TrueLife - Infiltrate the System & Take it Over

Episode Date: September 4, 2022

In this episode we speak with a panel of multiple guests. We ask done difficult questions such as: What does it take to leave everything you know and start over? How can you thrive under a system of oppression? Are humans a collective like a bee hive or are we wired for individuality?

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Welcome back to the True Life podcast, Sunday edition. We've got the entire team here. We've got Benjamin George, our friend Ranga, and Kevin Holt. And for those who may not know everybody, I thought that I would just take a moment to let everybody introduce themselves and then we can kind of get into some of the topics. So why don't you start off, Benjamin?

Sure. Benjamin George, lifelong entrepreneur, traveled around the world quite a bit. These days I spend a lot of my time in research and development on, you know, sustainability and technology solutions via automation, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, things like that. And happy to have a nice Sunday chat with some folks. Nice. Ranga, tell people that may not know who you are. Ranga here. I'm interested in talking about psycholics, racing,

Atlanta support, psychedelics, meditation, and helping us become more peaceful by working on ourselves. So wherever I could help in those parts, yes. Absolutely. Kevin, for people who may not know you. Yeah, my name's Kevin Holt. It's actually not my real last name, but I shortened it because my actual last name is a butcher, butcher it all the time, and I don't like it.

So I'm a sort of a nomad as well. We lived in about nine different countries, learned a bunch of languages, doing that thing. And I've written a book. I'm working on a second one, which will come out hopefully in a couple months about divorce and relationships and things like that. So I like writing. I'm into psychedelics, and I'm also into psychedelics. you know, spiritual awareness and growth.

Very nice. Yeah. One thing that I really admire about all of us. And since we're talking, one of the topics we're going to talk today is about parallel structures. And when I think of parallel structures, I think of a system within a system. Sometimes a system within a system within a system. So if you think about organized religion, if you think about like an LLC, there's all these vehicles that operate underneath the state.

And sometimes when the state becomes corrupted, it's these alternative vehicles or these parallel structures that we operate in to live a life worth living. And when I look at every one of you, I think on some level, we have all lived our own little parallel structure with Benjamin starting up the Tera Libre project, Kevin traveling around the world. Ranga moving all the way from India to Canada, from mechanical engineer to psychedelic advocate. it like we have all kind of made up our own rules and decided our own parallel structures. And so as I was thinking about this idea where we are in this world, I thought, what better way than to get these people together that have found a way to be successful and maybe share some of the ideas that they have used in their life for other people that they can use in their life.

So I wanted just to start a little bit about what Benjamin, let's start with you, about parallel structures and some techniques or some things that you used to set up your parallel structure? You know, I would say for me personally, the first thing was the realization that I had a different option. I could make a different choice. Yes, that choice was going to, you know, quote unquote cost me. It would take me out of the rat race, so to speak. You know, I wouldn't be keeping up with the Joneses for sure. But all of a sudden, I woke up. I woke up. I, up and realize that, hey, there is a different option. I can go off and have a grand adventure. I can go off on my own hero's journey. And in order to realize that, you know, there's some,

there's some practical things that have to happen. You're like, well, passports, visas, you know, languages. Kevin, you talked about, you know, your multiple languages. I've had a lot of experience in my travels and learning languages too. And, you know, it's, you, so you have to take to the account all of these different iterative pieces of information, and then you have to make a choice. And you're going to define your own parallel structure within that choice. And it'll be entirely as fluid as you want it to be, or it'll be as rigid as you make it. At least that was my initial foray into the whole world of, oh, well, everything I was taught was bullcrap, so maybe I should find a different path. That's amazing to think about.

Ronga, I'm curious about your journey. As someone who came from a completely different culture and different background and then moved to like the Western way of schooling and stuff like that, do you see the world differently being from a different culture and then now that you're submerged in this other culture, is it 180 degrees or how is it different?

You said, right, it was beautiful. It's a system within the system. So I would see the culture I came from was more limiting in views. So it was definitely like a smaller person inside a bigger person, right? So moving to the West, yes, immediately when the prison size becomes bigger, I mean thought-wise, right? It is freeing. You add the small room to navigate with respect to how we are perceiving the world. Now that wall is broken.

You're in a bigger wall. You have not realized it yet because you're still exploring. So that newer side of consciousness, you're exploring the freedom, deliberation, being able to talk freely, right, have more open-ended conversations. Yeah, pretty much things like that. So that was the first thing that was I was able to practically notice and also integrate and see I could be freer in communicating. Yeah. Yeah, it seems sometimes the cultural barriers we come from. they follow us. I know when I came from California to Hawaii,

you know, it's such a melting pot over here of so many different Asian cultures. And, you know, I really learned a lot about my limiting beliefs and my little blinders that I had on about how I thought the world should be and how it kind of exploded when, you know, I was just put in contact with different people and understandings. Kevin, you've traveled like all over the world. And you, for those that don't know, Kevin has done something amazing. He has got this thing down where he can pretty much move to any country and be successful. You know, he's gone from Japan to Bali, you know, over to New York and stuff.

But how do you see, are there different structures in different parallel structures in different parts of the world? Kevin, is there systems within systems in different countries as well? Yeah, for sure. This is happening everywhere. And once you take that leap that Ben was talking about, and we don't want to down. play the first initial leap because it is kind of scary when you start doing it and I saw an interesting interview of some woman I think she's an astrologer or something like that and she said that according to her teacher something like 70% of people get their information externally they

look to the outside where their opinions and thoughts and they're they seek they look to their community for all these things and the first step really and jr ben you kind of touched on this is to kind of separate from this and start looking inward on your own path, like looking for your own path inside rather than looking externally. And that can be isolating at first when you try to find your own path through this dark forest. But then when you finally do it, you find that it's actually, it opens up so many things. And you meet other travelers on this path. And we're doing it right now in this context.

We're the five, well, there's a fifth person now, but the four of us together. We're doing it now. Like, this is us finding our people on this path. And when you travel other countries, you see the same thing happening to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the culture that you're in and how conformist it is. So I think it was harder to find those people in Japan. But when I did find them, they were almost more extremely differentiated from society because they had that much more to break through to get onto that path. So hard to find, but yeah, they're definitely out there. Nice. Paul, can you hear us, buddy? Are you over there?

Yeah. Nice, man. Thanks for chiming in. On the line, we don't have Paul's picture up, but we've got them on audio. And for those, Paul La Pau is the, not only a great friend of mine, but he's the owner-operator of Maui Queen Bee Company. He recently co-authored a paper on Colony Collapse at the Kanzawa University. And welcome to the show, Paul. Thanks for showing up, buddy. Thanks for having me Yeah absolutely

So we were just getting into the idea Paul Of different cultures and systems within systems And one thing that For those that don't know Paul is a Not only is he the owner-operator of the Maui Queen Farm but he raises Queen Bees And him and I recently had a discussion

About colony collapse And it makes me think Like is it possible Some of the things we're seeing in the bee colony collapse are the same reasons we're seeing our society collapse. So I'm trying to make the point that there's a system with the bees.

There's a system in the colony collapse, but I think that we can see it in our own world. Paul, can you talk to us a little bit about the system inside a beehive? And can we learn stuff from the beehive system in our culture? Well, I mean, honeybees are a lot different than people and both how they behave

and what their function is. but you know what's happening with honeybees is you know the result of outside influences you know I think what people are doing is the result of of ourselves you know um it's been it's it's it's interesting when you look at like as a beekeeper I've always tried to look at the similarities between honeybees and people and and honestly I I don't really see a lot of similarities you know, um, you know, other than, you know, um, honeybees are, you know, live in a colony, people live in communities and, you know, honeybees, you know, communicate at a high level, um, as well as people do, but, you know, but that's kind of where the, you know, where the paths

diverge, you know, honeybees are always looking for, you know, behaving on the best interest of the colonies and people don't really do that you know and so I think I think you know if if these didn't have these outside influences that were affecting you know the things that they feed on and the places that they live then you know they would go on uninterrupted you know forever you barring some major earthly you know calamity but people you know just because of our, the way that we are, you know, we could be, you know, shortening, you know, our time here on Earth all on our own, you know, rapidly. Can I me stop? Let me ask you this thing right here. So when we look at the outside, you said that the bee colony collapse is mainly something to do with our environment. But isn't that the same thing that's happening right now with people is like this outward environment?

If you look at the factors that are calling, if you look at the factors that are causing bee colony collapse, that's the breakdown of a system, the same way that our system is breaking down. Maybe bees run on honey, but people run on money. I make it rhyme every time right there, but, you know,

it seems to me that with limited resources or the degradation of the environment, be it a social environment, or be it, you know, just a degradation of the bees environment. Might that be something that we can see breaking down in the system? Aren't those two things kind of similar, like a system within a system? Yeah, but it's happening to all types of things.

I mean, almost everything on planet Earth is being affected by this. You know, it's not just honeybees. This is true. This is true. You know, so, I mean, when I look at honeybees, you know, like I said, I look at them and I think, you know, if people weren't here, you know, messing things up, then they would just continue to go on uninterrupted. You know, it's people that have moved.

