Marijuana's not dangerous. So when you look at all the facts and then you look at all the absolutely proven medical benefits and then you see that they're denying the existence of these, you go, okay, well, the people that are in control of locking people up and throwing them in the jail, they're a bunch of liars because they're just ignoring the science. They're ignoring the research. And the research that's gone back to the 1970s

that the Nixon administration paid for and then ignored. That's right. And now I think the bar was even raised, right? CBD has gotten thrown into that. Really recently, which is just a really sneaky thing because CBD, much like hemp, has zero psychoactive properties. It's not doing anything to alter your consciousness in terms of getting you high.

That's right. But it does amazing stuff for reducing inflammation for people that have arthritis. It's like a lifesaver. So, you know, the only thing I could kind of in this thread is kind of think about and talk about is, okay, well, what is, you know, what's the reason behind this? I mean, if you kind of isolate big pharma and talk about that and then, you know, I know the CBD industry, they're, you know, big pharma is the enemy, right? Yeah. But I also have to just kind of say that big pharma's main goal is to make money, you know, to create products that make money.

It doesn't matter what the product is. If they told you that, you know, plastic is going to alleviate cancer, you know, they would make a plastic pill. But so what is, who is the enemy within this that is making things like CBD and marijuana? Like, is this just kind of left over from kind of baby boom paranoia, kind of narrow consciousness that we can't possibly allow these substances to fix us, to help us? I mean, what is that? Because there's tremendous profit potential. So something isn't in alignment. The problem is that profit can't be controlled like Viagra. It's hard to make Viagra. If you and I wanted to go into the Viagra business, we would have to find out what the key ingredients are. We'd have to set up a plant and manufacturing. If we wanted to go into CBD business, we just have to grow some weed.

Like it's not hard at all. Okay. There's a big difference between extracting CBD or especially medical marijuana. Like if you talk about just THC, you know, like cooking it down to a candy form or a pill form, it's not hard at all. Right, but I would think, like, GlaxoSmithKline can, you know, put a billion dollars into making the best CBD pill and putting it on the store of every Rite Aid, the shelf of every Rite Aid, and kind of get the propaganda out there about, you know, what it can do. Propaganda being a good thing,

getting the marketing out there about all of its benefits. So what is stopping that? Well, they can't copyright it. They can't control it. It's not patentable. It's not patentable. That's true. It's nature.

It would be like trying to patent oranges. Like, you really can't do it. It's not going to work. People are going to be able to grow oranges. Right. And when it comes to CBD oil, anyone in this room can grow some marijuana and extract the CBD from it.

It's not incredibly difficult. It doesn't require massive resources like it would if you were going to make certain types of Alzheimer's medication or Parkinson's medication, I should say, that would be competing with the CBD oil. Those are very difficult to get. And if you can lock down the doctors and make sure that they only prescribe these pharmaceutical drugs

that you guys can profit from and you're the only ones that can make it, then you've got that business locked. I mean, there have been people that have done calculations about all of the different pharmaceutical drugs that would be useless or would be unnecessary, I should say, if marijuana was legal. And it's pretty staggering. It's a long list. It's a huge list. And the amount of profit that the people who make those pharmaceutical drugs would lose if marijuana became legal and people just started realizing like, hey.

And then there are other benefits. Like there's no drugs that are like pharmaceutical drugs that also open you up, make you a nicer person, make you more friendly, make you more contemplative of your existence, sort of give you a different perspective that's almost unattainable without those pharmaceuticals? It's not really. Right. It's not. They don't have those additional benefits that the pot does. That's true. They don't, which is oftentimes why it's referred to as a war on consciousness.

Well, it is. It's got to be. I mean, that's absolutely what it is because it's not about drugs because there's so many drugs that are legal. I mean, come on. We cannot say there's a war on drugs when we can go buy a bottle of whiskey and a prescription for Oxycontin. No. It's insane. It's insane.

Yeah. And every restaurant you could buy booze. Right. Pretty much every restaurant. And I mean, look what the Oxycontin epidemic has done to America. I mean, it's decimated. It's created a whole generation of addicts all of a sudden, you know, and it's it's a dangerous drug. So it's a it's so it's a it's

got it's a war on consciousness yeah it's and it's really a war for profit for controlling the ability to profit off of people altering their consciousness because people have been like you said other than people that live in frozen places where nothing grows they've been trying to alter their consciousness forever okay but do you believe uh you know I don't know what your conspiracy level kind of meter is, but do you believe that like with all of this said that there is still kind of a secret kind of conspiracy government sanctioned funnel that allows the illegal drug market

to still flourish in some way in order to keep certain, you know, law enforcement in order, you know, maybe skimming off the top, off of piles of cocaine that are coming from Bolivia, whatever the case may be. I mean, I don't know what a case study is, but there's still so many coming in. It's certainly something to be considered. Are you aware of that CIA drug plane that crashed, the jet that had visited Guantanamo Bay a couple of times and it crashed in Mexico with tons of cocaine on it? You never seen that? Jamie, see if you could pull that up. CIA plane crashes in Mexico with tons of cocaine. They overloaded their plane and they had so much cocaine in it that they had to refuel.

And they tried to land in Mexico. And Mexico was like, fuck you. Here it is. CIA jet crashes with four tons of cocaine on board. Oh, my God. I mean. What year is this? This is just last month, a couple months ago.

September 16th. Oh, I missed that one. Well, this is a recent one, but it's happened a gang of times. Yeah. Okay, here it is. Eight years but it's happened a gang of times. Yeah. Okay, here it is. Eight years ago. It's saying eight years ago. Okay.

Okay. It crashed in the middle of the jungle in Mexico's Yucatan, carrying four tons of cocaine. The event and the aftermath changed forever. An official narrative of the war on drugs has for years been pushing the notion that there is no significant American involvement in the global drug trade and no American drug lords. Right. Okay. Well, you know the Barry Seals story? Only a little bit.

Barry Seals, who used to fly drugs into Mena, Arkansas from South America. He'd go down to South America, fly drugs, and there's photos with him with all the CIA guys, and he'd be partying with Noriega down in um Panama Panama and this guy was just bringing coke into the United States and then when he was scheduled to testify they uh assassinated him in his car on the way to court and he had he had George Bush's number in his phone in his pocket pocket. Oh, my God. Yeah, as he was executed. So the whole thing is just like, well, story's over, folks. Go back to sleep.

Good night, everybody. You know, I'm- Johnny Carson. The Rick Ross documentary? Yeah. I've had Rick on the podcast. Oh, you have? Yeah, twice.

What a story. Amazing story. I mean, that guy became a drug kingpin in L.A., selling drugs essentially to fund the war with the Contras and the Sandinistas. Right. And they're funneling the product. Yeah. Amazing. He was, you know, making millions of dollars for the U.S. government selling coke.

And, you know, Michael Rupert, who was a good friend of mine, too, who killed himself a few years ago, who had also been on the podcast a couple times michael um was the guy that exposed that he was a los angeles uh detective oh wow and he was uh there's a very famous uh moment where michael rupert is addressing the court and he he stands up in the middle of this all this stuff and and says and exposes this whole deal. He's like, I have personally witnessed the CIA selling drugs in, in, in central Los Angeles and South central Los Angeles. You ever seen that? I haven't seen that. No. See if you can find that Jamie, because it's a fucking crazy video to watch. Michael Rupert, uh, exposes CIA selling drugs in court. So why did he kill himself? He was depressed. He had some pretty significant depression, a long time being on the police force and all the stuff that he had to deal with in trying to expose corruption.

But listen to this because go full screen and crank up the volume. As a former Los Angeles police narcotics detective that the agency has dealt drugs throughout this country for a long time. This is allegations of CIA involvement in drug trafficking. This is on C-SPAN, and this is something completely unexpected. So when he stood up in front of these people and said that to the CIA, pull that up again so I can see the top of it, CIA director John Deutch. All right, obviously that is an answer for a lot of you.

Now can you please? I refer. All right, now can you please? I refer to it. Wait, wait, wait. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute here.

Wait a minute. If you don't like what's going on here, please leave now. No, no, no. Leave. No, no, no. Leave now because there are others who do want to hear what's going on in this room. Will you please take your seats? She's ineffective.

Is there another... I don't know what's... Here you go. Go back to him again. Specific agency operations known as Amadeus, Pegasus, and Watchtower. I have Watchtower documents heavily redacted by the agency. I was personally exposed to CIA operations and recruited by CIA personnel who attempted to recruit me in the late 70s to become involved in protecting agency drug operations in this country. I have been trying to get this out for 18 years, and I have the evidence.

My question for you is very specific, sir. If, in the course of the IG's investigations and Fred Hitz's work, you come across evidence of severely criminal activity... Let him speak in his mind. And it's classified. Will you use that classification to hide the criminal activity, or will you tell the American people the truth? Yeah, it's pretty intense. Yeah.

You know, he went through a lot with this and with many other things and just decided at one point in time he's suffering too much and took his own life. Oh, man. It's really intense. And, you know, I try not to be a cynic. I mean, I'm, you know, a pretty open-minded, you know, and hopeful guy. But with what we're kind of moving in towards with the next administration, I just— You know about what's going on in the Philippines with that drug, the crazy

drug policy. And what, Trump called him when he was president-elect? Yeah. They spoke and he took congratulate him for winning. For killing people? Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah.

And I guess Trump said on the call that he was, congratulations on this drug policy. It seems to be working. Oh my God. Yeah. He's just assassinating people. Yeah. They're just assassinating people. They're just killing people. He's talked pretty openly about it, how he's just assassinating drug dealers. They're just killing drugs.

And addicts and users. They're just killing drug addicts. That is the. That's something that happens when you have so many people in one area. I mean, the Philippines is thousands of islands for people who don't know, and they're just jammed up with people. And I think when you have a lot of crime and you have a lot of people,

you tend to value those people less. And it just becomes, especially when you're a dictator, I mean, essentially, that guy's a dictator. Yes, he is. I mean, whether he's elected or not, what he's doing is barbaric. Yeah, yeah.

He's fucking assassinating people. You value people less just based on kind of economic, on class. It's kind of a class struggle. A class struggle and also just the sheer volume of them. They're not as valuable. Right. It's like Norway, a smaller population of people.

I think you just value the people more. I don't know why I use Norway as an example. Yeah, but no, it's a good, I mean, all the Scandinavian countries are good. Did you see The House We Live In? What is that? The documentary, the war on drugs documentary. No, I didn't see that. Yeah, you did.

Was that about five years ago? Yeah, about four or five years ago. I've seen so many of those things. I can't remember them all anymore. There's so many of them now. It's a really good one and it basically like it comes up the the the final hypothesis is that the war on drugs it's a class war you know originally we thought it was a race war and it's still partially true you know that and um what's the guy um who uh the first drug czar from the uh the 40s and, I'm forgetting his name, Adelson or whatever,

but who, you know, he turned marijuana hysteria into a Mexican hysteria that they were bringing, and this was in the 30s and 40s, and created reefer madness. Then heroin was kind of pushed into the ghetto and it done in the Rick Ross. Harry Anslinger? Yes, thank you, yeah.

And then crack brought into the ghetto and stuff. But meth sort of becomes the exception because meth is primarily a white trailer park sort of trashy kind of thing. How racist of you. I know, how racist. That was politically incorrect. But it's true, though.