Things like the varroa might, you know, around the world, it's people that have, you know, have been largely responsible for bloodborne diseases that affect, you know, honeybees, you know, around the world. you know bees are pretty resilient and that you know they've they've always adapted to their you know specific locations of you know to you know weather extremes and and to you know predators and and everything else it's been you know it's been when people got involved in managing honeybees of if we can actually call it managing um is when you know things started going terribly wrong for honey bees

okay let me Benjamin let me ask you this do you think that it's people managing other people that causes the decay of society? And then I'm going to ask everybody else that one. So if you guys are on deck, be ready. Benjamin, what do you think? Well, yeah, I, you know, the notion that people should be ruled is something that, you know, we don't really get to explore at a personal level. We're born into it and we're forced to accept it at varying different levels, depending

on what country and what location you are in the world. So whenever you have somebody who's managing somebody else, their self-interest, I mean, this is game theory, right? Their self-interest is going to outweigh, you know, as long as it doesn't destroy the system entirely, like, i.e., they get fired or something like that, their self-interest will always take precedent over, you know, whatever system they're supposed to be supported. and then you have things like bad actors and stuff like that that really kind of add you know turn it into a conflagration and you know we've seen that really leaked throughout history uh in the bee regard you know i don't know if you're all familiar uh there was an experiment done with rats where they basically uh created an opulent environment for rats where they weren't having to for their food it was all just provided for them there was an over abundance of everything and they observed that their society all of a sudden like rats just develop these wild behaviors some of them would be obsessed with pruning and pruning themselves all day long some of them would be completely lackadaisical some would be highly motivated to gather resources so they actually developed similar kind of pathologies to human when there was

an overabundance of resources and i wonder what would happen in overabundance of resources in like a hive situation because that's usually not the case like they're always you know there's always the next the next effort that needs to happen but if you could create that artificial environment would be behave the same way is our behavior some sort of mechanistic function of abundance or lack thereof yeah that's a good question Paul, did you hear that, Paul? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good question.

What do you think? What if, go ahead. So bees have what's known as a swarm, you know, tendency to some bees depending on where they, you know, are located on Earth, you know, will swarm more or less than others. And usually, you know, swarming begins in the spring when resources are abundantly available, nectar and pollen and, and, um, you know they have you know they're directing the queen to you know lay a lot of eggs and and the hunt the hive begins to explode in population and then you know so the thing about honeybees is I don't know if you could ever test that because they're going to want to go somewhere else they're going to want to they're like we're feeling so good about ourselves there should be two of us you know and um so you know what they'll do is they'll they'll take the old queen and um you know start feeding her her less and then they'll make new queen cells and then they'll you know the you know a big portion of the of the workers will swarm the old queen out of the hive and go find somewhere else to live and they'll leave some of the workers and all of the brood and you know almost fully developed

queen cells you know back at their original location and and then so then the hive will take a you know its resources will begin to slide you know downwardly a little bit until the new queen, you know, until the new queens emerge and then they fight it out and you have one queen that's left and that queen will fly off and mate and come back and begin laying eggs again and then the population will begin to rise. And some honeybees will do that, you know, a couple times a year. Some colonies will do that a couple times a year. Some honeybees will do that, you know, eight, ten, twelve times a year, maybe even more, depending on what kind of bees they are so like I don't think you know honey bees you have ever probably faced anything like that

you know an overabundance you know I can see a bunch of bees that's sitting around doing nothing like yeah everything's taken care of you got all the pollinating done yeah that doesn't really happen so there's no welfare system for the bees they just don't sit around oh they don't and then in fact like you know like if you if you're a bee and you're not pulling your weight like drones, male bees, you know, at the end of the season, they'll get rid of you or kill you because you're not pulling your weight and you're a drain on the resources and you don't provide protection to the hive. It's like a self-governing, self-governing body.

Robin, let me ask you. You know, the honeybee is like, when you look at, so that's another thing, like, you know, we're a community full of individuals, you know, wherever you live on earth, you know, and honeybees don't really behave. They don't really have individualistic behaviors. When you look at a beehive, it's like, I view a beehive as like one thing. And everything in it is working on, you know, for the one thing. You know, there's no individualism there.

It's like the Chinese system, it sounds like, where there's more of a collective to it versus like. The board, the board, the, yeah, that's what I was going to chime in with. Ranga, let me ask you this. Yeah. Yeah, please. Go ahead. I was going to say in India. Okay.

In India, there's a caste system there? And if so, when you come to America, do you see a caste system that is disguised as a non-cast system? I would say caste system is a disguised racial system. So racial system is about people that are other throughout the world, right? So in India, you don't grow up thinking it's more of a racial system. system, its casks were designed based on the jobs that people were doing, right? You do not really see it from the race point of view. But then for me, at least personally, when I came to Canada and I got no more about the racial things that have been happening for the past centuries, there was no

difference. It was pretty much similar to what was happening in India. And the more darker the skin, for example, there are a cast called Dalit who are untouchable, right? So it is that they are both, I think, again, caste system is part of that many-year system in a bigger mistake that humans are making. Yeah, that's huge to think about. Kevin, what do you think? You've done a lot of traveling around the world. Is it, do you, in your opinion, do you think that the only social mobility is the,

fictitious idea of social mobility? No, I don't think it's entirely fictitious. I do think that in a lot of places, it's real. But I don't have enough experience talking about the race topic to say whether there is that ingrained to a large degree or not. It seems like there is. And it seems like even if it's not racial, a lot of times it's what school did you go to? And I remember when I was at a university, I was looking into jobs.

And they said quite clearly on some jobs, unless you went to an Ivy League school with a certain grade, they wouldn't even consider your application. So there are these, even if they're not racial, there are socioeconomic status type gatekeeper elements within certainly the West, but I imagine the same thing plays out in a lot of countries. And I saw in Japan, too, all the quote unquote best jobs, they would only recruit from really the first top two universities, which was to. University and Waseda University. And to get into those, you had to go to a very prestigious high school. And to get into the prestigious high school, you had to do well on your junior high school exams. And to get into the right junior high school, you had to do well in elementary school, to the extent that kids in Japan sometimes kill themselves when they're like 10th,

because of all that pressure already then, because that's going to determine their entire future because the system is set out that way. So I think there are various elements that can stratify society in that way. Some can be worked around and some really can. Do you think that it's pretty much been this way, I mean, for our lifetime and maybe even prior, or do you think that this type of behavior is accelerating?

I think it might be decelerating, but I think it's still there. Yeah, I think the fundamental structure is still there. and may always be there until we figure a new system out, which hopefully we'll do on this show. Yeah. That brings me like, what, Ranga, what do you think? Like, you, I'm really amazed at the courage and the awesomeness of what you've done. Like, you were a mechanical engineer.

You are a mechanical engineer, but you've decided to, you know what, I'm going to change my profession a little bit. Like, that's a huge move to make. And in a way, it's, it's, it's, trading one system for another system, for a better system, maybe trading someone else's dream for your dream. And I'm curious, can you talk a little bit about the psychedelic experience that made you come to that realization?

Yeah, before we go in there, I would like to continue what Kevin was saying. That is definitely this socioeconomic status game that is going on. And I think he was a joke. my friend and I were talking about a few years back where in India there are cities where people are starting to put so much pressure into the kids. At least when I was in grade 10, there was two years of preparation in my high school to get into the institute of technology and two years preparation became four years and then it became

six years and now people start in grade six or grade five, you know. And the joke was basically that, you know, in these fast running cities, what do you think the first thing a couple does after having sex? I don't know. They basically go and wait in the admission line for a school. So the wait times are pretty long. So they kind of do that right after. Right.

And yeah. But those pressure were also there when I was growing up. It is decelerating, but still the acceleration has been so much in the previous generation, I think we have still not peaked the amount of people who are trying to compete in that game in neither the rat race or the status game, right? It is decelerating based on how much unhappiness it is being led to, right? So I think over the course of maybe the next generation or a couple, there'll be a downfall in that rate, I hope.

With respect to my thing, yeah. So growing up in India, they give you these concepts to survive on. So it tells you survive, keep surviving, until for me that surviving was not happiness. It's like barely holding onto the last piece of, you know, boat when it's dragging in the sea, right? And for me, psychedelics was about breaking those concepts, right? And for once, I think I said this and this would be my constant thing. I was able to breathe, right?

That changes everything when you're able to breathe freely for the first time. And whenever the previous concepts are coming, you're more certain that this is, this is what's just choking me. Right. So it is scary in the beginning because the people who might be on this path are not out there talking about it as much as the people who are actually making decisions for the system to keep the system going. So those are the things that are you year first. So whatever you want to conceive against the system seems wrong. So you're doubtful. You're not confident enough to put it as the strong point to start using it to navigate your life.

That's there for the first few months or a year where, yeah, I know that this is not what I want to do, but should I just drop it off immediately? it's difficult, right? So you still have this idea that maybe I'm just going to go back to that and taking a break. But during the Drake time, that was the most important thing. Doing nothing was amazing. And that's where Ben, your question about overabundance for humans, would it be similar to rats or bees?

I think it might be a little different based on the way self-awareness works in humans. For example, bees or rats, they kind of, I believe, are born into the roles, as Paul was saying, there is no individuality. They work as a collective one being. But I think with a bit of self-awareness, we are able to add this bit of individuality and say, maybe this is not what I want to do. I'm not born into this role. This role was given.

Maybe I could choose something else, right? Maybe in that case, in the overabundance of resources instead of us being obsessed with behaviors like pruning and stuff, we might be able to divert it to art, which might be able to divert it to art, which might seem equally meaningless, yet is fueling humans' curiosity or just the part of communication, non-verbal communication. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.

Go ahead, Benjamin. What you got? Oh, I was going to say, the rat idea was to kind of highlight where we, at least from my perspective, was kind of highlight where we are now as a society. I agree with you. I think the, you know, the awareness is. our ability to communicate, especially in mass now, allows us a different level of appreciation to life, to the world,

to these things around us. You know, art is one of the most foundational things to our society these days. I mean, look at who, you know, you can argue that sports are a form of art. You can argue that, you know, UFC is a form of art. You can argue that all of the, you know, all of the musicals and movies, and music and all of that stuff, those are pillars of, you know, what everybody grows up on now. So I think you're absolutely correct in that our awareness breeds our ability to kind of take that overabundance and resource it into something that's, you know, proactive for society.

And I think, you know, this level of communication, especially these conversations like we're having right now, I think this is where we foster the ideas, foment the next. iteration of these concepts, of these ideals, of these philosophies to implement into society, whether that be locally, regionally, or globally, potentially. Yeah, that's a great point. And for me, like, I've been seeing a lot. It doesn't take much to do some doom scrolling. Like, I've got to do is turn on TV or look at your computer or, you know, there just

seems to be a lot of negativity out there right now. But that's always there. It's always been there. And it's very powerful because it can suck you in. But I wanted to talk about some ways. Is it possible that we are already at the next level of change, that maybe we're living in a better world if we just choose to live in it? You know, a while back, last week, Benjamin and I were talking about, you know,

what could we do to make the world a better place? And we came up with this idea of, well, all that Benjamin talk about, it's called Gauntlet TV, man. Can you tell everybody in on what gauntlet TV could be? Oh, sure. You know, I think the art of debate, the intellectual conversation, the challenging of ideas is something that's been kind of lost on the greater level of society. And if we were to have some, you know, fun website like a gauntlet.

On TV, like you're throwing a gauntlet back in the day as a challenge. And then, you know, could you imagine just 100,000 people who, you know, they wanted to see somebody debate and their whole social media feed was just filled with pictures of gauntlet. So, you know, you could kind of, there's some social compulsion that you could get people onto the debate table. And then you could actually have, you know, the hashing out of these ideas where as opposed to just the projection of them onto society. Yeah. Well, imagine if instead of Monday night football, we had like Monday night debate with two people that were awesome. And then I thought for like a flip, maybe for the first part of the debate, the two people would, you know, they would come out on their sides.

But then maybe they should switch sides. And someone that was vehemently against global warming should have to argue for global warming. You know, it would force something to me. I think that's going to be a hard uphill battle for a lot of the people who are, you know, at the spear tips of these things. I agree. I just thought it would be a weird twist to try to force people to steal man the other person's argument. You know, it would almost force like a camaraderie or a. some sort of thing in there.

Why do you think we don't, what do you think, why do you think, Kevin, that we have a lack of, of conscious discourse or a lack of real debates in society? Ego, mostly. Attachment to ideas, emotions, and beliefs. So that's why a lot of times debates are a waste of time,

because all you get are two people that all they want to do is reinforce. force their existing beliefs and they're not actually open to being wrong and changing them. So unless we can figure out that, if that's a huge problem to solve, I don't know how we're going to have honest and level-headed communicates. I think the idea behind that, the way that you kind of like overcome that little, that first hurdle is as you have reasonable intellectual people who are, you know, not afraid to steal, man, any argument.

and those are kind of the pillars of the debate circle, if you will. And then they would be the people who would debate, you know, people who are, you know, galvanizing these ideas in the public sphere, you know, who, and then you actually get a true challenge of the idea. And obviously, they're not going to steal man your argument, but everybody knowing that you can steal man any argument gives you the credibility to be able to have that conversation. facilitate it.

Problem. Problem with, you know, we're losing you, Paul. Okay. It's kind of patchy. Try it again. The problem with that idea,

you know, as like a form of entertainment is that most people who, you know, understand how to debate, the rules of debate, but largely uninteresting to other people. I agree.

I agree. It was just a fun idea, more than anything. But surely, Paul, there's a way, to make it work how do we do it paul come on well i mean the first thing it's like what we've talked about here is uh is that like when i was in high school we had um you know we had a debate club you know but those were largely filled with people that were uninteresting you know and and you know

sometimes those people were ridiculed in high school i have to admit i was one of the ones when they're ridicule but what i learned as i got older and actually learned how to debate and and learned what you know, the higher and the lower forms of communication are that, man, I was really primitive way back then, you know, and so I think we began by, you know, teaching people, you know, especially our kids in school and how to properly communicate and how to, you know, how to not deflect, you know, and point fingers and, you know, and all these other different things that, you know, there's a, there's a pretty large segment of our society here in America that just loves to, you know, deflect off on other things and accept no responsibility for their words or their actions or any of that stuff.

And so we have to go back to, you know, like teaching. It was like, George, you and I talked about this before. It was like, you know, people who got a classical education actually learned this stuff. And, you know, in public school that I went to, and I know George went to you, I don't know about the rest of you guys. But it wasn't really, you know, it wasn't like high on the priority list of teaching kids, you know, how they should behave. and what to expect as, you know, what people expect with them as adults. And, and yeah, one of those is teaching kids how to properly communicate. I think that's a big thing because when you turn on, like, for instance,

I'll go, I'll read certain articles, I'll read articles from certain, you know, what publications are all, I'll listen to the news from, you know, certain broadcast companies. And, you know, they are constantly, you know, using all of the lowest forms of communication to battle rouse. And most people don't understand what's happening to them. They get all emotional about it. You know, they just heard a bunch of sense that doesn't make sense to anybody who

understands debate and communication, but they heard it and, you know, and got all emotional about it. And, you know, and so I think, I think once we teach people how to, you know, identify, you know, some of these lower forms of communication. Now, when I say lower form of, you know, like ad homin and attacks, red herring, straw man arguments, you know, there's a whole list of them, you know, but once you learn to identify those things, then you start to figure out, to me, like, who's being more truthful and, you know, who's lying through their team.

Well, and I would say, you know, from, we're kind of, we're actually participating in it right now, but society is learning that for itself at this point. I mean, look at the, just look at the podcasting atmosphere, how it blew up, how many views these things get. You know, Joe Rogan's getting more views than any major news station could ever dream the hope to get, right? And so now there is kind of this resurgence of these types of conversations of this type of dichotomy happening. And I think, you know, where the attention is going is kind of indicated, indicative of what people are feeling and desiring, you know, and want from the information sources that they subscribe to. Yeah, I would agree. Ranga, what do you think about the problem with debate right now? I think the other people have mentioned it beautifully.

It's not being receptive to what the other person is saying, right? The goal of the debate right now is to win, that's all. So it's, yeah, the win is going to be amazing. There is not going to be any progress with that, right? So it's not just being quiet for the one hour of the other person while they're debating, but also listening to them, right? not being occupied with how am I going to reply to this sentence? Oh, I got a great point for this, right?

So rather than just be receptive of all the things and when you start talking, right, the words start flowing through you. You don't need to prepare unless, of course, you know, you want to win. Because naturally debates are something which has to come from our fundamental ideas, which should be honest. So I feel like no preparation should go into it. Like this is what, if you wake me up at 2 a.m. and, you know, I'm in any mode

do you ask me something? This is what I'm going to think about, right? And I feel like those kind of prerequisite to a debate would be interesting. Other things are, as people said, people need to be honest, right? Yeah. I often wonder why.

It seems to me, like, our language is unsatisfactory. And what I mean by that is that translation means interpretation. And when we're talking about different cultures, We're not only interpreting languages. We're interpreting backgrounds and cultures. And if people can't thoroughly express themselves in their own language,

how could they possibly understand where someone from another language is coming from? Does anybody have any ideas on how to maybe bridge the gap between east and west or bridge the gap between the language barrier? Does anybody have an answer to the insufficiency of language? Well, just ask all the easy questions. Why don't you just? Just throw that out there, you know? Yeah, just go work, Kevin.

We've got to develop. We're doing. Well, Kevin, you've been all over. You've done a lot of traveling. And, you know, you told me a story about being shipped to the kind of the back hills when you went to Japan. But you seem to find a way to communicate effectively when you were there. What did that look like from a, from an experiential point of view? I spent so many hours.

trying to figure out what people were saying, only to realize that most people had nothing to say. That was my experience learning. That might be cross-cultural, too. Yeah. It definitely is, yeah. Yeah, you're like, oh, you guys are talking about the weather again. Exactly. I thought they were doing these huge debates, super-interesting topics, and then I tried for a year to understand what was going on in the morning staff meeting.

And then one day I finally got it And the discussions about whether We should turn on the heat in the school Or tell everyone to wear sweaters Because one parent complained I was like, I'm glad I put in the thousand hours studying So I could be a part of this Okay, I got an idea

Maybe the psychedelic experience Is maybe language is insufficient Because we need a better vehicle And maybe that better vehicle Is the psychedelic experience It is more than a language. It is a, it is something that can be beheld. Like, you may not see the same things as me, but you feel a similar type of awakening.

I know it's kind of blurry, but I think that there's a there there. Do you guys know what I mean? Like, if you and I share a psychedelic experience, I could probably figure out by talking to you for an hour or two that, I bet you this guy has had a psychedelic experience, be it, you know, a form of dance or psilocybin or some type of close. death, but some sort of psychedelic experience. Do you think that there's promise in the psychedelics as a vehicle for communication? I 100% do personally. Can you elaborate on that? What do you mean? Sure. Because you're, to your point, it creates a different type of experience, a more visceral one. But from like a physics perspective, I would describe it as you're just exposed to much more

essentially data input than you would normally be. And if you figure that that's going to be consistent across the board, now you're opening up people to just that many more angles of communication, of recognition, of attenuation, of all these different abilities to make those connections that allow us to have these relationships in these communities. What do you think? I think you can drive people further apart. You think it would drive people apart? As far as communication goes, you know, I've had a lot of experimentation

with psychedelics. I started when I was a kid. And, you know, I think it depends on the environment in which you're, you know, where you're doing the psychedelics. I think when people talk about, you know, coaching or, you know, having somebody there, like an mentor, you know, situation to help, you know, guide people. You know, I think that that's highly important. But I know people who, you know, I did, you know, psychedelics with that, I feel that, you know, communication-wise, we went further apart.