It's true. And so we kind of, we do have a class struggle. Well, even then, that's a class issue as well. I mean, it just happens to be Caucasians. Yeah. And, and, and so we kind of, we do have a class struggle. Well, even then that's a class issue as well. I mean, it just happens to be Caucasians. Yeah, exactly. Poor people who really get into the math.

Poor people. Disenfranchised. Disenfranchised, unspoke, unheard of. Yeah. No, I think it's definitely,

you could say that, that the war on drugs is a class war. It's all, but it's also like, where can they extract the money? Where can they get the money? Well, the DEA has to,

they have to keep people employed, you know, and the way to keep people employed is to justify their job the way to justify their job is to continue making arrests and show that you need to make arrests and so you have to have laws in place which is why you know that prison guards will will lobby to make sure that marijuana stays illegal and other drugs are strictly enforced that the policies are strictly enforced just so the policies are strictly enforced just so they can continue keeping their jobs. Right. Yeah, absolutely.

But when we still like what Obama, during the Obama administration, he did the, he took the crack cocaine versus powder cocaine, you know, the discrepancies from what, 20 to one and he got it down to whatever it is, eight to one or something. It's still ridiculous. It's still insane. It's still insane. It's the same drug. It's the same drug.

Yeah. But it's, it's purely based on class and race, you know? Yeah. And, and that is just, I mean that, I mean,

clearly now, you know, as we've seen it and as the rhetoric that's been going on the last year during the election cycle, it's a much bigger problem than we thought it was. I mean, I always knew, we always knew that this was a problem, race and class and stuff.

But now straight, you know, out on the table, all the chips on black and, you know, everybody's, you know. One of the things that I feel that's troubling about this election is that a lot of racists, like my friend Alonzo Bowden had a great quote. He said, not all Trump supporters are racist, but all racists are Trump supporters. That's right. It's like the Bill Maher quote about Republicans. What did he say?

Not all Republicans are racist, but all racists are Republicans. Oh, that's not true, though. There's a lot of racist Democrats. That's a bad quote. That's a terrible quote. I mean, maybe there was racists that voted for Hillary, sure.

Yeah, I know. But it's true about... It's more fun than it is real, you know, as a quote. But it seems like they're out in the public now. They're out in the open. I mean, I've seen so many videos of people that are Trump supporters that are using the fact that Trump's in office now to say a bunch of real, really

disgusting racist shit. To go crazy. Yeah. And they kind of got a hall pass, you know? That's what, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah. I mean, it was like, obviously, you know, I know people as you do who voted for Trump. Sadly, I do, but whatever, you know, and not all Trump supporters are uneducated, racist,

sort of whatever. Yeah, some people did it for the economics. Some people did it for the economics thing. But the fact that they gave those other people a hall pass to act like that and just wait, you know, troubling, really troubling. Well, it's going to be interesting to see this Jeff Sessions guy, what he decides to do. Because the attorney general elect, that guy that's coming in, is that what you say about him? Attorney general elect, like a president elect, you call him that? Yes.

So he's a staunch marijuana hater. He's a fucking dyed in the wool, marijuana is for bad people kind of guy. Yeah. Just got to get that guy high. That's all we have to do. I mean, I know he's probably 80. Yeah. But it's not too late. Just get him we have to do. I mean, I know he's probably 80 Yeah, it's not too late Get him just give him a little hit don't fuck him up. Just give him a little and

Yeah, just a little just I'm with you and Come on dude, you'll be fine relax. Let's go sit in the grass look up this guy. Does it look different? Clouds you ever looking them that way and that's a thin layer of gas. It separates. Look at the sky. Does it look different? Look at the clouds. You ever look at them that way? That's a thin layer of gas. It separates us from infinity. What's your favorite music, man? Come on. Do you like Pink Floyd?

You like Pink Floyd? What'd you grow up on? Put these headphones on, dude. You like the Beatles. I'm sure you like the Beatles, right? Everyone does. He might not. He might be one of those weird John Ashcroft guys that's really into gospel music.

Oh, yeah. And you remember that John Ashcroft song? Yes. About the flies or whatever it was. Let the eagle soar like she's never soared before. I think he was one of the scariest guys that ever attained any sort of office or had any sort of power. Dude, Ashcroft, you remember, what state was he from? Missouri, maybe.

I think he was from Missouri. I don't know. He lost the election for the governorship to a dead man. Did he? Yes. That's how much people didn't like him? A dead guy beat him. And then Bush appoints him to be Attorney General.

Do you remember when he put coverings over the naked statues? Yes. He covered up the boobs in the rotunda. He was so disturbed by their nakedness. Well, we survived that. Barely. I mean, we went to a war that's still going on because of that asshole

and the other assholes that are in that administration. I mean, that administration was a dark, dark moment of despair. These alleged weapons of mass destruction that never existed, you know, all of it. And now Trump is talking to Karl Rove again. Oh, not to Dick Cheney. He's talking to Dick Cheney.

Dick Cheney's fucking putting on his Darth Vader mask again. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Yeah.

We should use this moment to say rest in peace, Carrie Fisher. Yeah. That was a hard one. Fuck man. 60. She was only 60. I know. Did she have a a drug problem did she have an alcohol problem not current but she used to yeah was it was a pill thing i had pills and coke and but yeah she was uh i think she was sober and aas yeah best i

understand the problem is the damage those goddamn thing that they do to your cardiovascular system oh my god yeah she's so devastating no she lived hard she lived hard and i think suffered a lot of yeah physical problems as a result so sad 60 oh my god and george michael 53 that was even sadder but you gotta think that he probably went out in a wave of dicks just a tsunami of them. He probably was just exhausted from orgies. Somehow I just feel like he squeezed in a lot of life in 53 years. I think he did too. No pun intended.

Or pun intended, exactly. George. Yeah, but with guys like that, I often wonder, with being a songwriter or a hit maker, is it better to have had one hit or a few hits and then completely fade away? Not that he faded away into obscurity. Maybe he's not a good example. Or to not have it at all. Because I think George did kind of carry with him that like he was no longer current sort of thing.

Yeah, that's a weird thing where someone's not famous anymore. They're kind of a joke. Whereas a regular person is not a joke. Like here's an example. Do you remember when Gary Coleman was a security guard? Yeah, of course. He had to get a job. And it was a real problem because Gary Coleman was just trying to do his job and just trying to get paid so he can eat.

He was just trying to feed himself like all the rest of us. And people would come up to him and take pictures of him and mock him, and they would use him as a joke. But you don't use a regular security guard as a joke. If you see a regular security guard, you're like, what's up, man? How you doing? Yeah, I'm going to go to this building right here. I can see your ID.

Cool. Everything's fine. You don't say, ah, you're a fucking security guard. Look at you. But because he used to be something greater you know yeah yeah there's a poor gary coleman when he was a security guard yeah that's so troubling and it kind of really plays into the whole idea of fame and perversion in america and the things that we hold dear the things that are valuable to us kind of the American,

the disillusion of American values, which I think that's the rise of Trump to me. It's a values thing. I had a guy give me a hard time once about not, about Fear Factor being canceled. And he was a fucking, a couch here at CVS. He was working at CVS.

He's like, what happened to his show? And I said, it was canceled. He goes, no more show huh like all attitude I'm like dude shows go away they go on and they get cancelled

he was like shitting on me but he was like he was being aggressive about it it was like so weird what a just bizarre detachment from reality you're working at fucking CVS dude like I'm not giving you a hard time about being a CVS guy. Right. But if I was the guy from Fear Factor and then I was a CVS guy, how bad would you shit on me then?

Because I'm just coming in as a guy buying some cough drops. That's right. Like, what a weird thing that we have, this need to, when someone attains a very high status and then falls off of that, what we think, you know, we think they're down. We want to attack. It's like an animal thing. But in your case, best thing that ever happened to you. Yeah, I mean, I don't think he knew, you know. He probably didn't know that I had a stand-up career,

that I was doing the UFC or anything. He was just like, oh, you're fucking losing now, huh? What is your show? It was like this crazy accent, all aggressive. I was like, all right, dude. Yeah. But it was so blatant, it was confusing. I was like, all right, dude. Like that is so, it was like, but it was so blatant. It was confusing.

I was like, am I being punked? Yeah. And, and, and the idea of like, uh, uh, you know, winning. Yeah. Just that idea. You got to win, man. Like win. Whatever that means.

That's the Trump thing. That's the Trump thing. That's the Trump thing that's really disturbing is that, that winning thing. Got to win. Got to win. Got to win. And not this lack of perspective. I mean, he's fucking 70, man. There ain't a lot of time left, bro.

I mean, if you're super lucky, you got 20 summers left. If you're super lucky, if everything goes great. And he's not that healthy. No. He's fat. He's fat. His chin just has like a very sloping slab of skin that's loosely attached to his neck that goes down to his collarbone. He doesn't look like a healthy 70-year-old.

Yeah, I don't think so either. Sylvester Stallone is older than him. That's a good piece of – Yeah, there you go. To put it in perspective. Or Sean Connery. Yeah. Both of them, right?

They're both older than him. Yeah, but that whole idea, it's just that destruction of sort of like the things that we have instilled as being an important, like you've got to have a winning temperament. I'm going to make America win again. Why is that the most important sort of attribute for someone to attain to? What does that even mean, win? And it's so attached to like a financial thing. Right. Like what kind of value system is that?

Like are there ways to quote unquote win? It doesn't have to be tied to money well the problem is it becomes attractive you know when you see someone who has a slick back hair and a private jet and he takes a photo with his expensive gucci shoes on his private jet and it's on his instagram and then he's you know that all stuff becomes very attractive and then people aspire to that and then you know you get that gordon gecko greed is good thing. Yeah, you're right. Greed is good. But also like that level of aspiration, first of all, it's pretty much not attainable.

I mean. Well, it's attainable. Yeah. But one, what, to private jet rich? I mean, that is. Some people can do it. They obviously have private jets. That is the 1% of the 1% of the 1%.

I mean, that level. Right. Like the people who are following those people on Instagram. Instagram. Instagram. Okay, Grandpa. Oh, you fucking kids in the Instagram. On that series of tubes.

It's a series of tubes. God damn it. Right? The Facebook. But, I mean, if you're trying, you know, you want to climb a mountain, you want to climb Everest. If you want to be the Gordon Gekko guy, you want to climb a mountain, you want to climb Everest. If you want to be the Gordon Gekko guy, you want a private jet and a slick back hair. But it never ends.

It does never end. It never ends. Well, that's what's weird when you see the really, really, really rich guys who are still smashing and just every day trying to attain new. And we always assume they achieve enlightenment. It's like this idea that, like, well, he's got $50 billion. Why doesn't he just retire? They never fucking retire. Do you read Steve Jobs' last words? Have you ever read that?

No. What did he say? You might want to bring that up, Jamie. It's really, really fucking cool. It's like he's, it's his last whatever. I mean, maybe not the last word he said to his wife or something, but it's kind of his last cohesive thought was like, look, I'm, you know, many people in the world views me as completely successful. And I've achieved so much in business. But, you know, my personal life and everything that he was lacking, you know.