And I think it all depends on, especially when you're self-guiding and your trip, you know, what's, you know, what are the things that you're. you're thinking about, where's your mind going, what are you dwelling on or, or, you know, so I think, I can go both ways. I think you can bring people, you know, in communication, like you're closer together. And at the same time, I think it can make people, you know, further apart. It's a good point. Is that farther apart? Is that farther apart? I would almost argue that it's more of a personal reflection. So when you go on that psychedelic experience and you look in the mirror,

and, you know, if you look in the mirror and you don't like what looks back, I could definitely see how that would on the surface appear as a distancing of communication because now you're going into, you know, that self-reflection and, you know, realizing the words you've said and the people you've hurt and all these things. And that might cause that seeming on the surface kind of movement apart. but is it actually like a less form of communication or is it just you know there's a wall between that current moment's communication are you talking about like within the you know the actual experience itself right well like experience that you were mentioned where where you've

felt that people went further apart i mean was that just them being self-reflective and going through their moment and so they weren't able to to communicate communicate outwardly or you know G.3 was actually an aspect of the psychedelic experience itself. Right, an aspect of the psychedelic experience. Well, actually, you know, post-psychedelic experience. I mean, you know, it's like you experience a whole, you know, myriad of, of, of emotions and thoughts, you know, during a psychedelic experience. And it's, Some people are just more strongly rooted to their default mode than others, and so they are less pliable regardless of what psychedelic, you know, what psychedelics they're on.

Some people, you know, whether they're having a good trip or a bad trip, will, you know, hang on to certain experiences that they had during their psychedelic trip and focus more on that type of, you know, on whatever that was. but as far as communication goes what I view as you know being able to bridge a communication gap you know either during a psychedelic experience or after a psychedelic experience

largely dependent on you know the individual's experience you know some people that I have friends that you know that I did psychedelics with and and I don't know if it was you know if it was you know that they were reflecting, you know, looking in the mirror and not liking what they see and maybe felt some

sort of shame more, you know, about that. And so they became more distant, you know, I don't, I don't know if what we're talking about is the same as far as communication goes and then actually physically or emotionally distancing yourselves from other people that you've shared that experience with. Okay. I mean, yeah, so you're talking more of the post experience. Post experience, yeah. Okay. I mean, to me, it's like if I'm viewing, you know, psychedelics as a medicine, you know,

I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of weird things happen during, you know, can happen during, you know, a psychedelic experience. But to me, it's, it's usually post experience. I've always found that it's always kind of the point in which you're coming down from the experience is where I've done the most growth in my life. you know, it's never been like the peak experience. It's never been to ramp up and the peak. It's always been on the other side.

You know, it's always been like, you know, the quiet times, the, you know, the majority of the, you know, if it was the fun or the real life, where people would call it an enlightening phase of the psychedelic experience is over, is where I found that most of my thinking and most of my, you know, change to my, default mode occurred has been at the end of the experience.

And then post experiences where, to me, that's where those thoughts and those changes that I made, you know, begin to show up. I wonder, is there a general consensus that even though you will experience a difficult time in a trip, is the general consensus that you're glad that you had the experience? I think it's going to be highly dependent on the person. I've seen some people who've had some really bad trips. Yeah, true. I mean, if you come into that thing as a very highly broken individual,

there is a fair chance that you leave even more fractured if you're not able to put those pieces back together. Yeah. How does that play out in the world of psychedelics today? I mean, there's a lot of people that need help. And if they are, I think this is a pretty big gap in the world of psychedics. psychedelics, there are people that are broken. And if psychedelics are freely available, which they kind of are right now anyway, what's to stop someone from taking them and maybe flipping out and doing something crazy?

Not a thing, man. Not a thing. But on the flip side of that. I think if they're, no, I think if they're broken enough, with respect to cyclics, I think there is a wall or a bad. I stop them from people. It's just, I personally, when I see the world, it's more so they can be driven to other drugs. But when there is something inherent with psychedelics, which kind of, I think if you do not want to take it, you don't take it.

Right. I think that inner mechanism, defense mechanism kind of acts as the barrier. So it doesn't matter if it's publicly available. or not being, yeah. And then at the same time, you know, you look at all of the festival drug use, you know, recreational drug use for things like that. And I would say that there's quite a few people who get thrust upon a path without even knowing that they were going to go down the path,

which goes back to set and setting, right? And also, you know, having that shaman, that mentor, that guide. If you're really serious about the journey, I don't think you're, going to come out of it with negative experiences. However, I don't think everybody's serious about the journey when they partake in it. Yeah, that's true. I, I 100% agree. I feel like the term psychedelic, even though might be given to the drug, it doesn't become a psychedelic, at least based on how we use the term. It doesn't become a psychedelic if the set and setting are not proper.

It just becomes another drug that gets you high. So for me, psychedelic, the first time I learned the meaning of the word, I think I read somewhere, psych means mind and delic means opening or expanding. Right. So if none of those mind-expanding thing is going on, it's not a psychedelic. So it's just another drug, right? It's based on the situation, it's going to become not a psychedelic. So, yeah.

Yeah, that's your point. Kevin, you're pretty quiet over there. What are you thinking about? I just agree with what it's being said. Nothing really had on top of that. It's all about set and setting. Yeah. I've, you know, I have had some situations where, you know,

have you ever heard the saying, the best trips are the worst, or the worst trips are the best trips? Like, and I realize it takes a strong mind to do so, but sometimes I've been in some pretty deep water where I was scared. You know, I wasn't threatening myself, anything like that, but just some of the thoughts I had about who I am and who I wasn't and who I was never going to be.

You know, there's some very deep water there where you don't know who you are. And while that can be scary, ultimately it became very rewarding because, you know, I got good news and bad news. The bad news is I don't know who I am. And the good news is I don't know who I am, you know? And so I think that sometimes, not always, but sometimes the worst trips can be the best trips if you're willing to integrate it afterwards. And that may mean talking to somebody. That may mean keeping a journal. It may mean, you know, going to the library and studying.

But I think that if you find yourself in a trip that is really bad, there's some real room to grow right there. Like, that's a spot you need work at. And that's why you're stuck there. That's why it's a bad one. It's because you haven't figured it out yet. But if you're willing to see it as something you need to work on, it can become one of the most fulfilling experiences for you. Have you guys ever felt something like that?

Yeah, I think it's a matter of degree. I mean, as Benjamin was saying before, there are people who have certain predispositions to perhaps psychotic break. And if they're in the wrong setting, that is going to tip them over the edge. And I don't know if there's any way you can argue that that's a good trip. but I myself have had very many unpleasant trips, which I would then say is good. For example, ayahuasca, I don't think I really enjoyed any of my ayahuasca experiences. Like they were all painful, uncomfortable, but I felt great when it was over.

But during it, I thought, this is terrible. I wanted to end. But they were all good. So, yeah, I do think it's a matter of degree. Do you see that as like, would you, I've done a little bit of reading, like on some of, I think it may have been the Hopi tribe, but I'm not 100% sure. They have like the ordeal. So you're not really taking a hallucinogen,

but maybe you're ingesting a substance that makes you feel like you're going to die. You feel so horrible, but then you don't die. And it's like, oh, my God, I'm not going to die, you know? Or sometimes they'll have these things like they dance until they almost pass out, or until they do pass out. But it's this ordeal. It gives you the same sort of experience as a psychedelic trip. psychedelic in its own way. Like, you feel like you're going to die. And then when you don't die,

you're so thankful that you have a new lease on life. Would you say that maybe some of your ayahuasca was more of an ordeal? Yeah, that's definitely happened a few times, especially with the sweat lodge where I did feel like it was an ordeal on that I might not live. You know, for people who, yeah, you come out with, go ahead. For people who may not have heard that story, would you mind sharing it again? Um, so yeah, yeah, with ayahuasca, there's a lot of, of it going out going around now i guess it's become more and more popular in the last years so in my opinion they're not right and wrong but there are two ways that people go about it and for me the complete experience involves the sweat lodge what they call the temas skull which is a man-made sauna

of some bendy wood that's covered with blankets and then it's on the it's dug into the earth and there's a little pit in the earth and it's very small you basically have to crawl into it it's not tall enough to stand in and typically in these ceremonies they can cram anywhere from 10 to 20 people in this tiny space and you're pretty much touching each other you're very close together and one of the shamans i worked with he will do he'll do two different ways he'll first you'll drink the ayahuasca in a separate location and you'll have that experience for a few hours and then you'll sort of cap off the experience by going into the sweat lodge for a bit but the second day what he does the night of the second day is you drink the ayahuasca and then you go straight into the temascal and

you stay in there for three to four hours about four rounds of 45 minutes each and all this is heightened because of the ayahuasca, but the experience is you're in a, you're in a claustrophobic setting. It's super hot. You're not permitted water. At the end of each round, you might get a sip or two of water. So you're experiencing like, you know, you feel dehydrated. You feel hot.

You feel uncomfortable. You feel like you're suffocating. You can't breathe because the air is so full of steam and other people. and more than once, pretty much every time I've done this, I have that feeling that I'm not getting enough air, I'm too hot, I'm not going to make it, and I had this experience of just, I couldn't do anything but surrender to the experience.

And I literally, one session, I think I spent almost all of it in the child's post position on the ground. Like I couldn't even sit up. I didn't have the strength even sit up because the heat would rise, right? So the only way to kind of get through it is to stay low and process. You're also processing stuff at the same time. You've got whatever's going on with your ayahuasca experience. And it's just, it's a deeply humbling experience because what happened to me a couple

times is I would actually get to that point where that fear, the fear kicks in. And you just, I got to get out of there. I can't take this anymore. Like this is maybe going to kill me and starts to bring up fears of past medical conditions. like, what if this happens, what if that happens? And then I found, every time I've done this, you find the warrior spirit within. And a lot of things assist that, the setting, you're singing powerful songs, and these songs help you battle against this fear that arises and gives you that warrior within that comes

forth. And something happens. It literally is kind of a death and rebirth where, At some point, I said, whatever happens happens, I surrender. And then this little thing comes up where I feel that power come up and I'm able to sit up again. And I'm able to sing. And then I got other people singing. And I'm looking at somebody next to me who's fighting through it.

And I get inspiration from that person. And then we all build on each other. And it's sort of a crescendo occurs. And we all make that push together that we're all in it together. And it's just this beautiful shared experience. And then you come out of it like totally dehydrated. exhausted, emotionally, physically, mentally exhausted, literally crawling on your hands and knees out of this thing into the cool air and just being so thankful that you made it.

And that, for me, that's the closest thing I found to what you're talking about, George, Ruth. It was like the ordeal of the near-death experience that you can actually make yourself. That's an awesome story. Like, I've never experienced it in a group setting like that. And I think that one reason, well, one of multiple reasons I wanted everybody here is like, I think everybody has a unique way or at least a unique story about doing it. Benjamin has done something that I've never heard anybody in my life go through. And I was hopeful, maybe you could share about your story about running, Benjamin.

Sure. Well, it was actually, right as I finished my book, I went and had this experience. I was down in the New Mexican desert. And I decided that I wanted to have a vision quest. And I had a bit over an ounce of mushrooms available to me. But I didn't want to do it, you know, just as a normal trip. And so what I did is I just ate and then I went and ran. And I would come back and I would eat more and run and eat more and run.

And I did this for three days straight. The first day I ended up with completely sunburnt water blisters all over my skin. the second day it healed. And I actually haven't been sunburnt since doing this. And, you know, I can sit out in the midday sun. I go run in the midday sun every day and I don't catch a burn anymore, which is fascinating. And I first was turned on to that from Paul Stamond. But, you know, so I discovered a different way to have, you know, a very, a very physical experience.

And I ended up running like about, on average, about 30 miles a day. And then I picked up ultra running since then just was kind of the hobby and it's fun. But I've also now repeated this experience with some other people, some guinea pigs. And they've had similar experiences. You know, I've had people who, you know, 50 years old running up a mountain type idea. Yeah, it's fascinating to think about. I'm coming with you one day. I don't know when,

but I'm coming with you one day. We'll make it happen. Yeah, we should all do it together. I'm definitely not doing that. Not doing that. It was the most wonderful, liberating experience in my life, if that helps.

So when you're running, it seems to me, like, you know, when I think of a trip, I think of seeing some closed-eye visuals or even open-eye visual, and some deep thoughts.

What goes through your mind when you're exercising at a high level, like say around mile 15? Like, what are you thinking about or what's going through your mind? It was a very, very, very wild experience because all of a sudden, my ability to breathe, my ability to intake oxygen was just completely altered. My thoughts were going a million miles a minute, even faster than sitting, you know, in a dark room because I was moving forward. And so as I was moving forward, I was actually singing half the time after it really got going good, just because I had that much energy.

As I was running up and down hills and all around the desert, and it was one of those things were just, it was transformative just in my perception of what the human body was, my human body, and what it was capable of. and it was just it was everything that a heroic trip would be but it was just at a very heightened pace and it was glorious at the end of the day. On some level, I think it's, I think it may be possible to eat an ounce of mushrooms and run 30 miles without ever leaving your bed. You know what I mean? Well, there's something to be said about that for sure. I think I'd be done for the trip. Yeah, right, that would be amazing. What it makes me think about is that there's so many ways of changing our reality

or utilizing a psychedelic substance that we haven't even thought about yet. And I bet if we looked back at literature, I bet if we look back at some of the indigenous tribes, we would find different ways, be it a sweat lodge, or be it an ordeal, or be it running, or Paul, what? What say you about the native Hawaiians and ordeals and rituals? Well, they've been blown apart in the last 150 years. Native Hawaiian rituals, I mean, they're pretty much non-existent these days.

You know, I mean, the culture, you know, the Hawaiian culture, well, I mean, I'm not going to want to say that. I mean, it exists here and there, but. You know, the thing with Hawaiian native rituals is that, you know, there's hula and there's, you know, there's chanting. And then, you know, then there's, you know, there's food. But, you know, none of those things were written down. You know, Hawaiians didn't have a written language. And these things were shared. And, you know, during when the missionaries came here, they, you know, they put a big, you know,

acts right down the middle of the sharing of, you know, rituals and culture and language and and all the rest of that stuff. You know, there's been a resurgence. But, you know, I don't know if you're, if you're asking me how it pertains to, like, you know, a hallucinogenic experience. But what about, yeah, what about, like, are there some ceremonies with Kava? Kava's like a slightly psychoactive ingredient, isn't it? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But, you know, the, you know, when, you know, we did, we had a Kava ceremony when my daughter passed away. And, you know, they, it's, you know, they use it at, you know, baby moo-ows. And, and then, of course, you know, when people pass. And it's more of like a, like a ritual. It's more like a religious thing.

you know the kava when the hawaians call ava is um it's really not something that's that's practiced a lot anymore and in you know hawaiian society there's you know hawians have kind of moved on you know it's been my experience they moved on from from ava um and it's and have gone towards you know other things like crystal meth quite a jump yeah yeah it's a heck But as far as like, you know, Hawaiian, you know, Hawaiians, you know, they weren't really into, you know, using that as far as a, as a, you know, kind of like a pathway drug. It was more, you know, chanting and Hula provided, you know, that for them, you know, more. especially chanting. You know, there's, you know, you talk to Hawaiians and, you know, they'll tell you

there's something, you know, psychedelic about chanting, you know, in that, you know, the, the breeding and the vibration and, you know, and the sounds that will open up, you know, different, you know, psychological pathways, you know, more than anything, really. Ranga, what do you think? A lot of the media, right, Ranga? Yeah, coming from India, like reading the... Yeah.

What's that? Oh, Ranga, what do you think? Coming from India, like, if you read the Upanishads and things like that, that is a psychedelic experience in itself. And I'm wondering, like, you and I have had some really good conversations, and it seems to me like the East has just this deep understanding of the psychedelic, at least to me. I mean, how would you, why do you think that is? Like, it seems to me that India especially, you know, when you look at the ashrams and all these different types of people there and the idea of Soma and, you know, just so many great stories.

What, what say you about the psychedelic experience in India? I think psychedelic experiences are found throughout the world. Yeah. I think we are existing in this face where you can see a. of knowledge present in India maybe. I'm not sure what we perceive, but more on the knowledge side, there seems to be a lot of knowledge,

not actual practice, because if that was the case, I don't think I would be in Canada, right? And it's just that we are in the time phase to witness knowledge being there, practice being kind of spread to different parts of the world, different, same substances with different

connotations, different meanings, re-explode. And yeah. What about the yoga tradition in, Kevin, you might be able to answer this one too. You do a lot of breathwork, and I think you're familiar with some of the yoga traditions. What can, do you think you could reach a psychedelic state? I mean, I guess they have Kundalini, which is sort of a, you can reach a state, a psychedelic state in that particular area. Do you know anything about that?

I'm not familiar with Kundalini. I've tried it. It's not my cup of tea, but you can for sure access states like that because they do work with the breath a lot. And I was just thinking earlier, just listen to all your talk about Benjamin's talk and about the mushrooms and running, just like how many different modalities that humans have discovered to try to transcend, I guess, transcend the physical or have that divine connection. And that's one of the reasons I'm interested in yoga in that tradition because there are so many modalities there. And I have experienced something similar to a psychedelic trip with holotropic breathwork for one and a couple of other types of breathing. It's not quite as intense as something like a mushroom trip or an Iowa trip, but it's close.

And I can imagine that if you were really disciplined with it and you did it a lot, you could for sure get to that kind of state if you stay in prolonged meditation afterwards. And I think it's interesting to study the history of Indian culture. Because you basically have a culture that spent thousands of years trying to figure out consciousness. And although I don't understand a lot of the texts I read, I find it fascinating just how they attempt to label and quantify all these different altered states of consciousness, like in between waking, consciousness and enlightenment they have like all these different words for like very specific janas samadhi near beja samadhi and there's like three different four different types of samadhi names and then it's like quite amazing that you have a society that actually sat down and tried to like figure that out and actually label it and categorize it for thousands of years and you know hopefully we'd be

hang on to that and develop it but i feel like We have, we're too, you need to be a culture with a shitload of free time to be able to figure that stuff out. And all we're doing is making ourselves busier and busier. Yeah. Ranga, what do you, do you know about those different, do you know a little bit what Kevin was talking about, about those different ways to describe consciousness? I read about it and meditation also, they mention all these things. I have no understanding what these people actually mean. Yeah, it's quite interesting.

interesting with the time they had, they were able to explore consciousness, right? It wasn't just running after survival and then a bunch of concepts building around survival. It was something beyond that, I feel just not restricted to the particular lifetime. But yeah, coming back to those terms, I have no idea of what's happening in those terms. Do you think that there's a certain type of goal? Like, do you think that there's a certain type of thing that happens to everybody when they take psychedelics? Like, is it a way to help us evolve? I don't know if everybody's familiar with Terence Licita's Stone Ape Theory.