So he was just sort of coming clean about the imbalance of it all. He was kind of coming clean about the, you know, the levels of discontent and the path of the heart, the path of the soul, the path of the spirit. Because he was essentially, you know, a spiritual guy and, you know, was a meditator, was a practitioner of Zen and into, you know, Neem Karoli Baba and all sorts of things. But he got just so wrapped up in this vicious sort of cycle of having to produce product, product, product. And, you know, Apple essentially in in his words you know he made it into it was a product company and that's how we defined it you know and not even an idea

company it was a product company and then products are based on having to have the latest version of the product over and over and over again and he just got wrapped up and kind of lost his soul isn't it interesting that like bill uh bill gates Gates and Steve Jobs are like the two competitors that we always thought of? And Bill Gates was thought to be the business guy who's the cold, hard. And he was. And he was. In a lot of ways, sure. Back in the day, yeah.

But if you look at him in his older years, he became very charitable, involved in a bunch of humanitarian efforts and does a lot of amazing work and is using his substantial wealth for a lot of good and doesn't work anymore. He's just, he's done with all that. He's all just doing humanitarian work and helping people, which is kind of beautiful. And he became, you know, this different guy as he got older, he became wiser and became much more involved in doing good and trying to help and trying to use that immense amount of money that he acquired by being a ruthless sort of business gangster, but doing it for good, which is kind of really fascinating that he decided, Hey, I'm going to step back here. I'm

going to set, set back and think about what I'm doing and what's really important to me in this last stage of life. And that's, uh, you know karma yoga that's what karma yoga is you know about the um uh you know what a sadhu is the path of the sadhu in in india like traditionally the path of the sadhu um you know kind of historically and traditionally it's um you know the sadhu grows up is born in india and is raised into education and then to become a householder householdholder meaning getting married and has kids. Works, has career, provides for the kids. And then in the last third of his life becomes a sadhu. Drops all of it.

Walks away. Kids are grown up. Out of the house. Kind of leaves of his wife, which is kind of a... Bummer for her. Bummer for her, but kind of a concept. Maybe she was annoying. Maybe. Maybe she wanted to keep buying purses and shit. And he's like, no, we have to meditate. No, I'm shopping. bummer for her bummer for her but in kind of a concept maybe she was annoying maybe

maybe she wanted to keep buying purses and shit and he's like no we have to meditate no I'm shopping online but then he takes off and he becomes

a wandering mendicant in India and that's the path of the sadhu it's kind of broken into different phases I don't know if that's the right way

to do it either oh I don't know but it's fascinating it's an interesting it's an interesting way of looking at it that, okay, you've achieved a lot,

you've accumulated a lot, and now I can go be of service. Well, being of service is always a great idea. Wasn't it, the Sadhus are really into hash, right?

Isn't that the big thing? How many chillums you can smoke? It depends what lineage you belong to. I've sat with some of them and the Nagababas and at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad.

I've sat with them. It's wild, man. It is amazing how when people discuss religion, if they discuss Hinduism or the Sikhs or any of the various strains of religions that are inexorably connected to psychedelics, those psychedelics are rarely discussed. You know, I mean, if you go and you read like the Vimanas or read any of the ancient Hindu texts, there's so many references to Soma and so many references to what is obviously some sort of a psychoactive substance.

You know, but when people talk about like Hinduism and that doesn't hardly ever comes up. You talk about yogis and sadhus, it hardly ever comes up. In the modern sort of take on it, because there have been, there's kind of a revival of, within Hinduism of kind of an orthodox version of it,

which is, you know, intoxicant free. And that's sort of, that's kind of an orthodox version of it which is you know intoxicant free and that's sort of that's kind of a modern revival within the hindu tradition you know so they've kind of pushed that aside but yeah i mean you know what bong is the it's the it's like a yeah the powdery pot thing that you just kind of you know you swallow some of it yeah how does that what is that stuff made with it's um you take like the leaves and you grind up the leaves into like a fine powder. Then there's some kind of cooking process. But within just the leaves, the shake, all the scraps is enough. And you can extract the THC in some kind of cooking process.

And you make it into a fine powder and just throw it down. Throw it down and it gets you pretty toasty. Yeah. Well, I know that they're also into the crystals, and they take the crystals and mash them up and sort of make like kind of a hash out of the scrape from the THC crystals. What is that called?

I know what you're talking about. Yeah, we both know. Some sort of a mushy, sort of waxy type jazz. They take that. Yeah. But, I mean, again, back to the original thread of our conversation. It's like every tradition has some kind of sacrament, a mind-altering sacrament. Vedic text.

All these different. I mean, look, they had to be. They obviously were aware of these substances. If they found these substances, there was no science back then. There was no real understanding of what's going on in the world, no real understanding of your body. But there was this access to this stuff. Hey, man, you see those things that are growing on that cow shit? If you take that, you will meet God.

And then people did it and did meet God. They're like, holy shit, you're telling the truth. Like there is like everybody wants, like if you think about religions, if you think about the stories that people tell of the wise men and their, you know, the experience, the burning bush and God gives them the 10 commandments and all these different things that happen, they're all sort of beautiful stories, but your everyday life experience is so flat and fucking boring. And then you do take these things. You go, well, this is just going to be just like everything else,

just flat and boring and bullshit. And you take those mushrooms that you pluck off that cow shit, and all of a sudden it's exposed to you in some grand way and then your whole life becomes about worshiping that i mean that's mckenna always argued that um the all the ancient cattle worshiping um religions and cattle worshiping civilizations like chak tal hiuk and all these really old, old cultures, that that's what it was all about, that these people had found out that cows grow mushrooms on their shit and that they weren't able to differentiate between,

they thought it was coming out of the cow's body. The cow would shit it out and they didn't understand spores. So they thought it was inside the cow and it would grow in the shed. And that was your, your portal to God. Wow. Wow. But you rarely hear that discussed. I mean, you always hear it discussed in terms of like an agricultural resource. That's why they worship the cows. And you know, that, and that just makes me think it goes back to that, you know, and

I'm someone of a very spiritual person and have a practice and all that kind of stuff. But like that just brings up the question to me is like did we invent god as a result of those experiences kind of like this is a good chris ryan thing if he was here you know kind of like in the hunter-gatherer kind of tribal you know when we were just starting starting to learn to depict our experiences and talk about our experiences and creating like an oral history and sort of like the first kind of existential dilemmas and which many say came from you know psychedelic awareness from back in those days so is that what led to the creation of god and you know and to me it doesn't make a difference being a believer of god i don't really care if it's real or myth or not it just it works for me but it does bank it almost doesn't

matter it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if it benefits you to believe in it it benefits you people ask me that all the time like oh my god you actually believe in flying monkeys and a blue guy playing a flute in the fields i've seen flying monkeys those people don't know shit those people talking shit i've seen jokers giving me the finger. They're spinning in geometric patterns that were infinite. I've seen a lot of shit that's way more ridiculous than a guy with a harp. And not only have you seen it and have I seen it, but I can tell everybody listening how to see it. Yeah, you can see it.

If you have the courage and the substances, you can see it. Yes, you can. And it works on everybody. Except I think DMT apparently doesn't work on everybody. There's like one out of a thousand where it literally doesn't do shit. Oh, really? Jamie doesn't get high off of edibles.

This fucking freak over here. He'd give Jamie a super powerful edible and barely does a goddamn thing to him. Yeah, it took like 1,200 milligrams before a concert and drove home two hours later. Jesus, man. Jesus, because the edibles today in my he's a freak it's a goddamn alien working the controls over there i mean for the first time in my life i feel like kind of finally like an old hippie like oh my god the edibles when i was a kid yeah it's not like that today man man. No. That shit's insane. These fucking things. This is a Jumbo Spray.

I took 10 hits of this before, maybe 12, I forget, before a Sam Harris podcast. I was skiing downhill straight. I wasn't crashing, but I was figuring out how to barely stay up the entire conversation. I'm like, what in the fuck have I done? I was so high. It was probably as high as I've ever been in my life. Was that the last Sam Harris podcast? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The long one. But Sam is a perfect guy to be that baked with because all you have to do is just wind him up and say something. And he's so eloquent that he could just continue to go on these amazing. As long as you just keep up with what he's saying. So you have good questions. He is. But I i and i that's all due respect to sam and i do think he is smarter than me in terms of iq but i do think he uses that intelligence to kind of kind of shuck and jive you a little bit shuck and jive how so well i'm not like i mean he's so smart and so articulate and obviously brilliant um and i've mad respect for him but i just don't think he's so smart and so articulate and obviously brilliant. And I have mad respect for him, but I just don't think he's right.

About what? Well, let's take Islam, for example. I mean, there's just so many things. But, I mean, Islam and it's sort of like the right to sort of like prepare for violence and kind of self-defense. I don't really agree with that philosophy. and kind of self-defense. I don't really agree with that philosophy. And I just, I don't agree with it because I think if you,

it just invites the consciousness into your head to where you are going to have to use it. That's interesting. Like the idea that self-defense and preparing for something sets up the stage to make something happen. Different than say getting in the octagon and the MMA stuff. Well, that's a competition thing.

That's a competition, yeah. But you think maybe a guy walks around with a gun and a knife and a bulletproof vest. I think it invites the consciousness into the atmosphere, and it creates the energetic cycle of having to use that. And then Sam kind of throws out those statistics that, well, it's about the same odds as having a car crash as you are going to experience some kind of act of violence in your life where you will need to learn how to, I don't know, do something, self-defend yourself. And I just, I don't, maybe you can throw out that math to me. And I think it depends on certain socioeconomic conditions but

i just don't think that's true i just don't want that consciousness in my life and i don't think we should we need to dissolve that consciousness well i certainly think you're free to not have those thoughts in your head and to choose to take the path of love and acceptance and just passivity and move through this life. But the reality of human beings is like, I've been unfortunately watching some videos online. I watched this video today of a guy kicking some lady down the stairs for no reason. He was behind her and then they're looking out for it. They're trying to find him in the UK. They've got photos of him, but he just, she was walking in front of them. Uh, don't go on the stairs. And he walked up

behind her and just, just a random person kicked her down this flight of stairs, and she's horribly injured. And I've seen a bunch of those, and things do happen. You can run into the wrong people. Yes, they do. They do.

Have you, you know, Steven Pinker, Petal's Angels. Sure, yeah. You know, we are, and yes, those things happen, and look around the world today and flip on the news, and it's highly disturbing, but we are. And yes, those things happen and look around the world today and flip on the news and it's highly disturbing. But we are living in the most peaceful time.

Amazing time. Of our existence. You know, if you were a 30 year old man in the year 1500, your most the highest cause of death was not disease or infection. It was an act of violence. Right. You were going to be raping and pillaging and you just had to defend your food supply for Kringle. And we have come to some kind of understanding, some kind of collective consciousness that has morphed itself together in the form of cooperation. We have to.

And there's so many of us now and it's getting more of us. The pen is getting smaller. We have to cooperate. I agree with you. But what do you do with those guys that kick women down flights of stairs like that? You, I mean, I guess there is some sort of form of, you know, I guess punishment. And we do have a, we live in a society where law and order is maybe a necessary evil. And I, you know, and I'm sure there's some kind of incarceration.

But ultimately, you've got to love them. You've got to have compassion for them. And you've got to just teach them with compassion that their action was wrong. Don't kick the lady down the stairs, man. Here's why you shouldn't do that. And I love you, and it's going to be okay. People right now are up in arms and want to kick your ass.