Yeah. Are you familiar with that? Yeah. I pretty much kind of see it that way because for me, after psychedelics, I was able to realize knowledge was nothing more than paying attention. So if one is able to be there. without having thoughts, just with the process, I think there is something magical that's happening, which we will never be able to comprehend yet that that's happening, right? I read these two, three things in the last two, three days.

It was interesting how the Nobel Prize winner who designed PCR test. He said he couldn't have designed it without LSD. And there are bands that have formed just, we weren't that much into music, you know. And we had this psychilic experiences and then we just thought our life should be in music. And it just happened. And they've gone to become bigger bands. And all of this originates, I feel like the whole idea of creativity happens when we don't try to go after something. And to let it be, I think psychilics puts there.

It puts the break on your thought. It puts the break on wherever you're rushing. And like, it's just there. Why are you not seeing it, right? I think the magic is happening throughout everywhere, right? It's just energy and it's just transferring. And that's, for me, it's magic. We are not able to perceive it in our ordinary sense.

As we are busy, we're not able to perceive it. So all these techniques, our cyclic drugs would be to get us to stop and see for what it is. I just had a ridiculous thought. Why stop with the stoned aid theory? Why don't we have stone dolphins? Let's get some dolphins high. Well, they get high voluntarily. They go suck on puffer fish.

Yeah. I saw the neural pathways work. Say what? They already may be predisposed to this experiment then. Yeah. I think it was John Lilly who said, you have to take copious amounts of ketamine to talk to the dolphins. Copious amounts. What a wonderful measure.

Have you guys, I haven't, I have, I've read a little bit of John Lilly, but not a whole lot, but he's done some interesting stuff where he goes into like, you know, the, the isolation tanks and does huge doses of ketamine. I think he also did a lot of ketamine and swam with dolphins and thought he could communicate to them. I think he did work for the Navy, to be honest with you. Have you guys heard about that? Yeah, I heard about that. What can you, yeah, what was he doing there, Benjamin? I think a lot of that's still redacted, actually. So who knows exactly what he was doing? But, you know, the Navy was very intent on using dolphins for torpedo delivery, for

reconnaissance, and they were successful in a number of instances. So I know he was a part of that program. The absolute details, I'm not too familiar. it. But yeah, I think, you know, dolphins go off and get high just in general. And, you know, when we're looking at all the ancient cultures, like in Japan, you know, there's a temple where there's a whole bunch of mushrooms erected in stone. You know, there's, you know, we have, you touched on the soma, you know, there's the illicitian mysteries back in ancient Greece. It's, you know, every, whenever we're looking at ancient history in our, in our past cultures, there seems to, if you look at the right places, there definitely seems to be an aspect of psychedelic use that kind of pushed forward society.

I mean, you know, half the world's population on their iPhone wouldn't have it if Steve Jobs didn't take LSD, right? Yeah. You know, that was his, he came up with, you know, all of those ideas on LSD. and many other CEOs and founders and things like that, through my just entrepreneurial experience, I've had a lot of personal conversations with people who, you know, like, yeah, we were really struggling, couldn't figure out the solution. We went to Burning Man. And all of a sudden they'd come up with this magnificent solution, elegant solution to the problem,

and they were able to, you know, grow it into multi-million dollar company. So I, go ahead. No, go ahead. I think sometimes I think that for me silozybin I believe it's working on the on some level it is allowing us to communicate with the planet itself and I know that may seem a little crazy so let me try to explain like I've taken a lot of mushrooms and like I always end up noticing more things especially in my garden like all of a sudden I'm like wow it's so weird how that plant always opens up a flower like at that 45 degree angle.

You know, in a weird sort of way, when you begin to notice that stuff, it's almost like its own language. And this may be a stretch, but it kind of seems like that plant's talking to you. You know, I read a book by Jeremy Narby called The Cosmic Serpent. And in that book, he's an anthropologist that goes down and he's spending time with his tribe. And the tribe's been tell them, like, oh, yeah, look, we talk to the plants. And the majority of the anthropologists, these people are crazy and they left.

but he stayed and he asked them he says how is it that you talk to the plants and i said oh that's a great question thank you for asking and so they he shows him he's i'll show you so they they walk out into the jungle a little bit and there's this like a a white or a green snake with two white dots on it's on the back of its head and he goes that's a very poisonous snake if it bites you there's a good chance you're going to die unless you get the antidote and he's like but see this plant over here and he shows him a plant and the the leaf on the plant looks exactly the same shape as the snake's head and it has two white dots on the side of it. He goes, you see that?

That's the plant telling us it's the cure for the snake. And he goes, oh, the plants talk to you. You know what I mean? And so I think on some level, be it just making us more observant or maybe we take in more information when we can use mushrooms or other types of psychedelics, I believe that it's a different form of communication and that, you know, somewhere along the lines we've lost that way

to communicate with ourselves, with the planet, with our environment. And I believe the psychedelics are a type of resurgent for that. It also gets me thinking about other animals. Like when I recently saw this thing on squids or cuddlefish, one of the two. And, you know, when they communicate, they change colors. They change textures. And their whole body is communicating. And in a way, we do that as humans, but we don't really pick up on it. Like, have you ever, like, talk to a girl and all of a sudden you see her blush? Like, oh, this girl must think I'm cute or something like that. Or, you know, Maybe you blush or maybe you get goosebumps.

The same way the octopus or the cuddlyfish, they use their skin to communicate to the other cuddlfish. That's something our language doesn't really have, but we as humans have it. Like our texture changes, our color changes. We tend only the most skilled among us really factor that in when we're communicating. Maybe that could be a way to help us communicate more effectively and efficiently. Maybe that could be working into language. Maybe there's a way to put text. texture in a language, you know?

Maybe there's a way to use some sort of, you know, honorifics or something like that that could be used as a texture or something like that. But I think that those are all things that I think of when I'm on mushrooms. And I would never think about those if I didn't take mushrooms. I agree with you on the part that communication is happening, right? And psychedelics, I think, helps humanity as such right, two ways. right if external communication is

am I cutting is it okay now better now you're okay now yeah okay yeah so I think when it's trying to

improve our external communication that drives the progress and if it drives the internal communication right each each second our body is trying to talk to us we're not the body yet

we are you know we are aware of it so based on our ideas and stuff the body is reacting to that, you know, you're going to hear a statement rather than reacting to it, you listen to your body, the body is going to react to that. Oh, I'm going to get angry. I'll dare you talk, something against it.

So that inward communication, if it's strengthened by psychedelics, right? So we're able to listen to us, our emotions or whatever, sensations, right? And not react. Oh, it's just communicating with me. Same as the leaf with the two white dots, right? That communication is happening over a term of, as over a time. as evolution and this is happening, you know, in a matter of seconds based on our ideas and based on situations which we interact with. And the second part, it's, I think that's where psychedelics

are key for mental health. It's just people are able to be themselves and see their own emotions as something that they don't, it's not my thoughts, it's not my emotions, right? I think it gives them an opportunity to think it as a way of communicating rather than, oh, I'm responsible for my emotions. Why I have this intrusive thought. I have to stop the thought. Rather than that thought can be there. Like I get a lot of thoughts.

You know, my partner and I talk about how many times, you know, we get frustrated. Let's say with the dogs. Like, I'm just, can you stop screaming? I'm going to take your tongue out. It doesn't mean I'm going to do that. But it's there, right? I'm not sad about it because at this point, maybe due to experience, I've had the start over a thousand days, maybe.

so it's no unusual thing. But even otherwise, right? It's just a form of communication which we don't need to react. We have a limited amount of resources and we can choose to pay better attention based on if we know that we have a choice. I think awareness is an important word in that conversation. Yes, awareness.

You know, something that psychedelics are very, very great at is raising awareness, whether that be from just, the, you know, the physical sensations, the synesthesia, the interoception, the ability to process through emotions, you know, all in a detached form, you know, just having that state of awareness is, you know, that's what meditation is, that's what holotropic breathing is, that's what, you know, I'm a fan of Tumowm breathing. Like, have you guys heard of Wim Hof, the Iceman? Oh, yeah.

A guy who walked up Everest in a pair of shorts. Yeah. You know, he uses that Tumo breathing, a variation of it. And you could go, now I can too. I can go sit outside in the snowstorm and I'll start steaming simply because of that, that breathing takes you into a point of interoception where you're able to control your autonomic nervous system because you're aware of it. and you know all of these processes that we're talking about build our awareness which increases our ability to communicate George I like what you said about the silas I'm being kind of a link between us and nature because I've had that experience as well too that I was communicating directly with some old natural entity through the mushroom and it makes sense too when you think about what mushrooms do in

nature like normal mushrooms. There's a great, I didn't know this before I listened to this, but there's a great episode of the Radio Lab podcast that came out, I think four or five years ago where they talk about the mycelium in the forest floors and how there's this network of very thin mycelium connecting everything, all the trees, all the plants and the ecosystem there. So biological extension, I like to think of the south side mushroom as being that connector for us to nature. I agree a lot. And it's even more so than just the connections.