That's cool. There's a bunch of people right now in Nebraska that are like, this fucking hippie. Fucking Tim Leary. Fucking Leary's kid, this pussy. Kick his ass. Kick his ass, Seabass. But, you know, on a different, you know...

It's a beautiful thought. It is. It's Gandhi. There's some people that you can run into though, unfortunately. You're better off. It's like that expression about having thought it is it's gongy there is there's some people that you can run into though unfortunately you're better off it's like that expression about having a gun you're better off having it not needing it than needing it and not having it yeah i don't i don't agree so i get it i get it and i understand the argument do you know that about that guy who was uh was it in um i think it was in minnesota he was running around stabbing people.

And then some guy who was a concealed carry permit holder pulled out his gun, shot the guy, and killed him. And it was one of those things that people point to. Like, hey, this guy was a competition shooter, concealed carry permit. And he saved people's lives because this guy was killing a bunch of people. Yeah, but those case studies compared to the case studies that go wrong, I don't know what they are. I don't have the metrics, but I bet they're, what, 10 to 1, 20 to 1? Sure, because it's way easier to get a gun, just to go and get a gun, than it is to become a competitive shooter. Like what that guy was was the rarest of the rare. Someone who's not just competent with a firearm, but an expert level.

Here he is, man who shot Crossroads Mall Terrace's USPSA competitor three-gun shooter. Yeah, so this guy is just a badass gun carrier. And that's fine, but that is the rarest exception. I'm positive of it. Right, but it is real, right? Sure. It's real. It can happen.

So he was right. So his thought was one day, if I am carrying a gun, I'll be able to save people's lives. That's fine. And protect myself. Okay, I get that. But the hundreds of others that go along that are just somehow there's so many loopholes in the system of crazy people who get guns and go to Sandy Hook. Well, that's a terrible example. But it's not worth it.

And those are illegally acquired guns. Yes. That's a gun that was acquired by a person who was mentally ill and his parents didn't protect the guns. Yeah, that's a different story. But yeah, you're right. I just think that the risk versus reward, it's just far too unbalanced. Well, it's definitely the ability to shoot someone and kill someone by pulling that little tiny muscle on your finger is kind of crazy.

I mean, it's the amount of power that you have in doing so. It's a glitch in the matrix. I mean, I hate using matrix analogies, but it's a glitch in the matrix, man. And it just, it plays into kind of every fallacy of the human condition, you know? And it's like, why, how did we let that happen? How did we make it so easy to take someone else's life? So what do you, if say, if I make Zach Leary, the president of the United States, does the, does Zach Leary say no more military? Does Zach Leary say police officers can't have guns. We all need love. Everybody gets their guns taken

away. Like, what do you, how do you deal with everything? Yeah, man. I mean, and it's not something that you can just do. Yeah. It's not something you can just do overnight. I'm not, I'm not, you know, naive enough or, you know, stoned enough or meditate enough to think that that is. Maybe we should get high. I mean, rethink it, but in a different way. And there are already 300 million guns in America. I think there's more i think there are more guns in america than there are human beings and here's what's crazy it's not like we're like well we're good no we're fucking making guns like crazy people are as we're sitting here they're chunk chunk chunk machines are churning out guns but yes exactly who becomes president i know it's highly unpopular and people will get

pissed at me but we stop the sale of all and unless you have a very specific kind of uk style hunting exceptions do you eat meat i do you do i do i didn't for a while but i do again why'd you start again um i got sick um not from not eating meat. I just had this terrible flu, and it was just really, really sick. And just like, you know, not a cold. I mean, it was like, ugh, terrible flu. And all I could think about was I wanted a turkey sandwich. Whoa. Fuck turkeys, huh?

And I was like, fuck it. And I had a turkey sandwich, and I felt better, and I never went back. Wow. And you eat everything? Burgers? Everything? The whole deal? Yeah and I never went back. Wow. Eat everything? Burgers? Everything? The whole deal? Yeah, I kind of do.

Do you eat factory-farmed food? I really, really, really, really try not to. But you do. I do. I mean, I can't say that I don't, but I don't, I mean, in the most dire emergency. I give you super hungry? If I'm super hungry. You know where I do?

It's not like you're dying, right? No, you know where I do? And I have to to it's kind of a a loose way in the airport yeah i'm in the airport and i'm just like i'm whatever i always get to the airport way too early because i just i like being in the airport early i like to be in that it's like a neutral zone between there and here and just i love. I love hanging out in the airport. And I get there, I'm hungry, and I give in. I'm like, fuck, man. I used to fuck up at the airport all the time with blueberry muffins and chocolate croissants.

That was my shit. Yeah, I'm a sucker for the Egg McMuffin. Those are good, too. Those are good. They taste good. That's not the worst thing in the world for you, quite honestly. No, it's not. Except for the ham. It's definitely factory farm. Yeah, it's not the worst thing in the world for you, quite honestly. No, it's not. Except for the ham.

It's definitely factory farm. Yeah, it's not the worst thing in the world for you, but McDonald's is the devil. But what am I going to do? I do the best I can. I really do. Yeah, it's a weird world. Well, a lot of vegans would disagree with that. They would say, well, you're definitely not doing the best you can if you're out there eating egg muffins.

That's true. That's not the best you can. That's true. Fair enough. Oh, God. No. That's not the best you can. That's true. Fair enough. Oh, God, no. Vegans and I argue a lot. Do they? Do you? Yeah, I argue with vegans a lot. What do you argue about? On the social

media. Well, and it's weird because kind of philosophically, I'm on their side. Philosophically, but not in practice. I just, it doesn't feel I'm not quite ready for that. I'm just their side. I'm with you. Philosophically, but not in practice. I just, it doesn't feel, I'm not quite ready for that. And I have to admit, I'm just not, you know, I am where I am. But what I argue with them about is, and it's a constant social media argument, is that we are omnivores.

We are. Yeah, we definitely are omnivores. We eat what's around us. We always have. There's a way that you can eat cruelty-free meat, but there's not a way where you could have cruelty-free mass consumption. The real problem is cities. Like, you know, unless you have a co-op where you guys are growing your own eggs. What was the second part?

Sorry, I didn't understand. It's not you can eat cruelty-free, but you can't what? In a mass consumption environment, like seven million people living in Manhattan like good luck getting cruelty-free meat to all seven million people cows per se inside that area you know it's just you have to bring it I mean what we've done over the last 150 years is move completely away from agriculture in in these cities and and drive things in in trucks have you ever seen some of the old models of what they were the way from agriculture in these cities and drive things in in trucks. Have you ever seen some of the old models of what they were, the way when they were planning cities, like in the early 1800s when they were designing New York and a couple

other cities? They had set up areas for agriculture, areas for livestock, and they had them in cities. And so they didn't have this notion that we have now that everything would be driven in in trucks because they didn't have trucks. So when they had cities in the 1700s and later, there was no way to get all that food to millions and millions of people. So they literally had to grow stuff in cities, which is a way better way to do it. Yeah. And Michael Pollan, if you've read any of his stuff. Omnivore's Dilemma.

Yeah, yeah. He's great. He's also getting into psychedelics now, which is pretty cool. Just recently? Yeah. Really? He's doing some really interesting research. Who's the wonderful person who popped him into the Matrix?

I don't know, but I'm in touch with him and going to do a podcast with him. Oh, that's great. We'll figure it out. But, yeah, I mean, his whole kind of, you know, in the Omnivore's Dilemma and some of those other books, like the biggest problem with our food supply is that we have lost our connection to how food got there. Yeah. Up until 100, maybe 120, at the turn of the century, the 19th and the 20th century, everybody had a relationship with their food. They knew you went to the produce person it didn't come

on the shelf in a box right you know you had you knew where it was sourced and you it was kind of and if you ate meat you kind of you saw the bloodiness and you just saw like even if you didn't kill it and slaughter it and butcher it you you knew you know it wasn't this pre-packaged thing that just comes from magic the bacon fairy you know right and that that's our problem right food comes from your shelf nobody understands i think there's a giant disconnect with and it's it's so many people the problem is like it used to be that a few people were disconnected and most people were connected and now it's completely turned on its head and when you have 20 million people in los angeles and what percentage of the 20 million people in Los Angeles acquire their own food from either growing plants or hunting their food?

Like no one. Almost none. Like 0.111, whatever. It's kind of crazy when you consider that it's an essential part of being a person is consuming food. But there's also this beautiful feeling that you get, and vegans have this feeling as well, when you grow your own food. You grow food in a garden, and you pick your salad, and you cut up your cucumbers. This all came from the ground right out there. But there was a really interesting article that was written by a vegan that was essentially saying there are no vegetarians,

and that the only way is it is actually impossible to be a vegetarian not not meaning that it's impossible for you to live and eat vegetables but those vegetables need dead animals in order to be alive and that animals are consumed by plants and that is what fertilizer is all about and whether or not it's the fertilizer is just the poop no no no there's a lot of it is actual decaying matter and in order to be healthy in particular like what we're doing most of you know about fritz hopper do you know what the hopper method is don't know in uh during world war one there was this uh german scientist named fritz hopper and he came up with the hoper method of extracting nitrogen from the air.

Most people think of the air as being oxygen, right? But air is 78%, I think, nitrogen. Right. And you can extract that nitrogen from the air and use it as fertilizer. And so because of Fritz Haber, they have been able to extract this nitrogen and use it to fertilize plants because before they'd use like emulsified fish and you know and fish was like a big one like dead fish and fish bones and things along those lines because that is when it decays and breaks

down that is the food for these plants okay so what would a, why would the vegans oppose this in the sense that like. I don't think they're opposing it. They're not, okay. No, I think it's just what, I mean, he wrote it. The guy who wrote it was a vegan. But essentially he was saying that there's this massive cycle of life. And he even pointed to Michael Pollan's work. Because Pollan has written about the emerging science of sentient plant life and that he believes that what's going on with plants is very similar to what's going on with like maybe our understanding of a lot of different things.

It's like as our understanding expands, we have to sort of reclassify what we think those things are. Like for the longest time, they thought that fish couldn't feel pain. And that was, oh, don't worry about it. Fish can't feel pain. And now they're saying, well, we're pretty sure they can. We have a different understanding of what pain is to them. It might be a different sensation, but there's very clearly some alarms that are going off. There's very clearly some sort of a reaction.

Yeah. That same can be pointed out for plants. Like plants, not only do they have a reaction, but plants, when you play the sound of caterpillars chewing leaves, certain plants like the acacia tree has the ability, when it hears leaves being chewed, it changes the taste of the leaves. It extracts some sort of a chemical. And that chemical does something to the taste of the plants that makes them so inedible that some animals have starved to death

because upwind there were animals that were chewing plants. That sound came downwind through either smell or some sort of a communication thing that's going on with the mycelium and with the root structure. And the plants downwind had changed their taste and the animals wouldn't eat them anymore and they were starving. Wow, that's far out, man. That just kind of makes me think like what's going to be the next sort of like vegan movement,

maybe some kind of ayahuasca ceremony in the middle of a garden or an agricultural thing where we're listening and trying to make peace. We have to make peace with that everything needs everything else in order to make it. I think it's like a suffering and a respect thing. Well, I think it's like a suffering and a respect thing, right? Yes. And then you also have to consider if plants are sentient life forms, how fucked up is it to have these gigantic large-scale agricultural setups where you are completely unnaturally changing the landscape in order to grow corn or in order to grow lettuce or strawberries? Like, that is not normal. Like it's not normal to have 7,000 acres of corn. Right.