They actually transfer resources from individual fauna. So they'll actually take, you know, they'll transfer resources and they communicate. They've actually recorded the frequencies of these things, too, of these big mycelial networks. And so they have communication channels and then they also have resource sharing channels. So they'll take something that the maple tree is producing in abundance and put it to the book. and transfer it through that mycelial network because the bush needs it to thrive. I would like that. I would add this point about how during the last mass extinction where the dinosaurs were white

doubt and all the bigger land beaches were white. Mushrooms were the, so they survived because of their underground nature and in some sense mushrooms are seen as the mother of, the current chain of evolution, let's say. Right? So that way they kind of show you everything. They act as, and now, you know, you're trying to discover so many mushrooms being able to,

let's say, digest plastics or just pretty much replace all the things that we thought could not be replaced. We had to have non-organic substances. So, yeah, it's been a long time of evolution helping us with a lot of different things. we've just not become aware of it yet. Yeah. Sometimes I, you know, when we think about the, the asteroid or the meteor that took out the dinosaurs, you know, doesn't it kind of seem like maybe they say that that's when humans like, well, when the small human type animal began to flourish is when that happened.

But my, it's not too far of a stretch to think that sport. If you listen to Francis Crick or if you look at panspermia, it's not too much of a stretch to think that maybe those spores came from space and it came on the meteorite. All of a sudden, you know, that kind of dovetails with Terence McKinna's idea of stoned ape theory. Here comes this asteroid, boom, kills out the dinosaurs. But now these spores are on the earth. It's almost like the mushroom is the alien.

Maybe it's taken over the human. You know what I mean? I want to address this book right here. There's a great book called The Genius Play. and it's by David Walton. David Walton is a, he works for like skunk works, and he is like an incredible scientist,

and he's also probably one of the greatest science fiction writers that, for some reason, people don't talk about it. But in this book, The Genius Plague, he talks about this guy that goes to South America, and he eats a type of mushroom that's very similar to that type of cortisept that the ants eat, and it gets into the ant, and then the ant climbs the tree,

and it explodes out of the ant, And are you guys familiar with that type of? Out of its head. Out of its head. Okay. Okay. So in this book, he says that mushrooms, and he's kind of alluding to magic mushrooms, that they are like a, it's like a symbiosis.

So when you ingest them, they become part of you, the same way. And then they begin to grow in you. And he gives this idea, and it's a science fiction book, but he goes through like all this neurochemistry about how it helps heal the brain. and like he just goes super in depth like you would expect an engineer from Skunk Works to go in depth makes me start thinking like what does this guy know

but anyways I wanted to bring up the book I hope you guys all get a chance to read it it's called The Genius Plague and I don't want to spoil the ending for anybody who might read it but it's well worth your while So on that point you know it's really interesting you know we have a whole fungal system inside our body

that's typically pretty malnourished In fact our whole nervous system is fungal based right I didn't know that Yeah, yeah. So we're a combination of all these things that have been on this planet for quite a while. And, you know, we have we have pieces from parasites that are that have been incorporated into our DNA. We have chunks from viruses that infected the populace from certain periods of time. All these things have kind of made an interplay into who we are of a human. But we have a fungal system as well. In that fungal system, you know, so one of the things that it does that, I just found out about this about a year ago. Brett Weinstein talked briefly about it, but there's this thing called ionophores.

And ionophores are what carry electrical charge between the cell and the rest of the body. The only two things that grow ionophores in the human body are fungus and bacteria. And so we have specific parts of our fungal system that grow these ionophores, ionophoric systems in our body that create a greater energy transfer between ourselves and all the surrounding tissues and all the in, you know, in all the surrounding cell.

So there's a lot to be said from just the biochemistry perspective of, you know, our relationship to mushrooms. And then you look at it is, you know, mushrooms are also the only thing that inhales carbon or inhale's oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide in kind of the plantish king. if you will. You know, so they're much more akin to us than they would be to, you know, your average fauna. Yeah, I agree.

I, getting back full circle, a root system looks a lot like the neural network in your brain. You know, if you just look at like the fMRI versus, you know, pick your root ball system. And if the, if the mycelium is connecting and strengthening all those particular gateways and pathways, you know, why wouldn't it do the same thing for an organism outside the ground than it does for an organism inside the ground? Like I really think that we're going to start to see a lot of incredible science come. The more we investigate, the more we begin to see, I think once we start getting through the trials of PTSD, I think you're going to see it work really well with like autism and, you know, I don't want to jump the gun or cause

anybody to get in trouble with research or whatever, but I really think that there is a long, I think, why not? I mean, if it's healing the brain in certain ways, and we know that there's some sort of CBD oil that helps with autism, I think it's well worth investigating the, the effects of psilocybin on autism, you know, it seems like a no-brainer. Well, sure. I mean, you're, you're getting neurogenesis whenever you're suggesting psilocybin. So, you know, that alone is enough to try to explore for, you know, use it as, as an expert. exploration tool as an experiment for any sort of neurological disorder or disease or what have you. Because that's, it's one of the only, I don't even think there's anything in pharmacology that does

anything close to that. Right. Yeah. So, you know, it's the only, it's the only substance that we're aware of that promotes this type of neurogenesis. I would, I would, I would think too, like, I've been experimenting with like a, I'm big on supplements and I'm big on, um, experimenting. And of course, I don't, I try to be as responsible as I can. But I think there's something to be said for taking like a growth hormone along with psilocybin. I think it's like a, it's like a steroid for the continued growth of neurogenesis. You know, like if you're so, if you are secreting HGH and on top of that, creating new neural pathways, like I, whenever I take psilocybin now, I'll take like 20.

milligrams of like MK 677, which is a SARM. And I can, in my opinion, listen, I'm not a scientist and maybe people shouldn't do this, whatever, but I mean, I have found with my journal and my subjective ideas that it works amazing. Well, you know, that's kind of, if you look at how HDH is when it kicks off in the body, you know, it's usually when you're doing like heavy lifting or highly intense workouts type, things like that. So from my experience perspective, you know, I concur. Yeah. You know, putting yourself under that physical stress in having that type of

concoction of environment created in your body is a different animal. Yeah, I agree. Paul, you're pretty quiet over there, buddy. Are you still with this? Yep. Just listening. Nice. What do you think, Paul? If you have, to choose a favorite psychedelic what would you what would be your choice oh man I mean you know for me psychedelics well when I was young was available I remember that the older was in between like you know what the vacation called for I don't know if it would have like a I can't tell you yeah Paul's breaking up first me too. Yep, you're breaking up on us, buddy. You go closer? Yeah. Um, you know, I don't know if I really

have a favorite one. It's, it's more like, um, you know, what are we doing? What's the occasion? What do we, you know, what's happening here? And then, you know, then, then, then choose the most appropriate one. Yeah. It's kind of like a sword. Am I breaking up? A little bit. A little bit. Yeah, I don't know if you guys caught that, but for me, I don't have a favorite. It's, you know, it's, you know, what are we doing? You know, am I going to be by myself? Am I going to be with other people? Or we, you know, what's the purpose here?

So then, you know, then you pick the most appropriate one. Have you ever given your bees psilocybin? When do you think what happened? No, I've never given bees psilocybin. It's interesting, though. I mean, I don't, you know, I've, I've taken psilocybin, you know, honey. But, but never. That's the popular thing in Costa Rica.

All of a sudden, right up the right time of the year, you'll see everybody with these little tubs of honey and a whole bunch of mushrooms marinating. Yeah. Yeah. But, no, I've never, I've never given them. I've never, I've given honeybees, you know, clifitting in. and, you know,

amidicloropin and all kinds of nasty stuff, but I've never given them psychedelics. I think we should, I think we should document that. I bet you it would be, I bet you we could learn something. They did that with spiders,

didn't they, back in the day? They did. Yeah. I don't, I don't, what, do you remember what the results of that were?

If I recall, it was the weed one had, it was pretty similar to a normal web, and the LSD one had a whole lot of intricacies and it was still a pretty functional web and then they did things like cocaine, heroin, PCV and stuff like that

and they were all just, the webs were trash. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm going to have to try it. Yeah, I wonder if it would change the behavior of the hive. I mean, they're already, if some of the things we were saying about the mushroom bringing people

closer together or something like that, I wonder if it, I don't like, How would the hive become even more functional? Or do you, I guess you would start with a hypothesis. My hypothesis would be that giving psilocybin to bees would cause the hive to be more productive. What do you think, Paul? I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, I don't know if, well, first of all, you got to deliver it to them, right? And then, you know, you, the results would only be within the hive itself. It would be really hard to determine, you know, whether or not they were actually being more productive. If they were, if they were, you know, collecting more pollen or if they were collecting better pollen, if they were collecting more nectar, different types of nectar, it would be really difficult to, you know, that I guess it would be, you could really see it. What would be interesting is because they use honey, you know, just because they eat it doesn't mean that they're going to process it.

You know, they may store it. They may use it to feed to, you know, to brood. They may use it to, you know, to do other things. So it would be interesting to see what the effect of that. Maybe they would build some really outrageous honeycombs. Maybe the honey would be psychoactive. Is that a possibility? You know, that's a possibility.

Isn't there some bee species, I think it's in Asia, that, something like that that creates psychoactive honey? I've heard of it. I've heard of it. You know, I know that, you know, one of the big things, you know, five years ago in the bee world was manuka honey, you know, that came out of New Zealand and people were talking about all the medicinal properties that manuka honey provided. but I've never heard of

you know honey well you know here's what I do know like bees will actually forage on stuff that is you know that is poisonous to people and then they will make honey out of that

and you know for a long time people were saying like you know over here in Hawaii we have fireweed and it's you know it's pretty toxic but honeybees love it and they'll get on it and feed on it. And then what people are saying is like, you shouldn't eat the honey because it's,

because it's toxic. But I have some friends that keep bees up the mountain where there's a lot of honeybee, where there's a lot of fireweed. And they claim to get kind of a, you know, like a kind of euphoric experience when they're eating the honey. You know,

maybe a slight, you know, poisoning, you know, slight toxicity in their system. That's, you know, that's making them feel a certain way. I believe that. I wouldn't doubt that. Yeah, I just had Jamie pull this up.