Like in just corn all in a neat row that you could see from space. And it's destroying the soil too. Yeah, completely. It's completely destroying the soil. But like with this idea of like having, you said, respect and pain, kind of getting into that idea. Like, do you think, and my opinion is results may vary and I'm not so sure, but if everybody had the data and saw the data about factory farming, for instance, that they would change and thus act accordingly and not eat that shit anymore. Definitely not everybody.

Some people don't give a fuck. I think some people just don't give a fuck. And those Gordon Gekko type dudes with the slick back hair that are like, fuck it, I'm here to win. Give me that burger. Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp. Well, I mean, I've thought about myself. I mean, I've seen every one of those movies.

I've read every book. It didn't work. I name my muffin from time to time and I'm like, what is wrong with me? Like, is there something? Am I a sociopath? What is that? Because it's easy to do. If somebody said, oh, you're hungry?

Why don't you shoot that pig in the head and cut off a leg and throw it on the smoker? Well, then you would have a real issue. You'd be like, I don't want to do that. Oh, okay. Well, why don't you pull those beets out of the ground? Well, if you put on these headphones, you can hear the beets scream for their parents. They're like, oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.

I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. But there's just something about plausible deniability that's kind of hardwired into us in all aspects of our life, not just food, but war and politics and money and greed and oil and everything that's, what it takes to get oil to this damn country

and everything that goes on to fill up our car. You know, I mean, oh, my God. Plausible deniability is definitely the way to look at it. Yeah. The extreme ability to detach ourselves from the consequences of our actions, you know, because it's convenient in the moment. That's right. Yeah.

And convenient in the moment to just buy that quarter pound or cheese, not think about it that it's a ground animal burger. That's right. Yeah. You know, and, you know, it's only going to cost me two bucks. Yeah. And you get it like that, which is kind of crazy. I mean, it really is amazing.

If it wasn't connected to such horrific crimes against nature, it's amazing. It's amazing. That you could just go. So, I mean, what an incredible system they've developed. And outside of food, just what, you know, the economic factors for how convenience equals pleasure equals like an economic value that is usually low, how that has all sort of worked together to kind of create this system that we're living in now. And we have this, again, this plausible deniability kind of hardwired thing to ignore it. Like Walmart's a great example. deniability kind of hardwired thing to ignore it.

Like Walmart's a great example. I mean, you know, the sort of this disenfranchised middle of the country, you know, and they did lose their jobs in that area of the country is decimated, but they all shop at Walmart. And that's part of what the problem is. But it's cheap. It's convenient. You're still going. And it's like, well, what's it going to be? You know, pick a horse.

What's interesting is that this is all really recent, right? I mean, this is all from the Industrial Revolution on. This is all this last couple of hundred years of civilization where we've sort of entered into this wage existence, you know, where people are living this way and buying this horrible fucking factory produced food and even more um recent that i mean yes it all can be traced back to post-industrial revolution stuff but even just like the massive hyper consumerism that's only like really taken off since the mid-90s yeah yeah there's a cool little movie out called The Minimalists. I mean, after a while, I kind of, you know, I got it and I didn't finish the whole thing. But the first hour is fascinating.

It's about these guys. They wrote a book called The Minimalists and about, you know, they were all kind of corporate ladder kind of American successful guys and just consuming, consuming, buying shit, buying shit, buying shit. And all of a sudden, they just kind of had the kind of big kind of cliched awakening like, oh my God, maybe I don't need all this shit. But the data that they present from what's happened in the mid-90s on sort of as a result of the internet boom with instant gratification, one-click shopping, and disassociation of

just the accumulation of stuff. And we live in bigger houses now than we've ever lived square footage wise they've never been so big before and yet um you know they've put all these heat maps on uh they did the study where they put heat maps on these homes to see where people were living in the homes hanging out and like the average family in like their huge kind of mansion or something only uses like 40% of the house. Yeah, that makes sense. And also has a self-storage unit to go with it somewhere else.

You know, it's just this endless kind of relationship we have with it. I watched Hoarders the other night. Oh, my. And there was some dude who bought two houses next to his house because he had so much shit that he had to move the shit to other houses. I was like, it was fucking crazy. Hoarders is gnarly. But this is a weird hoarder because it was a guy who had some money. Yeah, he bought two houses.

Yeah, it wasn't like a hoarder, like some poor person that was going to yard sales and buying used clothes and then putting them in bags in their house and stacking them up the ceiling with newspapers and stuff. This was a guy who had all these collectibles. And he was a neurosurgeon, which is really, really interesting. Interesting. Yeah, and he lives in Vegas. And he wanted to be known for his collection.

He had crazy stuff. Like he had. Yeah, what's he into? He had a lot of space memorabilia. Like he had a scale model of one of the challengers or one of the space shuttles, rather. He had one of the test lunar modules that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong apparently had used in testing and in preparation for the Apollo missions. And he had a bunch of crazy shit all over his house. But he had three houses filled with this stuff,

the courtyards and all around his pool was stacked up with shit. Oh, man. That's so insane. It's just, you know, escapism. This need to sort of like pacify our existence here. I just, you know, as we kind of evolve and kind of grow into the future, it just seems like so few people can truly be comfortable in their own skin and just be,

and be present and be comfortable and content contentness. Yeah. We're constantly inventing new ways to escape, to disassociate, to take, get out of the moment. What do you think that is? What do you think is so compelling to us about the constant accumulation of

material possessions and this whole greed is good sort of mentality and moving up the corporate ladder without any sort of appreciation or acceptance in the fact that we're these finite life forms clinging to a spinning orb hurling through infinity. All those inevitable and inescapable realities, I mean, we look at them every day. We look up. I mean, that look at them every day. We look up. I mean, that is undeniable that you are looking up as you leave your house and get to your car. You have infinity above your head. Yes, you do.

And you don't look at it. I mean, what's going on with us? I think we're born, this thing that we've kind of created, this construct that we call society, we're automatically born into a bad hand. And I think it's completely bogus. You're dealt a bad hand at birth. It doesn't even matter if you're born into privilege.

I mean, sure, that's great if you're born into privilege versus the slums of Mumbai. That's definitely better. Yeah, that's definitely better. I mean, of course, I'm not going to. If you're balling in Beverly Hills, that's way better than Liberia definitely better i mean of course i'm not gonna if you're balling in beverly hills i'm not gonna that's way better than liberia yeah i mean or syria you got a bethley convertible dude you're doing way better than someone in zaire with no feet no no question but like you know you're dealt this bad hand of like you know being alive is hard right you know you you're born you going to go into this building from ages.

What? When do you go to school? Ages four. Is that about right? Some people go to preschool at four. Kindergarten is five. First grade, six. From four to 18, you're going to go into this big cement building to be taught these certain subjects in this certain order.

And then you're going to leave that cement building and go to another one that's even more expensive. order and then you're going to leave that cement building and go to another one that's even more expensive and then you're going to leave that and you're going to get some kind of employment thing which exists pretty much from nine to five for most people unless you're fortunate or clever enough to kind of exist outside of that framework and create your own reality but most people are going to work some kind of structured life and i just i think it's hard I think it's just hard to be alive it definitely is well it's not harder than it's ever been it's easier than it's ever been right I mean it's it's more safe than it's ever been safer more access to information than ever before yes but you know why I think it is in some aspects it's harder because um well I yeah I don't

know if if that's true. Because back in the olden times, you did have to, you know, kind of compete against each other for survival. But I think it could be argued that it's harder because this constant sort of, you know, onslaught of media and comparing ourselves to each other and to feel insecure if you don't look like that, if you don't look like this, if't have that something's wrong with you if you can't afford to buy that you're not doing well you're fucking up man if you can't afford to buy that or if you don't look like that oh my god i'm sorry nobody's ever going to want to fuck you that's really sad no one's going to want to fuck you if you don't have the stuff that's awful you have to have all the stuff you gotta have all the stuff and it's a terrible thing to say to teach our our children, you know? Well, so I think it's hard to be alive. It is in a sense. It's very tricky. And it's also, I think we are being raised by babies.

I really do think that. What do you mean? Well, I have children and I kind of, I kind of get it now in a sense that before I had children, I used to think of people as being sort of static. Obviously, I was younger. And when you're, especially when you're real young, when you're like 20 or something like that, you don't really take into consideration that the people around you used to be your age. You kind of know it in an abstract sort of a sense.

But once you actually have a baby, and then like five years later, the baby's talking to you and you're having conversations, you're like, oh, you're fucking learning shit now. And then 10 years later, the baby's in high school and you're like, oh, Jesus Christ, you're almost a man. And then you realize that, oh, we're all babies who had babies and you raise those babies and then they become adults and have babies of their own. But no, there are no grownups. It's bullshit. It doesn't exist. Like when you're a kid and you're sad you go oh one day i'm gonna be a grown-up and all this is gonna make sense but it never that day never comes you you get older but you're a baby still you're just an old baby you're an old baby with a car

and fucking credit card debt and then you have a baby and then that baby grows up well i'm smarter than my dad he's a fucking idiot. And it's like, you know, my dad didn't know shit. He didn't even have the internet. It's so funny. And, you know, I think that's a, and I'm not the first to say it, but that's such a huge thing with Trump. He acts like a seven-year-old. Yeah.

It's like, what does a seven-year-old do? Like, you get your mug, Rogan. You know, you write your name all over fucking everything. Ha! That's so true. That's right. That's so true. That's so true. He puts his fucking name on everything. He's probably got it on his socks and his underwear on the band.

It probably says Trump. Oh, my God. Name my Trump underwear. Do you ever stay at a Trump hotel? Yes. Yeah. I did in New York. And you know the toilet paper, like the little sticker they put on?

It's in a Trump insignia on the damn toilet paper. Right. But it is called the Trump Hotel Trump Hotel I mean if you go to the Renaissance it says Renaissance on the way to but I do it's much much more ironic though with the Trump thing it's weird because it's a guy's name who's alive yeah now happens to be president well and he says it's about it's a symbol of quality around the world whatever that you see that but I'm card Trump card but I think it's bullshit I think he's just a seven-year-old who likes to write his name on all this shit well the evidence in is in how he tweets to people you know and he gets mad and tweets about shit and

responds to people and argues with people i mean you tweet on him no no i don't tweeted i hardly tweeted anybody you don't get into that shit i don't want to i definitely don't get into like those kind of tweet battles on the internet but i just think as i've gotten older and had some good experiences and bad experiences online yeah i've realized that you can like you were talking about like you go out and you seek bad things if you have this in your mind that you're going to go out and you're going to be attacked. So I'm going to wear a gun, I'm going to have a knife, I'm going to wear a bulletproof vest and all these different things. You can also seek negative interaction online.

You can go look for it. When you find it, you could react to it and that begets more of it. And I think that you're far better off just choosing the people that you interact with in actual real life. And then when I look at things online, I'm just observing. I very rarely interact. If I do, it's very friendly. And I limit myself almost entirely to friendly interactions. Cool. And anything that's negative, I just... You stay away. It's not worth it. There's nothing to be gained. If you get in an insult war with somebody and you make them feel bad, what do you get out of that?

Unless it's funny, what do you get out of that? Unless it's tongue-in-cheek and everybody's having a good time? Yeah. And also, what you can do in 140 characters is absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculous. It's insane. You can't get into a meaningful, thoughtful debate in 140 characters. No, but people seek it out.

They seek these debates out and they ask you what they think are hard-hitting questions. No, but people seek it out. They seek these debates out and they ask you like what they think are hard hitting questions. Like, go fuck yourself. I'm not getting involved in this 140 character thing. It's like, it's silly.

I'm just, the reason I asked because, you know, Duncan's starting to kind of tweet at Trump a little bit. Does he? What does he say?

Just kind of wacky shit like tweets at him. I'm going to be the minister of, you know, whatever. I don't know. Like, tweets at him. I'm going to be the minister of, you know, whatever. We got to find some of them. They're kind of funny. But because I think Trump, sometimes he does read his

tweets. Oh, he reads his tweets. I think he's reading his tweets. He reads his tweets. Yeah. He gets in there. I guarantee you he gets in there. You ever see the debate that he had back and forth with Jon Stewart? Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, that was fucking hilarious. Jon Stewart has put it into his act now. That's so funny.

He tweets him at 1.30 in the morning, little Jon Stewart is a pussy and would be hopeless in a debate with me. Like, can you imagine that he actually did that? This is the guy that's the president now. So great. But yeah, I mean, it says so much about the personality of someone.

And I don't get in Twitter wars because I don't really tweet all that much, but I get in Facebook wars. Do you? Yeah, I do. You get in Facebook wars? I do. And I'm just horribly impulsive about it. Horribly impulsive to a fault.

Like what kind of stuff do you get involved? You were saying you have issues with vegans. Is that where you get into it? Yeah. I mean, there's some vegan stuff. I mean, a lot of politics stuff. I mean, over the election cycle. And I'm, you know, a little quick on the trigger to like because you know with online so in social media

It's just you push a button and like, you know calling people morons and so right just far too quickly Yeah, we're taking a breath stepping back and go maybe I shouldn't call you a moron. That's probably not the best debate tactic Well, there's no benefit in it Even if you make them feel bad that they're a moron and you get your rocks off in some way. And I've done it. I absolutely have done it in the past. But I try very hard not to engage in that kind of thinking anymore because I don't think – all it does – It's not going to help.

It also – when you get into conflicts with people, negative conflicts create these centers of attention. And those conflicts become these centers of attention. And ultimately nothing happens in them. these centers of attention and those conflicts become these centers of attention and ultimately nothing happens in them they just sort of distract you like a little vortex of bullshit and I think and as I've gone older and started analyzing my own life and and happiness and productivity and when I'm at my most creative is when I'm not engaging in any of that. Like the least I am involved in the negativity and conflicts and debates and going back and forth and trying to make people feel bad and all that stupid shit that people get wrapped up in.

You fucking idiot. You know, all that kind of stupid stuff. The more, the least I do that, the more it frees up my resources and it frees up my mind. And I don't have this, like,

I think anytime you get in conflict, a contact conflict with someone, it creates like this negative center, this vortex, this weird area in your mind, in your consciousness where that conflict exists. It's on a shelf just stinking up the joint. And I think the least amount of those that you have in your consciousness, in your library of memories, the better off you are. Yeah. I tend to, I tend to agree with that. And I tend to feel that like, you know, especially, and it's for somebody of kind of my cloth, it's hyper hypocritical to, you know, attack somebody online, you know, over their political beliefs for sure. You know, being a spiritual person, but you know, at the same time, for sure. You know, being a spiritual person, but, you know, at the same time, like, especially now within the last year, this is a highly charged debate cycle. And I was, you know, convinced that, you know, how, how possible,

how could a cognitively kind of adept human being justify voting for Donald Trump? Like, it just didn't make sense to me. Well, how could one vote, justify voting for Hillary either? Oh, I can make that. Can you? Absolutely. Don't you think that there's a lot of issues involved with Hillary Clinton? First of all, Hillary said in the WikiLeaks documents that she was against marijuana legalization in every sense of the word.

I'm not pro-Hillary. The Clinton Foundation. I mean, there's a lot of things you could bring up. I'm not a Clinton flag-waving kind of guy, but comparing the two and however you look. So to me, Hillary Clinton was just status quo. Right, but isn't the status quo fucked up and really bad yes but the status quo is better than negative

this is going to be negative progress this is negative how certain are you that it's going to be negative progress absolutely certain I mean the Supreme Court alone I mean you know Ginsburg made the fatal flaw of not retiring sooner so I mean she's know, Ginsburg made the fatal flaw of not retiring sooner. So, I mean, she's, what, 180 years old.

How dare you? There's already one vacancy there. Well, she's on her vitamins, man. She's hanging there. She's not going to make it. And, you know, so Trump in one term could presumably have three appointees. Right. And that is negative progress.

But you know that he was a Democrat for almost all his life. I know, but he's not now, man. I mean, look, Steve Bannon and the CEO of Exxon, the CEO of Carl's Jr., Ben Carson and being the HUD guy. I mean, it's just, it's absolute insanity. Yeah. Why didn't he make Ben Carson the attorney general? Or rather the... Surgeon general. Surgeon general. I mean, why wouldn't he have him involved in something medical? I mean, he's a very talented neurosurgeon.

Because he was the African-American guy who grew up in the projects, man. So he should run HUD. Oh, how odd. That was the argument. Oh, okay. Yeah, that was it. Seems like he knows more about medicine, right? You would.

The guy's a doctor. You would think he did. He's a fucking medical who's a doctor. He's a fucking medical expert. And he's actually good at that. Yeah, he's fucking amazing at it. I mean, he's like one of the top neurosurgeons in the world. Right. So he grew up from the projects. African-American guy grew up out of there.

So he must know about housing and urban development. So it's just complete insanity to me. And it is taking two, three steps backwards. The only silver lining that you can weave from it, and it is, you know, it's a good thing to weave, is that there is kind of a collective consolidation of solidarity. Kind of like, hey, you know, we need to rise up, get our shit together, figure out how to articulate the opposite vision and perhaps defeat this later on down the line. And that's cool. People are waking up and there's great conversations happening. Well, I think there's an ebb and flow that always exists in cultures. You know, there's a push left and a push right. And we try this for eight years and then we go that way for eight years. And some of it's productive and some

of it's very negative. But even the negative ultimately, it, it, it fosters resistance and that resistance is oftentimes positive. And in, even in resistance, there's a lot of understanding the consequences of negativity that maybe wasn't really appreciated while you had like a progressive Democrat in office. But then there's, you know, there's things that Obama did that people are incredibly upset with in terms of whistleblowing. Whistleblowers were supposed to be cherished and he was going to help. I mean, that was part of the Hope and Change website when he was running for president.

Yes, it was. And then, of course, he's been one of the worst people in terms of freedom of press, in terms of whistleblowers. He's been one of the worst administrations ever. Guantanamo never closed. Drones, yeah. Drones, the drone wars. Yeah, all this stuff.

There's absolutely no doubt about it. But with sort of the ebbs and flows of progress versus no progress. And in this instance, in this context, it's just how many people are going to get hurt as a result of it. That's like, that's what I don't like. That's why it's not working. The lack of perspective that I think we have collectively as a culture, the lack of, I mean, what you were talking about, about these people living their lives solely intent on

acquiring material possessions and status and all the nonsense that goes with it. material possessions and status and all the nonsense that goes with it, how much of that can be attributed to the relative lack of exposure to psychedelics collectively that we have? If you looked at the entire 300 million people, you know how they do that red map and you see how many people are Republicans and how many people are Democrats and it looks like- It looks like the whole country. It looks like one of the avatar people got hit by a train. That's what it looks like, right? They got splattered. But when you, when you look at that, if you had a similar map in terms of like how many people have had what I would consider a breakthrough psychedelic experience,

I know some people that have done mushrooms and they did a little bit and they felt good and no big deal. And I i i had done quite a few things before my first real dmt trip and the first real real dmt trip was like okay everything else is bullshit like this awesome this is it's so awesome and so mind-blowing and just knowing that that's a real place that anyone can get to. That's right. Relatively easy. Not only that, this is not a precious material. This is a material that exists in thousands of different plants all over you, everywhere you go. Like every drive down the street, you'll find a fucking hundred different kinds of plants that have DMT in them. Wow.

So the DMT experience to me was, I would say, like, I'm really like two different people i'm the pre-dmt person and the post-dmt person i'm like i mean i'm real similar i talk the same but the the person the experiences they're so vastly different that i was exposed to a whole new infinite area of the spectrum that i didn't know existed before. I existed in this very small area. I thought there was like birth and death and love and sex and beer and, you know, fucking movies and what all the other things you enjoyed. Right. I didn't even know that was real. How many people out there like that? I mean, is there a million of us? I mean, is there even, is there even 2 million? I mean, how many people

out of the 300 and whatever million people in this country have had breakthrough psychedelic experiences? How many people did they say did LSD in the 60s? It's a good question. It changed the culture. Yeah, I don't know what the number is, but I mean... Too bad your dad's not around. He'd probably tell us. He'd probably tell us, yeah.

He was probably responsible for 40 or 50% of it, right? Right, but what was the number? It was... Yeah, and this is, to me, this is a fascinating case study for us to look at, is, you know, in the 60s, you know, millions and millions and millions of people did some kind of psychedelic, right? And if they didn't do a psychedelic, at least they, you know, smoked grass and put on certain peppers, at the very least. And, yeah, great things were born out of that. I mean, an argument could be made that if the 60s didn't happen and flourish and become

what it became, that you and I wouldn't be sitting here right now being able to talk about what we're talking about. I think that's a very good argument. I think, yeah. Right. But here we are, 2016 and Donald Trump is elected president. So last time we had a global kind of consciousness shift that was massive and, you know, really shook us all up. You know, I don't know.

Not enough happened. So it's like, what's it going to take next time? Okay, so let's get, you know, let's just say let's get 10% of the country to turn on. And for me, I kind of, I'm a little bit more elastic with it. And I think that can also be, you know, meditation. Sure. Or, or flotation tanks. Kundalini. Flotation tanks. Yeah. I'm not so hung up on. Holotropic breathing. Whatever. Yeah. The method isn't as important to me anymore, but like say get 10 to 20% of the people to do that, six, three, 6 million people, whatever it is, you know, then, you know, what is it going to change?

How are we going to integrate? And we were talking about this a couple hours ago. It's like the integration part. And I think perhaps that's what we lost in the 60s. We were so hung up on the veil getting pierced. And my dad's one of the best quotes is in order to understand the 60s, you must understand the 50s. Right. What a change. I mean, the 50s were just, you know, very lock and step and white picket fence, 2.5 children, car, you know, suit and tie, hair short.

Like there is no variation. And we burst that bubble. But, you know, the integration level, it just wasn't wasn't meaty enough. You know, we still we elected Richard Nixon in 1968. I mean, granted, Robert Kennedy was shot, but still, you know, and here we are 50 years later and look what we're doing. So, you know, it is great to turn on and I love people turning on and I think it's fantastic and it's a great thing to talk about and like you are, and it's, you know, you have a huge megaphone and getting people to do that, but what are they going to do different?