It says, Nopolis. Hallucinogenic honey from Nepal is rare. It's not as sweet as traditional honey is. It's also more reddish in color. However, the biggest difference between this type of Nepalese honey and the regular variety is the effect. Hallucinogenic honey has on those who eat it. When you eat it,

these small amounts of this honey, you can experience dizziness and euphoria. An excessive dose of mad honey can produce hallucinations. While some people value the mad honey experience, others face severe side effects. So it doesn't say why, but it definitely says that there's something there. I would imagine it's what they're feeding on, right, Paul? Probably. Yeah, or it could be, you know, like I make mead, lots of it. And, you know, that's fermenting honey.

And there's, you know, meads a lot different than any other alcohol I've ever had. And that it's got up, you know, the euphoria effect is high, you know, when you drink meat. And so it could be, you know, it could be, you know, something that is seasonal that gets into the beehive that maybe begins to ferment the honey. And then so when they take it, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's more of an of an alcohol, you know, than, I mean, who, I'd have to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to read into that. I'm going to figure that out. but that you know honey fermenting in a beehive is you know not outside the realms of possibility it happens and and some people you know bad beekeepers will take honey before it's ready will harvest honey before it's ready and therefore you know their honey will begin to ferment you know pretty quickly And, you know, I mean, we all have experience of eating foods that are fermented and drinking beverages that have been fermented and it's, you know, can be euphoric and it could be, make you sick, you know, but it's definitely an effect there.

Yeah, it's fascinating to think about. Gentlemen, I haven't having a blast. I have a dinner to go to, but I wish I could keep talking to you. And this is really fun. I really enjoyed it. What do you guys think? That's fine. Yeah, good time.

Yeah, I loved it. Oh, yeah. So why don't we start? Thank you. Yeah, start around. Kevin, tell us where we can find you and what you got coming up. I just want to thank you, George, for doing the very difficult job of moderating people talking and trying to keep everybody on track. That's not easy.

It's easy with you guys. Thank you. Of course. Yeah, my website, Kevin Holt.me, my website, Kevin Holt.me, you can find everything there if you want to check me. And Kevin's wrote an amazing book. If people are listening to this or you're watching young, successful and miserable, and it's an awesome book. There's a lot of work you can do in there.

So it's a book you can not only read, but that you can work with. And I think it's awesome. I need a great job on it. And I'm looking forward to the next one coming out. You said you might have a semi-date for that one in next couple months? Nah, I never know how long it's going to take. I'm always happening. Yeah.

I'm excited to see that you're working on something because you're a really good writer and a really good person and I enjoy talking to you. So thank you. Thank you, George. Absolutely. Benjamin, what do you got going on, buddy? Where can people find you?

What's on deck for you? Benjamin C.George.com is the home for all my projects and efforts. Book, no absolute for sale on the website, Amazon. And I'll be hosting a podcast here at the end of September with George is my first guest. And I would love to invite the other three here to be guests on the podcast as well. Absolutely. They'll make great guests, I think. I was going to, yeah, maybe Benjamin's got some awesome ideas about the Terra Libre project.

I wanted to get into it, but I ended up going over a little bit of time. And I don't think a short amount of time would do it justice. this. But I don't know. You want to talk about it? What do you think? I'll give the 10,000 foot. Yeah, please do. Please do. Essentially, it's a lifelong passion project. Well, 15-year-long passion project. The idea is to merge sustainability and technology to solve societal level problem that we're currently facing. Paul, you got a friend that does. I just thought about this right now. Who's your friend that is working on alternative energy? the guy that had the radio show Oh my friend Josh

Josh we should get Josh I'm gonna send you Benjamin stuff and you can send it to Josh I think he'd be a good fit for that but yeah Benjamin and I have talked a little bit about it and it's it's kind of one direction I wanted to go in

when we talk about parallel structures you know it's about building a system where each individual helps with but doesn't necessarily take profits from the other individual. You know, and like I said, it's, how else would you flesh that out? Is that a good way to describe it? Well, I mean, so it's a very complex model because it's a communal model.

So the idea would be that it's a network system where the individual is the ultimate product. And the idea behind that is each individual would have their, it removes all of the barriers of entry into the market for you know like starting in LLC getting a website getting all of this stuff and it just allows people to focus on the arts the good the services that they're going to offer that network system is incorporated into a corporate structure so it can compete in the marketplace of the world and then the and then there's some there's a it's a much larger conversation but The idea is that you have a meritocracy combined with a democracy because you have a one vote, one person system with the crypto network background. And then it's kind of all embroiled into a corporate structure to complete in the wider marketplace of the world, which doesn't mean anything. But in a longer conversation, it does start to make a little sense. Yeah. I'd need acid for that one.

I think that if we if you could see some of the the maps as far as imagery and you could read the business plan it would make much more sense. I should have had some of that stuff ready and then I could have I could have made it a better. Yeah, well next Sunday I should have a whole slew of infographics and stuff and I can send I could send out at least a little write-up. Yeah. Yeah. That would be awesome. Ranga, man. I love talking to you, man, and I really admire the insight that is totally different than mine, man.

And you always have like a super awesome, super awesome joke. I got a guest right here, guys. Griggs 420, good friend of mine. He is, I'm going to have him on the show. This guy, he's probably one of my favorite artist in Hawaii. Griggs, if you listen into this, maybe post, I don't know if you can post a picture in the chat, Griggs, but if you can't try it. So Griggs is one of us. Griggs is he's definitely big on the psychedelic scene, and he takes it to a whole other level.

He's been taking a lot of underwater pictures. And if you've ever seen a picture of a wave, imagine it magnified. And he has like a set, a set of pictures that when you look in the wave, you can see faces in the wave. And not like, not just faces that you imagine, but like up close and faces that look like they're smut. back at you. The picture is psychedelic in itself because it's like the wave is smiling back at you. I'll send you guys all a picture of it. But you're super awesome guy and one of the best artists, I think, in Hawaii. I'm going to have him on here. And he'd be a great person for your podcast as well. But what's up, Griggs? I love you, buddy. So Ranga, what else? What do you got going on right now?

What are you excited about? And where can people find you? The people can find me on LinkedIn, Ranga Rajin. So it's easier to reach me there. I haven't found what ways I'm going to contribute in psychedelics, I think, as I said last time. Right now I'm just taking it easy, jolly, and going to set up a podcast. The last podcast kind of gave me the motivation to, you know, have my things. There are so many things we can talk about issues. And I feel like it's just putting your voice out there for someone who might need it at that point. So I feel like I've had that during my first.

face of questioning being scary, the initial scary face, right? I don't know which, which path you're going to go. How are you going to create your own path or it's safer to walk? And at that time, you know, you could hear someone say that, yeah, yeah, yeah, do not worry, you know, as scary as it can be. You can, you can question anything. So that's, that's the idea behind the podcast and trying to start with cultural and traditional, traditional, tradition related problems that's originating from India.

because as much as culture and tradition seems brighter on the outside, when it goes to the individual level, I don't think it is as beautiful as it is. It becomes more compulsive. At least that's my experience and experience of my friends who have tried to get away from it, right? What's the point you want to get away? Because it's just, it's compulsive.

So how do we overcome that compulsion rather truly enjoy what we are doing? I think culture can be only perceived from outside. When a person is doing, I don't think he should. or she should be focused on cultural tradition. But I think cultural tradition is the thing that is honored and people are doing it to follow it. So this chicken or egg thing, which comes first, so we've got to break that and say, do it,

and whatever you're doing might be perceived as culture from the outside. Yeah. Like you're, I love talking to you. Our last conversation was really good. I think that we, I think in the first day we had like 360, views on the YouTube channel. And people really responded to the things you were saying.

And I think you're going to help a lot of people. I'm glad you made the choice that you did, Ranga, because it was the right choice. And I can see your passionate about it. And for everybody out there that's questioning what's right and wrong for them, I would point you towards Ranga and listen to what he says because he lays it out perfect. Like you have to do, even if people around you think maybe you're doing the wrong thing, That's not a reason for you to not do it. It's the courage to do what you know you have to do to make you be successful.

And I know that's the path you're on, man. Quite honestly, it's pretty inspiring. So thank you for doing it, man. I'm looking forward to seeing what you got coming up. Paula Powell, Paulopal, what? Where can people find you? What are you up to? And what are you excited about?

Man, it's like everybody else here has got, like, you know, websites and writing books and LinkedIn. in and, you know, starting podcasts or, you know, you really can't find me. You're sending queens all over the world, my friend. I think that you are doing some pretty big things. No, but you can't, you really can't find me. And, you know, the people that I sell queens to have been, you know, been doing it for a long time. And to be honest, I started selling queens because I put one post on the classified section of the B-source forum and then have never had anything.

since then. That's awesome. That is. What's it going rate for a queen? What's that? What's the going rate for a queen? I'm curious. Between 25 and 30 bucks.

Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, there's such high demand, you know. Can you mail them in here? I'm just kidding. Yeah, you put them in the mail. That's what we do. UPS.

FedEx won't pay for you. Plug for you. Yeah, and I don't really, I don't, really do the social media stuff. You know, kind of like a, I don't know, you know, Stephen Hawking's a jungle theory. I don't really want to be, you know, I kind of lay low. I farm, you know, so I spend a lot of time on, you know, hundreds of acres, either by myself or with only a handful of other people, and I really enjoy that.

It makes me jealous. Yeah, it makes me jealous. Thank you. You know, I'm going to Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.