That's what I'm more concerned with. They're going to consider their life in a different way. And I think that in many people, maybe not in all of us, but in many people, that changes the direction of the path that you're on. It changes the way you communicate with people. It changes your understanding of each other and your understanding of the connections that we have with each other. Yes. I think there's a giant chunk of people that are what you would call influencers in this country, whether it's politicians or CEOs of large corporations. Podcasters. Well, I mean, I'm just going to say people that haven't had this experience.

Okay, yeah. These influencers that live in this very flat plane of existence of acquiring material possessions, getting your dick sucked, doing a lot of coke, driving in your limo, all the different shit that a lot of people look forward to that ultimately might not really be important. Yeah. Or important, it might feel important in the moment, you know, in this ego gratification sort of a way, but without that ego obliterating experience to put it all into perspective, you might not understand that that state of mind is even achievable.

Like the undeniable ego shattering experience of like a severe mushroom trip or a DMT trip or, you know, any, anything along those lines is so beneficial in that it gives you that momentary break from the ego and from this, the momentum of the race that you might not really want to be in. You know what I mean? There's a lot of people that are doing things they fucking hate all day long just in order to acquire shit that they don't really need. Yeah, man. And that's what I was like.

The point I was trying to make earlier is like this hand that you're dealt is bunk because you're like so many people are trapped in that thing of like doing something they hate. Right. But do they have to be like it sounds like they think they have to be. Right. They think they have to be. That's what I'm talking about. They think they have to be. But no, they don't.

They can break free. They can pier have to be. That's what I'm talking about. They think they have to be, but no, they don't. They can break free. They can pierce the veil. They can go on a DMT trip or get in a flotation tank and break free. No, you have the choice. Even just by quitting some fucking shitty job and doing something you love. Okay, but why don't more people do that? Because they're scared. Is that what it is?

Is it fear? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, people are afraid of change. They're afraid of the unknown. They're afraid of uncertainty. They're afraid of the unknown. They're afraid of uncertainty. They're afraid of failure for sure. If you offer them some really convenient, stupid job that is absolutely going to stay there for them or, hey, man, take a chance. Open a pottery studio.

Oh, I'm going to go broke. People are terrified of failure. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. But I also think there's a level of that that's also kind of like graduate school in the sense that maybe a lot of people are just addicted to being pacified. That like, you know, I get my three hours of television at night and I get my, you know, and just they're even considering that notion of what you're talking about beyond the realm. Well, you know that experience. Just keep me plugged in. I'm cool. You know that expression, the comfort zone is beautiful, but nothing grows there.

Oh, I didn't know that. It's a great, you know, it's nice to be comfortable. I'm cool. You know that expression, the comfort zone is beautiful, but nothing grows there? No, I didn't know that. It's a great, you know, it's nice to be comfortable. It's beautiful. Oh, relax. But you don't get better at anything. You don't get better at life. You don't grow. And we're scared of uncertainty.

You know, we want to survive. We don't want to starve to death. We don't want to be a failure. We don't want to be that guy that, you know know used to be on tv and now he's a security guard you know that all those things that like the fear of not being successful god man so stifling it oh god it so is and i just when you say that it just immediately just triggered my you know my own life and all the failures i've had all the fuck-ups falling flat on my face you know many many many times but like the getting back up, it's like, that's

where the work is. That's where the, that's where the awakening is. I mean, it wasn't like, Hey, everything's just going perfectly and no wise. And this is all my life is just rolling out on a red carpet. And I turned on or something happened and I, you know, touched the face of enlightenment. No, it's because I fell in the dirt and you take those risks and shit happens. And you, and you, the grist for the mill, as Ram Dass would say, and, you know, you have that grist for the mill that makes it so much juicier and falling, finding your face. It's essential. And I think you can apply that same sort of thinking to our entire civilization. And I think right now we might've skinned our knees. We might've fallen on our face. We might've gone face down in the mud and like, ah, fuck. And I think we've got

to get up and realize that we fucked it up, you know, and we'll see how bad we fucked it up. And who knows? Because one of the things about having an outsider in this, what I think is an impossibly corrupt, unfixable foundation filled with bullshit, which is what I think our an impossibly corrupt, unfixable foundation filled with bullshit, which is what I think our society is built on, whether it's special interest groups or corporate greed or lobbyists or all the chaos, private prisons and fucking the war on drugs, all the chaos that I think any rational person that's not connected to it in any sort of a way where you're making profit off of it would agree.

Like this is an insane way for an enlightened society to behave and act. It's broken. Right. Unfixable. Just bullshit. Right. The awareness of that is more and more exposed today online and in conversations. And people are more aware of that than any other time in human history but i feel like we're like a giant battleship it takes a lot to turn that

fucker it takes a lot of a lot of thinking and action it takes a long time for that thing to actually spin around yeah that's right that's right and the first you know the first step in that is like the acknowledgement that hey we skinned our knees or maybe fell flat face down into the mud or something and is the acknowledgement that that is the case that's the scenario we're in and which is why i'm always so frustrated in that like you know the general narrative or the general rhetoric especially in politics is you know wrong conversation's always being had. Nobody's talking about the right shit.

We're treating the symptom. We never treat the disease. We're just treating the flu, blowing our nose constantly and never, ever acknowledging the disease. Bernie Sanders touched on acknowledging the disease. He was the first guy, really in a long time, to make it that far and acknowledge the disease.

We are at risk of becoming an oligarchy. It's the top 1% that is ruling the country. He might be the first guy ever, right? I mean, if you really stop and think about it, who got that close to the Democratic nomination? Yeah. Other than McGovern. Yeah, but I mean, I think in older times, in the 19th century, there was kind of hints that this could happen. And kind of people insinuating, hey, the Industrial Revolution and Carnegie's and the Mellon's and the Rockefeller's.

Like, watch out. This could get dangerous. Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex. And he was a Republican. That was a creepy speech, right? A creepy speech, but fascinating at the same time. But yeah, so Bernie took it. He did talk about the disease, which was fantastic.

So it is out there that, you know, that we have these fundamental problems. Until you fix the fundamental problem, nothing else is going to get better, which is essentially taking the money out of the game. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, that's why I do think it's fixable. I disagree with you in that, that I do think the machine is fixable. How's it fixable?

You got to take the money out? That's unfixable. No, it's not. The whole thing runs on money. How are you going to take the money out? Have you read Republic Lost? The Lawrence Lessig book? No.

You got to read it, man. Fascinating. What is his solution? Or watch his 20 minute TED talk. You can get the whole book. Fascinating. What is his solution? Or watch his 20-minute TED Talk. You can get the whole book in that, too. What's his solution? Get rid of lobbyists. Yeah, man.

That's easier said than done. I know. I know. Well, someone like Trump is actually working to do that, whereas someone like Hillary is not. He's already put in a bunch of regulations to make sure that people cannot become lobbyists within a certain amount of time after leaving office. After leaving office. But he also has the, you know, the president-elect office is crawling at the same time. It's crawling with lobbyists.

Yeah, who knows? You know. I mean, I'm not a Trump supporter, but I'm not convinced that having this complete outsider who's also a guy who's been feeding this machine with money and making these massive political contributions so he understands the system and how it works, I'm not completely denying the possibility that he might present some good... I just think he's the wrong guy for the job.

I do believe in the outsider thing. I love that. That's great. That's a great part of him. Bernie would have been fascinated. Yeah, Bernie would have been fascinated. He would have cost me a shitload of money, but I would have been willing to take that. I would have loved to see it.

I would have to see what the fuck would happen because that guy doesn't give a shit. And he's not you can't buy him, man. You can't buy him. And you got to watch this. This Lawrence Lester talk. It's a few years old now, but it really just it kind of rips apart and puts everything out on the whiteboard and into like a keynote presentation about even the you know the most well-intentioned politicians who are great mr smith goes to washington kind of shit just great people who go in there with the best of intentions

you know at some point you know then they end up spending 25 percent of their time inside of the phone bank the democrat the dnc phone bank begging people for money right and you know they do that yeah and it's across the street from the capital so it's not too far and and it just and it escalates and it's a snowball just going more and more and then it just becomes even the best intent but if you take money out of politics then you have only people with money who get into politics because they have so much money. They don't need anybody else's money. Hence Donald Trump. Yeah.

But I mean, if you did it like, you know, first of all, if you did it like the UK does it and shorten the election season. You know, first we got that's a great first step. You know, you can't make it 18 months. It's insane. And the amount of money. It's a great team sport. It's going on forever. We got a root, root, rah, rah.

We got debates and debate season. Yeah, man. It's a great team sport. It's going on forever. We've got a root, root, rah, rah. We've got debates and debate season. Yeah, man. It's great television. People wear their red and their fucking blue and Make America Great Again hats are on sale. But the amount of money that it takes to play that game. I know, right? What was he making per day from those hats? Off Make America Great Again?

I bet millions. No, he was making something like 80 grand a day or something from the hats. Something stupid. It's so bad. There's those stupid looking hats, too. It's not even a good design. It's like somebody made it at the mall. You know, those little hat shops.

What do you want it to say? Bobby loves Jesse. All right. Bobby loves Jesse. Make America great again. Red hat, white letters. I'm the man. I'm the fucking man.

I got the hat on. The fucking man. i don't even know what that means yeah he doesn't know what it means either well i don't know i mean america's never been greater in terms of like safer more access to medicine more access to information more access to education that's never been better in that way but like uh you know our the rank our education rankings you know it's sort of in the world in the world where we're used to place you know, our education rankings, you know, it's sort of. In the world. In the world where we're used to place, you know, your typical high school graduate in the year like 1960, you know.

It's like went to college and ranked number one in global math, science. Right. You know. That's because the rest of the world was in the Stone Age. And we were the only civilization, I think. I think we were. We had just started civilization back then and no one knew about it yet. And they all caught on, and we got fat off Twinkies and the mall and fucking Walmart poisoned us.

And then there's some shit from fracking that definitely got into the wall. I don't know, man. I think I'm a pessimist. Turn everyone on. I'm fine with that, too. I'm a pessimist in some forms, but I'm an optimist in others. And what I'm optimistic about is that people care and that this world that we live in, that this is a, you know, like when everybody was crying after Trump got elected. And part of me was like, well, this is so preposterous. Like, why are these people crying?

But the other part of me was like, that is when things get done, is when you have this outpouring of emotion. Remember when those people were marching down Wilshire? And it was just a fucking huge line of people, like hundreds of thousands of people that shut down Wilshire. And these people were filming it with drones from overhead. I was like, wow, that's a crazy response to this guy winning the presidency and people were like hoping the electors you know the electoral college people wouldn't elect him and they were they would act on their no fuck you it's not gonna happen like you're playing a game he won the game yeah and you can't you can't take it away from him after he won the game like he didn't cheat

he won the game so this is the game and this is how the game works. Russia. Listen, this is the game. This is how the game works. Now you got to figure out why is this game in place? Why do you have this fucking goofy game? Why do you have this representative government? Why do we continue this?

You know, and if we can slowly move that battleship towards a more rational place. Yeah, you're right. And it does come from a consciousness shift. That's the first step. Always comes from a consciousness shift. That's the first step. Always comes from a consciousness shift. I think pot. I think legal pot is the fucking real gateway. I really do.

Yeah? I really do. Because I think it calms people down. It makes people nicer. And I think just that alone. It's like the opposite of what alcohol does. That's true. It definitely does not increase aggression.

Or confidence. It doesn't increase confidence at all. It's the opposite for me. It makes me more vulnerable. You don't smoke it? I don't like it. I don't like it. Something changed in me.

I did when I was a teenager. I loved it, man. I'm a deadhead. That was my life. But I take it now and it's just massive. And also the confidence thing. It does not bring out my best. It makes me feel like if we smoked and we did this podcast.

You'd be freaking out? What do I have to say to Rogan? I sound like an idiot. Duncan told me. I would be like that. So it does not bring up my best so how long ago is this switch when did it happen to you oh quite a while yeah I mean I'm 43 you know you know more than 15 years ago so that's when you stopped smoking 15 years ago no I stopped yesterday yeah I'm still freaking out because of yesterday's pot yeah about that

so do you do anything these days sort of psychedelics not really no I don't but I keep a place in my heart for the psychedelic experience should it arise again in between

English muffins you know yeah I mean I'm open to that and should the again. In between English muffins. In between Eggman muffins. Yeah, I mean, I'm open to that, and should the opportunity arise, I'm down for it. I mean, with the psychedelic thing, I just yeah, I mean, I am open to it. I just kind of did kind of hit the Alan Watts wall in a way, like, you know, the Alan Watts

thing about him. You know, I got the phone call, and then I learned to hang up the phone what is the alan watts thing how does that work uh the quote goes something like um i got the phone call and then i kind of learned to hang up the phone i didn't need to stay on the phone relating to psychedelics oh i see i see so he got the message he got the message to continually get the message over and over and over and over yeah m McKenna, I think, was in that boat, too, before his death. They were saying that he talked a lot about it, but he really wasn't doing anything anymore.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. Smoked a lot of pot, though. Did smoke a lot of pot. Because I always remember, Terrence, you know, the thing that us drug people have is repeatability. Yeah. You know, it's that.

Well, it's true. But, I mean. No, it's great. After 5,000 fucking mushroom trips. I mean, Jesus Christ. I mean, I've done acid, what, 200 times or something? You could probably be like legally insane, right? I think like there's a certain amount of acid trips you do where they used to classify you as being legally insane.

Well, yeah, I mean, maybe. Do you get some money from the government, bro? How much? Probably like 50 bucks. I don't know. But if you just ran around saying that I broke my brain and I'm disabled, I bet you could juke the system. That's really funny. I had a pretty serious hard drug problem, too.

Hard drugs? Yeah, which I got a heroin crack. Oh, damn, dude oh damn dude gotten through it the needle or the smart snorting smoking smoking no needles no needles yeah stayed away from that but you know made it through and i'm damn how'd you get on that how'd i get on it yeah um pain you had some injuries or something? No. Pain. Emotional pain. Emotional pain? Yeah, emotional suffering. Pain. Lost. Aimless.

Wandering the world. Aimless. Not knowing what to do. And that was, the escape was the heroin? Somebody introduced me to it about that period in time. And it just was like, oh, wow. You know, heroin has the great ability of, and it's really seductive and really fucked up, of making you think that your life is okay when you're in the gutter. Wow.

It has that sort of, that sheen that it just kind of, the bubble it puts over you. You can be literally living in an alleyway, high on heroin, thinking you got it going on. Wow. Yeah, it's really weird and perverse like that and at that time in my life i mean my dad just died um and you know when he died what with it what went with it was kind of my life up until i was 22 up until that point like my life was in that bubble you know he was larger than life he was was famous. Girls came with that. Work came with that.

A scene came with that. Friends came with that. And when he died, that just went poof. Did girls want to bang you because you were Timothy Leary's son? Of course, yeah. Really? Nice. It worked out for a while.

Sweet. Did you put on a guru attitude? Like, just relax. I've got it all going on ladies at that time that that stage in my life no it's not it was a disaster and i try to do that now though on occasion oh but no i had a good story man this is really funny like you were talking about soliciting the government for money for being an acid casualty which is a good idea but i was really high on crack once um and just kind of on a bender just losing

my mind and crack and i thought in the middle of the night it'd be a really good idea to join the cia and that they would want me me specifically being like tim larry's kid they'd want me because i have access to shit that they want access to right like i can be an insider i was a mole and it was high on crack and i downloaded the i filled out the form oh my god you got that deep I got that deep I spent hours on it it's really long complicated though the whole kind of join the CIA printed out sent it you sent it in the mail you're in the CIA you're there with Anderson Cooper you work for CNN well yeah you're in there and never heard back but. And never heard back,

but it was... Never heard back. No, never. They started laughing. They just laughed and threw it in the garbage, I'm sure. But it was really funny

and kind of a great delusional high-end drugs moment. Wow. So what did you think that you were going to do as a CIA operative? What were you going to do? Were you going to fix it

from the inside with crack? Yeah. Something like that. Wow. Something crazy. You know, just that's what a crackhead does at the time. How did you get off the crack and the heroin? Yeah, just recovery.

Did you go, oh, you went 12-step? Yeah. Like AA or Narcotics Anonymous? Yeah, that kind of stuff. Yeah, it worked for me. Now, is that one of those things you have to continually visit? Do you have to constantly have meetings and stuff?

Well, you know, I'm kind of a, you know, I'm kind of, in a way, as a card-carrying member, as it were, I'm kind of not the best card-carrying member of it, and I break from tradition in a little bit in that, like, I don't know, I'm not a zealot sure maybe yeah maybe you do but for me I just happen to like

it I just enjoy it whether or not I have to go and oh my god I'm gonna die if I don't and I'm gonna end up back in the gutter if I don't I don't know I believe there's a little hysteria with that and that's kind of like the party line which sometimes bothers me. It bothers a lot of people.

Yeah. That's sort of disempowerment. It's disempowerment. I don't believe that with any tradition or anything. Yeah. Like, oh, my God, if you leave us, the shit's going to hit the fan, man. I mean, you stop and think about a lot of destructive things you did when you were younger that you don't do now. Yeah.

Like, well, I don't need a 12-step program to tell me not to do stupid shit. I just know it's stupid shit, and so I don't do it anymore. But the idea that you could potentially fall into that is what they hold over your head, right? Yeah, but it's not that simple. Like, oh, my God, I know heroin is going to kill me, so I'm just going to stop doing it. It's not that rational, sadly.

I wish it was that rational. So what's the difference? What's the disconnect? The disconnect is that in order to, you know, and Bill Wilson was really a groundbreaking dude. Well, he was also an acid head, which is really kind of crazy. Bill Wilson being the guy who founded Alcoholics Anonymous. He did acid, what, five times? Yeah, well, and he also thought that acid could be a viable treatment method for people that are alcoholics.

There's some great. viable treatment method for people that are alcoholics. It's completely ignored today. And his thoughts and ideas about that, completely ignored by people in recovery because they think that no, no, no, no, you don't get clean by taking something else.

They hate it. Before this sort of got popular, before the documentaries came out and all that about exposing Bill Wilson, I used to just blow AA members' minds with that. It's like, did you not? He did it. And he had correspondence with my dad when he was at Harvard.

I'm sure he did. Yeah, they had some really interesting, these letters are fantastic. And yeah, he called it the great ego sublimator and thought it could be the solution for alcoholism. And he did not change his sobriety date, you know, which is highly controversial. Sobriety date? His sobriety date, like when he said he got sober. You know, he still, when he died, he said he had whatever, 48 years sober.

But he was still doing acid. Well, he had stopped doing acid. But, you know, typically, you know, in AA world, if you do acid, that's it. You start over. You start day one. You start day one over again. But he didn he didn't he did not he looked at acid as being completely different than an intoxicant like alcohol it was a neuropsychotropic therapeutic agent is how you refer to it well i think that is what it is and i think this blanket statement you know drugs yeah that word drugs it's just's just like it applies to too many things that do too many different things.

That's right. It's like food. You know, food's bad for you. What? No, no. Food's not bad for you. Well, this food's bad for you. Oh, yeah.

Okay, it is. But, like, this salad's good for you. Like, that's food, too. And that's the problem with drugs. Drugs, the word drugs applies to things that are highly beneficial. That's right. It's the problem with drugs. The word drugs applies to things that are highly beneficial. That's right. It's just, you know, in AA land, I get why they need to tow that company line. But doesn't it- I do get it because-

And again, it's disempowering in a way, isn't it? Because you're treating everybody as if you are the weakest possible example. Look, man, I'm not disagreeing with you at all, but I'm just saying I get it because it does work. That's all I can say about it. I don't disagree. I'm kind of wishy-washy about it, but it works. To have a hard line. I have seen people's lives who you just, you know, the

doldrums, the disenfranchised, I mean, left for dead get their lives saved and have really great, productive, amazing lives today. And it's a really beautiful, cool thing to see. Well, there's also, I think we have to come to the realization that everyone's different biologically.

That's why, that's the point. Everybody's wired differently. There is no one size fits all thing. And now what we're seeing with Ibogaine treatment that, you know, maps this to, oh my God. So, so cool. Yeah. Really, really promising. And so, you know, I just encourage everybody to find their own Dharma, find their own path and kind of make what works for you.

You know, there's no prescribed method for spiritual awakening or life-saving or life changing. You know, you just have to, you know, balance it correctly. So what is, what is your life like? Like, what do you, what do you do with your time? What do you do for money? Well, I do a few things. My life is kind of split into two things.

You know, I have my podcast. Right. What is that called again? It's All Happening. It's All Happening. Yeah. So I do that. I'm actually starting another podcast.

I'm going to be hosting the Maps podcast. Oh, really? Oh, that's awesome. So Maps is starting and I'm going to help them get it off the ground and host it and start that. So, you know, I kind of do that. I can speak, you know, at festivals and kind of teach, you know, some spiritual stuff and kind of do that. Right. I've been working on a book. But the other half of my life, kind of before I had my own little spiritual awakening,

I was a technology consultant and a branding consultant and worked in digital marketing and at a lot of ad agencies and stuff and led kind of a nine-to-five corporate life, which I've ditched, but I still keep some clients as kind of a day job sort of thing. So that's interesting. So like what does that entail? Anything that is, you know, if a brand or an entity or a film or a music client, anybody wants to come to me and sort of define their internet strategy, how they want to behave online, you know,

whether that's just something as mundane as having a new website to coming up with a complete communication message about how they want to market their, their thing. So I kind of do that too. So I, I divide my time sort of 50, 50 between my stuff and then other people's. And when is this maps podcast launch?

January. Oh, that's cool. So you, you by just by having that name attached to it, you'll be able to get some pretty amazing guests. Yeah, man. We'd love you to do it, of course.

I'll do it. I'm in. Let's do it. Sign it up. Yeah, Rick. Set it up. Fasten on. So yeah.

2017, folks. Shit's going down. So yeah, I keep busy, man. I keep busy. Beautiful. Yeah. All right, man. Well, let people know, what's your Twitter handle?

Is it just Zach Leary? Zach Leary or go to my website, zachleary.com. And the podcast is called It's All Happening. Is it available on iTunes? Everywhere, podcasts, stuff, yeah. Well, thanks, man. Thanks for coming in, man. Thanks for having me, man.

It's fun. Fun time. Appreciate it. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it very much. Zach Leary, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, everybody. We'll be back tomorrow with the great Greg Fitzsimmons,

also known as Grapefruit Simmons. See ya!